Episode 1697 Scott Adams: Ruble, Aliens, Hole in One, Hunter, Carbon Removal, Slapstick, Peace Deal
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Rewriting of history by pet media
Medicinal mushrooms, Ego Death
Attacks on Will Smith and Chris Rock
Carbon Capture technology
Paying for Russian energy in Rubles
Biden's tax the rich plan
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Yacking with the people on Locals, turned off my computer before I printed my notes for today, and what would normally be the highlight of your life has now turned into, tragically, a slow slog of watching me try to print while talking at the same time.
Not many people can print and talk at the same time, but I'm going to prove that it's not a myth.
It can be done. Watch and learn.
Boom. Yeah, that's printing.
We're going to take it up a notch.
I hope your printers are working as well as mine because they're quite good right now.
Have you ever had this experience that your printer is so undependable that when you hear that beautiful sound of it working correctly, it's just like music.
Until I turn around and find out that the ink is out and it's all blank pages.
But until I do that, it's going to be awesome.
Hold on. Do you see how many notes are printing?
When you hear that much printing, it means a good show.
A good show is coming up.
Hold on. Oh, I can't reach.
I'm tied in. You know the thing that sets the show apart?
I'll tell you what sets the show apart.
Low production values.
Yeah. If you go to other places, you're going to get a bunch of fancy background sets and probably the audio will work almost every time.
But do you get this?
No. No.
This is casual.
This makes you feel comfortable.
This is the thing that you want more than anything, but you also want it to happen in its proper order because that's the way you've been taught.
Good morning, everybody.
How would you like to participate in the simultaneous step?
I know you would.
Here's the sound. That's what you've been waiting for.
And now, now that your day has gone from the depths Of incompetence to the height of mastering what we call the simulation.
If you'd like to take it up another notch, all you need is a cup of margaro glass, a tank or chalice, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine hit of the day.
Wait. Wait.
Hold on. Hold on.
I'm going to teach you something. Hold on.
Hold on. Hold on. Put down your cup.
Today we're going to take a page out of George Costanza's book.
We're going to combine two of the most awesome things in the world.
You can do it your own way.
We're going to be skill stacking the simultaneous sip.
We're not only going to be sipping your favorite beverage, but at the same time I will be using this back scratcher to scratch that itch in the middle of my back that I've been waiting all day to get.
Watch this, at the same time.
You can do it at home too. Go!
Oh, double pleasure.
Wow. Everybody, everybody.
I don't know. Yeah, if you do the ham sandwich plus the sex, that's what George Costanza taught us in Seinfeld, you can double your pleasure.
And I think I just did it for you.
All right. Now, here's what we got going on.
Let's see. Let's see.
Apparently, Ukraine is offering some kind of a land for peace deal.
So it looks like...
Maybe the peace deal in Ukraine will be Russia keeps, you know, their land bridge, and they keep the east of Ukraine, and maybe, maybe the rest of Ukraine stays Ukraine.
Who knows? But I saw a provocative tweet by somebody named Inna Sofsson.
And maybe a pro-Ukraine person says, for anyone asking me, quote, maybe you should give up Crimea and Donbass in exchange for peace.
Before asking this question, name me the specific region in your country you would be willing to give up if Putin started bombing your cities.
That's a good question.
If Putin were bombing your country, could you name any part of your country you'd be willing to give up?
Well, I would start with Detroit, but that would depend a lot on Putin not Googling it.
But, you know, we could just say, hey, Motown, Motown.
And then Putin would be, well, that sounds good.
So if we could end a war, a war that was destroying the country, and the only thing we had to give Putin was Detroit, I'd at least talk about it.
I'd throw in San Francisco just as a sweetener.
I mean, he doesn't even have to ask for that one.
He'd be like, okay, we'll stop the war.
You just have to give us Detroit.
And I'd say, wait, are you done negotiating?
He'd go, yeah, yeah, well, just Detroit.
That's all we need. We'll stop the war.
I'd be like, could we offer you more?
And he'd be like, well, you're a bad negotiator.
I've just agreed to take Detroit in return for stopping the war.
And I'd say, yes, but I was going to offer San Francisco.
You know, if we could just reopen the negotiations just for a minute, maybe take that off my hands, too.
Delaware, another fine suggestion.
Rhode Island, we could give him some of the small stuff.
He might not know the difference.
All right. Here's the most fascinating thing.
Glenn Greenwald is all over this, about how the CIA and the mainstream media are rewriting history.
And he's talking about the Hunter Biden laptop story.
And you know how the story came out that there was provocative stuff on the laptop about Ukraine and business dealings when Biden was vice president.
And You know, the media just made that story go away, and they made it go away before the election, and it could have made a big difference.
Could have. Don't know.
So that was a gigantic story that the media just made go away.
But then as time goes by, it turns out that the story was real, and now we can confirm that That the CIA and various intelligence agencies colluded to make an important story go away to rig the election, or at least to influence it.
I call that rigging, but let's say influence.
But then the interesting thing happens was, so the original story goes away, but then when it is validated much later, the story about the story going away goes away.
Now here's something you need to understand about persuasion.
Persuasion is everything about memory.
This is a good way to think of it.
The things that you remember are the only things you act on.
It makes sense, right? You know, when I say it, you're like, well, that makes sense.
If something's not in your mind in any way, you don't act on it.
So memories are what you're trying to create.
You're trying to make a stronger memory for the thing you want to persuade than the memory of something else.
So you're going to act on your strongest memory.
And here's a situation where the CIA... With whatever persuasion technology it has, working with the mainstream media, made a gigantic story go away.
And then, just to show you how much they could influence your memory, they made the story about the story going away go away.
And if they can make the story go away, and then they can make the story about the story going away going away, Then what else can they make go away?
And by they, I mean...
Well, by they, I mean...
And the story about the...
What were we just talking about?
I forget the topic.
Was there something about...
I think it was something about...
Chris Rock getting slapped.
Yeah, that's what it was. So let's talk about that.
I feel like there's something I'm forgetting, though.
No, no, I think it was about the Oscars.
All right, do you remember I gave you a prediction the other day that was really weird, but you're watching it come true in real time, faster than I imagined.
And the prediction goes like this.
The growth of mushrooms as a drug of probably great medical value, some recreational value as well.
But honestly, the people who take it recreationally end up saying that the health value is the bigger part, the mental health part.
And I told you that the growth of mushrooms, especially now that it's been commoditized and the stigma has been removed, That it would change civilization.
Remember? So this isn't just another drug.
In a way, you could say fentanyl is changing civilization, but in the worst possible way.
But mushrooms are going to change civilization probably in a positive way.
And one of the ways it does that is it destroys your ego and allows you to just consider new things.
So it makes you more creative.
So one of the things I predicted is that the United States would dominate China in the future in large part, not small part, in large part.
This is what makes the prediction interesting.
Not in small part, but one of the biggest reasons, the biggest reasons that the United States will dominate technology and entrepreneurship in the future is that we're going to do more mushrooms.
And again, I don't recommend this or any other drug, just to be clear.
I'm not recommending you take anything.
Right? Every drug has a danger.
I'm not a doctor. Blah, blah, blah.
We're talking about them. We're not recommending them.
So I'm going to give you an example of where that wild prediction is already happening.
Right in front of you. Chris Rock was in the news, as you know, for getting slapped by Will Smith at the Oscars.
Do you know that Chris Rock is going on a world tour, comedy tour?
Do you know what the name of the comedy tour is?
Somebody say it. You know what it is.
What is the comedy tour named?
It's already named, Chris Rock's Comedy Tour.
It's called Ego Death World Tour.
Ego death world tour.
Now, what is ego death?
Ego death comes from using hallucinogens and usually mushrooms.
What are the odds that there's a big story about mushrooms and that the person who's in the news is doing a world tour called ego death?
Is that a coincidence?
Now, What is also the biggest surprise, maybe, about Chris Rock getting slapped?
Did you hear that he apologized?
If you didn't hear that, what's that doing to your head?
Chris Rock apologized unreservedly.
He's the one who got slapped.
He told a joke as a comedian...
In the role of a comedian, he told a joke, he got slapped hard, and he apologized unreservedly.
Who can do that?
Oh, here we go, here we go.
That's the comment I was looking for.
Somebody said, pussy. Wimp, right?
Weak. Weak.
Stop getting ahead of me.
Somebody said, Jesus.
So half of you said he's a weak pussy, and some of you said he's like Jesus.
Make up your mind.
You know what he is?
He's a person who has controlled his ego.
Ego death. Do you think he named that world tour Ego Death because he hadn't experienced it?
Oh, no. There are no coincidences here.
I'm just guessing, right?
But I'm putting two and two together, and it usually equals four.
We could be surprised, right?
Because I'm acknowledging that I'm taking some leaps and assumptions.
But if you name your world tour ego death, you're thinking mushrooms.
If you're thinking them, you've done them.
If you've done them, you've experienced it.
He's probably recently experienced ego death.
His response, the apologizing for being slapped, is the most aware thing you'll ever see in your whole fucking life.
It's one of the most impressive things anybody ever did.
But it doesn't look that way, does it?
It looks like, to those of you operating at a lower level, it looks like he caved.
He was weak. He gave in.
Right? Those of you operating at a post-mushroom level, those of you who have experienced ego death, might be seeing a different movie.
The movie you're seeing is somebody who took full responsibility for his own actions.
What? That's right.
He took full responsibility.
Not partial. Not partial.
Full responsibility.
For his own actions, because they're the actions that cause the other action.
Now, in the real world, does anybody ever do that?
Almost never. Almost never.
Generally speaking, you would have expected him to hedge and say, well, you know, I thought I was just making a joke, but it was sort of a mistake.
Nope. Took full responsibility.
Now, if somebody says it was fake...
If he did not have a tour called Ego Death, I might have said so too.
Scott has jumped the shark.
You can tell the people who have never done mushrooms.
The people who say I've jumped the shark.
That's a good tell.
For somebody whose ego is completely owning them.
If you want to be totally owned by your ego, just make comments like that.
NPC comments. Alright.
So... There's a second part of this that's even more mushroomy.
So while it seems to me that Chris Rock has demonstrated, not only by his immediate reaction, but in my opinion, and again, this is all very subjective, so there's plenty of room for you to disagree, but in my opinion...
Chris Rock's handling of this went from sort of interesting, and maybe professional, I guess, that he managed to carry on with the show, which is kind of impressive.
But when he went full responsibility in public and didn't hedge it at all, to me that was very impressive.
And here's the thing.
Do you think he doesn't know that he'll be called a wimp?
Of course he does. Do you think he doesn't know that the way he handled it doesn't look manly?
Yeah, yeah, he knows that.
Yep. Perfectly aware.
Do you think he's not aware that he was the smaller man and a larger man just beat the shit out of him on TV? Yep.
Do you think he's handling it?
Yep. It looks like he can control his ego.
Here's the better part of this.
If you look on social media, it's just full of people making the same NPC comment, which is that Will Smith is a cuckold because he allows his wife to date other men.
Now, where's the part where you know what Will Smith is doing in his spare time?
Isn't there something missing in the story?
Isn't it more like two people who have decided to have a, let's say, an important primary relationship, but they've both decided that they will have exterior relationships and that that will be part of their going forward?
Now, what makes that bad for Will Smith?
May I give you a little bit of reality?
Somebody says Will Smith is gay.
I don't think so. I don't think so.
Here's what I think. Would you agree with the following statement that Will Smith is probably, probably, one of the most desired men in Hollywood?
That women would flock to be with him, would you say?
Can anybody agree with me on that?
Yeah. I mean, he would be...
He's fit, he's funny, he's rich, he's successful.
He's got a lot going for him.
So I would say that he could probably...
Have as much sex as he wanted of the highest quality.
Would you agree with that?
Does anybody disagree with that?
That if he wanted, he could have the highest quality and the most sex he wanted.
Why do you think he's not doing that?
What in the world would make you think he's not doing that?
Now, yeah, I hear the theory that he's gay, but all evidence suggests that's not the case.
So, think about Will Smith's ego.
Think about this. Will Smith knows exactly what everybody's saying about him, right?
You assume that's true.
He's completely aware that the internet thinks that he's letting his wife sleep around, but he's not for some reason.
Where's the part where Will Smith says, hey, hey, everybody, don't you know that I'm doing it too?
I'm seeing a comment on locals that was, let's say, off-color, but very funny.
I'll just tell you what it was.
There was some gentleman on the Locals platform talking about Will Smith who says, I blew him and I can confirm he's gay.
Probably not.
Probably not. It probably didn't happen.
Anyway, ask yourself this.
Is Will Smith operating at a low level of awareness or a high level of awareness?
At a lower level of awareness, what would you expect him to say to defend himself against all these claims?
You'd expect him to say, well, you know, I'm doing it too.
It's not just my wife who's dating guys.
I'm up to my balls and strange every day.
But because he apparently is operating at some kind of higher level, apparently, he actually lets this ride.
The only thing I've seen as impressive as this, and I've told you this before, is Richard Gere, who never denied the rumor, which I'm sure is not true.
He never denied the rumor that he once went to the emergency room with a gerbil stuck up his butthole.
As some sort of alleged sex play.
Now, personally, I don't think there's any chance it's true.
But because it was a gigantic rumor for decades, you'd think at least once Richard Gere would say, oh, that's not true.
But I love the fact he never did that.
I love that. Like, it just made me respect him so much.
And not respect him because of the way he handled it, necessarily.
But respect him because he didn't need to do it a different way.
Apparently. Like, he didn't have any lower awareness need to defend himself.
He just let it ride.
And it looks to me like Will Smith is doing the same thing.
I mean, he's really being viciously attacked for his lifestyle.
And the most obvious thing about his lifestyle is that he's getting so much sex that he's probably just exhausted half the time.
So, why did you imagine it was any other way?
Have you partied with the Smiths?
No, but it sounds like a good time.
I can't imagine anything that would be more fun than that.
Somebody said, have I partied with the Smiths?
Like, literally, I can't think of anything that would be more fun than that.
Can you imagine? Imagine getting invited to one of their parties.
I'm not trying to get invited to a party.
I'm just saying, if you imagine it, it couldn't be a bad time.
Wouldn't be a bad time. All right, here's the greatest tweet about that...
Oh, and by the way, we don't know if Chris Rock knew about the alopecia or not.
We're not sure if he knew about that.
But probably... I think not, right?
Which would explain the whole thing.
All right. Here's a tweet that sums it up.
Julius Sharp tweeted this.
He said, Last night was show business in a nutshell.
A performer gets punched in front of everyone.
No one does anything to stop it.
And everyone acts like it didn't happen.
The puncher gets an award and a standing ovation.
And the funniest thing about that is that that's just a description of what happened.
He didn't have to add anything.
It was just a description of what happened.
Did you see that Trump got a hole in one?
So if you're not aware of how golf works, there are some holes on a golf course that are very long.
It would take several strikes with your instrument to get there.
And then there's some that you can reach the green with your driver, or not usually your driver, but some you can reach the green with...
A five iron. As Trump did.
And so if you can reach it in the first shot, there's a chance that it might fall in that hole.
And it looks like Trump is claiming that he did that and he's got witnesses.
And one of them is a professional golfer, so sounds like a pretty good witness.
But the part you have to see...
And I keep saying this, and I don't think that...
I think people are starting to understand.
Trump is a really good writer...
Does everybody get that?
That whatever you want to say about him in any other realm, he's a really good writer.
Every sentence he writes, you can't look away.
Somebody says, Steinbeck, It's something about the visual imagery.
It's something about the fact he never says what you expect him to say.
There's something about the complexity of it.
There's something about the humor in all of it.
Like everything is tongue-in-cheek, but you're not quite sure.
And also that the joke is on the reader.
And you know that Trump is making some people upset to entertain other people.
And it's working. So I'm not going to read the statement, but I will simply turn you toward it and say, if you get a chance to Google Trump hole-in-one and read his statement about it, it's just a little masterpiece.
It just is. It's just a little masterpiece.
All right. What else is happening?
Well, the Wall Street Journal has a big article, and it's proving once again that the Addams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters is a darn good one.
So the Addams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters says if you can see a disaster coming with enough time to do something, we always adjust.
Because there have been plenty of world-ending disasters.
We're all going to run out of food.
Well, okay, we didn't.
We're going to run out of oil.
Okay, we didn't.
So climate change is going to kill us all?
It probably won't. So here's what's happening in climate change.
Not only are there...
Let's see, I think it was maybe a year and a half ago when I was doing research on this...
There were about a half a dozen companies in the carbon removal business, where they could suck the carbon right out of the air or right out of the smokestack and turn it into a product or store it in rocks, basically get it out of the system.
And that handful of companies, a year and a half ago, has now turned into...
There were 200 companies that asked Shopify for some investment in that space.
And I guess nine of them they funded.
So one company, just Shopify, got 200 applications in this space and funded nine of them.
So there's just immense, immense energy just went into carbon capture because anybody who gets something that works is going to be a multi-billionaire.
Right? Right.
There aren't that many areas left where there's a virgin field, you know, it's just a field, and somebody's going to be a billionaire, and everybody wants to be that billionaire.
Somebody's going to make the better carbon capture.
And the article in the Wall Street Journal today goes through a number of ways they're doing it.
One of them is a company that uses drones just to drop seeds in places that need to be reforested.
Now, there probably were other ways to drop seeds, like walking around and tossing them.
That always works. But you can see that the breadth of the number of companies working in this space is pretty big.
So here's what I think.
I think we're going to be fine.
I think we're going to be fine, climate change-wise.
I think that the problems we have are that all predictions are straight-line predictions.
When you make a prediction of what's going to happen in 80 years, it's almost always what I'll call a straight-line prediction.
And if I may use my backscratcher to illustrate it...
It means that whatever you're predicting, let's say the rate of growth in something, tends to just go in a predictable line, you know, like it's one straight line.
Now, you might say that the growth of it is quick or the growth of it is slow, but still, when you predict it, you never predict big bumps and shocks because those are, by definition, unpredictable.
So instead, you put it in a straight line.
But the real world never works like that.
So why do I say that nobody can do a long-range prediction about anything?
Because in 100% of cases, there are surprises if you wait long enough.
So the longer the time period, the less you can predict, obviously.
Now, this carbon capture stuff is already taking a steep turn.
So if you predicted carbon capture, you would say, well, it's not very good now, but if it slowly improves, maybe it'll make a little difference in 80 years, which would be ridiculous.
Now, I don't know that they're making that specific assumption.
I'm making a general case about assumptions.
But if you look at this Wall Street Journal article, 200 companies sprung up in this space.
It looks like carbon capture is going to go from doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work.
A thousand companies are working on it.
Oh, shit, somebody got it.
I think that's what's going to happen.
I think numbers alone and all this energy put into the same field pretty much guarantees that one of them is going to become Apple Computer.
Pretty much. Would anybody disagree with that?
That if you have enough energy going into a question, even fusion looks like it's going to be solved.
Even fusion. How about flying cars?
Yeah, we're one year away from flying cars.
I mean, not literally a car, even though we will have some of those, but a little quadricopter that you can just have in your backyard and fly places.
That's like a year away. I think you can actually put in an order for one right now.
So pretty much everything happens if you put enough energy into it and enough companies try enough things.
Let's talk about the ruble.
There was something I never understood about currency, which is...
If you can make somebody pay you in a certain currency and they need whatever you're selling, that currency always has value, doesn't it?
I didn't understand how a currency could decline in value so long as there was...
All right.
I was just reading a paid comment there.
So, anyway...
What were we talking about?
Hunter's laptop? Sorry, that got me totally distracted there.
Oh, talking about currency and the ruble.
So I guess what Russia is doing is they're saying if you want to buy our energy, which apparently people have to, or else they'll die, you have to pay us in rubles, which makes the ruble not collapse, because you have to turn your money into a ruble to buy some energy, and you have to buy energy. So...
Why did we not see it coming that the ruble would just become the currency that you have to buy Russian products with and ruble is mispronounced?
It's a rubble? Yeah, what are the odds that they would turn Ukraine into rubble and Ukraine would turn their currency into...
their ruble into rubble?
A lot of rubble. Anyway.
So it looks like there's peace talks and...
It looks like where things are headed with Ukraine and Russia is that Russia has already drastically reduced its military around Kiev.
So it looks like Russia is not as interested, unless they're bluffing, they're not as interested in taking the capital because it looks like they want to consolidate what they've already taken and call it a victory.
And if they do that, would you say that Putin won?
If Putin gets the Donbass and that other region, and they get a land bridge, and they get no NATO in Ukraine, and they get no offensive weapons in Ukraine and neutrality, would you say that Putin won, despite the sanctions?
Yeah. Yeah, I'd have to say yes.
Because you know what?
It's only going to take about five years of...
Putin acting not as belligerent.
I'm assuming he could pull that off five years within a war.
It's only going to take him five years within a war, and the sanctions will fall apart, and he will have won.
To me, it looks like he won.
Would anybody disagree?
Because I'm seeing opinions.
I saw Ian Bremmer say that no matter what happens, Putin lost.
It doesn't look like it to me.
To me, it looks like he won.
Am I right? It looks like Ukraine lost a bunch of stuff, and it looks like you won.
And moreover, it looks like Putin will bring peace to those places he took over.
Am I wrong about that?
Could you say that it's more likely there will be peace in Donbass if Putin just controls the whole thing?
I think so.
Because it was dangerous there before Putin, right?
Did Scott say Ukraine would win?
Well, I guess I was specifically thinking about Kiev falling or Ukraine falling as a country.
Would you say that Zelensky won?
Let's say things go the way it looks like they're going to go.
Some kind of Russia keeps part of it and Zelensky keeps part.
Wouldn't you say that Ukraine...
I don't know if you'd say they won.
It looks like they both got something.
Because I think Ukraine will be safer.
Now, somebody smart said the following.
It's going to be tough for Russia to get out of the sanctions, but it might be easy for Ukraine to rebuild.
Do you know what is the very best thing you could do for a European country?
There's probably nothing better you could do for it.
Which starts with something awful.
The awful part is being bombed into rubble and millions of people leaving and starvation and every other deprivation.
So it's horrible.
But in theory, because Ukraine is an educated population, you'll have a lot of support, probably get a lot of Western funding, Ukraine will probably rebuild into the coolest place around.
Am I right? Because if you can rebuild and you build everything modern and it's just better, I feel like...
Somebody says you're wrong.
I feel like in the long run, although nobody would have chosen the war, we have both sides win, and Scott predicted it, somebody says.
I don't know that I predicted both sides would win.
But it certainly looks like Putin will claim he won, and it looks like Ukraine did not fall.
Now, how many people predicted that Ukraine would not fall?
Apparently, Scott has yet to inform himself, I'm reading a paid comment, about Operation Gladio, the singular thing that explains literally all of the United States foreign policy.
Well, I will get back to you on that.
I predicted that both would claim victory.
Well, I don't think both would claim victory if Kiev had fell.
Had fallen, right?
If the capital had gone under Russian control, I feel as though Ukraine could not claim any victory.
And as it is, I'm not sure it's a victory.
It's a not losing as bad as they could have, I guess.
Rebuild without a strong dollar, yeah, that might make a difference.
Yeah.
I said, you predicted it was possible Ukraine could win outright.
I don't know.
I mean, it looks like they won outright because the regions that Russia will control are largely disputed regions, right?
A disputed region isn't exactly Ukraine's to begin with.
It's a disputed region.
So I'm not sure that Ukraine lost Ukraine.
I think that the disputed regions became less disputed, if that's what happens.
Somebody says, this is weasel thinking.
No, it's weasel talking.
So, yes, I do believe I could make a weasel argument for having been the most accurate predictor.
I believe I could make that weasel argument.
But, you know, every other predictor is going to say they were right, just like every other time.
Everybody who made a prediction is going to say they were right.
That's what happened with the pandemic.
The people who predicted that there was no pandemic at all are saying they were right.
And the people who said it will kill a million people are saying they're right.
So everybody gets to be right all the time.
It used to be you got to be wrong.
Now you don't. Anything else happening?
Biden wants to tax the rich in the dumbest fucking idea I've ever seen, which couldn't possibly be the product of a stable mind.
He wants to tax the rich on appreciation of their stock assets in any one year with no word as to whether they could get a write-off if it went down the next year.
There isn't the slightest chance that this could get passed.
It's almost like it's a joke proposal.
Like, hey, I got an idea.
Every time you put on mismatching socks...
If your net wealth is over a million dollars, you're going to pay a 7% surtax.
And people would say, I don't know, but that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.
It almost sounds random.
It's so bad. It doesn't even sound like a real idea.
It sounds like a movie idea.
It's so bad. He will get exactly...
Well, I guess there will always be some Democrat economists who will say it will work.
But I don't think I've heard one yet.
Here's my challenge to you.
See if you can find even a Democrat economist, a professional economist, a Democrat, who thinks it's a good idea to tax stock appreciation before you actually sell it and realize the gain.
Now, I don't think Krugman would.
I'll bet not. Somebody says that Krugman would, because you imagine he's in the pocket of the left.
I'll bet you can't get any.
Any. Reich is not an economist, I think.
Janet Yellen did?
No. No, I don't believe that.
I do not believe any professional economist, a Democrat or not, has ever addressed that.
Well, Bernie's not an economist.
So that's my challenge.
See if you can get a Democrat economist to agree with the Democrat plan.
I don't think so. I don't think so.
All right. The Hunter Biden connection to the Ukrainian labs is mostly fake news.
Are you all aware of that?
So I joked, but I didn't really talk about it too much.
I joked that the simulation had to give us...
Hunter Biden connected to bio labs in Ukraine.
Because it was just the funniest thing that could happen.
And sure enough, it happened.
But it turns out that that's closer to fake news than real news.
Wow. So here's why it's fake news.
The connection is real.
But it's so indirect that it's ridiculous.
I read about the emails as well.
Apparently these labs were not weapons labs.
They weren't bioweapons labs.
They were biological research facilities.
But of course you could argue that one could be turned into the other.
But there's no evidence that they were meant to be bioweapons.
And his investment was through a fund, and a fund had some money and something.
He probably never knew, blah, blah.
So his connection to them is there, but it's through money that went through other hands, and basically, it's not really a story.
It's fun. It's fun, but it's not really a story.
How can you be so obtuse, Greg says.
Greg, do you really believe, do you really believe, really, That Hunter would be funding bioweapons labs in Ukraine, and that that's like the secret story?
Really? Really?
Or do you think it's a little more likely that he had money in funds that had money in lots of different places?
Because that would be normal.
It's normal to have money in funds that have money in lots of places you don't know about.
It is not normal...
That he would be directly investing in bioweapon labs in another country.
That wouldn't be likely.
So I'm going to say that the labs exist.
They're not designed as bioweapons labs.
And that there is money that flowed and Hunter had something to do with it.
But I don't think it's a story story.
It doesn't seem to have any relevance, let's say.
It doesn't seem to be relevant.
All right. Biden's dementia is getting worse, and I wonder who is behind this tweet.
So Biden tweeted that Russia's economy was ranked the 11th biggest economy in the world before this invasion, but that now soon will not even rank in the top 20 in the world.
What do you think about that?
Won't rank in the top 20.
Is that the most fucked up thing you've ever seen your president do?
That's just fucked up.
Here's why. Aren't we mad at Putin?
We're not really mad at the Russian citizens, are we?
When did that happen?
Was that some kind of shift?
Because he's actually doing a victory dance on the suffering of the Russian citizens.
Not cool. That's not cool.
I understand what he's getting at, right?
He's showing that the sanctions work and the Russian public should rise up and get rid of Putin, but they're not gonna.
So it just seems messed up to me.
Now, I'm in favor of the sanctions.
I'm in favor of the sanctions.
But doing a little victory dance like this on top of the citizens of Russia just feels low-class.
It doesn't feel strategic.
It doesn't feel good for the United States.
It just feels a little dementia-like.
So who approved this?
I mean, let's face it.
We know Biden doesn't do his own tweeting, right?
He's not there. I'll tweet this.
So somebody approved it.
I mean, some advisor.
That's scary.
So that's happening.
And here's the worst argument about Ukraine.
It's a violation of international law.
I've heard it said, who said it?
Maybe on the five I heard it, that we should simplify the case and just say it's a violation of international law and just stick it to that.
Was it Greg or was it Jesse?
Somebody said it. And I would disagree with that because violation of international law is meaningless to everybody.
Everybody violates international law when they can get away with it.
It's really just about what you can get away with.
So saying it's a violation of international law doesn't really buy you much for persuasion.
For persuasion, I'd say, we can't let anybody be rewarded for conquering their neighbor.
Is that better? We can't let Putin be rewarded for conquering his neighbor.
Now remember, it was sort of an optional war.
I mean, maybe Russia would argue, but it was kind of an optional war.
If you run an optional war to conquer your neighbor, you just can't be rewarded for that.
You just have to make sure that's not rewarded.
So I would say that that's a better way to simplify.
Because nobody respects international law if they can get away with breaking it for their own self-interest.
What do you think about the question now of would Putin have invaded under Trump?
What do you think? Do you think if Trump had been president, Putin would have invaded?
Now, I know this audience is going to say no, because he was unpredictable, and maybe not.
But let me give you the counter-argument, because I've made the argument myself that maybe Putin wouldn't.
Here's the counter-argument.
Nothing was going to stop him.
He was going to do it no matter what.
Because it does look like Putin's kind of determined, if you know what I mean.
It may have looked different.
But I think he would have done it anyway.
And the idea is that he doesn't seem to be scared of risk.
Right? Putin seems very risk-takey.
I feel like he just would have said, you know, the Donbass is whatever, and we've got to do what we've got to do.
So he did wait, we heard, but I don't think that's confirmed.
And if he had waited, let's say Trump had won a second term.
Do you think he would have waited a whole other four years?
It made sense for him to wait to see if Biden got elected.
And I think that's why you're conflating.
It would definitely make sense to see if Biden got elected.
But maybe he just would have done it differently if Trump got elected.
I don't think we can conclude we know what would have happened.
All right. I saw the most interesting tweet today.
So it was a Cernovich tweet, but it was about a piece, a medium piece, Where somebody, Jonathan Roseland, was writing about...
He was reading Graham Hancock's Magician of the Gods book, and he was talking about all these great pyramids and ancient constructions that we barely know how to do today, if at all.
Now, have you ever wondered why it is that they knew how to make pyramids at one point and then they stopped knowing how to make pyramids?
Isn't that weird? Why did the Egyptians just sort of stop doing it?
And when they stopped doing it, why didn't they at least carve into a wall or something the instructions for making another one?
So here's a further mystery to that, and that comes from that Graham Hancock book, I guess, that for everything else in history, you can see the early prototypes.
If, let's see, an alien civilization came here and tried to figure out what humans were like before we became extinct, they would find early automobiles, they'd find bicycles, and then they'd see the evolution from the early automobiles to the modern ones, then to airplanes and rockets, and you could kind of see the whole progression of technology.
Right? If you can find enough, you know, remaining stuff.
But why is it that when you look at, and this is what I guess Graham Hancock asks, why is it that when we look at these great structures and pyramid-like structures all over the world, and remember, it wasn't just in Egypt.
All over the world, there were these pockets where they built great things, and then here's the key part.
They forgot how to do it, and here's the new part.
There were no prototypes.
Nobody found the bad pyramid.
Where was the bad one?
Where was the early one?
Where was the practice pyramid?
None of these things had any practice, apparently.
Now, I think that's probably not true.
Probably there was practice, and we just didn't find them, or maybe they took the stones from the practice one and put it in the good one.
It's like, eh, we'll just tear down this pyramid and make a better one using those stones.
I don't know. Maybe something like that.
So I'm not so sure that we don't know where the prototypes are, but I love the question.
And the hypothesis is this, that there was a time that something like Atlantis might have existed, and that there must have been some advanced civilization that was helping all these other civilizations build massive structures, and the speculation is it would sort of inspire the locals...
To know what they could do and build more technology.
So there might have been a way to seed the primitives with technology.
What do you think? Was it a way to seed the primitives with technology by saying, look, we're going to help you build this pyramid.
Once you see how this is done, It's like everything you need.
You'll see that things can be done, and then you'll try to do them yourself, and that will raise you up the evolutionary ladder faster.
Because you'll know that technology is something that can be developed and coordinated and stuff.
I don't know. It's a little bit of a stretch, but I kind of love it.
I'll tell you that when I was in Greece, and there's a...
A place off of Santorini.
So on Santorini, there is an advanced civilization, which they've uncovered, and you can go visit it, in which they actually had indoor plumbing however many thousands of years ago.
Now, when I say indoor plumbing, I just mean that there was a channel from the upstairs throne all the way down to the sewer system.
And so their streets and their water capture and even maybe their war technology, even their sailing, seems to have been quite advanced.
Now something wiped it out.
So it might have been Minoan civilization or something.
But apparently they had seafaring vessels that probably were doing trade with Africa.
And there were advanced civilizations that got wiped out.
Now, we don't know if that was Atlantis, but some people say it is, some people say it isn't.
Maybe there were a bunch of advanced civilizations.
Maybe there were a bunch.
Here's the theory that I like the best.
An advanced civilization of aliens came to Earth and goosed our evolution.
For whatever reason. Maybe to prepare it for their own inhabitation later, in a million years when their planet dies.
I mean, think of it this way.
What would we do if we knew Earth was going to die, guaranteed, in a million years?
What would we do? We'd make a new planet.
But instead of making a new one, wouldn't it be smarter to terraform an existing one?
Yeah. So you'd go there and you'd put some DNA there and you'd build it into a world of food.
So that when you decided to leave your dying planet and go to this new planet, it'd be full of food.
Plants and animals and, uh-oh, people.
But maybe the people were goosed in their evolution.
Because you needed the people to civilize the planet, so when the aliens come, many of the problems have been solved.
And then they just eat the people and take over the technology.
Something like that.
Well, that's one possibility.
The other possibility is nothing like that.
But I do wonder, where are the prototype pyramids Aliens with that power don't need to seed planets?
Oh, I don't know.
I don't know. They don't need to.
But let me put it this way.
How many of you are growing vegetables in your backyard?
You don't need to.
You don't need to. So an advanced alien civilization wouldn't necessarily do things because it needed to.
It would just do things it could.
Because it wants to. You just described my book.
Okay. Maybe they weren't angels.
Maybe they made patterns with cardboard.
Okay, that could be it.
Look in West Egypt for the prototypes.
Don't become Art Bell.
Well, the difference...
The difference between Art Bell and me is I'm not trying to tell you it's true.
Well, I don't know if he does that either.
Maybe nobody does that. Alright, that's all for now.
