Donald Trump, June 9, 2024:
“So I said, let me ask you a question and he said, nobody ever asked this question and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart. He goes, I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there, by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that a lot of shark? I watched some guys justifying it today. Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were, they were not hungry, but they misunderstood what who she was? These people are. He said there’s no problem with sharks. They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now. It really got decimated and other people do a lot of shark attacks. So I said, so there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here, do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you he didn’t know the answer. He said, you know, nobody’s ever asked me that question. I said, I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time.”
I guess thank you for finally filling me in on what was going on with sharks and batteries.
Move over shark-with-freaking-lasers, we got sharks-with-freaking-batteries now!
What was the question that prompted this reply?
He was trying to rail on electric vehicles and how we need fossil fuels.
Note to any scientists out there who may have a conversation with trump in the future:
When he says something so incredibly incoherent that your brain reboots, please do your best to quell your default “nice” response (in this case “Oh, no one’s ever asked me that before”) and instead take a moment to formulate a thorough critique:
“I’ve never encountered a person with such a limited understanding of so many topics who was actually willing to apply that knowledge in a conversation, let alone a pointed question about the safety of batteries. I need to teach you about how sharks, boats, water, batteries and electricity work before I can even begin addressing that catastrophe of a question.”
I’ve had this conversation with people who send me big brain conspiracy videos on topics I actually know things about.
“Look, this is wrong in a very specific way but for you to understand why I’m going to have to take you through a physics class.”
There’s this baseline thing that I don’t think we teach in school very well about words and language. We can be using the same words to say things, but our underlying meaning can at times be so different as to be in opposition. Science uses words weird, so a lot of times people who don’t know that very badly misinterpret the meaning of what scientists say.
The UV and bleach thing was dumber than most know. Can’t find a longer video any longer, just the ones with him already talking. Picture this.
Trump enters from stage right to give a press briefing on COVID. On the way up he spies a CDC infographic poster suggesting bleach and UV light as ways to disinfect surfaces. Trump then takes the stage, and like the totally unprepared school child he is, starts blabbering.
Sun work good outsides. Y no insides too?
Weren’t a bunch of those Covid claims just badly inspired from a sign that he saw while he was walking onto the stage - like a much, much stupider version of The Usual Suspects?
Yep, here it is:
I still find this hilarious.
“Nobody ever asked this question” is so rarely actually true. It’s usually more like, “people have been asking this question for centuries, and we had a decent idea of what the answer is, but we only just now have the data/understanding/technology/circumstances/math/computational power to be able to answer it definitively.” See: Philolaus > Copernicus > Galileo, or Fermat > Wiles, etc.
When it really is true, it’s usually because, like, a kid asked a question about The Hulk punching the ISS out of the sky or something similarly bananas. Cute when it’s a kid, less so when it’s an elderly man trying to use it as evidence that he’s qualified to have the nuclear launch codes.
I distinctly remember he said people should inject bleach not drink it.
The news noticed quite a few people dying by the “inject an UV lamp from your ass” procedure.
[Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was](https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=nSuregWhlWk)
