Joe Duarte

Political Diversity Will Improve Psychological Science
cambridge.org/core/journals/…

He's really not that funny anymore. I recently saw one of his recent Netflix specials, and it drags.

He doesn't have a lot of material and he just sort of monologues, tells stories, etc.

It's weird because he told an obviously false story about his time in the UAE – obviously false stories rarely work in stand-up. It confuses the audience and the laughs were only moderate.

Comics are probably lying much of the time when they tell stories, but their stories are not *obviously* false. His story of being prosecuted for murder in the UAE was just weird because everyone knew it wasn't true, and it deflated the audience's engagement with it.

I recently met a Tucson high school history teacher.

He said some of the boys said "Happy Birthday Hitler" at the start of class, on Hitler's actual birthday. Several boys, coordinated.

I was floored. He said it picked up after the COVID school closures. Like these boys were at home messing around online and coalescing on this groyper poison when they should've been in school.*

The bright side was that he said their worldviews were unstable and they can turn on a dime. (I got the impression these boys weren't necessarily Nazis anymore, but I'm not sure.)

There's a transgressive impulse and willingness to shatter norms at work that seems dependent on the rise of the internet and smartphones. When I was a kid, our transgressive impulses might've manifested as farting in church – not getting into Hitler or Naziism.

The bad news is that there does seem to be a more durable cohort of neo-Nazis forming among young people, maybe more in their 20s than in high school. They don't seem to need podcasters to feed them this stuff, so they're not listening to olds like Tucker Carlson (he gins up an older set to hate Jews). It seems to sprout more endogenously, and they might not listen to long-form stuff anyway.

* You might wonder why they don't become groypers during summers if the COVID school closures did it. I don't know – it's a good question. Maybe summer is more full of activities. Kids these days have schedules – it's different than when I was running around the desert with a pellet gun.

Travis & Jason Kelce have such a fun podcast.

The real possibility that Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are actual biological brothers is hilarious. They explain why it's possible.

youtu.be/L7yCmDXHAZs?is…

Grok Bot is blocked by various merchants, including Walmart, limiting its ability to serve as a shopping agent.

Maybe we need a Bot Bill of Rights? 😐