Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 06, 2021


Episode 1428 Scott Adams： Fake News About Fake Science and Delicious Coffee Too


Episode Stats

Length

53 minutes

Words per Minute

146.88492

Word Count

7,858

Sentence Count

515

Misogynist Sentences

15

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello everybody and good morning. Welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams, the best part of every
00:00:12.380 single day. And to make it even a little bit extra special, not only are we live streaming
00:00:18.260 from the locals platform at the same time, with an audio de-esser. That's right. If you're
00:00:25.820 listening on YouTube and it sounds like I'm a snake hissing, well you wouldn't be hearing that
00:00:31.240 so much on locals because I've got that solved electronically. Well all you need today to make
00:00:37.940 this a special day is a cup or mug or glass, a tanker, chelsea, and a canteen jug or flask, a vessel
00:00:42.840 of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled
00:00:48.420 pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the
00:00:55.000 simultaneous sip and watch it improve your life now. So I learned something yesterday about the
00:01:06.420 sound quality on YouTube. It turns out that no matter what equipment you use or how you broadcast,
00:01:15.000 YouTube has some kind of a weird bug that makes some people's audio low on some videos
00:01:22.120 and not on others. And apparently it doesn't matter how you make the video that the problem
00:01:28.800 happens within YouTube. So for all of those saying, I can't hear you, your sound is too low,
00:01:35.660 that's your problem with YouTube and not a problem necessarily with the content. Although I might,
00:01:42.340 I might do this without a microphone one of these days. All right.
00:01:51.240 So you know about that big hacking attack, another $70 million ransom being asked for
00:01:57.880 presumably Russian hackers who hacked into a whole bunch of companies. And I would like to say again
00:02:07.120 that we're not treating this hacking stuff seriously. This should be a death sentence
00:02:13.700 because the level of destruction that comes from these hacks needs to be discouraged at the risk of
00:02:22.820 death. And at the very least, we should consider it a terrorist attack. And at the very least,
00:02:28.680 we should be able to take action in any country we want. So if these guys live in Russia,
00:02:34.040 whether or not Putin is controlling them, we can take them out. We can just drop a drone right on
00:02:44.460 some Russian territory and just take them out. Because we're not even serious about this right now.
00:02:50.000 And I don't see why the hackers would stop. The business model seems pretty good. It's working
00:02:55.600 pretty well. So I would say we need to get serious about this. And we're not even close.
00:03:02.300 Once again, this is probably something Trump would do better. Because you need to ratchet up the
00:03:10.360 threat. You know, the response has to be much bigger than it is. This whole, oh, Putin, there will be
00:03:18.060 consequences. Will there? Will there be any consequences for Russia because of these hacks? No. Putin will just
00:03:27.280 say, I don't know where they're coming from. And we won't have proof. And we won't be able to go that
00:03:33.160 hard at Russia. So that's where President Trump could be a lot better in this situation.
00:03:42.340 On Twitter yesterday, I asked people in a little Twitter poll, very unscientific,
00:03:48.240 if I had ever changed anybody's opinion on any social or political topic. And the last I checked,
00:03:56.960 there were about 14,000, 15,000 people that answered the poll, and of my 630,000 followers. And
00:04:05.120 over half of them who answered, which would be about 8,000 people, said yes.
00:04:12.460 So apparently, I've changed, just on the people who answered the poll, more than half of them
00:04:20.300 have changed an opinion on something based on watching this content. Now, I'm wondering if
00:04:29.260 that's normal. Because I don't know how to judge that. Would you say that, you know, Ben Shapiro,
00:04:39.120 if you watch his show, and he did the same poll, would he find that people had changed their minds
00:04:46.480 because of watching his content? Because his content is terrific, right? Lots of reasons and
00:04:51.400 facts and, you know, good context and background and, you know. So intellectually, Ben Shapiro's show
00:04:59.740 would be superior to mine, I would say. Certainly on the factual and context kind of a basis, he's good
00:05:06.100 at that. But does he change minds? Let me ask in the comments. Has Ben Shapiro ever changed your mind
00:05:17.360 on a topic? Or do you find you agree with him, and all you're doing is just agreeing?
00:05:23.800 So I'm going to look at your comments as they go by. I see a yes. I see a bunch of no's.
00:05:30.240 Oh, I see a bunch of yeses. Okay. Lots of yeses come in. Some no's. Interesting. Okay. So I don't
00:05:39.900 know how to, how do we evaluate whether I'm being persuasive or it's just a function of talking in
00:05:47.020 public. So maybe if you talk in public and you, you say a lot of things, you're going to change
00:05:52.060 somebody's mind. All right. Rasmussen has a simple results. They asked, how likely is it that the US
00:06:01.800 government spies on critical journalists and political opponents? Now that's a pretty loaded
00:06:09.680 question, isn't it? Do you believe that the US government is spying on critical journalists?
00:06:17.740 Well, 36% of the public, the voting public, likely voters, think that the government is spying on
00:06:37.360 journalists. What do you think? Yeah, of course they are. Yeah. One way or another. I mean,
00:06:44.660 they might be spying on them. They might be monitoring them. They might be, you know, caught
00:06:50.780 in the indirect monitoring because they may have communicated with somebody who they do monitor
00:06:56.160 a foreign, foreign agent. Now, have I ever talked to somebody from a foreign country that our NSA
00:07:06.920 might want to be tracking? And the answer is, yes, I have. I have. Now, I haven't had any like deep,
00:07:16.520 you know, secrets or anything, but I have had conversations in digital means with people that
00:07:25.680 in retrospect, I could imagine would be tracked by the NSA for legitimate reasons. You know,
00:07:34.060 I didn't have any like secret, you know, nothing that I would worry about anybody knowing about.
00:07:41.120 But doesn't that put me on the list? If I have a conversation in any way with anybody who is on
00:07:48.240 the monitoring list, don't I get monitored automatically? So I don't know how anybody could
00:07:55.060 disagree with the idea that the government is spying on journalists. I guess you could question
00:08:01.340 the intent, but not the fact that it's happening. It's simply a fact that it's happening, isn't
00:08:07.860 it? Would anybody disagree with that statement that because we know the NSA checks anybody who's,
00:08:16.920 let's say, a foreign person who might have some importance to us, intelligence-wise, don't
00:08:23.680 you think many of them have contacts with journalists? Probably, right? So yeah, the NSA is probably
00:08:32.920 looking at all of them. And then the 23% said it's somewhat likely that the government is spying on
00:08:38.520 journalists. So you add them together, and you get 59% think it's either very likely or somewhat
00:08:45.280 likely that the government is spying on journalists. It's not even a story, is it? How in the world
00:08:54.340 is that not one of the biggest stories in the country? But it's not. I mean, it's a story,
00:09:00.140 but it just kind of comes and goes. I like your idea, Ken. All right. I am fascinated with the topic
00:09:14.920 of how people assess risk. Now, I know you don't like it when I talk about any COVID stuff, because
00:09:21.320 it seems like it's over for most of you. And I agree with that, by the way. Personally, I feel like the
00:09:26.960 pandemic is over for me, because I'm not going to take a long plane trip and a mask ever again.
00:09:33.660 I just won't do it. And I don't need to wear a mask locally for anything, because I'm vaccinated.
00:09:40.100 You know, I suppose if I visited an old folks home, I'd put one on. But so I'm not too interested
00:09:47.900 in the pandemic stuff, but I'm very interested in how minds work. And so that's the element I'm going
00:09:55.520 at here. And I'm really fascinated with a specific question, where people are trying to decide whether
00:10:01.920 to get vaccinated or not. You've got two unknown risks that people have to balance to make their
00:10:08.160 decision. And they're both completely unknown. One is, what is the long term risk of getting a
00:10:15.740 vaccination, especially an mRNA vaccination, the type of which is sort of new to the human experience?
00:10:24.060 We have a pretty good idea what the short term risks are, because of the trials, and also because
00:10:30.800 of the feedback. But how would you know if there's any risk five years from now, from the vaccines?
00:10:39.360 And the answer is, you wouldn't, right? So if you're trying to say, what is the long term, you know,
00:10:44.520 unknown risk of a vaccination? The answer is, who knows? Nobody. There's nobody who can even estimate it.
00:10:52.340 Not with any data. But also, what is the long term risk of getting this particular virus? Now, if it
00:11:00.960 were a normal flu virus, you'd say to yourself, well, five years from now, it's very unlikely, I'm still
00:11:07.780 going to have a problem from a normal flu virus I got five years ago. Very unlikely. But this is not
00:11:14.820 like a normal virus, right? It's engineered. Or it looks like it. You know, we don't have full
00:11:21.940 confirmation of that. But it appears to be weaponized. Can you tell me that the risk five
00:11:29.220 years from now, from a weaponized virus is zero? I have no idea what the risk is. So you've got a
00:11:39.080 risk from an unknown virus that's novel, and weaponized, in all likelihood, we don't know for
00:11:45.420 sure. But it looks like it. And we've got a vaccine of the type we've never seen before, pumped into
00:11:52.440 millions of people. Which one is the bigger risk? Now, here's what fascinates me. Most of you can
00:12:00.600 make this decision. I don't know how. Right? Because it's two complete unknowns. Complete.
00:12:11.760 Now, if you were to look at the short term risk, let's separate them. The short term risk of,
00:12:17.560 let's say, dying within two weeks of getting a vaccination, or the short term risk of getting
00:12:23.660 COVID and dying in the hospital. How big are those risks? Could you compare them? Well, let me tell
00:12:31.920 you how I do it. I round them both to zero. And then I ignore them. Right? Because the risk of me dying
00:12:39.420 from coronavirus is so close to zero, that I would treat it the same way I treat driving to the store to
00:12:47.280 buy a loaf of bread. I could die in the car, driving to the store to get a loaf of bread. But it's not
00:12:53.100 part of my decision making, because it's so close to zero. So while I think the vaccination is really
00:13:00.700 so close to zero, I can ignore that risk in the short term. And the risk of dying from the coronavirus
00:13:07.160 in the short term, so close to zero that I make both of them non-existent. So if the risk from both of
00:13:16.040 them rounds to zero, get a vaccination or don't get a vaccination, both zero risk, effectively,
00:13:23.200 you know, because it's so small. What do you do? Well, I'll tell you what I do. I defaulted toward
00:13:29.920 the decision that also had about zero risk, because both of them do. But I picked the one that gave me
00:13:36.760 more freedom. So I feel, and of course, freedom is largely a sensation, as much as a fact. My sensation
00:13:45.880 is that I'm more free. Because apparently, I survived the first few weeks of getting the
00:13:51.720 vaccination. So that the early risk is behind me. But I can I can go places without a mask. And that
00:14:00.680 means a lot to me. So that's how my decision was made. Short term, both risks are zero. Effectively.
00:14:10.040 Both are just zero. But one gives me more rights. So I took that one. Now the long term risk still
00:14:18.180 separate, but can't calculate it. Nobody can. Nobody can calculate that risk. I do, however,
00:14:27.600 know from personal anecdotes, several people who have had long haul risk with the virus. Now,
00:14:35.940 I don't know if those long haul risks are really permanent, or if they could be. But I've heard of
00:14:42.080 them. Right? I've heard real people say, it's been months, and I had the virus, and I still get
00:14:48.000 problems. I've never personally heard of anybody who had a problem with the vaccination.
00:14:53.340 Now, that's not science, right? Because the people I've personally heard of has no statistical
00:15:01.760 value. But still, it's hard to avoid the fact that I've heard of several people with
00:15:07.400 virus long haul problems. And I've heard of nobody that I know personally. And it's the personal part,
00:15:15.900 not news stories. But nobody personally who's had a problem with the vaccination.
00:15:20.040 That doesn't mean it's not happening. I'm just saying I'm influenced by, you know, my immediate
00:15:25.720 information. So I don't know how you make your decisions. But I round the vaccination and the
00:15:32.300 virus down to zero risk each. And then I take the one that gives me that I take the path that gives me
00:15:38.620 more options. So that's where I'm at. Now, I, I stress again, that if this sounds like I'm trying to
00:15:47.480 talk you into getting vaccinated, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't take that away from this.
00:15:54.660 Because do you see me with my doctor degree? No, no, cartoonist. Do you take medical advice
00:16:02.900 from cartoonists? No, no, don't do that. Don't do that. I'm only interested in the decision making
00:16:10.660 process. That's it. All right. Do you do your own medical decisions. All right. Let's talk about
00:16:18.200 billionaires in space. So I love the fact that Jeff Bezos plans to take his rocket company into space.
00:16:28.120 And he plans to be one of the first or the first, I guess, first crew among the first in the crew on
00:16:34.440 Blue Origins. So that's the name of Bezos's company. And by the way, I think he's stepping down
00:16:40.360 from running Amazon full time. Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic, run by Richard Branson, he's, he's
00:16:50.660 decided that he's going to get into space a little bit earlier. But apparently there's a, there's a
00:16:56.240 dispute about whether that's really in space, because there's sort of a dividing line between
00:17:02.860 space and not in space. And I guess the Virgin Galactic flight will just be below that line,
00:17:09.220 whereas the Amazon one will be above that line. So technically, Bezos will be in space.
00:17:17.720 Technically, Branson will be almost in space, but not quite. So maybe that matters if you're
00:17:22.880 keeping score. But both of these, both of these trips are deadly, meaning that Bezos could die.
00:17:32.940 He could die. He could die. And it's not the same risk as driving to the store for a loaf of bread.
00:17:41.780 I don't know, if I put odds on it, it's like 10%, isn't it? Maybe a 10% chance you'll die.
00:17:48.540 Would you take a rocket ship if you had a 10% chance of dying? He's a lot braver than I am.
00:17:55.060 Maybe that's why he has more money than anybody in the world. And it also makes sense for Richard
00:18:03.400 Branson to do this, because Branson's brand is adventurism and taking risks and doing sketchy
00:18:11.320 things. Not sketchy things, but dangerous things. And so it makes sense for Branson. He's always been
00:18:19.900 this person. But does it make sense for Bezos to risk his death going up in space? I mean, I do like
00:18:27.520 the fact that he's putting his skin in the game. That's not nothing. I mean, that's a lot. But I
00:18:34.600 just don't know if it's the right play if you're a billionaire. Because I have to think his life is
00:18:39.760 going pretty well so far. Why would he take a risk of dying in a preventable accident? Preventable in
00:18:48.520 a sense he doesn't need to be on it. But I guess you'd feel pretty bad if you send somebody else up
00:18:53.140 there and they died. So, you know, maybe he can't just can't live with the guilt of that if somebody
00:18:59.800 else died and he wasn't on the ship. But we wish him luck. And what would happen if all of our
00:19:08.340 billionaires just died in space? You know, because you know Elon Musk is going to be on one of those
00:19:13.880 rocket ships eventually, right? We could wipe out the entire like billionaire class in this country
00:19:20.440 just having them try to fly into space and not make it. And I hope that doesn't happen. Of course,
00:19:25.660 I wish them all well. But it's fun to watch. And it's really fun. And I feel as though we're going
00:19:32.800 to look back on these days and realize that because these billionaires were competitive with each other,
00:19:38.840 you know, because you had an Elon Musk at the same time as a Jeff Bezos, at the same time as a
00:19:44.420 Sir Richard Branson, the fact that they all existed in the same time in space is probably really
00:19:51.900 important. Because don't you think that the competitive element of that and what they're
00:19:57.020 learning from each other and probably at some point some employees might be cross-pollinating and
00:20:01.980 stuff. I feel like it's a little bit like the founding, I don't want to say founding fathers,
00:20:08.240 it's too sexist. It's a little like the founders of the United States. What were the odds that at the
00:20:14.700 same time in history, you'd have, you know, Monroe and Jefferson and Washington and, you know, John Adams
00:20:22.480 and Ben Franklin, you know, forgetting a few names, Hamilton. What are the odds that all of those people
00:20:30.480 would be alive at the same time and sort of in the same time in space and they created the United
00:20:36.400 States? I don't know that any other group of people could have pulled that off. There was something
00:20:42.320 about that group of geniuses being in the same place that made it all happen. And I think we're
00:20:48.180 going to look back on this space stuff and say how lucky we were that three of our most important,
00:20:55.820 you know, entrepreneurs were alive at the same time and could see each other's work. I mean,
00:21:00.820 it's going to be a big deal, I think. So CNN is reporting that it's quite obvious now that
00:21:08.780 climate change is what's causing our heat patterns. Is that true? How many of you would say that is a fact
00:21:18.740 the science agrees with? Is it a fact that the heat wave we're seeing now is unprecedented and also
00:21:27.540 clearly because of climate change? I'm seeing a lot of no's go by in the comments. I think the answer
00:21:36.500 is no, right? I believe that the high temperatures have not been much higher than they have been
00:21:43.660 historically. But here's the catch. I think the winter temperatures are more mild. So there's a
00:21:54.400 book and an argument that I can't remember right now. Let me tell you the name of the book because
00:21:59.220 it would be deeply unfair to refer to this and not mention the actual book that I haven't read yet.
00:22:05.460 So let me see it. This is a book recommendation. This came through Joel Pollack, who just read this
00:22:16.920 book by Stephen Koonin, K-O-O-N-I-N. It's called Unsettled, What Climate Science Tells Us,
00:22:26.040 What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters. So he's trying to use the existing data. So my understanding is that
00:22:33.440 he uses the existing databases, he's not making up his own data, and just coming at it at a
00:22:39.240 different angle. And apparently part of the argument is that the winters are getting more mild,
00:22:44.220 but the summers are not getting hotter. If that were true, climate change would be more good than bad,
00:22:51.980 right? I don't know if it's true, but that's the claim. So I haven't read that book, but I hear it's
00:22:58.180 good. Um, but more to the point, isn't it just fake news when CNN reports, well, clearly here's
00:23:09.020 climate change. That's fake news, right? Because the data doesn't indicate it or doesn't. Because
00:23:16.420 what I don't see is a bunch of climate scientists coming on TV and, um, okay, you can stop mentioning
00:23:25.120 Tony Heller. I've spent a lot of time interacting with Tony Heller and he is not credible. Now that
00:23:33.660 doesn't mean he's wrong about everything he says, but in general, he is not credible. And if you're
00:23:40.140 following him and buying everything he says, you're in deep trouble. Don't go down that path. I went down,
00:23:47.400 I went down that path pretty far myself. And once I saw, you know, the critics weigh in about his
00:23:54.740 analyses, it kind of falls apart. So, um, don't go down the, that path. Um, so I guess I'm waiting
00:24:05.400 to see some scientists come on CNN and tell, tell us that the data shows that something different is
00:24:12.600 happening now. Maybe they can, by the way, just an update. I'm not a climate change doubter.
00:24:21.440 I am a doubter about how bad it will be because I say, um, humans are good at, you know, adjusting
00:24:28.800 and correcting. And even the projections are not that bad. If you really look at the projections
00:24:34.820 of how much bad is going to happen in the future, it's actually not that bad. It's like a 10% hit on GDP
00:24:41.520 over 80 years, which you literally wouldn't even notice. Um, uh, why don't you be specific about
00:24:50.360 Heller? Well, I'm not going to be because, um, he's not, he doesn't rise to the level of
00:24:56.500 conversation. Meaning there, there are some things that maybe yes, maybe no. Take, take the issue of
00:25:04.300 ivermectin. Ivermectin is one of those things that's worth discussing, whichever way you go on
00:25:10.720 it, worth discussing. The, the Tony Heller analysis has been debunked to the point where it's not worthy
00:25:18.780 of discussion. Now, if you're not there, maybe you need to do your own research, but don't ask me to go
00:25:25.960 there because it didn't rise to the level of being worthy of discussion. It did at one point until I
00:25:32.340 discussed it to death and couldn't find a value in it. All right. Um, so here's a terrible thing
00:25:40.380 that's about to happen that nobody's talking about. So you're following the story of, uh,
00:25:45.340 Shakari, Shakari Richardson, the female sprinter who, uh, got tested positive for marijuana and is going
00:25:54.400 to be kicked off the hundred, is it the hundred meter sprint, which is her best, uh, event. Now,
00:26:01.720 the talk is that because there's a one month suspension and there's a difference in timing for
00:26:06.840 the different events that it is possible for her to be on the relay team. So I guess the relay race
00:26:14.920 happens later and her suspension would be done by then. So the thinking is that although she was not
00:26:21.900 going to be on the relay team originally, maybe she could be on the relay team, help them win because
00:26:27.480 she's fastest woman in the world, apparently, and that would all be good. Do you see any problem with
00:26:36.020 that theory? Does anybody have a concern about her being on the relay team? Exactly. Somebody would get
00:26:48.080 booted from the relay team. And here's the important part. The person who will get booted from the relay
00:26:55.720 race team didn't break any fucking rules, right? Now I'm, I'm very, um, I'm very solidly on the side
00:27:06.680 that says that she should be allowed to compete and they should immediately change the rule and wipe
00:27:13.360 away this marijuana thing, et cetera. So, so I think she should be allowed to compete period.
00:27:19.960 But whatever mistake was made was hers, right? Whoever this other person is, presumably some
00:27:29.540 woman who thinks or had a good chance of being on the team is going to get bumped off because
00:27:36.620 somebody else fucked up. Come on. If you're talking about an injustice, it is an injustice in my opinion
00:27:48.380 that somebody who trained all their life for the, the hundred meters sprint or whatever gets bumped
00:27:55.120 for marijuana. That's a, that's a deep injustice, but you're just screwing some other athlete if you
00:28:01.560 put her on the relay team when she wasn't supposed to be there. So this looks worse to me, much worse.
00:28:11.100 I mean, not even close. This is deeply unfair because you would literally be punishing somebody
00:28:17.120 who didn't do anything wrong so that the person who did something wrong could compete. There is no
00:28:24.000 way in hell this is okay. Am I the only one who has mentioned this so far? I haven't heard anybody
00:28:29.500 mentioned it in public, but I imagine somebody's going to mention it. All right. Um, have you seen
00:28:38.400 today's Dilbert comics that I, that I just, uh, tweeted out? So the latest two Dilbert comics are on the
00:28:47.120 subject of the boss and the Dilbert comic, uh, hired a, uh, hired a racist just so they'd have somebody
00:28:54.880 to fire in case the woke crowds came after them. And then today in the comic, the woke gangs came
00:29:02.320 after them. I call them the wokies, which I think you should adopt the wokies, the people who are
00:29:08.360 woke. So they come after Dilbert's company. And then, uh, here's, here's the, uh, text of this one
00:29:14.360 in case you missed it. And there's a point why I'm going to be talking about this comic. I'll get to
00:29:18.500 it. Um, and it goes like this, uh, Dilbert says to his boss, there's a mob of woke people surrounding
00:29:25.880 our building. They demand a human sacrifice. And then the boss says, fetch the spare racist I hired
00:29:33.120 for that purpose. And then the last panel, you see there, they're dangling the, the racist down the
00:29:38.460 window on a, on a pole. And, uh, the, the alleged racist is saying, I'm not a racist. Really? I'm not.
00:29:45.920 And then from inside the building, you can hear, he can't prove that. Now, regardless of whether you
00:29:52.960 think that's funny, not very funny when they're just spoken and not read, um, there is a Dilbert
00:30:00.200 effect, which might be important. And it goes like this in the nineties, the early nineties, those of
00:30:09.620 you who were around, remember that business books were huge. It seemed like every day there was a new
00:30:15.240 business book with a new great theory about excellence and passion and, uh, re-engineering
00:30:22.100 and all these things. And, and, and the thought was in the early nineties that if only you read the
00:30:27.800 right book and use the right systems, your, your company would be, you know, taken off and very
00:30:34.600 successful. Now, almost none of that was true, but it was generally believed to be true in the early
00:30:43.020 nineties that if, yeah, if you just stopped people from moving your cheese and use your excellence and
00:30:49.480 all that stuff, everything would be great. Do you know what happened to that market for business
00:30:55.380 books? Well, that market, um, happened to coincide with the rise of Dilbert. So Dilbert as a comic hit
00:31:04.580 its, um, hit its most famous stride, I would say in the mid to late nineties and it destroyed the
00:31:11.760 business book, um, business because Dilbert was the first, um, sort of high visibility mocking of
00:31:21.720 things that people sort of suspected should be mocked, but they didn't want to be the ones to do
00:31:26.580 it, right? You don't want to go first in case you, you get caught looking foolish, but I never mind
00:31:31.880 going first and looking foolish. So I went first. The entire market for business books was destroyed.
00:31:39.720 I think largely because of Dilbert, because you, you, you know, for example, that Elon Musk has a rule
00:31:46.580 for Tesla. The rule at Tesla is, and this is Elon Musk's published rule for Tesla, that if, if there's any
00:31:56.200 kind of a policy at Tesla that they can imagine would end up in a Dilbert comic, don't do it.
00:32:04.700 It's a very useful rule. If you think it would end up in a Dilbert comic, don't do it. Cause that's a,
00:32:11.820 that's a pretty good indicator that this should be mocked and not taken seriously. So we do know that,
00:32:19.040 uh, and I've received lots of information that companies have, um, altered their practices because
00:32:25.840 they either something appeared in a Dilbert comic or they didn't want it to cause it would be too
00:32:30.140 embarrassing. And when you see wokeness and corporate wokeness become a recurring theme in
00:32:39.720 the Dilbert comic, it's probably an indicator of a turning point. Now, not necessarily because
00:32:46.780 I'm causing it, although that's not impossible, but more because it's more of a canary in the
00:32:53.700 coal mine, sort of an early indication of, of a, of a transition. And, and, uh, I feel as if
00:33:04.360 wokeness may be peaking. Does it feel like that to you? You know, everything good and everything bad
00:33:10.900 seems to, you know, peak at some point and then decrease. I feel like it's once it's in a Dilbert
00:33:17.140 comic and people just laugh and there's nobody reading the comic and say, well, you know, but
00:33:23.240 really the wokeness is good. Nobody's going to read these comics and say, yeah, I get that you're
00:33:29.680 making fun of it, but gosh, you know, there's a lot of good stuff here too. So don't go too far
00:33:34.100 with mocking it. That's not happening. I think people are just laughing at it. And if you're
00:33:41.300 laughing at the wokeness from the wokies, um, it may be the beginning of the end. So we'll see.
00:33:50.740 Um, let's talk about all the fake news. There was a story today about a man in Austria who was bitten
00:33:58.640 by a, uh, a five and a quarter foot Python that was in his toilet. So the story says that this,
00:34:07.680 uh, man just sat on his toilet and a Python that had somehow reached his toilet through the pipes
00:34:16.800 was in his toilet, a five and a half foot Python, and it bit him in the genitals.
00:34:21.600 This story is actually in the news. Now put on your fake news thinking cap.
00:34:32.480 Is this true? Do you really think that an escaped Python climbed all the, all through the pipes
00:34:41.280 from some other place, climb through the pipes and came out into his toilet and waited. And when he
00:34:50.160 opened the toilet to use it, he didn't notice a five and a quarter foot Python in his toilet.
00:35:00.240 Now imagine, you know, how thick a Python probably is. Now imagine five and a quarter
00:35:09.040 feet of that wrapped up in a toilet bowl. I have to think that the head was probably already sitting
00:35:15.920 up above the level of the toilet. So here's my advice to you. If you're approaching a toilet
00:35:23.360 and you're about to sit on it, if there's a Python head looking at you from the place you plan to sit,
00:35:32.800 don't sit on that toilet. That's your advice for today. Well, I'm going to call this fake news. I do
00:35:39.840 not believe there was a Python in the toilet. No, I don't. It's an excellent story. But between us,
00:35:50.320 there was no Python in the toilet. I feel pretty confident there was never a Python in the toilet.
00:35:57.440 Or at least if there was, it didn't get there by crawling through any pipes.
00:36:01.200 All right, here's some more fake news about fake news. Did you see the story? I think it was yesterday.
00:36:09.760 There was an executive who used to work for Fox News, who said some bad things about Fox News.
00:36:17.440 It was a big story. And then Richard Grinnell points out that this executive from Fox News
00:36:24.400 quit in 1997. So the executive who was in the news for saying that Fox News had problems left in 1997.
00:36:39.280 And that fact was not in the stories. It took Richard Grinnell's tweet to surface that. Are you
00:36:48.160 freaking kidding me? Somebody who hasn't worked there since 1997 had a strong opinion about what
00:36:55.200 it's like there now and wanted us all to know? Is there anything that this person could add that you
00:37:02.160 couldn't know yourself just by watching TV? This is the most bullshit fake news story I've seen since
00:37:09.200 the Python in the toilet. Um, how about some more, uh, some more news? So true story on the 4th of July,
00:37:23.200 Christina said to me, you know, if you were going to murder somebody, a great time to do it would be
00:37:29.200 the 4th of July because people would think the gunshots were just fireworks. To which I said,
00:37:36.240 I'm a little bit disturbed at how much time you put into murdering people and getting away with it.
00:37:42.160 Because I feel like I might be on that list if you know what I mean. Um, so aside from the fact
00:37:48.480 that it's disturbing that my wife is considering murder and watches every CSI and crime movie,
00:37:54.400 uh, that's ever been made, she's become quite an expert at killing people and getting away with it.
00:38:00.320 I don't know if she's ever done it, but if she does, she'll get away with it.
00:38:04.480 But, uh, here's my point. It turns out the CNN is reporting that, uh, over the 4th of July weekend,
00:38:13.440 150 people were killed by gun violence and more than 400 shootings across the country.
00:38:21.680 What? On one weekend? On one weekend? There were 400 shootings?
00:38:36.320 Now, I knew gun violence was a problem. Did you know it was this bad? Now, I don't know if anybody
00:38:45.920 got shot in my town, so it feels like it didn't affect me directly. But, really? 400 shootings?
00:38:55.120 Now, I ask you, how many of this was because the fireworks were happening?
00:38:59.840 How many of these 150 people who were killed were killed around the time the fireworks were going
00:39:06.560 off? You know, say, nine o'clock at night and after? I feel like there might be people who are
00:39:12.560 literally taking this, this technique and putting it in practice and literally killing people on 4th of
00:39:19.120 July. I'm going to hide on the 4th of July next year. So, Britney Spears, um, looks like she's going
00:39:27.200 to be retiring, uh, unless her conservatorship gets, uh, removed. Because she doesn't want to be working
00:39:35.440 and just having somebody else be able to manage the money, which makes perfect sense to me. Now,
00:39:41.680 I have a few questions. Number one, uh, we hear in the news today that her attorney until 2019
00:39:49.440 was named Andrew Wallet. His last name is spelled exactly like the wallet you have in your back pocket
00:39:58.080 that has money. Here's my advice to you. Never hire an attorney whose last name is wallet.
00:40:10.720 I'm just saying it's sort of a red flag, right? Just don't do it. If the name is a wallet, walk away.
00:40:18.880 All right. So here's my questions about Britney Spears. I like that she's starting to play hardball
00:40:26.080 because a number of people only get paid if she works and she's going to stop working to put some
00:40:33.040 pressure on the conservatorship. Probably a good strategy. But let me ask you this. I know there
00:40:39.680 are always lawyers watching this. Let's say I'm Britney Spears and let's say I'm subject to a conservatorship.
00:40:48.880 Can I, can I go to a promoter and say, Hey promoter, I'm in a conservatorship,
00:40:54.800 but if you don't mind and I don't mind, can we sign a deal? Can, can Britney Spears go sign a deal
00:41:03.120 with her name on it to do a performance with somebody who says, yeah, and I'll pay you any
00:41:08.640 way you want to be paid. You just tell me where the money goes and I'll give it to you. And then
00:41:13.680 Britney says, for example, Oh, I'd like it in crypto. Can the conservatorship get at it?
00:41:20.080 Because remember, Britney did not agree to the conservatorship. She's just a citizen.
00:41:29.040 Can that citizen make a private deal with another citizen?
00:41:35.380 I'm seeing Fred say her signature has no standing, but does that matter if the other person respects it?
00:41:43.660 So I hear what you're saying. And I don't know if that's legally true, but let's, let's take the assumption that
00:41:49.880 she's not allowed to do business deals because she's under a conservatorship, which feels like that's probably true.
00:41:57.380 Right. But that only matters if the person she makes the deal with recognizes the conservatorship and respects it.
00:42:06.500 So say she goes to somebody and says, look, you know, uh, I want to beat this conservatorship.
00:42:13.040 How about you and I do a deal? My signature won't mean anything, but yours does. So you're going to sign
00:42:20.320 something that says you'll pay me if I perform. I'll perform. You pay wherever I tell you to pay me.
00:42:27.780 In this case, I'm going to say, send crypto to my wallet. What happens if the conservatorship says,
00:42:35.500 Hey, Whitney, Hey, Brittany, that crypto money belongs in the conservatorship. And Brittany says,
00:42:42.820 yes, it does. It totally does. Good luck with that. Cause you don't know my wallet and you can't get
00:42:49.620 at it. What would happen? I don't know. All right. Let me give you another, um, another one. Let's say a,
00:43:01.780 let's say Brittany teams up with somebody she can trust. I'm going to put myself in the story
00:43:08.080 just cause it needs a third party. So let's say Brittany says, Scott, I trust you, but I don't
00:43:15.360 trust my conservatorship. So here's the thing. Why don't you make a deal with the venue that I'm going
00:43:21.520 to perform at? And they will pay you. I'll perform because nobody can stop me from driving
00:43:27.820 places and performing. So I'll perform and I won't even sign a contract. They'll just give the money
00:43:33.380 to you. I will trust you to give that money to me in some fashion. Is that legal? Could she do that?
00:43:42.980 That's a straw man. Yeah. And it would be, you know, quite explicitly to beat the conservatorship,
00:43:50.800 but would it work? How much power does the conservatorship have to, to claw back things
00:43:58.260 that maybe get out of their bounds? The conservatorship would sue.
00:44:05.680 Interesting. That sounds right. I don't know if it's right, but if the conservatorship sued her,
00:44:11.780 hmm, but would that work? What if they, what if they sued her and won? And they said, yeah,
00:44:20.180 you got to give us this crypto. And then she just doesn't. What would happen?
00:44:26.980 Yeah. So these are the questions. At the very least, she could push the question. Let me tell you
00:44:33.160 what I would do. If I, if I were Brittany, I would put every kind of pressure on the system that I could.
00:44:39.500 I would try to break it. I would try to go around it. I would try to get allies. I would hire lawyers
00:44:46.620 through the, through the wazoo. I mean, I would just attack it from every single angle in every
00:44:52.340 possible way. And I would try to beat it and challenge them to unbeat it. In other words,
00:44:58.740 in other words, I would find a way to get the money directly or indirectly. And then I would challenge
00:45:03.060 them to get it away from me, make them work for it. Because especially, especially if they get some
00:45:10.040 kind of a co-conservatorship and it's not just her dad, I don't know how hard anybody's going to work
00:45:14.800 to get that money. Would the co-conservatorship sue her? Let's say the, apparently the professional
00:45:22.900 conservators quit. So I think at this point it's only her dad, but if she had succeeded in having
00:45:30.700 a co-conservatorship with professionals, do you think those professionals would have sued Brittany
00:45:37.500 for making a side deal and making some money? I don't think so. They might quit, but I don't think
00:45:46.420 they would sue her for trying to beat the conservatorship that even they don't think is
00:45:51.720 valid because they quit. I would push everything. I would pull out all the stops. If I were Brittany,
00:46:01.820 I would destroy, I would just lay waste to everything and everybody. I wouldn't take any prisoners.
00:46:10.180 I would go on full, full offense and I would not stop. I would destroy the lives of any
00:46:16.400 who was keeping me in the conservatorship. Let me say that again. I would destroy the lives
00:46:22.760 of anybody who kept me in the conservatorship under those conditions, the same conditions that Brittany's
00:46:28.960 under. I would destroy anybody. I would be hiring people to, you know, dig into their lives, whatever's
00:46:35.880 legal. I mean, I wouldn't do anything illegal, but oh my God, I would go hard at those people.
00:46:41.620 I would make her father live the rest of his fucking life in court. I would just sue him for
00:46:48.640 everything. I would just start making up stuff and say, okay, gonna sue you for this. Gonna sue you for
00:46:54.060 this. Gonna sue you for this. Sue you for this. I would just sue the fuck out of him every goddamn day.
00:47:00.540 Sorry. I know you don't like that phrase. And she would have the whole world on her side. I mean,
00:47:08.000 the whole world is on her side. She needs to put the pressure on. And so we're, we're backing her
00:47:12.860 completely, I think. Another fake news. The, there was a story that the U.S. women's soccer team
00:47:21.020 turned their back on some veteran who was playing the harmonica for the, um, the pledge of, not the
00:47:28.600 pledge of allegiance, the national anthem. But it's fake news. Uh, there is video of the teammates,
00:47:35.920 some facing one way and some facing the other, but some of them had turned to face a flag and some of
00:47:42.700 them didn't know. And it had nothing to do with the guy with the harmonica. So that's just fake news,
00:47:48.540 fake news. Um, and that is your live stream for today. Probably the best one you've ever seen in
00:47:59.860 your whole life. We do need, uh, to get back to some really good stories because it seems the summer
00:48:06.600 is not when the good stuff happens. Um, here's a question. Have you considered reading, listening
00:48:15.860 to Norm MacDonald's wonderful novel? Well, I've been asked that a number of times. Now I'm a huge
00:48:21.920 Norm MacDonald fan. Uh, I watch all of his YouTube clips, probably at least once a week. I watch a bunch
00:48:29.700 of, uh, Norm MacDonald clips. Uh, so I would imagine that his book is very good, but I haven't, haven't
00:48:36.780 read it. Um, Dilbert represents, illustrates the Kafka trap. Yeah, we've been hearing a lot about that
00:48:45.260 lately. I forget what it is though. Have a Weinstein on please. Um, I know why you're asking,
00:48:54.560 but it wouldn't give you what you want. And I've said this before. The problem with the world
00:49:02.520 is one expert talking on TV or a podcast. That's not the solution. That's the problem. So I'm not
00:49:10.820 going to be part of the problem by bringing on the one expert and then you hear what they say
00:49:16.480 and it doesn't have to be an expert. It could be just bunded, whatever. Uh, and then you don't have
00:49:21.280 a counterpoint that's useless. It would make things worse, not better. Now, if I could host some kind
00:49:29.260 of content where there were people on opposing sides and I didn't have a time limit and I could
00:49:36.240 interrupt them and say, Hey, what about this? And you didn't answer that question. And you know,
00:49:40.540 how about this data? If I could do that, then any topic where there's controversy would be
00:49:46.200 great. In fact, I'd love to do that. Uh, I need a little better technology set up to be able to do
00:49:51.640 that. So sometime soon, I think I can, I can. Um, yeah, it would be awesome. And I would be
00:50:01.720 pretty good at it if I do say so myself. Uh, that used to be a TV show. Did it? I don't remember a TV
00:50:11.320 show like that. Um, Weinstein spent some time, I'm reading a locals comment here on his podcast last
00:50:21.900 week talking about Scott. Oh, I didn't know that. Um, I hope it was in a useful way. Uh,
00:50:32.860 Jerry Springer. Um, why is your audio so good today? Well, as I said earlier, um, the audio is random
00:50:43.060 on YouTube. So I'm using the same setup that I know works, but some people will experience low
00:50:50.080 audio and some people won't. And it has nothing to do with what I'm doing. Apparently it's a YouTube
00:50:54.640 bug of some sort. Um, no, I've, I threw away the, so the device that required batteries, I will never
00:51:02.480 use again because, uh, I was testing it, but I knew right away that if it required batteries,
00:51:08.560 I was going to run into trouble and I did. So that technology is dead to me. Um, it would be good
00:51:15.840 technology if you're just practicing and recording, because then if you have a bad battery, it's not
00:51:20.680 the worst thing in the world, but you can't do a live stream and depend on your batteries. Um,
00:51:27.080 all right. I love locals broadcast in the background. Um, do you hold the same animosity
00:51:37.920 toward police unions as you do toward teachers unions? Um, no, because they're different.
00:51:47.200 So the question is, do I rail against, uh, police unions the same as I rail against teachers unions?
00:51:54.320 Well, here's the difference. The, the police unions have some issues, right? They're protecting
00:51:59.880 police and maybe overprotecting them, but it is sort of their job. They are, they are a counterbalance
00:52:07.380 against, you know, uh, management abusing the employees. So, you know, it's a, it's a productive
00:52:14.400 kind of a tension, I would say, but I don't see the police being a gigantic problem in general.
00:52:23.400 Um, there are definitely police abuses and maybe the police unions are making it a little easier for
00:52:30.480 that to happen in a variety of ways. That could be an argument, but when you look at the teachers
00:52:35.800 unions, they're destroying generations of kids and they're the biggest form of institutional racism,
00:52:43.580 period, by far, not even close to anything else. So the teachers unions are destroying civilization.
00:52:51.760 The police unions are maybe protecting some bad cops sometimes in some situations. Those are not
00:52:58.320 comparable. One is destroying civilization and one gets a few people killed. That is tragic,
00:53:06.700 but it's not a civilization ending problem. Um, have I seen the John Hopkins war game? No, I haven't.
00:53:19.040 All right. Um, that's it for YouTube. I'm going to talk to the locals crowd for a little bit before I go
00:53:27.320 and I will see you YouTubers tomorrow.