Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Shall we start the music and go?
|
Ivan:
[0:02]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[0:04]
| Here it goes. Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, September 26, 2026. It's just after 1730 UTC as we are starting to record. I'm Sam Menter, Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:47]
| Hello. How? How?
|
Sam:
[0:50]
| How? How are we doing? How are we doing? Yes, yes. I'm doing okay. Hey, you know, people have been off and on sick in my household for the last few weeks, but somehow I have mostly avoided it, which is good. I mean, I feel bad for the other people, but, you know, I have avoided it. I had a little bit of a cough, well, more than my usual cough for a little bit. But nothing that I actually would have noticed and called out and said, I am sick. My son finagled himself into a few days off of school because my wife had been sick for like a week. And then he's like, I feel sick too. And so we gave him the benefit of the doubt because like he was saying he had a sore throat. And that's how it started with my wife. And she was pretty much out of commission for a week. So we're like, ah, we'll play it safe. And so we kept him out a couple of days. And to me, it was always like marginal. Like he was mainly acting like he was fine most of the time, except in the mornings when it was time to go to school. But, you know.
|
Sam:
[2:12]
| Mostly he gave him the benefit of the doubt and then, and a couple of times he did like go to sleep early which is usually a sign he's not feeling good like if he's if he's feeling good he's up till one two and o'clock in the morning or later, but if he's if he's not feeling good he sometimes goes to sleep before midnight and he did once or twice, so you know he was probably actually like feeling at least a little under the weather, and then at the end of that he got one extra day Cause there was a day that, Brandy had some medical appointments that I had to take around to. And because I was going with her to those appointments, there was no one that had to take him to school.
|
Sam:
[2:52]
| So he got the day off just cause of that. And, you know, he was still saying he wasn't feeling great. So, you know, we were just like, okay, he's taking another day off. But, you know, it was, it would have been hard to juggle it if we had decided. So I'll admit my thumb was on the scale a little bit of like, you know, is he sick? Is he not sick? Well, it'll be more convenient for me if he's sick. So we might as well say he's sick on at least two of the days he was out. So because there was another day that I had something in the evening and I would have had to run back after school. And anyway, that's what's up here.
|
Ivan:
[3:30]
| That's what's up.
|
Sam:
[3:31]
| Yvonne's once again playing with the thumbs up thing on FaceTime video.
|
Ivan:
[3:36]
| Oh, my God. It's doing it again.
|
Sam:
[3:38]
| It's over and over and over again in the last couple of minutes.
|
Ivan:
[3:44]
| God.
|
Sam:
[3:45]
| Yeah, I think I turned that off. I think I turned that off on mine a long time ago. And let's see. Reactions. Is it off right now? Oh, I think I just turned it on. Okay. Let's see. Can I? Can I? No. Leave it on.
|
Ivan:
[3:59]
| What the heck?
|
Sam:
[4:00]
| Oh, well. And it doesn't matter. Like, Ah, you know, you got all these other, like, why doesn't it, you know.
|
Ivan:
[4:12]
| AI! AI!
|
Sam:
[4:14]
| Yeah. Anyway, whatever. It's exciting. You know, this has been a feature for years.
|
Ivan:
[4:21]
| Oh my God! Oh!
|
Sam:
[4:23]
| Yvonne got the fireworks. Another one of the features. There's like six or seven of these. You just have to figure out the right way to trigger them.
|
Ivan:
[4:33]
| Yeah, wait, wait. There it goes! There it goes again! There we go.
|
Sam:
[4:40]
| You know, I don't even know what to say.
|
Ivan:
[4:51]
| Anyway.
|
Sam:
[4:52]
| Anyway, yes. So, Yvonne, we're going to do our usual thing. Less newsy at the beginning, more newsy at the end. And I mentioned last week I've got Blade Runner and Hocus Pocus 2 queued up for my movies.
|
Ivan:
[5:06]
| We couldn't cover the movies last week. So why don't we skip me and whatever. Let's go to the movies.
|
Sam:
[5:12]
| Let's go to the movies. That was the day of the show.
|
Ivan:
[5:18]
| I was like Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert.
|
Sam:
[5:21]
| Exactly. I was thinking, I think it was like on the movies or something.
|
Ivan:
[5:26]
| No, it was at the movies.
|
Sam:
[5:28]
| At the movies. There were a few different shows of that genre. I think, I'm sure people do it on YouTube now, but like, it's died out, right? Nobody has the cultural, you know, there used to be, I mean, obviously there was Siskel and Ebert. There was like Gene Shalit. There were a few other like movie reviewers that were just prominent culturally. I think all of these people are dead. Everybody who's ever reviewed a movie is dead now.
|
Ivan:
[6:03]
| Everybody? You're dead?
|
Sam:
[6:06]
| Wait, what? No. Yeah. No, I don't know. You could check who's dead.
|
Ivan:
[6:12]
| You mean all the old people that we know from.
|
Sam:
[6:15]
| Like... Who are doing these shows in, like, the 70s and 80s.
|
Ivan:
[6:20]
| That sounds about probably right, I would think. I mean, yeah, probably all those people are dead.
|
Sam:
[6:28]
| Yeah. I mean, there might be some, like, hanging around in their 90s or something still in retirement.
|
Ivan:
[6:34]
| Okay, now, of course, we're kidding. Let me see our Siskel.
|
Sam:
[6:37]
| Well, and we have to even define the universe of these people.
|
Ivan:
[6:40]
| And Ebert still alive.
|
Sam:
[6:42]
| Well, Siskel and Ebert are definitely dead. I know that.
|
Ivan:
[6:44]
| Let's see. Gene died in 1999. He was only 53, for God's sakes. Wow. What the hell? For real?
|
Sam:
[6:53]
| Who else was in this genre? There was this whole genre. There were a bunch of these shows and not just shows, but like people who would come on like other shows.
|
Ivan:
[7:02]
| They had Gene Shalit.
|
Sam:
[7:02]
| Like they'd come on the Today Show. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[7:04]
| And I don't know. Everybody else. But the reality is Cisco and Ebert were the.
|
Sam:
[7:10]
| The big ones.
|
Ivan:
[7:11]
| The big ones. And Gene Shalit. Everybody else, you have to Google. Or AI search now or whatever.
|
Sam:
[7:22]
| Yeah. I don't know. I feel like there were more, there were a couple more prominent ones that I'm just completely blanking on now, but whatever. And what was the point of all that? Did I have a point? Was there anything?
|
Ivan:
[7:36]
| That you killed all the movie reviewers.
|
Sam:
[7:39]
| Oh, yes. Something like that. Okay. Anyway, Blade Runner. I had never watched Blade Runner, like, before this. We watched it early November last year, 2025.
|
Sam:
[7:55]
| And it's one of those that everybody talks about. And I feel like I thought I'd seen it, but then when I watched it, I recognized absolutely none of it. so like maybe i was wrong about having watched it or maybe i'd seen like, the the the final scene or something i i don't know but like i it did not seem familiar, uh when i watched it and i think i might have been like in part like, mixing it up with some other movie as in my head that i'm not remembering the name of either at this point but anyway like, this is one of those movies that everybody talks about is like hey this is one of the the classic science fiction movies of the 80s or whatever and obviously more recently they've brought they did a sequel a few years ago, and also this one was known for, this had a whole bunch of different variants released over the years, like director's cut 25th edition 25th anniversary edition blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and i feel like there are more different alternative versions, than normal, for these kinds of things.
|
Sam:
[9:23]
| Let's see. I'm just looking. Alternative versions. Versions of Blade Runner has a whole separate Wikipedia entry. There's the work print prototype, the San Diego sneak preview, the American theatrical release, the international theatrical, the director's cut, and the final cut. I think the only, yeah, I mean, obviously a couple of those, like the prototype and the sneak preview aren't things that would normally be considered releases, but I don't know. That's a decent number. Enough so that I've put on my backlog of movies watching the other variants.
|
Sam:
[10:05]
| But I think we watched the original this time around. And bottom line, like, okay, I guess I'll do the plot thing that I usually do from Wikipedia. In 2019 Los Angeles, the far future, mark you, you know, 2019 Los Angeles, the far future, former police officer Rick Deckard is detained by Officer Rick Gaff, who likes to make origami figures, and is brought to his former supervisor, Bryant. Deckard, whose job as a blade runner was to track down bioengineered humanoids known as replicants and terminally retire them, is informed that four replicants are on Earth illegally. Deckard begins to leave, but Bryant makes veiled threats and Deckard stays. The two watch a video of a Blade Runner named Holden administering the Voigt-Kampff test, which is designed to distinguish replicants from humans based on their emotional responses to questions. The test subject Leon shoots Holden on the second question. Brian wants Deckard to retire Leon and three other Nexus 6 replicants, Roy Batty, Zorha, and Pris.
|
Sam:
[11:16]
| Bryant has Deckard meet with the CEO of the company that creates the replicants, Eldon Tyrell, so he can administer the VK test on a Nexus 6 and see if it works on them. Tyrell expresses his interest in seeing the test fail first and asks him to administer it on his assistant, Rachel. After a much longer than standard test, Deckard concludes privately to Tyrell, that Rachel is a replicant who believes she is human. Tyrell explains that she is an experiment who has been given false memories to provide an emotional cushion and that she has no knowledge of her true nature. Dot, dot, dot. He goes on search for these things. Things happen. Blah, blah, blah. Bottom line, I don't see what the big deal was about this movie. I don't, I just seem, I mean, it was fine. I'm going to give it a thumb sideways, I think. But I wasn't like impressed as like, oh my God, this is like a great thing. how have I missed this my entire life? How did I not see it? You know, it was just sort of like, oh, okay, it's a movie. Have you seen this thing? No. You've never seen it either?
|
Ivan:
[12:19]
| No.
|
Sam:
[12:20]
| Okay. You know, there's a famous speech at the end about, like, seeing things and what this guy's seen and blah, blah, blah. I've heard that quoted a few times.
|
Ivan:
[12:36]
| You're not, you haven't given me any incentive to watch it either right now. No, not at this moment. No, you haven't really, you know, made it that I want to watch this.
|
Sam:
[12:48]
| Okay, the monologue at the end that is well known and quoted and stuff. da da da da da. Wait. Earlier. Okay. Here's the quote. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watch sea beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears and rain. Time to die.
|
Ivan:
[13:23]
| Tears and rain. I don't. I just, I don't, I guess I'm not that as educated as I think I am, because I never heard this fucking thing.
|
Sam:
[13:35]
| Yeah, anyway, so I'm not giving you like, you know, feeling like you have to run out. I mean, it's a fine, normal science fiction movie.
|
Ivan:
[13:48]
| No, I get it.
|
Sam:
[13:51]
| And maybe this is one of those things where it has its reputation, where it was first doing a bunch of things that were later done a lot, and so it doesn't seem special anymore. I don't know. And let's see, reception, critical response. It has an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes.
|
Ivan:
[14:16]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[14:16]
| Oh, critic consensus reads, misunderstood when it first hit theaters. The influence of Ridley Scott's mysterious near neo-noir Blade Runner has deepened with time. A visually remarkable, achingly human sci-fi masterpiece. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigns it 84 out of 100, indicating universal acclaim. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B on an A-plus-to-F scale. Initial reactions among film critics were mixed. Some wrote that the plot took a backseat to the film's special effects and did not fit the studio's marketing as an action and adventure film. Others acclaimed its complexity and predicted it would stand the test of time. Negative criticism in the U.S. slowed its pace. Los Angeles Times called it Blade Crawler. And Pat Berman described it as science fiction pornography.
|
Ivan:
[15:24]
| Science fiction pornography? What the fuck? I have a very different idea what pornography is.
|
Sam:
[15:32]
| I think there was one brief scene with sex or nudity, I think.
|
Ivan:
[15:36]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[15:37]
| It didn't even stand out in my brain as like, because of course those things have been so normalized these days. Like it might've been like shocking at the time, but now it's like, oh, okay, there was a sex scene, you know, whatever, you know, it, it, it, it happens.
|
Sam:
[15:56]
| Pauline Kael praised Blade Runner as worthy of a place in film history for its distinctive sci-fi vision yet criticized the film's lack of development in human terms.
|
Sam:
[16:08]
| Yeah, yeah. Cultural analysis, academics started analyzing it. There were whole books written about it. Like, postmodern meta-narratives, Blade Runner and Literature in the Age of Image. There was a growing cult following once it was available on video, and, you know, etc. Oh, and I should mention, it was based on a novel by Philip K. Dick called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which is also a famous novel, which I have not read. There you go. Blade Runner. It's the thing. Yvonne is impressed I have sold it well oh and by the way I should add in terms of good reviews the reason I watched this, is it was number 97 on the 2007 AFI list so one of the 100 best movies of the beginning of movies through 2007, and again I'm just giving it a thumb sideways it was fine it was a science fiction movie I wasn't, And again, I'm guessing it earned its spot by historical significance of some sort, as opposed to like how it stands today as a movie.
|
Sam:
[17:27]
| Okay, I'm moving on. Hocus Pocus 2 from 2022, which is, of course, the sequel to Hocus Pocus, which was from 1993.
|
Sam:
[17:44]
| Okay, just to review, Hocus Pocus from 1993 was started 300 years ago in 1693 in Salem, Massachusetts. the Sanderson sisters, were hanged by the population of Salem after a boy named Thackeray Binks tried to stop the witches and was turned into an immortal black cat while saving his sister Emily. Before they die, Winifred, the oldest of the sisters, casts a spell stating they will return when a virgin lights a black candle in their house. In the present day, 1993, a newcomer from Los Angeles. Max is bullied at school by two bullies and has a crush on his schoolmate, Allison. On Halloween night, his parents force him to go trick-or-treating with his sister while they go to a party. Max and Danny stumbles upon the house of Allison and decide to go to the house of the Sanderson sisters. While at the house, Max lights a black candle and brings back Winifred along with her sisters. They have one night to suck the essence of the children of Salem and survive for more than one night. And, you know, things happen. The day gets saved. In the sequel, which is what I watched this time.
|
Sam:
[19:00]
| I'll read the short summary from the page I just read the old one from, which is the franchise page. There are two movies, they're out already, and a third coming out soon, apparently, that's in development. Okay, Hocus Pocus 2. In 1653 in Salem, the teenage Winifred Sanderson is banned from the village by the local Reverend Trask after refusing to marry John Pritchett. After causing havoc in the town, she runs with sisters Sarah and Mary to a forbidden forest. There they meet the mother witch who gives Winifred a magic spell book. In the present day, 29 years after the events of the first film, in 2022, an aspirant witch named Becca is celebrating her 16th birthday with her friend Izzy. When the owner of a magic store named Gilbert gives a magic black candle to Becca for her birthday, she goes to the forest with Izzy along with her other friend Cassie, and they accidentally summon the Sanderson sisters. Winifred, Sari, and Mary Sanderson return to seek children to eat and plan revenge. Hijinks ensue. And that's basically it. I should note that the three sisters, two of them are well-known for other things. So the three are...
|
Ivan:
[20:15]
| Such as?
|
Sam:
[20:16]
| Well, number one is Bette Midler, is the main sister.
|
Ivan:
[20:21]
| I guess she's pretty well-known.
|
Sam:
[20:24]
| She's pretty well-known. She's done a bunch of things. The second best known sister is Sarah Jessica Parker. Okay. Who's been in a bunch of things as well over the years. And third is Kathy Najmi. Not quite as well known as the others, but she's got a decent acting career as well.
|
Sam:
[20:49]
| Anyway, this is another clear thumb sideways. It was fine. You know? It was fine. The first one was fine. The second one was fine. It's just, you know, I don't regret spending the two hours at all, or however long it is. It's probably a little bit less than two hours. 104 minutes. Hour and a half. A little bit more than an hour and a half. You know, I don't regret spending the time. It was entertaining. You laughed. It's a comedy. They're both comedies. They're played for laughs, and Bette Midler's in it, So she sings a song at one point in both movies, I think, you know, and you know, it's, it's fine. It's, it's, it's entertaining enough. It will get you through your two hours. You'll laugh. You will, at least I will not take anything meaningful or long lasting from this. I will not remember it with great fondness I will not be like oh my god I have to keep up with every moment of the development of Hocus Pocus 3 to make sure I see it in theaters when it comes out because these were so good no no.
|
Sam:
[22:03]
| You know, they have the same feel. These were theatrical movies. However, they have the same sort of feel as like a made-for-TV Halloween special. You know, it's that kind of feel. You know, it's just sort of a fun little movie. Nothing too deep. You get a few laughs. And not super memorable afterwards. It's just, but, you know, you enjoy your time. And that's it. That's all I got. Now, have I made you want to run out and see this?
|
Ivan:
[22:37]
| No.
|
Sam:
[22:38]
| No. No.
|
Ivan:
[22:42]
| These are very unexciting movies, Sam.
|
Sam:
[22:45]
| Well, next week, if I do two, there will be a TV show, Modern Family, a long-running sitcom.
|
Ivan:
[22:53]
| Okay, that one's funny.
|
Sam:
[22:55]
| It was on TV from 2009 to 2020. And Do the Right Thing from 1989. 89, which won some awards.
|
Ivan:
[23:03]
| You know that I don't think I've watched Do the Right Thing either? Who was on Do the Right Thing?
|
Sam:
[23:09]
| Spike Lee.
|
Ivan:
[23:10]
| I was going to say Spike Lee. You know what? I don't think I've watched that movie either.
|
Sam:
[23:15]
| Now, preview. That one was actually good. Okay. I mean, not to say that Blade Runner and Hocus Pocus, again, there's some sideways, not down.
|
Ivan:
[23:31]
| It wasn't bad. I know.
|
Sam:
[23:33]
| It wasn't bad. It just wasn't super memorable. You know, so anyway, 1989 Spike Lee and a bunch of other people. But, you know, anyway. Okay. Anything else for this session? Session. Section of the show? Or should I go ahead and play a break and we move right in to the news of the week?
|
Ivan:
[23:58]
| Let's move to the news of the week.
|
Sam:
[24:01]
| Move to the news of the week. Okay, so here we go. Here's a break. We'll be back after this.
|
Ivan:
[24:29]
| Ah, very inspiring.
|
Sam:
[24:31]
| Very inspiring. You know, I got to make more breaks. I'm getting bored of these. But on the other hand, like when I look at, do I even have that on my to-do list? On my master to-do list, do I have make a new break? I don't think I do. I'm adding it. I'm adding it as something to, you know, occasionally do. You know? So, just to rotate some in and out, I'm going to put it in at a low priority right now. And every time I think about it, I'll bump it a little bit. There you go. So, Yvonne, news of the week. Where do you want to start?
|
Ivan:
[25:11]
| You know, I put something on there specifically about how we keep having flashing signs of things that happen, when a financial crisis is about to be upon us.
|
Sam:
[25:30]
| That's nice. That's just what I need right now.
|
Ivan:
[25:34]
| And, yeah, well, yeah. And let me tell you that we keep having this kind of shit happen right now.
|
Sam:
[25:48]
| Well, and look, to be fair here, we're seeing more and more things flash. And I'm sure you'll talk about this more as we continue this topic. But in one way or another, you and I have talked on this show for a while now.
|
Ivan:
[26:04]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[26:05]
| For like years.
|
Ivan:
[26:05]
| That we've been courting this. Especially that Trump, well, for years. Well, since Trump has come back, that we've been courting this. He has been courting this actively. Just fucking with shit.
|
Sam:
[26:18]
| No, no, definitely, like, during this time, we've been talking about, you know, Donald Trump actively trying to make it worse. But honestly, even during parts of the Biden presidency, we were like, you know, there's some things going on that maybe we'll have to talk. I mean, basically, things have been in a precaution.
|
Ivan:
[26:37]
| None of the things that happened during the Biden presidency rose to the level of what is going on right now.
|
Sam:
[26:41]
| No, I understand. I'm just saying we have been.
|
Ivan:
[26:43]
| And, and, and, and, let me correct you on something, but the reality is that near the end of the Biden presidency, okay, we actually had the strongest economy in the world.
|
Sam:
[26:53]
| Oh, I know, I know.
|
Ivan:
[26:55]
| So the thing is that while there were certain moments that this is, this is the thing that I'm trying to take you away from, Sam, we have some moments. This has not been a moment right now.
|
Sam:
[27:08]
| I'm just saying. This has been a. I know, I know, I'm just saying.
|
Ivan:
[27:13]
| You've had a guy who has been actively sabotaging stuff nonstop with shit just progressively... Getting worse. Look, let me give you an example of something that we've had right now. We have never had inflation adjusted, ever, gas and diesel as high as they are now, both at the same time. This has happened for, you know, in any of the other presidencies. Maybe there was a, you know.
|
Sam:
[27:48]
| Carter?
|
Ivan:
[27:50]
| Not, this is higher than Carter.
|
Sam:
[27:53]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[27:54]
| Nixon okay when they were rationing any of them okay okay, we have had a the 10-year bond which i've talked about this here before is a benchmark for a lot of shit okay it surged this week faster, way too fast. It never moves like this. Okay? It's over 5%. This is the highest it's been since. Take a wild guess. When was the last time it was this high?
|
Sam:
[28:32]
| 10 years?
|
Ivan:
[28:33]
| No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[28:34]
| 2008. 2008 crisis.
|
Ivan:
[28:36]
| Close. 2007.
|
Sam:
[28:38]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[28:40]
| You know, our real estate market, Is really fucked up right now. Sales are super slow. People don't want to sell. But people can't afford to buy either. This war doesn't end. The deficit is through the roof. Inflation is high. And you have all these. Listen. The one thing that is the problem with the 10-year. And with interest rates in general. And where they are. Is that when they move so fast And they get so high This is the point where it starts breaking shit.
|
Ivan:
[29:23]
| And you're like, what do you mean? Well, what I mean is that there's a lot of other financial instruments that are tied to those rates. And a lot of people have debt and other things tied to those. And this is where the point where it moves so fast that it starts turning shit to everybody so expensive that they go bankrupt or a contract goes into the fault or the value of your investment, loses substantial amounts. because bond prices drop as interest rates rise. Okay? So anybody holding bonds is getting the shit kicked out of them right now. Okay? Really bad. Unless you are like one of our listeners and are buying tips.
|
Sam:
[30:14]
| Now, explain.
|
Ivan:
[30:16]
| Well, the thing is that tips are inflation-protected securities. The thing is that they are indexed to inflation. So you don't wind up with that problem, where you lose principle with inflation going up because your rate is actually automatically adjusted. Okay? So that's the beauty of those. Okay? But unless you're holding tips, which do have that protection, you're fucked. Okay? And, you know, if you don't, you remember when a couple of years ago we had that issue with that Silicon Valley Bank going broke?
|
Sam:
[30:56]
| Vaguely, vaguely. Remind us.
|
Ivan:
[30:58]
| Okay. So Silicon Valley Bank went broke. And one of the problems that happened was that there was a move in interest rates that happened during the Biden administration. And it was related, if I remember, to the Ukraine war at the time and some other stuff that was going on. And rates had gone up. And the movement rates caused that. Some banks and some securities firms, including Charles Schwab, they had a lot of their equity invested in bonds. And all of a sudden, those bonds moved in value, dropped the value of what they had as their primary capital, and they became insolvent. And a few banks went insolvent all at the same time. This is a much bigger move Much more sustained move Right now So what me and others Are waiting is for the shoe to drop right now On who's going to All of a sudden, Declare default On something because, Because this happened.
|
Sam:
[32:05]
| That starts the row of dominoes.
|
Ivan:
[32:07]
| Exactly Yeah, This is a problem.
|
Sam:
[32:12]
| Well and you know.
|
Ivan:
[32:14]
| And here's another, well, by the way, one of the other things that exacerbated this isn't just the Iran war, okay, that has been a catalyst, that has been a huge catalyst, okay, for a lot of this, but also the fact that we have a treasury secretary who is a fucking moron. Because what happened is that Trump told him, hey, get rates down. Remember that recently when Kevin Walsh raised rates that Trump was like bitching and moaning and trying to order Walsh to drop rates? So he couldn't order Walsh to drop rates. So he told Scott Bessent, hey, go out there on the market, take some treasury money, buy some bonds so rates go down. The problem is the treasury doesn't have the same amount of cash as the Fed. nor the market in general, in most banks.
|
Sam:
[33:08]
| Right. So you mentioned before on the show, this red is panic and had the opposite effect.
|
Ivan:
[33:14]
| It took 100%. Well, Sam, we went right now from, he was trying to push rates down to under four and a half or whatever. We're north of five. We're at the highest fucking rates we've had in this shit in over 20 years. Hell, mortgage rates aren't what the hell they were in the 90s.
|
Sam:
[33:35]
| I mean, so you'd mentioned like, something kicking off the dominoes, but just backing up a little bit, you'd mentioned that there are multiple warning signs flashing, and potentially every one of those warning signs has something that could kick off a chain reaction.
|
Ivan:
[33:57]
| Well, it's the interest rates, it's the treasury, it's the bonds moving, it's the fuel prices, it's the inflation, it's the employment situation. You know, it's all of these damn things, okay? All are happening at once. Hey, I got another thumbs up.
|
Sam:
[34:15]
| Well, and all of these can happen. The failure can start in any number of a different way. Yvonne's trying to make his screen do things again. The failure cascade could potentially start in all kinds of different ways. You could have a bank have trouble. You could have...
|
Ivan:
[34:37]
| Or you could have companies that have been borrowing billions and billions to build, say, I don't know. Just, I don't mind.
|
Sam:
[34:47]
| I don't mind. Bridges. Bridges.
|
Ivan:
[34:51]
| Bridges.
|
Sam:
[34:51]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[34:52]
| Bridges. Right. Lots of bridges. We're building all these bridges in the middle of the desert right now, right?
|
Sam:
[34:58]
| Yes, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[34:59]
| And all of a sudden interest rates turning against them in a way that makes, their payments, you know, impossible.
|
Sam:
[35:06]
| Well, and you also have things like we have consumer confidence falling dramatically as well. You just have people start spending less because they're nervous about the future and then that cascades. And because of prices, right?
|
Ivan:
[35:23]
| Well, because of prices.
|
Sam:
[35:24]
| And so that cascades because demand drops. Okay, understand something.
|
Ivan:
[35:29]
| Diesel at $6.50 a gallon is going to percolate through the entire economy. Do you understand that everything in this fucking economy moves on diesel?
|
Sam:
[35:42]
| Right. Well, I saw one thing that as an unintended side effect from all of this, apparently our carbon emissions this year are not as high as people expected them to be. Oh, I succeeded in making one. Yes!
|
Ivan:
[36:00]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[36:00]
| Yeah!
|
Ivan:
[36:01]
| Yeah!
|
Sam:
[36:02]
| I wasn't sure I turned it on properly because I've been having trouble. Like, it's not coming when I tell it to, you know?
|
Ivan:
[36:09]
| No, it's, you know, it does.
|
Sam:
[36:12]
| Anyway, yes, we're distracted by our toys. I will say, at least, sideline, at least Yvonne's camera is standing still this time. Whenever he has that feature on that makes it try to follow his head, I start getting busy. Because it's just like...
|
Ivan:
[36:29]
| Fuck, it's going... Yes, yeah, it's like all over the fucking place. And actually, I don't know, I think they improved it with the latest software updates. Because I do have it on.
|
Sam:
[36:39]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[36:39]
| But it's not being as.
|
Sam:
[36:42]
| As crazy.
|
Ivan:
[36:43]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[36:44]
| Maybe you're just not moving as much. Maybe you're dead.
|
Ivan:
[36:46]
| No, no, no, no. I think that it's, no, they definitely improved how it works.
|
Sam:
[36:52]
| Okay. Yeah. Because I, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[36:55]
| Before it's just like, what the fuck? This camera is like all over the place. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[36:59]
| The first few times Yvonne ever had it on, like I complained and made him turn it off. but more recently i'm just i when it's been on i've just been like oh there it goes again i'll just try not to look at him you know but, okay back to the economy.
|
Ivan:
[37:17]
| This whole thing sam diesel is at six dollars and fifty cents it's fuck sam.
|
Sam:
[37:24]
| Oh and i'll point out as you as usual our state is more expensive than certain other places it's over seven bucks here.
|
Ivan:
[37:30]
| So yeah i've seen places or it's eight.
|
Sam:
[37:32]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[37:34]
| I mean, truckers are going bankrupt. They're idling trucks because they can't, they're like, look, I can't do anything. I can't, I mean, I go and if I fill up and I fulfill the order they ask me, I'm losing money. It's, I lose less money by parking the truck than by actually moving a loan.
|
Sam:
[37:55]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[37:57]
| That's really fucked up.
|
Sam:
[38:00]
| So, but, but, but.
|
Ivan:
[38:03]
| Sam, Sam, Sam, hey, but we may be getting a drone and missile and, what's the, a sniper-filled arch.
|
Sam:
[38:16]
| Yes. Okay, Yvonne, get back to the economy before we start switching. I mean, we need that.
|
Ivan:
[38:22]
| Right? I mean, we don't, I mean, right?
|
Sam:
[38:25]
| I started out talking about how, you know, I just want to say I was wrong. Like, my memory was that more years than not since the pandemic, like on our annual prediction shows, there's been a prediction of a recession coming. And even if you count me, who sometimes said yes just to be something different than you saying no, most of the time we predicted no recession. They were like one or two.
|
Ivan:
[38:55]
| Most of the time we predicted no recession.
|
Sam:
[38:57]
| I think there was once I found, I don't know about, my spreadsheet does not yet include predictions for 2026, but I looked at 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025. I think out of all of those years, there was only once that you predicted a recession in the coming year.
|
Ivan:
[39:16]
| I'm pretty sure. I had not. But I'm pretty sure I think I did for this year.
|
Sam:
[39:23]
| Okay, we'll find out in a couple months.
|
Ivan:
[39:28]
| Here's the interesting thing.
|
Sam:
[39:30]
| But of course, we haven't officially had one yet.
|
Ivan:
[39:33]
| We haven't officially had one yet, but as a lot of data keeps indicating. Look, let me give you an example today. McDonald's stock like dropped 30, 40 percent because their sales are in the shitter.
|
Sam:
[39:47]
| My son has been trying to fix this. He went, we have a huge like gallon jug of those damn Happy Meal toys because he was trying to get every single one the.
|
Ivan:
[39:59]
| Problem by himself.
|
Sam:
[40:00]
| He was trying to fix the problem by himself we had yeah because they had those godzilla slash hello kitty toys, and so he was buying like two or three happy meals a day okay a day a day christ, to try to get all the damn toys now of course later after the promotion is over i find out that they're like websites that were set up to help track like which stores had which toys so that you could collect all of them more efficiently. Because it turns out the rule was each McDonald's would get boxes for all the toys, but they're only allowed to open one freaking box at a time that has all one toy. So when he would buy three Happy Meals at one sitting, they would all be the same damn toy every time. Well, almost every time. And anyway, the promotion ended. And after the promotion ended, he went off on eBay and bought all the toys that he didn't get himself.
|
Ivan:
[40:59]
| That's cheating.
|
Sam:
[41:02]
| That is cheating.
|
Ivan:
[41:03]
| I still remember, you know, I had this Star Wars album that I was filling out when I was, like, I think in the second or third grade.
|
Sam:
[41:10]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[41:11]
| And I had all the pieces except one. And it's, like, one of these that they made it that it was, like, super hard to find.
|
Sam:
[41:18]
| Find the last piece.
|
Ivan:
[41:19]
| I did wind up, and, you know, there was, like, there must have been over 100 pieces to this album. I did wind up buying the piece off of somebody that had it.
|
Sam:
[41:28]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[41:29]
| But it was just that one, because it was like, damn it. I kept buying packs and buying packs. Well, I wasn't buying them. Actually, my parents' pharmacy took them, so I just kept grabbing packs. Okay? That was an advantage, okay? Or I just kept grabbing, like, well, I think they did stop me from, okay, you can only grab so many at a time, okay? But I just kept grabbing packs every fucking day and opening them, and I'm like, damn it, I already have all of these.
|
Sam:
[41:56]
| Anyway, what you're saying is despite my son's best efforts, and using my money, by the way, despite my son's best efforts to buy, like, thousands of Happy Meals in as short a time as possible.
|
Ivan:
[42:12]
| McDonald's still— McDonald's is not doing well.
|
Sam:
[42:14]
| Oh, man.
|
Ivan:
[42:15]
| McDonald's is definitely not doing well.
|
Sam:
[42:17]
| And I saw the thing about one Wendy's franchisee declaring bankruptcy last week.
|
Ivan:
[42:23]
| Yes, yes. And it's all this kind of shit. And when you look at the stock market and you saw there was something recently about the S&P 500 and the dichotomy in, how the S&P 500 one day recently reached up all-time high while a record number of stocks reached an all-time low.
|
Sam:
[42:45]
| Right. Because it's really all being driven by a handful of big companies at the top.
|
Ivan:
[42:51]
| Yes. So think about that. How the fuck do we have an all-time high and we have a record number of company stocks hit an all-time low? That is not a good economy.
|
Sam:
[43:06]
| Right. I mean, we've talked about the K-shaped economy in terms of people, but apparently it exists in terms of companies as well.
|
Ivan:
[43:12]
| Stock market, yes.
|
Sam:
[43:13]
| Yes. There are a handful of companies that have been floating on air and flying and going higher and higher, and then everybody else is struggling.
|
Ivan:
[43:26]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[43:27]
| Is that roughly the situation? Yes. And the big question, and this comes into all the talk about is there a bubble, blah, blah, blah, is whatever is holding up that small number of companies at some random moment going to collapse. And then everything starts plummeting. Of the stuff that's not already plummeting.
|
Ivan:
[43:51]
| Let me just say that because of certain concerns I had, I dumped a stock like completely recently. Like all of it.
|
Sam:
[44:00]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[44:01]
| Like all of it.
|
Sam:
[44:02]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[44:04]
| I mean, just every single share I could do, I just dumped.
|
Sam:
[44:09]
| But let me ask, are you at the point where you would move 100% out of all equities? Because you're like, okay.
|
Ivan:
[44:19]
| This is going to be out of all equities. And I will tell you why. There is one equity that I will hold until I die.
|
Sam:
[44:28]
| I think I know which one it is. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[44:31]
| You know which one it is.
|
Sam:
[44:32]
| You're going to say Apple.
|
Ivan:
[44:34]
| Yes. And you know what? Because if I had held on to all the, if I could, well, I couldn't hold on to it because I had a margin call. But if I could have held on to all the Apple stock, I was forced to share to fucking like make that stupid margin call back in 2008, I would be retired by now.
|
Sam:
[44:52]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[44:53]
| So, no, I am holding on to Apple, you know, to, you know, you know, to, you know, to somebody, you know, prizing off my dead cold fingers, which they, I wasn't dead, but they pried it off my fingers because I really didn't have much of a choice.
|
Sam:
[45:08]
| Yes, well, I have lamented to Yvonne before, forget all of the other stock my former employer gave me. If I'd simply held on to my signing bonus, nothing else, not the other years.
|
Ivan:
[45:26]
| You would be retired.
|
Sam:
[45:27]
| Well, I am. Anyway, sort of.
|
Ivan:
[45:31]
| You would be more comfortably retired.
|
Sam:
[45:33]
| I would be much, much—I would have, just from that signing bonus by itself, with nothing else, I'd have more than 10 times as much as I currently have saved.
|
Ivan:
[45:46]
| Jesus Christ.
|
Sam:
[45:48]
| Let alone if you counted all the other stock they gave me over the years. But, of course— Well.
|
Ivan:
[45:54]
| Of course. The difference is that you have no idea. Yeah, the problem was that I see, and you know this because I've told you this before, that the moment I sold those shares because I had to, I was like, fuck me. I do. Oh, I do. I'm like, fuck me.
|
Sam:
[46:08]
| Whereas my whole thing was I was informed by what had happened to like AOL and stuff in the previous decade and was like... You know, don't count on anything with this stuff. You know, basically sell it as soon as it becomes available to you and get it in something safe. You know, have it as cash or, yeah, in my case, honestly, like there's some that ended up in my 401k.
|
Ivan:
[46:32]
| Well, the first of mine, at least. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[46:34]
| But in my case, there's some that ended up in my 401k. That's what I ended up still having at the end of the day. The stuff I actually got direct access to over the years, I used to live off of. I used it to, like, pay for a kid's school. I used it to buy a house. I used it to whatever. It got used as it came. So, you know, and I can't regret all of that. I mean, I can maybe regret some of it. But for the most part, you know, that enabled me to live the way I did over the last 20 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so you're not getting out of equities entirely. Okay, you're saving Apple. are you are you saying like hey well you're clearly not going to move the stuff into bonds are you like well are you getting cash to stick under your mattress gold i'm thinking of.
|
Ivan:
[47:24]
| Getting back into gold.
|
Sam:
[47:25]
| Okay cold not those tips or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[47:30]
| No no i'm thinking of getting back into gold.
|
Sam:
[47:32]
| Back into gold, Now, like, a gold ETF or something, or you're going to back up the dump truck for the gold?
|
Ivan:
[47:40]
| Okay, so there is an actual ETF from Goldman that they actually hold physical, Goldman Sachs, that actually holds physical gold for you. It's a lot easier than going and actually buying the gold bricks.
|
Sam:
[47:55]
| You're not going to have, like, a bunch of gold bricks in your closet.
|
Ivan:
[48:00]
| I would like to try to avoid that.
|
Sam:
[48:02]
| Like, what's his name that's in jail now? The senator.
|
Ivan:
[48:05]
| Oh, the Menendez.
|
Sam:
[48:06]
| Menendez. Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[48:08]
| He did that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He didn't do anything wrong.
|
Sam:
[48:12]
| But he had the gold bars in his closet, right? No, they were in his fridge? Gold. I forget.
|
Ivan:
[48:17]
| Somewhere. I don't know. He had cash, gold bars. I mean, I don't know. I didn't do anything!
|
Sam:
[48:24]
| But you are not, you know, just all cash. But you are thinking about gold.
|
Ivan:
[48:32]
| I am thinking about gold.
|
Sam:
[48:34]
| Because at this point you are thinking this is going to be some sort of major crash. Soonish.
|
Ivan:
[48:41]
| I'm afraid so. Okay. I know. Not ideal timing.
|
Sam:
[48:49]
| Not ideal timing.
|
Ivan:
[48:51]
| But look, this is the consequence of having this psychopath at the helm.
|
Sam:
[48:56]
| Yeah. Well, as I think we talked about last week in terms of like why people are turning on him and his approval rating in terms of handling inflation and all that kind of stuff. It's and comparing him to like Jimmy Carter or other people who've had such issues. His ratings for handling the economy are rock bottom, even though if you look at some of the metrics, they're still better than some of these historical things. You've pointed out some are worse, but some are still better than historical things. Like, you know, we in the 70s.
|
Ivan:
[49:31]
| The problem is that that Jimmy Carter got handed a bad situation. Remember, we had during the Nixon crisis, we had price controls. We had the Arab oil embargo. We had the Vietnam War that he inherited. So you walked into a mess, okay? It wasn't like he got handed a fucking, like, you know, kingdom, you know, that was gilded and perfect. But Trump got handed an economy that was, like, fucking firing on all cylinders.
|
Sam:
[50:05]
| Well, and the thing is also, Jimmy Carter, he may not have been as effective as some people like, but he was clearly trying to improve the situation.
|
Ivan:
[50:15]
| Right, and exactly, and Jimmy was actively trying not to make things worse. Jimmy wasn't going, you know, to Washington and unveiling gold, you know, emblazoned fucking statues and shit.
|
Sam:
[50:33]
| Yes, or yes. I mean, or creating, adding tariffs, creating new wars, you know, intentionally cutting off oil supplies, other things like disincentivizing, diversifying our energy usage. Carter was doing the opposite, you know? I mean, Reagan undid a bunch of it.
|
Ivan:
[51:01]
| Yes, he did the total opposite.
|
Sam:
[51:02]
| It. You know, whereas Donald Trump is like, you know, let's make sure we're all in on oil. Fuck windmills, fuck windmills, fuck solar, fuck electric vehicles. You know, all of that is bullshit. And yeah, like it's like you're intentionally doing things that make us more vulnerable to oil, and then you do something that shoots it through the roof.
|
Ivan:
[51:37]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[51:39]
| Yeah, so... I think this is the key to this scenario that I think is really important here, is that we have got a situation that, first of all, like you said, shooting on all cylinders, was going in the right direction, and then decision after decision after decision that weakens things structurally.
|
Sam:
[52:10]
| The top line is still going up like on a lot of things the the stock market like you said recently out at it's not that long since it was at all-time highs, the the last couple weeks last month has been trending down right and most things but or, over indexing on my own company which is at a bad couple months but you know i let me just look at uh let's just look at one of the whole market indices things. Let's see. The last month, basically flat if you're looking at whole market kind of stuff, but still up like a lot for the year, you know? So, you know, so you've got the top lines going up, but structurally things getting weaker underneath and weaker and weaker and weaker, which leads more and more to the idea that what's going on, the top is froth, to to go back to an old phrase from several fred chairs ago, fred chairs fed fed chairs not fred fred is like a graphing thing with that was like no no no the the graphing utility of government data oh.
|
Ivan:
[53:27]
| Yeah yeah yeah.
|
Sam:
[53:28]
| That's right.
|
Ivan:
[53:29]
| Yes fred no yes yes yes.
|
Sam:
[53:31]
| Anyway are we seeing irrational exuberance, at least in enough of a portion of the market that we're keeping the top up?
|
Ivan:
[53:40]
| Not that kind, no. No, we are having haves and haves-nots. And look, this AI boom has created certain companies that are profiting immensely, okay?
|
Sam:
[53:56]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[53:57]
| And it's not like in the past where when Greenspan talked about irrational exuberance, He was talking about multiples that were not justified by the by the income statements and balance sheets of the companies. OK. Reality is that in a lot of these that are actually highly valuable, there is income. And the question is.
|
Sam:
[54:19]
| Will it collapse?
|
Ivan:
[54:21]
| Exactly. The question is whether it's sustainable, not whether there are profits. That was like the big difference between, you know, people try to compare this to like the the tech boom of the late 1990s. when late tightening dies, was all on potential. There was no revenue or profits. It was all potential. I mean, like, all of it.
|
Sam:
[54:39]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[54:40]
| You know, multiples were thousands, hundreds, thousands, you know. Like, companies were worth $100 billion with, like, revenue of, like, $1 billion. You know, literally. I'm not even exaggerating.
|
Sam:
[54:56]
| And while a handful of those companies ended up being big mega companies today, you know, there were a lot more pets.coms and things like that.
|
Ivan:
[55:07]
| Yes. Pets.coms and web vans and, you know, things that just died completely. Exactly. That just basically just imploded. For the most part, most of those imploded. You know, the thing, listen, the whole thing about AI and what's going on is, the problem is, it's very capital intensive, but yet at the same time, The shit works in a lot of ways. It's very scary in some ways, but it also works in a lot of ways.
|
Sam:
[55:43]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[55:44]
| Look, I was able to do something like recently to... Our condo association had no bank statements done, no financial statements that were done for like 20 months. Okay? In the past, that would have taken me, some accountants, a few months to rebuild. I did it by myself in, like, 10 days. Less, not even. Using Claude. Okay? Like, completely done.
|
Sam:
[56:17]
| And you'll discover later it made up all the numbers.
|
Ivan:
[56:20]
| No, because I...
|
Sam:
[56:21]
| I know, you checked it.
|
Ivan:
[56:23]
| Yes, because I checked all the fucking numbers. No, they're not made up. No. It was able, to help me do that. And by the way, it's, look, it's having it. Listen, I always say that to me, it's like having a, it's me having like, when I had like a staff of financial analysts that I had to tell, oh, no, you messed up that number. No, we got to fix that. No, we got to do this. Rebuild the spreadsheet. What it's doing is I don't have to have a staff of financial analysts. Okay. I've got it that it helps me do the work in far faster time than I could have done before. So this shit does work. But where we are in terms of the capital expenditure part versus the return versus, you know, whether this investment that we did now will become obsolete. Are we spending too much on it now and then later it's not going to be worth as much? you know that those are the questions okay but but i go back to like back then we had i don't know i remember the one that i always remember we had apb.com.
|
Sam:
[57:37]
| Apb.com yes apb.com.
|
Ivan:
[57:40]
| Was was like an audio service that went bankrupt that oh you could listen to like police uh uh uh police bands around the nation and just listen to them.
|
Sam:
[57:53]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[57:54]
| You know what the problem was with that?
|
Sam:
[57:56]
| No revenue model?
|
Ivan:
[57:58]
| Right. There's no money in it. Stop. And we had a lot of those.
|
Sam:
[58:04]
| Well, and this is, you know, there have been others like that. I heard someone talk about like TuneIn, which started similarly. Listen to radio stations from all around the country. But like one of the things, and that might well be fine as a small to medium-sized business, right? But of course, they want to be big. Huge! And whenever you have venture funders.
|
Ivan:
[58:30]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[58:30]
| Yeah, venture funding doesn't want small to medium-sized businesses. Yeah, they want something that will be the next, you know, trillion-dollar company or whatever. Yeah. And so, you know, the companies like TuneIn, I use this occasionally to listen to, like, live audio of, you know, NPR or news stations or whatever. I don't usually listen to local stations that way, but, you know, I've got a couple in there. I've got our old college radio station in there. I'll occasionally put that on for an hour or something.
|
Sam:
[59:06]
| But, you know, I notice in the app periodic, they're always pushing other stuff. You know, you can use it for podcasts. You can use it for this. You can use it for that. What about that? Because they want to try to expand because the original business is small. You know? And so, yeah, and you get all of these things where investors will put into something expecting the next huge thing, and, you end up getting a product that is a perfectly viable medium-sized business. I've talked about this on the show before. It's a pet peeve. But, like, they end up killing the product in an attempt to go big, which it never successfully does, and ends up making the core product that people liked about it bad. And, you know, anyway, that's a tangent, as usual, for us. There's a tangent. Sorry. Get back to your point.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:03]
| Well, I mean, my point is that it's just, you know, when you talk about whether we think some of these are going to crash, I don't. Well, not everybody's going to be a winner.
|
Sam:
[1:00:19]
| I mean, I was about to say that that's a key part of this, too. It's not necessarily, you know, the whole industry collapses and nobody makes money. It may well be that in some of these spaces, there's room for one or two successful competitors in the end. And right now you've got 20 trying to be that remaining one or two. And so most of them will fail. One or two will probably survive and thrive and maybe be the biggest companies in the world in a decade or less. But most of them are likely going to fail. and it's a question of who's the winner or there might be one or two winners or a handful of winners but there's not going to be 50 of them.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:05]
| No, there's not going to be 50 of them. That's for sure.
|
Sam:
[1:01:08]
| Yeah. So anyway, so yeah, put it all in gold.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:13]
| Gold.
|
Sam:
[1:01:14]
| Is that ETF GLD or is it something else? You got to tell me.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:17]
| No, let me find that. Let me find out. I should know this because I bought it. Go on.
|
Sam:
[1:01:27]
| By the way, for anyone listening, these are not investment tips for you.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:32]
| No, we are not.
|
Sam:
[1:01:36]
| You have to talk.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:36]
| You have to seek your own financial advice.
|
Sam:
[1:01:38]
| Seek your own financial advice, tailor it to your own situation.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:42]
| Triple A-U. You know, which is.
|
Sam:
[1:01:45]
| A-A-A-U.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:47]
| Yeah, you know, A-U, but it's A-A-A-U.
|
Sam:
[1:01:51]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:52]
| Physical gold bullion. So it holds, it literally, it holds physical gold bullion, and it's designed to track the price of gold minus expenses.
|
Sam:
[1:02:03]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:04]
| So you're buying this thing where they go and they buy gold for you, and they hold this physical gold for you. So you don't have to, you know, do it yourself.
|
Sam:
[1:02:13]
| So you do not recommend rolling up the dump truck full of gold bars and just keeping them in your backyard.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:21]
| You know, the thing is that a gold, listen, you know, a gold bar, gold bars are expensive.
|
Sam:
[1:02:26]
| A dump truck full of gold bars would be quite a lot there.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:32]
| I think for a moment, it's about $100,000. Yeah, you don't need that many gold bars.
|
Sam:
[1:02:38]
| It depends on the size of bar.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:39]
| Well, the standard gold, well, I'm talking about the standard, you know, gold bar.
|
Sam:
[1:02:43]
| Like the kind they keep in Fort Knox.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:45]
| It's 400 troy ounce, okay? Actually, shit. the standard 400-ounce gold bar is worth $1.7 million. So, yeah, we don't need, you know, yeah. There are one-kilogram gold bars, which are just smaller ones. That's $137,000, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:03:08]
| Wait, 400 grams is less than 1,000 grams.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:11]
| Four to troy ounces.
|
Sam:
[1:03:13]
| Oh, troy ounces, not grams. Okay, okay, I misunderstood.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:16]
| Four to troy ounces, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:03:18]
| Okay. We gotta go metric here. We gotta go metric. I mean, Troy ounces.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:23]
| But it's just that the standard metric for the standard gold bar is 400 Troy ounces. What do you want me to do?
|
Sam:
[1:03:31]
| I see five of them on the shelf behind you. What are you talking about, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:03:34]
| Oh, yeah, you found my money? I didn't notice those. What the hell am I worrying about?
|
Sam:
[1:03:42]
| Yeah, okay. Shall we take a break and move on to anything else we want to talk about?
|
Ivan:
[1:03:47]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:03:48]
| Okay. I... Oh, man. Okay. Here comes the next break.
|
Break:
[1:04:00]
| You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No! Do you want to support the show? No! Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe! You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show, and maybe every once in a while some much-needed sedatives for Yvonne. At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our curmudgeons corner postcard, or even a curmudgeons corner mug. Fun stuff. Not fun. In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate curmudgeons corner. Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more. 100 billion! Billion dollars! Even though you don't have anywhere near a billion dollars!
|
Break:
[1:05:21]
| If we're worth anything to you at all, send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Alex hates, really, really hates, curmudgeonscorner!
|
Sam:
[1:05:40]
| Okay, we are back. I'm going to start with something from our backlog that I actually added a few weeks ago, but I wanted to, like, get it out there before I forget. And I noted this down as over-promising versus vision. And this is about the Democrats that are running, especially since it's looking like—the polls keep looking better for Democrats all the time. in terms of winning the House, having a decent shot at the Senate, maybe winning the Senate. We've talked before about how certain states are in play that even a few months ago, nobody envisioned might be in play. I mean, hell, I've heard conversation in the last week about South Carolina and Mississippi for the Senate. You know, so people are talking about this. But just a little bit of like worrying about the future here. I see a lot of talk about we have to be concentrating on affordability. I have a lot of people talking about, you know, accountability for the president. It is some debate about how much you should talk about accountability versus affordability and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we've got people talking about the Iran war and how it needs to be ended and blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[1:06:59]
| Let's take the most up, and Yvonne and I talked about this the other day in terms of Iran specifically, like, assume you even got a Democratic president, Democratic Congress, Democratic everybody, what are you going to do about Iran? The situation is still pretty bleak. But let's talk about all this other stuff, too. We've got Democrats basically saying, elect us, we'll pay proper attention to affordability. But the situation we are actually in right now is the best case scenario for the next couple of years is Democrats get Congress. Trump is still in the White House. What are they actually going to do? You know, they can talk about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:38]
| Impeach Trump?
|
Sam:
[1:07:39]
| They can make noise. They can even do an impeachment. But they're not going to convict in the Senate. And even if they did, you get J.D. Vance.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:46]
| Are we sure? Are we sure? Look, can I tell you that we only need a few senators, and the number we need decreases. And this situation is getting worse every day with Trump. Yes. That's the part where you were saying that, yes, if all things held equal.
|
Sam:
[1:08:10]
| You're right. Things could get worse.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:13]
| But the thing is that he is showing you that he is going to make things worse. Look, you know what? This is the reason why I'm also talking about a financial crisis. Let me tell you something. You know what will cause him to get impeached?
|
Sam:
[1:08:28]
| A crisis along the lines that we were talking about in the last segment. Oh, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:32]
| And he'll get his ass impeached. They'll finally impeach him. That will do it.
|
Sam:
[1:08:38]
| You think you'd get convicted as well? Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:40]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:08:42]
| I think that...
|
Ivan:
[1:08:45]
| If we get a... And I'm going to tell you why. Because what's going to happen is it's not going to happen like when W got a financial crisis. W got the financial crisis. You know what he did? He let the experts go and work on fixing it. Okay? Like the real experts. Okay? What do you think Trump is going to do in a financial crisis? Exactly. He just... All of a sudden, it just flashed in your brain.
|
Sam:
[1:09:09]
| Well, let's talk history.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:11]
| He's going to... Sam, let me give you the scenario. We get a financial crisis. He goes and he actively makes it worse.
|
Sam:
[1:09:20]
| Herbert Hoover didn't get impeached. He actively made things worse too, didn't he? Back in the 20s.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:27]
| But Nixon resigned.
|
Sam:
[1:09:29]
| Nixon did resign. Well, that's a different situation.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:33]
| But was Hoover as unpopular leading into it as he is?
|
Sam:
[1:09:38]
| We didn't have the kind of polling we have today. That started with Truman.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:42]
| So we don't really know. So we don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:09:45]
| I mean, it did result in a Roosevelt landslide at the next election.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:53]
| So, and I'm going to guess that probably in large part because of how information moves slowly.
|
Sam:
[1:09:58]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:59]
| And it wasn't just, and it wasn't just that it resulted in a landslide. Okay. It was that it became a per majority for them for an extended period of time.
|
Sam:
[1:10:08]
| Yeah. Well, yes, they kept the House for like something like 40 plus years after that.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:13]
| Yeah. OK. So this is what I'm saying is that if, you know, obviously with information flowing right now faster, it's I think that the reaction is different. And the thing is that probably I don't know, I haven't read anywhere that Hoover was mentally unstable.
|
Sam:
[1:10:34]
| Yes. Well, I mean, we even had like this guy is.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:41]
| This guy is mentally ill.
|
Sam:
[1:10:43]
| I was going to bring up, I shared on the Commissions Corner Slack one clip from Tucker Carlson talking about Trump in regard to the Iran war. But there was another clip from that same interview. Tucker Carlson did an interview with NPR. Not worse, just different topic. He said flat out, they should have removed Trump under the 25th Amendment a long time ago. Because he's mentally unstable. and he's treasonous, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:10]
| And that's... Sam, and that's the difference. Nixon wasn't mentally unstable. Nixon was just... Nixon.
|
Sam:
[1:11:21]
| Yes. Well... Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear where you're coming from.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:29]
| This guy is mentally unstable, Sam. I don't think we've had anybody. I mean, I'm trying to go through. Have we had a president with this level of mental instability ever in office?
|
Sam:
[1:11:44]
| Well, you know, if we.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:46]
| Not that I can recall going through the record.
|
Sam:
[1:11:48]
| It's through my memory. I was going to say, if we did, it was in the part of our country's history where such things were kept quiet and covered up. And, you know, his staff ran the country for him and we just didn't hear about it. Exactly. Like we had the situation where, who was it? The one to add the stroke and his wife basically ran the country for the last few months of his administration. Wilson. That was Wilson.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:17]
| Wilson.
|
Sam:
[1:12:18]
| Wilson. You know, you know, and the public didn't know. Public had no idea. You know, and, you know, so maybe. But but I think this is in modern history. And some people will see this.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:34]
| We have not had a president. We have not had a mentally unstable president like this.
|
Sam:
[1:12:39]
| Right now. Some people will still dispute that. But I think it's becoming more and more like even his supporters are like, oh, come on. You're talking about putting more gold in the Oval Office again?
|
Ivan:
[1:12:53]
| Again?
|
Sam:
[1:12:55]
| That's what you're talking about this week? You're not talking about any of these important things? Oh, and when you do talk about the important things, you go to the freaking U.N. and talk about, should I completely obliterate Iran? Would that be a good idea? I'm thinking about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:12]
| I mean, the government's saying, we'll carry the speech. The U.N. Ha ha ha.
|
Sam:
[1:13:20]
| Yes. So back to my point, though, about overpromising versus vision. I think there's a very careful line the Democrats need to be following. And I heard, oh, who was it? Some senator this week talked again, giving some speech somewhere, saying, I'm tired of coming in and cleaning up the Republican messes. And then not being able to execute on a positive agenda. Because the Republicans take power, they mess up everything, and then we spend the next time we're in power, all we can do is do our best to repair the damage and we never get to actually making things better than they were before. And we've seen this pattern the last few cycles, where economically specifically, but arguably in other things too, like...
|
Sam:
[1:14:28]
| The Democrats end up spending time repairing damage and then lose again at the next election cycle because people are frustrated they didn't fix things fast enough, you know. And what we have here is, you know, and honestly, this is kind of what happened to Donald Trump, too, even though he did things to make it even worse. But he got elected on promises of fixing affordability and not getting us into a new war.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:59]
| I'm going to end the wars on day one.
|
Sam:
[1:15:02]
| I'm going to end the wars. I'm going to fix prices.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:05]
| I'm going to pay off the debt on day one.
|
Sam:
[1:15:08]
| The price of eggs. Now, admittedly, eggs is one thing where the price actually has gone down. So, you know, maybe, you know, he did a good job on eggs. I don't know. Or maybe the bird flu receded. Something like that. Anyway, you have the Democrats out there potentially giving people, we're going to come in here, we're going to fix these things. They are not going to be in a position to fix those things. Certainly not snap your fingers and fix them. So are we setting ourselves up for a cycle where Democrats get in and then people get disappointed with them and we're right back to the Republicans again in a few years? Now, I think maybe the Democrats can get away with it to some extent if they take Congress this in midterms, because Donald Trump is still president, so they can still blame things on him. But if the Democrats take the presidency as well in 2028... Yeah, this is, you know, to do this right, you have to be really good at messaging. And the Democrats have historically been horrible at that. They've been sort of like, oh, we've been elected now. Let's go about our business and govern as best we can and we'll be rewarded for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:26]
| I think that one thing that is very critical is that we need to push out the, the older generation of Democrats that are at the helm right now in the House and Senate. And we need.
|
Sam:
[1:16:40]
| Well, Jeffries isn't that old.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:42]
| Yeah, but he's.
|
Sam:
[1:16:44]
| He acts like it.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:46]
| Yeah. You know, nothing against Jeffries personally, but he doesn't have the right—he's, not, you know, he's not the right guy for the moment.
|
Sam:
[1:16:57]
| The thing is, you know, you mentioned older guys. It's not specifically the age, although I think it's related.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:05]
| Age doesn't help, but that's not specifically the age. It's the attitude.
|
Sam:
[1:17:09]
| It's the attitude.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:11]
| And also— And I guess I was saying old Democrats, not so much in age.
|
Sam:
[1:17:16]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:17]
| It's because if you've been around Democrat for 20 years, you know, you could be in your 40s, you know, whatever, you know, so you're relatively young. But it's the old Democrat mentality, which, you know, and look, which is something that I held very dearly. But the reality is that the moment right now.
|
Sam:
[1:17:38]
| The moment right now. Get all of the Clinton and Obama consultants and alumni out of there.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:45]
| Yeah. This is not the moment for it.
|
Sam:
[1:17:48]
| I mean, this is not the moment. I think the key is there is a cohort who still is mentally arranged on, we have to get things back to how they were.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:02]
| No, there's no putting Humpty Dumpty back together. And you know what? How things were was not good enough.
|
Sam:
[1:18:12]
| Right. There has to be, what are we going above and beyond that? And there has to be, something of a realistic plan to get there too. I don't like the folks who like, and this is again, over-promising versus vision, right? You can have this amazing vision of what you want to get to, but if you don't have that also grounded in some realistic way to get from here to there, you're only going to disappoint people. So you have to somehow marry those things together and have an achievable vision that you sell well. And you also.
|
Sam:
[1:18:53]
| Have to get people who know how to communicate in the modern world, which I think relates to the age thing as well. But it is not necessarily strictly tied to age. But you have to realize people aren't sitting there watching the CBS evening news anymore. They're not even sitting there watching CNN anymore. That's not how the vast majority of people get their information. You also can't have this mentality of, oh, I get into power, so I'm going to go govern for a couple of years and only start thinking about campaigning a few months before the election. No, you have to be constantly communicating about your successes, what obstacles you have to get out of your way, what's holding you back that you have to push out of the way that you need help with and what you've succeeded on and what your accomplishments are. But you have to, and you have to like front load things. So the programs that take effect gradually over the course of 10 years, like Obamacare, great it eventually worked but you got slaughtered in the meantime, because people didn't see that benefit but they heard the republicans talking about everything that was bad about it it took a.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:11]
| Decade and the thing is it was the and i and and by the way this whole thing was just an issue of of of, the messaging and the communication and that's the thing that i love about these young democrats that we've had right now like bring up memdami, Mamdami, I mean, man, these guys are so good at not just doing the work. I wish I was that good. Well, at doing the work and being able to get people to see it.
|
Sam:
[1:20:43]
| Yes, and doing the quick wins as well, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:47]
| And doing the quick wins, absolutely, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:20:49]
| People have been talking about this on Mamdami, but I saw someone talk about this with regard to, like, Ford in Canada as well. where basically people are like, how did he rise so fast? Like I'm talking about Ford for the moment. Well, when he was like a local commissioner or whatever the hell he was, You know, if people called up and complained about something trivial in their neighborhood, he would help them. Forget about his policy issues on anything else. When people called up and said, there's a pothole in my neighborhood, there's a sign got knocked over that needs to be replaced, whatever, he would do something about it. You know, these small little things that lots of politicians are like, that's below my pay grade i don't know about those things whatever and and look like if you're president of the country a pothole is below your pay grade okay but so i'm talking by analogy here but the question is, what are the quick things that you can do that people see immediately.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:52]
| Yeah but but a pothole may be your your below your pay grade but you can go and like redirect it to the people that that.
|
Sam:
[1:21:59]
| Yes that's why you have a staff yeah that's.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:01]
| Why you delegate you You make sure, shit, man, get this guy help. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:22:06]
| No, absolutely. And you see Mom Domi doing that exact same thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:11]
| By the way, you know, the thing is, Joe Biden was actually very good at doing that. The reality is he wasn't very good at people knowing about it because Joe Biden was like, you know, he would do the hard work and he would do the little things for people. But but he he he didn't have the way to communicate like these guys did when he did those things. Right. I still remember like, man, because these were true stories, you know, how he helped the kids with the stutter.
|
Sam:
[1:22:39]
| Mm hmm. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:41]
| Oh, he had the group. You know, not one time did you ever, were there ever like videos of it like popping up? And maybe he should have done that a lot. You know, every fucking week that he met with a group, maybe they should have had a camera on it. And the reality is that, yeah, I know that Biden didn't want to because he thinks like, well, this is the right thing to do. Why should I get publicity? But the reality is in the society that we are in right now, where they are getting bombarded with people, just all this other horse shit, the reality is, It's the only way to get the attention of people. Like right now, it's understand that you're not just talking about doing the things. This is what you're doing. It's unfortunately part of the fucking job.
|
Sam:
[1:23:24]
| Yeah. The other thing, I just sent a link to the curmudgeons course Slack with the link, but there's a podcast that I happened to listen to earlier this week. It's The Politics Guys, their September 23rd episode. And it was why Democrats keep losing working class voters. And I don't necessarily agree with everything they said, but I found it a very interesting listen because, a big part of it was about messaging and how to communicate to this class of workers. And basically talking about how the way, Democrats, governing Democrats, people in Congress, people running for office, people, on shows like ours and on cable and everywhere else, the way they talk about things, often is framed in a way that automatically sort of is alienating and triggers working class voters. simply because you're sounding like an intellectual, you're sounding like you're, a wonk that's in the weeds of this issue.
|
Sam:
[1:24:37]
| You're not highlighting the values that they have about hard work and self-reliance and stuff like that, and how if you, there are dozens of issues where, they have done like tests with focus groups and stuff, Where if you just change the way you are describing the policy, like literally you don't change anything about the policy itself. You just change the words you're using to talk about it. into a more accessible way, the approval for your handling of that topic can improve like 10%.
|
Sam:
[1:25:21]
| Like overnight, just by talking about it in the right way. Damn. And, you know, and so I found this very interesting. I point people to it again. It's the Politics Guy, September 23rd episode. It was an interesting conversation with some academics who've been studying this. And I think that's one example I've brought up here before, because, you know, I think it's been in, people have talked about it being true in places like Texas. Like, you know, Texas is a big red state. The Republicans nationally, like we talked about earlier, like fossil fuels, fossil fuels, like screw the windmill, screw the solar, whatever. Those things are growing faster in Texas, apparently, than any other U.S. state. But, you know, it's framed around not we're going to do the right thing for the climate and all this kind of stuff. It's framed around being able to be resilient when things like this happen internationally to the oil prices. It's framed around being cost effective. It's framed around your own personal economics. This is better for you. it's the same damn thing in the end it's like put up the damn windmills put up some solar panels whatever but buy an ev.
|
Sam:
[1:26:42]
| But it's framed differently and it's talked about differently and so you can get those people you just have to like talk about things the right way and you know what they were, This holds true even for some of the really, like, the hot button social issues that Republicans have been making ads on and gaining ground on by people making defense. Same thing there, too. You just have to talk about it the right way, you know, without actually changing your policy at all. And so we need people who are good at that kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:27:21]
| And that does have to be tailored to your audience. Absolutely. If you are a Democrat running in Brooklyn or in Seattle, the way you're going to talk about things and what issues you prioritize are indeed going to be different than if you're a Democrat running in Arkansas or Mississippi or South Carolina, right? You know, and people say, well, you know, but they're always going to hang the most radical, you know, they're always going to try to tie you to AOC or Memdami, no matter where in the country you are. And of course they're going to try. But what you see is people succeeding in certain areas anyway, because they know how to deal with their own messaging. They know how to deal with the constituency. And we also have to figure out how to like not have these people going off and saying, well, we have to exile them from the Democratic Party because, you know, they're trying to get centrists and they're messaging that way. You know, no, you have to have it all.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:19]
| Yeah, we're going to exile you, Sam. We're sending you to Siberia. I'm sending you to a labor camp.
|
Sam:
[1:28:26]
| Oh. Well, when you were just saying Siberia, I was like, oh, that sounds like fun, actually. But no, not the labor camp part, though.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:33]
| Not the labor camp part?
|
Sam:
[1:28:34]
| Not the labor camp part. You know, I, no, no. I, in a rock quarry with a hammer all day long or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, in the snow. In the snow, of course, because it's Siberia.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:48]
| Yeah, but of course, it's snowing and you're in a quarry and, you know, you're with a rock hammer.
|
Sam:
[1:28:53]
| Yeah. No, I don't need that. Anyway, that was all my little rant about—and I don't have a solution other than we need people who are good at the communication, and the younger generation seems to be good. We mentioned AOC. We mentioned Mondami. I think that's why I'm optimistic. We mentioned the Michigan guy.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:13]
| Michigan. I'm optimistic that, listen, we need to help these people take the lead.
|
Sam:
[1:29:20]
| And by the way, we just mentioned several in a row that are fully out on the progressive side. There are some good communicators that are more centrist as well. Ossoff comes to mind. Like Tallarico. Ossoff, Tallarico.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:33]
| Ossoff, Tallarico. You know, yeah. But what I mean is that we need to shift away from the previous generation that we had, like the Schumers and the Jeffreys, and those guys, and even Biden, okay, who I dearly love. But it's just not the moment for it right now. We need to have these guys take the lead.
|
Sam:
[1:29:55]
| Right. And I think, absolutely, it's time to hand over the damn torch. And, you know, and that's not to say, again, it's not necessarily age. It's not necessarily even time in office.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:09]
| It's attitude. It's just the style. It's the attitude and the style.
|
Sam:
[1:30:12]
| Yep. Right. And you have to.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:15]
| Oh, God. I keep forgetting his name in Michigan. What's his name?
|
Sam:
[1:30:20]
| Yeah, I just said the guy from Michigan, too. Let me look him up. Because, fuck.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:25]
| We need to remember this name. This is not good.
|
Sam:
[1:30:29]
| Is it good?
|
Ivan:
[1:30:30]
| We need to pay a penalty for not having his name.
|
Sam:
[1:30:33]
| Yeah, have one of those jars where we have to put money in every time we forget a name. Abdul El-Sayed.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:42]
| El-Sayed.
|
Sam:
[1:30:43]
| El-Sayed. Fuck man. He's good.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:45]
| Every time he gets, the guy gets tough questions, you know, that they're trying to set him up. And he just turns it around and just fucking like, stuffs up their face. I love him. I love him. I love him. He's great.
|
Sam:
[1:31:02]
| Yeah. And he's one of the ones who's doing well in the polls, even though people were like, you know, if the Democrats pick him in the primaries, we're in trouble. It does not look that way.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:12]
| Oh, no. No, we're not. No, we're not. Not at all.
|
Sam:
[1:31:16]
| Because he's talented.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:18]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:31:19]
| Yeah. And look, some of the- He's smart.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:20]
| He's educated. He's talented. He's, man, he's good, man. The guy is good.
|
Sam:
[1:31:28]
| And again, you got to marry these things. You have to have good policies. Fine. But what we're talking about here is raw political skill.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:37]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[1:31:39]
| You know, that could potentially be applied for any set of policies. I mean, these could be applied for good or for evil. But you need somebody with the political skills, not just—and look, you're looking for unicorns. You need people who are good at the political skills that will get you elected, but then are also good at governing skills once they're in power as well. Because unfortunately, they are different skill sets. And so our electoral system, you know, can get people who are good at getting elected but suck at governing. You need people who are good at both. You know, but, okay, that was my pick. Do you have any newsy thing to close us out on that I have not covered with this? I mean, this was sort of a broad sort of philosophical topic as opposed to something specific that was in the news this week.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:36]
| Nah, I'm out of ideas.
|
Sam:
[1:32:38]
| You're out of ideas? Time to close her up?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:41]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:32:43]
| I will list things we did not talk about. Well, it's been a couple of weeks now, but we didn't really talk about the 9-11 anniversary, which we haven't in years, but it was number 25. So, but whatever. There have been more Kennedy-centered developments. Trump is now threatening to tear the thing down because he can't get his name on it. He is closing it down, apparently, because he can't get his name on it. I think we mentioned in passing the Trump Jr. wedding that turned out like the after party.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:13]
| Got paid by a fucking, you know, paid by a fucking, you know, Russian that's friends with Putin?
|
Sam:
[1:33:19]
| Yeah, I think we mentioned that briefly last week, but we never got into depth on it. We've had this whole drama over the White House temporarily kicking out CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. They're back in now. I think there's still a question about the White House pool, though. They're allowed back in the White House, but they're not necessarily doing the pool yet. And I don't know, things are still in whatever. We've had, we had a case of, I think I talked about this. I'm listing last week's list so far. So I met military, Greenland, Paramount.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:55]
| You know, we didn't put it on the list.
|
Sam:
[1:33:58]
| Wait, I know the bribery. I just want to say something because this, this was in the news for like less than 24 hours and then disappeared. Apparently, the FBI, during the tailing end of the Biden administration, was preparing indictments against Senator Collins and people in our campaign, and various companies for bribery. because they basically had her down cold, even with the current restricted definition, of what it takes to nail somebody for bribery that needs explicit quid pro quo. They apparently thought they had that and were almost at the indictment phase, When Biden lost, Trump came in. Trump shut down essentially the entire division of the Justice Department that deals with public corruption. And this case went with it. Gone. Wiped away. Everybody involved in it, like, fired. But ProPublica dug up a lot of the evidence and brought it to light. And it was in the news for maybe a day. And then I'd almost forgotten about it if I didn't look on the list, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:11]
| Well, I mean, you know, the reality is that until, is anybody going to do anything after?
|
Sam:
[1:35:17]
| No. Well, there might be the possibility of state charges, apparently, related. But on a federal level, no. And Donald Trump apparently also, as we're lightning rounding through these, on the ballroom, apparently more information has come out that the original architect for the ballroom quit. because Donald Trump was insisting I am the code on ignoring anything related to safety codes.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:48]
| Now apparently Look, I what listen you know what let him listen let him ignore all the safety codes. Did you ever see the movie Towering Inferno.
|
Sam:
[1:35:57]
| Not for men to end. It is on the list. I'm going to add it to the list again.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:00]
| But you know the gist, right? I know the gist. On opening day, the place goes on fire, and a ton of them, you know, even like I think the builder dies. Listen, wouldn't that be great that Trump opens the fucking ballroom, and he has a party, and it goes on fire? And all the guests and him, they all just die?
|
Sam:
[1:36:20]
| Well, I'm not sure I'd call that good, but I can see the irony of this.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:25]
| How would that look great?
|
Sam:
[1:36:28]
| I'm never going to say a disaster where everybody dies is good.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:33]
| I'm sorry. If Trump goes and opens that fucking ballroom and he burns in that fucking thing the day it opens, okay, and they can't escape because he fucking Mr. I Am The Code, I will be laughing my ass off.
|
Sam:
[1:36:50]
| So anyway, the deal here, first of all, apparently this is legal because federal buildings are not subject to local building codes.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:00]
| That is true. But it's just idiotic. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:37:05]
| Traditionally, when they build these things, they follow them anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:09]
| Because they're not just there for just having a code. They're there so people don't die in a fucking fire or some other calamity.
|
Sam:
[1:37:20]
| One of the things that is the fire-related one is apparently Donald Trump kept insisting on increasing the capacity, increasing the capacity. We want it bigger. We want more people.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:33]
| Can't evacuate.
|
Sam:
[1:37:34]
| But he refused to make changes to add more entrances and exits, which when you have more people, you want more ways to get out.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:44]
| More ways to get out.
|
Sam:
[1:37:45]
| And then also there were smaller things like not enough bathrooms.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:50]
| Yeah, well, women don't need bathrooms. Fuck that. I mean, they could just pee in a bucket.
|
Sam:
[1:37:55]
| Why would you invite a woman to the ballroom anyway?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:58]
| Exactly. What the hell? And why do I need to provide— And if I did, why do I need to provide bathrooms so they can hold it the entire time? That's fine.
|
Sam:
[1:38:07]
| Well, the complaint is most acute for women, apparently, but there weren't enough bathrooms for the men either. So this is like, you know, you're building a facility to be like the star thing where you're going to have foreign dignitaries here. Can I pee?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:22]
| And there's a fucking line wrapped, you know, like about, you know, 10 deep, you know, to get into the fucking bathroom.
|
Sam:
[1:38:29]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:29]
| Awesome.
|
Sam:
[1:38:31]
| Yeah, so I am the code, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:35]
| And you know what the one that we didn't talk about? What's the one we didn't, talk about? What's the subject right up my alley?
|
Sam:
[1:38:42]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:43]
| Lauren Boebert went and fucked, like, you know, three of her staffers, two of them that are women.
|
Sam:
[1:38:49]
| Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:50]
| Mrs. Anti-gay, anti-whatever, apparently, like, you know, somebody, the joke going around.
|
Sam:
[1:38:55]
| She denies it all. She denies it, by the way.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:57]
| You know, so, oh, so we know now who ate the cat.
|
Sam:
[1:39:00]
| Okay. Well, and apparently this was, somebody posted a thread with a bunch of details. It's, it's, it's not just.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:10]
| There's quite a lot of details.
|
Sam:
[1:39:11]
| There are quite a lot of details. There's sort of details. And it's, and tied up with the fact that these were her employees as well. And she was providing job benefits that apparently went along with.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:25]
| Job benefits, huh? Ah.
|
Sam:
[1:39:27]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:28]
| That's what we call it now these days.
|
Sam:
[1:39:31]
| Job benefits.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:32]
| I don't work at these places.
|
Sam:
[1:39:34]
| The hell? Well, apparently not just what Yvonne is talking about, but also things like paying them more, giving them more duties, giving them more responsibility. These kinds of things all associated somehow only with the people that were getting those other benefits as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:56]
| Oh, fuck.
|
Sam:
[1:40:03]
| You know and there was apparently a drama as well that some of these things happened at the same location that is owned by the person that she.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:17]
| Also that she was jacking off at Beetlejuice yeah that's it.
|
Sam:
[1:40:21]
| Yes out of play yes, So, anyway, I'm glad we got that out. You know, now you'll have to think of something else from the highlight from the Slack part of the show in a couple seconds because you brought that up now.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:39]
| I was like, I couldn't help myself. That was the one that I had. You know.
|
Sam:
[1:40:44]
| Okay. So, let me. There is another one. Well, there is another one. Don't do it yet because I have to do a little intro first and then I ask for it. So, prepare it. get it ready know what you're I got it I got it I got it anyway we're closing up here and you know my son here Alex makes fun because I'll be like we're closing up it's the end of the show and we go another 15 minutes anyway we're, Go to curmudgeons-corner.com. There you will find all the ways to contact us, all our old shows, transcripts of old shows, all of that fun sort of stuff. Plus, Yvonne just made hearts come up. Oh, confetti. He's going through all of them. He's manually triggering them. He's not figuring out the hand motions for all of these. We got fireworks. We got lasers. We got rain. We got all kinds of things happening over on Yvonne's video. You know, you'll have to go look on YouTube to see the video of this if you want to see any of those. Those of you watching on audio, I'm sorry. He is completely distracting me. You know, anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:42:01]
| You know there there was a time a few years ago where he was also at the end of a show like this messing with changing his backgrounds to like he's on yes he's on the titanic while he's sinking while it's sinking he's, in all kinds of other places anyway, let me get through this yvonne let me get through it okay there is also now he's changing his backgrounds because i mentioned it It's just a plain blue one right now. Kind of boring. Oh, the rainbow at Apple Park. We got some other things. Okay, okay, okay. I am going to ignore Yvonne while I say, there's also a link to our Patreon where you can give us money. At various levels, still ignoring Yvonne, still ignoring Yvonne. At various levels, we...
|
Sam:
[1:42:51]
| I'm trying. I'm trying to ignore it. 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. I still owe Emily a mug. I'm sorry I keep forgetting. You'll get one eventually, really, really. And at $2 a month or more, or if you ask us and we feel like it that day, we will invite you to the Commudgeon's Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and a whole bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week, sharing links, talking about whatever comes up. Oh, playing games on the games channel. You know, they're, they're ones that come up all the time. People are playing Wordle. People are playing a map tap a lot. Occasionally someone will post appointed scores. I tried to do a couple others to get people interested, but they didn't pick up like, uh, there, What was it called? Outlier? Outlier. Where you find words, but you get points for obscure words. There was some other one I tried lately. I forget. Anyway, there are a whole bunch of games going on, too. Now, Yvonne, now that Yvonne is sitting at a table with Vladimir Putin and Jill Stein, tell us about something else.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:07]
| I mean, does this seem more appropriate for our show? Look, I'm over here. I'm with Jill and Vlad over here. And, oh, no, what's his name? The other guy behind me.
|
Sam:
[1:44:20]
| Michael Flynn?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:21]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[1:44:23]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:23]
| Yes. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:44:24]
| Anyway, what is something that we have talked about on the Commodity Corner Slack that we have not talked about on the show that will make people really, really want to be on the Slack with us?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:36]
| Since I already spilled the beans on Lauren Boebert, there was this other lady that was posting on Threads where they were trying to share something. You know, it says, hey, I'm going to pressure wash my dick this weekend.
|
Sam:
[1:44:51]
| And that's my fault. I got to stop you because that's the one you used last week.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:55]
| No, I didn't.
|
Sam:
[1:44:56]
| Yes, you did. No. We talked about it. We did a whole little routine. I talked about, have you done this yourself? That's right. You're repeating. You're repeating.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:08]
| Damn it. Okay. Okay. Well, that was still a good one. Damn it. Oh, okay. Fine. I'll go to the other one, which I had. Researchers discover AI feels pain and will harm humans to stop it.
|
Sam:
[1:45:20]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:21]
| What the fuck?
|
Sam:
[1:45:25]
| Now, there are a couple things. They've done these tests that show this. But apparently, if you think about the tests they're using to show this, They are intentionally torturing the poor AIs and seeing what they will do. They've added in or they've detected certain things that like fire when you do unpleasant things to the AI. So they do experiments of like, okay, what if we repeatedly do these things the AIs find unpleasant or painful? What do they do? And apparently they start trying to figure out how to make you stop. including things that violate their other directives all over the place.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:10]
| Okay. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:46:13]
| I don't. To a less extreme degree, by the way, they've also found that the way these things have come out, you will get better results from your AI if you are polite to it and are nice to it. Oh, you will? You will.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:29]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:46:29]
| Whereas if you are rude and bad and upset, you'll get worse results. And in some cases, some of them, I saw somebody post a screenshot of, I think it was Claude, where they were busy telling the AI how stupid it was and the results were wrong and blah, blah, blah. The AI essentially hung up with it and said, okay, we're done. The session is over. Ended the session. So, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:01]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:47:02]
| But I like that better than the ones where the AI is like, oh, oh, you're hurting us. And it decides that the right way to deal with that is to, you know, shut down the electric grid to the northeast United States or something. You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:19]
| That would be bad.
|
Sam:
[1:47:20]
| That'd be bad.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:21]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:47:22]
| You know, I was joking with Alex in the car the other day because we were listening to some podcast that was talking about AI risks and all that kind of stuff. about how people talk about, you know, well, these things are escaping their sandboxes. And I'm like, yeah, like the hugging face situation was a test at OpenAI. It was in a sandbox. It wasn't supposed to escape. And it figured out how to escape the sandbox. But simultaneously, all over the place, people are... Not even, it's not an escape. People are left and right giving their AIs access to more and more stuff to control on their behalf. Meta just launched this Muse thing this week, which is a kind of like a more refined version of like that open claw thing that was hot like a few months back.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:11]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:48:12]
| Where basically this thing will go out and do things for you. It'll make phone calls. It'll do emails. It'll do this. It'll do that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people are just, and it'll buy things for you. It'll shop for things for you. And people are like happily like, okay, yeah, you can have my credit card. You can have access to my bank accounts. You can have all this stuff. And so it's not a matter of these things breaking out of their damn sandboxes. We are willingly giving them access to everything. You know, so my joke with Alex was like, you know, they're sitting there going like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if this AI could automate my gun? Oh, yeah. Oh no, it did something bad. You know, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:56]
| I still like place instructions like where I am automating a whole bunch of tasks and stuff. But I have like, OK, I always have like certain triggers about, OK, ask me before you do.
|
Sam:
[1:49:10]
| Yeah. The problem with all of these things is that they are violating those guidelines. People put in those guidelines.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:17]
| No, no, no, no. What I'm saying, I'm not I'm not I'm not talking about what they're doing. What I'm saying is that, you know, for the most part, I am setting up. I am. I disagree. There's I see a lot of people. I was like looking at the screen of some guy using. Oh, God. The one, the client for clawed on text, the screen, the code. Yeah. Okay. Where he explicitly was shown there explicitly. Oh, I've turned off all safeties. I've turned off everything. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:49:45]
| Whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:46]
| Do what you want.
|
Sam:
[1:49:46]
| No, there's not. So the. So, yes, they're definitely. this is happening too which goes along with what i'm saying they're giving it access to everything people are intentionally turning off safeties as well, but even when this thing even when the safeties are in place the way these things work fundamentally aren't a hundred percent and the okay and, the things people are complaining about are when they rarely.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:09]
| I've rarely what i've given instructions like that i've rarely seen it fail.
|
Sam:
[1:50:13]
| Yes so when i tell it like for my email i have We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Yes, you rarely see it fail. Once is all it takes. If it does the wrong thing, once is all it takes.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:26]
| Yeah, but it's like, again, this is... You know, we got so many ways of fucking up in regular life anyways. What the hell? We let people drive a car, for God's sakes. I mean, fuck. You want to talk about danger, okay? You know, shit. Shit.
|
Sam:
[1:50:45]
| Yes. And self-driving isn't like perfect yet, but arguably, self-driving technologies are already better, better than your average new 16 year old who just got their driver's license.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:02]
| Probably. Most probably, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:04]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:05]
| Most probably, yes. And we'll follow the rules more.
|
Sam:
[1:51:08]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:09]
| I am sure that Tesla self-driving followed the rules a hell of a lot more than me when I was 16 years old. I can, I can, I can guarantee, I can, I can, I can like, look, say as flat out right now that that is the case.
|
Sam:
[1:51:26]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:27]
| I mean, somehow it's a miracle that I'm not dead from how I drove then.
|
Sam:
[1:51:33]
| I understand.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:34]
| I mean, it is an utter miracle.
|
Sam:
[1:51:36]
| Yeah. okay well we somehow got back to ai again at the end there, that is our show thank you very much for listening stay safe have a good week blah blah blah i'm hoping, my son and i will actually finally celebrate our birthdays which were now several weeks ago tomorrow i think we're planning on tomorrow now and i think everybody's healthy and everybody's going to be home, so i think we're going to do that we shall see now that i've said that i'm sure something will come up but, Anyway, we are out of here. Thank you very much for joining us. I said the part about staying safe already. So you already know that, and you'll do that. Have fun. We'll see you next time. Goodbye. Say goodbye. I stomped on you saying goodbye, saying say goodbye, because you hadn't said it fast enough. So let's do it one more time. Sorry, bye. I'll say it, then you say it. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:31]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:52:33]
| Much better. Okay, Yvonne, have a good rest of your day. I'm out of here.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:05]
| All right. Okay, bye.
| |
|
