Automated Transcript
Peter:
[0:00]
| So I should warn you, I do have a cold, so I sound a little nasal and I've got this kind of Barry White voice thing going on.
|
Sam:
[0:06]
| That's okay. Everybody will just think you're cool.
|
Peter:
[0:09]
| Yeah. Something like that. Let me get the notes up here for show topics.
|
Sam:
[0:17]
| Yeah. So I figure like we can do our two movies in the first segment. And then, like I said, I'll pretty much leave the rest of the agenda up to you. There's no, like, I know you want to avoid politics and there's nothing big this week anyway. Like there's nothing that I feel like super pressing about. So like pick what you want. Like the, you know, you can talk about your Shangri-La thing in Japan or whatever else you feel like. And you know, I, I haven't, I don't know what I'll know about those things, but I'll add what I can and we can chat.
|
Peter:
[0:50]
| And that's the story of how Sam lost all his, all his listeners. Let's talk about video games, Sam. It'll be great. We'll talk about obsolete computer RPGs.
|
Sam:
[1:02]
| Okay, cool. Yeah. So, okay. Ready to start? Here we go.
|
Break:
[1:09]
| Here we go.
|
Sam:
[1:30]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, June 8th, 2024. It's just before 1930, UTC. And this is Sam Minter. And for the second week in a row, Yvonne Bowe is not available to join us today. Last time he was in Guatemala. I'm not sure exactly what he was doing this weekend, but I saw some pictures from Disney on Facebook. So he might be at Disney yet again. So we have as a volunteer for a co-host this time, someone who is joining us for the first time. We've mentioned him on the show a couple of times because he's been contributing on our Commodions Corner Slack for a while, but it's Pete. Hi, Pete.
|
Peter:
[2:09]
| Hey, how are you doing, Sam?
|
Sam:
[2:11]
| I'm doing great. And before we get started and talk about the agenda and actually dive into things, you want to give a quick introduction on who you are, whatever you're comfortable with would say?
|
Peter:
[2:24]
| Sure thing. I go by Peter B online. You could find me on Mastodon under that name, Peter B at Mastodon.xyz. I have an old blog from back in 2004 called Tea Leaves, T-L-E-A-V-E-S.com that I no longer write for because who writes blogs anymore? Instead, I have a YouTube channel called Tea Leaves Programming. And it is partially about programming, partly about double entry accounting, and partly about old obsolete computers and video games. And I have a cold today, so I do apologize if my voice is a little scratchy.
|
Sam:
[3:05]
| Yeah. It just makes you sound authoritative.
|
Peter:
[3:09]
| I kind of like it. I might have to maintain this cold for, you know, my own recordings.
|
Sam:
[3:14]
| Yeah. And, uh, you know, I, I looking at your YouTube channel, your most recent series is on wizardry. It looks like, yeah.
|
Peter:
[3:22]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[3:23]
| You know, I've never played that. I've never played that game.
|
Peter:
[3:26]
| You've never played it.
|
Sam:
[3:27]
| I watched, I watched a few minutes of your videos, so I have an idea of what it is, but I never played it when it was, I've never played it.
|
Peter:
[3:34]
| I mean, speaking honestly, my videos are probably intolerable unless you're a certain type of nerd, but for me, it's largely an exercise in nostalgia. And so I'm kind of playing these games and messing with these computers that I used when I was, you know, 10, 11, 12 years old. And wizardry, of course, was very formative for me as a game. And so that's why I'm doing a series. And this particular wizardry that I'm doing right now is actually a distiff branch. So wizardry was somewhat popular in the US and then kind of faded out. It has always been incredibly popular in Japan and has never stopped being popular to the point where it's very influential on their anime, their manga, their TV shows. And so this is basically a Japanese wizardry game called The Five Ordeals that I'm playing a little bit of. But really, it's a very limited, it's a very niche audience, I would say, for my channel.
|
Sam:
[4:32]
| Well, you had mentioned on Mastodon that, well, one of your previous series was on a fool's errand. And I never actually played a fool's errand, but I played the next game from that guy, 3-3. 3-3 Classic. You had mentioned online that you were going to do 3-3. So I am waiting for your three and three series.
|
Peter:
[4:52]
| Yeah, man, we could, we could talk. You were like right before the show began, you and I were kibitzing and you're like, well, what do you want to talk about? You were just waving the red flag in front of the bull. Cause I could talk about three and three for an hour. And my, my fear, I'll just, I'll say you can cut this out if it's boring.
|
Sam:
[5:09]
| This is a, this is an old Mac game by the way, from like, you know, back in 1993, 94.
|
Peter:
[5:17]
| Something like that is.
|
Sam:
[5:18]
| Somewhere around there. And I remember like there, there is a series on, on my YouTube channel first that my son and I started on three and three.
|
Peter:
[5:28]
| I watched some of it.
|
Sam:
[5:29]
| And, you know, we, we, it was, it was full of like technical glitches. At one point we recorded the wrong window at one point. Like I didn't realize I had it on record the window mode, but didn't realize it was actually just locking onto a segment of the screen. So I moved the window there. And at the time I remember, and you're like, you can cut this out. Forget that way. People listen or not, you know, but like the, at one point we couldn't get the old Mac emulator we worked to save properly. Like it wouldn't save the game. And like 3 and 3 is the kind of game you don't do in one sitting.
|
Sam:
[6:10]
| And so it was really frustrating because we started it a couple of times and kept having to start over from the beginning and we're like, that's no good. And ended up, Yeah, we actually emailed the author of the game, and he wasn't sure. Eventually, I figured out on my own, there was a bug in the version of the emulator we were using, and there was an update that fixed it. Excellent. The problem was actually that what we had downloaded was a version of 3 and 3 that bundled the emulator as well. And the bundled emulator was broken. Broken so we downloaded the emulator separately and then loaded the game into the emulator with the current version of the emulator and then everything worked and we we told the we told the developer about this and that he might want to change it on his website i don't know if he ever did or not he was very nice no.
|
Peter:
[7:02]
| I don't think so i think these he's made so little money from these over the years i think.
|
Sam:
[7:08]
| It's not worth the time aside.
|
Peter:
[7:10]
| I i would love to do three and three as a as a let's play the problem with it if you remember the game.
|
Sam:
[7:17]
| It's a it's it's a puzzle game and it's a lengthy puzzle game and length.
|
Peter:
[7:24]
| Is really the problem in that he repeats the same puzzles again and again and some of them kind of in my personal opinion overstay their welcome.
|
Sam:
[7:34]
| And so.
|
Peter:
[7:35]
| Even though my audience is very niche i do like to have this idea that the video has to be interesting in some abstract sense right.
|
Sam:
[7:44]
| Right like.
|
Peter:
[7:44]
| I would have to want to watch it and i'm not sure i would want to watch me playing three.
|
Sam:
[7:50]
| Well and the two things on this are well and when when we replayed it with my son like one of the problems was i started this game in college and i got like to the 99 level i think there was one or two puzzles left and i got stuck on one Oh yeah. And I never solved that puzzle from like 20 plus years ago, 30 years ago.
|
Peter:
[8:14]
| This is before walkthroughs, before game facts. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[8:18]
| You couldn't just look it up online and find the answer. And I wouldn't have wanted to anyway. I kind of wanted to solve the puzzle, but at a certain point you get so frustrated. You're like, I've tried everything I can think of. I don't know how to do this. So I was actually looking forward to doing it with my son to like get through it. But we, we didn't get that far. We didn't get anywhere near the part where I got stuck in college. And so like at some point i want to resume but i i what one of the reasons i would be interested if you did ever play this and maybe you edited and cut out some of the boring parts i don't know there are a couple of puzzles where i never actually figured them out i.
|
Peter:
[8:56]
| Got i gotcha.
|
Sam:
[8:57]
| I got past them by just clicking until i clicked a bunch until eventually you get out there yeah i'm talking there's ones where you change the level of little platforms that you have to jump across. And I'm sure there is an actual pattern, but on a whole bunch of them, I never figured it out. I just kept clicking until I won, you know? And, and then of course, I'd love to see you get past the part where I was stuck. But anyway, it's fun, you know, and this is the thing and you know, yes, old video games is one of our butt firsts. Here we go. You know, I, a lot of these classics from when we were young, like some of them don't hold up at all, but some of them do. And there's some that are exceptionally simple, but are still fun to play. I mean, I'm even remembering, like, there was an old CPM game that I played on a computer, one of my dad's computers, a K-Pro2, which was, you know, a class of computer that doesn't exist anymore. It's a luggable. It's basically, it's intended as a portable computer, but the damn thing weighs like 30 pounds.
|
Peter:
[10:06]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[10:06]
| So, you know, but, you know, I remember the game to this day, and I think I found it emulated online somewhere, but I haven't played it. Well what was it like what what was that game oh it it's basically it's a platformer basically but it's all text-based like because that well and by text-based i mean like there were no like graphic elements so your character was an at sign who ran around and jumped and stuff like that but basically it was you know each each level was a screen where you started at the bottom left-hand corner and had to make your way to the upper right-hand corner and you jump over things and And things are coming at your way and things try to kill you and you get from one side to the other. And, you know, it was fun. And I got, I forget when I was a kid how far I got. But, I mean, it's one of those, like, I have memories of it however many decades later. And I'm like, that would be fun to play again, you know?
|
Sam:
[11:03]
| And some of these, like, you think about that, but a lot of it is nostalgia. And I know from the kind of things you do on your channel, sometimes, like, if you actually go back and play it, you're like, like wow this is kind of disappointing i have these fond memories of it but now that i actually go back to it it's not that great it just was in comparison i guess to everything else that was available i don't know but i don't know it's fun stuff like and i presume like people will have the same kind of feelings about certain games that are brand new today like 30 years from now wow.
|
Peter:
[11:39]
| Whatever you play when you're 11 years old is like the thing you feel nostalgic for right or whatever music you listen to at that age whatever books you read.
|
Sam:
[11:48]
| Oh absolutely it it's like yeah basically from age 10 11 through to the end of your teen years that's the stuff that sort of gets stuck in your head as like this is the good stuff this is the nostalgic stuff and And people go back to it. And so, yeah, I mean... Minecraft's is like what 15 years old now something like that and you know they're going to be people like in 20 30 years going back to sort of classic versions of minecraft absolutely not even whatever is the current version then because it'll probably still come around in some way shape or form but like going back to like oh let's go back to the original right right before they added all this other crap you know i think that's true i.
|
Peter:
[12:39]
| Think that's true.
|
Sam:
[12:40]
| Yeah and and people like you know the music from the stupid game will come up like in a club or something and people will go wild so.
|
Peter:
[12:49]
| I mean this actually connects to a very human behavior that i see play out in politics i see play out in religion i see play out in culture which is we have this myth the idea and the one sentence description would be things were better when i was a kid.
|
Sam:
[13:11]
| And i and i and i've i've seen memes where people like pull out like quotes from writings saying people things were better when i was a kid and all all the young people are foolish and don't know what they're doing and.
|
Peter:
[13:28]
| It's from like ancient rome.
|
Sam:
[13:29]
| Yes going back literally as far back as the ancient Greeks and probably even further. And every hundred years since then, it's a recurring theme in human history. Nobody, nobody ever likes what the kids these days are doing.
|
Peter:
[13:44]
| That's right. The you kids with your loud rock and roll music. So, so I try to be aware of this. I don't feel that things were better politically. You, you, there's no amount of money you could give me to say like, would you go back before antibiotics were invented and, and live a life then in a mansion? Like, absolutely not. Right. But I do have this affinity for these games. And I just try and repeat to myself, I just try and be conscious that like, this is a thing that I like, right? Because of my personal damage, because of my personal history, but that doesn't mean it's better in any kind of objective sense. It's not that the games today are worse. It's just, this is what I was imprinted on like a baby duckling.
|
Sam:
[14:27]
| Yeah. And they're different. And that's another thing that like, like you said, recurring theme, I get irritated all the time at these sort of moral panics about what the kids are doing, including things like screen time and all this kind of stuff. Stuff and you know and they're like well we've had all these studies that show that it does affect your brain and there's this and this and this that are different and i'm like okay different.
|
Sam:
[14:54]
| But you're implying it's bad show me that it's bad that that's that's different and like this and and sometimes for some new things i'm sure you can find data that actually shows things are objectively worse in some way, but almost always these things just point out a difference without pointing out actual harm. And I'm like, okay, yeah. Okay. Maybe, maybe attention spans are shorter. Is that really bad? It sounds like a good adaptation to modern society to me, you know, things like that. And I don't know, it's just like the automatic assumption that if things are different than what they were 20, 30 years ago, that's bad. It seems to be sort of built in to so much of this conversation. And I think you just need to separate difference from harm because they're not the same. Sometimes they are aligned. I think there is evidence that people talk about the effect of social media on teens and people being like their mental health is being...
|
Sam:
[16:00]
| Degraded by people, you know, having unrealistic expectations of like body image and all these kinds of things. Okay. That might be real harm, but you got to separate these two things, difference from harm. And I think oftentimes people just assume different as bad.
|
Peter:
[16:16]
| Well, I won't try to out your age, but surely, surely you are just barely old enough to remember the experience of needing to write a book report in junior high or middle school. And the way you did it was, you know, you'd go to the library, you would maybe look through the card catalog or maybe browse the shelves and whatever you happen to find, that's, that's the sources you're using. And that's it. And I compare that to what people today have available. You know, anyone could sit down in Google and type a question and then the brave, brave new AI future, you know, maybe they They can type a question and get a three-paragraph wrong answer about it rather than just a bunch of links. That experience is very different. And I think your point that you can't really be sure a priori whether it's better or worse.
|
Peter:
[17:09]
| But you can be sure that it's different. The amount of data is different. And I got in an argument with a relative of mine about this very topic where they were very much, how can you not go to the library and browse and, you know, kind of go deeply. And, and my reaction is that searching is an adaptation to the volume of information being beyond what you could read in your lifetime. If, if you or I were locked in our local, I don't know where you grew up, but if you were locked in your local library, assuming it wasn't like New York city, you could imagine the sci-fi premise that you would read every book in that library. might take you.
|
Sam:
[17:52]
| A long time.
|
Peter:
[17:53]
| But it you could have done it.
|
Sam:
[17:55]
| For a small library anyway yeah for.
|
Peter:
[17:57]
| A small library that's what i mean but on the internet not possible and it would never be possible.
|
Sam:
[18:02]
| No not even close not even and yeah there are a lot of things that are just yeah it's different it's not necessarily good or bad you you have to you can't just assume that oh we we found a difference in like how people react or, you know, even in things like grades or how people respond in school or, you know, one of the examples I've used on this show before is people saying that, you know, the, the YouTube generation attention span is less. And so they're, they're having a hard time learning by sitting in a classroom, listening to a lecture for an hour. And I'm like, well, because they've learned there's something better.
|
Peter:
[18:52]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[18:52]
| Like they can do, they have access anytime they want to more engaging, more directed, more whatever than that method of learning. So the response to that isn't, oh, there's a problem with our kids because they're bored at lecture. The problem is, okay, if you want to teach them, you need to figure out a way to do better. you need to figure out where you can actually compete with the other ways of learning that are now available also.
|
Peter:
[19:22]
| We were bored at lectures 40 years ago also.
|
Sam:
[19:25]
| Yeah we just didn't have a choice that's right you know but now you do i mean one of the things that you know we've had a whole series of problems with getting my kid to school the last few months because and if there are a number of issues involved in there but one of them is that for years now he has been trying to convince us that school is absolutely useless for him, you know, because, and he will give us like chat GPT generated essays arguing this point, but the, basically his arguments are around, look, I, anything I want to learn, I can find it and I can find it in a way that's It's accessible to me and I can learn it. And I, and he proves it all the time, learning things and moving forward on his personal projects, like well beyond any level of knowledge I have that he's found on his own using internet resources.
|
Sam:
[20:30]
| And, and in, in some cases now, like using things like chat GPT to help them along the line, but he's, he's clearly learning the stuff. He's not just copying and pasting out of chat GPT. He's using it as a tool. and he's using other internet resources as a tool. He finds stuff he needs everywhere. Reddit, everywhere on the internet. It's a wide, wide open thing. Now, of course, is he learning the things that they want him to learn in school? Maybe, maybe not. But he's diving down and doing self-directed learning. Now, this is not going to work for all kids. There are kids who, given that choice, would sit down in front of the TV and never learn anything.
|
Peter:
[21:12]
| I think you're kind of backing into this topic that I've been reading about lately of unschooling, right?
|
Sam:
[21:19]
| I've been looking at that too because I'm like, you know, like –, literally like we should explain what we should.
|
Peter:
[21:28]
| Explain what unschooling is if you're gonna.
|
Sam:
[21:30]
| Talk about it yeah sure we might as well and maybe we skip the movies i don't know we've got some good topics going on but uh like let me just say like as as background my son is finally like he is now bigger than i am and he is no longer at the point and he has realized this where we cannot get him to go somewhere without his cooperation right and he has basically for the last two months decided he is done with school period right like to the point like we just found out the other day school has officially unenrolled him because he hasn't been there in long enough wow because we spent we were for a while going to the point where we were spending multiple hours every morning trying to get him to school. And every once in a while we would get him in. But then once he fully realized, yeah, I, if I just don't get up and don't move, they can't like when he was little, you just pick him up and put them in the car and go pick him up.
|
Peter:
[22:37]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:37]
| But when he's big, like you can't do that anymore. And so he's sort of realized that and has been vetoing. And now we've got meetings with the school to try to figure out what the hell to do for For next year and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, cause looking for alternatives that, that are legal. Cause he can't officially, like he could probably take, take the GED like tomorrow and pass it to be honest, but he's not allowed to till he's 16. You know and so we we have no idea what the hell we're doing we're trying to figure that out now trying to get because like he's also like i've mentioned on the show before he he's autistic as i probably am too and he's got a fairly severe social anxiety issues and so a big part of this is he hates and is very uncomfortable with the actual prospect of going into a big crowded school with lots of kids. Right. You know? And so we're trying to look at, do we have solutions where we can get them into some sort of more smaller group settings or something or, and like we've tried online stuff, but he hasn't participated generally with online stuff because he's almost entirely nonverbal at this point. He used to be very chattery at home. You've heard him on the podcast. It's been a year since he's spoken to anybody at this point.
|
Peter:
[24:01]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[24:01]
| But you know, So we're trying to figure all this out, but one of the things, to get back to what you suggested, that I've looked at is there is this unschooling movement, which is basically, to describe it at a very high level, and maybe you know more because I've only skimmed the surface looking at this, it's basically a variant of homeschooling where you also essentially throw the curriculum out the window. Cause normal, normal homeschooling is okay. You're going to work with the kid at home. You're going to be their primary teacher. Maybe you have some local resources where they meet up with other kids and you know, you co-op share with other parents so that you split the load, something like that. But basically you're doing the same curriculum they would do at a regular school. You're just doing it mostly from home. Um, unschooling says, yeah, that's nice. Yes. And we recognize maybe there are some required state tests that they have to take at some point. But basically, let the kid follow their interests and learn the things they want to learn and ignore the things they want to ignore and just let them do that.
|
Peter:
[25:14]
| I think that's a fair description. And homeschooling can have more or less structure.
|
Sam:
[25:22]
| Depending on how the – This is essentially a very extreme form of homeschooling that puts a lot of control for the kid.
|
Peter:
[25:32]
| I mean, is it even homeschooling at that point? If you're not helping them decide what it is they should be learning, it's literally if the kid wants to learn geometry, wait for them to express an interest in geometry, and then they'll go figure it out. I mean, I'm very skeptical of this because have you met people? People, people are just like, if I was unschooled, I'd be, I'd be majoring in Atari.
|
Sam:
[25:58]
| Right?
|
Peter:
[25:58]
| Like that would be what I would do 24 hours a day.
|
Sam:
[26:01]
| Oh, absolutely. And I think this is one of the main criticism of it. And I've like, there's one person on Tik TOK who like has been coming up on my feed. Who was unschooled as a kid and is now talking about it as an adult. And this is one of the main things. I think like the key to this is every kid is different. You know, and there are certainly kids that with that kind of structure would do absolutely nothing. There are other kids who would do exactly what you hope they would and like research a whole bunch of stuff and learn a bunch of.
|
Peter:
[26:37]
| I don't believe that. I don't believe that even a little bit.
|
Sam:
[26:40]
| But what I was going to say is almost the vast majority of people, this would not work for at all. Well then there's a group that would just deep dive into whatever their interest was and learn anything that's directly related to that and have huge gaps in their knowledge and i think that's where most if most people who even were able to succeed at this a little bit would still end up in that trap and like you said maybe it doesn't exist at all i'm sort of acknowledging that maybe Maybe there's, you know, one in a hundred thousand who would actually like do something more general.
|
Peter:
[27:17]
| But I think, I think you have to be specific though, right? Someone the age of your son, maybe that works. You've got someone who is, you know, 14, 15, they, they've kind of gone through the basic basics. It works.
|
Sam:
[27:32]
| It's not going to work with a six year old.
|
Peter:
[27:34]
| But when people are talking about unschooling, my impression, and I've not unschooled, I've not been unschooled. My impression is they're talking about like five-year-olds.
|
Sam:
[27:44]
| Right? Yeah.
|
Peter:
[27:45]
| And that is not going to work ever for anyone in the history of mankind.
|
Sam:
[27:50]
| Yeah. Yeah. I see this concept working a lot better the older the kid is, to be honest.
|
Peter:
[27:58]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[27:58]
| Absolutely. And even then, only for a very, very slim subset of kids. Like I don't – like I'm mentioning my kid. That's essentially what he's been doing lately. but I'm not sure it actually works for everything it needs to work because again, he's diving into very narrow areas where his interests take him. And part of the point of school is, is to give you a wide ranging, well-rounded background, even in the things you don't care about.
|
Peter:
[28:27]
| And to force you to do, let's see, how much cursing do I want to roll out here? None. To force you to do the dumb things you don't want to do, like be able to have a conversation with another human being, which is gruesome. In junior high school, in high school, I was miserable all the time. You know, I, I, I'm not going to pretend otherwise, but I kind of still had to do it.
|
Sam:
[28:55]
| Yeah.
|
Peter:
[28:55]
| Obviously there are exceptions and, and, and particularly amongst special needs kids. That's just not, that may not be in the cards or on the table at all, but for kind of the average kid, yeah. Learning, you know, what a deadline is. And then sometimes you have to finish something on time, even if you don't want to.
|
Sam:
[29:12]
| Yeah. It's a, it's a very important point that applies both for, for primary school, but also for secondary and college is, yeah, it's not just about the academics. It's also about the life skills. And if you don't have that environment to learn them in, you're going to have to learn a lot of these skills somewhere else. You're going to have to learn at a certain point, self-sufficiency and being able to do the unpleasant tasks that you need to do, but don't want to do. And you're going to have to learn the interacting with people and And like you said, that this, this sort of social interactions and, you know, I, I, I still suck at this stuff. I definitely sucked in grade school and high school. Sure.
|
Peter:
[29:57]
| You know, and you were pretty good by college though. I mean, I thought you were okay.
|
Sam:
[30:01]
| I don't know. I was still pretty sucky in college. Like I was still very much like the only times I interacted with people in college, the only time I interact with people today is when I'm pulled into it by other people. I do not initiate that kind of stuff. If you left me to my own devices, I would stay at home and never interact with anybody ever again.
|
Peter:
[30:22]
| Oh, it sounds so good. Doesn't it?
|
Sam:
[30:24]
| That sounds so good. Love it. Yeah.
|
Peter:
[30:29]
| Be the change you want to see in the world, Sam.
|
Sam:
[30:32]
| Exactly. Like I've said before, I was thrilled during the pandemic. I got, I got to stay, stay at home and not have to interact with people. It was awesome. Like I know all kinds of people were like upset by that and felt like they were going stir crazy. And I was like, this is great. Yep.
|
Peter:
[30:49]
| I would imagine that you're, you're, I know somewhere up in the Northern wilds of Washington. I mean, I have to imagine my prejudice is that that's got to be in a hotbed of unschooling. I don't know why I think that. Is that true?
|
Sam:
[31:04]
| I don't know. It's, it's sort of, yeah, parts of the area are like hip. It's also a very hippie dippy kind of thing. And so you're likely to see it more in, in more liberal states. And I, Washington state's definitely got some of that, at least in Western Washington. Whereas you know in large parts of the country you talk homeschooling you're talking about christian nut jobs who just want to indoctrinate their kids with and that's a whole different kind of homeschooling you.
|
Peter:
[31:30]
| Got to cross the border to idaho for that.
|
Sam:
[31:32]
| Yeah but yeah i imagine there's some of that out there and honestly one of the things that we're looking into or we will be looking into for next year is you know do we have some yeah or is there some sort of, homeschooling group that we could join. Like we've always rejected homeschooling for two reasons. One, neither myself nor my wife have time. And two, like he is much more will, he has historically been much more willing to do things for teachers at school than he is to do things for us. And so like when we have tried to get him to do schoolwork at home, we have almost invariably failed or when we've tried it's been like incredibly painful just to get a small amount out of him so i don't know we'll we'll we'll figure it all out but like that and this is why like when i saw the unschooling stuff start coming up on my tiktok feed i was like huh, maybe we should consider something like this maybe.
|
Peter:
[32:35]
| They're listening to you and and are proposing it.
|
Sam:
[32:39]
| Yeah, probably. And it's just sort of like, yeah, it's essentially what's happening anyway, whether we like it or not. And so do we just lean into it and try to figure out the best we can do of it? Because honestly, like, like I said, like, you know, he's not eligible to take the GED for another year and a half. But unless we can figure out something where he's happy or comfortable enough, like we honestly would consider just saying, okay, you don't want to go to high school, pass out of it, do it right now as, and we'll stop, we'll stop bugging you about it. If you actually, you know, pass out of it and get your GED and, and then we'll see what's up next, you know, but, oh, well, so that was a couple of interesting tangents.
|
Peter:
[33:27]
| Yeah, I enjoyed that conversation. But I also know that being that we just established that you might be on the spectrum. Yeah. I'm acutely conscious that stopping you from covering the movie you wanted to cover might be a problem. So I would feel better if you actually did your movie butt first.
|
Sam:
[33:49]
| Well, let's do this. Honestly, I have learned to be more flexible over time. I, I, I, you know, it is a skill that I've worked on developing, but no, no, let's do this. I never actually said the agenda for the show. Oh, the, the normal agenda is we do a, but first, and we usually do a couple of movies and then we do a couple of segments on other stuff. One of the things I was going to mention is Pete here does not want to be canceled.
|
Peter:
[34:20]
| It's true.
|
Sam:
[34:21]
| And so he, He would like to avoid a little of the politics that we often talk about. And honestly... Like I'm okay with having a politics like light show this week, a news light week show. Cause it was kind of a slow week for once.
|
Peter:
[34:36]
| They knew I was coming.
|
Sam:
[34:38]
| Like, yeah, yeah. There was some Hunter Biden stuff going on. There's some other stuff. You know, there was nothing like, I felt really compelled. Like, oh my God, we have to talk about that. You know, do we.
|
Peter:
[34:48]
| Do we get a voice memo from Yvonne this week?
|
Sam:
[34:50]
| Well, he has not prepared. No.
|
Peter:
[34:52]
| So I think that means there's nothing going on.
|
Sam:
[34:54]
| There's nothing going on. Nothing going on in the whole world. obviously there is but you know there was nothing i really felt like talking about so i'm fine doing a politics light show and we were gonna do a couple movies in the first segment and then we were gonna have two other segments on some pete here just got back from a trip to japan so there was what shangri-la dialogue what is this some sort of international conference did you actually she attended or was it just going on while you were there?
|
Peter:
[35:23]
| No, gosh, no, no, no. I think that the one thing that happened is when I started using my phone in Japan, you suddenly start getting news articles that are more relevant to your position. So this conference was going on while I was there. It's kind of a defense conference with generals and admirals and secretaries of state.
|
Sam:
[35:48]
| So we'll talk about this in a minute. So we're going to talk about that conference and otherwise Pete's experiences in Japan recently. And we're going to do two segments out of those. I suggest at this point we take a break and then we come back and we do movies anyway.
|
Peter:
[36:05]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[36:05]
| Pete had a movie. I had a movie. We'll do that as a segment. Then we'll take a break and then we'll do all the Japan stuff, including the conference and anything else Pete wants to say about Japan. And then that'll be a show.
|
Peter:
[36:16]
| Love it.
|
Sam:
[36:17]
| So that's what we're going to do. And so here comes the first break. I want this one. And we will be back right after this.
|
Break:
[36:30]
| Do do do! This podcast is sponsored by alexemzilla.com. Alex Emzilla is great. It's on YouTube and it has lots of fun videos. Alex Emzilla is awesome and great. I love his videos and they are obviously better than Curmudgeon's Corner. Well, they're funnier. They're more interesting. And frankly, he seems at least a little smarter than either of the hosts of Curmudgeon's Corner. Honestly, it's ridiculous how endlessly talented and phenomenal Alex Emsula is. That's how great his YouTube channel is. is a l e x m x e l a dot com yes do do do.
|
Sam:
[37:33]
| Okay we are back and so uh pete why don't we start with you you you mentioned you had a movie and i have one from my big list that i'm catching up on so what's the movie you want to highlight it's.
|
Peter:
[37:47]
| A long tradition of watching whatever is on the airplane entertainment system. And this is a movie that I had heard about on NPR called American fiction. And it is the movie version of a book that I've completely forgotten the name of. Oh, the book was erasure, a 2001 novel named erasure.
|
Sam:
[38:09]
| I'm of course looking at the Wikipedia page. Cause I have not seen this movie.
|
Peter:
[38:13]
| But you were more prepared than I was because you already had it up. Excellent. Really? I, I want to avoid just, Oh, it's really great. But the, the premise of the movie is that the protagonist is a black author of a, very classical. I don't know if they were, I actually don't remember in the book if it was fiction or if it was like academic works about, it seemed to be mostly ancient Greek themed. He teaches at a college. He's from a fairly wealthy family. His mom, I think, was like a psychotherapist or something. Most of his family is very well off. They have a beach house. So, So very kind of upper middle class to rich lifestyle. And he goes through a series of reversals. This is a minor spoiler, but I think it's really the premise of the movie.
|
Sam:
[39:09]
| Okay.
|
Peter:
[39:09]
| Where he's having trouble getting published. He's having trouble getting his new book published. And he attends some sort of conference where there is another black author who is having just huge success with a book that is written in African-American vernacular English and just very what he views, the character views, as taking every stereotype of the white perception of the black experience and profiting on it. And so one day in a fit of pique, he kind of dashes off a novel in this same style. He's kind of trying to parody it. And he gives it to his agent with a pen name Stag R. Lee.
|
Peter:
[39:59]
| And lo and behold, white New York publishing editors love it, love the authenticity of it. And he very quickly starts living this double life where he's publicizing the book under the guise of being this ex-con who's written this tough from the streets novel when that isn't who he is at all. And in fact, he kind of despises that. He views that as a white projection onto the black experience. Just really fascinating movie. I can't say enough good about it. It's obviously, I mean, I think that I have a little bit of trepidation talking about it because I don't know. Whether uh how legit it is for me to have opinions about some of this stuff but from a strictly from a strictly entertainment.
|
Sam:
[40:50]
| Standpoint just for anybody amazingly enjoy it because you're white yeah because i'm white yeah because people can't yeah yeah you you're a white guy i'm a white guy i would.
|
Peter:
[41:00]
| Say i'd be cautious you know.
|
Sam:
[41:02]
| Well and that's absolutely fair like for things that are trying to experience show the experiences of some group if you're not part of a group it's sort of like the right way to approach it is to try to listen and learn not try to sort of explain it from your own mindset because your own mindset is wrong right.
|
Peter:
[41:25]
| Jeffrey wright plays the the protagonist there's some really standout performances notably leslie uggams.
|
Sam:
[41:33]
| Plays i haven't heard that name in a long time yeah.
|
Peter:
[41:36]
| She was in deadpool and a couple other things i believe or one of the deadpool movies and she plays a mom the mom who is kind of suffering from dementia at one point in the movie uh just some really great performances and i i can't recommend it strongly enough so that's my that's my movie that's my butt first.
|
Sam:
[41:56]
| Yeah okay i will of course add it to my list of thousands of movies to eventually maybe think of looking at but uh no so so sounds good mine is let's see when did i watch this we're back in december now so i am slowly catching up on these things this watch this right before the new year at the end of december and this is making our way through the harry potter series to be honest um this was harry potter and the goblet of fire which i guess is number four now when these first came out i'd seen most of the series in the theater i think we actually never saw the last two in the theater so i've never seen the last two but like like almost everybody else at the time where you know it was a big thing everybody was harry potter was huge for like a long time like people joke even now that like there's a whole generation of people who like whenever they're making comparisons or metaphors to things in real life somehow it's always a comparison to harry potter and you know so we slowly have been working our way through it it's my son's first time seeing these it's my first time seeing them in forever and honestly the last couple i've been a little hesitant because like jk rowling has been increasingly.
|
Sam:
[43:24]
| Problematic over the last decade or so, uh, specifically with a lot of anti-trans stuff as she's been very vocal on. And it's like, you know, and no compromise, just sort of.
|
Sam:
[43:38]
| But anyway, she's been increasingly problematic.
|
Sam:
[43:42]
| And so it's sort of like, you really want to support that? And you know, the way I justify it, I do the thing where I'm like, I'm sorry, like if you don't watch any media where the creators are problematic, you eliminate almost all of media, like in one way or another. Other like the same thing has been like you know back in the day i i watched buffy like josh whedon has also been outed as being very problematic there's other things like you know there and and especially with okay she was potentially the sole author of the books i'm sure their editors and other people that helped blah blah blah but like with a movie like this they're literally thousands of people involved in making that movie as well as her. So I don't know. I find myself like, I'm okay watching it. It's a cultural touchstone. It's an important part of history. And I can separate that out from not approving of what J.K. Rowling is doing these days. And even the cast has all distanced herself from her at this point. But I don't know, A lot of people find that kind of stuff problematic and will not go back and revisit even content they loved if they find out that the creators have significant issues. I don't know. That's just where I come down on that. Before I talk about the actual movie, any thoughts on that, Peter?
|
Peter:
[45:10]
| Well, as a... Jewish-American guy who likes classical music, the example that always comes up is Wagner.
|
Sam:
[45:20]
| Right?
|
Peter:
[45:21]
| Who, of course, was used heavily by the Nazis in their propaganda. And, of course, himself was a truly kind of vile anti-Semite in kind of the most self-interested way. He was always competing with other composers. And in the case was cases when those composers were Jewish, you know, he would, he wrote, he wrote a terrible essay kind of basically saying that, you know, Jews can't write music, that sort of thing.
|
Sam:
[45:51]
| Lovely.
|
Peter:
[45:52]
| But unfortunately, the son of a gun wrote some really beautiful music. And so you have to kind of decide, you know, yeah, are you, are you okay with it? Are you not? My mom, you can't listen to Wagner, you know, and like, she's not interested. And for her, it really is kind of that political question. It's very cut and dry for her. For me, I listen to it. I don't view my enjoying that music as either an endorsement of his views. And I don't fear that I'm going to be, I don't fear that the music somehow carries the idea with it.
|
Sam:
[46:30]
| Well, is it different for somebody like Wagner, who is no longer around and hasn't been for a long time? Part of the concern that people have on something like Harry Potter is if you buy the Blu-rays, or even if you stream it, or whatever, you're potentially putting money in her pocket right now.
|
Peter:
[46:51]
| Yeah, and I think this comes down to personal... Personal opinion. And I would not mock or make fun or argue with anyone who said that to me, anyone who said, I don't care how good or bad the book is. I'm not giving this person who I despise my money, you know, sensible argument. Again, it wouldn't stop me because I, I am desperate for entertainment in this cursed world. And, you know, as long as it's not a directly, As long as the work itself is not directly despicable in a, in certain ways that, that is kind of where I draw my line is that if the content itself is problematic, then.
|
Sam:
[47:38]
| Yeah, I definitely see that. I mean, in some cases, I could see myself wanting to read something with despicable content for the purpose of educating myself on what it was and what people were talking about or whatever.
|
Peter:
[47:58]
| But you'd pirate it.
|
Sam:
[48:28]
| Or even modern works where there's some really obnoxious conservative authors right now who I might consider reading some of their recent writings to be like, okay, let me really understand what the hell they're going on about so I can criticize it intelligently. But i that would be i imagine that would be less fun and frustrating for me as well like if i'm reading like i might do it because i feel like i need to to be able to speak intelligently or something but like i could see myself getting so frustrated if i was reading something where on every single page i was like oh my god this is horrible this is awful these views are despicable and they're stupid. They're not like, making sense. I could see that as being a painful exercise, but I could see some scenarios where I would do it, but that's kind of, that's a little bit different than the, okay, I'm going to watch Harry Potter, even though JK Rowling is a transphobe.
|
Peter:
[49:37]
| Right. You're, you're not re you're not watching Harry Potter to, to debunk it. You're watching it to enjoy it.
|
Sam:
[49:45]
| Although there are lines there. I mean, except that first.
|
Peter:
[49:48]
| That first Chris Columbus movie, which was terrible and nobody should like that movie.
|
Sam:
[49:54]
| Well well i was gonna say you know you bring up the anti-semitism people point out that they're stupid goblins that run the banks at gringotts who are very clearly jewish caricatures in harry potter and there are other similar things in terms of how like they they sort of retroactively adjusted some of this stuff after the initial publication but like every all the the main characters are white like you know they sort of retroactively made oh yeah dumbledore's gay but like it's not actually clear from the original you know so there are problematic things even within these if you think about it a little bit i don't know poor.
|
Peter:
[50:36]
| I don't know i think that that she wrote a wave because i remember when these books first came out and And I had friends who had kids who kind of basically forced the books on me and said, you have to read this. This is back around the time of the first two or three books.
|
Sam:
[50:55]
| Yeah.
|
Peter:
[50:56]
| And it was clear to me, particularly in that first book, that this was a children's story.
|
Sam:
[51:02]
| Yes.
|
Peter:
[51:02]
| Like firmly, like this was a very lightweight, it was almost one step up from a pamphlet.
|
Sam:
[51:09]
| Very.
|
Peter:
[51:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:10]
| The first one was very much. Yes, exactly. There was not much substance behind it.
|
Peter:
[51:17]
| And so I feel like some of the content criticisms I think are valid. Some of them I think are, you know, this is someone who is writing a pamphlet and it got away from her. You know, you find yourself in this world where you've basically written yourself in a corner. I'm not trying to make excuses for her in any way. But I do think that that explains a lot about the aesthetic of, of harry potter.
|
Sam:
[51:42]
| Particularly in.
|
Peter:
[51:43]
| The later books you know the later books grew out of these first books which were very much this british just so you know myth the story of i had a miserable life and i went away to public school right like that's the story forget about all the wizards and stuff that's a very well trod path.
|
Sam:
[52:04]
| Yeah in.
|
Peter:
[52:05]
| British young adult fiction.
|
Sam:
[52:07]
| Right and and you know they they do try like i guess the initial conceit of what she was doing is to try to age the books as you go through the series so that as the characters age the writing is also a little bit deeper and blah blah blah i don't think it ever gets that deep to be honest but you know whatever anyway the movie this is it originally came out in 2005 and this is as a basic plot harry potter gets That's interred against his will. He didn't intend to be, but it's some tournament that, of course, as you are going to do if you are taking school children and having a friendly competition that can be deadly and dangerous along the way, because, of course, why not? And it has a bunch of challenges, and the schools are competing each other, and blah, blah, blah. And as usual in the Harry Potter universe, this is being manipulated by the forces of evil.
|
Peter:
[53:06]
| You mentioned multiple schools. As long as we're talking about stereotypes, right? We've got one school from France, which is entirely composed of beautiful ballet dancers. And we've got another school from France. Some undefined place in Eastern Europe. Let's say Prussia. It's definitely in Prussia, right?
|
Sam:
[53:29]
| Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
|
Peter:
[53:30]
| And they might be Russian. They might be German. I don't think J.K. Rowling knows, but they're definitely they all have very ominous names and wear jackboots and like goose step into the place. So right there, we've got some great, great shorthand going on.
|
Sam:
[53:46]
| Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, as usual, the forces of evil are out there trying to get Harry Potter and trying to manipulate things. And they're trying to bring the bad guy, he who shall not be named, which I will name, Voldemort.
|
Peter:
[54:07]
| He's going to show up now.
|
Sam:
[54:09]
| I know. I know. Shocking. Anyway, they're trying to bring him back and hilarity ensues and blah, blah, blah. I'm going to give it a thumb sideways. It's fine. It's an entertaining way to spend a couple hours. I had to read the Wikipedia page to remind myself of what really happened in this because, honestly, I watched it in December and my memory had already faded of what's really happening, what was the main plot, what was whatever. You know so i realize again these were sort of a a cultural touchstone of that decade were first the books then the movies and they were really huge they were everywhere but they're okay they're not like i i i, At least for this one, like you said, the first one kind of sucked for this one. I would just sort of say, eh, it's fine. It's entertaining. It's not gonna, I have no feeling of like, oh my God, this was something that I was changed by touched by want to like go revisit on a regular basis. It was just sort of, yeah, it is what it is. It's a, it's entertaining couple hours, but beyond that, whatever.
|
Peter:
[55:32]
| One thing that I think is legitimately great about those movies, completely separate from the content is that you have this massive intellectual property, which because Warner brothers is the worst studio on the planet, doesn't have a consistent, any kind of consistency across its run. Right. In particular, they've changed the director. director i think there were four directors for the entire series out of seven so seven movies four directors and.
|
Sam:
[56:05]
| The style changes completely.
|
Peter:
[56:07]
| Yes and i what i remember is that prisoner of azkaban which was the movie before the one you're talking about was directed by alfonso cuarón and that one had a very distinctive feel and and then they they go in this completely different And I think the first two are just execrable, if that's an English word, directed by the guy who did the Home Alone movies, and it feels like it. It's all like reaction shots of the kids clapping in glee. It's just, I can't stomach them. But, but just this, this idea of it really shows you the impact of a director on a movie, since these are ostensibly all the same kind of universe, all the same kind of production design, but they all have very different feels.
|
Sam:
[56:58]
| Yeah. Well, and I think they, I mean, it wasn't an accident. Like if they'd wanted to do some consistency, they could have, they, they explicitly chose, Hey, we're going to change up the style every couple of years. And part of it, I think, is to try to go along with this notion that as you move through the series, you move from a kid series to a more not adult series, but something for older children or even teenagers. Because, you know, you are trying to, you know, when they start, like these kids are like, what, eight, nine years old, something like that. And when we end, you know, the books don't cook quite as fast as their real ages. But, you know, they're in story, they're graduating high school at the end of these. And so i think part of the thought process was you want to reflect that growth and that change in both the characters and the audience i don't know how how well executed it is i.
|
Peter:
[57:58]
| Think you're giving these guys way.
|
Sam:
[58:00]
| Too much credit i think this.
|
Peter:
[58:02]
| Is you know someone wanted another zero on their paycheck and they said no we'll find a new director this is this is warner brothers the idea that there's any kind of like cogent thought or.
|
Sam:
[58:13]
| Planning done is like.
|
Peter:
[58:14]
| Not not well supported.
|
Sam:
[58:16]
| Okay okay i'm you know i'm trying to fit a theory to it that matches a little bit but maybe right.
|
Peter:
[58:24]
| Maybe right maybe.
|
Sam:
[58:25]
| You know but yeah so thumb sideways for harry potter and you gave a big thumbs up for american fiction and yeah i think that's that's enough for media for this week and And unless you have something else you want to add real quick, any other things that you've seen recently that.
|
Peter:
[58:41]
| No, I have seen things, but I don't think they warrant their own segment. So I'm, I'm happy to move on.
|
Sam:
[58:48]
| Okay.
|
Peter:
[58:49]
| I'll save them for next time.
|
Sam:
[58:51]
| Yeah. And Yvonne seems to be like missing shows more and more, like, you know, one thing or another, he's sick, he's traveling, he's whatever. So there'll probably be more opportunities sooner rather than later.
|
Peter:
[59:03]
| Well, based on, based on Yvonne's voice memo, I mean, I think he's probably on a celebration bender, you know, he's out somewhere just six sheets to the wind, extremely happy about the political developments.
|
Sam:
[59:19]
| Would not be surprising okay so although he has said he drinks a lot less now than he used to i.
|
Peter:
[59:27]
| Find that that's true for me as well getting getting old getting old just like makes it less fun.
|
Sam:
[59:34]
| In ivan's case his wife quit drinking completely and they don't have alcohol in the house anymore so he only occasionally drinks when he's out whereas it used to be a more regular thing. In my case, I didn't drink at all until I was over 21. I was legal before I had my very first drink of anything. And through my twenties, I probably did, you know, I, I drank to excess on a few occasions. I never really drank like with dinner or anything. I only drank when I was like out with friends for the purpose of drinking. And then in my thirties, I cut that way, way, way back. Cause I realized I was like, this is, I'm, I don't actually enjoy this process. I don't like it that much. So I cut way, way back and would only occasionally drink a very small amount. Like, like maybe I'd have a margarita once in a while at a Mexican restaurant, like once or twice a year. And then when I hit 40, I was like, basically I'm done. I haven't had a drink since.
|
Peter:
[1:00:33]
| So Sam, I have a new topic.
|
Sam:
[1:00:36]
| Okay.
|
Peter:
[1:00:36]
| Would you like me to introduce this topic? Are we, were you going to do a break?
|
Sam:
[1:00:40]
| I was going to do a break. Let's go ahead and take the break and we can do your new topic before.
|
Peter:
[1:00:45]
| This topic, this topic is based on the one that you're talking about.
|
Sam:
[1:00:49]
| Okay.
|
Peter:
[1:00:50]
| That's all. Just, I'll just say the words and you can take the break and we come back.
|
Sam:
[1:00:54]
| Okay.
|
Peter:
[1:00:54]
| If we could talk about it.
|
Sam:
[1:00:55]
| That's cool.
|
Peter:
[1:00:56]
| The rise of very drinkable, zero alcohol cocktails and drinks.
|
Sam:
[1:01:04]
| Ah, okay.
|
Peter:
[1:01:05]
| That's my topic.
|
Sam:
[1:01:06]
| Okay.
|
Peter:
[1:01:06]
| Because I think it's relevant.
|
Sam:
[1:01:08]
| There you go. Back after this.
|
Break:
[1:01:12]
| You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No! Do you want to support the show? No! Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe! You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show, and maybe every once in a while some much-needed sedatives for Yvonne. At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our Curmudgeon's Corner postcard, or even a Curmudgeon's Corner mug. Fun stuff. Not fun. In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Commodion's Corner. Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more.
|
Break:
[1:02:32]
| If we're worth anything to you at all, send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeon's corner. Alex hates, really, really hates curmudgeon's corner. That's really mean, isn't it? That I hate curmudgeon's corner. But I really do!
|
Sam:
[1:02:52]
| Okay, we are back. So before we get to Japan, and I don't want to squeeze out Japan entirely because you had a whole bunch of stuff you wanted to talk about there. But what's the deal with the non-alcoholic cocktails and i will admit like i just said like i haven't had an alcoholic drink since i turned 40 which is a long time now but like i certainly haven't even had like mocktails either like i haven't felt like oh my god i really want that like alcoholic drink taste but without the alcohol it hasn't even i haven't even thought of The.
|
Peter:
[1:03:25]
| Deal is that they exist now. So for many, many years, there have been non-alcoholic beers and non-alcoholic wines, and they have been uniformly terrible. When you and I were high school students, I think there was a beer, a non-alcoholic beer called Moosey that you could get. Okay. It tasted like the worst stale Budweiser you've ever had. Really, you know, practically undrinkable. It tasted like barf.
|
Sam:
[1:03:54]
| Now i i always thought even when i drank it i thought all beer tasted like barf because i just never i never actually liked it but okay kind.
|
Peter:
[1:04:02]
| Of did i mean back then back then.
|
Peter:
[1:04:07]
| As I've gotten older, my alcohol tolerance has just gone down and down and down. I drank a lot in my 20s. I drank moderately in my 30s. And that acclimated me to the taste. So you get to a point where I would like to drink a whiskey. I would like to drink a glass of wine. And I want to drink it not because I want to get a buzz, not because I want to get drunk, but because I would like the taste. Taste but one drink nowadays is enough to make me feel like garbage in the next morning which is just was not true 30 years ago it's true today right if you give me a full glass of wine out you know even if i'm drinking it with dinner the next morning i'm gonna have a headache a little hangover so i want the taste but i don't want the alcohol the thing that has shocked me is i feel I feel like this decade is where the producers have cracked the code. You can get non-alcoholic IPAs. I know you said you don't drink beer, but you can get non-alcoholic Guinness. They have fewer calories than the full alcohol version. Listen, I had a non-alcoholic Guinness the other week from a can, right? So you're not getting the draft experience. It tasted to my taste buds, pretty much identical to Guinness in a can with alcohol.
|
Peter:
[1:05:27]
| And the other thing that has happened is there's been an explosion of non-alcoholic spirits. Now what it means for something to be a spirit.
|
Peter:
[1:05:38]
| That doesn't have alcohol, it's a little confusing to me. I don't fully understand it, but they exist. I've had mocktails made with them, and they're in the ballpark. So that's my pitch is if you have not tried, particularly the non-alcoholic beers are superb now, but if you haven't tried these and you have the urge, it's worth checking in again if the last time you tasted one was 20 years ago Because the technology, like the technology for meatless meat, has improved massively over the past few years.
|
Sam:
[1:06:15]
| So go try the non-alcoholic cocktails if you're somewhere that offers them.
|
Peter:
[1:06:21]
| Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:06:21]
| Are they offered all over the place now? Like if you go to a random bar, are you going to be able to find these?
|
Peter:
[1:06:28]
| If it's a beer bar, if it's so specifically for the beers, if the bar has a good selection of bottles, it's almost certain. That they're going to have at least one NA bottle somewhere because people go and really want to drink with their friends or they're the designated driver.
|
Sam:
[1:06:44]
| How about the cocktails? You mentioned this on.
|
Peter:
[1:06:47]
| The- The cocktails are harder to find. I've had to go, there are specialty stores that sell these bottles and you can mail order them or there happens to be a specialty store in my town in Pennsylvania where I can get them or get some of them. So those are a little rarer. most places you go you get a mocktail you're really getting a you know fruit juice and and stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:07:10]
| Before we move on to the japan stuff just along those lines uh you mentioned the technology has improved i think another part of this is the market is changing too i've seen a few reports that you know just amongst younger people the just the amount of alcohol consumed is dropping at a fairly good clip, you know, and it's not, I'm not saying that young people don't still consume alcohol. They do, but the amounts at which they are doing so seem to be dropping quite a bit. There's a lot more consciousness about being responsible with it and making sure that, you know, you're, you're not just getting blasted out of your mind all the time and certainly not going, doing that and driving or whatever. Also, honestly, there's other legal alternatives now in many places. People are doing the legal marijuana instead. So there's more competition for even the mind-altering stuff and some other drugs that aren't legal but are, not people don't have as much concern about them so there's there's a bunch of competition out there for the slot that alcohol had and and not just other drugs but also like competition from just being sober there's a lot more people who are out there who are just like yeah i don't need that i don't want that and from the very beginning also.
|
Peter:
[1:08:40]
| People drinking less soda people drinking you know.
|
Sam:
[1:08:42]
| Yeah. Oh yeah. As well. Like the drink manufacturers in general are like, you know, have scrambling to figure out like what to do to, to, to make their money because tastes are changing. Like alcohol is less in favor than it was, at least here in the U S I've heard different from some other countries, but highly sweetened stuff is going out of style. Meanwhile of course these energy drinks that are just pumped full of caffeine they they exist in a way that didn't when we were younger as well so like it's just a, different yeah like again not saying better or worse but there's definitely differences, and honestly from my point of view i think the the what it's still not like a majority or anything but the fact that, consumption of some of the, of things like alcohol is going down. I think that's actually a good thing overall. Like, and you know, we, a couple of weeks ago when Matt was on the show, we talked about rescheduling of marijuana and how like, like I'd probably prefer personally if people didn't use either, but in terms of danger to yourself and people around you, marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. If you have to pick one, you know, I'm not sure the alcohol is the one that I would want people to be taking. So.
|
Peter:
[1:10:11]
| No, very true. Very true. Although I do wish in places where people are using legalized marijuana, I am begging you. Can't you take, eat a brownie? You don't have to smoke it.
|
Sam:
[1:10:24]
| Please.
|
Peter:
[1:10:24]
| Like, especially around my house. Like just, I don't want to smell it.
|
Sam:
[1:10:28]
| Oh yeah. Like brownie, gummies, whatever. Yeah. I, I, I am sensitive to all smells and always have been my whole life. Like somebody can be smoking tobacco like 30 feet away and I'm like, Oh my God, I have to walk a different direction. And there are certain parts of Seattle or any public event. You go to a damn concert or whatever. The smell is everywhere. Like whether you want it or not, you can't avoid it. And it's like, yes. Like, and even like, even where it's legal, legal typically it's legal for use inside your private home it's not actually legal to use in the public venue on the streets or whatever but people do anyway and the smell is all over the place and yeah so i agree with you fully like you know do do this in a way that does not affect others like you know we finally mostly seem to have gotten rid of secondhand smoke from tobacco In most places, like, like I, I have a neighbor who goes out to their front porch to smoke. And so sometimes I can smell that when I walk out of my driveway and every time I'm like, oh, you know, I don't want to smell it. Like, and I understand your wife probably kicked you out to keep you because you're not allowed to do it in the house. So you do it on the porch, but that like it propagates, it's not just where you are, but anyway, so.
|
Peter:
[1:11:55]
| A conversation I've had with younger, I guess, zoomers is what growing up in the 1970s was like. So I, I, I'm not going to say this was universal, but certainly in my family and where I grew up, my experience was that everyone had a relative who smoked.
|
Sam:
[1:12:15]
| Right?
|
Peter:
[1:12:16]
| Probably multiple relatives who smoked. Yeah. And the consequence of this, right? People are smoking in your house. Even if your parent, my parents did not smoke, they had ashtrays because people would come over and they have to smoke. Everything smelled like smoke all the time forever your hair smelled like smoke your clothes smelled like smoke your car in my case god forbid my grandpa's car that guy smoked cigars, everything smelled like smoke all the time and i just want to if you're younger i just want you to like take a moment out of your day take a deep breath and like really appreciate how lucky you You are in this one particular way. Was that, was that your 1970s experience, Sam, or am I unique?
|
Sam:
[1:13:05]
| I don't think you were unique at all. It, it was less so for me, like neither of my parents smoked and nobody came over and smoked in our house. Like, you know, so, but the fact that cigarettes were everywhere, like every public space had ashtrays. Airplanes airplanes smoked in airplanes there there were smoking sections and airplanes but it made like smoke traveled anyway and i know people talk about well the ventilation is left to right and so like it's no no it did not stay in the smoking section i am sorry restaurants had smoking sections uh every place you could not like you couldn't and you know i was talking about marijuana smell. The same thing would be true of cigarette smoke smell practically everywhere you went. Even when I was in my 20s and starting in the professional world, a huge portion of the people at work would take smoke breaks. If you went by any of the entrances, it would be crowded by smokers having their smoke break and you'd have to walk through that in order to get in and out exhaling.
|
Peter:
[1:14:24]
| Right beneath the air intake right.
|
Sam:
[1:14:26]
| Yeah and now like i mean now where i am in washington state i don't know about other places but there are laws around you you can't smoke within a certain amount of distance of the front entrance at this point and and there you there are certainly people who still smoke and take smoke breaks and stuff like that but it's much less visible than it was you know a couple decades ago even and the percentage of people who smoke actively has been dropping and dropping and dropping because like young kids like i mean if they if they pick up something now it's likely to be vaping which of course has like some of the the same problems health-wise if you're vaping nicotine, but it, some of these other things are less of a problem. And the, the, the smell for other people is less of a problem. It doesn't go away completely, but it's, and so it's different. And again, like.
|
Sam:
[1:15:27]
| You definitely see a lot less of it than you did. And, and this, this shows also, like I've, I've done the comparison before people talk about, like, you know, I've done a comparison to the gun debate, right. About like, you know, does out, you know, just even if we didn't have a second amendment, do like strict gun laws, would they do what you wanted to? And the answer is no. If people want something, they're going to have it. But what happened with smoking was not like, Like people learned from the prohibition of alcohol. It was not let's outlaw cigarettes.
|
Peter:
[1:16:00]
| It was let's make it more inconvenient and a little more expensive and a little more socially unacceptable.
|
Sam:
[1:16:07]
| Yes. And culturally put a stigma on it. Make it culturally unacceptable. Make it more expensive. Make it more inconvenient. All of those things you said. And over the course of a few decades, usage dropped precipitously. Now it's not zero.
|
Peter:
[1:16:22]
| I think that's so good. I think it's so good. You know, this is a personal topic for me. My dad passed away a few years ago and he passed away of lung cancer. And the thing that I want to, you know, that I think about is that this guy did not smoke a day in his life. He never lit a cigarette, never lit a pipe, never lit a cigar, but his brother smoked a pipe. His other brother smoked cigars and his mom smoked cigarettes and his aunt smoked cigarettes. So he grew up in a house with four smokers and he's the guy who got lung cancer from that. And, you know, I absolutely, you know, you can't know why, why someone comes down with something, but I absolutely ascribe it to that. So, you know, if, if you're, if you're a smoker, I mean, I don't know, it's not my place to lecture people, but it's not just you that you're affecting. You're also affecting the people around you. So I urge, I I'm very glad that smoking is dropping and I've heard disturbing statistics about the rise of vaping, but hopefully, hopefully it's less bad and hopefully it's less just simply in numbers than it was.
|
Sam:
[1:17:30]
| Yeah, and I think less bad is the right thing. It's not not bad. And honestly, same thing with marijuana and other things. It's like none of these things are harmless. There are negative effects, but shifting from something that is more harmful to something that is less harmful is still beneficial. You know, and it's sort of the notion of harm reduction as a strategy. Telling people, no, you can't go do something that they find fun is a losing strategy. Yeah. It just plain is you can't say same thing with, you know, abstinence only sex education. I mean, come on, you know, you, you can't just say, don't do it.
|
Peter:
[1:18:18]
| People do. People do say it doesn't work.
|
Sam:
[1:18:21]
| I know people do, but it's so – you've actually had people show that that kind of stuff is actually counterproductive because you make it more appealing to the people who want to be rebellious and stuff like that. And so, yeah, instead, you can educate. You can make sure that when people do do things, they do it in the safest way possible. You give them resources to stop if they want to stop. All of this kind of stuff. It's just so much more healthy to think about things from a harm reduction point of view. And from the point of view of, you know, maybe redirect them a little bit, but don't just be like, no, you can't, it does not work. Prohibition does not work in almost any category.
|
Peter:
[1:19:07]
| Now pivoting topics. I did walk a few clouds of cigarette smoke in my recent trip to Japan.
|
Sam:
[1:19:13]
| Oh, time for Japan. Finally, let's not miss it.
|
Peter:
[1:19:17]
| I'm gonna i'm gonna pivot because i i'm very conscious that i have spent an hour taking you down all of it i'm it sam i see something shiny i see something shiny and i just i gotta go no.
|
Sam:
[1:19:29]
| No this is good this is fun this is a good conversation go ahead but it's time for.
|
Peter:
[1:19:34]
| Japan went on a two-week vacation to japan i was in tokyo and a town called matsumoto and a town Well, Kyoto, which is kind of ground zero for the tourist explosion in Japan right now.
|
Sam:
[1:19:50]
| Now, were you solo or were you with other people?
|
Peter:
[1:19:53]
| I was with some friends. Okay. We'd planned this trip for a while. And I got to tell you, I'm ready to go back. It is.
|
Sam:
[1:20:02]
| Was it your first time in Japan?
|
Peter:
[1:20:03]
| Yeah. It was amazing.
|
Sam:
[1:20:05]
| I've never been. So.
|
Peter:
[1:20:07]
| You should go. That's my comment to everyone. And I think, I think to just see what is possible in a high trust society, um, and you know, there are, there are pluses and minuses, I think to the Japanese affect, I'll call it the, the kind of public affect.
|
Peter:
[1:20:29]
| But I think the thing that really encapsulates it for me, and it's very silly, um, One of the things, people will talk about this, it's not a shocking thing, is after the Sarin terrorist attack in, I believe, the late 1980s. There was a case where there was a terrorist attack where someone brought a chemical weapon onto a subway. And part of the consequence of that is they tightened up security. And one of the decisions was, we're mostly getting rid of trash bins. It's not a hundred percent like, you know, stores will still have trash cans. And sometimes you'll see a, if you have a vending machine selling bottles, you know, sometimes there'll be a little trash can next to the vending machine for the bottles. But in terms of like random trash bins out in the city, you don't have them. They're, they're just not there. If you, the protocol is if, if you're out somewhere and you generate trash, you put it in your pocket and you take it home. Coupled with this, they're very, very strict rules about how you're supposed to put your garbage out, what days it's okay, which types go out.
|
Peter:
[1:21:42]
| And if I said to you, hey, Sam, new rule, Seattle needs to get rid of 90% of its trash cans, what would your expectation be?
|
Sam:
[1:21:54]
| There would be so much mass resistance, including for me. I'd be like, what the hell do you mean? What am I supposed to do with my trash?
|
Peter:
[1:22:02]
| But even apart from people's feelings.
|
Sam:
[1:22:04]
| Yes.
|
Peter:
[1:22:05]
| My expectation, if you did that in Pennsylvania, my expectation would be that people would just leave their trash. They would just throw it on the ground.
|
Sam:
[1:22:13]
| Oh, yeah. Like, if you don't give them a place to put the trash, they will just say, well, I have to put it somewhere. I'm just throwing it over there.
|
Peter:
[1:22:21]
| Yes. And this does not happen there. Or it did not happen in the three cities that I was in. Everywhere is trash. Clean to an almost disturbing level. The, the, the story that I'll tell is on the second from last day of the trip, I was walking to place to send my luggage onward and I was walking past train tracks. And so there was a gate, a fence, and then the train tracks are behind the fence. And then leaning against the train track was one piece of paper. And I swear to God, I had the reaction. I literally said it out loud. Oh, thank God. Like, thank God I finally seen a piece of trash. Where I am in this town, the roads are just filthy. You'll be driving down the highway and you will see someone just like throw a McDonald's bag out of their window.
|
Sam:
[1:23:17]
| I haven't seen that myself in a long time. But yeah. But I still see the trash. trash but i remember when i was younger i would actually see the people throw it out the window while driving now it is still trash along the side that you see but i i feel like there's enough shame to it now that i don't actually see the people like if somebody's going to do it i feel like they look behind them to make sure there's no one who can see them do it.
|
Peter:
[1:23:45]
| I mean i assume this has to be the power of cultural norms yes similar to what we were just talking about in terms of smoking they've managed to make being a litter bug socially unacceptable to more or less everyone yeah again caveat if there's some town in japan that is covered in garbage you know i wasn't there and didn't see it feel free to you know i guess mention it on the slack and tell me where it is i'll do a pilgrimage or something but that to me was really striking the food was excellent and you I don't want to give a travelogue, but there were basically two things that I noted.
|
Peter:
[1:24:27]
| So that's the two things I wanted to call out about this trip, because I don't want to turn it into Pete's travelogue, because that's not what Commerciants Corner is about, are the two cultural differences that I found striking. So one is the trash thing. The other is specifically in Tokyo. I've heard that it's different elsewhere.
|
Peter:
[1:24:49]
| There's a norm that one does not speak on the subway, on the Metro. You don't have loud conversations on the Metro. Occasionally you'll see someone lean over and, you know, murmur something, but even that is really not done. And I saw a poster, a Hello Kitty poster kind of giving these rules. And, you know, I've heard someone say, what is it? The subway is a place of quiet contemplation. Whether that's literally true or if this is just a cultural norm that people have adopted, I'm not sure. But I really liked it. I found it, you know, maybe that's my inner introvert speaking. But I liked, like, I'm not encountering, you know, people arguing with each other or having loud conversations. And in fact, we had one incident in Kyoto where there was an American family visiting that was having just this hugely loud conversation about what their next travel plans were. And it was really disturbing and everyone around them was disturbed. And I was disturbed because I'd gotten used to it for two weeks of not experiencing. So that's, those are the two things from the Japan trip that I wanted to pull out.
|
Sam:
[1:26:09]
| Well, like you said, uh, well, culturally, you mentioned like even within the U S and even within families and like introvert extrovert kind of thing. Like I find this is one of the things where I personally am not comfortable speaking I'm speaking in a public space where I know that others are able to hear, you know? So like, and, and this is completely opposite from my wife. So like, if like, I will not like, if I'm on the phone with her, but I need to go into the grocery store or something, I will hang up with her before I go into the store. I will like, cause I'm like, I, or at best I'll be like, I can't like, I will listen to you, but I'm not going to speak anymore because I'm now in public. Whereas she like feels completely comfortable having a conversation as you're walking through the grocery store, being on the phone with somebody while you're going through the grocery store. And I'm like, I just can't do that.
|
Peter:
[1:27:07]
| Right. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:27:08]
| Like, and, you know, it's like, and even there, I feel self-conscious, like in, if, if she's on, if, if she's on the phone with her mother, I don't feel like, even though I know she doesn't mind, I feel like I should go to the other room. that.
|
Peter:
[1:27:24]
| Feels yeah that feels very extreme to me like.
|
Sam:
[1:27:26]
| Yeah she's well because she's fit she's having a conversation with her mother i'm like that's not if i'm part of the conversation that's a whole other thing but like i'm gonna go elsewhere and like when i call my dad i for the most part don't like i i will go and do a walk around the block while i talk to him rather than, you know like i i just can't do it like i can't have that conversation in the living room with my family around. Cause I'm like, I'm having a conversation with my dad. If it was, I'm having, if, if it was like the whole family is going to have a conversation with my dad, whole different story. But, and I know I, like you said, that's maybe that's a bit extreme, but like, again, that's where like, I feel, I don't feel comfortable having the conversation, around people other than the people I'm having the conversation with. Whereas on the other hand, lots of people, absolutely no problem. You know, unless, and unless, and unless you're talking about something especially sensitive now, that's a different story, but just for normal routine conversation, like, yeah, yeah. I see people all the time talking, you know, talking, uh, on the street, in the grocery store, whatever. Now, funnily enough though, like, If I'm at a booth in a restaurant, I don't longer feel this, even though theoretically the people in the next booth over can hear me just fine.
|
Peter:
[1:28:54]
| So it's the physical separation of the booth that gives it to you. The physical separation of the booth is enough for you to feel like it's your space and you're allowed to talk. What about a table? If you're at a table in the middle of the room, is that okay?
|
Sam:
[1:29:08]
| I feel a little bit more exposed in that scenario, but I will still talk. I think part of it is it really is socially accepted that what people do at restaurants is they talk to each other. So it would be kind of weird if I sat there silently eating. So I don't know. But okay, I know where we are rapidly running out of time. You've talked about generally your Japan experience and the two experiences and the two cultural things. You did have something about a conference you were at.
|
Peter:
[1:29:41]
| No, I was not at the conference.
|
Sam:
[1:29:43]
| Oh, right. You just heard about it in news. That's right. That's right.
|
Peter:
[1:29:46]
| So one effect is if you travel internationally, of course, everyone is trying to show you the right ads, which means they're trying to show you the right content, which means you tend to get local news stories. And going to Asia, I started getting all these Asia-specific news stories. And the big news in Asia when I arrived in Japan was this conference called the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, which seems like national security types from the U.S., from what they call the ASEAN countries, Southeast Asia, Australia, and China was there. And I really want to recommend that people look up some of these video clips because they are very striking. the extent to which mainland China is comfortable.
|
Peter:
[1:30:38]
| Being publicly aggressive about specifically Taiwan independence, but also just, you know, their desire and their plan to dominate the region. There is a really fascinating back and forth between, I believe his name was Admiral Dong Jun and a US admiral named Paparo, who, you know, kind of directly kind of answered this Chinese admiral's kind of statement about the US being kind of preparing for war. You know, the vibe was that they're being somewhat warmongery.
|
Peter:
[1:31:25]
| And, you know, he kind of gave a very politic answer that he personally is in favor of peace, but the entire point of a deterrence is that you're, you know, you're trying to deter aggression, that being the philosophy of the way you're going to guarantee peace is by being essentially in a posture where you can respond if something happens. Really striking and really interesting to me that you would have, Non-politicians. Now, you could argue about whether an admiral at that level, you're kind of a politician, but you're certainly not like a secretary of state or something.
|
Sam:
[1:32:02]
| Right.
|
Peter:
[1:32:03]
| The extent to which these dudes were willing to have that conversation in public on a stage, I found just fascinating. And so, Shangri-La dialogue, and I do recommend you seek out some of the clips in the news. I hesitate to talk about them in more detail. tell, even though I put it on the show topics because I'm not an Asia expert and I'm not a military expert, you know, but as a lay person, I thought it was a fascinating thing to be exposed to.
|
Sam:
[1:32:33]
| And it's interesting. I was just looking up the Wikipedia page for this. They, first of all, it's actually, you know, you're in Japan and talking about it as local, it's regional. This is actually held in Singapore. So it's not, wasn't actually in Japan where this was happening.
|
Peter:
[1:32:48]
| Yes, correct.
|
Sam:
[1:33:19]
| Stuff there is available online if you want to check it out okay well with that uh let's wrap this up peter i i know you need to go but it's time for all the stuff at the end all.
|
Peter:
[1:33:31]
| Right stuff at the end let's get to it let's do it.
|
Sam:
[1:33:33]
| Let's get to it let's do it first of all go to curmudgeons corner.com, You can find all the stuff, how to get in touch with us. So Facebook, Mastodon, email is all there. Hey, Peter, do you want people to go via us or do you want to give your own contact info out there and plug your YouTube again?
|
Peter:
[1:33:55]
| You can find me at PeterB at Mastodon, M-A-T-H-S-T-O-D-O-N dot X-Y-Z. And you could find me on YouTube at the channel Tea Leaves Programming.
|
Sam:
[1:34:07]
| And that's T-E-A, right?
|
Peter:
[1:34:09]
| In that case, it's T-E-A, correct.
|
Sam:
[1:34:12]
| Because your blog was just the T.
|
Peter:
[1:34:15]
| I know. It's very poor branding. What can I do? Someone took it. Someone squatted it. So I changed the branding.
|
Sam:
[1:34:22]
| Well, that's why I have curmudgeons-corner.com because somebody had curmudgeons-corner.com without the hyphen.
|
Peter:
[1:34:29]
| Well, it is liberating to not have any viewers because it means that the consequence for it is very low if people get it wrong.
|
Sam:
[1:34:37]
| Well, I've seen you have a few views. Yeah, it's okay. You're, you're, you're no Dan TDM or anything, but.
|
Peter:
[1:34:44]
| You were watching and that, that really is heartwarming to me. Knowing that you were watching Sam, that's all I need.
|
Sam:
[1:34:50]
| There you go. Uh, and I, I will, and once you get that three and three video out, I will, I'll be sure to watch intent.
|
Peter:
[1:34:57]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[1:34:58]
| Sold. Okay. So aside from that, we, oh, we of course have the archives of the show, including for about the last year transcripts because of Peter. Peter is the one who demanded transcripts and got it in my ad.
|
Peter:
[1:35:13]
| You're welcome, sweet America.
|
Sam:
[1:35:16]
| Now, and of course, I'm sure that means you read them every week, right?
|
Peter:
[1:35:21]
| I do not use the transcripts every week. I do use them when I don't have time to listen to the show.
|
Sam:
[1:35:29]
| Ah, interesting.
|
Peter:
[1:35:30]
| I have searched for things, for topics on previous shows that I haven't learned. And I make heavy, heavy use of your chapter markers.
|
Sam:
[1:35:40]
| Okay. And what I, and I, in just last week's show, I adjusted my, I've said in the past, I don't like chapters, but I, the, it was sort of automatically doing them because of the way I made descriptions. And I just last week adjusted the way that I use the descriptions to make those chapters come out looking a little bit better. Cause I used to have time start time end for each segment, which the way it got interpreted, it identified the time starts. And then the name of each chapter was not just the name of my segment, but was the time end and the name. So I just, killed the time end so it only has the start times so i i've adjusted that and at the moment transcripts are only on the website there is new podcast 2.0 or whatever it is functionality that can let you embed the transcript in the podcast metadata itself so that you can have it like show on your screen on your podcast player while you are listening i have not done i have not done that yet. I've not figured out what's involved someday. I may have time to do that. But again, that's one of those things where like you have to figure it out. I think, I think this, I think I can do it. I think I have the tools necessary, but I don't necessarily have the time necessary to get it set up.
|
Peter:
[1:37:02]
| This is a brave new world. You're marching boldly towards Sam. I'm excited.
|
Sam:
[1:37:07]
| Yes, I know. I know.
|
Peter:
[1:37:08]
| I really want to see how I need to go back and check the transcripts to see how they handle Ivan when he gets to the, you know, where he makes himself so mad that he kind of loses the power of speech and just like, this guy with the, I really want to see how those turn out.
|
Sam:
[1:37:28]
| Yes, absolutely. Anyway, we also, of course, have a link to our Patreon where you can give us money. We always like money. And at various levels, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. and by the way Pete, For actually being a co-host, if you want a mug, just send me your offline, send me your address and stuff, and we'll get a mug off to you.
|
Peter:
[1:37:52]
| This is the most exciting thing that's happened to me this year. So I love it. Thank you.
|
Sam:
[1:37:59]
| And so, in any case, at various levels, we'll do all those things. And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our Commodions Chorus Slack, where Yvonne and I and lately Peter and a whole bunch of other listeners. Well, not a whole bunch. A few other listeners are chatting throughout the week and sharing links and all of that kind of thing as we go through stuff. So it's a lot of fun. The more the merrier. We would love to have you join us. So, Pete, do you have something you want to highlight from the Slack or should I pick something real quick?
|
Peter:
[1:38:35]
| I am completely unprepared for this question. because.
|
Sam:
[1:38:40]
| We want to give people a highlight that illustrates why they might want to be on the slack and why there's fun stuff there.
|
Peter:
[1:38:47]
| Well i mean you know i i just picked something and you said then you said fun stuff i was gonna well.
|
Sam:
[1:38:56]
| It does it can be serious stuff too it doesn't have to be the jokey stuff.
|
Peter:
[1:38:59]
| It was it was yvonne's link to william the tragic death of william anders There's the Apollo 8 astronaut who recently was in a terrible air crash and just his life.
|
Sam:
[1:39:12]
| Yeah, he's right here in the Seattle area, not that far from where I am off the coast. And here's the thing. 90 years old, solo piloting a plane, doing stunts from what I understand.
|
Peter:
[1:39:28]
| Yeah, it looked like he stalled. It looked like he either stalled out or maybe there was some sort of car. he might have been dead before the plane hit the ground.
|
Sam:
[1:39:36]
| He might have been like in that kind of scenario i mean we don't know at this point it just happened like yesterday as we're recording this so they haven't done all the but at 90 years old it wouldn't be shocking if you had a medical event while flying and i and also at 90 years old it wouldn't be shocking if it just had a lapse in skills like i don't know there's all kinds of things that could happen or there could have have been a mechanical failure or something else entirely. We just don't know yet. But I, I sort of, when I saw that, I'm like, wait a second. He was 90 years old, solo piloting a plane doing like, not, not just like, flying from a to b but like doing performance things with the plane apparently at least that's what i read i don't know did i get that wrong pete no.
|
Peter:
[1:40:24]
| I think that's exactly right.
|
Sam:
[1:40:25]
| Yeah so i'm like was that really wise should he have been but on the other hand he was 90 doing that stuff that's pretty good i.
|
Peter:
[1:40:34]
| Think when you've flown around the moon you know the normal rules may not apply to you.
|
Sam:
[1:40:39]
| You could do whatever the hell you want and he undoubtedly knew the risks and everything like Like, and you know, tragic that it ended that way, but on the other hand, good long life. And so, yeah, he's the one who took the famous earth rise picture. I don't know if you mentioned that or not, but.
|
Peter:
[1:40:55]
| No, I did not. Thank you.
|
Sam:
[1:40:56]
| But so he was well known for that. And yeah. So with that, thank you very much for joining us, Pete, for your first time co-hosting the show. I hope you had fun.
|
Peter:
[1:41:08]
| I had a blast. Thank you so much for having me on.
|
Sam:
[1:41:11]
| So as I said, Yvonne's been missing a lot of shows lately, so there may be more opportunities. But it was very great to have you. It was a lot of fun for me, too. And sort of a different flavor of show than when Yvonne's here, but that's okay.
|
Peter:
[1:41:26]
| That's okay. All right, Sam. Thank you so much. We'll see you around.
|
Sam:
[1:41:31]
| So thanks, everybody. Everybody have a great week. Stay safe. All of that kind of stuff. I always say goodbye. Say goodbye, Pete, out loud.
|
Peter:
[1:41:40]
| Goodbye oh right it's an audio show isn't it yes.
|
Sam:
[1:41:44]
| It is goodbye.
|
Peter:
[1:41:46]
| Goodbye.
| |
|
