 The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Monday, I think. It's Monday morning. It's hard really to comprehend it being Monday. Markets are closed. It feels like it's holiday. I don't know. It's a little weird. Sorry, we are on Monday, the morning after Christmas. Hopefully all of you had a fantastic Christmas, had a fantastic weekend, and are ready to go on the last week of the year. The reality is not a lot of news coming out of this weekend. It's kind of a dull weekend. It's like the world just hit pause for Christmas. Just nothing exciting happened. Pause. So we'll stop. So I got a bunch of news items from really from last week. We didn't cover last week. I was kind of delaying and postponing talking about the last week. So we'll talk about them today. Two of them with regard to Stanford University. Jennifer says, Boxing Day. I don't get Boxing Day. What is Boxing Day? Is this like a violent thing? Is this like you go out and box people? I don't know what's going on. Anyway, we've got a couple of stories about Stanford. We've got an interesting story, I think, about Microsoft. Oh, yeah. The big news, of course, of the weekend that dominated all the headlines everywhere, was that you guys are cold. That you guys are frozen. So I don't know if you're still cold, if you're still frozen. I hope some of you enjoy that and like it. And therefore, you're doing OK. I hope you don't have broken pipes, leaks. I hope nobody got hurt. I hope everybody's doing well. And I'm just some of you in Miami or in Florida. I heard Southern California is beautiful. And of course, here in Puerto Rico, it was, last time I looked, it was 81 degrees. So, but yeah, I hope you guys are holding out given how frigging cold it is in the United States. Jupiter says it's 20 degrees today. So he feels like it's getting warmer. I assume that's centigrade because I don't know what 20 degrees Fahrenheit is. That isn't a reality in my world. Although, of course, I was told not to do long introductions to get right into the topic. Otherwise, people will leave. But anyway, of course, I'm going on a tour of Europe in February. There will include some pretty cold places, including Stockholm. So I shouldn't talk because it's all going to come back at me when I reach these places. And I'm going to be in my 55 layers and freezing and my nose is going to fall off and all of that. And you guys will make fun of, you know, you'll make fun of the fact that I made fun of you because I'll be. Yes, I'll be in Europe in February, last week in February. So just to get a flavor, so I can get a flavor of what you guys are going through right now. So, all right, let's jump in here. So a couple of stories out of Stanford, a couple of stories in the Wall Street Journal last week from Stanford. The first one, I think, went viral and made the news and was kind of everywhere. And that is the Stanford Tech Department. The Stanford Tech Department came out with these language criteria, index of a billion words, right? And this is a recommendation by the Tech Department at Stanford and index of forbidden words. Now, this is not, and there's no indication this is going to be a compulsory. This is a list of words that is, it is recommended at Stanford University by the tech bros that you should not use. That are offensive and shouldn't use it. And it very much reminds me of, you know, the good old 90s. You remember political correctness. And I mean, there was a whole, like the idiot's guides to political correctness where they had the whole, all the list of words. And you couldn't say certain words. You couldn't say short there, you know, vertically challenged and all of this stuff. And that's where all of that went. Political correctness kind of disappeared for a while and has come back as some type of wokeness. And it's funny. It's ridiculous. And of course, because it deals with words, it deals with concepts. And it is pretty serious because it is more than anything what these things do is they create cognitive clumsiness. They create cognitive inefficiency. They make thinking more difficult because what you can't say you shouldn't think. They make thinking more difficult. They make language more difficult. They make it more cumbersome to engage in thoughts and conversations. And it's absurd and ridiculous. So here are some of the words that you shouldn't use. You shouldn't call anything or anybody, but including anything or anybody crazy or insane. That is offensive. You can't use the word retarded. And I'm pretty sure that was during the 90s. I remember that was wasn't that cognitive challenge or something like that? You couldn't use the word retarded back then. But this goes a little further. So this, according from the thing, you can't use retarded because it is a slogan. Those who are neurodivergent. So now you have to call them neurodivergent or have cognitive disability. So I guess that's cognitive disability. All right. Fair enough. But then it adds, you should not use to make a point about a person, place or thing. So I mean, you can't say a fire extinguisher retards the fire. That's what a sprinkler system does. You're supposed to instead of, by the way, they offer you alternatives. So you can't blame the Stanford tech department of not thinking this through. They offer you alternatives to, by the way, this is some of this is coming out of some of this is coming out of an article by Jonah Goldberg. Some of it's coming out of an article and reason. As I said, this went viral last week. But Jonah, if Jonah says, Stanford says that instead of crazy and saying retarded, you can say things like boring or uncool instead of retarded. So he writes, this is Jonah, right? So if there's a fire, a sprinkler system can uncool the blaze, right? So everything is uncool or boring. You're not stupid, you're boring. But soon boring is going to be insulting. Don't you think boring is going to be insulting? One of the terms you're not supposed to use is American. You shouldn't call yourself an American because that's just wrong, right? There's a bunch of countries that are part of America, right? The American continent, there are actually 42 countries in the Americas. And American kind of implies that we're the most important country in the Americas. That only we count. And that seems wrong, right? I mean, and I know this is a real problem because I'm sure the Canadians offended because they'd like call themselves Americans, but they don't want to be confused by us. And yet, what about the fact that Canadians call themselves anti-Americans and that doesn't bother them? I mean, there's a whole anti-American movement in South America. I mean, there's a lot of anti-Americans in South America. They call themselves anti-Americans and they don't seem to have any problem with that. But we shouldn't call ourselves Americans because there are other people who are Americans even though other people who are Americans don't call themselves Americans and think of us as Americans and hate us because we're... Anyway, it goes on and on. Of course, Jonah points out that the whole term Americans should be purged and is going to be purged is just a matter of time because after all, America was derived from the name of Amerigo Vespucci, Amerigo America. The Italian colonizer, he was a colonizer. He was the man who argued for the first time that what Columbus had discovered was the new continent. So he is considered... the continent was named after him, but he was a colonizer. He was one of those evil bad guys. So there's no way we shouldn't even use America and you're sure that that is going to be... that is going to go away. So you really should call yourself a United Statist. So you're from the United States, you're not from America. Or United States citizen. But of course, citizen is a problematic word. Immigrant is a problematic word. The list of immigrants is a problematic word. They've got a better word than immigrants. Let me just find this, the immigrant one. Yeah, I can't find the immigrant. But immigrants, no, not acceptable. Here's some other ones that are pretty funny. You shouldn't say low man on the totem pole. I don't know that anybody uses that anymore, but totem, you know, can't use that. That's cultural appropriation. Long time no see because that's discriminating because some people don't see. That's discriminating against the blind. Don't use white paper. You know, you wrote a white paper on this issue. Can't use white paper. That's obviously racist. Webmaster. Webmaster. I mean, anything with master in it is unacceptable because master, master and slave. I mean, nobody in America is a master. You can't use a master. Beating a dead horse is too cool to animals. It's just, it's too vivid. Or take a stab at it. You want to take a stab at that. You can't use that because that's like, that's violence. You're advocating kind of white noise, Jennifer. No, no, no, no. That's racist. Can't use white in anything. You can't use, what was it? What was the term? So it used to be that you weren't allowed to use the term victim. Instead, use the term survivor. But now the term survivor is not acceptable. And the new IT department now refers to survivors or victims as person who has been impacted by. Now notice the cumbersome nature of the kind of language that that all implies. You could go on and on and on about this. It's ridiculous. The absurdity of it all. And it's interesting. Jonah quotes, I think, a really good quote out of 1984. By the way, the website where all of these words are listed has a trigger warning. This website contains a language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace. Just be careful because, I mean, you could be offended. And you could, you know, the whole microaggression trigger warning thing is kind of gone silent. That was the thing that kind of led to woke. And that was the thing like five, four, five years ago. And that has now gone under and maybe it's just been accepted. So it's not a newsworthy item anymore. Anyway, this is the quote from 1984, which I think is really apropos. And it kind of exposes the nihilism that is implicit in the destruction of banning of words, the cognitive destruction that is of banning of words. Here's the quote from 84. Quote, it's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. And, you know, it's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. And Jonah goes on to say, the beauty of that project is to deprive the mind of words to describe reality as it is. And to shrink the map of mental space, there is no safe harbor from the party line. I mean, Jonah is summarizing what's going on in 1984, but that's absolutely right. Again, the beauty of the project, that is the destruction of words, is to deprive the mind of words to describe reality as it is. And to shrink the map of mental space, there's no safe harbor from the party line. Now that's absolutely right. That's the kind of nihilism that is involved in this. So, yes, I mean, you know, just a few other stands that preferred replacement for stupid, as well as retarded, boring and uncool. We said that instead of crazy or insane, you're supposed to use the word like wild or surprising. You want to jump off that bridge instead of saying that's crazy, you say that's surprising. Or see that strange guy in the clown suit behind the wheel of that old van? It would be wild if you accepted his invitation for a ride instead of it would be insane if you accepted his invitation for a ride. And you can go on and on. Okay, one more, and this is Jonah brings up one more comment on words. And this I think relates the destruction of words, but this is one we've talked about before. Dictionary.com has declared that its word of the year is, get what the word of the year is for dictionary.com. Anybody guessing? Word of the year, word of the year is woman. Woman, right? Pretty straightforward, pretty straightforward word yet a woke crowd, a woke world has put this word into play. What is a woman? Woman happens to be one of the, as Jonah Goldberg writes, woman is one of the oldest words in the English language. It's one of those fundamental words, one of the most basic words because it describes something that is easy to identify and easy to recognize. It's intensely important because the differences men and women are crucial, particularly if we go back to pretty basic, basic life. It's a reason why this is one of the first words we identify the difference between men and women becomes crucial to human survival. It's a human survival word. And it tells us, it tells you a lot about the world in which we live that this is the word of the year, right? We can't define women anymore, the dictionary.com is not sure what the definition of women anymore. It's horrible. Now, this is John Kelly, the dictionary.com's editorial director. He says, quote, the dictionary is not the last word on what defines a woman. No, it's actually biology. He writes, the word belongs to each and every woman, however they define themselves. In other words, words now become completely subjective, completely they mean whatever we feel like they should mean. I mean, it's pretty ridiculous. It's pretty absurd. We talked about this when we talked about, when we talk about Matt Walsh's, what is a woman? So, yeah, I mean, people are now canceled, being canceled for claiming there is a difference between men and women, or claiming there's a difference between women and men who describe themselves as women. Women and men who even go through surgical process to become women, or to become closer to women, claiming that there's a difference there, is now a cancelable offense, or in no way, you can land up in jail, supposedly. Tonya Jev-John, whatever, I can't pronounce the name, who's a Norwegian actress, a lesbian, wrote on a Facebook page, quote, it's just as impossible for men to become a lesbian as it is for men to become pregnant. Men are men regardless of their sexual fetishes. Whether you agree with that or not, she faces up to three years in prison under Norway's hate crime laws. So, state of language in the world in which we live. All right, pretty sad and pretty disturbing, and it really has nothing to do with your views on trans, it has nothing to do with the fact that there is a small, tiny fraction of a percent of people who are not clearly men or not clearly women, because the genitalia doesn't necessarily reflect their chromosomes, and there's all kind of borderline cases, all kinds of them. I mean, it's truly amazing once you start reading about this, the wide range of different types of borderline cases of things that are not clearly men or women. That doesn't eviscerate the actual concept. It doesn't change the fact that there is such a thing as a man and a woman, and it just says that there's some people who don't fall neatly into either one of those categories. And that seems to be a biological reality, whether some of you like it or not, but it is a biological reality. All right, quickly, this is a quick story. It made the Washington Journal again. It also made John Cochran's website, given that he teaches Stanford, this is relevant. It looks like Stanford is really over the last probably six, seven, eight years, but particularly over COVID, has clamped down dramatically on student life. In many respects, they've taken the fun out of student life. They've clamped down on fraternities and sororities. They've basically destroyed their capacity to do that. They've introduced new housing systems. They've taken over the property. They've destroyed the playgrounds of much of student life. Now, I have no doubt that fraternities and sororities did abuse of things and did horrible things, but the solution was not to deal with those and to deal with them on a case-by-case basis. The solution was sometime in the early 20s, a decision, it seems like, was made at Stanford to literally destroy the capacity of Stanford students to engage in folic and fun and crazy and disorganized activities and regiment them and restrict them and have laws and systems in place that put them into boxes that do not allow the free play. What's interesting about some of the articles that were written about this is some of this, some of the, so in the 1990s, supposedly, Stanford was a crazy place. I mean, it was fraternity life, but also generally student life was, students were left alone and they did crazy stuff and they built stuff, they destroyed stuff, they created stuff. They experimented with different styles of living. They experimented with different ways of engagement. And at least some of this is, you know, some of the success that these students later had in Silicon Valley is attributed to this. I'm reading here from an article written about the Stanford's support for the unconventional, pioneered and new breed of elite students. The charismatic builder who excelled at breaking things in nearby Silicon Valley, breaking thinking in you was what they kind of, was the way their life was. Just like young kids need to be out in the playground negotiating the rules themselves without lots of parents and coaches and hovering over them. This continues from, I think this is John Cochran writing, college students need self-organized parties and pranks to learn to be tech entrepreneurs at always disparage party schools as places with too much drinking and they're not out of studying. And most parties seem to me like pointless drunken, you know, pointers and drunken. But the importance of self-organized activities is something I had missed and there is a value there. Well, at Stanford that has been, that self-organized activity has been crushed and devastated and there was a whole article, there's been a series of articles both in the Stanford School of Newspaper at the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. And John Cochran has a great blog post about this where the administration has just clamped down in the name of safety, in the name of conventionality, in the name of, I guess part of this came out of legitimate concerns out of the MeToo phenomena, legitimate concerns out of cases of rape and cases of drunken debauchery in Stanford. But, you know, it seems like they've gone completely overboard. And again, instead of banning particular activities instead of coming down really hard on particular violations, they basically banned the whole phenomena of students self-organizing their own activities and generating their own experimentation, if you will. So there is, I guess there was a, in a football game or something, the local students have put out big banners now, they're banners all over Stanford. I guess the school mascot and others put out this banner called, that says in big type, Stanford hates fun. And this is becoming a big deal among the students at Stanford. So if you're interested in this, you can go to the Grumpy Economist blog. You can look up at the Stanford Daily, which is the student newspaper, has a bunch of stories about this. But it is, it is kind of an interesting phenomena where stomping out fun at major at one of our most important universities, one of the most important universities in the world. All right, let's see. All right, final quick story. You probably heard about this, but Microsoft is being sued by the US Federal Trade Commission. It's an anti-shash complaint over its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which is a gaming company, and the idea is that if Microsoft, and Sony and others are supporting this claim, and the idea is that if Microsoft buys Activision, given that it's, given that it already has control, what is it, the Microsoft gaming console, it will make Call of Duty, which is Call of Duty is one of the most popular games in the world, produced by Activision. It will make Call of Duty exclusive to its console and deny the ability of players with other consoles to play Call of Duty, and that's a huge anti-trust problem. Why exactly? I don't know. But anyway, anti-trust is all-inclusive. Anything could be an anti-trust problem. So there's a big fight about this. It's a very standard anti-trust case, I think. And Sony is saying, no, we won't. We promise. We're not going to make Call of Duty exclusive. It's not in ourself interest to do so. The whole point is that people can play across platforms. We do have some exclusive games. It's true, but this will not be one of them. So Microsoft's making the normal claim. We don't have monopoly power. Look at all the gaming companies out there. Look at all the number of games that are produced by other people. There's no way we have a... If anybody has monopoly power, it's Sony, but nobody really has. I mean, the fact that the two of them just obviously is obvious that it's Call of Duty, that it's not a monopoly. But what I found super interesting is a constitutional argument that Microsoft is making. And the constitutional argument questions the very existence of the Federal Trade Commission, which is the U.S. alphabet agency entity that is responsible for all anti-trust cases. And this is huge because if this case goes to the Supreme Court, which it might, this could be a massive ruling and they're doing this on purpose. They're doing this in order to try to get this to the Supreme Court because they know the proclivities of the justices on that court who might support this. So here's what they're arguing. Quote, these proceedings are invalid because the structure of the commission as an independent agency, the real significant executive power and the associated constraints on removal of the commissioners and other commission officials violates Article II of the U.S. Constitution and the separation of powers. Now that is huge. It's absolutely a violation of the Constitution. But if FTC is a violation of the Constitution, so are many of the alphabet agencies. So certainly it's the case that the consumer protection, what is the CFPB or whatever it's called, the consumer finance protection, something commission is anti-constitutional based on this. It's absolutely true that the alphabet agencies have way too much power that what we've created is a fourth branch of government, that what Congress does is creates these entities, then writes vague, empty laws and allows these agencies to fill in the blanks. In other words, allows the agencies to become effective legislatures, but also these are agencies that have executive power. So they both legislate and have executive power. It is a massive violation of the Constitution, and yet this massive violation of the Constitution has been in place since at least the 1930s. It's been approved by the Supreme Court over and over again, defended by the Supreme Court over and over again. However, there are now justices in the Supreme Court, primarily Gorsuch, who is an anti-administrative state. He is a huge opponent of this issue. This is directly written for and to Gorsuch. So this is an attempt, basically, to appeal to the conservative majority in the Supreme Court led by Gorsuch. This is what makes him strong. I don't like Gorsuch on a lot of issues, hubs and much of other things. But on this, he's very good, and you saw that a little bit in ruling. They did not that long ago about the EPA and its ability to regulate, I can't remember what it was exactly, but they limited the scope of the EPA to be within the bounds of what the legislation actually said. So reducing its capacity to actually legislate for itself. That was a huge decision. This is to the very nature of the organization itself. It's appealing to the very structure of the organization and its powers. And wow. So it's also questioning, it questions the FTC's practice of having complaints initially heard by administrative law judges that are appointed by the FTC rather than a judge from the Federal Circuit. So it's appealing to the power of the FTC. It's appealing against the power of the FTC and claiming its lack of separation of powers. This is going to be fascinating to watch. It's going to be really interesting to see how Gorsuch and possibly, I mean, I'm sure Thomas is on Gorsuch's side, maybe Alito not clear, and then it's not clear how the other, I don't think, I don't think, what's his name? The other Trump appointee is on Gorsuch's side, but he might be swayed. I don't know Barrett, I don't know Barrett's views on this at all, but she might be swayed. I doubt Roberts is on this side, but certainly Gorsuch would need to let your leadership here. There is a huge skepticism by Gorsuch and others on the administrative state. I think Microsoft is setting this case up to give them an opportunity to really question. Kavanaugh is not very good on the administrative state. But again, I think Gorsuch is much more intellectual and he might be able to move Kavanaugh and Barrett in that direction. I just thought it was an interesting story. It didn't make the headlines. It's buried in an article about the anti-trust case. The rest of the anti-trust case is usual. You know my opinion on anti-trust. The rest of it is kind of usual. All right. I've got another couple of stories, but let's jump into your super chat and make the show shorter and we'll cover these other stories another time. All right. Liam says, I love your line from your last Rules for Life show about waiting for happiness to show up. So many people are waiting for a break instead of taking a chance. I would turn that segment into a short clip, likely to go viable. Well, I don't know that anything is likely to go viable, but I will mention it to a Christian who might be on right now. Maybe Christian can, maybe he's not on, but maybe you're listening to this. Maybe Christian can turn it into a short clip. Thankfully, I'm really appreciate it. But yes, I think there's way too much of the waiting for happiness to show up rather than actively pursuing life, actively pursuing values. Martin Anderson, it would be super cool if you debated destiny. He's generally held, holds progressive pro-establishment views and is intellectually honest in my opinion. Ayn Rand used to be a big influence on him and still is to some extent. I think I've tried on a number of occasions. It hasn't come together. You know, I'm sure there'll be future attempts to do it. We'll have to wait and see. But I know we've tried on some of these debate platforms to do a debate with destiny. All right. We are about $170 short of our $250 target. We don't want to make this the anti-Christmas collapse of Super Chat. So if there's anybody out there who'd like to jump in, that'd be great. I want to remind everybody of the December 31st show that's going to be a review of all of 2022 and looking forward to 2023. It will be, you know, kind of a big year-end fun show. It'll be longer than usual, but also we'll have a Super Chat match. We will have one of our contributors, one of our contributors has offered to match $10,000, up to $10,000. So the more we raise up to $10,000, the more they will match. It provides us with huge upside, provides you a runbook show with huge upside. So it's an amazing opportunity. So I'm hoping that a lot of you who might not otherwise maybe just show up, say hello, make a small contribution. Anything, everything, anything and everything is acceptable. Of course, it doubles because of the match. So it's a great opportunity for you to participate, including those of you who are listening to the shows on the podcast or those of you who listen to the show, not live. Jump into the live show. Just say hello and make a small or large or huge or massive. I think we're limited to $500 a person on Super Chat. But a contribution of Super Chat to help us make the $10,000 goals and to say hello. And it'll be a fun show in which hopefully we can get a lot of people to kind of come in and out on live. And because like the number of people that you watch this live is relatively small as compared to the total listenership. So it would be great to have, you know, more of the regular listeners show up and say something on the chat. Alright, Darian says, could I pay to get an objective review of a short fictional paper of mine? Would that be possible through direct message or Twitter or something similar? Yes, but I have to say, you know, I'm not an expert on literature. I don't think it would be fair for me to review fiction. I mean, you're better off, you know, finding somebody who's an expert on writing and fiction who could do that. You know, I'm not a particularly good writer. You know, certainly not a fiction. I have no knowledge of fiction. Maybe email Don Watkins and ask him. And I'm not an expert on literature. So I think I know a lot more about movies. I know a lot more about, you know, I don't know a lot about songs, but I've said that and I haven't charged a lot on that. So I know that. And by the way, I know I owe you a lot of reviews of those. And, you know, I know a lot about, you know, classical music and painting and sculpture, but I don't know a lot about literature. I don't talk a lot about literature on the show. So, you know, ask Don. Don Watkins was on the show recently or someone else. So maybe send me an email and we can we can talk about that. You're on at you're on bookshow.com. Thanks, Darian. Thanks for the support. Jennifer says, waiting for the rainbows to end to send itself your way. Neil put waiting for the rainbows to end to send itself your way pretty. Thank you, Jennifer. Appreciate it. All right. We're much closer to our goal. Thanks to Jennifer and Darian. So we're just $130 short. So still an opportunity to jump in and help us get there. Daniel says, frozen pipes and super cold. Yes. Most of the country. Michael Sander says, what differentiates being certain from being absolute or absolutely sure why not say possible or probable instead of certain? Well, I think I think the sequence is probable, possible, probable, certain. Those are different levels of certainty, right? That's those are different levels of your, your, your, your cognitive conviction about a particular fact. You think it's possible. That's pretty low. Probable, higher, certain, very high. So, you know, you've already got, you've already got that. So, you know, absolutely sure it's just, it's just not a technical term. Absolute is not a degree of certainty. So again, certain is certain. That's a high degree of certainty and possible problem. Leonard pick up as a whole section on that on one of his lectures. I can't remember which one. Michael asks, why do intellectuals not take the law of identity seriously since causality is just a law of identity applied to action? Just since it's just the law. I mean, that idea is a complex idea. There's nothing just about it. There's nothing trivial about it. Why did intellectuals not take the law of identity seriously? They don't take the law of identity seriously. You know, I don't know that they, first of all, they don't think in those terms. There are very few people to think in terms of the law of identity. And, you know, they don't take reality seriously. They don't think thinking and reason seriously. And as a consequence, they place wishes about facts. They do all the things that embody not taking the law of identity seriously. Why don't they do that? Because they're not good thinkers. Because, again, they don't have a developed explicit, you know, epistemology or methodology of thinking, of reasoning. They don't value reason. Andrew, do you generally prefer to go to museums alone or with others? Well, it depends on the others. You know, my preference is to go to museums with my wife. That's my favorite person to go to museums with. And sometimes it's fun to go with other people. I like to go alone as well. But it all depends. You know, you get a different experience. So, you know, I like going with friends because I usually go alone. So going with friends is kind of a special and a unique experience from going alone and then going with my wife is the best. But, again, it's a different experience in going with friends and going alone. So they're all different. But my favorite is going with my wife. She knows a huge amount about art. And she can see things that I can't see. Any views on Patty Chayefsky's movies? I don't know Patty Chayefsky. Maybe I know the movies, but I don't know. I don't know the name. Sorry. What do you think up here? Paulie, this guy running for prime minister, I guess, in Canada. He's a big Milton Friedman fan. I just saw him on Jordan Peterson. And it looks like he has a real shot at beating Justin Trudeau. I mean, I think it would be good in Canada. It would be great to get rid of Justin Trudeau who's been truly horrific on authoritarian. I don't know that much about Pierre. I hope he is not authoritarian. I hope he's not part of the new right that he focuses on primarily being a fan of Milton Friedman rather than being kind of the other stuff. So Patty Chayefsky is the network and Marty. You know, I like the network. Let's just finish that. So that's what I have to say about Canadian politics, which I don't know that much about. Yeah, I mean, I thought both the network and Marty were good movies. I thought the network, they were both very powerful. Very powerful. They really had a clear message, a powerful message. The network was way before its time. I mean, everybody should watch the network today and think about how influences, what influences do to all of us and how they influence us and the degree to which people follow influences. It's I think the precursor to kind of authoritarian government. So I think both are very, very powerful movies and well made, very well made and to get you to respond in such a powerful way. All right. Quickly, Adam says, I made a point to make a positive comment yesterday. Whenever comment yesterday, whenever I heard relatives make a negative or complaining topic during Christmas get together, never realized how much people bond over negativity until I started paging, paying close attention. Absolutely. I mean, you know, Adam Campbell, you're not even Jewish, but you know, Jewish household in particular. But yes, there's a massive bond about complaining, about complaining about your own life, about complaining about life. Generally, about complaining about politics, about complaining about the weather, about complaining about stuff. And there's very little energy and focus spent on, wow, isn't that amazing? Did you see that great movie yesterday? Isn't, you know, isn't this or that that we did so super? And I think part of it is that praising life and focusing on the positive seems so selfish. It's so your values, my values, however you want to put it. Misery loves company, but misery loves. I mean, it's not even a misery. It's the complaining itself. Misery doesn't love company. That's the thing. It's the complaining about the fact that you're miserable, which loves company. It's the talking about it that attracts attention. All right, my last super chat question. We're about 40, 50 bucks short. I think I'm going to do a lot less asking next year of super chat and just going to just going to roll with it and assume you guys are going to follow it more. I think that I'll help with retaining people both alive and the people who watch later. Darian says, thank you for the consistency. I've been able to get much further in my endeavors and have gained much needed confidence because of your objective judgment of things. Thank you. I appreciate that, Darian. Thank you. And it's always heartening for me to know that I'm having a positive impact on people. That's great. Jupiter says, attempting to explain basics of objectivism to individuals, everyone cannot overcome. Everyone cannot overcome subjectivism and grasp the primacy of existence. I think there needs to be an easier way to get people to understand the philosophy. I mean, I think people, one of the easier things for them to grasp is the primacy of existence. It's the implication of the primacy of existence. We say have a hard time grasping, but the primacy of existence, I think, is relatively easy. It depends how you do it and what you're trying to achieve. So there's a whole art to how to convey objectivism to people. I think Don is going to do some good work on that. But yeah, I don't think explaining the basics of objectivism is that hard. It's once you get into the nitty-gritty of the implications of it, it becomes really, really, really hard. All right. We have $30 short, but we're going to call it a morning, an evening, or whatever it is. Thank you all. Thanks for the support. We will be back tomorrow morning. And tomorrow evening, there is a hangout. So if you are $25 or more regular contributor to the Iran Book Show, you should have gotten an invite to participate in the hangout tomorrow night. Thursday night, I'll be interviewing Tara Smith. That should be a lot of fun. We'll be talking about a wide variety of things from how to live a flourishing life, all the way to privacy and other kind of legal issues. And anyway, it'll be a lot of fun. And then, of course, Saturday will be our big year and matching show where we kind of summarize the year. All right. I will see you all tomorrow. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for all the superchatters. Really, really appreciate it. And Merry Christmas to everybody. And happy new year. Heading towards that new year coming up really, really soon.