i appreciate your support love. i didn't feel that you were attacking me, i welcome different views and opinions because things would be so boring if everyone blindly agreed with each other! so no hard feelings at all, i understand where you're coming from and i think it's valid <3
my personal view is that he said he listened to science podcasts and included lex fridman, who is employed by mit and is a research scientist for machine learning. i don't believe it's valuable for me to get upset about something that isn't totally clear. he also assigned a condition to his statement by saying he listened to "some of" lex fridman's stuff. from what i can see of lex fridman's platform, there is a lot of conservative grifting/propaganda, but also a mix of surface-level "what's going on with ai?"/film discussions.
he didn't assign a condition to kipping's podcast and just said, "i enjoy his podcast" probably because it's mostly science based. in fact, david kipping is pretty outspoken on his twitter about defending science, criticizing doge cuts, amplifying black voices in stem, and even joked about katy perry being sent into space for no reason.
i also agree with you that joe is not some progressive icon and we shouldn't treat him like one. he is simply just a guy and it's important to remember that at the end of the day.
we can have fun, thirst, and psychoanalyze him all we want, but the second i turn off my phone, i don't think about that man bc not only do i not know him like that, i also have more important shit to do <3