Episode 1899 Scott Adams: Ye Buys Parler, I Try To Get Canceled Again, And A Peace Plan For Ukraine
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Content:
David Sacks criticized for being helpful
Best case outcome for Ukraine war
Ye's George Floyd comment
This weeks Dilbert theme
Ye buys Parler
Going to the brink of nuclear war
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That's good. Well, let's start with the fake news of the day.
Fake news of the day.
Fake news of the day.
Did you see the story that Mark Wahlberg is moving out of California?
So he's going to move out of LA and move to, he hopes, Nevada.
Now, how did the news cover that story?
Did it cover it like he wants to get out of California because California is a hellhole?
Sort of. That's how they covered it.
Because that's the narrative, right?
The narrative is people moving out of California because California is a hellhole.
Do you know why Mark Wahlberg is moving out of California?
Well, I don't know either, but I did watch a special of his just recently in which he said it had something to do with tax benefits for building a facility.
Yeah. There was some kind of...
It looked like he was negotiating with somebody in Nevada that he would build some kind of a facility, maybe a studio, like a new studio or something.
But he's waiting for tax breaks to do it.
So really it's pretty much just a business decision.
I finally figured something out that I've been wondering about for a long time.
Have you noticed how often people will become famous in one thing and then they just can't leave it alone?
They try to be successful in a different realm and people get real upset about it.
Why is it? Why?
Why do people who make it in one realm try to succeed in a different realm?
Because you've seen me try to do it as well.
Why do we do that?
Why do people try to do that?
Why would you leave your lane?
I'll tell you in my situation.
I had to find out what my limits were.
I didn't know if I had limits, because when Dilbert started working out, everything worked.
Like I wrote a book, and it was the number one bestseller.
Just everything was working.
I won the Cartoonist Top Award for cartooning.
So for a while there, everything I did not only worked, but it worked great.
And I wondered, now you say hubris, and you're completely wrong.
So your point would be the opposite of my point.
So your point is the traditional point.
That the people succeed at one thing, and then they get full of themselves and say, oh, I'll bet I can succeed at everything.
I'm not saying that. Very different.
I'm saying that I actually didn't know what my limits were, so I had to find out.
Imagine if you thought you had a superpower, but you didn't know how much of a superpower.
Isn't that the first thing you'd have to find out?
You'd have to find out.
Like, what else can I do?
I don't know. I don't know what else I can do.
The only way you can find out is to try it.
So, I'll tell you what I learned.
I learned that I'm a terrible business owner.
Just terrible. Just awful.
And I'm very good at being an entrepreneur for myself.
So if I'm completely in charge of the thing that makes money, then I'm fine.
But I can't manage people.
I can't do it.
And I think the reason is I can't buy into the level of evil that it takes to do it.
Because managing people usually means getting them to do something very unpleasant for them so that you will have a payoff.
I don't know. I just can't get there.
I don't know how to abuse other people for my benefit.
So I can never be a good business owner because you have to manage people.
Anyway, then secondly, why is it that people...
This is my other realization.
Why is it that people get mad When people leave their lane, such as Elon Musk talking about Ukraine, why do people get mad when people do it?
I have a theory here.
Jealousy is not quite right.
Not envy and not jealousy.
But you're in the right ballpark.
All right, here's my spin on it.
Most of the people who complain about somebody leaving their lane have a certain quality about themselves.
What is it? It's not everybody who complains.
Does everybody complain when Elon Musk tries to do something outside of his expertise?
No, not everybody.
No, it's not a liberal. It has nothing to do with a liberal Republican.
Nothing. So it's not political.
At least that's not where I'm going.
Some of it's political, but that's not where I'm going.
It's not a lack of confidence.
Here's what it is. If you are a person who believes you are capable, let's say you did well in school, you went to college, you got a good degree, you look good, you wear a suit, you got your hair, whatever you think makes you look like you should succeed, and you're not succeeding as much as you thought you should.
I think it's how people explain.
It's how they explain why they're not more successful.
Bear with me. If everybody who succeeded is succeeded in exactly one field and could never leave their field, what would you be able to say about yourself if you had done everything right but you had not really succeeded?
What would you say about yourself?
You would say you didn't get lucky.
You would say the other person got lucky, and you know it's luck, because the moment they try to extend their skill into another field, it doesn't work.
So if people can't leave their field, you can tell yourself they got lucky.
Because obviously, if it's not luck, you could take that skill somewhere else and succeed again, right?
So it's just luck.
And if you can explain your own existence as being just bad luck, Well, then your ego is intact.
So I don't think it's jealousy.
I think it's ego. I think it's how people understand themselves.
So when people are criticizing people for leaving their field, they're really saying, I don't want you to succeed in a second field.
Because if you do, I've got some explaining to do about why I haven't succeeded in any.
I think that's what it is.
Honestly. I saw a A European who is giving some criticism to David Sachs, who on Twitter has been trying to be helpful and suggest ways forward for the Ukrainian war and to come up with some peace plans.
So David Sachs, who you should know as a famous tech investor kind of person, if you don't know his name, you should.
He's one of the names you should know if you want to have an awareness of how things work.
If you want to understand the world, he would be in the list of 100 names you should know.
And here's what's interesting.
We're watching people like David Sachs and Elon Musk and...
Who was the other VC? I can't remember his name.
But some other fairly well-known, famous people talking about what they would do or some suggestions for ending the war in Ukraine.
And I saw a European mock...
Specifically, Dave Sachs.
I saw a European say it was sort of an American thing that citizens would believe that they could just wade into like a nuclear confrontation and be useful.
Now, what do you think of that?
Some European guy, I think he was European, but who was not American, saying it's an American thing to imagine that just an ordinary person can go like change the world.
And I think to myself, well, that's why your country isn't doing so well.
I don't even know what country he was from.
But I can tell you they're not doing so well.
Because that's what we do over here.
Now, I heard somebody else say that we're sort of a problem-solving country.
We're not just a problem-solving country.
That's part of it. And I believe that's a huge part.
We are the most problem-solving motherfuckers who ever lived.
That is America.
We are problem-solving motherfuckers.
We'll solve a problem like nobody's business.
We know how to solve some problems.
But we also have this characteristic where we feel unlimited.
Not everybody. Not all the time.
But there are enough of us Americans who feel like we actually can change the world.
And so we try. And every once in a while it works.
And that's how you get Apple computers, motherfuckers.
That's how you get, you know, Starlink and Tesla and SpaceX, motherfuckers.
Because we don't feel like we're limited.
If we think we have something to add, we jump in.
If your car is on fire, we stop and pull you out.
We solve problems.
So when I see people making fun of David Sachs for making a citizen suggestion, I say, I don't think you understand what's happening right now.
I would put David Sachs in the internet dad category.
I don't know if he'd want to be in that category.
And what I mean is people who have built credibility in some realm and they're trying to use it productively to make the world a better place.
Because I honestly think that's primarily what Elon Musk is trying to do.
Like, long ago he made enough money.
I think he's trying to fix the world.
And when I watch, you know, David Sachs tweets, I don't see anything else.
I don't see him trying to make money out of Ukraine.
Nothing. He's just trying to fix a problem.
And so am I. So am I. I mean, I have a, you know, a business model which allows me to benefit the larger my audience is.
But that's pretty standard stuff.
I mean, I wouldn't be doing it just for the money.
It's not what I would do.
I would do it because I think maybe I could add something.
So here's what I'm going to add.
The Ukraine war, I don't think our politicians can solve this one.
It has that weird characteristic that the politicians aren't going to be able to get this done.
So if we need to get to some kind of a good end point, it's going to be the internet dads.
It's going to be the internet dads.
So let me tell you what one of them says, and I'm not going to promote this particular idea, because I don't want Ukraine to be mad at me yet.
They will be, but not yet.
There is a day when Ukraine will be mad at me, but not yet.
So I'm just going to say what David Sack's idea is.
For ending the war. So, he says, concrete suggestion.
U.S. proposes an armistice based on February 23rd lines, along with a guarantee that Ukraine won't become part of NATO. Now, what are the February 23rd lines?
Does that mean...
That Russia would give back everything but Crimea?
Is that what February...
Is that what that is?
That's what that is, right?
So the suggestion...
Again, this is not mine.
So Ukraine, you can't be mad at me.
I'm just talking.
So the idea would be that Russia would keep Crimea...
Which some would say is, you know, a settled issue.
But give back the disputed areas, and then Ukraine doesn't join NATO. Now, if you were an observer, who would you say won in that case?
Who would be the winner if that were the peace plan?
Would you say that Russia won, because it keeps Ukraine out of NATO, And they keep Crimea, but they were going to keep that anyway, probably.
Would you say that that would be a case of Russia winning?
Or would you say that both of them had a little pain, which is sort of what you want for a lasting peace, you know, a little bit of pain?
Why are you so focused on Ukraine?
Could it be the 10% to 25% chance of nuclear war?
Was that a serious question?
You're wondering why I'm focused on the Ukraine?
Like, our entire civilization depends on this.
Everything. So, yeah, I'm going to focus on that.
So, what do you think of that idea?
Well, it doesn't matter what you think about it, does it?
Because you're Americans and you're not in it.
So here's the, but the rest of it gets into more what happens if you don't.
So here's the rest of Sack's suggestion.
If Moscow rejects that idea, Because obviously that would be them giving up some land that they control right now.
If Moscow rejects, war goes on until the February 23rd line is reached.
So there's an assumption here that Ukraine would eventually be able to take back those disputed territories anyway.
But maybe not Crimea.
And then...
He goes on, even if Moscow rejects the proposal now, keeping it on the table creates an alternative to nuclear use if they become desperate, thereby reducing the risk of nuclear war.
Now, do you see that David Sachs, a citizen, a citizen of America, that's all, not an elected person, he just protected you from From nuclear war.
He just did that.
Like, actually, literally, with a tweet.
He protected you from nuclear war.
Now, not completely.
Not completely.
But he has high enough visibility, high enough visibility that if enough people retweet that, and I retweeted it, some other people did, if enough people retweet it, Russia will see that there are some, let's say, prominent voices that Who have a plan that Putin might be able to live with.
That's less than nuclear war.
And that escape valve, the fact that there might be an escape valve that prominent Americans would support, does give Putin a little bit of a backdoor if he needs it.
It does take the risk of nuclear holocaust down.
Now, why did he have to do that?
Why did David Sachs have to reduce the risk of nuclear war himself?
Why did he have to do it personally?
Because nobody else was.
Nobody else did.
Where is Biden's plan that would give Putin an exit to escape from nuclear war?
Where's that? It's like the reason that the internet dads get involved It's because something needed to be done and it wasn't getting done.
And here David Sachs just protected you from nuclear war with a tweet.
Literally. Now, I'm not saying, you know, he reduced the odds of war.
I mean, he didn't reduce the odds to zero.
I'm saying it makes a difference.
Now, if that message got extended, then Ukraine would hate it and they'd be arguing about how terrible it is, but it would be an alternative.
It only has to exist as a functional alternative that people are talking about.
And he did that for you.
He did that for you. So to whoever it was who was saying, you know, this is about Americans, that Americans think that, you know, if you're just a citizen, you can just jump in and, you know, make a difference.
He did it!
He jumped in and he already made a difference.
That's a real difference.
I feel it. I mean, I feel safer because a prominent, smart person in America raised a potential peace plan that I think, well, I can see Putin maybe sort of last resort taking that plan.
I don't know. I think you're seeing something amazing happening that's not quite appreciated.
But I'll try to help you.
Try to help you appreciate it.
Did you know that there's still...
This is actually a real fact.
Like, I can't even believe I'm gonna say this.
All right, so it's, what is it?
It's October, it's 2022.
And I'm just gonna read you this fact.
And I just shake your head and like, your head can hit the floor.
I'm just gonna read the fact.
Did you know that a lot of our voting machines are still connected to the internet by modems?
Not accidentally.
Not accidentally.
That the normal way that they work is they transmit their results by modem.
And so, as of even today, even today, when the experts are very clear that this is a hacking vulnerability, Are there any experts who say that there's no risk of having modems attached to your voting machines?
I don't believe so.
I've never heard one.
I've never heard any expert, like a hacker expert, I've never heard one say, ah, it's okay to connect to the internet.
What could go wrong?
Now, I was under the impression that this didn't exist.
How could I have been under that impression?
Because I follow the news pretty closely.
Pretty closely. How many of you knew that in a number of states, and there are important states too, it's like several important states, that they're still attached to the internet?
Did you know that? You know, I'd seen reports or allegations of that, but I was pretty sure that they stopped doing it.
Like, I was sure that that was an old practice, that nobody would do that anymore.
Oh, my God!
Now, are you also watching the election denial, what would you call it, the flip?
So somebody else called this out on Twitter, so this is not my original thought.
But I wish it had been.
It's a really good original thought.
I forget who said it first.
I wish I remembered. Oh, was it Cernovich?
Maybe. Might have been Cernovich.
But here's the flip.
That now that the polls are suggesting a potential big Republican win, I'm not sure I believe that yet, but the polls suggest there might be a Republican wave.
And what are the Democrats going to start to talk about?
Election integrity.
Because if the Republicans win, the Democrats will claim, they will claim the election was rigged.
So I'm seeing people say it was Mike Cernovich who pointed that out.
Yeah, you have to see it developing now, because it's already developing.
You can see it happening now.
So suddenly the Democrats are going to get all kinds of religion about how vulnerable our elections are, so watch for that.
I mean, it's already happening, but...
Yeah, I think you're right.
Right, it must have been a Mike Cernovich tweet.
So there's also a hacking story.
I guess the Mexican government got hacked.
It's not clear who hacked them.
I guess there's some hacker group taking credit, some Mexican hacker group.
But they found, among other things, alleged connections between the political class, meaning the Mexican politicians, the ruling party, and organized crime.
In other words, the cartels.
So now the hackers have evidence of connection between the Mexican government and the cartels.
How often are you seeing now calls for direct military intervention in Mexico?
You're seeing that now, right?
I saw it on Fox News yesterday.
There was a direct call for direct military confrontation with the fentanyl labs.
Just bomb them. Now, who's the first person you heard say that in the world?
Right. And I've told you before that one of the benefits I can provide is that I'm not embarrassed by stuff.
I'm not embarrassed by stuff.
So I can say something like that, Out loud and just test it out.
Trump said it after I said it.
Yeah, way after I said it.
And because I've been able to say it, that allows other people to say it because I didn't get cancelled and nobody called me crazy.
Oh, actually, people did call me crazy, but it wasn't that bad.
And then we heard that Trump actually floated the idea internally, but he was called crazy.
But now it's in your head, right?
Now you know that Trump floated the idea.
Now you've heard a few people talk about it.
Now suddenly, an idea that was just ridiculous, now what's it sound like?
Now it sounds almost inevitable, doesn't it?
It is. It is inevitable.
There is no scenario where we don't attack Mexico.
You know that, right?
There's no scenario in which it doesn't happen.
It's only a matter of when.
So we can do it later or sooner, but we're totally going to attack the fentanyl facilities in Mexico.
That is going to happen.
So get ready for that.
So let's talk about Ye.
So, how many of you saw Ye, who is the artist formerly known as Kanye, how many saw his full interview on the podcast Drunk Champs?
Did anybody see that?
All right, I watched it.
I guess it's been yanked in a lot of places because, wow, did he double down.
You know, I told you that after he made his statements about DEFCON 3 for Jewish people.
So the first thing we learned is that he didn't mean death as in somebody dying.
He meant DEF as in DF, but he spelled it wrong.
He meant DEFCON as in defensive.
That's what he says.
Yeah, I'm not going to make...
I will make no...
Defense. So here's the context of this conversation.
Nothing I say is intended to defend him.
He's on his own. And he's doing fine.
Surprisingly, I think he might actually turn this around.
I'll tell you why in a minute.
Now, first of all, is what he said about Jewish people appropriate, true, Was it good?
Was it bigoted?
Was it racist? I'm going to say yes.
Big yes. Yeah, that's as bigoted and racist as you can get.
Now, I wasn't entirely sure when I saw the tweet, but when you see his extended interview, he is very clear.
He's very clear that he believes that Jewish people have been blocking him and black people in general at every turn.
And although he would claim that this is not about hate, because he would claim that black people are Jewish also, I don't know that argument, but let's go with it for now.
But he does say very clearly, Jewish people...
He doesn't say a few people who happen to also be Jewish or something like that.
He actually, he's making a statement about Jewish people.
I will, however, give you this context.
And I haven't seen anybody say it yet.
The context with which he was super bigoted and, do you call it racist?
Is being anti-Semitic racist?
Do we use that word? Is that a 2022?
I'm not sure if that's a 2022 spin or not.
Is it? I mean, I don't think it is, but it's in that category.
Let's call it bigoted. Let's go with bigoted.
So here's my not a defense.
So I don't want anybody coming at me later and saying, you defended him, because he's on his own.
When you go this far out, you're on your own.
We'll see if he can handle it.
I don't know. I don't know.
But here's the context I want to give you.
The context with which he said his super bigoted stuff was weirdly complimentary.
Weirdly complimentary.
I'm going to give you an analogy, not as an argument, But just so you can see my point, right?
So I'm not trying to convince you of anything.
Analogies are not good for that.
It's just so it'll illuminate my point a little bit better.
Suppose a white person went on television, a celebrity, and said that black people play basketball really well.
Would he be cancelled? Would a white celebrity be cancelled for saying that black people sure play basketball really well?
You say yes?
Seriously, you think you'd get cancelled for saying black people play basketball well?
Really? No, I don't think so.
Oh, this didn't work out at all.
You were all supposed to agree with me that that wouldn't be a problem.
I'll be damned. No, the way you say it matters, the way you say it matters, right?
If you got into some weird genetic thing, then suddenly you're cancelled.
Now, keep in mind, I'm not making a claim.
I'm saying, if there were a person like that, would you say they're a racist?
Now, here's the first thing you should say.
Yes. That would be a racist statement, wouldn't it?
Nobody would disagree with the fact they would be racist.
It's literally talking about a difference in a race.
That's as racist, by definition, as you could be.
But it would be the kind of thing that didn't make people too mad, would it?
Would a lot of black people be angry if they knew that a white celebrity said black people play basketball pretty well?
Would they? They might, just to get some attention, but nobody would take it seriously.
Wouldn't it? Because the context, you know, you'd have to worry if that conversation is going to go somewhere else, right?
You'd have to worry if the conversation would go in a bad direction.
But if you limited it just to that statement, I think people would say, well, that's totally racist, but we also don't mind that much.
Now let's get back to Kanye.
What did Kanye say about the Jewish people who he says were blocking him at every turn.
Did he say that they were dumb?
No. Did he say they broke the laws?
No. Did he say that they were acting unethically?
Not really. Not really.
Did he say they were being immoral?
I didn't hear anything like that.
Did he say that they were less than, in any way, anybody else?
I didn't hear it. In fact, everything I heard was that he wanted to emulate their strategy and success.
And he thought black people should be more like that because there was something working in that community, and it wasn't working in his community, and he thinks maybe they could learn from that, and that maybe they should fight as hard, maybe they should join together in some cases, or something.
So, will Ye be cancelled?
Well, he was. I guess he's semi-cancelled now.
Will he be cancelled for saying that the Jewish people, mostly in America, I guess, have been very successful, and he wishes black people could rise to that level of performance?
Because that's what I heard.
Now, at the same time, that's what I heard.
It was really offensive. Did anybody else have that same feeling?
I had two brains going at the same time.
One brain was sort of complimentary, and the other brain is, why is it offending me?
And I think the reason it offends me is maybe the same reason you said people would be offended if somebody said black people play basketball well.
It would be offensive because you don't think the conversation's going to stop there, right?
It's not about that.
It's because you think the conversation isn't going to stop.
You're going to like, oh, don't bring that into other realms, you're in trouble.
Now, here's the safe way to bring it into other realms.
Here's what I always mock about white people.
The dumbest thing that, well, I don't know, there'd be a lot of competition for the dumbest thing, but one of the dumb things that white people do is imagine that the successes of the very few white people who really nailed it is somehow, like, we get some of the credit for that.
I don't get any credit for Steve Jobs.
I don't get any credit for Elon Musk or Bill Gates.
I don't get any credit.
What, because I got some pigment in common?
What does it matter to me that I'm also white?
That those few people who are not me, they're not me.
Well, why do I get credit for them?
It doesn't make any sense at all.
So even if you said, oh, there's this one group that has, let's say, higher math scores, Well, that doesn't change my math score.
My math score doesn't change at all if there's somebody who has my same pigmentation who's really good at calculus.
It doesn't help me at all. Now, here's another point I've been dying to make.
I'm going to talk about the Dilbert comic that's going to get me in a little bit of cancellation trouble.
When I talk about how my own career was...
Let's say, limited by being a white male, and in two corporate careers, I was told directly that I couldn't be promoted because I was white and male.
Now, when people hear that, they think, oh, this reverse discrimination thing, you're talking, blah, blah, blah.
Here's the thing that they're all missing.
Who am I complaining about?
Who am I complaining about?
Did I say that black people are discriminating against me for being white?
That's never happened. In my entire life, I can think of zero cases where any black person ever discriminated against me.
Zero. I mean, I can't think of any.
At all. My whole life.
Do you know who was discriminating against me when I was told I couldn't get promoted because I was white and male?
White men. Rich white guys.
Yeah. Rich white guys were discriminated against me.
So... Why can't I identify as black?
Because I hate rich white guys as much as anybody else who might hate them.
Now, of course, when I became a rich white guy, the first thing I did was try to increase the diversity.
I shouldn't even admit that.
But I've been on both sides of the conversation.
So I've been on the side of the conversation where I would be denied opportunity because I was white.
But I've also been in the room I've never admitted this before.
I've also been in the room with other white people discussing how we've got to get some non-white people in this project or in this group or on this team or on this startup or something because it helps.
It's one less thing you have to explain away.
Like, do you want to start a company and then it becomes a unicorn and after it becomes a unicorn somebody says, Every single person in your company is a white male.
I don't need that trouble.
So as soon as you're a rich white male, the first thing you do is look to discriminate against poor white males.
And I would love to tell you I was above that impulse, but it's just self-interest.
It's pure self-interest.
You're not really thinking in terms of discriminating.
You're thinking about what's good for yourself.
And what's good for myself is to live in a world that's diverse and nobody's complaining.
So sometimes I try to make that world for myself.
Yeah. So if you imagine that there's something wrong with me because I pursue self-interest in a free market society, I would say, uh, that's what the free market's supposed to do.
It's supposed to give me this playing field and then say, go pursue your self-interest as hard as you can.
And so I do. Let's move along.
You're right. Have you also noticed how, this is also a David Sachs observation, that Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine, it's not even all of Ukraine, just that little strip of Ukraine on the east, is the new organizing principle of American foreign policy.
Now, when I read the first sentence, I was like, what?
That's a big claim. That that little part of Ukraine, that's our organizing principle for American, for all of our American foreign policy?
That's crazy. And then he gives us examples.
Venezuela becomes our friend suddenly?
Oh, okay. Saudi Arabia becomes an enemy?
Hmm. Europe freezes, global south starves, and the US has a recession.
All over a piece of real estate that has never been a vital U.S. interest.
That sums it up pretty well.
Yeah. We've changed our entire, and I would argue even Taiwan.
The risk of Taiwan being lost to China probably has something to do with Ukraine as well, doesn't it?
I mean, suddenly everything's about one strip of land in Ukraine that we don't give a shit about.
Honestly, we don't care.
We really don't. And then I saw this question on Twitter.
Explain how Ukraine could end in the best-case scenario for the ending of the Ukraine conflict.
What does that look like to you?
What's the best case that you could imagine?
Not that it's likely, I'm not saying it's likely, but what would be the best case, the most optimistic case?
And I tried to answer that question.
I think the best case would be Putin gets removed in a coup, but we get lucky, because remember, this is the best case.
Not the most likely case, just the best case.
That Putin gets removed in an internal coup, gets replaced with a leader who's more cautious.
He doesn't have to be less, you know, less, I don't know, Russia is great, but he needs to be more cautious, at least for a while.
That would buy us something. Ukraine stays mostly intact and nuclear power gets a huge boost because nobody wants to be beholden to Russia.
So I think that the best case scenario is that the American energy companies maybe get a boost if we're providing more to Europe.
That could be nice.
Russia becomes less of a thorn in our side.
I think there's an upside.
I mean, it doesn't look good because we've spent all of our money.
And all of the Ukrainian women move to the United States and marry American men.
Yeah. So, lots of upside there.
Let's see. So, this is like a small story, but it's like connected.
I'll talk about George Floyd in a minute, too.
So, Olivia Wilde, actress, and I guess she's a film producer, director now, has a new movie that's getting good reviews.
But she goes to this gala, academy, museum gala thing, wearing a braless, see-through gown.
And... I see that and I say to myself, 2022 is the year when children have to wonder about their mother's tits and ass being on the internet.
It's like the number of people who have to worry about that now.
And Kadya was talking about that too.
He was talking about Kim Kardashian.
And he was complaining that his children...
His children have to see his 40-something-year-old wife showing her ass in a magazine because the fashion industry sort of forces her to do that.
And I thought, this is such a 2022 problem of children seeing their mother's ass on Instagram.
There are a number of accounts that I follow on Instagram.
Every now and then you'll see that they've...
Well, never mind. I'm going to change the topic.
Let's talk about George Floyd.
So one of the things that Yeh said on his controversial interview is that after watching Candace Owens' documentary about George Floyd, he believes that George Floyd died of fentanyl and not from what the coroner concluded, which was the knee on his back slash neck.
And, of course, there is a lot of pushback on that because if there's one thing we can trust, it's that a coroner in the year 2022, when every single one of our organization systems and leaders are corrupt, one thing we can depend on is that that coroner told us the truth.
So, that's good.
Now, you might say to yourself, if he had concluded that fentanyl had been the cause of death, he would be murdered, and that's probably true.
So, it could be, if you were like a conspiracy theorist, you would say, what would a person who risks his life do in that situation?
Would he lie to save his own life I don't know.
Do people lie to save their own life?
Is that something people do?
Do you think the jurors found Chauvin guilty to save their own lives?
No, that doesn't happen.
No. All right.
Here's what I say. Let me say this in the least offensive way I can, because what was going to come out of my mouth was going to be pretty bad.
Let me reword that in my head, and now I'm ready.
Okay. If you tell me that the coroner was correct and that he accurately got the cause of death, which would also require that the verdict was correct...
If you tell me that, you could be right.
You could be right.
It's entirely possible that it's just what it looks like.
The coroner is a professional, did a good job, told us the truth, and the jury got the right answer.
Totally possible. If you believe it because somebody told you it's true, you're a fucking idiot.
It's 2022, people.
You can't believe that the coroner told you the truth.
We don't live in that world. You know that, right?
A coroner lying would be the most ordinary thing in our world.
And a coroner lying in that situation would be almost guaranteed.
You get that, right?
It doesn't matter, regardless of what Floyd died from, the coroner could only give you one cause of death.
If the coroner had said fentanyl was the cause of death, which I believe his original notes suggested it might be, if the coroner had said that, it would have been chaos.
It wasn't really an option.
So, in a perfect world, there was only one thing the coroner could conclude, but maybe it was also true.
I'm not saying it wasn't true.
I'm saying that would be a nice coincidence if it were also true.
So before you watch a documentary, remember what I told you about documentaries.
All documentaries are persuasive because they're one argument without the other side.
So before you watch the Floyd documentary, here's an exercise you should all do.
Remember the documentary about Michael Jackson allegedly being a child abuser?
If you watched that documentary, you came away thinking, he's totally, totally a child abuser.
There's no doubt about it.
Just removed all doubt in your mind.
And then, watch the documentary that debunks the documentary you just believed.
And you will find yourself totally convinced That the first one was fake, and it has been successfully debunked.
Now, is that my final answer?
No. Because what I learned is that all documentaries are persuasive.
That's all. I don't know what happened at Neverland.
I don't think I could ever know.
But I do know that both of those documentaries were 100% persuasive.
So when you watch Candace Owens' documentary, whatever claim it makes, you will be persuaded.
You will be. But if you haven't seen whatever other documentary would tell the other story, just be aware of that.
Just be a, let's say, a smart consumer of the news.
I think this is hilarious, that Katie Hobbs refuses to debate Carrie Lake, running for governor there in Arizona, and that Katie Hobbs won't even exactly say why she refuses to debate her.
I think I know why.
I don't really pay attention to the state stuff too much, especially if it's not my state.
But if you spend one minute listening to Carrie Lake talk on television, and then listen to one minute of Katie Hobbs talking on television, it's pretty obvious why she doesn't want to debate her.
It would be a slaughter.
It would just be a slaughter.
So I think she's going to do the Joe Biden strategy of just, you know, of just not showing up and hoping that that's good enough.
I'd like to bring up this topic again, and I'll tie this into something new.
I was reminded by an article that 34% of white college applicants say they're minorities to get accepted in college.
34% of white college applicants lie and say they're minorities.
And apparently it works every time.
Do you know why? Because the rules are they can't doubt you.
The rules are you can identify as anything you want.
Now, I didn't make the rules.
I did not make the rules.
But if those are the rules, you should identify as whatever gets you the most money.
Because those are the rules.
Now again, I don't believe in cheating.
I believe in following the rules.
But those are the rules.
You can identify...
And by the way, you don't need to give a reason for your identification.
That's also a rule.
If somebody identifies as whatever, do I get to question their decision?
No. No, I do not.
I do not get to say, in my opinion, you are not that thing.
That is not part of the conversation.
So if those are the rules, anybody who is identifying as something that pays you less, why?
I mean, to me, when I see this statistic, 34% of white college applicants say they are minorities.
My brain translates that into, wow, that's a lot of white college applicants who are fucking idiots.
Only 34% were even smart enough to apply for the way that they get free money.
How many people were not applying for the way they get free money?
Of course you should get the free money.
Of course. I may have told you this before, but when I applied to college back in the 70s, On one application, I said I was Native American, because I believed at the time incorrectly.
Like Elizabeth Warren, I believed I had a little bit.
That was like the family rumor that we were part Native American.
So I was actually raised thinking I was a little part, maybe like 1 1 28th or something like that.
So I applied once as a Native American, and I was inundated with scholarship offers.
I was offered a free ride to college without filling out an application.
Let me say that again.
I was offered full scholarships to college without filling out an application to those colleges.
Now, I decided that it would be unethical To take an advantage that large.
Because I looked at it and thought, uh, I don't want to get caught doing this.
Because in those days, it wasn't allowed.
In those days, if you had identified it as the wrong thing, you got caught, you'd probably get kicked out of college.
So, you know, I was like, oh, this was a fun experiment, but I'm not actually going to do this.
This would be a dumb crime.
Yes, Hartwick was close to home.
That's true. And So I didn't do that.
But today it's allowed.
So now the rules allow you to do it and you could get caught and it wouldn't make any difference at all.
So do that.
So this week I'm running a series in Dilbert that if this doesn't get me kicked off of everything, I'll be surprised.
Let's go read this for you.
So it's a series, and it starts out a little bit tame, so you wouldn't know where this series is going unless you were familiar with the characters.
So I'll read it to you first, and I'll tell you why it's going to be trouble.
All right, so this is Dilbert's boss says to Dilbert as Dilbert's walking by the office, the boss says, there's an opening in management for a director of AI research.
And the boss says, you're the only employee with AI experience, but I'm also considering Ashok, Tina, and Dave.
And then Dilbert says, none of them are even close to being qualified.
And the boss says, do you have any idea how bigoted you sound?
Now, what you would have to know is that Ashok was born in India.
In the Dilbert comic, he's an Indian-American.
Tina is a woman. She's a tech writer.
She's not even working in technology.
And Dave is the new character who is a black character who identifies as white because he's a prankster.
And he just thinks it's funnier to identify as white.
So this, here's the background of this.
This is based on my exact experience.
Now I've changed the job titles.
But my experience was this.
My boss came to me and said, you're the obvious person, most qualified, but you're a white male.
So I did not get that promotion.
So Dilbert is going to be dealing with my exact situation.
And it's one that a lot of people are dealing with in 2022.
And in 2022, I can get away with this.
Well, I can get away with it.
I mean, I'm not going to go to jail.
But I expect a lot more newspapers will cancel me this week.
I haven't heard yet, but probably.
Probably. I would expect at least one more chain to cancel me.
And the chain is just one decision can take out hundreds of newspapers in one decision.
So this is continued.
I won't tell you what the rest of the series is, but we'll have some fun watching that.
All right. Let's see.
What else? We talked about George Floyd.
I feel like there was one other thing we...
Oh, Parler. There's so much news today.
It's all Ye news.
So Ye announced this morning, or Parler announced, that the social media company Parler, that's sort of like a Twitter knockoff, Ye is buying Parler.
So he's going to have his own social media thing.
What did I do? I immediately went to my Parler app and signed up.
I think I was already signed up, but I hadn't used it.
That's why I renewed my thing.
So I'm going to at least check out what he has to say.
Now, it's kind of interesting because now the conservative world will be broken up into truth, social, and parlor, and also getter, right?
Now there are three, getter, parlor, and truth.
So you're going to have a reverse Fox News effect here.
Fox News is the biggest news entity because there's only one big entity that talks about conservative stuff.
And then the left has to share their audience, CNN and MSNBC and stuff.
But this is now the opposite.
So I think the conservative voices will be Broken into smaller chunks, whereas Twitter may become the blue thing or something.
Oh, Gab.
Gab is out there too.
Will Ye rename Parler?
Parler.
Huh. Maybe.
Maybe. Maybe.
All right. I think that's about all I have to talk about.
Have we solved all of our problems?
All right. Here's what I think is going to happen with the Ukraine nuclear standoff.
And I want to keep telling you this almost every day.
We will be going to the brink of nuclear war, but that's unavoidable, right?
And we will go to the brink because that's also the fastest way to peace.
It's the fastest way to total destruction, but also the only path to peace.
Because if we're not afraid of actually dying, meaning everybody involved, they're not going to make any deal.
Because have you noticed that the people doing the negotiating are not doing the suffering?
You know what would be a better way to negotiate the end of a war?
Like, dig some Ukrainian out of the rubble, like of a destroyed residential unit.
Dig them out of the bottom of the rubble, and then that would be your negotiator.
And then the Russians, you'd take the mother of one of the soldiers who was just killed.
So, one Ukrainian who was dug out of the rubble, negotiating with one Russian mother whose son just died in a stupid war.
And have those sit down and come up with a peace plan.
Do you know who can't make a peace plan?
Zelensky, who's having the time of his life.
Zelensky is having the time of his life.
I mean, it's horrible in lots of ways, true.
But he's also more alive than he's ever been.
He's having the time of his life.
He's like the celebrity of the world.
Of course he's enjoying it on some level.
He probably hates it on a lot of levels, but I'll bet he's enjoying it on some level.
How about Putin? Well, I think he still gets a massage and a hand job every day.
Probably every day. I think he's eating fine food and Having a good time.
So our problem is we keep asking the people who are not suffering to negotiate.
Those are the wrong people.
What kind of result are you going to get if the people negotiating don't give a shit whether it gets one way or the other?
It's not going to make much difference.
So we're going to walk up to the brink of war.
We will not have a nuclear war.
I wouldn't rule out a tactical nuclear detonation.
That could happen.
I think it's unlikely, but we're not going to have nukes flying into America and Moscow.
That's not going to happen.
Now, what I think will happen is the two sides will settle into a drone war, and the drone war will be both unstoppable and unmistakable.
What's the word where you just can't put up with it?
So it will be both unstoppable and intolerable.
It will be intolerable and unstoppable.
Now, once you reach the point where it's both intolerable and unstoppable on both sides, then you can negotiate.
But it has to be both intolerable and unstoppable.
And that's what drones will buy you.
So I think drones are going to be...
They're going to define future war.
If you can't knock drones down, and apparently we can't, not well enough.
Both sides can just degrade each other until those disputed regions are just garbage.
Nobody's going to want them anyway.
Except for their resources.
Yeah, and it's inevitable that chemical weapons will end up on drones.
I think that's inevitable.
It might not be a state actor, it might be a terrorist, but chemical weapons on drones, and it's going to be fentanyl.
Because that's the easiest one to get.
So that's what's happening.
Or COVID-19. Yeah.
So here's something that, as we check our assumptions about COVID, There's an assumption that I used to make that was central to most of my assumptions that I believe has not been demonstrated.
So check this with me.
Did we not believe at one point that the amount of infection you initially got would have a big impact on your outcomes?
We used to believe that, right?
Wasn't that basic understanding?
And I would say that the top-level experience with masks especially shows that that was not the case.
To me, it looks like the viral load thing was always wrong, but now we know it.
Because if the viral load thing had been true, I think you would have seen a difference between the masked and unmasked places.
Now, of course, because it's data and it's the Internet, it will take one minute for somebody to put up what looks like data to show that masks totally worked in some place or another.
And it will take one more minute for somebody to debunk that.
Because nobody knows that maths worked or didn't work.
It's just not known. But I would think that we would have seen a big effect.
If the plume theory was even half right, we would have seen it in the numbers, I think.
Wouldn't we? So I'm going to say that one of my guiding assumptions About what would work and what wouldn't.
I was always against mask mandates, so in case anybody's joining us now, I've never been in favor of mask mandates or vaccine mandates or closed-down mandates, except for the first two weeks.
The first two weeks was worth the shot.
We just didn't know it was a bad idea at the time.
But I had assumed that if you did wear a mask, it would help you because of the plume theory.
But now I think I have to release on that, don't I? Do you like it when I admit I'm wrong?
You know, I probably admit I'm wrong more than anybody in the public eye.
I'll bet nobody's ever admitted they're wrong more than I have.
It's like a continuous thing I do.
Like I'm always rolling out, well, I was wrong about that.
Now, I was not wrong about not wanting masks to be mandated.
Because the bottom line is, what do you do about it, right?
And the what do you do about it, I think I was still right.
Which is the no mask mandate.
But I was definitely wrong on that assumption, because common sense tells me that a bigger plume would be a bigger problem, but it didn't show up in the numbers.
So I'm going to say that that was probably wrong.
Probably wrong. Alright, now Nisi is saying something that's pissing me off.
She says, I'm glad you fessed up on the masks.
No, fuck you.
That didn't happen. I don't know what you just saw.
I fessed up on the mask.
I had a bad assumption.
Probably. But I was always on the no mask mandate side.
I literally was...
I was an activist for, you know, violating the mask mandates.
So be very careful.
Be very careful.
How many of you are following...
I forget his name. There's a gentleman who's a married man on Instagram who he does these hilarious reels on things he had to apologize to his wife for.
Have you seen those? Things he apologized to his wife for, including he couldn't hear her when she talks to him from another room while he's frying bacon.
It's pretty funny.
Breathing. Yeah, he breathes.
Sometimes he faces her in bed.
That's one of the complaints.
Sometimes he lays in bed facing her.
Can't have that. I totally understand that.
Oh, yeah. And the wife is mad at him because she had a dream where he cheated on her in the dream.
All right. Alright, that's all I got for today.
No doubt, one of the finest things you've ever experienced.
The live stream to end all live streams.
The best thing that's ever happened.
People thought you were pushing masks.
I was pushing an assumption.
You can see how people can't handle any nuance at all.
You can't say, well, something has some good elements to it, but we shouldn't do it.
Like, nobody can handle...
Well, there's some good parts to that, but overall we shouldn't do it.
Nobody can handle that.
Like peeing or farting through pants.
Yes.
Really? You think you can piss through your pants just as easily as you can piss when you don't have pants?
Like, your arguments were always stupid.
My argument had a bad assumption, That was backed by science.
It just happened to be wrong.
But, you know, some of the people who disagreed with me were not even backed by science.
All right. So that's all for now.
You can't hear the B in subtle, but it's still there.
