Episode 1720 Scott Adams: Kamala Harris Loves Space, Elon Musk, Trump Gets Fake Newsed, And More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
1st Black Dilbert character
Tesla robotaxi by 2024
Tulsi Gabbard's vs Mitt Romney
Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard
Michael McFaul on Putin's Ukraine goals
Piers Morgan vs President Trump
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And congratulations for making it to the highlight of civilization.
Some call it a morning ritual, but your brain might want to process it differently.
You might say to yourself, this is just something you do to have a good day.
Or maybe you come here for the fellowship, which is a vaguely sexist-sounding word.
But I don't know what the other word would be.
The personship.
And by the way, I'd like to make an announcement that I've made a decision on pronouns, everybody.
Pronouns. I have been resisting having pronouns mentioned in my profile or anything, but I've decided to embrace it for what it is.
So my pronouns are, number one, if you're a member of the media, And you're speaking about me in any reporting kind of a context, I would like you to refer to me as they.
They. Only they.
Anything else I would find deeply disrespectful.
However, if you are not a member of the media...
I would invite you to use any pronoun you like, just like before.
Just like before. So that part won't change.
So it's very narrow.
I insist that the media refer to me as they.
I did not come up with this idea, but I wish I had, because it's pretty darn good.
And by the way, would you like to take this experience up a notch?
Yeah. Yeah, I know you would.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tanker, a chalice, a canteen jug, a flask, 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 of the day.
It's the thing that makes everybody feel better, makes your oxytocin spike.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
It happens now. Go! Savor it.
Savor it. Savor it.
Okay, good. Well, I'd like to make an announcement.
I will use this platform to make an important announcement.
Bulletin! Bulletin! Breaking news!
Breaking news! Are you ready?
I will be introducing, in the coming days, the first black Dilbert character.
I know! Overdue, isn't it?
That's what I said. But I've told you before that the reason I have never introduced a black character into Dilbert was, number one, how the heck do I draw that character so it's not going to get me in trouble?
How do you do that?
So I have a solution for that.
And the second one is, what kind of...
What personality flaw can I give this character as a white author in 2022 writing for a black character that I would add to the Dilbert cast, which I am adding, and how do I do that without getting cancelled?
And I thought to myself, there is no way to do it.
It's impossible.
It cannot be done without getting cancelled.
So we're going to take a run at it.
Because if there's one thing I've always known about my career with Dilbert, that at around the age 65, sort of that retirement age, you know, traditionally, I'm not planning to retire immediately, but, you know, sort of a traditional retirement age, 65, I always said to myself, should I play as safe as 65?
I mean, really? Should I? No.
If I'm going to get cancelled, I want to go out in a big flaming fireball.
The worst thing that could ever happen to me, like this would just be so incompatible with my personality, would be just to say, hey folks, I've had a good run.
I'm going to disappear now.
I couldn't do that.
How could I do that?
If I'm going to go out...
I want to take the whole block with me.
I mean, not really.
You know what I mean. I'm talking about if I'm going to leave the stage, you're going to know I left the stage, if you know what I mean.
There's going to be debris and rubble.
I'm going to make sure it's exciting.
I promise you. So, here's how I solve these problems.
Number one, I drew the black character looking like all the white characters.
Except he'll be colored black.
Because I realize that none of my characters look like people.
So why the hell did I have to worry that he had to look black except for the actual physical color of the skin?
So basically he'll just have the same features as everybody else.
But he'll have a shaved head.
Ah, see what I did? So I don't have to deal with hair because he has a shaved head.
And I don't have to deal with any kind of, like, facial difference that would, you know, make it look racist in some way to somebody.
Somebody would think so. I just make him look like every other character in the Dilbert comic because they don't really look like people anyway.
All of their noses are just the letter C. So, you know, it's not like I'm making some big differentiation between individuals.
And by the way, this was because I asked on Twitter for suggestions, especially a black cartoonist to make a suggestion.
But when I saw some different versions that other people did, I thought, ah, somebody figured it out.
Somebody figured out how to do it.
So I just basically learned from that.
And then in terms of the personality flaw, do you want to guess what the personality flaw is?
What will be the character's personality flaw?
The first black character added to the main cast.
Somebody says perfection.
So I don't want to do what Burke Bretha did when he added a black character.
He made the character a hacker so that the black character would be the smartest person in the thing, but would be a little naughty because he was an underage kid.
So it's kind of naughty.
He's hacking. So the way he did it was a little too woke.
Even earlier. It was a little too gentle, but just sort of you had to do that, right?
He avoided being cancelled, so it totally worked.
It definitely worked. So here's what I settled on as the character flaw.
And by the way, did I tell you the character has a name?
Yeah. So the character has a name, and the name will start to give it away.
His name is Dave.
So... He's the first black character in Dilbert whose name will be Dave.
But here's the running gag.
You'll never know when he's pranking you.
Because on the first day he's introduced, the boss will introduce him as a solution to their diversity problem.
So the boss will say explicitly, hey, we hired Dave because we need to get more diversity.
And then Dave will say, I identify as white.
And it goes from there. So Dave, the first black character, you're never going to know if he's just screwing with you.
So you can't tell, does he really think that identifying this way is actually just what he wants, or is he just making it difficult on his boss?
And so, because it's ambiguous, the staff will...
Be endeared to him because he'll be such a pain and yes to management.
And management just won't know what to do with him.
Because he knows he can get away with murder, because he can.
Just because he can. And so he's going to use it to just have the best time with a straight face.
Now, what do you think?
I feel like I solved it.
Did I not? I feel like I solved it.
Now, I didn't do it alone.
I did it with a lot of help, right?
So part of my process is interactive.
I ask people for suggestions, and I use them in the strip.
So I don't want to devalue the value of the input I got on this character.
It was quite good, and I appreciate it.
And I just think it's funny that his name is Dave.
Anyway... And it may or may not be loosely based on my brother, whose name may or may not be Dave, and he may or may not be famous for you can never tell if he's telling the truth.
Well, I'll tell you one story, just so you can get a sense for it.
I remember my brother visiting me in college, because coincidentally he was dating somebody in that college.
He was older. It was around Halloween, and he picked up a pumpkin that was in his then-girlfriend's, or the woman he was dating, her room.
And he lifts it up, and he starts talking about...
I forget how it started, but he said he'd been a pumpkin hefter.
And, of course, she asked, a pumpkin hefter, what's that?
He goes, well, pumpkin hefter, you know, I'm sort of paraphrasing here from bad memory, but I believe he said, well, pumpkin hefter, I used to work on a pumpkin farm, and you couldn't weigh every pumpkin, but you still needed to know their approximate weight.
So they would have trained hefters, and the hefter would pick up the pumpkin, and they'd see, you know, they'd judge his heft, And then they would record that and then throw it on the truck.
And so when he was picking up the pumpkin, he was like, this is about 3.2, 3.4 pounds, whatever he said.
And everybody was quite impressed at his experience as a pumpkin hefter.
Now, I happened to be in the room, and so I was supporting the story with details.
I don't remember what I said, but I might have said something like, I tried to be a pumpkin hefter, but it takes some sort of natural skill.
I didn't have it. But I worked for years trying to match my older brother's pumpkin-hefting talent, and I had to drop out, you know, because not everybody makes the grade.
It's sort of like a sommelier.
Some people have it, some don't.
Yeah, if you came in late, this doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
But anyway, Dave, the first black character, will have a little bit of a personality like that.
All right, credit where credit is due.
We'll get to that in a moment. Kamala Harris was giving a speech about space, and I'd like to read it to you because it's rather moving.
Whoever wrote this for her, I don't know, maybe she wrote it herself, but I think somebody wrote it for her.
And you may have heard that there have been staff defections on the Kamala Harris staff.
So I'm guessing that the talent pool might be getting a little thinner.
Specifically, the speechwriting talent pool may have, I don't know, may have gotten a little less.
I'd like you to judge.
So here's the stirring oration that she gave about space.
She said, I think everyone here recognizes how extraordinary space is.
Whether it is satellites that orbit the earth, humans that land on the moon, or telescopes that peer into the furthest reaches of the universe.
Space is exciting.
It spurs our imaginations and it forces us to ask big questions.
Space, it affects us all and connects us all.
Now, I took this to heart because I found it moving.
And yesterday I was thinking I needed some more bottled water.
And normally what I do is I drive to my local Safeway, get a few cases of bottled water, put them in the car, drive them home.
That's my normal process.
But after I read this and I found that the space, it affects us all and it connects us all, I thought I should...
Maybe think again. And so before I drove to the store and got my bottled water, I peered into space, and I tried to figure out how it was affecting me and how I would affect it, because I'm connected to everybody through space.
And the last thing I want to do is move some empty space...
Effect it, which will cause a ripple effect because emptiness does that.
That's just physics.
And so if you push the emptiness, the emptiness will cause like a domino effect, affecting all of us, connecting everybody.
And I thought, I could kill somebody just by going to buy water because of the space variable that I had not considered once.
Not once. I had not even thought about this.
So now that I've been spurred in my imagination to know how extraordinary space is, I will take it into consideration in all of my thinking and all of my decisions because it's so extraordinary and big.
Also very big. Very, very big and extraordinary, that space.
And not only that, but listen to this.
This is important. She said, our space capabilities...
I swear, this is like Dr.
King soaring oratory.
If you don't get goosebumps from this next sentence...
You're dead inside.
All right, let me say it again.
Vice President Kamala Harris.
Our space capabilities provide for global awareness, global connectivity, and global navigation.
Yeah, it does.
Oh, tingles.
Oh, ho, ho, ho!
Do you feel that?
Oh, ho, ho! Wow!
Soaring. That's all I have to say about that.
But then she gives the payoff here.
This is why our administration has proposed the largest single increase in our military space capability in our nation's history.
Well, okay.
That part's good, actually.
So credit where credit is due.
If you ignore the fact that she's emptier than space itself, if you ignore the fact that Biden...
Is a few quasars short of a universe or something.
I don't know. I was thinking on the fly there.
This is actually the right thing to do because they have identified that space is vital for the future.
It is. For defense of the earth, defense of the country, economics, everything.
So he's doing the right thing.
Just doesn't seem like they're selling it just right.
All right. Let's talk about Elon Musk being interesting again.
He was talking about Netflix, and he said the woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable.
He said that on the 19th, two days ago.
What was the day that Netflix stock tanked?
Was it right after he said that or right before it?
Was he responding to it, or did he make it tanked?
No, I think their numbers made a tank because they lost subscribers and they were forecast to gain a few million and they actually lost.
But was it...
Did I not tell you the same thing, basically?
I've been telling you for a long time that movies are unwatchable now.
And there's a very simple reason why.
If you're a writer and you have to service wokeness...
It's so restricting that you don't have enough tools to get a proper story going.
If you could do all the wokeness and still get a proper story, well, okay.
Then you've got everything, I suppose.
But if the wokeness makes it too hard to write the story, and I think probably it does, then you just get crap.
And I think that all movies and TV are now just unmitigated crap at this point.
It's not even... It's barely an entertainment...
I think I signed up for almost every streaming service there is, or at least the top six or whatever, because I was desperate to find anything I could watch anywhere that would take my mind off the fact that I've drawn Dilbert 11,000 times, and I've got to do 11,001.
I just want anything that isn't terrible to be on, and I can't find it.
There's just nothing. All the streaming services, you can run through the ones you want to watch in, what, three hours?
That's it. Then you're done and you forget to...
And then you go back and look every now and then.
I go back to the Disney streaming app every now and then.
Let's see what they got. Nothing.
Oh, they got something new.
I wouldn't watch that. Is anybody having the same problem that it's impossible to watch a show because it's so hard to find anything that you would watch and you're not sure why?
It suddenly went from all kinds of stuff to watch to nothing to watch?
And some of it's because it's crap, but others is because by making the interfaces all different apps and different ways to find things, it's just so damn hard to find something.
Let me give you an example.
If I want to go back to watch a movie I just started, which I tried to do, I don't know where to go look.
I say to myself, oh, I'd like to watch the rest of that movie that was on Netflix?
And then I look and it's not there.
I go, okay, it was probably on Hulu?
Nope. HBO Plus?
No. And then I end up timing out.
Try this experiment.
Here's an experiment I want you to try.
There's two of you, so you and a spouse or a friend.
Try this exercise. Order some food and sit down with the food with the intention of turning on your iPad or your TV and finding a show you can watch before your food is done.
So you start eating and flipping through the channels and see if two people can find a show that they would both watch before all of your food is done.
You can't do it. It can't be done.
It cannot be done.
Unless you happen to be the two people who will watch anything.
Some people. Well, so I agree with Elon that the woke mind virus is killing the streaming services, just movies in general.
I guess Tesla announced that they're making robo-taxis and that they're expecting them to be in volume production in 2024.
What? In two years?
So these would be autonomous robo-taxis, so there'd be no steering wheel and no pedals, maybe.
I mean, I'm not sure anything's confirmed at this point.
And I guess, actually, Elon Musk did confirm that, I guess.
And he said there'll be a number of other innovations around it, which are quite exciting.
Now, there's a lot in this story.
Do you have any idea how big this story is?
Because when you read this, you think, oh, it's another story about...
You know, maybe autonomous cars.
And you think it's like flying cars.
You probably won't have to worry about this in the future.
No. This is one of the biggest stories of all time.
Here's why. Number one, if you're as big as Tesla and you want to enter a new market so that you can keep growing, you have to take over gigantic markets or else there's not enough in the market to grow your company because you're already so big.
So if you're a trillion-dollar company, it doesn't help you much to buy a billion-dollar company or get into a market where you can only make a billion dollars.
So he has to go after enormous markets, enormous ones.
Now, the self-driving market, I think, is that one, right?
It's the only thing that looks like it could be bigger than individually-owned cars.
Because over time, don't you think self-driving cars will take over for regular cars?
It will. It just will.
I'm not even open to the conversation.
It will. And I'll tell you why in a minute.
But suppose we got to a place where we had mostly autonomous cars.
What would that do? Well, besides solving climate change, do you know how easy it would be to get from one place to another if people didn't own their own cars?
And then maybe sometimes you can share one, or it just comes when you want it, and it knows what all the streetlights are doing, so it never has to stop for a light, because it knows where the other autonomous cars are, so they can just cross each other at, you know, slow speed, but, you know, they never have to stop.
So you basically...
It changes the entire energy structure of the planet over time, assuming it's successful, right?
It would eliminate drunk driving.
Now you say to yourself, how is Elon Musk, or anybody, going to sell this to Congress or the states or whoever has to approve it?
Because there's going to be a regulatory hurdle here, right?
Elon Musk could clear that regulatory hurdle fairly easily.
And I'm not sure anybody else could, but I think he could do it easily.
So first of all, he's got the reputation...
He walks into a room and people think he can do what he says he's going to do.
He's got that working for him.
All he has to do is show his work.
An autonomous car will do a pilot program So we'll limit the things until we have more data.
So we're asking only approval for a pilot in a certain place.
And I guarantee you that deaths by automobiles will go down substantially in the place that's only automated cars.
Let's say there's no regular cars on the highway.
It's just an automated car area.
Actually, I guess it would have to share the road to be a good test.
Do you think you can sell that?
Because I'm pretty sure he can sell it based on drunk driving deaths alone.
He wouldn't need to sell anything else.
He's like, look, here's one thing.
I'm going to eliminate drunk driving deaths eventually.
And he's the only entrepreneur I've ever heard say that his product will probably kill people.
He actually said that about flying to Mars.
Now, not a specific product, but he basically said going to Mars will end up in people dying.
And we're going anyway, because it's that important.
That is a really unusual thing for an entrepreneur to say, like directly.
People will die going to Mars.
I think Elon Musk is the only person who would be credible enough to stand in front of Congress and say, autonomous robotaxis will kill some people.
Who else could say that?
Who else could say that directly?
Autonomous robotaxis will kill some people.
They will also save tens of thousands more per year because no drunk driving, at least wherever these cars are.
In the short run, it doesn't save much because they're just feathering into the mix.
In the long run, it eliminates one of the biggest causes of death.
And forget about drunk driving, just automobile accidents in general.
So do you think Elon Musk could not sell...
The honest story that the robo-taxis will kill people.
Don't kid yourself. They'll kill people.
We don't mean to. We're going to do everything we can to make it not happen.
But it's going to happen. We're just going to save so many more.
So can you approve that?
How do you get turned down?
Can you imagine Congress turning down that proposition...
Assuming that he sells it in a clean way.
And then he goes to Twitter and just starts dissecting anybody who said no to it.
I think he gets a yes.
Don't you? I don't know if anybody else could, but I think he would.
Think about how far our best entrepreneurs are thinking ahead.
Jeff Bezos is building...
It seems funny that Bezos would do Amazon.com and then he's doing his own rocket-making company, Blue Horizon.
Those don't seem like they fit together.
But you know someday he's going to deliver Amazon packages to off-world locations, right?
That's totally going to happen.
Just not right away.
Amazon will absolutely deliver to other planets.
That's going to happen. Isn't that weird?
The Bezos...
Like, these guys are so far ahead of the curve that you can't even see what they're up to.
I mean, space is important in general.
I mean, it's just a good market, so maybe that's all the reason that Bezos needs.
But Amazon is going to have to compete with companies that can deliver off-world someday.
So he's going to be ready for it.
It's kind of like insanely smart.
Here's what else is insanely smart.
Do you know what Tesla's biggest risk is?
Aside from supply chain, I guess.
Tesla's biggest risk is self-driving cars.
Right? So unless it plays in that game...
And I think the self-driving cars are not just going to be the autonomous cars, but I think it's going to be no steering wheel situation.
I think that's where it's going.
So Musk is probably accurately understanding that his entire business would go out of business in, I don't know, 15 years or whenever autonomous cars become the thing, unless he makes autonomous cars.
So he's basically launching the company that will put his current company out of business, in a sense, right?
Because once everything is a robo-taxi, you don't need to buy a Tesla.
But he will be robo-taxi, too.
And it will be bigger than Tesla.
Maybe. So the size of these bets and how many decades in advance they're thinking is just thrilling.
It's honestly just thrilling to watch people operate at this level and with this amount of vision.
Well, speaking of interesting things, Tulsi Gabbard is taking some legal action, that I say with quotes, legal action, against Mitt Romney.
For Romney did a tweet in which he accused her of treasonous lies and Russian propaganda.
And I guess she's got her lawyers to send him a cease and desist letter, basically warning him away from calling her a traitor.
Which is deeply insulting, I would imagine, to anybody who has served in the military.
Or is serving. And anybody who just sort of doesn't like stuff like this, which is awful.
I'm pretty sure she's never said anything that would rise to the level of a treasonous lie or Russian propaganda.
That is a hell of a thing for a sitting senator to say about a private citizen.
Because remember, she's a private citizen now.
She was a politician, so that has to be factored in.
But she's a private citizen.
At the moment, she has not announced she's running for anything.
Am I right? Let's get rid of this troll.
Goodbye, troll! So anyway, what do you think of the fact that she's going to take legal action, meaning writing a letter?
So it's just a letter. I think it's kind of perfect.
If she tried to sue him, well, that would be, you know, too much.
But getting your lawyer to write a letter and then getting the press to act like it's a legal action, which makes you think it's a lawsuit, but it's not a lawsuit, it's just a letter...
I don't think he has any legal anything, right?
It's just a letter from the lawyer.
Hey, cut that out. But then that makes it a bigger story, so she gets to show her side of things, which I think she has the stronger point, and then her side of things gets some air, and then Mitt Romney looks like a jerk.
So it was a good play.
Well played by Tulsi Gabbard, I'd say.
And poorly played by Romney.
I just don't know what he thought he would gain by that.
So I asked this in a tweet, and it got so many retweets that I thought, well, maybe I'll mention it here.
And I tweeted that I'm not a Republican, as most of you know, but the fact that supporting free speech in 2022 forces people to assume you are one is making the option look attractive.
How would you like to be running for election as a Democrat while knowing that if somebody comes out in favor of free speech, they're labeled a Republican?
Just think of it. That you get labeled a Republican...
Just because you're in favor of free speech.
I mean, can Republicans win any harder than that?
And again, I'm not a Republican.
I'm just observing from the sidelines.
I'm like, oh my goodness.
I mean, the most basic tenet of the Constitution and freedom, free speech.
And people just think, oh, that's sort of just a Republican thing.
That's where we've gotten to in 2022.
The New York Times is reporting that the Justice Department is going to appeal a court ruling that struck down federal mask mandates on public transportation.
What? What?
Are you kidding me?
I want to use profanity, but I do it too much.
So I'm trying to hold back.
Well, if this were not happening the exact way it's happening, I would say that the way to approach this is to defund the Justice Department.
Or at least we should bring it up.
Somebody needs to bring it up.
Because if the Justice Department has time to appeal a court ruling about masks, which is, I don't think, any of their business...
Because they're not exactly a medical entity, and they're not...
I don't know. I'm not sure on what grounds they're going to do it, but it doesn't matter.
We don't want them to do it.
At least I don't want them to do it.
So I think the way to approach this is to literally say you should defund the Justice Department.
Because you should actually call in the director and say...
Congress should actually call in the director...
Who is it? Garland?
And just explain why they have so many resources that they could do this.
I want him to explain what they're going to not do so they can do this.
Don't you want to see them say, you know, everybody has limited resources.
Wouldn't you like to see the Senate bring them in, Garland, and say, you know, we make all these budget decisions and it doesn't look like your budget is being used...
In a wise way, and the evidence is, if you're doing this, what is it that you're doing that you're not doing?
What things got pushed back so you could do this?
Just make them say it in public.
Just make the Justice Department say in public what they're not doing so that they can do this.
And just make them explain it.
This one speaks for itself.
You don't have to argue it.
You need to make them argue it.
You know what I'm saying? You don't have to argue the other side.
Make them defend it.
Just make them defend it.
Their side. That's it.
Oh, my God. Well, Rasmussen did a poll about what American voters think about Russia in the 2016 election.
And sure enough, 47% of likely U.S. voters think it is likely that Russian interference changed the outcome of the 2016 election, including 26% who say it is very likely.
Interesting. So what do you think about that?
So we are so addicted...
To our Russian conspiracy theories.
We just love our Russian conspiracy theories.
Now, this is such an indictment of the fake news because anybody who saw the actual interference, I don't think, you know, if you're talking about the memes, if you actually saw the memes and how little money they spent, like $100,000-something, they spent nothing, and the memes were ineffective.
So if you didn't know that, you might think it was some big program.
So the only other thing is that something got hacked and we're blaming it on Russia.
Do you know why we say Russia hacked, what was it, Podesta's email or something?
Do you know why we say Russia did it?
We know because 50 former and current intelligence officials said so.
No, that's not true. I made that up.
But it's the same fucking idiots who have been lying to us about everything.
Everything. So the only evidence we have of Russia interference is that the same fucking liars who've lied about everything for years say that they're pretty sure they can't show us the proof, but trust us, totally Russian hackers.
Now, I'm not saying it wasn't.
Because I think you'd get kicked off of social media if you do that.
How would I know? But you know what I do know?
There's only one thing I know for sure.
There is no information about whether they did it or not.
There's none. Because the only information you think you have is from the same fucking liars who we know for sure.
For sure. They lied about Hunter's laptop.
They lied about Russia collusion.
They lied about everything.
It's the same fucking liars.
So if the only reason that you believe that Russia interfered is because the same fucking liars who lied about everything about Russia every time, it's because they said so and they won't show you their work?
Oh, because it's secret.
Can't show you your work.
If you believe it because they said it, you're an idiot at this point.
I mean, honestly.
Now, if you believe it because you think there's a good reason it happened, okay.
I'm not saying it didn't happen.
So if you believe it for your own reasons...
Maybe your own reasons would be, of course they're doing it, because we're probably doing similar stuff to them, and it's just routine.
That would be a good enough reason, and I would accept that as a totally reasonable speculation.
But if the reason you believe, if your reason for believing that Russia hacked anything in the United States that affected the election is because you were told by the liars who don't show their work, The most confirmed, guaranteed, definite, documented liars.
There's no question about it.
We're not guessing.
We know they're liars and they lie on this topic.
They're not even generic liars.
They're liars about this.
So far, three times, right?
WMD is another one.
So just check your thinking.
It's okay to think Russia did it for your own reasons, but not because your government told you that.
That would be really dumb if you believed it for that reason.
That's not a reason. All right.
Are you following this Amber Heard and Johnny Depp story?
I really didn't want to look into it because I just thought it was icky.
It really was.
But... Here are some of the things that we know Amber Heard did.
Apparently she accused Johnny Depp of abusing her, but now we know that she hit him, apparently lots of times, threw things at him.
She threatened suicide to control him.
If he didn't do what she wanted, she was going to kill herself.
She used gaslighting.
She lied. She projected.
She got hysterical over little things.
And she actually thought that the things she was doing were little.
She thought that physically attacking him was no big deal.
Do you know what this all is?
You should Google vulnerable narcissists.
There are a few different words for it.
But not to be confused with grandiose narcissists.
A grandiose narcissist is just somebody who thinks they should get credit for doing awesome things.
So that would be Trump.
So Trump would definitely be one of those.
I don't know what else he is.
But he's definitely someone who thinks he should get credit for doing awesome things.
Now, I'm one.
I think. I mean, if I could diagnose myself.
I love getting credit for doing things that...
Why wouldn't I? So, you know, I always said that the grandiose type are actually useful because they work hard to get credit.
I feel like I do that.
I feel like I work hard to make things better because then people say, oh, you helped.
And I go, oh, did I? That feels great.
I like that feeling. So I guess that's what I am, since I like it.
I do it for my own enjoyment as much as the benefit of other people.
But... If you Google vulnerable narcissist and look at the checklist of behaviors, then listen to the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp story.
I'm no medical expert.
And one thing you should never do is diagnose somebody's mental health or other health from a distance.
I'm going to do that right now.
She seems clearly a vulnerable narcissist.
Like, really, obviously, clearly.
Like, I would put a really big bet on it.
I'm no doctor.
I'm no expert, but I'd put a really big bet on it.
And let me tell you, do you know what the solution is if she is a vulnerable narcissist?
Do you know what the experts say that Johnny Depp should do if this is true?
Run. There's only one recommendation.
Because people who fit this profile are closer to monsters than people.
And I know that sounds like an overstatement.
You're like, okay, they're not monsters.
They're just annoying, or maybe they're hyperbolic or something.
They're not monsters. No, they're actually monsters.
Now, you don't believe me?
There are people on this livestream watching who have had this experience, and they've been in a relationship.
In the comments, you tell me, monster or no?
Just in the comments.
Just watch the comments for a moment.
Because not everybody's had experience with this.
If you've never had experience with it, it doesn't sound like it's real, does it?
I mean, it doesn't sound like somebody could actually be that way.
Yeah. So look at the comments, and you can see for yourself.
The people who have experienced it know that this is not even like a regular person.
It's not like a human. And when you listen to the Amber Heard audios, my take on it is she doesn't sound human.
Because she wasn't prioritizing what a human would prioritize, if I can say it that way.
So I get this whole uncanny valley feeling with her.
Like, oh my god, that doesn't even feel like a human.
The thing she was saying. I think she was completely straight on the recordings that we heard.
It didn't sound like she was drunk or under the influence.
It sounded like her actual personality was a monster.
Now, when you hear that Johnny Depp was like hiding in bathrooms and literally hiding from her because she was so dangerous, and then you see how much projection she does, how many lies she tells, how much gaslighting she does, and it's all in the audio.
You can hear it all for yourself.
Apparently, she's thrown pots and pans at him and believes that he's just a pussy, basically.
That she believes that beating him up physically, beating him physically, which she acknowledges she did in the audios, is no big deal.
And he's just sort of being weak if that's a problem for him.
That's a monster. The person who does it is a bad person.
The person who does it and tells you you should put up with it and then makes you believe it, that's a fucking monster.
Hitting you is just an asshole.
A lot of people have been in abusive relationships.
That's a drunk, an asshole, somebody who's got an anger issue.
There are lots of reasons for it.
You could call them lots of things.
But if you hit somebody and then convince them that they deserve it and they're less of a person if they even think there's a problem with it, you're not those things.
Those things are bad enough.
You're a monster. Because you're trying to destroy him mentally as well as physically.
You know, I guess every abuser is doing that.
So I guess it would be fair to say that always happens.
Yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
All right. So maybe you can learn something about the monsters among us by following this Amber Heard thing.
The funniest thing about it is that part of the story...
It's weird. Johnny Depp woke up on two occasions to find what he is quite sure was human excrement on the other side of the bed that he believes was done as something she did to make him unhappy.
I don't know exactly the theory of it.
So there's some mystery about this, and she says it was the dogs, but Johnny Depp says he's lived with these dogs a long time, and he knows dog poop, and he knows human poop, and this was the latter.
But the best part about it is that instead of Amber Heard trending, the hashtag that's trending today is, wait for it, Amber Turd.
A moment of awesomeness.
I just have to stand up for that one.
Yeah.
Amber Turd.
Thank you.
Yep. You can't beat that one.
Yeah, you just can't beat that one.
And you're right. There's a commenter who says this is the best show ever, and you are right.
You're right. Well, in the two movies about Ukraine, we have another movie.
Let's see, this one comes from Michael McFall.
Who seems to know what he's talking about, but he says that Putin has failed to achieve any one of his goals for Ukraine.
And then he lists all the things that, in his opinion, were Putin's goals, or Putin actually said it in some cases, and were not accomplished.
Now, that's one way to look at it, because you could say, well, he didn't take the capital...
He hasn't conquered and held an entire major city yet, although Mariupol, there's nothing left of it, and they've surrounded the defenders there.
So that one's sort of a grey area.
So yeah, and then he hasn't completely controlled everything and hasn't demilitarized, hasn't denazified.
So Michael McFaul, he makes a reasonably good argument.
That Putin is failing.
But you've also heard the other argument that Putin is completely succeeding and whatever he wants, he'll get if he doesn't have it yet.
So he's not done.
He hasn't lost anything.
He's just chewing along and he'll get it when he gets it.
And I think both of those movies or those frames or points of view, to me, they're both alive.
To me, they're both completely alive.
And also completely alive is that the Ukrainians could pull out a victory.
I think it's still possible.
I don't think it's likely.
You know, the odds of it probably go down every day.
But there's lots of things that could happen here.
War is unpredictable by its nature.
But here would be my counter to McFall's take that Putin did not achieve any of his goals.
Was it a goal? Did he have goals or did he have a system?
Because he certainly had some things he wanted to achieve, whatever word you want to put on it.
But I feel as if he had a starting approach, but probably always knew that he would have to keep adjusting until he got what he wanted.
So is it a goal or is it a system?
Because the system is, all right, I need to take this Ukraine problem away and maybe get some glory.
So I guess you could say that's a goal, but it's kind of like a high-level goal.
Whereas a specific goal would be to take the capital.
I don't know that he had a specific goal.
I feel like it was more of a system of degrading Ukraine in every way that you can, in every direction, in every possible way, so it was hard to stop it.
So the defenders couldn't concentrate their forces in any one place because he was just shaping the...
I guess they call it shaping the battlefield, right?
He was creating the conditions everybody had to react to as just a normal military system or a process or a strategy, I guess.
And that even though things didn't go the way he might have predicted, that might have been irrelevant, right?
It might be irrelevant that it didn't go the way he predicted because you know he might know He might know that war never goes the way you predict.
What if he knew that?
Because that wouldn't be hard to know.
I would imagine most generals would agree.
Oh, yeah, war rarely goes the way you predict.
So you better be ready to make the adjustments.
So if what he did is said, I need to handle Ukraine militarily, like I need to get...
Make sure that it's not a threat.
And he also wanted a land bridge, and he also wanted some glory.
And maybe he said, I'll just keep throwing assets at it until I got it.
They'll give up on the sanctions over time.
We'll come out way ahead in the long run.
I don't know. I don't know if you could say he's failed.
Would you? Let's put it to a vote.
Has Putin so far...
Now, remember, it's just so far.
So as of today, is Putin succeeding or failing?
Go. Based on your reading of the news, succeeding or failing?
I'm seeing more...
Well, actually, it's a mixed bag.
Yeah, inconclusive.
I think you'll get the land bridge.
I think you'll get the no-NATO. But they're not going to demilitarize, probably.
They might. Who knows?
They still have to negotiate.
All right. We don't know.
See how weird that is.
All right. There's a video of Putin who's looking kind of sick.
He's just talking to one of his...
Defense Minister, I guess.
And he's sort of gripping a table and his head is over to one side and he looks kind of small and his posture is bad.
And one doctor said it just looks like it's allergy season.
It looks like he might just have an allergy because he didn't look too well.
But that doesn't explain why he's holding the table the whole time in a weird way.
He looked really uncomfortable.
Which is weird for somebody who's running the country and in charge of the person that he's talking to.
And he's the one who asked for the cameras, I guess.
I imagine. So the whole situation is one he wanted.
He should have been comfortable in it, but he looked really uncomfortable.
So I don't know what that's about.
It didn't look like drunk.
Well, maybe. I don't know what it looked like.
But don't assume that we can look at it and know that he's going to die or anything, but it was very unusual.
I think it's worth calling out, even if we don't know what's going on.
Well, the Biden administration is putting $6 billion into trying to rescue as many nuclear plants in this country from closing to try to keep them open running.
And the reason is that it's a carbon-free source of power that helps to combat climate change.
Now... May I give credit where credit is due?
This is exactly right.
The exact right play is to keep the existing plants open, if they can do it safely, because that's the best way to get a lot of electricity that you wouldn't have otherwise, right?
And again, this is credit to Michael Schellenberger and Mark Schneider and people who have been persuading on this very point for a long time.
And the Biden administration is doing it.
Now, I think that the Trump administration should have done it.
Don't know why they didn't.
Maybe they thought of it.
Maybe they were working on it.
It could be that this is a continuation of an energy department thing.
Maybe. I don't know. But, yeah, it does seem a little late, but I can't ignore the fact that Trump didn't do this, and this is the right thing to do.
Everybody okay with that? Even if you support Trump, he was wrong on this, or less effective on this, I think.
So unless they waste their $6 billion, which is possible, it looks like a good idea.
There's some fake news about Trump.
He did an interview with Piers Morgan, who has a new show, I guess.
And the...
The advertisement, or whatever you call it, the trailer for the show, is Rupard together.
So it's a fake edit that makes it look like they were mad and he walked off at the end, which didn't happen.
So he didn't walk off, and he did say some insulting things to Piers Morgan, but it was all...
If you saw it in context, you would see two people who probably like each other on some level...
And are operating at the peak of their games.
They both know how to get publicity, and they both know how to generate energy, and then use it as they want.
So, Piers Morgan is probably perfectly fine with the fact that he's being criticized for this trailer.
Because now everybody knows he has a show.
I didn't know he had a show.
Did you? I found out that Piers Morgan has a new show.
By learning that he made a fake video about Trump, and Trump is now angry at him, or acting angry.
Again, I'm going to say acting, because Trump also knows how to work this, right?
So Trump does this press release.
He says, Piers Morgan, like the rest of the fake news media, attempted to unlawfully and deceptively edit his long and tedious interview with me.
He wanted to make it look Like I walked out of the interview when my time limit of 20 minutes went over.
Yes, so Trump had given him 20 minutes and he went like an hour or something.
So I think Trump's explanation is, you know, he might be short-cutting it a little bit too much, but essentially it was fake news.
But I don't know.
This doesn't feel like regular fake news, does it?
This feels like two people who knew exactly what they were doing.
And we're operating at that level where they didn't need to collude.
I doubt there was any time that Trump and Pierce said, look, we'll do this fake edit, you act angry, I'll fight you for it, we'll get good ratings.
I doubt they said it explicitly, but they're both operating at such a high level of understanding how to move energy that I think it was just obvious.
It was just the obvious play.
So I'm going to actually compliment Piers Morgan because I think he knows what job he is.
I think he knows his job, right?
He knows he's in the business of generating attention.
He got some. He nailed it.
All right. I got an answer to my question.
When was the first time that I said China is too risky for business?
It was 2019. And I said, how long before CEOs find it unsafe to do business in China?
And the answer is about three years.
So that's when the Wall Street Journal did an article saying it was risky to do business in China.
And so you must ask yourself, did I predict it?
Did I cause it?
Is it a coincidence?
It's probably not a false memory, because you can actually find the tweet yourself.
How'd that happen? Because if I predicted it, how did I predict it?
I wasn't aware of predicting it.
Or is it the simulation?
Did I program the simulation?
See, there are lots of possibilities, and we don't know any of them.
We don't know. Probably just a coincidence, but...
Here's the second question you must ask yourself.
How many times have I said I was going to make something happen and then it happened?
By coincidence.
By coincidence. Lots of times.
And at some point, you have to imagine...
Well, you could say that China was always risky, but we didn't frame it that way.
Certainly people weren't thinking of it that way.
It's around 50% That's no better than random chance.
50% of things I influence, I would say that would be a lot better than random chance.
If you could change 50% of the things you tried to change with persuasion, you would be the greatest persuader of all time.
That's a really good batting average.
Are you kidding? So there's somebody who thinks I only succeeded half the time.
I'm like, I'd be pretty happy with that.
Can I make Trump win again?
You know, I don't think I can prevent him winning.
I think all he has to do is want to run, and he can prevent it himself, I suppose.
I mean, he could self-immolate, and you know he's going to get close to it, no matter what.
You know that if Trump runs, he's going to fly so close to the sun, because it's fun there.
You know, he gets a lot of attention, and I think he can't...
I don't think he can avoid the energy.
Oh, eco-nuclear.
Are Gen 4 reactors being called eco-nuclear?
I hadn't heard that before. I'm just reading a comment over on the Locals platform.
You think Putin is going to die before Biden?
No.
How can I live near SF and not know that GM's cruise is already operating a driverless AV fleet there?
Well, actually, in the Bay Area, there are a number of driverless cars.
So everybody knows that who lives in the area.
But if Tesla says they have a robo-taxi, I take that pretty seriously.
