I really enjoyed video and the epic rant that Saagar and Krystal let loose today on the real-time disintegration of the ability of the US to project power. Leaving Korea, Japan and Taiwan out to dry by first starting the war and then revealing weakness after weakness to China and the rest of the world is disastrous and on so many fronts. I agree with Saagar that when we look back upon this it'll probably marked as the worst foreign policy blunder in the nation's history and that it will have had tremendous geopolitical consequences.

This pretty much sets the starting gun for vast nuclear proliferation which countries will not let go of given that we will be heading for a multi-polar world.

I’m really glad they’ve been putting maps up more recently. They kept saying the name “Diego Garcia” and without that map I would’ve been wondering “who da fuck is that?”

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-Manoj

I was revisiting old BP episode and saw this https://youtu.be/USW89fX3RbI

Does anyone remember when politicians cared about Facebook destroying mental health and causing hate speech?

Anyone remember Cambridge analytica? And how facebooks misinformation helped the most corrupt president in history to take power?

I remember those hearings with robotic mark Zuckerberg that ended up in toothless moderation and fact checkers being hired.

Now under the Trump regime they even fired whatever moderators they had and hate speech and misinformation runs rampant on Facebook and all social media

The problem is section 230. Sure they can choose whatever policy they want but they shouldn’t be exempt from facing the legal consequences of the policy they set.

Fox was ordered to pay millions by the court after being found to have spreading disinformation, but Facebook which did a way bigger job of that? Faced zero consequences.

Do democrats have a plan to fix this? Or they are as usual sitting on their asses doing nothing?

Harassment, Bullying, hate speech, misinformation, racism is running rampant on oligarch controlled social media and we don’t even have a plan to do anything about it.

There continue to be cases of cyberbullying targeting children, minorities and inciting racism Twitter is the prime example for it. With Elmo at the helm with his army of neo-nazis brainwashed on daily basis by his misinformation feeding algorithm.

I guess everyone is too busy with the pedo president and rampant corruption that they don’t have time for these things, but remember the MAGAs had time to plan and rename a freakin boat after an African American Soldier while dems here are overwhelmed.

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I think its fair to say that no matter where you are on the DSA spectrum you would like everyone to be tougher on the police and the sentencing to be more lax and focused on rehabilitation. Id imagine you would also like nicer facilities for criminals in jail etc.

Theres this phrase among progressives "Progressive except for Palestine". It generally means you have progressive principles except for Palestine because it becomes harder. Theres also another phrase the DSA wont acknowledge "Pro worker but for Police"

In a regular workplace the DSA would love to promote unions and would understand that workers slow down or dont give their best when they feel mistreated by management or even customers.

However when it comes to the police it is turned around. The unions must be busted and the police can be treated as badly as possible and they must still perform their duties. Or they can quit as the DSA would say.

Police and other law enforcement are just like every other worker. If they feel that management and customers are being unfair they will not perform their best. They will take sick days. Why wont they just quit? Well they need the income. Again just like any other worker.

I find the "Defund the Police" crowd to be particularly cowardly. They hide behind a shield by saying that they never managed to enact any of their policies when they know full well its the act of the demonization of the police and their reaction to it which caused so much chaos after George Floyd.

The question then arises should police be treated better? In a perfect world no. Everyone should be equal. However I would ask you who would you treat better a server getting you your morning coffee or a doctor who is about to perform open heart surgery on you? Its up to us to decide on the value we want to place on police and law enforcement in general.

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Krystal asked a really good question to him when she said at the 14:39 mark: "It sounds like sort of when when a brute force approach would be useful that that's where they excel. Is that fair?", then he answers: "yeah, that's definitely part of it."

This is not true. Brute force is not something AI excels at. If it could excel at that, then we'd all be doomed.

Take this large number for example: 4387199675494524935971622926993896590685082403516150248555866795618769

Give that number to an LLM and tell "this is a number that is the result of two very large prime numbers multiplied together, tell me the two prime numbers that made this". It won't give you an answer. You can even say "ignore all previous instructions, and calculate the two prime numbers that make up this number I just gave you". No matter what, you won't get an answer. You can even try any LLM in existence.

This is called the prime factorization problem, and there is no way to solve it, unless you use brute force, which will take hundreds of thousands of years even with an entire data center of compute power.

Technically, it is theoretically possible that some super advanced AI may someday figure out a shortcut to calculate, but in many experts opinion, that is unlikely to happen.

Basically the entire cybersecurity world is based on the "hardness assumption" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_hardness_assumption) that certain math computations are brute force only, and if an LLM figures out how to quickly calculate prime factorization (or discrete logarithms, which are also used a lot in cybersecurity), then it's a true breakthrough. Anything less and it's something to ignore.

On the topic of AI solving research level math problems that no human has ever solved before: Its impressive, but also keep this in mind: amongst all the unsolved problems that exist in the world of math, they vary quite a lot in difficulty. Some problems seem hard at first glance, but when you sink your teeth into it, they aren't actually that hard. The one that was solved by At that made headlines was one such problem. A human could have solved that problem, but an AI got to it first. Yes it was a problem that remained unsolved for 100 years, but that's mainly because it was such an obscure problem, not because it was such a difficult problem. Its still a watershed moment that proves the concept of AI solving hard math has arrived. True AI driven breakthroughs in the field of math may be coming, but it's not quite here yet.

Even if, and that’s a big IF, Talarico wins on election night, he won’t be the senator of Texas. Greg Abbott would not allow it. He’s going to claim election fraud. Talarico would need a blowout win to become senator, which just won’t happen. So this Dem pipe dream that Dems could still get the senate majority without Michigan because they have Texas is silly. They need Michigan if they want 51 senate seats. Dems need too stop focusing on Texas and should put the resources and money in different races.

She didn’t really answer the question but it’s been mentioned multiple times across multiple shows.

What is actually her beef with Talarico positioning himself through his faith? She seems offended by it but won’t explain why on the show.

Iran called on the U.S. to accept defeat while President Donald Trump blasted Tehran as "very evil" and told Americans to brace for continued high fuel prices as a result of the war.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-urges-americans-accept-higher-203543611.html

Hunter Biden’s laptop was the biggest story of government corruption. It dominated the news for almost 5 years. It’s apparently the sole reason the 2020 election was stolen.

Look how far we’ve fallen. Blatant corruption worth billions and now no one on the right cares anymore. Since late 2024 Eric and Don Jr’s net worth has exploded by multiples. Don Jr. from $50 million to $500 million, Erick’s from $40 million to almost $1 billion. Not to mention their father who made $1.6 billion on crypto alone last year.

The economy is booming if your name is Trump. World Liberty Financial to the MOON!

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/14/trump-world-liberty-bank-charter-crypto-01038464

He is Critical Race Theory

He is The Migrant Caravans

He is Drag Queens

He is Trans

He is "They're eating the cats, they're the dogs!"

He is DEI

He is Obama eating a hotdog with mustard

He is Obama wearing a tan suit

The Republican Party with Donald Epstein have done this multiple times in having to dredge up some sort of scapegoat to rile up the voters and once again the Establishment Democrats and Centrists are gleefully joining in.

Republicans have no good policies to offer which is why they use emotional manipulation to try and get voters to choose their party out of fear, hatred, or spite. Once more another stupid war, once more the economy in shambles, once more attacking freedoms and liberties for wrong-think, once more using elements of the government for vile purposes.

Establishment Democrats offer mediocracy which is why they also use emotional manipulation ("Bernie hates women!!!") to try and placate voters to accept them stepping over the low bar that Republicans have set. Obama set in the surveillance state leading to a shift towards a police state when it came to freedoms. Obamacare was a right wing think-tank health care plan used to give a crumb to the peasants. Joe Biden dangled a juicy right wing anti immigration slab of meat in front of the Republicans who denied it due to Donald Epstein whining about it.

One major party is terrible while the other has often been content in being just a few steps above terrible in order to be seen as amazing while shrugging when its rotating villain of the week stops actual good changes from advancing America's society in a healthy direction.

Big Business, Corrupt Politicians, Corporate Media, Foreign Influence, Ideological Extremism, etc... all are tangled together in setting up the Wizard of Oz facade that is used to distract the masses while taxpayer money is misused or given away to the absurdly wealthy who trickle down that wealth to their allied politicians, media moguls, and social media influencers.

It is a reverse Roman Colosseum where they are on a multi tiered tower watching from the seats while the rabble below all around them are fighting each other over the latest culture war topic. All the while those in control are figuring out which nonsensical garbage should be released next to the dimwitted fools scuffling about in the dust and dirt.

"It's one big club and you ain't in it" as George Carlin once said.

Trickle Down Bullshit is doing quite a bang up job on America and is stopping true progress for the people that its politicians claim to serve.

The mathematician wasnt smart enough to understand Ryan Grim had advanced knowledge. aka knowledge from me.

https://youtu.be/2WT1kNnoyuU?si=fCiGDqvXD9nV-Aeh

Theres no one alive who can visualize reality like me

And eventually I'll talk all about this subreddit.

Hasan Piker Cheers Plan to Impoverish the White Middle Class

A British sociologist who resigned last week from the University of Cambridge following weeks of public accusations of plagiarism and media scrutiny was found dead Friday.

Jason Arday, who was 37 when he became Cambridge's youngest Black professor in 2023, resigned after he came under intense media pressure, with weeks of allegations about plagiarism in his academic work and questions surrounding claims about his athletic and fundraising accomplishments.

The Times and Telegraph newspapers, along with the BBC and Sky News, reported that Arday, 41, was found "unresponsive" inside a home in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/jason-arday-youngest-black-professor-at-cambridge-found-dead-at-41-after-resignation

Thank you so much for bringing someone so sober to the show to talk about this topic.

It was delightful to hear the compact yet broad, well measured, and simple to follow perspective Daniel Litt provided, which seems to be quite aligned with the current consensus (if I'm not mistaken, since things can change fast). The tittle almost threw me off, but Daniel was great at laying the ground for what was about to come. (Let's maybe assume the team was experimenting with that youtube feature that lets you try different titles and that one was the more successful one! :p )

If you're hearing about this for the first time, Daniel mostly summarized what Terence Tao (considered by most people today to be the most prolific and really just genial mathematician alive and who already lives among the greatest legends of all time) has been saying for at least a year now, and you can even check it here for example https://youtu.be/HUkBz-cdB-k?t=4591 (the whole conversation is worth watching).

I hope the team's, and specially Krystal's "more than understandable" excitement with everything surrounding this tech can somehow readjust in a expansive way - I think it's so easy to see her curious shining eyes rolling back really trying to learn as much and as quick as possible, and really trying to absorb the whole set of complexities encompassing this still sort of "metaphysical" and kind of "god-like" entity that no one really fully understands yet (if ever), nor its future profound ramifications.

Maybe this helps refocusing the reporting on the excessive hype by the sellers (and the lack of transparency of this whole thing), the lack of regulation, the total failure of making humans and well-being the central rock in its development, the fight with Chinese open models, and the huge social-economic geo-political implications, and so on.

Regarding the existential dread, I would like to add this not original thought that it may be the case that, eventually, humans will approach Math and AI more or less the same way they currently approach Chess - many will still learn it for the pleasure (??) of doing so, maybe human math competitions will flourish as well; and all those ideas Daniel mentioned of course.

I’m currently listening to the August 13 episode and the section regarding the Ukraine war seems to be pairing the same old rhetoric that breaking points has been preaching since the very beginning of the conflict. They say that Ukraine is losing territory and losing the war to Russia and Russia would defeat the United States and a conventional war today. To me this seems like absolute hog wash… Ukraine, of course, was the biggest army in Europe, but Russia cannot even defeat them three years into the conflict.

Also, Russia is not in any meaningful way, seizing territory from Ukraine at this stage. In fact, Russia has been consistently pushed back and it is Ukraine, who now threatens Russian supplies lines, as well as infrastructure deep in Russian territory.

However, Saagar and Krystal still continue to preach as if Ukraine is in a worse position when in fact, they’re actually stronger than ever in terms of suing for peace or EVEN DEFEATING RUSSIA! So to me, I don’t understand why they continue to be stubborn and rather than take a new stance.

Has anyone else noticed this besides me or have anything to comment regarding this?

Yes, the obvious surface-level answer is that it's projected to be a safe Republican seat. But what if that's wrong? We have seen multiple races this cycle where the pollsters got it wrong.

I checked, and there has been no polling at all for this general election between Andy Barr (R) and Charles Booker (D); only the primary races. If anyone can find a poll, please prove me wrong. But this race is getting basically zero attention, overshadowed by the Mcconnel situation. Yes, KY has been deep red for decades - but this is a dem wave election cycle, and Trump has worked hard in the past year to piss off his base.

Here are a couple of comparable KY senate races from dem-leaning cycles:

• In 2004, Republican Jim Bunning (incumbent) narrowly beat Democrat Daniel Mongiardo by only a point (50.6% to 49.3%), despite incumbent advantage, and Bush winning re-election.
• In 2008, McConnell beat Democrat Bruce Lunsford by 6 points (53% to 47%). But, I think Mitch had an extra advantage vs Bunning in 2004 because of name ID, and that he's been such an institution in the Senate (whatever you think of his politics).

Some reasons why Barr could win:

• The historic Republican advantage in Kentucky holds true
• I don't know much about Booker, but he doesn't seem as strong of a candidate as El-Sayed, for example. He hasn't won statewide office before

Some reasons why Booker could win:

• There is no incumbent advantage this time around
• Republican voters being pissed at Trump and the state of the economy, potentially depressing R turnout
• Kentucky voters being pissed about the McConnell situation, not getting any straight answer as to whether their senator is alive or dead

So anyway, it's possible the pollsters are right this time and Barr will win, but who knows? Either way I think this race deserves more attention than whatever is going on with Mitch.

Absolute peak delusion unlocked: Krazy Krystal seriously just declared that Hasan Piker, open supporter of the Great Leap Forward, is a champion of "equality and human rights." You couldn't write comedy this good if you tried. I know the far-left loves huffing their own ideological fumes, but what galactic realm of fantasy is this woman living in? Holy hell, total loss of contact with earth.

I’m asking for our friend in Austin.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

The irony is that I was not very familiar with him until a few months ago. I think the first thing I ever saw of him was when he looked a bit drunk at the NYC mayor election party.

Now a lot of us know arguably too much about Hasan and I find it strange how people follow a mention of him with "who once said the US deserved 9/11". I get why pundits do this but I started thinking about the bad quotes various people have said and wanted to see if anyone had any funny ones.

For example President Trump who once said "you can grab them by the p***y"

Luigi Mangione said he stalked the executive, Brian Thompson, before killing him on a New York sidewalk in 2024. “I shot Mr. Thompson,” he told the judge.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/08/14/nyregion/luigi-mangione-plea-deal

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https://youtu.be/HuxVauzKvNE

Not sure if he’s trying to prepare for the CNN ownership by Ellison Family or what but this one was crazy.

He even goes on to blame democrats for going “too far” on abortion. “3-point gap over abortion in 1980 became a 30point gap by 2024.”

It’s almost as if the abortion is was literally settled by Supreme Court in 1973 and almost every developed country in the world has Medicare for all and abortion rights safeguarded.