Podbit · Modern Wisdom
California's CPUC requires large utilities to direct up to $633 million in contracts to state-certified LGBT-owned businesses. Qualifying requires letters from personal contacts on company letterhead attesting to your homosexuality — and falsely claiming the certification carries up to a year in jail.
Where this was said
At 27:24 · chapter starts 17:43
George introduces Montaigne's lists — the philosopher's private collection of culturally strange practices across history (killing your father at a certain age, grinding the dead into wine at funerals, judging weddings by how many of the groom's friends slept with the bride) — as a tool for reminding himself that all norms are arbitrary. [1] — George Mack "Normal person: 17 tsp sugar/day: George Mack's 'modern normal' list includes consuming 17 teaspoons of sugar per day, $104,755 in debt, bei…" 21:02 He then delivers a modern update, cataloguing the current Western 'normal' as 17 teaspoons of sugar daily, $104,755 in debt, 30 pounds overweight, 22.3 hours spent indoors, and 20 years of screen time across a lifetime. Chris adds the beard-wearer Joseph Parker who was imprisoned in 1830s Massachusetts for refusing to shave. The conversation shifts to which Asian trends actually migrate West: live shopping hasn't crossed over despite years of predictions, while South Korea's 'dopamine websites' — where users browse food menus they can't actually order from — represent a more intriguing behavioural export. Japan's enforced subway silence, where even whispering is taboo, is offered as a reminder of how much of identity is just postcode.
George Mack reimagines Montaigne's famous collection of bizarre cultural norms — applied to modern life. The result: 17 teaspoons of sugar daily, $104K in debt, 30 pounds overweight, less than 10 minutes of silence a day, and 20 years of life spent on TV and social media. This is 'normal.'
George Mack's 'modern normal' list includes consuming 17 teaspoons of sugar per day, $104,755 in debt, being 30 pounds overweight, and spending 22.3 hours indoors daily.
The average person will spend 20 years of their life watching TV or scrolling social media, according to George Mack's 'modern normal' statistics.
California's CPUC established procurement goals requiring large utilities to direct $633 million in contracts to state-certified LGBT-owned businesses by 2024.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
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