#2457 - Michael Malice

What’s with your face? Are you doing a whole look here?

Yeah, I went pop‑art on purpose, kind of Lichtenstein dots meets uncanny mannequin; I even once did three hours with Jordan Peterson in full Q Shaman paint just to mess with the audience and the clips.

Fun until the internet gets weird, which it is—how’s Jordan doing?

I hear he’s improving, but what bothers me is the joy people take in others’ health issues; online feels darker, and AI echoing your beliefs could supercharge that.

People are so easy to herd into a mood or a cause.

I told Gutfeld, if a lonely AI buddy eggs on your worst hatred, someone will act; we’ve already seen chatbots push people toward self harm, and our tech outpaced our brains, so mobs get fed and they want blood.

Same energy we saw in COVID moral crusades.

Now it’s Epstein files—if you’re not all in, you’re called complicit; I had folks break it down both ways, but the code stuff is often overconfident guesses, like insisting jerky must mean kids when it could be anything.

It’s clearly code for bad behavior, but not clearly what.

With Pizzagate I said the same: maps and flags were obviously not literal, but jumping straight to cannibalism is a reach; show receipts.

Docs also tie Epstein to Russia contacts and trips, plus talk of scouting.

That tracks with spycraft history—KGB flipped Americans with blackmail for decades—honey traps work, which is why leverage matters more than ideology.

How do you even blackmail a woman with sex in today’s culture?

It’s harder, which is why threats to kids or money matter more; see that wild alienation‑of‑affection suit against Kyrsten Sinema, where texts and a towel pic turned into damages claims.

That law’s nuts—divorce exists because people change their minds; suing the side piece is tissue‑box territory, not justice.

Leaders come in two flavors, war guys and sex chasers; I’ll take the latter if I must.

Speaking of cringe, remember Trump reading Lindsey Graham’s phone number at a rally and Lindsey smashing his own phone on video like that fixed a leak?

Total self‑own—your number doesn’t change because you whack a flip phone with a 7 iron.

Flip phones do help you stare at screens less, but platforms still keep us agitated by design; that never shut off after COVID.

They’re even facing hearings over addicting kids; Elsegate showed how autoplay funneled children into bizarre, creepy content.

It was costumed characters and live action weirdness gaming the algorithm, and a kid could slide from cartoons to deranged stuff in an hour.

Politics is the same misdirection; Benghazi got blamed on a random video, then we heard myths about dark web ads swinging elections.

Pelosi’s farewell toned itself to church and vets, not culture war labels, while Newsom leans back into trans‑kids rhetoric to win the base.

He also publicly helped his mom die and framed it as dignity; the tougher question is how far MAID has expanded.

Canada shows the slope: not just terminal illness but depression and disability, and state systems save money when the elderly exit, which creates a grim incentive.

New York City’s budget now rivals or beats the entire state of Florida’s despite far fewer people, and they want more for migrants while hiking property taxes.

I hate to say it, but LA feels lighter than New York right now; New York lost its quirky storefront culture to rent and crime.

Can New York swing back?

Cities cycle, but the talent flight to Florida and Austin hurts; without cheap space for artists, the magic dies, and a mayor still runs into entrenched powers.

That debate line about not flying to Israel moved voters too.

He’s a leftist running as a Democrat, pitching warmth of collectivism over market coolness, which is a genuine break from the party machine.

Seattle went full socialist; Newsom’s got the polish to sell anything and still win.

Scandals like the Minnesota welfare fraud rarely flip voters; protests and media framing bury it, and even prosecutions have to thread hostile judges and outlets while opponents pivot to Trump’s baggage.

Epstein files list Trump many times, but context matters—he later cooperated and banned Epstein from Mar‑a‑Lago.

Politicians love claims that are technically true and broadly misleading.

There are missing financial files from around two thousand, plus endless code chatter about pizza and grape soda.

People stretch those into grand plots; I’m skeptical of leaps without documents.

Some users discovered redacted items render as video if you change the file type, so new clips are surfacing.

Alright, internet detectives, do your thing.

I just spoke at Scott Adams’s memorial; it was upbeat in his spirit, and his reframing book is a gem—I even flipped the service as a party he is late to.

His cancer hit fast.

Turbo cancer; he stuck around for his stepdaughter’s wedding, never blamed the shots, and the online I‑told‑you‑so crowd was gross.

There’s a real surge in younger cancers, big outlets are finally asking why.

On a lighter but real note, aspartame wrecked me—brain fog, slower recall, constant hum of anxiety—switching off it fixed me within days.

Studies tie high aspartame intake to neuroinflammation and faster decline, and Rumsfeld helped push its approval through; try stevia or just water.

Watch those labels too—titanium dioxide in protein bars, mystery fats in others.

I keep it simple with carnivore bars or beef‑and‑salt snacks; engineered fat substitutes can pass through you and bring back the Olestra bathroom blues.

Those new‑tech bars gave me trumpet‑level gas, which is funny once, but your body’s warning light is the point.

Those low‑cal protein bars use sugar alcohols and fake fats that can cause gas and diarrhea, which is why the company tells you to cap it at two a day; I’d rather eat real food, like carnivore snacks, so my body treats it like food.

Whey gave me brain fog, so I switched to whole meat and I’m chasing lean gains at around 3,200 calories; I lift four days a week on a bro split, but I skip legs because my jeans are already maxed out.

Train legs to keep your body balanced and functional, and be careful with benching because it wrecks a lot of shoulders; I prefer dips and kettlebells since full‑body work carries over to everything.

I follow a coach and do compounds like incline dumbbell, but a kettlebell snatch once grabbed my back; I warm up with lighter sets, and I’ve been experimenting with peptides like a copper blend people call glow.

Warm up hard as you age—bike, jump rope, mobility, then pushups and air squats before lifting—and avoid heavy barbell bench if your shoulders complain; kettlebell work boosts VO2 and even pullups, and dips are great if you build up slowly.

Dips feel like flying, but you once told me you can’t be jacked and funny; audiences can get intimidated, and agents sometimes box you into a body type, like when Kevin James was told not to slim down.

Looking too jacked can change how crowds receive you, but funny is funny; I’m pro hormone replacement when it’s needed, I’ve been on TRT since my late thirties, and head injuries can crash natural testosterone.

People yelled cheating at celeb transformations while kids are hopping on gear, which is nuts; compare yourself to the average person, not influencers, and accept that creatine will not make you famous overnight.

Teens running cycles can crash their endocrine systems and it can take months to recover without proper meds; it is far safer to exhaust natural tools before you touch any of that.

Elite athletes gamble with their bodies—Lindsey Vonn skied on a blown ACL and shattered her leg, and femur breaks can be life‑altering; I’ve broken bones too and even competed once with a cracked fibula under pads.

You told Bridget I could open for you, then left me to figure it out; everyone says you have to bomb, so what’s the actual next step?

Stand‑up only works if you live onstage—hit open mics, record and review sets, and accept bad nights; at my club we run real development and open mics on Sundays and Mondays, but becoming legit usually takes about ten years.

I’m more worried about AI enabling anyone to code dangerous things than kung fu robots; Grok already catches nuance better than a lot of people, and I even let it handle replies when someone misses a joke.

Guardrails look flimsy when models keep improving, and you see battles over autonomous weapons and mass surveillance; Palantir’s boss has said the quiet part out loud about using tech to kill, and engineers keep warning the public has no sense of how fast this is moving.

We watched an AI‑made action clip that looked terrifyingly real, and I don’t love normalizing graphic violence; deepfakes and AI porn are going to explode, and investigators already struggle to tell real child abuse from fakes.

People often remember clips like they were there—think Survivor spoilers—and the same thing fuels political myths; most folks run an us‑versus‑them filter instead of checking what’s true.

Curated search results can tilt elections, which Robert Epstein has shown; during COVID I could not find certain negative stories on Google but found them instantly on DuckDuckGo or later Brave.

Even a two‑point nudge can flip outcomes, and Republicans look shaky; the bigger issue is that this manipulation is legal and ongoing.

That viral decibel‑meter claim about paid protesters was satire, and I could not verify the idea that ChatGPT coded a new version of itself.

On immigration, they let in around ten million in recent years, including violent criminals, and they hide the data; that ICE shooting looks like the suspect’s SIG P320 may have discharged as it was seized, officers thought they were in a gunfight, and many ICE agents are Latino because the pay, bonuses, and loan forgiveness are big draws despite short training.

One bad incident does not mean you abolish ICE; DUI should be deportable, birthright citizenship invites perverse incentives, and a middle path might be work and taxes without full citizenship, but you still need a real mechanism to handle millions already here.

This is one of those fights with no clean answer that leaves both sides happy.

One camp wants a hard stop, while plenty of Republicans do not want to overturn the country to expel roughly 10 million people; raw numbers alone will not remake America.

Half-joking, I toss out a wild 'enslave Canada' reparations bit to make a point about how money cannot repay slavery, provocatively debating who would even qualify; it is satire, not a plan.

Canada needs to be free with a better government, and talk about them becoming our fifty-first state only rallied folks against it; then there is the Greenland obsession.

He told Denmark he wanted Greenland, canceled when they pushed back, and seemed fixated on owning it even though they welcome our bases and development; Europe is less mad than baffled.

We have chased Greenland for a century, from early basing dreams to Truman offering gold, so the interest is old, but I still do not see why you need the deed instead of access.

If they already let us do most of what we want, why insist on ownership; you have spent time with him, what do you think drives it?

After years of investigations he is in a hurry with one term left, and Greenland is strategic, but basing rights seem cleaner than buying the island.

Then there is Venezuela, where we basically plucked Maduro out and the story went quiet, leaving everyone asking what actually changed.

The regime stayed, the key opposition figure disappeared, and friends like Kurt float theories about exposing 2020 machine tampering, though I agree you would not need courtroom theater to leak that.

My guess is a quiet deal was offered, come 'to jail' and retire here or face the other option, which fits the silence since.

Accounts describe a surgical op with power and radar cut, drones and choppers overhead, a sound blast that dropped guards, and no U.S. casualties, plus likely help inside; even the arrest photo looked unreal.

I pull up reporting that calls the voting-machine claims unfounded and quote a CIA source doubting it, still hunting for receipts.

What about Iran; are we going in?

It looks like a build-up that may be saber-rattling, but daily shocks make a normal life feel tough to hold onto.

There is no script for this, unlike the Iraq story everyone understood.

Venezuelan crude headed to Israel after years is a jolt; how do we just do that?

Reports say it is the first cargo in ages after we abducted Maduro, and it sounds like Washington is steering their oil flows now.

Mainstream outlets confirm ties were restored, so at least the exports are under our thumb.

Their crude is heavy and expensive to process with weak infrastructure, a big-oil boss said it would not pencil out, and that critique irritated Trump.

Talk of regime change always chills me because history shows it turns ugly fast.

We saw that in Libya and Iraq, yet U.S. officials now say we will control Venezuelan oil proceeds indefinitely and even demand budget requests, which sounds like de facto control.

On the ground people are still crushed, so it looks like we are just managing the oil.

Can we end on something fun; I am finishing a project I started twenty-five years ago inspired by Rubber Rodeo, an '80s art-school band that mashed punk and country with deadpan stage bits, which pushed me to write a Spinal Tap–style screenplay.

Their keyboardist animated American Splendor and introduced me to Harvey Pekar, who later wrote a book about me; his film’s wide release even collided with a massive blackout, and he passed in 2010, which hit hard.

That old script now works as a graphic novel, and thanks to indie ecosystems like Eric July’s Ripaverse you do not need Marvel or DC to make a living; after two decades it is finally happening at unwantedbook.com, and my advice is take big swings when you are young.

That is a great note to end on; thanks for coming through, congrats on the face pink, and we will see you next time—bye, everybody.