Episode 1710 Scott Adams: Start Your Week Off Right With The Simultaneous Sip & Weird Headline Views
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Twitter suspensions for free speech
Elon Musk declines joining Twitter board
Non-Binary as a catchall
Ukraine War musings
Inguinal hernia surgery resistors
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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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And I am delighted to see all of you, especially you, and you, and you.
You know who you are.
And while you're here, how would you like to get your dopamine just raging?
That's why we're here.
And a little bit of oxytocin.
A little bit. But we'll jack up your dopamine a good 20%, get you going for the day.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a gel, a stein, a canteen, a glass, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine day of the day.
It's the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip, but it happens now.
Go! Here's your persuasion tip of the day, if you didn't already know this.
When you associate something that people like, a pleasure that's a known pleasure, with some other thought or stimulation, you can take some of the goodness from the thing you like, and it gets transferred over to the thing you associate with, as long as it's sort of a fresh thing that people haven't thought too much about and have too much baggage with.
And you can use that to extend people's enjoyment from things they already enjoy to entirely new things.
How cool is that?
You can actually make people enjoy things that they never considered enjoying before, just by association.
It happens with songs.
You hear a song that reminds you of something.
Still to this day, when I hear...
There's a song by Traffic...
I can't remember which one it is, but it was played before all college soccer games at my alma mater, Hartwick College, which one of the years I was there was the number one soccer power in the country, which is weird because it was a tiny little school, but it won the whole country one year that I was there.
And so the soccer was this big event, and they would play the same song before each game, and you'd be so charged up In a variety of ways, if you know what I mean, because it was college after all.
And it would be so fun to be there that that song, even if I hear it today, years later, you get just an immediate dopamine hit.
So use that technique to extend the things you like.
Rasmussen had a poll asking people, is illegal immigration getting worse?
So Rasmussen asked that poll, and 55% said, yes, illegal immigration is getting worse.
27% said no.
No. No.
No. No, no, no, no.
It's not getting worse. 27%.
27. That's about a quarter of the people who responded.
About a quarter. A quarter is, well, if you were to round it off, that's roughly 25%.
Which means absolutely nothing to the people who have never seen this livestream before.
But if you've been here before, you know how funny this is right now.
Because 25% is roughly the number of people who get every poll question wrong.
It doesn't matter how easy the question is.
Question, is oxygen good for humans?
64% said yes.
26% said, no, no, people don't need oxygen.
No, no, no.
Well, meanwhile, in censorship news, Juanita Broderick had her account locked on Twitter.
For what they say is misinformation about COVID. Here is what she tweeted, and you be the judge.
Is this misinformation or false?
She tweeted, when will this vaccine crap be over?
Big Pharma has profited enough for the next hundred years.
Stop pushing vaccines that don't work and, oh, here comes the bad part.
Alter DNA, she posted on Saturday.
Alter DNA. Womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp.
Cannot say alter DNA. Womp, womp, womp.
Alert, alert, alert.
Censorship. Code of silence.
Juanita has been neutralized.
Has been neutralized.
Now, to be clear, I don't think the vaccinations alter your DNA. I don't think that's true.
But, separately, Was it a good idea for her to be censored?
That's really the question.
Yeah, you could argue whether she's right or wrong, I suppose, and I don't think she's right.
I don't think so.
But how would I know, really?
What exactly would be my qualifications for answering that question?
I don't know. Seems like the news seems pretty convinced it's not altering your DNA, but...
How would I know, really?
So I wonder if there isn't a better way to handle something like this.
For example, if the altering the DNA part was the offending part, could you alter the Twitter interface to simply flag the part that mainstream experts disagree with?
Would that be offensive to you?
Would you consider that a violation of free speech if Twitter simply had a policy of instead of banning people...
Now, remember, you're going to compare it to banning people, and not necessarily for every person who says everything that's wrong, but just people who are bannable in that bannable range.
Would you be okay with the bannable part simply connecting to a source, maybe not a fact-checker, I don't know, because we don't trust the fact-checkers, right?
But I feel like there's a better way to handle it.
In other censorship news, Jack Posobiec apparently got locked out of his Twitter account for a while, but he seems to be back.
And correct me if I'm wrong, is it because he called Disney groomers because of their...
What is it? The opposition to the new law about what to teach young kids about sexuality or sexual preference or something.
I don't know. I just can't get interested in the story.
I hate it. I know you are, right?
Well, let me ask you. Let me ask you this.
How many of you are, like, really interested in this Florida law story?
Is it interesting to you?
I see mostly not...
Okay, well, I see yeses.
Maybe it depends if you have kids who are in that relevant age group.
All right, so it's a mixture. But probably more nos than yeses, although I suppose I could have gotten this on any topic, right?
It's only the fascinating way I cover it that makes it so, so salient.
Yeah, I feel there's just not enough to say about it.
Like, we know what some people want.
We know what the criticism is.
They're going to fight it out.
I don't know. It just doesn't seem like there's anything there.
Anything there that makes it worthy for yet another person to be talking about it.
Certainly it matters to the people involved.
So I don't want to minimize...
Let me not minimize the importance to the people involved.
It's certainly important to the people who care about such things, and maybe they should.
But there isn't much depth to the story, is what I'm saying.
Somebody says, one thing Scott will never do, and that is condemn a pedophile.
Would anybody like to see me do that?
It's a challenge. I've been challenged.
Will I condemn a pedophile?
Are you wondering if I'm going to bail out and not condemn a pedophile?
Okay, I condemn pedophiles.
Totally. You okay with that?
Now, here's the part where I get banned from all social media, if not society itself.
I also don't believe in free will.
Sorry. So, you have to condemn people who are, you know, doing things that are bad for society and especially bad for kids.
So there's no hesitation about what's right for society, right?
For society?
Yeah. You've got to condemn the hell out of anybody who's hurting anybody.
Most people agree with that.
But, on a philosophical level, I kind of see everybody as equal, right?
Sorry. Not legally and not practically.
In a practical sense, you just can't treat everybody the same.
You have to treat certain behaviors completely differently than other behaviors, of course.
But when I walk into a room and see a bunch of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells and non-standard people, basically a pirate ship of humanity, I don't walk into that room and say, well, you suck, you suck, you're an asshole, you're bad, you're unworthy.
That one I like. That one I like.
I don't do that. I walk in and I like the whole pirate ship.
I like the whole pirate ship.
I have to condemn some of them for behaviors.
But I don't devalue people because I don't see free will the same way other people do.
So, certainly you can change people's behavior, maybe by condemning certain parts, maybe it reduces who does what.
But I don't believe in, oh, judge not, thank you.
Thank you, if you'd like to put it into Christian terms, and let me invite you to do that.
I'm not a believer, but I like the framework.
It's a handy framework.
So yeah, who am I to judge?
That would be the better way to say.
I don't put myself in the role of a judge, but certainly you have to condemn certain behaviors for practical reasons.
All right. Here's my new red line.
I was insulted on Twitter today, and while I think you should use the blocking judiciously, Somebody went a little too far today.
And I just want to run it by you, you know, because you're my advisors.
So as my advisors, did I go too far, or is this reasonable?
I blocked somebody today who accused me in public, and people are going to see this, right, because it's like a permanent record.
He actually accused me in public of believing the news.
I blocked that motherfucker.
Don't do that if you want to ever, ever, ever see me again.
I will be so gone.
All right. So the big interesting news is that Elon Musk has declined the offer to have a board seat on Twitter.
Isn't that interesting?
Didn't we think that his play was to get on the board and that he'd have some influence?
Well, it turns out we all learned something today, or you're about to learn it.
Being on the board limits your options.
Did you know that? It limits your options if you're Elon Musk.
It probably doesn't limit your options if you're just a board member.
Like, if you were important enough to be on the board, but maybe other people haven't heard your name before, well, in that case, being on the board probably does give you more influence over Twitter.
But if you're Elon Musk, all it does is limit you.
Because everybody's going to listen to what you say, right?
That's the key. Everyone's going to listen to what you say.
So once you have that...
Being on the board just gives you limitations.
It's a limit to what you can say about the company, I'm pretty sure.
I think there's limits about how you can trash the company if you're on the board.
And I think there's a limit to how much stock you can own.
Somebody said 15%.
So why would he put up with limits when there's no upside?
And I think to myself, I don't know if there's another person in the world who would have played it this way.
And it's right. I don't know anybody else who would have played it exactly like this to earn a board seat and then turn it down because it was limiting.
Nobody else would do that.
Even if they were in this position, I feel like they wouldn't have done that.
He consistently finds the thing that you're not supposed to do.
And then makes it work.
That's why it's so fun to watch.
Now, he continues to make marketing departments completely irrelevant wherever he has ownership of a company because he just is so newsworthy that, really?
Has anybody not heard of Twitter?
Have you not heard that there might be some changes coming?
I think you probably have heard it.
But the marketing department didn't get it done.
Must it? All right.
So I saw a tweet by a user named Tank.
That's what he calls himself on Twitter.
He tweets, he goes, let me break this down for you.
Elon becomes largest shareholder for free speech.
Elon was told to play nice and not speak freely.
In other words, the entire reason he was doing it was to have, you know, try to get free speech for himself and others.
And joining the board would actually limit his free speech, you know, in a commercial way, not in a government way.
In a separate but related story, there's a Twitter engineering manager.
Now, what I don't know is how important a Twitter engineering manager is.
Are there lots of them?
Because there are lots of subgroups, so they all need a little manager.
Or is this somebody who manages all the engineers?
I don't know. It would be a pretty big difference.
But somebody who is a Twitter engineering manager had been tweeting some negative stuff about Elon being on the board and really hated it and was digging up some old Elon Musk tweets to embarrass him.
And I think this is telling you everything, isn't it?
It feels like that's everything.
I feel like knowing that there's an engineering manager in Twitter that really, really doesn't like whatever it is that Elon Musk thinks he's going to do, I feel like now you know everything, don't you?
Now, it's only one person, so maybe I'm overgeneralizing here, but that's one person who operated with impunity in the sense that that one person was not shy about putting out the message he put out.
I shouldn't say he, because I don't know the pronoun.
But let's say they put out.
All right. Here's another funny tweet by First Words on Twitter.
Unscripted Mike says this.
He said, Elon Musk recently built the largest factory in the world, in Texas of course, just launched the first all-private rocket to the International Space Station, and will soon restore free speech to Twitter, the 21st century town square.
Meanwhile, Biden was speaking incoherently somewhere the whole time.
And the funny thing about this tweet is what makes it work is the last...
Three unnecessary words.
So here's a little tip for you.
Generally speaking, you want to remove unnecessary words from your communication.
Because they're unnecessary, and they just get in the way.
But an exception is humor, where sometimes the unnecessary words are...
I don't know exactly why they work.
It's just something you have to A-B test in your head.
If I add these unnecessary words, is it better or worse?
And I don't know why this is better.
But let me read the sentence again and see how important the whole time is, even though it's unnecessary.
Watch. Meanwhile, Biden was speaking incoherently somewhere the whole time.
The whole time. I don't know.
That's what makes the tweet. Right.
By the way, how often have you seen my blog post on how to be...
the day you became a better writer?
How many of you have seen that?
Because it's going around again.
It's been going around...
I think he gets passed around at least every month or so for years...
If you haven't seen it, the reason it gets passed around every month or so for years is that when people read it, and it takes approximately less than two minutes, very short, and it's basically the shortest writing lesson in the world with the most impact.
So it was created to be exactly that, the shortest writing with the most impact.
So just Google if you want to see that, the day you became a better writer.
The day you became a better writer.
And with my name, it'll pop right up.
It's all over the place. Now, this is why I like this live stream.
Because some of you know what just happened, right?
Some of you know what just happened.
And some of you don't.
But you're going to find out. What just happened was, the people who are familiar with that little piece I just recommended are actually aware that it actually fundamentally gave them a superpower.
Right? Like turn them from mediocre writers or good-ish writers into good writers in two minutes.
In two minutes.
It really does that.
That's why I put these little two- to four-minute lessons on Locals subscription platform.
Because you can actually fundamentally change somebody's effectiveness forever, forever, in two to four minutes.
You just have to say the right stuff.
The people who know that know that I just changed a whole bunch of lives just by mentioning it.
Maybe three of you will Google it, but the three of you who Google it and read it are actually going to have different outcomes.
It's that powerful. All right.
There is some more information about the importance of ventilation.
And I would still love to know this question.
If we know that almost nobody gets COVID outdoors, and we know that for sure, right?
Has anybody ever gotten COVID in a well-ventilated place?
And how well-ventilated does it need to be?
Because, you know, I've talked during the pandemic, what if you just turn on your fans?
What if you just have fans on?
Is that good enough? And we still don't know the answer to that.
We might have had a complete solution to the pandemic and overlooked it because it was too ordinary, which is make sure there's a fan in every room.
Now, the experts say you've got to have a window open, but I think that's where they go wrong.
Because if the window's open, it's going to be too cold, too hot.
Then there's a reason that people close windows, right?
Bugs. So I really, really, really wonder if just moving the air is enough to distribute the plumes.
And we might have had a solution the whole time.
We might have. Alright, here's my solution to the whole LGBTQ, and I think they've added some numbers, or letters, maybe some numbers too, and some letters recently.
And this is a persuasion recommendation.
Now, I know many of you are on the, let's say, the social warrior side of stop making a big fuss and giving all these rights to those LGBTQ activists and stuff like that.
This isn't going to be that.
This is actually going to be legitimate advice for how the people who would define themselves in that community could get maybe better results.
Okay? And this is in the form of a persuasion lesson.
I'll just apply it to something that's in the news.
Every time the LGBTQ adds a new designation or a new flavor, I think they get further from their objective.
And what I would do is advise them to take a tip from what the gay activists did in the earlier days of gay rights.
Do you remember when gay was called homosexual?
And homosexual sounds almost like a disease if you're not well-educated, right?
It just sounds like, wait, that word is way too big.
There's a famous story, and maybe somebody can tell me if this is real or it's just one of those stories you heard, that in the early days of the United States, I don't know exactly what year, somebody was running for election and won the election in part by labeling his opponent a, I think it was a flagrant heterosexual.
And people were so undereducated that when they heard that, they're like, whoa, a flagrant heterosexual?
We can't have one of those in office!
You know, back in cowboy days or whatever the hell it was.
I mean, it feels like it was a Lincoln kind of an era thing, but can somebody tell me, did that really happen?
Yeah. So I don't know if that really happened, but it tells the story really well.
So here's the thing. When the gay rights people changed, you know, from homosexual and queer, although queer, they sort of did the N-word thing and owned it, which was also a good technique.
But gay? Who doesn't want to be gay?
I mean, in the sense that it sounds happy, right?
Right? So just labeling it with a word that people universally embrace before they think about it was kind of sort of awesome in terms of persuasion.
It's just one of the greatest...
Persuasion plays of all times, in my opinion.
Just one of the best. Although Black Lives Matter was very good.
Again, we're separating whether you like the politics of it from just the persuasion element of it, if we could.
So, what could the LGBTQ and extra letters...
Do to be more friendlier sounding, so they immediately get a positive vibe before people think about the politics.
And here's what I would suggest.
Non-binary.
Now... Correct me if I'm wrong, but non-binary, the way it's currently used, is more limited than including all of LGBTQ, right?
It doesn't matter for my purposes.
I'm saying to rebrand non-binary as the only thing that captures everything that's not binary.
Here's why. People like being non-binary.
If you say, you fit into one or two categories, I say, yeah, damn it, well, I don't know if that sounds so good for me.
It feels like I'm a little bit limited in my thinking, doesn't it?
Even if you're completely hetero or you're completely, you know, if you're completely hetero, you're still going to say, yeah, I'm completely hetero, but I don't know, I'd like to think that at least I have some flexibility, you know?
And I also wonder...
If there aren't lots of people who would brand themselves hetero, who in their private thoughts are thinking, well, I'm hetero-ish.
You know what I mean? Maybe the porn they look at isn't exactly matching their hetero.
You know what I mean? You know what I mean?
There must be plenty of people who say, yeah, for public consumption, I'm hetero, but privately, I'm a little bit non-binary.
Just a little bit. I see a lot of pushback, which is why I'm doing this.
I mean, if it were not provocative, would I do it?
Really? If I were not provocative?
That's what makes this question fun.
So, with all respect to the LGBTQ community, which some of my favorite people are members of, I think if you just said non-binary, maybe you'd get further.
Or even something better, if there's a word like gay that just puts a positive spin on it from the start, and then you think about the politics.
That's all. Just come up with a better label than a bunch of alphabet letters.
All right. Have you noticed that, in our minds at least, there are certain patterns that keep repeating?
And one of the reasons that movies and books and TV shows work...
Is that people like certain patterns of things.
They like stories of good versus evil.
They like stories of redemption.
There's a limited set of what we imagine are the stories that we want to see.
And I'm fascinated when I see parallels.
For example, as I tweeted today, if you're familiar with the Star Trek universe...
This will work better if you have some familiarity with that universe.
But if NATO is the Federation, and again, right, everybody gets to say their side is the good guys.
I get it. I get it.
If you're in Russia, NATO doesn't look like the Federation.
But from our point of view, right, this is just a subjective point of view.
If NATO is the Federation, would Russia be the Klingons?
And would China be the Romulans, or would they be the Ferengi?
Ferengi. Or the Borg.
They're a little bit the Borg because they're trying to assimilate the Uyghurs, but they're a little bit the Ferengi because they're, you know, sort of commerce first.
And the Russians seem like the Klingons because it feels like the honor of their empire is what matters more than life itself.
Oh, the Ferengi are capitalists, but they're merchants, right?
So... This all brings me to the most important question, which is when we look at this whole Russia-Ukraine war, what would Shatner do?
And until we've heard that, I don't think we understand the whole situation.
But what would Captain Kirk do?
I was going to ask him, but I couldn't.
His DMs are closed.
All right. Here's my most provocative take today.
You're going to hate this one.
In my opinion, it looks like Russia already lost the war.
But the news is not saying that.
Like, I'm observing it, and what seems to me, and I'll get to my cognitive bias and my confirmation bias, that's the point, we're going to that.
So you don't need to shout that you disagree with me yet, because your disagreement is the point of this, right?
I'm watching the news and you're watching the news, but why do I see that Russia already lost?
But the news isn't reporting it.
So there are two possibilities here, which are kind of cool.
Number one, I'm suffering from confirmation bias because I, somewhat uniquely among experts and probably most of you, said that Russia would actually be running into a buzzsaw.
And it wouldn't be easy.
And that the modern technology that the Ukrainian army was likely to have access to, because they're NATO and American sponsorship, they were likely to surprise Russia with an unusually aggressive and effective tech-led response.
I said their tanks would be in trouble, that drones would be part of it.
And so far, 100% of that seems true.
Would you say that my...
So I had the incorrect prediction, 100% incorrect, that Russia knew what I knew, which is, this doesn't look easy, but I guess they thought it was.
Maybe they had bad information.
So they went ahead and invaded, so that part I'm 100% wrong, just so you can hear me say when I'm wrong.
But it looks to me, like the second part of that, that Russia would be surprised...
Happened. And that it's already happened.
Because it doesn't look like they really have a good shot at taking over the country in terms of owning the capital, Kiev.
And now we see them doing something that looks, again, again, just to me it looks this way.
Not to you. I'm not suggesting you see it this way.
I'm saying that my confirmation bias, which makes me want to be right...
See, I want to be right that Ukraine was more able to defend itself than others thought.
So I'm interpreting the situation to make myself right.
And even though I'm aware of it, I can't unsee it.
Isn't that weird? Like, I'm completely aware that I'm the only one seeing this.
But there's a reason I'm the only one seeing it.
Either, and here's the fun part, Either you're alright and I'm experiencing confirmation bias.
Completely possible.
I have no way to know that that's not true.
And it's actually quite likely.
I put it in the solidly, very likely category.
The other possibility is that most of you get your opinions from the news.
Most people do. They get their opinions from the news.
It's very rare to have somebody who has an opinion that disagrees with either the left or the right-leaning news.
It's very, very odd.
Unusual. So you get your opinions largely from the news.
And the news told you, with all its experts, that Ukraine was going to be conquered by Russia.
Well, okay, not in two days.
Well, it might take them a little longer.
But suddenly, Russia has withdrawn from the entire north to try to salvage whatever it can.
It doesn't even look like it's going to take Odessa.
I mean, maybe it will, but at the moment, it looks like it got stopped from taking Odessa, too, in the port.
So am I experiencing cognitive dissonance, or is the entire mainstream media, including the left and the right?
Because remember, both the left and the right thought it was going to be an easy victory for Russia.
And they were so wrong, it looks to me.
They were so wrong that they can't tell you that they were wrong.
And that the cognitive dissonance and the confirmation bias is 100% on the mainstream media side, who has now brainwashed the rest of you into believing that something like a Russian victory is unfolding.
When the news they actually report...
I just watched General Petraeus explain the situation and the withdrawal from Kiev.
If you just look at what he's reporting, it really looks like Russia already lost.
But you tell me.
Let's take a vote.
Tell me, am I experiencing confirmation bias?
And Russia will just roll on to victory.
Yes or no? There's only one correct answer.
The correct answer, I just saw only one person said it.
The correct answer is unknown.
All right, you just separated yourselves into the higher level of awareness and lower level.
Here's what I'm not going to tell you that I'm right about this.
I can't tell you that I'm right.
I can only tell you what it feels like.
Because if you're experiencing cognitive dissonance or confirmation bias, you're the one who doesn't know.
You're the one who doesn't know.
So if it's me, I don't know.
And even if you tell me, even if every one of you told me I'm experiencing it, I'd still say, I don't think so.
I don't think so. I got reasons.
I got good reasons.
One person said unknown.
When I ask the question, who has cognitive dissonance?
The person who said unknown has the best level of awareness probably in the conversation.
The moment you realize that cognitive dissonance and confirmation can just as easily affect you, that's when you see the machinery.
That's when you see reality just, it opens its cover.
But you have to accept that it's happening to you.
If you believe it only happens to the dumb people on the other side, you'll never see the machinery.
And then you will be the scenery.
So you can be the scenery or you can see the machinery.
And if you think that you know who has cognitive dissonance in this situation, you're scenery.
If you can accept...
That you don't know, as I do.
I really don't know if I'm right.
I only know what it looks like.
And I accept that.
And that allows me to see the machinery.
Don't be the scenery. All right.
And we heard more about this Ukrainian volunteer drone unit.
Bunch of nerds. I say that with love because I love technical people.
They've modified these little hobby-sized drones, and apparently they got credit for stopping the convoy.
I feel like they might be getting a little more attention than maybe their actual contribution is.
But do you wonder if maybe there isn't still some kind of secret drones over there that we don't exactly know about?
Maybe something that America or NATO has that's a little bit stealthier or a little bit faster or, I don't know, maybe a little more autonomous, a little more something.
I don't know. And do you think that when this is over, we'll learn that there was some technology in play that made a big difference that we hadn't heard of during the conflict?
Maybe. It could be just that the weaponization of drones in general is the whole story, or most of it.
What do you think of the idea of calling Putin a war criminal?
Let me explain how war crimes are tried.
It's very complicated. So try to follow along.
This is how you handle the war crimes.
So you've got the International Criminal Court located in Hague, and it's created by the Rome Statute, but some people are members, some aren't.
We've got the United Nations.
They could do something, and then the members could all agree, and it would give it a patina of credibility, but of course Russia wouldn't go along with it, so it doesn't really matter.
So you've got a whole bunch of legal remedies and legal approaches that all have the same characteristic.
We don't fully understand them, and they're not going to make any difference whatsoever.
Because Putin isn't going to go to trial, right?
And we're not going to capture him if he leaves the country, are we?
Really? I mean, I don't think so.
Would we? Is somebody going to take him into custody?
I don't think so.
But here's what's interesting.
Can Putin ever travel again?
Except to the few places where they're friendly.
I feel like that Russia no longer has a leader in any realistic way.
Meaning that if the whole world decides you just can't even come here, You can't even touch our territory.
Do you really have a leader?
Because you kind of want a leader who can go to the G8, the G20, whatever is appropriate.
You feel like your leader needs to show up.
Right? 90% of success is attendance.
And he can't attend.
Right? Attendance is very important, and now they have an alleged leader who can't attend.
Right? In a practical way.
Because he won't be invited, or it might be too risky to leave the country.
So, in a real sense, they've already lost their leader.
I mean, it's like he's a military commander now, but the country doesn't have a political leader because the other countries that would need to treat him like a political leader are just not going to do it.
Because they have this credible allegations of war crimes.
Now, I want to jump in here and say, because every time I say something like Russia's committing war crimes, somebody who's pro-Ukraine jumps in and says, Scott, Scott, Scott, why do you believe in the news and the propaganda?
Don't you know that the Ukrainians were shelling the Russians and the Donbass and discriminating against them?
To which I say, I don't really know that.
No. But I don't need to know it.
Because if you're telling me that Ukrainians have done any war crimes against Russians during this conflict, or even before, did some bad things, well, believe it.
You don't even have to show me an example.
It just sounds like something people do.
So I'm already there.
I don't even need any evidence.
Yeah, it's a war. There are war crimes.
Uh-huh. Both sides?
Yeah. Yeah, both sides.
Most of the time or all the time?
All the time. All the time.
If it were only some times that wars produced war crimes, then I'd be like, let's look into this.
Let's look into these details.
Got to find out who's doing it and who isn't.
But I don't believe that.
Do you? I just think war creates war crimes.
Because the people that you send into war...
Are the people who are going to do some war crimes?
And if they didn't start that way, war can turn them into that kind of people.
And I think that there are legitimate trade-offs between, you know, saving yourself and saving your prisoners.
And people are going to say, well, I'd rather save myself, frankly.
Thank you. Biden droned an innocent family.
Well, intention always matters.
So, yeah, intention matters.
I'm tending to think that it might be a good move, branding Putin as a war criminal.
He's never going to be tried.
Unless there's some kind of revolution in Russia itself, I suppose.
That's possible. But I don't see that happening.
I think Russia will just continue as a degraded country, and that's it.
It'll just be a degraded country forever, at least for a long time.
All right. I don't have much else to talk about.
Is there anything I missed? Did you hear the story about the 75-year-old activist who was, what, several years ago?
He was out there, and the police were clearing the streets, and they shoved him, and he fell down and hit his head.
There was some case against the police officer, and the police officer has been completely cleared.
Apparently, if you stand in front of the police and try to stop their progress, they can push you out of the way.
Turns out the police can push people out of the way if they're trying to stop the police from doing their job.
Now, I remember seeing that when it originally happened and people called me a ghoul for thinking I didn't see a crime there.
I don't know if anybody remembers that.
I had a pretty small audience at the time.
But I remember looking at it and thinking, well, what do you think happens when you stand in front of a police action?
How do you imagine that goes?
Was there a positive way that was going to turn out?
I don't know. Now, of course, the fact that falling down and being pushed out of the way actually caused an injury, that's not funny.
But I don't think it was the point of why he was pushed.
I don't think they were trying to hurt him.
I think they were trying to get him out of the way.
And I don't think that it was obvious that that was going to be as bad as it was.
All right. The Hunter Biden case is heating up?
Or is it? Or is it?
Yeah, he was a local provocateur.
Is there a new troll who's not doing a good job over here on YouTube?
I hate it when the new guy...
He's not really trained on where my hot buttons are yet.
He's just, like, flailing. Can somebody train the new guy?
By now, everybody must know my hot buttons.
I'm sure you can find them.
It can't be that hard. Am I still on Prisoner Island?
I am not. I am not.
And... Not that I won't go back.
Prisoner Island... Recalls us on a regular basis.
You do get dropped on Prisoner Island every now and then.
So let me tell you what one of my big issues was that apparently isn't a big issue.
So I thought I had a hernia.
It's a little iguanal hernia or something.
And I thought that that would require surgery, and probably really soon, and it would ruin my whole summer.
And I really, really needed a non-pandemic summer.
I mean, most of you do, but I really, really needed it.
I went to the doctor, and the doctor said, and this will surprise you, it turns out that Googling your symptoms is just as good as a doctor.
Don't listen to anybody who tells you it doesn't.
So I basically went in and said, Doctor, I think I have an inguinal hernia.
And the doctor says, let me see.
And it took the doctor like three seconds to say, oh yeah, that's one.
And then I said, all right, what do I do?
And the doctor said, well, you know, there's one group.
Listen to this. This will dovetail into the actual live stream content that I do.
It turns out that there was a study of one group of patients that always refused hernia surgery.
Just one group. What do you think that group was?
Who was the group who refused hernia surgery even when they had a hernia?
Somebody says the Amish.
That wasn't where I was going.
The answer is surgeons.
Are we done here?
Yeah. The group least likely to get hernia surgery to fix it, as opposed to just living with it, are surgeons.
And that's what my doctor told me.
And so the new thinking is that you might be better off living with it unless it worsens.
There's some point at which surgery is necessary.
But mine really doesn't have any pain, and you can't really see it.
So there's nothing visual.
There's no pain. It just is something I know exists.
I'll work around it, and so I'll have a good summer.
So I was sort of on Prisoner Island and thought I'd stay there, but I just wasn't current with the best thinking on it, and so I scared myself for no reason.
I probably will end up, I imagine, someday getting it repaired, but it won't be this summer, so I'm not going to worry about it.
