No Kings but lots of dopes, and more fun with the news today~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Politics, X Algorithm Update, New England Redistricting, No Kings Protest, Democrat Imaginary Issues, Antifa No Kings, John Bolton Indictment, Energy Affordability, Climate Change Scam, Marc Benioff, Sam Harris, Podcaster Free Speech, Democrat Money Laundering, George Santos Sentence Commuted, Thomas Massie, Tomahawk Missiles Ukraine, Malibu Homeless Fires, Venezuela Conflict, President Maduro, President Trump, Rebuilding Gaza, Elderly Roommates, 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.
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
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Oh, so good, so good.
Well, I gave an update to my local subscribers, but I'll give you a quick update.
Yesterday I did a special kind of a medical pet scan that is specific to tests to see if you would be a good candidate for this new cancer drug called pluvicdo.
Um, I do not know how to read the results of my tests, but the results do say that I have high sensitivity to this PSMA stuff that they put in your body, which I believe means I'm highly qualified for the drug because they test they test the radioactive drug to see if it can reach all the right places and light them up, and apparently it did.
So I spent 20 minutes in a pet scan machine, which forced me to lay straight on my back, which is insanely painful in my particular situation, and despite having really good pain meds, they made no difference at all.
It was like I didn't have any pain meds at all.
So for 20 minutes, I had to endure the worst pain of my life and not move, or I would die.
Let me say that again.
Since this is the only path that I have identified that might you know keep me alive for a while, if I had moved and therefore ruined the pet scan, probably I wouldn't have tried it again, because it was it wasn't just a little bit painful, it was monstrously painful.
I can I can confidently say it was the worst 20 minutes of my life, and I doubt it'll ever be worse.
It's the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life, and you and you had to not move, you know.
So I'm like holding on to this thing, trying not to move.
If I moved a little bit, I might die because I wouldn't be able to get the treatment.
Let me tell you, that was no fun at all.
But you know what is really good?
You know what is good news?
It's over.
Oh my god, does it feel good when it's done?
You know how when something's bad happens and it feels extra good when it's done.
Imagine the worst pain you've ever felt in your life, and then when it's over, oh because when it's over, it's completely over.
I mean, it takes 60 seconds to get in a position that doesn't hurt.
So what a day.
Anyway, so the good news, maybe we'll have to see, is that I should be qualified for the drug, and there's uh probably a one in three chance it'll make a big difference, so we'll see.
Well, I know that you like to see the reframes from my book, Reframe Your Brain, changing your life a little bit at a time.
So here's one of the reframes.
I'll just pick one here.
Randomly.
This is one of my favorites.
Uh one of the usual frames that people think is that the odds of success are low, whatever it is you're doing.
You know, it doesn't matter what you're doing.
We We often think our odds of success are low.
But uh the reframe is maybe I'm bad at estimating the odds.
Because I remember when I went to become a tried to become a cartoonist.
I was told the odds were you know one in 10,000.
But it turns out I was bad at estimating the odds, because I made it.
And it turns out that it never was one in 10,000.
That if you looked at all the people who tried to become a cartoonist, there might be 10,000 a year who try to become professional cartoonists and fail because it's hard.
But the number of those 10,000 who actually could draw a comic and write a joke, a dozen.
So I was really only I was only competing with maybe a dozen people in the entire country.
All the rest wanted to be cartoonists, but it, you know, even you could look at their work and say, no, no, this is this is not close.
So here I thought I was competing with 10,000 people, an almost impossible task.
Probably it was 12.
So here's the the reframe is that sometimes a task is impossible.
Sometimes you're bad at estimating how possible it is, and you have to get those clear.
So that's your uh reframe for the morning.
Might have another one for you when we're done.
After our uh podcast today, Owen Gregorian will be doing his uh spaces after party.
So just look for uh Owen's space uh after after we're done here.
Tomorrow, Sunday, toward the end of my podcast, I'm gonna have a guest, King Randall.
Uh I tried to have King Randall on before, but I had a little medical emergency when I was gonna so anyway, but I think it'll work tomorrow if I do it as part of the end of the show.
So what it won't be its own broadcast, it'll just be tacked on the end.
Um so probably quarters of the hour or so at the end.
Um let's look at the news.
Let's see if there's any uh science that they didn't need to do.
Oh, yeah.
Did you know that people's views on immigration are shaped by whether they think the immigrants will vote the same way they do.
Are you surprised by that?
Is there anybody who didn't know that that would be true?
So apparently, if you think the immigrants are uh gonna vote the same way your political party votes, suddenly you don't mind those immigrants nearly as much.
So do you think that that uh something that they needed to study?
No, you didn't need to do a study to find out that people like it when people agree with them.
People like it when people agree with them, all things being equal.
And guess what?
Eric Dolan of SciPost is writing yet again about psychedelic experiences, and apparently uh a brief experience with psychedelics can reduce your lifetime use of cannabis.
So apparently uh one of the benefits if you're looking to cut down on your marijuana use, is that uh psychedelics might do that for you, even with a limited exposure to them.
You might have a lifetime decrease in marijuana use.
Do you think that's a surprise?
Not really, because if if you've had experience with both of those things, you would totally understand why the one would make the other less less desirable.
Well, apparently the X platform is going to have a whole new recommendation system uh in a few weeks, Elon Musk is telling us.
So at the moment, I have no idea why X shows me what it shows me.
I've I just can't figure it out.
It doesn't show me anything I disagree with anymore.
So X completely stopped showing me anything from any left-leaning anything.
Now, maybe they all went to blue sky or something, but I don't get anything that's on the other side of uh of my political opinions.
Never.
So I don't know if that'll change, but what they're trying to do is make sure that uh awesome small accounts can get recognized, which doesn't happen at the moment.
So I guess, and then I guess you'll be able to just talk to Grok and uh just tell it what to prefer in its algorithm, and then it will just do it.
That's kind of cool.
Um, but Grok will literally read every post, Elon says, and watch every video, 100 million per day that's match users with content they're most likely to find interesting.
Do you think that'll make a difference?
I don't know.
There have been a lot of changes to algorithms that did not seem to be doing that, but maybe he can pull it off.
Speaking of Elon, um, he's one of the people who pointed out, I think JD Vance did too, that in New England, um, there are six states that have collectively around 40% of their population votes Republican.
40%.
So it's six states, 40% of them are Republican.
Guess how many Republican representatives in in uh Congress they have?
40% of six states.
None.
They have zero zero Republicans, even though 40% of six different states are Republican, and they have no representation.
Do you feel bad about redistricting now?
Well, I don't.
I don't.
Well, uh apparently there's a new Leonardo DiCaprio movie.
Um that's called uh one battle after another.
And my understanding is that the critics like it, and the public are saying, what kind of uh Antifa propaganda garbage is this?
Some are saying it's a pro-Antifa um movie.
Apparently it's on it's on uh it's on a track to lose 100 million dollars, but I think Warner Brothers disputes that.
So but the public doesn't like it nearly as much as he as the elites.
Well, as you know, today's the No Kings rally.
The No Kings organizers think that they might get more than five million people at 2500 cities all around the country to march.
And uh I, for one, am certainly glad that they're marching for keeping the kings away because so far they're doing a great job.
Uh have there been any kings since the last No Kings march?
No.
No.
So if the last one worked that well, it just makes sense.
I'd keep doing it, because you know, if something works, keep doing it.
So no kings so far, and I think this one's gonna work too.
Um I'm I'm not feeling any kings emerging.
So kind of genius.
It's working.
It's funny that we even know the name of the organizers.
You know, this guy Joel Payne, he's the chief uh communication officer for Move On.
It's one of the organ organizers.
So maybe I'm wrong about this, but uh give me a fact check on this.
If you do a protest and there's no violence and no threat of violence, does anything change in the real world?
Answer?
I don't think so.
Because why would anybody do anything differently if there's no risk?
It's just people marching around.
What why would I change what I'm doing?
Because some people took a walk.
But if a protest looks like it is violent or could be violent, do things change?
Sometimes, because that that would be a signal that whatever they're protesting is so important, just so amazingly important that people are willing to get violent over it.
So the No Kings thing is aggressively nonviolent, right?
Is there any chance that will make a difference in any way on any topic?
I think the answer is no.
There's no way it could.
There's not even an argument about how these set of actions could have a ripple effect that would cause something good to happen.
There's not even a case, right?
It's just completely disconnected from anything in the real world.
It's just people march around and getting paid.
So I think the organizers get paid.
That's why they organize it.
Some of the protesters get paid.
And some of the protesters are going to be probably, you know, bad people trying to make bad things happen.
So you can have fake protesters and your fake uh completely useless protests.
Anyway, um, I asked Grok, what would be some of the examples of what the Trump administration is doing that would look like authoritarianism, which would cause the entire country to want to do a no kings uh kind of uh protest?
So what exactly are the complaints?
Here are the things that Grok said.
That doesn't mean it's right.
This is just coming from one AI.
Firing prosecutors and inspecting generals.
Is that authoritarian?
Firing prosecutors?
Doesn't it matter if the prosecutors were doing their job that they were asked to do?
If you fired them for no reason, maybe that would be bad.
But suppose you fired them because you asked them to do something and they were Democrats, so they decided not to do it.
Is that authoritarian to fire somebody for not doing what you asked them to do for their job?
Doesn't feel like it.
How about uh the law faring of uh John Bolton and Comey?
Well, as far as we can tell, those are real crimes, and at least Comey was trying to overthrow the government, allegedly, and uh and Bolton apparently was uh accusing Trump of all the same things that he was doing at the same time he was accusing him, uh, in terms of mishandling of classified information.
So is that authoritarian to uh to indict Bolton when the crimes look really sort of obvious?
Like, you know, maybe as a defense, but what we know looks like a crime to me, and coming is the same thing.
Uh Grok also said that part of the authoritarian vibe is that the hyper macho military, the Hegeth and Trump are making the military hyper macho.
Is that authoritarian?
Or is that just what a military should be?
Shouldn't a military be hyper macho, even if you have women in the military?
Shouldn't it still be hyper macho?
I don't know.
And then there's the issue of the National Guard in cities, um, because they would be, let's say, walking on or ignoring the local government's preferences.
But correct me if I'm wrong, the National Guard is only guarding federal federal assets, and if the local people say, no, no, we don't need help, then they don't do it, right?
I don't know if any case where the National Guard is doing what the locals said don't do, except protecting federal assets, as far as I know.
Then there's the uh the law fairing with the DOJ, which uh I'm totally in favor of as long as they're lawfaring the lawfareers and the insurrectionists uh, which they are.
Um Grok says that uh Trump is punishing critics, is he?
Well, a lot of people getting fired, but that feels like what happens on both sides.
You know, don't the Democrats fire Republicans when they take power?
It's sort of ordinary.
And uh see, Grok says the authoritarianism included CIA ops in Venezuela.
Well, really.
I mean, don't we have CIA ops in other countries, especially South America, like all the time?
Like with every government?
Is that is that some new thing?
Uh then there's a rhetoric.
The rhetoric is macho, according to Grok.
And uh and uh Grok also thinks that the administration is uh let's say misbehaving or disobeying the courts, but it's doing it by foot dragging and workarounds and you know, nothing illegal, but but that it's not kind of coordinating and uh obeying the courts as much as it could.
Now, which one of those things seems real?
Do any of those feel real to you?
They don't feel real to me.
It just feels like list persuasion.
You know, I've told you about list persuasion.
If you don't have a good reason, put a bunch of bad reasons in a list, and people will get the impression, well, you know, I I don't know about any one any one of those reasons, but there's so many.
I mean, it's a list, so there must be something to it because it's a whole list.
Doesn't work that way.
List persuasion is persuasive, even if everything on the list is BS.
And I don't know.
I I can see how they can cobble together a vibe, but no, this doesn't look like anybody's becoming a king to me.
Now compare this to what Democrats believed, let's say even a year ago, were their most important issues.
Okay.
So a year ago, most important issues.
Uh whatever's happening in Israel and Gaza, but now they just are sort of ignoring that.
So I guess that's not important now.
Uh climate change.
There was a uh I'll tell you there's an article in Wall Street Journal saying that the Democrats have backed off from climate change.
So it was an existential threat last year, and for 20 years before that, but suddenly, uh, yeah, they're not going to pay much attention to it now.
From existential threat, biggest threat in the world, to uh let's de-emphasize this.
Then there was the uh the big issue of uh anybody questioning our elections was uh insurrectionist, just just even questioning the but now it's uh even you know, Kathy Griffin and some other prominent democrats are questioning whether the elections are rigged or not.
So they went from you cannot even question to questioning complete reversal from there's no way that these elections are rigged to hey you Republicans we're gonna rig these elections.
Then there was the open borders, which were terribly important to keep open, but now they're closed and don't hear a lot about it.
There were the COVID shots that were just the everybody had to get them, but now not so much, and then there was the everything has to be trans, and now not so much.
So they got rid of all the things that they were worried about, all the big things, all the big things, and I guess you could throw in tariffs.
It wasn't that long ago that tariffs were like the big big problem, and uh Elon Musk being in doge was the big big problem.
Both of them just went away.
So Elon started working on Tesla again, and uh they just sort of let go those things that they were trying to sell us as the most Important problems in the world were never problems.
So what do they do?
They have to come up with a whole new imaginary thing to bitch about, and it's this whole uh authoritarian king thing.
Everything they do is imaginary.
Everything that Trump does is measurable.
Is there still a war in Ukraine?
Yes, we can measure that.
Yeah.
How's the economy doing?
We can measure that.
So everything Trump does is measurable.
Everything that the uh Democrats are jabbering about seems like conceptual because they don't really have anything, they don't have anything real.
Anyway, um, Antifa is apparently, or did you know that Antifa is a real organization, not what the Democrats say.
They say Antifa is imaginary.
So they think that the real stuff is imaginary and the imaginary stuff is real.
Uh but Antifa, the parts that are not imaginary, uh, are asking for Antifa people to embed with the no kings thing to make it a little bit more, let's say less safe, because they want to they want to reinforce the fact that Antifa is not a not a safe organization, even if the no kings people are mostly about nonviolence.
So we're gonna have this weird situation where you can have fake protesters, because they're paid protesters, they're gonna be um possibly this is pretty funny.
So the protesters themselves would be mostly fakes, because a lot of them are just paid protesters, but Antifa is going to maybe penetrate the fake protesters with fake protesters.
So the fake protesters might be uh penetrated with other fake protesters, and then on top of that, some of you are gonna imagine that the FBI is going to send some fake protesters too.
I don't think so, but maybe.
So you have a fake issue that somebody's worried about a king, completely artificial fake issue.
You've got your fake protesters, and then on top of that, there might be some fakes pretending to be the fakes.
Yeah, if you ever wanted a stronger indication that we've entered the golden age, this is it.
Can you imagine anything better than waking up and your biggest problem is that Democrats think they're fighting an imaginary king and that all their protesters are fake?
It's the best, it's the best you can imagine, because it means we don't have any real problems that we're not dealing with in some creative way.
I feel like Trump, with with the exception, I can say health care, health care stands out as something that's not dealt with by either side.
But if you take health care off the table, and maybe you shouldn't, but everything else looks like it's sort of getting handled as best it can.
You know, even the war in Ukraine, it's not over, but obviously we're putting the the right kind of attention on it.
So it's like everything's being handled except health care.
That's it.
That's all they have.
So John Bolton has been indicted, as you know, so now it's official.
Apparently, what he was doing is he was taking notes from meetings and then including them on his AOL account.
Would you like me to make a joke about AOL and John Bolton using AOL?
Are you ready for this?
You've got jail.
How was that?
Instead of you've got mail, you've got jail.
All right.
Maybe not.
We'll see.
But um a lot of people are saying that the uh Bolton situation is just like Trump.
So why did Trump get away with having those classified things when uh Bolton might not get away with it.
And the answer is don't be an analogy thinker.
It's not a good analogy.
Bolton was not the president of the United States.
He had no authority ever to have classified stuff at his house or his office.
Trump was the president of the United States and was the ultimate decider of what was classified and what was not.
Trump, now this is his defense.
I wasn't there, but his defense is that if he says it's unclassified or even acts like it is, it's unclassified because when he was president, which I agree with, actually.
So no, these are not, these are not equivalent.
One had the authority to declassify, and one never had that authority.
So I was telling you about uh it's actually uh politico, not the Wall Street Journal.
So Deborah Kahn writing in Politico that uh Trump's victory taught Democrats about climate change and that climate change is out as a topic and energy affordability is in.
In other words, the Democrats just found out that everything Republicans have been saying forever is the right approach.
That you want energy affordability, and ultimately that will get you know better climate and everything else.
So, yes, affordability.
So let me ask you this.
If the Democrats thought that was their existential problem, climate change, and they've all seemingly decided to de-emphasize it.
Does that mean it was ever real?
And did they ever believe it was real?
Because how in the world do you go from this is the biggest problem civilization has ever faced, climate change, to why don't we stop talking about it?
Let's let's de-emphasize this and work on energy prices.
Doesn't that tell you they never believed it?
Or does it tell you they did believe it, but they don't anymore, because the the data has not performed according to their models.
Which is it.
But it does seem terribly important to understand the world that it went from the biggest problem in the world to uh maybe maybe we just you know shouldn't mention it.
Let's let's just downplay this a little bit.
My goodness.
All right.
Well, Mark Benioff, CEO of uh and founder of Salesforce, apparently he's apologized for agreeing with Trump temporarily for just like a minute.
He had to apologize.
What he agreed on was uh in some conversation, somebody asked him if he'd ever be in favor of the National Guard helping San Francisco with their crime, and he made the mistake, uh, let's say a Democrat mistake, of uh acting like that might be a good idea under the right circumstance.
Now, under the right circumstance.
So, of course, it's not just yes, it's you know, there might be a there might be a situation where that makes sense.
Now, that is the most reasonable thing that any leader could ever say.
Totally reasonable.
Yes, if crime is out of control, I can imagine a situation in which you would want to get it under control temporarily with but he got so much pushback, he said, quote, having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, he said, I do not um believe uh that I want that.
All right.
So he got beaten back to his uh his side.
Sam Harris has emerged again, and he's being provocative.
So Sam thinks that uh the Joe Rogan style of conversation and podcasts, and uh especially when he talks to Elon Musk and podcasts, uh, has done in social media uh is amplified misinformation and conspiracy thinking, and then Sam goes further, and he said, and it's frankly getting people killed.
Do you believe that things that Joe Rogan and Elon Musk have said on the podcast, uh, are in fact getting people killed?
Not just risking, not just putting people at risk, but are getting people killed.
Do you think that's fair to say?
It might be slightly fair, because they do talk about important you know, health and lifestyle related things, and probably there's somebody who made a bad decision because of something they heard, I don't know what.
It wouldn't have been Ivor MacDon.
But don't you think that free speech is dangerous by its nature?
Why would you pick out these two people as the only one whose free speech is going to hurt somebody?
Don't you think that Sam Harris's free speech would kill people?
If you were to look at all the things that Sam Harris has promoted versus all the things that Elon and Joe Rogan have promoted on podcasts, which one do you think you could determine killed the most people?
I don't know if you can tell.
But if you're if your uh problem with other people's free speech is that it might be dangerous, I don't know how you can how do you defend that?
Wouldn't you say that things I've said would be dangerous?
Right?
I mean, if you're in the podcasting business, you sooner or later you're going to say something that is dangerous because somebody's going to take your advice, even if you say don't take my advice.
So I talk about a lot of things, and then I say, but don't take my advice, you know, financially or medically.
But people will.
In the real world, people can hear me say something, and then even right after I say, don't take my advice, they're gonna go take that advice because it feels right to them.
So will that mean that I kill some people?
Maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, if you want to live in a world with free speech and a dynamic podcasting environment, which we have, people are gonna die.
Absolutely.
Now I think that he may he may be a little bit overworried about the size of the risk, but I wouldn't say that nobody will ever die because of things they heard on podcasts.
Of course they will.
It's a big world and there'll be lots of things said, and lots of crazy people who believe anything that's said.
And yeah, of course.
That there will be situations in which um ordinary podcast conversations lead to people dying.
But what would you do instead?
You know, it's okay if somebody like Sam Harris is raising the alarm.
Because I have also made the criticism that the podcast um model has a problem.
You've heard me say this before, right?
It's the it's the documentary effect.
If you put if you put somebody on a three-hour podcast, especially a high reputation one like uh Joe Rogan's, people will believe whatever whatever they say when they're done.
Most people, because they would get three hours of one point of view and no hours of the opposing view.
Of course it would be persuasive.
Of course it would.
Um, so I've said that for the important topics, you know, not just the fun ones, but for the important topics, you pretty much, you just gotta have a fact checker there at the same time.
Somebody who would disagree, but fact-check you as you go, so that at least the at least the viewer has you know a little bit of uh safety.
You know, I suppose AI could do it now.
You you could say, hey AI, uh look at this uh interview with Joe Rogan and some guests, and you say, What's the pushback?
What would the critics say about that podcast?
That would actually be very useful.
So maybe you just need AI, maybe you don't need a fact checker, as long as you're willing to uh fact-check it yourself with AI, although half of that would be hallucinated.
Anyway, imagine if Sam Harris had gotten his way and uh he had managed to persuade people to vote against Trump and Trump had never come into office.
Would more or fewer people die if Trump had not been present?
Oh.
Now we're getting into it, right?
I believe that Trump's ascendancy to the presidency, the second term, especially, probably will save an immense amount of lives.
Gaza being the obvious one, maybe Ukraine if he can get that done.
So yeah, free speech is uh definitely kills some people.
According to Wall Street Apes, I saw this on X. Allegedly, GoFundMe.
Uh created over a million NGO pages and was accepting donations without the NGOs knowing that they had a page.
A million.
A million.
So an NGO is a non-government organization that usually exists to grift money off the government or off of rich guys.
They made a million of them.
A million.
And then put them up there and collected money on it.
Without the organizations knowing that they had one.
Where did the money go?
Did they give it to the NGO?
Or did they just keep it?
I don't know what they did.
Anyway.
It created uh 1.4 million 501c3 organizations using public IRS data.
So is it my imagination, or is everything that's associated with Democrats a complete scam?
And everything's just money laundering operation.
It's hard for me to, I don't know, the news that I watch is just one Democrat organization after another being determined to have stolen millions and sometimes billions of dollars.
And are any of them Republican?
Am I in a bubble?
Am I in a bubble?
Because I can't think of one example where a Republican dominated organization turned out to be a complete corrupt, you know, whatever this is.
But don't we have situation after situation after situation where it's obvious that the Democrat leaders are running just money laundering operations?
I actually don't know if that's my imagination.
So I'm looking for a real an actual fact check.
Is there a list of Republican bad behavior that matches what we've been seeing for the last several years from the Democrats?
Or is it really all Democrats?
I can't tell because social media is only giving me one side of the story.
But at least I'm aware of it.
I'm at least aware that I've got this big gap in my information.
I think...
Unless there's nothing there.
Yeah, so anytime you find uh Democrats in anything that's funded, you could pretty much guarantee it's corrupt.
And what I'm wondering is, is there a way for AI to be the ultimate government auditor?
Seems to me that we're probably at a place where we need to say nobody gets any money for anything if it comes from taxpayers.
Nobody gets any money for anything unless there's an AI automatic audit.
Meaning that AI will monitor everything they spend and then report it in a way that you can connect the expenses to whatever the outcomes are.
Because right now there's there's just no control over the spending.
They just give it to some organization and it goes into a black hole and they give it to their friends and spend 10 cents on the cause and nobody even checks.
But in theory, AI could be your automatic always-on auditor, right?
So somebody needs to develop some kind of a product, maybe a third party product that can automatically audit um any funded organization.
We We gotta have that.
Because right now we're just drowning in corruption.
The corruption is so out of control that there's looks like nothing works.
I think all of our systems are broken by corruption at this point.
Well, George Santos, Republican who got sentenced to jail for wire fraud and identity theft has been uh has sentenced commuted by President Trump.
I did not hear an argument for why.
Uh so this is one of those ones that makes you scratch your head and say, hmm.
Am I on the same side with this?
Let's see, I'm on the same side with the Republicans.
I'm on the same side with MAGA, usually.
I'm on the same side with Trump.
But why would I support this?
Am I am I supposed to say that Republicans get out of jail for free?
Because why?
Why does he get out of jail for free?
Now, to be fair, Trump has also commuted sentences for Democrats who did real crimes, but thought maybe thought the sentence was too much or something.
So there's there's some there's some noise about maybe he was being mistreated in jail, but nobody gets treated well in jail.
So I don't know.
If the thinking, here's what I wouldn't want.
I wouldn't want the thinking behind this to be he's a Republican, so we're gonna get him out of jail.
I hope that's not the thinking, right?
Um, I do like Trump being protective of his base.
So I do like commuting all the January 6th stuff, including some of the people who went way too far.
I'm in favor of that.
Because that's just protecting his team, and I think he has to.
But this is he protecting the team, or is this just a criminal who maybe should have paid his paid his dues?
He may have been over over sentenced compared to other people.
That could be part of it.
Trump's also uh backing a primary challenger to Thomas Massey.
Uh, I don't love that.
Don't love that.
Um, you know, I'll reiterate my Thomas Massey opinion.
Yes, he's a gigantic pain in the ass to Republicans, but just the kind I like.
Yeah, not everything has to be smooth.
Sometimes you need that alternative voice.
And Massey is uh insanely brave with his alternative voice and also insanely rational.
And uh he's almost always on the right side of principle.
Maybe always, maybe always on the right side of principle, but principle doesn't get the job done, right?
We live in the real world.
Sometimes you just you could have to vote with your team to get anything done, you know, because it's so close.
But I would rather keep a massey, even at the cost of losing one you know, dependable Republican vote, because I think his voice is too important, and we cannot lose it.
So I will disagree with Trump, but I understand why he wants his people to vote for him.
Everybody understands, you know, we we can understand both sides of this situation.
Well, there's a um meeting with Trump and Putin coming up in uh in what country?
Bulgaria or someplace?
I don't know, Hungary.
One of those countries over there that I always get confused.
So that's we don't have a specific date, I don't think.
But uh Trump thinks that maybe maybe we're at a point where talking to Putin could get something done.
Now, cleverly, as you know, Zelensky with two Y's.
Um, do you know why Zelensky's name is spelled with two Ys at the end of a Zelensky?
It's because that's what that's what everybody asks when they hear him.
Zelensky.
Why?
Why?
Okay.
Um anyway, so Zelensky wants these tomahawk missiles that only the US can supply, and they would give him range to go way into Russia and bomb their energy infrastructure and whatever else.
So Trump is not eager to uh make things worse.
But he did once again, Trump did his Trump thing where he created an asset out of nothing.
So the asset out of nothing is oh, we might we might give Ukraine these tomahawks any minute.
Yep, we might any minute.
You want to talk?
Oh, oh, you'd like to talk.
So Putin wants to talk now because Trump has created this asset that didn't exist before, which is maybe maybe I'm gonna give Ukraine some tomahawk missiles, and you're really gonna be fucked up.
So he creates that risk, an asset to trade away, and then he schedules the meeting.
Pure Trump.
Do you think that Biden would have done that?
Probably not, because he wasn't smart enough.
He just literally wasn't smart enough.
You create the asset, and then you talk, and then you trade away the asset.
It's a real asset.
When I say he created the asset, I don't mean it's imaginary.
It's a real asset.
He really could, and maybe even probably will give these tomahawks to uh Ukraine eventually.
I I feel like if literally nothing comes out of this meeting, I think Ukraine's gonna get tomahawks.
What do you think?
I think they will.
Because Trump's not gonna what is he gonna do?
Just say, well, we tried.
I don't think so.
I think he's gonna say, if we can't get it done with this level of mutual threat, I'm gonna increase the mutual threat.
And then we'll try again.
So who knows what he's thinking internally?
But if you're Putin, you would have to worry that the Tomahawks are definitely coming if you blow this meeting.
Do you think uh Putin's risk management would allow him to take a chance on those tomahawks coming online?
I don't know.
That'd be pretty that'd be a pretty big risk for Putin.
I don't think he likes that kind of risk.
That that would be a little bit more than he might want to take on.
Because the correct me if I'm wrong, but the Tomahawks could just turn off the power in in Russia, right?
If you had if you had a a thousand tomahawks all of a sudden, you don't think you could take out the entire energy infrastructure of Russia right before the winter?
I'll bet you could.
Logically you would imagine that Russia could turn off Ukraine's power too, but would they?
Probably would if they got attacked that hard.
Well, Malibu is looking to arrest homeless people over fire risks, because I guess the homeless have started lots of 30 fires.
Um, usually not intentionally.
I guess they're just starting fires to stay warm, but things get out of control.
Some of them probably intentional.
But uh Malibu now is uh not as blue as it used to be.
Now maybe it wants those those uh homeless people to not be so dangerous.
We'll see where that goes.
Um there's something strange happening with Venezuela and the US.
So Trump says that uh Madura has quote offered everything, meaning that we're negotiating with Venezuela through some channels, I don't know, but that uh Venezuela has reportedly offered to give the U.S. a dominant stake in Venezuela's oil and other mineral wealth.
What?
What?
How is that even a real thing?
Are you serious?
That Venezuela is trying to buy its way out of trouble by giving the U.S. equity and its natural resources.
I didn't see that coming.
Is that even real?
Well, here's what I think won't work, which is it looks like a here's how I interpret it.
So this is just my interpretation.
My interpretation is Maduro knows he has no chance of survival.
Because once he's been determined to be a cartel head, as opposed to a legitimate head of state, they can just take him out.
And they know that Trump is someone who won't hesitate to take out a terrorist head or the head of the cartel.
So Maduro is probably saying, okay, I got you know, I got four weeks to stay alive, basically.
I'm gonna have to offer whatever it takes for them not to kill me, specifically, right?
Because I'm pretty sure that they would do a decapitation strike.
I don't think they would go in and you know, try to grind it out and beat the military.
That seems like a bad idea.
But they would definitely know where Maduro is, and they would definitely be able to put a drone on his ass anytime they wanted.
So Maduro's probably thinking, all right, I gotta come up with something that can keep me alive for the next month because it's not looking good.
So he may have promised Venezuela's assets to keep him in power, which is a pretty smart offer because you know that Trump would want to, you know, he'd want to claim success, he'd want an economic bump.
Uh, but it's not good enough because Maduro would still be the head of a cartel and a terrorist organization, according to the United States.
So I don't think you can bribe your way out of that situation, can you?
But it's a hell of an offer.
Uh and Trump seems to have rejected it.
And uh he said, quote, using the F bomb, which Trump is so good at, he says he doesn't want to fuck with the US.
Is that perfect?
Remember, I I keep telling you that the Democrats they try to copy Trump, and they they do it by trying to swear like they think he swears, because it seems to work when he does it.
They don't do it right.
They just throw the F bombs in podcasts, whereas when he throws one in, it's the perfect application.
Imagine you're you're Maduro or you're the Venezuelan leadership and you're watching the news, and Trump turns right at the camera, looks at the camera, and says, he doesn't want to fuck with us.
That's not just a good use of a swear term.
That that's a whole different level.
That that is making sure that you know that he means that, and if there's one thing you're gonna pay attention to, it's that.
Everybody?
There's lots of things going on today, but here's what you're gonna pay attention to.
You're gonna pay attention to my F-bomb.
They don't want to fuck with us.
And that is such a clean, clear, strong message.
Perfect use of a curse word.
Perfect use of a curse word.
Then you watch uh somebody like Newsom just sort of randomly throwing in a you know a blue word.
Doesn't work at all.
Doesn't work at all.
But if you do it this well, that's that's how to do it.
So we'll see.
Maybe something will happen with Venezuela.
ABC News has an estimate for building Gaza, rebuilding Gaza.
70 billion dollars.
I saw somebody else say 60 billion, but you know, once you get into that range, you're just guessing.
Um 70 billion dollars.
Where's that gonna come from?
Apparently uh over 80% of Gaza's city buildings are damaged, and 40% are completely wiped out.
Only 40%.
You know, when I see pictures of Gaza, I don't see anything that looks like it's salvageable.
Are there Are there entire parts of Gaza that weren't damaged that much?
But we only see the pictures of the ones that are totally flattened.
I don't know.
I'm doubting that 40% number seems like it's more like 80%.
But uh 70 billion.
I don't know how anybody's gonna get 70 billion dollars to invest in a place that's still gonna be festering with terrace.
70 billion.
Yeah.
Well, over in uh Great Britain, there's apparently a breakthrough in fusion energy.
Um if you follow my podcast, you know that I always talk about all the many breakthroughs in fusion, but we've been having breakthroughs in fusion for my entire life, and we don't have any fusion yet.
So don't get too excited.
But apparently, uh over at Oxfordshire.
Um they've made some kind of major breakthrough, technical breakthrough.
They've they figured out how to stabilize the turbulent edge of a fusion plasma.
Wow.
Wow, they can stabilize the turbulent edge of a fusion plasma, which actually is a gigantic deal.
If they if they could really do that, apparently that's gigantic.
Gets you a lot closer to fusion.
The US has also published a roadmap to get us diffusion.
So the energy department appears to be doing a good job, uh, both in priorities and communicating.
Um I always talk about uh what's happening with living situations and especially senior citizens.
And here's a trend which I was expecting to see, and uh apparently uh there's some studies that show this is true.
The older people are far more likely to take on a roommate now.
So if there are seniors who own a house and they don't want to leave their house, but it becomes too expensive to you know run the house by yourself.
Apparently it's a very big trend now.
Oh, close to a million adults are living with unrelated housemates, older adults.
You know, it's not surprising if it's 20 somethings have roommates, but when the 70 somethings start getting roommates of other 70 somethings, then you've got something going on here.
So the uh number of people who are cohabitating with non-relatives is uh up quite a bit since 2021.
So you know, I was telling you before that China seems to have adapted to the uh that one child thing better than we expected.
So the one child would just stay home and would just be an asset to the parents in a way that maybe if they had several kids, the kids would have left and gotten jobs and whatever.
So it it is uh it's useful to watch how society can adjust when it just has to.
And this living the the cost of living is so high that the seniors just have to adjust, they just won't be able to afford you know the the old kind of lifestyle where you can just live in a big house, I guess.
Um yeah, you're gonna see a lot of people cohabitating.
I think they'll be happier.
I think they'll be happier having another life in the house.
All right.
Um, as I told you, as soon as we're done here, Owen Gregorian will have his uh spaces after party, so just go to X and look for Owen Gregorian, and you'll see that.
Uh I think I'll give you one more reframe before we go.
Anybody up for another reframe?
All right, we got time for one reframe.
And then it's time for breakfast.
All right, this is from my book, Reframing Your Brain.
Now, the context here, if you're new to this, is that most of the reframes might not be you know one that you need specifically, but they're all things that you know somebody who needs.
So you'll be smarter and more capable of helping other people, even if it's not directly for you.
All right.
Um here's a reframe.
One of my favorites.
Uh The usual frame is I want to do something.
Whatever the whatever the thing is.
I want to do the thing.
I want to get this degree.
I want to get this job.
I want to accomplish this thing.
But a better reframe is I've decided to do it.
This is one of my favorites.
You've heard this one before, but for those of you who haven't heard it, Deciding to do something is an entirely different situation than wanting to do something.
So once you understand that distinction, that there are things you want that you're probably not going to work that hard on.
It's just something you want.
But if you decide, then you're going to do whatever it takes.
I told you earlier about my situation with the PET scan and how monstrously painful that was.
Did I want to do that?
Or did I decide to do it?
I decided.
Always know the difference between what you want and what you've decided.
