ter was very good. Again we're separating whether you like the politics of it from just the persuasion element of it if we could, right?

So what could the LGBTQ and extra letters do to be more like friendlier sounding so they immediately get a positive vibe before people think about the politics? And here's what I would suggest: non-binary. Now correct me if I'm wrong but non-binary the way it's currently used is more limited than including all of LGBTQ. Right? It doesn't matter for my purposes. I'm saying to you to rebrand non-binary as the only thing that captures everything that's not binary. Here's why. People like being non-binary. If you say you fit into one or two categories I say yeah damn it I don't know if that sounds so good for me. It feels like I'm a little bit limited in my thinking doesn't it? Even if you're completely hetero or you're completely, you know if you're completely hetero you're still going to say yeah I'm completely hetero but I don't know I'd like to think that at least I had some flexibility you know. And I also wonder if there aren't lots of people who would brand themselves hetero who in their private thoughts are thinking well I'm hetero-ish you know what I mean. Maybe the porn they look at isn't exactly matching their hetero you know what I mean. There must be plenty of people who say yeah for public consumption I'm hetero but you know privately I'm a little bit non-binary. Just a little bit.

And I see a lot of pushback which is why I'm doing this. I mean if it were not provocative would I do it really? If I were not provocative that's what makes this question fun. So with all respect to the LGBTQ community, which some of my favorite people are members of, I think if you just said non-binary maybe you'd get further. Or even something better if there's a word like gay that just puts a positive spin on it from the start and then you think about the politics. That's all. Just come up with a better label than a bunch of alphabet letters.

All right. Have you noticed that in our minds at least there are certain patterns that keep repeating and one of the reasons that movies and books and TV shows work is that people like certain patterns of things. Like they like stories of good versus evil. They like stories of redemption, right? There's a limited set of what we imagine are the stories that we want to see. And I'm fascinated when I see parallels. For example as I tweeted today, if you're familiar with the Star Trek universe this will work better if you have some familiarity with that universe. But if NATO is the Federation, and again everybody gets to say their side is the good guys I get it I get it right. If you're in Russia NATO doesn't look like the Federation but from our point of view, right, this is just a subjective point of view. If NATO was the Federation would Russia be the Klingons and would China be the Romulans or would they be the Ferengi or the Borg? They're a little bit the Borg because they're trying to assimilate the Uyghurs but they're a little bit the Ferengi because they're commerce first. And the Russians seem like the Klingons because it feels like the honor of their empire is what matters more than life itself. Yeah the Ferengi are capitalists but they're merchants, right?

So this all brings me to the most important question which is when we look at this whole Russia-Ukraine war what would Shatner do? And until we've heard that I don't think we understand the whole situation. But what would Captain Kirk do? I was going to ask him but his DMs are closed.

All right. Here's my most provocative take today. You're gonna hate this one. In my opinion it looks like Russia already lost the war but the news is not saying that. Like I'm observing it in what seems to me, and I'll get to my cognitive bias and my confirmation bias. That's the point. We're going to that so you don't need to shout that you disagree with me yet because your disagreement is the point of this, right? I'm watching the news and you're watching the news but why do I see that Russia already lost but the news isn't reporting it? So there are two possibilities here which are kind of cool. Number one I'm suffering from a confirmation bias because I somewhat uniquely among experts and probably most of you said that Russia would actually be running into a buzzsaw and it wouldn't be easy and that the modern technology that the Ukrainian army was likely to have access to because of their NATO and American sponsorship, they were likely to surprise Russia with an unusually aggressive and effective tech-led response. I said their tanks would be in trouble, that drones would be part of it, and so far 100 percent of that seems true, right? But would you say that my, so I had the incorrect prediction, 100 percent incorrect, that Russia knew what I knew which is this doesn't look easy but I guess they thought it was. Maybe they had bad information so they went ahead and invaded. So that part I'm 100 percent wrong just so you can hear me say when I'm wrong. But it looks to me like the second part of that, that Russia would be surprised, happened and then it's already happened because it doesn't look like they really have a good shot at taking over the country in terms of owning the capital Kyiv. And now we see them doing something that looks, again just to me it looks this way not to you, I'm not suggesting you see it this way, I'm saying that my confirmation bias which makes me want to be right, see I want to be right that Ukraine was more able to defend itself than others thought, so I'm interpreting the situation to make myself right and even though I'm aware of it I can't unsee it. Isn't that weird? Like I'm completely aware that I'm the only one seeing this but there's a reason I'm the only one seeing it. Either, and here's the fun part, either you're all right and I'm experiencing confirmation bias. Completely possible. I have no way to know that that's not true and it's actually quite likely. I put it in the solidly very likely category. The other possibility is that most of you get your opinions from the news. Most people do. They get their opinions from the news. It's very rare to have somebody who has an opinion that disagrees with either the left or the right leaning news. It's very very odd, unusual. So you get your opinions largely from the news and the news told you with all its experts that Ukraine was going to be conquered by Russia. Well okay not in two days. Well it might take him a little longer but suddenly Russia has withdrawn from the entire north to try to salvage whatever it can. It doesn't even look like it's going to take Odessa. I mean maybe it will but at the moment it looks like it got stopped from taking Odessa too in the port. So am I experiencing cognitive dissonance or is the entire mainstream media including the left and the right, because remember both the left and the right thought it was going to be an easy victory for Russia and they were so wrong it looks to me they were so wrong that they can't tell you that they were wrong and that the cognitive dissonance and the confir