their best interest and probably ours too. If we couldn't work out all these little cyber things and other stuff. They're saying it directly. I feel like that's something you don't put in a document unless you mean it because you don't really see people talk this way do you? When you see companies that are sort of at each other and they've got a conflict they don't say directly why not be friends. That's what Putin just said basically. This is as directly as you can state: why don't we just say we'll get along because we don't really have a reason not to, right? I've been telling you the whole time we don't have a reason to be at each other but we have plenty of reasons to be allies. I mean the risk, the list of good reasons to be allies is almost infinite. I mean you would die before you finish the list. The list of reasons to be enemies: zero. Zero. None. Not one. And I don't think Russia sees one. I don't think the United States sees one. And to me this looks like it just sort of — what do you call it — inertia. It's just some kind of leftover inertia from the Cold War or something. Anyway I think the Russian situation is going to go the way we want it in the long run. The way they want it to apparently.

China is offering to pay our social media influencers to say that the Olympics are awesome and they've hired a public relations firm in New Jersey to get social media influencers to say good things about the Olympics in China. At this point US, Australia and Canada have all — they're all going to boycott with their diplomatic stuff. The athletes will still participate. And why are we letting China pay influencers? How would you like to be an influencer that somebody finds out was paid by China? What would happen to your influence? Isn't this a death sentence? I can't think of any influencer who would have the clout or the let's say the anti-fragility if you will to survive knowing that China paid them to say good things about the Olympics. Who could survive that? I'm so curious if this company that took their money, the three hundred thousand dollars to get these influencers — I'm so curious if they can find any. Now it doesn't take much money to influence an influencer because there are a lot of them who don't have much money but have big platforms. So maybe yeah, maybe you can find somebody who'll take money for anything and they might not even — if it's young enough people they might not even know they're doing anything wrong. You know you get a 19 year old influencer and you say I'll give you a thousand dollars to say some good things. I don't think they're thinking in terms of international relations. I think they're thinking in terms of twenty thousand dollars. That's real money. All right so that's disgusting.

Even CNN has an article in which — or was it CNN but there is talk among experts that the Omicron might act like a vaccination. So we still have reason to be worried just because it will be so spready. But listen to this data that I don't believe will necessarily hold up but here's some data about Omicron. Remember it's still fog of war. All these numbers could be wrong but it's coming from experts and the experts say that it affects people about 70 times faster than earlier strains. What, 70 times faster than the thing that just took out the world? 70 times faster than the pandemic itself? What does that sound right? I mean I don't believe it do you? You know if they said five times I'd be like well maybe five times but 70 times? If it said 70 percent faster I'd say oh that's a lot but 70 times? Do you believe that? If it's 70 times it's going to be over in a month right? Can somebody do the math? But off the top of your head we're 30 days to total infection if it's 70 times as spready. Am I wrong about that? I mean just off the top of your head if anybody's just sort of good at math you know this is one you don't have time to do the math but on the top of your head if it's 70 times more spready we're done in 30 days aren't we? Somebody says 10 days. You might not be wrong.

All right well and I feel like if it were really that fast it would have been more spread already but I guess it starts slow sort of like the grain of rice on the checkerboard if you know that story. But here and it's also 10 times or the infection is about 10 times lower in lung tissue. So it's 70 times more spready but 10 times less infection in your lung tissue which is where the problem would be. 10 times. How many people are going to die with a virus that's 10 times less effective than the ones that isn't killing hardly anybody? It's a terrible sentence but you know what I mean. The news is having a tough time dealing with this because all early indications are that this will solve the pandemic. It will create extra hospital impact even in mild form just because of the rapidity of it. It'll hit so many people at once. So I doubt that the risk is zero. I'm sure people will die of Omicron just like they die of every other medicine they take basically. Somebody does. But damn, damn this. I think we're 30 days away from the entire traditional way to handle this pandemic just won't make any sense as if it ever did.

Well remember I told you that Michael Shellenberger keeps making things happen first in the nuclear domain and then you saw that San Francisco's mayor completely changed her viewpoint. That was another thing that he and his group were working on. And today yet again, yet again. So it turns out that the Netherlands has now joined the UK and France in announcing a major expansion of nuclear. And Michael has an article on Substack and tweet thread talking about how did this happen. Like how did we so quickly go from nuclear is bad to let's build nuclear as fast as we can. And the answer is that one of the people over in the Netherlands telling them what they should have done is Michael Shellenberger. Every place something is changing he's there. He's the best persuader I've ever seen I think. Because and I've been trying to figure out exactly what makes him so effective. One is that he argues from data. The other is that you actually can't tell what his political affiliation is. I mean I know him pretty well from this sort of stuff and I don't know. Does he lean left or right? I know on social stuff he had traditionally leaned left but when it comes to hard analytics of what works and what doesn't that's not left or right. The hard analytics of it are just numbers and so he just does the numbers where they come out and he doesn't give anybody a reason to be against him which is different isn't it? Have you noticed that everybody who's a proponent of just about anything is also toxic? Have you noticed that including me, right? So I'm somewhat toxic because I'm sort of in the fight. You get slimed with every related thing. But somehow Shellenberger I think mostly by staying out of the true political parts of the questions — you know he's not backing any candidate or anything — so I think that may be the brilliant part of what he did. Everybody thinks that he's on their side and guess what they're all right. Everybody who thinks that Michael Shellenberger is on their side, they're all ri