Arena Magazine editor Julia Steinberg on Issue 006, California Forever, and San Francisco's slow recovery

from Arena Magazine. Everyone, good to see you.

Good to see you.

Thank you so much for stopping by. Thanks so much for coming down. Nice to see that the studio is real, that it's not AI generated.

It is real. It is real. We are here in Hollywood bringing media back to Hollywood. We appreciate you uh Are you the only ones left?

We really are.

We are.

We're in a huge com like complex.

Yeah.

And not a to our knowledge, not a single other firm actually shows up every day.

I do have there is a there is a one benefit. There are many benefits to being in Hollywood. One is that it's in between where Jordy and I live, so it splits the commute. The other uh benefit is that I think it should dramatically increase our chances of winning a uh a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because if the if there it is a lifetime achievement award, [laughter] you're truly in in incredibly rarified air. You know, Frank Sinatra is there, Leonardo DiCaprio is a star. You truly have to be at the pinnacle of your craft. But if there is some bonus point for actually being in in Hollywood, I think we get we Yeah. It increases our chances dramatically.

Lifetime Achievement Award of of Animal Analogies applied to artificial intelligence.

Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder if they'll just start putting influencers on there. Like where is Alex Earl? Why is she not on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? Because that's what Hollywood is at this point.

Portoy made the most people angry of anyone ever. Yeah, Portoi is I mean uh as you walk down the Hollywood Walk of Fame like yes, there are some absolute legends, but there are some other folks who are you know more mid-tier. Yeah, I would say mid. [laughter] Uh and and so I would put influencers there. The weird thing is that the influencers aren't in Hollywood. So the question is like does the Hollywood Walk of Fame just wind up reflecting what's happening? Is it geoence? Are the star Are the stars

like when when does Mr. Beast become eligible? Because he's in North Carolina. Well, when are they going to do a Saudi Arabia?

Oh, yes.

Hollywood Walk of Fame. That's what I'm looking for.

Don't give them the idea. They will definitely do one over there.

They should hire and open.

I bet the H I bet Hollywood as a Is Hollywood a city? I don't know. But

I don't think it's an independent city. I think that's I think Hollywood. There's obviously folks here that want to raise money. They should franchise the name. They should sell the rights to the name Hollywood and put a Hollywood in

Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia should just recreate every city in the world in the desert and then use it and then use it to incentivize movies to get made there.

Yeah.

Bring uh bring culture to the desert.

Um

that's what LA did.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, we've been to we've been to New York on the Fox lot here in LA. They have basically a mini New York

full re uh full like representation of of New York. You can go film whatever you want there. Uh anyway, give us uh give us an update since you've been on the show a few months ago. What's latest in your world?

I you're fulltime at Arena Magazine.

I am full time at Arena Magazine. We're getting ready to launch our upcoming issue 006 ode to Capitalism. And that's all I can say. More will be out next week. So keep your timelines open. I remember I was talking with Max. I was like, "Oh, is like Thanksgiving week, is that a good week to launch? will like more people be online or will fewer people be online because they'll be with their families. And we had this whole debate about how online people were going to be during Thanksgiving week. And the

answer that we came down to is actually people are going to be more online during Thanksgiving week

I think. So

they, you know, they don't want to be responsible for getting the turkey in or out of the oven. They they don't want to argue with their family about Epstein files or whatever. So,

yeah. I wonder I [clears throat] wonder what the online behavior is because uh over Christmas uh like we noticed that that's when like the really crazy H1B dust up happened.

I know. Well, I I'm Jewish. I don't celebrate Christmas. So, I was I had, you know, I had plans. I had to go get Chinese food. I had to go to movies and I was just totally offline. And all my Christian friends or my friends who celebrate Christmas, they're hyper aware of the H-1B discourse. or they could recite, you know, this person.

It was very odd timing because a lot of the tech podcasts were off for the holidays and didn't need to comment on it even though it was this like hot political issue that you would have expected most tech podcasts to touch on. But then by the time everyone got back from New Year's like the whole the whole like you know dust had sort of moved on. So

well maybe that's good because the H-1B issue is just you shouldn't touch it. It's too controversial if you want to be monetized still like

Yes. Yeah.

So maybe that was some like very clever like Jewish marketing gimmick by putting the H1B discourse on Christmas so only the Jews could participate.

Maybe. No, I know. I So I I do think everyone participates in in the timeline over holidays. I think it's uh but but maybe it's more phone time, less computer time. Like people are milling about. They're stepping away from the turkey, but they're not necessarily sitting down and writing.

More good screen, less bad screen.

Wait, which one's the good screen? I mean, that's the that's the joke. It's like I close my bad screen.

The bad screen is the computer.

Yeah. Yeah.

I I have it. I think my my good screen is the computer. My bad screen is my phone.

I would agree with this.

On my phone, actually.

You guys are I mean, you guys are not working an office job.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. I I I think there will be people uh milling about reading posts, but they won't have time to sit down and really uh we we were debating this over the stream. Like, will anyone have time to watch like a three-hour stream uh on Thanksgiving? Of course, we're taking Thanksgiving off, but um uh but not Black Friday, but we are we are going to be the most important, Dave. We're going to be open for business. We're going to be celebrating.

Tell me what deals tell me what to buy on Amazon.

Yeah, we will. We have some good people lined up. Um so, yeah. What uh what what uh what did you write about last magazine and uh did the California Forever piece line up with it's going to publish in the next B?

Yeah. So in the last magazine I did the review of Dan Wong's Break Neack.

That's right. You talked to him too a little bit. What was your takeaway?

I think I really like Dan. I think he's a really smart guy. I've hung out with him a few times. Uh he gave me a huge stack of the London Review of Books and he's like this is just like the greatest thing ever. So it was nice bonding over print media with him.

That's great. Uh, I do think that it's just I like I'm very skeptical that the United States government should get involved in these huge infrastructure projects in its current state. Like I like the idea of engineering, but what makes American engineering so spectacular and so amazing is that we do it in the private market.

It's distributed.

It's distributed. And if we just said, okay, we're the United States government is going to do this huge engineering project. It's like,

do do we trust the United States government to do this huge engineering project? I like I I drove down uh to LA yesterday from San Francisco and it's like half the roads were terrible and it's like you know what I sort of wish this whole thing was a toll road. Yeah. Maybe I'm not like that like dieh hard libertarian where I'm like government shouldn't do roads private

at least not yet. Uh give me like 5 years.

I I joke that the G Wagon is so popular in LA because you actually need a 4x4 to like get around some of like crazy

Well, yeah. Well, it was raining like crazy yesterday on the freeway and I was driving down and I was like, "Thank God that my beautiful, beautiful Rav 4 has four-wheel drive or else I would die because these roads are terrible and no one knows how to drive in the rain."

Yeah, I was I was reflecting on that. There are so many interesting anecdotes about like is the government equipped to take on the project that you are interested in whatever your pet project is whether it's healthcare or space exploration or whatever you want. And uh yeah, I I I keep I keep coming back to this part of like like step one in any of that is like fix the productivity problem in government projects.

Yeah. I think the for the la for the next issue of Arena

[clears throat]

006 that's coming out December 1st, I wrote about California Forever, which is the project to build a new city in Salona County, which is about an hour northeast of San Francisco. And it's it's sort of like an interesting concept to me because it's like oh it's this privately funded city you know all of the like the who's who of Silicon Valley Loren Powell Jobs Collison brothers Reed Hoffman not Freriedman Mark and Dreon all these people put money into this it's a privately funded city

but so much of the struggle with getting California Forever off the ground is just because of government and I remember I was factecking the essay and I was communicating with Julie Julia Bleststone who's the California Forever head of comms And I was said like, "Okay, well the next step is there's this like 1,200 uh page environmental review." And she's like, "No, it's actually 12,000 pages." I don't think I've read 12,000 pages in my life. I don't think anyone in this room has read 12,000. And I read a lot. Maybe I have in my life, but me not at once. And definitely not environmental review report.

Yeah.

Especially a report that somebody's just going to drag into Chat GBT and say, "Uh, turn this into five bullet points, please.

[laughter]

turn this into one image.

My favorite memory from college actually is this is actually when uh Peter Teal was co-eing a class and I my sophomore year of German 266 and it's a class of like you know 60 people you have to fill out a form to get in. It's supposed to be like you know a good class and it is a very good class. It's a fascinating topic. But my favorite or one of my favorite memories from the class is the kid next to me who had the startup that was worth like that millions if not tens of millions of dollars

put in chat summarize Hegel in three bullet points. [laughter] I

love that.

One shot it.

Yes.

Don't make mistakes.

That would be Yeah, that's that's

Well, maybe maybe I mean

Stanford Whiz Kid his startup's only worth a couple million bucks. Maybe he's actually not [laughter] that not that elite. Who

knows? Yeah. what what is the uh what is the mood in the the Stanford alumni uh world right now? Uh there was this question I was sending you this post from Delhi and this question about like uh the age-old question of like is this next generation cooked? Is there is is is AI actually turning off folks brains to the point where they can't sit down and read Hegel all the way through that everyone is doing this? Is it a systemic problem or is this you know uh just canankerous old millennials shaking their fist at the younger generation?

Well, I will say this at Stanford there's a thing called co-terming. It's like a fifth year masters you apply. Most of the time people get in and you just sort of stick around for another year, finish up a masters and you get two degrees at the end in five years.

Apparently a third of my class the class of 2025 co-termed whereas it's co-terming right now.

A third 33%.

Yeah, we we've seen this a lot. We saw some data that more people are applying to law school.

Oh yeah, the law school thing is terrible. The law I have a few friends who are studying for LSAT right now and I'm like hitting them in the head with their huge LSAT books.

Is that because you think they won't be a it won't be a career path?

There there aren't going to be associates. Maybe they're going to be like five associates, but there aren't going to be 50 associates because it's interesting because

if you genuinely are excited about devoting your life to understanding and finessing the legal system, it's probably as good of a time as ever because you're going to be able to learn a lot faster. You're going to be able to be more productive. like if you're super high agency, you'll find the right firm and attach your career to that and and probably uh be able to have a wonderful career. But deciding to do law school because you don't know what you want to do and you trying to buy time uh and you want to do something that's sort of like high like on a on a high status track uh and hopefully high earning without without being necessarily high agency just feels like a a train wreck uh an inevitable train wreck. Well, how it seems to me my dad actually he just retired from a legal career and he was the first person to say like yeah all the associates are sort of screwed because they're like they just can't out can't out compete the AI and law especially how it's structured because there needs to be like a partner on the case as per like this weird agreement that was reached I think in the early 2000s associates can't really be on cases anymore so there's even less of a need for associates and this is going to be true in all fields and I think obviously there like these in law specifically there are these you know 100 200 year old firms that really care about legacy they care about reputation so they're like okay we need to have like some young people to carry the firm on but it's just the question of like how are those people going to learn anything if chatbt is just doing all their work or Harvey or anything like that

I think how I like I I think for if you're like the top like 5% of like law students you're probably going to be fine

uh we're still going to have judges is judges are one thing and I'm like maybe AI should just replace judges. We have a lot of bad judges.

That seems like a that's a crazy idea. Before of of the courtroom, the thing to replace you would think would be the stenographer. Like we have dictation and yet and or all the time. It's not that great. Okay. Uh we can get into the bear the bear thesis for AI in a minute, but uh the the the court uh the illustrator, what do they what are they called? just court

courtroom illustrator.

Courtroom illustrator. We have cameras. Why don't we just take a picture?

Like the the downside of if you actually use Nana Banana

or any other image model.

Yeah.

It would it would not it would just be like good enough to not produce a funny result. And I feel like there's so much humor.

It has to be like Studio Gibli like murderer or murder like defendant.

No, that would work. But I'm saying like sometimes that sometimes the illustrators like botch an illustration so badly that it's funny or something. That's what you're thinking about. Yeah. Um, yeah, I I I was shocked by how resilient that uh job was to automation since we do have the camera and we've had the camera for a hundred years almost and it's stuck around as a real

I think I don't know like a lot of court or a lot of law is like ritual like and I think in the UK the judges still have like the weird head things that they need to wear the wigs

um or even like the judges robes and my dad like he had to wear a tie

around for a really long time even if the AI can do so much it just we will do it out of procedure we will we will have these conversations with humans for for uh whatever reason I don't know

yeah procedure is very inelastic and also I think just you know lawyers it's a very easy like cast of person to demonize and I think just as you know McKenzie will stick around so they can say oh sorry about the layoffs Mackenzie made us do it it's going to be the same with the evil lawyers

yeah sure yeah yeah you want the buck to stop with someone and not necessarily an AI

no

not necessarily

because if you say Oh, sorry. The AI said this. Well, they said like, "Well, you use Grock instead of Chad GBT. Can you ask Chad GB's T?" Because that's my preferred AI model. If it's just McKenzie.

Yeah. What's the uh um I feel like I feel like there's still there's still probably some alpha in uh becoming a lawyer or going down the legal path in 2025. uh if you are basically setting yourself up not to just be uh you know associate fodder for you know high margin billing but in fact you are setting yourself up to gain control over an institution that would be harder to build independently. Well, I think with young people especially, law it's because you have, you know, you make like good money in your your like late 20s and 30s, but you start to make really good money in your 50s and 60s.

And I think for

sort of like an MLM, [snorts]

yeah, a little bit. But it's also for people my age who it's like, oh, I could either like work really hard for like 30 years and maybe if I make partner and I'm one of the really good partners, I can make

a ton of money,

like a good amount of money. It's like why do that when it's like oh if I learn how to code and after like 10 years I can make this much money.

Y four years with vesting.

Yeah. With vesting. All you need is the four years.

Yes. At the right hot company at the right time.

Yeah. So it's it's interesting to me because I feel like with the Gen Z financial incentives. It's so oriented around like make money now. Yeah.

Uh or even like the oh you have x amount of years to make money before AGI hits and the economy is permanent underass.

Yeah. Permanent underclass. I'm still waiting for the the gam g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g gambling on your student loan debt, you know, the double or like double your debt or pay nothing, you know.

I I've become I've become very skeptical of the permanency of the underclass phenomenon. I I feel like there will be like the the the strength of the underclass is growing in number, but the permanency is decreasing. uh because at any moment someone can be plucked from the underclass into the global elite through just one right like parlay or one right actually like building a company joining a thing um like distribution on the internet is so so aggressive that you can be languishing in the underclass and then go viral and launch a DTOC line and if you just have like a few things go your way you become like the the the market just gives you $10 million basically.

Yeah. I think it's very rare. It's random, too.

It's random. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you were on that plane and you screamed at that person and then you went viral and you became and then you started a podcast.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Don't give people ideas. I I think it usually goes the other way.

Girl, for example, I don't know exactly know how it all played out for her, but Haley Welch like like

Well, she she she was stupid with it.

Yeah. I think she like she launched a coin and it did not execute well. But that type of opportunity is entirely random and every once in a while the market just comes around. It does not feel permanent to be in the under.

So when I start yelling so on Wednesday when I fly to see my family for Thanksgiving, when I start like really aggressively yelling at people on the plane, you know it's time to buy Juliacoin.

Yes. Yes. Yes. You got to get in early on that for sure.

You have to get in early before I have my like tantrum on the plane.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, what else is uh uh has has anything updated you on the get your bag culture? Are people now self-aware of it? Uh, we were talking to Jessica Livingston and she was referring to the concept being actually not very new. She was saying uh carpet baggers.

Well, yeah, that was like a term for the Civil War and it was like anti-N northerner. It's like these people are just exploiting business opportunities which I don't know. It's like

I I don't like the term like exploitative business opportunities. I think we have enough.

But I don't think a lot is so we're in LA right now. I went to high school like a few miles from here and I think like a very like core memory for me and it was a college

memory. Shout out Ashley Vance.

Yes. Uh the ad the college admission scandal varsity blues. I

I was a junior in high school when this happened.

Okay. So you experienced Wow. I so my school actually the whistleblower's daughter was a senior and she was gonna go to Yale for soccer and we're all like oh it's sort of weird that this girl I'm gonna call her Susie.

Sure.

Susie is going to go to Yale for soccer but she's not on the soccer team at her school and there's not really evidence that she plays soccer but she's going to go to play soccer at Yale.

One of the most elite teams in women's soccer.

Sure. I don't know anything about soccer but uh this girl was going to go to Yale and you know at my high school it was very like elite. Everyone was concerned with if they got into Yale or not. So it was all sort of like oh like this is important like everyone flagged that Susie is going to Yale but we all sort of knew that she didn't play soccer

and I remember my my high school was very small and you know it was a college prep school and the day before the news came out I had a meeting with the head of school to talk about like where I should apply to college uh what my SAT scores was blah blah blah privilege blah blah blah acknowledged that I had a very elite upbringing

but I remember I the principal was late and this never happened

there seemed to be something very wrong and I was like I don't know what's happening and she was late to the meeting and it was fine and I was told that my SAT scores were fine blah blah blah blah blah I the next day first period I have a moral philosophy class I'm the only junior in the class it's all seniors I petitioned to say I can take this elective and we're talking about meritocracy

and whether meritocracy is real yes in the class we have a reading about meritocracy it's is it meritocracy just is it something that we should optimize for is it something that's unjust because you know intelligence is heritable, so it's it's not earned,

blah blah blah blah blah.

And we get to the class and, you know, at 7 a.m. that morning or whatever, we all woke up, we all saw that this girl's dad was, you know, he was arrested for securities fraud and part of his plea deal was that he was giving up his college admissions scandal where this guy, this college admissions coach was telling people to put that there were black on their college apps, that they were faking associations with various sports teams at all these elite schools. So, we go in and it's like, okay, like we're talking about meritocracy. What about Suzie? What about the college admission scandal? Because we're all sort of fed up with the whole college admissions process. It's a dog and pony show. My little brother's going through it right now. And I'm like, why are they asking you what three words you are? What could this possibly have to do with how good of a student you will be or anything like this?

But I remember going through the college admission scandal firsthand, just seeing like how corrupt it is, but also in a way it was sort of like an equalizing form of corruptness. M

because like if your family can donate $50 million to Harvard, you will get it. Like you have to be like really really really really bad to not get in if your family donates 50 million.

What if your family doesn't have 50 million to donate to Harvard? What if they only have $500,000?

Well, then you have to make 50 million before you apply.

Or you can use the $5,000 to buy your spot on the sports team.

Oh yeah.

Five grand.

500.

Oh, 500.

But it's that's a lot less than 50 million.

Yeah. Yeah.

So it's sort of more equalized. So it was for it wasn't like the like.1% but it's still like 1%.

Sure. Sure. Sure.

Corruption. Uh so I think that experience

isn't there a pro libertarian hot takeake that says like you should just auction off every slot.

I I've said this before like I well my my sort of take on this is that college admissions office should just be sold to the highest bidder.

Yeah. Um it would be a lot more honest than what's done now because right now it's they sort of they give you the spiel about like oh we need to have a super diverse class where we have one chist and one person who's really good at like studying molecular bio and like

and a sailor. We have to have a sailor.

The Michael sailor.

We actually don't have enough sailors there. They're doing walk-ons in the sailing team at Stanford. My best friend in undergrad did that. But

uh yeah, I think we should just auction off the college admissions office.

We don't have enough sailors in this country anymore.

We don't have enough sailors in this country. so bearish.

We got to get back into sailing.

That's hilarious.

But yeah, I think it's this is actually something I was talking about with my boyfriend is like how much would it cost

if you just auctioned off a slot? Maybe if you only auctioned off 10 if you limited

Oh, I would think you would you would auction off literally every slot, all of them. Like what is the market clearing price? Because you know uh in the luxury watch world like there will be a certain number of uh I mean this happens with like the market what is the market clearing price for Taylor Swift tickets but like you know there are if they if Porsche comes out with a new a new uh GT3 RS there might be you know 5,000 made and they will try to find the market clearing price as close as possible to what the market will bear. Sometimes they overpric them. They don't sell them all. Sometimes they underpric them and they immediately trade up on the secondary market. But you could even have a secondary market that you know, okay, yes, I bought my slot at Harvard for 2 million, but they're going to three million now, so I'm going to sell that, go to NYU instead. [laughter] Like you could have you could have an entire entire process uh just to maximize the price.

I just don't know. It's like if that happens, what percent of the Stanford class would be international, which is a good question.

It'd be hugely international, of course. I mean, it would be it'd be across the entire world. Everyone would just pay to go. And I mean there's already a little bit of that, but it's it's definitely like there's more design to the system than that. There's certainly I I would imagine

how how do you how do you uh how do you defend that against uh you know just eliminating an entire track for uh young people that maybe have uh negative capital within their family systems. And uh even if you tell them even if you tell the family at birth like you know expect to be able to purch if you want your child to go to Stanford or the auction range at that point counting in inflation will probably be you know 70 to 80 million to get into the school. probably what we'll have is

and then and then it ultimately actually destroys uh would would naturally just destroy I think some of the the uh would certainly be valuable for uh students from elite families to network with other uh students from elite families but ultimately would would uh kill a lot of what makes universities great. Yes, I I I agree that it would kill a lot of that. But probably what would happen is, you know, now you have a lot of scholarships. Uh when you apply for college, you know, the Coca-Cola scholarship is a very big one. A lot of these are sort of mostly like full rides to college, like the very like prestigious scholarships. And so probably what will happen is that instead of having these scholarships to college, it's like, okay, we young people of America whose family can't afford the like $50 million sticker price of college admission, apply and we will give you the $50 million to pay your way for this price. But yeah, it's obviously a very flawed system, but it's interesting. It's interesting like mental model about how much we value college admission especially because you know at a place like Stanford there are like what like 1,700 to 2,000 graduates in a year. Not all of them do fascinating things.

Yeah. Uh what's uh where where what city are you living in these days?

I live in San Francisco.

What is the mood in San Francisco? Do you think it's getting better?

I don't know. I've only lived there since August, so I can't really say. There was this narrative in the uh in the mansion section today about uh about it cleaning up its act. There's

I have a fun story. So

there's more uh there's more demand for West Portal Village Center. I had never heard of that.

I don't know what that is.

It is now more expensive to live there than in uh Pack Heights. Apparently $2.5 million median list price. There's also the the story about like the Open AI secondar is driving up real estate prices. Um, but it's always it's always interesting to feel what's actually happening on the ground.

So, I live uh I live in Pack Heights. I live in Lower Pack Heights. Yes. And a few weeks ago, there was a homeless guy who's just totally passed out on my doorstep.

I It was a Saturday morning. I woke up late. It was like 9 or 10. I checked my phone and in our apartment WhatsApp, it's like, "Hello, there is an unhoused person on our doorstep. Please don't disturb him." And then in this group chat, we had this huge debate over whether we should call the cops. And the the conclusion is just the cops won't come. You can't really do anything about it. He seems nonviolent. Maybe we should wait for him to leave.

So I left my apartment at like, you know, 10:30. I was back at 3:00 and he was gone.

Yeah.

But it's still like a weird thing to account for. Like

you sort of want to call an ambulance for

you want to call Well, you just want to call someone.

Yeah.

And have And in my building, you know, there

probably like 30 people who live in the building. So, it's like someone could have called someone or maybe if all 30 of us tried,

but it it was very disconcerting because it's one of those things where it's like, oh, everything's better. Everything

was everything noticeably cleaner during uh uh Salesforce this year, Salesforce's conference because a few years ago, Beni off like just completely cleaned up the entire city. And then the other time that they cleaned up the city was when Cian Ping was visiting your

Cian Ping. I was in as of that week and it it felt like it was a different place.

Really?

Mhm.

That's funny. I think SF generally or urbanism generally it's just it's so hard to justify living in one of these places. I think for most people

I think I I I I agree but it's almost the flip side where it's it's so easy to justify living in a suburb because yes you're in the city and it feels like ah this is like like we got to clean this place up. We got to clean this place up. But then uh you you sort of work on that and then you also work on your life and your company and your business and whatever. And then as soon as you have money in a family, it's just so easy to go to a suburb. And there's so many fantastic suburbs. And that's always it was always the thing that annoyed me about the discourse of like San Francisco has fallen or San Francisco is such a bad place to live. It's like, well, people live in Palo Alto, they live in Atheertton, they live in, you know, up north in wine country, they live in Incline Village, they live all over the place, and they live in these wonderful luxurious places that have no crime, no homelessness. Like they have they have like fantastically managed cities just a commute distance from San Francisco.

Yeah. I think San Francisco it's always sort of been like a young person city.

Totally. When I lived there it was super rough but I was like I'm young. It's fine.

Yeah. I saw a guy on Twitter who's going to give me a taser. So thank you. Um

but I think weapons on the internet.

Yeah. Giving away weapons.

You can buy a taser on Amazon. It'll show up this afternoon.

It's like a taser gun. So I think it'll be easier to use. I was going to buy a taser. This

Well, those are Yeah, those are legal. You can also just buy this.

Yeah, it's

someone's going to give you a free one.

Yeah, someone's going to give you a free one. So, SF is sort of it's it's, you know, the duality of San Francisco is it's great because some random stranger on the internet will give me a free taser gun, but the sort of negative part is that I need this taser gun to stay safe.

Yeah. Uh, it's always been so fascinating. I mean, I wonder I wonder if the OpenAI wealth will meaningfully change the uh the budget of the city. I you know you there's just so much and it's actually the company's actually in San Francisco. It's not a Mountain View company. It's not a Palo Alto company. It's not a you know Menllo Park company. It is a San Francisco company and you have 500 billion dollars of wealth loosely with you know tens of billions in the pockets of employees right there. Like that should w wind up doing something even if it's just some renovations some private security.

How good are OpenAI employees at spending money?

I don't know.

How would they spend it? How how would you recommend this?

I have I have a friend who works at OpenAI and you he just like you know I don't really know how to spend my money and I was just like

do you want like I can yacht?

Yeah. [laughter]

Get a yacht. I don't know. There is a marina in San Francisco.

There is. Yeah. Beautiful.

I like to go over and walk around there. There are these like cool boats and yachts. It doesn't need to be like a super ostentatious one, but

I don't know.

Yacht is secondary to uh to cleaning up the streets, you know.

Yes. But all of like even buying a yacht would help clean up the streets because it is some simulation of the city's economy.

Okay.

Uh I don't know.

I suppose. Yeah.

Speaking of boats, it's like waters uh high tides uh rise all boats.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah.

So I don't know. It's I guess it's sort of it's silly to say like rise or like raise the economic output of San Francisco because it's one of the most economically like intensive regions in the country. But I do very strongly believe that, you know, just

let market forces do their thing, things will get better.

Well, uh, thank you so much for stopping by the Ultradome. This is fantastic.

Yes. Thank you for having to get the update. Excited for 006.

006.

Yeah, 007 is next after that.

Very exciting.

Amazing.

Uh, where can people get it?

People can aramag.com.

Arenamag.com and at Barnes & Noble near you.

Yes, there's a Barnes & Noble deal now. IRL. Well,

so if you want to buy any romanty books, which I think is is the new genre.

Yeah, there's romantic fantasy, right? Okay,

that's a new genre that won't it's not my type. I will see you have to get on that.

Uh well, thank you so much for this is great. Great to see you. Cheers.

Uh [applause]

let me tell you about eight.com exceptional sleep without exception. Fall asleep faster, sleep deeper, wake up energized. Uh we have our next guest joining right now. We have uh Bob Brushaw from Dupe. Uh this is a very fun