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Content:
Politics, Shrinking Human Brains, Bill Maher, Dean Phillips, Republican Philosophy, Democrat Philosophy, Mike Cernovich, Ukraine War Peace Talks, President Trump, Rep. Tlaib, Israel Hamas War, Hamas Persuasion, Hezbollah Leader Speech, Israel Funding Bill, Matt Gaetz, Rep. Zinke, Palestinian Immigration, xAI Grok, Elon Musk, Human Social Connections, Scott Adams
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If you'd like your experience to go up to levels that nobody's ever experienced before, in fact, it's beyond the ability of a human to even explain it, well then all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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Now, that music I was playing is by Stormcrow, and it features my drumming, which he turned into a magical trivia.
So when it started, I thought it was above my ability, and I seem to be able to do it.
I'm not talking a little bit about my ability.
So here's the weird thing.
If you listen to this with headphones on, not everybody, because everybody's different, but you're going to have an actual experience.
You'll actually feel something in your body.
I don't want to say more than that.
So there is some hypnosis technique built into this, the pacing and the leading specifically.
But see how you feel.
Storm Crow did this with a variety of skills in his talent stack, including some AI for all the background video, etc.
Honestly, I'm trying to figure out how to tell you it's amazing, but since it includes something that I did, it feels a little braggy.
It's actually amazing.
You really ought to check it out.
With headphones.
Definitely use headphones.
There was a suitcase found in Lake Merritt in Oakland floating on the lake and then they opened it and they found a dead body inside the suitcase.
Lake Merritt is a few towns over from me in Oakland.
You might remember Oakland as being one of the murder centers of the country.
You know, and I feel like this story is missing some context.
When they say there was a dead body found in a suitcase floating in Lake Merritt, don't you wonder how many bodies are actually at the bottom of that lake?
Imagine you're a lake at the epicenter of a murder capital.
Theoretically, I can't think of a better place to get rid of a body.
Than the big lake that's right in the middle of your murder capital.
Wouldn't you think there are quite a few bodies at the bottom of that lake?
I mean, I feel like that lake is closer to a human soup at this point.
Yeah, try to get that image out of your mind.
Good luck with that!
Well, the Wall Street Journal is talking about some science that's showing that they have a pretty good indication that human brains have gotten smaller in the last three to five thousand years.
Does that surprise you at all?
I would say that's the least surprising thing I've ever heard.
Just look around.
I'm pretty sure brains have gotten smaller in the last 10 years.
Or at least smoother.
I don't know if they're smaller, but they're smoother.
Now, of course, this is a big breakthrough in our understanding that brains have gotten smaller.
But then the next question is, well, wait a minute.
Does that mean we used to be smarter and now we're dumber?
I don't know, but I probably could have figured that out 5,000 years ago, but now I'm just confused about the whole thing.
No, because we're humans.
We're humans, dammit.
Do you think that we would conclude we used to be smarter?
Does that sound like something a human would do?
No.
What we would do is make up excuses for why our smaller brains are actually really better.
Yeah, you know, In the article, somebody actually did this.
It could be more like microchips.
It's not the size of the microchips, it's how densely the circuitry is.
So we could have smaller brains, but denser circuitry, and really much better brains.
But any advantage we got from that has probably been wiped out by smartphones by now, and the general stupefication of all our news and education.
But 5,000 years ago, we were kind of awesome and smart.
And taller, it turns out.
Can you believe that?
We were taller in the past?
Doesn't that scare you a little bit?
Yeah.
Do you think our food sources are compromised?
Clearly.
Clearly, our food sources are compromised.
Because I'm telling you, whatever it is that you eat that makes you taller, is better than whatever you're eating that's making you smaller.
I'm no dietician scientist, but I can tell you for sure that I don't think there's more clear indication that our food supply is completely compromised.
Here's another one to make you crazy.
Do you remember if you're a certain age Somewhere in around the 60s, you'd be listening to, let's say, a new rock song, and there'd be a male singer, and he would sound, he might be 19 years old, you know, because the bands were really young back then.
He'd be about 19, but he had a gravelly voice of a 50-year-old trucker.
Have you listened to any music in the last 10 years?
It's a little bit more like this.
I used to have a girlfriend, but now I'm weepy and sad because she left me for somebody better.
Oh, I'm so weepy and sad.
I wish I had some testosterone like they used to have back in the 60s.
Yeah, music is about men being sad and female in our current time, right?
I don't know how men listen to music, if it's just going to turn you into something, which it does.
All right, so don't listen to too much music unless you're doing it medicinally, as I do.
Today was a good day for me, because I solved one of my most nagging, bothersome mysteries.
And maybe some of you have had the same mystery.
The mystery is, what the hell is going on with Bill Maher?
Am I right?
Because here's how the mystery works.
He clearly demonstrates on a regular basis that he follows the news because it's his job.
So he tells us, yes.
I mean, he's literally said this in public a number of times, that it's his job to follow the news.
So obviously you would assume he's more informed than the average person and probably is.
Probably is.
Then, You also note that he says clever enough things which show a depth of understanding that he's not just ordinary smart, but actually extra smart.
I'm not sure if you know he went to Cornell.
Cornell is where I tried to go, but they turned me down.
Only because my application was late.
I wasn't very skilled when I was 17 years old, it turns out.
So I got my application in late.
But, if you graduated from Cornell, you are legitimately probably in the top 2% of IQ.
Not every person, of course.
But generally speaking, if you went to that school, it's not like any Ivy League school to be top 2%, something like that.
So the things we know is that he pays attention to the news and he's way above average in intelligence and demonstrates it on a regular basis, I would say.
It's very obvious he is very smart.
Now, how does that explain his TDS?
Is it literally like a A brain problem that seems to be limited to that one area?
That part didn't make sense to me.
Like why would his brain work so well but just doesn't work in that little area?
Sort of like a big mystery.
Here was my working assumption.
My working assumption was that he knew exactly what he was doing and just personally didn't like Trump.
Now, I don't think that's true at the moment.
I've revised my theory, but that's the best I could come up with.
The best I could come up with is that he just didn't like Trump, and then that just informed everything else.
But we also noticed that he seems uniquely willing to offend his core audience.
So we would say it's not just to make his audience happy, which is what you'd expect from most people, but he clearly shows you that he can go against his audience and does on a regular basis and just yells at him for being idiots sometimes.
So it's not just being a team player, and it's not because he's not smart, and it's not because he doesn't watch the news.
So what is it?
And I got what I think is a fairly Complete answer, because he appeared on the Trigonometry Trigonometry podcast.
And it was fascinating, because the hosts knew a lot more than he did.
They're British, right?
And they knew a lot more than he did about American politics.
And he was learning things that he'd never heard before, that all of you already know.
Just think about that.
Pretty much, I would guess, 100% of everybody watching this live stream, and not because I told you, but because you're a group of people who watch the complete news.
This would be a crowd of people who knows what the mainstream says, because you know what CNN says.
You always hear it.
And the mainstream, everybody knows.
But you also get the other points of view that are less traveled.
So you get a complete picture.
Here are some of the things that Bill Maher might still believe, but he believed until the other day when he was on trigonometry.
Just listen to this.
Bill believes that the Russians, with a budget of $100,000, who produced some memes that are basically high school quality, if you've seen them, And some of them were anti-Hillary and some of them were anti-Trump.
These are facts that nobody disputes.
$100,000 budget, everybody would agree that that is minuscule by any standards.
The memes, if you've looked at them, 100% of people who've looked at them would say, that wouldn't influence anybody.
That's literally nothing.
Everybody would say that.
That's not an opinion.
Nobody would have a different opinion if they looked at the actual memes.
They'd say that couldn't make any difference.
Now he believes that that influenced the election.
A $100,000 buy of some memes that I was watching election stuff every single day and never saw one of them.
I'll bet most of you didn't see any of those.
So you believe that that actually was a variable that you could, you know, kind of move the needle?
I don't think any of you believe that, do you?
Do any of you believe that $100,000 of memes in a billion-dollar election, when the memes were just the same thing that you... Do you think that those Russian memes got more attention than any one of my tweets?
I'll bet every one of my tweets got more attention than every one of those memes.
So was I influencing the election?
If Russia was influencing it, I was definitely influencing it.
But that would mean that everybody with You know, a Twitter account at the time, who had a big Twitter account, was influencing the elections.
I suppose that would be fair, because they would be Americans.
But no, $100,000 of bad memes doesn't buy you anything.
Not even a single vote.
And let me say that clearly.
Not a single vote.
I'm going to say that with confidence.
Not one vote could have even theoretically been changed by those memes.
They weren't the kind of memes that would change anybody's vote.
Secondly, Bill believes that when Paul Manafort, who was on the Trump team, that when he shared some stale internal polling information, I think that's what it was, that that was influencing the election.
Or that it was collusion.
It was one guy scamming a billionaire.
Paul Manafort was scamming a billionaire by promising things he wasn't delivering.
The one thing he delivered was some internal polling data that couldn't have possibly been useful to anybody.
Do you think Paul Manafort was trying to give them things that could operationally make a difference?
I don't see how.
How would some internal polling really make any difference?
Did they target their $100,000 worth of memes?
Because they had a little better polling?
Oh, we better send these memes that have no value whatsoever to the, let's say, the single mothers in the suburbs.
What exactly would the polling information tell the Russian billionaire?
Basically nothing, right?
But Bill believed that that was a significant thing.
But this is the real head shaker.
So Bill Maher was not aware I think it was, and he learned on the podcast, he was not aware that Hillary Clinton had repeatedly claimed the 2016 election was rigged, and so did most of the leaders of the Democrat Party, and not just once, they said it over and over and over again in public.
Bill was not aware of that, and he actually questioned whether that was true.
And of course, the podcast in post-production inserted the actual videos to show you it was true.
Now, how could you not be aware of those things?
Do you know how?
It finally brought together something else that Bill Maher had said in public.
He said that he limits his news sources to a few strong ones.
So I think he follows the New York Times, for example, and maybe some other big mainstream news outlets.
Now, do you think that gets him a good, well-rounded sense of what's going on?
No.
So it turns out that he accidentally walled himself off from any possibility of seeing both sides.
And so he has what I call the documentary effect.
I've explained the documentary effect.
If you watch a documentary that's meant to present one point of view, it will be really, really convincing.
I guarantee.
Even if the point of view is completely fake.
If you watch it, you're going to be totally convinced.
Because if you commit to something that's, say, an hour long, and every part of the hour is evidence toward their one thing they're trying to brainwash you into believing, you'll believe it.
By the end of the time, if you've only seen one side, you're totally going to believe it.
And there won't be anything wrong with your brain.
This is important.
It doesn't matter how smart you are.
Now, if you don't believe that's true, the documentary effect, that it can convince you of anything basically, watch, and I've said this a number of times, but watch the two competing documentaries about Michael Jackson.
One says he was a horrible child abuser.
And if you watch that, you will be convinced, beyond any doubt, that the accusations are true.
Then watch the opposite one.
The one that says it was all made up and he's being framed.
And you say to yourself, there's no way they're going to make that case.
And then they do.
Not only did they make the case that he was framed and all of it was innocent, it's really strong.
Is it true?
I don't know.
That's my point.
I've watched two things which individually, if you only watched one of them, would be absolutely persuasive whether it was true or not.
I had no way to know.
So if you haven't watched, if you haven't done this experiment on yourself, and watch them one day and then the next day, it will amaze you.
And I would say, do it in this order, because this is more fair.
I think it's more fair to Michael Jackson if you do it in the order of, see the one that accuses him first, because that's how a trial is done.
You know, the accusations come first.
But the final closing argument gets to be from the defense.
So let Michael Jackson's closing argument be the documentary that says he was framed.
Doesn't mean it's true.
I'm just saying that in our system that you let the defense go last.
So and again I'm not going to try to convince you anything is true or not true about Michael Jackson.
The point is that Bill Maher lived in sort of the documentary problem.
Since he never saw the other documentary, he lived in a completely persuasive bubble that any normal person with a good brain would have come to believe exactly what he came to believe.
You could put any one of us in that bubble, deny us all the knowledge and information in the rest of the world, and you would have come to the same opinion.
Yeah, somebody was mentioning Oliver Stone.
Exactly a good point.
An Oliver Stone documentary, like his JFK stuff, is 100% persuasive.
And as I was watching it, I kept trying to remind myself that that didn't mean anything.
Couldn't do it.
Failed.
Even with the little recording in my brain, don't believe it, Scott.
You're only seeing one presentation.
Even though I have no reason to doubt Oliver Stone, per se, it's a point of view.
And if you haven't seen the opposite point of view, you really don't know anything.
And it's really hard for a human brain to accept that if it's only seen one point of view, that its full total knowledge that it has is nothing.
Your brain is just way too biased toward thinking that the documentary, okay, maybe it's not 100% complete.
Sure, maybe they bent things a little bit, but basically you're getting the sort of general idea.
Nope, not true.
As soon as you believe that one documentary gives you basically the general idea, maybe it's not perfect, you're gone.
That's how they get you.
It doesn't work that way.
If you saw the opposite documentary, you would be just as convinced.
That's how it works.
I know some of you have said, because I saw this comment before I got on, you're saying, Scott, Scott, Scott, no.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
Pretty sure that's not the case.
Because he does it so transparently in front of us.
You know, if you saw the Trigonometry podcast, that was genuine confusion.
That was not an act.
That was someone who actually wanted to know the truth and was having his mind boggled by two people who I believe he understood were fair actors.
Like, I think he trusted the people he was talking to.
And so when they told him something so opposite of what he understood, you could see that he was taking it seriously.
That's not somebody whose brain is broken.
That's somebody who had been starved for real information from credible sources.
And then when two credible sources sat there and looked at him, like, how did you not know this?
You could tell it was affecting him.
So, you know, good for him for having a flexible brain, which I think actually got moved by that podcast.
I'd be surprised if his opinion stayed the same after that.
I'd be really surprised.
So that was a step in the right direction.
Dean Phillips, who's running, trying to primary Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president,
He was on, speaking of Bill Maher, he was on the Bill Maher Show, and he, this is amazing, remember he's a Democrat, and he said that being a Jewish member of Congress in the Democratic caucus is very difficult right now, you can imagine, and there is seemingly a lack of progressive love when it comes to our doorstep, and it's problematic.
I know I don't look like someone whose community might need support or affection or protection, That's right.
If you're a Democrat, even an elected Democrat in high office, you still feel like you're being discriminated by your own side.
Now, you may be quick to say, if you're a Republican, oh, but the Republicans, you know, embrace you and they're pro-Israel and don't like discrimination.
That's generally true.
But what is also true is that the far left and the far right are also, they seem equally anti-Jewish.
Remember I told you that there isn't any difference between the far left and the far right, except who they decided to hate?
It's basically the same fucking people.
So, I think it is too... Let me put it this way.
In the middle of the country, You know, most of the left and most of the right are reasonable people who want what's good for everything.
Good for the country, good for the family.
Would you agree with that?
An ordinary Democrat is not a risk to civilization.
There are also people who have slight differences of opinion.
But the far left are batshit crazy mental cases.
The far right, batshit mental cases.
Why are we treating them like they're part of, you know, Part of the normal conversation.
We should forevermore call the extreme left and the extreme right, the extremists, put them in the same group and have law enforcement approach them exactly the same way.
But, you know, don't let politics say they're part of your team if you don't think they're part of your team.
All right.
So, the fact that a member of Congress is having an experience of discrimination within Congress from his own side, do you believe that there's even one Republican member of Congress, because remember, the people in Congress are not the crazy extremists, do you think there's even one Republican member of Congress with whom Dean Phillips feels uncomfortable for being Jewish?
Do you think there's even one?
I'll bet not.
I'll bet 100% of the Republicans make Dean Phillips feel perfectly comfortable because he knows that they're not having discriminatory feelings about him.
I'll bet.
I'll bet you.
And I'll bet you that something like a quarter of his own team makes him uncomfortable.
How do you put up with that?
How in the world do you stay on that team?
It's just sort of a baffling mystery.
All right, I've got a reframe for you.
There are two political philosophies in this country.
Of course, there's more than two, but two big ones.
I would say the Republican philosophy is that your actions define you.
Would you say that's true?
Your actions define you.
Not your ethnicity, not your gender.
Your actions.
So if you follow the Constitution and you're doing all the right things, I want you to be my neighbor.
Be my neighbor.
You're awesome.
You do good things.
But the Democrat philosophy is you're born either a victim or an oppressor and there's nothing you can do to change that.
Because your lineage, as Greg Guffield likes to say, your lineage defines you.
Now, let me say them again.
Republican philosophy is that it's your actions, what you do defines you.
Democrats, you're either born a victim or an oppressor and there's not much you can do about it.
Which of those two philosophies guarantees a future genocide?
Which one guarantees it?
Yeah, the Democrat philosophy actually guarantees genocide.
You just don't know when the timer starts, right?
There isn't any other way that goes.
It can only go that way.
It might not happen this year.
But it's a guarantee if that philosophy stays as dominant as it is at the moment.
It can only go to genocide.
That's the natural landing place.
Remember I tell you that design is destiny?
We've designed a system that guarantees some genocide.
What would you say about the Israeli-Gaza-Palestinian situation?
I'll tell you my opinion.
That is a system designed to guarantee genocide.
The design.
If you design a system that guarantees genocide, and then you get a bunch of genocide, you don't have to like it.
You've got to do what you can do to correct that.
But you can't say you didn't see it coming.
So of course in this situation we've got the battling genocide narratives, right?
So the pro-Palestinian people are saying it's a genocide against Gaza.
Are they right?
Well, that would be a definition.
That would be arguing a definition.
We all know what's happening.
So what's happening is not a mystery.
So there's no difference of opinion of what's happening.
If you label it with that word, well then, you know, that's more of a definition thing and might have some consequences.
But do you think that the Israelis think that October 7th was a genocide?
Clearly it was.
But that's also a definition.
The other side says it's, you know, well-earned retribution or something.
I don't know.
Whatever it is they say.
Israel has a situation in which their current design guaranteed some form of genocide.
It either guaranteed that it would happen to them, or that they would be the ones doing it.
Wasn't any way around it.
Now, if they don't fix that system, as a result of the latest ugliness, if they don't fix that system, then they've just reinstituted a system that guarantees genocide.
Guarantees it.
So when Israel talks about Gaza no longer ever being controlled by Hamas or maybe even the Palestinians, that's at least a system change.
I don't know if it's a good one, but at least it recognizes that if you just rebuilt the system you had, you're going to get another genocide.
Maybe two, depending on how you define things.
All right, so the reason I mention these two philosophies is it might be an interesting way to frame it for Democrats who are not aware that they're on the pro-genocide part of history.
I would wonder, what would a Democrat say if you just presented this to them?
You know, the victim or oppressor frame guarantees genocide.
Because I feel like a lot of them, that's what they want.
You know, the people talk about colonizers.
Colonizer is a word that guarantees genocide.
Again, you just don't know when it starts.
Could it start next week?
Could it be ten years from now?
But if colonizer becomes part of the vocabulary, part of the way we think of each other, guaranteed genocide.
Guaranteed.
So don't be surprised, and make sure you're ready for that.
Well, let me give you some more uplifting thought.
I watched Mike Cernovich save some lives yesterday, almost in real time.
It was fucking impressive.
Let me tell you what he did.
So Cernovich, who's got over a million followers, so he's got a big footprint, mentioned that somebody he knew had committed suicide recently, probably because of a bankruptcy problem.
And that he'd heard whispers, I think, of other people who were similarly distraught over potential and actual bankruptcies.
And so what he did was explain in a lengthy post that you're looking at bankruptcy wrong.
Bankruptcy is a tool for the benefit of the bankrupt person.
It's not a mark of shame.
They don't paint a big B on your chest.
You don't have to live in shame.
You're just a person who's in a situation, which many have been in, and many billionaires, many successful people, and that bankruptcy is simply a legal option that makes it easier for somebody to emerge from debt, and that it's just a tool.
The reason it exists as a law is because it's such a common situation.
It doesn't mean you screwed everything up.
It might mean that luck Didn't go your way.
But I don't think for most of these people it's because they didn't work hard enough, right?
I think the bankruptcy happens for other reasons, just circumstance.
But anyway, so Cernovich goes through his long explanation of how you shouldn't see this as a, you know, a failure of life, more like a speed bump.
That's my summary.
And in the comments there were two people who said he may have just saved their lives.
Just think about that.
Just in the comments.
I mean, just a quick look at the comments.
There were two people who said, you may have just saved my life.
Just hold that in your head for a second.
All right, moving on.
NBC News is reporting that US and European officials are quietly talking to the Ukrainians about negotiating a peace deal with Russia.
Now, is that really a story?
Don't you think that we're sort of always quietly talking to them about that option?
Did we only just recently start talking about the option of a peace deal?
I'd be quite disappointed in the government if they hadn't been saying, you know, and maybe you should consider this.
I realize that you want to fight at the moment, but you know, just in case, maybe you should think about what that would look like.
You know, think about it mentally.
I don't know what talking to them quietly means, but if that hasn't always been on the table, I'd be kind of worried.
How much of this do you think is because Ukraine doesn't seem to be making any progress?
And how much of it is because it's too expensive?
And how much of it is because the new, new thing is Israel?
I think that our brains can't wrap...
We can't wrap our heads around two oars.
So I think it's a combination of things.
But I think the American public Two wars is a line, right?
One war is a one-off.
Two wars completes the line.
That's two points.
That line is a line to absolute fucking doom.
So, I don't know if it mattered which one came first.
Obviously, Israel is a little more popular in some parts of the government than maybe Ukraine is, and vice versa.
So, it may have something to do with, you know, pulling favorites and knowing that you can't have two wars at the same time.
It might be that, a little bit.
But it's also exhaustion from Ukraine, not seeing any other options, Ukraine literally running out of human beings to shoot.
I mean, the Russians, I think the Russians are over there, it's like, you have anybody left to shoot?
I think we shot all the young ones.
Do you have any older ones we can start shooting?
That's basically what Ukraine gets to decide.
All right, let's make some more decisions.
Which ones do we want the Russians to shoot?
Because that seems to be the only variable.
The variable seems to be that Ukraine is literally running out of human beings to shoot.
They don't seem to be running out of ammo and weapons as quickly.
But they might be able to add to that too if we don't give them the funding they need.
So now CNN has also turned against Ukraine, Time Magazine has, and NBC News, which some say is the voice of our CIA.
Some say.
I don't personally know that.
But some say if NBC is reporting it this way, that means that somebody in the deep state wants you to think this way.
So it would seem to me that the people who are running everything have made a decision and that they're going to force Ukraine to negotiate.
And here's the other factor that's really big.
You ready for this?
The worst thing for Democrats would be for Trump to end the Ukraine war in one day, like he said he could.
They cannot, they cannot let the end of the Ukraine war slop into a potential Republican presidency.
Because then Trump's going to get the credit for ending it, like Afghanistan, and then Biden will get the blame, even though, you know, Biden did the last part of Afghanistan, but he did it wrong.
So, politically, it's a frickin' nuclear bomb.
If you give Trump that one win, Which is almost guaranteed, honestly.
If you put Trump in the job today, I think he'd be done in a week.
And that's not a joke.
Honest to God, it's my actual solid opinion that Trump could end the Ukraine situation in one week, exactly like he says.
And exactly the way you think.
He would just threaten both sides.
And both sides would say, I'm not sure he means that, but I don't know.
And then they would make peace.
Because both sides want to make peace.
It's obvious where it's going to end up.
You know, Russia is going to still end up owning a bunch of stuff that used to be Ukraine.
It's guaranteed at this point.
I'm not saying that's what I want.
I'm just saying it's guaranteed.
And I'm not even sure that's a bad outcome.
Can you tell me that Russia owning those territories is bad for me?
In what way?
Is it bad for the residents that the war could be over?
And that they would be owned by the corrupt Russian government instead of the corrupt Ukrainian government?
The most massively corrupt government that I'm aware of?
Do you think that the groups that have now been controlled by Russia have a lot of Russia-sympathizing people in them?
Do you think they want to be owned by the most corrupt regime that just put most of the young people in their country into a meat grinder for no good reason?
Do you think they want that?
I don't know.
Maybe they do.
But I know it's none of my business anymore.
I know that I just don't have an interest.
I think that they need to settle things up.
Now, I know the people who say, oh, if you let Russia do that, they'll go do something else.
Will they?
Will they?
Do you think Russia had a good experience?
Even if they Win.
And winning would be just the parts that they already hold.
Even if they win, are they going to want to do that again?
What kind of winning does that look like?
Because I think it's going to be a Pyrrhic victory, as the people who want to impress you like to say.
How many of you don't know what a Pyrrhic victory is?
Just the ones who don't know what it means.
I want to just test the vocabulary here.
How many don't know what a Pyrrhic victory is?
I'll give you a little education.
It's one of those things that the smart pundits like to say.
There's a history to it.
The Pyrrhic part has some history to it.
But the basic idea is that you win the war, but in doing so, your army is so destroyed That you can't hold the territory.
And so you eventually just get easily conquered because you weakened yourself in the process of winning to the point where you're guaranteed your own demise.
So winning wasn't winning.
It's a Pyrrhic victory because you get the temporary good feeling, but basically you're dead.
So to me, they lost their pipeline.
They lost their control over Europe.
They probably a lot of their energy business, their sanctions are higher than ever.
I don't think they want to do it again.
So I feel like nobody would want to do that again.
All right.
So Representative Rashida Tlaib is not too happy with Joe Biden.
And as Greg Price said, an ex-post, On the inclusion of the from the river to the sea part.
Really?
Is Tlaib actually saying from the river to the sea?
Has she said that out loud?
Actually out loud?
Okay.
I'm seeing lots of confirmation.
It's one of those things where I was pretty sure that she had said it, but my brain couldn't hold it in my brain.
Like, how is that even possible?
How could she still be sitting in Congress and having said that out loud in public?
And she still has her job.
Like, my brain can't hold that.
What's going on?
Explain that to me.
There's nothing that can explain that.
That is a mystery.
So she says, basically it's pick your genocide.
So she thinks Biden's involved in a genocide.
Obviously, the pro-Israel people think that Hamas was involved in a genocide.
But whatever side you're not on seems to be doing all the genociding.
So I read an article on how Hamas won over all the idiots in America.
When I say idiots, the people on the far left who back them.
Apparently, there's information to confirm that the Hamas planners behind closed doors, there's some recordings of them I guess, in which they literally said they were going to try to tie their movement to the idiots in the United States movements to make it seem like they were just part of the anti-white movement.
That was pretty smart.
Because to the extent that the left thinks that Jewish people are not white, or not to the extent that they think that Jewish people are white, that allows Hamas and the Palestinians to be on the people of color side and the anti-colonist side.
So Hamas convinced the American left that they were just part of the larger problem of colonizers Abusing the locals, and especially those white colonizers, the worst kind.
So that was the trick.
That was the trick.
And it worked.
So Hamas is quite good in the persuasion game, it's obvious.
The Hezbollah leader spoke, I guess by video, because it's too dangerous to go in public if you're the Hezbollah leader, in Lebanon.
And some people were surprised that he was not more overtly warlike.
It didn't sound like he was encouraging Hezbollah to wade into the fight in a big way.
So I suppose that's good news, but he could also be lying.
He could also be telling you he's not while he's actually planning to do exactly the opposite.
Could be.
Speaking of which, Hezbollah attacked Israel.
Surprise.
And the IDF has already hit back.
So I saw this on a Kyle Becker post that the IDF warplanes were attacking Hezbollah targets now because Hezbollah carried out some kind of an attack.
But that's also sort of baseline over there.
You know, here's an attack, here's a response.
I think that's sort of business as usual.
It doesn't necessarily say that Hezbollah is wading in in a big way yet.
All right.
Somehow I didn't even notice this.
So I guess the House passed the funding bill for Israel, but Biden's going to veto it.
Do I have that right?
So the House did pass a standalone Israel funding bill.
And Biden's going to veto it because it doesn't give him money for Ukraine, right?
Do I have that right?
I think I have that right, right?
To which I would like to take this moment to give Matt Gaetz a little bit of an ovation.
Matt Gaetz?
Good job.
This is what I wanted.
I wanted our government to have to chew on a bill And like it or not, and if they can't get enough people to like it, it's dead.
Good.
Good.
Absolutely what I want.
Now, I don't want the government to be forever constipated and not be able to do anything.
Obviously, that's bad.
But they can't just keep doing the things that fuck us right in front of us.
Here are your options, Congress.
You can obviously fuck us as hard as you can and destroy the country by doing omnibus fucking budgets forever until we're broke.
Or you can look like the fucking idiots that you are and not be able to do a single thing.
I prefer that so much.
I prefer complete incompetence Just show us.
Show us that you can't get a fucking thing right.
And then let us vote on you next time.
Let's vote with full knowledge that you are unable to do the business of the people.
Thank you.
Now, Matt Gaetz gave that to you.
He broke the thing that had to be broken.
Now, generally, Americans have been good at reassembling and fixing things better.
But somebody had to break it.
You broke it.
Good, good, good, good work.
In fact, that's like the play of the decade.
You know, the political play of the decade, honestly.
I haven't seen anything that makes me happier than this, politically.
So now, of course, I have some optimism here that we'll figure out a way to actually get a more functional government that does things that people want.
But if we can't get that, I'd rather just stay broken.
Keep working on it.
Because no, we're not going to pass any fucking omnibus bills anymore.
I hope.
That's happening.
Representative Zinke.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right.
Z-I-N-K-E.
He's a Republican and he wants Congress to shut down all Palestinian immigration.
To which I say, What?
We have Palestinian immigration?
Seriously?
Really?
Really?
I guess I hadn't really thought about it.
You know, because we don't have, I guess the Biden administration, I don't know if has a ban on any country.
Does Biden have a ban on any country?
Probably doesn't, right?
Because that would be racist.
So I should have imagined that we were doing some Palestinian immigration, but are we allowed to prioritize national defense over looking good?
Feeling good?
Because, you know, I understand not discriminating, but we're not talking about individuals.
We don't have the ability to vet individuals.
If we have the ability to vet any individual and really be confident about it, And yet we were banning them?
I would say, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's some fucking discrimination right there.
There's some bigotry that is completely out of place.
If we're discriminating on an individual person basis because they were Palestinian, that's just bigotry.
If we had the ability to go deeper about them.
But if you don't have that ability to judge people individually, You can judge the class as a risk.
And that class doesn't have, you know, we're not talking about any genetic defect or even a cultural defect.
You're talking about some group of people who are programmed with a certain mindset, and you don't know which ones are dangerous.
Under those conditions, Your national self-defense should be a much higher priority than your wanting to look good and not appear to be bigoted.
So here again, I say to you as clearly as I can, discrimination against individuals For employment, or personal life, or romance, or, you know, all the basic stuff of society.
Totally inappropriate.
I would discourage it in every way.
So if you're looking to hire somebody or marry somebody, look at them as an individual.
Everything else would be counterproductive for everybody.
Not good for you, not good for society, not good for the person you discriminate against.
But, if you don't know everything about the individual, or at least enough, And you're looking at a class of people, and you're talking about your national defense, and there's a very clear reason why there's a specific risk that their minds have been shaped in a way that is incompatible.
In that case, absolute total discrimination without any shame.
No embarrassment, no shame.
No excuses.
Complete, total discrimination against that class is in the interest of the self-defense of the United States, and it is bad for many people in the group.
Not our fucking problem.
It's not the job of the United States to solve everybody's problem everywhere.
It's not a thing.
It's not possible.
So whether or not it's their fault is not part of the conversation.
Whether or not it would greatly help people who are in a terrible situation, not our problem.
Because most of the world is in a terrible situation.
I mean, we could spend our entire budget helping the people of Africa if being nice was what we wanted to do.
Does anybody disagree with that, by the way?
That you can discriminate against a class if what you're discriminating against is the way they've been trained, and it's incompatible with your system in a dangerous way.
Well, I knew I'd win you all over eventually.
Actually, you were all there at the beginning.
So good work, Representative Zinkia, for saying the thing that's hard to say.
Out loud, but it is the thing that is in our best national interest.
And I would argue strongly that it's in the best interest of the Palestinian Americans who want to live here in peace and not be discriminated against.
Because I'll tell you, the worst thing that could happen for an An American who has Islamic background, the worst thing that could happen to you is we let in some people that do some shit and you get blamed for it.
We're trying to prevent that.
A good 10 years of living together without any problems is going to help you a lot, but letting in one terrorist Who shares your religion, at least.
Very bad for you.
So I'd like to prevent that as well.
All right, some fun news in the AI.
Musk is teasing about the X version of AI.
So Brian Ramelli said he got a, I guess he got a sneak preview of it, and he's very impressed.
Now, if you don't know who Brian is, he's someone who really, really knows this AI space.
One of the better accounts to follow if you're trying to understand what's going on.
If he's impressed, there's something good coming, right?
So he would not be prone to hyperbole.
But what we know about it so far, is that Elon Musk says it's built to have a sense of humor.
He actually showed an example.
So it can actually banter with you.
And it will joke with you.
How much better is that than standard AI?
Like way, way better.
Am I right?
Way, way better.
Let us go on.
How will it be distributed?
Like what app will you use?
How do you access this new?
Well, it turns out it's going to be built into the X platform, but only for the people paying for the premium subscription.
So for $8 a month, the thing you are using anyway would be integrated with this AI.
Now let me ask you this.
Well, let me tell you this.
So when AI blew up Earlier this year, I wanted to be understanding the first wave of it.
I signed up for a whole bunch of AI apps.
A number of them were subscriptions that renew.
And some of them were kind of expensive, like really expensive for a monthly application.
But I thought, OK, this is worth it.
I'm going to find out which ones are great.
I'm going to implement it if I were.
I'll be one of the early adopters.
That'll be good in a number of ways.
Good system.
And after several months, last week, I looked at all my subscriptions, and I deleted every one of them.
Do you know why I deleted every one of my AI apps?
Because I found no utility, no dopamine, and no purpose for them whatsoever.
Now, they did, in fact, offer abilities and tools that I didn't have.
So it could create, let's say, some impressive art to be a thumbnail for my podcast.
Do you know what I heard when I created impressive art as a thumbnail for my podcast?
People said, yeah, that's impressive.
You know what we like better is just a picture of you holding your coffee cup.
A whole bunch of people said that.
I'm like, really?
I worked really hard on this.
Even though AI did most of the work, it's a huge pain in the ass to find out which one to use and get the image and upload it every day and all that.
No value at all.
And then there was, of course, the value of asking AI questions.
Do you know how many questions I care about where the information for it stopped in 2017?
Turns out nothing.
There was nothing of interest to me that I couldn't look at on Wikipedia.
That was from 2017 back.
So if it didn't happen recently.
Turns out I had very little interest because it's something I've already looked into or I could just look on Wikipedia or just Google.
So it didn't really do anything for me.
It didn't act smart.
It couldn't answer any question that was edgy.
It was just worthless.
So it was extra work.
So here's what I like about the AI for X. If I'm using the X platform anyway Which is the genius of what Musk is doing.
If you don't see the play here, let me explain it to you.
The main reason I got rid of my AI apps is because of the friction involved.
In remembering which app it was, opening it up, reminding me what the interface is, creating something, and then I had to figure out how to take that something and integrate it into a post, because that's mostly what I do with stuff, on the X platform.
And that friction of going to the second app, or third app, maybe you combine two or three apps, was enough to just make it not worth it.
So it just basically wore me down.
I wasn't getting enough value to do that much work.
But, if the AI is just native to the thing I'm already in, do you think I'll use it more?
Guaranteed.
Guaranteed.
The day that X launches their own AI, and it's available to me.
I will use more AI that day than all of the AI I've used up before that day.
And I did put in some work to spend some time with it.
So, again, and also apparently X's AI will be up to date.
So you could do essentially a Google search and get as good a result as Google, I think.
This is the indication.
Because it's not limited to 2017.
The biggest problem with it.
So just think of the things that Musk has added.
He gave it a personality, because it has a sense of humor and that will feel like a personality.
He got rid of the friction of going to another app.
We'll see how well he implements that, but I think he's going to nail that.
So he's got personality, got rid of friction, got rid of cost, because it comes free with a premium subscription that you would want for other reasons.
So for a lot of people, it's free.
And it will be free for the people who tend to be power users of things in general, so that makes sense.
And then it has, it's up to date.
So just, and it's probably not woke.
It's probably not overly woke.
Don't know that yet, but probably.
So think about all those improvements to the product.
Personality, no friction of the other app.
For premium users, no expense.
It's up to date.
And it's not woke.
It's not crippled by being woke.
I swear to God, he already won.
I feel like the contest hasn't started and he already won.
Now, one of the things that I think Elon Musk is underrated for, which seems weird because, you know, he has such esteem in what he does.
But I think he's way underrated in product design.
And by product design, I mean he understands the human mind in a way that he can build a product that just fits right in perfectly.
For example, when he built the first Tesla, He knew that he had to make the first sports car do something that no regular car could do.
In other words, it was just like fast as fuck.
Because it was electric.
So he could do things that a motorized engine couldn't do.
So he gave rich people, the kind of people who would collect cars that are too expensive, because it was too expensive, he gave them the best reason to buy it.
This car may have many things that your regular car doesn't.
But one thing it has, it'll be faster.
And then people bought it.
And then he created a market, because he'd do the psychology of a certain kind of buyer, and then he could chase that into broadening his products and proving the market, and now it's Tesla.
And then, of course, in SpaceX, he built the reusable rocket that was the key product difference.
He's the primary launcher of anything into space and the entire world, because he improved his product to fix that one product problem.
Now he has a better product.
So you'll see that in everything he does.
That, you know, even the, what is it, Ridiculous Mode on the Tesla?
What's that called?
Insanity Mode?
What's the name of that?
Ridiculous Mode?
Ludicrous.
Ludicrous.
Ludicrous mode?
What is the point of ludicrous mode?
The point of it is you can't feel it anywhere else.
People will pay for a feeling they can't feel anywhere else.
So it gives them ludicrous mode.
How useful is ludicrous mode?
Not at all.
It's not really useful.
It's just something you can't feel anywhere else.
You can't make your car make a fart sound.
But you can make the Tesla do it.
Again, something you can't do somewhere else.
So Musk's ability to design a product is, I think, unparalleled.
And you're going to see that with AI.
I've thought that from the beginning that AI was poorly designed as an interface, which is weird because it's AI.
Have you thought the same?
That all of the AI interfaces to this point have such bad interfaces that they're almost unusable?
I'll bet you he solves that.
We haven't seen this interface, but I'll bet you.
I'll bet you you can easily upload other content to it, which is the other big problem with AI.
All right.
So I'm seeing more and more data about how people don't want to get married, and there are structural reasons they don't.
They don't have enough money to buy a house and start a family.
That's the big one, I think.
More to the point, we don't offer, men and women don't offer each other enough value like they used to.
So in the old days you needed, I mean it was literally a survival mechanism to make sure that you had a little unit that would work together.
One would make some babies so you had some future.
One would protect you, kill animals and stuff.
So it all worked and so as long as everybody needed it, it was more likely it would last.
At the moment, of course, any woman can get a job and get her own money and have a child or not.
So basically we don't need each other in the way we used to.
And the obvious outcome of that is less reproduction and less satisfying lives.
But I would like to offer that almost certainly There will be a counter trend that will address this.
And I think what it's going to look like is something more like a virtual tribe.
Because if you look at the problems that people have, not being in a family unit, you could take each of these problems and say, all right, problem number one, don't get enough sex.
Problem number two, lonely.
Problem three, you don't have a purpose.
You're not working toward a purpose so much.
And you could make a list of all those things.
I would argue that there may be a way for those people who just are never going to fit into the traditional marriage situation, that there's some kind of a tribal solution.
And that we may be seeing this in some of the activism and the Antifa and the BLM's and everything, that the The allure of being in a group because you're not in a family group is so strong because we're just naturally built that way.
I've accidentally created some form of this through the Locals subscription site.
So the people on the Locals platform who follow me at scottadams.locals.com and this is also part of what I've told you before that the The customer doesn't, I'm sorry, you don't tell your customer what your product is.
You try, but in the end the customer tells you what your product is.
Because if you thought you were selling a can opener, but all your customers bought it to use as a hammer, you're selling hammers.
There's nothing you can do about it.
You could tell them it's can opener all day long, but if the only thing they use it for is to pound nails, you made a hammer.
So my locals people, I thought was going to be mostly me, you know, giving them my content.
And it largely is that on the surface.
But what it turned into is a whole bunch of people who didn't, many of them, especially older ones, who don't have a family to go home to at night.
They listened to my usually nightly Man Cave livestreams and it's turned into a whole different thing that was not part of the plan.
And what it turned into is some kind of a self-supporting tribal digital tribe in which the members have, let's say, self-selected and self-organized To help each other in a number of ways.
So sometimes it's just, you know, some congratulations.
So one of the weird little things that happens is somebody will be on the live stream at night and they'll say something like, I got that big promotion.
And then we all genuinely say, congratulations, great job.
And then a whole bunch of people say, great job.
And then we all feel good.
Because we made a member of the tribe feel good about an accomplishment.
Now that's just one little thing that a family could give you.
Like a family could make you feel like you'd done something useful.
That you'd succeeded if you had a win.
So we do that for each other.
There are a number of other situations where people have jumped in and actually got involved personally to solve some problem.
And none of it's planned.
It's just that we've decided to be a little group by choice.
And when I first started doing it, it was just part of my putting things on the platform to see what people liked.
So I was still in content mode.
Oh, here's some content.
I'll give you some extra in the man cave.
But it morphed for me until it's a vital part of my mental health.
So when I do this in the morning, I think of this as more content, because it's one-directional.
But when I do the man cave, I'm doing that as much for myself.
I'm having an experience, a social experience, which does not fill all of my needs that a marriage would fill.
But it fills a whole bunch of important ones that I wouldn't have anticipated.
Specifically, the loneliness.
So here's what I'm going to predict.
I think that because we're digitally connected, that we will start to form tribal entities that are some people in person and some people at a distance.
Now, my actual physical life is starting to self-organize in a similar way, which is that there are a variety of people in my life, and they have contributions And I have contributions to them.
And when you sum it all together, it creates something like a satisfying life for Scott.
But, you know, it's easier for me because I have a public position, so it's easier for me to self-organize in that way.
But somehow, we're going to have to figure out how a regular person can feel connection.
I'm going to finish it with this thought To put a little brain on top of the thought.
I saw this quote the other day, and I took a screenshot so I definitely wouldn't forget.
It was from some Instagram account from Akan Yanili.
I don't know if that's who the speaker is, but this guy.
So he's on the stage.
I think it's a TED Talk.
He said this, the opposite of addiction, so he's talking about alcohol and drugs, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety.
It's human connection.
That's actually the secret for why the Alcoholics Anonymous works.
They replace your addiction, not with sobriety, But with a social network that's going to be there every night, no matter what.
And they definitely understand you.
That's why it works.
For the longest time, I've been trying to figure out, why does this AA stuff work?
And why is it the only thing that, you know, sometimes people say it's the only thing that works.
And the answer is, they figured out this one thing.
That the opposite of addiction is human connection.
So they give you human connection.
So, the fact that he's talking about the addiction domain doesn't make that less important for the rest of you.
And I'll tell you that, do you ever think to yourself what you would remember if you died?
Like if you knew you were dying in 10 minutes and they say your life goes in front of your mind?
So I do that exercise a lot.
And I can tell you that there's not a single thought that I'm going to have in my last 10 minutes that doesn't involve other people.
Not one.
It's all about the human connections.
To the end.
So, speaking of human connections, thanks for joining me.
Go find some human connections and get yourself back in the world.
