Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 609: Californian Alimony

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!   Show Notes   Shoutout to the band Good Thyme, "Those Without" Ruined New Years Eve  

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All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout. 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 Glory Hole 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 609 of Cognitive Dissonance. And Cecil, we are recording again from far apart. Yeah, far apart, Tom. We got to stay. We got to be socially distanced. We are 40 miles socially distant again, my good man. We need to be socially distanced this New Year's Eve. I managed to get myself sick, so we are,

I don't think it's the Rona, so, you know, fucking fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. You know? It's funny, see, so I, you know, I've been feeling sick

for a couple of days. I got a fever. I got some stuff going on. Family's a little under the weather too. There is an exposure. I was like, oh, I got to go get a test. You can't get a fucking test, man. The testing situation is pandemic part one. Seriously, I don't know if you've been out there, but it fucking feels like, it feels like fucking April or May of 2020 right now. I bought one maybe nine days ago. I bought two sets of tests. I bought four total tests, right? One with one piece in each.

And so I bought two rounds for my family, which is my wife and myself. And I bought it like maybe nine days ago. And there was stacks of them. Yeah. So they must've been over the holidays. People just getting sick and then coming back. But nine days ago was a thousand years ago again.

Yeah, for sure. Because we're in the accelerated timeline of the pandemic. I know. We're in the fucking like, we're in the fucking matrix where we're fucking dodging fucking COVID tests side to side.

Fucking Trinity fucking shoots six COVID tests at the agents. Yeah. Jesus Christ, nine days ago? Was that even the same year? I don't even know. Fuck. It's so funny because to get a test, there's these pop-up sites now that are all over by me.

So there's pop-up sites that are all over, and they all have cars lined up 30 fucking deep at these sites. And then CVS by me is like, you call them, they're not even taking appointments anymore. They're like, go to one of the state sites, we're out. Like even for like the drive up,

swabby swab tests. And I wanted to buy at home tests. And I tried to drive, I drove to four CVSs and two Walgreens. And I drove from Plainfield to Aurora to Naperville to try to find a test, and I finally found one. I drove for 40 minutes total,

just driving around, just going to every fucking drugstore I could find until some lady's like, they just got a shipment at the fucking Walgreens at such and what and who's it fuck? And I was like, oh, I gotta go. And you're like driving there, and they have like a fucking limit four signs like i like i grab four i have two different tests i grab four of each of the two tests and i call my wife like

look up which one's better i gotta i'm holding them in my hands you know so i can like because it's like it's fucking the wild west out there again man yeah yeah it's fucking crazy so we're we're recording apart from one another because i am i am running a fever and i'm not feeling so great so if the energy wanes guys if it goes i'm fucking sorry but gets a little weird yeah it gets a little fucking weird but tom's covid brain we're on the fucking struggle bus over here in the Tom household. Oh, man. When I'm sitting with my wifey on a bus and a dear old lady stands in front of us, I resolve to be a gentleman discreet.

I'll politely offer her my wifey seat. This is my New Year's resolution. All right, so let's talk about some struggle bus shit. This story, Cecil, you put this in the notes, and it is the greatest thing I've ever read, and I'm reading the whole thing. Because every bit of it is... Oh, it's so good.

It's so good. It's short, because it's the Daily Beast. It's so great. Candace Owens. So you know it's going to be good, right? Candace Owens. Trump is pro-vax because he's too old to understand the internet.

We talked about this story last week, Candace Owens, on talking to Trump in an interview. Trump basically made her walk back, walked her back and said, no, the fucking vaccine is good. You should get boosted. You should get vaxxed. This is important.

My administration was responsible, and that was the message that many people got. And her whole position has been 100%. I mean, look at how she's trying to walk this story back to try to say, no, it's okay to still like Trump, even though he's pro-vax. That's how bad she's been on the vaccine. The flip-flop gymnastic-y bullshit is amazing here. Yes. Far-right provocateur and anti-vaxxer Candace Owens, 32, took to Instagram to explain why she thinks Donald Trump unexpectedly defended COVID vaccines

during an interview with her earlier this week. The reason? Trump, 75, is too old to know how to navigate the internet and find these obscure websites where it seems that she believes the truth about COVID and vaccines can only be found. Quote, people oftentimes forget that like how old Trump is, she said. He comes from a generation. I've seen other people that are older, have the exact same perspective. Like they came from a time before

TV, before internet, before being able to conduct their independent research and everything that they read in a newspaper that was pitched to them. They believed that that was a reality. Owens urged her conservative fan base to take it easy on Trump, saying that she doesn't think his support of the vaccine is evil or, quote, based in any corruption, end quote. But she added, quote, he needs to have a larger conversation to understand what's going on and why so many people are horrified by his remarks. End quote. I love the idea.

So much in here. She says, when she says, before being able to conduct their independent research on the internet, is what she said. Research should not be started and finished while you are on the phone like taking a shit. It should not happen while I'm shitting. That's not research. That's fucking looking shit up on Reddit. That's not, I mean, that's not research, man. It is not research. And the problem is, is that people have taken this colloquial idea of research. Like I looked it up, I research. And it's like, you have no way to truly vet some of the, a lot of the information that you're getting, especially the information you're getting that's anti-vax.

You have no way to vet it. Now there's plenty of ways to vet the pro-vaccine information through legitimate websites. There's plenty of ways to vet that information. There's no way to vet the fucking, the fucking, I don't know. I think there's fucking scorpions in the vaccine or whatever. Like, man, there's no way to vet that. It's like, there's so much fucking wrong with this. And it's, I love everything she said. Everything she said is delightfully fucking bonkers crazy, but it just tells you everything you need to know.

Like, to your point, Cecil, almost to a person, statistically speaking, you can't do the research. You can't. You don't speak the language. The research is written. The language of research is written. Medical research is written in a language you are untrained to speak or to read or to understand what you read is you read somebody's reporting on somebody's analysis. So like going to fucking quote unquote obscure websites just means that the information that you're getting is less likely to be accurate and vetted. Not more likely to be accurate and vetted.

If I, you know, like I looked this up the other day. Cecil, do you know who owns the New York Times? I don't. The New York Times. That's it. That's who owns them. That's who owns the New York Times. That's it. That's who owns them. That's who owns the New York Times. They got like thousands of people that work for them. They're an independent news organization with thousands of people all vying to try to like win Pulitzers and shit. They're not some crackpot who fucking

fancied up his WordPress site. That's what this other shit is it's fucking joe schmoe at home writing a bunch of fucking garbage or fucking yammering into a fucking 99 webcam on their fucking youtube channel fuck you like if that's your fucking standard sargon is real right you know what i mean everything is fucking sniper wolf then is every bit as fucking good of a source as as fucking dr fauci fuck you just fuck you you can't do your own research that's a stupid thing to think you are not qualified you can't do it almost to a person it's it's we had a conversation with marsh i don't remember when it was. It was recent. And he had even said,

and Marsh is a very intelligent guy who has done some research. He's done some investigative journalism on his own. He's the editor of the Skeptic UK. He's a highly qualified skeptic, skeptic of the year, some people might say. You know, I don't know if that's true, but you know, no, but seriously, like he is, he's one of these guys that, you know, a lot of people in our circles look up to as a skeptic. Even he said he doesn't do this kind of stuff. He says he looks to his partner, Alice, on the other show that he does, Skeptics with a K, to understand some of the medical terms and some of the medicine that is coming out of these studies

because he can't do it. When we wanted to talk to him about hydroxychloroquine, he turned us on to somebody who was doing that actual research and debunking those studies. Marsh did not come on our show. Marsh turned us on to someone else who was doing that work.

Even Marsh doesn't think he's qualified to give you that stuff. He recognizes what he doesn't know. What is the, you know, what's that old saying? Socrates was smart because he knew what he didn't know. And that's the thing is like, all these people are so confidently stupid and they just, and they'll spread these crazy messages

on the internet and they're so confidently stupid. They trick people with the rhetoric of how confident they are and not with any of the research, you know what I'm doing, air quotes thing, research that they've done. The one thing that makes me upset about, well, not upset. The one thing that is just complete hypocrisy about this is that, you know, when the president, when the president Trump, when there was a president Trump and he was in office, there was this sort of feeling. And I've had it my whole life. Whenever the president speaks on anything, he's given a talk.

He's talking about something to reporters. If he's doing a news conference, if he's doing a, you know, a roundtable with a bunch of people, whatever. You always presume that he has been heavily briefed on the subject. You don't ever presume that the president is just winging it. He's not just hip shooting. You know what I mean? Like he has had a conversation with many experts, maybe several people who have helped him craft his message, and now he's coming to tell everybody else about it. But he's not like in the dark about something. And so when he speaks about things,

you sort of give him this sort of knowledge privilege. You're like, I presume you know what the fuck is going on. I presume you have a level of understanding of this subject more than an average person would. So, and I don't know if you remember, but when he was in office and he was a fucking doofus, right? He was an absolute doofus and he blew that fucking, my brain exploded when he came into office because we heard from all those people who said he was the worst person to brief because he would be like fucking humming to himself and he's like, bring me some

cake. I don't have enough cake. Bring me ice cream, more ice cream than the other ice creams. And he wouldn't listen. And then he would interrupt and he wouldn't pay attention. And so they didn't want to, they didn't want to brief him on anything because he was really bad at understanding information. Right. I always had presumed up to that point, like presidents just learned a bunch of shit and they were smart enough to intercept this information. He was not at all. Right. But we heard from the other side, oh enough to intercept this information. He was not at all. Right. But we heard from the other side.

Oh, he's so smart. He's playing 4D chess. That Scott Adams guy used to give him this sort of presidential privilege all the time. You don't know what he knows, yada, yada, yada. But now that he's out of office, now we presume that he doesn't even know how to use the internet. How was he qualified to run a country then before if he couldn't find a website the thing is like first of all the president should have information

that is better than random obscure websites Candace Owens fucking stumbles on so if the fucking president or former president who was intimately involved and to hear him tell it who developed them himself. He like fucking wrote the code or whatever for the fucking vaccine.

So, but like either he was too fucking old to be useful then, but suddenly, but he wasn't right. Like when that motherfucker, when they were touting that fucking old man's bloated fucking corpse out, like everybody was like, Oh,

he's a strong, feral. Look how smart he is. Woman, man, dog, camera, whatever the fuck. Like that guy was a fucking stable genius as far as the fucking eye could see.

But now what's happening is the craziest shit. Like the narrative is spun out of his control. Yeah. And the fucking dogs that he has let loose into the world,

they don't fucking need him anymore. And so now he's a doddering old man who doesn't know how to internet. Now he's a guy who like came about before the rise of television for god's sake yeah you know now he's an old man now he's too old he's just too now he's just a piece of shit wait fucking you want it you guys fucking stormed the fucking castle like a year ago to try to re-ensconce him into power. Candace Owens supported his re-election last year, but now that same motherfucker's too old to know what's going on. Yep. Happy New Year to you in jail. So Cecil, a little bit of good news. The story's from the New York Times. Jelaine Maxwell found guilty of aiding in Epstein's sex abuse.

Five out of six counts. Yeah. She is guilty of minimum sentence for these is four to five years, I think. So you're looking at five counts, five years. She's 60 years old. She dies in prison. Max of this is like 50 some years. I counted up the other day.

The max is like 50. So if she gets fives on everything, it depends on if they're consecutive or not. I don't know. Sometimes they run them consecutive. Concurrently or consecutive, yeah. Sometimes they say they're concurrent. So it could be the longest sentence

that she could be sentenced for is 20, I think I saw. So 20 years was the longest. And then five was the shortest. So if they're running concurrently and they're all fives, then they're all fives, then they're all fives and she could maybe get out when she's still alive.

But it's a good thing that she's been convicted of all this stuff. So many people have come forward throughout many of the years and have accused them of this. Epstein has been accused of it more than once

and he was actually convicted of something a while back and he was actually convicted of something a while back and they like pled it down to child prostitution, which isn't even a thing. That doesn't even make sense.

That's rape, guys. That's, there's no such thing as child prostitution. That doesn't exist. That's fucking rape, period. But in any case, he had already done

some time, part-time, kind of hanging out in prison when he wanted to. And then he got caught again, and then he hung himself in prison. And the reason why I wanted to talk about this, Tom, is because when Epstein killed himself, the fucking conspiracy machine blew up. Oh, yeah, Tim. There was these people who were just like, Oh my God, he's, he was going to bring down the whole house of cards.

It was going to, he was going to take down all these, all these powerful people who were all pedophiles. Cause they were one time. They one time had a picture taken with Jeffrey Epstein, everybody who has ever been in like, uh, an area where Jeffrey Epstein's arm span was,

was a pedophile for his whole life. No matter what, if, and that's the, like an area where Jeffrey Epstein's arm span was, was a pedophile for his whole life, no matter what. And that's the real problem is, is that when Epstein was accused, everybody presumed that sort of the QAnon take on this, that there's some sort of child trafficking cabal of rich people. They took that as truth, right? Because he was accused,

it's been, he was somebody who got off of, because he had powerful friends, because he's fucking, if he was a billionaire or not, masquerading as a billionaire certainly helps you get powerful people on your side. But it's like, the problem is, is that people, the conspiracy thing went crazy. The conspiracy train was off the tracks. When she was getting her trial, everybody was like, oh, she's going to wind up dead just like before, you know, the Clintons will be involved or whatever. It's just insane stuff. Yeah, right.

Oh, they'll never let her speak. Yeah, they're never going to let her live. But she hangs herself. Exactly. And then what happened was the trial starts. And I remember reading recently, someone was like, whoa, geez, they're showing the Rittenhouse trial. Why aren't they showing the Ghislaine Maxwell trial? I'm like, it's a fucking federal court, stupid. They don't show

those trials on television. That's why it wasn't on. But everybody was like, it's a big conspiracy again, again and again. You want to just be like, name one federal trial you've watched. Yeah, exactly. And so everybody was still on the conspiracy train. She's been convicted and nothing happened. There's no turning on all these people that people have been sort of throwing and saying, oh, well, that person was on his jet, so therefore they fucked a kid or whatever. And that's what everybody has been talking about. And this is just bad thinking, right? Just because Jeffrey Epstein hung around with people didn't mean that they were pedophiles. Now, I will say, if after he was convicted of that quote unquote child prostitution thing,

after that happened and you still hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, you were hanging out with a pedophile. You knew what you were doing, right? You were on his boat. You knew what the fuck you were doing. But all the people who hung out with him prior to that, you can't make those assumptions. I know that there's been people who have been accused by these other people, but none of them have said that there's like 65, 100 people that he was feeding. There was like one or two other people. The floodgates are going to open, guys. There's going to be, oh, Jelaine Maxwell's going to reveal the case.

It's going to open up and there's going to be, you know, she's going to cut a plea deal and expose the secret cabal of Democratic. Nothing. None of it. Nothing. None of it. Not even for that fight. Like there's like a prince who's been accused yeah uh of of some sexual wrongdoing and that might turn into something that's fucking

one yeah that's fucking one look i hang out with cecil it doesn't make me a better cook you know what i mean like if i hang out with cecil it's not like cecil made french onion soup and then i'm like holy shit i, I know Kung Fu. Yeah. Like that's not how that works. That's not how any of it works. And you know, like I get it. I do understand that, you know, like when you're hanging out with somebody, you know, there can be some sort of weird stuff that's happening in the background and people can, absolutely, that can absolutely happen. But you are making a lot of assumptions, a lot of conspiratorial assumptions. I'm not saying none of it happened.

I'm just saying there's no proof that any of it happened. And those are two different statements. Those are two different statements. Understand the difference between those two statements. Here's to another lousy millennium. This is a feel-good story. It is a feel-good story, Tom. Cecil, I want you guys to know, Cecil put this in the notes today.

This is a feel-good story. And I like it. I like it. I wouldn't have put it in the notes today. This is a feel-good story. And I like it. Man. I like it. I wouldn't have put it in the notes. I would have seen this story and I'd have said, no. No, Cecil. We are not talking about feel-good stories.

It's so good, though. No, it is. It's so wonderful. This is from the New York Times. A world divided by COVID and other ills, united to explore space. This is a reference to the incredible launch of the International James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope, for those who have been hiding under a rock,

is a multi-billion dollar, multinational, decades plus long project to launch a big motherfucking telescope into space and to look at basically like where life and stars and light and everything began and to search for life and other habitable planets farther out into the interstellar space than we've been able to do before. And it's baller as fuck that this got done. and almost Cecil for just a moment reading this made me feel I'm trying to remember what the word is again

hopeful yeah man it's wonderful I'll tell you you know I read this story and I was so it's so uplifting if you get a chance read this New York Times story it really is uplifting because they talk about all the different stages and all the different struggles

that all these different countries had to go through, especially during COVID. And it's such a great juxtaposition with COVID, right? Yeah. One of the things that I think we should understand when we read this story and when we pay attention to this story is that COVID could have been this easy, I think.

I know this wasn't an easy project. I'm not saying that, but it was successful, right? And it was a lot of people from all over the world worked on this thing, used science and communication to make sure that they could create this thing, to put this thing in space. They had to do things over Zoom and all that, basically contend with COVID because they couldn't actually meet in person and go visit certain places to look over stuff. Engineers had to look at things over Zoom. And it's been set up and it's partially funded by other people. Now, the United States picked up a lot of the bill, but it's partially funded by other

countries. This is one of those things that you see and you think, it could all be like this. Yep. It could all be like this if there was less, if there was less my freedoms, we could be a lot more like this. Yeah. And I don't want to like take away from the hope.

I really truly don't. But I will say that one of the things that occurred to me is very similar to what you were saying, is that this to me highlights, it just stands in such stark contrast, the difference between scientific problems and political problems. Yeah, yeah. You know, the scientific problem of how do we get this unbelievable telescope into space to search for, you know, the beginnings of time and space and light. And, you know, like we'll solve those problems. Science doesn't, science is agnostic to your politics, right? The space telescope will work. The science will work. The physics is there.

All these minds are there to solve problems, you know? And I mean, honestly, the same was true of COVID. It was like, holy shit, we cut, the science is not the problem. No, it's not. It's not the problem. Science is not the problem with climate change. Science is not the problem with, it's not that we're waiting for the solutions. I think sometimes we behave like we are waiting for science to come up with the solution to the problem. And it's like, man, we're waiting for people to decide that they give a shit enough about the problem to turn loose these minds.

To implement the solution. Right. Because science is good at this. Like, we're unbelievably good at this. We are so fucking good at this. It is mind-boggling how wonderfully good at this we are if we'll let ourselves be. Yeah. If we'll just allow for ourselves to be this good.

Like, it's something that makes me nuts. I've talked about this on the show before, but like, Cecil, it's something that like, I could just feel it all the time. There are so many different Americas. There's so many different like, like the human species is at once in the 21st century and in the 18th century, man. Yeah. And like, there are parts of our own country just as a microcosm where there are people working on putting a fucking space telescope into space to like, and then there are people who are dancing around with fucking rattlesnakes. And that's happening

in the same country. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just so unbelievable. We're not all in the 21st century, man. Yeah. We're not. Because there are guys who are like,

hey, what is a fucking, we got a helicopter on Mars that flies around and is like, hey, look, there's water in them, there are canyons. And please don't send me a thing that it didn't come from the helicopter. I know it, it came from a different orbiting satellite.

But still like, you get the point. And then there are also people who are like, my truck's got extra smoke that bellows out the top of it. And it's to make you mad. It's not, like I made not it like i i made the smoke thing i made the smoke thing not because i needed to not because of any other reason other than it makes you upset yes that's why i did it yep like the most petty reason to do it yes if we could

just and we're going to talk about this when we talk about the Sagan chapter this week. But honestly, if we could just all decide to live in the same century, life would be better for everybody, literally everybody. Life would be so much better, man. Life would be so much better. Just think about medicine in general, right? How many people right now, they're rejecting these vaccines. They're rejecting masks. They're rejecting things

that have data. They're rejecting all these things because for them, rejecting it makes them feel like they have some modicum of freedom. And you're like, you're going to ruin the world. They're doing the same thing with climate change. Think about climate change. How often have we seen this push against the large consensus of scientists who say climate change is a thing look at how across the world across the globe things are changing and i got a fucking alert today that was like wow fucking glaciers on top of the himalayas those are melting quick huh and it's just like what you sent me an alert for that like but i got like a,

like, this is melting. Could be really bad. It's like, yeah, no shit. It's bad. Of course it's bad. We knew it was bad. We knew it was bad. When I was a kid,

we knew it was bad. We just never acted on it. We have thrown out the concept that we can work together and work under science. And I love to see these things because it reminds me that if there's some way,

if there's, you know, COVID's a perfect example too because, you know, we needed a vaccine. We got a vaccine. We needed a vaccine and we got one fast. Nine months, man, nine months. And that was nine months approved nine months. That's fucking fast, man. That's unreal.

I remember when you and I were talking about it, I was like, I was a big man. I was like, we'll never get a vaccine in a year. I'm like, that's a crazy it's unreal I remember when you and I were talking about it I was like I was a big man I was like we'll never get a vaccine in a year I'm like that's a crazy person thing to say it was approved in nine months

it wasn't just it was in people's arms in five it was like it was fast what I keep thinking is like climate change is gonna

climate change and science like what I keep thinking as you're talking is like and the vaccines and COVID are a great example. There is going to be a real demand, I'm certain of it, for the curatives, right? For the, you know, for the Pfizer pill or the Merck pill.

So when I get sick, when we are in trouble, we will turn to the scientists and say, get us out of trouble. Oh, 100%, 100%. But when the scientists are saying, we will turn to the scientists and say, get us out of trouble. Oh, 100%. 100%. But when the scientists are saying, here's how you prevent disaster. You can stop it. You can stop it. We ignore them. 100% don't listen to them.

Do not listen to them. And we could live in a world where the guys that we are going to turn to to solve the problem, we could live in the world where we turn to those same guys and say,

how do we not end up in deep shit? Yep. Because it's the same. You're turning to the same guys, man. You're turning to the same collection of dudes, but you're turning to them while your house is on fire. And you're like, should I be playing with matches? Well, now that I played with them, do you happen to have a fire hose? Exactly. Exactly. We have to keep walking backwards with people. That's the problem, right? If you could easily look ahead and say, these are our top 10 problems. Let's solve them before they even become problems. We see them on the horizon. Let's solve them now before they

become problems. Then you'd never have to break stride. Then you can keep growing and growing and moving forward. The problem is, is that we're so fucking stupid and so content with what we have that we refuse to change. And so that change, that fear of change, makes it so we never do anything until it's now really, really, really dire. And then we're like, fuck, we've got to change because it's no longer, it's the dog.

This is fine. It's no longer fine. We're like, okay, it's no longer fine. The house is on fire. It's no longer fine. I the dog. This is fine. It's no longer fine. We're like, okay, it's no longer fine. The house is on fire. It's no longer fine. I've got to figure something else out or the house has fallen down because the dog is sitting in a house that's on fire.

So it's clearly, it's worse than that. It's got to get worse than just the house on fire. But, you know, then we act, but you always have to break stride and we shouldn't have to do that. We should be smarter than that. There are smarter people than that that should be in charge do that. We should be smarter than that. There are smarter people than that

that should be in charge of that. They should be in charge of everything. So you never have to break stride. And so you're always moving forward.

But you constantly have to drag the stupidest parts of humanity along with you. Wow. That was a really good song. I'm good. I mean, I'm just, they know. The people know. Oh, hey, Gary. Hi, Ian.

Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Hey, did you make any New Year's resolu- Why do you sound like that? Well, my New Year's resolution is to be more confident and speak in a natural tone. That's not your voice. It is my voice. No, it's a filter. It is not a filter. Okay, how are you doing it then?

I fortunately know a little magic. Gary, did you steal his voice? No, it's a talent I have always possessed. Did you Ursula him? I don't know what you're talking about. Did you Little Mermaid style steal his voice? No, it's so sad. So

true? God damn it, Gary. Stealing someone's voice is not a resolution. Well, I felt resolved to steal his voice. Give it back. No, give it back. No, Gary. There's a better resolution. Like what? Oh, no, the music. Make a New Year's resolution for better sex this year.

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Stick with. Get it? Yeah. Tell them, Gary. Okay. Enter offer code GLORY. That's G-L-O-R-Y, GLORY, at adamandeve.com. Bring more pleasure and satisfaction into your bedroom this year. Gary.

Well, it does make you sound better. See? Really does make this whole podcast more perfectional. Don't let Cecil know you have this power. Uh, no. Although it would be really good for his only flans. Huh? Only flans. Whatever. What's that? Oh, it's a site for hot recipes. Oh.

And even hotter chefs. Oh. Yeah. I don't get it. Anyway, Happy New Year! Oh, I'm happy. Very happy. And you will be too if you go to adamandeve.com and use code GLORY. GLORY. All right.

Congratulations to our fourth competitor. Ruin New Year's. Ruin New Year's, Dave. Fuck you. This is unreal, man. This story is from Newsweek. Marjorie Taylor Greene calls it wise to bar Democrats who move to red states from voting.

I just, again, I'm going to read this whole thing because it's short. If red states and blue states were to divorce each other, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called it possible that people who move from a Democratic state to a Republican state would be barred from voting for a temporary cooling off period. California has seen an influx in people moving out of the state. Many have opted to go to Texas and Florida, where residents can get more bang for their buck.

However, some, including Greene, have complained that those who are leaving California are bringing their political beliefs with them and potentially shifting the political landscape. On Wednesday, the Georgia congresswoman posted on Twitter that brainwashed people who moved from California and New York need a cooling off period. Her comment was in response to a Twitter user who wrote he supports discriminating against Democratic transplants, including restricting their ability to vote for a period of time. He also wrote that they should have to pay a tax for their sins. Now, here's what the quote is. The quote from some asshole named Pedro. I support actively

discriminating against transplants like this through legislation. They shouldn't be able to vote for a period and they should have to pay a tax for their sins. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweets all possible in a national divorce scenario. What the fuck does that mean? That's a civil war, man.

That's a secession. that's what a national divorce is first okay first of all that's a civil war it's a straight up civil war straight up what the fuck you're in congress and you're advocating for the dissolution of the fucking states how fucking dare you how fucking treasonous is that that's sed seditious as fuck, bro. Fucking A, man. Holy shit. Fucking A. Also, California right now has a multi-billion dollar state budget surplus. They'd be paying fucking maintenance and alimony to Texas if they got divorced. They'd be fucking shelling that shit out, man. You know, what were they saying? It's the fifth largest economy in the world.

Fifth largest economy in the world. And they have a massive budget surplus. It's a state. Right. It's a state that is the fifth largest economy in the world. You're going to tell me that California is a fucking hellhole that Texas is not? Go fuck yourself raw, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Also, you're from Georgia.

Your fucking state did secede from the union yeah like how did that go for you but you assholes died a bunch of our assholes died you're still part of this fucking union yeah you kidding me i i feel like you know one of the things that that gets this this concept gets bandied about where they keep on saying over and over this sort of like seditious language they're using has been like, and they're using it all the time. And I was thinking about it today. Well, you know,

other than sort of just us, a couple guys from different parts of the United States, like different, like, you know, getting somebody from that area. So, you know, the two senators from down there, like, you know, getting somebody from that area. So, you know, the two senators from down there that are, you know, in the Warnock and Ossoff in Georgia, they're from that area of the country. So it might be important to have people from all over the country come in from those separate areas. So I do understand that. But at a certain point,

these states' rights people over the federal government i just i'm like shut the fuck up what is what is like i fuck your states rights raw number one and the fact that some people have to go like live in like practically a third world country from a first world country just so they could change the vote. The reason why they're going down there is because it's cheap, man. They're going down there because it's fucking, they could live really large on a salary that they wouldn't, that normally in the place in California where the cost of living is through the roof, that's going to suck for them. They're now remote work, work from home. They're moving the home portion, but they're keeping their California job. They're not moving to Texas to get a fucking Texas job. And they're shitting money into your economy. Well, you're going to shit on them.

They're fucking, they're, they're hemorrhaging money into your state. That's like, that's like being like everybody who gets everybody who comes here. That is a tourist. We get to punch them in the face. We get to punch every tourist. We get to blacken every tourist's eye just for the right to stand in our city. Like, what is wrong with you? You fucking suck. If they come here, you let them come on your face. So they think that's what you let them do. You want every tourist in the world to come to your place because they're going to shit a ton of money, not use a lot of your infrastructure and then leave. That's what you want. You're going to be super happy with all those people who come to your state. How fucking stupid are you to attack the people who are bringing a good job

that doesn't even have to live in your state to shit and hemorrhage money into your state? What is wrong with you to fucking throw a wrench at those people? Well, and like this idea that they should come, if they come to your state, they're going to change the fucking demographic of a red state. You're terrified. The entire Republican party is saying the quiet part out loud. They're terrified. They're fucking terrified. Because they know, they know that Texas is on the verge of flipping. They know the entire country is on the verge of flipping. They watched it happen at Georgia. They have to fucking redistrict in an unfair ways. They have to fucking restrict the voting to reduce the number of the people that have access to their

own fucking democracy in order for their party to have any fucking validity. Now they're like, shit, what if people move into these parts of the country that we have always been able to count on for our, well, then that's how that works. That's just how that works now. Like, you know, the thing is like these same assholes, how many times do you fucking hear in 2016, like, oh, elections have consequences. Oh, you know, it's not, it's about winning the electoral votes. It's not winning about the popular votes. And you know, this is a politics is a game and he won up, smush up the game. This is like, if that's all true, if it's just like, Hey man, how it shakes out is how it shakes out. Then listen, bitch, how it shakes out is how it

fucking shakes out. And if a bunch of people from fucking blue States move into your fucking purple States and that scares you cause they'll turn blue. Hey, that's fucking how it shakes out. states and that scares you because they'll turn blue hey that's fucking how it shakes out elections have consequences literally your words you said when you were winning speaking of which the story comes from huffpo rand paul inadvertently tells the truth about republican voter fraud claims holy shit here's what he said. This isn't a tweet. Cecil, these people shouldn't be tweeting. Yeah, no, they shouldn't. These fucking old people shouldn't be tweeting. No, no. They're bad at it. Somebody should take this away and slap their fucking hands. Here is what Senator, let that stick in your craw, Rand Paul said. How to steal

an election? Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results. Legally valid way is an important way to say that. So another way to describe that is how to steal an election. Ask the people who they want to be elected. Go out of their way to make sure they can vote. Collect those votes. That's what you described democracy. The best reply to this is on Twitter. This guy says, PE says, and by the way, his ad is forever, never Trump, which I like. How to steal food.

Drive to market with available product with as much cash as possible. Targeting the food you want by putting it in your cart and then counting the money you need to give to the cashier to pay for the food. It's so amazing. It's so amazing. It's so amazing. You know, and here's the thing. Like, he's been one of these voter fraud people since the beginning. And he even used a quote, hilarious quote that says, legally valid way. And you're just like, okay, well, you just undermined all of your arguments up till this point.

One question I want to talk to you about, though, Tom, is, you know, there's a big push on the right for voter ID. That's the big thing. That's what they want. They want voter ID. I feel like the right is really, really good at controlling the language around these things. Voter ID, when you say those words, sounds like a good thing. You're like, voter ID, because it makes it sound like there's no system in place currently to identify voters. Instead, it makes it sound like they have a solution to identify voters,

which is missing the point because there's plenty of ways that we currently identify voters. But they're doing a good job of controlling the language. They do this all the time. Rhetorically, they control the language around these subjects really well. Part of me wonders if it's not better to just embrace voter ID,

but in a way to do it is make sure it's 100% free. It's provided to you by the government. So it's 100% free that you have a waived day to go get it off of work. So you have a waved day that you could use to go get it. And you only have to register one time in your life and you never have to register again for the rest of your life. I literally wrote that down. I was literally writing the same thing down, like just concede the ID issue and then give everybody a free fucking ID. And the thing is like you, most of that work is already done. Right. So what I mean by that is you could just pass a federal law that turns your driver's license or state ID into a federally acceptable ID.

Right. So we could just, so that work could be just automatically done for the most part. Then you could have a database, for example, too. Like think about how nice this would be where if I move from one state to another, I don't have to get a new driver's license, right? Yeah, my federal ID is just my federal ID. Yeah, license. So every state license automatically

is grandfathered in to become a federal license. Federal IDs, to your point, are free. You get a day off to go get one, like a national federal fucking ID day. Like you could put a fine, concede the fucking issue and get everybody a fucking ID. Let's do it. Let's give everybody a fucking ID. Fine. And then we'll still do absentee ballots. Yeah. Because it's fucking 2021 and I don't have to go anywhere for anything anymore. Yeah. I don't have to leave my house to buy a car. If I buy a car,

they'll drive the fucking car to my house and drop it off my fucking driveway. Yep, yep. I don't have to leave my house to get gross. I don't have to leave my house for fuck all anymore. I shouldn't have to leave my house to vote. Are you fucking kidding me? And that's the thing is like tie it together.

Be like, okay, fine. We'll do voter ID, but we're also going to, and then as the democrats can start to like set up these things as like mobile stations to take the state to those places you know you pay to have the state come and be like and make it a federal thing so you can you don't need the state to be on board so if you're in a heavily red state they have no say whatsoever they can't come in and be like you can't go to that black neighborhood and get them IDs.

Bullshit, we can. We can walk right the fuck in there and make it so that, you know, if you want it, I'll make you, I'll make you give it to me, but you're going to give me everything that goes along with it. And then you bring it up to vote

and you're like, well, we wanted voter ID. They didn't want voter ID. They didn't, because they're not going to vote for it, Tom. They'll never vote for this. They'll never do it. They didn't want voter ID. We want to get voter ID. They didn't want voter ID. going to vote for it tom they'll never vote for this they'll never do it they didn't want voter id we want to get all right they didn't want voter id and you're taking away the headline right it doesn't matter about the minutiae of the bill nobody fucking

pays attention to that anyway look at how many emails we get that don't understand that there's a filibuster or that one person can tank an entire fucking legislation look at how many emails we get about that. They don't understand. They literally do not understand how the government works. So the fucking minutia of this would literally never get to the Republicans. They would see that idea and they'd be like, wait, I wanted you to vote for voter ID. And then you would never be able to explain it to them because they're too stupid to understand. Dude, I totally, I completely agree. The Democrats should seize the voter ID issue

and be like, we are going to give every American an ID. Every citizen of this country is going to get an ID issued. And the thing is like, we'll give you a fucking government issued ID at birth. Yeah. Oh yeah, there you go. Going forward. Yeah.

Give them a, so from here forward, get a government issued ID at birth. And at 18, you get to vote. You're automatically registered. There's no more, you don't have to register. You're just registered. Why would you register to vote? That's stupid. They would 100% never

do that. They would never ever, you couldn't, like if you fucking Frankensteined a dead Republican, you could not get them to vote for that with their hand. You could electrocute the fucking hand, the muscles in that arm to fucking make them try to press it. And they would fight you from the grave.

They would never let you do it. No way. They would never let it happen. And then you stole it from them. You stole it from them. You stole that rhetoric. And it would be perfect. I just think one time, I just like to see it play out one single time where we actually

won, where we actually worked together and won something instead of everybody fighting each other. We do this all the time. You know what makes me crazy is the right is the right, and the right is the right because they want to stop everything. So stopping something has a whole bunch of people behind it, and so all those people all agree, but the left wants to move forward, but some people want to move forward faster than others. And they are enemies of each other. The people who want to move forward faster than the other people don't like those people, even though they want to move faster. They, even though the other people want to move in the same direction, everybody still wants to move. Sorry're not friends we don't like you we are fighting we are enemies we will divide ourselves instead of looking at it

as a binary like either we move forward or we fucking stop no it's no i want to move forward as fast as possible if you don't want it fuck you and die and it's like well yeah and we are stuck in this weird position where the democrats and the people on the left, because there's people who don't consider themselves Democrats that are on the left, and they don't like each other. They don't want to talk to each other. They don't want to work together. And it's like, you could get something, but you don't want something. You want everything. Yeah, well, I really do believe very much, Cecil, that a huge part of it comes down to a total, like, there is what is pragmatic and practical within the system that we are living in today.

And then there is what we should have. And the shoulds absolutely will not give a fucking inch because it's based in an idealism. Yeah. And idealism is wonderful. And that's a great place to wonderful. And that's a great place to start. And that's a great place to work toward. But ideals are not pragmatic. You have got to get some shit done. The first time you got in a car and started driving, you were not an ideal driver. I guarantee you, you had to learn to drive. You had to figure some shit out. You

were fucking shaky. You didn't fucking drive fast enough. Sometimes you fucking stopped before you made a right turn. To all those people that think you cannot take a fucking right turn, by the way, at less than fucking 20 miles an hour, you're assholes. You can make a right-hand turn at 20 miles an hour. You don't have to stop the car and then turn right. On a green? Dude, how many times have you seen people just drive, and then they come to a damn near stop and then turn right on a green even on a dude without even a light it happens out here all the time does it not happen out by no i'm driving behind people every day just driving and they want to make a right hand turn and they just like they come they crawl that car to like six miles an hour what to turn right you can do a straight 90 degree corner at 18 to 20 miles an hour. It doesn't

even feel like anything. Fuck you. You guys should all have your licenses taken away unless it's your first few months driving. That's fair. Right. And like everybody is less than ideal. Everybody. And we don't agree on the same ideals. What makes me crazy is exactly your point. Like if we sacrifice the practical in favor of the idealistic, we get neither. You get nothing. We get nothing. And we already have nothing. Yeah, you already got nothing.

And the other guys are going to win. That's the way to hand the other guys the win, dude. You got nothing already. Nothing I have. In abundance, I have nothing. And you will lose. And you're going to have an abundance of nothing forever. And then you're going to have,

and actually it's not just going to be stopped. It's going to be going back. It's regressive. You're going to have an abundance of nothing forever. And then you're going to have, and actually it's not just going to be stopped. It's going to be going back. It's regressive. You're going to regress. You're going to regress in rights. You're going to regress in civil rights. You're going to regress in reproductive rights. You're going to regress in all those rights.

That's going to happen because you wanted to move fast too quickly. And it's like, I want to move fast too, man. There's a sense that people have that because they don't want to be living in a two-party system, they like to somehow will themselves out of it.

Pretend that they're not living in a two, you are living in a two-party system. There's no viable third party. Well, there could be. There isn't though. There is not. There is not. Closest we came in our lifetime was Ross Perot. The closest

we came in our lifetime was Ross Perot. Yeah. And that wasn't that close. When Beatles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottles in a poodle and the poodles eating noodles, they call this a muddle puddle, treetle poodle, beetle noodle, bottle paddle battle. This man is a genius. So for this week for cognizant book club we are nearing the finish of demon haunted world by carl sagan and we're reading it's happening on the shoulder uh it is nearly finished but this at this particular chapter was about uh disparities uh in in literacy in at in opportunity uh between uh a white america and a black america he talks a lot about um about uh frederick douglas uh who a lot of people have been saying has been you, we've been hearing more and more about lately.

One of the things that he did talk about was just how, in general, human beings are pretty new to reading. And we're talking about humans in general. I mean, this is a relatively new discovery in humankind. Sciences as well. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago. But writing and reading is a pretty new discovery in humankind.

For much of humankind's history, nobody had any idea it ought to read. It's invented a couple thousand years ago. And in that time, all the way up until relatively recent history, most people didn't read. Most people had no idea how to read, period. Illiteracy was the norm. And he talks about the strides that the African-American community have made to become literate. But it is really a reflection when he talks a lot about

the sort of poor education system in the United States and how poor it is when you don't have privilege, how bad it is when you don't have privilege. And so that's the main thrust of this particular chapter.

And, you know, he talks a lot about how the way to keep people, he uses Frederick Douglass, as Cecil mentioned, who, again, more and more. More and more. More and more. More and more. Talks about how, you know, the way to keep people enslaved is to keep them from gaining access to knowledge, gaining access to literacy.

It's amazing that through most of all of human history, we haven't had writing. And if you don't have writing, there's no progress. And with writing, we could launch, as we mentioned earlier, a fucking space telescope, right? You can't do that without writing. Writing is the key. Writing is the thing that puts our information and lets us stack information, lets us stack and accumulate knowledge, and lets us accumulate knowledge that grows ever more complex and ever more specialized. And we don't value that enough. I read a statistic, Cecil, and I was trying to find it just a moment ago, and I didn't find it,

so I may get the exact number wrong, but I'm going to err on the side of caution. but I'm going to err on the side of caution. It's about 60% of Americans cannot read past the sixth grade level today. Wow. So about a little more than half of Americans read at or below the sixth grade reading level today. Literacy is under fire, man. And literacy is massively important. We are running the risk, and I think Sagan points this out as something we should try to avoid, and then we didn't. We are running the risk of creating a technocratic elite and then everybody else. And the problem is the technocratic elite, they are going to be in charge of us in ways we did not consent to, don't fully understand, cannot control. And that is going to happen very, very quickly. We have to have not just basic functional literacy, but we need scientific literacy. We need both kinds. The alternative is enslavement, is literally enslavement. That is how you keep people, that is how you keep systems of power in power. That is how you keep people from being able to think for themselves and to grow generationally. It's not

an accident that this happens. Right. This doesn't happen by accident. Right. This is, we have to do the work. And I think that we're running ourselves into a place where we are steadily moving away from functional literacy. We are moving away from, I mean, 60% of this country is sixth grade or lower in their reading skills. That's something to be fucking worried about, man. Yeah, that's alarming. I feel like this particular chapter made a lot of good points when it came to, I mean, it really felt like he was speaking about the language of privilege before there really was a lot of conversation about it. And I thought that that was, that was kind of cool to see that he was sensitive to something like that even back then,

which I, I'll be perfectly frank. I wasn't even sensitive to it until a couple of years ago. Yeah. I mean, as an, as, I mean, as a, as an older adult, I wasn't as sensitive to it. It wasn't a thing that I ever thought was a thing. I mean, it was just genuinely wasn't a sensitive to it. What I really liked was that kind of, he talks a lot about how great a dude Frederick Douglass was, which I thought was kind of cool. Like he goes out of his way to sort of explain how great a guy Frederick Douglass was, like how smart he was, how influential he was, Douglas was, like how smart he was, how influential he was, how, and this is again, one of those things that like, this is not somebody who I think a lot of people knew about growing up and not a lot of people know the story of Frederick Douglas. By the way, if you want to know the story of

Frederick Douglas, we did him on Citation Needed. You can check out an essay, I think written by Noah about Frederick Douglas, which was amazing. And it's like, I didn't even know this stuff. And if I was re and I read this book a long time ago, so I don't remember this stuff, but if I were to pick this book up without having heard that citation needed essay written by Noah and then able to write into it and stuff, I wouldn't have known the things that, that he was going to elucidate in this chapter either. And so, you know, but it shows you that, you know, our country teaches the heroes it wants to teach and it teaches the inspirational stories that it wants to teach. And it certainly leaves a lot of black and brown people not in the conversation

and not having somebody to look up to and not having somebody to be a hero for. And I think one of the things too that I liked that Carl was clear to point out is that just because somebody like Frederick Douglass could overcome the obstacles of his birth does not mean that most of us are as brilliant as Frederick Douglass. He comes out and says it. The bar it. Yep. We should not, the bar should not be because one person was brilliant. Everybody is expected to be brilliant. That's bootstraps intelligence. It is. It is. And you know, intelligence is one of those things that I think I certainly will count myself, like it's one of those things that we forget intelligence is a privilege the same way that many other things are, right? Some people are born with a greater level of just natural affinity for reading or for math

or for the arts or for, and that is, that's a privilege. That's a genetic lottery that you, some people win that other people didn't win. And like, we need to keep that shit in mind. And one of the things that we need to keep in mind when we think about that is that like, we tend to categorize people as stupid, you know? And we think of that as like, that person is stupid. That makes them a bad person. That makes them a less than person versus this person over here who is smart and that it makes them a better person. But like a lot of that stuff has nothing to do with who we are and the choices we make. It has a lot to do with the choices our parents, parents, parents were able to make. It has a lot to do with whether there's fucking lead in the drinking water of our grandparents

and our parents or us, right? Whether or not we were properly nourished. There's an enormous amount of shit that goes into that that you have nothing to do with. And I think it's really important to recognize that shit and to say like, if we value intelligence, then we need to value the social systems that enable more people to be intelligent. That allow it, that produce it, that make it flourish.

And one of the things he spends some time on in here is nourishment. Talks about nutrition. And he talks about how important that is for the human mind, saying that it will start shutting down the mind and not nourishing the mind way sooner than it would any of the other functions in the body

because it's much better to, I forget the term or phrase he used, something about a stupid, you'd rather be stupid and alive than smart and dead or something like that that's what he said and it's it's the thing that we've talked about we've had conversations on this show many times the school lunch program in the country the fact that people that some students come to school and the only meal of the day they get is that meal at school, that meager meal that we're able to provide them. That's the food they're able to eat for the day, or that's the one meal of the day. They might have a snack cake or a Pop-Tart later on, but that's the food they get. Think about how that's affecting all those people

who are mal, because that's malnourishment. Think about all those people that are malnourished going to school, trying to learn. And it's the one thing that it's shutting down is your brain. Well, they're bad kids. They're all bad kids. No, maybe they're just not eating enough.

Maybe we're not caring for them enough. And that's, I love this side of reading this because it shows that there's this care that we could easily just pay attention to these scientific ideals, these scientific points of reference, and it would make us more caring. Quick correction, I looked it up.

I did find this statistic. I'm sorry, it's 54% of adults that lack proficiency below a sixth grade reading level. So I just want to make sure I get this. I know someone will correct me, you rightfully should. It's still more than half. It's 54% below the sixth grade reading level.

All right, so join us. We're nearing the end. I think there's maybe four more chapters left in the book. So come join us. We're going to start talking about, on the comment section, patrons, start talking to us about maybe our next book that we can read, especially in the comment section and Patreon.

Comment on these particular posts so we can read them and find out maybe what you're thinking about we might want to read next. Maybe we'll even put a poll up for patrons moving forward. But we're super excited about this, and we really do enjoy getting a chance to sit down and read something worthwhile. And you should too. Go check out Carl Sagan's book,

Demon Haunted World. We're almost finished with it, but even if you pick this up late, you can go back and read this book in a couple of days and you are not going to regret it. So we'd like to thank our patrons. Of course, we'd like to thank our patrons. Of course, we'd like to thank all our patrons,

but we'd like to thank our newest patrons, Vegan Mortician, Help Your Lymphocytes and Get Vaccinated, Treviac, Read Only As You Both Fake Laughing Nervously. I don't know. That's insulting. Victoria,

and people who up their pledges. Jacob, thank you so much for your generous donations. We really do truly appreciate you. The reason why Ian gets a paycheck and Sarah gets a paycheck. Thank you guys so much for your generous donations. I want to talk a little bit about our email this week. We got a couple of messages talking to us about things that we could do

that we would all be able to use the Texas law for, that Texas law of using the civil courts to try to attack something. And the Texas law in particular, it's attacking abortion. And we were wondering what kind of thing on the right we could use.

A couple people sent in that we could go after gay conversion therapy. But Tom and I were talking, that seems to be outlawed in a lot of places already. So it doesn't really feel like it's, I mean, you could feasibly maybe set it up to be like, if your kid is unvaccinated because of religious exemptions,

that's child abuse, I guess. I don't know what you go for. The problem is that the only things on the right. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what you go for. The problem is that the only thing's on the right. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe vaccination is it. You should be able to sue if you're unvaccinated and you got me sick.

Yeah. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what you do. You know? Yeah. There you go. Yeah, I think we figured it out. Yeah.

If you got me sick because you're unvaccinated, then I'll sue you. Yeah. That would be interesting. Then you could make that, you could unvaccinated, then I'll sue you. Yeah, that would be interesting. Then you could take that case and use that as a way to bring that to the Supreme Court to try to overturn that case

because that case is just going to be a disaster when the rubber hits the road. But a bunch of people said gay conversion therapy. A couple other people had other suggestions. None of them were really as deep a wedge issue as abortion is, though. And so that's the difficulty, and that's the hard part about figuring out what you go after on the right.

We got a message from Brad, and Brad says that you can do large Hadron Collider visits, and they do, they can sign up for tours 14 days before you go, and they fill up fast. Man, I would set my fucking watch to that to figure out 14 days

before I was there to see if I could. That'd be fun. That'd be great to go there. It'd be really amazing. Got a message from Art and Art says, you should definitely check out Fermilab.

When I lived closer to it a few years ago, in the before times, I would go to lectures. They don't just cover physics, but a whole array of scientific subjects from biology to astronomy to, yes, quantum physics. All of them are great. And they would generally be hosted

by one of the scientists who worked on whatever experiment the lecture is on and always made it very comprehensible. That's actually really cool. And you know, it's one of those things too, I say that I might not understand it, but I think that it's not my inability to understand it. I think they're probably

just really smart and able to help under, help normal people understand the things that they work on because they have to pitch, you know, a lot of these people

have to pitch to people that aren't scientists to make their money, you know? Yeah, right. You got to know how to pitch. Everybody's got to start

something like that. It's not like you'd show up and it would be like, all right, this is a graduate level physics class. You know, like there are entry level everything. And there is like a popularization of just about everything.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, if things can be made, most things can be made at least like broad scale, comprehensible. If the minutia may still be challenging. Got a message from Randy and Randy says,

if you're interested in Fermilab and physics, you might like to know that Fermilab has a YouTube channel. And so they have lectures and stuff there. In fact, there are three semi-regular shows on their channel and they're great about learning about physics about as in-depth as a lay person can get. So that's great. I think that's really neat.

I'll definitely check them out. I'll see if we can link them on the show notes. But I'm absolutely interested in checking it out because like that's right near Chicago. Yeah, that's right down the road. Yeah. That's not far at all from where we're at. Well, we got a message on Patreon.

I don't want to read who said this, but they said, I went to a Catholic college too. It was cheaper out of pocket for me than the state school I applied to. And I got to run track and cross country on scholarship for them. I totally agree about learning how to learn at college.

I went in a shitty little anti-choice Catholic teen and came out of school a liberal atheist. The more I learned, the more empathy I have towards people. That's exactly it. And that's the thing is like the Catholic school I went to had a component to it where you had to go out in the community and do some sort of community service to get your degree. You had to do that. And I know that many liberal schools across the country have the same component, this learning component outside the classroom component where you have to go and do some sort of community service as part of your degree. And that just genuinely try, like, that's a way to try to open up your mind to the fact that not

everybody has it as good as a liberal kid going to, you know, a college. I think it's funny, Cecil, because that's like, that's the right-wing horror story. That's everything they're afraid of. Oh my God, she went in a pro-life Catholic and she came out a pro-choice atheist. And when they say like, that's what we're afraid of, that's what they're afraid of. But they, they're misunderstanding that the reason that that happens, they think it's indoctrination. And instead it's, no, I just, I learned how to fucking think for myself. I read some stuff and started understanding other people's perspectives

and started understanding myself better and started understanding the world differently. And it's not that I started understanding the world as dictated to me by other people. Exactly. It's just me understanding and learning about the world. And in fact, that's exactly what you give up

when you give up those systems of power. We got a message and this is from Jim. And Jim says, as much as I enjoy a good Alex Jones mocking, it turns out he was

more or less correct about the terraforming air processes in CO2. A company in Iceland has deployed carbon capture machines on a large scale for the first time. Okay.

Two things. One, it's not terraforming. Jim, terraforming is going to another planet and making it like Earth. That is terraforming. Now, I am not disputing that there are big CO2 processors, and we'll get

this. I'm going to let Tom discuss how big and how much those CO2 processors are doing, but I am going to fight you tooth and nail on terraforming. It is not terraforming. Terraforming is what you do on Mars. You do not do it in Ithaca, New York. Yeah, and large is a very relative term. They're large in the sense of large compared to other carbon capture systems we've previously developed.

But compared to the total amount of carbon that needs to be captured, these carbon capture systems are equivalent to less than 800 cars worth of CO2. Like, 800 is nothing. It's like, honestly, it's not even worth a conversation. 800 cars? Like who fucking cares? I don't care until you get to 800,000 cars. Honestly, I don't care at all. We have literally tens of millions of cars on the road. I live in a suburb with 200,000 people. It's just a fucking rink-a-dink nothing suburb not even worth knowing about.

There are 200,000, 800 cars. That's like, 800 cars. I've gone to sporting events that have had five times that number of cars just to see a baseball in-game.

Like, get the fuck, that's relative. It doesn't mean anything. I think it's a great first step, but it's not large scale. It's not large scale in the sense, too, that what he's talking about, right? What fucking Jones is talking about is that these fucking giant CO2 things are changing the weather. Right. Get out of here with that nonsense. If you took 800 cars out of the equation, how much does the weather change?

Nothing at all. Nothing changes at all. Take every single bit of cars out of the equation. Maybe we'll start talking about how the weather changes. But unless you're saying all the cars, I just don't think that that's going to have a huge impact on the weather changes. But once you, unless you're saying all the cars, I just don't think that that's going to have a huge impact on the weather. We got a bunch of messages

from a bunch of different people. This one in particular is from Dean, but a bunch of people have the same, basically the same sentiment. Gene says he listened to 607 and he says,

I take exception to your opinion that Chicago drivers are the worst in the country. And he says, you've been to, you've never been to Richmond, Richmond, what is that? British Columbia. British Columbia? the Chicago drivers are the worst in the country. So many emails like this. And he says, you've never been to Richmond. Richmond, what is that? British Columbia.

British Columbia. There's a Richmond in like every state, by the way. And there's one clearly in Canada. Here's the thing. I just want to say, you're wrong. And it's okay to be wrong, Dean. It's okay to be wrong. Sometimes you just have to accept that you're wrong. And

everybody who sent us messages and told us how your state was the worst. I understand that you're wrong and I get that you're wrong, but you were going to be wrong from now until the end of time about who has the worst drivers, genuinely 100% Chicagoland area. There's no comparison. I don't care who you are. And don't argue from authority with me. Don't tell me, oh, I'm in a professional driver. That's the argument from authority. And I'm not listening to you. Okay. I'm not listening to you. Cecil, literally today, just today, I was on I-88 today. I was in the left-hand lane. I was going 80, 85 miles an hour. left-hand lane. I was going 80, 85 miles an hour. And there was in the far right lane, it's a four lane, four lane, the far right lane, a fucking Mustang flies past me. Like I'm not even moving.

I'm going 80, 85. That car must've been going 105 because it's moving. Yeah, no, it looks like you're standing still. Right. Then it weaves across three lanes of traffic to go into the left lane like five cars in front of me and then starts skirting around that's normal shit man 100 it's normal to go 100 110 115 plus and then on expressway and weave in and out of all three lanes of traffic i my eye lost that guy He's, that dude is fucking every time. Today, I was Googling dash cams. Yeah.

Today, I was like, I should probably have a dash. At this point, driving around the city, driving around Chicago and the Chicagoland area, I think it's actually kind of just like insane that I don't already have a dash cam.

You should have a front and rear dash cam. It should have one at the front and rear. Yeah. I was like, I don't know why I don't have this and I'm going to put one in my car this week. You should have a front and rear dash cam. It should want to have that front and rear. Yeah. I was like, I don't know why I don't have this and I'm going to put one in my car this week. You should absolutely do it. I should do it too.

I've never really think about it, but I would a hundred percent should. I, I'm almost in an accident. I don't even live in Chicago anymore and I'm almost in an accident almost every time I drive. Almost every time.

And I, and I'm, I'm like, I'm the fucking, like the epitome of a boomer driver. Like I don't do anything bad. I always, like I try to stay like the epitome of a boomer driver like i don't do anything bad i always like i try to stay in the right lane i check my blind spot hands at 10 and 2 i am 100 conservative i'm a conservative driver and i'm always fucking almost always in an almost in an accident because

people are the the craziest worst drivers here and by the way i just want to mention one more time if you disagree you're wrong okay so we want you to join us for our streams. Come join us on Thursday nights. You can come catch us live. We do a live show, 9 p.m. Central Time, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook. Come check us out. And we have a lot of fun. It's always a good time. So come hang out with us. If you miss us live, you can always catch us on Twitch. That stays lot of fun it's always a good time so come hang out with us if you miss us live you can always catch us on Twitch that stays there for I think a couple weeks

and then on YouTube it's there in perpetuity on Facebook it's there in perpetuity you can come catch those streams after they happen but we do interact

with chat a little bit and sometimes we have polls and things where we'll take a poll or we'll talk to chat about things and we'll look for their answers so sometimes we definitely interact with people while they're live.

So it's great to catch it live in the new year. Come catch us. Come catch us live. Come hang out at a stream. Trust me, you're going to have a great time. They've got kind of a different vibe. They're a little silly, a little off the cuff. They're fun.

They're fun. We don't really plan a lot for them. We just have a lot of fun. We talk about a couple of different stories and then we just chill out. It's a good time. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do

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