Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 640: Stupid in Isolation

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

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 Glorhill 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 mat. This is episode 640.

And if you are listening to this, you are not watching this. That is because we have no video this week, Cecil. No video. I had some family issues pop up. We had to move the recording. You were gracious enough, Cecil,

to move the recording from our usual Thursday to sometime in the afternoon on Friday. And we weren't able to get together in studio, guys. Yeah. And also, I get my hair did and my nails did on Thursdays. And I'm just not camera ready today, Tom. Brother.

Just not camera ready. I am never camera ready. We started a fucking audio podcast. And then fucking Ian shows up and is like, like oh let's buy a bunch of cameras and have have you seen me ian you know you wonder why the youtube show isn't exploding off the fire look at me for god's sake that's it i have a voice for radio not a face for youtube all right cecil let's uh let's jump right in here. This is an awesome article.

It's from USA Today. This is probably the most pressing. This is pressing shit, buddy. Fact check. Scientists at CERN are not opening a portal to hell. Oh, thank goodness, Tom. I'm so happy that verified fact checkers check our heart at work hard at work checking or checking on whether or not there is an actual portal to hell made up space this is

this is something that we have with this is how stupid we've gotten this is i don't know if we were always this stupid or if now we're just like vocally out loud this stupid or able to broadcast. Because like we've done Citation Needed episodes about like when they used to think tuberculosis was caused by vampires. And so they would dig people up and like stake their fucking hearts and eat their fucking ashes and shit. So people have always been basically trash, just complete trash. But man, it's 2022. It's 2022. And this is fact check. Scientists are not opening a portal to hell. It's 2022. And they have to walk up to some guy in a fucking lab coat and be like, hey, is hell real? Right. I guess that's the part that, Cecil, you hit on it right, though, because that's the tension that I am unable to wrap my head around.

I don't know how you live in a modern world where there is a CERN. Right. We're putting fucking rovers on Mars that like fucking parachute down to gently land on the surface to send high definition video back from another planet. We're doing that stuff. And at the same time, we have to tell a segment of this self-same contemporaneous population. It's not a portal to hell. It's not. it's not a portal to hell it's not but um it's that it's worse it's worse than that because it's not just like one person you have to assuage their right it's it's thousands if not millions of people will see this and think oh i saw this thing that they're opening portals into hell and

like believe it like believe it because it worldview that, you know, scientists are bad, that science is bad, that science is trying to disprove this fairy tale that you really, really want to cling to. And so now when you see something that confirms this hatred you have for this group of people, you immediately believe it because it matches the worldview you've already made up for yourself. Yeah, man. That's exactly right. It's that, we talk about it a lot in our book, Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit. It's that confirmation bias, right? It's like, there's a worldview these folks hold and everything else gets fucking shoehorned into that worldview. It's like, you know, fucking shoehorned into that worldview. It's like, yeah, it's like, you know, water or gases expand to fit the shape of their fucking vessel, you know? And it's like, yeah, fucking shitty

ideas expand to fit the shape of the world. Yeah. Right. And I feel like it's the same sort of, sort of principle. So the claim scientists at CERN are communicating with demonic entities and opening a portal to hell. Again, this is not from the Weekly World News. This is not Bat Boy found. No, no. In April, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, restarted their particle accelerator, the world's largest and most powerful accelerator, after a three-year hiatus. The accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider,

had undergone repairs and upgrades, and scientists plan to use it to crash protons together and learn more about the origins of the universe. Nevertheless, social media users are suggesting that the machine has a different purpose. A Facebook post, shared July the 5th, shows a TikTok video.

I also love that. A Facebook post of a TikTok video. I also love that. A Facebook post of a TikTok video. Why don't you just in this fucking article reference the TikTok video? What? Also, there's users out there that are like, no, I

saw a Facebook post of a TikTok video and I know what they're doing over there. I saw a screen grab of an Instagram reel on my Facebook and somebody set that to some musics up on TikTok and that's how I got my news. And I watched it because someone did a reaction video on YouTube about it. And that's how I know y'all is lying. Do your research. Here's what I want. I want 2005 me to hear me just say that.

You wouldn't even know the words. You know what I mean? I wouldn't even know. I'd be like, you made up all those words. You made all those words up. You'd just be like, I don't know what any of that is.

A Facebook post shared July 5th shows a TikTok video of a woman who claims that CERN scientists are using the machine to open a doorway for demons. Quote, if y'all don who claims that CERN scientists are using the machine to open a doorway for demons. Quote, if y'all don't know about CERN,

I'm already not interested. I'm already not interested. I'm glad she has a Southern troll. If y'all... Thank you. Thank you. Amazing. I'll try to read it in character here.

If y'all don't know about CERN, it's a demonic evil machine that opens up portals to other dimensions. Hail. It's a machine. It's a machine. Is that what CERN is, lady? A machine?

It's a machine. Is that what it is? It's a machine. Well, it's not a series of tubes or a dump truck. What is a Hadron Collider? You know, it's not a series. She didn't say Hadron Collider. No.

She said CERern is a machine she doesn't know what she's fucking talking about man you should already just be like yeah we threw that out because she literally doesn't understand the terms you're right opens up partles to other dimensions hail other spiritual worlds not heaven or bosom of Abraham, and it brings in demon, wicked spirits, high evil principalities, reads the caption of the post. That's... And then she looks in her fucking pantry and she had

spaghetti to give all her little kids or whatever. She kept on stirring and all she put in was a tiny little bit of spaghetti, Tom, but when she stirred it... And she stirred it and stirred it. So stupid, it. So fucking fantastically stupid. There's been similar posts on Facebook and Twitter

and they had to go back and be like, yeah, that's not like you can't open up portals. USA Today had to go talk, guys, to a fucking physics professor at the University of Buffalo and be like, can you open up portals and here's

the answer they actually answered it the fact that they graced this question with anything other than a harumph or a door slam or a phone hang up you don't deserve to be this is your question about how the world works you don't deserve to be answered that's it but it's amazing because they said to create a black hole or a wormhole even microscopic ones with our current technology in the context of our standard theories of gravity we need an accelerator

as big as the whole universe it's like when Carl Sagan is like in order to make an apple pie you first have to invent the universe it's the same thing here it's like what Carl Sagan is like, in order to make an apple pie, you first have to invent the universe. It's the same thing here. It's like, in order to get a,

like a black hole made, we have to make a whole universe and then make a, make a fucking Hadron Collider the size of the universe. Yeah. So if we take up all the space possible and use all of the materials ever,

then maybe... I hear this stuff, man. And I get this little panic attack going where I'm just like, God, how can we be this stupid? Like, no, we can't be this stupid. And it's not just like... Like, look, I get it when we want to say

there's one person out there who believes stupid shit. There's not just like, like, look, I get it when we want to say there's one person out there who believes stupid shit. There's a bunch of stupid people out there that believe a lot of stupid shit, but we've done a really bad thing in connecting all those stupid people together so they could tune each other up. Oh, absolutely, man. Cause he's like, these people used to be stupid, like off in the fucking corner of accounting. You know? Like, they were stupid in isolation. They used to be stupid in isolation. And now they're stupid as a giant angry group.

And then they fucking spin each other up like a fucking Hadron. Like a CERN, Tom. They spin each other up like a CERN. Fucking idiots. Jesus. Oh, my God. So, yeah, guys. fucking idiots Jesus oh my god so yeah guys don't fucking if you were fretting don't fret until you see a

fucking collider the size of the entire universe don't worry yeah god next week next week in USA Today fact check Easter Bunny doesn't lay chocolate eggs with unidentified goo inside yeah you don't have to say thank you Easter Bunny when it lays a chocolate egg for doesn't lay chocolate eggs with unidentified goo inside. Yeah.

You don't have to say thank you, Easter Bunny, when it lays a chocolate egg for you. God, man. What is happening? Okay, looking at the minutes from last week, it looks like we still need a unanimous vote on whether we want to be STIs or STDs. What's the difference? The I is for infection and the D is for dick.

No, it's not for dick, herpes. It is for disease. It's for dick. Big D dick. We're not doing this again. I want to be known as a dick disease. Ew, I hate that. All right, well, speaking of stupid, let's talk about this very quickly from Newsweek.

Marjorie Taylor Greene asks why kids are getting monkey pox if it's an STD. So Marjorie Taylor Green, and I didn't grab this story, but earlier, I think this week or late last week, she also tweeted some shit about how what we should do about monkey pox is mock the people that have gotten monkey pox. And we should mock them because in her view it was an std that only gay men got right so right right and that and a bunch of right-wing evil-minded dipshits who have absolutely no understanding of what monkey pox is or epidemiology or empathy for uh people yeah at all, and most importantly, the final one. Or any fucking empathy whatsoever.

You know, they are seeking to both politicize, publicize, and then dismiss monkeypox because they feel like it's a scourge that can be isolated to a group of people they've already demonized. Now, to be entirely fair to the science, that's not true. There's been about 16,400 cases of monkeypox in the United States, and the majority of them have been found in the primarily gay male population. But I read a real

interesting article that suggested very strongly, and I think it was in the Times or the Post, that the gay male population often acts as a sort of epidemiological canary in the coal mine. That unless there is some reason for a disease to stay within a population or demographic, and for monkeypox, there is no reason for it to stay, that it's got to show up somewhere first. Just require skin-on-skin contact. Right. Things have to show up somewhere first. And if there is some demographic activity which

allows things to show up first within the gay male community, and it does, that's a canary in the coal mine situation. It's not a fucking border wall around monkeypox that prevents monkeypox from moving into other areas. So, and it's not a fucking STD. It's just not, you can get it from clothing, bedding, linens. You can get it from physical contact with anybody. Physical contact. Right. If I had a fucking S, if I had fucking monkeypox, Cecil, I would give it to you when we record. If I like shook your hand or gave you a hug. Shook my hand.

You know? Yeah. Or like... Yeah, it requires... I guess it requires a little more than... From what I was reading initially, now this is admittedly over a week and a half ago, but it requires a little more than

just touching something someone else touched or something like that. It requires like an actual physical contact, which is why it's, you know, people are getting it when they have sex because there's extensive physical contact during those times. I'm surprised it can spread that fast though,

like in one minute. Well, maybe that's why Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't know what it is because the only time she has sex, somebody comes in their hand and throws it at her. They're just like, no, that's it. That's as close as I want to get to Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't know what it is because the only time she has sex, somebody comes in their hand and throws it at her. They're just like, no, that's it. That's as close as I want to get to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Here's what fucking Greene said.

She said, if monkeypox is a sexually transmitted disease, why are kids getting it? And there are two pieces to that that I wanted to talk about because I think that they're both important and they're both insidious. The first is the premise that we already kind of destroyed, right? If it is an STD, well, it's not. Nobody says that this is an STD. It's not labeled an STD by the CDC or the WHO or any medical body whatsoever. In 2003, I don't know if you remember this, Cecil, but in 2003, there was a monkeypox outbreak in the United States,

and it was spread from prairie dogs. Do you remember that? I don't remember prairie dogs being... Prairie dogs were being kept very briefly in the United States as a sort of temporarily cool, exotic pet. Oh, really? So, yeah.

So prairie dogs were being kept as pets and prairie dogs are susceptible to monkey pox. And so there was an outbreak of monkey pox where people were getting it from prairie dogs. This happened in 2003. And I actually remember when this happened because I remember thinking, oh man, a prairie dog would be kind of a cool pet.

And then I looked it up and I'm like, actually, that's a horrible pet. And then like, it's like a, literally it's a terrible pet. Like it's terrible. You know, it's like, it of a cool pet. And then I looked it up. I'm like, actually, that's a horrible pet. And then like, it's like a, literally, it's a terrible pet. Like it's terrible. You know, it's like, it's a horrible pet. I just thought they were cute. But yeah, like there was a monkeypox outbreak that.

It's not a fucking STD. But I think this question is intentionally raised to inflame and promote the Republican fear-mongering bullshit about pedophilia and pedophilia's imagined link to the gay community. The Republicans are saying, like, look, who's giving it to all these kids? Hey, you know, we're all going to grant that this is an STD that is just for gay men. So then how are kids getting it? Well, obviously, kids are getting fucked by gay men.

Yeah, man, fucking A, dude. That's what she's fucking saying. But she doesn't have to come out and say it. All she needs to do is imply it and put that question in the minds of people that have had these similar questions and ideas already implanted. Well, and her hateful base eats that shit up.

They want her to make those veiled claims because it makes her look powerful. It makes her look like she's saying the right things against these groups that they think are lesser and that they hate. It's all a benefit

for her to say things like this. It's a win-win for her to be provocative in this way. And she's done a very good job, you know, as stupid as she comes off very often. And I don't think she's a very intelligent person, but I do think she's crafty.

And I think she's got, she understands that she can push certain lines. This last week, she talked about Christian nationalism. Yeah. Was a thing that she said. She's week, she talked about Christian nationalism. Yeah. Was it, was the thing that she said?

She's like, I, what I'm a Christian and I'm, I'm a nationalist. I don't, I don't think there's anything wrong with being a Christian nationalist. Now, I don't know if you remember,

but that's that guy from fucking Iowa. That Steve King, he said white nationalist and he got fucking like, he didn't win his seat back, man. They were just like, oh no, pass hard to pass. And I think,

I think people need to recognize like Christian nationalism is a terrifying fucking thing. They want to incorporate, understand what it is, understand what it means. It means they want to make a theocracy, more of a theocracy than we already have, which we already do have a very deep theocracy, but they want to take it another step.

They want like a Pope for a king, man. Like, get the fuck out of here. And I think we need to make sure that people understand. I don't think it's going to change anything about her because I think she comes from a very rural district. It's in Georgia. I don't think it's going to change anything for her in particular.

But you need to make that a bad word so people don't say that kind of shit because, man, the more they say it, the more they're going to push the Overton window over that way. Yep. She's intentionally using language like nationalism as, and the right is doing this a lot. They're using that language as a stand-in for patriotism. Yes. And they are, and by doing that, by shifting that linguistic window, they're shifting the ideological window. And this is the Overton window you referred to. The way that they do that is through the clever-ish use of language. There's a difference between nationalism and patriotism, right? Patriotism for many Americans

would be thought of as a virtue. Nationalism, if you look at what it is, is not just pride in your country, but it's pride in your country to the specific exclusion of the value of other nations. Right. That is it. And it's that exclusivity element of nationalism which sets it apart from patriotism. They are not synonymous, although they share a handful of similar elements. But because people believe that their country is a nation, that their nation is something to be proud of, that pride in their nation, it would be nationalism, right? It's easy linguistic shit. And this is games. These are just rhetorical games that people are playing to fuck with people's ideas about how they see the world. Because now, well, I'm a Christian and I'm a patriot. Why wouldn't I be a Christian nationalist? Well, holy shit. There's like 50 reasons why you don't want to belabor this too much, but also when you combine two words, you you you now have a new concept.

Yes. Yes. If I'm a Christian, that's one thing. It's got a definition. If I'm a nationalist, that's one thing new concept, right? But they don't treat it as a new concept that has its own specific definition. What they treat it as is two words that they want specifically to deal with differently. I'm a Christian. What's wrong with being a Christian? Well, okay, nothing's wrong. All right, we'll set that aside. I believe in my country. What's wrong with nationalism? Aren't you a patriot? Well, yeah, I'm a patriot. Okay. Well, then I'm, you know, see no problem with being a Christian nationalist. But that's disingenuous. Right. Because it's not dealing with the truth of what that phrase is defined as. That's key. That's important. And you're absolutely right. You know, you make a new

concept when you glue those things together, because they weren't, when they were apart, they weren't affecting each other. There wasn't like a tie between them. They were two separate concepts. But the moment you put them in the same as a conjunction or whatever as a fucking phrase, now you're saying these two things are inextricably linked and they mean something to each other.

And that's a dangerous concept. And we should be pushing against that as vociferously as we can, because what I don't want is for that shift to happen where suddenly we're arguing on levels of Christian nationalism. Where suddenly we're saying, well, let's just get to the lowest level of Christian nationalism. I want to get it out of our government completely. I know it's not going to happen, but I want to keep pushing the language so that we don't start accepting the fact that there is a government that has a Christian overview. I want to see people twist all these laws that the Supreme Court is laying down now. I want to see people start twisting these laws

so they have to allow other religions to do the same thing so that people suddenly realize they fucked up like the Satanists do all the time when they do this thing where they're like, yeah, they put up a fucking 10 commandments, we put up a Baphomet skull. And they're like, oh, sorry about the 10 commandments.

That's our bad. And then they took them down. I want the same thing. I want satanic prayer or something after school that shows that this is a bad idea for everyone, that no one really wants this. You only want it for Christians. But I think we need to keep pushing that

because if we don't, we're going to wind up with, well, at least we're not as Christian nationalists as we could be. Yeah. And you know, they, they only want this for Christians and then they don't even have a settled idea of what Christianity means. Oh no, no, no, no. You know, they don't even have a settled idea. You, you, you talk to people about this stuff and it's like, all right, well, you know, what if, what if you had, uh, you know, somebody who was a Mooney? Now, the Moonies are Christian, you know, or the Jehovah's Witnesses. They're Christian. They've got some ideas that most of the mainstream Christian population wouldn't ascribe to.

Yeah, I think Mormons are too, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, I think the Mormons. So there are so many denominations of Christianity, which would necessarily conflict. I mean, what if you had a teacher standing in front of your kids saying, all right, well, you know, in our classroom, obviously we're not going to do birthday celebrations or Christmas celebrations because, you know, and started teaching you about Jehovah's Witness stuff. Or what if they started scaring the shit out of your kids about, you know, rapture stuff? Or what if they were a Unitarian,

you know? And they started like, it's just, it doesn't work. I think, I think a valid strategy might be for some, uh, for some atheists and humanists out there that want to change this law to adopt and try to understand Jehovah's witness principles and use Jehovah's witness as the thing. Because like you say, it's Christian. So they might start, but then do all the crazy shit that they don't know about, right? Do all that crazy shit or do it as a Mormon where you're announcing like, yeah, we all get your own fucking planet

or whatever when you die. You know, so that there's something that makes everybody in the audience be like, whoa, wait a minute, what? No, what is that? And it gets them uneasy with hearing about other people's religion because you seem to think,

everybody seems to think that their religion is all, everybody's ubiquitous. Everybody has the same ideals. In fact, I talked to somebody this week who was a Methodist. And I was having a conversation with this Methodist and we were talking back and forth.

And I said, Methodist, isn't that like a really sort of liberal group of people? And she's like, you know, there's a very progressive wing that I belong to. And she's like, but Jeff Sessions is a Methodist. She said, you know, like it can be, so even in their own church, even in your own sub-church, right?

It's a Protestant religion. Even in your own Protestant subsect, there can be highly liberal and highly conservative wings. The Catholic church has a highly liberal and a highly conservative wing. Like the conservative wing is anti-immigration. The conservative wing is a full on, you know, no abortion. And then there's a liberal wing that is pro-choice and pro-immigration. You know what I mean? So there's like, there's like big, when you get a group that's big enough, even the own, even the church doesn't agree with itself. Right. Yeah. The Methodist is an interesting example because I think if I'm not mistaken, but I see articles all the time that there is, there is a straight up schism taking place in the Methodist church right now around the issue of, of gay marriage.

Yeah. And whether or not, you know, some churches have said, yeah, we're 100% pro and other churches have said we're 100% not. And there is a straight up, like split the church in half schism

just in that one fucking niche of a niche of a niche. It's fucking nuts. When my, it was interesting Cecil, because we sent, as you know, and I talked about this on the show, we sent my stepdaughter to a Lutheran school for the last two years because of the pandemic. So we needed her to go in person for a bunch of reasons. So we sent her to a Lutheran school as the only option.

And then, you know, come to find out, and I Googled around, that there are different sects within the Lutheran denomination. And we had centered to the one that was part of this like Missouri Sinai or Sinai, I don't know how it's pronounced. And that is actually like a really, really, really conservative version of Lutheranism. And I had been familiar before we signed up with a much more liberal version of Lutheranism. And so this church ended up being quite conservative, like very conservative. And I was struck like, wow, this doesn't seem in keeping with the Lutheranisms that I've been exposed to. And I looked it up and it's like, oh, it's because they're part of this chunk, right? This carve out or whatever. So it's fucking, this chunk, right? This carve out or whatever. So it's fucking like, no, nobody wants this.

I'd be interesting Cecil if, if, if atheists pursued within science classes. And I don't know that like, I would want anyone to do this, but like if kids started fucking flunking AP exams and like not exiting school with the proper knowledge. I don't want this. I don't want people who are... I don't want them to be hurt, right? The whole idea is not to hurt students. But it's like at some point, isn't it going to? Oh, yeah.

Aren't they going to leave school with bad ideas or lesser ideas or fucked up ideas about how the world operates? You know, this is a tangent, but this week I read a story out from Florida that if you're like a veteran, you can get a waiver to teach class in like schools there. Yeah, man. Did you see this? Yes, I read the same. This is fucking nuts.

Yeah, it's just- Florida is so out of teachers that it's like yeah they're just like yeah we'll just take a veteran it doesn't matter what what you are trained in you can just do like a little bit of like i think it was a certain number of hours that they could do and then they could um and i know i saw a story circulating that somebody said that somebody you could do it if you were a veteran's wife or a spouse, but that's, I don't, from what I read, that's not true. That's not true. Yeah. You can get a waiver for some fees. You can get a waiver for fees, but you got, you still have to do this, do the schooling or something. But if you're a vet, I think they

waive the schooling. Yeah. If you're a vet, you don't have to have a degree in your subject area of expertise. So like when I went to school to teach, because that's what I went to school for. So you had to have, I wanted to teach high school English and I was going to be certified six through 12, because it's just more marketable. So, but you had to get your degree in your subject area. So you had to get like a bachelor's degree in my case, English, English literature. And then you had to get a minor in secondary education. And then you had to do a bunch of practicum work. So you had to do a bunch of like clinical hours of, you know, observation and then like teaching, like student teaching, but also you had to do some stuff in between observation

and student teaching. I forgot what they called it. And then you had to get a license and then you were licensed for a certain thing. And so what Florida is saying is like, yeah, but if you're a veteran, you don't have to do that stuff. Yeah. Well, here's the actual, here's the outlines. A minimum of 48 months military service with an honorable or medical discharge, a minimum of 60 college credits with a 2.5 grade point average. So that 60 college credits, I don't think that gets you a degree. I

thought you had to be like in the 90s or something like that for a degree. So I don't think that gets you a degree as I recall, but I could be wrong. I have no idea. Passing, and then you have to pass on a Florida subject area examination for bachelor's level subjects. You have to have a passing score on that. And then there you go. Yeah. So you have to have a pass. That's what you have.

So you just have to test well. You just have to test well. That's all. Yeah. I mean, I will say like to be a teacher, at least in Illinois, it's kind of a high bar. It is a, it is a pain in the ass.

Like the educational requirements, the practicum, the clinical hours. It's a lot of work. It's a lot more than just, I tested into my subject area. Yeah. Holy shit. What the fuck difference is being a veteran make? Like literally what in the world difference does that, why should that be? I mean, like if, if you're qualified to teach because you can take a test, what the fuck difference does it make if

you're a goddamn veteran or not? This is like such a, God, when I read that story, Cecil, it's like such a fucking obvious right-wing pander. It is totally nothing in the world. This is a fucking gargle fucking troop come. That's all this is. But what you're doing is you're making a dumber United States populace over and over and over again. And we've been going down this road since I was a kid, man. They've been trying to, they've been trying to change how we teach kids stuff. And it's been going on for a very long time. And teachers are the front line very often of these battles. And I don't want to call it a culture war because it's not a culture war.

It's an education war. It's a war on whether or not we're going to tell people reality or not. And that's been happening in the schools for over two decades now where, you know, they're fighting on whether or not they're going to have intelligent design added to the books. I talked to a teacher. I know he's a high school teacher and a history teacher. And he basically said there's two makers of textbooks. Either you get the Texas one, you get the California one. Those are your two options. And so, you know, you know, they're not teaching the California one in half the states, over half the states. so, you know, they're not teaching the California one in half

the states, over half the states. And, you know, the Texas one is probably almost certainly omitting a bunch of stuff or changing history or making people feel good about slavery and other things. You know, those people aren't getting a good, solid education in those places. And then, you know, compound that with the idea that we use property taxes as a vehicle to fund schools in our area, which then perpetuates cycles of poverty and wealth. And it's just, I mean, it's just a fucking stupid system. It is terrible. We throw political wrenches in it like fucking hand grenades. Yep.

And nobody is doing this more than Florida. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. DeSantis is so fucking heavily involved. There was another story I saw just like last week, or maybe this week, I don't even know anymore. There was a public school, that elementary school that had to pull all the books from their classroom libraries because they needed to be reviewed to make sure that they didn't have content that violated the new Florida restrictions on, you know, anything that had gender

or sexual identity anywhere in it. And it makes no sense, right? Like what book, what book does not have gender and sexual identity in it? Like literally what book, what book does not have gender? There goes Little Women. There goes everything where there's characters, I know. If there are characters that interact.

Like an agender fucking robot or something. Right. Which they wouldn't want either. Right. Like, like any interaction is like, like all interactions are in some way and without a lot of reading into gendered interactions. Like if I am, if I'm Like if I mention in a book that I am a father or a son or a mother or a brother, all of those are gendered terms. I can't mention any, I can't have characters that are related to one another or married or dating or going to a dance with another person. Like you can't have a story of human beings.

What the fuck? How in the world? But it's not, they're not really trying to police, and that's why it's so absurd, right? They're not really trying to police mentions of gender and sexual identity.

They're trying to police mentions of gender and sexual identities, which they deem to be unacceptable to the right. The others, the others. If you don't fall into the I or the O, then you're out.

Yeah. That's it. Hey, all you planeteers at home. Remember, turn off the faucet between usages and recycle those plastics, or else I'll turn you into a fucking tree. Captain Planet, motherfucker. All right, so big caveat on the source here, motherfucker. Big caveat on the

source here, guys. This comes from Oddity Central. Oddity Central, Tom? Oddity Central. Oddity Central, Tom? Also, there is an embedded video from The Telegraph. Yes. The thing is,

Cecil, I did see that from The Telegraph, and that's why I felt comfortable. And I'll be blunt, I didn't go try to source this somewhere else because I just thought it was, it just reminded me actually of, again, a Citation Needed episode. This comes from Oddity Central. Politician drinks water from polluted Holy River to prove it is clean, ends up in the hospital. It's also in I Fucking Love Science. It's on Yahoo. It's also in I Fucking Love Science. It's on Yahoo. It's on Business Insider too.

Yeah. So it's made its way around. It looks like it's made its way around. Yeah. And again, there's a link from the Telegraph, which is in here. It's an embed from their YouTube channel. And that does go to their YouTube channel.

I did check that. So there is a river. It's the Kali Bain or Kali Bean. I'm sorry. I'm probably mispronouncing. It's a holy river for people that are of the Sikh faith. And it is an incredibly polluted river. It's a nasty old fucking grody polluted river. It's been cleaned up a little bit, but it's still a river. So it's still full of, and this fucking guy was like, yeah, it's a holy river. So it's totes fine. And he drops a fucking glass in there and fucking drink some drink to show everybody that it was fine. And the guy ends up getting the big tummy rumbles. And it's not just like he got the squirts.

He had to like get airlifted to a hospital, man. Like that's like a, like, like what is it? Battery acid? What did you drink, man? Holy shit. Goddamn. Get a life straw. What's wrong with you?

Right? Would it have been funny if he dropped a life straw on that thing? Bear Grylls drank his own piss and he didn't have to get airlifted to a hospital. He drank, Bear Grylls drank his own piss and he didn't have to get airlifted to a hospital. Did he like, he squeezed water from a fucking elephant poo and drank it and was fine. What is in your river?

He didn't even get elephant lifted to the hospital after that. Yeah, man. Well, and the thing is, is they had said, they had said that like, like I think he was doing it for a couple of reasons. One, it's a holy river to the Sikh because it's believed that that's where the founder of Sikhism, he bathed it in and achieved enlightenment.

I mean, okay, cool. He sat in the bath and thought, wow, it's cool to be alive. I don't know what happened. But anyway, this guy also is one of the people who's, I think, been sort of spearheading a weight or at least someone around him in his periphery has been sort of spearheading the cleanup of this. And so it's been, I think they're trying to prove that it's clean

and they didn't carry the wand. Yeah, right. And instead got carried to the hospital. Carried to the one. Yeah, right. And instead got carried to the hospital. Carried to the hospital. Yeah. Like, you know, even if it was clean of pollutants, rivers are full of like giardia and stuff.

Oh, I know. Yeah. Like, even if you like- There's all kinds of- Who shits in there? Lots of things shit in that water, man. Yeah. Like, what the fuck?

Why are you- You should not be drinking that. You got to run it through a filter of that brain-eating amoeba before you put it in your body, you know? This reminded me so much of, I think it's, wasn't it Midge? Thomas Midge? Yeah, Thomas Midgley. He's like fucking the leaded gasoline guy

that eventually got all the bad leaded gasoline stuff. Yeah, dude, like in front of a crowd of reporters was like, oh, everyone's afraid of tetraethyl lead. It's no problem. Look, I'll wash my hands and tetraethyl lead gotta go to the eye barrel now. Like, what the fuck? Like, these, like, demonstrations of

I totally promise it's safe. It reminds me, too, like, did you watch Tiger King? Yeah. There's a, like, did you watch Tiger King? Yeah. There's a, like, I listened to this long-form podcast about it, and I watched it, so I don't remember if it was on the documentary or not, but the guy who shoots himself accidentally in the head with the gun was

doing it to prove to the other guy that the gun wouldn't, like, he was like, oh, yeah, why don't you take the clip out? Like, it's totally safe. And then he just, like, shoots himself in the head and doesn't, like, take the bullet out of the chamber. No, there was a bullet in the chamber. I remember that. Yeah, yeah.

It was like his lover or whatever. Right, yeah. But he was trying to prove to somebody else that, like, it was totally fine and safe. Jesus Christ. And doesn't take the bullet out of the chamber. Do that in the air and then be like, thank goodness I didn't put that

up to my head. Same thing here. It's like, do that in a test tube and then be like, thank God I didn't put that in my body and have to get

airlifted to a hospital. Right. You know what this reminds me of too, Tom, is do you remember that the Virgin Mary that was like sewage

and people were like licking her toes and like getting sewage poison. Yeah, there was that guy. Remember we went to like Tam and that guy had like basically been like run out of the country

because he was trying to show everybody like there's like a sewer pipe. It's not like leaking joy water from heaven. She's not crying. She's not crying. The tears of heaven,

that's a poop, man. It's like, look, that statue's dry as fucking Ben Shapiro's wife. Like it's just got fucking poo water dripping out of it. Are you serious? What? So it's Ben Shapiro's mouth is what you're saying. Me, me, me, me, me. Look at me now.

Here comes the one who's getting married today. Oh, you gammon jealous bitches better get out of my way. Cause I've got a man and yous ain't got shit. And if yous haven't married by now, you poor bitches might as well quit. This story comes from NBC. GOP lawmaker attended gay son's wedding three days after voting against same-sex marriage. This is Representative Glenn Thompson. He's a Republican from Pennsylvania. And his gay son got married.

Good for him. And then pretty much immediately, his dad voted against a bill which would have protected gay marriage, a bill which is only necessary because the Supreme Court has basically invalidated all of its prior rulings. And it's in reverse order, right? So his dad didn't vote on it. And then he got married afterwards, right? Yeah, he voted no. Yeah. He voted no. Yeah. And then after voting against, after voting to strip the rights of other people just like his son, three days later, he goes and celebrates his son's wedding. It's so funny because you know for sure that it's, I mean, like, one, you don't presume that he hates his son.

Right? And you also, I also don't presume that he's necessarily anti-gay in the sense that he dislikes gay people. I think what he is, is someone who recognizes his own constituency would be very upset with him if he did something and he knows something's going to pass. And so he's just like, these are people who don't have any principles. Never, ever, ever think that these people have a principle that they're standing on. They are only doing the things that they need to do to continue having this job. That is all they're doing.

They're not doing anything that is, because most of the stuff they do is politically motivated. We talk about it on the show all the time, Tom, how many people like certain things that are a majority of people in the country agree that this should be a thing, and yet they still don't enact it. They still stop it from happening.

And it's because of, you know, lobbying power to keep them in power. It's all about, you know, knowing how they can cut up their little section of the pie every single time. And, you know, I'm not letting this guy off the hook for being an absolute shit, right? I think he's an absolute shit.

But I think that, you know, like, like, it could also be too that he doesn't like gay people in general, but he loves his son. Yeah. You know,

there's a couple of options. There, there are. The thing is, I read his, like, he gave a very nice speech at his son's wedding. There was video that came out

and it was transcribed and I read the transcription. He gave a very nice speech welcoming his new son-in-law into his family. It was a very unreserved sounding speech. It was a little awkward. He's not a good speaker, weirdly enough, but it was a little awkward. But he gave a very nice speech. I think a couple of things are important to note. I think you're absolutely right, Cecil, that guys like this, they're not acting on principle. They are acting on political impulse.

And so we have to look at this and say, all right, well, if the political impulse for these people is so strong that they can't tell right from wrong anymore, then we need to adjust the system by creating very short-term limits. We should be moving people in and out of this system of governance much, much quicker than we do. We should not have lifelong senators. We should not have lifelong Congress people at all. You should not be getting term after term after term after term because now you're embedded in a system and you don't know how to go get another job. This should be something that you do for a short period in your life as an act of civil and public service. That's it. And if we can't figure that piece of this system out, this is the

inevitable result. People will do a lot of shit to preserve their jobs and their power and their money. And I can't entirely blame people. I do, but I can't entirely blame people for preserving their ability to feed their family, right? Their ability to keep their jobs. I do think these people generally have lots of options, but still. I think they do too. Be generous. Yeah, man. I mean, this is a privileged position and they can walk out and get another position really easily. Really easily. Yeah. So, but term limits are part of the answer to this. I think the other thing to note is like this motherfucker knew that his kid would not be affected. He knew that no law was going to get passed. Yeah. Right. So these fucking assholes, they always get theirs first. Yeah. And then they

take from you. Yeah. He was absolutely happy to make sure that he would attend his son's wedding because his son's rights were never in danger. The timeline doesn't work, right? Pennsylvania didn't have a law. What he was voting on was a federal law, which will hopefully pass and will make same-sex marriage legal at a federal level so states themselves can't restrict that right so there is not a pending piece of pennsylvania legislation which would have gone into effect that could have affected his son's ability to get married so he knew his son was going to get his yeah so as long as he's safe as long as his family's protected then he's going to do the other thing to protect himself and his family,

which is to do politically motivated shit. And his son, probably because this guy's lived a privileged life, also has some sort of privilege that can probably, if it gets outlawed in his state, go to a place where he can, you know, like they have the options

to be in the parts of the United States that will allow gay people to continue their unions, even if the Supreme Court rules against it or whatever, and they toss it back down to the states again, because that seems to be what they want to do. Well, if they do that, then they toss it back down to the states in places like Illinois and New York and California. And, you know, like, you know, 20 other places maybe on the map are going to say, your marriage is fine here. And the other places will either be stuck between, you know, maybe allowing unions or nothing at all. And that's what, that's what, and so there,

so his son won't ever be stuck in Alabama. Yep. Absolutely, man. Absolutely. This, this kind of disingenuous liar's bullshit, it's important to point out because the hypocrisy is preventable. The system can be revised. We can make changes to the system. We can create term limits. We can make the process less just transparently politically motivated, personally politically motivated. We can fix it. Yeah. I also too,

I know that there's a push for people to say, well, it's just hypocrisy. They're just hypocrites. There's nothing you can do. It's not going to change them. And I know that. This guy's not going to change his mind. He doesn't care that this,

this guy doesn't care this story's out. He literally doesn't care. He's not, it's not going to change him at all. It may be used as an attack ad in some ways against him by somebody else who's probably more conservative. Because I can't imagine a left-leaning person using this as an attack ad to be like, he goes to gay marriage weddings. What do you do as his attack? I don't know what your attack ad even says. But a lot of people will say, pointing out hypocrisy doesn't matter. Yes, it matters.

We have to point it out every single time, every opportunity we get, we have to point it out and you have to keep pointing it out over and over and over again. Because when you start to let it slip, then it doesn't matter. And then they can just literally do whatever they want, but you have to always call them back constantly and say, no, that's a hypocrite stance. You're doing one thing and then you're saying another. That's a hypocrite stance and you've got to keep doing it. Democrats think they have a right to all the black people, but that's not the case. We are not a monolith. Democrats may be cool, but they ain't practical. There you go. Republicans are practical.

Black people are practical. Come to think of it, get those pants. I think black Republicans are pretty cool. So am I. So here, here, here. Not to mention very diverse. There we go. Mm-hmm.

Excuse me, gentlemen. Sorry to interrupt. Someone's white wife is here to pick them up? Oh, what was up? Oh, yeah, I mean, that's OK. What here to pick them up? What's her name, Emily? She was white. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

Texas log cabin Republicans are finally admitting the obvious. We failed. The log cabin Republicans have long espoused the idea that they could work from within the Republican Party to make the Republican Party more amenable to things like gay marriage, which I have no idea how the fuck you think you could possibly do that. But here we are in 2022, and rather than the Republican Party becoming slightly more progressive, even as the demographic reality of this country shows more and more and more and more people are much more accepting of gay marriage. The Republicans are doubling down and doubling back into the past and into history.

And the log cabin Republicans are finally like, well, shucks. Well, golly. Huh. That didn't work. I don't think it's the work of the diligent log cabin Republicans that have changed public opinion on gay marriage. all these years that we've had and have witnessed gay relationships and people coming out of the closet and people becoming more and more like slowly, progressively, more and more accepting of those couples. And then specifically big decisions coming down from the Supreme Court to make it a thing all across the country. So you can't discriminate against a gay relationship like that. Like that's a huge, that's a huge thing for opening up people's

eyes. It's like, it reminds me of like when California pushed back and they said, and this was on energy efficient cars. They had pushed back a while back against Trump to say, no, man, we're going to make some really restrict shit. And a bunch of people, a bunch of the automakers were like, well, we're going to follow what California wants because they're a huge demographic.

And I think the rest of the country would do this if we all just got on board and we all just admitted that we're just cool with it. Like, okay, man, we're all just cool with it. Who cares? The moment you see that demographic has tipped so much, you can then open up and say, okay, well, we've changed all the structures in this country to now be accepting. There's no going back. We can't retool the machine, so to speak. But the problem is there's some of these people, some of these hateful, disgusting people

in some of these states, and a lot of them are politicians and a lot of them are religious leaders, and they are hateful, grotesque people who hate gay people beyond compare and have never taken their foot off the gas, have never once taken their foot off the gas. And in this article, you know,

you get fucking Abbott signing like a Chick-fil-A fucking bill or something. Yep, save the Chick-fil-A bill into law. I want to shit on the log cabin Republicans very specifically for a second. And I want to shit on them with a quote from one of these folks. This is from Paul von Wuppertfeld.

We failed to moderate the Republican Party. I'm glad we tried, and I think we did the right thing by trying, and we're actually going the other way faster and faster. Fuck you, man. The Republican Party has been transparent about their stance from day one. Your desire to moderate the Republican Party

is because a lot of these people in the log cabin Republican, they are themselves gay. And what they want, Cecil, is they want all of the other evil bullshit restrictions the Republicans stand for, but they want to be included too. So they weren't asking to moderate

the Republican stance on any of its other evil bullshit. On abortion. Right. They were always trying to take women's rights away. They were always trying to financially devastate people of color.

They were always trying to do all the rest. They were fine, Cecil, with all the rest of the discriminatory bullshit evil practices. And they were saying, oh, you know, the rest of the discriminatory bullshit evil practices. And they were saying, oh, you know, we were trying to be a moderating force. Fuck you. Only for one thing.

And you wanted that because you wanted yours. You wanted your tax cuts, motherfucker. That's what you wanted. You wanted your tax cuts. You wanted to win at the expense of others. That's what the Republican Party is about. It is about a small minority of this country winning at the expense of others. And you were mad that they wouldn't let you in the club because you love someone that they don't approve of. So what you were trying to do is get them to open the door a tiny crack enough so you could get all

of the winning at the expense of others. That's what you really wanted. Fuck the log cabin Republicans. They were never going to moderate or soften the Republican Party. They never wanted to. They just wanted to sit at a lunch table full of bullies. And they only wanted to moderate them on one tiny issue. Yes. Now, don't get me wrong.

I want them to moderate on that issue along with a bunch of other issues and get them so that they're more progressive in every way. But I but if you're going to throw out all the rest of the issues and be like, no, that's fine. Then I then I agree with you. It's like, fuck off. Fuck off. You know, you're the one who picked the fucking snake up. What the fuck did you think it was? Exactly. No sympathy at all. None. did you think it was exactly no sympathy at all none die in a fire log cabin republicans because it's not windy then they're just doing that's why they do it in windy places because the turbines are being spun by wind yeah i'm not talking about the ones to generate i'm talking about the wind turbines for global warming what i thought that's what they were for no yeah yeah it is for global warming because they're trying to stop

to cool down the earth oh my god oh shit isn't that is that what he thought you thought he was like a fan basically bro just wear it

no okay wait hold on what about what about hey I'm done with you I'm done with you that's what I said for global warming wait let's let him finish so That's why I said for global warming, wait, let's let him finish.

So when you think it's for global warming, what was you gonna say? No, as in you're not using like, you thought that it was cooling down stuff. He thought the fans were cooling down the- Isn't that what you use fans for? It's not a fan. It's a fan, what is it, a winter, a fan, bruv.

It's not a fan, bruv. It's not a fan. It's not a fan. It's a fan. What is it? A winter? A fan, bruv. It's not a fan, bruv. It's not a fan. It's not a fan. It's a fan, bruv. These guys are idiots. It's a fan. Stand in front of it. I bet you'll be cold.

This story comes from the BBC. The audacious PR plot that seeded doubt about climate change. It's kind of a longer BBC article. And it really, I think the heart of this article to me, Cecil, when I read it is that much of the disastrous inactivity that we've encountered in our non-existent fight against climate change that we are going to pay for, for fucking ever now, really comes down to a handful of industry insiders who changed, literally worked with PR companies to change the rhetoric and the narrative and the language around climate and around climate change.

And by controlling that language, they've really captured and stalled the argument. And it was all about doubt. All they had to do was seed a little doubt into there. And what they did was they fed on the conflict that occurs when you put two people in a platform and then have a debate. And so they recognize that that's going to get viewership,

that's going to get clicks, that's going to get whatever. that's going to get clicks that's going to get whatever and the news organizations fed on that and so what they did was they just fed what the news organizations were looking for they were looking for this debate and so what they did was they furnished a debate they went out and found any of the voices out there that were negative that that had some seed of doubt in them that said, I don't know about all this stuff that all these scientists agree on. And instead, they made it seem like this one person who's supposedly also an expert has the exact same

weight of their opinion as the other person who they're arguing against, who happens to be backed by like reams and reams and reams of data. And they, and they treat those like equals and they treat them, they give them equal time and equal amount to talk about it to each other and equal amount to refute each other's points. And then they pass it back off to the audience to say, well, now you get to make your decision. Well, you're the one who portrayed it in a way to make it seem like it's a coin flip and it's not a coin flip. It's all the data on one side, no data on the other, just a willingness to make a little bit of money to maybe to embellish your doubts on television so that you could continue to make this paycheck that these PR companies are willing to pay you. Yeah, it is a well-known and unfortunately effective strategy that if you take an issue and you turn it into a fucking intelligence squared debate, then you are telling everybody by virtue of that debate, you're telling everybody that there are two sides,

but there are not two sides to every question. There are not two sides to the speed of acceleration due to gravity on earth. That's a measurable known thing we can know. There are not two sides. But if I put two people at a lectern and I got one guy who says that, oh, the speed of gravity, the acceleration due to the speed of gravity, it really depends on the variety of fact. It makes a bunch of shit up. And the other guy

has all the facts. But if I'm in the audience, I'm like, wow, this seems like there's a lot of debate on this issue. This is not a settled question. Right, right. Creating that uncertainty is why we've gotten nothing fucking done. That's like from the article, the same tactics would now help beat climate regulation. They would persuade people that the scientific facts weren't settled and that alongside the environment,

policymakers needed to consider how action on climate change would negatively affect American jobs, trade, and prices. So it's kind of a twofold piece. First, let's pretend that facts aren't all facts. Like, let's pretend that there's a debate where there's not actually a debate. Let's pretend that the scientific data here wasn't settled. And then let's misconstrue or muddy that water with saying, well, but even if it were true, and we're not even saying that it is, but even if it were true, doing anything about it would, you know, cost everybody who ever met their job and we'll all

be poor. And yeah, your cars will, and they sell you this like worst quality of life and this like scaremongering stuff about lost jobs and trade and, you know, increased prices and all this stuff. And you're like, wow, all that. And the data's not even in? Fuck. It's so smart. It is. It's such a fucking smart strategy, but it's a liar's strategy. And they knew it was a liar's strategy.

They hired a PR firm to lie to us. Yeah. Not only that, they got away with it for under a million bucks, right? Half a million then, 850 million now. But, or 850,000 now.

I mean, like, am I wrong? Was it a million? It was under a million, right? Yeah, it was. It's fucking like no money, man. It's like no money whatsoever. It's no money whatsoever to essentially ruin the earth, to ruin the earth for future generations. They were able to, for not a lot of buy-in, create tons of pushback against this idea that many, that all, like pretty much all the scientists agreed on, that pretty much everybody agreed on. And the problem is that we're willing to take that paycheck in exchange for our own kid,

even, because our own kid is a long-term project and humans are terrible at looking at, they're only, we're only good at looking at short-term stuff. We are never very good at looking at long-term things. And so when we look at long-term things, we're like, well, what does it do for me today? And if it doesn't do anything for me today, then it's like fucking strip mine it all, tear it all down. I don't care. I want the biggest profits I can get today and not care about the future. And we've proven that time and time again. And man, they have done, there's been so much that we're going, the acceleration of this has happened so much quicker

than people have thought that it was going to happen. Like scientists thought they're like, man, it's going to be real bad in like 50 years. And then it's like 20 years later, like, wait, whoops. I mean, wow, wow, wow. We to be real bad in like 50 years. And then it's like 20 years later, like, wait, whoops. I mean, wow. Wow. Wow. We didn't think that was going to happen.

Yep. I mean, now you're going to need a life straw to drink out of like meat or whatever. I want to read from this article because I think this is real interesting. And I'll read it quickly because it's a little longer, but I think it needs to be heard. While most climate scientists agreed that human-caused climate change was a real issue that would require action, a small group argued there was no cause for alarm. The plan was to pay these skeptics to give speeches or write op-eds and to arrange media tours so they could appear on local TV and radio stations. My role was to identify the voices that were not in the mainstream

and to give those voices a stage, said Reem. There was a lot we didn't know at the time, and part of my role was to highlight what we didn't know. He says the media was hungry for these perspectives. Journalists were actually actively looking for the contrarians. It was really feeding an appetite that was already there. Many of these skeptics or deniers have rejected the idea that funding from the GCC and other industry groups had an impact on their views, but the scientists and environmentalists tasked with repudiating them, arguing the reality of climate change, encountered a well-organized and effective campaign they found hard to match. The global climate collision is seeding doubt everywhere,

just fogging the air, and environmentalists really don't know what's hitting them, said environmental campaigner John Pascodonto. What the geniuses of the PR firms who work for these big fossil fuel companies know is that truth has nothing to do with who wins the argument. If you say something enough times, people will begin to believe it. Yeah, man. That's that misattributed Goebbels quote or whatever. Yeah, man. Just say it over and over. People will believe it. And it's fucking true, man. It's super true. I want to say too, I think there's a way to beat this back,

but it has to be done through policy that changes how industry works and then to push the industry to then sell stuff that they might not want to sell because it's not expedient and they have to change their processes. But if you change their process, like you suddenly turn multiple GM plants and other car plants into electric plants instead of into fucking gas plants, it's harder to switch them back. So if you can get legislation to make them switch

and get that stuff switched and get that and enforce that innovation, and there's this new bill that just, that it looks like it's going to pass. So we don't know yet. Mansions on board and other people might be on board. It just depends. But there's a big portion of this that's climate-based.

And it's good because it extends tax cuts for people who are looking to get the solar energy in their house. And that's a great way to convince people to get solar energy, is to offer them that sort of money up front and tax breaks, and then also the money that they can save then

on their utility bills. You start changing the way cars have to be sold, then there's no option for the consumer. It's now just a decision to just buy that car and be like, okay, well, I guess I have to get this hybrid. And then suddenly there's no, it's way harder to go back once you've changed. You know, that's why they didn't want to do it in the first place because they didn't want to change it up. But if you force the change, going back is just as big a headache as it was to shift over. And so they don't want to do that.

And so they're going to follow that road of least resistance or path of least resistance. And they're going to keep doing it. If you can change these things in law to force their hand and to force the hand of corporations to do this, you can really change a lot of the aspects of climate change relatively soon. I mean, you can do a lot. You can do a lot. We've just been fucking paralyzed because we can't do anything in our government. Part of government's job is to change the incentive structure of an economy that has a deeply held economic inertia. So there is this intense inertia where the entire system lurches in this one direction because it has lurched in this direction for however long. And so the energy

industry looks a certain way and it has this entire economic and physical infrastructure built around that kind of an energy infrastructure. That's never going to change on its own because all the directionality and weight of force is moving in that space. Government's job is to change the incentive structure because you've got to do something to arrest the inertia of the existing energy infrastructure. You've got to do something there. That's one of the things government has to step in and fucking do. If you just wait for it, if you just wait for all the capitalist incentives to catch up, things have to get so bad with fossil fuel that all of a sudden, it's cheaper now to do something else.

But fossil fuels have a hundred years of innovation making them cheap. So like, you've got to have an externality event and government has to be that externality. Yes. So next week, we're going to read our patrons. This week, we can't read our patrons because we didn't record last night. We normally do, and Ian normally has an opportunity to enter patrons, and he didn't do it this week.

I know we have last week's patrons to get to. We promise in next week, we'll read two weeks of patrons. It's just we've had a bad recording schedule, but we will do it next week. So patrons, thank you so much for being patrons. We appreciate it. Patrons just got our last episode

that was patron only release for the book club. We read the first third of Radley Belko's Rise of the Warrior Cop and released our discussion on it. I know that there was some confusion. Some people thought that maybe we would read the book to them. That is not going to happen. We don't think that's ever going to happen again.

In fact, that was a one-time thing only that we did. So we don't ever think that we're ever going to have a Tom read a book to you type thing, unless we decide to do our own book. But, but the book is available both in print and on audible. And we,

we, we covered the first third of it and we had, I thought a really good discussion that's available only for patrons. So if you're interested, you can become a patron on a per episode basis and go listen to that episode. This is from Alexander and he says, hey Cecil, when are you gonna have another episode

of Seasoned Liberally? I am, so here's the thing. I had a problem with my kitchen I had to fix. And once I did that, I wanted to try to find a better way to film because it takes me hours to set up my setup and then I have to tear it down. And it's like a whole day worth of stuff in order to do one episode. And I want to try to find a way to quickly film rather than find a way to like do all the work that goes into the YouTube of cooking. And I actually put up a job description on Upwork and no one contacted me.

So I have to do it again. Nobody really? Yeah. I wanted to pay somebody to ask them questions about what cameras equipment should I be using? What lighting system is fast to use? Are these shots the best shots? Would you suggest other shots? I basically wanted a cinematographer, but I need a local one because I need someone to like see the space and like look at the space. And I need someone with like, I want someone with a lot of experience. I don't just want to get somebody

who like one time picked up a camera and I haven't been able to find anybody yet. So I'm going to keep posting it. The moment I get a bite on it, I'm going to try to start filming more, but I just got to make the workflow easier for me to do it. Cause it's a solo project.

So it takes a very long time to do, and I want to try to speed it up. I'm not giving up on it and I will do it. I just haven't had, I just, it's just carving out that much time to do it. Even when it's super slow is very hard and I need to make it so it's more streamlined,

but I, it's, it's going to happen in the future. I got it. I just got to figure out how to do it. We got a message. This is what is that? Pierre Ives?

Is that how you would say that? Sure. Pierre Ives. I don't know if that's correct. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name. It said the Pope came to Canada to apologize for the horrible way his church treated the First Nations as a country a bit late to the party. Oops, when you

guys found out, then we're sorry. Sorry, yeah. We didn't apologize to preempt any of this. We only waited until after you found out. When you found the mass graves, that's when we decided we were sorry. That's when we knew we had to apologize. So we got a message

from If I I Jane Dickweed gets it then so should you that's a great name that's a great name apparently NYC's own mobile crisis emergency services program is active and reducing the number of hospital visits

per emergency call that's great evidently the number is 888 NYCC-WELL, W-E-L-L, and it's reducing. I mean, that's great. That's awesome.

I think everything should, I mean, it should work like that, right? Yep. A couple people sent this in, Tom, that the Brooklyn pastor got robbed of a million dollars in jewelry while he was on the stage. Man, are you not just thinking, why do you have a million dollars in jewelry while he was on the stage. Man, are you not just thinking,

why do you have a million dollars in jewelry with you? That's what I'm thinking. Like, I don't want to like, I don't think you should be like robbing people. So I don't want to be like, ha ha or whatever. But at the same time, I want to say like, man, you're wearing a million. And I also don't want to kind of blame the victim

in some way to be like, you're wearing a million dollars. But at the same time, it's like, how do you have, you know, the one thing I want to say is, how do your congregants think it's anything except for about you if you're wearing a million dollars? That's the only thing I want to say about it. You know, it's like, how do your congregants walk into your place and think, I'm doing a good thing today? The problem isn't that somebody has a million dollars in jewelry. Like, I don't care. The problem is that that million dollars worth of jewelry came from probably tens of thousands of small donations from people who are almost certainly poor. Yeah. And they are being grifted. And want to help someone, right? Like you gave that money to them with intent that it was going to be doing

something good because that's what you're told when you give church money to church. Exactly. Is that it's doing a good thing. And it's not doing anything except for enriching this guy's earlobes or something. And it's enriching somebody so much that he has a million dollars just in jewelry. Yeah, right. Just in garbage. Just garbage.

We got a message from Char. Char, I don't know. I mispronounced your name last time. So there you go. So I mispronounced it again. But this is a person who works for Camp Quest Michigan. And they said they were able to host 52 campers with a staff of 16 volunteers.

I think that's great. We were able to get a little bit of the word out. I'm sure other people heard about it from different places, but anybody who reached out and was able to help out with Camp Quest Michigan, you're just helping a great thing happen. So congratulations on a good season. All right, so next week

we hope we'll be back on YouTube, and we will be back on the regular podcast. And you can also come check us out. You can check us out every Thursday night, 9 Central, unless you're here during the day, we won't be doing it. But most of the time is we're pretty regular. Every Thursday, you come show up. 9 Central will be on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. You can catch our live streams. People have been really enjoying them.

We've covered a lot of the January 6th stuff. So if you missed any of that, you can go back and re-watch some of those hearings. We watched them. So you can watch the hearings, hear what we have to say about them. It was a lot of fun. We put a lot of time into it. So go check those out. And we should be back on YouTube next week. So come check us out. That is going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead,

pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. Leo Pisces. Cancer cures. Detox. Reflex. Foot massage. Death in towers. Tarot cards. Psychic healing. 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. Double speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. 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.

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