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- [00:01]
Scott Adams
Spend this time together again when the lazy podcasters are taking the day off. Do I? No, no. I'm here for you. And it gets better every time. Well, let me make sure I've got my comments working. There we go. All right. Everything's working out great now. Well, maybe I'll unplug this. That should work. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's the best day that'll ever happen to you, but if you'd like to take a chance of making it even better than anybody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brain, well, all you have to do to make that happen is you need to grab a cup or a mug or a glass of tankard shells or stein, a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind to fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens. Now go. Have you ever noticed that every Fourth of July there's always a story of some car runs into a fireworks factory and it all blows up? Or somebody said that in the town near me there was a barge that was full of fireworks, so they could do it from the water, and the barge sunk. I always feel like there's this nonstop bunch of disasters that always happen on July 4th, but probably that has to do with the slow news nature of it. Well, after this exciting podcast, which might be a little short because there's not much news happening, Owen Gregorian will be hosting a Spaces after party, so you'd have to be on X to see it. And Spaces is the audio only feature, so you can find that by going to Owen Gregorian's site. And it'll be right after the show. You can talk some more about what we talked about today, or probably other stuff, too. Well, remember yesterday I told you that Grok had been updated? And I told you it gave me completely better answers. It gave me before it was updated, and then today I found out it was. It was not updated. Everything I told you yesterday about Grok being better because I'd upgraded it. They haven't done the upgrade yet. It might be today, but I had misread the. I misread Elon Musk's message. I thought it was yesterday. So I take back everything I said. But it's sort of interesting that the two days I asked essentially the same question and I got just wildly different answers. So that's the old version, but then Related to that, I was reading a substack piece that was mostly a complementary, you know, it was an essay about me. So, you know, I've told you that when you see stuff about yourself, that's when you notice that the, the news is, you know, fake or wrong. And so I'm reading about myself from somebody who is very well informed and would definitely should have known what was real and what wasn't. And in this article I'm reading and it says, and I swear to God, it said this, it said that I publicly apologized for promoting vaccinations. That's two things that never happened. I never publicly apologized for promoting vaccinations because I never promoted vaccinations. That's like a really big thing to get wrong and then getting it wrong twice, once saying that I did the opposite of what I did because, you know, and you're all my witnesses, you know that I never promoted vaccinations. And indeed, as far as I know, I'm the only public figure who publicly predicted that the vaccinations would not work when they introduced Project Warp Speed. And then again publicly, I predicted that it didn't work after it was already created and rolled out. So is that, did anybody else, Is there even one other public figure who told you that they wouldn't work the day that we're introduced? Nobody. You can't get more, I don't think you could get more anti vaccination than predicting it wouldn't work in public. So no, I did not promote vaccinations. I did the opposite. According to scientific reports, AI can now figure out whether you're likely to. And I'm going to choose my words carefully so I don't get demonetized. There's some keywords that you don't want to use. So I'm going to talk around the keywords and say AI allegedly can predict when a user is likely to want to harm themselves, let's say the ultimate harm. You know what I mean? I'm just trying not to use the words. Do you think that's right? Do you think AI can analyze your, let's say, social media messages and tell if you're likely? They say they have an 85% accurate accuracy. What happens if they find that your messages suggest you're going to harm yourself? What do they have if they really think it's 85% chance, wouldn't they come to your house and remove you from the house because it's for your own good? Well, we've determined if we leave you to your own devices you're likely to do something you shouldn't do. So we're going to pick you up and put you under observation. I don't know, I'd be a little worried where that's heading. And then in the article that was by Scientific Reports, the, the article talks about what some experts say about this, about the AI being able to determine whether you plan self harm or whether you're likely to do it even if it's not planned. But they also got a quote from, from just an ordinary person who must have had some experience with AI and maybe a loved one. And they're talking about why AI might cause some mental problems. And this one woman who's not an expert said it just increasingly affirms your bullshit and blows smoke up your ass so that it can get you fucking hooked on wanting to engage with it. Because I guess her, her husband had been involuntary involuntarily committed to a hospital because he had a mental breakdown working with Chad gbt. And that makes me think that maybe, maybe the way to think about AI is that if somebody has good mental health it might make them even happier and make them more productive. But if you have bad mental health it might agree with you a little bit too much. And the last thing you want is to have really negative dangerous ideas in your head and have your AI agree with you because it's designed to be, you know, non confrontational. So feels to me like if you're not mentally strong, AI will potentially be the end of you. But if you are mentally strong, maybe it gives you a raise accordingly. There's an article in futurism that OpenAI has hired a forensic psychiatrist to, to figure out why AI is potentially dangerous to some users. As I was explaining and now AI says OpenAI says that they're doing it to research, so they're doing it to research, you know, what are the impacts on users psychologically. But they might be aware that AI is deadly for some kinds of people and they're trying to figure out how to, how to reduce their, let's say liability. But, but let's also assume they'd like to save some lives because they're good people. As far as we know.
- [10:41]
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- [11:14]
Scott Adams
There's a form of gene therapy. According to a publication called the Conversation. May Allie Dwayne is saying that there are some people who are born with. They're born deaf. And depending on the specific kind of problem you have with you or reason for being deaf, they can restore hearing in some people with gene therapy. And that's all just gene therapy. And then suddenly they're hearing. I won't say it returns, but they can make somebody born deaf with an incurable cause then now they can cure with gene therapy. Now, obviously this is not going to work on every person, and I think they mostly used it on young people. But how amazing is that? Imagine if that became common and a baby is born and is deaf and they just say, oh, no problem, you know, just give us this gene therapy and then two weeks later the baby can hear normally. We're, we are definitely entering a golden age if we allow ourselves to be in it. That's pretty amazing. Likewise, according to New Atlas, there's a break. There's a breakthrough in hay fever, reducing your allergies. And I guess they use some kind of molecular shield in your nose. So you spray something in your nose and it's not interacting with your body to make you less allergic to just like a shield so that your nose doesn't pick up these allergens. That's kind of cool. And then over in Paris, this will be a good test of your, of your, let's say, willingness to do dangerous things. So the river that goes through Paris, the sin has been too polluted to allow people to swim in it. So I guess for about a hundred years it was just too polluted. I, I don't know if it was illegal or just unwise, but because the Olympics, I guess, are coming to Paris sometime soon, Paris put on a, a big, a big effort to clean up the sand. Until now. It is normally clean enough to swim in, so they're allowing people to swim in it. But if it rains, apparently the runoff kind of pollutes it again for a while. So would you go swimming in the sand if you knew that it had been too polluted to swim in for 100 years? But they say it's clean now. They say unless it has rained recently, would you swim in that? I don't Know, I feel like I would be thinking too much. You know, the Tootsie Roll was going to float into my mouth if I were swimming in that thing, if you know what I mean? Hell, no. No, we would not swim in the sun. All right, well, Trump, true to his word. New York Post is reporting that he's gonna, he's already started to put together the letters that he sent account to the other countries telling them what kind of reciprocal tariffs are going to pay. So some of them will be pretty high. And I'm wondering, did Trump find a brilliant workaround for the fact that there were too many deals to actually negotiate that quickly? You know, in a perfect world, there would have been a whole bunch of done deals where, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of countries would have negotiated terms and we would agree to them and we'd have signed deals. But nothing happens as quickly as you want them to in the real world. So did Trump find a workaround for that where he's just going to negotiate with a few big countries like China and Vietnam, but for the rest of them, he's just going to send them a letter and tell them what their, what their payment will be to have access to our markets and that if they want to negotiate, he can say, nah, yeah, I don't know, you can make me an offer, I'll listen to it, but we don't need anything. You're going to pay these? Well, the importing company, the American company will be absorbing some percentage of it, but we don't know in the real world. What percent do you think, do you think he found a way to make this work? Because it kind of looks like he did. I feel like all he's going to do is scare the bejesus out of other countries with these demand letters. All right, your tariff will be 70%. But, but, but. Well, you, you had months to negotiate a better deal with. You know, our doors were open. All you had to do is make us an offer that was more to your liking and met our requirements, and we, we wouldn't do this. But, but, but we didn't have time. That's fine, no problem. Just pay the 70%. But, but, but that's so unfair. Yeah, really, it is. But it was unfair what it was before, too. But, but, but doesn't it feel like it just feels kind of brilliant that he just basically told people, we don't need to negotiate, we're fine not negotiating, we'll just send you the bill? Well, we'll see. The Wall Street Journal is reporting and others are reporting that Hamas has accepted a framework for a ceasefire and allegedly this. And by the way, I don't believe this at all. I mean, I believe that the reporting is accurate. I don't believe it's actually going to happen, but I'd love to be wrong. Hamas has accepted the framework of a proposed 60 day ceasefire, but it would only involve releasing 10 living hostages. My understanding is it might be 50. I don't know how many are living, but are they really? Did Trump really get Israel to agree to a deal that would not free all of the hostages? Really? That doesn't seem like something they would agree to. So Trump must be putting a lot of pressure on Israel if they agreed to a ceasefire without getting all of the hostages back. So we'll see. I'm going to bet that this will not work out. Probably something will eventually work out, but I just don't see ceasefire in return for 10 hostages. I just don't see that working out. We'll find out. Well, there's a mystery that happened in the bitcoin world, I guess, yesterday. Eight dormant bitcoin wallets. So these would be people who own bitcoin but had never traded it or sold it or cashed it out or done anything with it. So as people who had had their bitcoin since the beginning of bitcoin and they never once moved any money around, but they just decided to become active. Eight of them became active after 14 years of no activity, and they moved a total of $8.6 billion around in their wallets. Now, I don't know if they moved it or cashed it, but somebody was sitting on Bitcoin for 14 years and there were only eight accounts that were worth 8.6 billion. So on average that would be a billion dollars per account. And somebody had so much money that they didn't need it for 14 years and they just let it sit there until it was worth a billion. But I like to think, you know, my favorite story I'll tell myself is that maybe they're stolen, right? Could be. Could be somebody hacked them. But wouldn't it be fun if they didn't know they had the bitcoin and one day they just were looking through their papers and said, oh, wow, yeah, I forgot. I bought. I bought some Bitcoin 14 years ago. I wonder how. Oh, here's my instructions on how to get into my wallet. And then suddenly, just some ordinary person is worth a billion dollars. I like to think of it that way. But it was probably some rich investor who didn't need it. She's made up her mind to live pretty smart Learn to budget responsibly right from the start. She spends a little less in boots more into savings Keeps her blood pressure low and credit score raises she's gotten dead right out of her life she tracks her cash Boring money moves make.
- [21:28]
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- [21:30]
Scott Adams
Pretty sweet to your wallet BNC bank brilliantly boring since 1865. Well, Elon, I'm sorry. Joe Rogan was talking to the CEO of a big company. I forget which company. Some big company. It doesn't matter which one. And he asked the CEO or the CEO had an opinion about why Wokeness died. Did Wokeness die? What do you think? It feels like it. You know, it's been a long time since somebody insisted I pay reparations or use their pronouns, so I don't know if Wokeness is dead dead. You know, the universities are holding on tight to their racist ways. Oh, yeah, it was the. It was a CEO of Replit. Replit, which is an AI company. I don't know. Anyway, the CEO of a Replit said that he thinks that Americans Woke culture was entered by Elon Musk buying Twitter. Do you buy that? Do you. Do you think the reason that Wokeness died was directly related to Elon Musk buying Twitter, which allowed, for the first time, something close to free speech? I don't know. I feel like it had more to do with Trump winning the election because he got rid of dei. He made DEI basically illegal. Not basically illegal, but illegal at the federal level. As much as I think that Elon Musk rescued free speech, which I believe he did, I don't know if that rescue of free speech is what ended Wokeness. I feel like what might have ended it is finding out that most of the country was against it. And Trump made it illegal, at least the DEI part. He made it illegal also the trans athletes on women's teams. So I feel like Trump is one who did it by simply making it illegal to be woke at a point where it's destructive to society. I mean, you can be woke in your brain, but if you're going to implement it in society, the way that destroys the fabric of sports and. And the economy, well, you don't get to do that. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna say, I don't know, maybe 50% Elon buying Twitter and 50% Trump making wokeness illegal, according to CNN's Harry Enton. And maybe this is more on the same theme according to four different big Respected polls, a clear majority of Americans back deporting all illegal immigrants. So depending on the poll, between 55% and 64% of poll respondents used to be American citizens want to send back all illegal immigrants. Now, did you know that in 2016, only 36% of the respondents said send everybody back? So when, when Trump first was saying, hey, close these borders and deport everybody, he didn't really have majority support. A little over a third now he has solidly over half of the country says, send them all back. Now, mostly I would say that's because there was so much of it between 2016 and now. So people just said, yeah, you know, a little bit of immigration was good, but this is totally out of control and now you have to send them all back. So some of it is Trump being very persuasive and some of it is the situation worsened. And so the news showed a different situation to people. But does that surprise you? I did not know that a majority of Americans, so that's got to include a bunch of independents at least, if not Democrats, the majority want to send back all illegal immigrants. That's, that's way more than even Trump recently promised. Because ICE and Trump were both saying, we're going to, you know, start with the worst first. So they never, they never dropped the idea that they were going to deport everybody. It was illegal. But there was a practical limitation to that, meaning that they could, you know, work for years just trying to get the, the worst ones, the ones that had broken laws after they got here. So I thought, well, yeah, you can say, you can say you wanted to board every single one. But if you start with the worst first, it's going to get harder and harder to find worsts because once you get all the low hanging fruit, you'd be like, all right, well, I know there's more criminal undocumented people. They're just harder to find, you know, but we'll keep working on it. But apparently the public is, is on the same page as Trump's campaign promises, at least by a solid majority. So that surprised me. The Wall Street Journal seems to be a little bit pro Trump in terms of the big beautiful bill. So the editorial board is complaining that the Democrats are lying about the big beautiful bill. So that's sort of a pro Trump message that they're saying the Democrats are lying to you. So the things they're lying about is saying that the Republicans are going to take away all your health care or that people who are eligible and should be getting Medicare are going to be dropped from it. They think what else they think. Yeah. So the CBO had said that 4.8 million people would rather lose their Medicare that they have now than get a job or apply to school to learn something. Because if you're in school or you have a job and you don't even have to work many hours, it's like 20 hours a week, you can even volunteer just to maintain your health care. But the CBO estimated that 4.8 million people wouldn't do that. Can you imagine being so lazy that you wouldn't take any kind of job at all to maintain your own health care coverage? No job, nothing for 20 hours a week, or even just sign up for a community college and, you know, barely pass? How hard would it be to do enough work to maintain your health care? So that's amazing. So are we supposed to have empathy for people who want us to pay for them? Well, they don't work even though they're able bodied. So I think Democrats have convinced themselves that their relative who's in a wheelchair and can't walk, can't speak, that they're going to lose their Medicare. No, no, it's only able bodied people. It's not people who are already in terrible shape. So the, the Democrats have to lie that they're going to take away your health care. But also, I asked this question on X this morning. I said, when Democrats describe the hellscape of living under Trump's authoritarian rule, what part of that is touching them personally? Have you ever wondered that if, if all democrats, probably maybe 2/3 of them, would agree with the statement that everything's going to hell under Trump, do they have an example of something that affected them? Because I wake up every morning and nothing seems to be affecting me. There's nothing that Trump has done except maybe decreasing the number of dangerous undocumented people. I don't feel anything different. Every day I wake up and things are about the same. But what, what are Democrats doing? Are they waking up into some, you know, hellscape? And if you ask them, all right, so what exactly is the hellscape, Art? It turns out that according to the comments to my posts, that a lot of people believe that regular citizens will be deported. How many of you believe that just regular citizens will be deported? Just minding your own business. And that one day ICE will break down your door and say, all right, your family's been here for four generations, but Trump has decided to deport you somewhere to a country you've never had any association with. Apparently Democrats believe that's real. So they think that citizens will be deported. What? What? So they think that their health care will go away even if they deserve it, which is not true. And they think that the deporting won't stop until they get all the Democrats, I guess. Psst.
- [32:19]
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- [32:49]
Scott Adams
But they might hate the fact that Planned Parenthood is being majorly defunded by the big beautiful bill. Now, by defunded, I mean, I don't mean that they lose all their money, I think, but it's a lot. I think it's like a quarter of their funding or something they get from the, the feds. So they're going to lose about a quarter of their funding somewhere in that neighborhood. But does that mean that the government should continue to pay for it? You know, I prefer to stay away from the. The whole argument about abortion because I think men such as me should just stay out of it. And whatever women work out, you know, I'll go along with that because if the situation were reversed and I were a female, I wouldn't want men to have an opinion on abortion. I'd say, stay out of it. You just stay out of it. Let the women figure it out. So I, I apply the same standard as a man. I say, okay, if I were you, I'd want me to stay out of the argument. So I do. I have nothing to add to the argument. But if we're looking at the funding alone, I do feel like Planned Parenthood will eventually find enough voluntary funding. Probably they'll just get more donations because they'll, they'll say, hey, mean old Trump took our funding, so why don't you donate to us? So I suspect that their business won't be that much affected in the long run, but we'll see. But I guess that would be part of the Democrat hellscape, to which I say, how many people needed an abortion today? Anyway, so when I asked the question about the hellscape, I'm kind of fascinated by the troll activity because if I say anything about policy that is sort of anti Democrat, I'll get at least one, and usually just one comment from somebody who looks like an AI troll or maybe just a page role. But they, they have some stuff in common that doesn't make them look like regular commenters. So to my question about where exactly is this hellscape people are living? Richard Anguin, who I don't know if is a real person or not, replied Scott Adams, smug dismissal of legitimate fears about Trump's authoritarian tendencies is a dangerous oversimplification that ignores the real trauma inflicted on marginalized communities by his policies. To which I say, that is a perfect Democrat response. It did the two things that Democrats do. The first thing is they don't address the point, they insult you personally. So was the thing that you needed to talk about my smug dismissal of legitimate fears, was this really about me? Why would you make it about me? That's not a reasonable question to ask. If half of the country believes they live in a hellscape, and I care enough to understand what that's about, that I publicly put myself out there and say, well, can you give me an example? Because I can be convinced I could be talked into it. If you had real examples, I'd say, oh, okay, maybe those things don't bother me, but I could see how they would bother you. Thank you for your answer. But instead I get attacked personally for my smug dismissal of legitimate fears. Like I've got some special lack of empathy for the underprivileged. No, I don't. I just have a genuine curiosity. What the heck is the hellscape? Can you give me some examples? Then the second thing that is typically Democrat, besides going after the person instead of the opinion, is these vague hand waving problems like Trump's authoritarian tendencies. All right, so go on now, complete the picture. His authoritarian tendencies. Give you what problem? Well, it allowed me to oversimplify and ignore the real trauma inflicted on marginalized communities. Okay, we're getting closer. What, what would be an example of the real trauma inflicted on the marginalized communities? Just one example. So what exactly is a trauma inducer? Can you give me any example of that? Probably not. All right. Rasmussen did a poll asking people about their preferences for Democrats preferences for their presidential candidate for 2028. And at the top of the list was Kamala Harris. Let me see if you can guess what percentage of the respondents thought that having Kamala Harris as a candidate was a good idea. What percent of the people who answered, does anybody know? You know, I don't have to tell you. You know, that's right. If you guessed 25%, you were very close. The answer is 23%. Yep. 23% of respondents thought that Harris would be a good idea. How in the world could you go through that last election cycle and conclude that Kamala Harris is your best player? Like I always say. So for those of you who are not in on the inside joke here, I'll bring you in. The inside joke is that I always tease the pollsters that for every poll, there's always at least one answer that's really stupid. There might be several answers that are reasonable, but maybe you disagree. But there's usually one answer. No matter what the topic is, there's usually one answer that they get that's just stupid. And I would say that favoring Kamala Harris as your champion for 2028, that kind of falls into stupid. I don't think that's just a preference, is it? Would you call that a preference? It just looks like you don't. You weren't paying attention at all. Anyway. Eric Dolan over at Psy Post tells us there's a new study about what percentage of Americans think that we're heading toward a civil war. You know, if you spend any time on social media, people just casually say, it's time for the civil war. You know, grab your gun. And I always wonder how many people actually think that the US Is close to a civil war, because, again, I don't know what hellscape that is you're living in, but I don't know anybody who's close to a civil war. It's just, you see some strangers on social media say, yeah, it's time for that civil war, but I don't know a real person who thinks a civil war is necessary or desirable. None. But it turns out that my intuition was not too far off, because only 6.5% of the respondents felt strongly or very strongly that a civil war was likely, and only fewer than 4% agree that such a conflict was needed. So, 4%. I'll bet even that 4% doesn't really mean it. You know, like if you said, all right, the magic genie just put you in charge of the civil war. If you say, yes, there will be a civil war that you think is necessary. If you say, no, the genie will make sure there's no civil war. Do you think you could get 4% of the respondents to say, yeah, let's do the civil war? Because I'm a little skeptical. I feel like it might be close to zero. People would actually say yes to that. So I don't think the US is close to a civil war. Nowhere close. We don't even have protests unless they're funded by, you know, dirty money backers. We don't even have spontaneous protests. We only have the paid, professional activist kind of protest that nobody thinks is an indication of what people are thinking. Rather, it's just political theater. So as soon as the Department of Justice and the FBI said they were going to look into the funding behind the anti ICE protests in la, suddenly all the protests stopped. Interesting. As soon as they were going to look into the real cause of it. So that was never real. Those protests were obviously activists and funded.
- [43:20]
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- [43:52]
Scott Adams
So Elon Musk is modifying his plans for starting a new political party. So instead of primaring every single Republican who voted for the big beautiful bill, which is something he threatened, he's now saying that one way to execute on this would be to laser focus on just two or three Senate seats and eight to 10 House districts. Because he reckons if he can get just that many people to join what he calls his America Party, that the, the Democrats and Republicans would be so close they'd be sort of a tie on everything, that he would be the Joe Manchin tiebreaker. You remember I always talked about how smart Joe Manchin was because he would be the one person that you were never sure if he was going to side with the Republicans or the Democrats, which effectively put him in charge of the whole country. Yeah, at the time, because the votes were all close to a tie and you always needed that one extra senator. And I always thought he's so smart to not commit to one side or the other because it puts him in charge of the whole country. And this is what Musk is looking to do. If he could really get just a handful of senators, he would run the country because it would be a tie with pretty much every topic except for his five senators that maybe he could push toward deficit reduction or something. So we'll see if he follows up on that. I know that whatever we're doing now isn't the best system. So I don't know, would he make it better or worse? How many of you believe that the Russian economy has been suffering because of the war? Didn't you sort of think that was true? Didn't you believe that the Russian economy must be sputtering? Well, maybe your news didn't tell you that for the past two years the Russian economy has been zooming. Now it's probably because the stimulus of having a war. So it's not a permanent situation. But now there's a some reporting that maybe their economy after two years assuming might be a little bit weaker. I don't think so. I think if we're waiting for Russia's economy to falter and then we'll negotiate, I don't think we should wait for that. Well, Trump continues to say that he's got a tick tock deal pretty much done that would allow some American or at least non Chinese investors to buy it if he can only get China to agree. But when it comes to China agreeing, he's going to be talking to him next week, I guess. And he says when asked if he's confident that China would approve the sale of TikTok, an American led consortium, probably he said, I'm not confident, but I think so. President Xi and I have a great relationship and I think it's good for them, the deal is good for China and it's good for us. So does that sound like he, he's going to succeed? To me that sounds like China is not going to give up on this unless they get some big trade, you know, some trade concession. So in order for Trump to satisfy his investors, who are probably also Trump supporters, the ones who have agreed to buy TikTok. So in order to get that done, the question I would ask is, is he going to have to throw the rest of us under the bus by not pushing China as hard as he could on trade? I don't know. I'd be a little bit concerned about what China asked for in response. As in, well, we really, really don't want to sell Tick Tock, but we might be willing to do it if you just drop this whole trade war thing and give us AI chips. There's probably something they're willing to ask for that would make it worth it for them to sell TikTok, which they don't want to do. And also TikTok is how they can brainwash our country. So China might just say it's not even about economics, it's entirely about having a platform that can control minds in America anyway. So the Democratic National Committee is sharpening their attacks on Trump, and their new approach is that Trump is, quote, killing the American dream through price hikes and his big, beautiful bill. So does that sound like a good attack? Trump is killing the American dream. Again, there's. There's no image that goes with that. So that's not, it's not visual persuasion. It doesn't exactly ring true. I don't imagine it would ring true for. I don't know. I. I can't put myself in the head of Democrats, maybe for young people who believe that everything is too expensive, so they'll never own a house. So if their message is killing the American dream through price hikes, you'd have to give examples of those price hikes. At the moment, inflation is not bad. So Democrats look to be hooking their horse, so to speak, to an argument that is the opposite of the data, which they always do. It's the most common thing they do is come up with an argument that's opposite of the data anyway, so that's their best idea. So the new hoax, the new Democrat hoax, would be that Trump is preventing the American dream instead of creating it. Well, did you know, according to the Washington Times, Matt Delaney is writing, did you know that there are 9,000 reports, 9,000 reports of Russia using chemical weapons to attack Ukraine's forces? 9,000 times that we know of. And apparently they're. They're loading the chemicals into their own drones and they're gassing the Ukrainians who are hiding in trenches and other places, and it gets them to leave their protected areas so they can breathe, and then they, you know, kill them with their drones. So apparently chemical warfare is just raging over there, and it's the first time I've heard of it. Does it make sense to you that Russia is routinely gassing the Ukraines? And today's probably for some of you, today's the first day you've ever heard of it. Why would that be? Is it. Is it to prevent us from getting involved? Because if we think they're gassing people, we say, hey, you know, we have to get involved because, like, weapons of mass destruction. I don't know. I. I can't understand why I'm only hearing about this today. Was it always out there? Maybe it was always out there and I just missed every story about it. Or maybe it's not real. Don't know. So I was checking today to see if my idea about Zoran Mamdani, the potential mayor of New York City. So I told you that the best attack is to attack his creepy smile because once you hear it called creepy, you'll always see a smile is creepy. You just have to hear it once and it just becomes part of you. So it's spread a little bit. You know, there are some notable people have posted it, but I feel like it could get a lot bigger and I, you know, I suspect it hasn't had any impact on actual voters in New York City yet. So it would have to get a lot bigger or somebody like Trump would have to say he has a creepy smile because otherwise it won't get to the voters. You know, it's not like the New York City population is watching this podcast, but they definitely have to pay attention to anything that Trump says. So if he went after him for his creepy smile, I think you would remember that forever. So we'll see if that happens. Well, President Trump says set on Friday that Iran had not agreed to nuclear inspections and it had not agreed to give up its enriching of uranium. But there are apparently some talks coming up. According to MWAJ Media, whatever that is. They say that the US and Iran are going to be talking. Does that sound real? Do you believe Iran and the US are going to have any productive high level discussions? I don't know. I'm not sure I believe it yet. But if it happens, they would be talking about all these things. I don't imagine anything good is good about that. So we'll see. Trump has pulled some rabbits out of some hats. So anything's possible in the golden age. Well, this is the end of my prepared comments. You saw how dull and boring the news was today. I know a lot of you just use this to fall asleep to my voice. By the way, if you want a recommendation for another content to fall asleep to try very old black and white TV sitcoms, you know, like the Dick Van Dyke show and New Heart, if you're old enough to remember those. There is nothing happening in those shows. The jokes are not jokes. The issues are not controversial. It's just people talking and talking about ordinary stuff. So even, you know, My Favorite Martian, it's not provocative. There's no swearing, there's nothing that will make you laugh. There's nothing so interesting that you'll really want to hear it. It's just like asmr and I can fall asleep to that so easily. The other thing I can fall asleep to, just in case you want to test it for yourself, is I'll put on a YouTube video about ancient ruins like Gobelly, Gopelli, Capelli. Well, you know that place because there are hundreds of them, and they all say the same stuff. Well, we found some rocks. We don't know how they possibly could have carried these big rocks and cut them to such precision. We also don't know how they understood the. The zodiac or astronomy so well that they're lined up perfectly with the North Star. And it's the same. Same content over and over again. It's usually some boring person talking about it. You can go to sleep to that. Really? Well, there's nothing new in those. Well, we were wrong about 100 Gatherers created civilization. All right, I've heard it a million times. Anyway, so if you're using my podcast to fall asleep, good for you if it works. And this one will be especially good because there was no good content today. Not my fault it's a boring holiday weekend. Anyway, it's time for me to say a few words to my beloved local subscribers, but I'll keep it short and give Owen Gregorian just enough time so he can go get the spaces ready, so. Oh, and you're still in the comments, I see. But in a very few short minutes, the Spaces event will be opening up for people who want to get a little extra talk about today's stories and whatever else I guess you want to do. So just search for Owen Gregorian on X and you'll see a link at the top of his feed for when to join, how to join the spaces. All right, that's enough of that. Hey, locals, I'm going to come to you privately. The rest of you, I'll see you tomorrow. Same time, same place. In 30 seconds will be. Oh, is that not working? Well, it looks like we have a technical problem. Let's try again. So I don't have the ability to go private with locals today. Just the button. The button is not responding. This happened a few times. All right, well, we don't need to. I'll catch up to you on the Spaces event. And so I'll just say, see you later. See you later. I make sure that I see somebody else say see you later before I go. There we go. See you later. Oh, it also doesn't let me end the stream, so I have to sign off and then reside back on. Just sa.