Pirate Wires - TikTok Bill Moves To The Senate, Elon Cancels Don Lemon, Florida Bans Fake Meat, Neil Young Returns To Spotify

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

EPISODE #43: Welcome back to the pod! This week we break down the TikTok bill that was passed in the house. Will it pass in the Senate? We look into the people who voted no, the politicians who were paid off by Jeffrey Yass, and fractures in the right wing coalition. We then discuss River’s story on Florida’s ban on fake meat. Then, Don Lemon is back in the news. His deal with X was cancelled after an interview with Elon Musk went awry. Now, Don is going back to his old employers claiming free speech violations. Finally, Neal Young capitulates and returns to Spotify. Further solidifying our take on the memory hole that is the C*vid years. Enjoy!  Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, River Page, Sanjana Friedman Subscribe to Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/ Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/tiktok-battle-for-the-swamp?f=home https://www.piratewires.com/p/lab-grown-meat-ban-in-florida?f=home Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell River Twitter: https://twitter.com/river_is_nice Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod! Like & Subcribe 1:00 - TikTok Bill Passed In The House - What's Next & Will is Pass In The Senate? 29:30 - Florida Passes Bill On Fake Meat 43:00 - Don Lemon's Twitter Show Is Cancelled! Don's Fight With Elon Musk 49:30 - Neil Young Capitulates - Returns To Spotify 59:30 - Thanks For Watching! Tell Your Friends! See You Next Week!

The House passed a divestment bill, which passed overwhelmingly in a way that I certainly didn't expect. I thought it was going to be much more of a battle. You see a fracture more on the right that has become more and more pronounced as the days have gone on than the left. You guys talk about Don Lemon. The deal goes south after his very first interview. Don Lemon is trying to, like, leverage this as much as possible to get as much publicity for his first episode. Neil Young is back on Spotify. Two years and 15 vaccinations later. What it really is giving is like, did you also hear about Cynthia Nixon's hunger strike?

I mean, she broke it two days later. Two days? Yeah, I know. There's like 16-year-old girls in Toledo, Ohio doing that for Instagram. Give me a fucking parade. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod. Obviously, right off the bat, we got to talk about TikTok. So this week, enormous news. The House passed a divestment bill, which passed overwhelmingly in a way that I certainly didn't expect. I thought it was going to be much more of a battle. But on it goes to the Senate.

And next up, if it passes in the Senate, the bill becomes law. So TikTok will be forced to sell to another buyer that is not in a sort of like hostile foreign powers category, which would include Russia, China, Iran, and what is the fourth? North Korea, which I always forget about. But there it is, just still threatening nuclear war every now and then. So that's that. In terms of the legal process, I think we've talked about TikTok a lot over the past couple of weeks. I think it's warranted considering how big the news is. When you think about this, this is like 150 million people are on this app. No matter where you're falling in terms of opposition of the divestment or support of the divestment, you have to at least acknowledge that this is a very big deal. And while divestment itself is not unprecedented, we've in fact written about it here last time in

the case of Grindr. I believe that something, to the best of my knowledge, something at this scale is unprecedented. I have a lot of thoughts just on the discourse, the way this is evolving, the way the tech opinion specifically is changing on this. But first, what are your thoughts on where we are so far in the process? The Senate pretty much openly said that they're dragging their feet. I think there might be a lot more opposition in the Senate because it's such a smaller number of people. It's easier to spread influence more quickly

when you have a smaller number of people, it's easier to spread influence more quickly when you have a smaller number of actors. Well, certainly they're putting a giant for sale sign on their front porch. We've already seen how much money is at play. I did write quite a bit about Jeffrey Ass and his influence on the Republican Party in our piece on TikTok at Pirate Wires, which you should definitely go check out if you haven't already. At this point, yeah. The Senate had... There was more support for divestment in the Senate than the House previously, according to everybody that I talked to in Washington. And they all seem like... The Senate, it's like, we have a very good chance at this point. However, there's a lot of money at stake now. And you see a fracture more on the right that has become more and more pronounced

as the days have gone on than the left. So I do think that's where people are going to focus. I am interested to see where JD Vance lands on this because he has to sort of maintain the populist right-wing credibility to a certain extent. That's what got him into office. And increasingly, that appears to be kind of called into question. We saw that in the debate before the House vote. We had Marjorie Taylor Greene stand up and go after it on grounds that, well, I mean, it was completely ridiculous. The first thing she said was Twitter had once banned her years ago. And so she was naturally suspicious of this other totally unrelated bill. And then the other thing she said, there's an argument maybe broadly, it's like, all of these companies are bad. All of these social media companies are bad. And increasingly,

it's like, do I trust Mark Zuckerberg with my data more than I trust Xi Jinping? And the answer is no. And therefore, the bill is bad. I don't really understand this. I feel like one is not equivalent to the other. And if you want a broad data bill, then you can push it. And you just haven't. Another thing that she said was, if you were really serious about China as a threat, you would be banning the sale of US farmland to China. And it's like, great. I also agree with that. Let's do it. Can we do it tomorrow? How fast can you get a bill together? I'm ready for all of the divestment from the CCP. And that's, I think, on the populist side. So it's like Trump really signaled, when he changed his mind on TikTok, I think he signaled to the rest of the right that this time

around, if you'll remember, last time he was the one that forced divestment, not forced divestment through, he was the one who got divestment through before it went to Biden, who killed it when Biden came into office. He has changed his mind. That has opened up the way for other right-wing populists to change their mind. And we have seen that in, you know, in the world of the Margie Taylor Greene. We've also seen that in the world of media with Tucker Carlson, who's come out against it. Vivek also came out against it. But what Vivek has in common with Trump is a lot of money from Jeffrey Yass, which he also has in common with Rand Paul. So this is a billionaire who has a massive stake in TikTok and an enormous financial interest to keeping it from divesting. I think the tech piece is a little

bit interesting, where there has been espionage in tech forever. There is broad agreement that this is a problem, like foreign agents spying, stealing trade secrets, taking them abroad. And also, we have a bit of a trade war. So the fact that you cannot sell social media abroad in China specifically is not lost on entrepreneurs who are like, well, why are you allowed to compete here? And we're not allowed to compete there. This, as I've said again and again, is a huge motivating force for me. I think that we need to have some kind of sane trade policy with China. I think we have to have a sane trade policy with all of the countries, allies and adversaries alike.

But even while that specific point has achieved or attracted quite a bit of, I think, agreement within tech, you've seen some pushback. And you get pushback from... There are two guys I'm thinking of right now. You have one who is, I think, just less threatened by China in general. And you have one who is much more just suspicious of government power. And maybe they both are suspicious of government power. And maybe just in general, the kind of libertarian-ish thing in Silicon Valley is suspicious of government power, government overreach, new rules given to the government. Here, the bill has been framed as a path to banning Twitter.

That's the big, scary bogeyman that keeps being invoked. This bill will lead to a ban of Elon's Twitter right before the election. It's clearly a tool used to stop dissidents in the country. And of course, none of that really makes sense when you talk about the fact that it started with TikTok, which has been ground zero for regime-friendly propaganda forever. It has nothing to do. It's like nothing like Twitter in that way, in terms of just the content that's being released. So just kind of automatically feel strange. And what you see is you see there are two things I have here. One is in terms of an argument against it, a really coherent argument against it.

One is just a distrust of the people who are passing it. And by that, they mean Democrats. There are a lot of Democrats, just like there are a lot of Republicans who are supporting it. There were an overwhelming number of both in the House. But then I think of who else is supporting it. Most people in tech are supporting it. I'm supporting it. Are we the suspicious people? It's strange to me. The second one is they've been called maligned as traitorous, which I do think is wrong. The idea that the only reason you could possibly be against this bill is if you're a traitor. I mean, that is happening. I have a guy in my DMs right now who's another popular influencer going off about how all these people clearly the thing for me and i get how it's grating you know to be called a traitor i just don't see how that is um how that's a good defense of of an one and what is obviously a threat and then two what is clearly an unfair sort of trade

situation i don't know do you guys make anything of that i mean i think one thing that's interesting to me on the opposition to the bill i mean mean, I because I do understand, actually, the people who sort of take issue with maybe how broadly it's written and that there are like Thomas Massey was saying, there's no sunset provision in the bill that sort of says, OK, well, you can force the this can be, you know, these provisions that allow the president to designate applications of national concern could be used to come after, you know, domestically owned applications or something. I think those are, to my mind, more legitimate concerns. But I think there's also, in addition to this kind of, you know, sense that people might be traitors, there's this weird this weird almost libertarian suspicion of the idea of forced divestiture in general that people like Massey are pushing

and that I've seen Candace Owen's Amplify on X because she basically retweeted his speech on the House floor and said this is why I'm now opposed to the divestiture. And so I think Thomas Massey likened forced divestiture

to like third world dictators forcing expropriation of, you know, foreign companies. And so I think that there's also this kind of weird, like people are trying to signal discomfort with the idea of American, the American government actually forcing a company to do anything in general. Right. Or just they're resisting the idea of government in general. So when they talk about things, you said that there's not a sunset clause. Well, I think there's not really not a sunset clause on most bills, first of all, which would be great. Would love to introduce

that concept broadly, but we don't have it. And then it's like, well, this power could be interpreted. It's very vague. It could be interpreted a million ways. Yes, again, welcome to governance. Generally speaking, this is a problem in these bills. As far as bills go, this one's like, I read it. It did not take long. It's a very short bill as compared to, for example, the infrastructure bill, which is, I don't think, over a thousand pages or something crazy like that. That's another one that I went through and actually wrote a piece on. It took forever. This did not. I don't think it's as broad maybe as you're saying. It seems pretty narrow to me, certainly more narrow than the last bill, which I opposed, which was targeting TikTok on grounds that it was too broad. I think that one thing again and again, they kept mentioning one of the rare non-personal attacks or responses to a personal attack in terms of critique was this phrase about a person subject to the control of. So they are saying, you know, the bill is saying you can't be controlled by,

the company can't be controlled by a foreign adversary. And they define what in control of a foreign adversary means. And one of those things is controlled by, it's self-controlled by a person subject to the control of one of the adversarial powers. That's been framed as extremely ambiguous to the point that Elon Musk could be considered subject to the control of foreign powers. And it's just not. It's explicitly not. The powers themselves are explicitly defined. And what that means, if you are subject to the control of, they're talking about a fucking spy. They're talking about treason. And treason has always been illegal in this country. It's like a lot of the conversations

we're having, they're not really about the bill. They're about bills at the conceptual level. And so that leads me to really feel strongly that we're not being honest about the pushback against this in some way, that there are other motives behind it. Because I find it just hard to believe that all of these people are anarcho-capitalists who just don't believe in this stuff. They don't believe that government should pass any kind of bill or any kind of legislation. If they do, then I mean, I guess it's possible that they all do, that Candace Owens really does. I find it hard to believe that she wouldn't support a bill banning transition of young people or something. But who knows? Maybe

she's had a change of heart and she just is very resistant to the concept of government overreach now. Or I wouldn't even call that overreach because that's something that I would support. But maybe she's resistant to the concept of government itself i don't have you guys uh brandon have you have you kind of seen this as well am i being the crazy guy with the board right now or is it sort of like a vaguely just anti-government in general vibe which by the way fine but that's not what we're talking about here i agree with you um one one other point that i see brought up is that it's a ban in all but name because essentially they're not going to find a buyer and there's not enough time. There's 180 days to divest after the passing of the bill, I think. And the argument is that that's not enough time for ByteDance to sell the company.

The other thing that I would point out is that this would be a great time for somebody to leak the actual documents that that committee was shown. Yeah. Regarding what's happening with ByteDance that convinced everybody or the vast majority of the House to vote for the divestiture. to vote for the divestiture. And it does make me a little bit suspicious that we haven't seen that yet because it seems like such an obvious thing at this point strategically to do. Maybe they're waiting for the day before the Senate vote

or something like that. But I mean, now I feel like we need to just see what the DOJ found. Which to her credit, I think is what Ocasio was hinting at. She was saying like, this needs to be, because you only have a few people who voted no. You had the squad on one side and you had the Marjorie Taylor Greene,

sort of like the negative squad on the other. It reminded me of in Power Rangers when you had like, not Power Rangers, in Captain Planet where all the bad guys created their own like evil Captain Planet. And it was like that very small contingent on opposed. And then everybody else was just in favor. But to her credit,

she said something that I do agree with, which is that Ocasio said something I agree with. Marjorie said nothing that I agree with. But Ocasio said, yeah, the public should see what these concerns are. I guess there are narrow conditions in which us learning about something inhibits the government from protecting against it or something. But I mean, anything short of that, it just seems like a no-brainer that we should see it. Agree with you. Maybe they are just waiting for the tactically

right moment and maybe they'll need it leading up to um leading up to the vote in the senate which would be surprising to me but as you know river implied before like that argument uh that fight seems to be heating up certainly in a way that i did not anticipate but in a way that makes sense and maybe that's what they're doing um it's kind of it's unbelievable that the populist position is pro-China in this case. Well, it's fractured. There are populists on both sides.

There are nationalists on both sides. I have yet to find a nationalist who was not paid by Jeffrey Yass, who's against it, other than, I guess Marjorie is one. I mean, I don't know. I can't imagine that Yass is paying her, but I haven't seen that, so I can't be sure. I think on the divestment, they're right to be concerned about whether or not divestment is possible, but not because you can't find a buyer in six months. You'll find a buyer

tomorrow. Everybody wants TikTok. The question is whether or not Khan is going to allow a major tech company to buy it, or if she wants to continue to cripple our own country, or if she wants to continue to cripple her own country. Zelina Khan, the FTC chairwoman who's determined to just annihilate all US tech. tech but i don't think china is going to allow it china did not allow it said it wouldn't allow it last time around there are two reasons why it might not or at least these are the popular ones that that uh that have been floated one by them one by me um so she they xi jinping uh has signaled no interest in selling. And the sort of Chinese propagandists are out on Twitter.

I mean, official propagandists, like people sort of working for Chinese state media and things like this are saying it's like a consequence to America. So, you know, enjoy 150 million Americans furious with you before the election or whatever and and that's what should happen if you try and screw with our technology um i find that not compelling because the bill has broad bipartisan support in the first place um and in a second i just what would really happen really happen if TikTok, if China forced the ban rather than divestment? Would people really lose their shit? They'd be upset for a minute, and then who would they tell? They don't even have TikTok anymore. They'd probably just go to Instagram. And in a year, I don't think people would even remember. I find it hard to believe that they would really care. Whereas I think they do really care about things like rent and the cost of food and things like this i think if amazon

were banned that would matter more to consumers than something like tiktok even though tiktok is agree very popular um push back from you guys on that first before i get to my reason that i think they're really going to ban it i mean i think that you're right that like after a while people wouldn't care but i also a while people wouldn't care but i also think that people don't care about banning it now like the average person because if you have for the average person it really doesn't matter if the chinese communist party has your dick pics or your email or whatever right uh especially in the post Snowden era where we know that the government is spying on us and the corporations are spying on us.

It's a feeling of who cares if the Chinese but if you but the thing is that it doesn't actually matter for the average person. What it matters for is if you are 20 years old sending you know

compromising information over tiktok and then in 15 years you're a congressman maybe they have information on you so it's something that it's a threat down the line especially with grinder yeah i mean god knows yes yes you and i have talked about this actually the grinder thing i mean can you imagine like there's no one yeah you don't there you don't not want a cia agent who has used grinder in a world where grinder data is compromised by this ccp it's fucking horrifying right exactly but river do you think that what do you my question though is less like, I agree that nobody wants a TikTok ban. Generally, the average person doesn't care about it. It is totally... Even the question of data, even back when Facebook, the data questions were first arising directly following Trump. Nobody cared. It's like, stop trying to make Benghazi happen.

It's like that kind of energy. But what if it was... What if divestment happens you know following the senate bill and uh she refuses to allow the company to sell app is at that point banned um what do you think the reaction from people would be like do you think this affects the election possibly do you do you think uh uh do you think people remember it for a really long time does it have a more lasting impact than i've been saying i mean maybe if you're the type of person who makes a living off tiktok you you vote because of that but that's not most people and i think most people as you said would go to instagram or there'll be some sort of tiktok clone that somebody makes and then people will go to that. People will find something because at the end of the day, it's just a video sharing platform

and everybody at YouTube is kind of doing the same thing. Instagram is doing kind of the same thing. I don't really see what's all that unique about TikTok. I don't really use it that much anyway. And I think that's the relationship that most people have with it. It's kind of like Twitter in that way. Most of the people on it aren't even posting on it. They're just flipping through videos and there's somewhere else that they can do that. If China's leverage is truly that, if they're

saying, look, we will not allow ByteDance to sell Biden, and that's going to fuck you over during the election, that seems totally thin. Number one, it's very hard for me to imagine a bunch of blue-haired non-binaries deciding to vote for Trump in any possible scenario. Like, it's not, I don't think that's going to happen. Secondly, it's not clear to me that they would want Biden to lose. Because that would imply that they prefer Trump to be the president, that that's somehow better for China. So it would be, I mean, I don't know the answer to that, but I think there's fully an argument that it would be, I mean, I don't know the answer to that, but I think there's fully an argument that it would be counter to China's interests

for Trump to be the president. So I don't know. I don't find it very compelling. Now, it's a little confusing with Yas, but previous to Yas and Trump's 180 on the position, I would guess that that china that like trump's nationalism and maybe even mercantilism is uh would be a threat to china or the china would perceive it that way right i think the hard left that would be affected by the tiktok band to the

point they just not vote for for b Biden they're all are they already not voting for Biden because of Palestine isn't that what they keep saying like isn't it already it's good but it's going to be between Biden and Trump so who are they going to vote for well they would just not vote yeah and then yeah there's going to be I I do actually think that the Palestine thing is going to hurt Biden it not because they're going to vote for Trump but because there's a lot of people especially in Michigan especially in a lot of college towns that aren're going to vote for Trump, but because there's a lot of people, especially in Michigan, especially in a lot of college towns that aren't going to show up. I think that is more likely.

I think that is, what I will give you is that is more likely than them not showing up because of the TikTok to best of sure. In terms of why I think China really doesn't want this and why they're going to allow it to be banned

is remember the Twitter files. What happens when a company changes ownership is all of that data could... I mean, Trump... I mean, Elon is a wild character in this way where he just was like, have at it, journalists. Here's all the shit that happened here. But I think there's almost no way that following a successful divestiture, the new owner would not be handing information over to the government. And tons of that would either be released to the public or suddenly the US has intel on how the company was operated. And I think what you're going to learn with any amount of scrutiny into what has happened at that company, you're going to learn that the connection between the company and the CCP is very strong. And you may even get some insight into how the algorithm works. And that is

probably not opportune or that's probably not exciting to China for two reasons. One, because there's likely some amount of control or direction from them. And then two, the algorithm is different. And we don't have an algorithm. Our social media companies don't work quite like that. You're going to learn it's like trade secrets. I mean, China's really good at stealing them. I don't think they've ever really had anything to steal. And now maybe they do.

So they'd rather just not be taken. But in any case, I do think they're going to resist it fiercely. It'll go to court first. I would really be surprised if divestment, even if the Senate votes on it, and even if it all ends up successful, will even happen before the election, to be honest. But I guess we'll see. Yeah. I also, I would say in terms of why China might be so fiercely opposed to the divestiture, my personal theory about what they might have revealed in the hearing that led to the the divestiture my personal theory about what they might have revealed in the the hearing that led to the initial um you know the house committee meeting is that the doj was investigating

tiktok like surveilling journalists who'd written very critically about the platform american journalists um and i would imagine there might be some like very damning kind of scary, heavy handed, you know, surveillance and intimidation that they might have subjected some of these journalists to who have like, you know, there's someone who works at Forbes who's done a lot of digging into like specifically how ByteDance has circumvented Project Texas to continue shipping data back to China. invented Project Texas to continue shipping data back to China. And I think in that light, the people who've come out opposing the divestiture are really going to look bad in a few months if we learn that there was like, you know, this really predatory, you know, attempt to intimidate journalists. It's no longer going to just be this kind of like oh well facebook is going to get more powerful and you know we need to have sort of this equal competition between uh equally bad social media companies like you might have evidence that uh tiktok intimidated uh american journalists which could explain more than any secret information from the government why people are fine in Congress with voting yes for divestiture because they just are trying to mitigate against that risk.

Like it's easier for them to say sure than to take on the potential calamity that would be saying no and then finding out things are truly horrific and they supported it. I guess that becomes a problem for trump then if that's true especially if it happens before the election i don't think so trump has really not he's been really cagey about it he's not like he's not been nearly as so anti the bill as like david sacks for example like trump's really been trying to walk a fine line and uh i i think it's like he will trump is such an e in some ways i really love how easy he is to understand with this stuff like there's no secret motive at all it's like he needs money jeffrey has offered him money. He's like, yes, I'm going to take the money. And now I'm going to be like, I'm going to hedge on the issue.

I'm not going to get all the Republicans to, you know, be super pro this thing. And that's that. It's like the man is, yeah, it's like, is that corrupt? It feels corrupt. I think it's technically legal, but like, at least I know where the man stands. Like the man, the man loves a nickel. And so that is where we are. I think it's a, for me, final point on this, it is kind of interesting how little the sort of like Tucker Carlson and even like the Trump's equivocation on this issue, but like

Vivek and Jeffrey, yes. So the populist right sort of talking heads, the more establishment Republican donors, they didn't have much of an effect on the vote. It was overwhelming majority voted yes. I don't know what to make of that really. Maybe this is the last point is just in favor of the fact that some pretty crazy information was revealed but yeah i'm not really sure um we should move on to fake meat uh i would love to talk about lab growth not not fake you know this is not some like this is not a this is not satan or something this is or satan whatever the vegans are eating uh this is straight up cultivated meat it is like cellularly the the cellular break breakdown of it is is meat river just tell me about fake meat yeah so fake meat it's actually not fake meat it's

immortalized cells of say beef or chicken that continue to divide under certain uh conditions what you end up with is essentially the same product that you could buy at the store on like a molecular level. Florida has banned this as of March 3rd. It's part of a larger ag bill that has to go to DeSantis' office. He's already signaled support for the meat ban. So it's going to get signed. I looked into this. I wanted to see why they decided to ban this. So I talked to Josh March, who's the head of Sci-Fi Foods, which is a cultivated beef company. And I also talked to Representative Dean Black, who was he's a Florida legislator who supported the bill.

Josh March essentially told me that it's all about the cattleman's lobby. They've given money to DeSantis. They've given money to the Florida Republican Senate Electoral Committee. They've given money to the president of the Florida Senate, various congressmen who were involved in crafting this bill. So the Florida Cattleman's Association, on the surface, seems that it's behind it. But if you actually look at the amounts of money that they're giving them, because Florida has fairly strict campaign finance laws, it's not a ton of money. In my opinion,

it's not enough money for Florida Republicans to have supported this bill if they didn't actually want to pass it. Right. So first of all, this is in a piece that River published today called Florida Just Banned, Lab Grown Meat. I tried to find out why and check it out over on Pirate Wires and should. Give us that click, baby. $75,000, I read, was one of the PACs, gave to a PAC that supported DeSantis. But for the most part, it's a maximum of like $1,500 or $3,000 which to your point seems like not a reason that somebody would run a like write a bill run a bill it just is not sufficient it doesn't feel like enough right and the representative I talked to insisted that which he actually didn't get money from the

cattlemen's association but he is a cattle rancher. So, you know, I guess he has an inherent interest. But he told me that competition has nothing to do with it because there is no cultivated meat available for sale in Florida. And it's all about safety. And he just kept saying, you know, this is about safety and the bill doesn't ban research and we want more research. But the truth is that the fda has already approved two cultivated meat products for sale they're not actually on the market yet because it's not scalable i mean it's just like our institutions aren't ready the fda has made mistakes before um it just couldn't really give me a clear answer you just kept saying you wanted more research but if you don't there's no provision in this bill that like kicks in once there's a certain threshold of research about safety met.

There's no, if the FDA isn't the arbiter of whether or not cultivated meat is safe and who is, just I couldn't get any of these questions really answered in a straightforward way. answered in a straightforward way and so if you go through um all the statements that have been released uh by desantis by members of the legislature who are supporting this bill it's all about you know esg they're talking about esg they're talking about how it's uh unnatural how the it's not what god put all this earth it it's um it's very much a culture war issue when i talked to josh marsh he kind of agreed with me a little bit and he said that you know the first wave of plant or you know meat replacement sort of uh like the plant-based meats and stuff they really went hard against meat and that kind of created they kind of made it a culture war an issue in a way and i think once you look at all the a big problem with cultivated meat is like its supporters the hype about guilt

free meat and and all of this suggesting that it's immoral to eat meat in the present day that's one piece of the culture war issue so that is that's like the kind of that's your your father's culture war to a certain extent like the vegetarian fight has been so many decades now um it's like an that's an interesting piece of it the more recent one feels to me like this crunchy red pill thing that's been happening you know you're like microplastic adjacent sort of raw milk maxing uh soul bra type person who is just like i'm not eating anything grown in a lab man like i want to sun my balls and eat a steak that i you know harvested from a cow that i killed myself with my bare hands and uh and that is a new very strong strain of of i don't

even know what i would call it but it's on the right for sure and it does seem to be I don't even know what I would call it, but it's on the right for sure. And it does seem to be, I don't know, at least driving a lot of the discourse on this. Even the comments on your piece kind of are a little bit adjacent to this. I actually myself am somewhat persuaded by the crunchy Redfield people on this stuff. I'm like, yeah, I don't know. It's not super Lindy to be doing cultivated meat. And as you wrote in your piece, yeah, like, I don't know. It's not super Lindy to be doing cultivated meat. And as you wrote in your piece, these are like, it's really bad PR. The fact that a lot of these cells that are immortalized

are like pre-cancerous or even cancerous, which I know means nothing. And they break down in your aminos and blah, blah, blah, science, science, science, the FDA approves. But yeah, my instinct is sort of like, I'm happy just having steak. Yeah. No, I mean, the the pr is the marketing is not good um around cultivated meat at all and i i understand why honestly if it was on the shelves today i probably wouldn't buy it just to be completely honest but i also

don't think that it i don't like um nanny state sort of politics where, you know, the government is making decisions based on these like spurious claims that things are unsafe. Especially when, you know, I wrote at the end of it, I wrote this article with a cigarette in my mouth. Like, I don't want Florida banning that either. I know cigarettes are bad. They know cigarettes are bad. But my body, my choice. And that's kind of how I feel about this whole thing. And I feel like people are going to get mad at me now.

But the truth is, is that there's no evidence that there's anything wrong with it. And if people want to eat it, fucking let them eat it. Yeah. I think best case scenario, the cultivated meat to me is much more interesting and exciting than the fake meat that's like, it tastes like meat, but it's not really meat. It doesn't taste like meat. And there are a million weird things in it that are not. Cultivated meat is to me at least more interesting than that. And cultivated meat at scale right now, it's super expensive.

So people can't even afford it. It's kind of the moot point, but which begs another question of, you know, why go after it this way? But at scale, if it could dramatically lower the cost of beef, that's very interesting. And suddenly, you know, the world has access to a very inexpensive source of healthy protein that would potentially, you know, that would potentially be great.

I, yeah, I don't know. That having been said, I just, you know, if the bug men want to eat bugs, that's fine. I'm not like opposed to the bug man existing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm opposed to being told that I have to be a bug man. Yeah, I'm opposed to being told that I have to be a bug man. And I think that that's the way that's like the moderation that that we at Pyrewire's I think all pretty much sort of failing strategic playbook from the people who oppose self-driving cars and AI in general, which is to say, oh, well, there's a safety issue here. And what we really need is like more time to study you know what the impact of this is going to be and of course they're very

nebulous like they never say it's not enough that the FDA has approved it just like with self-driving cars it's not enough that like the DMV has approved it or something because you know clearly well I would assume that in the case of the Florida ban like there's a lot of meat industry lobbying behind this and probably justified concern from cattle ranchers who are worried about how this is going to impact their bottom lines in a few decades. Which to me seems like a much, it seems like a reasonable concern to bring up and actually like a reasonable way to frame your opposition to, you know, this, the sort of fast rollout of this, this kind of product. Like maybe it should be labeled differently. Maybe we should, you know, think a little bit more carefully about what this, how this could impact other industries. But they don't do that often. They think that they're trying to sort of avoid

maybe this argument that they're Luddites or something. And so they go with the safety tack, even though it's obviously, like it's so transparently weak. I don't understand why. And it is labeled differently to be like, it has to say, theda puts a label it says cell cell derived meat or something but that doesn't even matter as a commenter uh on your piece

actually wrote he had a really interesting comment i'm going to read it really quick uh as a diet i'm going to read the best part first as a diehard pirate wires reader whose livelihood has been within the beef cattle industry for many years, though across the country from Florida, there is another element to the protectionist-based opposition. They believe, for better or worse, that the dairy industry did not sufficiently protect themselves from non-milk alternatives and now has to compete with almonds, soy, rice, etc., products all labeled milk. The question within the beef industry has been whether to seek outright bans on lab-grown meat or just demand certain labeling. We see which side of the argument won in Florida. I think the labeling doesn't even matter. Nobody thinks oat milk is milk. They just want it. And I think that that's an interesting insight from... It's true. Milk

industry is over. I mean, milk is really... i don't know if it's over i mean dairy is not over but it took a huge huge huge hit from this stuff um and it's not really surprising that they uh the cattle industry or the cattle lobby would would maybe be a little bit alarmed also beef consumption in america is down i learned while researching for your Peace River. And obviously, global competition is up. So beef consumption is up globally, but production in America is down. There's competition everywhere. The cost to produce it in America increases when you get to things like environmental concerns and safety regulations and things like this. So they're facing this multi-front war. And I think it's like the culture war. My sense is maybe not the culture war did it.

I think the culture war has given them a lot of allies that they're using because there is this looming threat to the industry. It's not necessarily just lab-grown cultivated meat, which again is like a sort of future threat that's coming. It's just that they're the scapegoat. They're being threatened everywhere yeah i mean there's a lot of problems um there's also like uh trade uh fuckery that's happening yeah i don't know if people know this but when when you buy meat at the grocery store and it says product of usa that does not necessarily mean that the cow is from america you can literally bring a cow from like anywhere in the world and repackage it and sell it as

product of USA, which is something that was foisted upon us essentially, uh, through, I believe it was the world trade organization, which said that it was anti-competitive for us to label American beef as American beef, which is ridiculous. It's just also why we shouldn't just do bilateral trade agreements. Yes. Also, cattle inventories are at their lowest point since 1951.

Another thing that I have no idea until you wrote that. I was like, there's no way. Here goes River making up docs again. And then I looked and I was like, oh, no, he's right. That's crazy. That is fucking crazy. Yeah. And a lot of that has to do with, and this is a part which actually the beef lobby, because it's controlled in large part by these big corporations, is not going to solve the problem.

these big corporations is not going to solve the problem um the reason that the inventory part of the reason the inventories are so low is because live cattle prices have decreased while um beef prices have continued to go up because you have massive concentration of uh the slaughterhouse industry it's like giant brazilian conglomerates that have come in and they're basically price fixing so farmer ranchers are being driven especially smaller ones are being driven out of the business like where i grew up people used to have like 30 40 head of cattle almost everybody and now almost nobody does because you can't make any money yes it sounds to me like the issue is yet again globalism yeah pretty much uh let's move on we gotta we have we have a couple more topics that i think are really good um both tech

both fun i really do want to get to uh we gotta talk about don lemon um so was someone else gonna do a thing here because i could i could cover it if hey solana have you ever done math yeah he uh he basically uh asked his new met with his new boss the first time and asked him if he if he was doing ketamine i mean like that's a crazy thing to do well let's back up though so we're talking don lemon which we we've talked about this already he was he was fired from uh was it cnn yeah after he suggested that women over the age of like 45 or something were not fit to be president. They're past their prime. They're past their prime. She says people, you know, politicians or something are not in their prime.

Nikki Haley is in her prime. Sorry. When a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s. What are you talking about? That's not according to me. Prime for what? It depends. It's just like prime.

If you look it up, if you Google when is a woman in her prime, it'll say 20s, 30s, and 40s. I don't necessarily... 40s, oh, I got it another decade. I'm not saying I agree with that. It was like a very wild thing

to say, period, to say on CNN, especially to say in the post-MeToo era, especially, especially. I would not fire anybody for saying that. I would have questions for the record. But he was fired at CNN. He comes back as a free speech warrior on X out of nowhere after like a year in hiding.

And everyone's like, wait, what? This is like the CNN guy. This is like the mask up or die guy. This is like the yay censorship police guy. What is going on here we find out he assigned a deal with elon musk so the deal goes south after his very first interview for his like you know x exclusive content uh he has like a don lemon show on x so he does an interview with elon and asks him if he does drugs and elon is like no and also i don't want to sign this deal with you anymore. I don't like you. Goodbye. Don is now at this point still allowed to, he's still allowed to go on Twitter and do his dumb show that's going to fail no matter what he does, frankly. But he's not getting paid by Elon Musk anymore. And so he decides that this is a free speech issue. And he frames it as like you know elon

is not okay with people criticizing him and that's not really in keeping with his philosophy i think but of course like elon's entire point when he bought twitter was people should be allowed to say whatever they want on twitter not that don lemon specifically should be paid for saying stupid shit and i just like that's i don't what are we doing here like he can't really be this stupid right does just don really believe maybe he's been maybe he's been protected for so long in cnn that he really does believe that like free speech means when people like him specifically are literally given money to say things that the state agrees with i don't know what do you guys make of this story i think he's well one thing that's interesting interesting to note for context is Don Lemon later went on CNN. So he goes back to his former employer

to talk about what happened in the Elon interview, which I think is hilarious. And in that clip, he basically suggests that the reason Elon got mad is because at one point in the interview, Don Lemon asked him if he was going to regulate, if he was going to moderate hate speech more on X or something like that. Do you believe that X and you have some responsibility to moderate hate speech on the platform? That you wouldn't have to answer these questions from reporters about the great replacement theory as it relates to Democrats? I don't have to answer these questions. The great replacement theory as it relates to Jewish people. Do you think that? I don't have to answer questions from reporters. Don, the only reason I'm doing this interview is because

you're on the X platform and you asked for it. Otherwise, I would not do this interview. My sense is like, the interview went poorly and now Don Lemon is trying to like leverage this as much as possible to get as much publicity for his first episode

and hopefully ride that wave to develop like a larger audience the issue of course is that the people to whom this would appeal who would still watch cnn are probably like boycotting x or something they're on blue sky well and also don lemon for saying that women over 45 are over the hill like yeah he's he's burned both bridges yeah sir what have you done like you like what have you done brandon thoughts from the media perspective just one of the phrases that was going around when he was canned from cnn last year was like every other headline had like he canned for diva like

behavior it's like it's like this totally tracks he might be he might be that stupid but he's a diva and this is totally diva behavior i would not watch his show but i do kind of like don london a little bit like there is something that sort of speaks to me about the messiness of him and there's also a like there's one year like where they do that um you know the new year's thing on cnn or whatever and he was like shit face like grabbing anderson cooper's ass and i'm like what a great like he is um one of the one real gay guys in media like in mainstream media i'll say that like just messy he's like insulting and he's like at 40 women are past their prime he was like and they did they were like what and he was like it's not an opinion it's a fact or something he doubled

down he was like google it google it i'm like what classic gay misogyny it was crazy like don why are you more sexist than like anyone in manosphere? This is crazy. This is absolutely insane. Not even blushing. He's just going straight in, doubling down. I agree on the messy point. I think it's very interesting just what a complete disaster he is. And he's really proving it now with the Elon thing, which was really an interesting lifeline for him. His career was totally over before this.

totally over before this uh and now it will be over again except you know where did you just say that he was on with anderson cooper uh with uh with uh andy cohen or something where was he grabbing ass where was that i think i could be misremembering that was a couple years ago but he was shit-faced on cnn like with anderson cooper well anderson cooper is friends with so here's my connection anderson cooper is friends with Andy Cohen. Andy Cohen has an entire universe of reality television where someone like Don Lemon would do very well. And I think maybe that's the future. So last one is also in the world of tech media as it relates to something funny.

I want to talk about Neil Young and Spotify. Sanjana, can you break this one down for us? Yeah, so Neil Young, Spotify. Sajana, can you break this one down for us? Yeah. So Neil Young, a couple of days ago, released an open letter called My Return to Low Res Spotify, in all caps, on his website. You may remember, basically, Neil Young in 2022 sent another open letter out saying that he was requesting his managers to remove all of his music from Spotify. And he was doing this because Spotify was basically spreading misinformation about the vaccine through the Joe Rogan show. So he said specifically, you know, I'm doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines, potentially causing death to those

who believe the disinformation being spread by them uh and he later said in the letter you know i want spotify to know that they can have rogan or young not both obviously obviously they chose like some poor 22 year old scandinavian reading that letter and they're just like who is neil young yeah so so Neil boycotts Spotify. Basically, they remove his music from the platform. Shortly thereafter, a couple other Canadian artists from his time period follow. Joni Mitchell follows and boycotts over the Rogan disinformation.

So this is January 2022. Two years elapse, andil young is back on spotify um and two years and 15 vaccinations later neil young has returned but he's he's framing it as uh he's back on spotify despite the fact that the streaming is low resolution so he says in the uh the opening of this letter spotify the number one streamer of low-res music in the world, Spotify, where you get less quality than we made, will now become home of my music again. And then he briefly mentions disinformation that was supposedly the catalyst for leaving in the first place. He says, my decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I'd opposed at Spotify.

Doesn't specify which. Um, and then he goes on to basically say, you know, I hope that Spotify will, will, uh, enable high resolution streaming so that my fans can hear my music in

full. Uh, no like caveat about the, you know, the vaccine, uh, disinformation that he said it was gonna kill thousands of of people who believed it um but yeah i guess neil young is back and so overall point he's like you know every platform is lying about the vaccine to you now therefore i gotta get

that spotify check this is like when people say they're gonna move to Canada and don't. This is what this is giving. Yeah. Well, people don't realize how long Neil Young has been this annoying libtard. He was the inspiration for Sweet Home Alabama, the Lynyrd Skynyrd song. Very famous Lynyrd Skynyrd song. It's a diss track

of Neil Young. Of his song Southern Man, because he was like saying that southerners are like evil racist or whatever I mean that's like his main yeah look it up they say his name in the song I love that it's like boomer drama yeah so he's been in the

game and irritating people for a long fucking time but yeah I mean I guess great that he's back for whoever's listening i don't i don't know i've never met a neil young fan there's some i feel like there's some context missing with the neil young story today which is that um there was a huge push to get joe rogan deep platformed that neil young was, of which Neil Young was riding the wave. This happened at the same time as they signed, this is up in the same time period as them signing

Joe Rogan exclusively. Um, and a bunch of employees, a bunch of stories about Spotify employees, uh, like having hissy fits about that situation and to his credit the ceo daniel eck standing firm and saying we are um going to continue on with the contract that we made with joe rogan they eventually capitulated i think it took a few weeks and they started adding like covid just a covid warning onto spotify onto joe ro's Spotify podcasts. But I think my point is to say is that Neil Young, he played the wrong hand back then and Joe Rogan did not get canceled. And now he's crawling back and he's got to get that Spotify bread. That's great. I'm glad you brought that up.

That is important context for sure. And it's important. It's part of this other thing we always touch on here, which is like the total memory holding of 2020, 2021, like that whole period, 2022 even. You're right.

There was a real powerful push to get rid of Joe Rogan. He was mentioned constantly in every mainstream outlet, always with disinformation. And disinformation, disinformation about vaccines and stuff was being targeted by all of the platforms. This was the game. It was like the platforms had the rules in place, and then the media would find instances that they believed were infractions, and they would go after them relentlessly until the platforms took action. And Joe Rogan was their highest profile target. They did everything they could to stop him. I think the real reason is obvious. It's because Joe Rogan is just as influential as

the New York Times, really, when you break it down. The New York Times is very influential to a certain kind of person, an enormous population of people in America, but so is Joe Rogan. It's a different kind of guy. That guy is not reading the New York Times. We're talking about how many people listen to Joe Rogan at this point? It's by far the most popular podcast. It's got to be in the 30 million plus range at this point, at least. I feel bad even saying that number. I'm sure it's higher. Matt, just throw it up on the screen right now and we can all laugh at how on target or off I am at this in the comments. But they failed. That effort failed. And in part, that signaled the changing of the tide that we've also been writing about here at Pirate Wires and talking about for a while. This sort of strange, difficult to truly define, but definitely happening vibe shift that kind of

carries on to the point where now it's like the idea of banning joe rogan on spotify is really unfathomable he just had his deal renewed in fact um and there was really no fanfare at all about that it's just like those people the sensors completely lost uh when it comes to just the kinds of things you're allowed to say in America. There was also a 17% riff at Spotify. So 17% of the company got laid off in 2023. Maybe some of those former Joe Rogan enemies had taken out. Yeah.

Dealing with the same stuff that's happening throughout tech, I guess, where these firing moments are also opportunities to get rid of just the most annoying employees at your company who are causing all of the ruckus. Last thoughts on Neil Young, Don Lemon, I don't know, China, or fake meat. In fact, if anyone can think of a way to tie them all together, I would be very obliged. Well, I would just say one more thing on the Neil Young thing with the overton window shifting and the kind of weird memory holing of of 2020 we've been talking about is like

i just think it's interesting that he's framing his departure as a resolution issue and not like he's completely walked back from this disinformation tack that he hit so hard in the first letter um and i guess sort of expecting that people aren't gonna you know go back and and you know double check why he he initially left like it's kind of bizarre um but it's a sign that you know no one that's no longer a serious argument to make against the platform he said that he told them that he did it because amazon and apple were also doing disinformation now and so he can't boycott everyone so that's why he's going back to spotify i don't i don't know what disinformation apple and amazon are doing now but well i mean

it's also what it really is giving is like did you also hear about cynthia nixon's hunger strike so yes exactly so cynthia nixon of sex in the city fame uh the the redhead who then was gray and i don't know maybe she's back to red now in the new ones now in the new one she's like a lesbian and a cheater and a political activist and had gray hair i don't know anyway she in real life is super politically active in the most irritating ways imaginable and she went on a hunger strike for Palestine and the hunger strike lasted two days and she got a lot of news when she went on the hunger strike because everybody was like awesome like this is great news like we she should definitely just starve but um but then uh i mean she broke it two days later and there was really no news it's like

all the days yeah there's like 16 year old girls in toledo ohio doing that for instagram give me a fucking parade yeah i know um but that's like that's what these people are they're all just kind of they're all just like frauds. And they don't mind being frauds. And we all amplify them for being frauds. And the media rewards them for being frauds. And then they walk it back and nobody remembers. And it's like, that's what we're here for, guys.

We are the record keepers. We're here to keep these people honest. Godspeed. Rate. Review. Send it to your friends. Please subscribe to PirateW honest. Godspeed, rate, review, send it to your friends. Please subscribe to PirateWires.com. I would like to feed these lovely writers

here in the chat. It's been real. See you guys next week.