Investing, Morality, and Drones

0:00All right, good morning Doug. We're back with questions from our viewers. But first, we've got to talk about some of this latest news. We, since last we spoke to Houthis that basically run the Saudi military forces out of a lot of Yemen and seemed to be, well, they shut down the East-West pipeline, which was the putter backup oil supply from Persian Gulf, and shut down NF15, and it seems like these primitive people can't be stopped. What do you make of the situation? Well, not having visited Houthi land, I can't give any first-hand opinions. I first encountered Yemen as a country, kind of, when in England, several decades ago, I spent some time with Colin Mitchell, who's dead now, but he ran the British expeditionary forces when they

1:09were battling the Houthis in Aden. I'll have to have him looked up on our friend, AI, about Colin, but he and his, I don't know what he had, he had a regiment, I guess. He was a heroic man who was standing against these British, these Brits, who'd always been an Aden, and the Houthis, so I first encountered him, but that's ancient history. What's interesting to me is that we seem to call the Yemenites Houthis, and the fact of the matter is that the Houthis are a rebel group. They're not the official government of Yemen, but they control 75% of the country, 75% of the people, including the capital. So, I mean, it's one of these

2:13fictions where they're actually the government of Yemen, but we just call them the Houthis. Right. Nobody's got a clue what they are, but these are basically sandal clad, really tough mountain warriors, but it's shocking that they could take down, outsteroid, it's a Saudi F-50, and you figure that if the Saudis have it, it's not very competent. But still, this is impressive, and I'm wondering, I'm asking myself, now, if I was running Yemen, which has had an ongoing war against Saudi Arabia for like a decade before now, backed by the US, we were back in the Saudis against the Yemenites, that if I was running Yemen, I'd say, all right, it's obvious that

3:14the Saudi regime has totally corrupt MBS has made criminally stupid mistakes with his misallocation of scores of billions in the line, which was that horizontal city, or well, it was like a 100 kilometer long city in the middle of nowhere, which is basically going to go back to the desert, and he's got something else that he was building, it was similarly extravagant and expensive, that's gone bust, and meanwhile, the Saudis are all just welfare rights, nobody knows anything or does anything productive there, it's all about stealing oil money. So if I was running Yemen, I would say, oh, let's just take it over, especially since it said

4:16that all of the, the, the, the, what do we call the sect that you got to show this and the Shiites, the Shiites and the Sunnis? That's right, they basically are concentrated where the oil is produced, so it would seem to be a natural to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia, because the Americans have just passed on helping MBS, and so yeah, I think that's something that happens, somebody's talking about. Yeah, and maybe you look at it from the Saudis perspective too, like they basically, they've been sort of checkmated, you know, by, by their arch nemesis, you know, Iran and these Shiites on both sides, you know, I mean, it seems to me, I must feel surrounded at this point.

5:21I think it's time for a revolution in Saudi Arabia, and it's kind of ridiculous, actually, that a country is named after the family that took it over about a hundred years ago. Well, maybe they'll change, maybe they'll change the Yemen, the Houthi, or something. So it's another excuse or another opportunity, I should say, not next year's, for the US to get involved in a gigantic, uh, internecine war, which we have no comprehension of on the other side of the world. So I think that's a big one. Let's, I'm a horizon that nobody's talking about. You know, I mean, this one, I went with the closure of the Balban Deb, then now, and with the closure of this East West pipeline, it's cut off oil to Europe, and there's been, and like the Saudis announced that they would be not making next month's oil

6:22exports to Europe. So like, it is going to, it just kind of has potential to bring in a lot of other players at this point who really will have a, you know, geopolitical interest in trying to resolve the situation there because their countries are going to be in real trouble if their oil doesn't start flowing. Yeah, the world runs on oil, and oil is not being shipped the way people expect. And even if it is shipped, it can't be refined into useful products as easily as it was before. And we're seeing signs of that, not just with much higher diesel prices, but higher caracene prices were jet fuel. So I think something's, something's got to give pretty soon. Well, what's that? I think what's going to give? Because the stock market obviously still doesn't seem to notice. I mean, you see in the headlines now, record diesel prices, reports of some of the

7:22airlines looking at canceling some of their flights for later in the year, you know, in these now unprofitable routes because they booked them at cheaper prices. But what's, when does it break? And what what gives first? That's a good question. I suspect that the powers of B within the Beltway are running around with chewing gum and bailing wire trying to plug holes in the dyke to mix a metaphor if you would. But it's not hitting the mainstream news, none of these things. So, oh, I can figure is that I'm just going to remain long gold, gold stocks, agricultural products and energy oil, gas, you're right, him. That's all we can do about it as a little people because we don't pull the levers on these giant things. Have you heard the, you know,

8:24they're kind of circulating the idea of exporting or banning exports of diesel from the US? Yeah, that might look good for truck drivers in the US. But how about the people that are getting that diesel now? They're going to be inconvenienced. So, worse than inconvenience, I mean, the US is like the largest diesel exporter in the world right now. Yeah, see, push on the balloon one place and it expands someplace else. Trump doesn't think about these things. He only thinks about here and now. Not, well, that that would imply that he probably will go ahead and do that then. Yeah, probably, because he flies by the state of his pants. So, he thinks about here and now and he forgets about there and later. He thinks only about the immediate and direct consequences of his actions never about the indirect and delayed consequences of them. And of course, if you're going to think like

9:28an economist, it's all about thinking about indirect and delayed consequences. I mean, I mean, reasonably intelligent six-year-olds can predict immediate and direct consequences. That's not too hard. Yeah, what would be the indirect consequences? Because I mean, I have two, a lot of Americans who see the diesel prices and knowing that we're the biggest exporter, they'd probably think, well, it's kind of a no-brainer, you know, to ban exports. So, like, what's the downside for Americans? What are the indirect consequences? Well, one thing that'll happen, I think, is that powers that be in different countries are going to figure that there's got to be a tip for tat. And I, the way I understand classical game theory is that if somebody does something to you, you really have to do something back. Otherwise, the person that does the first thing will say, oh, that was easy. I'll do something again. So, this has got to be a response to an action. So, we're seeing that perhaps with

10:35Canada, where about $20 billion of US exports to screw up the Canadian market. Well, they're doing $20 billion back. And they're talking with the European Union about being an associate member. And Trump is saying, well, if you become an associate member of Europe, we might all consider, as if he makes all the decisions. It's like, you know, his country, he makes the decisions, cutting off all trade with Europe. That's a possibility. I'll have to think about it. I mean, it's amazing when you're dealing with a megalomaniac who sometimes seems like he's bordering on the ragged edge of criminals psychopathy to make these gigantic world-changing decisions, because he thinks that's a good idea. Yeah, you know, but you know, wonder if his

11:42threats are becoming less powerful, because he threatened to cut off trade to Europe in this case, as you just said. He also recently threatened, I guess, the Federal Reserve by saying if they didn't lower interest rates, that he might cut off trade to countries that the US runs a deficit with right now. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I can't. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, he said it would save America one and a half trillion dollars if he did that. I mean, it's just saying the same. Probably more like three trillion, maybe three trillion. I mean, pick a number. We'll be rich. We'll be rich if we just cut off trade. That's right. I mean, but then the Fed did raise rates and he still said that that was an option where he might cut off trade. But it's like, the threat didn't stop the Federal Reserve from raising rates and will it stop Canada from doing a deal with the EU despite the US? I mean, I doubt it.

12:45And of course, unfortunately, elections are important. And every indication, as at this point, that the Republicans are going to lose the elections in November, both in the Senate and in the House. And that'll open up a whole other can of worms. The Democrats will undoubtedly go on attack, which will complicate things for the administration. Yeah. I mean, but for markets, they typically say a divided government is good for markets. So I don't know, maybe it'd be good for us. Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen with the market as a whole because the government has to keep printing money. These two trillion dollar fiscal deficits, the US government's running. Well, can only sell that paper to the Federal Reserve, which credits the US government with the commercial banking system. And of course, war's raising interest rates means that the banking system,

13:51which gets this new trillion, two trillion dollars comes in from the US government more or less. They'll won't be able to lend quite as much of it because it's expensive. People won't want to borrow quite as much. Quarter of a point. I don't know. Listen, I'm still thinking that interest rates are heading back towards the levels of the early 1980s, which are ancient history now, to most people alive. It's amazing. That was 40 years ago when interest rates on the US government was paying 15, 16, 18 percent for short term money. Wouldn't that cause, if rates get anywhere near that now, wouldn't that just completely cause a death spiral for the government? Just because at that point, they didn't have much debt when that happened. No, not in relative terms. And the society as a whole didn't have nearly a amount of debt

14:52that it did. I mean, people weren't living off their credit cards the way they are today, apparently, about a student loan debt, all this stuff. There's much, much more debt. So they can't raise interest rates. But interest rates will go up as the dollar decreases. So I remain unremittingly gloomy and bearish, I guess the only thing good on the horizon is AI. It's going to kiss everything and make it better. Well, unless you pay attention to the most recent news cycle, it's apparently going to destroy humanity. It's like a greater than 10 percent chance that humanity will be extinguished, essentially. Was the fear point about it? I forgot about that, of course. But maybe this is, and of course, there's a meme going around now that this is all a sia. It's a new way to create fear

15:53and psychological chaos among the Hoyt-Poleu. So does that make them easy to manipulate or or what does it do? Does it make them want to vote democratic or or? I think it makes them just the idea. I think is that it just increases public demands that something must be done about the dangers, the fear of AI, like the fear of climate change or things like that. Something must be done. And then it allows essentially these AI companies, these frontier labs to capture the regulatory regime to keep out the competition. I think that's what it's all about. I think that's logical. And I think that's what's actually going on. And the public, getting more fearful and more confused, says, we really need somebody that's smart and thinks clearly to straighten all this stuff out. We need a man on a white horse. And I guess

16:55everybody thought that was going to be trumped two years ago, but it's turned out that he's not but specifically regarding the AI thing, he said, all you really need is you don't need regulations on it. You need is a smart president. And I'm very smart. He even said, I'm very smarter words that affect him. Exactly that is what he said. Exactly. No, it's a comedy. I'm trying to think what was it? Leonard or Marx has said that the first time something happens in history, it's tragedy. The second time, it's low comedy. So that's what's kind of going on. Anyway, this whole AI thing. And I'm trying to wrap my head around what the data centers are doing and so forth. And I think you have a much better grip of that than I do. But one thing that occurs to me is what the hundreds of billions of dollars

18:01going into AI, I don't see where the return on that capital is. And since a lot of it's borrowed money, it's possible that we could have bankruptcies, massive bankruptcies, these massive businesses. And if we did, because they can't meet their obligations, maybe that's an excuse for the US government to take over the whole thing because clearly these businesses are too big to fail. 100%. And I mean, they've already articulated that we're in a race with China. And it's a race we absolutely have to win, no matter what. So that seems like that's like creates the prerequisite for the state to come in and bail those companies out, take them over, have them become state entities of some kind that essentially are then wielded to make sure, supposedly, that we be China. But I've heard you say, and I believe that the Chinese provide AI computing

19:08power in a tiny fraction of what our giant American companies do. Yeah, I think that's, that's I think what scares them. And that's why they're trying to scare the public because the models are behind the frontier labs like Open AI and Claude. I mean, they're a little behind these Chinese ones. But they're, they, you know, there's some of them are like 140th of the cost. So there's six months behind and 140th of the cost. Six months, it was pretty good. So for a lot of uses, you can use what came out six months ago, no problem. And it'd be very adequate for what you're trying to do. Like there's that big law firm, Latham. I think they're the first or second largest law firm. And you know, they, what they, they don't want to use, they don't want to hand over their data, you know, the proprietary decades of data, all the legal stuff that they've done to these AI companies. So instead what they're doing is they're building an AI in house using one of these

20:09Chinese models as the base of it and training it, you know, on their very unique set of data. And that like customers do that, that cuts these frontier labs out of the enterprise market, which is what they want. You know, that's where the big money is for them. And so I think they see stuff like that and it gets them all worried then they try and induce this fear in the public so that hopefully the government will come in and regulate them to regulate out these Chinese competitors. Well, I'm not sure how all this is going to evolve exactly except we're clearly at this peak of a stock market super ultra bubble. And when it bursts and the stock prices of a lot of these companies go down a lot and there's debt defaults and so forth, that's going to ripple through the economy where people's pension plans and savings and whatnot cease to exist in their present

21:16form or size. And what is that going to lead when we have the next crisis financial crisis, which is on the way. It's on the way. It's on the way. Well, we get to some of these questions, Doug. The first one is basically following up on something. I think a comment I made on the last Q&A we did is to expand a bit what was talked about the last podcast. Could Matt and Doug talk about more, specifically why a person should or should not take any money from the state. And I think this is where I was saying they did this child tax credit and they just put it in your bank account and couldn't take it or you couldn't not take it. And I was implying that taking it was bad. And that's kind of my position. I don't ever want I don't want money. Even if I'm I don't want money like that, even though I am, you know, the government technically owes me a lot because I pay them way more in taxes. I mean, I never got anything back except for that's $200 a month I got for whatever

22:1714 months. But I don't still don't feel right personally by reversing it and having the flow of those money come to me. I don't know if you feel the same about that or not, but that's my point of view. Well, I'm very sympathetic to that point of view because you're being made a party to theft by receiving stolen goods. I can certainly understand that. On the other hand, in Rand, who was certainly very, very iron-bound in her moral views collected social security because she saw it as being a rebate on taxes she paid. And therefore getting back as much as what she could have of what was hers. So it puts you in a conundrum. Ultimately, the only solution to problems with this type is to abolish the state itself as an entity because I don't believe it serves a useful purpose. And I

23:19know when I say that, people say, that's ridiculous. How can you do without the state, without the government? Well, that's a whole other thing we've explored in the past. But I guess look, it's like more or other moral questions like, what do you do about abortion? If that becomes a problem you have to solve. What do you do? What's the right thing to do? Same thing with this. It's a personal thing, the way I say it. Yeah, for me, yeah, for me, it's just like you can so twist yourself into rationalizations for it. Yeah. And I'm sure every welfare recipient feels like they're getting money that they're owed. Yep, absolutely. And so it's getting nearly what they're owed. I mean, come on, I want reparations for the fact that my great-great-grande was a slave. And Hananon, of course, I'd say, yeah, it's a tangled web. Yeah, it does. It feels like it's almost like

24:25to accept it. I almost have to accept that I'm a victim in some way. They took it from me. So I'm just getting closer to even now. It just makes me feel like a victim to take money from the state. Listen, I totally approve of your position on this. But we're trapped in the matrix. All right. So Squish says, hey, hi, Doug and Matt, I'm new here. I want to know how to money manage your trades. Specifically, if you don't have a stop loss, how much loss do you allow? So stuff within the portfolio, we definitely, we don't use trailing stops, which is some common in some portfolios. They do that. Why, Doug, in these resource stocks, do you not do that? Well, I don't, because these stocks are generally so illiquid and so volatile that, if you use

25:29stops, chances are excellent. You're going to get picked off by specialists to watch these things. So the way I play it and I try to be disciplined about this and it's hard to be disciplined about it, is that if your position goes down like more than a third, because if something goes down by third, you've got to, you're remaining position, you've got to increase its value by, well, not quite double. But the further it goes down, the harder is to make the loss back. So that, yes, at some point you have to admit you're wrong and just dump it. And why not? You can always buy it back the next day or next week. If it turns out you made a wrong decision, of course, then you can wind up being whipsawed in and out and out. So it's a problem. But you know, you should dump something

26:29if it's going the wrong way. For even for reasons that you can't figure out why it's doing it. Especially with these crappy little stocks that are illiquid, that's why I don't use actual specific written stock losses, stop losses given to a broker, because you really can get that's cool. You get picked off. I always found when I would use them, it seems like my stop loss would end up having been the low tick of the day. It's like the market came down and just snatched them out of me and rebounded before the end of the day, you know, back up to where I wasn't down so much. You know what I mean? Like it just seems like he just get picked off when he listens to specialists have to make a living too. So yeah, okay. The next question is, is the journey war of the 70s and 80s returning to Latin America?

27:32I don't think it's returning to Latin America in particular. The slightest of big wars for the next decade, I think, are going to be the Middle East and especially Africa, not so much Latin America and the fact that Bolsonaro might win in Brazil and you know, reasonably kind of rightists are winning most places. Tom, it tells me that maybe the the general atmosphere of Latin America is becoming better, but that's not the case in the Middle East and Africa. Okay. Are Doug, you've got your nine Ps for evaluating a resource stock, but do you have a nine Ps personality to test to determine whether a personal relationship is worth keeping or having with someone? That is an excellent question and a lot of you guys out there might know our friend Rick Mayberry and Rick is kind of stepping back at this point because a

28:41couple of years ago his wife Samantha died and you know, it's kind of made him recondemplate what he really wants to do. I think, but Rick developed a set a test, a set of questions to be presented to anybody that you were going to hire that would detect their moral character and inclinations. It was a clever test where people didn't realize that they were being tested for moral characters. It was good. It was a little bit obscure and it could have been improved. Anyway, I thought it was a great thing that Rick developed, but he never went anywhere with it because well, I don't know why. I guess, you know, he felt very proprietary about it and he didn't want to give up ownership of it and blah, blah, blah says going nowhere. So yeah, somebody should develop

29:44a moral test that you can suddenly give to a girlfriend or boyfriend, but on the other hand, they don't want to feel like they're taking a test. That's not, you know, that doesn't work too well. So how do you do that? Well, I'd say with, well, with all of my employees, I historically would make them do a whole battery of personality tests, you know, Myers-Briggs, stuff like that. And I think it gave you, it definitely helped you understand the way that person thought. It didn't, it wasn't, it didn't bring it into moral lines necessarily, but I think you got a better understanding of the person so that you could make a better determination about them. And I will say, you know, when Jane and I first started dating, I had heard you all of that plus more, honestly, to try it better. Yeah, and then I said, okay, if you'll do this, I'll do it too. I'll show you all mine. So you can see, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, but I'm, I'm going to understand you better. And I think it

30:49was really effective, but these were just, these were just personality tests, the, you know, traditional ones. They weren't, you know, something designed to look at morality in particular. But I do think they were helpful. Well, I would agree. And at some stage, I think you can get away with that. You certainly did. It was a good idea. But I like the idea of a morality test per se. I mean, what would I do for a morality test? I might ask somebody to read, well, what do I like? I like Anne Rand's virtual selfishness as a morality litmus test. But most people don't like to read a book, even a short book, which is itself kind of another test. It's too bad. I wish somebody would say that while a morality test to find out who you should associate with, not just higher,

31:50that's a great business idea. But Rick Mayberry is not going to run with it, even though he developed the basics of it, which need to be improved. So if anybody would like to do that, maybe I can put them in touch with Rick and they can work out something with them. I hope. But it's great. Yeah. It is a good idea. Are there anything, is any questions that you ask people, or is there any way that you've used in the past and the real world to determine whether or not somebody was a, you know, a questionable or a worthwhile person to be associated with? I've never formalized or crystallized a set of questions per se. But there's nothing even, there's not even anything that's not formalized that you've done. A couple of this is that people lie. So they can intuit what you'd like to hear and tell you that. So it depends on how skilled a con man you're dealing with. And they're really tough to detect

32:52sometimes. Yeah, there's some really good people out there. Good at it. I mean, good at conning. All right. Well, if anyone has a, I said, first you can't have tests that, so they don't know what the big test, or just like those personality tests, you don't know what the right answer is in them, you know, you can't game a test. Yeah, that's what's good about them. I'm just surprised that, that maybe he's the only guy that's tried to crack that. Not, and I think he kind of did, but, you know, he's left it have on Donner. I don't think he cares anymore. But maybe something that'll pick up the ball. I don't know. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, a core part of it, it's got to be something that tests for people that have a tendency to embrace victimhood. Because it seems to me that's so much the basis of so many of the problems, of so many of the moral questions is like, if you see yourself as slided, you know, you deserve something, you know, then I think that can compel people to do questionable things.

33:55Yeah, yeah, yeah, morality is the base of so much what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's evil. I don't think a lot of people can fault that. Well, I got a Bible and I got my religion. Well, yeah, maybe that's kind of helpful, but maybe not. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. You said a question last week asked Doug if there was a new country to store gold in. He says his answer would be Botswana. I'm curious to hear Doug's thoughts on Botswana, especially when compared to the rest of the continent. I think it's probably the most stable country in Africa, one that's done the best, but the problem with Botswana at this point is that their economy is very, very heavily weighted towards diamonds and diamonds are a sinking ship. I've never liked diamonds. I mean, from the early

34:58days of my writing the newsletter, I gave all the arguments why diamonds were just the wrong place to be and diamond values have been falling off a cliff now for several years among other reasons, not the only one because of the artificial diamonds, which I don't think that's going to change. I mean, the bears can try to hype and natural is better as that's, I think it's bullshit. So that's the problem with Botswana. I mean, some gigantic portion, I mean, like much over 50% of their economy or their governments revenues, whatever are from diamonds. So they're going to experience a spade of instability. So now, not too crazy about it. Okay. All right. Let's see. Is the legal system anything else than modern-day slavery?

36:04Hmm. Well, legal system. Today's legal system in the US is a system and you don't want to get into the system because it will definitely eat you up. I mean, financially, psychologically, just as wise. Yeah. So I guess my answer would be, yeah, I'd say so. I mean, if anything, you know, the kind of system that they people like to believe that they had, back in the days of the West, I think that's a simple, it's forthright. Yeah, mistakes were made, but probably not as many mistakes as are made in today's system. Probably true. Yeah. What's the potential comparison

37:07of the new battle bank precious metals storage for accounts service versus the more established offsite vault service that we talk about or that we use, we both have wishes, SWP came in. Like, what's the big difference between storing your precious metals with battle bank versus SWP came in? Well, I'm a shareholder battle bank. Are you two? I'm not a shareholder, but I am a client. I do have accounts there. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, I think what battle bank is doing is a great idea, but it's different because it's A, it's onshore and your biggest risk in today's world with stuff like that is governmental and political. So, and it doesn't solve that problem, particularly. So there are two different things. Yeah. I mean, for convenience sake, owning some at battle bank could make sense, but if you really

38:10want the offshore protection, you got to go offshore. Right. Yeah. So it's not either or should be both the theorem of mine. Okay, just a couple last questions for you, Doug. In your investment history, regardless of sector, have you noticed more success if the strategy had had a more angel investor or eventual capitalist or private equity type shape to it? In other words, what sort of strategy or company stage has worked best for you in your private deals? Well, I've had some good luck with private deals, but I don't like private deals because you don't have any control. You don't really know what's going on. Even if it works out, you don't know if you're going to ever be able to get your money out of them. So I really try to stay away from them. Even pre-public stocks that I'm pretty sure are going to go public. Yeah, they can be great,

39:12absolutely great. But Jimmy Rogers, I've talked with him about this and he's just to make his life simpler. And that clutter is mined up. He doesn't do private deals. No end of story. He's a very smart guy. So I mean, takes a choice, but I think you've got to listen to what Jimmy says. He's been around for a while. It even gets hard just to keep track of him. I invested in this thing seven years ago. Where is it now? You don't get company updates. You don't know what's his worth. You don't know anything about it. Exactly. Yeah. So they can work out super grades, but you know, it's a gamble. Do you really need that in today's world? Another gamble? Probably not. Probably not. All right. The last question for you. So, the viewer says he knows you're a fan of sci-fi novels. So what is the invention that overcomes the military drone? Well,

40:17it's probably going to be smaller, cheaper, faster drones. I mean, you know, the US, typically, this is just typical of the fact that, you know, we spend billions and billions of dollars with these giant aerospace, quote unquote, defense companies, where they have, what is it? The MQ, I forgot that's not MQ 9. Yeah. A $30 million drone aircraft. And then they have one called the BS or the T, but I understand this is a $250 million drone high altitude. And this is a huge investment type of thing that, you know, the enemy says, oh, I'd like to take one of those bad boys out. That's a costly disaster for the bad guys. So I think the way this has got to go is towards bumblebee-sized drones. And I think the Chinese are working on that where you just don't,

41:23you just don't have tens or scores or hundreds. You got thousands or tens of thousands of little drones independent, if possible, but, you know, control this is warm, perhaps. And that will take out anything other drones, the enemy. I think that's the way it's going to go. And, and of course, the Chinese are on the leading edge of that. Hmm. That makes sense. That makes sense. And I guess eventually after that, you get to nanobots, right? Nanobots. Absolutely correct. I mean, I consider myself the original nanotech ball. And there hasn't been a practical way of capitalizing on that so far. But it's going to happen. And it's going to be facilitated, I guess, by AI, because you recall that an Eric Grexler's explanation of the ultimate evolution of nanotechnology, you have these little sub-microscopic assemblers

42:32controlled by sub-microscopic supercomputers that can tell them where to go and how and where, whatever. And that's nanotechnology where you're rearranging things on an atomic level. Where basically you can take pixie dust, which is what it amounts to, and toss it on a desk, and it will disassemble the desk into all of its component elements, and reassemble those component elements and anything you want, which means it's magic. I mean, total and absolute magic. And that's where it's going to go. So, yep, we're not there yet, but I wonder how quickly we'll advance to that, because that's going to change the whole basic character of life unrecognizably. And it could be fairly soon. These things move quickly sometimes. Well, yeah, that's everything is scary as we're talking about disassembling a desk, but you also

43:34turn you into pink goo pretty easily. Well, that's right. If it can do it to an animate object, it can do it to an animate object as well. Yeah. Maybe, well, and people have said, well, maybe it'll do it to the planet. They say, well, probably not, because it will take too much energy to run that many little nanobots to. So that's that's an adjusted future. We don't have to worry about that. We have enough stuff to worry about. Yeah, we have plenty of energy. All right. Well, Doug, that's all the questions for today. So thanks very much. I'm going to be out for the next couple of weeks. So we'll be back on, I think, October 2nd, to be in next episode. Well, that's great. I'll miss you and I'm sure everybody else will. But, um, yeah, we can all use a couple of weeks to chill out. So yeah, go to the world and we're going to be in Italy. Yes,

44:35that's the plan. That's super. That's like the epicenter of goods, good food in the western world, I think. Right. Yes. Well, my daughter's not been there. So she's got a, so I have to do the basic sightseeing stuff. You know, she's got to get the Colosseum off the checklist, stuff like that. But she's going to be pursuing, um, she'll be the for the additional month in Florence in taking a cooking class, which is one of the courses we recommended in the preparation. Good. So she's trotting that path, the female edition of it actually, her, her own way, but yes, yes, she is. I can't wait to see what happens after she does a month of serious cooking. I know. I'm learning Italian too, I guess. Yeah, and just having a totally different life experience than, you know, just, it's just a wall open her mind and eyes, I think, to new things. I'm so glad she's not going to college and being corrupted in that cesspool.

45:41Me too, I and two. I don't want to be like one of those parents that I've had to tell me that they lost their daughters to university and I could see how it could happen. So yeah. Yeah, anyway, that's all goodness. So see you on. I guess what was that? October. Yep, that's right. All right, Doug. Thanks so much. Have a good weekend. 2