all gay sex. At what point do we stop calling it gay sex? Aren't we already there? I feel like every time we call it gay sex it's like saying somebody's a negro. Are you having that feeling yet? It's like, isn't that way of referring to it no longer useful? Doesn't really make sense going into '24.

I would say two staffers having sex. Are you ready for that or no? Can't just say two staffers having sex because in what way did their sexual preference have any bearing on anything? It doesn't. It doesn't have any bearing. But we can't stop doing it, right? Oh it's gay sex. It's funnier. I don't know. Check your bigotry. Check your bigotry.

Now here's the answer to why people add the gay part. There is something funny about the story which would be funny whether they were gay or not. It's just funny that people are having sex in the Capitol building and filming it. But humor works better when you can add anything non-standard. So gay sex is a little less standard than heterosex just in terms of numerically. It's just less common. So that works for humor because it's less common.

But in addition the sexual acts themselves are less common than the average and therefore it's the less common part that makes it a little more interesting. But we shouldn't be making a big deal about that. Personally I wasn't too interested to find out there's a second sex tape, a gay staffer sex tape. But probably you had the same impression I did when you heard the story that there's two of them. Yeah, right? As soon as you heard there are two of them you said the same thing I did, which is, well we'll wait for the compilation video. You all said that, right? Well don't tell me it was just me.

All right, simulation alert. We have another hint that we live in a simulation and it's code reuse. Code reuse. There are two stories in the news that are basically the same story. Story number one: Adam Schiff is leading by nine points in the polls to become the next senator of California. Okay, that's scary that Adam Schiff is leading in the polls to be the next senator of my state.

But the simulation gave us some code reuse because there's another story that's basically the same story, just different words. And the story is California wants voters to drink toilet water. It's basically the same story. The real story is that California wants to purify wastewater and serve it up as water. I don't have a super problem with that. If I had to guess, by the time they purified it and tested it it's probably as good as any other water. So I'm not going to worry about that. But it's funny. It's the same story.

Well you know the Spaces function on the X platform, it's that audio thing where people can do an audio event. Musk has announced that now you can attend them anonymously. So before everybody could tell who was attending because your profile showed up. And this is good news for me. Does everybody know why this is good news for me? Because when I attend a Spaces I just want to be an audience member and just listen. It changes what they say and it just ruins my experience.

The other thing is that they invite me on stage and sometimes I'm on my computer that doesn't even have a microphone. So I'm like, ah, I just ruined your Spaces event because you're waiting for me to go on stage but I don't even have a microphone or a camera or anything. Well I don't need a camera. But the other thing is I attended a Spaces event where the speaker immediately said she couldn't go on because I joined the Spaces. She said, I just can't go on. I can't continue because Scott Adams just joined the Spaces.

And I thought, what? And then she told a story of some interaction we had on Twitter that she found so upsetting that she couldn't even talk in public if I were listening. And I looked at her name and I said to myself, I have no recollection of you whatsoever. No memory. No memory of that whatsoever. But they went on. I guess she finally went on.

There was another Spaces I attended where as soon as I showed up the host said, uh oh, that racist guy is here. I'll get rid of him. And then they kicked me off. Now it was a mostly or almost all Black attendance and it was some topic that was more interesting to the Black community. Now that was exactly the kind of Spaces I wanted to attend. I don't really want to attend a Spaces where I hear people who agree with me saying all the things I would say if I were there. I don't have any interest in that.

But think how cool it is that you could be like a fly on the wall where a bunch of people who might be saying things that you would not hear normally would be talking a little bit closer to their natural way of communicating. Meaning that there's something about Spaces where people don't hold back as much as they do on video. Because on video you feel like people are watching. On audio you just feel a little bit more private even though you're not.

So I often joined the Black-centric Spaces so I could hear opinions that I wouldn't normally hear. Isn't that exactly what I'm supposed to be doing? Who exactly is against that? It wasn't for any bad purpose. I wasn't there to gain material. I was actually interested. I was like, oh what is the dominant opinion of people who I don't talk to that often? I got kicked off. But now I can watch anonymously so it's less racist and that's good.

Saw a report that there's a big whiff — I forget which publication said it — that most economists and most journalists and most regular people thought the US was headed into recession and they all had bad predictions for 2023. Well I couldn't help myself and I had to point out that one disgraced cartoonist, me, had been saying the whole time that 2023 was going to surprise by not being a recession and we'd be better than anybody thought. Nailed it. Nailed it.

Now I do have a degree in economics but I hasten to point out none of that was usefu