AUGUST

I love everybody. Hey, down. Hey. Hey, hey.

Okay. Ladies, gentlemen, and friends beyond the binary, welcome to um me talking to you for a while. Hi. Hello, internet. It's Brison. Um, sorry about last month. I actually like completely blanked uh on the stream and then on the day that I was supposed to be doing it, I went for a road trip and uh didn't get home until well after the stream was supposed to already be started and also was completely wiped because I had been driving for about four hours. So, yeah. But hi, I'm here. I made it. I uh I'm excited to uh to be here talking to people. Um I'm um part of me was trying to think that it might be interesting if I played against the storm while I did this, but I think that might be a bit more setup than I'm ready to do. And I think that people are people come to chill and uh ask questions and stuff. So, I think that I'm just gonna stick with that for the time being. So, hi. Uh, my name is Tristan. I am the host of the YouTube channel Stepback, uh, which you can find here at stepbacksis. com. And I am also the uh, host of It's Probably Not Aliens and uh, which you can find at prosaliens. com. If you want to support my work, I have a Patreon, patreon. comstepbackhistory. Uh or you can go to uh patreon. com/propsaliens or you can sign up for Nebula using either the link through propsaliens or uh step back and uh in doing so you are supporting my work. Uh if you want to support my work without paying money which makes sense uh word of mouth find a video you like and share it with somebody who you think will like it. Um that's really the best things to do. Um, yeah, this is a show that I do once a month to kind of just keep the iron going. Uh, I am still trying to make videos. I'm having a very, very difficult time doing so, but I am still, you know, scraping together the energy uh time and again to make uh make stuff happen. So, um, and it's been like almost a year since my last video came out, so I need to like really get on it. Um, my latest video is on private equity firms, and my next video, which, uh, I have a interview that I'm doing on August 25th. And once that interview is done, that's going to be the end of the research phase of that video that I've been working on now for gosh, it now for probably like four months, four, five months. In some ways, I've been working on it since the end of November, uh, since I released the last video. In some ways, though, like the serious work since I started doing interviews in the spring and everything like that, I was reading books over the winter. So, it's coming out. Uh, if I were to hazard a guess, I think that it would be it could be out for people in late September, early October. That's like the thing I'm shooting for. But also, I kind of have this like pipe dream of making a shorter video between then because I have, you know, I have uh about, you know, a little under three weeks before the next interview. And so I'm thinking I might try to make another video that I have been uh dancing around for a very long time about uh about Africa for the mo biggest part, but specifically about um the French language uh and how our world is shaped by the language of the media that we are in and how we are completely missing out on like the what because of that we're missing out on like a lot of very important things to understand about how the world is shaping up and how like the

next few decades are going to play out because essentially like the power players who are going to decide the later half of the 21st century and even the early 22nd century. All of that is uh is going to be dependent on uh on how the next few years play out. And specifically because uh we have a pretty good idea of how population growth is going to go over the next few decades. And what I will say is that the current consensus about the size of the human population is that it's going to cap out at about 9 billion people and that the 9 billion uh the 9 billion people are going to like the a lot of countries are already in a state of population decline. And so where a lot of the population growth over the next few decades is going to be in subsaharan Africa. Um and so a lot of these countries the language of business and the sort of language of international stuff is all French. And uh there's a whole process going on right now that a lot of people in like the sort of English-speaking world aren't really aware of, which is that a lot of these countries are moving away from uh Western dominance and are moving closer to Russia and China as allies. and that, you know, and especially with stuff like the closing of US ID and everything like that um that like sort of the the bricks block, if you want to call it that, is going to is making massive uh power grabs uh setting itself up for like the future of this the of the world for the next few decades. And it's all happening in these places. but also there's a whole like long history of French colonialism and the sort of overthrowing of French uh French foreign power and influence and it's a whole thing and it's like one of the most important stories going on right now that we don't hear much about because again it's all happening in French uh and like how we don't know much about what China is doing because all of their media is Chinese. Uh, so like that's sort of um that's sort of the video that I've been I have I know that it's time for me to make a video about something because it's one of those things that I don't stop talking about with everybody that I know. And this one about French and French Africa has been like one that I have been annoying everybody in my life with for years. So um I am I'm definitely ready to talk about my my video which I'm calling France 2. 0. And there's so many cool aspects to get into like how it's changing even like the ways that we approach language. And yeah, it's gonna be pretty pretty good. I'm pretty excited for uh for that. Um we're also right now really deep in the recording of we're about halfway or a little bit over halfway through recording the next season of Probably Not Aliens. So, uh we've recorded three episodes. I think we've got we've recorded three or four episodes, we have uh three more left to do. And once those are in the hands of the uh once they're all going to go over to Max, one of our editors, once they're done editing the video uh or the podcasts, uh we will look to making a release. And then, you know, Scott and I got to get researching on the next season. So, that's another project that I need to do. And all of this is when I'm not being a full, you know, doing a full-time shift at my job and then doing another full-time shift as a parent. And that like little tiny thing that can claw away is is basically all the time I get for content creation. So that's why shit's been slow. Um because basically like all of the time that people would use for like watching shows, playing games, or uh relaxing or any of those things, that is the only time I have to make content. So, um that's just life at the moment. And I was actually having a chat with um with Mexi um the YouTuber Mexi over on uh we were having like a Discord chat and she was mentioning like that she like uh like for the next like two years she's like I don't think I have any realistic plans to uh reliably make content until then because there's just like you know this phase of a child's life is just insanely busy. So, uh, you don't really have that kind of time, but you know, my son's going to be starting kindergarten next year and, uh, you know, I'm hoping, you know, inshallah, we'll see that, um

that, uh, the the it's the podcast, the it's probably not aliens, is doing really well. And if I can like I think that if I can make like a really good push with it and we can get it to a really good place that I could uh through it and hopefully through getting some like you know getting some more effort into step back uh justify taking a part-time position instead of a full-time position. Um, but all of that is going to be dependent on a bunch of stuff because timewise right now, uh, I don't know if you guys know, you guys probably go, you guys are pretty, uh, smart audience, but, um, but Mark Carney has just pushed some huge, uh, spending changes to the Canadian federal government. like um the new Liberal government is has approved a $30 billion increase of the Canadian military which I know is like when you look at like American federal budget numbers that's like nothing but this is humongous for us and in doing so he says he's going to have to find $25 billion in the budget and primarily they're going to be going after CRA which is sort of the Canadian version of the IRS and um and IRCC which is the immigration department which is uh the people who fund my job. So, um that's that's gonna be a whole thing. Uh which means like, you know, my job is could be I could be out of work uh this time next year. We'll see. But, uh yeah, that's life. Um but uh yeah, I I first want to uh start off. So, so those are like the sort of content related things, but to kind of get going, I really like to start my pod my podcast, not podcast, um, but like start this show off by talking about, you know, talking to you guys and also specifically collecting wins, which is that, uh, whenever I do a stream, I try to start with people talking about like since the last stream, what kind of cool stuff have they done, what kind of victories they've had, small or big, because, uh, while there's a lot of darkness in this world and there's like a lot of uh you know there's a lot of big problems that we are dealing with. The world isn't all doom and gloom despite what people think and there is um there is good in this world and there is room for hope in this world and I like for us to start by giving that the space that it deserves because it very often does not. Um, and I have a couple that I can actually talk about that I would like to um, bring up with you guys. Uh, when it comes to like my personal life, uh, you know, things are kind of just keep going as they're going. But uh when it comes to like the world, I do have a couple of things that I've been like, you know, one of the things that I try to do, and I know people are like kind of reactive against this, but I like looking into um how we are dealing with existential threats in like how we are like thinking of new ways to do things. Like one of the things I had a really big conversation about this last Wednesday um and it is how we are very doom and gloom about climate change in the west and not for like incorrect reasons. But what I will also say is that this is another artifact of the this is also has to do with the fact that we live in the Anglosphere of um like we live in sort of the Americaentric English-speaking part of the of the West. And if you think about climate change and dealing with our energy crisis in the you know the rest of the world there's actually uh a lot of uh optimistic things to go with uh like one of the things that I think is like a really critical aspect is that the bricks so bricks is like the sort of uh this sort of economic alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and uh South Africa but it has um several other members. members and several other members that have been invited or are um considering joining. And basically the whole idea is to just make a realignment of world power out a structure of world power outside of the United States's dominance. And in their they just had their latest meeting like about a month ago and one of the things that they have made like as their big public statement is that for geopolitical reasons they are trying to intensely fasttrack their transition away from hydrocarbons as their sources

of energy. Um reason being is that if you look at like there are geopolitical reasons why uh the west has resisted so much uh us moving off oil. And the main reason is that the United States basically uses oil and our dependence on oil and oil diplomacy to uh make a mess of geopolitics. uh basically to the entire like Americanled world order has at its core hydrocarbons and specifically petroleum as the like major thing it uses to control everybody. And so the bricks uh meeting they said about how uh transition away from fossil fuels is not only like an existential requirement to you know deal with the impacts of climate change because uh the BRICS countries are from the countries that are going to be disproportionately more affected by climate change than like western countries. but also as a way to reduce their dependence on uh American hydrocarbons. And so uh this has resulted in things like uh China has put together uh some really fascinating new things like um the big ones that I was looking at were that the Chinese government uh in Inner Mongolia have uh opened up the first uh sort of experimental uh thorium uh power thorium tetraflloride liquid power liquid fuel nuclear power plant. Now, this was always a theoretical form of nuclear power that could be revolutionary to the way that we see nuclear power. Uh few reasons is that the uh fuel it uses is a molten salt made of thorium tetrachloride, which if you're not a dork, you wouldn't have an idea of what that means, but it's basically a salt uh a liquid salt. And uh thorium instead of uranium is the material that is um that is being used as the file like the source of the nuclear chain reaction. It's much less um much less energy dense than uranium but the important thing is that it can be uh you can do nuclear fision with it in a liquid state. Uh in a traditional nuclear power plant, you have to have uh these iron these uh sorry uranium rods that in order to control the um the nuclear reaction, you use these like these control sticks that come go in and out to uh slow down or speed up the reaction. And if that stuff melts down, like the entire building of a nuclear power plant has to be designed to contain uh this stuff because it's used to it's put in a tank of coolant or water basically. Um, but uh if it gets too hot and there's like a meltdown, that water will immediately turn to steam and the building could explode and radioactive steam could like blow out of the building and cause like massive like that's what happened at Chernobyl. Um, and the way that a thorium power plant works is that if it gets too hot or say like the power's cut off or something is an issue, what they have is there's going to be a drainage tunnel with like a little uh like cap that is kept cold by like constantly blowing cold air on it or something like that. And then if the power goes out, that little cold air blowing thing turns off. the cap melts and the entire fuel goes into an underground tank where it will be stored safely. Um the major issue that people were having with thorium power plants is that one it it's um it doesn't have the same geopolitical usage because it doesn't use enriched uranium which means that you can't like a lot of like nuclear power plants are like the process of enriching uranium is also the process of developing the technology for developing nuclear weapons. So the doing that is kind of like a stepping stone in that process and so we've developed it much more while like thorium power plants can't be turned into weapons essentially. The other thing that makes it a really useful thing is that uranium, the uranium that you need to uh make a uh a typical nuclear power plant today is fairly rare. Like uh when it comes to its

like density in the earth, like how much of it is in the earth, it's comparable to silver. So we're like burning silver to run these plants. While thorium is um in any sort of rare earth uh mining operation, there's going to be tons of thorium. Thorium is a very common uh material that's found in the same mines that we use for develop for getting rare earth minerals which are used in all of our technology. At the same time like you can find it in seawater if you really wanted to. So like there's tons of thorium. Um so it's a lot cheaper and easier to get. The problem they had too is that um that these liquid power plants they couldn't figure out how to refuel them. So like once they would start they kind of just would say ran out of like nuclear material they would kind of just stop. But apparently the Chinese plant or the Chinese like firm that's working on it was able to um consistently refuel it so they can keep it running constantly and generating power. So if this one works in uh in in Mongolia or Inner Mongolia, like the sort of part of Mongolia that's in China, then they'll probably build more pretty quickly because that is going to be a lot of energy. Uh the other one that they're also pushing forward on and also uh Canada's also pushing on it. We have like one in Ontario being built is what are called small modular nuclear reactors which are still uranium plants but they are much smaller and they are designed with like the idea that you don't have to con they don't construct them the same way that you construct a typical nuclear power plant. So they can be a lot smaller but also that you can expand them because you don't have to build the entire building around one thing. Um the other aspect too, the other one that's um this is sort of like a uh this is the one that's probably gonna get me more like you know this is going to get me more uh more [ __ ] from people but like um the that nuclear fusion has had uh some real like leaps and bounds since 2021. uh in 2021 I think was the first time that they were able to demonstrate ignition which is where they were getting more energy out of the system than they were putting into it. And uh since that discovery there has been a lot more uh really big pushing forward on fusion. and there's a lot more money going into it. Um because we're not that far away from like the like it's not impossible that like if we were to build a brand new fusion plant from scratch right now, we could almost use it as a nuclear power plant. Um so that is pretty impressive. I think uh they just did groundbreaking in uh I want to say like Oregon or something like that on a or Washington and it is the first like tokamac fusion plant that's designed to um connect to the power grid which is like a pretty big deal. Uh the major issue that they were having with these nuke with these um with these fusion plants were that this is basically where this is the basically the issue with fusion, right? Is that in order to have the fusion reaction, you have to make you have to like have the the hydrogen in it be contained under extremely high pressure using magnets. Um the magnets have to be at a so like to make it work you have to have extremely powerful magnets and while you are fusing uh material you are creating some of the hottest temperatures in the universe like hotter than the surface of the sun like extremely hot temperatures. Yet the magnets that you need to make this reaction possible in order for them to have the magnetic power that they need in order to do the the creating the magnetic field to create that heat has to be extremely cold. Um it has to be like almost absolute zero. So the issue is how do you maintain a system where you have to have some of the hottest temperatures and coldest temperatures that in the universe existing very close to each other. Um and keep that reaction going for like you know more than like just like a couple seconds. Um, and managing that magnetic field is in the past would require it like the way to function. It required a lot of like micro adjustments and stuff like that were basically like way too fast and way too difficult

for people to to do properly. But there's been a breakthrough in recent uh years where a um some kind of like like machine learning uh technology has been able to be implemented to manage the magnet the magnetism the managing the magnetic fields and has been pretty successful at it. And they've had some pretty promising types of uh like tests of fusion stuff lately. So, it seems like they are like I know it's like one of those things it's been 10 years away for like 50 years, but it seems like there there's a real uh corner being turned on that technology. Um there's some other stuff too like I could go I could go on like I keep looking up this stuff like uh COF99 a new compound that was discovered in California earlier this year. Uh COF99 is a it's like a it's a uh it's a fairly easy to uh produce material like it's made with like pretty basic um tech like pretty basic materials. Uh I think right now they're just trying to figure out how to make it at scale. But um COF99 is a material that is um it's really good at absorbing carbon dioxide. Um so it's a carbon capture technology. Now, one of the things about carbon capture tech, carbon capture materials in the past that made them not really that useful was that um they would if they once they were like saturated with CO2 in order to get the CO2 out of them again so that they could be used again, they would need to be heated to like a super high temperature and that these materials would really only run a few times before they're basically depleted and They didn't run very well in places where humidity was very high. But COF99 has a phenomenal ability to absorb carbon dioxide, just suck it out of the air really, really efficiently. But on top of that, it's also uh the temperature it needs to be heated to in order to get to release its CO2 that is um is uh that so that it can be like sequestered or something like that is about 60° or let me just translate that. about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So 60° is uh way easier to like of a temperature to get something to like 60° is not even the warmth of like a cup of coffee. Um like I think a cup of coffee is typically around 80 or 90 degrees if not like 70 or something like that. So, it's a pretty manageable level of heat to get to get the carbon dioxide out of it. And also, it seems that it actually works better in more humid situations. And that it seems to um be able to be used over and over again without much degradation. So, if they can make it at scale, they could use it to sequester a lot of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which I think is um because my whole thing is like I don't You know, I don't think that there's going to be any individual solution to climate change. Like, I don't think we're going to figure out one thing that's going to solve it. It's going to be a million small solutions because we went from being a sort of like mutilated economy where we all depended on one type of power source and one like way of doing things. And this problem is so big that we're going to be addressing it in a million different ways to make things work. And co99 carbon capture I know is a thing that uh a lot of people sneer at, but it actually does like it does seem like there is some interesting uh things being turned on there. Um there's also a new solar cell technology that's becoming a lot more efficient. So there's like a hu like they're called uh peravskit solar cells. Um, perovsky solar cells are uh another like solar like I don't know too much about it, but it's like basically another like solar panel technology that is apparently going to be much more efficient and much more like uh much easier to like get a uh to get like working on like uh like to get um it could get it's just much more efficient at converting sunlight to electricity and apparently it can be put on a lot more surfaces Like there was when I was reading it, there was like talk about

how it could be used like you could put them on like windows because it could be like transparent and stuff. So that's pretty cool. Um, and that there's like some there's stuff with like fuel cells, like sodium air fuel cells that use So fuel cells are a sort of technology that use air and um like uses like hydrogen and uh and air to basically do a form of uh like it turns it turns that into water vapor and in doing so produces energy. And uh one of the things about it like it's not really like a way to like produce electricity because the amount of energy that you need to separate water and uh water into its constituent components in order to get the hydrogen that you need for fuel cells is uh pretty energy intensive. Although there's some like real big breakthroughs happening on that. It's more of a storage technology because part of what you need for it is just air. uh and it's its uh output is water. And this is a uh this has been floated not so much like for like everyday things because hydrogen like explodes. So it's like you know you're not going to be putting it in everyone's cars, but uh fuel cells have been floated as a potential solution for how to deal with flying airplanes and stuff like that because they can get the sort of energy density that you need in order to maintain flight. uh without having to worry about the because batteries are very uh they're very heavy, right? So that's a big one. So like there's a bunch of like that's my like win is that I'm following up on this stuff specifically to keep myself away from Doomerang. Um, and so, you know, I think that my my climate change prognosis is that things are going to be really bad and the West is not going to be helpful at all. But I do think that we will come out the other end of it in some fashion. What state the world is at that point, I don't know. But I do think that like we're not going to climate change ourselves into extinction. I hope. Anyway, that's my win. All right, let me see if I can I'll look in the chat real fast. See if I can get some wins from people. Um, let's see. See, you got the Okay, so Nadia uh got the process started and filed papers with the German government for residency. The existential threat that I've avoided repatriation where my letter LGBT won't uh take the USA long for mass imprisonment. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, getting out of the US is pretty much a is a pretty good win. Won't lie. Um let's see. Eri for all forms of nuclear including thorium is pretty broadly overestimated. Energy return on energy invested. Uh yeah, well it's seems like it's I mean people seem pretty into it. Um it's not I mean nothing is going to hit petrol, but it's a pretty good one. Um that's a hot tub. Yeah, fision developments are very cool and should have definitely gotten more investment in previous years, but at this point solar is so ridiculously cheap, it's hard to argue that's not going to own the space. potentially. I think that um I think that there's there's use for all of it. um like solar stuff is really good and it's really cheap and it um I do think that it's going to have a lot of really good usage but I also think that as we're kind of already seeing um that like the earth's energy consumption is already like it's going up and up as we like you know develop a bunch of new technologies and so uh I do think that like you know solar to meet our needs is like space and time and stuff is I think that uh other things are also going to be useful. Um not to say that solar is not solar and wind are not going to be part of the equation. It's just like I think a lot of things are going to be because we have to you know

the sort of history of civilization if you like think of like the cardv scale is basically like as civilizations advance they need more and more energy even if it's not like you know petrol like carbon energy they're just going to need more and more energy and uh that means that we need to constantly be on the lookout for new ways to harvest energy from everything. Um so uh I do think and I think that like nuclear stuff like it is some potent stuff. Um and the other thing too is that wind and solar because they're interstitial means that they have to um they're a little bit uh choked by developments in battery technology. And battery technology is a whole other there is some cool stuff on the horizon but at the moment like that's the biggest like uh choke point is the word I'm looking for um for like uh for solar and wind because they need like you need find new and novel forms of energy storage in order to get it to work. But you know fuel cells are a thing. Uh there's like, you know, gravity batteries. There's all sorts of like types of batteries that you can make to store power. Um just, you know, that's another thing. Um yeah. Okay. I don't see any um other wins, but if you have any other wins, please drop them in. I'm going to go through the questions now. So, first question I got is from Nordic Mountain, which says which asks which was before the stream started said, "Do you do you think there's a chance, however small, that three eyelas is an alien probe? " Um, probably not. Um, mostly because that would need to have uh some positive evidence in its direction. And at the moment, there's really no like like This is in a uh I talk about I don't talk about this specifically, but I talk about um in a podcast that is hasn't come out yet that uh the process of determining if something is of extraterrestrial origin is going to require pretty high standards of evidence because you're have to eliminate pretty much every other form of identification. So, for those who don't know, three/Atlas is a uh it's like another omua mua that we've like noticed that's coming through. So, it's a it's an extra solar. So, it's like a comet coming in through outside of our solar system. And the same guy as always, [ __ ] Avi Lo. Um, who you should really see uh Angela Collier's video on Avi Lo. It's really good. But he has tried to say that it's aliens and it's like well the chances are pretty low. Um, and like the problem is that the problem why like Avi Lobe can say it's aliens and and scientists are like, well, probably not is mostly due to the fact that we don't actually know all that much about it at all, but there's really nothing uh seriously making us consider that it's aliens. Um, but it is interesting. It's like the third ever interstellar object detected passing through the solar system. So, you know, uh it's got some interesting stuff like it's got a lot of water in it, but um the reason the thing that Lo is saying is that because it's going to pass close to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter that it's uh that that's the that's its trajectory is sus is sus uh and that it's moving faster. But I don't know. It's not a very good uh explanation that like it needs more. That's a very very sparse part of evidence. So I guess like do you think there's a chance, however small, that it's an alien probe? Sure, there's a chance, but like there are a lot more other ones that are much more likely. Um, the other one, why aren't enough people talking about the voting irregularities in New York State where thousands of votes went to the Democratic senator, but zero for Harris and a lot for Trump? Uh, this is a result of on of an ongoing lawsuit. So, one of the reasons why not enough people are talking about it is because of two things. One, this has not been like there's two things. one, there is a current lawsuit in the process that suggests that there might have been some irregularities or

some like um issues in the counting or something like that, but couple things. One, it wouldn't have been enough to turn the election. Two, um it actually the results that we got line up pretty closely with uh the districts that are being talked about. So, this is the reason that they're talking the reason that people are like suspicious is because there's this one um there's these like counties in New York that went to Trump but uh but voted for the Democratic senator and voted for a bunch of other Democratic stuff. And that is weird because it's like why are there no votes for Harris but there is like a bunch of votes for Trump but like all these like other things. But like if you like subject matter experts like people who are experts on New York demographics and like New York election data have pointed out that this is while it's like you know probably worth investigating it's not it's it wouldn't have been enough to turn the election. It wasn't even in it's in a state that already went to Harris anyway. Um, but on top of that, it's a it's uh there the voting patterns there are strange, but they were very they're not dissimilar to how they went in 2020 because this same area voted for like a lot of Democratic stuff, but also voted for Trump in the 2020 election. And the reason that uh is cited is because these are um Orthodox um these are like these are uh very heavy Orthodox Jewish uh like districts and I guess um that like very conservative but very like democratic leaning and a bunch of stuff. So there's like a lot of like you know there the experts don't seem to be alarmed by the results I guess is the answer. Um, this is the thing. It'd be really hard to do election fraud in America because we have so much like I feel like American elections are some of the most studied elections on Earth. And so major discrepancies would actually be pretty difficult to pin down or would be pretty easy to spot because like like people know like down to the district like what people expect and like what would come out. Um, and so the blue and people unfortunately don't have a whole lot to stand on because the 2024 election while like you know not the answer that they wanted uh lines pretty closely with like you know um what people expected based on like demographics and stuff like that. So there you go. Um does the blue anon movement have any legitimacy behind it? No, it is there's a it is a very good example of something that I have I say about conspiracy theories which is that um a lot of times people's conspiracy theories are when their uh when their politics or sorry when reality becomes inconvenient for their politics. So if their idea of how the world works is threatened by like or is contradicted by reality, that's when the conspiracies start to develop because they need to basically instead of changing their mindset to understand the situation they're in. They try to change the the un the world that they're in order to fit their idea of the universe. like, you know, the the flatearthers come are that way because they want to keep a like very literalist interpretation of like Christianity and the Bible and stuff or like you know um like a lot of racists uh like white supremacists and stuff like that. They their conspiracies are about how the world could be functioning the way that it is when they have a very hierarchical view of how people of different uh ethnic backgrounds um you know how they are essentially in like an essential way. Um, and Bluanon is a group of liberals because if there's anything that the last like, you know, basically since the November election have shown is that is the utter like intellectual and moral bankruptcy of neoliberal centrist sort of, you know, mainstream centrist democratic uh, politics. they it's now at the head of like the by far most unpopular party in the country

even more than the Republicans. Um and has shown in the face of one of the largest uh crises to I think like if not the largest crisis to the United States in its history um probably at least since the Civil War. um has been completely uh unable to uh rise to the situation and do what is necessary. Um, and I do think that like until I suspect that 2026, we're going to see a lot of very interesting Democratic primaries and that the victories that the Democrats are going to get are going to say a very different lesson than what the Democrats of today think is successful electoralism and we're going to um you see some major changes. Like I think the fact that 10,000 people registered as candidates for the 2026 election after uh Zanran Mandani won the Democratic primary in New York says a lot. I think there's going to be some the Democratic party leadership has shown itself to be completely unable to rise to the occasion that they are in and uh people are aware of that and I think there's going to be some major changes major backlash too. everything that's happening both in the Democratic party but also with the Trump administration and everything. So yeah, I don't blue and I think is a reactionary backlash to the idea that centrist neoliberalism has essentially shown itself to be a completely bankrupt ideology with no ideas with no nothing to really stand on. And so they have to default to conspiracy theories to say that no, it's not that our ideas are bad or that we lost the election, but that there was, you know, it was undermined and that Trump cheated or something. I thought about you the other day when I wanted to ask you about, have you been able to feel safe visiting your wife's family since the border patrol went crazy? No. Nope. Uh I I think we've come pretty much to the conclusion like uh my like my wife and I have come very solidly to conclusion that uh as things are unless something major changes that we are not going to the United States under any circumstances not for holidays not for birthdays probably not even for like funerals or weddings because um like there's a nonzero chance like first of all as a Canadian citizen uh there's a decent chance that you know bad things could happen to us including my kid who does not have American citizenship. Um but also like because of my you know advocacy, my social media presence, my like background that if I went to the US I like the chances of me going to SECOT are not high but they're higher than they than you know they're not zero either. Um, and not only that, but um even something less crazy like less intense would be um would be that now that they are like checking people's social media and turning people around for uh basically not sufficiently agreeing with the regime. um if they found my social media feeds uh and they turned me away from entering the United States like at the border um that would be bad. Not only like cuz even if like say a new administration came into power and like they weren't doing all this stuff anymore. Um people who get turned away at the border for any reason uh will get haunted by that basically for the rest of their life. like um I think it's uh John Green who talks pretty regularly about how once when he was like 18 or something like that tried to cross the Canadian border and got turned back and now he has to deal with that every single time he goes into Canada. So I'm like okay I might as well just like not go to the US while like it's dangerous like that. Um, not to mention like, you know, elbows up, uh, we don't want to give any money to American companies anyway either, right? Like we're participating in a nationwide boycott of American goods. So, uh, that means that if we can afford to, don't go I I'm not going to the US and giving American companies money because, you know, they have threatened to conquer us and make us the 51st state. So, like, uh, [ __ ] off. It could be really silly to go visit a country under any circumstances that

their official position right now is that they wish to annex my country and turn it into a state within their [ __ ] country. Anyways, so I'm not going to America. Not for any reason at the moment, which is sad because I have a lot of friends in the US and like I really like going to VidCon and stuff like that, but I'm just not going not going. Um, might be going to Mexico more now that Canada and Mexico are kind of working out deals to become uh friends and allies without the United States, which is working out pretty which I think is pretty cool. Is it safe to say that blank is acceptable when all options for a peaceful settlement have been foreclosed? Um, I mean, yeah, but I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna I I I'm not gonna say that on a social media platform. What are you talking about? the two CFA frunks getting ditched especially the one with the norly one. So hell yeah. Um yeah. Speaking of probably not aliens, did you guys figure out how to move Big Rock? No. big rock store remains unmoved. You could easily get that $30 billion from I don't know taxing the rich. Part of it um Canada doesn't have I don't think Canada has quite enough billionaires to get $30 billion. Like I know I Dazzia I I feel you. But also um uh the Canadian economy is so much smaller than the American economy that like we don't have like how many billionaires does Canada have? It's not as many as America. Yeah. Uh, according to Forbes, there's an estimated 62 billionaires in Canada. Um, and like yeah, like raising taxes on them would be pretty great, especially because uh inequality is going up quite drastically in this country, but like 30 there's no like adding 30 billion to our like spending is absurd. Uh it's a huge increase in our spending and uh without a clear way to pay for it, it's going to be it's extremely reckless. Like $30 billion I think is like almost equivalent to like 30ish like a almost like a third of our entire federal budget. Like it's it's quite huge. Um, hey medium maths got a win. You finally got off your butt and cleaned up your bedroom, including sorting through a few years of papers to file or shred. Very nice. I love handling that kind of [ __ ] Uh, stuck with not having much time since working at Walmart. There's somehow part-time means six days a week. I struggle to find time to do stuff that Yeah, that's tough. Not gonna lie. Naughty. Uh, Nadia, we already talked. Fraudulent Brit is hoping to relocate to the Seattle area within the next year or so. Best of luck. Uh, have we ever talked about the dark forest on your podcast? I was listening to a podcast about that today and I realized it's just projecting our own [ __ ] into hypothetical aliens. Um, this is the theory behind this is like the the Firmeny paradox answer that is uh it's part of um the threebody problem, right? like the three body problem kind of talks about this. Basically, if I remember correctly, it's just that um uh any alien that sort of any like intelligent species that sticks its head up and is too obvious in its existence will get itself killed. Let me just work this out. Because of like, you know, hostile

aliens because uh and the ones that do survive um by not getting killed by more advanced civilizations actually are the ones that are best at hiding their masking their existence. And like there's not there's some stuff like there's a lot of like assumptions in that like but some of those assumptions come from a place of you know like really the problem that we have is that we only have our own context to really understand extraterrestrial life, right? Like we only have one planet that evolved life that we know of um that we have seen. And so we only really have ourselves as an example. And on Earth, there is a pretty uh there's a pretty good correlation between intelligence and being predators. like pretty much every uh like there's not a I'm struggling to think right now, but um there are not very many if any like really really smart herbivores just because the process of like uh having a plant-based diet uh in the wild uh is uh it requires a lot of energy to just digest all of that plant matter. Uh but also it's not a terribly difficult life. Um like it's not like it's you know your your food doesn't run away from you. Uh so intelligence is just not something that's usually selected for. But for predators it is because predators need to you know outsmart their prey and catch them. So um a lot of like you know like intelligence is tied to being uh to to you know a carnivorous diet which means that like you know uh the idea of like violence being a major aspect of the culture of any species that gets sufficiently evolved to the point where it has the intelligence to leave its planet is not uh I mean with our one example that we can point to it's not an un uh unbased solution like it is a it is not a answer that doesn't have a base like if you look at like the most intelligent species on earth humans chimpanzees uh if or even like the sort of different branches of of species that have developed intelligence like um citations dolphins uh octopuses um and like humans and you know other like sort of great apes and and such. Uh all of them are predators in one way or another. Um so that is yeah that is part of that's part of and the smartest ones of them are also the most like you know the most violent ones like the most intelligent citations or like you know like uh like dolphins for example are predators and like orcas which are sort of the like related to dolphins are also predators. Um and the like Yeah. And like we can see things like when predatory animals uh evolve away from eating meat and move towards eating plant matter, they actually do like one of the first things that goes is their intelligence. Um, good examples of that are like the panda, the koala, the uh those are the two big ones that like relatively recent in evolutionary terms uh became herbivores instead of you know uh being more omnivorous. Um yeah so um but there is some other aspects that would not stick out which is one um a sufficiently advanced alien civilization probably doesn't have a need for at least we probably wouldn't think so like a need for like violence would be a thing that they would have to kind of um again this is also a sort of bi like assumption that could have no base which is like in order to evolve sufficiently to go into space they would have to go past their violent tendencies not necessarily true case in point us Um, but like they would like the amount of material in the universe is so plentiful that like a sufficiently intelligent species

really isn't going to like have a lot of motivation to take over us for like our stuff. like uh aliens and humans like are aliens will have like unless they're like a super like hyper advanced civilization like a cardartesev two or three civilization is like not going to have a much need for anything that our solar system can provide because they'll have all they need without having to leave their solar system and travel the absolute oceans of space that it would require to get to us. But what it would what one of the things that they would need from us and I do think is uh we're kind of seeing it a little bit in like the sort of AI race and I think that there's something interesting in there although it's not like fully uh fleshed out but I do think that uh one of the kind of firmy paradox answers that I think is really interesting and might be one of the ones that really uh answers which is that if you know if uh materials and matter and like energy is pretty plentiful in space. Then what is like a truly rare resource that you know uh that advanced civilizations might want from us? And what it will be is information because there is one thing that we have that aliens don't which is all of the information that is unique to our circumstance you know. Uh, and so what aliens might do is they might not want to intervene with us because by doing so, by like making that connection, they could be contaminating a source of information where they want like clean unadulterated data that they can then use to, you know, for whatever various purposes. Uh but um but information might be like one like especially like the sort of high complex information that like active biospheres create might be one of like the rarest things in the universe. And so they that they might be keeping us from seeing other aliens as a response. Um I think that that to me that's a more compelling answer than like the way that the dark forest theory works. But maybe I should talk about it. It's extremely doubtful that interstellar travel is possible even for aliens. Um maybe I do think that there are ways of doing interstellar travel that are possible. Probably not with like actual living things, but probes and stuff like that could definitely happen. It'll just take a really long time. Von Noman probes and stuff like that I think would be a thing. Um, fish. Okay. Oh, let's see. Where did I leave off? Back with another dino fact. Google utyrannis, the biggest known feathered dinosaur. Its fossils have traces of emu like fluff that was 8-ish inches long. Oh my god, big fluffy boy. That's beautiful. That's pretty fun. I mo I've mostly been counting on regression back to the stone age from lack of energy, peak oil, etc. and replaying the Perian Triacic, but my being too short-lived to see much of it play out. I I I respectfully disagree. I understand the motivation behind it, but I do think that I think that we have a skewed uh understanding of it because in the we're part of the world that is um that stands to lose the most of its global power through the end of fossil fuel dominance. And so like we're all we were always going to be brought into the new age kicking and screaming, but luckily for the world um the west is losing its grip on the power over the planet. And I think that the next stage might be uh might be a little bit more you know stable. Um, we also have to be very wrong about physics and astronomy for living beings to do interstellar travel. Yeah

I mean it's not impossible, but you know, it's um it's definitely a stretch. Are more interstellar objects hitting the solar system in recent years or are we just getting better at detecting them? I think it's the latter. TBH, it's also the fact that a lot of people don't vote down ballot just president. I do know a lot of Republicans here won't vote for senator because oh well, Chuck will win. Granted, some said for president. Okay, makes sense. HyperOrthodox Jews in New York voted for Trump because Israel and hated slash wouldn't consider voting for Kamala in specific because of her mild social justice focus and be powerful, confident, Darc. Okay. The Rockland City lawsuit is almost assuredly not going to uncover a widespread conspiracy but conspiracy, but hopefully we'll turn some attention to voting machine security, which is a legit concern. Yeah, I don't know why America uses those voting machines. Um, like here we use paper ballots and it's fine. Or actually, that's not 100% true. For federal elections, we use paper ballots. Uh for Ontario elections, we don't use voting machines. Yeah, I guess like it's true on both. Like we do still have paper ballots even in Ontario. In Ontario, I think we have machines that automatically count our ballots because like you'll get a piece of paper and you still have to like mark in the candidate, but um but you know you then put it in like this envelope and the envelope goes to the machine and the machine kind of sucks it in. I don't know if they tally it through that or if it's just a security measure, but we use paper ballots. Then again, also um on average, uh Americans vote for a lot more stuff. Like, uh one of the things that I think is really different about Canadian elections versus American elections is that American elections are all tied to the same day. And you have a lot more stuff that is like a lot more positions that are elected positions than we do. Like we don't elect coroners. We don't elect dog catchers or mosquito control officers here. Um we don't and we don't elect judges. Um, but what we do, so when we go to vote, um, typically we're only voting for like I've never voted in an election that isn't that is for more than two things and that is municipal only like um there may be in 2026 I go to the polls again and there's going to there may be three things where you vote for mayor you vote for your uh city councelor and you vote for um like school board people. Um but like and like for federal elections you and like most like almost every election I've voted in that isn't like uh what's it called? Like the only elections where I have voted for more than one thing was the last city elections. They were all city level. Uh, one was here in London where I had to vote for a city a ward like a city counselor um and a education person like a board of education people not board of education what do you call it um I don't know uh school board of trustees and that kind of thing but uh then also uh the Toronto uh the the municipal Toronto election where um I got to see [ __ ] Faith Goldie on a ballot, which was uh distressing to say the least. Um, and so I uh I did not vote for her obviously, but uh every other one it's just like uh MP or MPP basically, right? But in America, your ballot is humongous. You have so many things to vote for. Um, and I think that is a problem. I think one of America America's uh election issue comes from the fact that you vote for too many things that don't need to be voted positions like judges or like um

um what do you call it? uh like you vote for judges, you vote for like uh like stuff like coroner. I don't know. It's really strange. These are not jobs that need to be. And I think that America having a political judiciary is one of the reasons it's in such a mess right now. Like for example, not that Americans vote on this, but like because it's so like, you know, checked out of politics, like I couldn't even name a Canadian Supreme Court justice right now. Um, I just couldn't. They're they they don't factor in like in as individual people as often. But yeah, all that is to say, I don't understand why people use voting machines. They should they don't seem to be secure. Why just use paper ballots? It despite all the technology, it's still like the absolute safest way to vote. Win for me. I finally started cleaning my painting desk after two years. Also fun. Dino effect. Yeah. Udisaurus. We talk about that. Yeah. Parrots. Parrots were intentionally selected for a knowledge of variety of fruits that can only produce with short season and know how to um move around and take advantage plus large customary social groups. Same with crows and arguably humans. Yeah. Well, Elliot, on that point, crows also do eat like predators are selected for be for intelligence, but also omnivores specifically uh do a lot. Like, you know, some of the smartest animals that are not like the hypers smart ones are like crows, raccoons, and stuff like that. But parrots are a decent um a decent counter example, I guess. Maybe uh maybe the aliens will all be frugavores, you know? Elephants. Elephants are actually a good example. You know what? [ __ ] that's a good one. Elephants, I think, are really intelligent because they are migratory over a huge area and have to remember a whole lot of information about moving around. But yeah, that's really fascinating. Yeah, elephants is a good is a really good one though. So, there are exceptions already. Um, materials aren't plentiful in space. The vast majority of space is flatout vacuum. The rest tends to pull into gravity wells like gas giants, brown dwarves, stars, black hole. What I mean by that is like um the trouble of going to an entire other solar system for materials like for things like our solar system isn't remarkable. It doesn't have any like special stuff in it um that you wouldn't find in most other solar systems. Uh, so like if you were an advanced enough alien civilization that you could cross like to another solar system, there's not really much that like we would have that their solar system would not. Um, and you know, with enough and with enough energy, you can kind of make any material you want. now as like um as some people are talking about how there's like a new there's some there's a couple there's a new startup that is like talking about using fusion not to make power but to um make material. Uh they're talking about how they're literally trying to be able to use nuclear fusion to make gold. And I was like, "Oh, interesting. That sounds like a huge uh energy investment, but okay. The the physics is right I guess. All right. Uh do you think I'd be it'd be possible for a society to industrialize without inventing capitalism? Like suppose you had state

manufactured stateowned manufacturers from the start. not impossible. Um, case in point, like we saw like some extremely planned, intricate top- down economies in like the [ __ ] Bronze Age. Like ancient Egypt was a like very much like kind of close to being a planned economy. Um, honestly I don't uh I don't think I think that capitalism really can't like is really a very specific product of colonization and slavery. Uh I do think a and so I do think that while there will always be you know different econom like you know even if a different type of way of the humanity ran there would still be major transitions of power as we moved from an economy that was dependent on agriculture to one industry uh like manufacturing but um would that necessarily have been capitalism? Not entirely. Not necessarily. Agriculture uses a lot of habber process affairs at minimum. Uh plus uh even where electricity is spotty, that's still largely coal. Oh. Oh [ __ ] I need to find this. I was reading an article about this recently because there was um Nadia, you are a very smart cookie. Um because I remember that there's actually like I think it's an Australian uh chemistry like university thing that was um that just developed some process for making ammonia that was like way less energy intensive than the habber process which like I when I read to the point where I think it might have it might use no electricity. Um, let me see. Um, let me see if I can find it real fast. So for those who don't know, the habber process is a chemistry process that's used to turn nitrogen in the air into ammonia, which is then used in fertilizer and is basically responsible for the creation of uh modern agriculture. And uh it still uses a lot of energy and we haven't really found a way around it. And uh it's one of like the big the one of the big things. But um yeah, there's something called electrochemical nitrogen reduction, which is uh a way to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen and water under ambient conditions using electricity. Uh so that was a big one. Um that's is that the one I was looking for? photocatalytic chemical looping. There's a lot of uh of alternative habber bosch processes that are in development. So I think that if we can if that's that being scale up could be like one of the most massive like ways to reduce our carbon output on earth. All right. Question. Why are provinces so independent when in most countries they are administrative regions with little power? Um mostly because Canada is a confederacy. It's not uh it's not it wasn't developed as a independent state. Um what that what I mean by that is um so Canada was made under the uh what the British North America Act and uh before that Canada was there was no such thing as there there's of a thing called Canada. There were several different colonies like Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, upper and lower Canada, uh British Columbia, and like um like you know like uh Newfoundland and Newfoundland didn't join until much later. But um but uh but like these were all British colonies. And so what happened was is that uh Canada wasn't made to like make a individual country. Canada was made basically for Britain to take all of its North American colonies, slap them all together, and say, "Okay, you guys are now quasi independent. " Um, and so we had to kind of we just we didn't like choose, we didn't have like a sort of centralized identity to become a country. We were just sort of confederated together. And so our country was founded on the idea that we were like a bunch of colonies that were just sort of banding together in a

collective defense agreement against the United States. um and across and with the common purpose of specifically building a rail line to the Pacific coast and colonizing uh what would become Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which at that point had not had serious uh like western colonization efforts yet. And they were worried about that because um the Americans who uh the Americans had already started their westward expansion and uh we did not trust the United States to stick to their side of the 45th parallel. So they were like we need to get there before the Americans do basically. So because that was the origin of the Canadian state, um it meant that like yeah, like we were like the rules were kind of set it up so that it was supposed to be like more of a shared market and collective uh defense uh pact rather than like you know like a revolution or anything like that. And uh and it just sort of became a country once it stopped being a dominion. Uh, and so you know it's because we're a Confederacy like I said. So yeah, like Canadian provinces can have like to some degree their own immigration policy. They can have like to a very limited degree their own foreign relations. And like there's like a lot of like pretty much like on an average day, Canadians interact in their day-to-day lives, Canadians interact way more often with their provincial government with than with their federal government. Like uh our health care system is managed by the provinces. Uh all of our like sort of infrastructure and everything like that is managed by the provinces. Um, like aside from just a few big programs, pretty much everything is run by the provinces. Uh, and a lot of Americans don't know that. Like Canadian provinces are way more independent than American states are. Um and like a lot of efforts to unify the country have been met with backlash for various reasons. Like one of the uh one of the more, you know, contentious political things in Canada is equalization payments where uh a portion of the income of the richer provinces go to the poorer ones and that often leads to um like political tension issues. Um, and even like Mark when Mark Carney came into power, one of his like first things that he wanted to do was literally like was reducing interior trade barriers, which means that we had like we had trade barriers and like issues between provinces. So interprovincial trade is still not entirely free. So we um so yeah, there was like there's been some work to break that down as well. what are your thoughts on Trump asking Texas to jerrymander districts and California doing the same thing to counter their gains? I mean, American democracy has always kind of been a fraud. It's just like I feel like um I feel like a maybe that maybe this is like a little bit spicy to say, but I think that a lot of Donald Trump's second presidency doesn't include a whole lot of new things happening. What it does include is a lot of uh doing explicitly what would normally had some like, you know, branding around it before. Trump is really just like America without its like uh you know branding of self-importance and self-d delusion on top of it. And I do think that stuff like that is an example. In 2026 I got a governor election, federal house election, state assembly, senate election, I think county. Yeah. So that's messed up. Um here what would happen is that um uh is that like fairly regularly like uh I have voted in two elections

this year already. They like there was an Ontario election earlier this year and then there was a federal election very soon afterwards. So like instead of like having like one election day where you have to vote on all things, what'll happen is that in Canada an election will be called and then like within 30-ish days or something like that there will be a uh an election uh and that's when like the campaigning can start and everything like that. And then once uh all the voting is done, it's done. So, like we don't like know when the next election's going to be. We know that like that they can't not call an election before a certain point. And that'll happen. Like for example, we know that the last time the city government was elected was in 2022. So, uh and they have to have an election every four years. But they could all but you know they could call a snap election if they wanted to, but they they wouldn't because you know they'll keep they'll keep in power as long as they uh legally can. Um but um it'll happen. But you know like that's just that's just how things work here. But and if there was like a referendum or something like that, uh we would have the referendum like every single election is not all like kind of forced into the same thing. It is going to be like all of them are going to be their own elections. Well, like yeah, when Americans go to vote, they have like a thousand [ __ ] things on their things. Um, Canadian Supreme Court judges have way better official outputs than Scotas, too. Yeah, the Canadian Constitution, honestly, like mostly because it's not 250 plus years old. The Canadian Constitution is pretty robust and um we have had uh times and se we have said several times in recent years where there have been some pretty good dubs uh that happened because uh like a law that was on the books was deemed to violate the Constitution. even for things that like the government didn't want to be the case and they were kind of forced to change the law to adopt to uh to fit the like new interpretation of the constitution like um when uh like one example is that uh the Ontario Supreme Court found that solitary confinement violated the constitution and that just meant that the government had a year to get rid of solitary confinement. like they just had to find within a year they had to end it. Um, another example too which was interesting because it happened during Harper's year and Harper was like or he still is. He's still alive. But um Harper is an evangelical Christian. Um and he was prime minister and uh while he was prime minister, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that uh our ban on the sex trade was like having like prostitution be illegal was a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is the name of our Constitution. And so they had to change the law. um they didn't legalize the sex trade necessarily, but um they sort of uh I can't remember what the result of that was, but they had to do some serious alterations of it though as an example. Um, you don't like electing a highway superintendent because bro, I don't care who doesn't make but also the thing is like things like being the highway superintendent like that isn't a political job. It shouldn't be a political appointee. the the being elected to become being elected doesn't say anything about whether or not you would be a good highway superintendent because it's more like a job that you would like hire for like because your job isn't to be like a political position. Your job is to be the superintendent of the highways and so like you should just be hired it for being a good highway superintendent by the government. Yeah. Let's see. Parrots also eat insects and small vertebrates on occasion in the wild. Interesting. And elephants also have long

institutional memory and complex social group selection. You know what, Elliot, that is Yeah, I know that elephants are packaderms in general are like really fascinating in that sense. I am kind of curious about because if you really do think about it an elephant being as intelligent as it is evolutionarily at least in my mind it seems like it's very expensive and wouldn't make sense. So I do wonder what is the selection pressures causing elephants to be as intelligent as they are and especially because it seems like their intelligence is very much based on uh as you mentioned here like knowledge like passing down knowledge and I wonder if it's because I think now I I'm no elephant expert but I think that elephants are like migratory and that their migration routes are very long and so it could be like kind of based on that But I'm honestly not sure that would be if anyone has an answer to that. I'd be very curious. The habber process I thought largely just use coal to raise temperatures. Yeah, could be. I'm not a chem I'm not a chemist, but I do know that um that there is like because of specifically to fight climate change, there's like a bunch of like chemists and stuff that are like trying to find new ways of doing the habber bosch process in order to make it um less energy intensive or not use carbon. John just got in wanted to say what's up and with all the bad news lately. Any good stuff happening? Yeah, we just did a you just missed a really long conversation about like um about a bunch of stuff that I'm kind of excited about. Oh yes, the classic. Okay, so Canada technically has a constitution, but yeah, there is a weird part of the Canadian constitution that was I think which is the notwithstanding clause, which used to be that. So this this will make Americans really spin. So um the notwithstanding clause is a thing in the Canadian constitution which basically says that if something happens that is deemed unconstitutional but the premere of the province concludes that it is like something that is critical to that province's identity and like its like uh existence that they can actually invoke the notwithstanding clause to basically ignore the constitution. Um and it was a very rarely used thing. Um there was a really funny thing where um because our constitution the constitution as it exists today was developed and signed without Quebec uh without Quebec's input and without Quebec sort of uh signing off on it. all the other provinces basically signed off on except for Quebec. And for a number of years, because of that, the Quebec government invoked the notwithstanding clause for every single law they passed. Um, even if it had like nothing to do with like violating the constitution, they just wanted to say in every law they did so without recognizing the constitution. Um, Parrots Descended from Birds of Prey. Oh, interesting. It would be great for these renewable things worked out. I'm all for doing them. I think they're just long shots. The thing is like I I understand what you're saying. I don't the thing is like they're the the science behind them is sound. The major problem is geopolitical. that the west is so dependent on oil as not only a source of energy but as like its source of like international control over the world. And so other like you know other uh countries like China for example is using green energy and a lot of these like kind of uh technologies to fight climate change as a way to undermine American supremacy because they have they know that like the powers of the future are going to be the ones who made energy by not depending on fossil fuels and they want in. They want to be on the ground floor of that. While the West is sort of like with its like dogmatic uh attachment to capitalism is so shortsighted that they think that they can just like rely on just oil forever. And it's not going to work. It's

already not working. Um, does the cardv scale have some capitalist growth ideology treated as universals? Not necessarily. I think that it um, even outside of capitalism, if you look even at like the the like 10,000year history of humanity, you will see like our technological development is very much tied to us being able to harness more and more energy. Like that is If you think of energy as like uh not so much like specifically electricity but like uh the and it makes sense like our society develops more the more that we are able to harness uh other forms of energy to do work that we don't want to do or can't do. And I mean like that is like you know everything from like windmills, you know, to uh to ox carts to uh fire to the steam engine to uh the internal combustion engine to like nuclear power are all forms of us capturing more energy in order to use it to do more work on our behalf. half. Um, and so I would not I would I wouldn't say that that's necessarily and it would not be uh it would not it would be quite a um break with the trend line if the future depended on us like if the future resist resulted in us using less energy to or to harnessing less energy to do work. I think that will that's a pretty that's pretty reliable. Yeah, there's a separate publicly funded explicitly Catholic school board. Yeah. Well, that's because it was designed to segregate the French and the Irish, obviously. Um, hey Tristan, how are you from Michael Collins? I'm doing all right. It's Saturday night. It's a long weekend. Feeling all right. Um, elephants have long gestations with long calf with cow times, too. They've maxed out on their few babies. Put lots of effort into them. Strategy. Interesting. I'm gonna I'm now going to have to research elephant evolution, I guess. um to figure out what uh what put them what why they why why they why are they like that Greg Grain Deans America was a very enlightening about what evil monsters they were too I think it's also a byproduct of needing an incredibly complex brain to control the muscles in their trunk yeah but like also why did they need a prehensile trunk Um, some kind of attraction power well before the rise of agriculture Mesopotamia, which is cool. Yeah, that is cool. I like that. Apparently, goat pulling power in the Eastern Mediterranean is documented to be even older, which I also didn't. That is pretty sweet. Yeah, you know, that kind of makes sense because like a lot of areas in um subsaharan Africa specifically like when you get to like uh sort of south of the Congo, uh there's a lot of like flat land there and the people who live there have been like cattle herders and stuff like that for like very very long time. And they are some of like the most like you know long-term established like you know there have been humans living in Africa longer than any other continent because that's where we evolved. So um that that there's something there's a logic there. I think what are my feelings about degrowth? Um I think that I don't think that the Okay. I know I know I'm trying to I know what you're getting at. You're like you're kind of like well like you know if the Cardartesev scale means that we're always using more and more energy doesn't that throw us in the face of the idea of degrowth? I don't think that they are mutually exclusive things. Um I don't think that degrowth is as um is as like you know ludistic as people think. Like I don't think that degrowth

is like let's just become [ __ ] uh Amish people but make it like woke or whatever. Uh I think that degrowth is really um is more of an economics thing which is about not modeling our uh success metrics for economics on growth metrics and instead focusing on like satisfying needs and stuff like that. Because a lot of the problems with our economy that has done growth for growth's sake is about is like overproducing and creating demand when there isn't demand by like making like planned obsolescence and [ __ ] like that. I do I don't think though that would like that would subtract from the overall fact that like our civilization will use more energy over time as we find new ways to use that energy to do things like that that was like as we find new ways to replace human labor with energy we will keep doing it. Um, and I don't think I think that I don't think that degrowth necessarily like it at least as far as I know, uh, nobody but like the anarchco primitivists are the ones who are legitimately arguing that we should like disregard civilization, become monkey, you know. Um, hey Tristan, always love the videos and streams, man. Glad to see you're still here. Any plans to upload soon? No stress. I know life is crazy these days. Just hope just hopeful fan for real. Thank you, Stephen. Um, yeah, I have a video that's been in the works for a number of months. Uh, I have one more interview left on, uh, October 25th, I want to say, is when it's planned. And when that interview happens, uh, I'm basically officially done the research for the video and I'll be writing the script. I'm hoping that it'll come out in like realistically sometime in October. Uh, but I'm also trying to do a quicker video in between if the time comes up. But I also have, you know, another batch of podcast episodes that I need to research. And I also have uh like um, you know, I have a bunch of other stuff. So I have, you know, a three-year-old and uh an entire a whole ass full-time job. Um, so, you know, those things also need to be taken care of. But uh I'm hoping that I'll be able to I'm hoping that I can work it in. just missed making stuff. I miss making content a lot. Uh I'll be honest. But you know, kids grow up and maybe I will have a job that cares less about arbitrary performance metrics and will care more about, you know, give me a little bit more time to breathe. But my next video is about Hindu nationalism. So, you know, next video is going to have a lot about like Tulsi Gabbard and like what's it called like Nahendra Modi and like a sort of uh trying to explain to Westerners the entire idea that I'm going to try to explain Hindu nationalism to a western audience including things like uh issues that a lot of like westerners probably don't have a lot of experience with like castism and um like a lot of other kind of things like that The other really wild thing when it comes to animal evolution is actually um octopuses because they are extremely intelligent animals but their intelligence is so different from others and on top of that um they're very smart, but they have extremely short lifespans. And yeah, there's probably some kind of

like there's tragedy in that I think somewhere The two-year lifespan is what gets me with octopus intelligence. Yeah, cuz like to give you guys an idea like an OC. No, this is these are like kind of comparing apples and oranges because intelligence is so different. But like octopuses are thought to be like probably smarter than dogs. Um, and yet they only live like two years. It's it's actually wild. And every time they reproduce they die. There's a good sci-fi story about an octopus civilization called Children of Ruin. Okay, interesting. How do they How do they deal with the fact that they don't live past two? That's the big one. Being underwater is limiting, too. Oh, yeah. Are aquatic intelligent species not going to be a thing for a reason that I don't know. Oh, interesting. Okay. According to the internet, um, elephants in de developed intelligence because they, uh, it was an adaptation to the climate moving from like forest to savannah. uh where they have to memorize like they have to find patterns across huge distances of watering holes specifically. And so they are always like wandering around in search of water and they have to remember this like sort of cycles and that can happen over many years. So they've developed like a lot of their complex stuff to kind of uh keep those roots in mind and everything. And yeah, its brain also developed quite a lot for their trunks. Interesting. But it is interesting because like they're an elephant's food is extremely low. Like elephants eat plant matter which means that like they have to eat a lot cuz like that big brain of theirs is going to require a [ __ ] ton of calories to stay going and there the amount of calories per pound of like just raw vegetation is pretty bad. Um, so I'm curious about how they thread that needle. All right, we've got about five minutes left before I'm going to call the stream. So, uh, what did we talk about today? We talked about electricity and, uh, elephants. A lot of talked about elephants. Uh I'm uh think the interesting part in that story is their head, brain, and tentacles are slightly independent. That is true though. That is a fact about octopuses is that their brain isn't they don't have like humans. They don't have a and it's it's kind of turning out to not entirely be true for humans, but um the they're they don't have a single brain. They have like a main brain, but then each of their tentacles actually does

have kind of its own brain. Um it's a bit of a long show. There's some suspicion that uh that the sort of uh it's like the vagus nerve or something like that has some intelligence. Not like actual intelligence but like it does a lot more for information processing than we thought. Um, which may speak to why, you know, this is like extremely kind of squishy science that uh a lot of people have run with in the wrong direction, but like it they're trying to explain why maybe like um mood and and digestion and diet are all kind of uh related to each other. and um and like the sort of interaction uh with the Vegas nerve might be part of it. Take that with like an absolute [ __ ] truckload of salt because I'm not It's one of those science things that is like very very early in its development and uh a lot of bad actors on the internet have used it to promote a bunch of [ __ ] So um all right we got about a minute and a bit left. What can we do? What can we finish off with? What would make people happy? I uh I'm Oh, you know what? I'll finish off with a video game thing. uh because I'm kind of hyperfocused on Against the Storm and I like it a lot and I have I'm enjoying one aspect of it a lot which is the idea that um it is there's a lot of games that I enjoy parts of playing that I think uh but I always like fizzle out in my interest in them because they always are like this will last forever. There's no goal. There's no end thing like Minecraft. Minecraft is neat, but I've never ever like really stuck with Minecraft because like there isn't a point to Minecraft or like Dwarf Fortress or like uh like War Fortress I love a lot. I love playing it, but I always fizzle out because it's like what what's the motivation to keep going? While Against the Storm is a citybuer, but it's also a roglike where like it has a whole lore about how the world keeps getting reset with apocalyptic rainstorms every couple of decades. And then during the times when the storms abate, you only have like about maybe like 20 or 30 years to go out and collect as many resources as you can before the next storm comes in. and uh you are like leading the teams that are like building these little outposts and trying to collect like certain resources and enough to like get everything you need before the next storm. And then in the longer goal, you're trying to go and fix these like magical seals so that when they're all done, uh the storms will stop. And that [ __ ] rules All right. Some kind of crossover between the Vegas and bladder control. Yeah. Anyways, this has been a really good stream. Thank you guys so much for coming out. I'm very sorry about missing the last month. Um, I'll try I'm going to do another one of these in September or sometime. And hopefully I'll have more updates on like, you know, the video and everything like that cuz I want to keep making stuff for YouTube. I miss doing it so much. But just this this chapter of my life is just is there's not a lot of wiggle room for like I have a handful of things that my life has to be about and I really don't have any space for anything else. Uh but I'm trying really hard to keep it going. Um, anyways, the other thing that also slowed the video quite a bit is that I got a freelance contract in January that pretty much uh ate up a bunch of I ate up a whole a good chunk of my time until like June, but it's over now. Anyways, this has been a great stream. I I miss you guys. I hope I really miss doing

this kind of stuff. Um, but you know, take care of yourself, take care of each other, and I really hope that do something good for yourself. And uh, yeah, there is always hope. Yeah, that's what I'm going to finish off there. There despite all evidence to the contrary, there is always hope.