o something that's sort of counter to who they know they are. And if you do something that's opposite of who you are, let's say you're a nice person, but you do something cruel, you don't say to yourself, "Oh, I guess I was wrong. I guess I'm cruel." Cognitive dissonance would cause you to redefine that situation in some way that's good for you so that your ego is not damaged. So you'd imagine, oh, that's not what's happening. It's really complicated.

So cognitive dissonance is when you concoct or your brain sort of automatically concocts a story that makes you look good, even if the reality is you shouldn't look good in this story.

But here's the background. Apparently the whole concept of cognitive dissonance was brought about because there was this cult. So years ago there's this cult and I guess they said that the world was going to end at a certain time and it didn't. 1954 there was no apocalyptic flood. So there was a book written that suggested that once they saw that all of their predictions were wrong instead of saying oh I guess we don't know what we're talking about. We're all wrong. That they came up with completely weird cognitive dissonance explanations for why there wasn't a big flood that killed everything and that that became like the trigger for understanding that cognitive dissonance is a real thing.

And today I found out that the book was apparently a fraud and that the cult existed. But when they found out that their prediction didn't work, they did what normal people would do and say, "Oh, okay. Let's do something else." That didn't work. Apparently, we can't predict the future. So they were actually the opposite of cognitive dissonance. They took the new information. Oh, I guess our prediction was wrong. And then they just built a worldview that was based on reality that they can't predict things.

However, for apparently years, people believed that that cult was the best example of this new thing called cognitive dissonance. And so it became a well-known psychological phenomenon, which is real. Cognitive dissonance is real. But what's funny about it is that the way we learned about it and understood it was fraudulent.

Anyway, according to Reuters, the US Army is going to buy a million drones. I've told you so many times that the future of warfare is who can get the most and best drones. So if we can't get ourselves a million drones, mostly I think that we're not going to be dominant in any way militarily. And a million might not be enough. Like the number of drones, that's the right number. I don't know because we just have to be way more than anybody else. So if it turns out that China figures out how to make 10 million drones a year, even if they don't use them, we're going to have to figure out how to make 20 million drones a year. So we're in the drone making contest situation. Yeah. So we'll see.

And then allegedly, and I don't believe this either, that Russia is signaling some interest in restarting peace talks. Do you believe that? The *Washington Times* is reporting this. Now, I don't know exactly how they know if Russia is serious about any of this. Doesn't seem like something that we could know for sure, but it's possible that since both sides are just slamming each other with drones and missiles that neither of them wants to go through the winter. So it could be that Putin is aware that even if he's winning, and a lot of smart people say, "Oh, Russia is definitely winning." It's a war of attrition. I feel like the war of attrition is over and that now we're in the war of robots. It's almost like a second war. So you could almost argue that the Ukrainians lost the first war. So they lost the one that depends on humans dying less than the other side. They just lost that.

But in the meantime, they had built up a robot army that they have not lost. So I think two things can be true that Russia has the big advantage in human capital that they're using up at the same time that it might not be a human war anymore. It might be just a robot war. That's what it looks like. But I would not be surprised if both the Russians and the Ukrainians are a little bit panicked because both of them are going to turn the lights off on the other and winter is coming and I don't know if you can turn on that many lights. Somebody said that Ukraine can survive a power outage better because they have so many trees and they can just burn firewood and have fireplaces and stuff. I don't know if that's enough, but it'd be better than if you couldn't. So it's entirely possible that Putin is a little worried about getting through the winter because Ukraine is going to make it very cold for a lot of Russians and he knows that.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is all I had to talk about today. I nailed it. It's exactly top of the hour. How do I do it?

And Carl the Fly would like to thank you for joining in. He is my new sidekick. I believe he'll be dead by tomorrow. I'm not sure I'll be alive tomorrow, but Carl the Fly and I will be back.

I'm going to say some words privately to my beloved members of Locals. And you can say hi to Carl, too. I'm sure he wants to talk to you. Free Carl. Free Carl. Free Carl the fly. Oh my god. Carl, get off my forehead. Ow. Get off my head, Carl.

All right, I'm going to have to hire a staff member just to keep that fly off my head. All right, everybody. I'll see you tomorrow. Locals, I'm coming at you privately. Coming at you harder than a Frenchman.