Episode 1863 Scott Adams: It Looks Like A Slow News Day So Let's Just Make Up The News
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Content:
Upgrading to a new phone
Ukraine war is a risky gamble
Russian military collapse in Ukraine?
Making up our own news
The top 1% of humans
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And welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to anybody.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
Now, it's a rare, rare morning Because not only are we still talking about the Queen's demise, but we're also, I don't know, noting 9-11.
So it's a double no-news day.
Any one of those things could have made the regular news disappear, but you put two of them together, and we're going to have to make up the news ourselves, which we'll do in a moment after.
After the most important thing you do today.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, but all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a gel society, 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.
It's the dopamine hit of the day.
It's the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
It happens now.
Go. Mmm, yeah.
Yeah, that's good stuff.
All right. So what's going on today?
Has anybody ever tried to upgrade a phone while also being a senior citizen?
Has anybody tried to do that recently?
Let me tell you what it should be like.
Oh, here's my new phone.
Oh, here's my new phone.
I'll take my old phone and deactivate it.
And then I'll activate my new phone using the same phone numbers and stuff.
And the new one will just like pick up all the characteristics of the old one.
And man, will I be happy?
Won't I be happy?
Because, you know, millions and millions and millions of phones are upgraded every year.
So if there's one thing that the phone company knows how to do, Am I right?
It's upgrading one phone.
Obviously they know how to do that.
Would you like to know the statistics for me upgrading my phone?
It started with five trips to a website.
Every time I went to the Verizon website to upgrade my phone, I would navigate to the right place and the user interface was so confusing That I would run out of time before I could figure out how to order the phone.
Because I had to figure out which one I wanted and there were some complications there.
So five different times I tried to order a phone, but because they made it difficult, I ran out of time each time.
So five trips to a website so far.
So then I said to myself, well, screw that.
There's a Verizon store that I drive by every day.
Literally every day I drive by a Verizon store.
So I said, I'll just walk in there.
I'll pick up my phone and I'll walk out.
That's easier than going to a website five times and bailing out each time.
So I go into the store.
Turns out it's not a Verizon store.
It's a Verizon branded store run by a third party, which is different.
It's different. And so I said to them, do you have the model phone that I want?
And I never remember what model is what, I think it was the 13 Max Pro or something.
So I say, do you have the phone that I want?
And they say, what did they say?
What do you think they said?
Yes, yes.
Have you done any shopping for a product in a store in 2022?
What do they say when you say, do you have the product I want?
Is it in stock? Yes.
Yes, we do. And then you start doing some paperwork, right?
And then what does the person in the store start doing once you say you would like to get that phone?
What do they do when you say, yes, I would like the phone?
What do they do? You know what they do.
What do they do? It's like you've never been in a phone store.
What do they do? No, no, no.
They don't upsell. They don't order it.
They don't upgrade. No, no, no.
It's like you've never been there before.
Let me tell you what they do.
They walk over to their computer, which you can't see their screen because you're on the other side of the desk.
They sit down at the desk and they start playing Tetris or possibly Minecraft.
And they'll do that for an hour. Tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip.
And I'll be on the other side of the desk and I'm thinking, "You know my phone number, you know my name, and you know what I wanted." How much fucking typing does that take?
Because if I were going to order this online, if I could have found where to click, I would have clicked three things and been done.
And so I'm sitting there waiting, and I'm thinking, well, it's a good thing I still have my old phone.
So I take out my phone, and I'm playing with my phone, and I'm thinking, I wonder how long this will last.
Type, type, type. Type, type, type, type, type.
Type, type, type, type, type, type.
Type, type, type, type, type, type.
And I'm like, well, it's been 20 minutes.
It's been 20 minutes now.
Type, type, type, type. Type, type, type, type.
Type, type, type, type, type, type.
So then the guy says, what memory do you want on your phone?
And I go, oh, I don't know.
What's the high end?
Because I don't want to run out.
He goes, well, the only one we have is the one with the lowest amount of memory.
Oh, here it comes.
Here it comes. So they do have the phone.
But they don't have the one with the right amount of memory.
So I wanted 512, but he had 256.
128 would have been too low.
So I said to myself, can you tell me how much I've used so far?
And so we looked that up.
I guess I could tell on my own phone.
So I look at my phone and I'd only used less than half of what I had, far less than half of what I had.
So I said, oh, oh, actually, I guess I don't need the maximum.
I can go down to half the maximum, which is the phone they had.
So, I agreed that I would buy the phone that they had, not the one I wanted.
Very common experience, right?
You think you want a phone, you get all excited, and then you go to the guy who does this.
Time, time, time! Time, time, time!
And after 20 minutes, you're so fucking tired and annoyed that you will buy any phone that's offered.
So I said, all right, all right, give me the 256.
So that was our deal.
Do you think they had the 256?
Nope. Nope.
After all of that, the phone he sold me, they didn't have.
Didn't have the 256.
Didn't have anything. How often has that happened to you?
How about every time?
How about every time? Every time you go into a store, they sell you something they don't have, and then they try to get you to agree that they will order it and you'll pick it up.
So now I'm a little bit pregnant, right?
So now I've done five trips to a website that didn't work, and now I've made one trip to a store.
And then I say, but what is the process these days for transferring my data?
Because if you don't upgrade every year, you think you better ask what the process is because it might change, right?
So the guy says, oh, it's really easy now.
All you have to do is put your new phone next to your old phone.
I said, what? He goes, yeah, just put your new phone next to your old phone, just lay them on the counter, turn on the new one, and it will know it's the new one, it'll talk to the old one, and then you'll approve it, and it'll just, like, shoot that data over like frickin' magic.
How'd that work? Did it work just the way he explained it?
Do you think that my experience that evening was in any way similar to putting two phones together and saying, huh, I guess you want to move some data?
No, no.
Nothing like that happened.
What began was an odyssey.
An odyssey.
Because what did the new phone do as soon as I turned it on?
It started begging for an update.
That's right, my brand new phone didn't have the most modern operating system.
So in the middle of the transfer, in the middle, not at the beginning, at the middle, once I'd started things going, it asked for an upgrade.
And I thought to myself, I don't know how this is going to work.
Are you supposed to upgrade your operating system in the middle of your upgrade, middle of your transfer?
I don't know. Is that going to delete all of my data?
I don't know. So before I left the store, how do you think he first suggested that I transfer the data?
So that was actually his second suggestion, to put them next to each other and do it myself.
What was the first suggestion?
The first suggestion was, since there was nobody else in the store, now I know why, He said, you can just leave your phone with us.
It will take us about half an hour, and we'll move your old data over to your new data.
And I said, what?
He goes, yeah, just unlock your phone.
Just leave your unlocked phone with all of your financial and personal data with some strangers for half an hour, and when you come back, we'll have it all moved on to the new phone.
And I just looked at him like...
Does anybody ever say yes to that?
Are you telling me that there's somebody in the world who's ever heard that pitch and said, yeah, that sounds good.
Let me leave my unlocked phone with you for half an hour, stranger.
So I said, okay, that's not going to happen.
So then he tried to pitch it a few more times.
And I kept saying, okay, let's work with this constraint.
You're not going to have my unlocked phone.
Okay, make that work.
Make that work. Okay, well, you could leave your...
No, no.
How about an idea that does not involve me leaving you my unlocked phone for half an hour?
You must work with that constraint.
Work with that constraint and give me a second way to move my data.
Because I'm not the first fucking person who ever upgraded a phone.
They acted like it was the first time it had ever been done.
Oh, my God.
My God.
So... Here was how we settled it.
I would take home the new phone, I would do the transfer myself, and then I would return with the old phone and then they'd combine the data and give me my discount.
So that will require me going there and back.
So that's four car trips.
So I've got five website visits, four car trips, and an entire evening.
Now, we're not done yet.
How many electronic devices did I have to use just to upgrade my phone?
Well, I needed the new phone.
I needed the old phone.
That's two. But you also need another phone.
I needed another phone.
There's part of the process where you have to have a phone that's neither of those phones to call a number to activate it.
Now, they should have mentioned that because you know what I don't have?
I don't have another phone.
I didn't have a phone.
These were my only phones.
So now I can't call anybody.
What do I do? Because both of them are sort of in the process now.
So I have no phone. I had to go find...
I had to go find a landline and plug it in and hope that I had phone service, because it was part of a package for my cable company.
And so then I had to recharge a phone before I could call the phone number.
Now, then when it says, hey, we're not sure it's you, go to your other devices and it'll be on another device.
You can approve it from another device that's already approved.
Now, I have a lot of devices, because I've got two iPads running right now for what I'm doing right now.
So even right now, I've got three devices right here.
So in my big house, I would hear ping, and I wouldn't know what room there was a device that was the device I had to go find to get the approval for the device in the other room.
So now I'm running up and down stairs, room to room, looking for the ping and trying to find the thing before it times out.
But then each app that I try to get into, oh, and then it says that my iCloud password doesn't work anymore.
My iCloud password.
The most basic thing that I use all the time.
Somehow they changed the password on me.
Because I do know my password.
It is written down in a top secret place.
I know my password.
It just didn't work anymore.
So I had to change it.
It took a long time to change it because it didn't like any of my new passwords.
So now I have a password I can't remember because it's not the old one.
And I think it took, I don't know, probably I wasted an entire day.
If you added it all together, probably a full day.
And I haven't returned the old phone yet.
So I'm still working on it.
It's like a whole project.
Now, did I tell you a story about going to the DMV and just trying to transfer a car into the name of my ex?
You know, just part of the divorce process?
And they didn't know how to do it.
The DMV didn't know how to fill out the forms to transfer a car into somebody else's name.
That's what they do. The phone company didn't know how to upgrade my phone.
It's all they do.
They didn't know how.
Now, if you multiplied, in my experience, times the 200 million phone users of the United States, you couldn't possibly support any kind of industry with that kind of efficiency.
So I don't know how...
The rest of you probably just go to a website and click it and the phone shows up, right?
Is that how you do it? You just click the website and a new phone shows up?
Well, that's the other way to do it.
I suppose that's the other way to do it.
Anyway, the point is not about me.
It's about how we seem to have completely broken systems everywhere.
This is part of the reason, I think, that we need to build a new place with no privacy.
Because if you said to me right now, Scott, I will make all of those problems go away, all you have to give up is all of your privacy.
Because then they'll know who you are.
It would be easy to upgrade your phone if the phone company knew for sure who you were and there was no doubt about it.
They'd say, oh, okay.
We'll just move this stuff over to you.
Now, I know you'll never agree with the lack of privacy, but it's the only thing that would make all this checking who I am.
I probably had to prove who I am 15 times.
And I'm not done, by the way, because every app that had a password, I have to break into it again.
I'm going to have to send it to phones and find out which phone and opening apps and upgrading things.
For every single app I use now, they all lost their passwords, which doesn't sound like something that should have happened.
They didn't all lose their passwords, but a bunch did.
All right. I saw a Joel Pollack tweet saying, basically, if Ukraine hits a turning point against Russia, in other words, if Ukraine is winning, and Putin does not or cannot retaliate, Joe Biden will deserve credit for a gamble that only he could have achieved.
Why is it that only Biden could have achieved Russia?
Some kind of victory over Russia.
What did Biden have going that nobody else had going for him?
Well, Trump didn't have it going for him, maybe.
Because, as Joel says, the media would never tolerate backing a war without clear aims if done by a Republican president.
And I thought, oh yeah, that's true.
Trump couldn't have done any of this.
Now, I'm not saying he would have or should have or it was a good idea, but he couldn't have done it.
The media never would have allowed the war to go this long without something like a better idea for why we were there.
It's true. But as Joel says, it remains a risky gamble.
And the current apparent advantage of Ukraine may not last.
Blah, blah, blah. So it'd be a good time for Putin to start talking.
Well, so here's the issue.
Do you believe anything that comes out of that area?
So let me give you a little...
I'll give you a little of, say, good news, and then I'll completely cancel it at the end, all right?
So those of you who don't believe that Ukraine is having some lasting advantage here, I'll say something that you'll appreciate in a minute, okay?
So just wait for that. So it does appear that Russia is moving forces out of some places and Ukraine is retaking those places.
So that part I think we can say is true.
Because I believe both the Russians and the Ukrainians are saying the same thing about some areas.
Ukraine is in fact taking them back.
Now Russia's Description would be they're just, you know, letting some places go and fortifying others, but it's no big deal.
Now, Ukraine would say, but that little place we took happened to be the rail hub, like the most major rail hub for that whole area, which means it's way more important than just a little piece of land.
Now, We don't know from here if Russia is in this massive collapse and retreat, because the word collapse is being used, not just by me.
By the way, am I the first?
I'll bet I'm the first person you heard in public use the word collapse about the Russian military.
Collapse. Did you hear anybody else even mention that that could be a possibility?
But I read a long tweet today from somebody who has some inside information over there, saying it looks like the Russian military is in fact, if you would believe the reporting, and you shouldn't, you shouldn't believe the reporting, because it's not dependable at this point.
But if you did believe it, it's the reporting that the Russian military appears to be collapsing.
Because here's what the claim is.
And remember, I'm always going to say claim because we don't know what's true over there and what's not.
And in a minute, I'll give you the Russian side of this that's actually very strong, the opposite view.
So wait for that. So the view is that the Russians don't have air superiority.
Amazingly. I mean, I don't know what's behind that, but they don't seem to have it.
Secondly, when they retreated, they did not retreat to a new fortification.
In other words, there's no new defensive line.
They're just running around.
Now again, do you believe that's true?
I don't believe that's necessarily true.
I think they probably are forming a new defensive line.
Maybe it's just not being reported.
I don't know. But if it were true, that would suggest collapse.
Now we are seeing some stories of Russian Let's say high-profile people questioning Putin in a public way, which is very unusual.
So there are signs that there's unrest.
And we know Zelenskyy's been working as persuasion against the Russian military and the mothers of the army, etc.
So maybe all that's working.
We also hear that Ukraine is degrading the supply lines and maybe the Russians can't resupply.
Maybe they've...
But here's something that I said yesterday that I've never heard anybody else say.
Do you remember in the beginning of the war, we believed that the Russian conscripts didn't even know where they were going or why.
Does that sound true? It sounds true-ish.
I don't know that they could really not know where they were going or why.
I feel as if they would know, even if their command didn't tell them.
I feel like they could figure that out.
Anyway. But, now that the war has been raging for a long time and lots of villagers have been, let's say, taken into custody, Does that not suggest that the Russian soldiers have access to lots of phones?
Because they killed a lot of people.
And a lot of people had phones.
And they captured a lot of people, and they had phones.
So it seems to me they could have gotten access to the Ukrainians' phones just by putting a gun to their head and saying, give me your password.
Am I wrong? Give me your password?
All right. Let's see what's going on in the world.
And then they just check the world because it's the only way they can check is on the captured phone.
Well, to me it seems that the Russian soldiers know exactly why they're there by now.
By now, right?
And what would you think if you were a Russian soldier?
Why are you fighting?
Can you think of any reason?
Imagine being a Russian soldier, you weren't really following the news, you're in your 20s, and the next thing you're in Ukraine fighting people who look like you and sound like you.
And you don't know why.
Do you think they have any idea why they're there?
Because whatever they hear, yeah, something about Mother Russia needs to dominate Ukraine, would that be a good reason to you?
That's like a good reason if you're the leader of the country.
We must have our historical power over Ukraine.
It's really part of Russia.
But I can't imagine any soldier caring about any of that.
That should be the most irrelevant goal anybody ever had if you're 23 and you're in the military.
So I can't believe that the military is doing anything except trying to avoid getting killed.
Right? I think the Russians are very focused on not dying because they don't think the war will last forever and there's no gain.
There's nothing to be no benefit from fighting.
So that might be the whole story, that they just have no reason to be there and they know it.
And maybe you can't shoot enough of them to make them fight anyway.
But here's the counter to that.
You want to hear the counter?
So now the news seems to be solidly indicating, as well as social media, that Ukraine is making all these advances and the Russian military is collapsing.
You want to hear the alternative explanation?
Here's the alternative explanation.
Look at the room you're in.
Now look at the size of it.
Now take a postage stamp and throw it on the floor of whatever room you're in.
That postage stamp is how much the Ukrainians have captured back.
Nothing's happened. In terms of the total amount of land that Russia took versus the total amount that's been taken back, it's a postage stamp.
Now, that postage stamp happens to be a critical rail junction, so it might be more important than the size would indicate, but it's a postage stamp.
Russia firmly controls the room that would look like the floor of the room you're in, but Ukraine took the postage stamp back.
Now I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not much to make the point.
It's a small exaggeration to make the point.
So if you think that Ukraine has got Russia on the run, it doesn't look anything like that from the sky.
From the sky, it looks like they're having good days, but there's not much changing on the ground.
Now, it doesn't mean that that couldn't change quickly.
It could change quickly.
This could turn into a route, maybe.
But at this point, it's sort of a postage stamp-sized readjustment.
We'll see if it matters.
They've taken back a great deal since February, not a great deal as a percentage.
It might be a great deal in terms of square footage or something, but not as a percentage.
All right. One third of Pakistan is underwater.
Can somebody remind me, is Pakistan our good friend who did everything they could to help us when 9-11 happened?
They were just all over about helping us, right?
But how about Great Britain?
Great Britain's been a solid ally for decades and decades.
So should we talk about Pakistan being one-third underwater, or should we talk about the Queen?
Well, I do have empathy and sympathy for the people of Pakistan who didn't do anything to deserve this, but a third of Pakistan is underwater?
There's a reason that's a small news story, and the Queen is a big news story, because the Queen was not an asshole.
The Queen was awesome, so we're going to honor her and spend a lot of time, not honoring even her, but honoring what she did and what she represents and what she accomplished, which was tremendous, I think.
But Pakistan is a bunch of fuckers.
And it looks like they have a problem they're going to have to solve themselves.
So I guess God was not on your side after all.
If you believe that God was making all your decisions, and that even the stuff like the weather, God made a decision to give you that weather, how do you deal with the fact that a third of your country has been destroyed by God?
Well, God decided that a third of your country is going to be underwater.
Like, how would your religion process that?
Would you say, well, those underwater people, I guess they didn't pray hard enough.
What exactly would be your impression?
Yeah, it sounds very Noah-like, doesn't it?
Yeah, God likes two-thirds of your country.
The people who live by the water?
Well, God's not a big fan.
Not a big fan. All right.
So, like I said, it's a double no news day because of the Queen business and because of 9-11.
We're talking about that, and because it's Sunday, there's three reasons for there to be no news.
So I think we have to make up our own news today.
Shall we? Shall we make up our own news?
Well, it looks like the country of Elbonia has entered the fight on the Russian side.
So, Elbonian forces are being hired as mercenaries by the Russians.
They're all suicide bombers because the Russians don't really like the Elbonians.
And it could turn the tide of the war.
Could turn the tide of the war. In fact, Elbonia has already captured much of the Russian homeland as well as Ukraine.
And maybe they shouldn't let them in there because they're such good fighters.
Do I have an Elbon...
No, I need one. I need to design an Elbonian flag.
Yes, they wear explosive hats.
That's exactly what they do.
All right. There is absolutely nothing else happening today.
Is there anything you'd like me to talk about that's not the news?
Because there's no news.
Will you read Kushner's book?
I will, actually.
His office asked me if I wanted a copy, so I said yes.
So I think a copy of his book is coming my way.
News from the future, unknown agenda.
Hypnosis resources.
People ask me this all the time.
How can you learn to be a hypnotist?
I have no idea. No idea.
I do know that if you try to learn it from a book or a video, it probably won't work.
It is one of those things where in-person learning makes just so much difference.
So I don't know where you would find a hypnotist in your town.
Your best bet would be to find some hypnotist who wants to teach you individually.
But it would take a long time, right?
It's not something you learn in an hour.
I haven't watched the Hunter Biden film, but I will.
Vaccine for HIV?
I thought that's coming, isn't it?
Don't we have a vaccine for HIV in the pipeline?
I don't know. There's much I can do about it.
Am I AI? I might be.
Might be more raids on Trump?
Maybe. The Uncle Tom 2 movie?
I got halfway through it.
I need to finish that. How many of you listen to this while you commute?
Commuters versus exercisers.
Who's commuting and who's exercising?
It's also really good for housework, I understand.
If you're doing like your little chores around the house.
I keep you company that way.
Good for housework.
Alright, good. Good to know.
Good for exercise. Exercise or chores?
Sometimes eating. I can join you for eating.
I can do that too.
You know, there's a product that I always wanted that I would use for long car drives if it existed.
And basically I became that product, which is something that would have a conversation with you without you having to participate.
And I tried to do that a little bit, but it could be done better.
It should be a female voice.
So what I'd love is for a female actress who just has a pleasant voice to build a, let's say, a podcast or a radio station where every day that voice just talks for an hour like I do and just talks about what's new.
But talks about it not like a newscaster.
Not like, Pakistan is under heavy rains.
Nothing like that. But just somebody who would talk about it like you were having coffee with them.
And I would listen to that.
I would rather have a person talking about the news and what's new and just sort of riffing about stuff.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. You'd prefer a male voice.
There should be an option. Oh, Rush Limbaugh did that?
Yeah, Rush Limbaugh, though, was political.
So I think you'd want a non-political fake voice.
A computer backseat driver, yeah.
You know, I use my navigation sometimes just to talk to me.
Do you ever do that? Have you ever turned on your navigation to someplace you knew where to go?
Just because you wanted to hear the voice?
Oh, yeah. Come on.
Not the only one. No, I have a mindset for a sexy voice.
My... My phone is set for a sexy voice.
So I have a...
It's an Indian accent on top of a British accent.
So it sounds like a native Indian-born person, India-born person, who has...
Well, probably British-born, yeah.
Probably a British-born person of Indian ancestry.
But, oh my God, it's so sexy.
Totally sexy voice.
You'd like a Scottish one that swears?
uh Wouldn't that be funny?
to have a navigation that swears.
Female Spanish, sometimes French.
Alright. Have a drunk lady navigate you?
Yeah, especially if you've been drinking.
Your navigation should be also on drunk voice.
I think you should take a right.
Maybe we live over here.
Or maybe you take a left.
That'd be funny. Yeah, a spouse simulator.
Don't you think you love a spouse simulator?
Now that you know that AI can put something in somebody else's voice, because it's done that for me.
So AI has studied my voice, and it can reproduce my voice with different words.
That's a thing now.
So now imagine this product keeping you company, and it's the voice of your spouse.
Let's say you like your spouse.
Or somebody who's gone before.
I could take my, let's say, deceased parent's voice, if I had enough audio of them, I could take my deceased mother and have her read me the news every day.
And then throw in some, make sure you wear a coat.
It's going to be cold out there.
Make sure you use the bathroom before you take the trip.
You know, throw in some mom-isms, that sort of thing.
Yeah, I know, that's too creepy.
Too creepy, I know.
I'm just saying you can do it.
I'm not saying you'd want to.
Somebody doesn't want to have the wife simulator because it would wear out your car speakers.
All right. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the economy is improving.
It looks like the war in Ukraine is going the Ukrainian way.
It looks like the United States is finding ways to be energy independent, slowly.
It looks like California got through its energy crunch for this year.
It looks like California got through its forest fire problem this year.
Do you know that normally I wouldn't be able to go outside this time of year for the last several years?
Because it would be full of smoke.
Because much of California tends to burn up every year, but not this year.
This year there have been fires, but apparently they've been on the smaller side.
None of it has been where I live.
So we managed to beat the fires.
Somehow we still have water, I don't know how, and we're chugging along.
We're actually doing pretty well relative to...
Do you remember how scared you were the first weeks of the pandemic?
Can you put your head back in that space?
The first weeks, let's say first month or so of the pandemic, it did legitimately look like we could run out of food.
Now, we're still talking about food shortages, but I feel like that's going to be starvation for some places and just higher prices in America, I think.
Now, I don't think we're going to run out of food.
Because I think we'd be talking about it differently.
With California, when we were talking about running out of electricity, the thing that I kept wondering about is why we weren't talking about it more.
And I think the reason is that the people who knew, knew we could adjust.
They knew we'd get through it.
It wasn't that dangerous, maybe.
It was plenty dangerous, but it wasn't as dangerous as maybe you thought.
Next week, railroad and UPS strike.
Yeah, that might...
That might whack us.
Ooh, Arizona is asking California not to use the Colorado River.
over.
Eeks. Interest rates could lead to deflation.
Reno and Nevada is buried in California smoke.
Oh, so there's part of the state that is on fire, somebody's saying.
But I can't see that from where I am.
Yeah, we need nuclear power plants with desalinization.
That is exactly what we need.
It looks like the clink clank people have come over.
Drink the trunnion, okay.
Star Trek talk. New battery is 15% of the cost of lithium.
Yeah, what's going to happen if Musk builds all of these lithium battery mega factories and then a new battery technology comes out?
I suppose he would adjust quickly.
You know, it's one of the most interesting stories in the world is nuclear waste.
Since I was a child, people kept saying, we haven't figured out what to do with nuclear waste.
And it seemed like everybody believed that was an insolvable problem.
But the entire time we were talking about it, it had always been solved.
They just keep it on site.
It was never a problem in the first place, which is weird.
The thing that you thought was the biggest problem was actually never a problem.
They just put it in casks, sealed it up and put it in the corner and it doesn't even take up that much space.
Relative to the value of a nuclear plant, it doesn't take up much space.
So it turns out that was all sort of false.
It was all sort of fake.
For decades, we believed that, and there was never any problem in the first place.
They didn't even need to change anything.
It wasn't like they solved the problem.
It was already solved.
They just left it where it was.
It was fine. All right, and then you can reprocess some of it.
That is correct. Say nuclear instead of nuclear.
Yeah, it can be used for the new generation for some of them.
It can be used for some of the new plants.
Alright. We know how to burn it, do we?
I don't know about that.
Yeah, this is all Jimmy Carter's fault, isn't it?
Was Jimmy Carter the original anti-nuclear person?
Or was he pro-nuclear?
What was Jimmy Carter?
Give me a history lesson.
Was he pro or anti-nuclear?
I think he was anti, right?
Yeah. He was a navy nut but afraid of proliferation.
Okay, until they start closing him.
Well, if they close him, they could always just move it to another site.
I mean, not just.
It would take some work, but it's not an unsolvable problem.
Yeah, Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer, but apparently not a good one.
Apparently he was as good a nuclear engineer as he was a president.
Oh, Three Mile Island was during Carter.
Okay, that would make a difference.
All right, yeah, nuclear has changed quite a bit, that's true.
All right. There are online ads for fart filters for your chair.
I didn't know that, but thank you for filling me in.
If you need one of those fart filters for your chair.
By the way, you know how to attract somebody to your cubicle?
Just pass gas.
See how quickly somebody appears in your cubicle that you weren't expecting.
It's almost instant.
If you've ever tested it, you can make a person appear in your doorway like magic.
You know it's true.
Mindy says hello.
Well, hello Mindy.
Alright. It happened to you yesterday, 15 seconds, yeah.
You're taking a break, the clankers are?
All right. So I don't think there's anything else to say, but somehow we've managed to keep a few thousand people here to hear absolutely nothing.
And I appreciate it.
The question is, is Dilbert still going to get fired for being white?
Yes. Yes, I will make you this promise.
Dilbert will get fired for not being a person of color or somebody interesting.
Yancey's not done washing the car and asks if I stay on long enough, at least for the car to be finished.
Does that seem fair? We should at least wait until the car gets washed.
Otherwise, somebody's going to have to find something else to listen to.
All right, Yancey, we're here for you.
How far along are you?
Do you have at least, is it mostly soap down?
Give us an estimate here.
We're going to do this for Yancey, okay?
Everybody, are you here for Yancey?
We're all here for you, Guy.
I think Guy. I don't know if Yancey is male.
I'm guessing. Alright, make a Super Bowl prediction.
You know, I don't follow sports.
Not that that should make a difference.
What do you think is the cause of intention in improving the message for the recipient?
People need to know you're serious so they can pick that up with intention.
Because otherwise everything just feels like noise.
But intention, if it's clearly signaled, then that makes everybody know something's really going to happen.
Can I make a Carrie Lake prediction?
Well, how is she doing in the polls?
I mean, I wouldn't have any prediction beyond how she's doing.
But I would expect her to win, based on what I saw.
It would be hard to imagine somebody going up against Carrie Lake...
'cause she's really strong communication-wise.
Dilbert gets fired and becomes a cartoonist.
That's actually what's going to happen.
Dilbert will get fired and he will become a cartoonist.
And he'll be really bad at it.
Here's how you know if I retire.
If Dilbert becomes a cartoonist and he succeeds, that's when I retire.
Now, I was going to retire, you know, 20 years ago, I decided that I was going to have Dilbert transition.
That would be the end of the strip.
So that when he was done, you couldn't do a sequel or anything because he transitioned into a woman.
And I thought that would just be an interesting way to go.
Because lots of times they do these terrible things where somebody dies.
I didn't want to kill him. I thought about it, but I didn't want to kill him.
And sometimes you wake up and it was all a dream.
It's like, ah, it's been done too many times.
So I wanted to do something nobody had done before.
So I thought, I'll just change Dilbert into a whole different person, basically.
But I think because there's so much trans rights stuff going on, that just doesn't seem interesting anymore.
So having him just become me in the real world, that'd be a good way to go out.
So if Dilbert succeeds in his cartooning job, it means I've decided to retire.
So watch for that.
Who taught you hypnosis?
There was a hypnosis school in San Francisco 40 years ago.
It doesn't exist now. It was very small.
It was just one hypnotist and 10 people in the class, basically.
Open a school for hypnotists.
All right, you want to hear a little behind-the-scenes kind of interesting something?
So... the Internet and also...
You know when you're, what is it called when you're typing and it changes you from the wrong word to the right word?
Autocorrect? Do you know that hypnosis doesn't autocorrect?
Like it autocorrects to the wrong word?
It actually autocorrects on some apps, not all apps, but instead of H-Y-P, it autocorrects to H-I-P. It actually autocorrects to the wrong word.
Have you ever noticed that? Which is weird, because it auto-corrects to a word that doesn't even exist.
Then, do you know what happens if you try to Google hypnosis?
You'll get some hits, but the internet hides most of the hypnosis content.
Do you know why?
Do you know why?
Hypnosis designed an album cover.
Thank you.
It's too powerful.
There's a whole field of it, which I spend a lot of time looking at, that I would never be able to tell you about.
Because if you found it out, it would change civilization.
There are some people who have discovered a level of power with hypnosis that you have no idea about.
You have no idea.
But it's contained.
So it's contained in a very small, let's say, cell within the larger world, so it's not dangerous at the moment.
But the Internet is very consciously making sure you don't see it.
And I'm not going to tell you where it is, because I'm the same as the Internet.
I don't want you to know either. It's too dangerous.
It is literally too dangerous.
And I've spent enough time looking at it to know it's not what I do.
There's a whole other level.
There's a level that is just crazy.
It's dangerous.
I think that's why I caught the attention of some interesting people in the world, because they weren't sure how close I was to the good stuff.
You know what I mean? I've studied the good stuff.
I've studied it.
But, you know, there's an ethical consideration.
All right. That's why you have low subscriber count.
Not sure why.
Anchoring in mystery is a statement of secret hypnosis, secret hypnosis, I don't know.
Let's see what's happening in Columbia.
My stepdaughter is doing 10 months in Columbia.
Columbia, the country. And she's just giving me an update.
Actually, she's an exchange student.
So she's actually on her own.
By the way, I have to brag about her for a minute.
You know, no matter what you think about what opportunities people get, like certain people get certain opportunities and whatever, the individual is just so important.
Imagine a 16-year-old, you know, teen, who on her own, so this is a real thing that happened, on her own decided that she wanted to learn Spanish.
She took a job at McDonald's, which she didn't eat.
She took a job at McDonald's just to have some work experience.
And all of her co-workers in the back were speaking Spanish.
So for that and other reasons, she decided that outside of school, she would teach herself Spanish.
So she asked me if she could hire a Spanish tutor over Zoom.
So I said, sure.
So she hires a Spanish tutor over Zoom, uses the Spanish tutor several times a week, and then sets a goal for herself to learn 25 vocabulary words a day in perpetuity.
And every day, sure enough, she sat down and she learned 25 new words And she became fluent in Spanish in a few months.
She's fluent.
Completely on her own.
The school system did nothing.
It didn't help her at all.
During the pandemic, she learned a new language on her own.
Then she comes to me and says she wants to spend one year of school in a Spanish place, and Colombia was the country that she picked.
Her tutor was from Colombia.
And so, of course, I'm scared to death, right?
Can you imagine anything scarier than having a kid say they want to live in another country for ten months?
Like, that's some scary shit.
But, you know, you have to...
Do the thing where you're understanding whether this is about you or about somebody else.
Once you realize that the fear is about you, it's not about what's good for the kid, you get past it.
And completely on her own, she does the research, she finds the program she wants, she applies to it, which is really hard.
It's a whole complicated set of steps.
Has to apply for a visa.
Which is a whole weird process.
So there's a lot of work, like paperwork and everything to get this going.
She did it all.
She did it all. So she just texted me an update.
So as we speak, she's living with a family in Colombia and speaking fluent Spanish.
Now, you tell me that the way you raise somebody makes a difference.
I mean, it made a difference in the sense that I had assets that I could help her with her plan.
But the plan was completely, completely her.
Like, she was not pushed.
She was barely encouraged.
I mean, she was encouraged, but it all came from her.
Yeah. So, anyway.
When I see people do things like this, it makes me feel good for the future.
The thing that we always forget is that only a few people change the future.
There's a small number of people who will ever change the future.
Everybody else is important.
You know, they're keeping the lights on, they're creating new humans and, you know, doing vital things.
But the ones who actually change the world, you know, the jobs and gates and people like that, it's a very small number.
And that very small number of young people that are awesome is probably better than ever.
So if you look at the average teenager, you might say to yourself, oh, they're not as good as we used to be.
I don't know. Maybe they are, maybe they're not.
But it doesn't matter. The ones who are exceptional are just as exceptional as they always were.
And they're the only ones that matter in terms of changing things.
Everybody matters in terms of keeping the lights on, but not everybody matters in terms of building the new thing.
The young people who are capable of building the new thing, probably more than ever.
There are probably more capable young people than ever in the history of the world, just because there are more people.
And you don't need all of them to be superstars.
You just need the ones who were born superstars to just get out of their way.
So I think what I did in this case is I got out of the way.
She had a plan.
And she's executing.
And the only thing I could have done is stop it.
So the few kids who have something going on, I think they're unstoppable.
Because they always were.
They always were.
The top 1%, or it might even be less, or fewer, the ones that are making a difference, they're unstoppable.
Civilization won't stop them.
Their parents won't stop them.
They are just unstoppable.
Now, that's the difference. I like to remind you of some of the best advice I ever heard.
I like to pass it along.
It's the difference between deciding and wanting.
99% of people want more.
But they're not necessarily doing much about it, right?
They want more, but they're still just going to work and doing their normal thing.
1% have decided to have more.
They've decided. If you decide, you're willing to push through whatever problem is to get there, because you decided.
There's no going back.
I've decided. I'm going to push through this.
So when that 1% of the young people who actually is going to change the world, when they decide...
They're going to do it. And they still do.
We still live in a world where the most talented, they do decide.
They decide to change the world, and then they do it.
So the most important engine of keeping civilization healthy is that 1% of young people who aren't going to take no for an answer.
And they're productive, right?
It's a positive influence.
So there you got it.
We're fine. The top 1% of humans are great.
They always have been.
They always will be, probably, until the robots take over.
Yeah, so as is being noted, not everybody has resources to go to another country.
So that required resources.
But I believe that she would have succeeded with or without going to the other country.
Because what you saw was something that comes from within.
And so my whole point is you could change all of the externals, including replacing me with somebody who didn't have money, and she still would have found a way out.
Because she had decided.
You had to see the transition.
I could tell from very early on that when she came with the idea of the foreign exchange, it wasn't so much a desire, it was a decision.
It was a damn decision.
The first time I heard about it, it was a decision already.
So, now in that case, she knew that she could get it done because we had resources.
But she would have done something else if that wasn't possible or made it work somehow.
I don't know. Yeah, deciding is always better than wanting.
All right. I believe I babbled enough.
Did you tell her how impressed you are with her?
I did, multiple times, yes.
I'm very impressed with her.
And by the way, it's hard to impress me.
It's hard to impress me.
But that impressed the hell out of me, I gotta say.
Very impressed.
Yes, I tell her often.
All right.
Now, the other thing that I taught her is the talent stack concept.
So, as she's developing her Spanish...
She is also completely aware, because I coach her on it all the time, that the Spanish is just one of the layers of the talent stack.
So her next goal, and she knows it, is to figure out what works well with that.
So what can she add to her career that's going to work well with the fact that she has foreign experience and she can speak the language fluently?
And there's lots of things.
Like the whole bunch of careers would be benefited by that.
So she hasn't... Cashier at Lowe's.
That's pretty funny. Funny and true.
Yeah, she can go work for the cartel.
Anyway. Is she near Medellin, where the cartels are?
I don't know too much about the geography of Colombia.
Alright, let's do a closing simultaneous sip.
I see your request. And I think that we've done our job of talking about the day.
Even though the news did not gift us with lovely news, we still made something of it, didn't we?
How about that? How about that?
How about a toast to us?
Do you think we've earned it?
Do you think those of us who are part of this process, this collective intelligence which we've formed, I think we've earned it.
Yes. So this one's to us.
Go. And Erica, who is designing the Coffee with Scott Adams mug, You now have the design, which we've cleaned up, and you have the simultaneous SIP written out, which would be in the back.
And I'm not sure what the next step is.
Were you going to look for...
We probably need to mock it up so we can see the font on the lettering.
But next phase, Erica is to find an American manufacturer.
Have you found one? Have you looked at manufacturing at all?
Apparently there are two designs.
Okay, so Erica says she has one American manufacturer.
Can we all agree that we would choose the American manufacturer even if it's not the cheapest one?
Everybody on board with that?
Might be a little extra.
But if this group doesn't agree with that, I don't know what you would agree with.
Yeah, alright. We're all on the same page.
It's going to be a USA Cup or nothing, okay?
So this will be designed by mostly people in the US, I suppose.
Those of you who are here.
Some of you from New Zealand, I understand.
And places far and wide.
From Europe. Hello, Europe.
And Elbonians. Many Elbonians are here.
That's good, too. All right.
Let me ask my non-US listeners.
Does it make you puke when you hear Americans talk about buying things that are made in America?
Do you have any reaction to that?
Let's say you're an ally. You're in Europe and you like the United States more or less.
Does it bother you at all?
So I'm saying mostly no, but a few yeses.
No, no, no. So mostly no.
Okay. I just wondered how obnoxious that was.
Because this is more about not making it in China.
You get that, right? It's far less about making it in America, because I have no illusion that America could make better stuff.
That's not the point. I mean, I'm sure we could make fine stuff, but I don't think that there's one country that has some monopoly on making good stuff.
Would it put the price out of bounds for some?
No. No, it's just a coffee cup.
I mean, we're talking about a dollar difference, I think.
It's obnoxious, but the intent is to make non-Chinese, obviously, yes.
All right, so when I talk about America first, if you're some allied, or even if you're a non-allied resident, It's not how it sounds.
It's not exactly the way it sounds.
I think it comes off sounding more arrogant than it is intended.
What do you think, Americans?
Do you think we come off sounding arrogant when we talk about manufacturing stuff in this country and America first and stuff?
Does it sound arrogant?
Or does it just sound like every country should act the same way?
I think it's somewhere in between.
It probably doesn't go down great in any other country, but it's not intended to.
It's really a domestic message.
Alright. Yeah, what's wrong with wanting things made in your own country?
Nothing. But if you obsess on it, then it sounds different.
Alright. Every country should be proud, I suppose.
We need to discuss?
Okay, we will discuss.
Alright, that's all for now.
YouTube, hit that subscribe button and I'll talk to you tomorrow.
