tise whatsoever?

Here's another one. When Russia was threatening to attack Ukraine, I got one prediction 100% wrong, as wrong as anything could be. And I said that Putin must be bluffing because he must know that it's not going to be as easy as people say. So I predicted that he wouldn't go in, but I also predicted that if he did, he would not be able to conquer Ukraine in two weeks. And that the ground assets that he sent in would be too vulnerable to high-tech air stuff, you know, missiles and drones and stuff. And that's what happened. So I have no military experience, but why was it that my prediction that Ukraine would be able to hold off Moscow, why was that right so far? I mean, you could argue if you wait forever, it'll become wrong, and that's true. But I was just about the most right on a military question. How's that possible when I don't have any military expertise?

How about the fact that I predicted that Trump would win in 2016? What was my prior political experience? None. None. None at all. How did I get that right in a domain that I shouldn't have known anything?

How about when the Ukraine war was newer and I predicted that Prigozhin, remember Prigozhin? I predicted that he would turn on Moscow and try to overthrow Putin. I'm the only person who said that. Nobody else in the world said that. And then he did. And then when he got obviously murdered immediately by Putin once they got their hands on him, the news told you that he was flying off to Belarus to live his life happily. And I laughed at you and said, "No, he's already been killed. There's no way he's still alive." And of course, I was right about that.

Now, how did I get all of those predictions right? I mean, those are really specific predictions, and nobody else made them. Well, I don't have any expertise in that area, right? But how did I get that right? And so you could probably come up with a few more.

Here's my theory. I believe that the reason I have an advantage over the experts is that experts are not allowed to depart from the other expert opinions. That as soon as you, let's say you're a military expert, as soon as a few people say, "Well, Russia is going to just crush Ukraine in 10 minutes," you don't want to be the person who's on the other side of that if you're an actual expert. So it's just safer to go with the majority, I guess. And I have the freedom. I don't know anything about any of these topics there. I have no expertise in any of these domains. I have the freedom to say, well, what's it look like? And then I just apply usually the Dilbert filter to it and a persuasion filter. Usually some economic filter, just basic stuff. And I say, well, looks to me like this is going to happen. So I would argue that it could be that being an expert makes you because you can't really throw away your whole career over a specific prediction. But I could make a wild prediction and if I'm wrong, well, I'll just say, "Oh, I got that one totally wrong." It wouldn't make any difference at all. So I have a little bit more freedom to consider the alternatives. So maybe that's what's going on. It's my best guess.

As you know, Minnesota is in a pitched battle with California to see which would make the shittiest state. If I said to you that a housing program has been caught stealing $100 million, a housing program, what state would you imagine that was? We'll play this game. The answer is Minnesota. So there's a new story. $100 million stolen from some housing program.

Here's another one. A man got 28 years in prison, according to the Associated Press, the AP, for $48 million of COVID era food and fraud scandal. Is that California or Minnesota? The answer is Minnesota. Minnesota.

So there you go. California, if you give us a hundred billion dollars for a bullet train, we'll probably just keep that money. If you give us money to fix the fire damage in LA, well, we'll just let somebody steal it, probably. I don't think we'll build any new homes or help any people. So which state is shittier, Minnesota or California? I'm going to say that Minnesota is shittier simply because they have worse weather and more mosquitoes and otherwise we're both corrupt.

I got this question so many times from so many people and I don't want to have individual arguments with all of you. So people keep asking me,