A (41:07)
Well, I guess some New York Times reporter is suing the big AI companies. In this case, this would include X. So Google X OpenAI they're suing over chatbot training. So I guess they're worried that the chat bots read their books without permission and got trained on them and they think that's some kind of a copyright violation. Now you've heard this before. It's sort of an old story that authors but I guess they're not doing a class action in this case. Which has some extra risk for the AI companies, allegedly. So I ask it, I ask AI about my books, and it generally, it knows. Well, here's what it pretends to know. If I ask AI, you know, what's on page whatever of my book, it can't do it. So it's not trained that well. If I ask it to summarize my book, it can do it, but it takes a summary from other people's comments about the book. So it is legal for the AI to look at public comments like a review of the book or what somebody said about it on social media, for example. And usually that's enough to piece together what the book was about. So in a sense, AI, at least in my case, finds a workaround that doesn't look like a copyright violation to me because there's. There's no problem quoting a reviewer or something. So I asked Gemini today if it was true that John Bogle, who is the famous Vanguard Index Fund guy, is it true that he wants to use my financial advice in his book? Because I was wondering who I have influence. And according to Gemini, it could tell me the page number and the book. And I think it was year 2010 that his book took my nine page personal finance advice and he just included it in the book because he thought it was so well done. It was really well done. And that was, I think, mostly right. But when inside I could give me the page number, I'll bet that was a hallucination. So I don't know. I've not. I cannot confirm that his book included my financial advice. I can confirm that a few people asked for permission to reprint that. So whether he did or not, I don't know. Anyway, did you know that I have, I've had an influence on personal finance? How many of you knew that? That's one of the weird areas that I had an influence. You know how I've told you that one of the ways to be influential is to be the person who writes it down? Whatever it is, if you write it down, you become influential if you do a good job of writing it down. So because I'm a cartoonist and I'm really good at summarizing, I found a way to write down all the advice you would ever need for personal finance in just nine bullet points. So the, the breakthrough was not that I knew more than anybody else, the breakthrough is that I figured out how to do it in nine bullet points. That would be in the order. This is the key part. They would be in the order that you should do Them. Nobody did that before. Everybody else just said, this is a good idea, this is a bad idea, good idea, bad idea. But it was overwhelming. So I got rid of the overwhelming part by just saying, if you don't know anything else, do this. I think number one was make a will. If you have, if you have people you're trying to take care of. But of course, you should do that first. Why would you leave yourself exposed? So I don't know if AI got that right. Well, Jasmine Crockett, your favorite Democrat. Yes, I said Democrat. She's got a new technique that is so. It's so bad that it's almost good. So she was asked, Breitbart News was reporting this. So in some interview recently, she was asked if she accepts the idea that the current administration has vastly reduced the illegal border crossings. Now, would you agree that one of the most obviously documented total facts is that the Trump administration has in fact reduced the number of illegal border crossings? Now, how could she possibly say that that didn't. Okay, I'll get back to that. Well, here's what she did. So she didn't want to give credit for what is an immense accomplishment. So instead she said, we know that this administration has not been the most honest when it comes to reporting numbers. So instead of saying, yes, obviously they stopped border crossings, she questioned whether the data was accurate. Oh, my God, I hate it and I love it. At the same time, it's so bold that you would even go that direction. But if you assume that the public isn't really following things closely, she says, well, you know, they, they cheated on the jobs numbers. I don't know if that's true, but she said the jobs numbers were fake. So if the job numbers were fake, couldn't it also be true that the border numbers were fake? No, because we would definitely notice that the border numbers were fake if the border was exactly the way it had been. You don't think we were noticed? It's harder to notice unemployment or employment, you know, especially if you're talking 1 or 2%. But it's not hard to notice that the border is wide open or totally closed. But the, the husband of even saying that it might be a data reporting problem by the administration. That's pretty bold. So apparently there's a giant tanker, oil tanker that is one of these shadow fleet trying to illegally move oil from Venezuela. And so the Coast Guard started chasing it down. And instead of surrendering, which you would expect them to do because they're literally up against the military. So instead of Surrendering, they decided to do a U turn and make a run for it. Now, obviously they're not going to outrun the Coast Guard, so there's a little bit of a mystery as to why they haven't surrendered. Because the, the staff of the, of the, the vessel, they're not military, you know, they're just underpaid semen, so to speak. So why would they even take a chance? It's not their oil, you know, I mean, I suppose there's some risk of penalty to them if they give it up, but what do they think? They think they're going to outrun the Coast Guard. So part of the story Wall Street Journal is reporting on this is that the US is just waiting to bring some more military assets in so they can do a proper military takeover of the boat. If they don't voluntarily surrender, it looks like they're not. So did you know that there's such a thing as a maritime special response team? So apparently the US military has a group who are specially trained elite force for boarding hostile ships. I guess what they do is they bring in a bunch of helicopters and, you know, the helicopters keep everybody busy. Then the special elite team, they repel down, presumably. I, I don't think the helicopter lands. I think they probably rappel down and then they use their superior weaponry to make it to the bridge and then basically take over. And then there's some speculation that they're looking for a captain who would know how to run the boat after they, the ship after they take it over. Because it's not that common to know how to operate that kind of a ship. So it might be hard to find somebody who's willing to, you know, be the, be the new captain. Would they be seals? I don't know. Maybe there would be a subset of seals, but the seals were not mentioned in this story. Anyway, as part of that story I keep hearing is said that if the Venezuelan oil shipments are shut down or even seriously degraded, that it will collapse the economy of Cuba, because Cuba is already a basket case and it depends on cheap Venezuelan oil. So if the cheap Venezuelan oil gets cut off or seriously degraded, some people say, oh, the Cuban economy will collapse. To which I say there's never been a time in my life when the Cuban economy was not on the border of collapse. Do you believe that they're going to collapse every time we hear this? Things don't collapse, at least not completely. So it seems like there's always a workaround for everything. But the thing I still don't know is if the Trump administration thinks they're getting a twofer and that they're going to find a way to do regime change in Cuba the hard way, just indirectly, by putting pressure on their, their sponsor. Don't know. All right. According to POLITICO, the U.S. immigration Customs Enforcement people that we know as ICE are buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of surveillance tools so that they can find the non legal residents. So that would include, let's see, social media monitoring tools, facial recognition software, licensed flight readers and services to find people, where people live and work. So let me take you back to something I've been predicting for 10 years. If you think you can protect your privacy, you can't. Your privacy was always going to disappear and it wouldn't matter who's in charge. And the reason I say that is that the utility of taking your privacy away is just too high. So the government, whoever the government is, is going to say, well, you know, we really need to, you know, we really need to do this for the illegals. Then the next thing you know, you're going to say, well, we have all these tools, you know, why do we also sell it to the police force? And I don't think it will ever matter if the Democrats or the Republicans are in charge. I think in every scenario, just the usefulness of taking away your privacy for law and order will be so high that you don't have a chance. It will just disappear. And I'm not saying that's a good idea. I'm just saying it's inevitable. So, you know, if you're worried about it happening, maybe what you should worry about is not doing anything that can be discovered that you would want to be discovered. Because a full lack of privacy is just guaranteed in the future. I mean, that's before you have a robot in your house, how much privacy you can have with a robot in your house. All right, let me ask you this. Let's say you've got a, an optimist robot and the police say if we could get that robot to spy on you, that we can find out, you know, if you're doing anything bad. Would Elon Musk say, nope, even though you have a warrant, I will not, I will not turn on the ability to monitor people through the robot, which would be presumably not that hard. But even Elon Musk can't defy the Department of Justice. So if the Department of Justice says, oh yeah, this is a totally legitimate use of a warrant, you've got a robot, we can listen through the robot we are ordering you to make that robot a spy. Would he do it? I don't know that he would have a choice. I think he would go to jail if he didn't do it. So, yeah, as soon as there's a robot in every house, you'd better not break any laws. Surprisingly, there's a report that Zelensky is going to meet at Mar a Lago on Sunday to try to reach an agreement. Now that surprises me because the most recent comment from the Russian envoys was that they're not, they didn't make any progress recently and they're, they're not close to a deal. But there are some hints that they might be close to a deal. One of the hints is that Trump probably wouldn't take the meeting unless he thought it was close enough that he could push it over the edge. Now, he's an optimist. So just because he thinks they might be close, that doesn't mean they're close. But it's worth a try. So remember, he's got Kushner and Wyckoff working on this and they're very good at what they do. So maybe we're in for a surprise. But according to Axios, here are some of the things that are the biggest sticking points and why we might be closer to a deal than we think. One is that Ukraine needed security guarantees and apparently the US Is willing to put some legislation through Congress that would give them security guarantees without NATO. Now what would that look like? What exactly would a US Security guarantee be unless it meant we would put boots on the ground if Russia got adventurous? Well, I don't know, but one of the things it could be is that open ended, we will respond, but that what we would plan to do is give the Ukrainians the good weapons that we've never given them before. So suppose we said, here's the deal, Russia, we have held back our best weapons because it would look like we're part of the war if we give it the good stuff. But if we give them a security guarantee and you move on them militarily, we will instantly take the controls off and they can have everything except our nuclear weapons. So suddenly, you will not be facing Ukrainian weapons. You'll be facing the most optimized American weapons. If you look at what companies like Anduril are doing to make our weapons smarter, cheaper, that would be quite a threat. And it would not guarantee that there would be any boosts on the ground, but it could be quite a good, quite a good incentive for Russia to stay away so I'm just speculating that there is a way to create a security guarantee that would be sensible. I wasn't sure there would be. And that if Russia responds military, there would also be sanctions. Of course. And maybe the sanctions would be worse. If they could be worse, then the other thing that Russia wants is it wants complete control over the Donbass. So it sounds like they're not flexible on control of the Donbass, which would require, I think, Ukraine to actually pull out of some part of the Donbass that they have not yet lost. And Russia would have control over what they already have, plus a little extra. Now, here's what the US Seems to have counter proposed since the word that's being used as control. Is it possible that you can find a hybrid situation where Russia feels like it has enough control to be, let's say, safe from a military build up there or safe from something bad happening? But that, I guess Wyckoff and Jared Kushner have suggested that they turn that into the Donbass, into a free economic zone, so that you reframe it. And I like this part. You reframe the Donbass from a military zone to an economic zone and you say, how about we make this the one place that you can make some money and there's not going to be any war. If that works for you, it works for us. We don't need to put any missiles there, you don't need to attack it, but you can have something like control. Do you think there's any hybrid situation in which Russia would say, all right, that's enough control? Because we're worried about security, we're worried about the US Putting some missiles there and we, we would agree not to maybe. Maybe. I think there might be something there. And let's see. And apparently there's some issue about a ceasefire, because Russia doesn't want to do a ceasefire until they have a deal. But Ukraine is saying we can't have a deal because of our laws unless we have a referendum. And the referendum ended in voting to give up that control of the Donbass. But it looks like the Russians understand that if the, if the referendum is the only way to get there, and the only way to have a referendum is with a ceasefire, that might be negotiable. So maybe that's something that they would cave on. So anyway, I'm just speculating that is possible. I'd probably still bet against it, but it's possible that they're close to a deal. And then I saw in where Did I see this in the Amuse account on X pointed out. I don't know what the source of this is, but Amuse is good on sources that the European Union has committed to. This blows my mind that the European Union has deals to buy Russian energy through 2027. So that would be, that would imply that Russia could continue affording war for at least two more years. So it's possible that Russia, you know, might want to make a deal, but maybe they could wait another two years and see if they get more control over the Donbass if they don't care about the casualties. So it just blows my mind that Europe is still, you know, attached to Russian oil. Then apparently there's some people in the administration who think that if we make peace with Russia, that would be a four way piece, you know, Europe, us, Ukraine, Russia, if we can make peace. That Russia has such unlimited natural resources that everybody can make a ton of money. But the counter to that is that the entire economy of Russia is about the size of Italy. Italy's economy and is sort of shrinking. They've got a demographic problem. But the biggest problem that Russia has is that if you're a legitimate business person from the west and you built a company that made money in Russia, the Russians would steal it. They would literally just steal your company. Because Russia is basically a criminal organization pretending to be a country. So do you think it's. And they don't have that many resources that are, they're unique. So the thinking is that if you thought Russia was this gold mine of natural resources. Well, it does have some natural resources, but it's not essential to run the world. And it's so risky to do any kind of business in Russia that you'd be crazy to try. So one question is, can we really sell the idea that doing business with Russia is good for them and good for us? I can see why it would be good for them. Because if, if an American company comes in and, you know, let's say, you know, builds this really successful energy enterprise working with the Russians, the Russians would seal it, they would nationalize it, they would jail the CEO. They would just steal it. So we'll see if the. We'll see if that's even a path they can take. Hey, everybody makes money. We'll see. Well, over Christmas, if you weren't paying attention, the US launched strikes on the Islamic State targets in Nigeria. Apparently Nigerian ISIS has been killing, literally massacring Christians. And Trump really doesn't like that. So he had warned them that the bad guys that if they kept killing Christians, he was going to respond militarily. Allegedly Nigeria's government approved it, so it wasn't a violation of their sovereignty. But we don't know how many people were bombed or if it was missiles. I'm pretty sure no American boots were on the ground and no American casualties. Don't know that for sure, but I'm sure we did it from a distance anyway. It makes me wonder under what authority can Trump order an attack on Nigeria? Even if the government of Nigeria says yes, what authority allows him to do that? Can he just tell the military to attack anybody he wants now? You know, arguably there's a good rationale for it. I'm not arguing that he shouldn't have done it, but how do you justify that legally? I know. I suspect the anti war people will have something to say about this next week. And again, I'm not opposed to it. If there were no casualties on the American side and it made a difference. We don't yet know if it made a difference, but potentially might have been a good play. You know, I've told you now quite a few times that when Trump has options, he always picks the strongest one. Even if the War Powers act, even if it's not the optimal strategy, that every time he picks the, quote, strong strategy, that pays off because the next situation where he's negotiating, nobody will think he's bluffing. You see what I'm saying? As long as he always picks the strongest play, even if it's not the optimized play, then every time he has to deal with somebody, they're going to say, oh, damn it, he's not bluffing. If he says he's going to bomb us, he's definitely going to bomb us. So even if he isn't, so it's a real good play. Persuasion wise, literally murdering priests. I also don't know the scale of it. Obviously there's no amount. That's right. There's no amount that's the right amount of killing Christians. But I do wonder, what is the scale? I mean, are they killing 100 Christians a day? How bad is it? Arguing about the legality is laughable. Yeah, I would say I'm more curious than arguing about it. I wouldn't say I'm arguing about it. All right, pull our investments. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I have for you today. And if you want to hang out for another minute, I will be happy to sip my coffee and hang out with you just because you might be lonely. I know there Are a few birthdays today. How many of you have a birthday today? At least two of the locals people have a birthday, but we've got, what, 5,000 people watching? Out of the 5,000 people, how many are. How many are having a birthday today? I'll bet there's quite a few. So there you go, Deb. Happy birthday to all the birthday people. Your brother does all right. Did anybody get a pet for Christmas? Did anybody get, like a kitten or a puppy? If you did, I want to see a picture of it. Oh, it's a lonely day for you. Well, that's why we're here. You need not be lonely because I'm here and all of your friends are here. I'd like to see a robot do this. Well, I don't know if that was a good show, but kept you busy for an hour. Sex kittens. Yeah, they count. You wish. You got a puppy. Over 52,000 Christians I've been. Wow. Well, that's in Africa in general. That's all of Africa, not Nigeria. Right. That's a lot. 52,000 Christians. Yeah. No medical advice, please. You're understanding that? What? Oh, you can't show that. Do I have a lot of close friends from school? Not from school, because I don't live anywhere where my school is. But let me tell you this. I am so blessed, so blessed to have people that I trust completely in my life. Because when you get in my situation, you have to. You have to trust people to do what you need to be done and not take advantage of you. And I have a. I have a very high trust social situation. Very high trust. And that is quite a. Quite a relief. You're always alone on the holidays, huh? Sorry about that. I know you said it doesn't bother you, but it's not what I want for you. Yeah, no, I had no problems on the holidays whatsoever. You reap what you sow. True enough. No, don't send gifts to my caretakers, But thanks for offering. Are you enjoying your Sunday home? All right, people, I think we've done enough for today, so how about we say bye for now and I'll catch up with you tomorrow? Bye for now. Where's my cursor?
