It's called the simultaneous sip. And nothing's ever been better. Go.

I would like to start with a checklist for the golden age. You ready? I think I might put this on paper. I was thinking about all the things which have somewhat subtly turned positive while we're in this environment of everything going to hell. And you can lose sight of anything that's maybe getting better because our focus is always on the latest disaster.

Number one, there have been no major forest fires in California this year. Now knock on wood, right? But I believe that's because of the helicopter rapid response team. I think we're actually getting on the fires faster. In other words, we adjusted. We found a way to make a difference. We're not talking about it. Why is nobody talking about California on fire? It could be luck. It could be weather. It could be chance. But I feel like maybe we got on top of it or at least there's a substantial improvement.

How about climate change and nuclear energy, which is really the only solution to it all? Positive. All positive. Everything in the nuclear energy field went from super negative, I don't know, five years ago to super positive. So you've got your climate change, your nuclear energy.

Now in the short run, in the short run we've got a lot of challenges with power, etc.

Let's talk about inflation. Energy prices seem to have maybe stabilized and dropped a little. Too soon to be happy, but it looks like inflation, at least on the energy part, the biggest part, looks like it might have slowed down. And then the energy cost, if it slows down, will ripple through the rest of the product stuff. We might have seen something closer to the top of inflation. I guess some of the core stuff is still going to be higher for a few months, but that should get pulled back because they're now.

Let's take China. I just saw another article. It's hard to speculate what's happening in China. We don't know. But it looks like China is in an actual recession already if you read the tea leaves right. They don't report that, but it looks like they might be. And it looks like China as the growing power that we have to worry about may have taken quite a hit because I think their manufacturing base will be drained forever. I don't think people are going back.

So in terms of how we deal with China, even though it's hard for our supply chains and stuff, I believe we're probably moving our pharma back because if anything scared us straight, I would imagine big pharma has plenty of money. Am I right? Does big pharma have money? Of course they've got all they need. So they can move their plants back to wherever they need to get it out of China.

So I believe that our position in the world relative to China is better. What do you think? I mean, you can easily be wrong. We could all be wrong about this stuff. But even though we both took a hit, I believe the United States will take less of a hit going forward.

About Russia, our two biggest competitors in the world, right? Russia and China. I feel like Russia is taking a step backwards relative to the United States at the same time the United States is not doing terrific. But relatively I think we opened a gap. So I would say that the United States has improved its position maybe with Russia and China, its two biggest competitors.

I think we'll get past inflation. What about that risk of nuclear war with Russia? I haven't worried about it lately. Have you? I feel like we're past it. And I feel like there's some kind of a stalemate situation happening there that's expensive. But I feel like the end point of Ukraine is looking a little more clear. Looks like a stalemate where Russia will control what they control and Ukraine will complain about it forever. Right?

How about AI? Now AI is either going to be the greatest thing or the worst thing, but it's going to change everything. You know, whatever you think about the change that AI will bring, you have no idea. There's nothing that will be the same after virtual reality and AR hit. AI, if you combine AI and virtual reality, what life looks like in 10 years is completely unpredictable. There's just no way to know. It's going to be really interesting, but it might be better.

There's a whole segment of the world that literally can't find happiness because the resources don't exist. There are people who can't find a mate, which is sort of important for happiness. And I think people will just take a drug, put on the VR helmet and go into their other life. And that other life will be fully satisfying even if in the other life they're in love with an AI, an NPC or something driven by an AI. It'll be a relationship and it'll be somebody that's not treating them poorly.

So I think that for 60 to 80 percent of the public they would be better off with an AI partner eventually. And everybody who disagrees with that, 100 percent of the people who disagree with that statement are thinking of current technology which couldn't come close to that. But future technology, and it's not that far in the future, there will be a better version of a human for your enjoyment than any human could ever compete with. It won't even be close. In the long run it won't even be close. It'll take a while for the crossover. We're not there. People still better than robots. But that gap is just closing like crazy. There's no question where it's going. It can only go one direction.

Can they do plumbing and electrical? Probably. Probably.

I made a claim on Twitter. I got a slight adjustment by Paul Graham. If you don't know Paul Graham you can Google him, but he's one of the high value accounts. Tech founder, generally considered one of the smart people in California or Silicon Valley. I'm not sure where he lives now. But anyway, the part of that is he's real smart. So when he says stuff you should pay attention.

And I had said provocatively that the most valuable words for success are "be useful." That if you didn't know anything else about anything else and you're just like, well how do I be successful? Just focus on being useful. And the more useful you are the better off you'll be. More is better. But be useful. If you focus on that, things will go well.

Now a lot of people agreed. Paul Graham added this twist. He said that if it's business that's effectively making what people want. So basically if you're in a business, being useful translates to making products that people want.

And here's the part that gets interesting. I'm not sure that's exactly right. It's close. Feels like an 80 percent sort of situation. And here's why. I think there's a difference. But help me think this through. This is like preliminary thinking in my opinion.

If you focus on what the customer wants you can get a good result. If you focus on making yourself useful I think you could also get a good result. If you focus on making yourself useful via the process of making a product that somebody wants, well then I think Paul Graham's point makes a lot of sense. Like the being useful and giving them something they want ends up being pretty much the same thing.

But here's where I disagree a little bit, and I'm not sure if my thinking is clear on this yet. I feel like what you focus on makes a difference even if you say the outcome is going to look about the same. I don't know. I think what you focus on makes a difference for the gray areas of which you would expect money.

I think if you focus on being useful you're always going to win. But if you focus on giving people what they want, sometimes they don't know what they want. You know what I mean? Being useful is a little bit more objective. This is useful or not. This is more useful than that. You could usually kind of suss that out. What is more useful than something else?

But I don't know if you can deal with what people want. People's wants are not necessarily tether