Episode 2934 CWSA 08/21/25

We almost have a quorum so we can redistrict.

No, there won't be any redistricting today.

Not here anyway.

Texas.

Yeah, maybe.

All right.

Once your comments are working, we'll get busy with the show that you can't wait to hear.

Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.

It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and you've never had a better time.

But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience up to levels that no one could even understand with their tiny shiny human brains.

Well, all you need for that is a copper immug glass, a tankered shell or a ste a canteen jugger flask, a vessel of any kind.

Fill it with your favorite liquid.

I like coffee.

And join me now for the unparallel pleasure of the dopamine of the day thing that makes everything better.

It's called the simultaneous sip.

It happens now.

Go.

M pretty good.

Pretty good.

Not the best, but it's right up there.

Well, the uh restaurant chain called Cracker Barrel has decided to go broke, but uh the way they'll get there is by going woke.

So, apparently they have a newish CEO, a woman who's uh quite gung-ho for all things DEI.

And one of the things they did was they removed from their logo the old man uh who who I always thought was a cracker and then he was leaning on a barrel.

So they got rid of the cracker and they got rid of the barrel.

I don't know what's left.

Well, if you had to guess, uh, what is most likely?

Is it most likely that their move toward DEI and making a big deal about it and changing their logo and getting rid of the old white man on the logo?

Is that going to help their bottom line?

If you had to guess, would you guess?

Well, this will all work out.

Well, let's uh check in with um Target Target stores who went through their own uh wokeness uh tuck friendly swimsuit uh kind of event and I'm reading from Red State.

Bob Hogue is writing in red state that uh let's see uh their target CEO is leaving his post next year and it looks like they never really recovered um from their their wokeness uh drama.

But here's the funny thing.

Um the way CNN describes it is that the problem is a backlash to its retreat on DEI.

So if you get your news from CNN, it will say the problem with uh Target sales is not that people didn't like them being woke, but rather they didn't like when they were woke and then they became less woke.

So, it was the becoming less woke because there was such an uproar that that really hurt their sales.

What do you think?

Was it the being woke or was it the retreating from being woke that hurt their sales?

Well, probably both.

My guess is that anytime you change anything, it gives somebody a reason not to not to shop there.

But what it definitely didn't do is give somebody a reason to shop if they didn't already have one.

It could give you a reason not to shop either way because they got too woke or they retreated from the woke.

But which of those things would cause you to buy more?

Would you say, "Oh, Target's really woke now.

I'm going to buy a few extra pairs of pants." No.

It can only go one direction.

Whether you go woke or you go less woke, it can only cost you customers just because it's a change and there's no way there's an upside.

So, we'll see.

Meanwhile, Kroger stores have announced that they're going to close multiple supermarkets in Washington state due to crime, according to the Gateway Pundit.

Mike Leance is writing about that.

And uh what do you think of that?

So Kroger has uh decided that instead of staying in the high crime area, they're going to get the f out of there.

Huh.

Well, that's uh that's some advice, isn't it?

I wonder if they could get cancelled for saying that they should get out of a high crime area.

I feel like they should be cancelled for that.

No, no, just kidding.

Don't don't hurt Kroger.

Um, but what will happen?

Will Kroger's sales go up or down?

Well, they'll have fewer sales in the high crime area, but they probably were losing money and employees, too.

Meanwhile, Bed Bath and Beyond, which at one point was bankrupt, but I guess got rescued by some big money entity.

But uh they're trying to rebuild and they have announced that they will not build any stores in California.

Can can you even hold this in your head that California is uninvestable if you're a big company?

They've just said there's overregulation and taxes and um basically those two things, overregulation and taxes.

So they say it's just not even worth it.

It's too risky.

So the two risky places to do business, three uh well four if you count Ukraine um would be China, Ukraine, Gaza, and California.

uh but also uh fairly Washington state but also Washington DC.

So there's a whole bunch of places you just don't want to be.

And unfortunately I live in one of those places.

So I'm thinking of moving to Ukraine for the friendly business environment.

Well, Sam Alman, uh, head of, uh, Chat GPT, uh, apparently, according to Zero Hedge, has hired some top Democrat operatives to help them, uh, grease the gears, so to speak, as Zero Hedge puts it, grease the gears with California politicians, um, because they need to restructure the company and eventually go public.

and they need California to be a friendly business environment.

Do you know what will happen if they don't get what they want?

This is uh in Politico, by the way.

Um well, will they leave California?

What will their AI tell them to do?

But uh it seems unbelievable to me that uh a company as big as uh OpenAI and Chat.

Gpt that they have to hire people just to figure out how to navigate the Democrat says pool that is California.

That's not good.

That's not good.

And what could you say about the governor of a state that's so poorly run that Bed Bath and Beyond is not willing to do business in the state and Chad GBT had to hire expensive Democrat weasels to try to figure out how to do business with the state?

What would happen to that governor?

Well, obviously obviously his political career would be over.

What?

Oh, he is the highest polling person to be the presidential candidate.

Oh, okay.

So, we'll talk a little bit later about how Democrats are not taking the best advice, but what about Walmart?

Don't you think Walmart's having some issues with wokeness or DEI or uh do you think they're having some issues with tariffs?

Well, Walmart is once again, you know, arguably one of the most impressive companies in the history of the United States because their sales are up.

So, they've got a 4 4.6% sales increase in the last three months.

And that's even including the fact that they've got tariffs that are built into their prices.

Yeah.

Now, they have raised some of their prices because of tariffs, but only onethird of their goods come from overseas, and they're not passing along the entire cost of the tariffs.

They're they're absorbing some and passing some along, but it wasn't enough to decrease their sales.

And apparently I haven't heard of them doing anything that would make anybody mad about DEI or about trans or wokeness or any of that.

So somehow they've avoided all of that.

Good job Walmart.

Impressive.

Well, speaking of big companies doing stuff, Axios is reporting that Morgan Stanley did some data analysis and this is what Morgan Stanley came up with.

Now, I'm laughing because it used to be my day job at a big corporation to do financial uh estimates and projections and decide which path was the the best one financially.

So I have a little bit of appreciation of how accurate you can be in doing this, which is Morgan Stanley did an analysis of how much money AI could save the big uh companies and uh they said it could save them nearly $1 trillion a year um in reducing I think mostly employee costs.

So they came up with $1 trillion a year and um that's only the beginning.

They say long-term it could result in 13 to$16 trillion in market value creation for the companies in the index.

I figure that's the S&P 500 index.

I think that's what that means.

All right.

Do you believe I'm giving it away by laughing at it, but do you believe that Morgan Stanley has somebody on their payroll that can estimate the trillions of dollars of impact of AI?

No.

No.

They don't have anybody who knows how to do that.

This is pure Uh there was somebody who was no doubt assigned the project.

That's the sort of project I would have been assigned to.

Do you think I would have not produced the number?

Of course I would.

If I had been working for Morgan Stanley and they said, "Scott, got an important assignment for you.

It will be up to you to decide, you know, how much money can be saved by AI." And I'd be like, "All right.

And then I'd go off and I'd start making some assumptions.

Well, let's assume 46% of all the companies fire 20% of their staff within 8 months.

Uh, where did you get that assumption?

Um, look over there, it's a deer.

Change the subject.

Yeah.

No, you can't really do that kind of an estimate.

It's entirely possible that AI will just be wonderful and companies will make more money and all the people who lose their jobs will be instantly retrained and have AI as a buddy and they'll go off and make more.

It's all possible.

But if you tell me that anybody can estimate what's going to happen in even three years, no.

No, nobody can do that.

Um but Google's uh generative AI team according to futurism newer LCB is writing about this CBI I don't know um that uh there would be no point in getting a law degree or a medical degree if you were going to start today and the reason is that AI will just eat your lunch and you could get that expensive education it might take 7 to 11 become a practicing doctor, but by then there's almost no chance the AI won't do it better and cheaper and faster.

You'll still need nurse type people, you know, to put on splints and do physical stuff.

Well, I guess you could do a lot of that in hospitals.

Um, but in terms of analyzing something and prescribing something, I feel like I would agree that your regular doctors have some problems and lawyers, too.

But I will point out that uh um Chat GBT just had to hire some humans to help them navigate California.

And I suspect that one of the big advantages of big law firms is that they have connections.

Um they literally know the judge.

They uh you know their brother-in-law is in some political office.

So I suspect that the big law firms that uh charge a lot and get the most powerful people out of trouble and most powerful companies.

It probably is more about their weasly ways and who they know and what they've done and who owes them a favor.

And uh I don't know if AI can keep up with that.

I mean, they would use AI, but I suspect that the lawyers are going to get together and make make it illegal to have an AI only lawyer.

Imagine, imagine if you will, just a few years in the future where there's a uh a uh accused felon who goes to trial and says, "Your honor, um I'd like to uh exercise my right to have an AI attorney.

Uh we fed all the documents and it's ready to go." And then the AI just sits there in a box and argues against maybe another AI.

Is that going to happen?

I don't know.

Because you would have to train your AI to be somewhat dishonest.

Well, let's say dishonestly persuasive, especially if you were the defense and your client was guilty.

The only way your client can win is if your AI is a lying weasel, you know, just like a human would be defending you.

So, will it ever be legal for for AI to be programmed to lie to the jury to get a guilty person off?

I don't know.

I I feel like the existing lawyers are going to find ways to make it illegal to have an AI lawyer.

Now, will the medical community do the same?

Probably.

I would say um probably it won't be long before you start seeing stories in the news about somebody who died because they took advice from AI.

Oh, you know that's coming.

that it will be you know those stories will be planted by let's say you know some doctor the AMA or some doctor you know benefiting organization and suddenly your your brain will think wow AI just keeps killing people with bad advice oh it told him to take horse paste or whatever and then you'll say h I only want a human doctor and it will all be fake.

But the doctors will hire the human lawyers to make sure that it's illegal to have an AI only doctor because it's far too dangerous.

That's what they'll say.

Well, there's a physicist who believes he has a theory.

His name is Miguel Elubberry.

He has a theory for how to do faster than light um engines.

So sort of warp speed kind of thing faster than light.

And the way he would do it since it's impossible to go faster than light is instead of making the object go faster than light, you will bend space.

That's his proposition.

You could bend space so that there's uh let's see um so that there's less of it in front of you than there is behind you or something like that.

And then bending the space gives you the functional equivalent of traveling faster than light.

But you're technically not because within your, you know, your small local domain, you're not faster than light.

It's just that you're bending space in front of you that you're not in yet and behind you.

Now, does that make sense?

I don't know.

I mean, I may not have explained it perfectly, but uh does it seem possible that you could bend space in front of you and behind you?

I don't know how you do that.

We don't know how to do that now, right?

So, I wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for that.

But hey, you never know.

Mario Knoff found that story.

You should follow Mario Noel on X.

He does great summaries of the news every day.

Um Elon Musk has made a uh provocative and nonobvious uh re prediction.

He said that AI is going to obviously uh oneshot the human lyic system.

Now I don't know exactly what he means by that part but the real prediction comes next.

He said that said I predict counterintuitively that it will increase birth rate.

Mark my words.

And then he goes also we're going to program it that way.

Well, the only one he can program is is his, you know, Grock X AI.

Um, and I could certainly imagine that it would program it to optimize human reproduction, but I don't think the other AIs are going to necessarily do that, are they?

And it also seems to me like that could be its own set of problems.

I feel like maybe AI should just stay out of it.

But hey, you know, he he's obviously got a he's done more thinking on this specific topic than I have, so he might have something.

I'll uh I'll be open-minded on that.

But why would AI increase birth rates?

He does say it's counterintuitive, but that he doesn't help us out with the reasoning.

Do you see it?

How many of you is it because the AI will hypnotize us into reproducing?

Is it because the AI will take away all our uh workload and we won't have much to do and we'll be staying home and so it'll be like well if we're going to be home a lot we won't have any problems washing the kids.

we don't need.

So may maybe it just makes life easier and maybe it makes it easier to afford things too.

We might get to the point where, you know, energy and housing costs are all low because the robots are building the houses and, you know, we we've solved energy by just having smarter, you know, nuclear power and stuff.

So, I don't think this is going to happen right away, but I can imagine getting to the point where if you're a family or let's just say you're married, that you wouldn't have anything to do unless you had kids.

So, might be that having families is the only thing that will have meaning because you won't be able to get meaning through work.

The robots will be doing the work.

So, I think he might be right, you know, as I'm as I'm thinking it through.

Um, I could if you could get to the point where people don't have to work and everybody has enough of the basics, yeah, people will be bored and they're going to want to just have babies probably.

Well, did you know according to Cell Press that reading for pleasure in the US has decreased over the past 20 years?

Um, do you think they needed to do a study of that?

I feel like I would have known that.

Isn't that purely because of alternative uses of our time?

You know, if you've got a phone in your hand, um, you don't need to read that much.

Now, personally, I read way more now than uh than I did before computers because you know, it was only rarely that I'd pick up a book.

But, uh, you know, if if you're on the internet all day, if you're on X or you're reading stuff all day.

I mean, I read probably the equivalent of about a quarter or half of a book just getting ready to do this podcast.

I mean, the amount the amount that I read in the past two hours is pretty pretty uh large amount.

So, yeah, reading for pleasure.

I was trying to remember the last time I read fiction for pleasure and I couldn't even remember.

I think it was, you can help me out on this.

Um, I've I've read non-fiction books, of course, but fiction for pleasure.

Probably the last one was the second Harry Potter book.

So, if you told me what year that was, the second Harry Potter book when it just came out, I think this might be the last book I read for pleasure.

That was a while ago.

Anyway, um according to Newsweek, some schools are going to test out uh schools in Florida are going to test out putting armed drones in schools um to defend against school shooters.

Now, when I say armed, I don't mean necessarily with bullets, but rather it would have pepper spray and some some kind of glass breaking device so it doesn't get trapped beyond a glass door, I guess.

Um, and what would happen is if there was a if somebody did the secret button, um, presumably it would be an administrator who did it, then the drone would take off and it would be operated remotely by somebody who would know to do it and they would look for that uh, that shooter and at the very least, you know, they'd get more information about the shooter, but it could also interfere with them.

So the the drone could try peppering him and you know he's going to have to turn his the shooter would have to turn its attention on the drone just so the drone didn't take him out.

So that would be fun.

That seems like a good idea.

We'll know because you could deploy that drone in like five seconds.

Well, I'm loving watching the bad advice that Democrats are giving to other Democrats.

Um, James Scarville was on some show talking about what the Democrats should have done when JD Vance took his summer vacation because I guess he went to England and a place called Oxford Shshire.

He took the family and uh that's sort of an upscale place in England.

And James Carville says that the Democrats should have hammered him because there are vacation spots in the United States that are not doing as well as they could be doing.

And what's he doing taking his American money wasting it overseas?

And he says that they should have just been all over him on that and made a big deal about it.

Is that some of the worst advice you've ever heard?

How many people care where the vice president is taking his family on vacation?

How many people care about that?

Most Americans would be perfectly happy to take an overseas vacation.

You know, different countries they might prefer, but is there any American who doesn't think that they would like to take an overseas vacation someday?

And do we really think that we're all going to be taking the same kind of vacation as the president and the vice president of the United States?

That is ridiculous.

It's just the worst advice.

If the Can you imagine some Democrat voter?

It's like, well, you know, uh uh I was uh going to vote for Trump, but then I found out that JD Vance and his family went on a vacation in Oxford Shshire, England.

That changes everything.

Are the Democrats of this lost?

That that seemed like good advice.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

In other news, um, apparently the, uh, Arctic sea ice, the Guardian was reporting on this, there's a new study that says that the Arctic sea sea ice has not reduced um, in 20 years.

Now, if you believed in climate change and you believe the planet's getting warmer and uh it might be might be getting warmer, but wouldn't you also predict that that warming would increase the ice loss?

Well, apparently it didn't happen.

However, instead of saying, "Uh-oh, it looks like our prediction models are wrong cuz you can't go 20 years without losing some sea ice if the planet's getting warmer." No.

Instead, the the climate people say that they have at least two climate models that would uh allow for such long pauses, including another 10 years.

So they say that there are two existing credible climate models which would allow the planet to get warmer for 30 years but the ice in the Arctic not to change for those same 30 years.

Does that sound even a little bit like they they know what they're doing and they've got a they got a handle on this thing?

It sounds like a Dilbert response, right?

Well, yeah.

My prediction model is no matter how warm it gets or for how long, the ice won't melt.

All right.

Okay.

Got it.

Well, I don't know what to believe there, but you know what I always say?

Wait until you find out about climate models.

It's so funny.

I I think people are slowly starting to get the idea when they see that every other thing in our environment is fake.

The news is fake.

Our employment data is fake.

Um certainly all of our casualty numbers from war all fake.

The reasons we get in war all fake.

Um the Russia hoax all fake.

Um most of our political stuff all fake.

But people still believe that the most ridiculous of all those things, the climate models, that we could somehow monitor, we could somehow model climate into the future, that we still believe that one's real when all the other things from Yeah.

from flu deaths to everything else are all fake.

And we know they're fake.

But there's one thing Oh, that one's true.

You know what I'd love to see since the best argument for the non-scientist is that there are so many scientists who say it's true.

How how many other topics has science had 98% in agreement?

We'll just rand I know it's not 98%.

But let's just say I 90%.

How many how many items in science have had 90% agreement and then later turned out not to be true?

I feel like there's a pretty long list, isn't there?

Certainly the uh nutrition pyramid probably had 90% agreement of dieticians and whatnot and that was fake, right?

So if you knew how many times science had been wrong when nine out of 10 scientists believed something was true, wouldn't that change how you saw the climate stuff?

They would that would be important context and I don't know it I don't think you know it either but certainly there yeah certainly eggs are bad I'm seeing some other some other examples go by yeah and then we believe that our elections are pristine really everything's broken but our elections are fine and climate science once you realize that everything is fake If it's complicated and there's a lot of money involved and it really matters, it's definitely fake.

All right.

Um, Scott Bent was asked about uh getting a trade deal with China, which we don't have yet.

And Breitar News Ian Hanset is writing about this.

And apparently uh Bess's take is that we don't need a deal because we've uh passed tariffs along and the tariffs include things like you know grotesque higher tariff because of fentinol and apparently um China is our biggest source of tariff money right now.

Now I'll remind you it doesn't mean that China is paying it although in some cases they might by taking lower profit margins but uh the company that's importing is still paying it but uh apparently China is not complaining too much and we're getting all kinds of revenue toward uh you know the deficit and we don't really need to do anything.

I have to admit I did not see that coming.

I did not see us getting to the point where our trade deal with China is, you know what, if they want to keep having these tariffs, we we'll be happy to keep them on there.

So, he just instead of uh solving the problem, um Trump monetized it as he does.

And Bassan says, "If it's not broke, don't fix it." So, he's happy to just plot along and keep the tariff money.

Well, the US has a bunch of warships and 4,000 marines off the coast of Venezuela because Madura, the leader, is accused of being more cartel than national leader, although he's both.

And uh I guess Maduro is uh activating a bunch of reserves.

So he's got millions of soldiers just in case.

And uh I'm going to give you my conspiracy theory of the day.

Now, I wouldn't say that I believe this is true, but um some of you are going to say that's a pretty good conspiracy theory.

You ready?

Like many of you, I also believe that when a president gets in office, that there's something like what I'm going to describe that happens.

Maybe not exactly this, but it's what you imagine happens.

That someday some spooky guy, it's always a guy in a nice suit, will visit the new president and say, "Let me explain to you how it works.

The military-industrial complex runs the country and you're going to give us at least one ongoing war all the time.

If you don't, we will probably take you out one way or the other.

What?

Take me out?

What do you mean?

Like kill me if we have to.

But the important thing is the country needs at least one war all the time.

So, what if, and again, this is just um I'm having fun with a conspiracy theory, so don't believe this.

This is just for fun.

What if Trump knows that?

And so, in order to end the war in Ukraine, he knows the only way to do it is to promise a brand new war really fast.

And so, again, it's just for fun.

I'm I'm not I'm not alleging that this is true.

So then what he do is put a bunch of military forces around Venezuela because you could credibly believe that he might be planning for a war and then you say to that spooky guy in the suit, "Hey, uh here's a deal.

If you help me get out of the Ukraine situation, we'll start something locally and we'll we'll have a brand new one with Venezuela.

Deal.

How do you like that for a conspiracy theory?

That's the most cynical you could get.

That we that what matters is we have to have a war.

So when you see the new one getting queued up just in time.

Huh?

Isn't that weird?

It's just in time because the other one might be ending.

Huh.

That's a little bit of a coincidence, isn't it?

Well, it might be just a coincidence, so don't take it too seriously, but uh we'll see what happens in Venezuela.

Um, apparently the Department of Homeland Security has pulled funding from groups that are quote, uh, alleged terrorist ties.

Um, how much money does our government have that we don't know that some of it is going to organizations that have uh terrorist connections?

Well, turns out there's a good reason to believe we've been giving money to some groups that had terrorist connections.

Um, we're giving way too much money away.

Um, so Fox News Digital got this scoop, I guess.

49 projects with alleged affiliations to terrorist activities have already been cancelled.

49 49 funded projects that our government and your taxpaying money went to support have some kind of terrorist connection.

It took until now to say, "Hey, hey, maybe we shouldn't be giving them money." All right.

All right.

And in related news, Tulsi Gabbard, head out of the DNI, um is now sweeping overall and is going to get rid of 40% of staff.

Um, I love the fact that even though uh Trump is not crowing about his cost savings in government, that it seems like all the department heads know that uh winning means cutting costs.

And so they're all doing it and there it's almost like they're competing to see who can cut the most because that's how you win favor.

But it is strange that Trump's not bragging about it.

Good.

Just a minute.

All right, I'm back.

All right.

So, um, the reason that the Democrats are losing so many uh, registered voters, I guess there's a 4.5 million voters swing from Democrat to Republican in the last few years.

And a poll uh by a Democrat super PAC, Unite the Country, showed that uh what Democrats thought of their own party is that it was out of touch, woke, and weak.

Out of touch, woke, and weak.

And so apparently their response to being out of touch, woke, and weak is to talk more and mock Trump more.

Does that sound like what the country wants from them?

Now, I would agree.

It might be that the poll did get those results and that that's what people said.

But don't you think that being strong and not being out of touch would involve having good policies for solving our big problems as opposed to finding a clever way to do a skit that involves mocking Trump?

No, the theater kids only have one play.

What kind of theater can we put on u to get power?

Um the the Russia Russia gate hoax was theater, was it not?

It was literally imaginary characters with an imaginary plot.

It was fiction.

Most of the hoaxes from the 51 Intel people with the laptop to the fine people hoax to the January 6 hoax um they're all fiction.

So, and then you've got uh Nuome who's doing this clever but not really effective u mockery of President Trump by doing social media posts in his voice.

Um, to me that seems out of touch because it's not addressing any problem and it seems um it's not woke, it's just ignoring woke.

Um, and it feels weak.

So, do you notice that the reason that uh that mockery of Trump works is that everybody knows how he talks?

And Trump has proven that the way he talks is the most persuasive and effective way anybody could ever talk.

We all kind of know that now.

We didn't know that when he first ran for the first uh first term, but at this point, everybody who is paying attention knows, okay, he he doesn't talk like other people, but it's the most effective political talking we've ever seen.

So when you mock the most effective political communication you've ever seen by simply matching it, you haven't really mocked anything.

You haven't mocked anything because the thing that he's mocking is well understood to be the the superior form of communication.

If he mocked something that wasn't working, well then he'd have something, right?

But you can't mock something that worked so well and made him president twice.

The way Trump communicates is not a flaw.

It's not the thing that the country needs to get rid of at all.

It It's very effective.

So, I don't think that mocking the most effective form of communication we've ever seen in that domain is buying them much, but it's a skit.

And the important thing, if you're a Democrat, apparently, is to be part of a play.

And so, Nuome's got this little character he plays that's like the president.

And so he's happy because Democrats are saying, "Yeah, look at that.

He's playing a part.

Look at that play.

I want to bring my friends to the play.

I got a ticket." They they seriously are about the act.

They really are about the act.

Now, of course, all politics is a little bit acting, but not like this.

This is literally living in fiction world and having uh no regard whatsoever to policies or uh the things which you would imagine would help them more.

Well, Texas indeed passed its new uh redistricting map, so it looks like they'll get some extra seats in the house.

and uh Nuome um won in California courts.

I guess the Republicans tried to stop him from his plans of redistricting California, but he probably will now.

Uh first he has to win the power to do it in a referendum.

Uh but he might he might get that.

And uh Trump has announced that Missouri is going to redistrict.

So Trump says he wants all the Republican states that haven't to redistrict.

And in if if you believe the reporting on this, if all the Republicans did it and all the Democrats did it that haven't done it yet, at least to the max, um the Republicans would come out way ahead.

I'm not a 100% sure that's true, but uh looks like a good play for Trump.

And uh I guess Democ not Democrats, but people are beginning to receive letters in the mail saying that they have to complete 15 hours of community service per week in order to get their uh benefits.

Um they don't like taking time out of their day to get benefits.

So, we'll see how see how that goes.

I guess Trump has threatened to cut funding to uh California public schools if they don't follow the uh federal policy on not allowing trans athletes in women's sports and sometimes if they cheat on DEI.

So, we'll see if any schools lose their funding for that.

Uh Chris Quuomo, I didn't realize this, but Chris Quuomo is not a Democrat.

I I assume he was at one point, but he was talking to uh Benny Johnson and he was talking about, you know, what the Democrat party has become.

It was pretty brutal.

Um apparently he thinks that the Democrats become the party of elitism, open borders, socialism, and defunding the police.

and that those ideas are so bad they killed the modern Democratic party.

He says the uh the Democratic Party that his father was a part of no longer exists and he doesn't know why.

Um he doesn't know why his brother is still registered as a Democrat.

So as supportive as he is of his own brother, he he can't even say that the brother belongs to a party for a good reason.

He goes, "My brother's a Democrat.

I don't know why, but he is.

My father was a Democrat, but his party doesn't exist anymore." Well, here's what I think.

Cuomo um in his current opinion of the Democrats and not wanting to be one of them feels like where Bill Maher is being drawn.

I don't think Bill Maher is going to make it, you know, over the line.

I I think that you just he'll have to stop before he becomes a Republican.

And it's not like Chris Cuomo became a Republican.

You know, he's an independent.

But do you think it's possible that Bill Maher will be, you know, pulled so far that he just, you know, denounces the Democrats and says, "All right, I just can't even support you anymore." I feel like, uh, he's really close.

So he might I don't think he's he'll ever become a Republican, but he doesn't need to.

He just needs to denounce the badness.

um this um the issue that uh Trump has created with this Smithsonian and the other museums.

He wants the uh museums to focus more on the positive accomplishments of America and less focused around an emphasis on slavery.

And uh to this point, Molly Hemingway was reporting on on X.

She said, "I overheard an older white woman sitting behind me on a plane ride today talking to her husband.

She was a gasast at the idea that the Smithsonian might not make the history of slavery the centerpiece of the institution." Now, we all agree that slavery was a big part of the story of the, you know, the early United States.

So, everybody agrees with that.

But does it make sense that your museum focuses on the thing that was the worst part?

Well, depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

If what you're trying to accomplish with your museum is a history lesson, well, then you just make sure that it covers all the history.

And slavery was a big part of it.

But if you're trying to make uh Americans feel good about being Americans, which I feel like is the more important use for the national museums.

There could be private museums that do whatever they want, but for a national museum, I feel like it should absolutely be focusing on the positive so that we'd feel positive about the country.

But I will go further than that.

I believe that the more attention it's giving to slavery as the original sin and biggest part of our history, it's all bad for black Americans today.

Does anybody know why?

It's something I've taught you many times and it's just glaringly obvious in this case and here it is.

People don't think logically.

They think by association.

So if you can say somebody was good friends with Epstein, you can ruin them even if they didn't do anything wrong because it's just the association.

What does it do to modern black Americans if when um you're thinking of black Americans, you're thinking of slavery because it's just in your mind and it's really part of the narrative.

What does that do to how you feel about black Americans and how they feel about themselves and how they fit in?

Well, since being a slave would be a horrible association, you're taking modern black Americans and you're making you're making people think about their existence as slaves.

That is the worst association you could ever put on anybody if you want them to be successful in the modern world.

So from a history perspective, yeah, if you're just trying to describe what happened, of course you want to include as much of the history of slavery as makes sense, of course.

But if you're trying for people to be happy and successful, then persuasion and how people feel about things and associations and the psychological impact of things has to be a big part of the the decision.

And I can tell you for sure that black Americans would be way better off if there were some device that you could hold up to everybody's head to make them forget that slavery ever happened.

If you could make everybody forget that slavery had ever happened, then black people would wake up in the morning and say, "Huh, I guess anything's possible." And they would just work toward their best life and they would have the best outcomes that, you know, are possible in the in the real world.

But will that ever happen?

No, that will never happen because there are people who make money by emphasizing the negative parts.

So, as long as there's a business to be made in emphasizing the negative, people will do it.

Um, yeah.

So, that's what I think.

Um, Elon Musk has denied on X.

The Wall Street Journal's report that he's decided to uh scrap his third party idea.

He has not decided um definitively to scrap that in favor of supporting JD Vance.

So, uh Musk told us to not believe everything you read in the Wall Street Journal.

So, we won't believe that until we have some confirmation if it ever comes.

Well, the University of California in San Francisco reports that uh at UCSF they discovered a protein that reverses brain aging in mice.

How many times have you seen a story in the news that somebody reversed aging in a mouse?

I feel like this story has been coming out for 40 or 50 years every few weeks.

Hey, we discovered something that will reverse aging in a mouse.

Now, how many things have reversed aging in human beings?

Zero.

Is there any pill that I could buy that I'm not that would reverse my aging?

And yet, and yet every freaking week for 50 years, we figured out how to reverse aging in a mouse.

Uh, you should not believe anything that is reported about success with a mouse.

The the percentage of those that translate into a real, you know, functional human medical process is really low.

It's very unusual, but the way the news reports it, it makes you think, wait, it worked on the mouse, and they wouldn't bother testing it on the mouse unless I would tell you something about whether it would work on a human being.

So, wow, this is promising.

No, it's not.

It's not promising.

It's the the odds of any of this ever seeing the light of day and turning into a pill that will reverse your your brain's age is really really low.

Like really really low.

So low don't even think about it.

Anyway, so I've noticed that Ukraine and the Ukrainians have what I call a sunk cost problem.

So in economics, a sunk cost is money you've already spent.

So what you should never do is say, "Damn it, I've already spent so much in this project that I have to keep spending more to finish it." No, you don't.

The amount that you've already spent is just gone.

You should make your decision as if it didn't make any difference at all.

And uh gamblers would do the same.

If you're gambling and you've lost, you know, a million dollars so far.

If you say to yourself, I can't stop now because I've already I'm down a million.

I got to win it back.

That's some cost.

You should look at every bet as if it's a new decision independent of anything you've already done.

And likewise, the Ukrainians uh often are saying stuff like, "We can't give up any land to Putin because so many Ukrainians have died trying to keep that land." To which I say, "That's a sunken cost.

Those people are not going to pop back to life no matter what you do.

They are just gone.

And while you can respect their sacrifice, you should not be making your new decisions based on the fact that they died.

And it looks like they are doing that and that's a sunk cost fallacy.

Now, I don't know if the leaders are doing that, but you're hearing that from, you know, Ukrainians.

uh we can't can't give this land up because people so many people sacrificed to um to try to keep it.

You should count that as zero.

If if millions of Ukrainians died trying to protect that land, zero.

You should not include that in your decision.

However, since we're not a logical species, we're a persuadable psychologically uh emotional species, it does matter if people feel like they they can't make a certain decision.

But you you need to separate what is them feeling a certain way.

Oh, we can't give up this land because we've sacrificed so much with what makes sense.

What makes sense is it doesn't matter at all how many people died protecting trying to protect that land.

It doesn't matter.

It's already over.

They're dead.

You have to make your decision like you woke up into the game today and the only thing you know is what what's true going forward.

So here's my prediction.

I think Putin is going to keep yanking the football.

We're already seeing some indications that uh Putin isn't so keen on getting a deal, which would be no surprise.

And eventually um if it hasn't happened already, whatever good will Putin has developed with Trump will evaporate and reverse really quickly.

And when Trump decides that he's pissed off at Putin and there's no redeeming, it's going to get ugly.

And I'm almost guaranteeing that's where it's going to go.

I don't think Putin is going to deal with uh Trump and with Europe and Ukraine in a productive way.

I don't think he wants to.

I don't think he plans to because time is on his side.

and he probably thinks that Trump and the Europeans have used all of their uh all their chips, that there's not much else they can do to him and he can just last forever.

But as I mentioned before, um India went from 1% of its oil that it purchased being from Russia to 40%.

And it turns out that the reason it went so high is that it's not that they're buying it to use it in India, but some entities in India are buying it and reselling it because it's cheap oil.

So they're just keeping the difference.

So basically some Indian entities and there can't be that many of them because you would have to be in that specific line of business.

How many people are in that line of business that they can move gigantic amounts of oil from one country to another?

can't be that many people.

I think that Trump says to India, here's the deal.

You've got half a dozen companies that are allowing uh Russia to move its oil.

I know you India as a government want to keep good relationship with uh with Putin.

However, there's nothing that's going to stop us from taking out your six companies.

Their CEOs are going to start dropping dead.

uh we will sanction them individually.

We'll just take out those companies.

And what will India do?

Will India say, "You can't do that.

I want to protect my companies that are thwarting the sanctions on Russia so that the Ukrainian war will last longer." What are they going to do?

Well, I don't know the full situation.

So, you know, I'm I'm in in way over my head talking about Indian buying and reselling oil.

But if it's true that there are a handful of companies in India, they're keeping Russia alive, I believe that we could target them.

I believe that we could just tell India, look, you know, there those companies are going to start having some real bad luck.

And you might not know where that came from, but trust us, those companies are going to have some real bad luck, and it's going to happen really fast.

So, here's what I think.

I think Putin is going to believe that he can get away with uh stalling and that will cause the Europeans to be mad at Trump and that'll all be good for Russia.

But I think Trump is going to say, um, you've now crossed the line and now I'm going to take your economy and maybe it will be the India play.

Maybe not.

But I do think that there is um, let's say an a more aggressive way that Trump could just take the knees out and I think he would do it.

So, I think that's where it's headed.

And maybe something with giving Ukraine better weapons, too.

That might happen.

Trump's uh $464 million civil fraud penalty was vacated on appeal.

Really?

So, Zero Hedge is reporting that the Was that not the Leticia James case with the banks?

and uh that just got thrown out on appeal if if that's true.

So, we'll see.

Anyway, you know what is the dumbest comment?

I just saw the dumbest comment here on locals.

Bad take.

Bad take.

Bad take.

I don't think once someone has ever told me I had a bad take and then could follow it up with what was wrong with it.

As soon as I hear bad dick, I just think, "Oh, you're idiot." Because if you had a real reason, it would have taken about as many words as bad take.

You know, you could have said something like, "That's not how that works." Or, "Well, that that's too generic, too." Uh, CNBC reported it as well.

Wow.

Wow.

Now, does that mean that he's not guilty of any of those charges or that he just doesn't have to pay?

I wonder what that means.

I don't know how that works.

All right, we'll look into that.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to talk to the uh the beautiful people, my beloved people on locals, subscribers, and the rest of you.

Thanks for joining.

Hope you enjoyed it.

See if we can end some wars.

All right, locals.

I'll be coming at you privately in 30 seconds if it works.

All right, that feature is not working today.

Or is it?

Let me try.

We almost have a quorum so we can

redistrict.

No, there won't be any redistricting

today. Not here anyway.

Texas. Yeah, maybe.

All right. Once your comments are

working, we'll get busy

with the show that you can't wait to

hear.

Good morning everybody and welcome to

the highlight of human civilization.

It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and

you've never had a better time. But if

you'd like to take a chance on elevating

your experience up to levels that no one

could even understand with their tiny

shiny human brains.

Well, all you need for that is a copper

immug glass, a tankered shell or a ste a

canteen jugger flask, a vessel of any

kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.

I like coffee. And join me now for the

unparallel pleasure of the dopamine of

the day thing that makes everything

better. It's called the simultaneous

sip. It happens now. Go.

M pretty good.

Pretty good. Not the best, but it's

right up there. Well, the uh restaurant

chain called Cracker Barrel

has decided to go broke,

but uh the way they'll get there is by

going woke. So, apparently they have a

newish CEO, a woman who's uh quite

gung-ho for all things DEI. And one of

the things they did was they removed

from their logo the old man uh who who I

always thought was a cracker

and then he was leaning on a barrel. So

they got rid of the cracker and they got

rid of the barrel.

I don't know what's left.

Well, if you had to guess,

uh, what is most likely? Is it most

likely that their move toward DEI and

making a big deal about it and changing

their logo and getting rid of the old

white man on the logo? Is that going to

help their bottom line?

If you had to guess, would you guess?

Well, this will all work out.

Well, let's uh check in with um Target

Target stores who went through their own

uh wokeness

uh tuck friendly swimsuit uh kind of

event and I'm reading from Red State.

Bob Hogue is writing in red state

that uh let's see uh their target CEO is

leaving his post next year

and it looks like they never really

recovered

um from their their wokeness uh drama.

But here's the funny thing. Um

the way CNN describes it is that the

problem is a backlash to its retreat on

DEI. So if you get your news from CNN,

it will say the problem with uh Target

sales is not that people didn't like

them being woke, but rather they didn't

like when they were woke and then they

became less woke. So, it was the

becoming less woke because there was

such an uproar that that really hurt

their sales.

What do you think? Was it the being woke

or was it the retreating from being woke

that hurt their sales? Well, probably

both. My guess is that anytime you

change anything, it gives somebody a

reason not to not to shop there. But

what it definitely didn't do is give

somebody a reason to shop if they didn't

already have one. It could give you a

reason not to shop either way because

they got too woke or they retreated from

the woke. But which of those things

would cause you to buy more? Would you

say, "Oh, Target's really woke now. I'm

going to buy a few extra pairs of

pants."

No. It can only go one direction.

Whether you go woke or you go less woke,

it can only cost you customers just

because it's a change and there's no way

there's an upside. So, we'll see.

Meanwhile, Kroger stores have announced

that they're going to close multiple

supermarkets in Washington state due to

crime, according to the Gateway Pundit.

Mike Leance is writing about that. And

uh what do you think of that? So Kroger

has uh decided that instead of staying

in the high crime area, they're going to

get the f out of there. Huh. Well,

that's uh that's some advice, isn't it?

I wonder if they could get cancelled for

saying that they should get out of a

high crime area. I feel like they should

be cancelled for that. No, no, just

kidding. Don't don't hurt Kroger. Um,

but what will happen? Will Kroger's

sales go up or down? Well, they'll have

fewer sales in the high crime area, but

they probably were losing money and

employees, too. Meanwhile, Bed Bath and

Beyond, which at one point was bankrupt,

but I guess got rescued by some big

money entity.

But uh they're trying to rebuild and

they have announced that they will not

build any stores in California.

Can can you even hold this in your head

that California

is uninvestable

if you're a big company? They've just

said there's overregulation and taxes

and um basically those two things,

overregulation and taxes. So they say

it's just not even worth it. It's too

risky. So the two risky places to do

business, three uh well four if you

count Ukraine

um would be China, Ukraine,

Gaza, and California.

uh but also uh fairly Washington state

but also Washington DC.

So there's a whole bunch of places you

just don't want to be.

And unfortunately I live in one of those

places. So I'm thinking of moving to

Ukraine for the friendly business

environment.

Well, Sam Alman, uh, head of, uh, Chat

GPT,

uh, apparently, according to Zero Hedge,

has hired some top Democrat operatives

to help them, uh, grease the gears, so

to speak, as Zero Hedge puts it, grease

the gears with California politicians,

um, because they need to restructure the

company and eventually go public. and

they need California to be a friendly

business environment. Do you know what

will happen if they don't get what they

want? This is uh in Politico, by the

way. Um well, will they leave

California?

What will their AI tell them to do?

But uh it seems unbelievable to me that

uh a company as big as uh OpenAI and

ChatGpt that they have to hire people

just to figure out how to navigate the

Democrat says pool that is California.

That's not good. That's not good. And

what could you say about the governor of

a state that's so poorly run that Bed

Bath and Beyond is not willing to do

business in the state and Chad GBT had

to hire expensive Democrat weasels to

try to figure out how to do business

with the state? What would happen to

that governor? Well, obviously obviously

his political career would be over.

What? Oh, he is the highest polling

person to be the presidential candidate.

Oh, okay. So, we'll talk a little bit

later about how Democrats are not taking

the best advice, but what about Walmart?

Don't you think Walmart's having some

issues with wokeness or DEI or uh do you

think they're having some issues with

tariffs?

Well, Walmart is once again, you know,

arguably one of the most impressive

companies in the history of the United

States because their sales are up. So,

they've got a 4 4.6% sales increase in

the last three months.

And that's even including the fact that

they've got tariffs that are built into

their prices. Yeah. Now, they have

raised some of their prices because of

tariffs, but only onethird of their

goods come from overseas,

and they're not passing along the entire

cost of the tariffs. They're they're

absorbing some and passing some along,

but it wasn't enough to decrease their

sales. And apparently I haven't heard of

them doing anything that would make

anybody mad about DEI or about trans or

wokeness or any of that. So somehow

they've avoided all of that. Good job

Walmart.

Impressive.

Well, speaking of big companies doing

stuff, Axios is reporting that Morgan

Stanley did some data analysis and this

is what Morgan Stanley came up with.

Now, I'm laughing because it used to be

my day job at a big corporation to do

financial uh estimates and projections

and decide which path was the the best

one financially. So I have a little bit

of appreciation

of how accurate you can be in doing

this, which is Morgan Stanley did an

analysis of how much money AI could save

the big uh companies and uh they said it

could save them nearly $1 trillion a

year

um in reducing I think mostly employee

costs.

So they came up with $1 trillion a year

and

um

that's only the beginning.

They say long-term it could result in 13

to$16 trillion in market value creation

for the companies in the index.

I figure that's the S&P 500 index. I

think that's what that means. All right.

Do you believe

I'm giving it away by laughing at it,

but do you believe that Morgan Stanley

has somebody on their payroll that can

estimate the trillions of dollars of

impact of AI?

No. No. They don't have anybody who

knows how to do that. This is pure

Uh there was somebody who was

no doubt assigned the project.

That's the sort of project I would have

been assigned to. Do you think I would

have not produced the number? Of course

I would. If I had been working for

Morgan Stanley and they said, "Scott,

got an important assignment for you. It

will be up to you to decide, you know,

how much money can be saved by AI." And

I'd be like, "All right.

And then I'd go off and I'd start making

some assumptions. Well, let's assume

46% of all the companies fire 20% of

their staff within 8 months.

Uh, where did you get that assumption?

Um, look over there, it's a deer. Change

the subject. Yeah. No, you can't really

do that kind of an estimate. It's

entirely possible that AI will just be

wonderful and companies will make more

money and all the people who lose their

jobs will be instantly retrained and

have AI as a buddy and they'll go off

and make more. It's all possible. But if

you tell me that anybody can estimate

what's going to happen in even three

years, no. No, nobody can do that.

Um but Google's uh generative AI team

according to futurism newer LCB is

writing about this CBI I don't know um

that uh there would be no point in

getting a law degree or a medical degree

if you were going to start today and the

reason is that AI will just eat your

lunch and you could get that expensive

education it might take 7 to 11

become a practicing doctor,

but by then there's almost no chance the

AI won't do it better and cheaper and

faster.

You'll still need nurse type people, you

know, to put on splints and do physical

stuff. Well, I guess you could do a lot

of that in hospitals. Um, but in terms

of analyzing something and prescribing

something,

I feel like I would agree that your

regular doctors have some problems and

lawyers, too. But I will point out that

uh

um Chat GBT just had to hire some humans

to help them navigate California.

And I suspect that one of the big

advantages of big law firms is that they

have connections. Um they literally know

the judge. They uh you know their

brother-in-law is in some political

office.

So I suspect that the big law firms

that uh charge a lot and get the most

powerful people out of trouble and most

powerful companies. It probably is more

about their weasly ways and who they

know and what they've done and who owes

them a favor. And uh I don't know if AI

can keep up with that. I mean, they

would use AI, but I suspect that the

lawyers are going to get together and

make make it illegal to have an AI only

lawyer.

Imagine,

imagine if you will, just a few years in

the future where there's a uh a uh

accused felon who goes to trial and

says, "Your honor, um I'd like to uh

exercise my right to have an AI

attorney. Uh we fed all the documents

and it's ready to go." And then the AI

just sits there in a box and argues

against maybe another AI.

Is that going to happen?

I don't know. Because you would have to

train your AI to be somewhat dishonest.

Well, let's say dishonestly persuasive,

especially if you were the defense and

your client was guilty. The only way

your client can win is if your AI is a

lying weasel, you know, just like a

human would be defending you.

So, will it ever be legal for for AI to

be programmed to lie to the jury to get

a guilty person off? I don't know. I I

feel like the existing lawyers are going

to find ways to make it illegal to have

an AI lawyer.

Now, will the medical community do the

same? Probably.

I would say um probably it won't be long

before you start seeing stories in the

news about somebody who died because

they took advice from AI.

Oh, you know that's coming. that it will

be you know those stories will be

planted by let's say you know some

doctor the AMA or some doctor you know

benefiting organization

and suddenly your your brain will think

wow AI just keeps killing people with

bad advice oh it told him to take horse

paste or whatever and then you'll say h

I only want a human doctor

and it will all be fake. But the doctors

will hire the human lawyers to make sure

that it's illegal to have an AI only

doctor because it's far too dangerous.

That's what they'll say.

Well, there's a physicist who believes

he has a theory. His name is Miguel

Elubberry. He has a theory for how to do

faster than light um engines. So sort of

warp speed kind of thing faster than

light. And the way he would do it since

it's impossible to go faster than light

is instead of making the object go

faster than light, you will bend space.

That's his proposition. You could bend

space so that there's uh let's see um so

that there's less of it in front of you

than there is behind you or something

like that. And then bending the space

gives you the functional equivalent of

traveling faster than light. But you're

technically not because within your, you

know, your small local domain, you're

not faster than light. It's just that

you're bending space in front of you

that you're not in yet and behind you.

Now, does that make sense? I don't know.

I mean, I may not have explained it

perfectly,

but uh does it seem possible that you

could bend space in front of you and

behind you? I don't know how you do

that. We don't know how to do that now,

right? So, I wouldn't be holding my

breath waiting for that. But hey, you

never know.

Mario Knoff found that story.

You should follow Mario Noel on X. He

does great summaries of the news every

day.

Um

Elon Musk has made a uh provocative and

nonobvious uh re prediction. He said

that AI

is going to obviously uh oneshot the

human lyic system. Now I don't know

exactly what he means by that part but

the real prediction comes next. He said

that said I predict counterintuitively

that it will increase birth rate. Mark

my words. And then he goes also we're

going to program it that way. Well, the

only one he can program is is his, you

know, Grock X AI. Um,

and I could certainly imagine that it

would program it to optimize human

reproduction, but I don't think the

other AIs are going to necessarily do

that, are they? And it also seems to me

like that could be its own set of

problems. I feel like maybe AI should

just stay out of it.

But hey, you know, he he's obviously got

a he's done more thinking on this

specific topic than I have, so he might

have something. I'll uh I'll be

open-minded on that. But why would AI

increase birth rates? He does say it's

counterintuitive, but that he doesn't

help us out with the reasoning.

Do you see it? How many of you is it

because the AI will hypnotize us into

reproducing? Is it because the AI will

take away all our uh workload

and we won't have much to do and we'll

be staying home and so it'll be like

well if we're going to be home a lot we

won't have any problems washing the

kids. we don't need. So may maybe it

just makes life easier and maybe it

makes it easier to afford things too. We

might get to the point where, you know,

energy and housing costs are all low

because the robots are building the

houses and, you know, we we've solved

energy

by just having smarter, you know,

nuclear power and stuff. So, I don't

think this is going to happen right

away, but I can imagine getting to the

point where if you're a family or let's

just say you're married, that you

wouldn't have anything to do unless you

had kids.

So, might be that having families is the

only thing that will have meaning

because you won't be able to get meaning

through work. The robots will be doing

the work. So, I think he might be right,

you know, as I'm as I'm thinking it

through. Um, I could if you could get to

the point where people don't have to

work and everybody has enough of the

basics, yeah, people will be bored and

they're going to want to just have

babies probably.

Well, did you know according to Cell

Press that reading for pleasure in the

US has decreased over the past 20 years?

Um, do you think they needed to do a

study of that? I feel like I would have

known that. Isn't that purely because of

alternative uses of our time? You know,

if you've got a phone in your hand, um,

you don't need to read that much. Now,

personally, I read

way more now than uh than I did before

computers

because you know, it was only rarely

that I'd pick up a book. But, uh, you

know, if if you're on the internet all

day, if you're on X or you're reading

stuff all day. I mean, I read probably

the equivalent of about a quarter or

half of a book just getting ready to do

this podcast. I mean, the amount the

amount that I read in the past two hours

is pretty pretty uh large amount.

So, yeah, reading for pleasure. I was

trying to remember the last time I read

fiction for pleasure and I couldn't even

remember. I think it was,

you can help me out on this. Um, I've

I've read non-fiction books, of course,

but fiction for pleasure. Probably the

last one was the second Harry Potter

book.

So, if you told me what year that was,

the second Harry Potter book when it

just came out, I think this might be the

last book I read for pleasure.

That was a while ago. Anyway,

um according to Newsweek,

some schools are going to test out uh

schools in Florida are going to test out

putting armed drones in schools

um to defend against school shooters.

Now, when I say armed, I don't mean

necessarily with bullets, but rather it

would have pepper spray and some some

kind of glass breaking device so it

doesn't get trapped beyond a glass door,

I guess. Um, and what would happen is if

there was a if somebody did the secret

button,

um, presumably it would be an

administrator who did it, then the drone

would take off and it would be operated

remotely by somebody who would know to

do it and they would look for that uh,

that shooter and at the very least, you

know, they'd get more information about

the shooter, but it could also interfere

with them. So the the drone could try

peppering him and you know he's going to

have to turn his the shooter would have

to turn its attention on the drone just

so the drone didn't take him out. So

that would be fun. That seems like a

good idea.

We'll know because you could deploy that

drone in like five seconds.

Well, I'm loving watching the bad advice

that Democrats are giving to other

Democrats. Um, James Scarville was on

some show talking about what the

Democrats should have done when JD Vance

took his summer vacation because I guess

he went to England and a place called

Oxford Shshire. He took the family and

uh that's sort of an upscale place in

England.

And James Carville says that the

Democrats should have hammered him

because there are vacation spots in the

United States that are not doing as well

as they could be doing. And what's he

doing taking his American money wasting

it overseas? And he says that they

should have just been all over him on

that and made a big deal about it.

Is that some of the worst advice you've

ever heard?

How many people care where the vice

president is taking his family on

vacation?

How many people care about that?

Most Americans would be perfectly happy

to take an overseas vacation. You know,

different countries they might prefer,

but is there any American who doesn't

think that they would like to take an

overseas vacation someday?

And do we really think that we're all

going to be taking the same kind of

vacation as the president and the vice

president of the United States?

That is ridiculous. It's just the worst

advice. If the Can you imagine some

Democrat voter? It's like, well, you

know, uh uh I was uh going to vote for

Trump, but then I found out that JD

Vance and his family went on a vacation

in Oxford Shshire, England. That changes

everything.

Are the Democrats of this lost? That

that seemed like good advice. Oh my god.

Oh my god.

In other news,

um, apparently the, uh, Arctic sea ice,

the Guardian was reporting on this,

there's a new study that says that the

Arctic sea sea ice has not reduced um,

in 20 years.

Now, if you believed in climate change

and you believe the planet's getting

warmer and uh it might be might be

getting warmer, but wouldn't you also

predict that that warming would increase

the ice loss? Well, apparently it didn't

happen. However, instead of saying,

"Uh-oh, it looks like our prediction

models are wrong cuz you can't go 20

years without losing some sea ice if the

planet's getting warmer." No. Instead,

the the climate people say that they

have at least two climate models that

would uh allow for such long pauses,

including another 10 years. So they say

that there are two existing credible

climate models which would allow the

planet to get warmer for 30 years but

the ice in the Arctic not to change for

those same 30 years.

Does that sound even a little bit

like they they know what they're doing

and they've got a they got a handle on

this thing?

It sounds like a Dilbert response,

right? Well, yeah. My prediction model

is no matter how warm it gets or for how

long, the ice won't melt. All right.

Okay. Got it.

Well, I don't know what to believe

there, but you know what I always say?

Wait until you find out about climate

models.

It's so funny. I I think people are

slowly starting to get the idea when

they see that every other thing in our

environment is fake. The news is fake.

Our employment data is fake. Um

certainly all of our casualty numbers

from war all fake. The reasons we get in

war all fake. Um the Russia hoax all

fake. Um most of our political stuff all

fake.

But people still believe that the most

ridiculous of all those things, the

climate models, that we could somehow

monitor, we could somehow model climate

into the future,

that we still believe that one's real

when all the other things from Yeah.

from flu deaths to everything else are

all fake. And we know they're fake. But

there's one thing Oh, that one's true.

You know what I'd love to see since the

best argument for the non-scientist

is that there are so many scientists who

say it's true. How how many other topics

has science had 98% in agreement? We'll

just rand I know it's not 98%. But let's

just say I 90%.

How many how many items in science have

had 90% agreement and then later turned

out not to be true?

I feel like there's a pretty long list,

isn't there? Certainly the uh nutrition

pyramid probably had 90% agreement of

dieticians and whatnot and that was

fake, right?

So

if you knew how many times science had

been wrong when nine out of 10

scientists believed something was true,

wouldn't that change how you saw the

climate stuff? They would that would be

important context and I don't know it I

don't think you know it either but

certainly there yeah certainly eggs are

bad I'm seeing some other some other

examples go by

yeah and then we believe that our

elections

are pristine

really everything's broken but our

elections are fine and climate science

once you realize that everything is fake

If it's complicated and there's a lot of

money involved and it really matters,

it's definitely fake.

All right.

Um, Scott Bent was asked about uh

getting a trade deal with China, which

we don't have yet. And Breitar News Ian

Hanset is writing about this. And

apparently uh Bess's take is that we

don't need a deal because we've uh

passed tariffs along and the tariffs

include things like you know grotesque

higher tariff because of fentinol and

apparently

um China is our biggest source of tariff

money right now. Now I'll remind you it

doesn't mean that China is paying it

although in some cases they might by

taking lower profit margins but uh the

company that's importing is still paying

it but uh apparently China is not

complaining too much

and we're getting all kinds of revenue

toward uh you know the deficit

and we don't really need to do anything.

I have to admit I did not see that

coming. I did not see us getting to the

point where our trade deal with China

is, you know what, if they want to keep

having these tariffs,

we we'll be happy to keep them on there.

So, he just instead of uh solving the

problem,

um Trump monetized it

as he does.

And Bassan says, "If it's not broke,

don't fix it." So, he's happy to just

plot along and keep the tariff money.

Well, the US has a bunch of warships and

4,000 marines off the coast of Venezuela

because Madura, the leader, is accused

of being more cartel than national

leader, although he's both. And uh I

guess Maduro is uh activating a bunch of

reserves. So he's got millions of

soldiers just in case.

And uh I'm going to give you my

conspiracy theory of the day. Now, I

wouldn't say that I believe this is

true,

but um some of you are going to say

that's a pretty good conspiracy theory.

You ready?

Like many of you, I also believe that

when a president gets in office, that

there's something like what I'm going to

describe that happens. Maybe not exactly

this, but it's what you imagine happens.

That someday some spooky guy, it's

always a guy in a nice suit, will visit

the new president and say, "Let me

explain to you how it works. The

military-industrial complex runs the

country and you're going to give us at

least one ongoing war all the time. If

you don't, we will probably take you out

one way or the other. What? Take me out?

What do you mean? Like kill me

if we have to. But the important thing

is the country needs at least one war

all the time. So, what if, and again,

this is just um I'm having fun with a

conspiracy theory, so don't believe

this. This is just for fun. What if

Trump knows that? And so, in order to

end the war in Ukraine, he knows the

only way to do it is to promise a brand

new war really fast.

And so, again, it's just for fun. I'm

I'm not I'm not alleging that this is

true. So then what he do is put a bunch

of military forces around Venezuela

because you could credibly believe that

he might be planning for a war and then

you say to that spooky guy in the suit,

"Hey, uh here's a deal. If you help me

get out of the Ukraine situation, we'll

start something locally and we'll we'll

have a brand new one with Venezuela.

Deal.

How do you like that for a conspiracy

theory?

That's the most cynical you could get.

That we that what matters is we have to

have a war. So when you see the new one

getting queued up just in time. Huh?

Isn't that weird? It's just in time

because the other one might be ending.

Huh. That's a little bit of a

coincidence, isn't it? Well, it might be

just a coincidence, so don't take it too

seriously,

but uh we'll see what happens in

Venezuela.

Um, apparently the Department of

Homeland Security has pulled funding

from groups that are quote, uh, alleged

terrorist ties.

Um, how much money does our government

have that we don't know that some of it

is going to organizations that have uh

terrorist connections?

Well, turns out there's a good reason to

believe we've been giving money to some

groups

that had terrorist connections.

Um, we're giving way too much money

away. Um, so Fox News Digital got this

scoop, I guess. 49 projects with alleged

affiliations to terrorist activities

have already been cancelled.

49

49 funded projects that our government

and your taxpaying money went to support

have some kind of terrorist connection.

It took until now to say, "Hey, hey,

maybe we shouldn't be giving them

money." All right. All right.

And in related news, Tulsi Gabbard, head

out of the DNI,

um is now sweeping overall and is going

to get rid of 40% of staff.

Um, I love the fact that even though uh

Trump is not crowing about his cost

savings in government, that it seems

like all the department heads

know that uh winning means cutting

costs.

And so they're all doing it and there

it's almost like they're competing to

see who can cut the most because that's

how you win favor. But it is strange

that Trump's not bragging about

it. Good.

Just a minute.

All right, I'm back.

All right. So,

um,

the reason that the Democrats are losing

so many uh, registered voters, I guess

there's a 4.5 million voters swing from

Democrat to Republican in the last few

years.

And a poll

uh by a Democrat super PAC, Unite the

Country, showed that uh what Democrats

thought of their own party is that it

was out of touch, woke, and weak.

Out of touch, woke, and weak. And so

apparently their response to being out

of touch, woke, and weak is to talk more

and mock Trump more.

Does that sound like what the country

wants from them?

Now, I would agree. It might be that the

poll did get those results and that

that's what people said. But don't you

think that being strong and not being

out of touch would involve having good

policies for solving our big problems as

opposed to finding a clever way to do a

skit that involves mocking Trump? No,

the theater kids only have one play.

What kind of theater can we put on

u to get power?

Um the the Russia Russia gate hoax was

theater, was it not? It was literally

imaginary characters with an imaginary

plot. It was fiction.

Most of the hoaxes from the 51 Intel

people with the laptop to the fine

people hoax to the January 6 hoax um

they're all fiction.

So, and then you've got uh Nuome who's

doing this clever but not really

effective u mockery of President Trump

by doing social media posts in his

voice.

Um, to me that seems out of touch

because it's not addressing any problem

and it seems um it's not woke, it's just

ignoring woke. Um, and it feels weak.

So,

do you notice that the reason that uh

that mockery of Trump works is that

everybody knows how he talks?

And Trump has proven that the way he

talks is the most persuasive and

effective way anybody could ever talk.

We all kind of know that now. We didn't

know that when he first ran for the

first uh first term,

but at this point, everybody who is

paying attention knows, okay, he he

doesn't talk like other people, but it's

the most effective political talking

we've ever seen. So when you mock the

most effective political communication

you've ever seen by simply matching it,

you haven't really mocked anything.

You haven't mocked anything because the

thing that he's mocking

is well understood to be the the

superior form of communication.

If he mocked something that wasn't

working, well then he'd have something,

right? But you can't mock something that

worked so well and made him president

twice.

The way Trump communicates is not a

flaw.

It's not the thing that the country

needs to get rid of at all. It It's very

effective. So, I don't think that

mocking the most effective form of

communication we've ever seen in that

domain

is buying them much, but it's a skit.

And the important thing, if you're a

Democrat, apparently, is to be part of a

play. And so, Nuome's got this little

character he plays that's like the

president. And so he's happy because

Democrats are saying, "Yeah, look at

that. He's playing a part. Look at that

play. I want to bring my friends to the

play. I got a ticket." They they

seriously are about the act.

They really are about the act. Now, of

course, all politics is a little bit

acting, but not like this.

This is literally living in fiction

world and having uh no regard whatsoever

to policies or uh the things which you

would imagine would help them more.

Well, Texas

indeed passed its new uh redistricting

map, so it looks like they'll get some

extra seats in the house.

and uh Nuome um won in California

courts. I guess the Republicans tried to

stop him from his plans of redistricting

California, but he probably will now. Uh

first he has to win the power to do it

in a referendum.

Uh but he might he might get that. And

uh Trump has announced that Missouri is

going to redistrict.

So Trump says he wants all the

Republican states that haven't to

redistrict. And in if if you believe the

reporting on this, if all the

Republicans did it

and all the Democrats did it that

haven't done it yet, at least to the

max, um the Republicans would come out

way ahead.

I'm not a 100% sure that's true, but uh

looks like a good play for Trump.

And uh I guess Democ not Democrats, but

people are beginning to receive letters

in the mail saying that they have to

complete 15 hours of community service

per week in order to get their uh

benefits.

Um they don't like taking time out of

their day to get benefits.

So, we'll see how see how that goes.

I guess Trump has threatened to cut

funding to uh California public schools

if they don't follow the uh federal

policy on not allowing trans athletes in

women's sports

and sometimes if they cheat on DEI.

So, we'll see if any schools lose their

funding for that. Uh Chris Quuomo, I

didn't realize this, but Chris Quuomo is

not a Democrat. I I assume he was at one

point, but he was talking to uh Benny

Johnson

and he was talking about, you know, what

the Democrat party has become. It was

pretty brutal. Um

apparently he thinks that the Democrats

become the party of elitism, open

borders, socialism, and defunding the

police. and that those ideas are so bad

they killed the modern Democratic party.

He says the uh the Democratic Party that

his father was a part of no longer

exists and he doesn't know why. Um he

doesn't know why his brother is still

registered as a Democrat.

So as supportive as he is of his own

brother, he he can't even say that the

brother belongs to a party for a good

reason.

He goes, "My brother's a Democrat. I

don't know why, but he is. My father was

a Democrat, but his party doesn't exist

anymore." Well, here's what I think.

Cuomo um in his current opinion of the

Democrats and not wanting to be one of

them feels like where Bill Maher is

being drawn. I don't think Bill Maher is

going to make it, you know, over the

line. I I think that you just he'll have

to stop before he becomes a Republican.

And it's not like Chris Cuomo became a

Republican. You know, he's an

independent. But do you think it's

possible

that Bill Maher will be,

you know, pulled so far that he just,

you know, denounces the Democrats and

says, "All right, I just can't even

support you anymore." I feel like, uh,

he's really close. So he might I don't

think he's he'll ever become a

Republican,

but he doesn't need to. He just needs to

denounce the badness.

um this um the issue that uh Trump has

created with this Smithsonian and the

other museums. He wants the uh museums

to focus more on the positive

accomplishments of America and less

focused around an emphasis on slavery.

And uh to this point, Molly Hemingway

was reporting on on X. She said, "I

overheard an older white woman sitting

behind me on a plane ride today talking

to her husband. She was a gasast at the

idea that the Smithsonian might not make

the history of slavery the centerpiece

of the institution."

Now, we all agree that slavery was a big

part of the story of the, you know, the

early United States. So, everybody

agrees with that. But does it make sense

that your museum focuses on the thing

that was the worst part?

Well, depends on what you're trying to

accomplish. If what you're trying to

accomplish with your museum is a history

lesson,

well, then you just make sure that it

covers all the history. And slavery was

a big part of it. But if you're trying

to make uh Americans feel good about

being Americans, which I feel like is

the more important use for the national

museums. There could be private museums

that do whatever they want, but for a

national museum, I feel like

it should absolutely be focusing on the

positive

so that we'd feel positive about the

country. But I will go further than

that. I believe that the more attention

it's giving to slavery as the original

sin and biggest part of our history,

it's all bad for black Americans today.

Does anybody know why? It's something

I've taught you many times and it's just

glaringly obvious in this case and here

it is.

People don't think logically. They think

by association.

So if you can say somebody was good

friends with Epstein,

you can ruin them even if they didn't do

anything wrong because it's just the

association.

What does it do to modern black

Americans if when um you're thinking of

black Americans, you're thinking of

slavery because it's just in your mind

and it's really part of the narrative.

What does that do to how you feel about

black Americans and how they feel about

themselves and how they fit in? Well,

since being a slave would be a horrible

association, you're taking modern black

Americans and you're making you're

making people think about their

existence as slaves.

That is the worst association you could

ever put on anybody if you want them to

be successful in the modern world. So

from a history perspective, yeah, if

you're just trying to describe what

happened, of course you want to include

as much of the history of slavery as

makes sense, of course. But if you're

trying for people to be happy and

successful, then persuasion and how

people feel about things and

associations and the psychological

impact of things has to be a big part of

the the decision. And I can tell you for

sure that black Americans would be way

better off if there were some device

that you could hold up to everybody's

head to make them forget that slavery

ever happened.

If you could make everybody forget that

slavery had ever happened,

then black people would wake up in the

morning and say, "Huh, I guess

anything's possible."

And they would just work toward their

best life and they would have the best

outcomes that, you know, are possible in

the in the real world.

But will that ever happen? No, that will

never happen because there are people

who make money by emphasizing the

negative parts. So, as long as there's a

business to be made in emphasizing the

negative, people will do it. Um,

yeah.

So, that's what I think.

Um, Elon Musk has denied on X. The Wall

Street Journal's report that he's

decided to uh scrap his third party

idea. He has not decided um definitively

to scrap that in favor of supporting JD

Vance.

So,

uh Musk told us to not believe

everything you read in the Wall Street

Journal. So, we won't believe that until

we have some confirmation if it ever

comes.

Well, the University of California in

San Francisco reports that uh at UCSF

they discovered a protein that reverses

brain aging

in mice.

How many times

have you seen a story in the news that

somebody reversed aging in a mouse?

I feel like this story has been coming

out for 40 or 50 years

every few weeks. Hey, we discovered

something that will reverse aging in a

mouse. Now, how many things have

reversed aging in human beings?

Zero.

Is there any pill that I could buy that

I'm not that would reverse my aging? And

yet, and yet every freaking week for 50

years, we figured out how to reverse

aging in a mouse.

Uh, you should not believe anything

that is reported about success with a

mouse. The the percentage of those that

translate into a real, you know,

functional human medical process is

really low. It's very unusual, but the

way the news reports it, it makes you

think, wait, it worked on the mouse, and

they wouldn't bother testing it on the

mouse unless I would tell you something

about whether it would work on a human

being. So, wow, this is promising. No,

it's not. It's not promising. It's the

the odds of any of this ever seeing the

light of day and turning into a pill

that will reverse your your brain's age

is really really low. Like really really

low. So low don't even think about it.

Anyway,

so I've noticed that Ukraine and the

Ukrainians have what I call a sunk cost

problem. So in economics, a sunk cost is

money you've already spent. So what you

should never do is say, "Damn it, I've

already spent so much in this project

that I have to keep spending more to

finish it." No, you don't. The amount

that you've already spent is just gone.

You should make your decision as if it

didn't make any difference at all. And

uh gamblers would do the same. If you're

gambling and you've lost, you know, a

million dollars so far. If you say to

yourself, I can't stop now because I've

already I'm down a million. I got to win

it back. That's some cost. You should

look at every bet as if it's a new

decision independent of anything you've

already done. And likewise, the

Ukrainians uh often are saying stuff

like, "We can't give up any land to

Putin because so many Ukrainians have

died trying to keep that land." To which

I say, "That's a sunken cost. Those

people are not going to pop back to life

no matter what you do. They are just

gone. And while you can respect their

sacrifice, you should not be making your

new decisions based on the fact that

they died. And it looks like they are

doing that and that's a sunk cost

fallacy. Now, I don't know if the

leaders are doing that, but you're

hearing that from, you know, Ukrainians.

uh we can't can't give this land up

because people so many people sacrificed

to um to try to keep it. You should

count that as zero. If if millions of

Ukrainians died trying to protect that

land,

zero.

You should not include that in your

decision. However,

since we're not a logical species, we're

a persuadable psychologically

uh emotional species, it does matter if

people feel like they they can't make a

certain decision. But you you need to

separate what is them feeling a certain

way. Oh, we can't give up this land

because we've sacrificed so much with

what makes sense.

What makes sense is it doesn't matter at

all how many people died protecting

trying to protect that land. It doesn't

matter. It's already over. They're dead.

You have to make your decision like you

woke up into the game today

and the only thing you know is what

what's true going forward.

So

here's my prediction. I think Putin is

going to keep yanking the football.

We're already seeing some indications

that

uh Putin isn't so keen on getting a

deal, which would be no surprise. And

eventually

um if it hasn't happened already,

whatever good will Putin has developed

with Trump will evaporate and reverse

really quickly.

And when Trump decides that he's pissed

off at Putin and there's no redeeming,

it's going to get ugly.

And I'm almost guaranteeing that's where

it's going to go. I don't think Putin is

going to deal with uh Trump and with

Europe and Ukraine in a productive way.

I don't think he wants to. I don't think

he plans to because time is on his side.

and he probably thinks that Trump and

the Europeans have used all of their uh

all their chips, that there's not much

else they can do to him and he can just

last forever.

But as I mentioned before,

um India went from 1% of its oil that it

purchased being from Russia to 40%.

And it turns out that the reason it went

so high is that it's not that they're

buying it to use it in India, but some

entities in India are buying it and

reselling it because it's cheap oil. So

they're just keeping the difference. So

basically some Indian entities and there

can't be that many of them because you

would have to be in that specific line

of business. How many people are in that

line of business that they can move

gigantic amounts of oil from one country

to another? can't be that many people. I

think that Trump says to India, here's

the deal. You've got half a dozen

companies that are allowing uh Russia to

move its oil.

I know you India as a government want to

keep good relationship with uh with

Putin. However, there's nothing that's

going to stop us from taking out your

six companies.

Their CEOs are going to start dropping

dead. uh we will sanction them

individually. We'll just take out those

companies.

And what will India do? Will India say,

"You can't do that. I want to protect my

companies that are thwarting the

sanctions on Russia so that the

Ukrainian war will last longer." What

are they going to do? Well, I don't know

the full situation. So, you know, I'm

I'm in in way over my head talking about

Indian buying and reselling oil. But if

it's true that there are a handful of

companies in India, they're keeping

Russia alive,

I believe that we could target them.

I believe that we could just tell India,

look, you know, there those companies

are going to start having some real bad

luck.

And you might not know where that came

from, but trust us, those companies are

going to have some real bad luck, and

it's going to happen really fast.

So, here's what I think. I think Putin

is going to believe that he can get away

with uh stalling and that will cause the

Europeans to be mad at Trump and that'll

all be good for Russia. But I think

Trump is going to say, um, you've now

crossed the line

and now I'm going to take your economy

and maybe it will be the India play.

Maybe not. But I do think that there is

um, let's say an a more aggressive way

that Trump could just take the knees out

and I think he would do it. So, I think

that's where it's headed.

And maybe something with giving Ukraine

better weapons, too. That might happen.

Trump's uh $464

million civil fraud

penalty was vacated on appeal.

Really? So, Zero Hedge is reporting that

the

Was that not the Leticia James case with

the banks?

and uh that just got thrown out on

appeal if if that's true.

So, we'll see.

Anyway, you know what is the dumbest

comment? I just saw the dumbest comment

here on locals. Bad take. Bad take.

Bad take. I don't think once someone has

ever told me I had a bad take and then

could follow it up with what was wrong

with it. As soon as I hear bad dick, I

just think, "Oh, you're idiot."

Because if you had a real reason,

it would have taken about as many words

as bad take. You know, you could have

said something like, "That's not how

that works." Or, "Well, that that's too

generic, too."

Uh, CNBC reported it as well. Wow.

Wow. Now, does that mean that he's

not guilty of any of those charges or

that he just doesn't have to pay?

I wonder what that means. I don't know

how that works. All right, we'll look

into that.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm

going to talk to the uh the beautiful

people, my beloved people on locals,

subscribers, and the rest of you. Thanks

for joining. Hope you enjoyed it. See if

we can end some wars. All right, locals.

I'll be coming at you privately in 30

seconds

if it works.

All right, that feature is not working

today.

Or is it? Let me try.