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Ah, sound is working.
Everything's coming together.
Well, the May, month of May, CPI.
In other words, the inflation measure was 2.4%, which was in line with expectations.
So if that's what you expected, you got what you wanted.
Meanwhile, in California, it is now illegal for drivers to hold their phones to view a map.
So you can put your phone into a holder, you can have it in your pocket, but you can't have it in one hand while you're driving.
That should be on a list with many other things.
You should not be able to drive while you've got that in your hand.
For example, let's say a makeup brush, right?
Wouldn't you feel safer?
If nobody can drive with one hand and put makeup on with the other.
Yeah, that's just one example.
I'll bet you could think of another.
But moving on.
The House, which would be Congress, well, part of Congress, is launching a probe into Harvard over their, well, alleged discrimination in hiring.
That's the Washington Examiner has that story.
And what do you think?
Do you think when they look into Harvard that they will find any possible discrimination against white men in hiring?
Do you think there's any chance that they don't discriminate against white men?
Of course they do.
We'll see how much trouble they get into over that.
Meanwhile, you might remember reporter Terry Moran, who was working for ABC News, but he made some unfortunately highly personal sounding hatred posts about Stephen Miller.
And he's also said some bad things about Trump.
But he was put on some kind of leave.
And now they say, ABC says, his contract is up and he will not be renewed.
So what happens with all these biased news people who get fired for being biased and terrible?
How many of them will start their own podcast that becomes wildly economically successful?
Do any of you think that Don Lemon is making money on his podcast?
Because I kind of doubt it.
And what about, what's his name, Jim, who always would be...
Do you think Alcasa, no, Jim Acasa, what are the odds he's making any money with this podcast?
Probably not very high.
And every one of these people get fired from the mainstream media.
They have no place to go.
Sort of like me, actually.
Same situation.
When they get canceled, they end up starting podcasts.
I saw, was it Chris Cuomo, who was predicting that even Joe Rogan's show would go down in viewership.
And it would be because so many people are entering that space, and a lot of them are So the idea is that the space that you have enjoyed for podcasting will be full of highly qualified people who will be sucking up all the time and attention that I was taking from you.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see.
Because the podcasting world is a very different skill.
All right, what else is going on here?
Oh.
So, according to the Wall Street Journal, as being reported here by Zero Hedge, in the final years of the Biden administration, they had launched, the Biden people, had launched an investigation into Elon Musk's foreign associates.
So there were just...
Now, what crime do you think they were looking for?
The answer is, any crime.
They were looking for anything because I think it was already obvious that Musk was...
And I think there was just weaponizing government and going after a potential Trump ally before he was as much a Trump ally.
And I guess they didn't find anything because nothing came of it.
But just think of that.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department were Investigating Musk for nothing.
for nothing, that there's no They simply were, you know, looking into his associates to see if there was anything they could make something out of.
God.
Anyway, over in France, where you thought the French were Well, it turns out that they would like to classify the X platform as an adult site because it has a lot of adult content on it.
France wants the users of X to have to show an ID to use the platform.
Now, not every time they use it, obviously.
But I think they're also doing the same thing with Pornhub and some other porn sites.
So at least they're being consistent.
It's not that they're going after X in particular, but apparently there's going to be a little bit of friction there.
So we'll see.
Speaking of Musk, There appears to be some kind of understanding that is developing here between Trump and Musk.
And it started with, we think they had a phone call, but Musk posted, quote, I regret some of my posts about President Trump last week.
Now, oh, and he says they went too far.
Now, how many of you would call that an apology?
He's got regret, and he says why he regrets it, because it went too far.
Is that an apology?
Well, you know, an apology to your spouse would have to be a lot deeper and more personal.
But in terms of famous people, Who, you know, have thicker skin than they're used to this stuff.
That's pretty close.
Sort of.
It's in the neighborhood of an apology.
It at least acknowledges that he was in the wrong.
Which is the important part.
Because, you know, if you're dealing with Trump and your conclusion is, okay, the problem was all me.
I regret it.
I should not have done that.
Here's why.
That's not bad.
That's not bad.
It's not technically an apology.
But among famous people, that's not bad.
And then I guess Trump was asked if he could ever work with Musk again.
And Trump says, I guess I could.
I guess I could.
So that would suggest that maybe there's some kind of agreement going on there, that they know they're better with each other than without.
Now, this might be related, or it might not be.
So see if you think this next story is related to the Musk and Trump story.
So, Speaker Mike Johnson.
He told reporters that Republicans plan to launch a, quote, multi-front war against the deficit.
He says, every dollar matters.
We're serious about this.
The Republican Party is doing everything, blah, blah, blah.
But then he said, and here's the important part.
He said, this rescission package is a critical step.
And it's one of many.
So it's the one of many part that's the important part.
According to Speaker Johnson, there'll be several of these, and they'll come from the White House who will work together with the administration to cut all the fraud, waste, and abuse.
So what Mike Johnson is saying is that there will be doge-like cuts.
But that they're going to come in separate packages, and it's a presumed, understood part of the process.
Now, doesn't that sound like something that Musk would have asked for in order to stand down and stop criticizing the big, beautiful bill?
I feel like the thing he could have asked for and should have is...
But you're going to have to tell me which one does.
You're going to have to put something out there that says we are going to cut expenses with these subsequent spending packages.
That's what Johnson's saying.
Now, I think this...
So it makes me wonder if the outcome of Elon talking to Trump and getting mad at him and maybe hopefully getting over it is that at some point maybe Speaker Mike Johnson agreed to Give a little bit more detail to the public about how they plan to attack the debt.
Now, I don't know if this is enough, so I would love to tell you, oh yeah, if they have these subsequent spending bills that they don't call spending bills, and they cut them, well, we're in good shape.
I don't know that that will be the case, but it's definitely what we need to hear.
We all needed to hear that they have some kind of plan for cutting expenses, so that helps.
According to a new study, a side post is talking about this, Eric Nolan.
When there's a perceived social breakdown, It fuels the desire for authoritarian leaders.
There's a new psychology study that says.
So when society is falling apart, the members of society are far more likely to say, could I just have a dictator to work this out for us?
Because democracy isn't going to work in this chaos.
And is there a way they could have saved any money on that study?
Can you think of anything they could have done instead of doing the study that would have gotten them to the same conclusion?
Well, yes, they could have asked Scott.
Because if you said to me, Scott, do you think that during times of People will want stronger leaders.
I would have said, duh!
Yeah, every time.
And I didn't even know that was a question.
Of course I will.
And if things look like they're going fine, what happens then?
When things look like they're going fine, that's how you elected Jimmy Carter.
You get Jimmy Carter.
So I thought everybody knew that, that when things look uncertain, that people want an authoritarian leader who can take charge.
So maybe that's exactly where Trump needs to be.
Trump says in a post on Truth Social, So, do you think so?
If we had not done so, L.A. would have been completely obliterated.
The very incompetent governor, he puts it in quotes, governor, Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass.
Should be saying, thank you, President Trump.
You are so wonderful.
We would be nothing without you, sir.
Every time he writes, it's funny.
But here's what I think.
We will never know what would have happened in LA if there had not been National Guard.
But are you happy that Trump Are you happy about that?
I am.
I'm happy about it because I don't know if it increased or decreased any kind of violence.
I doubt it increased it.
It seems kind of unlikely it made it worse, but that's what the Democrats are claiming.
So I would say during great uncertainty, when our cities are inflamed, look back at that psychology study and ask yourself, did you want a strong leader this week, or did you want a weak leader this week?
And if you're being honest, you're probably saying to yourself, you know, a lot of stuff on fire, a lot of uncertainty.
I wouldn't mind having a strong leader.
And Trump stands in and he gives you exactly what you want.
He is very good at reading the room.
So his timing for being more assertive as a leader is...
It was perfect.
Uh-oh.
I'm running out of ink on my printer.
Well, Karen Bass has declared a local emergency for just one part of L.A. And so curfews are in place from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Now, why did that take so long?
So Trump is there with the National Guard in, like, no time at all.
And the mayor, it took until now to come up with this idea of a curfew.
If a curfew is useful, didn't they wait a little bit too long?
Or are these riots supposed to last forever?
Like, how long are they going to last?
You know, the natural life of a protest like this would be, I don't know, two weeks?
Maximum two weeks?
But if a curfew helps, I'm going to say, why wasn't that the first thing you did?
You know, once you saw foreign flags and cars on fire and graffiti on things, Wasn't there an earlier time when you might decide, you know what?
A little bit of a curfew would help.
All right, well, better than nothing.
So Governor Newsom had a little embarrassment because he planned this major announcement where he put on a suit and tie and acted like he was a governor, and he wanted to say some things that were bad about Trump, mostly.
While using the excuse of the protests in LA as a reason to talk to the country.
And first several minutes of his broadcast, there was an audio problem.
So it looked really sort of amateurish because the audio didn't work for a while.
They got it working finally.
It was a recorded piece.
But it didn't come off well because it made him look like he was running a crappy operation.
And then there's this weird story where Newsom apparently made the claim that Trump had never called him or called him back.
I don't know which one it was.
But Trump...
And there it was, right on the phone, a call log of 16 minutes where he spoke with Newsom.
Now, if you're Newsom, They're all professional liars.
But why would you tell a lie that could so easily be detected and debunked?
Did he forget he talked to Trump?
Or did he think nobody would check?
Or did it work because...
So probably, I don't know, three-quarters of his base who ever heard him say that Trump didn't call, they probably still believe he didn't call, even though there's a call log and it's a national story that he did.
So, anyway.
So, how is MSNBC handling the coverage of the protests?
Well, one of them, whose name I don't know, he said that he was reminded of slavery.
And he's reminded of the slaveholders versus the slave catchers.
And he didn't want to live in a world where citizens were forced to decide if they should be helping ICE or not helping ICE.
And so he made an analogy to slavery and escaped slaves.
Now, I've got a little advice for you.
If you ever hear anybody bolstering their opinion about a topic, By making an analogy to slavery, the Holocaust, or Hitler, and there's probably more I could add to the list, but those are not serious people.
Those are people whose filter is just completely broken because you shouldn't need any kind of analogy for something that's obviously wrong and the argument.
Is enough?
Why would you have to make an analogy to slavery?
If it were bad, wouldn't you be able to say, oh, let me just describe it, and there's nothing else you need to know?
You don't need to know, well, does it share three of 17 points with this historical event that was horrible in its own right?
No.
Anybody who needs to make an analogy to the Holocaust, to Hitler, or to slavery, they don't have an argument.
So they're sort of flailing away there.
All right, here's a story which is in the news, but I can't tell if it's fake news or partial fake news, so I'll watch the comments.
Maybe you know.
So the allegation is that the either ICE or Border Patrol was starting to target Home Depot day workers.
Now those would be the people who, at least where I live, the illegal immigrants would often gather in the parking lot of Home Depot because people would And so you could drive up to the little group of them and say, I need you and you to help me dig a ditch today or put up a rock wall.
And then you drive them to your house and they work all day and then somehow they get home.
I don't know how.
And so the allegation, Is that ICE is targeting them and has targeted them, and especially in the Paramount area, they targeted Home Depot allegedly, and I'm asking you if this is real, and that that caused the protests.
Now, does that sound true?
Because here's the...
There was one story in April where there was somebody with an arrest warrant who was one of the day workers.
And when either ICE or Border Patrol, I forget, went to arrest the one who had an open arrest warrant, they did what they have told us they have to do.
Which is, in the process of going after the one person, if it puts them in contact with a bunch of other people who are illegal but they were not the targeted ones, they might get deported.
Now, that's something that ICE and Tom Holman have been saying since the very start.
And I understand it.
I don't love it, but I understand it.
That if your job is ICE and you're in a room full of people that you don't to be illegal, what are you going to do?
Are you going to ignore it?
I mean, it's still a crime.
So the part that I liked about Tom Holman's approach was the worst first, which makes me very comfortable.
If they were targeting Home Depot people just because it was easy and they're standing right there in public and you'd know exactly what they were, they're not really the criminals.
They're not the worst.
And it would be really bad publicity, a bad brand image look.
For ICE to be going after the people who literally are standing there saying, can I help you build a wall?
Can I work for you at below market wages?
They're not really the dangerous ones.
So I know that many of you are going to say, ship everybody home.
There's no such thing as anybody who should stay if they're illegal.
I get it.
But wouldn't you agree with me that if you were ICE, you should stick with your plan of worst first?
And the story about the Home Depot would be the opposite of the worst first.
So I don't know if the story is even true.
Because I can't imagine ICE saying, you know, this whole worst first thing has worked so far, but...
I don't know.
Doesn't seem like a good plan.
So I'm going to say that I don't believe this is real news.
Or that there's something about the news that's, you know, undisclosed.
Like, you know, maybe there were some known gang members within that group or something.
But no, there's something wrong with that story.
It just doesn't fit the known facts.
According to News Nation, federal agents have arrested more than 100 people at this big Nebraska food plant, Glen Valley Foods in Omaha.
And I guess the workers ran for cover, but they got 100 of them.
Now, is that a case of worst first?
And so the question I have is, has something changed in the priority of the deportations?
And I'm not arguing whether it should or should not at the moment.
I'm just asking, did something happen?
Where they decided that worst first did make sense?
I certainly understand that if 100 of them were working at this one Glen Valley Foods, wouldn't that be 100 jobs that American citizens might have instead?
You know, it's indoor work, and it seems like it would be So, you know, I'm not going to say I'm in favor of it or against it.
I'm just wondering if it's a change in strategy.
You say you think it's a new sheriff in town move?
To scare him into not working in America in the first place?
Maybe.
And MSNBC is reporting that ICE is going to deploy tactical units to five sanctuary cities run by Democratic mayors.
So that would include Seattle, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Northern Virginia.
Now, that part seems like business is normal because the sanctuary cities would presumably be where a lot of the worst of the worst are.
So that makes sense.
And it does suggest that ICE and Trump are not backing down because they're going to go right after the bluest cities.
So there's something to be said about that.
Do you remember LaMonica McIver?
She's representative from the House of Representatives.
And she was the one who was accused of forcibly interfering with the federal law enforcement officers.
Gateway Pundit is writing about this.
And apparently a federal grand jury has returned a three-count indictment.
Charging her with forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement at the Delaney Hall Detention Center in Newark last month.
And apparently she's facing a maximum of 17 years in prison.
How bad was it?
You know, when I hear the penalties, For some things, I say to myself, seriously?
17 years for a middle-aged woman pushing somebody in law enforcement?
Now, obviously, it needs to be illegal to interfere with law enforcement doing their job.
So I have no problem with it being illegal, but what would be the appropriate penalty?
I don't think it's 17 years.
Maybe six months.
At most, six months suspended sentence.
Yeah.
So, I don't know.
We'll see.
I guess, according to Fox News, 1,500 protests planned in 50 states.
PBD was on Fox News, and he was talking about it was like a setup that Democrats are looking for their next George Floyd moment to frame Trump as a dictator.
Now, that's exactly what it is.
I would go further and say what we're in is not a protest, but a photo op competition.
Once you start thinking of it as a photo op competition, then everything makes sense.
So at the moment, Trump is winning because the photo ops are a guy with a Mexican flag on top of a burning car.
So that's a photo that works in Trump's favor.
So at the moment, the photo op competition is strongly favoring Trump.
But it would only take one photo of something that goes the other way before the Democrats could be solidly winning the photo op competition.
They just need one law enforcement person to put one knee on somebody's back.
They just need one person to be wounded badly who's a protester.
They need a short video of somebody who didn't look too dangerous being dragged away.
The photo op contest will get a lot closer than it is.
At the moment, like I say, Trump is, you know, he's dominated.
All the photos are...
But keep an eye on that.
So yes, PVD, you are correct.
It is a photo op competition.
So meanwhile, Rachel Maddow, living in her world of madness and hallucination, she has this persuasion method.
I don't know if it has a name, but she's trying to convince her viewers that there's something that she's imagining that they can also see clearly.
It's a tough trick.
So she's operating from pure imagination, hallucination.
And what she sees is she's calling a clear, unambiguous reality.
Trump is an authoritarian leader who's trying to take full dictator control of the country.
Now, the way she's trying to sell this is not by giving you examples, which would normally be the way you'd sell such a thing.
It would be like, well, he did this, and then he did that, and then he did this, and then he said that.
And if you put it all together, it looks like he wants to be a dictator.
Now, that would be an actual argument.
But she's hallucinating that everybody can see it clearly.
Where?
What are you even talking about?
Is sending in the National Guard to temporarily protect the city?
Is that what makes a king?
That's a pretty weak king.
So she uses words to convince people that they should not question.
So she doesn't say, you know, it looks like there's some risk here that, you know, this Trump fellow might be trying to take more power.
You know, that's the way you talk about the real world.
You don't know for sure anything, but you say to yourself, well, there's some risk.
You know, if this happened and that happened, maybe something bad would happen.
But instead, she goes with, it's clear, it's certain, it's unambiguous.
There's now no question about it that he's becoming a dictator.
If that's all you have is words, That's it.
Just words.
Clear, unambiguous, all doubt removed.
Those are not arguments.
Those are words.
And that's what she's got.
Just words.
Well, CNN's Harry Enten, you know him because he does a lot of the polls and data stuff on CNN.
It's pointing out that legal immigrants in the U.S., people who came here the right way and either got a citizenship or at least here legally, that among the people who are legal immigrants, there's been a 40-point shift to the right among immigrant voters.
So now Republicans went from way down.
In the minds of legal immigrants to weigh up.
They even shifted wildly in their support for President Trump.
So if you're a legal immigrant, the odds that you like Trump are pretty good.
Very good.
Now, I don't know if it's the same where you live, but I know...
And I would say that a solid majority of them are pro-Trump.
The illegal immigrants, probably not the same, I assume.
But the ones who followed the law and got here the right way, they're not looking for trouble.
They're not looking for people coming from their home country.
Disrupting their stores and their cities.
They're not looking for that at all.
They're looking for the law and order and the country they thought they were going to.
So, yeah, that supports my observation that legal immigrants are more likely to want a little law and order and be...
That's been my experience.
Well, I was wondering yesterday, when an Apple store gets looted and you see the people just grabbing each of the individual phones and ripping them out and running away, I said to myself, and to you as well, Why are these phones working once they know they've been stolen?
So it seems to me that the phone should have some kind of facility on it that if you took it out of the store illegally, it would lock up or erase itself or something.
But apparently it's even better than that.
The iPhone's sound alarms.
And then a message reads that it was a stolen phone, and it needs to be where it needs to be returned.
So there was a video of a pile of stolen phones just going, rah, rah, rah.
And I don't think you could get those phones to do anything else.
What's happening?
The stock market is up.
Looks like it is.
Anyway, so that answered my question.
If you were planning on looting an Apple store, it doesn't look like that works so well if you're going to take phones.
Don't do it.
Well, here's a gigantic story in terms of how it will affect you and the world, bigger than all the rest of the stories.
And that is, Wall Street Journal has a story that goes on.
So if you wanted to know some kind of news story or something like that, instead of giving you a list of news sites, it might open its own AI and just answer the question.
So why is that a big deal?
It's a big deal because most of the news sites depend on Google search traffic for their own advertising revenue to be triggered by traffic.
So apparently, often post is almost invisible now.
It doesn't show up in searches because the AI is answering the questions.
The Washington Post looks like it'll take a hit.
Business Insider is cutting staff due to a reduction in traffic.
The Atlantic publication expects Google traffic to approach zero.
Wow.
Zero.
Now, that has happened before to Breitbart, for example.
The reason wasn't AI in that case.
It was censorship.
So basically, Breitbart went from a place that would show up on Google searches to a place that did not.
And that pretty much just decimated Breitbart.
But they seem to be recovering, so we'll see if they're...
Now, what would happen?
Oh, and by the way, the Wall Street Journal didn't seem as susceptible.
And I understand that because when I want to see the Wall Street Journal, I don't just Google a story.
I Google the Wall Street Journal because their brand is so well-known.
So that makes sense.
That their traffic would be flatter up because when you look for them, you're looking for them.
You're not just looking for a story.
Anyway, the reason that's such a big thing is that what would happen if your major news sites lost 50% to 75% of their revenue?
Would they stay in business?
And if they didn't stay in business, what would that do to all the social media people like me, the podcasters, who look at the traditional news in part to make fun of it and to determine what's fake and what's not and to compare it to the left and the right?
That whole game might be over.
It's entirely possible.
That the whole concept of going and looking at a news site, that might be a year away from being obsolete.
And that's pretty extreme.
How would I know what's real?
who would be looking to find out what the real news is?
You know, as much as we make fun of the traditional media,
Now, I know that the fake news will have lots of stories that are not totally believable and credible, but that's part of the process, is comparing it to other stories and trying to figure out what's real and what isn't.
And sometimes you can crawl toward the truth.
But what if you didn't have any of that?
What if I didn't have a New York Times or a Washington Post or a Wall Street Journal to even look at?
Because they couldn't maintain their business model.
We're right on the edge of that.
And then what would happen to Google's AI when you said, all right, I'm not going to have links to the other sites.
But the AI will tell me what's true.
How can it do that?
The AI would only be able to look at other news stories and scrape them or steal them or something.
But the AI doesn't know what's real.
The AI can only look at news and then tell you what the news says.
So if the Google AI...
It wouldn't be able to answer.
So we're sort of right on the edge of all public information disappearing.
What the hell does that look like?
If you didn't have reporters and independent press, there are going to be some things that the independent press can't really afford to do.
None of the podcasters have their own news bureau in the Middle East.
So we may be approaching a really weird time in human civilization.
Where our sources of news just disappear because they won't be sustainable.
Google will eat it all.
Google will eat it and then starve to death on its own because it needs the things that it's eating for its own survival.
Not company survival, but survival as a news information entity.
So, interesting times.
Well, here's a story about China and the trade deal.
As you know, China and the United States have been talking productively, and at least some of the people are saying good things.
I think Ludnik is saying that the two largest economies have reached a handshake for a framework.
So let me explain how far away that is from a deal.
There is a trade deal, which could take years to get the details right.
And then above that, there would be a framework, which would be something you could agree on that the details have to attach to.
But we don't have that.
We have a handshake.
About a framework.
We have a handshake about a framework of a deal.
Does that sound like a deal to you?
So, I don't know.
I've never negotiated an international trade deal with China, so it could be that this is the one and only way to get there.
Everything looks tentative, and it's a messy process, and people think you've agreed to one thing, but the other side says, no, we didn't agree to that.
What was that handshake all about?
Well, that handshake was about the framework.
So probably it's not as nailed down as all the participants would want you to believe.
But the things that matter are apparently Trump has pushed hard to get a speedy answer on the rarest minerals.
And so far, it looks like China would be willing to do that.
So that's good.
If the only thing we got out of it was that, at least in the short run, that would be pretty good.
and it would make the markets happy, etc.
And as of today, the reporting is that the U.S. would have a 55% tariff on China, whereas China would be 10%.
Now, that part I don't believe.
I don't believe there's going to be some kind of general tariff that's, you know, Does that sound real?
I don't know.
I would need to hear more about that to know how real that is.
There's something about Chinese students being allowed to stay.
I feel like that might have been a big lever.
Because imagine all the wealthy Chinese leaders whose children were in school or they wanted them to be in school in the United States.
Once that looked like it was going to go away, I'll bet you President Xi got a lot of phone calls from his buddies.
You know, it would be really good if my son or daughter could get back into that school that they were in.
So I think that was probably a big leverage point, but it's hard to say.
And Trump apparently is okay with the Chinese students, as long as it's part of the larger trade bill, and so he seems to be happy about it.
I haven't seen anything on fentanyl or IP theft, which are really big deals.
They're also the things most likely to be ignored in the end.
So what would you imagine is going to happen?
Do you think that China will come up with a fentanyl offer that when we look at it, we'd say, oh yeah, that'll really take care of it.
That'll get rid of the problem.
I don't feel like they will.
I feel like that that will be the last thing that gets negotiated.
And because it's the last thing and you don't want to lose all the gains that you've already made, we'll agree to, you know, any bullshit thing they say.
And one of the bullshit things they're likely to say is, oh, yeah, we'll crack down on those precursors.
Yeah, we'll totally do that.
Oh and and those dealers will uh, Yeah, yeah, we got it.
And that will look a lot like what they've promised in the past and never delivered.
So I'm expecting absolutely no fentanyl progress when this is all done.
I would love to be wrong.
But I think they can just keep kicking that can and just ignoring it as long as they want.
I don't think we're going to go to war over it, so they kind of have the advantage there.
And I don't know what they could possibly promise about IP theft, because how would we police it?
Are they going to create some kind of international court?
That, you know, bows to external demands for, you know, justice?
That doesn't sound like China.
So I don't think we're going to get anything on IP theft or fentanyl.
But we'll probably get tariff stuff and, you know, rare earth mineral stuff.
So, that's not nothing.
According also to the Wall Street Journal, Europe wants their versions of AI to be locally obedient.
So, in other words, the AI that, let's say, ChatGBT makes, or NVIDIA, or Perplexity, Would be a sovereign version.
So everybody would have their own sovereign AI.
Even though there might be several different AIs, each one would have to be made for that country.
And so if you ever thought to yourself, well, this AI is going to get all the countries to agree on the history and the facts.
All the fake news will go away?
I don't think so.
I don't think any of the fake news is going to go away.
I think as long as every country has their own AI, they'll have their own histories, they'll have their own truth.
That's where we're headed.
Now, I always tell you there's a new lithium battery, but here's another one.
Interesting engineering has this story.
There's another solid lithium-air battery that has four times the energy density as the old ones, and it breaks the room temperature performance barrier.
Now, when it comes to batteries, there's always going to be some inflection point where it's not just a little bit better battery, but it just changes everything.
This one has the potential to be that kind of a battery because it would reach the energy density of gas, basically.
So gasoline is a good energy density.
But if you can make this lithium battery four times more energy storage, it would be right up there.
And that would change everything.
So, I'm not saying this particular battery is going to be the one, but, you know, once you see that every single day there's another breaking story of a lithium battery laboratory breakthrough that gives it, you know, way more power and way more, you know, faster charging and all that, we have some fun stuff ahead of us and batteries are going to be.
A real big part of that.
All right.
Apparently, U.S. oil output is going to drop for the first time since the COVID.
Now, that kind of had to happen, right?
Trump's idea was to unleash energy.
By drill baby drill and making it legal to drill in more places and more ways and easier to get permits, etc.
But the obvious problem is that the more oil we drill, the lower the cost of a barrel of oil because, you know, supply and demand.
And then when you reach a certain point, which apparently we reached, it doesn't make sense to drill anymore.
So you can't use that technique to just keep lowering energy costs.
You can only lower it to the point where it still makes sense to produce the energy.
And apparently we hit that point.
So if you were waiting for the cost of energy to go down another, you know, X percent, probably not.
I think we had some kind of, like, floor.
And below that, at least when it comes to the carbon fuels, probably won't go lower.
Now, the good news is that the U.S. government, working with private industry, is really going hard at nuclear energy, and specifically the kind of nuclear plants that don't have the meltdown risk.
So they know how to do that, basically, at this point.
And so building the micro reactors and even the bigger reactors are using the new technology and the new fuel.
We're going to get to the point, it might be, I don't know, 12 to 20 years from now, because everything takes too long, where we're going to have coming online a massive amount of But, at the same time, there'll be a massive demand for it through AI.
But, at the same time, and I don't see other people adding this to their predictions, but my prediction looks like this.
At the moment, We think we need, like, you know, I don't know, 100 nuclear power plants just to keep the lights on because AI is going to use so much power that will just, you know, it would be almost impossible to make too much.
But at the same time we're trying to create all of that power, I think people are trying to figure out how to have AI that doesn't need that much power.
And my guess, Is that by about the same time all those nuclear power plants come online, will be about the same time we figured out that we don't need that much electricity because we found clever workarounds and we figured out how to take the entire AI model and put it on your phone.
And so it's only using your phone electricity after that.
So I feel like there's a point.
In 20 years, I don't know when, might be in five, not five, but probably 15 to 20, where we're going to have a massive amount of electricity coming online and not really a massive demand anymore.
At which point, the cost of energy could come down.
That might be the good news.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is the end of my prepared statements.
I hope you all feel smarter and a little bit more prepared for the day.
I'm going to talk to the subscribers on Locals Privately for a minute.
The rest of you, thank you so much for joining.
And I hope you come back tomorrow, same time, same place, where we'll solve...
