TRASHFUTURE - The Ackman-aniacs

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

We revisit our old pal Bill Ackman, who was one of Wall Street's most notorious activist investors, to become the SPAC king, to finally settling into his new role as a billionaire culture warrior. Also, we discuss the suspension of a delightfully moronic Tory MP, and check out how Neom is finally building some stuff that's not just different shaped hotels. CHRISTMAS ANNOUNCEMENT: The TF team will be taking some time off, so instead of a free episode in the week of the 25th we will be unlocking a paid episode for free listeners and releasing a Q&A for paid listeners, and then normal service will resume the first week of Jan. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture Medical Aid for Palestinians: www.map.org.uk *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here: https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello everybody, welcome to this free episode of TF. No, nothing from my look. Great, thank you. It's a free one. Sorry, I was distracted by the conversation we were having before we started recording. The podcast with Rym joke is so good at disrupt the opening. Yeah. Yeah. We finally figured out how to get Milo to stop doing that annoying thing he does,

which is one or both of us has to save something so distractingly funny that he is not able to concentrate. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, anyway. We've got a show for you today. We're going to revisit some old friends. So one very old friend. Oh, like how old are we talking? What sort of time scale? We last talked about him. Charlie Palmer. Yeah, it's Charlie Palmer. No, we last talked about him when SPACs were popular. Remember SPACs? We became one for a while, special for Psychositions Corporation.

Yes, I think that was just off to we were in oil warehouse. Yeah, this was, this was Mr. SPAC. Basically is back in the news again. Mr. Bill the SPAC Ackman. Bill SPAC, Bill SPAC, Bill SPAC. Bill SPAC, Bill SPAC, that's right. That was like a fairly odd. Yeah, he got, he kind of got radicalized and is now based.

Oh, okay, back to the knife. I mean, okay. We're gonna be talking to him. In Basin, what way? Well, we'll find out. Okay. Yeah, but I have, I have a few news items first and I've been handed just a bulletin as I was on my way to the studio.

I love a bulletin as I was on my way to the studio. Love a bulletin. With someone, I now consider to be one of my newest, favoriteest Tory MP scandals. I want to add, I know nothing about MP Scott Benton, other than this. This is all I know about him. Scott Benton is already good backbench Tory MP name. We're basically, he was hit with a sting and the kind of sting that only a monumentally stupid person would be hit with.

Okay. Which is Robert Redford showed up at his house dressed like a guy from the Depression. Dress like a bee. It's him. May I please sting you? And he said yes. He was the Mexican bee from the cinemas. So basically, a number, a couple of undercover reporters called him and said,

Hey, quick question. We represent like Gambler incorporated. Do you mind committing us some, let's say, breaches of parliamentary standards in exchange for some money that we're going to give you to breach parliamentary standards? And he said immediately, absolutely right away. It's a great perfect. So this is what like cash for questions or even more pathetic. Really?

I rang him off and I said hi, Khan. Had you feel about the pockets? He said he would help this fake company get a foot in the door with ministers and advisors, but also that he would freely leak notes and a white paper on gambling that weren't available to the public. Right. Fantastic. I mean, in fairness, like gamble or having done years of the start of game is an intensely believable company name.

So I'm, I'm so sympathy for him on that front. Yeah. So, basically, he was boasting to them about his, he was boasting to them that he had access to all sorts of ministers that he would steal documents for them, basically, and just said, give me 4,000 pounds. That's all it took. Look at it.

What is? Right. That's so little money. That's what back, that's what I love about it is. That's what I mean, the bribe should be proportionate to not the amount of work it is but the amount of trouble you get in if you get caught right. It's also funny because they're undercover journalists so you know they weren't hardballing him about the money like a feat of us for more money that have gone short like because they're not actually gonna say he didn't negotiate at all like

they said their opening position was foreground and he said yeah, and they were like, man, even for a sting operation, this is way too easy. I just unziping the big hold awful of cash paying himself foreground and zipping it right back up and pushing it over the table, because it's not greedy, you know? Opening, opening a fucking briefcase full of money,

taking out foreground, closing the briefcase which is still completely full and putting it back down and see. Well that's how much he asked for that and a membership of the jockey's club. Look they said they said it's our bribe it's the company's bribe money is everybody's bribe money so be smart with them. Yeah. Does it, do you have access to very small furniture items? Do you have access to like a 50% scale club room that I could sit in and hang out? So he, he said that he gave a number of excuses which also make me, I think sort of really like him based on the fact that this is all I know of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, I was only hit by that sting by these reporters in the times because the hotel

we met at was noisy and I couldn't concentrate. You know what? Honestly, respect to this man. Hoomst among us who has not been neurodivergent, half able to hear a conversation and just going, yeah, yeah, sure. And then, you know, he's got ADHD. I grabbed a, a wad of like 4,000 pounds worth of notes and just kind of hopes that the conversation was going in the direction that you thought it was. I needed more fun co-pops, so I took the money.

The best thing was because it was all recorded, there is, as he gives these excuses, there is a live tape of him saying the opposite where he says, I can hear everything. You're saying, quite clearly. Yes, yes, yes, there's a recording. The reporter says, this is convenient. It's nice because a lot of these big hotels around here are quite busy and quite noisy But I find the music in these places makes it impossible to hear the other person Benton replied that's very very true. It's quiet here and you're close to comments as well This is a good you then when that excuse didn't work he said well I thought it was a job interview so I was exaggerating what I could do show us how you would be

Bribed in a work environment. You know, like when you apply to somewhere and they say you're like a coding problem or something, this one is like a bribery problem. Like an intracidual service. That's exactly. Also, like one of the best ways to show that you were, you were just sort of testing your abilities for a job

and that your great interviewing is to accept the first deal that is offered to you. Yeah, or because there might not be another one. Because there might not be another one. And you know that it would no deal. That's the awesome, that is the art of the deal. This guy would love to see this guy having to haggle in like a Moroccan street market.

I thought I was on the popular daytime TV show Deal or No Deal with no Edmonds. And I thought I don't the popular daytime TV show Deal or No Deal with no Edmonds. And I thought I don't want to leave here with one P in a box. So I took the box that had 4,000 pounds. But I also love it. He's just like, no, don't you get it? I was lying. And also the next one is he's saying, I don't know anything about gambling. Is he was saying, no, I was offering to leak the document after it would have been published. That's that's a master's excuse. Yeah, that's how that's how it works. Without gamble. He was saying, no, I was offering to leak the document after it would have been published. That's a masterhouse.

That's how it's used. Yeah, that's how it works. Once everyone has access to this, I will email you a link for it. This will be $4,000. Why did they pick on this guy in particular? Was there a reason? Well, maybe they just had a register of like the dumbest MPs.

Yeah, in which case we need access to that. Fucking full year request. Where is the official register of dumbest MPs. Yeah, in which case, we need access to that. Fucking foyer requests. Where is the official register of dumbest members of the house? Because it's very important to podcast it. I think we could spare four grand, or I guess for the next one up, five grand for the list of dumbest MPs. It says, under cover, it's just exactly the same as Tore MPs elected the 2019 election. So, an undercover reporter said to Mr. Benton, It's just exactly the same as Tori MPs elected the 2019 election.

An undercover reporter said to Mr. Benton, it would be advantageous, quote, if you're able to get us advanced side of the gambling white paper, and he said probably, I could guarantee you within 48 hours of publication, they then followed up. You mean before, right?

And Benton said, yes. Okay, really boxing him in here on this one. Now you don't understand, I had my fingers crossed behind my back when I said it. The hotel got very loud when you emailed me the word before. This is like a fucking arrested development cutaway. It's just like smash cut to him saying,

I don't care for Joe. So you then also says that he also, some of the lies were great. He just one of the lies was, I know, Kimmy Badanok very well. Does he? And that too admit, no, he doesn't. Just quite impressive given that they're both Touring MP. Yeah.

Then, the last couple before we move on, because I had, you see, I had to talk about this. I had to like, of course, of cover-up. Yeah. Then he was like, I didn't attend this as, in my capacity as MP, I was doing it as a private citizen. What, who, who? Oh, it was a citizen's bribe, I see. Saying in a democracy, it is imperative for parliamentarians to have the freedom to engage in private conversations

and express their views openly. Be that about briary or otherwise. My view is that I should be able to leak this white paper of 48 hours for publication. I just, I really want him to keep making excuses like these in the hopes that one of them works. Just see, accidentally, like, makes his saving throw on this, you know? He's like, I was actually speaking Dutch in the interview.

It sounds a lot like English, but in Dutch, actually, all those things I was saying mean the opposite of what they mean in English Yeah, the Dutch sentence I completely repudiate bribery sounds a lot like you know, please give me this bride Okay, I want to do one more before we please give me this bra before we go on His my favorite of his claims was that he didn't know what the job was. So, says, he claimed that when he received the email from the fake company, he was unsure what they were seeking from him,

saying it was particularly clear over and above, saying the employment would be in the realm of one to do days per month, and it would be in the field of betting and gaming. He also said he bitterly regrets not asking them to clarify this. But the commissioners then noted that the initial email made very clear

this was for a paid role at the beginning. And the interview was that they were looking for a strategic advisor and renovation was specifically discussed at the end of a meeting when they agreed to salary. Just try more things. Slam, just go with, I don't know what money is, you know? Well, his last one was just, I didn't know that I couldn't do that.

I love the 2019 intake, man. Yeah. He's literally like worse than Sam Aladice. Like this is, because I remember when Sam Aladice got Sack to Zingham manager for actually not taking a bribe. He got Sack for just taking the meeting about the bribe, in which he then said, well, I wouldn't be able to take that bribe without permission from the FAA. I'd have to discuss, and they still sacked him. This guy's just like, yeah,

I'll take the bribe. Sam Aladice must be above suspicious like Caesar's wife, you know? Yeah. Look, Sam Aladice, I think, should be our next Prime Minister. I think that Britain is currently in the sort of global relegation zone. And what man better to take it on and steer it to kind of a like lower mid-table position than Big Sam. The guy from it's always sunny has bought a Britain and now he's making an inspirational TV series about it. My favorite thing about Sam Alladis is that whenever he's embroiled in a scandal, he goes back to this like shit pebble dash house that he owns in Bolton, which is clearly not where he lives to do like a press conference in front of it, because

I think he thinks it makes him seem more like a regular guy. And he's just like embattled in his tracksuit outside his pebble dash semi. Beautiful. I've just I'm unfortunately have just learned that Scott Penton is a a a a a member of an anti-abortion organization. Oh, good. Oh my goodness. Again, one week. Why don't you could bribe him out of that. Yeah. Look, the abortion organization is like Scott Benson.

I've got three and a half thousand pounds here. And I need you to go into Parliament and say abortion is good. He's like, I'll do it. I'm kind of like, it's important that parliamentarians are able to express their views. Really enjoying the idea of not a bidding war, but just he always says yes to every bribe. And so he just goes into the House of Commons and says whatever he has been bribed is say most recently. You say he's basically

an LLM. Yeah. But like, I pay to play LLM. Yeah, that's right. Scott Benson, I will give you a Sherbert dip dab and a Freddo to go into Parliament and say you believe in the Jewish conspiracy. He's like, well, I guess I have to do it. It's a living piece of earth. I wouldn't actually do that. I've just gone through that. So I want to move on from from Scotty B. Well, I'm sure you know what, I want to hear from him all the time. I'm really looking for him. I look forward to hearing from him again

as an old friend of the show. I have one small AI update then we're going to go into all pals, which is, you know how there was that whole thing like, oh, Chachi PT's, it's woke now. Fortunately, this has been fixed in a most German fashion. Oh, has it. We have met Grunk of an unvolked.

We have met Nazi Grunk. This is Axel Springer, is now the official news provider to open AI. Axel Springer, the guy. What is Axel Springer? This is a guy. He's a German media tycoon. He owns a bunch of German newspapers and TV. He owns a build and

belt and stuff like that. Oh, all the normal papers. Yeah, exactly. And he's also in German guns and roses. And he's like ardently pro-Israel anti-Palestinian, is the demarcasing thing. So a bunch of people have been fired from Springer, his like news corporation, for like saying anything other than like vehement support of Israel. Well, in Germany, this seems very common at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. From what I've heard from our sources on the German side of the fence is that this

is, it's, it's, German's got, Germany's gone really crazy. It is, it is a, it is a profoundly German vibe, but even for Germany, this guy is like, this guy's far. Yeah. Okay. Basically, for those of you who don't know, sort of the Axel Springer media group in like the US, for Germany, this guy is like. This guy's far, basically. For those of you who don't know, sort of the Axel Springer media group in the US, for example, consider him like Germany's rooper, then like Germany's Fox, basically. But they also own like Politico and business insider.

Oh, well. So is this insider? I hardly know that. So what basically what they've said is, Axel Springer and OpenAI have announced a global partnership to strengthen independent journalism. The partnership will enrich users' experience with ChatGPT by adding recent and authoritative content

on a wide variety of topics. So basically, they've created a robotic Ulf post art. Cool. Oh yeah. So, Ulf post art who loves post is. Yeah. So the way this is going to work then is if you type into chat gpt like who is morally correct about the israel palestine conflict, it will serve you like a rewritten belt article that's like Israel. Yeah. Okay. Correct. That was a very

short well-tarticle. Yeah, just one word. Yeah, it's just one word, you know? Yeah. Yeah, well, but this is also right, the, what we've talked about is the four planer list of things that Israel has done wrong. And it's like, yeah, don't worry about it. Is it being too good? Number one. Yeah. But the, I think that this is much like how Google became the way that people experience the internet now, right?

Through keyword searching essentially. Yeah. One of the things I've often thought of when sort of large language models started to become popular is that this is possibly, the goal here is to make this how people experience the internet so that things like, you can hardly call sort of much of what

Axel Springer does, at least in its German titles journalism. But that's going to be the goal you can see the vision, right? Which is that companies get tie-ups with open AI to feed it in for that basically create information feedstock that will then be summarized in difficult to attribute and largely interestingly wrong summaries. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's exciting.

That's something to look forward to. And I guess what Springer gets out of it is that it then becomes easier to automate away your troublesome journalist to keep saying things like free Palestine. Well, also what Springer gets from it is they get a kind of foot in the door if that's where they think this is going.

So they get the preferential rates, for example, for their partnership with OpenAI. And they also get like, they also get to use large language models for free, which can get expensive, right, to just generate content. So, the end result here is just we're taking a enough fresh water to, I don't know, irrigate most of Southern California into, you know, growing almonds again or whatever. And we're pouring it on a great big hot stone that just says, build.

Yeah, we're taking all of the water that we're gonna need and we're diverting it to one German man. It's literally the big fat guy drink out of the big pipe of water, me, isn't it? Yeah, correct. This is, but just to see like the... That's just the piss guy. That this is, I think that there's not much here yet,

because it was just announced. Yeah, right. But I think you can see the vision of news. You can see the vision of the internet kind of implicated in this tie-up, which is, you don't even see the content anymore. You don't even see the words, right? Everything is all just mixed up and interpreted for you, which is just another way of getting even further from another human when you are consuming

information. I've offered Scott Benton a delicious schnitzel to go into the British parliament when it says that he thinks this partnership is a great idea. Yeah, now this is firmly in the like chilling percent of things to come come category, isn't it? Yeah, I'm afraid so. I mean, to be fair, if you catch me on a day when I'm really hungry and offer me a shnitzel to do something, maybe. Just maybe. I mean, who's among us would not enjoy having just £4,000 cash in hand as a little treat?

Sure. I've got an end of schnitzel. Yeah. I mean, £4,000 you could buy pounds you could buy a lot of Schnitzel. You good? Have your fellow Schnitzel's. So I think the question is, I think there's, what does this do? I think it probably is yet another sort of alienating constraint on our ability to

perceive the world around us. Which is also going to make a chance EPC worse. Which is cool. Okay. All right. I want to talk about Neon. Yeah. Because. Neon, Neon, I'm up there.

It just drops. So the thing is, the thing is, we've been talking, like our last couple of Neon updates, I've been like, I was interested, but like they've had like three new things that we haven't bothered to talk about. It's been, it's been, it's been, it's been washed. It's just like, here's some shit

in the side of a mountain, don't care, you know? Yeah. We made a hotel, this one's pointing, we made a hotel this one's point You made a hotel this one's a hexagon wash. Yeah, I thought that they were totally out of juice I thought they had nothing left. I was wrong. It's true. I love to hear that we counted out touched down Muhammad Ben Salman Yeah, somewhere in Sydney Tom Walker's glad to hear it too in the middle of the night He sat bolt upright awake.

The Tom Walker signal has been shown into the time. Tom, Riley and I all have this common experience, I suppose, of being subscribed to the Neon YouTube channel. And therefore getting a little notification on our computers or on our phones that's like, yes, what? It's some more stupid bullshit. And after two misses,

I was kind of, my spirits were low on this one. When I got some new stupid bullshit, it just dropped notification. But it brought me back instantly. Yeah, I was like, oh, this is not just a different shaped hotel. This is something. How anime villain are we talking? All right.

Do you want to talk about their new immersive destination for art and entertainment? Or how they're going to sustainably produce food for 10 million people in the desert. We've got to start with the food, surely. Yeah. Topian. There's a new company in the arm called Topian.

No, the Utopian, nor Dystopian, just kind of regular, run-of-the-mill Topian, just everyday Topian. Just Topos, just right there on the surface. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just a place. So fostering a vibrant community of scientists, industry experts, and innovators, all of these people, by the way, are just like, you know, northern European men in square glasses who won the lottery of being an imaginer. Yes.

Or is this a huge thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right now, they're gonna need a podcast at some point Come on put us in Put your turn game keeper. We know how to make fun of you We know how to make you make not fun. I am I Colleagues have laughed at me for years because I was not so one who invented the twinkibuts. They're not laughing now Now I am building a topia

so Now I am building a topia. So, a topian is a purpose-driven organization which aims to perfect the art of more with less, for example, more food with less water or air of the land. Okay. I mean, can we say now that this is another one of the vertical farming things? Well, they're trying to not say that, especially as today, a high profile vertical farm company in Germany went out of business because it's completely impossible to do for anything other than herbs.

Yeah, you can do like salad for you and it's with it quite efficiently and then kind of nothing else. Like no strawberries, for example. Because what I love about this company, by the way, it was called InFarm, I think, is they went out of business because they kept on promising stuff,

they hadn't figured out yet. Like strawberries was the example, they couldn't do strawberries, and they also just didn't never assume that electricity prices would ever be anything, but nothing. Of course. They're a German company, by the way.

Oh, so they were like, oh yeah, right, the gags. It's a very, very like environmentally friendly, like growing strawberries on a wall thing, but it's all powered with a lignite. Well, that's basically it. So yeah, they just completely vanished because it's fucking difficult to do. Mm.

And the added bonus of doing it in the desert. Yeah, I mean, farming is traditionally horizontal. I'm not a farming expert. Well, that's because if you have a horizontal farm, do you know what's free? All your energy. Yeah. The sun. Yeah.

What if we build if you're in Germany? Yeah. But what if we just had a kind of warehouse-like, automated farm thing that's going to make everything much more efficient? I imagine. like automated farm thing that's gonna make everything much more efficient. I imagine. Wouldn't that have a huge impact on the area? I'm sure it wouldn't. Toby has launched concept.

Future to table. So not farmed to table. Future to table. It's where you sit at the table and there's no food, but you'll reassure that in the future, there will be. Let the fates become your wases at the table of the future. Yeah, it's like Looper. You know, there's a guy from the future, comes through a sort of portal with your food and then you have to kill it without taking the bag off.

Is that? Yeah, seeing my, uh, my order of here going carved into my arm, you know, so, uh, it will introduce and apply innovative solutions that will revolutionize the current global food system. So you know, the current global food system, again, it's breaking down, it's badly needed revolutionizing, but I just don't think that this is gonna do it. Yeah, what if we just did some more silly bullshit, you know? Topian seeks to redefine food production,

distribution and consumption, to the consumption. They're trying to redefine food consumption. Are you easing your assortment? Yeah, strawberries backwards now? Yeah. What about intravenous strawberries? What about supposed to be strawberries? Through the creation of sustainable and innovative food solutions across five vertical pillars.

Okay. Okay. Right. Yeah. Is that a free production? Yeah. We're in a boy. Emcee. Ever. Sorry. Every time there's five, that's sufy as large. I know this is the 50th time I've done that bit and I will every time there's five. Sorry, that's Sufie's life. I know, this is the 50th time I've done that bit and I will do it 5,000 more.

It's difficult to not do that when there's numbered pillars involved. Yeah, it's true. Climate proof agriculture, one. How's that? Other than vertical farming, what is that? It's a big, to say that's one of the steps that you're going to take is quite,

I feel like that's something which itself needs to be broken down into a lot of steps. I feel like that's a controversial, you know, how you'd get to that. You can't just start doing that. No. So next one, regenerative aquaculture, that's actually sort of a real thing,

but didn't they also want to have all of the sea areas around Neon be like crystal clear snorkeling destinations for the Uber Rift? Yeah, because I mean, you've got the like industrial bit and an oxagon, right? And you've got the like all the touristy bits with the weird shapes hotels. And there's, you don't want algae or whatever, floating around off those. No. Regenerative aquaculture, not bullshit. Do I trust them to do it?

No, not at all. I really like the energy of this list. It's kind of like if we did a list of like, how to start a really successful podcast. And it's like step one, marry Kim Kardashian. You're just like, well, I guess that probably would work, but how are you gonna? We're also not gonna tell you

which one of us married Kim Kardashian. That's right. It's a secret. She understands me. No. The third. Novel foods. Novel foods.

Novel foods. Yeah, new foods. Just eat new stuff, I guess. But yeah. Yeah, good when already started with novel foods. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The deal about personalized nutrition. Okay.

So that's like inventing like a kind of protein bar, but that's unique to you. Mm. Why do I, if anyone else eats his poisonous? I don't know. Because, I mean, the real answer, why do you want this is because, because Neom is thought of at every stage by a literal king,

then he, the only way he can think of making something that someone else would want is everything has to be completely tailored to and unique to you at all times. Oh, okay. You know, what if your food was a Spotify playlist? Kind of. There's a lot about sites. I don't want to see my food wrapped.

Like that's going to be a depressing experience. A sustainable food supply. You are a eSd coming up. looking into the fridge multiple times this year. Oh yeah. You're at the top 0.5% of customers of BurgerCon. Neon aims to drive a transition towards better food future by promoting the adoption of alternative products in novel ingredients across the broader Middle East and providing the service as needed to empower consumers to make informed and responsible food choices

in a seamless fashion. I'm worried about what these novel ingredients are. Are any of them Jamal Kishok? Yeah, it's a bit snow piss, isn't it? Yeah. Well, also the other thing to remember is like, I believe this was through a couple years ago, I don't know if it still is, but the part of the world that has the fastest growing obesity crisis is the golf.

Yeah. Blasco, just twice. The kingdom of all the little fancy lads. Yes. Crazy. I was just thinking, if they're like, if they're sort of a pro-sauce, you're going to do personalized meal plans using novel ingredients. There is really only one answer to this, which is, we're going to find ways for you to eat

yourself. Oh God. Yeah. We're going to go with the way you're going Oh God. Yeah. We're gonna, right, it's way much better than all. You are gonna have to produce your own cheese out of your own sweat glands. And you're gonna enjoy it.

Oh, you know what? Let's take that and build on it, right? What if these are, this is for the board wealthy, right? We clone the board and wealthy and then you have to hunt yourself for sport and you can eat that. Always we can. By Matthew Luchansky is available in all good bookstores.

Yeah, my, my, my, I've been Salman just like proudly announcing that like come cookbook that everyone found. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is what they're epic. Like clone in order. This is what it is. So this is one of the epic clone in order to This is what it's up Those happy

Neon really taking a direction I didn't expect it just like the way at the future we are the first podcast in Neon I'm sucking off my clone and I'm like, man, this is, this is, this sure is a topos. It's, uh, you know, sucking off your client and neither of you are enjoying it. Yeah. I, I miss burger cut. I'd rather stand up and eat in front of the fridge and do this. You're just, you're basically, is everyone in Neom, I keep imagining as like one of the four lower

and animals from the Flintstones, like, it's a living. Yeah. I've been in from the Flintstones, like, it's a living. Yeah. Opening your fridge and just being like, oh, clone dick again. Oh, oh, oh, oh. So how is Topey in going to sustainably produce food you might ask? I might.

Is it not? Well, this is one of their frequently asked questions. Okay. I'm asking this all the time. How are you frequently asking? How are you so great, Topey? Mm-hmm. New technologies are urgently needed to feed humanity today

and in the decades to come. We are developing in testing ways to improve quality and quantity while reducing environmental impact. This is the like carbon capture thing, right? Where it's like, we have to invent this or all fucked anyway. So therefore, don't ask me about it because we're trying a bunch of bullshit

and seeing what works. But it strikes me that as with carbon capture, a lot more of the bullshit might be successful if you did it in an environment that wasn't this. Well, of course. Well, it's a bit like the whole thing about like, oh, well, we'll just go and live on Mars in a bio-dome. So, well, wouldn't it be much easier to live in a bio-dome

on Earth? Wouldn't that be logistically taking a lot of problems out of the... Getting bio-dome off my clone. That's right. So, they, their example, is growing a kilo of problems out of the... Getting cryo-dome off my clone. That's right. So, they, their example, is growing a kilo of tomatoes in an open field require 60 liters of water, and a greenhouse only requires 15 liters, and in a truly controlled production system like the ones they're designing, they can reduce it to just four liters. And, hey, wow, great if true, but we keep seeing people try to go beyond greenhouse.

And unless you're going to just seal it in better, at some point, you're going to hit the vertical farming problem, where then you have to all of a sudden spend a huge amount of energy to keep it like cool and also lit. They're going to create one of those like sealed biome terrariums that like produces it's own moisture. I'm always spending a huge amount of energy to keep it cool and also lit.

Yeah, that's right. God damn it. All right, all right. I wanna talk about one more thing before we go into the startup, which is Bill, the SPAC King, SPACMAN. Oh, we missed half of Neon. We're gonna have to save that for next time.

Oh shit, yeah. Well, the next thing with Neon. We're gonna have to save that for next time. Oh, shit. Well, the next thing with Neon is it's like fine. It's not as fun as Topian. Okay. It's just they've created a new kind of stage. Yeah. What it is is like this first we came apparent to me when they were doing oxagon, which is that

MBS has just been playing Civilization 6 because he keeps inventing this is the like ex-district and it's a hexagon and this is the like culture district. This is gonna be the like the theater district. So it's an immersive destination for art and entertainment, an innovative event space to host global artists. And again, like the AI generated video of a guy there is just like a man playing a violin,

but with next to a hologram like a man playing a violin, but with next to a hologram of himself also playing the violin. Yeah, you can come see us at Uttama, the theater district of Neon. I'm seeing double here. Four guys playing the violin. Uttama will be performing next to our clones and next to our holograms and next to holograms of our clones. It's going to get very confusing. Cocoon in a mountain located along the Gulf of Akaba coastline next to the holograms and next to holograms of our clones. Gonna get very confusing.

Cocoon in a mountain located along the Gulf of Acaba coastline next to the shape hotel. Utamo creates a unique backdrop from music events, exhibitions and art activations that will transform. Art activation. You have art activation. We have installations anymore

because there's nothing to install. So it's just gonna be an activation. I saw Mrs. Delphi, the musical, and now I'm the Manchurian. That kind of thing. Leo, you're watching a guy in a hologram of that guy type in the CD key for the Sims too. Nice. Hining natural beauty and technology, the venue has been designed to a place where art

and architecture blend. Yes, we'll arrive by an extended pathway of a garden promenade featuring more than 50 species of shrubs, herbs and flowers. The 64 meter high entrance pays homage to art and design. I love this scene. And sets the scene. This thing's... But I get chanchy-be-tea to write this.

I think they might have. And sets the scene for the experiences awaiting guests inside. The theater of the future were reality and digital converge. Utama will host events that will redefine the benchmark of entertainment, including VIP lounges and signature restaurants, because they can't do, including VIP lounges and signature restaurants, because they can't do anything without VIP lounges and signature restaurants. It's everywhere, it's right.

Well, if you're in Neon, you are a VIP. The VIP lounges, the whole place. Yeah, but it's going to be the VVI. Yeah, and those things are like purely textural places for everyone who like thinks that way. So it's just like, you know, where are the places that I'm gonna spend my time? In the same way that if you're designing a train station, you might go, well, okay, I should put a bench in so I can sit down and just exist. This guy

goes, oh, I should have like a VIP lounge. I mean, yeah, yeah, the thing is, right? I find this one a lot more fun than like the hotel that's just a shape. This is a lot more whimsical, you know? It's like, I think like we have fucked up London has fucked up so badly. We were wrong. We have to do a shenanopology cause the one other thing reading between the lines of this statement they're so mad they don't have a sphere dude. They want this fear so bad and they can't have this fear and either can. It would go with the other shapes. Yeah, we could do we could like look last Vegas already has one sphere. Yeah. So what should Neon have in its entertainment district either one of the line creates a perfect silhouette of two balls and a massively disproportionate dick from space.

Yeah, go with a really long thin penis of the kind that women love. Yeah, that was a long penis. She was pissed a lot. Yeah. Yeah, that's... Well, it takes a long time from when you start pissing for any piss to emerge from the end of your toilet... Of your penis. How have you been using the bathroom? Yeah, Milo's just trying to take it as many Kandiru fishes he can.

That's right. All right, all right. Now we're going to talk about Bill Ackman, the Spakman. How long is his penis? You know, he's never posted about it. It's one of the few things he hasn't posted about it. Oh, okay. There is one guy who is really loving the new 10,000 character Twitter limit.

It is Bill Ackman, the King's backman. You're going to call him that the whole thing every time. Until I forget, yes, so William's backman. Yes. Sort of a hostage situation emerging here. So basically, Bill Ackman, for those of you who don't recall, is like one of the big hedge fund guys in the States, like up there with like Ken Griffith kind of thing. Yeah. Peter Griffith's brother.

Yes, that's right. His Georgian brother. Don't do it. You fucking do it. No, Ken Griffith is the name of the guy and family funny guy. You can't silence me. You can silence him, but you can't silence me. I found a new way to take a fucking company public with

far less checks and balances. You're but you can silence me. I found a new way to take a fucking company public with fun, let's check some balances. You're going, it's me, your brother. Can't, can't, can't even. Wait, wait, wait. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon.

You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. You're a demon. Peter Griffin. Okay. All right. Peter Griffin's a hedge fund manager.

Yeah, that's right. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see.

We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see.

We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. We're going to see. high value targets like Elon Musk, like people with a lot of outsize influence because they can't communicate with like normal people anymore. Well, yes, exactly. So, Ackman, he started a, if you just a refresh your memory, you might remember this from our old episodes about him, but they were a while ago.

He started a hedge fund called Purshing Square that basically made him a billionaire. And his back fund was called Purshing Square Tontine, which I always thought was very fun. Name it after an illegal thing. And he's always being what you call an activist investor. A spactorist, yes, a spactorist, which means that he will take a position in a company and then publicly bother them forever until they

don't do what he says. Oh, it's like, yeah. But here's the thing then, right? I have a proposition. Since we're already a SPAC, we should, if we just like, don't pay ourselves from the podcast for like a year, all of us, and we take that money, we then become activist investors. And we just like we find we identify emerging startups and we use that money to fund and then bully them in a kind of black male situation. Okay. So always what we could do is say, all right, you guys you you start up, you want to

I don't know, you want to make AI to have curtains straight, bedding, which is curtains, right? Fine, you can have your angel investment, you can have your seed round. However, we get to come into the office once a week and let off an air horn. Yeah, at a randomly determined time. Just impose new shit.

I think you'll find our investment is contingent on me using this conference room to build my Legos. And if you move any of them, we will treat that as a very serious breach of contract. Oh, yeah. We will pull the investment. Yeah. And Scott Benton's going to hate the air horn.

He didn't understand what the job would involve. He already hates the texture of the chairs and the tables. So basically, your diversion, bribe story is just such a good bit. This is my comfort money. I needed it for stuffies. This is, but I've watched Bill, also Ken Griffin has gotten in create, like it was weird. It was after Trump. It was after 2020. These guys got increasingly, I'd say radicalized by Twitter. Yeah, so Akman, Akman's always been weird. One of the other times he talked about him was,

he was like this secret billionaire interviewed by, I think Bloomberg during COVID, where his main complaint was that his employees weren't in the office and he thought that showed a lack of initiative. And also that his builders weren't coming to finish the country house where he was running his hedge fund for. I remember this because this was the one where it was like, we interviewed a mysterious shadowy billionaire

and everyone looked at that and said, that is Bill Ackman. Yes, that is exactly what happened. He, they were like, wait a minute. That is just, that is literally just Bill Ackman. Yes, that is exactly what happened. They were like, wait a minute. That is literally just Bill Ackman. Yeah, we interviewed Bill Inel. Let's call him spill back. They're doing the like voice distorting thing, but they've forgotten to turn the lights facing him off.

So he's just like a very well lit and talking strangely. He's got the eye for a vocal voice. So you can just fully see his face. So he, he was very supportive face of an actor. Uh, so he's someone who was like in, um, he's, he's one of these people is like, oh, I was always a good liberal. I was always voting Democrat. Um, but then he got me mugged me, you know, yeah. Essentially, um, he's was supporting initially Michael Bloomberg,

and I believe then thought that another hedge fund guy would be like a great president of the US. Rich Gonsolodarity is crazy. What if my friend was president? Yeah, that's basically him. I was, I think it might have even been Ken Griffin. I can't remember, but along those lines, right? But you also see this with Ken Griffin.

You also saw it with one of my favorite finance guys to follow on Twitter is Doug Seafood. CIFU, he lives in Florida, and he runs like Virtue Capital, like one of the big hedge funds. And until about 2020, Doug, you can follow him on Twitter, He's at Dougie large. All he posted about was like hockey. Okay, that's all. Yeah, he was just that kind of like

the hedge fund guy, I just want to talk about sports. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He was only Yeah, yeah, exactly. He was only talked about sports and just having fun down in Florida. He was living a blessed existence. Going to let it go down in Acafolka. He was living a blessed existence. And now he's anti-woke. Yeah, now he's like, quote tweeting people, being like, hummus supporter, et cetera.

This is the thing. You make yourself miserable doing this. Like, at least when you're like going to parties and Miami Beach and stuff with the worst people on earth, you were having a good time. Tweeting about hockey saying that like the Toronto Maple Leaf support them as. So the reason that he's in the news now,

and the reason that he's worth talking about, and he's raising his head so much further Above the parapet is that if you've been following the saga of the various like, you know Ivy League University presidents Harvard Penn and MIT sort of getting president gay. Yes indeed. Yeah Getting dragged over the calls in Congress For again Cervicating I guess yeah, like, however you choose, like, trying to try and get like,

trying to like, fumbling, uh, in a very sort of like, contested media environment, uh, the like, institutional statement on Palestine. Um, yeah, essentially. Which of course, as we know,

is tantamount to being a member of Hamas. Yeah, correct. Uh, is that Ackman being a member of Hamas. Yeah, correct. Is that Ackman has gone on a particular crusade to try to get them fired. Trying to remove President Gay at any cost. Yeah, that's right. So what he's done is he's, and he's not George Santos,

the other one. Yeah. And he basically, what sparked all of this was a letter from some Harvard students basically saying, hey, the occupation more or less made this inevitable. Yeah. Right? Which is true.

That's just flatly true. And if you refuse to condemn this in the most kind of abusive terms, that makes you a member of Hamas. Yes, effectively. So what happened was he took this and made this a national issue kind of personally. And you can see a lot of the like activist hedge fund manager brain kicking into gear.

Well, he decided he was like, well, I feel invested in the American Firmament of elite institutions. He's doing like activist investment stuff in Harvard, where, which activist investment, by the way, is still so funny to me, because it is the same business model that the Yakuza used to have of just, of like buying a few shares in a company in order to show up and blackmail them. Otherwise, you disrupt the AGM by like shouting about the emperor and stuff.

You've got to let blackmen do what he wants with the board of your company. Otherwise he's going to cut off the end of your pinky fingers. I mean, just of increasing odds as these people get radicalized by the far right that they own a katana. So, and this is, Akun has tried to be, he's tried more activist tactics than just badgering them in the national press. So building a bunch of Legos on one of the conference tables. Well, so one of the first things he did is he invited Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard,

to see a such a great Gatsby ass name. Claudine, she was scheduled to testify in front of Congress alongside MIT and Penn presidents on the morning of December 5th, which would have forced her to miss a screening the night before at Harvard of like the footage that the IDF is showing. Oh, the snuff film. Yeah, the snuff film. To make it possible for her to attend both, Akman offered to send his private jet to Boston to fly her from DC right after the screening

where he'd personally escort her and served dinner on the plane. What better way for her to show the seriousness with which she is taking the issues around October 7th and anti-Semitism, which again, our scene is like, coterminous? Yeah, most, yeah. Ackman wrote, I wanted among other things

to help prepare her for the likely questions she would receive. And it's like, yeah, how on earth would she turn down a plane ride in a night with this strange guy? One night with their lack of that. And so of course, then he is then leading campaigns to like blacklist, any of the students, like publicly name and blacklist, any students involved in like lettering. Yeah, at one end of the like, doxing truck thing. Uh, faculty members at Harvard have been warned about going on rich guys planes since

some previous incidents. This guy's, he, there's a, there's an Epstein connection later. Yes. Of course, the fucking. Don't do it. So greed to take her place on the plane. That man will go on any plane. He's like, the squad bent into planes.

Yeah. That's right. He just loves the plane right. He doesn't care where it's going. But the argument that you can see sort of coalescing underneath Ackman and this is something again, you see in a lot of other big hedge fund guys, if you follow them is that he said this on one of his like 10,000 word posts that only I read. Yeah. All right.

He says, I learned from someone with first hand knowledge of the quote, of the Harvard President's search that the committee would not consider a candidate who did not meet DEI criteria, like diversion equity and inclusion. So this is part of the, like in the UK, we see this as the war on like HR mandated grievance training or whatever. In the US, it's the war on the DEI industry, which is seen as a kind of shadowy fifth column, kind of like takeover America from the inside

through like racial quality. This was always an interesting kind of conspiracy theory to me because you had people who in another generation would have been like, virtues, like members of the John Virtua Society, people who have never cared about or been exposed to that kind of like corporate managerial culture, talking about things like DEI

and corporate social responsibility. And it was like, why are you talking about this? Why do you know about this? And the answer it now seems was because this was part of a concerted effort to get guys like Bill Ackman and Elon Musk instead of them. And it's just kind of spilled over. I think the DEI should be a federal agency,

like the DEA, like they can kick in the door of your boardroom like with a SWAT team. Like, to be right men in here. Greg Stuby's on the run from them. That's right, yeah. Yeah, they're trying to get big guys out, Paul. He's for smuggling white men. Well, because if you think about it,

he's such a big guy that he's like five white men all in himself. So if they get rid of Greg Stuby, that I've made a lot of progress. All right. All right. So basically, he then says, the same is true for other elite universities doing searches at the same time. And it is also not good for those awarded the office of president who find themselves in a role that they would likely not have obtained were not for this finger on the scale.

And this is astoundingly racist, we should also say. Like absolutely. Nothing new, but to be like, oh, this is the diversity hire who is not qualified for this job. And I mean, the job of President of Harvard is like asset management and shmoozing. There's not, there's an asset management line to this as well,

which is that it was like followers of Ackman will know that he's still like, yeah, Ackman likes to relax. Yeah, Ack, Ack, Ack, Ack, I say. I say that he's kind of had a bone to pick with Harvard for a few years because of the strange way. So, basically this is, this is great. I mean, this is so fun. I actually didn't know elements of this.

Okay. So he donated $10 million in stock because he was liquidity constrained at the time because he was getting divorced. So not even that he wanted them to have a little walking around money, he was just trying to hide money from his wife. Well, he wanted to get money as a tax,

he was liquidity constrained and needed to save on taxes. So he donated stock, basically. Like when you're that rich, money is such a different thing. Yeah. Like a tax right off is the same as money in your pocket. Holding four thousand, holding four thousand pounds in your hand really means nothing. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So basically, he gave them $10 million of stock and then said, anything above a certain amount, I get to direct how you invest it. If it goes up a certain amount, anything, if it drops below 10,

then I'll make up the difference, like that kind of agreement. Now, because Harvard is basically a big hedge fund as is every American university, they have their own assets, they're not just gonna be like, okay, well, I guess we just own 10 millions, we just have a random allocation based on what our benefactors kind of vibe with. So they sold it and invested it into something else.

Again, Harvard loves to buy forest land, water rights, and California, awful institution. But then, the stock went up hugely after they'd sold it. And then he was really mad that they just like liquidated it. And so he's been kind of pissed with them for like six years. It's an insane grudge to hold. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, it is absolutely baffling. But I just love that he also was like, oh yeah, by the way,

it was because I was getting divorced. Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I said one thing we've learned during this podcast, is a lot of these things come down to guys getting divorced. Yeah. Guys going through it in the family courts underpins a huge amount of Anglo-American political life.

He wanted to end out, Raj Chetty as an economics chair. So there's now this guy, he's now the Bill Ackman School He wanted to end out Raj Chetty as an economics chair. So there's now this guy is now the Bill Ackman School of Professor of Economics via this like stock donation. Amazing. So anyway, but he says also, it is back to the crusade against Claudine Gay,

he says, I've been called brave from my tweets a few times over the last few weeks. Yeah, me too. The same could be said for those calling out Joseph McCarthy during the red scare. But you are Joseph McCarthy. Do you not see that in that analogy? Like, it is so funny to be like,

yeah, this is just like the fight against McCarthyism, which is what you're trying to do. You're trying to make it unacceptable to hold an obviously fine political position. We're trying to blacklist Joseph, if we blacklisted Joseph McCarthy from a job, what if we said Joseph McCarthy was a communist and then he got kicked out of the government? Well, Joseph McCarthy was the real communist because communist are the ones who don't want people to say or do anything. At long last, Senator, you're cancelled.

I was quite happy. I don't think it will be long before we look back in the last few years of free speech suppression and repeated career ending accusations of racism for those who questioned the DEI movement. Again, you have infinity money and what you're worrying about is like workness on campus and making yourself miserable to do it. It's just really like depressing in a lot of ways. It is the final victory, I think, of right-wing culture warriors to get hedge funders. Yeah. It's maybe not the final victory.

Okay, fine. But it was in fact quite the victory of these culture warriors to get hedge funders. And I think it also goes to show how... It's a good thing that we're not responsible for because like none of those guys are ever gonna be on the left. Well, they could have been was kind of mainstream Democrats

and the Democrats sponsored those guys. Yeah, absolutely. They, there was so, I think like, especially American and British liberalism have been so wet and just bereft of anything other than naked careerism and also have like embraced many of the ideologies that these guys now have turned against in the most shallow and cynical way possible. Also, you don't have to give them a lot of concessions. All they want is people to pay attention to them and tell them they're smart. Right? You could absolutely do this.

Like this is something that Biden had done successfully in the past. It's something that Hillary Clinton had done successfully in the past. And then, you just needed something to compete with the rush of this. And liberalism wasn't very well equipped to find it. And so then what happens is, and this is like Chris Rufo is then interviewed, and yeah, he interviewed by multiple like legit papers about this, saying that Bill Ackman is now an elite defector.

He is a man of the people again. Says Bill Ackman is a man of strength and courage. He demonstrated the power of speaking the truth while so many elites remain silent. Through his actions, he exposes them for what they are. Cowards, abolish DEI now and forever. Not a thing. I mean, the crystal roof, I mean, it's like a guy who scores into an open goal a bunch of times and then tells you he's the best footballer in history, you know. Yeah, he's the professional footballer playing against a hundred children.

Boris Johnson versus that one child. Yeah, that was awesome to be fair. Best thing Boris Johnson ever did. But, right, this is also part of, goes back to, that's who's talking to these guys who could potential to win them is Chris Rufo. And they want to hear him probably because they're very aware, I think, again, like things like COVID and the political disruptions of the late 2010s kind of cast a light to these people on how alienated they

are from the rest of society. So they say, okay, well, I want to be a man of the people again. And then Chris Rufo comes in, maybe not even directly, right? But he has this ready-made ideology that says, here's how you're a man of the people. You can be an elite defector. You can, you can join the people again. It just so happens that the people are fantastically racist. What's like, yeah.

What Ruffa also offers them is a way of sort of like participating in politics without really having to sort of give up anything. Because like, what it sort it seems like before is, they, like, hedge fund managers, tech guys, they can participate in politics as far as much as they can sort of donate money and part like political parties, like centrist political parties, will kind of just do whatever they want, right? Like so much of the sort of development of Silicon Valley is really based on that type of principle. And I don't know whether COVID was like the first kind of time where a lot of these guys sort of were affected by

sort of like political phenomena in a way that they weren't sort of fully protected. And that might be one reason why this becomes like a radicalizing moment. But the other is also like I think, this is a phenomenon where everyone is forced to recognize that they have to engage with politics in some form. They can't be protected by it. The financial collapse also means that just objectively throwing money around doesn't necessarily

achieve the goals that you want. And so what Rufo has done is what people like Rufo have done has really presented this idea of you can actively participate in poll, you can be the activist hedge funds manager, but you don't actually have to engage materially with politics in any form, you can just be the reaction, you can be a funnel for the reactionary framework for these guys develop. And Rufo does like a very good job of it.

I don't know why, I don't really have a fear of us to like why he's particularly successful at it. I don't think it's because he's like intelligent, I think you know, there are sort of various sort of environmental and social phenomena in there. But what I was gonna say was like, people like Matt Goodwin, for example, you can see that very clearly trying to imitate that formula actually very openly says that, but what I was gonna say was like, people like Matt Goodwin, for example, you can see that very clearly trying to imitate

that formula actually very openly says that, yeah, Chris Rufo, like does good stuff and I would like to very much do it in the UK. Whether Matt Goodwin is as successful as him as a different question, but I feel like you're still seeing a similar thing. It's very, it's still very much like, okay, you guys have become radicalized.

Well, like, we can take advantage of you being radicalized, but like, here is a framework for engaging of politics, where you can present yourself as a man of the people without actually having to sort of give away anything material to sort of even postulate, but you know, that's the fun thing. He's still giving away material. I think he's still donating to Harvard. Because these guys have, my question.

They have huge stakes. I think that's true, right? Well, it's like the guys who like, were really mad at Balenciaga for a very brief period of time because they did that weird like child BDSM thing and then like sort of forgot about it a month later. Well, the thing is, I think you're absolutely right, right? It's that they want to be engaged

but they want to be engaged in a way that's fun. And even in the sense that like, he still gives to Harvard, right? Because he's never gonna stop giving to Harvard, because they're enormously invested in American elite institutions, whatever they are. Not even necessarily educational ones, just the things that mark out American elite.

I mean, they recognize what being an elite in society isn't they also recognize that like, you know, they recognize what being an elite in society is and they also recognize that like, you know, they have no intention of like destroying any type of system that would like, what posture that they are like men of the people in the sense that, you know, if you were to sort of take them seriously, even if, you know, you disagree with their politics, you know, the premise would be like, okay, well, you recognize that society is run by elite institutions and people who sort of benefit from those. So yeah, surely you would want to just, you would want to get rid of those institutions as well, right?

We want to build them from the ground up. That's what you keep saying. No, they don't. But like people like Matt Goodwin don't really want to do that even most of like the British elite. They just want those institutions to like them and take them seriously. Yeah, they would like those institutions to sort of work.

They would like those institutions to work in the way that they would like them to. And so they have no interest in actually dismantling them or even thinking about why or how these institutions may not be beneficial for the types of politics they want to control them. They would like to control them. They want to control them. But basically, my question though, as you mentioned this earlier, what's the Epstein connection here? Thank you, thank you for asking. By the way, just before we go to the Epstein thing,

which we'll do the start of the next episode, I'm gonna say, say, Claudine Gay, mostly through Bill Akman's intervention, has it time of recording, kept her job because he pushed so hard that Harvard would have been seen to capitulate him. Hey, he overplayed his time. Amazing, fantastic.

Yeah, so, no, you wanna know, of course, what's the connection here to Epstein? that Harvard would have been seen to capitulate. Hey, he overplayed his hand. Amazing. Fantastic. Yeah. So, no, you want to know, of course, what's the connection here to Epstein? And of course, his via MIT and the MIT Media Lab. Yes. We're counting champion. So basically, he said this also,

well, he was really like feeling himself. He said to the MIT governing board, he sent this on Twitter, let's make a deal. If you promptly terminate your president cornbluth, I won't write you a letter. Whoa. That's very chaos, Tom, right?

I do an activist investor. If you're a management of a company of an activist investor and you ignore a letter, that's a very bad thing. But he doesn't have that same level of direct control here. Okay. So this is Professor Naree Oxman, Bill Ackman's Now wife, was tapped by the MIT Media Lab to court donations from Epstein, gave him a grapefruit-sized 3D printed marble with a lighted base as a thank you present to him for giving her design lab 125,000 dollars.

New orb just dropped. Yeah. Massive marble. So he was playing like marble run, but like billionaire size. It was like the whole island was a giant marble run. That's such a cursed object that the MIT Jeff Reapstein orb. I mean, who owns this now? Like, I guess his estate.

Well, someone must, right? I'm counting on you. If you know who owns it, right in, it's up there with the golden arm. For objects we must have. I'm like, camped out at the Jeffery Appstein estate sale, looking for the orbs. There are so many orbs at that. It's like a yard sale at Littleson James Island. Like a bunch of stuff out on tressal tables on the beach.

Like you on the orb. I don't know. Give it a put. It's like a table full of orbs, table full of orbs. Highly pixelated table full of the most illegal shit you've ever seen in your life. I'll give you 50 pay for all the orbs. So Joy Edo basically asked her and other professors

to solicit donations and write like thank you notes to him. And she was like she demerred. Then in 20 and 2017, when Akman started like writing angry letters to Harvard. And so I didn't say this earlier, but wrote them a whole plan to get students back to campus like in the middle of the pandemic. And they were like, no, we're not going to do that. And he was like, oh, so, so Eto requested that oxman send this marble to Epstein's Manhattan

townhouse. And then when, this is like in 2017, by the way, well, after all of the original stuff. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. So then Ackman stepped in when questions about the MIT Media Lab and Epstein began to swirl back like around when we talked about it. And Ackman said, I don't want to see her, Neri, forced into a position where to protect her name, she's required to be transparent about everything that took place at MIT with Epstein.

Anything other than perfect transparency will make her look like she is hiding something, and this has regretfully become a witch hunt. So basically, he was like, hey, don't let reporters ask any questions to my wife about her Jeffrey Epstein marvel. Don't email my wife. And brackets about the Epstein marvel.

Yeah. I'm sure. You know, did you not insinuate that my wife gave Jeffrey Epstein a marble on the Plymouth Herald comment section. I'm looking for the marble and I don't believe there are any photos of the of the orb at all, which is alarming in its own way. There is. I will send you the marble. His wife is hot though. So I do have to say that. So no, this is, oh, yeah, she is hot. This is from Surface magazine. Neri Oxman is redesigning the natural world. The official magazine of Surface material. Yeah. Huge topos fans over there. Oh, yeah, they love stainless steel

gloss. What at carpet even? So it's not necessarily the marble, but you can find a picture of a similar 3D printed marble. Oh, she didn't even get a unique marble. You know, do all of that marble. He didn't even get a unique marble. You know? Do all of that shit. They don't even give you your own orb. Yeah. Oxman then said,

I regret having received funds from Epstein. Yeah, I regret. Epstein said, I regret having received orb. Yeah. Well, I regret orb. Yeah. I regret having received these 4,000 pounds from the gambling company.

I clearly said, don't, don't. Okay, so that's the Epstein connection and he was trying to hush it up. And that is it finally, finally. The last funny thing about Ackman, I mean, there's lots of funny stuff about Ackman. This is just the stuff that we can get. He's a weird guy. Yeah. Was that he was sort of mooding, taking Twitter, public via a more complicated version of a spark.

Called a spark. Do it, Percy. Bill Spogman. Yeah. Which I think wasn't approved because it was too weird. I am willing to see Toys of Crash and Burn in any manner of financial instrument. However they want to orchestrate it.

But also after sort of Elon Musk being like, ah, the Jews doing white genocide thing. Akman said that Musk remark was simply shoot from the hit commentary. And that he's a free speech absolutist, which I respect. I think he's entirely correct that he's treated unfairly by average. This kind of radicalization is like very, very weird just for Elon Musk who's having to triangulate between like the ADL and Baby Netanyahu. I can't imagine how much weird it is if you are actually Jewish.

Yeah. It's a very strange though to have watched all these hedge fund guys get radicalized in real time. Like we could do a whole episode on Seafood or Griffin or any of them really. You know, it's, you know, it's, it's Seafood onto Tulkalki. Yeah. You know, it's, um, it's, guess Seafood onto Toil Kalki.

Yeah. I always thought it would be cool to, but I used to think I don't think it's cool to talk to Doug Seafood anymore. I would have wanted to talk Krakow to you, you know, yeah, I would have wanted to talk about hockey with one of the richest, most regular seeming guys and the only super rich regular guy. And he's not regular anymore

They took it from us the right took this from us. He's deregulated Anyway, anyway, that's all we have for today, but this has been TF has been free TF It has been free to know that there's a bonus. There's a bonus. There's a bonus folks I just I bring out the bonus. It's only on the patreon. We're gonna find that out Also, patreon has told us some new information. Hmm. Oh god. Which is the Apple store is going to for all new subscribers Charge a like 30% cut of if you subscribe through the iOS app to the patreon There's in the patreon iOS app. I think after March, next year or so, you're gonna get charged with 30% surcharge to do it.

But if you subscribe any other way, like online or whatever, you can pay the normal amount and you can still listen through the iOS app. But just don't, our recommendations don't subscribe after that day, whatever that day is. I think it's Marchish next year through the iOS app. If you're already subscribed through the iOS app,

you can stay subscribed and your price won't change. Yes, that's correct. A little consumer tips, though. Yeah, your price of trash. You also might have been wondering, hey, how come TF didn't talk about like the Epic Games Google ruling? Because that's actually going to be hugely

consequential for the tech economy. Because gaming is for nerds. We don't care about it. Yeah. Enjoy your no e3 this year idiot. Yeah, we're getting to that. Don't worry. And all the other sort of boring actual tech company news that came out recently.

We're getting to it. Anyway, so subscribe to the free, the, no, subscribe to the free feed. You're already on it. Subscribe to that too. Yeah. Subscribe to anything. Yeah. Everything's a random. Yeah. Check out the free feed. You're already on it. Subscribe to that too. Subscribe to anything. Check out the bonus feed. So buttons, mash pedals, change gears,

get symbols. You should start button mashing in real life. That's right. And just see what happens. Anyway, anyway, you can check out the bonus feed right now, still in normal price through the iOS app. For now, yeah, two dates, Amsterdam selling really fast for January 26th. That's on my website, Rotterdam. Wait, no, I'm still at January 7th.

Rotterdam is January 26th. There's more to get available in Rotterdam, but I think Amsterdam will start pretty soon, so get on that. I'm going to be in Berlin, February 10th, with friends. Hang out. I'm trying to be in Berlin, February 10th, with friends. Hang out. Oh, yeah, Melbourne County Festival on sale.

I thought if you're going to be in Melbourne, late March through early April, my show at the festival is now on sale. And I'm going to be in Switzerland, the first weekend of February. Skiing, dope, dope, dope, dope. Don't speak to Arley. How does one man take this many vocations? I'm just going to be around, like, you can come talk to me if you want. I'm going to be, I'm going to be in Glasgow.

Yeah. Again, do not try and contact me. There's a bit of an adventure that I set on. There's a bench that I set on in Bethnal Green and I have a sandwich sometimes when I say, it's the VIP, we lounge at Bethnal Green. That's right. Yeah, you're allowed to sit down next to me.

I may not be good conversation. I tend to lose my focus quite a lot, but yeah, that's, that's it. Have you ever taken a bribe? If anyone wants to offer me a suitcase with 4,000 pounds, and I go to a bakery in the West End, quite regularly. I will take 20 pounds of that, maximum. Go get myself a nice treat, and then I will give you the changeback. Yeah, but that would be...

If you wish to bribe us, these are our locations. Offer her say in a sticky bun and a poro or a coffee, and he will say anything you want on the podcast. I would genuinely actually do that. Find me in Burghain, or the gondola, up from clusters or other places that I'm often found. Offer Riley some free piss in Burghine.

Mm-hmm. You can find him at the sandwich place in Burghine. Yeah, the open-faced sandwich bar. Well, the show, the homeless guy gives you an ice cream. All right, that's true. We saw that guy. We did, yeah, I got an ice cream from him. Took a fuck of a long time though. Well, he's busy. Yeah, that's right. All right, that's true. We saw that we did. Yeah, I got an ice cream from it took a

Fuck of a long time though. Well, he's busy. Yeah, that's right. All right. All right. It's time for us to actually go. Bye everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye!