Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:02]
| Greetings.
|
Ivan:
[0:03]
| Oh, well, ah, aloha.
|
Sam:
[0:08]
| You know, those flights started like today.
|
Ivan:
[0:11]
| Which flight? Oh, to Hawaii to from from from pain from Everett Everett to Hawaii pain in my ass field.
|
Sam:
[0:18]
| $400 round trip.
|
Ivan:
[0:20]
| Nice. Not bad. There you go.
|
Sam:
[0:23]
| Brandy was like, let's ditch the family and go.
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Ivan:
[0:27]
| Oh, that's great. It's just wait, I'm sorry, it froze, as you said, let's ditch them.
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Sam:
[0:33]
| Yeah, Brandi said, let's just ditch the family and go.
|
Ivan:
[0:36]
| Why not?
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Sam:
[0:36]
| Don't even tell them, just leave.
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Ivan:
[0:39]
| I mean, you know, why not? I mean, have you been to Hawaii? I I'm all for it.
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Sam:
[0:47]
| You're you're all like pixelated.
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Ivan:
[0:51]
| I mean, you're.
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Sam:
[0:54]
| Do I look normal?
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Ivan:
[0:55]
| Well, the fine normal. Not well, you look like usually you look like, yes, OK, OK.
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Sam:
[1:07]
| You're clearing up there.
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Ivan:
[1:09]
| OK, yeah. I mean, have you been to Hawaii?
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Sam:
[1:12]
| Never been.
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Ivan:
[1:14]
| Well, there you go.
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Sam:
[1:15]
| Yeah.
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Ivan:
[1:17]
| So new. Go see the volcano.
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Sam:
[1:21]
| OK, but first an alternate or do you like specific?
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Ivan:
[1:25]
| Yes, go, go, go. Oh, go, go, yeah.
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Sam:
[1:27]
| Okay.
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Ivan:
[1:28]
| Yeah. Yeah.
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Sam:
[1:30]
| Here we go.
If it freaking works.
There we go. Okay, now I'm gonna hit this button. I'm gonna try this button.
And it does nothing. So, I'm going to- Huh?
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Break:
[1:57]
| Huh?
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Sam:
[2:18]
| Welcome to curmudgeon's corner for Saturday, November 18th, 2023.
Uh, it's just after three 45 UTC as we're starting. I am Sam mentor.
Yvonne Bo is here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:35]
| Aloha.
|
Sam:
[2:37]
| Yes, yes, yes. Aloha.
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Ivan:
[2:40]
| My wife for whatever random, I mean, we've been to Hawaii.
Okay. I've only been to Hawaii once. I went to Hawaii with my wife.
And she loved it. I loved it. It was great. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:51]
| Yeah. Yes.
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Ivan:
[2:52]
| The one thing is that now this was like a long time ago already.
Like Jesus Christ, 16 years ago, it's 2007.
It's been a long time. But for some reason, you know, we just when we got got her new car a few months ago, she went out and bought a thing, a thing, a license plate.
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Sam:
[3:15]
| Oh, the Aloha plate. You've mentioned this on the show before.
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Ivan:
[3:17]
| Yes. Yeah. So she's got that as a license plate. Okay.
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Sam:
[3:21]
| Cool.
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Ivan:
[3:22]
| I don't know why it came up now, but that was like a.
Anyway, all of a sudden. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been a long time.
|
Sam:
[3:31]
| Just say, you know, our, our agenda for the show, the agenda, we're going to do our usual alternating topics with the first two in this section being a little bit lighter and the ones later on being more newsier.
Heavier, heavier, heavier, weighty, weighty or getting weighty as they don't have to be. I mean, we could pick all I said.
|
Ivan:
[3:57]
| We're getting weightier as I age. I mean, I've actually been around the same weight for about very close, like 10, you know, plus minus.
You know, in a range of 10 pounds for the last like 13, 14, 50, close to 15 years.
|
Sam:
[4:17]
| I'm, I am about 15 pounds down from my all time high, which was like a decade ago or something.
Okay. But, but like still, could you, it's still well above my recommended level.
Let's just put it that way.
|
Ivan:
[4:32]
| I, I, I could stand to gain.
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Sam:
[4:35]
| I'm not getting not. gained, I could stand to lose like another 20 pounds or maybe even more, but you know, well, you know, it is, it is hard, but anyway, it's not what I wanted to talk about. Yes.
So why, why did you start your butt first?
|
Ivan:
[4:53]
| Well, I was going to mention that we had an, I speak into the microphone, speak, I went through, I went through another election, another one, the condo board of directors and you were, it actually, you were crushed.
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Sam:
[5:09]
| You are, you feel devastated. You were pounded into the dust by your competition.
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Ivan:
[5:14]
| I was not, Oh, I did get reelected.
I will say that this one, you know, I've been on this board for.
13 years. OK. We've had some elections that have been contentious, and we've had we've had years where we haven't had anybody you know, submit for the board.
So basically, by default, if nobody submits, then you're rolled over to the next year. Do we've had years that have been like that?
|
Sam:
[5:51]
| Have you ever thought of just like, hey, I'm done with this shit? I'm out.
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Ivan:
[5:56]
| I have, I have to say, you know, I will say that the last few years have been some of the most challenging for a number of reasons.
One thing I will say is the biggest challenge has been the rising prices.
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Sam:
[6:14]
| Of all the services that you need in order to maintain.
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Ivan:
[6:17]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's been insurance has been at the top of the at the top of that.
But, you know, like I'll say that, for example, an example of a service that soared in price, landscape services, OK, landscape services.
The cost of of that is up about 50% since before the pandemic.
Very labor intensive. And I I'm pretty sure that the governor's crackdown um, or at least intimidation of businesses related to immigration has caused them to have difficulty hiring people.
And so, yeah, the cost of that is definitely up about 50% from where it was pre pandemic.
Other things have not gone up like that, say, like electricity is up 20, 30%.
And that's also related a lot to fossil fuel increases that we've had, I think that's been more recent other stuff, you know, security services and we have 24 hour guards.
Uh, it's I'd say that's been up about 20, 25%.
Yeah. I mean, it's, but in the end, I, like I, I formulated a chart or I was looking at where we are at budget wise for the last 13 years and even including the increases that we had to put in this year were up like 30 some odd percent over a 13 year period.
So we're averaging around two and a half percent increase a year.
And during that time, we added some services. So, so our number is not that bad.
I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't consider that, you know, when we've gone up now the last couple of years, the increases have been higher, definitely.
But, but part of that was also that we're doing a major construction project and that major construction project, I will say has been.
That's why, one of the reasons why it's been so difficult, this, this thing has taken about three and a half years right now, and we're not done yet.
And dealing with the contractors is basically not been good for my mood.
|
Sam:
[8:36]
| I believe you've complained about that before.
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Ivan:
[8:39]
| And, but, but we had this, but like I was, I was mentioning, yeah. So, so some years, I will say that the combination of insurance has been the worst look insurance.
I looked this up and in 2019, we paid somewhere around $150,000 a year to insure the entire property.
The estimate for next year that we got, what is it going to be $450,000.
So it's a 300% increase in insurance. And the problem is all you have to add the fact that we have a governor that basically as the insurance markets have been problematic, seizing up and prices have been soaring, you know, he's fighting drag queen shows in Miami Beach.
And so they have not done any serious insurance legislation during that time period.
So I will say I do think that partially partially motivated because a lot of the I think the.
There was a lot of griping about the renovation project even though it was voted upon by the owners i did this thing where we went through a process where.
Ok we want we're gonna change the appearance of the place.
It's on order to do that we did a series of straw polls to see which which designs.
You know, they agreed that they, they found more appealing and then the ones that got top billing, I basically put on a final ballot to everybody.
And it was like, look, basically you've got two choices, a, whether modernize the way it looks now, or B, we go with this completely new, new, new, new look with all the colors.
Which it was basically colors and it was a big change in the colors.
So all the colors would change.
I thought I'm like, you know what? It's so contentious of polarizing, sometimes picking colors.
I'm thinking baby people are just like, yeah, we'll stick with the current one.
We're not going to change. But actually, no, people voted overwhelmingly to make the change.
And I'm like, OK, all right. So we're going to make the change.
Then the one thing that happened is that a lot of people as the place started getting painted, started, Oh my God, complaining and complaining.
And one of the problems that they were doing is, Oh my God, it looks terrible. That's primer.
That's not the color. You're, that's, that's not the way it's looking.
That's your, that's, that's primer. You're complaining about the primer.
And so it was very people. I mean, I mean, some people were belligerent about it.
Some people extremely belligerent. And I And I think that that motivated some people to...
That this election, there were more people running the increases, the, the changes, everything. So more people were on the ballot.
We had five, we have three spots, three incumbents. We had five candidates.
I will say that it was, I wasn't sure of the outcome.
I mean, we reached out to people to see, you know, make sure to rally votes.
Well, I had to canvas, you know, We got to get votes.
And in the end, I did still win. I was like, I was a little bit like, wow, the the the candidate that that one of the candidates that came close to unseating some of us that were on the board, he came pretty I would say he came pretty close, you know, much closer than any than any others.
There was a fifth candidate that didn't seem to have gotten that as many not not that many votes.
I don't think they were actively campaigning. I mean, they didn't even come to the to the meeting. The other person showed up and they were very active.
Like they are. They really wanted a seat on the board and they they came close.
I was like, well, and actually, you know, I don't think there would have been any.
I was thinking about it. I'm like, well, if I lose.
I lose. I do think that a lot of people basically voted, wanted me to stay and voted me back because it's a complex financial situation with all these things happening, we've been involved.
And I think that, you know, we, with my background and experience, you know, I've been leading meetings where I've been going and like.
Carefully explain to people what the challenges are, where we are, how we can get to the future, you know, and and providing detail and going through all the different line items, you know, my it's, the business experience that I that I bring from many years of, Negotiating things is very helpful for this job, okay.
And I will say that I, I also have learned from being on the board and things that I apply at things that I apply at work in terms of negotiating contracts and other things, I will tell you that there is, there is, there, there is definitely, some there because whatever you're going to bid out a complex project and how to properly do that.
I mean, I've, I've done it as most of the time I always did it as a respondent.
So, you know, I'm bidding to be your vendor, whereas over here, I had to go and participate on the other side. Well, how do I go?
And I ask for bids and then have people do bids that are that that are comparable, okay?
Because everybody can take a speck and interpret it however they want.
And it's very important that everybody, you know, you're comparing apples to apples.
So that that was so that was the thing. The bottom line is that, well, I, you know, I think people saw that. I go into, you know, we're very transparent.
Actually, you know, there's been in the news around here about some condo associations doing some shit.
I mean, there was like a couple of eight people arrested for basically taking millions of dollars out of out of the condo association coffers and one of the biggest condo associations south in Miami was crazy people.
I mean, people arrested and going to jail. Okay, using the credit cards from the association just on expenses.
Well, they actually created shell companies to which they were billing stuff from the from the association something basically send themselves checks.
|
Sam:
[15:03]
| Okay, now you're not talking about yourself here.
|
Ivan:
[15:06]
| Now, you know, One thing, no, one thing that unlike those people, which made elections and made people difficult to vote and so forth or whatever, we're pretty transparent with the entire thing, including financials.
I mean, like literally you go to our, you log into our condo board website and you can get that as late a financials as I get to see, okay.
Basically for, I don't know how many years you look, you need to go through them, you've got check registers, receipts, the whole thing, you know, but.
Transparency, I, you know, you, I, you know, I go, you know, we talk a lot about votes and elections and transparency and ethics and all of this stuff, whatnot, right?
I look up practicing what I'm preaching, okay? There is full voter transparency.
There is total transparency to the board when we're making decisions.
Well, you know, it's not a legal requirement that I understand right now to do the meetings on zoom, but since the pandemic, we started them. Yeah.
So, you know, we'll, Hey, you know what meetings on zoom, you want to listen, you can't be there in present.
You want to dial in, you know, go for it, you know, open to questions, make sure to address people's questions and concerns.
And so I try to, you know, that's the way I try to do something.
And I, you know, again, I, I, I got the most votes for reelection, you know, basically, I'm pretty sure because of that, I know that there was one voter that I, that I saw that on one of the ballots, it should be example that there is one person that doesn't like me at all.
|
Sam:
[16:39]
| Only one?
|
Ivan:
[16:40]
| Well, there's one. No, no, no. There's one that specifically hates me, like, you know, very, very much.
And they went on the ballot and voted for three other people on the ballot.
And they actually went through the effort of crossing my name out on the ballot and then putting an arrow and making a note saying, this guy, no. Me, basically.
|
Sam:
[17:02]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[17:03]
| OK. I mean, actively, you know, you usually you vote, you vote for you.
One, they actually actively X me out on the ballot. Okay.
As to not, not him. Okay.
So yes, there is one person that did that.
But one of the things that comes with that is I will say that is a great benefit I think to everybody is, you know, I'm negotiating contracts, including internet here.
So all of a sudden at seven 30, we had an outage, the internet went out.
We're watching TV and all of a sudden the internet goes out and I'm like, what the hell's going on? Well, one of the great things about me being in charge is that, look, I noticed that if it was my own outage, I would not do this. I would call 800 number.
But I verified that it was a community wide outage.
And I'm like, I go and I try to log in to, you know, the stuff at our at our at our office and I see nothing is responding.
Media wide. So find email, send out an email.
Forget about calling a call center. I have to give them credit.
They're very good, very. The company we have is very proactive.
I five minutes later, Mr. Bo, yes, we see that you got our eyes on.
A technician is on their way.
Do you know if we had a power outage or anything? No. Well, listen, we're on our way out.
Please, you know, if you can go and check the equipment hub to see if you see anything, just go over there, whatever.
So I went to check. I don't know what the heck happened.
They're like wondering, was there a power outage? of some kind, I'm like, well, everything's on battery backup, but I don't recall, but everything went out at seven 30.
Before even, I think the technician got here 45 minutes later, it all went back up.
And they were like, not understanding why they notify me, Hey, it's all back up.
And I'm like, but we didn't do anything. I'm like, well, okay, well, our technician is still going to go over there and check because this is weird because everything just didn't go out and it just all of a which is.
Went back in that I mean, something must have happened.
But I couldn't figure out what the hell it was. I know that I went in there and I know that dear to my heart in in where we have all the switches or whatever, there's tons of blinking.
And like, oh, my God. And beeping, Sam, nonstop beeping.
I mean, man, this is I sort of I mean, it's like this is so great.
I mean, I love this place. It's just tons and racks and racks of blinking lights and beeping sounds. It's just, you know, with digital led displays, flashing numbers and random things or whatever.
|
Sam:
[19:40]
| Yes. I know that.
|
Ivan:
[19:41]
| I don't know what that I love that shit. It's great. We can go into a place and there's just racks and racks of these blinking lights, led displays, and all this stuff just wearing, going, moving, beeping. I'm just moving.
|
Sam:
[19:55]
| Did you say moving? I meant I'm not moving, you know, that, that would be a new way of do it.
|
Ivan:
[20:05]
| That would be a new way of computing. Also, you just walk it through the data center.
Yeah, that would be something but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not boy. I didn't mean.
But anyway, yeah. So I don't know. Internet went out and it went back.
I have no explanation. Why the hell? And you went out for 45 minutes.
|
Sam:
[20:25]
| And meanwhile, you got reelected.
|
Ivan:
[20:27]
| Okay, I got reelected.
|
Sam:
[20:29]
| My turn.
|
Ivan:
[20:30]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[20:31]
| Okay. I working on the whole catching up on media so this is going to be another movie.
However, this is one that was added to the list because you watched it, but we have both watched it.
You watched it in May and I watched it in June.
|
Ivan:
[20:50]
| How the hell did we watch something in that close a time period?
|
Sam:
[20:54]
| You know, I'll tell you why.
|
Ivan:
[20:57]
| Why?
|
Sam:
[20:58]
| It was an actual movie theater movie.
|
Ivan:
[21:01]
| Guardians of the Galaxy?
|
Sam:
[21:02]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[21:03]
| Oh!
|
Sam:
[21:04]
| Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 3. So since we have both watched it, we can both give our opinions.
So I will start.
|
Ivan:
[21:14]
| Yes, no, it's your segment, so yes.
|
Sam:
[21:16]
| You know, I have not sort of watched the...
I have not been a completist, like trying to watch all the MCU movies or anything like Alex has actually been going through watching all of the movies and TV shows shows in the MCU, not in release order, but in chronological story order.
|
Ivan:
[21:36]
| Okay, well, that that probably helps to understand that. Yes, because that is what they.
|
Sam:
[21:40]
| So he's been doing that. And so I've watched bits and pieces of lots of them, but I have seen, I had seen both of the previous two guardians of the galaxy movies.
|
Ivan:
[21:49]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[21:49]
| Although it had been a little while, but I had seen them both and I'll just say of the three I like this one the best.
I I this is one of those ones where like, you know every once in a while you see the questions of like, movie series that actually like Get better, you know or where number three is good, you know because it's it's sort of a typical pattern that in many cases like I think number one sort of sets the pattern of a series and as it goes on, they sort of decline in quality.
Every once in a while you have a case where like number two is the best, you know, in this case, I think number three was the best.
Like it, like it, it sort of got me more than some of the others and just without like giving spoilers, spoilers, but the rocket, the sort of genetically modified raccoon thing, who's like a smart ass and blah, blah, blah.
This is really like his backstory.
Yes, it's, it's the backstory of rocket and some things that happen to sort of.
Conclude the story that starts with his backstory.
And I thought that I thought that was really like compelling and stuff in a way that, and I know like the other, the other two had sort of emotional hooks as well.
But for some reason, like the, the story of, you know, how they made rocket out of like a regular raccoon and some other experiments that were going on around that and the whole story of how that it got me like, like emotionally in a way that was more, more substantial than the other two, I mean, the other two had some like father son dynamics and some things with the kid and his mother and blah, blah, blah.
And yeah, okay. Those got me too, but like, I, I felt like it all came together nicely on this one.
So anyway, I'm giving it a thumbs up, thumbs up for this kind of movie, just to be clear, like I give it a thumbs up as well.
|
Ivan:
[23:53]
| I thought it was a very good movie. I'm not really one into these.
Marvel or whatever movies, but I, I like these, I mean, you know, I've enjoyed watching these.
|
Sam:
[24:04]
| They're cute.
|
Ivan:
[24:04]
| You know, they're well made.
|
Sam:
[24:05]
| Music.
|
Ivan:
[24:06]
| Yes, yes, yes. No, the one, the one thing that, that, as you mentioned that your son is watching all this Marvel cinematic universe stuff in chronological order.
Well, I'm sure that that helps because listen, there is a part in this movie.
That's very confusing. If you came from watching the previous movie and this one, okay.
|
Sam:
[24:28]
| Oh, because the stuff that happened in between that's right.
|
Ivan:
[24:32]
| That happened in a movie that wasn't really a guardians of the valley, a galaxy movie.
|
Sam:
[24:38]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[24:38]
| And that they just throw it in there and I'm like, well, what the fuck?
And I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
|
Sam:
[24:45]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[24:45]
| Why is this happening? And I'm like, I have no clue.
I had to basically Google it because I'm just like somebody explain what the fuck is going on?
And then I saw, Oh, well, fuck.
|
Sam:
[24:56]
| Well, yeah. Cause major things happened to some of the characters in between guardians of the galaxy two and three, but in a different Marvel movie, you know, that was not, and they had significant impact on this movie and the characters.
|
Ivan:
[25:12]
| And so, yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:13]
| And there was also, and also there was a TV special that there was a guardian of a galaxy. Yes, that's Halloween.
|
Ivan:
[25:20]
| I saw there was also a Christmas special. Christmas. Yes.
|
Sam:
[25:23]
| Holiday, whatever, you know.
|
Ivan:
[25:24]
| Yeah, whatever it was. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:26]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[25:26]
| Yeah. And so that that that was, you know, look, it was annoying, but not enough to detract me from not liking the movie.
I just found it annoying. I'm like, well, fuck, somebody should have told me I needed to watch this other fucking movie first.
|
Sam:
[25:41]
| Right. But but frankly, even if you had, you probably would have been confused by the other movie because it was a continuation of previous movies.
|
Ivan:
[25:49]
| Oh, some other, yeah, I know, fucking yeah, Jesus. So yeah, so that was the one thing. And I'm not, I don't have the.
I, I don't have the time to invest into all this shit.
I can't, I can't. I don't know. I don't have them. I don't have the patience or the time for this shit.
|
Sam:
[26:08]
| So, well, you know, as Alex has been, well, I Googled it. It's that you Googled it. That helps. I mean, but, you know, they could have had like a little scroll at the beginning.
Like something, you know, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:18]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[26:19]
| Tell you, like since since number two, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Happened.
|
Ivan:
[26:23]
| Yes. He's a high, you know, right. You know, yeah, give me, give me that.
So at least the movie was like self contained contained in a certain way, you know, but, but yeah, but now, you know, I had to figure it out, but it did not detract from from enjoying the movie.
|
Sam:
[26:41]
| Right. It just sort of would a little extra background that would have kept you from like going, well, but yeah.
And they I mean, they are made to be standalone.
There there is background. There is backstory, blah, blah, blah.
But it's meant to be like, they've failed if you can't jump in and enjoy a single movie without watching all of the history.
Because at this point, I mean, there's like 20 some movies. There's a whole bunch of TV shows.
There's all, there's like so much.
|
Ivan:
[27:13]
| Yeah. I will say that considering there's that much. Yeah. I mean, you could watch the movie and it, you know, I think that if you, like you mentioned, this movie could be self-contained if you had, if you hadn't watched any of the previous ones, you wouldn't have these questions.
So you could have just jumped in and watch three and you're like, Oh, okay.
Whatever, you know, but the thing was confusing where I'm going from two to three and I'm like, wait, weren't they together?
What the fuck is going on? Why?
But what is that, but, but yeah, I Googled it and I figured it out.
|
Sam:
[27:55]
| Yeah. And so anyway, I enjoyed it. Thumbs up fun, little superhero.
I was starting to say also, like, as Alex is going through all these, I haven't been sitting with him watching every single one.
Otherwise I'd have a lot more to list here, but I've, I've caught bits and pieces of them and you know, there are a bunch of these, these are fun.
Like the movies are fun. Some of the TV shows are fun. the TV shows have a wide variety.
Like one of the things about the MCU is there are a whole bunch of different styles.
It's like that, you know, some are more comedic, some are more action-y, some are, you know, like mystery thing.
And they're, they're just different, different feel to them.
And the same thing is true of the TV shows as well.
And so like if you're going through them all, it's sort of, And actually, to some degree, it's like, wait, wait, this is a completely different like style and feel and whatever to the last thing I watched, but it gives a little bit of variety and, and you know, most of them are like, oh, okay, I can see that, that, that was, that's sort of fun.
I mean, and just with me dipping in and out of the TV shows and movies as he's watching them and such, you know, and he, and, and to be fair, actually he did this for a couple of months, but then he like decided he was done for now.
So he's, he's off onto other things. He hadn't finished, he hadn't caught up with everything they've released and, but he'd watched enough of it for like a couple of months. And he's like, okay, I'm ready for something else now.
|
Ivan:
[29:25]
| You're ready.
|
Sam:
[29:25]
| But anyway, thumbs up guardians of the galaxy. Volume three.
|
Ivan:
[29:30]
| Thumbs up.
|
Sam:
[29:31]
| Thumbs up.
|
Ivan:
[29:32]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[29:32]
| Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Now I'm doing that little Muppet thing. You know, the ones that look at the TV, the telephone thing.
Yeah. Anyway.
Okay. We'll take a break and then we'll be onto our more serious thingy thingy Boopaloopas lump lump.
That's a different movie. That's a whole other thing. There's a new one of those coming out too.
|
Ivan:
[30:01]
| Yes. I heard. Yes.
|
Sam:
[30:03]
| Yeah. And then, you know, and I heard as well, like if you actually read the original book, the whole Oompa Loompa thing, it's actually just a completely racist thing.
I realize that's, I mean, which they, they like read did some movies and blah, blah, blah.
You get these orange people, but like the original a lot of things that were done like 150, 70, 80, it wasn't that long ago.
It was like the fifties or it was the 1900s.
|
Ivan:
[30:31]
| I called it the other day. I realized that I have to refer it as the 1900s, you know, we're well past that, you know, that, that century, It was in the 1900 Sam the 1900s now we have to refer it as we're growing up.
Remember when we talked about the 1800s Yes.
Yeah, that's how the way that we're having it.
|
Sam:
[30:50]
| We're talking about the 1900s I know I know but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the book was 1964, Yeah, wait.
|
Ivan:
[31:00]
| Yeah shit 60 years ago, Fuckin' 60 years ago, Sam!
|
Sam:
[31:09]
| Yeah, yeah, I hear ya.
|
Ivan:
[31:10]
| So if it would have been in 1985, we're talking about a fuckin', you know, movie from 1925!
And by the way, you would have said, in 1985, holy shit that's old!
|
Sam:
[31:26]
| Yeah, well, yeah, that was the date of the book, not the movie.
Just to be clear. The book was 19th century.
|
Ivan:
[31:33]
| Well, yeah, still, the book was very old, anyway, yeah.
|
Sam:
[31:35]
| And the, let's see, what's the date of, I'll tell you the date of the stupid movie, too, then, since I'm, since we're talking about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the, the, the, the, the film, oh, they named it something, the original, hold on, hold on, there we go.
Media franchise, the first film, the one everybody thinks about like was 1971.
And then there was another really year I was born and then there was, and you too.
Yeah. And me too. It was born. It was born.
Born to Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory came out in between when you were born and when I was born.
|
Ivan:
[32:17]
| Ah, okay.
|
Sam:
[32:18]
| So, and then there was Charlie in the chocolate factory in 2005.
There was a Tom and Jerry version in 2017.
|
Ivan:
[32:26]
| That sounds cool.
|
Sam:
[32:28]
| Yeah. And the new one is coming out next month. It's just called Wonka.
|
Ivan:
[32:33]
| I like Tom and Jerry.
|
Sam:
[32:35]
| Yeah. Shall we take that break?
|
Ivan:
[32:38]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[32:39]
| Yes, we should. Okay. And it's, it's, it's your favorite one. So here we go.
|
Ivan:
[32:45]
| Yeah.
|
Break:
[32:53]
| No, that was bad. Ah. Beep bop bop bop beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. No, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[32:59]
| Beep boop doop doop boop boop boop boop.
|
Break:
[33:07]
| You were on the floor eating the bugs that you found up on my face.
No, what? Bye.
|
Sam:
[33:28]
| Okay, here we go. And it's your turn, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[33:31]
| What's up? My turn.
|
Sam:
[33:33]
| I'm for more newsy topic.
|
Ivan:
[33:35]
| Time for more newsy topics. Well, how about, how about, let's talk about Elon Musk playing Jenga with his businesses, shall we?
|
Sam:
[33:46]
| Okay. So all the Elon Musk stuff. Okay. Cause there, there, there have been a few things going on.
|
Ivan:
[33:52]
| I just think at this point, I'm telling you that's that I was trying to figure out how do I synthesize into one way of saying what the hell is Elon Musk doing?
He's fucking playing Jenga. I mean, with, uh, with all, with everything that he's built, he's just trying to fucking see how, you know, Oh, that, Oh, that kid.
Oh, that, that get, get Twitter bankrupt.
Oh, that didn't get Twitter bankrupt.
That didn't get to, Oh shit.
Well, maybe I finally did it now.
|
Sam:
[34:28]
| But also like when you, when you started saying Jenga made me think you're also bringing in like what he's doing with space X and tests.
|
Ivan:
[34:37]
| Oh yeah. With space X with, with every, oh yeah. That's why I said with all his businesses, I was saying it about Twitter specifically, but it's with all his businesses. Yes.
Yes. Yes. With all of them.
|
Sam:
[34:46]
| With all of them. And he's, is he doing the thing where he's using some of them to help prop up the others and all that kind of intertwined?
|
Ivan:
[34:53]
| Well, one of the things, well, I don't know if he's, I mean, look, he's done some of that in the past.
He did that with solar city as a reason why Tesla owns it. But one of the things that he seems to be needing cash is that all of a sudden.
So you're saying about propping up? Well, how about that? All of a sudden they they said, Hey, you know what, Starlink?
Hey, the revenue is getting pretty good. We're going to do an IPO.
And look, he's not a guy that likes giving up control of shit.
Hell, he wanted to take Tesla public.
So private. The only reason be private. Yes, he wanted to he wanted to take it private back.
And so the only reason that I can fathom that he's thinking of doing this is because and for that matter, same damn thing with Twitter, right?
|
Sam:
[35:44]
| I mean, he was offered a seat on the board and all this other stuff.
Yeah, keeping it public. And he's like, fuck that. I just want it.
|
Ivan:
[35:50]
| No, I want it. Yeah. No, no, no. I want to control it. I want a private. Yes. So. I mean.
It's this entire just sequence of of things.
Right. And, you know, when you talked about the other businesses, you know, yeah, you're right, because things that he how he inserts himself into decisions that he has no business in making decisions about.
For example, the one thing that he did with these with his damn cars that I think has basically one of the reasons why he has pushed away Tesla, He's pushed Tesla further away from being able to have a self-driving car is, this idiotic decision that he made. Well, we're going to get rid of radar.
What? But, but, but, no, no, no, no, no, no, just cameras. Well, radar, well, yeah, radar and well, well, yeah.
|
Sam:
[36:44]
| You turn off everything except cameras to save cost.
|
Ivan:
[36:47]
| You turn off everything except cameras. And you're like, everybody that knows about this is like, are you out of your mind? And you can't, that makes no sense.
Think about an airplane, okay, right?
Oh, we'll just use cameras, not radar.
How would that ever work? It would never work.
The radar can see through clouds, can see through things, it can see when it's not, your cameras are blocked, you fucking idiot.
You want fucking radar. There is no technical fucking reason to believe that only visual is good!
|
Sam:
[37:24]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[37:24]
| I mean- And only a jackass like him, who keeps thinking he is smarter than everybody else, would insert himself into such a fucking technical decision and, oh, yank all the radar off the cars, and oh, by the way, disable it on the old ones too.
|
Sam:
[37:42]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[37:44]
| And you're like, what?
You know, you know, they had that starship fiasco.
|
Sam:
[37:52]
| They're about they're about to do the next with that launch.
|
Ivan:
[37:54]
| They're they're they're they're trying to do it again. Yeah, but but they had, you know, that that fiasco cost a bundle.
OK, as well. And it was all because, oh, I know how to do better.
Oh, you know, water, you know, this, you know, the whatchamacallit, the the the the water blasts that they do in order to get down in the sound and whatever.
We don't need that shit. it.
Although scientists, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
|
Sam:
[38:22]
| Like, and specifically, like, it's, it's dismissing the decades of learning that already exist.
And that's a theme in Twitter, too. Like, when people first started launching rockets, they didn't know this shit, either. There was lots of trial and error.
And over time, people figured out what you need to do.
Same with like social media, like people have figured out like a whole lot of things on moderation and how you do it and how you don't do it and pros and cons and blah, blah, blah.
And, and, you know, he, his, his approach is like, I don't care what anybody's done in the past, what anybody thinks they have learned.
I know better and I'm going to start over and do it my way.
|
Ivan:
[39:05]
| Well, and the other thing is how to be a fucking chief executive of any fucking company, because if there's one thing that people learned over decades, what delegate is that anything not well aside from no no about communication is that you know what, You fucking for the most part, what filtered communication of what the fuck, you are communicating to the marketplace.
|
Sam:
[39:32]
| You want to be very careful and make sure that you have thought through how people can misinterpret you're putting your best foot forward.
You're making sure that like, you're, you're just being thoughtful about it.
|
Ivan:
[39:50]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[39:51]
| I know, I know that's such a shocking thing, but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[39:56]
| And people over decades learned that that was, you know, important.
Okay. You did not see Steve Jobs going around, you know, regularly having people collect his thoughts, you know, and say things.
You know why? Because probably if you took a lot of those and snippets, you know, like as happens with people, including myself, if I would do that, I mean, that would sound like, I mean, like a raving lunatic and nobody would want to do business with me.
So you, you are smart enough to say, you know what, no, I don't want them to take like the meaning I had a couple of weeks ago where I told a vendor, okay, that I was so furious and I told them, you know, to go to hell.
That's not, you know, I don't want that in, in, in, in public consumption.
Okay. No, I, you know, if I'm the leader, anything that you say weighs more, it weighs more when, when you deride, you know, deride something and your employees probably did it, man, that weighs on people a ton.
Okay. When you go to an office and you don't say hi to people that has weight, if you only say hi to certain people that has an impact, all those fucking things have an impact on your workforce, on your employees.
And it's a fucking reason why this guy can't keep any fucking employees around because not, I mean, I have not seen a tech executive with the kind of fucking turnover that he has at top level jobs at all the places that he works at now, you know, well, but he's made a lot of money.
He sold a lot of cars. He's done a lot of things yet. No, no, I get that. And you know, there it isn't that he is.
Completely stupid. Okay. But he's also been, but you know, also sometimes making money and being lucky doesn't mean, you know, there's a lot of luck involved.
|
Sam:
[42:09]
| And in Elon's case, it's also a bunch of take things that others have started and, and, you know, do a little marketing on top of it, take a little, you know, but it's, it's fundamentally not like he has not been the mastermind behind any of these of any of none of these of any of these like he has always taken something from other people the things that he's had ideas about for the most part of failed you know yep and part of what he's doing with Twitter he's trying to break I mean the whole X thing was like this is the thing I wanted to do thing he wanted 20 years ago well well let me let me just say that, you know, what going, I just, it's just unfathomable to me that how, if, if this was the CEO of any other publicly traded company, you know, because he is a CEO of Tesla, if this, but he was a CEO of any other publicly traded company, like 90 plus percent of them, he would have been fired already.
|
Ivan:
[43:17]
| The board would have already had a meeting and would have had him out on like, they just did the Sam Altman today for that's right.
What what's I basically, apparently he was lying to the board.
|
Sam:
[43:29]
| Yeah, for what's the name of the company? It's I something that chat to open open AI. There it is.
But yeah, so let's get specific on Elon for a second, like on what what the current Twitter situation is.
|
Ivan:
[43:44]
| And, look, the current situation is that he has been doubling and tripling down on being an anti-Semite online!
|
Sam:
[43:54]
| Let me just say, this isn't all new. I mean, he's been a jackass online forever.
He's said things that clearly seemed racist, anti-Semitic, whatever, before.
But this time around, like, apparently, like he, somebody tweeted something that was basically this whole, you know, Jews hate whites and are orchestrating a takeover of the country by non-whites, in order to meet their secret agenda or something like that.
Somebody tweeted some nonsense like that.
And he responds with, you're absolutely right. I forget the exact words you said, but they were something like you say the truth or something like that. And this time.
A whole bunch of companies are saying, okay, we're pulling our ads now.
|
Ivan:
[44:52]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[44:53]
| And, you know, a whole bunch of companies pulled their stuff when he first took over, but a lot of them came back.
Some of them stayed the whole time. I think Apple was one of the ones that paused before and now they're paused again.
But last time they eventually came back, but there's a whole bunch of big advertisers have said, we're not doing this anymore.
Some of them have said it said permanently. Some of them have just said for now, but what, you know, it's a small number of companies, but they're big companies.
They're prominent companies.
It's right before the big holiday season where a bunch of them were probably going to do quite a bit of advertising.
|
Ivan:
[45:35]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[45:36]
| What's, what's your take on the, the impact of this?
I've, I mean, I've seen some people post like, okay, this is Finally, the end of Twitter, I feel like it's not that simple.
|
Ivan:
[45:49]
| Well, I'm going to say that in the last month, I have seen an accelerated exodus from Twitter, even before this.
I'm not. Listen, when threads launched at first, a lot of people jammed in, didn't know exactly what to do. Then a whole bunch of people stopped and they went back. Some people stayed.
|
Sam:
[46:10]
| Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for threads to federate with Mastodon, but, you know.
|
Ivan:
[46:15]
| They actually, this week, published a document explaining how they are doing that exactly. Timetable?
|
Sam:
[46:21]
| Timetable?
|
Ivan:
[46:21]
| And...
Some time in the next, I think it said six months.
Anyway, so it's not that far, not that far off, but like before that they said, yeah, but that they said, you know, they actually went and released some specific information, technical information about how it's going to work, how it's going to do it, when, et cetera, and so forth.
|
Sam:
[46:42]
| Oh, I checked in occasionally on blue sky. I check in occasionally on threads, but I haven't built a habit around either of those and I haven't engaged with either of them. I'm sort of read only.
|
Ivan:
[46:53]
| But here's the one thing that I've noticed, especially that's accelerator or last couple of months, a lot of the major ones that I, you know, kind of like missed from Twitter that had not come over to mastodon, all of a sudden now are all are on threads and are heavily into threads.
And a lot of people just that are that are in there, which is basically said, Yep, we're completely done at Twitter.
We're here now. And that's it.
And we're here to stay. And that number has accelerated greatly recently.
Look, you say, oh, is this the end of Twitter?
I think this might, I'll tell you why. Well, at least it's going to, I mean, when people say the end of Twitter, no, okay. The end of Twitter as we know it.
Okay. Not doesn't mean that the company's going to fold because I'm like, here's the issue, he's accelerated.
|
Sam:
[47:44]
| Which, and you can't log on to X anymore.
|
Ivan:
[47:47]
| Well, look, the big switch to which was it to, to, oh God, MySpace didn't happen until like about a decade after they were irrelevant.
|
Sam:
[47:57]
| Isn't it still on? I thought they still existed.
|
Ivan:
[47:59]
| I, I, I think they're, I think it's gone. I think it's finally gone.
|
Sam:
[48:03]
| Okay. I'm checking.
|
Ivan:
[48:05]
| Are we checking now?
|
Sam:
[48:06]
| It's still there.
|
Ivan:
[48:09]
| Okay. Are you sure it's not?
|
Sam:
[48:11]
| Well, you know, people buy brands and they do this and they do that.
|
Ivan:
[48:15]
| Right, right, right. It's not, it's not the original site. Let's see.
Peak years to climb and sail.
Okay. I guess it's still now owned by. So how about.
|
Sam:
[48:26]
| Weekly.
|
Ivan:
[48:27]
| Yeah. Something like that. How about let's see. Hold on.
|
Sam:
[48:29]
| I know what you mean, though. Like there is a long decline for things like.
|
Ivan:
[48:33]
| Okay. Okay. So, so, or could.
|
Sam:
[48:35]
| Okay. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[48:36]
| For example, it became invisible, like in around 2009 and then the, it, it, it really didn't shut down until 2014.
|
Sam:
[48:47]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[48:48]
| So it was about five years later. Okay. So that's the thing, you know, you know, but they were already irrelevant by 2010.
|
Sam:
[48:56]
| And so that when people, yes, like when people talk about this, there are I mean, there are a few different scenarios.
One is it's a private company. Elon could actually just say, OK, I'm turning the servers off. We're done.
Like he could give no notice, go in himself to the server rack and just start pulling cords out.
|
Ivan:
[49:16]
| And that and that would be, you know, on it would be completely.
|
Sam:
[49:19]
| That's one possibility.
|
Ivan:
[49:21]
| The other, he would just say, I'm done with this shit. I got no more use for this. I'm done. I'm going to threads. Bye.
|
Sam:
[49:28]
| Exactly. I mean, but another, another thing is like they could declare bankruptcy, but reorganize and keep like something going on, but you have this sort of slow decline, continuing usage and decline in relevance over a long period of time.
Elon could do that and then sell it. And then, you know, like we were talking about with my space being owned by entertainment weekly, you could end up in that kind of situation where it's just a zombie brand.
Yeah, there are all kinds of things you could do, or, you know, it's, it just keeps chugging along for a long time, you know, and here's something I just double-checked, AltaVista no longer works. Oh, yep.
|
Ivan:
[50:13]
| That was dead. That was totally dead.
|
Sam:
[50:16]
| I have to go there now. It just takes you to Yahoo.
|
Ivan:
[50:19]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[50:20]
| Which, which is also a surprising that it still exists kind of thing, but, you know, sorry.
|
Ivan:
[50:29]
| I mean, that's, I mean, that, that, I think you just hit, that's a perfect example.
Yahoo, right? I mean, Yahoo has been dead really for like about a decade.
I mean, nobody gives a shit who is giving a shit about Yahoo.
I mean, what's the last time you purposely went, I'm going to yahoo.com and I'm going to search for something. I mean, that hasn't happened since the since the what what the fuck do I call the other decade? The odds, the odds.
|
Sam:
[50:54]
| Uh-huh.
|
Ivan:
[50:56]
| Yeah, I mean, that hasn't happened since then.
So what I but but I do think that the problem that he's got right now is, all these services depend on a critical mass of people being there and then you having a critical mass of advertisers that are also paying the bills as well.
|
Sam:
[51:15]
| And, and so, yeah, maybe the servers, I just want to say not, it's a critical mass of people, but also a critical mass of people engaging in a compelling way that, that, you know, like the advertisers don't want to be there if it's just accessible.
|
Ivan:
[51:37]
| And that's what started happening. I mean, it's like all of a sudden IBM and all of these finally started realizing, Hey, I'm putting an ad and it's right beside some neo-nazi shit.
Well, I don't want this crap This is not good, And it's happening more and more and more and more and so if you're losing any quality content at all And all you've got is a whole bunch of fucking neo-nazis and and, you know on the fucking place Well, if I'm sorry, how how enjoyable can it be?
Neo-nazi gathering. I mean, think about it, right?
|
Sam:
[52:14]
| Well, it depends if you're a neo-nazi yourself.
|
Ivan:
[52:15]
| Even if you are a neo-nazi, I mean, really.
|
Sam:
[52:20]
| Well, people have pointed out many times, and this is, Truth Social is failing too, like Gab and all of these.
The thing is, those type of people, They don't want to just talk to themselves. They want to be aggravating the liberals.
You know, they, they want to be, they want to be owning the libs.
They want to be seeing that what they're saying makes people mad.
|
Ivan:
[52:46]
| Hey, is there, Hey, is there, you know, you know, trade.
And so if there isn't anybody to hate, I'm just with a whole bunch of neo-Nazis, who are all just agreeing with each other.
And let's be clear about it. Like I've said again, how enjoyable can a fucking neo-Nazi meeting be?
I mean, I'm thinking, listen, are neo-Nazis, when you see them together, are they happy? Is that?
|
Sam:
[53:12]
| You know, what comes to my head is that picture of that guy with the tiki torch screaming, right? You know?
|
Ivan:
[53:20]
| Exactly. That is not happiness.
OK, so my whole thing is the marketing of these folks. It's a marketing of hate.
The reality is that, yes, you've got a whole bunch of angry people.
But the reality is that if you're going to go pick where the fuck you want to be, oh, do I want to be with the angry torch bearing people?
Well, some people will say that to that. Yes. But most people are like, no, I want to go see somebody sharing, you know, puppy memes and, you know, Seinfeld jokes.
And you know, you know, dumb dad jokes.
I mean, being with a whole bunch of angry people has really, really sucked.
|
Sam:
[54:06]
| So just from the immediate point of view with a bunch of big name, a bunch of big name advertisers pulling out, is there going to be like an immediate financial crunch like tomorrow?
Or does this when does this when does this actually hit anything?
When does this feel right away?
|
Ivan:
[54:24]
| I say if I saw an acceleration of people say, of big companies saying no, no, no, no, no.
I'd say give it six months. I mean, he's going to have to they're going to have to make some difficult decisions.
And here's the other thing. I don't know how long Linda Yaccarino has the current because the current CEO, because it's like, I mean, really, she is.
I mean, the best the best analogy is she is really Leslie Nielsen in the naked gun in front of the fireworks factory saying nothing to see here, please disperse.
You know, I mean, it's ridiculous.
Oh, we have no place for we are have no tolerance for Nazism and racism here while she's got her boss standing right behind her in a fucking KKK suit.
|
Sam:
[55:26]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[55:28]
| It's ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[55:33]
| And what do you think, like, I'm plumbing this a little bit deeper into this, I mean, it's been a while since we talked about Twitter and Elon and all this kind of stuff.
There are a lot of folks who think that the implosion of Twitter is actually what Elon wanted all along, that he wasn't really wanting to like make money off this, but he wanted to take what was a useful town square for all kinds of people he didn't like and destroy it.
Now, now, I think that he thought, which by the way, if that's what he really wanted, he could have just pulled the plug right after he bought it.
|
Ivan:
[56:16]
| Correct. I think that he really thought that I'm in the right.
You know, I'm going to make this place better.
|
Sam:
[56:25]
| And he's a genius and he knows how to make it run the right way.
|
Ivan:
[56:28]
| Exactly. Absolutely. And I'm going to make more money at it.
Because I was going to turn into the X app where you're going to trust me with your money, and I don't know what other things that I'm like, wait a minute, are you fucking kidding me?
You think I'm going he wants to do a financial app? You think I'm going to now trust him with my money deposited at his fucking place? You're out of your mind.
|
Sam:
[56:56]
| And he wants everything else, too. He wants it to be YouTube.
He wants it to be shopping. He wants it to search.
|
Ivan:
[57:02]
| Yeah, every AI, everything, all the all app. It's going to do everything.
I.
|
Sam:
[57:13]
| I mean, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[57:15]
| I look, he doesn't have the problem. But his problem is that too, he's lost so many engineering resources.
And I mean, most people, so many got fired that he's toxic.
So few quality people want to actually go work at Twitter right now.
I mean, they call you and say, Hey, I got a job opportunity at Twitter.
What, what, what, what, what did you say?
|
Sam:
[57:41]
| Even imagine like, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[57:44]
| Even if you're an Elon, I'm going to offer you $5 million or $5 million in stock to join us.
I'm like, it's not going to be a cash.
|
Sam:
[57:55]
| Yeah. I was going to say the only way that I would go for that is if it was upfront in cash, right?
|
Ivan:
[58:01]
| Yeah, exactly. I want to see the wire hit my bank and then we're good. Okay.
|
Sam:
[58:07]
| You know, then I'll then I'll go for a week and quit, you know, exactly, you know No, I mean, I can't imagine anybody, Wanting to go into that situation right now I mean that I mean, I know that there are Elon fanboys who would do that but you know given the entire history of the time since he took over it is just I, mean there I have not heard a single report of of people enjoying working there, you know, not one.
|
Ivan:
[58:41]
| I'm sure that one thing that he could do is that he could subcontract, you know, outside companies to do development work in order to build some of this stuff.
But here's a problem. You need money to do that.
OK, if that's your route, you want to like outsource the development.
Great. OK, do it. But you need some you need some bucks And people are not going to do it just for free.
And so so that's also an issue, especially if revenue is driving down and and he's having more cash demands.
And so it's it's the problem is that he's listen, but he started the company down this vicious spiral downward and most of these companies.
It's so rare that any of these after day start going down like this. Then they come back!
|
Sam:
[59:35]
| Right. I mean, the, the exceptions are notable enough that people study them. Yeah.
I mean, you know, you, you have the, the Apple turnaround when jobs came back, right.
You know, and maybe a handful of other examples, but that's the one that comes to mind immediately, but it's rare.
|
Ivan:
[59:55]
| Like, you know, I'm thinking more because hardware companies sometimes do go through, through cycles and products or whatever, you know, like the examples we were talking about before my space, Yahoo, AOL, when those go jump the shark, man, they never come back.
|
Sam:
[1:00:14]
| They're done. And especially these kinds of things that are, have a cultural component as well, because they go somewhere else and built the culture back and then you're like, I'm not leaving.
It's also about what's cool, right? Like once you're not cool anymore, I mean, even, you know, I mean, obviously Facebook is still big and meta has a thing going, but it stopped being the cool place to go a long time ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:44]
| It stopped being, but the one thing is that the company built other things and also their decline, it, they, they haven't like really like declined.
It's just not maybe the cool place, but a lot of people still use it.
|
Sam:
[1:00:59]
| Yeah. Okay. There are a couple of things that their demographics have changed.
Yes, yes, they're not like, but even young people who don't use Facebook as their primary place, go there because their parents and grandparents are there, right? Exactly.
But it's not that it's not the cool place. It's not where they like are spending their attention, but they still have an account.
Right now, they still have an account, you know, but that, but for the most part, Once you start.
That process of no longer being the cool place, no longer being what's driving attention, et cetera.
And in Twitter's case, like what they were known for was they were like, I mean, they were known for other things too, but in my world anyway, they were the dynamic engine behind the daily news cycle.
Right, you know because all of the all of the reporters were on there all of them were sharing stories You could you could be if you are following the right people on Twitter, You would have a 24 to 48 hour head start on what was gonna be in the news in the major media Yeah a couple days later because you could see it bubbling up and people starting to talk about it and that that goes for like, major news stories, but also stupid little memes of like, oh, this cute little thing happened over here.
And then a few days later, people are talking about it on there.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:37]
| You know, I'm going to give you an example of a company that's also jumped the shark like this.
And it and there have been struggling and trying to stay, but they're but they're declining. And they they can't.
I don't think they've been able to arrest it. Snapchat, for example.
You know, look, Snapchat soared in one moment. And then... I got there and then...
There... Okay, we're...
We flattened out and we can't we we can't do anything. A lot of people still use it, especially younger people I've seen.
But but it got to a point where it it was like a grew.
And then all of a sudden, people are like, OK, I'm done with it.
|
Sam:
[1:03:18]
| Well, let's move on. And that and that's frankly like a lot of these things that are sort of trendy have that boom and bust.
Yeah, but it's not a boom and bust cycle. It's a boom, a bust and a bomb.
Done and you're done, you're done.
And, and there's a lot of that. Like there was, I mean, I know you're still doing it, but like wordle as an example, that is the kind of thing that it hit. It hit hard.
People got very excited about it. Everybody was talking about it for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months.
The New York times paid a crap load of money to the developer who did it, who got out, got it at just the right time.
He did this one thing and then usage peaked and is now a trivial fraction of what it was there, there are various other sort of games that went through that cycle in the past that the people who made angry birds went through that kind of cycle where they have one hit game and then they've had trouble.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:14]
| And I think, Oh, Oh, he's reminded me one farm.
|
Sam:
[1:04:17]
| Farmville. Okay. Farmville.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:19]
| Oh my God. Farmville.
|
Sam:
[1:04:23]
| And yes. Yes. And so, which is different, like, for like some of these physical things, like, you know, we had like, you think of like something like Sears, they were, they were in decline for decades, decades, forever. I mean, they're still around, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:04:43]
| Are they, or did they, there's very few stores left, right.
|
Sam:
[1:04:48]
| And, and Kmart was the same way. Those kinds of things, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:04:52]
| I mean, yeah. There are some, they, you know, they are, they are almost.
Completely out of business. They are Sears is down to 12 stores, 12 stores.
|
Sam:
[1:05:07]
| And, you know, they were huge, huge.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:12]
| They were huge. They were I mean, they were the biggest retailer in the U.S., you know, before Wal-Mart took took the credit.
|
Sam:
[1:05:19]
| It took for ever for them to die. Right.
And so and the physical things have an advantage with that. Like the the digital properties, especially I think social media can go south a lot faster.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:35]
| Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because, you know, you have all these brick and mortar stores and locations.
I mean, I'll tell you that one of the locations that for whatever the hell reason still clings out at the there.
I said that there are 12 locations still open.
The Puerto Rico store is one of them.
|
Sam:
[1:05:53]
| Hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:54]
| Okay. For whatever the hell damn reason. But, you know, they are, they are down to that, but, you know, you want to talk about becoming irrelevant, right? You know, it's great.
|
Sam:
[1:06:04]
| I was starting to point to that and then I got.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:07]
| Yeah, because how did it become irrelevant? Because, you know, Sears was Amazon before Amazon existed.
And the crazy thing is how long is the catalog business?
And the crazy thing is that somebody at corporate decided, it, eh, that business sucks.
We're going to shut it down.
|
Sam:
[1:06:31]
| It boggles the mind that, you know, add that person and said, Hey, let's put this catalog online.
They could have reinvented the whole business.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:45]
| Yeah, but but you know, look, and it takes leadership to do that. Look, look at Netflix.
I mean, like Netflix at first tried to do this a little too early.
OK, you know where they were going to say, well, we're dumping the DVD business.
We're going online. And people said, well, wait a minute. Nobody is online yet. Are you crazy?
Well, the idea was right. It's just the timing was a little bit off.
But then eventually it did happen.
Okay, they just shut down the DVD business finally a few weeks ago, actually, it was, but, but, but that day did it, they, they saw what the next thing was, and they started playing there as the other one, you know, declined, I'm going to say that I think that made a, to a certain extent has played that pretty well with a lot of their properties in terms of, Hey, okay, Facebook is kind of flattened out. So we bought Instagram.
I mean, hell, I can't remember which company had the shot at, but, oh, it was, it was Twitter itself.
Twitter actually had tried to buy Instagram. And for some reason, they didn't.
And Facebook did not think about different fortunes. OK, that would have happened if that if that transaction would have gone through.
OK, so, you know, they were like, no, they got an Instagram threads. What's up?
Yeah. OK, you're going into the other ones. But honestly, Twitter had been stuck, you know, they weren't doing terrible, but they weren't doing gangbusters either.
|
Sam:
[1:08:18]
| Well, and I think, and this ties to like one of my recurring themes is the expectation of exponential growth forever is ridiculous.
And the fact that there's the culture built up that if you're not growing exponentially, your failure, it just automatically like screws up all kinds of these businesses.
And I've said, Oh, totally look, 100%.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:43]
| I agree.
|
Sam:
[1:08:44]
| I've specifically said on Twitter a long time ago, that if they had been content to just be a medium sized utility business for a niche audience, who's into that kind of stuff, and just got there and then doubled down on just, hey, make that experience really good for the power users who love your service.
They'd still be doing fine.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:08]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:09:08]
| Like they'll be doing fun now. Would they be all of these goals of like, Oh, we're going to take on Facebook.
We're going to, we're going to, or what are you on is doing now of like, I want to be the everything store, blah, blah, blah, no, just be content being a small, medium, small to medium sized business with that's not growing particularly that just sort of chugs along doing its thing, but we're profitable.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:33]
| We're doing okay. You know, we're doing good. And we're, you know, yeah. I think and they were growing.
The thing is, it was the expectations because their stock market cap had implications of it growing a lot faster than it did, which is what the pressure was.
Look, I still I go back to when I joined HPE in late nineties.
HPE was growing. HPE was profitable.
And, you know, investors and people were like ripping the company to shreds because it wasn't growing as fast as others When, you know, three years later, it turns out a lot of those other fat, supposedly fast growing companies were cooking the books, right?
But they're either either cooking the books or they were making sales that were bullshit that then soured and then were a disaster.
And you know, HP was forced to make a gazillion stupid changes, including firing its executives and bringing in fucking idiot Carleaf arena from one of these fucking like, you know, smoke and mirrors companies in order to supposedly try to juice the company because we needed this when it was just all bullshit.
It was all there.
Oh, oh, oh, bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:10:45]
| There should be no shame in being a mature, stable business and growing like what?
|
Ivan:
[1:10:52]
| Oh, my God. Oh, we're only we grew 8% this year. Oh, my God.
We're awful. The fuck is fucking, you know, what the hell's wrong with 40 billion? We're there.
We're a $40 billion company. We grew 10% here.
So you don't want the funniest thing about all of this is that one of the things that all those investors forced HP to do was to spin off the original business that HB started in, which was the test and measurement semiconductor manufacturing.
It was because that's where HB started not making computers or printers or any of that.
They started, you know, with the test and measurement business oscilloscopes.
And right now that company still exists.
It's called Agilent. They've been around. They got spun off.
It's still around. Honestly, it really they should fucking like go to HP and say, Hey, give me the fucking name back because you're not HP.
We're HP. By the way, right now the market cap of that company is more than Hewlett Packard that exists right now at HP Enterprise combined.
|
Sam:
[1:12:05]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:07]
| Because they were, this was, you know, microchip design, microchip testing, all this shit that you need for fabs, the testing, all of this fucking stuff that is you know, the.
But they were like back then that business is boring.
It's not, you know, it's not sexy. We want to compete with Sun.
Fuck, you know, Sun now where they come from, where they we own them.
Where I work right now, you know, unfortunately, they basically they got consumed.
I mean, because they literally almost went out of business.
|
Sam:
[1:12:45]
| So anyway, just to wrap up Twitter again, we got the advertising, Exodus, we've got more people leaving, like I've seen over, since this, since Elon's comments, seen a number of high profile people who are just like, that's the last straw. I'm out.
And so we'll continue to walk.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:06]
| You know what? The one thing that, that really pisses me off is that it took all these people that long because it didn't take me this fucking long.
|
Sam:
[1:13:14]
| You know, I, I mean, Well, and there's still a lot of high profile people will still be here after this. Like there's a lot of momentum there.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:24]
| My thing is, I don't understand why so many people were blind to fucking Elon Musk, because I have been, let's be clear about this, on this podcast, I have not, I have been an Elon Musk detractor for a long time.
I think that's safe to say, right?
|
Sam:
[1:13:46]
| Yeah. I mean, I've been consistent on this, that I thought this guy- I remember there were times when he was sort of in his cool stages.
He was doing a lot of, SpaceX was doing some cool stuff, Tesla was doing some cool stuff.
We did say some positive things about him, but it was always sort of tempered with, yeah, but he's a little crazy.
But I think we've learned over the last couple years just how crazy.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:12]
| No, but I think also the thing is that, look.
All of the shit, like you mentioned, that he's been doing. I don't understand.
I mean, this was evident, like right from the start. I mean, I'm sorry. The last straw, I was like kind of like gritting my teeth a little bit about it, because I know, you know, we knew about the you know, look, I'm saying the tractor and all this shit like years back when he called that guy the the pedophile, how he sank people after anybody that said bad things about Tesla online.
And he basically got people to just pillory and attack these people and enabled all these trolls all the damn time that we're talking about.
And of course, calling himself all the time as well and trolling himself all the time and like attacking and destroying people, people, you know, with with baseless accusations and bullshit.
And so, I mean, I had been, you know, you know, he was on my shit list the entire time is one of the reasons why I look, you know, I like like efficient cars, I fucking refused to buy one of his cars, period.
I was like, I look, I love, I want the environment, whatever.
I'm like, I'm going to wait for somebody else to build electric, but build some kind of like efficient electric car. I like I'm not buying his shit, period.
I mean, end the story. And that's it. And I'm still the thing is that when he bought Twitter.
The last day that I was on Twitter, And I don't understand how people that this was in the last straw is that that fucking day that he said that he was like Made this joke about his pronouns being prosecute Fauci Hmm, and I'm sorry.
I'm like, you know what what the fuck else you need?
|
Sam:
[1:15:55]
| What the fuck else that people need damn it Well, I mean the the logic that people have are that you know, hey, this is where my community is This is where I make money off this platform.
I use, I have, I can't just go cold turkey on it because this is how I get my stuff out and the audience isn't in these other places.
And this is the, this is the logic people are doing. And even now, like I fully expect, like, you know, if, if I go watch.
News networks tomorrow, they're still going to be talking about like, go, go find me on, on X, you know, it's not going to disappear.
Like, but, and, and this is the point I was trying to make earlier as well.
Like before this, Twitter was known as the place that drives the news cycle that has already largely disappeared.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:51]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:16:52]
| Like you'll occasionally, they'll still occasionally be somebody tweeted this or somebody tweeted that or whatever.
And they still usually call them tweets, not Xs or shits or whatever they're calling them.
Shitter. But, but the degree to which that, I mean, it just isn't the same anymore, where you can sort of tell that there's this, there's this vibrant community of that is influencing what the, the conversation is every day.
And that's what it used to be. It's not, that's already gone or mostly gone and people are just hanging onto little remnants here or there.
And it may well be that this decline takes a long, long time, but it's already a shadow of what it once was.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:40]
| Look, I, I have said to all those people, not that I go on there anymore to experience it myself, but, but, but I, I, I have said of all those people, well, my community is still here and, you know, it's so hard to go whatever.
And I'm just like, I mean, you're enabling a.
A fucking racist troll just because you want to still see some of your friends, really?
And you make a couple of bucks.
It's just, they, they, I said it before saying, again, you should be ashamed of yourself. Sorry.
|
Sam:
[1:18:21]
| It's just, there's some point that you have to just, you know, at the S at the same time, one thing I've seen people talk about on mastodon is there are a few people who are coming in and say, and, you know, Hey, I'm here.
I've, I finally left Twitter, blah, blah, blah.
And people are quote unquote, welcoming them by yelling at them for how long it took them to leave Twitter.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:44]
| Oh, fucking people get a life, people know. What I will say is that I OK.
I've said this here about it, that I think it took them that long, but I don't I'm not going to.
I think it's very, very counterproductive to go on. Just yell.
|
Sam:
[1:19:01]
| Yeah, somebody comes in and says, Hey, I'm joining Mastodon.
I'm giving it a try or threads or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:07]
| I'm like, Hey, welcome.
|
Sam:
[1:19:08]
| As opposed to took you long enough, jackass.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:13]
| Look, if it was a friend of mine, I would say that because, you know, I, that's how I, my friends are.
The other day I went, I saw a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in a few weeks and all of a sudden the first thing he did is slap me in the face.
Okay. So yes, but that's, that's that. Okay. But that's, that's me and my friends, that, that story, I actually thought it was cute.
I was like, Oh, there you go. You know, he, he, he still loves me. So there you go.
But you know, not to random people now, right.
|
Sam:
[1:19:37]
| Okay. Okay. So we've gone long enough that I don't think I'm going to do a second one in this segment.
Oh, Holy shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:47]
| We will think we could talk out our ass.
|
Sam:
[1:19:50]
| We were, let's take a break and then we will come back and I will do a topic and I will just preview right now where as it's just going to be a combination of all the sort of political things that have happened, politics, politics.
Yeah. We got a number of events that have happened. And so we'll just go through a bunch of them in and chat. Okay.
After this. Oh, and this is a wiki of the day. Enjoy.
If it fucking works, you know, I'm going to actually submit a ticket to these Riverside people about this. This has happened too often.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:26]
| We can get a day. Hi. Going to imitate the wiki of today.
Podcast. It's cute. It's great. and it's short.
We provide information.
Favorite wiki of today. Today's topic is...
|
Sam:
[1:20:48]
| Okay. Okay. Let me try just doing it this way and then I'll fix it in post.
Here we go. See if we can do this.
Go on, go on.
|
Break:
[1:20:58]
| Do do do. Hello, this is Sally Standard.
I'm here to let you know about Sam the Curmudgeon's other podcasts, the Wiki of the Day podcasts.
Wiki of the Day comes in three varieties, popular, random, and featured.
Each highlights a new Wikipedia article each day, they just pick the articles differently.
This week on Popular Wiki of the Day, you would have heard this summary from Adam Webb. Madame Webb, Cassandra Webb, is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.
She first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man No. 210, published November 1980.
And was created by writer Denny O'Neill and artist John Romita Jr.
She is usually depicted as a supporting character in the Spider-Man comic book, series, where she appears as an elderly woman with myasthenia gravis, connected to a life support system resembling a spider web.
Madame Web is a clairvoyant and precognitive mutant who first appears to help Spider-Man find a kidnapping victim.
She is not one of the mutants that lost their power during the Decimation storyline.
In Grim Hunt, she is attacked by Sarah and Anna Kravinoff, who kills her, but before she died she was able to pass her powers of precognition as well as her blindness on to Julia Carpenter, who becomes the next Madame Web.
Webb is consequently resurrected by Ben Reilly, before succumbing to the carrion virus.
Webb is the grandmother of the fourth Spider-Woman, Charlotte Witter.
Madame Webb has appeared in or served as inspiration for several Spider-Man-related media.
Rachel Dratch voices C. Webber, a character loosely based on Madame Webb, in Spider-Man — Across the Spider-Verse, 2023, while Dakota Johnson will portray an original incarnation named Cassie Webb in an upcoming self-titled film.
That's all there is to it. See? Fun, entertaining, educational.
In short. Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on your podcast playing software of choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com, to check out our archives.
Now back to curmudgeon's corner. Do do do.
|
Sam:
[1:23:10]
| Know, you know, your, your imitation Yvonne was actually pretty good.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:14]
| Thank you.
|
Sam:
[1:23:15]
| You know, you had the, it's, it's, it's short and moist or whatever it says at the end and you know, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:22]
| There you go. Not too bad. There we go.
|
Sam:
[1:23:24]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:25]
| We get enough.
|
Sam:
[1:23:27]
| And now you have learned about a character in Spider-Man comics.
I had never heard of this character before, to be honest.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:40]
| Hey, I wasn't a big spy. I wasn't a Spider-Man guy.
|
Sam:
[1:23:44]
| No, you didn't run around in the costume.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:47]
| No, I got to admit that my comic books, trying to remember what my favorite comic books were.
I liked Scrooge McDuck.
|
Sam:
[1:23:56]
| Of course you did. Of course you did.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:58]
| Yeah. You know, I did like the Richie Rich comic books.
|
Sam:
[1:24:03]
| Yeah. I read Richie Rich, I admit to that.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:07]
| Yeah. I read Richie Rich, I liked Scrooge McDuck. Definitely liked Scrooge McDuck.
That was like one of my...
|
Sam:
[1:24:13]
| Now, if you have not seen it, I'm going to have to point you out that there's a YouTube channel called The Film Theorists, and they did an episode to try to figure out just exactly how much money did Scrooge McDuck have?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:33]
| Oh, oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:24:35]
| And it's like a 20 minute analysis of all the evidence to try to figure out, exactly how rich was Scrooge McDuck.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:44]
| Interesting. I'm going to have to, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:24:47]
| Everyone out there, you should check that out.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:50]
| So I read, there was one that I read also, which is this one.
Um, I, I don't think, I mean, nobody in the U S read this. There was a Mexican one called Mammy.
|
Sam:
[1:25:02]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:03]
| All right. Mammy, bing, bing, bing. It was a Mexican comic book character who's created in 1943.
And they were answering one of the original series had 372 chapters. OK, printed in Sepia.
And I read this when I was little, and I got to admit that I read this and I liked it.
You know, but one of the big things about this, I mean, there there is some.
Well, I mean, was black in Mexico, and there was a lot of stuff about him being racially taunted and try, but but he he he succeeded, he was he was you wanted to root for this kid.
And so so but I but I I did I did read this is one of my favorite ones.
And but it's just kind of hard to describe. I think if you look to, if you go to Wikipedia, it is there.
Memming, memming, M E M I N.
Pinguin, P I N G U I N. And it describes the, the series.
And that was one of the ones that I was favorite.
And so.
|
Sam:
[1:26:12]
| Okay. And so before we get to real, I will give the proper reference to the Scrooge McDuck thing.
It's film theory, Scrooge McDuck's Net Worth Solved, Disney's Duck Tales is the title of the episode.
It was published on August 8th, 2017.
So it's pretty resolved. And anyway, so it's fun. Now, politics, politics.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:39]
| Politics.
|
Sam:
[1:26:39]
| We actually had a kind of eventful week, which a bunch of stuff happening.
Let's start with no government shutdown, no government shutdown.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:52]
| How did it happen? It was, was, was government spending halved.
|
Sam:
[1:26:59]
| Oh yeah. Johnson pushed through something with major, major cuts to everything and the Senate and Biden were just like, oh yeah, that's cool. And signed off on it.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:10]
| Oh, okay. So that's how it happened. Okay. So Republicans did it. Yeah.
Basically, people, you know, employees are going to have to bring their own toilet paper to the federal offices.
|
Sam:
[1:27:23]
| They can just use your tax returns.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:26]
| They can do that too. I mean, my tax returns were pretty lengthy.
I will say, I think, I think I submitted a 100 page tax return.
|
Sam:
[1:27:34]
| Anyway, anyway, yeah, no, obviously that's not what happened.
What happened was the house did exactly what they did before, which was pass a continuing resolution with the existing spending to kick the can down the road.
The one difference that Johnson got, which the Democrats were sort of like, Huh?
That's, that's stupid, but fine. Whatever was splitting it so that instead of everything expiring at once at a new deadline, some it's staggered.
So things expire at different dates. I think there's some things that expire in January and some things that expire in February.
So it's not all at once. And the, the logic is, well, this gives us more time and we can prioritize the things in January 1st and blah, blah, blah. Uh, but yeah, it was kicked the can down the road a few months, just like they do every other time.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:26]
| All right. So, and, and all right. So how long does speaker Johnson have on the clock right now to survive?
|
Sam:
[1:28:33]
| I think so. So first of all, my prediction before, and I think this is playing out.
Is that the people who sunk McCarthy are going to give them a pass for this first time around.
They did not immediately respond to this by voting him out again.
But I think they have already indicated they are very upset.
They they prevented any other business from happening in the house after this by voting against various procedural resolutions to they, they basically shut down all continuing business after the, after this happened.
And I don't know. So I think he's going to make it through the rest of the year.
Cause they're not going to do anything.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:25]
| They're not going to do anything. They're at, they're going to go away.
Listen, they're going to go away for Thanksgiving break and not come back until after new year's.
|
Sam:
[1:29:31]
| I think they're coming back in for one thing, and we'll talk about that in a second.
But they and they're still, you know, they're people saying we're going to come back and we're going to do like Ukraine and we're going to do Israel and we're going to do they might do some of that stuff. I don't know.
I think the next danger point for Johnson is, of course, when these things expire in January and February.
And I don't know that if he does it again, if he just pushes through another continuing resolution, then that's when I think they pull the plug on him again.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:06]
| So you think basically, and that's what I was thinking that he doesn't make it through March.
|
Sam:
[1:30:12]
| I think so, because here's the thing. They fundamentally want the impossible.
Like, you know, they, the, the reality is that we are in divided government right now, which means to get anything done whatsoever, it needs to be bipartisan.
You need to have something that can pass the Republican House, but also pass the Democratic Senate, and also be signed by a Democratic president. That's it.
And if your bottom line is if you cooperate with the Democrats, you're out, Then you've just already written the end of the story.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:53]
| I think the whole problem that they've got was illustrated by GOP rep Chip Roy of the Republican Republican for Texas from the 21st District, San Antonio, Austin, Fredericksburg, Kernville, whatever the heck it is. And he went on the floor.
And this was after they tried to impeach Mayorkas, the Homeland Security, yes, it's Homeland Security guy, and they couldn't do it.
They didn't have the votes. They couldn't do that.
|
Chip Roy:
[1:31:30]
| And he went out and said, uh, one thing I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing, one that I can go campaign on and say, we did one, anybody sitting in the complex.
If you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides, well, I guess it's not as bad as the Democrats.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:58]
| And he's right. Yeah. I haven't done shit. Nothing.
And unfortunately, like you just mentioned, what they want done is impossible.
This is about willing to negotiate then.
Well, then they're going to get nothing. It's as simple as that.
I mean it's... Fuck, this goes back to the Boehner days!
The grand bargain!
And they were getting a lot of what they wanted. They all torpedoed it because it wasn't everything.
|
Sam:
[1:32:30]
| Yes. And, you know, is it possible that Johnson manages to get them to pass out of the house, a few more of these sort of messaging bills where the Republicans sort of say, here's what we want? Maybe he might.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:47]
| Maybe they'll pass. Maybe they'll pass once again. Have they anybody submitted a bill to abolish the Affordable Care Act again?
|
Sam:
[1:32:56]
| The problem with all of these messaging things and like whenever there's a split Congress like this, you have these messaging things.
The Democrats have certainly done it too, is that they're dead on arrival in the other half of the Congress, you know, and they all know this, but they're trying to sort of put on the record.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:17]
| This is what- But they can't even do a messaging bill.
|
Sam:
[1:33:19]
| They have failed at the messaging bills too. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:22]
| That's the thing.
|
Sam:
[1:33:23]
| I mean, they can't even do that right now because they can't get all because because of their slim majority, they can't get all the Republicans on the same page either. So they can't.
And so they've gotten a couple of these things passed. But but for the most part, like the things that were tanked by the Freedom Caucus at the end, we're we're another one of these spending omnibus, not omnibus, but these they're trying to do the actual sort of no, no, not the.
After the continuing resolution, what the House is trying to do is sort of have these separate spending bills.
Like, this is the spending bill for topic X, this is the spending bill for topic Y, and trying to have these separate bills, and that's what they're failing at.
And they, because they can't even get all the Republicans together in one place, and they're proposing things that none of the Democrats are going for.
So, you know, you're, you've got something that can maybe get 40% support in the Congress and, or in the House, and you can't pass something in the House with 40% support.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:30]
| No, you can't. No, you definitely can't.
|
Sam:
[1:34:33]
| So will he make some progress on those kinds of things? Maybe, maybe. But again, they're dead on arrival messaging things.
So I think basically, and somebody pointed this out, one of the things that the Democrats, including Biden, but also the Congressional Democrats, Republicans really should be double and tripling down on is, you know, the do nothing Republicans because they're completely incapable of governing in any way, shape or form.
Now, you also want to pound home that if they magically did succeed, they would be doing things that are deeply unpopular, but they can't even succeed in the deeply unpopular things they're trying to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:19]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:35:20]
| So now, do I think there's a chance Johnson makes it past March?
Yeah, I think February, March are his next danger points.
But also, I feel like even the Freedom Caucus people who triggered the whole McCarthy thing know that it's not particularly going to help them to just do it again.
You know, so I mean, they may hold their fire. and try to protest in other ways.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:50]
| I think you may be right on that because I just think that.
It's just they've already looked so incompetent at this point.
That it's just heading into another election next year.
If they go and they torpedo another speaker and then they can't get one.
|
Sam:
[1:36:13]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:13]
| I mean, the fucking campaign fodder they're generating for their opposition is ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[1:36:19]
| I mean, already. I mean, the Chip Royce speech you just talked about, that's a Democratic commercial right fucking there.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:26]
| Exactly. Yes. I mean, that that's the kind of shit.
|
Sam:
[1:36:28]
| And he's not the only one who's been making statements like that either.
Yeah, the Republicans, the house Republicans have been going on the record in front of reporters, in front of cameras for the last several months, openly talking about how much they suck and, and wait, did McCarthy really.
Elbow that guy. So yes, we were, this was one of my next topics on this, on, on Congress.
So there were a couple of violent incidents.
The one that you are talking about right now is McCarthy.
Apparently like there was another Republican Congressman that he had beef with in some way and he just walked past him quickly and elbowed him hard in the back.
The guy is like, I, I still hurt like, you know, 12 hours later or something.
He's still hurt. And yeah, we got Vista cuffs between Republicans happening and McCarthy, like there was which one was it?
One of the ex Congress people who left because they're like, they're too crazy for me, there's no way I'll, I'll win.
I think it was Kinsinger. He said McCarthy used to do that to him too.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:50]
| Jesus Christ. The hell.
|
Sam:
[1:37:52]
| But then we also had this senator.
Who, which Senator Mullen, was it Senator? Oh yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:00]
| The one that was threatening the team. Was it a teamster?
|
Sam:
[1:38:02]
| Yeah. Teamster guy. We were, he was in a congressional, in a hearing with some guy from the teamster from the teamsters.
And he read some tweets that this guy had made. See, see Twitter still driving the conversation.
You read some tweets where the, the, the teamster guy had basically said, stop the tough guy act.
We can like settle this anytime, any place. And he and he's like, this is the time, this is the place, let's go settle this.
And he's like, getting up from his seat to, like, go, like, have a fistfight with this guy.
And of all people, Bernie fucking Sanders, who is chairing the committee, had to be like, stop it, people.
You are a United States senator. Sit down.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:51]
| You know, Bernie did a pretty good job of handling it. But I have to give him credit that he did, you know, he didn't go and like, he fucking liked his wedge, like his shit to sit the fuck down and stop. Okay. Enough.
|
Sam:
[1:39:05]
| And, and when, when, when bringing this up, one of these people was asked about their behavior and mentioned the guy during the civil war who beat some other Congress person senseless with a cane and is like, okay, is that the model you're actually emulating apparently.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:29]
| Who, who was the, wasn't there an ex-president, ex-president that died in a duel?
|
Sam:
[1:39:34]
| Yes. Yes. That's, that's the whole Hamilton burr thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:37]
| Right. Yeah. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:39:39]
| But yes, look, and what you've got is you've got this whole.
I don't want to say necessarily the whole party, but yes, the whole fucking party.
The whole Republican Party is like all this sort of macho, misogynist, show that you're tough kind of bullshit crap.
And they are getting very frustrated right now because they are not getting what they want.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:09]
| Poor things.
|
Sam:
[1:40:10]
| And so what happens? They start beating on each other.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:14]
| Well, that's, that's one thing that's been happening because we saw that there's been a lot of inviting also with the state Republican parties and so forth at the point where many of them are running out of money.
|
Sam:
[1:40:26]
| Well, and we, and let's not, let's not forget a few weeks ago we had Marjorie Taylor green and Bobert going at each other on the house floor as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:34]
| That's right. I forgot about that too.
|
Sam:
[1:40:36]
| You know, Jesus Christ, you know, this is just like, I mean, on the one hand I'm laughing about it.
On the other hand, it's just ridiculously stupid and disturbing and shows just how bankrupt this whole thing is.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:56]
| And yeah, you remember when I was talking about leadership matters?
|
Sam:
[1:41:00]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:03]
| You know look the main insider of this behavior that is that throwing this example around the people is fucking Donald Trump, Yep, I mean he has been the one encouraging people to punch each other and encouraging violence over and over and this is the whole thing that people have been talking about is the the, Normalization of violence as a way to solve political problems correct the whole January 6 thing is about this I mean, hell right now, the pop, the poppy, the, the fucking guy to try to kill Paul Pelosi for God's sake.
|
Sam:
[1:41:39]
| Yup. Yup. And, and the, all the threats that Trump is making against the judges and the prosecutors and all this kind of stuff, that's been going back and forth in the courts about whether or not they can do a gag order and blah, blah, blah. And that's still ongoing.
Yes. Yes. It all comes from the top. And where we are right now is Donald Trump is encouraging and the whole rest of the party is going, yep, that sounds good to me, this whole way of doing things where it's about violence. It's about intimidation.
And, you know, the, the places this can lead are incredibly scary, which is why On the one hand, I'm like laughing at ah, ha, ha, you know, stupid Congress, people doing stupid minor violence, but.
This is not a good direction at all.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:39]
| No, it's not. It's not. And, and, but, you know, I mean, look, I'll put this into perspective.
I mean, look, nobody has shot anybody in Congress yet. And we've had that happen before.
Uh, look, we are, we are in a bad cycle. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:43:00]
| We are definitely in a bad, bad cycle, but I, I, I, where I've said before, like it's actually somewhat of a miracle that while we have had some incidents, we haven't had any major people actually killed yet now, I mean, no, we had the, the shooting that got Scalise.
Yeah. The sort of baseball shooting.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:23]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:43:23]
| We had, what's her name? The congressperson from Arizona a few years back.
Gabby Giffords. Gabby Giffords.
We've had numerous attempts. Of course, we've had January 6th, and people did die on January 6th, but we have yet to have, and we had the Paul Pelosi thing, like you said, but he survived.
And it's actually remarkable that this political violence hasn't sort of reached over the top and put us in like 1968 1963 1960s.
I mean, we had 1960s was a decade of political assassinations.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:05]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:44:05]
| You know, and I am very glad that nothing like that has occurred yet, but I fear that it could at any moment.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:16]
| And I, and I, as much as I would like one candidate not to ever appear again, I, I don't want, I, I doing it that way would not like improve the situation.
|
Sam:
[1:44:29]
| It would no, not at all. Like if that kind of shit starts happening, that's like descent into crazy violence all over the place. We do not want that.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:39]
| We don't, we don't want that. So I ask you a question.
|
Sam:
[1:44:43]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:43]
| Is Santos going to get, I was next on the list.
|
Sam:
[1:44:46]
| Yeah. You're, you're looking at the same list. I am. You're going down.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:48]
| Is that those going to get, get, get, get, get tossed.
|
Sam:
[1:44:53]
| It's going to be close, but I think he's going to survive.
I mean, I'm like, damn, after the ethics report, shit, we, you need something like 60 Republicans to go along with getting rid of them.
I think there's something like 20 who've said openly so far.
And those numbers are off the top of my head. They're probably slightly.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:15]
| Of course, I know that the problem they've got that I, you know, because they need a majority in the house to expel a member.
Right, right. But but the problem is that that they've got is, of course, that.
I mean, they lose this guy. I mean, shit. I mean, he's going to be replaced by a Democrat.
|
Sam:
[1:45:32]
| Yeah. I mean, it's not 100% guaranteed that he was replaced by a Democrat, but probably, but probably, and so you go from having a four seat margin to having a three seat margin.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:45]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:45:46]
| They're already having so much difficulty. And that's why I think he's going to survive.
I mean, you're going to get a bunch of Republicans who vote against him, but you're going to have a bunch who are like, we need the majority.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:59]
| You know, one thing is that I'm looking at the news a couple of days before the actual report was, they're not going to push to, to throw them out, but it was a fucking Republican. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:46:10]
| Yeah. I mean, that's one thing like the ethics report before I'd heard a lot of people and I'd repeated this say like, look, the ethics investigation is just a way for the Republicans to bury this and to like kick it down the road and not have to deal with it. But I will give them credit.
The ethics committee run by Republicans came back with an absolutely damning report that they did not come back with an actual recommendation to expel.
They figured they that would cause additional problems, but they laid out the case and then the chairman introduced the resolution to expand, expel him and they referred more things to the DOJ.
Santos is already indicted for a bunch of stuff. They referred even more to DOJ.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:03]
| I have to admit, I had not read this article. I was looking more at the, the, the one about the Republican that, that did put forth the resolution to, to put this to a vote to expel Okay, but I had not read deeper in here this article of the New York Times that outlined how sent I've read the headline Yeah, but the details, okay There's a reference house how Santos spent donors money.
Yeah, Gamo only fans and both Botox Yeah, how that's house ethics investigators found that representative George Santos used campaign money on personal spending splurges, splurges in the Hamptons and Atlantic City Okay, so so the the the descriptions insane it says George Santos was utterly triumphant He had just flipped the Long Island congressional seat and probably helping deliver Republicans a house majority It was time for a post-election shopping, spree over just a few days last November I mean, it's like if I use the fucking I should I use the condo board credit card in order to do my shopping spree?
|
Sam:
[1:48:08]
| Of course as well, of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:10]
| Okay. All right. Thank you over over just a few days last November.
Mrs Santos dropped $6,000 at Ferragamo. You know.
|
Sam:
[1:48:19]
| I don't even know what that is. So say what that is.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:21]
| Okay. All right. Ferragamo is an Italian brand of shoes that if you you've seen me wear these shoes, the black shoes that you if you ever see me wear a suit.
Where are those typically normally those?
I mean, he bought a lot of stuff because it's expensive. But shoes are 700 bucks around there. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:48:43]
| Which to me is insane anyway. But yes, they are.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:46]
| They have more expensive stuff. So, yeah, so he spent six thousand of Ferragamo and perhaps on some red designer sneakers he later wore, which is just stupid.
I remember seeing these to walk the marble halls of Congress.
He withdrew eight hundred dollars in cash at a casino where an aide said he liked to play roulette.
He paid off his rent and he pulled out another thousand and spending money in an ATM to his apartment in Queens.
I mean, let's see.
All of which was being illegally funded Mr. Santos' congressional campaign, which wired him $20,000 just after Thanksgiving without ever telling campaign donors or the Federal Election Commission.
These outlays were just a fraction of the $10,000 or more that Mr.
Santos siphoned from unknowing donors for years, propping up the kind of glittering consumer dream the 35-year-old son of immigrants never could have afforded himself. So, I mean, Jesus.
Let's see. trips to the casinos. Okay, so let's see trips to the casinos in Atlantic City in the Hamptons purchases a French fashion house Hermes also another quite quite pricey regular cosmetic treatments.
He likes stuff that I like I have got ties.
But you know, I thought you were gonna say Botox.
No, not the Botox regular cosmetic treatments labeled Botox and internal campaign records.
I mean, he put out a campaign record label Botox now you got, you got to look good to small purchases on small parts, even even small purchases on only fans, Jesus Christ.
So yeah, I mean, he's just, you know, I mean, he was, you know, let's see, there's more here.
Investigators found more than 40,000 in expenditures from the campaign bank account were never reported to the FEC, appear to have been used for Mr.
Santos' personal benefit in violation of campaign law.
They include $1,500 in February at a business called Max Pets, smaller charges from JetBlue Home Depot Hilton and Urgent Care Office.
And Adventureland Amusement Park on Long Island.
|
Sam:
[1:50:56]
| Nice.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:57]
| I guess he was going around there in those red shoes and more than seventeen hundred dollars at two Atlantic City casinos, Caesars and Harris.
A four, you know, let's see what else? Investigators flagged the July 2022 hotel stay for three thousand three hundred thirty two dollars.
Eighty one cents. It did appear on Mr. Santos if he sees silence.
The problem is Mr. Santos calendar showed he was in the Hamptons at the time, not engaging in any known campaign activity.
He charged for campaign for taxi and hotel charges in Las Vegas at a time that his aide said he was there on his honeymoon.
I mean, Jesus Christ, I mean, basically, look, this guy decided that aside from the $174,000 in salary he was going to get from that, whatever was in the campaign funds was his personal money.
|
Sam:
[1:51:45]
| And, and look, some of the people on the ethics committee were quoted saying things like, this is the most blatant violation of any of this shit I've ever seen in my life.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:58]
| And it's not like he kind of tried to like say, well, you know, I was there for a meeting and look, it's on the calendar.
No, no, no, no. It's like, fuck this shit. I went to the casino to gamble.
|
Sam:
[1:52:11]
| Because you know a lot of these people in Congress are doing those gray area things like you're right, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:52:18]
| Like you you you put like a you have a Schedule that campaign meeting over there and we were there at a hotel and that they paid for my hotel.
Okay, you know No, but this guy Gray areas fuck the gray areas up foot up, you know, I don't care about that I'll go blatantly out there.
Just you know, fuck it I'm just taking the cash out of the ATM from the frickin' campaign coffers and gambling with it.
|
Sam:
[1:52:46]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:47]
| At the casino. On video.
Jesus.
|
Sam:
[1:52:52]
| Anyway, like I got to say, like my, my prediction is that he will narrowly survive this just because they need the margin.
But honestly, I would not be shocked if they do kick his ass out, you know, cause it's just because it's so egregious because it's so egregious, but then, you know, you're going to have a little battle.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:13]
| He said he's not running. He said he's not running again.
|
Sam:
[1:53:16]
| Well, yeah, this is, this is the ploy. That's the ploy to try to get them not to do this.
And, you know, so, you know, part of the deal is, okay, fine.
I'm not going to run again. So don't kick me out.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:31]
| Okay. So what are the rules of he was kicked out for his seat?
Does it vacant until next election special election appointment?
I don't know. What's the New York rule.
|
Sam:
[1:53:43]
| Yeah. I don't know the New York rule.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:44]
| Okay. So let's look at what the George said to us. Yeah. do your rule because this does differ.
|
Sam:
[1:53:50]
| It's not a uniform process.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:52]
| Yeah, I know. That's why I'm wondering. Yeah. I see if Mr Santos were to step down and remove his seat would be subject to a special election scheduled by Governor Hawk Hock you'll of New York. Okay.
So, all right. So yeah, it's a special election.
|
Sam:
[1:54:06]
| Okay. And and in not that long, so that there'd be they probably give it a couple months or something like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:13]
| Right? So, so that's the thing that that's where, you know. So, yeah, it could maybe stay Republican, but the reality is it was a seat that he flipped.
And the opinion against these guys, I mean, he has probably soured Republicans so much that, I mean, they know that if that goes to the special election, they're in danger of flipping it back to the Democrats.
|
Sam:
[1:54:36]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:39]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:54:40]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:41]
| Anybody else?
|
Sam:
[1:54:42]
| Yeah. I, I, I, let me, let me mention a couple Trump related things, but let's, let's just bang through them quickly and then end.
Yeah. So we, we had this whole thing of, Oh, number one, Trump thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:55]
| Trump sucks. He still sucks. Fuck him. Start off with that. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:55:00]
| Is that covers it all? Let's just wrap up.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:05]
| There we go. Thank you. Well, I summarized it pretty well. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:55:07]
| Well, I mean, I just want to bullet point them.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:11]
| We had Trump paraphrasing Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, well, Trump paraphrasing, Well, it is kind of the same right now at this point, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:55:21]
| Trump paraphrasing Hitler in one of his speeches, you know, with all kinds of people pointing out sort of the direct, like, he said this, Hitler said that, he said this, Hitler said that, you know?
And it's like getting more and more blatant as we go on.
I mean, we had his ex-wife like in her book or wherever it was, like said he had a copy of Mein Kampf right beside the bed.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:48]
| But come on, you think he ever read it?
|
Sam:
[1:55:50]
| Oh, of course not. He doesn't read Jack.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:52]
| But that's what I'm saying. He probably had the cliff. Maybe he had the cliff notes like hitting.
|
Sam:
[1:55:58]
| No, he probably had a little audio book. The movie version.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:00]
| Right. There's a movie version of Mein Kampf.
|
Sam:
[1:56:06]
| The Germans might have made one, I don't know!
Comic book version.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:14]
| Now, that sounds more like him. Yes. Comic book. The comic. That's all so sweet.
The comic book version of Mike Cobb.
|
Sam:
[1:56:23]
| Yeah. Anyway, we had we had that and people getting upset about that.
And and on the legal side, there's like there's all kinds of back and forth motions.
Trump has lost some. Trump has won some. The gag order is once again not in effect, so he's yelling at people, but it's as it goes through the appeal process and, there's the The delay delay delay tactic continues in DC He's desperately hoping to get some sort of thing that he can take all the way to SCOTUS that would cause a delay in Florida one of the interesting things is that The judge, so far, is sticking to May as the official date.
However, they have scheduled a time in March to reconsider the calendar based on how things are going.
And, so far, she has, this is canon, has dragged her feet on absolutely everything, taking extraordinarily long to respond to everything.
And basically when Trump and folks have asked for delays, she may not give them everything they asked for, but gives them some time, give them lots of leniency.
And so what it's looking like is by the time we get to March, it'll be like, well, this is still a lot of unresolved stuff.
We're not gonna be able to make May, let's delay it further.
But because that May trial is in place, The Georgia case...
Has to, they just asked for August, because they can't ask for May or June or July because it's expected that the Florida case will be at that time.
So the sort of sequence of events that looks like it's getting set up is right now, the, we get, we get the Florida cases scheduled for May, we get the Georgia case settled for August, but then we get to March and they're like, ah, we can't actually start the Florida case in May.
So we're going to have to move it back, but we can't move it back just a little bit because hey, he's got the Georgia trial starting in August.
So we're going to have to flip this into 2024 or 2025.
You know, now it does look like for the moment, the date on the DC trial is holding.
And there's also that, like the New York criminal one too.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:55]
| The New York one is still going.
|
Sam:
[1:58:56]
| Everybody sort of forgets about that one. That one's hitting in like January or something, isn't it? Right.
But that's also a felony charge, right? You know?
So there's a lot of stuff going on, but delay, delay, delay is the strategy of the day.
The other and last thing I want to mention on Trump stuff is there have been a bunch of these challenges to keep them off the ballot due to the 14th Amendment.
The whole, you know, you're not eligible if you were involved in an insurrection.
So far, the folks trying to do that have lost every case.
They're all probably going to get appealed. But they've all lost for different reasons, which is interesting.
Like, one of them lost because they're like, you're trying to keep them off the primary ballot, but the primaries are really a mechanism for the parties to choose their candidates.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:49]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:59:50]
| So ask us again for the general election, but for the primary.
It's up to the parties, not us. There was another one that was basically like, look, the right place to adjudicate this is actually going to be Congress on the next January 6th event.
Like, if Congress wants to reject electoral votes because the guy's not eligible, that's up to Congress.
It's a political question, don't go to the courts. The most recent one, and I forget which state is which, sorry, and the most recent one was Colorado, though, which just happened a few hours ago, they said that first of all, they said, yes, Donald Trump was involved in an insurrection. It was an insurrection.
We, we don't dispute that as a statement of fact that happened, but they said, according to their research, the way the 14th amendment is written, it actually applies to other federal things.
Offices is the word that's used, but that does not apply to the presidency.
Because the amendment as written mentions the Congress, mentions the Electoral College, mentions a few other things, but specifically does not mention the presidency or the vice presidency.
And the default in many things like this is if there's an enumerated list and something is left out, you assume it was left out intentionally.
And so, but that's also probably gonna get appealed and blah, blah, blah. So there's a lot of that going on. Now, frankly.
You know, the legal questions, I sort of feel like if you leave out the president from an amendment like that, that's stupid.
Of course it should apply to the presidency.
And you know, the intention of this, you know, going back to the intention of the people who wrote it and blah, blah, blah.
The whole idea was to keep the people who rebelled against the country and the confederacy from taking back over the federal government. Right.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:48]
| That was the whole point of And I would think that that would include the fucking presidency.
|
Sam:
[2:01:52]
| I would think so too, but there is the argument against. However, and so all of this will go, it'll probably go to SCOTUS unless I would say the way it gets to SCOTUS is if at some point the people trying to keep them off the ballot win.
If the people trying to keep them off the ballot keep losing at the lower levels, they may choose not to take it to SCOTUS.
Like Donald Trump would certainly take it to SCOTUS if they knocked him off the ballot.
But if the people trying to keep him off have lost at the lower levels, they may not take it to SCOTUS because they just don't want the case that officially says, SCOTUS says 14th Amendment does not apply, because if they lose at all the lower levels with this Supreme Court, do you really think they'll, they'll be the ones to reverse it?
No, but also just looking at it from, you know, while I feel like, yes, this amendment certainly should apply here at the same time, I feel like if you solve the Donald Trump problem by just saying, sorry, nobody can vote for him.
That's not really going to solve the problem. There are going to be lots of people that would...
|
Ivan:
[2:03:14]
| I get what you're saying, but...
|
Sam:
[2:03:17]
| This is another place where people were like, okay, you're not going to...
Who's against democracy now? You won't even let us vote for our candidate.
And so if we can't get what we want by democracy, then you're absolutely right.
We have to take it by violence.
You know, so, you know, like if we're all supposedly for democracy, then that's got to include the possibility of, yes, if these people want to vote for Donald Trump, they should be able to. And if he wins, he wins.
But that's where, that's where that issue gets like, like, if you've got somebody who fundamentally is anti-democratic, then what is your defense?
I saw someone read like someone right earlier today. Like this is a fundamental paradox of democracy.
It includes within itself the seeds of its own destruction because people can always vote in dictators who then don't continue the democracy.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:16]
| Yeah, but but but but the one thing is the whole the whole argument is, hey, we've got this rule that basically bars this guy from even running for it.
|
Sam:
[2:04:29]
| It's all no no the question is the amendment says they can't hold office.
It says nothing about running Like so what I hold office one potential way of dealing.
No, I know it's holding office No, no, I understand holding office But the one thing like he could win the whole election He could go up to inauguration day and then right at that moment say, oh, sorry You can't actually take office your vice president becomes president.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:55]
| That would be interesting. At now. Now imagine if that actually played out.
If I guess Roberts administers the oath, right?
And he goes and says, say, we got the worst scenario.
He wins whoever the hell he has is his V. Well, whatever.
And Ed Roberts goes, you're not eligible.
You're not eligible. You over there, vice president.
There you go. That would, that, that would, that, that would be, that would be one hell of a spectacle.
|
Sam:
[2:05:31]
| It would be. And then also, or if they tried to deal with it on January 6th, when Congress certified the votes, either one of these, like this, this, this, none of that plays out well, none of that plays out well.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:44]
| And it makes me like want to move to New Zealand.
|
Sam:
[2:05:47]
| New Zealand isn't letting people in easily. You have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops, but, you know, or pay them a lot of They do.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:55]
| They do get transfer. There you go.
|
Sam:
[2:05:58]
| I think they're one of the countries that like basically sells resident visas if you have enough money to pay them.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:04]
| Let me see.
I mean, I get work remotely from New Zealand and time zones.
I mean, New Zealand residency by investment visa. Here it is. It's not that much.
|
Sam:
[2:06:18]
| How much?
|
Ivan:
[2:06:20]
| New Zealand, 100000. Okay, wait, what's the exchange rate fuck New Zealand dollars? I know, Us dollars, Uh, it's only it's cheap 60,000 bucks.
|
Sam:
[2:06:42]
| Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You could swing that. Yvonne. I know you could swing that.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:47]
| I can swing this. Yes. I can swing. This is not a problem. Yeah.
60 grand go for it. I mean, let's go. I'm New Zealand.
|
Sam:
[2:06:56]
| New Zealand is very nice from everything I have heard.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:59]
| I know. Doesn't seem like a bad, doesn't seem like a bad deal over there.
|
Sam:
[2:07:04]
| Look, if I work remotely, although New Zealand also their, their liberal party just lost an election, I think, and they got some more conservative people in here, but on the world scale scale on the world scale of conservatives, these guys are probably like what?
|
Ivan:
[2:07:22]
| Like Democrat, like moderate Democrats. Okay, perfect. All right.
I'm in. I'm fine. Sure. Okay. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:07:28]
| That's the right way. Right about that. Am I remembering right?
Did the, did you just lose? You got to double check on this too.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:34]
| I, Oh God, New Zealand, New Zealand elections.
|
Sam:
[2:07:38]
| Right. Blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:40]
| Okay. Let's see. All right.
|
Sam:
[2:07:42]
| And because I don't want to be talking complete shit out of my ass.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:45]
| It says here, let's say, I think you may be right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
New Zealand Alexis, most conservative government in decades.
The rightward shift came after as voters punished a party once led by Jacinda Ardern for failing to deliver transformational change they had provided.
So, yeah, it is the most New Zealand.
It is the most right wing, you know, government there.
But, you know, like I said, I don't know what their policies are, but I'm guessing it's probably less crazy than Donald Trump.
|
Sam:
[2:08:17]
| I'm sure that that doesn't take much.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:21]
| Wait, let's see. So the National Party had campaigned on a platform of tax cuts, saying it would offer relief to ordinary families, ordinary families, so not rich, which rely heavily on foreign ownership, New Zealand property.
Looks like that's about that's about it.
|
Sam:
[2:08:39]
| OK, OK.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:40]
| So but nobody wants to relitigate abortion or homosexual marriage.
|
Sam:
[2:08:44]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:45]
| Unlike, you know, so none of that shit.
It's just a middle-class tax cuts that we're talking about. Okay. And I'm in for, okay.
|
Sam:
[2:08:57]
| I know before we start like delving into the politics of New Zealand, which we know nothing about nothing, not a, I think we should wrap it up.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:07]
| Okay. We should wrap it up.
|
Sam:
[2:09:08]
| You know, because at this point we would be talking, you know, you know, we probably don't have to worry about Donald anyway, because Nikki Haley is going to take off any moment and now, and she's going to be the nominee.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:21]
| Well, that would be, that would be something.
|
Sam:
[2:09:23]
| Now she'd, she'd probably kick Biden's ass.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:26]
| She might, but you know, if she ran as a straight Republican, you know, the way that we use the old fashioned Republican.
|
Sam:
[2:09:35]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:35]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:09:36]
| Maybe just maybe, although you've said before, she would lose the support of the crazy Republicans and therefore lose anyway, but well, let's start.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:42]
| Well, let's start with this. She's a woman and she's not, she's not white.
Yeah, so, so, I mean, I mean, forget that shit. I mean, she's done. Next.
|
Sam:
[2:09:55]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:56]
| That's a pipe.
|
Sam:
[2:09:56]
| We are wrapping this up. Thank you for joining us for yet another curmudgeon's corner as usual.
Go to curmudgeon's hyphen corner.com and you can find out all the ways to contact us on Mastodon on Facebook on email.
You can see our archives going back to the beginning of the podcast version of this show.
You can see transcripts of the last few months of episodes, all that kind of fun stuff.
And then very importantly, you can go to our Patreon where you can give us cash money.
You can fund Yvonne's relocation to New Zealand.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:34]
| Yes.
What, what, what will I invest in there though? What like goat herding or something?
What what could I do over there? I don't know.
|
Sam:
[2:10:45]
| Anyway, I got you can farm sheep.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:48]
| Sheep, sheep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, sure.
|
Sam:
[2:10:51]
| There you go. Sounds good. And at various levels, we'll send you a postcard.
We'll mention you on the show. We'll send you a mug, all that kind of stuff.
And very importantly, at two dollars a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our commercials, corner slack where Yvonne and I and a whole bunch of listeners, thousands, thousands of millions, Millions are chatting throughout the week, sharing news links, talking about whatever Yvonne and some others are still doing Wordle every day, all kinds of fun stuff.
And we would love to have you. So please ask and join and blah, blah, blah.
So, Yvonne, do you do you have one thing to highlight from the slack that we have not talked about on the show today?
|
Ivan:
[2:11:36]
| Oh, I say, hold on. I, What do we got? What do we got? What do we got? What do we got?
|
Sam:
[2:11:52]
| You can just say no. It was boring this week. There was nothing on the damn slide.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:59]
| There. I'm trying to see. I'm trying to. I'm not.
Well, we've been talking about this is not as funny, but this is one that that they were talking.
There was a I shared an article of somebody that visited 120 EV chargers.
|
Sam:
[2:12:18]
| Ah, OK.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:18]
| In California, and that basically they went and found that 25% of them were broken.
|
Sam:
[2:12:28]
| Nice.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:28]
| And this is in California. And so now just imagine the equivalent, right?
|
Sam:
[2:12:33]
| Like, can you imagine like if 25% of the gas pumps you went to didn't work?
|
Ivan:
[2:12:39]
| We're broken. Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's just absolutely ridiculous.
It's the state of charging for for companies, not Tesla is absurd.
You know, and I've talked about this how it's just ridiculous.
Now there are companies now trying to fix it.
|
Sam:
[2:12:55]
| But yeah, it's just and it is better for Tesla. If you you know, we were you were just like saying all the things that were wrong with Tesla, but they got this right.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:03]
| No, but that that they have absolutely right. Their chargers are up running and always working and people aren't showing up.
You know, 25% of them are broken.
I have no idea why these companies just can't keep a fucking charger working.
I will state that for my point of view, I think we've had this charger now has been working for five months.
And I think it's been out like one day, maybe one time. That's it.
That's it. And so I it baffles me now. I have had to reprimand people about the charger.
|
Sam:
[2:13:36]
| Only one only one person for like hogging the charger.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:41]
| Now the main, the one person that actually owns a Tesla for whatever, I mean, for whatever the hell damn reason after they charged, they weren't putting the charger back into the slot or protected it from the weather and elements they would go and like finish and hang it like around, like uncovered and did it. And I'm like, okay, you know what?
I finally had to get the property manager, get it. Tell him.
Tell those lazy people to fucking just put the damn thing back in the thing.
I mean, it's they're going to short out the stupid thing, break it.
Somebody is going to come in to that.
The damn thing is going to be wet. They're going to be plugging and plug it in and cause a fucking problem.
Could they just please put it back? They started putting it back in the thing.
|
Sam:
[2:14:24]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:26]
| That's it.
|
Sam:
[2:14:27]
| That's it.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:27]
| But yeah, but I haven't had this problem like keeping this thing running.
I don't understand why 25%.
|
Sam:
[2:14:33]
| Well, maybe it's exactly what you just said, though. Like you're you're in a gated community. You have limited number of people.
Most of these are like in grocery store parking lots and stuff like that.
And just maybe random people doing damage to the display.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:46]
| But a lot of the display is flashing broken. So so so they have to know what the place. Hey, you know what? This charger is broken.
|
Sam:
[2:14:54]
| They should say yes, but maybe there is a problem with like people vandalizing them or something, and then they're just slow and rude.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:03]
| Oh, in most of the cases there, I think that over a third of them were connectivity issues.
|
Sam:
[2:15:08]
| Yeah. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:09]
| And, and the chargers are supposed to default to when there is a connectivity issue to just basically let you charge for free. And in many cases they're not doing so.
|
Sam:
[2:15:18]
| Yeah. I, I don't know. I'm trying to help them out. Give them some excuses. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:22]
| Yeah, they're idiots anyway. All right.
|
Sam:
[2:15:24]
| Okay. With that, we are done. We are out of here. Have a good week.
We have our Thanksgiving's coming.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:31]
| Thanksgiving!
|
Sam:
[2:15:32]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:33]
| Eat a lot of turkey.
|
Sam:
[2:15:34]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:35]
| Gobble, gobble. Those of you not in the U.S. Well, then I don't know what you do. Thanksgiving, you probably just work.
|
Sam:
[2:15:41]
| Well, Canada had their Thanksgiving last month.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:44]
| A lot of countries don't have Thanksgiving. I mean, I know that they're going to make me work.
|
Sam:
[2:15:48]
| Yeah, well. I'm taking off the Friday between Thanksgiving and the weekend.
And so we and I'm not working on Thanksgiving either.
So anyway, have a good Thanksgiving.
Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, eat good food, blah, blah, blah.
If you're not in a place that celebrates Thanksgiving, go have a wonderful day.
Have a wonderful day. Have some good food.
You know, whatever we enjoy. Enjoy.
OK, with that, we're out of here. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:18]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:16:33]
| ♪ Okay, thanks Yvonne, I'm hitting stop.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:51]
| Stop!
| |
|
