Some More News - Respect For Marriage, Seditionist Texts, and EVEN MORE Fusion Breakthroughs

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Hi. Cristen Conger (@CristenConger), host of the Unladylike podcast, joins Katy and Cody to talk about the Respect For Marriage Act, the newly-uncovered text messages from Republican representatives about the 2020 election, the redpilling of Elon Musk, and the fusion breakthrough that's a legitimate piece of some good science news. Also: There was an issue with Katy's audio this week, so we had to use her audio from the Zoom recording. It's a little lower quality than usual, so thank you for bearing with us! Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news  Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit https://athleticgreens.com/morenews today. Follow Scamfluencers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome back to even more news the first and only news podcast my name is katie stole katie stole that is your name hi i'm cody hi Cody. Joining us today for the first time is author, podcaster, host of the Unladylike podcast, Kristen Conger. Hello, I'm so happy to be here. Thrilled to have you. It's our last show of the year. You're helping us end this year, right? By talking about some news. And I'm sure it's all positive right because it's only been good things this year only good news it's wild you know after so many years of bad news it's just like all the bad news dried up only good news here had a good run a good run for a full year the first thing we do here at even more news News is highlight the holidays of the week today.

So first up today, December 15th is National Regifting Day. Jonathan included a good point in our notes, which is that you'd think that National Regifting Day would come after Christmas. However, seeing National Regifting Day really got my juices flowing. I've got a couple more presents to buy, one of them being for my nephew's girlfriend. She's like 19. What do you buy a 19-year-old girl you don't know? I think I'm going to give her something that I already have. You give her a candle.

I give her a candle. You do. See, now that is an example of my favorite kind of gift to give and re-gift because nobody really wants to buy themselves a candle. It's, I mean, I don't know. I haven't done any research on this. I've got no data, but I certainly don't want to spend $25 to $30 on a candle, but if someone gives it to me, wonderful. Also a great gift to pay forward. Then you have a great candle. Do you think they made this uh regifting day before christmas to like just sort of nudge people to remind them to like think a little more

about the gifts they give well another thing jonathan included that i didn't cherish this apparently started um as like a something you do for holiday office parties oh because you don't want to buy those people gifts you really don't but oh god no i don't want to buy anybody gifts right now yeah they're not gonna get my good candle you know that i will give to someone else eventually but no yeah exactly some of you care about good candle please you gotta be kidding me december 16th this one's unlike all of the other ones we share. Yeah, they're all normal. Barbie and Barney backlash day. While Barbie and Barney are not the only characters to have graced our screens and lines, especially over the holiday season, these two can hit a nerve sometimes.

On this day, we can swish off our television screens from their annoying sing-alongs and put away the toys scattered around the home. Perhaps it's time to read a storybook or try a different activity with children that don't involve Barney or Barbie. I think that this was created by someone who never wanted to be a parent, but was pressured into it by their partner. They love their kids. They cannot wait for them to be grown up, right? Yep. And learn how to read themselves so they won't even have to handle story time. Like, look, I get it bernie is not a pleasant creature but i should highlight you were reading a description there from the national day calendar you you weren't uh an impromptu description just like excitedly i bet it's this

of this like 1998 fake holiday my my two cents was that last observation about the partner and this person not wanting to be a parent. And there's a lot to unpack there if this theory is true about our society and like the pressures we put on people and children and like finding your own bliss. However, I think this day is a step too far. This day is so weird. It's founded by wellcat.com like cat the animal cat well cat yeah w-e-l-l-c-a-t what is this cat live in wells or is it like well drinks they're ruth and tom roy and they're the creators of more than 70 copyrighted holidays as published on their website and we've highlighted well cat before as a holiday creator

they don't know how much we use their content on this show it's just like two people who make holidays up they made a company in order to do it and they've trademarked do they get apparently i feel like there may be they have like an evangelical agenda or something i mean barbie backlash day give your kids a book like a good book the bible i don't know i mean this feels weird but they also have bathtub party day okay actually never mind dimpled chad day dimpled chad what the not no it's like a food thing never mind no not like a dimpled internet not like a or like a dimpled like binding chad like is that what they're called no chad's roasted in garlic make an excellent sprinkle topping for salads so celebrate that on january 4th i think that this is some sort of scam and we need to dig into this this company

they also sell herbs yeah there it is yeah we're gonna we'll do a deep dive maybe we should do an hour-long video essay but it's just for the podcast and it's just about well cat yeah i think this is important bulk herbs and spices okay before we move on from the holidays i do think it's important to say that december 15th which is today when we're recording so not when you're listening is the last day to sign up for open enrollment for the aca if you need health care so if it's time and do that if it's friday and you're listening to this you missed it you missed the deadline sorry folks sorry to be fair of that bad news there's a deadline in this country to be able to go to the doctor it's wild and if you miss it you have to like be yeah you

have to just like not have it and then know that you don't have it during the holidays because it ends before the holidays whatever yeah it's not gonna be don't go skiing this holiday season kristin this is the part of the show where we chat with you a little bit get to know you before we bum everybody out with the great news of the week. So we wanted to highlight a tweet of yours from last month and it's your first tweet and it's a good one. So does this mean I don't have to have my quarter anxiety spirals over ghosting Twitter to the likely detriment of my market value in the creator economy anymore. Can't wait to tell my therapist about this breakthrough. And I love that.

It is so much pressure for us to be online. I love that you have it. You bopped in for four years to do that. And yet you are having success. You are building your career without needing to dive into that talk successful. And I think it's inspiring. If you would like to talk about that a little bit. Oh, wow. I am blushing so hard. That was the night that I got on Twitter when everyone was like,

rip Twitter. This has been an amazing space. It's going down. And I, you know, because I like to lurk, but I haven't been actively tweeting since the Trump administration, I guess. And my first thought was like, all these years, it's finally caught up to Kristen, all that procrastinating, all the like, you know, when am I going to break my accidental Twitter fast? And I was like, well, it's kind of like the thing of like, well, if you if you have like an accidental death, like if you like died on the toilet and your pants are down, you know what I mean? Like, what is my Twitter? Am I just going to already look? It's already a graveyard on my account. So one last hurrah, I might as well toss my hat in the ring and then god damn it if the site is not still up and so now I'm like do I have to maintain this I guess I need to I've either got to wind her back up or take her back down I don't know in five years

do another one yeah yeah you haven't fucked around with it too much i don't know why you need to start now it is weird it's not going away i didn't think it would um though it was fun to dream it is definitely a less pleasant place to be yeah it's just different and worse now yes it's definitely less fun for me yeah it's less fun uh well it's been getting less fun i think for a while just generally i think just the vibe's been off. Obviously, like people for that many, many years. But it seemed to sort of get to a weird point of just like everyone's just so angry at each other, even if they like each other. And then this guy decided to make himself the main character every day for 44 billion dollars.

And it just has made the whole place not fun at all because it's mostly all there is i do it too i tweet adam and talk about him but it sucks i've actively stopped and that helped my experience a bit that's nice the pressure uh seeing less of it ignoring it just doubling down on only tweeting about things that are very dumb and aren't going to actually cause angry people in my DMs and my messages. And I'm going to move on to a different question on your podcast. Unladylike you have this ask unladylike segment and you feel questions from listeners. It's something I've always wanted to do, but haven't because

I'm always like, I don't know, who am I? But I think it's also a really good community building tool. And like, it's a really good opportunity to learn from people and to see what kind of similar things people are struggling with. And is there anything that you've learned from answering those questions? Also, do you have any advice for someone thinking of starting an advice segment on their podcast? Okay. Well, my, my advice to you on that is that all you have to do is ask your listeners for questions and I know they will send them. And in my experience, at least it's a fun exercise in also kind of sharing a little bit more about mirror like my own lived experience, which both like gives me pause in terms of like, am I like a good advice giver? Like I will bring in a guest expert when needed to help me with that. That's responsible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can't be like the straight white lady giving all of the advice about all of life.

And I was actually just emailing. This is probably the opposite of how I need to talk about my podcast. But I was just emailing a listener whose question I recently answered on an Ask Unladylike. a listener whose question I recently answered on an Ask Unladylike. She is a lesbian in her early 30s. She's femme and she recently started dating a butch lesbian and it's like a brand new dynamic for her. And she was like, I feel weird about this because I feel like I'm like somehow back in like a gender normy kind of relationship. And so I was like, oh, a butch lesbian who like kind of is in that role to give some advice from that perspective. But in the process, I didn't really give give enough attention or care to. Her side of things and a listener kindly called me in on that. And so I was just emailing her being like, Hey, I'm just checking in about that advice. It wasn't the best advice I've given. And thank you for

initially trusting me to share this. And, uh, you know, I'm learning as I go. I think that that's an interesting thing about it. You know, nobody has all the answers to anything, but it is very helpful to have the conversation. And it's also very important to be able to say like, oh yeah, I could have done this one better and without beating yourself up about it. And it's very, very appreciated when people kindly and respectfully point that out, because then you don't feel like this because mistakes are human and evolving perspectives are human and you do your best and you learn something and then you don't feel like this because mistakes are human and evolving perspectives are human and you do your best and you learn something and then you grow and that's is why i like the advice

thing i personally find it's easier to give advice to people than to myself but in the act of doing so frequently therapize myself i'm like oh girl oh yeah well i was really well put why don't you put your money where your mouth is you know start journaling i do feel like i owe my therapist residuals because half the time i am just kind of like pay her residuals every time or get them the residuals every time you see them so much great point great point vital tool that we all should be able to avail ourselves of that is cost prohibitive yeah i do want to quickly say though you know for people who are like oh wow unladylike it's just a girl giving bad advice it wasn't terrible advice okay it was but it was a missed perspective please listen y'all

oh my god okay no it's a good show it's a good show well then you listen back and you adjust and yeah and we're gonna you know and you're gonna hear that question again because really what unladylike is it's the same episode over and over and over again until i get it perfect you just hone it exactly yes yes it's a slow build that's kind of what it feels like right now for us when all the news is always elon musk or donald trump like didn't we talk about this already oh no there's more to say and everybody wants to hear it. But you see, AG1 replaces your vitamins. It kicks your vitamins to the curb by replacing your nutritional intake with a single drink. In fact, just one tasty scoop of AG1, put in water or I guess milk, contains 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients designed for any lifestyle.

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an immune supporting free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. If you visit athleticgreens.com slash more news today, again, simply visit athleticgreens.com slash more news today. Again, simply visit athleticgreens.com slash more news to take control of your health and give AG1 a try. Do it. Okay, we've procrastinated long enough. It's time for the big fun, the main events, the news. We're going to start off with something pretty positive. Some things we can talk about some bad parts, but the Respect for Marriage Act was signed into law this week.

Jonathan, why don't you set us up some facts here? Yeah, semi-positive. It does away with the Defense of Marriage Act. I wouldn't say it codifies Obergefell v. Hodges and Loving v. Virginia into law, because there's a couple of wrinkles here. So it doesn't guarantee the right to marry, but it specifies that states have to recognize same-sex marriages across state lines and that same-sex couples have the same federal benefits as other married couples. So the few caveats here are that the Supreme Court could still overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, and then states would still be able to not allow new same-sex marriages in their states. So if you lived in, I don't know, Mississippi, you'd go to California and get married and then go back to Mississippi. And then Mississippi has to respect that marriage.

Don't assume maybe you wouldn't be able to get married in California and you'd have to go to Mississippi to get married. You know, I do that all the time. And you are right. You're right to point that out. But also you're incorrect because what I said is probably what would happen so it's a good example okay well no I mean we can both be right thank you

and then non-profit and religious organizations and this was the way they got bipartisan support in the senate non-profit and religious organizations are exempt from having to support or host same-sex weddings cool but like other than that semi other than that positive it's hard because at least at

first blush when this news was being reported of like you know passing heading to the biden's desk it's celebrated as this this big victory when it's actually, and it is in some ways, but it's so close, so close to getting there. And there's a lot of caveats here and ultimately it could get overturned. There is a pathway for something like that to happen. And it's hard for me to celebrate that because it should be a slam dunk.

And I understand the different factors that go into why, I guess. But also, if Republicans aren't going to vote for it, why do we need to cave in any capacity when we've already shown that voters will follow us? Like, we did well in the midterms because of abortion. Do you know what I'm saying? It seems to me like, I don't, but maybe I don't believe that completely because I do. I'm not, I am a straight cis woman and I, my marriage isn't being threatened, you know,

in some capacity by not passing it. So I certainly understand that this is a really big step in the right direction for, for so many people. Yeah. that this is a really big step in the right direction for so many people. Yeah. Do y'all think that the nonprofit loophole as well is just an extension of kind of freedom of religion factor? Because it just always makes me suspicious with that, just knowing how much money, ironically,

can go through those as well. Yeah, for sure. One interesting thing about this is I was reading an analysis of the legal merit of the Respect for Marriage Act and if the Supreme Court could just overturn it, you know, could they just like overturn any law? And the analysis suggested that the law backing it up is very sound with a reasoning that even, you know, Scalia a decade ago or more ago previously supported. And so it's like they shouldn't be able to overturn it, but also shrug emoji. They they just overturn stuff they don't like these days. And so they could overturn Obergefell and then this law if they really wanted and and to be very clear the reason why we're doing this is because the supreme court overturned

roe v wade and because they signaled that they would come for this potentially next so it feels bad that that's still something that could happen you know even if it would be hard to do yeah is the uh the uh the religious non-profit exemption is that specifically weddings or marriage in general like it's not like it's the language that they're exempt from supporting hosting same-sex weddings or supporting same-sex marriage which is a lot looser verbiage in terms of like well there are a lot of ways you can support and not

support a gay like the existence of gay marriage I'm curious how that will fly well why don't we just take a look and see why don't we just take a look I'm gonna read from the law. Give me a law voice. Yeah, something like that.

Okay, so this is section 6B. This is section 6B of the law, and it states goods or services consistent with the First Amendment to the Constitution, nonprofit, so it's nonprofit religious organizations, including churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, non-denominational ministries, interdenominational and ecumenical organizations, mission organizations, faith-based social agencies, religious educational institutions, non-profit entities whose principal purpose is the study practice or practice or advancement of religion and any employee of such an organization shall not be

required to provide services accommodations advantages facilities goods or privileges for the solemnization or celebration of a marriage any refusal under the subsection to provide such services accommodations advantages facilities goods or privileges shall not create any civil claim or cause of action so it's celebration of marriage yeah which could be so many things yeah i don't like that um religious freedom freedom point taken good to know it's just the specifically religious non-profits yeah yeah they do they do cut that out um yeah i didn't need to read that whole thing but i did we did it and we have an answer that helps somewhat but you know not the worst news um before we take a break uh why don't we talk a little bit about oh yeah the texts are pretty funny i don't want to

spend a lot of time talking about this but i do want to dramatically read some of the texts so it feels it's time to do it i think that would be the most fun uh just as background talking points memo got a hold of a cache of new texts between uh trump's final chief of staff mark meadows and 34 republican members of congress who were you know trying to overturn what happened in the 2020 election these texts cover from right around the election right after the election to just before the inauguration and they are embarrassing for the seditionist representatives uh involved in them so how about this why don't i kick us off with one of these and you can react to it and then we can start reading through a few more this is from from South Carolina representative Ralph Norman on January 17th.

Do a little list if you can. Yeah. So well after January 6th, a few days before the inauguration, Mark, in seeing what's happening so quickly and reading about the Dominion lawsuits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation, And reading about the Dominion lawsuits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation, we are at a point of no return in saving our republic.

Our last hope is invoking martial law with a S-H. Please urge to president to do so. That last one, all caps. Ooh, that was good. Any emojis used? No, no emojis. No anger face, no sweaty guy. Sweaty guy. He would want to let everyone know how sweaty he was.

Yeah. I mean, the voice, I assume he's in like a white seersucker suit with a fan of some kind, right? He's mopping his brow. Exactly. This text is pretty remarkable for a couple reasons uh the misspelling is obviously not important but i think it's uh funny that so a reporter reached out to him about it about the message and he seems to regret

misspelling marshall and that's it that's it well i misspelled marshall uh is what he how he responded and then said i was very frustrated then i'm frustrated now i was frustrated then by what was going on in the capitol president biden was in the in his basement the whole year dominion was raising all kinds of questions he doesn't mean the attempted insurrection at the capitol does he because the text was sent on the 17th and that happened 10 days earlier right so what does he mean what was going on in the capitol i think he must mean the non-hanging of mike pence right like we needed martial law to get that guy hanged let's read another one i'll do this one texas rep brian babin november 6th what's a texas accent texas mark mark when we lose trump we lose

our republic fight like hell and find a way we're with you down here in texas and refuse to live under a corrupt marxist dictatorship liberty babin fucking signs his text messages i love that and it says there's no babin sent at least 21 texts to meadows between the 2020 election and inauguration he's got your number saved man i reject this implication that all these insurrectionists are only southern accent tavers alright we'll give it a shot at this Louis Gomer Gomer Gomer Gomer

maybe you know there's like you know New England folk right there's all kinds of you know maybe they're one of these maybe they have little boat shoes what are they Ringo? peace and love we have to ringo yeah peace and love peace and love we have to stop the steal

peace and love do you want to do one more do you want to do gomer lily gomer um it's just a bunch of like little sweaty freaks just like floundering and they're like in their little phones um what do you mean a marxist dictatorship what do you like those

words don't really go together it sounds like he's tweeting which is the disturbing thing that like oh god these people really when they say liberty they are being very earnest like what yeah these private texts

do sound like public tweets like there's all that performative like the Ted Cruz of like the freedom we gotta do that but this is how they talk not the next one doesn't this one makes me laugh specifically louis gomer texting mark meadows but i like this last part of it would it be possible to ride air force one to georgia saturday i don't need to ride down since i'd stay there longer also if prez had any time, I could drop by today. Would love to see you both. Thanks, Louie. Again, don't need to sign it. This is just so sycophantic of like, hey, can I hop? Can I stop by and see the president? And also, can I get a ride on Air Force One? I don't need to ride back though. I've

got my own transport back. I'll bring snacks. I mean, like, whatever you need. Yeah, yeah. I got the weed. You got the beers. Some of these, it's interesting because a lot of these texts come from before, you know, the media called the race for Biden. So in that weird November 4th to November 6th time, and a lot of them were already sending mark meadows newsmax articles about independent state legislature theory texas representative mark green would literally just sent mark meadows a newsmax article and was like well dick morris is saying that the state legislature can intervene and declare trump the winner as if dick morris knows what you know anything about this. These guys are so deep. You think they're

above the standard right-wing Newsmax talking points, and they're not at all. It's just the exact same. Yeah, that's how they absorb stuff. It's what gases them up, right? This really feels like this was a planned insurrection,

guys. Yeah. Trying to feel like it yeah all right we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna be back for even more news hey there little fella since we learned that our main demographic is children ages 4 to 6, for some reason, we thought we should speak directly to you, our child fans. Listen up, sport. The world is filled with scary things. Open sewers, for example. Dark rooms.

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We're going to talk about. Yeah, we're going to talk about Elon Musk. Sorry. But in a different way this week. Yeah, a little bit. So funny voices. Yeah, no, I'm so funny voices yeah no i'm gonna do the i'm gonna do the inherit the wind southern draw the whole time so just as you know the last week elon musk has been especially red pilled he's been talking about the woke mind virus a lot

he calls an immortal threat to civilization uh obviously, you know, he says he strongly disagrees that trans people are real people with real feelings. In a tweet to Scott Kelly, he tweeted follow and then the rabbit emoji, a reference to QAnon. He, of course, had my pronouns are prosecute Fauci and suggested that he supports anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. But Kristen, you had a recent episode on your show about men's rights activists and how straight white men fall into this pattern. And what's going on with

Musk seems kind of similar to that to me. And I'm wondering, like, what you think if this follows that same trajectory. idea of men's rights is basically that men are actually the oppressed people in society and feminism is the cause of it. And women are the ones who are actually privileged. So Katie, hey girl, girl power. Here we are. And I was actually thinking about the the red pilling kind of angle of it as I was watching, spending too much time watching people booing Elon on stage at the Dave Chappelle show this week. Freud, of course, but also thinking like, oh, my God, I don't know that him being booed and ridiculed to this extent to his face like this is not going to shake out well. question mark into the equation like yes all roads are leading straight to red pill and thinking about who his like fanboys and girls are on twitter like they are they're the ones who are kind of rhetoric anyway so yeah i i i think i think it lines up yeah that listening to you make that point it reminds me of there's just so many parallels between donald trump and elon musk but it's kind of like the white house correspondents dinner where Obama makes fun of Donald Trump. And you're like, oh, now, in hindsight, we see this trajectory.

But, yeah, the public embarrassment certainly feels like a real instigating factor for him. It's like he keeps seeing that challenge to double down and make it go bigger. seeing that challenge to double down and make it go bigger even it's like that kind of public embarrassment isn't uh a cue for him to take a step back and reflect it's it's his opportunity to use that to his advantage or to keep trying to get other kinds of validation from the people that aren't turning on him which are the bad people yeah it's not good um well because it's also like it's a combination it's like a combination of all this sort of stuff because he's like his position lines up with this ideology that he seems to be espousing like his view of the world is art like it's built up to be like this sort of right wing capitalists got like even uh his

first marriage there's a piece from his first marriage from like decades ago and at their wedding he whispered to his wife his that day new wife uh i'm the alpha male in this relationship so he's always had this sort of inclination and view of like relationships and the world. And most of his career, he's been like a PR guy. And now he's front and center. And it's like it's exacerbating it. Like, I think he's always sort of been there in that realm. that realm but because of uh being bullied uh by certain people and then being encouraged by other people uh who just want whether it's to scam uh other people or to ride the coattails or to

get their sort of ideology uh locked into the culture it's just not gonna turn out well i don't think i would like to be on the record that i'm pro booing elon you know we certainly don't need to be you know tiptoeing around his feelings and i wonder for y'all how much of this do you think is purely just desperation to be considered funny oh is that all it is he just wants to be thought of as funny he wants to be respected and he wants to be seen as funny there's that story today of how he like wrote out he was in a meeting and he wrote out this tweet like oh if i had a dollar for every time someone asks me if trump is coming back on Twitter, Twitter would be minting money. And then he showed a bunch of the assembled executives there.

And then one Twitter executive was like, you might not want to tweet that out since it's like a really controversial issue. And then he tweeted it anyway. And then that executive got fired later that week. Well, it's pathetic is what it is. But it's been and you can sort of see this too. You can track it like because he was in Iron Man 2 as a stark Iron Man counterpoint like, oh, look, I'm buddies with Iron Man. But his actions and his words slowly are more apparent and he's not necessarily likable or funny. And you can even pinpoint there's like a year like 2018 where he started responding to the onions headlines about like his terrible labor practices and apartheid emeralds and things like that. And he responds to them like wow i the

onion used to be funny he loves the media that is there to like part of the function of a lot of these like the onion is to make fun of people like him um and then he gets in the position that is the target and then he doesn't like it anymore and then you see the babylon b doing articles about well look at elon musk saving mars in a mech suit and he's like ha that's funny i love you guys and then he goes even farther uh down that road uh like that john the story you just told is absurd we know uh somebody who ended up who was working on a comedy project and he fired people who made fun of him and he just doesn't ask yeah elon musk he just yeah we know him and he fired himself um we uh yeah um so it's like a combination of yeah

not need like needing that because also being wealthy breaks your brain like it like literally like one of the like it affects your impulse control. It affects how you see people in your empathy at a certain point. And he's like maximum that I think he always sort of was. And now it's like the impulse of like, look at this tweet. Maybe you shouldn't. Oh, then I'm going to do it. like the impulse of like, look at this tweet. Maybe you shouldn't.

Oh, then I'm going to do it. It's digging in your heels on these bad ideas and then claiming they're good and not being able to recognize any fault in your in your actions. He even said like early on, he's like, well, when I do Twitter, I'm going to have like the Lincoln approach. I want a bunch of people who disagree with me. No, he doesn't. me no he doesn't no he doesn't at all he absolutely does not um and that is apparent every single day yeah maybe he's full of shit maybe lies all the time and lincoln was a lot funnier y'all yeah okay funny abe that's

how he's known did a lot more consequential things honestly funny babe no do you think if the babylon b like hired him as a writer that like this all might calm down a little bit like he could get his i'm probably not because he would post his headlines and we'd make fun of them for not being funny and it would keep like but it just seems like he wants to be a comedy writer and i get it that's what a lot of people want to do it's tough it's hard to be a comedy writer but he and he can't get that he can't do it and then because it it feels like we either need to get to a place where we can like ignore what's going on week in and week out but like we can't he's the main character unless like twitter really does just kind of like die.

And then all the Tesla stock goes away and he just loses his his influence. Yeah. Well, I mean, he's he's losing his influence in real time. It's it's just this it's weird because it's like there's so like all these like personal like ego things that drive his actions. But also, I think it's important to note that he does believe these things. He does have like a worldview and an ideology that lines up like there's a reason he's tweeting it and he know and getting all these people to continue this, like the discourse in this

way. And he, you know, he's friends with Peter Thiel still. He wants to populate the earth with his high IQ seed. Like he has this view of the world that is like strictly hierarchical. And he thinks that because he has money, he's the smartest. He thinks if you have money, then you're the smartest. Think if you're if you have a high IQ, then you deserve money and all these sort of things. If you have a high IQ, then you deserve money and all these sort of things. And, you know, he thinks that he does think that, yeah, the wokeness, whatever he defines as wokeness, is like a detriment to society because his view of society is fucked up and his like vision for the future is actually fucked up.

He doesn't really want Star Trek. He wants the expanse because he only likes the gadgets and the gizmos and the idea of being in space while he gets to tell people what to do right well it's also like he was initially hailed as kind of like this super innovative guy and at least what he's showing us right now are just very old ideas you know what i mean like there's what there's nothing original here and what always what i somehow just like always come back to is something that y'all talked about which are like okay if elon not to be not to be this feminist but if elon were a woman a mother of how many children and was obviously like spending this much time at work, I think I think she would be removed. Like, like, talk to your kids.

I don't know. Don't you have like 16 of them? The point of how differently we talk about men and women, you know, and how gendered it is. differently we talk about men and women you know and how gendered it is like but like yeah oh elon musk is a hero but there's absolutely no to some people conversation about how he's also clearly a negligent dad i mean his whole trans tirade when his child one of his children is trans and he's demonstrable like this this is when i'm all he says call him a deadbeat dad an absent father uh you know not an active parent you know but he's elon musk and well yeah because he wants he's uh wants to be a gang as con right he was like well i'll just i just gotta like make

the kids i gotta help make them and then i'm gonna go do my five ceo jobs or whatever and but instead of doing that i'm just gonna tweet all day in an interview i think shortly after one of his kids uh with grimes they were like you're doing all this stuff don't you have a good newborn and he's like there's not really much for me to do you know they're babies you know they need the mom they need to sleep there's there's not much for me to do and it's like are you are you sure about that a man who truly understands humanity and how we grow and learn and become human beings that is depressing as hell it's like that's what i keep coming back to is just like your vision of like how things should be and what human beings are capable of is just like not aligned with like he doesn't he wants to be

in like he wants everybody to be in there like their little like private car going off to their little jobs to mine on mars or something like that he doesn't want people to be connected even though he says he wants people to be connected online on something like that he doesn't want people to be connected even though he says he wants people to be connected online on his website that he owns but he doesn't even want to connect with his kids although he will sometimes he brought his uh kid x to uh to san francisco um which i guess is illegal to do on twitter Now you can't like show the location of somebody in real time, but he did that with his kid. Also.

Every, every tweet of his it's, I don't want to, I don't want to do the Trump comparisons all the time, but like for every tweet of his, there's another tweet that is completely contradictory. It's the same phenomenon. There is a tweet for everything. I think we should move on because i would love to

talking about him let's talk about briefly something that elon musk had nothing to do with but is a wonderful scientific breakthrough that maybe he'll take credit for one day who knows okay that would be a fusion breakthrough nuclear fusion if you split atoms you create energy and if you combine atoms you make even more energy energy and mass are the same thing technically and we just don't have the power and energy to fully appreciate and utilize that knowledge but we're getting there you know well why don't we say what happened explosions of science i i will i will say a brief bit of what happened uh so scientists at the lawrence livermore national laboratory in california announced the first ever fusion reaction in a laboratory setting that produced more energy than it took to start the reaction. So they pointed

192 giant lasers at a small cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser that contained a frozen nubbin of hydrogen encased in diamond. That's right. In a brief moment lasting less than 100 trillionths of a second,

the New York Times says. 2.05 megajoules of energy roughly the equivalent of a pound of tnt um bombarded the hydrogen pellet but it produced three megajoules of energy a factor of 1.5 in energy gain which inspires the question that if we can do that we will have limitless clean energy in the future correct incorrect potentially with a lot of caveats um because the end i mean the energy that went into the laser is not a part of this uh discussion it should be like the energy from the laser the laser the laser energy input was smaller than the output from the fusion but the energy required to run the laser is a

separate conversation so there's stuff to still figure out but like we talk about you know like even just like harnessing the sun with solar panels and doing things like that the sun makes energy with fusion it turns hydrogen into helium through this process so we're skipping it we're gonna eventually skip a step and just do it ourselves potentially it's it's a long way away but it's pretty incredible yeah that people can make money from it it is people can make money from it um jonathan you made a good point the incentive of different industries of allowing that you know this is going to decrease their profits um there is a cynical

element of what are the steps between now and then and if we will be allowed to use this technology but you know right now this is still a really i mean it's a very positive and exciting step forward yeah clean of clean of uh void void of like culture culture And politics and everything It's incredible that Human beings And life in general Has gotten to the point where From you know Not understanding any of our surroundings

And walking around and Grabbing sticks and like oh there's fire Oh look there's a god in the sky And it brings us light And then it leaves and then another god the sky and it brings us light and then it leaves and then another god comes up and it's slightly less bright. From that to actually what it's doing, it's converting atoms, which we can't see, into other atoms and making energy and it comes here in the form of light. We figured it out and we can do it kind of, which is pretty incredible. Yeah. It is exciting that we are not,

not all of us are getting stupider, you know? But there's still, there's still some cutting edge ideas happening that my little brain doesn't entirely understand, but I know to be excited for it yeah it feels good yeah it's people that uh go to their jobs and show up and care as opposed to just tweeting on twitter all day they don't hang out on twitter all day there's there's a problem probably i do like that idea that like no matter all this other shit is going on all this stuff we talk about every week there are scientists going and like plugging away at yeah breakthroughs like potential like decades

in the making we were talking we've talked about on this show but in a meeting recently you know like the good news stories we joked up top about how the last couple this year has been just only good news it has it hasn't been but a lot of the good news that we do see is scientific and that is truly inspiring and very exciting. And it does feel like that's our hope. Um, and I do have a lot of hope for it because we're learning and accomplishing incredible things. There's so much left to discover and uncover and learn about the world that we live in. And that is pretty magical. discover and uncover and learn about the world that we live in and that is pretty magical yeah i think magic is i think science is magic actually it is we're just figuring out how it works i think it's actually magic it's just you know the spell is really really really specific

it's 192 lasers that are being powered by 192,000 hamsters running around in a wheel. That's where the power for the lasers comes from. Oh, perfect. And also diamonds. Diamonds were involved. I mean, what a glamorous experiment. They were talking, you know, more energy than it costs. I'm like, yeah, but did you factor in the diamonds?

Like, what was that? Where did you get that diamond? We can make fake diamonds now. We can make fake diamonds now we can make fake diamonds they're fancier than real diamonds they're more uh i don't quote unquote perfect a frozen nubbin of hydrogen it's like that costs like half a nubbin for yeah exactly you put half a nubbin and you get a full nubbin and then you turn that full nubbin into one and a half heliums so we'll be running all of our like our heat and our cars on nubbins

like maybe 2026 yeah yeah at the latest I'm investing in nubbins hard for 2023 nubbin futures that's where it's at don't don't get these trump nfts get a get a get it on big nubbin

all in on nubbin have you heard it on big nubbin all in on nubbin have you heard the new big nubbin album by the way oh good it's pretty good it's pretty good i mean pitchfork only gave it like a 7.2 but i think they're just like oh everyone's talking about nubbin so we exactly know that they've got to be a little bit they'll lay like 20 years they'll do like a uh revisit like oh we were we were wrong on this one we actually like this the rich while the original left must much to be desired this new remaster exactly really uh brings out the nutty beats of the nubs or they'll pick like a lesser heralded nubbin album and be like this is the real uh big nubbin that everyone

needs to care about and you're like all right all right, all right, Mark Hogan. Exactly. And we'll be doing it by putting little diamonds into some machine and shooting lasers at it. Guys, I think we've done it. No, you want to make more jokes? No, I just I didn't mean to single out Mark Hogan, the first pitchfork writer that jumped into my head. I don't think if he's listening you'll be like what the fuck shots fired we're coming for you kristen it was so good having you join us today um could

you please tell our listeners where to find you other than twitter well look i mean i'm there okay I might not be tweeting frequently but I'm there at Kristen Conger or you can follow Unladylike on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok at Unladylike Media and you can listen to the podcast Unladylike on all the podcast places and this was so fun

I'm uh I can't wait to get rich off of nubbins next year with all of you. It's going to be a good press. Her first hot tip. Our first stock tip for everybody ever. First and last. I guess that's it.

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