Episode 1904 Scott Adams: The Walls Are Closing In On Trump! It's Worse Than Watergate! More!
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Content:
Dilbert today after quitting his job
Dogs can smell human disease & psychological distress
Rob Reiner's standard democrat ploy
Will Trump's base accept his pro-vax stand?
Pancreatic cancer possible cure
Steve Bannon sentenced to 4 months
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Highlight of Civilization.
Some say it's Stonehenge, but no.
It's coffee with Scott Adams, the best thing that'll ever happen to you, and it's happening to you right now.
Think about it. The best thing that will ever happen to you is happening right now.
Wow. That's pretty amazing.
Want to take it up a notch? Yeah, you do.
You do. That's the kind of person you are.
And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice, a canteen jug or a flask of a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid I like.
Coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine here, the day, the thing that makes everything better, it's called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now.
Go. Mmm, yeah.
Yep, yep, yep.
That's some good stuff.
Good stuff.
So, I saw a hashtag on Twitter this morning that's quite active.
The hashtag is, what should Scott Adams be for Halloween?
Now, I think somebody played a prank.
I'm just guessing based on the comments.
So there must be some prank out there that says I'm going to pay $300,000 for the best suggestion for a Halloween outfit.
And apparently when people believe you're going to pay $300,000 for your Halloween outfit suggestion, you get a lot of suggestions.
So just to be clear, I am not offering $300,000 for a Halloween suggestion.
But somebody got away with that prank.
If you see who did that prank, it must be a tweet somewhere.
There's a tweet that I didn't see.
But can you send it to me?
If you can DM me.
I just want to see who did that.
It's pretty funny. Dilbert is at the end of the series in which he...
In which he got passed over for a promotion for being a white male.
And it's based on my own corporate experience.
So the series in Dilbert is loosely based on my actual real life experience.
I was kind of hoping I would get cancelled over this.
Because if I got cancelled over my real-life experience, that would be a good story.
Like, you can't say this.
And then I would say, what do you mean I can't say?
I can't describe what happened to me?
Like, just ordinary things that happened to me in my real life?
I can't put that? But nobody complained.
So I'll tell you what I've done.
Apparently I have...
I've increased the size of the envelope of what's acceptable because I didn't get any pushback for this at all.
But today's series, I had a problem because I had Dilbert quitting because he got passed over for promotion.
And if you're a cartoonist, whatever you do to your characters, when you're done, you have to bring them back to their original situation so that tomorrow can just be a normal comic.
So I had to deal with the fact that Dilbert just quit his job But he can't really quit his job, right?
He's got to come back. So here he is talking to Carol, the admin.
And Carol says, I thought you'd quit.
And Dilbert says, I quote, quiet quit.
I'll keep coming to work and getting paid, but only so I can give fodder for the comic strip I'm starting.
That's my actual experience.
And then she says, you have no art skills whatsoever.
Also, based on my actual experience.
And then Dilber says, true, but being qualified for my job didn't work out either.
Also, directly based on my experience.
So when I went from the thing that I was completely qualified for, which is a banking and then also a telecom job, I didn't do well.
But as soon as I left what I was qualified to do and went where I was completely unqualified, like completely, success.
Based on a true story.
So, did anybody notice I seemed a little grumpy yesterday?
Did anybody pick that up?
Was there any, like, little keys, little signals or anything?
A little bit. So I'll tell you what I did.
So my problem was, and I don't want to be an old man who talks about his health problems, except there's something interesting about this that might have a general value to you, which is, God fucking damn it, what is wrong with my phone?
So I was trying to figure out why...
My energy was at about 25% and was staying there.
And the trouble is that when your energy is low, there are too many things it could be.
So I spent yesterday afternoon with my whiteboard, first writing down all the things it could be, and then using my iPad to look for all the symptoms of each of those things.
And then figuring out which one was most likely.
So here are all the things it could have been.
So these are the things that, and probably the list is much longer, but here are the things that could have been.
It could have been long COVID, it could have been Vax injury, if either of those are actual real things.
It could have been diet, diabetes, blood pressure, meds, heart disease, endocrine problems, old age, arthritis, autoimmune issues, or depression.
Somebody said weed.
That's not on the list because I know what weed feels like.
I know. Weird, huh?
But I actually know what that one feels like.
It doesn't feel like this. So then what I did was I looked at these symptoms for each, and then I started, you know, ranking them for how close they were to the symptoms.
So a number of these I could rule out because of timing.
For example, the arthritis didn't fit because it wasn't joints.
I don't have joint pain.
I have mostly muscular pain.
And old age didn't fit because the symptoms came on quickly.
So there must have been something going on, right?
So I went through the list and I narrowed it down to four possibilities, the most likely possibilities.
One is long COVID. But I think the odds of any one person having long COVID are kind of low.
Wouldn't you think? So I don't know.
The other one is BP beds, which is very likely.
That's a very likely one.
Endocrine issues, which end up looking like other things.
And depression. So when I looked up all the symptoms, which one do you think matched exactly?
Some of you already know the answer.
Which one matched my symptoms exactly?
Depression. Depression.
So, very interesting finding.
Now, here's the thing I learned about depression by being Dr.
Google and just Googling around.
Did you know this?
Did you know that people who are depressed feel, they feel weak, and they feel a lack of energy?
Right? And that's what I was feeling.
I was seriously having trouble walking up and down stairs.
And also, everything hurt.
Like, just everything hurt.
And it turns out that those are the exact symptoms of depression.
Did you know that? But here's the real key.
This might be the Rosetta Stone that kind of opened up the whole possibility here.
The thing that really makes me think that's what it is, I have two extra pieces of information.
Number one, apparently there was a study to see if depressed people were physically weaker What do you think the answer was?
Are depressed people physically weaker?
Most of you say yes.
The answer is ironically, not ironically, but surprisingly, it's the opposite.
Depressed people are a little bit stronger than non-depressed people.
It almost makes sense, because I can see myself feeling depressed and having to pick up an object.
I'd be like, ah, you fucking think...
So I could almost see that being depressed would make you stronger.
But it makes you physically stronger while you feel too weak to walk up the stairs.
Isn't that weird? You're actually stronger But you feel weaker to the point where you can't walk up the stairs.
Now, here's why I was so confused.
Because my symptom was that if I went to the gym, like I went to the gym yesterday, sat in a chair and stared at a wall, and then drove home because it was all I could do.
I actually couldn't get out of the chair and lift anything or sit on anything.
Nothing. And I almost couldn't stay awake on the way to the It was hard driving and staying awake, even though it was the middle of the day.
Somebody says bipolar is two different versions of depression.
We'll get to that in a minute.
So the first clue was that my current ability to lift is the highest it's ever been.
So yesterday I was so low energy I literally couldn't even touch a weight.
But I made it to the gym and I call that a win.
Because as long as my system works, as long as my habit is intact, I'll get back on cycle in a bit.
So my habit is I'm going to the gym.
If I don't want to go to the gym, I go to the gym.
If I do want to go to the gym, I go to the gym.
If I absolutely can't go to the gym, there's just no way I can go to the gym, I go to the gym.
So that's my rule. It doesn't matter how much I can go to the gym, I go to the gym.
Because usually you can do a little bit of a workout.
So yesterday was a day that I really, really couldn't work out.
It just wasn't physically possible.
But I went to the gym.
So to me that's 100%, A +, pat on the back.
Good job. Because that's the person I want to be, right?
Right? The person you want to be is the person who made it to the gym anyway.
And then failed. But, you know, I'm very stubborn about some things.
And if I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail at the gym.
Like, I'm not going to fail before I go to the gym.
If I'm going to fail, I'm going to go all the way to the gym before I fail.
So, that was consistent with depression.
But here was the other clue.
So last night, after an entire day of really, I couldn't do anything after about 11 in the morning.
Like, I could drive somewhere, but that was about it.
Couldn't do anything. Couldn't work.
Couldn't do anything. I had a positive social interaction.
I had a positive social interaction.
And all of my symptoms went away.
Think about that. All of my symptoms went away with one positive social interaction.
Now, I still have one other hypothesis.
I have one other hypothesis, which still could be the blood pressure meds, because I take them once a day at night, And last evening was the longest I'd been without taking it, right?
Because it's an hour before I take it again.
So it's entirely possible that it's just the blood pressure meds.
But the blood pressure meds I don't think would explain everything else.
And then the depression does.
I don't take statins, no.
So I woke up still in a great mood.
I think you can tell, right?
I'm not faking it. I'm actually in a terrific mood right now.
And nothing in my physical condition changed.
Nothing changed. Nothing in my life changed.
Nothing in my diet, meds.
Nothing changed yesterday except one positive social interaction.
And then suddenly, all of my symptoms went away.
I was actually like running around the house last night at 10 o'clock at night, like actually running, you know, just sort of jogging from one room to the other, just doing some stuff I needed to do.
And all of it went away.
Now this morning, I'm pretty stiff, just because I'm always stiff in the morning, so I don't know what today looks like.
But I just want to put this in your heads, that I had no idea what depression was supposed to feel like.
Did you? I didn't know what it was supposed to feel like.
So I had ruled it out because I thought it would be different.
You know, I'd always heard people who had genuine depression and they'd say, trust me, I can't get out of bed.
And I'd say to myself, I don't even understand that.
How can you be alive and, you know, all of your body parts work and you can't get out of bed?
Explain that to me. I don't get that.
And I experienced it.
And what it was was a disconnect between my brain and my, what do you call it, dopamine.
Have you ever felt that?
I could feel the complete disconnect between my brain saying, go do something, it's time to do this thing, and my body didn't have the dopamine which allows you to actually move.
I had no dopamine. So dopamine, if you didn't know this, is what translates your thoughts into motion.
So you can have all the thoughts in the world, but if you have no dopamine, you'll just sit there and look at the wall.
As soon as you have dopamine, you go, oh, you get up and do the thing you were thinking you need to do.
Take iodine. Well, I very much appreciate all your suggestions, but I want you to know that there are too many of them.
There are too many of them. So I've seen, you know, five or six different suggestions.
I probably won't be trying those.
Because I'm not sure if you heard me say, one positive social interaction fixed me.
So we'll see if that plays out.
Anyway. Sometimes it does pay to be your own doctor.
Peter Bergen, writing for CNN, had a headline.
I don't know if he wrote the headline.
But an article that I thought I was not going to appreciate.
He said, America is great again.
And I said to myself, all right, it's Peter Bergen, he's writing for CNN, he says America is great again, which, you know, sounds counterintuitive at the moment.
What kind of dumbass argument is that going to be?
I thought it was going to be Joe Biden made a bunch of good decisions and passed good legislation.
I thought it was just going to be some pro-Democrat thing.
It actually was more interesting than that.
It was quite provocative.
And his argument is that although America, whatever America's problems are, his argument is everybody else is doing worse.
So his argument is that Russia is no longer the superpower.
And that China is in a world of hurt, and while we've got our own issues, we're in much better shape than those two.
So, in his view, and this would be maybe my spin on his view, it looks like we went from a three-superpower world to a one-and-a-half.
Now, that's obviously an exaggeration at this point.
But it does look like maybe the relative ranks changed a little bit.
I don't know. It wasn't a bad opinion.
Not a bad opinion, so I recommend it.
There's a test that shows that dogs can smell stress.
Is there anybody who has a dog who didn't already know that?
Any dog owners?
Every dog owner knows that.
Do you know what one of my biggest problems of working at home with a dog is?
I like to sometimes, you know, curse or just, like, let out a little frustration.
So I'll be a whole, and I think I'm alone, right?
Because you don't think of the dog.
I know. I should.
I'm such a humanist.
I should. I don't think of the dog, and I'll be like, oh, fucking, I'll just go into, like, a screaming, like, yelling rant because, I don't know, my printer is broken or something.
And it doesn't last long.
The whole thing might last five seconds.
But the dog will go run and hide and cower in the far end of the house until I go get her, if I don't notice.
But it turns out exactly like you think.
Dogs can pick out a whole bunch of mood disorders.
They can detect a panic attack before you know you're going to have it.
PTSD and even addictive cravings.
They can pick out addictive cravings and maybe stop you from doing a drug.
Imagine if you were a drug addict and you started getting those cravings and the dog picked it up and just ran over and started giving you a bunch of dog love.
Well, the dog love's pretty good too.
Maybe it would work. Maybe it would distract you.
Anyway, dogs are awesome.
Rob Reiner tweets today, in too many capital letters, with the discovery of stolen, highly classified nuclear secrets, we can now add espionage to Trump's mountain of crimes.
The indictments can't come soon enough, Rob Reiner.
The walls are closing in.
Well, you recognize this play, right?
We're getting closer to elections.
So you knew that the Democrats would say, we have discovered highly damaging documents in these Mar-a-Lago boxes, and we definitely can't tell you what they are because they're secret.
But who? Wow.
Those are so bad. Whoa.
Wow. Boy, is he in trouble.
For what? Well, we can't tell you.
But it has something to do with nuclear things and Iran and China.
That's a pretty big category, isn't it?
Pretty big category.
Now, yeah, so they got him.
Now they got him. I think there are like five different, you know, legal problems Trump has just this week.
But if the past is predictive, He'll be fine.
All right. Jake Tapper was wondering why he said on the air, I have to say I'm surprised that there hasn't been a national conversation about the damage done to kids because of these school closures.
Now, you're probably saying to yourself, whoa, CNN is really moving to the right, like they say.
I don't know. I think that's just Jake Tapper being a dad.
And I don't know if he has kids, but I think he does.
I don't know. Doesn't that just sound like a dad?
I mean, I've heard Jake talk about it on the air.
And when he talks about it, I don't hear any politics.
What I hear is a really pissed off father.
That's what I hear. What do you hear?
When you hear him talking about it, that doesn't sound political to me.
That sounds personal.
Yeah, like human first.
And you know what that reminds me of?
A good Republican political approach.
You ready for this? Here's your persuasion tip of the day.
You're only a Democrat until your kids get involved.
You can afford to be a Democrat until they come for your kids.
Everybody can afford to be a Democrat until they come for the kids.
And then, you're a parent.
You're not a Republican.
You're not a Republican if they come for your kids.
And if you're a Republican, you're not a Republican if they come for your kids.
If they come for your kids, you're a parent.
And you can see that the political frame just dissolves.
As soon as you put the kids in the mix, it just dissolves.
So I think the Republicans have, like, that would be a powerful thing to say.
Because, you know, we're trying to heal the country, find any way that we can come together.
And I think that if you say, when the kids are involved, you're not a Democrat and you're not a Republican anymore.
Let's work together on that.
How about that? Right?
Because I do think you could actually say directly, when the kids are involved, you're no longer, it's not politics anymore.
I think that would work.
I have a real question about whether Trump can win re-election because the anti-vax people in the Republican Party are so many.
How are they going to forgive him?
Now, everybody who commented on it so far said they would.
So, on Twitter, I think every comment I saw, every one, said, well, I hate that he's a little too, you know, pro-vaxy, even though he's not pro-mandate.
He's not pro-mandate.
So people were giving him the out.
They were saying, he's not pro-mandate, so we're okay.
And here's the reason I doubt that.
Because you didn't give me that out.
Where were all the people saying to me, Scott, you were never pro-mandate, so therefore whatever decision you made, that's just your own decision.
No, nobody gave me that break, did they?
And you watched it. You watched how brutal people were with me, and I was always against mandates, very clearly against mandates.
Now, are you really going to give Trump a break on that, and you didn't give me a break on that?
Really? I'm skeptical.
I'm skeptical. I suspect that a number of anti-vaccination people are going to say, that's my single issue.
I can't do with that.
I think people are going to be mad that he didn't fire Fauci.
People are going to be mad that, on his watch, the pharma companies did something that many will claim they don't like.
So let me ask you this.
Is there anybody watching here who will not vote for Trump, let's say a Trump supporter, so this is only for people who were Trump supporters otherwise.
Is there anybody who will not vote for Trump who is Republican because of the vaccinations and whatever you want to say about the vaccinations?
Is there anybody who won't?
Anybody? Everybody's saying no, and I think that means no, you don't mind.
I've seen one yes.
Okay. So, basically, you all forgive him for rolling out the vaccination that you believe is harming the country.
This is really surprising.
I'm not sure I believe you, honestly.
Huh.
You forgive me too?
You don't have anything to forgive me for.
Whoever it is that said you forgive me too, why are you forgiving me?
What did I do wrong?
I didn't do anything wrong.
There were people who misinterpreted me, but I don't think that was on me.
Alright. There's a potential cure for pancreatic cancer.
Apparently engineers at Duke University have some way to inject some radioactive substance that they'll inject the radioactive substance that apparently is coated by something that protects it and it just emits its radiation directly into the tumor and apparently it just kills tumors.
It just whacks them.
And the researchers said there's nothing else that's ever done this.
Nothing's ever been in this category of effectiveness.
So it's a long way from being available.
They tested mice, now they have to do it in bigger animals and then maybe humans.
But I like to bring up these potential cures.
Pancreatic cancer. That's the one that got Steve Jobs.
That's a big one. So maybe, maybe.
Did all of you see the, you have to see this by the way, the video of the China CCP summit and it's a big auditorium and all of the officials with their dark suits are sitting there and President Xi and as everybody sits there quietly The bodyguards of President Xi come in and they take away the prior president,
the one that Xi replaced, who was sitting right next to Xi, and they had to forcibly, physically move this 79-year-old out, while there didn't seem to be any explanation of why.
It looked like just a power play.
Some kind of a... He was just making a point.
She was. But, oh my God, was it scary looking.
And does anybody remember the old videos of Saddam?
Do you remember the Saddam?
It looked exactly like that.
When Saddam took over, they had, you know, a big meeting of all the government people, and then Saddam read the names of people who were going to be taken out of the room and shot.
And then one by one, while everybody sat there scared to death, you know, the guards would take out one person at a time and kill them while they all sat there waiting to see if they were next.
And apparently the ex-president has been scrubbed from social media already.
You can't even search for him.
Now, I saw one attempt at trying to explain it away.
To explain it as not a political move.
And it wasn't a bad explanation.
And the explanation was he's 79 years old and he wasn't feeling well, but he wasn't willing to leave because he probably didn't want to leave an empty seat there and it would be embarrassing and everything.
So it's entirely possible that President Xi was doing him a favor.
And, you know, saying, no, you're really sick.
You need to, you know, go lay down.
Maybe. I mean, if you saw it, you could actually interpret it either way.
He definitely didn't want to leave, but you could imagine somebody who was sick, but it's like the biggest day.
You know, he wouldn't want to leave on his own.
So you could see that they maybe have to, you know, guide him out of there for his own good.
Maybe. It's possible.
It didn't look like it.
It looked political.
It completely looked political.
But who knows? We might be surprised.
Yeezy is saying again that he's building a yeeco system, a mini-city.
That will be themed, sort of a Yeezy themed mini city that would be well designed.
And apparently it's pretty far along in the planning of it.
I've told you before that this is the biggest industry you don't see coming.
It's building entire small cities from scratch Based on everything we know and can do with modern living and modern technology, and you make it green, but you make it more livable.
So design and living are the two things that haven't been brought together except for furniture and paint.
Usually when you talk about design, it's just your interior decorating.
But what we don't design as well is the lifestyle.
And the green part, and how do you get around, and all that stuff.
So if Yee fixes all that, and I think that he might be one model, because I plan to build my own mini-city.
I've told you that, right?
My longest-term plan is to build a mini-city, and frickin' Yee beat me to it.
Of course, he's probably funding himself, so that makes it easier.
But I think that that will be one of the biggest industries of the next 100 years.
Building all new towns that are just amazing to live in and low cost and healthy and all that stuff.
Very different from the current situation.
So, did we talk about this?
Steve Bannon got sentenced to four months.
I think it's actually two, two-month sentence he could serve concurrently or something, maybe.
A lot of smart people think it'll get overturned on appeal.
I feel like it will.
Don't you? It's hard for me to believe that Steve Bannon will really go to jail.
It just doesn't feel real.
Yeah, because of Eric Holder, etc.
So there's a precedent.
I feel like it's going to get overturned, but we'll see.
So, by election day, they could have, let's see, Trump in jail, Steve Bannon in jail, and pretty much everybody else neutered.
So, I figure they'll come for me next.
Coming for me next.
All right. I don't have anything else to talk about, but I do have some other things to do today.
And I'm all stuffed up, as you can tell, so I feel uncomfortable talking right now.
