Episode 2075 Scott Adams: Twitter Becomes X, Incels Go Wild, China Evidently Owns Biden Admin
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Twitter becomes X
Germany's third-largest mistake (nuclear closings)
China and Mexican cartels own Biden
Incels go wild
Massive carbon capture project
Is racism getting worse?
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Oh, yeah.
Ah, The Wizard of Oz.
Oh, I get it, Craig.
Nice.
Craig on YouTube just called me The Wizard of Oz.
Ah.
Very good.
The Wizard of Oz.
All right, I give you credit for that one.
Well, let's jump into the amazing, amazing content of this show.
Where do we begin?
How about this is the category I call nothing is safe.
Nothing is safe.
The FBI has warned that if you use a public charging station at an airport, for example, That there's something called juice jacking, where bad actors can put malware on the cables and grab your passwords from your phone.
Can you believe that?
You can't even charge your phone on a public charging station without them trying to steal your data.
That's dirty juice.
Yeah, that's dirty juice.
So that's just in the category of everything you think is safe is probably not.
CNN is reporting on Elon Musk's antics.
Apparently, Elon Musk is up to some antics.
What kind of antics, you ask?
Well, there was the time he changed the Twitter flag on the building.
This was all just this week.
He changed the Twitter flag from Twitter to Titter.
Got rid of the W. San Francisco said, you've got to put that W back.
So he put it back in very light letters, so it still said Titter, but you could tell it was Twitter.
Then he changed his name.
He changed his username on Twitter to Harry Balls.
Harry Balls.
B-O-L-Z.
Then he made some off-color sophomoric jokes on Twitter.
And what else?
He had more antics.
Oh, he changed... The BBC and NPR are now called state-funded entities.
They used to be state-affiliated media, but now they're just state-funded.
So he's making a distinction between affiliated, which kind of means you have to do what they say, versus funded, where NPR and BBC probably have some independence.
Yeah, virtual independence.
So, that's part of his antics.
Let's see what else is in his antics.
He also recently said that the S in ESG stands for satanic.
The S in ESG stands for satanic.
And of course, he also said some things about Soros.
He thought that what was driving Soros, this was in response to something I was saying about Soros on Twitter.
And Elon said he thought that the Soroses were driven by pseudo-intellectual ivory tower ideas.
In other words, ideas that sounded good, but maybe they don't work out in the real world.
So, all of that happened.
And then Elon Musk drives all of those headlines out by changing the name of Twitter to X. Did you know that happened today?
There's no more Twitter.
Twitter doesn't exist.
The company is called X now.
Now X, now I don't know if the branding and stuff on the site itself will change right away.
That could be why he was changing the bird to a dog.
You all saw that the Twitter bird was turning into a dog there for a while.
Probably just testing the water a little bit.
But it appears that all of the complaints about Musk's antics, and by the way, the best part about this story that I just read from CNN, is that none of the antics involved me.
Did anybody notice the lack of me in this story?
I know it's unusual.
I'm usually in all of my stories.
But this time it had nothing to do with him supporting my racist rants, as the news likes to misreport.
So apparently the Overton window has pushed me out of that story.
So the good news is, That Musk had so many antics that the one antic that they've been talking about for two weeks, which is me, they got rid of that antic.
They had enough antics now.
Plenty of antics.
We don't need to add one.
So that's good.
Good for me.
But X is the company that Musk has long talked about that would do more than Twitter.
In other words, it would Uh, it would take payments, for example, allow you to give and take payments.
Maybe, I assume it's gonna allow you to commercialize your work.
I assume it's going to compete with Locals and Rumble and everybody else.
Because it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't compete with the TikToks and the Instagram Reels.
Because Reels are the most important, like, you know, the catchiest thing in social media.
So I would assume you'd have more videos.
I would assume someday you'll be able to tip and pay creators and it will be a better creator.
Place, I would imagine.
In the short run, I was a little concerned this morning, but I don't know, this is an unconfirmed rumor, okay?
Every morning I tweet the link to this livestream, and this morning Twitter wouldn't let me tweet it.
Now, it gave me an error.
Before it successfully posted it.
But twice it gave me an error when I tried to include a link, which I do every day.
And when I tried it without the link, it went through without the error.
So somebody said they have to pay for those links now, but I don't think that's true.
I haven't seen that.
So I'm only putting that out there as a possible thing that might be changing, because we know that Twitter is suppressing links to competing services, such as Substack.
That's why Matt Tybee was abandoning Twitter, apparently.
So it could be that Twitter is going to war with the other sites.
Which would be interesting, but it would be hard to navigate for people like me.
I'd have to stay on my toes.
All right, well here's a story that's a sign of the times.
CNN headline, it says, losing weight might be bad for older people.
What do you think of that headline?
Headline on CNN, losing weight might be bad for older people.
Do you catch the word bad might there?
Might?
Do you know what the other possibility is?
There's a correlation between losing weight and dying.
So do you know what the other correlation, causation might be?
That people who are dying lose weight?
Or is it that losing weight makes you die?
What do you think is more obviously true?
That dying makes you lose weight?
Or that losing weight and going from obese to a healthy weight is likely to kill you?
Which of those two things do you think is more likely?
Now, the study, of course, considered this possibility, so they removed from their data people who had been hospitalized.
Now, that seems fair, because if you're hospitalized, you often lose weight before you die.
But what about the people who were never hospitalized?
What about the people who were just losing weight and they didn't know why?
Or, how about people who were hospitalized and then were released into hospice?
Are people in hospice counted?
Because they're still losing weight.
I just assume the data's bad.
So here are two signs of the times.
Number one, a study that confuses causation and correlation.
That's 2023, peak 2023.
And then the second part of it that's a sign of the times is having confused the causation They lead with the performance headline.
Now, performance headline is that there's fat positivity and everybody's equal and gaining weight isn't so bad for you after all.
Depending on the study you look at, they actually had to support being overweight in a sort of weird, indirect, vague way in their headline.
Because they couldn't bring themselves to say that losing weight might be good for you.
That's just too hard.
Sign of the times.
Well, remote work, as you know, people working at home, was very popular during the pandemic, of course.
And then I reported recently, based on other people's reports, that Companies were, you know, reducing that.
And there was a lot less remote working.
But I just saw the best argument for remote work I've ever seen.
So there's another mass shooting at a bank.
And one of the people who witnessed the mass shooting was calling in on Zoom.
So there was somebody who should have been in the office and would have been shot.
But instead they were attending the meeting on Zoom.
And actually watched the massacre on Zoom while they were working at home, isn't it?
I've been saying for a long time that the worst possible future is one that's coming.
Which is, humans will be hesitant to go wherever there are a lot of other people.
Because something bad might happen.
That's one of the reasons I don't want to work in a skyscraper.
After 9-11, I thought to myself, you know what?
Why would I want to work in a place which is an obvious first target?
You know, because you want where there's a lot of people and there's a big splashy explosion and stuff.
So I've already decided I don't want to go to sporting events.
Sporting events seem like the most dangerous, like an outdoor sporting event in the age of drones.
Don't make me fill in the blanks.
In the age of drones, going to a stadium event outdoors, I don't think I'm ever going to do it.
I think I'm done with that.
Concerts, yeah.
Because the odds of one of them being attacked by some kind of a drone attack, it's 100%.
You just don't know when and how often.
But it's 100%.
There's no way that's not going to happen.
All right.
So what do we know about this 25-year-old bank employee?
I don't like to give too much attention to the mass shootings, so I'll just kind of use it to segue into another topic.
There seems to be some kind of an incel problem, meaning young men who have no purpose, and they're depressed, and they have no social life, and they have nothing to live for.
The problem is that they're men.
And when men have nothing to live for, they can often be dangerous.
Because it just makes them feel alive for five minutes before they die.
So yeah, some of it is mental health.
And some of it is probably psychiatric drugs.
And some of it is hopelessness.
And I think it's Scott Galloway who's been warning about this for a long time.
And How many of you remember that I predicted the number of mass shootings would skyrocket?
Does anybody remember me saying that two years ago?
Yeah, about two years ago?
I can't remember.
I predicted it would skyrocket.
And the reason I predicted it was the trend in men not being able to mate.
Because the whole mating situation and dating situation has turned into the top 20% having a good time.
In other words, people who are having a lot of sex are devaluing their, let's say, their mating potential by having too many encounters.
This would be, of course, subjective, but that's what we're talking about.
While the 80% of men are finding it difficult to find anybody who wants to spend time with them.
Now there's no way that doesn't lead to massive uptick in mass shootings.
If you had the, you know, the video games and the movies, if you had the news coverage reminding everybody about it.
Now, question.
Would you support a federal law that says that the national news cannot report on a mass shooting?
But it can report it as a statistic, but not details.
Now, you'd still allow the local news to report on it, and then, of course, anybody could tweet it.
But suppose you said, if you're national news, you know, you're ABC, CNN, Fox News, you can mention it as a statistic, but you can't mention any details.
But, The local news could fully cover it, no restrictions.
And you could tweet it.
So if you wanted to, as an individual, do anything you want.
You can tweet it anywhere you want.
But as a federal level, you can't talk about it.
I see more no's than yes's.
And I think that's a free speech thing, right?
Everybody's like, Free speech.
But I would argue, let me give my best argument for it, okay?
I'm not convinced of this myself, but I'm going to give the best argument for it.
It's exactly like yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
It's exactly that.
It's not similar to it.
It's exactly that.
It's exactly, exactly that.
Right?
Now usually, usually I mock people for using analogies and arguments.
But the one time that you can use it is when it's exactly.
It's exactly that.
It's stuff you say that guarantees people get hurt.
It guarantees it.
So that's the difference.
If you yell fire in a theater that doesn't have a fire, or even one that does, I suppose, you're guaranteeing people get hurt.
Right?
That's a guarantee.
They might not die, but people are going to get hurt.
And that's on you.
So that's why it's illegal.
If you keep reporting and You know, glorifying, in a way, kind of glorifying these shootings, it's guaranteed to make more of them.
Guaranteed.
It's guaranteed.
And it's fairly immediate.
In other words, within the same year.
I don't believe that a mass shooting that happened 10 years ago has much impact on a mass shooting decision today.
Would you agree?
Would you agree that something that happened 10 years ago probably is not influencing a 15 year old today?
But something that happened 6 months ago, if it happened 6 months ago, yeah.
That's when that teen was 14 and got the idea.
Now they're 15.
Yeah.
Columbine was 24 years ago.
So that's my strongest argument of which I'm not convinced myself.
I'm just giving you the strong case.
Now the strong case in the other direction is free speech.
And that could be the end of your argument if you want.
If you want to say that's the end of the argument, I would respect that argument.
Total respect.
Because free speech has got to be the thing that you're, if you're going to overreact on something, I would prefer overreacting in favor of freedom, not overreacting in favor of censorship.
So if it's a gray area of should you favor free speech over some functional benefit, I would usually favor free speech, but Yelling fire in a crowded theater, I'd probably make an exception.
All right.
Now, is it true that platforms already restrict free speech massively?
They do, right?
The reasons that social media restricts free speech are they think that they're damaging levels, let's say hatred, or encouraging somebody to hurt somebody.
Don't you think that coverage of these mass shooting events encourages people to hurt people?
I do.
To me that's directly encouraging people to do it.
Because everything that you pump into people's heads becomes part of their operating system.
And that's what they're pumping into their heads.
All right, well enough on that.
So Germany made the third biggest mistake in its history.
By shutting down his final three nuclear power plants and has no, apparently no plans to have additional nuclear energy.
Now, is it my imagination, or can Germany be characterized in the following way?
On the little stuff, they're really good.
Yeah, getting the little stuff right?
Tell you, the Germans, they really, really get the little stuff right.
But on the big stuff, on the big stuff, such as Holocaust, World War I, and closing all of their nuclear energy plants.
I'm just saying that on the big stuff, not such a good record.
Not such a good record.
But on the little stuff, the day-to-day stuff, Germans are excellent.
So we'll see what happens as Germany makes itself more and more vulnerable to Russia.
Oh, here's a factoid I heard about Ukraine that I was not aware of.
This was on the Conocoa, the great Twitter feed.
And Musk waited on this, saying that people were not aware of this.
But did you know That prior to the war, there was a time that Zelensky himself disagreed with the Ukrainian law that was going to make Ukrainian language the only language of Ukraine.
Where it turns out that the regions that Russia has now occupied are mostly Russian-speaking and it would have been deeply discriminatory toward people who had lived there forever and spoke Russian.
And didn't need to change their language just because some government changed and suddenly said that they should.
And even Zelensky was against forcing the Russian speakers to speak Ukrainian.
So, when you see that Putin was acting like the protector of all Russian-speaking people, there was something to that.
That doesn't mean it's the only reason he did what he did.
But there was something to that, and we don't hear that side of the story so much.
Yeah.
And now remember what, and there's some reporting that Putin was just waiting for a wink from Trump to do what he already did, which is take control of parts of Ukraine.
But apparently Trump never gave him a wink.
But it's still being reported as if somehow it's Trump's fault for not giving him a wink.
That's reaching pretty far.
You're reaching pretty far to make that Trump's fault.
Another way to say it would be Putin didn't invade under Trump because Trump had a credible threat against him.
Seems obvious.
All right.
What else is going on?
I asked this question because I was curious about all the myocarditis.
And of course the big argument is, is it from the shots?
Is it from the COVID?
Apparently both the shots and the COVID could cause some myocarditis.
Now that we know, right?
Would you say that's the only thing we agree on?
That some amount of myocarditis and some amount of it came from the shot itself.
That's a confirmed known thing.
And some amount of it came from the COVID.
But there might also be some amount of it that came from obesity or lifestyle changes or I don't know what else, whatever else.
But here's my question that I'm trying to add to the conversation.
Do you think that we checked for myocarditis as thoroughly as we might now because it's a hot topic?
And so I looked up what are the symptoms of myocarditis and just for the benefit of the NPCs, would those of you who are players mind if I take a moment just to speak to the NPCs?
I'm going to read you a list of symptoms for myocarditis, and then I'm going to ask you if doctors would have routinely checked for myocarditis if they saw these symptoms.
Some of these are really obviously heart-related.
You don't have to tell me that if a patient comes in with a clearly heart-related problem, that they would have checked their heart.
Because I do believe that if you come in and say, my heart hurts, They will check your heart.
You don't need to tell me that.
Can I beg you?
Don't tell me that after I tell you the symptoms.
But, some of the symptoms are clearly heart-related, and always I think any doctor would have checked.
And in fact, doctors confirmed that when I asked that on Twitter.
But, here are some of the less obvious symptoms of myocarditis.
Body aches, joint pain, Fever?
Headaches?
Vomiting?
Diarrhea?
Or a sore throat?
Now, if you went to your doctor and you said you had any one of those things, how often would they have tested you for myocarditis?
I'm guessing zero times.
Now, maybe there'd be some, you know, cardiac doctor who's, you know, really alert and said, no, let's just check.
But my guess is, That you're getting checked for myocarditis more often than you would have before the pandemic.
What do you think of that?
Do you think that the less obvious symptoms for myocarditis, as opposed to the obvious ones like heart palpitations, right?
If you come in with, here's some of the other ones, shortness of breath, Rapid or abnormal heart rhythms.
I mean, obviously they're gonna check your cardio situation for that, right?
But here's another one, fatigue.
If your only symptoms were fatigue, and you found it hard to walk up the steps for a while, do you think your doctor would say, ah, fatigue, that's myocarditis, or at least we should check for it?
Well, let me tell you this.
I've complained to my doctor about fatigue more than once over the course of my life.
How many times did I get checked for myocarditis?
None.
None.
Right?
Now, age is a factor, but remember that myocarditis is allegedly happening in younger people.
So it shouldn't matter the age after the pandemic.
But to your point, it could be that before the pandemic, they would never check a young person's heart unless they actually said, my heart is beating fast.
Right?
If you point out your heart is the problem, yeah, they're going to check it.
But I think if you're 25 and you said, I'm fatigued, They'd check everything except your heart, probably.
Just wouldn't seem obvious.
Yeah, he thought I was a hypochondriac.
Maybe.
Well, there are a lot of reasons for fatigue.
That's all I'm saying.
I've told you my new hypothesis about working assumptions.
I think we have to say at this point, when we see the Biden administration trying to use TikTok influencers at the same time, there's this presumed legislation to ban TikTok, which turns out to have nothing to do with TikTok.
Direct Zoom, other than China, owns the Democrats.
Or probably the Republicans as well.
I think you have to assume that China got to our government.
There's no way that they would ignore this risk unless... So it's my working assumptions.
Now the alternative explanation is that they find too much value in TikTok as a campaign tool.
And that would be supported by the evidence as well.
However, explain fentanyl.
If TikTok were the only issue, I'd say, you know, if I had to look at the two explanations, China bribed their government, which seems, you know, sort of extraordinary.
So, you know, not the most likely thing.
But I'm comparing that to the other thing, which is, well, they just like TikTok for campaigning.
It helps them get elected.
I would have said that getting elected is the obvious one, right?
Oh, it just helps them get elected.
So of course they want it.
However, The context is that they also are ignoring fentanyl.
And fentanyl doesn't help anybody get elected, does it?
There's no Democrat who had a better chance of getting elected because fentanyl was killing people.
So both of those, those are twin China-related topics that seem to go the same way despite having nothing in common.
And that suggests that China actually just owns our government.
Because those are the two biggest problems I see right now, or two of the biggest problems, and we're not doing anything about them.
We're just ignoring both of them.
There's no way that's natural.
My working assumption is that China owns the Biden administration.
It might not be true, but I would be disappointed in any reporter who acted like it wasn't the base assumption.
So here's how I would ask the question to the Obama administration.
Not Obama.
The Biden administration.
Sorry.
Freudian slip.
I would say this.
Given your stand on doing nothing about fentanyl that looks useful, doing nothing that looks useful about TikTok, our operating assumption is that the Chinese government has bought you off.
Can you give us any evidence that that's not the case?
Now you can't prove a negative.
But I would make them do it anyway.
Because the operating assumption is that they are bought off.
And I think the reporters should just embrace that frame.
Max, what are you doing?
Mexico's president wrote a letter last week and sent it to Xi, pleading him to tell him the companies, the ports, the ships, etc.
for fentanyl imports into Mexico.
So is the Mexican president asking China to stop sending fentanyl?
Is that what happened?
Pleading him to tell him the companies, the ports, oh, telling him who they're importing the fentanyl into so that Mexico can stop it.
Now that's interesting.
I'm just reading a highly funded super chat here on YouTube.
China said they don't produce it.
Oh, okay.
So China says they're not producing it.
Do you know how they get away with that lie?
Here's how they do it.
We say to China, hey, you're producing those precursors for fentanyl.
And they say, no we're not.
We changed it by one molecule.
So we're not doing that at all.
Then we say, but it's the same thing.
It's exactly the same thing.
And then China says, no, it's a different chemical.
You never even mentioned this chemical.
This has never even been discussed.
And then we ask them to ban the new chemical.
And so they do.
And then they add one molecule.
And then now it's a new chemical.
And then they say, yeah, we banned everything you told us to ban.
Every time you ask us to ban something, we ban it.
What more could we do?
All right, so that's the game that China is playing.
I do believe that there may be some Mexico-China disconnect where the president of Mexico is not so sure what's coming in and what isn't and where.
That might be true.
And it could be that the president of Mexico is just pretending to act like he's going to change something.
Because the cartels probably own the government.
We assume the cartels have control over the Mexican government.
And I extend that operating assumption to our government.
I don't believe that we have an independent government anymore.
That's my operating assumption.
Because they don't act like it.
If they acted like an independent government, then I would give them the benefit of the doubt.
But if you don't even act like you're independent, the burden of proof has to go back on you.
The burden of proof is not on me anymore.
If you act like you're bought, the burden of proof is on you.
And I would make Biden defend that every day.
I would make him defend it every day.
All right.
And I think at this point, literally everyone knows that the legislation to ban TikTok is fake.
Do you think there's anybody who doesn't know that at this point?
Well, the people who pay attention.
The people who pay attention to the news They all know that legislation is fake and we don't do anything about it.
Mexican cartels have a new source?
That's possible.
They may have a new source.
If you were the Mexican cartels wouldn't you try to get new sources or try to make it yourself or something?
I wonder if there's any limitation to the Maybe El Salvador.
You never know.
All right.
So I've been telling you that there's literally no good argument for keeping TikTok, which is the weird thing about it.
Typically, you have good arguments on both sides, or if something's a stalemate, at least people have different priorities, and that's why their arguments are different.
But in this case, I kept telling you, there is no argument.
For keeping TikTok.
There just isn't one.
It doesn't exist.
But I saw one, an attempted argument, by Catherine Mangu Ward, who's editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine.
Now, if you're familiar with Reason, they're neither left nor right.
And they try to do exactly what the name says, which is attack ideas based on evidence and reason.
So here's the editor of Reason arguing the best argument for keeping TikTok.
It goes like this.
First you compare it to Facebook and say Facebook also takes personal information and we're not doing anything about Facebook.
Okay, that's a terrible argument.
Facebook is American.
TikTok is Chinese.
Alright.
If you can't make that distinction... I mean, is that the end of the debate?
If somebody made that point, would you listen to anything else they said?
If they compared an American company to a Chinese-owned company?
Both of them having influence over American minds.
Like, that's just the same.
No, those are not the same.
That's the analogy problem.
As soon as you make an analogy, you have departed what?
Reason.
You've departed reason.
Now I get if it was a precedent.
If it were a precedent, then that would make sense.
But we're not talking about a precedent, we're talking about two different things.
An American company versus a Chinese company.
You can't compare them.
Here's the next point.
There's no evidence that TikTok ever used a PSYOP, and we don't close companies over hypothetical issues.
What about that point?
TikTok is being blamed as something that they've never done, or there's no evidence, no evidence they've ever done.
And we don't close companies just because they could do something evil, but they have not.
What about that argument?
All right, let me extend this argument.
You should get rid of the military, because China has never attacked the United States.
It's only hypothetical.
You should get rid of Homeland Security, because everything they work on is hypothetical.
Somebody might do this, they might do this, we better get ready.
So we should get rid of our police, because the police are there for the next crime, not the last one.
The police are there for the crime that hasn't happened yet.
Right?
I mean, they take care of the current ones, but mostly it's for the future.
So let's get rid of all the Homeland Security, let's get rid of all the military, let's get rid of all the police.
Because those are only hypothetical problems, right?
They're taking care of things that might happen but haven't.
Now, the argument that you should allow China to have a mind-control weapon aimed at the head of the United States, and it's okay because they haven't pulled the trigger yet?
Maybe we should get rid of our nuclear arsenal because nobody's ever attacked us with nuclear weapons.
Have they?
They've never attacked us with nuclear weapons, so we don't need any.
It's a hypothetical.
Why would you deal with it as a hypothetical?
Alright, so here's the problem.
It's the analogy problem again.
So, Catherine has made an analogy of an American company with an adversarial company.
That's the wrong comparison.
If you compare the wrong things, you'll always get the wrong answer.
No, do not compare TikTok to an American company.
Because you know what Zuckerberg is not trying to do?
Here's what Zuckerberg's not trying to do.
Destroy America.
Now, you could argue that you don't like what he's doing in a variety of ways, but he's not trying to destroy America.
That's not happening.
Now, of course, you can't be 100% sure of anything, I know.
I get it.
I get it.
You can't be 100% sure.
But if you're playing the odds, are you going to bet on Zuckerberg protecting America or President Xi?
Which one's more likely?
To want to protect America.
All right.
It's sort of an easy question.
So that's the best argument for keeping TikTok is to compare it to the wrong things.
That's the best argument.
Compare it to the wrong things.
All right.
Well, Whole Foods is closing one of their stores on Market Street in San Francisco because the environment is too unsafe.
If you're not familiar with San Francisco, let me explain what Marquez Street is in San Francisco.
It's Main Street.
It's the primary busy street.
Marquez Street of San Francisco is too dangerous for Whole Foods.
And they're talking about the stuff that's going on outside and they're trying to use their bathrooms.
I mean, why would you live In a city.
Living in a city doesn't make any sense anymore.
It's just crazy.
All right.
Let's talk about these incels some more.
I don't think I was done with that.
What do we do with the fact that there are more and more incels and they're going to be more and more dangerous?
Is there anything you can do about that?
Now I would say that social media makes it worse, wouldn't you?
And that dating apps make it worse.
Could you imagine a time when dating apps are illegal?
I can't.
I can't imagine dating apps will ever be illegal, but it would fix a lot, wouldn't it?
I mean, it would make some things a lot worse, but it would fix a lot too.
We do have a civilization where ordinary people can't meet ordinary people and fall in love and get married.
It just doesn't work anymore.
The economics don't work, the social part doesn't work, the expectations, the whole model of relationships don't work anymore.
Now they do work for some few people who are perfectly in tune, but it's the exception.
Vlad asked me, do Americans realize the Cold War is on again, this time with China?
I think so.
Doesn't everybody understand that there's a Cold War with China?
I think we all understand that.
Yeah, it's opium war too, and all that stuff.
All right, well, I don't have an answer about what to do with the incels, but it could be the biggest problem.
And usually, I think wars are what takes care of incels.
The other thing is hard work.
I feel as though if you take somebody who doesn't have meaning in life, and they have to do hard physical labor to stay alive, such as farming, I think they're happier.
What do you think?
I think that having a physical mission, to go physically make your money and physically improve things, I believe that would make incels more valuable to even people who'd want to be with them.
And I think that they need to do something.
If the incels simply did something useful, that other people could see as useful, then they would probably attract people.
But maybe you just need to teach people how to be worthy of getting married.
You know, I spend a lot of time, probably because the algorithm is feeding me this stuff, but I'm seeing all kinds of messaging from social media that from the perspective of women, men are not such a good deal anymore.
But from the perspective of men, women are not a good deal at all anymore.
Except for sex.
And that feeling seems to be growing and widespread already.
Are you aware of that?
So when I was in my 20s, my view of the world was that there were plenty of women.
They just didn't like me.
But there were plenty of them.
And if I worked in an environment where there were women, I usually did fine.
And if I found myself, for whatever reason, in environments where there were not a lot of women, then I didn't do fine.
But as long as I was around a lot of people, I did fine.
There was always somebody who would be willing to spend time with me.
So, some of it is that we don't put people in mixed groups anymore where they can just naturally meet and get attracted to people.
And we also have a lot of people... That's a funny comment.
Alright.
Sounds like a coastal issue.
Might be.
That's where the biggest populations are.
Yes, indeed.
Oh, just going back to that TikTok, the hypothetical PSYOP.
Is it hypothetical that TikTok is causing young people to remove their genitals?
That's not theoretical.
Is that hypothetical?
That seems to be obviously happening.
To me, that's observable.
Because there's a huge increase in trans, and that's almost entirely from media, and the most dominant media for that age range is TikTok.
It's almost certainly the reason, or one of the biggest reasons.
So, you don't have to wonder.
Now, I don't think it was necessarily intentional, but let me tell you what was intentional.
What was intentional Is that China knows not to allow TikTok in their own country because of things like this.
So it doesn't mean that they did that specific thing.
It just means that they knew that an open channel like this would cause this kind of effect and they didn't want to have it on their own kids.
So obviously they knew.
Maybe just not the specifics.
All right.
There's an enormous carbon capture project.
I have a nerdish interest in this.
So the problem with carbon capture, which would allow you to pump oil and do stuff as long as you were capturing as much as you were putting out, it wouldn't affect the climate if you were recapturing as much as you were creating.
So that was the prize.
But the economics of it are terrible.
It's nearly impossible to get a machine that's efficient enough To suck up enough CO2 that it could possibly make any sense economically.
However, like everything else, it just keeps improving.
There was a time when you couldn't have an automobile with a battery, because the batteries wouldn't last long enough.
But now they do.
So carbon capture is going to go that way.
But already, Occidental Petroleum, their plan is to do so much carbon capture as a company, and somehow make money on it, that they can pump as much oil as they want in the future, and they'll still be carbon neutral overall.
Now the way they plan to make money on capturing carbon, you're going to hate this.
Oh, you're really going to hate this.
The way they're going to make money is not just turning some of it into products, which you can do on a small scale, but they're going to sell carbon offsets, carbon credits.
That's right.
The way they're going to make money is from basically the government.
I don't want to see people doing massive projects that depend entirely upon the law to make money.
Because if the law did not allow these carbon credits, they wouldn't exist.
And so they're building something just to take advantage of that law.
That will be their profit.
And that's just like, ugh!
That's so creepy to me.
That that's the way they're going to make money.
The only way I want to see somebody make money is by making stuff that people want to buy.
Anything that's not pure free market is going to be a problem.
Somewhere.
Somewhere it's going to be a problem.
I don't doubt that it works.
You know, it might actually lower carbon in the atmosphere, but it seems like it's got some problems.
However, the good news is that at least Occidental feels that they can scale this up to their first plant that's coming online, and they're going to blow most of the CO2 into the ground and capture it underground.
They can get rid of 110,000 cars worth of carbon.
And they plan to build 35 of these.
So 35 times 110,000 cars.
And that's just one company.
So if one company could remove, let's say, the carbon of, I don't know, half a million or a million cars, that begins to be important.
Right?
A million cars out of how many?
40 million or something?
How many cars in the United States?
There's more cars than people, probably.
100 million?
We make 14 million cars per year, but we also retire cars.
Yeah.
So, by itself, it's not big enough to, you know, change the world.
But it does suggest that maybe carbon capture will become a bigger thing.
And they might just get better at it and better at it over time.
290 million cars.
It's going to take a while to put a dent in it at 1%.
But all it's going to take is for it to make money.
If it's profitable, there's going to be more of it.
All right.
Do you think racism is getting worse in the United States?
Newsweek had a piece on this.
And there's a good article by Wilfred Reilly, Assistant Professor of Poli Sci at Kentucky State University.
And so here's the weird thing that's happening with race.
So here's some Pew Research data.
8 in 10 black Americans say they have personally experienced discrimination because of their race.
Does that sound right?
Do you believe that 8 in 10 black people have experienced discrimination?
Of course they have.
Of course they have.
People say no.
Are you serious?
You think black people don't routinely experience racism?
There's some people actually saying that.
They don't believe that they actually experience racism.
Of course they did.
8 out of 10 doesn't surprise me a bit.
All right, here's the next question.
If you ask the question not of black people, but of white men, how many white men in America would say that they personally have experienced discrimination?
How many white men?
It would be 100%.
Yeah, it would be 100%.
No, it would be 100%.
It would be 100%.
No, it would be 100%.
It would be 10 out of 10.
Just saying.
Now, here's the second question, which I think is more important.
How many black people would say, according to the poll, that discrimination is the main reason black people cannot get ahead? 68%.
So two-thirds of black people in this survey, Pew Research, said that discrimination is the main reason that black people can't get ahead.
Now I assume that includes systemic racism.
So here's a thought experiment.
There are two groups of people, and let's say they're the same ethnicity, and they're the same intelligence, and they're the same, they're basically the same.
Just two groups of white people, let's say.
And you say to one group of them, you're being massively discriminated against, and so it will be really, really hard for you to succeed in this world because of all the discrimination against you.
And then you tell the other group, you're the kings of the world.
There are lots of problems in this world, but you will just breeze through them, because you can do anything.
Which group is going to do better?
The group that are told they can't succeed because discrimination is holding them back, or the group that's told that nothing can hold them back.
It's pretty obvious.
It's pretty obvious who's going to do better.
That's a huge problem.
And this is part of that backwards-looking point of view, that everything's about what already happened.
And if you take your eye off of the future, you're going to pay for it.
That's an expensive thing to do.
If you're focusing on the future and planning for the future and doing what works in the future, you're going to do fine.
If you're focused on the horrors of the past, you're going to live there forever.
All right.
The proportion of American adults describing relationships as good Between the races was 70% among blacks and 62% of whites in 2021.
So basically, both whites and blacks are describing race relations as much worse.
However, if you were to look at actual numbers of people who, for example, disagreed with people getting married of different races, interracial marriage, that's the lowest it's ever been.
So if you actually measure data, racism is the lowest it's ever been.
Because people are no problem voting for a president who's black, getting married to somebody who's black.
That's going down to just noise level.
It's just not a thing that people are thinking about anymore.
So in that way, racism is the least it's ever been.
So why is it that people think it's the worst it's ever been?
The data shows it's the best it's ever been in the things you can measure.
But of the things that are more squishy, like the subjective stuff that you can't really measure, everything's way worse.
Of course it's the news.
Of course it's social media.
Social media and the news are destroying the country.
There's no doubt about it.
It's obvious.
It's obvious that the media is doing this.
Because the media used to brainwash us to all believe the same positive stuff.
Hey, we're a melting pot.
You know, we don't do that stuff.
And people believed it.
And then they acted like it was true.
And it was good for everybody.
But now the media is the enemy.
Alright, famous female soccer star Megan Rapinoe.
You might remember her from the U.S.
women's team.
And she was either the best star or one of the best stars on the winning American team.
And she is coming out opposing the proposed measures that would prevent people who were born male from transitioning and playing on women's teams.
So she doesn't want to prevent biological males who have transitioned to women.
She doesn't want to prevent them from playing in professional sports.
Now, some people have said, do you realize that you would not be who you are if they did?
That she specifically would not be the most famous female soccer player because she wouldn't be in the top 10.
Or 20 or 100, depending on how many trans actually entered the league.
And here's what I think about that.
Is this not the perfect example of performance instead of opinion?
Do you think this is her opinion or do you think it's her performance?
Because I think she's also LGBTQ, am I right?
I think she's a She's a member of the LGBTQ team, so she's supporting the T part of LGBTQ.
So I get that.
I get that there's this sort of artificial team of people who decided they're on the same team, and she's on that team.
Right?
She's on that team.
So I get that, but this doesn't feel like an opinion at all, does it?
It doesn't even strike you as that she really believes it.
To me it looks like she has to signal this, and so she's putting on a woke performance, and you shouldn't take it seriously at all.
You should just say it's a good performance, and you've established yourself as one of the open-minded people, good for you.
Now let the serious people talk.
Because the serious people need to make actual decisions based on what's good or bad for the world.
You don't.
Megan only has to demonstrate that she's a good person.
There's nothing else she needs to accomplish.
And she did.
She did.
She successfully transmitted to us that she's an open-minded person.
So, I guess that's successful.
But, I mean, that's just a clear example of performance over opinion.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the best livestream you're ever going to see.
I remind you again that if you are not on the Locals platform, scottadams.locals.com, it's a subscription, that you would not be seeing the Dilbert comics that are running this week only on that platform.
Which are getting spicier every day.
A little bit spicier.
I'm not going to tell you what this week's theme is, but there's no way it would have run in newspapers.
Let me put it that way.
No way.
All right.
It looks like locals worked perfectly today.
We've got a huge crowd here.
About the usual size crowd here.
Your mind is blown by what?
Edward Dow's life insurance study for early deaths.
If there's only one, I wouldn't believe it.
But I also wouldn't believe that we know the cause.
Just send you a tweet of my own cartoon?
Egypt is selling rockets to Putin?
What?
Lorenzo, you don't have to consume everything at locals.
Some people like the, by the way, so just for those of you who don't know, on Locals, besides my Dilbert Reborn comic, the only place you can see it, there are also Micro Lessons on Improving Your Life, and the Robots Read News comic, which is More subversive than Dilbert Reborn.
And I also do live streams from my kitchen, where I teach you to cook.
Very simple things.
And from my man cave, where we do enjoy some legal adult entertainment in the form of smokeables.
But you don't have to watch it.
It's not required.
You don't have to watch that at all.
I mean, you were watching this.
Otherwise you couldn't have commented.
Yeah.
And I would also argue that the Locals platform gives you more hours of entertainment per month than any streaming service.
There's no streaming service that would give you as many commercial-free minutes as this.
All right.
I saw one NPC comment that I'm going to call out.
Whenever we talk about carbon capture, somebody says, we already have it.
It's called trees.
So if you want to identify as an NPC, just say, we already have that.
It's called trees.
Now here's another NPC tip, if the NPCs are looking for them.
If I say, I went swimming for the first time yesterday, I didn't.
But let's say it.
If I said in public, I went swimming for the first time yesterday, the NPCs should say what?
Go.
What should the NPCs say if I mention swimming?
What do they say?
In any context, just swimming.
That's the best kind of exercise.
So the NPCs have to, if you mention swimming in any context, they can't help it.
Like, don't say it!
My mouth is starting to form words!
Swimming is the best exercise!
And they can't stop.
You can even tell them in advance, hey, Bob, I'm going to say something about swimming.
I want you to try as hard as you can to not say swimming is the best form of exercise.
Just try to hold on.
And I'll say, hey, my swimming pool's warm and I was swimming yesterday.
And Bob would be like, it's the best form of exercise!
And there's no way he'd be able to prevent it.
You can't stop agreeing with a fake narrative about CO2 danger.
Craig, what are you hallucinating?
Craig believes that I continue to support the fake narrative of CO2 danger.
Do you know that my whole fucking brand is the opposite of that, right?
Do you know that what I've gotten in more trouble with for anything else is saying that the projections and that the alarm about CO2 are bullshit?
Craig, you've managed to consume all of this content and come to the opposite conclusion of what's happening here.
What is wrong with you?
Seek treatment.
Seek treatment.
But I will say this.
The science does strongly suggest that adding CO2 to the atmosphere, if everything else was the same, would raise the temperature.
But here's what I don't believe.
Everything else is always the same.
I don't believe that.
And I also don't believe we can predict it.
And I don't believe we can predict carbon capture.
And I don't believe we can predict mitigation of disasters.
None of it's predictable.
So, Craig, how did you get exactly the wrong opinion?
All right.
Who's going to carbon capture a volcano?
Well, in theory.
In theory, if you had enough carbon capture, you could.
Alright.
You think George Soros is experiencing cognitive dissonance?
I think he's experiencing dementia.
But we don't know about his son.
I would love to interview his son.
Wouldn't you like to see that?
Wouldn't you like to see me interview George Soros' son?
That would be interesting.
That would be one of the few interviews that I would be totally interested in that.
Here's the thing I suspect.
I don't know if this is true.
Maybe you can give me a fact check on this.
If you were to look at all of the things that the Soroses give their money to, how many of them would you say are toxic?
It can't be all of them.
You think most of them are toxic?
Maybe so.
I guess that's why I'm asking for a fact check.
See, I suspect that it's the ones you hear about.
Because don't you think he sometimes gives money just for climate change stuff?
Let me ask you that.
You don't think he gives money that's just purely climate change?
Which would not be toxic, but it might be a... You might think it's not a good use of his money, but it wouldn't be hurting anybody.
Oh, it wouldn't be toxic?
So if he donated money to, let's say, make a better windmill or something, that'd be toxic?
You're tough graders.
You're very tough graders.
It might be.
I suppose it might be.
All right, but it would be well-meaning even.
Let's put it this way.
If you were funding green technology, it wouldn't be because he wants to destroy the world.
Oh yeah, I was going to mention Vivek.
So Vivek Ramaswamy is doing these podcasts where he interviews people and then he gets to really focus on, you know, his own point of view.
And it's just a great way to campaign.
But, you know, you're still going to miss a lot of people don't watch a podcast.
