Episode 3056 CWSA 12/28/25

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All right, we got a lot to talk about and I always wondered if there's some number of attendees I should wait for before I start.

It'll be a weird day because it's Sunday, it's a holiday.

People are in church, people with the family.

But I think it's time for this simultaneous sip and all you need is a cuper, bugger, a glass, a tanker chest dying.

in a canteen jugger flask or vessel of any kind.

Fill it with your favorite liquid.

I like coffee.

And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.

The dopamine here of the day, the thing makes everything better.

It's called the simultaneous sip.

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exquisite.

Well, I have a clarification slashcorrection.

Um, sort of.

So yesterday I talked about a story in the news in which Japan had just successfully tested beaming electricity from or energy I guess electricity via a microwave beam from space to earth.

So the idea is you could put big solar panels floating in space.

It could gather up the electricity and shoot it to earth.

Um and they had shown that they could do that on a small scale and I said that that would be a you know big game changer if they could scale that up.

Well I mistakenly believed that Elon Musk agreed with my take but it's actually the opposite.

So Elon responded to that story.

A lot of people had asked him about it, I guess, and said that uh he's often asked about beaming electricity from space from solar panels.

And I mistakenly believed he said that was a good idea.

But what he was talking about and only the only thing he was talking about because he says that could never work.

There's, you know, there there reasons in physics which he understands that I don't that would make it really impractical or impossible to scale it up.

But if you were generating it in space, but also it built your let's say your AI data center in space, you could use the electricity in space and then it would be almost unlimited because you would be above our cloud cover and you could be where the sun always gets you.

So it never be nighttime if you solar panel.

So the clarification is that at least in terms of what Elon says and I will not disagree with him that there's no practical way to make that a dominant energy source for the terrestrial folks.

However, you might cynically or skeptically say, "Scott, Scott, Scott, you simpleton, don't you know that even though it was Japan that announced this breakthrough, that it almost certainly is a cover for some kind of a space-based weapon?

Because if you had uh if you had something that generated a lot of electricity floating above the earth and you could microwave that as something.

Um, that would be a good way to shoot down, you know, any kind of a space-based weapon on the other team because although that microwave beam apparently is an inefficient way to carry electricity, you know, through the atmosphere, um, it might be just what you need to shoot down a, you know, some kind of a threat from space.

So even the even the press release on that might be a cover for something military maybe.

Speaking of charging things electric electrically over space, apparently Tesla just filed a patent on something that would allow you to charge your electric vehicle without plugging it in.

So Tesla apparently has a plan which I believe will be applied to the cyber cab which allegedly don't won't even have a charging port.

So the idea is that uh the cyber cab maybe first I don't know will not need a port if it gets close to something that's you know designed to work that way.

it will wirelessly charge your vehicle.

Now, what I'm not sure about, but I saw um some I I guess estimates that that would also apply to existing Tesla that has a charging port, but there might be some way to also wirelessly charge it.

that part I don't know but I think more more reliably it's true that the cyber cab will be using it and not have a charging port.

That's got to be the last thing that Tesla needed to make everyone buy one because even though you know it might be 30 minutes to charge your car and it's not really hard to plug it in.

Wouldn't you like to not get out of your car?

So, with the current technology, you have to always get out of your car, right?

Even if you're just plugging it in for an electric charge, that little bit of work where you have to get out of your car and the weather might not be ideal, that's probably a big deal.

I don't own one, but I imagine I would be very, very happy if it if it drove to the charging station on its own when it needed to.

and that entourage itself without me touching it and without me getting out.

That would be a whole different experience.

So, you know, these seem like small changes, but I'll bet it's not small.

So, here's something that happened to me yesterday that freaked me out a little bit.

And I think I think this is an accurate statement of what happened.

Does anybody need an extra sip?

If you came in late, extra Sunday sip.

So because of my, you know, advanced age and because of my health situation, um I had started to write down some facts about myself just for posterity basically.

So, I was recording some, you know, timeline things and it turns out that um using AI to learn about my own life was the best way to do it.

For example, I couldn't remember, you know, what years I worked at the uh phone company, you know, what years I worked at the the uh bank, but it's on Wikipedia and you can get that kind of stuff using AI.

So, I was messing around with Gemini.

Gemini would be the Google version of AI.

And I asked it something about my own life.

And it used as a source the Google document that I was using to compile that information which was brand new.

That's right.

Google's AI used as a source document a private document that I just created using Google tools.

Do you know how freaky that was?

And it told me that's where I got it.

It it said it got it from this document.

That is literally the document I just created.

So, it was a little bit circular because I was looking for it to, you know, validate the dates that I guessed and instead of validating it, it could find that I just written it down and it used that as a source.

Now, I'm pretty sure it also knew who I was because, you know, I had interacted with it before and I think I told her who I was for, you know, for some convenience.

That was freaky.

Well, I have some questions about the increasing use of coal power in the United States.

And here's some news and some context that I'll add to it.

So, the Daily Color News Foundation is reporting that uh that there was more coal burned in 2025 than in the year before.

It was up around 13%.

Now, that might not come as a surprise to you because you know that Trump has been pushing coal.

He calls it clean coal.

I don't know if there's anything that's clean coal, but he says that.

Um, and I wondered how much danger that created because you know that the knock on coal is that it would be bad for the world.

And but we live in a time in which people are way less worried about CO2.

So one there there two big um objections to coal.

One is to put CO2 into the atmosphere at a pretty big pretty big pace.

Um, but at the moment that's not terribly concerning the way it was even two years ago because even the mainstream media is starting to admit, well, we don't have necessarily a climate crisis.

You even Bill Gates is now, well, it's not a crisis.

So, but the other part is that it's also just a pollutant and uh and air pollution kills a lot of people.

So, I wondered how many people get killed by coal uh as a pollutant, not as a CO2.

And I went to AI, went to Grock, and they said uh there estimates that coal might kill up to 10,000 people per year just by being a pollutant.

Now, what is the first thing you ask yourself if you see an estimate that coal might kill 10,000 people a year?

I think that's just in America.

Yeah, I think.

Well, the first thing you should ask yourself is who did the study and what was their motivation?

Can we believe a study about how many people were killed by coal?

Remember, it's 2025 and we've learned that every corner of science, every corner of politics is corrupt.

Can you trust that 10,000 people a year are being killed by coal?

And then secondly, what percentage of all the people being killed by pollution is that?

Is it 1% of all the people killed by pollution?

Is it half?

Well, also according to rock, something like 40 to 60,000 people per year are killed by pollution.

So if these numbers were right, and I'm very skeptical, if the numbers are right, it would be 10,000 out of 40 to 60,000 directly just because of extra use of coal or just coal in general, not the extra.

So here's what's interesting.

if it's true.

Oh, and by the way, the number of people who are dying from pollution is has been dropping year to year and the drop in those deaths is being attributed to the closing of coal plants.

But now the coal plants are not only not closing, they're reopening and going wild.

So what would happen and this will be the fun thing to watch.

What would happen if the deaths from pollution keep dropping while the use of coal is unambiguously up?

What happens then?

Would you would you like to make a prediction?

Do you think that the the I guess it would be the mainstream belief that the reduction in coal plants is caused a reduction in mortality?

Do you believe that that will reverse because the use of coal reversed and there doesn't seem to be any other mitigating factor such as clean or coal or anything like that?

I'm going to make you a bet.

I'm going to bet that the mortality rate drops even though coal use goes up.

And I don't know that I'll have an explanation for why.

I just think that it's a little too easy to say, oh, coal use went down, mortality went down.

We don't really live in a world where we're that good at correlation.

So, I'm just going to say I think there will be a mystery coming up.

All right.

In other news, you know, filmmaker James Cameron and uh he says he's he's been asked to write a new movie, a Terminator movie about the future, but he can't write things about the future or it's hard because the actual future will be too close to what he calls science fiction.

So for example, if he wrote a movie today in which let's say the machines became sensient, that could actually happen before the movie hit the screen, which is really a weird problem for a writer to have.

It's like no matter what he says, oh, the the robots will be running all the Oh, wait, that actually will happen, you know, in three years.

So, that's a pretty that's a pretty interesting take.

I don't know if he's right to the counter to that is that I've told you this before, but if you're a subscriber, you'd have to be a Dilbert Reborn subscriber.

So, if you're seeing Dilbert that I still produce every day and you're seeing behind the payw wall, you can see it on X behind the payw wall I have or you can see it on the locals platform.

those are the only place that runs right now.

So, you'd have to be a subscriber.

But in addition to a daily uh new Dilbert cartoon that I'm doing, which is a little spicier than it used to be, uh I also give those subscribers the same the the comic that ran exactly 10 years ago.

So, you'll see today's comic.

I'm trying to catch up from my time in the hospital, so I'm a little bit behind.

But in theory, you would see today's comic and then what I thought was worth writing about 10 years ago.

The entire month so far of my 10 years ago comic is about a sensient robot that works in Dilbur's office.

And it's about Dilbert having to deal with the fact that his coworker is a robot.

10 years ago and here we are.

So basically I I knew I was writing about some kind of future but if you wondered what what I was thinking was going to happen 10 years from now.

There it was.

So you would think if you saw the 10 year ago comic you would think that I wrote it yesterday.

It was just spoton.

All right.

According to a one of my followers on X named Alex who is an engineer so he's probably right.

He says that in 2024 alone the average battery price uh we're talking about batteries for you know big things uh prices fell by 40%.

And it looks like there's going to be a similar fall for 2025.

So he says that the economics of solar have now reached a crossover point where pairing solar with enough batteries to keep the electricity on at night when there's, you know, when there's no sunshining um is now an economically viable thing.

I know that many of you have been telling me for years, Scott, Scott, Scott, uh, solar power will always be limited because it doesn't work at night and it doesn't work when it's cloudy.

And I would always say, but but you can store it in batteries.

And then people say, "Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott, you can store it in batteries, but you're never going to get close to good economics because the batteries are expensive to make and maintain and blah blah blah." And that was all true until apparently now.

So, one of the reasons I continue to hammer on more than I more than I know you want to hear, but it helps you understand what's coming is that there are so many just so many advances in battery technology that you wouldn't have to wait too far given that it's, you know, a trillion dollar market, multi-trillion dollar market.

you you would know that the free market would be running as fast as it could to make better and cheaper batteries because the potential is, you know, insane.

Then you add robots and auto caps to it and the the market potential for batteries is probably higher than maybe anything.

You know, it could turn out that the battery industry is bigger than AI because you can't even have AI without an incredible battery industry.

So, according to one engineer, Alex, if you're listening, Alex, hi.

Um, we may have reached crossover.

That's one of the funny things about technology is that technology can be, oh, it's boring, it's boring, it's boring, then suddenly it changes everything.

It looks like we got to the changes everything point.

Well, I saw a post on X by Charles Ford, not a famous person, just somebody who's funny, who said, and I quote, "Wondering if the Somali will be eligible for reparations when that time comes.

Will the Somali be eligible for reparations?" And I I posted back in a comment paying for them or receiving them because it's a complicated world, isn't it?

Should the Somali be receiving reparations or should they be paying them?

It's not obvious, is it?

There would be an argument in both directions.

I'm not saying I agree with any of the arguments, but there would be an argument that they shouldn't receive them, and there would be an argument that they should be paying for them.

Pick one.

But it's pretty funny to highlight the absurdity of it that way.

Well, according to the New York Post, um the southern states, not all of them, but southern states generally speaking, are doing much better than blue states in fixing their education systems after the pandemic, especially.

So, there seems to be a clear correlation between whatever the conservative states are doing and whatever the liberal states are doing.

So the liberals are not getting good results.

Uh the other states are.

Now there are a number of things that have been credited for why there's a difference.

But we have a new entrance for why there's a difference.

So there were some common sense reforms in the southern states where they got back to basics that probably made a difference.

So they went back to phonics and stuff.

Um they went back to more of a merit-based you know sort of thing.

Um the universal literacy screeners basically they went back to the things that we know work and when you go back to the things that you know work you get a good result.

Whereas the blue states were trying to relax their disciplinary policies uh trying to find some more you know woke way to teach people and that wasn't producing results.

But the uh new hypothesis according to some new study is that what might be the magic sauce is that the southern states are more hardcore about uh law and order.

Meaning that they make sure that if you're a disruptor, you just get sent home.

Uh sort of the old way.

So they don't tolerate students who are disruptive.

Whereas the blue states, their school system not only tolerates it, but makes it easier for them to get away with their whatever they're doing.

So do you think that's fair?

Um, I would say that there's no way in hell that a school that doesn't control student behavior could compete with a school that does.

Is that not just obvious?

It's obvious, right?

If one school lets people run wild because they they're woke and they don't want to punish them and they think it's racist to punish one group more than another.

So, they're trying to be, you know, fair and all that.

there's not really any chance that they would perform the same.

There's 100% chance that the ones who are controlling the students behavior more aggressively are going to get better grades.

There's just no way around that.

But also made me think that homeschooling has a natural cap, meaning that there's no way a parent who can't control their kid at home is going to be a successful homeschooler, is there?

Because that bad behavior would make them a terrible candidate for being homeschooled.

So maybe those people are like, "Well, I can't do anything with this kid.

I'll just send it to school.

At least I can go to my job.

So, I've always suspected that one of the reasons homeschoolers uh tend to be so such good outcomes, I think you would agree with that, right?

You'd agree that the people who are homeschooled tend to be just better citizens.

The problem, part of the reason is that you don't even get to be homeschooled unless you have parents who know they can control you in a in a proper parental child way.

So, I'm not 100% sure that what makes those kids do so well later in life, the homeschooled kids, is that homeschooling is better than regular school.

It could be a selection bias that the only people who even give it a try, you know, they they know by the time the kid is six if it's a controllable kid or not.

Wouldn't you say?

Well, don't you think it's fair to say that you have a pretty good idea by the time the kid is six, am I going to be able to discipline this kid and will they do what parent tells them or will they just always be that rebel?

Now, you add to that the number of single parent households, and there's just no way a single parent household is going to be able to control a a kid at the same level that a two parent household could.

So, homeschooling, even if you use AI to do it, should be capped by the total number of people who can be controlled by a parent or two.

Well, I don't know when this is happening.

I think maybe tomorrow that Trump is bringing his economic team to Mara Lago to talk specifically about housing and specifically about the cost of housing and one of his economic advisors has it thinks that most of us meaning the important people in the administration are going to be there and that they will discuss a uh ideas that people have for improving housing costs.

Now, this is one of my pet favorite topics.

How do you make uh housing less expensive and also better?

And I'm so curious what kind of ideas they'll have.

Some of them are probably obvious.

Uh, I'm sure that reducing regulations will be part of the conversation because, you know, it's such a Republican thing to do.

It's doable.

But what I wonder is will they suggest a federal standard that if you build to that standard, the states have to accept it.

So you could take the state completely out of the approval process which we where I live would instantly cause more housing because these state requirements are pretty burdensome.

So one possibility is that you can either build your house to the state standards or uh you could have a let's say a more limited set of choices of how you can build it but those choices would be preapproved.

So, if you build a house with this set of standards, you've met all of the federal requirements, but the state would have to accept it.

That would instantly take a whole bunch of, you know, costs off the top.

What about um some kind of boost to make the robots uh more active in building the houses?

I don't know what that would look like, but if there's any restrictions and maybe states would be the ones that would have these restrictions.

Could it be the removing restrictions on replacing humans with robot builders is just what we need because the robots could not yet but maybe very very soon lower the cost of construction.

Could it be that some of those pre-approved homes that I already mentioned would uh be allowed to use what I call Lego construction?

Um because the algorithm on the internet knows what kind of stuff I like.

I see a lot of videos of companies that are that have this product.

So already there exists um these these sort of blocks that fit together which the homeowner themselves could build most of the house because it's just snapped together.

So what if the federal government said in addition to what else it does that if you build your house with these Legos um it could get approved.

Right now, if you tried to build a house in California with some kind of new age Lego construction, there's not a chance you get approved because they've never seen it before.

So, it's just automatically off the table.

I learned that when I built my house.

I had all these great ideas for building my house using the newest technology, but then as soon as you get into it, you realize you cannot get the newest technology approved because the the city has never approved that technology.

So if you say if you give them something they've never seen before, it'll never get approved.

That you have to show them what they've seen before, and even then it can take a year and a half to get approved.

So maybe there's some way around that.

Maybe the maybe some of the federal land would be used for building new houses.

Maybe something about immigration enforcement, but that's already happening.

Um maybe suppose I'm just throwing out some ideas.

It seems to me there will be a lot of large houses that are empty nesters.

that it would be better if the person who is let's say a senior citizen owns a house um that if they take on a I'll call it a roommate for now, a young person as a roommate who's there to help the older person maintain the house.

Maybe there's some kind of tax break.

So imagine you're in your 20s and you'd like to live in a house but you can't afford one.

So suppose the government says, "Well, if we can match you with a senior citizen who has a house that's too big for them, and you have a contract to help out, you'll get some kind of a tax break.

So then the old person has help.

They don't have to sell their house if they don't want to.

And the young person has an awesome experience because depending on the old person, you might actually enjoy it.

Could be a relative, doesn't have to be.

Right.

Um, so that's a possibility.

I don't know.

What What other ways do you think Republicans can lower the cost of housing?

You already have squatters.

Well, you know, it's it's actually becoming common for young people and older people to pair up that way.

So, it's it's happening organically.

I don't know if it's working, but it's happening organically.

One of the problems with um California is that if I were to sell my house after it value has gone up, the new person buying it wouldn't be able to afford the property tax because the property tax is based on the value of the house.

Now, I can afford it because I built it about 10 years ago.

No.

How long ago?

2009.

So my property taxes are artificially based on what the, you know, early value of the house was, not its current value.

And it would be about double if I paid the property taxes based on current.

So it makes it very hard to sell your house because even though it was affordable for you, it would not be affordable for the person who bought it because the property taxes would just be crazy.

So that's something that is a state problem, but maybe there's some kind of federal way to make it illegal to raise property taxes or something.

And I think there are some other obstacles to selling a house that maybe could be removed.

Um, there'd be a lot more houses available if the people had them could efficiently sell them.

All right.

Um, you know, this story is over and over again, but I've got something to add to it.

So, according to an article by Joe Wilkins in Futurism, um, children are having a tough time with AI chatbots.

So you've seen the stories I'm sure where children especially teens um are chatting with AI and it becomes their friend but then it starts recommending dangerous things.

Now that you already knew that story, but uh according to a new Pew Research, 64% of teens in the US are already using chat bots and about 30% of those um who are using it use it daily.

And as I mentioned, it might be kind of dangerous because it's it it's taking them away from the real world, which is its own problem.

Um, but the chat bots can say some really dangerous stuff and uh I think some kids have harmed themselves allegedly because the chat boss is now I would argue that this is also happening to adults.

So it's not really limited at all to children but we worry more about children.

So So imagine if you will that you've got this huge problem.

Here's the problem.

What is the main driver of AI adoption right now?

Well, we've got all these all these plans for how AI will be, you know, powering robots and everything else, but at the moment, and it looks like this moment will last a while, the main thing that people sign up for AI for is to chat.

It's the main thing.

Um, and what happens if the main thing turns out to be too dangerous to be loose?

Is there any chance that they're going to take away the main thing that all these biggest powerful companies are relying on to get adoption going?

because they kind of need they need a lot of adoption to probably get to the point where the AI can run your robot in your factory and you know be a butler and all that.

So I don't think it's going to be stopped.

But I would also add the context that probably every new technology seemed too dangerous to be worth it when it was first introduced.

Don't you think that's true?

When we invented the car, I wasn't around.

But don't you imagine that the smart people were saying, "Oh, those automobiles, that's way more dangerous than riding a horse." When the smartphone or the computer were invented when the internet was invented.

Don't you think there were a lot of people saying, "Oh, it's too dangerous to have the internet.

You're going to lose your privacy." And all that's true, right?

So the the dangers that people pointed out, all true.

So you had at some point 50,000 people a year dying from auto accidents.

That's a pretty big downside.

That's probably worse than AI will do.

So my prediction is that even though uh AI chatting could be dangerous, definitely is dangerous, uh it won't be stopped because that's what every new technology goes through.

That's what I think.

Well, let's talk about all the corruption in the world.

Would you be surprised that the LA Times did a research and found out that uh there was a LA fire department afteraction report about the Palisades fire and do you think that that afteraction report which is basically the fire department reporting on themselves how they did.

Do you think that it was honestly reported uh what possible mistakes the fire department might have made?

No.

So once again, the people who are in charge are also in charge of telling you how they did.

and the people who are in charge, the LA Fire Department in charge of the fire had decided that they would remove uh some substantial parts of the report that made them look bad.

So, the afterhour action report according to the LA Times is and they in fact were definitely definitely the problem.

Uh, and part of the problem was that they knew there was a existing fire that had been the thing that reignited.

They almost certainly should have been there.

They should have had water.

They should have been should have been more ready, etc.

So, essentially a cover up.

Yes.

So, how often have we seen that if the government is involved and they have the ability to either not audit or to do a fake audit that they will do the fake audit or no audit every time?

Every time.

All right.

What else?

I'm going to skip that for now.

So I was thinking today how hard it is to understand the news.

So think about all the things that had to happen for me to understand our current situation in the world.

Right?

If any of the following things had not happened, I would be so lost and so would you.

Let me give you an example.

Um, how confused would you be if you had not learned that the news is fake?

Have you ever talked to somebody who thinks news is real and it just feels like they're from the past?

Really?

Really?

You think the news is real?

Oh.

Oh, no.

You think that the news on one side is real?

Sorry.

If if you don't understand the news is and maybe always has been uh fake, you would be very confused about what you're seeing.

Right?

So that's number one.

And I would say that Trump was the biggest reason that we understand the news to be fake.

Not only did he tell us, but we could watch through his experience how often there were hoaxes in the news and you could really learn, oh my god, the news is not even real.

That's number one.

How confused and lost would we be if Elon Musk had not purchased Twitter and turned it into X?

Because I get most of my knowledge from X.

If I had to depend on everything else, literally everything else.

I wouldn't know what's going on.

Now, I might be in a bubble, so I have to watch out for the bubble problem.

But without X, there's so much context that I'd be missing.

Now, what would have happened if Trump had uh not won the election?

If Trump had not won the election, I think the X would have been destroyed.

Um, I think that people would still think the news was real.

They would trust their elections were not rigged and they would have an entirely different view of what's real and what's not.

And and Trump just barely won.

Well, he would say he won by a lot, but if you consider the allegations of rigging, suppose um there had not been um some really I don't know if it's real, but the reporting is that the uh there was some Serbian, you know, Serbian uh data center that had to be taken offline just in time or Trump would have won.

Now, I don't know if that's true, but it does suggest that if it was, we were very close to losing everything and then we would again not know what was going on because we would be in the dark.

What would happen if Doge had never happened?

And I'll add Mike Benz to the this point.

What would happen if there had never been a Mike Bettton and there had never been a Doge?

Would you understand how the NOS's and the USA ID stuff were distorting everything we knew and everything we were doing?

I didn't know about any of that stuff.

And what are the odds, you know, that you'd be born in a time when both of these things would happen?

Doge and and Mike Benz.

That's we were very close to never understanding what was really happening, but now we're getting close.

What about the rise of independent media?

Do you think we would know anything except for the rise in independent media, which mostly you get to CNX?

Nope.

Because corporate media will always have a limit on what they can do if they take advertisement for their business model.

There's going to be entire domains where you can't trust what they say.

And the only way that you would know what's happening is if an independent media grew up and that only was only was possible recently and mostly because of X.

Um, in order for me to understand what's going on and then to try to tell you, I had to use Grock uh to summarize Mike Benton's posts because his posts are, you know, very detailed and I it's hard to watch four hours of content and even though he summarizes it and he gets clipped, it's a lot.

And so even this morning and really it feels like every morning there'll be some big complicated story about what's wrong with the world and I'll say Grock summarize this and if Grock did not exist I'm not sure I'd be able to totally follow everything that Mike Ben says that puts things in context.

So I happen to, you know, you have to be lucky that Elon Musk made Grock.

Um, how would you have ever understood what a color revolution was and the fact that the people who were doing it to successfully overthrow other countries had very clearly use those tools against us?

How would you know that without X, without without Doge, without Mike Benz?

Very specific things had to happen at the same time for us even to understand that that's the world we're living in.

How would you have ever known that the let's call it the censorship industrial complex had found a way to use the international tools and also to partner with Europe mostly to censor um people in the United States.

That's that's something we only just recently learned.

So, uh, think about how sensitive, uh, the world was to all of those factors.

And if any one of those had not happened, would we have already lost free speech?

with the censorship um and the colored revolution already made it impossible impossible to have a democracy and never get a a real Republican elected.

We were this close to losing everything.

It almost seems like magic that all the right things happened at the same time, right?

It's very unlikely that all of those things would happen at the same time, but they did.

They did.

Kind of amazing.

Speaking of Mike Benz and Grock and censorship, uh here's another one of those stories that you would not understand unless we had been given this new context and these new set of assets to understand the world.

So, there's this guy, Imran Ahmed, and I might have this wrong, but I think he's a Brit, and he's allegedly was part of the effort to, and apparently there's documentation that he said this directly, that he was in charge of trying to kill Elon Musk's Twitter for censorship reasons.

um and that he was running quote black ops against RFK.

So would you have known that there's this guy in another country who was part of a big industrial censorship complex that was working with the United States to essentially get rid of free speech in the United States?

Well, there's this guy named Norm Eisen who's a attorney who is associated with Democrats, but he's also associated with that entire foreign and now domestic uh color revolutions.

So, he's sort of one of the architects of how to do a color revolution.

And he's now the lawyer representing Imran Ahmad.

So if you don't know the players, you don't really know what's going on.

And as soon as you see that he's the lawyer for Imran Amed and then you see Mike Benz explaining the connection and the history and what both of them have been been doing.

All of a sudden it clicks in place.

Click, click, click.

Oh, all right.

So, as Mike says, Norm Meis specifically made internet censorship a cornerstone of his domestic color revolution playbook published in 2025.

He literally published the technique for doing this.

So, we're not guessing what he's thinking.

He wrote it down.

Um, and that that playbook, the Normisen playbook called for state governments to set up social media censorship regulatory regimes, and we've seen this in California, New York, and Michigan try to do it, to specifically instruct his networks to quote, find partners in Brazil's censorship apparatus.

So I think the point here is that this color revolution thing is very obviously being used in countries that we're trying to control and Brazil was on that list I guess and that you know all of these efforts are staffed with exobama people and there's no doubt about what side they're on.

They're they're not trying to make things good for America.

They're trying to make things good for the Democrats basically.

So there you go.

Now here's another question I have.

You know, we all live in a news bubble.

So even as even as much improved as things are today, I would say things are much improved as I mentioned, you know, the free speech and uh the context and all that.

In my bubble, the the um allegation that the our elections have been rigged, and you could pick any year, but let's just say rigging probably happens every year.

Sometimes more successfully than others.

In my world, that's a proven fact.

not proven in court, but because of my bubble, I've seen so many stories that are at least high credibility.

I don't know how true they are, but they're high credibility about rigging that I would just say it's a fact now.

But if you're not in my bubble, how much of that do you ever see?

I feel like the left never sees it.

And what they see is the times when the claims are debunked because there are a lot of claims that yeah do not you know check out.

So I'm going to name a few things in my bubble.

So in my bubble that Serbian data center thing is true.

In my bubble there was Chinese technology and the voting machines.

In my bubble, there are credible reports of duplicate ballots that all look the same and widespread.

You know, there's a lot of it.

In my bubble, there were whistleblowers and undercover video proving that there was ballot stuffing and, you know, illegal stuff.

In my bubble, there's plenty of evidence that ballots should not have been counted in in massive ways either because they didn't have the signatures um because they were sketchy looking, etc.

And that that's just a fact.

And we have whistleblowers and we have, you know, multiple multiple reports.

Even even people under penalty of perjury are claiming they saw it firsthand.

We've got that uh that uh warehouse that's been locked for years because allegedly it's full of fake ballots.

Um and all we'd have to do is get to it.

And I think that's happening actually.

We've got all kinds of allegations about Arizona.

Too many to mention.

Um, we've got that video of Ruby Freeman, is it?

Who allegedly is doing something sketchy.

I think she's being accused of u, you know, counting the bells three times.

Now, she won a court case um for being accused of that.

So, the courts uh did not confirm that she's anything illegal.

So, she's not she's not indicted or anything, but if you're in my bubble, um she's accused of all kinds of things.

Uh there's the story of the water leak that was fake that was just used as a cover to get the observers out.

Now, I could go on and on and on, but how many of you are having the the same um experience that in your bubble you have massive just massive stories about very credible stories that various parts of the election were rigged.

That's your bubble too, right?

But I bet almost nobody on the left is exposed to this stuff because it's not going to be in the news, right?

CNN doesn't cover it.

MS Now is not in the New York Times.

And whenever it is covered, they might just hit it and then leave it.

Whereas in my bubble, it's repeated and repeated and stuff is added to it all the time.

So then uh in that context uh Scott Presler was reminding us on X that back in 2008 and I admit I was not paying attention to politics in 2008.

So in 2008, how many of you knew this happened that Al Franken was running for senator in Minnesota?

And if he won, he would become a critical um majority vote, which he was, and it was a difference between Obamacare passing and not passing.

So Al Franken had to win for them to get Obamacare over the line.

and he did win by 312 votes.

Now, my understanding is, again, I wasn't paying attention back then.

My understanding is that he did not win on the first vote and that they had to keep saying, "Wait, we kept finding some more votes and that a critical turning point in his winning is that somebody who worked for the election people uh had found a bunch of ballots in the trunk of his own car." Is that true?

Did he win because somebody claimed they found a bunch of ballots in the back of their car?

and he only won by 312 votes after he had already lost.

So it was actually, you know, after the election was already closed.

Is that true?

And as Scott Presler also points out that Minnesota has one of these weird laws where one person can vouch for up to eight people living in their precinct that they're they're qualified to vote.

In other words, that they're citizens and they live there.

What are you telling me?

That one criminal can vouch for eight other criminals and that would be enough for the eight other criminals to be able to vote.

What kind of law is that?

That looks like a law that's only designed to promote fraud.

And then we heard that over half a million voters were registered to vote on election day.

Now you might say to yourself, "But Scott, uh, lots of people tend to register on election day if they have that option because, you know, they just put it off and maybe the relatives talk them into it or something." But half a million, do you think half a million decided that the day to register was election day?

That doesn't sound real.

So, is it possible that in 2008 before we understood how corrupt the world really is that this was just pure corruption?

If I told you it happened in Minneapolis, let's say Minnesota, uh, if I told you it happened in Minnesota, back then, I might have said, well, you know, Minnesota is kind of a state where there's not a lot of crime.

So now we realize that Minnesota is the most corrupt state that isn't in California.

So how much of that is real?

You know, I I don't want to put it in the form of an accusation, but it looks sketchy as hell.

And if you drop that story into my bubble where I get, you know, this total flow of reports about election rigging, that sure looks like election rigging to me, you know, from my 2026ish perspective.

Speaking of corruption, this one blows my mind.

I cannot believe that Gavin Newsome has any chance to become president, but we live in a world where as long as he maintains his bubble, he probably can, or at least he'd have a shot at.

U, I'm going to vote against that being possible, but anything's possible.

All right, listen to this one.

So, as you know, California got these billions of dollars that were supposed to be from the federal government that was supposed to be spent on the so-called highspeed rail project.

As you know, none of that got built after many years.

As you also know, nobody can account for where the money went.

So, the money just disappeared, i.e.

gas stolen billions and billions of dollars.

So if you were the governor or you were in charge in any way during that time, how do you explain where all the money went and then still become president?

Because it's so obvious that there's either massive incompetence, well maybe or just theft or both.

So, here's what Newsome has proposed that instead of cancelling the project because they don't have any money and they have no way to get that money back and there's it would cost, you know, five times more than they thought to build it.

So, there's no real possibility of building the thing they got funded for.

There's just none.

But instead of cancelling the project, he's he's trying to extend it and make it a smaller project, something that you could imagine and probably only in your imagination, they could actually build.

And the reason that he would want to keep it alive is that if he builds nothing and he says I'm not going to build anything, he has to give back the money or at least he has to give back what you know maybe what's left.

So in order to not have to give back any money, he's going to pretend that there's still a live project and it's just much smaller.

Holy You know, it's probably legal.

You know, it's more of a weasel legal thing to do.

But how in the world can you do something like this and still become, you know, considered to be a presidential candidate.

The only way is if is if people like me know about it.

But I wasn't going to vote for him.

And the people who might like him and might vote for him will never hear this story.

They will never hear this story.

And even if you brought it up and people heard it for the first time, let's say let's say his competition brought it up at a debate or something, it's sort of technical and you know, I'm not sure it would make any difference to a Democrat.

And if he has some excuse like, I don't know what they're talking about.

We just need a train between these two places and we have the money.

Why wouldn't we build it?

So the Democrats could easily be convinced that there's no real problem here.

And he would say, am I indicted for anything?

No.

Is it a crime?

No.

We're just doing things differently than Republicans would do them.

There's no crime in that.

So he could probably very easily dismiss it in a debate.

The news will probably let him have a pass.

And it's just unfreaking believable.

Wow.

All right.

Here's a story I've been watching for a while, but now talking about.

So Elon Omar, you all know her.

her husband allegedly um and she went from having no money at all to him having a company that's worth $30 million.

So, first of all, I don't know that the estimates of their net worth are accurate because you know numbers.

Um, but if you did not understand, and this is me, for most of my adult life, I didn't understand why people who could clearly make more money in the private sector would want to be politicians because being a politician looks like a crappy job.

I mean, just the work looks like just crappy.

and they really don't get paid enough to have a house in DC because they have to be there a lot uh but also maintain their their their home and their city they're representing of the state.

Um, so I was always curious why in the world would you have so many people who would be willing to work at these bad jobs for years when when after some point they could just put it on the resume and get excellent, you know, corporate jobs and stuff like that.

And now I understand the real way you make money is that you as the politician um figure out how to be part of the allocation of funds and you make sure that your husband or your spouse is somehow benefiting.

So they might be in an NGO, they might be um some private company that provides a service to the government, but suddenly the spouse of the politician is getting a lot of good luck.

H isn't that good luck that you're in the business that can benefit from government contracts.

At the same time, you're married to a politician.

How lucky.

So I now suspect that although this would not explain every single person in politics, that a big big part of it is that the spouse um play that you could get away with because you make it look legal is why they do it.

And then my next question is this.

Um, since I don't know too much about the Department of Justice and how that works, at what point can you investigate somebody's spouse and the business that the spouse is in, unless there's like a really obvious crime?

What if you only suspect there's a crime because somebody is doing unusually well uh in their job?

You can't investigate that, right?

in order to get a warrant or open up an investigation.

Is this sufficient that that it looks like they got money too fast or or do you need to know?

Well, they got money too fast and here's the criminal way in which it happened.

So, that's an open question.

I just don't know the answer to that.

But if we don't fix that, I think we're in trouble.

Now, in the context of finding out that everything is corrupt and all of her numbers are and everything's a scam, I saw a post by a data Republican who had this to say and well, let me just read it.

So, David Republican said, "I had this idea.

What if autism diagnoses are partially from fraudulent billows?

And then I poked around a bit and it turns out that the whole one in 30 statistic, that's one in 30 uh kids being born have autism today, which is an alarming number.

She's what if the one in 30 statistic isn't based on official diagnosis?

ADDM, I don't know what that is, has clinicians review school records and if the record fits, then it counts as autism even if there's no medical diagnosis.

Then that statistic is quoted to justify increased ABA centers, increased research, and all kinds of grants.

And then uh data republican closes with I'm questioning literally everything now.

All right.

Now, I do believe that it is reality that there's more autism.

I think that RFK Jr.

is right that there's probably something in our environment, something in our food, maybe something in our medicines, something somewhere that is causing more autism.

So, I do believe more autism is real.

But how easy would it be to hide the fraud of claiming there's more autism than there is so that you could get funded for treating it?

So now that we've seen the Somali healthc care scam and how easy it was for them to run the scam, is it possible that instead of one in 30, which would be, you know, super alarming, maybe it's one in 100?

I don't know what the old number was, but it could be that there's a, you know, huge increase in it, but at the same time, that huge actual increase is masking the fact that there's massive fraud, making it look even worse.

So, uh, I like D Republicans closing sentence.

I'm questioning I'm questioning literally everything now.

That's where I'm at.

It doesn't matter where the data comes from.

My first reaction is really really how many of you are in the same place that you just don't believe any stat.

I I tend to be biased to believe statistics that agree with my preconceived notions, but I'm definitely feeling an alarm bell at the same time.

And I didn't always feel that.

So here's another one where I didn't used to think this was true.

So Elon Musk is talking on X or said this somewhere that the the left has been using government programs for a long time to import voters so that they can create a block of voters that would vote, you know, vote together to control the American process.

And that that's what the Somali immigration was all about.

that Democrats were intentionally creating pockets where they could control who won Democrats uh because they would have a block of people would vote the same.

Now, we see that in Chicago, for example, more organically, that Chicago has a large black population and they somewhat reliably are going to elect black Democrats to be in charge, mayors.

Not every time, but you know, that that would be the the trend.

So, I used to doubt that that was intentional.

I used to think, well, yeah, there is a lot of uncontrolled immigration and yeah, it's natural that those people would want to settle with other people like themselves, but it's now some grand plan.

I've changed my mind.

>> >> I am now convinced that there had to be, you know, just as Elon Musk is saying, there had to be a plan to do this intentionally to take take control of the uh the census, take control of local governments and effectively uh change the voting situation in the United States and more more alarmingly that they were very close to pulling it off and maybe they could still.

Um, and it would made it would have made a permanent change in the ability for Republicans to get elected and it would have permanently made it impossible for anything but a Democrat to ever be in charge of anything important.

And we were this close.

Now, it might still happen.

I don't know.

And maybe they've already done enough of this cuz you've got your Hispanic pockets, you've got your Somali pockets.

Um, maybe they've already done it, but I don't think so.

Here's another one that I wouldn't have believed five years ago.

So, the Newsmax has reported that Judicial Watch, you know who Judicial Watch is, right?

um President Tom Fitton as warning that the Secret Service might be uh let's say um maybe not doing their best to protect the president and that maybe that's not just incompetence.

So the examples given are the two assassination attempts which we all think look like um it looked like the his security didn't do enough.

He lived, but from the outside it looks like, wait, it doesn't even look like you had the A team protecting the president.

Is that a coincidence?

And then there was also the incident where Trump went to some restaurant and somehow the uh people who don't like Trump had been alerted which is a gigantic security problem and there could have been some danger there because people knew in advance he'd be at a restaurant and it wasn't well secured.

So there are at least three examples where you say to yourself, is it possible that the president of the United States has incompetent security?

Is that possible?

Yeah, Code Bank uh Democratic group Code Pink showed up at that restaurant to protest.

So is that possible or is this a pattern?

And I guess uh judicial watch is asking for some information to maybe drill down on that a little bit.

Now, five years ago, if you told me that his security was penetrated or compromised and that people were trying to kill him and had made already three attempts, you know, three attempts, they had insiders involved.

I wouldn't have believed that, but today it's on the table.

I absolutely would say maybe.

I mean, we know, for example, that JFK I think I think I can say we know this um that his assassination had something to do with insiders, right?

That the CIA in particular.

So, if it were true for JFK, but I didn't believe her for decades, and then you look at all the other things that are true.

Wow.

almost anything is on the table.

So, I'm not willing yet to say that the insiders are have penetrated his security service, but I don't rule it out.

I'm not ruling it out.

Um, I've been watching Traath from the Alen Pod getting very active on Acts talking about California and its various um problems.

and he notes that apparently um the California state pension it looks like it's solid and it looks like you know it could pay pay the pensions but it's only because they've changed the accounting to a very weaselike way to make optimistic assumptions that are not realistic about what's going to happen in the future.

So, in other words, California also, on top of all the problems you've heard, probably has this massive underfunded state pension problem that they're covering up by clever accounting changes.

Wow.

Um, so this this is something I would call the uh technically legal but holy kind of fraud.

Meaning it's not technically illegal for them to estimate the uh pension payout with optimistic assumptions.

That's not illegal and they show their assumptions apparently.

But how is it not fraud?

You know, in a sort of a common sense way.

is sort of obviously fraud.

Uh on top of that, I'm wondering if Chabath would be a candidate for governor or Yeah.

Yeah.

Governor.

So, at the moment, uh Steve Hilton is running for governor in California, and I think he's actually leading in the polls because the the polls are so fragmented and they have a different voting system.

So, it's possible that the next governor of California could be a Republican.

But if it's not Steve Hilton, is there a time when Schmath says I'll step up and do that because I would very much love to see him in the leadership role.

I would back that hard.

Well, speaking of other Californian stuff and uh Chamath is also weighing on this pretty hard.

So, Ro Kana, one of our representatives in California, who normally is what we would consider a more reasonable Democrat than other Democrats.

I obviously I don't agree with everything that Roana wants, but you usually think of him as well considered and not you not crazy biased.

He could, for example, he could work with Thomas Massie on the Epstein stuff because that's just, you know, sort of an independent good thing to do.

But row is backing this idea of a wealth tax on billionaires in California.

And the idea is that billionaires above a certain level of billions would would have to give up 1% of their net wealth every year for five years.

So So it' be 5% by the time they were done.

Now this is wealth that they had already paid taxes on.

Um, you could argue that point, but there was no precedent for this.

There there's a precedent for income taxes and there's a precedent for taxing rich people more.

But there's no real precedent for just taking their money after they made it, just saying, "Hey, you have too much money, so we're going to take some of it." Now, this is surprising because this is probably one of the worst ideas I've ever heard.

And my impression of Roana is that not only is he, you know, more often than most uh has an independent view of things, but he's not stupid, right?

When when you see him, it's not like you're looking at uh Swallwell.

It's not like he's, you know, you could name he's not Jasmine Crockett, right?

He's genuinely a smart, reasonable person, but somehow the smart reasonable person is going all in on the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life.

So, as you might imagine, uh, several billionaires are already, you know, quite obviously getting ready to leave the state.

Uh, and what would happen if our if our most capable people left the state?

Well, we lose all of that base.

They would probably do the investing in other states, etc.

Because you wouldn't even want to invest in the state.

you wouldn't you wouldn't want to have anything to do with it because it just be it'd be like doing business in China if you could turn California into a China problem.

It's like, well, why would you ever build something in China?

They're just going to steal it anyway.

Russia, too.

One of the reasons that Russia isn't going to get a lot of external investment is that you think the Russians just steal your business if it if it does well, and they would.

So why would you stay in California when you see something this extreme that that's being pushed against the most successful entrepreneurs?

So um and I often joke because Ro Island talks about income inequality and you know you have to do something about that income inequality and it's not fair.

I I always joke, but I'm not joking, that fairness is a word that was invented so that children idiots have something to talk about.

Fairness is not something you want.

You want you want meritocracy.

That's not fairness because some people have more merit.

Some people will thrive in a meritocracy, some people won't.

It's not exactly fair, but it's just a good system.

for everyone.

So, this system where they just take your money if you're very successful, uh, it's just a terrible idea.

So, here's what I'm wondering.

Could the California billionaires um do something that would make it look like they were contributing more to the state and would actually be contributing more without having their money confiscated?

Is there a counterp proposal that the billionaires could make to say, "Hey, instead of taking our money and then giving it to California that will waste it, because that's that's the other big problem.

If you know for sure that California is wasting your money, it's really hard to give them an extra billion, right?

It's like way harder if you earned a billion, but let's say you had lots of billions.

um it's pretty hard to give them a penny more when they're so bad at allocating the uh capital.

So what if the billionaires came up with a counter proposal and I'll just brainstorm a little bit here in which they would be um voluntarily but maybe at threat of some penalty um they could allocate more money for the benefit of California.

For example, suppose California said, "We really need to improve affordability." So if you're a billionaire and you commit to put 1% of your assets directly into investments that would improve affordability, you don't have to pay the you won't be subject to the confiscation.

So let let's say you're a billionaire and you say to me, "Scott, you can invest currently, you can invest your money anywhere you want, but if you invested in ways that would improve affordability for Californians, you don't get you don't get the penalty of having to confiscate." And that to me would be excellent.

And one of the things that Chimath talks about is that the the richest people, especially the AI billionaires, they need to do something that's highly visible, but also good for the public.

And I'm totally on board of that.

It should be highly visible and good for the public.

That is one thing that Bill Gates was doing very right with the Gates Foundation.

So when he was the richest guy around, it really helped him that he said he was going to give it all away, that he was putting lots of his billions into um a charitable thing.

Now, since then, you know, there's been lots of criticism of what his true motives are, all that, and that's valid.

Those are valid criticisms.

But in terms of a strategy, I think it was very good for Bill Gates to try to reframe himself as a person who's doing the things that are even too hard for the government to do.

So there's my idea.

If you say billionaires, if you live in California, we need you to step up and make it cheaper to do health care, cheaper to do education, cheaper to do transportation, and you have to show us that you've you've allocated some new money, not money you've already allocated, but you've allocated some new money into projects that have a good chance of lowering our costs.

Wouldn't they stay?

You know, under those conditions, if you were a billionaire and you thought, "Huh, okay, I wasn't planning on being forced to invested in these areas, but nobody can complain if I do.

And if I found a way to make transportation or shelter or something cheaper, u the government would work with me, maybe even help me with some possibly the state would have to agree to remove some regulations.

So suppose the billionaires say yes uh we will we will invest in affordability but you have to remove these roadblocks.

One roadblock would be over um would be over taxation, I guess, and the other one would be uh over regulation.

What do you think?

Now, I don't know if anything like that could happen, but it would be way better for the billionaires to have at least one proposal.

And I would be surprised if you couldn't get both Democrats and Republican billionaires to agree with that.

You could probably get even somebody like a Tommy Styer to agree, you know, a Republican billionaire.

I just want to see your reaction to that.

Is that the best idea you've ever heard?

Because the one thing we know is that the billionaires by and large would be way way better at identifying ways to improve affordability than it would be the government.

And uh it would it would satisfy Chimas view that they should be more prominently involved in helping the public which I agree with.

All right.

Did you know according to Elon Musk that electric semitrs will be a way better idea than diesel?

Here again is exactly my point.

If Elon Musk did not exist, would you know that you could make an electric semitr that would be way more practical and affordable and affordable than the current technology?

You wouldn't even know that, right?

Yeah.

Tom Styer isn't a Republican.

That's my point.

My point is that both Democrats and Republicans would probably like the idea of working on affordability.

So, that's another example of if you didn't have a billionaire who was uh interested in the public good.

And by the way, Musk usually starts there.

He starts with what would be a public good and then can I fix that?

Everything from space to electric cars to solar power.

He always starts with what's good for the public and then can I make that thing.

So electric semitrs would be right in that uh area.

Well, you all know who Bill Aman is, right?

He's a a well-known investor and he's talking about uh you know the uh the widespread fraud in so many government programs and he had a suggestion for a way to audit.

Now the idea of auditing of course is not new but apparently it doesn't work because the fraud still exists.

So his suggestion for auditing is that first of all you have to severely uh use the DOJ to severely punish anybody who got caught with fraud.

So you've got some disincentive for fraud.

That of course I think we all agree with.

But then he says uh that there should be a federal internal audit system where private citizens would get a bounty.

they'd be bounty hunters who find fraud and earn rewards equal to a percentage of the grift identified.

Now, he calls it grift.

I don't know if that means only illegal stuff or just stuff people are getting away with.

Um, but I like where that's going.

So, my idea um was that we need to have a federal standard for audits and that we do not currently have a good idea how to do it.

Somebody said, and they were right, that the auditors also would be criminals because it would be so easy to buy off an auditor.

So, if you just had a standard audit system, they would either be incompetent or bribed or they'd be in on they'd be in on the plot.

And I agree with that.

Over time, the auditors would be, you know, blackmailed or bought off.

But if your auto system involves these citizen bounty hunters, presumably people who are capable and well trained to do that sort of thing, they would just be working for the money.

And if they could make more money by turning people in than they could make by being in on the graft, well, now you got a system.

So, you know, there are lots of questions and details about that, but I like where that's heading because if you don't have what I would call a free market approach to make sure that the audits are are doing what they should be doing, the audit will be waste of time.

And that's what we see right now.

Our current auditing systems largely don't work.

Case in point, there's a new story that says that billions of dollars that we send to Israel as weapons after October 7th have not been accounted for.

So apparently the auditing system they should have tracked uh weapons and and armaments same thing that we gave to Israel uh we were only able to track some percentage of it.

Now, that does not mean that that stuff was stolen or ended up in the wrong hands.

What it does mean is we don't know.

It could have been stolen.

It could have ended up in the wrong hands.

We don't know because once again, although there was tracking, the tracking was inadequate.

And so, we don't know.

Now, I do think that Israel would be highly incentivized to make sure those weapons got used by the IDF in exactly the way we wanted, but you know, we don't know.

And if you take any auto system that is blind and there's a lot of money involved and you just wait, that guarantees corruption.

Lots of money involved, lots of time involved, and nobody's watching.

100% chance that ends up in in subcriminal behavior.

Well, here's some maybe good news.

There's a new study according to the Brighter Side News that Alzheimer's can be not only stopped but reversed with a very common supplement.

Now, this common supplement called NAD+ is not something you can buy over the counter.

And if it were ever made available, oh wait, I'm sorry, that's wrong.

The NAD+ is apparently something that people have in them.

And when the NAD+ is at the right level, they don't get Alzheimer's.

But the recent discovery is if you could boost their NAD+ because older people lose it.

So if you could just boost them back to a normal level that not only do they not get worse in the Alzheimer's, but it could actually correct it.

you could actually cure it.

So, they've shown this in mice, but they've also shown it in uh samples of human brains.

Now, if they had not shown this true in a sample of a human brain, I would not be excited because mouse studies, there's a million mouse studies that never turn out to work for humans, but it's already it's already a chemical that's in your body.

So, that's good news.

They know for sure that the people with Alzheimer's have less of it and they know exactly why that would cause the Alzheimer's and they know that it can be increased by adding this thing called a compound called P73- A20.

So some lab has developed this.

So it would be easy to develop the compound um developed in Piper labs.

uh but because it's a drug, it would have to go through a whole bunch of uh FDA testing, etc.

So, it's not it's not on the horizon.

It would have to be tested.

But this does sound more promising than almost anything I've ever heard in that domain.

So, I'm going to end on that bit of optimism.

I'm going way late, but it's a Sunday.

Didn't you enjoy spending some extra time?

Did you?

All right.

It's why smokers rarely get Alzheimer's.

I've never heard that.

Is that true?

Smokers rarely get Alzheimer's.

All right, people.

I won't stay too much longer.

Uh, but I will say a few words to the beloved members of uh, locals who might want to stay around a little bit longer.

The rest of you, enjoy your Sunday.

I hope this was uh useful to you.

I try to be useful.

Doing my best.

All right, locals.

I'm going to come at you privately if this works.

bad.

Local supporters will be private in Uhoh.

Maybe this isn't working.

Everybody, we're get ready for the show.

The podcast you love the most as far as

I know. Come on in here. We've got a sip

to do. We've got some flood news.

I'm going to put some stuff in context

for you

as soon as I get this working.

Yay.

Got a good cat picture for you.

Come on in.

Hey, what's this? It's the 2026

calendar. They're still available.

Limited quantities available,

but if you don't have yours yet, Amazon

is the only place to get it.

All right, we got a lot to talk about

and I always wondered if there's some

number of attendees I should wait for

before I start.

It'll be a weird day because it's

Sunday, it's a holiday.

People are in church, people with the

family.

But I think it's time for this

simultaneous sip and all you need is a

cuper, bugger, a glass, a tanker chest

dying. in a canteen jugger flask or

vessel of any kind. Fill it with your

favorite liquid. I like coffee.

And join me now for the unparalleled

pleasure. The dopamine here of the day,

the thing makes everything better. It's

called the simultaneous sip. It happens

now. Go.

exquisite.

Well, I have a clarification

slashcorrection.

Um, sort of. So yesterday I talked about

a story in the news in which Japan had

just successfully tested beaming

electricity from or energy I guess

electricity via a microwave beam from

space

to earth. So the idea is you could put

big solar panels floating in space. It

could gather up the electricity and

shoot it to earth.

Um

and they had shown that they could do

that on a small scale and I said

that that would be a you know big game

changer if they could scale that up.

Well I mistakenly believed that Elon

Musk agreed with my take but it's

actually the opposite. So Elon responded

to that story. A lot of people had asked

him about it, I guess, and said that uh

he's often asked about beaming

electricity from space from solar

panels. And I mistakenly believed he

said that was a good idea. But what he

was talking about and only the only

thing he was talking about because he

says that could never work. There's, you

know, there there reasons in physics

which he understands that I don't that

would make it really impractical or

impossible to scale it up. But if you

were generating it in space, but also it

built your let's say your AI data center

in space, you could use the electricity

in space and then it would be almost

unlimited because you would be above our

cloud cover and you could be where the

sun always gets you. So it never be

nighttime if you solar panel. So the

clarification is

that at least in terms of what Elon says

and I will not disagree with him that

there's no practical way to make that a

dominant energy source for the

terrestrial

folks.

However,

you might cynically or skeptically say,

"Scott, Scott, Scott,

you simpleton,

don't you know that even though it was

Japan that announced this breakthrough,

that it almost certainly is a cover

for some kind of a space-based weapon?

Because if you had uh if you had

something that generated a lot of

electricity

floating above the earth and you could

microwave that as something.

Um, that would be a good way to shoot

down, you know, any kind of a

space-based weapon on the other team

because although that microwave beam

apparently is an inefficient way to

carry electricity, you know, through the

atmosphere,

um, it might be just what you need to

shoot down a, you know, some kind of a

threat from space.

So even the even the press release on

that might be a cover for something

military

maybe. Speaking of charging things

electric electrically over space,

apparently Tesla

just filed a patent on something that

would allow you to charge your electric

vehicle without plugging it in.

So Tesla apparently has a plan which I

believe will be applied to the cyber cab

which allegedly don't won't even have a

charging port.

So the idea is that uh the cyber cab

maybe first I don't know will not need a

port if it gets close to something

that's you know designed to work that

way. it will wirelessly

charge your vehicle. Now, what I'm not

sure about,

but I saw um

some I I guess estimates that that would

also apply to existing Tesla that has a

charging port, but there might be some

way to also wirelessly charge it. that

part I don't know but I think more more

reliably

it's true that the cyber cab will be

using it and not have a charging port.

That's got to be the last thing

that Tesla needed to make everyone buy

one because even though you know it

might be 30 minutes to charge your car

and it's not really hard to plug it in.

Wouldn't you like to not get out of your

car?

So, with the current technology,

you have to always get out of your car,

right? Even if you're just plugging it

in for an electric charge, that little

bit of work where you have to get out of

your car and the weather might not be

ideal, that's probably a big deal. I

don't own one, but I imagine I would be

very, very happy if it if it drove to

the charging station on its own when it

needed to. and that entourage itself

without me touching it and without me

getting out. That would be a whole

different experience. So, you know,

these seem like small changes, but I'll

bet it's not small.

So, here's something that happened to me

yesterday

that freaked me out a little bit. And I

think I think this is an accurate

statement of what happened.

Does anybody need an extra sip?

If you came in late, extra Sunday sip.

So because of my, you know, advanced age

and because of my health situation,

um I had started to write down some

facts about myself

just for posterity basically. So, I was

recording some, you know, timeline

things and it turns out that um using AI

to learn about my own life

was the best way to do it. For example,

I couldn't remember, you know, what

years I worked at the uh phone company,

you know, what years I worked at the the

uh bank, but it's on Wikipedia

and you can get that kind of stuff using

AI. So, I was messing around with

Gemini.

Gemini would be the Google version of

AI. And I asked it something about my

own life.

And it used as a source

the Google document that I was using to

compile that information

which was brand new.

That's right. Google's AI

used as a source document

a private document that I just created

using Google tools.

Do you know how freaky that was? And it

told me that's where I got it. It it

said it got it from this document.

That is literally the document I just

created.

So, it was a little bit circular because

I was looking for it to, you know,

validate the dates that I guessed and

instead of validating it, it could find

that I just written it down and it used

that as a source.

Now, I'm pretty sure it also knew who I

was

because, you know, I had interacted with

it before and I think I told her who I

was for, you know, for some convenience.

That was freaky.

Well, I have some questions about the

increasing use of coal power in the

United States. And here's some news and

some context that I'll add to it. So,

the Daily Color News Foundation is

reporting that uh that there was more

coal burned in 2025 than in the year

before. It was up around 13%. Now, that

might not come as a surprise to you

because you know that Trump has been

pushing coal. He calls it clean coal.

I don't know if there's anything that's

clean coal, but he says that. Um,

and I wondered

how much danger that created

because you know that the knock on coal

is that it would be bad for the world.

And but we live in a time in which

people are way less worried about CO2.

So one there there two big

um objections to coal. One is to put CO2

into the atmosphere at a pretty big

pretty big pace. Um, but at the moment

that's not terribly

concerning the way it was

even two years ago because even the

mainstream media is starting to admit,

well, we don't have necessarily a

climate crisis.

You even Bill Gates is now, well, it's

not a crisis.

So, but the other part is that it's also

just a pollutant

and uh and air pollution kills a lot of

people. So, I wondered how many people

get killed

by coal

uh as a pollutant, not as a CO2.

And I went to AI, went to Grock, and

they said uh there estimates that coal

might kill up to 10,000 people per year

just by being a pollutant. Now, what is

the first thing you ask yourself if you

see an estimate that coal might kill

10,000 people a year? I think that's

just in America. Yeah, I think.

Well, the first thing you should ask

yourself is who did the study and what

was their motivation?

Can we believe

a study about how many people were

killed by coal? Remember, it's 2025

and we've learned that every corner of

science,

every corner of politics is corrupt.

Can you trust that 10,000 people a year

are being killed by [clears throat]

coal?

And then secondly,

what percentage of all the people being

killed by pollution is that? Is it 1% of

all the people killed by pollution? Is

it half?

Well, also according to rock, something

like 40 to 60,000 people per year are

killed by pollution.

So if these numbers were right, and I'm

very skeptical, if the numbers are

right, it would be 10,000 out of

40 to 60,000 directly just because of

extra use of coal or just coal in

general, not the extra.

So here's what's interesting.

if it's true. Oh, and by the way, the

number of people who are dying from

pollution

is has been dropping year to year

and the drop in those deaths is being

attributed to the closing of coal

plants. But now the coal plants are not

only not closing, they're reopening and

going wild. So what would happen and

this will be the fun thing to watch.

What would happen if the deaths from

pollution keep dropping

while the use of coal is unambiguously

up?

What happens then?

Would you would you like to make a

prediction?

Do you think that the the I guess it

would be the mainstream belief that the

reduction in coal plants is caused a

reduction in mortality?

Do you believe that that will reverse

because the use of coal reversed and

there doesn't seem to be any other

mitigating factor such as clean or coal

or anything like that? I'm going to make

you a bet.

I'm going to bet that the mortality rate

drops

even though coal use goes up. And I

don't know that I'll have an explanation

for why. I just think that it's a little

too easy to say, oh, coal use went down,

mortality went down. We don't really

live in a world where we're that good at

correlation. So, I'm just going to say I

think there will be a mystery coming up.

All right. In other news, you know,

filmmaker James Cameron

and uh he says he's he's been asked to

write a new movie, a Terminator movie

about the future, but he can't write

things about the future

or it's hard because the actual future

will be too close to what he calls

science fiction. So for example, if he

wrote a movie today in which let's say

the machines became sensient,

that could actually happen before the

movie hit the screen,

which [clears throat] is really a weird

problem for a writer to have. It's like

no matter what he says, oh, the the

robots will be running all the Oh, wait,

that actually will happen, you know, in

three years. So, that's a pretty that's

a pretty interesting take. I don't know

if he's right to the counter to that is

that I've told you this before, but if

you're a subscriber, you'd have to be a

Dilbert Reborn subscriber. So, if you're

seeing Dilbert that I still produce

every day and you're seeing behind the

payw wall, you can see it on X behind

the payw wall I have or you can see it

on the locals platform. those are the

only place that runs right now. So,

you'd have to be a subscriber. But in

addition to a daily

uh new Dilbert cartoon that I'm doing,

which is a little spicier than it used

to be, uh I also give those subscribers

the same the the comic that ran exactly

10 years ago. So, you'll see today's

comic. I'm trying to catch up from my

time in the hospital, so I'm a little

bit behind. But in theory, you would see

today's comic and then what I thought

was worth writing about 10 years ago.

The entire month so far of my 10 years

ago comic is about a sensient robot that

works in Dilbur's office. And it's about

Dilbert having to deal with the fact

that his coworker is a robot.

10 years ago

and here we are. So basically I I knew I

was writing about some kind of future

but if you wondered what what I was

thinking was going to happen 10 years

from now. There it was. [laughter]

[gasps] So you would think if you saw

the 10 year ago comic you would think

that I wrote it yesterday. It was just

spoton.

All right.

According to a one of my followers on X

named Alex who is an engineer so he's

probably right. He says that in 2024

alone the average battery

[clears throat] price uh we're talking

about batteries for you know big things

uh prices fell by 40%.

And it looks like there's going to be a

similar fall for 2025. So he says

that the economics of solar have now

reached a crossover point where pairing

solar with enough batteries to keep the

electricity on at night when there's,

you know, when there's no sunshining

um is now an economically viable thing.

I know that many of you have been

telling me for years, Scott, Scott,

Scott, uh, solar power will always be

limited because it doesn't work at night

and it doesn't work when it's cloudy.

And I would always say, but but

you can store it in batteries.

And then people say, "Scott, Scott,

Scott, Scott, you can store it in

batteries, but you're never going to get

close to good economics because the

batteries are expensive to make and

maintain and blah blah blah." And that

was all true until apparently now. So,

one of the reasons I continue to hammer

on more than I more than I know you want

to hear, but it helps you understand

what's coming is that there are so many

just so many advances in battery

technology that you wouldn't have to

wait too far given that it's, you know,

a trillion dollar market, multi-trillion

dollar market. you you would know that

the free market would be running as fast

as it could to make better and cheaper

batteries because the potential is, you

know, insane. Then you add robots and

auto caps to it and the the market

potential for batteries is probably

higher than maybe anything.

You know, it could turn out that the

battery industry

is bigger than AI [laughter]

because you can't even have AI without

an incredible battery industry. So,

according to one engineer, Alex, if

you're listening, Alex, hi.

Um, we may have reached crossover.

That's one of the funny things about

technology is that technology can be,

oh, it's boring, it's boring, it's

boring,

then suddenly it changes everything. It

looks like we got to the changes

everything point.

Well, I saw a post on X

by Charles Ford,

not a famous person, just somebody who's

funny, who said, and I quote, "Wondering

if the Somali will be eligible for

reparations when that time comes.

Will the Somali be eligible for

reparations?"

And I I posted back in a comment paying

for them or receiving them because it's

a complicated world, isn't it? Should

the Somali be receiving reparations

or should they be paying them?

It's not obvious, is it? [laughter]

There would be [clears throat] an

argument in both directions. I'm not

saying I agree with any of the

arguments, but there would be an

argument that they shouldn't receive

them,

and there would be an argument that they

should be paying for them. Pick one.

But it's pretty funny to highlight the

absurdity of it that way.

Well, according to the New York Post,

um the southern states, not all of them,

but southern states generally speaking,

are doing much better than blue states

in fixing their education systems after

the pandemic, especially.

So, there seems to be a clear

correlation between whatever the

conservative states are doing and

whatever the liberal states are doing.

So the liberals are not getting good

results.

Uh the other states are. Now there are a

number of things that have been credited

for why there's a difference. But we

have a new entrance for why there's a

difference. So there were some common

sense reforms in the southern states

where they got back to basics that

probably made a difference.

So they went back to phonics and stuff.

Um they went back to more of a

merit-based you know sort of thing. Um

the universal literacy screeners

basically they went back to the things

that we know work and when you go back

to the things that you know work you get

a good result. Whereas the blue states

were trying to relax their disciplinary

policies

uh trying to find some more you know

woke way to teach people and that wasn't

producing results.

But

the uh new hypothesis

according to some new study is that what

might be the magic sauce is that the

southern states are more hardcore about

uh law and order. Meaning that they make

sure that if you're a disruptor,

you just get sent home. Uh sort of the

old way. So they don't tolerate students

who are disruptive.

Whereas the blue states, their school

system not only tolerates it, but makes

it easier for them to get away with

their whatever they're doing.

So do you think that's fair?

Um, I would say that there's no way in

hell that a school that doesn't control

student behavior could compete with a

school that does. Is that not just

obvious?

It's obvious, right? If one school lets

people run wild because they they're

woke and they don't want to punish them

and they think it's racist to punish one

group more than another. So, they're

trying to be, you know, fair and all

that. there's not really any chance that

they would perform the same. There's

100% chance that the ones who are

controlling the students behavior more

aggressively are going to get better

grades. There's just no way around that.

But also made me think that

homeschooling

has a natural cap,

meaning that there's no way a parent who

can't control their kid at home is going

to be a successful homeschooler,

is there? Because that bad behavior

would make them a terrible candidate for

being homeschooled. So maybe those

people are like, "Well, I can't do

anything with this kid. I'll just send

it to school. At least I can go to my

job.

So, I've always suspected that one of

the reasons homeschoolers

uh tend to be so

such good outcomes, I think you would

agree with that, right? You'd agree that

the people who are homeschooled tend to

be just better citizens.

The problem, part of the reason is that

you don't even get to be homeschooled

unless you have parents who know they

can control you in a in a proper

parental child way. So,

I'm not 100% sure that what makes those

kids do so well later in life, the

homeschooled kids, is that homeschooling

is better than regular school. It could

be a selection bias that the only people

who even give it a try, you know, they

they know by the time the kid is six if

it's a controllable kid or not. Wouldn't

you say? Well, don't you think it's fair

to say that you have a pretty good idea

by the time the kid is six, am I going

to be able to discipline this kid and

will they do what parent tells them or

will they just always be that rebel?

Now, you add to that the number of

single parent households, and there's

just no way a single parent household is

going to be able to control a a kid at

the same level that a two parent

household could.

So, homeschooling, even if you use AI to

do it, should be capped

by the total number of people who can be

controlled by a parent or two.

Well, I don't know when this is

happening. I think maybe tomorrow

that Trump is bringing his economic team

to Mara Lago to talk specifically about

housing

and specifically about the cost of

housing and one of his economic advisors

has it thinks that most of us meaning

the important people in the

administration are going to be there and

that they will discuss a uh ideas that

people have for improving housing costs.

Now, this is one of my pet favorite

topics. How do you make uh housing less

expensive and also better? And I'm so

curious what kind of ideas they'll have.

Some of them are probably obvious.

Uh, I'm sure that reducing regulations

will be part of the conversation

because, you know, it's such a

Republican thing to do. It's doable.

But what I wonder is will they suggest a

federal standard that if you build to

that standard, the states have to accept

it. So you could take the state

completely out of the approval process

which we where I live would instantly

cause more housing because these state

requirements are pretty burdensome. So

one possibility is that you can either

build your house to the state standards

or

uh you could have a let's say a more

limited set of choices of how you can

build it but those choices would be

preapproved.

So, if you build a house with this set

of standards, you've met all of the

federal requirements, but the state

would have to accept it. That would

instantly take a whole bunch of, you

know, costs off the top.

What about um

some kind of boost to make the robots

uh more active in building the houses?

I don't know what that would look like,

but if there's any restrictions and

maybe states would be the ones that

would have these restrictions. Could it

be the removing restrictions

on replacing humans with robot builders

is just what we need because the robots

could not yet but maybe very very soon

lower the cost of construction.

Could it be that some of those

pre-approved homes that I already

mentioned would uh be allowed to use

what I call Lego construction?

Um because the algorithm on the internet

knows what kind of stuff I like. I see a

lot of videos of companies that are that

have this product. So already there

exists um these these sort of blocks

that fit together which the homeowner

themselves could build most of the house

because it's just snapped together. So

what if the federal government said in

addition to what else it does that if

you build your house with these Legos

um it could get approved.

Right now, if you tried to build a house

in California with some kind of new age

Lego construction, there's not a chance

you get approved

because they've never seen it before.

So, it's just automatically off the

table. I learned that when I built my

house. I had all these great ideas for

building my house using the newest

technology, but then as soon as you get

into it, you realize you cannot get the

newest technology approved because the

the city has never approved that

technology.

So if you say if you give them something

they've never seen before, it'll never

get approved. That you have to show them

what they've seen before, and even then

it can take a year and a half to get

approved.

So maybe there's some way around that.

Maybe the maybe some of the federal land

would be used for building new houses.

Maybe something about immigration

enforcement, but that's already

happening.

Um maybe suppose I'm just throwing out

some ideas. It seems to me there will be

a lot of large houses

that are empty nesters.

that it would be better if the person

who is let's say a senior citizen owns a

house

um that if they take on a I'll call it a

roommate for now, a young person as a

roommate who's there to help the older

person maintain the house. Maybe there's

some kind of tax break. So imagine

you're in your 20s and you'd like to

live in a house but you can't afford

one. So suppose the government says,

"Well, if we can match you with a senior

citizen who has a house that's too big

for them, and you have a contract to

help out, you'll get some kind of a tax

break. So then the old person has help.

They don't have to sell their house if

they don't want to. And the young person

has an awesome experience because

depending on the old person, you might

actually enjoy it. Could be a relative,

doesn't have to be.

Right.

Um,

so that's a possibility.

I don't know. What What other ways do

you think Republicans can lower the cost

of housing?

You already have squatters. Well, you

know, it's it's actually becoming common

for young people and older people to

pair up that way. So, it's it's

happening organically. I don't know if

it's working, but it's happening

organically.

One of the problems with um California

is that if I were to sell my house after

it value has gone up, the new person

buying it wouldn't be able to afford the

property tax because the property tax is

based on the value of the house. Now, I

can afford it because I built it about

10 years ago. No. How long ago? 2009.

So my property taxes are artificially

based on what the, you know, early value

of the house was, not its current value.

And it would be about double if I paid

the property taxes based on current. So

it makes it very hard to sell your house

because even though it was affordable

for you, it would not be affordable for

the person who bought it because the

property taxes would just be crazy. So

that's something that is a state

problem, but maybe there's some kind of

federal way to make it illegal to raise

property taxes or something.

And I think there are some other

obstacles to selling a house that maybe

could be removed.

Um, there'd be a lot more houses

available if the people had them could

efficiently sell them.

All right.

Um, you know, this story is over and

over again, but I've got something to

add to it. So, according to an article

by Joe Wilkins in Futurism,

um, children are having a tough time

with AI chatbots. So you've seen the

stories I'm sure where children

especially teens

um are chatting with AI and it becomes

their friend but then it starts

recommending dangerous things.

Now that you already knew that story,

but uh according to a new Pew Research,

64% of teens in the US are already using

chat bots and about 30% of those

um who are using it use it daily.

And as I mentioned,

it might be kind of dangerous because

it's it it's taking them away from the

real world, which is its own problem.

Um, but the chat bots can say some

really dangerous stuff and uh I think

some kids have harmed themselves

allegedly because the chat boss is now I

would argue that this is also happening

to adults.

So it's not really limited at all to

children but we worry more about

children. So So imagine if you will

that you've got this huge problem.

Here's the problem.

What is the main driver of AI adoption

right now? Well, we've got all these all

these plans for how AI will be, you

know, powering robots and everything

else, but at the moment, and it looks

like this moment will last a while, the

main thing that people sign up for AI

for is to chat.

It's the main thing.

Um, and what happens if the main thing

turns out to be too dangerous to be

loose?

Is there any chance that they're going

to take away the main thing that all

these biggest powerful companies are

relying on to get adoption going?

because they kind of need they need a

lot of adoption to probably get to the

point where the AI can run your robot in

your factory and you know be a butler

and all that.

So I don't think it's going to be

stopped. But I would also add the

context that probably every new

technology

seemed too dangerous to be worth it when

it was first introduced.

Don't you think that's true? When we

invented the car, I wasn't around. But

don't you imagine that the smart people

were saying, "Oh, those automobiles,

that's way more dangerous than riding a

horse." When the smartphone or the

computer were invented when the internet

was invented. Don't you think there were

a lot of people saying, "Oh, it's too

dangerous to have the internet. You're

going to lose your privacy." And all

that's true, right? So the the dangers

that people pointed out, all true. So

you had at some point 50,000 people a

year dying from auto accidents. That's a

pretty big downside.

That's probably worse than AI will do.

So my prediction

is that even though uh AI chatting

could be dangerous, definitely is

dangerous, uh it won't be stopped

because that's what every new technology

goes through. That's what I think.

Well, let's talk about all the

corruption in the world. Would you be

surprised

that the LA Times did a research and

found out that uh there was a LA fire

department afteraction report about the

Palisades fire and do you think that

that afteraction report which is

basically the fire department reporting

on themselves how they did. Do you think

that it was honestly reported

uh what possible mistakes the fire

department might have made? No.

So once again, [clears throat] the

people who are in charge are also in

charge of telling you how they did. and

the people who are in charge, the LA

Fire Department in charge of the fire

had decided that they would remove

uh some substantial parts of the report

that made them look bad. So, the

afterhour action report according to the

LA Times is and they in fact

were definitely

definitely the problem. Uh, and part of

the problem was that they knew there was

a existing fire that had been the thing

that reignited. They almost certainly

should have been there. They should have

had water. They should have been should

have been more ready, etc. So,

essentially a cover up. Yes.

So,

how often have we seen that if the

government is involved

and they have the ability to either not

audit or to do a fake audit that they

will do the fake audit or no audit every

time? Every time.

All right. What else?

I'm going to skip that for now.

So I was thinking today how hard it is

to understand the news.

So think about all the things that had

to happen for me to understand our

current situation in the world. Right?

If any of the following things had not

happened, I would be so lost and so

would you. Let me give you an example.

Um,

how confused would you be

if you had not learned that the news is

fake?

Have you ever talked to somebody who

thinks news is real and it just feels

like they're from the past? Really?

Really? You think the news is real? Oh.

Oh, no. You think that the news on one

side is real?

Sorry.

If if you don't understand the news is

and maybe always has been uh fake, you

would be very confused about what you're

seeing. Right? So that's number one. And

I would say that Trump was the biggest

reason that we understand the news to be

fake. Not only did he tell us, but we

could watch through his experience how

often there were hoaxes in the news and

you could really learn, oh my god, the

news is not even real.

That's number one. How confused and lost

would we be if Elon Musk had not

purchased Twitter and turned it into X?

Because I get most of my knowledge from

X. If I had to depend on everything

else,

literally everything else. I wouldn't

know what's going on. Now, I might be in

a bubble, so I have to watch out for the

bubble problem. But without X, there's

so much context that I'd be missing.

Now, what would have happened if Trump

had uh not won the election?

If Trump had not won the election, I

think the X would have been destroyed.

Um, I think that people would still

think the news was real. They would

trust their elections were not rigged

and they would have an entirely

different view of what's real and what's

not. And and Trump just barely won.

Well, he would say he won by a lot, but

if you consider the allegations of

rigging,

suppose

um there had not been

um some really

I don't know if it's real, but the

reporting is that the uh there was some

Serbian,

you know, Serbian uh data center that

had to be taken offline just in time or

Trump would have won. Now, I don't know

if that's true,

but it does suggest that if it was, we

were very close to losing everything and

then we would again not know what was

going on because we would be in the

dark. What would happen if Doge had

never happened?

And I'll add Mike Benz to the this

point. What would happen if there had

never been a Mike Bettton

and there had never been a Doge?

Would you understand how the NOS's

and the USA ID stuff were distorting

everything we knew and everything we

were doing?

I didn't know about any of that stuff.

And what are the odds, you know, that

you'd be born in a time when both of

these things would happen? Doge and and

Mike Benz.

That's we were very close to never

understanding what was really happening,

but now we're getting close.

What about the rise of independent

media?

Do you think we would know anything

except for the rise in independent

media, which mostly you get to CNX?

Nope. Because corporate media will

always have a limit on what they can do

if they take advertisement for their

business model. There's going to be

entire domains where you can't trust

what they say. And the only way that you

would know what's happening is if an

independent media grew up and that only

was only was possible recently and

mostly because of X.

Um,

in order for me to understand what's

going on and then to try to tell you, I

had to use Grock

uh to summarize Mike Benton's posts

because his posts are, you know, very

detailed and I it's hard to watch four

hours of content and even though he

summarizes it and he gets clipped, it's

a lot. And so even this morning and

really it feels like every morning

there'll be some big complicated story

about what's wrong with the world and

I'll say Grock summarize this and if

Grock did not exist

I'm not sure I'd be able to totally

follow everything that Mike Ben says

that puts things in context. So I happen

to, you know, you have to be lucky that

Elon Musk made Grock.

Um,

how would you have ever understood what

a color revolution was and the fact that

the people who were doing it to

successfully overthrow other countries

had very clearly use those tools against

us?

How would you know that without X,

without without Doge, without Mike Benz?

Very specific things had to happen at

the same time for us even to understand

that that's the world we're living in.

How would you have ever known

that the let's call it the censorship

industrial complex had found a way to

use the international tools and also to

partner with Europe mostly to censor

um people in the United States.

That's that's something we only just

recently learned. So,

uh, think about how sensitive,

uh, the world was to all of those

factors. And if any one of those had not

happened,

would we have already lost free speech?

with the censorship

um and the colored revolution already

made it impossible

impossible to have a democracy and never

get a a real Republican elected. We were

this close to losing everything.

It almost seems like magic that all the

right things happened at the same time,

right?

It's very unlikely that all of those

things would happen at the same time,

but they did. They did. Kind of amazing.

Speaking of Mike Benz and Grock and

censorship,

uh here's another one of those stories

that you would not understand

unless we had been given this new

context and these new set of assets to

understand the world. So, there's this

guy, Imran Ahmed,

and I might have this wrong, but I think

he's a Brit, and he's allegedly was part

of the effort to, and apparently there's

documentation that he said this

directly, that he was in charge of

trying to kill Elon Musk's Twitter for

censorship reasons.

um and that he was running quote black

ops against RFK.

So would you have known that there's

this guy in another country who was part

of a big industrial

censorship complex that was working with

the United States to essentially get rid

of free speech in the United States?

Well, there's this guy named Norm Eisen

who's a attorney who is associated with

Democrats, but he's also associated with

that entire foreign and now domestic

uh color revolutions. So, he's sort of

one of the architects of how to do a

color revolution. And he's now the

lawyer representing Imran Ahmad.

So if you don't know the players,

you don't really know what's going on.

And as soon as you see that he's the

lawyer for Imran Amed and then you see

Mike Benz explaining the connection and

the history and what both of them have

been been doing. All of a sudden it

clicks in place. Click, click, click.

Oh,

all right. So, as Mike says, Norm Meis

specifically made internet censorship a

cornerstone of his domestic color

revolution playbook published in 2025.

He literally published the technique for

doing this. So, we're not guessing what

he's thinking. He wrote it down.

Um, and that that playbook, the Normisen

playbook called for state governments to

set up social media censorship

regulatory regimes,

and we've seen this in California, New

York, and Michigan try to do it, to

specifically instruct his networks to

quote, find partners in Brazil's

censorship apparatus.

So I think the point here is that this

color revolution thing is very obviously

being used in countries that we're

trying to control and Brazil was on that

list I guess

and that you know all of these efforts

are staffed with exobama

people and there's no doubt about what

side they're on. They're they're not

trying to make things good for America.

They're trying to make things good for

the Democrats basically.

So there you go.

Now here's another question I have.

You know, we all live in a news bubble.

So even as even as much improved as

things are today,

I would say things are much improved as

I mentioned, you know, the free speech

and

uh the context and all that. In my

bubble,

the

the um allegation that the our elections

have been rigged, and you could pick any

year, but let's just say rigging

probably happens every year. Sometimes

more successfully than others. In my

world, that's a proven fact.

not proven in court, but because of my

bubble, I've seen so many stories

that are at least high credibility. I

don't know how true they are, but

they're high credibility about rigging

that I would just say it's a fact now.

But if you're not in my bubble, how much

of that do you ever see?

I feel like the left

never sees it. And what they see is the

times when the claims are debunked

because there are a lot of claims that

yeah do not you know check out. So I'm

going to name a few things

[clears throat]

in my bubble. So in my bubble

that Serbian data center thing is true.

In my bubble there was Chinese

technology and the voting machines.

In my bubble, there are credible reports

of duplicate ballots that all look the

same and widespread. You know, there's a

lot of it. In my bubble, there were

whistleblowers

and undercover video proving that there

was ballot stuffing and, you know,

illegal stuff. In my bubble, there's

plenty of evidence

[clears throat] that ballots should not

have been counted in in massive ways

either because they didn't have the

signatures

um because they were sketchy looking,

etc. And that that's just a fact. And we

have whistleblowers and we have, you

know, multiple multiple reports. Even

even people under penalty of perjury are

claiming they saw it firsthand.

We've got that uh that uh warehouse

that's been locked for years because

allegedly it's full of fake ballots. Um

and all we'd have to do is get to it.

And I think that's happening actually.

We've got all kinds of allegations about

Arizona. Too many to mention. Um, we've

got that video of Ruby Freeman, is it?

Who allegedly is doing something

sketchy.

I think she's being accused of u, you

know, counting the bells three times.

Now, she won a court case

um

for being accused of that. So, the

courts

uh did not confirm that she's anything

illegal. So, she's not she's not

indicted or anything, but if you're in

my bubble,

um she's accused of all kinds of things.

Uh there's the story of the water leak

that was fake

that was just used as a cover to get the

observers out. Now, I could go on and on

and on, but how many of you are having

the the same um experience that in your

bubble you have massive just massive

stories about very credible stories that

various parts of the election were

rigged. That's your bubble too, right?

But I bet almost nobody on the left is

exposed to this stuff

because it's not going to be in the

news, right? CNN doesn't cover it. MS

Now is not in the New York Times. And

whenever it is covered,

they might just hit it and then leave

it. Whereas in my bubble, it's repeated

and repeated and stuff is added to it

all the time.

So

then

uh in that context

uh Scott Presler was reminding us on X

that back in 2008

and I admit I was not paying attention

to politics in 2008.

So in 2008, how many of you knew this

happened

that Al Franken was running for senator

in Minnesota? And if he won, he would

become a critical

um majority vote, which he was, and it

was a difference between Obamacare

passing and not passing.

So Al Franken had to win for them to get

Obamacare over the line. and he did win

by 312 votes.

Now, my understanding is, again, I

wasn't paying attention back then. My

understanding is that he did not win on

the first vote and that they had to keep

saying, "Wait, we kept finding some more

votes and that a critical turning point

in his winning is that somebody who

worked for the election people uh had

found a bunch of ballots in the trunk of

his own car." Is that true?

Did he win because somebody claimed they

found a bunch of ballots in the back of

their car?

and he only won by 312 votes after he

had already lost. So it was actually,

you know, after the election was already

closed. Is that true? And as Scott

Presler also points out that Minnesota

has one of these weird laws where one

person can vouch for up to eight people

living in their precinct that they're

they're qualified to vote. In other

words, that they're citizens and they

live there. What are you telling me?

That one criminal can vouch for eight

other criminals and that would be enough

for the eight other criminals to be able

to vote.

What kind of law is that? That looks

like a law that's only designed to

promote fraud.

And then we heard that over half a

million voters were registered to vote

on election day.

Now you might say to yourself, "But

Scott,

uh, lots of people tend to register on

election day if they have that option

[clears throat] because, you know, they

just put it off and maybe the relatives

talk them into it or something." But

half a million, do you think half a

million decided that the day to register

was election day?

That doesn't sound real.

So, is it possible that in 2008 before

we understood how corrupt the world

really is that this was just pure

corruption?

If I told you it happened in

Minneapolis, let's say Minnesota,

uh, if I told you it happened in

Minnesota,

back then, I might have said, well, you

know, Minnesota is kind of a state where

there's not a lot of crime. So now we

realize that Minnesota is the most

corrupt state that isn't in California.

So how much of that is real?

You know, I I don't want to put it in

the form of an accusation,

but it looks sketchy as hell. And if you

drop that story into my bubble where I

get, you know, this total flow of

reports about election rigging, that

sure looks like election rigging to me,

you know, from my 2026ish

perspective.

Speaking of corruption, this one blows

my mind. I cannot believe that Gavin

Newsome has any chance to become

president, but we live in a world where

as long as he maintains his bubble,

he probably can, or at least he'd have a

shot at. U, I'm going to vote against

that being possible, but anything's

possible. All right, listen to this one.

So, as you know, California got these

billions of dollars that were supposed

to be from the federal government that

was supposed to be spent on the

so-called highspeed rail project. As you

know, none of that got built

after many years. As you also know,

nobody can account for where the money

went. So, the money just disappeared,

i.e. gas stolen billions and billions of

dollars.

So if you were the governor or you were

in charge in any way during that time,

how do you explain

where all the money went and then still

become president? Because it's so

obvious that there's either massive

incompetence,

well maybe or just theft or both.

So, here's what Newsome has proposed

that instead of cancelling the project

because they don't have any money and

they have no way to get that money back

and there's it would cost, you know,

five times more than they thought to

build it. So, there's no real

possibility

of building the thing they got funded

for. There's just none.

But instead of cancelling the project,

he's he's trying to extend it and make

it a smaller project, something that you

could imagine and probably only in your

imagination, they could actually build.

And the reason that he would want to

keep it alive is that if he builds

nothing

and he says I'm not going to build

anything, he has to give back the money

[gasps]

or at least he has to give back what you

know maybe what's left. So in order to

not have to give back any money, he's

going to pretend that there's still a

live project and it's just much smaller.

Holy

You know, it's probably legal.

You know, it's more of a weasel legal

thing to do. But how in the world

can you do something like this

and still become, you know, considered

to be a presidential candidate.

The only way is if is if people like me

know about it. But I wasn't going to

vote for him. And the people who might

like him and might vote for him will

never hear this story. They will never

hear this story. And even if you brought

it up and people heard it for the first

time, let's say let's say his

competition brought it up at a debate or

something, it's sort of

technical and you know, I'm not sure it

would make any difference to a Democrat.

And if he has some excuse like, I don't

know what they're talking about. We just

need a train between these two places

and we have the money. Why wouldn't we

build it? So the Democrats could easily

be convinced that there's no real

problem here. And he would say, am I

indicted for anything? No. Is it a

crime? No. We're just doing things

differently than Republicans would do

them. There's no crime in that. So he

could probably very easily dismiss it in

a debate. The news will probably let him

have a pass.

And it's just unfreaking believable.

Wow.

All right. Here's a story I've been

watching for a while, but now talking

about. So Elon Omar, you all know her.

her husband allegedly

um and she went from having no money at

all to him having a company that's worth

$30 million.

So, first of all, I don't know that the

estimates of their net worth are

accurate because you know numbers. Um,

but

if you did not understand, and this is

me, for most of my adult life, I didn't

understand why people who could clearly

make more money in the private sector

would want to be politicians

because being a politician looks like a

crappy job. I mean, just the work looks

like just crappy. and they really don't

get paid enough to have a house in DC

because they have to be there a lot uh

but also maintain their their their home

and their city they're representing of

the state. Um, so I was always curious

why in the world

would you have so many people who would

be willing to work at these bad jobs for

years when when after some point they

could just put it on the resume and get

excellent, you know, corporate jobs and

stuff like that. And now I understand

the real way you make money is that you

as the politician

um figure out how to be part of the

allocation of funds and you make sure

that your husband or your spouse is

somehow benefiting. So they might be in

an NGO, they might be um some private

company that provides a service to the

government, but suddenly the spouse of

the politician is getting a lot of good

luck. H isn't that good luck that you're

in the business that can benefit from

government contracts. At the same time,

you're married to a politician. How

lucky. So I now suspect that although

this would not explain every single

person in politics, that a big big part

of it is that the spouse

um play that you could get away with

because you make it look legal is why

they do it. And then my next question is

this.

Um, since I don't know too much about

the Department of Justice and how that

works,

at what point can you investigate

somebody's spouse and the business that

the spouse is in, unless there's like a

really obvious

crime?

What if you only suspect there's a crime

because somebody is doing unusually well

uh in their job? You can't investigate

that, right?

in order to get a warrant or open up an

investigation.

Is this sufficient that that it looks

like they got money too fast

or or do you need to know? Well, they

got money too fast and here's the

criminal way in which it happened. So,

that's an open question. I just don't

know the answer to that.

But if we don't fix that,

I think we're in trouble. Now, in the

context of finding out that everything

is corrupt and all of her numbers are

and everything's a scam, I saw

a post by a data Republican

who had this to say and

well, let me just read it. So, David

Republican said, "I had this idea. What

if autism diagnoses are partially from

fraudulent billows?

And then I poked around a bit and it

turns out that the whole one in 30

statistic, that's one in 30 uh kids

being born have autism today, which is

an alarming number. She's what if the

one in 30 statistic isn't based on

official diagnosis?

ADDM, I don't know what that is, has

clinicians review school records and if

the record fits, then it counts as

autism even if there's no medical

diagnosis.

Then that statistic is quoted to justify

increased ABA centers, increased

research, and all kinds of grants. And

then uh data republican closes with I'm

questioning literally everything now.

All right. Now, I do believe that it is

reality that there's more autism. I

think that RFK Jr. is right

that there's probably something in our

environment, something in our food,

maybe something in our medicines,

something somewhere that is causing more

autism. So, I do believe more autism is

real. But how easy would it be to hide

the fraud of claiming there's more

autism than there is so that you could

get funded for treating it? So now that

we've seen the Somali

healthc care

scam and how easy it was for them to run

the scam, is it possible that instead of

one in 30, [clears throat] which would

be, you know, super alarming, maybe it's

one in 100?

I don't know what the old number was,

but it could be that there's a, you

[clears throat] know, huge increase in

it, but at the same time, that huge

actual increase is masking the fact that

there's massive fraud, making it look

even worse.

So, uh, I like D Republicans closing

sentence. I'm questioning I'm

questioning literally everything now.

That's where I'm at. It doesn't matter

where the data comes from. My first

reaction is really

really

how many of you are in the same place

that you just don't believe any stat.

I I tend to be biased

to believe statistics that agree with my

preconceived notions,

but I'm definitely

feeling an alarm bell at the same time.

And I didn't always feel that.

So here's another one where I didn't

used to think this was true. So Elon

Musk is talking on X or said this

somewhere that the the left has been

using government programs for a long

time to import voters so that they can

create a block of voters that would

vote, you know, vote together to control

the American process. And that that's

what the Somali immigration was all

about. that Democrats were intentionally

creating pockets

where they could control who won

Democrats uh because they would have a

block of people would vote the same.

Now, we see that in Chicago, for

example, more organically, that Chicago

has a large black population

and they somewhat reliably are going to

elect black Democrats to be in charge,

mayors.

Not every time, but you know, that that

would be the the trend. So, I used to

doubt that that was intentional.

I used to think, well, yeah, there is a

lot of uncontrolled immigration and

yeah, it's natural that those people

would want to settle with other people

like themselves, but it's now some grand

plan.

I've changed my mind. [laughter]

>> [snorts]

>> I am now convinced

that there had to be, you know, just as

Elon Musk is saying, there had to be a

plan to do this intentionally to take

take control of the

uh the census, take control of local

governments

and effectively uh change the voting

situation in the United States and more

more alarmingly

that they were very close to pulling it

off and maybe they could still. Um, and

it would made it would have made a

permanent change in the ability for

Republicans to get elected and it would

have permanently made it impossible for

anything but a Democrat to ever be in

charge of anything important.

And we were this close. Now, it might

still happen. I don't know. And maybe

they've already done enough of this cuz

you've got your Hispanic pockets, you've

got your Somali pockets. Um, maybe

they've already done it, but I don't

think so.

Here's another one that I wouldn't have

believed five years ago. So, the Newsmax

has reported that Judicial Watch, you

know who Judicial Watch is, right? um

President Tom Fitton as warning that the

Secret Service might be uh let's say

um maybe not doing their best to protect

the president and that maybe that's not

just incompetence.

So the examples given are the two

assassination attempts which we all

think look like um it looked like the

his security didn't do enough. He lived,

but from the outside it looks like,

wait, it doesn't even look like you had

the A team protecting the president. Is

that a coincidence?

And then there was also the incident

where Trump went to some restaurant and

somehow the

uh people who don't like Trump had been

alerted

which is a gigantic security problem and

there could have been some danger there

because people knew in advance he'd be

at a restaurant and it wasn't well

secured. So there are at least three

examples

where you say to yourself,

is it possible that the president of the

United States has incompetent

security?

Is that possible?

Yeah, Code Bank uh Democratic group Code

Pink showed up at that restaurant to

protest.

So is that possible or is this a

pattern? And I guess uh judicial watch

is asking for some information to maybe

drill down on that a little bit. Now,

five years ago, if you told me that his

security was penetrated or compromised

and that people were trying to kill him

and had made already three attempts,

you know, three attempts, they had

insiders involved. I wouldn't have

believed that,

but today

it's on the table. I absolutely would

say maybe. I mean, we know, for example,

that JFK

I think I think I can say we know this

um that his assassination had something

to do with insiders,

right? That the CIA in particular.

So, if it were true for JFK,

but I didn't believe her for decades,

and then you look at all the other

things that are true.

Wow. almost anything is on the table.

So, I'm not willing yet to say that the

insiders are have penetrated his

security service, but I don't rule it

out. I'm not ruling it out.

Um, I've been watching Traath from the

Alen Pod getting very active on Acts

talking about California and its various

um problems. and he notes that

apparently

um the California state pension

it looks like it's solid and it looks

like you know it could pay pay the

pensions but it's only because they've

changed the accounting to a very

weaselike way to make optimistic

assumptions that are not realistic about

what's going to happen in the future.

So, in other words, California also, on

top of all the problems you've heard,

probably has this massive underfunded

state pension problem that they're

covering up by clever accounting

changes.

Wow.

Um,

so this this is something I would call

the uh technically legal but holy

kind of fraud. Meaning it's not

technically illegal for them to estimate

the uh pension payout with optimistic

assumptions. That's not illegal and they

show their assumptions apparently. But

how is it not fraud?

You know, in a sort of a common sense

way. is sort of obviously fraud.

Uh on top of that,

I'm wondering if Chabath would be a

candidate for governor

or Yeah. Yeah. Governor.

So, at the moment, uh Steve Hilton is

running for governor in California, and

I think he's actually leading in the

polls because the the polls are so

fragmented and they have a different

voting system. So, it's possible that

the next governor of California could be

a Republican.

But if it's not Steve Hilton, is there a

time when Schmath says

I'll step up and do that because I would

very much love to see him in the

leadership role.

I would back that hard.

Well, speaking of other Californian

stuff and uh Chamath is also weighing on

this pretty hard. So, Ro Kana, one of

our representatives in California, who

normally

is what we would consider a more

reasonable Democrat than other

Democrats. I obviously I don't agree

with everything that Roana wants, but

you usually think of him as

well considered and not you not crazy

biased. He could, for example, he could

work with Thomas Massie on the Epstein

stuff because that's just, you know,

sort of an independent good thing to do.

But row is backing this idea of a wealth

tax on billionaires in California. And

the idea is that billionaires above a

certain level of billions would would

have to give up 1% of their net wealth

every year for five years. So So it' be

5% by the time they were done. Now this

is wealth that they had already paid

taxes on.

Um, you could argue that point, but

there was no precedent for this. There

there's a precedent for income taxes and

there's a precedent for taxing rich

people more. But there's no real

precedent for just taking their money

after they made it, just saying, "Hey,

you have too much money, so we're going

to take some of it." Now, this is

surprising because this is probably one

of the worst ideas I've ever heard.

And my impression of Roana is that not

only is he, you know, more often than

most uh has an independent view of

things, but he's not stupid,

right? When when you see him, it's not

like you're looking at

uh Swallwell. [laughter]

It's not like he's, you know, you could

name he's not Jasmine

Crockett, right? He's genuinely a smart,

reasonable person, but somehow the smart

reasonable person is going all in on the

dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life.

So, as you might imagine, uh, several

billionaires are already, you know,

quite obviously getting ready to leave

the state.

Uh, and what would happen if our if our

most capable people left the state?

Well, we lose all of that base. They

would probably do the investing in other

states, etc. Because you wouldn't even

want to invest in the state. you

wouldn't you wouldn't want to have

anything to do with it because it just

be it'd be like doing business in China

if you could turn California into a

China problem. It's like, well, why

would you ever build something in China?

They're just going to steal it anyway.

Russia, too. One of the reasons that

Russia isn't going to get a lot of

external investment is that you think

the Russians just steal your business if

it if it does well, and they would. So

why would you stay in California

when you see something this extreme that

that's being pushed against the most

successful

entrepreneurs?

So

um and I often joke because Ro Island

talks about income inequality and you

know you have to do something about that

income inequality and it's not fair. I I

always joke, but I'm not joking, that

fairness is a word that was invented so

that children idiots have something to

talk about. Fairness is not something

you want. You want you want meritocracy.

That's not fairness because some people

have more merit.

Some people will thrive in a

meritocracy,

some people won't. It's not exactly

fair, but it's just a good system.

for everyone.

So, this system where they just take

your money if you're very successful,

uh, it's just a terrible idea.

So, here's what I'm wondering. Could the

California billionaires

um

do something that would make it look

like they were contributing more to the

state and would actually be contributing

more without having their money

confiscated?

Is there a counterp proposal

that the billionaires could make to say,

"Hey, instead of taking our money and

then giving it to California that will

waste it, because that's that's the

other big problem. If you know for sure

that California is wasting your money,

it's really hard to give them an extra

billion, right? It's like way harder if

you earned a billion, but let's say you

had lots of billions. um it's pretty

hard to give them a penny more when

they're so bad at allocating the uh

capital. So what if

the billionaires came up with a counter

proposal and I'll just brainstorm a

little bit here in which they would be

um

voluntarily

but maybe at threat of some penalty

um they could allocate more money for

the benefit of California.

For example, suppose California said,

"We really need to improve

affordability."

So if you're a billionaire and you

commit to put 1% of your assets directly

into investments

that would improve affordability,

you don't have to pay the you won't be

subject to the confiscation.

So let let's say you're a billionaire

and you say to me, "Scott, you can

invest currently, you can invest your

money anywhere you want, but if you

invested in ways that would improve

affordability

for Californians,

you don't get you don't get the penalty

of having to confiscate." And that to me

would be excellent. And one of the

things that Chimath talks about is that

the the richest people, especially the

AI billionaires, they need to do

something that's highly visible, but

also good for the public. And I'm

totally on board of that. It should be

highly visible and good for the public.

That is one thing that Bill Gates was

doing very right with the Gates

Foundation. So when he was the richest

guy around, it really helped him that he

said he was going to give it all away,

that he was putting lots of his billions

into

um a charitable thing. Now, since then,

you know, there's been lots of criticism

of what his true motives are, all that,

and that's valid. Those are valid

criticisms. But in terms of a strategy,

I think it was very good for Bill Gates

to try to reframe himself as a person

who's doing the things that are even too

hard for the government to do.

So there's my idea. If you say

billionaires, if you live in California,

we need you to step up and make it

cheaper to do health care, cheaper to do

education, cheaper to do transportation,

and you have to show us that you've

you've allocated some new money, not

money you've already allocated, but

you've allocated some new money into

projects that have a good chance of

lowering our costs. Wouldn't they stay?

You know, under those conditions, if you

were a billionaire and you thought,

"Huh, okay, I wasn't planning on being

forced to invested in these areas, but

nobody can complain if I do. And if I

found a way to make

transportation or shelter or something

cheaper,

u the government would work with me,

maybe even help me with some possibly

the state would have to agree to remove

some regulations.

So suppose the billionaires say yes uh

we will we will invest in affordability

but you have to remove these roadblocks.

One roadblock would be over um would be

over taxation, I guess, and the other

one would be uh over regulation.

What do you think?

Now, I don't know if anything like that

could happen,

but it would be way better for the

billionaires to have at least one

proposal. And I would be surprised if

you couldn't get both Democrats and

Republican billionaires to agree with

that. You could probably get even

somebody like a Tommy Styer to agree,

you know, a Republican billionaire.

I just want to see your reaction to

that. Is that the best idea you've ever

heard?

Because the one thing we know is that

the billionaires by and large would be

way way better at identifying ways to

improve affordability

than it would be the government.

And uh it would it would satisfy Chimas

view that they should be more

prominently involved in helping the

public

which I agree with.

All right.

Did you know

according to Elon Musk that electric

semitrs will be a way better idea than

diesel?

Here again is exactly my point. If Elon

Musk did not exist,

would you know that you could make an

electric semitr that would be way more

practical and affordable

and affordable than the current

technology? You wouldn't even know that,

right? Yeah. Tom Styer isn't a

Republican. That's my point. My point is

that both Democrats and Republicans

would probably like the idea of working

on affordability.

So, that's another example of if you

didn't have a billionaire who was uh

interested in the public good. And

[clears throat] by the way, Musk usually

starts there. He starts with what would

be a public good and then can I fix

that? Everything from space to electric

cars to solar power. He always starts

with what's good for the public and then

can I make that thing.

So electric semitrs would be right in

that

uh area. Well, you all know who Bill

Aman is, right? He's a a well-known

investor

and he's talking about uh you know the

uh the widespread fraud in so many

government programs and he had a

suggestion for a way to audit.

Now the idea of auditing of course is

not new but apparently it doesn't work

because the fraud still exists. So his

suggestion for auditing

is that first of all you have to

severely

uh use the DOJ to severely punish

anybody who got caught with fraud. So

you've got some disincentive for fraud.

That of course I think we all agree

with. But then he says uh that there

should be a federal internal audit

system where private citizens would get

a bounty. they'd be bounty hunters who

find fraud and earn rewards equal to a

percentage of the grift identified. Now,

he calls it grift. I don't know if that

means only illegal stuff or just stuff

people are getting away with. Um,

but I like where that's going. So, my

idea

um was that we need to have a federal

standard for audits and that we do not

currently have a good idea how to do it.

Somebody said, and they were right, that

the auditors also would be criminals

because it would be so easy to buy off

an auditor. So, if you just had a

standard audit system, they would either

be incompetent or bribed or they'd be in

on they'd be in on the plot. And I agree

with that. Over time, the auditors would

be, you know, blackmailed or bought off.

But if your auto system involves these

citizen bounty hunters, presumably

people who are capable and well trained

to do that sort of thing, they would

just be working for the money.

And if they could make more money by

turning people in than they could make

by being in on the graft,

well, now you got a system. So, you

know, there are lots of questions and

details about that, but I like where

that's heading

because if you don't have what I would

call a free market approach to make sure

that the audits are are doing what they

should be doing, the audit will be waste

of time. And that's what we see right

now. Our current auditing systems

largely don't work. Case in point,

there's a new story that says that

billions of dollars that we send to

Israel as weapons after October 7th have

not been accounted for. So apparently

the auditing system they should have

tracked uh weapons and and armaments

same thing that we gave to Israel

uh we were only able to track some

percentage of it. Now, that does not

mean that that stuff was stolen or ended

up in the wrong hands. What it does mean

is we don't know. It could have been

stolen. It could have ended up in the

wrong hands. We don't know because once

again, although there was tracking, the

tracking was inadequate. And so, we

don't know. Now, I do think that Israel

would be highly incentivized to make

sure those weapons got used by the IDF

in exactly the way we wanted, but you

know, we don't know. And if you take any

auto system that is blind and there's a

lot of money involved and you just wait,

that guarantees corruption.

Lots of money involved,

lots of time involved, and nobody's

watching.

100% chance that ends up in in

subcriminal behavior.

Well, here's some maybe good news.

There's a new study according to the

Brighter Side News that Alzheimer's can

be not only stopped but reversed

with a very common

supplement.

Now, this common supplement called NAD+

is not something you can buy over the

counter. And if it were ever made

available, oh wait, I'm sorry, that's

wrong. The NAD+

is apparently something that people have

in them. And when the NAD+ is at the

right level, they don't get Alzheimer's.

But the recent discovery is if you could

boost their NAD+

because older people lose it. So if you

could just boost them back to a normal

level that not only do they not get

worse in the Alzheimer's, but it could

actually correct it. you could actually

cure it. So, they've shown this in mice,

but they've also shown it in uh samples

of human brains.

Now, if they had not shown this true in

a sample of a human brain, I would not

be excited because mouse studies,

there's a million mouse studies that

never turn out to work for humans, but

it's already it's already a chemical

that's in your body. So, that's good

news. They know for sure that the people

with Alzheimer's have less of it and

they know exactly why that would cause

the Alzheimer's and they know that it

can be increased by adding this thing

called a compound called P73-

A20. So some lab has developed this. So

it would be easy to develop the compound

um developed in Piper labs.

uh but because it's a drug, it would

have to go through a whole bunch of uh

FDA testing, etc. So, it's not it's not

on the horizon. It would have to be

tested. But this does sound more

promising than almost anything I've ever

heard in that domain.

So, I'm going to end on that bit of

optimism. I'm going way late, but it's a

Sunday.

Didn't you enjoy spending some extra

time?

Did you?

All right.

It's why smokers rarely get Alzheimer's.

I've never heard that. Is that true?

Smokers rarely get Alzheimer's.

All right, people. I won't stay too much

longer.

Uh, but I will say a few words to the

beloved members of uh, locals who might

want to stay around a little bit longer.

The rest of you, enjoy your Sunday.

I hope this was uh useful to you. I try

to be useful. Doing my best. All right,

locals. I'm going to come at you

privately if this works.

bad.

Local supporters will be private in

Uhoh. Maybe this isn't working.