Hello, hello, hello, everyone. This is Nick Gillespie with Reason. Thanks for joining us today for another live stream. My guests today are podcaster, author, and Bon vivant, Coleman Hughes, as well as Cato, policy analyst, and legal beagle, Walter Olsen. Thank you, Coleman, for joining Reason. My pleasure. And Wally, thanks for talking to us this afternoon. We're gonna talk primarily about the two recent Supreme Court rulings, the one about affirmative action in college admissions that involve the University of New North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Harvard, and also the 303 Creative LLC versus Alinas case that had to do about providing web services for gay weddings. We'll get to both of those in a second. But first, what I want to do, and let me just see if I can find them. Okay, first I wanna talk about the legitimacy of the court, the Supreme Court as an institution. Interestingly, while responding to questions about the affirmative action ruling, President Biden was asked, has, you know, that the Congressional Black Caucus said the Supreme Court by virtue of its affirmative action ruling has thrown into question its own legitimacy. President Biden was asked, is this a rogue court? And the president answered, this is not a normal court. And I just wanna point out, also at the same time, the Supreme Court job approval, this is from last year at Gallup. It's the most recent that I could find, but it has seen a fairly precipitous drop over the past couple of years, down to 40% of people saying that they approve it. If you go to other Gallup records, just to give a sense of this, 25% of people say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the Supreme Court. And that's down from 45% in 1973. Wally, if I can go to you first, you know, is this a normal court? Is this a legitimate court? Are these questions we should be seriously considering? That's three different questions. And I'll say- Pick the one you like the least and answer that one. Okay. Is it a normal court? Yes, it's a normal court, both Rob Lube, are we getting interference? It's a police iron I live in New York City, this happened. What the court did, in particular in these two cases, was telegraphed, I would argue, 20 or 25 years ago in earlier cases. And in fact, of all the things the court has done this year, the results in these two cases were among the most predictable and would have happened had there been some president other than Trump, for example, they were not considered close cases by the majority and so forth. Now, is the court legitimate? Interesting question in which you have seen, I would argue, a number of forces attacking the court's legitimacy, including both a bunch of people on the left who combine being sore at outcomes of cases. We can all go through the ones there, but with also being sore procedurally at the various confirmation bubbles, which I agree that Congress has disgraced itself or the Senate has disgraced itself at various times in its conduct, but they are sore about particular vacancies that they believe should have gone to democratic appointees. And then on the MAGA side, we all know what Trump thinks of the legitimacy of courts, which is he calls them so-called judges, if they will against him. So you have, as part of the general polarization, you have this and other institutions that are the subject of more demonization and delegitimization campaigns. You could, we could go on all day about the pluses and minuses of that. There are libertarians who would say, good, no confidence in government institutions. I am the other kind of Costco liberal who thinks, no, we're courting dangers if we undercut institutions that we may only do rely on. Yeah, and just to put the court decline from 45% people having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence and trust in the institution of the Supreme Court, down 45% or down to 25% from 45% in 1973, Congress in 1973 had a confidence rating of 42%. That's down to 7%. And the presidency is down from 52% in 75, which was the first year that Gallup asked it down to 23%. So in a way, the court is mirroring the same kind of decline we see in the other branches of government. Coleman, what about you? What do you think? I mean, should we be worried about these kind of broad-based attacks on the legitimacy of the court? Is this something to be worried about? Well, yeah, I mean, I think the truth is Biden is attacking the legitimacy of the court because he doesn't like the particular verdicts. That's all there is to it. There's nothing in the jurisprudence of these decisions that calls into question the soundness of mind of Supreme Court justices. And Biden and Democrats and liberals in general have had no qualms with the legitimacy of the court on the voting rights cases that have come out in the past month, two of which have gone towards what would be characterized usually as sort of the liberal position, one in Alabama and one with federal oversight of state legislatures in general. So obviously this is just, this is a political attack. This should not actually be taken seriously. I think the court is legitimate and it's important from a separation of powers perspective that it continued to be seen as such. Yeah, well, let's move on to the ruling itself in the Harvard and UNC case. Common, let's start with you. You know, do you think this is a good decision? Yes, I do, I do. So, I mean, I've heard many people on the left sort of hyperventilating and about the consequences of this decision for black Americans and for racism. I mean, this is, I mean, that's a very uninformed fear to push, I think. There's two things to say just right off the bat. One is nine states had already banned affirmative action before this ruling.  No one said that because no one even had that fear. And now there are people trying to sort of uncover all the ways in which it's been terrible to be a black California student for the past 25 years as a way of sort of justifying that take. You have also pointed out in, you have a phenomenal article that you wrote at your sub-stack about this that is in our show notes and whatnot, but that we're also talking here about a very elite phenomenon. Can you discuss that a little bit and, you know, just what does that mean in the context of college admissions? Yeah, so I am a half black, half Hispanic elite. So when I make these comments, I come from a place of knowledge and love, not of denigration, but the policy we call affirmative action is not a policy that has anything to do with addressing the problems of what used to be called the black underclass, the problems of black poverty, the legacy of racism and so forth. It's a policy that affects, according to Princeton sociologist, Thomas Espenshade, about 1% of black and Hispanic 18 year olds any given year. The other 99% either don't graduate high school to begin with or graduate high school, but go to colleges with higher acceptance rates that don't practice affirmative action. So this, some people want to frame this as a decision about quote unquote, access to higher education has nothing to do with access to higher education per se. It has to do with the ease of entrance to a very select set of Ivy League and elite schools in general, which have a somewhat inflated sense of self-importance to begin with. For instance, if you look, and again, I speak as someone who went to Columbia. And so- And Juilliard as well. Yeah. Which is a totally different case. But if you look at the colleges attended by the Fortune 500 CEOs in this country, you see very few elite colleges there. By and large, you see schools with like above 60% acceptance rates that wouldn't be affected by this ruling. And they all somehow got good educations there. So I think we have to keep in proportion what this case is really about. And can we, here is a slide that this is Joe Biden speaking saying affirmative action is so misunderstood. I want to be clear, make sure everybody is clear about what the law has been and what it's not been. Many people wrongly believe that affirmative action allows unqualified students to be admitted ahead of qualified students. This is not how college admissions work. And then just this is admin rates at Harvard by race and ethnicity and academic decile. And what this chart shows essentially is that the acceptance rate for an Asian American in the top academic decile. So these are extremely high performing students at Harvard had a slightly lower rate than an African American applicant in the fourth academic decile or the sixth in the Hispanic. So it's not a question of whether or not everybody is qualified or unqualified but it does seem clear. And this certainly came out in the case against Harvard that they were diminishing the possibility of Asian Americans to get in according to the way that they would have kind of test scores and the general profile was there without a racial preference. When you look at something like that, Coleman, what's your response to that? You just said you're Hispanic and African American.  But like when you look at that, what's your response to that? First of all, people have long defended affirmative action by saying it's really just a thumb on the scale. It's used only as a tiebreaker between otherwise identical candidates. I've always known that that's just a lie or just uninformed by the people who say it. But it does betray a sense that even defenders of the policy are a little bit uncomfortable defending the reality of it. They would wish it to be more of a thumb on the scale thing, but it's not. And we've had research that's shown that for, several decades, actually. Thomas Eshmanseid found it was the equivalent of 450 SAT points for an Asian student relative to a Black student. Everything else held equal. And just one more thing to say about that is, actually sorry, I just forgot the point I was gonna make. Well, yeah, I can jump in. The way Biden put it was a bit of a word trick because he made it hinge on something to which there is no definition, qualified versus unqualified. You can't go and find data that is assorted by those categories in order to sidestep the question of whether better qualified applicants were being turned away in favor of not as well qualified applicants, which is what we can get statistics on when those decil numbers were a good example of many others. So Biden makes an assertion that can't be verified about an undefined concept because he'd rather not talk about all the things that we do know. I think Walter, you took that from my head because that's exactly what I wanted to say. And Wally, you of course are also an elite graduate, right? If I'm not mistaken. I'm afraid so, yeah.  But on another level, is it also the case? I mean, when we talk about this as an elite phenomenon, are the Asian Americans who don't get to go to Harvard, even though on a kind of straight dossier or application, they don't get in because Harvard has clearly capped the number of Asian Americans that they want in a given year. Do they suffer because they kind of, they go on to success anyway, right?  And sometimes it's reassuring by people who mean them well. Sometimes it's the defense of the policy that points out that it's not as if their lives are going to go badly. I would still say there's a reason these places are so sought after. They do offer certain advantages. Might not be that everyone benefits from those advantages, but the advantages are there. If you want to go into certain fields, then having that extra boost of being in a world famous department in whatever your major is, we'll put you a little ahead. It's just the way it is. You know, part of it, Colman, when I was looking at the Harvard case and I've been covering this kind of brewing over the past several years really, but part of me is reminded by the idea that this pit cut blacks or African-Americans, especially against Asians. And it seems to me that's almost kind of like a dodge because the power structure isn't really like Asian-Americans versus blacks, right? It's whites. I mean, is there some kind of weird power dynamic diversion going on here that's worth talking about? Well, I think, yeah, somebody made this point, which was that when affirmative action really first started in earnest in the early 70s, this country was by and large white people and black people. It was basically a biracial country with a rounding error of other immigrants. And it was a white population that was aware that of the history of slavery and Jim Crow and white supremacists' legal structure, right? So on a purely reparations compensation-based rationale, it made a lot of sense whether or not all white people agreed. It made a lot of sense to try to compensate the oppressed population at the expense, frankly, of the oppressor population to use crude terms, right? As the country has become more diverse, the borders opened up after 65 and we've gotten influx of immigration from, you know, of quote-unquote people of color from the Asian world and also from West Africa. It makes less and less sense to penalize those people who are not even here for the offenses of Jim Crow and slavery to penalize them based on the logic of paying back black people. It makes increasingly no sense. And then add to that the fact that one study found 41% of black kids at elite colleges are actually first or second generation immigrants, meaning their parents were not even here for Jim Crow. They're just, you're penalizing one immigrant at the expense of another immigrant for their racial identities, which, you know, up till recently we had concluded as one of the most inherently unjust immoral things that you can do, right? So none of it makes sense now. If I may, let's look, I wanna look at this something that Joe Biden talks about because the ruling itself actually does say that race can play or, you know, a consideration of race may play some part in a kind of totality of, you know, when you're considering people for admissions, which has kind of been found in other groups. But Joe Biden says what I propose for consideration is a new standard where colleges take into account the adversity a student has overcome when selecting among qualified applicants. And, you know, I mean, sometimes people talk about that as a class-based affirmative action.  And is this kind of preferential, you know, admissions policy stuff just something we shouldn't be engaging in? Well, what Biden says on the one hand is totally unexceptionable because for ages, universities have in fact taken adversity into account. They look at someone who has done well in high school despite various setbacks in their family or their community. And yes, they work more points. So Biden is uncontroversially, you know, on the one hand saying fine, to go ahead and do these things. Once you try to quantify it or allow them to pretend that they can quantify it and use or use discretion, the question arises, you know, are we heading off into some completely new direction in which they are just going to introduce class-based affirmative action which will have its own problems because it will include its own problems of the students not doing as well if the reason they had the low SAT scores that they just came out of the poor background not as well-prepared. But it will also raise the question. And as Coleman said, and he's using this topic, we're not coming to this situation new because California, Michigan, Washington and a bunch of other states already did this. And so we know the range of reactions which includes sometimes using language like this and meaning it and other times using language like this and trying to smuggle in the old racial preference. Yeah, you know, Coleman, what happened in places like California and Michigan? Was there a substantial and persistent decline in the number of blacks and Hispanics who were admitted to the UC system or the Cal State system, things like that? And if so, is that a problem? And just to add so that I give you more questions that you could possibly remember much less answer in a single bound, if that is, if it does result in lower acceptance rates or lower attendance rates among blacks and Hispanics, is it college where that kind of thing should be addressed? You know, that kind of disparity? So what happened in California is that, UC, as you know, is not a college, it's a whole set of colleges as Cal State system. Some of those colleges, after affirmative action was banned, black and Hispanic attendance went down. At other of those colleges, it went up so that the overall change in attendance was nothing. Yeah, which is kind of great, right? And kind of exactly what you'd expect. And there's a paper called Did the Sky Fall? The Consequences of Prop 209, which found that the graduation rate among the post-affirmative action class was actually somewhat higher, presumably because people were better matched, their incoming credentials and preparedness were better matched with the schools they were attending. One of the side effects of affirmative action has been that you are effectively sending that those black and Hispanic kids to be at the bottom of those better schools, which for some of them, I think some of them will rise to the occasion and find out that they really can hold a candle to all their prepared peers, but some of them can't. There is an interesting, in terms of graduation rates, and this goes into the mismatch there and whatnot, private colleges tend to have, particularly elite colleges, have extremely high four-year graduation rates. Public colleges, even really good public colleges, tend not to have as good. And that's partly because private colleges go out of their way to make sure that people graduate because the graduation rate is really important, but it's slightly different. Wally, is there a lot of the attention in this case has been given to Harvard because Harvard is Harvard and people love to talk about Harvard, even though most of us will barely be able to wave to it from a train pulling through Boston or something. Is there a meaningful distinction here between private universities and public universities because from a libertarian perspective, like libertarians are like, oh, you should be, and we'll get into this with the next case, private businesses should be able to discriminate if they want to. This was something that was missing from the 200 pages or whatever of Supreme Court opinions in a remarkable way because, again, I, like many libertarians, looked at the two cases and said, in principle, they might come out in very different ways as a citizen of a state, I want the state not to do any racial discrimination and the Constitution says so. The Constitution does not say that about private institutions. Now, legally, what the court hung its hat on is that earlier court decisions have said that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act follows the same principles as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. So we're going to treat them as if private and public universities were under the same regime. And Justice Gorsuch's concurrence is the only place where, first he lands one blow on this, which is if you go back, that isn't actually something the court has decided upon proper consideration, it's just something that a few justices have assumed and that a few, and there's no particular reason to assume that Title VI is always gonna work the same way as the Equal Protection Clause. The second thing is, even if they're right, and even if it does, Congress could go back and revisit Title VI anytime it wanted in order to allow private affirmative action. Now, it's interesting politically whether it will or not, but if we want to allow private institutions freedom to experiment with this sort of thing that we would not allow of a state institution, all that it's gonna take is go to Congress, ask to change that law.  I wanna get to, yeah, here we are, a slide that shows about half of US adults disapprove of selective colleges. And you brought this up and passing Coleman, there's something like 4,500 four-year colleges and universities in the country, about 400 of them have any real admissions kind of cut. Most four-year colleges accept anybody who applies, assuming they've graduated high school and taken the proper prerequisites. So we're talking about small number of colleges here, but half of US adults disapprove of selective colleges considering race and ethnicity. A third approve, it changes a little bit. Blacks are more likely to approve, but it's still under half of blacks say that should happen. Interestingly, people who are Democrats, identify as Democrats and lean Democrat, 54% of them approve of using race and ethnicity. On a certain level, is this the Supreme Court catching up to where the country seems to be going? Well, yeah, I mean, I think either every or almost every time affirmative action has been put to a state referendum, including in states liberal as California, it's lost. So it has long been a fairly unpopular policy, worth noting that before 2020, Pew and Gallup asked these questions in 2019. And back then, even a majority of black adults said that they disapprove of the use of race in college admissions. And perhaps the kind of culture of the past three years has changed that for black Americans. But nevertheless, people, and what's really interesting here to me is that back in 2019, when you asked the question, do you support affirmative action? Lots of people would say yes, majorities would say yes, but if you ask the same group of people, do you support the use of race in college admissions? They'd say no. So it's clear the framing of using that euphemism affirmative action, which if you didn't know what it meant already would never tell you what it meant. Lent the policy, kind of an air of credibility that the actual substance didn't have. And I can say as someone who was wrong back then that in the early years when this was being introduced, a lot of people took the meaning of affirmative action to be things like going out and going to more job fairs, you're trying a little harder on recruitment rather than altering the standard for acceptance for a job. And still people will often assume an affirmative action program might be no different than that. Before we move into the website case, I guess, Wally, you and I are old enough to remember what Coleman talked about before, a country that was kind of white and black and whiteness is constantly under construction and it's constantly falling apart. My grandparents were all immigrants from Ireland and Italy. When they showed up in the 19 teens, they were not so white after World War II, they and their children were white in a way that was kind of striking.   That has not been your experience. Can you talk about like, what's the mismatch and how do we get to, you know, this isn't about court cases or anything, but how do we get to a better conversation about these questions, which isn't tribal or political or ideological? Yeah, I mean, the source of the mismatch in my view comes mainly from social media and smartphone culture. Like back when I was, I don't know, say, let's say 12 or something in like 2008, most people aren't on Facebook, most people aren't on Twitter. People are judging the state of society by like their conversations with their neighbors and their coworkers and the local newspaper. Then what happens in 2013-14 is say, if something happened in like a sleepy town in Indiana. Or Ferguson, Missouri. Or Ferguson, Missouri. Yeah. Really anywhere. You know, prior to social media that would have been reported the next day in the local newspaper where it gets, you know, the journalist talks to the police, talks to everyone, gives a fact checked kind of gate kept version of what happened. And that's all that happens. Post 2013, that same event is filmed by someone on their smartphone who probably films the second half of it without filming the lead up. It circulates, it gets millions of views within a few days out of context of any sort of fact checking or journalism. And that's how people get their impression of what's going on in the country. And then it gets algorithmically boosted so that it's preferentially shown precisely to the people that would be upset most by it. And that's how the entire information landscape changed radically without anyone in big tech meaning to. They fundamentally changed the perceptions of people in the country. And it's consistent with Eric Kaufman, the political scientist has done research finding that black people who are on social media report experiencing much more racism in their personal lives compared to black people who are off social media. Now that's a correlation. So it doesn't necessarily imply causation, but it is consistent with the story that people's sense of reality is being warped by the algorithmically boosted content on social media and pervasiveness of smartphones. I wonder if that also works. I spend a lot of time with white people who are very much on social media and they believe the worst of all that we're living in a hellscape where every subway ride you are going to be accosted by an endless parade of homeless people, et cetera. Or that you can't walk down a street in New York without having a young African-American man punching an Asian-American woman in the face. You know, that's fascinating. And I guess as long as we're talking about the web or smartphones and social media, we might as well move into the next case, 303 Creative, limited liability corporation versus Alinas.  This is a case that is about a woman who ran a website service who said she would refuse to make websites for gay weddings or gay married couples and that she shouldn't have to in the Colorado law, anti-discrimination law, was compelling her to make speech she didn't believe in. You know, how does this ruling, how do you respond to this ruling? Is it good legal ruling? Is it a good social ruling? How do you kind of incorporate this into your world? Well, let me respond to it as legal ruling because that's what I get paid to do is legal ponder free. And I will say, first, as I mentioned at the very beginning of the program, you could see this coming a long, long away. On the racial preferences at universities case, we all remember 25 years ago, some of the justices that were in the middle and had the deciding votes on those cases said, it's okay for now, but it's going to have to be phased out. Senator De O'Connor and others said, we can't go on having this 25 years from now. So that's why that one was telegraphed. In this one, not just Masterpiece Cake Shop, which is five years ago, in which the court came up to and then refused to decide a closely related issue, you could tell from the way the court justices were writing that there was going to be a majority for something like this when the speech was framed up in the correct way. In other words, more clearly speech than cake decorating, which is a very gray area kind of thing, that when a case came along in which it clearly was speech that the complainant would win, I would go back to 1995 and the court's unanimous ruling in the Boston Irish Parade case. This was one where a gay rights Irish group wanted to march in the Boston Irish Parade. Management of the parade said, no, we are staunch believers in Catholic teachings. This would be at variance with, and the court took it and ruled nine to zero, including all the big liberals and written by Justice Souter, who was not anti-gay, that they had the right to turn them away. The one thing that is a little different that needed clarification is that this applies in commercial situations as opposed to the parade thing, which was a purely nonprofit volunteer type thing. And we can get to that. But I want to emphasize two other things that are easy to miss about the 303 creative case. One of them is it did not go to the court based on her rights of free exercise of religion. They deliberately did not take the religious liberty angle and made it a free speech one. Now that has important implications. Because she won on free speech rather than on religious liberty, it means that everyone else in who objects to being forced to create some piece of speech or a song or whatever it is, is going to be able to rely on her case. In fact, if you want to take a provocative fact situation, the next time that a gay website designer wants to turn down someone who wants to cite honoring their confirmation in a religion that they've just changed to whatever, this law will protect that secular gay person who says, I'm sorry, but I just can't bring myself to recite the things that you would need as part of a proper site celebrating your religious conversion. So it's not in that sense really a gay rights case. It's an everyone rights case. Is it, I guess, does it matter that it's come out that the customer that was kind of referenced in the brief didn't exist or apparently doesn't exist? So this was hypothetical. Does that matter at all? The shorter answer is no, but let me back up a little bit because it's worth catching up on the procedural background, which especially in First Amendment cases is different from other legal controversies that reached the Supreme Court or other courts. The general background rule is that you can't get a court ruling unless you have an actual injury from the law, which means mostly that they've enforced it against you. So she wouldn't get in until some Colorado agency had fined her or done whatever the penalty is. And that's how it usually works. But especially for First Amendment law and also for some other constitutional rights that are considered important ones, the courts have for a long time developed procedure under which you can do a so-called pre-enforcement challenge. And you can go in saying I have a reasonable fear that the law will be enforced against me. So even though I haven't sold a copy of the censored book or whatever the thing is, I deserve a ruling on that. Now, in her case, she tried a number of theories. The theory that she won on in the 10th Circuit Federal Appeals Court was not the theory that she had actually tried to do any business. It was a pure pre-enforcement challenge in which the premise was, we're gonna decide this case for you based on the track record of First Amendment pre-enforcement challenges, whether or not you have ever tried to do business. And the Supreme Court took the case as it founded, said, it's up to us on a classic challenge of this type. We don't care any more than the 10th Circuit cared whether she had any live clients. So that's the short answer as to why that whole thing is irrelevant for purposes of how the court ruled. It might possibly be relevant if they believed that someone was trying to put one over by generating false evidence, then there could be some sort of legal discipline case. But no one has put forward a plausible theory as to who did that. Let me just find the slide that I was hoping to go to. I'm sorry, excuse me while I scatter through this. Okay, so this is from Justice Sotomayor's dissent. She said, today the court for the first time in its history grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class. Coleman, how do you respond to that? Like, does that issue right? Does that concern you? Or do you feel that the way Wally was talking about this actually is the better way to view it? It seems like a category error to me because this business presumably, if I were wanting to set up a website for my gay friend but I was really the customer and I was paying for it for whatever reason, they would have refused me just the same and I'm not gay, right? So it seems like the logic of the case is not that it's refusing to serve members of a protected class, but it's refusing to execute services related to speech and writing that it doesn't, where it doesn't wanna say those words and express those beliefs. I think that's the better way to conceive of this issue and I'm curious just as a matter of, for people who feel Sotomayor's position is right, how their intuitions might change if it were instead a Muslim rather than a Christian and you were asking a Muslim website designer to make a website depicting the Prophet Muhammad or something, I mean, that's an extreme example but to do anything, I'm curious if people would have the same intuition that really what's important is that we force that website maker to say something here she doesn't wanna say or whether the important thing is to be on the opposite side. Yeah, Wally, how does this case fit into questions of public accommodations? I know Coleman, I am not smearing you with the label libertarian, I know that you are libertarian adjacent or maybe moving in that direction, you have unnatural libertarian tendencies or whatever, but Wally, you are a self-defined libertarian and one of the odd things about libertarians is that they'll always say racism is the most vile form of collectivism and they believe people should be able to free, live freely and do whatever is consensual among adults and all of that kind of stuff and libertarians take a dark view at anti-discrimination laws and public accommodation laws that say if you open your business to the public you've gotta serve everybody. Does this case fundamentally challenge or engage that kind of issue? Well, it brushes past it and I'll say by way of background that exactly half the states currently have public accommodation laws in which sexual orientation or gender identity are one of the protected categories. So by that definition, half of America was already a hellscape, I'll go along with your term for gay people or else you may not notice it because in fact in those other 25 states very hard to find any actual instances in which other than with wedding services and a couple of very narrowly defined controversies very difficult to find any difference in treatment. Libertarians, you're right, you're absolutely right, have a I think justified suspicion of the attempt to use public accommodation laws to override the independent judgment of businesses of how to serve. And I say brushed against it because both the majority and the minority in the 303 creative case did turn to history. There were questions which may shed light on whether public accommodation laws were a fairly rare and exceptional thing or were something that were completely accepted even in the grand old libertarian classical liberal period. It was certainly accepted that some businesses like inns to stay the night in a country when you might freeze to death if they wouldn't take you in were under a public accommodation obligation. We do know that about Anglo-American history and some others closely related in the hospitality business. What about someone who would fix your shoes? What about someone who would bake you a cake? Well, the majority brushes by theory that if you look at old instances where classical liberal society has accepted the public accommodation idea, the idea that businesses undertook a particular accommodation that aside from the hospitality on the road cases they were very often monopoly cases. If you're going to give a company a monopoly over something you darn well are going to give them an obligation to serve every single customer. And then the dissent by Sotomayor said, oh, no, no, no. By the time she was done talking about it you would really would think that every single person who ever offered any services or products was under a public accommodations obligation which I think is not actually true. Go back to the old law books. So they both found it worth engaging and yet on one level what they said does not change the sweep of these laws. It does admit the opportunity to say as a libertarian that the stakes of social division go down if you don't define every single florist and calligrapher as a public accommodation. If you take a reasonable view that some things are big and public enough like theaters that there is some sort of public stigma in not being allowed. But if you try to extend it to every little one person business you are going to have more social division. You just are. Can I ask Wally as a gay man who I believe is married? Correct? Well, Steve thinks so. Okay. Maybe married in multiple states. I don't know.  Like I'll make you a website but like I'll be damned if I'm gonna write, here's our gift registry for a wedding or you can buy a cake I baked but I'll be damned if I'm gonna write best wishes, you know, et cetera. I mean, like, how do you respond to that on an individual level? Well, there's a great line from Zora Neale Hurston about being discriminated against. I can't imagine she said why people would want to deprive themselves of the delight of my company. And that is a confident person's response to being discriminated against. Obviously she lived in bad circumstances in the South and she knew perfectly well that there was more and worse to be had from discrimination. But I love the attitude because especially when the discrimination is just symbolic and is not actually causing you to not be able to get the job or the home or whatever, you just brush it off as people who haven't learned what they need to know about the world. And here we get to the series of cases involving Masterpiece Cake Shop and the Flowers case and now the Website case which is it's very hard to find any of those cases in which gay people getting married or these date back to the point where you couldn't get married and it was just solemnizing a relationship. Very hard to find any of these instances in which the people didn't have lots of other good choices of people who would gladly observe their business. And so again, it gets me thinking about Zora Neale Hurston. Are you just trying to say in order to make a point? Yeah, Zora Neale Hurston is somebody who we can all do. We can all benefit from thinking about a lot more and looking at her life, certainly her literary output. But there's a real sense of tragedy there and Coleman, I know that you're familiar with Zora Neale Hurston who was also a Columbia student back in the day and studied with Franz Boas in the anthropology department and suffered real massive indignities. Is that on the account of both her gender and her race? But I mean, is it that we are in a stage now and it's always, we're always declaring victory way too soon in all kinds of wars, right? But like, is it the world that she lived in and that level of anger and hate and contempt for sexual minorities, for racial minorities, for ethnic minorities, is that mostly behind us and is that something that we need to incorporate into our contemporary discussions of things? It's interesting, I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I think we have made massive progress in people's attitudes towards minorities, racial minorities, sexual minorities, et cetera. On the other hand, I don't think that these bigger trees will ever be gone fully and permanently. I think human nature has a bigoted element to it that is reducible but not eradicable. And at some level, we're going to be living with some amount of racism, some amount of homophobia until the end of time and we should, while combating it, we should understand that. Yeah. Wally, can I ask from, and again, this is going back into the kind of libertarian subculture. People like Milton Friedman talked about this as well as a wide variety of other people whose motivations may not have been as clear or as pure, I think, as Friedman's.  So that 303 creative probably isn't that good of website anyway or will lose enough business that companies that refuse to hire women or blacks or Latinos who were good workers end up paying higher wages for shittier workers and things like that. Is it more than theoretical to say that markets, relatively free markets actually punish discriminatory behavior? It's a big topic Nick and I can offer particular examples that back up Milton Friedman's suggestions. It's well known, I think that in the South during Jim Crow railroads and others who needed a lot of skilled labor were constantly seeing if they could undermine Jim Crow because it was denying them access to a lot of workers who would have done very well. And it gets complicated because as Coleman said sometimes you've got a background of real social prejudice that has not been eradicated and markets can sometimes transmit that in that if bigoted customers won't visit your restaurant or whatever. So I don't want to make sweeping assertions. I think that courts by and large decide and should decide the cases on other bases where these things come in again is every one of those state and local anti-assumination in public accommodations laws was passed through a legislative process in which people could waive some of these things. And I urge people again as someone who not just from my libertarian standpoint but as someone who doesn't want to see social divisiveness, that's the time to go in and say, are you legislating just to demonstrate your virtue or is there really some social problem that is solved by extending it from old style public accommodations to every single little one person operation? But you would agree that public accommodation laws which do restrict the right of businesses to operate however they see fit are actually beneficial in certain cases. Well, I would say from a libertarian standpoint, I'd follow, I think this is the Richard Epstein analysis. I'd like to confine them to the cases where there is a practical monopoly. Ironically, ends to stay for the night which were effectively a practical if not a royally granted monopoly centuries ago. With Airbnb, not at all. But I don't mind for utilities and I can see at least their point if someone is going to freeze the doubt of saying the end is freighted with a special public interest. But I would make it a demanding test that wouldn't result in very many public accommodations laws. I want to go to a slide. We were talking about this in the context of affirmative action. And let me just see if, where did it go? Sorry, there we go. I am just not very good at this. I apologize for where did, there we go. US support for gay marriage on a certain level. And this is pretty stunning. In 1996 Gallup started asking this question 27% of Americans thought that same-sex couples should be recognized by the law as valid with same rights as traditional marriages. It's now at 71%. I guess I'll start with you, Wally. What do you think accounts for that pretty straight line, massive increase in acceptance of same-sex marriage? It is the great social revolution, great successful social revolution of the last generation. And if I had a one sentence explanation of why it happened, I'd write a book and some million copies. I think in that particular instance, when people got to meet their neighbors, by and large, they realized that this was something that was not only good for the people involved, good for the moms and dads who could see their kids get married who thought they would never have grandchildren and also good for the water society in many ways. It is judged by its outcomes and its outcomes have been overwhelmingly beneficial. Some polls recently showed a drop and there's a lot of discussion of whether the public is having second thoughts about the whole area because of more recent controversies we haven't talked about having to do with, transgender teams on sports teams or whatever the thing may be. That's for another show, I think. But in this case, I think that Gorsuch as so often comes closest to the libertarian center of the court in that he handed down the huge victory for gay rights a couple of years ago and then came right around and clearly as part of what he sees to be the proper settlement of these things says this is not going to affect conscience rights. People who want to live as dissenters from the consensus and lead a more faith-based life, that's such an awkward phrase, is they will retain all the freedoms they always have. Yeah, Coleman, you know, and equally I'd actually even more simultaneously more disturbing but also more triumphant. A chart is one of people who find interracial couples moral. Gallup and other polls when, I remember this came up a lot during Barack Obama's presidency when he was born in the very early 60s of his, you know, just a few percent or something of Americans who believe that interracial marriage was moral. You know, now it's in the 80s or 90s. You know, what do you think drives acceptance of one's unthinkable kind of marriage scenarios? That's a good question. I mean, one, so I mean, it helps to be on the more logical side of the argument, I think, right? Like there was the case against interracial marriage and gay marriage just never made sense in a secular context at least because, you know, as the jokes always used to go in the 2000s, no one is forcing you to get gay married, right, no one is forcing you to get interracial marriage. But just knowing it's happening is ruining my marriage. Right, right. When Newt Gingrich, you know, railed against it and it was like while racking up lives, it was ridiculous. There's that. And in the gay marriage case, there's obviously the long-term secularization of the country in general. It's just, it's very hard to get someone to an anti-gay position if they were never Christian or raised with faith. It's tough to, it'd be tough to just argue a kid into that position without the background of Christianity. So as Christianity declines, I think that's got to have something to do with it. Now on the interracial side, I think the civil rights movement was a major transformation in the psyche of many Americans. And obviously the trend took really 50 years to go from single digit approval to single digit disapproval. Right. But, you know, I think, I'd like to think that that just represents people making the argument, people seeing interracial couples in movies on TV, seeing it as, there's like a snowballing normalcy where the more normal it becomes, the more people think it's normal and then the more people, the more normal it becomes, right? So that the people doing it don't have to be like really the most, the bravest members of society can just be like your average Joe. How old are you, Colvin? 27.  It's like, yeah, you're peaking too soon, man. I gotta tell you that right now. Take a couple of years off. But, you know, again, different than Wally and me who, you know, roamed with, we had pet dinosaurs and stuff like that. But where has individualism gone? And I realize, you know, that's a strange thing to bring up in these cases.  But, you know, they're about lumps of people that are being perceived one way or the other. And, you know, I was raised to believe, and it's not like uniquely, there was a rhetoric of individualism in America that seemed to be important. And, you know, it's kind of gone missing, maybe in somewhere or not.  You know, and I think of people like Zora Neale Hurston, I think of people, certainly Martin Luther King, you know, a number of other, you know, particular black writers or writers on race talked a lot about individualism. And that part of the problem with racism is that you couldn't be an individual. You were constantly representing this grand abstraction that could lead to you either being exalted or being lynched. You know, what's the status of individualism kind of in your cosmos right now? It's, I mean, I would say it's alive and well, but it's become something quite different. It's become a more, you know, inward-looking, somewhat narcissistic kind of individualism where it's obviously cliche to point out, but, you know, the culture of Gen Z, it's kind of navel-gazing about what is my unique identity, right? And it's not based on something that I've done. It's based on, you know, like, what do I really think my gender identity is? Like, last month I thought it was this, but I'm evolving and it's this, and let's have a long kind of inward-looking conversation about who I am, which really makes little reference to like what I do and what I care about, but is in some way more of like a style and an aesthetic. And I used to like to dress like this, but now I dress like this. And what does that say about how I'm changing? Like this is the kind of, and everyone must be kind of miracle of self-invention on the aesthetic front and the rest. And I definitely saw a lot of that kind of individualism when I was in school, for instance, a few years ago. It's a very different kind, but it does strike me as a kind of individualism in the sense that it's like, I have to stand apart. I have to invent myself from scratch as an identity. And I have to be different from everyone and I have to dress different. And so in a way, it's still very alive. It's just transmutated, I guess. Yeah. Wally, as a take us out with an answer this question, the Supreme Court's positive approval ratings have dipped. As I was saying, 25% of people, according to Gallup, have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. It's down from 45% in 1973, which is what, 50 years ago. And it's in lockstep with other declines, but is there anything that the Supreme Court can do going forward to kind of restore its sense, restore confidence in that it is working through these things in the way that it's supposed to, as opposed to in kind of cheap political ways? Big question. And part of it is how well they explain themselves. Part of it is when justice is dissent, whether they do so in language that undercuts the legitimacy of the majority or vice versa. And part of it is a process that you certainly can see if you look up close at the cases that the court takes and how they decide them, which is that, although they are not swayed by public opinion to do things that they wouldn't do affirmatively, they will sometimes duck cases and rule narrowly for fear of being demonized again by some of the same groups that are just waiting to demonize them. I find that unhealthy. I will say looking back over the last few years, the courts have been one of the few institutions, the federal courts in particular, that actually have done what they needed to during a potential constitutional crisis. They were the ones who turned down all the frivolous election suits. And I worry that sniping at them for short-term gain over various issues that they decide means that the public support will not be there when they need to make a perhaps unpopular decision upholding the right side in an election dispute. All right, we're gonna leave it there. We have been talking with Walter Olson of the Cato Institute. Look him up there in Coleman Hughes of Conversations with Coleman and at Coleman Hughes. Is it Coleman Hughes dot com? Dot org. Dot org. Yeah.  Yeah. Okay, fair enough. No, but thank you guys so much for walking through and talking through these cases. Fantastic, we will see you next Thursday at 1 p.m.


Welcome to episode number 33. You are listening to the Martin Magdal podcast. It is fully actual and we are eating grass. Cows eat grass. Yeah.   Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That, I, it's so hard to be here. All right, famous birthdays. Kim Kardashian is 38. Wait, what about on this day? On this day in 1867, $50. It was, someone owned 50 bucks. On this day in 1857, $50 man. Was invented. No. $50. That's it. Don't add to it. You can, you can do with that. You can do what you like with that information. Okay. $50. $50. Also, on this day in 1945, on October the 21st, women in France were allowed to vote for the first time. France. He said that weirdly. It's France. It's like, do you say dance or dance? Dance.  What about if you go disco? Disco dance. Disco dancing. Oh yeah. So there you go. Women, women were allowed to vote in France. Well, on France, first country to do that.  Imagine a time where women weren't allowed to vote.  Well, I think like if you look at history, it's always been pretty fucked with a lot of things.   Everything's perfect. No, no, no. In Portugal, they've passed now censoring the internet from fake news, but the government determines what's fake news. Oh yeah. But in Portugal. In Portugal, you're allowed to have any drug you want. Yeah. They decriminalize and it lowered the people doing drugs. Yeah, of course. But. That should do that internationally. There's still problems. There's no problem. Gotta fix them. Everything's fixed now. You get the hammer, you get the bricks, the concrete, you fix it. Wholesome. Everything's fixed now. All right. Also famous birthdays, Kim Kardashian turns 38 today and her tits turn 43. Her tits were actually first. And then the rest of her grew from the breast tissue. Stem cell research. Yes, exactly. Stem cell research. Look it up if you don't believe me.  And go to, go to book, go to book up it.  Got a book. That's a club. That's a club. Got a book up it. Judge Judy Shindlens, 76. Whoa, she has an agent. I swear we've spoken about her before.  Just a jab. You can't, you can't.  Dude, she would take you to court. She is in a very fiery old lass. Yeah.  Just to see what she would do. She's walking down the street, walking to work with her suitcase. You run behind her.  The center of her spine. See her turn around, realize what it is, and then just see her reaction. I'd pay money to watch that, dude. Yeah, is that, I guess you'd go to jail for that. But it would honestly be worth 30 days in jail.  As first time, oh yeah, we'd probably go to jail for a couple years. Still nearly worth it, nearly worth it. Also, Carrie Fisher, who is an actor, she's famous for Star Wars. She turns Nintendo 64 today. She's 64 years old. Oh, she's dead. 63. Oh, she would have turned 63. Oh, you got that.  Yeah, that's her. And she's 64. And also, Judge Judy, she watches, look, we're not going to do that. Comedy's comedy.  Please, if anyone does that, we'll give you a shout out.  Go, spread the word. It needs to happen. Judge Judy's child. Is this defamation? No, because we're not talking ill of her. We're just, we're just hate speech, probably. Is that, that's like, that's like what Hitler did. No, it's comedy.  I'm full of power.  Get started, let's back.    Slapping on her back. I was happy and, oh, that was it. I was like content with life for a good 30 seconds.  And this is a segment where we just answer fan questions that we have had sent in from Instagram. Oh my God.   This is for Martian. The sake of his toes. Oh, I'm on ripped off.   It's painful. Yeah, nice.  Peeking of pure sex ecstasy. Next question is from t.weez. And he's asked, or she, when are you cunts making a movie? 15 hours from now. Yeah, we have, you didn't read my email, did you? Paramount has contacted, you told me. Yeah. Didn't read the email. Well, look, we'll have a movie one day, you know? I don't know when, but we'll probably bloody, couple of years. I'll say a couple of years. We're gonna be a show first. Yeah, we wanna show, and then a movie, and then a, you know.  And then we'll sponsor Holden in the V8s. That's the pinnacle of success. That's what we wanna do with our lives. Sponsor Holden V8 supercars. Bathurst, Peter Brock, crushed it. Isn't he the guy that got killed in cricket? Crushed it.  Oh, he died. He's gone, you all right? And Holden sponsored it. We need to do it now. Next question is from Slipknot underscore maggot underscore. What is your favorite video and why? It's a great Instagram video. What's got a movie? What? Movie. No, he wants to know what our favorite video of our videos is. Oh, our favorite, oh fuck, I would never put that together. My favorite video of us is probably the passed out mate compilation. That's every time I watch that, I laugh hard. You laugh, yeah. And that is like overly hard.   My favorite is a YouTube video. I think we might have released it on Facebook. If you go to our YouTube, where we did like, we used to go to UQ. We've been banned from all universities in Queensland because of what we've done. Permanently. And hit mighty, it's called the Stalker. The Stalker prank. Exactly, yeah. I forgot that. And I pretend to be obsessed with Michael. So like I go up to like people going, hey, can you just vouch and cover me right now? I'm not meant to be at uni. This guy's crazy. Can you just say I was handing you an assignment and then I was just here for like 10 minutes to hand you this.   So he's tucked his shirt in, his pants up to his tits, he's jolted his hair back. Ah! Ah! He looks insane. And then they have to deal with him. At one point in the scene there's two chicks, he brings up a dead like little baby magpie that we found was like perfect for the scene. Yeah, walked up to Michael and the two chicks with a dead bird in my hand and their faces were so good. Watch the video, find it on our YouTube. Like Stalker prank gone wrong or whatever. Like Marty, Michael, Stalker prank. It is so funny that like, that's my favorite video because Marty's character is so gross and fucked. Yeah, it's perfect example.  They're not your friends now. Like, oh dude, it's so fucked.  But now we're banned, now we're banned.   That was so much fun back in the day. Using the public for entertainment is the best. But we were king of cringe and it was always very awkward. Yeah. Next question.  This one's from SlipknotMagin. Sophie.cellanas. SlipknotMagin. All right, which is your favorite fiction book and why? I love true stories.  I love a good book. In a Blight in the Mart Magic Fireway, Tree gets me off pretty hard. I liked James and the Giant Peach. All Roll Darlin' in Blightin' is like the God. But if you want to read something that's fiction-based, but then became reality, read 1984 by George Orwell. It'll change your life and you'll see the truth. Favorite type of books of more like true stories is literally nearly all I read. Next question! All right, next question's from The Darkness. He says, always turn the lights off. J Grace X, marry me is my question for the book. We get this a lot. What? Marry me, question mark. No. We can't. We're taken, boys. God, my liver hurts. You didn't even have anything.  Yeah, he showed me the videos. Yeah, my girlfriend has videos of me dancing naked. Private shows and fuck, they're funny. Bullsack galore. Yeah, so we can't marry Grace. Great question, though, I guess. Well, yeah, I know, I know. We are very, very- Very good. Important, popular, the best.  Numbers, massive, tumor field testicles. Big numbers, fiction-based, fingers in the bum, where's your flux, what's aspirin? Cascading out of my mouth. Find it, find it, search it. This one's from I Huey. For a while now, I've been noticing I myself sexually budding towards cows. What a strange question. I see cows. When I see a nice-looking cow, I start to get those impulses, similar to what I've heard Marty talk about. However, I get incredibly timid and nervous and can't speak. I need help and advice in approaching cows because I'd love to enter into this new chapter of my life and exploring who I truly am. So I guess this guy just wants advice, Marty, on how you make your first move on something you know everything about. So, you know, the nerves, I never really had that. It sounds to me like you're respecting the cows too much.  You need to, as quickly as you can, remove all respect from the beast, separate what you want to its feelings because the two cannot exist together. Figure out what you want to do and then buck and hone in on that and don't think about anything else. And then there will be no such thing as approaching the cow or how to talk to them. You just do it. You just do what you want as hard and as fast as you want and you're not worried about it. You're not worried about its feelings. You just get it.  Take it, Sly. Oh, dude, I got away with pissing.  I got away with pissing in a bucket again. You owe us a perfect question to do it because you were so passionate. You couldn't hear, you know, microphones that dribbling on the bucket. No, you blacked out for a bit, didn't you? Yes. All right, next question.  If you are ever involved in like a murder case as a suspect, they're going to use that and go to this footage to show this footage to a jury.  All right, next question is from Tyson, underscore Bowen, underscore 06. What is your most accomplished thing in life besides being the best? Aside from all of the followers, aside from our huge bulging bank accounts, aside from our good looks, I wish, our incredible personalities and aside from our hilariousness and aside from being the best, my biggest accomplishment would be taking down a 1.3 ton kilogram heifer with nothing but my left arm. That's not even your dominant arm. No, I had an injury. Couldn't use my right arm. There's a big heifer. Fast. And there were steep incline hills. Had to chase it for 15, maybe 25 minutes. And I had to grab a hold of it. Used nothing but my left arm and wrangled it to the ground and yeah, anyway. Mine's probably, we got to, you always want to get to a point in your life where you can say, you're top 10 at something. Cause I wanted to be top 10 or number one in the world at tennis. It didn't happen. It's too hard. Alcohol comes about, you get distracted with girls and parties happen and then you get the way we did. But there was a point in me and Marty's life where we were tennis coaches and we didn't care about anything but playing, well I didn't care about anything but playing video games. And Marty would sleep over my house cause he didn't have a license and I'd have to drive him to work in the morning. We've told, have we told them about this? Yeah, probably. We won't let him hear it again. We got to number nine in the world at Worms Armageddon too. A tactical chess sort of like tactical game like chess in a way. Know your turns but know when to do the certain weapons and the shots you got to make. I would execute him.  Yeah, we got to number nine in the world at something. No one can say they're top 10. I'm pretty proud of that. Even though that's fucking, that's sort of just as bad as putting your life earnings into a. We've done well. We've done well, but there's far more achievements to come. So we're not happy. We're not happy yet. So. Strive for more, always. Be better. Hashtag be better and bender. All right, next question's from Trenticals underscore 87. Hey guys, these are my questions from last week. Don't know if you had used them or not cheers. Long time listener, first time, bevine molester. Can you guys give me any suggestions on how to approach my first sexual experience with a plump, this is perfect, plump heifer. Any pointers would be much appreciated. Yours truly, Trenticals underscore 87. You legends are gods among mere mortals. If you had 10 commandments, what would they be? So we as your humble followers can please and abide by you. Lots of lava hugs and kisses. So 10, 10 commandments. And you already gave your advice on the cows. So 10 commandments in life is number one. You go, then I'll go. Number one. Number one would be never, ever break eye contact with someone with red hair. All right, next. Number two is finger it out. Number three would be never finish a sandwich while in the presence of someone with red hair. Number four is don't spend too much money on a car. Number five would be watch all of the Fast and Furious movies and then uppercut yourself. Number, what are we up to? Six.  If you watch them above 12, you're fucked.  Number eight is listen, listen to things. Number nine is breastfeed as long as you can.  Hmm, it helps. It helps. Trust me. And number 10 is instead of finger it out, figure it out. Byron.Joseph with double H at the end. When will you introduce us to Marty's cow-eye? Oh, look, I don't have a wife that's a cow. I have lots of cow mistresses, but I would never, ever.  They are just huge lumps of flesh where I inject my seed into, that is all I am. There is never an emotional connection. It is always just fiery hate. Mixed with aggressive lust bombs. That was pretty good, that is.   All right, this one's from official underscore Declan underscore, your name's too long.  And yeah, yeah, we do smoke weed. I don't have a bong, but I just put it in my hand and then put the lighter under my hand and heats it up. And then I inhale it as it melts. I don't smoke, I don't even smoke anymore really. I might have it at a party now. I used to smoke every day back in the day. Now I don't like it as much. Coward. I push it out.   My whole surprise didn't say a word.  I just go into my own head and I think about that impending thought of we're gonna die. We're gonna die one day and that's scary. I just wanna be immortal. Does that mean what? No, immortal is immortal. I wanna be like huge tumor next to your spine inoperable, inoperable. What is your favorite podcast so far? Which one should we go back and watch or listen to? This one's from Matt Brown, four ones. Just one, one, one, one, four times. Matt Brown, one, one, one, one. And this is from our producer. He's actually an employee at a large company and they make big blocks of concrete. Sell it to people and fish. He was in as a guest on our podcast, number 30. So large quantities of concrete and the company that he works. My favorite is podcast number 17 because it's the only one I've really listened back when I've had the time to listen on a long journey by myself and I pissed myself laughing the whole time. Yeah, that was a rip at that one. But also the podcast with the cat prank call. Yeah, I think we lost it and then we redid it but if you go on Spotify, there's two podcasts that you can't watch on YouTube that you can listen to on Spotify. I don't know which ones they are, maybe three and six.  I think it might have been a man. It was a man.  That brings us to the end of Carla Macala. It brings us to our next segment, of course, which has been renamed to and during this segment we basically just talk about an old story. It's happened to us. We were out drinking. This is 10 years ago. We're trying to be very careful not to incriminate ourselves too much.  We did some damage. We don't do this We did this so you kids don't do it and we've learned from our lessons. Yeah, we're not scientists We're not promoting vandalism We're just telling you an old story that we did and it didn't help us in any way shape or form So don't do it unless you want to start a podcast. Hmm. You want to talk about something then?  We didn't know what to do. It was probably half society's fault. I'm gonna play him Yeah, it was it was definitely not our fault, but this is what we we it was the getting in to We had no intention of doing this, but there's these poles that you can climb up And it's like a 10 meter wall, right? It's literally like a 10 meter wall and then the school this is this School is on a clip on a like a cliff thing, right? And there's a pipe a pipe a drain pipe that goes all the way to the top of the wall So just we wanted to see how high we could get we had no intention Yeah, it started off as a challenge. They shouldn't provide challenges like that, but they shouldn't have obstacles Fun obstacles like this. We were being like athletic. We're being ninja shits Anyway, we get to like we're like 10 meters if we fell we would have broken something or maybe even die I would have sued if we did that. Yeah, but so anyway, we climbed up the poles and we we and we get to the top somehow and The reward at the very top the wheel it was like with the pole was like the drain pot was like bending backwards Snap that would have been it. That's not good by Marty and Michael. We'll land it on our backs Cackling as we fell. Yeah, skulls would have exploded on the pavement and we would have been free My question in my mind. Anyway, we made it to the top and we were like, oh, this is so funny And and now we're in a school all of a sudden all over in a school and Then we start, you know, we start it's it's like what 2 a.m..  So what of course of course we're going to get into the cherry picker And you know, we're drunk. It's hard to steer.  Yeah, cuz it's right near the pool So what do you expect to like what don't drive it in the pool because we weren't initially going to drive it into the pool We were like climbing on the on the cherry picker bit, but then we found out there was the key still in it And then I drove it or we drove it together in To the pool because it wasn't our cherry picker and Yeah, and all our pool so yeah You know the pool is a bit of a mess But and then we just we climbed onto the roof and it's a tiled roof We one of the buildings we made a scale that got on top and we were just lobbing a tile off every now and then Just throwing it underneath. So there's a few broken tiles and you know, we sat there for For hours for for hours sun almost the sun was rising So we've analyzed and then we're sitting in our vandalism and then we we saw Some people coming up the driveway, you know, cuz it's early morning now.  So that's when Construction workers, I guess come to their work zone to work on their project And then once we saw that we snuck down out of the roof and Yeah, we went home and we went home and we fell asleep and honestly didn't think that much of it Didn't think that was a big deal And then we woke up the next day and realized that we were you know, we were there for a long a sickeningly long time And we were so worried about it CTV footage and fuck it. It was but we survived. Yeah How do you like how do you make Listeners think that we did the right thing there. Well, as I said, we did it so you don't do it and we were we We would do it again No, I probably I'd be too scared and they've got more cameras these days. This is ten years back We would do it. We're what we're trying to say is We would do it again.  Oh, we would do it again I wouldn't mighty would but if he convinced me and I was drunk enough. I'd do it again. Sorry Sorry about that Yeah, I guess yeah, I guess that's pretty bad.  Push it around organize it and don't forget to push it. Push it to the heart Push it to the hardcore. Yeah Remember. Yeah, I remember that Space it out evenly and don't question things.  All right. So this one is a news headline from the independent and I Is hits quite close to home this should help us get verified on on Instagram because it's a process cows found mutilated with sex organs removed and blood drained prompt alien and cult Theories yeah, well, they've been doing this for years, but I got news for your theorists out there. It was It was me Cats out of the bag there Aliens aren't real. It was me. I did it. All right.


We want to see scholarly communication, specifically in the life sciences, because that's where all of those of us who are involved in this organization come from. We want to see it become more transparent, efficient and open, which we see as providing several benefits. The first being that in the acknowledgement of the fact that science only progresses when people make disclosures of what they've done to one another, we want to make it possible for people to share their work earlier and receive feedback that is constructive rather than entrenched in some kind of journal gatekeeping.


Hi everybody, I'm Jen with opensource.com and I have a brand new top five articles of the week for you today, August 19th. At number five, four alternatives to ghost for disk cloning. Jason Baker says that disk imaging and cloning doesn't require an expensive tool or a proprietary one. In this article, he lays out four open source alternatives for your disk imaging needs. At number four, Godot open source engine helps power the future in West Virginia. Godot is ideal for group learning in the classroom. In this article, find out more about how West Virginia is using Godot as it rolls out its first ever coding app and game design curriculum for schools. At number three, let's encrypt. Why create a free automated and open CA? During the summer of 2012, two guys decided to start a certificate authority or CA, which acts as a third party to issue digital search certificates. Learn more about why and how they started let's encrypt, now one of the larger CAs in the world. At number two, top five open source web servers. Did you know that open source powers a lot of the web? Probably, but had to ask. You can get an introduction to five of the most popular open source web servers out there from our writer Scott Nesbitt. And finally at number one, what is copy left? You've probably heard or seen the term used copy left, but maybe you're not sure exactly what it means between copyright open source licenses and permissive licenses and a lot more. It can get pretty murky. Become the envy of all of your friends by learning all about copy left and more in Ben Cotton's introduction. Alright, that's it for the top five this week. Thanks so much for joining me and I hope to see you next time.


What's going on infinite family? Welcome back to another video. It's your girl Denise. If you guys are new to the channel, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and join the family. I know that I've been recovering and it's been a journey, but I think that I'm ready to get back into the game. The game of pranks guys. So Isaiah is currently in the bathroom right now. He's getting ready for the day, so I have to be really quiet.  Now I know what you guys are going to say. The other day, we just gave a whole speech on how you're positive on your body now. You're so happy. I love my body and I'm super happy with like the journey that I've been on and I think my scars are cool. I always thought scars were cool on someone. I always thought it made people interesting. This is just for the prank today. I know Isaiah is going to be super confusing. He's going to think the same thing that you guys would probably think if I had said I hate my body out of nowhere. If you guys are ready for today's video, don't forget to smash that like button and comment team Janice in the comment section below.  And I don't feel the same how I feel before and we are going to see his reaction. So let's get it guys. Alright friends and fam, so I have the camera all set up. Isaiah right now is taking blue bra for his walk.  And I'm just going to be looking at my incisions and everything and we are going to get this prank started. So if you guys are ready for today's video again, don't forget to smash that like button and comment team Janice in the comment section below. God that feels so good to say. Let's get it guys. I really hate how I'm looking right now. Hey I thought you said you didn't care about that type of stuff. You gave a whole spiel the other day saying how you were like happy with the skin that you were in and you didn't care what you were thinking. And I meant it. And I meant it but it's just like now that I'm looking at myself in the mirror I'm like this is crazy. Like they're super super dark and it's like Babe it's not that bad. It is. It's not that bad. I feel like disgusting. I feel bloated and nasty. Like I just I'm not like You're not bloated. You're swollen. There's a difference. I just don't feel like I'm gonna heal nicely. And I'm just like really not happy with my body. Babe you you just got surgery like five days ago. You're being way too hard on yourself. You're still swollen. Your scars, your stitches, they're still fresh. I just don't feel like I'm just gonna like be happy once they're healed. Like it's gonna look bad. Babe they sell creams for that and all that. But what if it heals dark? I wouldn't heal dark. The sensation is so dark and then these look like rays. So I feel like I'm gonna have a dry skin. That's all like dry blood and stuff. That's dry blood and it's still fresh. I'm just not happy like with how I look right now. You're being way too hard on yourself. Come here. You're being way too hard on yourself.   But now I'm scared. Like I feel like you are gonna say stuff about it. What would the person, what would they say? Like if we go to the beach. People are gonna look at me and be like, Ew, look at her. Look what she has on her body. That's how I feel.  I feel like you're thinking way too much about it. I don't think anyone's gonna look at you like that. If anything, I feel like those scars made you a strong person. I even said that the other day. I feel like, I don't even know how to explain it. Like you became so much like a more stronger woman with those scars. Why? How do you think that? Because the other day you were so confident in yourself and that's how I want you to be. I want you to be confident in yourself. You don't care about the scars. Those scars made you stronger. How? How do you feel stronger? I feel weaker. Why would you feel weaker? Because I can't even get up on myself still. It's hard for me to put on scars, but on my clothes. You just had surgery. You're still in recovery technically. So it doesn't mean anything. I'm not happy right now with how I look. Babe, you're being way too hard on yourself. How am I being hard on myself? I just don't like it. It's different for you. You need to understand that with or without these scars you're still beautiful inside and out. I want you to realize that. Why do you want me to keep looking at them? Because you should not be afraid to I don't want to see that. You shouldn't be hiding or anything. You should embrace it. This made me so much stronger. Because of this, I feel so much better internally. I handled the problems that I had to handle. You should feel happy that you went through that. How? Why am I happy? Why should I feel happy? There's people out there that don't have to go through this stuff. They look great. You're acting like you're the only person that had to go through this. You know how many more people, there's probably millions of people out there who are scared to go through what you just went through. You should be the role model for them. You should be that image. She went through it. I can do it too. She came out stronger. She came out so much healthier. You should be that person that people look up to. You're that person. I want you to realize that. You shouldn't be hiding your scars. You should really be embracing them. I feel like you should be telling people your stories. So many people called you wrong with you. I feel like that's what you need to show the world.   Those scars just made you so much more stronger for women.  You really... Come here. What is it that bothers you? Is it the darkness? It's everything. They told me that my belly button was going to look different. Why would your belly button look different? Because they cut the inside so it's going to look different. All of this is raised skin. It's all swollen though. That's what you need to understand. You've only been out of surgery for four days. It's only been four days. Give yourself time. Give your body time to heal. You need to just chill. You're getting way too far on yourself. So you love my body? Yes. I told you I've always did. Before the surgery, after the surgery. That doesn't mean anything to me. I'd hug you tighter. Obviously I can't. You need to stop worrying about your image. You said the other day you didn't care about that type of stuff. I don't want you to be like that.  You're hot.  I want you to see that. You're too hard on yourself. You really are. No, I'm not. What do you mean? I feel like my scars are pretty bad.  You just wanted to hear it? It's a prank. That's what we're doing now? We're back on that? We're back on that? I just wanted to hear how much you love me. I already told you that. And you wanted to hear it again. You started something. That means you must be feeling way better. I'm feeling way better that you have time to do all this now. Say it. So I'm not in my usual spot because I actually can't sit down on the couch normally yet. But anyway, thank you guys so much for watching today's video. If you guys enjoyed the video, don't forget to smash that like button. Again, leave your comments in the comment section below. Guys, I got Isaiah so good. It's amazing to hear how much of a supportive boyfriend Isaiah is and how he genuinely feels about my body. Babe, I love you. No, man. You're not getting any more compliments for like a week. This was epic. Thank you guys so much for watching today's video. And it's time for today's post notification shout out. Today's post notification shout out. Today's post notification shout out goes out to Gary Fernandez. Thank you so much for your love and support. Isaiah and I love you. If you guys want a post notification shout out, all you guys got to do is like, comment, share, and subscribe. And turn your post notification bells on to notify whenever we post a new video and we'll catch you in the next one. Love you all to a new family.


A Kentucky National Guardsman received a silver star for his actions in Afghanistan. Captain Shannon Eisen was deployed in 2008 with the 206th Engineer Battalion. He had been leading a platoon clearing improvised explosive devices from a roadway when things went wrong. A vehicle got in front of us, had hit an IED, then initiated an ambush, which we ended up having to fight that as well as trying to help those individuals that were in the vehicle. Eisen braved enemy fire while rushing to the aid of four trapped men and also gave medical aid to an injured soldier. The Silver Star is the military's third highest award for valor.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with Leighton Sports Cards. We are ripping 2021-22 Panini Spectra basketball hobby four box break number two random team style. Here is a look at our random results again. To show my daily group break. Awesome man, that's great. I could always find these on the website under the results tab as well as the link in chat. Let's get right into it without further ado. We've got Reggie Jackson, Bones Highland Rookie. We've got a Trey Mann, that is a radiant rookie auto, 56 out of 99. And we've got Luka Donchich on the silver, very nice. Dude, I have not heard the name Noah Von Le since like 2017 Von. I cannot believe that guy is still in the NBA. Jalen Suggs rookie. Ooh, we've got 41 out of 49. Clyde Drexler auto on the full spectrum. Going to do a random for this at the end between the Blazers and the Rockets. We've got Blazers is Sam A and Rockets is Houston, Houston, Houston, Houston, Houston. John M. So this will be a random between those two teams. We've got Clint Capella, 19 out of 35 on the Astral. Swiss Bank, Christian Wood, Jaden Springer. We've got Mark Aguirre, 89 out of 99 on the Catalyst's auto. Nice one there for Dallas. That's pre-bad boys right there. Nice Mark Aguirre and Marcus Smart Silver. MPJ, Trey Young. We've got Joe Weisskamp, 53 out of 149 on the Rookie Jersey auto going to the Spurs. Nice Weisskamp. And then we've got Davion Mitchell, 21 out of 25 on the Meta. Very nice. Grats on that one, Kings. That'll do it for Box One. Since Duke won the national championship game in 2015. Holy cow, bubba. It's kind of wild, dude. Yeah, I get it. If you're not a fan of Spore, I mean, it's like, it's, you know, one of those things. So I get it. I get it. I get it. Lamello, Zyre Williams Rookie. We've got Kazzy Russell, 93 out of 99 on the Icons auto going to the Lakers. Seguru, there you go. And Kai Jones, Rookie Silver. Kemba Walker. Jalen Green Rookie. There you go. Rockets. We've got Charles Bassie, that is 12 out of 15 on the aspiring auto. I'm assuming that's just orange, right? Yes. Orange out of 15. There you go. Sixers. And Nikola Busavich on the, no, on the Meta to 25 for the Bulls. Nice. Two Metas and two Packs. Very nice. Little piece. Luca Garza Rookie. We've got Moses Moody, that is 18 out of 99 on the aspiring Rookie Auto for the Warriors. Congrats, Warriors. Golden State is Derek Jay. There you go, Derek. And then we got a Moses Moody Silver Rookie on the back. Good Warriors pack for you there. Derek Jared Jackson Jr. Ray Allen. Wow. One of one. Logo man. RPA Joshua Primo. Let's go, baby. Who's got the Spurs Taka Hero K? So we're matching Matt right now. We're matching Matt, baby. Whoo. Let's go. Huge. That will go right into a mag for you. Spurs and Keon Johnson, 29 out of 35. Going astral for the Blazers. Yeah, man. What a day here it's been. There has just been fire after fire after fire. That's what we do. Oh yeah. Big time stuff right there on the logo, man. Heck, yeah. Let's get it. We're about to jump out the gym, baby. I know exactly Paul somehow. I know, right? Isaiah Jackson. Oh, the White Mamba, 62 out of 99. Brian Scalabrini. Let's go. Thanks for the sub there, Savage Smurf. The White Mamba. And the Anthony Davis Silver. Do you know, he's got one of the greatest quotes of all time. Someone was like making fun of him because he was like, it was not that good of an NBA player. So he goes, I'm closer to LeBron James than you are to me. And it's like true. I love Scalabrini. Joshua Primo Rookie. Alex English, six out of 25. On the Celestial Icons Auto. There you go, Nuggets. One of the most underrated players of all time. I'll say it every time I pull an Alex English Auto. Show me that two-inch vertical. 14 out of 99 is Deontay Murray for the Spurs. Spurs just gravy now, Takahiro. Kemba Walker. Trey Mann, Rookie. Devin Basel going to the Spurs again. That is 16 out of 99. C's broadcast team has Kendrick Perkins and Brian Scalabrini. That's a dream team. Dallin O'Banton Silver. Perkins wears me out a little bit. Yeah, he's, he can be a bit much sometimes. Yeah, we've got nice 43 out of 49. Franz Wagner. Glory, congrats, buddy. Glory's in chat right now. Boom. Let's go, buddy. There it is. The Franz. That's sick. There it is. Then we've got Christian Wood, three out of 25 on the meta. There he is. Oh, Glory's pumped. Glory is pumped, baby. Is that on card or is that sticker? I think so, yeah. I believe that's on card. I don't see the little sticker. I was going to say that's on card, too. Yeah, four colored RPA. That's perfect. Let's go, dude. Filthy Franz, you go, Sammy, you're going to pop something? Honestly, my voice is already given out, dude. I'm already losing my, like I'm the logo man. It was like half voice on that. Yeah, exactly. Brandon Boston, Jr. 21 out of 49. Nasty RPA there. Congrats, Clips. Sammy on the combo spot. Sammy. Oh yeah, same name, Mojo, baby. 68 out of 99. That is Jeremy Grant. Yeah, we pulled a lot of heat, Bubba. If you want to check out some fun stuff, go look at the breaks one through four of Penini three and two baseball. We did. I did the first four breaks of the night. Absolutely loaded. Absolutely loaded. And then some good stuff out of luminaries, too. Oh yeah. Yanis. Kim Thomas, 9 out of 10 on the Gold Radiant Auto for the Nets. Clarence, congrats, Clarence. Oh yeah, the first age charm, baby. You know it. And we've got Chris Paul, 15 out of 49. Interstellar. Shreve Cooper rookie. We've got JT Thor, 96 out of 99 on the Celestial Patch Auto for the Hornets. Congrats, Charlotte. And we've got Bama to buy on the silver. I think Sean was done up. We've got Kat Ant-Man. That is Spencer Dinwitty, 15 out of 25 on the Catalyst Auto for the Mavs. Congrats, Mavs. And then Kyle Lowry, 14 out of 35. Worse than the game. All right, guys, let's do this random really quick for this Clyde. We're doing the random for this Clyde Drexler. It is trailblazers and rockets. Let me get that typed in. Then we'll do a quick recap. All right, guys, we're doing the random for a full spectrum of trailblazers and Houston rockets. Clyde Drexler Auto numbered 41 out of 49. So it's between these two teams going to roll the dice. And whatever team is on top after eight times, we'll get the card. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Go into the blazers. There you go. Let's do a quick recap, guys. What a break this was. This is absolutely nuts. All right, we've got Clyde Drexler going to the blazers, Spencer Dinwitty Mavs, JT Thor Hornets, Cam Thomas Nets, Brandon Boston Jr. Clippers, Devin Vasell Spurs, Alex English Nuggets, Brian Scalabrini for the Celtics, Moses Moody, Warriors, Charles Bassie going to the Sixers, Kazi Russell going to the Lakers, Joe Wisecamp Spurs, had Mark Aguire Mavs and Trey Mann for the Thunder. Then we had a Franz Wagner RPA 43 out of 49 going to Glory with the Magic, and then a one of one Nebula Logo Man RPA Joshua Primo going to the Spurs. That'll do it for the break there, guys. Thanks again for the fail. We got more spectra.


10 poorest countries in Africa in 2023. In today's video, I will be showing you the 10 poorest countries in Africa. Have you ever wondered why so many African countries are poor? Have you ever wondered which is the poorest country in Africa? Well after careful analysis and the standard of living, I present the 10 poorest countries in Africa. Hello there, welcome. I am James your host and you are watching Africa Reloaded. Africa is home to some of the world's poorest countries, with many of them facing economic, political, and social challenges that have hindered their development. The continent is home to a large proportion of the world's poorest people, with many living in extreme poverty, lacking access to basic services such as health care, education, and sanitation. Despite efforts by governments, international organizations, and NGOs to tackle poverty, many African countries continue to struggle with high levels of poverty and inequality. Before I begin, a like on this video will be very much appreciated because you will be supporting me. I will focus on the 10 poorest countries in Africa based on their gross domestic product, GDP, per capita. These countries are facing various challenges that are preventing them from achieving economic growth and improving the living standards of their people. The list includes some of the least developed countries in the world where poverty, malnutrition, disease, and political instability are pervasive. 10. Guinea-Bissau Guinea-Bissau is a small West African country located on the Atlantic coast, bordered by Senegal and Guinea. The country has a population of around 2 million people and its economy is primarily based on agriculture with cashier nuts and rice being the main cash crops. Guinea-Bissau has been affected by political instability and drug trafficking which has hindered its economic development. The GDP per capita of Guinea-Bissau is around $968, making it one of the poorest countries in the world.  A president's five-year elected term has never been completed in this country. 9. Madagascar This is a large island nation located off the southeastern coast of Africa. The country has a population of around 29 million people and its economy is primarily based on agriculture with vanilla, cloves, and coffee being the main cash crops. However, Madagascar has been affected by political instability and natural disasters including cyclones and droughts which has had a negative impact on its economy. The GDP per capita of Madagascar is around $945. Over 2 million people in Madagascar are in danger of imminent starvation due to a prolonged drought. 8. Liberia Liberia is a small country located on the west coast of Africa bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d'Ivoire. The country has a population of around 5 million people and its economy is primarily based on agriculture with rubber being the main cash crop. The country also has significant deposits of iron ore, gold, and diamonds. However, Liberia has been affected by years of civil war and political instability which has hindered its economic development. The GDP per capita of Liberia is around $729. However, an Ebola outbreak in 2014 and the end of international aid initiatives in 2017 have forced the nation to deal with its significant economic issues on its own. 7. Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, is the second largest country in Africa, located in Central Africa. The country has a population of around 100 million people and its economy is primarily based on mining with cobalt, copper, and gold being the main minerals. However, the DRC has been affected by years of conflict and political instability which has hindered its economic development. The country has also been affected by poverty, malnutrition, and disease which has had a negative impact on the well-being of its population. The GDP per capita of the DRC is around $632 making it one of the poorest countries in the world. 6. Niger This is a landlocked country located in West Africa bordered by Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali. The country has a population of around 23 million people and its economy is primarily based on agriculture which accounts for around 40% of its GDP. The country is one of the driest in the world with most of its land being desert or semi-arid. Niger has been affected by poverty, food insecurity, and conflict which has hindered its economic development. The GDP per capita of Niger is around $580. Unfortunately, the newly stable nation is surrounded by Boko Haram and the Islamic State soldiers. According to the UN, Niger cannot feed itself even in a good year. 5. Mozambique Mozambique is a country located on the southeastern coast of Africa bordered by Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Eswatini. The country has a population of around 30 million people and its economy is primarily based on agriculture which accounts for around 27% of its GDP. However, Mozambique is also rich in natural resources including coal, natural gas, and minerals. Despite its natural resources, Mozambique has been affected by years of civil war and political instability which has hindered its economic development. The GDP per capita of Mozambique is around $523. 4. Malawi This is a small landlocked country in southeastern Africa bordered by Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique. The country has a population of around 19 million people and its economy is primarily based on agriculture which accounts for around 80% of its exports. Tobacco is the main cash crop but the country also produces tea, cotton, and sugar. However, Malawi has been affected by periodic droughts and flooding which has had a negative impact on its economy. The GDP per capita of Malawi is around $397 making it one of the poorest countries in the world. More than 70% of Maloans make less than the $1.90 per day set by the UN as the poverty line. The majority of Malawi's workforce is employed in agriculture which is hampered by increasingly frequent floods and droughts. This fact only serves to exacerbate the situation. 3. Central African Republic The Central African Republic is a landlocked country located in the heart of Africa. The country has been affected by political instability, violence, and conflict for many years which has had a negative impact on its economy. The country is rich in natural resources including gold and diamonds but the conflict has made it difficult to fully exploit them. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy with most people engaged in subsistence farming. The GDP per capita of CAO is around $352 making it one of the poorest countries in the world. South Sudan South Sudan is the youngest country in Africa having gained independence from Sudan in 2011. However, the country has been affected by years of conflict and violence which has had a severe impact on its economy. The country's GDP per capita of around $307 is one of the lowest in the world and poverty is widespread. South Sudan is rich in natural resources including oil but the conflict has made it difficult to fully exploit them. Majority of the citizens leave in the slums. 1. Burundi Burundi is a small landlocked country in East Africa bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The country has a population of around 12 million people and its economy is heavily dependent on agriculture which accounts for around 90% of its exports. However, Burundi has been affected by political instability and civil conflict which has hindered its economic development. The country's GDP per capita of around $261 is one of the lowest in the world and poverty is widespread. Many Africans continue to live in poverty as the economic crisis gets worse. I appreciate you watching to the end. Please help us out by giving this video a thumbs up. For more excellent material, leave comments and become a subscriber to Africa Reloaded. To receive notifications of our new video don't forget to switch on your notification icon.