erm it should lower prices. Short term the companies will just take an extra profit.

He wants to eliminate rent seeking practices. Now that's not a phrase that most people know what it means. Rent seeking. That's sort of a political insult that I even I forget what it means. I always see it and I go can you use like real regular ordinary words? Like there's something to rent seeking that has its own meaning so that's useless communication. So my advice to the people communicating on the Trump team, don't use rent seeking. 99% of the public has no idea what you're talking about. They think it means rent. It has nothing to do with the rent. And he wants to get rid of administrative expenses that are driving up health care costs, lower housing costs and increase the housing supply, create employment opportunities for American workers. Well that rent seeking, that phrase rent seeking is doing a lot of work. I think it means just people getting a job in some grifty kind of thing that didn't need to happen in the first place. So rent seeking meaning trying to get paid as opposed to trying to make anything better. Is that a good definition? Rent seeking would be just somebody says well if I become the head of DEI I'll get a big paycheck as opposed to somebody saying do we need a head of DEI? Like why are we even doing that? I think it's close to that anyway.

So Trump is halting gain of function research. The kind that got us in trouble. Gain of function on the viruses. He wants to halt that. But I wonder about why do we call it gain of function? Isn't it weaponization? Or are we pretending that we're only seeking to understand how someone else could weaponize it so we can treat it?

Oh here's the definition of rent seeking. Rent seeking: when an entity seeks to gain added wealth without any reciprocal contribution of productivity. Okay so my definition was not exactly right. Not really.

So I've got something on the screen that I can't make go away which means I can't see you. I don't know if you can see me. Really? Come on there should be somewhere on this screen a little X or something to tell me how to turn this off. Really? Can you even see me? I can't see your comments. I've got a black screen with one image that I clicked on and no indication of any kind of a way to turn it off so I can see you. No it wasn't that. Clicking anywhere doesn't do it. Oh my God I'm going to have to get out of this to get back in just because I clicked on an image. Holy hell. Can't make it go. Oh okay it turns out that dragging it worked. Another interface fail. Well I'm glad you could see me anyway.

So gain of function sounds like weaponization to me. Marco Rubio is off to Panama. Getting started fast but not just Panama. He's going to El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, etc. So he's going to talk to Panama. I'm sure that won't go well in the first conversation. But there there is a story about how the Panama Canal got started that I told in the man cave but I'll tell now. The story is, and this is wild. There's a YouTube video on it. You could just go to YouTube and look for Panama Canal and French engineer.

So before the United States got involved in the Panama Canal, I'll try to tell the story quickly. The French were trying to build in the same place but the French found out that every time they dug something it rained and then the mud just fell back in the trench. So they just gave up. So the French left. But there was one engineer who was a French engineer who decided to stay to see if he could get something going. So one engineer, just one, decides to convince Panama, which at the time was not its own country. It was an extension of Colombia. So Colombia kind of extended along the little peninsula there. And so he talks to the Panamanians who are more like an area than a country. He said hey the Colombians that own you are ignoring you and you're not getting your value for being part of the country. You should be independent. And the Panamanians are like yeah yeah we should be independent. How about that? And then he says if you make me your ambassador, now keep in mind he's not Panamanian he's a French citizen, and he convinced the Panamanians if you make me your ambassador I'll get you independence. And they probably didn't think it was serious anyway so like sure yeah you're our ambassador go get us some independence.

So he goes to Colombia and says hey Panama wants independence. How about that? And Colombia said get out of here because of course that's ridiculous. So he goes back and then he goes to the United States. And this is during Teddy Roosevelt's time. Now Teddy liked to take over some stuff so he was kind of expanding the empire. So he was already mentally on the same page. If we can grab something we'll grab it as he had already done. And somehow the French engineer convinces them that he's speaking for Panama and that they're going to go independent and it'd be really helpful if the American Navy was parked outside nearby and acted like they were in favor of this independence. Now Teddy thinking maybe we could get some kind of very low cost conquer some territory here. So the American Navy sits out there waiting. Colombia knows about it. And then the ambassador, the ambassador of Panama declares independence. And the Colombians are like hey you can't. Oh maybe you can. Well we don't care about you that much. Okay you're independent. So they gain their independence with no fighting because a French guy wanted to build a canal and he wanted America to be the builder of it with his help.

So then he says all right we got a deal. So then the ambassador who is the French engineer he comes up with a treaty or a deal with the United States that the United States could have control of the Panama Canal in return for building it. You know they'd have to build it but they'd have control of it. So the Americans say hey that's great. They come they sign the deal and then they pull up to take control of the canal and the Panamanians say what are you doing here? And the Americans say well you know because of the deal we signed a deal so Panama gave us this. And the Panamanian said what deal? The only person who even knew about it was the ambassador. The ambassador who was not even Panamanian. So not only did the French engineer create a new country out of nothing but then he made a deal with the United States, the biggest thing that ever happened in Panama, on his own without telling Panama. So the United States comes, realizes they don't really have any standing but they have this big military so they just took the canal because they knew that Panama couldn't stand up to the American military. They knew that they had some cover story of this ridiculous deal with the Panama guy so they just, it was just Teddy Roosevelt situation. He's like oh I guess it's ours now. And sure enough it was.

And then the Panamanian engineer had some ideas how to build it that the French didn't like. So his ideas how to build it were adopted by the Americans because it looked like a good idea and it worked and they built the Panama Canal. Now have you ever heard that story? I think it's true. I mean it was an extensive documentary on YouTube but I