Episode 2950 CWSA 09/06/25

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Um well this is hard to believe.

Um, really unbelievable, but I said something incorrect yesterday and so I need to correct it.

Um, I was talking about the Tesla app, the robo taxi app.

It was the number one download and I mistakenly thought that that app was to turn your own car into a robo taxi, which is coming.

That'll be a real thing.

But I was corrected uh that that's probably just the app for calling a robo taxi.

So if you're in one of the cities where they roll it out, um you'll have the app.

All right.

Well, can you believe it?

I saw a story in the Daily Caller News.

While the Daily Color News Foundation had a story about sea levels have not been surging despite years of climate uh activists yelling that they would.

So the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering published this peer-review paper and as you know all peerreview papers are exactly accurate.

Have you noticed that Have you noticed that when the science is in the direction of something I want to be true or it makes me look like I was right about something that I automatically assume it must be some pretty solid science.

The best you can do to block your own bias is sort of keep score and say to yourself, huh, it it does seem to me that I don't do as much skepticism on the science that that agrees with me and this would be more of that.

But apparently I I think it is reasonably true that the sea levels have not been uh rising at a rate that would suggest the climate models were correct.

And you know what I say about the climate models, right?

Wait till they find out about the climate models.

you know, the the best kind of predictions to make are the kind that really really can't be wrong.

There there's not even the slightest chance that if you went, you know, forward enough in time, there's not the slightest chance that the, you know, the final uh let's say verdict on climate models.

There's not a slightest chance that in the future they will say, you know, those climate models, they really nailed it.

You all know there's no chance of that, right?

The only question is how long it takes.

So that's why I think it's funny to just keep asking the question and and sort of tease it.

When do you find out about those climate models?

Well, you've heard the stories about scientists, engineers could turn Wi-Fi routers into a tracking device that knows where you are and even who you are, I believe, and it could track you in your own home.

Well, now they've got um some technology that could track heartbeats without you needing to put anything on your body.

So, your Wi-Fi router, uh, you know, if it were adapted to do it, um, I guess it would just be software, would be able to detect your heartbeat and, uh, and your pulse, I guess.

Is that the same thing?

And, and I wondered, it makes you wonder how many other um, passive health related things could happen.

Could you imagine inviting somebody over to your house and they don't know that your Wi-Fi is measuring their heartbeat?

Hey, uh Bob, it looks like you got a little rhythmia going.

What?

And uh based on what we've detected from your exhalations, your breath, uh I'd say um got a little bit of schmeosis, which is probably not a thing.

Anyway, so somebody somebody's going to build the world's creepiest house that can detect all of your medical problems as soon as you walk in.

Well, Google, I guess, uh, lost some court case.

I've been ordered to pay 425 million because they were, uh, they were indirectly tracking users who disabled their web and app tracking.

So, I guess the people who thought they were not being tracked by Google because they had opted out of it, um, Google just used third-party apps that they had kind of connections with to track those same people.

So, apps like Uber, Instagram, and Venmo, somehow they could get information from them and they could just keep tracking people that didn't want to be tracked.

So that violation of privacy, it created a lawsuit that cost them $425 million.

Although it doesn't look like it was intentional in the sense that it was somebody's plot, it was just that's what their technology did.

They just had a workound.

All right.

Uh and then uh was it Google also had an earlier case in Texas where they had to pay $1.4 4 billion for a settlement with to tax us um over alleged violations of some state level privacy rules.

So that would be if you're keeping track about $2 billion that just Google has had to pay for violating privacy rules which I'm guessing they weren't even aware they were doing.

Do you think that, you know, it feels like u the lawsuits are at a point where, you know, you would have to be the size of Google just to survive all the all the lawsuits.

Speaking of lawsuits, Apple's being sued by authors, uh, you've heard this story before, but not about Apple yet, over the use of books in their AI training.

Newsmax is writing about this.

So apparently um this is another one of those situations where authors like me, although it's the first time finding out about it, um seem to have banded together for some kind of lawsuit over uh the use of their material to train the AI and Microsoft had that problem and Anthropic had that problem.

So this whole business of uh whose intellectual property is getting mined for AI is getting bigger.

So yet again this is another industry that if it were not already gigantic, it wouldn't be able to withstand all the lawsuits.

I mean the there will just be nonstop lawsuits against every AI company, not just for this but for you know the I think I already mentioned that sometimes the AIS have encouraged people to harm themselves, especially minors.

And so those are lawsuits, too.

So, you would have to be enormously rich um or wellunded to uh just survive all the legal challenges.

I mean, you think about Uber when Uber started.

if it had not become somewhat you know immediately gigantic in terms of funding and value um they would have survived all the legal challenges I think so that's the uh the biggest challenge to any like really successful startup is the legal stuff look at all of Tesla's lawsuits it's just nothing but lawsuits I I mentioned to you before that when I was in the restaurant business I owned a couple of small restaurants that they became just, you know, lawsuit uh activities.

It was just just one damn thing after another.

And it was all over BS.

You know, it was not over anything that you think anybody should have had to sue about anything, but there they were.

All right.

So, so Open AI apparently uh released some new paper about why these large language models, the AIs hallucinate.

And the the thinking the new the new insight here is that the reason that the AI hallucinates is because it's trained to be rewarded for guessing.

So much like uh if you were taking a test in let's say school and it was multiple choice and there was no penalty for guessing wrong per se.

It's just it wasn't right.

You would guess on every one.

You wouldn't leave it blank.

You know, you would be rewarded for guessing.

And so in some analogous way it seems that the large language models are rewarded in whatever reward means for AI um for guessing.

So if they could teach it to know not to guess and instead admit that it doesn't know the answer, uh they could cut down the hallucinating, they think.

So we'll see.

I saw a post by Rowan Paul about that.

Um, and OpenAI apparently is going to start uh working with Broadcom to make its own AI chips.

Don't you wonder like I do why is it that chipm is so uniquely difficult to compete with?

You know, why is it that there's for some reason something in Taiwan that we can't do?

You know, because there's nothing else like that, is there?

Is it is it that we don't have the knowhow or is it that we uh maybe there's some kind of patents involved where somebody owns a patent and there's just no way you could make a chip the way they do it legally.

I don't really understand why the United States, you know, even if you make an argument about the US being in decline, which I don't think it is, um, why can't we make chips as easily as some other countries or, you know, Taiwan in particular?

I don't know.

So it feels like maybe there would be something like uh this is my guess that it will seem like the US is behind in chipm until very suddenly it isn't.

I think that's what's going to happen.

I feel like the US is just going to snatch that, you know, dominance back.

Well, here's the weirdest news story, and I feel like this one might be fake news or lacking some context.

So, one of my many public services as I try to help you recognize when uh the news doesn't look like it could be possibly true.

This is one of those stories.

So, according to multiple sources, uh, Speaker Mike Johnson says that, uh, Trump was an FBI informant in the Epstein case.

Quote, he was an FBI informant to try to take the take this stuff down.

And apparently, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that on Friday, so yesterday.

Um, and he was speaking to reporters at the capital.

So he wasn't it wasn't like he was overheard or he said something accidentally.

He said it very intentionally.

He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.

So that was in service of you know saying that uh Trump knows that the Epstein crimes are not a hoax.

He's just saying that the way the topic is being treated you was a hoax I guess.

So, here's a part I don't believe we've already heard from um was it the deal there there was some lawyer who was explaining when he was originally looking into Epstein that Trump was the only person who who just called him and gave him all the time he wanted to say what was the deal with Epstein.

Now, do you think that got conflated with an FBI informant um who has had some kind of formal arrangement to, you know, take down Epstein and that we're just finding out about this now and that there was apparently no reason we wouldn't know about it because Mike Johnson just sort of casually said it like it was no big deal.

But if it was no big deal, why would we just be finding out about it now?

Does any of that track?

How many of you think this story is complete and it's just way you thought it was?

That he was literally a secret that Trump was literally a secret FBI informant on Epstein and that we didn't find out about it until yesterday.

Does that really?

So here here I have to give it the really test where all you do is you say really in a sarcastic way and and see if it fits.

So he was an FBI informant the whole time.

Really?

Really?

Really?

Yeah.

See what I mean?

The really test is kind of a useful one in this one.

So, I mean, maybe it's exactly true, but doesn't feel like it.

Well, Newsmax is telling us that the uh Republicans are looking at the GOP is looking at Kansas and Nebraska as states that they might want to go into redistricting, which would give the the Republicans more seats in the House.

Now, I'm kind of loving the fact that uh even though maybe it's not technically true, it sort of looks like Gavin Newsome was lured into starting a redistricting fight, you know, with where there was more mutually assured destruction, except that it wasn't mutually assured.

So Nome needs to learn the difference between destruction, in this case self-destruction of Democrats and mutually assured because I think that when uh when Nome said, "Well, well, I'll say in my raspy voice, if uh if you're going to redistrict in Texas, I'll tell you what I'm going to do.

I'm going to redistrict here right here in California." Now, he probably would say that with more jazz hands, sort of like that.

But, uh, I don't think he realized that if he reciprocated that it it would cause it would cause Republicans like empty the quiver and just shoot every arrow that they had at the same time and say, "Well, well, you know, we we would have stopped with Texas.

You know, honestly, we weren't really even thinking about those other states.

We would have stopped with Texas, but if you want to go if you want to go full quiver, we'll give you all our arrows.

Sure, why not?

So that may not be like I said, you know, what I just described as more of a narrative, not exactly the, you know, an objective uh picture of truth, but that's what it looks like.

You know, it's a funny narrative.

Well, for my other favorite funny story of the day, these are good Saturday stories.

Not too serious.

Well, it's very serious for this one person.

So, you know, Kil Mara Brego Garcia, he's the gentleman who uh got deported to El Salvador.

I hope I'm not mixing up my um my stories.

I think that's the guy.

And uh then, you know, the lawyers and everybody said, "No, he's that's he can't go back there or that's the one place he can't go back to." And then then they couldn't figure out where to deport him to cuz it was okay to deport him but they you know it would depend where he got deported.

And then I guess uh he gave them a list gave the government list of over 20 countries that he thought he didn't want to be deported to because they would torture him.

He thought there he actually thought that there were more than 20 countries who had it in for him so badly that they wouldn't just jail him, they would torture him.

So even I don't know who it was, whatever government entity, ICE or Border Patrol or somebody, they sort of mocked him in writing, but then they came up So then they came up with this great solution since he was afraid of these 20 countries uh torturing him and that they would send them to a country called it's in Africa it's called Ewatini and and of course you've all heard of Ewatini.

It's a really really small African country.

Uh, I guess it's mostly surrounded by South Africa and but it used to be called Swasilland.

So I've heard of Swisilland but it's a tiny tiny little country in Africa.

So, I guess I guess the joke here is, you know, half of the time when I analyze what the Trump administration does or what Republicans do, you have to almost analyze it like a prank, like somebody with a sense of humor came up with this.

All right, so we got these 20 countries you don't want to go to.

Have you ever considered Esatini?

I'm sure the lifestyle there is just terrific.

You'll love it.

You'll love their prisons.

Well, there's some more, believe it or not, more updates in the Biden auto pent story and the clemency and pardons situation.

And I guess there's more documents that have been made available.

Just the news is reporting on it.

Stephen Richards and John Solomon and uh let's see what else we know.

Um so Biden AIDS uh this is what we've learned.

Biden aids believed he should sign pardons by hand.

Um, I guess that was a tradition and something they decided, but he and he seems to have outsourced approvals to Vice President Harris, but I don't think there's any um documents to say she really did anything just in general.

Um, and there's no evidence that Biden himself never attended a meeting on any of these clemency decisions.

So anyway, there's some more uh more evidence that um maybe was not a uh a real appropriate chain of approvals.

So we'll see.

The uh latest jobs report is a little soft and disappointing.

Not hugely, but definitely going in the wrong direction.

um only added 22,000 jobs and and that was 53,000 lower than expected.

And so unemployment also ticked up to 4.3, which is not terrible.

4.3, but you don't want to see it working.

Yeah.

Moving in the wrong direction.

Well, as you know, yesterday Trump announced that the Department of Defense would in fact be renamed the Department of War.

He says that it's really about winning.

Yeah, we should have won every war.

We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct or woke.

I like that he's trying to popularize the word woke.

Yeah.

Or woke.

So, I saw a uh report that there's a backstory to why, you know, Department of War came back and that Lucky Palmer might have been the uh the main influencer on that.

You know, he would be the Anderil um founder, a uh defense contractor.

So, anyway, that's interesting.

So, uh, apparently a Hyundai factory in Georgia, um, was raided by the, uh, Department of Homeland Security for their, uh, nonitizen workers, their illegal workers, and 450 people were arrested, which I believe was close to their entire uh, employee base.

So imagine if you will that Hyundai is incentivized to come to the United States with the express purpose of creating jobs in the United States.

So they come to the United States and they do in fact create jobs in the United States at least 450 of them and then they staff them all with non US citizens.

All of them.

Not just some of them, but pretty much all of them.

So, do I feel sorry for Hyundai that their entire factory will have to grind to a halt because they lost all of their employees?

No.

No.

Hyundai, I think you were, you know, maybe maybe adhering to the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

now but I will I will give them this much cover.

Um I'm not positive about this but I believe that probably during the period when they did the hiring that the only thing they were required to do is check the documents from the actual applicant that says they are or are not a citizen.

And there were plenty of people who had fake you know fake ID and fake documents.

So if all they did was look at the fake documents and not being document experts said, "All right, well that's all we've been asked to check and you've got those documents." Probably it's it's going to be kind of a gray area whether they were even knowingly breaking any law at all.

So they might be not in much trouble, the employer, if they followed all the rules as they used to exist.

Well, Van Jones on CNN says that tens of thousands of Africans have already died because of Trump administration uh cutting the funding for some program called PEPFAR that uh allegedly had saved millions of victims of HIV in Africa.

And I said to myself, number one, do you think that's true?

Would that be the way you would say it?

Because why is it that the United States has some kind of unique responsibility to Africa?

Now, I get how terrible the AIDS epid ep epidemic in Africa is, but what is China and Russia doing?

What are all the other countries doing?

Why is it the United States problem to sol to solve a problem in Africa?

what what makes that our problem or national interest.

Now, as as a human, you know, you could certainly empathize and you could want it to be solved, but it's kind of weird that we just sort of assume that if we have the ability to save some life anywhere in the world and we don't do it, that that means that we kill them.

It doesn't really mean that we killed them because we can't really save all the other lives in all the other world without destroying ourselves which would also have a ripple effect and be bad for the rest of the world in our case.

So it's a tough one.

You know this this is why you don't want to be president because you make decisions where people could credibly argue you just killed tens of thousands of people.

Well, you just killed tens of thousands of people.

And then you have to argue, well, you you can't say I killed somebody by not helping them because the entire world is full of people we didn't help all over the place.

And even the country is full of people we didn't help and they died.

So I would reject the idea that is our responsibility if we could do it and it didn't have a you know some kind of a cost that was bigger than the the benefit um then uh I'd feel differently.

do.

Um, but then I went to Grock and asked if it was true that cutting that funding meant that tens of thousands of people were dying in Africa.

And unless I read it wrong, it looked like Grock said that there was no funding cut that it was considered and then cancelled.

I don't know if that's a hallucination, but so it's not clear that that was even canceled.

So you could give me a fact check on that.

Um, have you have any of you seen the uh online uh see would you call it a conspiracy theory?

I'll let you decide what to call it, but it was the idea that the polio vaccination didn't actually end polio, but instead it was improvements and uh hygiene.

Have you heard that one?

By the way, I don't I don't subscribe to that, but it's it's actually somewhat prominent.

I've seen it quite a bit on social media.

So, that's that's out there.

Um, but we'll see what happens when uh the various changes happen with RFK Jr.

and all the work he's doing and maybe changing of mandates more than anything else.

That's probably the the main thing that's going to happen.

Mandates will change.

Well, according to the Daily Mail, there's a new uh uh poll, the Daily Mail JL Partners poll.

It says that Trump is at his highest approval rating of his presidency.

Now, they're they've got him at 55% approval.

Uh that would be higher than any other poll that I've seen.

So take it with your usual polling grain of salt.

But at the same time, Newsmax is reporting that the Zagby poll um has him at a solid 46%.

Now 46%, you know, given our, you know, divided country is actually pretty good.

you know, you'd love to see it over 50%, but today's day and age, 46 pretty strong.

So, and I guess he got a bounce, you know, he took a little dump over the summer after the 100 days was over, but he's sort of bounced back.

And uh I guess John Zagby says that uh at that level of approval, he is impeachment proof.

So even if the Democrats took control of the House, you would be impeachment proof.

I think he was impeachment proof anyway.

Um but that helps.

Let's see.

Speaking of polls, Arasmus had a poll that said that 53% of likely voters under 40 want a socialist president in 2028.

the postmillennials writing about this.

Does uh does that even sound real?

How many of you are uh like shaking your heads right now and saying, "Ah, wait, did I hear that wrong?

53% of likely voters under 40 want a socialist president like right away." Now, I do this thing where I try to put myself in other people's shoes and just literally just see if I can imagine it just to try to see what would be behind that.

Now, your first your first impression is that what's behind it is that they're poorly educated about the risks and rewards, right?

That's your first impression.

Well, they must be poorly informed or poorly educated because there's no way that anybody, you know, would want a socialist present.

But, um, keep in mind that there's a lot of news around the fact that young people don't believe that they can achieve the American dream.

So, I take I wind myself backwards in time.

I go, what if I were 20 years old and didn't believe there was any path for me to, you know, get a house someday or to be, you know, married with a family or something?

What if I thought there was no real practical way that could ever happen for me?

would I be in favor of capitalism and I still have to work hard and I and I couldn't even find a job and you know I can't stay employed long enough to have health care and the robots are coming going to take my job.

So, I got to say that if I if I subtract from my assumptions that the American dream, you know, work hard and go to school and stay under trouble gets you almost anything you want.

If I take that out of my assumptions, would I be and I and you make me 20 years old, would I be leaning socialist?

And maybe would socialist just mean something different to me?

Because maybe all it would mean is free health care and free education and free transportation.

Suppose that's all it meant.

Well, I mean that's a lot.

But if I were young, I could very easily see myself being persuaded into the same camp.

So if you think this is some kind of a fleeting thing, you know, that maybe is just going to be limited to New York City, I don't think so.

I I think that unless something fundamentally changes where everybody can get what they want, which is sort of the promise of the robot age, but I'm a little bit skeptical that it will go that way very quickly.

I don't know.

It's going to be a whole lot of people who are going to try to vote other people's money into their pocket because they won't have access to making their own money.

You know, it won't even be their fault.

What would you do if your only choice was to vote somebody else's money into your pocket cuz you didn't have the option of just working hard and making your own money?

What would you do?

So, something's got to change.

Um, so let's see.

Oh, Trump was asked about the new thing in Florida where Florida dropped all mandates for vaccinations in schools.

And I'm no medical expert, so I have a mixed feelings about it.

So I'm more of a wait and see.

Certainly, we'll know maybe in two or three years, maybe much less.

Won't we won't we know pretty soon if Florida is, you know, killing a bunch of kids accidentally by uh creating a situation where they're less likely to get vaccinated.

I mean, so it's an experiment which I feel like is worthy because the it seems to me there are enough people concerned about the risks of you know any health risks from the vaccinations themselves if they feel that the science has not been sufficient or that maybe the the people who do the science can't be trusted.

Um, it's a reasonable parental decision that some people will make to get vaccinated and some will make to not get vaccinated.

But we'll at least know if it made a difference.

We'll at least know.

And the people who do get vaccinated, if the vaccinations work, well, they don't have to worry about getting it, right?

So, the only people who have to worry about it are the people who didn't get vaccinated.

you know, maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but I think that's true.

So, um, you know, they would know what risk they're taking.

So, I don't know.

I like the freedom of it, but, uh, until we know if it causes, you know, like massive deaths or something, which I doubt, but we'll know pretty soon.

Then I don't have to guess.

And according to Oregon Health and Science University, there's uh new evidence.

This will make you crazy.

Uh that childhood vaccinations can last for decades.

So boosters are not necessary for some things.

And I think that they mentioned tetanus tetanus and dtheria booster shots.

So apparently for years and years People have been getting these booster shots that the data does not support make any difference at all.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

Science and guessing almost identical except that guessing is a little bit better.

And that's not even a joke.

If if you flipped a coin, you'd at least get 50%.

Uh but size I believe is less um because there there's so many ways it can get distorted beyond chance.

All right.

Um there was a new uh Gatesbacked study according to modernity John Fleet was writing about it.

So, Bill Gates backed the study.

They found that the the seasonal flu shots are linked to Oh, just shoot me.

Are linked to 27% higher heart injury risk, the Lancet reports.

Uh so, so seniors vaccinated for influenza experience more heart injuries, not fewer.

So, and how did they get how did they get uh the wrong answer?

Well, apparently it was a statistical trick with the data.

No, really.

So, the data the data had always showed that it was riskier for your heart, but there was a little bit of gamesmanship with the statistics to make it go away.

But it doesn't go away in the real world.

It's just you can game it away with the statistics.

And so they did.

And uh that's one of the reasons that anyway according to them.

Um so that's suboptimal.

And now here according to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, uh after 40 years a heart doctors say beta blockers may do more harm than good.

Do you see the theme?

By the way, these are just these are stories today.

What's the rest of the week look like?

This just today.

How many how many stories can there be just today that some gigantically major thing in healthcare was just wrong?

All right.

So, uh, apparently the beta blockers, it looks like it maybe they had been good at some point, but, um, when matched with other modern, uh, stuff that generally comes at the same time, they might not match good with that.

So that uh so it has more to do with how they interact with other treatments, but the bottom line is um beta blockers may be a little more risky than you thought.

And uh and then there's also a report I don't know how confirmed it is, probably no more confirmed than anything else, but uh there's allegations that Tylenol taken during pregnancy might be linked to autism.

Um, so there's that.

And then, uh, Bill Maher had his show last night.

And, you know, on Saturday, we're always talking about the clips that come out of that.

You know, uh, I was going to say something mean, but then I withdrew it.

But then I might wait.

I'll just say the mean thing at the end.

Okay.

So, Bill Maher has decided that uh RFK Jr.

is nutty and that he's got to go.

Now, you've seen most of the Democrats complaining about RFK Jr.

Can anybody give me an example of what he's done on the job?

because that's the part that matters.

What has he done on the job that would that would uh classify as nutty?

Can anybody give me one example?

I mean even one is the example.

I believe the only one that Bill Maher mentioned was that he fired like you know massive bunch of people you know that were in the vaccination decisionmaking capacity.

To which I say, don't you think there's a little context missing to that?

Do you think he just fired them because they liked vaccinations?

Or do you think he fired them because they were actively trying to stop him from gathering more information about vaccinations?

Or do you think they may have had some ties to the pharma companies they were, you know, trying to regulate, if that's the right word?

Do you think there might have been some backstory as to why they got fired?

Do you think he did it just because he's a mad man who wants to ban vaccinations and so he had to get rid of all the provaccination people?

Like, do you really believe that's what happened?

Cuz that would be nutty, right?

That would be nutty if the only reason he did it is cuz he disagreed with them and his spin was not based on any science.

Well, that would be nutty.

But why would you believe that's happening?

What would what would bring you to the twisted and unrealistic assumption that the reason he was doing it would be nutty if you knew it?

Why would you even think that?

It's not like he's got some big track record of doing things that nutty.

I mean, he's done things that are fun, you know, in his personal life, but nothing like nothing nutty in this this class.

Nothing like that.

So, it seems to me that there is an RFK junior TDS kind of thing, derangement syndrome.

And this is a really good test of how much uh psychosis can be uh let's say installed by the media.

There are probably tens of millions of voters in the US who believe the same narrative that RFK Jr.

is a wacko nutty anti-science guy.

But not one of them could give you an example that would be compelling that would make that case.

not one of them.

Now, here I'm I'm going to limit it to, you know, the work he's actually doing in the actual job, right?

Nobody has any examples.

And and when they when you hear one, you say to yourself, uh, sounds like you just got that story wrong.

So, sometimes they'll say stuff like, yeah, he's making vaccinations unavailable.

And then you'll find out really it's about mandates.

So like they don't even have the right story.

So how could so many tens of millions believe that he's he's a nut job?

And the only reason is cuz the media and social media have told that story and it's that's all it takes.

So if you wondered um how powerful is hypnosis?

Well, if you extend the definition of hypnosis to include any repetition of a lie, you can see for yourself.

Tens of millions of people have been convinced that RFK Jr.

is nutty when the truth is they've simply been hypnotized.

That's it.

They've just been hypnotized and they're not aware of it.

So, um, and then, uh, Bill Maher also is worried that, uh, Trump militarizing the cities by putting the National Guard in some of the big cities is a prelude to creating his own sort of dictator, you know, personal police for his eventual potential stealing of democracy and taking over the country.

Now, does that sound sane to you?

Does Bill Maher sound sane when he says that sending the uh National Guard into what what would be the highest number at the same time?

Two.

Do do you think he can bite off more than two cities at the same time?

I mean, I think even Washington DC will wind down uh before Chicago might wind up and he's worried that that will militarize our cities and give him a chance to take over.

Let let me ask you this.

What kind of dictator is proun?

Is that a thing?

Can anybody think of any dictator authoritarian who is pro gun?

Has that ever existed?

And how exactly does militarizing the cities, but let's just call that sending in the National Guard?

How in the world do you um evolve that into a into some kind of like secret police without the public being so all over it and dismantling it that it couldn't possibly like even if he wanted to?

How would that plan work?

It's sort of like believing, which Bill Maher also believes, that the January 6ers were doing a legitimate plan to take over the country by by trespassing in one building.

How do you take over a country by trespassing in a building?

Like even if some of them were violent, which they were, how does that take over a country?

In in in what twisted nightmare does any of that result in taking over a country?

It obviously wasn't intended to do that cuz that would be insane.

It would be insane.

So yes, what looks to us like uh mental illness in Bill Maher is almost certainly susceptibility to brainwashing by the media.

Uh in his case, more the media than the social media.

It's it affects everybody.

So he's a very high IQ, high functioning, you know, well-informed guy.

Doesn't make any difference.

Yeah.

the the brainwashing is just exactly effective on some number of people regardless of uh what you would imagine would be their ability to defend against it, but that's not a thing.

People can't defend against it.

Um, Senator Tammy Duckworth, what's a Duckworth?

Okay.

Um, she said that Trump's use of the military against the drug smuggling narot terrorists is uh setting the conditions for occupying US cities to interfere in the next election.

Now, come on.

Is she even serious?

I mean, what even what is that?

Is that insanity or is that being hypnotized?

This doesn't feel like being hypnotized.

This feels like somebody who knows she's lying and knows that the lie will work.

Just I mean, I don't know that cuz I can't read her mind.

But that's what it looks like.

It It feels like she knows she's lying because it's too ridiculous, you know?

But I I suppose cognitive dissonance would get you to the same place.

So, you can't be sure on this one.

And then, of course, the uh the Hitler analogies live on.

Um I guess a CNN person, Rana Furuhar, um says that the fact that businesses are refusing to speak out against Trump and his administration is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

Come on.

Yeah.

Can you believe that there's somebody still in 2025 who believes that going on CNN and comparing Trump to Nazi Germany is somehow additive?

Is that additive?

If you were the producers of CNN and you heard somebody go on the air and say yet again, yet again, oh, he looks he look like a Nazi.

I think he's going to be a Nazi.

When the smartest people in even the Democratic party have said, can you just shut up about the Nazi stuff?

It doesn't work.

And every minute you spend doing that is a minute you weren't doing something better.

Right?

So, even the Democrats know it's the biggest dumb thing to do at the moment.

So, do you get invited back if you bring up Nazism?

If I were the producers, I wouldn't I'd take you off the list.

You wouldn't be a guest after that cuz it's 2025, people.

You're supposed to say oligarch and authoritarianism.

Well, here's a story that I don't know how many times I've heard this story over the decades.

Interesting.

Engineering has it this time that uh some Chinese entity has developed a transparent coding for windows that would allow the window to be become a solar power generator.

Now, is it just me or does this story come out once a year and has for my entire adult life?

How many times have you heard of somebody invented a window that will turn sun into energy and it'll be cost effective?

I I swear once a year for at least 30 years.

So, is this one the real one?

Nah.

No, probably not.

I wouldn't bet on it.

So, uh, Ran Paul did an interview talking about Dr.

Fouchy and he said that, uh, that the private emails show the lab leak theory was at least a 50/50 with him.

He says, uh, that government officials were aware CO likely leaked from a Wuhan lab, but destroyed anyone who said so publicly.

So he goes uh Rand Paul says it's an extraordinary thing where in private they know that from the documents that they were very open to the fact leaning towards and in favor of the fact that the virus came from the lab in public they were disdainful.

Um is there a reason why that matters so much?

There's something about the story that I'm missing.

I I get that Fouchi shouldn't have been lying and I get that probably would have been better if we knew the right answer, but did it make any difference in the end that we knew where it came from or we didn't know where it came from?

Like as a as a practical matter, would we have treated China differently?

I don't know.

So, I will acknowledge that uh Fouchy has to answer for that if he was lying to the public.

But I'm not aware of how that hurt us.

I mean, you wouldn't want it to happen again, right?

But but did it hurt us just in trust?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I'm I'm agreeing that we'd have to do something about it.

All right.

Thomas Massie points out that uh Congress spends tens of millions of dollars on secret projects that that can only be viewed in a secure room.

And if you go in a secure room to look at what those secret projects are, uh they're all described in code words, so you can't tell what they really are.

Are you comfortable with the fact that there are tens of billions of dollars on secret projects and that even a member of Congress who presumably would have the authorization can't figure out what they are?

Uh well, I'm a little uncomfortable with that.

you know, you you like to believe that they have the right um the right kind of controls and audits on that kind of stuff that even though you and I don't know what it is, that doesn't mean the government doesn't have full control over it and they're monitoring their expenses and making sure that it's operating in the best interest of the public, right?

No.

One thing we know for sure is that our government is designed maybe unintentionally, but it's designed by its design.

It's it's a giant criminal organization because it just invites every criminal scheme that you can possibly do and the odds of getting away with them look like it's pretty good.

If I were going to give a young person career advice and they were afraid of, you know, robots taking all the standard jobs, I'd say, "Young man or young woman, you should run for office because politics is where you can steal the most money with the lowest odds of being caught." No, I wouldn't say that, even though it's true.

Well, Trump's gonna blacklist some countries for imprisoning Americans, Newsmax is reporting.

And uh so I guess that would uh the state sponsors of wrongful detentions would be, you know, punished in a variety of ways.

And I thought to myself, how many of those countries are there?

Are there a lot of countries that are needlessly imprisoning Americans?

Hm.

I got questions.

Um, I guess Venezuela is getting some Iranian missile boats.

They're going to go try to threaten some of our naval assets maybe or trying to make us worry about what's happening.

I'll tell you one thing that Venezuela would not want to do, which would be sink a major American naval asset.

because if they haven't figured it out yet, that would be a very bad thing for them to do.

Well, I'm a little late on this story.

Maybe some of you heard it, but the uh I guess the New York Times reported, and I don't know how they knew it, that uh there was a SEAL team that penetrated North Korea back in 2019, and they were trying to install some electronic surveillance device, but they failed because there was some uh u fishing boat that kind of encountered them by accident.

So they ended up murdering the fisherboat people, three, and puncturing their lungs with knives so they would float to the bottom.

And then they, you know, cancelled the project.

So they canled the mission.

Now the real question is who told the New York Times and should the New York Times be writing about that sort of thing?

I I I feel like that would be I mean just think about the public good.

Isn't this very very very bad for the public good that that story was reported?

Well, what what is the upside of that?

Was there someone who would say no, whatever you do, don't plant any listening devices so we know better idea what's happening in North Korea.

And it looks like it was designed as a leak strictly for the purpose of crippling uh Trump's, you know, diplomatic work so that North Korea would be mad at us.

It feels like that was the only purpose.

So anyway, um, and once again, University of Copenhagen says that scientists have figured out how to transform plastic waste into a thing that absorbs CO2 from the air and captures it.

And you know what you always say when I tell you there's a new story about some new way to capture CO2.

What do you always say in the comments?

But damn it, Scott.

That CO2 makes our plants grow better.

We're all going to die if they suck all the CO2 out of the air.

You fool.

You fool.

All right, so I did that for you so you don't have to.

Well, as I mentioned, Owen Gregorian will be holding a spaces event immediately, or not that immediately, but sort of sort of after this event is over.

And this event is coming to an end for all of you except the few people on locals, my beloved subscribers who I'll be talking to privately.

And I would like to point out to you that my book, Loser Think, is available now on Amazon.

It's the only place you can get it.

And loser think will teach you how not to sound like you're bad at debating and arguing and thinking.

It'll tell you what not to do so that the smart people won't say, "Oh, are you using word thinking or an analogy to make an argument or a lot of other things you learn." All right, locals coming at you privately in 30 seconds.

The rest of you, thanks for joining.

Hope I can see you again tomorrow.

Same time, same place.

Wait a minute.

There you are. It's uh great to see you.

Come on in. Light yourself in and grab a

chair.

Beverages are in the fridge. Help

yourself.

And the coffee maker as a fresh pot of

coffee. So, we're about to have a

Saturday podcast while all of the lazy

podcasters are sleeping in.

Although, there's something to be said

for that as well. All right, let me make

sure I got your comments working. And

then

then we've got the show that you've been

craving. Yeah, craving.

You'll be savoring it later, but for now

you're just craving.

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Well, all systems are working

well. As tradition recently dictates,

Owen Gregorian will be hosting a spaces

event right after this and uh you can

talk more about the topics I talk about

today or probably some other stuff too.

So look look for Owen Gregorian on uh X.

All right.

Um well this is hard to believe. Um,

really unbelievable, but I said

something incorrect yesterday and so I

need to correct it. Um, I was talking

about the Tesla app, the robo taxi app.

It was the number one download and I

mistakenly thought that that app was to

turn your own car into a robo taxi,

which is coming. That'll be a real

thing. But I was corrected uh that

that's probably just the app for calling

a robo taxi. So if you're in one of the

cities where they roll it out, um you'll

have the app. All right. Well, can you

believe it? I saw a story in the Daily

Caller News. While the Daily Color News

Foundation had a story about sea levels

have not been surging despite years of

climate uh activists yelling that they

would. So the Journal of Marine Science

and Engineering published this

peer-review paper and as you know all

peerreview papers are exactly accurate.

Have you noticed that

Have you noticed that when the science

is in the direction of something I want

to be true or it makes me look like I

was right about something that I

automatically assume it must be some

pretty solid science.

The best you can do

to block your own bias is sort of keep

score and say to yourself, huh,

it it does seem to me that I don't do as

much skepticism on the science that that

agrees with me

and this would be more of that. But

apparently I I think it is reasonably

true that the sea levels have not been

uh rising at a rate that would suggest

the climate models were correct.

And you know what I say about the

climate models, right?

Wait till they find out about the

climate models.

you know, the the best kind of

predictions to make are the kind that

really really can't be wrong. There

there's not even the slightest chance

that if you went, you know, forward

enough in time, there's not the

slightest chance that the, you know, the

final uh let's say verdict on climate

models. There's not a slightest chance

that in the future they will say, you

know, those climate models, they really

nailed it.

You all know there's no chance of that,

right? The only question is how long it

takes. So that's why I think it's funny

to just keep asking the question

and and sort of tease it. When do you

find out about those climate models?

Well, you've heard the stories about

scientists, engineers could turn Wi-Fi

routers into a tracking device that

knows where you are and even who you

are, I believe, and it could track you

in your own home. Well, now they've got

um some technology that could track

heartbeats

without you needing to put anything on

your body. So, your Wi-Fi router,

uh, you know, if it were adapted to do

it, um, I guess it would just be

software, would be able to detect your

heartbeat and, uh, and your pulse, I

guess. Is that the same thing? And, and

I wondered, it makes you wonder how many

other um, passive health related things

could happen. Could you imagine inviting

somebody over to your house and they

don't know that your Wi-Fi is measuring

their heartbeat? Hey, uh Bob, it looks

like you got a little rhythmia going.

What? And uh based on what we've

detected from your exhalations, your

breath, uh I'd say um got a little bit

of

schmeosis,

which is probably not a thing.

Anyway,

so somebody somebody's going to build

the world's creepiest house that can

detect all of your medical problems as

soon as you walk in.

Well, Google, I guess, uh, lost some

court case. I've been ordered to pay 425

million because they were, uh, they were

indirectly tracking users who disabled

their web and app tracking. So, I guess

the people who thought they were not

being tracked by Google because they had

opted out of it, um, Google just used

third-party apps that they had kind of

connections with to track those same

people.

So, apps like Uber, Instagram, and

Venmo, somehow they could get

information from them and they could

just keep tracking people that didn't

want to be tracked. So that violation of

privacy, it created a lawsuit that cost

them $425

million. Although it doesn't look like

it was intentional in the sense that it

was somebody's plot, it was just that's

what their technology did. They just had

a workound.

All right. Uh and then uh was it Google

also had an earlier case in Texas where

they had to pay $1.4 4 billion for a

settlement with to tax us um over

alleged violations of some state level

privacy rules. So that would be if

you're keeping track about $2 billion

that just Google has had to pay for

violating privacy rules which I'm

guessing they weren't even aware they

were doing.

Do you think that,

you know, it feels like u the lawsuits

are at a point where, you know, you

would have to be the size of Google just

to survive all the all the lawsuits.

Speaking of lawsuits, Apple's being sued

by authors, uh, you've heard this story

before, but not about Apple yet, over

the use of books in their AI training.

Newsmax is writing about this.

So apparently um this is another one of

those situations where authors like me,

although it's the first time finding out

about it, um seem to have banded

together for some kind of lawsuit over

uh the use of their material to train

the AI and Microsoft had that problem

and Anthropic had that problem. So this

whole business of uh whose intellectual

property is getting mined for AI is

getting bigger. So yet again this is

another industry that if it were not

already gigantic, it wouldn't be able to

withstand all the lawsuits. I mean the

there will just be nonstop

lawsuits against every AI company, not

just for this but for you know the

I think I already mentioned that

sometimes the AIS have encouraged people

to harm themselves, especially minors.

And so those are lawsuits, too. So, you

would have to be enormously rich

um or wellunded to uh just survive all

the legal challenges. I mean, you think

about Uber when Uber started. if it had

not become somewhat you know immediately

gigantic in terms of funding and value

um they would have survived all the

legal challenges I think

so that's the uh the biggest challenge

to any like really successful startup is

the legal stuff look at all of Tesla's

lawsuits

it's just nothing but lawsuits I I

mentioned to you before that when I was

in the restaurant business I owned a

couple of small restaurants that they

became just, you know, lawsuit

uh activities. It was just just one damn

thing after another. And it was all over

BS. You know, it was not over anything

that you think anybody should have had

to sue about anything, but there they

were.

All right. So,

so Open AI apparently uh released some

new paper about why these large language

models, the AIs hallucinate.

And

the the thinking the new the new insight

here is that the reason that the AI

hallucinates

is because it's trained to be rewarded

for guessing. So much like uh if you

were taking a test in let's say school

and it was multiple choice and there was

no penalty

for guessing wrong per se. It's just it

wasn't right. You would guess on every

one. You wouldn't leave it blank. You

know, you would be rewarded for

guessing. And so in some analogous way

it seems that the large language models

are rewarded in whatever reward means

for AI um for guessing. So if they could

teach it to know not to guess and

instead admit that it doesn't know the

answer,

uh they could cut down the

hallucinating, they think. So we'll see.

I saw a post by Rowan Paul about that.

Um, and OpenAI apparently is going to

start uh working with Broadcom to make

its own AI chips.

Don't you wonder like I do why is it

that chipm is so uniquely difficult to

compete with?

You know, why is it that there's

for some reason something in Taiwan that

we can't do?

You know, because there's nothing else

like that, is there? Is it is it that we

don't have the knowhow or is it that we

uh maybe there's some kind of patents

involved where somebody owns a patent

and there's just no way you could make a

chip the way they do it legally.

I don't really understand why the United

States,

you know, even if you make an argument

about the US being in decline, which I

don't think it is, um,

why can't we make chips

as easily as some other countries or,

you know, Taiwan in particular?

I don't know. So it feels like maybe

there would be something like uh this is

my guess that it will seem like the US

is behind in chipm until very suddenly

it isn't. I think that's what's going to

happen. I feel like the US is just going

to snatch that, you know, dominance

back.

Well, here's the weirdest news story,

and I feel like this one might be fake

news or lacking some context. So, one of

my many public services as I try to help

you recognize when uh the news doesn't

look like it could be possibly true.

This is one of those stories. So,

according to multiple sources,

uh, Speaker Mike Johnson says that, uh,

Trump was an FBI informant in the

Epstein case. Quote, he was an FBI

informant to try to take the take this

stuff down.

And apparently, House Speaker Mike

Johnson said that on Friday, so

yesterday.

Um,

and he was speaking to reporters at the

capital. So he wasn't it wasn't like he

was overheard or he said something

accidentally. He said it very

intentionally. He was an FBI informant

to try to take this stuff down.

So that was in service of you know

saying that uh Trump knows that the

Epstein crimes are not a hoax.

He's just saying that the way the topic

is being treated you was a hoax I guess.

So, here's a part I don't believe

we've already heard from um

was it the deal there there was some

lawyer who was explaining when he was

originally looking into Epstein that

Trump was the only person who who just

called him and gave him all the time he

wanted to say what was the deal with

Epstein. Now, do you think that got

conflated with an FBI informant

um who has had some kind of formal

arrangement to, you know, take down

Epstein and that we're just finding out

about this now and that there was

apparently no reason we wouldn't know

about it because Mike Johnson just sort

of casually said it like it was no big

deal.

But if it was no big deal, why would we

just be finding out about it now? Does

any of that track? How many of you think

this story is complete and it's just way

you thought it was? That he was

literally a secret that Trump was

literally a secret FBI informant on

Epstein and that we didn't find out

about it until yesterday.

Does that

really? So here here I have to give it

the really test where all you do is you

say really in a sarcastic way and and

see if it fits.

So he was an FBI informant the whole

time.

Really?

Really?

Really?

Yeah. See what I mean? The really test

is kind of a useful one in this one. So,

I mean, maybe it's exactly true,

but doesn't feel like it.

Well, Newsmax is telling us that the uh

Republicans are looking at the GOP is

looking at Kansas and Nebraska as states

that they might want to go into

redistricting, which would give the the

Republicans more seats in the House.

Now, I'm kind of loving the fact that uh

even though maybe it's not technically

true, it sort of looks like Gavin

Newsome was lured into starting a

redistricting fight, you know, with

where there was more mutually assured

destruction, except that it wasn't

mutually assured.

So Nome needs to learn the difference

between destruction,

in this case self-destruction of

Democrats and mutually assured because I

think that when uh when Nome said,

"Well, well, I'll say in my raspy voice,

if uh if you're going to redistrict in

Texas, I'll tell you what I'm going to

do. I'm going to redistrict here right

here in California."

Now, he probably would say that with

more jazz hands,

sort of like that.

But, uh, I don't think he realized that

if he reciprocated

that it it would cause

it would cause Republicans like empty

the quiver and just shoot every arrow

that they had at the same time and say,

"Well,

well, you know, we we would have stopped

with Texas.

You know, honestly, we weren't really

even thinking about those other states.

We would have stopped with Texas, but

if you want to go if you want to go full

quiver, we'll give you all our arrows.

Sure, why not?

So that may not be like I said, you

know, what I just described as more of a

narrative,

not exactly the, you know, an objective

uh picture of truth, but that's what it

looks like. You know, it's a funny

narrative.

Well,

for my other favorite funny story of the

day, these are good Saturday stories.

Not too serious. Well, it's very serious

for this one person. So, you know, Kil

Mara Brego Garcia,

he's the gentleman who

uh got deported to El Salvador. I hope

I'm not mixing up my um my stories. I

think that's the guy. And uh then, you

know, the lawyers and everybody said,

"No, he's that's he can't go back there

or that's the one place he can't go back

to." And then then they couldn't figure

out where to deport him to cuz it was

okay to deport him but they you know it

would depend where he got deported. And

then I guess uh he gave them a list gave

the government list of over 20 countries

that he thought he didn't want to be

deported to

because they would torture him.

He thought there he actually thought

that there were more than 20 countries

who had it in for him

so badly that they wouldn't just jail

him, they would torture him.

So even I don't know who it was,

whatever government entity, ICE or

Border Patrol or somebody, they sort of

mocked him in writing, but then they

came up

So then they came up with this great

solution since he was afraid of these 20

countries uh torturing him and that they

would send them to a country called it's

in Africa it's called Ewatini

and and of course you've all heard of

Ewatini.

It's a really really small African

country. Uh, I guess it's mostly

surrounded by South Africa and but it

used to be called

Swasilland.

So I've heard of Swisilland but it's a

tiny tiny little country in Africa. So,

I guess I guess the joke here is,

you know, half of the time when I

analyze what the Trump administration

does or what Republicans do, you have to

almost analyze it like a prank,

like somebody with a sense of humor came

up with this. All right, so we got these

20 countries you don't want to go to.

Have you ever considered Esatini?

I'm sure the lifestyle there is just

terrific.

You'll love it. You'll love their

prisons.

Well, there's some more, believe it or

not, more updates in the Biden auto pent

story and the clemency and pardons

situation. And I guess there's more

documents that have been made available.

Just the news is reporting on it.

Stephen Richards and John Solomon and uh

let's see what else we know. Um

so Biden AIDS uh this is what we've

learned. Biden aids believed he should

sign pardons by hand.

Um, I guess that was a tradition and

something they decided, but he and he

seems to have outsourced approvals to

Vice President Harris, but I don't think

there's any um documents to say she

really did anything

just in general. Um,

and there's no evidence that Biden

himself never attended a meeting on any

of these clemency decisions.

So anyway, there's some more uh more

evidence that um maybe was not a uh a

real appropriate chain of approvals.

So we'll see.

The uh latest jobs report is a little

soft and disappointing. Not hugely, but

definitely going in the wrong direction.

um only added 22,000 jobs and and that

was 53,000 lower than expected. And so

unemployment also ticked up to 4.3,

which is not terrible.

4.3,

but you don't want to see it working.

Yeah. Moving in the wrong direction.

Well, as you know, yesterday Trump

announced that the Department of Defense

would in fact be renamed the Department

of War. He says that it's really about

winning.

Yeah, we should have won every war. We

could have won every war, but we really

chose to be very politically correct or

woke.

I like that he's trying to popularize

the word woke. Yeah. Or woke.

So, I saw a uh report that there's a

backstory to why, you know, Department

of War came back and that Lucky Palmer

might have been the uh the main

influencer on that. You know, he would

be the Anderil um founder, a uh defense

contractor.

So, anyway, that's interesting.

So, uh, apparently a Hyundai factory in

Georgia,

um, was raided by the, uh, Department of

Homeland Security for their, uh,

nonitizen workers, their illegal

workers, and 450 people were arrested,

which I believe was close to their

entire

uh, employee base.

So imagine if you will that Hyundai is

incentivized to come to the United

States with the express purpose of

creating jobs in the United States. So

they come to the United States and they

do in fact create jobs in the United

States at least 450 of them and then

they staff them all with non US

citizens.

All of them. Not just some of them, but

pretty much all of them.

So, do I feel sorry for Hyundai that

their entire factory will have to grind

to a halt because they lost all of their

employees? No. No. Hyundai, I think you

were, you know, maybe

maybe adhering to the letter of the law,

but not the spirit.

now but I will I will give them this

much cover.

Um I'm not positive about this but I

believe that probably during the period

when they did the hiring

that the only thing they were required

to do is check the documents from the

actual applicant that says they are or

are not a citizen. And there were plenty

of people who had fake you know fake ID

and fake documents. So if all they did

was look at the fake documents and not

being document experts said, "All right,

well that's all we've been asked to

check and you've got those documents."

Probably

it's it's going to be kind of a gray

area

whether they were even knowingly

breaking any law at all. So they might

be not in much trouble, the employer, if

they followed all the rules as they used

to exist.

Well, Van Jones on CNN says that tens of

thousands of Africans have already died

because of Trump administration uh

cutting the funding for some program

called PEPFAR

that uh allegedly had saved millions of

victims of HIV in Africa.

And

I said to myself, number one, do you

think that's true? Would that be the way

you would say it? Because why is it that

the United States has some kind of

unique responsibility to Africa?

Now, I get how terrible the AIDS epid ep

epidemic in Africa is, but

what is China and Russia doing? What are

all the other countries doing? Why is it

the United States problem to sol to

solve a problem in Africa? what what

makes that our problem or national

interest. Now, as as a human,

you know, you could certainly empathize

and you could want it to be solved, but

it's kind of weird that we just sort of

assume

that if we have the ability to save some

life anywhere in the world and we don't

do it,

that that means that we kill them.

It doesn't really mean that we killed

them because we can't really save all

the other lives in all the other world

without destroying ourselves which would

also have a ripple effect and be bad for

the rest of the world in our case.

So

it's a tough one. You know this this is

why you don't want to be president

because you make decisions where people

could credibly argue you just killed

tens of thousands of people. Well, you

just killed tens of thousands of people.

And then you have to argue, well,

you you can't say I killed somebody by

not helping them because the entire

world is full of people we didn't help

all over the place. And even the country

is full of people we didn't help and

they died.

So I would reject the idea that is our

responsibility if we could do it and it

didn't have a you know some kind of a

cost that was bigger than the the

benefit

um

then uh I'd feel differently.

do. Um, but then I went to Grock and

asked if it was true that cutting that

funding meant that tens of thousands of

people were dying in Africa. And unless

I read it wrong, it looked like Grock

said that there was no funding cut that

it was considered and then cancelled. I

don't know if that's a hallucination,

but so it's not clear that that was even

canceled. So you could give me a fact

check on that.

Um,

have you have any of you seen the uh

online

uh see would you call it a conspiracy

theory? I'll let you decide what to call

it, but it was the idea that the polio

vaccination didn't actually end polio,

but instead it was improvements and uh

hygiene.

Have you heard that one? By the way, I

don't I don't subscribe to that, but

it's it's actually somewhat prominent.

I've seen it quite a bit on social

media. So, that's that's out there. Um,

but we'll see what happens when uh the

various changes happen with RFK Jr. and

all the work he's doing and maybe

changing of mandates

more than anything else. That's probably

the the main thing that's going to

happen. Mandates will change.

Well, according to the Daily Mail,

there's a new uh uh poll, the Daily Mail

JL Partners poll. It says that Trump is

at his highest approval rating of his

presidency.

Now, they're they've got him at 55%

approval.

Uh that would be higher than any other

poll that I've seen. So take it with

your usual polling grain of salt. But at

the same time, Newsmax is reporting that

the Zagby poll

um has him at a solid 46%.

Now 46%,

you know, given our, you know, divided

country is actually pretty good. you

know, you'd love to see it over 50%, but

today's day and age, 46 pretty strong.

So, and I guess he got a bounce, you

know, he took a little dump over the

summer after the 100 days was over, but

he's sort of bounced back. And uh I

guess John Zagby says that uh at that

level of approval, he is impeachment

proof.

So even if the Democrats took control of

the House, you would be impeachment

proof. I think he was impeachment proof

anyway. Um

but that helps. Let's see.

Speaking of polls, Arasmus had a poll

that said that 53% of likely voters

under 40

want a socialist president in 2028.

the postmillennials writing about this.

Does uh does that even sound real?

How many of you are uh like shaking your

heads right now and saying, "Ah, wait,

did I hear that wrong? 53% of likely

voters under 40 want a socialist

president

like right away."

Now, I do this thing where I try to put

myself in other people's shoes and just

literally just see if I can imagine it

just to try to see what would be behind

that.

Now, your first your first impression is

that what's behind it is that they're

poorly educated about the risks and

rewards, right? That's your first

impression. Well, they must be poorly

informed or poorly educated because

there's no way that anybody, you know,

would want a socialist present.

But,

um, keep in mind that there's a lot of

news around the fact that young people

don't believe that they can achieve the

American dream.

So, I take I wind myself backwards in

time. I go,

what if I were

20 years old and didn't believe there

was any path for me to, you know, get a

house someday or to be, you know,

married with a family or something? What

if I thought there was no real practical

way that could ever happen for me? would

I be in favor of capitalism

and I still have to work hard and I and

I couldn't even find a job and you know

I can't stay employed long enough to

have health care and the robots are

coming going to take my job.

So, I got to say that if I if I subtract

from my assumptions that the American

dream, you know, work hard and go to

school and stay under trouble gets you

almost anything you want. If I take that

out of my assumptions,

would I be and I and you make me 20

years old, would I be leaning socialist?

And maybe would socialist just mean

something different to me? Because maybe

all it would mean is free health care

and free education and free

transportation.

Suppose that's all it meant.

Well, I mean that's a lot.

But if I were young,

I could very easily see myself being

persuaded into the same camp. So if you

think this is some kind of a fleeting

thing, you know, that maybe is just

going to be limited to New York City, I

don't think so. I I think that unless

something fundamentally changes where

everybody can get what they want, which

is sort of the promise of the robot age,

but I'm a little bit skeptical that it

will go that way very quickly.

I don't know. It's going to be a whole

lot of people who are going to try to

vote other people's money into their

pocket because they won't have access to

making their own money. You know, it

won't even be their fault. What would

you do if your only choice was to vote

somebody else's money into your pocket

cuz you didn't have the option of just

working hard and making your own money?

What would you do?

So, something's got to change.

Um,

so let's see. Oh, Trump was asked about

the new thing in Florida where Florida

dropped all mandates for vaccinations in

schools.

And I'm no medical expert,

so I have a mixed feelings about it. So

I'm more of a wait and see. Certainly,

we'll know maybe in two or three years,

maybe much less. Won't we won't we know

pretty soon if Florida is, you know,

killing a bunch of kids accidentally by

uh creating a situation where they're

less likely to get vaccinated.

I mean, so it's an experiment

which I feel like is worthy because the

it seems to me there are enough people

concerned about the risks of you know

any health risks from the vaccinations

themselves if they feel that the science

has not been sufficient or that maybe

the the people who do the science can't

be trusted.

Um, it's a reasonable

parental decision that some people will

make to get vaccinated and some will

make to not get vaccinated. But we'll at

least know if it made a difference.

We'll at least know. And the people who

do get vaccinated,

if the vaccinations work,

well, they don't have to worry about

getting it, right? So, the only people

who have to worry about it are the

people who didn't get vaccinated.

you know, maybe I'm oversimplifying it,

but I think that's true. So,

um, you know, they would know what risk

they're taking.

So, I don't know. I like the freedom of

it, but, uh, until we know if it causes,

you know, like massive deaths or

something, which I doubt, but we'll know

pretty soon. Then I don't have to guess.

And according to Oregon Health and

Science University,

there's uh new evidence. This will make

you crazy. Uh that childhood

vaccinations can last for decades. So

boosters are not necessary for some

things. And I think that they mentioned

tetanus tetanus and dtheria booster

shots. So apparently for years and years

People

have been getting these booster shots

that the data does not support make any

difference at all.

Oh my god.

Oh my god. Science and guessing

almost identical except that guessing is

a little bit better. And that's not even

a joke. If if you flipped a coin,

you'd at least get 50%.

Uh but size I believe is less

um because there there's so many ways it

can get distorted beyond chance.

All right. Um there was a new uh

Gatesbacked study

according to modernity John Fleet was

writing about it. So, Bill Gates backed

the study. They found that the the

seasonal flu shots are linked to

Oh, just shoot me. Are linked to 27%

higher heart injury risk, the Lancet

reports.

Uh

so,

so seniors vaccinated for influenza

experience more heart injuries, not

fewer.

So,

and how did they get how did they get uh

the wrong answer? Well, apparently it

was a statistical trick with the data.

No,

really. So, the data the data had always

showed that it was riskier for your

heart, but there was a little bit of

gamesmanship with the statistics to make

it go away.

But it doesn't go away in the real

world. It's just you can game it away

with the statistics. And so they did.

And uh that's one of the reasons that

anyway according to them.

Um

so that's suboptimal.

And now here according to the Mount

Sinai School of Medicine, uh after 40

years a heart doctors say beta blockers

may do more harm than good. Do you see

the theme? By the way, these are just

these are stories today.

What's the rest of the week look like?

This just today.

How many how many stories can there be

just today that some gigantically major

thing in healthcare was just wrong?

All right. So,

uh, apparently the beta blockers, it

looks like it maybe they had been good

at some point, but, um, when matched

with other modern, uh, stuff that

generally comes at the same time, they

might not match good with that. So that

uh

so it has more to do with how they

interact with other treatments, but the

bottom line is

um beta blockers may be a little more

risky than you thought.

And uh and then there's also a report I

don't know how confirmed it is, probably

no more confirmed than anything else,

but uh there's allegations that Tylenol

taken during pregnancy might be linked

to autism.

Um,

so there's that.

And then, uh, Bill Maher had his show

last night. And, you know, on Saturday,

we're always talking about the clips

that come out of that. You know,

uh, I was going to say something mean,

but then I withdrew it. But then I might

wait. I'll just say the mean thing at

the end. Okay.

So, Bill Maher has decided that uh RFK

Jr. is nutty and that he's got to go.

Now, you've seen most of the Democrats

complaining about RFK Jr. Can anybody

give me an example

of what he's done on the job? because

that's the part that matters. What has

he done on the job that would that would

uh classify as nutty?

Can anybody give me one example? I mean

even one is the example. I believe the

only one that Bill Maher mentioned was

that he fired like you know massive

bunch of people you know that were in

the vaccination decisionmaking capacity.

To which I say, don't you think there's

a little context missing to that? Do you

think he just fired them because they

liked vaccinations?

Or do you think he fired them because

they were actively trying to stop him

from gathering more information about

vaccinations?

Or do you think they may have had some

ties to the pharma companies they were,

you know, trying to regulate, if that's

the right word? Do you think there might

have been some backstory as to why they

got fired? Do you think he did it just

because he's a mad man who wants to ban

vaccinations and so he had to get rid of

all the provaccination people? Like, do

you really believe that's what happened?

Cuz that would be nutty, right? That

would be nutty if the only reason he did

it is cuz he disagreed with them and his

spin was not based on any science. Well,

that would be nutty. But why would you

believe that's happening?

What would what would bring you to the

twisted and unrealistic assumption that

the reason he was doing it would be

nutty if you knew it? Why would you even

think that? It's not like he's got some

big track record of doing things that

nutty. I mean, he's done things that are

fun, you know, in his personal life, but

nothing like nothing nutty in this this

class. Nothing like that.

So, it seems to me that there is an RFK

junior TDS kind of thing, derangement

syndrome. And

this is a really good test of how much

uh psychosis can be uh let's say

installed by the media.

There are probably tens of millions of

voters in the US who believe the same

narrative that RFK Jr. is a wacko nutty

anti-science guy. But not one of them

could give you an example that would be

compelling that would make that case.

not one of them. Now, here I'm I'm going

to limit it to, you know, the work he's

actually doing in the actual job, right?

Nobody has any examples. And and when

they when you hear one, you say to

yourself, uh, sounds like you just got

that story wrong. So, sometimes they'll

say stuff like, yeah, he's making

vaccinations unavailable.

And then you'll find out really it's

about mandates. So like they don't even

have the right story.

So how could so many tens of millions

believe that he's he's a nut job? And

the only reason is cuz the media and

social media have told that story and

it's that's all it takes. So if you

wondered um how powerful is hypnosis?

Well, if you extend the definition of

hypnosis to include any repetition of a

lie,

you can see for yourself. Tens of

millions of people have been convinced

that RFK Jr. is nutty when the truth is

they've simply been hypnotized.

That's it. They've just been hypnotized

and they're not aware of it.

So, um,

and then, uh, Bill Maher also is worried

that, uh, Trump militarizing the cities

by putting the National Guard in some of

the big cities is a prelude to creating

his own sort of dictator, you know,

personal police for his eventual

potential stealing of democracy and

taking over the country. Now, does that

sound sane to you?

Does Bill Maher sound sane

when he says that sending the uh

National Guard into what what would be

the highest number at the same time?

Two.

Do do you think he can bite off more

than two cities at the same time? I

mean, I think even Washington DC will

wind down

uh before Chicago might wind up and he's

worried that that will militarize our

cities and give him a chance to take

over. Let let me ask you this.

What kind of dictator is proun?

Is that a thing?

Can anybody think of any dictator

authoritarian

who is pro gun?

Has that ever existed?

And how exactly does militarizing the

cities, but let's just call that sending

in the National Guard?

How in the world do you

um evolve that into a into some kind of

like secret police

without the public being so all over it

and dismantling it that it couldn't

possibly like even if he wanted to? How

would that plan work? It's sort of like

believing, which Bill Maher also

believes, that the January 6ers were

doing a legitimate plan to take over the

country by by trespassing in one

building. How do you take over a country

by trespassing in a building?

Like even if some of them were violent,

which they were, how does that take over

a country? In in in what twisted

nightmare

does any of that result in taking over a

country? It obviously wasn't intended to

do that cuz that would be insane.

It would be insane.

So yes,

what looks to us like uh mental illness

in Bill Maher is almost certainly

susceptibility to brainwashing

by the media. Uh in his case, more the

media than the social media. It's it

affects everybody. So he's a very high

IQ, high functioning, you know,

well-informed guy. Doesn't make any

difference. Yeah. the the brainwashing

is just exactly effective

on some number of people regardless of

uh what you would imagine would be their

ability to defend against it, but that's

not a thing. People can't defend against

it. Um, Senator Tammy Duckworth,

what's a Duckworth? Okay. Um,

she said that Trump's use of the

military against the drug smuggling

narot terrorists

is uh setting the conditions for

occupying US cities to interfere in the

next election.

Now, come on. Is she even serious?

I mean, what even what is that? Is that

insanity

or is that being hypnotized?

This doesn't feel like being hypnotized.

This feels like somebody who knows she's

lying and knows that the lie will work.

Just I mean, I don't know that cuz I

can't read her mind. But that's what it

looks like. It It feels like she knows

she's lying because it's too ridiculous,

you know? But I I suppose cognitive

dissonance would get you to the same

place. So, you can't be sure on this

one.

And then, of course, the uh the Hitler

analogies live on. Um I guess a CNN

person, Rana Furuhar,

um says that the fact that businesses

are refusing to speak out against Trump

and his administration is reminiscent of

Nazi Germany.

Come on.

Yeah. Can you believe that there's

somebody still in 2025

who believes that going on CNN and

comparing Trump to Nazi Germany is

somehow additive?

Is that additive?

If you were the producers of CNN and you

heard somebody go on the air and say yet

again, yet again, oh, he looks he look

like a Nazi. I think he's going to be a

Nazi. When the smartest people in even

the Democratic party have said, can you

just shut up about the Nazi stuff? It

doesn't work. And every minute you spend

doing that is a minute you weren't doing

something better. Right? So, even the

Democrats know it's the biggest dumb

thing to do at the moment.

So, do you get invited back if you bring

up Nazism? If I were the producers, I

wouldn't I'd take you off the list. You

wouldn't be a guest after that cuz it's

2025, people. You're supposed to say

oligarch and authoritarianism.

Well, here's a story that I don't know

how many times I've heard this story

over the decades. Interesting.

Engineering has it this time that uh

some Chinese entity has developed a

transparent coding for windows that

would allow the window to be become a

solar power generator. Now, is it just

me or does this story come out once a

year and has for my entire adult life?

How many times have you heard of

somebody invented a window that will

turn sun into energy and it'll be cost

effective?

I I swear once a year for at least 30

years. So, is this one the real one?

Nah.

No, probably not. I wouldn't bet on it.

So, uh, Ran Paul

did an interview talking about Dr.

Fouchy and he said that, uh, that the

private emails show the lab leak theory

was at least a 50/50 with him. He says,

uh, that government officials were aware

CO likely leaked from a Wuhan lab, but

destroyed anyone who said so publicly.

So he goes uh Rand Paul says it's an

extraordinary thing where in private

they know that from the documents that

they were very open to the fact leaning

towards and in favor of the fact that

the virus came from the lab in public

they were disdainful.

Um

is there a reason why that matters so

much? There's something about the story

that I'm missing. I I get that Fouchi

shouldn't have been lying and I get that

probably would have been better if we

knew the right answer, but did it make

any difference in the end that we knew

where it came from or we didn't know

where it came from? Like as a as a

practical matter,

would we have treated China differently?

I don't know. So, I will acknowledge

that uh Fouchy has to answer for that if

he was lying to the public. But

I'm not aware of how that hurt us.

I mean, you wouldn't want it to happen

again, right? But but did it hurt us

just in trust?

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm I'm agreeing

that we'd have to do something about it.

All right. Thomas Massie points out that

uh Congress spends tens of millions of

dollars on secret projects

that that can only be viewed in a secure

room. And if you go in a secure room to

look at what those secret projects are,

uh they're all described in code words,

so you can't tell what they really are.

Are you comfortable with the fact that

there are tens of billions of dollars on

secret projects and that even a member

of Congress who presumably would have

the authorization can't figure out what

they are?

Uh well, I'm a little uncomfortable with

that. you know, you you like to believe

that they have the right um the right

kind of controls and audits on that kind

of stuff that even though you and I

don't know what it is, that doesn't mean

the government doesn't have full control

over it and they're monitoring their

expenses and making sure that it's

operating in the best interest of the

public, right? No.

One thing we know for sure is that our

government is designed maybe

unintentionally, but it's designed by

its design.

It's it's a giant criminal organization

because it just invites

every criminal scheme that you can

possibly do and the odds of getting away

with them look like it's pretty good. If

I were going to give a young person

career advice and they were afraid of,

you know, robots taking all the standard

jobs, I'd say, "Young man or young

woman, you should run for office because

politics is where you can steal the most

money with the lowest odds of being

caught."

No, I wouldn't say that,

even though it's true.

Well, Trump's gonna blacklist some

countries for imprisoning Americans,

Newsmax is reporting. And uh

so I guess that would uh the state

sponsors of wrongful detentions would

be, you know, punished in a variety of

ways. And I thought to myself, how many

of those countries are there? Are there

a lot of countries that are needlessly

imprisoning Americans?

Hm. I got questions.

Um, I guess Venezuela is getting some

Iranian missile boats. They're going to

go try to threaten some of our naval

assets maybe or trying to make us worry

about what's happening. I'll tell you

one thing that Venezuela would not want

to do, which would be sink a major

American naval asset.

because if they haven't figured it out

yet,

that would be a very bad thing for them

to do.

Well, I'm a little late on this story.

Maybe some of you heard it, but the uh I

guess the New York Times reported, and I

don't know how they knew it, that uh

there was a SEAL team that penetrated

North Korea back in 2019, and they were

trying to install some electronic

surveillance device, but they failed

because there was some uh u fishing boat

that kind of encountered them by

accident. So they ended up murdering the

fisherboat people, three, and puncturing

their lungs with knives so they would

float to the bottom. And then they, you

know, cancelled the project. So they

canled the mission. Now the real

question is who told the New York Times

and should the New York Times be writing

about that sort of thing? I I I feel

like that would be

I mean just think about the public good.

Isn't this very very very bad for the

public good that that story was

reported?

Well, what what is the upside of that?

Was there someone who would say no,

whatever you do, don't plant any

listening devices so we know better idea

what's happening in North Korea.

And it looks like it was designed as a

leak

strictly for the purpose of crippling uh

Trump's, you know, diplomatic work so

that North Korea would be mad at us. It

feels like that was the only purpose.

So anyway,

um, and once again, University of

Copenhagen

says that scientists have figured out

how to transform plastic waste into a

thing that absorbs CO2 from the air and

captures it.

And you know what you always say when I

tell you there's a new story about some

new way to capture CO2.

What do you always say in the comments?

But damn it, Scott. That CO2 makes our

plants grow better. We're all going to

die if they suck all the CO2 out of the

air. You fool. You fool. All right, so I

did that for you so you don't have to.

Well, as I mentioned, Owen Gregorian

will be holding a spaces event

immediately, or not that immediately,

but sort of sort of after this event is

over. And this event is coming to an end

for all of you except the few people on

locals, my beloved subscribers who I'll

be talking to privately. And I would

like to point out to you

that my book, Loser Think, is available

now on Amazon. It's the only place you

can get it. And loser think will teach

you how not to sound like you're bad at

debating and arguing and thinking. It'll

tell you what not to do so that the

smart people won't say, "Oh, are you

using word thinking or an analogy to

make an argument or a lot of other

things you learn." All right, locals

coming at you privately in 30 seconds.

The rest of you, thanks for joining.

Hope I can see you again tomorrow. Same

time, same place.