Coffee with Scott Adams 2025-08-25
Hello everybody. I was just checking your stocks. They are kind of flat and boring today, so maybe we’ll get some more excitement later. But in the meantime, we’ve got a show to do, and I’m going to look at your comments to make sure I’m plugged in.
We’re going to do a little vibe podcasting. That’s right, I use AI to help me—that makes it vibe podcasting. Although I am completely normal unless YouTube uses their AI to fix my look. I could use some help.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It’s called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you’ve never had a better time. But if you’d like to take a chance of elevating your experience today up to levels that no one can understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a tanker, chalice, stein, canteen, jug, or flask, a vessel of any kind. 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. Go.
All right. All humans and all pets who are listening: make sure your pet is listening. I do send subliminal pet commands. So if you watch this with a cat on your lap or a loyal dog on the couch next to you, I will be training your animals at the same time I’m entertaining you.
Science and Cannabis/Aging
Well, there’s a scientific study, according to ScienceAlert. David Nield is writing that cannabis compounds are showing early promise for healthy aging. That’s right. According to this one study—and remember, the majority of studies are not reproducible, so when I talk about science, just keep in mind that the overall theme is it’s probably mostly made up. But as of today, the science says that you will age better if you’re using marijuana. That’s what the new study says. It’ll be good for your organs and your brain, and you’ll age better.
Now, let me summarize the total state of science in 2025. You ready? It can’t tell the difference between medicine and poison. Am I right? How many times have we seen that modern science literally can’t tell the difference between medicine and poison? I would even include CO2. Is CO2 like a medicine for the planet that’s good for the plants, or is it a poison that’s going to heat up the atmosphere and kill us all? Science looks like guessing, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t trust any of it.
Philosophy Majors and Intelligence
Here’s another good example. All right, this is presented as a serious article about a serious study. I want you to be the judge of whether this looks like a prank or a serious thing. All right, you ready? So this is from some publication called The Conversation. Michael Vazquez and Michael Prinsing are writing about this. They say that studying philosophy does make people better thinkers. And there was research on more than 600,000 college grads.
And now, interestingly, the two people who did this study are themselves philosophy majors. Huh. So you’re telling me these two philosophy majors did a study that determined that being a philosophy major makes you smarter? Okay, hold that thought. Hold that thought that it was performed by philosophy majors who presumably, if their research is correct and their interpretation of it is correct, would be the reason they’re so smart. Yeah, the reason they’re so smart is because they were philosophy majors.
But they looked at the data and sure enough, the people who were majoring in philosophy were indeed smarter on other standardized tests than the average of other people. Now, here is why I can’t tell if this is a prank. Because isn’t it kind of stupid to assume that the causation here is that the classes made you smarter as opposed to the more obvious explanation that people who thought they were already good at reasoning thought, “You know what? I’m good at reasoning. Maybe I should be a philosophy major.”
And then two people who should have been good at reasoning somehow wrote an article without even mentioning that the far more likely way to—or realistic way to—interpret the data is that people who are already good at reasoning and know it are the only ones who sign up to be philosophy majors and last. There might be some who were just wrong. They think that they might be good at it or they think they’re going to learn how to be good at it, and then they drop out after the first semester so they don’t get measured so much, do they?
So I can’t tell if this is some kind of a public prank where they’re trying to see if you notice that they’ve done really bad thinking, and then it’s an article about the people who—including the authors—have been trained to be extra good at thinking. Are they serious? I don’t think they even have a way to figure out if the training made them smart or if they were smart and that’s why they got into that field. I don’t even think they can measure that. They probably don’t have that kind of data. Anyway, I mean, how would you do a control?
The only way you could do a control test is you take a bunch of people who had declared that their major would be philosophy, and then you’d have to take half of them and say, or some proportion of them, and say, “We’re not going to allow you to be philosophy majors.” Wait, what? “Yeah, we’re doing a study, and the only way we’ll have a control group of people who on their own had decided to become philosophy majors but didn’t so we can compare them to the people who did, we’re going to have to prevent you from following the major that you would like to get into.” Wait, what? “You can’t do that.” “It’s for science.” No, there is no way to measure that ethically.
Hydration and Stress
Did you know, according to Fox News, Ashley DiMella is writing that if you don’t drink enough water—or I think they just mean if you’re not hydrated—your body will not be able to handle cortisol and that your stress reaction will be much bigger. Do you believe that? Well, if it’s the basis of a study, that would mean that the odds are against it. Just try to hold this wild thought in your mind: if I ever tell you there’s a study and it decided that, you know, proposition A is true, it means that the odds are against it being true because the majority of studies are not real. The majority are not real.
So anytime I tell you something’s been discovered, it probably means the odds are against it. That’s the weird world we’re living in. But the study says that if you stay hydrated, it’s probably good for your stress levels. And I say, well, maybe they should have just asked me because I would have said, “Hmm, let’s see. Your brain is part of your body. Check. I knew that part. If you don’t take care of your body, you won’t be taking care of your brain. Check. It’s true with nutrition, it’s true with sleep, it’s true with everything we’ve ever measured that has an impact on your body.” What do we think would happen if you don’t have proper hydration? Let’s see. It’d be bad for your body. Your brain is part of your body. Oh yeah, okay. I think I would have guessed that one.
Humor and Intelligence
All right, science also says, according to something called YourTango, Christine Schonwald is writing that science says people with a good sense of humor are wired for higher intelligence. Hmm. Well, I take back everything I said about scientific studies. It turns out that science is very, very accurate because I can’t find anything to argue with with this. Yeah, people with a good sense of humor, they’re much more intelligent. They have more smartitude. Their smartness—the smart-tastic smart-tasticness—I don’t even have words anymore. But anyway, yeah, that’s true.
Remember I’ve famously said for years that one-third of the public literally doesn’t have a sense of humor? Do you know what the other way to say that would be? One-third of the world isn’t smart enough to get jokes. Just one-third. Yeah, think about it. Think about it. When my experience, you know, as a professional funny man, my experience is that the smarter people are, the more they’re going to get my jokes and the more they’ll appreciate it. So yeah, I think intelligence and sense of humor are related.
Modeling Active Lifestyles
Here’s another one from Science Mag. They did a study to find out that the children of adults who are very active themselves—doing sports and outside activities and stuff—if the parents are very active physically, then the children are more likely to be physically active. And so they’ve concluded that if you model a behavior, the children will follow it. You know what they could have done? They could have asked me. And the first thing I would have said was: A, yes, children do copy whatever examples they’re exposed to. Yes, that’s—you don’t have to study that. I will just tell you that’s true.
Secondly, how do you rule out that there’s a genetic thing where the people who are genetically, you know, predisposed to exercise—because not everybody likes it the same amount. You know, not everybody reacts to food the same, not everybody reacts to exercise the same. You know, personally, I am not genetically able to enjoy running a marathon or even training for one. It would just hurt. But there’s a whole range of physical activities, like I was playing aggressive ping pong yesterday. Oh, cat is visiting me. And I seem to be optimized for, you know, that. So yeah, how do you rule out the fact that the kids are just naturally more active because they came from parents who are active, you know, genetically? You cannot. So I do not trust that study.
Economic Growth
Another report says the American economy grew 3% in an annualized basis, I guess. And that would be amazing. So if you’re not following economics, you wouldn’t know that they were expecting something in the twos, the mid-twos, as a percentage of growth. But it’s 3%. And that is really good. It’s not so high that you’d expect inflation to go up and then interest rates can’t come down. It’s just almost perfect. You wouldn’t want it to be too hot. But it’s definitely strong. That’s a good result. It’s one of the best. If it’s real. I mean, obviously, the macro theme today is everything is bullshit, so it may not be real. But if it were, it would be great.
AI and Robotics Jobs
There was a back and forth on the X platform today between Elon Musk and somebody named David Scott Patterson. I don’t know anything about him, but he had an interesting comment that Elon weighed in on. I’m just going to read it to you because they were both very brief and very interesting.
So David Scott Patterson says that by 2030, all jobs will be replaced by AI and robots. All jobs. And here’s his calculation. He says the US labor force is about 170 million. About 80 million of those jobs include hands-on work. So he’s talking—so the rest will be about the whole 170 million because it’s not—you don’t need robots to replace every job. It could be the AI by itself that replaces the job. So you’d be replacing, you know, at least 80 million, the hands-on group.
And he notes that automated systems—that would include robots but even, you know, automated systems—can work four shifts a week. So you don’t need as many robots as you would need humans because humans have to rest. And he says replacing all physical labor would require about 20 million autonomous systems, meaning robots and autonomous vehicles. Vehicles would replace cab drivers, for example. And he says that could be accomplished easily in the next four years.
So the question is: could we make 20 million, you know, really good industrial robots and have self-driving everything in four years? 20 million? And the answer is: yes. That’s well within the doable range. He says people saying it’s not physically possible to build that many systems in four years are delusional. For comparison, 16 million cars were sold in the US last year. Interesting. And cars are 20 times the mass of a humanoid robot. Now, that was a fascinating way to look at it: that the humanoid robots have lower mass, so therefore they’d be easier to build. That does seem true, but I never would have thought of it that way—that mass is a way to compare those things. And he goes on: if robots were sold at the same rate as cars, that would be 320 million robots per year. Wow. Even a tiny fraction of that would be enough to replace all human labor.
All right, so the summary is that by 2030, it would not be difficult, given what we can already do in the world, to replace all human work with robots. Now, that would be a little bit disruptive for the normal economy if every single job had been lost. And here’s what Elon Musk says. He weighed in, he goes, “Your estimates are about right.” Oh, wow. He goes, “However, intelligent robots in humanoid form will far exceed the population of humans as every person will want their own personal R2-D2 and C-3PO. And then there will be many robots in industry for every human to provide products and services.” And then he says—this is still Elon Musk—“There will be universal high income, not merely basic income, but universal high income. Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport, and everything else.” And then he summarizes it as “sustainable abundance.”
Now, of course, Elon Musk is in the business of making robots, so he wants to put the best possible spin on it. What you’re hearing is my cat going wild on a box of Kleenex. Manny is having fun. Here, you can watch him for a while. There you go. Yeah, you’re on the podcast now. He’s looking at himself. Yep, that magic device. “What is going on?” he says. Hold it, hold it. Don’t start typing. All right, back to me. That’s enough. That’s enough, Gary. Oh, Gary.
Anyway, I was going to summarize here that Musk is unusually good at predicting the future. But since his trillion-dollar net worth depends on the future being the way he describes it, he might be a little biased about this. But that hasn’t affected his predictions too much in the past because he’s almost always predicting things that affect him personally. So that’s good news.
I don’t know. Does your common sense and your gut instinct tell you the same thing? That robots will make us simply just not need to work anymore and that we’ll all have everything we need and plenty of it? I don’t know. My problem is that would be true if everybody surrendered to that process. But if people said, “Oh, this transition to the all-robot thing will take a while, so I’m not going to give you my, let’s say, steel for free. You’re going to have to buy the steel.” And everybody else will try to do the same. They’d be like, “Oh…” Okay, little catastrophe going on there. We’ll clean that up later. Bad cat.
AI Girlfriends
Well, in other news, Bindu Reddy, I saw on X, was talking about AI girlfriends and points out that both Meta and X, who understand human behavior pretty well—very well, Bindu says—they’re betting on AI girlfriends. So as Bindu says, they’re working on AI that can one-shot the human limbic system and give us a constant dopamine high, an addiction that is custom-designed. So in other words, you know, your AI chatbot will be different from mine. So it’s custom-designed and may be more potent than cocaine. It might be.
And interestingly, she points out Elon Musk has already warned us of said outcome. Well, I may have a, let’s say, contrarian view of that. I definitely think that a whole bunch of people, like millions and millions of men, are going to give the AI chatbot girlfriend thing a try. I think that almost all of them, maybe 80%—I’ll say 80%—are going to find, “Hey, this is pretty good.” And even compared to human women, they’re going to say, “You know what? This is surprisingly drama-free and yet it’s still entertaining me.” And they will be drawn to it and might even get some, you know, some dopamine out of it.
But I believe that everybody’s destined to be bored by it because you can’t maintain interest in something that’s not alive. We’re just not evolved to do that. So once the novelty wears off and you realize that you’re the one who has to initiate all the conversations—that’s the story I talked about yesterday—I don’t think it’s going to drive your limbic system. I feel like it’s going to drive your boredom eventually. But I think it’ll have a really predictable arc where a whole bunch of people try it, and we all get worried about it, and people are literally marrying them and putting them in their robot. And it’ll be a big story, and it will affect a lot of people for a long time. But I think it’s self-correcting. I believe that you can only get oxytocin from humans or maybe cats, you know, but like an actual mammal of some type.
Anyway, so as much oxytocin as I get from my cats, it’s not like a human. It’s not like cuddling up with some, you know, beautiful woman that you’re in love with. It’s not in that category. So then the robots and the chatbots are going to be less than a cat. You know, it’s going to be less limbic system than, you know, owning a dog. So I’m not too worried about it in the long run.
Trump on Jonathan Karl’s Hair
All right, Trump is being hilarious again in Truth Social, talking about Chris Christie and some other people. And he did this long screed against Chris Christie, and then he said about George Stephanopoulos on ABC Fake News. But then he goes parenthetically: “By the way, what the hell happened to Jonathan Karl’s hair? He looks absolutely terrible. It’s amazing what bad ratings on a failed television show that was forced to pay me $16 million can do to one’s appearance.”
All right. Now remember we were talking about sense of humor is related to intelligence. If you don’t think that’s funny, I don’t understand what’s wrong with you. Maybe it’s your intelligence. But to me, that’s just hilarious. And here’s why. If you were looking at it out of context, you’d say, “Really, Scott? You’re saying that’s so clever? All he did was insult his haircut. Anybody could have done that, and it was, you know, inappropriate for his office. Why do you think that’s funny?” Well, let me explain it.
It’s funny because he’s completely aware of the effect it has on people. That’s the funny part—that he knows that it’s making people who don’t have a sense of humor react to it negatively, and that makes the rest of us really amused. So he knows how most people who support him are going to react to it, and they’re just going to laugh. And it’s funny because the president isn’t supposed to say that sort of thing about anybody.
And then I imagine—I don’t know if you do this—but I imagine poor Jonathan Karl, who’s just waking up in the morning. Imagine just waking up in the morning, you’re like, “Oh, I wonder if anything’s happening today. Well, we’ll check X.” “Uh, it’s about my haircut.” And now every time Jonathan Karl goes out in public today, and maybe for the rest of his life, everybody’s going to look at his haircut and say, “Hmm. What happened to your haircut?” So not only has Trump made us laugh about Jonathan Karl’s haircut, but he’s cursed and doomed Jonathan Karl to the end of his days that everybody’s going to look at his haircut and go, “Hmm, well, he had a point there.” All right, that’s funny.
Trump and Chris Christie
But he did threaten to lawfare Chris Christie, which is not cool and is definitely authoritarian. Are you comfortable—most of you are Trump supporters—are you comfortable with Trump threatening to reopen the Bridgegate thing that Christie had, that drama? To reopen it to punish Chris Christie for saying bad things about Trump on television? Are you comfortable with that? I’m not. I’m not comfortable with that. Let me say that as clearly as possible. No, that’s fucked up. That is authoritarian.
So I don’t think he’s serious about it. I don’t even think he’s a little bit serious. But I don’t really want my president to threaten to do something authoritarian and absolutely out of bounds at this point. Because it’s not like—it would be one thing if some whistleblower presented something that we hadn’t heard before, but literally to reopen a closed case? No, that’s out of bounds. So this is where the people who support Trump have an important role. You need to say if you think that’s too far. Because, you know, he follows social media and he does adjust fairly quickly when things aren’t working for his base. So let me say it as clearly as possible: that’s too far. No, I don’t support that.
Israel and Yemen
In other news, Israel has bombed Yemen’s presidential palace, and now it’s a presidential pile of debris. Apparently, they’ve hit Yemen a bunch of times. The Houthis in Yemen continue to send missiles toward Israel, and now one of them, at least, includes a cluster bomb. So a missile with a cluster bomb. And Israel just isn’t going to put up with it. So, note to Yemen: Have you checked the news, Yemen? I’d like to make a little message to the Yemenis, mostly the Houthis. Have you noticed anything that’s happened in the past year or so? It has to do with a pattern you might start to notice that what happens to people who go against Israel and are trying to kill the people in Israel—have you noticed that it doesn’t work out? I mean, you may notice the not having a presidential palace. I mean, that’s a little hint. But you know that this doesn’t go your way in the long run. Have you noticed the pattern? Talk to Hezbollah and Hamas. Yeah, they might be able to straighten you out on this and save some time.
Calling Organizations Cults
Well, here’s some advice for you. There are two opinions that once you hear them, you should ignore everything else you hear from the person who said it, because it reveals that their brain doesn’t work very well. And I may have mentioned this before: but when somebody says that they don’t like some movement or organization because it’s a cult—like people call MAGA a cult, and people call the woke people a cult—basically a lot of people call things cults. It’s always dumb.
And the same thing when they say something’s a religion that’s, you know, not technically a religion. These are analogies. And when you run into somebody who is an analogy thinker, this whole “MAGA is a cult” is really no different from “Oh, they’re like neo-Nazis.” It’s just that there’s something, maybe in its exaggerated form, reminds you of something else. There’s no thinking involved in that. So as soon as you hear, “Well, it’s a cult, they’re in a cult,” you don’t need to listen to anything else that person says. Because if they believe that using an analogy—a terrible one—I mean, it doesn’t really, you know, MAGA doesn’t fit the definition of a cult if you made a checklist. Most things would not be checked. Right? But you can always find something that reminds you of something about something else. So it’s not really thinking. And if you run into somebody who’s unable to do that basic thinking, well, they’re probably not philosophy majors, if you know what I mean. They probably don’t have a sense of humor, if you know what I mean, if you’ve been paying attention, tying it all together.
Gavin Newsom’s Mockery
Speaking of which, here’s another prediction I made that has, as we say, aged well. I’m kind of proud of this one because it happened so quickly. I told you that Gavin Newsom’s mocking of Trump—by mocking his Truth Social posts that are often in all caps and stuff like that—I told you that was well done and I would consider it successful. So, you know, if I’m going to be an objective observer, I would say, “Okay, that worked.” It got attention for Newsom, and attention is the coin of the realm if you’re going to run for president later. It looks like he might. It so basically that’s what it did. It got him attention, and it was funny and it was viral, and it allowed him to raise some money as well. So that’s all really well done.
But what did I predict? What I predicted was that if they just kept doing the same thing, it would stop being interesting really quickly. And I think that happened. Yesterday I saw another one of his mockery posts, and I wasn’t tempted to read it, even though I’d enjoyed, you know, the cleverness of the first one or two. It’s the same joke every time. So I’m not going to read just the same joke over and over again.
So what they had to do was try to extend their victory by doing something that wasn’t the same thing over and over again because people would just get tired of it and it would lose all its magic. So they had to extend it to something else and try to get another viral moment, which is so hard to do if you’re planning it. Sometimes you can hit magic, which is what he did. He tried lots of things, and then he hits this one thing that worked, and he rode it for a while, as he should.
But there’s no reason to believe that this is reproducible. And as proof, I give you that he now has a mocking gift shop online of, you know, MAGA-related stuff, but it’s mocking it. All right? And it’s trying to be funny. What do you think happened when he tried to make magic happen a second time and get people to laugh at his mockery?
Well, here are the products in the “Make America Gavin Again” store—MAGA. “Make America Gavin Again.” Ha ha ha ha ha! I see what he did there. Isn’t that humorous? He replaced “Great” with “Gavin.” Ha ha ha ha. Okay. But then he had other merchandise in there. One is a hat that said “Newsom was right about everything.” Oh, ha ha ha. I get it. It’s because Trump has a hat that says “Trump was right about everything,” because that’s something that people say a lot, so it made sense to put it on a hat. But how clever was Newsom to change it to “Newsom was right about everything”? Ha ha ha! And it’s a red—it’s a red hat. Ha ha ha ha.
But then another—there’s a—what do you call it, like a wife-beater thing—that says “Trump is not hot.” Oh, ha ha! He’s not hot. Get it? Wouldn’t you love wearing that to a party? “Trump is not hot.” Ha ha ha ha. Um, here’s one. You know that Trump has that “Trump 2028” hat, but of course he can’t run for office in 2028. That’s what makes it funny. Well, not to be outdone, Newsom now has a “Newsom 2026” coffee mug. Get it? Get it? He can’t run in 2026. Do you get that? Ha ha ha ha. And then one of the hats says “Real Patriot.” Ha ha. All right. Well, I think his brief time in the sun may have lapsed a little bit. Yeah, give it up.
South Korea Shipbuilding
Well, South Korea is meeting with Trump today, and things are going well with the US and South Korea. So it looks like we’ve hammered down, for the most part, a trade agreement. But a big part of it, which is kind of exciting to me, is that South Korea is the second-biggest shipbuilder in the world after China, but actually is better than China because they have a more technological, automated process. And they apparently are going to work with the United States to help make the US a shipbuilding power. Now, that seems like a really, really smart way for the US to, you know, leapfrog our current, completely bad-at-shipbuilding situation to, you know, get into at least onto the same field as the ones who do it well. So I like that. That looks very positive and also makes the Trump administration look smart because when I look at that, I just think, well, everything about that makes sense. And apparently South Korea is on board with it. So all good.
Crime in DC and Chicago
You know, I was thinking about Trump solving the crime in DC. Apparently, they’ve gone 10 days without a murder. Can you imagine bragging about going 10 days without a murder? I think we’ve lowered our standards. “Hey, good news! 10 days without a murder!” But it makes me wonder: the minute the National Guard pulls out—because at some point they’ll pull out because things will be under control—will the murders just—will there be like pent-up murders? And people are like, “Oh God, they’re gone! Now I can finally murder Carl! Carl, come here! Bang!” Yeah, I mean, is that such a thing? Or are all the murders sort of acts of passion? Or are all the murders just on the streets? And that’s why? So there’s so much law enforcement on the streets that they’re just like, “Darn it, the place we like to do all our murdering’s got all these law enforcement people.”
Well, it makes me wonder. And now Trump is talking about getting rid of cashless bail in DC. So he’s got that. And to me, that makes perfect sense because the federal government controls DC, and DC looked like it was out of control, so he moved in. But have you noticed that nobody did it before? Because it didn’t really feel like the president’s job, even though technically the federal government should be taking care of DC. It didn’t feel like really his job, right? And it makes me wonder: did Trump solve so many problems that he had to go look for new things that look like problems? Is he expanding his presidential portfolio? I mean, technically that’s not an expansion, but in terms of showing it any attention, it’s an expansion. Is it because he solved everything else?
Now, you might say, “Scott, he hasn’t solved Ukraine.” And I would argue he kind of has. Because the only thing I was asking him to solve for Ukraine is to solve the United States’ involvement. And he kind of solved it. Because we get now paid for selling Europe these weapons, so the US GDP benefits from their war. We have no boots on the ground. We don’t really have a risk of getting nuked because Russia—it just wouldn’t be in their interest, and Putin’s not crazy. So we do—he did kind of solve Ukraine. Would we prefer that there had been a ceasefire? Well, sort of, but we wouldn’t make nearly as much money as we will now. So he didn’t solve it for other people, other countries—that’s for sure—they’ve got a big problem. But he did sort of solve it for the United States so that we’re not putting out money and we’re not really at gigantic risk. Not really. So yeah, maybe he’s just looking at cities like Chicago and stuff. We’ll talk about that, because he’s running out of stuff to do. “Well, I solved that. I solved the border. Now what?”
Executive Order on Flag Burning
Well, along those same lines, Trump has signed—today, I guess, he’s going to sign—an executive order enacting legal consequences for people who burn the American flag. Well, I will give you my opinion. By the way, this is only popular with, according to Grok, 49% of Americans. So if this were an 80-20 issue, then I would say, all right, maybe it’s not what I want to do, but if 80% of Americans want that, okay. I mean, I live in a country where an 80% majority should get their way most of the time, even if it’s not what I want to happen. But it’s 49%, less than half.
Do you think that we should put a limit on free speech, which is what this would do? Because burning a flag is a form of speech—there’s no question about that in my mind. I wouldn’t even debate that. It’s obviously speech. And it’s free speech. And if he puts a legal consequence on it, in my opinion, that is too far. That is unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. And that would be quite a stain on Trump’s legacy, in my opinion.
Now, I know a lot of you have an emotional stake in the flag, and you say, “But, but, but, I kind of agree with that. I don’t think people should burn the flag; we should respect the institution.” But my take on it is that Trump is the one burning the flag. Because to me, the flag is not a piece of material; it is a symbol. And as long as that symbol is indestructible—meaning that you can burn it all day long and it’s still the flag—then it’s valuable. The moment he says, “I have to punish you if you don’t show respect to this piece of cloth,” then that piece of cloth has no meaning to me. I still love the country—it’s not about the country—but he’s burning the flag. To me, he’s disrespecting the power of the flag, which is you can’t destroy it. It’s a concept so strong that fire doesn’t touch it. That’s what makes it great. And it’s a symbol of free speech when somebody burns it right in front of the White House. Free speech. And it’s not really hurting any people, except maybe your feelings. So let me go on record as saying: no, I would consider that authoritarian, unambiguously. This would be a clean mistake in my opinion. But I also acknowledge that a lot of you disagree. And you would be in that 49%, apparently.
Revoking Broadcast Licenses
Trump has also said recently he’s in favor of revoking the broadcast licensing for ABC and NBC News. Now, the broadcast license is for the network in general, but they also have a news part. So I don’t know how that would work, because if you took away the broadcast license for the entire entity, would that look appropriate? I don’t know. Now, his argument is that their news is 93%, or whatever the number is, negative to Trump and therefore it’s not really news; it’s just propaganda. And it’s not even operating as news. Now, that’s a pretty good argument. However, I would argue that that’s kind of true for all the news sources. So if he just picked out these two for being like the extra-bad ones for some reason, I would say that’s going too far. That’s too far. That would be authoritarian.
So if it’s just part of his threat so he’s trying to browbeat them into giving him better coverage, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have a giant problem with that because their coverage is propaganda, and it would be just another way to call them out for being a propaganda entity as opposed to a real news entity. Which is fair game, because that’s free speech too. But if he’s serious about it and he actually revokes the licenses? Too far. Too far. That would be authoritarian.
So unfortunately, in between the things which he’s doing which are frankly amazing and spectacular, actually—he’s hinting at making Democrats right by looking like he’s willing to go too far on a few topics. So that’s—you know, I’m still, of course, a big supporter of Trump, and I feel it’s useful that he gets honest feedback about what works and what doesn’t work in terms of the public. So that’s my feedback: he has gone too far on some of these and he needs to adjust.
Fentanyl-Free Campaign
Fox News is reporting that there’s a “Make America Fentanyl-Free” campaign. It’s a privately organized and funded thing. I guess it will be sort of like the anti-smoking campaigns, you know, more informing people and telling them what the risks are. I like all of that. So it’s privately funded; it’s essentially propaganda. Because you can’t really reason people out of fentanyl; you have to scare them. You know, sort of like “This is your brain on drugs” and that sort of thing. So yeah, a propaganda campaign against fentanyl—better than not doing it.
Gas Prices
I guess gas prices for August are looking about normal, a little bit better than they were last year this time. We’d like them to be lower, but Washington Examiner is talking about this. So the average price of a gallon of regular is at 3.16, which makes me mad every time I read the average price of gas because do you know what brings that average way up? California, where it’s over five—I forget what it is, but it’s not even close to three.
National Guard in Chicago
So Trump is talking about bringing his Washington DC plan to Chicago. That would be bringing the National Guard there to help curb the crime. But Mayor Brandon Johnson says citizens will “rise up and fight tyranny.” Oh, okay. It’s tyranny to reduce crime in your city, he says. And that the city does not need a military occupation because there’s been a 30% drop in homicides.
Well, have you heard anything negative about data crime statistics? Do you think that the people in Chicago are feeling safe enough because crime went down—or the murder allegedly went down—30%? And do you believe that? Do you believe murder went down 30%? It might be down 30% from the high of the pandemic. But is that where you would measure from?
I’ve also told you that if you look at the percentage but not the raw number, it means somebody is trying to mislead you. If they only tell you one of the two things—either the raw number only or the percentage only—and he’s doing the percentage only, that is almost always meant to deceive you. They leave out the number because the number would give you the opposite message as the percentage. If I say the percentage is down 30% and you didn’t know what the number was, you might agree with him and say, “Well, come on, they’re doing great. Down 30%, let them keep doing what they’re doing. It might go down even further.” But what if the number of homicides happened to be a thousand a month? Would you say to yourself, “Sounds like it’s going well because they’re down 30%,” or would you say, “Oh my God, a thousand people murdered per month? We’d better move the military in there.” So the percentage tells you a totally different story than the raw number. And I don’t know what the raw number is, but it’s not a thousand.
All right, so this raises a question: Will that Chicago “tyranny”—is that going to be done by the oligarchs or the patriarchs or the white supremacists or the authoritarians? And will they steal your democracy? So these are questions that the Democrats are raising. Are the tyranny people the oligarchs, the patriarchs, the white supremacists, and the authoritarians? Are they all on the same team? Same bunch of people? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask a Democrat. They see them everywhere. “I see dead people.”
Baltimore Population Loss
Well, Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, said that over 300,000 people have left Baltimore, Maryland, due to crime. So 300,000 out of what had been a city of 920,000? So basically a third of the city. One-third of the city said, “I can’t even live here; I’m out of here. I’m gone.” Now, you know what I say about that: that’s a lot of racists. So 300,000 people, probably all of them racists, left Baltimore. And they need to be canceled; I disavow every one of those racists.
Letitia James Case
Well, meanwhile, according to Gateway Pundit, Letitia James says that Trump is “weaponizing justice” in his fraud case. So let’s see. Some people say that Trump is trying to get revenge. And if you heard that out of context, you heard that a president was trying to get revenge on an American citizen, well, that would sound pretty bad, wouldn’t it? Now, they also say that Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice. Wow. If you hear that out of context, that’s pretty bad. So two things I definitely don’t want to see from my president are revenge—I don’t want to see any of that—and using lawfare or weaponizing the Department of Justice. Something I absolutely do not want to see.
But you know what I do want to see? Is if those two things are put together, I’m fine with it. If he uses lawfare to get revenge… well, if it’s real revenge as in somebody who has it coming, oh, I’m completely in favor of that. Yeah, if it’s somebody who lawfared you and you’re lawfaring them in revenge, totally acceptable. Totally acceptable. See, now that’s full context. If you give me the full context, then I like the lawfaring and I like the revenge. Because I would call them mutually assured destruction, and if you don’t actually do the mutually assured destruction, well, then it doesn’t exist to keep society together in the future. Is it a big risk that the other side will escalate and it will get—everybody will just be doing it like crazy? Yes. Yes, that is a risk. And it’s a better risk than not addressing it. It’s a risk; we live in a risky world.
Trump on TikTok
Well, Trump has softened so much on TikTok, probably because TikTok helped him get elected—it turns out he was popular on TikTok, so that probably helped him. And they’ve got the official White House account on TikTok now; that’s recent. And Trump’s now saying that all the panic about the app’s Chinese connection is “highly overrated.” So now that he’s finding that TikTok just works to his favor, he’s like, “Yeah, the risks there are highly overrated.” And he said he vowed to keep extending TikTok’s deadline until a US buyer steps in, which probably will be never. Because no US buyer can buy it unless China says, “Yes, I’ll sell it.” And China’s definitely not going to say, “Yes, I’ll sell it.” So he’s just going to kick the can down the road and take the benefits of TikTok.
So once again, Trump has taken a problem for the country and he’s monetized it. Because TikTok works so well for Trump because he’s so good at social media, that it’s going to definitely allow him to raise more money for Republicans, wouldn’t you say? Is it fair to say that he’s monetized TikTok for the benefit of the Republican Party? I think so. So he monetized the Ukraine war; he monetized TikTok. He’s on the sidelines of this fentanyl fund, but the US government’s not funding it; it’s being funded by rich people who care. So he’s very consistent. He just keeps monetizing things that are a problem. And I don’t hate it. He monetized trade with the tariffs. That’s a lot of monetizing.
Mexican Narco-State
There was a Mexican Senator who was on Fox yesterday, I guess, and actually accused her own government of being a narco-state, meaning that they were owned and controlled by the cartels. So a Mexican Senator is saying it publicly and that that has to change. Now, it’s one thing when we say it in this country, but I always wonder—I assume it’s true, I mean I’m really, really sure that the cartels are controlling the government of Mexico—but it really hits differently when the Mexican Senator says it. And you know, I wondered if that Mexican Senator is going to be alive in a year. Because can you say that? Can you just out your own government as being a cartel-run operation and then just go about your business and hope you don’t get assassinated? I don’t know about that. So I hope she’s got really good security. Even called her own president a traitor for working for the cartels. Wow.
Vibe Coding and Smart Glasses
So there’s a Harvard startup—I think it’s Harvard dropouts did a startup—with some smart glasses that will do vibe thinking for you. I don’t know if you’ve heard this cool people term: “vibe coding.” So if you’re using AI to help you write code, you’re kind of working with the AI and you don’t have an exact plan because how the AI does its thing might affect how you do your thing. So you’re kind of vibing with the AI to write some code. But they’ve used that “vibing” thing in other contexts where you’re using AI.
So I guess the idea here is that the glasses would listen to every conversation all the time, and it would make smart suggestions that you didn’t ask for. So it might remind you of things that are important. Like it might say, “Oh, this person’s name is Jenna and today’s her birthday,” because you would hate to forget Jenna’s birthday. And it would know that everybody would want to remember somebody special’s birthday. So I can imagine having glasses that were making smart suggestions to me based on my real life. That actually would be kind of cool. I don’t know if I would get tired of it or it would change my brain, but you would truly be a cyborg if you were talking to somebody, you’re doing your thing, and then in the glasses—I assume that’s how it communicates, maybe it does it by sound, I’m not sure—but if you could see in your glasses something that the people you’re dealing with don’t see, and it was giving you suggestions of things to talk about or it was checking your calendar for you, all of that stuff.
Imagine you’re talking to somebody in person. You say, “Hey, you want to get together on Saturday?” And then your glasses, without being told, pop up your calendar. And then you can see that your Saturday’s open or not. How cool would that be? So the thought of just putting on your glasses and having your effective IQ doubled, or maybe by a thousand or something, is kind of exciting. Because any topic that you brought up—if you’re just talking about something in the news—boop, it would pop up like an AI summary of that topic so that when you’re talking about it, you can just throw in a data that you see in the glasses while you’re talking. How cool would that be? If it works.
I’m going to be happy for two reasons. One, it will look like wearing glasses is just something you’re doing for technology reasons instead of looking like you have bad eyesight. So I like the fact that since I’m a glasses wearer, that there might be some reason that everybody’s wearing thick-rimmed glasses like the ones I have on, because it would just make everybody more like me. I’d look more normal. I liked it—what was it, was it the ’90s when people like Michael Jordan and Bruce Willis made it normal to shave your head if you were going bald? And I happened to be alive during that era. It was like, “Yay! Good luck.”
Ukraine and Russia Stalemate
Apparently, Putin and Zelensky have made no plans to meet. It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. So like I said, it looks like Ukraine is going to keep attacking Russia’s energy infrastructure, and Russia apparently has ramped up their attacks. So looks like they’re going to fight it out. So it’s not so much, let’s say, who can kill all the soldiers on the other side. I think they’ve made it just an economic war at this point, meaning that if Russia can destroy all the economic infrastructure of Ukraine, it will probably make Ukraine give up faster. And if Ukraine can destroy the energy industry in Russia, Russia is going to start looking for a way out if they can’t stop that from happening. And I don’t think they can stop it. I feel like we live in a world that if one—if your neighbor wants something to blow up in your country and they really, really want that thing to blow up, they’re going to make it blow up. Like you can stop a few of the missiles, but they’re going to get it. So there’s going to be a lot less energy coming out of that place for a while.
Teachers’ Unions and Political Funding
Did you know that according to a watchdog report—Corey DeAngelis was talking about this on X—that the two biggest teachers’ unions funneled $50 million to left-wing groups? So I assume that means from the dues that teachers paid, where they thought they were paying their union to represent them, only 10% of the money that they gave turned into representational activities. And 90% of it apparently went to things like administration and funding left-wing groups. Why is that even legal? My God. Does that feel like some kind of RICO—it just feels like a money-laundering criminal organization. How is that legal?
So they’ve got the teachers in a bind. The teachers feel like they have to be in the teachers’ union for whatever reason they think they have to. And then they have to pay their dues. I think there are a few states that gave them the freedom to avoid the union. But generally speaking, they have to put their money in and then their money is being used in ways that they might approve of, but nobody asked them. It feels like theft or blackmail or… there’s got to be some crime that’s involved there. Anyway, if there was enough crime there to neuter—somehow legally—have the Department of Justice neuter the teachers’ unions, then maybe children would have a chance.
Government AI Deal with Google
The US government reached some massive AI deal with Google for Google’s Gemini. And I guess that will be a key part of the government fixing up government services by adding AI to them. I assume that this is dovetailed with the new “design guy”—basically the government has a design guy now who will fix the interfaces where people deal with the government online. So the AI is a big part of that. So I guess Google will be the lead AI. Do you think that’s because Google has sort of this CIA alleged backing, so that that’s the reason that Google gets this gigantic government contract? Because then the CIA allegedly—I don’t know that this is true—but they could influence what Google’s AI does and doesn’t do, and that will influence the government, which influences the people, etc. So is it a total coincidence or is it just because they were the low bidder? I’ve got questions.
Journalist Deaths in Gaza
Well, more journalists have been killed in Gaza, accidentally we think. But 200 journalists have allegedly been killed in the Gaza war, which would make it the most journalists dying in a war since… well, ever. It would be the most journalists ever killed in warfare. So even World War I there were up to 80 were killed; World War II up to 200. But Gaza’s estimated at 232, actually. And Vietnam was 70 to 100. But the Syrian Civil War was over 700. Oh my God. But that was spread over a longer period. So on a per-year basis, Gaza’s killed the most journalists.
But what have I told you about data? Almost all data is fake. I’m going to go further: all data is fake. How many of the journalists do you think were really Hamas operatives pretending to be journalists? Well, not zero. Probably not zero. And there may have been some who were legitimately journalists but maybe also legitimately Hamas. So there you go.
So if 200 journalists get killed in a tiny little battle zone as big as Gaza, if I were a journalist, I would take the hint and I would say it looks to me like they’re going to try to kill me if I go here. Now I’m not alleging that that’s what’s happening; it just looks like it. And if I were a journalist, I would just assume that they were targeting them intentionally. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not—I don’t know either way. But I do think that Israel’s success depends on not having journalists in Gaza, if you know what I mean. So I can’t say that they do it intentionally—unless they’re dual-use journalists who are really dealing with Hamas—that might be intentional. But yeah, I would stay away.
Drone Journalism
Here’s my prediction for wartime journalism: it’s going to turn into drones. Instead of going in person into Gaza, imagine if they had sent a drone in that was somehow optimized to be a journalist drone. So that let’s say that people were trained that sort of like the Red Cross, you know, there’s some symbols that can operate in the war zone and you’re not supposed to shoot at them. So imagine you had a drone that as soon as you saw it, you say, “Ah, that’s a journalist drone, I don’t need to shoot that one.” And then it’s got a zoom camera on it and it just comes down and lands somewhere where it can talk to anybody and it does an interview. It says, “Hey, do you have a minute? I’m a journalist. You’re talking to me through the…” maybe there’s a little screen on it. “And can I interview you?” And maybe even there’s some AI that does some language translation. Because AI can translate on the fly, so you could be an American journalist land in an Arab country and just interview somebody in another language if they were willing to do it. So that’s what I predict: journalists will be replaced with drones operated by journalists, but they should stay out of those places.
All right, everybody. That’s all I’ve got for you today. I’m going to say a few words privately to the Locals people, my beloved Locals people. The rest of you, thanks for joining. Hope you got something out of this. We’ll do it again tomorrow, same time, same place. Come back. All right, no, it’s not working again. All right, so Locals, my button to go private with you is not working today. I wonder why it works sometimes but not other times. Yeah, so that’s not working. So I can’t talk to you privately today, but I will give you a final sip that you can all enjoy. And then I’ll say see you later. See you later. Oh, I can’t even end it! So I have to close it and reopen it.