Episode 1264 Scott Adams - All the News That's Fit to Sip. Get in Here.
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: ----------- - Twitter's new Birdwatch feature - Israel will attack Iran if Biden/Iran nuclear deal - Will Biden clash with teachers unions? - Impeaching George Washington over slavery - Critical Ethnic Studies in California high schools - Aaron Rupar and cannibal dinner invites ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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.
Hey everybody, come on in here. It's time. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams from across the world. Well, I suppose it depends where you are. I might be where you are. You could be right next door. I wouldn't even know it. But I'm in French Polynesia still for a little bit longer. Oh, by the wa…
View segment →e missing? Yeah, there is. It's called the simultaneous sip. Eric, Eric Finman, good to see you. And do you have your copper mug or glass, Eric? I hope you do, and I hope the rest of you do too. Because will I remember the entire toast? Let's see. Grab a copper mug and glass, tankard, chalice, vess…
View segment →ple because if they can't vacation at a nice place, it's just sort of gross to put it in people's face. On the other hand, I do like a little bit of transparency in my life, and it would be no secret to anybody that especially for my honeymoon I can go to a nice place. And so I didn't think I would…
View segment →o of them, a hundred thousand views. Now in terms of viewers, probably there'll be a hundred thousand of them by the end of the day. Right now it's views, but there'll probably be that many viewers. And I thought to myself, I wonder if these guys know that they just went international. They literal…
View segment →in the context, maybe they have something. If what they're doing is looking for the one correct narrative, that's worse. Can we agree on that? If it turns into a Wikipedia-like narrative-telling situation where there's one truth that comes out of it, that's worse. If it shows both sides and doesn't…
View segment →you have a problem with the FDA? The whole problem with the rapid tests is that they're lower by design. They're lower sensitivity. And that's the problem. The FDA doesn't want low sensitivity tests out there even if they would be more useful than high sensitivity tests because you could do them in…
View segment →esn't have that same relationship, etc. So I just wonder why we're not hearing anything about it. I guess Kim Jong-un would have to do something provocative to make that happen. So we're already seeing that China did some flexing their muscle, did some flyover over Taiwanese airspace. And I think t…
View segment →ause we know children to be damaged by being kept out of the social school situation. They're not learning as much. They're not socializing right. They're getting damaged. It's real. It's important. But likewise the economy really depends on getting the kids back to school because you've got two par…
View segment →kills to transfer to space? Because space is going to be nuclear, all right? Probably they won't use nuclear engines to take off. That might stay similar to how it is now. But once you get into space you're going to need some serious energy, right? To stay up there for a while, to go to Mars and bac…
View segment →anybody who wants Biden to pursue unity, I think we should push the fine people hoax as the thing that needs to be corrected. It's the thing in my life that most needs to be corrected. I need the people on the left to know they were lied to about that in particular because it was so important. They…
View segment →lately. In the California high schools they're going to embrace the CRT or critical, now actually critical ethnic studies. So I guess instead of critical race theory it's critical ethnic studies. And within that study apparently, reportedly, they talk about who has a privileged position in society.…
View segment →in the comments you damn smart people. My clever point was just coming up and you beat me to it in the comments. Would you ever assume that if they said I'd like you to come over for dinner that their real intention was to eat you and that they are cannibals? And if not, why not? Why would you not m…
View segment →ld assume that that was even something that the president would say out of his mouth and that it's even possible that that could have happened. You've got to assume that wasn't possible if you're going to understand how language works, right? Language doesn't work if you make the dumbest assumption…
View segment →y. So I think he just tried to make it go away. What is up with Newsom? Well it looks like the number of signatures for the recall is getting up there. And somebody smart pointed out, I forget who it was so I can't give you credit, that if Newsom demands that the signatures be audited, the idea of…
View segment →Hey everybody, come on in here. It's time. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams from across the world. Well, I suppose it depends where you are. I might be where you are. You could be right next door. I wouldn't even know it. But I'm in French Polynesia still for a little bit longer.
Oh, by the way, there's a day that I know I won't be able to Periscope coming up. So if there's a day this week, I think it might be Thursday morning. Not sure about that either. Wednesday or Thursday, I'm not going to be able to Periscope.
Let me tell you about all the stuff that's happening, all the news that's fit to sip, as I like to say. But before that, isn't there something you're missing? Is there something you're missing? Yeah, there is. It's called the simultaneous sip.
Eric, Eric Finman, good to see you. And do you have your copper mug or glass, Eric? I hope you do, and I hope the rest of you do too. Because will I remember the entire toast? Let's see. Grab a copper mug and glass, tankard, chalice, vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit that makes everything better. Yeah, everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. That happens now.
Oh yes.
So there's an awkwardness that I should just call out because I'm vacationing at a very nice place. I hesitate to show it to people because if they can't vacation at a nice place, it's just sort of gross to put it in people's face. On the other hand, I do like a little bit of transparency in my life, and it would be no secret to anybody that especially for my honeymoon I can go to a nice place. And so I didn't think I would need to hide that from any of you, and I was hoping that some of you would enjoy the tales from Bora Bora.
Last night Christine and I were doing dinner on the beach. You know, the tables there as part of the restaurant, as part of the resort. And there was this fire dancing group entertaining us. And here's the funny thing. There are so few people at this resort. I don't think I've seen more than twenty people all week. And this is a place that would normally hold hundreds or a thousand or something. But maybe twenty people I've seen in the entire resort. And it's the same couples you see every time. Now I don't know what the actual number is. I've only seen the same twenty people. But there are maybe twelve of us total watching this show. That's it. Just twelve people watching this fire dancing show.
So I thought, well, that's not nearly enough. These guys put in a lot of work to do this. Yeah, they're twirling these lit torches. So I fired up Periscope and I just started live streaming these fire dancers. And I didn't know what to expect, but I think already there have been over a hundred thousand views on two different videos. So between the two of them, a hundred thousand views. Now in terms of viewers, probably there'll be a hundred thousand of them by the end of the day. Right now it's views, but there'll probably be that many viewers.
And I thought to myself, I wonder if these guys know that they just went international. They literally were being streamed all over the planet with just this little thing in my hand and a good cell signal. And that's it. And suddenly their show was worldwide. And here's the funny part. I don't think they know it. So yesterday they gave a show to the entire planet, tens of thousands of audience members. The only people who don't know it is the people who gave the show. Nobody told them. So I just think that's an interesting little slice of life there.
All right. Interesting thing. Twitter is introducing a new feature which is getting mixed reviews before anybody even sees it. That's the way things go. And the new feature is trying to get at these censorship problems. Well, not censorship so much as fake news. It's more of a fake news solution or attempted solution.
Now of course you know from my other Periscopes that I'm always, always in favor of testing a new solution. So those of you who are saying, my God, it's the end of the world, this new feature will just be bad like everything else in the world, you might be right. It's entirely possible that Twitter would roll out a new feature and it might make things worse. Anything could happen, right? It's an interesting world. But don't you have to first of all appreciate testing new stuff? I think you've got to give it to them for that, right? I mean, you can criticize the social media platforms for a billion different things and that would be valid. But you can't criticize them for testing solutions. That part I like. So let's keep that part.
Now what could go wrong? Plenty, right? That's the problem. What could go wrong with this new feature? So the feature, I don't know the details, but in broad strokes it allows you to add context to other people's tweets. So if I understand it correctly, you'd be able to say, here's another story that's the counterpoint to that, or some background that would make the story look different.
Now how is that bad? Now some people are saying, well, you know that we already have that. It's called the comments. You can already leave a comment. But how often do you read the comments on a tweet? I mean seriously, how often do you dig into the comments of a tweet? I do often, but not as a percentage. As a percentage of the time I usually just read the tweets. Probably eighty percent of the time. Now I see what you're saying that you often, some of you often read the tweets. So I would say twenty percent of the time I dig in. And it depends on the tweet, right? If I think I understand the tweet and there's nothing to talk about, I'm not going to dig into the comments. And those are the dangerous ones. The dangerous ones are the ones that I think I know the story by reading the headline.
If I'm being honest, half of the news I consume is just the headline because the rest of the story is unnecessary, right? Most of the time the headline is all you need to know. There's nothing else beyond the headline that has any value at all usually. Now sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes there are lots of important nuggets in the story. But we're busy people and I have to decide when do I dig into the comments and look for it and when do I just read the headline and move on. So the practical reality of it is that we read the headlines and move on.
Now wouldn't it be nice if instead of having to dig through some comment that could be in a string with hundreds or thousands of comments, wouldn't it be nice if for every story that had a need for context it was just right there? Click this button to see the other side or click this button to see the top rated counterpoints. Something like that.
Now I do think that there's some way to solve this problem. I'll tell you a way that probably won't work. And I saw Jack Posobiec was tweeting an old tweet of mine in which you side by side you can see how Wikipedia talks about the fine people hoax and then you can see the transcript, the actual transcript from the event. And you can see how different they are. And I don't know the current situation of the Wikipedia story about the fine people hoax, but I was involved with at least one of the editors who was trying to fix that some time ago. And every time it got fixed to match the transcript, that's it, just fixing it to match what the transcript says, editors would re-edit it and turn it back to the fake hoax, to the whole side of me. And it would happen almost instantly, as if somebody was just sitting on it waiting to change it back to the hoax.
Now I don't know where it is now, but at one point it was almost just where I would put it. In other words, it stated that the president said he wasn't talking about the neo-Nazis, etc. So once you say that clearly, that debunks the hoax. So what happens if this new Twitter feature, this Birdwatch, is anything like Wikipedia? It's a problem, right? Because this is a very specific observable example where Wikipedia, because of its business model, if you can call it a business, because of its model, the public can distort the news.
Now ideally they can't distort it forever because there will be enough people coming in to correct it that the correction will eventually overcome any errors. And that normally is the way it works. But I think in this narrow realm of politics the trolls or the people who want to protect the incorrect story are just too strong. There's just too many of them. So this is the one realm on which Wikipedia is difficult to self-correct because there's too much incentive to keep it incorrect, which wouldn't apply to most of its content, right?
But I don't think that Birdwatch is heading to the Wikipedia model. The Wikipedia model tries to get you one story that's correct. I don't think Twitter is trying to do that, and it would be a mistake if they did. I think they're trying to show you what people say if it's a reasonable counterpoint and it can be expressed that way. So if what Twitter does is surface the points and the counterpoints in the context, maybe they have something. If what they're doing is looking for the one correct narrative, that's worse. Can we agree on that?
If it turns into a Wikipedia-like narrative-telling situation where there's one truth that comes out of it, that's worse. If it shows both sides and doesn't try to play favorites, just hey, here's the argument, make up your own mind, that's better. Because if somebody tweets something, let's say they believe something they saw on CNN, and I put a comment on it in our current model without this new feature, who's going to see it? Right? The people I want to persuade or inform, not likely they're going to see it.
But what would happen if I made the best argument against the tweet that I thought was a wrong narrative or interpretation? Well, if I make a really good counterpoint, the odds of my counterpoint floating up to the top should improve, right? Because it's a good counterpoint. Other people see it. They say, yeah, that's what I would say. He's saying this the way I would say it. So I have some optimism for this feature, but I'll acknowledge there's a million ways it could go wrong.
All right. Somebody's building a face mask that has a COVID test indicator built into the face mask. So I think something would change color based on the droplets coming out of your mouth all day. Eventually they might build up to the point where it could measure them. And I said to myself, if we can do that, shouldn't we have rapid tests already? If you can build that technology into a mask, you can't just put it in a pack of gum and sell it to me over the counter?
And if the problem is that the mask would be, let's say, a lower sensitivity than a proper COVID test, then don't you have a problem with the FDA? The whole problem with the rapid tests is that they're lower by design. They're lower sensitivity. And that's the problem. The FDA doesn't want low sensitivity tests out there even if they would be more useful than high sensitivity tests because you could do them in volume.
So I don't think this thing about the mask having the test built into it, I don't think that can work unless rapid tests can work. And I don't see how they're going to get improved right away, although the Biden administration apparently is doing a better job on that, approving that stuff.
One of the questions that I was asked here is to teach people how to know who to trust in the news, which is a good question, right? How do you know who to trust? All the pundits, all the experts, all the news people. What rules do you use? And there are lots of them. But I'm going to put one of them out there. Somebody says trust no one. Trusting no one is a really good starting point, right? Trust no one is a good starting point. I agree with that. But there are some situations that stand out more than others.
All right, you're going to end up probably not trusting, but let's say siding with a side. You're probably going to do that. So you'd like as much knowledge as you could about who's more credible. Here's a little tip. Don't trust anybody who has a brand consistency problem. Here's what I mean by that. A brand consistency problem is you've built yourself into a kind of voice. You always have a kind of slant on things. You're the person who's known for saying whatever. As soon as you're the person who's known for saying whatever and you start monetizing that, your credibility goes right out the door because you sort of need to stay that person to be the brand that people are coming to. And now what do you do? Because you need to be that person.
All right, and I'm going to mention a specific person but I want to generalize the point, right, so it's not about a specific person. So you've been watching Alex Berenson, who's probably maybe the most notable or famous, I would say, skeptic would be the right word. So when you see him appearing or writing and he's all over the place with the coronavirus story, I believe he worked at the New York Times, so he's a credible kind of person with a credible resume. And he's been skeptical of a lot of the data science that's coming out of the coronavirus stuff.
Now in the beginning of the pandemic, is it useful to have a skeptic? Yeah, it's really useful. You really do want some strong voices to say, you say that that makes sense scientifically but where's your data? And then you show the data and then you still want somebody to say, yeah, but I don't think that data says what you think it's going to say. So a skeptic with credentials, you know, at least journalistic credentials like Alex Berenson, very, very valuable. You want as many of those as you can get. Smart people, right? You don't want dumb skeptics. You want a smart, legitimately professional person who's an actual skeptic. So from that point of view he's a national treasure, right?
I always appreciate skeptics. They're national treasures, especially if they go against the grain and it's going to cost them something professionally. It probably did. He probably took a hit professionally. But I think he was starting out doubting, and maybe still does, I don't know his exact position on masks and social distancing and lockdowns.
Now is it reasonable to be a skeptic on masks, social distancing and lockdowns? Yeah, yeah, it's reasonable. Completely reasonable. Is it right? I don't know, right? I don't know because we don't have data we can trust, which would be the point of a skeptic, right? The whole point of a skeptic is, hey, this data you're selling us, it's not reliable. So when you see somebody like Berenson say your data is not reliable on masks, social distancing, whatever else, I feel like I'm on pretty solid ground most of the time. Like I think that most of the time that data is not reliable, meaning it's not really nailed down that these facts are telling you what you think they're telling you.
But as time goes by, those things which you should be properly skeptical about, you get a little more clarity over time. I believe that the consensus of science and even maybe skeptics is that masks surely must make some difference. So not so much protecting you from virus but from the ones that you might be giving off. But now we have vaccinations. Would you take the same level of skepticism for masks and lockdowns and stuff and take that to vaccinations? You should, because skepticism everywhere is always a valuable asset, right? Even if it's wrong, you want that point and counterpoint. You always want that.
So Alex Berenson was tweeting I think the other day, yesterday, that Israel has not yet shown any effect from their vaccinations. And they seem to be the most complete in getting people vaccinated, over 65 at least. And I saw that and I thought, I don't know, is this where you want to put the skepticism? I would have waited a little bit. But almost five minutes after he tweeted that Israel is not showing any difference, Joel Pollak and other people who were also following it said no, actually the data is really clear. Here's the graph. Three weeks after the vaccination started you see the hospitalizations, not every other measure but just hospitalizations, just plummeted.
So who is right? Is Alex Berenson's chart and data that didn't seem to show anything obvious happening there, is that right? Or are the other people who said no, here's the current information on hospitalizations and there are actual stories based on news reports, are they right? I don't know. The problem is just because you see data in a news story it doesn't mean it's right anymore. It used to. It used to make me think it was probably right. But not anymore. You can't really trust anything anymore.
But if I had to bet, I would bet they're working and I would bet that the graphs showing lower hospitalizations, I would bet that's accurate. I would bet the things are going the right direction. So to my first question, who should you trust? Alex Berenson has the problem which is not necessarily his fault, right? This is not a criticism. But once you become the skeptic guy, it's hard to get out of that, right? Once you're the skeptic guy, that's why you get asked to be on the show. It's why a publisher will publish your book. And it would be easy to overdo the skepticism.
All right, so bringing you back to the specific personality, is Alex Berenson a credible person? Yes, yes, he's a very credible person. But if you take the most credible person in the world and put them in a situation where they've got a brand compatibility issue, that credibility you have to mentally adjust it, right? So that would be one tip for knowing who to trust. It doesn't matter how credible or smart or well informed the person is. If they have a brand issue, that's what you want to look for.
Now am I suggesting that Alex Berenson would intentionally say something that was wrong for his brand? No, no, I have no reason to believe he would do anything intentionally. I'm just saying that you should not make any assumptions about people's internal thoughts. And if they have a brand issue, factor that in.
Here's a dog that's not barking. What is the Biden administration's approach to North Korea? Why aren't we hearing anything about that? Did North Korea suddenly become no problem? Because if it is no problem, isn't that Trump? And if it is a problem, what's he doing about it? What's the Biden administration take on North Korea? Would you like to know? That's going to be a fun one. Assuming the world doesn't blow up, it's going to be really fun to see how Biden handles North Korea because he doesn't have that same relationship, etc.
So I just wonder why we're not hearing anything about it. I guess Kim Jong-un would have to do something provocative to make that happen. So we're already seeing that China did some flexing their muscle, did some flyover over Taiwanese airspace. And I think they're really gonna start flexing on Biden. We'll see what he does.
So Biden did sign some kind of a Buy American legislation, but it only applies to government stuff. And when I heard that I said to myself, wait, what? Joe Biden had to pass some kind of a law or it must have been an executive order. He had to, I think it was executive order, he had to change something to make the government of the United States prefer American products. And I thought, we didn't already do that? I mean I get why you wouldn't necessarily do it with the public, but the government, I feel as if the government should be buying from American producers if there's any product that meets the need.
And I also ask myself, Trump didn't do that? Are you telling me that Joe Biden had to do the thing that was Trump's brand, which is Buy American? Why didn't Trump do that? Can we say that that was a plus for Biden? Okay, can we be objective?
Oh, by the way, you're watching me model the very thing I was talking about not doing. One of the reasons that I tell you from the start is that I'm left of Bernie but I liked a lot of what Trump did. Is it confusing you about what my brand is? I do that intentionally. And I do that to make sure I don't get in a brand trap where there are some topics I just can't talk about because nobody would trust me. They're like, ah, you're the guy who always says that.
So part of my brand risk is that people who have not followed me closely, they think that I always agree with Trump no matter what Trump does. Now those of you who follow me know that that's not even close. And here's an example. As far as I can tell, just looking at it from, you never know the details, but it looks to me like this was a Biden success to require that our government only buys American. That looks like a Biden success. And if Trump had done it I would have said that's a Trump success. And it looks like it was something Trump could have done and didn't do.
Now if you dug into this story you might find out that there's nothing there. It might be all smoke and mirrors, which might be why Trump didn't do it. It could be that we'd be better off buying, let's say, a French generator if no American makes that product. It could be that we already buy American whenever it's an option. Don't you think if you're the procurement person for the government, no matter what part of the government you're in, and you have a choice of the Lithuanian product or the American product and they both do the same thing for about the same price, don't you think you were going to buy the American product anyway?
So I don't know if it makes any difference. It may be entirely just for show. But let me be consistent. If Trump had done this and even if it were just for show, I would still say it's the right thing to do because it's part of how you change minds about what is right and smart. So even if it didn't make any practical difference to have the government required to buy American stuff because they probably were pretty close to doing that anyway, it sends a message and it's a good one. You know that this is the direction we're going. Everywhere we can find an opportunity to buy American, we're going to do it, even if it's a small opportunity. So that's a Biden success in my opinion. I'm going to give them that one.
CNN being more entertainingly ridiculous than ever had a chyron, which is the name for the little message that appears at the bottom of the screen. It's called the chyron, C-H-Y-R-O-N in case you wondered. And so on CNN's Reliable Sources, the chyron was below a picture of Biden's spokesperson Jen Psaki. And it said that Psaki promises to share accurate information. And then in parentheses, how refreshing. This is on CNN. Their coverage, their critical coverage of the Biden presidency is that Biden's spokesperson promises to share accurate information. How refreshing. Oh my God.
Glenn Greenwald came in to dunk on them in a tweet. And Greenwald says, I once again humbly submit that this would be a bridge too far even for North Korean state television, which is usually a bit more subtle and discerning than this. And I think he nailed it. CNN obviously wants access to government people because the worst thing would be to be CNN and have no access to interviews because they don't like you. So apparently they're in the business of getting liked by the Biden administration so they have access. But it is actually literally funny to watch.
Now somebody's saying it's like Fox to Trump and you're not wrong. So I'm not going to defend anybody else on this, but this is actually pretty funny.
I told you yesterday that if you saw Vice President Harris getting a portfolio, like a special job for a vice president like Al Gore had a special job fixing the government's processes and Mike Pence had a special job with the coronavirus task force, so if you see a vice president get a special portfolio that would be an indication that that person is going to stay a vice president for a while. But I told you that if you see that Harris does not get a portfolio, it might mean that they're grooming her to step in fairly soon.
And then the news within hours of me saying that, then I saw an article. And I don't know, maybe the article came out even before I said that but I hadn't seen it. According to the New York Times, Harris has not been assigned a specific portfolio. The exact thing I said. She's not been assigned a specific portfolio. As of now she will serve as, and listen to this phrasing from the New York Times, a governing partner to Biden on his top priorities. She's going to be a co-president. She's going to be a governing partner. Now that's not exactly a co-president but it feels like it, doesn't it? Don't you feel that vibe?
Now I don't expect my predictions to usually be that accurate that quickly. And again I don't know if this information was out there before I even made that prediction, which would make it not a prediction. But that's what I was expecting. So I expected that she would not get a portfolio. And I do think that that indicates they're trying to... The problem with giving the vice president a portfolio is that it diminishes them. Does that make sense? If you get a portfolio it's sort of like, oh, Vice President, a little pat on the head. Oh, what a cute vice president. You could never be president but we'll give you a project. Here's a little project. Yeah, yeah, you little vice president. That's what it feels like when you get a portfolio.
But when you don't get one it makes you look like you're a governing partner, right? Yeah. So it clearly is she's being positioned to take over. Now that doesn't mean they have a specific date to do it. I've heard people suggest they would do it after the midterms, which would not surprise me.
Israel is saying that if the United States drops the sanctions with Iran and gets back into some kind of an Iranian nuclear deal, that Israel says it will attack Iran. Now that's not an official pronouncement. I guess this is just reports from people who are part of the government. So it's not an official government statement. But apparently they're saying it fairly directly. Now when they say attack they don't necessarily mean a full war. They mean attack their nuclear facilities. And when Israel says we will attack, that doesn't mean maybe, right? Is there ever been a case where Israel said under these conditions we will attack and then they don't? Has that ever happened in the history of Israel? I don't know. But I would certainly trust them if they said we're going to attack.
So what does Biden do? Biden would guarantee war or at least something that looks a little like a war between Israel and Iran based on the stated policy that he's pursuing. And Israel is saying it's not maybe military action, it's military action. So that's quite a pressure on Joe Biden. How will he manage this, being the statesman that he is? So keep an eye on that.
Here's a little crack in the Democratic front. So there's a reporter for CBS, a White House reporter named Catherine Herridge. Now it's important to the story that she works for CBS because you think CBS is sort of left-leaning. And here's what she says in a tweet. She said, teachers unions, I'm sorry, she said in her tweet, if Biden is really serious about getting kids back to school within 100 days, he's going to have to clash with teachers unions at some point.
So that's CBS saying that if Biden wants to get kids back to school he's going to have to go up against the teachers unions. Interesting, right? Because the teachers unions are really, really powerful. They really support the Democrats. And Biden is completely beholden to them. But if he wants to keep the country intact he has to destroy them or at least push them aside temporarily. Is he the right president to do that? Nope. He's not. He's exactly the wrong president to do that.
I've told you a number of times there's no such thing as a good president or a bad president. Now that's an exaggeration. Of course you could have one that's bad. But in general you have presidents that either fit a situation or don't. I thought that Trump fit the North Korean situation. He fit the peace in the Middle East situation. He fit the ISIS situation. He fit the China situation. There's a whole bunch of stuff that Trump is a perfect fit for. Health care, maybe not so much, right? Not the right fit. Did some good things in terms of reducing regulations and that cannot be ignored. But it's the fit that matters.
Who would have been a better fit to take on the teachers unions? Trump, who did not get support from them, or Biden, who does get support from them and is really, really important? The answer is Trump. Trump for this situation, getting kids back to school, is unambiguously the better president. Unfortunately he's not the president.
So what does Biden do? Does he let the teachers unions continue with their being the source of all systemic racism, which they are? And the argument there is that by preventing school choice they lock every poor community into remaining a poor community because those kids can't go to a better school. There's just no choice. They have one bad school and that's what you got. So that of course makes systemic racism continue on in ways that it should not. If everybody had a good job because of a good education you'd have a lot less discrimination, right?
But now they're actually hurting children because we know children to be damaged by being kept out of the social school situation. They're not learning as much. They're not socializing right. They're getting damaged. It's real. It's important. But likewise the economy really depends on getting the kids back to school because you've got two parents that can't work at the same time necessarily if kids are there. So the teachers unions have become the biggest problem in the country. And we have a president who's the only one who can't do anything about it. That's a bad, bad situation. He can't even talk about it, right? Can't even talk about it. That's a problem. So keep an eye on that.
On the plus side, if you're following Corey DeAngelis on Twitter you see lots of reports. And you should, by the way. You should follow him, Corey DeAngelis. You'll see him in my Twitter feed if you're looking for him. He reports on various states and localities looking into funding students directly. And apparently there's a lot of movement in that direction. Now I don't know exactly how well that's going to work. But anything that looks like it's breaking the monopoly that the teachers unions have is worth looking at, right? It's worth looking at.
So directly funding students instead of funding the school gives the students who are directly funded at least the option to take their education somewhere else. And then maybe the free market can fix things in a way the teachers unions cannot.
I got a question for you. Is it too late to impeach George Washington over slavery? Because I don't know about you but I am opposed to slavery. Totally opposed. Not even any wiggle room. I can't speak for the rest of you but just for me, no slavery. Totally against it. And George Washington having been a slave owner, I don't think we could let that slide, can we?
Now there was a time when I thought, well what can you do about it? He's dead. It was hundreds of years ago. Yeah, and Thomas Jefferson, that he's got to be impeached. He's got to be impeached. But now that I know you can impeach your president after they're out of office, I don't see any reason you can't impeach them when they're dead. Can you? I'm not aware of anything in our Constitution that would prevent Congress from impeaching a dead president like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. And they did some bad stuff. Slave owners. That's about as bad as it gets, right? Short of a holocaust. Owning slaves has got to be number two on the list of bad stuff you can do.
So I think we need to stop doing the business of the country. By the way, Joe Biden has acknowledged that impeaching Trump will damage the effectiveness of the Congress so that while the impeachment of Trump is going on, the impeachment trial, he acknowledges that they won't be able to do the work of the country as efficiently. But he's okay with that because he says it's really, really important to impeach Trump. It's very important because reasons. It's very important to impeach Trump because he's gonna run for office again. I would think they would be very, very happy to have him run for office again. I would think that Trump plus four years of age, I think they would be happy to have him run for office because it would look like President Harris for sure.
But I think the real reason they say they want to do it is not that. If you ask the Democrats why are you doing it they won't say well we want to keep him out of office in the future because that would sound petty and also sound like not doing their job. It would sound political. So instead they say things like it's very important to send a message. Well if it's important to send a message let's send the message to all of those past presidents who've had some issues we don't like. I feel as if most of our presidents could be impeached.
Do you know what JFK did in the White House? He defiled the White House a little bit. Just a little bit. So let's just say he was doing a lot of defiling in that White House. So impeach him for that too.
And I've told you of course that I'm on another platform called Locals, L-O-C-A-L-S. You can find them just go to onlocals.com. And apparently it's just taken off. Not apparently, it's taken off like crazy. So a lot of people who are looking for some kind of platform where the censorship is not going to be political are going there. And I'm on there and you can subscribe to me. And because it's a subscription service I don't get trolls. So I have a whole other experience on Locals in which everybody who's there wants to be there. They're paying. They're literally paying a subscription fee to be there, seven bucks a month or more if they want to message me. And when people pay to be somewhere they act quite polite. They're happy to be there. So I have this whole other experience where the people are posting interesting things because they came there because of some intersection with my points of view. And so the things they post tend to be extra interesting.
And apparently Locals is taking off and traffic wise it's just on a nice growth right now. Full disclosure, I have a small amount of stock in Locals, just so you know that. Small amount, not enough to change too much in my life.
All right. According to the IEEE Spectrum the only way we're going to be successful in space and getting to Mars in particular quick enough is if we use nuclear engines in our rockets. Now have I told you before that our domestic energy policy needs to have a robust nuclear energy component so that we're developing the right kind of skills to transfer to space? Because space is going to be nuclear, all right? Probably they won't use nuclear engines to take off. That might stay similar to how it is now. But once you get into space you're going to need some serious energy, right? To stay up there for a while, to go to Mars and back, that sort of thing. You're gonna need a lot of energy.
And so the idea is nuclear thermal propulsion. So it uses the nuclear reaction to heat liquid to some god-awfully high number which causes the propellant to expand and shoots out the nozzles and whatever. So if you use nuclear energy in rockets once they get to space, not only could you get to Mars, is it two years they think? Maybe it's twice as fast. But when you get there you've got a nuclear energy source. So not only does the nuclear engine allow you to travel but should you try to colonize something you'd have a nuclear energy source. Just plug in your devices to your spaceship I guess.
All right, so that's good. And again I point that out because if the United States doesn't dominate or at least be a major presence in space we don't have a future, right? Whoever owns space, that's who is going to control the future. That's it. So and without nuclear that doesn't happen. And without a robust civilian nuclear program you're not going to have the talent to do it in space. So we have to pursue that.
Now what would happen if we tried to find unity in this country? What would that look like? What would it look like if we tried to have unity? Well Joe Biden's call for unity involves impeaching Trump. So he just said again that he wants to do it even though it's bad for the country. Revenge, I know. So is that good for unity? Is impeaching Trump at the expense of the business of the country for unity? That's not much unity.
I was watching Alan Dershowitz's podcast which is really good called The Dershow. One word, as in the first part of Dershowitz, it's his name, The Dershow. And he had asked people for ideas and suggestions on how to build unity with the left, political left and right. And I tweeted yesterday a caller who called in to suggest that maybe the best way to get unity would be for Joe Biden to correct and apologize the fine people hoax.
Now I was a little bit concerned that Alan Dershowitz would say that's no hoax, that's a real thing, as most Democrats would say right now. Remember Alan Dershowitz identifies Democrat. He voted for Hillary Clinton, has never wavered. He's a Democrat to the core. And as a Democrat he said unambiguously that the fine people hoax is a hoax and went through the reasoning and said it as clearly as you could possibly say it. And I felt really good about it because I've told you before that I'm never confident in my opinion until I hear Dershowitz agree with it or I hear him first and then I just agree with him because it's easier than coming up with my own opinions because his are better than mine. So I just wait till Dershowitz says something. I go, what did he say? Okay, that's my opinion now.
Now I do think about it a little bit but he's so damn logical that once he says his opinion I just look at it and go, ah, who else has an opinion that's going to top that? I don't think so. So I feel as if we should pick a thing and push it forever. And I think the thing we, meaning anybody who wants Biden to pursue unity, I think we should push the fine people hoax as the thing that needs to be corrected. It's the thing in my life that most needs to be corrected. I need the people on the left to know they were lied to about that in particular because it was so important. They need to understand they were lied to about that. That's a big change. There's nothing else unity wise that I can think of, nothing that would come close to that in terms of making the people on the right say, okay, okay, that sounds like unity. Right? Stop calling us racist. That would be a start. Yeah, there's the other hoaxes too, the bleach drinking hoax, etc.
Brandon Straka apparently has been picked up by the FBI. I don't know if he's arrested per se but he's in some trouble for being part, allegedly part, of the Capitol insurrection. And by being part of it the reports, which you should not treat as credible yet, is that he may have been inside the Capitol and may or may not have been saying things inciting other people to go inside.
I have a real problem with somebody like him getting swept up in any legal problems. On one hand I totally oppose the people who entered the Capitol and caused any damage and threatened our government, etc. The legal system needs to do what the legal system needs to do. If laws were broken it has to be addressed I guess. There's just no way around that. Even if you have some empathy for the people who did it, our system just doesn't let you commit crimes and get away with it. Unfortunately you just can't do that. Or fortunately you just can't do that.
But the problem is I do think there is something about the idea of being swept up in something. If everybody is doing something it doesn't look so wrong if you're in the crowd. And somehow that has to matter, right? You can't let people get away with crimes but it has to matter how you got there. And I think the legal system does take that into consideration at least for sentencing. So I'd hate to see somebody like Brandon Straka get any kind of a permanent problem in his life from the legal system for what I doubt he ever had any violent anything. Probably thought he was doing a free speech thing, didn't think he was getting anybody with a club. So he was just there for free speech. I just have a real problem if he gets hit hard by the legal system.
So that's just a shout out to the legal system. Be smart about this, right? You've got to be smart about this. And this would be sort of a dividing line. Like he's an edge case where what you do with Brandon Straka and other people who are in the same situation, I feel like how you treat that is going to make a big difference especially to unity.
So Joe Biden has prioritized racial inequality as one of his top things to battle. And here's my take on that. Of course racial equality is something I think we all want, don't we? Is there anybody here who doesn't want racial equality? So as a concept of course we all want that. If you're a good person you want that. But my problem with it is it's the easiest con because talking about it does the least and it might even be in some cases counterproductive. And so making it a priority but not doing anything about it, it just feels like a con.
Compare that to what Trump did. He didn't talk about it but he did things about it. You know he did prison reform. He worked on the economy which is good for everybody. As I said earlier he didn't seem to be a supporter of the teachers unions which are the biggest cause of racial inequality in the long run. So Trump was all action. He funded permanently, or he did a lot of funding for the historically black colleges. He did opportunity zones with Tim Scott. Every part of that was action directly related to making the world a more equal place racially, etc. All action.
But what exactly is Joe Biden going to do having made it a priority? I feel like that's about talking. I feel like it's a con. That it's a way to make people think something is happening but what's happening is talking. And I feel bad honestly for black voters who thought they were getting more than that. I don't know that they're getting more than that. We'll see. But looks like that's all they're getting.
Speaking of that priority, here's the scariest thing that you'll see lately. In the California high schools they're going to embrace the CRT or critical, now actually critical ethnic studies. So I guess instead of critical race theory it's critical ethnic studies. And within that study apparently, reportedly, they talk about who has a privileged position in society. And what would be the point of saying that some group has a privileged place in society? What would be the point of that? Now some of it is education and context, etc. But wouldn't the express point be to discriminate against that group? Isn't that the point?
Now when I say discriminate, if you're discriminating against the group that's in power, well that doesn't feel so bad does it? You're discriminating against the strong. What would be bad would be discriminating against the weak as a general concept, right? Without getting into the details, generally speaking doing something against the strong not so bad. Doing something against the weak very, very bad, right? As a general rule. Now even better, don't do bad things to anybody. Can we agree on that? Best situation, don't do bad things to anybody.
But I think the critical ethnic studies and critical race theory essentially put white people as a privileged class which is very close to putting a target on their back. Hear what I'm saying. If you mark somebody as the privileged people you have marked them as the ones who should have less in the future. They're targeted. Now I don't mean targeted for violence. I'm not talking about that. Targeted for maybe you should have a little less of this privilege thing in the future. Maybe other people should have more. But the only way you get there is you have less. So in the sense that it's the group targeted to have less relative to the other people, they're targeted. Is that a fair statement? That they would be targeted to have less in the future compared to other people to make things more fair as the theory goes.
But here's where they made a small little mistake. Something that maybe they could have seen coming. And it goes like this. They decided to throw Jews into the category of privileged people. Do I need to finish the sentence? Critical ethnic studies in California high schools are going to call out Jews as targeted for privilege, meaning that they should have less in the future relative to other people.
Let me... there are some things which defy words. So if you're only listening to this on the podcast I'm going to have to do this with a physical expression that you won't be able to hear. So when you don't hear me for a moment it's because I'm doing something hilarious and spot on to the people who are watching. And it goes like this. That's it. What words could possibly express how bad this is, right? As a direction you're going anyway, right? Unbelievable.
Now I get the point that there are certain groups who are economically doing better than others, right? And I'm guessing that that's where they're coming from. But I think it has more to do with they've just decided let's throw the Jewish Americans in with everybody else who's white. Call them all privileged. Boom. And we're done. I don't feel like that's a good path. I feel like that's not going to work out. So there's a little bit of a unity that needs some improving, wouldn't you say? I think we can improve our unity on this question a little bit. A little bit.
So now I've told you that the obvious direction for wokeness is self-destruction because the whole woke thing, when you start breaking people into categories you can't stop. There's no logical place to stop once you start categorizing people. Which is why you don't want to do it, right? Either treat everybody the same or you categorize until you get this kind of problem. So this was the most predictable thing that could have possibly happened. Totally predictable. So we hope that there will be some force that pushes back on that.
All right. I think I had one other point I was going to say which is, remind me, did I talk about Aaron Rupar and Vox and the drink bleach drinking hoax? The amazing thing about this hoax, I think I did talk about it, is that people don't understand how communication works. Which is interesting for someone who's a professional writer that he doesn't understand how communication works.
Let me explain to you how communication works. It's a very basic concept and apparently some people don't get this. It goes like this. You have to assume what a speaker is thinking in order to understand what they're saying. So you have to consider the source. So if your best friend mocks you, you say that's my best friend. In my best friend's mind they're not being mean to me. They're just having fun. So who says it and what they're thinking completely determines how you accept it, right?
So let me give you an example. Let's say I said to you, hey I'd like to invite you over to my house for dinner. How would you interpret that? If somebody said I'd like you to come over for dinner tonight, what would be the logical assumption about what the person who said that was thinking? You'd probably say to yourself, well I think that what they're thinking is that they would like to entertain and they will make a meal and they will serve that meal and I will sit at the table with them and we'll eat that meal. But that's not said, right? That's all just assumed in your head. You're filling in all the blanks.
Stop getting ahead of me in the comments you damn smart people. My clever point was just coming up and you beat me to it in the comments. Would you ever assume that if they said I'd like you to come over for dinner that their real intention was to eat you and that they are cannibals? And if not, why not? Why would you not make the assumption that they're cannibals? Because the words fit both meanings, right? How do you not assume they're cannibals? What evidence do you have that they're not cannibals? And the answer is because nobody does that. Nobody invites you to their house to eat you. No, I'm not saying it's never been done. Jeffrey Dahmer got close to that. I don't think he used those words. But you have to make an assumption that the person speaking is not an absolute crazy insane monster unless obviously they are.
So when Aaron Rupar was, when I was questioning him and saying there's nothing about drinking bleach in President Trump's statements when that event happened, he points me to the place where he says he sees it. And I think how can you see the thing that isn't there? And so I read the words and he says, Rupar says, quote in a tweet back to me, he was clearly talking about household cleaning products when he refers to disinfectant.
Now if you read the words exactly the way Aaron Rupar did, could you interpret it to mean household cleaning products? And the answer is yes. Yes you could. You could interpret the exact words and specifically the word disinfectant. You could interpret that to mean bleach, right? But should you? Is it completely reasonable to think that the president of the United States, someone who had been handling the office fine, seems to operate in public, went to college, is an actual operating adult in the real world, is it reasonable to think that he was suggesting putting household disinfectants directly into your body? In what world do you make that assumption?
That the word disinfectant, especially when it's in the context of talking about light, light, light, light, light, disinfectant, light, light, light as a disinfectant, disinfectant, light, light as a disinfectant, disinfectant. What logical reason would you pick that word, disinfectant, which is used, you know a light is a disinfectant. Why would you just pick a word end of a sentence to say all those other times before and after it he was talking about light because he used the words specifically. But this one time, this one time right in the middle when he used the word disinfectant, that was the time he meant let's put some bleach into your body.
That's why Aaron Rupar assumed the president was thinking. He made the assumption that the president of the United States quite literally would stand in public and suggest ingesting bleach. Why would anybody be that dumb? And I'm not talking about Trump. How could you be so dumb that you think that the president would say that? That's even possible. If you're making a list of all the things that could have happened would that even be on the list? Because it's just like somebody inviting you over for dinner. You don't assume they mean cannibalism ever. Ever. It's never the right assumption.
But a lot of people did, just like Aaron Rupar did. He's not alone, right? There are tens of millions of people made that same assumption. Why? Because the fake news had drawn such a caricature of Trump that that seemed possible. In other words the fake news was so thoroughly convincing that if President Trump had invited Aaron Rupar over for dinner Aaron Rupar could reasonably assume it was meant to eat him because that's how bad Trump is. That's the world we live in. That somebody would assume that that was even something that the president would say out of his mouth and that it's even possible that that could have happened. You've got to assume that wasn't possible if you're going to understand how language works, right?
Language doesn't work if you make the dumbest assumption about what the person is thinking. It never works. Nothing would make sense if you made the dumbest assumption about what somebody's thinking. So let me do that with Joe Biden. Joe Biden, his highest priority is getting rid of racial inequality. Therefore he wants to kill all the white people. Why would I assume that? Wouldn't that be stupid? Does anybody think that Joe Biden wants to kill all white people? Well it's right there in what he said. He wants racial equality. How else are you going to get it? Logical.
So watching Democrats not know, especially a professional writer, I mean Aaron Rupar is a professional writer at a pretty big publication, Vox. He knows how language works. He knows how talking works. He knows how communication works. He's literally a high-end professional. And even he thought that Trump maybe suggested drinking bleach. That's how bad the fake news is. I mean that's bad. That's as bad as you can get.
All right. Anything else we need to cover? I don't think so. Somebody says it's intentional but you can't rule that out. But honestly I don't get that vibe. If you know because we had some back and forth and he did not defend himself like somebody who knew he was wrong. He defended himself exactly like somebody who thought he was right. Now I can't read his mind so if you're going to say to yourself but you don't know he might have been acting. Yeah I guess that's possible. I'm just giving you my best judgment is that it looked genuine.
Why did he say he was being sarcastic? Oh why did Trump say he was being sarcastic? Again we can't read his mind but my guess is that he got so much heat for that he just wanted it to go away. So he just said I was just playing around being sarcastic. I think that's the best explanation. But there's no chance that he sarcastically suggested drinking bleach. There's no chance that he sarcastically asked about injecting household disinfectants into a body. He did not sarcastically say that. But he did say that he was being sarcastic. And we know that he sometimes has a history of trying to make it an issue just go away. So I think he just tried to make it go away.
What is up with Newsom? Well it looks like the number of signatures for the recall is getting up there. And somebody smart pointed out, I forget who it was so I can't give you credit, that if Newsom demands that the signatures be audited, the idea of auditing elections is gonna look good.
All right. I think that's all I got for now and I'm gonna go enjoy the day and I will talk to you tomorrow.
hey everybody come on in here it's time it's time for coffee with scott adams from across the world well i suppose it depends where you are i might be where you are could be you could be right next door i wouldn't even know it but i'm in french polynesia still for a little bit longer and oh by the way there's a i think there is one day that i know i won't be able to periscope coming up so if there's a day this week i think it might be uh thursday morning not sure about that either wednesday or thursday i'm not not going to be able to periscope so let me tell you about all the stuff that's happening all the all the news that's fit to sip as i like to say but before that isn't there something you're missing is there something you're missing yeah there is it's called the simultaneous sip eric eric finnman good to see you and do you have your copper mug or glass eric i hope you do and i hope the rest of you do too because will i remember the entire toast let's see uh grab a copper mug and glass tank or chalice vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine the other day the thing that makes everything better yeah everything better it's called the simultaneous symptom that happens now go oh yes so there's a an awkwardness that i should just call out because i'm vacationing at a very nice place i hesitate to show it to people because if they can't vacation at a nice place it's just sort of gross to put it in people's face on the other hand i do like a little bit of transparency in my life and it would be no secret to anybody that especially for my honeymoon i can go to a nice place and so i didn't think i would need to hide that from any of you and i was hoping that some of you would enjoy the the tales from bora bora so last night christine and i were doing dinner on the beach you know the their tables there as part of the restaurant as part of the resort and there was this fire dancing group entertaining us and here's here's the funny thing there there are so few people at this resort i don't think i've seen more than 20 people all week and this is a place that would normally hold hundreds or a thousand or something but maybe 20 people i've seen in the entire resort and it's the same you know couples you see every time now i don't know what the actual number is i've only seen the same 20 people but so there are maybe 12 of us total watching this show that's it just 12 people watching this fire dancing show so i thought well that's not nearly enough these guys put in a lot of work to do this yeah they're they're twirling these lit torches so i fired up periscope and i just started live streaming these fire dancers and i didn't know what to expect but i think already there have been over a hundred thousand views or two different videos so between the two of them a hundred thousand views now in terms of viewers probably there'll be a hundred thousand of them by the end of the day you know right now it's views but there'll probably be that many viewers and i thought to myself i wonder if these guys know that they just went international they literally were being streamed all over the planet with just this little thing in my in my hand and a good uh a good sell signal and that's it and and suddenly their show was worldwide and here's the funny part i don't think they know it so yesterday you know they gave a show to the entire planet tens of thousands of of audience members the only people who don't know it is the people who gave the show nobody told them so i just think that's an interesting little slice of life there all right interesting thing uh twitter is introducing a new feature which uh is getting mixed reviews before anybody even sees it that's the way things go uh and the the new feature is trying to get at these censorship problems um well not censorship so much as fake news it's more of a fake news solution or attempted solution now of course you know from my other periscopes that i'm always always in favor of testing a new solution so those of you who are saying my god it's the end of the world this new feature will just be bad like everything else in the world you might be right it's entirely possible that twitter would rule you know roll out a new feature and might make things worse anything could happen right it's a it's an interesting world but don't you have to first of all appreciate testing new stuff i think you got to give it to him for that right i mean you can criticize the social media platforms for a billion different things and that would be valid but you can't criticize them for testing solutions that part i like so let's keep that part now what could go wrong plenty right that's the problem what could go wrong with this new feature so the feature i don't know the details but in broad strokes it allows you to add context to other people's tweets so if i understand it correctly you'd be able to say uh here's another story that's the counterpoint to that or some some background that would make the story look different now how is that bad now some people are saying well uh you know that we already have that it's called the comments you can already leave a comment but how often do you read the comments on a tweet i mean seriously how often do you dig into the comments of a tweet i do often but not as a percentage as a percentage of the time i usually just read read the tweets probably eighty percent of the time now i i see what you're saying that you that about that you often some of you often read the tweets so i would say 20 percent of the time i dig in and it depends on the tweet right if i think i understand the tweet and there's nothing to talk about i'm not going to dig into the comments and those are the dangerous ones the dangerous ones are the things are the ones that i think i know the story by reading the headline if i'm being honest half of the news i consume is just the headline because the rest of the story is unnecessary right most of the time the headline is all you need to know there's nothing else beyond the headline that has any value at all usually now sometimes you're wrong sometimes there are lots of important nuggets in the story but we we're busy people and i have to decide when do i you know when do i dig into the comments and look for it and when do i just read the headline and move on so the practical reality of it is that we read the headlines and move on now wouldn't it be nice if instead of having to dig through some comment that could be in a in a string with hundreds or thousands of comments wouldn't it be nice if for every story that had a need for context it was just right there click this button to see the other side or click this button to see the top rated counterpoints something like that now i do think that there's some way to solve this problem i'll tell you a way that probably won't work and i saw jack posabic was tweeting an old tweet of mine in which you side by side you can see how wikipedia talks about the fine people hoax and then you can see the transcript the actual transcript from the event and you can see how different they are and i don't know the current situation of the wikipedia story about the find people oaks but i was involved with at least one of the editors who was trying to fix that some time ago and every time it got fixed to match the transcript that's it just just fixing it to match what the transcript says editors would would re-edit it and turn it back to the fake uh hoax to the the whole side of me and it would happen almost instantly as if somebody was just sitting on it waiting to change it back to the hoax now i don't know where it is now but at one point it was almost just where i would put it in other words it stated that the president said he wasn't talking about the neo-nazis etc so once you say that clearly that debunks the hoax so what happens if this new twitter feature this bird watch is anything like wikipedia it's a problem right because this is a very specific observable example where wikipedia because of its business model if you can call it a business because of its model the public can distort the news now ideally they can't distort it forever because there will be enough people coming in to correct it that the correction will eventually overcome any errors and that normally is the way it works but i think in this narrow realm of politics the the trolls or the people who want to protect the incorrect story are just too strong there's just too many of them so this is the one realm on which wikipedia is difficult to self-correct because there's too much incentive to keep it incorrect which wouldn't apply to most of its content right but i don't think that bird watch is heading to the the wikipedia model the wikipedia model tries to get you one story that's correct i don't think twitter is trying to do that and it would be a mistake if they did i think they're trying to show you what people say if it's a reasonable counterpoint and you know it can be expressed that way so if if what twitter does is surface the points and the counterpoints in the context maybe they have something if what they're doing is looking for the one correct the one correct narrative that's worse can we agree on that if it turns into a wikipedia-like narrative-telling situation where there's one truth that comes out of it that's worse if it shows both sides and doesn't try to play favorites just hey here's the argument make up your own mind that's better because if somebody tweets something let's say they believe something they saw on cnn and i put a comment on it in our current model without this new feature who's going to see it right the people i want to persuade or inform not likely they're going to see it but what would happen if i made the best argument against the tweet that i thought was you know a wrong narrative or interpretation well if i make a really good counterpoint the odds of my counterpoint floating up to the top should improve right because it's a good counterpoint other people see it they say yeah that's what i would say he's saying this you know the way i would say it so i have uh i have some optimism for this feature but i'll acknowledge there's a million ways it could go wrong all right um somebody somebody's building a face mask that has a covered test indicator built into the face mask so i think something would change color based on the droplets coming out of your mouth all day eventually they might build up to the point where it could measure them and i said to myself if we can do that shouldn't we have rapid tests already if you can build that technology into a mask you you can't just put it in a pack of gum and sell it to me over the counter and if the problem is that the mask would be let's say a lower lower sensitivity than a proper covert test then don't you have a problem with the fda right the whole problem with the rapid tests is that they're lower by design they're lower sensitivity and that's the problem the fda doesn't want low sensitivity tests out there even if they would be more useful than high sensitivity tests because you could do them in volume so uh i don't think this this thing about the mask having the test built into it i don't think that can work unless rapid tests can work and i don't see how they they're going to get improved right away although the biden administration apparently is doing a better job on that approving that stuff one of the one of the questions that i was asked here is to teach people how to know who to trust in the news which is a good question right how do you know who to trust all the pundits all the experts all the the news people you know what what uh rules do you use and there are lots of them but i'm going to put one of them out there somebody says trust no one trusting no one is a really good that's a good starting point right trust no one is a good starting point i agree with that but there are some some situations that stand out more than others all right you're going to end up probably not trusting but let's say siding with a side you're probably going to do that so you'd like as much knowledge as you could about you know who's more credible here's a little tip don't trust anybody who has a brand consistency problem here's what i mean by that a brand consistency problem is you've you've built yourself into a kind of voice you're you you always have a kind of slant on things you're you're the person who's known for saying whatever as soon as you're the person who's known for saying whatever and you start monetizing that your credibility goes right out the door because you sort of need to stay that person to be the brand that people are coming to and now what do you do because you need to be that person all right and i'm going to mention a specific person but i want to generalize the point right so it's not about a specific person so you've been watching alex berenson who's probably maybe the most notable or famous i would say skeptic would be the right word so when you see him appearing or writing and and he's all over the place with the coronavirus story i believe he worked at the new york times so he's he's a credible kind of person with a credible resume and he's been skeptical of a lot of the data science that's coming out of the chronovirus stuff now in the beginning of the pandemic is it useful to have a skeptic yeah it's really useful you really do want some strong voices to say you say that that makes sense scientifically but where's your data and then you show the data and then you still want somebody to say yeah but i don't think that data says what you think it's going to say so a skeptic with credentials you know at least journalistic credentials like alex berenson very very valuable you you want as many of those as you can get smart people right you don't want dumb skeptics you want a smart legitimately professional person who's an actual skeptic so from that point of view he's a national treasure right i always appreciate skeptics they're national treasures if especially if they go against the grain and it's going to cost them something professionally it probably did he probably took a hit professionally but i think he was starting out doubting uh and maybe still does i don't know his exact position on masks and uh social distancing and and lockdowns now is it reasonable to be a skeptic on masks social distancing and lockdowns yeah yeah it's reasonable completely reasonable is it right i don't know right i don't know because we don't have data we can trust which would be the point of a skeptic right the whole point of a skeptic is hey this data you're selling us it's not reliable so when you see somebody like behrenson say your data is not reliable on mass social distancing whatever else i feel like using pretty solid ground most of the time like i think that most of the time that data is not reliable meaning it's not it's not really nailed down that these are these facts are telling you what you think they're telling you but as time goes by those things which you should be properly skeptical about you get a little more clarity over time i believe that the consensus of science and even maybe skeptics is that that masks surely must make some difference so uh not so much protecting you from virus but from the ones that you might be giving off but now now we have vaccinations would you take the same level of skepticism for mass and lockdowns and stuff and take that to vaccinations you should because skepticism everywhere is is always a valuable uh asset right even if it's wrong you want that point and counterpoint you always want that so uh alex berenson was uh tweeting i think the other day yesterday that the israel has not yet shown any effect from their vaccinations and they seem to be the most uh the most complete in getting people vaccinated over 65 at least and i saw that and i thought i don't know is this where you want to put the skepticism i would have waited a little bit but almost five minutes after he tweeted that israel is not showing any any difference joel pollock and other people who were also following it said no actually the data is really clear here's the graph three weeks after the vaccination started you see the hospitalizations not every other measure but just hospitalizations just plummeted so who is right is alex berenson's chart and data that didn't seem to show anything uh obvious happening there is that right or are the other people who said no here's the current information on hospitalizations and there are actual stories based on news reports are they right i don't know the problem is they're just because you see a data in a news story it doesn't mean it's right anymore it used to it used to make me think it was probably right but not anymore you can't really trust anything anymore but if i had to bet i would bet they're working and i would bet that the graphs showing uh lower hospitalizations i would bet that's accurate i would bet the things are going the right direction so to my first question who should you trust alex berenson has the problem which is not necessarily his fault right this is not a criticism but once you become the skeptic guy it's hard to get out of that right once you're the skeptic guy that's why you get asked to be on the show it's why a publisher will will publish your book and it would be easy to overdo the skepticism all right so uh bringing you back to the specific personality is alex berenson a credible person yes yes he's a very credible person but if you take the most credible person in the world and put them in a situation where they've got a brand compatibility issue that credibility you have to mentally adjust it right so that would be one tip for knowing who to trust it doesn't matter how credible or smart or well informed the person is if they have a brand issue and that's what you want to look for now am i suggesting that alex berenson would intentionally say something that was wrong for his brand no no i have no reason to believe he would do anything intentionally i'm just saying that you should not make any assumptions about people's internal thoughts and if they have a brand issue factor that in here's a dog that's not barking what is the biden administration approach to north korea why are we hearing anything about that did north korea suddenly become no problem because if it is no problem isn't that trump and if it is a problem what's he doing about it what's the what's the biden administration take on north korea would you like to know that's going to be a fun one assuming the world doesn't blow up it's going to be really fun to see how biden handles north korea because he doesn't have that same relationship etc so i just wonder why we're not hearing anything about it i guess kim jong-un would have to do something provocative to to make that happen so we're already seeing that china is they did some uh flexing their muscle did some flyover over uh taiwanese airspace and uh i think they're really gonna start flexing on biden we'll see if we'll see what he does so biden did sign some kind of a buy american uh legislation but it only applies to government stuff and when i heard that i said to myself wait what joe biden had to pass some kind of a law or exam must have been an executive order he had to i think it was executive order he had to change something to make the government of the united states prefer american products and i thought we didn't already do that i mean i get why you wouldn't necessarily do it with the public but the government i feel as if the government should be buying from american producers if there's any product that meets the need so and i also ask myself trump didn't do that are you telling me that joe biden had to do the thing that was trump's brand which is by american why didn't trump do that can we say that that was a plus for biden okay can we be objective oh by the way i'm you're you're watching me model the very thing i was talking about not doing one of the reasons that i i tell you from the start is that i'm left of bernie but i liked a lot of a lot of what trump did is it confuses you about what my brand is i do that intentionally and i do that to make sure i don't get it in a brand trap where there are some topics i just can't talk about because nobody would trust me they're like ah you're the you're the guy who always says that so part of my brand risk is that people who have not followed me closely they think that i always agree with trump no matter whatever trump does now those of you who follow me know that that's not even close and here's an example as far as i can tell just looking at it from you know you never know the details but it looks to me like this was a biden's success to require that our government only buys american that looks like abiding success and if trump had done it i would have said that's a trump success and it looks like it was something trump could have done and didn't do now if you dug into this story you might find out that there's nothing there it might be all smoke and mirrors which might be why trump didn't do it it could be that we'd be better off buying let's say a french generator if no american makes that product it could be that we already buy american whenever it's an option don't you think if you're if you if you're the procurement person for the government no matter what part of the government you're in and you have a choice of the lithuanian product or the american product and they both do the same thing for about the same price don't you think you were going to buy the american product anyway so i don't know if it makes any difference it may be entirely just for show but let me be consistent if trump had done this and even if it were just for show i would still say it's the right thing to do because it's part of a it's part of the let's say how you change minds about what is right and smart so even if it didn't make any practical difference to have the government you know required to buy american stuff because they probably were pretty close to doing that anyway it sends us a message and it's a good one you know that this is the direction we're going everywhere we can find an opportunity to buy american we're going to do it even if it's a small opportunity so that's abiding success in my opinion i'm going to give them that one um cnn being more entertainingly ridiculous than ever uh had a chiron which is the name for the little message that appears at the bottom of the screen it's called the chiron c-h-y-r-o-n in case you wondered and so on cnn's reliable sources uh you you know that sorry the chiron was below a picture of biden's spokesperson jen pasaki and it said that pasaki promises to share accurate information and then in parentheses how refreshing this is on so cnn their coverage their critical coverage of the biden presidency is that biden's spokesperson promises to share accurate information how refreshing oh my god uh glenn greenwald came in to uh to dunk on them in a tweet and greenwald says i once again humbly submit that this would be a bridge too far even for north korean state television which is usually a bit more subtle and discerning than this and i think he nailed it the cnn obviously wants access to government people because they can't report the worst thing would be to be cnn and have no access to you know interviews because you know they don't like you so apparently they're they're in the business of getting liked by the biden administration so they have access but it is actually it's literally funny to watch uh have forming there now somebody's saying it's like fox to trump and you're not wrong so i'm not going to defend i'm not going to defend anybody else on this but this is actually pretty funny i told you yesterday that if you saw vice president harris getting a portfolio like a special job for a vice president like al gore had a special job fixing the government's processes and mike pence has a special job with a crew or had with the coronavirus task force so if you see a vice president get a special portfolio that would be an indication that that person is going to stay a vice president for a while but i told you that if you see that harris does not get a portfolio it might mean that they're grooming her to be uh step in fairly soon and then the news within hours of me saying that then i saw an article and i don't know maybe the article came out even before i said that but i hadn't seen it i said according to the new york times harris has not been assigned a specific portfolio the exact thing i said she's not been assigned a specific portfolio as of now she will serve as and listen to this phrasing from the new york times a governing partner to biden on his top priorities she's going to be a co-president she's going to be a governing partner now that's not exactly a co-president but feels like it doesn't have don't you feel that vibe now i don't expect my predictions to usually be that accurate that quickly and again i don't know if this information was out there before i even made that prediction which would which would make it not a prediction but uh that's what i was expecting so i expected that she would not get a portfolio and i do think that that indicates they're trying to the problem with giving the vice president a portfolio is that it diminishes them does that make sense if you get a portfolio it's sort of like oh vice president a little patent ahead oh what a cute vice president you could never be president but we'll give you a project here's a little project yeah yeah you little vice president that's what it feels like when you get a portfolio but when you become when you don't get one it makes you look like you're a governing partner right yeah so it clearly is she's being positioned to take over now that doesn't mean they have a specific date to do it i've heard people suggest they would do it after the midterms which would not surprise me israel is saying that if the united states drops the sanctions with iran and gets back into some kind of a iranian nuclear deal that israel says it will attack iran now that's not an official pronouncement i guess this is just reports from people who are part of the government so it's not an official government statement but apparently they're saying it fairly directly now when they say attack they don't necessarily mean a full war they mean attack their nuclear facilities and when when israel says we will attack that doesn't mean maybe right is there is there ever been a case where israel said under these conditions we will attack and then they don't has that has that ever happened in the history of israel i don't know but i would certainly trust them if they said we're going to attack so what does biden do biden would guarantee war or at least some something that looks a little like a war between israel and iran based on the stated policy that he's pursuing and ira and israel is saying it's not maybe it's not maybe military action it's military action so that's quite a pressure on joe biden how will he manage this being the statesman that he is so keep an eye on that here's a little uh crack in the democratic front so there's a reporter for cbs a white house reporter named catherine watson now it's important to the story that she works for cbs because you think a cbs is sort of left-leaning and here's what she says in a tweet she says teachers unions i'm sorry she said in her tweet she said if biden is really serious about getting kids back to school within 100 days is going to have to clash with teacher you teachers unions at some point so that's cbs saying that that if biden wants to get kids back to school he's going to go have to go up against the teachers unions interesting right because the teachers unions are really really powerful they really support the democrats and biden is completely beholden to them but if he wants to keep the country intact he has to destroy them or at least push them aside temporarily is he the right president to do that nope he's not he's exactly the wrong president to do that i've told you a number of times there's no such thing as a good president or a bad president now that's an exaggeration of course you could have one that's bad but in general you have presidents that you either fit a situation or don't i thought that trump fit the north korean situation he fit the peace in the middle east situation he fit the isis situation he fit the china situation there's a whole bunch of stuff that trump is a perfect fit for health care maybe not so much right not the right fit did some good things in terms of reducing regulations and that cannot be ignored but it's the fit that matters who would have been a better fit to take on the teachers unions trump who did not get support from them or biden who does get support from them and is really really important the answer is trump trump for this situation getting kids back to school is unambiguously the better president unfortunately he's not the president so what does what does biden do does he let the teachers unions continue with their being the source of all systemic racism which they are and the argument there is that by preventing school choice they lock every poor community into remaining a poor community because those kids can't go to a better school there's just no choice they have one bad school and that's what you got so that of course makes systemic racism continue on in ways that it should not if everybody had a good job because of a good education you'd have a lot less discrimination right uh but now they're actually hurting children because we know to children to be damaged by being kept out of the social school situation they're not learning as much they're not socializing right they're getting damaged it's real it's important but likewise the economy really depends on getting the kids back to school because you've got two parents that can't work at the same time necessarily if kids are there so the teachers unions have become the biggest problem in the country and we have a president who's the only one who can't do anything about it that's a bad bad situation he can't even talk about it right can't even talk about it that's a problem so keep an eye on that on the plus side if you're following corey deangelis on twitter you see lots of reports and you should by the way you should follow him corey deangelis you'll see him in my twitter feed if you're looking for him he reports on various states and localities looking into funding students directly and apparently there's a lot of movement in that direction now i don't know exactly how well that's going to work but anything that looks like it's breaking the monopoly that the teachers unions have is worth looking at right it's worth looking at so directly funding students instead of funding the school gives the students who are directly funded at least the option to take their education somewhere else and then maybe the free market can fix things in a way the teachers unions cannot i got a question for you is it too late to impeach george washington over slavery because i don't know about you but i am opposed to slavery totally opposed not even any wiggle room i can't speak for the rest of you but just for me no slavery totally against it and george washington having been a slave owner i don't think we could let that slide can we now there was a time when i thought well what can you do about it he's dead it was hundreds of years ago yeah and thomas jefferson that that he's got to be impeached he's got to be impeached but now that i know you can impeach your president after the round of office i don't see any reason you can't impeach them when they're dead can you i'm not aware of anything in our constitution that would prevent congress from impeaching a dead president like george washington or thomas jefferson and they did some bad stuff slave owners that's about as bad as it gets right short of a holocaust owning slaves has got to be number two on the list of bad stuff you can do so i think we need to stop doing the business of the country by the way joe biden has acknowledged that impeaching trump will will damage the effectiveness of the congress so that while the impeachment of trump is going on the impeachment trial he acknowledges that they won't be able to do the work of the country as efficiently but he's okay with that because he says it's really really important to show to impeach trump it's very important because reasons it's very important to impeach trump because of uh that he's gonna run for office again i would think they would be very very happy to have him run for office again i would think that trump plus four years of you know age i think they would be happy to have him run run for office because it would look like you know president harris for sure but i think the real reason they they say they want to do it is not that if you ask the democrats why are you doing it they won't say well we want to keep him out of office in the future because that would sound petty and also sound like not doing their job it would sound political so instead they say things like it's very important to send a message well if it's important to send a message let's send the message to all of those past presidents who've had some issues we don't like i feel as if most of our presidents could be impeached do you know what jfk did in the white house he defiled the white house a little bit just a little bit so let's just say he was doing a lot of defiling in that white house so impeach him for that too and peach emol um i i've told you of course that i'm on a another platform uh called locals l-o-c-a-l-s you can find them uh just go to onlocals.com and uh apparently it's it's just taken off not apparently it's it's taken off like crazy so a lot of people who are looking for some kind of platform where the censorship is not going to be political or going there and i'm on there and you can subscribe to me and because it's a subscription service i don't get i just don't get trolls so i have a whole other experience on locals in which everybody who's there wants to be there they're paying they're literally paying a subscription fee to be there seven bucks a month or more if they want to message me and when people pay to be somewhere they act quite polite they're happy to be there so i have this whole other experience where the people are posting like interesting things because they came there you know because of some some intersection with my points of view and so the things they post tend to be extra interesting and uh apparently the locals is taking off and traffic wise it's just uh it's on a nice growth right now full disclosure i have a small amount of stock in locals just so you know that small amount not enough to change too much in my life all right according to the ieee spectrum uh the only way we're going to be successful in space and getting to mars in particular quick enough is if we use nuclear engines in our rockets now have i told you before that our domestic energy policy needs to have a robust nuclear energy component so that we're developing the right kind of skills to transfer to space because space is going to be nuclear all right probably they won't use nuclear engines to take off that might stay similar to how it is now but once you get into space you're going to um some serious energy right to stay up there for a while to go to mars and back that sort of thing you're gonna need a lot of energy and so the idea is nuclear thermal propulsion so it uses the the nuclear reaction to heat liquid to some god-awfully high number which causes the propellant to expand and shoots out the nozzles and whatever so if you use nuclear energy in rockets once they get to space not only could you get to mars is it two years they think maybe it's twice as fast but when you get there you've got a nuclear energy source so not only does the nuclear nuclear engine allow you to travel but should you try to colonize something you'd have a nuclear a nuclear energy source just plug in your plug in your devices to your spaceship i guess all right um so that's good and again i point that out because if if the united states doesn't dominate or at least be a major presence in space we don't have a future right whoever owns space that's who is going to control the future that's it so and without without nuclear that doesn't happen and without a robust civilian nuclear program you're not going to have the talent to do it in space so we have to pursue that now what would happen uh if we tried to find unity in this country what would that look like what would what would it look like if we tried to have unity well joe biden's call for unity involves impeaching trump so he just said again that he wants to do it even though it's bad for the country revenge i know so is that good for unity is impeaching trump at the expense of the business of the country for unity that's not much unity i was watching ellen dershowitz's podcast which is really good called the durst show one word as in the first part of dershow it's his name durst show and he had asked people for ideas and suggestions on how to build unity with the left political left and right and i tweeted yesterday a caller who called in to suggest that maybe the best way to get unity would be for joe biden to correct and apologize the fine people hoax now i was a little bit concerned that alan dershowitz would say that's no hoax that's a real thing as most democrats would say right now remember ellen deschwitz identifies democrat he voted for hillary clinton has never has never wavered he's a democrat to the corps and as a democrat he said unambiguously that the fine people hoax is a hoax and went through the reasoning and said it as clearly as you could possibly say it and i felt really good about it because i've told you before that i'm never confident in my opinion until i hear dershowitz agree with it or where i hear him first and then i just agree with him because it's easier than it's he's easier than coming up with my own opinions because his are better than mine so i just just wait till dershowitz says something i go what do you say okay that's my opinion now now i do think about it a little bit but he's so he's so damn logical that once he says his opinion i just look at it and go ah who else has an opinion that's going to top that i don't think so so i feel as if we should pick a thing and push it forever and i think the thing we meaning anybody who wants biden to pursue unity i think we should push the fine people hoax as the thing that needs to be corrected it's the thing in my life that most needs to be corrected i need the people on the left to know they were lied to about that in particular because it was so important they need to understand they were lied to about that that's that's a big change there's nothing else unity wise that i can think of nothing they would come close to that in terms of making the people on the right say okay okay that that sounds like unity right stop calling us racist that would be a start yeah there's the other hoaxes too the bleach drinking hoax etc um brendan straka apparently has been picked up by the fbi i don't know if he's arrested per se but he's in some trouble for being part of the allegedly part of the capital insurrection and by being part of it the reports which you should not treat as credible yet you know is is that he may have been inside the capitol and may or may not have been saying things inciting other people to go inside i have a real problem with somebody like him getting swept up in any legal problems on one hand i totally oppose the people who entered the capital and caused any damage and threatened our government etc the legal system has to do with the legal system needs to do if laws were broken it has to be addressed i guess there's just no way around that even if you even if you have some empathy for the people who did it our system just doesn't let you commit crimes and get away with it unfortunately you just can't do that or fortunately you just can't do that and but the problem is i do think there is something about the idea of being swept up in something if everybody is doing something it doesn't look so wrong if you're in the crowd and somehow that has to matter right you can't let people get away with crimes but it has to matter how you got there and i think the legal system does take that into consideration at least for sentencing so i'd hate to see somebody like brandon stracka get any kind of uh you know a permanent problem in his life from the legal system for what i doubt he ever had any violent anything probably thought he was doing a free speech thing didn't think he was getting anybody with a club so he was just there for free speech i just have a real problem if he gets hit hard by the legal system so that's just a shout out to the legal system be smart about this right you got to be smart about this and this would be sort of a that's sort of a dividing line like he's he's an edge case where what you do with brendan's uh with brandon straca and other people who are in the same situation feel like how you treat that is going to make a big difference especially to unity so joe biden has prioritized racial inequality as one of his top things to battle and here's my take on that of course racial racial equality is something i think we all want don't we is there anybody here who doesn't want racial equality so as a concept of course we all want that uh if you're if you're a good person you want that but my problem with it is it's the easiest con because talking about it does the least and it might even be you know in some cases might be counterproductive and so making it a priority but not doing anything about it it just feels like a con compare that to what trump did he didn't talk about it but he did things about it you know he did prison reform he worked on the economy which is good for everybody as i said earlier he didn't seem to be a a supporter of the teachers unions which are the biggest cause of racial inequality in the long run so trump was all action if you know he funded permanent not permanently or he did a lot of funding for the historically black colleges he did opportunity zones with tim scott every part of that was action directly directly related to making the world a more equal place racially et cetera all action but what exactly is joe biden going to do having made it a priority i feel like that's about talking i feel like it's a con that it's a way to make people think something is happening but what's happening is talking and i feel bad honestly for black voters who thought they were getting more than that i don't know that they're getting more than that we'll see but looks like that's all they're getting speaking of that speaking of that priority here's a scariest thing that you'll see lately in the california high schools they're going to embrace the crt or critical uh now actually critical ethnic studies so i guess instead of critical race theory is critical ethnic studies and within that studies apparently reportedly they talk about who has a privileged position in society and what would be the point of saying that some group has a privileged place in society what would be the point of that now some of it is education and context etc but wouldn't the express point be to discriminate against that group isn't that the point now when i say discriminate if you're discriminating against the group that's in power well that doesn't feel so bad does it you're discriminating against the strong what would be bad would be discriminating against the weak as a general concept right without getting into the the details generally speaking doing something against the strong not so bad doing something against the weak very very bad right as a general rule now even better don't do bad things to anybody can we agree on that best situation don't do bad things to anybody um but i think the critical ethnic studies and critical race theory essentially put white people as a privileged class which is very close to putting a target on their back hear what i'm saying if you if you mark somebody as the privileged people you have marked them as the ones who should have less and the future they're targeted now i don't mean targeted for violence i'm not talking about that about targeted for maybe you should have a little less of this privilege thing in the future maybe other people should have more but the only way you get there is you have less so in the sense that it's the group targeted to have less relative to the other people they're targeted is that a fair statement that they would be targeted to have less in the future compared to other people to make things more fair as the theory goes but here's where they made a small little mistake something that maybe they could have seen coming and it goes like this they decided to throw jews into the category of privileged people do i need to finish the sentence critical ethnic studies in california high schools are going to call out jews as targeted for privilege meaning that they should have less in the future relative to other people let me um there are some things which defy words so if you're only listening to this on the podcast i i'm going to have to do this with a physical expression that you won't be able to hear so when you don't hear me for a moment it's because i'm doing something hilarious and spot on to the people who are watching it and it goes like this that's it what words could possibly express how bad this is right as a as a direction you're going anyway right unbelievable now i get the point that there are certain groups who are economically doing better than others right and i'm guessing that that's where they're coming from but i think it has more to do with they've just decided let's let's throw the jewish americans in with everybody everybody else who's white call them all privilege boom and we're done i don't feel like that's a good path i feel like that's not going to work out so there's a little bit of a unity that needs some improving wouldn't you say we i think we can improve our unity on this question a little bit a little bit so um now i've told you that the obvious direction for wokeness is self-destruction because the whole walk this thing when you start breaking people into categories you can't stop there's no logical place to stop once you start categorizing people which is why you don't want to do it right either treat everybody the same or you categorize until you get this kind of problem so this was the most predictable thing that could have possibly happened totally predictable so that's we hope that there will be some force that pushes back on that all right um i think i had one other point i was going to say which is remind me did i talk about aaron rupar and vox and the drink bleach drinking hoax the the amazing thing about this hoax i think i did talk about it is that um i think people don't understand how communication works which is interesting for someone who's a professional writer that he doesn't understand how communication works let me let me explain to you how communication works it's very basic concept and apparently some people don't get this it goes like this you have to assume what a speaker is thinking in order to understand what they're saying so you have to consider the source so if your best friend mocks you you say that's my best friend in in my best friend's mind they're not being mean to me they're just having fun so who says it and what they're thinking completely determines how you you accept it right so let me give you an example let's say i said to you hey i'd like to invite you over to my house for dinner how would you interpret that if somebody said uh i'd like you to come over for dinner tonight what would be the logical assumption about what the person who said that was thinking you'd probably say to yourself well i think that what they're thinking is that they would like to entertain and they will make a meal and they will serve that meal and i will sit at the table with them and we'll eat that meal but that's not said right that's all just assumed in your head you're filling in all the the blanks stop getting ahead of me in the comments you damn smart people my clever point was just coming up and you beat me to it in the comments would you ever assume that if they said i'd like you to come over for dinner that their real intention was to eat you and that they are cannibals and if not why not why would you not make the assumption that they're cannibals because the words fit both meanings right how do you not assume they're cannibals what evidence do you have that they're not cannibals and the answer is because nobody does that nobody nobody invites you to their house to eat you no i'm not saying it's never been done jeffrey dahmer you know got close to that i don't think he used those words but you have to make an assumption that the person speaking is not an absolute crazy insane monster unless obviously they are so when aaron rupper was when i was questioning him and saying there's nothing about drinking bleach in president trump's statements when when that event happened he points me to the place where he says he sees it and i think how can you see the thing that isn't there and so i read the words and he says rupaul says quote in a tweet back to me he was clearly talking about household cleaning products when he refers to disinfectant now if you read the words exactly the way aaron rupar did could you interpret it to mean household cleaning products and the answer is yes yes you could you could interpret the exact words and specifically the word disinfectant you could interpret that to mean bleach right but should you is it completely reasonable to think that the president of the united states someone who had been you know handling the office fine seems to operate in public went to college is an actual operating adult in the real world is it reasonable to think that he was suggesting putting household defect household disinfectants directly into your body in what world do you make that assumption that the word disinfectant especially when it's in the context of talking about light is light light light light light disinfectant light light light as a disinfectant disinfectant light light as a disinfectant disinfectant what logical reason would you pick that word disinfectant which is used you know a light is a disinfectant why would you just pick a word end of a sentence to say all those other times before and after it he was talking about light because he used the words specifically but this one time this one time right in the middle when he used the word disinfectant that was the time he meant let's put some bleach into your into your body that's why aaron rupar assumed the president was thinking he made the assumption that the president of the united states quite literally would stand in public and suggest ingesting bleach why would anybody be that dumb and i'm not talking about trump how could you be so dumb that you think that the president would say that that that's even possible if you're making a list of all the things that could have happened would that even be on the list because it's just like somebody inviting you over for dinner you don't assume they mean cannibalism ever ever it's never the right assumption but a lot of people did just like aaron rhubart did he's not alone right there tens of millions of people made that same assumption why because the fake news had drawn such a caricature of trump that that seemed possible in other words the fake news was so thoroughly convincing that if president trump had invited aaron rupar uh over for dinner aaron rupar could reasonably assume it was meant to eat him because that's how bad trump is that's the world we live in that somebody would assume that that was even something that the president would say out of his mouth and that it's even possible that that could have happened you've got to assume that wasn't possible if you're going to understand how language works right language doesn't work if you make the dumbest assumption about what the person is thinking it never works nothing would make sense if you made the dumbest assumption about what somebody's thinking so let me do that with uh joe biden uh joe biden uh his highest his highest priority is racial is getting rid of racial inequality therefore he wants to kill all the white people why would i assume that wouldn't that be stupid does anybody think that joe biden wants to kill all white people well it's right there in what he said he wants racial equal racial equality how else are you going to get it logical so watching democrats not know especially a professional writer i mean aaron rupar is a professional writer at a pretty big publication vox he knows how language works he knows how talking works he knows how communication works he's literally a high-end professional and even he thought that trump maybe suggested drinking bleach that's how bad the fake news is i mean that's bad that's as bad as you can get all right anything else we need to cover i don't think so somebody says it's intentional but you can't rule that out but honestly i don't get that vibe if you you know because i we had some back and forth and he did not he did not defend himself like somebody who knew he was wrong he defended himself exactly like somebody who thought he was right now i can't read his mind so if you're going to say to yourself but you don't know he might have been you know acting yeah i guess that's possible i'm just giving you my my best judgment is that it looked genuine um dds is real uh why did he say he was being sarcastic oh why did trump say he was being sarcastic again we can't read his mind but my guess is that he got so much heat for that he just wanted it to go away so he just said i was just playing around being sarcastic i think that's the best explanation but there's no chance that he sarcastically suggested drinking bleach there's no chance that he sarcastically asked about injecting household disinfectants into a body he did not sarcastically say that but he did he did say that he was being sarcastic and we know that he sometimes he has a history of trying to make it an issue just go away so i think he just tried to make it go away um what is up with newsome well it looks like the the number of signatures for the recall is getting up there and somebody smart pointed out i forget who it was so i can't give you credit that uh if newsom demands a uh that the signatures be uh audited the idea of auditing uh elections is gonna look good all right um i think that's all i got for now and i'm gonna go enjoy the day and i will talk to you tomorrow
hey everybody
come on in here it's time
it's time for coffee with scott adams
from across the world
well i suppose it depends where you are
i might be where you are
could be you could be right next door i
wouldn't even know it
but i'm in french polynesia still
for a little bit longer and oh by the
way there's a
i think there is one day that i know i
won't be able to periscope
coming up so if there's a day this week
i think
it might be uh
thursday morning not sure about that
either wednesday or thursday i'm not not
going to be able to periscope
so let me tell you about all the stuff
that's happening
all the all the news that's fit to sip
as i like to say
but before that isn't there something
you're missing
is there something you're missing yeah
there is it's called the simultaneous
sip
eric eric finnman good to see you
and do you have your copper mug or glass
eric i hope you do and i hope the rest
of you do too
because will i remember the entire
toast let's see
uh grab a copper mug and glass tank or
chalice vessel of any kind fill it with
your favorite liquid i like
coffee and join me now for the
unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine
the other day the thing that
makes everything better yeah everything
better
it's called the simultaneous symptom
that happens now go
oh yes
so there's a an awkwardness
that i should just call out
because i'm vacationing at a very nice
place
i hesitate to show it to people
because if they can't vacation at a nice
place it's just sort of gross to
put it in people's face on the other
hand
i do like a little bit of transparency
in my life
and it would be no secret to anybody
that especially for my honeymoon
i can go to a nice place and so i didn't
think i would need to hide that from any
of you
and i was hoping that some of you would
enjoy the
the tales from bora bora so last night
christine and i were
doing dinner on the beach you know the
their tables there as part of the
restaurant as part of the resort
and there was this fire dancing group
entertaining us and here's here's the
funny thing
there there are so few people at this
resort
i don't think i've seen more than 20
people all week
and this is a place that would normally
hold hundreds or a thousand or something
but maybe 20 people i've seen in the
entire resort and it's the same
you know couples you see every time now
i don't know what the actual number is
i've
only seen the same 20 people but
so there are maybe 12 of us total
watching this show that's it just 12
people
watching this fire dancing show so i
thought well that's not nearly enough
these guys put in a lot of work to do
this yeah they're
they're twirling these lit torches
so i fired up periscope and i just
started live streaming
these fire dancers and i didn't know
what to expect
but i think already there have been over
a hundred thousand views
or two different videos so between the
two of them a hundred thousand views
now in terms of viewers probably
there'll be a hundred thousand of them
by the end of the day you know
right now it's views but there'll
probably be that many viewers
and i thought to myself i wonder if
these guys know
that they just went international they
literally were being streamed
all over the planet with just this
little thing in my
in my hand and a good uh a good sell
signal
and that's it and and suddenly their
show was worldwide
and here's the funny part i don't think
they know it
so yesterday you know they gave a show
to the entire planet
tens of thousands of of audience members
the only people who don't know it is the
people who gave the show
nobody told them so i just think that's
an
interesting little slice of life there
all right interesting thing
uh twitter is introducing a new feature
which uh is getting mixed reviews before
anybody even sees it
that's the way things go uh and the the
new feature
is trying to get at these censorship
problems um well not censorship so much
as
fake news it's more of a fake news
solution
or attempted solution now of course you
know
from my other periscopes that i'm always
always in favor of testing a new
solution
so those of you who are saying my god
it's the end of the world this new
feature will
just be bad like everything else in the
world you might be right
it's entirely possible that twitter
would rule you know
roll out a new feature and might make
things worse
anything could happen right it's a it's
an interesting world
but don't you have to first of all
appreciate
testing new stuff i think you got to
give it to him for that
right i mean you can criticize the
social media platforms for
a billion different things and that
would be valid but you can't criticize
them for testing solutions
that part i like so let's keep that part
now what could go wrong plenty
right that's the problem what could go
wrong with this new feature
so the feature i don't know the details
but
in broad strokes it allows you to add
context
to other people's tweets so if i
understand it correctly you'd be able to
say uh here's another story that's the
counterpoint to that
or some some background that would make
the story look different
now how is that bad now some people are
saying
well uh you know that we already have
that
it's called the comments you can already
leave a comment
but how often do you read the comments
on a tweet
i mean seriously how often do you dig
into the comments
of a tweet i do often but not as a
percentage
as a percentage of the time i usually
just read read the tweets probably
eighty percent of the time now i i see
what you're saying that you
that about that you often some of you
often read the tweets
so i would say 20 percent of the time i
dig in and it depends on the tweet right
if i think i understand the tweet and
there's nothing to talk about
i'm not going to dig into the comments
and those are the dangerous ones
the dangerous ones are the things are
the ones that i think i know the story
by reading the headline
if i'm being honest half of the news i
consume is just the headline
because the rest of the story is
unnecessary right
most of the time the headline is all you
need to know
there's nothing else beyond the headline
that has any value at all
usually now sometimes you're wrong
sometimes there are
lots of important nuggets in the story
but
we we're busy people and i have to
decide when do i you know when do i dig
into the comments and
look for it and when do i just read the
headline and move on so
the practical reality of it is that we
read the headlines and move on
now wouldn't it be nice if instead of
having to dig
through some comment that could be in a
in a string with
hundreds or thousands of comments
wouldn't it be nice if for
every story that had a need for context
it was just right there click this
button
to see the other side or click this
button to see the
top rated counterpoints
something like that now i do think
that there's some way to solve this
problem i'll tell you a way that
probably won't work
and i saw jack posabic was tweeting an
old tweet of mine
in which you side by side you can see
how wikipedia talks about the
fine people hoax and then you can see
the transcript the actual transcript
from the event
and you can see how different they are
and
i don't know the current situation of
the
wikipedia story about the find people
oaks
but i was involved with at least one of
the editors who was trying to fix that
some time ago and every time it got
fixed
to match the transcript that's it just
just fixing it
to match what the transcript says
editors would would re-edit it and turn
it back to the fake
uh hoax to the the whole side of me and
it would happen almost instantly as if
somebody was just sitting on it
waiting to change it back to the hoax
now i don't know where it is now
but at one point it was almost
just where i would put it in other words
it stated that the president said
he wasn't talking about the neo-nazis
etc
so once you say that clearly that
debunks the hoax
so what happens if this new twitter
feature
this bird watch is anything like
wikipedia
it's a problem right because this is a
very specific
observable example where wikipedia
because of its
business model if you can call it a
business because of its model
the public can distort the news now
ideally
they can't distort it forever because
there will be enough people coming in to
correct it that the correction will
eventually overcome any errors
and that normally is the way it works
but i think in this narrow realm
of politics the the trolls or the people
who want to
protect the incorrect story are just too
strong there's just too many of them
so this is the one realm on which
wikipedia is difficult to self-correct
because there's too much incentive to
keep it incorrect which wouldn't apply
to most of
its content right but
i don't think that bird watch is heading
to the
the wikipedia model the wikipedia model
tries to get you one story that's
correct
i don't think twitter is trying to do
that and it would be a mistake if they
did
i think they're trying to show you what
people say
if it's a reasonable counterpoint and
you know it can be expressed that way
so if if what twitter does is surface
the points and the counterpoints in the
context maybe they have something
if what they're doing is looking for the
one correct
the one correct narrative that's worse
can we agree on that if it turns into a
wikipedia-like
narrative-telling situation where
there's one truth that comes out of it
that's worse if it shows
both sides and doesn't try to play
favorites just
hey here's the argument make up your own
mind
that's better because if
somebody tweets something let's say they
believe something they saw on cnn
and i put a comment on it in our current
model without this new feature
who's going to see it right the people i
want to persuade or inform
not likely they're going to see it but
what would happen if i made the best
argument against the tweet that i
thought was
you know a wrong narrative or
interpretation well if i make a really
good counterpoint
the odds of my counterpoint floating up
to the top
should improve right because it's a good
counterpoint other people see it they
say yeah that's what i would say
he's saying this you know the way i
would say it
so i have uh i have some optimism for
this feature
but i'll acknowledge there's a million
ways it could go wrong
all right um somebody
somebody's building a face mask
that has a covered test indicator built
into the face mask
so i think something would change color
based on the droplets coming out of your
mouth all day
eventually they might build up to the
point where it could measure them
and i said to myself if we can do that
shouldn't we have rapid tests already if
you can build that technology
into a mask you you can't just put it in
a
pack of gum and sell it to me over the
counter
and if the problem is that the mask
would be let's say a lower
lower sensitivity than a proper covert
test
then don't you have a problem with the
fda
right the whole problem with the rapid
tests is that they're lower
by design they're lower sensitivity
and that's the problem the fda doesn't
want
low sensitivity tests out there even if
they would be more useful than high
sensitivity tests because you could do
them in volume
so uh i don't
think this this thing about the mask
having the
test built into it i don't think that
can work
unless rapid tests can work and i don't
see how they
they're going to get improved right away
although the biden administration
apparently is doing a better job on that
approving that stuff
one of the one of the questions that
i was asked here is to
teach people how to know who to trust in
the news
which is a good question right how do
you know who to trust
all the pundits all the experts all the
the news people
you know what what uh rules do you use
and there are lots of them but i'm going
to put one of them out there
somebody says trust no one trusting no
one is a really good
that's a good starting point right trust
no one
is a good starting point i agree with
that
but there are some some situations that
stand out more than others
all right you're going to end up
probably not
trusting but let's say siding with a
side
you're probably going to do that so
you'd like as much
knowledge as you could about you know
who's more credible
here's a little tip don't trust
anybody who has a brand consistency
problem here's what i mean by that
a brand consistency problem is you've
you've built yourself into a kind of
voice you're you you always have a kind
of slant on things you're
you're the person who's known for saying
whatever
as soon as you're the person who's known
for saying whatever
and you start monetizing that
your credibility goes right out the door
because you sort of need to stay that
person
to be the brand that people are coming
to
and now what do you do because you need
to be that person
all right and i'm going to mention a
specific person
but i want to generalize the point right
so it's not about a specific person
so you've been watching alex berenson
who's probably
maybe the most notable or famous
i would say skeptic would be the right
word
so when you see him appearing or writing
and and he's all over the place with the
coronavirus story
i believe he worked at the new york
times so he's he's a credible kind of
person with a
credible resume and he's been skeptical
of a lot of the
data science that's coming out of the
chronovirus stuff
now in the beginning of the pandemic is
it useful
to have a skeptic yeah it's really
useful
you really do want some strong voices to
say
you say that that makes sense
scientifically
but where's your data and then you show
the data and then you still want
somebody to say
yeah but i don't think that data says
what you think it's going to say
so a skeptic with credentials
you know at least journalistic
credentials like alex berenson very very
valuable you you want as many of those
as you can get
smart people right you don't want dumb
skeptics you want a smart
legitimately professional person who's
an actual skeptic
so from that point of view he's a
national treasure right
i always appreciate skeptics they're
national treasures
if especially if they go against the
grain and it's going to cost them
something professionally
it probably did he probably took a hit
professionally
but i think he was starting out doubting
uh and maybe still does i don't know his
exact position on masks and
uh social distancing and and lockdowns
now is it reasonable to be a skeptic on
masks
social distancing and lockdowns yeah
yeah it's reasonable completely
reasonable
is it right i don't know right
i don't know because we don't have data
we can trust
which would be the point of a skeptic
right the whole point of a skeptic
is hey this data you're selling us it's
not reliable
so when you see somebody like behrenson
say your data is not reliable
on mass social distancing
whatever else i feel like using pretty
solid ground most of the time
like i think that most of the time that
data is not reliable
meaning it's not it's not really nailed
down
that these are these facts are telling
you what you think they're telling you
but as time goes by those things which
you should be properly skeptical about
you get a little more clarity over time
i believe that the consensus of science
and even
maybe skeptics is that that masks
surely must make some difference so uh
not so much
protecting you from virus but from the
ones that you might be giving off
but now now we have vaccinations
would you take the same level of
skepticism for mass and
lockdowns and stuff and take that to
vaccinations
you should because skepticism everywhere
is
is always a valuable uh asset right even
if it's wrong
you want that point and counterpoint you
always want that
so uh alex berenson was uh
tweeting i think the other day yesterday
that the
israel has not yet shown any effect from
their vaccinations and
they seem to be the most uh the most
complete
in getting people vaccinated over 65 at
least
and i saw that and i thought i don't
know
is this where you want to put the
skepticism
i would have waited a little bit but
almost
five minutes after he tweeted that
israel is not showing any
any difference joel pollock and other
people who were also following it
said no actually the data is really
clear here's the graph
three weeks after the vaccination
started you see the hospitalizations
not every other measure but just
hospitalizations just
plummeted so
who is right is alex berenson's
chart and data that didn't seem to show
anything
uh obvious happening there is that right
or
are the other people who said no here's
the current information
on hospitalizations and there are actual
stories based on news reports
are they right i don't know
the problem is they're just because you
see a
data in a news story it doesn't mean
it's right anymore
it used to it used to make me think it
was probably right
but not anymore you can't really trust
anything anymore
but if i had to bet i would bet they're
working
and i would bet that the graphs showing
uh lower hospitalizations
i would bet that's accurate i would bet
the things are going the right direction
so to my first question
who should you trust alex berenson has
the problem
which is not necessarily his fault
right this is not a criticism but once
you become
the skeptic guy it's hard to get out of
that
right once you're the skeptic guy that's
why you get
asked to be on the show it's why a
publisher will will publish your book
and it would be easy to overdo the
skepticism
all right so uh bringing you back to the
specific personality is alex berenson
a credible person yes yes he's a very
credible person but if you take the most
credible person in the world
and put them in a situation where
they've got a brand compatibility
issue that credibility you have to
mentally adjust it right so that would
be one tip
for knowing who to trust it doesn't
matter how credible or smart or well
informed the person is if they have a
brand issue
and that's what you want to look for now
am i suggesting
that alex berenson would intentionally
say something
that was wrong for his brand no
no i have no reason to believe he would
do anything intentionally
i'm just saying that you should not make
any assumptions about people's
internal thoughts and if they have a
brand issue
factor that in
here's a dog that's not barking
what is the biden administration
approach to north korea
why are we hearing anything about that
did north korea suddenly become
no problem because if it is no problem
isn't that trump and if it is a problem
what's he doing about it what's the
what's the biden administration
take on north korea
would you like to know that's going to
be a fun one
assuming the world doesn't blow up it's
going to be really fun to see how biden
handles
north korea because he doesn't have that
same relationship etc
so i just wonder why we're not hearing
anything about it i guess kim jong-un
would have to do something provocative
to
to make that happen so we're already
seeing that china is
they did some uh flexing their muscle
did some flyover over
uh taiwanese airspace and
uh i think they're really gonna start
flexing on biden we'll see if we'll see
what he does
so biden did sign some kind of a buy
american
uh legislation but it only applies to
government stuff and when i heard that i
said to myself
wait what joe biden had to pass some
kind of a
law or exam must have been an executive
order he had to
i think it was executive order he had to
change something
to make the government of the united
states
prefer american products and i thought
we didn't already do that i mean i get
why you wouldn't necessarily do it with
the public
but the government i feel as if the
government should be buying from
american
producers if there's any product that
meets the need
so and i also ask myself trump didn't do
that
are you telling me that joe biden had to
do the thing that was
trump's brand which is by american
why didn't trump do that can we say
that that was a plus for biden
okay can we be objective oh by the way
i'm
you're you're watching me model the very
thing
i was talking about not doing
one of the reasons that i i tell you
from the start
is that i'm left of bernie but i liked a
lot of a lot of what trump did
is it confuses you about what my brand
is
i do that intentionally and i do that to
make sure i don't get it in a brand
trap where there are some topics i just
can't talk about
because nobody would trust me they're
like ah you're the you're the guy who
always says that
so part of my brand risk is that
people who have not followed me
closely they think that i always agree
with trump no matter whatever trump does
now those of you who follow me know that
that's not even close
and here's an example as far as i can
tell
just looking at it from you know you
never know the details but
it looks to me like this was a biden's
success
to require that our government only buys
american
that looks like abiding success and if
trump had done it i would have said
that's a trump success
and it looks like it was something trump
could have done
and didn't do now if you dug into this
story you might find out that there's
nothing there
it might be all smoke and mirrors which
might be why trump didn't do it
it could be that we'd be better off
buying
let's say a french generator
if no american makes that product it
could be
that we already buy american whenever
it's an option
don't you think if you're if you if
you're the procurement person for the
government no matter what part of the
government you're in
and you have a choice of the lithuanian
product or the american product
and they both do the same thing for
about the same price
don't you think you were going to buy
the american product anyway so i don't
know if it makes any difference
it may be entirely just for show
but let me be consistent if trump had
done this
and even if it were just for show i
would still say it's the right thing to
do
because it's part of a it's part of the
let's say
how you change minds about what is right
and smart so even if it didn't make any
practical difference
to have the government you know required
to buy american stuff
because they probably were pretty close
to doing that anyway
it sends us a message and it's a good
one
you know that this is the direction
we're going everywhere we can find an
opportunity to
buy american we're going to do it even
if it's a small opportunity
so that's abiding success in my opinion
i'm going to give them that one um cnn
being more entertainingly ridiculous
than ever
uh had a chiron which is the name for
the
little message that appears at the
bottom of the screen it's called the
chiron c-h-y-r-o-n in case you wondered
and so on cnn's reliable sources uh
you you know that sorry the chiron
was below a picture of biden's
spokesperson jen pasaki and
it said that pasaki promises to share
accurate information and then in
parentheses
how refreshing
this is on so cnn their coverage
their critical coverage of the biden
presidency
is that biden's spokesperson promises to
share
accurate information how refreshing
oh my god uh glenn greenwald
came in to uh to dunk on them in a tweet
and
greenwald says i once again humbly
submit
that this would be a bridge too far even
for north korean state television
which is usually a bit more subtle and
discerning than this
and i think he nailed it the
cnn obviously wants access
to government people because they can't
report
the worst thing would be to be cnn and
have no
access to you know interviews because
you know
they don't like you so apparently
they're they're in the business of
getting
liked by the biden administration so
they have access but it is actually
it's literally funny to watch uh
have forming there now somebody's saying
it's like fox
to trump and you're not wrong so i'm not
going to defend
i'm not going to defend anybody else on
this but this is actually pretty funny
i told you yesterday that
if you saw vice president harris
getting a portfolio like a special job
for a vice president
like al gore had a special job
fixing the government's processes and
mike pence has a special job with a crew
or had with the
coronavirus task force so if you see a
vice president
get a special portfolio that would be an
indication
that that person is going to stay a vice
president for a while
but i told you that if you see that
harris does not get a portfolio
it might mean that they're grooming her
to be
uh step in fairly soon
and then the news within hours of me
saying that
then i saw an article and i don't know
maybe the article came out even before i
said that but i hadn't seen it
i said according to the new york times
harris has not been assigned a specific
portfolio
the exact thing i said she's not been
assigned a specific portfolio as of now
she will serve as and listen to this
phrasing from the new york times
a governing partner to biden on his top
priorities
she's going to be a co-president she's
going to be a governing partner
now that's not exactly a co-president
but
feels like it doesn't have
don't you feel that vibe now
i don't expect my predictions to usually
be that accurate that quickly
and again i don't know if this
information was out there before i even
made that prediction which would which
would make it not a prediction
but uh that's what i was expecting
so i expected that she would not get a
portfolio
and i do think that that indicates
they're trying to
the problem with giving the vice
president a portfolio
is that it diminishes them does that
make sense
if you get a portfolio it's sort of like
oh
vice president a little patent ahead oh
what a cute vice president you could
never be president
but we'll give you a project here's a
little project
yeah yeah you little vice president
that's what it feels like when you get a
portfolio
but when you become when you don't get
one it makes you look like you're a
governing partner right yeah so it
clearly is
she's being positioned to take over now
that doesn't mean they have a specific
date to do it i've heard people suggest
they would do it after the midterms
which would not surprise me
israel is saying that if the united
states
drops the sanctions with iran and gets
back into some kind of a
iranian nuclear deal that
israel says it will attack iran
now that's not an official pronouncement
i guess this is just
reports from people who are part of the
government
so it's not an official government
statement but
apparently they're saying it fairly
directly now
when they say attack they don't
necessarily mean
a full war they mean attack their
nuclear
facilities and when
when israel says we will attack
that doesn't mean maybe right is there
is there ever been a case where israel
said
under these conditions we will attack
and then they don't has that has that
ever happened in the history of israel
i don't know but i would certainly trust
them if they said we're going to attack
so what does biden do biden
would guarantee war or at least
some something that looks a little like
a war between
israel and iran based on the stated
policy that he's
pursuing and ira and israel is saying
it's not maybe it's not maybe
military action it's military action so
that's quite a pressure on joe biden how
will he manage this being the statesman
that he is
so keep an eye on that
here's a little uh crack in the
democratic
front so there's a reporter for cbs a
white house reporter
named catherine watson now it's
important to the story
that she works for cbs because you think
a cbs is sort of
left-leaning and here's what she says
in a tweet she says teachers unions i'm
sorry she said in her tweet she said if
biden is really serious about getting
kids back to school within 100 days
is going to have to clash with teacher
you teachers unions
at some point so that's cbs saying that
that if biden wants to get kids back to
school he's going to go have to go up
against the teachers unions
interesting right because the teachers
unions are really really powerful they
really support the democrats
and biden is completely beholden to them
but if he wants to keep the country
intact
he has to destroy them or at least push
them aside temporarily
is he the right president to do that
nope he's not he's exactly the wrong
president to do that
i've told you a number of times there's
no such thing as a good president or a
bad president
now that's an exaggeration of course you
could have one that's bad
but in general you have presidents that
you either
fit a situation or don't i thought that
trump
fit the north korean situation he fit
the peace in the middle east
situation he fit the isis situation he
fit the china situation there's a whole
bunch of stuff
that trump is a perfect fit for health
care
maybe not so much right not the right
fit did some good things in terms of
reducing regulations and that cannot be
ignored
but it's the fit that matters
who would have been a better fit to take
on
the teachers unions trump
who did not get support from them or
biden who does get support from them and
is really really important
the answer is trump trump for this
situation getting kids back to school
is unambiguously the better president
unfortunately he's not the president so
what does
what does biden do does he let the
teachers unions continue with their
being the source of all systemic racism
which they are
and the argument there is that by
preventing school choice
they lock every poor community into
remaining a poor community
because those kids can't go to a better
school there's just no choice
they have one bad school and that's what
you got
so that of course makes systemic racism
continue on in ways that it should not
if everybody had a good job
because of a good education you'd have a
lot less discrimination right
uh but now they're actually
hurting children because we know to
children to be damaged by
being kept out of the social school
situation they're not learning as much
they're not socializing right
they're getting damaged it's real it's
important
but likewise the economy really depends
on getting the kids back to school
because
you've got two parents that can't work
at the same time
necessarily if kids are there so
the teachers unions have become the
biggest problem in the country
and we have a president who's the only
one who can't do anything about it
that's a bad bad situation he can't even
talk about it right
can't even talk about it that's a
problem
so keep an eye on that
on the plus side if you're following
corey deangelis on
twitter you see lots of reports and you
should by the way you should follow him
corey deangelis
you'll see him in my twitter feed if
you're looking for him
he reports on various states and
localities
looking into funding students directly
and apparently there's a lot of
movement in that direction now i don't
know exactly
how well that's going to work but
anything that looks like it's
breaking the monopoly that the teachers
unions have is worth looking at
right it's worth looking at so directly
funding
students instead of funding the school
gives the students who are directly
funded at least the option
to take their education somewhere else
and then maybe the free market can
fix things in a way the teachers unions
cannot
i got a question for you is it
too late to impeach george washington
over slavery
because i don't know about you but i am
opposed to slavery
totally opposed not even any wiggle room
i can't speak for the rest of you but
just for me
no slavery totally against it
and george washington having been a
slave owner
i don't think we could let that slide
can we
now there was a time when i thought well
what can you do about it he's dead
it was hundreds of years ago yeah and
thomas jefferson that
that he's got to be impeached
he's got to be impeached
but now that i know you can impeach your
president after the round of office
i don't see any reason you can't impeach
them when they're dead
can you i'm not aware of
anything in our constitution that would
prevent
congress from impeaching a dead
president like george washington or
thomas jefferson
and they did some bad stuff slave owners
that's about as bad as it gets right
short of a holocaust
owning slaves has got to be number two
on the list of bad stuff you can do
so i think we need to
stop doing the business of the country
by the way joe biden has acknowledged
that impeaching trump will will damage
the
effectiveness of the congress so that
while the impeachment of trump is going
on
the impeachment trial he acknowledges
that they won't be able to do the work
of the country
as efficiently but he's okay with that
because he says it's really really
important to
show to impeach trump it's very
important because
reasons it's very important to impeach
trump because
of uh that he's gonna run for office
again
i would think they would be very very
happy to have him run for office again
i would think that trump plus four years
of you know age i think they would be
happy to have him run
run for office because it would look
like you know president
harris for sure
but i think the real reason they they
say they want to do it
is not that if you ask the democrats why
are you doing it
they won't say well we want to keep him
out of office in the future
because that would sound petty and also
sound like not doing their job it would
sound political
so instead they say things like it's
very important to
send a message well
if it's important to send a message
let's send the message to all of those
past presidents who've had some issues
we don't like
i feel as if most of our presidents
could be impeached
do you know what jfk did in the white
house
he defiled the white house a little bit
just a little bit
so let's just say he was doing a lot of
defiling
in that white house so impeach him for
that too
and peach emol um
i i've told you of course that i'm on a
another platform
uh called locals l-o-c-a-l-s
you can find them uh just go to
onlocals.com
and uh
apparently it's it's just taken off not
apparently it's it's taken off like
crazy
so a lot of people who are looking for
some kind of
platform where the censorship is not
going to be
political or going there and i'm on
there
and you can subscribe to me and because
it's a subscription service
i don't get i just don't get trolls
so i have a whole other experience on
locals
in which everybody who's there wants to
be there they're paying they're
literally paying a subscription fee to
be there
seven bucks a month or more if they want
to message me
and when people pay to be somewhere
they act quite polite they're happy to
be there
so i have this whole other experience
where the people are posting
like interesting things because they
came there you know
because of some some intersection with
my points of view
and so the things they post tend to be
extra interesting
and uh apparently the locals is taking
off and traffic wise it's just
uh it's on a nice growth right now full
disclosure i have a small amount of
stock in locals just so you know that
small amount not enough to change too
much in my life
all right according to the ieee spectrum
uh the only way we're going to be
successful in space
and getting to mars in particular quick
enough
is if we use nuclear engines in our
rockets
now have i told you before that our
domestic
energy policy needs to have a robust
nuclear energy component so that we're
developing the right kind of skills
to transfer to space because space is
going to be nuclear
all right probably they won't use
nuclear engines to take off
that might stay similar to how it is now
but once you get into space you're going
to um some
serious energy right to stay up there
for a while to go to mars and back that
sort of thing
you're gonna need a lot of energy and so
the idea is
nuclear thermal propulsion so it uses
the
the nuclear reaction to heat liquid to
some
god-awfully high number
which causes the propellant to expand
and shoots out the nozzles and whatever
so if you use nuclear energy in rockets
once they get to space not only could
you get to
mars is it two years they think maybe
it's twice as fast
but when you get there you've got a
nuclear energy source
so not only does the nuclear nuclear
engine
allow you to travel but should you try
to colonize something you'd have a
nuclear
a nuclear energy source just plug in
your plug in your devices
to your spaceship i guess all right
um so that's good and again i point that
out because
if if the united states doesn't
dominate or at least be a major presence
in space
we don't have a future right whoever
owns space
that's who is going to control the
future that's it
so and without without nuclear that
doesn't happen
and without a robust civilian nuclear
program you're not going to have the
talent to do it in space
so we have to pursue that
now what would happen uh
if we tried to find unity in this
country
what would that look like what would
what would it look like if we tried to
have
unity well
joe biden's call for unity involves
impeaching trump so he just said again
that he wants to do it even though it's
bad for the country
revenge i know so is that good for unity
is impeaching trump at the expense of
the business of the country
for unity that's not much unity
i was watching ellen dershowitz's
podcast which is really good
called the durst show one word
as in the first part of dershow it's his
name durst show
and he had asked people for ideas and
suggestions
on how to build unity with the left
political left and right and i tweeted
yesterday
a caller who called in to suggest
that maybe the best way to get unity
would be for
joe biden to correct and apologize the
fine people hoax
now i was a little bit concerned that
alan dershowitz would say
that's no hoax that's a real thing as
most democrats would say right now
remember ellen deschwitz
identifies democrat he voted for hillary
clinton
has never has never wavered he's a
democrat to the corps
and as a democrat he said
unambiguously that the fine people hoax
is a hoax and went through the reasoning
and
said it as clearly as you could possibly
say it
and i felt really good about it
because i've told you before that i'm
never confident in my opinion
until i hear dershowitz agree with it or
where i hear him first and then i just
agree with him because it's easier than
it's he's easier than coming up with my
own opinions because his are better than
mine so i just
just wait till dershowitz says something
i go what do you say okay
that's my opinion now now i do think
about it a little bit but he's so
he's so damn logical that
once he says his opinion i just look at
it and go ah
who else has an opinion that's going to
top that i don't think so
so i feel as if
we should pick a thing and push it
forever and i think the thing we meaning
anybody who wants biden to
pursue unity i think we should push the
fine people hoax as the thing that needs
to be corrected
it's the thing in my life that most
needs to be corrected
i need the people on the left
to know they were lied to about that in
particular
because it was so important they need to
understand they were lied to about that
that's that's a big change there's
nothing else unity wise that i can think
of
nothing they would come close to that
in terms of making the people on the
right say
okay okay that that sounds like
unity right stop calling us racist that
would be a
start yeah there's the other hoaxes too
the
bleach drinking hoax etc
um brendan straka
apparently has been picked up by the fbi
i don't know if he's arrested per se
but he's in some trouble for being part
of the allegedly part of the
capital insurrection and by being part
of it
the reports which you should not treat
as credible yet
you know is is that he may have been
inside
the capitol and may or may not have been
saying things inciting other people to
go inside
i have a real problem with somebody like
him
getting swept up in any legal
problems on one hand i totally oppose
the people who entered the capital
and caused any damage and threatened our
government etc
the legal system has to do with the
legal system needs to do
if laws were broken it has to be
addressed
i guess there's just no way around that
even if you
even if you have some empathy for the
people who did it
our system just doesn't let you commit
crimes
and get away with it unfortunately you
just can't do that
or fortunately you just can't do that
and
but the problem is i do think there is
something about
the idea of being swept up in something
if everybody is doing something it
doesn't look so wrong
if you're in the crowd and somehow that
has to matter
right you can't let people get away with
crimes
but it has to matter how you got there
and i think the legal system
does take that into consideration at
least for sentencing
so i'd hate to see somebody like brandon
stracka get any kind of uh you know a
permanent problem in his life
from the legal system for what i doubt
he ever had any
violent anything probably thought he was
doing a free speech thing
didn't think he was getting anybody with
a club so he was just there for free
speech
i just have a real problem if he gets
hit hard by the legal system so that's
just a shout out to the legal system
be smart about this right you got to be
smart about this and this would be sort
of a
that's sort of a dividing line like he's
he's an
edge case where what you do with
brendan's uh
with brandon straca and other people who
are in the same situation
feel like how you treat that is going to
make a big difference
especially to unity
so joe biden has prioritized racial
inequality
as one of his top things to battle
and here's my take on that
of course racial racial equality is
something
i think we all want don't we is there
anybody here who doesn't want
racial equality so as a concept
of course we all want that uh if you're
if you're a good person you want that
but my problem with it is it's the
easiest con
because talking about it does the least
and it might even be you know in some
cases might be counterproductive
and so making it a priority but not
doing anything about it
it just feels like a con compare that to
what trump
did he didn't talk about it but he did
things about it
you know he did prison reform he worked
on the economy which is good for
everybody
as i said earlier he didn't seem to be a
a
supporter of the teachers unions which
are the biggest cause of racial
inequality in the long run
so trump was all action
if you know he funded permanent not
permanently or
he did a lot of funding for the
historically black colleges
he did opportunity zones with tim scott
every part of that was action
directly directly related to making the
world a
more equal place racially et cetera
all action but what exactly is joe biden
going to do
having made it a priority i feel like
that's
about talking i feel like it's a con
that it's a way to make people think
something is happening
but what's happening is talking
and i feel bad honestly for
black voters who thought they were
getting more than that
i don't know that they're getting more
than that
we'll see but looks like that's all
they're getting
speaking of that speaking of
that priority here's a
scariest thing that you'll see lately in
the california high schools
they're going to embrace the crt
or critical uh now actually critical
ethnic studies
so i guess instead of critical race
theory
is critical ethnic studies and
within that studies apparently
reportedly they talk about who has a
privileged
position in society and
what would be the point of saying that
some group has a privileged
place in society what would be the point
of that
now some of it is education and context
etc
but wouldn't the express point be to
discriminate against that group
isn't that the point now when i say
discriminate
if you're discriminating against the
group that's in power
well that doesn't feel so bad does it
you're discriminating against the strong
what would be bad would be
discriminating against the weak
as a general concept right without
getting into the the details
generally speaking doing something
against the strong
not so bad doing something against the
weak
very very bad right as a general rule
now even better don't do bad things to
anybody
can we agree on that best situation
don't do bad things to anybody
um but i think the critical ethnic
studies and
critical race theory essentially put
white people as a privileged class
which is very close to putting a target
on their back
hear what i'm saying if you if you mark
somebody
as the privileged people you have marked
them as the ones who should have less
and the future they're targeted now i
don't mean targeted for violence i'm not
talking about that
about targeted for maybe you should have
a little
less of this privilege thing in the
future maybe other people should have
more but the only way you get there is
you have less
so in the sense that it's the group
targeted to have less relative to the
other
people they're targeted
is that a fair statement that they would
be targeted
to have less in the future compared to
other people to make things more fair
as the theory goes but here's where they
made a small little mistake
something that maybe they could have
seen coming
and it goes like this they decided to
throw
jews into the category of privileged
people
do i need to finish the sentence
critical ethnic studies in california
high schools
are going to call out jews
as targeted for privilege meaning
that they should have less in the future
relative to other people
let me um there are some things which
defy words so if you're only listening
to this on the podcast
i i'm going to have to do this with a
physical expression
that you won't be able to hear so when
you don't hear me for a moment
it's because i'm doing something
hilarious and spot
on to the people who are watching it and
it goes like this
that's it what words could possibly
express
how bad this is right as a
as a direction you're going anyway right
unbelievable now i get the point
that there are certain groups who are
economically doing better than others
right and i'm guessing that that's where
they're coming from
but i think it has more to do with
they've just decided let's
let's throw the jewish
americans in with everybody everybody
else who's white
call them all privilege boom and we're
done
i don't feel like that's a good path
i feel like that's not going to work out
so there's a little bit of a unity that
needs some
improving wouldn't you say we i think we
can improve our unity on this question
a little bit a little bit so
um now i've told you that the obvious
direction for
wokeness is self-destruction
because the whole walk this thing when
you start breaking people into
categories you can't stop
there's no logical place to stop once
you start categorizing people which is
why you don't want to do it right either
treat everybody
the same or you categorize until you get
this kind of problem
so this was the most predictable thing
that could have possibly happened
totally predictable
so that's we hope that there will be
some force that pushes back on that
all right um i think i had one other
point i was going to say
which is remind me did i talk about
aaron
rupar and vox and the drink
bleach drinking hoax
the the amazing thing about this hoax i
think i did talk about it
is that um
i think people don't understand how
communication works
which is interesting for someone who's a
professional writer
that he doesn't understand how
communication works
let me let me explain to you
how communication works it's very basic
concept and apparently some people don't
get this
it goes like this you have to assume
what a speaker is thinking in order to
understand what they're
saying so you have to consider the
source
so if your best friend mocks you
you say that's my best friend in in my
best friend's mind
they're not being mean to me they're
just having fun
so who says it and what they're thinking
completely determines how you you accept
it right
so let me give you an example let's say
i said to you hey
i'd like to invite you over to my house
for dinner
how would you interpret that if somebody
said
uh i'd like you to come over for dinner
tonight
what would be the logical assumption
about what the person who said that was
thinking
you'd probably say to yourself well i
think that what they're thinking
is that they would like to entertain and
they will make a meal
and they will serve that meal and i will
sit at the table with them and we'll eat
that meal
but that's not said right that's all
just assumed
in your head you're filling in all the
the blanks
stop getting ahead of me in the comments
you damn smart people
my clever point was just coming up and
you beat me to it in the comments
would you ever assume that if they said
i'd like you to come over for dinner
that their real intention was to eat you
and that they are cannibals
and if not why not why would you not
make the assumption
that they're cannibals because the words
fit both
meanings right how do you not assume
they're cannibals
what evidence do you have that they're
not cannibals
and the answer is because nobody does
that
nobody nobody invites you to their house
to eat you no i'm not saying it's never
been done
jeffrey dahmer you know got close to
that
i don't think he used those words but
you have to make an assumption
that the person speaking is not an
absolute
crazy insane monster unless obviously
they are
so when aaron rupper
was when i was questioning him and
saying there's nothing about drinking
bleach
in president trump's statements when
when that event happened
he points me to the place where he says
he sees it
and i think how can you see the thing
that isn't there
and so i read the words and he says
rupaul says quote in a tweet back to me
he was clearly talking about household
cleaning products
when he refers to disinfectant
now if you read the words exactly the
way
aaron rupar did could you interpret it
to mean household cleaning products
and the answer is yes yes you could you
could interpret the exact words
and specifically the word disinfectant
you could interpret that to mean bleach
right
but should you
is it completely reasonable to think
that the president of the united states
someone who had been you know handling
the office fine
seems to operate in public went to
college
is an actual operating adult in the real
world
is it reasonable to think that he was
suggesting
putting household defect household
disinfectants
directly into your body
in what world do you make that
assumption
that the word disinfectant especially
when it's in the context
of talking about light is light light
light light light
disinfectant light light light as a
disinfectant
disinfectant light light as a
disinfectant
disinfectant what logical
reason would you pick that word
disinfectant which is used
you know a light is a disinfectant why
would you just pick a word end of a
sentence to say
all those other times before and after
it he was talking about light because he
used the words
specifically but this one time this one
time right in the middle
when he used the word disinfectant that
was the time he meant
let's put some bleach into your into
your body
that's why aaron rupar assumed the
president was thinking
he made the assumption that the
president of the united states
quite literally would stand in public
and suggest
ingesting bleach
why would anybody be that dumb
and i'm not talking about trump
how could you be so dumb
that you think that the president would
say that that that's even possible
if you're making a list of all the
things that could have happened
would that even be on the list because
it's just like
somebody inviting you over for dinner
you don't assume they mean cannibalism
ever ever it's never the right
assumption
but a lot of people did just like aaron
rhubart did he's not alone
right there tens of millions of people
made that same assumption
why because the fake news
had drawn such a caricature of trump
that that seemed possible
in other words the fake news was so
thoroughly
convincing that if president trump
had invited aaron rupar
uh over for dinner aaron rupar could
reasonably assume
it was meant to eat him because that's
how bad trump is
that's the world we live in that
somebody would assume
that that was even something that the
president would say
out of his mouth and that it's even
possible that that could have happened
you've got to assume that wasn't
possible if you're going to understand
how language works
right language doesn't work
if you make the dumbest assumption about
what the person is thinking it never
works
nothing would make sense if you made the
dumbest assumption about what somebody's
thinking
so let me do that with uh joe biden
uh joe biden uh his highest
his highest priority is racial is
getting rid of racial inequality
therefore he wants to kill all the white
people
why would i assume that wouldn't that be
stupid
does anybody think that joe biden wants
to kill all white people
well it's right there in what he said he
wants racial equal
racial equality how else are you going
to get it
logical so watching democrats
not know especially a professional
writer
i mean aaron rupar is a professional
writer at a
pretty big publication vox
he knows how language works he knows how
talking works
he knows how communication works he's
literally a high-end professional
and even he thought that trump
maybe suggested drinking bleach
that's how bad the fake news is i mean
that's bad
that's as bad as you can get all right
anything else we need to cover i don't
think so
somebody says it's intentional but you
can't rule that out
but honestly i don't get that vibe if
you
you know because i we had some back and
forth and he did not
he did not defend himself like somebody
who knew he was
wrong he defended himself exactly like
somebody who thought he was right
now i can't read his mind so if you're
going to say to yourself
but you don't know he might have been
you know acting
yeah i guess that's possible i'm just
giving you my my best judgment is that
it looked genuine
um dds
is real uh why did he say he was being
sarcastic oh why did trump say he was
being sarcastic
again we can't read his mind but my
guess is that he got so much heat for
that
he just wanted it to go away so he just
said i was just playing around being
sarcastic i think that's the best
explanation
but there's no chance that he
sarcastically suggested drinking bleach
there's no chance that he sarcastically
asked
about injecting household disinfectants
into a body he did not sarcastically say
that but he did he did say that he was
being sarcastic and we know that he
sometimes
he has a history of trying to make it an
issue just go away
so i think he just tried to make it go
away
um what is up with newsome well it looks
like the
the number of signatures for the recall
is getting up there
and somebody smart pointed out i forget
who it was so i can't give you credit
that uh if newsom demands a uh
that the signatures be uh audited
the idea of auditing uh elections is
gonna look good
all right um
i think that's all i got for now and i'm
gonna go enjoy the day and i will talk
to you
tomorrow
