Palantir's Manifesto with June and Caleb from KTC

32:21Like this is, they're operating, like this is how they operate. This is what they do. They whine, they whine until they get what they want. And then they whine about getting what they want. I forget what, I think it's Caleb Pitts maybe. He has a great stand-up comedy thing where he's walking around, he's a bald guy, and he has I eat shit tattooed in his head. And he looks at the camera and goes, guess who just got kicked out of a cafe for being white? And you guessed it, being white. Yeah, I love it. It's just that every day. Yeah, I think that this one and into the next point too are kind of connected in that kind of Habermas sense of like, you have to be able to like discourse.

32:59course, you have to be able to debate and fight on the forums with people that you disagree with. And if you cancel your opponents, you'll have no one left to argue with, right? And that argument is, I'm joking a little bit, but that is central to his core ideological belief. Yeah. It's amazing how many people get Twitter psychosis and bring it out into everything they do in real life. It's astounding. so point number 10 as we've kind of hit it the psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they have never met will be left disappointed well i mean i give him that one but also i'm not sure he realizes the actual problem when i read when i read this i have you guys seen this new phrase that's been that's uh elon musk helped blow up in the last like year or so the suicidal empathy thing have you have you guys seen it's basically this concept where that if you care too much about other people you will always like like the way it's traditionally used is like oh you care about palestinian people uh you think that they should have rights but have you thought about white people like you're you're sacrificing white people for like thinking about like trans rights trans rights are taking so much away from like cis people it's basically the the concept of if you care so much about other people you will shrink the majority's white like rights essentially are you suggesting everyone would have equality i think not you're suggesting that the people who have too much and the people who have too little would have similar amounts of stuff whoa whoa whoa whoa, whoa.

34:46It's so adjacent to like white supremacy and like the great replacement theory. It's like super adjacent to all that type of shit. But I just can't help but think of this. It's like, you know, I think Caleb, you're 100 % right. It's adjacent to number nine in that same way that you were outlining before. But I also think it's sort of this thing where it's like, we can't really care about people too much. We really can't care about the consequences that might hurt, like, I don't know, gay people or whoever. Like that's like sort of, that's missing the forest for the trees. for them is like what they're thinking.

35:1711, point 11 is our society has grown too eager to hasten and is often gleeful at the demise of its enemies. Exactly. All of these are tied. The sanction of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. Well, have you talked to your customers about this? Have you done a little bit of customer experience work, Alex? I'm not sure your customers would agree it's also just like very funny because this is someone who laughs at his enemy's suffering. He laughs. He takes glee in the suffering of those. He disagrees with. In that same Barry Weiss interview, he, I think the term that he used, and I may be wrong, but no one's going to listen to this to correct me anyway.

36:01So I'll just say, he said something along the lines of like, America should take pride when it uses force because we're a just nation or something. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Okay. I feel like that word pride, probably not something to come out of his mouth it's also just wild especially this year as recent as as of like three months ago and I think the reason for this is he doesn't view these people like as enemies even though you know the way that ICE I'm talking about the way that ICE uses Palantir to like find find people to deport scans regions and I think they use like some face scanning system in their database that ICE has as well, where it's like people are so gleeful whenever people get deported.

36:48They're fucking over the moon. They post about it. The government accounts on social media post like epic aura Gen Z brain rot edits about deportations. Which is so embarrassing. I'm not saying I agree. But I think to finish this thought, they don't see that as like demise of enemies. That is not what I think they think. But go on, sorry, yeah. Yeah, you're totally fine. I'm not saying I agree with Karp, But specifically about ICE, his point was, you know, if you are somebody who's concerned with this, you would want Palantir to succeed because then that means we only deport people who deserve it, who have done crimes.

37:23I mean, so again, I'm just saying I'm not saying I agree with what I am saying is it matters because he does believe he's high on his own supply. Yeah. No, I think you're so right. I always go back and forth on whether these tech people truly believe the things that they say. I think Elon Musk probably on most degrees does. I think he bullshits a lot, but I think, I think you're right. I think just in this recording, I think you've completely convinced me that Alex Karp absolutely does believe. There are some elements of cynicism to this, but most of this, I think he does believe. And I would say, I would agree with you on, on Elon when he's talking about how like empathy is a bug or something like that.

37:57Yeah. I'm not a psychologist and I'm not even frankly that smart, but he has this kind of like an attachment style because of his abusive father. that I think necessitates that he sort of intellectualize or abstracts concepts like empathy to such a degree that he would say, you know, I have empathy for mankind, but not on the individual. And it's a societal bug, right? Yeah. It's a weakness, a sign of weakness. Yes, correct. Because he can't negotiate with or engage with empathy like a person who hasn't experienced abuse from a terrible father could, right? I don't know. I don't feel like Elon believes in anything i genuinely think that i always go back and forth i think that oh i think he has deep-seated racism i truly like he's a sexist absolutely but i don't think he's sitting there and is like could explain all sorts of deep sincere thoughts i think it's whatever would get him what he wanted if there was a democrat in power giving him everything he wanted he would best friend of obama he'd be yeah well i mean i said democrat uh oh we're getting political aren't we very political episode yeah there we go no and it's just it's just i've watched this this guy for years and just he used to be an epic bacon science guy yeah he was an epic bacon science guy and he's he's now just like he sits online with too much money being like i will yes yes horse city at 52 i agree it is time for the great cleansing yeah it's just and even with this list it's like alex carp you run a software company mate you're not president you're not even a politician you got like you didn't get into racism school like i like what it like who gives a fuck what you think you make evil salesforce like so okay number this is maybe a better question for the end but i i've i've just been thinking why and we're only halfway through but like why did they post this like it's a like they're trying to make like oh i can give you from the uh i can actually tell you so from a client perspective this is some shit that you're sent at five in the morning on a sunday or a saturday like a sunday morning you get this and the client's like i'm gonna put this up on monday i'm gonna put this i'm gonna put that so wait a sec april 18th this is posted let's see what day this was okay oh fuck yeah this is posted on a saturday he wrote this on a friday so yeah some poor pr person got a fuck it an email friday at like 7 p.m 8 p.m and he's at he's like with his wife and kids trying to eat dinner he's like i'm gonna post this tomorrow i'm gonna post this it was posted at 11 45 a.m okay so so okay so you're talking like uh what's that 8 45 a.m eastern uh pacific anyway putting all that aside so this was just i'm gonna post this tomorrow and the guy was probably like well alex it's not got any formatting or numbers it's just a block of text we should at least put it in a numbered list go well okay okay i need to post this now post it tomorrow and it was probably the thought was okay this guy on a saturday i can convince him yeah you should post it immediately on the saturday so everyone misses it except the problem is is the everyone saw it because it's the fucking hunter account but it's just no this is a this is clients gone wild this is client client has an idea that they are 100 you could not a client sends you something like this you could not talk them away from it you put a gun to their head they'll they'll say kill me isn't this just a summary of the main points of Alex Karp's book that came out like a year ago like this is like yeah this is a summary this is a summary of one of his books essentially all the points he talks about he had a fucking book oh yeah hard power soft belief enough about it's um do you know who that guy is Caleb have you ever looked into the Nicholas Zeminska yeah he's the he's the like a legal counsel he's their lawyer oh damn he's the fucking lawyer honestly if I If I worked at Palantir and I was thinking, who should co-write this?

42:13I would say a lawyer. I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You should have a lawyer read every word. Just in case. Especially every 14th word, if you know what I mean. But okay, we move on. Number 12, the atomic age is ending. Once an age of deterrence, the atomic age... Once one age of deterrence, comma, the atomic age, comma, is ending, comma, and a new era of deterrence built on ai is set to begin no it is not just no yeah no it's not what are you talking about what do you mean uh chatbot because if we're talking about ai powered databases if we're talking about like databases of people pre-crime and that we have fucking compass since the 80s we have had algorithms for pre-crime since the 80s we have had the fucking promise software was the underlying thing back north to israel like it's a crazy story um you should look into the promise software you don't do it it'll ruin your life it will ruin your life i have a i have a hobby for the rest of my day it'll fuck you up big time um big up to my girlfriend for telling me on that one um that what like we have had this already like if we're talking about ai pre-crime surveillance we've had this already what are we talking about but because ai is the new bing bong that everyone must jerk off it's like okay yeah well now it's a that you know what that's a classic client point as well that is actually it's like we need to get at oh this is a really good point yeah we should add ai at the end what do you mean what do you mean ai i'm not really sure how that what does the ai deter how does it what's it deterring like is the idea that we'll be able to generate more nudes like but the chinese already have undetectable deep fakes of kim jong-un what are we doing like what's the point of this we'll be able to generate epic bacon memes of our adversaries despite the fact that like this um timing wise it was not that far after when you remember you guys remember this this is a really small blip on their radar but stuck with me was when they when rfk was like oh the department of health or whatever we're releasing our own like health ai bot do you remember that no i missed that oh my god the first thing i did on there i was like i asked it what kind of rocks are the most nutritious to eat smiley face and it gave me a list of rocks what are you talking about the atomic age of ai come on no i think i think this yeah this gives the game away that they're like actually can we have the spotlight now please like yeah it's like if we get the spotlight we'll survive as companies like just keep funneling us all of this money keep keep keep shoveling it over keep shoveling it price high yeah like we need that yeah keep yeah this next point is the funniest no other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one the united states is far from perfect but it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

45:20God damn, dude. I guess if you're maybe talking about Russia currently, maybe. If that's the only other country in the world, sure. He defines progressive values in this statement as non-hereditary elites becoming CEOs. That's not what most people would define as a progressive value, right? Definitely not. That kind of gives away the game a little bit. What does he mean? Based on the history of America, I wouldn't say, like, I think it was more defined as a battle against progressive values in some cases, like history of Portland, for example. Look into the Portland Police Department. Or, I don't know, look at the current Police Department of pretty much every city as well.

46:01And I mean, not even just the police department, just the government actively currently trying to erase history of, like, black history, like, LGBTQ history, like, erasing it off of monuments and taking, like, taking away monuments in some cases or racing school systems and like the compass system i don't think it's true like like i don't yeah it's just not necessarily true like we are we are still a lot of people love to be like wow like we like whenever pete whenever you talk about like palestine it's like oh well you're you're gay and you support palestine they'd throw you off roofs false first of all second of all you it was illegal you could not gay marry in this country until 10 years ago.

46:43It's like, what are we talking about? People were killed for being gay on the streets 30 years ago in this country. Like, what are we talking about here? We have a police force arresting people of color arbitrarily. Yeah, it's like, we are sure, like, I guess I'll hand it to him. We are far from perfect, but I think we're further from perfect than he's trying to convince us of. And we've done progressive things, but we also seem to be trying to undo those. Anyway, Wade, don't worry, we've got another really smart port coming up.

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50:58Number 14 American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace Too many have forgotten or perhaps taken for granted Nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict What the fuck you Peace for who Peace for who Billions of people and their children and now grandchildren have never known a world war Literally Those are the only wars that have happened in the last hundred years There's a trillion of them We've started the united states alone have started what like 10 12 13 wars since world war ii we've killed so many people read the jakarta method that's all i have to say a million people like a minimum a million people in in jakarta like the amount of terror we have reigned on the world it's like sure it's not war for us it's not war on our territory it's not war on our ground but it is war it is devastation it is terrorism across the globe perpetual there's been war everywhere if you're a fucking ignorant monster if you want to pretend that like America has been in a war the whole time anyway here's another great point.

52:04And there's also different countries also doing wars like I don't know like there is not long peace. It don't matter none you know what's the little oh it's over there anyway number 15 the post war neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone the defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I'm serious. I like this idea that if Japan could have a military, their problems, everything that's going wrong in Japan right now would be fine.

52:48I think it's a counterbalance to China is what he's getting at. I do agree with that, but I just don't understand what a military of the size of Japan could do to like, at this point, especially like even just giving him like, let's say today they could, you know, build up military. What are they going to like? How is that going to change the current situation? I don't know. I think it's just like the word overcorrection to it, I think is very telling. It's like, okay, you don't really have. It's interesting that he came from a progressive. Yeah, Germany. I think it's interesting that you have laid out that he's sort of come from like a more left-leaning sort of history because this is not something I would imagine someone – and again, he changed more recently.

53:33But like Germany and Japan especially, it's like – I feel like everyone knows why they cannot have militaries. Yeah, what happened? Why did that happen, Alex? Yeah, what happened in the 40s? I can't speak to Japan despite the obvious kind of surface level. That's a counterbalance to China thing. In his history, and I don't know if the book – I haven't finished the book yet. I'm still reading it. But in his life, he did go to Germany in – I think he moved for school in the 80s or early 90s when he was studying there. And a lot of his politics and the things that he believed in are a sort of direct confrontation of post-war Germany and the things that he saw in that society.

54:16It was very interesting. And just I think that he saw – he really – and this is a Habermas thing too of like what kind of national identity should Germans have in the wake of this existential death of humanity. That informs Karp thinking quite a bit. And when you think about his whole idea is like aggression is social cohesion, it starts to make sense when he says, well, maybe Germany should be allowed to have a military. To be clear, I don't – he's not a Nazi. He's Jewish. But it's still very kind of fucking crazy to think about this, especially when you think about how openly he engages with fascist and Nazi ideals, you know, again, from the point of argument as a reasoning tool.

55:03little bit still it's like i mean i think we're gonna get up to a point fairly soon sort of related to this in that way but like i i think it's interesting that a lot of tech people in the united states in like the last couple years have started doing this thing where it's like we unapologetically do this we unapologetically believe this like they're they're like there's like this shame like the where this like you cannot have shame for anything you ever do you cannot be introspective like mark and reason he was talking about like oh you know yeah it's like it's so it's it's it's a weakness to have introspection i think that's sort of linked to that in that way where it's like we can't apologize for our like actions or whatever you know yeah it's i don't isn't that a roger stone thing as well like never apologize yeah oh my god yeah no explicitly it is yeah it probably came from him to be honest yeah they don't have ideas but let's go on to one of the other ones they claim to have number 16 we should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act.

56:01The culture almost snickers at Musk's interest in grand narrative as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves. Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. That would suggest he's created something. Now, Ed, I'm not an expert in this field. Maybe this is a question for you. But wasn't Elon Musk forced to purchase Twitter because... he made an epic meme because he made he was epic and based and said i will buy this and then when he tried to pull out they were like no you agreed to buy this fucking website shit give us the money interest you moron dr carp excuse me also let's talk about some of the things that elon musk has talked about robots doesn't exist robo taxis doesn't exist uh tesla roadster with rockets on it doesn't exist just like the reason people snicker and jeer at elon musk is he says something will happen and then it doesn't and then he's like well uh it's uh it's uh delayed until uh the year of the base tiger he's just like and everyone just goes okay well if we had a functioning business in tech media they would stop printing what he says my god but they would just go like oh yeah this guy is lying but it's funny because this is this only ever comes from incurious dullards it's never people who create a lot of stuff who are like hey elon musk's fucking trying okay he's trying to create something while you sit here from the peanut gallery it's never like artists or writers who have like written meaningful shit or like authors it's always guys like this executives of software companies who could be replaced with anyone like let's be honest like what makes Alex Karp uniquely the person to run Palantir?

57:53There's probably 18 different Lockheed Martin gargoyles or fucking former Hanwar executives who could be slotted in and we would never know the difference other than the fact that we wouldn't have to fucking hear from them all the time. Because you notice we don't hear from fucking Lockheed Martin CEO. We don't hear from the CEO of RTX, nay Raytheon. We don't hear from these people. We don't know who they are because they don't go... Raytheon is not sitting around being like, Like, what's our social? Well, they actually have a social strategy. It's very funny. And they love to post like LGBTQ awareness, which is really fucking crazy.

58:26I love when they're like, we're the greatest company for gay people out there. We're rated number one. And it's like, all right. But nevertheless, like you don't have RTX's CEO going around being like, and here's what I think about social justice. They're like, we make bombs. We make bombs and the software behind bombs. If you need to kill someone, call RTX. We will blow them up big time. What's it going to cost? More than you think. And more than we say. It's been really interesting, Palantir, especially in the last year, sort of make this bigger presence of themselves with this manifesto and Alex Garp going on these speaking tours.

58:59And I believe it was a New York Times page ad where it was a couple of weeks ago that was like, Palantir supports Israel. They're purposefully putting themselves in the limelight and getting all of this attention and hate. It's attention economy. It's the attention economy. Yeah. It's interesting, too, because he's been the CEO, I think, for 18 years. Jesus Christ. And nobody had ever heard of him until recently. He's actually been quietly, I would say, smartly just building relationships with various governments and alphabet agencies around the world and such and kind of kept to himself. And I've often thought that his proximity and relationship to academia has been able to sort of ingratiate himself with these types of people that are in these positions.

59:45and that's how he's been so successful um i don't know what it is i'm still kind of trying to to i can explain he saw all the attention that elon musk got and the peter teals got by saying like yeah the antichrist right or like uh what if we ban woman like whatever they're saying and he was like yeah cool i want to do this like i want to be popular too and also now's the time because all these people want to be statesmen sbf sandbank mr bankman free he was kind of early in that he wanted to be a statesman. He wanted to be seen as like an elder statesman. And you've kind of seen it with Elon, except I say this with no respect to government officials.

1:00:23He lacks the decorum and he lacks the grace. He doesn't function or talk like a politician and he doesn't know how to do it. They don't know how to dress as well. This is such a really small thing, but go and find the picture from the dinner with Trump and look at Elon Musk's shoes. And look at the break on it. I mean, he wore a shirt backwards when he was doing his little X jump or whatever. Remember that? But it's just like, go and look at their shoes. Look, I'm not even being the menswear guy here. Look at the break on their pants. It's really uneven. This is something that you can solve when you have a billion dollars.

1:00:55You go to Savile Row in London and you go, here is my credit card. Don't worry about whatever you put on it. Just give me the perfect looking suit and they'll fucking do it. You will find anyone. You can find them in New York. Find them in any city, everywhere. You have enough money. You could probably just have them fly. Like they could do one in a day. They could buy the factory. You could do it. but they just don't really give a fuck what they want to do is skip all the hard part of you know learning and being a person and growing so they could just be famous and they've realized that that works you can just go and blah blah racism blah blah pax americana manifest destiny i've learned these terms yesterday from wikipedia and i forgot what they mean blah and it's they will do that as enough times the problem is the reason they seem so frantic and tired is because there's nothing behind it.

1:01:42They don't give a shit about this. We're even on this fucking list. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Point 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, banning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with the constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. Surveillance state. Yay! Yay! So they let's stay hippie! Also, this is a person that does not believe that social services are part of that.

1:02:20The violent crime in San Francisco comes from Ronald Reagan emptying the fucking homeless people. People that became homeless, I should say, from mental asylums that he closed. Watch Deadly Class, great show. Have you ever watched The Southland Tales? Oh yes, of course. Do you remember, like, throughout the movie, there just will be points where just different things will pop off and it'll cut two military people on roofs with the machine guns and they'll just shoot people from the roofs. That's what he wants. He wants the machine guns on the roof with just soldiers always watching. That's what this point is, is Sutherland Tales.

1:02:53That movie, Sarah Michelle Gellar is in it as a porn star. And the one thing I remember is she is in a movie called Cock Chuggers 2 Cock Chuggin'. To be clear, Sarah Michelle Gellar, amazing actress, but just fucking hilarious. Everyone should watch Sutherland Tales, by the way. It is a insane movie. Panned at the time, but I think especially these days, it is very prescient. I think very, you'll be like, God damn, people didn't like this back in the day. It's very, it's a very camp. Oh no, I can get why people didn't like it. It is insane. It is insane. Scene between scene, you're like, what, what is happening?

1:03:26Anyway, if only his worldview was that coherent because, because what he believed is that he wants to put the homeless people in the embrace of God. He wants to shoot them. He wants to jail them, which I'm sure will solve the prison population issue we have. I wonder how he feels about prisons, by the way. I don't know. He probably loves them, I'm guessing. Because the solution is always more software, more jail, more gun. It's never like more home. Because that's a really good way of dealing with homeless people. You give them a path out of transience because they have mental health issues. Of course, by the fact they don't have a place to sleep or a place to go to the bathroom other than their trousers.

1:04:05and these people are suffering and they're hurting and the way that people deal with them is to hurt them more versus yeah and oh it costs a lot of money yeah it does to pull someone out of hell and if you are someone listening to this by the way who has a view of homeless people it's like oh they need to be moved away you're a fucking arsehole and a loser and a coward homeless people are victims of society they are society owes them a debt not the other way around and the idea that someone needs to work enough for social services is a joke anyway that's my little sandbox there It really pisses me off.

1:04:36What were you going to say? Oh, sorry. Yeah, go with Caleb. It's hard to say what he believes in since his sort of schism, but I do think it's worth noting that he has talked about social services and these programs pretty extensively in the past. He just thinks that Palantir specifically will make them better, for whatever that's right. Of course they will. yeah i think that he does believe uh because again he he's over the years described himself as uh various times you know a so social something democrat liberal this neo-marxist whatever um he does believe in these things i just think that he's um sort of this eccentric megalomaniacal freak that's i alone can improve these problems like forrest balkan of ninth gate I alone am worthy Bitcoin will fix this Alright, well Let's go to point 18, which is a real banger 18 The ruthless exposure of the private Lives of public figures drives far Too much talent away from government Service, the public arena and the Shallow and petty assaults against those who Dare to do something other than enrich themselves Has become so unforgiving That the republic is left with a significant roster Of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within and that is exactly how that's written he just got let that typo go right through if there were any genuine belief structure look i don't know i i this is about a mate of his but this is like don't look at the epstein files yeah like this is a way to say to not do that yeah don't look at the epstein files don't look at whether reed hoffman ceo of linkedin endorsed jeffrey epstein which he did uh we don't know what for i've asked i haven't got a comment back but anyway let's move on i just want to say really quick sorry really quick just that like it's so funny to say this but also be like virul in the uh anti-zoran mamdani he's like zoran mamdani none of this none of the things you want will ever work he's bad he's evil he's bad so it's like he already like within just like one second of looking at some of his new opinions even like a couple of days later or like a couple of months after this or before this sorry are you suggesting a conservative leader is a hypocrite um yeah much hypocrite much it's just it's just it just drives me crazy how all of this none of these people like he i think he does believe this stuff but he's just so he is not self-aware in any capacity to where it's like he he he says things that can directly contradict some of this manifesto well 19 the caution in public life that we unwittingly encourages corrosive those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all so that's just about racism that's just about saying the arsler that's like it's real like this he's gonna frame this as oh it's a philosophical debate but it's like no it's um it's not it's actually it's actually just someone said the arsler and he wants to protect them but we gotta keep we we've let this one go a little long so we're gonna move on a little faster because number 20 is a real banger the The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted.

1:07:44The elite's intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that it's a political project, that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. I would say that there are definitely ways in which religion is pushed out. I don't think those are the ones he's talking about, though. I've found it so fascinating in the last two-ish years how a lot of these Silicon Valley tech people have really, whether they actually really embrace it or not, have outwardly embraced religion as this new thing that everyone needs to – you're like a deeper person for re-embracing religion.

1:08:23You know, like Peter Thiel, all of these people. I think it's one of the most fascinating new narratives to come out of Silicon Valley is how they're all Christian all of a sudden and all really love God and all really think that that's more valuable than like anything else while they talk about how we need more bombs to kill people. They've seen the value of appealing to people who already have like proclivity to dogma baked in, right? Absolutely. It's super beneficial for them. I mean, Russell Brand, sexual assault. You pick up a Bible, everyone, you get all sorts of money. The Pierce Morgan thing was so funny, by the way.

1:08:59Oh, my God. Just flipping through the Bible. Two minutes. Oh, my God. It's like, I think it's this one. I can't find it. I can't find it. It's so silent. And Pierce Morgan is like gym facing. Like, it's just, and I watched the whole thing. Masterclass. And all I could think of was no American would have the balls to do this. No American journalist. I don't love Pierce Morgan, but like, No American journalist would ever have the balls to just sit there in complete silence for two minutes as Russell Brand went, Is it Isaiah? Is it Isaiah?

1:09:36Is this the one with the wall in it? Is this the one with the angels that have sex with each other? I use Grok to read this to me. And it's just, it's like, no, anyone who suddenly becomes religious is extremely suspicious. never trust anyone in fact i know some very spiritual deeply religious people people with great faith and the way they talk about it is just completely different to anyone else he talks about but it's never it's it's something for them not for you and the moment it becomes something outward is when i get very fucking suspicious absolutely all right if you guys know this you know you guys both know i go to church every sunday right that's cool do you really yeah yeah what kind of judge i didn't know that shit uh i i have been going to a universalist unitarian church so it's like fake church but there's nothing fake about it's what your faith is no i'm i am like agnostic and i i have some spiritual i think my writing's quite spiritual the process but it's like nothing with a god or anything i think people are dismissive of religion in some ways but this is referring to school protests this is just this is just this is just college campus protest this is what he's talking about all right we've only got two more of these fucking things all right 21 some cultures have produced vital advances others remain dysfunctional and regressive all cultures are now equal criticism and value judgments are forbidden yes this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures have produced wonders others have proven middling and worse regressive and harmful my what are you fucking talking my god i assume he means islam like i just i just i assume he's like it's just like yeah it's like those those brown countries you go a little south the the darker than brown the black countries that there is there really any wonders there there's no wonders there yeah my uh my challenge to anybody listening to this is if anybody ever says this to you and i've seen this framing come up quite a bit more and more increasingly if somebody says you ask them what they mean yeah and smile smile on their faces what do you mean by that and make them fucking say it yeah i mean it's so obviously like rooted in that like oh the west the western values it's like yeah all right final one 22 we must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and horror low pluralism we in america and more broadly in the west have for the past century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity but inclusion into what we need more racism racism we need transphobia we need homophobia we need more bigotry that's the only way we'll be multicultural yeah yeah no this yet again is sort of like cancel culture bullshit this is like suicidal empathy because like oh what like if we're tolerant of everyone like what like we lose so much the society that'll lead to societal decline if everyone destruction what if someone's intolerant of me being intolerant fucking assholes well i will say and this ends by saying it's an excerpt from the book so couldn't probably should have known that before going into it myself i will say that if i was made to read this book i would i would try and poison myself i i don't i don't want to know what these people think but i think that this kind of this kind of proves that this is a series of incongruent points written by somebody that can't choose whether they want to be a convenient or inconvenient fascist like they don't want like they aren't really sure what they believe in other than the fact that someone they like is being oppressed but the people they don't like aren't being impressed enough oppressed enough it's also like give us more contracts give us more money we want a full wartime economy focused on giving AI companies more money.

1:13:26It's like both of those things. It's sort of this techno-fascist sort of like, give us money, please. Also, we agree with you on culture war, so please give us more money for that. Yeah. Well, now that we've gone through that horrible series of points, I want to thank you both for joining. Where can we find you? You can find us at, we do a show called Kill the Computer. You can find us at killthecomputer.com or just anywhere. Amazing website. yeah be our our community our the person that sort of like helps with our community also made the website she's amazing she built i think i'm biased it's a website for our show but i think it's one of the most like if you love like what the internet used to be what it could be obviously it's a website for a podcast but i think it just has the spirit of what the internet still could games on it our phone has games on it so sick there's a leaderboard like there's fun it's fucking dope um so please yeah it's a show about just uh uh like how um internet and culture and politics sort of intertwine and and sort of manifest in in the world that we live in essentially um so we talk about a lot of stuff like we talked about today we talk about um one of my favorite episodes that we did uh a little bit ago was uh talking about the the like death capitalist economy of like...

1:14:45Oh, Grief Tech? Grief Tech, yeah. Where it's like these tech companies, how they sort of prey on people grieving family members dying or getting to end of life and providing these different services that will sort of create fake memories in some cases. They made a chatbot out of your dead grandmother and they're going to update the model and she'll start hallucinating and you can't afford it and blah, blah, blah. It's just very... Yeah, it's very... No, we talk about all sorts of stuff like that. So please check us out. thanks for listening everyone there'll be a monologue on friday you'll love it i promise i haven't decided what it is yet thank you for listening to better offline i'm goddamn ed zitron

1:15:31thank you for listening to better offline the editor and composer of the better offline theme song is matt osowski you can check out more of his music and audio projects at matt osowski.com M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I.com You can email me at ez at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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