Pirate Wires - LA Is On Fire & Trump’s Manifest Destiny | PIRATE WIRES EP#82 🏴‍☠️

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

EPISODE #82: Anything happen while we were away? Our excitement for the new year fell off a cliff this week as Los Angelas caught on fire. The typical climate change narratives were used by politicians, but this event seems to be a complete failure of California government policies. Are we even sure it was a natural disaster at this point? Trump came in swinging in the new year, suggesting renaming the Panama Canal to the America Canal as well as a rebrand of The Gulf Of America. What is Trump’s actual plan here? Mark Zuckerberg continues his based journey by announcing that Meta will no longer use fact checkers. And finally, while you were away, an H1B war was waged on Twitter. We’ll catch you up on everything that happened. Happy New Year! (?)  Featuring Mike Solana, Riley Nork, Matt Marlinski, Kartik Sathappan We have partnered with Polymarket! Download the Polymarket: Election Forecast app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/polymarket-election-forecast/id6648798962 - Disclaimer: Not Financial Advice, For Entertainment Purposes Only. Sign Up For The Pirate Wires Daily!  https://get.piratewires.com/pw/daily https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Riley Twitter: https://x.com/rylzdigital Matt Twitter: https://x.com/mattmarlinski Kartik Twitter: https://x.com/sathaxe TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod! 1:30 - LA Fires 35:00 - Trump's Manifest Destiny 46:30 - Odd's That Trump Will Rename The Gulf Of Mexico - SPONSORED BY POLYMARKET 52:35 - Based Zuck Announces The End Of Fact Checking On Meta 1:00:00 - Elon & Vivek Battle Over H1B Immigration  1:26:00 - Thanks For Watching Friends! Like & Subscribe #podcast #technology #politics #culture

Three, two, one, happy new year! The good news is, I'm a great grandfather. The Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory. The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US. Can you assure the world that you are not gonna use military or economic coercion?

No. Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis that it is. Like, so you're not even doing the basics right, then you're gonna blame Trump and like the evil demon Republicans on climate change? Like, that's insane. I do not give a shit.

Don't care. My cup is full of bull— No more. There's no more room for bullshit. I don't care. Is that really as stupid as someone who just chooses to do nothing about any of these problems? Imagine just saying Canada's gonna be a state three times and their prime minister resigns.

Like, that's— Why are you here? Like, get out of here. Like, I don't invite you. Imagine just saying Canada's going to be a state three times and their prime minister resigns. Why are you here? Get out of here. I don't invite you. You don't need your moral guidance. Go home. And we are back. We are back in 2025. Welcome back to the pod. What is up, guys? Riley, great to see you again. Matt, joining today.

Brandon out while he is dealing with stuff. He lives in Los Angeles, as does Riley. Riley's a little closer to the water. Down in, what are you, Venice, I believe, or something like that? Yeah. Brandon is up near one of the fires, so they had to evacuate, sadly. Prayers for Brandon Goral.

He is now dealing with that, so he's off. But we're carrying on with Pirate Idol for the next four weeks, full segments. And our very first guest, we've got Cardick in the house here to discuss all this stuff with us. I'd ask you all about your holiday, but there's a lot going on in the world, and I think that we need to actually talk about it. Riley, why don't you break down? Let's start with what's going on in Los Angeles.

Yeah, let's get into the giant fiery Armageddon that's a few miles away from me as we speak. So multiple fires have hit the Los Angeles area area this week um anecdotally it had felt like the conditions for a fire were there all week it's been super dry highs in like the 70s super windy starting tuesday especially and lo and behold tuesday morning at around 10 30 um the palisades fire the largest of these recent fires was first reported and it quickly grew to just like an insane hard to comprehend magnitude as of this morning it's burned 17 234 acres that's according to the watch duty app which i've had to rely on since you can't count on this state for anything um and the images have just been horrific, like entire neighborhoods just like

reduced to ash. The Pacific Palisades neighborhood is like a wasteland right now. Beloved restaurants like burned to the ground. The aerial footage has been insane. My brother and a ton of friends have had to evacuate. Brandon, like you mentioned, had to evacuate as a result of one of the other fires currently going on in Los Angeles. And it's just heartbreaking stuff. There have been at least two deaths last time I saw, which frankly, thank God it's not worse than that because it easily could have with just the scale. Oh, it's definitely worse than that. Those are the two that counted yesterday, but there's definitely more. Yeah. It's going to get worse. Yeah. And the cause is still undetermined as of this recording, though I saw a stat that something like 95% of wildfires are caused by humans rather than lightning or any other factor.

And insanely, this was just posted last night by Andrew Huberman. Matt flagged this. But there have been reports of people starting fires in other urban parts of LA just randomly. We're at 302 Pico and people are lighting fires now. You can see they lit a fire. These guys, not all the people there, but some of those guys lit that fire. And they're actually, the trees caught fire and then the palms are catching fire. Which sort of begs the question if we're dealing with something like much more sinister here,

like some kind of like sleeper cell situation or anything. I don't know. But one thing we do know is like that whenever there's any type of natural disaster, politicians will be there to sound the climate change button instantly. Bernie Sanders did exactly that saying of the fires that broke out in an area under exclusive purview of Democrat politicians. Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis that it is um just two quick things on that and then i'll kick it to you guys so i don't necessarily have a problem with the people talking about the potential role of climate change in these disasters but to exclusively point to that and not say a single word of any of the other potential contributing factors like

about fire hydrants malfunctioning, about Karen Bass cutting the fire department budget by $18 million is just crazy. And the second thing is, does it have to be the very first thing to come out of your mouth? Can we wait for the elementary school to stop smoldering

before we start talking about carbon footprint and why we all need to cut back on plastic straw use? It's just insane. But I will stop my California rant and yeah, I'll let you guys get into this. It's just this incredible obfuscation that we've seen for years. I started writing Pirate Wires in 2020 and that was around the time... It was right around that time. It was maybe like... I mean, it was a wild first year from COVID and then a year after COVID, so into 2021. And I believe it was in 2021 when the fires got really bad up in San Francisco or north of San Francisco and the sky turned orange.

And it was just relentless fires back then. But once the sky turned orange, it was this wild, just dystopian feel. It's hard to get back into um that headspace actually like things are better now in a lot of ways than they were back in 2021 it was really really really dark dark period i think for for america and i remember being really frustrated because uh everybody was as the skies were orange talking about climate change that was the narrative that was um you know this is pre-elon twitter so that was not only like the narrative that was the enforced narrative that's, you know, this is pre Elon Twitter. So that was not only like the narrative, that was the enforced narrative. That's all that you saw everywhere on both media and social media. And I wrote this piece called Global Warming Ate My Homework. And it was about land management. It

was about the fact that we've known about this problem for decades. It was about the fact that even I don't understand, I'm actually not convinced that climate change is to blame here. California has been wildfire prone since the dawn of California history, pre-recorded history, because when Europeans came over, it was already a thing. You can look at the geological record and there's evidence for fires dating back forever. They are getting worse, actually, I think, because we're preventing them in parts, and we're overdeveloping. And so fuel is building up. They used to have these massive statewide fires. Because that doesn't happen anymore, the fuel builds and builds and builds. And if you don't manage it properly, you get these massive, crazy fires. And they come fast,

and a lot of people lose everything and many people die. And you have to figure that out. You need better irrigation methods. You need better water collection. What is it called with the reservoirs? You need to fix your reservoir system. So you're capturing the rainwater rather than letting it roll out into the ocean. You need to be doing controlled burning. You need to be developing in a smarter way. You do have to be thoughtful about where you're allowing residential zoning and things like this. And these were all things. And also, you need better firefighting equipment. It's not like we don't know this is going to happen. I mean, people have been talking about, there were the fires in Los Angeles and the hills a handful of

years back. And people have been talking about a crisis like this coming for many, many, many, many years. And so if that's the case, if we knew it this coming for many, many, many, many years. And so if that's the case, if we knew it was coming, if it always is happening, it's not like, oh my God, who could have thought that there was a fire? Then the onus is on you as the people in charge to figure something out and to correct a plan. And as I was watching this all unfold this week, I thought, man, it is just the exact same story. Totally, it's the exact same thing. Only this time, the idea that these people are to blame, our leaders are to blame, has gained much more traction. It is a much bigger part of the story now. And to the point where I really don't, it's like an unmistakable part of the story. I would say it's louder than the climate change

piece. Totally parallel universe, New York Times. When you look at their coverage, it's not there at all, which is interesting. But I don't know, Cardick, what do you make of how the conversation has changed? Or maybe I'm wrong about that. Yeah, I think that the conversation is stuck still, which is the most annoying part. A couple of things I would take away, even to echo some of what Riley said, is everyone is blaming climate change, but it's so easy to disarm that argument because even if it was 100% solely the fault of climate change that we have fires, it still wouldn't excuse the gross mismanagement and inability to solve these fires. It actually makes it even worse because if you

know the problem and the problem's been going on forever and everybody responsible believes in it, then you should fucking solve it. Right? So I think that's kind of the most annoying and damning part about this climate change issue. And then the other thing I've seen is, you know, Huberman shared that post of people setting fires and people talked about how, oh, you know, this echoes kind of this old time. Even you were alluding to when there were fires north of San Francisco, I was here. It was orange. It was also COVID. The photos of me are like wearing a mask during that time.

And so it was weird. But like there was a reason for it to be weird then. Now it's just a normal January. There's no COVID. There's no riots. You know what I mean? But people are still just setting fires for the fuck of it because I think they've learned that maybe it's fun or no one cares anymore.

Or they're drug addicts. I mean, this is a city that prioritizes the well-being of antisocial drug-addicted vagrants over the families and taxpayers who live in the city. So they're all over the place doing fucked up shit. I mean, if you're starting a fire right now, then this is happening. It seems like there are reports all over the city. So they're all over the place doing fucked up shit. I mean, if you're starting a fire right now, then this is happening. It seems like there are reports all over the city. So if you're looting houses from people who are fleeing a fire, that's really bad. It's right here. If you are starting more fires, I don't even know where to begin and it seems like there are many of them um and i that could be as i think you alluded to riley you know is that is that a foreign actor

uh it seems really bad so you want to say that but what if it's this worst thing which is just this kind of the degradation of the american soul to the point where there are these just ghouls wandering around inflicting chaos on society who I would love to know how many of them we're actually paying to live. I would bet, I mean, if there was a polymarket for this, it would be like thousands of dollars that out of all the people lighting fires, at least half of them are getting some kind of government assistance. That's what I think is happening. I really do think it's just drug addicted vagrants who are doing this it's like they're feeling the energy of the craziness it's that charles manson you know southern california

vibe they just like caught it and are wreaking havoc and um really bad really really really dark but the failure to stop them like really speaks to the like mismanagement of leadership that we talked about. And it really is unfortunate that like with super majorities in California, thanks to a lot of factors, you know, immigration, major industries in the state, like entertainment that are historically liberal, you know, voters who are frustrated with the status quo really like don't have any other choice that they like would in other jurisdictions or at like the national level. Like if you feel the president is doing poorly well guess what you can always vote for someone who presents a different vision in four years like that just happened this past

november but if you hate the way this wildfire was handled or how the state treats these vagrants who presumably are starting arson like your tax dollar or yeah your tax dollar is going to high-speed rail train that was supposed to go to SF and is now going to an entirely different state. If you hate any of these problems, you just have no choice other than to accept it. A part of me wants to believe this is going to be a catalyst for change, but another part of me thinks that similar to COVID, it's just going to be a catalyst for more people to leave the state. Let's focus on the global warming thing for a second, because the reason that this has not been a catalyst for change is because you have had this thing that you could point to and say, it's this. But I don't, even for the most blinded leftist MSNBC watching, Trump hating individual. I don't know how decades into this, decades it's been,

into just the global warming question, you could tolerate the idea that there has at least not been some kind of prevention. Because what exactly are the Democrats, when Bernie Sanders stands up and says, we need to address climate change right now, what I'm really hearing is we're not going to prepare for wildfires until you decarbonize the entire planet. And that's stupid. That's never going to happen. So if that's never going to happen, then all you're doing is not helping. And it's very clear that that's what you're doing, is you're just waving your hands up in the air and you're blaming this abstract idea that is associated with right-wing people who are not in charge of your state. There's been a comparison to hurricanes in Florida that I've

seen quite a bit. It's like, oh, you're blaming the fires, but you're not, what about the hurricanes in Florida or something? And I guess here, I've heard the hurricane thing a bit before. I've watched people typically on the left blame people who are living in hurricane areas for two things, one for voting red, and then because those people don't believe in hurricane areas for two things, one for voting red, and then because those people don't believe in climate change, but then two for living in hurricane prone areas. Now they're sort of attaching this to the sort of like, well, if you're going to blame the leftist government of California for not preparing for wildfires, then I'm going to blame Rhonda Santos for not doing something about hurricanes.

What would you have to do to stop hurricanes? Us actually asked that question. It seems much bigger. I actually do think it would be kind of cool to see massive land barriers along the entire Florida coast. It would be really wild if the whole thing, a huge multiple miles all the way down this mega engineering project. But that's the kind of thing that it would take. It's like some ring world shit is what you need to do something about hurricanes, unless Donald Trump's idea of nuking the hurricanes has legs. Maybe. Don't know. I'm listening though. And that's kind of one of his ideas. That's like one of his ideas that it's like, I don't know that I want to be nuking hurricanes in the Gulf. However, I like where his head's at. Let's be thinking about how do we stop these things? What could we do to do something? The idea that what you really have in the nuke hurricane thing is a man who is wondering what can we do about hurricanes. And that is not a kind of thinking that we really have in America, generally speaking.

generally speaking. You don't often have someone say, how do we fix this problem? And so it sounds crazy to us when someone offers a solution and your first impulse is to be like, you're fucking stupid. You can't nuke hurricanes. But is that really as stupid as someone who just chooses to do nothing about any of these problems year in and year out. And I do think, just on the hurricane thing, that that problem is way bigger, and I don't even know how you would even begin to address it, than what you need in California. I mean, there are some things we could try. If we fix the reservoir system, and we start capturing all that rainwater, so we at least have water, right? If we make sure that the fucking fire hydrants work, if we make sure that the fire department is well-funded, if we start doing proper land management and controlled burns without the

EPA getting involved and forcing us to wait seven and a half years or whichever, I'm actually not sure with the EPA. I'm not sure what environmental organization within the government it was that prevented the controlled burning. But if we did all of those things and then still nothing mattered, then I'd be like, okay, we got to think of some other stuff but it would be like let's think of some other stuff not let's throw our hands up in the air and blame um the sky demons yeah that's stuff that that drives us crazy that's why we sort of

congregate here with pyrewire it's like you read bernie sanders tweet and says well trump has to take this seriously it's like excuse me the all-democrat state that's always yelling us about the globe and how to buy electric cars to save the planet he's also it's crazy he's not exactly for 10 more days so it's like you're like i guess we're just gonna burn until donald trump is in office and then he better decarbonize the planet like what is this what like what is that thinking i don't understand that it's a and it's like obviously the story in New York got railroaded this week for much bigger things. Like it's this constant just like you guys are the ones in charge. Like you keep creating these like demon out of nowhere of Trump. It's like you are in charge.

And Governor Newsom did an interview yesterday where Trump was calling him. I can't even. We're in the public safety phase. I hate to even ask this question, but the president elect chose to attack you, blame you for this. It's one can't even respond to it. I mean, it's, you know, people are literally fleeing. People have lost their lives. No, he should be saying this stuff. You didn't do your job properly. Like you can't control fires.

Like it's kind of the sad thing about these events. It's like Mother Earth is going to burn sometimes. There's going to be forest fires, but you didn't even do the basics. The thing with the dams I'm hearing, I didn't look into it too much. I don't know if, Riley, you did. The dams where they close them so the fish can live. My mom's been texting me about this.

I'm like, you know what? I didn't have time to research it. I was like, what? That can't be real, which it might be real. Should we just look into someone look up i know what it's it's like a smelt or something what the thing about the smelt you're talking about yes let's get to the bottom of the smelt issue that's crazy like so you're not even doing the basics right then you're gonna blame trump

and like the evil demon republicans on climate. Like that's insane. Carter, have you figured out the smelt situation? Yes, I have figured out the smelt situation. It's a tiny fish. It doesn't look like it tastes very good. Um, basically it's in the Sacramento Sonokin river Delta. Okay. And basically environmental regulations to protect the smelt, uh, were used to say that we cannot funnel this water down to socal uh and typically this just be extra water i don't think it's a high percentage so i don't know if this is like the night or day solution but there is a video of newsome basically trumpeting this with some native american tribe that's around there i don't ever want to hear about a native american tribe i do not i do not give a shit we're all

better now all better it sounds like it was for a photo op i like just don't i'm so over it the native american tribe you know you know the native american tribe can do they can move to los angeles and like live in society and we can have water like that's just fucking crazy that that's even a consideration in 2025 like why are we pretending that they're like out there not even it's not even like they're on it's not even like some pocahontas shit or some fringally shit where they're like out there in the nature or whatever these are just separate reservations that then like to go and like swing their dick around and be like wait a minute but the the sacred smelt or something that's not even real it was never

like it you just made that up like you like you don't have there's not even real it was never like it's you just made that up like you like you don't have there's not even a written you didn't have a written language how who is recording the sacred texts of the smelt fairy or whatever nobody did that so it's like you just ad hoc basically 1970s came around and you like watched a bunch of hippie movies and invented an entire history of native american history and then it's like that has to that has and now i can't have water in los angeles that's fucking crazy that's i'm not doing that anymore not in not in the mid-20s and then find the guilty white man to uh fix all your problems yeah well the guilt my cup is full of no more there's no more room for bullshit i don't care i also don't care like i no longer care about like, I'm watching the arsonists. And if I find out that's a homeless person, I swear to God, my empathy for the

homeless, specifically, not all homeless, drug addicted, vagrant, vandalizing homeless people. For a long time, I had to pretend that I cared, right? It was like, okay, well, it's really sad what's happening to them. And I feel bad for them. You have to say before you say, but can't we do something about it? I no longer feel bad. I no longer feel bad. I am prioritizing human civilization over the absolute most antisocial, terrible aspects of human civilization. I don't care about them anymore. I care about the city of Los Angeles not burning to the ground. That's my number one priority. And then number two would be, I saw this tweet. It was a girl and she was in the subway. So congestion pricing, are we talking maybe at the end of the episode? I don't know if we're going to make it.

Don't get me started. Very quickly, congestion pricing went into effect in New York City. And by design, the purpose was to flood the subway with people. They want to increase use of mass transit, which I sort of understand. The more people who use it, the better it should be in practice. The problem is it's run by the worst people alive who are grifting and stupid. And so nothing's going to get better. And this girl was on the subway and she couldn't use, she's pregnant or not pregnant. She had a kid with her and she couldn't use the elevator because there was a homeless man sleeping in the elevator. And it's like,

I don't care about that person as much as I care about the girl, the woman with the kid. I just don't get the fuck out of the elevator and let the woman with a child use it to go up to the street level. It's crazy. Like you have the entire planet to go and putz around. Why are we pretending that you have to do it right there? You don't. And we all know that you don't. And I just like really hope that 2025 can be the year of just saying real shit. Like, no, you don't need to be there.

Fucking move. Next question. Low trust society everywhere, right? Like people looting already. There's arsonists in LA, the homeless in New York. It's like just a constant low trust. And we keep putting up the, okay, I guess we'll pour them pour them fuck that man like it is a lot of the voters though like did you guys go through the replies to that woman's tweet like it's pretty insane um i always i go

back and forth on are they real yeah you know like is are these just how bot generated... When people are saying really, truly stupid things, you meet a random... Nine out of 10 regular people that you meet have a kind of common sense impulse about the world. Why is the internet not common? Why don't you see that as much? Yeah, I did see the comments and people being like well we gotta hear both sides or whatever i don't i don't know i do know that if i were running an op strategy for a hostile foreign country you know and i wanted to fuck with a free society where free speech existed and um and there was this easy low-hanging, well, let's just so social tension and animosity and hatred. And you could do that online because I certainly get angry at an imaginary person who I don't

even know is real. When I see 10 comments saying something really antisocial and bad, I'm like, man, these people are bad. Who are they? Who are these people? Are those leftists? Like, I don't know. These people are bad.

Who are they? Who are these people? Are those leftists? Like, I don't know. I don't know many liberals who think that, who are happy, who are happy that the homeless guy has an elevator to sleep in while a woman with a child is trying to get up.

I have not met many. I'm sure there are some. I think it's a fair point because I know a lot of lefty people. I haven't seen them say all that stuff. Like, they're definitely, I'll see them say the climate change bullshit, but like the homeless thing,

I haven't seen them say anything. So it is an interesting case study. Like it might be that like fake generated. I mean, here, here, my friend. So these people do exist.

This tweet, this guy. Oh my God. So G here says, let's pull up, let's, let's, let's pull up the source material.

So here's G here. Who, what does he do? Oh, he writes for the nation. So this is one of these people, by the way, who used to feel like one of the people, one of the voices. Back when I was one of the little people, you know, unchecked. These were like one of the blue check gods who would like lord over us with their correct opinions.

Always hated his guts. And here he is with another bad opinion. he is with another bad opinion. He quotes the Getty building, which is burning to the ground right now, along with the homes of countless people in Los Angeles who are in the middle of a terrible tragedy. And he says, this is his contribution to the discourse. Remember when people got upset that a tiny number of climate activists were doing minor, easily repairable damage to a handful of paintings? Will those people now acknowledge that climate change is itself a far bigger threat to the cultural inheritance of humanity? So where do I begin with this incredible time?

Here's where I'm going to begin. I'm going to begin with something fucking like ad hominem. That's where I'm going. I'm going, I'm going, I'm mad. I'm going nasty. I want you to take a look at cheat here.

This seriously, Google image, this motherfucker really quick. And I don't like to throw fat jokes around a lot or fat comments, but I think it is relevant in this case because I want you to take a look at a picture of this fat ass and ask yourself a question. What is his carbon footprint? What is it, G? What is his carbon footprint? What is it, G? What is it? I can guarantee you that your carbon footprint is at least thrice mine. How much does it cost to fly your fat ass across the country? Okay. A lot. A lot. How many birds have you killed? Goddamn. I'm mad. I'm mad because

that's some bullshit. Oh, if only a few more unwashed, dirty British hippies had tried to destroy the Mona Lisa, then maybe a bunch of homes in Los Angeles wouldn't have burned to the ground. Are you retarded? It's crazy. It's like crazy that that is the level. I mean, it's not really the level of discourse anymore. Like that's where it was for years. We're beyond that now, gratefully. Like now I, well, that one had a lot of love. I mean, a lot of people actually liked that one, but we can at least trash it. And, um, you know, it's no longer the sacred opinion that is protected behind the bulletproof digital walls of, I don't want to say, I don't want to throw Jack Dorsey under the bus, but certainly he has some crazy people working there.

Your own liberal, your own liberal government didn't do anything. That's where I'm the crazy pills come in. You're like, why? Like, like Trump was, listen, you don't have to like Trump, but he's been saying for like two years, at least, hey, even longer than that, maybe like, uh, this could happen soon. This fire, like he's been saying it. Cleaned out and protected. You've got to take care of the floors. You know, the floors of the forest is very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently and, and it's a whole different story. I was with the president of Finland, and he said, we have a much different, we're a forest nation. He called it a forest nation.

And they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem. And when it is, it's a very small problem. How does he know more than the climate change people? We're all about scapegoating the wrong things. That's what it is it's a very small problem dude also how does he know more than the climate change people another we're all about scapegoating the wrong things that's what it is it's like he wants to scapegoat this invisible bogeyman which maybe there's some truth to it i don't really think there is i think california is a place where wildfires happen and we're building now in wildfire prone areas and probably we should have a plan for that and it wouldn't really fucking matter if the global temperature was a little bit cooler. We would still have this problem.

But let's table it. That's one of them. Another one now that I'm seeing is the insurance thing. So a bunch of people were dropped. Tons of people were dropped in California from their wildfire insurance. And obviously, it's going super viral, including among the MAGA. There's a lot of overlap between the left and the MAGA, like hard MAGA right on these kinds of issues, these like populist issues. And they're furious. It's like Luigi Mangione, not even just adjacent. I

mean, his picture is back in the news cycle because it's like he is the patron saint of murdering people that you don't like in the field of insurance. And I will admit that when I saw that headline, I thought, that's fucked up. And just a little while ago, that's interesting. Tinfoil hat starts to come on. I'm like, what is going on here? Well, it turns out there was a law in California that was passed that said the insurers could not create quotes based on how bad things were getting. Basically, they had a model off of the world 10, 15, 20 years ago. And so the risk was out of whack. It was like they were taking on too much risk and they could no longer afford it.

Insurers are famous at running the accurate statistical calculations. And they're like, what is the likelihood of a really bad fire? And it was way higher. And they were like, we literally can't afford this. We'll go out of business. So they had to stop. They did pull out. And now there's a huge problem and they're being blamed rather than the actual politicians who we have elected who are directly responsible. There are actual people in office right now who are responsible for that, who somehow in this state are just completely bulletproof. And it's like no one ever holds them accountable.

I will say, of the crazy lefty, I did see a few crazy lefties on Instagram share the image and name of one of those insurance companies. we're getting luigi vibes again and uh obviously this guy's more left but like the bill mars of the world he complained in the show for like three years but he's won solar panels on his like shed outside and it's like this like theme on his show for years where like he couldn't get past the california bureaucracy of just doing a solar panel for his own fucking house. Yep. And your own people, your own people you're hurting.

What's going to be really messed up is when all of these people start trying to rebuild their houses. And because of all the new ordinances that have gone into place, they're no longer able to build the same houses that they had. There's one in LA now. There are parts of LA, I think, where you can no longer build more than 6,000 square feet or something. And these are like, there are 10,000 square foot houses over here, which sounds like,

oh, here's my little violin or whatever. But also, here is my violin. That's fucked up. That's someone's home. And whatever, they spent their whole life to build their dream house. And now it's destroyed and they can't build it back. That just doesn't pass the vibe check that you cannot build back your own home. And I think we're going to start seeing stories like that if these people stay, like maybe they do just, I don't know, maybe they've had enough. That's why I'm skeptical of, I'm sorry,

I'm still recovering from G here, fat ass. That was great. But that's why I'm still skeptical of like, because these people who lost their homes rightly are going to be pissed off. Chances are they would make their feelings felt at the ballot box. But are they really going to like stay in California and deal with that insurance mess again and try to figure out a way to get coverage? Or are they just going to go, hey, Arizona or Texas sounds great and just leave the state. So that's why I'm skeptical. Like, as terrible, like, as this has been handled, I wonder if the people who are responsible are going to actually lose their jobs for it. Well, especially because the, I'm sorry,

the, the richer being obviously demonized the Keith Wasserman thing where like he, he, he tweeted out looking for, for firefighters and like, like this whole, like we talk about boogeyman's a lot,

like, holy shit. Like you're not allowed to have money anymore. Like you can't like, you can't work your life. Yeah. You can't have money. I mean, you can't work your life. Yeah, you can't have money. I mean, you can't.

That's why I leave this problem. What? This guy is looking for private. His house is burning down. His neighbor houses are already on fire. He's going to lose everything. He knows it. And he sends out a tweet asking if anybody knows of any private firefighters who could help.

Because clearly, the regular firefighters are tapped out. They're not there. They're not helping. So, okay, if they're not there and I'm not being helped, can someone else help? And that's turned into this, it's immediately warped into this crazy classist thing somehow, where people are like, this man wants what no one else could have. And it's like, well, what does everyone, you mean burning things down? What is the just and equitable thing to do in a situation? What is the just and equitable thing to do in a situation like this? And I believe the answer,

according to the seething masses of populist retarded people, you should simply die. If you had any moral righteousness in you, you would just sit there and burn to death, obviously. You would burn to death with the rest of it. Everything that you own should just be destroyed. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Everything he had was destroyed. He lost everything. It's gone. And he was run off of Twitter. And I will say the poor guy, I don't care even if the tweet was bad, which I don't think it was. If it was bad, his house is burning down. Can we have just a fucking ounce of grace for these people? I don't care what

he says in that moment. There's nothing that, I mean, there are probably some things he could say that I'd be like, well, wait a minute. That's maybe a little over the line. It's been a theme I've been watching all week. I mean, I keep dipping into the congestion pricing thing, but it's like, oh, well, the rich people, poor them can't drive their cars. It's like, what is with this? Like what? You're not allowed to have anything. Like if you have a certain amount of money, do you just self emulate yourself? Or do you just remove yourself from society like what is this you can't have anything i saw people posting on the zillow they were like um oh here's a zillow shot of all the houses in the pacific palisades because the pacific palisades are are gone which is just

unthinkable and here's a shot of the zillow and it was like all these like five million six million dollar houses and they said are we supposed to feel sorry for this yes or nothing you're allowed And here's a shot of the Zillow. And it was like all these like $5 million, $6 million houses. And they said, are we supposed to feel sorry for this? Yes. Or nothing. You're allowed to feel nothing. You're allowed to feel nothing and not comment. But if you feel something at all, it should not be, if it's joy, you're just, you're like

a bug person. You're honestly like subhuman in a way. It's, and you should be embarrassed because what you're really saying is that you're so incapable that you'll never be able to have anything nice in your own life. And so you have to destroy or really piss on other people who are losing things that they've worked their whole life for. That's pathetic. And we as a society should look at people like that and say, you're a fucking dirtbag and you should be ashamed to be alive. And I'm certainly ashamed to know you. That's what the vibe needs to be. It comes out of ashamed to know you like that is the vibe that's

what the vibe needs to be it comes out of the mouths of like 35 40 45 year olds too you're like are you serious you're an adult ma'am sir what the fuck is wrong with you you're not 17 years old in a punk rock band enough yeah sigh well let's talk about something more like i mean i want to like i don't want to be a biden here and like, well, now I'm going to talk about my granddaughter. I would like to switch topics and talk about our new president who would never do something so thoughtless, but he would do something like vow to possibly use military force to seize Greenland and Panama and possibly Canada and rename the Gulf of Mexico. And has he claimed anything else this week?

I don't know, but the week is still not over. Riley. Yeah, very, very, very based. So I would like to think this whole thing started, this American expansionist rhetoric started with a humble media company who called for the moon to be a state. I think we deserve some credit. Let's go. That's the one we get. We did. Thank you. to catch on to the idea. But where this talk really picked up once again was at that recent press conference by Trump, where after, like you mentioned previously, calling for buying Greenland and making Canada the 51st state, he suggested we rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America.

And like you mentioned, Trump was also asked, would he rule out using, quote, military or economic coercion as part of one of his ideas to secure the Panama Canal? Trump's response to that, no. Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion? No. Can you tell us a little bit about what your plan is? Meanwhile, we are also seeing a bit of real world progress on this front because Donald Trump Jr. recently visited Nuke, Greenland, and met with officials there, took a bunch

of pictures with Greenlanders and MAGA hats. and MAGA hats. And meanwhile, in the 51st state, Justin Trudeau, or Justin the Black, as Alistair brilliantly called him on our team, is stepping down. It appears at least partly as a result of Trump's tariff threat. So whatever you want to say about Trump's manifest destiny rhetoric here, it does seem to be already leading to some real world political change. Well, yes. And that's where I want to pick it up because we talk a lot about, for a while now, we've been on the, I mean, I do think we, I'm just going to say it, we started this. We literally started this. The moon thesis has been going strong at Pyrowire for a long time. And the idea of acquiring new territory is something that is really evocative to me and exciting and makes me feel like we're growing again.

And it makes me just imaginative and hopeful for the future. So it's something that I like to write about and talk about. And now there's a lot of action in a lot of different places. I think people are just really over the last few days and kind of right while the fires were picking up, this was happening. I noticed that some more thoughtful center left accounts were realizing this was serious and getting angry about it because even the thoughtful left of center people have this, I think, internalized sense of self-loathing. And we could just talk about that later, but it's like this idea that America shouldn't grow. We should all be in it together,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they were going on and on about the different thing. I think one talked about, she said, imperialism is little dick energy. And then another one was mad about just the concept of Greenland being seized, threatening war is what she was saying. And I thought, okay, that's not what is happening here. And rather than joke in this segment, I would like to just lay down what I think, honestly, is really happening with all of these different discussions. So the first one is Canada. Canada is not real. That's a joke. No, Donald Trump does not think he's going to invade Canada or acquire Canada or Canada's become a state. I do think that there's some chances I've mentioned here

before that Canada could become a part of America, but that's like over a century time horizon. I think that it's maybe just we become more entwined economically and gradually just things, the border gradually drops and then we become whatever. I mean, it would make sense, but that's not what's happening now. Trump's doing that as a joke. He's doing it to humiliate Justin Trudeau. And he was doing it to try and force Justin Trudeau out. If he could humiliate him in front of his entire country, that would help. And it seems like, as Riley, as you noted, it seems like that did work. Or at least, you can't prove it. You can't run the experiment twice. But I think that that was what that was about. It was really a gift to the guy, the appellating guy. I can't pronounce his last name because I don't speak French. Paul of the Air, whatever that guy is.

It was a gift for him to stand up and be like, of course, Canada will never be a state and to seem strong in comparison to Trudeau, who seems weak. The next one, Panama. Panama is incredibly important to America for any number of reasons, from actual military reasons to trade. That was our canal. And there are clauses in there. I mean, they're supposed to have access. When Jimmy Carter just handed it over, there were stipulations there. That is still under our broad, I guess, shadow, let's say. And China's been buying up real estate, right? China's been making a play of reports and things all around the country. China's very interested in the Panama Canal for a lot of reasons. And I think what's happening right now, when Trump is talking about

the canal, it's more of like a promise and a threat, but less to Panama than it is to China. He's saying, you're never taking this from us. This is actually ours. I'm asserting dominance over this. You can try and buy whatever you want, but if you decide that you're never taking this from us. This is actually ours. I'm asserting dominance over this. You can try and buy whatever you want, but if you decide that you're going to buy some shit over there and shut down traffic for America, I'm just going to take it. Literally watch me. It's mine. I think the beginning, early stages of a negotiation of some kind. But then let's get to Greenland, last one. Greenland, I think, is also not going to be a state. What Greenland could possibly do, Greenland is a place, people in Denmark don't want Greenland and haven't wanted it for over a century. People in Greenland want some kind of independence,

which is delusional because they produce nothing, but whatever. I think there probably is a group of people there who are really obnoxious. And I kind of empathize with Denmark on this. They've just been pouring money into that thing forever. It's like a giant frozen, I think they called it like a giant block of ice or something. They're like, take it to America. I think what will happen is they will get independence. They will look for protection. America will offer it with some kind of binding contract up in the Arctic where there's a huge war now brewing, a sort of shadow war between Russia, China, and America. We'll put bases up there. We'll maybe get some

mining rights. Greenland will still be nominally independent, but a kind of de facto territory of the US. And then maybe gradually over time, it becomes an actual territory. And that's what's actually happening. And Trump is starting these conversations. He's expanding the Overton window along all of these dimensions. His purpose is to begin talks so he can get somewhere close to what he wants on all of these scores. And I think it's really exciting and interesting and of a kind of self-interested foreign politics that we've not seen in any of our lives. And so I'm a huge fan of all of those things. I think he's doing, I mean, I wouldn't say he's doing a great job. You know, he's, I don't know if it's necessary to say,

who knows, maybe to military action in Greenland. I don't know. But then again, I'm not the president. I didn't make it as far as he did. And he's much closer to acquiring Greenland than I've ever been. I agree. I love the strategy. And I think it's a, like, what a better approach this is for like maintaining global hegemony than like being the world's policemen and throwing trillions of dollars into unwinnable wars you know like this is a the risk reward of like just buying greenland compared with spending a fortune in a regime change war in the middle east is like unreal like this is a much better way of like yeah i guess promoting america around the the globe than the approach

that we've been doing in the past. So yes, great strategy. And if it leads to me visiting Greenland someday without a passport, I'm even more all for it. I wonder what's going on over in Greenland, like for vacation. I think probably not a lot. I think it's like Iceland is that's like Iceland is I imagine Iceland as here's why how I think of Iceland. Iceland is everyone everyone in Iceland is like a 25-year-old girl with a pixie-ish kind of like white haircut. Go on. Like very petite and a DJ.

Go on. And she's doing DJ stuff with like cool hipster outfit on top of like a smoky blue lagoon. That's Iceland. And then Greenland, I think is literally just ice. I think it's just endless wasteland, but I see opportunity in the endless wasteland. Iceland sounds great. When we go to Iceland. That's amazing. We love Iceland. How long do you think this strategy of Trump just like talking big

will work? Because to me, it seems like forever is the answer i don't know how like imagine just saying canada's gonna be a state three times and their prime minister resigned crazy that's crazy yeah he is like a wizard he just says shit and the world crumbles that's really crazy that is true and i think people fear him for his words too, because you see right now concurrently, while Trudeau is collapsing at the sound of Canada becoming a state, you have Macron in France standing up,

crying about like Elon Musk saying mean things about him abroad. Like the idea of these big personalities just being able to make fun of them is seen as a threat all throughout Europe. But I think it's the idea that power can be criticized. They're somehow not used to it, which is shocking to me because I feel like they're so worthy of critique. I imagine they should be used to it by now, but it seems like they're really not, much less so than even American

politicians. European politicians are not used to this. There has to be some kind of consequence to that though, right? There's no way that they just allow it to persist. It seems too dangerous to them for people to be able to tell the truth in France, for example. I'm not sure. I tried to have a technical discussion about terrorists with my dad and he's like, we're getting into the weeds on it. I was just like, it doesn't even matter if terrorists are a good or bad idea. He just has to threaten 100% terrorists and then he gets everything you want. So who cares? You don't even know what a tariff is.

It's a negotiation tactic, yes. I mean, it's kind of insane, but I mean, that's a good thing. Like it's a lot cheaper than, you know, going to war or doing anything like that. So it works for me. I think where you see that a lot is in Mexico and Canada. Like you saw those negotiations play out fast and they really

seem to work in Canada where they immediately attracted a conversation and a discussion about border security and trade negotiations, basically. They work less well in the context of Mexico, which is run by a socialist woman now who I think just doesn't seem to understand how... Maybe she does understand how weak her hand is, but she's also in a country run by the cartel, or a series of cartels. So it's like her hands are kind of tied and I don't know. But I think the negotiations are going to stall out there and we're going to have problems in Mexico, but I think things are going to go really well between us and Canada.

And I think we'll be on the path to reintegrating, to lowering that border and to... I would love to see greater work opportunities for Canadians in America. They're effectively a part of our country. I think we should integrate more, but that's just me. We should get to our Polymarket read. Oh. Welcome to our Polymarket segment. Thank you, Polymarket, for giving us money, for paying us, for supporting this amazing work that we do. Let's talk about some stuff that we see on Polymarket, which I found pretty interesting this week. So on the, let's say,

jingoistic Manifest Destiny type stuff, the odds that Trump renames the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America currently sits at 32% on Polymarket. Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum has pushed back stating, obviously the Gulf of Mexico is a name recognized by the United Nations. Oh no, not the United Nations. Well piss off the United Nations that would not exist written off for the United States. She even joked about renaming the US saying Mexican America. That sounds nice. Good one, Claudia.

Well done. For his part said, we have a massive deficit with Mexico and we help Mexico a lot. They're essentially run by the cartels. Can't let that happen because Mexico is really in trouble. A lot of trouble. Very dangerous place. Oh my God. a lot of trouble very dangerous place oh my god i have i think riley you had a great take um on the mexican america like before we get into the question of whether or not the gulf of mexico will be renamed can you just um why don't you read out your uh your take that went live today um i'm not on my uh normal i can do it you want me to read it okay playing the role

of riley mike slana playing the role of riley reading as right pipe down and give us the gulf a take by riley nork writer for pyro wires mexican president shine bomb parenthetical aside on a break from beta testing her new illegal immigrant helper app we presume showed off an old map while speaking with journalists at a press conference depicting current u.s territory under the occupation of mexico mexican america that sounds nice the president reportedly said while musing over her pre-alamo map her comments come on the heels of trump's recent statements on the topic of American expansionism, including buying Greenland, re-securing Panama or the Panama Canal, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. But Scheinbaum's clapbacks just aren't landing,

and I think I know why. The imperialism jokes are only funny because America's a superpower. If we wanted to take Mexico, we don't. Nobody does. We actually could. And telling the truth is taboo. It wouldn't work if we were building apps to help our citizens escape, for example. Or if our chief export was fentanyl. Try again. And I think that's fair. It's like, girl, first of all, who asked? Like, you didn't have to say, you could have just said nothing.

first of all, who asked? Like, you didn't have to say, you could have just said nothing. Second of all, if you're going to try and, if you're going to try and be funny, you have a better land. It really better land because you're now, you're in the arena with,

I mean, Donald Trump is the guy. He is the apex predator of trolling, clownish monsters, honestly. Like, he is the demon that sleeps under your bed and if you're gonna come you just have to come correct and claudia did not come correct do not come do not come i'm gonna come might have been on drugs i mean that's what's going on down there a lot of people there are um yeah and like when trump does his and maybe this is why he like sort of gets people to like go along with his talk when he just throws out tariffs and says we're going to rename the gulf

is like it's backed by the most powerful country in the world with the most powerful military in the world and when claudia does it it's like what is this backed by like freaking like five cartels and like the most like decrepit like corrupt nation and like so it works for us because we can talk the talk but back it up and like claudia can't and it just comes across as i think there's something let's just talk about humor for a second i think there's something it up. And Claudia can't, and it just comes across as very cringe. I think there's something, let's just talk about humor for a second. I think there's something in humor where it has to be a little subversive. And there's something about America asserting power that's subversive because it's not supposed to happen. And there's a good reason for it, I think. It's because America had all the power. We're used to this post-World War II era, where especially immediately following World War II,

which is really where our culture that we live in today was created, where America was the most powerful country in the history of the world. It was more powerful than every other country in the world combined. It could have done anything that it wanted. And when you have that kind of power, it's terrifying to not be American. And I think that the way that you work with the rest of the world is by creating sort of maybe implicitly, you don't even mean to do it, but these taboos are created where you just, you don't talk about what you could do if you really wanted to. Everyone knows it, so you don't say it. And it's a taboo to say it. It's a taboo to even joke about it. It's why the

Green Party president or whatever in Canada, is that a real party? Is that a real thing? Is Canada a real country? Who knows? She expressed real fear when Trump was talking about Canada as a 51st state. Yeah. So it's like a taboo. It's been transgressed, which humor is how we deal with things that make us feel weird or alarmed or something or there are a lot of reasons that we use it but it's typically in a response to uh something unusual uh provocative wrong uh it's how we work through things and mexico saying that you know it's going to rename america is just like it's just like it's a stupid thing to say

it's not it's not transgressive it's not it's not based in reality so it's not it's just like it's a stupid thing to say it's not it's not transgressive it's not it's not based in reality so it's not it's not this is not funny she doesn't have the range um i don't i don't think she's gonna make i don't think she's gonna make it folks i don't think she's gonna make it a four years of trump she's not gonna make it now uh riley why don't we talk uh take take us down the meta rabbit hole meta's uh free speech evolution, let's say. Yes. Let's talk about our favorite dripped out jujitsu practicing tech guy. So first among his recent announcements was that Dana White would be joining the meta board of directors. Dana, obviously a big Trump guy, CEO and president of the UFC. obviously a big Trump guy, CEO and president of the UFC. That followed an announcement that Meta's new head of global policy would be Joel Kaplan,

someone with a history of working for Republicans like George Bush. But the changes for Meta on the user front were pretty substantial. Zuck announced in a video this week that Meta is ending its content moderation policy, instead offering something more like the community notes feature that X uses. Zuck said of his previous content moderation strategy, quote, we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. Meanwhile, another notable move was moving the content moderation team altogether from California to Texas,

presumably to get away from a culture of built-in bias. So the California L's continue on this week's program. But moral of the story here is that the vibe shift has arrived. And when it comes to meta, turns out it has arrived in a pretty major way. Yeah. I mean, either weightlifting really does make you more right wing, like a lot of people are saying, or Mark is, you know, I mean, I kind of called him a shapeshifter too, but I like this shape, so I don't really mind. I think he's just correctly calling, you know, the next 12 years in the White House are probably going to be red, so maybe he's just calling that correctly. He's just calling that correctly. Also, this is just a better decision. Like, I don't know how much this censorship has affected you.

It hasn't affected me publicly, but even more scarily, meta censorship has affected me in private chats. So I don't know if you've had this experience, but I think Kanye West dropped a news site a while ago, like a year ago or something. And I just shared the link with a friend. Like, this is hilarious. And they couldn't open it, you know, just because, you know, no one likes Kanye West at meta, I guess. That's crazy.

Same thing happened even more recently with just an rfk video this is during the election i just shared an rfk video to the same group chat and it just got banned they couldn't even see a preview it's like this is like a private message like it's one thing you do on facebook.com but messenger is kind of insane so um you know regardless of the motives i'm happy he's going this direction i think it's a good point to bring up and i think what what i'm hearing is we need to hold them accountable like i think i think there can't just be reconciliation here um you know i'm gonna be watching mark i'm gonna be watching you got my eyes on you sir uh and if he fucks up we got to call him out and it has to be really really bad after this after him sort of doing his may culpa and um there can be a zero tolerance policy for any of the authoritarian

behavior that we saw previously we're living i mean it was not so long ago like another thing that i wrote about what three years ago donald trump our sitting president was to platform from every single tech company in the fucking Valley, everyone, Twitter, Facebook, Stripe. You had Pinterest. Like there's, it was all,

all, all of them. That was frightening to me. When I saw that, I was like, whoa, we are, this is the story was Donald Trump for most of the country. It was not for me.

The story for me was, wow, tech is really powerful. The cumulative power of tech is enough to silence any single person in the country completely, to completely just take them off the board, including the most powerful human in the world, I thought, was Donald Trump. human in the world, I thought, was Donald Trump. And he was just gone like that. Now he's back. I think he's doing a very good job not retaliating so far. We'll see what happens. I think some of this remark is probably fear. But also Trump said, one thing I like about, or I should say another thing. I like the Greenland thing stuff. But another thing I like about Trump is he's such a businessman. And he's going to do the pragmatic thing when it comes to dealmaking. This is how he operated with the unions. This is how he's going to operate with tech. He sees that these companies are valuable resources for America. He is going to work with them for as long as they are advantageous to his goals, which I think are the flourishing of America insofar as it makes his legacy seem great. I think that's what he wants, to be remembered as a good president. I think he wants to be remembered as the greatest

president in history. And that's a good goal. We should want him to be the greatest president in history, right? If that's what he wants to be, good job, Donald. Go for it, man. Like, let's fucking go. Be the greatest president in history. I want to see it. And we should all help. And I hope that Mark will.

And I think that Trump will work with him for as long as he does. And I'm excited about that. Yeah, people have, of course, said the obvious thing that was just, oh, it's easy for you to make this change now that the political pulse of the country has shifted. it's easy for you to make this change now that the political pulse of the country has shifted. And I used to like think along those lines for the longest time and still do in some ways, but I sort of have like thought about this differently for CEOs and that it's like sort of a part of their job to like read the pulse of the country and adopt accordingly. Like they have shareholders to depend on, like, what do we we expect them to be a terrible businessman?

It's sort of part of the job description to read the pulse of the country and adopt accordingly and figure out how you can help your country best profit from that. So yes, you do kind of feel that this is phony, but it's sort of part of your job to be phony. So I guess I view it with a little bit more nuance than I have in the past. It's certainly your job to be... It's Meta's job to be met. It's Meta's job to be a platform for every American or all the different platforms, Instagram,

Facebook, um, uh, threads now, I guess like these should be platforms for everybody. And so it makes sense that he wants to work with the administration, even just on that level. But I also think,

I mean, if you look at the history of all of the tech guys who are working on social media companies, right? Speech, free speech. I've been around. I've been in this game for a long time, guys. And the free speech thing is always there. They were always very pro free speech. This was a huge controversy in the early teens, according to the tech press. Mark Zuckerberg was trying to maintain a free speech platform, and he was being ruthlessly hounded by the press for it and accused of every heinous act that could possibly happen anytime anyone did something bad on a platform of hundreds of millions strong. He personally would be blamed for it. And that's a tough space to be for anybody.

And they relented and they buckled and they caved and they created this really draconian system of what they would say is trust and safety. What I would say is horrible authoritarian censorship regime. And then they broke it. And now I think, I mean, Twitter has been, or Instagram has been crazy for a while. I've seen all sorts of shit on there that I don't even see on Twitter. So I think that he's walking the walk. And what you're saying, Carter, about the links and stuff is troublesome to me. It's worrisome, but again, you know, just got to watch and then call him out on all this bullshit as it comes. Should we talk about this H1B thing?

Sure, yeah. I'm going to title the segment. How to H1B American. Let's go. Nice. Well done. Click it away. There were many opinions about how to be a proper American, so aptly named. But yeah, we can dig into this. I think it's very wrongly called the H1B Christmas scenario, mainly because it had, it started off with nothing to do with H-1Bs whatsoever, but somehow we leaped from a nomination from Trump to green cards to H-1Bs to the woke

right and DEI all in one weekend. So that was kind of fun. The event that triggered this all off was basically Trump nominating Shriram Krishnan of A16Z to be a senior policy advisor on AI. Seemingly at this point, the only thing you could not like him for is his face is a little odd, I guess. Like that's what people didn't like about him. I'm being really clear.

That's the only thing anyone had to say about him. I hope they said that about him. You're not saying that's your opinion. No, it's my opinion. I was like it's i was like what is this crazy segment holy shit off the top rope no no no no i'm just saying the classic attacks were you know downloading his profile picture and just pasting it with no okay okay that's me i get that yeah so that was the number one i look fucking great thank you keep sharing don't share it though i don't like my face out there sorry keep going and then they basically found a tweet of his where he is talking to elon musk and basically saying it's a retweet

of a doge it's a quote tweet of a of a doge post where he's saying we should remove the country caps uh on green cards okay and so basically right now if you're trying to get a green card, only 7% of all the green cards every year can go to any country. Basically instituted so it's like, okay, we just don't import all Indians or all Chinese people or whatever it might be. And of course the two hottest categories then are China and India

based on, I would say, nothing but their population. It's quite obvious that we have the most applicants in those two countries. Right, they're huge populations. And so all Sri Ram said, it is the only first party thing he has said about this, is that exact quote. And I think you can have real problems with that, like saying, no, like there should be a country cap. We don't want America to be half white people, half Indians, whatever, all these crazy arguments started coming up and that's fine. But then somehow the bulk of the conversation just became about H-1Bs. And now, of course, when you get an H-1B,

you were dreaming of getting green cards so they understand the relation. But that's kind of it. And so now it blew up. It was all about H-1Bs who put this Indian guy in charge. We're supposed to make America great again. In charge of what? He's not in charge of H-1Bs.

He's in charge of AI policy, which also, I mean... He's not even in charge. He's a senior policy advisor for AI, which sounds like a whole lot of nothing. Okay? And so, he's not in charge of anything. No one put him in charge of anything, but people are getting pretty mad about this, especially

like the core, far-right base of the Trump ad. Loomer. I saw Loomer going off. Well, I was given some tweet. I was off. I was on break. Yeah, Loomer's going off, and basically now, the discussion has just pivoted to H1Bs, and so this is where we are. Yeah, Loomer's going off, and basically now the discussion has just pivoted to H1Bs, and so this is where we are. Basically there's two main characters here.

It's Vivek and Elon. So Vivek comes out. He's Indian. He was born here, just like I was, so he has nothing to do with, he never had a visa. He's a natural US citizen, and he basically went on this tirade, which is pretty stupid. Like, I have to agree with people criticizing him, where he was saying, like, look, this has nothing to do with american iq obviously that's the stupid take

this is all about how americans are just obsessed with like kind of being lazy and sloth recently and you know we shouldn't talk about homecoming kings we and queens we should be talking about like kuman and math tutoring and we shouldn't be watching friends we should be watching whiplash on repeat that was crazy he might just save by the bell like what year is this and he's just like going off on like all like all americana and just saying like no like math you know math and being a nerd is better and now there's anything wrong with those things but that like i think rightfully was attacked i was like i don't know why he made this statement um i don't know if you guys saw that but it was very long it was insane i tried so hard to why he made this statement. I don't know if you guys saw that, but it was very long.

It was insane. I tried so hard to stay out of this and I did. I succeeded, I would say. Everyone wanted me in. I never get this many. It was emails. It was DMs on Signal, on Twitter,

people egging me on, look at this thing. Aren't you going to fight? And I was like a samurai sitting beneath the tree peacefully with a Y- brim, like one of those samurai hats. My sword is rested next to me. And it's like, it's Christmas, bitch. I am not interested.

I'll see you in 2025. And here we are. So was JD Van sitting next to you? Because he dodged a bullet as well. He said nothing. Everyone started to post just pictures of him at his wedding, which is hilarious because his wife is Indian. So there's a bunch of pictures of him as a court that they're like,

why is Vance quiet? And it's just a picture of him smiling like with his children. Good Lord. It's like, I'm. And then, so then the, the final,

I guess thing was Elon came out and was just like, what was the quote? I will go to war on this issue. The likes of you cannot possibly comprehend. He said I will fuck your face or something It was crazy Tropic Thunder quote. I don't if you've rewatched a movie to know the while it's pretty funny Um, and you know, I think it makes sense for him. You've touched a nerve, you know, he's an immigrant Obviously, he's more of like a what eb--1, O-1 kind of person, like not on an H-1B, so this really wouldn't affect him. But he has a bunch of employees that are H-1Bs, especially at

X. I mean, everyone's seen the picture of like, all the employees are left are Chinese or Indian and can't move their H-1B somewhere else, but also probably love to be there. I mean, it's an incredible company. So I think that's what he got some flack for. And then Trump came in with the cherry on top and basically agreed with Elon and said, yeah, you know, I like H-1Bs. We have a lot of them working at all my properties, which is just impossible.

That is just categorically not true. Like you have to have like a graduate degree, bachelor's, special occupation, STEM. And so like, he's probably talking about H-2Bs, which are seasonal workers or specifically resorts and golf clubs. So I thought that was just hilarious, but that's how he ended up agreeing with the statement. Well, I have a lot of thoughts. I guess I'm, what I was hoping for this conversation, maybe I could just, I'm not entirely sure what I think about H1B and how it should be expanded,

if it should be expanded, if it should be reformed or how it should be reformed. The piece of this that, first of all, I think it's a small, it's 85,000 about people a year. That's a really small number. And if that were the only, if that was the number of immigrants that we were having every year, we'd actually be able to assimilate them into American culture, which I would be happy about, unlike the BEC, which is what I really want to talk about. I do think there are all these problems with H-1B that are inherent in the conversation. It's sort of implied that we don't have enough talent. Okay, well, why don't we have enough talent? It's been many, many decades since we knew that tech talent was important. We invented the internet in this country. We invented most of the technology that we're now using, like almost all of it. Why do we need to import Indians to code? Like, why are we teaching our own kids how to do this? And it's a sort of trite point, but I almost hate to make because it's like the obvious, like we should be teaching our own kids this, but it's really important that we're still

not doing that. Not only are we not doing it after all these decades of this, as I mentioned, Mark Zuckerberg creates Facebook in what, 2008 about? I think it was 2008, 2007, 2008, six. No, earlier. Oh my God. It would have been like 2005 for Facebook. The boom happens in 2008. So 2008 is when the whole next tech boom begins. It's this mad rush. People are building companies. It's exciting.

It's like learn to code. That was a long time ago, okay? That was 16 years ago. That's a whole generation. We have teenagers today who were born after Facebook was created. We knew this was where the American economy was going and still we failed to train anybody or enough people to do this, at least if we're to believe that the tech companies can't find enough talent, which I think is true. Recruiting is the thing that everybody struggles with. I saw one thing from the New York Times that they had,

obviously they came out against this. They finally found a kind of immigration that they're willing to criticize. And it's one that Elon Musk likes. But they highlighted a lot of corruption within the H-1B system that I think is accurate. The woman who wrote about this, though, was talking about reporting in 2013, and she was saying, we're importing all of these people, and it's depressing the wages in tech, and that's making people in America leave the tech industry. That's just not true, okay? There are no engineers who are in America who are saying, oh man, I just can't make ends meet with my tech salary. In fact, in 2013, the opposite argument was being made from all of these media, these tech press outlets were making fun of all of the perks that were being offered

to engineers. These exorbitant salaries, paddle ball in the middle of the day, nap pods, massage parlors, free lunches. They were day nap pods massage parlors free lunches they were so mad endlessly mad about free lunches uh free lunches being it was an it was obviously just a you know a perk of the of the job that was being done because there were not enough engineers even then and when you have less supply the demand goes up and so do the salaries and that is still the world that we're persisting and we've not seen a dip in that ever until COVID when everything got really scary. There were not layoffs. We were in a bull run forever and the H-1B did not impact that at all. But the idea of, I've seen concurrently people talking about, well, there are 1.2 million Indians on a wait list to come in who are highly qualified.

If we're to believe it's like a strict meritocracy, we just let everybody in. I think that we have to have some real conversations about what culture is and what will happen to our culture. San Francisco population is 800,000. You can't tell me that you let in a million people from another country that is very different and that our country is not going to change at all. And then it's, I think, valid to have a conversation about how you want that country to change, which is why Vivek's comments, just really mocking American culture and Americans, fucking pissed me off. I was like, who are... I saw another one that Lulu posted, and she was right to criticize it, where it was an immigrant talking about how he didn't have a

trust fund and he didn't have all this privilege. They're grinding on these Americans, these pathetic Americans. And I'm thinking, if we're so shitty, why are you here? All America is, is our people. If you don't like us, and that's what this read like, it's very insulting to come to someone else's country and be like, you suck. You're not good enough. I'm better. My immigrant parents raised me better. Well, my immigrant grandma raised me to believe that America slapped and I was lucky to be here. And if another Spaniard was making fun of the country, we should tell them to go the fuck home. was making fun of the country we should tell them to go the fuck home and um that vivek thing was it was bad man i saw in that the seeds of the dissolution of the entire everything positive i feel about um you know it's time to build like we're built america's open for business again and uh it feels like things are possible again and we're gonna clean house with doge and stuff like that in his elitism and his contempt for the average person in this country, I feel like all I see is everyone who sucked, who I didn't like

before. There's almost no difference even between he's talking about, these people are talking about privilege, the privilege of Americans who are here. And really, I think it was really damaging. It was really bad because if you remember i mean vivek's the one been hounding you know like pounding the horn on this fact that like we need to be more patriotic like we need to love america again we have a cultural issue and i loved him for that stuff i was like yeah that's true like you can't you can't govern our ways to like govern our way into becoming more american or assimilating people it's kind of a cultural issue and he was talking about that all the time but But now, obviously, when you put out a tweet like this, it's like, is this what

you meant by it? You know what I mean? And so, yeah, I mean, it really is damaging for him. And I think he was a very powerful voice before this tweet. So I don't know how he recovers. What is he even, what is his sense of what American culture is, is now my question. Like, what do you think we are? And in group chats, I was getting bombarded with, you know, a lot getting bombarded with, you know, a lot of people agree with him. A lot of people who think America has no culture. And so it's like, why even pretend that there's some culture here to preserve or whatever?

And it's like, it is hard. If you're asked to define what American culture is, that's a difficult thing to do, to sit down and be like, okay, here's what we are and here's what we're not because America is super diverse. But then I started thinking about that more and I thought, man, you would never ask a Japanese person that or a Russian person or a French person. And if you did ask them that, if you asked a Japanese person, define your culture, describe your culture right now on the spot. And not like a smart one, like a normie on the street on the, on the Japanese Metro, like, like describe your culture. I don't think they would be able to do that. I think they'd say

some things like, Oh, um, our language and our, you know, history and they would fumble because culture is not, it's something that you almost breathe in, right? It's like it just is. It's your oxygen. You don't have to think about it. You just are. I don't have to think about what makes me American. I'm American. I know that. I am American culture. American culture is diverse. Japanese culture is diverse. It's weird to frame it that way because it betrays... To say that America doesn't have a culture because it's diverse betrays a lack of um there's pictures and ignorance of the rest of the world if you go to tokyo it's fucking weird it's very diverse a lot of shit is going on in tokyo is it all japanese culture i don't know maybe but i i just don't think it's a valid question um and i think that the vex line of

of argument there was just a way of um really what is here. I don't know where that comes from. Maybe he was, and I mean this not as a dig, I think maybe he was picked on as a kid and for not being American enough or something. I sense resentment there. And that made me not want whatever he was selling. I don't don't want any of, I don't want any more resentment, especially resentment that is associated with race. Like we do not need any more racial resentment. We need everyone to be like, yes, we're all American moving on. Um, he did the, if his goal was to make me feel better about immigrants, it, he achieved the opposite. And I'm more open naturally, I think, to his argument. So I understand why

that was so triggering to everybody else on the far right. They feel like they've been left behind. They're making arguments like, why is my son not being trained to work at Facebook, but we're hiring someone from India who is? That's weird to them. They think about it in just those simple terms. And the Vex job as a politician representing the government now is to have a good answer for that question, which is a valid question. Even though there are good answers to why, it's a perfectly understandable question and he should be able to answer it. Yeah. I mean, there was like a crumb there. There's something interesting, but he just totally just avoided doing that instead. I mean, like you said about education, like maybe it is that, okay, yeah,

there are more nerds that are Asian and that's why they're more suited to being engineers or maybe you just have a more personal interest in engineering. We can do that here too without not watching TV. You know what I mean? These things are not at odds.

There are plenty of American nerds as well of all colors. So there was something there that he could have said that would have been very uplifting, but he did not do that. Yeah. You always bring your own stuff to these conversations and I can't help but bring my own background to this. And I think about the privilege comments that I read and the idea that Trust Fund was one of them too that was thrown around. And it's like, what is your sense of what an American,

that's not my background. I went to public school like most of us. There was no trust fund. There was no like, no one gave me a leg. My mom and dad did not have any connections in the tech industry or to help get me to, I was the first person in my family to go to like a, as a freshman, like a sleep away in a dorm room, like big college in the history of my family, like to go back to the beginning of the Solana lineage. Okay. Like that is, um, it's just obnoxious and ignorant. And,

uh, I think that your first dude, like i would never immigrate to a different country and then be like you're fucking lucky to have me i would be coming with a different energy than that that's just like bad you're a bad guest you're you're that's just not it's like basic social like you want to go in and do as the romans do if you're if you're what is it is i think that's a quote that's probably a quote if you google that i'm sure that's a quote well haven't we talked about before that's uh the john oliver effect the the um the other noah what's his uh what's the other trevor noah trevor noah like all the british people that i want it's the same shit like they come here just like shit on us the whole time like why are you here are you here like get out of here like i don't invite you i don't want you here nobody asked nobody thinks you're funny you not funny. Like you don't need your moral guidance.

Go home. Go back to London and fucking stay there. And you're all obsessed with us. We talked about earlier with like Elon and Trump. All these guys, you're obsessed with us. Like, I don't get it. Like, well, you all want to be here. I get it.

I get it. How do you not get it? I'd be obsessed with us. We're fucking awesome. Well, I get it. I'm obsessed with us too. I love it here. But like, you can just say that.

Like, you'd be like, America's awesome. And I just, I'm saying these things. I love it here. But like you can just say that like you'd be like America is awesome. And I just I'm saying these things because I have a little voice in my head that says I'm not ever going to be American enough. And for John Oliver, listen, that's true. But it doesn't mean that we're going to kick you out. Like you could just stay here and like be like be fucking cool. If that is possible.

I don't think it's possible. I did see it. You did trigger the one thing. I did see a few people chat GPT in our GROK imaging of like vivek getting bullied in high school I think there's oh really yeah so I was really not like I was truly not online I deleted the app it was then hard to log back on like truly twitter has got a lot of bugs my friend that's what Elon needs to be focused on is how degraded that platform is I literally could not get like after break I didn't have mobile on my phone for almost a week sitting there trying to log in and getting error messages. Anyway, I was truly clocked out. And so I got a handful of these things. And after the fact, I pieced it

together. And the center of it for me was really the Vivek thing. Because a lot of times people don't respond logically to anything. Everyone is going to engage in these situations emotionally. thing. Everyone is going to engage in these situations emotionally. And Vivek is a very smart orator and politician. And so he knows that. And so to lay down that kind of poison and expect people not to react to it is a huge misstep. It was just sloppy. And that's why I think, man, he really did get picked on. And the heart of American culture, like our TV and our entertainment that's so so part of our culture he's like not the right he's saying like that's what he's because he has um you can see that he has a sense of arrogance about it where he says that's not a real culture oh because you watched saved by the bell

it's not a real culture um and it's like it is first of all first of all that and then second of all i think that no one would ever like that's not how it happens it's like we have a million things going on and that's like one of our common touch points and pop music and and our language and our history and our holidays um comic experiences and holidays and whatever i, we could go on and on fashion, like, uh, dietary choices, whatever. It's like a long fucking list. And, um, and you just pick something that a lot of people like to make fun of it and, uh, and frame yourself as better because you're smart and you're a nerd. And it's like, okay, well, I knew a lot of nerds who also like Saved by the Bell. And, um, I don't know. They're not like talking about it a lot on nerds who also like Saved by the Bell. And I don't know, they're not talking about

it a lot on Twitter. It's just fucking goofy. Stop. That's another thing. Don't be goofy. You cannot be a crybaby, okay? You are now in power. And this is maybe my message for all of these people. All of these people are used to being aggrieved victims. Like, oh, the woke police are going to stop me from speaking and we got to stop the wokies and ooh, the big bad Democrats in power and they're all working together and the media, oh, the media is so bad and evil. And I get it. For a while, all of these things, all of these founts of power worked together in a decentralized way, in an unofficial way, to exert real and, I think, frightening control over the world. PirateWire was born in the stew of this. And I believe that that was really dangerous. And I'm really proud of the work that we've done navigating that system. But now, while pieces of

that stuff still exist and are still dangerous, Donald Trump is in the White House. The media has never been more fragmented. Some of the most powerful voices or influential voices in the kind of new media movement are now sitting in the White House, okay? Elon Musk is in the White House. He and Vivek are in power. They're responsible now for cutting out the fat and actually doing something. And I think when you have this much power, you're essentially, you're a kind of a new elite.

It's something I wrote about Elon a while ago before all this happened. I was talking, I was kind of wondering about what a new elite might look like. They're there and they have to act like it. And this crybaby shit is not it. If you're going to be a king, you got to act like it. And this crybaby shit is not it. You know, you got to be a king. If you're going to be a king, you got to act like a king. And that's not what I saw from Vivek and I want to see more of it. And that's how I feel about H1B. Last thoughts from you guys.

It sort of feels like this whole debate about culture wasn't even like necessary even to begin with. Like Cardick mentioned, it eventually got to the topic of H1Bs. On that topic, there seemed to be like

a lot of general agreement between the MAGA right and the tech right. It ended up being like, okay, this is maybe a broken system that needs a little bit of reform. It's like, could we not have just gotten to that point without all of the, your culture sucks, you suck, fuck you in the face. We didn't need all of that.

Stick to what we agree on. I knew that. It is funny. But there are also forces in the media that like want desperately for those two factions to be like so pissed off at each other and for elon and trump to be so pissed off at each other and it's like when you just when you engage in a week-long christmas feud over twitter you're not helping that cause at all so let's just focus on the things that we have in common here guys log off it's christmas like follow solana's lead let's log off go home samurai christ guys like oh my god

i mean i was forced to delete the app like i don't know if you guys saw this sounds like something you didn't like i mean the the level of racism against indians was fucking out of control and so i can give like, they're like, Oh, you can just go to amazon.in and buy like cow dung for your puja or whatever. It's like,

dude, they're doing that in India, not here, man. Like who gives a fuck? And so like things were just getting like out of control crazy. And I just had to delete the app. I mean,

I was almost thankful because I was like, okay, I can just, you know, I can just go enjoy my Christmas instead of looking at all this bullshit. The racism gets bad. It's like, it's right wing hell though. And I think also everyone sees, everyone sees, you know, I, I don't want to get into all the

things that I see, but there's a lot of really bad stuff online. Um, when I logged back on, I saw some stuff that hit me in a way that I didn't like um and i think it's going to get louder and louder as the years go on we're in a world of no moderation and i'm not even sure how much of it is real and how much of it is amplified by like foreign bots um i think a lot of it's real i think the racism is real um but i guess i just struggle now with i just know that it's going to get worse like the internet is becoming more toxic not less and so it's like how are we going to we have to get better at um self-regulating and uh and not letting this stuff change us because i think that that's why it exists actually i think. I think it's like,

you saw this, I mentioned Charles Manson earlier in the cast. That is what they wanted to do. That was the whole goal, was to start a race war. It was, how do we provoke a race war and drive America apart? America is a multiracial society. And so, to provoke racism is the thing. And so to provoke racism is the thing. It seems like the real Death Star weakness in us is if everyone abandoned collective identity and adhered very strongly to racial identity. We couldn't function anymore. So I think we have to do everything we can to resist that stuff. I wish I had a thought as to how.

I don't know how. I do not know how. I think it's going to get worse. Damn, we need something positive to end on. Oh man. You want to have a positive. Fires, races.

Oh no, God. Race wars are coming. Um, I don't think race wars are coming. I guess. Okay. I'll, I'll take a,

I'm, I'm inspired by our sitting president. We discussed all the shitty things in our country, but I'm happy to announce that I am expecting a daughter. Let's go! Come on! There we go. That's well done, my friend. Well done. Improving the birth rate. We love to see it.

Yeah, I'm trying. Alright, and on that note, Touch Grass. Have a great weekend. It's been swell. Welcome back to the new year. Rate, subscribe, review. Tell your friends to watch this. Let's get these numbers up, gentlemen. You all need to be forwarding this thing to your friends, telling them to play it, telling them to watch this. Let's get these numbers up, gentlemen. You all need to be forwarding this thing to your friends, telling them to play it, telling them to watch it.

Pirate Idol is going to persist like this. A new guest next week. You'll see who it is when you log on. See you on the internet. Bye.