Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| So i have i have prepared a special cold open a special cold open for the thousand south for the 1000th episode.
|
Ivan:
[0:12]
| Oh oh oh great.
|
Sam:
[0:15]
| So so we will start with that i'll hit play in just a second and then i'll roll right into the uh theme song at the end okay so it's uh it's a few minutes long. It's like, yeah, it's about just under seven minutes long. So prepare to listen. Feel free to react. Whatever. Shall I hit play and start that thing?
|
Ivan:
[0:40]
| Shall it?
|
Sam:
[0:41]
| Shall it? Okay. Here it goes.
|
Break:
[0:45]
| In the early 90s, Curmudgeon's Corner was born as a public affairs talk show on WRCT Pittsburgh, 88.3 FM, Carnegie Mellon's College radio station. It was live. Sam did the news at the beginning, then Sam and Ivan talked about the news of the day. They sometimes had guests, they sometimes even took callers. They did this for a couple years. But they both graduated. Life moved on. They did other things. Until in June 2007, Curmudgeon's Corner was revived as a podcast. There hasn't been a missed week since. Here are some highlights. Episode 1, Sunday, June 3rd, 2007.
|
Sam:
[1:28]
| Okay, so we'll see how that goes. Yvonne, any thoughts before we start?
|
Ivan:
[1:33]
| You know, I gotta say that times have changed since we did this. You know, there's no way that we could have done it the way that we're doing it right now. But, you know, let's give it a go and see how it goes, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:44]
| Okay, so Yvonne, we talked about a few things we might want to talk about before we started today. And you picked uh the first one so why don't you introduce.
|
Break:
[1:55]
| Episode 100 monday april 27th 2009.
|
Ivan:
[2:01]
| I you know look i look i love meat, and i eat meat i mean i don't know i i plenty of meat look i i don't i don't have a problem with it but but i gotta say that look and i'm like you know sometimes i think about the ethical questions regarding this and i'm like you know something i'm like Look, I don't think there's a real debate on this. The truth of the matter is that that's how animals, we are part of the animal kingdom.
|
Break:
[2:30]
| Episode 200, Sunday, March 27th, 2011.
|
Ivan:
[2:36]
| So anyway, you know.
|
Sam:
[2:38]
| You could do that rapid bilingual thing and do all your swearing in Spanish.
|
Ivan:
[2:43]
| I could do that. That would be an option. The other day we went about two weeks ago, three weeks ago to a lunch and my boss said, hey, there's going to be this person there, don't swear that much think how well that worked laughter, Then we had the head, of U.S. corporate.
|
Break:
[3:04]
| Episode 300, Monday, March 4th, 2013.
|
Ivan:
[3:10]
| A thousand places that I would like to go visit first before I go to fucking North Korea.
|
Sam:
[3:16]
| By the way, I should mention that one of the tweets that Dennis Rodman made from North Korea, when they just in the last couple of weeks turned on a 3G network so he could do this. But he said hey maybe while i'm here i'll run into that gangnam style guy oh you fucking who of course is not from north korea he's from south korea.
|
Ivan:
[3:35]
| You fucking giddy oh you're like.
|
Break:
[3:39]
| Episode 400, Friday, February 6th, 2015.
|
Sam:
[3:44]
| There's an escalation of the situation. Secondly, almost certainly adding weapons into a war zone results in more dead people. You know, we.
|
Ivan:
[3:56]
| Will typically is the case.
|
Sam:
[3:57]
| We will increase the total death toll in Ukraine. Now, you know, yes, it is. Is the alternative, we do nothing and we slowly watch Putin roll across Ukraine? Maybe.
|
Break:
[4:14]
| Episode 500, Saturday, January 7th, 2017.
|
Sam:
[4:20]
| So your very first prediction was the Olympics would actually happen.
|
Ivan:
[4:24]
| They did.
|
Sam:
[4:24]
| They did. You got that right.
|
Ivan:
[4:27]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[4:27]
| You predicted that they would go smoothly.
|
Ivan:
[4:30]
| They did.
|
Sam:
[4:31]
| They did, mostly.
|
Ivan:
[4:33]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[4:34]
| You predicted Castro will die. Did Fidel Castro die?
|
Ivan:
[4:37]
| Oh my God, yes!
|
Sam:
[4:41]
| Meanwhile, I said that at this point, it was pretty clear that Castro was immortal and would never die.
|
Break:
[4:48]
| Episode 600, Saturday, December 8th, 2018.
|
Sam:
[4:52]
| Yeah, I mean, well, this was a bipartisan election board that had caught him before. And they'd actually referred him for prosecution, but nothing happened with that prosecution. And then so he does it again.
|
Ed:
[5:06]
| Actually, I understand that he still owes the campaigner, you know, the candidate who won the election. Still owes this guy $4,300 or something.
|
Sam:
[5:16]
| Nice. So the bipartisan election board here, to their credit.
|
Break:
[5:21]
| Episode 700. Saturday, November 7th, 2020.
|
Ivan:
[5:26]
| Maine. That is exactly. That is 270 electoral.
|
Sam:
[5:32]
| Yes. Yeah, that's the scenario we were bringing up before, where, you needed the one CD to get to the 270.
|
Ivan:
[5:43]
| Shit.
|
Sam:
[5:46]
| Of course, there's scenarios there where you can get to 269, 269 as well.
|
Break:
[5:51]
| Episode 800, Saturday, October 8th, 2022.
|
Sam:
[5:56]
| Huge. Basically, the bottom line is if you really look at just the generic ballot, they're within margin of error and they've been within margin of error the whole fucking time.
|
Ivan:
[6:07]
| So it's basically right now, because we're within margin of error and we've had so many factors, you know, in play right now, it should not surprise anybody if the Democrats keep the House. It should also not surprise anybody if the Republicans take the House.
|
Break:
[6:25]
| Episode 900 saturday september 7th 2024.
|
Sam:
[6:31]
| You know in some cases maybe they are stupid enough maybe it's like the chase glitch people they're just really idiots uh in other cases it's like okay come on you knew.
|
Ivan:
[6:42]
| No it's so stupid.
|
Sam:
[6:43]
| And also they're like oh i am such a victim i was getting a hundred thousand dollars a month and i just didn't look into where it was coming from i'm such a victim.
|
Ivan:
[6:54]
| I mean sam i mean did you check our patreon.
|
Break:
[7:01]
| There you go now with 999 episodes in the can prepare yourself for episode 1000 saturday august 8th 2026.
|
Sam:
[7:37]
| So there you go, Yvonne. Here we are. Episode 1,000 of Curmudgeon's Corner.
|
Ivan:
[7:42]
| Can I just say that I think more producing went into the intro for episode 1,000, than for any of the prior 1,000 episodes, in total?
|
Sam:
[7:57]
| I don't know. It didn't take me that long.
|
Ivan:
[7:59]
| I did— Wait, it may be that the technology made it that it didn't take you that long.
|
Sam:
[8:03]
| That's true. Yes, that's true.
|
Ivan:
[8:05]
| But the reality is that there was more producing for that than anything I am doing. The only thing that I can imagine that took this much was when you did that super cut of me swearing.
|
Sam:
[8:22]
| Yes, yes, I did.
|
Ivan:
[8:25]
| That is similar in effort.
|
Sam:
[8:26]
| And if I remember right, I did that, like, not for an anniversary episode, but right after an anniversary episode. Because we just had an anniversary episode. I forget which hundreds it was. And somebody mentioned something about the swearing. And so I made that for the very next episode.
|
Ivan:
[8:44]
| You decided to see how, you know, how, how much swearing I, I, I, I, I.
|
Sam:
[8:52]
| And we ended up and we, we did, I, I, I, I counted it. I made every like thing, you know, whatever. And I believe between the two of us, we did, we averaged like one swear word every 45 seconds or something for the course of whatever episode I sampled for, for that. item. I will mention one other thing. Because I did this, Alex also made a version of a cold open for the show. He has not let me listen to it. It is very long. It is like half an hour long or something like that. So I have no idea what it is. I have no idea. It may not even relate to our show at all it may be a sample of one of his episodes or something i don't know but i did promise him i would append it at the very end of our show today, so once we are completely done i will play whatever the hell this thing is that alex has produced, and i will listen to it at the same time at that point i told him if i'm not going to stick around like you know we're going to finish the show and yvonne's going to be like bye i'm out of here but i and i.
|
Ivan:
[10:06]
| I i definitely need to do that because I am like right now on... On on on duty just fully because juana is working elections early voting started here for primaries are you like the last.
|
Sam:
[10:21]
| Primaries or something like we had we had ours this last week and uh it seems like we're and i thought we.
|
Ivan:
[10:28]
| Were pretty late in the cycle might might be i i but i i don't know i didn't look you know but but this is definitely primary season right now i got my ballot over here, you know, that, uh, I haven't, I mean, I actually, I'm going, I'm going to go into early, well, he did this stupid thing where they, you know, they're, they, if you didn't send in something, you didn't get a mail-in ballot again.
|
Sam:
[10:55]
| Okay. Right. Cause they're trying to, you know, get less people to vote. Right.
|
Ivan:
[10:58]
| They're trying to, of course. So I'm going to go into the, I'm going to go in to vote, in the early voting. So I got the ballot right here. I keep forgetting that Alex Vindman is running for Senate because we do have this open Senate seat because Rubio is.
|
Sam:
[11:15]
| His brother ran for House, right? Did his brother win wherever he won?
|
Ivan:
[11:20]
| I think so.
|
Sam:
[11:21]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:21]
| I thought so. You know, so that's one thing. We got some interesting choices. You know, there's a couple of interesting things here. I will say that the, look, one thing about this election, and I actually think we have a very strong chance of getting to governorship this time. And you're like, ah, Florida, whatever. Look, people keep forgetting. This state has swung left, you know, all over the place like crazy the last 25 years. Okay. I mean, two years that Obama, you know, Obama took the, you know, took the presidency, then we swung back, then it was like a narrow margin, then it's, then it swung the other way. And then, you know, I mean, remember, worn out is welcome, Matt.
|
Sam:
[12:08]
| For quite a while. I mean, I mean, everyone remembers 2000 and the hanging chads, but for several cycles in a row, you know, it was Florida was like the quintessential swing state. It was like the state that was in the middle and everyone was battling over, along with like Ohio was also in that category. Iowa was in that category. All three of those moved red in the intervening years. And some other states moved more blue word, but yeah, those three states moved red. And yeah, so now everybody thinks of Florida as a solid Republican state, but no, no.
|
Ivan:
[12:48]
| But I don't look, there is listen, there is one thing that the Republicans have done. There's a number. There's a lot of things. But one thing that I and this is this has to do with the fact that Republicans are very racist. In general, this is the reality of the current GOP. If you're in a Republican Party. I mean, the racism is just permeated the party at this moment, okay? And for whatever reason, they're leaning towards nominating a black dude to be the gubernatorial candidate. And look, the reality is that they're so racist that you're going to have so many of them that are going to go and I can't vote for this black dude to be governor, that they're going to hand the governorship to the Democrats. And I'm perfectly happy with that.
|
Sam:
[13:41]
| So you think that the basic dynamic is racist Republicans won't vote for the Republican because the Republican is black.
|
Ivan:
[13:50]
| Correct. And this has happened before, Sam. This wouldn't be the first time. There are races that you can look where, you know, I can't, what was the, you remember that they put in Herschel Walker as a candidate for Senate? How did that go, Sam?
|
Sam:
[14:07]
| Well, and, and didn't, well, I guess this one's strong. I mean, I think Ramaswamy is having the same kind of issues.
|
Ivan:
[14:14]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[14:14]
| He's running for something in Ohio right now, right?
|
Ivan:
[14:16]
| Yes. Yeah. How's that going for Ramaswamy? Look.
|
Sam:
[14:20]
| I should check.
|
Ivan:
[14:21]
| But you should check. But last time I checked, it wasn't going that well. And. The reality is that they cannot get, their racism is so deep-seated that they just cannot push it aside.
|
Sam:
[14:39]
| Ramaswamy is leading in the polls for Ohio governor just barely, 47 to 46.2.
|
Ivan:
[14:46]
| Right. Like, exactly. In a governor race that they won before by how much?
|
Sam:
[14:53]
| I don't know. You're asking more information. I just Googled that one. I got some random polls, pollsmax.com that I've never heard of. I got their polling average. And by the way, you know, I haven't spun up election graphs for this cycle yet. I have worked on it some. I'm heading towards a November deadline. But like, or Target, I should say. But like, there are like thousands of these now. Like, every time I turn around, there's more like polling visualization sites. So I'm, I'm in a very crowded world now, but anyway, there is another one. Yeah. So anyway, good. I don't know what he, how he went for governor. Ohio governor election results. Let's not primary. I want the last actual 2026 gubernatorial to 2022 gubernatorial. That looks like the last one is 62, 37, 62, 37. was the last result. 62-37, Sam. Yeah. And now it's like a dead heat in the polls.
|
Ivan:
[15:57]
| Exactly. 62-37.
|
Sam:
[16:02]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[16:07]
| Look, I... Hey.
|
Sam:
[16:08]
| I mean, it's also looking like a bad year for Republicans overall, but I'm sure you're right.
|
Ivan:
[16:14]
| And this doesn't help. But that doesn't help.
|
Sam:
[16:16]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[16:17]
| Which I'm happy with that. You know, it is, like, kind of refreshing to have their racism come back and bite them in the ass. Speaking of numbers, I went, because you're talking about polling numbers and stuff, but, you know, one of the things that influences elections right now, and I think that is influencing people, is their pocket. And, you know, it was kind of very, to me, hilarious seeing some of these MAGA white people that are very obviously racist complaining, complaining about the cost of living, how they've been screwed. And I saw her, there's this lady in a video clip that was going around where basically she was kind of saying, you know what we know? Well, we thought she was going to screw kind of them. You know, them. Them, you know? Not me. Them. You know? Them. It's just every time I hear it, I'm just like, you fucking assholes. Sorry, God. You know? By the way, here's the thing, right?
|
Sam:
[17:18]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[17:19]
| They don't seem to understand. We're not voting to screw them.
|
Sam:
[17:23]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[17:23]
| Which is, which is which is the thing that it's just like they don't understand. You don't realize what we're voting for. Is it meant to screw you at all?
|
Sam:
[17:36]
| Why would you vote for somebody who didn't want to screw the other side, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[17:40]
| Yeah, I know. I know. My God. You know, Jesus Christ. You know, they all think it's like the old Gordon Gekko line in the movie where he's going on this thing where he talks about how life is a zero-sum game. And they see everything as a zero-sum game.
|
Sam:
[17:58]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[17:59]
| If I will win, somebody must lose. Simple as that. Nothing. So I'm looking at, you know, how inflation has, you know, and wages has impacted things. And I did, I had this plot and I asked, I had done this by hand. I asked Claude to help me update it today with my earnings dating back to 2007. Okay.
|
Sam:
[18:22]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[18:23]
| And to see inflation adjusted, what, you know, what my peak earning years have been over time. And the interesting thing is that, say, in nominal terms, like my earnings in pre-tax, you know, nominal earnings have more than doubled in those 20 years. Okay.
|
Sam:
[18:49]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[18:50]
| But the reality is that if I go back to 2011, okay, my W-2, my AGI in 2011, inflation adjusted, was 84% of what I made in my peak year later.
|
Sam:
[19:11]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[19:11]
| Even though nominally my earnings have more than doubled. Think about that. I mean, actually, go back to 2007, the same thing, 86%. It's inflation really has.
|
Sam:
[19:25]
| Taking a big bite out of things.
|
Ivan:
[19:28]
| Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about it. I mean, I'm barely, if you think about it, inflation adjusted terms, I'm barely making what?
|
Sam:
[19:36]
| More than you did.
|
Ivan:
[19:37]
| Not that much more than I did in 2011.
|
Sam:
[19:40]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[19:41]
| So, I mean, that was sobering to look at.
|
Sam:
[19:46]
| Well, one of the things that I had on the list to talk about later in the episode was economics. We're sort of jumping right into real topics. Should we just continue? you.
|
Ivan:
[19:56]
| Know well i i mean well the thing is that i by my wife working the elections you know kind of like.
|
Sam:
[20:02]
| I i did want to derail me i did want to do a couple i mentioned a couple more election things real quick i i did say that, we we we had primary elections here in washington state this last week so two things to note on that one i was a guest again on the um sir podcast so just oh it's all Of hiatus.
|
Sam:
[20:24]
| She's been publishing a few episodes lately. Okay, okay. But I was a guest this last week. We did a live stream while election results were coming in. So we talked a little bit about Michigan and we talked about Washington State specifically is where we spent the most time talking some generic things about elections and politics in general. But I'd point people to the UMSUR podcast with our good friend Emily and check it out. I'm on the latest episode. She also posted video of the live stream on UMSUR's YouTube channel as a collaboration with Curmudgeon's Corner. So you can also find that episode on the Curmudgeon's Corner YouTube channel listed as a collaboration. So check it out and catch up with those election results. The one that I'll highlight from our local stuff is, as most of you know, my wife is a politician here in Washington State. She is a state representative. And so her primary race was this time around. And I always have to like caveat for people who aren't in Washington state and don't know that. Washington state has jungle primaries, which means every party, anybody who wants to run, runs at the same time in the primary.
|
Ivan:
[21:39]
| That's what I was wondering. So there was only like the top two go to the general?
|
Sam:
[21:48]
| And the top two go to the general regardless of party. So, like, if you have 10 people running and the number one and number two are both Democrats, then the general election will be between two Democrats. Same the other way. It could be two Republicans, could be a Democrat and an Independent, could be whatever.
|
Sam:
[22:05]
| Now, you would think if there were only two people running, they would just skip it because you already know the answer. There are two people running and both of them are going to win and go on to the general. So you can just go on to the general. So what point is there having a primary? But no, Washington state still has the primary anyway, even in that scenario, as long as it's a partisan race. And I think even for nonpartisan races, they'll only skip it if there's only one candidate. But anyway, so we had our primary. The primary ends up because, and my wife only had one opponent. And so it essentially ends up being a preview of the general election. Obviously, more people tend to come out for generals than for primaries anyway, but it's a preview and gives you a good idea. Anyway, as of the August 11th vote drop, or no, August 11th is the next drop. That's in the future still. As of the August 7th vote drop, and Washington State drops results exactly once a day as more ballots come in and such, my wife has 59.64% of the vote, to her Republican opponent at 40.26% of the vote.
|
Sam:
[23:25]
| And there you go. So she's like stomping on him. So that's great. I appreciate that. And the general election will probably be similar. So I've been spending like eight hours every weekend putting out signs. I'm probably going to cut that back down to four. I'm still going to be putting out signs every weekend and checking the signs we have for damage and replacing them and stuff like that. But yeah, she's doing great. She was concerned that, you know, there might be various things and maybe it would be close or maybe, you know, who knows.
|
Ivan:
[23:58]
| We should always be concerned. I mean, I, you know.
|
Sam:
[24:00]
| Yes, absolutely. I think that one of the biggest problems with.
|
Ivan:
[24:03]
| Like, oh, God, yes. You know, look, I mean, we've already gotten killed with complacency.
|
Sam:
[24:10]
| You want to behave as if you're losing, even if you are, what is this? You got a 30-point lead. 20 points. I mean, she's like 20 points a hat. Yeah, but you want to behave as if you're behind anyway, because you never know. You never know what could happen, and you want to give due respect to your opponent as well and treat them seriously, et cetera. But I think she does feel better after seeing these primary results than she did before, which is good. So congratulations to my wife. And the other two seatmates in the same district are similar, similar results. They're all roughly 60-40 splits with their opponents. And this district has been moving blue. At one point, it was a red district, and then it moved sort of purplish, and now it's clearly moving more blue. So good. Anyway, so, yes, did you want to jump right into economy or should I do a couple movies or should we or do you have any other like fun things about your wife running elections that we should talk about?
|
Ivan:
[25:21]
| Fun things? I don't know. I don't think it's fun. I, you know, I mean, she was up at 345 in the morning to go set up the polling station on a Saturday. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[25:35]
| I'm all for civic engagement, but I'm not for getting up at three something in the morning. I don't care.
|
Ivan:
[25:40]
| Well, look, let me tell you something now.
|
Sam:
[25:44]
| I am sometimes up at three something in the morning. It happened this last week, but it happens because I haven't gone to bed yet. Not because I'm getting early. Getting up early.
|
Ivan:
[25:54]
| Yeah, no, no. We had gone yesterday and my wife did not think this through, but her ADHD does this to her. She had planned to do a lot of things yesterday. And one of the things that was in the plan was to go see the new Spider-Man movie.
|
Sam:
[26:10]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[26:11]
| And she bought tickets for Showtime at 8.15. She didn't really look at how long the movie was. For some reason, she thought it was like an hour and a half. We didn't get out of the theater until past 11.
|
Sam:
[26:23]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[26:23]
| So she thought we'd be out of there before 10. And we didn't get out of the theater until past 11. She hadn't packed anything for today, you know, because she has to take all these things to the polling station. And, you know, we're doing this last night at 11.30 p.m. So, and then the one thing is that when this happens, I usually, I try to block off so I, I, I try as hard as I can that I don't have to go on a business trip. I try very hard.
|
Sam:
[26:55]
| At the same time that she's doing this kind of stuff. Right.
|
Ivan:
[26:58]
| Yes. But, but, you know, sometimes unpredictable things happen. I can't, you know, I can't block everything out. On a couple of occasions I've gone and, but what I, what happened was I had a meeting that was scheduled for last week. Was with a chief executive officer of a company and their executive staff. And the meeting got pushed to this week. And it's a very important meeting. And I'm like, fuck. I can't eat shit. So I had planned to get my mom to come over here and my mother-in-law to help take him on to school. Because school starts high school. This is Monday. You know. our.
|
Sam:
[27:42]
| School here doesn't start till september so.
|
Ivan:
[27:45]
| So it starts on monday so i told my mom yesterday.
|
Sam:
[27:48]
| Was alex's last day of his summer session for school.
|
Ivan:
[27:51]
| That's good so i got a couple weeks off i told this this year i had manu didn't do a summer session he did a summer camp because he's done a summer session for years i tried to do something different so he did summer camp and then you know been you know just, lazy lounging for a bit well and we went on vacation but anyway, So my plan was, look, meeting is Thursday, 10 a.m. It's 11.30 a.m. There's a 7-something p.m. flight to San Juan. I'm going to fly down the latest flight down to San Juan. I wish there were later flights. You know, I saw at the board at the airport some cities where flights are leaving at, hey, flight to Chicago at 10 p.m. I'm like, why the fuck not, damn it? That would be perfect. I'm like, get me on the fucking 10 p.m. flight.
|
Sam:
[28:37]
| I am going to Ohio to visit my dad and my sister and some other folks. My aunt's going to be there too. You know, on at the end of August, last week of August, I'm going there. And, you know, I, my choice of flights were pretty, you know, morning or a red eye. I'm like, God damn it. I want, I'm absolutely doing the red eye. Give me, give me a fucking red eye. I am not a morning person.
|
Ivan:
[29:02]
| Give me a fucking red eye.
|
Sam:
[29:04]
| Like, and you know, when, when you put into place, like all the prep and driving to the airport and blah, blah, blah, even like a nine or 10 a.m. Flight, you have to leave home pretty early.
|
Ivan:
[29:14]
| Listen, if you, listen, if you take it, what the, let alone if the flight is like 7 a.m.
|
Sam:
[29:18]
| Or something.
|
Ivan:
[29:19]
| Because I had to do this last week. I had to fly. I, I had something very, I need to be at this office like before, you know, 1030. Okay. So the flight that was available is a 7am thing is 7am flight. I got a fucking, you know, leave, wake up at three 45 in the morning to make it to the airport, to get to that damn flight. Might as well tell me there's a, Hey, you know what? There's a 10pm.
|
Sam:
[29:48]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[29:48]
| Give me, give me on the fucking, you know, because I don't want to like, if I got to go on the 7 p.m. Flight, then, you know, take it away from my personal time. But if it's an 11 p.m. flight, the hell with it. I get to spend the day with family, do whatever, blah, blah, blah, head to the airport 11 p.m., everything's good, we're all good. So it's a short sleep, but whatever. I'm like, you know, I'm going to get there. I mean, so anyway, so my plan was to do that and to come back on Thursday afternoon, but the meeting got postponed again. Because I think that we, we caught the executive, I think there's a new CEO and this, and I think that we, I think we're pushing the boundaries and stuff in a good way. I think the, the, the executive team realized, oh, we weren't, we aren't, we haven't really thought this through yet. Okay. To the level that we should have thought this through. So they've been asking us more and more questions to prepare for the meeting. So that's, that's a good thing. So anyway, so no, so I'm, I'm going to, uh, no, no travel this week right now. So I'm, I'm actually happy because I had traveled right now the last four straight weeks. It seems I think, right. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's getting too old for this shit.
|
Sam:
[31:06]
| Well, let me do one, one, one movie related thing.
|
Ivan:
[31:11]
| If curmudgeons quarter get the multi-billion dollar investment, can we get some kind of eco-friendly private jet.
|
Sam:
[31:20]
| Yeah sure sure well yeah is.
|
Ivan:
[31:24]
| That okay are you okay with that.
|
Sam:
[31:26]
| We can do that what we'll do is we'll move to doing these in person every week, we'll just fly a different fly to a different city like, we both need our own jets of course not just one curmudgeon corner chat.
|
Ivan:
[31:43]
| And so we're going to have a fleet of Brunches corner jets.
|
Sam:
[31:47]
| Every weekend we will fly and meet somewhere new to do the show live in person from somewhere new.
|
Ivan:
[31:56]
| I mean, this is good. Yeah. I like this. Okay. Okay. This is good. I like this.
|
Sam:
[32:04]
| That's the plan. So as soon as that multi-billion dollar contract comes in, we'll get right on that.
|
Ivan:
[32:11]
| Excellent. Excellent. I like this. Yes.
|
Sam:
[32:13]
| I'm sure it'll be any day. Any day.
|
Ivan:
[32:15]
| Any day now. Any day now.
|
Sam:
[32:16]
| I mean, we've got a thousand episodes. You know, what else does anybody have to ask?
|
Ivan:
[32:21]
| Exactly. Come on. Should be a no-brainer.
|
Sam:
[32:25]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[32:25]
| So we did see the Spider-Man movie. It's a thumbs up.
|
Sam:
[32:27]
| By the way. Well, then you got to give. I know you're such a fan of these superhero movies.
|
Ivan:
[32:33]
| Well, I, now, you know.
|
Sam:
[32:35]
| This is another, no.
|
Ivan:
[32:36]
| No, no, well, this is another one of these franchises that even my wife was like confused. How many Spider-Man movies have there been? Wait, what the hell? So, wait, what?
|
Sam:
[32:46]
| But look, here's the thing with the Spider-Man compared to the other two, like you always, you always rag on Batman because there've been like thousands of people playing Batman. There have been like three Spider-Men. That's true. And not only that, but they brought them together.
|
Ivan:
[33:02]
| Yeah, yeah, the storyline is kind of consistent.
|
Sam:
[33:05]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[33:06]
| Somewhat.
|
Sam:
[33:06]
| They brought them together to a multiverse kind of thing. So the three Spider-Men met each other. And, you know, I have not seen that movie, but I've seen plenty of clips of it. So, oh, sorry, spoiler. The Spider-Men met each other. That was like a big like secret until the movie came out. Oops. So, yeah, whatever. Everyone knows.
|
Ivan:
[33:26]
| But that was not on this movie. That was on the previous movie.
|
Sam:
[33:28]
| Yes, that was on the previous movie. So how was this movie? It's a spoiler.
|
Ivan:
[33:32]
| It was good.
|
Sam:
[33:33]
| You liked it?
|
Ivan:
[33:33]
| It was good. I liked the movie.
|
Sam:
[33:35]
| And also I'll say, the current Spider-Man, Spider-Man, he's not Spider-Man, he's Spider-Man. Somebody did a... Tom Holland? Yeah, somebody did a whole comedy bit on that at some point. Or maybe he was actually in one of the movie. No, it was in Friends. Friends did the scene on that. That's what it was. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[33:53]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[33:55]
| Yeah, Tom Holland. He's been Spider-Man for like 10 years now. So it's been a while.
|
Ivan:
[33:59]
| Well, okay, so that's, you know, okay. And I realize that, which is, I think.
|
Sam:
[34:03]
| Why. And he's got a contract for two more movies.
|
Ivan:
[34:05]
| Which is why I wasn't like, I do not have the aversion to Spider-Man that I have to fucking Batman.
|
Sam:
[34:15]
| You know, I gave some reviews lately in recent episodes, and we've talked about the Vacation series. One of the one of the running gags on the vacation series is in every movie the kids are played by completely different actors correct you know completely different right not not even like somebody you got Chevy Chase you got Beverly DiAngelo but the kids are.
|
Ivan:
[34:41]
| Like just hey let's just play roulette to who the hell the kids are gonna be in the next one.
|
Sam:
[34:45]
| Yeah they don't even bother to make them look similar to the previous actors just completely do no no no now they use.
|
Ivan:
[34:52]
| The same names.
|
Sam:
[34:53]
| They do use the same names but I'm just saying for continuing Batman they should just lean into it completely different Batman every time no similarities whatsoever, not even pretending we have a new actor, you can have a different actor at the beginning of the movie than the end of the movie you know.
|
Ivan:
[35:14]
| That would be.
|
Sam:
[35:17]
| He's under a mask anyway well you just do it every time he takes off the mask it's a different actor.
|
Ivan:
[35:23]
| It's a different guy.
|
Sam:
[35:25]
| Yes. So thumbs up to the new Spider-Man.
|
Ivan:
[35:28]
| Thumbs up to the new Spider-Man.
|
Sam:
[35:30]
| What is it? Brand new day. Spider-Man brand new day.
|
Ivan:
[35:32]
| Brand new day. Brand new day.
|
Sam:
[35:33]
| Was it a brand new day? Was it like...
|
Ivan:
[35:37]
| I, I, I'm not, you know, that's one thing I, I, I don't know what, what the hell the title ties really into the movie. I don't really understand. I, I, I, well, I, I do think there is something to the plot that I think it required. I read about it to know what the hell happened before to understand why it's a, a brand new day.
|
Sam:
[35:59]
| I have not seen these movies, but I know enough to know that something significant happened in the previous movie.
|
Ivan:
[36:05]
| Well, I have to figure it out.
|
Sam:
[36:07]
| So you didn't see the movie with the three Spider-Men? Spider-Men? Okay.
|
Ivan:
[36:12]
| No.
|
Sam:
[36:12]
| Because, yeah, there was context there, so.
|
Ivan:
[36:17]
| I, my wife was wondering about it, whether you didn't really need to see the previous movie. I think that even if you haven't seen the previous movies, which I haven't, I can't remember the last Spider-Man I watched. I have watched some of them, but I don't recall which one is the last one. It's not any of the Tom Holland ones.
|
Sam:
[36:38]
| Okay. So you've not seen any with him.
|
Ivan:
[36:41]
| No.
|
Sam:
[36:41]
| And he was in a couple of the Marvel MCU movies as well as Spider-Man. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[36:47]
| Uh, uh, but this movie you could watch if you, I guess the thing is, I know enough about the Spider-Man story that the things in terms of what happened, I understood. So if you know in general about Spider-Man.
|
Sam:
[37:05]
| That's enough.
|
Ivan:
[37:06]
| It's enough. You don't really need to have seen any of the, you know, previous movies to follow this movie.
|
Sam:
[37:14]
| Okay. Good enough. okay let me let me do mine real quick and this will be a pretty quick one because i don't i don't have a lot to say about this of course i always say that and then spend 20 minutes talking about but this is that's.
|
Ivan:
[37:28]
| Us oh yeah this will be brief.
|
Sam:
[37:31]
| So the the ver so here's this backstory of this one at one point, In my early days at Amazon, I was doing a project where I was interfacing with the team that handled music at Amazon, like selling DVDs and selling CDs and music and stuff. I do kind of remember this that you did that. Before it was like digital, like it was still physical media music.
|
Ivan:
[38:00]
| Right, right, right, right. Because there was a time that Amazon was a very big seller of this shit.
|
Sam:
[38:07]
| Yeah. back when amazon was mostly it started out a bookstore right and then they added music and then they added videos and then and now added everything you know but, anyway i was interfacing with them for some stupid thing i forget i was trying to trying to get them to participate in in a automated email program that i owned or something anyway bottom line the guy who did the music stuff one day, gave me a stack of music related stuff and says here thank you for working with us here's a stack of music stuff and it was like you know 10 or 15 cds of various bands some of them like you know autographed by the artists, and and there within that stack, there was a dvd as well. Now, I later came to realize that I think he gave me all the stuff no one else wanted. Okay? You know, it wasn't just like, oh, this is some stuff I think you'll like, Sam. It was just like, ah, here's a bunch of crap I had on my desk. Have fun. You know? And so on the music side, this of course, every track on every one of these discs went into the random shuffle, because I listen to music on random shuffle, so like I would hear the songs from these new discs. But the one DVD, was War Greatest Hits Live.
|
Ivan:
[39:30]
| Is that U2?
|
Sam:
[39:32]
| The band War.
|
Ivan:
[39:35]
| Oh, the band War. Oh, because it's just that I thought, okay.
|
Sam:
[39:38]
| So it's War.
|
Ivan:
[39:39]
| U2 had an album called Greatest Hits Live. Okay.
|
Sam:
[39:44]
| The DVD apparently came out in 2008.
|
Ivan:
[39:48]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[39:48]
| And it came up in my rotation to watch just now. Or not, a year ago just now, like last October. Okay. And so here's the thing. Like, it's not like I'm a particular fan of the band War, you know, or know anything about them or whatever. For anybody out there going, who the hell are these folks? I mean, you know, they were, I guess, big in the...
|
Ivan:
[40:17]
| I mean, I kind of like...
|
Sam:
[40:18]
| They've got two biggest hits.
|
Ivan:
[40:23]
| One is, whatchamacallit.
|
Sam:
[40:24]
| Why can't we be friends?
|
Ivan:
[40:26]
| Why can't we be friends?
|
Sam:
[40:27]
| And Lowrider.
|
Ivan:
[40:29]
| Lowrider! I said Tequila. Yeah, Lowrider. Lowrider.
|
Sam:
[40:33]
| Yes. Those were their two big songs, and frankly, the only ones that I believe I'd ever heard before. You know... We watched the D-Writer.
|
Ivan:
[40:46]
| It's a very famous song. I mean, for God's sakes. I mean, look, I'll tell you this, that if you're going to be a music star, you get at least one hit like that, which has endured for decades. That's enough for me. I'm done. I'm like, you know what? I'm like, I can.
|
Sam:
[41:07]
| I've heard interviews with a variety of one hit wonders. It's a little bit, when you're a band, it gets spread out a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[41:15]
| But there are one-hit wonders that are, oh, they peak and then people forget the song. No, this song isn't just a one-hit wonder. It's still people listen to it. Manu loves that song.
|
Sam:
[41:28]
| Well, right. I mean, look, but I've heard interviews with a variety of these, not just one. But the common theme is like people asking him, like, you know, it's been 30 years. Aren't you sick of that song? Do you hate having to perform that song? And they're like, you know, it pays the damn bills. You know?
|
Ivan:
[41:49]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[41:50]
| And they're like, you know, would it be nice if I had a back catalog of like, many, many, many songs that were beloved? And yeah, sure. That would be great. But that one song that I made 30 years ago has paid the bills ever since.
|
Ivan:
[42:11]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[42:11]
| You know, or whatever. Right.
|
Ivan:
[42:15]
| Because it's probably the reason why they get called to do any any live appearances and people buy tickets still to this.
|
Sam:
[42:22]
| Day exactly or anything yeah and so like, yeah people appreciate there was one man what artist was this i i saw i saw a clip of one artist lately who is in that category but like the specific thing they had done, they're like you know my buddy called me into the studio on an afternoon and i came in and i you know i recorded this track with them, and it took i was in the studio for 45 minutes and that's it and then boom that's paid my bills for the rest of my fucking life. That 45 minutes of work.
|
Ivan:
[43:02]
| Look, if we could do one episode of Curbudge's Corner that could pay for bills for the rest of our lives. I mean, think about that. Just one episode. And then, you know what? Fuck it. We're done.
|
Sam:
[43:19]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[43:20]
| Look, we both know you and I, unlike a lot of these people that are workaholic addicted people. That we can manage to fill our days without having to go and work for somebody.
|
Sam:
[43:38]
| I am definitely not one of those that would, well, I don't have to speculate.
|
Ivan:
[43:46]
| You don't have to speculate.
|
Sam:
[43:48]
| I've been unemployed for nearly a year now. I'm thrilled. I'm the happiest I've ever been. You know? You know, as long as the money doesn't run out, which, OK, you know, we have to be careful about that. But, you, know, I've got plenty of ways to spend my time. I'm not going to be, like, depressed because I don't have to, like, go somewhere and do something.
|
Ivan:
[44:15]
| But, Sam, there are people that, I mean, there are stories of people that have retired and they go home and they basically die of boredom.
|
Sam:
[44:23]
| Right. Yeah, no.
|
Ivan:
[44:24]
| We're not those people.
|
Sam:
[44:28]
| No. No.
|
Ivan:
[44:30]
| We're like, oh, oh, I don't have to work again? Oh, okay, great!
|
Sam:
[44:34]
| Exactly. So, anyway, War, I only really knew those two songs. You know, it was an okay, like, experience listening to this. Basically, it was a concert recording of them playing their greatest hits. They included of course the two big songs plus a bunch of others i'd never heard before it was fine i'm not a particular fan, i i'm not gonna watch it again i i think did i add i i probably like just for the principle of it added a few more of their songs to my random rotations but i wasn't like, I'll give it a thumb sideways. If you're a particular fan of this band, I'm sure you would enjoy it. I couldn't care less, and so I'm giving it a thumb sideways. But it was not unpleasant or anything. You listen to their greatest hits, and it was a DVD, so you see them up on stage performing and stuff. And it was just a concert recording. It wasn't like some super, like, produced special thing. They were in some theater on stage doing their thing. And, you know, they had a few cameras scattered around the theaters and, you know, one that was up close and getting close-ups and stuff. And it was fine. That's all I got to say about that. Okay. I think we can move on now.
|
Ivan:
[45:58]
| We can move on. Okay.
|
Sam:
[45:59]
| Okay. This next break is a wiki of the day. And after that, we'll come back and we'll talk about some actual news of the week stuff. Back after this.
|
Break:
[46:12]
| Do do do hello this is generative jasmine i'm here to let you know about sam the curmudgeon's other podcasts the wiki of the day podcasts wiki of the day comes in three varieties, popular random and featured, each highlights a new wikipedia article each day they just pick the articles differently this week on popular wiki of the day you would have heard this summary for Chris Hansen.
|
Break:
[46:40]
| Christopher Edward Hansen, born September 13, 1959, is an American television presenter, journalist, and YouTube personality. During his tenure as a correspondent for Dateline NBC, he hosted the program's segment To Catch a Predator, 2004-2007, which revolved around catching potential internet predators using a sting operation. When the segment's three-year run concluded, Hansen continued to host shows on other networks with a similar format. After parting ways with NBC in 2013, he began hosting Killer Instinct on Investigation Discovery in 2015, a short-lived series that documented homicide investigations. That same year, he replaced Matt Doran as the host of the syndicated series Crime Watch Daily, which he hosted for two seasons and had his own segment similar to his Dateline feature, Hansen vs. Predator. He co-founded the true crime-oriented streaming service True Blue in 2020.
|
Break:
[47:45]
| For which he produced and starred in the web series Takedown with Chris Hansen. Hansen has earned several accolades, including 10 Emmy Awards, 5 Edward R. Murrow Awards, 3 Clarion Awards, the National Press Club Award, and Awards for Excellence from the Associated Press and United Press International. Hansen and numerous subjects of his investigations have garnered online cult followings, and Hansen is considered a progenitor in content centered around sting operations. That's all there is to it. See? Fun, entertaining, educational. And short. Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on your podcast playing software of choice. Or just go to wikioftheday.com to check out our archives. Now back to curmudgeon's corner. Do, do, do.
|
Sam:
[48:39]
| Okay, we're back. I want to mention something I neglected at the beginning. Just having the law and order sound near the beginning of that, like, cold open with the thousands episode, that was Alex's idea. Like, I didn't have that originally, and he was like, you got to insert the dun-dun. Good job.
|
Ivan:
[48:57]
| Good job, Alex.
|
Sam:
[49:00]
| Here it is. You got to insert the... There you go. Anyway. So, real stuff. Where do you want to start? You sort of started on economic stuff. Do you want to continue on that vein or pick something else entirely?
|
Ivan:
[49:15]
| Ah, I'm actually, well, look, we've had some big revisions in the employment numbers. That was one thing that was in the economic news. But let's talk first. First, before we dig into that, I'm going to ask, let's go into this idiotic fucking Blanche nomination, okay?
|
Sam:
[49:39]
| Yes, okay.
|
Ivan:
[49:41]
| You know, so— We talked last week.
|
Sam:
[49:44]
| When we talked last week, we were talking about how maybe it's dead, but it wouldn't matter anyway because he could just keep him on.
|
Ivan:
[49:49]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[49:50]
| The couple of holdout senators were insisting that he put in writing that this, slush fund deal was dead. And I said, look, it's not just put it in writing. You have to nullify the contract. You have to actually expunge the settlement, etc. Etc and and people even then were speculating that these senators only wanted a fig leaf and so they got a fig leaf they got a statement from blanche in writing, saying that the deal is debt that the, well not the deal is debt they specifically saying that the slush fund nothing had happened and there were no commissioners nothing had happened blah blah blah and and also reiterating that, the immunity deal for taxes was only related to the past which are all things that he had said but by the way there was not a single thing in that statement that talked about the future, it was all talking about current or past, You know, so it was not a promise that none of these things would happen. It was just a statement that they hadn't happened yet.
|
Sam:
[51:07]
| And the legal agreement, the settlement is still technically in force. And Donald Trump is actually still appealing the judge's ruling that this was all bogus to begin with. So there's still stuff very much in play. But the senators were like, OK, he did what I asked. It's in writing. OK, we're good. Voting for him. And so earlier today, actually, as we're recording this, the Senate officially voted. It went out of committee last week and earlier today. The full Senate voted on it and he has been approved and he will presumably take office Monday or something. I mean, he was already acting, so he'll become permanent, you know. So, yeah, what about it, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[51:51]
| Well, I'm just like the one thing, that the continued total spinelessness of so many GOP senators, even in the face of how unpopular Trump is, even when they are lame ducks, it's just staggering.
|
Sam:
[52:09]
| Right. Well, I mean, I saw some commentary on this that, look, it all has to do with even if they're lame ducks and they're leaving, their prospects for making money post-Senate are all about living within the conservative ecosystem. You know, whether it's, you know, gigs on Fox, it's gigs on Fox News, speaking engagements, consulting engagements, working as, you know, get it, get, you know, lobbyist stuff. But all of those places are places where right now to be in a decent position and wanted and hireable, you have to be in the Trump world.
|
Ivan:
[52:53]
| Okay, let me see. You know, which centers are we talking about? Bill Cassidy. I mean, what is his net worth? Let's see. What is his net worth? Let me see. Hold on. These guys have to be rich. Give me a fucking break, okay? There's no way these guys are, you know, they're not missing money. You know, let's see. Let's see if I can find a... Come on. Where's this conglomerate? Come on. I mean, these guys... I guess, actually, Bill Cassidy doesn't have a lot of money. I just looked it up.
|
Sam:
[53:34]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[53:35]
| So, yeah. He really needs to be able to fucking make money in his... Oh, yeah. His net worth is probably lowered in yours and mine.
|
Sam:
[53:48]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[53:48]
| That's what reports show.
|
Sam:
[53:51]
| Well, that's a shame. He hasn't been grifting well.
|
Ivan:
[53:54]
| No, apparently not.
|
Sam:
[53:55]
| What kind of fucking Republican is he?
|
Ivan:
[53:59]
| It's pretty shitty according to this i mean jesus usually these guys are pretty good at a massive i mean you know by the way that's that.
|
Sam:
[54:07]
| That's non-partisan usually in.
|
Ivan:
[54:09]
| General, kirsten cinema it went at like for example her that i mean you you want to talk about you want to talk about a, grifter extraordinaire kirsten cinema came in with a net worth of almost zero old and like she left with a net worth in the millions in the millions and millions and by the way i mean it is not universal.
|
Sam:
[54:31]
| It is not universal i mean we've talked before joe biden was in the senate senate for decades and didn't.
|
Ivan:
[54:36]
| Yeah joe biden magically expand his net worth no joe biden 40 years his net worth is doing okay now, he made books book deals after his vice presidency but it's just okay okay i mean it's not like you know but yeah there's.
|
Sam:
[54:54]
| Certainly it is well known that a lot of people in congress leave richer than they came in um by significant margins it's not.
|
Ivan:
[55:02]
| Universal it's not universal but what what was worth like about zero when she when she left her net worth was about two million okay uh and you know like because yeah because you talk about biden biden's Yeah. And his pension. Pretty much it. Didn't have much else.
|
Sam:
[55:24]
| That's it. Yeah, like I said, after his vice presidency, he started getting book deals and stuff, too. But yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he'd already been in Congress for decades.
|
Ivan:
[55:34]
| Yeah. Yeah. So. So, yeah. So, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[55:38]
| So, Castey needs his gas. So, he doesn't want to burn bridges. I mean, he's already burned more bridges than he probably can afford, right? He voted for Donald Trump's impeachment.
|
Ivan:
[55:48]
| Isn't he a fucking doctor?
|
Sam:
[55:49]
| He is a doctor. He has a doctor. I forget what kind.
|
Ivan:
[55:52]
| He can go fucking work as a goddamn doctor.
|
Sam:
[55:53]
| He's like a liver specialist or something, too.
|
Ivan:
[55:55]
| Well, shit. I mean, that's something that you could go fucking make money off of.
|
Sam:
[55:59]
| Go be a fucking doctor.
|
Ivan:
[56:01]
| Then.
|
Sam:
[56:01]
| He probably hasn't practiced in a long time, so I don't know. There might be weirdness getting back into it. But yeah, I don't know. I'm sure he has ways. But the ways are easier if you're in the good graces of whoever's running the conservative media ecosystem at the given time, you know, and as long as they're sucking up to Trump, they don't want people who aren't, you know, so.
|
Ivan:
[56:29]
| I mean, the currently the the yeah, it's it's just I just. I don't know. Well, the judge is still holding up this whole settlement thing. He's not.
|
Sam:
[56:45]
| Well, like I said, Trump is appealing and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[56:48]
| Because the deal that Blanche has made, what he has written on paper, isn't worth a damn.
|
Sam:
[56:54]
| Well, and the judge has also asked for specific, you know, legally binding assurances, and Blanche has not given that yet. And that's part of, you know, what's still working its way through the legal process. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if it ends up going to SCOTUS like all this other stuff, you know, before it's all worked out. And we'll see what they do with it. They have their issues too. But yeah, but I think nobody believes that the stuff is really dead, dead, dead. And specifically, you know, this particular fund may be not coming back, but it's been made clear that there are all kinds of other avenues to give people money. And in fact, some of them are already being exercised. You know, Mike Flynn got like a couple million dollars for his troubles of being indicted early in the first Trump administration, for example.
|
Ivan:
[57:58]
| Oh, my God. Yeah, I forgot about that.
|
Sam:
[58:01]
| And there have been others, you know. So they're already handing out money through whatever mechanisms they can find. And there are a variety of mechanisms. I mean, here's the thing. And this ties back to stuff we've talked about for years. Like the whole of all of these mechanisms relied on the good faith of the actors in office. You know, when you have somebody like Donald Trump who will just say, oh, we want to give these guys money, find somewhere in the federal government to give them money. I don't care how, you know, like in some cases it'll be like from some settlement fund. In some cases it'll be, hey, let's let them renovate the reflecting pool. You know, and you give him a whole bunch of money for that. And, you know, whatever happens to a reflecting pool, who the fuck actually cares, you know? I'm sure Donald Trump was, by the way, disappointed that it did not work out the way he wanted it to. But what really mattered was he was giving some money to his friends.
|
Ivan:
[59:06]
| You know? Yeah, I mean, that is, well, by the way, I'm pretty sure that the way he operates, this isn't just giving money to his friends. Because there's always a kickback somewhere.
|
Sam:
[59:18]
| Oh, yeah. It's, yes. It's always a quid pro quo. There's always, always, always a transaction.
|
Ivan:
[59:28]
| That's the way these guys operate.
|
Sam:
[59:30]
| Yeah. Donald Trump isn't giving money away for free.
|
Ivan:
[59:34]
| They're fixing their school at Mar-a-Lago free or something or, you know, or at one of his clubs. Yeah, yeah. Trust me. He's getting that money back somehow.
|
Sam:
[59:46]
| Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure, yes. Everything is somehow about, there's always something in it for Donald. Or at the very least for his family. Yeah. No. Okay. So, Blanche, anything else? Like, you know, he's going to come in. He's going to continue doing what he's been doing, which, like, the president is happy with him because, A, he's been doing a pretty good job covering up the Epstein stuff. And, two, he's been actually going after the people Donald Trump wants him to go after.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:25]
| Okay. Let me correct you on something. doing a good job of, listen, I don't think he's been doing a good job about any of this shit. Now, he's been doing what Trump has asked him. Well, that's what good job means.
|
Sam:
[1:00:38]
| Come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:38]
| Well, no, what I'm saying is that if Trump was trying to deflect and get this done, it's not happening. However, the thing is that Trump wants what Trump wants. That means, oh, you go out there and yell at them. And so, which is what happened with his attorneys. His attorneys would go into court and they would be yelling on his behalf. He would be getting crushed. But if they actually did something legally that would be actually in his interest, but it wasn't like with the bluster and the message that he wanted to project, then he would like tell him to go fuck off. Yes he really wants attorneys that just do not what makes legally sense to make something get fixed he wants them to do what he wants them to do to project what he wants projected.
|
Sam:
[1:01:34]
| Yes and and it absolutely is about the show it.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:40]
| Is not necessarily.
|
Sam:
[1:01:42]
| About the result yes you know And you can apply that almost across the board to most things Donald Trump does. You know, add, yes, he wants to be racist, he wants to make money. And he has succeeded in both of those things. However, you know, I think he would compromise... He would make less money to produce a better show.
|
Sam:
[1:02:12]
| In the end, he wants a specific public perception of what he wants that matches his internal image. And also, this is all distorted, too, because it's all about his perception. Like, for instance, he believes all this tacky crap he's putting up all over the White House and Washington, D.C. Is awesome. And that everybody loves it. The fact that, in fact, most people, like even his supporters, think this is trashy. Like, it doesn't enter his head because he doesn't believe it. He believes everybody has to love this stuff because this is great. This is great. You know, the gold lions, you know. Whatever and he was uh he was yeah he has some speech or interview or something where he was talking about polls lately and he was talking about how the the economy is the best it's ever been and how his poll, forget the fake polls in actuality he's had the best polls he's ever had and people love him and on the one hand you think okay he's he's he's just, you know this is his whole thing where he's he he always routinely lies to try to if he says stuff enough people will believe it but honestly i think he believes half the shit himself you know he's not.
|
Sam:
[1:03:38]
| Yes he's trying to manipulate public opinion but he's also manipulating his own mind he he believes his own bullshit i more and more i'm thinking oh yeah a lot of his own own bullshit.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:52]
| All right. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:03:54]
| Next. Next.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:55]
| Now, I have some very interesting data on the labor.
|
Sam:
[1:03:59]
| Okay. So, we're flipping to economy. Should I drop a break in first or just go straight to economy? Break?
|
Ivan:
[1:04:06]
| Let's go to economy and then get a break afterwards. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:04:09]
| Go for it. Go for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:10]
| All right. So, So we've had some interesting labor reports this year, okay, where one of the things is that intuitively, the revisions, and we had this discussion on the chat, where we get these initial reports that show supposedly strengthened jobs, okay, and supposedly the economy is nominally strong. And then we've had subsequent revisions that basically wipe out most of those gains, okay? And if you go through, you know, although we've had a stock market that has been going up because there are certain segments of the stock market that have been benefiting from certain things.
|
Sam:
[1:04:50]
| Thank you, stock market, by the way. Thank you, stock market. I appreciate what you've been doing lately, especially in the last couple weeks.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:58]
| Keep it up. Keep it up. So, but all those things are hiding a lot of pain that is undergoing the average, the median consumer, I would say.
|
Sam:
[1:05:14]
| The median.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:15]
| The median. Because average, yeah, the median consumer, okay? And the median consumer is getting killed. It goes back a little bit to what I was mentioning earlier before, how inflation, okay? Even somebody like myself that whose earnings have been growing a lot the reality is that in real terms you're not exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:05:37]
| In the poor house yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:39]
| I'm not i'm not in the poor house but what i'm saying is that it's not as, it's it's definitely not as good as the number the headline numbers would look and right and the reality is that if somebody like me that's actually not in the poor house, okay, is not doing that great. And I know that I've been getting a hell of a lot more than most people in that department. Imagine the average guy who's only making $15 an hour. How his purchasing power is getting obliterated, destroyed. They are getting destroyed, okay, in this economy right now. So that's just a that's just real right now, especially with all the shit that the administration was doing. But then let's talk about the fact that I just went through the data and I just compiled it and just to confirm. And I had mentioned and explained this a little bit in the curmudgeon corner slack. So what is happening with these job reports that first come out? Oh, we gained one hundred and ten thousand jobs, blah, blah, blah. Then the next revision. Well, it was only $20,000.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:50]
| Look, this administration is absolutely 100% consistently manipulating those initial reports where they can pump up, that data to show supposedly strong job numbers, which then kind of pump up the stock market. And then later, because when they later revise them, people don't pay as much attention to the fucking revisions as they pay to the initial report.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:17]
| And so right and those actually happen when you actually get all the data collected okay because these are done with these surveys that they do and this information that at first you only get some preliminary samples well if you fucking skew the samples you're gonna fucking get, you know you know you're gonna torture the numbers so you're gonna get the data you want but but let me put this in numbers okay because i i actually went and i went through from 2023 to 2026, tell me what the fuck the initial reports were and how many jobs were erased later, okay? Under Biden, switching to the Trump administration, okay? 2023 under Biden, there were 3.1 million jobs created. The later reports revised that down to 2.8 million. So percentage terms, 11% adjustment, okay? All right? It's not that, you know, hey, it's data, it's a little bit off. In the previous, before that, it was actually, they were undercounting job growth, by the way, all right? Because as the economy was actually really booming, they were actually undercounting the growth. But later on, it became that, well, we thought it was 3.1 million actually wound up being 2.8 million, 11%. 2024, the adjustments eliminated about from 2.589 million to 2.348 million. So down about 9.3%, okay? Hey, still, you know, a little bit. 2025, Sam, we got the Trump administration.
|
Sam:
[1:08:45]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:47]
| The initially reported jobs number, by the way, the job generating machine. We went from 2.6 million jobs created in 2024 to 584,000 initially reported created jobs. I mean, think about this. We lost a job generation of 2 million fucking jobs in the initial reports of the first year. But here's the reality. It was a lot worse. The actual number they went from reporting 584,000 the downward revision it was like nine percent under the Biden administration 69 percent 69 percent, this is not a statistical error this is they are fucking with this data flat out.
|
Sam:
[1:09:36]
| But from the original set the revision you believe is still accurate, they're just, it gets buried because it's a revision a month later or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:44]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:09:45]
| But you think they're eventually reporting the correct numbers.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:48]
| Oh, the eventual number's correct. Yes, we've only created, in 2025, only 181,000 jobs were created. Yeah, but think about this, Sam. They went from reporting 584, which was bad already. And versus, by the way, 584 initially reported versus 2.6 million initially reported in 2024 under Biden. OK, so think about that. It's already two million down. OK. And that but the actual number was two point four million for Biden versus an actual one hundred and eighty one thousand jobs. That's it. That's it. Twenty twenty five. Twenty twenty six. Worse. Well, it's the same thing. The downward revisions now under Trump are in the order of 60 to 70 percent.
|
Sam:
[1:10:35]
| 65 percent.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:37]
| From whatever they report initially to the actual number, because it's the initial estimate versus the final number. The initial estimates are basically just being padded to the moot.
|
Sam:
[1:10:52]
| Right. And I would not be shocked to see these go negative at some point, too. But like you answered this question on the curmudgeon score slack, but I want to give you an opportunity to answer here as well. If they're so willing to mess with the initial numbers, what stops them from messing with the final numbers?
|
Ivan:
[1:11:10]
| The thing is that the first, the first numbers, because this is a thing of where, there's, it's like, hey, there's a moment when I could like kind of like provide an estimate and people are like, seem to be very willing to fuck with that part. Okay. Which is just the estimate. But I guess that they are not, they don't, they, they're like, oh, wait, this probably gets down to me being a criminal because the estimate I can, hey, it's, an estimate, right? It's a forecast. Hey, I can forecast whatever the fuck I want. But then it comes down to actually reporting a number. And I guess that they're just not being willing to just, you know, fake the number. Because it would take just saying, calling, you know, hey, just, hey, let's literally call it, hey, it's raining outside. No, no, no, it's sunny. Instead of a weather forecast, hey, we think it's going to rain tomorrow. Oh, well, it's going to be clear all week perfect weather next to the week.
|
Sam:
[1:12:12]
| Then you can say oops I was wrong my forecast was off but if you actually say, it's sunny when it's raining people will call you on your bullshit correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:26]
| Or you could be getting into something that maybe crosses the line into illegality as well.
|
Sam:
[1:12:31]
| And the thing to remember is while we have, one of the key elements of the Trump administration is expanding the part of the federal government that is essentially political employees and they've started and they fire career people because they don't toe the political line.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:50]
| And that is a big impact to this.
|
Sam:
[1:12:52]
| The reality is that they have fucked with that. But even still, at the lowest levels, the people who are actually collecting the numbers and doing the math and doing the science and economics on this and all of this, those are still predominantly career people. Now, they may be career people who are frightened for their jobs because of, how this administration is working, but they may be people who are still like, they're trying to go by the book and actually do what they're supposed to do. And so far, the administration apparently has not flat out said to the people at that level, no.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:39]
| Just lie.
|
Sam:
[1:13:40]
| Just lie. right now they've been.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:44]
| Willing to fiddle with the estimates which are estimates and like i said hey forecast forecast anybody can forecast whatever the fuck they want.
|
Sam:
[1:13:52]
| And by the way we're talking economics here but this this pattern has played out throughout the entirety of the federal government right now yeah i mean just look at the kind of stuff happening at cdc for instance oh god yeah Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:07]
| I mean, the fact that fucking RFK Jr. had the fucking cojones to go on TV and say that the emergency rooms were empty during the COVID pandemic. I want to grab that motherfucker. Oh, my God. That guy needs to be in jail. At some point, we need to throw that son of a bitch in jail.
|
Sam:
[1:14:26]
| No, no, Yvonne. That's Fauci you're thinking of. Fauci is the one that's supposed to be in jail.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:31]
| No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:14:32]
| No, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:33]
| No, not Fauci. No.
|
Sam:
[1:14:36]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:37]
| Anyway, that that son of a bitch deserves jail for the rest of his fucking life.
|
Sam:
[1:14:42]
| Anyway, back to economy for a second.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:45]
| So the bottom line is that right now, listen, job creation right now in this. I mean, one month of the Biden administration created more jobs than two years, than almost two years of Trump. One month. I mean, are you understanding how bad this is? One fucking month of the last year of the Biden administration created more jobs than 18, almost two years of this asshole being president.
|
Sam:
[1:15:23]
| So with all that, though, you know, as we were alluding to earlier, The stock market is at or near all-time highs. It seems to still be going up.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:33]
| But again, it goes back to how, you know, this economy is bifurcated.
|
Sam:
[1:15:38]
| And so what's the, how, you know, we've been predicting recession for a while. Like, I mean, like, oh, Donald Trump's stuff has got to crash at some point.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:50]
| Listen, given this job creation numbers, I'm sure we're getting close to that. I mean, you can't keep going like this. Look, all the data points are shitty. I mean, tell me which data point is good. Interest rates, they're soaring because inflation is high, okay? They have no control over that right now. Job creation is in the shitter. The housing market is kind of like ground to a grit lock. Only high-end stuff is selling. People can't afford to buy houses.
|
Sam:
[1:16:27]
| Mm-hmm. And there's basically no such thing as like starter homes anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:32]
| No, not really. And so it's, look, I, like I mentioned, this economy is bifurcated in a way that is really, man, these guys really want to go back to the, I think you, I can't remember, I think you may have mentioned this, that Trump's ideal is not to go back to the 1950s. Is to go back to the late 1800s. Yes. That's what he wants. And by the way, that economy was not good for the median consumer at all.
|
Sam:
[1:17:11]
| And that's why you had major backlash. That's why you had first the, well, you had the two Roosevelts. You had the Teddy Roosevelt progressive era and then a generation later you had FDR and really pushing in the opposite direction. And it was all backlash. It was all backlash to, you know, situations where you had this kind of bifurcated economy where the rich were doing great and everybody else was doing horribly. And, you know, similar types of, you know, the French Revolution came out of these kinds of conditions too, right? I mean, literally, yes, this is, you know, this is where you get like people being beheaded and shit, you know, um, cause yeah, this, this. You know, I don't have anything in front of me, but I remember seeing before a variety of things where one of the, biggest predictors, not foolproof, but one of the biggest predictors for social unrest and upheaval and civil war and violence.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:27]
| Oh, it's income inequality. It's income inequality. There's like massive amounts of like data that over time that show that income inequality is one of the greatest predictors of that kind of unrest. Absolutely. A hundred percent. And these guys are all about making that worse. And but they've also the kudos to them that they have completely made an entire group of actually of people that aren't making shit vote for them at the same time. OK, these people are these these people are the ones that are getting hit the worst by these policies, and yet they are voting for the guys that keep making it worse for them. And not just that, being convinced that the guy that actually was making their lives better was not. That's the amazing thing. Well, because, of course, the trans athletes.
|
Sam:
[1:19:27]
| Well, look, if you can.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:33]
| And all the and the thing is that they're getting. Listen, they also convinced them that the immigrants are also the other guys. They got the trans athletes and and immigrants that are the ones that are making their lives worse. So, therefore, when we take care of them, then you'll be good.
|
Sam:
[1:19:53]
| Look, for generations now, we have shown that people are willing to give up things that benefit themselves personally as long, as you can screw the groups you hate and it allows you to be properly bigoted the way you want to be. I mean, the prototypical example back in the 60s and 70s was people closing public pools because they had to be integrated. We would rather close the public pools so nobody can have them than allow black people to use these pools. You know, that was all over the South. That was all over the South that happened.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:37]
| I made a post on Robin Letter talking about how my life has been enriched substantially, by all the different people from around the world that I have met. It has been so enriched and it opened my eyes to.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:59]
| And one very important thing that I learned, that we are a lot more like than we really understand. And how amazing I find that the GOP continues to tell and convince these people that all these other people are different and evil and you should reject them. When the reality is that the more I go, like, I mean, it doesn't matter, Asia, Europe, whatever. The reality is that we share a hell of a lot more, especially because of how interconnected society is now. I think it was like more, what I noticed is that 20, 30 years ago, the differences were actually bigger. But this technology that we have now has actually made people be a lot closer, in the things they want, that they care about, what they are looking for, how they want to work, that we share a lot and a lot of good things in general. And the fact that there's so many shared good things and that all these fucking people get convinced that these people they never met are evil and are fucking them.
|
Sam:
[1:22:14]
| Mm-hmm. One of the things that I've noticed, even, you know, look, I have not done as much world travel as you have or met people, but I've done a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:26]
| You've done a good bit, too.
|
Sam:
[1:22:28]
| I've done more than lots of people. But, like, specifically, but I think even within the space of our lifetimes, like you were saying, the technology changes things. Like if you went back to the the 70s 80s whatever, i i think you know if you were traveling across the world you definitely notice, a lot more you know things that are are really localized and more of that kind of stuff yeah, i i remember when i visited my mother when she lived in mozambique in southern africa and i was there for like three weeks and it was culture shock the entire time like, you know, in terms of like, this is so different. And, you know, the, the, the level, you know, all kinds of stuff was different from just the, the income levels and what was available. And, you know, it was lots of culture shock. And I honestly, it probably would be today if I visited there too now, but I've, you know, Alex and I, one of the things we watch on a.
|
Sam:
[1:23:37]
| And like, just as an example, right last night, we were watching a front line from, I think, 2014 or so. So it's a bit old, but it was about the Syrian civil war. And it was following some kids in the Syrian civil war. Right. And, you know, they had their cell phones. Even in 2014 you know they had their cell phones they were dressed in western fashion they were wearing t-shirts of like whatever you know.
|
Sam:
[1:24:11]
| They weren't speaking English but we had subtitles and they were talking just like kids here you know the same kind of crap they were in the middle of a fucking war zone so all horrible things were happening all around them but, they were just kids and they were concerned about the same kind of things kids here are concerned about and you know the like you said the technology is flattened and i've seen like you know, other videos of you know folks in other countries that aren't in the middle of a war zone and it's like you know back in the day you'd think oh it's the third world they're a bunch of farms and they're off in the middle of nowhere and no they're fucking cities that, look just like the major cities here, you know china is arguably more industrialized than we are and more advanced technology, technologically than we are at least in the big cities you know and the things have flattened significantly you go anywhere in the fucking world and people have their smartphones, and they're they're often doing more things on them than here because you know because they have that instead of other infrastructure a computer or a tablet.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:22]
| Or something yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:25:23]
| Yeah yeah and so For them.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:25]
| The smartphone is the connection to the world.
|
Sam:
[1:25:28]
| Right. And it's like, yeah, so, like, I think you're absolutely right. Differences are flattening. Now, there are clearly some, you know, things. There are parts of the world where there's religious fundamentalism that is.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:41]
| You know, whatever. But Sam, the one thing that I always, like, still to this day, that it's just the one thing that, I'll tell you, the one marker of, like, how this fucking world is just all, I mean, the fact that, my God, Sam, there isn't a fucking place in the world that I can't get to without a fucking Starbucks. It's just ridiculous. Okay? Whether it was Moscow, I can't remember. I went to Malaysia. I landed at this small airport. I can't remember a local airport. It's a fucking Starbucks at the damn terminal. I'm like, at this, Malaysia, I'm like, at this commuter terminal. I walk in, oh, there you go. There's another fucking Starbucks. I mean, what the hell? I mean, it doesn't matter where. The Dominican fucking republic and fucking, you know, any, look, any, you go, you know, anywhere you go and, you know, you can find a fucking Starbucks anywhere in the fucking world. And it's like one of those things that everybody is like, oh yeah, let's go to Starbucks.
|
Sam:
[1:26:39]
| Well, and American media.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:41]
| That wasn't that way 30, 40 years ago.
|
Sam:
[1:26:43]
| Right. And American media and culture and stuff. I mean, you know, on some of these war documentaries is like, you know, the kid or whatever is like, yeah, you were talking about Spider-Man. They'd be wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt and talking about their superheroes and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:58]
| Of course.
|
Sam:
[1:26:59]
| You know, and sitting in the middle of a war in Afghanistan or something and, you know, there's still—anyway. Yes. The war—, You know, to quote the old song, it's a small world after all, right? You know, and getting smaller by the day and the barriers are dropping. And I think part of the tension we have in general is that people are threatened by that because they do have to come in contact with the other. And like the healthy way to deal with that I mean places like New York City, are vibrant because they've got people from all over the world interacting all the time generally peacefully you know I think you, know some of the video of like Mamdami right people were trying to like you know paint him as an anti-Semite or whatever and like you know there's been video of you know him hanging that.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:59]
| Guy that just won the damn primary in michigan for god's.
|
Sam:
[1:28:02]
| Sake right elsa oh my god yeah yeah i mean but you have i tell.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:07]
| You what i hadn't seen followed him a lot you know i wasn't following it that closely but i was on some clips of this guy and i'm like fuck i can relate to this guy shit i love him.
|
Sam:
[1:28:16]
| Yeah absolutely and my point was going to be though and you see video of them that you know they're painting him as anti-semites whatever because they do have some positions to say, by the way, Israel is doing some bad things, which, by the way, they are. But, you know, they're hanging. But you have them hanging out in these polyglot things. You know, the Muslim mayor hanging out with the Jewish people, hanging out with the black people, hanging out with the Latinos, all getting along and enjoying each other's company and living peacefully. That's a healthy way to do it and appreciating the differences in each other's culture where they apply, and having the best of it, right? And let me tell you something.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:57]
| And then you've got, on the flip side, a guy like Tucker Carlson going on TV, in fucking Fox News, I remember one time, railing against that. Literally railing against that literally saying how that was like a destruction of america.
|
Sam:
[1:29:12]
| Right well and the unhealthy way, which definitely is playing out at various points of the world at any given time, is people not just the u.s it's not just the u.s being threatened by that and instead erecting barriers you know saying we don't want those people in we want to maintain the purity of our old culture instead of having like, you know, the melting pot and get the best of all worlds. And, you know, hey, if they, you know, if that culture over there has some great food, hey, I want that food too. I want to try that out. I'm not going to like, you know, or whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:29:50]
| And, you know, but people can very easily get defensive, bring up walls, refuse to associate with the other people, make it an us and them, you know, and, you know, this is where wars come from you know and yes it's just it's just ridiculous it's the it's we, at every level we should be fighting against that and i think one of the, this is one of the clearest divisions is you know are you a are the people with an us and them mentality versus people who are like hey, everybody's welcome let's learn from each other let's have fun let's enjoy each other let's Celebrate our similarities and celebrate our differences. It's okay if you have, you know, a different, you know, cuisine, religious culture, sexual orientation, whatever, you know, let's have fun together. Yeah, whatever. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:49]
| You know, before we go to a break, but the one thing I was explaining to somebody this week that there is this—, athlete railing about, there's a WNBA basketball player talking about how they were so concerned about the trans people playing in basketball, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, the whole thing is, my, simple explanation for this, listen, this whole thing about them railing against the trans athletes is the same thing as all the people banning Sharia of Sharia law in, oh, we're banning Sharia law in our state. And I'm like, okay, is anybody trying to, is there any anywhere where they're implementing Sharia law in your state? No. It's all a straw man. It's a straw man to, the Sharia law bans are straw mans to generate hate against Muslims. The whole thing about railing about trans athletes and professional sports has to do with them using that as a straw man for you to generate hate against trans people. That's all it is. It's got nothing to do with anything else. That is, those are their proxies for you to, for them to rally the hate. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:01]
| Right. Yeah. I mean, sometimes there is a real core to something, but they don't need that.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:13]
| It's just an excuse.
|
Sam:
[1:32:15]
| It's just an excuse. And even when there is a real division, like I was like there when people were closing those pools in the 60s and 70s, there really was a push towards integration.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:26]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:32:26]
| You know, but that's not the right way to deal with it. Come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:31]
| Yeah. But that was like really, oh, I don't want to be with the black people.
|
Sam:
[1:32:37]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:38]
| You know, yeah. But right now, for the most part, most of the stuff that they are doing with immigrants, with this, with anything or whatever, they're creating these fake, you know, things in order to just incite hate against a group in one way or another. Whether it's the blame, you know, blame there, the fact that they're in, you know, they're, they were like using, oh, the, the, the immigrants are stealing your homes. So that's why homes are pricier. The immigrants are stealing your jobs. That's why you can't find a job. You know, all of these things, none of which are true. Because, you know, like I mentioned, it's like, you know, yeah, you know, or these people are going to go cut grass and like climb on roofs to go and like install decking at a hundred degree heat, like five days a week. No. They're not there. These are jobs that these people, you know, don't want so many times in certain places where they have taken all the immigrants out of a out of a town, like whatever, because they were, you know, working at a slaughterhouse or something or whatever. And then all of a sudden, OK, great. We got jobs for you guys. Take up, take the jobs. And they're all like, oh, we don't want those. It's such bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:33:51]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:51]
| Such fucking bullshit. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:33:54]
| Okay, let's take a break, and then we can briefly talk about, like, one more thing, and then close it up, because I still have to play that, like, half-hour thing that Alex made at the end of the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:05]
| Oh, yeah, right. Well, send me the AI summary.
|
Sam:
[1:34:11]
| Yeah, yeah, there you go. Okay. Break first.
|
Break:
[1:34:14]
| Okie dokie. Here it comes. It was just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make. Bubble, Come, on, come on. i'm tired what's wrong i'm i'm really tired you you you it's it's amazing to get the show on the road there's a road there's a road oh my god there's a road.
|
Sam:
[1:35:19]
| Okay for those of you not on video, You should realize that through that whole break, Yvonne was doing really disturbing things with his mouth. You know, it's just like, I can't quite describe it. It was just like, you know, that scene where Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs does some sort of thing with his mouth, like, you know, with slurping and like, you know, I don't know, but he was doing like, just stuff. You know, I...
|
Ivan:
[1:35:58]
| You can go watch a YouTube video if you're so inclined.
|
Sam:
[1:36:05]
| Okay. My turn. And I think... This was originally prompted by I saw Yvonne post something on either Threads or Blue Sky, I forget which, talking about, how nobody cared or knew about this so i'm like okay okay of course i'm gonna have to talk about it, yes um which is you know and i'll expand out to more stuff but we'll do ai related stuff because hank green got in trouble for this and some other guy was mentioned but i still.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:35]
| Don't even know who the fuck this guy.
|
Sam:
[1:36:37]
| Is oh i didn't know that the the the post that yvonne meant talked about mentioned hank green and one other guy i didn't know the who the other guy was but i knew, you don't know who Hank Green is? Come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:50]
| And by the way, and by the way, most people have no clue who the fuck Hank Green is. By the way, FYI.
|
Sam:
[1:37:00]
| Okay, let me expand your knowledge and anybody who might not know. I was going to bring up the Wikipedia page to give more information, but of course my safari is like spinning wheel of death.
|
Sam:
[1:37:15]
| But Hank Green is a YouTube science communicator, basically.
|
Sam:
[1:37:20]
| He and his brother is John Green, who is a famous author as well. The two of them together started out doing a Vlogbrothers thing on YouTube a long time ago, which I guess is still going. But they do a lot of independent things now. His brother is a famous author who is, let's see, what were some of his big books. The Fault in Our Stars was, I guess, his biggest thing. There have been movies made out of his books.
|
Sam:
[1:37:53]
| But Hank Green has specialized in sort of science communication. So he has a bunch of YouTube channels, Crash Course, SciShow, things like that, where basically he does like the things where you pick science topics and he makes them into little educational videos where you can learn about whatever the topic is. He's very popular in that field. I've seen many, many, many of his videos over the years. And basically what he got in trouble for was fans of his noticed that over the last few months, the tone of his videos seemed to be changing a bit. And he didn't sound quite like himself. And specifically in one recent episode, they claimed he used a phrase that is an A.I. tell.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:51]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:38:52]
| You know, like if you if you spend a lot of time talking to Claude or chat GPT or whatever, there are certain phrases they reuse all over, over and over again. I think this one was something like, I appreciate the pushback and then something else. Right. You know, related to something. And he put that in one of his videos and people were like, that sounds like AI. And so he got a lot of criticism because people basically accused him of letting AI write the scripts for his videos. And he came back with a statement and basically apologized, saying, look, I've checked that script. And that particular phrase wasn't even in the script. I ad-libbed it while I was recording. It wasn't in the script at all. however I.
|
Sam:
[1:39:46]
| I realize that it's true that I've been relying more and more on AI for research, and to go back and forth and talk about things and perhaps to an unhealthy degree. And I'm going to take some time and think about things and figure out, you know, what's the right position to be here. And then just like yesterday or something he came out with a statement for all of his different projects on what they will or will not do for instance saying that AIs will never write the scripts or any words for his channel, and you know they.
|
Sam:
[1:40:26]
| Not trusting certain sources I forget I don't have it in front of me I think I favored it on some some place I like noted it so I could come back to it, but of course I didn't prep for it. But he came out with a fairly reasonable policy saying, look, AI is a useful tool. We're not going to not use it entirely, but we will make sure that these certain elements are AI free. Because if you're coming here to watch the channel, you're expecting my editorial judgment. You're expecting my words. You're expecting, you know, this kind of level of authenticity. And so we're not going to let the AI do that part of things. But the fundamental thing here was...
|
Sam:
[1:41:13]
| You know, a challenge of like, where, where do you draw these kinds of lines? And what do people expect? Because you've got the whole range here. I mean, you've got entire channels at this point that are 100% AI generated, that I talked about this on the show on one of the weeks you weren't here, Yvonne, about how, you know, there people are posting how to do scripts that basically like, you know you set up a workflow using ai that takes some existing youtube channel as input and says and basically says clone this, and make something like this and automatically put out a new episode every day.
|
Sam:
[1:41:57]
| And specifically the one that i was watching was like for for like kids animations, you know, for like educational, like count to count to 10, learn your ABCs kind of content. Right. And basically, you know, imitate the style of Cocoa Melon, generate a new video every day automatically go and how, and how some of these are making decent money at this point. Now, well, I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:23]
| To be fair, to be fair. There are people making money on YouTube by just broadcasting white noise.
|
Sam:
[1:42:33]
| Well, right. I was going to say, you know, the fart channel, but, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:37]
| The fart channel. I mean, so, I mean, yeah, you know, that does happen a lot. But I do find it quite disturbing people fucking going and, like, directly taking somebody else's editorial ideas that they came up in a production order to do it. To for them to steal that and then just have it have ai generate their own version of it which is straight up plagiarism i mean if you think about it in the air and that's just that's just you know, that's like when you know people get pissed off and comedians rip off other people's jokes or stuff like this or whatever it's the same shit you're just stealing somebody else's ideas and you know the ai is just oh look that guy came up with something you you just generate the thing you're, you're just automating the process you're just straight up stealing that's it pretty much.
|
Sam:
[1:43:27]
| And and so look and i and what i set up that show when i talked about this, was look i appreciate the people who come up with an original idea and do it for the first time like you know i i don't and you know the guy who came up with the white noise channel the first white noise channel and made money off it okay you had an idea you went for it, congrats to you congrats yeah you know but if you're if you literally are saying, you know do something just like these this other guy's channel and automate it and put out new episodes, i don't have a lot of respect for that and also by the way it will get saturated, you know if if it's one thing to be the original person who did it it's another thing to be the first person who imitates them. But if you're the hundredth person to imitate them or the 10,000th person to imitate them, at some point, they're very diminishing returns there. But, With Hank Green and his thing, he's like, look, you know, the bottom line is, you don't go to Hank Green's channel for Hank Green to read a script written by AI.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:40]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:44:41]
| You know, and so if he wants to maintain the respect of his audience, he's going to write his own crap.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:48]
| But here's the one thing. Like, this is, you know, like, yes, I don't go somewhere for that. But I had this discussion with somebody like a bit ago where I will write out stuff and I will use AI tools to help me edit it like a lot. Like, I mean, there are, you know, look, I'm going to write an email to a customer and I put down all the different ideas. Listen, I need to communicate this, this, this and this. OK, and, you know, it's going to help me like organize the bullets, go through these things and whatever. And a lot of times I well I personally I don't know I've noticed that there are other people that don't do this they just have whatever AI generates send it out and it looks I mean a lot of times it's, It doesn't sound like even they're talking, but that, okay, I help it with my drafts. I have anything that I first put it in my drafts. I will go through it. I'm like, no, no, this is wrong. No, no, no. This is not the way I want to convey it. You know, I go and I, but it helps me get through my stuff faster. So I can understand using that.
|
Sam:
[1:45:52]
| But I think there's a fundamental difference and there are different types of communication that we should talk about. Now, there are some people who object even to the use cases you're talking about, but I think there's a difference between a communication where, look, you actually don't want your personal voice in it. You want a plain, like factual, here's the information, present it as concisely as possible, and if anything, you want to match some sort of flat corporate tone or whatever. Like, AI is actually pretty decent at that right now. Yes, yes. That is a difference from, hey, I'm writing a short story or I'm making something for entertainment.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:41]
| But I think that if you're doing a science show, you're trying to research a subject, I would think that you would use the AI in order to maybe help you with the research.
|
Sam:
[1:46:50]
| The thing that he said is he's going to continue using AI to potentially help with research, but he won't let the AI pick the topics. He won't let the AI write the script. And also, by the way, when the AI, quote unquote, helps with research, you fact check it separately to make sure it's not making shit up.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:11]
| I know. And that's a big thing. I mean, I spend so much time, like, you know, like, but this, I'm going to tell you something. I really, truly believe that the people who are going to be, truly successful using these tools are the people that know how to actually, fact check through all of this shit and make sure that what what is coming out is, is good versus the people that just regurgitate whatever the ai gives them because the reality is that i know so many times that i work with this stuff like, i work with it all day like right now and there is just so much stuff no no no that's not the right person no no no that's not the right title no no no these are out the right numbers and if i would just, and i and if you just rely on it just just being you know just doing it it there's so many times that it will either tell the wrong story not do what you're looking for whatever that, it's maybe eventually it will get to that point but like right now it doesn't know enough for it and so, i i feel like i'm just i'm like honestly what i feel that I have with AI flat out is like when I had staff that would help me prepare material.
|
Sam:
[1:48:34]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:34]
| Straight up. I would tell them, hey, look, I need these charts for this meeting. I get back to charts. No, that's not the way that chart should look like. That chart is not, I need to change it into this. OK, we're getting closer now. We're missing this element that I need to bring here. Here's the information for that. That's actually how I work with it every day. It's really like I have extra hands helping me with something. It's not just me going like, oh, do this and then just like, you know, set it off in its merry way and then, you know, generate the content like you were mentioning. And I'm like, oh, this is crap. I never even looked at it.
|
Sam:
[1:49:11]
| Which by.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:11]
| The way a lot of people are doing.
|
Sam:
[1:49:13]
| And by the way.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:15]
| A lot of people are noticing when it's like that because.
|
Sam:
[1:49:18]
| That's why.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:18]
| People noticed it's it gets you know as more people use ai it becomes really noticeable when somebody didn't check it.
|
Sam:
[1:49:27]
| Well and also in the in the hank green case they called him out on a phrase that he apparently ad-libbed while recording it, which it means the ai didn't write it but means he was talking to the ai enough that he started imitating phrase he picked up the phrase yes, and and and you know and he admitted he felt like he was over relying on these tools and he's going to try to cut back, because he felt he was getting into that cycle that people have described before, of the ais being all like oh yes this is wonderful You're amazing. This is a great idea. And getting into that cycle where you're just getting that reaffirmation from the AI without actually applying the critical thinking to it that you need.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:15]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:50:16]
| And there have been some preliminary tests that people have done where that even the people who do what you're describing, Yvonne, and iterate with the AI instead of taking its first thing—, are showing some level of decay in their ability to do things independently when asked to do it without it.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:38]
| But Sam, that is a byproduct of using any technology for any of this stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:50:44]
| Bingo.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:45]
| Let's get away from that because, look, from calculators. Calculators. You know what? Fuck this shit. Listen, people doing math on their heads, going from like and using calculators diminished because we started using calculators. Navigation skills with GPS, okay? Listen, people now working on GPS right now, you give them a map, you give them a compass, you try to figure out how to fucking get somewhere, they can't figure it out, okay? This is a byproduct of the technology. Yes, you're right. The reality is that the underlying skill that was there before you used the AI will diminish. Yes, that's true. But you're doing that for the sake of efficiency, because in many cases, for example, for most people, yeah, I know I can grab a map and I can fucking take a compass. And yes, I will be if I get placed somewhere lost, I will be able to get out and 99 percent of the people won't.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:43]
| You know what? That's a skill that's diminished because it's so convenient right now for people just to punch in an address of their fucking GPS and get somewhere that in reality is that learning the skill the way I did. Like when I used to navigate on an airplane where I used to measure distance and time. I would take a map. I would go by distance and time and on the map. And I know, hey, if I'm going at 60, you know, I'm going at 100 knots and I'm traveling seven minutes. I will be over this place and I can find it here. Yes, it's a fair, absolutely, is it a great skill? Yes, but is it really useful in the age where you've got avionics right now and some of these, like, even, like, the smallest airplanes that can fucking fly the damn thing by itself where you just punch, punch, punch, go, and this damn thing just goes. I mean, it's hard to argue with the efficiency.
|
Sam:
[1:52:33]
| Right, I mean, you made a bunch of examples, and now I feel sad with my one little, I was going to just say I'm not as good writing with a pen anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:41]
| Because well fuck I got pens like here look I still, I actually look I got I got a I got a couple of pens like I still I still I got I got notes I got I got notes I got scribbles and actually you know what I still I'll tell you no I'll do one bad I'll do one bad look yes yes where.
|
Sam:
[1:53:00]
| The hell is it yeah while you're looking for that let me just finish what I was saying like yes I have pens yes I will write things but honestly it is incredibly rare these days that I write anything longer than my signature.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:12]
| Right? Look at this, Sam. Yes. You see this thing?
|
Sam:
[1:53:15]
| Yes, I see it.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:15]
| He's got some sort of like- It's a pad.
|
Sam:
[1:53:17]
| Pad with notes in it.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:19]
| It's a pad that I use for like taking notes at customer meetings a whole bunch of times.
|
Sam:
[1:53:22]
| Oh, wow.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:23]
| And they're, you know, but you know why I use this? Why do you use it? Because sometimes if you're using a computer, you're using a smartphone to take the notes, they think that you're playing on your phone and you're not actually paying attention to them.
|
Sam:
[1:53:35]
| I understand. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:36]
| And so I will just use this pad to make, to take notes from a customer meeting. I will go and I'm like, you know, look, I got, I have like, and this is filled with notes from meetings where I will go to a meeting. And then afterwards, by the way, I'll dump it into my AI because I have like stuff for, for every customer I have, I have created this repository of information. So it's able to help me like later on when I'm analyzing and doing stuff and whatever okay and so i will just dump that in there but, you know i look i look i get pad and by the way here's the funnier thing about this when you look at this pad how old is this pad look at the logo it's got inside.
|
Sam:
[1:54:17]
| It's got an old hp logo.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:19]
| That's exactly right they gave me this at hp like 20 years ago or something i still got this thing that i carry around.
|
Sam:
[1:54:25]
| So let me give one example of AI stuff from this week for me that I just wanted to give a little anecdote. I was working on Robin Letter stuff. Robinletter.com, if you haven't tried it, please go. You check it out, try it, whatever. Anyway, one of the things I've been working on.
|
Sam:
[1:54:44]
| Is web push notification, whatever. And I put out the, it's ready for selected users to test, not for general release yet. But as I was putting out something related to this, there was one part that, That I was about to push to production and something weird happened when I was tested. And I was like, okay, let's look into this. And the AI that I was working with was like, oh, this is an easy fix. Did a fix, then was about to put it to production and then was examining some logs to test it. It was like, oh no, something horrible is happening. We need to stop immediately and check what this is. And I may have accidentally broken something. Let's not push this to production. And it ended up discovering, and we spent time looking into this, something where there were a whole bunch of extraneous requests coming in, only in my development environment, not in the production environment. And so I started digging into this with the AI. And for whatever reason, by the way, I was on a session that was still on Opus 4.8, whereas the latest is Opus 5 from Anthropic for that type, and then they have Fable.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:06]
| Well, it's Fable.
|
Sam:
[1:56:09]
| And so, like, I started out on Opus 4.8, and then it started trying to figure out what was going on. Yeah. Let's just say it was thrashing. It was trying all kinds of hypotheses. It was ruling out some of them. It was getting absolutely nowhere. And by the way, this whole process started when I noticed something weird at like 11 p.m. or something. Okay? And I'm like, I was trying to push a bug fix out to production. But it found this weirdness in dev. And it was thrashing and thrashing and thrashing. So I did stop it and go to Opus 5, and it was having trouble, too. It was still having trouble. And then I started ramping up the effort level. I'd started out at effort level medium. For those of you who know how these work, they've got a little slider. Essentially, you can change how much time it spends thinking. So I kept making it smarter from medium to high to extra high. Um
|
Ivan:
[1:57:12]
| So you're not like me that i basically i just go say fuck it on it uh.
|
Sam:
[1:57:17]
| Ramp it all the way.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:19]
| Yeah that by the way this this may come up i i may get i may i may get yelled at at work.
|
Sam:
[1:57:25]
| Over so but anyway well there was one experience like my my son i don't know if i mentioned this on the show i think i did mention this on the show maybe it was one of my solo episodes, but he was doing something and he he did that he was the first he he put it on the latest model and he ramped it to the maximum and it went off and it thought for like over an hour and then came up with bullshit like it used up my, it used up like my entire quota for the day it went it went past my quota started charging overages it ended up costing me 115 bucks because it went out it's, it spawned like a hundred agents to look into his problem they all went thinking for like an hour they all reported back and told and at the end of that whole process they told him it was a problem that had already been ruled out before it even started like, it was not that thing at all it did not provide any value whatsoever for that 115 and an hour plus spent with the highest level model at the highest thinking level, it just completely wasted that hour and a half 120 bucks whatever You know, but anyway, and so I, I've, I've put on, I've now made it so it won't automatically go into overage charges. Anything like that happens again.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:49]
| Oh, I see.
|
Sam:
[1:58:50]
| Cause I'm lucky it was only a hundred dollars, you know, but anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:58:58]
| Point is, it was completely thrashing. So I did try Fable for the first time. I switched it from the Opus 5 model to the Fable 5 model. I put it on the same thing. Fable went off, thought for like half an hour straight, and came back with an actual solution to the problem. It came back. It asked me to test a few things to gather some more information, found some stuff. And actually, it thinks it found a bug in Safari that has not already been reported. It could be full of shit. I'm not, it wants me to report the bug to Apple. I'm not sure I'm going to report the bug to Apple because I'm not sure it's right. But, you know, it basically had, you know, like Safari does these things where it preemptively in the background starts to preload a page you're not on because it thinks you might go there soon based on your patterns. And basically what was happening was Robin Letter was misbehaving If like when I'm testing, I have multiple tabs up doing multiple things. And so it was opening additional Robin letter tabs that were actually completely invisible from the UI. And the back, the non-real phantom tab was misbehaving and failing and causing like, you know, basically I was DDoSing myself, from these background tabs that weren't real.
|
Sam:
[2:00:24]
| And basically the bug is, well, it shouldn't do that in quite that way. But it came up with a variety of ways to detect when something like that was happening and mitigate it. And so it did that. So I was quite happy. So Fable actually solved the issue, I think. There's still some weirdness going on. I'm going to iterate with it a little bit more on related things. But it seemed to deal with the issue in a decent way and was much smarter. But I will say one thing that I was repeatedly annoyed by, by Fable, once I upgraded to it, although I think Opus 5 was doing this too. I mentioned I started this at about 11 p.m. And I was iterating on this all night long. And it kept telling me it's two in the morning don't you want to stop and go to bed.
|
Sam:
[2:01:14]
| Like and it also kept gaslighting me and it's, you know and look it also kept gaslighting me like it had said oh this is this major problem and then it's like well, you know i i think we should maybe we should just put that on the backlog and just finish the thing that you were working on when you found this and not worry about it right now. And I'm like, but you just said you found a major problem that we should stop and deal with. So why are you telling me that? And I kept having to argue with it that no, no, look, look, I've told you five times already. You found a problem in production that could potentially affect the real world. We are not walking away until we have fixed it. And it's like, don't you want to take a break? How about you should go to sleep? We'll talk more in the morning, you know, and stuff like that.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:07]
| And OK, maybe to be fair, how long have you been working on it?
|
Sam:
[2:02:13]
| Well, I ended I ended up going from about 11 p.m. till eight in the morning.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:19]
| Well, you know what? I don't think that... I think it may have had a point. Just saying. I think it may have had a point. You may have needed a break.
|
Sam:
[2:02:36]
| I may... I mean, you know... But look, when I get into the zone on something...
|
Ivan:
[2:02:41]
| I get that, but don't think that there is...
|
Sam:
[2:02:42]
| I'm like, there is a specific thing...
|
Ivan:
[2:02:46]
| There is a legitimate... I do think that it had a good reason to be somewhat legitimately concerned.
|
Sam:
[2:02:53]
| It was probably telling me a healthy thing to do. But on the other hand, I was like, I will stop when X, Y, and Z are true.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:59]
| I want to fucking fix this. Fuck this shit. Yeah, I know. I get it.
|
Sam:
[2:03:04]
| Yeah, anyway. You know, I haven't actually flipped that one session back from Fable to Opus yet. And, you know, people talk about how fast Fable uses up your limits. For what I was doing, it hasn't so far.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:20]
| Me neither, by the way. Well, I've got the $200 a month thing.
|
Sam:
[2:03:26]
| I've only got the $100 a month plan. And aside from the one time Alex did the thing I mentioned, I haven't hit a limit in months. But then again, I'm using it for Robin Letter. I'm using it for several other projects. But I'm not working eight hours a day on them or anything like that. You know, I work on it when I have a chance in between, you know, while Alex is at school or in the evenings or whatever. But I'm not like.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:52]
| I will admit that I get these notices about how much I'm spending a week on the on on on AI models at the for work.
|
Sam:
[2:04:01]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:01]
| For work. Yeah. I look, I. I started using Sol because it recently rolled it out.
|
Sam:
[2:04:10]
| Which is one of the latest from ChatGPT, from OpenAI.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:13]
| And I mentioned that, by the way, it is quite amazingly good. And they have, I realize that they have one. I don't have this available on my consumer, but they have a version that we have that. They actually added a whole bunch of things related to our work, that it has knowledge about how to do certain work processes. Now, the reality is that I am... I'm doing this for sales. So I think that my ROI case, especially considering how much the sale is pretty easily justified, but I did get a notice that in one week I'd burned up like $500.
|
Sam:
[2:04:51]
| I've seen a number of notices. There was one news article a week or two ago, about my old employer, who I can now just say. It was Amazon. Yeah, yeah. Who had set up some internal process and just let it run. And somebody a couple weeks later noticed that it had burned like $1.5 million on like random shit that nobody actually wanted or needed.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:19]
| Okay. You see, that's the thing. I burned up $500 on like analyzing, you know, important customer stuff for us to respond to deals worth a lot of money. So, you know, this stuff is going to help. And it actually did, and actually, by the way, the output it did, this is the thing about it. Matt, the output I got from the Soul Ultra whatever fucking version it is was really good. I was, I mean... Dude, this is, this was a leap above, I mean, a big leap above what I had gotten before from either Fable or 5.5.
|
Sam:
[2:06:00]
| And this is the other thing. It keeps improving. We haven't hit the top of the curve yet.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:05]
| But this is the part where I'm like, you know what? Listen, I'm having to do a job for, that before took multiple people. So I got to, can it replace, can it replace like the people behind it? No, but I'll tell you what, I sure as hell enabled me to be able to do the job of multiple people.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:26]
| And so, you know, I could, I could, I could assure, would you say that, say that for sure. So, yeah, I mean, here, here's one thing I see people forgetting, you know what? And I know that, look, I know that there's a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt around AI for a lot of very good reasons, okay? You know, don't get me wrong. I don't think the reasons are invalid. But I remember the productivity leaps that we had in the 90s due to adopting a whole bunch of technology like this, okay? Which in terms of like the leap from where we, while we did things before to how we were doing it with the technology is a significant leap. And I think we just forget how big a leap we did in the 90s with a lot of this stuff, okay? And that the reality is that we wound up hiring a lot more people in the end because it just enabled us to do more. Thought shit that we just didn't have time to do before that now all of a sudden we had time to do because the technology let us do it. And so it was like, oh, wait, so I hire one employee and they're so much productive that their output grows that much. Shit. Wait a minute. So if I put two employees using that technology, we could do more. And here's a reality that I also discovered.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:51]
| I think it's going to incentivize. I think that on our end, if they don't realize that you want to actually hire more salespeople that understand how to use these tools because we can reach a lot more customers, then we're missing the plot. Somebody will figure it out. I think a whole bunch of companies will figure it out because they'll realize that all of a sudden, oh, wait a minute, we can, so before I couldn't hire this person because I needed this and this and we didn't have enough throughput to that. And now all of a sudden, wait, I can hire more salespeople and they can deliver more shit. Yeah. Why wouldn't you hire more salespeople?
|
Sam:
[2:08:26]
| Well, and getting back to something I mentioned earlier, and then we have to start wrapping things up.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:31]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:08:33]
| When people get all upset about this, it is a different thing in different domains, I think. Like, what you just described in sales is very different than, you know, the AI replacing the clerk at McDonald's is very different than we're going to have an AI make a movie for us is very different than the cloning the YouTube channel.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:55]
| Like, you know, go and launch nuclear war and annihilate all of us.
|
Sam:
[2:09:01]
| Speaking of which, Alex, is the thing that you made that I'm going to play one of your Yvonne and Sam dialogues or a compilation of them? No? I guess we'll find out.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:13]
| We'll get my AI summary later.
|
Sam:
[2:09:15]
| One of the things Alex has been doing on a regular basis and sometimes playing for me in the car on the drive home from school, is he has been feeding an AI transcripts of Curmudgeon's Corner and then asking it to generate dialogues between Yvonne and Sam on various topics. Now, when he plays it to me in the car, it's a little bit confusing because it says, like, it's all the same voice being read to me, but it says, like, Yvonne, and then the stuff Yvonne says, then Sam, and the stuff that Sam says, then Yvonne, and the stuff that Sam says, or Yvonne says. Yeah i got see i i confuse myself yeah yeah yeah but like you know, and as and i i'm one of these days i'm gonna have to try doing one of these podcasts with the ai pretending to be yvonne again like i did once when i did that.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:09]
| Oh i mean yeah it was a.
|
Sam:
[2:10:11]
| While back it was more than it was let's see years ago let's see i i have i can tell you co it was march, 2025 that i did that So a year and a half. It's been a while. It could be a lot better.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:29]
| It could be.
|
Sam:
[2:10:30]
| It could be a lot better. So I should try that again. But yeah, that's one of the things Alex has been doing. And honestly, some of these are, I don't think it's quite captured either your personality or my personality, but they're still funny. So I don't know if that's what he's prepared or not. It could be something completely different, but maybe it's that. I don't know. We'll find out in a minute. But anyway. Okay. I think it's time to wrap up, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:55]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:10:56]
| Thank you for joining us for this 1,000th episode of the Curmudgeon's Corner podcast. We appreciate all of you who have joined us along the way, and we appreciate your listenership. And all of you who've been around a while know curmudgeon-corner.com. You can find our transcripts. You can find all the ways to contact us, all of that kind of stuff. You can find old episodes all the way back to episode one. And, you know, each time I've done a retrospect, I've done the even hundred number episodes. If we ever get to like, if we get to episode 1500 or 2000 or something, I'll have to like randomly pick episodes. So I'm not just picking more samples from episode 200 over and over and over again. But, you know, whatever. Anyway. Go to our website, find all that stuff. You'll also find a link to our Patreon. We deserve lots more money for 1,000 episodes. So go to our Patreon, give us money at various levels. We will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. And I owe Emily a new mug. I were told the story once that the mug got stolen, that she had it out at some events.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:07]
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
|
Sam:
[2:12:08]
| Yeah, I'm going to send her a new mug.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:11]
| I also have to look up the schedule for the Shinomish Podcast Network, since I said I was going to fly up for a mixer, and I have that as a commitment, so I got to figure out when to...
|
Sam:
[2:12:21]
| Well, Yvonne, there's one this Tuesday. You're going to come this Tuesday?
|
Ivan:
[2:12:24]
| No, but I can't. This is the week I said I wasn't going to travel. Not that's...
|
Sam:
[2:12:29]
| Well, that means you're free.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:31]
| No! I can't travel because Baru has school. Moana's working.
|
Sam:
[2:12:37]
| Moana?
|
Ivan:
[2:12:38]
| Did you just call your wife moana moana like like from the movie like she's yeah yeah it's kind of like her yeah, okay anyway not the war that would be the worst thing i could call her i mean actually it's.
|
Sam:
[2:12:54]
| Not bad i i imagine there are many worse things that.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:57]
| Would cause problems if you yeah that would that was actually pretty good actually so there you go.
|
Sam:
[2:13:01]
| Okay so anyway at two dollars a month or more, or if you ask us and we feel like it, we will invite you to the Commissions Course Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week, Yvonne, what's a highlight from the Slack this week?
|
Ivan:
[2:13:16]
| So Google Earth had decided to try to add an AI integration to Google Earth. It's called, today we're bringing AI image generation with Nano Banana. I don't even know what the fuck that is. To Google Earth, letting you virtually reimagine anywhere in the world. For the first time, you can generate custom images using Google's Earth satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery. And i guess that this these images would be there for people to see on on google earth well i think it's.
|
Sam:
[2:13:50]
| I think you just generate it for yourself but then you can share them on social media and such.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:54]
| Well or you can share them well anyway i'm not sure where they were being shared but apparently they turned it off after a day yeah because the images that people were decided to create were, there are a number of them that were quite disturbing. The first one is, the first one here on this scroll is United 767 crashing into the new World Trade Center.
|
Sam:
[2:14:18]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:19]
| Then there's this other one. Wait, what the fuck is this? Oh, the Eiffel Tower, you know, fallen over in half. Iceland basically being devoured by a massive, like, sinkhole. I can't remember which nuclear power plant over here, basically, like, destroying everything. Red Square turned into a war memorial. And the Great Pyramid of Giza basically apparently being hit by a meteor. So I don't know.
|
Sam:
[2:14:46]
| I mean, the thing with all of this is that, Google Earth Maps are one of the things, with recent satellite image easily available publicly, etc., is one of the things that has been used to fact check for years now. And, you know, here's the truth on the ground. We can look at the satellite image. Here's the date of the satellite image. Here's the new satellite image. When there's an earthquake or something, people do before and after so you can see exactly what the damage is. And it's been a trusted, reliable source. Now, to be clear. At any time in the last years when this technology has existed anyway, people could have taken the image out, asked their AI to make the change, and distributed these modified versions anyway using NanoBanana or any other. But having it built into the tool. I mean, the thing is, what's the purpose of this tool? The purpose of this tool is to get factual information about the world.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:49]
| And that's not factual information.
|
Sam:
[2:15:51]
| You're not helping your product. You are doing something that is, by definition, corrupting the purpose of your product. And so it's like, you know, people are trying to shove AI into everything. And I think one of the things that people need to be careful about is, does this actually make sense here? Does it make the product better? And is it better than the previous alternative? Like, is it an actual net improvement, or are you saving a couple bucks, but you're making your product shit? Cause you, you will, you, you will lose customers that way. You will lose trust that way.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:32]
| I think the reality is that there was really almost, there's no value that I could see that being derived from adding this to. A system that you just mentioned that was like used for checking the actual record to see what was happening there there's no value in in in doing that, kind of image generation if it was for imagery analysis or something to like you know hey, let's take this actual image and let's understand you know compare to me the changes and other that that happened in this terrain or other analysis like that yeah i can see the value but this is just a jar of fake images, from it you know for people's amusement, not exactly really what Google earth really is used for.
|
Sam:
[2:17:16]
| Okay. We're going to wrap this up. We're going to say goodbye after the outro music. Stay on. We've got this. Alex has prepared his own 1000 episode special thingy bop. It's, it's about 30 minutes.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:35]
| This is not like a celebration. This is more like a like a, we are encouraging a guy who seems to be the perennial hater of our show to actually go and put 30 minutes of his, you know, hate on display. Excellent idea. This will get us that billion dollar investment.
|
Sam:
[2:17:58]
| Oh, I'm sure it will. And I have not listened to it at all. I am going to stick around and listen to the whole 34 minutes. I'm going to listen to the whole 34 minutes here. Yvonne, leave when you feel you need to.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:11]
| I'm going to go cook.
|
Sam:
[2:18:12]
| Yes, yes. Well, listen to at least the first few seconds so you know what it's like. Anyway, thanks, everybody, for listening again. Have a great week. We'll be back for 1001 next week. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:27]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:18:58]
| Okay, I'm about to hit play on the thing, and Alex just told me Alex would like it if I did the noise to start it that I use for, like, Sam from the Future and stuff. So, here we go. Do, do, do!
|
Break:
[2:19:10]
| Oh, Alex would like it if I made the noise. Do, do, do! Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:19:17]
| He had a pre-recorded version of me saying it. There you go. Okay, now I'm hitting play.
|
Break:
[2:19:52]
| Welcome to the fifth curmudgeon's corner of 2007. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner. This is the 19th century to characterize the franchise's history. It's a very different time for many years. It's traveling through the second century. It's a very different time for a lot of tourists to the next century. This is Sam's history. This is September.
|
Sam:
[2:20:16]
| Okay, I'm hitting pause for just a second. I think I realize what this is.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:21]
| Playing all of them all at the same.
|
Sam:
[2:20:23]
| Time i think so all 1 000 episodes overlapping together okay uh i'm hitting play again here we go I don't know.
|
Break:
[2:20:32]
| All right, now I should have Mr. Scottie. I'm sorry, she's over here. She's out here, she's out here. She's still here. She's still here. So what do you do? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is June. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
|
Sam:
[2:21:26]
| Yvonne just left. He says it's funny, but also quite dystopian. And we have a comment on the live chat too, saying this is the best thing ever, almost better than Lou Reed's metal machine music. Anyway, I'm going to play and just let it go. Have fun, folks. Is it really all 1000 episodes, Alex? Are they like, was there a delay with like one coming in, then another one comes in a few seconds later than another one a few seconds? Yeah, okay. And then obviously, a lot of our shows are multi-hours long so you caught it at like 33 minutes in a little bit so i'm hitting play again here we go and, i'm gonna listen to the whole thing here we go.
|
Break:
[2:53:49]
| Well, I would know. I don't think there were hours in before dark. Just say fuck it. Just go for broke. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:54:17]
| And we are back. Um, yeah. I guess for a big part of that, we had our own little white noise episode. Oh, wait. Alex has something else to add.
|
Break:
[2:54:31]
| Oh, Carrick. Okay, back to the thing. Oh, Alex would like it if I made the noise. Doo-doo-doo!
|
Sam:
[2:54:39]
| There we go. Thanks, everybody. I don't know if this is anybody who made it all the way to the end here. I really appreciate it if you did. And yeah, a combination of our first thousand episodes added together in a nice way, including some swear words at the very end.
|
Sam:
[2:55:05]
| Alex is upset that it included swear words at the very end. At the very beginning and end, you could hear the different voices. In the middle, it was mostly white noise. but every once in a while, you got just a glimpse of something that sounded like, did Yvonne just say something? Anyway, that was fun. Thanks, everybody. And maybe we'll do one of his—we'll try to figure out how to make a proper two-voice version of one of the dialogues he does at some point. Okay, we're out of here. We have the tools now. Both my intro and Alex's were helped out by Claude with some of the logistics. I picked the individual clips in mine but I had it sample and do like 10 random samples of each episode and then I picked the one I liked the best and I had it do the assembly and all that kind of stuff, and I've been looking at some of the transcript of what Alex did with Claude and he was giving it all sorts of instructions, on combining all the episodes I haven't read at all Did you actually re-upload episodes when it was all available on the server to start with? Anyway.
|
Sam:
[2:56:20]
| Ah, we're done. I need my mouse to say goodbye, right? Okay. I'm saying goodbye. Okay. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you for episode 1001 next time. And I already played the outro, so I'm not playing again. I'm just going to hit stop. Bye again. Oh, Alex is hitting me. Alex, do you have anything you want to say to contribute? Okay. Bye.
| |
|
