United States, she points out that the American Heart Association has on their forum General Mills and PepsiCo. So when you think of things that are good for your heart, do you think of General Mills and PepsiCo? So they're major members of the American Heart Association. Now does that matter? Do you think you'll see any impact because those entities are on the American Heart Association? Well, maybe, because there was this bill SB 379 that would have removed from the SNAP program, which is a program for people without money to buy food. So right now those people could use the government money to buy candy, soda, cookies, and chips. And so there was an effort to say well, you can buy food, but we don't think you should be using the government money for candy, soda, cookies, and chips.

Now who do you think makes at least the soda, cookies, and chips? Two members of the board or the forum. And so the American Heart Association came out against banning candy, soda, cookies, and chips from government-funded food buying. They came out against it. The American Heart Association. Now let me ask this question again. Are there any large organizations that are not corrupt? I wonder if there are. It just seems to me that everything that matters has been penetrated by somebody who had the ability to penetrate them, so it feels like there just aren't any large organizations that you can trust at all. Like they all get corrupted one way or another, either through money or membership or something. So there you go.

According to Neoscope, Noor Al-Sibai is writing that apparently human intelligence seems to be dropping sharply. So people are getting dumber, but really quickly, like more so than other times in history. So apparently it's not just your imagination. People are losing the ability to critically think and to concentrate and to do reasoning. They're bad at problem solving. Their information processing skills — basically all aspects of intelligence — are dropping like a rock sort of everywhere in the modern world. And the thinking is that it might be some combination of things in the environment. It might be the food, it might be the pollution, it might be the lead, it might be the phones, it might be the screens. So I think mostly the phones. If you had to pick one thing, it would be the technology, mostly the phones.

But I'm going to offer a counterpoint. You ready for this? Yes, it's true that humans are getting dumber. Humans. So we're all getting dumber. However, we're not a human anymore. We are cyborg. If I have a phone in my hand, I'm smarter than anybody in history has ever been, right? As long as I know how to talk to AI and ask questions and search for stuff or even just text somebody who knows the answer that I want to know the answer to. So if you say that people are getting dumber, that's true, but I wonder if it's relevant because cyborgs, which is what we are — we've evolved into a cyborg state — a cyborg is way smarter than anybody in history. Do you have a question? If I have my phone in my hand, I can get an answer. So does it make sense to compare cyborgs to humans without factoring in the fact that the cyborg part, the technical part, gives them the superpower? I don't know. I don't know.

I think that even people who are bad at critical thinking are going to just start asking their phone. Yesterday I wanted to heat up some water for tea, and I'd never done that in the microwave. All of my other ways to make hot water were broken. That's another story. So I have at least several ways to make hot water; they're all broken. I've got a hot water spout that's full of pollution. It's just bad news. So I thought, how long do I microwave this? So I took out ChatGPT and put it in video mode, and I just made it look at my cup of water, and I said, how long should I microwave this? It's like, well, one to two minutes. Perfect. So there's nothing I can't figure out in like a moment. It was kind of fun anyway.

According to PC Magazine, a writer is writing about this. OpenAI says that China could compel the DeepSeek AI that comes from China to cause harm, and so OpenAI says that the Chinese AI should be banned. Now who's surprised about that? Not me. One of the things I've been telling you about AI is that no matter how good it is, the problem is going to be the humans are going to try to ban it for a number of reasons. So this is ChatGPT trying to ban Chinese AI, but it seems to me that there is pressure against OpenAI. They've got legal pressure. There's going to be the copyright things. It's lawyers, lawyers, and laws, and humans are just going to be such an impediment to AI. Makes you wonder if AI can ever get to the next level, or else we'd stop it. We'd find some reason. It's like, oh, it's too dangerous, you have to stop. Oh, it comes from another country, you better stop.

Now I do agree with banning the Chinese AI. It is too dangerous, but there's going to be an argument against every AI. Pretty soon people are going to say, oh, this AI is biased, it's misinformation, so you got to shut it down. The pressure against AI is going to be just through the roof anyway. We'll see if OpenAI wins that.

There's a robot factory being built. Interesting. So there's a US firm called Figure that's a robot company, and they're going to build their factory to make 12,000 humanoid robots per year. And that's a California-based company, but they're not putting the — are they putting the — I didn't see that, but they couldn't possibly be putting the manufacturing in California, right? It doesn't say where the manufacturing would be, but I'd be amazed if somebody built manufacturing in California. That feels like an unnecessary risk. So it's a California-based company, but I don't see here where they would put the factory anyway. I wouldn't put it in California.

Anyway, I told you the story about the South African scientists are trapped in a tiny base in Antarctica, and apparently because of the extreme weather there, there could be months, up to 10 months, before the weather would be good enough for anybody to leave or arrive. And they're complaining because there's one researcher in that group, according to the Daily Mail, who has been threatening to kill them and sexually abuse somebody. So they got basically some kind of a sexual criminal who is threatening to kill people, and they're trapped in this little building for at least 10 more months. So they're sort of begging for relief.

Now I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, can Elon Musk rescue them? Right? Well, he can't do everything. I don't think he could land a Starship there, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Boring Company is already drilling a hole from America to Antarctica to get them out. Wouldn't surprise me. I just don't think it's happening. So no, Elon Musk can't rescue everybody. Sometimes they're going to have to rescue themselves.

Let's talk about the Houthis. As you know, the Houthis were threatening, and have for a long time been threatening, shipping in the Red Sea. Apparently I didn't realize this, but nearly all the shipping — at least our shipping, as in other countries too — nearly all of it has been avoiding the Red Sea because it's too dangerous because of the Houthis, and they've been going the long way, which is making everything cost a lot more and take a lot longer.

So Trump has decided that this Iran-backed Houthis that keep shooting at the shipping in the Red Sea, their time has come. And National Security adviser Mike Waltz, he confirmed that the US is making big airstrikes and took out multiple Houthi leaders. Now taking out leaders, I don't think is going to work because they just get new leaders. And nearly three quarters of shipping is now diverted to get out of that area. Three quarters. And it's way more expensive if they have to go around the hard way.

And then Mike Waltz, he said that there's a large-scale strike campaign going on against the Houthis and that it will continue and be, quote, unrelenting until they pledge to back off, pledge to back off attacking US assets.

Now here again you have that problem of what if they do promise it. Would the shipping return just because the Houthis said, oh yeah, we'll totally leave your shipping alone? Because the real problem is the insurance. You would have to get the risk down to zero. How can you ever get the risk down to zero? Because even if like one in 20 ships get attacked, how are any of them going to get insurance? And they need insurance. So you can't half-ass this thing. You have to completely destroy the Houthis' ability to do it or completely destroy whoever is funding them, Iran in this case. You have to get them to change their mind, but even if they change their mind, they could change it back. You know, it's the same problem. If they promised, oh, we promise, yeah, we won't attack your ships, and then a few ships come back, they only have to attack one and then the whole thing falls apart.

So how much do you have to kill before you can guarantee that it will be economical for ships to use that place again? Like you either have to wipe out everything in that area, man, woman, and child. I'm not recommending that. I'm just saying if you wanted to fix it, you would have to actually just depopulate the place because they don't seem to be afraid of anything, and there always seems to be a replacement willing to take over, and there's always going to be a new leader, and Iran will still be funding him. So anything short of a kind of brutality that we've never seen before couldn't possibly make a difference. So we'll see if this gets us anything. I'm highly skeptical that it can be solved without doing something that would be so unconscionable to American minds that doing it would be going too far. I don't know. You know, if the real lever is Iran, then maybe there's something to work with, but I don't know. You have to get the risk down to zero or it just doesn't even matter. You know, if the risk is 5 percent, down from 100 percent getting attacked down to 5 percent, I don't think that changes the insurance situation at all because 5 percent is way too much of a risk. Way too much. It's not even close. So we'll see.

Anyway, that's what I got for you today. I'm going to say a few words privately to the local subscribers, but for the rest of you, thanks for joining. Happy St. Patrick's Day. So I'll say goodbye to YouTube and Rumble and X and Locals. I'm coming at you in 30 seconds privately. We'll have another sip.