Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 590: Binomial Factor

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Show Notes

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from gloryhole studios in chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at.

This is episode 590 590 590 Cecil it's a big number bud 590 we're close we're closing in on that 6

we're climbing in on that magic 600 yeah wow round numbers couple months round numbers are more important than less round numbers

we still should do something really I don't know important for 666 we should definitely have like a special holy shit dude you're right we should have a special it's over a year away plus it's a should definitely have like a special. Holy shit, dude, you're right. We should have a special.

It's over a year away plus. It's a year plus, but like a year and a half. But like, we should definitely plan a thing for 666. We got to plan episode 666. See if we can get Lucian Greaves to come on and have him not blow us off.

We got to do something big for the, for the, for the satanic episode. That's amazing. I'm going to get an abortion. We should sponsor a bunch of abortions for our 666th episode. We should have a fucking abortion fundraiser. We should,

yeah, we should have an abortion fundraiser and give all that money to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood. Yeah, it'd be outstanding. Yeah, I think maybe we should. Yeah.

We should have an abortion themed 666 fundraiser. It's such a fantastic. I love how, I think maybe we should. We should have an abortion-themed 666 fundraiser. It's such a bad taste. I love how wonderfully grotesque this is. It's grotesque. It's such a bad taste. I love it. Yeah. Oh, God.

Fucking people need abortions. Let's pay for that shit. Fucking A they do. Yeah, yeah. Fucking the world isn't getting better. I'll tell you what, if you're pregnant, maybe think about that for a minute. Also, happy day for you. Oh, shit.

Your kid's going to die at 10 in the climate war. For sure. Yeah. So, you know, you just get it done a little earlier. That's all. It's not a kid yet. Who are we kidding? The climate wars are the wars we all lose.

Kind of like Afghanistan and Iraq. Pretty much. Pretty much. Pretty much. That's great. Yeah. How am I supposed to teach this when I don't even understand

how that's math? When I was a kid, we wrote down numbers and multiplied them. Now it's like you got to do math by drawing boxes and lines and dots and I don't get it. It's almost like you're teaching me

because y'all do some interesting math nowadays. All right. So jumping right in. This story comes from vice.com. I fucking love this. This is so good, dude. This is fucking.

Oh, I just got to read from this story. So good. So good. Expert mathematician on election fraud. Actually, a swing set installer lawsuit claims a man posing as a math expert with evidence. Installer lawsuit claims a man posing as a math expert with evidence. Trump won. The election is actually a convicted drug dealer with no college degree who installs swing sets on January 27th.

Pro chump channel. Oh, I broadcast a segment interviewing an expert mathematician named Ed Solomon. He was actually going to split the evidence right down the middle. And then he'll tell you the mean he'll factor your polynomial for you oh god what he says what he says is so fucking amazing though that's coming up it's the best this uh Ed claimed to have found evidence within precinct level reporting that the election was rigged by an algorithm. The basis of Solomon's claim

is that he found several precincts throughout the country reporting exactly the same results at various times through the vote tabulation process. Asked by host Christina Bob what the likelihood of what Solomon claimed to have found

being a coincidence is, Solomon replied, you can use the binomial probability formula. And the chance of that event happening is one over 10 to an exponent, exponent so large. There's not enough stars in the universe. There's not enough atoms in the universe to explain the number. It can't happen naturally.

So I love this so much. Uh, I remember factoring binomials and polynomials in uh high school algebra yeah but when you do this though tom you have to times the universe on one side of the equation yeah by the universe on the other side of the equation. And they actually cross-factor out. I am an expert mathematician because I also passed freshman year algebra. That's what makes you an expert. It's not that I...

What if you get all the way to trigonometry? It's just like you walk in an OAN, people are just like, boom. It's not that I took exactly the minimum number of college math classes that I could get away with for my English lit degree. Here's the thing. This guy took the minimum number of college math classes that I could get away with for my English lit degree. Here's the thing. This guy took the minimum number to not go to college.

Okay, how many math classes do I need to install the swing sets? He knows fractions or he knows metric. Whatever the wrenches are in, he definitely knows that. I'm really good at graphing an arc. I can graph the arc of a swing set like a son of a bitch. I'm really good at graphing an arc. I can graph the arc of a swing set like a son of a bitch. I'm just saying. I'm not shitting on swing set installers

or installers of anything. But that doesn't make you a mathematician, man. I love it. Mathematicians go to college and get math degrees. It's so crazy that you could just literally go to fucking OAN. Yeah, they vetted nothing. And you could fucking say whatever you want. Right. You could i'm a fucking i'm fucking gandalf right it doesn't

matter they literally will not fact check it they don't care anybody can be any expert yeah we should have gone on now that i know this we 100 should have gone on oan and newsmax yeah we should have gone on and been like okay so clearly i have evidence that dragons rigged the election are you kidding also like the idea that this is so improbable that it that that number the same number appeared at the same time we are counting 160 million votes yeah like the more you do something the more likely improbable things happen. Well, one of the things too that you got to understand is that these things are all being entered by human beings. And so, you know, there was, there was, uh, sometimes they skip some columns I saw like in the,

and they were entering shit into the fucking, uh, when they were entering it into the spreadsheets and they were doing this constantly. And people were saying, oh, but that's not exactly how it should be. And that's not, and there was all these, because what you have is a whole bunch of people who one, don't know how the process works. Right. And then two, what you also have is a group of people who are anomaly hunting now.

And so they're going out of their way to try to find any little thing that doesn't feel like it's right. And so if there's a column missing or a column misplaced or they didn't bother to enter some things in or things get put in all at the same time, right? So like you get all the, somebody hands you

all the fucking things to type into your sheet. And so you're entering them in all at 1201. That's 445-789-236, you know, blah, blah, blah. You're just doing the number pad on the side, just entering them all in. They're like, oh, well, how could they all come in at the same time? It's like, well, they didn't come all in the same time. They were just entered in all. But again, you have these people who constantly are just digging to try to find any little thing to make the reality the one that they want it to be because they're trying to

confirm every bias that they have that Trump is the one who got elected. And they won't take any, they see anything that could possibly be that one little wedge and they will try to pull apart whatever they can. And it's just insane at this point to think that any of this ever went down the way they said it went down. Yeah, you can't arrive any longer at that. It's a fucking, it was a bonkers conclusion then. It's a bonkers conclusion now. There's no attempt to actually understand the process. And to your point, they're hunting for anomalies without understanding, in order to know what an anomaly is, you have to have a frame of fucking reference. These guys have no frame of reference. Like if I'm looking and saying, oh man, it's so weird that these number of vote

tabulations appeared in multiple counties. Well, is it really? Because people probably type at roughly the same speed. Sure. Right. And if I've got a thousand monkeys at a thousand keyboards, are they, are a few of them going to type at roughly the same speed? Yeah. It's the same that if you just explain that to me, I'd be like, okay, well, yeah. So that makes perfect fucking sense. And how many people, how many counties are there in America? How many people are tabulating in those counties? My numbers, again, like the numbers get so big. When you start looking at how many people, how many things have to be entered in order for 160, 170 million units to be counted.

Yeah. It's enormous. Yeah. It's enormous. And we're just like, that's not what I expected. Really? Yeah. Well, how was it last time you weren't fucking involved? It's enormous. Yeah. It's enormous. And we're just like, that's not what I expected. Really? Yeah.

Well, how was it last time you weren't fucking involved? Well, and that's the thing is that these people all stormed in because again, Trump primed the pump before any of this happened. Right.

He was calling and saying it was going to be voter fraud well before the election even happened because Trump wasn't stupid. He saw the polls. Yep.

It did do a good job of getting those yokels out to vote. Those people came out in droves. Trump got the second number of votes in history of the United States for president, the second number under Biden, right? So he got a lot of fucking votes and his belly aching and moaning ahead of time to call it rigged actually got people out to vote. It really did work. It was a genius way to motivate his base. And he did a

great job with it. And so when they went out, he also suggested that they become poll watchers. Again, I think he was thinking more along the lines of, you know, let me be perfectly honest. I think he was thinking more along the lines of brown shirts, right? Somebody who was going to try to come in and intimidate some people. He was thinking that, but they were ready for him and they were ready for these people. But these people, the questions that they asked, they didn't know anything

that was happening there. They're accusing people of flipping and doing all kinds of stuff when it was really just, that's how the process works. And they just aren't familiar with it. But again, they're there to just throw wrenches into everything

because they, and look at exactly how Trump spoke the night of, stop the election here. Keep counting here. Keep counting over there. Everywhere I'm losing, keep counting. Everywhere I won, stop counting. We just hear that out loud and be like,

that doesn't sound at all suspicious to you. That doesn't at all sound like an attempt to rig to a conclusion. And everything else that has come out since, all the documents have shown that he literally wanted to strong arm everybody

into just becoming president again because his fragile fucking ego couldn't take it. Couldn't deal with it. Could not deal with it. And now the swing set installer has got his binomial calculations with more atoms

than in the universe. It's that unlikely. O-A-N. The chance of them saying something smart is that there would need to be that many atoms in the universe. And you pick that one and they would say something intelligent. I mean, they don't vet anybody.

It's an embarrassment. It's an embarrassment of a news network. They should be ashamed and that they are not, that they continue to go on air is just like, yeah, they're just there to fucking sell ass. Yeah, care they don't give a shit they don't give a fuck this reminds me cecil do you remember those people that you run into in your life that just tell stories to tell stories oh yeah yeah for sure like this fucking swing set installer is just one of those guys one of those guys he's in the fucking secret service and he's in the witness protection

program and he can fly when you're not looking yeah no and his girlfriend in fucking canada's super hot he's a he he's the heir to a bacon empire or something like the fuck out of here okay wait she just called me a bitch you just called me a bitch yes you are a whore and you will not disrespect me like this today good night ass bitch ass slut ass whore oh see it just keeps getting better this story comes from businessinsider.com a federal judge denied motions from syd Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Lindell to dismiss Dominion's lawsuits against them. So fucking good. A federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday denied motions from all those fuckers. All those fuckers are like, we don't really want to be held to account for what we're saying.

And Dominion's like, we're coming at you for billions. $1.3 billion in damages. And Tom, if there's anything out there that might convince the next guy, the next rich fucking loud mouth not to do this, it's going to be this. This is going to be the one thing that sticks because there's no fucking,

there is nothing in the United States that is a penalty for lying. Because we've figured out that it's not a penalty to your status, to your stature, to your reputation. It's none of that. It doesn't do anything at all to that. It literally, it doesn't even mar it. So what we have to do is punish these people in some way. And if it just so happens that the next fucking, if the my blanket guy doesn't jump on board because the my pillow guy is broke, they're going to fucking, they're going to do something else. They're not going to do the same

lying. They're not going to do the same defamation that these people did. Yeah. This is the, this is the only way what this will accomplish is it is a couple of different things. One, it's going to force these assholes to go on record and try to defend their bullshit. And they're going to be totally unable to defend their bullshit. And that is going to be on record. You're going to have Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, this fucking Mike Lindell guy. And they have been screaming, they continue to scream that they have all this evidence. And if you run this lawsuit, there's going to be depositions and all that shit's going to be out there in open court. All that shit's going to be available for public record.

And they are going to have to stand in front of people and admit they had nothing all along. That the emperor never had any fucking clothes on. That's important. It won't change minds, but it's fucking important to set the goddamn record straight. It really is. And then to just burn them.

To just burn them. None of those people that on the other side are going to believe. Well, I mean, for one, they might not even believe that they're actually having to pay. They might just think it's some sort of theater to appease the message. And they'll say something like that. Or they'll say it's the deep state that did it. Right. Right. So no matter what, it's not like this is real justice because real justice, everybody would recognize that it's justice. But in this case, half the people recognize it's justice, and the other half, their heads so far up their own ass, they can't

recognize anything. And so, there's not going to be a recognition on the other side that this is actually justice, or some of them might not even think it actually happened. But that being said, something like this needs to happen to deter the next person. This is one of those deter moments, where punishment is a deterrent

to stop people from doing this in the future. And it turns out that these two voting companies are like, fuck you, Smartmatic and fucking, and Dominion are like, no, fuck you. I'm going to take you to court. And they're never going to get that kind of money out of these guys, but this guy might have to sell his fucking pillows

out of the back of a fucking car for the rest of his life. Yeah. Well, I mean, this has the potential to crush them financially, to bankrupt them, to just absolutely ruin them. And let me be very, very clear. It should. These people deserve to be ruined. The damage that their bullshit and their lies, which they espoused personally for their own gain, right? Rudy Giuliani didn't do this for love own gain. Yes. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Rudy Giuliani didn't do this for love of God and country. No, no. You know, fucking Mike Lindell,

who knows why he does anything? That guy's head is not screwed on right. No, he's not. He's not okay. He's not well. He's not okay. He's not well. And then Powell, like,

I'm sure she was hoping to get an appointment to the next Supreme Court opening or something. Or she was waiting for her 15 minutes so she could be a commentator. Right. Same thing with Giuliani. He's looking for some way that he can either be a commentator or when it comes to, they were saying that he was angling for a blanket pardon, I think at one point some people were saying behind the scenes. I don't know how true that is, but I wouldn't put it past Giuliani anyway to be angling for something like that anyway. So who knows why these people were motivated to lie as much as they did, but the fact is, is that they did. They did, and they

should be held accountable. And if you can't hold them accountable in a regular court of law, because in our country, defamation is really hard to do, in this, it's at least holding up past the first judge so that people are going to hear it. I just, fingers crossed that it goes through. I can't wait for the deposition. Because man, they were viciously like constant. And it wasn't just a little bit, it was constant. It was constantly talking about, you know, they're talking about that last guy, the last story we just talked about

with the guy who had the swing set mathematician. That shit was still on OAN's website and it's called Smoking Gun. That's what it's labeled as, but it's archived, right? So it's in like a hidden area, but it's still fucking there. They didn't take it down with a correction. It's not taken down. They didn't correct it.

They took it down quietly, and then it's still there. The permalink's still there, so people can still share it because they want the fucking views, man. They want to turn that shit. Everything is just monetized, man. We've taken reality and we have stripped the fucking truth from it. And then we have bastardized it

and then fucking monetized it. And it has fucked our country up. Did you know though, Cecil? Yeah. That Rudy Giuliani right now is on Cameo. I did not. You can, it's I think $1,500. Oh, that's expensive.

To get Rudy Giuliani on Cameo like to sing fucking happy birthday or whatever you would want Rudy Giuliani

to do Cameo he's not gonna do like I'm fucking guilty I hope I burn in a lake of fire or something like that I don't think he would either otherwise I'd have already

spent $1,500 of glory hole money you'd have to trick him somehow into doing it right you know what I mean like Like, there's just no way. I think they got, yeah. But again, cameo is one of those things where

I wish I could just be like, no, you have to say it. You're contractually obligated. You have to do it. You're contractually obligated to say, I look like the guy from Fifth Element with shit leaky dumb face or whatever. I was going to say, can I just pay you to be quiet and to just sweat shoe polish? Is there any way I can just get you announcing like,

welcome to Four Seasons Total Landscaping? Like there's so many things. There's so many things that would be amazing to have him say. That would just be outstanding. I would pay. I seriously would pay $1,500 of my own money and not eat for the entire month just to have a recording of him saying, welcome to Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

I would listen to it on repeat while I worked out. I would work out to that. I would fucking pump iron to that. I would work out to it. It's amazing. Romnichelle Gypsy Annie is crazy about her first cousin, Josh. That's my honey. We love each other.

And the feelings mutual. We just clicked. And it's never a dull moment at all. So this story comes from Fox 17. It's the Nashville affiliate. Tennessee pastor, governor a coward, chicks in hospitals doing TikTok dances. Okay, so in order to get a little context, I just want to play a tiny bit of this to just understand what's happening.

Now, this guy, outspoken pastor, what is this dipshit's name? Yeah, we've had this guy on before. This is Greg Locke. Greg Locke. He's been on our show on the live stream several times. And so this is just a tiny bit from the affiliate there. A popular pastor is telling his global congregation the Delta variant is not real and not to wear masks at his church or risk being forced out. Local doctors, though, disagree. Okay, I want to stop there. Yeah. There's no agree or disagree. One party in here is completely fucking wrong.

Thank you. Thank you. Don't present this like there's some sort of back and forth with the facts. There's not. Disagree is the wrong fucking word to say there. Local doctors, local doctors laugh at his buffoonery is more like it. That's something you should say, not disagree. That's bad reporting. It's bad reporting. And I mean, the thing that it also, it seeks to do, and I think it's very intentional, is it seeks to strip the idea of what's true from truth and to put everything on the playing field of opinions, right? Right. So, but there are some

things that are just true, right? Some, if you can test it, it's not an opinion. So you don't get to have an opinion about something which can be tested, right? That which can be tested can be proven or disproven. That's not your fucking opinion. But we've descended into this fucking narrative, fucking rhetorical chaos, this mad storm where we attempt to just pretend that everything is democratically equal, that everything, I can agree or disagree about whether or not masks mitigate the spread of disease. No, you can't. No, you can't. Because either they do or they don't, right?

And once you run the fucking experiment, we get to know that. It's not a matter of agree or disagree. You can be wrong about the facts, right? If I say like a Tesla Model 3 goes zero to 60 in 3.4 seconds, and then I get in a Tesla Model 3 and I hit the gas and it does that, you don't get to disagree with that. That's what fucking happened. Some shit is just true. But we try to play this weasel bullshit with words, man. And it's bad reporting, but I think it's intentional.

I feel very strongly like that shit is fucking intentional. It puts that shit on this, on this sort of equal footing where, well, you know, everybody's got their own opinion. Everyone has the right to their own opinion. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not an opinion. You don't know the difference between opinions and facts. Nobody has the right to their own facts. Right. And we saw that in the last administration where they, they even came out and said, there's regular facts and there's alternative facts. Oh my God. And it came out as the first week, second

week of his administration. We laughed. We thought it was hilarious, but genuinely that was four years ago and it's been a screaming fucking nightmare ever since. I mean, it's, there's nothing, it's not stopping. This is a constant. It's every moment of the day, there's this new horror of people not,

I mean, everything that we want to do right now, everything that we could be doing right now could be so easy if everybody just said, hey, we're all going to get vaccinated. Hey, guess what? We're all just going to get vaccinated. Those people that are sick and can't get vaccinated, we're going to protect those people

because that's what good people do. They go out of their way to make sure that we protect everybody who's vulnerable in our population. That's what we do. And so we all just got together as a country and just made a decision to do that. And we're all going to do it. And we're going to make sure

that there's a herd immunity here where the virus shows up and there's just nowhere for it to go. It can't get to our vulnerable populations because we won't let it. We are the fucking frontline of defense. Can you imagine? Like how inspiring is that?

How great is that, right? How perfect is that? That's how human beings should be. But instead what you had is this weird fight, a political fight where suddenly politics trumps medical facts.

And it happened over and over and over again for multiple things. Restaurants opening, whether or not you could be on the CTA, whether or not you could be in a bar, whether or not you could be on the CTA, whether or not you could be in a bar, whether or not you should wear a mask, whether or not you should get vaccinated, whether or not remdesivir works, whether or not, you know what I mean?

Like look at all this stuff that was like, and I don't know, I think I picked the wrong thing. Cause I think remdesivir is a thing that works, but one of those was not. So I can't remember which one. Hydroxychloroquine was the one that didn't work. Yeah. Remdesivir does work, I think. Remdesivir is what Rand Paul's wife invested a bunch of money in right before. Sorry, I picked the wrong drug.

Yeah. But there's also another one too that just came out that the new one, the one that they were, they were an Invitacin or something. I can't remember what, Invitamesin or something like that. I can't remember what it's called.

Oh, I know what you're talking about. But that one came out and that one's not effective either. Because, again, it was a political the reason why it was in front of us, the reason why anybody talked about it was because it was a political fucking ploy. It was a political

point. It had no medical background whatsoever. Never did. And we spend all this time fucking having intelligent doctors look at fucking dumb as rock senators and try to explain simple fucking medicine to them and none of them can understand it and in fact they might even be able to understand it they just push back with rhetorical devices that's the thing is that i'm not i don't know it's impossible for me to know what they understand but it is not

impossible for me to know that they should, but it is not impossible for me to know that they should understand. Right, right. Right? And that it is not impossible for me to know that we should cede the floor to the fucking experts. Yeah. And if you got a fucking JD, you know what you're an expert in? Law talking. Law talking. That's what you got. That's what you're a fucking expert in.

That's what you got. You know? Yeah. You're not a fucking expert in the fucking medicines. Yeah. You're not a fucking expert in epidemiology medicines. You're not a fucking expert in epidemiology. Listen to the epidemiologists. But we have spent four years, five years now,

breaking that down and breaking that down and just tearing apart the idea of expertise and shitting and shitting and shitting on the idea of seeding. I mean, look at the, during the Trump administration, look at who he picked for his fucking cabinet. He picked people who were entirely unqualified. He picked Rick Perry

to be his energy secretary, right? That guy wanted to disband the Department of Energy and has a fucking animal husbandry degree from Texas. I would not believe you if you said Rick Perry found that place without a GPS.

Yeah, I'm saying. I wouldn't believe you. I would say, no, I'm sorry. I don't believe you. I would say, no, I'm sorry. I don't think that he could. I don't, I seriously don't think he could get in a car and pilot himself to that place. He picked a pyramid scheme heiress to be the Department of Education head, right?

He picked a neurosurgeon to be the head of the housing and urban development. We have destroyed and dismantled the idea of expertise. Sure, yeah. And we're paying that price, man. We fucking pay that fucking price. It's ridiculous. I want to read part of this though, Tom,

because there's a part here where he says, this is Greg Lox giving the sermon. And he says, he called the governor down there who signed an executive order. And the executive order was pretty milquetoast, as I recall. There really wasn't a lot in there. The order from Tennessee, part of it is an extension of the prior order. And our governor has done the same thing.

So our governor has extended the disaster declaration and then amends the disaster declaration as we move through the different phases. It doesn't mean it's... Almost every governor has done this. The only reason you would be upset by this is if you're in complete denial that COVID even exists. Right. That's the only reason you'd be upset by it.

He called the governor a coward, a noodle, and a waffler. And this is also the other problem that we've run into in our culture. And it's that when we find better information, there's a population of such fucking idiots in our culture that think that if you change your mind, that's the detrimental path. If you change your mind, when presented with better evidence, we have, we, we live in a country with people that are so stupid. They don't think you should change your mind when you confronted with better evidence. We have, we, we live in a country with people that are so stupid. They don't think you should change your mind when you're confronted with better evidence. Yeah. They think they, they think of that as a moral and intellectual failing when it's the

exact opposite. Yeah. You know, I, I, it's funny Cecil, cause I remember, I remember when you and I were first becoming friends, like a long time, it was a long time ago. So we met and then we weren't friends right away. Yeah. Right. Like we were in the same friend group, but we weren't, we weren't friends for three years or so. Yeah. And I remember like you and I had, like we got together and we talked about like philosophy. We talked about Kant. We like read some stuff together and like, we started to become friends. And one of the things that I remember specifically admiring was your ability to change your mind. And I remember being like, man, like so few people. And I raised my hand in that number, are comfortable doing that.

And I learned that, I very much like, had I learned it from you, dad, moment. Because I was like, Cecil changes his mind when he's like, he is able to be convinced. Sure. And I remember being like, I fucking admire that. I need that. I need that in my life. And I remember, and that was me at 23. Sure.

That's a lesson you can learn fucking organically as just a regular Joe Schmo. Yeah, right, right. You know, but it's what's encouraged and what's reinforced by the people that are around you. Right. I don't eat salad. I don't eat steak. I stay away from chicken. I don't eat any vegetables or fruit.

I love fishing, but there is no way in hell I will eat a fish. Burgers are so good. Oh my God. Again, Cecil, this story is from Business Insider. Woman sues McDonald's after complaining that a cheeseburger advert was so irresistible it caused her to break her fast-stirring lens. I love it so much. Have you ever seen a commercial?

For real, have you ever seen a commercial and then immediately been like, I'm getting that right now. I'm just stand up and I am going to get in the fucking car. I'm going to put my pants on. I have got to get that. Never.

Never in my life. Never. Never in my life. Never. I will say that if I was fucking McDonald's though, I would 100% settle this. I would settle this

out of the quarter pounder. Oh, 100%. No, but seriously. Out of the quarter pounder? Out of the court. Take me inside.

A quarter pounder. No, but seriously, like I would fucking 100% settle this because it makes it look like, because first off, she only wants 14 bucks, right?

So she wants a thousand rupees or whatever. It's 14 bucks. That's number one. But number two, it makes it look like that your first off, she only wants 14 bucks, right? So she wants a thousand rupees or whatever. It's 14 bucks. That's number one. But number two, it makes it look like that your shit is so irresistible. People have to like take you to court

because your shit is so good. Right. I would figure out a way to use this as fucking my marketing. I would fucking pay the judge to sit up there with a fucking meat tenderizer

instead of a gavel. Are you kidding me? I'd make him fucking, I'd be like, the honorable Mayor McCheese takes the stand. I'd make her wear the fucking Hamburglar outfit. Are you kidding me? I'd turn the whole, the fucking bailiff would be

grimace. I would make this a fucking, I would televise this shit. Are you kidding me? Fucking A, man. This is money in the bank. All day, all day long. If you can't capitalize on this all day like this i just i read this and it was one of those things where you just stare at it you're like this has to be from the onion yeah this just straight up has to and it's not it's not it's

not it's it's just fucking it's cecil this story is delicious. Also, I'm loving it, Tom. I can't believe she wants so little money. They really should supersize that complaint. Oh, man. I just love this so much. It's so fucking good. I would, you know what? The next person should sue Pornhub

because he jerked off during that. I jerked off during that. I jerked my dick right off. You're never religious, right? No, not really. No, not really. No. I was, I was brought up Catholic.

So Lent was a thing in my house. We did do Lent. A couple of times in my house, we did do Lent. And I remember asking my mom, like why, but, but regular boots on the ground Catholics as near as I could tell didn't have any fucking idea. They're just like, no, that's just what the church says to do. I don't know.

Priest says you don't eat meat. It's penitent. They're just like, be penitent. And most Catholics, at least the ones I ran into, did not do anything special except for the meat, sort of not have meat in their diet on Fridays during Lent, which is only 40 days. So what's

that? Five, six weeks, something like that. So it's only five or six Fridays that they didn't eat meat. But I do know some people in my life that were Catholic and I still know some Catholics. And first off, the day before Lent, I think it's the day of Lent, actually, the first day of Lent. Is it just like a wild bacchanalia? No, the first day of Lent is always the like a wild bacchanalia? no the first day of Lent is always the you got shit on your forehead day oh yeah

that's Palm Wednesday or whatever the fuck it is Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday yeah when I used to go to Rosie Palm Sunday I think is the other one

I forget I don't know but yeah when I used to go to the office I would always be a little like taken aback by the smudges I just it catches me off guard every year

every time every year I'm just like, fuck, you got something on your face. Oh, nope, you purposely have something on your face. But it's something you got on your face. That's the first day of it. And then it goes for six more weeks. But I also know Catholics that gave up things.

I remember some people I know gave up, they went vegan for it. Oh, God. And that was a difficult time for them. And I remember cooking for them for the first, this was years ago. So it really wasn't as popular as it was today to do vegan food.

And there wasn't as many things, right? So there just wasn't as many shortcuts and things that you could buy that would be like a vegan cheese or a vegan whatever, you know. I literally, while you were talking, I thought I just had a vegan dinner though. And I had salad because i was in my mind i had a salad but a salad with four shish kebabs of chicken you'd have four shish kebabs of chicken but in my mind i was like

that was vegan though that was vegan tom would eat the bus boy that delivered the salad you kidding me i was like it can't be that hard. It's like a vegan salad. Tom's fucking putting a whole chicken in his mouth and just spitting feathers out. No, it's vegan chicken. If it's on a salad, that makes the chicken vegan. It's a vegan chicken. But anyway, I remember making a pie

and that was tough because I had to use, I just had to use Crisco and a blueberry pie and normally you can't put any butter for any thickener or anything and so there was a lot of Jesus

extra plus and then I also had to make like straight up just straight up vegetable something and I was like well I'll make a pasta because you know

you can make a primavera or something without any other meat products and no butter I had to use olive oil but like you know you could do it but it was also

back before there really was anything that was like hey you want to have a plant-based burger? There's no such thing, you know, it didn't even exist. So, but, uh, there's been other things. I remember, you know, when I first met my wife, she was Roman Catholic. And for the first few years we were together, she did do some, she was very religious. So she would go to church. She's not anymore, but she was then. And so she would go to church and do all that stuff. And she would also, um, do something for Lent, like certain things, like little give ups and stuff like that.

I never understood. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, if you think you're improving your personality, try to improve your personality all year round. Don't just do it for 40 days. If you think you're giving something up that you like, why the fuck are you giving up something that you like for 40 fucking days out of a calendar year?

If you're going to do that for the rest of your life and that's 40 days out of every calendar year, you're're going to do that for the rest of your life and that's 40 days out of every calendar year, you're giving up something that you enjoy for that long? What the fuck is wrong with you? You're only here for 70 or fucking 80 years. I have never, I'm so glad that like, first of all, we were raised Methodist

and that's the easiest thing because they don't make you do anything. Like you just go to church and you leave church, you forget you're Methodist entirely. So there's never any ask. It's the best of all the denominations because you just are like, what are you? You're like, I don't fucking unobservant. That's what I am.

It doesn't matter. I don't do anything. But I had a huge, because I grew up in Chicago. So like a huge number of our friends and family were all Catholic. And I remember resenting the hell out of the, like meatless Friday, even though you get to eat all the other meats. That's the thing that always made me laugh is like

You get to eat all the other meat you can eat chicken. You can eat pork. You can eat fish, right? Oh, you can only eat fish. Oh, you don't get the oh, you don't get you'll get chicken or pork no terrestrial stuff Okay, so no no walking fish. It's You can eat fucking lobster. You can eat whatever. That's not that big a deal. It's really not that big a deal. It is if you're, I will say this, it is in the early 80s,

late 80s in Illinois because there wasn't good fish back then. That's true. You're not just going to like swing over there. You're eating the fucking Gordon's Fisherman for fucking five fucking weeks. Or if you're broke, because fish is expensive.

Fish sticks, that's what we had. When we were kids, that's what we ate, fish sticks. Or if you're broke because fish is expensive. Fish sticks. That's what we had. When we were kids that's what we ate. Fish sticks. Or my mom would make what she called vegetarian spaghetti

which was it was a bell pepper with like tomato sauce and other stuff so it had a bell pepper flavor to it. Okay. But it wasn't

it had no meat in it but that was what she would make. Okay. And that's actually I didn't know that. I thought you could I thought the only thing

you couldn't eat was beef. But when we were kids I remember eating that stuff but it wasn't it was all kinds of terrestrial mammals. So any kind of mammal and even bird. So couldn't eat a bird either. Okay. I didn't know that. Yeah. So at least that's, at least that's the classic Catholic I was, was that particular. Oh, I'm sure that's right. I suspect it is, but it's fish was the thing. And I'm sure somebody's going to send

us a long email about why the origin started like that, but I assure you, I don't care. to send us a long email about why the origin started like that, but I assure you, I don't care. You're not that invested in the history of life? The reason why

I don't think I care is because I think it's a silly tradition anyway. Right. And so if I knew the origins of your silly tradition, I don't think it would make it any less silly.

Right. The banal, everyday, probably money-based origins of your... It's guaranteed it's money-based. Well, of course, it was never... It's all made up by people for something. Yeah, exactly. It's guaranteed it's money-based. Well, of course, it was never, it's all made up by people for something.

Yeah. Right? It's like every other fucking religious proscription. It never came from anywhere, but some dude who wanted something from someone else. Yeah, yeah. What do you get from McDonald's? When I go to McDonald's- Yeah, what's your McDonald's?

What would be on that commercial feed? So, a couple of different things. I do like a Quarter Pounder. I think a Quarter Pound So a couple of different things. I do like a quarter pounder. I think a quarter pounder is a solid choice. And I also like a Big Mac. I'm a big Big Mac guy. I fucking, thank you. Big Mac is a good sandwich.

Thank you. I like making my own Big Macs at home. But I will say one of the things about a Big Mac is that the, in my opinion, in a Big Mac, there's one major flaw and it's the meat to bread ratio is off. I think the meat to bread ratio is a little low. I think there needs to be,

if there was three patties in there, I think there's only two. If there was three patties in there instead of two, I think it would be better. My very favorite thing, they don't have it on the menu all the time, only once in a while. My very favorite thing is a triple cheeseburger. I fucking love their triple cheeseburgers. Is that just?

It's just three old, instead of a double cheeseburger, they just put an extra patty on there. Yes. And I will tell you this, that is the best thing to order from there because it is the proper meat to bun ratio. Because their meat is like so thin.

It's so fucking thin. It's so crazy thin. It's like roadkill thin. Yeah. And it does have like their meat, because I think they must grill it with the onions. It has that really like onion-y kind of base. Even if you get without onions, it still has that flavor. Yeah. I fucking, the Big Mac is just good, man.

Big Mac is good. I make them on my own. I make them with my own stuff without the middle bread and I do a double and I'll make it at home. And that's a good, that's a good sandwich. You make your own, you make your own thousands. You put a couple of, you know, you get, you dice up your onions real fine and they're, and they're fresh onions instead of dehydrated, which I like better. So yeah, it's a little better sandwich at home. The Big Mac is the worst sandwich to try to eat while you're driving. Don't eat it while you're driving. Pull in and eat it. Just eat it there. What a pain in the dick. Do not try to eat that while you're driving. There's a couple of things you don't eat while you're driving. That's one of them because that fucker will just explode. It's everywhere. And that lettuce, that lettuce is,

you may as well just take the lettuce and just put it in your car seat, like in that crack between your console and your seat. It's a confetti gun. Yeah. It's essentially, it's like a party popper of lettuce. And the reason why it all falls out, Tom, is because there's three openings or two full openings instead of just one. So you can't just put your hand around one. There's like cracks and shit. So it just fucking shoots out like silly string.

It's like a guy, I mean, it's unbelievable. I remember trying to drive a stick and eat a Big Mac at the same time. Oh God, that's- You need a tail. No, yeah, man. You need a tail to do that. Your car probably looked like somebody was murdered in it.

It looked like somebody was murdered and they shot Thousand Island out of their blood. Their blood's just shooting, pumping Thousand Island. I'm sure I was weaving around the road like a fucking madman. I know we're also going to get a bunch of messages about, oh, you shouldn't eat McDonald's. McDonald's is horrible or whatever.

And that's fine. Of course it is. It's terrible. I don't eat it very often. But you know, there's sometimes you're just on the road and there's nothing else to eat and you have to. I haven't eaten McDonald's, gosh.

It has to be at least over a year. It's probably on to like two and a half years since I've had McDonald's, I would say. You have kids, so it's different. Kids like McDonald's. Kids like McDonald's. So I suspect that with you, it's different, but for me, it's probably been two and a half years

since I've had McDonald's. I just don't, I don't eat it very often. But if I do, and I see it, those are my go-tos. So I wanted to caveat that so I don't fucking weather a million messages about how bad the taste I have or whatever because I'm eating at McDonald's.

Don't eat those hamburgers. I want nothing. I want my God and I want my family. This is tainted. I don't want it. Whatever it is, it's tainted. Whatever it is you're giving me, I give it up to God. I'm a God warrior and I don't want someone with tainted anything in Belize doing anything with my family. Get out. Get out. All right, this story comes from the Friendly Atheist blogs over at Patheos.

Tennessee parents whine after school denies son's religious exemption to mask mandate. And I want to read what they actually said. Neil says in years past, the school made exceptions for students who wore certain attire in line with their religious beliefs. He says this should be no different. He and his wife feel their children should not have to wear something they believe would restrict them in any way. Our God is not Fauci, it's Jesus.

And we should have the rights to be defended and supported in the same way. Fucking idiots. And there is nothing in any holy book about a fucking mask. You're making that up. You just don't want to do it. There is nothing religious about this.

It's 100% political. And if there's anything in the world that the Christians always get on, it's about these false prophets, about false gods. These people worship Trump. They genuinely worship Trump. They genuinely worship him.

And you're just like, I know you guys are hypocrites all the time. You're fucking 100% hypocrites all the time. They worship guns too. But this is one of those moments where you're just like, you're a fucking giant hypocrite. But I do want to point out that I saw a tweet.

I think it was a tweet or Facebook message. I'm not sure. I think it was American Atheist that posted it. But someone had sent American Atheist a message and said, hey, I'm an atheist and I work as a nurse. Is there any way that you can help me with a religious exemption to not get a vaccine? What?

Can you help me out? And they retweeted or whatever and said, pro tip, don't ask us to fucking help you dodge vaccines, stupid, or something like that. Good. But I don't know how real it is, right? You're just, you're just suspecting that some guy who found a form or sent something on Facebook is being genuine. You don't know. Right. But they, they said that they were like the response. The response is the right response. Yep. Don't fucking send us a message because there is no religious exemption

for fucking vaccines. That's stupid. There should is no religious exemption for fucking vaccines. That's stupid. There should be no religious exemption for wearing masks. That's stupid. I just, I just can't, I cannot understand that the two things that we know for sure

would 100% help us and could move us past this point in time where we're still seeing this uptick in COVID cases, where ICU beds across the United States are being full and starting to get to the point where they're going to have to start triaging people and deciding whether or not-

It's getting dire, man. It's getting dire in many different places. All of this could be mitigated so easily. If one, if 50, I mean, at this point, it's probably like 40% or 20% or whatever of the population just stopped and said, you know what? Politics be politics. I'm still behind Trump, whatever, but I'm going to wear a mask. Politics

be politics, but I am going to go get the jab. If they could just for a second, just realize that they're causing real harm to other people. Yeah. The quality of care for everything else you go to the hospital for. I was listening to a doctor out of Florida on a podcast this morning. And I mean, it's just a fact. It's just a bald fact. Like when they're that busy, if you go in with a heart attack, you don't get as good a care. There are less nurses to attend to. The doctors are more tired. They've been working longer. So it's not just COVID. Everything gets worse. You know, it would be unsurprising if you saw fetal and infant mortality rates rise in hospitals during COVID spikes, right?

The quality of care that you get, and Ron DeSantis came out, and he's like, our hospitals are open for business. And it's like, yeah, but they're fucking overwhelmed. And almost all their ICU beds are met at this point. And shit is continuing to climb. Yeah. And one of the things that we saw in a story earlier

that we didn't touch on was the guy was saying they're doing TikTok dances. The nurses are doing TikTok dances or something like that. Right. To try to intimate that there's some sort of like, there's not a lot of people in ICU beds. And it's like, man, there's people all over the country that are in a massive,

that are having massive trauma right now in these hospitals. I mean, these people that have to be intubated, these people, there's a chance, there's a good chance they're going to die. They're getting fucked up. The stuff they have to do to you in order to get you to that position, it's not good for you.

They're essentially putting you in a coma just to try to keep you alive. It's something like 60 some percent of those people don't come out of the intubation. They don't even come out of it. And these people that are having people in their churches without masks, pushing for no vaccine, saying the vaccine's evil, the mark of the beast,

these are evil people. They are. These are evil, awful, terrible people. And I only wish the worst for them. I wish the worst thing possible could happen to them so that they stop doing these publicly harmful things. There's nothing in our country that is allowing us to stop this fucking,

this thing from happening. This slow motion car wreck where we have to watch people lie on television and on radio and on podcasts. And we get to watch them lie on television and on radio and on podcasts. And we get to watch them lie on YouTube. And we get to watch them lie all over every bit of media that we have on Facebook and Twitter and fucking parlor and whatever we get to see them lie. And we get to watch it happen.

And there's nothing that can happen. There's nothing we can do. There's nothing. I feel like we just are watching this happen. And I, I were paralyzed. We can't do anything about's nothing. I feel like we just are watching this happen and we're paralyzed. We can't do anything about it. And I understand, you know,

you can't go out there and like make a draconian society where you're, you know, like throwing people in jail or whatever. But at the same point, it just feels like we're hamstrung. There's nothing we can do. There's nothing we can even do to slow it down. The best we could do was take Trump off Twitter

and that removed 66% of whatever false information. I want to point out what this guy said and how much bullshit this is, right? He says he and his wife feel their children should not have to wear something they believe would restrict them in any way. Where's your fucking mass protests about seatbelts? Yeah. About child safety harnesses, right? None of that stuff. I bet when your fucking kids were babies, you restricted the shit out of their movement. You probably put them in fucking child safety harnesses, right? None of that stuff. I bet when your fucking kids were babies, you restricted the shit out of their movement. You probably put them in fucking child safety seats with five-point fucking harnesses facing backward. Why?

Because you gave a shit about them. You believed in the danger. All these like anti-vaccination arguments, Cecil, I firmly believe that it's all bullshit. The arguments are a luxury of your risk position. Because if you look at the percentage of people who have been vaccinated over 65, the people who are personally themselves at risk, it's like 90%. So if you felt like you were personally at risk, you were like, all of a sudden, you're not a fucking QAnon guy, right?

Yeah. All of a sudden, when you're personally at risk, it's not about freedom. There's plenty of Republicans over the age of 65, right? Yeah. That, in fact, it skews that way much more heavily. The thing is that as soon as that risk comes knocking at your fucking lungs personally, all of a sudden, your ideals about big government and the fucking, don't force the jab on,

no, no, no, you're in line, motherfucker. And we know that's true because the numbers tell us that's true. It's 90%, right? So when you were scared for you, you showed the fuck up, you stood in the fucking line,

and you were the first guy out of the gate to get the fucking vaccine. All the rest of this noise, all the rest of this, don't tread on me, no step on snack freedoms and do, all that stuff is and has always been bullshit.

What you're really saying is, I'm not afraid and I don't care about you. And I don't care about you. Right? That's 100% I don't care about you. Right? Yeah. I don't care about you and I'm not afraid.

Because the people that were afraid, 90% of them got vaccinated. Yeah. And the thing is, is I was never really terribly afraid of getting this anyway. To be perfectly frank. I mean, I was a little nervous about getting it. I never thought I would be one of these people that would be very, very sick from it. There's certainly a dice roll involved, but I'm a relatively healthy guy. I'm relatively active.

And I know there's people out there that were very active and they got fucked up by it. So I know it's a dice roll. But on average, most people don't. It doesn't kill. It turns out pretty good. It turns out okay.

It turns out fine. But long COVID, losing the sense of your taste or whatever, that terrifies me. That shit scares the hell out of me. But I never really thought I was one of those people. I didn't think, I didn't think, but I 100% immediately got the jab because I have friends that are fucking immunocompromised, man. Yep, yep.

That even with a vaccine might still get it. That even with a vaccine might still have some real fucking significant problems. I don't just know one or two of these people. I know dozens of these people. And I don't, it's my fucking personal duty to go out and protect those people

from this fucking disease, from this variant, from all of it. It's my personal duty to do that. Just like it's my personal duty not to speed down a fucking school crossing area.

Just like it's my personal duty to use my turn signal and look both ways and all the things I do for public safety all the fucking time. And this is just one of those things that got so hyper politicized that we just decided that that's not one of those things that we're going to do. It's the moment that you're going to blindfold yourself, hit the gas and drive down a busy highway. Yep. Because you can't. Because you can't. Because Trump said it's okay to do. Hey, you know what?

My car's got a five-point harness and good safety belts. I'm going to be all right. I'm going to be okay. Yep. It's bullshit. It's total bullshit. If you do the cooking by the book, then you'll have it. Break it down, bitch.

Let me see you back it up. So, Tom, we read Demon Haunted World, Chapter 4, Aliens. We read Demon Haunted World, Chapter 4, Aliens. Chapter starts out with a very detailed, what could be an experience someone might have as someone who had maybe, you know, one of these repressed memories that came out, pulled out by some hypnotist. And he talks a lot about the idea of the flying saucer

and where the idea comes from. One of the things that I really liked was the flying saucer itself is a misquote from an article. So initially- I thought that was great. I thought, I mean, it's such a good piece of trivia. Right. The idea of a flying saucer didn't actually come from someone who said they saw it and said they, didn't actually come from someone who said they saw it and said they, instead, they were trying to describe the way in which it moved,

not so much the shape of the thing. And they, and the person then that the quotable bit, the soundbite was flying saucer. And so they took that and ran with it. And that's the thing we remember decades later. Right, because that's the thing after that goes into the cultural consciousness, that's the thing after that goes into the cultural consciousness. That's the thing people remember seeing. Yeah, for sure. I thought that was so

interesting because the way that you are, and it goes back to the pareidolia, right? The story that you are expecting is in many ways the story that your mind will tell you. Right. So if you've been told about flying saucers, then when you see a shape in the sky, your mind will tell you. Right. So if you've been told about flying saucers, then when you see a shape in the sky, your mind may interpret that as a saucer shape, right? And your mind may start to spin a story that matches up to other stories that just hang out in the background of your consciousness, right?

They form that mental rubric, that heuristic that we all reach into to understand our world all the time. It made me want, I was going to ask you this, Cecil, did you in the nineties, because this shit was big in the nineties, the alien abduction shit was huge. Did you read or follow, did you read like Operation Blue Book or read like Communion and all those books by Whitley Stryber? Were you into that at all? I did none of that stuff. Never read any of it. I was so fucking into that shit. Scared the beus out of me in the in the early 90s i'm like

12 13 14 somewhere around there there was a very popular fiction author whitley striver who wrote these books and he would put on his fiction books based on a true story and they were like communion was one of them one of them. But they were all fiction. They were all fiction, right? Clever. But it's like Blair Witch. But it's just like Blair Witch, yeah. Based on a true story.

Eh, it's not. But you can say it because fiction means I can lie. Sure, yeah. The Fargo series, hilariously, the new Fargo series that came out a couple of years ago, every single season as based on a true story. None of it's true. These books, I'm a 12 or 13 year old kid. And yeah, I picked this

book up at the library in the fiction section, but the book says based on a true story and I'm 13 and I'm not sure how to parse that. Sure. And it's written in this very, like this happened to me sort of a way. Well, this very first person account kind of way. Brother, they scared the shit out of me. They scared they did. They scared the shit. I read every horror book known to man. None of them did shit. The Communion and the rest of that shit kept me up at night, man.

Wow. I don't know if I believed it, but I did not believe it. Yeah. I was nervous. What's interesting in this is that there's a shift from flying saucers to crop circles

because there's a tie-in. And the tie-in is the circle, right? So the crop circle, very similar to the flying saucer. And when they first start showing up in England, all these scientists and other people are trying to figure out what the fuck's happening. And so they're doing all kinds of tests. And he's talking about people from all over the world

coming there to do these tests. There's different tests that a bunch of days, he's talking about Japanese scientists at a certain point. He's talking about French science. He's talking about scientists that are showing up to do this work. And it's, and you know, we know now, at least skeptics know now that it was a couple of guys in a pub that just had, they had a, first they did it with a bar and then they said, Hey in a pub that just had, they had a first, they did it with a bar and then they said, Hey, we can do this easier if we had a board and a fucking with a,

with a rope on it. And then they started drawing out these patterns and making really intricate stuff. And I remember the first time I had a coworker and I remember I was listening to a, this was right when I sort of found skepticism. I was listening to a old, whatever the I sort of found skepticism. I was listening to an old, whatever the fuck that-

Art Bell. Art Bell. And I remember listening to this thing on crop circles and being like, God, that is such bullshit. I remember thinking to myself, because when I was a kid, Art Bell used to do that to me.

Like, you know how you'd read that book? He would have people on that would freak the shit out of me. I'd be listening to it. I'd be like, oh, this is weird. Yeah. Because he's talking to a devil, a guy who's possessed on the phone and it's crazy. he would have people on that would freak the shit out of me. I'd be listening to it. I'd be like, oh, this is weird. Because he's talking to a devil, a guy who's possessed on the phone and it's crazy.

Or there's a time traveler who's telling you this future is going to be terrible. That guy knew though, by the way, the future is going to be terrible. But in any case, I remember being afraid of that stuff or at least it would titillate me, right? So it wasn't, I wasn't like terrified of it. I wasn't hiding under the covers, but there was certain parts where it would, you know,

give me chills or whatever and, you know, that sort of thing. But I remember listening to it as an adult. The first time I listened to it, all I found the cache of online archives. And I started listening and I'm thinking to myself, holy shit, this is a stupid shit I've ever heard in my entire life. And I remember turning to the guy I worked with at the time being like, oh my God, this fucking crop circle stuff. And he's like, you shouldn't laugh at that stuff. That's like a weather phenomenon and whatnot. That's like, that stuff. That's like a weather phenomenon and whatnot. That's like, actually, that's like a real phenomenon. And I'm like, no, man, it's made by people.

He's like, no, it's like a real, like supernatural phenomenon. And he got like really defensive because he dug his heels in. And this was one of those things that he just believed. And he didn't ever, I don't think he ever thought about it before. But the moment I was there to upturn the apple cart, he was mad. Like he was visibly like shaky and mad. So I just let it drop.

I was just like, cool story, dude. That's not real, but whatever. I'll just let it drop. But seriously, like there's like a- A lot of investment. There's a lot of investment in it. But anyway, so we get to the end of this chapter and it's essentially him talking about

the tools of skepticism. So I want to read two quotes. One is right after he talks about flying saucers. He says, in college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we really want to know something is true. rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we really want to know something is true. How many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking? How our biases can color our interpretation of evidence and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious, and academic hierarchies turn out to be not only just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong.

And that's a quote from him. And it's one of those things that we talk about all the time about those things influencing how we think. When there's no error bar, there's nothing to look at them and say, those people are wrong. Again, it's going back to what you said earlier.

They're just talking about opinion and they're trying to talk about facts as if they're an opinion. Right. Yeah. Without ever having spent the time, it's like that guy at your work who's like, no, it's a weather phenomenon. And that guy, I'm sure, genuinely believed that it was a weather phenomenon.

And just as I'm sure of that, I'm sure he's not 100% sure why he believes that. Right. I'm confident that that's a guy who never, he arrived at that conclusion somehow. And because he's not sure of how he arrived at that conclusion, he's all the more ready to dig into it, right? Because to do otherwise would expose that he arrived at a conclusion without any real significant interrogative process. Yeah, yeah. And he just believes something.

And that would be a stupid thing to do. So instead, he's going to dig in. Going to dig in. Here's another quote that I really loved. But the tools of skepticism are generally unavailable to the citizens of our society. They're hardly ever mentioned in schools, even in the presentation of science.

It's most ardent practitioner, although skepticism repeatedly sprouts spontaneously out of the disappointments of everyday life. Our politics, economics,

advertising, and religions, new age and old, are awash in credulity. Those who have something to sell, those who wish to influence public opinion,

those in power, a skeptic might suggest have a vested interest in discouraging skepticism. That is such a powerfully written paragraph, but it rings so true. And it's something we've been talking about on this show forever. You see the people and you see their motivations and they're plain as day, right? Jim Baker, his fucking motivations are plain as day. These people that are out there asking for funds, that are asking for the passing around at the church, the mega church pastors, Joel Osteen, all these people, their motivations are crystal clear. And you know that they're out there trying to squash any bit of skepticism. And it's interesting because without the tools of proper skepticism, we become skeptical about the wrong things in the wrong way.

Absolutely. Denialist. Right? Denialist instead of skeptic. And that's not true skepticism, right? And we say, oh, question everything. Okay, that's not actually what skepticism means. And then when we teach science in a, here are some things which are true.

Science as a body of knowledge, not science as a body of knowledge as understood through experimentation, right? Not as understood through process. A lot of my education was science as a body of knowledge. Sure. And looking back, what a terrible disservice that was. Yeah, sure. It was just a list of facts. It was a list of facts, man. It was just a list of knowledge. Sure. And looking back, what a terrible disservice that was. Yeah, sure. It was

just a list of facts. It was a list of facts, man. It was just a list of facts. I do want to read two more quick little pieces. This one here, Demon Cell, Hoaxsters Are Boring and in Bad Taste. What a great, that's a great line. But there's another one here too. And I want to talk about this for a second. There was a line in here where he says, writing books on skepticism, the authors came across as grumpy and superior is what he wrote. And I wonder, I mean, I recognize that I think we probably come off both of those ways all the time. Sure. I suspect we do all the time. Probably. Is there a way to change that? Is there a way to approach this in a different way? It feels like Carl is constantly pushing it away to be a friendlier skeptic, right? Like a friendly atheist, like a friendlier skeptic.

It feels like it, at least for the first several chapters, it feels like he's pushing towards this. I don't know if it's true or not, but that's the idea I'm getting from a few lines here and there. Yeah, I think that that's certainly the, he's trying to approach this, the topic empathetically first, right?

As a science communicator, probably. He opens up the book with, you know, here's a guy that I'm deeply sympathetic to his impulses, but he got it all wrong, right? I think that's not an accident. That's how he opened the book up. I think as skeptics, we should be, there's a difference between how we approach people who are themselves making a claim

versus how we, I think, sort of just go about our everyday lives and try to encourage skepticism. I think it's important to push back against people making very specific claims. Yeah, I agree. And that's pretty much this show. Yeah. And to do that in ways that are unequivocal. Yeah. Right?

And to do that, maybe not grumpily, but certainly stridently and strongly. Yeah. And to do that in ways that are unequivocal, right? And to do that, maybe not grumpily, but certainly stridently and strongly. Sure. But in terms of going about your life, walking around with a fucking haughty nose up in the air bullshit attitude with the people that you meet in the street on the day to day, that's exactly the wrong fucking thing to do. Sure. That's not accomplished shit. Yeah. And I feel like i've never had a moment in my life where an argument in person was going to change that person's mind i could have a discussion with them and i think that that's a different thing yeah right i remember anthony magnabosco remember having him on the show the way he approached all this stuff now i know he he used peter bogosian's thing but i don't like to pretend like i like to pretend that guy doesn't exist

because he sucks because he's a dick but i but i like to pretend that guy doesn't exist. Yeah, because he sucks. Because he's a dick. But I remember Magna Bosco and the way he approached these things and that sort of, what did he call it, street epistemology, where he'd walk up to somebody and he would just question them and just ask them and just be invested in their answers and listen to them and then push back, but only push back in a way that was going to get them to the answer. He was going to pull them to the answer. He was never going to give them the answer.

And I think that that's probably the most productive way that you could have that conversation because I've never had an argument with somebody where I've changed their mind. It's always been, I've had a discussion with someone about what's true, what's not, those types of things. And maybe one of us moves a little bit here and there.

But arguments, like you say, that sort of grumpy superior bullshit, that's not going to change anybody's mind. That's not going to work. But I also feel like you do, where when somebody comes on and they make a claim, you need to be bold. You need to stand there and say,

fuck you, you're wrong. Yeah, there has to be opposing voices. Absolutely. Absolutely. Next week, chat next week's chapter is spoofing and secrecy. That's chapter five in demon haunted world. We are, uh, we are going along through it. Uh, we're going to have, uh, next week's probably going to be vulgarity for charity and a little bit of this book, maybe a couple of stories, but, uh, But we hope you guys are enjoying it. We hope you guys are joining along with us. It's a great book. You can pick it up in all different kinds of places. And if you're a patron, Tom is reading it aloud and we're posting that for patrons earlier in the week. So we want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank all our patrons. We want to thank our newest patrons.

Dennis, Vince, Rose Vold, Nicholas, Ferret Maestro. That's great. Betsy, Brian, Jenna, Caleb, Michael, Word of the Broad, Michael again, another Michael, Avery, Balls Deep Bill,

congratulations, and Christopher. And people up their pledges. Kevin and Maggot Exterminator. Maggot, I don't think that's, is that spelled correctly? Maggot. Maggot.

Maggot. Because Maggot is M-O-G-G-O-T, right? This is Maggot. This is Maggot. M-A-G-G-A-T. Again, exterminator.

So thank you so much for your generous donations. We really do truly appreciate you guys pay the salary of the workers who work for us. We have two employees and we thank you for that. And you guys also make sure that Tom and I have full bellies every time we record. We order food. Before we record, we order out and Tom and I eat together as sort of a ritual, which is what we've been doing for several years at this point. At this point, at least six years we've been,

it's a ritual. Last year was different, but- A little hiatus. A little different. But the ritual is we order food on the show every single week. We sit down, have a meal together before we record. And we thank you because you guys are able to fund that. So if you want to buy us a meal,

you can go to patreon.com slash dissonance pod or go to dissonancepod.com. You can become a patron on a per episode basis. We love our patrons. We give them lots of audio, including the audio from our live streams

and the audio that we record multiple different pieces of audio. Tom is reading Demon Haunted World for patrons. And so there's lots of extra audio you get in your podcast player every week. Patronage pays off. We got a message.

This is from someone who didn't sign their message, but they said, in Canada, we had a guy in Toronto set up a list of businesses that had some vaccination requirements. He ended up shutting it down because the website, because both he and his businesses

were getting harassed by anti-vaxxers. So that's nice. So if you start something like that, like you suggested, having a Yelp-like system where you can decide, hey, I want to go out to a fucking place that only requires vaccinated people,

that is something that would probably get you death threats. That's great. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's great. You know, it's got to be such a big site like Yelp

that you don't even know where to send a death threat to. Yeah. Right? Exactly. Where the customer service is so bad, you're just like,

I don't even know anymore. I'm done with clicking. You know what you do? You hire the people who do the DNR and the FOID registration here in Illinois to make that website.

So it's so esoteric, you have no idea how to navigate it. And so you get super frustrated. But it does list things if you type in the right code of Comcast. It should be on Comcast servers. That's exactly... Okay, I think we figured this out.

We got a message. This is from Laura. And Laura mentions that there is a thing called exploding head syndrome that they used to have when they were younger and it's something that they were saying that reminded them of when I said I hear slamming noises when I go to sleep.

I don't hear them all the time. I hear them once in a while, but I will hear a slamming noise and I know for sure it's nothing. It's just my brain just trying to wake me up. There's nothing in my house that's slamming anything. My cats are both covering us like a fucking blanket because they never move. Once you lay down, they literally lay on top of you

until you fucking, they try to smother you to death every night. They literally lay on top of us. I will say having cats and dogs helps determine like, is that just me or did that really happen? Yeah, yeah. If you have a cat or a dog, they're like, the fuck? Yeah, right.

Their hearing is better than yours. Their hearing is better, exactly. Right? Yeah, so they Because when you have a cat or a dog, they're like, the fuck? Yeah, right. Because their hearing is better than yours. Their hearing is better, exactly. Right? Yeah, so they freak out if they hear something. Right. But there's that. I know, it's just my stupid brain.

Only one time did I jump out of bed with my big stupid Maglite flashlight and prowl around the house. Yeah? Because I'm like, somebody's here! Ah! Like, running around the house.

Was anybody there? No one was there. I'm just an idiot. So, we did get an image, though, because Laura sent in an image of beers from Chicago and Tom seems to know a few of these. I know most of these. I don't know these

beers specifically, but I know all these breweries. Temperance is excellent. Noon Whistle is not far from where I live. You've got Penrose. That's also excellent. That's not far from where I live. So these aren't Chicago breweries. They're Chicago land breweries.

They're Chicago land. Yeah. Some of these are suburban. Terrific though. The Hell's Lager that's on there. I can't tell what brewery that's from, but I will say I fucking love Hell's Lagers. So these are baller beers.

Good. Well, they got it out there. They said they're from the UK and they're getting them shipped from the States. So awesome. Chicago's got great beer. That's great. Chicago does. Chicago. So awesome. Chicago's got great beer. That's great. Chicago does.

Chicago has great beer. Chicago has very good beer. Yep. Revolution. Terrific brewer. Terrific brewer. Terrific. If you can get Revolution outside of Chicago,

Revolution is an excellent brewery. Also, Goose Island makes some good stuff too. Goose Island does make some good stuff and they've got some higher end, really interesting brews too. Like their regular, like 312 is a solid beer. I like Matilda. For sure. good stuff too. Goose Island does make some good stuff and they've got some higher end really interesting brews too. Like their regular like 312 is a solid beer. I like Matilda.

For sure. Matilda is a very good beer. Matilda is an excellent beer. So they, Goose Island's very good. Those two, Revolution and Goose Island are very popular

but there's also some small breweries in Chicago that are just killer. They're very good. Do not get distilled spirits from Chicago.

Distilled spirits from Chicago are not good. No. But, Ko get distilled spirits from Chicago. Distilled spirits from Chicago are not good. But Koval distillery, at least they were a couple of years ago, absolutely terrible. So we got a message. This is from someone who just says,

say hi to your glory hole for me. So they didn't unsign their message, but they said, hey, I'm just wondering, how do you convince somebody? They got a bunch of people in their life. What's the best way to educate them on how a vaccine is important?

And so Tom and I, we talked about this beforehand. We don't know. Yeah, I've not successfully convinced anybody that was vaccine hesitant. I haven't either. And so my suggestion is, I would think that someone should make a thread about this somewhere, probably on the Facebook page.

And if you've succeeded in this, talk about how you did it. Because this is important information to share with other people. I don't know. If you did convince somebody else, send us a message, dissonance.podcast.gmail.com. So we can, well, maybe I'll read it next week. Who knows? But I'm interested because I don't know. I don't know what you do. I don't know how you go to the next step because it's such a political thing. I don't know what you do. I don't know how you go to the next step because it's such a political thing. I don't know what to do or how to approach it. So if you convince somebody, let us know

or start a thread and see if we can like mill it about and maybe figure out some avenues of attack. We got a bunch of, this is Natalie who sent this in. And Natalie sent this in and she sent in a ton of stuff from Baltimore. This is from Baltimore House Facebook page, Tom.

And there are a ton of different images. Yeah, I think these are great. There's like a great big one. Ginger Ale can't cure COVID, Derek. Your grandma's right. Ginger Ale does help settle an upset stomach,

but it's no substitute for getting vaxxed. There's like a shot, like a Shutterstock kind of image of this woman like yelling at her boyfriend. Like yelling at someone. Yeah, they're all Shutterstock,

which is great too. Yeah. And there's another one of dude like taking a big bite out of like a romaine lettuce and it says, salad doesn't cure COVID, Connor. We're pro-healthy eating.

We're pro-healthy living. But a keto diet and jogging in the park isn't a substitute for the vaccine. Oh gosh. Eat your veggies and get vaxxed.

That's great. Yeah. So there's a bunch of these. These are great. These are great. We'll have Ian post these on this week's's great. So there's a bunch of these. These are great. We'll have Ian post these on this week's show notes so you can take a look at them. It looks like they're you know, I like that they're doing something like this. It's clever.

It's clever and it's funny. Maybe it'll make you look at it. We got a message from someone who wanted Tom's reading of Demon Haunted World. Tom is reading Demon Haunted World for patrons and we're posting it, but we are encouraging anyone who's not a patron

to go and buy the book. So they said that if we could somehow have it easy to download so they can share it. We're actually not encouraging that. This is a special thing specifically for patrons. It's an extra for patrons. So we're not encouraging anyone to share this stuff outside of the small group of patrons

who want to listen to it. If your friend wants to read the book, there's plenty of ways to get this book to them. There's audio book versions of it. Audio book versions. You say your friend is blind, is legally blind.

So getting a paper copy might not be worthwhile, but Audible sells this book so you could gift it to them on Audible. And I'm sure you could even, maybe even check it out from your library with an audio version as well. But we

are specifically only suggesting that this stuff is available for patrons. Mainly because we don't want to... What we don't want to do is create a new thing from somebody who's trying to make money off of something. We're very conscious that this book is still in print and people are still doing it. We're only

reading it for patrons because we think it might be easier, but we're very conscious that this book is still in print and people are still doing it. We're only reading it for patrons because we think it might be easier, but we are also finding that several people have gone out and sent us messages and said they went out and bought this book because we started reading it. We got a lot of messages about this. So we are encouraging people to go buy this book

because we think it's a worthwhile endeavor. So Tom, you wanted to tell me about this Summerfest. Tom sent in a message about Summerfest. So Summerfest is a great big nine-day musical festival in Milwaukee. Draws three quarters of a million people that go to Summerfest every year and they are requiring vaccination

or a negative test before you walk in the door. So you have to have a vaccination card? Yep. You got to have proof of vaccination or you have to have a recent negative test and they are turning people away. Good. If you show up and you don't have,

you're fucking, guess you bought a ticket for nothing, stupid. Go get back. I mean, you can't even go get vaccinated. Yeah. You guys. Yeah. Cause you gotta wait. You gotta go get a fucking negative test. This is the only responsible way to hold events. It really is. It really is. Someone should follow that. We got a bunch of messages about koalas riding dragons because Tom loves it. So this is an image that someone made. This is hilarious. Of smog, I think it is. I don't know.

Look at that koala. The koala on the back. I bet you that koala stinks, Ty. Oh, they fucking reek. Can you imagine them being hot on the back of that dragon? Oh, God. Smelliest animal

I've ever encountered. We're going to have Ian post it on this week's show notes and it won't smell like promise. We got a message from Becca. Becca says that their boyfriend introduced them to Cog Dis and Citation Eater around the same time.

Loves them both. And they wanted to say that our podcast helped them with their decision to leave the Catholic Church. That is, I think that is great. You know, get away from those people that are fucking taking your money, diddling kids, and not apologizing

for it. At least in the podcast world, that stuff isn't happening. Right. But you can still become a patron because we do tie. So you can still become a patron if you want. I think that's great. The Catholic Church is an unsupportable, evil organization. Very evil. Absolutely. 100% agree.

This is from Josh. And Josh sent in a message and said, heard you both mentioned that you don't have library cards in anymore as a librarian next door in Southern Wisconsin. I'll pretend I didn't hear that. You're gonna have to pretend twice that we didn't hear, but, but they said they'll save us time.

You could check out your library's website and you might be able to sign up online. I'm going to do that this week. I'm going to do that this week too. That's great. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just moved here.

I had one downtown. I just moved. Get off my back, Josh. I'll be honest And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just moved here. I had one downtown. I just moved. Get off my back, Josh. I'll be honest. I haven't had one in a few years. And we were talking about this a few minutes ago. My library card was treasured as a kid. I used it all the time.

I went to, my dad would drop me off Saturdays at the library, like leave me there all day. I don't know what he did most of the time. I did that too all day. I spent all summer. I lived across the street as a kid from a library. I literally lived, it was kitty corner for me. I lived across the street. There was a bank directly across the street and right next to it was the library. And I would get up in the morning on like a Tuesday morning and I would

walk right over to the library. I didn't have air conditioning, they did. And I sat in there and I read all day and they had a giant, a whole bookshelf full of comic books. Oh, that's cool. And I just sat and I would just read comic after comic after comic. I would try to sort them and find the ones that I wanted because they weren't sorted. They were just like a stack of comics. And I would just sort them to be like, which ones do I want to follow? And which ones do I want to read? And I remember going in there and I would just spend, I would spend all day in the library. I would just spend all day in there,

just reading and reading and reading. It was, like you say, it was a treasured thing for me. I loved it. My dad would drop me off. I'd spend the whole day. I would have limits. My dad would be like, no more than six books.

And he's like, I would have like hard limits on how much I could check out. I mean, the library meant the world to me. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It meant the world to me. Tom is also, you know,

Tom's reading Demon Hunter World, but Tom's also reading his blog, the blog that he wrote, Dangerous Letters. And this is for his, he wrote a bunch of letters to his kids. And they're terrible,

terrible children. I don't know why he writes letters to them. Well, I got to improve them somehow. They're awful children. They're the worst children. But he still writes some letters and he's still a caring father. And it really comes out in these letters.

These letters are really wonderful. And he reads them. And so we give them to patrons and he gets a lot of messages about how much people love these letters. And so if you're interested in hearing Tom's heartfelt letters to his boys, you can become a patron

and you can hear that audio. So next week, we are not streaming. Tom has to travel for work, so we are not streaming on Thursday. We had a great time this last stream. We laughed until we cried. So go check this stream out if you missed it. Especially stay till the end.

Wait until the end. Guys, I was laughing so hard I started coughing. We were coughing. It was really amazing. That was genuinely Ian suggested a video we watched and we watched and we loved it. It was super fun. So check it out. We got a copyright strike so you might as well go watch it and enjoy it. But yeah, go check out last

week's stream and we're going to miss next week's but we'll be back the following week. So check us out the following week and we're also next week going to be finishing up Vulgarity for Charity. So next week is the last episode of Vulgarity forgarity for charity. So next week is the last episode of vulgarity for charity for 2019. So,

uh, so tune in for that. And we're also going to be continuing with demon haunted world. We're going to be, uh, doing chapter five next week. So come tune in for that. Uh,

and we might have a story about a concealed carry re-up that Tom and I did. So we'll make you want to check that out. All right. Check us out next week, but no stream, uh, have a wonderful week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Pseudo-Quasi-Alternative-Acupunctuating-Pressurized-Stereogram-Pyramidal-Free-Energy-Healing-Water-Downward-Spiral-Brain-Dead-Pan-Sales-Pitch-Late-Night-Info-Docutainment.

crystal balls, bigfoot, yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this.

The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you. you