Walter Kirn: Everything that happens before the election is a PSYOP. KIRN: “Everything that happens, the polling, the rumors, the word of mouth, the social media posts, the trends, the little anecdotes that get repeated and go viral. Everything is subordinate to that election. And none of it is true in and of itself. It's all instrumental.” “Not only don't I trust the polls, I do trust the polls. I trust them to be nudging people in all the ways that polls can for all the people who can pay for polls.” “The news now is all about behavior modification. It's not about truth.” For the next week, every poll or viral story you see, don't ask if it's true. Ask what it's trying to get you to do.

David Friedberg says this isn’t Suicidal Empathy, these are Armchair Do-Gooders. He is referring to the French woman, who yelled “Do you know who I am? I am an activist who advocated for you all” as rioters destroyed her store. FRIEDBERG: “The look on her face, which was like, ‘What the hell happened,’ is meant to be this moment that sort of captures the zeitgeist of what some people call Suicidal Empathy, but I think it’s much more about being an Armchair Do-Gooder. An armchair do-gooder is someone who kind of sits at home in a nice home in the suburbs or wherever they live, and they say, ‘Let all the people in, take care of all the people.’ But as soon as the people show up to their front step and says, ‘Can I come and stay in your house?’ the answer is no, of course not.” “Someone else has to deal with it. Someone else has to house you. Someone else has to feed you. Someone else has to give you a job.” We’ve all seen this play out in the man-on-the-street interviews where people say they support policies that let immigrants in, but when it’s time to house them, suddenly they have no room. JASON CALACANIS: “We called this Limousine Liberals.” There have been many names for this. Rob Henderson calls them luxury beliefs… Open borders is one of his own examples. Everyone always seems surprised to find out their actions have consequences.

David Sacks: The fears about Super Intelligence are rotating hoaxes meant to stop the thing that will make life affordable SACKS: “What creates abundance? Technology in general, and specifically Super Intelligence... AI is going to put everyone out of work? Total fake narrative. That was last year’s hoax. Data centers using up everyone’s water. That’s the data center hoax. There’s a new hoax about human extinction... So we have a series of rotating hoaxes, where every six months there’s a new one to try and convince us to sabotage the thing that’s going to solve so many of our problems.” The Economist estimates SI has already created about a million new American jobs, while people are still being told it will put everyone out of work. Which hoax did you fall for first: the job loss, the extinction, or the water?

In 2018, Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 946 and decriminalized sidewalk vending in California. Eight years later, businesses are paying the price. Business owners are paying taxes and rent and are subject to regulations, while just outside their shop, vendors are freely selling the same products. Restaurants are dealing with the health department while vendors are on the corner dumping their grease and attracting rats. Law-abiding, tax-paying businesses are going under while the street vendors are thriving. Hilton: “We’ve become a state where if you do the right thing, you’re punished. And if you do the wrong thing, you’re rewarded.” Chamath: “It’s functionally one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.” *posted yesterday for subscribers

That was a common scam on Craigslist years ago. They’d offer you more than what you were asking to pay someone to deliver it for them. You’d deposit the cashier’s check, pay the delivery, then eventually the bank figures it out and you owe the whole amount back. The scammers got your item and some extra cash from you.

Clips that are new to X should count as original content. Accounts like @TheChiefNerd, @JasonJournoDC, and mine bring content to X that wasn’t here before. We also add context for why it matters. If there’s no reason to keep clipping to X, that’s a huge loss for how useful this platform is. I trust @elonmusk will fix this. He’s shown he’ll move fast, break things, then course-correct when it goes too far.

Elon Musk: Patents are for the weak. Ted Cruz: “As I’m walking through with Elon, he’s pointing at the stuff and he says, this is all alien technology. And then he says something really unusual. We don’t patent any of it. I assume everyone is going to steal everything I make. Patents are for the weak. By the time they steal it, I’m going to be five or six generations down the road and it won’t matter.” Patrick Bet-David: “What a powerful thing to say. Can you imagine? It is like an insult to your competition to say, ‘Guys, I'm not even thinking about you.’” @tedcruz @elonmusk @patrickbetdavid

Jason Calacanis and Chamath explain the real reason Americans are turning against AI. Regular Americans don’t care about “AI safety.” They’re watching tech executives get rich while their wages stagnate and inflation eats them alive. Jason: “What two things can they do? They can vote for socialists and they can actually stop data centers. And that’s what this is about… The discussion for them is why am I not getting rich and everybody else is?” Chamath: “This generation of tech oligarchs who have won are pretty displeasing. They’re not aspirational. They’re not the people one would look up to. They’re not Steve Jobs by any stretch of the imagination. And now people look at the next generation and think, ‘We’re going from billionaire, to decabillionaire, to centibillionaire, to trillionaire… and it’s those guys. Those guys are even worse than the last crop.’ They’re like, if we can just slow this down, maybe another batch of people will show up who actually mean to do the right thing. And I won’t be so begrudgingly hating the fact that you’re about to make a trillion dollars.” When people feel they have no power, they reach for the only levers they can find. @Jason @chamath

It’s one of the most difficult things to do. Giving up your comics—not acting. We’ve all had to do it. But I love how genuinely passionate he sounds in this clip. Marvel better cast him in the next Fantastic Four film!

Stephen Root: Marvel Comics saved my career “I was a huge Marvel guy from the time I was a teenager. By the time I got to New York as a starving actor, I had to sell a lot of my comics just to pay the rent. But I feel that was good… because that kept me being an actor in New York. The only ones I said I wouldn’t sell are the Fantastic Fours, and I still have them.”

This is actually a perfect take on X-Men’s Mr. Sinister. I hope Adam Driver is watching. His whole goal is to engineer the perfect human through genetic manipulation. I would love to see Sinister on Joe Rogan in the MCU!

Joe Rogan: Humans are genetically engineered. “The story of humans is a story of genetic engineering. You take this primitive beast, put something else into it, and you rapidly create something far more advanced than anything else. We kept too much of the primitive beast for the intelligence and technology we’re capable of. It’s too violent. Too territorial. Still too much animal. But we’re not totally an animal. Look at us next to everything else. That animal’s crazy. This animal makes airplanes. We’re so different than everything else. I think we’re engineered.”

Stephen Root reveals how Milton from Office Space was created. Mike Judge was originally going to play him, and Stephen was either going to be the hypnotist or one of the Bobs. Several of the King of the Hill cast did the table read for Fox, and Stephen got asked to read Milton. After watching the original animated short, he gave Milton a lisp. The gravy stain on the tie later completed the look.

@kinsellawarren Don't underestimate @AOC. The same guy who identified Trump's unique persuasion talent and predicted his win in 2015 said she has similar talents and is not stupid.

California legalized cannabis and promised the tax would fund substance abuse prevention. Instead $350 million went to a “health” nonprofit that hands out grants for ballot harvesting. Steve Hilton: “This is what they do. And we’re paying for it.”

Tell him about all the kids sent to the same address with people claiming to be a their sponsors and it was a strip club! Another bunch sent to an empty parking lot. Those whistle blowers testified and still nothing happened!

Steve Hilton tells Rogan how Biden and Xavier Becerra chose “speed over safety” to get unaccompanied migrant kids out of the camps. After years of attacking Trump over “kids in cages,” they rushed children out of facilities where sexual and physical abuse was happening so they wouldn’t have the same optics — and didn’t care that many went to sex traffickers and slave labor. Vetting was dismantled because it was too slow. No ID checks, no home visits. Staff who raised red flags were fired. 200 kids were sent to an address that turned out to be a front for traffickers. One kid went to a woman wanted by Interpol. 330,000 kids are still missing. 40 have died. Rogan: “It’s crazy you can be responsible for that many kids and say speed over safety.”