Episode 2994 CWSA 10/20/25

Good morning everybody.

Let me solve my technical problem.

For some reason my i.

Pad died.

Why?

Why stocks are looking good?

Bitcoin's up.

It's a slow news day.

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Well, like I said when you were first joining, there's no news today.

Do you ever wake up and there's no news?

There's just there's just no news.

I'll talk about the news and I'll you know, some of it's about science and stuff, but boy, they closed the government and all the fun stuffs.

So, first I'll tell you about my comic that you can only see if you're a subscriber on X or on locals.

I'll just tell you that uh the boss is looking to hire an employee who's got a neurochip in his head.

So, he'll be an advanced employee, but not only does he have a neurochip in his head, he's got an entire micro data center in his head.

So pretty soon you're going to be hiring employees who have micro data centers in their head.

That's my prediction.

All right.

Uh I saw a couple of posts by Dr.

Nicholas Fabiano who found a few studies that were interesting on X.

One of them is that apparently there's a high correlation between people who are nearsighted like me, people have glasses that are nearsighted and higher IQ.

Do you know how they could have known that without doing a study?

They could have asked me.

I'll tell you when I discovered this.

Many years ago when Dilbert first became a phenomenon, I was invited to speak at MIT.

And I go into this auditorium and this was before LAS.

I don't know if it was before LASIK was invented, but it was before it was popular.

And I stood up there in front of that crowd with my glasses on and I looked into the CL crowd and I'm not positive, but I think every single person in the room was wearing glasses.

and they're probably all nearsighted.

And I said to myself, I've never seen this before.

I've never seen an entire auditorium of people wearing glasses at the same time.

MIT, our smartest college.

Uh Dilbert actually graduated from MIT.

That that's part of his backstory.

Dr.

Fabiano also found a study.

They said that depression can be contagious via the mirror neuron system.

So in other words, if you spend time around a depressed person, it can make you depressed.

How many people didn't already know that happy wife, happy life?

Is there anybody who didn't know that hanging around depressed people will make you feel bad if you do it enough?

Okay, I think they could have saved some money on that one.

Here's some good news.

How many of you remember you, if you've been with me since the beginning politically, uh, back in 2016 or so, I was just talking all the time about generation 4 nuclear power and how it was coming.

It's here finally 8 10 years later.

Uh, there's a first, I think it's the first Gen 4 reactor.

It'll be a small one.

uh that's going to open up and it's uh just what you think it is.

It's molten salt used as both a coolant and a fuel.

It's just going to be a little one megawatt reactor and it'll be a it'll be a test to see if they can build the 100 megawatt, which they probably will.

So it looks like this technology is now well understood and the plan is that if they can build this in a factory.

So they're trying to make a small easy to build won't melt down.

Won't melt down is the important part.

Won't melt down.

It can't.

It's actually designed so it could melt down if you wanted it to.

Um, so it won't melt down and will be built in mass production in factories.

So they would build the components and then ship them out to the site, which would be way less expensive.

So we might be uh, you know, it'll take a few years for this to get built and then it'll take a few years for the big ones to be built.

But I feel like we're at Gen 4.

I think we got there, people, if you were waiting for it.

Well, I guess last night while I was sleeping, the internet broke.

Uh, except for X.

So, I guess the problem was with Amazon's AWS cloud service that affects a lot of the big services.

So, a whole bunch of apps, they use Amazon's back, what would you call it?

Uh, backroom processing.

And, uh, it all broke.

So they had one failure point at Amazon and it broke the entire internet except for X because I guess Musk has his own his own secured internet.

So everything went down except X which is scary but at the same time isn't it nice to know that X didn't go down because you can do almost everything there.

You can message pretty soon you'll be able to send money.

can't send money yet on X, but you will.

I mean, he's already applied for it.

That's going to happen.

So, yet again, another service that Elon Musk provides to the world.

The the list the list of things that one man is doing for the world to make it safer is just out of control now.

I mean, just it's crazy.

It's crazy how much he's done for the world and how much he probably will do because he's still young.

Anyway, here's here's a study that was designed to do nothing but make you mad.

You ready for this?

On one level, it's a study about a thing, but the thing won't even matter to you.

As soon as you hear it, you're just going to get mad.

You ready?

the study that has no purpose other than to make you mad.

Uh, University of Florida says they they've got a study now that said that people who got the COVID vaccine lived much longer if they also had cancer.

In other words, the study says that the COVID vaccine was one of the greatest cancer treatments of all time.

How do you feel now?

Do you believe it?

Do you believe that this would be reproducible that that they could do another study and find out that the people who got the shot because this is opposite of everything you've heard, right?

This is direct opposite of everything you've ever heard because the only thing you ever heard is that maybe people were more vulnerable and and maybe they were.

So, do you think I know the answer?

Of course not.

I don't know the answer.

I don't know if these shots made you more vulnerable or saved your life.

No idea.

But I'll tell you what I know for sure.

Science doesn't know.

That's what I know for sure.

That the scientists don't know.

So, do I believe this?

No.

Do I rule it out as completely impossible?

No.

But I don't think I'm going to believe this one.

I'm gonna I'm gonna put a pin in that one.

I'd love to know who funded it, don't you know?

All right.

Uh, I'm going to give you some reframes this morning, but I thought I'd start with Trump's because Trump had a reframe that uh was very impressive.

Very impressive.

So, the the no kings thing happened and uh Trump was responding to it and he said this quote, "I'm not a king.

I work my ass off to make our country great.

That's all it is.

I'm not a king at all.

Now, that, ladies and gentlemen, is a reframe.

Because the normal way that you would respond to an accusation that you were trying to become a dictator would be what?

You would say, "I'm not trying to become a dictator." Would that move anybody?

No.

You might say, "I love the Constitution." And then people would say, "Yeah, everybody says that.

wouldn't mean anything.

Uh I I love our democratic republic.

That's what I'm committed to.

Conceptual.

Conceptual.

But when he says, "I'm not a king.

I work my ass off." He's reframed it into a category where it's hard to judge him, isn't it?

Because even his biggest critics will admit he's working his ass off, right?

So he retreats to something that even his biggest critics will will grudgingly say, "All right, well, he does work his ass off." That's true.

Now that So he's already won half the battle because he moved them to a place where they agree with him.

He works his ass off.

And compared to Biden, it's really striking, right?

So when he says, "I worked my ass off," it's not exactly specifically a defense against trying to become a king, but it is hard for you to hold in your head both of those thoughts at the same time.

That's what makes it so good.

You don't think of the king as working his ass off.

You think of the king wearing the hat and telling other people to do stuff.

But we observe that Trump is in the trench all the time.

day and night, sleeps less than anybody you ever know, works harder, takes fewer vacations, golfs a lot, but the golf is often worked too.

And so he creates this frame where you can't really hold in your head the hard worker part, which we observe and all know to be true with the cane part.

That is brilliant.

I don't I don't know if I can quite express how smart that is.

It's it's again it's the sort of thing that only a Trump can do this this specific Trump.

Other people can't do this.

They they would just have some, you know, weak I love my democracy.

No, no, they're the ones who have the they're the ones who want to be the king.

But this is perfect.

I work my ass off.

It's hard to argue.

I I work my ass off.

All right.

So, I told you I was going to give you some more reframes.

And so I will from my book Reframe Your Brain, my highest rated book, five stars.

So it's full of reframes if you didn't know that.

Let me give you one.

Um, how about the the Here's one.

Suppose you want to do something big.

Doesn't matter what it is.

You want to shop for a house or save up for a house.

You want to uh maybe decide to go back to school.

You want to change your job.

You want to do something something big.

So, here's a reframe for that.

Quite often, we don't do it because the effort is so big and daunting that you can't even start.

Do you ever have that situation?

There's a thing you want to do, but it's it's just so big, you know, in order to start.

Like maybe you want to relocate to another state.

That's like a really big job, right?

So, you don't want to start because it's just so big.

Here's the reframe.

What's the smallest thing I can do that moves me in the right direction?

Think of the smallest thing, not the biggest thing.

Just reverse it.

What's the smallest thing?

Usually, the smallest thing is to look for some information.

So, I'll just use my example of you wanted to move to another state.

First thing you do is you look up their tax code.

And maybe that's it.

Maybe that's all you do that day.

You just look at their tax and go, "Okay, they they have lower state taxes, so so far I'm good." Maybe the next day you ask again, what is the smallest thing I can do?

Well, I could maybe uh do a little research to find out what town would be the best town to live in that's near wherever I think I want to work, for example, or my family or whatever.

So the way you approach it is what's the smallest thing you can do because what you'll find is that there's sort of a compound interest to it.

When I wanted to become a cartoonist, I had to assemble all of these tiny little facts like this is the kind of paper you want to use.

This is the book that tells you where to send your samples.

This is the kind of pen you want to use cuz other pens have problems for various reasons.

This is, you know, it's got to be three panels.

You want to all capital letters.

So, you assemble all these tiny tiny little things that individually get you closer to this big thing.

And you realize that life is actually kind of long.

Sometimes, sometimes time flies, but other times life is long.

So, how many of you remember when I decided I was going to teach myself to play drums?

Was that like um seven years ago?

Probably seven years ago.

And some of you watched me.

And you watched, you know, eventually I got a I watched some You.

Tubetubes, but I eventually got a an instructor would come once a week and I started assembling very very slowly the skills to play the drum.

Now, I didn't want to play in a band.

I just wanted to be able to knock around in my garage, maybe play to my stereo or something.

So, those of you who are with me and uh on the locals app, you know that I've accomplished that.

It took seven years, but but after seven years, I finally did a a drum solo, you know, playing over with with some other music in the background for my audience.

Now, was it good?

No.

But I didn't care.

I I wasn't trying to be great.

I was just trying to do it.

Now, the doing it was extraordinarily fun.

Extraordinarily fun because I could feel the entire 7-year arc.

And it actually started with my stepson.

I tried to get him into the drums when he was maybe 14 or something because I thought it'd be good for him.

Uh but he wasn't as interested I as I was.

So to me it's sort of a legacy that connects us uh across across life and death.

So that's my point.

So the point is that you can in many times do the smallest little thing.

I can't tell you how many times I would walk by the drums and say I'm going to try this one thing and I'd put 60 seconds of practice into it.

And then the next day maybe two minutes.

All right.

That's your reframe.

for the day.

All right.

So, the no kings event happened and uh I'm happy to report there are no extra kings.

Uh there are no reports of any extra kings.

So, I think it the no kings um march did suppress any extra kings popping up.

So, so far so good.

Uh but the Democrats are apparently a afraid of the blowback now that the no kings thing is over.

They don't have a reason to keep the government closed.

So, uh, Scott, what do you think about becoming a stepfather?

Many rightwing men don't like it.

I'm going to answer that question even though it's distracting from my my topic because we don't have much news today.

So, I'm going to just jump around.

Uh, how do what do I think about stepids?

Here's the the one and only way to think about step kids.

You have a separate relationship with them.

That's it.

It's you you have a relationship with the the parent, but your relationship with the kids, that's just separate.

So, you could like them.

You could stay in their life if they want to stay in yours.

You know, if you get divorced, if they want to stay in yours.

Now, mine do.

Mine do want to stay in my life and I want to stay in their life.

So we have a separate very good relationship but they don't you know they don't live with me but they're also you know certain age.

Uh and the second thing is that I always saw it as a package deal.

So even though the the relationships are separate it's still a package deal.

So when you agree to be part of the parents life, you're agreeing to be part of the children's life, too.

As much as they want, it's up to them, right?

It's always up to them.

But as much as they want, I'm all in because both because they're they're just excellent people and I I like having excellent people in my life.

So the answer is it's really individual.

Um, if if I were scraping by and didn't have enough money for myself, I would probably be regretting, you know, any kind of contact with any exes of any kind.

But since I'm in a favorable situation financially, um, I can make their life a little easier and mine at the same time.

So, everybody wins.

Anyway, so what are the Democrats going to do now that their no kings thing happened?

It didn't make any difference to anybody.

It just showed that they don't have anything.

Uh I think they proved that they don't have much black support because the protesters were almost no diversity at all.

Uh and uh they were mostly older people and very few young men, the groups that they want to get.

So if the Democrats wanted to win back the black vote and win back the Hispanic vote and win back the young male vote, they did everything the opposite of that by showing all the people who are not that being their base visually.

So visually I think it was a disaster for the Democrats because visually it was just grandparents.

It was just old white grandparents, which could not be further from what they're trying to make their brand, which is the, you know, all diverse everything.

So, I would say visually it was a complete disaster.

Um, but not in a way that they will recognize the there'll just be this continued drift toward fewer Democrats and nobody will be able to quite put their finger on what was the one thing that made that happen.

Well, it wasn't one thing.

It was everything.

And this this is just part of the everything that continues to to push that ball down the road.

It's like, no white guys.

Nope.

We don't like men.

Nope.

Nope.

Just a little bit.

Anyway, uh Mom Dami versus Quomo and uh what's the other guy?

Siwa.

There's a new poll.

Gotham polling.

I don't know how reliable Gotham polling is, but they do say that if Sleewa dropped out that it would be close between Cuomo and Mdami and it would put Cuomo within striking distance and some New Yorkers, even Republicans would say, "Ah, give us the Democrat.

At least he's a normal Democrat." Cuomo being a normal Democrat.

Uh, but Siwa is not looking to drop out.

So if he doesn't uh then it looks like Mabi would win quite easily.

So there's that.

What do you think of the theory that letting M dami win and essentially sacrificing our crown jewel city for however many years uh might be useful for Republicans and maybe useful for the city because it would prove that he's not the right solution and we you maybe we get another 20 year reprieve from that kind of thinking.

What do you think?

Do you do you think we'd be better off New York specifically?

Do you think they'd be better off just eating this sandwich and then and then learning from it?

I don't know.

You know, I was surprised to learn that New York real estate is coming back.

That's the last thing I would have expected.

If there's one thing I can tell you about economics, nobody can predict it.

So the the entire um I would say the the argument against mom dummy is that we can all predict economics here.

Here I'm going to I'm going to make you a little bit uncertain.

Are you ready?

When you came in here you were completely certain that Mami's approach was a bad one.

Communist socialist and that uh the normies had the right one.

you know, social, capitalism, free markets.

You were completely right about that, right?

Well, here's the thing.

How many of you predicted that in the middle of the race to elect a socialist/ maybe communist in the middle of the race that New York City real estate prices would go up and people would be coming back in and buying office space and is recovering?

How many of you would have predicted that?

To me, it was the most easy thing to predict wouldn't happen, right?

Because the the situation in theory is getting worse and worse for a traditional business that doesn't want to overpay doesn't want to overpay taxes and doesn't want to be in a crime area.

So in theory, it would be the easiest prediction in the world that the real estate situation in New York would continue getting worse, at least during the election when there's a chance of the communists getting in power.

But it's the opposite.

So this is where I'm making you feel uncertain.

And one of the reasons that I have no respect for my own uh college degree, which is in economics, it doesn't predict.

Yeah, I I've told you in different contexts that the best you can do in understanding reality because we're not good at understanding reality is whether it predicts.

Well, the reality I was living in didn't predict.

Did yours?

Didn't predict that New York City real estate would already be recovering.

Which reality predicted that?

Not mine.

Not mine at all.

You know whose might have?

M Donny's it's entirely possible that M Donnie was expecting and predicting real estate to come back and the argument would be there's only one New York City.

That's that's the whole argument.

There's only one New York City.

So if you want if you want to play with the big boys, you're going to have to go back.

and and he even thought mom Davia even wanted to raise taxes on corporations to match uh New Jersey which is also clever because he's matching that's this very clever way to do it but obviously he thought it wouldn't destroy the economy or even he wouldn't be predicting it right so now let's see if I succeeded so you walked in here completely sure that he was the one who's always wrong and you're the one who's fight because you like the capitalism and the free market.

Except his point of view is the only one that predicted correctly, right?

I'm just messing with you because obviously I don't I don't think his his uh plans are the ones that are the good ones.

But have a little bit of humility.

Just just back up to a little bit of humility.

Looks to me like he predicted correctly and you didn't.

Looks to me like he predicted correctly and I didn't.

And in theory, I have more credentials than he has for this kind of prediction.

I don't know.

Just that's just something to think about because it's a slow news day.

Apparently Denmark uh just decided that uh people in Denmark can copyright their own face.

So if AI tries to use your face, there'll be a copyright violation.

I don't know if that'll last.

That doesn't seem like something that could last.

Anyway, all right.

Here's another surprise.

Did you know that San Francisco, I think this was in Wall Street Journal, that even San Francisco is rebounding.

Did you know that?

So, they've got a good mayor.

I forget the mayor's name, but I heard people say they were happy about our current mayor.

Uh, burglaries are allegedly down 28% this year in San Francisco.

Do you believe that or is that just another one of those they they change the way they report it or people just stop reporting it?

I feel like it's both, but it might be true that it's not getting worse.

That might be true.

And uh let's see.

Crime rates have dropped in general and uh allegedly the number of homeless encampments in San Francisco has fallen, but I don't have a percentage on that.

And then here's another one.

Rents are up in San Francisco 12% over last year.

All right, let's do this again.

How many of you predicted that San Francisco of all places would be able to raise rates in the middle of what looked like the city falling apart?

How many of you would have said, "Oh yeah, those rentals will be up 12%." Not me.

I I would have guessed that rents would have collapsed by now.

So that's two cities in which my ability to predict with all of my economics training zero.

Zero ability to predict.

If you think you can do better, knock yourself out.

Well, in other fun stories, uh let let me say this about Candace Owens.

Uh, I love Candace Owens.

Um, I like her personally.

I only met her once, very briefly, but she was very warm.

And, uh, I love this show that she puts on, not just the actual podcast, but the whole show.

I I I like the way she's, you know, inserted herself into the the public mind.

I I just sort of like everything about what she does.

Now, that's different from agreeing with all of her takes.

Everybody gets that, right?

Do do we ever get to the point where I don't have to say that?

Can we ever as a civilization get to the point where I can say, "I like that public figure without having to say, but I don't agree with 100% of what they say." We're not there yet, right?

I still have to do that.

I don't agree with 100% of everything she's ever said.

All right.

Well, she's she's making some uh noise today.

She says Charlie Kirk was betrayed and don't worry about the gag order in the Charlie Kirk case.

Is that a gag order directed at her?

I think so.

Um she says, "I plan to violate it on the world's behalf." So, she to violate the course gag order on the world's behalf.

She says, "The things I've discovered this past week are enough to burn the house down." And yes, Charlie was betrayed by everyone.

All right.

Now, do you see what I mean?

How do you not love that?

She She's so good.

Just so good at getting attention, which is her job, right?

If that's what I do, she and I are in the same job in a way, which is to get attention.

But you're only going to get attention if you're creating value, right?

You could get attention for one day, but you can't be Candace unless you can get attention just regularly, anytime you want.

And wow, can she get attention?

So good at this.

So if you if you simply and you know, I like to do this.

I like to separate the person's, you know, character from their skill level.

I like in this case I like your character and her skill level, but uh the skill level is just crazy.

Kandis's skill level, her talent stack is crazy.

Anyway, so this is fun.

We'll keep an eye on that.

Um according to Jensen Wang, CEO of Nvidia, here's more good news.

Um, it only took one year and apparently the US is already manufacturing the the most advanced chip for AI and Vinnie is working with uh what is the name of that uh TSMP or something.

The Taiwan company uh apparently used moved it some of its technology to the US and working with Nvidia.

So now the US can make not at the same not at the same quantity TSM.

Thank you.

TS TSM is the name of the chip company from Taiwan.

Anyway, so they're working together and now they can make the most advanced chip in the US.

I assume that uh volume is probably still a big issue, but I feel it's TSMC TMS TSMC.

Okay.

Um, but that's a pretty big deal to me because it means that even if Taiwan sunk into the ocean, um, we could get going.

You know, we we could we would have enough on our shores that we could reconstitute slowly.

That's a big deal.

But it probably also makes it far more likely that Taiwan will be destroyed by China because China will know that it's not an existential risk to the United States anymore.

H I just realized this could be a double-edged sword.

If you're China and you're not benefiting directly from the advanced chips on Taiwan, but your biggest competitor is the United States, would you worry too much if in the process of conquering Taiwan, you destroyed the semiconductor business?

You might not care as much as you should because then it would just put you at parody with your biggest competitor who who has access to it now but wouldn't if it got knocked down.

But now but now we can make those chips in the US.

So now you're China and you think, "Aha, I can totally overthrow Taiwan now because the US won't have to fight." If they don't want to and they don't want to be in a war, a world war, they don't have to.

But before we kind of would have had to because we couldn't let China take control of the chips that would be better than the ones that we could make.

That'd be too big a risk.

So, it's entirely possible that growing our own homegrown best of chips will sacrifice Taiwan.

It's not impossible, you know, it's not impossible.

All right.

Uh, apparently Trump is using the uh shutdown of the government to kill some projects.

I didn't know that was an option.

I guess the Democrats didn't know it either, but they're finding out.

Allegedly, there's some kind of $20 billion New York City tunnel project that Schumer had spent.

Uh, Representative Schumer, Senator Schumer has spent years trying to get passed and finally did.

And now because the government's closed, Trump's just going to cancel the whole project.

I don't even know if I don't even know if uh Trump even looked into whether it was a good idea to do the project or not.

I think it's just a Schumer's project and he worked 20 years to get it, so he's just going to cancel it on his ass.

All right, that might be a little bit that might be a little bit authoritarian, but I'd have I'd have to know if we really need this tunnel.

I imagine that we could live without the tunnel and the $20 billion.

Anyway, um, so there's a story today that somebody built a a hunting stand in a tree, which is where the hunters hide from the prey, and then they can take a shot from their hiding place in the tree.

They built one that had a uh that had a complete view of Air Force One when it lands in Palm Beach.

So, so he had the the the hunting blind had an open wide openen shot at the president of the United States coming down the gate from his own airplane in a place where he's known to land.

Now, the good news is that it was discovered and it looks like it's been there for a while.

Uh, but uh we don't know why it was there.

We don't know if it was there for that purpose, but it would be a strange place for a Wouldn't you think that Palm Beach would be a strange place to have a hunting blind in a tree?

I I don't know how many other hunting blinds and trees there are in Palm Beach, but that certainly looks exactly like what it looks like, doesn't it?

Bonino's all over that one.

Well, apparently Boston is looking into having a cityrun grocery store.

Mom Dami has um talked about that.

They haven't done it yet, but did you know that Atlanta already has one?

They have a cityrun um grocery.

And I do not have an update on whether it's working in Atlanta.

I imagine they've got some some challenges, but it makes me wonder, is there a way to make a government grocery store work without getting rid of the regular grocery stores so the rest of us can have more choice?

And I was thinking about that.

What What would you do if you were the government and you wanted to I don't want to say compete, but you were going to have an alternative grocery store in the same place where there were regular grocery stores.

So the first thing you have to do is make sure that people who had money still preferred the regular grocery stores.

And you could do that easily by having more junk food and more selection, right?

Selection alone would would get the people with money to go there.

So the first thing you do is have less selection if it's a government grocery store.

I think if you reduce the selection to just, you know, basics like vegetables and um and protein, you could probably find ways to cut costs like crazy cuz you just keep it simple.

It's like, okay, we got five proteins just always the same.

Um, but then could you also do something that was direct from farm if you got rid of some regulations because you are the government.

So, if you got rid of government regulations and said, "All right, you can take your chances with the food because it won't be regulated, but it's coming right from the farm and we'll give you all the information you want about the farm, but it's up to the farm.

And we're going to we're going to hold the farm possibly uh possibly hold the farm um blameless even if somebody gets sick from the food.

So you'd have to handle sort of the insurance risk of providing food to people and a government could just say, "Yeah, you can't sue.

You you can't, you know, some people are going to die from the farm food.

You can't sue." Uh so if you did all of those things, you reduced the choice, you figured out how to get the footprint really low, may maybe you even got some free rent, uh maybe you figured out how to use robots instead of employees.

Maybe you squeeze the big food producers, you know, for a little little taste of something to help pay for it.

Um maybe you had your own uh maybe you had your own vertical so you you owned the farm but you also owned the grocery store.

So my point is if you if you started from scratch and said how would we build a alternative place to get food?

Um could you do it?

Is it even doable?

I've always thought that the ideal would be that there would be like a cafeteria that you could go to that would be close enough everybody could get to it.

You know, maybe there would be multiple, but the cafeteria model would have less waste than individuals.

You know, if if you shop for yourself and cook for yourself, it's just so wasteful the amount of time you spend and that you have to drive somewhere and pick something up.

You got to store it.

Some of it goes bad.

You got to negotiate who gets what.

Compare that to just everybody walks over to the buffet and you just get what you want.

So I do not rule out that there could be a government grocery store.

I I think if you rule it out because it's never worked, that's a good starting point.

But that's just the starting point for the analysis.

You have to go past it never worked.

You have to go to what what has never been tried.

If you get to what's never been tried, well, now you've now it's interesting.

Well, you were not surprised to know that the Gaza ceasefire is not holding as well as people would like, but it's unclear whether the leadership of Hamas has anything to do with it or is it rogue elements within Hamas.

But there is some firing, there are some deaths.

Israel uh is responding to the to the encroachments by uh cutting food, I guess, and aid.

We hope that's temporary.

Uh so humanitarian aid is stopped or paused, I guess.

Mostly paused.

And uh I feel like that'll get worked out.

So, as I said yesterday, uh I'm not worried about the ceasefire as long as both sides have dramatically drawn down their military presence.

There's definitely going to be violations of the ceasefire.

You know, every single person who's been alive more than 10 minutes knows the ceasefire is going to get violated.

So, you can't say we're going to change everything if the ceasefire gets violated because we know it's going to get violated.

there there wouldn't be any point even doing the deal if we thought a violation was going to overturn the whole thing.

So, of course, we're going to work through all the little violations, but probably we will probably will.

It it does make sense that there'll be plenty of people there who don't want a ceasefire and we'll be acting upon it.

But as long as they get the big weapons out of there.

I guess uh Jared was talking about maybe a gun buyback program.

And my what what was your first impression when you heard that that they would do a gun buyback program with Hamas?

Your first impression is no, right?

That's not going to work.

They're not going to sell their guns.

My second impression was we don't really know how the the depth of their poverty right now.

So if you were a uh if you owned a gun, you were Hamas and you owned a gun and the government offered you what was a really good price, a really good price, and you had no source of other money and you also thought that the the war was over.

I think maybe half of them would sell their guns because money is better than a bunch of bullets you're not going to use.

Right.

So, I do like the buyback idea, but I think it's, you know, that's only a dent.

You can't get all the guns with that.

But if you got half of them, that'd be that'd be pretty impressive.

All right.

So, uh, yeah, Kushner and Wickoff are the two guys trying to figure out how to govern, uh, Gaza after that, which which to me, um, brings up this question.

Is there a way to create a non-corrupt government, even for just a city?

Let's let's call Gaza a city, even though it's a it's bigger than a city.

Has anybody ever done it?

I don't think it's even doable.

I don't believe there's any form of government um that you could just plop in the middle of a highly corrupt culture and then suddenly have it not be corrupt.

Now, when I say it's a highly corrupt culture, I am not uh I'm not banging on one type of people.

It's everywhere.

You know, you you you could, you know, just take a a pin and drop it on the globe and it would hit some some corrupt place somewhere.

All right.

Basically, all cities are corrupt.

So, the question is, if you build the cities the way they've always been built in the past, what are you going to get?

Well, corrupt Gaza for sure.

But is there a way, similar to the conversation about the government grocery stores, if you were to throw away all assumptions, uh, and this is what Jared I think is especially good at, throw away all assumptions, could you do it then?

And who would do it?

I've often thought that the number one thing you need to get right is that the people who are making the money decisions don't live there.

Because if you live there, you've got all these corrupt influences.

You know, that gangster you grew up with and uh the people you went to school with and you know, your your wife's family who wants that contract.

You can't let the people who live there control the money.

They will always be corrupt.

they would just give it to their family members etc.

So you need some kind of independent physically not there entity to not only decide where it goes where the money is spent but then to watch it like a hawk and report on it so that everybody knows where it went.

If you can't get that part right, nothing else works.

So somehow Jared has to solve the problem of what happens when money is introduced into the the zone and then who gets to decide where it goes, who watches it, and who reports it to the people to make sure it went to the right place.

If you don't get that part right, nothing else matters.

And that's the hardest part to get right.

Nobody's done it.

As far as I know, nobody's ever done it.

I believe every city is corrupt.

But if Jared could pull that off with some clever set of systems, it would be one of the greatest things that ever happened in the world.

Think about that.

The the odds of pulling that off are pretty low.

It's, you know, it's maximum challenge.

But what if he did it?

What if they pulled that off?

Wickoff and uh and Jared Kushner, what if they actually built a city that by its design, you know, the the systems they put in place avoided corruption?

Can you even imagine that?

That that would be one of the greatest things that ever happened in the history of humankind.

So, I don't know what you're working on today, but uh but those two guys have a chance to change everything.

Do they have a plan?

Probably not yet.

But do they have the skills that the two of them could conceivably come up with a way to build a non-corrupt zone?

And I think yes.

I think yes.

I believe that they have the skill to do that.

Doesn't mean it will get done because you know there there will be a lot of push back in every possible way.

But yeah, they might be the the only two dudes that could pull that off right now.

Trump has announced an end to the Colombian foreign aid.

I didn't even know we were giving Colombia foreign aid, but apparently now they're a bunch of illegal drug dealers, too.

Um Trump's not happy with the uh president of Colombia who is not happy with us.

So Trump's going to discontinue whatever our subsidies were for Colombia.

I feel like the subsidies were for the purpose of fighting drugs, weren't they?

So, is he saying that we've been paying Colombia to fight drugs, but Colombia is actually the drug cartel and we've been paying the cartel?

Is that what is that what happened?

I don't know if that's what happened.

I'm seeing some yeses.

So yes, if if that's even close to what's happening, and I don't know that it is, but if the government is embedded with the cartel and we were paying the government to deal with the cartel, well, maybe it's time to stop doing that, huh?

You would not be surprised to hear because it's it's a groundhog day all over again.

Ukrainian drone struck a major Russian gas plant.

How many times have I said that?

Like every day, right?

Every day there's another Russian major energy structure that got attacked.

So that's happening.

Um and other positive news, interesting engineering has a story about a wind turbine.

So it's basically, you know, the the fans of a windmill would be, you know, the the turbine part, but apparently they've somebody has developed a new shape for the uh I guess what the turbine, now I don't know what turbine means.

If you say turbine enough, you don't know what it means.

Turbine, turbine, turbine.

God, now I don't even know what it means.

But, uh, it would be the little things that the air is bouncing off of.

And they've figured out how to make one that boosts energy output by 83% with 35% less weight.

Fiber composite rotors make a small turbine stronger, more durable.

83%.

Do you believe that?

that they figured out how to make a windmill 83% more efficient all of a sudden with just a shape change.

It's just a shape, you know, something easy to reproduce, a shape.

Uh well, if that's true, finally your dream can come true, which is you'll be able to watch television even when the wind is just barely blowing.

Of course, I'm joking.

Trump always says that the windmills are no good because when the wind stops blowing you can't watch TV, which of course is not true, but it's hilarious every time he says it.

And now, now I'm thinking, finally, we can watch TV when the wind is barely blowing.

You know, maybe it's so efficient, those little turbines, that you could have one in your house without making your neighbors crazy from the sound and the dead birds.

Um, all right.

According to uh Elizabeth Gimney, who's writing for nature, AI boss have now reviewed uh oh, there's a conference coming, which is an all AI paper conference.

So the conference will have humans at it, but they're there to see what would happen if AI wrote the scientific papers, submitted the scientific papers, and then here's the fun part, did their own peer review.

So they're doing a conference of AI generated scientific papers uh that will be matched with the peer reviewers so that the humans who attend can see if the peer reviewers can add value to the AI papers.

Does that make sense?

Did I did I explain that well enough?

Um so I it's not that the papers are going to be um trusted more.

is it's more about seeing how the human AI scientific model works.

I love this.

I think this is exa exactly exactly what they should be looking at to see see what that looks like when you throw the AI in there.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I told you I'd be uh finishing a little early.

There's not much news happening today, which I suppose is good.

But I did tell the people on locals, my beloved subscribers, that I'd be taking some questions at the end about anything you want.

So, I won't be able to see all of your questions because they zip by pretty quickly.

But, if you do have any questions uh on any topic at all, I'd be happy to uh happy to answer them.

All right.

I'm just looking to see there's a little lag here.

What if the peer reviewers have AI write their peer review?

They are.

That's what they're doing.

The peer reviewers are the AI.

It's exactly what they're doing.

All right.

Uh All right.

Uh question.

Trump's government added the White House.

Oh, man.

Trump's government added the White House and departments to Blue Sky Social Network.

So I subscribed.

Wow, TDS is strong.

What are your thoughts including how those supporting should engage?

So how how should Trump supporters engage with Blue Sky?

So Blue Sky is the competitor to X that only only Democrats went to basically.

Uh but the White House wanted a presence there, which is smart.

Um I just would ignore it.

Just ignore it.

There there's nothing there for you.

Uh if it becomes more of a thing then maybe someday you don't have to ignore it but at the moment I just ignore it.

I helped you with your teen.

Good.

Can you reframe marriage for more success?

Now the the individual relationship ones you'd have to know so much about the individual situation.

I I can't just reframe marriage because some people ought to be married and some people ought to probably cut it out.

If my rodents returned what I noticed, um I feel having two cats will probably eliminate my rodent stuff.

All right.

So, uh, dogn Barking says, "I missed what you learned from your medical testing Friday." I'll give you that fast.

So, I've got terminal cancer, um, metastatic prostate cancer.

There's a drug that's newly approved just this spring called Pliku, but you don't get that unless you go through a scanning process in which they give you some radioactive juice to see if it lights up the tumors.

because if they can't light up the tumors with the practice juice, then the real thing won't do it either.

So, it's a way to find out if this limited and expensive process would be applicable to me or not.

Now, the test was the most painful thing I've ever done in my life by far because I can't lay in my back without extraordinary pain and you have to lay in your back for 20 minutes.

Extraordinary pain.

Just extraordinary.

But it's over and I got through it and it did light up um at least my reading of the tests.

I don't the doctor hasn't read them yet so it might be maybe I'm misinterpreting but the reading of the test is that they let they lit up well that they had a high sensitivity which is what we're looking for.

So in theory my doctor will look at that today.

he'll recommend it to a committee who decides whether or not that's good enough for me to get that drug.

If the committee says yes in a week when they meet, then it will be scheduled.

But I don't know how long it takes to schedule it.

And there would be several applications.

So it' be once a week for I don't know four or six weeks or something like that.

And then it doesn't work for everybody, right?

Even if you've tested, even if you've tested to see if it lights up your tumors, it's not going to work for everybody and it's not going to work as well for everybody.

So, there's some chance that I will get substantial relief fairly quickly, you know, within a matter of just a few weeks.

uh because some people have but it's far more likely maybe two out of three chance that maybe I get a little bit of you know delay in the whole dying thing but doesn't change the arc of my life too much that'd be the most likely however we're at this weird point in history where there are all kinds of new things coming online every day literally every day there's a new prostate cancer thing that looks like it might work if they test it a little bit further So, if I can if I can extend my survival, and I don't know how much I need to, but we're at that period where if you can get that little extra, you might be able to get to the new thing.

So, that's my game plan.

My game plan is to try to get to the new thing without knowing what the new thing is or or even that it will exist.

But and then there's a nonzero chance.

I'm not counting on this, but there's a nonzero chance that the uh the blue vict will just just knock it out and that it will still be there because it's it's not it's not a cure, by the way.

not marketed as a cure, but it could knock it back so much that if I don't do chemo and weaken my immune system, I might be able to just sort of keep it at bay without too much future trouble.

Possible.

Not likely.

Most likely is I slow it down and it and it rages back in a few months.

Most likely, but that might be enough.

All right.

I feel like I'm not adding value now because I'm just talking about my own situation.

How did I prepare myself for the painful mental scan?

Excellent question.

How did I prepare myself?

Well, I knew it would be bad and I had the maximum pain relievers, but I had not practiced being in that position for that long because obviously it's the most painful thing you could ever do in your life.

Uh so I didn't know how bad it would be.

So that's number one.

If you don't know how bad it will be, that helps that helps you that helps get you in the room.

Once you're in the room, this is where the the reframe wanting versus deciding comes in.

Do you see how powerful this is?

If I had simply wanted it, I could not have held out.

No way.

But I had decided.

I decided, meaning that you could put a hot poker through my forehead and I was going to hold on.

There's a thing you hold on to to keep yourself from wiggling.

And I told myself, you could do anything to me there.

There's no level of pain that's going to make me move.

This is my one shot because I don't have a plan B.

There's no plan B.

This is the only plan I had to survive.

So that's a decision.

That's not a preference, right?

So once you move it from preference to decision, it doesn't make it easier, but it largely guarantees it'll get done.

So you're not always trying to make it easier.

You're trying to make sure it gets done because once it's done, it's done.

That's a that's a full solution.

Done is done.

And then I also do a thing where I don't I try not to imagine it too much.

Um, when I have a dental appointment, I do that as well.

If I know it's going to be painful, I tell myself simply, get out.

That's another reframe.

If it's in my head, I just get out.

Get out.

Get out.

Think of something else.

Get out.

Get out.

And the less you think about it before you go, the happier you're going to be because the thinking about it doesn't help.

So you just say, "Get out.

Get out every time you need to." So that's two reframes.

the wanting versus deciding and then the get out so you're not obsessing about it before it happens.

I think that was a good answer to your question.

Uh that moved you Tom.

It should have.

How does gravity manifest at the quantum level?

Well, I don't know if I'm ready for that one yet.

When you imagine how you're perceived.

Now, that's interesting.

So, um, when you think about how other people think of you, I have a reframe for that.

We'll probably get to it later, but I'll I'll share it with you now.

What's the best reframe for worrying about what people think about you?

You've heard me say this one.

Provenge.

Yeah, I'll look into Provenge.

I I know about that one.

Wait, what was I talking about?

You You uh I just forgot what I was talking about cuz I got on the revenge track.

Oh.

Uh how to reframe if you think people are thinking bad things about you.

The basket case theory is one.

That's not the one I was going for, but that's that is also correct.

If you remember that everyone's a basket case, then you're not going to feel bad about you being one.

That's that's a very powerful reframe.

It's one of my favorites.

You just once you realize that once you get to know somebody, they've got all kinds of problems that you didn't know about until you knew them really well.

And once you realize there's no such thing as the people who seem to have no problems, they don't exist.

There's nobody like that.

Once you realize that you're just like everybody else, but your problems might be different, but you all got you all have your things, right?

So that's the first one here.

But here's one that's even better.

Nobody cares about you.

They're not even thinking about you.

You you imagine that people are having all these negative thoughts about you.

If they do, it lasts all of one second in their head.

It doesn't matter.

People don't care about you.

You know, your family does, but that's not what you're talking about, right?

You're not talking about your loved ones.

You're talking about sort of co-workers and people you run into in the street, stuff like that.

So, here's where I learned that.

Uh, I've told you this story, but this will make it concrete again.

Uh, many years ago, I did laser surgery on my face to correct a bunch of spider veins that were sort of in the the mask of my face.

Now, I was told by the laser professional that my face would look all purple and it would look like I had gone through a a windshield and it would last for about 3 weeks.

and I probably didn't want to go out in public looking that way.

So, sure enough, I get the treatment.

My face is all purple and it looked like I'd just gone through a windshield.

So, obviously, I don't want to leave the house.

So, day goes by and I'm bored and I'm thinking, three weeks?

Wow, that's that's a long time not to leave the house.

And the second day comes and I'm bored and I just want to go shopping just to get out of the freaking house.

And I say to myself, what would happen if I just didn't care what anybody thought?

What would happen if I just do go to the mall with my face that looks like I just went through a windshield?

What would happen?

So I went to the mall.

Nobody gave one what I look like.

Nobody stared.

Nobody asked me about it.

Nobody showed Nobody showed the least bit of interest in whatever it was I was going through.

Not any.

Not a glance, not a stare, not not a child.

You know, there was no child going, "Oh, what's wrong?" Nothing.

And and once you get a big dose of nobody cares, oh my god, the freedom.

the freedom that that gave me it it was actually one of my more memorable days of my life because that's when I realized for sure that I didn't have to worry about what other people were thinking about me because they weren't thinking about me.

They just weren't.

They just were not thinking about me.

They think about themselves.

So if you want to be liked, help people think about themselves.

That's what the Dale Carnegie course does.

If you want to be liked, your job was not to make them think better about what your face looked like.

That wasn't the job.

The job was to make them think about themselves if you want them to like you.

So, there's another reframe for you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen.

I would say we've done what we need to do here.

I hope I've changed your lives a little bit.

just a little bit and we'll come back and do this tomorrow.

There will be real news sometime this week and we'll get back to what we usually do.

But in the meantime, I'm hoping all these reframes are making you more powerful and happier.

All right, everybody.

Good.

All right, everybody.

Um, I won't be talking to the locals people privately because basically what I just did is what I would have been doing.

But uh I will see you tomorrow everybody.

Maybe tonight I will do another drawing class for the locals people but I don't know yet.

[Music]

Good morning everybody. Let me solve my

technical problem.

For some reason my iPad died.

Why? Why

stocks are looking good?

Bitcoin's up.

It's a slow news day.

[Music]

Good morning everybody and welcome to

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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and

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The dopamine hit the thing day, the

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right now. Go.

Well, like I said when you were first

joining, there's no news today.

Do you ever wake up and there's no news?

There's just there's just no news. I'll

talk about the news and I'll you know,

some of it's about science and stuff,

but boy, they closed the government and

all the fun stuffs.

So, first I'll tell you about my comic

that you can only see if you're a

subscriber on X or on locals. I'll just

tell you that uh the boss is looking to

hire an employee who's got a neurochip

in his head. So, he'll be an advanced

employee, but not only does he have a

neurochip in his head, he's got an

entire micro data center in his head.

So pretty soon you're going to be hiring

employees who have micro data centers in

their head. That's my prediction.

All right. Uh I saw a couple of posts by

Dr. Nicholas Fabiano who found a few

studies that were interesting on X. One

of them is that apparently there's a

high correlation between people who are

nearsighted

like me, people have glasses that are

nearsighted and higher IQ.

Do you know how they could have known

that without doing a study? They could

have asked me. I'll tell you when I

discovered this. Many years ago when

Dilbert first became a phenomenon, I was

invited to speak at MIT.

And I go into this auditorium and this

was before LAS. I don't know if it was

before LASIK was invented, but it was

before it was popular. And I stood up

there in front of that crowd with my

glasses on and I looked into the CL

crowd and I'm not positive, but I think

every single person in the room was

wearing glasses. and they're probably

all nearsighted.

And I said to myself, I've never seen

this before. I've never seen an entire

auditorium of people wearing glasses at

the same time. MIT, our smartest

college. Uh Dilbert actually graduated

from MIT.

That that's part of his backstory.

Dr. Fabiano also found a study.

They said that depression can be

contagious via the mirror neuron system.

So in other words, if you spend time

around a depressed person, it can make

you depressed.

How many people didn't already know that

happy wife, happy life?

Is there anybody who didn't know that

hanging around depressed people will

make you feel bad if you do it enough?

Okay, I think they could have saved some

money on that one. Here's some good

news. How many of you remember you, if

you've been with me since the beginning

politically, uh, back in 2016 or so, I

was just talking all the time about

generation 4 nuclear power and how it

was coming. It's here finally 8 10 years

later. Uh, there's a first, I think it's

the first Gen 4 reactor. It'll be a

small one. uh that's going to open up

and it's uh just what you think it is.

It's molten salt

used as both a coolant and a fuel. It's

just going to be a little one megawatt

reactor and it'll be a it'll be a test

to see if they can build the 100

megawatt, which they probably will. So

it looks like this technology is now

well understood and the plan is that if

they can build this in a factory. So

they're trying to make a small easy to

build won't melt down. Won't melt down

is the important part. Won't melt down.

It can't. It's actually designed so it

could melt down if you wanted it to. Um,

so it won't melt down and will be built

in mass production in factories. So they

would build the components and then ship

them out to the site, which would be way

less expensive.

So we might be uh, you know, it'll take

a few years for this to get built and

then it'll take a few years for the big

ones to be built. But I feel like we're

at Gen 4. I think we got there, people,

if you were waiting for it. Well, I

guess last night while I was sleeping,

the internet broke. Uh, except for X.

So, I guess the problem was with

Amazon's AWS cloud service that affects

a lot of the big services. So, a whole

bunch of apps, they use Amazon's back,

what would you call it? Uh, backroom

processing. And, uh, it all broke. So

they had one failure point at Amazon and

it broke the entire internet except

for X because I guess Musk has his own

his own secured internet. So everything

went down except X which is

scary but at the same time isn't it nice

to know that X didn't go down because

you can do almost everything there. You

can message pretty soon you'll be able

to send money. can't send money yet on

X, but you will. I mean, he's already

applied for it. That's going to happen.

So,

yet again, another service that Elon

Musk provides to the world.

The the list the list of things that one

man is doing for the world to make it

safer

is just out of control now. I mean, just

it's crazy. It's crazy how much he's

done for the world and how much he

probably will do because he's still

young.

Anyway, here's

here's a study that was designed to do

nothing but make you mad. You ready for

this?

[Music]

On one level, it's a study about a

thing,

but the thing won't even matter to you.

As soon as you hear it, you're just

going to get mad. You ready? the study

that has no purpose other than to make

you mad. Uh, University of Florida says

they they've got a study now that said

that people who got the COVID vaccine

lived much longer if they also had

cancer. In other words, the study says

that the COVID vaccine was one of the

greatest cancer treatments of all time.

How do you feel now?

Do you believe it?

Do you believe that this would be

reproducible

that that they could do another study

and find out that the people who got the

shot because this is opposite of

everything you've heard, right? This is

direct opposite of everything you've

ever heard because the only thing you

ever heard is that maybe people were

more vulnerable

and and maybe they were. So, do you

think I know the answer? Of course not.

I don't know the answer. I don't know if

these shots made you more vulnerable or

saved your life. No idea. But I'll tell

you what I know for sure. Science

doesn't know.

That's what I know for sure. That the

scientists don't know. So, do I believe

this? No. Do I rule it out as completely

impossible?

No. But I don't think I'm going to

believe this one. I'm gonna I'm gonna

put a pin in that one.

I'd love to know who funded it,

don't you know?

All right. Uh,

I'm going to give you some reframes this

morning, but I thought I'd start with

Trump's because Trump had a reframe that

uh was very impressive. Very impressive.

So, the the no kings thing happened and

uh Trump was responding to it and he

said this quote, "I'm not a king. I work

my ass off to make our country great.

That's all it is. I'm not a king at all.

Now, that, ladies and gentlemen, is a

reframe.

Because the normal way that you would

respond to an accusation that you were

trying to become a dictator would be

what? You would say, "I'm not trying to

become a dictator."

Would that move anybody? No. You might

say, "I love the Constitution." And then

people would say, "Yeah, everybody says

that.

wouldn't mean anything. Uh I I love our

democratic republic. That's what I'm

committed to.

Conceptual. Conceptual.

But when he says, "I'm not a king. I

work my ass off." He's reframed it into

a category where it's hard to judge him,

isn't it? Because even his biggest

critics will admit he's working his ass

off, right? So he retreats to something

that even his biggest critics will will

grudgingly say, "All right, well, he

does work his ass off." That's true. Now

that So he's already won half the battle

because he moved them to a place where

they agree with him. He works his ass

off. And compared to Biden, it's really

striking, right? So when he says, "I

worked my ass off," it's not exactly

specifically

a defense against trying to become a

king,

but it is hard for you to hold in your

head both of those thoughts at the same

time. That's what makes it so good. You

don't think of the king as working his

ass off. You think of the king wearing

the hat and telling other people to do

stuff. But we observe that Trump is in

the trench all the time.

day and night, sleeps less than anybody

you ever know, works harder, takes fewer

vacations, golfs a lot, but the golf is

often worked too.

And so he creates this frame where you

can't really hold in your head the hard

worker part, which we observe and all

know to be true with the cane part. That

is brilliant.

I don't I don't know if I can quite

express how smart that is. It's it's

again it's the sort of thing that only a

Trump can do this this specific Trump.

Other people can't do this. They they

would just have some, you know, weak I

love my democracy. No, no, they're the

ones who have the they're the ones who

want to be the king. But this is

perfect. I work my ass off. It's hard to

argue. I I work my ass off.

All right. So, I told you I was going to

give you some more reframes.

And so I will

from my book Reframe Your Brain, my

highest rated book, five stars.

So it's full of reframes if you didn't

know that. Let me give you one.

Um, how about

the the Here's one. Suppose you want to

do something big. Doesn't matter what it

is.

You want to shop for a house or save up

for a house. You want to uh maybe decide

to go back to school. You want to change

your job. You want to do something

something big. So, here's a reframe for

that. Quite often, we don't do it

because the effort is so big and

daunting that you can't even start. Do

you ever have that situation? There's a

thing you want to do, but it's it's just

so big,

you know, in order to start. Like maybe

you want to relocate to another state.

That's like a really big job, right? So,

you don't want to start because it's

just so big. Here's the reframe. What's

the smallest thing I can do that moves

me in the right direction?

Think of the smallest thing, not the

biggest thing. Just reverse it. What's

the smallest thing? Usually, the

smallest thing is to look for some

information.

So, I'll just use my example of you

wanted to move to another state.

First thing you do is you look up their

tax code. And maybe that's it. Maybe

that's all you do that day. You just

look at their tax and go, "Okay, they

they have lower state taxes, so so far

I'm good." Maybe the next day you ask

again, what is the smallest thing I can

do? Well, I could maybe uh do a little

research to find out what town would be

the best town to live in that's near

wherever I think I want to work, for

example, or my family or whatever. So

the way you approach it is what's the

smallest thing you can do because what

you'll find is that there's sort of a

compound interest to it. When I wanted

to become a cartoonist,

I had to assemble all of these tiny

little facts like this is the kind of

paper you want to use. This is the book

that tells you where to send your

samples. This is the kind of pen you

want to use cuz other pens have problems

for various reasons. This is, you know,

it's got to be three panels. You want to

all capital letters. So, you assemble

all these tiny tiny little things that

individually get you closer to this big

thing. And you realize that life is

actually kind of long. Sometimes,

sometimes time flies, but other times

life is long.

So, how many of you remember when I

decided I was going to teach myself to

play drums?

Was that like um seven years ago?

Probably seven years ago. And some of

you watched me.

And you watched, you know, eventually I

got a I watched some YouTubetubes, but I

eventually got a an instructor would

come once a week and I started

assembling

very very slowly the skills to play the

drum. Now, I didn't want to play in a

band. I just wanted to be able to knock

around in my garage, maybe play to my

stereo or something. So, those of you

who are with me and uh on the locals

app, you know that I've accomplished

that. It took seven years, but but after

seven years, I finally did a a drum

solo, you know, playing over with with

some other music in the background for

my audience. Now, was it good? No. But I

didn't care. I I wasn't trying to be

great. I was just trying to do it. Now,

the doing it was extraordinarily fun.

Extraordinarily fun because I could feel

the entire 7-year arc. And it actually

started with my stepson. I tried to get

him into the drums when he was maybe 14

or something because I thought it'd be

good for him. Uh but he wasn't as

interested I as I was. So to me it's

sort of a legacy that connects us uh

across across life and death.

So that's my point. So the point is that

you can in many times do the smallest

little thing. I can't tell you how many

times I would walk by the drums and say

I'm going to try this one thing and I'd

put 60 seconds of practice into it. And

then the next day maybe two minutes. All

right. That's your reframe.

for the day. All right. So, the no kings

event happened and uh I'm happy to

report there are no extra kings. Uh

there are no reports of any extra kings.

So, I think it the no kings um march did

suppress

any extra kings popping up. So, so far

so good. Uh but the Democrats are

apparently a afraid of the blowback

now that the no kings thing is over.

They don't have a reason to keep the

government closed.

So,

uh, Scott, what do you think about

becoming a stepfather?

Many rightwing men don't like it.

I'm going to answer that question even

though it's distracting from my my topic

because we don't have much news today.

So, I'm going to just jump around. Uh,

how do what do I think about stepids?

Here's the the one and only way to think

about step kids. You have a separate

relationship with them.

That's it.

It's you you have a relationship with

the the parent,

but your relationship with the kids,

that's just separate. So, you could like

them. You could stay in their life if

they want to stay in yours. You know, if

you get divorced, if they want to stay

in yours. Now, mine do. Mine do want to

stay in my life and I want to stay in

their life. So we have a separate very

good relationship

but they don't you know they don't live

with me but they're also you know

certain age. Uh and the second thing is

that I always saw it as a package deal.

So even though the the relationships are

separate it's still a package deal. So

when you agree to

be part of the parents life, you're

agreeing to be part of the children's

life, too. As much as they want, it's up

to them, right? It's always up to them.

But as much as they want, I'm all in

because both because they're they're

just excellent people and I I like

having excellent people in my life. So

the answer is it's really individual.

Um, if if I were scraping by and didn't

have enough money for myself,

I would probably be regretting, you

know, any kind of contact with any exes

of any kind. But since I'm in a

favorable situation financially,

um, I can make their life a little

easier and mine at the same time. So,

everybody wins.

Anyway, so what are the Democrats going

to do now that their no kings thing

happened? It didn't make any difference

to anybody. It just showed that they

don't have anything. Uh I think they

proved that they don't have much black

support because the protesters were

almost no diversity at all. Uh and uh

they were mostly older people and very

few young men, the groups that they want

to get. So if the Democrats wanted to

win back the black vote and win back the

Hispanic vote and win back the young

male vote, they did everything the

opposite of that

by showing all the people who are not

that being their base visually. So

visually I think it was a disaster

for the Democrats because visually it

was just grandparents. It was just old

white grandparents, which could not be

further from what they're trying to make

their brand, which is the, you know, all

diverse everything. So, I would say

visually it was a complete disaster. Um,

but not in a way that they will

recognize the there'll just be this

continued drift toward fewer Democrats

and nobody will be able to quite put

their finger on what was the one thing

that made that happen. Well, it wasn't

one thing. It was everything. And this

this is just part of the everything

that continues to to push that ball down

the road. It's like, no white guys.

Nope. We don't like men. Nope. Nope.

Just a little bit.

Anyway, uh Mom Dami versus Quomo and uh

what's the other guy? Siwa.

There's a new poll. Gotham polling. I

don't know how reliable Gotham polling

is, but they do say that if Sleewa

dropped out that it would be close

between Cuomo and Mdami and it would put

Cuomo within striking distance and some

New Yorkers, even Republicans would say,

"Ah, give us the Democrat. At least he's

a normal Democrat." Cuomo being a normal

Democrat.

Uh, but Siwa is not looking to drop out.

So if he doesn't

uh then it looks like Mabi would win

quite easily.

So there's that. What do you think of

the theory that letting M dami win and

essentially sacrificing our crown jewel

city for however many years uh might be

useful for Republicans and maybe useful

for the city because it would prove that

he's not the right solution and we you

maybe we get another 20 year reprieve

from that kind of thinking. What do you

think? Do you do you think we'd be

better off New York specifically? Do you

think they'd be better off just eating

this sandwich and then and then

learning from it?

I don't know. You know, I was surprised

to learn that New York real estate is

coming back. That's the last thing I

would have expected.

If there's one thing I can tell you

about economics, nobody can predict it.

So the the entire um I would say the the

argument against mom dummy is that we

can all predict economics

here. Here I'm going to I'm going to

make you a little bit uncertain. Are you

ready? When you came in here you were

completely certain that Mami's approach

was a bad one. Communist socialist and

that uh the normies had the right one.

you know, social, capitalism, free

markets. You were completely right about

that, right? Well, here's the thing.

How many of you predicted that in the

middle of the race to elect a socialist/

maybe communist in the middle of the

race

that New York City real estate prices

would go up and people would be coming

back in and buying office space and is

recovering? How many of you would have

predicted that?

To me, it was the most easy thing to

predict wouldn't happen, right? Because

the the situation in theory is getting

worse and worse for a traditional

business that doesn't want to overpay

doesn't want to overpay taxes and

doesn't want to be in a crime area.

So in theory, it would be the easiest

prediction in the world that the real

estate situation in New York would

continue getting worse, at least during

the election when there's a chance of

the communists getting in power. But

it's the opposite.

So this is where I'm making you feel

uncertain. And one of the reasons that I

have no respect for my own uh college

degree, which is in economics, it

doesn't predict.

Yeah, I I've told you in different

contexts that the best you can do in

understanding reality because we're not

good at understanding reality is whether

it predicts.

Well, the reality I was living in didn't

predict. Did yours? Didn't predict that

New York City real estate would already

be recovering. Which reality predicted

that? Not mine. Not mine at all. You

know whose might have?

M Donny's

it's entirely possible that M Donnie was

expecting and predicting real estate to

come back and the argument would be

there's only one New York City. That's

that's the whole argument. There's only

one New York City. So if you want if you

want to play with the big boys, you're

going to have to go back. and and he

even thought mom Davia even wanted to

raise taxes on corporations to match uh

New Jersey which is also clever because

he's matching that's this very clever

way to do it but obviously he thought it

wouldn't destroy the economy or even he

wouldn't be predicting it right so now

let's see if I succeeded

so you walked in here completely sure

that he was the one who's always wrong

and you're the one who's fight because

you like the capitalism and the free

market. Except his point of view is the

only one that predicted correctly,

right?

I'm just messing with you because

obviously I don't I don't think his his

uh plans are the ones that are the good

ones. But have a little bit of humility.

Just just back up to a little bit of

humility.

Looks to me like he predicted correctly

and you didn't. Looks to me like he

predicted correctly and I didn't.

And in theory, I have more credentials

than he has for this kind of prediction.

I don't know. Just that's just something

to think about because it's a slow news

day.

Apparently Denmark

uh just decided that uh people in

Denmark can copyright their own face. So

if AI tries to use your face, there'll

be a copyright violation.

I don't know if that'll last. That

doesn't seem like something that could

last.

Anyway, all right. Here's another

surprise. Did you know that San

Francisco,

I think this was in Wall Street Journal,

that even San Francisco is rebounding.

Did you know that? So, they've got a

good mayor. I forget the mayor's name,

but I heard people say they were happy

about our current mayor. Uh, burglaries

are allegedly down 28%

this year in San Francisco. Do you

believe that or is that just another one

of those they they change the way they

report it or people just stop reporting

it? I feel like it's both, but it might

be true that it's not getting worse.

That might be true. And uh let's see.

Crime rates have dropped in general and

uh allegedly the number of homeless

encampments

in San Francisco has fallen, but I don't

have a percentage on that. And then

here's another one. Rents are up

in San Francisco

12% over last year. All right, let's do

this again. How many of you predicted

that San Francisco of all places would

be able to raise rates in the middle of

what looked like the city falling apart?

How many of you would have said, "Oh

yeah, those rentals will be up 12%."

Not me. I I would have guessed that

rents would have collapsed by now. So

that's two cities

in which my ability to predict with all

of my economics training zero.

Zero ability to predict. If you think

you can do better,

knock yourself out.

Well, in other fun stories, uh let let

me say this about Candace Owens. Uh, I

love Candace Owens. Um, I like her

personally. I only met her once, very

briefly, but she was very warm. And, uh,

I love this show that she puts on, not

just the actual podcast, but the whole

show.

I I I like the way she's, you know,

inserted herself into the the public

mind. I I just sort of like everything

about what she does. Now, that's

different from agreeing with all of her

takes. Everybody gets that, right? Do do

we ever get to the point where I don't

have to say that? Can we ever as a

civilization get to the point where I

can say, "I like that public figure

without having to say, but I don't agree

with 100% of what they say."

We're not there yet, right? I still have

to do that. I don't agree with 100% of

everything she's ever said. All right.

Well, she's she's making some uh noise

today. She says Charlie Kirk was

betrayed and don't worry about the gag

order in the Charlie Kirk case. Is that

a gag order directed at her? I think so.

Um she says, "I plan to violate it on

the world's behalf." So, she to violate

the course gag order on the world's

behalf. She says, "The things I've

discovered this past week are enough to

burn the house down." And yes, Charlie

was betrayed by everyone.

All right. Now, do you see what I mean?

How do you not love that?

She She's so good. Just so good at

getting attention, which is her job,

right? If that's what I do, she and I

are in the same job in a way, which is

to get attention. But you're only going

to get attention if you're creating

value, right? You could get attention

for one day, but you can't be Candace

unless you can get attention just

regularly, anytime you want. And wow,

can she get attention? So good at this.

So if you if you simply and you know, I

like to do this. I like to separate the

person's, you know, character from their

skill level.

I like in this case I like your

character and her skill level, but uh

the skill level is just crazy. Kandis's

skill level, her talent stack is crazy.

Anyway, so this is fun. We'll keep an

eye on that.

Um according to Jensen Wang, CEO of

Nvidia, here's more good news. Um, it

only took one year and apparently the US

is already manufacturing the the most

advanced chip for AI and Vinnie is

working with uh

what is the name of that uh TSMP or

something. The Taiwan company uh

apparently used moved it some of its

technology to the US and working with

Nvidia. So now the US can make not at

the same not at the same quantity TSM.

Thank you. TS TSM is the name of the

chip company from Taiwan. Anyway, so

they're working together and now they

can make the most advanced chip in the

US. I assume that uh volume is probably

still a big issue, but I feel it's TSMC

TMS TSMC. Okay. Um,

but that's a pretty big deal to me

because it means that even if Taiwan

sunk into the ocean, um, we could get

going. You know, we we could we would

have enough on our shores that we could

reconstitute slowly. That's a big deal.

But it probably also makes it far more

likely that Taiwan will be destroyed by

China because China will know that it's

not an existential risk to the United

States anymore. H I just realized this

could be a double-edged sword. If you're

China

and you're not benefiting directly from

the advanced chips on Taiwan, but your

biggest competitor is the United States,

would you worry too much if in the

process of conquering Taiwan, you

destroyed the semiconductor business?

You might not care as much as you should

because then it would just put you at

parody with your biggest competitor who

who has access to it now but wouldn't if

it got knocked down. But now but now we

can make those chips in the US.

So now you're China and you think, "Aha,

I can totally overthrow Taiwan now

because the US won't have to fight." If

they don't want to and they don't want

to be in a war, a world war, they don't

have to.

But before we kind of would have had to

because we couldn't let China take

control of the chips that would be

better than the ones that we could make.

That'd be too big a risk. So, it's

entirely possible that growing our own

homegrown best of chips

will sacrifice Taiwan.

It's not impossible, you know, it's not

impossible.

All right. Uh, apparently Trump is using

the uh shutdown of the government to

kill some projects. I didn't know that

was an option. I guess the Democrats

didn't know it either, but they're

finding out.

Allegedly, there's some kind of $20

billion New York City tunnel project

that Schumer had spent. Uh,

Representative Schumer, Senator Schumer

has spent years trying to get passed and

finally did. And now because the

government's closed, Trump's just going

to cancel the whole project.

I don't even know if I don't even know

if uh Trump even looked into whether it

was a good idea to do the project or

not. I think it's just a Schumer's

project and he worked 20 years to get

it, so he's just going to cancel it on

his ass. All right, that might be a

little bit that might be a little bit

authoritarian,

but I'd have I'd have to know if we

really need this tunnel.

I imagine that we could live without the

tunnel and the $20 billion.

Anyway, um, so there's a story today

that somebody built a a hunting stand in

a tree, which is where the hunters hide

from the prey, and then they can take a

shot from their hiding place in the

tree. They built one that had a uh that

had a complete view of Air Force One

when it lands in Palm Beach. So, so he

had the the the hunting blind had an

open wide openen shot at the president

of the United States coming down the

gate from his own airplane in a place

where he's known to land.

Now, the good news is that it was

discovered and it looks like it's been

there for a while. Uh, but uh we don't

know why it was there.

We don't know if it was there for that

purpose, but it would be a strange place

for a Wouldn't you think that Palm Beach

would be a strange place to have a

hunting blind in a tree?

I I don't know how many other hunting

blinds and trees there are in Palm

Beach, but that certainly looks exactly

like what it looks like, doesn't it?

Bonino's all over that one.

Well, apparently Boston is looking into

having a cityrun grocery store. Mom Dami

has um talked about that. They haven't

done it yet, but did you know that

Atlanta already has one? They have a

cityrun um grocery.

And I do not have an update on whether

it's working in Atlanta. I imagine

they've got some some challenges, but it

makes me wonder, is there a way to make

a government grocery store work without

getting rid of the regular grocery

stores so the rest of us can have more

choice? And I was thinking about that.

What What would you do if you were the

government and you wanted to I don't

want to say compete, but you were going

to have an alternative grocery store in

the same place where there were regular

grocery stores. So the first thing you

have to do is make sure that people who

had money still preferred the regular

grocery stores. And you could do that

easily by having more junk food and more

selection, right? Selection alone would

would get the people with money to go

there. So the first thing you do is have

less selection if it's a government

grocery store. I think if you reduce the

selection to just, you know, basics like

vegetables and um and protein,

you could probably find ways to cut

costs like crazy cuz you just keep it

simple. It's like, okay, we got five

proteins just always the same. Um, but

then could you also do something that

was direct from farm if you got rid of

some regulations because you are the

government. So, if you got rid of

government regulations and said, "All

right, you can take your chances with

the food because it won't be regulated,

but it's coming right from the farm and

we'll give you all the information you

want about the farm, but it's up to the

farm. And we're going to we're going to

hold the farm possibly

uh possibly hold the farm um blameless

even if somebody gets sick from the

food.

So you'd have to handle sort of the

insurance risk of providing food to

people and a government could just say,

"Yeah, you can't sue.

You you can't, you know, some people are

going to die from the farm food. You

can't sue." Uh so if you did all of

those things, you reduced the choice,

you figured out how to get the footprint

really low, may maybe you even got some

free rent,

uh

maybe you figured out how to use robots

instead of employees.

Maybe you squeeze the big food

producers, you know, for a little little

taste of something to help pay for it.

Um maybe you had your own uh maybe you

had your own vertical so you you owned

the farm but you also owned the grocery

store. So my point is if you if you

started from scratch and said how would

we build a alternative place to get

food? Um could you do it? Is it even

doable? I've always thought that the

ideal would be that there would be like

a cafeteria

that you could go to that would be close

enough everybody could get to it. You

know, maybe there would be multiple,

but the cafeteria model would have less

waste

than individuals. You know, if if you

shop for yourself and cook for yourself,

it's just so wasteful the amount of time

you spend and that you have to drive

somewhere and pick something up. You got

to store it. Some of it goes bad. You

got to negotiate who gets what. Compare

that to just everybody walks over to the

buffet and you just get what you want.

So I do not rule out

that there could be a government grocery

store. I I think if you rule it out

because it's never worked,

that's a good starting point.

But that's just the starting point for

the analysis. You have to go past it

never worked. You have to go to what

what has never been tried.

If you get to what's never been tried,

well, now you've now it's interesting.

Well, you were not surprised to know

that the Gaza ceasefire is not holding

as well as people would like, but it's

unclear whether the leadership of Hamas

has anything to do with it or is it

rogue elements within Hamas. But there

is some firing, there are some deaths.

Israel uh is responding to the

to the encroachments by uh cutting food,

I guess, and aid.

We hope that's temporary.

Uh so humanitarian aid is stopped or

paused, I guess. Mostly paused. And uh I

feel like that'll get worked out.

So, as I said yesterday, uh I'm not

worried about the ceasefire as long as

both sides have dramatically drawn down

their military presence.

There's definitely going to be

violations of the ceasefire. You know,

every single person who's been alive

more than 10 minutes knows the ceasefire

is going to get violated. So, you can't

say we're going to change everything if

the ceasefire gets violated because we

know it's going to get violated. there

there wouldn't be any point even doing

the deal if we thought a violation was

going to overturn the whole thing. So,

of course, we're going to work through

all the little violations,

but probably we will probably will. It

it does make sense that there'll be

plenty of people there who don't want a

ceasefire and we'll be acting upon it.

But as long as they get the big weapons

out of there. I guess uh Jared was

talking about maybe a gun buyback

program.

And my what what was your first

impression when you heard that that they

would do a gun buyback program with

Hamas?

Your first impression is no, right?

That's not going to work. They're not

going to sell their guns.

My second impression was we don't really

know how the the depth of their poverty

right now. So if you were a uh if you

owned a gun, you were Hamas and you

owned a gun and the government offered

you what was a really good price, a

really good price, and you had no source

of other money

and you also thought that the the war

was over.

I think maybe half of them would sell

their guns

because money is better than a bunch of

bullets you're not going to use. Right.

So, I do like the buyback idea, but I

think it's, you know, that's only a

dent. You can't get all the guns with

that. But if you got half of them,

that'd be that'd be pretty impressive.

All right. So, uh, yeah, Kushner and

Wickoff are the two guys trying to

figure out how to govern, uh, Gaza after

that, which which to me,

um, brings up this question.

Is there a way to create a non-corrupt

government,

even for just a city? Let's let's call

Gaza a city, even though it's a it's

bigger than a city. Has anybody ever

done it?

I don't think it's even doable. I don't

believe there's any form of government

um that you could just plop in the

middle of a highly corrupt culture and

then suddenly have it not be corrupt.

Now, when I say it's a highly corrupt

culture, I am not uh I'm not banging on

one type of people. It's everywhere.

You know, you you you could, you know,

just take a a pin and drop it on the

globe and it would hit some

some corrupt place somewhere. All right.

Basically, all cities are corrupt.

So, the question is, if you build the

cities the way they've always been built

in the past, what are you going to get?

Well, corrupt Gaza for sure. But is

there a way, similar to the conversation

about the government grocery stores, if

you were to throw away all assumptions,

uh, and this is what Jared I think is

especially good at, throw away all

assumptions,

could you do it then?

And who would do it? I've often thought

that the number one thing you need to

get right is that the people who are

making the money decisions don't live

there.

Because if you live there, you've got

all these corrupt influences. You know,

that gangster you grew up with and uh

the people you went to school with and

you know, your your wife's family who

wants that contract.

You can't let the people who live there

control the money. They will always be

corrupt. they would just give it to

their family members etc. So you need

some kind of independent

physically not there entity to not only

decide where it goes where the money is

spent but then to watch it like a hawk

and report on it so that everybody knows

where it went. If you can't get that

part right, nothing else works. So

somehow Jared has to solve the problem

of what happens when money is introduced

into the the zone

and then who gets to decide where it

goes, who watches it, and who reports it

to the people to make sure it went to

the right place. If you don't get that

part right, nothing else matters. And

that's the hardest part to get right.

Nobody's done it. As far as I know,

nobody's ever done it. I believe every

city is corrupt.

But if Jared could pull that off with

some clever set of systems, it would be

one of the greatest things that ever

happened in the world.

Think about that. The the odds of

pulling that off are pretty low. It's,

you know, it's maximum challenge. But

what if he did it?

What if they pulled that off? Wickoff

and uh and Jared Kushner, what if they

actually built a city that by its

design, you know, the the systems they

put in place avoided corruption?

Can you even imagine that?

That that would be one of the greatest

things that ever happened in the history

of humankind.

So, I don't know what you're working on

today, but uh but those two guys have a

chance to change everything.

Do they have a plan? Probably not yet.

But do they have the skills that the two

of them could conceivably

come up with a way to build a

non-corrupt zone?

And I think yes. I think yes. I believe

that they have the skill to do that.

Doesn't mean it will get done because

you know there there will be a lot of

push back in every possible way. But

yeah, they might be the the only two

dudes that could pull that off right

now.

Trump has announced an end to the

Colombian foreign aid. I didn't even

know we were giving Colombia foreign

aid, but apparently now they're a bunch

of illegal drug dealers, too.

Um Trump's not happy with the uh

president of Colombia who is not happy

with us. So Trump's going to discontinue

whatever our subsidies were for

Colombia. I feel like the subsidies were

for the purpose of fighting drugs,

weren't they? So, is he saying that

we've been paying Colombia to fight

drugs, but Colombia is actually the drug

cartel and we've been paying the cartel?

Is that what is that what happened? I

don't know if that's what happened. I'm

seeing some yeses. So yes, if if that's

even close to what's happening, and I

don't know that it is, but if the

government is embedded with the cartel

and we were paying the government to

deal with the cartel,

well, maybe it's time to stop doing

that, huh?

You would not be surprised to hear

because it's it's a groundhog day all

over again. Ukrainian drone struck a

major Russian gas plant. How many times

have I said that? Like every day, right?

Every day there's another Russian major

energy structure that got attacked.

So that's happening.

Um and other positive news, interesting

engineering has a story about

a wind turbine. So it's basically, you

know, the the fans of a windmill would

be, you know, the the turbine part, but

apparently they've somebody has

developed a new shape for the uh I guess

what the turbine, now I don't know what

turbine means. If you say turbine

enough, you don't know what it means.

Turbine, turbine, turbine. God, now I

don't even know what it means. But, uh,

it would be the little things that the

air is bouncing off of. And they've

figured out how to make one that boosts

energy output by 83%

with 35% less weight. Fiber composite

rotors make a small turbine stronger,

more durable. 83%.

Do you believe that? that they figured

out how to make a windmill 83% more

efficient all of a sudden with just a

shape change. It's just a shape, you

know, something easy to reproduce, a

shape. Uh well, if that's true,

finally your dream can come true, which

is you'll be able to watch television

even when the wind is just barely

blowing.

[Laughter]

Of course, I'm joking.

Trump always says that the windmills are

no good because when the wind stops

blowing you can't watch TV,

which of course is not true, but it's

hilarious every time he says it. And

now, now I'm thinking, finally, we can

watch TV when the wind is barely

blowing.

You know, maybe it's so efficient, those

little turbines, that you could have one

in your house without making your

neighbors crazy from the sound and the

dead birds.

Um, all right. According to uh Elizabeth

Gimney, who's writing for nature,

AI boss have now reviewed

uh oh, there's a conference coming,

which is an all AI paper conference. So

the conference will have humans at it,

but they're there to see what would

happen if AI wrote the scientific

papers, submitted the scientific papers,

and then here's the fun part, did their

own peer review.

So they're doing a conference of AI

generated scientific papers

uh that will be matched with the peer

reviewers so that the humans who attend

can see if the peer reviewers can add

value to the AI papers.

Does that make sense? Did I did I

explain that well enough? Um so I it's

not that the papers are going to be um

trusted more. is it's more about seeing

how the human

AI scientific model works. I love this.

I think this is exa exactly

exactly what they should be looking at

to see see what that looks like when you

throw the AI in there.

All right, ladies and gentlemen,

I told you I'd be uh finishing a little

early. There's not much news happening

today, which I suppose is good.

But I did tell the people on locals, my

beloved subscribers, that I'd be taking

some questions at the end about anything

you want. So, I won't be able to see all

of your questions because they zip by

pretty quickly. But, if you do have any

questions uh on any topic at all, I'd be

happy to uh

happy to answer them. All right. I'm

just looking to see there's a little lag

here.

What if the peer reviewers have AI write

their peer review? They are. That's what

they're doing. The peer reviewers are

the AI.

It's exactly what they're doing.

All right. Uh

All right. Uh question. Trump's

government added the White House.

Oh, man.

Trump's government added the White House

and departments to Blue Sky Social

Network. So I subscribed. Wow, TDS is

strong. What are your thoughts including

how those supporting should engage? So

how how should Trump supporters engage

with Blue Sky? So Blue Sky is the

competitor to X that only only Democrats

went to basically. Uh but the White

House wanted a presence there, which is

smart. Um I just would ignore it. Just

ignore it. There there's nothing there

for you.

Uh if it becomes more of a thing then

maybe someday you don't have to ignore

it but at the moment I just ignore it.

I helped you with your teen. Good.

Can you reframe marriage for more

success? Now the the individual

relationship ones you'd have to know so

much about the individual situation. I I

can't just reframe marriage because some

people ought to be married and some

people ought to probably cut it out.

If my rodents returned what I noticed,

um

I feel having two cats will probably

eliminate my rodent stuff. All right.

So, uh, dogn Barking says, "I missed

what you learned from your medical

testing Friday." I'll give you that

fast. So, I've got terminal cancer, um,

metastatic prostate cancer. There's a

drug that's newly approved just this

spring called Pliku, but you don't get

that unless you go through a scanning

process in which they give you some

radioactive juice to see if it lights up

the tumors. because if they can't light

up the tumors with the practice juice,

then the real thing won't do it either.

So, it's a way to find out if this

limited and expensive process would be

applicable to me or not. Now, the test

was the most painful thing I've ever

done in my life by far

because I can't lay in my back without

extraordinary pain and you have to lay

in your back for 20 minutes.

Extraordinary pain. Just extraordinary.

But it's over and I got through it and

it did light up um at least my reading

of the tests. I don't the doctor hasn't

read them yet so it might be maybe I'm

misinterpreting but the reading of the

test is that they let they lit up well

that they had a high sensitivity which

is what we're looking for. So in theory

my doctor will look at that today. he'll

recommend it to a committee who decides

whether or not that's good enough for me

to get that drug. If the committee says

yes in a week when they meet, then it

will be scheduled. But I don't know how

long it takes to schedule it. And there

would be several applications. So it' be

once a week for I don't know four or six

weeks or something like that. And then

it doesn't work for everybody, right?

Even if you've tested,

even if you've tested to see if it

lights up your tumors, it's not going to

work for everybody and it's not going to

work as well for everybody. So, there's

some chance that I will get substantial

relief fairly quickly, you know, within

a matter of just a few weeks. uh because

some people have but it's far more

likely maybe two out of three chance

that maybe I get a little bit of you

know delay in the whole dying thing but

doesn't change the arc of my life too

much that'd be the most likely however

we're at this weird point in history

where there are all kinds of new things

coming online every day literally every

day there's a new prostate cancer thing

that looks like it might work if they

test it a little bit further

So, if I can if I can extend my

survival,

and I don't know how much I need to, but

we're at that period where if you can

get that little extra, you might be able

to get to the new thing. So, that's my

game plan. My game plan is to try to get

to the new thing without knowing what

the new thing is

or or even that it will exist.

But

and then there's a nonzero chance.

I'm not counting on this, but there's a

nonzero chance that the uh the blue vict

will just just knock it out and that it

will still be there because it's it's

not it's not a cure, by the way. not

marketed as a cure, but it could knock

it back so much that if I don't do chemo

and weaken my immune system, I might be

able to just sort of keep it at bay

without too much future trouble.

Possible.

Not likely. Most likely is I slow it

down and it and it rages back in a few

months. Most likely,

but that might be enough. All right. I

feel like I'm not adding value now

because I'm just talking about my own

situation.

How did I prepare myself for the painful

mental scan? Excellent question. How did

I prepare myself? Well, I knew it would

be bad and I had the maximum

pain relievers, but I had not practiced

being in that position for that long

because obviously it's the most painful

thing you could ever do in your life. Uh

so I didn't know how bad it would be. So

that's number one. If you don't know how

bad it will be, that helps that helps

you that helps get you in the room. Once

you're in the room, this is where the

the reframe wanting versus deciding

comes in. Do you see how powerful this

is? If I had simply wanted it, I could

not have held out.

No way. But I had decided.

I decided, meaning that you could put a

hot poker through my forehead and I was

going to hold on. There's a thing you

hold on to to keep yourself from

wiggling. And I told myself, you could

do anything to me there. There's no

level of pain that's going to make me

move. This is my one shot because I

don't have a plan B. There's no plan B.

This is the only plan I had to survive.

So that's a decision. That's not a

preference, right? So once you move it

from preference to decision,

it doesn't make it easier,

but it largely guarantees it'll get

done.

So you're not always trying to make it

easier. You're trying to make sure it

gets done because once it's done, it's

done. That's a that's a full solution.

Done is done.

And then I also do a thing where I don't

I try not to imagine it too much. Um,

when I have a dental appointment, I do

that as well. If I know it's going to be

painful, I tell myself simply, get out.

That's another reframe. If it's in my

head, I just get out. Get out. Get out.

Think of something else. Get out. Get

out. And the less you think about it

before you go, the happier you're going

to be because the thinking about it

doesn't help. So you just say, "Get out.

Get out every time you need to." So

that's two reframes.

the wanting versus deciding and then the

get out so you're not obsessing about it

before it happens.

I think that was a good answer to your

question.

Uh

that moved you Tom. It should have.

How does gravity manifest at the quantum

level? Well, I don't know if I'm ready

for that one yet.

When you imagine how you're perceived.

Now, that's interesting.

So, um, when you think about how other

people think of you, I have a reframe

for that. We'll probably get to it

later, but I'll I'll share it with you

now. What's the best reframe for

worrying about what people think about

you? You've heard me say this one.

Provenge. Yeah, I'll look into Provenge.

I I know about that one.

Wait, what was I talking about?

You You uh I just forgot what I was

talking about cuz I got on the revenge

track.

Oh. Uh how to reframe if you think

people are thinking bad things about

you. The basket case theory is one.

That's not the one I was going for, but

that's that is also correct. If you

remember that everyone's a basket case,

then you're not going to feel bad about

you being one. That's that's a very

powerful reframe. It's one of my

favorites. You just once you realize

that once you get to know somebody,

they've got all kinds of problems that

you didn't know about until you knew

them really well. And once you realize

there's no such thing as the people who

seem to have no problems,

they don't exist. There's nobody like

that. Once you realize that you're just

like everybody else, but your problems

might be different, but you all got you

all have your things, right? So that's

the first one here. But here's one

that's even better.

Nobody cares about you.

They're not even thinking about you. You

you imagine that people are having all

these negative thoughts about you. If

they do, it lasts all of one second in

their head. It doesn't matter. People

don't care about you. You know, your

family does, but that's not what you're

talking about, right? You're not talking

about your loved ones. You're talking

about sort of co-workers and people you

run into in the street, stuff like that.

So, here's where I learned that. Uh,

I've told you this story, but this will

make it concrete again. Uh, many years

ago, I did laser surgery on my face to

correct a bunch of spider veins that

were sort of in the the mask of my face.

Now, I was told by the laser

professional that my face would look all

purple and it would look like I had gone

through a a windshield and it would last

for about 3 weeks. and I probably didn't

want to go out in public looking that

way. So, sure enough, I get the

treatment. My face is all purple and it

looked like I'd just gone through a

windshield.

So, obviously, I don't want to leave the

house. So, day goes by and I'm bored and

I'm thinking, three weeks? Wow, that's

that's a long time not to leave the

house. And the second day comes and I'm

bored and I just want to go shopping

just to get out of the freaking house.

And I say to myself, what would happen

if I just didn't care what anybody

thought? What would happen if I just do

go to the mall with my face that looks

like I just went through a windshield?

What would happen? So I went to the

mall.

Nobody gave one what I look like.

Nobody stared. Nobody asked me about it.

Nobody showed Nobody showed the least

bit of interest in whatever it was I was

going through. Not any. Not a glance,

not a stare, not not a child. You know,

there was no child going, "Oh, what's

wrong?" Nothing.

And and once you get a big dose of

nobody cares, oh my god, the freedom.

the freedom that that gave me it it was

actually one of my more memorable days

of my life because that's when I

realized for sure that I didn't have to

worry about what other people were

thinking about me because they weren't

thinking about me. They just weren't.

They just were not thinking about me.

They think about themselves.

So if you want to be liked,

help people think about themselves.

That's what the Dale Carnegie course

does.

If you want to be liked, your job was

not to make them think better about what

your face looked like. That wasn't the

job. The job was to make them think

about themselves

if you want them to like you.

So, there's another reframe for you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen. I would

say we've done what we need to do here.

I hope I've changed your lives a little

bit. just a little bit and we'll come

back and do this tomorrow. There will be

real news sometime this week and we'll

get back to what we usually do. But in

the meantime, I'm hoping all these

reframes are making you more powerful

and happier.

All right, everybody. Good. All right,

everybody. Um, I won't be talking to the

locals people privately because

basically what I just did is what I

would have been doing. But uh I will see

you tomorrow everybody.

Maybe tonight I will do another drawing

class for the locals people but I don't

know yet.