Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:01]
| Hello hubbub.
|
Ivan:
[0:03]
| Bob hubbub hubbub.
|
Sam:
[0:07]
| That's right.
Okay. Usual.
Shall we just go?
|
Ivan:
[0:17]
| What do I keep getting these stupid warnings?
Background items that added software from Google LLC, added items that can run into background.
|
Sam:
[0:30]
| Google spying on you.
|
Ivan:
[0:32]
| Oh, fuck. Well, I mean, Google was spying on me.
Oh, yeah, because they don't know everything at this point.
Yes, I'm sure I've got all the secrets that I have been able to keep from.
|
Sam:
[0:47]
| It's probably actually like an update or thing for like Google like Google Earth had one of those.
|
Ivan:
[0:54]
| I know, but I've seen this notification like multiple times already.
I'm like, OK, enough. Yes.
All right. You know.
Anyway, can we get this fucking show on the road? Let's go. Come on.
All right. Fine. OK, go. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:12]
| OK, let's see if it's late.
|
Ivan:
[1:14]
| I'm tired. I'm cranky. Fuck all these people. I've worked yesterday. I've worked the day.
|
Sam:
[1:20]
| That's excellent. Here you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:31]
| That, that, that, that do do do do do do do do do.
So I need to do that again or no.
Oh, I, it was sounding on your speakers, like, Oh yeah. I fit not.
|
Sam:
[1:47]
| So I figured out what was wrong. You sounded funny because you were coming off my speakers, not my headphones. Well, that could, and then, and then I played the song on preview mode.
So, and the only reason you could hear it, is it? Cause it was coming through my speakers. So let me try that again.
Here we go. Intro maybe.
Welcome to curmudgeon's corner for Saturday, November 25th, 2023.
It is four 12 UTC as we are starting to record. I am Sam mentor.
Yvonne Bo is here too. We're going to do our usual back and forth with the first back and forth a little lighter and fluffier and the others like Newsy.
That's the plan. And yeah, and I, I'd switched it.
|
Ivan:
[2:52]
| And juicy. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:53]
| Newsy and juicy. And see, I'd switched it back to my headphones in the middle of the song when I realized what was going on. And that's why.
|
Ivan:
[3:00]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[3:01]
| Okay. Cause I am really good at this. Really professional. I'm, we're got everything going.
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Ivan:
[3:07]
| I mean, we are a totally, you know, professional six Sigma operation over here. Okay.
|
Sam:
[3:18]
| This is why we get the big $15 a month for the doing this.
|
Ivan:
[3:22]
| Yes of course. Yes. Yes. Six Sigma obviously helps as well.
|
Sam:
[3:26]
| Yes.
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Ivan:
[3:27]
| You know, every time they do these, I, so yeah. Every time they do these ISO certifications and I'm like, I realize that they're certifying, yes, we are ISO certified.
And I'm like, you know, and I'm like, look, all you did is document the fucking process that sucked and then showed that you properly documented the really shitty process, but did absolutely nothing to improve it. Yes. Congratulations.
Yes. You pass your ISO certification. Yay.
|
Sam:
[3:58]
| Good job. I am proud of every place that has done that.
I remember that vaguely from many, many jobs ago when I worked at a manufacturing company.
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Ivan:
[4:10]
| You know, I worked at a whole bunch of workplaces. I mean, so for it services and like for business service getting required, you know, you to be ISO 9,001, whatever the hell.
|
Sam:
[4:25]
| There are a whole bunch of different ISO standards.
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Ivan:
[4:27]
| There are a number of ISOs finder is that right? And so whatever the hell, the stupid standard.
And I'm like, you know, that's great. We're certified. This process sucks.
And we certified it. Great.
|
Sam:
[4:39]
| But at least you're following the sucky process to the letter.
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Ivan:
[4:44]
| To the letter. To the letter. Yes, we are following the sucky process down to the T. Yes, absolutely.
|
Sam:
[4:51]
| OK, so we're but first thing. What's your but first? Is it ISO processes?
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Ivan:
[4:57]
| No, you know what I I it's it's, you know, yesterday I giving once again, we were driving home after Thanksgiving.
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Sam:
[5:09]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[5:09]
| And which was a lovely affair with my family. And, you know, we had a lot of different foods because not just the turkey, but we also had ham.
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Sam:
[5:22]
| Right. And alligator, iguana.
|
Ivan:
[5:27]
| No, we did not have alligator or iguana, but we had like, for example, we had mofongo as part of the you know, what are the stuffings?
|
Sam:
[5:35]
| Remind me what that is.
|
Ivan:
[5:37]
| A mofongo is a smashed plantain. Basically. OK, yeah.
So, you know, the plantains are kind of like more of a texture, like more similar to a potato than a banana, even though they look like a banana.
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Sam:
[5:50]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[5:51]
| They look like a banana, but the flavor is more akin to a potato. OK.
|
Sam:
[5:55]
| And so I've had plantains, but it's been a while. Yeah.
Although, although my wife just last week brought home like a bag of like dried plantain chips or something, but I haven't had them.
|
Ivan:
[6:06]
| Okay. So by the way, those are furry addictive. Okay. And I just recently forbade my wife from buying another one of those bags.
|
Sam:
[6:14]
| You eat too many of them.
|
Ivan:
[6:15]
| Well, the, the air is the one thing, and somebody was talking about this on a local podcast from Miami, we're talking about the fact that those plantain chip bags, they are far fuller than the potato chip bags.
|
Sam:
[6:29]
| Okay. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:30]
| They really pack them in like big time. And look, they are extremely addictive and they are fried.
And my stomach now does not like fried food. Does it tolerate it as well as it used to?
And but she bought two bags in the last month.
And what happened is inside 24 to 48 hours, I finished them off and after I finished the last one, I said, shit, don't bring another one of those bags here again.
And the one thing is that one of the things that we do in order to keep a relatively healthy eating, okay.
|
Sam:
[7:06]
| It's not stuff in the house.
|
Ivan:
[7:07]
| We don't buy it. It's just not here. There's just, you know, you go to our pantry and there are multi-grain bars, nuts, that kind of stuff. Okay. You know, for the most part.
And fruit, you know, that and so you put you break that and then I'm like, fuck, I had some and then you're a vacuum and then I'll have some more than fuck. The goddamn bag is gone.
|
Sam:
[7:34]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[7:35]
| And then my stomach and then I have to take something from my stomach because I ate so much fucking fried plantain chips that, you know, my stomach is killing me.
|
Sam:
[7:44]
| Anyway, you were talking about your Thanksgiving dinner.
|
Ivan:
[7:47]
| Yeah. So we finished Thanksgiving dinner, you know, we had that, we had rice, we had a whole bunch of stuff.
Anyway, it was a good, you know, got together with the family, had a good time.
And as I'm driving again on my way home, once again, I notice a car that is driving with her headlights, headlamps off.
|
Sam:
[8:07]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[8:09]
| Which in recent years, with more vehicles being a quick automatic.
Yeah, well, it's not just the automatic headlamps, it was the automatic headlamps alone, People would notice it pretty quickly. Just still still turn them on.
The I think the bigger problem is that automakers have fitted.
Daytime running lamps. OK, yeah, that are that are good enough getting brighter and brighter.
Yeah, they're not good enough, but they're not good enough.
|
Sam:
[8:41]
| They're good enough to make you not notice.
|
Ivan:
[8:43]
| No, they're good enough to make a moron not notice.
OK, because they are kind of like squinting to see what the fuck is going on.
Why are my headlights so shitty?
And it's you asshole. It's because your daytime running laps, not the fucking actual lamps. Okay.
And so but I I will say that the bigger problem with with these isn't so much, their forward visibility, which is impaired. Okay.
|
Sam:
[9:14]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[9:15]
| But but, you know, if you're in a place with a lot of street lights of whatever, it's probably not.
|
Sam:
[9:20]
| It's terrible. Other cars seeing you.
|
Ivan:
[9:22]
| Yes, because the reality is that those fucking cars with all those lights off are basically like, like just completely almost at night, you can bear you can.
All you can see is barely a glimmer of some reflectors on it or whatever.
And if somebody is distracted, they're going to, you know, they're going to slam into one of these.
|
Sam:
[9:44]
| I passed one of those earlier today. It was not that long after sunset, but it was after sunset after sunset and they clearly Were only on their running lights and like I forget if I was turning or what but I remember seeing them later than I would Have expected to see them and I'm like, oh shit, where'd they come?
|
Ivan:
[10:02]
| Exactly. Now I didn't and that's the problem was no accident or anything, but it was like, Listen that increases the likelihood of an accident exponentially I mean, it's the reason why we have daytime running laps and the daytime because they found that having just those damn lights on in the day, reduce the likelihood of accidents.
That's the reason why have the, they're called daytime running laps, but they're fucking daytime running laps.
They're not headlamps for the night. You assholes. Okay. And so.
So these people are all driving around clueless is all fuck.
Okay. About this. And I don't understand.
And, you know, I haven't tried this myself, but man, shouldn't the fucking auto manufacturers don't they put a warning saying, Hey, Marlon, your lights are off.
|
Sam:
[10:49]
| Well, you know, my question is, is at this point, like, shouldn't like just shouldn't the automatic mode be like the default to actually I've seen something.
Okay, I've seen that like I can understand, I can understand situations where you would want to manually turn it off.
|
Ivan:
[11:07]
| Yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[11:08]
| But it shouldn't, but it shouldn't be like, it shouldn't be easy to manufacture. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[11:12]
| It depends on the manufacturer is what I've noticed. Okay. Because certain manufacturers make it that you, you might turn it off.
And then, well, I know that I remember like one brand where I think I turned them off or something and on the display and said, Hey, your headlamps are off.
Okay. that, you know, that you want it this way, okay? So it was like, you know, very obvious, oh shit, right, okay.
And so, but my thing is that most of the time that I've noticed these morons, I have on, and the ones that are morons are more the ones, not this person yesterday.
But typically before I've even tried to like flash my headlamps at this person and try to like say, hey, dude, your lights are off. And they they're like, so oblivious.
|
Sam:
[11:56]
| I have no idea what they're like.
|
Ivan:
[11:57]
| They have no they have no fucking clue. OK. And I've tried that a couple of times. So I've almost like given up.
But yesterday, I mean, this one was so egregious. Really, you can see this was and this is a very pretty new luxury SUV. Genesis, Hyundai Genesis.
And by the way, I've noticed that this is It's mostly a provenance of a couple of Asian manufacturers for the 90 plus percent of the ones that I observe.
Usually Nissan's Nissan's are for whatever the hell damn reason is almost the key offender.
And then what I've noticed is that Hyundai and Kia also have the problem.
And I think in part with Hyundai's and Kia's is because exactly what you mentioned that the damn daytime running labs are so they, they put, they've put so much of them on that they kind of like deceive the driver to thinking they, they have just their headlamps on, but they're kind of running very shittily.
So yesterday that this lady on the, on this Genesis SUV, and I went, we got by pass it. I said, well, fuck this. Let me, let me try.
Okay. I flashed my headlamps a couple of times. They were confused, but it took them a little bit, but all of a sudden I saw, Oh, they started the clip and they turned on the damn headlamps.
They realized that their fucking headlamps were off.
I saw them. They turn them off and on. They were like, I guess, unsure of the setting.
Maybe they just bought it recently. OK. All right. They were like, not not familiar with the settings.
But again, it shouldn't be that fucking confusing.
Damn, auto manufacturers that make it. Hey, if you're driving at night, your damn headlamps are off. Say, hey.
Turn them on. Are you sure?
|
Sam:
[13:40]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[13:41]
| So so anyway, that was the one thing that is just these drive me crazy.
But then I observed another one that I've seen the last couple of days.
So I think it's for a South Florida phenomenon. And it's these people, you know, people complain about glare with like lights a lot, especially they they love to complain about LED headlamps being glary, blah, blah, blah.
Uh, and you know, that really depends a lot on the manufacturer.
I've noticed which ones are, are better or worse than that.
There's been research that shows that. And also there is a thing that in the United States, us rules for some reason, have barred some of the smarter headlamps from coming in.
|
Sam:
[14:19]
| I think they're like one of the, I've seen videos about these, the ones that detect the cars ahead of you and blank blank out the exactly where it's pointing at that still light up around them and stuff. Yeah, exactly.
Those are those, those look really cool.
|
Ivan:
[14:32]
| They, and they're great and they work really well, but for some damn reason they had been barred in the United States by certain rules that were in the books that prohibited that guy.
That's what apparently in the, we're going to get start getting those in the near future.
|
Sam:
[14:45]
| Well, the, the, the way this usually works with the regular regulations is not, they specifically anticipated those and said, don't do that.
It's that the regulations were written in such a way that required a standardized way of doing it. Correct. Didn't anticipate the better.
|
Ivan:
[15:02]
| It didn't anticipate that existed. Right. Right.
|
Sam:
[15:03]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[15:04]
| And so so that's why, you know, regulators were like, No, you can't do those.
But I've heard that those are coming in the pipe.
But but the one thing is that these people with with cars that do not have LED or these lights that have old halogens that are blasting at at at high beams.
OK, all right. These people are just blasting their fucking high beams and, you know, oblivious to, you know, everybody around them. You know what, they're stupid high beams.
And I do think that part of it is maybe related to I've noticed that in the past that when you have halogen headlamps, low beam and high beam, if you have a burnt out lamp, OK, in the low beams, it will not work.
But that side will light up with the high beams.
Right. So so if you're a lazy idiot it and have a burnt out lamp on that side.
And then you decide that you need more light. Oh, well, let me just fucking flip on the high beams and I'll have that light working very well.
Why don't why? Why won't I? Yeah.
And, you know, fucking bulbs, a couple of bucks, which is it on those old ones. It's really easy.
You pulls out, you put the fucking ball back in.
Get this is not an expensive repair. Just fucking put in a goddamn light bulb.
You know, can you give me a fucking break? Why are you driving around with a goddamn high beams all the fucking time?
The entire time you're you're you're in park behind somebody.
I was like leaving. I mean, actually, there were two cars today with them.
|
Sam:
[16:41]
| I was like, let me just say too, this is another one of those things that if you're not paying attention, you can accidentally be on the high beams too and just take a while to notice.
I mean, I've had a couple of like, I, I haven't had an occasion in practically years to actually have the high beams on.
Cause I live in areas where I'm always driving in places with lots of traffic, you know, like the place where you really need them is you're on a rural road, you know, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[17:09]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm leaving a fucking parking garage at the sign.
|
Sam:
[17:12]
| No, no.
|
Ivan:
[17:12]
| Museum today.
|
Sam:
[17:13]
| I'm just saying I'm just saying like what happens like a couple of times recently.
I don't know how it's accidentally gotten into high beam mode.
And I actually suspect my son was messing around in there or whatever while it wasn't running and flips it off the normal settings.
And I don't anticipate that it's not on the normal settings.
So it takes me like, did I notice, oh, the little blue light is on on my dashboard and I turn it off as soon as I notice, but it might've been five.
I might've been driving five minutes before I noticed that.
|
Ivan:
[17:43]
| Well, you know, the one thing is I think that if you're sitting parked behind in traffic, okay, behind somebody, it's very fucking noticeable.
If you have your goddamn high beams on, if you're in a fucking traffic light, okay, maybe, I mean, you know, it should be fairly obvious you have the fucking I beams on okay.
Especially as I'm trying to dodge even my, my, my, you know, night.
I'll tell you whatever the fuck and stop blaring me with your fucking lights.
|
Sam:
[18:21]
| Like I'll tell you, like this has maybe happened to me twice in the last year.
Like this is not like it happens frequently, but maybe twice in the last year.
But each time, the only reason I noticed was because of the light on my dashboard, not by what I saw at the front of my car.
|
Ivan:
[18:36]
| Well, I will say that, you know, yeah, I mean, I've had it happen for a little bit, but usually, like I've said, if you're if you're parked behind a fucking car, you're lighting it up like a Christmas tree.
You should notice, hey, maybe my high beams are on.
OK, I mean, OK, OK, I happen to have the last, you know, my my the Volvos I've had, it's only been the last three years.
Those have auto high beams. OK, OK. And so that that's easier to not screw up.
OK, my wife's Honda also has my wife's that two Hondas.
Her Hondas have had auto high beams, both of them, you know, not expensive ones.
Actually, I've noticed that a lot of like I mean, her Honda was like 20 some odd.
But, you know, this is not not not, you know, it's it's a Honda.
It's a you know, they had actually have very good headlamps on the Hondas.
Well, like right now, I'll tell you what, there's some of the highest rated.
So yeah, I, I like her head lamps.
|
Sam:
[19:36]
| Okay. Okay. Is that a euphemism?
|
Ivan:
[19:40]
| No, that was not a euphemism. I really, truly like I have this thing about I will say about vehicle headlamps.
OK, waiting back a long time because I I still remember originally the standard in the United States for a long time was 55 watt headlamps.
And I lived in Puerto Rico somewhere.
Man, the roads were very, very dark.
I mean, there was a lot of places with no lights at all. And the 55 watt standard was like half the European standard. Okay.
I mean, you could, I mean, you could barely see with those damn headlamps.
And so I remember when I first got one of my first cars, my uncle, well, to this day, the store exists, he had an auto parts store that sold like aftermarket parts and stuff, whatever for vehicle modifications or whatever.
And they had Euro style headlamps. Okay.
And I remember that one of the damn things that happened when I started driving and I realized, fuck, this is ridiculous.
You can barely see what he's with with these headlamps is I went and I replaced the headlamps with it with the European spec headlamps, which were double the wattage output on on the low beams. And they had low beams and high beams.
And man, I remember I was like, well, I was driving all of a sudden. Damn it.
I can say my God, I can see what the hell is going on. I'm not just going to hit an animal or something, you know, down the road because I can see it far enough before I go and I hit something.
Which, which was the thing, I mean, the high beams on, on those shitty, the originals you're, if this was the standard in the U S the square lights, you remember, you were talking about the standards of what the, this, but for a while they, we had this standard of square, you know, rectangular headlamps, either you had the two little, you know, two little squares on each side or bigger, like rectangular headlamps.
And they were all the same standard and they were all 50 watts and they all, for the most part, were horrible.
Okay. You couldn't see a damn thing with those things. Okay.
You know, and, and Europe, there was the same thing that I'm not sure why their regulations are not as, you know, they don't have such a narrow book on what you could use with headlamps.
And so I just got some, my, my uncle imported those European headlines And I put those on and I was like, Oh my God, I had a Japanese car.
I mean, it was a Japanese car. Is that Toyota?
And I was like, Oh, sudden, oh my God, let there be light.
|
Sam:
[22:19]
| Excellent.
|
Ivan:
[22:20]
| So so, yes, I am for whatever reason, but it's the thing with like I, I have to say that one of the things that I important to me when I shopped for a car headlights.
Oh, absolutely. Headlights were important.
You know, I, I look at a whole bunch of oddball things like the headlamps, the seats, and I mean the seats, I mean, look, lumbar support.
I mean, because I've sat in cars that had zero lumbar support, my back would be killing me.
And I'm like, look, if there isn't sufficient lumbar support here, it's like.
If there is no seat option with enough lumbar support, I can't do this.
I'll kill my back. I can't, I know.
So there's just these little things, but headlamps.
I want to see what the fuck is going on down the street.
And I don't want some asshole in a damn traffic light with his damn headlamps on me and I be for like about 10 minutes in a damn traffic jam.
|
Sam:
[23:28]
| Okay. So speaking of, speaking of traffic jam, I want it to be my turn now.
|
Ivan:
[23:35]
| Okay, go ahead.
|
Sam:
[23:36]
| My turn, my turn. Yeah. So my, my topic. Oh, the week.
|
Ivan:
[23:42]
| Oh, the week.
|
Sam:
[23:43]
| Oh, the week we're going Irish is black Friday and the nonsense surrounding it.
|
Ivan:
[23:50]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[23:52]
| Now, and it's full disclosure here.
|
Ivan:
[23:55]
| Yes, I did. Absolute. I have shopped for absolutely nothing on black Friday.
|
Sam:
[24:00]
| Excellent. Good job. You now, now look, all kinds of places have sales online and offline, et cetera.
It's a bit of a frenzy. It's a bit nuts, but I am specifically going to restrict my conversation here to black Fridays at physical malls. Okay.
But they just actually go, wait, wait, let me, let me explain what happened here. Okay.
So I, I, I tend to avoid physical stores whenever possible at any time of year.
Like I, I just don't like going to the store at all.
|
Ivan:
[24:39]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:39]
| Like I will go when I need to, and there really isn't a choice.
Otherwise I'm going to order the damn thing online and have it delivered. Right.
Like that, that is my preference. Almost 100% of the time. Now.
And pretty much the only exception being like, I need it right now.
Like I can't wait even till tomorrow. Right.
Then it's like, okay, fine. I'll go to the goddamn store and buy a banana or whatever the fuck it is. I want, right.
|
Ivan:
[25:08]
| You know, you went to the store to buy a single banana. I hope you would have taken a couple of more bananas. If you went to the store.
|
Sam:
[25:15]
| Well, you know, I, I didn't, yes. Anyway, like whenever we buy more than the number of bananas, that's going to be eaten immediately within like an hour.
|
Ivan:
[25:24]
| They all spoil.
|
Sam:
[25:25]
| Yeah. They all spoil like, like any, any, any banana that doesn't get eaten within the first hour of being brought home will be found months later as a pile of goo underneath something else. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[25:37]
| We, we will, we will, we free, we, if we see the bananas turning like that, we will freeze them and then later make banana bread.
|
Sam:
[25:44]
| Yeah. No, we will find the pile of goo after like following the flies back to their home.
Okay. Okay. So anyway.
|
Ivan:
[25:54]
| Okay. All right. So, okay. We'll buy one banana. Okay.
|
Sam:
[25:57]
| That's fine.
|
Ivan:
[25:58]
| Don't buy any more. Okay. I'm fine with that. Okay.
|
Sam:
[26:02]
| Yes. Anyway, other members of my family in past years have not only wanted to do in-person Black Friday shopping, but have wanted to do it at midnight.
Like Thanksgiving dinner is over. go to midnight, wait for like the all night things.
Midnight, one in the morning, two in the morning. Why?
|
Ivan:
[26:26]
| What's wrong? What, what, what, what, why?
|
Sam:
[26:29]
| Now, here's the thing. The pandemic broke that habit.
And so it was like, okay, this is not going to happen. Okay.
And my wife even on Friday morning after Thanksgiving was like, I, I want to go out to get some stuff I need for a project.
Like I want to do this project and I'm like, you don't want to go to the mall.
Do you? And she's like, no, no, no. I just, I just want to go to like Michael's or Joanne's or something or whatever, you know, that kind of craft store.
But then my son, Oh boy.
Like pops up and is like all excited. And she's like, wait, you want to go to the mall?
And he's indicating that absolutely. Yes. He wants to go to the damn mall.
So she's like, okay, we'll go to the mall. We can do that.
Now, then like a little while later, like this was other things were going on.
They weren't leaving immediately.
My wife comes to me or she texts me, but my wife asks, says, look, parking is probably going to be a problem at the mall.
Oh, you do you want to can you just drop us off?
|
Ivan:
[27:48]
| Oh my God.
|
Sam:
[27:49]
| And I'm like, okay, look, sure. Tell me when you're ready to go.
I will drop you off at the mall. I will come home.
I will work on... I had started my election graphs post that I've been promising for several weeks now.
I had started it. I'd written the introduction and the little summary.
I put it at the top, but I hadn't pulled in all the graphs and charts and all that kind of stuff yet.
So I was like, fine, I'll take it in a mall. I will come home.
I will work on my blog post for a few hours, however long till you're done with whatever the hell you're going to do. Cause I want no part of it.
And, and then you'll, you'll text me and let me know when you want to be picked up. Okay.
So now this mall is 20 minutes from our house. Okay.
So getting there to drop them off took about 30 minutes and I'm like, okay, that's fine. It was a little extra traffic getting into the parking lot, whatever.
I dropped them off. I dropped them off at almost exactly 4 p.m.
And they went off on their way and they went to the food court and they were getting a snack and they were texting me periodic updates of what they were doing. But here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[29:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:10]
| It took me an hour, 40 minutes to get out of the parking garage.
|
Ivan:
[29:17]
| Oh God.
|
Sam:
[29:19]
| No, wait, actually, sorry. Let me break that down a little bit more.
It took me 30 minutes to go the approximately 500 feet from the parking garage to the stop sign to turn, right?
I was texting her every few minutes saying, basically like, it's been another five minutes.
I've gone another five feet, you know, and so in order to get out of the hole and you're like, not really wanting to make her feel bad, right?
You decided to provide her like regular updates, regular updates, like, you know, cause I didn't feel bad texting while driving because I'm not moving.
So it took me 30 minutes to go the length of the parking garage and then Then it took me Another then it took me another 10 minutes after that to get out of the non parking garage part of the parking lot, and Then after I got off the grounds of the mall itself It took me another 15 minutes to get to where the traffic actually let up to be moving normally So it took me 55 minutes to get the three blocks from where I dropped her off to where I was able to actually drive freely.
|
Ivan:
[30:47]
| Excellent, excellent, fantastic, excellent. Uh huh. And then, oh, excellent.
|
Sam:
[30:53]
| Okay. And then, then, then it, then it took me another 15 minutes, of course, to get home because normally it's 20 minutes to this mall, so it took me 55 minutes to go the distance it would normally take five minutes to go.
|
Ivan:
[31:09]
| Basically, basically, you spent close to about two hours going back and forth through this mall.
|
Sam:
[31:13]
| Well, here's the thing. I, I, I took.
|
Ivan:
[31:15]
| No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. Go, go two hours just to go to the drop off, run and back.
|
Sam:
[31:23]
| Yes. Yes. It took me that. And then I got home and then I did the calculations.
Cause I was like, okay, so, cause I, I dropped them off at four o'clock.
We probably, we probably left around three 30. I dropped them off around four o'clock.
I got home around five 15. Uh, and so then I started doing, okay, I need to be back by 8 PM to do the podcast with Yvonne.
So I'm like, okay, I have to allow two and a half hours for the round trip to go back.
So I'm like, okay, eight o'clock minus two hours is six o'clock minus another half hour is five 30.
It's 515 right now. I've got 15 minutes at home.
|
Ivan:
[32:13]
| You gotta go. You gotta go. You gotta go right away.
Get back in the fucking car and just start driving back again.
|
Sam:
[32:22]
| Pretty much. And so, oh my god.
So I, I, I essentially did this. I went in, I used the bathroom, I got a drink and then I turned around and got back in the car.
And, you know, frankly, by the time I had spent the hour going three blocks, I thought to myself, it's not even worth it going home.
I should just pull over into a random parking lot and wait for them to be ready. Right.
But I was like, but you know, I need to use the bathroom. I'm thirsty.
I need to, at this point I might as well go home. So I went home, but I didn't stay very long.
I turned around, luckily the dry, it had cleared up a lot by the time I went back.
|
Ivan:
[33:04]
| Oh, thank God.
|
Sam:
[33:05]
| You know, it was more normal. It was a little bit busy, but there was no like hour to go three blocks to that kind of traffic. So I picked them up.
I actually, and my wife hadn't actually wanted to go to the mall at all.
She'd wanted to go to Michael's.
So I calculated there was a little time to actually do that.
Now, of course, my son had gone to the mall and my wife is like, oh, you want to do some Christmas shopping or something. And he's like, no, he just bought a whole bunch of crap for himself.
And, and then he wanted, he went into Michael's with my wife as well and bought more crap for himself.
And then my, my wife had asked, asked like right when we stopped at Michael, she's like, can you go in with me? Cause he's going to want to buy all kinds of stuff.
And I forget exactly what I said, but she interpreted what I said is no, absolutely not. I'm not going in with you.
|
Ivan:
[34:02]
| And I probably probably a proper translation.
|
Sam:
[34:05]
| Yeah. Well, I mean, my answer was like, no, I don't want to go in.
I would have gone in if she'd like.
Insisted, but I didn't want to know. I had just spent like fucking however many hours in the car. I'm like, just let me sit here for a while.
Yeah, exactly. But but, you know, by that point, her willpower was done, too.
So the kid kept buying more stuff that's supposed to be being charged.
He's got like a little card that his allowance goes on to, but she let him buy considerably more than what he had on his card.
So now I have to keep track of how much he owes us until the allowance pays it off.
And that's that's a pain in the ass. And of course, none of this stuff is for Christmas.
So he's going to want extra money to buy people Christmas presents instead of using his own money.
And I'm like, come on anyway, but we managed to get home and I got, I got home a little bit later than I would have liked to prepare for the show, but like, it was, it was fine, but that first run though, it was like, it was so crowded and so many people, and I'm like, oh my God, how can anybody ever want to do this?
I'm like, I would do everything in my power to avoid going to a store on black Friday and I, in this case, I was like, well, dropping you off, can't be that bad. You can deal with the crowd there.
I don't have to, I'm not going to go in, et cetera, but like, no.
Well, I, I ended up spending like between all the back and forths, like three hours in the car, just to go back and forth to a mall that's normally 20 minutes from our house and it's just like, and so of course I did not finish that blog post yet.
I'll take another shot at it tomorrow.
I did at least start it, but I was intending to finish it before we did the show today.
But that entire time got eaten up by sitting in the freaking car going zero miles an hour.
|
Future Sam:
[35:58]
| Doo doo doo! Sam from the future here. I did indeed get that blog post out over the weekend.
If you go to electiongraphs.com and then click on blog in the navigation, it's in the hamburger menu if you're on mobile, otherwise it's just up at the top.
It should be the most recent blog post unless you're listening to this way in the future.
345 days out, Trump Stronger Than Ever is the title published November 26, 2023.
Please take a read. If you listen to our show a week or two ago, when we talked about polls, it, it's not much different than it was, but there's a TLDR up at the top with the sort of summary, and then I just highlight a bunch of graphs anyway, back to the show. Do do do.
|
Ivan:
[36:46]
| So, you know, this reminds me of, you know, I will say that I.
I mean, I do go to the mall more than you do, but I will say that, look, the, the, one of the reasons I love living here is that the mall is less than 10 minutes away. Okay.
And our mall is even on a holiday.
It will be full, but it's not like that, OK? It will never take you that long to get in and out, OK?
It's just, you know, yeah, it could be, you know.
So, you know, I have like on sometimes like at the holidays that I've had to go get something and it's almost near the holiday where it's been, you know, it's taken me a while to find parking.
But if I went to just drop somebody off, it wouldn't have. Yeah, it wouldn't have been that kind of a shit show.
|
Sam:
[37:43]
| And I'll tell you, let me just say this for those of you who are in the area.
Our closest mall is actually closer to like 10 or 15 minutes away. It's the Everett mall.
This is the Alderwood mall, which is a little bit further away for us between 20 and 25 minutes normally, but it's a nicer mall. It's got more stuff.
|
Ivan:
[38:05]
| Well, the thing is that the mall that's here, it's it's an extremely nice. Is the not exactly.
I mean, you don't I mean, it's got a great it's The Apple store is, is fantastic.
Like all the, all the, all the stuff, you know, I don't have to go to another mall to get something better, but our second, there is the nice mall with the Apple store and all that kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[38:26]
| The closest mall is like, you might go there for a movie. There might be a couple other things, maybe, but most of the time you'd go to a nice mall.
|
Ivan:
[38:34]
| All right. But my, my point is to bring up that there, there is a mall that, that is here in South Florida.
A lot of people go to, and I looked up just to confirm this and I guess It is the, I didn't realize this big.
It's the third largest mall in the United States. Okay. Aventura mall. Okay.
Which is Aventura, Florida. It's right where Miami, Miami number one is mall of number one, the ball of America. Number two is American dream in New Jersey.
So before the American dream, where minute Minnesota, right?
Yes. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, you know, before American dream, which has been, I I don't even know if it's fully operating because that mall is at a lot of financial difficulties.
The second or third largest, okay.
And look, I have like my boss, like my, one of my bosses used to live near there and I had a lot of people that used to like to go there and whatever.
But look, every time somebody told me to go to that fucking mall, I'm like, Oh, for the love of God, man.
No, because the traffic, it didn't matter.
And forget about the holidays or whatever. I mean, it always was worse than what you just described.
I mean, getting into that damn mall during the holidays could be an hour and a half endeavor.
The parking lot is a zoo. I mean, I have driven through there or I have been like, literally just like scared of like driving through that damn place. Okay.
It's a zoo. It's nuts. And I am like, exactly what you said, man, there is no shopping that could make me want to subject myself voluntarily.
Do that other than, Oh my God, these people want to meet us there and whatever.
And I'm like, Oh fuck, that's where we're going to meet them.
Really? I'm like, Oh shit. Yeah, no, but yeah.
|
Sam:
[40:26]
| Yeah. I don't like the mall even in normal times, but like between Thanksgiving and Christmas, like I know, like I don't want to really, but the most part though, by the call over here, I'm actually fine with, is two options for parking are actually pretty easy.
|
Ivan:
[40:46]
| There's a covered parking garage that if it's if it's available, it's like whatever.
It's you know, I mean, I can just park the car there. Usually find a spot real quick if we get in. The other option is that there is a valet.
And I'm like, look, if I am not even in the mood of fucking parking, I'm just like, here, just go to the valet here, take the car off.
I mean, whatever I go in, whatever I'm like, I'm not dealing with a fucking car and you know, to go to go get my stuff. And I'm like, you know, so so that's the convenience of that.
But I yeah, I cannot, you know, but look like right now, even though I like like Best Buy in these stores, I have to admit that I don't.
I mean, I will go for like certain stuff, but I I go less than I used to.
Yeah, I'm like, look, I got a you know, I will say that recently I had a major problem with some items that I ordered online and I tried to solve it over the phone and I, you know what, the only people that could really, that really solved the problem was actually going to the Best Buy store and get them to fix the whole damn thing.
And one of their product experts there took the thing and I said, look.
Forget it. I'll I'll fix the order. Okay.
And took an hour there of fixing this whole damn thing. It was for some appliances from my parents' house.
It'll go there and they were going to be delivered to the wrong places, wrong appliance. They couldn't have delivered it.
They had the wrong stuff and whatever. And he was like, look, just just leave this to me and I'll take care of it.
And that's nice to be able to get that kind of service.
Because all I did over the phone was get bounced around to a lot of people that just told me, oh, we can't do anything.
|
Sam:
[42:27]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[42:27]
| And I'm like, Oh, fuck me. And I'm like, like, you know, the appliances are going to be shipped at a wrong place. I'm like, well, that's not helpful.
And then they sort it out. We couldn't understand why the hell the order is sorting shipping to the wrong place.
They realize there's a glitch in the system that it caused it to do that.
So anyway, but bottom line, OK, mall.
|
Sam:
[42:50]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[42:51]
| So Black Friday sucks. Thumbs down.
|
Sam:
[42:55]
| Thumbs. Absolutely. Thumbs down.
|
Ivan:
[42:57]
| So two thumbs down. Okay. That's our review.
|
Sam:
[43:02]
| I will undoubtedly deal with my holiday shopping in the way I usually do it, which is like, I theoretically, like I have the system where every day from December 1st until Christmas, I buy one thing, at least that's the theoretical plan, the actual plan is I forget about it and get behind and then buy a whole bunch on one day until I'm like, ah, I don't know what to do then I'll wait a more days and, and then I always end up scrambling right at the end too, and nothing's available, but.
|
Ivan:
[43:29]
| Oh, wow.
|
Sam:
[43:30]
| Yeah. I'll probably do something similar this year, but I will guarantee you, my process will not involve going back to that fucking mall.
|
Ivan:
[43:39]
| That I, I believe I really right now truly believe that that is a sound decision.
|
Sam:
[43:48]
| Okay, shall we take a break, Yvonne, and then start hitting more, more serious topics?
|
Ivan:
[43:55]
| Serious things. Yes.
|
Sam:
[43:56]
| Yes. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[43:57]
| We're going to get really serious now.
|
Sam:
[43:59]
| The star.
|
Ivan:
[44:01]
| The star?
|
Sam:
[44:02]
| The serious, the star, the dog star.
|
Ivan:
[44:05]
| Oh yes, that's right. Like Sirius XM. Yeah, that's right. Yes.
|
Sam:
[44:08]
| Yes. But not the radio.
|
Ivan:
[44:10]
| Not the radio satellite. No, no. I know the star is serious.
|
Sam:
[44:13]
| Well, I mean, they name all of fusion energy in the sky. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[44:18]
| Serious. It was serious. Radio was, you know, they named it the logos for the serious star. Yeah. Because it said, yeah, whatever. Okay. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[44:27]
| Yeah. Okay, here we go. Back after this.
|
Break:
[44:30]
| You're supposed to say, do do do. Do do do! Alex Zemzala!
Alex Zemzala is awesome. Its videos are fun.
And today, once again, we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you how awesome Alex Zemzala is.
I'd say on a rate from 1 to 10, Alex Zemzala is awesome at, I don't know, 37? 82?
He's pretty radical, his videos are phenomenal, they're full of creativity, and they're so funny and exciting to watch.
Wow, what happened to your voice then, Amy? Was that dad pretending to be you because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't? Because I told him to?
Yes. Good job on remembering dad. Do do.
|
Sam:
[45:28]
| You know, I noticed a couple of shows ago that one of those breaks that has like Alex in it and Amy, but does not have background music, like the one that we were just listening to, I have this post-processing stuff I do that cuts.
Out filler words and blank and long blanks and stuff, but it could, for whatever reason it was detecting.
Like, I guess some of that came across as filler words or long blank.
So we was chopping it up a little bit and it sounded like things were missing and it like something was wrong with the break.
And I noticed that a couple episodes ago and I was like, yeah, that's too much work to fix.
I'm not going to worry about it right now and just let it go in the show.
But I I'm like, if that happens again, like, cause they've upgraded their software since then and said, they've made it smarter, blah, blah, blah.
But if it happens again, then I'm going to have to take like some of those breaks where there's no music.
And specifically add music, because if there's music, then it recognizes, Oh, I can't chop this off.
I can't, you know, whereas like AI, AI, yeah.
Whereas if it's, if it's just people talking and like a part of it is too low, it's like, Oh, maybe that was supposed to be silenced and it pulls it out.
Or, or something, somebody says something and it sounds like a filler word.
It might chop it up anyway.
I'll, I'll, if it happens again, I'll play with it. But if anybody noticed that a couple episodes ago, like I left it in, I did know it was there, I left it in. Cause I was like, I want to deal with it right now.
Because as we said at the beginning, we are super professional and on top of our game.
So we noticed that, like, the break is all screwed up and just leave it in.
And by we, I mean me, because, yeah, that Yvonne Yvonne just talking.
I all the editing crap is me.
|
Ivan:
[47:19]
| I mean, well, one of these weeks we should make. What about what about the production staff? What are you talking about? What was you fired them all?
|
Sam:
[47:27]
| Oh, oops. You know, lay off. Tell me about that. Layoffs happened to all of us.
|
Ivan:
[47:33]
| Hmm. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[47:35]
| You know, it's, it's the easy, these economic times and $15 a month only goes so far, I'll be, you know, that'd be that that's, that's some hefty salaries cut, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[47:48]
| So I guess you're pocketing all the money. I mean, Jesus, what did you just tell me about them?
|
Sam:
[47:52]
| Yeah. Okay. Okay. Von your first stop for a more newsy topic.
|
Ivan:
[47:59]
| My first up for a more Newsy topic, more Newsy topic, more Newsy, Newsy, Newsy, Newsy, Newsy, Newsy.
We got something going on in the news. You know what? I'm going to go and pick Argentina.
Okay. Because I know a lot more about this and I know very little other than the headlines.
|
Sam:
[48:22]
| So go for what happened.
|
Ivan:
[48:23]
| So let's talk. Well, first and back, then what happened? Okay.
Burst them back. Well, well, let me say what, what happened.
Did go, then go back into the background. Look, they had their presidential elections right now, which were every four years.
And they, you know, almost every time, as far as I know, very frequently, they go into a runoff. Okay.
You need to get at least 50%.
|
Sam:
[48:50]
| And they usually have more than two major candidates.
|
Ivan:
[48:53]
| Yeah. And they get, they, they, it's happened repeatedly where to get multiple candidates.
|
Sam:
[48:56]
| And so they're, or at least number three is big enough that it keeps either one from getting majority.
|
Ivan:
[49:01]
| Exactly. So you, you, you get, you know, usually, you know, you get the top, top two and then they go back full disclosure.
Um, you know, the, the business I ran for Kodak used to print the ballots for this election.
|
Sam:
[49:15]
| Okay. So you're responsible for all this.
|
Ivan:
[49:17]
| Yeah, well, we're not not doing that any any more.
I mean, shut down the business and this and you're not some of our competitors anymore, not at the company anymore.
But but the interesting thing about about the election, they are number one voting is is mandatory.
OK, OK, you can get fined. There are certain penalties associated with it.
Some are pretty, you know, they're not like jail.
But for example, if I remember correctly, one of them was like you couldn't access any government services for about a year if you didn't show up to vote.
So almost everybody votes. Okay. Now, one thing that they could do is if they're unhappy with either any of the options, they could like.
They can like mark, you know, invalidate the ballot.
|
Sam:
[50:05]
| There's a none of the above or something?
|
Ivan:
[50:06]
| There isn't a none of the above, but they'll get the ballot, it'll be registered, but they'll mark it invalid.
|
Sam:
[50:13]
| It'll be registered as a vote, but they don't vote for the candidates.
|
Ivan:
[50:16]
| Correct. The ballots are not secret, okay?
And what I mean by that is that the ballots are actually printed with the personalized information of who the person is that sent vote.
Now you're like, wait, it's not secret. But the one thing is reason to do that is to avoid fraud because that way they have an ID.
The ballot is printed individually.
It has the picture from the ID of the person.
|
Sam:
[50:42]
| Of course, the reason not to do that is people worry about intimidation and people not agree.
|
Ivan:
[50:46]
| Intimidation or whatever. Yeah. But that's the main reason why people don't want that.
But at the same time, in terms of utmost security, to make sure that Whoever the hell actually, whether it is the person that actually showed up when the ballot is actually printed with, with a fucking picture of who the hell is the person that you're giving it to makes it pretty, you know, a lot more difficult for in the precincts of people to be, to be cheating and the elections are clean.
I I'm, you know, the, the elections there have been, I've been very clean.
I that's not, that, that, that has never been something of an issue in, in the.
The, the main thing is that the runoff, the runoff this year.
Had three major parties on there. Okay.
|
Sam:
[51:29]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[51:29]
| Now, typically it's really been two, the first, the one, the most important one that's been around for a long time is the Evie, the PR the Peronist every time I don't evita. Okay. Perone.
|
Sam:
[51:45]
| Yes. Don't cry for me, Argentina and all that. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[51:49]
| Yes, exactly. And all of that. Yeah. That, that party going around.
That's what, that was the party that was in power.
Okay. Like right now at this point, and they had been out of power and they came in and just had the last four years, but they had been in power for the previous Jesus, 15, 16 years.
They had been in power for a long time. Okay.
And so.
Well, what's happened is that it, that type period is the, well, the guy that won is not for that party and not from the more mainstream middle of the road party. Okay.
And more, a little bit towards the right.
Okay. But this is a centrist party. Okay. Which was the one that had won the previous election, the previous president, which was mockery.
And there were more aligned this, these people were like more pro business mainstream, you know, the, the, the, the, the candidate from that party was a pretty wealthy individual that had a lot of business interests in Argentina.
You know, they were the representative of that party. And so they got booted out on the, on the first round, they were third.
Now, one thing is that there, there was, there was polling already and they do some kind of like a very, I can't remember what, what it's called.
Some some basically pre polling poll thing that they do that showed in August that to expect this to expect the shock.
OK, it already you know, the reason why we had heard on the news about this, guys, because that that in August indicated that this was going to be the case.
And, you know, it came down in the election, which is the second country in Latin America this has happened to.
Brazil had this, where the choices were just, fuck, man.
If you voted for the other candidate, Massa, okay?
He was the finance minister of the current administration that basically had orchestrated you having 150% annual inflation.
|
Sam:
[54:07]
| Or B, you just to put that, just to put that in, in perspective here, people here in the U S are complaining right now about five.
Well, there's five, four, like three or four, three, 3%. Yes, 3%. And they were, they were complaining when it was seven, eight for sure.
But like it's down considerably from that.
And they're still complaining at like three and a half percent, whatever it is lately.
And you're talking about down because I'm seeing, yeah, you're at 50% and 50% annual, inflation compared to like three that people are bitching about here.
|
Ivan:
[54:45]
| Correct. Yes. Okay. So those were really your two final choices.
|
Sam:
[54:50]
| And so, so look, wait, the real quick, I just summarize those three choices again.
It's the finance minister from the current administration who orchestrated the 150% and what's your summary description of the other guy? The guy who ended up winning.
|
Ivan:
[55:09]
| Okay. The he's, he's crazy. Well, look, I'm going to say this.
He, he, he has made a lot of very conservative pronouncements.
Like he said that he wanted to liberalize gun laws in Argentina.
But once again, one of the things that is all relative when you have extremely strict gut, you know, when you're in a country that has extremely, extremely, extremely, extremely strict gun laws, you know, what does liberalization mean for them is not what liberalization means for us.
The one that he was like saying is that he wanted to like go back and abolish, abortion again, which by the way, was only a very recent development in Argentina, right?
That abortion had been legalized. This is not, there's only something in the last few years. Okay.
It's not, you know, so, so that's, that's not like here where it was legal for 50 years. It's yeah, exactly.
|
Sam:
[56:02]
| Now that's, that's something that has been trending across Latin America, right? Like just in the last five, 10 years, a lot more places have legalized. Whereas it right.
|
Ivan:
[56:11]
| Previously, like very Catholic continent, very anti-abortion has been the, yes, the Catholic or Christian, because even in Brazil that, you know, the ascended religion has been Christian conservative type of religion.
|
Sam:
[56:23]
| So, right. Okay. Continue.
|
Ivan:
[56:26]
| So you got that, but, but the most important plank is abolishing the central bank and just converting to the dollar.
Okay. And look.
People just listen people just voted for this guy because he wasn't the guy he wasn't the other Fucking people that have been fucking you for the last.
6070 years I Mean it was just he's neither of them.
Okay Argentina was a country with an economy that had per capita income at the end of World War two that was higher than the United States and has been in a economic, you know, pretty much with some plateauing and some increase or way, but basically they've been in a straight line downwards economically since then bottom line with military dictatorships that killed people and, you know, add and runaway bouts of inflation and then the government, like, you know, taking your savings, you know, there was this time where they, They froze all your bank deposits. Okay.
And it, you know, took them away.
A good portion of them just kept a lot of the damn money and shortages and, you know, unemployment and crime and shit.
And just people, you know, they were just like, you know, they weren't really for this guy. They were against everything else that had happened before.
|
Sam:
[58:08]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[58:09]
| And so that's really what happened here. Yeah. Well, you're talking about the currency and the whole dollar thing.
And a lot of people have been, well, this is crazy.
You can't just shut down the central bank. You can't do this. You can't do that.
But look, Argentina had a bout of hyperinflation in the, 80s to be specific that ended when a new president came in that this was president Menem who was in power for a long time.
And the the the one thing that he did is that he issued a new currency that was pegged to the dollar one to one.
And that had and that peg lasted for over a decade. OK, just slightly more than a decade.
And during that time, because he was not from the Peronis party, which the Peronis had nationalized industries that controlled, you know, you know, they had, they had nationalized just about every industry in Argentina's economic development had been, you know, very, you know, just had not developed economically at all.
And during the nineties, one of her biggest bouts of growth was, you know, he, he, you know, he sold off all those industries, privatized a lot, opened in the economy and, and peg the dollar.
But the one thing that he did is that also, well, he's selling off all these industries is it, he had accumulated a lot of debt and then because of all that debt, the, the peg to the dollar wasn't sustainable and late in 2000, it collapsed, okay, and, and it dropped the currency like an overnight.
Night, what they did is they a lot of people had actually their deposits in dollars and in the banks and the government took their dollars and converted turned them into pesos at is that a one to one at a 1.4, to one and then anything off $2,500 was, frozen. They couldn't access it. Okay.
And in and that really shook people and I mean, you know, It was a, it was a significant losses, but economic losses to everybody and people are very upset.
Banks shut down. The economy was paralyzed. I remember I was doing business back then.
There were months and months that we couldn't figure out how to write a contract, right? Okay. At what, what, at what price?
|
Sam:
[1:00:45]
| Because the value of the currencies kept changing too fast.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:48]
| And, and, and, and, and because, because the banks were frozen, how were people going to pay? Well, hell it happened that liquidity was so light that one of the provinces started issuing their own currency, okay?
Because they could get money. They started printing their own money.
They were called Papa Conex.
Okay, I remember that actually I got some of these Okay, and they were issued, you know, so you had you had a parallel central bank issuing their own fucking money Okay, because this the province didn't have anything else to pay with. Uh-huh.
So it's a shit show. Okay, and But the one thing is that.
Because the Argentinians are so used to doing everything in dollars, everything, even like right now.
I mean, when you talk to them about prices, about everything, anything is priced, it's, it's negotiated in dollars, right?
And so even though they have this local currency, they do everything in dollars.
And it is also reputed that Argentina has the largest stash of actual, Doll like bill, physical dollars, physical dollars in the world.
Stashed by people that do not trust the banks and have this at home.
Right. It is estimated that that amount is over $100 billion.
|
Sam:
[1:02:10]
| Like, and just to be clear, you mean more than even the U S like, Oh, yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:16]
| They have more physical dollars that are being, that was my understanding that they have more physical dollars or he stashed that even what we have in the U.S.
Is relation because we don't keep, we don't keep that as much in physical money.
|
Sam:
[1:02:29]
| As we've talked about before on the show, like use of actual paper money and let alone coins has been plummeting, you know, in the U.S.
As people move to, you know, electronic payments of one sort or another.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:44]
| So, so this guy's basically said, look, actually I stay corrected.
|
Sam:
[1:02:50]
| Oh $371 billion OK and got stuffed in mattresses.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:57]
| Yes, yes, and so you know it's it's it's a huge, huge, huge amount of money. And.
Look, he's saying people are saying that I loved how a lot of people, well, this guy's going to destroy the economy.
Guys, you guys don't get it. The economy has already been destroyed, obliterated.
There is, there is nothing to destroy here. Okay. Is this is like saying you're going to destroy a building that got already pounded by B52s Bob from the air level level, the whole fucking thing. And you're like, he's going to destroy it.
|
Sam:
[1:03:30]
| It was like, let me ask you a couple, let me ask you a couple of details here.
So first of all, you're saying basically like it is so bad right now, no matter how fucked up this guy is, it has nowhere to go, but up now.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:42]
| I mean, there is no, there is no more, there's nothing left to fuck up at this point when you've got inflation at 150%, when, when, you know, and it's, it's, it's just out of control.
There's just nothing else to fuck up like right now at this point.
|
Sam:
[1:04:03]
| So, so what, what are the currency controls? What are the specific kinds of things this guy is saying?
I mean, you mentioned getting rid of the currency and stuff like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:12]
| You want to like, he wants to like get rid of a whole bunch of government ministries and just shut down a lot of the government and and dollarize the economy.
|
Sam:
[1:04:20]
| This is why this is why people were calling him a libertarian and all that.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:23]
| Correct. Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:04:24]
| Now, does he call himself that?
|
Ivan:
[1:04:26]
| I haven't heard him say use that word because I've heard various descriptions of this guy.
|
Sam:
[1:04:31]
| One of the early headlines called him a libertarian. But then, like when I've heard people describe the things he's actually calling for, it hasn't actually been quite that clear to me.
And I don't know. I mean, it's certainly got aspects of it that I think people just try.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:50]
| People are people try to. It's got aspects of it. People try to ascribe U.S.
Terms for what right, left, whatever, to other societies and countries that they really don't line up nicely.
Those boxes don't really line up nicely.
And so but I think that.
My thing is that at this point, if he shuts down a central bank and no one will notice it, it's at a dollar.
I'm like, you know, hell, I thought that they should have done it already.
20 plus years ago when they had the peg.
|
Sam:
[1:05:24]
| Right. Okay. I mean, so now on the curmudgeon's court, wait, I'm not a curmudgeon's corner slack.
You also started to mention like things about him, maybe not being quite right in the head, you've mentioned him like talking to well, well, like that, or what's going on with that?
|
Ivan:
[1:05:45]
| All right. Well, look, he is nuts.
I mean, he was going around with a fucking chainsaw like campaign rallies talking about how he's going to cut through the carpet.
|
Sam:
[1:05:57]
| But no, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:58]
| But but no, but no, but but he also no. OK, no. He went in an interview.
|
Sam:
[1:06:03]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:04]
| And in serious terms was discussing how his dogs are part of his advisors and that he takes advice and information from his dogs for what decisions to make.
|
Sam:
[1:06:22]
| Okay. And, and, and, and, and Nancy Reagan wouldn't let Ronald Reagan do things because of her astrologer, you know?
Well, and, and well, and I'm wondering from like, you, you mentioned the chainsaw and stuff like this, like there's this crazy, and then there's just like being an outrageous performer to get attention.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:45]
| Well, and this is the one thing also that we don't know, because look, I will say that I have more than once, if we go back to like normal politics, instead of like.
Raving lunatics, right? Met more than one that's performed for this kind of stage and said a whole bunch of stuff that then basically, if you're a normal politician, what are the jokes that we used to make?
It's like, you didn't do 80% of the shit that you talked about.
Anyway, you decided to do whatever the hell else. So the question is, now that he's president, is he just going to continue with the schtick or is he going to be president or is he going to be presidential as we talk about it and we don't know?
|
Sam:
[1:07:25]
| Well, like this is this is, of course, the same damn thing people are we're asking about Trump, you know? Oh, it's all an act once he gets to be actually president He'll act very differently than he did on the campaign trail and guess what?
No, he did not he did what you saw was what you got pretty much and It's scary and and you know, that's, I think the number of cases where somebody's turned out in office to be radically different than the person they campaigned as is Actually, that's actually rare.
I mean details of campaign promises Absolutely people promise all kinds of shit.
They can't do but the personality stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:11]
| No, but that's but that's the stuff I'm more talking about when he's talking about abolishing every department and Doing this and doing that.
|
Sam:
[1:08:18]
| Yeah That's the kind of usual thing where like people like ramp up their rhetoric, like, of course, we're going to change everything overnight and blah, blah, blah.
And when they get in, they do a little bit of it. But most of it was unrealistic and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:34]
| Now, he does have a he does have a different listen. Congress for him would be very difficult because I don't think that he has the right majorities in order to be able to push a whole bunch of stuff through that he wants to do.
|
Sam:
[1:08:49]
| Right, but but I also think that there is a lot of support usual way, by the way, when when you talk about people not being able to deliver on their campaign promises, at least in the U.S.
Context, and it's different depending on what kind and form of government you have, like a parliamentary system is very different than what the U.S. has, for instance.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:08]
| Right. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:09:09]
| But like the general reason why campaign promises don't happen in the U.S.
Is not the person being like, oh, you know, I lied. That wasn't a good idea.
And I just lied in order to get into office. And now that I'm in office, I'm just not gonna do it. That does occasionally happen.
But the usual thing is just a, it's hard because in order to do things, you have to convince a lot of other people because it's not a dictatorship.
You can't just wave your magic wand or snap your fingers and enact your policies.
You have to, like in the US, you have to have the house and the Senate and be able to get past a filibuster. And you have to have all the implementation details, not just the high level idea, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And usually that's the reason why campaign promises don't happen.
Not because the person was just outright lying and advocating something they didn't actually want to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:01]
| Well, yeah. And, and, and that's the way it happens. So I, I look, I mean, Argentina has had previous presidents that, that, that that have been.
|
Sam:
[1:10:15]
| That actually have been dictators.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:17]
| Well, yes. I mean, they had a military dictatorship. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:10:20]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:20]
| Let's be clear about this.
|
Sam:
[1:10:22]
| And it's a little easier to implement whatever the hell you want when you've got that kind of system.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:28]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:10:29]
| So, but you think in the current situation in Argentina, he's actually saying a bunch of things that would require Congress to enact, but doesn't necessarily have the support in Congress to do it.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:39]
| For some of the stuff. I mean, you know, like eliminating every department, the way that he's saying it, look, man, so many are, are Argentines depend on pensions and government assistance in one way or another that, I mean, I, I know that that would prove to be ridiculously unpopular.
I mean, it would, you know, the, the, and they have no problems with like blockading the streets and basically paralyzing the country. I mean, I lived through it many times.
I lived through it, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:11:13]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:13]
| So, yeah, I mean, I don't... You're going to take away that kind of significance. You should believe me.
Don't block the streets. Don't block them for a long time until he fucking gives in, for sure.
No doubt about it. No doubt about it.
So it's not going to be...
It's not going to be like he just comes in and he could just wave his hand and do whatever the hell it is, even though it's unpopular.
He got voted in not because they agree with everything he said.
He got voted in because you're not the fuckers that got us here.
|
Sam:
[1:11:52]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:53]
| So let's give you a shot.
Basically that that's what you've got. So, and I, I do think that while it would be the biggest country to go and abolish your central bank and depend on, on the dollar, it's not like it's completely unprecedented.
Ecuador did that. Okay.
And how's it gone? It's actually going pretty damn well for them.
It's actually going really damn well for them.
So it's not unprecedented. Now this would, I mean, Argentina is a lot bigger than Ecuador, but the precedent has been that it's been done and it hasn't worked out that bad.
So I'm like, look, when you've been 70 years of this shit and inflation continues to be like this, I mean, I understand, you know, the youth, I could see, look, the youth in Argentina overwhelmingly voted for this guy because they have basically lived their life, in misery their entire lives.
Is, and it's like, you know, damn it.
Could we try something else please? For God's sakes.
So, yeah, I, I, I, it's just the one thing is that people in the right way, taking some kind of victory lap over, over this, it's, Oh, look, we've got, it's like the psyche of the people that voted there, it's just very different and right now is what they decided.
And they're just going to try something else. So we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll soon we'll find out it takes possession.
I think it's in January. So still got some transition like right now.
|
Sam:
[1:13:55]
| So is it that long? Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:57]
| I knew it was a little while, not as long as the U S presidential transition, I thought, but no, I think it's a little bit, no, it's about the same.
It's an isn't January. So I think it's January 15th, something like that.
|
Sam:
[1:14:07]
| So, okay. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:08]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:14:08]
| Very good. So very good.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:14:10]
| So, okay. Okay, normally we would jump right into my topic, but I think we've taken long enough. Let's take a break.
And then I will pick a topic and then we'll, then we'll decide whether or not there's more after that, depending on how long the next one takes.
So back after this.
Oh, it's done. It's done.
So I was messing with some stuff during the break.
|
Future Sam:
[1:15:24]
| I'll mention that later, but do, do, do Hey, it's Sam from the future again.
And you know, I said I was working on something and I'd talk about it later.
I forgot to actually talk about it later in the show. So I'm inserting it now.
Basically we are past Thanksgiving. We are in the tail end of the year.
And those of you who've been around a while know that the very last show of the year, we do predictions for the coming year.
And then the week after that, we see how we did a year and a week ago.
In any case, the last few years, we've taken suggestions for things we should make predictions about.
And the way we've done that is to set up a nice little Google doc and invite everybody to come and add stuff.
So I was just wanting to let people know, and then, then I forgot that said Google doc is now available. I actually finished it up during the show, but then forgot to say anything about it.
Anyway, the URL is tinyurl.com slash ccpred2024.
So that's ccpred2024 on tinyurl.com. So tinyurl.com slash ccpred2024.
As usual, we have five major sections, politics, which is really US politics, international economy technology and hodgepodge, please feel free to jump in there and start adding some things for us to do predictions on.
There are a bunch of things that are kind of obvious and that Yvonne and I will do, but I am, I will not add those in until the end, like after I see what people have dropped in.
So right now, as I am recording this, that page is blank other than the categories and a little bit of instructions at the top about like what kind of predictions we want.
And you know, it has to be things that we'll know the answer to at the end of the year and things like that.
And also a request to when you add a question, please like market with like your first name and last initial or something else, but something to identify you with.
So we know who's added the lovely questions and yeah, that's all I wanted to say.
So one more time, tinyurl.com slash ccpred2024.
I will probably mention that every single show from now until we do that last episode of the year, the end of December.
So there you go. Doo doo doo.
|
Sam:
[1:18:03]
| I have several things I want to talk about.
And since we've gone so long, I don't know if we'll get to all of them, but I feel like it's been several weeks since we talked about it and we had some significant developments this week.
So we should talk about Israel, Palestine again.
And so a couple of things to say here.
First of all, as we are recording.
We are in a pause where Israel and Hamas have agreed to cease hostilities for four days at the moment, is what they've said.
While they are, Hamas is giving back some hostages and in exchange for some prisoners, there may be other things going on and they're doing them a little bit at a time as we're recording.
There've already been the first batch of hostages released and they've, they're sort of doing it in batches because they're basically saying every time there's a batch, we'll potentially extend the pause a little bit longer.
OK, at the same time, Israel has said this definitely has an end.
This is not a cease fire. We are not done as soon as this is over.
We're going full force again because Hamas still exists.
Basically, meanwhile, the the death toll on the Palestinian side can uh.
Up until this pause anyway, has continued to increase dramatically over time.
You know, there were, there were some questions thrown around about, don't trust the numbers Hamas has been given. But over the course of the last couple of weeks, more and more international organizations have said, you know, from everything we can tell, these numbers are pretty close.
Yeah. If, if, if Hamas is exaggerating, maybe, maybe they're exaggerating a little bit, But we're not talking about the real numbers being half of what they're saying or a tenth of what they're saying.
They're, you know, in the fog of war, numbers are always like.
Not fully trustable, you know, you never know exactly, unfortunately, but they're not that far off.
So we know that at this point, many, many, many more Palestinians have died in this conflict than Israelis that were killed in the initial attack that Hamas did.
And we've, we, and we just keep, and approximately a third of those killed have been children.
And we've, we did have also this last week, Israel got into that hospital that has been a big source of conflict and they started to show off videos of the tunnels underneath and weapons they've found and stuff like that.
I don't think like compared to some of the ways that had been described, what they've shown so far has been a little bit underwhelming, but there's, there's been stuff there.
They're in, of course people will say, well, you're, you trusting the Israelis, blah, blah, blah.
They have brought in some third party independent people down into those tunnels as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:12]
| We know this is true. I mean, we've known that Gaza, that, that Hamas has been doing that.
Hamas has said that they do that. They've shown the videos. I mean themselves.
|
Sam:
[1:21:21]
| Yeah, we've not, Hamas has talked about the tunnels.
Reporters have been in them before. The question is how extensive they are.
What are they being used for? All kinds of things like that.
Anyway, that's roughly where we are in this thing.
I'll give you my initial thought and then turn it over to you, Ivan.
Which is, once again, we have a scenario. people have been going and I'll bring him back to us stuff at least a little bit.
People have been going after Biden non-fucking-stop for.
Like supporting genocide and being like all 100%, for the Israelis and not considering the Palestinians and how is he like doing, you know, all of this stuff, you know, and saying, we can't vote for Joe Biden because he's like supporting genocide and all that. And I look at this and say, look.
If he had come out on day one and been like, no, here's a line in the sand, Israel cannot respond in this way.
They have to do a very minor retaliation or even turn the other cheek or whatever.
And we need to instead concentrate on lifting up the Palestinians or whatever.
His influence with Israel would have plummeted to zero.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:51]
| LIAM Yeah, because they would have just gone ahead and done it.
|
Sam:
[1:22:54]
| TRAVIS They would have done what they wanted to do anyway, but now, but Biden would have been cut out of the process entirely.
The US would have been cut out of the process entirely.
Instead, from everything I have seen, from like day zero, Biden and his administration have been working nonstop behind the scenes trying to keep this thing from escalating, trying to slow down the Israelis, trying to make them take more account of civilians going on than they might have otherwise wanted to, have been trying to push them to have civilian corridors to get the civilians into safer places, and they've been dealing with these negotiations about the hostages since the very beginning, and what have they managed to broker right now?
They've got a bunch of hostages released. They've got a several-day pause.
They've got supplies coming in for humanitarian support of the Palestinians, all of this stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:00]
| People being able to leave through the borders.
|
Sam:
[1:24:03]
| People being able to leave who have dual citizenships and other reasons to go.
All of this, as far as I can tell, has been primarily a Biden administration-run, diplomacy. Sure, the Qataris are also involved. The Egyptians are also involved.
Blah, blah, blah. There are a bunch of countries involved in it.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:27]
| But the US has been driving it.
|
Sam:
[1:24:29]
| The US is driving it. Now, it isn't Joe Biden pounding his fist on the table saying, Israel bad, Palestine good.
But if he had done that, nothing would have, none of this would have, you would have had as bad or worse numbers of Palestinians killed, and you would not have any of these pauses or hostages exchanged or anything like that.
Instead, the Biden administration has actively been working behind the scenes.
I want to say, I'm tempted to say quietly, but it hasn't even been that quiet.
We know that this is happening.
It's just, they've got a veneer on top of it.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:12]
| Sam, Sam, Sam, look, look, look, look, look, look.
Joe Biden's a failure, man. Look, Joe Biden has not been able to Single-handedly, in what three years been able to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He's a complete fail Yeah, I mean the guy is just just an old slow slow dim-witted, failure obviously Who who wants nothing more than killing Palestinian children?
|
Sam:
[1:25:45]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:46]
| And he couldn't just snap his fingers like this and solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He couldn't just go like this and tell Hamas, hey, lay down your weapons, change your charter, and this is all good. We're fine. It's all good.
|
Sam:
[1:26:04]
| Yeah, yeah. We're good. And look, this may still get worse. It's not over.
But it honestly seems to me that under the circumstances, the Biden administration is doing about as good as they could fucking do.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:20]
| Yeah, it, they didn't make it, you know, it could be a lot worse.
And, you know, we talk about, but one thing is that we talk about what Israel is doing in terms of hitting.
You know, Hamas, let's be clear about this. Hamas isn't just laying there taking it, okay?
They're fighting. They haven't stopped fighting. They haven't stopped the rocket attacks in Israel. They haven't stopped any of that.
|
Sam:
[1:26:46]
| You know, this is, this is- And as Israelis will point out over and over again, of course, they do everything they can to hide behind civilians, so you'll get the civilian deaths.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:55]
| Which is part of the problem, also. So yeah, you know, and they, they, they, they want to listen, let's be clear.
They want Hamas wants, listen, Hamas has gotten what they want.
|
Sam:
[1:27:10]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:11]
| And to them, the deaths are here. The thing is that we know from what they have stated, that the deaths to them are in material.
They're using them. They wanted the deaths for propaganda. They wanted as much death for propaganda.
They wanted as much as in Israel for propaganda from there And they wanted that they wanted this to be as bloody as possible That's the reality.
Yeah, they want their this to be as bloody as possible This is why we said from the beginning that Israel going in there, There they're going to feel like they're compelled to go in but at the same time you're taking the fucking bait because they want this as bloody as possible and they want to be able to blame Israel for doing for making it as bloody as possible and they're doing a great job of it.
|
Sam:
[1:28:03]
| And, and meanwhile, we, we, we mentioned that I brought in the us politics for a minute and Joe Biden, although I haven't talked about what people think about that in the U S but the other part is of course Netanyahu politics in Israel.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:17]
| Like, and he's at it. Listen, I saw the latest polls saying that 75% of Israelis, want Netanyahu to resign.
|
Sam:
[1:28:25]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:26]
| They're brutal. They want to God.
Like, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:28:32]
| Well, and a lot of polls sort of acknowledge, like, when this is over, we expect you to go away.
But at some point, you got to think maybe he won't make it till this is over either.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:43]
| It's happened before, man. You know, they haven't, they haven't gotten there.
|
Sam:
[1:28:48]
| I mean, I think that right now in the short term, they were thinking that they were thinking that, but you know, well, and the, the, the, the, the facets of that, first of all, are number one, everyone blames him for this happening in the first place because of putting the attention in the wrong place.
Like we will go make pace. We'll go make peace with Saudi Arabia and all of the other countries, and we'll just ignore the Palestinians or even we will support Hamas a little bit by sending some money via Qatar to make them stronger to weaken the Palestinian authority in the West Bank because we think the West Bank is the real issue and we can ignore Gaza, right?
Yeah, and even then we want to ignore the West Bank as well.
And so they blame that whole approach of like just fundamentally being a mistake of this notion that they could ignore the Palestinian issue, deal with other countries and the Palestinian issue would just go away at some point.
And that clearly didn't work.
And so we had this surprise attack and blah, blah, blah.
So they blame them for that. Then, there's a whole contingent, a very large portion, who are upset that they prioritized.
The offensive over getting the hostages out, like lots of Israelis want to do both, but there's a lot of pressure to like, get the damn hostages.
Whereas the impression, a lot of members, not just Netanyahu, but other people in the Israeli government were giving, whether it's fully accurate or not, a lot of people were getting the impression that they were like, well, it's too bad about those hostages, but we got to go full steam in Gaza.
And if the hostages die because of it, oh, well, that we have to, we have to go after Hamas first and foremost.
And there's a significant chunk of the Israeli public who's like, yeah, we have to go after Hamas, we have to do something about that.
But the priority should be get those get these people back.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:56]
| Right, exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:30:57]
| And, and And honestly, that's a hard juggle to do.
And then there's a small group who are saying the kinds of things that you are saying as well, although they're getting increasingly loud too, is sort of the liberal part of the Israeli population who's like, what you're doing right now, long-term, is actually going to make it worse.
You are setting the seeds for the next round of this. You are not actually solving any problems yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:29]
| This isn't helping at all. Even if you kill every single last person who is an active Hamas fighter, each one of those have families that, that, that, you know, are going to want to come back and kill you.
|
Sam:
[1:31:42]
| Yes. You, you, for everyone you kill, you're creating a bunch of new ones in the next generation.
You know, especially when you, when you're talking about a place that is 40%, under the age of 18 or whatnot, you know, so anyway, I don't know what, aside from, you know, obviously it's, it's Biden's fault for not solving everything.
What, what are the rest of your thoughts on this Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:11]
| I mean, but like I said, once again, look, this is, they have backed themselves into a corner in this.
Going in and doing this attack, I, the way that they're handling it while a big show of force is not rooting out Hamas is not going to bring peace and is not getting those hostages out.
So I don't know what, and I think this is a reason why so many people with this pause, We are getting a few hostages, but it feels like Netanyahu and company, had to be basically badgered into it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:57]
| Yes, they were dragged into doing this. This wasn't their first choice, but they sort of realized that they were losing support even at home for not doing this.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:05]
| So, yeah, well, it's what you just said. People were upset that their first priority was not in getting the fucking hostages back.
I mean, shit. I mean, that should have been their first priority in the first place. doesn't make any sense.
|
Sam:
[1:33:21]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:21]
| I and I just.
|
Sam:
[1:33:24]
| Man, you can you can actually understand to at least a degree like there it was possibly the attitude they're saying essentially those hostages are dead anyway, no matter what we do, they're going to die. So we might as well ignore them and move on.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:39]
| I don't I don't I don't agree. That's bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:33:42]
| I mean, obviously, they've gotten a bunch back at this point.
So that wasn't true. So but but you can see where that attitude would come from.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:51]
| Now, I can see how some people would have that attitude, yes, but it's still that didn't make any sense.
Now, I just you know, I really think that it's just look, we we talked about this the first time.
You know, what's the end game in this? It's like from both sides, the end game, you know, What was Hamas thinking about the endgame?
Realized afterwards that the endgame for Hamas was like, hey, this was the endgame. They wanted a bloody war.
|
Sam:
[1:34:24]
| Because it would bring their issue back into the attention of the world where the world was more and more ignoring them Yes and it would and and they felt that they could wind up the, Publicity they could win because Netanyahu had alienated so many people over in recent time Well, and I will say on that front on winning the publicity war They kind of are oh, I'm saying they are they are Absolutely.
I mean, if you look worldwide, and even in the freaking US, the percentage of people who are like, Israel is 100% the bad guy in this, is, I mean, it was high already.
It's much higher now. And even I, I mean, I look at this and I'm like, I don't feel like, I mean, the number of people who are died here, the number of kids who are died here, it's very hard for to say that's okay.
I don't think that's okay.
I think they should have done something else.
I understand why they did what they did, but that was not the right way to go forward.
That was not a way that would help the situation in any way.
And in the meantime, you've got thousands and thousands and thousands of people dead, not the right response, but you understand where they came from there, but on a worldwide basis, certainly like every country who is already sort of not really on Israel's side is more hard line about it.
There's some that are wavering and they're now definitely not on Israel's side.
The support in the United States has plummeted below levels it's been in forever.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:06]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:36:07]
| You know, and you have all of this.
And again, Biden's sort of trying to, you know, people have criticized him.
He's just an old timer. He supports Israel and everything. That's just he's ingrained in him.
Like I said, I think he's been doing.
And yes, he says that, he says those words, but everything, if you look at what he's doing rather than what he's saying, he is doing everything possible to try to bring this to a close as quickly as possible with as few people dead as possible.
And then also to hopefully try to set up a path forward after it.
You know, people have pointed out that previous improvements in these kinds of situations sometimes only happen after a big conflagration like this.
And then everybody's sort of like, after it, they're like, Oh man, that was really bad.
Let's maybe agree to some stuff we wouldn't have agreed to before in order to move forward.
So maybe cross your fingers.
There's some better path out of this, but I think we've got, I mean, some people are even saying even after this pause, it's going to be quote unquote hard for the Israelis to start up again at full force. I don't know.
They seem determined to do so at this point. I guess we'll find out in a few days, but it's, it's easy to see this getting worse still before it gets better.
But I don't know. Like I said, I, I, I, I hate keeping it back.
Keep I hate to keep bringing it back to the American side because it's not really about us, but I feel like the, it, the impact that the U S under Joe Biden has been having to avoid the worst case scenarios is not getting enough credit.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:07]
| Listen, let me put it to you this way. Think about how the situation would have been if Trump were president.
Okay. OK, OK, exactly look, what would be be have have done?
Probably look, BB, because because of the rage and how they wanted to go in, probably, oh, man, if there are 50,000 casualties, I wouldn't be surprised.
And you know what? Over here, you know what? Nothing. You know, Trump would be, oh, I'm out.
I'm out.
|
Sam:
[1:38:40]
| So it's actually slightly more complicated because Trump is a sociopath.
If he had won and was still in office, I agree with you. Absolutely.
But he lost and Bibi acknowledged Joe Biden as the legitimate president of the United States. So now Trump hates Bibi.
And he's actually come out with statements on true social in favor of Hamas because he hates Bibi.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:07]
| So, so he would have armed Hamas.
|
Sam:
[1:39:11]
| He might have. Although I think what I think you're actually right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:15]
| That would have. I think now that would have been that would that would have been a take.
|
Sam:
[1:39:20]
| That's the new Trump having been out and coming back in like I like I said, if he'd won outright and it stayed there at all time, him and BB were chums, right?
The only reason he's not friendly with BB anymore is because BB recognized Biden as president. Yes.
And so now all bets are off. Now, Bibi is evil.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:41]
| So now, so now we give weapons to Hamas.
|
Sam:
[1:39:45]
| Well, I don't know if he would have actually gone that far, but I think you're kind of right.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:50]
| Or he wouldn't. Well, he wouldn't have stopped them getting weapons, probably, which he would have just been like, it's their business.
|
Sam:
[1:39:56]
| I don't give a fuck. They can do whatever they want.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:58]
| Yeah, I think that's that's exactly the take that I expected. Yes.
And, you know, Mimi was the slaughter, you know, however many civilians, I'm like, go ahead and fucking knock yourself out.
|
Sam:
[1:40:10]
| Yeah. But he wouldn't be upset the other way either. Yeah. So.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:17]
| Ah, they killed a whole bunch of Jews. He doesn't like them anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:40:20]
| Unfortunately, you're probably right about that.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:23]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:40:26]
| Okay.
We've exhausted this one, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:32]
| I mean, look, unfortunately, like I said, I mean, Joe Biden didn't just snap his fingers and solve this fucking problem.
And so basically we're back at the same thing that we've talked about this for the last 30 years, where, you know what, you know, at one point, somebody said, listen, sometime in the early nineties, we thought that there would have been lasting peace.
We came close and then.
|
Sam:
[1:40:59]
| Well, just in the last couple of weeks, the Clintons, both of them have been on interviews talking about how we had this on the table where Arafat could have gotten his Palestinian state.
He would have had 100% of Gaza, he would have had 97%, of the West Bank, plus Israel was going to give up territory to make that 100%, with some territory swaps and stuff.
And Yasser Arafat said, no, and that's because that's why we're where we are now.
And if he'd said, yes, we would have been in a much different place.
And as you also said, the other time we had the assassination of an Israeli prime minister as well, who is trying to go towards peace.
So between Arafat saying no, and the, the prime minister who was pushing peace getting knocked off because he was pushing peace, we end up here instead.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:05]
| Yeah. Unfortunately, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:42:09]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:11]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:42:12]
| On that happy note, on that happy note.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:17]
| And anything else to talk about?
|
Sam:
[1:42:18]
| I did. There was one other thing I really wanted to get in. So let's take a break.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:22]
| Are we going to talk about the terror about the terror attack in Niagara Falls?
|
Sam:
[1:42:26]
| No, I wanted to talk about open AI.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:29]
| Oh, oh that. Oh yeah. Something happened this week.
|
Sam:
[1:42:34]
| So let's take a break.
And we'll try to do a short 10-15 minutes on that and then we'll wrap it up.
We'll be back after this.
|
Break:
[1:42:47]
| Emma Standard Do do do. Hello, this is Emma 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 Featured Wiki of the Day, you would have heard this summary for Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty.
Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty is a non-fiction book written by the Australian lawyers and legal academics Harry Hobbs and George Williams about Micronations and their legal status within international law.
Written from an academic perspective, it is one of few works on Micronational movements and the earliest published book to focus largely on the legal aspect of micronations.
The book concerns the definition of statehood, the place of micronations within international law, people's motivations for declaring them, the micronational community and the ways by which such entities mimic sovereign states.
Both Hobbes and Williams specialise in international law.
Hobbes is a human rights lawyer and Williams is an Australian constitutional law professor.
—Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty was published by Cambridge University Press as an e-book on 23 December 2021, and in hardcover and paperback formats in January 2022.
The work's legal and non-dismissive academic approach to Micronations garnered positive reviews.
Hobbs and Williams authored a subsequent publication for a broader audience, entitled How to Rule Your Own Country, The Weird and Wonderful World of Micronations, which was published by the University of New South Wales Press in November 2022.
That's all there is to it. See? Fun, entertaining, educational.
And short. Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on your podcast playing software of choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com, to check out our archives.
Now back to Kamajan's corner. Do do do.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:53]
| Do do do?
|
Sam:
[1:44:55]
| You know, we're just failures because neither of us has started our own micronation yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:01]
| Okay. So, so that's our new plan. We're going to start a micronation.
|
Sam:
[1:45:05]
| We, we, we need a micronation, maybe two.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:09]
| Oh, maybe.
|
Sam:
[1:45:09]
| Cause we couldn't possibly live in the same nation. Cause that would be, well, that's true. That would be, it would be too much conflict and war between us.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:16]
| That would be, I mean, that sounds like, I mean, I don't, I don't want to live in your same micronation. I want my own micronation. What the hell am I talking about?
Screw that. Damn.
|
Sam:
[1:45:26]
| Okay. Oh, open AI. So first of all, open AI is the company responsible for chat GPT and they've been working on a bunch of other artificial intelligence technologies.
They apparently had some really weird oddball structure with a nonprofit owning a for-profit company because they wanted competitive salaries and blah, blah, blah. Last week.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:52]
| Well, well, it's well, it was a little bit more than that.
|
Sam:
[1:45:56]
| Oh, we'll get into that. Let me give the high level last weekend.
We had this whole thing where the board.
Fired the founder, CEO, Sam, one of the founders, one of the founders.
And then the other founder quit because of this.
And then, and then Microsoft offered to hire the guy.
And then a whole bunch of employees, like almost all of the 700 and something employees said that if this stood, they were going to leave too.
And then the board reversed themselves.
The board ended up leaving and they brought the guy back.
And apparently all of this conflict, like it's still unclear exactly what the reasons and everything where the board originally said it was because the guy was lying to them.
And then it looked like it was conflicts between like the goal of the nonprofit versus the goal of the profit.
And then there's some not profit like, you know.
Guy wearing a robe, giving messages from God, the other kind of profit.
But the then then it started being about, well, they were on the verge of this new massive breakthrough, and that was the cause.
Even what the fuck?
|
Ivan:
[1:47:16]
| I think that's the main answer. What the fuck? But I do think, look, I subscribe to this Silicon Valley like insider, you know, publication thing that has had some quite a lot of scoops and quite a lot of confirmed inside information on a lot of things that are that have gone on in the valley, including about this.
And they had published a story earlier this week that the specific cause of the distrust and concern came from one of their lead developers that was on the board and I'm looking for the story right now and I can't find it, but I'll paraphrase it first and then look for it.
But there's one other key researchers.
Was also on the board and sometime earlier this year they had made a what they called a discovery.
Related to a i that they believed could leapfrog anything that they had been doing right now the discovery was related to solving mathematical problems specifically and.
What that discovery had done was solve a mathematical problem for which it had not been it had not been presented the answer to before okay. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:48:54]
| And using methods that didn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:57]
| Right. And using, right.
|
Sam:
[1:49:00]
| Because as new, as people have pointed out, like the kinds of problems that this technology can apparently some get the right answer to, we're just talking about elementary school arithmetic, which your solar powered calculator that you get for free in a box of cereal can fucking do.
But The, the reason that makes it interesting from an AI point of view is that it apparently is able to figure out some of how to solve these problems without, having training data that already had these kinds of problems.
So I've seen some people saying that from what they've described, it's not actually that great, but we'll see.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:47]
| Yeah. Oh, well, I happen to agree with that. It's that open AI made an AI breakthrough before Altman firing stoking excitement and concern, and that apparently the concern from the board was that he had been.
Talking about it and speaking about it in public about how this is coming in the future and blah blah blah and so forth and the So this is from the story from the information Which okay?
I I well I can I guess I can share a free article or so if people ask me but because it's very limited circuit Very limited distribution.
It's not actually totally public because it's only two members of of this thing And so you you you have to pay for this thing and it costs it's not a trivial I can share it for free.
Yeah. No, it's not a trivial amount. No, no, not at all.
|
Sam:
[1:50:36]
| No, it's like one of the expensive publications. It's not one of the cheap ones.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:41]
| Really expensive. Yes. It's what a really expensive ones.
And so open AI made an AI breakthrough before Altman firing stoke and excitement and concern and the, the discoverer in the team, the technical breakthrough spearheaded by open AI chief scientist, Ilya Sutskover, raised concern about some staff that the company didn't have proper safeguards in place to commercialize such advanced AI models.
This person said, now this guy, Ilya is on the board. Okay. It's my understanding.
|
Sam:
[1:51:14]
| Yes. And he, uh, he initially, he initially voted to kick out Altman.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:18]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:18]
| And then a couple of days later over the weekend, he's like, I'm sorry. I screwed up. I shouldn't have done that.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:23]
| The work of Sutskover's team, which has not previously been reported.
And the concern inside the organization suggests that tensions within OpenAI about the pace of its work will continue even after Altman was reinstated as CEO Tuesday.
So he has been one of the key researchers there and there is that tension.
But yeah, this was related to this. Let me see.
The Susquehara's breakthrough allowed OpenAI to overcome limitations on obtaining enough high-quality data to train new models, according to the person with knowledge, a major obstacle for developing next-generation models.
The research involved using computer-generated rather than real-world data like, text or images pulled from the internet to train new models.
For years, Sutzkever had been working on ways to allow language models like GPT-4 to solve tasks that involved reasoning, like math or science problems.
In 2021, he launched a product called GPT-0, and not the DeepMind's AlphaZero, program, that could go play chess, go, and shogi.
The team hypothesized that giving language models more time and computing power to generate responses to questions that allow them to develop new academic breakthroughs.
So all of this research we're talking about, and this is what about about solving these problems disappears to have been in the back burner for whatever the hell reason they thought that his recent public.
Converse, even though he was talking about this, like not directly, but at some kind of like very vague level was freaked them out.
|
Sam:
[1:52:56]
| Well, and there, here's the thing there, there are a couple aspects to this one.
You know, this is of the three things I listed.
This is the last of them. There's the software and development that caused them to freak out, but it relates to The second thing I said as well, which is there's a fundamental disconnect, the nonprofit that set the top of this supposedly has as its primary mission overriding everything else is the quote unquote safe development of AI.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:27]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:53:27]
| And they are supposed to prioritize that over everything, over money specifically.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:34]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:53:34]
| Whereas the for-profit underneath is it's a for-profit.
They want to make money. Now it's a limited for-profit. There's some weird thing about maximum amount of money they can make. Blah, blah, blah.
But still, they want to... So they call this the battle between sort of the accelerationists who want to go as fast as possible.
And they call them the doomers who are worried about creating artificial generalized intelligence that'll take over the world, the humans, Skynet. Now here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:09]
| You watch that movie, right?
|
Sam:
[1:54:11]
| Yeah, I've watched Terminator. I have not watched the entire Terminator series.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:15]
| Have you watched Terminator two?
|
Sam:
[1:54:17]
| Yes, I have watched Terminator.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:19]
| OK, all right. OK, all right. OK.
|
Sam:
[1:54:20]
| But I don't know that I've watched anything past two.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:23]
| I don't think I haven't. Oh, yeah, I have.
|
Sam:
[1:54:26]
| Because they've got there were several after Terminator two and there was a TV series.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:31]
| I have that, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:54:33]
| But I have seen one and two, but not in a long, long time.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:37]
| I won't make you watch any of them.
|
Sam:
[1:54:39]
| Anyway, here's the thing. I don't like the accelerationists, because as we've talked about on this show before, the problem here right now with AI is, first, is they are absolutely useful for a whole bunch of things.
These LLMs and the other generative things for pictures and video and music, And these things are incredible.
They're doing a bunch of great things, but people are trying to shove them into all kinds of areas where they're not good yet.
And because everybody is like, Oh my God, we got to get on the bandwagon.
We can't be too late for this. Cause this is the next thing that's going to make multi trillion dollar companies. And like, we can't be left behind. Right.
So we have to do this and we have to push it everywhere. But the thing is, it's good in certain places and it absolutely sucks in other places, and it's getting pushed into a lot of places where it sucks, and even in the places where it's good.
In the terms of like it produces really good output that makes sense and you look at it and like you're like, that's really cool There is lots and lots of research about how fucking biased the damn things are there questions about intellectual property and them using the The the training data without permission there all kinds of issues that are still out there that have to be figured out So I'm all for like take a step back and be a little bit more careful However, I think the coming at it from the Doomer perspective with what they're worried about is Skynet is way past where we really are.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:18]
| And they're all, we're not, no, we're not, not even remotely there.
|
Sam:
[1:56:22]
| There are all kinds of real world problems about the technology that already exists in terms of using it in places where it doesn't get good results in terms of bias, in terms of intellectual property, intellectual property, hell, even in terms of the environmental footprint of the compute power needed in order to drive these things.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:44]
| Oh, it's ridiculous. It's it's ridiculous. The invite that, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:56:49]
| All of these are real issues that those, those are the things that should be causing them to slow down and be careful.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:57]
| Listen, let's not minimize the fact that right now, these D these things in order to do a really poor job at a lot of stuff, take gargantuan gargantuan amounts of resources to give you pretty much shitty results right now.
|
Sam:
[1:57:19]
| Yeah.
And so look, yeah, frankly, I'm one of the ones who from the acceleration point of view, if like people are like, it's do mongering, if you think there's going to be artificial global intelligence, I'll be like, God damn it.
If the if we get good artificial global intelligence, maybe they'll solve the Israel Palestine problem.
And maybe, you know, let's go for Yeah, I, it could be a very good thing for humanity, you know, you know, I, for one welcome our new robotic overlords, as they say, you know, I I'm, I'm like very positive about the possibilities of eventually getting to.
Generalize intelligence, but it, but again, it's not the stuff to worry about right now. There's lots of stuff to worry about right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:08]
| We are so far from there right now. I mean, look, like I've said before, we can't make these fucking cars figure out how to fucking turn left yet, for God's sakes.
|
Sam:
[1:58:20]
| I mean, listen, but, but meanwhile, at the same time, as we can't figure out that we, so far, most places have restrained from having the drones for their militaries, be able to autonomously decide when to kill people.
That's not going to last. I saw an article just within the last 48 hours of our Pentagon doing studies on they're like ready to try to recommend, okay, let the drone decide when to shoot.
Like this is going to happen very soon. It may already be happening secretly.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:56]
| But that's not even AI. If you think about it.
|
Sam:
[1:59:01]
| No, no, that's not AI.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:02]
| That's not AI. Well, that's a betting decision-making.
|
Sam:
[1:59:06]
| AI isn't AI. You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:59:09]
| Right, but, but, but no, but, but deciding like, okay, you, you give something a parameter and you decide to, whether you, well, if you see the parameter, whether you hit the button or, or, or, or the thing clicks the button.
|
Sam:
[1:59:25]
| Yeah. Yeah. Well, that, that's the thing that's the, yeah.
Well, that's, that's the thing. It's, it's just, it's just, just, it's just algorithmic decision-making and none of these AGI, there is no AGI, that's the point.
None of these AI algorithms that we're talking about are actually intelligence.
They're just complicated algorithms. They're just fancy use of statistics.
They're all of this kind of stuff, which is the same thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:53]
| Well, it was, listen, it was the reason, listen, it was the reason why when I, I i did some of this a i programming it and it's a really you know we had herb simon at the cardi well and i was at the psychology department we did some of these.
This research is double whatever and i realize that it's exactly what you just said it's just it's just a root decision tree it's just a very big one.
And we keep adding branches and we keep showing it stuff.
And then it will go through all the fucking branches to figure out what the one that meets the parameters and make the fucking decision to decide on that one.
That's basically what the fuck it is. That's it. And you know, we, we built these nests and trees and branches and we built more and more and more of them when we did that. And I was like, and that's it. And we just made them.
|
Sam:
[2:00:44]
| And there are lots of complicated way. And like, you know, you say trees, like some of the early models really literally were decision trees.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:51]
| Yes. were decision trees.
|
Sam:
[2:00:52]
| A lot of that, a lot of the algorithms now don't use that structure, but they're still just definable algorithms.
The problem is they get so complex and operate off too much, so much data that the human being looking at it can no longer sort of verify what the fuck it's doing manually.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:10]
| And it just keeps doing shit wrong.
|
Sam:
[2:01:12]
| And that, and that kind of stuff. And now there's an argument to be made that our brains are nothing different and our brains are also just following this, this chemical processes that can kick off and it's all, it's all deterministic too.
And there's arguments about that, but there's, there's still a vast gulf here.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:35]
| Listen, our, listen, our, our brains and how our body and everything that we do, works is in reality, when you compare it against any other technology that we have built or developed is nothing short of just incredible.
|
Sam:
[2:01:54]
| Okay. Yes. There is still a massive gulf between the best stuff we've ever built.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:00]
| I mean, holy shit.
|
Sam:
[2:02:03]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:03]
| At every single fucking thing. Let's be clear about this. We live by consuming, we function by consuming food.
Okay, all right, we generate our own energy based on on food.
We consume oxygen. We have all these functions that happen autonomously without you having to fucking think about them at any second.
You don't have to like, think about, hey, mouth open. Okay. It fucking opens. Okay.
And noise comes out of your mouth. That sounds like like, like, like, like words. And when I hear them, I don't have to turn on a, let me flip on the switch to analyze sound.
No, it fucking comes in.
We sense temperatures. We interpret multiple sources of data all at the same fucking time and go off like this.
When we're sick and other things, all these fucking things. And we fight infection somehow our fucking body, the ciphers fucking things and actually builds antibodies and protections for you.
And all it's it's insane.
|
Sam:
[2:03:19]
| So what so what you're saying, Yvonne, is that you don't think open a eyes next release is going to duplicate all of that next week?
|
Ivan:
[2:03:29]
| No, not even close. What apparel what you what you what you remind me is So Sunday article is basically right now. What we've been able to do is maybe sort of get it to do some remedial math on its own.
Yes, that's about it. That's where we're at. Not exactly going to launch a rocket to the moon using that right now.
|
Sam:
[2:03:51]
| We have reproduced a 1970s calculator.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:54]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:03:54]
| Using a shitload more resources.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:57]
| You see, I mean, so many resources that we could have fucking launched.
I mean, a hundred rockets to the moon.
|
Sam:
[2:04:05]
| Yeah. And anyway, look again, where I come down on all of this is, yes, There are lots of things to be concerned about ethical use of AI, but it's not the same thing these fuckers seem to be worried about.
It's like the on-the-ground, day-to-day, how are we using this right now?
And if you can't solve that, yes, you should slow down before you get to the next stage.
I'm not worried about an AI being released in the next year that's going to take over the world. Maybe I'll turn out to be wrong.
And if it does, I hope it's a good ruler of the world and not a bad one.
But there's so many issues with how it's being used today.
And these people, the same people who say they're worried about the computer taking over the fucking world, are the same ones going, no regulation, please.
We're the ones who have to figure this out.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:05]
| They say, yeah, hideout.
|
Sam:
[2:05:07]
| And I'm like, you got to be fucking kidding me. No.
Yes. You should slow down. Should you stop? No. But should you slow down? Should you be careful?
Should you look at the possible results of what the fuck you're doing?
Yes, of course you should. Even, even the stuff with just the chat GPT that's already existed for the last year, I see so many people complaining about how search results have gone to absolute shit because they're all polluted with AI written crap.
You know, solve that first.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:44]
| I mean, it's I mean, well, look, listen, it sounds good.
|
Sam:
[2:05:49]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:50]
| Look, I keep not understanding why the hell like any of these can't like figure out like it winds up, you know, words in sentences that make no sense whatsoever.
Why can't you figure out, you know, that I'm not trying to up, up, I don't know.
The gibberish word in the middle of it is wrong.
|
Sam:
[2:06:16]
| Well, and here's the thing, too, like the, you mentioned this new technology that OpenAI came up with is trying to layer on a layer of actual reasoning on top of the straight-up LLM.
Which, you know, when we were talking about this a year ago, it's one of the things we talked about, is like, you know, in order to make this really valuable, you have to have another layer that actually cares about truth, not just the probability of the next thing coming up.
So this sounds like an interesting development.
Let them do some research, but be careful. But the thing is, with all of the results of this going on the Internet, there's also the feedback loop problem of like, I mentioned search results going to shit, but if the next generation of AI is being trained on shit on the Internet and the shit on the Internet is coming from the last generation of AI, you're just going to get a feedback loop where this stuff is going to get worse.
So you also have to have like some extensive filtering to try to determine what to trust and not to trust. And maybe that's where this reasoning comes in. I don't know.
Maybe you get an AI detector out of the shit. Cause apparently people have put out some, but they're all crap.
They can't, they can't actually tell you anything anyway.
So to wrap this up, Yvonne corporate wise, like is open AI like back to where they were a week and a half ago and all things back to normal or pretty close.
So like they just had this like public mental breakdown and now everything's fine.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:50]
| Yes. Yes. Somebody said the equivalent was like when Apple got rid of Steve jobs, but for the tick tock generation.
|
Sam:
[2:08:01]
| So like, whereas Steve jobs was gone for years, for over a decade, this guy was God for like a few days for days.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:10]
| Correct. Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:08:11]
| And now that he's back, he can, he can take the, the, the company to the moon because everybody who is slowing him down is gone.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:22]
| Abby. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:08:24]
| And meanwhile, you know, Whether it's because they're worried about Skynet or just worried about anything else, it doesn't matter because they're not going to be careful at all anymore. There's just full, full steam ahead.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:38]
| Maybe who knows? I mean, I don't know. I don't even know if Altman was a steam full steam ahead guy. Really, to be honest, he was.
I mean, I mean, but what the hell does that mean? That's what I'm saying.
Maybe it's just, you know, thinking the same thing that we you and I have talked about right now. Which is that yeah, full steam ahead right now, because basically the things that people are worried about, Skydead, this shit isn't even close. So why the hell are you telling me to do this?
|
Sam:
[2:09:05]
| All the problems they need to be worrying about all that other shit, not ignoring it.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:10]
| Right, right. You know, so that's why, you know, I mean, full steam ahead.
Yeah, I mean, this, this thing right now doesn't, doesn't really.
Is it what people are really afraid of even remotely at this point that that is so far off?
|
Sam:
[2:09:29]
| Well, if people are only afraid of, you know, the computers are going to take over the world and kill all the humans, then okay. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:38]
| No, we're, that's not the problem, but I think that for the most part, for the most part, what I've heard these people, that's what they were basically expressing.
|
Sam:
[2:09:47]
| Yeah. But that, but that's the whole thing that I've been saying is that that's not the stuff to be afraid of.
There's all kinds of shit that we know is bad about this right now that needs to be fixed, but they're not addressing it.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:03]
| They're not, but that they're not, but they're, they're not seeing that. I'm telling you.
I mean, that, that, because if that's what they were concerned about, I mean, that wasn't the action, right?
|
Sam:
[2:10:14]
| Well, right. This is the problem. This is the problem.
I'm pointing out is like we have The the things that it's actively being used for right now are putting out Problematic output and being used for things that it's not good for like and again these these are, amazing technologies just in the last couple years the improvements in this kind of stuff, the generative text, the generative images, the generative video, audio, all of this kind of crap.
It has improved so much in the last few years. This is amazing stuff.
But, but, it is amazing within the particular areas it is good at, outside of those areas, it is problematic, but people are shoving it outside of those areas prematurely.
And prematurely is key here.
I think it'll, with additional improvements, moving away from just LLM to LLM, plus these other kinds of stuff we're talking about that care about truth, et cetera, et cetera, are, the areas that it's not good in will decline.
The areas it's good in will expand, and these areas that are bad, there'll be less of them.
I do think that's a trend we're going to see, but in the meantime.
If you don't want that to cause more and more problems as it grows, you have to solve the problems that you can visually see right now in front of you, like this is doing bad, stupid things right now, how do we fix them?
People have to be concentrating on that first. And then as a part of that, as we get closer and closer to Skynet, then you can worry about all the protections to how to make Skynet so it doesn't kill us all, you know, so, cause eventually we'll have a Skynet. Of course we will.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:15]
| Probably not in our lifetime.
|
Sam:
[2:12:17]
| Well, we'll make it a good one. A good, beneficent Skynet that will take care of us all.
And you know what it'll be like? It won't be like the one in Terminator.
It'll be like the one in WALL-E.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:33]
| Probably, I actually, you know what, probably more akin to that, it will wind up being. Yes. That's a reality.
|
Sam:
[2:12:39]
| Like the, the, the, the, the AI who was running the ship that all the humans left, right.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:43]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:12:44]
| Yeah. If you haven't seen Wally, go see Wally.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:47]
| Oh, that's two thumbs up. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:12:49]
| Yeah. Okay. We're done here.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:52]
| We're done.
|
Sam:
[2:12:53]
| Thank you everybody for listening.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:56]
| As usual, go to, we didn't talk about the terrorist attack.
|
Sam:
[2:12:59]
| The one in New York that wasn't that wasn't well Fox now it wasn't now Fox Fox did say it was, seems like that guy got his accelerator stuck is the latest theory I don't see what else could have happened his particular model of car had a recall open for exactly that actually no I just checked no there was no open recall for news article about that you mean it lied there was no recalls about there were recalls about the airbags and other stuff on whatever.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:28]
| There have been some issue with accelerators, they said, in Europe on the right hand drive cars.
|
Sam:
[2:13:34]
| And this was not this old.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:36]
| No, this was not.
|
Sam:
[2:13:37]
| OK, well, anyway. Yeah.
Guy and his wife killed in New York because their car flew through the air and blew up on the border crossing.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:47]
| I mean, I, I mean, I, I, I mean, He must have made some mistake.
I just I don't. I mean, he was going well over 100 miles an hour.
And one of the things they were saying is that from the smoke in the back, and I have to agree, it's probably correct that any.
And look, it is possible that the accelerator got stuck. I've seen people like loose floor mats or stuff like that doing something like that.
It seemed like he had been trying to apply the brakes because there was a plume of white, like trailing him.
And it seemed like that that was like him trying to apply the brakes, but not hard enough, unfortunately, which is one thing that people don't do in emergencies sometimes that, you know, they push them, but not jam.
And he was pushing on the brake, but not enough that he was just generating a whole bunch of smoke and not actually stopping So anyway, anyway, go to curmudgeon-corner.com.
|
Sam:
[2:14:47]
| You can find our archives. You can find transcripts of recent shows.
You can find all the ways to contact us, email and mastodon and Facebook.
If you want a link to that article, Yvonne mentioned that he can share with you, you know, hit him up, hit up, hit us up on email.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:05]
| I will, I will say, hit me up and I'll say, and I'll send you a link.
|
Sam:
[2:15:09]
| And you can also, of course, go to our Patreon where you can give us cash money.
And, uh, we appreciate that at various levels. We will mention you on the show.
We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We'll send you a mug, all that kind of stuff.
And very importantly at $2 a month or more, we'll invite you to our own curmudgeon's corner Slack, where Yvonne and I, and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week, sharing links, all of that kind of stuff.
You, do you want to share something else or what does the, the, the terrorist attack count.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:38]
| Oh, oh, oh yeah. Because I shared the, okay.
|
Sam:
[2:15:41]
| Well, let me see. You have something else.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:43]
| Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
|
Sam:
[2:15:46]
| Something that will entice people to join our Slack because this article is so compelling.
They're like, oh my God, I can't believe I missed this.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:56]
| Oh my God. I can't believe you missed this. Well, we were speaking of open AI and stuff.
|
Sam:
[2:16:03]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:04]
| And, Does a there's a Guardian article that basically said, does Australia exist?
Well that depends on which search engine you ask Microsoft bigs fall victim to long-running part joke Internet's conspiracy.
|
Sam:
[2:16:19]
| There you go AI doing its best Yeah, there was another one with if you ask do birds exist Yeah, first thing that comes up is the whole fake conspiracy theory about how birds aren't real.
They're just surveillance devices for the government Uh, you know, so I, I think that that sounds right.
Yeah. Cause of course, you know, anyway.
Okay. That's it. Thanks everybody. It's been great talking to you.
You're the usual stay safe. Have a good week. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving if you celebrate and hope you had a good black Friday that did not involve taking hours and hours at some mall anyway, have a great week.
We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:05]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:17:34]
| Thank you, Mr. Bo. I'm hitting stop.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:38]
| Alright. Save. Stop.
| |
|
