Episode 964 Scott Adams： Grab Your Beverage Because it's Time For...
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
148.32106
Summary
Coffee with Scott Adams: a story about being chased around by a 300-pound woman, and the only place I could be in a good mood is when I sip a cup of joe. Scott Adams also talks about when the first famous person under 70 dies.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, it's time. Yeah, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. Studio coming
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online. Any moment now. Alexa, turn on studio. Oh, there we go. Hold on.
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If your desk doesn't have a rolling chair, you're missing a lot. Because there are very
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few things more fun than rolling around in your office. Standing up and walking? That's
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for suckers. Get yourself a nice rolling chair. True story? Well, I'll tell you after the simultaneous
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sip. Because I know you're here for that. You're probably ready. You don't want your
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coffee to get cold. It's probably up. You're ready. And all you needed was a cup or mug or
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a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind. Fill
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it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure
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of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the damn
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pandemic. It's called the simultaneous sip. It happens now. Go.
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I feel my vitamin D levels increasing to acceptable range. Yeah. Yeah. I think that just happened.
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Now, probably isn't a lot of vitamin D in coffee, but I feel there's nothing that coffee can't
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fix, really. So I reminded myself of a story from my childhood. So when I was a kid, my
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grandmother would sometimes babysit me, actually fairly often. And my grandmother had sort of
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a little apartment room and a farmhouse at a farm. And it used to be where she had been
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married to the farmer, but her son took over. So her son was running the farm and she had sort
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of a little, you know, a grandma apartment within the farmhouse. So I would go as a little kid
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and I would have to be with my grandmother all day long. Now, let me describe what it was
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like to be with my grandmother all day long. So you just have to get this picture. So my grandmother
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like to quilt, she would make quilts. And because a quilt is a pretty big object, you lay it down
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on some kind of a table, you know, device so that you can walk around all the edges and put
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in the pieces. And it's a long project. So your quilt table, if you will, will be set up and
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there for, you know, days or weeks, however long you're working on your quilt.
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Well, the primary room that was her area was filled almost entirely by the quilt in the middle.
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So there was a narrow path around the edges, which was the only place I could be, except for outside.
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And, you know, if the weather wasn't good, it wasn't really an option. So my entire world as a kid
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was this narrow path around a quilt, but it gets better. My grandmother weighed about 300 pounds
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and she had a rolling office chair so that she could roll around the quilt without getting up
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and work on a quilt. And then she'd push herself around and, you know, work on the next part.
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And she would turn on her soap operas, which are in this little room. So at age, I don't know,
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whatever it was, eight or something, seven or eight, my entire day was being chased by my
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grandmother who was walking around the quilt, not walking, pushing the chair around, and I'd have
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to move all the time. And there wasn't any place to go except further around the quilt while she
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listened to her daytime soap operas. Now, if you're a kid listening to daytime soap operas, you just want
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to kill yourself. Listening to them for like seven hours in a row while walking around the perimeter
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of a quilt being chased by a 300-pound woman on an office chair? Well, that's how my childhood looked.
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And I'm not even telling you the bad parts. All right. Magician Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy
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died from COVID-19 complications at age 75. Now, I've been telling you that my personal standard for
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when I'm going to get worried is if the first famous person under 70 dies of the coronavirus.
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Because I'm looking at my odds. I'm saying, okay, I'm a famous person. I'm under 70.
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So my category has so far zero deaths. Famous people under 70 in the United States.
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Then I saw this headline and I'm like, oh, shoot, I don't know how old he was. He was 75.
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Which is way too young still in this world. And I'm sure he had still had some complications,
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I think, from the tiger attack years ago. But sadly, he passed. And I felt, this one felt like a,
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like I got grazed. You know, something you could hear the bullet go by. You could feel the wind
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past your ear. And I'm thinking, famous person, only five years over 70. It's getting closer.
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So I'm not going to be worried until my category has its first death. Because what are the odds it
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would be me? All right. There is yet another drug cocktail combination that is getting some
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promising reviews. Over at Hong Kong, they've tested a, I guess it's existing HIV drug combination. So
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it's got ritonavir and loponavir and beta interferon. Now, as you know, the beta interferon drug is,
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that's what Democrat men take, the beta interferon. Because what that does is it makes you more of a
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beta. Now, I'm just kidding. I don't know why they name it beta interferon, if they don't want me to
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make fun of it. But here's the thing. Call me skeptical. But, you know, all the drug companies
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are saying the same thing, which is given the compressed timeline, we don't really have time
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to develop a whole new drug that's perfect for this virus. It would just take too long.
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So they're using all this off the shelf stuff just to see. Now, what are the odds that you would
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have any kind of a new, let's say, new disease that pops up in the world, what are the odds that
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a new disease, a new virus, a new anything, would be treatable with old drugs? I mean, it's not
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impossible. But what are the odds that the pharmaceutical companies just happen to have
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on the shelf remdesivir, which isn't used for anything else? But they got a patent. They know how
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to make it. Wouldn't it be convenient if they could find some way to convince people this works
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for $1,000 a shot or whatever it is? So when I see that these existing HIV drugs were tested and
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they got good results, I don't think they have any kind of, it's not a full scientific study, but they
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anecdotally with their small group, they were getting better about twice as fast,
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or maybe a third faster. And I don't think they have any information on death yet, because they
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weren't really testing people who were near death anyway. So I am really, really skeptical,
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really, really skeptical of any existing drug working for this. I'm really skeptical.
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So, you know, I'll give you my estimates of odds. Now, for those of you who are not, if you're new to
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this, if I say the odds of something are 80% chance that it will happen, and then it doesn't happen,
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I wasn't wrong. All right, you have to understand that or you can't play. Saying the odds can be right,
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even if the less likely thing happens. So it's not, I'm not telling you what's going to happen,
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I'm just giving you odds. I'd say, hey, hydroxychloroquine, I'm still putting a 40% chance
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that that makes a big difference. There's a higher chance that it makes a difference.
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Probably a 40% chance that it's some kind of a game changer. I base that on the fact that we would
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already know that. If it were that big a deal, we would know it by now. Easily, we would know it by now.
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There's a hundred ways we would know it by now if it worked that well. But there's certainly
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indications it might work a little bit, and that's still worth something. So 40% chance that
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hydroxychloroquine is a game changer. Higher chance that it has some effectiveness.
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Remdesivir, I'm going to put at 10%. I'm going to say there's a 10% chance that remdesivir
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is going to be the game changer. Again, it might also have some effect in some situations,
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but maybe 10% chance. Then this HIV cocktail combination, you know, it's still way too early
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to know if it really makes a difference. It's not really a controlled study or anything.
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I would say one of the odds that this cocktail that was made for a completely different reason
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would also work well enough to be a game changer. I'm going to say, I just can't believe that we
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coincidentally, happily invented the right drug before the virus occurred. I mean, that would be a
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big coincidence. So I'm going to say 20%. 20% chance that this particular combination is the magic
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bullet. And then there's, you know, another hundred things out there that are being tested, right?
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All sorts of monoclonal things and whatnot. And I would say that the odds of, let's say, at least
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one of those things that I haven't mentioned yet, so the whole category of things that I haven't
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mentioned. So I have mentioned hydroxychloroquine, these HIV drugs, remdesivir. So those are one
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category. But the whole other category that's not those, for a game changer, let's say 50%. I'd say
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there's a solid 50% chance that there's something in the pipeline that could really just yank this
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thing back to where it needs to be. 50-50. I wouldn't count on it. Those are my best guesses.
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These are based on nothing but having been alive a long time, looking at the dog that isn't barking,
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you know, like we're not hearing that it's doing better, like the hydroxychloroquine. But we could
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all be surprised. So one of the things that Mark Cuban was saying in an interview, talking about the
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economy coming back online, is that the economy in 2020 is nothing like any broken economy of the
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past. And I would like to add to that thought. The thing that's really, really weird and unpredictable
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about this coming economic recovery is nothing's broken, like physically. It's not like a world war
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where your buildings don't exist, and you got to rebuild them. Everything's sort of there. Also,
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all the people to do the work are already here, and they're already trained. So you've got the jobs,
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the buildings, the assets, the people, it's all perfectly intact. The part that's broken is the
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psychology of it, and possibly consumer spending, as Mark Cuban was pointing out. What we don't know
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is will the people who go back and that once they can spend, will they? Because a lot of people don't
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have money. But as I've pointed out, the other thing that's weird about this one is that for
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something like, I don't know, 15% of people are unemployed. But of those 15%, how many of them
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were making a lot of money to begin with? Right? How many of the people who lost their jobs,
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let's say servers at restaurants, you know, you can go right down the line, retail people,
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they were not the big income people. For the most part, they're the ones barely getting by.
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And probably a lot of them had to live with someone else to pay the rent. So they either had
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someone else who could be earning money in the family, they might be living a home.
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You know, so if you took that 15%, how much is the total buying power as consumers that was in that
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15%? Now, some of those people are going to be high-income people, because you'd have to throw
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me in there too. You know, I basically have lost my job. I'm just waiting for the notice, basically.
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And in fact, my syndication company has already told me the cat's on the roof. You know, that joke.
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I got a letter that says, well, the cat's on the roof. Newspapers are going out of business.
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They want to renegotiate. Don't know if we'll get paid. So I'm approaching unemployed and, you know,
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not in the way of having a salaried job. But essentially, my job just went away.
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Or it's on the path of going away. So I don't know if I, am I thrown in that average too?
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So my buying power will go down about 75%. But mostly, the 15% who are unemployed were the
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ones who were not making that much money to begin with. So in terms of numbers of people,
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it's a disaster. Because it's a lot of people who are struggling because they don't have money.
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But if you just talk about math, the total buying power of that 15% might be 4% of the consumer
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purchasing. I'm just guessing. Because it's a big group, 15% of the public, but they didn't
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buy much because they didn't have much to begin with.
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So the people who still had a job, spent way less while they're on lockdown, they actually
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have extra money and pent-up demand. Everybody who wanted to buy a car for the last three months,
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well, maybe some of them did. I think car dealers were actually open. But probably just a lot of
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pent-up demand. So if I had to guess, now the real problem is that the businesses that are opening
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up under capacity, there's no way you can open up a restaurant or a movie theater at 25% capacity.
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There's almost no point to it. It would be smarter to go out of business at that point,
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because you're just, you know, every day that you're open at 25% capacity, you're just losing money.
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So, and I suppose it'd just be easier to declare bankruptcy. A big restaurant chain around here,
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Sweet Tomatoes, I think, just declared bankruptcy. A big Nordstrom, the biggest store in my area,
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in my town, is Nordstrom. Yeah, it's part of the one mall in my town. And that just, it's the anchor
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tenant, and they just decided that they're closing that store. I don't know about Nordstrom in general,
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but that store looks like it'll be closed forever. So these are pretty big changes.
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But here's what I'm going to add to Mark Cuban's comments. We've never been in a position where
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everything was not broken physically. The people were all trained. And here's the part I'm going to
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add. We've got the best communication we've ever had. And I think that it's that ability to
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instantly communicate, both on, you know, in digital ways, but also social media ways, which are also
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digital. But we can connect and find each other and find problems and solve problems in a way that
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was never possible before. So, you know, take the most trivial example. You saw that there were some
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restaurants in Tampa, I think, that closed the streets in front of the restaurant, so they could
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move the tables onto the street and have lots of space, and so that you could still have your
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restaurant. Now, in theory, you could get a lot closer to 100% capacity by spreading your tables
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into the street. That's an idea that would pop up in one place, then there's a news story or it's on
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social media, and then suddenly every restaurant hears the idea. Now, think about the difference
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of having no communication or poor communication early on in, let's say, the 1918 pandemic. And then
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some restaurant has a good idea. How would the other restaurants ever hear about that good idea?
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Wait for it to be written up in a physical newspaper and hope that you saw that newspaper?
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Somebody says Seattle did it too, right? Now, I don't know to what extent that idea was just so obvious
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that everybody would have thought of it. Maybe. That's possible. But I have to think that there
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were probably 80% of the restaurants who wouldn't have thought of it. They just would have said,
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I guess we can't open up. But the fact that some of them had that idea allows that idea to just spread
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across the country immediately. Likewise, every time anybody has a good idea anywhere, it immediately
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spreads because we're so well connected. So my take on this is that an economic recovery under these
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unique conditions should be spectacular. The conditions being nothing's broken. Everybody's
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trained. Half the country probably has more money than before the crisis. They're still going to spend.
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And the people who lost their jobs were in the, by and large, in the lower economic strata to begin with.
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They weren't a big part of the consumer spending. And communication is great. If you add communication
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to this mix, things can recover quite quickly. So I'm very optimistic about 2021.
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2021. Here's the weirdest thing. Here's a dark thought. You know, I keep watching the evolving Flynn
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collusion, Russia collusion story. And now that we've seen the actual documents, and we know that Adam Schiff
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was lying to the country for what, years? How long was Adam Schiff lying? And a lot of our leaders are
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lying. But let's just talk about Adam Schiff, because he seems to be the primary purveyor of the hoax.
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So my understanding is that he broke no laws, because members of Congress have immunity. So because he had
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immunity, he was able to lie to the country in such a way, and in such a consistent and public way,
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that he effectively attempted a coup. Not even effectively, he attempted a coup. I don't even
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have to add effectively. He tried to remove the government of the United States by lying consistently
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and grotesquely in the most, in the ways which are now obvious. We couldn't really tell before.
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You didn't really know. You didn't really know. But now you know. Here's the weird thing. When you
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think to yourself, all right, so somebody tried to overthrow the legally elected government of the
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United States, what would be the penalty for that? In your mind, what feels like the right penalty to
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match, it wasn't a crime, but it was a bad thing. Let's call it a bad thing that was not technically
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illegal. What do you imagine would be the appropriate punishment for that? Well, if you're like
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me, execution. Now, you could argue, well, I don't believe in the death penalty. I prefer life in
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prison. But I don't know. I think a coup attempt, a coup attempt at actual treason against the United
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States, given how much this cost all of us, I mean, there is a good argument that it was really
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expensive, even including not being as prepared for the coronavirus. Maybe. I'm not sure I believe
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that it would have made any difference, given that we had bad information about it during that period.
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But it's just blowing my head up that somebody did something that a reasonable citizen, who's not
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crazy, who's just looking at the situation, all right, I'm a reasonable citizen, that if I'm being
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objective, this person, we now know, we don't have to guess about it anymore, we now know with
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certainty, attempted to overthrow the president, it was treason. And it feels like the right punishment
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is execution. Is that too much? Am I going too far? I mean, because traditionally, that's the
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traditional penalty for treason. Now, I don't think we kill people in the United States for treason.
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I think actually, we don't have the, I think the death penalty is maybe on the table, but not always
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used, that sort of thing. But it's just blowing my mind that I'm legitimately not even in a political
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sense. Just my, my natural human citizen instinct of how bad it was what he did, feels like if it had
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been a crime, which it isn't, the right penalty would be execution. Is that too much? Because I
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actually don't think it is. Like, I don't even think it's a little bit too much. Now, if you said no
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execution, life imprisonment, you know, I'd say, okay, that's more of a philosophical difference.
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But in terms of the extent of the crime and the extent of the punishment, it's in that range.
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But instead, do you know what his punishment will be? Almost certain re-election. Almost certain
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re-election. That's what he'll get for that. He'll actually, he's going to get it rewarded.
00:23:51.840
Right. Now, when we're talking about hoaxes, and of course, you know, I'm usually talking
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about hoaxes that are presented by, you know, the Democrats against Trump. Those are the famous
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ones, you know, Russia collusion, the fine people hoax, the ingesting Clorox hoax, the goldfish
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feeding hoax. I mean, you can go right down the line. It's just hoax after hoax. But it's not just
00:24:22.920
one direction. People, it's not just one direction. I'm watching the coverage last night on the opinion
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shows on Fox, talking about Schiff. And they would, I think Tucker was doing this, showing clips of,
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you know, Schiff saying, yes, there's plenty of evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with
00:24:44.740
Russia. So they'd show him saying that. And then they'd show the evidence that there's nobody who
00:24:51.160
testified there was any evidence of that, no direct evidence of that whatsoever. So the implication is
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that the experts on oath are saying we didn't see any evidence. Yes, Schiff is taking is going out in
00:25:03.180
public and saying plenty of evidence. So therefore, Schiff's a liar, except he's being taken out of
00:25:11.080
context. I hate that I have to defend the guy I think should have the death penalty. I'm going to
00:25:18.080
defend Adam Schiff. It's for your benefit. So you can sort of have a better appreciation of how you
00:25:26.640
might be being manipulated by the news. Here's how you're being manipulated. When Adam Schiff says
00:25:33.740
there's plenty of evidence of collusion by the campaign, his specific examples are the Don
00:25:41.180
Jr. meeting, which did happen, but the way he interprets it, of course, is crazy, but at least
00:25:46.920
it happened. And the fact that the president said in public that time, hey, Russia, if you can get us
00:25:53.980
those emails, why don't you do it? So when Schiff says there's plenty of evidence, he's looking at
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the things that we do know about, and he's simply interpreting them as evidence. He's not talking
00:26:07.580
about the same kind of stuff that the people who were testifying were talking about. They were
00:26:14.980
talking about real evidence, like you've seen Russia do something, there's an email, there's a
00:26:20.320
taped conversation, like real evidence. But the people who said there's no evidence would also
00:26:26.320
have acknowledged Don Jr. went to a meeting, and that the president did once say in public at that
00:26:32.680
debate, hey, Russia, you know, if you have those emails, Hillary's emails. So when you see those
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things juxtaposed, as they say there's no evidence, and then Schiff says there's plenty, if you leave out
00:26:45.880
that part where the plenty he's talking about is the stuff that we do know exists, he's just
00:26:51.900
interpreting it differently. I don't feel that's exactly honest, honestly. Now, I still think that
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what he did is so dishonest that, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't really deserve a fair shake
00:27:05.580
at this point. But, and of course, what he was doing by defining those trivial things as being
00:27:13.480
plenty of evidence is completely bogus, completely bogus. But it's the complete story. You have to
00:27:22.260
say that's what he was talking about before you say it's bogus. Otherwise, you're just confusing the
00:27:27.900
listeners, I think. So, and Schiff is still saying there's plenty of evidence and still using those
00:27:33.360
trivial examples. The other thing that was interesting that Tucker was talking about is
00:27:37.820
that, and I don't think I'd heard this until it was on his show. And by the way, if you didn't watch
00:27:43.760
Tucker's show last night, it was really, really good. One of the best, I think Tucker's show last
00:27:50.720
night was one of the best he's ever done, you know, overall. I didn't like that, the Adam Schiff
00:27:56.080
treatment, but if you looked at the whole show, it was really good. Because it's the first time I've
00:28:01.660
seen it laid out as bare as that, you know, just showing us what happens, what the things we found
00:28:10.260
out in the transcripts that were important. I think it was laid out really well. And the thing that I
00:28:15.300
hadn't seen reported anywhere until Tucker talked about it was that, you know how we, the government
00:28:22.600
has been telling us that we're sure Russia hacked, hacked, I don't know, Podesta or the DNC or whatever.
00:28:28.720
Remember we were all sure that they did? And I think you remember that from the beginning,
00:28:37.280
maybe you don't remember, but from the beginning I've been saying, are we sure? Do you really believe
00:28:43.700
that we can know who hacked something? Because I've got a real question about whether we can know that.
00:28:50.960
I don't know what we can know, right? We know what we're told, but we know that we're being told,
00:28:59.200
frequently we're told things that aren't true. I mean, it's just happening literally every day.
00:29:03.400
We're being told things that aren't true by, you know, the government, intelligence agencies,
00:29:07.600
the news, pretty much everybody's telling us untrue things. So when I first heard that we could tell who
00:29:14.600
hacked us, I said to myself, if we can tell who hacked us, then I don't know what hacking even is.
00:29:22.880
Because if these top secret intelligence agencies with the best, the best technical hackers in the
00:29:30.000
world are leaving their fingerprints on their hacks, I don't understand the world. Because really the
00:29:38.520
whole point of the hacks is not getting caught. And you would know if you could get caught, right?
00:29:44.380
Wouldn't you know if you were leaving a fingerprint? So from the beginning, I said to myself,
00:29:51.500
we could strongly suspect who did it, but I don't know that we could ever know. And sure enough,
00:29:57.940
the transcript shows that when asked directly if we'd know, we don't know. It was just a lie the whole time.
00:30:08.520
So you're watching the story I know about, I guess there are 11 Secret Service people who have the
00:30:15.380
coronavirus and there are several members of the Pence and Trump staff people who are pretty close
00:30:20.580
to him who have tested positive. Neither Pence nor Trump have tested positive. But here's the obvious
00:30:28.800
thing. I often tell you that you can predict the future when you see this situation, which is
00:30:37.460
there's a situation with a big potential upside, there's a lot to gain, and there's no risk of
00:30:44.240
getting caught. So let's say it's something that isn't legal, but you know you're not going to get
00:30:49.580
caught, and the gain is just gigantic. Does it happen? Yeah, every time. It'll happen every time.
00:30:57.620
And then the third criteria is that there's multiple people involved in the situation. Meaning that it's
00:31:04.840
not just one person who might potentially say, hey, I'm a good person. I'm the only person who has this
00:31:11.120
opportunity for this huge upside game, but I'm not that kind of person because it's illegal. So if you
00:31:17.580
only had one person, you might get one that was honest. Could turn down a billion dollars because it
00:31:23.360
just isn't right. But if you've got a lot of people in your situation, somebody's going to take the
00:31:28.960
billion dollars. So I look at the situation of the people who have the coronavirus infections, and I
00:31:35.460
say to myself, if you were, let's say, a sophisticated country that had capabilities, and you wanted to
00:31:44.180
bother another country and possibly assassinate their leader who is over 70, how would you do it?
00:31:50.600
Now, I'm not giving anybody ideas because this is just so obvious. You have to assume that every
00:31:55.400
intelligence agency thought this on day one, which is, wait a minute. If I were to infect their outer
00:32:02.760
circle, which is probably easy, because you could find people who work at the White House who are not
00:32:09.340
themselves guarded. You could easily infect their place where they're going to be. I don't want to give
00:32:18.000
you too many ideas. Now, it's something, it's not something that an individual could easily do,
00:32:23.580
because how would you get, you know, a little vial of coronavirus for yourself if you wanted to do bad
00:32:29.020
things with it? It'd be kind of hard, unless you were personally infected. But if you're a government,
00:32:34.500
you're an intelligence agency, of course, you can get yourself a little vial of coronavirus.
00:32:39.480
And here's the thing. Imagine, I'll just give you one example. Iran. They have elderly leaders who are
00:32:49.640
the big problem. And then you've got a number of countries in the area, I don't need to name names,
00:32:56.000
who would have the capability and the motive to get a little bit of coronavirus to the advisors,
00:33:04.700
because that, and then the advisors will do the rest inadvertently. So when you saw, as soon as I saw
00:33:13.160
that Iran was having extra big problems, kind of early on, I said to myself, huh, a very unpopular
00:33:20.800
regime surrounded by highly capable enemies who could easily do this without getting caught. And then
00:33:29.840
statistically, well, you got a pretty good chance that it's going to mess up the other side. Huge
00:33:35.920
upside potential, practically no chance of getting caught. Lots of people involved. Do you think
00:33:44.540
anybody intentionally tried to infect the Iranian leadership? Probably, right? Do you think Iran tried
00:33:53.220
to intentionally infect the advisors of the Israeli government? Probably? Probably? Why wouldn't
00:34:04.420
they? Or at least try? Do you think anybody, any malign actors would try to do the same thing
00:34:12.180
with the leadership of the United States? If they would interfere with our elections, if they
00:34:20.440
would be sending us fentanyl? Of course they would. So you don't have to ask, would they? Because
00:34:29.860
of course they would. We have such a history where it's just obvious, of course they would. But only
00:34:36.720
if there was a big, big gain, potential gain, and almost no chance of getting caught. And that's
00:34:43.560
what we got. Because if somebody shows up and they have the coronavirus, how the hell would you know
00:34:48.420
where it came from? You wouldn't. It's the most, I don't know, it's just, on a risk management
00:34:56.020
perspective, I can't imagine that this isn't being used, I don't know, by a dozen different
00:35:03.100
countries trying to take out a rival country. I mean, I would bet there are 12 countries right
00:35:08.840
now that are trying to mess with some other government this way, because why wouldn't they?
00:35:14.180
Just why wouldn't they, really? Somebody says, never heard of tracing? Well, the tracing isn't
00:35:21.780
going to get it done. I mean, it would be too easy to put an end to that trail. All right.
00:35:29.620
The newest hoax is the Pence carrying empty boxes of PPE. You probably saw the videos, I think
00:35:37.940
Jimmy Kimmel started it, where they acted like he was carrying empty boxes to pretend
00:35:42.900
he was helping. But in fact, he was carrying full boxes to pretend he was helping. It's
00:35:49.400
sort of a hoax of a hoax. I mean, obviously, if the vice president is moving boxes, it's
00:35:56.780
obviously for the cameras. Right? We're all adults, right? Nobody thinks that he was just
00:36:02.740
helping out. Of course it was for the cameras. But I guess he joked about empty boxes or something,
00:36:07.340
and they got that on camera and put it together and then tried to act like he was moving empty
00:36:11.920
boxes. But does it matter? Does it matter if the boxes were empty? It was just a video
00:36:20.520
thing. That's all it was. It doesn't matter if it was empty. I mean, if they were full of
00:36:25.620
these light paper goods, it makes no difference at all. It's the story that didn't need to be
00:36:32.580
told at all. No importance whatsoever. All right. I told you I've been digging into this vitamin D
00:36:41.280
correlation with coronavirus and whether it helps you recover from COVID or not. And there's just
00:36:48.700
tons of information, but a lot of it is amateurs making their own graphs and not doing it right.
00:36:55.280
So I tested again my model of taking somebody's claim. In this case, it was a graph that showed,
00:37:02.740
it purported to show that the more vitamin D you had, the better you did with the COVID. But I asked
00:37:12.640
people to take a look at it in my Twitter feed. And, you know, all the doctors and scientists poured in
00:37:19.100
and said, ah, bogus, bogus, bogus, bogus. So that was good. So it got debunked fairly quickly. It's a good
00:37:27.720
model. I think I would be using that a lot where I'll just put it out there and say comments. And sure
00:37:33.100
enough, it got debunked. But that doesn't mean that vitamin D has no role. It just means that you
00:37:40.760
should be really, really cautious of everything you see about it. Everything. Literally every graph you see,
00:37:46.960
every set of statistics about vitamin D so far has big problems, I think. You know, so none of it is
00:37:57.480
conclusive that I've, that I've seen, but it's still promising. So we'll keep looking into that.
00:38:03.680
Um, so there's a, uh, uh, I guess he's a Democrat who on Twitter, he's a, some kind of data scientist
00:38:15.580
guy and, or yeah, he's a scientist, I guess. And he tweets this, he goes, I feel my brain rotting
00:38:22.020
every time I talk to a Republican. Like I was so bad to help them understand. I'm a damn good teacher.
00:38:29.380
And I honestly believe everyone is redeemable, but good Lord, it's like their brains got swapped
00:38:35.680
with the donkeys. Now he's a youngish guy. I, I judge by his profile picture. Youngish,
00:38:44.440
he looks like the thirties, maybe can't tell. Um, but I love watching somebody, uh, right before the
00:38:53.840
red pill because somebody, uh, suggested that he talked to me. What would happen if he talked to me?
00:39:02.460
Well, he's going to, he'll be choking back to the biggest red pill of his life. And, uh, I love
00:39:10.360
looking, I love being the observer of, of this person's journey. Now he's, he's, uh, he's at the
00:39:17.420
lowest level of awareness right now. The lowest level of awareness is that your side is giving
00:39:23.840
you the truth and the other side is lying. That is the lowest level of awareness. And he's a scientist
00:39:30.820
and in public, he's proclaiming himself to be at the lowest level of awareness because his view is
00:39:38.900
that Republicans have broken brains and his side is getting it right. Now, can you imagine how much
00:39:46.060
fun I would have with this guy to, you know, apparently he's never been introduced to the
00:39:51.720
next level of reality, which is, um, none of it's true. Just none of it's true. You're, it's
00:39:58.580
just, everybody's interpreting what they want, but I could get them there. Um, and that is all
00:40:11.020
there is that's happening today. Um, Hannity is the same. Somebody says, you've been thinking
00:40:21.360
about the Democrats being having the broken brains. Yes. Well, I don't know what Hannity's
00:40:26.420
thinking. So I wouldn't say that I know what he's thinking, but it is true that there are
00:40:32.800
Republicans in the same situation. Um, I have not watched the Elon Musk interview. I think
00:40:39.460
you're talking about Joe Rogan. Uh, it's hard for me to watch law or listen to long form,
00:40:45.120
um, interviews. Somebody says Don Lemon brought up the fine people hoax again last night. You
00:40:55.120
know, you do know that, uh, people like Don Lemon probably have never even heard the counter
00:41:03.080
argument. And I think people like Don Lemon actually think it happened and actually
00:41:09.300
believe it happened because that's widespread. All right. I'm just looking at your, uh, uh,
00:41:18.800
talking about Barr being the worst attorney general. Yeah. We've, we've had some attorney
00:41:24.900
generals that, uh, did not bring glory to the office. Uh, Plandemic has been banned. Well,
00:41:35.720
I'm still waiting for the counter argument on Plandemic. Uh, he tried to blame the shooting
00:41:46.320
of the, of the black kid on Trump. Who did Musk? I don't think so. Have I ever challenged
00:41:56.780
Lemon? Why would I challenge him? It's not like he's going to have any kind of a conversation
00:42:02.300
with me. Uh, let's see. Kim's still relaxing. Yeah. Nobody's seen, uh, Kim Jong-un lately
00:42:16.440
yet. There will be more about that story. Uh, thoughts on Amud Aubrey. Well, um, here's,
00:42:29.300
here's some thoughts. Uh, it's, it's sort of a made for television crime. Now I'm going
00:42:40.000
to call it a crime without the benefit of the legal system having yet fully weighed in, uh,
00:42:48.020
because it looks more like a really bad judgment in my case. So I think what happened was, uh,
00:42:56.860
everybody involved, uh, everybody involved, the two people who were chasing Aubrey down and then
00:43:02.800
Aubrey, for reasons that I don't quite understand, decided to wrestle with the guy and try to wrestle
00:43:08.500
his gun away from him. And I can't think that was his best play. So I think you had three people who
00:43:15.380
were all under the wrong impression of what was going on. I think Aubrey probably thought his life
00:43:20.980
was in danger in, in some senses it was, of course. Um, but probably didn't know exactly what
00:43:27.440
was going on and maybe thought it was a different situation than it was. And everybody was just
00:43:33.240
mistaken. And so when I look at this thing, I hear people putting it in political frame because
00:43:40.420
that's what we do. And, you know, maybe they're racist and maybe this, and it's a symbol of what's
00:43:46.140
happening in the country. And it's another example of racism and all that. I don't know that it's any
00:43:50.940
of that. It just looks like three people who were subject to confirmation bias. And, um, actually,
00:44:01.260
I don't even know if the, if the two, uh, two guys with the guns, I don't even know if they were
00:44:07.340
having confirmation bias or they were just trying to find out and they did it in the worst possible
00:44:13.540
way. In other words, where they just trying to find out if this was the person, uh, I think they
00:44:18.920
have some video cameras, video images of somebody trying to break into places in the area. And of
00:44:25.840
course we haven't seen that, have we? Um, I'm not suggesting that the deceased was doing anything
00:44:32.500
bad. I have no, no information that would suggest that, but since the people, the, the people who chased
00:44:38.760
him down were doing it because he matched some description of somebody who had broken into
00:44:45.760
homes, but I don't know if the description was based on video, video image was, or I assume there
00:44:52.180
was some kind of video that captured him. So at some point we're going to see a video. I'm guessing,
00:44:58.740
I don't know if there is video, but I think we might see a security video of somebody breaking
00:45:03.100
into homes in the area. And then we can judge for ourself. Does it look sufficiently like
00:45:09.480
the, the victim who got shot and killed? You know, is it close enough where you'd say,
00:45:16.780
okay, I can see how they'd make that mistake. You know, they were just going to get a better
00:45:21.060
look. They weren't sure. Maybe they were profiling like young black male. So, you know, so you could
00:45:27.960
certainly argue that the racism was part of the, part of the confirmation bias. Fair to say. I'm not
00:45:35.780
sure if it's racism, if it's just based on a physical look though. I mean, wouldn't they have done the
00:45:41.740
same thing if the description had been, he looked like a white hillbilly in overalls, overalls?
00:45:50.200
Wouldn't they have chased anybody who looked like a white hillbilly in overalls? If, if what they
00:45:54.900
were trying to do is find a burglar. So certainly the, the victim's race was part of the bad decision
00:46:06.220
making. But I think that they would also have been susceptible to bad decision making if it had been
00:46:13.560
any other color as well, including their own. Because if that was just what they'd heard, well, he's a,
00:46:19.380
you know, blonde guy, 45 wearing overalls. And they saw a blonde guy, 45 wearing overalls,
00:46:24.540
would they not have chased him? You know, would they have let him go because he was white? I don't
00:46:29.660
think so. So I think he, I think you've got to be a little more clever about saying what it was that
00:46:37.380
biased them. Because being biased by the physicality of someone who's been described
00:46:44.360
is different than being a racist. That's some pretty different things. You know, it was just,
00:46:50.540
the description wasn't good enough. That's, that's not racism.
00:46:56.700
But, um, these things, of course, turn into something else. Let me, let me, uh, let me give
00:47:03.260
you a hypothesis. I'm just going to put that out there. Um, if you are a black citizen of the United
00:47:10.660
States, let me not even pretend I can know how you feel or how you think, because we, none of us
00:47:16.480
know how anybody feels or thinks. So anybody who's not you, you don't really know how they're
00:47:22.940
thinking. Let's, let's be a little humble about that. But I'll put this in the form of a question.
00:47:30.500
Let's say you're, uh, and, uh, if there are any African American, um, viewers on this, I would love
00:47:37.140
to get your opinion right now. Uh, so you can confirm or debunk what I'm saying. If you're a black,
00:47:42.000
let's say you're a black man in the United States, we'll just make it a man to keep the example simple.
00:47:47.980
You're a black man living in the United States. Do you think that law enforcement treats you
00:47:54.060
unfairly? What do you think? Typical black man living in the United States. Is it your opinion
00:48:00.720
that the legal system treats you unfairly? Probably yes. Wouldn't you say? Again, everybody's
00:48:10.240
different. You know, you don't want to make a sweeping generalization, but I would think that's
00:48:14.780
a fair generalization. Now let's say you're a black man. You feel that the law enforcement has
00:48:22.760
been unfair to you and you're watching the news. And the biggest story is that the FBI and the
00:48:28.880
Department of Justice apparently just tried to frame, uh, a general in the general, a white
00:48:36.700
general, uh, and take down the president of the United States with false accusations. There's
00:48:46.940
something happening here that if you don't notice it could be really, really big. Trump just
00:48:55.700
became a black man. Let that sink in for a minute. Trump just became black. Think about
00:49:07.720
it. You, you said, we said that, uh, Bill Clinton was the first black president. Trump's number
00:49:14.340
three, because Trump just shares one of the biggest, I know, uh, experiences of being a black
00:49:23.460
man in America, which is that law enforcement targeted you and tried to take you out with
00:49:29.040
a bogus crime. If you're a black guy and you're watching Trump attempted to be taken out with
00:49:35.840
a bogus charge, what do you feel about that? Seriously? How do you feel about that? Because,
00:49:43.620
um, if that doesn't make you a little bit more empathetic about Trump's situation, now let's
00:49:51.880
go further. What has Trump done in terms of, uh, black, uh, people in prison? He has quite
00:50:02.540
noticeably and publicly worked hard to free black people who were, let's say, um, over,
00:50:11.820
over penalized. I don't know if any of them were literally innocent of the crime they were
00:50:16.740
committed, but they were over penalized, you know, like Alice Johnson, et cetera. Uh, and
00:50:21.640
then the entire, um, prison reform movement, which is entirely not entirely, but it's mostly
00:50:29.220
it's going to get people out of prison early, huge number of them overrepresented are black
00:50:34.980
community. So just by a weird confluence of things, I'm not joking. I think Trump just
00:50:45.480
became the third black president without even trying because nobody has championed their
00:50:50.980
side and also gotten the same treatment that I imagine they feel they get from law enforcement.
00:50:57.960
And that's a pretty big bonding experience. Now, I don't know if Trump will ever be clever
00:51:04.900
enough to, to tie the ideas together because, you know, he supports law enforcement and he's
00:51:12.640
not going to be anti-cop. That's not going to happen, but he certainly could say in public,
00:51:17.200
you know, if you're a, if you're a black man living in the United States, I'll tell you one
00:51:22.120
thing I understand. Imagine, imagine president Trump saying this in public. Let me, let me tell
00:51:28.680
you one thing. If you're a black man living in the United States and you're worried about law
00:51:32.560
enforcement treating you unfairly, I get it. I get it. That, you know, I, there's nothing I
00:51:41.660
understand better than that. Law enforcement targeting you for a crime you didn't commit,
00:51:46.340
treating you unfairly. I get it. How much would you love to see that?
00:51:54.120
You know, it's one of these, um, it sort of sneaks up on you because when you're talking
00:51:59.240
about the, the Russia collusion thing, you're not thinking about your race relations. It's
00:52:03.660
just his own little story, but the way, the way stories affect us, you know, they, they,
00:52:10.280
what we do is we say, is the person in the story like me or not like me? It's just automatic. The
00:52:17.320
reason we like stories is you put yourself in the story and the story of Russia collusion.
00:52:22.700
And I feel if you were a black man, you know, it could be a woman too, but you know, men are
00:52:29.460
more likely to be in the penal system. But if you're a black man in America and you just
00:52:34.460
watched the revelation that the president of the United States was framed for a crime,
00:52:41.420
how do you not feel a little empathy for that while that same person is freeing black people
00:52:46.320
from over being over penalized in prisons? There's just no way that doesn't affect you.
00:52:52.700
Will it be enough? Who knows? All right. That's a mind blower, isn't it? I can see in the
00:53:04.100
comments that some of you are, are really, really thinking about that one. The hero's journey,
00:53:13.320
somebody says. Yeah. So movies feature a story arc where the hero changes. So that's what makes
00:53:21.000
a good story. As the hero starts out as one kind of person and they've, you know, they've
00:53:26.260
learned their heart is opened or they've become better at something, whatever.
00:53:29.680
All right. Somebody says Trump is literally a person of color because he's orange.
00:53:46.780
That's funny. All right. It's an interesting theory, but a stretch, somebody says. Could be.
00:53:57.720
Let me give you an update on one of my predictions, which looks like based on preliminary information
00:54:03.900
could be totally wrong. But we know that preliminary information is often totally wrong
00:54:09.840
itself. So this isn't funny at all. So let me, let me get out of my good mood so that I don't say
00:54:22.500
this in the wrong way. It turns out that these statistics for, at least anecdotally, the statistics
00:54:29.060
for suicide are pretty, pretty alarming. Now, all the smart people said economic destruction and losing
00:54:38.300
your job and being socially isolated should lead to higher suicide rates, tragically. And early
00:54:46.740
indications are that that might be happening, at least, you know, more reportedly, but not, I don't
00:54:53.080
think anybody's done a study out of that. I had predicted the opposite, which that I was going to
00:54:59.520
predict that suicide would go down. And I use the Cheryl, the server theory for that, which is that
00:55:07.980
everything reduces when people think there's a new situation happening. Like everything,
00:55:12.740
everything that would have happened stops happening, whether it was good or bad, because you're,
00:55:18.500
you're all just adjusting to the new situation. And so that was my theory. But the longer the lockdown
00:55:25.760
goes, the longer it goes, the less the theory can hold, right? So the Cheryl, the server theory is only,
00:55:34.960
is only meant to be for a short time. So her, I'll give you the exact theory again. So she would say that
00:55:41.940
restaurant business would go down when something changed. So if the weather became seasonally good,
00:55:49.660
business would go down because people would want to go outside. If it rained and started to be rainy
00:55:54.760
that week, business would go down because people didn't want to be in the rain. So it didn't matter
00:55:58.920
if it was good weather or bad weather. Business always went down just because there was a change,
00:56:04.580
and people change their behavior when there's some larger change. But that the Cheryl effect
00:56:12.100
wears off after a few days, which is that, you know, one day of nice weather, your business will
00:56:18.560
go to nothing. But after two weeks of good weather, business goes back to where it was, people adjust
00:56:24.720
like, ah, we had a little out of our time, let's go back to the restaurant. So we've been in lockdown so
00:56:30.240
long that there, it does make sense that when you're looking at second, third month of a lockdown
00:56:37.320
and unemployment, yeah, yeah. At that point, you would have to assume that the lockdown becomes
00:56:44.540
normal. As soon as being locked down starts to feel normal, and it's unambiguously worse than what
00:56:53.500
even the worst of the previous situation was, and maybe people wanted to end their lives anyway.
00:56:59.440
So I could see how it would go from, so here, I will refine my prediction and say this. I'll bet
00:57:06.180
for the first few weeks, suicide went down. But I'll bet by the final weeks, oh, actually,
00:57:14.120
by the final weeks, it might go down again if people are saying, well, it's only one more week.
00:57:17.720
But somewhere right around now should be the worst of it. So it probably will be higher than average
00:57:24.880
for a while. So that's pretty tragic. So it looks like my prediction will be wrong. But maybe we can
00:57:33.760
learn something from the individual weeks. Because I do think, I do feel confident that the first week
00:57:43.140
or two of the shutdown will be lower suicide rates. And after that, I wouldn't be surprised if they went
00:57:49.400
up again. All right. I'm homeless now because of the China virus. Well, I'm sorry. You know, I've not
00:58:02.820
seen much news about people going hungry, have you? We saw some news for a while, it seemed like there was
00:58:10.160
about a week or two, where every now and then you'd see the long food lines in various cities.
00:58:17.240
But I thought that the news would just keep showing more and more of them, and the lines would get
00:58:22.380
longer, and there'd be more cities involved. But it feels like the coverage of the food lines just
00:58:29.160
sort of stopped, didn't it? Now, is that because we have enough food? And we still have the lines,
00:58:34.920
but they're getting their food, so it's not a story anymore? Is that why? Does anybody know what
00:58:39.460
happened to the food lines? Still there? Getting worse? Getting better? It feels like that's,
00:58:46.600
somebody says, food lines still in New York City. But I guess, I guess how much of a new,
00:58:51.960
how much of a news it is, depends on whether they have enough. Because you could have a pretty long line
00:58:59.660
if they're, you can have a long line, and it's not as much of a problem if there's enough food,
00:59:06.320
and the line is moving quickly. That's a different level of tragedy than the people at the end of the
00:59:12.780
line aren't going to get any food. So it's looking to me like we're meeting the hunger problem,
00:59:18.700
right? Lester Holt News had it on last night. Oh, okay. So maybe, yeah, it could be that just because
00:59:28.460
it's not new anymore. But I would think that the news would be all over that. Still here in Ohio.
00:59:38.140
Somebody says, Mark Cuban claims 96% non-compliance for Texas business distancing.
00:59:47.200
Have you noticed, let me ask this question and tell me in the comments. Have you all noticed that
00:59:53.980
there's way less compliance this week? Is it just my imagination? I think the lack of compliance
01:00:05.060
is starting to come online. I guess, I think most of the beaches were open in California.
01:00:10.620
But I had predicted that if the beaches were still closed in California, or at least in sections like
01:00:17.320
OC, if the beaches were closed on Mother's Day, that would be the end of the beach closings.
01:00:23.980
Because if you take your mom to the beach on Mother's Day, and like the beach is just full
01:00:29.240
of mothers on Mother's Day, especially if their kids are with them, what are the police going
01:00:34.260
to do? Because if you're looking at the power, let's say two policemen come to the beach. If
01:00:43.480
there's one mom, well, the police have an advantage. If you have 15 moms on a beach, and there are
01:00:51.320
two police, the police are going home. The police are just going to give up. If you have 15 moms on
01:00:58.040
Mother's Day, they're not going to get arrested. They're certainly not going to get arrested.
01:01:04.420
They're not going to get handcuffed. If those moms just say, thanks for the help, officer, but we got
01:01:09.880
this. Appreciate the advice, officer. We'll take care of this. That's it. Mothers on Mother's Day
01:01:17.800
are as powerful as a bride on a wedding day. If you've ever been through a wedding, and you've
01:01:24.360
observed the power of the bride on the wedding day, everybody will give the bride whatever they
01:01:30.460
want on the wedding day. It's just like a superpower. It's like, that tree is in the way. Could
01:01:36.400
somebody get out a pocket knife and try to get rid of that oak tree? And then suddenly everybody would
01:01:42.440
be like, take it out their pocket knives. It's the bride. It's the bride. You know, trying to take
01:01:47.160
down the oak tree with their pocket knives, you know, chewing on it like beavers. So yeah, I just
01:01:54.800
thought it would be hilarious if the beaches were closed on Mother's Day, because you'd know the
01:01:59.480
mothers would have made a run for it, right? I don't know if your state is different, but I can tell
01:02:05.080
you, California moms, they were going to the beach. A lot of California moms were going to
01:02:12.320
the beach if they had been closed or if they'd been open. And it would have been hilarious
01:02:16.460
because you know how it would have ended. It would have been funny. All right. There's snow
01:02:23.240
in Massachusetts, somebody said. Somebody asked, what's Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley like in the
01:02:31.220
pandemic? Probably exactly the same. I don't know. All right. That's all I got for now. I'll