ot getting worse. That might be true. And crime rates have dropped in general and allegedly the number of homeless encampments in San Francisco has fallen, but I don't have a percentage on that. And then here's another one. Rents are up in San Francisco 12% over last year. All right, let's do this again. How many of you predicted that San Francisco of all places would be able to raise rents in the middle of what looked like the city falling apart? How many of you would have said, "Oh yeah, those rentals will be up 12%." Not me. I would have guessed that rents would have collapsed by now. So that's two cities in which my ability to predict with all of my economics training, zero. Zero ability to predict. If you think you can do better, knock yourself out.

In other fun stories, let me say this about Candace Owens. I love Candace Owens. I like her personally. I only met her once, very briefly, but she was very warm. And I love this show that she puts on, not just the actual podcast, but the whole show. I like the way she's inserted herself into the public mind. I just sort of like everything about what she does. Now, that's different from agreeing with all of her takes. Everybody gets that, right? Do we ever get to the point where I don't have to say that? Can we ever as a civilization get to the point where I can say, "I like that public figure" without having to say, "but I don't agree with 100% of what they say." We're not there yet, right? I still have to do that. I don't agree with 100% of everything she's ever said.

She's making some noise today. She says Charlie Kirk was betrayed and don't worry about the gag order in the Charlie Kirk case. Is that a gag order directed at her? I think so. She says, "I plan to violate it on the world's behalf." So she plans to violate the court's gag order on the world's behalf. She says, "The things I've discovered this past week are enough to burn the house down." And yes, Charlie was betrayed by everyone. Now, do you see what I mean? How do you not love that? She's so good. Just so good at getting attention, which is her job, right? If that's what I do, she and I are in the same job in a way, which is to get attention. But you're only going to get attention if you're creating value, right? You could get attention for one day, but you can't be Candace unless you can get attention just regularly, anytime you want. And wow, can she get attention? So good at this. So if you simply, and you know, I like to do this. I like to separate the person's character from their skill level. I like in this case I like her character and her skill level, but the skill level is just crazy. Candace's skill level, her talent stack is crazy. Anyway, so this is fun. We'll keep an eye on that.

According to Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, here's more good news. It only took one year and apparently the US is already manufacturing the most advanced chip for AI and Nvidia is working with TSMC. The Taiwan company apparently moved some of its technology to the US and working with Nvidia. So now the US can make not at the same quantity. TSMC. Thank you. TSMC is the name of the chip company from Taiwan. Anyway, so they're working together and now they can make the most advanced chip in the US. I assume that volume is probably still a big issue, but I feel it's TSMC. But that's a pretty big deal to me because it means that even if Taiwan sunk into the ocean, we could get going. We would have enough on our shores that we could reconstitute slowly. That's a big deal. But it probably also makes it far more likely that Taiwan will be destroyed by China because China will know that it's not an existential risk to the United States anymore. I just realized this could be a double-edged sword. If you're China and you're not benefiting directly from the advanced chips on Taiwan, but your biggest competitor is the United States, would you worry too much if in the process of conquering Taiwan, you destroyed the semiconductor business? You might not care as much as you should because then