 Okay, May 40 here. So as I'm walking around Sydney, I'm listening to an audible book, The Power Broker by Robert Moses in New York City by Robert Caro and It's excellent insight into how power works and how journalism works So journalism largely depends upon documents. Journalism depends upon the announcements, reports, releases and events created by bureaucracies and when you limit your journalism to what bureaucracies stage and report and tell you, then you're not going to get sued. So let's say there's a trial and the evidence is overwhelming that O.J. Simpson's guilty of a double murder. All right. The jury result, the bureaucratic process, will result in a not guilty verdict on the criminal case, which has absolutely nothing to do with the truth. But the bureaucratic process of the trial concluded that O.J. Simpson was not guilty of murder even though the evidence was overwhelming, but he was indeed guilty of murder. So Robert Moses apparently, wasn't really aware of the guy, was approximately the most powerful man in New York City between about 1930 and 1960. So he was never elected to any position. He was a powerful bureaucrat, parks commissioner and head of the tri-borrow authority, so he was able to amass a ton of money and power and influence and it really couldn't be challenged effectively by journalists, unless they had documents and Robert Moses, at the head of tri-borrow, he wouldn't release documents. So journalists were stymied. Now when I published my biggest scoops, I generally didn't rely upon documents. So when I published that Mark Wallace was likely patient zero for the HIV outbreak in the San Fernando Valley that led to a dozen or more porn stars testing HIV positive, where I didn't have any documents. I just had the facts that he'd worked with these girls a few weeks prior to them testing HIV positive and that he was increasingly under suspicion by his peers and it was on that basis that I said, Mark Wallace is being looked at as likely patient zero. So the only documents I had for those showing that he'd performed, he'd worked in movies with certain actresses doing unprotected backdoor sex, and then they tested HIV positive. Then other stories that I broke included the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villargo. So he'd start wearing his wedding ring for the past approximately eight months. His marriage appeared to be over. So I guess I had documents in the photos of the mayor. It showed that this was true. Now Robert Moses, like this powerful bureaucrat, he was able to pay people off in a legal manner. So how do you pay people off in a legal manner? You line them up with consulting gigs. So a law firm can pay you for consulting. That's legal. That's perfectly legal in this way that you can pay people off. And there are all sorts of legal ways of paying people off to cooperate with you. And Robert Moses excelled at that. It's all perfectly legal and very difficult to document because Robert Moses would not release those documents, that information. So as a blogger, I didn't always rely on documents. That's how I was able to publish many of my biggest stories, but I also got sued for libel five times. So if you're going to run a news business, you really don't want to be getting sued for libel. It's very expensive even if you win. And you're not going to get sued for libel if you rely upon documents. So Paul Pringle's book on corruption between University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times, right? He got information that the medical dean at USC was present at a drug overdose. He knew that. He got that information from at least one source, but it wasn't until he was able to obtain a police report where the dean's name was listed as a witness. He finally had paper, he had a document, an official document, a police report. That made it then a new story. So it's not more true because there's a document. It just fulfills essentially the requirements of the news business, which is primarily about packaging up what bureaucracies release. That's the news. So the Biden administration says this. House Republicans say that that's the Communist Department releases these inflation figures. The Kremlin says this. President Zelensky in Ukraine says that. And you are packaging up what bureaucracies report to you. And then what journalists do is they take these official statements and documents and they present them in the most compelling way possible. So usually the easiest way to make something compelling is to hype it, which is a fancy word for lying, for exaggerating way beyond the truth, to compel attention because the more attention a news story gets, the more money you'll make. And so the easiest way to compel attention and to make money is to exaggerate the importance of the story. The journalists are very good at packaging up these reports from bureaucracies. Now the best journalists get background information, right? They get experts and unofficial sources to weigh in on what the official sources are telling them. So I had unofficial sources telling me that Mark Wallace was likely patient zero. It's HIV outbreak. And the unofficial sources, in this case, in many cases, are more accurate unofficial sources. So Robert Moses is likely the most powerful man in New York City between 1930 and 1960, according to this Robert Carrot biography. A journalist didn't cover him that way. And they didn't explain how basically we had everyone who mattered by the balls because Robert Moses controlled billions of dollars. And so the only way to break this story when there aren't official documents backing up is to rely on unofficial sources and without documentation. Journalist news organizations can't really publish stories that have warmingly relying on unofficial sources because that will leave them wide open for libel. It's just not how the news business works. But the best journalists like Paul Pringle, they get these unofficial sources. Find out that say USC's medical dean is present at a drug overdose at a hotel and then they chase chase chase a police report, an official documentation confirming what they already know. Now they have a news story. You've got the information already just from talking to informed sources. But you don't have a news story and we're speaking until you can tie it in to that sort of official proclamation documentation. So I'm here at Watson's Bay. So this Robert Moses biography is called The Power Broker. So it just showed the ways that he could make your life miserable if you opposed him. He had a whole panoply of people that he influenced. And so all the people that he he had power over they were swinging to action in his back and call. They would buy seats at your banquet. All right, they would praise and support you if you're doing what Robert Moses wanted. If you went against Moses then Robert Moses essentially had blackmail files on everyone who mattered in New York City. And he threatened to release the information to the press if he didn't comply with what he wanted. Especially everyone succumbed because Robert Moses had the power to make your life absolutely miserable. He frequently had the power to diminish your old age pension. Robert Moses saw to it that his brother essentially couldn't get employed in an engineering job. So Robert Moses had all these firms that would be holding to him where he could reward his friends with jobs, his supporters got jobs and prestige. And were taken care of. His detractors and enemies would get obliquely. There would be denigrated in the press because he'd leak information and everyone's done something which they're ashamed. And Robert Moses would would collect that information so that he could then bend people to as well. And so very rare is the individual who can stand up when the world around him comes crashing down on his shoulders. Like I've I've experienced it a few times. That's just when I published that Mark Wallace was likely patient zero. The HIV outbreak was like its major denial by the point industry and the Free Speech Coalition and the powers that be. Yet I was absolutely right. So often when the facts will bear out that you're right then in the age of the internet you can often break stories that the news won't touch until there's some official documentation. So this is the area that's fruitful for unofficial newsbreakers. So people like Libs of Tiktok for bloggers. People that were happy to break news on social media, right? You can often reveal something more important, more profound through unofficial sources than what's being released by official sources. And that is the opportunity. But it's a really difficult business in that without the official documentation you're much more liable to get sued for liable. Which is usually not an economical model for journalism, right? Even when you win just can't afford to deal with lawsuits. People can just wear you down with litigation. So your life as a journalist and a reporter a pundit, a live streamer it's made a lot easier if you rely on official sources. But sometimes their eyes will tell you more accurately the truth about what's going on in the world. What official sources say. So if you understand for example that stereotypes are usually true you understand that different groups have different interests. That different groups have different strengths. Right? You will be way ahead of the game as opposed to digesting 150 news articles and academic reports you know purporting to smash stereotypes. Well stereotypes are overwhelmingly true. Stereotypes that help you more effectively make sense of the world around you. But you won't get a lot of official sources and backing up stereotypes because of the price paid.