Talking about the news and robots and all the fun stuff~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Politics, Sam Altman, ChatGPT App, Tesla Optimus, China Robot Components, Elon Musk, EPA Phthalates Risk, President Trump's Approval Rating, NGO Gaza Support, Fed Project Cancellations, Fed Childcare Funds Suspension, Iran Protests, Zohran Mamdani's Block Party, Food Pyramid Update, Welfare Recipients Voter ID Link, Nick Shirley, Corporate Power Plants, Palisade Fires Permit Delays, Putin's Residence Attack, Filibuster Debate, Science AI Writing Usage, Taiwan China Tensions, 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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So one of the things I told you I like a lot is when people who are way smarter than me agree with me because it makes me feel smarter.
So the CEO of Perplexity, that's one of the big AI apps, Arvind Srinvas, he says the biggest threat to data centers is intelligence that runs locally on your device.
So I think I've been telling you for a while that the big AI companies are building enormous multi-billion dollar data centers.
And as an investor, I would be concerned that things could change instantly.
And one of the things that could change instantly is if somebody figured out how to do AI without the data center.
Now, it seems impossible.
But on the other hand, if you started with the data center training and then just added your own intelligence and your own stuff, how close could you get to a working AI that didn't need to be connected to a data center?
I think that's coming.
Anyway, speaking of AI, Sam Altman of ChatGPT and OpenAI, apparently he's got a different vision than Elon Musk does about what's going to happen to your apps.
So in his world, ChatGPT will have its own app store and maybe replace the Apple App Store.
But so far, they have not really been successful.
So they have some apps, but they're not, you know, it's not doing everything a phone could do.
So they think their big competition is Apple and the iPhone, but they can't quite get apps to work.
I don't know if they will.
Now, the difference is that Elon says there won't be apps per se.
There might just be one version of AI on your device, which would look nothing like a smartphone, except a screen and some basics.
So we'll see.
That's a pretty big deal because whoever ends up owning the app or replacement app environment is going to have a business that's worth a trillion dollars.
According to someone on X named Ming, I love it when I take random people I don't know about on X and act like they have a special insight.
Maybe he does.
Maybe Ming knows everything.
Or maybe Ming is making it up because I don't know who he is.
But he says that the mass production audit for Tesla's Optimus version 3, that would be the robot, has been completed.
And here's the new part.
Seven Chinese companies would be core suppliers.
So for different parts of the robot, Tesla would employ seven Chinese companies.
Now, a lot of it, I assume, would be made in the US, but they would be getting parts from China to assemble.
Now, you remember I was telling you that the CEO of Andreil was saying that basically every electronic component that came from China had some kind of a listening device in it that might be as big as a grain of sand or a grain of rice.
Not sand, stupid.
Rice.
Totally different.
So how much can you trust robot parts that came from China?
Do you think that's safe?
And what would Tesla's security be?
Would they make sure that every component was free from some kind of spy device?
I assume.
So it's a weird time in history where we assume that China would put malicious code or malicious hardware into every device.
At the same time, you probably can't make the robots without China.
So is China Tesla's friend?
Or is it just another way China can get some control of the United States?
But more to the point.
So they want to be ready to make 50 to 100,000 units.
That would be robots.
And Q1 2026.
So remember how I keep asking, how in the world will robots be generally intelligent and act like a butler if we haven't seen it yet?
I always mock the videos that show some robot doing exactly one thing.
So today, there's a video I saw about some Chinese-made robot that could play tennis.
But they don't really show it trying to make every kind of shot.
So it probably can't even do tennis unless it's like a ground stroke that's kind of close to his forehand.
So once again, every time we get tried to, somebody tries to trick us into thinking that robots are ready, they'll show a demonstration of a robot doing exactly one thing.
Now, obviously, if you could get a robot to play tennis, that would be pretty impressive.
But it wouldn't be the same intelligence that would make it a butler.
So here's my question.
What does Elon know about AI, the AI that would go into his robots, that we don't know?
Does he have this?
Does he have this mastered?
Because why would you even gear up for making that many robots this soon, first quarter, unless you have solved the general intelligence problem?
And how in the world would we not know that he has solved it?
Or is it optimism?
Does he feel that he's close enough that if you give it three more months, that you'll be able to do whatever you want to do?
I don't know.
I'm genuinely curious because, you know, Elon's not going to waste a bunch of money on a robot that doesn't work.
So he must think it would work.
And when I say work, I mean be generally trainable.
So you could just teach it a new thing on the fly, spaces.
All right.
Tesla is a surveillance company, you say.
Well, not by design, but I don't know what could surveil anything better than that.
You know, nobody's ever asked me to teach a robot how to be funny.
I'm seeing that in the comments.
But I think I could.
I think it would have been within my ability to teach a robot how to be funny.
Not positive, but I think I could.
Nobody else has.
Well, remember I told you yesterday, I think it was yesterday, that sometimes I cheer for the wrong people.
You know, you've seen movies, TV shows, where the bad guy is actually the charismatic one.
Do you remember the TV show Dallas?
And J.R. Ewing was the bad guy, but he was the most interesting person in the show.
So he ended up cheering for the bad guy.
And I told you that that started to be my feeling about that tanker.
It's an empty tanker that the U.S. Navy has been chasing.
And remember, I told you that he did a U-turn instead of surrendering, which was ballsy.
And then they painted on the side of their ship a Russian flag to try to get Russia's protection.
And it looks like it might have worked because apparently Russia has now asked the U.S. to not take the tanker.
So I don't know if it's really a Russian flagship or if they changed it to a Russian flagship.
But if he gets away with this, if that tanker captain actually pulls it off and gets away, that is going to be the coolest criminal thing I've seen this year.
So I'm trying not to root for the other team, but he's a ballsy captain.
Well, good luck, Captain.
So here's some good news.
Lee Zeldon is reporting that the Trump EPA just completed a risk evaluation of, and I think I'll be pronouncing this right.
It's spelled P-H-T-H-A-L-A-T-E-S.
So obviously that would be pronounced with Padness.
I think I nailed that right.
So apparently the Flavloti chemicals are going to be banned because they're bad for you.
Lise Eldon says the Maha activists were right and the Trump EPA strongly agrees that exposures in certain settings exceed safe levels and could cause endocrine endocrine disruptions.
So if I could give you any advice, it would go like this.
Stay away from the flaplatis.
All right.
Now, I try to be useful.
So here I am teaching you how to pronounce this difficult to pronounce word.
One more time.
It's pronounced flapplatis.
Yeah, that's a word.
But good job, Trump administration.
I like the fact that RFK Jr. is leading the do science better push.
So this is one of many things in which the gold standard of science will be applied and apparently has never been applied before, which is the weird part.
How long ago was it that you learned that science was mostly fake?
Or at least the science that we cared about.
We never really had safety tests for a lot of medicines, but we thought we did.
I mean, I think I thought the same thing you did for years, which is the most tested would be pharmaceutical stuff.
Turns out that was never the case.
And then secondly, you would assume that food and food safety would also be among the top things that our science did right.
Well, turns out that's all wrong, that we didn't have science to support our big meds and we didn't have science to support our big food.
And of all people, of all people, Trump is the one who's making this real science.
So there's more on that in a minute.
I'm seeing some reporting about Trump's approval levels being high.
I think it was Harry Anton on CNN who said they've never seen this before, which is a president in his second term who's been better, more approval than his first term.
Because first terms, you tend to get a little bit of a honeymoon.
But Trump is actually more popular now than at any time in his first term.
That's impressive.
Now, how popular he is is a matter of dispute.
So there are various different polls that have very different answers.
I think one said he's 44% approval, which wouldn't be bad.
Another poll, I think, said 50% approval, which would be very impressive, 50%.
But, you know, how much you really trust claims of popularity or approval, I guess.
But here's what Trump does.
So in the midst of these sketchy numbers, Trump says that the polls are rigged, and he claims his real job approval rating nearly a year into a second term is 64%.
64%.
Has there ever been a president?
It was 64%.
I think there were maybe around the first.
What was Bush's approval during the first Gulf War?
It was really high, right?
So Trump says he's got, he goes, the real number is 64%.
And why not?
And why not?
Our country is hotter than ever before.
Isn't it nice to have a strong border?
No inflation.
Happy New Year.
So if you're a Democrat, would this drive you crazy?
If you saw that the president was claiming a 64% approval, but had no poll whatsoever to back it, it would make you crazy.
How does it make you feel if you support Trump?
Well, I'm in that category.
To me, it just is funny.
I love the fact that he just throws that out there because he knows that his critics are going to go crazy and it doesn't make any difference whatsoever to his supporters.
We just watched the show.
So when he does that salesman-ish thing and he just throws out this giant number that can't be supported, it just makes me laugh.
And I don't think anybody else would know that that could be like a workable strategy instead of insane.
Oh, speaking of which, so Trump also had a physical.
He claims he's in, quote, perfect health, and that he aced the third cognitive exam he's been asked to take in his time as presidents.
He says, the White House doctors have reported that I am in now all caps, perfect health, and that I aced capital, all capitals, meaning was correct on 100% of the questions asked for the third straight time.
My cognitive examination, something which no other president or previous vice president was willing to take, Trump wrote.
Now, again, do you hate the fact that he's claiming his cognitive test success?
No.
Will it bother his critics for whatever reason?
Yes.
So if it bothers his critics and it doesn't bother his supporters, that's a sweet spot.
He has a sweet spot.
Well, over in Israel, apparently Netanyahu and the Israeli government is going to enforce a ban on 37 NGOs in Gaza.
So they believe that at least 37 of them are maybe sneaking in bad guys or doing something that Israel would not want them to do and is not in their charter.
So if you had heard this story a few years ago, what would you assume was happening?
You might assume that Israel was being mean and they were removing the sources of charity for the region that they conquered.
And you might say, my God, these brutal monsters that are cutting our NGO support.
But what do you think in 2026?
In 2026, now that we know the NGOs are massive money laundering schemes and probably, in this case, being used as some kind of disguise for moving in things that could be weapons, for example.
maybe it's other terrorists.
So it makes me wonder, has there ever been an NGO that was good?
Or are all NGOs just automatically a signal for fraud and a signal for something you don't want to happen?
I don't know.
But I'll tell you, it does seem to suggest there's never been a good NGO.
And that every single time you hear about one, there's something sketchy going on.
Probably.
All right, well, here's a story that was just complicated enough that I don't fully understand it, but I'll try.
So according to Jennifer O'Connell, writing for Red State, Trump has already this year vetoed two things at least.
And one of the things he vetoed was a decades-old legislation that was tied all the way back to John F. Kennedy 63 years ago, where they had put together a deal where the federal government would pay for this massive pipeline project.
But the way it was supposed to work is that the federal government would pay for it, but then they would be paid back over time with interest by the state and local authorities.
So on paper, sounds pretty good, right?
The locals get a source of water.
I'm sure they need it.
And it's all funded.
But that was 63 years ago.
So apparently all they do is they keep kicking the can down the road.
I think very little or nothing has been built.
So it's a little bit like the allegations about the California high-speed rail.
But Trump just canceled it.
So I feel like that's the right play.
Because if something has lasted 63 years and they haven't built anything, and it probably doesn't have a good audit feature, because one does, and there's probably no way that the fed would ever get paid back, I think Trump can cancel that.
So that does make sense to me.
And it makes me wonder how many things are going to get canceled because they never really made sense, or because it's been decades and the money just disappears.
So how much, I don't know how much money was ever allocated to it, but once again, no surprise, we learned that any big federal project or state project is probably just a way for somebody to rob us.
Speaking of which, the Trump administration has extended its ban on child care payments until the states can provide evidence of legitimate spending.
I saw this on one American news network.
So the Department of Health and Human Services, which had already suspended these federal payments to one state, I think it was just Minnesota, has now made that a national thing.
So do you think that's a good idea?
Probably.
Because as far as we can tell, all the payments of this type were massively fraudulent.
And it probably affected every state.
And it's perfectly reasonable to ask them for evidence that the money is going to the right place.
So it's not that they can't get the money.
It's that they will have to demonstrate with receipts and photo evidence and show that the funds are actually being used in the right way.
Now, here's my takeaway from that.
I'm trying to imagine any other president who could have done this.
Even though we recently learned that all these things were giant fakes, do you think that a Democrat would have just said, all right, we're going to stop paying all of you until you can prove us real?
No.
And I'm not even sure a Republican could have because there would just be so much pushback.
But here's why a regular ordinary Republican and definitely a Democrat president could not have pulled this off, which I think will be an important move.
The first thing you had to do was dismantle DEI.
If you had not dismantled DEI, then cutting funding in this way would automatically be called racist.
But Trump is the only one with enough balls to say, you could call me racist if you want to, but I'm still going to do it.
So you had to have an anti-DEI president.
No one else could have done this.
No one else.
Would you agree?
I'm looking at the comments right now.
Would you agree that no other person as president would have had the tools and the right personality and the guts to do this?
Secondly, and this is important, the only way this would get done is if he wasn't in on the scam.
Now, even if you say, well, no other president was in on the scam, but their supporters were.
So they would have had a base that said, what are you doing?
Their base would have stopped that president because they were in on it.
So Trump, whether or not any Republicans are in on it, and certainly some must be, that didn't stop him.
So he's not stopped by the DEI attacks.
Let's call it the racism attacks.
He's not stopped because somebody on his team is in on it.
And lastly, you need a, you know, basically balls of steel to do something that people will interpret, the bad guys will interpret, as killing children.
So a Democrat probably couldn't survive doing something that people would say, hey, you take that money away and it will kill the children.
But Trump would be smart enough, tough enough, strong enough to say, well, all you have to do is prove that you're real.
You can have the money right away.
So I don't know that any other president could have done this.
It's sort of the perfect combination of the person who needed to be there at the right time.
Otherwise, I think we're just doomed.
Just doomed.
All right.
I've asked you this before, but I'm going to add a little details.
I have a favor to ask.
You'll see a post that I pinned to my ex feed.
It's the one at the top.
In which I'm asking you if I helped you in any way, or let's say my work, if my work helped you in any way to leave a message in that post, because my good friend and now biographer Joel Pollock, I've asked him to write my biography.
And a big part of the biography will be some notion of what I added to the universe.
So if you have a story to tell, or you know somebody that does, do me a favor and leave a comment just so we know what the general thrust is.
And then follow Joel.
You'll see his You'll see his X handle in my post.
Give him a follow, because if he sees something in the comments that would look good, or he wants to follow up with in the book, he will have a way to contact you so he could follow you back and DM you.
Okay?
And that would be a big favor to me.
I would appreciate that.
Well, Iran apparently is having some big protests in the street.
So I saw some reporting that we'll see if I've trained you well enough to spot this.
The claim is that there are now 32 cities where there will be protests.
32 cities.
Now give me the filter on that.
Do you think that 32 cities are really going to have protests?
All right, here's the filter.
We'll see how many of you got it.
How big would the protests be in those 32 cities?
Because I heard yesterday that the 32 city thing might be true, but some of them would be small crowds.
So there's a big difference between a small crowd of protesters and an overwhelming number.
But we don't see how many of the 32 are going to be big or have been big and how many of them are just a few hundred people took the streets.
So they added it to the count.
But what is new and interesting is that Trump waited on this.
I thought he would stay out of it because you don't want the Iranian people to organize against the U.S. You want them to keep their focus on their own government.
And like I said, I don't know.
Is it a color revolution?
Is it completely organic?
Or is it really something that the U.S. and Israel are behind?
I would be surprised if it's 100% organic.
You know what I mean?
So I don't think we can tell from here how effective those things are going to be.
But here's what Trump said on True Social.
He said, if Iran kills peaceful protesters, we will come to the rescue, locked and loaded and ready to go.
So Trump is basically saying that the U.S. would get involved militarily if the regime murders any of the peaceful protesters.
Is that a good idea?
Here again, I'm going to make an assumption because it's not the way we've acted in the past.
But my assumption is that Trump knows more about this than we do.
So it could be that he has information that things are teetering on the brink.
Now, if things are teetering on the brink and a little, you know, giving a little boost to the protesters makes sense, then it's a good play.
But doesn't it seem to you like Iran has had many, many periods of protests and they eventually just get suppressed?
So if it just gets suppressed, I don't know if this helped.
So once again, I'm going to make an assumption that Trump knows more about this than we do.
So he knows what's behind the scenes.
It could be that there are insiders in Iran who are ready to take over and make a deal with the U.S.
It could be that Trump just always takes the strongest play.
I've been telling you this for a while.
If there are a couple of ways to go on any topic, he picks the one that's the strongest.
And the strongest would be to say we'll weigh in militarily.
So I have to say, I'm not optimistic that there will be regime change in Iran because of this.
That feels a little too optimistic, doesn't it?
But possible.
Like I say, if Trump knows something we don't know, or if Israel knows something we don't know, maybe.
We'll see.
Well, Zorhan Mamdani held what he called a block party to celebrate his election.
And apparently that became a little bit of a problem because his block party did not include food, music, or bathrooms.
No food, music, or bathrooms.
It was also really, really cold.
So here's how I'd summarize that.
First day of socialism, not so good.
Maybe they show less of a capitalist in there to sell bathrooms and food.
But then he said this, which is getting quoted a lot.
Mamdani said, we will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.
I wonder if the warmth of collectivism is actually the urine that's running down their legs because they don't have bathrooms.
Just wondering.
I would beware of that warmth of collectivism.
So first day, not so good.
Speaking of food, the FDA plans to update the food pyramid.
I think that's what it is.
But they say guidelines.
And they would do it based on real science.
Now, one of the things I didn't know was a problem, but the FDA is looking to fix it, is that the different states have different standards for what is ultra-processed.
So in one city, ultra-processed means one thing.
In another state, it means another.
But they're looking to get some kind of a federal standard, which you would sort of need.
If you're going to have a standard for food, you would need it to be federal.
Will the states disagree?
And will the states say, stay away from our state.
We have our own food standard, maybe.
I don't know.
But I do wonder if the FDA can do this now without the undue influence of big food.
Because the food companies obviously are going to weigh in.
They have a big influence.
Is this only because it's a Trump administration?
Is that the only reason that they can even maybe have a chance of good food guidelines?
Mostly, I think they're going to get rid of additives and food coloring and stuff like that, but there might be a lot more.
If you thought about it, if the only thing that the Trump administration accomplished, the only thing was to improve the guidelines for food and the testing of meds, that would be pretty successful.
Because those have, especially food, have such a leverage effect on everything else.
If you get your food right, presumably your healthcare costs go down, right?
So you get a lot done if you can just take care of the food.
Well, on X, a gentleman named Kevin Bass did some number crunching and he found out that states that have no effective voter ID requirements average nearly eight times more welfare benefits to illegal immigrants compared to states that require voter ID verification.
So it is literally the case that states are importing and paying illegals for votes.
And Elon Musk weighed in and said yes, is the biggest crime in American history.
I think he means the larger crime of essentially paying people to come into this country and then shipping them in so that you can control the vote.
I'm not sure which part is illegal, but it does feel like the biggest crime.
It does feel like the biggest crime in American history.
So imagine if Elon Musk didn't exist.
So I just gave you a whole speech about Trump as the only person who could have attacked the fraud effectively.
But I don't think even that would have happened without Doge and without Elon putting his finger on that button continuously.
So somebody told me that the Nick Shirley account, which blew up and became a giant thing, was primarily because Elon boosted him.
Is that true?
I was trying to understand why since 2018, local news and others have, and whistleblowers, have been pointing out this massive fraud, but it took Nick Shirley and his work to make us all pay attention.
Now, it could be that I'm in such a bubble that I think people are paying attention, but not really.
I said this the other day, that if you just walked onto the street and tapped on somebody's shoulder and said, hey, what do you think of the Nick Shirley videos?
They would have no idea what you're talking about.
But I live in a bubble in which the Nick Shirley videos are big.
So I see it every day, every day, and then versions of it every day.
So, but I think Elon just giving that a boost might make all the difference.
So again, I say, what would it be like if we didn't have an Elon?
Everything would be different.
We wouldn't even know about a lot of this stuff.
Now, Mike Benz, of course, would also be critical to our current understanding.
All right.
So the Washington Examiner, Drew Bond, is writing that can AI help lower our energy bills?
Now that sounds the opposite of what you thought, right?
If the big data companies or the big data centers that drive AI need massive, massive amount of energy, wouldn't that compete with the domestic residential need for electricity and power?
And wouldn't it necessarily make your energy costs go up?
But here's a version of what probably will be happening that suggests that the data centers will make your local energy prices go down.
So already we're seeing that the big companies, the massive companies who need to build these big data centers, they're augmenting the existing power by building their own power sources in the same places as the data centers.
So they're using natural gas, they're using solar, geothermal, wind, and small nuclear reactors and battery storage.
So if they use all of those things and they keep it local, they can pay for basically all the energy they need.
But here's the new part.
What would stop them from making extra?
If you're already going to put in this power source and you're going to use it just for yourself, how hard would it be to make it twice as big and then provide even cheaper energy to the local community?
And I never really thought of it that way.
But if they have enough regulatory relief, it seems to me that something has changed in regulations.
Because why is it suddenly so easy for these big companies to build their own power plants?
I feel like building a power plant would be the hardest thing you could ever get approved.
But suddenly, you know, there are lots of them and they seem to get approval.
So is that a Trump thing?
Did Trump, did the administration remove a bunch of regulations to make this practical?
They must have, right?
So again, could any other president have pulled off the AI revolution?
I don't know, because you would have to go massively after the regulatory structures in order to even imagine that private companies could build their own power plants on site.
Yeah.
Anyway, an update on the LA fires, post-millennial is reporting, Hannah Nightingale, that just 13% of homes destroyed in the LA fires have a permit to rebuild.
Now, do you know why it's taking so long?
It's not all because of the state, although much of it is.
Number one, there's no way to get fire insurance.
Would you rebuild a home if you knew you couldn't get fire insurance, especially a place where they had a big fire?
So some of it is the insurance companies and the homeowners not being able to do a deal.
Secondly, especially if you didn't have enough insurance before the fire, if you're a homeowner, you're probably short on cash.
So even if you could get approval to build, how many people would have enough to just rebuild a new house?
That's got to limit.
That seems like it would limit you.
And then, of course, there are endangered plants.
So apparently getting around the fact that there are endangered plants is slowing down permits.
But as somebody asked in the comments where I saw this, how did the endangered plants do during the fire?
Isn't a fire worse than building?
Yeah.
So we'll keep an eye on this, but it does seem to me that if there's no way to get fire insurance, it's going to be a long, slow haul.
maybe maybe they can clean it up so the fire risk is actually lower there than it is in other places fentanyl Oh, here's another one.
I'm seeing in the comments somebody saying that the fentanyl overdoses has gone way down since Trump got in office.
I have some questions about that.
I don't doubt it's true, but I didn't think you could reduce the supply of fentanyl coming across the border enough to make a difference, just because it's so small.
It's not like bales of marijuana.
You could put it in your pocket enough to kill a city.
So how do you stop that?
So even though he stopped shipments from Venezuela, some people say that wasn't fentanyl anyway.
But he did stop traffic coming in from Mexico.
And I can't believe that the smugglers can't figure out how to just throw a bag of fentanyl over the fence.
So they must be doing something right.
But we'll give him credit for that.
And I don't think another president could have done that.
Well, Russia is still claiming, according to the Washington Times, that the attack on Putin's home was real.
And they now have an unexploded drone that they're showing on video to prove, look at this unexploded drone.
It has evidence that it came from Ukraine.
So remember, Ukraine said they didn't do it.
The US said the Ukraine didn't do it.
And that it was just an attack on something that was kind of far away, but that Putin was just lying about it.
Well, here's what I would advise you.
Don't trust any report from a war zone.
So maybe, maybe Ukraine was behind it.
Maybe they intended to attack his residents.
But they showed a picture of a drone on the ground with no way to know if it's a real drone or if it's a real video.
But what they have now done is show the damage from the attack.
Am I right?
What is the main thing you would expect?
It's not as if no one's ever seen a picture of his residence.
You don't think he'd be willing to show maybe just a close-up, but something that shows there was damage on the actual residents.
Because if the only thing you show me is an unexploded drone in the bushes, how do I know what that's about?
So who do we trust?
Nobody.
I would not trust Ukraine that said they didn't do it, but I definitely wouldn't trust Putin who said they did do it.
I definitely wouldn't trust the United States, no matter what side they were on.
So it's kind of a weird one.
Probably works.
Maybe Putin gets some propaganda benefit on that.
So apparently, Elon Musk has signaled that he's going to massively fund Republicans for the midterm because he thinks that America is toast, quote, America is toast, if the radical left wins, they will open the floodgates to illegal immigration and fraud.
and it won't be America anymore.
That feels fair.
That does feel fair, doesn't it?
That we're so close to fixing a lot of stuff, but at the same time, all it would take is one election, especially if the election is rigged.
It would only take one election to reverse everything.
We are really teetering on the edge here, people.
And I saw the argument, I forgot who made it, somebody famous, made the argument that if the Republicans don't get rid of the filibuster, getting rid of it would allow them to pass lots of legislation.
But if they don't get rid of it, someday the Democrats will get in power and they will get rid of it.
And when they get rid of it, there's going to be a whole bunch of laws that get passed that you're not going to like at all.
So what do you think?
Would it be smarter for the Republicans to get ahead of it and say, all right, we know that you would get rid of the filibuster, so we're going to get rid of it first.
And then you've got a few years, maybe less than a few years, to do a bunch of stuff.
I'm kind of mixed on this because you can't really predict the future that well.
So I don't know exactly if getting rid of the filibuster would be the best we could do or would be the biggest mistake we ever made.
It could easily go either way.
Don't know.
Well, according to scientist Sabine Hasenfelder, who's a fun follow on X. Let me take a sip and get back to that.
I'm massively dehydrated, but intentionally.
So according to Sabine Haasenfelder, there's a new paper that has just dropped that says that scientists are 40% more productive when they use AI and increase their paper.
And for non-native English speakers, it's even more up to 80%.
So apparently this only applies to the writing part.
So it doesn't apply to the actual science part.
It applies to the writing it up and submitting it to technical journals.
So, as she warns, that if the thing that got faster was not the science part, but the writing it up and publishing it part, the scientific publications are going to be overwhelmed with what I will call science slop.
So if you assume that half of the science is fake anyway, which is what it is, if you increase the number of fake papers along with the number of real ones, are we better off?
Do you think the world is better if suddenly there are way more published papers just because it was easy to write them up?
I don't know.
I'm not sure that makes us better off.
So more slop.
And I believe I saw RFK Jr. say that the once credible technical journals are essentially owned by the pharma companies and the big industry.
So that what you thought was this credible process of peer review was nothing like that.
Basically it was a bought and paid for situation.
Owen says, get rid of the filibuster now.
You might be right about that, Owen.
Anyway, so RFK Jr. says they're going to stop publishing.
I don't know how they do this, maybe just government publications, but they're going to ignore the once credible publications because they're no longer credible.
And I think he wants to start, you also had to pay.
You had to pay $10,000 to be published.
So that doesn't seem like a good model.
But I guess RFK Jr. is going to push for some government, government-endorsed technical papers.
So if there's something in there, it would be a little more credible.
A little more.
And then finally, you may have seen that President Xi of China is ramping up the rhetoric about taking over Taiwan.
And you probably also knew that China was doing very aggressive, let's say, military, what do you call it, drills, in which they're surrounding Taiwan, et cetera.
And I saw a post by Dustin Walper who is cautioning us that the risk of losing our chip access in Taiwan is not the biggest threat.
It's a big one.
But if China were to take over Taiwan, it would have, as Dustin Walper says, a much bigger influence over Japan and South Korea.
And that Japan would consider it an existential threat to Japan if China took over Taiwan.
Because apparently that would give them some access to the South China Sea that's more militarily meaningful than what they have now.
So they would have unfettered access to the Philippine Sea.
And then China would also be in a position to more easily threaten and harass Japan's trading routes with the U.S. and Australia.
And so Dustin reminds us that Japan owns about half the industrial robotics market as a critical alternative to China for everything that we do with machines, basically.
So here's my question.
Would they dare take over Taiwan while Trump is in office?
Or would it make infinite more sense to spend three years preparing to do it?
And then when Trump is out of office, maybe they have a more greased path.
My guess is that Trump does a good enough job of scaring people, that they wouldn't do it while he's in office.
Would you agree that Xi would wait until Trump is out of office?
I feel like that would be the smart play.
And they tend to be very patient.
But it would suggest that their current moves are just preparatory and threatening.
But we'll see.
Anyway, that's all I got for today.
That's your show for today.
I'll look at your comments.
It'll take a few minutes to catch up.
Don't believe that Congress actually wants to fix anything.
Yeah, scientific studies are not too reliable, even if they're peer-reviewed.
Bobby Hayes, the journalist.
Yep, everything except our elections are rigged.
Right.
All right, people.
I'm going to talk privately to the members in the local community.
To the rest of you, thanks for joining.
Sorry, my voice is kind of sketchy.
Sketchy.
This part of my jaw is still paralyzed, as is the bottom part of me.