LA Is On Fire & Trump’s Manifest Destiny | PIRATE WIRES EP#82 🏴‍☠️
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Two, one, happy new year.

The Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory. The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US. Can you assure the world that you are not going to use military or economic coercion? No.

I don't care.

Is that really as stupid as someone who just chooses to do nothing about any of these problems? Imagine just saying Canada's going to be a state three times and their prime minister resigns. Why are you here? Why are you here? Like, get out of here. I don't invite you. You don't need your moral guidance. Go home.

And we are back. We are back in 2025. Welcome back to the pod. What is up, guys? Riley, great to see you again. Matt, joining today. Brandon out while he is dealing with stuff. He lives in Los Angeles, as does Riley. Riley's a little closer to the water. Down in Venice, I believe, or something like that. Brandon is up near one of the fires, so they had to evacuate, sadly.

Prayers for Brandon Goral. He is now dealing with that. So he's off, but we're carrying on with Pirate Idol for the next four weeks, full segments. And our very first guest, we've got Cardick in the house here to discuss all this stuff with us. I'd ask you all about your holiday, but...

there's a lot going on in the world and i think that we need to actually talk about it um riley why don't you break down let's start with the uh let's start with what's going on in los angeles yeah let's let's get into the giant fiery armageddon that's like a few miles away from me as we speak so multiple fires have hit the los angeles area this week um anecdotally it had felt like the conditions for a fire were there all week it's been super dry highs in like the 70s um

Super windy starting Tuesday, especially. And lo and behold, Tuesday morning at around 10:30, the Palisades fire, the largest of these recent fires, was first reported and it quickly grew to just like an insane, hard to comprehend magnitude. As of this morning, it's burned 17,234 acres.

That's according to the Watch Duty app, which I've had to rely on since you can't count on this state for anything. And the images have just been horrific, like entire neighborhoods just like reduced to ash. The Pacific Palisades neighborhood is like a wasteland right now. Beloved restaurants like burned to the ground. The aerial footage has been insane.

My brother and a ton of friends have had to evacuate. Brandon, like you mentioned, had to evacuate as a result of one of the other fires currently going on in Los Angeles. And it's just heartbreaking stuff. There have been at least two deaths last time I saw, which frankly, thank God it's not worse than that because it easily could have with just the scale. Oh, it's definitely worse than that. Those are the two that counted yesterday, but there's definitely more. Yeah.

It's gonna get worse, yeah. And the cause is still undetermined as of this recording. Though I saw a stat that something like 95% of wildfires are caused by humans rather than lightning or any other factor. And insanely, this was just posted last night by Andrew Huberman. Matt flagged this. But there have been reports of people starting fires in other urban parts of LA just randomly. We're at 302 Pico and people are lighting fires now. You can see they lit a fire. These guys...

Not all the people there, but some of those guys lit that fire. And they're actually...

the trees caught fire and then the palms are catching fire. So which sort of begs the question if we're dealing with something like much more sinister here, like some kind of like sleeper cell situation or anything. I don't know. But one thing we do know is like that whenever there's any type of natural disaster, politicians will be there to sound the climate change button instantly. Bernie Sanders did exactly that saying of the fires that broke out in an area under exclusive purview of Democrat politicians.

Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis that it is. Just two quick things on that and then I'll kick it to you guys. So I don't necessarily have a problem with the people talking about the potential role of climate change in these disasters, but to exclusively point to that and not say a single word of any of the other potential contributing factors like about fire hydrants malfunctioning, about Karen Bass cutting the fire department budget by $18 million.

It's just crazy. And the second thing is, does it have to be the very first thing to come out of your mouth? Can we wait for the elementary school to stop smoldering before we start talking about carbon footprint and why we all need to cut back on plastic straw use? It's just insane. But I will stop my California rant and let you guys get into this. It's just this incredible obfuscation that we've seen for years. I started writing Pirate Wires in 2020, and that was around the time... It was right around that time. It was maybe like

I mean, it was a wild first year from COVID and then a year after COVID, so into 2021. And I believe it was in 2021 when the fires got really bad up in San Francisco or north of San Francisco and the sky turned orange. And it was just relentless fires back then. But once the sky turned orange, it was just wild, just wild.

feel. It's hard to get back into that headspace actually. Things are better now in a lot of ways than they were back in 2021. It was really, really, really dark period I think for America. And I remember being really frustrated because everything

Everybody was, as the skies were orange, talking about climate change. That was the narrative that was... This is pre-Elon Twitter. So that was not only the narrative, that was the enforced narrative. That's all that you saw everywhere on both media and social media. And I wrote this piece called Global Warming Ate My Homework. And it was...

about land management. It was about the fact that we've known about this problem for decades. It was about the fact that even... I don't understand. I'm actually not convinced that climate change is to blame here. California has been wildfire prone since the dawn of California history, pre-recorded history. Because when Europeans came over, it was already a thing. You can look at the geological record and there's evidence for fires dating back forever. And

They are getting worse, actually, I think, because we're preventing them in parts and we're overdeveloping. And so fuel is building up. They used to have these massive statewide fires. Because that doesn't happen anymore, the fuel builds and builds and builds. And if you don't manage it properly, you get these massive crazy fires and they come fast and a lot of people lose everything and many people die. And you have to figure that out. You need better

better irrigation methods, you need better water collection. What is it called with the reservoirs? You need to fix your reservoir system so you're capturing the rainwater rather than letting it roll out into the ocean. You need to be doing controlled burning. You need to be

developing in a smarter way. You do have to be thoughtful about where you're allowing residential zoning and things like this. And these were all things. And also, you need better firefighting equipment. It's not like we don't know this is going to happen. I mean, people have been talking about, there were the fires in Los Angeles, in the hills, a handful of years back. And people have been talking about a crisis like this coming for many, many, many, many years. And so if that's the case, if we knew it was coming,

If it always is happening, it's not like, oh my God, who could have thought that there was a fire? Then the onus is on you as the people in charge to figure something out and to correct a plan. And as I was watching this all unfold this week, I thought, man, it is just the exact same story. Totally, it's the exact same thing, only this time, the idea that these people are

are to blame, our leaders are to blame, has gained much more traction. It is a much bigger part of the story now. And to the point where I really don't, it's like an unmistakable part of the story. I would say it's louder than the climate change piece. Totally parallel universe, New York Times. When you look at their coverage, it's not there at all, which is interesting. But I don't know, Cardick, what do you make of how the conversation has changed? Or maybe I'm wrong about that.

Yeah, I think that the conversation is stuck still, which is the most annoying part. Like a couple of things I would take away, even to echo some of what Riley said is,

you know, everyone is blaming climate change, but it's so easy to disarm that argument because even if it was 100% solely the fault of climate change that we have fires, it still wouldn't excuse like the gross mismanagement and inability to solve these fires. - Right. - It actually makes it even worse. 'Cause if you know the problem and the problem's been going on forever and everybody responsible believes in it, then you should fucking solve it, right? Like, so I think that's kind of the most annoying and damning part about this climate change

issue. Um, and then the other thing I've seen is, um, you know, Huberman shared that post of people setting fires and people talked about how, oh, you know, this echoes kind of this old time. Even you were alluding to when there were fires, uh,

north of San Francisco, I was here. It was orange. It was also COVID. The photos of me are like wearing a mask during that time. And so it was weird, but like there was a reason for it to be weird then. Now is just a normal January. There's no COVID. There's no riots. You know what I mean? But people are still just setting fires for the fuck of it because I think they've learned that

that maybe it's fun or no one cares anymore. I mean, this is a city that prioritizes the well-being of antisocial drug-addicted vagrants over the families and taxpayers who live in the city. So they're all over the place doing fucked up shit. I mean, if you're starting a fire right now, then this is happening. It seems like there are reports all over the city. So if you are

if you're eluding houses from people who are fleeing a fire, that's really bad. It's right here. If you are starting more fires, I don't even know where to begin. And it seems like there are many of them. And that could be, as I think you alluded to Riley, is that a foreign actor? It seems really bad. So you want to say that, but what if it's this worst thing, which is just this kind of the degradation of the American soul to the point where the

there are these just ghouls wandering around

inflicting chaos on society, who I would love to know how many of them we're actually paying to live. Like, I would bet, I mean, if there was a polymarket for this, it would be like thousands of dollars that out of all the people lighting fires, at least half of them are getting some kind of government assistance. That's what I think is happening. I really do think it's just drug-addicted vagrants who are doing this. It's like they're feeling the energy of the craziness. It's that Charles Manson, you know,

Southern California vibe. They just like caught it and are wreaking havoc. And, um, yeah,

really bad, really, really, really dark. But the failure to stop them, like really speaks to the like mismanagement of leadership that we talked about. And it really is unfortunate that like with super majorities in California, thanks to a lot of factors, you know, immigration, um, major industries in the state, like entertainment that are historically liberal, um, you know, voters who are frustrated with the status quo really like don't have any other choice that they like would in other jurisdictions or at like the national level, like, um,

If you feel the president is doing poorly, well, guess what? You can always vote for someone who presents a different vision in four years. Like that just happened this past November. But if you hate the way this wildfire was handled or how the state treats these vagrants who presumably are starting arson, like your tax dollar or yeah, your tax dollars going to high speed rail train that was like supposed to go to SF and is now going to an entirely different state. Like if you hate any of these problems, you've like sort of just have no choice other than to accept it.

And a part of me wants to believe this is going to be a catalyst for change, but another part of me thinks that similar to COVID, it's just going to be a catalyst for more people to leave the state. Let's focus on the global warming thing for a second, because the reason that this has not been a catalyst for change is because you have had this thing that you could point to and say, it's this. But I don't, even for the most blinded

leftist, MSNBC-watching, Trump-hating individual. I don't know how decades into this,

decades it's been into just the global warming question, you could tolerate the idea that there has at least not been some kind of prevention. Because what exactly are the Democrats, when Bernie Sanders stands up and says, we need to address climate change right now, what I'm really hearing is, we're not going to prepare for wildfires until you decarbonize the entire planet. And that's

stupid. That's never going to happen. So if that's never going to happen, then all you're doing is not helping. And it's very clear that that's what you're doing is you're just waving your hands up in the air and you're blaming this abstract idea that is associated with right-wing people who are not in charge of your state. There's been a comparison to hurricanes in Florida that I've seen quite a bit. It's like, oh, you're blaming the fires, but you're not

you know, what about the hurricanes in Florida or something? And I guess here, I've heard the hurricane thing a bit before. I've watched people typically on the left blame people who are living in hurricane areas for two things. One, for voting red and then because those people don't believe in climate change. But then two, for living in hurricane prone areas. Now they're sort of

attaching this to the sort of like, well, if you're going to blame the leftist government of California for not preparing for wildfires, then I'm going to blame Rhonda Santos for not, you know, doing something about hurricanes. What would you have to do to stop hurricanes? Like us actually asked that question. It seems like much bigger. I think that

I actually do think it would be kind of cool to see massive land barriers along the entire Florida coast would be really wild at the whole thing, like a huge, like multiple miles all the way down this mega engineering project. But that's the kind of thing that it would take. It's like, it's like some ring world shit is what you need to,

to do something about hurricanes unless Donald Trump's idea of nuking the hurricanes has legs. Maybe. Don't know. I'm listening though. And that's kind of one of his ideas. That's like one of his ideas that, you know, it's like, I don't know that I want to be nuking hurricanes in the Gulf. However, I like where his head's at. Like, let's be thinking about how do we stop these things? Like, what could we do to do something? The idea that what you really have in the nuke hurricane thing is...

a man who is wondering what can we do about hurricanes? And that is not a kind of thinking that we really have in America, generally speaking. It is not, you don't often have someone say, how do we fix this problem? And so it sounds crazy to us when someone offers a solution and your first impulse is to be like, you're,

fucking stupid. You can't nuke hurricanes. But is that really as stupid as someone who just chooses to do nothing about any of these problems year in and year out? And I do think, just on the hurricane thing, that that problem is

way bigger, and I don't even know how you would even begin to address it, than what you need in California. I mean, there are some things we could try. If we fix the reservoir system and we start capturing all that rainwater so we at least have water, right? If we make sure that the fucking fire hydrants work, if we make sure that the fire department is well-funded, if we start doing proper land management and control burns without the EPA getting involved and forcing us to wait seven and a half years or whichever, I'm actually not sure with the EPA, I'm not sure what environmental...

organization within the government it was that prevented the controlled burning. But if we did all of those things and then still nothing mattered, then I'd be like, okay, we got to think of some other stuff. But it would be like, let's think of some other stuff, not let's throw our hands up in the air and blame the sky demons. Yeah, that's stuff that drives us crazy. That's why we sort of congregate here with Pyrewire. It's like you read Bernie Sanders' tweet and it says, well, Trump has to take this seriously. It's like, excuse me?

the all Democrat state that's always yelling at us about the globe and how to buy electric cars to save the planet. It's crazy. He's not president for 10 more days. So it's like, you're like, I guess we're just going to burn until Donald Trump is in office and then he better decarbonize the planet. Like, what is this? What, like, what is that thinking? I don't understand that. It's, and it's like, obviously the story in New York, I railroaded this week for much bigger things. Like it's this constant, just like you guys are the ones in charge.

and you keep creating these like demon out of nowhere of Trump. It's like you are in charge. And Governor Newsom did an interview yesterday where Trump was calling him out. He's like, I can't even. We're in the public safety phase. I hate to even ask this question, but the president elect chose to attack you, blame you for this. One can't even respond to it. I mean, it's, you know, people are literally fleeing

People have lost their lives. No, he should be saying this stuff. You didn't do your job properly. Like you can't control fires. Like it's kind of the sad thing about these events. It's like Mother Earth is going to burn sometimes. Like you can't, like there's going to be forest fires, but you didn't even do the basics. Like the thing with the dams I'm hearing, like I didn't look into it too much. I don't know if Riley, you did like the dams where they like close them so like the fish can live. You're like, what's going on here? My mom's been texting me about this. I'm like, you know what? I didn't have time to research it. I was like, what? That can't be real, which it might be real.

Should we just look it up? Someone look up the fish thing. I know what it's called, like the smelt or something. What, the thing about the smelt you're talking about? Yes. Let's get to the bottom of the smelt issue. That's crazy. Like, so you're not even doing the basics right. Then you're going to blame Trump and like the evil demon Republicans on climate change. Like that's insane. Carter, have you figured out the smelt situation? Yes, I have figured out the smelt situation.

It's a tiny fish. Doesn't look like it tastes very good. Basically, it's in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, okay? And basically, environmental regulations to protect the smelt were used to say that we cannot funnel this water down to SoCal. And typically, this would just be extra water. I don't think it's a high percentage, so I don't know if this is like the night or day solution. No.

But there is a video of Newsome basically trumpeting this with some Native American tribe that's around there. I don't ever want to hear about a Native American tribe. I do not give a shit. We're all better now. It sounds like it was for a photo op.

I like just don't, I'm so over it. The Native American tribe, you know what the Native American tribe can do? They can move to Los Angeles and like live in society and we can have water. Like that's just fucking crazy that that's even a consideration in 2025. Like why are we pretending that they're like out there? Not even, it's not even like they're on, it's not even like some Pocahontas shit or some Ferngully shit where they're like out there in the nature or whatever. These are just separate things

reservations that then like to go and like swing their dick around and be like, wait a minute, but the sacred smelt or something, that's not even real. It was never, right? Like you just made that up. Like you don't have, there's not even a written, you didn't have a written language. Who is recording the sacred texts of the smelt fairy or whatever? Nobody did that.

So it's like you just ad hoc... Basically, 1970s came around and you watched a bunch of hippie movies and invented an entire history of Native American history. And then it's like, that has to... And now I can't have water in Los Angeles. That's fucking crazy. I'm not doing that anymore. Not in the mid-20s. And then find the guilty white man to fix all your problems. Yeah, well, the guilt... My cup is...

full of bullshit. No more. There's no more room for bullshit. I don't care. I also don't care. I no longer care about like, I'm watching these, the arsonists. And if I find out that's a homeless person, I swear to God, like I, my empathy for the homeless, like specifically, not all homeless, drug addicted, vagrant, vandalizing homeless people. Like,

For a long time, I had to pretend that I cared, right? It was like, okay, well, it's really sad what's happening to them. And I feel bad for them. You have to say before you say, but can't we do something about it? I no longer feel bad. I no longer feel bad. I am prioritizing human civilization over the absolute most antisocial, terrible,

aspects of human civilization. I don't care about them anymore. I care about the city of Los Angeles not burning to the ground. That's my number one priority. And then number two would be, I saw this tweet. It was a girl and she was in the subway. So congestion pricing, are we talking maybe at the end of the episode? I don't know if we're going to make it. Don't get me started. Very quickly, congestion pricing went into effect in New York City. And by design, the purpose was to flood the subway

with people. They want to increase use of mass transit, which I sort of understand. The more people who use it, the better it should be in practice. The problem is it's run by the worst people alive who are grifting and stupid. And so nothing's going to get better. And this girl was on the subway and she couldn't use... She's pregnant or not pregnant. She had a kid with her and she couldn't use the elevator because there was a homeless man sleeping in the elevator. And it's like,

I don't care about that person as much as I care about the girl, the woman with the kid. I just don't get the fuck out of the elevator and let the woman with a child use it to go up to go up to the street level. It's crazy. Like you have the entire planet to go and putz around. Why are we pretending that you have to do it right there? You don't. And we all know that you don't. And I just like really hope that 2025 can be the year of just saying real shit. Like, no, you don't need to be there. Fucking move. Next question.

low trust society everywhere, right? Like people looting already, there's arsonists in LA, the homeless in New York. It's like just a constant low trust and we keep putting up the, okay, I guess we'll pour them. Fuck that man. It is a lot of the voters though. Like, did you guys go through the replies to that woman's tweet? Like it's pretty insane. I always, I go back and forth on, are they real? Yeah. You know, like, are these just how bot generated, like when people are saying really, truly stupid things,

I, you meet a random, nine out of 10 regular people that you meet have a kind of common sense impulse about the world. Why is the internet not common? Like, why don't you see that as much? Like why were there? Yeah, I did see the comments and people being like, well, we got to hear both sides or whatever. I don't, I don't know. I do know that if I were running an op strategy for

a hostile foreign country, you know, and I wanted to fuck with a free society where free speech existed. And, um, and there was this easy low hanging fruit of, well, let's just so social, uh,

tension and animosity and hatred. And you could do that online because I certainly get angry at an imaginary person who I don't even know is real. When I see 10 comments saying something really antisocial and bad, I'm like, man, these people are bad. Who are they? Who are these people? Are those leftists? I don't know. I don't know many liberals who think that, who are happy, who are happy that the homeless guy has an elevator to sleep in while a woman with a child is trying to get up. I have not met many. I'm sure there are some. I

I think it's a fair point because I know a lot of lefty people. I haven't seen him say all that stuff. Like they're definitely, I'll see them say the climate change bullshit, but like the homeless thing, I don't, I haven't seen him say anything. So it is a, it is an interesting case study. Like it might be that like fake generated. I mean, G here, G here, my friend. So these people do exist. This tweet. This guy. Oh my God. So G here says, let's pull up, let's, let's, let's pull up the source material.

So here's Jeet here. What does he do? Oh, he writes for The Nation. So this is one of these people, by the way, who used to

He used to feel like one of the people, one of the voices. Back when I was one of the little people, unchecked, these were like one of the blue check gods who would lord over us with their correct opinions. Always hated his guts. And here he is with another bad opinion. He quotes the Getty building, which is burning to the ground right now, along with the homes of countless people in Los Angeles who are in the middle of a terrible tragedy. And he says, this is his contribution to the discourse.

Remember when people got upset that a tiny number of climate activists were doing minor, easily repairable damage to a handful of paintings? Will those people now acknowledge that climate change is itself a far bigger threat to the cultural inheritance of humanity? So where do I begin with this incredible time? Here's where I'm going to begin. I'm going to begin with something fucking ad hominem. That's where I'm going. I'm going, I'm going, I'm mad. I'm going nasty. I want you to take a look at G here.

Seriously, Google image this motherfucker. Really quick. And I don't like to throw fat jokes around a lot or fat comments, but I think it is relevant in this case. Because I want you to take a look at a picture of this...

of this fat ass and ask yourself a question. What is his carbon footprint? What is it, G? What is it? I can guarantee you that your carbon footprint is at least thrice mine. How much does it cost to fly your fat ass across the country? Okay, a lot. A lot. How many birds have you killed?

God damn. I'm mad. I am mad because that's some bullshit. Oh, if only a few more unwashed, dirty British hippies had tried to destroy the Mona Lisa, then maybe a bunch of homes in Los Angeles wouldn't have burned to the ground. Are you retarded?

it's crazy it's like crazy that that is the level i mean it's not really the level of discourse anymore like that's where it was for years we're beyond that now gratefully like now i well that one had a lot of love i mean a lot of people actually like that one but we can at least trash it and um you know it's no longer the sacred opinion that is protected behind the bulletproof digital walls of i don't want to say i don't want to throw jack dorsey under the bus but

Certainly he has some crazy people working there. Your own liberal government didn't do anything. That's where the crazy pills come in. You're like, why? Like, Trump was, listen, you don't have to like Trump, but he's been saying for like two years at least, hey, even longer than that maybe, like, this could happen soon, this fire. Like, he's been saying it. It's cleaned out and protected. You've got to take care of the floors. You know, the floors of the forest, very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently and it's a whole different story.

I was with the president of Finland and he said, "We have a much different, we're a forest nation." He called it a forest nation.

And they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problem. And when it is, it's a very small problem. How does he know more than the climate change people? We're all about scapegoating the wrong things. That's what it is. It's like he wants to scapegoat this invisible bogeyman, which maybe there's some truth to it. I don't really think there is. I think California is a place where wildfires happen and

we're building now in wildfire prone areas. And probably we should have a plan for that. And it wouldn't really fucking matter if the global temperature was a little bit cooler, we would still have this problem, but let's table it. That's one of them. Another one now that I'm seeing is the insurance thing. So a bunch of people were dropped. Tons of people were,

were dropped in California from their wildfire insurance. And obviously it's going super viral, including among the MAGA. There's a lot of overlap between the left and the MAGA, like hard MAGA right on these kinds of issues, these like populist issues. And they're furious. It's like Luigi Mangione

Not even just adjacent. I mean, his picture is back in the news cycle because it's like he is the patron saint of murdering people that you don't like in the field of insurance. And I will admit that when I saw that headline, I thought, that's fucked up. Like, what is... And just a little while ago, like, that's interesting. Like, tinfoil hat starts to come on. I'm like, what is going on here? Well, it turns out there was a law in California that was passed that said the insurers could not... They could not create...

quotes based on how bad things were getting. Basically, they had a model off of the world 10, 15, 20 years ago. And so the risk was out of whack. It was like they were taking on too much risk and they could no longer afford it. Insurers are famous at running the accurate statistical calculations. And they're like, what is the likelihood of a really bad fire? And it was

way higher. And they were like, we can't afford it. We literally can't afford this. We'll go out of business. So they had to stop. They did pull out. And now there's a huge problem and they're being blamed rather than the actual politicians who we have elected who are directly responsible. There are actual people in office right now who are responsible for that, who somehow in this state are just completely bulletproof. And it's like no one ever holds them accountable. Yeah.

I will say, of the crazy lefty, I did see a few crazy lefties on Instagram share the image and name of one of those insurance companies. So we're getting Luigi vibes again. And obviously, this guy's more lefty, but like Bill Mars of the world, he complained on the show for like three years about he'd won solar panels on his shed outside. And it was like this theme on his show for years where he couldn't get past the California bureaucracy of just doing a solar panel thing.

for his own fucking house yep and your own people your own people you're hurting what's going to be really messed up is when all of these people start trying to rebuild their houses and because of all the new ordinances that have gone into place they're no longer able to build the same houses that they had like there's one in la now there are parts of la i think where uh you can no longer build like more than six thousand square feet or something and these are like there are ten thousand square foot houses over here um which sounds like you know

oh, here's my little violin or whatever. But also, here is my violin. That's fucked up. That's someone's home. And whatever, they spent their whole life to build their dream house and now it's destroyed and they can't build it back. That just doesn't pass the vibe check that you cannot build back your own home. And I think we're going to start seeing stories like that if these people stay. Maybe they do just, I don't know, maybe they've had enough.

That's why I'm skeptical of I'm sorry, I'm still recovering from G here. Fat ass. That was great. But that's why I'm still skeptical of like, like, because these people who lost their homes rightly are going to be pissed off. Chances are they would make their feelings felt at the ballot box. But

are they really going to like stay in California and deal with that insurance mess again and try to figure out a way to get coverage? Or are they just going to go, hey, Arizona or Texas sounds great and just leave the state. So that's why I'm skeptical. Like as terrible, like as this has been handled, I wonder if the people who are responsible are going to actually lose their jobs for it. Well, especially because I'm sorry, the Richard being obviously demonized, the Keith Wasserman thing where like he, he, he tweeted out looking for, for firefighters and,

And like this whole, like we talk about boogeyman's a lot, like, holy shit. Like you're not allowed to have money anymore. Like you can't work your life. - Yeah, you can't have money. I mean, you can't. That's why I leave it as a problem.

What? This guy is looking for private... His house is burning down. His neighbor houses are already on fire. He's going to lose everything. He knows it. And he sends out a tweet asking if anybody knows of any private firefighters who could help. Because clearly, regular firefighters are tapped out. They're not there. They're not helping. So, okay, if they're not there and I'm not being helped, can someone else help? And that's turned into this... It's immediately warped into this crazy classist thing somehow where people are like, this man...

what no one else could have. And it's like, well, what does everyone, you mean burning things down? Like, what is the just and equitable situation, thing to do in a situation? What is the just and equitable thing to do in a situation like this? And I believe the answer, according to the seething masses of populist retards

people, you should simply die. If you had any moral righteousness in you, you would just sit there and burn to death, obviously. You would burn to death with the rest of it. Everything that you own should just be destroyed. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Everything he had was destroyed. He lost everything. It's gone. And he was run off of Twitter. And I will say the poor guy, I don't care even if the tweet was bad, which I don't think it was. If it was bad,

his house is burning down. Can we have just a fucking ounce of grace for these people? I don't care what he says in that moment. There's nothing that... I mean, there are probably some things he could say that I'd be like, well, wait a minute. That's maybe a little over the line. It's been a theme I've been watching all week. I mean, I keep dipping into the congestion pricing thing, but it's like, oh, well, the rich people, poor them, can't drive their cars. It's like, what is with this? You're not allowed to have anything? If you have a certain amount of money, do you just self-immolate yourself? Or do you just

removing yourself from society. What is this? You can't have anything. I saw people posting the Zillow. They were like, oh, here's a Zillow shot of all the houses in the Pacific Palisades because the Pacific Palisades are gone, which is just...

unthinkable. And here's a shot of the Zillow. And it was like all these like $5 million, $6 million houses. And they said, are we supposed to feel sorry for this? Yes. Or nothing. You're allowed to feel nothing. You're allowed to feel nothing and not comment. But if you feel something at all, it should not be, if it's joy, you're just, you're like a bug person. You're,

honestly like subhuman in a way. And you should be embarrassed because what you're really saying is that you're so incapable that you'll never be able to have anything nice in your own life. And so you have to destroy or really like piss on other people who are losing things that they've worked their whole life for. Like that's pathetic. And we as a society should look at people like that and say-

you're a fucking dirtbag and you should be ashamed to be alive. And I'm certainly ashamed to know you like that is the vibe. That's what the vibe needs to be. It comes out of the mouths of like 35, 40, 45 year olds too. You're like, are you serious? You're an adult, ma'am, sir. What the fuck is wrong with you? You're not 17 years old in a punk rock band. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Well, let's talk about something more. Like, I mean, I want to, I want to like, I don't want to be a Biden here and be like, well, now I'm going to talk about my granddaughter. Right.

I would like to switch topics and, um, and talk about, uh,

our new president, who would never do something so thoughtless, but he would do something like vow to possibly use military force to seize Greenland and Panama and possibly Canada and rename the Gulf of Mexico. And has he claimed anything else this week? I don't know. But the week is still not over.

Yeah, very, very, very based. So I would like to think this whole thing started, this American expansionist rhetoric started with a humble media company who called for the moon to be a state. I think we deserve some credit. Let's go. That's the one we need. We did. Thank you. Yeah. It's only a matter of time. Some people are starting to catch on to the idea. But where this talk really picked up once again was at that recent press conference by Trump where

After, like you mentioned previously, calling for buying Greenland and making Canada the 51st state, he suggested we rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

And like you mentioned, Trump was also asked, would he rule out using, quote, military or economic coercion as part of one of his ideas to secure the Panama Canal? Trump's response to that, no. Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion? No. Can you tell us a little bit about what your plan is?

Meanwhile, we are also seeing a bit of real world progress on this front because Donald Trump Jr. recently visited Nuke Greenland and met with officials there, took a bunch of pictures with Greenlanders and MAGA hats. And

Meanwhile, in the 51st state, Justin Trudeau, or Justin the Black, as Alistair brilliantly called him on our team, is stepping down. It appears at least partly as a result of Trump's tariff threat. So whatever you want to say about Trump's manifest destiny rhetoric here, it does seem to be already leading to some real world political change. Well, yes. And that's where I want to pick it up. Because we talk a lot about

For a while now, we've been on the... I mean, I do think we... I'm just going to say it.

we started this. We literally started this. The moon thesis has been going strong at Pyrowire for a long time. And the idea of acquiring new territory is something that is really evocative to me and exciting and makes me feel like we're growing again. And it makes me just imaginative and hopeful for the future. So it's something that I like to write about and talk about. And now there's a lot of action in a lot of different places. I think people are just...

Really, over the last few days, and kind of right while the fires were picking up, this was happening. I noticed that some more thoughtful center-left accounts were...

realizing this was serious and getting angry about it because even the thoughtful left of center people have this, I think, internalized sense of self-loathing. And we could just talk about that later, but it's like this idea that America shouldn't grow. We should all be in it together, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they were going on and on about the different thing. I think one talked about, she said, you know, imperialism is little dick energy. And then another one was mad about just the concept of Greenland being seized, threatening war is what she was saying. And I thought, okay,

That's not what is happening here. And rather than joke in this segment, I would like to just lay down what I think, honestly, is really happening with all of these different discussions. So the first one is Canada. Canada is not real. That's a joke. Donald Trump does not think he's going to invade Canada or acquire Canada or Canada's become a state. I do think that there's some chances I've mentioned here before that Canada could become a part of America, but that's like over a century long.

you know, time horizon. I think that it's maybe just we become more entwined economically and gradually just things, the border gradually drops and then we become whatever. I mean, it would make sense, but that's not what's happening now. Trump's doing that as a joke. He's doing it to humiliate Justin Trudeau. And he was doing it to try and force Justin Trudeau out. If he could humiliate him in front of his entire country, that would help. And it seems like as Riley, as you noted, it seems like that did work or at least,

You know, you can't prove it. You can't run the experiment twice. But I think that that was what that was about. It was really a gift to the guy, the appellating guy. I can't pronounce his last name because I don't speak French. Paul Vier, whatever that guy is. It was a gift for him to stand up and be like, of course, Canada will never be a state and to seem strong in comparison to Trudeau, who seems weak. Yeah.

The next one, Panama. Panama is incredibly important to America for any number of reasons, from actual military reasons to trade. That was our canal. And there are clauses in there. I mean, they're supposed to have access. When Jimmy Carter just handed it over, there were stipulations there. That is still under our broad...

I guess, shadow, let's say. And China's been buying up real estate, right? China's been making a play of reports and things all around the country. China's very interested in the Panama Canal for a lot of reasons. And I think what's happening right now when Trump is talking about the canal, it's more of like

a promise and a threat, but less to Panama than it is to China. He's saying, you're never taking this from us. This is actually ours. I'm asserting dominance over this. You can try and buy whatever you want, but if you decide that you're going to buy some shit over there and shut down traffic for America, I'm just going to take it. Literally watch me. It's mine. I think the beginning, early stages of

of a negotiation of some kind. But then let's get to Greenland, last one. Greenland, I think, is also not going to be a state. What Greenland could possibly do, Greenland is a place, people in Denmark don't want Greenland and haven't wanted it for over a century. People in Greenland want some kind of independence, which is delusional because they produce nothing, but whatever. I think there probably is a group of people there who are really obnoxious. And I,

kind of empathize with Denmark on this. They've just been pouring money into that thing forever. It's like a giant frozen, I think they called it like a giant block of ice or something. They're like, take it to America. I think what will happen is they will get independence. They will look for protection. America will offer it with some kind of binding contract up in the Arctic where there's a huge war now brewing, a sort of shambles

shadow war between Russia, China, and America. We'll put bases up there. We'll maybe get some mining rights. Greenland will still be nominally independent, but a kind of de facto territory of the U.S. And then maybe gradually over time, it becomes an actual territory. And that's what's actually happening. And Trump is starting these conversations. He's expanding the Overton window along all these dimensions. His

his purpose is to begin talks so he can get somewhere close to what he wants on all of these scores. And I think it's really exciting and interesting and of a kind of self-interested foreign politics that we've not seen in any of our lives. And so I'm a huge fan of all of those things. I think he's doing, I mean, I wouldn't say he's doing a great job. You know, he's, I don't know if it's necessary to say that,

Who knows, maybe to military action in Greenland? I don't know. But then again, I'm not the president. I didn't make it as far as he did. And he's much closer to acquiring Greenland than I've ever been. I agree. I love the strategy. And I think it's like what a better approach this is for maintaining global hegemony than being the world's policeman and throwing trillions of dollars into unwinnable wars. This is the risk reward of...

like just buying Greenland compared with spending a fortune in a regime change war in the Middle East is like unreal. Like this is a much better way of like, yeah, I guess promoting America around the globe than the approach that we've been doing in the past. So yes, great strategy. And if it leads to me visiting Greenland someday without a passport, I'm even more all for it. I wonder what's going on over in Greenland, like for vacation. I think probably not a lot. I think it's like Iceland is,

That's like Iceland is I imagine Iceland as here's why, how I think of Iceland. Iceland is everyone in Iceland is like a 25 year old girl with a pixie ish kind of like, like ice, like white haircut. And she's like very petite and a DJ. And, uh, and she's doing DJ stuff with like cool hipster outfit, um, on top of like a smoky blue Lagoon. That's Iceland. And then Greenland is,

I think is literally just ice. I think it's just endless wasteland. But...

I see opportunity in the endless wasteland. Iceland sounds great. When are we going to Iceland? That's amazing. We love Iceland. How long do you think this strategy of Trump just talking big will work? Because to me, it seems like forever is the answer. I don't know how. Imagine just saying Canada's going to be a state three times and their prime minister resigns. That's crazy.

That's crazy. Yeah, he is like a wizard. He just says shit and the world crumbles. That's really crazy. That is true. And I think people fear him for his words too because you see right now concurrently while Trudeau is collapsing at the sound of Canada becoming a state, you have Macron in France standing up crying about like Elon Musk saying mean things about him abroad. Like the idea of these big personalities just being able to make fun of them

is seen as a threat all throughout Europe. But I think it's the idea that power can be criticized. They're somehow not used to it, which is shocking to me because I feel like they're so worthy of critique. I imagine they should be used to it by now, but it seems like they're really not, much less so than even American politicians. European politicians are not used to this. There has to be some kind of consequence to that though, right? There's no way that they just allow it to persist. It seems...

it seems too dangerous to them for people to be able to tell the truth in France, for example. I'm not sure. I tried to have a technical discussion about terrorists with my dad, and we're getting into the weeds on it. And I was just like, it doesn't even matter if terrorists are a good or bad idea. He just has to threaten 100% terrorists, and then he gets everything you want. Yes. So who cares? You don't even know what a tariff is. It's a negotiation tactic, yes. I mean, it's kind of insane, but that's a good thing. It's a lot cheaper than going to war or doing anything like that, so it works for me. I think where you see that a lot...

is in Mexico and Canada. You saw those negotiations play out fast, and they really seem to work in Canada, where they immediately attracted a conversation and a discussion about border security and trade negotiations, basically. They work less well in the context of Mexico, which is run by a socialist woman now, who I think just doesn't seem to understand how... Maybe she does understand how weak her hand is, but she's also in a country run by...

the cartel or a series of cartels. So it's like her hands were kind of tied and I don't know, but I think the negotiations are going to stall out there and we're going to have problems in Mexico, but I think things are going to go really well between us and Canada. And I think we'll be on the path to reintegrating, like to lowering that border and to, I would love to see greater work opportunities for Canadians in America. They're already like a part, they're effectively a part of our country. Like we should just, I think we should integrate more, but that's just me.

We should get to our Polymarket read. Oh. Welcome to our Polymarket segment. Thank you, Polymarket, for giving us money,

for paying us, for supporting this amazing work that we do. Let's talk about some stuff that we see on Polymarket, which I found pretty interesting this week. So on the, let's say, jingoistic Manifest Destiny type stuff, the odds that Trump renames the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America currently sits at 32% on Polymarket. Um,

Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum has pushed back, stating, "Obviously, the Gulf of Mexico is a name recognized by the United Nations." Oh, no. Not the United Nations. Don't piss off the United Nations. That would not exist written off for the United States. She even joked about renaming the U.S., saying, "Mexican America

That sounds nice. Good one, Claudia. Well done. For his part, said, we have a massive deficit with Mexico and we help Mexico a lot. They're essentially run by the cartels. Can't let that happen because Mexico is really in trouble. A lot of trouble. Very dangerous place.

oh my god i have i think riley you had a great take um on the mexican america like before we get into the question of whether or not the gulf of mexico will be renamed can you just um why don't you read out your uh your take that went live today um i'm not on my uh normal i can do it you want me to read it for you playing the role of riley

Mike Slana playing the role of Riley. Reading as Riley. Pipe down and give us the gulf. A take by Riley Nork. Writer for Pyro Wires. Mexican President Scheinbaum.

parenthetical aside, on a break from beta testing her new illegal immigrant helper app, we presume, showed off an old map while speaking with journalists at a press conference depicting current U.S. territory under the occupation of Mexico. Mexican America, that sounds nice, the president reportedly said while musing over her pre-ALIMO map.

Her comments come on the heels of Trump's recent statements on the topic of American expansionism, including buying Greenland, re-securing Panama or the Panama Canal, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. But Scheinbaum's clapbacks just aren't landing, and I think I know why. The imperialism jokes are only funny because America is a superpower. If we wanted to take Mexico,

We don't. Nobody does. We actually could. And telling the truth is taboo. It wouldn't work if we were building apps to help our citizens escape, for example. Or if our chief export was fentanyl. Try again. And I think that's fair. It's like, girl, first of all, who asked? Like, you didn't have to say, you could have just said nothing. Second of all, if you're going to try and...

If you're gonna try and be funny, you have a better land. It really better land because you're now-- you're in the arena with, I mean, Donald Trump is the-- - The guy. - He is the apex predator of trolling, clownish monsters, honestly. Like, he is the demon that sleeps under your bed. And if you're gonna come, you just have to come correct. And Claudia did not come correct. Do not come. Do not come. I'm gonna come.

Might have been on drugs. I mean, that's what's going on down there. A lot of people there are. Yeah. And like when Trump does his and maybe this is why he like sort of gets people to like go along with his talk when he just throws out tariffs and says we're going to rename the Gulf is like it's backed by the most powerful country in the world with the most powerful military in the world. And when Claudia does it, it's like.

What is this backed by? Like freaking like five cartels and like the most like decrepit, like corrupt nation. And like, so it works for us because we can talk the talk, but back it up. And like Claudia can't. And it just comes across as very cringe. I think there's something, let's just talk about humor for a second. I think there's something in humor where like,

It has to be a little subversive. And there's something about America asserting power that's subversive because it's not supposed to happen. And there's a good reason for it, I think. It's because America had all the power. We're used to this post-World War II era, especially immediately following World War II, which is really where our culture that we live in today was created.

where America was the most powerful country in the history of the world. It was more powerful than every other country in the world combined. It could have done anything that it wanted. And when you have that kind of power, it's terrifying to not be American. And I think that the way that you

work with the rest of the world is by creating sort of maybe implicit, like you don't even mean to do it, but these taboos are created where you just, you don't talk about what you could do if you really wanted to. Everyone knows it, so you don't say it. And it's a taboo to say it. It's a taboo to even joke about it. It's why the Green Party president or whatever in Canada, is that a real party? Is that a real thing? Is Canada a real country? Who knows?

said, she expressed real fear when Trump was talking about Canada as a 51st state. Yeah, so it's like a taboo. It's been transgressed, which humor is how we deal with things that make us feel weird or alarmed or something. There are a lot of reasons that we use it, but it's typically in a response to something unusual, provocative, wrong. It's how we work through things. And Mexico saying that it's going to rename America is just like,

It's just like-- It's a stupid thing to say. It's not transgressive, it's not based in reality, so it's not funny. She doesn't have the range. I don't think she's gonna make-- I don't think she's gonna make it, folks. I don't think she's gonna make it four years of trial. She's not gonna make it. No.

Riley, why don't we talk, take us down the meta rabbit hole. Meta's free speech evolution, let's say. Yes, let's talk about our favorite dripped out jujitsu practicing tech guy. So first among his recent announcements was that Dana White would be joining the meta board of directors. Dana, obviously a big Trump guy, CEO and president of the UFC team.

That followed an announcement that Meta's new head of global policy would be Joel Kaplan, someone with a history of working for Republicans like George Bush. But the changes for Meta on the user front were pretty substantial. Zuck announced in a video this week that Meta is ending its content moderation policy.

instead offering something more like the community notes feature that X uses. Zuck said of his previous content moderation strategy, quote, "We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.

Meanwhile, another notable move was moving the content moderation team altogether from California to Texas, presumably to get away from a culture of built-in bias. So the California Ls continue on this week's program. But moral of the story here is that the vibe shift has arrived. And when it comes to meta, turns out it has arrived in a pretty major way. Yeah. I mean, either weightlifting really does make you more right wing, like a lot of people are saying, or...

Or Mark is, I called him a shape shifter too, but I like this shape, so I don't really mind.

just correctly calling, you know, the next 12 years in the White House are probably going to be red. So maybe he's just calling that correctly. Also, this is just a better decision. Like, I don't know how much the censorship has affected you. It hasn't affected me publicly, but even more scarily, meta-censorship has affected me in private chats. So I don't know if you've had this experience, but I think Kanye West dropped a news site a while ago, like a year ago or something. And I just shared the link with a friend. Like, this is hilarious. And they couldn't open it.

you know, just because, you know, no one likes Kanye West, I admit, I guess. That's crazy. The same thing happened even more recently with just an RFK video. This was during the election. I just shared an RFK video to the same group chat and it just got banned. They couldn't even see a preview. It's like, this is like a private message. Like it's one thing to do on facebook.com, but messenger is kind of insane. So, um, you know, regardless of the motives, I'm happy he's going this direction. I think it's a good point to bring up. And I think what, what I'm hearing is,

We need to hold them accountable. I think there can't just be reconciliation here. I'm going to be watching, Mark. I'm going to be watching you. Got my eyes on you, sir. And if he fucks up, we got to call him out. And it has to be really, really bad after this, after him sort of doing his mea culpa. There can be a zero tolerance policy for any of the authoritarian behavior that we saw previously. We're living... I mean, it was not so long ago.

Another thing that I wrote about three years ago, Donald Trump, our sitting president, was deplatformed from every single tech company in the fucking valley. Every one. Twitter, Facebook, Stripe. Pinterest. Pinterest. It was all of them. That was frightening to me when I saw that. I was like, whoa, this is...

The story was Donald Trump for most of the country. It was not for me. The story for me was, wow, tech is really powerful. Tech has the tech, the cumulative power of tech is enough to silence any single person in the country completely, to completely just take them off the board, including the most powerful human in the world, I thought, was Donald Trump. And he was just gone like that. Now he's back. I think he's...

doing a very good job not retaliating so far we'll see what happens you know i think some of this remark is probably fear um but also trump said one thing i like about or say another thing i like the greenland thing stuff um but uh another thing i like about trump is he's a he's just a businessman

And he's going to do the pragmatic thing when it comes to dealmaking. This is how he operated with the unions. This is how he's going to operate with tech. He sees that these companies are valuable resources for America. He is going to work with them for as long as they are advantageous to his goals, which I think are important.

the flourishing of America insofar as it makes his legacy seem great. I think that's what he wants, to be remembered as a good president. I think he wants to be remembered as the greatest president in history. And that's a good goal. Like, we should want him to be the greatest president in history, right? If that's what he wants to be...

good job, Donald. Go for it, man. Like, let's fucking go be the greatest president in history. I want to see it and we should all help. And I hope that Mark will. And I think that Trump will work with him for as long as he does. And I'm excited about that. Yeah. People have, of course, said the obvious thing that was just, oh, it's easy for you to, to make this change now that the political pulse of the country has shifted. And I used to like think along those lines for the longest time and still do in some ways, but I,

I sort of have like thought about this differently for CEOs and that it's like sort of a part of their job to like read the pulse of the country and adopt accordingly. Like they have shareholders to depend on, like, what do we expect them to like be a terrible businessman? And like, like it's sort of part of the job description to read the pulse of the country and adopt accordingly and figure out how you can help your country best profit from that. So like, yeah,

Yes, you do kind of feel that this is phony, but it's like sort of part of your job to be phony. So I guess I do it with a little bit more nuance than I have in the past. It's certainly your job to be met. It's Meta's job to be a platform for every American or all the different platforms, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

threads now, I guess. Like, these should be platforms for everybody. And so it makes sense that he wants to work with the administration even just on that level. But I also think, I mean, if you look at the history of all of the tech guys who are working on social media companies, right? Speech, free speech. I've been around

I've been in this game for a long time, guys. And the free speech thing is always there. They were always very pro free speech. This was a huge controversy in the early teens, according to the tech press. Mark Zuckerberg was trying to maintain a free speech platform and he was being ruthlessly hounded by the press for it and accused of every heinous act that could possibly happen anytime anyone did something bad on a platform of hundreds of millions strong.

He personally would be blamed for it. And that's a tough space to be for anybody. And they relented and they buckled and they caved and they created this really draconian system of what they would say is trust and safety, what I would say is horrible authoritarian censorship regime. And...

And then they broke it. And now I think, I mean, Twitter has been, or Instagram has been crazy for a while. I've seen all sorts of shit on there that I don't even see on Twitter. So I think that he's walking the walk. And what you're saying, Carter, about the links and stuff is troublesome to me. It's worrisome. But again, you know, just got to watch and then call him out on all this bullshit as it comes. Should we talk about this H1B thing? Sure, yeah. I'm going to title this segment. Yeah. How to H1B American.

Nice. Well done. There were many opinions about how to be a proper American, so aptly named. But yeah, we can dig into this. I think it's very wrongly called the H-1B Christmas scenario, mainly because it started off with nothing to do with H-1Bs whatsoever, but somehow we leaped from a nomination from Trump

to green cards, to H1Bs, to the woke right, and DEI all in one weekend. So that was kind of fun. The event that drew this all off was basically Trump nominating Sri Ramakrishnan of A16Z to be a senior policy advisor on AI.

Seemingly at this point, the only thing you could not like him for is his face is a little odd, I guess. Like that's what people didn't like about him. I'm being really clear. That's the only thing anyone had to say about him. They said that about him. You're not saying that's your opinion. No, it's my opinion. I was like, wait, this is a crazy segment. Holy shit, Cardick, off the top rope.

No, no, no, no. I'm just saying the classic attacks were downloading his profile picture and just pasting it with no call. Okay. I get that. I look fucking great. Thank you. Keep sharing. Don't share it though. I don't like my face out there. Sorry. Keep going. And then they basically found a tweet of his where he is talking to Elon Musk and basically saying it's a retweet of a Doge. It's a quote tweet of a Doge post where he's saying we should remove the country caps. Uh,

on green cards. Okay? And so basically right now, if you're trying to get a green card, only 7% of all the green cards every year can go to any country. Basically instituted so it's like, okay, we just don't import all Indians or all Chinese people or whatever it might be. And of course, the two hottest categories then are China and India based on, I would say nothing but their population. It's quite obvious that we have the most applicants in those two countries. Right. They're huge populations.

And so all Sri Ram said, it is the only first party thing he has said about this is that exact quote. And I think you can have real problems with that, like saying, no, there should be a country cap. We don't want America to be half white people, half Indians, whatever. All these crazy arguments started coming up and that's fine. But then somehow the bulk of the conversation just became about H1Bs. And of course, when you get an H1B, you were dreaming of any green cards. I understand the relation.

But that's kind of it. And so now it blew up. It was all about H1Bs who put this Indian guy in charge. We're supposed to make America great again. In charge of what? He's not in charge of H1Bs. He's in charge of AI policy, which also, I mean... He's not even in charge. He's a senior policy advisor for AI, which sounds like a whole lot of nothing. Okay? And so he's not in charge of anything. No one put him in charge of anything. But people are getting pretty mad about this, especially like the core far right base people.

-Lumer. I saw Lumer going off. -Well, I was giving some tweet. I was off. I was on break. Yeah, Lumer's going off. And basically now the discussion is just pivoted to H1Bs. And so this is where we are. Basically, there's two main characters here. It's Vivek and Elon. So Vivek comes out. He's Indian. He was born here just like I was. So he has nothing to do with-- He never had a visa. He's a natural US citizen.

And he basically went on this tirade, which is pretty stupid. Like, I have to agree with people criticizing him, where he was saying, like, "Look, this has nothing to do with American IQ. Obviously, that's the stupid take. This is all about how Americans are just obsessed with, like, kind of being lazy and sloth recently. And, you know, we shouldn't talk about homecoming kings and queens. We should be talking about, like, Kumon and math tutoring. And we shouldn't be watching Friends. We should be watching Whiplash on repeat." That was crazy. He might just save by the bell.

Like, what year is this? And he's just like going off on like all Americana and just saying like, no, like math, you know, math and being a nerd is better. And not that there's anything wrong with those things, but that like I think rightfully was attacked. I was like,

I was like, I don't know why he made this statement. I don't know if you guys saw that, but it was very long. It was insane. I tried so hard to stay out of this, and I succeeded, I would say. Everyone wanted me in. I never get this many. It was emails. It was DMs on Signal, on Twitter, people egging me on. Look at this thing. Aren't you going to fight? And I was like a samurai...

Sitting beneath the tree peacefully with the Y-brim, like one of those samurai hats. My sword is rested next to me and it's like...

It's Christmas, bitch. I am not interested. I'll see you in 2025. And here we are. So was JD Vance sitting next to you? Because he dodged a bullet as well. He said nothing. Everyone started to post just pictures of him at his wedding, which is hilarious because his wife is Indian. So there's a bunch of pictures of him as a Kortha. They're like, why is Vance quiet? And it's just a picture of him smiling like with his children. It's like, I'm...

And then, so then the final, I guess, thing was Elon came out and was just like, what was the quote? I will go to war on this issue the likes of you cannot possibly comprehend. He said, I will fuck your face or something. It was crazy. Tropic Thunder quote. I don't know if you've rewatched a movie to know the while. It's pretty funny. Um,

And, you know, I think it makes sense for him. You touched a nerve. You know, he's an immigrant. Obviously, he's more of like a, what, EB-101 kind of person, like not on an H-1B. So this really wouldn't affect him. But he has a bunch of employees that are H-1Bs, especially at X. I mean, everyone's seen the picture of like, all the employees are left are, you know, Chinese or Indian and can't, you know, move their H-1B somewhere else, but also probably love to be there. I mean, it's an incredible company. So...

think that's what he got some flack for and then trump came in with the cherry on top and basically agreed with elon and said yeah you know i like h1bs we have a lot of them working at all my properties which is just how impossible that is just that is just categorically not true like you have to have like a graduate degree bachelor's special occupation stem and so like he's probably talking about h2bs which are seasonable seasonal workers or specifically resorts and

golf clubs. So I thought that was just hilarious, but that's how he ended up agreeing with the statement. Well, I have a lot of thoughts. I guess what I was hoping for this conversation, maybe I could just, I'm not entirely sure what I think about H-1B and how it should be expanded, if it should be expanded, if it should be reformed or how it should be reformed. The piece of this that, first of all, I think it's a small, it's 85,000 about people a year

That's a really small number. And if that was the number of immigrants that we were having every year, we'd actually be able to assimilate them into American culture, which I would be happy about, unlike the Beck, which is what I really want to talk about.

I do think there are all these problems with H1B that are inherent in the conversation. It's sort of implied that we don't have enough talent. Okay, well, why don't we have enough talent? It's been many, many decades since we knew that tech talent was important. We invented the internet in this country.

We invented most of the technology that we're now using, almost all of it. Why do we need to import Indians to code? Why are we teaching our own kids how to do this? And it's a sort of trite point, but I almost hate to make because it's the obvious, we should be teaching our own kids this. But it's really important that we're still not doing that. Not only are we not doing it

you know, after all these decades of this, of this invention in Mark Zuckerberg creates Facebook in what, 2008 about, I think it was 2008, 2007, 2008, six. No earlier. Oh my God. I was in, it would have been like 2005 for, for Facebook. The boom happens in 2008. So 2008 is when like, you know, the, the whole next tech boom begins. It's this mad rush. People are building companies. It's exciting. It's like learn to code.

That was a long time ago. Okay. That was 16 years ago. That's a whole generation. We have teenagers today who were born after Facebook was created. We knew this was where the American economy was going and still we failed to train anybody or enough people to do this, at least if we're to believe that the tech companies can't find enough talent, which I think is true. Recruiting is the thing that everybody struggles with. I saw one thing from the New York Times that

They had a, obviously they came out against this. They finally found a kind of immigration that they're willing to criticize. And it's one that Elon Musk likes. But they highlighted a lot of corruption within the H-1B system that I think is accurate. The woman who wrote about this though was talking about reporting in 2013 and she was saying, we're importing all of these people and it's depressing the wages in tech and that's making people in America leave the tech industry. That's just not true.

Okay. There are no engineers who are in America who are saying, oh man, I just can't make ends meet with my tech salary. In fact, in 2013, the opposite argument was being made from all of these media, these tech press outlets were making fun of

all of the perks that were being offered to engineers. These exorbitant salaries, paddle ball in the middle of the day, nap pods, massage parlors, free lunches. They were so mad, endlessly mad about free lunches. Free lunches. It was obviously just a perk of the job. That was being done because there were not enough engineers even then. And when you have less

supply, the demand goes up and so do the salaries. And that is still the world that we're persisting in. We've not seen a dip in that ever until COVID when everything got really scary. There were not layoffs. We were in a bull run forever. And the H-1B did not impact that at all. But the idea of... I've seen concurrently people talking about, well, there are 1.2 million Indians on a wait list to come in who are highly qualified.

if we're to believe it's like a strict meritocracy, we just let everybody in. I think that we have to have some real conversations about what culture is and what will happen to our culture. San Francisco population is 800,000. You can't tell me that you let in a million people from another country that is very different and that our country is not going to change at all. And then it's, I think, valid to have a conversation about how you want that country to change, which is why Vivek's comments just...

really mocking American culture and Americans fucking pissed me off. I was like, who are... I saw another one that Lulu posted, and she was right to criticize it, where it was an immigrant talking about how he didn't have a trust fund, and he didn't have all this privilege. They're grinding on these Americans, these pathetic Americans. And I'm thinking...

If we're so shitty, why are you here? Okay? Like, if it's... All America is is our people. Like, if you don't like us, and that's what this read like. It's very insulting to come to someone else's country and be like...

You suck. You're not good enough. I'm better. My immigrant parents raised me better. Well, my immigrant grandma raised me to believe that America slapped and I was lucky to be here. And if another Spaniard was making fun of the country, we should tell them to go the fuck home. And that Vivek thing was, it was bad, man. I saw in that the seeds of racism.

the dissolution of the entire everything positive I feel about you know it's time to build like we're built America's open for business again and it feels like things are possible again and we're going to clean house with Doge and stuff like that in his elitism and his contempt for the average person in this country I feel like

All I see is everyone who sucked, who I didn't like before. There's almost no difference even between he's talking about, these people are talking about like privilege, like the privilege of Americans who are here. And, uh, and really, I think it was really damaging. Um,

It was really bad because if you remember, I mean, Vivek's the one been hounding, you know, like pounding the horn on this fact that like, we need to be more patriotic. Like we need to love America again. We have a cultural issue. And I loved him for that stuff. I was like, yeah, that's true. Like you can't, you can't govern our ways to like governor way into becoming more American or assimilating people. It's kind of a cultural issue. And he was talking about that all the time. But now obviously when you put out a tweet like this, it's like, is, is,

is this what you meant by it? You know what I mean? And so it, yeah, I mean, it really is damaging for him. And I think he was a very powerful voice before this tweet. So I don't know how he recovers. What is he even, what is his sense of what American culture is, is now my question. Like, what do you think we are? And in group chats, I was getting bombarded with, you know, a lot of people agree with him. A lot of people who think America has no culture. And so it's like, why even pretend that there's some culture here to preserve or whatever. And, uh,

And it's like, it is hard. If you're asked to define what American culture is, that's a difficult thing to do, to sit down and be like, "Okay, here's what we are, and here's what we're not." Because America's super diverse. But then I started thinking about that more, and I thought, "Man,

You would never ask a Japanese person that or a Russian person or a French person. And if you did ask them that, if you asked a Japanese person, like define your culture, describe your culture right now on the spot and not like a smart one, like a normie on the street, on the Japanese metro, like describe your culture. I don't think they would be able to do that. I think they'd say some things like, oh, our language and our history. And they would fumble because culture is not...

It's something that you almost breathe in, right? It's like, it just is. It's your oxygen. You don't have to think about it. You just are. I don't have to think about what makes me American. I'm American. I know that. I am American culture. American culture is diverse. Japanese culture is diverse. It's pretty, I would, it's weird to frame it that way because it betrays, to say that America doesn't have a culture because it's diverse, betrays a lack of,

There's an ignorance of the rest of the world. If you go to Tokyo, it's fucking weird. It's very diverse. A lot of shit is going on in Tokyo. Is it all Japanese culture? I don't know. Maybe. But I just don't think it's a valid question. And I think that Vivek's line of argument there was just a way of really mocking what is here. I don't know where that comes from. Maybe he was. And I mean this not as a dig.

I think maybe he was picked on as a kid for not being American enough or something. I sense resentment there. And that made me not want whatever he was selling. I don't want any more resentment, especially resentment that is associated with race. We do not need any more racial resentment. We need everyone to be like, "Yes, we're all American. Moving on." He

He did the if his goal was to make me feel better about immigrants, he achieved the opposite. And I'm more open, naturally, I think, to his argument. So I am very I understand why that was so triggering to everybody else on the far right. They feel like they've been left behind. They're making arguments like, why is my son?

not being trained to work at Facebook, but we're hiring someone from India who is. That's weird to them. They think about it in just those simple terms. And the Vex job as a politician representing the government now is to have a good answer for that question, which is a valid question. Even though there are good answers to why, it's a perfectly understandable question and he should be able to answer it.

Yeah, I mean, there was like a crumb there. There's something interesting, but he just totally just avoided doing that instead. I mean, like you said about education, like maybe it is that, okay, yeah, there are more nerds that are Asian and that's why they're more suited to being engineers. Or maybe you just have a more personal interest in engineering. We can do that here too without...

not watching TV. You know what I mean? Like these things are not at odds. Like there are plenty of American nerds as well of all colors. So I don't, there was something there that he could have said that would have been like very uplifting, but he did, he did not do that.

Yeah, I don't. You always bring your own stuff to these conversations. And I can't help but bring my own background to this. And I think about the privileged comments that I read and the idea that Trust Fund was one of them too that was thrown around. And it's like, what is your sense of what an American... That's not my background. I went to public school like most of us.

There was no trust fund. There was no... No one gave me a leg... My mom and dad did not have any connections in the tech industry or to help get me to... I was the first person in my family to go to... As a freshman, sleep away in a dorm room, big college in the history of my family. To go back to the beginning of the Solana lineage. That is...

It's just obnoxious and ignorant. And I think that your first dude, like I would never immigrate to a different country and then be like, you're fucking lucky to have me. I would be coming with a different energy than that. That's just like bad. You're a bad guest. You're, you're, that's just not, it's like basic social. Like you want to go in and do as the Romans do. If you're, if you're, what is it? I think that's a quote.

That's probably a quote. If you Google that, I'm sure that's a quote. Well, haven't we talked about before? That's the John Oliver effect. The, the, the other Noah. What's his, what's the other Trevor Noah, Trevor Noah, like all the British people that I want. It's the same shit. Like they come here and just like shit on us the whole time. Like, why are you here? Like get out of here. Like, I don't invite you. I don't want you here. Nobody asked. Nobody thinks you're funny. You're not funny. Like you don't need your moral guidance. Go home, go back to London, go,

and just fucking stay there. And you're all obsessed with us. We talked about earlier with like Elon and Trump. You're obsessed with us. Like, I don't get it. Like, we all want to be here. I get it. I get it. How do you not get it? I'd be obsessed with us. We're fucking awesome. I get it. I'm obsessed with us too. I love it here. But like, you can just say that. Like, you'd be like, America's awesome. And I just, I'm saying these things because I have a little voice in my head that says I'm not ever going to be American enough. And for John Oliver, listen, that's true. But it doesn't mean that we're going to kick you out. Like, you could just stay here and like be... Hang out.

Like be fucking cool. If that is possible. I don't think it's possible. Well, I did see, I did see it. You did trigger the one thing. I did see a few people chat GPT and our GROK imaging of like Vivek getting bullied in high school. I think there's a lot of that. Oh really? Yeah. So I was really not, like I was truly not online. I deleted the app.

It was then hard to log back on. Twitter has got a lot of bugs, my friend. That's what Elon needs to be focused on is how degraded that platform is. I literally could not get... After break, I didn't have mobile on my phone for almost a week sitting there trying to log in and getting error messages anyway.

I was truly clocked out. And so I got a handful of these things. And after the fact, I pieced it together. And the center of it for me was really the Vivek thing. Because a lot of times people don't respond logically to anything. Everyone is going to engage in these situations emotionally. And Vivek is a very smart orator and politician. And so he knows that. And so to lay down that kind of poison and expect people not to react to it is...

a huge misstep. Like, it was just sloppy, and it makes me... That's why I think, like, man, he really did get picked on. In the heart of American culture, like, our TV and, like, our entertainment that's, like, so part of our culture, he's like, not the right call. Well, he's saying, like, that's what he's... Because he has... You can see that he has a sense of arrogance about it, where he says, that's not a real culture. Oh, because you watched Saved by the Bell. It's not a real culture. And it's like... Fuck it is. First of all...

First of all, that. And then second of all, I think that no one would ever... That's not how it happens. It's like we have a million things going on and that's one of our common touch points in pop music and our language and our history and our holidays.

comic experiences and holidays and whatever. I mean, we could go on and on fashion, like dietary choices, whatever. It's like a long fucking list. And, and you just pick something that a lot of people like to make fun of it and, and frame yourself as better because you're smart and you're a nerd. And it's like, okay, well, I knew a lot of nerds who also like Saved by the Bell. And I don't know, they're not like,

talking about it a lot on Twitter is just fucking goofy. Stop. That's another thing. Don't be goofy. You cannot be a crybaby, okay? You are now in power. And this is maybe my message for all of these people. All of these people are used to being aggrieved victims. Like, oh, the woke...

police are going to stop me from speaking and we got to stop the wokies and ooh, the big bad Democrats in power and they're all working together and the media, oh, the media is so bad and evil. And I get it. For a while, all of these things, all of these founts of power worked together in a decentralized way, in an unofficial way to exert real and I think frightening control over the world. Pirate Wires was born in the stew of this. And I believe that

that was really dangerous. And I'm really proud of the work that we've done navigating that system. But now, while pieces of that stuff still exist and are still dangerous,

Donald Trump is in the White House. The media has never been more fragmented. Some of the most powerful voices or influential voices in the new media movement are now sitting in the White House. Elon Musk is in the White House. He and Vivek are in power. They're responsible now for cutting out the fat and actually doing something. And I think when you have this much power,

you're essentially, you're a kind of a new elite. Uh, it's something I wrote about Elon a while ago before all this happened, I was talking, I was kind of wondering about what a new elite might look like. They're there and they have to act like it. And this cry baby shit is not it. You know, you gotta be a kid. If you're going to be a King, you got to act like a King. And, um, and that's not what I saw from Vivek. And I want to see more of it. And that's how I feel about H1B. Last thoughts from you guys. It sort of feels like, uh,

this whole debate about culture wasn't even like necessary even to begin with. Like Cardick mentioned, it eventually got to the topic of H1Bs. On that topic, there seemed to be like a lot of like general agreement between the MAGA right and the tech right. It ended up being like, okay, this is maybe a broken system that needs a little bit of reform. It's like, did we, could we have not have just gotten to that point without all of the, your culture sucks, you suck, fuck you in the face. Like we didn't need all of that.

Like stick to what we agree on. I knew that. Because it is funny. But there are also like forces in the media that like want desperately for those two factions to be like so pissed off at each other and for Elon and Trump to be so pissed off at each other. And it's like when you just when you engage in a week long Christmas feud over Twitter, you're not helping that cause at all. So let's just focus on the things that we have in common here.

Guys, log off. It's Christmas. Log off, man. Follow Solana's lead. Log off. Go home.

Samurai wrestling. Jesus Christ, guys. Like, oh my God. I mean, I was forced to delete the app. Like, I don't know if you guys saw this. Sounds like somebody didn't like, I mean, the level of racism against Indians was fucking out of control. And so I can give like, they're like, oh, you can just go to amazon.in and buy like cow dung for your puja or whatever. It's like, dude, they're doing that in India, not here, man. Like who gives a fuck?

And so like things were just getting like out of control crazy and I just had to delete the app. I mean, I was almost thankful because I was like, okay, I can just, you know, I can just go enjoy my Christmas instead of looking at all this bullshit. The racism gets bad. It's like, it's right wing hell though. And I think also everyone sees, everyone sees, you know, I, I don't want to get into all the things that I see, but there's a lot of really bad stuff online. Um, when I logged back on, I saw some stuff that hit me in a way that I didn't like. Um, and yeah,

I think it's going to get louder and louder as the years go on. We're in a world of no moderation and I'm not even sure how much of it is real and how much of it is amplified by like foreign bots. Um, I think a lot of it's real. I think the racism is real. Um, but I guess I just struggle now with, I just know that it's going to get worse. Like the internet is becoming more toxic, not less. And so it's like, how are we going to, we have to get better at, um,

self-regulating and not letting this stuff change us. Because I think that that's

why it exists, actually. I think it's like, you saw this, I mentioned Charles Manson earlier in the cast. That is what they wanted to do. That was the whole goal, was to start a race war. It was, how do we provoke a race war and drive America apart? America is a multiracial society. And so to provoke racism is the thing. It seems like the real Death Star weakness in us is if everyone

We abandoned collective identity and adhered very strongly to racial identity. We couldn't function anymore. So I think we have to do everything we can to resist that stuff. I wish I had a thought as to how. I don't know how. I do not know how. I think it's going to get worse.

Damn, we need something positive to end on. Oh, man. Come on. You want to have a positive joke? Fires, racism. Oh, God. Race wars are coming. I don't think race wars are coming. I guess. Okay. I'll take a... I'm inspired by our sitting president. We discussed all the shitty things in our country, but I'm happy to announce that I am expecting a daughter. Let's go. Hey, come on. There we go. That's well done, my friend. Well done. Improving the birth rate. We'd love to see it. Yes. Yeah, I'm trying.

All right. And on that note, great touch grass. Have a great weekend. It's been swell. Welcome back to the new year rate, subscribe, review, tell your friends to watch this. Um, let's get these numbers up, gentlemen. You all have, you all need to be forwarding this thing to your friends, telling them to play it, telling them to watch it. Uh, pirate idol is going to persist like this. A new guest next week. You'll see who it is when you log on. See you on the internet. Bye.