Episode 3040 CWSA 12/08/25

It's about time you got in here.

Good to see you.

I'm coming to you from my man cave slashg garage.

And uh while you're streaming in here because we're going to have the best time you've ever had, we'll uh get ready for a show.

We've done the pre-show already.

So, this is the real thing at the top of the hour.

And uh how many of you want the simultaneous sip?

You do, right?

You do.

And if you want that, all you need is I'm reading my cup.

It's written on the cup.

Uh all you need is a copper mug or a glass, a tanker, gelserstein, a canteen jugger, flask, a vessel of any kind.

Fill it with your favorite liquid.

I like coffee.

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

It's called the simultaneous sip and it's happening now.

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Ah, tremendous.

Now, for the nerds among you, and I know there are some nerds, uh, I'm using my laptop, but I'm using the built-in microphone for the laptop.

Apparently, the using my i.

Phone as a remote microphone, which is an option, uh didn't give me quite the quality I was hoping for.

Uh that was the feedback I got.

And uh this is a little bit better.

It's not as good as the shore, you know, studio microphone, but I don't have a convenient way to set that up.

I bought myself a uh a microphone stand that will allow me to put it on the floor and and then have the studio microphone in front of me.

But that's what's happening.

Hey, you want to talk about the news?

That's why you're here, right?

Have some fun, hang out with each other.

By the way, I am I am kind of happy about the fact that I seem to have accidentally pioneered a new form of entertainment.

The new form of entertainment is yeah, we're going to talk about the news and yeah, you might learn some things and maybe you get a reframe and but it's more about hanging out because it seems that the biggest problem people have um certainly at a certain age, maybe at every age, but certainly beyond a certain age, people don't really have friends.

Have you noticed that?

They have family members, they have co-workers, they have neighbors, but people don't really for the most part have a lot of friends.

So what I do sort of accidentally is I created this this uh I don't know kind of a I don't even want to call it entertainment although I hope to make it entertaining but it just feels good to know that there'll be a time a day every day including weekends and holidays that I'll be here and that I do it for you and uh you do it for me and that just feels good.

So shall we begin?

Sure.

So according to Scypost Psychology News, Vladimir Hedrin's writing about this that the spice saffron uh might help with erectile dysfunction.

So I'm reading this long article about how if you give people saffron pills that uh they will have much better sexual function.

And then I get I get to the end of the story and it says, "However, it should be noted that this was an open label study.

In other words, the people who had the saffron were completely aware that they were studying their sexual function and they were studying saffron." Now, do you think that sounds like a valid scientific study to you?

There's a reason that they have, you know, the the blind studies.

This is not blind.

And if there's one thing I could, you know, tell you as a hypnotist, if you suggest that somebody's taking a pill to make them hornier, they will tell you they got hornier because people like to be horny and they like to have good sexual function.

And that's half of hypnosis.

You know, hypnosis works best when it's something that somebody wanted and they have no resistance to it.

Nobody has any resistance to that.

Everybody wants to have better sexual function.

So I would say that the credibility of the study would be approximately zero.

Zero.

But yet, if you knew somebody who needed some extra sexual function and you gave them the pill and you told them it would work, it might it might actually work just psychologically and that would be good enough.

Well, that's not the only spice that's good for you.

According to the Pennsylvania School of Medicine, uh the spice of rosemary might help with wound healing and reducing scars.

So, uh so saffron is maybe good for you and and uh then the then the spice uh rosemary is good for you.

Well, I'll tell you what.

Um this is just my suggestion, but you might want to give some other advice on this.

Um, if you find that medical school sounds like it's too tough and you can't get in and you don't want to do all that homework, you could just become a chef.

So, what I do when I'm cooking is I'll put a little bit of spice on the food and then just in case, I'll put a little bit on me.

Now, I'm not saying this is going to work every time, but have you noticed that there's never a study that says if you added this spice to yourself, something bad would happen, right?

So, if there's no downside, and who knows, might make your sexual performance better, might make your might make you heal better.

So, it goes like this.

Some for the meal, some for Scott, some for the meal, some for Scott.

Now, of course, nobody wants to eat dinner with you if you're covered with spice, but that's their problem.

All right.

Can you tell it's a slow news day?

Is there anything about the content of this podcast that tells you it's a slow news day?

Oh, I think there is.

I think there is.

All right.

What else is in the news?

Um there's now according to uh the Karolinska Institute of and Stockholm University, there's a new drug that looks like it might uh boost your muscles and uh curb your appetite and it might be better than these weight loss drugs.

So, if you wanted something that would make you lose weight while preserving all your muscles, they might have something.

Um, but probably not.

What What are the odds there's something in the news that says this might work.

It worked in a mouse.

Do you know what are the odds it will work in a human if it works in a mouse?

Not much.

Yeah.

So, it's fun to talk about, but you wouldn't want to bet a lot that it's going to work out.

Here's one that I thought was interesting.

Again, we don't know if this is real.

you'd have to have a lot more science before you could convince me.

But there is uh there is some good evidence that the time of day that you give somebody a treatment, a medical treatment might affect how effective it is.

So specifically um they found that if you give a I think it's a immune immunotherapy for cancer the certain it's a cancer treatment that if you give it to people in the morning you get a much better response than if you give it to them at night.

Now does that surprise you?

Again, remember the odds of this actually passing other scientific scrutiny and, you know, 5 years from now being true is not really that high.

You know, there there's probably a pretty good chance that this won't stand up, but it feels like it would.

Like I, you know, I think your body is different enough at different times of the day that I wouldn't be surprised if if when you take your medicine makes a difference.

I'll bet you this is the kind of thing that AI could discover, don't you think?

Once we get to the point that AI will uh monitor all the things you put in your body and then it can compare it anonymously to all the other people putting things in their body.

So some of it would be food, some of it would be time of day.

So in other words, it's just the AI is just measuring everything you put in your body and when.

Don't you think that that's going to have an immense impact on your health?

If you knew, oh, this this medicine works, but not if I eat a potato within an hour, because there's a whole bunch of those things where where there is a difference.

So imagine when AI can actually get a wrap its little head around that.

How many of you have ever heard of a thing called synthesia?

Synthesia.

I've talked about this but not in a long time.

It's the um phenomenon that applies to some people but not many.

So it's you know maybe maybe fewer than 10%.

um they can they they have some kind of a crossover effect in their senses.

So for example um some people if they're listening to music they can almost feel it whereas people like me I listen to music and I like it but I don't feel it the same way like a real musician would.

So that probably probably prevents me from being a great musician because I feel like you'd have to feel it in order to be really good at it.

You know, probably the Beatles were all they probably all could feel it.

Um, but what I would have to add to this is that there's a writer version of this.

So, not just musicians.

And I definitely have the synthesia for writers, meaning that I feel words.

I just feel them.

So, it's probably not uh an accident that uh without any special training on how to be a writer, I I managed to have a professional career as a writer.

I think that's that might be sesthesia because I just feel things when I write them.

>> >> Now, is that a humble brag or is that just telling you what works and what doesn't?

All right.

Um, how many times have you been told that it's good to get enough sleep?

Well, believe it or not, there's another study that says it's good to get enough sleep, but they go further and they say that if you get enough sleep, you're far more likely to be uh as active as you want to be for good health.

But they say it doesn't work the other way.

So according to this study at Flenders or Flenders University that uh sleep first, get enough sleep, then you'll get enough activity and then you have the two things that are good for you, activity and sleep.

But I don't believe that it doesn't work the other way.

Let's let's see what you say in the comments.

I believe that I can never get a good sleep if I have not been active that day.

Do you have the same same thing if I've not exercised that day?

Now, at the moment, I'm on all kinds of, you know, drugs and stuff for my cancer.

So, it's it's different now, but in my normal healthy life, if I don't get exercise, I can't sleep.

Don't you have that?

It can't just be me, right?

All right.

So, we're gonna I'm seeing in the comments that a lot of you are agreeing with me.

So I would say that uh exercise helps you sleep and sleeping helps you exercise and it definitely works both ways.

So some schools are experimenting with drones uh to protect against school shootings.

I'm going to give you a little quiz.

How many school shootings do you think happened in one year?

Let's see.

not one year since 2008 in just Florida alone.

So only the state of Florida and we're talking about shootings in the school since 2008.

Give me a number.

How many do you think there's been?

Well, while you're guessing how many there's been, the answer is, at least according to this one one uh article from the center square, Maril Lee Gastner is writing that there have been uh 33 school shootings since 2008.

So, that just feels like a lot, doesn't it?

Remember, it's since 2008, so it's not one year.

Yeah, your guesses are closer to a one-year guess.

Well, that's a lot, but I I assume that also includes just one person getting shot.

So, it's not necessarily mass shootings.

Um, but what they want to do is they're testing non-lethal drones.

So, if there's a shooter in the school, the drone will uh come and distract them.

So, the drone will not be deadly.

It won't have a gun, but it might have uh it might have sirens or pepper sprays or other distraction devices because if you are a school shooter and a drone comes after you, you're going to have to pay attention to the drone because that's the thing.

You don't know exactly what it can do and it's it's going to be in your space really fast.

I like this idea.

Seems pretty good.

You know, it it could even be better if you got rid of the humans.

You know, if you equipped the school with listening devices and then it heard a gunshot, don't you think it would be useful if the drone immediately went wherever the gunshot was?

Now, that doesn't mean it should intervene.

You probably want a human to decide whether it should intervene, but it should definitely go there.

Like, it it should just as soon as it hears the gunshot, it should pull into that room or as close as it can get.

I think this is a definitely worth testing.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I know it'll work.

Definitely worth testing.

Well, Trump is apparently going to announce a 12 billion dollar farm aid program.

The Washington Examiner is reporting.

And it kind of made me wonder because I'm a uh farm nerd.

You know, I uh I worked on a farm, my uncle's farm.

He had a dairy farm.

So, I've spent a lot of time on a on farms and and working on farms when I was a kid and a teenager.

I guess I was still a kid.

But, uh, here's what I wonder.

How do you make farms unprofitable?

Like, what is it about a farm that would take it from, well, we've been making money until now, but now we're losing money.

Well, some of it's obvious.

Some of it would be over supply.

So there might be a year when when everybody grows too much of one thing and then the price goes down.

It might be drought or flood.

So it could be bad weather in a variety of ways.

Um it could be the rising cost of seeds and the rising cost of fuel.

And I said to myself, are those all solvable problems?

And let me give you my prediction slash suggestion.

I guess I feel like we should have an ongoing um maybe government sponsored, but it doesn't need to be.

I guess it could be private.

Something like a an Elon Musk um farming, what would you call it?

Experiment.

I I know that uh Elon's brother has been working on indoor farming, so I think they understand the potential here, but I'd love to see it go to the next level.

Here's what I think it's going to look like.

If I were trying to solve all the problems of farming being too expensive so I could bring down the cost of food, I would build it underground.

So, first I'd have the Boring Company.

they can, you know, do underground tunnels really inexpensively.

So once you have a way to inexpensively um build a tunnel, then you could also redirect the sunlight from above into it so you get all the free sunlight.

You could just do it by mirrors.

I'm pretty sure you get all the goodness of the sun even if you redirect it through mirrors.

So you you'd have all the free sun, but you wouldn't have any weather related problems.

In theory, you could create your own seeds, couldn't you?

Why is it so hard to create your own seeds?

I I feel like that wouldn't be the hardest thing, but I don't know about that domain.

So, may maybe seeds would be a different problem.

But if you could get uh Oh, and you'd also have essentially free land.

So if you're if you're doing your farming below ground, it's basically free on top of owning the above ground.

So the other thing I would do is do the food processing directly above the underground farm.

So it doesn't have to go very far.

And then along the same lines, I'd make sure that your underground farm is really close to the store that's going to sell the food or or close to the consumer.

So, you want to get rid of almost all the transportation.

You want to get rid of all the risk of um weather.

And then, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're underground and you have a controlled environment, you're not going to need um fertilizer because you just keep the bugs out in the first place.

Um, and you're not going to need too much extra water because isn't it true that you can recycle your water?

It's basically hydroponic.

Couldn't you just um Yeah.

So, I'm not 100% sure, but it seems like if you iterated um underground farms, you would eventually get to the point where they're cheaper than anything we do above ground.

What do you think?

Fertilizer isn't just for bugs.

Well, that's true, right?

It's not just for bugs.

It's for growing more efficiently.

But if you want to go organic, you still might prefer a smaller vegetable without any fertilizer.

So, that I'm not sure about that trade-off.

Anyway, I don't want to obsess about that, but I think we we don't know how to do it cheaper at the moment, but there should be similar to how we're doing um uh nuclear power.

So, the government finally figured out, hey, if we can figure out how to iterate nuclear power, we can get to something that's that works faster.

So, that's what the government's doing.

They should do the same thing with indoor farms and they should be underground.

By the way, if you put it above ground, then it can still get ripped up by weather.

So, I think underground farms are the future.

And then, of course, you'd obviously have robots doing all the work.

So, you wouldn't have labor, you wouldn't have uh probably you could get rid of 80% of all the costs.

That's just my guess.

Uh, all this farming talk means people have to do something.

Well, nuclear plus hydroponics is a paradise farm.

All right, let's move on.

Um, you may have heard of this already, but uh there's a some company made an AI version of an actress uh called Tilly Norway.

Norwood.

Tilly Norwood.

So, it's an AI actress that's been created for they haven't quite fully commercialized it yet, but but the idea is that it would be a hirable actress and uh they would try to turn it into a star so that your AI star would be, you know, not eating up all your profits.

Uh, and weirdly, the smartest thing I've heard about this was a quote by George Clooney, who of course is a movie star.

And what he said about these AI actresses and actors, he said, quote, "AI is going to have the same problem that we have in Hollywood, which is making a star is not so easy." And I thought, "Holy cow, that's the smartest thing I've heard about this topic." If if you can't do it with real people and it's really hard and it's somewhat accidental because nobody knows exactly why one person becomes a movie star and one person doesn't.

I mean George Clooney is a seriously, you know, sexy guy, I'm told.

So you can say to yourself, "Oh, he's very sexy." But aren't there millions of super sexy men?

Uh, aren't there lots of people who could probably act as well as he can?

But why did we decide that this one person is the extra sexy person?

Well, some of it is the media.

Meaning that if People magazine puts you on the cover and says you're the sexiest person, it just sort of becomes a thing.

Would they be able to do that with an AI?

And I believe that there the problem with AI art will um will be the same problem here that on day one if you hear that it's a AI you might be interested it' be you know you'd be curious how it works but eventually you just feel like it wasn't real and I don't know if you could ever get to the point where if you know it's not real you can have the same emotional connection that you would with a real person in a movie.

Even though the real person in a movie would not really be real because they're acting, but I do feel like George Clooney has the right take on this that if it's super super hard to do it with a human, it's not going to be that much easier just because you have an AI.

So I would guess 99 out of 100 companies that try to make an AI movie star will fail.

So it's not not good odds.

All right.

Uh according to Axios, President Trump is betting his presidency uh and the future of the Republican party on lightly regulated fast expansion of AI.

First of all, do you buy that summary?

Do you think that the Trump presidency will depend on how well he regulates AI?

Now, regulating it well might mean not regulating it much and getting the states out of the way and giving the feds primacy over the regulation and then getting out of the way.

So, I kind of agree that uh that that's true, but I do wonder if the public will see it that way.

You know, people like us that the fact that you're even watching me on this podcast probably means you're in the top, you know, at least 5% of people paying attention to the news.

Wouldn't you say?

If you're watching this right now, you're probably in the top 5% of just people who care about keeping up with things.

So, I don't know if the general public will even notice if Trump did a good job or a bad job on AI.

Um, do you and and wouldn't we just argue about whether he did a good job or a bad job?

And it wouldn't be so much, you know, something you could just measure.

How in the world are you going to measure how well we do on AI?

Like what happens if you know Estonia comes up with the best AI because they just have some genius who was working on it.

Does that mean we did a bad job or does it just mean that Estonia had a genius?

So I don't know how you'd know if he did a good job or a bad job unless it was just screamingly obvious and I don't think it will be.

I do think that Trump's doing pretty much everything right, which I attribute to the fact that he's got, you know, Sachs and a bunch of smart people advising him.

I I don't think you'll get too far away from something that Elon Musk would say, you know, makes sense and is sensible for the country.

So Trump does have just the best advisers for AI.

Just the best.

Will that be enough?

Well, I don't think that Trump is going to overrule the smartest people in the world in a domain that they know a lot about and he doesn't.

Uh I I think that only the Trump haters think you would do that do that.

Anybody who's actually been paying attention knows that he loves advice from the smartest people.

All right, whoever is just yelling at me in all caps, maybe that person can disappear, if you know what I mean.

All right, so yeah, is he betting his presidency on the future of AI?

Sort of.

But I do think that the Trump administration has an advantage over other countries because with AI, we're not just competing companies against companies that we're also doing that.

But we're competing countries against countries.

And let me ask you this.

So we've watched Europe is just falling apart under its own bureaucracy.

China is somewhat difficult for us to understand from the outside, but it doesn't look like they're super flexible about everything.

Sometimes they can be super fast, you know, if the if the government says go do this, it'll happen pretty fast.

But is that the same as being super flexible?

because the United States is more likely to allow certain freedoms, you know, certain freedom of speech.

Uh the US is more likely to allow AI to train on more sources, whereas China might say, "Oh, you can't look at that." So your AI cannot train as on as many things because we want to control it.

So, I'm feeling that uh there's something about the United States uh and may maybe this is just me being biased.

I don't know.

So, you you tell me.

Am I being biased?

I think there's something about our DNA as a country that gives us a huge AI advantage.

I mean, just the fact that there could be a Trump who I think is very flexible business-wise, he would be the smartest.

I I I think Trump is the smartest president we've had business-wise.

He's here at a time when having the smartest president business-wise is super important.

You know, Bill Clinton was pretty smart, too.

You know, got us through the dot era.

But, uh, yeah, I I I do suspect that the US is going to have a DNA advantage.

we're just more flexible and more willing to take more chances.

I think that's exactly where we need to be to win.

So, that's my optimism on AI.

All right, let's talk about uh we're we're all following the story, maybe you're not, of uh California trying to rebuild after the Palisades fire, Pacific Palisades fire.

And I I think that here's the good news.

According to the Wall Street Journal, there is a house that's been built.

Yay, a house.

So, we're coming up on a year and uh one house has been built, but uh you can't live in it.

So, one house has been built, but you can't buy it and you can't live in it.

It's a developer model.

And if you were to get go inside the developer model and walk up to the second floor and look out the window, would you see the paradise that used to be Pacific Palisades?

Or would you see a bunch of burned down wasteland as far as you could see?

It would be the second one.

So, not only can you not buy it, not only is there only one, but if you stood in the second floor, you wouldn't even want to live there.

you'd be like, uh, why would I want to be in this this town?

However, it's not nothing.

So, it's not nothing.

So, there's a little bit of uh, you know, motion in the right direction.

I don't know how long this is going to take, but you know, I'm comparing the Pacific Palisades to China's big projects.

Doesn't it seem to you like China is building things that are as big as entire states and and they can just pound it out?

It's like, "All right, we got a year.

Let's build something that's as big as the entire island of Manhattan." And then you check back in a year and they're done.

Now, we can't build a house.

We We can't get a house built because, oh, there's bureaucracy.

We need approvals.

You know what's wrong with this story?

is that whenever I hear that there's a, you know, long delay, the per I always want to know is why, you know, when I when I built my own house, the the one I'm in, it took uh way too long to get the approvals in my opinion.

Now, in my case, I could tell you the actual person who was holding it up because we had one person in charge of approvals.

Now, if that one person uh woke up every morning and thought, "Hey, I got to get help Scott get his house built, probably I could have got all the approvals in two months, but I think it took well over a year." But there was a name to it.

There was one person who if they did not have as many tasks as they have and it was mostly because they they were overworked but that would be a very fixable problem.

I would say all right this guy Bob can't do this in two months which we should be able to do it.

It's going to take him a year.

So can we get two bobs?

Can we get six bobs?

How many bobs do we need?

Can we borrow them from another place just for a year?

Is there a way to unretire some people who, you know, for a little extra money?

Can we get, let's say, private Can we get a private entity, let's say a builder to pay the approvers with some kind of oversight, so it's not completely under control?

Why is why is it we never hear the people?

I want to know the name of the person who's not getting it done.

Doesn't that feel like that's missing?

It feels like it's missing to me.

So, if I don't know the person who's not doing the job, and I'm not talking about politicians, like we can we can yell at Nome all day long, but it's not like he's sitting in an office with a stamp and he refuses to stamp something.

But there is somebody there's somebody sitting in an office with a stamp and they're not stamping something.

Why?

Now, if you ask them, I I guarantee they have a good reason.

They're going to say something like, "Well, it wouldn't be safe because there's this inspection that hasn't happened." Well, who is that guy or gal?

Who's that person?

Who is it who doesn't have enough time to inspect it?

Why don't I have 10 more of him?

What What would it cost me to bribe somebody who had the right skills to come in and work for a year?

I just feel like there's a whole layer here that's missing.

And and if we treat it like it's just a regular process and we're just yelling at it for being slow, we're not really trying.

You know, if this were Elon Musk's property, do you think it would take a year to get anything approved?

I don't think so.

I mean, if he had full control of every part of it.

No.

No.

he would just move more resources where you need them and get rid of people who weren't doing the job and next thing you know it would be a two-month approval instead of a year.

That's what I think.

Well, the uh government Trump administration is doing what they call a whole of government approach to try to lower beef prices.

Now, beef appears to be something that is so uh important to the American psyche that it's different from other food.

Would you say that's true?

That if your beef is too expensive, it just feels like food is too expensive.

So, it's not like, oh, our broccoli costs too much because then you just eat some other vegetable.

But if you really like beef, and that would describe a lot of Americans, uh if you can't get that at a good price, that just feels like food is too expensive.

So, I can see why that would be, you know, a big uh like a big priority.

Um it's just hard to go from, well, if beef is expensive, I'll just get chicken and I'll be just as happy because you wouldn't be.

We just wouldn't be just as happy.

You could substitute almost any vegetable for another vegetable and people would say, "Well, you know, I prefer broccoli, but Brussels sprouts are fine." You know, what are you yelling at me?

Let me see if I can look at that comment.

Uh, very thing at the FDA, it's a bureaucracy, right?

Okay.

Imagine if we had a all of government approach to just get rid of bureaucracy.

We kind of have that but but I'd love to see it even bigger.

All right.

Anyway, so the whole of government approach to make beef less expensive.

Now, what would be the first question you would ask in that domain?

The first question you would ask is why is it more expensive?

Like what happened to it?

Well, I didn't know.

How many of you know why beef got way more expensive?

Is there even one of you in the comments?

Don't look it up.

Don't look it up.

Without looking it up, do you know why it's more expensive?

Well, some of it is the normal reasons.

You know, energy is more expensive.

Everything's a little more expensive.

But uh apparently Mexico uh which was one of our bigger sources of beef um they had some kind of disease.

So we're working through that.

It might be might be a year or two before we we have some non-deseased Mexican cows.

I don't know the details, but there was some kind of Mexican disease.

And the only thing they could do is just shut down the Mexican supply until that's completely under control, and it probably will be in a year or two.

But you just have to wait because it just takes a while to grow a cow.

So, you're saying it's a screw worm?

Is that what it is?

Screw those worms.

In the comments, people are yelling screworm.

So maybe that's the name of the name of the bug.

All right.

But uh we also could increase the amount of beef we get from Argentina.

I don't know if it says good, but that's another source.

Um, the government's also doing an anti-competitive probe to find out if foreign suppliers of food in general, I think.

But beef specifically, they're trying to see if there's any anti-competitive thing going on because if there is, that would be an easy way to lower prices.

Uh, well, I don't know if it'd be easy, but it'd be possible, I guess.

Um and uh so it looks like so so work with me here.

If we knew or we thought there was a high likelihood that beef would just drift down to a lower cost simply because two years from now we'd have a lot more cows, a lot more non-deseased cows.

Does that not?

So, this is a real nerd question.

Nerds, step to the step to the front of the class.

This question is for nerds only, who I love, by the way.

You know, I love my nerds.

I am one.

Um, would it be possible to use some kind of futures market to lower the cost of beef today if you felt confident that the price would be lower in the future?

Did that make sense?

So, right now, you can't you can't take the average cost of beef today and then take the average of it tomorrow, which would be lower.

But if you could, it seems like you could lower the price today with not a 100% chance that it would be lower in the future, but you feel kind of confident that it would be.

Don't you think you could get enough people to invest in that kind of a futures beef market that we could take advantage of the fact that with a high likelihood of being right, beef will probably be, I don't know, 40% cheaper in 3 years.

And so what you do is you start um charging people less today with some kind of insurance or protection that the beef farmers would never lose because they're they're going to get, you know, some some minimum payment.

All right, nerds.

Is there some reason that would or would not work?

Somebody's saying a 10-month gestation.

So it's about 2 years to grow yourself a proper cow for eating.

You think it already exists?

You know, I was wondering about that.

But if it already exists, would the prices be lower?

So the the comment I would look into first is does it exist?

We obviously have futures markets for all kinds of commodities, but I don't know if we have them for beef.

And I don't know if you could find some way to average the future and the current to lower the price.

I don't know.

I'll just put that out there.

Um, according to Israel, there are still 100 to 200 Hamas fighters in tunnels in Gaza and they're not coming out, but they also don't have any hostages to trade and they're running out of food and water.

What do you think Israel is going to do?

If if you were in one of those tunnels, would you come out or do you know that the minute you come out, you're either going to be in jail for the rest of your life or immediately murdered?

Not murdered, cuz let's let's take the uh let's take the opinion out of it.

You'd be killed.

Whether you want to call that murder, that would be a whole different story.

But you'd be killed or jailed forever.

You're not going to walk away.

So, um, what's going to happen?

I think that they'll have to probably just wait it out and then a year from now there won't be anything left.

We'll see.

Uh, so P Ath, Secretary of War, uh, he's announced that there's going to be this federal investigation into Mark Kelly.

you know, maybe they'll reinstitute him as in the they'll uh bring him back into the military so that they can court marshall him because he's one of the sedicious sex.

And I've got mixed feelings about that.

So, I'm just going to give you my human opinion and my citizen opinion.

We don't treat people in the military like regular citizens.

And most of us are okay with that, right?

We we acknowledge that uh the people in the military have or will have greater risk.

You know, they they've got more in the game and we we sort of allow them, you know, an extra, let's say, privilege in society.

And I'm okay with that because if they take an extra risk and I'm the beneficiary of that, I think we, you know, we owe them.

No.

Oh, I guess that's the wrong word.

It would feel appropriate to me that they get more privilege in society than I get because they're doing more.

That that fits for me.

So then when I watch the uh the Mark Kelly and the Sedicious Sex, I don't like it.

I don't like it, but I also don't like punishing them.

Is anybody having that same feeling that there has to be some way we can deal with this that doesn't take a member or multiple members of the military, past or present, and punish them for what I consider really somewhat outrageously bad behavior.

But because I think it's outrageously bad behavior and I live in a world with, you know, at least allegedly free speech, I don't have to say that they did the right thing.

I don't have to say I approve of it, but sometimes you just can't leave somebody on the, you know, a wounded person on the battlefield, so to speak.

So, what I'd like to see is something that's short of punishment, but is long on education.

I do like the fact that the entire public has been now accidentally educated on what is too far and what is appropriate behavior for the military and what is a crime in that context and what isn't.

I feel like educating us should be enough.

Is anybody having the same feeling?

Because as soon as you get me in the business of punishing members of the military for what they said, you know, unless what they said is giving away, you know, like secrets or something, but um as bad as I think their behavior is, I'm just not cool punishing members of the military for that kind of behavior.

There's got to be something in between.

Anyway, that's just a feeling.

Um, I guess uh Leslie Stall of 60 Minutes was talking to Marjorie Taylor Green and here's an interesting reframe if you want to call it that.

So Marjorie Taylor Green says she's not MAGA, she's America first.

What do you think of that?

Some of you saying no mercy, no mercy.

Really?

I don't think mercy is the right um I think that's the wrong frame.

You know, we we should be looking out for our own good as well as members of the military.

And you know, maybe it's good for us that we're not punishing members of the military too too aggressively.

You know, there always has to be some kind of guard rails.

But anyway, back to Marjorie Taylor Green.

Um, that's a pretty good reframe.

Now, independent of what you think of her or her opinions, it's a pretty good reframe because BAG, as she says, that's more like Trump's political opinions and America first is more of a philosophical position, I guess, which would have impact on policies.

So, um, you may have noticed that I've never embraced for myself the MAGA label.

Has anybody noticed that?

That I talk about MAGA all the time, but I don't call myself that.

I don't have a MAGA hat.

I won't be getting one.

And I've never really embraced it because I'm not a joiner in that way.

I'm just not a joiner.

Um, what are you saying about Anyway, so you don't have to take sides.

Um, I'm not talking about taking sides.

I'm just saying that as a reframe, America first versus mega.

It's kind of an interesting frame.

Yeah.

I I like to think of myself as an independent.

All right.

Tucker Carlson continues to be interesting.

So, you might know that people have been accusing Tucker of taking money from uh Qatar for I guess they would assume that he's taking their point of view or maybe he's being anti-Israel.

And uh he his claim is that he has never taken a dime from Qatar, but uh he's now decided to buy a home in Qatar.

and and uh apparently he's doing it as just an F to you to all the people who are accusing him of taking money.

And his point would be uh you can't affect my freedom.

So if if you're going to be mad at me for being friendly with guitar, I'm going to be even friendlier with guitar.

I'm going to buy a house there.

Now, none of us know what he's thinking.

So we we'd be on, you know, sort of sketchy ground if we assume we know what he's thinking.

We're not mind readers.

But I'll tell you what I think might be going on here.

Part of it might be that spite thing where it was just to make a point.

If you tell me I can't do it, I'm going to do it.

But here's another reason.

Have you noticed that the people who can afford it are all buying an escape country, you know, or state?

So, you've got a bunch of billionaires who have property in Hawaii, which has the advantage of being far away from the mainland in case the mainland turns into some kind of disaster or gets into a war.

And if I were going to pick a an escape country and I had, you know, unlimited money, seems like Qatar would be or cutter, whatever you want to call it.

Seems like that would be a good escape country, doesn't it?

So, every time I see somebody who can afford it get their escape country, I get a little bit more worried about what they know that I don't know.

Could it be they're just it's just risk management and and they're completely aware that you know every country has a risk even if you're a strong country.

I don't know.

I if if I had to guess and I cannot know what he's thinking.

My guess is that it's as much about finding a safe place for his family and him because remember it's getting very dangerous to be a conservative in the United States.

Tim P uh says there somebody shot into his facility uh the other day like a bullet and you know I don't have to go through the other examples from Charlie Kirk to Trump getting his ear shot to you know all the all the uh what do you call it the swatting.

So if I were Tucker and just imagine the number of death threats he gets just imagine it.

I'm guessing it's almost every day.

And some of them are serious.

So, if I got that many threats and I had, especially if I had a family or a spouse I'm protecting, I feel like I would be doing my job as, you know, head of the household if I had an escape plan.

you know, if it gets too bad, we're going to walk directly over to this private jet and we're going to go directly to to Qatar and we're just going to stay there until it's safe.

Now, that's what I'd want to see from my head of household if they can afford it and looks like he can afford it.

So, that's what I think is going on, but some of it might be the spite thing.

But I think if you looked at the spite versus the personal safety, probably the personal safety is the bigger variable, but I don't think you'd want to necessarily say that out loud.

Necessarily.

All right.

Uh, I guess the New York Times has an article, I haven't read it, but the article is about uh Ukraine corruption and how all the cronies of Zilinski contributed to the, you know, the corruption allegations.

And uh, now they're asking the question, where'd all the money go?

Where did all the money go?

Now, here here's a uh just a mental test.

What do you call it?

A mind, there's a word for that, a mind experiment, a mental experiment.

There, that's not the right name for it, but you know what I mean.

So, what we know is that when the the war broke out that the United States funded um Ukraine to help them attack Russia, would we have been better off bombing Ukraine?

Now, I'm not suggesting we do that.

I'm just putting it out there as a mental experiment.

If we had bombed Ukraine, the whole thing would have been over in a week because they wouldn't have anybody on their side, and we would have killed very few Ukrainians, but we could have taken out all their corrupt leadership.

Now, Russia would of course, you know, be the beneficiary, but aren't they going to be the beneficiary anyway?

So, let me be very clear.

I am not suggesting that would have been a good idea.

I'm only I'm only doing a a mental thing where you can imagine it.

And it's actually a little bit hard to explain why we would have been better off getting to the place we are now.

Is won't Russia still have its way in the long run?

Did we not spend tremendous amount of money?

And did did not that tremendous amount of money go into corrupt Ukrainian hands?

I mean, I think we should probably Oh, can I say this?

I might not be able to say this in public.

Um, I'll say it in the least, um, dangerous way.

We should, we, meaning the United States, should be putting a lot of effort into tracking down and bringing a legal process to the people that we think stole all our money, the Ukrainians.

And if we're not doing that, somebody needs to tell me why.

because you know we might we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, are we not?

Yeah.

So, I don't know where any of that's going, but um Trump Trump says that uh that Russia likes the current version of the proposed peace deal, and Zilinski hasn't read it.

And Trump's a little bit miffed that it's only 28 points or maybe fewer at this point.

We don't really know.

Uh, and Zalinski is acting like he's not even interested enough to stop what he's doing and read it.

What exactly was Zalinski doing that was more important than catching up with the current version of the peace proposal?

What?

What?

Anyway, um, according to Wall Street Journal, um, Russia has a big problem with AI.

Now uh what I mean is that Russia like all the major countries when AI became a thing wanted to have AI supremacy.

How is Russia doing in their AI supremacy?

I don't know if you saw their humanoid robot that they unleashed and it just fell on its face.

And they don't have a better one than that than the one that fell on its face in the public demonstration.

Um, so you've got, first of all, the the top Russian scientists, if they can get out of the country, are going to do it as soon as possible because if you're a top Russian AI scientist, the worst place you could be would be Russia or maybe China.

But if you could get out of there and go to some other freer country, you, you know, you'll be the richest, smartest, you know, most valuable person in that country.

So they're going to lose their best brains.

And uh apparently they don't have much else going for them.

Let's say Russian AI companies, this is the Wall Street Journal, the Russian AI companies attracted about $30 million in venture funding last year.

$30 million.

How much do you think Open AI alone?

Just one American company.

How much how much funding do you think Open AI got last year?

The answer is$6 billion dollars.

So the entire Russian AI enterprise raised $30 million.

One company in the US raised six billion.

And do you think our AI scientists are better than theirs?

If they're not, they will be there's no doubt about it.

So if it's true, here's where it gets interesting.

Try to try to connect these two thoughts and ask yourself why they're not already connected.

Don't you think that uh all the smart people are saying that AI dominance is the future?

So if you're not dominant in AI, you're basically toast.

But the Wall Street Journal is reporting that if you look at the funding, you look at what they've done so far, that Russia doesn't have any chance of being AI dominant.

They might make good drones, but they're not going to be AI dominant.

Now, maybe the US uh will be the dominant one.

Maybe it's China, but it won't be Russia.

So if you believe that your entire country is toast if you're not AI dominant, does it matter if if Russia conquers Ukraine or even gets another big chunk of it?

Because all the AI people will tell you, well, they're basically Russia's going to go out of business anyway.

It's just a matter of time.

Is that true?

Maybe it's never been true that if you're not AI dominant, you're going to be toast.

I mean, it wasn't you weren't toast when the United States became uh dominant, right?

Other countries still exist.

Russia still has an army.

So maybe maybe we've made too much of this AI dominance thing.

What do you think?

It could be that the whole AI thing is just so overrated that uh there's nothing there.

You know, maybe your drones will be a little better, but that's about it.

I don't know.

So, try to connect the two thoughts.

One is that Russia is definitely going to get everything they want from Ukraine, but also how's that fit with Russia will be completely toast in a very short time because they're they'll never be dominant in AI and they'll never even be good probably.

They'll probably not even be average good.

Can both of those things be true?

I don't know.

Well, there's a company called uh uh I'll see in a moment uh called biological oh there's a platform called the biological interface systems to cortex or bisque so there's a developed by teams at Columbia University and it's a new form of chip for your brain now as you know Elon Musk has a company neuro neurolink that makes a you know brain interface that's been super impressive so far.

But allegedly, and there there's a big big allegedly on this.

Allegedly, this other startup slash entity um has a super impressive chip that does not need a bunch of connections to your brain um and somehow can control more of your brain for much less cost.

It uses much less real estate.

So basically, it's a whole other higher level of brain interface.

Now, like everything in technology, it's probably overrated, but it does tell you where things are going.

And if it's true that uh that uh Neurolink has a real legitimate competitor, um that should make things go a little bit faster, right?

Even even if what happens is Neurolink buys the other entity and just you know takes their technology, we're probably at the point where the where the uh potential for these chips becomes mainstream because today if you asked me Scott do you want a hole in your skull?

We're going to put a chip there and a bunch of good things are going to happen.

I would say no thank you.

Why don't you go first?

But suppose this new technology was so good that I knew two or three people who had the chip and they were just delighted by it and it gave them a superpower.

Well then I'm going to be a cyborg as fast as I can.

And it does look like I have to admit I wasn't sure this whole neurolink thing had you know that much of a future.

you know, even if you assume, oh, technology always improves and, you know, never assume it will stop improving because it always improves.

Even with that, I wasn't really sure that we could put a a chip on your brain and make it talk to it.

But at the moment, I do.

At the moment, I think that this is something where the potential is hard to imagine.

And imagine if you will that you had all the powers of AI automatically and it was just in your brain.

You wouldn't need a phone, right?

You wouldn't need a phone.

You wouldn't need a computer.

Maybe you could just see the things, you know, floating in front of you even though they're not there.

So that's exciting.

It's exciting that there's a potentially a big competitor to Neuralink.

Well, here's a story you have to be careful with.

There's a uh there's uh let's see, this is the Okyama University.

Some researchers found that uh at least in mice, there's a green light, so a certain kind of light that apparently will kill cancer.

So, if I told you that there's a type of light that would kill cancer, what would be your first reaction?

Well, if you were CNN, your first reaction would be, "Wait a minute.

Why does drinking bleach sound like a good idea?

That's a terrible idea.

Don't drink bleach." That's what they said when Trump suggested using a different kind of light to battle cancer in your lungs.

Now, somebody else said, "Scott, Scott, you fool." Somebody that this morning in the comments said, "You fool, Scott.

How are you going to get the light inside your body?

To which I said, same way Trump was.

Uh they were talking about a essentially a what would you call it?

a stent or a there's a word for it, but you could put a light device down somebody's lungs and let's say somebody had lung cancer and let's say if you could look at their lungs from the inside, maybe you could see those cancer things.

Yeah.

So, is it possible that you could introduce a light with an endoscope?

Somebody say, "Could you introduce a light to the lungs?" And the answer is, "I think so." Here's another one.

Um, have you ever heard of uh I think this is an existing process uh where somebody can uh uh this is probably a non-medical bad analogy, but I'm going to make it anyway.

So, you know, if you were doing uh let's say getting your kidneys What's the word for that?

When you run your blood through an external device because your kidneys are not working.

What's that called?

Anyway, so we know that we can uh take people's blood, run it through some kind of process, some kind of medical process, and then reintroduce it into their body.

Could you dial dialysis?

Yes.

So dialysis, if I understand it correctly, is taking your active blood out of your body, uh, cleaning it, and then reintroducing it to your body.

Is that is that accurate?

What would stop you from taking the blood out of the body, running it through a light, and then reintroducing it to the body?

Because it would come, it would come back to the body without cancer.

Now, I'm not suggesting that would work.

I'm just saying it's not crazy that you could in fact introduce light to at least some specific kinds of cancers.

Um, blood cancer and maybe something else.

Anyway, uh I'm um mostly bring this up to Moxy and Adam for being such a bad s such a bad reporting uh element or entity that they that they turned that into drinking bleach.

At least when Trump said it, they turned it into drinking bleach.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I got for you today.

You may have noticed that it's a slow news week.

Oh my god, it's a slow news week, but we had fun anyway, didn't we?

It's better than nothing.

All right.

Uh, I'm going to talk privately to my beloved uh members of uh the locals platform.

So, locals, I'll be coming at you in 30 seconds privately.

the rest of you.

Thanks for joining and I will see you tomorrow, same time, same place for more of Yes.

It's about time you got in here. Good to

see you. I'm coming to you from my man

cave slashg garage.

And uh while you're streaming in here

because we're going to have the best

time you've ever had,

we'll uh get ready for a show. We've

done the pre-show already. So, this is

the real thing at the top of the hour.

And uh how many of you want the

simultaneous sip? You do, right? You do.

And if you want that, all you need is

I'm reading my cup. It's written on the

cup. Uh all you need is a copper mug or

a glass, a tanker, gelserstein, a

canteen jugger, flask, a vessel of any

kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.

I like coffee. And join me now for the

unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit

of the day, the thing that makes

everything better. It's called the

simultaneous sip and it's happening now.

Go.

Ah, tremendous.

Now, for the nerds among you, and I know

there are some nerds,

uh, I'm using my laptop, but I'm using

the built-in microphone for the laptop.

Apparently, the using my iPhone as a

remote microphone, which is an option,

uh didn't give me quite the quality I

was hoping for. Uh that was the feedback

I got. And uh this is a little bit

better. It's not as good as the shore,

you know, studio microphone, but I don't

have a convenient way to set that up. I

bought myself a uh a microphone stand

that will allow me to put it on the

floor and and then have the studio

microphone in front of me. But that's

what's happening. Hey, you want to talk

about the news?

That's why you're here, right? Have some

fun, hang out with each other.

By the way, I am I am kind of happy

about the fact that I seem to have

accidentally pioneered a new form of

entertainment.

The new form of entertainment is yeah,

we're going to talk about the news and

yeah, you might learn some things and

maybe you get a reframe and but it's

more about hanging out because it seems

that the biggest problem people have um

certainly at a certain age, maybe at

every age, but certainly beyond a

certain age, people don't really have

friends. Have you noticed that? They

have family members, they have

co-workers, they have neighbors,

but people don't really for the most

part have a lot of friends. So what I do

sort of accidentally is I created this

this uh I don't know kind of a I don't

even want to call it entertainment

although I hope to make it entertaining

but it just feels good to know that

there'll be a time a day every day

including weekends and holidays that

I'll be here and that I do it for you

and uh you do it for me and that just

feels good. So shall we begin? Sure. So

according to Scypost Psychology News,

Vladimir Hedrin's writing about this

that the spice saffron

uh might help with erectile dysfunction.

So I'm reading this long article about

how if you give people saffron pills

that uh they will have much better

sexual function. And then I get I get to

the end of the story and it says,

"However, it should be noted that this

was an open label study. In other words,

the people who had the saffron were

completely aware that they were studying

their sexual function and they were

studying saffron."

Now, do you think that sounds like a

valid scientific study to you? There's a

reason that they have, you know, the the

blind studies.

This is not blind. And if there's one

thing I could, you know, tell you as a

hypnotist, if you suggest that

somebody's taking a pill to make them

hornier, they will tell you they got

hornier

because people like to be horny and they

like to have good sexual function. And

that's half of hypnosis. You know,

hypnosis works best when it's something

that somebody wanted and they have no

resistance to it. Nobody has any

resistance to that. Everybody wants to

have better sexual function. So I would

say that the credibility of the study

would be approximately

zero. Zero.

But yet,

if you knew somebody who needed some

extra sexual function

and you gave them the pill and you told

them it would work, it might it might

actually work just psychologically and

that would be good enough. Well, that's

not the only spice that's good for you.

According to the Pennsylvania School of

Medicine,

uh the spice of rosemary might help with

wound healing and reducing scars.

So, uh so saffron is maybe good for you

and and uh then the then the spice uh

rosemary is good for you. Well, I'll

tell you what. Um this is just my

suggestion, but you might want to give

some other advice on this. Um, if you

find that medical school sounds like

it's too tough and you can't get in and

you don't want to do all that homework,

you could just become a chef. So, what I

do when I'm cooking is I'll put a little

bit of spice on the food and then just

in case, I'll put a little bit on me.

Now, I'm not saying this is going to

work every time, but have you noticed

that there's never a study that says if

you added this spice to yourself,

something bad would happen, right? So,

if there's no downside, and who knows,

might make your sexual performance

better, might make your might make you

heal better. So, it goes like this. Some

for the meal, some for Scott, some for

the meal, some for Scott. Now, of

course, nobody wants to eat dinner with

you if you're covered with spice, but

that's their problem.

All right. Can you tell it's a slow news

day? [laughter]

Is there anything about the content of

this podcast that tells you it's a slow

news day? Oh, I think there is. I think

there is. All right. What else is in the

news?

Um

there's now according to uh the

Karolinska Institute of and Stockholm

University,

there's a new drug that looks like it

might uh boost your muscles and uh

curb your appetite and it might be

better than these weight loss drugs. So,

if you wanted something that would make

you lose weight while preserving all

your muscles, they might have something.

Um, but probably not.

[clears throat] What What are the odds

there's something in the news that says

this might work. It worked in a mouse.

Do you know what are the odds it will

work in a human if it works in a mouse?

Not much. Yeah. So, it's fun to talk

about, but you wouldn't want to bet a

lot that it's going to work out.

Here's one that I thought was

interesting. Again, we don't know if

this is real. you'd have to have a lot

more science before you could convince

me. But there is

uh there is some good evidence

that the time of day that you give

somebody

a treatment, a medical treatment might

affect how effective it is. So

specifically

um they found that if you give a I think

it's a immune immunotherapy

for cancer the certain it's a cancer

treatment that if you give it to people

in the morning you get a much better

response than if you give it to them at

night.

Now does that surprise you? Again,

remember the odds of this actually

passing other scientific scrutiny and,

you know, 5 years from now being true is

not really that high. You know, there

there's probably a pretty good chance

that this won't stand up, but it feels

like it would.

Like I, you know, I think your body is

different enough at different times of

the day that I wouldn't be surprised if

if when you take your medicine makes a

difference. I'll bet you this is the

kind of thing that AI could discover,

don't you think?

Once we get to the point that AI will uh

monitor all the things you put in your

body and then it can compare it

anonymously to all the other people

putting things in their body. So some of

it would be food, some of it would be

time of day. So in other words, it's

just the AI is just measuring everything

you put in your body and when. Don't you

think that that's going to have an

immense impact on your health? If you

knew, oh, this this medicine works, but

not if I eat a potato within an hour,

because there's a whole bunch of those

things where where there is a

difference. So imagine when AI can

actually get a wrap its little head

around that.

How many of you have ever heard of a

thing called

synthesia?

Synthesia. I've talked about this but

not in a long time. It's the um

phenomenon that applies to some people

but not many. So it's you know maybe

maybe fewer than 10%.

um they can they they have some kind of

a crossover effect in their senses.

So for example um some people if they're

listening to music they can almost feel

it whereas people like me I listen to

music and I like it but I don't feel it

the same way like a real musician would.

So that probably probably prevents me

from being a great musician because I

feel like you'd have to feel it in order

to be really good at it. You know,

probably the Beatles were all they

probably all could feel it. Um, but what

I would have to add to this is that

there's a writer version of this. So,

not just musicians. And I definitely

have the synthesia for writers, meaning

that I feel words. I just feel them. So,

it's probably not uh an accident

that uh without any special training on

how to be a writer, I I managed to have

a professional career as a writer. I

think that's that might be sesthesia

because I just feel things when I write

them.

>> [laughter]

>> Now, is that a humble brag or is that

just telling you what works and what

doesn't?

All right.

Um,

how many times have you been told that

it's good to get enough sleep? Well,

believe it or not, there's another study

that says it's good to get enough sleep,

but they go further and they say that if

you get enough sleep, you're far more

likely to be uh as active as you want to

be for good health. But they say it

doesn't work the other way. So according

to this study at Flenders or Flenders

University that uh sleep first, get

enough sleep, then you'll get enough

activity and then you have the two

things that are good for you, activity

and sleep. But I don't believe that it

doesn't work the other way.

Let's let's see what you say in the

comments. I believe that I can never get

a good sleep if I have not been active

that day.

Do you have the same same thing if I've

not exercised that day? Now, at the

moment, I'm on all kinds of, you know,

drugs and stuff for my cancer. So, it's

it's different now, but in my normal

healthy life, if I don't get exercise, I

can't sleep. Don't you have that? It

can't just be me, right? All right. So,

we're gonna I'm seeing in the comments

that a lot of you are agreeing with me.

So I would say that uh exercise helps

you sleep and sleeping helps you

exercise and it definitely works both

ways.

So some schools are experimenting with

drones

uh to protect against school shootings.

I'm going to give you a little quiz. How

many school shootings do you think

happened in one year?

Let's see. not one year since 2008 in

just Florida alone. So only the state of

Florida and we're talking about

shootings in the school since 2008. Give

me a number. How many do you think

there's been?

Well, while you're guessing how many

there's been, the answer is, at least

according to this one one uh article

from the center square, Maril Lee

Gastner is writing that there have been

uh 33 school shootings since 2008.

So, that just feels like a lot, doesn't

it? Remember, it's since 2008, so it's

not one year.

Yeah, your guesses are closer to a

one-year guess. Well, that's a lot, but

I I assume that also includes just one

person getting shot. So, it's not

necessarily mass shootings. Um, but what

they want to do is they're testing

non-lethal drones. So, if there's a

shooter in the school, the drone will uh

come and distract them. So, the drone

will not be deadly. It won't have a gun,

but it might have uh it might have

sirens or pepper sprays or other

distraction devices because if you are a

school shooter and a drone comes after

you, you're going to have to pay

attention to the drone because that's

the thing. You don't know exactly what

it can do and it's it's going to be in

your space really fast. I like this

idea. Seems pretty good. You know, it it

could even be better if you got rid of

the humans.

You know, if you equipped the school

with listening devices and then it heard

a gunshot,

don't you think it would be useful if

the drone immediately went wherever the

gunshot was? Now, that doesn't mean it

should intervene. You probably want a

human to decide whether it should

intervene, but it should definitely go

there. Like, it it should just as soon

as it hears the gunshot,

it should pull into that room or as

close as it can get. I think this is a

definitely worth testing. I wouldn't go

so far as to say I know it'll work.

Definitely worth testing.

Well, Trump is apparently going to

announce a 12 billion dollar farm aid

program. The Washington Examiner is

reporting. And it kind of made me wonder

because I'm a uh farm nerd.

You know, I uh I worked on a farm, my

uncle's farm. He had a dairy farm. So,

I've spent a lot of time on a on farms

and and working on farms when I was a

kid and a teenager. I guess I was still

a kid. But, uh, here's what I wonder.

How do you make farms unprofitable?

Like, what is it about a farm that would

take it from, well, we've been making

money until now, but now we're losing

money. Well, some of it's obvious. Some

of it would be over supply. So there

might be a year when when everybody

grows too much of one thing and then the

price goes down. It might be drought or

flood. So it could be bad weather in a

variety of ways. Um it could be the

rising cost of seeds and the rising cost

of fuel. And I said to myself, are those

all solvable problems?

And let me give you my prediction slash

suggestion. I guess I feel like we

should have an ongoing

um maybe government sponsored, but it

doesn't need to be. I guess it could be

private. Something like a an Elon Musk

um farming,

what would you call it? Experiment.

I I know that uh Elon's brother has been

working on indoor farming, so I think

they understand the potential here, but

I'd love to see it go to the next level.

Here's what I think it's going to look

like. If I were trying to solve all the

problems of farming being too expensive

so I could bring down the cost of food,

I would build it underground.

So, first I'd have the Boring Company.

they can, you know, do underground

tunnels really inexpensively.

So once you have a way to inexpensively

um build a tunnel, then you could also

redirect the sunlight from above into it

so you get all the free sunlight. You

could just do it by mirrors. I'm pretty

sure you get all the goodness of the sun

even if you redirect it through mirrors.

So you you'd have all the free sun, but

you wouldn't have any weather related

problems.

In theory, you could create your own

seeds,

couldn't you? Why is it so hard to

create your own seeds?

I I feel like that wouldn't be the

hardest thing, but I don't know about

that domain. So, may maybe seeds would

be a different problem. But if you could

get uh Oh, and you'd also have

essentially free land.

So if you're if you're doing your

farming below ground, it's basically

free on top of owning the above ground.

So the other thing I would do is do the

food processing directly above the

underground farm. So it doesn't have to

go very far. And then along the same

lines, I'd make sure that your

underground farm is really close to the

store that's going to sell the food or

or close to the consumer. So, you want

to get rid of almost all the

transportation.

You want to get rid of all the risk of

um weather. And then, correct me if I'm

wrong, but if you're underground and you

have a controlled environment, you're

not going to need um fertilizer

because you just keep the bugs out in

the first place.

Um, and you're not going to need too

much extra water because isn't it true

that you can recycle your water? It's

basically hydroponic.

Couldn't you just um Yeah.

So,

I'm not 100% sure, but it seems like if

you iterated

um underground farms, you would

eventually get to the point where

they're cheaper than anything we do

above ground.

What do you think?

Fertilizer isn't just for bugs. Well,

that's true, right? It's not just for

bugs. It's for growing more efficiently.

But if you want to go organic, you still

might prefer a smaller vegetable without

any fertilizer.

So, that I'm not sure about that

trade-off. Anyway, I don't want to

obsess about that, but I think we we

don't know how to do it cheaper at the

moment, but there should be similar to

how we're doing um

uh nuclear power. So, the government

finally figured out, hey, if we can

figure out how to iterate nuclear power,

we can get to something that's that

works faster. So, that's what the

government's doing. They should do the

same thing with indoor farms and they

should be underground. By the way, if

you put it above ground, then it can

still get ripped up by weather.

So, I think underground farms are the

future. And then, of course, you'd

obviously have robots doing all the

work. So, you wouldn't have labor, you

wouldn't have

uh probably you could get rid of 80% of

all the costs.

That's just my guess.

Uh, all this farming talk means people

have to do something. Well,

nuclear plus hydroponics is a paradise

farm.

All right, let's move on.

Um, you may have heard of this already,

but uh there's a some company made an AI

version of an actress

uh called Tilly Norway. Norwood. Tilly

Norwood. So, it's an AI actress that's

been created for they haven't quite

fully commercialized it yet, but but the

idea is that it would be a hirable

actress

and uh they would try to turn it into a

star so that your AI star would be, you

know, not eating up all your profits.

Uh, and weirdly, the smartest thing I've

heard about this was a quote by George

Clooney, who of course is a movie star.

And what he said about these AI

actresses and actors, he said, quote,

"AI is going to have the same problem

that we have in Hollywood, which is

making a star is not so easy." And I

thought, "Holy cow, that's the smartest

thing I've heard about this topic." If

if you can't do it with real people and

it's really hard and it's somewhat

accidental because nobody knows exactly

why one person becomes a movie star and

one person doesn't. I mean George

Clooney is a seriously, you know, sexy

guy, I'm told.

So you can say to yourself, "Oh, he's

very sexy." But aren't there millions of

super sexy men? Uh, aren't there lots of

people who could probably act as well as

he can? But why did we decide that this

one person is the extra sexy person?

Well, some of it is the media. Meaning

that if People magazine puts you on the

cover and says you're the sexiest

person, it just sort of becomes a thing.

Would they be able to do that with an

AI?

And I believe that there the problem

with AI art

will um will be the same problem here

that on day one if you hear that it's a

AI you might be interested it' be you

know you'd be curious how it works but

eventually you just feel like it wasn't

real

and I don't know if you could ever get

to the point where if you know it's not

real you can have the same emotional

connection that you would with a real

person in a movie. Even though the real

person in a movie would not really be

real because they're acting,

but I do feel like George Clooney has

the right take on this that if it's

super super hard to do it with a human,

it's not going to be that much easier

just because you have an AI.

So I would guess

99 out of 100 companies that try to make

an AI movie star will fail. So it's not

not good odds.

All right. Uh according to Axios,

President Trump is betting his

presidency

uh and the future of the Republican

party on lightly regulated fast

expansion of AI. First of all, do you

buy that summary?

Do you think that the Trump presidency

will depend on how well he regulates AI?

Now, regulating it well might mean not

regulating it much and getting the

states out of the way and giving the

feds primacy over the regulation and

then getting out of the way.

So, I kind of agree that uh that that's

true, but I do wonder if the public will

see it that way. You know, people like

us that the fact that you're even

watching me on this podcast probably

means you're in the top, you know, at

least 5% of people paying attention to

the news. Wouldn't you say? If you're

watching this right now, you're probably

in the top 5% of just people who care

about keeping up with things. So, I

don't know if the general public will

even notice if Trump did a good job or a

bad job on AI.

Um,

do you and and wouldn't we just argue

about whether he did a good job or a bad

job? And it wouldn't be so much, you

know, something you could just measure.

How in the world are you going to

measure how well we do on AI? Like what

happens if you know Estonia comes up

with the best AI because they just have

some genius who was working on it. Does

that mean we did a bad job or does it

just mean that Estonia had a genius?

So I don't know how you'd know if he did

a good job or a bad job unless it was

just screamingly obvious and I don't

think it will be. I do think that

Trump's doing pretty much everything

right, which I attribute to the fact

that he's got, you know, Sachs and a

bunch of smart people advising him. I I

don't think you'll get too far away from

something that Elon Musk would say, you

know, makes sense and is sensible for

the country. So Trump does have just the

best advisers for AI. Just the best.

Will that be enough? Well, I don't think

that Trump is going to overrule the

smartest people in the world in a domain

that they know a lot about and he

doesn't.

Uh I I think that only the Trump haters

think you would do that do that. Anybody

who's actually been paying attention

knows that he loves advice from the

smartest people.

All right, whoever is just yelling at me

in all caps, maybe that person can

disappear,

if you know what I mean.

All right, so yeah, is he betting his

presidency on the future of AI? Sort of.

But I do think that the Trump

administration has an advantage over

other countries because with AI, we're

not just competing companies against

companies that we're also doing that.

But we're competing countries against

countries.

And let me ask you this. So we've

watched Europe is just falling apart

under its own bureaucracy.

China is somewhat difficult for us to

understand from the outside, but it

doesn't look like they're super flexible

about everything. Sometimes they can be

super fast,

you know, if the if the government says

go do this, it'll happen pretty fast.

But is that the same as being super

flexible?

because the United States is more likely

to allow certain freedoms, you know,

certain freedom of speech. Uh the US is

more likely to allow AI to train on more

sources, whereas China might say, "Oh,

you can't look at that." So your AI

cannot train as on as many things

because we want to control it. So, I'm

feeling that uh there's something about

the United States

uh and may maybe this is just me being

biased. I don't know. So, you you tell

me. Am I being biased? I think there's

something about our DNA as a country

that gives us a huge AI advantage.

I mean, just the fact that there could

be a Trump who I think is very flexible

business-wise, he would be the smartest.

I I I think Trump is the smartest

president we've had business-wise.

He's here at a time when having the

smartest president business-wise is

super important. You know, Bill Clinton

was pretty smart, too. You know, got us

through the dot era. But, uh,

yeah, I I I do suspect that the US is

going to have a DNA advantage. we're

just more flexible and more willing to

take more chances. I think that's

exactly where we need to be to win. So,

that's my optimism on AI.

All right, let's talk about uh we're

we're all following the story, maybe

you're not, of uh California trying to

rebuild after the Palisades fire,

Pacific Palisades fire. And I I think

that here's the good news. According to

the Wall Street Journal, there is a

house that's been built. Yay, a house.

So, we're coming up on a year and uh one

house has been built, but uh you can't

live in it.

So, one house has been built, but you

can't buy it and you can't live in it.

It's a developer model.

And if you were to get go inside the

developer model and walk up to the

second floor and look out the window,

would you see the paradise that used to

be Pacific Palisades? Or would you see a

bunch of burned down wasteland as far as

you could see? It would be the second

one. So, not only can you not buy it,

not only is there only one, but if you

stood in the second floor, you wouldn't

even want to live there. you'd be like,

uh, why would I want to be in this this

town? However, it's not nothing. So,

it's not nothing. So, there's a little

bit of uh, you know, motion in the right

direction. I don't know how long this is

going to take, but you know, I'm

comparing the Pacific Palisades to

China's big projects.

Doesn't it seem to you like China is

building things that are as big as

entire states

and and they can just pound it out? It's

like, "All right, we got a year. Let's

build something that's as big as the

entire island of Manhattan."

And then you check back in a year and

they're done. Now, we can't build a

house.

We We can't get a house built because,

oh, there's bureaucracy. We need

approvals. You know what's wrong with

this story?

is that whenever I hear that there's a,

you know, long delay, the per I always

want to know is why,

you know, when I when I built my own

house, the the one I'm in, it took uh

way too long to get the approvals in my

opinion.

Now, in my case, I could tell you the

actual person who was holding it up

because we had one person in charge of

approvals. Now, if that one person

uh woke up every morning and thought,

"Hey, I got to get help Scott get his

house built,

probably I could have got all the

approvals in

two months, but I think it took well

over a year." But there was a name to

it. There was one person who if they did

not have as many tasks as they have and

it was mostly because they they were

overworked but that would be a very

fixable problem. I would say all right

this guy Bob

can't do this in two months which we

should be able to do it. It's going to

take him a year. So can we get two bobs?

Can we get six bobs? How many bobs do we

need? Can we borrow them from another

place just for a year? Is there a way to

unretire some people who, you know, for

a little extra money? Can we get, let's

say, private Can we get a private

entity, let's say a builder to pay the

approvers with some kind of oversight,

so it's not completely under control?

Why is why is it we never hear the

people? I want to know the name of the

person who's not getting it done.

Doesn't that feel like that's missing?

It feels like it's missing to me.

So, if I don't know the person who's not

doing the job, and I'm not talking about

politicians, like we can we can yell at

Nome all day long, but it's not like

he's sitting in an office with a stamp

and he refuses to stamp something. But

there is somebody there's somebody

sitting in an office with a stamp and

they're not stamping something. Why?

Now, if you ask them, I I guarantee they

have a good reason. They're going to say

something like, "Well, it wouldn't be

safe because there's this inspection

that hasn't happened." Well, who is that

guy or gal? Who's that person? Who is it

who doesn't have enough time to inspect

it? Why don't I have 10 more of him?

What What would it cost me to bribe

somebody who had the right skills to

come in and work for a year?

I just feel like there's a whole layer

here that's missing. And and if we treat

it like it's just a regular process and

we're just yelling at it for being slow,

we're not really trying. You know, if

this were Elon Musk's property, do you

think it would take a year to get

anything approved?

I don't think so. I mean, if he had full

control of every part of it. No. No. he

would just move more resources where you

need them and get rid of people who

weren't doing the job and next thing you

know it would be a two-month approval

instead of a year.

That's what I think.

Well, the uh government Trump

administration is doing what they call a

whole of government approach to try to

lower beef prices. Now, beef appears to

be something that is so

uh important to the American psyche that

it's different from other food. Would

you say that's true? That if your beef

is too expensive, it just feels like

food is too expensive.

So, it's not like, oh, our broccoli

costs too much because then you just eat

some other vegetable. But if you really

like beef, and that would describe a lot

of Americans, uh if you can't get that

at a good price, that just feels like

food is too expensive. So, I can see why

that would be, you know, a big uh like a

big priority. Um it's just hard to go

from, well, if beef is expensive, I'll

just get chicken and I'll be just as

happy because you wouldn't be.

[laughter]

We just wouldn't be just as happy. You

could substitute almost any vegetable

for another vegetable and people would

say, "Well, you know, I prefer broccoli,

but Brussels sprouts are fine." You

know,

what are you yelling at me? Let me see

if I can look at that comment.

Uh, very thing at the FDA,

it's a bureaucracy, right? Okay.

Imagine if we had a all of government

approach to just get rid of bureaucracy.

We kind of have that

but but I'd love to see it even bigger.

All right. Anyway, so the whole of

government approach to make beef less

expensive. Now, what would be the first

question you would ask in that domain?

The first question you would ask is why

is it more expensive? Like what happened

to it? Well, I didn't know. How many of

you know why beef got way more

expensive? Is there even one of you in

the comments?

Don't look it up. Don't look it up.

Without looking it up, do you know why

it's more expensive? Well, some of it is

the normal reasons. You know, energy is

more expensive. Everything's a little

more expensive. But uh apparently Mexico

uh which was one of our bigger sources

of beef

um they had some kind of disease.

So we're working through that. It might

be might be a year or two before we we

have some non-deseased Mexican cows. I

don't know the details, but there was

some kind of Mexican disease. And the

only thing they could do is just shut

down the Mexican supply until that's

completely under control, and it

probably will be in a year or two. But

you just have to wait because it just

takes a while to grow a cow.

So, you're saying it's a screw worm?

Is that what it is? Screw those worms.

In the comments, people are yelling

screworm. So maybe that's the name of

the name of the bug. All right. But uh

we also could increase the amount of

beef we get from Argentina. I don't know

if it says good, but that's another

source.

Um,

the government's also doing an

anti-competitive probe to find out if

foreign suppliers of food in general, I

think. But beef specifically, they're

trying to see if there's any

anti-competitive thing going on because

if there is, that would be an easy way

to lower prices. Uh, well, I don't know

if it'd be easy, but it'd be possible, I

guess.

Um

and uh so it looks like

so so work with me here. If we knew or

we thought there was a high likelihood

that beef would just drift down to a

lower cost simply because two years from

now we'd have a lot more cows, a lot

more non-deseased cows. Does that not?

So, this is a real nerd question. Nerds,

step to the step to the front of the

class. This question is for nerds only,

who I love, by the way. You know, I love

my nerds. I am one. Um, would it be

possible to use some kind of futures

market to lower the cost of beef today

if you felt confident that the price

would be lower in the future?

Did that make sense? So, right now, you

can't you can't take the average cost of

beef today and then take the average of

it tomorrow, which would be lower. But

if you could,

it seems like you could lower the price

today with not a 100% chance that it

would be lower in the future, but you

feel kind of confident that it would be.

Don't you think you could get enough

people to invest in that kind of a

futures beef market that we could take

advantage of the fact that with a high

likelihood of being right, beef will

probably be, I don't know, 40% cheaper

in 3 years.

And so what you do is you start um

charging people less today with some

kind of insurance or protection that the

beef farmers would never lose

because they're they're going to get,

you know, some some minimum payment.

All right, nerds.

Is there some reason that would or would

not work?

Somebody's saying a 10-month gestation.

So it's about 2 years to grow yourself a

proper cow for eating. You think it

already exists? You know, I was

wondering about that. But if it already

exists,

would the prices be lower?

So the the comment I would look into

first is does it exist? We obviously

have futures markets for all kinds of

commodities, but I don't know if we have

them for beef. And I don't know if you

could

find some way to average the future and

the current to lower the price. I don't

know. I'll just put that out there.

Um, according to Israel, there are still

100 to 200 Hamas fighters in tunnels in

Gaza and they're not coming out, but

they also don't have any hostages to

trade and they're running out of food

and water.

What do you think Israel is going to do?

If if you were in one of those tunnels,

would you come out or do you know that

the minute you come out, you're either

going to be in jail for the rest of your

life or immediately murdered? Not

murdered, cuz let's let's take the uh

let's take the opinion out of it. You'd

be killed. Whether you want to call that

murder, that would be a whole different

story. But you'd be killed or jailed

forever. You're not going to walk away.

So,

um, what's going to happen? I think that

they'll have to

probably just wait it out and then a

year from now there won't be anything

left.

We'll see.

Uh, so P Ath,

Secretary of War, uh, he's announced

that there's going to be this federal

investigation into Mark Kelly. you know,

maybe they'll reinstitute him as in the

they'll uh bring him back into the

military so that they can court marshall

him because he's one of the sedicious

sex.

And I've got mixed feelings about that.

So, I'm just going to give you my human

opinion and my citizen opinion.

We don't treat people in the military

like regular citizens.

And most of us are okay with that,

right? We we acknowledge that uh the

people in the military have or will have

greater risk. You know, they they've got

more in the game and we we sort of allow

them,

you know, an extra, let's say, privilege

in society. And I'm okay with that

because if they take an extra risk and

I'm the beneficiary of that,

I think we, you know, we owe them. No.

Oh, I guess that's the wrong word. It

would feel appropriate to me that they

get more privilege in society than I get

because they're doing more. That that

fits for me. So then when I watch the uh

the Mark Kelly and the Sedicious Sex, I

don't like it.

I don't like it, but I also don't like

punishing them.

Is anybody having that same feeling that

there has to be some way we can deal

with this that doesn't take a member or

multiple members of the military, past

or present, and punish them for what I

consider really somewhat outrageously

bad behavior. But because I think it's

outrageously bad behavior and I live in

a world with, you know, at least

allegedly free speech, I don't have to

say that they did the right thing. I

don't have to say I approve of it, but

sometimes you just can't leave somebody

on the, you know, a wounded person on

the battlefield, so to speak.

So, what I'd like to see is something

that's short of punishment,

but is long on education.

I do like the fact that the entire

public has been now accidentally

educated on what is too far and what is

appropriate behavior for the military

and what is a crime in that context and

what isn't. I feel like educating us

should be enough.

Is anybody having the same feeling?

Because as soon as you get me in the

business of punishing members of the

military for what they said, you know,

unless what they said is giving away,

you know, like secrets or something, but

um as bad as I think their behavior is,

I'm just not cool punishing members of

the military for that kind of behavior.

There's got to be something in between.

Anyway, that's just a feeling.

Um,

I guess uh Leslie Stall of 60 Minutes

was talking to Marjorie Taylor Green and

here's an interesting reframe if you

want to call it that. So Marjorie Taylor

Green says she's not MAGA,

she's America first.

What do you think of that?

Some of you saying no mercy, no mercy.

Really? I don't think mercy is the right

um I think that's the wrong frame.

You know, we we should be looking out

for our own good as well as members of

the military. And you know, maybe it's

good for us that we're not punishing

members of the military too too

aggressively.

You know, there always has to be some

kind of guard rails. But anyway, back to

Marjorie Taylor Green. Um,

that's a pretty good reframe. Now,

independent of what you think of her or

her opinions, it's a pretty good reframe

because BAG, as she says, that's more

like Trump's political opinions and

America first

is more of a philosophical position, I

guess, which would have impact on

policies.

So,

um, you may have noticed that I've never

embraced for myself the MAGA label.

Has anybody noticed that? That I talk

about MAGA all the time, but I don't

call myself that. I don't have a MAGA

hat. I won't be getting one. And I've

never really embraced it because I'm not

a joiner in that way. I'm just not a

joiner. Um,

what are you saying about Anyway,

so you don't have to take sides. Um, I'm

not talking about taking sides. I'm just

saying that as a reframe, America first

versus mega. It's kind of an interesting

frame.

Yeah. I I like to think of myself as an

independent. All right. Tucker Carlson

continues to be interesting. So, you

might know that people have been

accusing Tucker of taking money from uh

Qatar

for I guess they would assume that he's

taking their point of view or maybe he's

being anti-Israel.

And uh he his claim is that he has never

taken a dime from Qatar, but uh he's now

decided to buy a home in Qatar.

and [clears throat] and uh apparently

he's doing it as just an F to you to all

the people who are accusing him of

taking money. And his point would be uh

you can't affect my freedom. So if if

you're going to be mad at me for being

friendly with guitar, I'm going to be

even friendlier with guitar. I'm going

to buy a house there. Now, none of us

know what he's thinking.

So we we'd be on, you know, sort of

sketchy ground if we assume we know what

he's thinking. We're not mind readers.

But I'll tell you

what I think might be going on here.

Part of it might be that spite thing

where it was just to make a point. If

you tell me I can't do it, I'm going to

do it. But here's another reason. Have

you noticed that the people who can

afford it are all buying an escape

country,

you know, or state? So, you've got a

bunch of billionaires who have property

in Hawaii,

which has the advantage of being far

away from the mainland in case the

mainland turns into some kind of

disaster or gets into a war. And if I

were going to

pick a an escape country and I had, you

know, unlimited money, seems like Qatar

would be or cutter, whatever you want to

call it. Seems like that would be a good

escape country, doesn't it? So, every

time I see somebody who can afford it

get their escape country, I get a little

bit more worried about what they know

that I don't know.

Could it be they're just it's just risk

management

and and they're completely aware that

you know every country has a risk even

if you're a strong country. I don't

know. I if if I had to guess and I

cannot know what he's thinking. My guess

is that it's as much about finding a

safe place for his family and him

because remember it's getting very

dangerous to be a conservative in the

United States. Tim P uh says there

somebody shot into his facility uh the

other day like a bullet and you know I

don't have to go through the other

examples from Charlie Kirk to Trump

getting his ear shot to you know all the

all the uh what do you call it the

swatting. So if I were Tucker

and just imagine the number of death

threats he gets just imagine it.

I'm guessing it's almost every day. And

some of them are serious.

So, if I got that many threats and I

had, especially if I had a family or a

spouse I'm protecting, I feel like I

would be doing my job as, you know, head

of the household if I had an escape

plan. you know, if it gets too bad,

we're going to walk directly over to

this private jet and we're going to go

directly to to Qatar and we're just

going to stay there until it's safe.

Now, that's what I'd want to see from my

head of household if they can afford it

and looks like he can afford it.

So, that's what I think is going on, but

some of it might be the spite thing. But

I think if you looked at the spite

versus the personal safety, probably the

personal safety is the bigger variable,

but I don't think you'd want to

necessarily say that out loud.

Necessarily.

All right. Uh,

I guess the New York Times has an

article, I haven't read it, but the

article is about uh Ukraine corruption

and how all the cronies of Zilinski

contributed to the, you know, the

corruption allegations. And uh, now

they're asking the question, where'd all

the money go?

Where did all [clears throat] the money

go? Now, here here's a uh just a mental

test. What do you call it? A mind,

there's a word for that, a mind

experiment, a mental experiment.

[snorts] There, that's not the right

name for it, but you know what I mean.

So,

what we know is that when the the war

broke out that the United States funded

um Ukraine to help them attack Russia,

would we have been better off bombing

Ukraine?

Now, I'm not suggesting we do that.

I'm just putting it out there as a

mental experiment. If we had bombed

Ukraine, the whole thing would have been

over in a week because they wouldn't

have anybody on their side,

and we would have killed very few

Ukrainians,

but we could have taken out all their

corrupt leadership.

Now, Russia would of course, you know,

be the beneficiary,

but aren't they going to be the

beneficiary anyway?

So, let me be very clear. I am not

suggesting that would have been a good

idea. I'm only I'm only doing a a mental

thing where you can imagine it. And it's

actually a little bit hard to explain

why we would have been better off

getting to the place we are now. Is

won't Russia still have its way in the

long run? Did we not spend tremendous

amount of money? And did did not that

tremendous amount of money go into

corrupt Ukrainian hands? I mean, I think

we should probably Oh, can I say this?

I might not be able to say this in

public.

Um,

I'll say it in the least,

um, dangerous way.

We should, we, meaning the United

States, should be putting a lot of

effort into tracking down and bringing a

legal process to the people that we

think stole all our money, the

Ukrainians.

And if we're not doing that,

somebody needs to tell me why. because

you know we might we're talking about

hundreds of billions of dollars, are we

not?

Yeah. So,

I don't know where any of that's going,

but

um Trump Trump says that uh that Russia

likes the current version of the

proposed peace deal, and Zilinski hasn't

read it. And Trump's a little bit miffed

that it's only 28 points or maybe fewer

at this point. We don't really know. Uh,

and Zalinski is acting like he's not

even interested enough to stop what he's

doing and read it. What exactly was

Zalinski doing that was more important

than catching up with the current

version of the peace proposal?

What? What?

Anyway, um,

according to Wall Street Journal,

um, Russia has a big problem with AI.

Now

uh what I mean is that Russia like all

the major countries when AI became a

thing wanted to have AI supremacy.

How is Russia doing in their AI

supremacy?

I don't know if you saw their humanoid

robot that they unleashed and it just

fell on its face.

And they don't have a better one than

that than the one that fell on its face

in the public demonstration. Um, so

you've got, first of all, the the top

Russian scientists, if they can get out

of the country, are going to do it as

soon as possible because if you're a top

Russian AI scientist, the worst place

you could be would be Russia or maybe

China. But if you could get out of there

and go to some other freer country, you,

you know, you'll be the richest,

smartest, you know, most valuable person

in that country. So they're going to

lose their best brains.

And uh apparently they don't have much

else going for them. Let's say Russian

AI companies, this is the Wall Street

Journal, the Russian AI companies

attracted about $30 million in venture

funding last year. $30 million. How much

do you think Open AI alone? Just one

American company. How much how much

funding do you think Open AI got last

year? The answer is$6 billion dollars.

So the entire Russian AI enterprise

raised $30 million.

One company

in the US raised six billion. And do you

think our AI scientists are better than

theirs?

If they're not, they will be

there's no doubt about it. So if it's

true, here's where it gets interesting.

Try to try to connect these two thoughts

and ask yourself why they're not already

connected.

Don't you think

that uh all the smart people are saying

that AI dominance is the future? So if

you're not dominant in AI, you're

basically toast.

But the Wall Street Journal is reporting

that if you look at the funding, you

look at what they've done so far, that

Russia doesn't have any chance of being

AI dominant. They might make good

drones, but they're not going to be AI

dominant.

Now, maybe the US uh will be the

dominant one. Maybe it's China, but it

won't be Russia.

So if you believe that your entire

country is toast if you're not AI

dominant,

does it matter if if Russia conquers

Ukraine or even gets another big chunk

of it? Because all the AI people will

tell you, well, they're basically

Russia's going to go out of business

anyway. It's just a matter of time. Is

that true?

Maybe it's never been true that if

you're not AI dominant, you're going to

be toast.

I mean, it wasn't you weren't toast when

the United States became uh dominant,

right? Other countries still exist.

Russia still has an army. So maybe maybe

we've made too much of this AI dominance

thing. What do you think? It could be

that the whole AI thing is just so

overrated that uh there's nothing there.

You know, maybe your drones will be a

little better, but that's about it.

I don't know. So, try to connect the two

thoughts. One is that Russia is

definitely going to get everything they

want from Ukraine, but also how's that

fit with Russia will be completely toast

in a very short time because they're

they'll never be dominant in AI and

they'll never even be good probably.

They'll probably not even be average

good.

Can both of those things be true?

I don't know.

Well, there's a company called uh

uh I'll see in a moment uh called

biological oh there's a platform called

the biological interface systems to

cortex or bisque so there's a developed

by teams at Columbia University and it's

a new form of chip for your brain now as

you know Elon Musk has a company neuro

neurolink that makes a you know brain

interface that's been super impressive

so far. But allegedly, and there there's

a big big allegedly on this. Allegedly,

this other startup slash entity um has a

super impressive chip that does not need

a bunch of connections to your brain um

and somehow can control more of your

brain for much less cost. It uses much

less real estate. So basically, it's a

whole other higher level of brain

interface.

Now,

like everything in technology, it's

probably overrated,

but it does tell you where things are

going.

And if it's true that uh that uh

Neurolink has a real legitimate

competitor,

um that should make things go a little

bit faster, right? Even even if what

happens is Neurolink buys the other

entity and just you know takes their

technology, we're probably at the point

where the where the uh potential for

these chips

becomes mainstream

because today if you asked me Scott do

you want a hole in your skull? We're

going to put a chip there and a bunch of

good things are going to happen. I would

say no thank you. Why don't you go

first? But suppose this new technology

was so good that I knew two or three

people who had the chip and they were

just delighted by it and it gave them a

superpower.

Well then I'm going to be a cyborg as

fast as I can.

And it does look like I have to admit I

wasn't sure this whole neurolink thing

had you know that much of a future. you

know, even if you assume, oh, technology

always improves and, you know, never

assume it will stop improving because it

always improves. Even with that, I

wasn't really sure that we could put a a

chip on your brain and make it talk to

it. But at the moment, I do. At the

moment, I think that this is

something where the potential is hard to

imagine. And imagine if you will that

you had all the powers of AI

automatically and it was just in your

brain. You wouldn't need a phone,

right? You wouldn't need a phone. You

wouldn't need a computer. Maybe you

could just see the things, you know,

floating in front of you even though

they're not there. So that's exciting.

It's exciting that there's a potentially

a big competitor to Neuralink.

Well, here's a story you have to be

careful with. There's a uh there's uh

let's see, this is the Okyama

University. Some researchers found that

uh at least in mice, there's a green

light, so a certain kind of light that

apparently will kill cancer.

So, if I told you that there's a type of

light that would kill cancer, what would

be your first reaction?

Well, if you were CNN, your first

reaction would be, "Wait a minute. Why

does drinking bleach sound like a good

idea? That's a terrible idea. Don't

drink bleach."

That's what they said when Trump

suggested using a different kind of

light to battle cancer in your lungs.

Now, somebody else said, "Scott, Scott,

you fool." Somebody that this morning in

the comments said, "You fool, Scott.

How are you going to get the light

inside your body?

To which I said,

same way Trump was. Uh they were talking

about a essentially a what would you

call it? a stent or a there's a word for

it, but you could put a light device

down somebody's lungs and let's say

somebody had lung cancer and let's say

if you could look at their lungs from

the inside, maybe you could see those

cancer things. Yeah. So, is it possible

that you could introduce a light with an

endoscope? Somebody say, "Could you

introduce a light to the lungs?" And the

answer is, "I think so." Here's another

one.

Um, have you ever heard of uh I think

this is an existing process uh where

somebody can uh

uh this is probably a non-medical bad

analogy, but I'm going to make it

anyway. So, you know, if you were doing

uh let's say

getting your kidneys

What's the word for that? When you run

your blood through an external device

because your kidneys are not working.

What's that called? Anyway, so we know

that we can uh take people's blood, run

it through some kind of process, some

kind of medical process, and then

reintroduce it into their body. Could

you

dial dialysis? Yes. So dialysis, if I

understand it correctly, is taking your

active blood out of your body, uh,

cleaning it, and then reintroducing it

to your body. Is that is that accurate?

What would stop you from taking the

blood out of the body, running it

through a light, and then reintroducing

it to the body?

Because it would come, it would come

back to the body without cancer.

Now, I'm not suggesting that would work.

I'm just saying it's not crazy that you

could in fact introduce light to at

least some specific kinds of cancers.

Um, blood cancer and maybe something

else.

Anyway, uh I'm um mostly bring this up

to Moxy and Adam for being such a bad

s such a bad reporting uh element or

entity that they that they turned that

into drinking bleach. At least when

Trump said it, they turned it into

drinking bleach.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's

all I got for you today. You may have

noticed that it's a slow news week. Oh

my god, it's a slow news week, but we

had fun anyway, didn't we?

It's better than nothing.

All right. Uh, I'm going to talk

privately to my beloved

uh members of uh the locals platform.

So, locals, I'll be coming at you in 30

seconds privately. the rest of you.

Thanks for joining and I will see you

tomorrow, same time, same place for more

of Yes.