B (10:47)

Kay Jeweler's Black Friday sale is on. Now's the time to get up to 50% off Black Friday deals with C. With savings this big, you can get gifts for everyone on your list. Plus, if Black Friday lines aren't your thing, skip em at Kay. You can buy online and pick up in store or get free shipping right to your home. This holiday season, unwrap love and savings with Kay. Exclusions apply. See kay.com exclusions for details.

A (11:22)

So if you're just joining, I'm using my NPR ASMR voice to conserve my energy so I can go as long as possible. Probably won't go more than 20 minutes, but we'll See? All right, so it looks like we're, or at least teasing, going to Venezuela, but here's the real question. I'm gonna get into some conspiracy theory stuff. It sounds better when you talk like this. Conspiracy theories. Is it really about the drugs? Maybe some people say fentanyl is not a Venezuela problem. So there must be some other reason Trump wants to go into Venezuela. Is it because Venezuela has some implication in our election systems? I'm going to talk about that separately. Is it because what we really want is regime change? So do you think the. Do you think the war on Venezuelan drugs is about voting machines? Is it really about drugs? Or is it really about regime change? Or is it some combination of all three or two? And how would we ever know? Now, today, this morning, since it was slow news, I had some gaps in my understanding of some recent stories. And so I used GROK to fill me in and it ruined all my fun. Has anybody tried that yet? Have you tried using GROK on stories within your own bubble? You will be very disappointed if you do not disappointed in GROK necessarily, but you'll be disappointed in how many things you believe that are pure bullshit. So my experience this morning was, all right, Grock, does this look reasonable? Nope. How about this? Does this look reasonable? Nope. So it turns out that there were several things that I thought were at least possible in my bubble that GROK says are bullshit. Now, that doesn't mean that GROK is right. Right. GROK is intended to achieve maximum truth, but it's not done yet. You know, GROK is still a work in progress. So it's possible that GROK is the one that's wrong, but it's pretty convincing. So the first thing I used GROK to help me on was the Emerald Robinson long thread in which she, she weaves together a very. A very convincing story that our elections have been fake basically for years, as well as the elections in other countries, and that there's a very specific set of allegations of why that is. But. So I ran that against GROK and I said, you know, basically summarize it and then tell me how reasonable it is. What do you think Grok said? GROK wasn't buying any of it. So Emerald Robinson's, I guess, or a thread you'd call it, is that. And I'll just throw out some of the main points. So one of the points is that the chips and election machines are made in China. Do you believe that's true? And that they have malicious, basically, that the chips are malicious, but that they were laundered through Taiwan. So it would look like the chips came from Taiwan, but they really were made in China. So I'm not sure that's proven. Then there was the allegation that one of the main election machines had as its CEO a George Soros ally. So there's a Soros connection, alleged. And there's a Chinese chip part, but there's also a Venezuelan software allegation and there's something about Serbian servers and the CIA. So the idea would be, and here's the part I was trying to understand, how in the world could all of those entities be working together? How could Soros be working with China, who is also working with some Serbians who is also being managed maybe by the CIA? Does it seem like they would all be on the same team? And Grox explanation is that the CIA, no, this would not be. This is Grok's explanation of, I think, the Emerald Robinson hypothesis. So it's not Grok's opinion, it's description of someone else's opinion. But the idea would be that the CIA is, is allowing with full knowledge China to manipulate our elections and Soros to manipulate them and some Serbians and maybe some Venezuelan software. And that the reason that the CIA would allow all that is that somehow that would preserve the deep state as it is now. Do you think Chinese microchips, if such a thing were real, do you think that all those entities would be working toward the same end and that the CIA would be completely aware of it and allow it to happen? And then separately, why didn't it work in 2024 if our elections are completely compromised, why in the world didn't it work in 2024? And the explanation given is that the good work of the people trying to uncover this vast conspiracy were so good at what they did that it increased the, let's say, the potential for audits and the oversight and that in some cases they got rid of election machines, I don't know how many places, but. So the theory is that they've, you know, that for maybe decades the entire system has been rigged, that hundreds of people are aware of it and part of it, but yet somehow the. We only hear about it from a few whistleblowers, even though decades and hundreds of people have been involved. That's a stretch. But we have seen real world situations where hundreds of people have been involved and it was actually was a conspiracy. You know, if you're talking about COVID for example, that was an example of a lot of people being involved who could have Been whistleblowers, but weren't. So we, we do have, I think, some precedent of lots of people being involved and nobody talking because they'd be afraid of being executed, presumably by the CIA. So how much of that sounds real to you? Do you believe that all of those entities. Let's see, I'll give you the entities again. Which ones it would have been the Soros organization, Venezuela, some Serbian hackers, the Chinese making microchips, the CIA. Do you believe that they were all coordinating. That's kind of a, it's kind of a stretch. I'm just looking at your comments. So Grox. Well, let me tell you what else. Just give you as much as I have. First of all, the, the story's gonna. Yes, confusopoly. Exactly. It's a big confusing story. So that's your first hint that maybe there's something wrong. Meaning there's a lot of parts to it. And if there's one thing I've taught you, and only one thing, it's that things which are not true can often have a lot of circumstantial evidence that they are. So it's not unusual for something not to be true, but really, really looking like it is for 20 different reasons. That just doesn't mean it's true. So let's see what else. I also look to Mike Benz to tell me if this all tracks. And I, I think Mike, I don't want to, I hate to mischaracterize him, but I, I think he would be on the side of not complete, not completely embracing the Emerald Robinson version of events. I didn't see him debunk it, but nor did I see him fully embracing it. If he had, that would have added a lot to the credibility because he knows, you know, he knows the context of things in ways we don't. Anyway. So part of the, part of the theory is, is that the reason. No, not, not S I R I theory. T H E O R Y I've got to talk to my phone for a minute. My phone thought I was talking to it. Phone. Quiet down. All right. So part of the theory is that the reason that the bad people got away with it is that they, they learn to shave votes only from the deep red pro Trump districts. And the idea is that nobody would suspect if they did all the cheating in the red areas because the red areas are Republican controlled and you wouldn't expect those to be the places that would be cheating against Trump. And the theory is that if It's a Trump 70% area. If they just shave it back to, say, 68%, nobody would notice because it would still be a landslide for Trump in a Trump area. So that would look legit. It would just look, I was off by Trump 2% from what we expected. But, you know, you can't expect that accurately. So that makes sense. I don't think there's proof of that, but it makes sense in the how would you cheat? If you did cheat, how would you do it? So it makes sense that way, but I don't think that's. I don't think there's evidence of that. See what else. I've been saying for a while that the best evidence that the electronic voting machines are not legit without stating who might be behind, you know, any bad behavior, is that they're not cheaper, they're not easier, and they're not more secure than the alternative, which is paper ballots. So why did they even exist? I'm leaning toward the idea that they do exist for the purpose of rigging elections in other countries, but that would still raise the question, who's doing the rigging? Is it possible that the CIA was working with Maduro and China? I don't know how all that makes sense Anyway, so let's see what else GROK said about it. Yeah. So the theory that the CIA allegedly allowed China to insert spyware because they were okay with it, does that really track? Does it make sense to you that there would be at least, I don't know, two or three entities that all had some access to be able to rig the rig the vote? I don't know. So I'm going to say this about that. First of all, GROK is really a spoiler. This won't be the first thing I tell you that it kind of debunked. Now, debunk is a strong word, and it does not mean disproven. So just get that part straight. GROK did not disprove the theory is. Simply did not find it compelling, I guess. But is that evidence? Are you, Is anybody convinced by grok's opinion? Well, one of the things that GROK did was it mocked me. And actually it used me as an example. In its response, it sounded. Sounded more like a. Like a Scott Adams conspiracy theory. And I said, why'd you bring me into it? And that was the funny part. GROK knows who I am. It knows who I am, but it also used me as an example to make his point. Anyway, I got a little personal there. All right, So I also tested GROK against the Mike Ben's hypothesis, I'll call it that, that it's not a coincidence that there are these big immigration waves to America that follow some kind of CIA color revolution in another country. So I think he had some, I don't know, maybe there were like eight different examples of countries where we were actively, meaning the CIA was actively trying to do a regime change and caused instability in the target country, be it Syria or Afghanistan. And then once that, once that, let's say, disruption of their society happened and it triggered a bunch of immigration or migration out of the target country, that there was a secondary benefit that the deep state or the CIA or somebody knew would happen. And what they would do is they would aim the refugees for areas where that extra population could be used to change the vote. So, and Mike gave a bunch of examples that you would have to believe that they were all a coincidence for that, for there to be any other reason. In other words, it does look intentional, but only by the fact that there are too many coincidences. But Grok, I thought, was going to buy into this a little bit more than it did. Grok said that there's no evidence of intent, so it didn't doubt Mike Benz's facts. It only said there's a part missing, which is some evidence that anybody intended for this to happen. We can observe that it does happen. We can observe that something like color revolutions that were pushing in other places does create mass migration, and we can observe that it changes the political dynamic in certain places. But the part that's missing is some kind of a more direct smoking gun. I guess that it's all intentional, at least. At least the intentional part is that it's partly to, you know, change the, the voting balance in the United States. So that ruined some of my fun there. As far as I can tell, Mike is undefeated in terms of showing his receipts. But sometimes you have to make a little bit of a leap and say, well, this doesn't look like a coincidence or, or if it is a coincidence, that's sure a weird one. So I would say that. So Grok was not. Grok was not, not at all convinced. Now, again, I remind you, that doesn't mean Grok is right. That was just sort of Grok's steak.

C (31:58)

If we knew more about our sleep, what would we do differently? Would we go to bed at a consistent time or take steps to reduce interruptions to our sleep? With the all new Sleep score, Apple Watch measures your bedtime consistency, interruptions and sleep duration. Then every morning it combines these factors into an Easy to understand score from 1 to 100. So you'll know how to take the quality of your sleep from good to excellent. Introducing the new sleep score on Apple Watch iPhone 11 or later required.

A (32:30)

Then this one will kill you. You ready for another one? I don't want to ruin all of your. Your fun with the conspiracy theories because they are fun and I, I get drawn into them as much as anybody else. All right, so I saw a post by Eric Doherty that summarized what a number of other people have said about the seditious sex. You know, the seditious sex. That would be the six Democrats who did the video that suggested that people in the military should not follow orders that are illegal now, as Eric points out. And this would be the. I think Eric's take would be what I'd call the. The Republican bubble. Doesn't mean it's wrong. Doesn't mean it's right. It's just what the Republicans are seeing on social media. But you know, maybe the Democrats don't even see it. I don't even know if they see it. But it goes like this. There's an alleged. And everything I say about this will be alleged. An alleged non profit linked to George Soros that is fomenting sedition within the military. So the thinking is that the video we saw was inspired by or even the script was written by some third party external bad player and that that bad player might be linked to maybe George Soros. But also there's some group called Wind Without War that put up a billboard, just one billboard in North Carolina and that was similar in tone to the seditious, seditious sex. So that would suggest there's some external, maybe larger, you know, larger play, bigger than just some Democrats wanting to do a thing. There's some link to Antifa allegedly. And then as Eric Daugherty is reporting that on November 11, just days before the video, the National Lawyers Guild published a page urging service members to refuse illegal orders. And it would be the. Basically the same talking points as in the video. So and then Win Without War, that entity. Let's see if I got the right entities. So there's a National Lawyers Guild, but there's also the Win Without War non profit, I think who are backed by the Soros Open Society. And the group had some previous name. All right, so. And then. Oh, here it is. So the Wind Without War is partnered with the National Lawyers Guild. Is this all too confusing? So that the short version is that the belief is that the six Democrats were not doing this on their Own that there was some external guiding force, still unidentified, that allegedly had some connection with Soros. I guess the National Lawyers Guild supports antifa. And then here's the key part. There's something that Senator Rubin Gallego said on video recently in some interview, I guess, and allegedly he admitted that there was a external script, that the script for the video, you know, he had seen came from some external source. But Grok says that's fake news. Grok says there is no such thing as Ruben Gallego admitting there was a third party script that just didn't happen and that it was a misinterpretation of something he did say. But there's no evidence that he said it came from an external source. Now, I don't doubt that there is more than one entity that's putting out the same message. But then I asked Rock, so why would these six people put out this video if not to, you know, try to create some kind of a insurrection or cause chaos or I don't take over the government or something else? And here's what Grok said. Grok said is most likely that the Democrats are legitimately afraid of Trump trying to go full dictator and issuing illegal orders. And so Grok believes that these seditious six were actually patriots who are legitimately concerned that Trump is at least teasing or moving toward some more authoritarian situation and that they would like to reduce the chances that he could succeed at that. And so they're warning the troops, hey, watch out. You know, he might actually try something that's legitimately illegal, and you're going to have to step up. Now, what do you think? Do you think it's more likely that some external entity was behind it all? And who would that be? Or do you think that every Democrat is afraid? Literally every Democrat is afraid that Trump might exceed his legal domain and try to get the military to do something illegal. And it might be illegal in terms of war, might be illegal in terms of immigration, could be illegal in terms of anything, I guess. So what sounds more likely to you that the Democrats are legitimately afraid and some of them said, hey, let's do something about it, you know, to inoculate. So the word that Grok used was inoculate. So the idea was to simply get the military thinking about how they would handle a situation that looked unambiguously illegal to them. I would say at this point, the third party connection is unproven. I don't think you need a third party. If every Democrat is really thinking the same thing and Trump keeps teasing about A third term. And if you're a Democrat, you take that seriously. You know, I think Republicans laugh at the third term thing because it looks like, you know, Trump's just playing with them, but they're the ones being played with. So they might be thinking. They might be thinking it's real. I'm going to say on this one, the only thing I think is proven is that there's more than one Democrat who thinks Trump might be breaking the law sometime soon. So if there is a connection to some shadowy external source, I don't think that's quite proven yet. Could be, though. Could be. All right, next story I saw in the Independent. Hannahova is writing that Russian drones are targeting civilians and turning one Ukrainian city into what they called a human safari. So apparently Kherson allegedly, as you know, I think hundreds of Russian drones a day are hunting for civilians that just happen to go outdoors. Does that sound real to you? Keep in mind that all reports from a war zone are a little, you know, a little sketchy. Do you believe that one? Do you believe that in Kherson there are, I don't know, hundreds of attacks on civilians? And if they are, let's say it was true. Why would Russia do that? Why would it use drones to attack civilians? I will sip for my awesome thing while you think about that. Would they be doing it if it's happening at all? Are they trying to depopulate the city? Are they trying to get people to move? So for what? So it'd be easier to take over the city? One theory is that they were just practicing and that they just use it for target practice to train the drone operators. Do you think they're doing it for target practice? Just to train the drone people? That doesn't seem like a good use of training. Are they trying to demoralize the city? Is it revenge? Some people say it's revenge for something the Ukrainians did. That doesn't make sense. Or is it propaganda and it's not actually happening? Or is it happening, but not at the level that's being reported? I would say I'm not quite willing to believe that it's even happening. I would say it's. It's too. Yeah, it's too fog of war. It's too much. Exactly like. Exactly like something somebody would lie about in a war. Oh, you're monsters. You're killing our civilians. We would never do that. So I'm gonna say I don't believe that story. Then. I tried to use Grok to understand how likely is it that Ukraine and Russia would find a. Find an acceptable peace. I think the answer is there's not really any way. I don't think there is a way. So I, I started with some context. You know, I've been hearing forever that Ukraine could have made peace back in 2022. And I guess the offer was on the table that Russia would keep Crimea and the Donbass, that has a bunch of Russian national. A bunch of Russian ethnic people would have some kind of special rule, and that Ukraine would agree to never join NATO. And the theory is that Russia would have taken that offer. But it looked like Zelensky may have been the one who. Let's see. Let's see if I have this right. Oh, so. So it looks like. It looked like there was a way to make peace, but probably that's an exaggeration. I suspect they were not ever close to peace, but it might be true that if they. The only way they could make peace is something that looked like giving up a lot. So you see how hard it is to. For me to even explain this. I'm doing a terrible job. So. So according to Grok, I'll just tell you what Grok says. Grok said that in 2022, Ukraine floated some concessions to maybe wrap things up without war. And he signaled openness to neutrality, not joining NATO. Zelensky did. And autonomy or special status for the Donbass. And. But I think. But Putin pushed. Again, this is Grok. Putin pushed for total demilitarization, a handover of Crimea, and more so attacked. So according to Grok, there was never anything that both sides agreed on. So if there was never anything that both sides agreed on, was it ever. Was it ever something that could have not happened? So, and then there's. Grok also says that the egos of the two leaders is in play. You know, they. Neither of them can lose. So that's part of the. That's part of it. So here's what I think. I don't think there was ever a chance it wasn't going to go to war because they were never that close. They say they were, but I think that's just propaganda. And both think the other is the reason that it went further. So. Here's why I think it's impossible for them to get any kind of peace, because if Zelensky makes peace by giving up land, he will lose his job and probably be killed. If Putin decided to go easy on Ukraine, that wouldn't make sense because he seems to be in a sort of a winning position in the Long run. So you've got two leaders who neither of them have much incentive to settle it, but they have an incentive to keep doing what they're doing. At the very least, you would need one of the sides to think it was a bad idea to be at war. And I don't think we have that. Greetings from Moscow. Somebody in the comments is in Moscow. So I would say that I don't believe the story that there was a point in the past where they could have made peace. I think that was always, maybe exaggerated and probably this was always going to happen just because of the interest of the two leaders. And it's more about the leaders in the countries. What do you think? I'm looking at the comments. Do you think, do you think there's any chance that they could have settled this thing earlier, like 2022? Yeah, I'm really feeling like no. And then on top of that, you have all the smart people saying that even if Putin agreed, you couldn't trust him. So, you know, there's not enough. There's not enough to make a deal. But even if he made a deal, it wouldn't be worth anything because I can't see. I can't see Putin giving up on at least controlling Ukraine as a proxy. So, Cruise again. What did I prove again? So I guess I don't believe anything about that. They could have had peace before. I just, I just know things. It was possible and it isn't possible now either. So I would say, at minimum, I'm going to re up my prediction. I think there's going to be at least another year of war, and it'll be perpetual war unless something changes. And I think, I think time is on Russia's side right now. Yeah, it looks like they're in a winning position. So they'd. They would have no reason to negotiate. I mean, it certainly doesn't look like. It doesn't look like Putin wants peace, does it? I don't think he cares at all. I mean, he would want peace if he also got as much of Ukraine as he wanted. But doesn't look like that's an option. Ukraine is not a country anymore. Huh? Well, there's still something left. You know, Kiev is still unoccupied. All right, that's all I have for today. If you're joining late, my whispering is because. Trying to save energy and I thought I'd try my ASMR FM radio voice, and it worked. So I got through most of the show. Now there's not much going on, and I think I, I think I did a terrible job today. If I were to judge my own analysis, pretty bad. Because these stories are all complicated. But I recommend the following. If you, if you see one of these complicated conspiracy theory stories, no matter where it comes from and no matter how credible it sounds, you really owe it to yourself to spend a few minutes with Grok and say, all right, here's the claim. Is that legitimate? I think what you're going to find is that 9 out of 10 times Grok is going to say, no, that is not legitimate. And then you'll say, damn it, I'm in a bubble because we all are in bubbles. Now, you may have also seen News Nation did a story about Dr. Soon Shun and his cancer treatments and trying to get the FDA to approve it. And who, who was it? Is it Redfield? Somebody was ex. FDA was saying that the practice of waiting for a serious trial of every medicine is not always appropriate. And I think the claim was if you, if you observe somebody doing a treatment that cures them or puts them in remission and there was nothing else that worked, that's not nothing. It's not a randomized controlled trial. But can you ignore that? Suppose dozens of people are curious, cured of incurable cancer. Would you not allow the next person to try it? So I think that's the question we're down to. So I'm on that path. So if I get, if I get remission, that'll mean something. I'll let you know. I've got one more dose. All right, people, I'm running out of energy, So thanks for joining and I'll say bye for now. I, I don't have enough energy to stay for the after show for my beloveds, but I'll try to get more energy in the future. Bye for now.