God's Debris: The Complete Works, Amazon https://tinyurl.com/GodsDebrisCompleteWorksFind my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.comContent:Politics, AI Robot Dog, American Eagle, Sean Duffy, Moon Mission 2026, Trump vs Rosie, Candidate Conor McGregor, E. Jean Carroll Verdict, AI Healthcare, Free Press CBS, Tim Kaine, God vs Government Rights, Harvard Funding, Epstein Island Visitor List, MTG, Mayor Bowser, Economic Expectations, Candidate Dropout Bribery, xAI Code Stolen, Polymarket, Donald Trump Jr., Venezuela Surveillance Surge, jeanine Pirro, Precursor Chemicals, Fentanyl Usage Increase, Operation Boxcutter, Chinese Companies Indicted, President Xi, South Korea Population Collapse, Retirement Age Decision, Privacy Myth, ICE Paragon, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
I hope you have your beverage, because you know it's coming up, right?
Yeah, there'll be some simultaneous sipping.
But I'm checking the stock market.
It's a little bit up, a little bit up, not nearly enough.
but as soon as i get my comments going we will launch into the best thing that will ever happen good morning everybody everyone Welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.
But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience up to levels that no one can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that-well, all you need is a copper mug or a glass attacker, Chelsea Stein, a canteen jugger flask, a vessel of any kind to fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens right now.
Go oh, yeah, that's just that's called topping it off right there.
Well, apparently today, the Robo Taxi app from Tesla is available for download.
I don't know what that implies for when you will be able to use your Tesla as a driverless sort of an Uber, but at least you've got the app.
I imagine it will depend on your state and locale.
In case I haven't mentioned it, my book, Loser Think, which was published a few years ago but got canceled when I got canceled, and it's back, but it's the second edition.
Now, it's basically the same as the first, but it's the only way I could make it available by independently publishing with Joshua Lysik, who is amazing.
And you should use him if you get a chance, or work with him, I should say.
Don't use him, work with him if you get a chance.
But I thought I would share with you one tip from the book Loser Think.
Now, as you might imagine, loserthink is what you would like to avoid.
So, you don't want to be the person who makes the mental mistake when other people are watching.
So, this is how to avoid those mental mistakes.
And I'll give you one.
If you ever find yourself online telling somebody to stay in their lane, you are a loser thinker.
You know why that's such bad advice?
Stay in your lane.
You know, this is not your expertise.
Well, how are the experts doing compared to the people who have no expertise and are just guessing?
It's pretty close to a tie, I would say.
So, if your argument is that the person involved is no expert in that field, you really have to consider what the experts versus the non-expert track record is.
Right?
You don't sound smart.
I think there was a time when that would sound smart, so you have to adjust that to the current day.
And you also have to think: tell me anything important in the world.
Whoa, cats destroying something in another room.
Tell me anything in the world that was made that was important, like a real big breakthrough, by somebody who was an expert at that thing.
It's like, you know, Steve Jobs couldn't program.
Yeah, I can go down, go down the list.
Basically, nobody was an expert until they figured it out.
So, stay in your lane is the worst advice.
And if you happen to say that to somebody, well, might be a little loser thing going on.
All right, that's my commercial.
It's only available on Amazon, but you can get it in three different forms.
The audio book will follow.
That's not available yet.
Well, apparently, according to live science, there's now an AI-powered robot dog that can play badminton against humans, which makes sense because most of the other animals, they don't play badminton.
So if you're going to make a robot that plays badminton, you should make it so it can play against a human.
Because if you make it to play against, let's say, a beaver or a squirrel, well, you're not really going to have any good matches because the beaver and the squirrel don't actually play badminton.
So that's important.
But I want one.
I really want a robot dog that can play actual badminton.
According to the video, it looked like it was pretty good.
I would totally play Badminton every single day with a Badmint robot.
So give me a price.
Well, American Eagle, the clothing maker, says that the Sydney Sweeney commercial everybody's talking about with her great genes campaign did so well that in just six weeks they're making all kinds of money and their stock is up 25 percent so according to a variety well I know it was a powerful marketing blitz because I bought
Moonshot Conspiracy00:03:22
three pair and they're all women's genes and I thought that they would look better on me but you know maybe it's just me but man that commercial is good well NASA Administrator Sean Duffy is telling us that the U.S. is going to send four men up to the moon at the beginning of next year now how many of you believe because you watched Joe Rogan's podcast
that it might be impossible to get through the Van Allen radiation belt, and that therefore you believe that no one has ever been to the moon in the real world, that it's all been faked.
How many of you believe that?
And if you believe that it's not possible, and also has never been done, obviously, then I'm being visited by a cat.
How many times will this cat put his tail in my face?
That's three.
I think there's more to come.
That's four.
All right, so what's fun about this moon launch, besides the fact that moon launches are obviously fun, is that it might convince people that the original moonshot either happened or didn't.
If for some reason they decide they can't do it, or the astronauts died on the way through the radiation belt, then you would be quite justified in saying, huh, maybe nobody's ever done it.
But the fact that China is trying to get to the moon, and Russia is trying to get to the moon, and we're trying to get to the moon, I feel like the theory that the Van Allen belt has prevented anybody from getting to the moon could be retired, don't you think?
If you believe that, are you ready to retire it?
But you could wait until the beginning of next year and see if somebody survives doing it.
Then you wouldn't have to wonder.
You could watch it if you believe the news.
All right, now, you know what people will be saying?
People will be saying, oh, so you're telling me it's a total coincidence that the first time that we seem to be able to prove that we went to the moon is exactly when AI can make an image that's fake, that looks exactly like it happened.
So those two things just coincidentally happened at the same time, just when you wanted to fake a moon landing.
Oh, look, by coincidence, the exact technology you would need to fake video of a moon landing is available.
So I guess the conspiracy theorists will have something to play with there.
Well, is there any studies that they could have avoided by just asking me?
Yes.
Cambridge University Press was talking about how there was a news study Cambridge in the British Journal of Political Science.
Small Business Owners' Politics00:10:19
And it showed that small business owners are more likely to be right-wing.
Now, I would call that conservative or right-leaning.
Do you think that they needed to do?
Did they really need to do a survey to know that if you spend five minutes running your own business, the one thing you're going to want less of is the government?
It feels to me that anybody who's had the small business experience, and I have with two restaurants, that you're battling the government and the law.
So it turns out that as a restaurant owner, you know, small business owner, that I thought I was going to be doing, you know, making fun decisions about the decorations and what's on the menu and stuff.
But you spend half of your time at least battling with lawyers and lawsuits and insurance problems, and your bank is mad at you and regulations.
I mean, we couldn't even put up a sign that was big enough for people to see that we had a new restaurant.
Now, that's a government problem.
Anyway, the most fun story in the news is that President Trump is fed up with Rosie O'Donnell, who, as you know, moved to Ireland and she's living there right now.
And so Trump has said, in a truth social, he said, not a great American.
He says, because of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interest of our great country, this is the president of the United States talking about one person, Rosie O'Donnell, who's in Ireland, is not in the best interest of our great country.
I am giving serious consideration to taking away her citizenship.
She's a threat to humanity.
She's a threat to humanity and should remain in the wonderful country of Ireland if they want her.
God bless America.
He is the best shit poster in the history of the world.
Do you know what my favorite part of this is?
Well, I've got a few favorite parts.
One is it will absorb the press's attention, and they're going to use up all of their time with the public talking about this ridiculous story.
And he knows it.
He knows they're just going to chew up all their criticism time talking about this, and that the public's just going to be sort of laughing at it.
But the best part is this: sooner or later, some member of the press is going to say, Are you really serious about this?
And he'll probably say something in a Trump-like fashion of, Well, we'll see.
You know, I'm not having made a decision, but there's a good argument for it.
Something like that.
And then, what will the member of the press, of course, ask next?
What would be the most obvious guaranteed question that will come up if Trump actually keeps with this theme?
The question will be: Are you going to consider taking away anyone else's citizenship?
Do you see the trap yet?
And then, when they say, Are you going to do that to anyone else?
What would be his answer?
Only Rosie O'Donnell.
Boom.
And the prank is complete.
The best troll, best troll in the history of trolling.
Jonathan Turley helpfully points out that the president cannot take away somebody's citizenship, which makes it even funnier because I'm sure he knows he can't do it.
And if he tried, I'm sure he knows the courts would throw it out.
So the fact that this is even a story is just the most wonderful troll, just good presidenting.
The president knows that entertaining us is part of the job.
I don't think any other president has ever understood that the way he does.
That if you keep us entertained, we're more likely to be on your team.
It just works that way.
We like to be entertained.
Well, speaking of entertainment, over in Ireland, Connor McGregor is trying to get some things changed in their system so that he could be possibly nominated to run for president of Ireland.
Now, apparently, president of Ireland is, you know, kind of a ceremonial position.
It's not so much a powerful position.
But I believe that Connor wants to champion the idea of closing down excess immigration into Ireland because it's changing the character of Ireland.
So he might be able to do that from the president's office.
Now, I asked Grok and he said it was unlikely that he would be able to beat through the nomination process because it requires people who are already elected, I guess, some number of them to agree.
So it's not up to the public.
It's not like our system, where if enough voters want him to run in the primary, that he's the candidate.
They have some other system.
So he's got a looks like he's got a petition going to see if he can get the system changed so that he could be on the ballot.
But what I would like to add to this conversation is that although he has many, many drawbacks, as in people have strong opinions about him, he's been accused of sex crimes and he's got sort of some baggage, if you know what I mean.
But do you think it's impossible for someone who's accused of sex crimes to become the president of a nation?
Well, I think it might be.
But here's the part that I think is the hidden, the hidden magic.
Connor McGregor is a student of success, meaning he's known to absorb a great deal of, let's say, practical advice about how to be successful at anything.
And that helped him win his titles, et cetera.
He is probably studying Trump, has probably read his share of materials about how to be persuasive.
His coach has absorbed some of my materials.
And I just noticed this morning that Connor follows me on X. So he, and I guess he's also used, he's referred to the book The Secret, which is sort of an affirmations kind of approach.
So I believe he's sort of an affirmations guy, which would just be one small corner of the process for success.
He's a systems over goal guy.
He's a talent stack guy.
And even though the deck is stacked way against him, even getting nominated, much less get elected, the level of specific talent that he brings to that domain should not be overlooked.
He's got some superpowers in his toolbox.
He's not Trump.
There's only one Trump.
But I guarantee, without knowing it, I don't have any special knowledge, but I guarantee that he's studying Trump to figure out what works.
And that, unlike maybe other observers, he might figure out what works.
So don't count him out.
Anyway, President Trump is reportedly, according to Axios, expected to ask the Supreme Court to reverse the E. Gene Carroll verdict.
Now, that verdict was a civil, not a criminal trial, if I'm correct.
I'm terrible at all the legal topics.
But I don't know what in what I read, I didn't see the argument.
So I didn't see what argument they would propose using to have that reversed, unless the argument is that it was so obviously contrived as a political move that even if they crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's to make it legal,
it might be just so obviously a plot to keep him out of the presidency as opposed to a more legitimate Department of Justice action that it might be reversible.
I didn't know you could even take the civil cases to the Supreme Court, and I also don't know what I'm talking about.
But if they're going to argue that it wasn't like a legitimate thing to even look into, that might be a strong argument.
So we might get surprised by that one.
All right.
I've got a cat as a table here.
All right, Gary the Cat.
You're going to have to hold my notes.
So that's scary.
Cbs's AI Challenge00:04:58
He's sleeping in front of me between me and my camera.
So he'll be holding my notes on his belly while we continue.
Good job, Gary.
All right.
Don't move.
Stay right there.
So apparently, according to futurism, Frank Landymore is writing that Medicare might start paying some AI companies.
I think they're going to do a test to see if they can find AI companies that would reject some claims for service, some claims for medical care.
So I think the idea would be that the AI would do all the tough work of deciding what things to accept or reject.
But here's the problem.
The New York Times reports that the AI companies selected for the experiment will get paid a share of the money they save by blocking people from their health care.
So in other words, the AI will be optimized and the AI company will be incentivized to help people the least that they can with whatever good AI argument they can make for not helping people.
Now, of course, the objective is to reject the fraud and the things that they're not supposed to be paying for.
But if the AI company gets paid for how much they can stop, what do you think is going to happen?
Now, it's an experiment.
So maybe they'll experiment and they'll find out what they could have just asked me.
You could stop this and just ask me.
What do you think will happen when you incentivize the AI to block people's health care by using clever arguments that would sound valid?
Well, it's probably not good because you probably want to err on the side of allowing more than you should, you know, because there's nothing perfect.
You don't really want a system that errs on the side of denying more than it should.
And I think the AI would obviously be that.
But here's the fun part.
At the same time, there's that story.
CBS News is reporting that there's some healthcare companies that consumers can use to fight against the denial of service.
So if somebody uses an AI company to deny you service, you could call your own AI company.
One of them is called Counter Force Health that uses AI to make phone calls and to pastor the whoever denied you the healthcare.
So you can fight for your healthcare using AI that might be fighting against another AI.
So that's where everything's going.
Well, in puzzling news, Paramount is going to buy Barry Weiss's free press.
So Barry Weiss founded the free press and apparently is doing gangbusters because it's only been a few years and it's the, I would think, the hardest market that anybody could ever make value, which is the most crowded, difficult market, which is news.
But the free press has been offered up to $200 million and they would offer her a senior editorial role as CBS News.
So I don't know if it means it would be rolled into CBS News or she would just have a dual role.
But does that make sense to you?
Does it make sense that it would be worth $200 million?
So my first assumption is there's probably something wrong with the reporting.
Because it might be like 200 million if you meet these goals over X number of years or something like that.
I have trouble believing that whoever owns all the equity would get collectively $200 million check up front.
That feels high.
I don't know.
But Paramount knows what it's doing.
So I'm sure they've looked into it.
It could also be, isn't Paramount run by Larry Elson's son?
So he would be sort of pro America first.
Trump.
I don't want to put words in his mouth, but it would sort of make CBS under the control of somebody who's a lot more independent and would have a lot more.
Rights From God or Government?00:03:44
Of course, everybody's controversial these days.
I think there's some controversy about Barry Weiss.
I don't even know what it is or whether it's valid.
But everybody's controversial after a certain point of notoriety.
All right.
So Tim Kaine.
You know, Tim Kaine, who didn't become vice president.
Apparently, he had a little debate with Ted Cruz about where our rights come from.
And the question was from God or from the government.
And Tim Kaine was scoffing at the notion that rights come from God and didn't think that the Constitution would suggest that that would be the case.
Ted Cruz, who he knows his Constitution, argued back on X anyway that he better read the work of the Founding Fathers because he argued that God is the source of our rights.
And Tim Kaine argued that the government determines your rights.
Now, I'm going to take a third approach.
Whether or not it's, let's see, you don't need God to make the same point that Ted Cruz would be happy with.
So let me explain.
Whether God created everything or we're just here for some other reason, whatever that reason is.
So whether it's evolution and chance or any other model, once you're here, you don't need to refer to God to say that we have all the rights that have not been yet restricted by our government.
So it's just cleaner and easier to say that we all have every right to do everything except what the government restricts.
And that gets you to exactly the same place as if you say God created these rights and we're interpreting what God had in mind.
Because that brings with it a small but real risk, which is if something happens in our form of government or who's in charge changes, it might be a different God that they're looking at for your rights.
You know what I mean?
So if we, you know, or let's say someone else became a Muslim-dominated country, they might also agree that your rights are assigned by God, but their version of what God would assign would be very different.
So there is some risk of interpreting what God meant for your rights.
So I would say you can maintain your God belief and even that God gave you rights.
But when you're debating it in the public forum, it's just cleaner and easier to say, no, you have a right to do everything, everything, except what the government specifically takes from you.
Governments don't give rights.
As soon as you imagine that somebody's giving you rights, be it God or be it the government, then you don't really understand rights in the most productive way.
The most productive way is you have every right until somebody who can put you in jail tells you you don't.
And well, then I could argue you still have the right.
You just better not do it.
All right.
Apparently, Judge has invalidated Trump's work against Harvard.
You know, he wanted to make them give him large amounts of money and all that.
Harvard's Legal Fight00:14:03
And apparently Harvard did a good job of suing to stop that.
And U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs is trying to restore the funding, government funding to Harvard.
Now, I have to say that I'm not surprised.
I don't know how it'll end.
Maybe a higher court will still back Trump.
But it doesn't surprise me that Harvard, of all places, could put up a good legal battle.
Because the whole point of Harvard is it's the best of the best.
And even with DEI, there's still it's like the smartest people around.
But they also have the Harvard Law School and they're the most connected people in the world.
So you would expect that the most connected, capable, high-level lawyers in the world would know how to get to a judge who could give them what they want, which is half of the game, maybe more than half.
So don't be surprised when you see Harvard able to put up a good fight in the legal sense.
Well, here's some Epstein news.
Surprise.
There's no new news, but there's lots of people making actions and activities.
We'll see if any of it turns into anything new.
The latest is there's a small group of, well, I don't know how small, maybe a dozen or more, of Jeffrey Epstein accusers who seem to be getting organized at the moment, and they made an announcement, or one of them did, that maybe the victims should put together a list of the people who were the regulars on the island.
Now, I heard one of them say that she had been victimized as many as three times a day as a minor.
And that, you know, well, just heard horrible things.
And it was every day and it was continuous and lots of people were involved.
Now, one of the things preventing any of them from naming names might be that they'd all signed, let's say, settlements in court because there was some large amount of money for settlements.
And they're just not allowed to talk about it without risking losing whatever substantial money they got.
And so that's part of it.
But there's also the problem that if the only thing you knew is that somebody was a regular or that you knew that they had visited the island, you have that problem of people who literally broke no laws and didn't do any of the naughty stuff whose lives would be pretty well ruined by the release.
So what do they do?
Well, and then how do they prevent payback and getting sued and all that?
Because they would all get sued if they mention a name of some billionaire and there's no hard proof that they did anything wrong.
I mean, the lawyers are going to just destroy these poor victims.
So I think, was it Marjorie Taylor Greene and maybe somebody else were noodling with the idea that they would be the ones who would read them out loud?
Because if you do it in the house floor, apparently there's some kind of law that gives you legal immunity so that you can say any damn thing, you know, in that specific context and nobody can sue you.
So they need a way to get the names out that won't get them sued.
And so they might pull together the names, give them to Marjorie Taylor Greene and have her read them.
Now, Marjorie Taylor Greene then would have the problem of being the agent of possibly ruining the lives of people who got pulled into something that they didn't quite know what it was about, but maybe didn't do anything wrong.
So how do you handle that?
I don't know, but I would like to suggest the following.
It shouldn't be one list.
If they pull together something, it should be something like, here's the people that we have a living human who says, I watched it or I participated in it or I was the specific victim or I walked into the room and saw it or my best friend described it to me and I knew it was true.
So that should be one list.
But the other list should be people who had maybe visited or associated, but there's no accusation.
So it might be the accused list and then literally called the not accused list.
Because that would at least give the people on the not accused list the easy out.
Say, just look at the news.
I'm on the not accused list.
It literally is the not accused list.
So leave me alone.
So that would probably be, even though that's not enough, the best you could do.
You need to give the people who don't have a real hard accusation with a witness or something, you need to give them some kind of constitutional protection in this situation.
And I think just clarifying that there's two sets of people, the ones you know did some bad, bad stuff and the ones who just sort of were around.
You got to make that distinction.
I hope they do.
Anyway, who knows if that will even go anywhere?
Nothing else has.
Mayor Bowser of DC is not only in favor of Trump's helping with crime by putting in some National Guard, she's also saying that they need a lot more regular police and they've got openings and they're hiring as fast as they can and that's all good.
So Muriel Browser, good job and not being ridiculous.
So many Democrats act in ways that are just ridiculous, except to the farthest left people, that we might be seeing a little bit of a movement back to the middle.
You've already seen that, right?
The Bill Mars and such saying, we're going to need to get back to something more reasonable.
David Axelrod was on CNN saying the same.
He said the right answer to this whole crime stuff is, quote, we'll take all the help we can get as long as it's appropriate and it's stuff that will really help.
Send us the resources we need.
We want to work with you.
Exactly.
So this is Axelrod with good advice for his team, which is you need to stop acting like you're pro-crime.
You know, that's my version of it.
But his version is, why don't you act a little bit more like you're legitimately anti-crime, if I can paraphrase it.
I would give you the additional advice.
Here's my advice.
Don't join any group that needs that kind of advice.
Don't ever join a group that needs to be advised to not take the side of the criminals.
That's the best advice you'll ever get.
Well, there's a whole bunch of employment and job numbers coming out, and they don't look so hot.
They're not terrible, but they're moving in the wrong direction.
Don't know if that's because all our numbers are bad and nothing's reliable or because, I don't know, weather sometimes, maybe because of the threat of tariffs, so it might be temporary.
I don't know.
But let's see.
For the first time, the unemployed workers outnumber the number of jobs since 2021.
But, you know, 2021 wasn't that long ago.
So the Hill is reporting that.
And then what?
The open jobs fell down a little bit, but I don't know that our numbers are that accurate.
We can tell that things move a little bit.
And yeah.
So anyway, then jobless claims were up to 237,000.
They thought it would only be 230,000.
So that's a little bit worse.
So all the job stuff is a little softer.
And some of the oil companies that announced that they're cutting, ConocoPhillips might cut 20 to 25%.
But that's coming off a few high years because oil was expensive and therefore they had big profits during the original Ukraine situation, but things have settled down there.
And a couple other oil companies looking to make pretty big employment cuts.
But if you put it all together, because the economy is a weird thing and not as predictable as common sense tells you it should be, that might be the reason that the interest rates get cut.
Because generally, if employment is looking bad and inflation is somewhat under control, that's when you get the rate cuts.
And when you get the rate cuts, that's really good for the economy and really good for the stock market.
So bad jobs report equals, weirdly, maybe things are going to speed up in the next few months.
And the Washington Examiner says that the Trump economy has raised optimism to a four-year high.
So it's still not more than 50%, but what, 44% now, which is much higher than it used to be, think things are on the right track.
So as I often remind you, the economy is based on expectations and resources.
We usually can find ways to get the resources in today's world.
So the expectations are what are kind of dominant.
And when people think things are going in the right direction, then they invest and they hire people and then things do go in the right direction.
So that's important.
Apparently, Bill Cassidy, who's a Republican, and also the Pfizer CEO have both said that Trump should be considered for the Nobel Prize for Peace based on his warp speed COVID vaccination work.
So do you think that the Warp Speed project, which brought vaccinations to us, well, don't call them vaccinations, I got it, shots, to us faster, is that a peace operation?
Was there a war I didn't know about?
All right, what's funny about this is that Trump has planted in people's heads the idea that there's some reason he should get a Nobel Peace Prize.
So he's made it a thing that we think about.
If you had never thought about it, the odds of him getting one would be lower, I think.
But the fact that everyone sort of just thinks about it now, because he's just inserted it into our minds.
And this is a good example because I don't think most of you would think that no matter what you thought of the shot, that that had anything to do with peace.
It had nothing to do with peace.
But everybody sort of understands that if you want Trump on your side, it would be really helpful to publicly say he should get a Nobel Peace Prize.
I feel like everyone has tried that now.
Like everyone who wants him to be on their side thinks, you know, what would be the best way to get him on our side?
I've got an idea.
About he gets the Nobel Peace Prize for whatever.
It doesn't matter what.
Anyway, I do respect President Trump for demanding that we find out for sure whether his project warp speed saved lives or killed people.
And you know what he wants.
I mean, he wants it to be that it was the greatest thing that he saved lives.
But he's also clearly open to the argument of a lot of people in his base that the data doesn't support that.
So he's asking for better data.
And I like that because so easily he could have stuck to his guns and just said, no, it was the best thing ever.
Give me the Nobel Prize.
But he's not.
He's saying, I don't know if it was good or bad.
And because the data is sketchy.
And he's demanding that they have better data.
So, I don't know, whichever way that goes, I'm happy that he's asking for it.
There are some reports that are being denied, I think, post-millennials writing about this, that Trump might at least be considering giving Curtis Zila and Eric Adams, who are both running for mayor of New York, some kind of job offer to get them out of the race so that Cuomo would have a better chance of beating Mandami the Kami.
I think there's some question about whether that's real.
Why Would It Be Legal?00:05:45
Maybe it's just something some advisors talked about, but not too serious.
But my question was, why would that be legal?
Would it be legal to effectively bribe somebody to get out of a race?
There's no law against that.
If doing so kind of would guarantee who won the race, it wouldn't be illegal to bribe somebody to quit.
I don't know.
How does that work?
It might not be illegal.
It just feels like one of those things that feels like it should be illegal.
I don't know.
But if it's not illegal and it works, I suppose it's on the table.
The EPUC Times is reporting that one of the engineers in Elon Musk's AI company, XAI, an engineer is being sued for allegedly stealing trade secrets.
And I wonder how common that is.
You know, part of me thinks that every AI company has somebody who's already stole their code, stolen the code.
What do you think?
And then I asked myself, how many employees have access to the really important parts of the code for an AI company that's all code?
How many people?
Wouldn't you imagine that there would only be, I don't know, three to five people who would have that access and they would all have to agree to make any kind of a change?
I don't know what kind of controls they put on that.
But it kind of makes me wonder if every AI company's code will be stolen and maybe even released to the public under the hypothesis that the world is a better place if all the code is public, which would be bad for the AI companies, but maybe somebody would think it's good for the public in some way.
I don't know that it would be.
But you can imagine somebody arguing that.
It's like, no, you can't have some companies owning AI.
It must be set-free for everybody.
So I'm going to say, even though the people who steal that stuff might get caught, I'll bet it will still happen because people always think they can get away with it.
So I don't know how you solve that.
Well, I saw a report that the company Polymarket, that's an online gambling firm, so you can gamble on political things happening and stuff like that.
It's been cleared for U.S. adoption after some board, CFTC ruling.
Zero Hedge is writing about this.
But what's interesting about it is that one of the investors of Polymarket is Don Trump Jr.
And he's also an advisor.
So right after, fairly soon after Don Jr. became an investor, they got approved to operate in the United States.
Now, do you think there'll be any pushback as an, you know, he got some special treatment?
Well, I don't know that he got any special treatment, but don't you think that the reason that he was, you know, maybe who they courted to be an investor, because they knew that if he were an investor, maybe some doors would open that wouldn't ordinarily open.
It would be a smart thing to do.
So every company tries to put on their board or have investors who have more than just the ability to be on a board or the ability to invest.
They look for people who are twofers, that they have some kind of network of contacts or they have some superpower or they operate some other company that's vital to what you're doing.
So it's the most ordinary thing in the world to have investors and or board members who can give you that extra, you know, that extra advantage.
It's all legal.
But it made me wonder this.
If you're Don Jr., isn't every single serious company in the world some kind of a conflict of interest?
Like everything?
If Don Jr. had invested in NVIDIA or been on the board of NVIDIA, wouldn't that look like some kind of conflict of interest?
It would look like it.
Almost anything he touched, whether it was a defense business or an AI or one of the platforms, just about anything he touched, somebody would say, you know, now that you're involved, the government's going to give them some big contracts and stuff.
And I don't think it should be illegal for a non-elected family, you know, just a family member to be blocked from doing ordinary things as long as it's somewhat transparent.
Like everybody knows who Don Jr. is, right?
So, and if it's a public fact that he invested in it, then it's a public fact that it got allowed to do business in the U.S., that's probably, that's all you can do.
It's probably all you can do is just make sure everybody knows.
I don't think you should make that illegal.
If he were elected to office, if you were the one in office, then yeah, maybe.
Drug Boats and Barrels00:02:36
But unelected people, even close family members, I don't know.
Seems too far if you block them from doing things that are ordinary business.
Well, you know the story of the Venezuelan drug boat that got blown up by the U.S. military, and that happened the other day.
And it made me wonder, how much of the ocean can we survey?
Do you ever wonder that?
Was it pure luck or some kind of tip that allowed them to catch this one particular boat?
Or do they have some kind of advanced technology that they can see everything and they know where all the smuggling boats are?
And maybe, you know, maybe they act on the ones that are actable.
So I asked Grok to estimate what percentage of the ocean around Venezuela they could actually monitor somewhat continuously.
And it said maybe 70 to 90% of the ocean within 200 to 300 nautical miles of Venezuela.
Now that's Grok.
So I don't know if it really could make a reasonable estimate.
But it did describe to me all the ways in which they watch the water.
So they've got a number of aircraft that are flying all the time.
But, you know, there's not an aircraft over every inch of the water all the time.
They got satellites, but again, those are sporadic.
They've got drones, and then they've got the ships themselves.
And they would have some kind of perimeter that they're watching all the time.
So, but apparently, what makes this feasible is that there are some places that are far more likely to have this traffic.
So they're going to put more resources where they know they got a higher chance of catching somebody.
So I don't know.
You know, Rubio said, Marco Rubio said, Secretary of State, he said the U.S. has a long and for many, many years established intelligence that allows us to interdict and stop drug boats.
So in other words, they get tips, or they've got some kind of intelligence where they can tell where the boat's going to be and stop drug boats.
And we did that, and it doesn't work.
What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.
Well, I don't know if it will stop them.
We'll find out.
But it's a heck of a theory.
I mean, you know, I'm pretty in favor of it, as you know.
Stopping Drug Boats00:06:33
And so a video this morning, Judge Janine was standing in front of a gigantic warehouse full of barrels.
And the barrels, 1,300 of them, were seized by law enforcement.
And they were full of precursors that were added to the cartels.
1,300 full-size barrels.
Now, I'm no meth user, but correct me if I'm wrong.
The physical amount of meth is very small, right?
So these are just precursors.
It's not the meth itself.
But 1,300 barrels kind of suggest I would think that would be all the meth that the entire country would use for months.
I mean, I'm kind of wondering if that will actually make a difference.
Like people will notice it in their supply and demand.
But that's a big deal.
So the Trump administration is getting pretty hardcore on this stopping the big dealers.
And at the same time, you know, maybe looking at dropping the scheduling for marijuana.
So I do kind of like the idea of going easier on the users and harder on the dealers of the hard stuff.
According to Newsweek, there's a surge in employees who are testing positive for fentanyl.
So even though the number of OD deaths is going down for fentanyl, there are more people apparently using it.
One of the reasons the deaths are going down is because they got an Arcan, so they can save you when you're on death store.
But a lot of employees are taking stuff, apparently, that have some fentanyl in it.
I don't know if they know it.
They might not know it, but that's a huge problem.
All right, here's an interesting story.
According to Fox News, Pylor Arius is reporting.
So the FBI did something called Operation Box Cutter and indicted 22 Chinese nationals and companies for fentanyl precursors.
22 Chinese nationals and companies.
So companies.
So Cache Patel says they've seized enough fentanyl to kill 70 million people.
And they targeted the fentolinite source, which is what we've always wanted them to do, right?
And that led to identifying some companies in China that were making the chemicals that were precursors.
But here's the thing that just frosts me, that the companies in China that were making the precursors were openly advertising it, openly advertising it.
That they were making precursors for fentanyl for the cartels.
So according to this story, the chemical companies were openly marketing and selling the precursors used for fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin.
And so apparently they've indicted Chinese companies.
So the FBI knows the name of the companies and he's indicted them.
What happens when you indict a Chinese company?
Nothing, right?
It's not like the Chinese company is going to say, oh, okay, we, you know, we throw ourselves at the mercy of the American justice system.
They just ignore it, right?
Because it has no, has no impact on them in China.
So I would imagine that nothing will come of this, unless there's something about this I don't understand.
But indicting them shouldn't make any difference at all.
They'll just keep their signs out and keep advertising what they're doing.
And obviously, the government of China knows what they're doing and is allowing it, obviously.
So here's what I think.
I think that now we have enough information since we know the exact companies and we know they were operating openly that it's time to embarrass President Xi until he can't stay in office, until his own people remove him.
So I think he should be embarrassed at being the world's biggest drug dealer.
Now that might not be the answer, but the thing is, at some point, you can embarrass Xi out of office.
And I don't know that Trump should do it necessarily because he's got to talk to him, but the world could do it.
And President Xi, I think you could accurately say, is the world's biggest drug dealer.
Now, that doesn't mean that we're going to treat them like a cartel for all practical reasons, but we could refer to him that way from now on.
So to me, President Xi is the biggest drug dealer in the world.
It's the most disrespected thing you could ever imagine.
And it's humiliating to live in a country of China and have your leader be the biggest drug dealer in the world.
So it's sort of the Venezuela problem, isn't it?
So here we assume that Xi could shut down those companies anytime he wants Florida is going to, maybe, assuming that they vote for it, it looks like they will.
And school vaccine mandates.
I don't know if that's a good idea.
I understand the argument.
You know, you should have freedom and choice about what gets put in your body.
I get it.
This is a strong argument, and I won't argue against it.
What I will point out is it's kind of nice that we have states that will try different things because maybe in several years we'll say to ourselves, well, that was a brilliant idea, Florida.
We'll follow your lead.
So I like the fact that it's like a laboratory, you know.
So I don't have an opinion on it.
We'll just watch it, see if it works.
You know, and anybody can get the vaccinations if they want them.
So that should be enough.
Retirement Age Influences00:05:27
In South Korea, their birth rate problem is so bad that it's only at 0.75.
So every person is only replacing themselves with three quarters of a person, you know, statistically.
It's the lowest, oh, wow, the lowest birth rate on earth.
Yowzer.
And their population is on track to shrink by nearly a third by 2072.
Bloomberg is reporting this.
So one of the things that's happening as a result of that is that some big companies in South Korea are offering bonuses to women who have babies, employees, I assume.
Must be employees.
Yeah, employees and their families.
$72,000 per baby.
$72,000 to have a baby.
And plus in-house daycare until 9.30 p.m., emergency babysitting and temporary cover for parental leave.
So they're basically, let me ask you this.
Why is it true that birth rates used to be higher?
And the answer is because it used to be cash-positive operation.
If you were running a farm, having more kids probably was all good because you had more people to work and protect you and protect your assets and all that stuff.
But when it became, because of the way we've organized modern economies, when it became an expense, then immediately there was less of it.
And when it became a really burdening suspense, expense, then it became an emergency.
So, so far, what we've noticed is that if you get the economic incentive right, things move in the right direction.
And they do say it moved a little bit already.
But $72,000 per child is sort of on the borderline of being a profit center, isn't it?
I mean, later the child will cost them enough money that it's not worth it.
Or it's not cash positive.
It will still be worth it, but it won't be cash positive.
I don't know.
Might work, but maybe it'll take $150,000.
Almost anybody would have a baby for $150,000.
$72, you might get a third of the people say, I'll do that.
That's better than working.
And I suppose you could work too, right?
Because they're doing daycare.
So I guess you don't have to quit your job if you're working, if you're a woman.
So you can get the $72,000.
You could also get leave.
Looks pretty good.
I saw a post from Peter Diamandis, Diamandis MD.
He says, if you retire at 55, you're 89% more likely to die within 10 years.
And the idea is that people who have a purpose in life seem to live longer.
But I would like to put some doubt in that study, which I'm sure was not a double blind, because the only way you could do a double blind would be to what?
Select some people and tell them they're going to retire even if they weren't planning to.
How would you do a double blind?
I don't know that you could.
So that's the first red flag: it's not a whatever study did this, it's just some correlation they found.
But I would like to inject this possibility.
I believe that one of the biggest factors in when people decide to retire, assuming they can afford it, is how long their parents lived.
Has anybody had that thought?
If your parents both lived to 100, then you probably think, I think I better work until I'm late 70s just to be able to even afford to retire.
And you might think, well, I'm going to, you know, I'll be so bored if I'm retired for 40 years.
I'll just be bored.
So I believe that if your parents died at 70, you say to yourself, I better retire as soon as possible so I get a little fun retirement.
I might not have long.
So it could be that the self-selection of when people retire is because they look at their own health and then they look at the genes of their parents and how long they lasted.
And if it doesn't look good, they retire faster.
And so that would suggest that people who retire were the ones with the medical disadvantages that would suggest they're more likely to die.
Anyway, apparently ICE, not the frozen water kind, but the ICE people who guard our borders or go after the immigrants who got through the borders.
Israeli Spyware Threat00:03:28
Apparently they are now going to use an Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps.
Guardian is reporting that.
So it looks like it can just slice through just about any kind of any kind of protection.
And it's from Paragon Solutions, and some say it's the strongest weapon of its type.
Are you comfortable with anybody, whether it's even if it's in Israel?
Are you comfortable that that exists?
That there's a known piece of spyware that can basically puncture everything.
Terrific.
As I've been saying for a while, your privacy is purely illusionary.
Illusionary?
It's a pure illusion.
And I like to say this until it sinks in, until everybody agrees with me.
That the only privacy you have, the only protection you have in your privacy, is being uninteresting.
Nothing else.
If you're uninteresting, and that would be uninteresting to law enforcement because you didn't do any crimes, uninteresting to your neighbors because nobody saw you cheating on your wife.
Nobody saw you, I don't know, doing anything interesting.
So as long as you remain really uninteresting, you've got all the privacy you'd ever want because nobody gives a shit what you do or even who you are.
But the moment you're doing anything interesting, say you're a Fed governor, just to pick one example, then people are going to find out everything they need to find out about you.
You know, sometimes critics and enemies, sometimes law enforcement.
But you don't have any privacy.
You have only the ability to be uninteresting.
And it's been that way for a long time because the government could always get some kind of warrant to look into your stuff.
Anyway, that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I wanted to say.
If you just joined late, I remind you that the second edition of Loser Think, my book that teaches you how not to evaluate things, you know, what mistakes commonly people make, arguing online, especially.
It's basically the same as the first edition, but I had to republish it independently with Joshua Lysak because I got canceled worldwide.
So it wasn't the book itself that got canceled, but my publisher canceled everything I had.
And people were saying, Scott, can you make that one available again?
Because it's quite popular.
So the best way to use it is if you see somebody using a bad way of thinking, I encourage you to take a picture of the page of the book in which I describe why it's a bad way of thinking.
And they just post it on X. So because it's in a book, it will make it feel like it's official.
You'll win every argument.
All right.
I'm going to talk privately to my beloved subscribers on locals.