Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| You are not in your usual location.
|
Ivan:
[0:02]
| No kidding. Really?
|
Sam:
[0:07]
| Wow.
|
Ivan:
[0:07]
| Sherlock Holmes.
|
Sam:
[0:09]
| Where are you?
|
Ivan:
[0:10]
| I'm in San Juan. That's why I said I had to take a 6.30 a.m. flight to get home.
|
Sam:
[0:17]
| You didn't say to get home. I thought you were leaving home to go somewhere.
|
Ivan:
[0:21]
| No, no, no. I need the flight to get home.
|
Sam:
[0:24]
| Gotcha. You're sideways. I'm okay with you sideways.
|
Ivan:
[0:32]
| Here's the thing. Over here, I'm not sideways. Yet you are.
|
Sam:
[0:38]
| I'm sideways.
|
Ivan:
[0:42]
| I'm like, why the hell? I'm trying this for the first time on the iPad.
|
Sam:
[0:49]
| You're using the app? Okay, you're right side up now.
|
Ivan:
[0:53]
| I guess this doesn't rotate. Wait, what the fuck did I do? What is grid beaker slider? I don't know what any of these things are. I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:11]
| Okay. Good, good, good.
|
Ivan:
[1:14]
| Well, it's just that I was trying to move the camera because the thing is, oh, here. Okay, that'll, that'll, okay, that fixes that. There you go. That's better. Not, I'm looking at the wrong place.
|
Sam:
[1:24]
| You're all good. Shall we, shall we go? Or shall we?
|
Ivan:
[1:27]
| Yeah, we need to go because I have to, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:30]
| Sleep! Sleep is good! Okay, here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 31st, 2024. It's just after zero UTC. I'm Sam Minter and Yvonne Bo is here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:10]
| I am here. Hello.
|
Sam:
[2:13]
| You sound so enthused.
|
Ivan:
[2:16]
| Well, I got sick this week.
|
Sam:
[2:20]
| I am finally over my COVID, by the way. I tested negative starting Wednesday night. And my symptoms had abated a few days before that. So, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:30]
| Look, I had a very stressful work week, which unfortunately, I'm really frustrated because I managed to accomplish. Well, no, I'm grossly excited to say nothing. I did move things forward, but I wanted to put, I'm in sales. I wanted to move them to completion. Unfortunately, completion did not happen. Did I get advances? Yes, I got some significant advances, but some of that stuff was hindered by the fact that, I don't know, on Tuesday night, I'd gone out to dinner and hung out with some friends. are actually celebrating the fact that one of my co-workers actually closed some of their first deals.
|
Sam:
[3:16]
| Okay, good.
|
Ivan:
[3:18]
| It's a new employee. They've been here a few months. We had a little bit of wine. We had nothing. Nothing too much. We ate, whatever, but nothing too much. Three in the morning, I feel my intestines are acting like when I get sick or food poisoned.
|
Sam:
[3:37]
| They're not happy at all.
|
Ivan:
[3:39]
| No. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? I'm like, and so anyway, the next day I have some important meetings I need to try to go to. Okay. And I'm like, look, I got to book this up. It doesn't fucking matter. I got to. I can't. And so I woke up.
|
Sam:
[4:00]
| You tried to push through it anyway.
|
Ivan:
[4:02]
| No, I did. But listen, I did. Okay. All right. Well, I woke up. No, I got up. I felt like, I don't, I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me? And I wasn't really sure what was going on yet still. Okay. But I felt just completely destroyed. I just felt just what the hell. When I get to the office and then we go to this thing. And then, you know, one thing is that at some point realize that we got there. And well, I had been able to explain to a couple of people that we're gonna go to the meeting and.
|
Ivan:
[4:44]
| What the purpose of it was. And we found out that, anyway, the guy that we wanted to talk to didn't want to receive that many people at once. So they said, look, I told him, look, I feel, take me back to the office. I can't.
|
Ivan:
[4:57]
| You said, look, I got it. I got it. Listen, we got it. Just, you know, these people aren't even my, they're not on my same team. They're on a different team, but we were having stuff that dealt with the same organization. organization and so this guy was just look i'll help you out okay all right because i know what i gotta do i don't i don't need to sell you i right now it's just a process thing you need to get some approvals through some organization and i'm just like so he drove me back to the office and i got there and listen my i i i left everything in the bathroom at the office and thank god that nobody was there when i got there because i was just oh god yes and i you know i had thought that from there i should have taken an uber and just left my rental car back at the office and i had my briefcase i'll just go straight to the hotel probably would have been the smartest thing because i i drove back and i almost fell asleep twice and hit and and on one of them i well i probably wouldn't have crashed but i i did fall asleep at a traffic light oh wow at two o'clock in the afternoon yeah okay like i think that's a short drive i got there i got to the hotel, I proceeded to get into bed and completely passed out. I then had to wake up because some stuff happened. I needed to talk to the contract people. I needed to talk to people. I basically wound up still working hours and hours, but from bed, just laying down in bed and going to the bathroom.
|
Ivan:
[6:25]
| The next day, I felt somewhat better, but I had an in-person meeting, and I told the person, listen, I don't think it's a good idea I come to your office. how about we just zoom this make this brief, and we'll go from there so I got them on I just I zoomed that meeting I did have to look I had to cancel a meeting I had in the afternoon on the previous day I couldn't go to a customer this one I zoomed, So that was like Wednesday, Thursday. I didn't eat for two days. But today, by yesterday evening, after my system had been properly evacuated, I felt a lot better. I found out, I told my co-worker I was celebrating with on Tuesday. I said, well, I called her up and I said, look, this happened. And she said, you know what? I know what happened. It's like, what do you mean? Well, I had a note from school. There's been a 24-hour virus going through all the kids at school. And that they've been getting this. And it's been like, you know, like that, like pretty quick. And on the day that I was at the office, a whole bunch of kids, parents had picked up their kids at school and brought them to the office.
|
Sam:
[7:48]
| Your kids who were sick?
|
Ivan:
[7:49]
| Well, they probably weren't. well they may have had it but they weren't.
|
Sam:
[7:53]
| Right okay it wasn't like they they got called from school come pick up your kid they're sick and they took him to the office right but it was more just kids were exposed yeah.
|
Ivan:
[8:03]
| And so i wound up being it so i'm still i i did work today a full day but i don't really feel back to 100 you.
|
Sam:
[8:15]
| Don't look back to 100 you you look at most 50 percent Oh.
|
Ivan:
[8:20]
| I'm like, I'm about 50. And then, you know, it was really, really stressful with work. You know, just getting stuff and working until very, I still wound up working all the time, even though I was basically just in bed with fucking laptop and phone and shit. And, you know. But, yeah, I'm not.
|
Sam:
[8:41]
| That sucks. There's no other word for it. Your week sounds awful.
|
Ivan:
[8:48]
| It's awful. It's awful. Plus, I didn't get.
|
Sam:
[8:51]
| You didn't get done what you wanted to get done. No.
|
Ivan:
[8:55]
| No, no. It wasn't because of that.
|
Sam:
[8:58]
| Well, it didn't help. It didn't help.
|
Ivan:
[9:00]
| Well, it didn't help. Okay. That's for sure. But the biggest reasons for that are just, you know, happened weeks and weeks in advance. Well, we had shit like, for example, unfortunately, this is in Puerto Rico, and one of the things that a lot of stuff got delayed because we had a storm two weeks ago. So they had a storm, not like the storm that happened like Maria seven years ago, but it still had some impacts. And so a lot of people didn't get any work done that week.
|
Sam:
[9:32]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[9:32]
| So that delayed shit, honestly, probably the storm. Without that storm, I would have gotten, we would have had enough time to get everything done. End of the month.
|
Sam:
[9:42]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[9:43]
| But, you know, hey, and I gotta be honest. I went from traveling nonstop. The pandemic made me spend one year where I didn't travel at all.
|
Sam:
[9:56]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[9:56]
| So now I have slept, I don't know. I have traveled a ridiculous amount again, and I just want to fucking go home. Yeah. I'm sick and tired of this fucking hotel. It's a nice hotel. I'm fucking sick and tired of it.
|
Sam:
[10:16]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[10:18]
| So no matter how fucking nice it is.
|
Sam:
[10:21]
| I gotcha.
|
Ivan:
[10:22]
| I did get, you know, I did, you know, I was so exhausted. One thing, at least, you know, about the hotel, it's in front of the ocean. So I had just opened my slider door and I probably, you know, when I got back from the office, I just crashed for a while. just hearing that sound until some idiots started playing music outside for some reason on on a on a plaza i decided that this is like fun to have some boom boxes start playing music and woke me up okay.
|
Sam:
[10:56]
| Well i'm glad you're feeling better even though you're not completely better at least you're you know 50 is better.
|
Ivan:
[11:04]
| Than where it sounds like you were oh man i mean that was like i mean people are looking at me the other day i'm like are you okay there'll be people I was like, it's like stress. I'm like, what the fuck is going on now? This thing is real sick.
|
Sam:
[11:19]
| So anyway, our plan for the day, this is our but first. Yvonne was just sharing his illness. Well, hopefully you can't actually catch it through listening to the podcast.
|
Ivan:
[11:32]
| This is not like Smell-O-Vision?
|
Sam:
[11:35]
| No, no. We don't do that.
|
Ivan:
[11:37]
| Where was Smell-O-Vision? I can't remember what the hell.
|
Sam:
[11:40]
| Well i saw i saw recently actually that like you know that oh the the the sequel to the tornado movie twist or two or whatever just came out like a few weeks ago and there are apparently some there's some theaters that are like 4d something something blah blah blah oh sure that i think it does include the smell of vision but it also includes the thing where it shakes the seats and stuff like that in the movie. So apparently a lot of people were watching this tornado movie in this theater that has the full immersive experience where you feel like you're actually in the tornado. And I don't know if they actually impale some audience members with random debris or not.
|
Ivan:
[12:30]
| That would be interesting.
|
Sam:
[12:31]
| You know, but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[12:34]
| Yeah, I mean, that would be. That would be interesting.
|
Sam:
[12:38]
| A little too realistic?
|
Ivan:
[12:40]
| That might be a little bit. You know, I've mentioned that, you know, there is this ride at Disney called Soarin' that is like that in terms of when you, they do the movie and they take you, you know, flying and they, you know, make the effect of feel like you're going, but they also add all the sets and things. Like if you're in the savannah, you know, you smell that. If you're at the Taj Mahal, I think there's, I don't know what flowers, roses, whatever there are, are you getting those so they do add that to the to the experience so that that is so they do that yeah i guess it's you know somebody decided hey.
|
Sam:
[13:16]
| Let's i think once or twice i went to things that had that kind of stuff and you know it was a novelty like but but it was it was not when when i went it wasn't like a regular movie it was a movie that was designed to do these things so it I mean, I think it was 3D, too. So, of course, they were always like shoving stuff at your face. And then like at certain points in the thing, it would shake or at certain points they'd spray some smell in your general direction. And I'm like, OK, this was an interesting experience. I wouldn't want like normal movies to be like this. You know, I think that.
|
Ivan:
[13:56]
| You know, the thing is that, you know, the thing with those kinds of movies, right, is that they're focusing more on the effects rather on the movie. And so it's just, it's just not a good movie. It's just something to show off that they can do the effect. You know, whereas if you have a good movie and you intersperse like really good, like surround sound that feels realistic and certain movements and certain things that you do it like that, it's directly related to the plot. And that makes more sense. Otherwise it's just, yeah.
|
Sam:
[14:26]
| I mean, I think even there, I mean, yes, you can do it. So it's really good and it's integral to the experience. But like most movies, I don't want to smell what's going on. I just don't want to. Like, I don't care how integral it is to the story. I don't want to smell it. I'm sorry. And like, if I'm sitting on my couch, relaxing, watching a movie, I don't want my couch. It smells like shit? Well, yeah, I don't want necessarily, oh, they're going through a cow pasture. Lovely. I can smell it. You know, and I don't want my couch to shake. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[15:01]
| The smells are not, you know, the thing. But look, but there is a big, big, big difference in, you know, when you go to an IMAX movie with the sound, you know, that is realistic versus, you know, you're watching an IMAX.
|
Sam:
[15:17]
| Well, yes, compared to watching on your phone and also like even like a regular television or television versus sound bar versus a real like seven to surround system, whatever. Like there are differences at all of those levels. And but, you know, most and like like I have the surround sound. I have I have the surround sound system in my living room when I watch things. But, you know, and occasionally it matters. like if you're watching a movie that takes advantage of it well i think the problem is.
|
Ivan:
[15:52]
| When you have it on all the time you stop noticing that it's happening and so you know it's one of those things that i just i really notice it when i you know for example i'm traveling and i'm watching something because i'm renting freaking thing with a little speaker it's not exactly really that much you know it's it's not really.
|
Sam:
[16:07]
| You notice the difference more after that yeah of course yeah.
|
Ivan:
[16:10]
| Yeah yeah i.
|
Sam:
[16:11]
| Mean and like most of the time what's on my projector system in my is news and like you know i it's really i.
|
Ivan:
[16:18]
| Think we really notice it it's like a movie like a really.
|
Sam:
[16:21]
| I know i was just gonna say surround sound does not add a lot to wolf blitzer no you know probably probably.
|
Ivan:
[16:28]
| The opposite to be honest with you.
|
Sam:
[16:30]
| Yeah i i mean but and even with movies mr wolf on the kind yes mr wolf mr wolf it it it depends on the kind of movie too like some movies you know like an action movie is going to take a lot more advantage of the surround sound and stuff like that than a rom-com you know sure you know so i mean you may still get some of that like some ambient noises from behind you and some stuff like that but it makes more of a difference in things that where there's lots of movement and action and things going on you know so and fine anyway.
|
Ivan:
[17:05]
| We've dragged this out.
|
Sam:
[17:06]
| Anyway okay.
|
Ivan:
[17:06]
| All right what are you gonna.
|
Sam:
[17:08]
| Okay what are Should I skip my movie? We can get right onto the meat of things.
|
Ivan:
[17:14]
| No, no, no. What's your movie this week?
|
Sam:
[17:19]
| Ghostbusters.
|
Ivan:
[17:20]
| The first one?
|
Sam:
[17:22]
| The first one. Okay, you've watched it. Oh, yeah, I have seen Ghostbusters many times before. This comes from when the newest Ghostbusters was in the theater. My wife was like, hey, let's go see it. And then we were like, well, wait, we haven't seen the one immediately before it. And it's sort of a direct sequel to the one immediately before it. So I'm like, you know, let's, let's watch all of the Ghostbusters and then we'll go see the new one. Like, so let's, let's catch up on the series. But of course, catching up on the series took us months. And so it's long gone from the theaters now. We could, it's, it's now available on streaming, the newest one. we have caught up like we've actually watched all the ones prior to the newest ones we we skipped for now the various ghostbusters tv series we have skipped those there were there were like three different ghostbusters cartoons or something but we we have skipped those but we have watched all of the ghostbusters movies and but now i'm only here to talk about the first one and i'll I'll get to the other ones later.
|
Ivan:
[18:36]
| Okay, let's talk about the first.
|
Sam:
[18:39]
| So, I mean, it's a classic.
|
Ivan:
[18:42]
| How does it hold up 40 years later?
|
Sam:
[18:47]
| Pretty good, actually. Yeah? Like, there are a few parts that fall flat, but I'd say mostly it holds up.
|
Ivan:
[18:57]
| That's good.
|
Sam:
[18:57]
| And, I mean, you know.
|
Ivan:
[19:00]
| I am remembering some of the lines from it. I'm just smiling from like thinking some of the stuff because I still remember that one of the first parts is – what's his name? Oh, God, Will Murray doing these experiments on this – with these two people. I guess he's like doing electrical torture or something, the questions. And the reality is he's just after – you know, he wanted just this girl. He was just torturing the other poor guy.
|
Sam:
[19:27]
| Yeah, he was zapping the guy and telling the guy that he got everything wrong, where the woman that was there got everything right. And there was, you are psychic. This is amazing. Like, blah, blah, blah. Yes, yes. I'm going to give it a thumbs up. I mean, Ghostbusters is Ghostbusters. I mean, who hasn't, like, seen this? Like, I don't know. It's, you know, like I said, some parts hold up a little bit better than others. but for the most part, it's pretty consistently still funny and it's, it's got some classic moments and, you know, and spoilers, you got the marshmallow guy near the end and.
|
Ivan:
[20:09]
| You know, yes.
|
Sam:
[20:12]
| Ray, if someone asks you, if you're a God, you say yes. You know, stuff like that. It's a, I mean, it's got good lines. It's, it's, you know, there's, there's a reason it's a beloved franchise.
|
Ivan:
[20:27]
| Blah blah blah I'm trying to think of something that just can't make me happy it was the little marshmallow guy.
|
Sam:
[20:37]
| Exactly and you're right I mean it's exactly 40 years it came out in 1984 I'm not.
|
Ivan:
[20:44]
| Sure if it was 40 years yeah.
|
Sam:
[20:47]
| 40 years in June so we're two months past 40 years.
|
Ivan:
[20:54]
| I'm wondering when that movie came out 40 years before It was the number one movie in 1944. I'm going to check. 1944. See, four years before that, the number one movie was called me going my way.
|
Sam:
[21:11]
| No idea.
|
Ivan:
[21:12]
| I mean, me neither. The second one I've heard, but I don't think I've watched it. Meet me in St. Louis.
|
Sam:
[21:18]
| I've heard of that, but I don't think.
|
Ivan:
[21:19]
| I've never watched top grossing movies going my way. I don't know what the hell it's about. Well, let's see. What is it about? It's, it doesn't really say here. What's wrong? Okay. God, I'm slow. My Way, I said, right? 1944?
|
Sam:
[21:44]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[21:44]
| Yeah, Going My Way, 1944. It's a musical.
|
Sam:
[21:49]
| Okay. Wow.
|
Ivan:
[21:50]
| With Bing Cronby. It's a 1944 American musical, comedy, trauma film directed by Leo McCary and starring Bing Crosby and Mary Fitzgerald, written by Frank Butler, based on a story by McCary. The film is about the new young priest taking over a parish from an established old veteran. Crosby sings five songs, with others performed on screen by Metropolitan Opera star Miss Soprano, Rye Stevens.
|
Sam:
[22:14]
| Deep um okay i i've added both that one and meet me in st louis which is also a musical to my my grand list of movies i i i can.
|
Ivan:
[22:24]
| See how this kind of year this kind of movie light and frothy 1944 with the war going on seemed like something that people want to watch.
|
Sam:
[22:33]
| Yeah a nice distraction from everything else that was going on yeah blah blah blah yeah.
|
Ivan:
[22:39]
| That makes Makes sense. Makes sense.
|
Sam:
[22:42]
| Anyway, Ghostbusters is also kind of light and frothy. It's not a serious movie at all. It's a comedy. You know, there are really goofy, silly things happening throughout the movie. It's just fun. It's just a fun romp. You know, it has a nice, you know, exciting ending that, you know, spoilers again. It turns out well. Everyone's happy. They're triumphant. Whatever. Has a good song. You know. Has a good song. you know, who you're going to call catchphrase that has lasted 40 fucking years.
|
Ivan:
[23:15]
| I mean, that's the thing, I guess, you know, think about, okay, nobody remembers that fucking movie from, from, from 1944, but to be fair.
|
Sam:
[23:24]
| To be fair, it's been 80 years now. Maybe they did remember it 40 years ago. Like if, if you were a teenager, when that movie came out and people made references to it, you might know them right off the top of your head.
|
Ivan:
[23:39]
| But I don't think, I will say, to be fair, that those war years were not peak for movie making.
|
Sam:
[23:45]
| Hmm.
|
Ivan:
[23:47]
| Okay? There are a few classics from the 40s. There are a few, but it was, you know, because of the war, I mean, they weren't making as many, like, say, you know, big movie productions. It's just, you know, hell, there were even actors and people who were going to war themselves. Right. So it wasn't exactly, like, you know, the easiest time for that. that so i i guess that that to be fair is not not not not good judging like that that time period on by the way that movie by the way go my way 83 on already rotten tomatoes 90 on metacritic okay so it does have some good you know good reviews so okay.
|
Sam:
[24:26]
| And and yeah like to this day i mean if you say who who you're gonna.
|
Ivan:
[24:32]
| Call you're gonna call i mean you know people you know the right way to respond to that phrase.
|
Sam:
[24:37]
| Yeah, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[24:38]
| 40 years later, yes. So that was a very iconic movie indeed of the 1980s. Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[24:44]
| Now, I'm not sure if you picked a random 18-year-old, would they get the references instantly? They might.
|
Ivan:
[24:52]
| Because we got the Ghostbusters.
|
Sam:
[24:55]
| Yeah, they got the new one. And one of the differences between now and when we were kids is the absolutely easy access to the Backit catalog. Like, you know, what are you talking about?
|
Ivan:
[25:08]
| I, I, will you, will you, I mean, didn't you stream your movies back in 1984?
|
Sam:
[25:13]
| I mean, it was, I'm sure it was possible to go get going my way at the blockbuster and watch it, but it took a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[25:23]
| Not even actually, I've got to say probably not.
|
Sam:
[25:27]
| I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[25:28]
| No, because the blockbusters used to have a very limited selection. you know, of what the hell was current, what the hell was renting frequently. Yes, they did have some of those old classics, but you know, it wasn't like they had every movie available. Okay.
|
Sam:
[25:44]
| Well, no.
|
Ivan:
[25:44]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:45]
| Cause you had to maintain physical inventory and you have limited space. So you have to pick and choose the things that people are likely to get. And so exactly. So you'd have a classic section, but there'd only be.
|
Ivan:
[25:56]
| You know, like the really big things like Casa Blanc, stuff like that, out whatever that everybody remembered okay you know.
|
Sam:
[26:03]
| Now there were there there were back in the day there were some specialty video stores that specialized in certain eras or certain genres yeah but you have to go find those you had to go find them you had to do that yeah well it's not like.
|
Ivan:
[26:15]
| You know i still remember the scene in the movie big where he was the ceo of the you know he's a big shot at the toy company and i don't think we had the facility where tom hanks goes and says hey could you go get me a copy of the super bowl and just edit out all the commercials show so i can watch it when i want please so yeah we we didn't have those kind of power.
|
Sam:
[26:34]
| Yeah and i i definitely can't get big to my list too yeah so yeah so anyway thumbs up to ghost busters if you haven't seen it i'm not even going to pretend anybody listening has not seen ghost busters but if you haven't seen it recently it's worth a re-watch and you know like you know no spoilers for the other ones i'll do ghostbusters 2 next week but like but you know so far we've caught up with all of the Ghostbusters other than the brand new one that was out in the theaters this year. And... You know, it's worth watching the whole damn series. You know, it's fun.
|
Ivan:
[27:12]
| I'm going to say, I'm pretty sure, I guess I watched probably Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2. That's right.
|
Sam:
[27:19]
| Okay. We'll talk about the rest in due course as I get to them in order. And we're starting with Ghostbusters 2 next week.
|
Ivan:
[27:30]
| Well, let me see. Well, hold on. I'm looking. So it's Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters 2.
|
Sam:
[27:36]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[27:36]
| So then there was a 2016 reboot, which was, what the heck was that called?
|
Sam:
[27:42]
| Was it called Ghostbusters? It was just called Ghostbusters. They retroactively added some name to it, but it was just called Ghostbusters. It was the one with female Ghostbusters that was in a different continuity. So they tried to reboot the series from scratch rather than making a sequel. And it kind of fell flat. And it's like, when I get to that movie in order, we'll talk about this more. But there was a controversy. Did people hate it because it was actually bad? Or because there was a lot of hate to it just because they cast women? And so was it bad because it was bad? Or was it bad because people just had a negative reaction to casting women in these films?
|
Ivan:
[28:22]
| Then we got Ghostbusters Afterlife and then Ghostbusters Frozen Empire was the new one.
|
Sam:
[28:26]
| Yeah. and i i've seen i've seen i've seen all of them except frozen except frozen empire i haven't seen frozen empire yet and they're also a whole bunch of uh you know tv shows you know animated tv shows and blah blah blah yeah so there's a bunch of stuff i haven't watched the tv shows i haven't watched the tv shows but maybe someday i.
|
Ivan:
[28:50]
| I haven't watched tv shows nor the sequels nor anything.
|
Sam:
[28:55]
| Anything.
|
Ivan:
[28:57]
| But I will say that I think you're motivating me to watch Ghostbusters with my son.
|
Sam:
[29:03]
| Well, and that's the thing. Now, there are a few scenes that get slightly racy, like PG-13 racy, not R-racy.
|
Ivan:
[29:11]
| That's fine. You think knowing me, you think, I mean, I haven't watched that stuff, maybe a little bit slightly racy. I mean, come on. The kid, like right now, all the complaints I was listening to today is that, you know, he's saying shit a lot.
|
Sam:
[29:25]
| Uh-huh.
|
Ivan:
[29:28]
| I'm just like, well, what the fuck you expect?
|
Sam:
[29:30]
| Now, here's the question. Do you have him saying shit in English, Spanish, or both?
|
Ivan:
[29:34]
| No, no, no. In English. The thing is that we've been focusing on his English because he is right now, I've seen that he's picking up more words in Spanish, okay? But we've been focusing on his English. And I will say that I probably, I have focused my cursing lately more in English.
|
Sam:
[29:55]
| Yeah, but anyway, I watch all these movies with Alex, and we have never shied away from, you know, the R rated stuff, you know, it's just like, you know, if, if he doesn't like it, he will leave. Whoa. Oh, oh, alarm, alarm.
|
Ivan:
[30:15]
| Sorry. You know, I have been woken up by a fire alarm, fire alarm in this, in this hotel before and I'd been stuck outside for a while. Understood.
|
Sam:
[30:27]
| Anyway, like we, we, we don't shy away from that. And my, my whole philosophy for that is like, he can self-censor. if he's upset by what he sees he can leave or he can tell me what's going on you know yeah what i.
|
Ivan:
[30:40]
| Mean it's not like you know what are you gonna do.
|
Sam:
[30:43]
| Yeah yeah i mean like well he.
|
Ivan:
[30:46]
| Doesn't like me swearing.
|
Sam:
[30:47]
| Oh no he he does not like the swearing but he will watch movies with swearing with me like oh so it's just a swear.
|
Ivan:
[30:55]
| So the problem with the swearing is more is.
|
Sam:
[30:57]
| You is you yeah well okay no he he doesn't like the swear he will cringe when there's swearing in a movie we are watching but he will not ask me to stop the movie okay although there are a few movies that have tested that because of how much swearing was in them but you know but.
|
Ivan:
[31:16]
| The opposite my son is apparently picking up chip off the old block.
|
Sam:
[31:20]
| There you go okay let's let's take a break And then we will do our two segments of more newsy things. I never actually said the agenda, but it's the usual. Two segments of more newsy stuff. The first one will be stuff picked by Yvonne. The second one will be stuff picked by me. Assuming Yvonne makes it that far. If Yvonne collapses, we'll just end the show. That's fine. We can have a short show. It's good. But this first break is another Apple Dream. This is Apple Dream 35. It's a short one, one minute or so. Here we go.
|
Ivan:
[32:39]
| That's good advice. There was more that happened before.
|
Sam:
[32:54]
| Was anymore. Bye. And that's it. So, you know, don't let your toddlers play around freely in the balcony in your high-rise.
|
Ivan:
[33:07]
| The always necessary high, you know, child safety adult dream.
|
Sam:
[33:13]
| Yeah. And you know, like I'm thinking it's been a long time. Like I've got a backlog of these on my phone that I've never published to TikTok. And at some point I need to catch up on them. And I haven't recorded a new one. Like I, I'm so far behind on publishing the ones I already recorded on my phone that I have, I got out of the habit of like, okay, if I wake up in the middle of the night and I still remember a dream, quick record it. I haven't done that in many months. like if if i wake up and i had a really good one i'll do it but if i if i wake up and like okay there was a dream but it was like mediocre and not all that interesting i'll be like oh screw it yeah i'm not gonna do it right now i don't feel like that's fair if i caught up maybe but like i, haven't done that in a while anyway yvonne of the newsy topics what do you have in mind there's.
|
Ivan:
[34:04]
| A a number of political ones. What are we talking about? We got, I see one, two, three, four political ones. So why don't we talk about those? Okay.
|
Sam:
[34:18]
| Where do you want to start on politics?
|
Ivan:
[34:21]
| Where do we want to start on politics? Why don't we start on politics on the polls, Sam? Are you giving an update?
|
Sam:
[34:27]
| Okay. Let me bring that up real quick.
|
Ivan:
[34:30]
| I said Sam a ton of polls, so give him a lot of work.
|
Sam:
[34:34]
| Well, you know, actually in this case, like about half an hour to an hour after you sent them to me, like the Bloomberg article was behind the paywall, but the link to the detailed polls was in the part you could see before they graded out and said you had to register or whatever. Like sometimes, sometimes the link to the full details is like below that part. Now, interestingly enough, the actual like PDF with the full results is not behind the paywall. So if you have the link, you can get to that. But the link to it is in the article that they publish. And depending on the article, like if they mention.
|
Ivan:
[35:16]
| If they put that link.
|
Sam:
[35:17]
| Because the way Bloomberg works, the way Bloomberg works, which is where this set of polls that you've on, they let you see like the first two or three paragraphs. photographs. And then after that, they're like, to see any more, you have to pay.
|
Sam:
[35:30]
| And sometimes they put the link in the top part and sometimes they put it in the bottom part. This time they put it in the top part. So I was actually able to link to and get to the whole thing, but I got a, I had a head start on it because Yvonne sent it to me. But no, here's where we are right now. Bottom line, we are still in a neck and neck race, essentially. With Harris having a slight advantage at this point. If you go to electiongraphs.com, you'll see my, my, first of all, the straight up, like trust all the polls.
|
Sam:
[36:02]
| If either candidate has even the very slightest advantage, assume they're going to win. And if you do that, Harris wins by 46 electoral votes right now. Um, and the tipping point is Pennsylvania with Harris ahead by 0.9%. So that's still a fairly narrow margin of error there, but she is ahead. And the reason I say that is because if like the last couple of cycles, the polls have underestimated the Republicans. If they underestimated the Republicans by the same amount that they have the last couple of cycles, you end up Trump with a very narrow victory. Like even though the polls show Harris slightly ahead. Now, if this time the polls are underestimating the Democrat, it goes the other way. And maybe Maybe this is a Harris landslide. You know, the problem is like, there are so many states that are really close right now. So let, let me read you some of the close states right now.
|
Sam:
[37:01]
| Here, here are all the states that where the current margin is less than two and a half percent.
|
Ivan:
[37:08]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[37:11]
| Virginia Harris's ahead by 2.4%. Michigan, Harris is ahead by 2.1%. Nebraska's second congressional district, I currently have the average at Harris up by 1.8, but there have been very few polls right there, so grain of salt there. Pennsylvania, Harris up by 0.9. Nevada, Harris up by 0.5. Georgia actually has Harris ahead right now, but only by 0.4.
|
Sam:
[37:37]
| Iowa's in this list has Trump up by 0.6, but there have been zero, zero Trump versus Harris polls in Iowa so far. So that's based only on sort of Iowa's average behavior over the last five elections. And it has been moving more red. So I don't actually expect Iowa to be anywhere near that close. It's probably a strong Trump state at this point, but there just haven't been any polls to prove that yet. Arizona, Trump up by 0.6%. North Carolina, Trump up by 1.2%. Maine's second congressional district, Trump up by only 1.4%. Every single thing I just listed is incredibly close and could easily go either way, even if you assume the polls are generally right. Now, if the polls have some sort of systematic error to them, that adds to things. But like, those are just like right on the edge, all of those states, that's like a huge number. And so if you look at, you know, just, and I did two and a half percent, but like my, my best case and worst case in the trust, the polls says any state under 5% could go either way fairly easily. The range you get from that is from Harris by 174 to Trump by 114. Like it's a massive range.
|
Ivan:
[39:05]
| It's ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[39:07]
| You know, because you got a huge number of states with lots and lots of electoral votes, very close. And the polls have been moving. As a general statement about trends, we had massive movement towards Harris after Biden dropped out for the first few weeks to the beginning of August. Then we add a little bit back to Trump and then back to Harris again. And then in the last, I don't know, couple weeks, it moved back towards Trump again and then has started to move back towards Harris again since the convention. But we're still, it's still close. It's still, there's a lot of back and forth as we get new polls in or out.
|
Ivan:
[39:59]
| I think a whole bunch of national polls also that are showing, like.
|
Sam:
[40:05]
| The national polls have, generally speaking, had a slow trend towards Harris, but we're back down a little bit from the peak.
|
Ivan:
[40:16]
| But it's been like a tiny amount. They got to like a three, you know, like on Thursday.
|
Sam:
[40:21]
| The high was 3.9% and it's back down to 3.4.
|
Ivan:
[40:25]
| Exactly. And it's been around that range, basically.
|
Sam:
[40:28]
| Yeah. And so.
|
Ivan:
[40:30]
| Yeah, it's not, it's not like, it's not, you know, no, no, no mailing it in. This is, this is all.
|
Sam:
[40:37]
| No, not at all. Like right now, my odds, I have my two different models that account for the amount of time left for the election, which as we are recording is refresh 66.9 days left. But between like, I'm going to ignore the, if the election was to the light today stuff, stuff. But my model, including the time left, my two models, the range is from Harris having a 53.1% chance to Harris having a 57.2% chance. So she is favored a little bit, but that's not like, we're not talking 95%.
|
Ivan:
[41:14]
| No, no, no, no, no, no.
|
Sam:
[41:16]
| This is not that far away from a coin toss at this point. And that's where we are now. I mean, I think, you know, so it, it frankly, like we ha we haven't yet had a big convention bounce show up, but we still don't have a lot of post-convention polls. We have a few, there were a whole bunch, you know, Yvonne mentioned, he made me a bunch of work, but over the last 48 to 72 hours, there have been so many swing Wing State polls, there have been quite a lot. And so it looks like if we got a convention balance, at least so far, it looks pretty small.
|
Ivan:
[41:59]
| Well, I think one thing is that we all don't.
|
Sam:
[42:02]
| The thing is that things had bounced so far towards Harris already, it's hard to squeeze more juice out of that.
|
Ivan:
[42:09]
| That's what I was thinking.
|
Sam:
[42:11]
| But here's the thing, though, and this gets me back. I have a couple charts on electiongraphs.com that compare to 2016 and 2020. Right now, it looks like, unless something major changes in the next couple days, for the very first time ever, Harris will be doing better than Clinton was doing at the same time before the election.
|
Ivan:
[42:36]
| Wow. Okay.
|
Sam:
[42:37]
| For the very, like, like, again, that we're not quite there yet. We're like a day or two away from like a place in the calendar where Clinton suddenly did much worse for a few days. That's where we're talking, but we're still nowhere near where Biden was in 2020. Like we're still several percent behind, like at the moment, like I'll give you like the stats as of right now, Now, 67 days before the election, right now we have the tipping point, which is the margin in the state that would put the winner over the edge. We have Harris up by 0.9% in the tipping point state, which right now is Pennsylvania. At this exact same time, 67 days before the election, Clinton was up by 3.4% and Biden was up by 4.6%. So we're still a long way behind the pace of either of those two times. And of course, Biden just barely pulled it out and Clinton lost. So... So, as you said, we've got a long way to go. Nobody should be complacent. There are a lot of things that indicate how – we've talked about how Trump seems to be struggling right now in terms of how to respond to Harris and how he's getting less rational and how he's doing things that should hurt him.
|
Ivan:
[44:04]
| But it's not impacting his voters. I mean, they're just whatever.
|
Sam:
[44:07]
| I mean, he's got the core group that is not going to change no matter what. And, you know, a lot of the stuff that we've seen is actually like, I mentioned this last time we were talking polls on the show, but like, for the most part, the changes here have been on the Democratic side, where the Democrats are doing stronger. Everything I talked about on election graphs is all centered around margins. But if you separate it out to look at how the Democrat is doing versus how the Republican is doing, basically what's going on here is the Democrat has been improving, but Trump has been staying flat. The number of people supporting Trump is not moving. Yeah, I mean, a little bit, but like, if you look on the national polls, like 538 national poll graph, and this is especially clear, like if you if you look on mobile, or you, you know, so that you have a narrower thing, it's even more obvious than if you look on desktop. top. But, you know, I'm looking since this only has since Biden dropped out because they have Biden versus Harris. But when on, what was it? July 24th, Trump was at 44% in their average.
|
Sam:
[45:30]
| As of right now, Trump is at 43.7% in their average. He's dropped 0.3% in that timeframe. Meanwhile, Harris has gone from 44.9 to 47.2. So Harris has gotten some movement, but Trump, it's just flat. It's just flat. You know, nobody's coming or going. So this is all about undecideds and maybe a few of those RFK people jumping to Harris. That's what it's about. It's not people are turning away from Trump.
|
Ivan:
[46:07]
| And it's all the one thing that, like we've said, we don't exactly know about turnout, which always is a big driver around all of these things.
|
Sam:
[46:18]
| Well, and you hear anecdotally all these stories about how like, you know, the support for Trump is, you know, you're not seeing as many like Trump parades and you're not seeing as many signs or the trucks with the flags behind them. And they're just less than there were before. But and so maybe that indicates less enthusiasm, but does it mean they won't vote?
|
Ivan:
[46:41]
| No, but I think more like a lot of that we've talked about over the last four years. There's been turnout for special elections and all these other things, et cetera, that we've been surprised. We've been continuously surprised. You know, we were continuously surprised in 2016 and even in 2020 on turnout in the opposite direction. But we have been repeatedly surprised in the opposite direction. It doesn't, you know, to create a massive landslide, you know, in the electoral system, it's not like it takes a lot of points.
|
Sam:
[47:15]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[47:15]
| One to two points that you're underestimating on one candidate at a number of states creates a landslide. It's that simple in the EV college. And so, yeah, it's very tight.
|
Sam:
[47:29]
| I just brought up election betting odds. So this is, this averages odds from Betfair, Smarkets, Predictit, and Polymarket.
|
Ivan:
[47:39]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[47:40]
| And right now, this very second, they have Harris 49.1%, Trump 49.1%.
|
Ivan:
[47:48]
| Jesus.
|
Sam:
[47:49]
| So, and then like other random people that's just dumbass. It's not even the right people. Like, if an asteroid hit and killed both Trump and Harris, the people they have third, fourth, fifth, and sixth on the list are not the people who would be most likely to win.
|
Ivan:
[48:05]
| Which is why those aren't exactly the best places to look at.
|
Sam:
[48:09]
| I mean, they have Haley next at 0.6%, and then Michelle Obama at 0.5%. And then RFK Jr. at 0.2%, and Hillary Clinton at 0.1%.
|
Ivan:
[48:20]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[48:21]
| You know, here's the thing. It is possible that neither Trump or Harris will end up as president. There are scenarios that play out that way. One or both of them could drop dead or have to drop out or whatever. That could happen. But in the scenarios that that happens, we're not going to get Haley, Obama, Kennedy, or Clinton. We're going to get like Walls or Vance, you know? Or even if those two were knocked out too. It's not going to be Haley, Obama, Kennedy, or Clinton. There would be other people who would be more likely anyway.
|
Ivan:
[48:59]
| Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[49:00]
| Of course, I should say this.
|
Ivan:
[49:03]
| Yeah?
|
Sam:
[49:03]
| If both Harris and Trump were, well, you'd have to kill Biden too. I was going to say you could end up with Speaker of the House Johnson or somebody as president if you knocked out people.
|
Ivan:
[49:18]
| Oh, God. Okay. Well, no, but you have Biden.
|
Sam:
[49:21]
| Okay, did you have other politics questions besides polls?
|
Ivan:
[49:27]
| So, I mean, we had these things that happened. You didn't watch the interview.
|
Sam:
[49:34]
| I did not. I've heard clips, basically. I have not watched it.
|
Ivan:
[49:40]
| I mean, it sounded good.
|
Sam:
[49:42]
| The basic summary of the impressions I've heard from people and from the few clips I have heard is that Harrison Walls both essentially knocked it out of the park in terms of handling the interview well. However, the interview itself was just dumb. The questions were dumb and it's like, didn't add any real information. There was a lot of, what do you think about this Republican talking point? A lot of the questions were structured like that now i've seen like i've read some of the chyrons on fox news when i have like the four up display with all the news networks and they're doing a lot of like the interview proved she's unserious you know and you know that she has no weight and no real policy and blah blah blah she has no weight what.
|
Ivan:
[50:35]
| She's weightless what is she in space.
|
Sam:
[50:36]
| Oh yeah probably probably you know Our first president in space. You know, but from the little bits I've heard, she handled the questions that were asked, very well. Trump said that it was boring. Trump said it was boring, which again, that's not necessarily bad. There were policy questions asked where she answered in detail. She knew what the fuck she was talking about and said, well, X, Y, Z, and here's why we did this, and here's what we're going to do next and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[51:16]
| I guess Trump expected him to, I don't know, do the tango or something.
|
Sam:
[51:20]
| Well, and you know what you're used to like in a Trump interview is that he doesn't answer the question at all. Instead, he yells about how the question is stupid. He yells about how it's unfair, how he actually won the 2020 election and people are after him. And like all of this sort of performative stuff without any – Like, and this people have brought up over and over and over again, which is like the ridiculous double standard that is applied here. Like people are nitpicking Harrison walls on like detailed policy questions. And were you exactly right in the way you worded your history about the whatever. And meanwhile, Trump can't say a single sentence without being, without lying about every word. And, and, and, and like, he says things that don't make sense. He says things that have no relation to reality whatsoever. He just in the last couple of days, he's gone back and forth on abortion and IVF.
|
Ivan:
[52:25]
| That was the next thing that I, that I had on my list. Hey, Sam. So, So is Trump, you know, pro-choice? Is he pro-IVF? Is he anti? What is he, Sam?
|
Sam:
[52:39]
| Look, here's the thing. And this applies to absolutely everything Trump-related.
|
Ivan:
[52:45]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:46]
| He doesn't give a shit about the actual policy. He says what he thinks will get him to win. Correct. Like, and this, every single issue. Like, he doesn't care. he doesn't care he doesn't care at all what.
|
Ivan:
[53:01]
| Could i say with.
|
Sam:
[53:02]
| Yeah yeah that's it that's it and so like he sensed that people were upset a little bit about abortion and so he tried to moderate his opinion a bit and guess what his his quote-unquote base got really upset by it so he went back the other direction a few hours later and of course before that he was taking credit it for getting rid of Roe, and he's been trying to push this. Everybody wanted it to just go to the states, and that's what they got, so everybody should be up for it.
|
Ivan:
[53:37]
| Everybody wanted it. Everybody had been collaborating for it to go to the states. I didn't hear about this. That was what all the polls said.
|
Sam:
[53:44]
| Yeah. Yeah. Everybody. And so he's trying to, he's flailing around trying to figure out the fact that like this out of several issues where his stated positions in the past and the Republican party more generally there where they have really unpopular positions, he's trying to triangulate and figure out how to say something that will get more people on board. and it has absolutely nothing to do with his beliefs on the damn issue if he ever says something that actually represents a belief it's an accident and.
|
Ivan:
[54:23]
| Actually he doesn't he doesn't know what he's.
|
Sam:
[54:26]
| Talking about anyway.
|
Ivan:
[54:26]
| No he believe that he should get money now that's one thing yes now that's one thing that.
|
Sam:
[54:33]
| Is one thing that he actually has.
|
Ivan:
[54:35]
| I mean a principled opinion on uh you know like his his very principled opinion on cryptocurrency that which is.
|
Sam:
[54:46]
| He hated it and.
|
Ivan:
[54:48]
| Pulling out a big.
|
Sam:
[54:48]
| Donor that liked it.
|
Ivan:
[54:49]
| And then he liked it and then he likes it and then he was going to be the most crypto pro president ever and then he was going to as usual i mean the thing is i don't understand how these people support him when he does this shit every time i'm going to be announcing you know you were talking about the double standard harris asking a question about policy giving a detail i'm gonna announce the detailed, cryptocurrency that my administration will have because the united states is going to be a crypto what the fuck was it it was like heaven it was like the olympus whatever the fuck it was okay just like the best place for crypto and we're gonna create like some kind of crypto like like, super fund or something or whatever. And then he announces his crypto thing. And basically, he's... getting paid by some guy to brand his own crypto currency that's it yeah nice and then he decided to promote it to everybody on lo and behold on x by you know by by you know by shoving around, this guy who i guess is paying him money for some new cryptocurrency that's so that's the trump, cryptocurrency policy. Buy the branded crypto. I will get money and we will be fine.
|
Sam:
[56:17]
| And yes, and this is not the only issue he's done this on. He's completely reversed the opinion.
|
Ivan:
[56:25]
| I mean, how old would I have during a campaign selling $99 digital trading card? I mean, Which scam is he not running, man?
|
Sam:
[56:36]
| And nothing's changed. I mean, he's been doing this the whole time. It's just like, what's this week's version?
|
Ivan:
[56:42]
| It's just like in the middle of a fucking election campaign. He's like, oh, yeah, let me just announce another scam. So, okay, the other thing that I've got here on the list that everybody seems to have forgotten already.
|
Sam:
[56:58]
| Arlington?
|
Ivan:
[57:00]
| Well, that one's like, whatever. ever know more important superseding indictment sam.
|
Sam:
[57:04]
| Oh yeah we'll talk about that and then and then i'll do arlington for a little bit but yeah we had the superseding indictment the reason it's gone away so quickly in terms of attention is because there were no charges added or anything this was the special counsel for the dc case the january 6th case just refiling refiling the the indictment, essentially taking out all the stuff the Supreme Court said they couldn't use. Great. So they actually, as we are recording, both the special counsel and Trump's lawyers have a few hours left to submit their briefs to Judge Trunkin on, Trunkin, is that how you say it? Anyway, whatever, you know how bad we are at hands. Yes, briefs, not underwear. Oh, okay.
|
Ivan:
[57:58]
| You could. Oh, you mean, okay. No.
|
Sam:
[58:00]
| All the lawyers have to submit their underwear.
|
Ivan:
[58:04]
| That would be one hell of a way of doing this, but no, thank you.
|
Sam:
[58:07]
| No, they have to submit their briefs on how this case should proceed, given the Supreme Court's judgment on presidential immunity. But the superseding indictment is specifically redoing the indictment, taking out everything that is... would be problematic given what the Supreme court said, or in the cases where the Supreme court said there was a presumption, but that could be overcome putting in detailed arguments about why it overcame the presumption and stuff like that. So it's not like new charges. It's just representing the old charges in a way designed to deal with the Supreme court decision.
|
Ivan:
[58:48]
| Right. Okay.
|
Sam:
[58:50]
| Because there was some evidence that they are like, there are some things like where he talked to the Justice Department to try to get them to do bogus investigations that the Supreme Court said was off limits. So that stuff's completely gone. There are some places where there were references to conversations that happened in the Oval Office or tweets that were done from the Oval Office. Those references are gone. They also added stuff to specifically point out that all the co-conspirators were acting in their private capacities when they were talking about Mike Pence. They took out things where there were conversations with Mike Pence about executive office functions, just generally when they were talking about election fraud, for instance. All that stuff's gone. But they left in when Pence was acting as president of the Senate.
|
Sam:
[59:41]
| Because that isn't, you know, the vice president has a dual role. Yes, they're an executive branch, but when they're, when they're acting as president of the Senate, they're actually part of the legislative branch. And so they made it clear, like almost every time Pence was mentioned, they talked about, you know, his role as president of the Senate and anywhere they couldn't say that they took out. So those are the kinds of changes they made. And, you know, Like I said, within the next few hours, it's due by, I think, Friday midnight Eastern time. So getting very close here, they're supposed to submit their plans to the judge on how to move forward. And then sometime next week, we'll hear more about that as well. Because I think the judge is going to have a hearing and then they'll make a decision and then we'll see what's going forward on that. So yeah, that's what's going on with the superseding indictment.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:37]
| Okay. Well, I want to mention something about the Arlington thing. I'm just like, I don't know what I mean. What do you expect from this asshole?
|
Sam:
[1:00:45]
| So here's the thing. And this is an example of like, as well of has Trump lost some of his mojo here? Because the intention here was to beef up his, you know, his whole reputation with the military. And specifically, the thing that he was going to at Arlington was the one-year anniversary. Was it one year? Two years. Whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:13]
| Yeah, I think it's whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:01:14]
| Two years.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:14]
| The anniversary.
|
Sam:
[1:01:16]
| Yeah, the anniversary. However many years it is, we've lost track of the soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan while we were withdrawing. And so he was going with the families of some of those people who were killed to visit their graves, blah, blah, blah. And so the intention was A, highlight Biden's, issue in Afghanistan of all the things in his presidency, that was one of the ones that was the most chaotic. And you can argue why it almost had to be that way, but nevertheless, it was not a good look. Um, and so he wanted to highlight that. And plus he wanted some nice pictures of him supporting veterans and stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:56]
| Yeah. But that's the problem.
|
Sam:
[1:01:57]
| But it completely backfired on him because he went and like, he made a campaign commercial out of this, But the problem is that there are federal laws saying you can't do that at that part of the cemetery.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:14]
| Great. And there's a good reason for that.
|
Sam:
[1:02:17]
| You know, basically you cannot.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:18]
| Not just at that cemetery. At any of the military cemeteries around, you know, that exist.
|
Sam:
[1:02:24]
| Right. Well, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:25]
| National cemeteries.
|
Sam:
[1:02:26]
| National cemeteries. No, but even within the national cemeteries, apparently, like if you want to do that in the part that has Civil War veterans, you can do it. The parts that are restricted are the parts that are from modern wars where the relatives of the dead are still very actively visiting people they knew, right? And so, but yeah, so he went in, him and his team. They were told multiple times that, no, you cannot have, you know, video and photography in this area. like, you know, your own private ones, especially anything related to your campaign. They ignored that. Somebody on their team assaulted the army person who was telling them no. And then, and of course they use all this footage in a commercial anyway, and it has Trump standing next to the grave, grinning and giving a big thumbs up sign. And it's like- I didn't see that.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:26]
| He's reciting Trump. I'm grave grinning with a thumbs up.
|
Sam:
[1:03:32]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:35]
| I cannot stop.
|
Sam:
[1:03:37]
| And so, of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:39]
| Like that part, I didn't know.
|
Sam:
[1:03:41]
| Yes. That is the case. I've seen the pictures I've seen and not, it's not just that the picture exists. They, they're using this in ads.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:52]
| Okay. I'm going to go right beside my, my, my, my, my, my family's grave and just be sitting over there.
|
Sam:
[1:04:01]
| Yes. The big thumbs up, big grin.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:05]
| It's literally a meme. It's literally a meme like this. Like, he's fucking crazy.
|
Sam:
[1:04:14]
| So here's the thing. Like, all sorts of military organizations who already weren't all that hot on him because of the statements he's made about, you know, prisoners of war being idiots. John McCain and others, he made statements while he was president that he didn't want, like, the people, you know, who were in wheelchairs because they lost legs in the war. Don't bring them in here. Don't show them. No one wants to see that. He said things like that. He made a comment just a couple of weeks ago about the Medal of Honor not being as good as the Medal for Civilians because you didn't have to die or be injured to get the other one. And so a lot of military organizations have basically condemned his behavior at the cemetery, all that. Now, there was one fake poll that's been going around showing like Oh God.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:08]
| The fake poll. Which I went and I suspected it had to be fake. And I said to this, I said, is this real? But yeah, somebody went and doctored like a Fox screen To show like 90% And I'm like looking at it and I'll go, bullshit, no way.
|
Sam:
[1:05:23]
| Yeah, it was like I would dream, but no. Trump's ratings being like near zero for everything, like 10%, 5%, whatever, amongst military families.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:34]
| It should be, but But it isn't.
|
Sam:
[1:05:36]
| It isn't. And the military has been getting less Republican over time. But historically, the military has been a very conservative organization.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:48]
| Yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:05:48]
| And so you certainly don't get like, you know, suddenly the military are the most liberal people in the universe and are all 95% for Harris or some bullshit like that. But it is hurting him amongst those groups. Yeah, it's not happening. Yeah, it's not happening. that you are willing to sacrifice your own opportunities or your life because you are serving some higher cause that is completely alien to him. He can't understand that happening. And so, you know, so whenever you get that kind of scenario where someone has died or been injured or hell, even when they're doing something like they're giving up financial opportunities to work in the public sector, let alone like dying or being injured. What do you mean you're teaching for like 30K a year when you could be doing something that made you money?
|
Ivan:
[1:07:13]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:07:14]
| You just can't understand. and i this stuff is seems to be like a lot of people are reacting negatively to it but again we were just talking about polls like these numbers are flat like.
|
Sam:
[1:07:28]
| Most so maybe most of the people who actually care about this kind of stuff already left him a long time ago and the ones that are left are going to be there forever yeah you know so okay that's that's all the stuff are we done with politics yeah okay let's take another break and then i'll bring up a couple non-politics things and then we'll then we'll wrap this sucker up back after this.
|
Sam:
[1:08:47]
| Okay. There we are. For those of you who are just listening on audio, you missed both Yvonne and I sort of dancing and bopping along.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:55]
| Dancing, bopping, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:08:56]
| Yeah, yeah. Okay. I got three things that aren't directly related but are sort of whatever. Just three things that we can talk about quickly. So I want to start, though, with something that hit the news a few hours before we were recording. Brazil has banned Axe. What the fuck's going on, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:18]
| Well, as far as I can tell, for a long time, the thing is, the way that I understand, and don't get me, don't, even though I have to deal.
|
Sam:
[1:09:30]
| Don't quote you.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:31]
| Well, no, I'm not an expert in the Brazilian legal system, even though I've had to deal with it.
|
Sam:
[1:09:36]
| No, really? Yeah, you're not an expert. I thought you were a Brazilian lawyer all this time. I have been under the misunderstanding.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:44]
| And I am standing a lot more familiar with, like, say, how federal courts work, state courts. And I know how you could appeal U.S. federal and state courts. I understand why you could bring a state action or why you could bring a federal action for certain cases. But normally would be because the difference is, you know, I know some of that from Brazil. I know a little. OK. But one thing that I that I remember is that the judges, when they're assigned, they're like prosecutors themselves. Okay. And so when they have been doing this investigation into X, the thing is that they have been demanding many things from X to produce them. And Elon thinking that every nation has the same rules and laws, they've been ignoring them. them.
|
Sam:
[1:10:39]
| Well also they as well as asking for documents and other evidence and stuff they're also.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:43]
| Asking him to remove some posts right correct and they were also asking him to send subcontinent actions of according to local law and one of the things that i always said is and i still don't understand how x has not gotten into more trouble regarding this across the world especially in europe okay where i know that it there are certain things related to this is that if they don't have that That ability, at some point, this is going to catch up with them legally mid-time, because they basically got rid of most of the people that do this. And so they have not been complying with orders. They've not been responding to subpoenas. They've not been responding to everything. And from what it seems is that he's acting like everywhere, where he thinks that he can just ignore the law ad infinitum. and they finally got fed up and they said you know what listen if you're going to be in complete content fuck you you know we're it's a temporary order as far as i understand it's not a permanent ban but look brazilian courts have been this is a fuck around and find out thing because just to be clear they've said they've.
|
Sam:
[1:11:53]
| Said they've said x can't operate there.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:55]
| Yes they've.
|
Sam:
[1:11:56]
| Also said that anybody using a vpn to get access to x anyway has.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:01]
| Significant fines.
|
Sam:
[1:12:02]
| Like close to ten thousand dollars for trying.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:05]
| To do that um i i think.
|
Sam:
[1:12:08]
| I think i saw somewhere else that they're also telling app stores to pull some of the vpn software as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:15]
| Right so.
|
Sam:
[1:12:16]
| This is a fairly extensive order to.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:20]
| Well this is and listen the one thing is that this is a fuck around and find out moment. A few years ago, Facebook had been brought to court over failure to comply over certain things. I can't remember exactly related to what. Bottom line is that they kept doing the same shit. They had taken the Facebook Brazil president and jailed him.
|
Sam:
[1:12:44]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:45]
| I vaguely remember that. Yeah. And then I know another time, The Cisco Brazil president was also thrown in jail, in large part, by the way, because it was found out that he was in cahoots over a scam to evade import duties.
|
Sam:
[1:13:02]
| Oh, beautiful. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:04]
| Yeah. So that, yeah, so that, that was the thing. So, and look, even my previous employer, Kodak, and I can talk about this because this is in public filings, or if you look at the SEC filings for my old employer, Kodak, it's there. We had a whole bunch of assets frozen. That were still frozen when I left because there was a $100 million tax judgment against Kodak Brazil. And the bulk of the assets that the company owned there were under, you know, were frozen until this got resolved. involved so brazilian courts don't fuck around okay they will you know it's not something you know their court system is strong they're not like they you know i will say that when they're talking about when they go about enforcing shit they don't fuck around and so where he thinks that in the u.s he can like vote the motion make us a peanut push off whatever pa pa pa pa man Man, they get really hard with big companies that don't comply. And you really, really, really just try to just ask the same.
|
Sam:
[1:14:19]
| And to be clear, this isn't like X going through the legal process and in the end losing. It's them refusing to participate in the process. Correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:32]
| And having multiple and multiple opportunities to comply where they refused.
|
Sam:
[1:14:38]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:39]
| So, you know, well, I mean, it's a big market.
|
Sam:
[1:14:46]
| Yes. And so one of the things I heard, I haven't had a lot of confirmation on this, but I saw a couple of people post on Mastodon that apparently a whole bunch of Brazilians in response to this are signing up for Blue Sky. Enough so that they crashed Blue Sky.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:02]
| Well, listen, think about this. Brazil has 200 million people. They have super high internet penetration. mobile phone penetration all this shit this isn't like you know taking it away from some country that you know some tiny country where nobody has cell phones so yeah i mean i'm i'm expecting the figures from a whole bunch of tech companies are gonna be like whoa we just got a whole bunch of people signed up for shit in a hurry and.
|
Sam:
[1:15:28]
| And anybody who doesn't already have a brazilian presence is going to be like, oh, let's get that taken care of right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:37]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:15:38]
| You know? Yeah, okay. Along those same lines, the CEO of Telegram got arrested in France.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:49]
| I, you know what? I read a little bit about what the hell was going on, but I didn't look at the details too much. It seems that it was, like, also related to not complying with some requests for investigations and stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:16:02]
| There was some of that and then also, well, and I've heard mixed things about this. So on the one hand, At a high level, it's, hey, Telegram has become a cesspool for illegal activities.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:17]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:16:17]
| Everything from child porn to coordinating arm sales, all this kind of stuff. But it's not, like people think of, there's a component of it that's like a WhatsApp or whatever, where it's like person-to-person communication. And that does exist. and it and by the way people assume it's like end-to-end encrypted by default it's not okay do that to do that person to person with end-to-end encryption you actually have to take some extra steps to do it but telegram also has like lots of channels really large channels that are open chat rooms right a lot of this illegal activity was happening there and so basically similar to what Elon's getting in trouble for in Brazil, which, by the way, we didn't mention, they've also sanctioned SpaceX as well as X, just because they're related somehow. Anyway, specifically Starlink.
|
Sam:
[1:17:20]
| But with these Telegram channels, a lot of this illegal activity was happening in these public channels. It wasn't even in the secret places. And they were refusing to censor those locations out of a, you know, free speech mindset or whatever. Look, I sympathize to some degree with not wanting to put a heavy hand on censorship. But on the other hand, when your open chat room that anybody can join is facilitating illegal activities right there.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:01]
| Look at some point somebody's going.
|
Sam:
[1:18:03]
| To do something about that.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:04]
| All the major telecommunication carriers whatever the hell you want have areas dedicated to basically law enforcement requests and a process and how to deal with them and how to comply with the law okay when the requests come in the problem always comes in it's the same promise as X is having in Brazil is that if you start getting those requests and you basically decided that you want to operate like a rogue state, well, at some point, they're going to come down on you. They're going to come down on you hard. Plain and simple. You have to have a process. You have to be able to respond. You have to be able to comply or say why you're not going to comply and the reasoning, period. End the story.
|
Sam:
[1:18:49]
| Or if you really and truly are like, we can't operate under those rules, then you don't operate in that country.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:55]
| But you can't operate in that country, period.
|
Sam:
[1:18:58]
| And look, lots of companies have made significant compromises in order to operate in China, for instance, or many other countries that have severe rules. They agree to things they would never agree to in the U.S. because it's the only way to be in that market. And you can judge them for that decision to make that compromise. compromise but if you go into a country and then say yeah but i'm not going to follow their rules, I'm going to blatantly operate illegally.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:32]
| And I understand that maybe you don't agree with the rule, but unfortunately, that's the rule there. And you're going to suffer the consequences. You know, simple as that. I mean.
|
Sam:
[1:19:44]
| Yeah. So and now the one thing that I heard was part and I don't have the details. I have not dug into this and a bad host for not doing so. Bringing up a topic I haven't researched fully. Oops. Oops, not like we ever get a lot of gear, you know, like we always only.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:01]
| Oh, no, we're we are the experts on everything.
|
Sam:
[1:20:04]
| On everything. Like we would never make a mistake thing. We never pull shit out of our asses to talk. No, never, never, never. Anyway, apparently there are one part of this potentially is about asking for encryption keys and other stuff that might compromise privacy for people using Telegram. And there's some questions about what Telegram has, what Telegram doesn't have, what level of encryption they have, and when do they apply it, and stuff like that, that may have implications of France doing some things that have other negative consequences as well. But in the end, like, like you, like you said, it boils down to, if you don't like the laws in a country, then maybe don't do business in that country. But if you are going to do business in that country, you're kind of forced to follow their laws.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:00]
| Yeah, basically.
|
Sam:
[1:21:00]
| It's part of the deal. And whether you like them or not, you can lobby to change the laws. You can say it should be something else and work in whatever way that country has to change laws. But if you are blatantly going to do something against the laws of the country after multiple warnings that apparently happened in this case, as in Brazil, then in the end, the country is going to do something. And in this case, unlike Brazil shut down X, France did not shut... Yeah, basically. Shut down Telegram. They arrested the CEO instead.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:33]
| I mean, Elon actually said the other day when he saw about this whole thing that maybe he's going to have to curtail some travel because he's afraid of legal repercussions.
|
Sam:
[1:21:46]
| I'm sorry. Like, you know, I would not shed tears over Elon getting arrested somewhere.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:54]
| No, not really, no.
|
Sam:
[1:21:56]
| Yeah. Go ahead and make that trip to Brazil, Elon. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:00]
| Yeah, I'm sure that'll go fine. I actually had a boss deported from Brazil. I had a boss that arrived that did not have the proper papers, a VP at HP, and he basically was not allowed to enter and was summarily deported.
|
Sam:
[1:22:17]
| Beautiful. That's what you want to see happen.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:20]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:22:23]
| Okay, one more.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:24]
| One more, one more.
|
Sam:
[1:22:26]
| One more.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:27]
| One more, one more, one more thing. The stranded astronauts. Well, they're going to be stranded longer, and they're sending the ship back.
|
Sam:
[1:22:39]
| NASA officially made the decision. We talked about how this might be possible, but it's now official. They are not going to let the astronauts go back to Earth on the Boeing capsule because they don't think it's safe. At least they don't feel it's safe.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:54]
| Here's the one thing. Now, I will say this. I don't think, actually, I don't think that it's because they don't think it's safe. I actually don't think that. I think that in the, if this was, if they hadn't lost two.
|
Sam:
[1:23:08]
| If they hadn't lost two space shuttles, they'd be sending them down on that.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:12]
| Exactly. If they hadn't lost two space shuttles and Boeing isn't being raped over the cold through all the fuck ups they have done the last decade on quality and, you know, design and shit or whatever, they might be coming back on that ship. But the brand new Boeing CEO that came in, but I was reading this, the brand new Boeing CEO that came in, got on the phone with Bill Nelson. They looked at their wrist.
|
Sam:
[1:23:38]
| From NASA.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:39]
| From NASA. And this guy basically is like, you know what? The first act that I'm going to do as CEO is not bring down, not go kill two astronauts. Screw this. Send the capsule back and bring it back somewhere else. Okay? Even if the chance was less than 1%.
|
Sam:
[1:23:56]
| Well, I mean, and this is the fundamental thing. Like the NASA folks explicitly said, look, we have learned over the course of mistakes we have made in the past with Challenger and Columbia that basically there were, in those two occasions, there were engineers who raised red flags and they were ignored.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:17]
| Ignored.
|
Sam:
[1:24:18]
| And then people died.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:20]
| And here's the thing. You have a solution. Okay? You have a choice. You don't have to bear the risk. It may not look good, but you don't have to take the risk. You've got another way of bringing them back.
|
Sam:
[1:24:35]
| Right. Now, they have to wait until, like, February or something. They were supposed to be there eight days. They're going to be there eight months. But, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:44]
| I mean, shit. I mean, I'm sure they're astronauts. I'm sure that from, you know, unexpectedly long stay at the ISS, but also at the same time as being astronauts, it's like, well, shit.
|
Sam:
[1:24:57]
| I get to stay at the ISS? for.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:59]
| Eight months and.
|
Sam:
[1:25:00]
| They will find useful things to do they will get to like participate and like yes i mean i'm sure they didn't plan to spend this time away from their families etc blah blah blah but you know better than getting in the capsule and burning up and re-entry i hope they filed taxes and.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:19]
| Shit they didn't have an extension due.
|
Sam:
[1:25:21]
| Well so someone i was interacting with on mastodon asked about whether they could vote. And so here's what I could find so far.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:29]
| Shit.
|
Sam:
[1:25:30]
| There are mechanisms in place for astronauts to vote from the ISS.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:35]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:25:36]
| However, the standard procedure for that is you have to sign up for it before you leave.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:43]
| Well, fuck. What? And we got to strand these guys in space.
|
Sam:
[1:25:49]
| So I was like, I'm sure they'll figure out some way around it. But apparently like there's some federal form that you're supposed to fill in and, and like most astronauts are based out of Texas. So Texas, like a couple of decades ago, passed a specific set of laws for how astronauts should vote. And they, they built specific mechanisms for how the ballots get transmitted to the space station securely and how the results get transmitted back securely and all of this kind of stuff. but they have to fill out some fucking form before they leave. And apparently I don't, I haven't confirmed whether these two astronauts are based in Texas. Like most are, if they're not based in Texas, it depends on your local laws, wherever you are based. But, but I'm sure they'll work out something for them. They'll figure probably, but, but yeah, so, so Boeing's really happy about all this. And, but yeah, like, look, You're right. I mean, NASA, this is, if NASA had picked anything else, like, it's no way i mean maybe they get lucky and everybody i mean get lucky there's probably a 95 chance everything would actually be what i read is even higher than that it was like probably closer.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:06]
| It was higher than that but.
|
Sam:
[1:27:08]
| It's probably yeah 99 yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:10]
| It was probably 99 but you know they were like man no no let's not you know no.
|
Sam:
[1:27:15]
| Yeah why take the chance if you don't have to exactly You know, and so, but, you know, didn't I hear there's yet another like Boeing quality issue about like the 777s or something? I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:31]
| Well, no, okay, not a quality issue. What they discovered was normal during, you know, flight testing in the 777X. that they'd, you know, unfortunately this is something that is, the kind of things they discovered during testing was that certain certain, I don't remember what the name of the part is. The support structure laid to the engine towards the wing, and I'm not sure if it's the pylon or something, but they discovered that they all had been fracturing. And so they're not sure if it's a fabrication defect, a design defect, or so forth. But they discovered that, and so obviously they're trying to get the 777X certified to begin deliveries soon. And the plan has right now been delayed already four plus years. And so this is a big setback for them that they discovered this on the 777X. But yeah, I mean, it was something that they discovered during...
|
Sam:
[1:28:33]
| Well, it's better discovering it during testing than after.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:38]
| It was not during production. It was whatever. This is the flight search and testing and they were going through the parts.
|
Sam:
[1:28:43]
| But the point is, Boeing has been having a tough time recently.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:47]
| A very tough time.
|
Sam:
[1:28:49]
| Very tough time. I mean, they got a new CEO.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:53]
| Like you said.
|
Sam:
[1:28:53]
| They'll turn it all around.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:55]
| Here is what I will say. I was looking at going through my re-watching all the seasons of Air Disaster, starting with season one and going through like season 14 right now. Let me tell you something. Airbus had a really bad streak for a while L2 of this ship. It had a really bad streak of stuff. And so one of the things that I could see that was the most pervasive was and Boeing had been later to implementing a, More computerized, you know, less direct control of flights, whereas Airbus use a side stick to transmit a computer commands.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:41]
| The side sticks in the new Airbus aircraft aren't connected one to the other. So you can have like inputs that are differing inputs and the damn airplane will average them out, which I find is idiotic. Makes no sense. Once, you know, on a Boeing aircraft, you know, you both are pushing, you know that if you're both pushing forward or back and the other pilot knows that. And Boeing has been later to add like computerized things to do certain things, like what happened with the 737 MAX. but man i saw so many accidents lately on airbus where they had added those features over the last eight years and it caused a crash on a320s a330s the a300 i mean there was one specific i was just reading about the a390s it's one of the first ones fly by wire that it was like the pilots hit the take off and go around button and they said it where the fucking pilot couldn't overwrite it and so the pilots are pushing forward the goddamn stick on the plane on landing the plane's nose will not fucking go down and they just stalled right near the fucking runway and by the way oh yeah there's a software update that didn't put in and i'm like oh for god's sakes you know so boeing had really not done a lot of that kind of stuff that their airplanes Lange's Insult recently.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:09]
| And so I think that they're now, I mean, they've had this issue with.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:15]
| With that, but also the other problems have been fabric, you know, manufacturing problems. And that is an issue which is more specific to Boeing because they decided over the last decade plus to change the way they made their planes. And it's really caused them a lot of problems because they've decided to contract substantial pieces to a whole bunch of other manufacturers. And so their entire control of their supply chain is not the same way it was as before. and and that's well hell they they had to one of the companies they spun off for this they had to buy it back so.
|
Sam:
[1:31:54]
| Right anyway so okay so basically i think we.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:00]
| Need to i need to.
|
Sam:
[1:32:00]
| I think we're done you need you need to go to sleep you need to catch your plane in the morning need to continue your recovery okay i i will mention one one quick thing on polls one quick Just on how fast they're coming in. Since we have been recording the show, not only since we've been recording the show, since we talked about polls earlier in the show, there have been two new polls, one in Texas and one in Minnesota, that have been released.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:28]
| Minnesota matters, Texas, I mean, or less surprising, the data in Texas.
|
Sam:
[1:32:34]
| Yeah, well, no, it's not surprising. It's as Trump ahead by eight. So neither one of these are surprising. They're both in line with roughly where the states are already. So it's not going to change anything big, but there are two new polls just in the last couple hours since we've been talking that, you know, I'll probably put in after we're done, but yeah, because the polls are happening hot and heavy. It's going to get more and more as we get closer, but like, it's getting to the point where, you know, it's a substantial time commitment for me now each week to put in these things. And of course, like, you know, I'm occasionally asked, you know, you could just like build something that ties into FiveThirtyEight's API and just pulls all their polls automatically. And I do not do that. I manually enter polls because I make slightly different decisions than FiveThirtyEight. I use them as my main source, and then I also check with the Hill decision desk poll information because sometimes decision desk has something that FiveThirtyEight rejects for whatever reason. So I look at different places and I determine differently which versions of the polls to include, blah, blah, blah. So I do it manually, but it ends up taking a lot of time. Anyway, we're done. You can all go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
|
Sam:
[1:33:55]
| It now has the link to our YouTube. is now on the website. So if you want to see the YouTube versions of this, someone subscribed last week.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:05]
| Whoa! There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:34:07]
| We now have two subscribers to the YouTube channel. Me and somebody else. What was their... It's probably a bot. They had a name. It actually came up with a name. I forget how to get to it now, so oh well. But yeah, we're not going to look now. Anyway, there was a person... Anyway, you can get there. You can watch it. Nobody's been watching live today. Oh, well, you missed out. You could see how sick Yvonne looks.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:39]
| God, Jesus. I look awful. Yvonne does not look great. I look a disaster. I look a fucking disaster.
|
Sam:
[1:34:49]
| Anyway, we'll let Yvonne go. On the website, you can also find all the ways to contact us. You can find the archive of our shows, transcripts for recent shows, all of that kind of fun stuff. and of course a link to our patreon where you can give us cash money and various levels on the patreon we will mention you on the show we will ring a bell we will send you a postcard we will send you i was gonna say a book we don't send people books we could send people books i don't know what book we'd send you but we could no but our mug you know i mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:21]
| I don't know a.
|
Sam:
[1:35:22]
| Book of transcripts of the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:25]
| There's the whole script. Wow. Jesus. Yes. There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:35:32]
| We will self-publish all the transcripts since I started including transcripts and self-publish it into a book. We can get both Yvonne and I to sign it and send it to you. There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:45]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:35:46]
| I'll be cheap. If you want that instead of a mug, just let us know. We'll take care of it.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:53]
| Oh, God. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Okay. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:35:59]
| I'm sure that will be extremely valuable as a collector's item. Anyway, at $2 a month or more. Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:07]
| No, no, no, go, go, go, go, go.
|
Sam:
[1:36:09]
| At $2 a month or more, or if you just contact us in any of the ways on the website and ask, we will invite you to the Commerciants Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are chatting and sharing links throughout the week. So Yvonne, anything to highlight from the Slack?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:27]
| Bank employees found dead in her cubicle four days after last clocking in. A Wells Fargo employee in Arizona was discovered dead in her cubicle last week, four days after she was last seen clocking into the office. Security at the Wells Fargo branch located in the 1100 block of West Washington Street contacted the Plembe Police Department after 60-year-old Denise Prudhomme was found dead in her cubicle Tuesday, August 20th. Prudhomme had last scanned into work Friday, August 16th at around 7 a.m. and never checked out. Police reported that Prudhomme was found on the third floor of the building in a cubicle that was not in a main hallway. There's no immediate sign of foul play. An anonymous employee told KPNX that co-workers had noticed a foul odor, but assumed it was related to a plumbing issue. Prudhomme's body was eventually discovered by another employee passing by. So how's all that employee interaction at the office, huh, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:37:18]
| Yeah, that's what I said. Now, of course, like, I made a stupid joke about this in terms of like, Like, you know, forcing people back into the office for all the interactions, but yet somebody died and was not found for four days.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:30]
| They've been found for four days!
|
Sam:
[1:37:31]
| But at the same, I mean, this is an awful story.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:35]
| It's an awful story! I mean, I'm really tired of it for a second, but also, no, but it's a good point. I'm like, fuck. I mean, these people didn't notice that their co-worker is dead for four fucking days! I mean, what the hell? Wasn't there a cleaning crew there that night?
|
Sam:
[1:37:50]
| Apparently not.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:52]
| There had to be around them.
|
Sam:
[1:37:55]
| I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:57]
| Well, it's really look really, they look really focused.
|
Sam:
[1:38:01]
| Well, it sounds like they weren't on a main hallway or something. They were off in a corner and they just didn't go. Maybe they even saw like the person there and we're like, Oh, we don't, we don't want to disturb them.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:12]
| I will say this. And you talk about what I want to say. Have you been, you would element about this is poor lady. I guess you have anybody that Mr.
|
Sam:
[1:38:19]
| I don't know. Like maybe, Maybe, I imagine if there was a family, maybe they were, they didn't know, like they called and it would take a few days to do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:29]
| Sam, well, what do you mean a few days? If you didn't come back from the office.
|
Sam:
[1:38:34]
| Okay. Yeah, I think my wife would notice within a couple hours. Where's Sam? Shouldn't he be home by now? Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:42]
| Where the fuck are you? but.
|
Sam:
[1:38:44]
| Like if I lived alone it might take a while before.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:48]
| Like my mom or my sister or something but that was my point the pressing aspect of that that I was saying is that they didn't have anybody that even noticed she was, That's right, though. Yeah. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:39:05]
| Okay. Well, on that cheery note. Yay. Yes. I feel sorry for her and her family, and probably her co-workers are feeling a little guilty, too, at this point.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:18]
| Oh, God. They better be fuckers.
|
Sam:
[1:39:21]
| Yeah. Anyway, thanks, everybody, for joining us for yet another Curmudgeon's Corner. And hopefully we will be back next week, and Yvonne will be feeling a lot better.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:32]
| Speaking of next week oh god i'm gonna be in vegas okay oh for god's sake well i don't know what the hell we're gonna do but okay we'll.
|
Sam:
[1:39:42]
| We'll figure that out so maybe we'll have yvonne maybe we won't ah who the hell knows but yeah and don't don't do what i did and gamble the entire 75 cents you have to your name and.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:55]
| The good news is i'm going on the company dime so therefore i'm not the company is giving me an award for how much i sold last year and part of it is a trip to vegas for for the don't don't gamble your award well i can't gamble my award part of it was in you know the the you know the the type that the companies give like the earned technology so i it's not invested yet ah.
|
Sam:
[1:40:22]
| Right okay well do you get it like a little plaque or something, at least?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:27]
| I probably will, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:40:29]
| Well, don't gamble that. Don't gamble the plaque.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:32]
| I'll go to the... I'm staying at the win on course. It's expensive wood's there. I'm going to go to the table. I'm going to put the plaque down. Okay. All of it on eight.
|
Sam:
[1:40:44]
| But if you win, you get more plaques.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:47]
| I get more plaques, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:40:49]
| There you go. Okay, we're done. We are so done. Bye, everyone. one. We'll talk to you next week, or at least I will. We'll see. I don't know. Whatever. Something. Bye. Later.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:00]
| Bye. Bye-bye.
|
Sam:
[1:41:31]
| Thank you. Okay, Yvonne, sleep, feel better, get home. I'm hitting stop.
| |
|
