Episode 3085 - The Scott Adams School 02⧸02⧸26
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
175.64429
Summary
Joel Pollack is the new opinion editor at The California Post, where he covers all things California. In this episode, he talks to Erica, Marcella, Sergio, and Erica's husband, Owen Gregorian, about Scott Adams' life and career. Joel also talks about what it's like to be Scott's biographer, friend, confidant, and all-around amazing human being.
Transcript
00:01:04.440
In a moment, I'm going to be introducing a special guest whose book read November already in the top 10 of a lot of its categories on Amazon.
00:01:13.740
I was noticing, and it's only just out today, I believe.
00:01:17.300
But we'll be talking to Joel Pollack in a little bit should my technology work the way I'd like it to.
00:01:24.720
But before that, yeah, before that, we have to do some very, very important stuff that will change your life a little bit.
00:01:38.620
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or gels, there's nine, a candy, a drink or a glass, a festival of any kind.
00:01:52.260
I feel sorry for all the people who did not take a sip just then.
00:02:14.120
Because their relative happiness is now not even close to the people who said, big difference, big difference.
00:02:41.100
We have Joel with us for about 20 minutes, okay?
00:02:56.320
And our special, special guest today is Scott's biographer, friend, confidant, and an all-around amazing human being, Joel Pollack, is joining us.
00:03:12.040
I hope you can hear me and see me and everything.
00:03:14.300
It's really impressive, by the way, that you guys are keeping this going.
00:03:20.140
There are over 2,000 people watching live, which is incredible.
00:03:26.380
And I think that means this is becoming a regular thing.
00:03:36.560
I am the new opinion editor of the brand-new California Post, which just started a week ago today.
00:03:44.640
And I'm in Santa Monica, California right now, although my family and I have temporarily relocated to Washington, D.C. since the Palisades Fire.
00:03:54.020
So if you see me complaining on Sunday about the ice and snow in D.C. and there's Monday of sunrises on the beach, that's why.
00:04:03.920
I am very happy to be here, and I miss everybody on this Rumble stream.
00:04:10.740
I miss everyone who was at the memorial last weekend for Scott.
00:04:17.020
And I've actually never been part of a memorial like that where every stage really added something special.
00:04:28.520
You don't have to feel guilty about watching it at one and a half speed.
00:04:35.280
And I'm just amazed at the connection we all made with each other.
00:04:42.440
And you see people at these events, and unfortunately, they happen too often.
00:04:46.940
But you see people that you've seen at other memorials or you see at conventions.
00:04:51.160
And there are debates that people have online about various topics.
00:04:55.140
And then you see each other at these big events where you realize a lot of those things don't matter.
00:04:59.180
And it's just great to come back together around what we all share in common.
00:05:03.420
I want to show you a couple things that are special.
00:05:06.700
But first, I'm going to talk a little bit about a reframe that I have felt very helpful.
00:05:11.180
Because as I thought about what I would say today, I thought of so many different things I could say about Scott, about what I'm doing on the biography, about what I'm learning, about Scott's lessons in my own life.
00:05:24.340
But I decided to narrow it down for this episode to one reframe.
00:05:29.280
And maybe if I'm invited back, I could do more reframes or more lessons in the future.
00:05:34.240
But these things are occurring to me all the time.
00:05:37.340
And so I'm going to get into that reframe in a minute.
00:05:40.340
But let me just show you a couple of things that are interesting.
00:05:57.840
I had an incredibly difficult time when I was at college writing my senior thesis because I would stare at the blank page for days on end and think of all the things I needed to say.
00:06:12.540
My thesis advisor said, well, make an outline and then just write point by point to the outline.
00:06:26.780
And I just decided I never wanted to repeat that again.
00:06:31.440
And one of them is called the visual block method, which I can explain another time.
00:06:36.180
You'll see a little bit of it here in what I'm about to show you.
00:06:38.780
But one of the other things I started doing was writing longhand.
00:06:45.400
But I find that producing a physical product, pen on paper, ink on paper, motivates you to keep writing.
00:06:52.800
And it doesn't matter if what you write is nonsensical, out of order, disorganized.
00:06:59.560
When you write on paper, you know you're going to have to come back and do another draft.
00:07:09.400
And you discover what needs to be said in the course of writing.
00:07:12.380
So you know you're going to come back and fix it.
00:07:15.940
And it keeps you going from one page to the next, one day to the next.
00:07:19.580
So this is my longhand so far of Scott's biography.
00:07:24.600
Now, if you can't read any of it, don't worry about that.
00:07:30.220
You can see a little bit of my visual block method because I've got each page divided into
00:07:35.480
paragraphs or four lines each on this particular notebook.
00:07:42.160
I write according to blocks that I create on the page.
00:07:46.540
And that's great because it motivates you to fill the block.
00:07:48.860
If you don't know what you're saying, you fill the block.
00:07:51.380
If you have too much to say, you trim it to fill the block.
00:07:53.840
And it just keeps you going from one idea to the next.
00:07:56.320
So this is the early draft of Scott's biography that I'm working on.
00:08:06.400
But I'm at the point in the draft where I've worked through Scott's early life.
00:08:12.160
And his career in banking in the Bay Area, moving on to Dilbert, and then moving on to
00:08:19.180
other businesses that he started, like his restaurants, which he talks about in some of
00:08:23.020
his books and he spoke about often in his live stream, and other ventures that he did.
00:08:28.260
And now I'm moving into some of Scott's theological views, which I think are very important to some of
00:08:35.940
So this, of course, is Scott's famous book, God's Debris, which I have with me here.
00:08:41.980
And I'm going to go through what Scott said, why he said it, where these ideas might have
00:08:49.920
come from in his own life, and how he interpreted them later as he developed his own theories
00:08:55.620
of managing the reality and the simulation that we live in.
00:09:03.380
It's a little bit every day, I probably devote one hour to it a day, I have an incredible
00:09:08.920
amount of work to do with the California Post, I've got four kids who I love, I've got a beautiful
00:09:14.340
wife, and I'm constantly cleaning up and doing other sorts of household chores.
00:09:20.480
So there's a lot to balance, the good things and the difficult things.
00:09:24.560
And I think if you can find an hour a day to focus on a creative project, you can really
00:09:30.020
One of the best lessons I learned about creativity was from a book called The Artist's Way by Julia
00:09:38.620
But when you get into the practice of writing early in the morning, and you get into the
00:09:44.040
mentality of, I just need to do a little bit every day to move it forward.
00:09:48.100
Eventually, you become amazed at what large things you can actually accomplish.
00:09:51.900
I think about Scott often in this context, because he would say, you need to schedule time to
00:09:57.220
And even if all you do is drive to the gym parking lot and sit there and then go home,
00:10:02.960
No, you didn't do exercise, but you still went to the gym.
00:10:05.720
And once you get yourself in the habit of doing it, eventually it becomes something bigger,
00:10:12.000
And that's a lesson you can apply to a lot of other things in life.
00:10:17.040
What I want to talk about in terms of the reframe has a little bit to do with what I mentioned
00:10:26.080
before about the challenges of managing workload and work-life balance and all of that.
00:10:31.440
When I think of Scott's lessons, Scott taught us how to apply different filters to reality.
00:10:40.200
I've got CNN on on my TV here in the hotel room, and their filter is completely different
00:10:45.840
The ICE incidents, for example, CNN sees it through a Nazi fascism filter, that this is
00:10:56.040
We have the secret police arriving in communities and dragging people away and demanding to see
00:11:00.920
their papers and taking children and all kinds of things.
00:11:07.020
And they allow a little bit of diversity around that viewpoint.
00:11:10.460
But essentially, you're forced to talk within that narrative.
00:11:15.840
If you go to Fox News, the narrative is very different.
00:11:19.520
It is a filter of fulfilling campaign promises, securing the border, making America safe.
00:11:24.960
And there, you can talk about the dramatic drop in crime since the ICE enforcement started,
00:11:32.740
It's not something that one mayor is doing or one governor.
00:11:35.500
It really is about the national policy of rolling out ICE.
00:11:44.760
And this is all building up toward the midterm elections.
00:11:47.460
And as Scott often noted, traditionally, the party out of power does better in midterm.
00:11:53.240
So you'd expect Democrats to do well in the midterm elections, unless something big happens
00:11:58.220
But we all have different filters, which is the point of this little digression into the
00:12:08.560
So if you want to live in the world where we're governed by a Nazi regime, and you have to
00:12:14.560
be afraid everywhere you go, you can live in that world.
00:12:17.500
However, that world might not correspond to reality.
00:12:20.520
And you might consider a more productive filter, which is the other side's filter, which is the
00:12:25.620
law enforcement filter, that if you obey the law, things will generally go pretty well with you.
00:12:29.940
Or you can take a completely different filter, which is that I don't have any power as an individual
00:12:35.640
citizen to have any impact whatsoever on these things.
00:12:41.480
So I'm going to adapt a completely different filter that focuses on what I can do today.
00:12:47.780
I don't have to get directed into this political conversation.
00:12:58.380
But the point is, choose a filter that helps you, helps you achieve something.
00:13:02.880
The best filter isn't necessarily the one that corresponds to the facts.
00:13:07.160
It's the one that helps you get where you're going.
00:13:09.160
And I've really struggled in recent days with the workload that I have.
00:13:17.260
But unlike where I worked for 15 years, Breitbart News, the California Post is not just online.
00:13:29.460
When you work in the online world, you give yourself a little leeway.
00:13:33.420
But in the print world, things have to happen at a certain time.
00:13:42.340
And that means that for about five or six hours of the working day, you are stressed out beyond belief.
00:13:50.960
But in about 15 minutes, my time is no longer my own.
00:13:55.080
And I am thrust headlong into this storm of news and articles and changes and edits and fixes and meetings and checking back in and social media.
00:14:10.020
And yesterday, I work on Sundays because I have to prepare the Monday paper.
00:14:14.840
Yesterday, I was trying to manage all that while at the same time also being a good parent.
00:14:20.840
So I had my son's indoor baseball practice in the middle of absolutely frozen in Washington, D.C.
00:14:31.800
That was about a 40-minute trip from our house.
00:14:35.840
And then I had my daughter's rock and roll concert.
00:14:41.660
So we had to come back from baseball practice in time to see my daughter perform Nirvana.
00:14:48.180
It was also her birthday, so I did not want to miss her concert on her birthday.
00:14:53.160
And in the midst of all that, I'm trying to work.
00:14:56.820
And that would be a challenge even if I lived in L.A.
00:15:03.680
If I were in L.A., if we all lived in L.A., and we will again one day soon, hopefully.
00:15:08.660
But if we were all in one place, I'd still be managing that challenge because I have children.
00:15:19.160
So I would have had that really tough balance to strike.
00:15:26.780
And it wasn't as if yesterday was extraordinary in any other real way.
00:15:31.600
Because even though my daughter had this concert, it's not like Sunday is a free day.
00:15:35.780
She also has rehearsals on Sunday when she doesn't have a concert.
00:15:43.300
And we do different things with different kids.
00:15:46.160
We don't really have a choice of leaving all the kids with one person or another, except my wife is very indulgent because she lets me do this bi-coastal thing.
00:15:59.120
So I often had the children to watch, although we had fewer of them.
00:16:10.360
And the thoughts you have are things like, this is why Americans don't have kids.
00:16:16.600
It's incredibly difficult to balance all these things.
00:16:25.660
But you can see why people on the outside looking in might think, this is not really something I can afford to do or want to do.
00:16:31.000
And you really just can pull yourself into a complete funk.
00:16:35.340
And it happens every single day because you have child care responsibilities, family responsibilities every day.
00:16:41.420
And if it's not the children, it's the groceries.
00:16:46.340
Sometimes it's something unexpected, an illness or, God forbid, a car accident.
00:16:50.100
These things happen, and you have to manage them alongside all the other things you have to do.
00:16:55.260
So I remembered an important thought that I had a few years ago, and I think it's a reframe.
00:17:02.660
And Scott didn't use this one, but I think this thought falls into the category of Scott Adams reframe type of ideas.
00:17:12.620
And that is that sometimes managing feels like not managing.
00:17:18.240
That is to say, you can be managing a situation, and you feel like you're not managing it, like everything's out of control.
00:17:33.220
But you come to the end of the day, and you look back at the end of the day, and actually, you finished all your work.
00:17:39.320
Your kids all got to their events on time, maybe a minute or two late here and there.
00:17:43.120
But everybody's safe, everybody got dinner, and eventually, everybody's in bed.
00:17:48.800
And wow, I can't believe things are calm right now as I'm heading to bed, turning in for the night.
00:17:58.580
And I think it's just important to remember that sometimes when we feel that way, that's not the reality.
00:18:03.900
That feeling of helplessness, of frustration and stress isn't necessarily a sign that you're failing.
00:18:12.420
It's part of the feeling you're going to have when you're managing many different things.
00:18:19.060
And we don't live in a simple time where we manage only one thing at a time.
00:18:26.580
In fact, maybe human beings never lived there, even before technology and all the different things that captivate our attention and compete for our time.
00:18:35.600
Even before all that, people had so many things to do, maybe more things to do.
00:18:39.200
When you think about the fact they didn't have labor-saving technology, doing the laundry took all day.
00:18:45.280
So this is something we've had to do for a long time.
00:18:52.340
Number one, it is important to take a break once in a while.
00:18:55.240
So I have the Sabbath on Saturday for religious reasons.
00:19:03.120
But in addition to that, when you're in the thick of it, don't panic if it doesn't feel right.
00:19:09.880
Because managing sometimes feels like not managing.
00:19:14.300
And when you think about that reframe, it really helps you understand that what you're doing could be objectively right and objectively successful,
00:19:24.480
even if what you're feeling subjectively doesn't feel that way.
00:19:27.540
Now, there are some situations where that feeling of being out of control is something you want to pay attention to.
00:19:33.240
Maybe you are doing too much, or maybe things are too difficult, or maybe you need to change the system you use to run your day,
00:19:39.180
or maybe you need to change jobs, or you need to figure out another arrangement.
00:19:44.500
But you're going to have that signal even when you're succeeding.
00:19:47.780
And that's especially true of parents with kids.
00:19:51.600
Kids are wonderful, but they also do random things at random times.
00:19:58.900
You can't control when a kid gets hurt, or a teenager comes home in a bad mood, or they get a bad grade at school, or whatever it is.
00:20:07.980
You have to accept that certain things are beyond your control.
00:20:11.360
And so you're going to feel out of control a lot of the time.
00:20:15.260
There's a thought that I have now as I'm telling you this.
00:20:18.660
There's this great movie with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, the late Diane Keaton, Parenthood.
00:20:24.840
A lot of other great actors in the movie as well.
00:20:27.180
But there's a scene where Steve Martin argues about whether the carnival ride that's best is the roller coaster or the merry-go-round.
00:20:40.980
The merry-go-round just goes in one direction, and you might get a little dizzy.
00:20:44.220
It's a little boring, but it's always the same.
00:20:46.960
And he decides that the merry-go-round is better.
00:20:49.980
He's just so stressed out, so many kids, so many challenges.
00:20:53.700
And there's a scene later in the movie where his kid starts destroying the school play on stage.
00:21:00.340
And the camera starts rolling as if he's on a roller coaster.
00:21:05.020
And eventually, instead of looking around in absolute horror at the destruction his child is causing on stage and terrified of where this roller coaster is taking him, he starts laughing and enjoying the ride.
00:21:18.140
And I think that's the transition that we have to try to make.
00:21:27.300
But I think that reframe is just one to keep in mind.
00:21:29.820
It has helped me in the past that sometimes when you are managing, it feels like you're not.
00:21:39.180
And I think a lot of us are feeling that way, too.
00:21:46.720
I swear I give you guys so much credit because I can't imagine adding another one human life to take care of.
00:22:00.360
And we are so grateful that in this crazy schedule, you took time to be here with us today.
00:22:10.200
We want you to come back anytime, all the time.
00:22:14.860
And I also want to say thank you so much again for your beautiful remarks at Scott's service.
00:22:21.560
If anyone still hasn't seen it, I encourage you.
00:22:25.000
And, Joel, you took us on such a visual journey with your words.
00:22:32.420
And you are just an incredible writer and thoughtful person.
00:22:38.960
But you just took us on this journey with the really good news at the end.
00:22:44.700
And I love you so much for that and for being such a great friend to Scott.
00:22:50.780
But, like, I just I have so much respect and love for you.
00:22:55.180
You guys, do you want to say anything to Joel before we let him go?
00:23:01.040
I just wanted to thank you, Joel, for taking all the time.
00:23:04.320
I mean, it sounds like California Post is great.
00:23:09.060
But it's going to need a lot of your time as a Californian.
00:23:15.520
I mean, it's like I work in downtown L.A. at times, and it's like worse than a third world country.
00:23:26.380
So, you know, if anything, you know, I know that it's a lot of sacrifice for you and your family.
00:23:32.380
But truly know that you're making it different.
00:23:47.040
What is your percentage, your slaughter meter percentage for the midterms?
00:23:54.080
And I don't know who's going to slaughter who, but what is your?
00:23:58.860
I would say right now there's a 75 percent chance that Republicans get slaughtered in the midterms.
00:24:05.860
But that doesn't mean it's going to happen that way.
00:24:12.000
And I think there are going to be some important changes in California.
00:24:14.400
But I think, look, the party that's out of power is always much more motivated to vote.
00:24:18.520
It doesn't really even matter what the issues are.
00:24:20.300
I mean, the issues can be completely made up nonsense.
00:24:23.160
But if people have a sense that they don't control anything in government, they don't control their own lives, and they get frightened and told you have to go to the polls to change that, then they go.
00:24:35.820
But I've just lived through so many of these cycles now that you laugh at the reasons people give for what they're doing.
00:24:42.860
I mean, take the phrase drain the swamp, for example.
00:24:51.420
They swept to power in Congress by promising to drain the swamp.
00:25:01.500
As soon as they got power, the swamp was bigger and badder than ever before.
00:25:06.880
And, you know, people just vote based on things that, as Scott would say, are often a fake because they cite reasons.
00:25:16.880
But if you actually ask someone who's really opposed to ICE, and you don't have to agree with everything ICE is doing.
00:25:20.860
But if you ask someone, well, we have borders, right?
00:25:25.540
So how do you have a secure border if you can't patrol the border?
00:25:28.780
And also, if you can't enforce immigration laws for people who overstay their visas or aren't here legally, there really is no substitute.
00:25:35.940
You need to have some kind of law enforcement that does it.
00:25:38.600
You might not, again, you might not like the way ICE is doing it.
00:25:42.280
But the idea of abolishing ICE, which is motivating so many people right now, is just crazy.
00:25:49.580
And if you point to one Trump accomplishment, I mean, if you don't believe he accomplished anything else, one massive Trump accomplishment is he closed the border.
00:25:59.860
So are you now telling voters you're going to open it up again?
00:26:04.260
I think people want a legal immigration system that works, and they want some humane approaches to people who have been here for a long time, and maybe we can integrate people into our society.
00:26:15.320
But do you really want to open up the border again to millions of people coming from all over the world?
00:26:19.880
We don't know who or why or what and crime going up and everything.
00:26:22.980
Nobody would logically say that, but they're all marching to this tune.
00:26:27.540
And, again, it's not the only time it's happened.
00:26:32.560
In 2014, Republicans took the Senate unexpectedly.
00:26:40.100
But the Ebola outbreak, I don't know if you guys remember the Ebola thing.
00:26:45.700
I wasn't an Obama fan, but I sort of understood why he was frustrated, because the Ebola thing was hyped so far beyond what it actually was.
00:26:53.600
It became a fake because people were going to vote because Obama didn't stop Ebola.
00:26:57.540
But, you know, there were like a handful of cases, and most people survived.
00:27:01.860
But it's just one of those things that, you know, people attach their motivation to something else.
00:27:06.400
I think the party out of power is always much more motivated.
00:27:10.720
They want to get control back, and they don't always know what to do when they get it.
00:27:23.120
I went through a lot of the same experiences with my kids.
00:27:36.040
So listen, we're going to talk more news in a minute.
00:27:40.020
And I'm going to just play something for you quick.
00:27:43.240
Let me just turn this light off because it's bright.
00:27:45.680
And I'll post it after the show so you guys can all have it.
00:27:49.900
But thank you to anyone who did send some clips.
00:27:54.600
And Jay Plemons, thank you for making this for us.
00:27:57.820
But you guys, I think you're going to love this.
00:28:07.260
I've been laughing for 10 minutes straight since I saw this.
00:28:16.760
Three, viewers might be more inclined to trust his statements.
00:28:30.380
Conversely, if he has been wrong before or shown bias, viewers might question his claims.
00:29:07.940
This frequency would make his assertion seem less credible.
00:29:12.980
Or might suggest that he is part of a broader misinformation.
00:29:16.600
The truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, and the truth.
00:29:20.500
From a storytelling perspective, whether George is portrayed as a credible newscaster or as someone engaged in gaslighting.
00:29:53.500
and i i literally cry every time i watch it like tears just shoot out of my eyes against my glasses
00:30:07.660
nothing better it was good that was awesome i think jay is the bomb you guys if you're not
00:30:17.940
following jay plemons please do and if you guys are hearing this could you drop jay's name in the
00:30:25.040
chat for everybody to follow he's at jay plemons and he's just so good to us and um i needed that
00:30:33.120
laugh that could we could probably have one that's like 25 minutes long with all of the laughing but
00:30:37.500
that was amazing oh all right so i'm gonna just um say let's go with the news owen and um i know
00:30:47.240
you dug up a bunch of great stories all right we'll dive in um at sergio's request i think i'm
00:30:54.220
going to start out with the grammys uh trump posted a truth social about that so i'm just going to read
00:30:59.280
it to you um here's donald trump's post the grammy awards are the worst virtually unwatchable cbs is
00:31:08.020
lucky not to have this garbage litter their airways any longer the host trevor noah whoever he may be
00:31:13.800
is almost as bad as jimmy kimmel at the low ratings academy awards noah said incorrectly about me that
00:31:21.960
donald trump and bill clinton spent time on epstein island wrong i can't speak for bill but i have never
00:31:27.880
been to epstein island nor anywhere close and until tonight's false and defamatory statement have never
00:31:32.820
been accused of being there not even by the fake news media noah a total loser better get his facts
00:31:39.320
straight and get them straight fast it looks like i'll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor pathetic
00:31:44.940
talentless dope of an emcee and suing him for plenty of dollars ask little george slopodopoulos
00:31:51.900
and others how that all worked out also ask cbs get ready noah i'm gonna have some fun with you
00:31:59.360
president djt there you go sergio that was amazing thank you so much i appreciate it no one writes
00:32:09.100
like that man i think scott would have had a big laugh about that um oh yeah yeah so i i didn't watch
00:32:17.600
the grammys i don't know about you but i had no interest at all i like um i like when he writes um
00:32:23.940
the the capitalizes wars but then what really made me laugh is he says noah said incorrectly about me
00:32:33.080
that donald trump and bill clinton spent time on epstein island and then he writes wrong
00:32:38.740
because he is so visual you know and uh so expressive what what did scott say his language was i forget
00:32:50.000
he had a word for it um you mean like a linguistic kill shot no he called the the the language that
00:33:01.340
the the trump used um visual visual but he had a word for it i i forget anyone in the chat let us know
00:33:11.820
if you remember i'm looking at now i can see all the comments now erica really well i can see youtube now
00:33:18.740
uh oh good everything yes i can see i have a big screen i see uh sofia john durham big morrow
00:33:27.200
voici voici that's oh voici he's he's he god would say that that trump wrote voici like you could
00:33:37.660
feel it and hear it when you're reading it for sure that's a good point because even if um
00:33:43.780
we were talking about if uh owen should do you know the trump voice or just say it he doesn't need
00:33:50.520
to do the accent because the the the writing itself is voici that's true yes we could so i'm glad you
00:33:58.740
did your own owen oh we would want owen to do a little bit of a trump maybe i'll work on it i'm not
00:34:06.180
very good at it right now but i i can practice um all right so go into a little bit of science um
00:34:12.480
there's a story about used concrete lasting up to 100 years in new buildings so apparently you're
00:34:17.320
going to start seeing used concrete blocks um it says that old concrete slabs and new buildings can
00:34:23.520
be used for 50 to 100 more years it'll cut emissions and waste and construction
00:34:27.080
um apparently they analyze buildings in sweden and finland with computer simulations with simulated
00:34:34.840
threats um and it says their lifespan was 50 to 100 years um i think this is based on having some
00:34:43.860
kind of silicone-based coating to cut corrosion up to 70 percent so it sounds like they're trying to
00:34:49.400
reuse their their cement and their concrete um not sure if i'd really want to get used concrete in my
00:34:55.160
building but i guess it's a good thing um so there's there's some science for you um
00:35:03.640
apparently on the ai front or the data center front um meta is spending six million dollars on tv ads
00:35:12.840
that is claiming that data centers bring jobs and they use an example of altoona iowa amazon's running
00:35:19.160
similar ads in virginia saying data centers connect us to the world apparently it's this big blitz of
00:35:24.120
lobbying and um advertising to try and convince everyone that data centers are good for you
00:35:30.280
so um there's a quote one executive said if we're going to spend tens of billion dollars
00:35:35.240
this year on capital projects we probably should spend tens of millions of dollars on messaging
00:35:40.760
and this is also probably in response to the fact that over two dozen projects have been
00:35:44.680
blocked or delayed this month um they're also targeting lawmakers with their messaging
00:35:50.680
trump had come out already and said that big tech needs to pay their own way um and then someone
00:35:57.560
named diane poppins said warned uh what i very much worry about with this ad campaign is localities
00:36:02.680
committing to this industry and then saying in 10 years what have we done to ourselves so
00:36:08.120
uh if you didn't notice the psyop it's coming soon to a an outlet near you that big tech is going to try
00:36:13.560
and convince you you should have more data centers in your backyard so look out for that so owen what
00:36:19.080
does that mean a data center what like what is it it well it's a it's basically a big building with
00:36:24.920
a bunch of racks of computers in them but what it means is that it would be using a ton of power
00:36:31.720
right and um you know i've been in these data centers i mean it's really just like an empty office
00:36:37.960
building kind of thing like a big warehouse looking type of building but some of these are getting
00:36:42.280
really big like many football field size buildings and if you can just imagine a building that size
00:36:50.040
with computers stacked floor to ceiling every inch they could fit in there um you know it's using a
00:36:56.040
ton of power a ton of heating and cooling really cooling and um it just it's a huge resource drain and
00:37:03.000
and yes it does require some jobs for people to run the data center but not that many jobs frankly
00:37:09.480
because most of the time the computers don't break and they just run 24 hours a day and it doesn't
00:37:14.840
really take a lot of um jobs i mean there'd be some jobs to build them and i think a lot of electricians
00:37:21.880
and plumbers especially are making bank right now building out data centers but once they're built
00:37:27.240
they pretty much just run for years and they don't really require a lot of people but data centers i've
00:37:31.320
been in were mostly empty they add cubicles and areas for people to work but those days are long
00:37:37.000
gone um for the most part you might have a few people for security and maybe a few people to just
00:37:43.160
you know take out a component when it breaks and swap in another component to replace it
00:37:47.160
but other than that it really doesn't require a lot of people so they're trying to convince you
00:37:51.320
it's going to create a bunch of jobs and it will create some jobs but probably not very many
00:37:55.320
and probably not even enough to account for all the energy usage that they're going to have so if
00:37:59.320
your electricity bill goes up to double or triple which i think is happening in some places
00:38:05.000
um it's it's not going to make your life better to say oh you know a couple people got a job
00:38:09.880
right so that's that's what's going on oh and so they're reframing the data centers as useful
00:38:16.920
as um maybe a source of a heat or something like that like your home i don't even think they're
00:38:23.000
reframing the heat is good thing i think they're just saying it's going to give more jobs to the area
00:38:27.160
and it's going to connect you to the world so you're going to get all the benefits from it but
00:38:31.480
i i don't know that i buy most of that i mean i think most of these things are built out for ai now
00:38:37.160
and um you know to me it's questionable what benefit the local citizens are going to get out of that you
00:38:45.000
know it's usually going to be people all over the world and there are there is a free market around
00:38:49.800
this too i mean like india apparently i think i posted a story about this as well they're saying
00:38:55.640
they're not going to charge any taxes to data centers that are built out in india um so if you
00:39:01.560
build an ai data center in india you're going to get free tax you know like tax-free operations for
00:39:06.840
some number of years um so there are other countries that are trying to get this and i'm sure from trump's
00:39:12.040
perspective he'd rather have it all happening here but um you know again i just i think the the equation
00:39:18.440
looks very different when you're talking about your local area yeah so but it looks like the psyop is
00:39:26.040
on to convince you that these are a good thing um all right now there's uh on the science uh studies
00:39:33.400
fronts there's a new tool that apparently reveals that 10 of cancer papers are potentially fraudulent from
00:39:41.480
paper mills um they apparently had a machine learning tool that flagged 10 of 2.6 million
00:39:48.360
cancer papers um and they were looking for specific textual patterns in retracted papers to try and
00:39:54.920
recognize similar papers and they said they have 91 accuracy in identifying these suspicious papers
00:40:01.160
and this is a big rise that the suspicious papers were like one percent in the early 2000s and now
00:40:07.720
they're 16.4 so on top of the fact that maybe half of all studies can't be replicated
00:40:13.880
um it looks to me that now like they're saying there's probably 16.4 percent that are just straight
00:40:19.480
up fraudulent um and you know it includes things about gastric cancer liver cancer bone cancer lung
00:40:26.040
cancer uh and the risk here is that it's skewing trials and it's skewing patient care that these
00:40:31.960
things might convince doctors to act differently um and it might not be accurate so um that's fun
00:40:39.240
but it does look like they're at least finding them so that's a good thing that they're coming up
00:40:45.880
with learning tools well i think scott would probably start with all data is fake and all
00:40:52.440
data that matters is fake and i think he'd probably you know say you can't really trust any of this stuff
00:40:59.080
and um i don't know he wouldn't i don't think he'd be surprised by it at all he probably would
00:41:04.920
have also said just ask scott what do you think i think he'd say who who ran the study follow the
00:41:13.400
money you know what was the motive that kind of a thing yeah i mean it'd be interesting to know the
00:41:20.680
business model behind a lot of this stuff i think part of it is just people beefing up their own
00:41:24.920
credentials because i think you know you do have this publisher parish thing that you have to to keep
00:41:30.600
your job as a researcher you have to put out studies and so i think the more studies you put
00:41:34.840
out and the more of those are cited by other studies the more status you get in the scientific
00:41:40.120
community and so you might get promoted or you might get more grants or you might get more funding
00:41:45.480
and so i think that's the business model behind it is that every study says hey we need to also study
00:41:50.920
this other thing that's related to this and so it's basically setting you up to ask for another grant
00:41:55.880
and so i think that it's really you know probably using ai in many cases but these paper mills are
00:42:03.800
just churning out papers and i think they're even selling them to scientists that don't want to write
00:42:07.720
them themselves for some reason and it's a bunch of fraud but um i think that's is that going to change
00:42:16.200
so you think it's going to change or there's no momentum towards any revolution on that because i
00:42:22.360
haven't seen anybody doing anything about it just you know i know we've been talking about it for a
00:42:26.840
while but is there anything being done about it just like a doge for university i don't know i mean
00:42:34.360
you know the the article does say they're going to pilot the tool as a pre-peer review tool so they're
00:42:40.680
going to maybe have a filter that doesn't accept papers that look really suspicious so that may improve
00:42:46.200
things but um i don't expect the trend to stop because i think it is very attractive to a lot
00:42:52.920
of scientists to say if i can get you know twice as many papers published then i might get twice as
00:42:58.360
much money and there's a whole lot of money behind all this stuff so follow the money would tell you
00:43:02.840
that this is going to continue and i think ai is very capable of generating paper it probably can be
00:43:11.960
done ethically where you actually do the study and you get the data set and then you just tell ai
00:43:16.440
write a study based on this or write write the text that goes with this um or at least create
00:43:21.640
a first draft and then i'm going to review it make sure it's all right i'm going to make edits and stuff
00:43:26.040
and i i could buy the argument that that might raise your productivity and not necessarily sacrifice
00:43:32.040
the science but i also think in many cases the ai could get it wrong and it is risky thing to do and
00:43:36.840
it's probably also very easily for a scientist to just be lazy and say looks good to me and not
00:43:42.360
really check it very closely and i think the whole process is flawed in the peer review process too and
00:43:47.880
there's been articles about that that i posted in the past where they you know they don't even get
00:43:53.400
access to the data set most of the time so you don't even have the data itself to scrutinize you're just
00:43:59.720
scrutinizing that person's analysis of the data which is the stuff you read when you read the study and
00:44:05.320
so that really limits what a peer review process can do because if the data looks wrong you know if
00:44:11.240
it looks fake they're not even going to be able to tell that they're only going to be able to tell
00:44:15.240
you know does your analysis of it look right or does it look like you made it up or something it's
00:44:20.840
a lot harder to do that but i think this machine learning tool might be a step in the right direction
00:44:26.280
but i think um you know to me there probably needs to be a more rigorous overhaul of the whole process
00:44:32.600
and i think more transparency rules that you probably shouldn't have to disclose your data
00:44:37.960
when you're doing peer review at least but probably in my mind you should probably also disclose it
00:44:43.560
when you publish the study so that other people who are replicated can also see the data i don't really
00:44:48.200
see why you would hide it unless you have something to hide right all right so there's always something
00:44:56.200
to hide more fraud and you know scott might also just say whenever there's a lot of money and
00:45:00.680
there's a lot of people involved there's going to be fraud hey owen are you getting away from your
00:45:05.480
microphone because there was uh some comments that maybe the the volume was coming down uh i've got a
00:45:11.240
headset on so no i don't think that's good now perfect now i'll try and stay still um so then we also
00:45:18.680
have a one-way heat diode that's been invented that will help batteries survive extreme operating conditions
00:45:23.720
so it looks like it's a way where this diode will let heat go one direction but not the other
00:45:28.760
direction and it seems there's claiming this is something no one's ever done before so i'm not
00:45:33.080
sure exactly what this diode is or how it works but maybe if there's someone who understands electronics
00:45:37.960
better than me i think i understand what a diode is in concept that it's like one of those little
00:45:42.840
electronic components that you make circuit boards out of but um you know i think it is something that
00:45:49.720
apparently will transfer the heat in one direction but block it going the other way
00:45:54.760
and i think that's meant to be you know it might let your iphone operate when it's hot outside or
00:46:00.840
um obviously it also has potential applications to evs or satellites or ai data centers so that that
00:46:08.920
seems kind of cool to me i mean yeah but is this is this another thing that's going to have to be mined
00:46:14.200
by you know or like i'm wondering what the diode is made of like what it actually is maybe somebody
00:46:20.520
knows yeah i don't have the details on that i can look it up maybe real quick but it's a a diode is a
00:46:26.520
one-way valve a one-wave uh one-way electronic valve basically so it only allows um current one polarity to
00:46:34.680
go one direction yeah like uh but if if it's about heat it's about keeping that heat you know retained i guess
00:46:44.760
yeah and i'm dying andy andy says hello uyghurs yes i know that's what i'm wondering like are
00:46:50.680
people gonna have to mine like you know what's gonna happen i just i like the idea of making
00:46:55.000
batteries last longer and be more efficient since that's such a crazy process itself but it's possible
00:47:00.520
i mean the other thing i'll point out and this of course is buried at the end of the article is that
00:47:04.360
this has only been demonstrated theoretically so they haven't actually done the experiments to see if it
00:47:09.240
works and um so it's at the very early stages so i don't know if this is going to be real just like
00:47:14.920
a lot of these studies where it's kind of an early thing that has been simulated essentially but um
00:47:21.240
we'll have to see if it really works and whether it actually does what they say it is doing and it
00:47:26.040
doesn't cover exactly what materials it's using so i don't know if it's going to have a mining impact
00:47:30.760
or not but um you know i think what scott might say about this is like you know maybe this thing
00:47:36.040
will be nothing maybe it'll be something but you know we're seeing battery technology innovations
00:47:41.560
all the time and so i think we are going to see this golden age of batteries that scott has been
00:47:45.960
predicting so you know stay tuned for that and we'll see how this works i mean cooling is one of the
00:47:52.280
the problems that you have to solve with batteries and you know evs sometimes catch fire and ai data
00:48:00.520
centers as i we just talked about have big heat issues so you know if this can help with that then
00:48:05.880
it might actually be a really cool thing so okay we shall see um all right getting into uh bio labs
00:48:15.480
apparently there's been raids in las vegas in california relating to bio labs um this latest story is
00:48:21.800
about las vegas where the fbi and the metro police raided a suspected illegal bio lab in las vegas
00:48:27.800
on saturday um it looks like it might be linked to another one that's in california that had hiv and
00:48:33.800
covid and ebola to call back to ebola um it looks like it the fresno lab was found in 2022 and had
00:48:42.760
cova tests pregnancy tests and 35 freezers with bodily fluids and genetically engineered mice
00:48:47.560
um they it doesn't look like they know exactly what was in the las vegas one yet but they just
00:48:52.680
raided it and it looks like the llc that's tied to this is part of a federal case against chinese
00:48:58.440
citizens for misbranded devices so that's fun yeah what could be wrong with an illegal bio lab
00:49:07.800
yeah i mean i don't know what's going on with that and i don't know why they're doing it here
00:49:10.680
that's the weirdest thing to me like you know we had all these bio labs that we heard about in ukraine and
00:49:15.000
other places in china and um i i don't really understand why someone would come to the united
00:49:20.200
states and try and do this stuff but it is scary to me because you know again these things need to
00:49:24.440
be very carefully controlled there if you have these dangerous things you got to have all these
00:49:28.680
safeguards in place to prevent it from getting out and i think these illegal ones clearly would not
00:49:33.800
have all those safeguards so well and you know there's 10 more we don't know about yeah yeah so
00:49:40.040
there's your nightmare for today um and we've got all the uh anti-ice activism going on people are
00:49:50.200
clashing with law enforcement um the the gop candidate apparently that's running to replace
00:49:57.880
waltz um his name is patrick knight he was slamming the sanctuary policies and saying the law is not a
00:50:04.120
buffet table where you just pick and choose which laws you're going to enforce today and which laws you're
00:50:07.720
going to ignore that the rule of law matters knight is a marine vet and an ex-ceo um he's running to
00:50:15.240
succeed waltz amid all this fraud scandal and you know billions of dollars that have been flowing to
00:50:20.360
these fraudulent places um and knight is calling for an investigation um the violence with ice he says
00:50:30.760
the loss of any life is tragic and there should be a full and transparent investigation with both the
00:50:34.600
state and federal government participating and let the facts drive the accountability and so he seems
00:50:39.240
like a reasonable guy he seems like he's saying the right things his plan is focused around the
00:50:43.320
economy affordability education rule of law and efficient government i i'm not sure that he really
00:50:48.840
has a chance in minnesota but it does seem like he's got the right platform so yeah well um so minnesota
00:50:56.760
needs a knight right they need like a knight in shining armor so let's say i hope people um like him and i
00:51:04.520
hope there's no dodgy stuff i mean how much more dodgy can you get with politicians there but hopefully um
00:51:12.440
hopefully minnesotans just want to have some law and order and have their hard-earned money put back in
00:51:18.600
their bank yeah and we've got more and you know anti-ice activism going on apparently there's 34 000
00:51:26.520
minnesotans that volunteered as ice watchers since the renee good shooting um they're using signal to
00:51:32.920
track them tom hellman is saying his operations are going to continue and justice is coming for the
00:51:37.960
agitators um there was an incident where some of these agitators attacked an la journalist and told
00:51:45.320
live streamers to look the other way where they turned their cameras away while they were attacking
00:51:49.560
this guy um and the lapd did intervene in this riot essentially where they this is the same one i posted
00:51:59.080
a story yesterday about someone who used a slingshot to try and fire some kind of metal at the ice
00:52:04.600
officers um and they set a dumpster on fire which is a nice metaphor um and they had anti-ice graffiti um
00:52:13.480
um so yeah there's more of that going on i think we'll probably see a lot more of that
00:52:19.160
um and then on the funding side um there's a story that apparently these anti-ice activists got 3.3
00:52:26.200
million dollars from a soros-backed charity uh the headwaters foundations for justice gave 3.3 million to
00:52:33.160
them since 2014 to 16 different anti-ice groups um and they list a bunch of the groups um you know
00:52:42.120
the the headwaters group quote is what we are seeing in the streets of minneapolis and across
00:52:47.800
minnesota right now is a fight for collective liberation in real time so a nice communist
00:52:52.760
message we got going there um so yeah we've got a lot of funding coming from soros and other people
00:52:59.880
to these groups and it's all organized as i think we've all seen um erica can you invite soros as a
00:53:08.520
guest can you invite oh yeah totally no problem and then to round this out um there's an a long
00:53:15.640
beach california mayoral candidate who just called on 55 local gangs to unite and fight ice this guy's
00:53:24.440
name rogelio martinez and he called on these 55 gangs to come to city hall um his quote is i'm calling
00:53:34.600
all 55 gangs in my beautiful city i'm calling the latino gangs i'm calling the cambodian gangs i'm
00:53:40.120
calling the filipino gangs i'm calling the black gangs i'm calling the pacific islander gangs i'm
00:53:44.840
calling all gang leaders to meet me right here long beach city hall this coming monday
00:53:49.640
ice needs to get out of long beach and this is the only way i know how to get them out peacefully but
00:53:53.560
with strong force and uh robbie starbucks summed it up by saying democrats are basically doing organized
00:53:59.880
crime crime so they're they're basically um creating the perfect storm uh democrats aren't
00:54:08.680
stupid they're doing something that um scott always told us they're creating fear and they're creating
00:54:15.080
visuals um and they're using this like ms now i did watch it this morning morning joe the thing was
00:54:23.080
parliament uh they're like talking about it as if we are being invaded by ice we americans are being
00:54:30.600
arrested everything is like super ultra you know extreme but it's basically the ice hoax that you
00:54:43.320
as an american are also targeted they brought up the texas uh senate uh district nine win last
00:54:52.680
week um there was a win by a rep a a democrat in a republican district that's worth more um i don't know
00:55:04.840
what that sound is that's me sorry um so they basically they are using this in order to win um in the
00:55:16.520
elections but we must counteract it um it is not like what it means and and i have to remind everybody
00:55:24.920
yes i did did have altercations with and killed um two different people those are going to be dealt
00:55:34.120
with in the courts and so on and so forth but there are so many women and men probably that have been
00:55:41.320
killed in this country by illegal immigrants i'm an immigrant i understand that yes we don't like
00:55:49.400
violence uh we don't like being arrested we don't like uh having a force go in but at the same time
00:55:57.960
that's not being talked about is all of the lake and riley's of this nation and so i do want to say
00:56:06.520
like this is being used completely i'm sure owen knows this is like the hoax that's why they're
00:56:12.600
funding soros is funding it so well it's it's serving them in the right direction and how do you
00:56:20.520
combat such a coax you know if anybody has any ideas but basically one of the ideas would be to show
00:56:27.960
um somebody says nobody turn marcella in no i'm legally here uh so it shows that um that there
00:56:40.840
is another side you know the the people that they go in arrest there's a warrant for them there's
00:56:47.160
there's more they don't just go in and take anybody by force um so i don't know if you have
00:56:54.760
more to say on that yeah no i think you summed it up um i i think the courts need to deal with it and
00:57:00.600
i think everyone else should just stay out of it and you know i don't know how to solve all this
00:57:05.880
frenzy that we've been seeing people whip people into from the democrat side but i think the best
00:57:12.200
we can do is try and use our persuasion skills and our information warfare skills to try and counter
00:57:17.400
the narrative i mean that's the best i can think of is just to say you know you shouldn't be defending
00:57:22.680
criminals you shouldn't be defending illegal immigrants you should be um letting law enforcement
00:57:27.480
do their job and not getting in their way and i think tom homan in my opinion is doing the right
00:57:32.680
thing saying he's going to continue doing what he's doing and he's not going to back down and he's going
00:57:36.360
to bring justice to the people who are interfering with with law enforcement so i you know if you're
00:57:42.760
smart you're going to stay away from this stuff and so i think you're going to find that a lot of these
00:57:47.240
people are the useful idiots that are just being whipped into an emotional frenzy um and a lot
00:57:53.160
of them are going to regret it and i'm going to say that not all mayors are doing that like my local
00:58:01.160
mayor for example um is uh exhorting everybody to be peaceful uh to protest so i'm not going to say
00:58:07.720
not all mayors are like so extreme like on the left you know but uh yeah we have to be careful because
00:58:14.440
uh it can happen anytime so everybody be careful out there carry maize with you all right so we'll
00:58:21.400
end with the latest conspiracy theory apparently epstein is a kgb honey trap um the according to
00:58:28.920
some of the documents now that i would put this definitely in the conspiracy theory category but
00:58:33.880
apparently there's um 1056 times that putin was mentioned in the latest epstein drop and moscow was
00:58:41.960
mentioned 9629 times epstein met with putin after the his 2008 conviction and he had an appointment in
00:58:51.000
2011 with putin according to an email he was planning another meeting in 2014 that was canceled um in 2010
00:59:00.040
he offered andrew andrew i think that's the the english guy the prince um a 26 year old russian
00:59:08.280
so there's some quotes saying she's 26 russian clever beautiful trustworthy and yes she has your
00:59:13.400
email um and apparently the bill gates stuff about the stds um was after apparently bill gates said he
00:59:24.120
had sex with some russian girls so there's at least some evidence pointing to the kgb in russia being behind
00:59:30.120
epstein um i will caveat this very much by saying that the article again buried in the article
00:59:36.280
um it says there is no documentary evidence that epstein was involved with or that russia was
00:59:42.360
involved with any of the epstein stuff so this is all speculative it's all just documents that
00:59:48.040
happen to mention these people there's no real hard evidence that proves that all this stuff happened
00:59:53.240
but that's the latest conspiracy theory is that the kgb and putin are behind epstein oh it's so fun it's
00:59:58.840
like the best soap opera ever um we'll see we'll see i do like the the dripping out of these files
01:00:07.000
yahoo and massad must be loving this yeah oh yeah they're like woohoo so you you all have been amazing
01:00:15.560
this is such a fun show today i want to remind you guys that uh you know we don't have to be completely
01:00:22.280
spun up and this is coming from me over the news it's okay to also do what's best for you um and
01:00:29.560
maybe what's best for you is not feeling like raging and panicking over the news is going to solve
01:00:36.200
something so mate let's make sure today we take a beat to look at our own personal lives and the
01:00:41.240
things that we need to do that will benefit ourselves and our family and our friends and um and then how to
01:00:47.320
manage our time too i like how joel said you know maybe try to find an hour a day to do something
01:00:52.680
creative or something that you know just sparks some happiness within you and always be useful
01:00:59.480
tomorrow you guys we have a great guest we have steve cortez he's going to come on with us which is so
01:01:06.760
fun so we'll have steve cortez here tomorrow and we're going to talk news and he has some projects
01:01:13.960
he's working on that he wants to share with us so um i love you guys we love you guys let's have
01:01:20.520
a closing sip in honor of our beloved scott thank you for hanging out with us and um we appreciate it
01:01:28.440
i i love you guys do you guys hear what joel said he misses us and i was messaging you guys i was having
01:01:34.840
a bad day on sunday and i was like i miss you guys oh all right you guys look at oh and he's sipping
01:01:41.320
okay love you guys to the to our beloved scott to scott to scott to scott we love you shelley