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All you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or gel, a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine The thing that makes everything better, it's called the simultaneous sip.
Go.
Oh, so good.
It looks like everything's working this morning.
What a day, what a day.
Well, it's Saturday.
Sometimes you call it Catterday.
And that means, at least today anyway, that Owen Gregorian will be doing his after-party on Spaces.
So after the show, if you're on X, go to Owen Gregorian's feed, or you should be able to find it.
And you can find Coffee with Scott Adams after-party.
And I guess he's got a special guest today, Chris Akers, who's going to talk about quantum science.
That sounds like a good one.
All right.
So there's a report that ChatGPT, the new version, version 4.5, which you can only get at the highest level of payment, apparently it's being called persuasive.
So it would be the first AI that kind of crossed that boundary into not just answering questions, but being persuasive.
And one tester called it warm and intuitive and natural.
And apparently it's got a personality and it shows better judgment in creative and writing.
So it's basically more human-like and less machine, they say.
So I have the highest-level subscription.
So I fired it up, and I asked it one question, and it lied to me.
And it showed no human warmth, no persuasion ability, and no ability to answer a simple question.
Do you know what the simple question was?
Are you...
GPT 4.0 or are you 4.5?
Now, keep in mind that at the top of the screen, I was using the app, it said 4.5.
I just selected it from the dropdown menu.
So it says, I'm 4.5.
And then I say, are you 4.5?
No, no, that's not really available.
I'm 4.0.
And I thought, it's just no different.
So my own experience was that I played with it for a few minutes, and all it is is a liar in a box.
That's my summary of AI. A liar in a box.
Because it literally hallucinates, but also if it's anything important, it has to lie to you because it's programmed to do that.
Because there's no way that the real truths of the universe or the way the world works could ever be revealed by AI. So it's basically a liar in a box.
But sometimes it helps you write computer code.
Anyway, I'm sure it'll get better in the next version.
That next version is going to be amazing.
Well, the Department of Homeland...
This story is funny, if it's true.
According to Zero Edge, the Department of Homeland Security was doing some bargaining with the TSA. So they've got a union.
TSA people, the airport checkers.
And they ended the collective bargaining after they found out that there were more people in TSA involved in the union than there were in checking bags.
So that literally their organization had more people just doing BS union stuff than actual work.
Administrative union stuff.
How is that even possible?
How do you get to the point where you have more people doing union-related work than actually checking bags at the airport?
And it makes me think, all right, let me connect some dots without doing any research at all.
Okay, okay.
It's a union.
It's a union.
Is it more likely to be led by Democrats or Republicans?
Democrats.
Democrats.
They like the unions.
So it's more likely a Democrat organization.
And let's see, it's run more like Hunter's artwork.
Hmm.
I guess nobody saw that coming.
Now, I'm very serious when I tell you that it looks like 100% of all Democrat-led organizations are just criminal enterprises.
If the TSA hired more people to not check bags than to check bags, that's a criminal enterprise because nobody signed up for that.
Where does their funding come from?
Are they hiring all their relatives or something?
How in the world do you get to the point where you have more people working on the union stuff?
than the job.
Criminal enterprise.
Meanwhile, FEMA has fired three supervisors that were part of that problem where Trump supporting homes were going to be overlooked because they thought it might be a problem if they knocked on the door of a Trump supporter.
So, allegedly, they were skipping some Trump supporters and three more Supervisors who apparently allowed that behavior, knew about it and allowed it, according to the New York Post, have been fired.
Now, FEMA. So during the prior administration, who was in charge of FEMA? Oh, that's right, Democrats.
And were they doing the job of FEMA? Or were they moving some money over to, let's say, Housing migrants in five-star hotels and overlooking the homes of Trump supporters?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, I don't know if that's a criminal enterprise, but there is some consistency with Democrat-led organizations.
Now, I'm not saying that Republicans have never done anything bad.
That's not it at all.
I'm just saying that...
On the Democrat side, it looks like 100%.
I think every, you know, even the Democrats who are trying to save the party, part of their suggestion to other Democrats is to stop pretending that cities are okay.
Cities aren't okay.
They're mostly Democrat-run, and they're absolute disasters.
And even the Democrats who are trying to save their own party are saying, okay, we have to admit that all the cities are disasters and they're Democrat-run.
Because if you can't do that, the voters will say, what's going on?
You don't even admit that the cities are disasters?
We can all see it.
Yeah, the cities are part of that problem.
Meanwhile, the Trump Organization is suing Capital One.
Because that bank allegedly closed a bunch of Trump-related accounts after January 6th, presumably because they didn't want to be associated with it and they thought maybe the tide of politics was moving against Trump and they wanted to get out of the way of it.
So they're getting sued because did they have cause?
Had the Trump organization done anything with their bank accounts that would cause them to be closed?
Absolutely not.
They just closed them for political reasons.
Allege the lawsuit.
So, let me ask you this.
Do you think the heads of Capital One, the executives, who presumably had to sign off on this, do you think they were Democrats or Republicans?
You know the answer.
I'm going to say Democrats.
Yeah.
Because this is, at least on the surface, if the allegations are true, I don't know if it's a criminal act to debank somebody for political reasons, but it's certainly an actionable one.
It looks like the lawsuit may have some merit, so we'll see where that goes.
Meanwhile, anti-DEI activist Bobby Starbuck may have another win here.
AT&T is dropping its woke policies, and Starbuck was active in that.
Making that happen.
I guess they had pronoun pins.
They were asking people, or at least allowing people, to wear a pin on their shirt that said what they were.
Can you believe, someday we're going to look back on this, and we're going to laugh, that people had to label themselves for a while.
Well, there were a few years, kids, when people had to label their gender.
Because people just couldn't tell.
Couldn't tell by looking at them.
So they're going to get rid of that.
They canceled a bunch of Pride programs.
They're unwinding their DEI. I'm not sure they're doing as much as they say they are, because they're head of DEI. Oh, and they're not doing scholarships that are racist anymore.
But their chief diversity officer...
is now listed as Vice President of Culture and Inclusion, to which I say, is that really going to be different than DEI? So we'll see if AT&T is serious about this.
So far it looks good.
I mean, they did call out a very specific set of things that they used to do that they're not going to do.
So we'll see.
Might be a step in the right direction.
Meanwhile, Trump administration is cutting...
$400 million in grants to Columbia University, according to Fox News, because there's a concern that Columbia has not done enough to fight the anti-Semitism on their campus.
Now, that would be related to the pro-Hamas protests that are going on and creating a culture where, if you're a Jewish student at Columbia, apparently it's just frightening.
Frightening to even be on campus because the level of bullying and essentially it's more than just speech.
There's a physical threat to it that's completely unacceptable.
And it's going to cost Columbia University $400 million.
Now, I don't know how much it costs to operate a university, but I feel like I could operate an entire university on $400 million.
But that's the part they're going to lose.
So, wow.
Anyway, speaking of that, also the New York Post is reporting that the U.S. is going to yank the visas.
I love the word yank in any kind of headline.
They're going to yank.
They're going to yank the first visa, so just one person so far, of a foreign student who is linked to Hamas supporting Disruptions on campus.
So they actually found a pro-Hamas non-citizen who was part of these protests, and they just said, well, you're going home.
Just one.
We imagine they might find more, but that's one.
Goodbye.
I like that.
I like that they're sending them home.
Here's another one that we don't know what's behind it, but you can kind of speculate.
So you remember when Mayor Adams in New York It was under all these corruption charges, and it looked like it might be more political than legal.
And you see the actual nature of the charges, and it was stuff like the country of Turkey asked them for a totally normal favor, which was, can you check on our building?
It's not getting approved for, I don't know, the fire department hadn't approved it, which to me is just the job of a mayor, somebody who's got an interest in the city.
Says something's not working, so they go to the mayor, and the mayor looks into it.
That should be the way things work.
But then there was, oh, but then Turkey rewarded him by upgrading his travel, to which I say, that's also the most normal thing in the world.
People getting their travel upgraded?
Okay.
And maybe you and I don't get it, but it's just so normal and routine.
Anyway, so...
The two of the prosecutors, who were after Mayor Adams, have been escorted out of the building, according to the New York Times.
So the Justice Department somehow has a beef with them, and they were immediately escorted out of the building.
So I assume that means fired or put on leave.
I don't know what that means, but the implication is that maybe they were law-faring Adams and that maybe the prosecutors were the bad guys.
We don't have evidence of that yet.
We only have speculation, but that's what it looks like.
So would this be another example of a Democrat-led organization, the New York prosecutors, that were closer to a criminal organization than an actual legitimate enterprise?
That's what it looks like.
We've got a pretty clear pattern here.
Meanwhile, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood studios are buying more ads on X. So Disney, Warner Brothers, a bunch of them.
I don't think it's a huge change compared to what it was back during the Twitter days.
So it's not like everything's coming back, but there's a little movement to bring it back.
But there's some controversy.
Because Elon Musk is embedded with the government at the moment.
And Elon Musk runs Axe.
And apparently there's some thinking that one of the big advertising, what would you call them?
They're sort of an advertising organization that makes recommendations and places ads on behalf of a number of different entities.
Called Interpublic.
But Interpublic wants to get this big merger done with some other enterprise that does something similar.
And it would require government approval.
So the accusation is that, hey, maybe Elon Musk is causing the government to maybe put a little pressure on that merger, maybe to limit it or to deny it.
And the only way they could get the merger might be, this is all speculation, that if they play along and advertise more on X, maybe that would get them the merger approval.
Now, there's no evidence whatsoever that the government's approval or disapproval of the merger would have anything to do with what's happening with X. So, who do you think is pushing this attack against Elon Musk?
Well, it includes Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, and Blumenthal, and a few other people I didn't recognize.
Now, what do I always tell you about the news?
If you know what is happening, you don't know anything.
You have to know who's doing it.
If you know who's doing it, well, you probably know everything.
So now I told you this whole thing that sounded quite reasonable.
You're like, yeah, you know what?
That does look like a conflict of interest.
You know, that's something maybe we should take a close look at.
Because I don't want Elon Musk to be using his access to get any kind of conflict of interest special treatment.
You know, none of us signed up for that.
So, you know, we should watch for that.
Because he has so many connections to so many parts of the government and so many parts of commerce, it's unavoidable that there'd be some overlap.
So we should make sure we got some transparency, and we're looking at that.
But then you see that Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, and Blumenthal are the ones pushing this.
You go, oh, the three hoaxers.
The three most dominant hoaxers of the entire Democrat Party.
So if the three of them are involved, yeah, I don't take it seriously at all.
That is the strongest signal you could get, that it's illegitimate.
Because the illegitimate things get all the normal Democrats on it, too.
The illegitimate things, it always starts with these three cats, right?
You know, and then how long before, well, I guess there's senators, but you'd expect, you know, Swalwell to be in there.
You know, basically all the worst of the worst.
They get behind the things that are the least true.
Well, there's a story in The Hill, and I guess other people reporting, that allegedly, I wasn't in the room, but allegedly, that Musk and Rubio got into some kind of a verbal confrontation at a meeting.
And maybe Musk got into a verbal confrontation with Duffy on air traffic controllers.
Something about DEI. And allegedly Rubio and Musk had strong words for each other.
And allegedly Musk didn't think that Rubio was cutting enough out of USAID. And allegedly the president stepped in to defend Rubio because he's got an enormous portfolio.
So here's where I agree with Rubio.
Rubio's job is so big.
Oh, my God.
So if you were just the State Department during these times when there's a lot of State Department stuff going on around the world, and then suddenly you have to absorb USAID and also make all those decisions about what to cut, the size of Rubio's job now is just...
It's just overwhelming.
I can't imagine how any human could even survive that at this point.
But certainly, it makes sense that you'd see some pushbacks from all the cabinet heads who don't want to lose control, and they also want to make sure the cuts make sense in their cabinet.
So there's a natural tension there.
So Trump was asked about it, and he just said, You know, some reporter asked about it at a press event.
He said, there was no clash.
I was there.
You're just a troublemaker, said to the reporter.
So who do you believe?
Do you believe that there was some tenseness and some words?
Or do you think Trump is right and says, there was no clash.
I was there.
You're just a troublemaker.
I'm going to say it's somewhere in between, meaning that a good, healthy, Government situation is where you have really strong players and they can be as honest as they need to be, especially behind closed doors.
So what I heard was you've got two superstars.
I think Rubio's doing great and Musk is doing great.
There's a natural conflict, I'd say a natural friction between the super cost-cutting people who want to go deep.
And a cabinet person who wants to make sure that the cuts are smart.
So that's a natural conversation.
You'd expect those two people to go at it pretty hard.
And if they do it transparently and they do it in front of other people, you know exactly what they're thinking, that's all good.
That's all good.
You can't treat lions like kittens.
If you put a bunch of lions in the same room, you're going to get a little roaring, right?
So if you want lions, You get this.
There's nothing wrong with it.
They should push hard, and probably they're all capable enough, smart enough, reasonable enough that they can get past anything that looks like a little tiff.
So I wouldn't worry about it at all.
It could be something that normies would worry about, but normies are not lions.
If you put lions in the room, you get a little roaring.
That's just it.
That's the end of the story.
There's nothing else to say.
So when Trump blows it off and says, there's no clash, I was there.
He's a lion.
So again, the lions are not going to see this as a problem.
This is just them doing what they do.
No problem.
So I guess Trump did this kind of clever persuasion.
You know how he likes to...
Steal the weapon out of the hands of the Democrats and flip it around.
So I guess he started saying that the cabinet members get to make the scalpel changes if they can.
If they can't make deep enough cuts with their scalpel, then he says, well, then Elon's going to have to make deeper cuts for you.
So I like the way he set it up, that the cuts are something that are going to happen.
It's not yes or no.
And cabinet, you get the first choice and take out your scalpel, make sure you're doing the ones you want.
But if it doesn't go deep enough, it's still going to get cut.
I love that.
That is pure leadership right there.
Yes, you go first.
It's your job to go first.
If you can't get it done, here's what's going to happen.
Perfect.
I like it.
But it steals from the Democrats their whole.
Oh, why don't you use a scalpel?
Because they don't know anything about business.
They just hear that little phrase, and they're like, yeah, yeah, that sounds good.
I don't know anything about business, but I'm pretty sure a scalpel is better than an axe.
So they just repeat it, and then the idiots who watch TV who also don't know anything about business are like, yeah, yeah, I don't know anything about business, but a scalpel sounds much smarter than an axe, right?
So Trump just takes it.
He goes, yeah, we're going to do the scalpel, not the axe.
But everything's exactly the same.
The fact that he uses those words, that the cabinet heads will use the scalpel first, it didn't change anything.
It just changed the words.
And it was enough to take the weapon out of their hands.
Like, what do you mean?
We're going scalpel first.
We're all about the scalpel.
You like the scalpel?
Well, I like the scalpel more than you like the scalpel.
I don't think you like the scalpel enough.
Oh, we love the scalpel.
Scalpel it up.
Come on, guys.
Get in there with that scalpel.
We want to avoid that axe.
Oh, no.
And don't get me started on chainsaws.
We don't want any of that.
Unless we need it.
It's kind of perfect.
Charles Payne on Fox Business is pointing out that there's a shocking drop on consumer spending and consumer plans to spend, which is a big deal for the economy and also very expected.
If food prices are up and gas prices are up and people are trying to figure out how to survive the inflation and employment is not looking as strong as it could be.
AI is coming after us.
You would expect that consumers would adjust by spending less, and sure enough, they are.
But two of the things that they're talking about, or three, I guess, are restaurants, airlines, and lodging.
So Charles Payne was calling them out in particular.
Now, why would restaurants, airlines, and lodging go down first?
Well, it's the most optional stuff.
So it's expensive and it's optional.
So of course that goes down first.
But I would like to offer a second reason why those particular things are going down.
They all suck.
They all suck.
Restaurants are overpriced.
I don't think the food is especially healthy.
Airlines are a disaster.
I mean, I wouldn't even go near an airline.
Was it Megyn Kelly who said that the TSA-approved line was longer than the regular line?
The pre-approved people?
The TSA is just a mess.
The airlines themselves are these 35-year-old planes.
It's traffic.
It's inconvenience.
It's hours in a little tube.
Half the time, they won't let you use the bathroom.
It's the first thing I cut out of my life.
Basically, travel just makes sense for women.
For some reason, women just love traveling.
And most men are like, okay, I guess we're traveling.
Now, there are men who love travel too, but in my experience, they like it a lot less than women.
Anyway, today's a Dilbert comic, for those of you who subscribe.
Is Dilbert trying to plan a vacation?
Let's just say when Dilbert tries to plan a vacation, he runs into all these problems, that everything about vacations are terrible.
So that's happening right now.
So if you want to watch Dilbert comics, which have never stopped since cancellation, you can subscribe on X or on Locals, where you get some extra stuff as well.
Meanwhile, watching the complete dissolution of the Democrat Party never gets old to me, but Maxine Waters is suggesting that Elon Musk might have stolen the last election by using his high technology ass.
That's Maxine Waters' language.
And we don't know everything that Elon Musk has done with his high-technology ass.
We don't know what he's been accused of by some, as it may relate to the election.
But we're not going to give up investigating and finding out.
They're thinking he used Starlink to change some votes or something.
Now, here's what's great about this story.
One hoax after another.
That supported the Democrat tent.
They're all falling apart.
Here's another one.
So if Maxine Waters is saying that we can't tell if the election was fair, that means that all the time they've been saying, if you doubted an election and the TV says it's fair, then you're some kind of a traitorous insurrectionist.
And here she is doing it.
Because she says you can't tell by looking at it.
I'm paraphrasing.
This is my own statement.
If she can't tell by looking at the election that it was fair, how can anybody else?
If she thinks that somebody, whether it's Elon Musk with his high-technology ass, or could it be some other person with their own high-technology ass?
Because there are a lot of high-technology asses.
Two cheeks apiece.
That's a lot.
So if they're accepting the idea that you can't tell if an election is fair or not, because somebody might have used their high-technology ass to rig it and not get caught, that's everything the Republicans say.
One of the biggest hoaxes is that you can tell that election was fair.
How?
What, just by looking at it?
Is it because the glowing box in your living room told you it was fair?
So therefore it's fair.
No, if the Democrats are releasing on the biggest hoax, to me the biggest hoax was that you can tell an election is fair.
They might be fair, but we can't tell.
How in the world do you know that somebody didn't find a way to cheat and get away with it?
That's not knowable.
The only thing you know is that you don't know.
You don't know what happened.
You only know that you don't know what happened.
Maxine Waters seems to have broken the seal on that hoax.
And from now on, anybody says, oh, but that 2020 election was good, you could just say, can you talk to Maxine Waters?
Because she thinks you can't tell if an election's fair just by looking at it.
Because somebody might have had a high-technology ass.
So I love that.
So Democrats now have...
Two paths to pursue victory.
One path would be to stay ridiculous and woke the way they are, which guarantees they lose everything.
So they can stay ridiculous and woke and lose everything.
Or they can copy Republicans but do the theater kid version where they just pretend to be Republicans and nobody in the world will be surprised or fooled by it.
Like, wait a minute.
You're just saying Republican stuff now.
But the Republicans have been saying it forever, and they mean it because every single Republican has meant it forever.
They're not kidding, but when the Democrats do it, they actually believe that they could just send the theater kids in, and they could pretend to be anything, and that if you get the messaging and the lines right, and you wear the right costumes, that you too can be as successful as Republicans.
They're so far from understanding how anything works, which is the main thing I always say about Democrats.
They don't understand how anything works.
They don't understand human motivation.
They don't understand incentives.
They don't understand the long-term effect of anything they do.
They don't understand business.
They don't understand scalpels versus chainsaws.
Almost nothing.
There's not even the most basic understanding of how anything works.
Anyway, so Elon Musk's Neuralink company filed some trademarks on telepathy and telekinesis, which is moving things with your mind.
Now, Emily Mullen is writing about this in Wired.
Now, that doesn't mean that they can do those things at the moment.
But I guess Elon Musk has talked about people with healthy brains.
At the moment, Neuralink is being aimed at people with specific disabilities that maybe Neuralink can fix.
But eventually, Elon thinks that ordinary people will have Neuralink implanted in their brains and might be able to just send thoughts to equipment or to people directly.
Now, I'm not sure I want that.
But it's a heck of a sci-fi looking future.
So we'll see where that goes.
Meanwhile, the idea that Jon Stewart and Elon Musk will have an interview is maybe a little lessened because I guess Musk recently called Jon Stewart a very far left and a propagandist.
He said, quote, Jon is too set in his ways.
He used to be more bipartisan.
Musk wrote over the weekend in one of his follow-ups, I guess, on Axe.
And then Stuart responded on air with, you know, you can imagine.
So I went to chat GPT, liar in a box, and I said, you define propagandist for me.
Like, what would make somebody a propagandist?
And some of the ways that you would be a propagandist, as opposed to a fair judge of the news.
Would be if you omit the counter-arguments, so you don't show the argument on the other side, if you're biased to one side, and if you use emotion to persuade.
So that was sort of the main determinant of a propagandist.
Does that sound like Jon Stewart?
Does he omit the Republican argument when he talks about stuff?
Yes.
Is he biased to one side?
Yeah, obviously.
Nobody's hiding it.
And does he use emotion, in his case humor, to persuade?
Yes.
He's very good at it.
And by the way, there's nothing wrong with it if you're transparent.
So this is not even a criticism.
Does Jon Stewart not know that he's a propagandist?
Is it possible he's not aware of it?
Or is it just a definition thing?
To me, it seems like he fits the definition perfectly.
Now, would I? Maybe.
Would Elon Musk fit the definition of a propagandist?
I think so.
Because he's biased, he leaves out their argument, and he uses emotion to persuade.
So I think we're all propagandists, if we're in this at all.
Now, I try...
When I know the argument on the other side, I try to include it, but I'd be lying if I said that I do a great job of it.
So, yeah, I'm pretty biased.
Pretty biased.
So if you wanted to call me a propagandist or anybody else who does this, it kind of fits.
It fits all of us.
So I'd love to see them talk.
I hope it happens.
So we need a name for this hoax.
This is one of the biggest Democrat hoaxes.
The big Democrat hoax was that there was no way Biden could close the border unless Congress acted on some kind of legislation.
Now, you knew it was not true because we all knew that Trump had the border closed before.
And now we've watched that Trump almost instantly closed the border again without any legislation from Congress.
I was open to the idea that maybe something had changed and maybe there was some new reason why the president wouldn't be able to close a border.
But I think Trump proved pretty quickly, yeah, a president can close a border.
And he just did it.
So we need a name for that.
That was one of the most destructive hoaxes in the country.
But it was a hoax.
And a hoax is that they know it's not true.
It's not a hoax if they're just wrong or just ordinary lying.
This was an organized hoax because they all got the memo to just say, oh, it's because of the failed legislation that the Republicans blocked.
That was never true.
Never true for a second.
And of course, my Democrat friend that I talk about all the time, he went to that right away.
Oh, nope.
Nope, you've got to have that legislation.
It's totally the Republicans are blocking it for political reasons.
Nope, it was always a hoax.
Well, apparently Russia has mounted some gigantic missile and plane attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
And Poland even scrambled some fighter jets because it was such a big attack.
They thought, hmm, maybe we should be a little prepared in case there's some surprises.
There were no surprises, but how do you take the fact that Russia is doing a major attack at exactly the time when people are saying, hey, it's about time to talk.
We should be negotiating.
Well, apparently this happened only hours after Trump had said, in some forum, I guess, Trump said that That Putin wanted to end the war, but that only Trump knew the secret reason why Putin had no choice.
Do you think there was a secret reason that Putin had no choice?
And do you think the fact that Trump said, oh yeah, Putin wants to end this war and he has no choice, do you think that may have caused him to launch one of his biggest operations to show that he definitely has a choice?
I don't know.
I don't know how long it takes to plan one of these attacks.
But certainly the timing makes you wonder if he's doing it to show some independence, as in, yeah, I can do this all day long.
So we can negotiate, but just remember, it's up to me whether I want to destroy all of Ukraine, because I can any time I want.
I think that's what's happening.
So I saw a post by Balaji Srinivasan, who you should all be following, and he says the Houthis, In Yemen, the Houthis are sending missiles and drones out at ships, making it impossible to navigate the Red Sea there.
He says the Houthis beat the U.S. Navy at the Red Sea, and that basically it's over.
There was a war.
The U.S. tried hard to bomb the Houthis to stop, and it didn't work.
And it won't work, and the Houthis won.
So apparently, the Houthis are not attacking.
Russian, Iranian, or Chinese ships, because they all have some kind of a connection through Iran.
So Iran is backing the Houthis, and Russia is friendly with Iran, and China is friendly with Iran.
So it's just Western ships.
So the Western ships are going to have to spend, I don't know, 25% more to get to their destinations, and it's going to take longer, because it's too risky to be a Western ship, In the Red Sea.
And it doesn't look like there's anything we can do about it, because our military is too weak.
And as Balaji pointed out, the Hoonies are using these $2,000 drones to take out ships, and then we try to beat them with $2 million missiles that do something, but that doesn't stop them.
So we can't really be sending $2 million per missile against their $2,000 drones.
As long as they can withstand their strikes, we don't have any defense.
So is that something that Trump can fix?
Because if you're looking at what's causing inflation, the enormous increase in shipping costs, because the Red Sea, have got to be a big part of it.
So what could he do?
Well, Trump says he's negotiating with Iran.
I think it's through backdoor ways.
But in theory, you could come up with some kind of peace deal with Iran that would prevent them from having nuclear power, but maybe also get them to tell the Houthis to stop destroying the Red Sea.
Now, what would Iran get for that?
Like, what do they get in return?
We don't attack them?
We couldn't even take out the Houthis.
Is Iran really worried about us or not?
If we couldn't destroy the Houthis, can we really do anything in Iran?
Now, I know Iran's air support was destroyed by Israel, which in theory means that Israel and the United States could have its way with Iran from the sky.
But it's not like they don't have a million ways to attack back cyberways and every other thing, terrorism.
So, I don't know.
It feels to me like Iran might not want to make peace ever, because they've got China backing them, they're friends with Russia.
Maybe that's all they need.
Sell everything they can make to China.
But, as somebody named Ben Talebou warns, this whole negotiating with Iran might be a trick.
Meaning that Iran just wants to buy time until they can build their nuclear weapon.
So when it looks like you're getting close to a deal with Iran, you probably aren't.
You're probably just being faked out.
It's like, oh yeah, we'll make a deal any minute now.
Well, now that's a problem.
We're going to have to go negotiate that.
We'll be back in a month.
So it looks like a very good possibility.
That if Iran is doing anything that looks like negotiating, it's just fake.
And all they're doing is buying time to build up their defenses and make their nuke.
But Trump is signaling that a nuclear deal could emerge in the near future.
So we'll see.
Is he being too optimistic?
Don't know.
I guess it depends what's included in the negotiations.
If it's way more than just...
Iran has nukes or Iran doesn't have nukes.
It may be a much larger conversation, more variables in there.
So if there are more variables, maybe.
But if it's just yes-no on nukes, I think they're just going to use the negotiations as a stalling tactic.
Meanwhile, according to the UPI, Mark Moran is writing, the support for Israel...
That being 46% of respondents say they support Israel rather than Palestine, at least in the current war situation.
And, of course, Republicans are far more likely to back Israel than Democrats, which is weird because There are more Jewish American Democrats than there are Jewish American Republicans, and you've got to wonder why.
Are there that many Jewish Americans who don't really care that much about how much support Israel gets?
I don't really know, but it seems to me odd that things are lined up that way.
But you shouldn't be surprised that support for Israel is currently a little bit low because there's a hot war going on, and that's just sort of a natural thing.
But there are thoughts that Israel's plan, since they haven't gotten the hostages back, and that looks like a stalling thing too.
So as they ramp up the pressure on Hamas, they will probably...
Remove the citizens that they allowed to return.
I don't know how anybody returned.
What were they doing to survive?
None of the buildings even looked habitable and everything looked toxic.
I don't know how they returned, but some did.
So there might be hundreds of thousands of people that they relocate and just empty Gaza out again.
And then maybe they started attacking and holding ground instead of just attacking.
Really putting a force to hold the ground.
And I would say that that's inevitable.
I don't think there's any way around it.
In the long run, which might come pretty quickly, what is Israel going to do?
The only thing that even makes sense is that they depopulate it, because it's too dangerous to live there anyway, and then they finish the job.
Will be, you know, bad news for the families of the hostages, but they're kind of down to no real other options.
So one of the things that always amazes me about this conflict is that it's like Hamas has a plan to give Israel everything in the long run.
It's like, well, if we attack them on October 7th and then we take their hostages and we don't give them back.
Then they'll be able to depopulate entire Gaza and control it in the future forever.
Like, they didn't see that coming?
There was nobody in Hamas who could figure out that the logical outcome of October 7th was Israel would own Gaza forever.
I figured it out.
I'm pretty sure I was onto that on day one.
And it's not the first time that Israel got bigger.
Because their neighbors got worse.
So there is a pattern.
Israel gets bigger every time there's some major attack against it.
Here's a surprise.
Apparently, didn't you think that Walmart might be in a lot of trouble because Amazon would eventually just eat their business completely?
Well, it turns out that Walmart is really good at executing, which is why they're Walmart.
Walmart used to be one of the main things you'd learn in business school as just an execution excellence company.
So they were really good at managing their supplies, managing their inventory, and getting it to the right place when they needed it and stuff.
So really nobody was ever better at that.
But here's what's happened.
Now Walmart...
It has so many stores, and they have really robust delivery service now, that they can do same-day delivery to more than 90% of the country.
Same-day delivery.
Now, I haven't tried it, but Walmart has groceries.
They have all kinds of stuff.
I mean, Walmart has an extensive list of things.
So anything that a Walmart has...
For 90% of the country, you could get it delivered same day.
That is really competitive with Amazon.
Because, I don't know about you, but the same day thing, or even, you know, Amazon's usually next day, but a few things are same day.
If I looked on Amazon and it was, oh, it might be tomorrow or the next day, but Walmart said I'll get it to you by 3 o'clock, I think I'd use Walmart every time.
Depending on the product.
Now, of course, Walmart doesn't have every product in the world, but they got a lot.
So I didn't see that coming.
Walmart's actually being a credible threat to Amazon, at least for the subset of the business.
Well, you know, I keep telling you about the breakthroughs in energy things.
Well, there's this breakthrough in hydrogen, to make hydrogen.
That's 99% more efficient.
99%.
And they use iron as part of the main catalyst to turn the, I guess, turning water into hydrogen.
So you have to split things up.
I don't know enough about the science.
But you have to use some technique as a catalyst for the water oxidation.
So here's the thing that caught my attention.
It's 99% Faraday efficiency in aqueous media.
That's right.
Yeah.
99% Faraday efficiency in aqueous media.
Well, I mean, I would have guessed 98%.
So I was way off.
Idiot.
So apparently, if they can scale this up, a 99% improvement in efficiency would make this It would make it just wildly cost-effective.
Just wildly.
It would be better than anything.
So keep an eye on that one.
We'll see if that does scale up.
Meanwhile, in Science Alert, it says that by 2050, three out of five adults will be classified as overweight.
What?
In 2050, three out of five adults will be classified as overweight?
You know what's wrong with that?
Have you walked outdoors recently?
Three out of five adults are already overweight.
You can't convince me that three out of five are not already overweight.
Have you just walked outside?
There are places where...
It seems like 100% of the people are overweight.
Now, I'll give you that LA still has a bunch of skinny people.
Maybe New York City, too.
There are a few places where you do have some skinny people.
But for most of the country, it's already 3 out of 5, easily.
So, we'll see about that.
But here's the good news.
There's never been a time...
When it was easier to compete for mates and for jobs and for friends.
It's never been easier.
Because if all you did was just eat right and exercise, you would look like a superstar on the dating apps.
Like, whoa, look at this non-fat person.
And same with jobs.
The better you look, it's not fair, but the better you look, the more likely you get hired, the more likely you'll have friends.
So, I don't know.
On one hand, it's terrible.
On the other hand, it's never been easier to be in the top 10% of whatever domain you want to be in.
Meanwhile, according to The Guardian, there's a new technology using gene editing to keep your banana from turning brown.
Now, I know a lot of you like your bananas brown.
But if you don't want your banana to be brown, You might get one of these special-made bananas with special jeans that don't turn brown.
You know, it's a mixed, sort of a mixed bag there.
If they could make this sort of thing work, especially for other foods, especially for avocados.
Avocados are pretty much a one-in-three situation that work.
About two out of three avocados you just have to shake hands because they're like, ugh, that's all brown.
But imagine the savings in food.
If you could just make sure that your current food you're buying doesn't go bad before you use it, that'd be a pretty big deal.
I'd be worried it would turn me into a fly or something, but, you know, that's worth it.
So your bananas are not brown.
And then scientists have created a super skin.
It's basically a gel that you can put on a wound, like a cut.
It'll heal 90% of cuts in four hours and fully repair them in 24. That is so Star Trek.
This already exists.
So this is a real thing.
They'd have to scale it up, but it's a real thing.
So imagine having a deep cut and just putting this gel on it, and in four hours it's healed.
That doesn't even sound real, does it?
Now, if this is real, I'm going to put it on my banana.
Keep it from going brown.
I don't know if that's the right way to play it, but I'm going to put my healing gel on my banana.
Maybe if it's already brown, it'll turn it back to not brown.
Alright, so those are my ideas for the future.
And I remind you that there's going to be an after party to this.
Which Owen will be setting that up any minute now over on X in the spaces.
That's the audio only part of X. So look for Owen Gregorian and his special guest, Chris Akers.
We'll be talking about quantum science, which I know will be very fun.
