QAA Podcast - DEWs and Data Centers - The Spokane Fire Conspiracy Theories (E384)
Episode Date: August 6, 2026On August 1st, 2026, a complex of fires started in Spokane, Washington that would become the state’s most destructive fires in history. Over 700 structures have been lost and thousands of acres burn...ed as high winds fed the flames over the weekend. Nearly as quickly as the flames ignited, so did the conspiracies online. Today, Travis takes Jake and Julian through the conspiracies being circulated about the fires. Corey chimes in on location. Spokane County leaders held unknown discussions with data center developer seeking massive facility on West Plainshttps://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/jul/24/spokane-county-leaders-held-unknown-discussions-wi/ A company proposing a massive West Plains data center has little history, spurring outcry from concerned residentshttps://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/02/company-proposing-massive-west-plains-data-center-/ Police Affidavit - State v. Aaron Forrest Farinacci https://cp.spokanecounty.org/courtdocumentviewer/imageviewers/SCDocumentViewer.aspx?docid=12708182&caseNumber=2611023532&subNum=2.0&pageNum=7 Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Well done. Welcome to the QAA podcast episode 384, DEWs and data centers, the Spokane Fire conspiracy theories.
As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
So guys, how many, like, wildfire episodes you think we've done so far?
One million and one.
Let's see, there's the fires that were started by the space lasers.
Yeah, I mean.
Space laser fires.
So the fires in our city?
There's the fires here.
And what were they doing here?
They were destroying evidence or something.
Yeah, the Getty Museum bodies in the Guinea, something like that.
Yeah.
There's Hawaii, the Hawaii fires.
Oh, yeah, the Hawaii was.
So, yeah, yeah, I mean, the problem is that, like, you know, these devastating events,
which just feel like they're getting just worse and more frequent, are just a reliable
source of, you know, conspiracy theories and wild speculation because it's, like, it's unfolding
chaotic event. You just don't know
how to make sense of it. So it's like
it's natural to try and fill in those gaps
with some speculation. Bodes very
well for climate change
slowly moving in. Our reaction
to it has been very healthy
and good and I'm sure we'll be able to organize
as human beings in an orderly fashion
and, you know, come up
with common sense and useful
solutions instead of spinning out.
Well, and typically, you know, the world is
burning only metaphorically. So,
you know, when it's when it actually is
on fire. I think that the, you know, the conspiracies, they, they, you know, there's a lot more
room to spread. All these horrible fire puns. I don't mean to do them. They're just, it's very
literal. I mean, I don't, I don't think it's metaphorical at all that the world is burning.
The world is literally getting hotter and hotter or recording record temperatures and more and
more wildfires are happening. Yeah, I'd say the world's burning for real, uh, in, in all ways
possible. Yeah, and in this particular situation, our editor, Corey, happens to be like literally
miles from where the fire is burning right. He happens to be on fire. We're cutting out of
Corey whose hair and body are on fire. He is rolling around on the floor trying to put himself out.
He will still be expected to deliver. We thought his screams, his screams would make a great soundtrack
that we'd later make him edit in, you know, to give us a little bit of flavor.
Right. He had to drop his, you know, noble work helping his friends and family to make some content. But he is, he is on the scene right now. And he doesn't, so as a consequence, he doesn't have his good mic, which is why he doesn't sound as good as us. But like, Corey, like what was going on over there?
Yeah. So I had just came into town for the weekend for some family stuff. And then, yeah, when I think we were maybe recording or working and then my mom came out and was like, there's a fire over near our friend's house. And we had stored some stuff.
there. He was looking at evacuating and then, yeah, as we're driving over there, you could just
see these like little plumes of black smoke around all the forests. And so you knew these were like
structures burning. And so it was pretty obvious that it was going to be pretty bad very quickly. And
I think when we went out there, it was 200 acres. And then by the time we left, they were saying it was
closer to 1500 and had jumped the river. And that was only within a few hours. And yeah, the winds were
blowing 30, 40 miles an hour. And yeah, things just kind of escalated from there. What was it? Have you
ever been like have you ever been like close to a blaze that large or kind of three years ago my
parents house burned down and the medical egg fires out here so i was over in seattle but had
immediately driven back that same night when we heard that the house burned down so a little
too close to to home my god what does fire have against core is the real question i think well i
think we're all going to experience the feeling of fire chasing us no matter where we run
eventually.
I think so too.
But you were able to get like your friends, you were able to help them evacuate some stuff.
Yeah, they were just right on the edge.
I don't think it actually ever crossed, or the evacuation zone never crossed the road.
So they didn't have to fully evacuate.
But we were just kind of making sure that one, our stuff.
So it wasn't fully unselfish reasons.
But our stuff was going to be good if they did suddenly get the evacuation order.
But they were closing down roads left and right.
The road that we came in on actually closed by the time we left.
So no one was able to come in if we had gotten there an hour later.
later. But their house is fine. Everything's good over there. Luckily, for them anyways, the wind was going the opposite direction. So it just kept blowing towards town instead of west into the airway heights area.
Yeah. The evacuation being one road away. It's also like, doesn't sound super comforting. Yeah. The east side of the road was evacuated. The west side was not. So.
Hmm. Close. Damn. Damn. Well, real spooky. Well, stay safe out there. Yeah. That goes for all of you, by the way, listeners.
Stay safe out there in the fire season. Yeah.
Yeah. To let you.
you know what a dedicated, what a dedicated editor and producer Corey is. He basically texted me
something like, you were like, well, uh, like I'll get the episode back in a little bit. Like,
wait, what did you? Hold on. I have the text.
Just about to, I think I was just about to publish with the blurb or something. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You were going to send me a blurb for the app. And you go, all right,
send you one in a bit. And that was at 102. And I was like, perfect. Thanks. And then at 118,
you go, okay, it'll be a little bit now. There's a fire and we have to go help a friend evacuate some
stuff. And just for everybody to know what a good boss I am, I went, holy shit, go in all caps.
And then, and then. Let's see if this was, okay, and then a couple hours later, you're like,
okay, I'm back. We'll send blurb soon. And then just sent me a picture of a massive plume of
smoke. And that was when you said it went from 200 acres, and by the time you left, it was
2,000. Oh, man, I'm glad you're all right.
You're covered in soot, and you've got like patches of extinguisher, folks.
still on you, but you're back here with your headphones on, you know, being, being a real professional.
Doing better than tens of thousands of people in Spokane, but yeah. That's what we ask. I mean,
is that unless it's third degree, the burns should be livable and podcastable through.
So, yeah, before we like get into, you know, some of the speculation that people are engaging in
online, let's try and sort of like lay out the facts of the matter. So there are currently three
fires around Spokane. First, there is the old.
trails fire. This is like the most devastating in terms of property damage across the Spokane River.
The largest fire in terms of like pure acreage is the autumn lane fire, which was reported
separately as the Meadow View fire. It's burning in an area northwest of Spokane around
nine mile falls, five mile falls, and the Little Spokane River. And the third fire is the Fairview
Fire. This is a northeast of Spokane near Mead. I have to say that this is making the
area seem really charming, even though, unfortunately, it's a list of fires. I'm like, oh, well,
that sounds like a cute place, you know, that river sounds nice. There's falls, you know, it's almost like
a little tourist brochure, except that everything covered is currently on fire. As of this recording,
which is the afternoon of Tuesday, August 4th, the fires have burned approximately 10,280 acres and are
zero percent contained. Approximately 65,000 people are under evacuation orders. Now, no day
deaths or major injuries have yet been confirmed, but U.S. Forest Service spokesperson
Benjamin Kossel has said that there's a high probability that that will change as search
and recovery expands into currently inaccessible areas. Reuters reports that at least 700 structures
have gone up in flames since Saturday, mostly in residential areas, with another 400, including
homes, damaged or destroyed. Now, the causes of the fires are under investigation, but an arrest
has been made on suspicion of deliberately starting one of the three fires.
The suspect, 37-year-old spoken resident Aaron Farinacci, was jailed on Monday on a $1 million
bond on a count of first-degree arson.
No, he set the fire.
Now, these blazes are the largest and most devastating fires in what is shaping up to be
an especially active fire season.
The interagency fire center has tallied 44,722 wildfires nationwide this year, the
highest number for this time of the year in at least a decade. Jake, I hear that you've been
coming up with a way to beat the heat. Do you want to tell us maybe about your haircut mechanism that
I thought, I mean, I know it's kind of off topic, Travis, but we can't just let this
pass. We have to talk about it. Do we have a minute? Yeah. Go ahead. Jake. What's going on
over? Oh, man, I wish sometimes I do wish this show is video so you could see some of my wonderful
colleagues' expressions.
When you work together for so long and you know
that Jake's about to launch into like
a seven to ten minute story that's going to have
nothing to do with anything that we're talking about.
How possibly could this take seven to ten
minutes? Like I asked, I said,
hey, nice haircut. You look
kind of like military today. What did
you tell me? Well, because Julian knows
what the answer to the question is, because we talked
about it before hitting record.
And I'm still reeling. I'm
reeling from this. The answer is
is that for the last, I don't know, six months,
maybe better part of a year,
I've been using a dog vacuum to cut my hair.
Now, I didn't buy the dog vacuum
specifically for cutting my hair.
I originally got it to cut teddies.
But after a very bad day
where I learned a very important lesson,
which is that you can't use clippers on papyons,
the thing was sitting in my, you know,
the upper storage cabinets,
everybody's got those.
The shit that you can't reach,
you shove it in there,
hoping you can never get it back. That's where it was sitting forever. And then a friend of mine,
I was hanging out with him. I was like, man, your hair looks really good. Like, where did you get,
where did you get it? Where did you get it cut? And he was like, he was like, I've been using it. I've
been doing it myself. He's like, you can't get the floby anymore because it's like, he's like,
discontinued basically. He's like, but they make the same thing in the form of a dog vacuum. And I was
like, oh, well, I have one of those. He was like, oh, yeah, that's what I use. And so,
and so, yeah, I've been using it to like cut my hair for. So yeah, your whole house has been using
this, right? You, the dog. No, it's just me. I know you'd be shaving that dog, too.
No, it's just me. And you don't want to know, you want to know, like, the sort of like M. Knight
Shamelon, like, twist of the end of this is that my buddy who ended up, like, who recommended it
to me, he and his wife were over at my place, and she, and she turned to him and she was like,
hey, Jake's hair looks really good. Like, why don't you ask him, like, where he gets his haircuts?
Oh, no.
And so you don't have to keep using the dog vacuum. He was like, yes. She's desperately trying to get him.
off it. She's desperate to get him to stop and she said it about the one friend that he had convinced
there are dozens of you. There are dozens of you out there. So yeah, everything's fine. And yeah,
to beat the heat, to beat the fires. You know, in a world on fire, start using the dog vacuum thing
to cut your hair. Beautiful stuff. Thank you, Jake. I appreciate you telling this story. It comes with a
bunch of different lengths. It vacuums all the hair up, right? It's so easy. It's so nice. If you're a person,
Look, if you're a person whose hair looks okay, if it's the same length all around,
your money.
If you're a person that has to have different lengths, like, you're kind of out of luck.
Okay, yeah.
Well, I mean, a lot of people do use, like, electric razors and stuff to cut their hair.
I just think that it is unique that you use a dog vacuum cleaner specifically.
See, that's where that differentiates it.
I don't think people are like, oh, the problem with the dog vacuum cleaner.
What's funny about it is that it's the same length everywhere.
Well, you know, Travis, you got to save us.
You can get creative with shorter paired clippers.
Like, you know, you could do like one, you know, not shorter on the side.
You know, the combs or whatever that you clip onto them.
You can do a little shorter on the sides, length on top.
It's not that difficult.
Before Travis takes us away from this conversation, which he should.
Yeah.
Do you have any other questions?
Admit that you've used it on the dog.
That's all I want.
No, no, no.
No, no.
I got it initially to use it on the dog the first time.
But you have to use scissors with Papillon.
They don't have an undercoat, and so you actually can't use clippers on them.
I can totally, like, destroy their beautiful coats.
It was actually a really bad day.
We got into a big fight.
With the dog?
Oh.
Teddy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Teddy was very upset.
You're ruining my beautiful she.
So he's only used it once on the dog.
Before you dare think this is funny, listener, just know he only used it once on the dog,
and it caused a huge fight.
That makes it a lot less funny.
I'm such a fucking man.
I really...
I don't know how I've made it this long.
My favorite part of that story is that it somehow didn't start during COVID.
Like, that is such COVID lockdown style behavior, but you're like, it's been six to eight months.
I mean, I know COVID is still happening in many ways.
Please don't write it and yell at me.
But yeah, I just mean that during the lockdown would have been a logical time to start using the dog vacuum as a haircut.
Oh, that makes so much more sense.
No, no, no.
after it, after the world reopened, I decided to retreat.
But I decided to take a thing I did out in public and take it back into the bathroom.
Yeah, the best part about using the Flobie is that you can use it while you're heating the sandwich between your thighs,
the peanut butter and jelly pre-made uncrustable.
You know what?
I'm off the uncrustables, man.
There's too much sugar in them.
I'm really trying to, I'm really trying to be like a...
The world of Jake is like an endlessly changing.
It's always changing.
I'm constantly evolving and devolving, falling in and out.
out of favor.
Boy, you've matured, certainly.
That's really beautiful to hear.
We'll have to get more updates later.
Sure, sure.
I could do a whole show probably, just like of my like chaotic philosophy, yeah.
About how you groom and what you eat.
We'll talk about that in the future episode, certainly.
That's right.
Take us back to this.
All right, here we go.
All right, back to the tragedies.
Different types of tragedies.
I think many would argue that the doctor.
haircut vacuum machine on a human head is a tragedy in and of itself. But please, I digress.
All right. People are losing their homes, Jake. All right. Whenever there's any kind of major disaster,
you know, including wildfires, you know, the chaotic, rapidly changing situation creates
mysteries and information gaps, which always leads to the spread of conspiracy theories to fill
these gaps. We talked about some of those and we covered like the Hawaii wildfires of 2023
and the Eaton fire in L.A. last year. By the way, just a few hours ago,
Before we recorded, the Los Angeles County fire officials, they released a report on the cause of the Eden fire.
And they say it was caused by sparks from an out-of-service transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison.
So there we go.
There we go.
There are criminals in many, many ways.
Yeah, right.
So just degrading American infrastructure, not merely failing to do its job, but actively destroying people's lives.
This would never happen in communist China.
One recurring claim in all of these fires is that the damage is not caused by a totally out-of-control blaze, but rather a carefully controlled laser or possibly a direct energy weapon or do.
Now, the evidence site is always the same.
People point out that buildings and cars are set ablaze, while trees and other vegetation are not.
They seem untouched, or at least merely singed.
Now, this observation doesn't lend any support to the due claim, of course, because it ignores.
nor is the fact that a dry structure has a lower ignition point than a sap-filled tree.
One video that conspiracies made about the Spokane fire.
People are asking questions as to why the trees are still standing all over the place,
and the metal has been melted in places, everything else destroyed.
Again, houses, you can see here, reminds me of the paradise, palisades,
where the houses are burned down, and the trees are.
around them still standing, and you've got things melted down.
Like this vehicle getting torched and it being hot enough to melt aluminum in glass,
but not hot enough to burn up the grass and the shrubbery right next to it.
A lot of odd things start to stand out.
Dry thing burn, wet thing not burn.
I mean, like variations of this video are made during every single wildfire.
And I thought this guy even says like, oh, reminds me of like the Palisades fire.
Really, you've seen this before and in different contexts.
You want to, like, examine that, explore why that is.
You want to, like, dive deeper into why you're seeing the same pattern over and over again in every fire you look at.
The problem here is that you could, I don't want to sound like a ma'am stream media cuck, but you can just Google why do trees not burn during house fires?
It's true.
I think, yeah, they just rather live with the mystery.
Or, like, it's just not intuitive to them.
Julian, why watch a video when you can make a video?
You don't need a video.
You can Google that shit and I'll probably answer it right there in the fucking AI overview garbage.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
That thing runs my life now.
So in this case, in this case, yeah, I'll let AI fucking answer this question for me, okay?
There's certain things that I don't need more complex insights to.
Another popular claim, whenever there's a wildfire, is that the color blue is able to deflect
these direct energy weapons somehow. So buildings with blue roofs are miraculously spared from the fires.
You see this again, every single time there's a wildfire. I wonder where people got it.
People say it's like, oh, you know why like Scientology buildings are blue is because they know,
they know the secret about the weapon. Yeah. Well, have you ever wondered why lakes don't burn down?
Mm, yeah. Blue. Rivers? Blue. The ocean has never burned down. Blue.
Sir, we've invented one of the most powerful weapons in the world.
It's a directed energy laser.
The only thing that can defeat it, a color.
Blue, da-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-da.
The energy weapons can't reach me.
And still yet another stock claim is that the fire is part of a plot to clear land for some sort of infrastructure project.
For example, people have claimed, basically, that the California wildfires were designed to help clear a route for the
currently under construction high-speed rail system.
Yeah, that's definitely happening, folks.
You're about to get high-speed rail.
They just have to burn down stuff first, of course.
In Spokane, it was a little different.
So people have instead suggested that the fire was part of a plot
to clear a path for the construction of an AI data center.
Here's how one self-described conspiracy theorist described it on TikTok.
Okay, so I'm a conspiracy theorist, realist, whatever the fuck you want.
Maybe it's just the truth that's being hidden, right?
Like, maybe that's what it is.
But a little over a month ago, Spokane was fighting city council, the mayor, and all the citizens were fighting as data center coming to Spokane, right?
And where does the data, where do they want to put the data center?
West Plains, okay?
Where did the old trell's fire start on Saturday?
Airway Heights.
Part of West Plains.
Where did the trail take it?
Along the river.
It jumped the river.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Make it as you, take it as you will.
This poor lady, she's been, the whole video, she's doing the eye opening thing
to the point where the white at the top is visible.
And that really gives you a crazed look.
Untrustworthy look.
Yeah, I thought this video was like really, really interesting because in this clip,
and in the rest of the video I didn't include.
Like, she doesn't really get around like spelling out the conspiracy theory.
She's, like, speculating about, like, she kind of, like, lays out a couple facts.
And then she kind of like, oh, though, she kind of, like, doesn't take it to the finish line.
He said, like, I don't know.
Like, take it for what you will, you know.
And I thought it was interesting because, like, if you take the, you know, the facts independently, what she's saying,
like, she didn't say anything untrue.
There is a company that has proposed a 514-acre data center.
and hydrogen production plant in the area.
That seems like it's not flammable.
That seems really smart.
They should definitely build a data center on a big, like, mass of hydrogen
and put it right where recent wildfires happened.
Yeah.
And then she also mentions that the old trail fire started in the West Plains,
and that's also true.
And then she mentions that the fire jumped the Spokane River.
That's also true.
But it's not state as like the relevance of these facts or how they're connected.
It's really more of a kind of like, well, here's why I know it to be true.
And when you add it all up, there's like something not right there.
Yeah, the special recipe is the whites at the top of the eye.
That's what you add to this to make it into a conspiracy theory.
And, you know, I suppose like on the abstract point of like something's not right about what's going on, I suppose that's like that's also correct.
Like, like it's a vibe.
And there's something not right specifically about the proposal for the data center.
And part of why it's fishy was uncovered by a real-life citizen journalist.
And what she discovered was that a county commissioner was in contact with the data center company,
despite the fact that he previously claimed that he didn't know the name of the company.
And I want to talk a little bit about that today because I think it's an interesting example
how of like a lack of transparency from public officials and the dismissal of legitimate concerns
about data centers are helping to like fuel conspiracy theories.
This is once again
Eddington-esque.
I have to give flowers
to that movie
that I dismiss too soon.
Everything seems to be
coming up, Eddington.
As reported by the outlet,
the spokesman review.
So these hidden communications
were uncovered by a Spokane resident
and stay-at-home mother
named Brittany Anderson.
So like Q and non-fellers,
they always fancy themselves
as people who like uncover corruption
and like, oh, I'm like exposing
like, you know, the bad guys
by posting and stuff.
Well, this is, this is,
interesting is like this is someone who like actually did it like she's not someone who was like a professional journalist or like a watchdog organization something like that she is simply someone who started reading about the effects that large data centers have on electricity rates water supplies and the communities built around them and she wanted to know what spoken county was doing so on june 12th anderson filed a public records request and about six weeks later on july 23rd spoken county released the records the bill was $78 for the records now the record
revealed emails and Zoom calls among Spokane County Commissioner Al French, utility officials,
and Sean Boyd, the CEO of a company called Apricus Energy Partners. So according to the spokesman
review, French had been discussing a major development with Apricus for more than a year,
a proposed data center in hydrogen production complex on the West Plains west of Spokane International Airport.
Planning documents, talking about like how much energy this project would need,
contemplated an eventual electrical load of 1,000 megawatts.
Now, for comparison, all of the approximately 422,000 electricity customers for the local utility company, Avista and Washington, Idaho,
use an average of roughly 1,100 megawatts combined.
So they speculated like nearly doubling the amount of energy consumed in this 30,000 square mile of region just for the sake of the data center.
So they're talking about basically adding one customer that would,
Double their electricity needs.
I mean, that was a shocking to discover.
I had to realize, like, what an energy drain these data centers can be.
Mm-hmm.
The documents include an estimate of approximately $184 million for transmission lines,
substations, and grid interconnections capable of supplying up to 650 megawatts.
The estimate did not include, like, what would be necessary for new power generation,
customer-specific infrastructure, or everything that would be required to reach the full
proposed like 1,000 megawatt load.
Apricus has also asked about their eligibility for a proposed data center tax exemption
and about finding additional sources of water.
Vampires.
Vampires.
It never stops.
They want everything.
This data center, like I mentioned, was not the only industrial project being contemplated.
They also described revenue from the data center as a way to help finance a hydrogen
production facility.
So the project was early stage.
There's no permits.
Avista's feasibility work reportedly concluded.
that existing infrastructure could not accommodate a project of that size.
But the records uncovered by Anderson showed that French had been advocating for it and
participating in conversations intending to move it forward.
At the same time, the proposal's scale in details were mostly not publicly disclosed
or even shared with other public officials.
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said that she knew very little about the Apricas proposal,
except for a mention from French during an informal discussion.
She told the spokesman review this.
At some point, we were discussing economic development, and commissioner mentioned this huge green hydrogen project, and I didn't have any details on it.
I don't recall the name of the company, but that the green hydrogen project also had a huge data center component to it.
Mayor Brown also said that Commissioner French lashed out at her when she opposed a sales tax break for the purchase and installation of data center equipment.
Al, also in a conversation, was very unhappy with me and told me I was killing jobs and not a good team player.
Now, this tracks.
Al French seems to be paranoid about data centers generally, not about them being built, about them not being built.
In a meeting on July 21st, he suggested that opposition to the building of data centers was actually fueled by America's geopolitical rivals who wants to retain the supposed economic benefits of data centers for themselves.
Of course.
We live in a teenage mutant ninja turtle's ass world.
The shadowy organization wants to put the data, you know, the data centers that's going to suck up all the energy.
It sounds like a cartoon bad guy.
It's like an Oopi soft bad guy.
You sound exactly like a Russian or Chinese agent when you say that, Jake.
I want you to know that right now, and I agree with whatever is coming up in this clip.
I've had multiple developers of data centers approach me about doing something on the West Plains.
and they have not been able to meet all of the metrics with regard to power or water or a variety of other things.
And Commissioner Kernan's has been in the same situation.
I know that Commissioner Cooney Brooks is also very familiar with data centers and the importance of them for our economy, for a nation.
In fact, it's been suggested that to be against data centers is to be anti-American because we know, in the FBI,
is currently engaged in investigations where China and Russia have engaged in activities to oppose
data centers because they do not want the United States to take a lead from an economic
standpoint with regard to data center development.
Yeah, that's why they want.
They can't stand to see you waste all your energy.
And these data centers, what do they do?
This is good for the nation, how?
Well, you can make Jake Chinese, for example.
I think it's interesting how essentially like Red Scare rhetoric is like creeping into like county commission meetings, like local kind of like county level discussions about like, you know, the menaces of China and Russia.
He doesn't really explain what's going on here.
I guess like there's some sort of agitators that are like influencing Americans to oppose these AI data centers and therefore their opposition isn't legitimate.
It's not from any kind of like real concerns.
as part of an international plot.
Yeah.
I just don't understand, like, the idea, like, this guy is, you know, probably in his early
60s or something, and he's like, we need these data centers.
Like, does he even know what he's talking about?
Like, I don't know.
It's so interesting to me how the data center itself has become such an obscure.
It's like, we need these data centers.
Like, does he even know what it's going to do?
Like, it's going to get him money.
He's getting paid off.
Is that what going on as the data centers are just coming in?
to anybody who's got a little piece of land, they go,
hey, Joe Schmo, you give us this land to do whatever the hell we want with it.
Oh, yeah.
And you'll be a very, very wealthy men.
You just, all you have to do is convince all your little buddies around those folding tables there
that this is a good idea and you should sign off on it.
How about this?
We'll donate to your re-election committee.
We'll, you know, send you on a nice trip to go and see how other data centers work,
maybe in a nice tropical location, all expenses paid, you know, that kind of stuff.
And so all he's doing is going, well, I'm just going to look at the mainstream news.
Oh, yeah, the FBI did say that.
Oh, yeah, this is what, like, a lot of mainstream outlets seem to think about China and Russia,
that they're involved in anything that goes wrong in the United States.
Perfect.
I'm just going to say this at the meeting.
Yeah, he's following the status quo.
Yeah, he's totally normal.
This guy is, like, he's basically parroting, like, shit that he probably fucking read,
very honestly, like, in a mainstream media account of the data centers.
Because guess who else is in the point?
pocket. Everybody's in this fucking pocket.
Because the pocket are big. The pocket's big. If this
isn't the thing, then the whole economy
is going to collapse. So it
has to be the next big thing. This,
AI, it has to be. Otherwise,
oh my God. Oh,
my God. What do you think happens?
The economy collapses. Huge crash.
Market crash. Oh, man.
What happens to somebody like me who doesn't give a
shit about AI and has never invested in
and really never doesn't own anything in it?
Your lifestyle, everything you love about your lifestyle
is going to be taken away except for the...
Except for the floby.
I'll tell you what.
The floby will be enforced.
You will have to.
You will no longer choose to.
You will have to get your haircut by the floby.
When this house of cards comes tumbling down, there be far fewer professional podcasters.
I'll tell you that.
So you're saying that potentially some of the most annoying people, the most obnoxious people could get the rug pulled out from under them and they'll suffer.
But, you know, regular people, you know, they'll be mostly okay.
No, no.
They'll be destroyed.
They'll be also destroyed.
Way worse, in fact.
So they've ruined it for everybody?
Yeah, and then we'll have to bail them out or something.
It'll be like, too big to fail AI.
We have to subsidize AI.
We have to reroute like half the fucking budget to AI.
Oh, subsidize AI.
Oh, my God.
Is AI going to, are they going to make like AI welfare cases?
How like, oh, well, we need to adopt.
No, you actually have to adopt AI because where will it go?
Where will it go?
It's so lonely out there with nobody to adopt it.
Oh, you want the Chinese.
to win the AI war?
Oh, so that's what it is.
That's what they've told people that go, oh, well, but we're in the AI wars.
It's like the nuclear race or the space race all over again, except with AI, which like,
you know, it upscales my games all right.
But what else does it do?
Better search engine, maybe.
Yeah, you could have all that without LLMs.
I agree.
I totally agree.
You know what?
I was living on the Earth for a long time before these little programs came around and we
were doing just fine.
For a second, I thought you were admitting to.
eating dirt.
How would I go from where I was to eating dirt?
I'm living on the earth.
I'm living on the earth.
I've been eating dirt for a long time.
I've been eating dirt for a long time, boy.
My teeth are black.
All right, sorry.
Travis, please.
Adding to the general sense of paranoia over the data center
is the fact that the company proposing it,
Apricus, is very young with no evidence
of successfully completing project.
Apricus describes itself as a clean energy developer with expertise in hydrogen, renewable power,
natural gas generation, using hydrogen blending and carbon capture and data center development.
Its founder and president is Sean Boyd.
On LinkedIn, he describes himself as having a history of working in the oil and gas,
mining, energy, and power, and seafood industries.
Oh, wow, that's great.
I want to put some shrimp in the gas, and then we're going to...
I love how these guys are like, now we're actually the good guys.
It's like, no, you're not.
You are absolutely not.
It's the same thing.
It's the same.
It's a new form of like gas rush.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Now, LinkedIn lists four employees for the company.
That doesn't mean that that's all there is, but like that's all that anyone can verify.
It's a private company.
Yeah.
So it has like 800 billion market cap and four employees.
Yeah.
Totally normal.
But it remains unclear who exactly is providing the capital for these proposed projects.
The company says that its team has decades of.
energy experience, but Apricus itself is new. So its LinkedIn page says that it was founded in
2023, and its website, which is pretty bare bones, names no completed facilities, customers,
investors, or financing partners. The head of Apricus Energy is like old Gil from the Simpsons
being like, well, oh boy, old Gil really needs this data center. Well, that's it. That is, but that is
like the local, the local administration. That is actually how they are. Oh, boy, I could finally
get that third jet ski.
Oh, if we could just get that
data center, I'll finally retire.
They're like, but Papa,
but Papa, the water
supply, it'll be poisoned
if it's even left to, you know,
left to drink. And he's like,
ah, I gotta get this
center.
People are literally becoming robocop
villains. It's amazing to me.
So the company lists
a Spokane address as its
headquarters, but it's just a post office.
office box. So earlier corporate paperwork used a suburban residential address in the town of
Surprise, Arizona, which is just Boyd's home. You know, you might question, so this is a, like,
of a big, expensive, complicated projects. Like, how many, like, projects has this company actually,
like, completed? And as far as anyone could tell, the answer is zero. I mean, there was a couple
instances where they almost got something off the ground, but nothing concrete. So in February
of 2024, Apricus appeared alongside several aviation companies proposing a hydrogen,
production project at Livermore Municipal Airport in California.
So the concept involved covering approximately 140 acres of airport land with solar panels,
using reclaimed water to produce hydrogen, and supplying that fuel to emerging hydrogen-powered aircraft.
Boyd predicted that the production could begin in the middle of 2026, which you might know,
we are past right now. We're in August. We're in August of 2026. Past the middle.
So when the spokesman review looked into it, it found no operating Livermore for the
facility. An assistant airport manager said that she did not remember working with Apricus,
and the proposal appeared to have never been advanced beyond the conceptual stage.
Earlier this year, Apricus also approached the Calispell Indian community in Washington State
about the project. The spokesman review also found that that didn't go anywhere. Here's what
they reported. Brandon Hogan, Project and Development Analyst for the Calispell tribe, said
Apricus Energy Partners approached tribal leaders last winter. We had a handful of meetings with
Apricus and some of the folks. They were interested in developing a facility that would help provide
energy to support the Big Rock project, Hogan said. As part of the proposal, which would be built on
tribal land, Apricus suggested that the tribe could retain an ownership stake. It was highly conceptual.
They were interested in developing a portion of the tribe's land, Hogan said. We looked at it and
decided we weren't going to pursue it. So there's no evidence that the company has ever
constructed anything at all in its three years of existence. And there's no evidence that anyone
associated with the company built something like the data center slash hydrogen power plant that
they are proposing for Washington State here.
Yeah, but don't you know that people get paid off if it just gets approved?
That's all that matters.
The actual building.
Who gives a shit?
Yeah.
I wonder if they just Googled like safe to have data center like in your area.
Cool and fun to have very loud things sucking energy and water out of local community.
Going back to like the, you know, I guess the conspiracy theories around the fire.
So there is a county commissioner who has been having undisclosed talks with a new company with no track record regarding a data center proposal.
And then a fire started around the proposed area for the data center.
Now, there's no evidence that these two facts have any connection to each other.
And personally, it's clear to me how this fire is supposed to help this proposal move forward.
But I sympathize with the paranoia people are expressing about the situation.
Because once you acknowledge that the people trying to push this project forward are not being as transparent as they should be and, you know, not sure why they have any business even attempting this, you know, that naturally opens you up your mind to speculation about corruption and coverups.
I also want to talk about the arrested arson suspect, Aaron Farinacci, because sometimes like a component of conspiracy theories I've read online that is that he's either a patsy or possibly even like he was hired to.
start the fire and he's like a fall guy or something. I don't know. But there's no evidence of any of these
claims. Solid gold, magic harp, uh, Antifa incoming. Yes, of course. The other thing that people are
doing is like, I hate this, is that they're denying the possibility that climate change is having a
role in these fires because there's an arrested arson suspect. This frustrates me because I feel like
generally people understand the difference between the actual catalyst for an event and an environment
that might make that event more or less likely to happen,
people normally don't have a problem
understanding the difference between these two things.
But for some reason, they act confused
when it comes to fires and climate change.
Like if you can identify the particular cause of the fire,
therefore the general environment that made it more likely to happen
or more damaging than it might have been otherwise
is somehow irrelevant.
Well, that assumes that it's good faith.
I mean, these are people who, like, bring snowballs
on the congressional floor and stuff.
Yeah, it's true.
They're cooks, you know, they'll take anything.
They're trying to find any argument.
They are purposefully ignoring some of the most basic and obvious common sense stuff.
But to a conspiracy theorist, the most obvious, like,
pushback you can give to anything is that climate change isn't causing more fires.
You know what I mean?
And so anytime there is an example of where climate change didn't cause that,
I think it's just because they think of fires in general as opposed to this,
specific fire or that specific fire. I think it's just, well, the fire, there's fires now and where
do they come from somewhere. We didn't have this when I was young. We did. Well, there were several
fires anyways. Even if Firenachi did set this one, there were several of them that broke out at
the same time. And even if he did set, let's say he's like a friggin super, Super Mario,
Super Farinacchi brothers. And he's going around setting fires that fast. Even if that happened,
the environment is still going to keep those fires alive better.
So even if they didn't cause the inciting event,
the inciting event leading to devastating forest fires
is directly linked to global warming and climate change.
Look, this guy just knocked his head on the wrong block, all right?
A flower grew out of it. He grabbed it. Boom.
The fireballs, yeah. Got it.
Boom, he put on a raccoon suit. Uh-oh.
Yeah, I was going to say, if we had Farinacci in the Tanuki suit,
like we'd be safe.
We'd be safe if you had picked up the feather instead.
So here's what the police affidavit says about what Farinacci is being accused of.
So three witnesses identified Farinacci as a man they saw near the eventual ignition point.
One said that he first saw the man looking toward the trees and approximately 10 minutes later,
bending over near the brush and appearing nervous.
A deputy detained Farinacci at 1216 p.m. more than a mile away.
He had cigarettes.
butane lighter in a box of waterproof matches, containing 14 of the original 25 matches.
Vernacci said that he carried the matches to light cigarettes when his lighter failed.
He admitted walking along the nearby railroad tracks as part of a regular four-mile walk,
but denied being at the ignition point or starting the fire.
A Washington fire investigator said that the origin matched the witness's location,
eliminated train activity and an electrical infrastructure as possible causes,
and concluded that the ignition was consistent with an open flame,
applied to vegetation. On this basis, they arrested them. I don't know. That sounds, I don't know,
it sounds like a flimsy case to me. I'll be honest. Yeah, I don't think, it doesn't sound like they
got much. Yeah, but we'll see if they uncover anything more substantial in the days ahead.
Now, you may have already heard about Farinacci's criminal history in October of 2010 when Ferranachi
was 21 and living in Mesa. Police said that he became engaged in an argument with his father over washing
dishes. Ferranachi took his father's handgun from the bedroom,
fatally shot him, pointed the gun at his father's wife, fled, and
subsequently shot himself in the chest. He survived that wound.
Holy shit. Oh my God. Damn, that's crazy. What the fuck is going? Yeah. Pretty
horrifying. He was initially charged with murder, but in 2012, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter
and aggravated assault. Court records reviewed by an associated press show that a judge
found Farinacci legally competent to assist in his defense in 2011, although his lawyer reported
that he had undergone multiple psychiatric hospitalizations. The psychological report used
at sentencing was sealed. So not a lot is known. Yeah, if they're pegging him on this with
just like the evidence that you listed earlier and his criminal record, that does seem like they
not for the reasons that the conspiracy theorists think, but it does seem like he's being used a bit as a
Patsy for this whole situation.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know if they're arresting anyone who might be, like, I just vaguely suspicious.
Because, like, yeah, I mean, Italian.
Oh, you were Italian within a range of the fire.
I don't know.
I think it's probably if you've got matches in your pocket within, you know, you got a lighter in your pocket.
Yeah, of course. Hey, everybody, look, I carry lighters, you know, even after, even long after the Sigs have gone.
A lighter is a handy thing to have around. No, you'll get no pushback from me.
I'm just saying that, like, dumb cops that are looking for any kind of.
of, you know, any kind of person to blame it on, at least one to blame it on.
They're like, oh, guy near the location, lighter in his pocket, like trouble past, like,
you know, doesn't have, you know, doesn't have the ability necessarily to stand up for themselves.
Like, boom, easy.
Yeah.
Do you use your lighter to light other people's sigs or do you go to birthday parties a lot?
I don't, like, bring it out with me.
I just have, like, lighters around the house.
I don't walk a ton of places, like, with a lighter in my pocket.
But, like, I'm living a very different life than this man.
Very clearly so. Let us hope.
So yeah, it's obviously, yeah, another really, really awful situation.
I like my sympathies to the people being affected.
You know, I live in California.
I'm no stranger to having to flee fires.
It's like it is really stressful even if you are one of the lucky ones who gets to return to an intact home.
Yeah.
It's not going to get better.
Yeah, and it's really paranoid.
Like one thing that really struck me about the whole appellate.
has situations. Like, you compared him to Old Gil. I think the, actually, the Simpsons character
that this guy reminds me of Sean Boyd is actually Lyle Landley, because like, you know, the,
the town to town monorail salesman. Because, like, he's like, this guy strikes me as someone, you know,
who's just working in, like, you know, the, like, energy development sector and saw that this
was the big new thing. And it's like, I can just fucking, like, just start a, like, one person
corporation with my home as the address, just get some, get some people and money together. And
go to, uh, go to towns with more money than cents and convince them that it's in their best interest to spend, uh, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars, you know, on a data center.
Yeah, lots of money, little, little morals. Uh, this is the perfect kind of gig for you.
Yeah, that's right. He's like, you're already in the oil and gas industry. So it's like, all it's like, who gives a fuck? You know where you're going.
So there's the really, there's no, the reason to like, you know, to try and turn a new leaf now.
And so these data centers, like, because, because, because, because, because,
This is just something that you hear about all the time now in the last, like, I don't know,
year and a half or two years.
I have a really bad conception of time, so forgive me.
But, like, all of a sudden, this was, like, what everybody was talking about,
and it was what was going to make SpaceX's stock skyrocket is the fact that Elon was going to put the data centers in space
and all this data center to run this AI that, like, nobody asked for, oh, God.
That's it.
I thought there was a good question at the end.
Like, what's a man?
Like, what's a guy to do?
Like, what's a guy to do?
It just feels like it's us versus, like, some kind of evil transformer that, like, has no...
It's not even living in the same dimension that we are.
Yeah.
Evil transformer also set the fires.
Very true.
Maybe not evil, but maybe, like, defective.
Yeah, let's...
Let's, yeah, stop trusting the Transformers.
Let's give them their crystal back or whatever we've taken from them.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's a time.
Tough sell.
Like, they just like, it's like, oh, we're going to build a large facility here.
That's going to, like, possibly double the energy requirements for your entire region through one single customer.
Also, we're going to use it to replace your labor with automation.
And also, we're going to use this facility to bend all the content you see online to the point that you don't know what's real or fake anymore.
But don't worry, there's somebody in San Francisco who's going to be able to better summarize.
the article they're too lazy to read.
Yeah, and I guess like a hand, you know, a couple of guys that will be like, I don't know,
they'll have like 300 million instead of 200 million.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we had our first trillionaire recently on the back of a pack of lies.
So why not create more of them?
Why not suck more of the money upwards?
Well, it just goes to show that money really can't buy sense because the first trillionaire in
the world streamed Citizen Vigilante for 48 hours on his platform as if it was like a
good and worthwhile movie, which shows me that he sucks. I don't think he cares if the movie is
good, Jake. I think he cares that it echoes his exact, noxious worldview back to him. Yeah,
yeah, but I mean, come on, if you can't tell that a movie sucks, like even I knew Ninja
Turtles 3 was shitty in the theater as a kid. Come on, if you can't tell a movie sucks,
even if it's got the thing that you like in it, then I don't trust you. Yeah, I mean, the guy doesn't
know what sucks and doesn't suck, just in general. He sucks so fucking bad. If he knew what sucked,
then he wouldn't be like that.
No, no, no.
He's out of the...
You can't even judge how much he sucks.
He's one of the, yeah, the most infuriating man on Earth.
Yeah, he's outside of time in how much he sucks.
One of the stupider human beings, I mean, watching him interviewed is always a pain.
Mm-hmm.
But he's going to put the data centers in space.
Yeah, he's not, of course, but he's going to lie about it and say he's going to do it in, like, an insane amount of time.
Like, oh, three years.
I do hope this bubble collapses.
I do, I kind of want...
I know that there will be collapsing.
collateral damage, but like, I do want this industry to, like, fold in on itself and all of
these people to sort of, like, get what they deserve. Yeah. The damage won't be so collateral.
It'll be pretty central, but yes. I mean, it has, the thing with bubbles is they have to pop
eventually. I wonder what the odds on Polly Market are for the AI bubble bursting.
Well, you know, it's like, you know, if the bubble burst too big, then there really won't be
anywhere to collect because all of infrastructure will have collapsed. Yeah.
Good stuff and pleasant. You think it'll be.
bring down the whole infras? Is that how much is being run by AI right now? Maybe I'm just like kind of
out of the loop. Maybe I've been like, no, it's not that man. It's the money. The money, the markets that
they've created new value, which they constantly have to create new value. And usually new value is
created by innovation and certain like, you know, new market sectors that open up. Except right now,
all of our fucking money, the whole market is being held together by a handful of companies that
are so deep in AI. And the money is so cyclical between those.
companies that it would profoundly fuck the economy. I see. So it is it is like it's it's not just like
rich assholes like losing their dumb little their dumb investment. It's like wiping out people's
401ks and all that kind of stuff. Yeah it would be like the the market crash in 2008. Yeah it like
tightening up like loans and investment and all that stuff and that yeah that would have lots of
domino effects. I mean I live through 2008 and that's why you got to buy silver. Yeah.
That's what my ex-neighbor, who I sometimes have over to take showers.
Well, that came out in a way he might not have.
No, that's fine.
People could take from that what they want.
But he hit me up.
He's like trying to call me and shit.
I'm like, hey, what's up?
Is it urgent?
What's up?
And he's just like, buy silver.
That's all he said in the message.
He was calling me in an emergency to tell me to buy silver.
Did you?
No.
No.
No.
Why silver, not gold?
Maybe.
Maybe this man.
I was like, yeah, I was like, why have all the precious metals?
Why silver?
Yeah.
Do you think maybe silver is a component needed to make the chips or something?
And so its value will go up more?
I'm just guessing.
I suppose gold is used in lots of electronic components.
So I'm curious when I was like, why silver over gold?
I don't know.
Yeah, they make the bram with the silver or something.
I mean, you have to keep in mind that this guy is the QAA catalog of beliefs.
Gotcha.
He is into everything.
He is unbeatable.
I could not stump this man.
He knew about everything I could ever bring up, and he believes in everything.
He did lose his job because he wouldn't wear a mask.
So maybe not a great fount of financial advice.
No, no.
That's precisely why the message struck me is quite funny.
Not his situation.
His situation is quite dire.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
This AI stuff really fucking came around, and it's coming from.
for us, you know?
Mm-hmm.
In a different way than I...
I mean, well, in a couple different ways.
It's, you know, the Skynet, the autonomous hunter killers is one thing.
But then also, yeah, this sort of, as you've described it, this hijacking of the sort
of central economy of the country that it's based on, you know, they've essentially
forced it on us.
Yeah.
And they're using it to take people's jobs.
I've said before I know on the show that my wife's last gig, they were asking her to train
AI to help to optimize her processes, which really was just training it to replace her ultimately.
Wow. People are going to continue to be paranoid. I'll fucking tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Why,
why is there any reason to trust like a single thing? And this is all, by the way, getting the
approvals, it's getting ushered through whatever political and legal, you know, routes it needs to be
to happen. And I don't doubt that, you know, as you mentioned, that there are officials and local
politicians who are making money on this.
It's probably much, you know, it's probably much bigger than I, you know, than I can even
imagine.
Well, again, because it's like happening on the local level.
So it flies under the, you know, the radar.
It's like, so we probably would not be talking about this.
It wasn't for the fact that I was happened to be discussing conspiracy theories related
to this fire.
You know, it was, it's mostly a local story.
But this is a story as being replicated all over the country.
Yeah, it was crazy.
Like, I was not prepared for like family friends and whatnot to,
approach me with the data center conspiracy.
Like they were the ones to bring it up to me and even like my mom and stuff.
And yeah, just dealing with it on the podcast all the time, I didn't expect to just have,
have that come out.
But then like, yeah, even scrolling X, just how fast everyone took it to be, oh, the mayor's
terrible.
Like this liberal city is like burning itself to the ground this way.
And like instead of just seeing it as a fire and a disaster and something we need to
work through first before we jump to these crazy conclusions.
And yeah.
Yeah, these liberals need to trust the Italians less.
I was thinking about that woman from TikTok that I showed at the beginning of the episode.
It's like she didn't even engage in a lot of wild speculation.
She said a couple of facts together and just sort of like implied that there's something shady going.
I feel like more and more people are going to be that kind of conspiracist, where they just have a general sense that something's not right.
And they're right.
And they're right.
And that's just about everybody I interact with on a daily basis.
And it's changed over time because I remember what it was like before the podcast.
You know, we've only been doing this for like seven or eight years.
So like I remember what talking to people was like beforehand.
And it was not like this.
The conspiracy has crept into nearly every single aspect of our human lives.
It is how we define our reality and cope with like what the what the system is doing to sort of your average person.
That's not in the sort of millionaire to billionaire range.
If we deny the validity of the malaise, then people will resort.
to all kinds of things. Yes, they will, and they have in the past. And I hear people, myself included,
getting closer to that, right? You know, like over little things, little things not working,
quality going down in the smallest way, you know, quality going down in the smallest of ways.
And people, even who aren't right-wing are saying, like Corey, like you said, like, hey, it didn't
used to be like this. Like, I don't remember it being like this. And even if they're wrong,
that paranoia is new.
in a way, you know, because it wasn't always like that. It really wasn't. And it's hard to describe
that to somebody that didn't live through that. And I feel bad to all the younger, all of our
younger listeners that were born into this like conspiratorial sort of age. It's really depressing.
I'm depressed like kind of a lot. I feel bad for them because they live in this age. Forget the
conspiratorial element. I mean, that's like a side effect of how fuck things have gotten. My God,
think about the hope for the future when you see like groceries go up this much in such a short
period of time, you know, I mean, it's, uh, it's bad. And where's fucking Joe Biden, huh?
He fucking, he sold us up the fucking river, man. Where is he? He fucking just was like, well, good
luck, buddy. Well, all right, and here's the keys to the kingdom. Like, you know, you know, after
everything, after everything, they just handed it over. And it's like, I get a text every now and again.
It's like, will you help us fight? I'm like, will, will you?
Have you forgotten yet that I did the genocide?
Hey, hey, hey, Belwell, let's say, let's be more, look, let's think about what have I done for me lately, okay?
I think we need to end the episode.
I'm like joking.
I know, I'm joking.
I'm just calling out to any, any wisp of perceived authority to be like, help, help us.
Don't worry.
Kamala Harris is running again.
We can fix this.
Do you think she really is?
She couldn't.
They've been discussing her as one of the front runners.
No, come on.
They've been discussing Hillary.
You're kidding me.
No, no, no, no.
I don't joke around.
Anyways, we got to end the episode.
I don't joke around.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
I'm in a purple coat.
Purple car.
I'm the riddler.
I'm the joker.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
That would be so, that would be so good for this podcast.
You guys didn't even laugh.
That's how sad.
That's how sad.
We are. That's how gone. That's how gone we've become.
Well, deep dish, blessing, keeping.
Go ahead. Yeah, so there's a whole, read the whole outro, Jake.
I know, I know.
That's how checked out he is.
No, I'm very involved. I'm not checked out. I don't want to be accused of being checked out on this, but I'm very grateful to be here.
I was looking forward. I was actually having a really bad day and I was looking forward to gathering with you, you fellas, and talking about how shitty the world is.
Because sometimes how shitty the world is,
make shitty things in your life feel not so bad.
So, no, I'm grateful to be here.
I don't want to be accused of being checked out.
I've seen other podcasts as being accused of checked out on long-running hosts.
And I said, never me.
No, I was just joking.
I'm also, like, kind of joking, but also, like, I think maybe just in a sensitive place
and being a little real, a little vulnerable.
We value you.
You are not checked out.
I mean, like, working on this episode,
loud being experienced one of the real joys of, like,
working out of this podcast where I just
sort of dive into like conspiracy theories
the things that people are chatting about online
and sometimes they're even like way off base
but they kind of they generally point
to something actually generally kind of creepy
and nefarious and involved suspicious corruption
and cover-ups and it's just you know
the dots always connect like people say they do
but there's something meaty there
thank you for listening to another episode
of the QA podcast you can go to patreon.com
and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second premium episode for every regular one, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
You can also go to cursedmedia.net to go check out all of our podcast miniseries.
We've got some real fire stuff cooking up.
We're going to be reporting soon.
I'm very excited to unveil all of this new stuff to you, listener.
So go check that out.
And also, if you'd like, you can check out my solo project at Suawe.
superstructure podcast.com.
I do that with John Gabris.
And yeah, it's a bit of a different topic,
but we just covered Thomas Sankara
and we were continuing to cover power
in its various manifestations across the world,
including some of my favorite revolutionaries.
A continuation of this discussion, if you will.
Exactly.
For everything else, we've got a website,
QAAPodcast.com.
Listener, until next week,
may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you.
We have auto-queued content based on your preferences.
Okay, my last one was immediately removed in that one that I, the short one that I just post,
is staying up for a second.
So I'm just going to try to briefly explain and hopefully not go against their guidelines.
Because I think their guidelines are anyone that exposes.
This is definitely going to get taken down.
Anyway, Spokane fire, Maui fire, Palisade Fire, not natural fire.
fires. That's not how fires burn. It's not how lightning works. They have the lightning showing
that it's going down on the same spot in the Spokane fire. It's not how lightning works. It burns
trees as well. Lightning and fire also burn trees if they were actually a fire. So people need
to just wake up to the truth. Stop commenting, saying silly things. Like, it's because the trees
have water in them. So do the forest fire trees that burn down. They all, what kind of logic is
we have water in us.
We will also burn in a fire
because they're hot.
I live in Central Oregon.
I'm terrified of them doing it to us.
I'm not being insensitive.
I'm being realistic.
People need to start talking about it.
