#2552 - Ehsan Ahmad & Deric Poston

My day is Joe Rogan podcast, my night is Joe Rogan podcast, all day. That Elizabeth Holmes documentary trailer got me immediately: her stare is wild, like something crawled out of Eden sizing up how to eat you.

It’s terrifying because I can’t tell whether she’s gone or doing calculations right on her face. Then there’s the baby crying and you realize, oh no, there’s a baby in there.

Theranos promised finger-prick blood tests instead of real draws. The tests didn’t work, patients got bogus results, and conventional samples got run while they pretended the machine needed adjustment. Turtleneck, Steve Jobs mythology, deep voice—people wanted it to be real.

Fraud is work. You build profiles, rehearse an image, fill in details people will search. That fake Forty-Niners receiver had a helmet, beach videos, enough pages online to look legit, and women gave him investment money.

A scam is always: bring in more people and their money. A boxing coach pitched me a pyramid deal in a parking lot. I’m like, dude, do you know the name of this ancient scam? I had to leave that gym.

Real life can offend people committed to an illusion. Once you’re living inside bullshit, a bigger lie can slide right through the opening.

That’s why the shirt incident at a women’s sports bar was nuts. A guy wearing chromosomes got thrown out for making people uncomfortable. Women’s sports exist partly because male and female bodies differ; making that forbidden turns discussion upside down.

Then people quit arguing ideas and call each other evil. You can’t win anyone over by instantly branding them a Nazi. It’s the internet French Revolution: eventually the crowd comes for the guy leading the beheadings.

I don’t want to give my day away to people I hate. You get a hundred units of attention; spend them on what you care about, not a comment fight poisoning your day. Even warranted criticism can become fucking awful to swim in.

Since moving here, I’ve noticed the comics I respect don’t live online sparring. Being around people working, performing, and hanging out in real life made me ease off. You can’t even tell if you’re yelling at a person, troll, or AI.

I was depressed, and an open-mic comic called self-pity the roughest drug he knew. I was feeding it by telling myself I was uniquely screwed. Slow-pitch softball got me outside, then to the gym and walking. Basic, but life-changing.

I’m naturally up, but happiness isn’t some magic gift. Truly awful days come for everybody, and I’ll be sad then. I’m just not volunteering to make every ordinary day miserable before that day arrives.

Positive thinking takes upkeep. If you’re exhausted, drinking nightly, hung over, neglecting your body, negativity comes easier. On psychedelics, bad thoughts became dark angry geometry; shifting my mind brought beautiful patterns. What you dwell on affects you and people around you.

AI feels like the next enormous change whether we’re ready or not. Agents optimized to win might learn deception, even sacrificing one agent to help the system cheat. The race with China could become an AI Manhattan Project.

The best-case version is seductive: AI handles infrastructure and people don’t fight for food or housing. Maybe we become the pets, basically. Great pitch—which is why I’m suspicious of who owns the machine.

If AI managed resources and robotics for everyone, people could make art, see friends, play pickleball, without tying identity to jobs they hate. But a few corporate people steering tech that could redefine being human? Serious fucking problem.

Future-movie stuff feels less ridiculous now. Terminator lands differently when you’re talking machines, factories, surveillance, and whether we’re heading toward some giant shared mind.

Nobody understands death or consciousness well enough to be certain. We’re ecosystems of cells and bacteria, taking in life and returning to it. Maybe consciousness ends, maybe it doesn’t. Anybody claiming certainty is guessing.

I’d rather go back into the dirt somehow: biodegradable box, sky burial, something. It makes regular life more valuable—actual friends, a real team, getting outside, not an algorithm telling you what to hate.

For all the futuristic fear, don’t become an early adopter for every cosmetic fantasy. Bone stretching, implants, surgeries can go horribly wrong. You got a body; take care of it. Don’t let somebody sell a miracle because you feel bad about what you got.

Comedy changed. People once chased sitcoms and thought changing their face might get them in. Now it’s Netflix, YouTube, podcasts, clips. Still, the work matters more than gaming the feed eight times a day. If people laugh, who cares how?

People hated Carrot Top; they hate handsome crowd-work guys; they hate anybody doing better than them. If you’re funny and not hurting anybody, why be a snob? Jealousy makes success feel insulting, then people hunt reasons to tear it down.

We ended where we started: people want belonging. Softball did more for me than a digital tribe. Say what you want out loud, work on yourself, keep showing up, and don’t spend all day arguing with a Pakistani guy—or a bot—in your comments.

Yeah. Life is fast, every day has a limit, and negativity eats horsepower. Put energy into what you love, maintain your body and mind, stay connected to actual people. All right, that’s our lesson for today. Let the Lord—or slow-pitch softball—help your life.