Episode 1811 Scott Adams: Fun Times Ahead. I Will Follow The Money And Tell You The Future
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Most likely outcome if Trump wins in 2024
Amazon enters healthcare market
Bill Gates motivation
Elon Musk Twitter negotiations
Democrats clever word trickery
Are Democrats noticing J6 committee is sketchy?
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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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That's an answer to the people and locals who asked the question.
But that's not why you're here.
You're here because this is the highlight of civilization every single day.
And today, nothing but optimism.
Can you handle it?
Can you handle nothing but good news?
It's going to be like that.
We have entered the golden age.
And if you'd like to take it up a notch and join the dimension of people vibrating just right, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of...
Hold on. Take care from the top.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass or a tank or a gel, 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 of the dopamine of anything that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it's amazing. It's going to happen now.
Go. Well, I was telling the people on the Locals platform before you joined here on YouTube and Spotify that, well, first of all, I saw a new story that drinking three cups of coffee will make you live longer.
I haven't read it, but since the headline agrees with me, good enough.
That's the way I evaluate studies.
If you're trying to figure out which scientific studies to trust, Here's a good tip.
Trust the ones that confirm your suspicions and reject everything else.
That's how I do it. It's called science.
Well, what I was going to talk about is I wrote a book back in 2004, at least that's when it was published, that was a prequel to my book, God's Debris.
Now, some of you are saying, ooh, my favorite topic.
And others of you are saying, God's Debris?
That's a weird book. I never knew a cartoonist wrote a book named that.
Well, if you don't know what I'm talking about, it was written in 2001, God's Debris was, and is still a worldwide phenomenon.
It's just that there's a certain type of person who's reading it and has ever since it came out.
And they formed almost like a secret society at this point, like the people who have read that book.
And they talk to me about it all the time.
It's one of the biggest topics in my life.
This is weird, probably.
If you're familiar with my work, it would probably sound weird to you that one of the biggest topics people talk to me about has nothing to do with Dilbert, nothing to do with politics or Trump or any of that stuff.
It's a little book I wrote in 2001 called God's Debris.
Now, it can't be described.
You'd have to look into it.
It's beyond description.
But here's the funny part.
I wrote a prequel because God's Debris did so well.
And it got very little notice.
I don't remember why.
Maybe I didn't promote it or something.
And I called it a sequel, but it was actually a prequel.
And I hadn't read it for 15 years myself.
So when Erica so nicely sent me a copy of my own book, because I didn't have a copy.
I wanted to look at it, but I didn't have a copy.
So Erica sent me a copy of my own book, and I started reading it yesterday.
And it is way, way stronger than it was in 2004.
And the reason is that it held a number of predictions about what was going to happen.
And the predictions are close enough to reality that it's going to freak you out.
It freaked me out just reading, because I didn't remember all the things I'd done.
And as I read it, I thought, oh, geez, its relevance just increased.
So I might read it, I don't know, I have the digital rights to it, so I might read it into YouTube or Locals or something at some point.
That was self-indulgent.
That had nothing to do with you whatsoever.
Why would you come here to listen to me talk about myself?
Here's the coolest news of the day.
NASA's Perseverance rover, they've got a really clear picture of something that's sitting on the Mars surface right by the rover.
And it's a bundle of string.
Wait, what?
No, seriously. It's a very clear picture of a bundle of string.
I'm not making that up.
And do you know what NASA said was the explanation?
The explanation was it was some kind of debris that fell off the rover itself.
So they say it's something about, you know, the device itself.
Now, I'm no engineer.
But I'm trying to think, what could possibly fall off a spacecraft that is also string?
Was there some point during the building of the rover where they said, hmm, we've been using rivets for this.
We've been using rivets.
But on this one component, I think we should wrap it with a string.
How in the world is there any string that's part of the rover?
Please. Can anybody explain how string is part of any part of this?
Here's my theory.
As you know, the moon landing was faked with puppets.
Most of you know that by now, right?
The moon landing never really happened in 1969.
That was faked with puppets.
It was actually an elaborate puppet show.
And now I think we're seeing evidence that the Mars rover is not real.
It has never been real.
Clearly, it's just another puppet show.
And one of the strings fell off the puppets and then got captured on camera, and now they're doing this scramble.
You know, NASA's like, God, what are we going to do?
They got our string. And so now they're trying to sell you that some of your finest Mars missions do involve string as part of an important part of the engineering.
So... Note to Elon Musk.
If you're building rockets to colonize Mars and you have no string, well, maybe you should work on better materials because this string made it all the way to Mars.
It's a good string. So there's that story.
Are you noticing that there's a sort of a, oh, let's say a gap or something missing in the headlines of some of the news, but not all of it?
Because I looked on Fox News and I saw this fairly, what I would consider, pretty major story of importance.
And then I looked for it in other news sources and I didn't see it.
I didn't see it. Now, see if you can come up with any kind of a theory Why this story, which I believe is true, looks like a true story, why would it only be on Fox News?
Here's the story. There was some kind of a shooting incident not too long ago in an Indiana mall, and there was a fellow named Elisha Dickens who was in the restroom when it all started, and he happened to be armed.
So he was just a customer at the mall.
He did not have military or police training, but he was armed.
I guess he had a concealed weapon.
And he steps out of the restroom to find that there's a shooting in progress.
From a distance, I didn't hear what the distance was.
From a distance, this guy put 8 out of 10 shots into the shooter with a pistol.
From distance. I don't know what the distance was, but you don't have to get too far away.
Somebody said 40 or 50 yards?
50 yards?
Are you serious?
40 yards. Alright, trying to visualize that.
100 yards is a football field, right?
So... 40 yards of a 100-yard football field.
Do you think you could shoot somebody 8 out of 10 times from 40 yards?
Somebody says feet? I don't think it was feet.
If it was feet, he would have been outgunned, right?
Because the guy had two rifles and stuff.
40 yards, all right. But it was a good distance.
But here's the thing. Apparently, this guy was tactically correct.
Like, he was getting bystanders behind him, and he closed.
He actually closed on the shooter.
And here's the fun part.
He neutralized the shooter with 8 out of 10 bullets into the body of the shooter in 15 seconds.
It took him 15 seconds to leave the restroom, assess the risk properly, assess the risk properly, And neutralize it in 15 seconds.
Oh, my God.
Now, how Republican was he?
I mean, it's not reported.
Nobody reported his political leanings.
But how Republican was he?
Am I right? I mean, if we find out it was a Democrat, I will publicly, you know...
Embarrassed myself by saying, well, no.
I was totally wrong.
But if that guy isn't a Republican, I'll be amazed.
I'll be amazed. And so I tweeted that the safest place in America is next to an armed Republican.
That's true, isn't it?
The safest place in America is near an armed Republican.
Now, I suppose January 6th was a glaring exception to that.
But generally speaking, you couldn't be safer than next to an armed Republican.
So, I mean, that's a real thing.
All right, here's a hypothetical question for you.
I don't think this is going to happen, but just hypothetically.
Let's say Trump runs for re-election and he wins with 75% of the popular vote.
Again, it's not going to happen. This is not a prediction.
But what if he did? Let's say the other candidate had some scandal or whatever.
It was just a blowout.
At the end of the election, if Trump got 75% of the vote, you think the Democrats would say, wow, good race.
Nicely done. Or do you think that they would say that the election was rigged?
What do you think? Do you think they'd say it was rigged despite having no court-certified evidence?
I believe they would.
Now, let us predict the future, shall we?
What is the most likely outcome of Trump in 2024?
The most likely outcome is that he runs, right?
I'm not predicting it yet.
I think things could go either way, still.
But probably Trump runs, right?
Probably he runs. So that's the most likely.
If he runs, what is most likely to happen in terms of who wins?
He'll probably win, don't you think?
I think he'll probably run, and he'll probably win.
Now, what would the Democrats say if that happens, the most probable outcome?
They're going to say the election was rigged, aren't they?
And they're not going to have any court-approved evidence of it.
And I don't know how much I'm going to enjoy this, but I'm already getting ready for it.
Like, I don't know if there's a movie or a TV show I've ever wanted to watch more than the day after the 2024 election when the Democrats are screaming that the election was rigged and they need more transparency and they need just a little bit more time to run some audits.
How much are you going to enjoy that?
It'll be glorious. You remember Elon Musk said, and I've said it as well, that for some reason, reality tends to trend toward the most entertaining outcome, not to the participants, but to the observers.
Can you imagine a more entertaining outcome than Trump reclaiming the presidency and the Democrats claiming the election was rigged?
I can't. I can't.
Not only would it be the most entertaining, it's also the most likely.
Probably there's a solid 60% chance that exact scenario will happen, don't you think?
Would you go with me at 60%?
If you take the entire chain of probability from Trump probably running, probably getting the nomination, Probably winning the general election.
Probably the Democrats will say it was rigged.
Am I wrong? There's at least a 60% chance that we're going to get the most entertaining outcome.
I wouldn't even say it's the one I want.
But it's the most entertaining.
We already have video of them saying it about the 2016 election.
Right. So we know that Dems said it about 2016.
What would stop them from saying it about the next election?
Nothing. So entertainment, here we come.
It's coming. Well, as I've taught you, you can predict the future by following the money.
Follow the money. And here's something that you should have seen coming, and you should continue to see coming.
And it goes like this. I heard Professor Scott Galloway talk about this first.
But it's also kind of a general math-based business concept.
It goes like this. If you're a big company, Just like every company that's public, you have sort of an obligation to grow, right?
If you have stockholders, they're kind of expecting you to grow.
So in order to grow, if you're a small company, any new market you get into will help you grow.
But if you're an enormous company, like Amazon or Apple, you can't just say, oh, I think we'll make keychains.
Because all the keychains in the world wouldn't make you enough money to move your big numbers because you're starting with such a big number.
So you have to enter markets that are already gigantic.
And there aren't that many gigantic markets left.
There's education, which the private sector has not really gone big on education, but it's guaranteed because it's such a big market.
One of the big companies has to take it on.
Self-driving cars.
All of the big companies have to be there.
They all have to, because it's one of the few things that's so big that it could move their numbers.
But the other thing is healthcare.
The big companies that are not in healthcare almost have to get into it, because that's where the money is.
There's nothing else that has enough money flowing around that they can really improve their top revenue number.
And so we see exactly what you would predict.
So the Scott Galloway prediction that big companies have to enter big markets, they have no choice.
They literally have no choice.
So if you wonder, was Amazon going to go big in the healthcare market?
Yes. Yes. Turns out they just bought a big healthcare provider for $3.9 billion.
One medical. So they're a primary care provider.
We're talking about the actual doctor who touches you.
But the thing that caught my attention is the way Amazon phrased this.
And by the way, if you're not catching this, this is one of the biggest stories in the world.
It just doesn't have that people dying part of it.
You know, there's nobody dying.
So, you know, it doesn't look like a big story.
But it's big.
This is really big.
Let me just say the way Amazon's representative described it.
Quote, we think healthcare is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention.
Oh, here it comes.
Booking an appointment, waiting weeks or even months to be seen, taking time off work, driving to a clinic, finding a parking spot, waiting in the waiting room, then the exam room for what is too often a rushed few minutes with a doctor, then making another trip to a pharmacy.
And they continue, we see lots of opportunities to both improve the quality of the experience and give back time.
This is from Amazon's SVP, Neil Lindsay.
Now, is that exactly what you want to hear from your big American company?
That is exactly, that is exactly what I wanted to hear.
Because they didn't, she didn't even say cost.
She didn't even say cost.
Or he. He didn't even say cost.
It was about the experience being completely broken.
And how often have you had a conversation?
I had two of them this week where some just basic health care stuff couldn't get done.
No, three of them.
I think I've been in three conversations this week.
Yeah, just this week. Three of them.
Where just the process of getting healthcare was just so broken that a consumer who was paying for it couldn't get a basic feature.
Just the most basic thing.
And you're paying for it.
Like the whole system's pretty fucked up right now.
And expensive, yes.
But that's not even the big problem.
The big problem is I can't get it.
The big problem is...
Okay. Depends who you are.
If you have money...
The big problem isn't the cost.
So you can't get it.
Like, I struggle at my income level to get basic health care services.
I have to fight for it.
Like, I have Kaiser, you know, it's an HMO, and they have a set of rules, and sometimes the rules work well, but lots of times they don't.
They don't work for me or other people.
So I'm, like, fighting for health care that I pay for.
Like, what are the rest of you doing?
Right? I mean, I'm in a privileged situation.
I have money. I've got health care, right?
Best situation you can be in.
And I've got to fight for it.
Like, they don't just say, here's some health care.
Do you want it? No, I've got to fight for it.
I've got to change policies.
I've got to get exceptions. I've got to get a doctor's approval.
What are the rest of you doing?
I mean, Jesus. Seriously.
I mean, I'm in the best situation.
I can barely get healthcare, it seems like, even when I pay for it.
So, when I see Amazon saying, this thing is just messed up, we're going to go fix this, the first thing I say is, who better?
Seriously. Who better?
No, nobody better. Amazon is the very best company you'd want to see doing this.
Apple, too, apparently has also announced they've got a 60-page white paper detailing how the Apple Watch will be connected to their healthcare efforts.
So Apple is going also big into healthcare.
Who better? Who better?
Amazon, right? Amazon and Apple just going big on healthcare.
If you don't think this is the biggest story in the world, it's bigger than everything.
It's just that it's all good news and nobody died from it, so you're not going to hear much about it.
So that's all changing.
Good news. Good news.
So apparently, even CNN is reporting, now they're not making a big deal of it, but on their page they are reporting that the cat is on the roof when it comes to Hunter Biden and various charges that would include, let's see...
So there's still been talking about charges that would include tax violations, maybe false statements and connections with buying firearms, blah, blah.
And so we don't know if there'll be any charges for that, but the investigators, I guess the government has sort of an unwritten rule that they don't like to interfere in politics.
So, the FBI, for example, would be less inclined to prosecute Hunter Biden while there's an election coming.
You know, they might want to wait so it doesn't bias the election.
To which I say, wait a minute, isn't this supposed to bias the election?
This is not the bias you're supposed to remove, is it?
I feel like this is the bias you're supposed to insert, right?
Does it not make the election, let's say, more credible for us to have more information about what Joe Biden did or did not do regarding China?
Wouldn't you like to know if your current president is owned by China?
Or do you think it would be good to wait?
I wonder if my current president is in the pocket of China.
There sure is a lot of evidence that he made some deals that would make you suspect that China has some pretty good blackmail material on the president of the United States, but you know what you should do with that most important information that you could ever have about your president?
How about wait?
Let's wait a few years, see how it plays out.
What kind of rule is that?
I get the general rule that you don't want to prosecute and influence the elections.
I get that. And I get why they would wait to try to go after Trump, for example.
Now, if we were talking about the president himself, maybe.
I'd say maybe wait.
But the president's son?
What exactly is the reason for waiting on that?
I'm not so sure that makes sense, does it?
Anyway. And a CNN reporter reveals there's new details.
But they also point out that the Republicans are definitely going to look into this Hunter Biden stuff when they get power, which they probably will.
So do you think that maybe the Democrats want to make sure that the investigation of Hunter is complete before the Republicans get power and do it right?
No. See where I'm going?
If you're going to cover this thing up, you need to get through the entire process and finish it before the Republicans come to power.
So what you might be seeing is the Democrats trying to strategize how to handle this and discount it before the election.
And they may need to handle it themselves before the Republicans do it, because the Republicans aren't going to be so kind.
Yeah. I think it's going to be a quick roll.
That's right. You all saw the story yesterday that Joe Biden announced he has cancer.
Now, cancer isn't funny, except that I don't think he has cancer, so that's funny.
How much did you laugh about that?
I couldn't stop tweeting about it, because it was just funny.
So let's start with, does he have cancer?
I don't think so.
I don't think so. Does anybody think he actually has cancer?
And that it slipped out?
It could. It's very possible.
Like, I wouldn't rule that out.
But I doubt it. Well, prostate doesn't count.
Everybody whose age has prostate cancer.
You almost don't count that one, because that's like a slow grower.
Skin stuff, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. All right, so here's my prediction.
My prediction is he doesn't have a deadly cancer at the moment.
Does anybody disagree? But he definitely said it.
He said it in clear words, but it looked like he just maybe mixed up something he was reading on the teleprompter, something like that.
And then the White House tries to cover it up by saying it had to do with his past non-malignant skin cancer stuff being, pre-cancer stuff being removed, as if that's what he was talking about.
And there was oil on his windshield from the...
Every part of this story was hilarious.
And as I tweeted, imagine the story if Trump had made that little flurb.
I think it was just a speaking misstep.
Imagine if Trump had done that.
And imagine if part of the story had been the oil on his windshield.
The news would have said that Trump claims he got cancer by licking his windshield.
That's what it would say. They say, Trump got cancer from licking his windshield, he claims.
That's what they would have said.
Yeah. But they got a different treatment.
All right, so... Kudos to Rand Paul and Cory Booker, who apparently are joining forces with a couple other lawmakers, who I will say their names because I'm going to compliment them to, let's see, it's also with representatives Earl Blumenauer, Democrat, and Nancy Mace, Republican.
So these four are adding to some existing legislation laws giving seriously ill patients access to Schedule I drugs, including marijuana and psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA. Now, thank you.
Just thank you. All right, so Cory Booker, I have mixed feelings about Cory Booker.
I don't think he's quite present material.
But he's pretty awesome in a lot of ways.
And I think this is a case where Rand Paul and Cory Booker are just doing something for the country.
What do you think? It's hard for me to see this as a political positive for either one of them.
Like, I love them. I love them for doing it.
But I don't know that this would overall help them in an electoral way.
I don't feel like either of them is going to be bragging that up as part of their accomplishments.
Because there are too many people who are scared of the whole drug-related space.
I don't see this as being politically motivated.
Am I wrong? I mean, maybe that's naive, that everything's politically motivated because they're politicians.
But this just doesn't have the smell of it, does it?
I mean, for one thing, it's bipartisan.
So am I right that we could...
Can you turn on slow mode?
I don't know what that means. Is there a slow mode for the comments?
Is that what you're saying? No.
Is that a thing? I'm just looking at YouTube.
Somebody said turn on slow mode.
Do the comments have a slow mode?
I don't think that's a thing. It's not a feature, is it?
Yes? Maybe.
Alright, I'll look into that. But I would just like to say publicly thank you to Cory Booker and Rand Paul and Mason Blumenauer, because to me it looks like they're doing a non-political thing that is simply good for the world.
And probably, I'm just guessing, I'll bet they all had some personal experience with something, some loved one, some family relative or something, because this looks legitimate to me.
When was the last time I said, here's a story in the news where everybody's acting appropriately, they're acting according to science, they're bipartisan, and they're just doing something that's good for America?
When was the last time I told you that?
Ever? Ever?
So, let's give these guys a big hand.
Now, I don't even know if they'll be successful, if their attempt at legislation will get through, I don't know.
But the fact that they're even doing this...
There's a big standing ovation for both of them.
All four of them, actually. Somebody came after me on Twitter again for allegedly defending Bill Gates.
But here's the only thing I'm going to defend.
I don't defend his personal life.
That's up to him. I can't stand people telling me he's in it for the money.
I just can't handle it.
Because that's so obviously not true that I just don't know what to do.
It just makes my head explode.
What could be more obviously not true that he's not in it for the money?
He's developing toilets for Africa.
Do you think that was like at the top of his making money list?
Don't think so. He's literally giving his money away.
Has anybody ever made money through massive philanthropy?
Can you think of one example where somebody gave away his money aggressively and made money because of it?
No. Please stop saying that he's in it for the money.
Now, others are saying he's in it for the power.
I don't know. Doesn't look like it.
If Bill Gates was in it for the power, is this the way he'd do it?
Is that the way you do it?
At some point he was like the richest person in America.
Do you think the richest person in America would try to get power by inventing toilets for Africa?
That's how he's doing it?
Trying to cure malaria?
I don't think so.
I think he would just buy politicians the way anybody else does.
Wouldn't he? He would just buy a politician.
Have you ever heard that Bill Gates owns a particular politician?
There are a lot of people who are owned by billionaires, but I haven't heard him owning one.
He's like the only name I haven't heard in that context.
I don't think it could be more obvious that he's not in it for the money.
And look at the way he presents himself in public.
Do you think his interest isn't looking good to you?
Is there anything about the way Bill Gates operates that tells you that his real interest is how you think of him?
Everything suggests it's the opposite.
He doesn't even dress or exercise or present himself in any way that suggests he's, like, really interested in the narcissistic perceptions of himself.
Now, what about philanthropy in general?
Do you think he's doing philanthropy because it's rehabilitating him and that's the reason he's doing it?
I don't know. I can't read his mind.
But I will tell you that he said, way before he became a philanthropist, he said that the second part of his life was going to be giving away his money.
And then he did it. And he would be probably one of the most effective philanthropists because he puts in the work to figure out where the money makes the most difference.
Now, Why is it that anybody hates him?
And what do you think he would do if he bought up a bunch of farmland?
There is no scenario in which he can make money from the things he's doing.
Like, one exception would be nuclear energy.
I do believe that he could make money in Gen 4 nuclear energy if that's the thing that takes off.
But he's not really the guy who would make that kind of play.
That would just be one of his investments.
He's got to be doing that for social reasons.
Right. It wouldn't make sense to put that much money in one company, I don't think.
If he were betting on nuclear in general, he'd probably spread his money around.
Maybe he has. I don't know. But for power reasons.
So if you think that Gates is going for power, like his own personal power, then you have to explain why he's doing it the wrong way.
And it would be obvious what the right way is, which is just buy some politicians, fund some organizations, the usual way.
You don't see George Soros inventing any toilets for Africa, right?
He doesn't need to.
He just buys organizations.
So if you told me that Bill Gates funded some organization and through it he wanted power, I'd say, well, look at that.
But if you look at the whole portfolio of what he's doing, there isn't...
Okay, let's say ego.
Let's say Bill Gates is doing it for ego.
Do you have a problem with that?
Oh, I cured malaria, but I don't get any credit because I just did it to look good.
No. That's not how it works.
You let him get that credit.
You know, I label myself a...
A grandiose narcissist.
There are a couple different kinds of narcissists.
There's one that's just all bad.
The grandiose kind is just trying to get credit for doing good stuff.
But they actually try to do good stuff.
They're not just lying.
They're trying to actually do some good stuff.
So when you see me trying to take any credit for something, it's because I'm trying to do some good stuff.
Right? That's not a crime.
All right. So I will publicly debate anybody who wants to embarrass themselves by saying that they know so little about how business works that they think what Bill Gates is doing, the portfolio of what he's doing, is to make money.
Let me challenge you to this.
I challenge you to find anybody with an MBA who holds that opinion.
Somebody who has a master's in business, somebody who understands business models, how to make money, here's your challenge.
Find anybody with an MBA, so that would suggest a lot of business education, at least, if not experience.
Find anybody with an MBA who agrees with you that he's in it for the money.
And if you say the tax write-offs, you really need to talk to somebody who knows what business is.
No, you can't make money on tax write-offs.
You can only lose less.
You can't make money with tax write-offs.
That's not a thing. All right.
So, the Panda Tribune, a Twitter account you should probably follow.
So just look for the Panda Tribune.
Did a cool analysis of Musk and his purchase of Twitter and what his best options are and what.
And the bottom line is that Musk is playing this correctly.
So his backing out of the deal, and then going to court over it, etc., is the right play, no matter how it turns out.
So he's played the odds correctly.
And here's the argument. Let's say that Musk has to pay the $1 billion breakup fee.
It's still better than buying a company that used to be worth, you know, he was going to pay $54 billion, but now it's worth only $44 billion, the stock price.
So it's better to lose a billion than to waste all that difference between what it's actually worth and what he was actually going to pay, you know, $10 billion or something.
So it definitely makes sense to walk away.
But here's the thing that the Panda Tribune adds, and I've always believed this would be the obvious way things would go, but I don't think I've ever said it.
So tell me if I've ever said this in public.
The leaders of Twitter have a fiduciary responsibility to get the best deal for Twitter.
They can't walk away from the best deal.
If there's only one offer for Twitter, and it's Musk, nobody else is offering, that's important.
If there's only one offer, and he says he's going to walk away and pay the billion dollars, he hasn't said that, but if he did, what should the Twitter leadership do to do their best job for the stockholders?
They should renegotiate the purchase price.
And they should try to get something that's between the 54 that he offered, and he's walking away from, and the 44 that it's worth.
So if Twitter is smart, they'll make him an offer that's somewhere in the middle.
He will have saved, let's say, $5 billion by not paying the highest price.
They will have done better than they could have done before.
Biden has COVID? Somebody's shouting that Biden has COVID. That's not a news event, is it?
That's just somebody shouting that?
Oh, it's just announced.
Oh, okay. Huh.
So, Biden has COVID. I don't know if that means anything.
I mean, even at his age, he'll probably be fine, right?
He's all boosted and whatever.
Interesting. Alright, well, we'll find out more about that.
Um... So anyway, it looks at this point that if you follow the money, the most likely outcome is that Twitter and Musk will walk away from the current deal, but they will keep negotiating because there might be a price where they can make the deal.
But I don't know that they'll ever be able to make the deal unless they reveal their bot traffic.
So maybe a future deal would have more teeth about proving the bots or something.
But the bottom line is that Musk will come out ahead by walking out of the deal.
Like, under every scenario, Musk comes out ahead by challenging the deal.
Even if he loses a billion dollars, it's better than the alternative.
So it looks like Trump is going to be hit with some Rupar videos today by the January 6th people.
And by that I mean outtakes that don't show the full context.
And here's how CNN is trying to frame this in advance.
So they're prepping you for this.
So Adam Schiff and all the usual people that you don't trust are saying, oh, this is going to be really bad.
Wait till you see these outtakes.
And what they're saying is that there'll be significant, quote, I think Schiff said this, significant in terms of what the president was willing to say and what he wasn't willing to say.
What's that mean? So you're going to be shocked by this bombshell that Schiff tells you will be significant, okay, that's general, in terms of what the president was willing to say and what he wasn't willing to say.
In other words, they have video of him saying things he wanted to say, but they don't have video of him saying the things he didn't want to say.
I think he said nothing, right?
It would be significant, that's general, Because he wanted to say things, and what?
So if you read this quickly, it sounds like he's telling you that there's a bombshell coming.
But if you read the actual words, there's nothing there.
There's just nothing there.
And here's what's going to happen.
They're going to show these, and here's what they're warning us we will see on these outtakes.
You're going to see Trump arguing that he wants to characterize the January 6th protesters as patriots.
Oh no! I didn't see that coming.
Bombshell! That's right.
Trump wanted to characterize the protests as patriots.
Because that's what they are.
They could be wrong.
They could be wrong about why they were there.
But they were patriots.
They are. Even the ones in jail.
Even the ones that got violent.
They were violent.
They need to answer for that.
But they were patriots.
That was the only reason anybody was there, was being a patriot.
There was no other reason.
No other reason. It was just that.
And CNN's reporting that that's, like, suspicious.
Isn't that kind of suspicious that you think all the patriots are called patriots?
Why would you call the patriots patriots?
Suspicious. The other thing, the other bombshell is that, what is it?
There's some other claim that was like as innocuous as that.
All right, whatever it is.
But there are going to be two claims that are absolutely empty.
But they're selling us, they're gaslighting us that something's happening, while proving to us simultaneously that nothing's happening.
They're going to show us nothing, and then talk about it like it was something.
And it will work.
Because it just worked right in front of you.
Adam Schiff just talked about literally nothing, but made it sound like you saw something.
Oh my God, the bombshell...
It's regarding the thing about the significance of the importance of the bombshell of the shocking news.
All they've done is that they've got rid of all the content now, and all they do is the shocking words.
Okay, Mr. Schiff, can you give us your read on today's events?
Well, it's a shocking news of a significant event.
It's going to be a bombshell.
I think you'll be shocked and appalled at the bombshell shocking events that are significant.
All the content is gone.
All the content is gone.
And they can still sell it without the content.
Because it was never about the content, was it?
If you can sell it without the content, well, that should tell you something.
It was always about the feeling.
It was never the content. All right.
Here's some new news.
My favorite story of the day.
53%, this is a Rasmussen poll.
53% of Democrat voters say Hillary Clinton should not run for president again in 2024.
You would not be surprised that Republicans and Independents agree by a larger number.
But 53% of Democrats don't want Hillary Clinton.
Okay. But is it worse?
Yes, it's worse than that.
CNN reports, and by far this is the most entertaining part of the news, like you wouldn't notice it unless you dug in a little bit to get the really funny part, but this is CNN's reporting.
They have their own poll in which they say the biggest shifts are that Democrats and Independents stopped believing in the credibility of our elections.
Now let me say that again.
You probably said, did you think I misspoke?
Since 2021, there's been a big shift in the public's belief about the credibility of the election.
The shift is that Democrats went from largely believing elections were credible to not.
Democrats. Did you think I said it wrong again?
Did you think I meant Republicans when I said that?
No, let me say it again clearly.
Democrats... I'll give you the numbers.
In early 2021, this is CNN's reporting, remember.
This is important. This is CNN. All right?
In early 2021, 90% of Democrats said they were at least somewhat confident that elections reflected the will of the people.
In one year, they went from 90% of Democrats saying the elections were valid.
What do you think that is now for Democrats?
Did you think I misspoke?
And said, when I met Republicans, no, I'm only talking Democrats, only Democrats, went from 90% thinking they trusted the election to currently 57%.
57%.
Democrats.
In one year, Democrats went from 90% trusting their own election to 57%.
And they won.
They won the election.
Did I mention that they won?
And they went from 90...
I don't even know what to say about this.
What do you think? I have a hypothesis.
And it goes like this.
The January 6th hearings are making Democrats trust elections less.
I'll tell you why. It's a hypnosis theory, and they had not thought this through.
They did not think it through.
Let me give you an example.
You've heard this example before.
Don't think of an elephant right now.
Don't do it. Don't do it.
Don't think of an elephant. Do not think of a giant pachydermine with big ears and a trunk.
That's my elephant impression.
Don't do it. How did you do?
Did you succeed in not thinking about that elephant?
Okay. So the first rule of hypnosis is you can't not think about things.
If it's in your face, you're thinking about it.
You can't unthink things.
So that's the first rule.
Thinking's automatic. Second rule is your opinion of what matters is what you hear about the most, not because it matters the most.
What you think matters the most is just what you hear about.
Ah, I keep hearing about that.
That must matter. What did the January 6th hearings do?
Well, the logical point to them was to make a logical case that Republicans are bad people.
There was a political show trial.
Still is. But that's a concept.
Do people remember concepts?
Yeah, I mean, if you gave them a test on it later, they might get the right answer.
But they really remember how you make them feel.
And so this is what the January 6th event has done.
Those elections were not rigged.
The elections were not rigged.
The elections were not stolen.
All of those many, many, many claims of evidence of elections are not real.
Those 2,000 mules didn't go to those drop boxes.
All you hear is that the elections are sketchy.
No matter how many times they tell you that the Republicans are wrong or lying about the elections, what you hear is, why are we talking about elections being sketchy?
We're still talking about elections being sketchy, right?
I just woke up today and it's a new day and Democrats are still talking about elections being sketchy.
Now, the concept is they're blaming other people.
But it feels like all they're talking about is elections being unreliable.
Now, here's the payoff.
What happened to Republican opinion about the reliability of the 2020 election, or elections in general?
I think it's elections in general.
Republican confidence in the elections went up in the same period.
Republican confidence in the elections went up in the same period.
It went from low, right, it was 23% were confident after the Trump experience in 2020, but it's up to 29%.
So Republicans have watched the same news, and by a smaller margin, but they've come to be convinced, okay, maybe we're in better shape than I thought.
Because the news showed the Republicans that no courts had found anything, and time goes by, and all these crazy cracking claims didn't come through.
Some number of Republicans just said, well, you know, I had my questions, but maybe I'll release on that for now.
So, am I wrong that that's the best hypothesis for what's happening?
Because I don't know what else would be happening.
If CNN is non-stop, in MSNBC, non-stop telling their base that the elections are fine, how do you explain it?
How do you explain a gigantic drop in confidence of the Democrats when their own side just keeps telling them everything is fine?
It's got to be the hypnotist thing, right?
It's got to be just that the topic itself is poison, because you can't talk about election fraud...
All day long and then have people think there is none.
So the entire thing is about, look at all this smoke.
Oh, look at all this smoke.
There's no fire there. Oh, look at this other smoke.
Well, it's very smoky.
It's very smoky. But every time we look for the source of the smoke, it's not there.
But did I tell you how smoky it is?
Well, there's another smoke.
Oh, there's some more smoke.
But so far, all the smoke we've found is nothing.
But boy, there's a lot of smoke.
Am I selling my point?
I don't know that this is what's going on, but it looks like they sold the opposite of what they were selling.
Right? At least you have to throw my hypothesis into the mix.
At the very least, it's a high possibility that this worked just the way it should have worked.
If you had asked me what would be the likely outcome of this, and somehow you could describe it to me before it happened, I would have said, whoa, I don't know if you want to spend so much time talking about the thing you said didn't happen.
Why does Russia collusion persist?
Russia collusion persists in the minds of Democrats, not because they followed the case and found that it wasn't true.
They still believe it because they heard it so many times.
That's it. If you say Russia collusion enough times, it doesn't matter if the outcome was there was none.
It matters that you heard it a lot.
So why would that be any different?
The Democrats are basically a heard it a lot machine.
You say the same thing over and over again and they just hear it.
Right? So the problem with the allegations of the election rigging are that the people making the allegations were the Republicans.
Right? If the situation was that the allegations were being made by the Democrats, then giving attention to the allegations, even if they're false, is a good play.
Because you're just giving attention to the thing you want to give attention to.
They made a big mistake by giving attention to a Republican claim.
So you can't talk about it being false without talking about it.
They claim the election is rigged.
I think they convinced their own base that the election was rigged.
Yeah, it's directly from my book.
I mean, what I'm saying now is from my book on this same topic.
It's not like I made it up now to fit the facts to it or something.
I've been saying this for a long time.
It's a well-understood concept, right?
Nothing new here. All right.
I love CNN's, the way they gaslight with words.
So they've been saying that Republicans claim 2020 was rigged, and then they use this phrase, despite the lack of evidence.
Do you think that's a true statement?
That their claim is the election, that people are saying the election in 2020 was rigged, quote, despite the lack of evidence.
Well, it turns out that the word evidence can be used in two ways.
I had to check just to be sure.
One way is that evidence is used sort of interchangeably with proof.
That's one definition.
And in that case, the evidence is not really evidence, like it's not actual evidence, unless it actually supports the truth.
So by that definition, it wouldn't be evidence if it was just misleading.
So misleading evidence wouldn't be evidence, it would just be something misleading by that definition.
So they can use evidence and proof sort of interchangeably.
And the English language allows them to do that.
Do you know what else the English language allows you to do?
It allows you to treat the word evidence as not being proof.
So the word could go either way.
Evidence can mean proof, or lack of proof when they say no evidence, or it could mean the opposite.
And since the public can't tell the difference, they can get away with that.
But they've stretched that somewhere.
They've stretched it to, despite the lack of evidence, so that part they get away with because of the gray area of the word evidence, but then they go all the way to this.
Despite that, Trump continues to push the, quote, falsehood that the election was stolen.
He's pushing the falsehood.
Falsehood? How do you know something's false?
Because you proved it?
That's not a thing.
All you know is you don't have proof that it's true.
It's not a falsehood.
So when CNN labels this a falsehood, that's just a lie.
It's just a lie. It's a lie that could be true, because nobody knows, because we don't have an auditable, fully auditable system.
But... Yeah, it's like they do these little word tricks to move you from a gray area word evidence that could be taken either way all the way to falsehood that can't be taken either way.
So you see the verbal trickery where they can get you from a maybe word to a definite word and make you not notice the difference?
It's very clever. All right.
Here's a question that also might get to why the Democrats are maybe having little differences of agreement about January 6th.
And let me put this out there.
Democrats don't like Republicans.
Are you with me so far?
Generally speaking. Democrats are not lovers of Republicans.
In sort of a general way.
Lots of exceptions. And wouldn't you say that Democrats are always looking for the worst spin to put on whatever Republicans are doing?
And vice versa. You know, Republicans are looking at the worst spin to put the Democrats in.
That's our general situation, right?
But let me ask you this.
Do you think there are any Democrats who are under the impression that any Republicans are not patriots?
Do you think? Even if their Democrats don't like Republicans, do you think that they believe that they're not patriots?
I don't think so.
I think that they think that Republicans are dumb.
They think Republicans are anti-science.
They think Republicans are immoral for various reasons, whatever.
That's all true. But do you think that anybody, like even one, even one, Do you think there's even one Democrat anywhere who believes that Republicans are not patriots, meaning that they're country first?
I don't think so.
Right? I think they...
Now, you see rhetoric that says that they don't, but I think that's just Twitter rhetoric, right?
That's just trolls. The average Democrat does believe that the average Republican cares about the Constitution...
Even more than self, sometimes.
So how does the average Democrat explain all of these patriots marching on January 6th?
It's a little hard to explain to yourself, isn't it?
Because no matter what they think about these people, You have to go pretty far into crazy land to imagine that they're not patriots, at least in terms of their internal thinking.
They could be wrong.
They could be patriots who have bad information.
They could be patriots within the group, some of them criminal.
That's all possible.
But I don't think there's any Democrat who really believes, like in a private moment, do you think there's any Democrat, like a serious person, not a troll, but a serious person, who thinks that the Republicans are not patriots at the base?
Somebody said Bill Maher believes that.
I don't know. You think he does?
I bet not. I don't know what he said, but if you talk to him privately, you said, all right, Bill, do you seriously think that Republicans in general are not really patriot-oriented, like protect the Constitution?
I don't think they think that.
So I think there's something that's bugging Democrats that's unspoken.
And I think that something is they know they're being gaslighted, but they don't know exactly what's going on.
I feel like Democrats have to have some suspicion that the most basic thing about Republicans, that they're patriots first, seems to be opposite of what the January 6th hearings are trying to present.
And I don't know how they can't notice that.
You could notice a lot of things, but you couldn't notice that.
Now, I didn't ask my, quote, Democrat friend, who I often mention.
I did not ask him that question, because it didn't occur to me until recently.
Because, you know, one of the things I wanted to do was...
Excuse me.
I wanted to make a list of things you would have to believe...
In order to agree with your own team.
And it could work for both Democrats and Republicans.
So one of the things you would have to believe to believe the January 6th situation is you would have to believe that our elections are both transparent, fully auditable, and that we can do it somewhat instantly.
Am I right? You would have to believe that, otherwise asking for more information about the audit would make perfect sense.
It wouldn't look like any kind of a crime unless you thought it had already been done or could easily be done, that sort of thing.
But here's another thing.
In order for you to believe the January 6th narrative as a Democrat, you would have to believe that Republicans are only fake patriots, that they're only pretending to be patriots, but what they really want is their dictator in power.
You'd have to believe that in order to believe any of the narrative.
Because what I believe is that there's not a Republican alive who would have let Trump stay in office if he had lost.
That's what I believe. Now, that's an exaggeration.
There would always be some lawyer or something who says, yeah, stay there.
There would always be somebody.
So let me back that up to less of an absolute.
Because it just makes people crazy when I talk in absolutes.
And probably should. I try to avoid it.
Yeah, I just think Democrats probably are noticing that there's something fishy about the January 6th thing.
Probably. Alright, so unless something changes, your future looks like this.
Trump wins the election, and the Democrats throw away everything they believed...
Or they say they believe right now.
And they say, these elections, we'd better fix these because they don't look reliable now.
Now, of course, what they're going to say is that the vote was suppressed.
And I'm sure that'll be the thing.
They're finally waking up.
Maybe a little bit. All right.
Am I wrong that all the news looks good?
So the stock market was up yesterday.
I think the futures were down, so it's probably down today.
Is the market down? Let's take a look.
The market is down.
It's almost flat.
Some up, some down.
Kind of flat. Something happened with Tesla.
Cartoonist says Biden getting COVID is good news.
That's more like a nothing news.
Scott, are you buying crypto?
No, no.
No, I'm not a crypto investor.
I'm a crypto diversifier.
Slight difference, right?
You could argue that's not different.
But I would never invest in a crypto.
I would only hold some of the big ones just in case, you know.
A little bit in your portfolio, just in case.
You never know. In case civilization falls apart and you just got to have a Bitcoin for something.
Your dad grew up with Biden and never heard of the oil on the windshield.
Biden's hair sniffing finally caught up with him.
He got COVID. He caught COVID from a little girl's hair.
Tessa, valuation way off the mark.
I don't know what that means. If you have to look at your stock every day, then you shouldn't have it.
That's a good rule. My rule is I look at my stocks every day the market is up.
And every day the market is down, I don't look at them.
Because looking at it is only to make you feel good or bad.
It doesn't have an investment purpose.
This is the point.
The point is you should buy them and hold them.
So when I look at them, it's just purely for psychological gain.
So when they're up, I look at them.
When they're down, I don't look at them.
That's my advice. Yeah, look at it for the entertainment value, exactly.
That's perfectly good. Oh, Bill Gates shorting Tesla.
So Bill Gates shorted Tesla?
So what? I don't know.
Does that tell me anything? Aren't there a lot of people shorting Tesla?
I think that's not like an obscure position.
Oh, there's some billionaire battle, yeah.
The US Open confirms Novak can't play unless he's vaccinated?
Seriously? Wow.
Really? I thought we were past that.
But it looks like COVID's coming back, right?
You wonder if Biden's going to be taken out because of the COVID?
Now, let me ask you this.
If Biden gets long COVID, but won't tell me what it is.
If Biden gets long COVID, he's not going to be capable.
At what point does Kamala Harris have to take over?
Now, if you've not had COVID, or if you've not had a bad case like I did, you don't know how bad this is.
Can I get an amen from anybody who had COVID and says, I wouldn't want to be president with this shit in my head?
How many of you think you could have made presidential decisions under COVID? I couldn't.
My decision-making was absolutely degraded.
Absolutely degraded.
And let me ask you this.
Are you comfortable that he hasn't already been removed?
I don't know what his symptoms are, but he's so fragile that COVID alone should activate the vice president.
Am I right? COVID alone should activate the vice president.
And let me double down on that.
I'm going to go where you don't want me to go.
If this were Trump...
Same thing. If Trump gets COVID in office, he had it right.
But if Trump gets it again, at whatever his future age is, he did, but he was a little bit younger.
But if Trump gets it at his new age in office, let's say election plus two years, what would Trump be in four years, let's say?
Four years, Trump would be 82.
82? Do the math for me.
How old would Trump be in four years?
How come you haven't told me yet?
How old is Trump? He would be 80 in four years?
He would be 80. Do you think that an 80-year-old president should stay in office when they have COVID? I don't.
I mean, I'm 65, and there's no way I could have made good decisions while I had COVID. No way.
You take me at 80, and you give me the same COVID I had at 65, at age 80, you do not want me making any decisions.
Trust me. And I feel like I'm pretty mentally sound, and you would not want me making decisions under those conditions.
So I think we need to trigger the vice president right away, if it's true that he has COVID. Now, I get it that the doctors are going to look at it, and if there's no symptoms, there's no symptoms.
Maybe. Maybe.
But if there are symptoms, that brain fog stuff is really bad stuff.
You don't want that.
So I think we need to trigger the Vice President right away.
Just for the risk of it.
Because the thing is, I don't know if Biden would tell you he had brain fog, would he?
Do you have brain fog? Oh, no.
I don't have any brain fog.
Would he know? Yeah. Would he know?
I don't know. See, that's the other thing.
I'm not sure that people know how much their brain is degraded.
Here's a study I'd love to see.
Since we know that brain fog is a thing, I mean, that's pretty well established, I think, could you do a test of IQ of people who are in COVID experiencing it, like not even long COVID, just in it, And a test of IQ for somebody not infected ever.
And you do enough of the tests to get an average.
I'll bet there'd be a difference.
I'll bet you would find that the IQ of a person with COVID is lower.
I'll bet you would. Temporarily.
Because it takes your energy away.
And have you ever tried to take a test when you're tired?
It's a big difference.
So there's no way...
That people with COVID are operating at the same mental capacity as people without it.
People have never had it. No way.
I mean, I'd be lucky if I get back to where I was.
And by the way, I don't know if I have.
I was telling you earlier that I was rereading my writing from 2004.
And if you asked me before yesterday, Scott, did the COVID and the long COVID that gave you the brain fog, do you think there's any permanent thing that happened with that?
I would say no. No, I feel fine.
In fact, if you ask me, I feel like at the top of my mental acuity right now.
No problem at all.
And then I read my own writing for 2004, modified my opinion a little bit.
I don't know if you know where I'm going on this, but in 2004, I could write a fucking sentence, let me tell you.
I could write a good fucking sentence.
I'm not so sure they would be just as good today, even though I feel like I'm at 100%.
But when I read my younger writing, I looked at it and said, shit, I don't know if I can do that.
I don't know. Maybe I could do better.
I don't know for sure.
But I got a real...
It was a wake-up call.
When I saw how tight my writing was from 15 years ago, if I write a book today, which I'm doing, which hopefully will be a gigantic bestseller, but I got my questions.
Yeah, I got my questions, whether I'm just as sharp.
Here's what I think is happening.
I think I'm less sharp, but I have more skills in my stack.
I think I come out ahead, but I think you would notice the difference.
That's what I think. I definitely have more skills in my overall skill stack, so that might come through in my writing and give me an advantage, but definitely the quickness is diminished.
Yeah, definitely. All right.
Demzet passed a new protocol to make it easier to remove a president.
Tesla investors, what?
Bet on recovery and fantasy.
Yeah. Tesla definitely has some fantasy elements.
But let me give you the counter-argument for Tesla.
I heard this from Adam Townsend, who is a great follow on Twitter, by the way.
Adam Townsend, you should follow him.
And this is why I actually bought stock in Tesla, which is unusual for me.
I wouldn't normally buy an individual company.
I'd normally diversify.
But it's because Tesla is a power company.
It's not a car company.
If you bought it as a car company, you'd look at all the other electric cars and you'd say, ooh, lots of competition there.
And that doesn't look good.
But if you see it as an energy company...
Because the world is going to need a whole bunch of batteries.
It's a whole different deal.
If you see it as an energy company, you have a whole different feeling about it.
And that completely reframed my opinion of it.
The cars might be irrelevant in the long run.
I mean, you remember, was it eBay?
eBay started out selling PEZ dispensers.
I think the Tesla automobile might be the Pez dispenser for Tesla.
It's just a total fake-out of where the company is going.
I think cars are the temporary product.
The big product is energy and maybe AI. AI and energy, probably.
Logistics, that sort of thing. Probably.
Yeah, Amazon started out with books.
Right, exactly. Perfect example.
I think Tesla is just starting with cars.
I don't think it's a car company.
In the long run. The Pez dispenser was a made-up PR story.
Yeah, okay. You got me.
The Pez dispenser story about eBay is sort of a made-up origin story.
But it was close enough to my point.
But you're right.
I take that fact check.
I accept your fact check.
But it doesn't change the basic point.
Um... You don't care for the looks of the new truck?
Well, a lot of people ordered it.
All right. All right, that's all for now.
Is there anything I missed? Is there any topic that you wish you had my opinion on?
I don't know why. Delta I Airlines started as a crop dusting service.
Hmm. Huh.
All right. I believe the golden age is with us.
No, I'm not a gamer.
Somebody asked if I'm a gamer.
And I'm not, and it's only because it's too addictive.
I'll tell you my gamer story, just so you've heard it once, in case you haven't.
At the dawn of video gaming, when I think Sony had the best console for a while, I may have the name wrong, I think it was Sony, and I was a young man, computers were just taken off, and I said, I've got to have one of those video games where I can shoot...
Shoot aliens out of space.
And so I bought this thing. It was really hard to get.
I forget which one it was.
And maybe a Sega?
I don't know. I can't remember.
But I got this system and I brought it home.
I forget which one it was.
And I played it for about eight hours straight.
And when I was done, I felt terrible.
Terrible. Like I lost eight hours of my life And all I could think of was getting back to do it again.
And nothing had been better.
I wasn't smarter, stronger, more successful.
I had just lost eight hours.
That's it. And I felt all nervous.
Not only did I lose eight hours, it wasn't fun.
It was like anxious making because I had to shoot more aliens.
I've got to shoot more aliens, aliens, aliens.
And so after...
You know, months of trying to get this thing because it was hard to get for some reason.
There was some kind of shortage. I finally got one.
I packed that thing up, took it back to the store for a full refund, and said, I never want to be close to one of these again.
And I haven't. So I've avoided gaming in all its forms because it was too dangerous.
And remember, by that time I was already a trained hypnotist.
As a trained hypnotist, you sample that shit, you run away.
And this would be an interesting experiment.
I'll give you a hypothesis.
My hypothesis is that trained hypnotists don't play video games.
Test that. Go do a test on that.
Just a claim.
Trained hypnotist, and I'll go further.
Somebody who has a PhD in psychology, they don't play video games.
I'll bet you. I'll bet you people with a PhD in psychology do not play video games.
I'll bet you medical doctors Let's say young ones, even going through medical school and stuff, probably do, some of them, but I'll bet not nearly as much as the average person.
Not nearly as much.
And there's a reason.
If you have any exposure to that world, you know, the world of psychology and mental health, if you have any exposure to it at all, as soon as you spend a little time playing video games, you know this shit's dangerous, and you just run away.
It's good for surgery skills, somebody says.
Maybe so. Yeah.
So that was my take.
It was too addictive. Now...
How do I explain not running away from Twitter?
Does anybody know my rationalization for that?
How do I rationalize spending so much time on Twitter?
Because I know it's addictive.
Yeah, I rationalize it as a business tool.
Right? But at the same time I'm rationalizing it, I'm so aware that it's a rationalization.
So aware. Now, it's also true Like, it's true.
It is a business tool.
It is sort of essential for what I'm doing here.
It would be tough to do without it.
But also, it's because I love it.
I don't have a time scheduled for the Russell Brand conversation.
I see some people asking over here.
I believe he's filming.
Which, by the way, I wish someday I could say that.
Russell Brand's producer said they'll get back to me with scheduling because Russell is off filming.
I want to use that as my excuse someday.
Oh, I'd love to do that, but I'll be filming that week.
Doesn't that sound better than anything you're doing?
Because you're working.
No, he's not off working.
He's off filming.
He's filming. Way better than working.
How much time do you spend each day on Twitter?
Pretty much all of the in-between time.
So I try not to, like, sit down and do Twitter, but you're always waiting for something, aren't you?
You know, like you're walking back and forth, or you're in-between stuff.
So it's my in-between thing.
But in-between is most of my day.
I probably spend more time between things than I do on any one thing.
If you were to amass all the actual minutes, good question.
I'll give you an estimate as best I can, subjectively.
If I imagine my day and how many times I check, one hour.
One hour. Best guess, one hour per day.
I might be off.
That feels like about right.
Because it's in 30-second increments.
So there's probably 120 half-minute increments during the day.
Yeah, it is a time suck, and it is an addiction, but like I said, I've got a rationalization.
Max says, are you dating?
Max, I don't think you're my type, but thanks for asking.
Check your iPhone for time spent on Twitter.
Oh, yeah. Let's do that.
It's in the settings.
Screen time. That's just screen time, right?
I don't know. App.
I don't want to do tech support while you're live streaming here, but I thought it'd be easier to find it.
I thought it'd be under screen time.
That's where I'd put it. Where would you put it?
On your phone? See all activity.
All activity.
Where's that? All right.
Thank you, Apple, for making it, once again, impossible to find anything.
Yeah, can't find it.
As usual, there are three ways to get to it.
There's always five ways to do anything on your phone, and four of them don't work.
Do I like ethnic or spicy food?
I thought everybody did.
Of course I do.
Over on YouTube, somebody's mad at Max for getting noticed in the comments and wasting his question on that.
All right, battery use.
Oh, it's a battery use thing?
If I look at my battery use, that'll tell me what I'm using now.
There we go. Battery use.
Where would I see that?
All right.
Well, I'll figure that out later.
I'm just looking at your...
I know it's in the settings. Scott, would you date a trans to avoid persecution?
I'm not sure I understand the question.
Would I date a trans to avoid persecution?
I don't know if that's a thing.
Count your antennas.
What? Your comments are all weird now.
Screen time and CL activity, I don't have that option.
This is like looking for anything on social media.
If you try to Google how to do anything, you'll always get an answer, and it will be wrong.
Have you had that experience? If you have any technical question, Except for how to reboot your OS. That's about the only one you get the right answer.
But anything that's like a technical question, you'll definitely get an answer.
And it will be wrong.
Every time. 90% of the time?
I'd say 90% of the technical solutions on Google are absolutely wrong.
All right. Alright, that's all for now, and I will talk to you.
Oh, the name of the prequel to God's Debris is called The Religion War.
I heard earlier that it's so hard to get, it got bid up to $60 on Amazon, because it's out of print.
It'd be hard to find. But I've got to tell you, it blew me away when I read it.
I'm not even sure I could read it without too much of an emotional reaction.
