Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Okay, I guess we're going. Let's do this. Transcription by CastingWords Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, November 30th, 2024. I am Sam Minter. We, we, we, we, we, we do not have Yvonne Bowe here today. Yvonne had a family medical thing happen. He has posted on Facebook, so I guess I can say at least that his wife burst her Achilles' hand. Like, can I even talk?
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Sam:
[1:02]
| It was an, it was an Achilles tendon. No, I can't talk. No, I can't talk at all. This is it. I might as well just hang it up. Forget it. His wife had an Achilles tendon injury that he has been helping attend to. And yeah, so she's, she's out of commission for a little bit and he's helping out with everything required for that. I did send out one of my little notes asking for co-hosts to, as usual, all the people on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, people who have co-hosted before.
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Sam:
[1:40]
| This is going to be a tough podcast. All of the people who have co-hosted before and people who have said they might be interested, minus the last three guest co-hosts, including myself. So right now, that meant I excluded Pete and Ed, and I excluded myself, but nobody else answered, so here I am. All by my lonesome, as usual, when I do these completely solo, I'm going to split this over multiple sessions. As I'm recording this, it is, did I say it's, it's just after 2030 UTC on Saturday, November 30th. And I'm going to record this first segment and then I'm going to take a break and I'm going to record more tomorrow. And then I'll wrap it up eventually. I don't know. Oh, you know, when I do it solo, it's, it's just easier that way. Like I don't have to, I don't, I don't know. I do a little bit, I do a burst and then I'm like, okay, I'm done for now. I'll take a break. Anyway, as usual, we'll do a butt first, which is less newsy stuff. And then the other segments I'll do in a more newsy way, more newsy topics, stuff like that. But my non-newsy thing today is a little bit of a complaint.
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Sam:
[3:02]
| And this is a complaint against an e-commerce vendor who shall remain unnamed, although you can probably guess. I mentioned on the show last week, I think, I don't know, like I was replacing my microphone. And the reason was I've had this Blue Yeti microphone for years and years and years. And you know at the time i got it it was like hey this is one of your best sort of amateur grade, usb mic like i i didn't want to deal with like the the connectors and stuff for the whatever you call them the big connectors with the three things and the blah blah blah you know the ones real pros use i'm like usbc yeah usb is fine and i just wanted to hook up to my computer easily and blah, blah, blah. And, and blue was considered one of the better, the blue Yeti. I, before that I had the blue snowball and anyway, but it years had gone by. And one of the things I like about the blue that.
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Sam:
[4:02]
| Yvonne does not use, he can't stand it, is I use a wired connection to plug my headphones back in so I can hear myself as I record live. So like I can get a sense of, am I too loud? Am I too soft? Is there a buzzing? Am I at the right distance from the microphone? Which by the way, I am borrowing my wife's right now. And so I don't have it like where I usually do. So I'm further from the mic than I usually would be like over here is probably where I really should be for the microphone for this microphone.
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Sam:
[4:40]
| And you can hear like, there's a lot less echo around me, or maybe there's more, I don't know a great way to say it. I, my voice is fuller when I'm speaking this closely to the microphone. And it sounds a little bit more like you would hear on like an actual radio show. I don't know if you can, can you guys tell the difference anyway? And this is me just speaking like further away from the mic. Cause I I'm using a desk stand cause this is my wife's mic that I'm borrowing and it's easier. Like when I have it on my little stand, I can put the microphone close. You guys don't care. Anyway, the point was the microphone was in general working fine, blah, blah, blah. But the little thing where you hook in the headphones, the wired headphones, the port had gotten loose to the point where it wasn't working anymore.
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Sam:
[5:34]
| Like it had for a long time been, you had to like.
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Sam:
[5:37]
| Put it in just right. You had to jiggle it a little bit to get a connection, whatever. And I dealt with that for a long time, but it just gave up the ghost and stopped working entirely. So a few weeks ago, I had a show where somebody, and by somebody, I generally mean my son, Alex, had messed with the gain on the microphone and turned it up. And I didn't notice before recording because I couldn't hear myself because this thing was broken. And I'm like, ah, screw it. I'll get a new microphone. The point of this talk is not microphones. The point of this is I ordered a replacement microphone and it's, it's like, I went with the same brand. I went with blue again, but their newer model, like instead of the blue Yeti, the blue X or whatever. Anyway, I ordered it from this large e-commerce site who shall not be named. And I didn't really pay much attention. I was just like, okay, I'm getting it. I click the button, click the button, click the button, done.
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Sam:
[6:32]
| So yesterday I went ahead to like set up this new microphone. First thing I noticed when I take it out of the shipping box was the interior box, you know, the actual product box was a little beat up. I'm like, okay, whatever. That sucks, but it's just a box. I don't really give a crap about the box. Like somebody obviously didn't treat this well. But then when I started opening it up, I'm like, wait a second. I started seeing, first of all, the little flap, you know, they seal these things with the little plastic circle things that, you know, seal the box. That was a little looser than I would normally expect. And I'm like, okay.
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Sam:
[7:23]
| And I'd also, the same day I'd gotten some, some speakers. They also had loose little flaps, but like I opened that up and everything went fine, blah, blah, blah. But I noticed this on the, the microphone. Then when I actually started taking the microphone out, I'm.
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Sam:
[7:43]
| I noticed scuffs. I'm like, wait a second. This looks like, you know, this is a little thing. There's one place where it looked like a sticker had been removed and it was the little schmutzis from the sticker still there. And another place, it looked like it had been nicked or something. And then I found like there was a place with a large gouge. And I'm like, what the hell? well and then there and then i i actually took it all out i plugged it in and then there's a place in the new one they've got like some some little lights so that unlike the old one there's like there's like a volume meter so when you talk there's a little visual indicator of how loud you are so you can tell right away are you being too loud are you being too soft speaking of which i talk up here again really close to the mic do you guys like that do i sound is is it like some ASMR stuff? Should I be like, and then I went to the store and the store was very nice. And in the store, I went and saw the rabbits and the rabbits were very nice too. Okay. I won't do that.
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Sam:
[8:58]
| Anyway. And I just knocked the mic and hit him. Anyway, this, this thing was clearly used. This thing had clearly been used, hit, beat up, stuffed back in the box, and returned and sold again as new Now to be clear, at the e-commerce site I got this from, you do have opportunity to potentially buy used versions of things at a discount I did not do that I absolutely did not do that I ordered a new one This thing was clearly... Returned and resold. Now, and I understand lots of places do that. Like they, they, it's theoretically, they inspect returns, they see if they're fine. And if they're fine, they potentially stick them back in the box and sell them again when something has been returned. But at least theoretically, they should pass some sort of really good inspection, right? And even then, Frankly, I think at that point you should be selling it as a discount, as nearly new or something like that. But this one had clearly been damaged.
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Sam:
[10:18]
| Now, I didn't actually try to record anything with it, but I did get it set up. I did plug it in before I decided this is too much. Because I kept debating. I am not one. I do not. My, my just, I'm not built for returning things, you know, it's just so much goddamn hassle. I mean, and, and, and like, I, I just hate the process and like, I physically am bad at the process. Like I, cause you, you have to like pack it back up. You have to take it somewhere either, either to ship it or to a return center or something. And it's just a hassle. And I don't like going through the hassle. And to be honest, I also have that autistic tendency of like giving personality to inanimate objects and being like, but would it feel neglected? Would it feel sad if I sent it back?
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Sam:
[11:20]
| You know, like if I was this microphone, on. And here is my opportunity to like be used and loved and blah, blah, blah. And yes, I've got a little scuff. My previous owner abused me, but please love me. Of course, I said something like that out loud. And so Alex, my son, starts having some of those thoughts as well. But I convinced myself, like after I found, like I was about ready to just say, okay, screw it. A couple of cosmetic scuffs. It doesn't really matter. I'll use the stupid thing. But then one of the lights that I mentioned, like that was messed up too. So the light looked wrong because like, you know how these things work. There's the light and then they sort of, some of it is painted over in black. So the light would be bigger, except they paint it just right. So that only the part that's supposed to show shows, but like that paint had been scraped off. So instead of the light being, you know, a really careful pattern that shows you how, how loud you are or whatever, there was just a blob of light. And I'm like, no, that would bother me every freaking time I looked at it. Cause like one of the other scuffs was like on the back. I wouldn't see it all the time. I'm like, eh, whatever I can live with that. So I actually started the process of doing a return. I went to the webpage.
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Sam:
[12:47]
| I typed in the reasons I filled, you know, picked the right thing. And I was like, you know, whatever, I'm going to do the damn return and I'm going to order a new microphone. Oh, I will add, by the way, the e-commerce site that I bought this from.
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Sam:
[13:05]
| Has all kinds of third-party vendors that sell through them as well. And honestly, I had not been paying attention. I thought I had bought this directly from the e-commerce vendor, not through one of their third parties. But then as I'm going through to the return process, I look carefully at the invoice and no, no, no, no, no. This had been through one of their third parties. And it was through some third party that was like something, something deal something something and i'm like this is why it was something something deal something honestly i hadn't even i mean i'd looked at the price but i hadn't done any price comparison i was just sort of like okay this is a reasonable price for the product i'm getting i i didn't like you know compare to the undiscounted retail price i didn't look at other places i didn't So like, you know, and it's, it's so easy. Like they, they intentionally make it so that you have to be paying attention to know if you're buying from a third party or directly.
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Sam:
[14:17]
| And yeah, so it was like some third party. I'm like, okay, this is what happened. It was sold through a third party that is specifically, their whole business might be reselling return crap. I don't know. Or maybe they do sell the new stuff, but then they have a very loose policy about like, hey, just shove it back in and sell it again. No inspections, no nothing, no whatever, blah, blah, blah.
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Sam:
[14:43]
| And then deal with the returns when they happen. At this point I was pissed. I was doing the return. I was ready to do the return. I was all, all about like, I still, I still didn't want to do a return. Like my, again, my natural inclination is that I would be like lesson learned, pay more freaking attention next time and make sure, you know, you're, you're buying from, you know, what you think you're buying from and double check everything. Like, and I double checked, like, did I accidentally buy a new, a used one? No, I did not accidentally buy a used one. It was, it was supposed to be new. Anyway, around this time, my son starts negotiating with me because he has decided he does not want me to return this thing. And I'm like, are you willing to pay for it? And we negotiated. He, He ended up paying me 60% of my purchase price in order for him to keep the damaged microphone. Now, I know him. He is never going to use that damaged microphone. We packed it all back up in the box because I was ready to return it. I packed it all back in the box.
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Sam:
[16:10]
| I told him that he either had to take it to his room where i wouldn't see it or actually hook it up to his computer and use it that would be acceptable too otherwise i would consider that he changed his mind and i would go ahead and return this thing i think do you take it i'm looking around right now i think he did i think he did eventually take take it to his room either that or he hid it somewhere in my office where I cannot currently see it.
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Sam:
[16:46]
| Anyway, I immediately ordered a new one. And this time I made very careful sure. Like I wanted one directly from the e-commerce retailer that I was intending to purchase from, not through one of their third parties. And it was like 20 bucks more. But I'm like, you know, my intention here, yes, like, you know, all things being equal, I would like to pay less, but all things are clearly not equal. You know, the shipping, I almost accidentally bought it from the same third party vendor that I got the first one from. And I thought I was paying attention, but I wasn't. I'm like no i had to pay careful attention and make sure and like look i buy all kinds of things and i've gotten all kinds of things from third-party vendors before and it's been absolutely fine and especially for cheap things who cares who cares like you know if i'm if i am buying.
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Sam:
[18:05]
| Like, I don't know, like I, I, I buy, I buy everything online. I go to the store for hardly anything, like, unless I am forced. So like, I'll buy bottles of shampoo, I'll buy toothbrushes, I'll buy toothpaste, I'll buy, you know, soap and toilet paper and all of this kinds of stuff. And frankly, like for a lot of these things, will I care about the brand? Usually I'll care about the brand, but will I care about the seller? Usually not. Cause like, I don't know. I suppose if you're worried about like tampering or something, you don't want toothpaste that has actually been replaced with like, I don't know, hemorrhoids cream or something. No, that would be bad, but like, that's not what you expect. Maybe I should expect, I'll check everything. Right.
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Sam:
[18:56]
| But for those kinds of low dollar things, I really don't care. Like if it gets screwed up, I'll be like, man, it was screwed up, whatever next. And I guess like my threshold, like this, this microphone is.
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Sam:
[19:14]
| Including tax and everything else was like $125 or something. I think the first one I said was $20 cheaper. Maybe this one was, it was $125. And then when I got the, I want to make sure it's coming from the place I think it's coming from, it was like $145. And I guess that's above my mental threshold because I was like, this was a purchase. I was looking forward to setting up this new microphone. and I was pissed off. I was annoyed. I was like, I ordered a new microphone and this one is all scuffed up and dented and damaged. And what the fucking hell? So I was ready to return it. And honestly, I probably should have anyway. I probably shouldn't have let my son buy it off me, but you know, the way you learn how to be careful with your money is to actually make mistakes and spend things on things you shouldn't. Now he has no, shown no signs of actually, like this is allowance money, right? So he's not like actually, and we give allowance a certain amount, just regular. Like he, he theoretically could earn money from doing stuff, but he doesn't, but we, we never required like chores for the basic amount. Like there's a certain amount we give no matter what.
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Sam:
[20:38]
| And so I don't think he's shown a lot of signs of yet learning exactly how much that stuff's worth. The things we kind of charge him for, first of all, he'll buy his own stuff online with his allowance money. He will, another thing he does often is when we order out food, like for delivery, I usually give him a dollar limit that I will pay for. And if he wants to go above that, then I'm pulling it out of his allowance and we have an allowance card. So that's easy. It's all in an app. I pull the money back and forth and blah, blah, blah. And yeah, so he'll do that. And there are a few other things he pays for on its own. And typically the thing is when he wants something that we're like, we don't want to waste our money on that. We give him the opportunity to waste his money on that. And then that's all, that's all on him, you know, and he can use that money, but he's still.
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Sam:
[21:33]
| Spends his money on stupid stuff but you know what he's 15 whatever anyway i let him buy the microphone off me i i i was one click away from doing the return but i was like you know and if i had not ever said anything i am not because i did say something like i wonder if the microphone will be sad if i return so maybe i set off this whole thing but honestly i think he might have gone on that direction anyway, because this is something where he and I are very alike. So anyway, I ordered a replacement mic. It'll be here tomorrow. But for the second week in a row, I'm using my wife's microphone on a desk stand instead of on my little arm thing that I can put directly in front of my face more easily. Again, I can lean into the mic and talk like this and use my, is this a radio? No, that's a stupid voice.
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Sam:
[22:42]
| Anyway, I can do the directly into the microphone NPR voice kind of thing, but I, Let's not anyway. And, and I mentioned, I also got these speakers cause my, my old speaker set that I, that I have on my computer, not like speakers for the living room or something, but the speakers I had on my computer had almost since I got them for, I mean, like these, these were really, really old speakers, like speakers I probably had for 15 years or more And the same brand and type, by the way, that I'd probably had for 15 years before that.
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Sam:
[23:23]
| But they were, you know, completely wired speakers. And there was always interference because like, you know, my desk is a complete tangle of wires of everything. And, you know, if Yvonne was here, he like is obsessive about running all the wires in really neat places and using like cable management stuff to make them all stay completely out of the way in straight lines, not visible, blah, blah, blah. My desk is just a tangle of stuff. And I actually like, I can't stand when the cables are all like neatly routed and stuff, because I want to be able to get in there and unplug things, plug things back in, change things around at a moment's notice and not have to worry about undoing things. Like this woman that we have come help clean the house sometimes. She's coming later today, actually.
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Sam:
[24:21]
| Sometimes when she finds like, you know, the cables we have, the charge cables we have plugged in for phones and stuff, like we'll wrap them up neatly and stuff. And every time I find that, I'm like, ah, you've made them unusable. I have to undo this before I can even use them again. And, Yeah. Anyway, my desk is a complete mess of cables. And with this wired analog cable, it meant that my speakers were constantly doing crackling noises. Now, if I was actually like turned up music or something, I couldn't hear the crackling noises anymore unless I really carefully paid attention. But whenever it was actually silent, that's when the crackling noises were just all over the place. And I was like, I'm going to order new speakers. And I finally ordered new speakers. And these, in addition to the analog connection, they can connect via USB. And they, so far, no crackle. I'm very happy about that. They're actually not quite as powerful as the old speakers I had. They can't get quite as loud. And it's absolutely fine when the air conditioner is not on, but when the air conditioner comes on, because I have the.
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Sam:
[25:35]
| My house has central air, but when my office, which is full of computers and electronics and has windows that sometimes get sun, my office can heat up anyway, despite the central air. So I have a supplemental window air conditioner in here. And when that thing turns on, then it's actually, I wish it was slightly louder, these new speakers, but they're doing fine. But the point is, the new speakers had even more evidence on the actual box, like their little circle sticker things had clearly been taken on and off several times before. And I'm like but that one like I opened it up and once I got it open and once I got the stuff out and I couldn't see any problem with them and maybe there was something invisible I don't know maybe there's a there's a dent or a scuff or something I didn't see or didn't notice, but for the most part they were exactly what I expected the microphone on the other hand.
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Sam:
[26:38]
| Visibly damaged in multiple places. I'm like, I was so upset. Anyway, the moral of all this is when ordering from prominent e-commerce vendors that also sell products that are sold by third parties, even if those third-party products are shipped from the e-commerce vendor themselves, pay attention.
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Sam:
[27:06]
| Like sometimes they make it hard to pay attention, but pay attention. And if you are intentionally choosing that, absolutely fine. Absolutely fine. Like, like I said, in this case, it was like $20 cheaper to like buy from the third party seller, which is undoubtedly why they were the one that was highlighted and the default and blah, blah, blah. That's how that you know but and and and most of like i have not had this particular problem before or maybe i just haven't noticed usually when i order new stuff i get new stuff but, and should i i don't know should i report the seller or something i feel like if i did the return that would kind of happen automatically but like i haven't done the return.
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Sam:
[28:00]
| Anyway too too much work too much responsibility i ordered the new one it'll be here tomorrow but yeah just pay attention know what you're doing especially i guess we're we're getting into that holiday season.
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Sam:
[28:13]
| As I record this, yesterday was Black Friday. And I saw some reports on, I guess I'm saying the news, but I saw it on social media, of course, that the physical brick and mortar Black Friday ain't what it used to be. Like I remember years ago, people going absolutely nuts.
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Sam:
[28:41]
| Showing up at midnight, showing up at dawn crowds, like people getting trampled, trying to get into the freaking store, people running to the back of the store to try to get the deepest discounted, like big screen TVs and crap and like violence ensuing. I think that's dying down. I saw a number of reports of people at like their local local big box mega stores being like, it's quiet. It's not even crowded. And that's probably not everywhere. But I don't know. I think that's a good thing. I don't know. I'm I feel like for the last few years and I've bought everything online for the Christmas holidays, like our family is not religious. us, but we do Christmas. We have the upside down Christmas tree that's been hanging in our house for several years. We do not take it down in between Christmases because it's too much of a pain.
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Sam:
[29:45]
| At least that's my attitude. I think my wife would actually prefer that it come down, but nobody has the willpower. I mean, if she took it down, I guess I wouldn't object, but i don't want to go through the effort and just leave it up like the way i look at it, is why the hell would you take it down if you're just going to put it back up 10 or 11 months later just leave the damn thing up whatever anyway so it's just it we just keep it up we don't usually turn the lights on when it's not actually christmas and we've talked a number of times about like changing the decorations to match the season and the holiday so we have an upside down tree all year long. But like in the springtime, it would be like pink flowers and crap, probably fake ones. Cause I'm allergic, but yeah, whatever. And at Halloween it would be pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns. I guess jack-o'-lanterns are skeletons, pumpkins and skeletons and things. And I don't know, like we could decorate it with effigies of me for father's day. I don't know.
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Sam:
[30:53]
| Anyway, my point was, my usual shopping habit has been to buy one item a day from December 1st through until it's too late to actually buy anything more for Christmas Day. And then split those 24-ish purchases amongst the family members I'm going to give gifts for. But honestly at this point we have we have too much crap in the house anyway like i don't want more stuff for me honestly i've said for years like a few years back alex got me this you know stand-up console video game thing that plays tempest and centipede and a whole bunch of old like arcade games. It's still sitting in the box. Cause I opened it once and looked at it and the instructions like gave me anxiety cause they were so complicated. So I put it back in the box and for every year since then, I've told my family, the only thing I want for Christmas is for somebody else to assemble this damn thing for me. And nobody's ever assembled it. So it's still sitting there in the box in the hallway, but cause I don't need, like when I need stuff, like I needed this microphone. I ordered the microphone.
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Sam:
[32:16]
| I needed these speakers. I ordered the speakers. Now, to be honest, it was getting close enough to Christmas, not for the microphone. Cause I felt like I needed that right away. Cause I use it every week, but for the speakers, I was like, you know, this is on my wishlist.
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Sam:
[32:31]
| Maybe I should, it's after Thanksgiving. Maybe I should just wait. A month, see if anything, anybody buys this for me. And if they do, then I won't buy it myself. And then I was like, you know, usually people don't buy the things on my wishlist anyway. Screw that. I'm just going to buy it. And that's the thing. Like if there's something I need directly, I just buy it. I mean, like my wife and I have a rule. We have a dollar limit above which we will consult with each other before making purchases like, but small things do not even meet that. I'm like, I need a thing. I buy the thing. Like, you know, we're not talking to major purchase. That's going to bust a budget or cause any heartache. It just like, if I, if I need something, I buy something, you know, like in the, and so gifts really at this point, like let's go, often do something together, you know, let's, you know, we, I don't know, we can go visit somewhere, take a weekend and like do something we wouldn't usually do even just like go to a restaurant that we wouldn't go to otherwise, or I don't know, but things that aren't stuff.
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Sam:
[34:00]
| Because at this point like and we're hoarders too like let's just be honest my i am a hoarder my son is a hoarder my wife and daughter have adhd and decision paralysis on like stuff so like even when they're ready to get rid of stuff they don't and there's constant stuff accumulating of projects that are started but never finished but then you're like if you pick it up you're like yeah but maybe I'll want to finish this project. And no, you're never going to finish the damn project. So we just accumulate. If anything, we need desperately to get rid of stuff. We need to get rid of lots and lots of stuff. There's lots of stuff that, and look, there is stuff that's sentimental value that I would not want to throw out, but there's lots of stuff that just needs to be thrown out.
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Sam:
[34:54]
| But the last thing we need is more stuff, more and more and more stuff. So like I've been thinking, do I really want to do this by 24, 20, you know, 24 ish new things to come into this house to split between the people here in one way or another? I'm not sure I do. And by the way, I say 24 things. It's not like 24 expensive things. There's usually like one thing per person that's like the headline gift that has a decent price tag to it. And the rest of the things are small and just are sort of an indication of, hey, I was thinking of you. Here's the small thing that I thought it was cute, whatever. But it's not like it doesn't have like a big dollar signs attached to it. But even those small things, well, maybe even especially those small things, if they're small things that like the person will be like, oh, that's cute. And then put it aside and never use. We don't need that in the house. You know?
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Sam:
[36:01]
| Yeah. So I don't know. I, I, for the last couple of years, I've thought maybe I don't do the one thing per day thing. Like the last person who really, you know, my son as the youngest, you know, there was still sort of the, Hey, the kid needs lots of presents. They expect the sort of big Christmas festivity thing and lots of things to unwrap and it's exciting and blah, blah, blah, but he's 15. He doesn't, doesn't play with toys the same way. You can't like, it's not the same as a seven year old or an eight year old where you get them a bunch of toys and they play with the toys.
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Sam:
[36:43]
| 15 year olds aren't the same. And I have no idea what to get him. Like, you know, I used to have an idea of what toys he would like and what toys he wouldn't. Now, I don't know. I've asked him a couple of times, do you just want extra cash? He says, no, he wants the damn presents. But I don't know what, what again, and like he is definitely one where there are piles of things from previous Christmases that he's never opened. I mean, he opened the wrapping paper, but he never actually unboxed the thing that was in the wrapping paper and used it. Some of the things he has, some of the things he hasn't. And to be fair, there are times that he has gone into his room, found an unopened box of something that we bought him for Christmas five or six years ago and brought it out and opened it and started using it. So, but I don't know. I kind of want to be done with the whole thing. Maybe say, okay, everybody gets one thing. I don't know.
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Sam:
[37:50]
| I don't want any more stuff. If any of my family is listening, no more stuff. I have enough stuff. If I need stuff, I'll buy stuff. Something that's not stuff, maybe. I don't know. How do you guys feel about that kind of thing? I don't know. Meanwhile, I think that's enough for a first segment. Depending on what time of day that stupid microphone arrives, maybe next time I talk to you, I'll be on the new microphone. Or not. You know, because usually these things arrive later in the day. You know and i thought about switching brands too but i didn't because it seems cute i don't know like i like it and i don't know it's fine anyway yeah arriving by 10 p.m tomorrow, who knows sometimes when they say arriving by 10 p.m it's like 9 59 p.m and i hope to have finished recording by then if but you know sometimes they show up in the morning yeah I, you just, you never know.
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Sam:
[38:56]
| Am I done? Am I done? I am done for this segment and I guess come back after some unknown number of hours has gone by and I will record another segment and I guess I'll talk about news year stuff. Newsier stuff. Newsier stuff. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Okay. Oh, and I realized the live stream, I'll fix this as soon as I had stopped. Nobody's watched the live stream today anyway, but I noticed I forgot to change the date on it. So it still says November 23rd. I'll change it to November 30th, part one, once I'm done recording. Anyway, you guys don't care. What do you guys think about gifts and the holiday season and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I say this, again, in a completely secular way. My family does not deal with any religious connotations of the December Christmas holiday, despite the name and the obvious religious origins of that. It's just the annual upside-down tree and lights and gift-giving. And obviously, I'm getting a little soured on the gift-giving part.
|
Sam:
[40:16]
| I mean, I like giving, I like giving gifts. I like the ceremony of people opening it. We, we just have, we have all the shit we need. We really do. We, we, we don't need more and, and you know, or, or we just need the very strict rule of like anything new that comes into this house, twice as much stuff has to go into the trash or be donated. I guess there's, there's a bunch of stuff we have that isn't actually trash. Which is another thing that stops us from getting rid of it, because donation takes work too. And sometimes it's stuff that maybe people could actually use, and sometimes I guess it is trash. Because even though it's still usable in theory, no one's actually going to.
|
Sam:
[41:03]
| I was trying to start this break, but I failed because I got distracted by more talking. Anyway, here's a break. backs yeah for you it'll be like a minute or two for me it'll be hours but i'll talk about serious stuff i don't know like trump shit tariffs and harris's you know paris's team doing an interview i don't know i don't know blue sky maybe i'll talk about blue sky because i don't know the trump stuff is just like yeah it's out there and the harris stuff is like do we really need any more, retrospective, whatever, you know, there's some interesting things to talk about there. But on the other hand, what's done is done talking about again, ain't going to help. I guess maybe there's some lessons for the future in there, but maybe Blue Sky. I don't know. I'll decide later. Here's the break.
|
Break:
[42:01]
| Okie dokie. Here it comes. It's just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make. The more the only balloon the problem, the problem the problem the problem, What? What? What? What? I'm tired what's wrong i'm i'm i'm i'm really tired you you you it's it's amazing to get the show on the road there's a road there's a road oh my god there's a road Hey.
|
Sam:
[43:08]
| Here I am. I'm back. Are you excited that I'm back? It's like, as I said, it's the next day. It is now Sunday, December 1st, just after 19 UTC. As I continue this, and I've decided that I'm only going to do one more segment because I'm doing some stuff with the family this afternoon. And after I'm done with that, I want to actually just get this thing out. So rather than do two more segments, I'm doing one more segment, and I am just going to do a hodgepodge going down the list of things that we had listed as potential topics and talking about whichever ones I feel like. Whichever ones I feel like. I said feel like it. That's wrong.
|
Sam:
[43:57]
| Anyway, the first thing, and this is actually from a couple weeks ago, and I think it's died down a little bit since, which is good. But I, after Donald Trump won and Kamala Harris lost, I was extremely disappointed to see a contingent of people on the left that were going in for election denial conspiracy theories. Like the same bullshit that we'd been criticizing the Trump side for, for years now. Now, to be fair, huge difference. Kamala Harris and her team and everybody related to them was having absolutely nothing to do with it. None whatsoever. However, these people were like trying to send her team memos and letters saying, you have to look at this. You have to look at that. And they just, yeah, the Harris people ignored them, which was the right thing to do. And, but I was seeing a lot of it on social media, specifically, mostly I've seen a lot of it on TikTok.
|
Sam:
[45:18]
| But it was people being everything from people taking statements from the Harris team and trying to do like read things into it. Like Harris was giving out coded messages of hope and that, you know, oh, she said this and that really means this. And if you, if you carefully parse what she said, or if you, some of them were practically like counting the number of letters and the words and crap like that. Then there were other people talking about, you know, Starlink somehow being involved. And there was a thing about like, Ooh, Ooh, Ooh, Elon Musk said that he knew the results before everybody else. This must be nefarious in some way. And look, it's almost certainly it's the same thing as everything else. Like he had folks with models, you know, exactly like the people who call things at the major news organizations. They have models that have like, that can take the results that have come in so far and compare them to what the expectations were and make a prediction. You know, it wasn't like, oh my God, he magically knows the answer before it happened. You know, and basically there were, there were a variety of these of a variety of different types, but the, the, the one thing they had in common was.
|
Sam:
[46:47]
| Is absolutely zero in terms of actual information or proof of anything, of anything at all. And you can be damn well sure if there had actually been information about shenanigans of some sort that would possibly have made a difference, that Harris's election lawyers would have been all over it. Mark Elias, who's like one of the preeminent election lawyers in the country, lawyers? I once again can't talk. One of the preeminent election lawyers in the country had been talking before the election about how they were all geared up. They were ready. They had teams all over the country. They were ready to contest anything that needed contesting, both election night things. Look, there were a couple of polling places that got bomb threats.
|
Sam:
[47:47]
| And they had to close for a little while, and that could have disrupted things. But guess what? They made sure that the polling places that were affected got to stay open late so that everybody could vote. It was all taken care of. There were other random election day things that happen every single election of every single year. Like, this is normal. There was nothing that mattered. Trump won fair and square. Straight up, you know, and, and, but there are all these people. And I recognize like the, this is sort of desire to like not believe it. And something had to have been, but no, no, no, no, no. But yet you had this group of people who were fanning the flames of, you know, something's going to happen on such and such date. And, you know, Kamala has a secret plan. Again, Kamala. Kamala has a secret plan. And come on, people. Like I said, it has died down. And the big difference between this and 2020 is the people at the top fanning the flames. I mean, hell, maybe even the people at the top believing it.
|
Sam:
[49:03]
| I mean, at this point, like, it seems clear that Donald Trump knew he lost and was just fanning all this anyway. But every once in a while, it seems like maybe he believes his own shit. But, like, I think there's plenty of evidence that he knew he lost. But that's the thing here. Like, there was no oxygen given to this from the Harris people at all. Not from Harris, not from Walls, not from any of the campaign people, nobody. Nobody else in the Democratic establishment was having one single word of this shit. They either ignored people who said this kind of stuff or shut them down immediately, which was the right thing to do. You know, just, oh.
|
Sam:
[49:49]
| Moving on, blue sky. I mentioned this in the last segment and people have been talking about it, so I figure I might as well. Blue sky had a big like for some reason like look people have been leaving twitter slash x for a long time i mean the the the exodus began when elon musk took over it has been slow but steady, apparently the election results were a big, I don't know, wake up call to some people. I don't know. But all of a sudden, all of a sudden the exodus increased after the election. And I've seen it specifically like in terms of more prominent people. I mean, it's happened with other people too, but like you've seen it with the.
|
Sam:
[50:49]
| Celebrities and journalists and those kinds of folks who'd been hanging on to Twitter, what used to be Twitter, finally deciding to get up and leave. And they've decided that the place they're going is Blue Sky. Now, as anyone listening here knows, I moved to Mastodon a long, long time ago. I stayed on a little while after Elon took over, but my big, moment was when they shut down to third-party clients because I used TweetBot as my client. I never used the official Twitter stuff. And so effectively at that moment, they broke Twitter for me. It became impossible for me to use it the way I wanted to use it because yes, could I have used the official clients at this point? Yeah, I could have, but I hated them. And primarily because of what to a lot of people made Twitter, Twitter, like, like my usage of Twitter through tweet bot was always the reverse chronological only, only see posts from people that you follow and replies. If both, if you follow both people, the, the, the person replying and the person being replied to.
|
Sam:
[52:11]
| And so like, and no ads. The actual Twitter experience, the algorithmic feed was always like, I could not look at it for more than a couple seconds without getting mad. There were ways to get to the non-algorithmic feed, but they made it. You had to do a couple extra clicks. You had to do this. You had to always do it and blah, blah, blah. And it just, and And you still got the ads, I think. I don't remember. It's been a long time. Anyway, that's the moment I left. And then over the course of the last couple of years, people have been slowly but steadily leaving as the Twitter experience has become degraded for the things that lots of people used it for. You know, participating in various communities, real-time news, blah, blah, blah. uh.
|
Sam:
[53:07]
| Things I kept hearing, and I haven't been there, I haven't been there in a long time. Things I kept hearing were the algorithm continuously shoving things in your face from Elon, the ads being extremely badly targeted and all over the place, the large number of sort of conservative right-wing folks that would get shoved into your feed, even if that wasn't your orientation, all kinds of things.
|
Sam:
[53:38]
| But apparently the election itself was a snapping point for a lot of people. And a lot of people started moving elsewhere in the past. Like, you know, there was a, there was a surge of people into Mastodon at the very beginning of this process, but then threads came online and that's where all the people were going for all, for many months. And then, and, but then people started getting unhappy with threads too. I mean, and by people, I put that in quotes. Obviously, lots of people are happy with threads because threads set up a policy very specifically. They don't want to promote news. So their algorithms are promoting sort of other stuff. So the people who were at Twitter for news specifically weren't that happy with threads for that. Now, threads also has a non-algorithmic following tab.
|
Sam:
[54:38]
| And there's news within the last couple of weeks that they're going to, they're at least going to be testing, but they may be adding a mechanism to let you be able to set that as your default. Which would be nice right now. It always, when you open it up, it comes in on the, I guess, unless you just left and are coming back. And so it remembers your previous state, but like it comes in on the algorithm tab and you have to like click over. So like, I, I, I check threads probably a couple of times a day. I like, I'm on Mastodon constant, like literally it's always on in the background. Like I do not like when I'm on my, on my home desktop where I have a three monitor setup. One of the monitors is always ivory, which is the people who made TweetBot made a client from Asinon. It's the one I use. I always have it up on one of the monitors in a six column view with several different columns with different slices of the kind of stuff I want to see that's updated in real time so that I can just glance over there and see what's going on at any moment.
|
Sam:
[55:45]
| And on my phone, I haven't looked at my stats yet, but it's got a, if it's not my number one app in terms of screen time, it's, it's number two. It's probably vying for TikTok at this point because it's a different kind of usage. TikTok makes you watch videos and blah, blah, blah. So anyway, the, but a bunch of people started moving and, and, you know, Blue Sky was like, oh, look at how many new users we have. We got this huge, massive influence, influx of new users. And they were talking about how they had to do like, they had to jump through hoops to make sure that her servers didn't fall over under the new load and all this kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[56:28]
| Threads like raised their hand at one point and said, you added a whole bunch of new users, but your total number of users total is still smaller than the number of new users we added just last month. You know, but the influx into Blue Sky has increased. And the thing I've noticed specifically is... All kinds of your, again, your journalists, your celebrities, whatever, starting to say, come see me on Blue Sky. That's my preferred place now. And so I'd had a Blue Sky account for a long time. Back when they were invite only, an old friend of mine, Rebecca, sent me an invite to Blue Sky and I joined. I think you can get in without invites now. It's wide open.
|
Sam:
[57:23]
| But i set it up and i followed a couple people i made like i said my profile hey my main location is on mastodon go see me there if you want to see me but which is the same as what i have on threads i so far i've treated both threads and blue sky as read only experiences like i i retweet things, on Mastodon all the time. I've got the election graphs and wiki of the day and curmudgeon's corner. Mastodon accounts were automatically post things. Like when I started recording this live stream, there was an automatic post on the curmudgeon's corner Mastodon saying, hey, there's a live stream. Here's the link. Click through it. And I went through the process of setting all that up. For a curmudgeons corner for election graphs, which election graphs is now silent for at least the next couple of years. But, you know, and Wiki of the Day, they all have these automated stuff and I'm personally on there all the time. I kind of suck that I relatively rarely do original posts, I sometimes do, but I'm bad at that. My main usage is really just I see something interesting and I hit the Retoot button or whatever they officially call it. I call it Retoot.
|
Sam:
[58:49]
| But anyway, so I actively spit things into the Mastodon world and I'm on there all the time. For threads, I was checking in once or twice a day and I immediately ignore the algorithmic feed, click over to the following feed and then scroll to see what's new. For the most part, I'm not even, like when Threads first came out, I followed a bunch of people.
|
Sam:
[59:20]
| Threads enabled partial opt-in federation with Mastodon. So like some of the accounts I care about you can now follow them from Mastodon even though they're Threads accounts. And so I've done that with a few. And so for the most part, I'm not doing a lot with Threads. I'm just checking in occasionally to see if there's anything that I missed that somebody hasn't shared into Mastodon. And sometimes there is. but like you know most of the accounts that would give me that kind of i don't know i shouldn't say most of it i've got a variety of accounts that have turned on their federation and i follow them from mastodon instead threads very annoyingly just recently added a 15 minute delay for that their stated reason is they've increased the amount of time that threads users can edit their posts and they don't share it to Mastodon until the.
|
Sam:
[1:00:30]
| They can no longer be edited. Of course, Mastodon supports editing posts, so that's not really an excuse, but for now. And also, Threads, they've only partially done the integration. Like, you can follow Threads accounts that have opted in from Mastodon, but Threads people can't follow Mastodon folks or other Fediverse things. It's not just Mastodon.
|
Sam:
[1:00:58]
| Anyway and i had not been checking blue sky at all i had when i first got that blue sky account i, i clicked in i set up my profile i followed one or two people and i basically maybe checked in once every few weeks i've been trying to also check blue sky at least daily now that there's this influx into Blue Sky. And I've also been making a point when I see somebody promoting their Blue Sky account, like either on TV or on a podcast I listen to, or a post on Mastodon that says, go follow me on Blue Sky, or a post on Threads that says, go follow me on Blue Sky. I've been trying to do that so that my followed feed in BlueSky can have more in it.
|
Sam:
[1:01:55]
| Because the thing is, if you're not doing the algorithmic thing, and BlueSky, by the way, also has its sort of default is the following as well. But one of the things that BlueSky is doing some interesting things. First of all, they're theoretically federated, but not really like they've got some centralized single points of data that are still like, yes, they've, you can, you can set up your own blue sky server, but it's still dependent on the centralized instance. Um.
|
Sam:
[1:02:31]
| They've done that, but they've also got – what their approach on algorithms is one I think is actually very interesting, which is, sure, algorithms can be useful, but we'll put it under your control. So they've actually got like a marketplace of algorithms where you can like any developer with the appropriate skills can code up an algorithm for use with blue sky. And they essentially have sort of a marketplace of what they call feeds, which are algorithms you can choose from. and you can add them. You can have multiple feeds. So like at the moment I have my, I have my following feed in blue sky. I have a discover feed. Like these first few are all defaults discover feed a popular with friends feed. And I added a mutuals one, which is just an algorithm that shows posts only people who you follow and who follow you back, but they've got others.
|
Sam:
[1:03:44]
| People have set up science feeds and arts feeds and news feeds and super clusters for various communities. Now, some of these are essentially what I use lists for in Mastodon and what I used to use lists for in Twitter, which is a curated set of accounts that are related to a topic. Mastodon also allows you to follow hashtags, which serves the same sort of purpose. Some of these are just that, are just, hey, here are a bunch of accounts that somebody is curating that are good for some specific topic. But others are, you know, algorithmic in one way or another to try to decide what to show when, have various conditions on it. And the whole point here is, though you have control over that. You decide which algorithmic feeds you want. You add them. They have a special place in the UI so that when you are going to that feed you know that you're going to it.
|
Sam:
[1:04:52]
| I prefer the reverse chronological, but I don't have a fundamental problem with algorithmic feeds in general. Even on my Mastodon usage, I go to sort of the popular and trending.
|
Sam:
[1:05:10]
| Thing tab feed whatever which is essentially an algorithmic feed i go there a few times a day in my desktop version it's one of the six columns i have up and and no no problem but i know that i'm going there i know why i'm going there i it is a conscious choice on my part to look at that. It is not sort of a feed that is manipulated by the social media company designed to optimize specifically for engagement and to all of this kind of stuff. Anyway, the point is of all of this, a bunch of people are going to blue sky. Like right now, like my biggest problem with Mastodon is my main daily driver or social media. I check all the others maybe once or twice a day. But it still has what to me is a fundamental problem that a lot of the people that I wish were posting there are not. There are some holdovers who are still on Twitter. There are a bunch that are on threads. Now there are a bunch that are on Blue Sky. Some of them have indeed enabled sort of federated. There's a bridge for blue sky as well. So for certain blue sky accounts, you can follow them via Mastodon, but it's not universal, just like it's not universal for threads.
|
Sam:
[1:06:39]
| And so a lot of the people that I want to be following are not here, are not on Mastodon. And so I have to, so I am going to these other places, but I haven't decided to like really jump in. I saw one person make a post the other day that was basically, I'll be on whatever social media that Tapbots makes a client for. They're the ones who made Tweetbot and now make Ivory for Mastodon. And I'm kind of there.
|
Sam:
[1:07:13]
| I like the interface. I like the program that I use. I like the way that it does things, I'm used to it. If they made a Blue Sky client, maybe I'd be on Blue Sky more often. If they made a Threads client, maybe I'd be on Threads more often. I don't know. I also like the automated things I do for Curmudgeon's Corner or Wiki of the Day, Election Graphs. Wherever I am most of the time, I'd want to set that stuff up. And both Blue Sky and Threads have slowly been setting up. They've got programmatic access too at this point so theoretically I know I could do those things but I don't relish the idea of going in and actually spending the time to do it again, maybe I will at some point set up a blue sky for those various things set up threads for those various things I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:08:09]
| But anyway, Blue Sky right now seems to be the place where the growth and the excitement is for the moment. I've heard other people, of course, complaining that with the growth and excitement comes people being abusive and various problems. The other thing Blue Sky, by the way, does is their approach to moderation is basically do it yourself. They're basically like hey we will provide a robust set of filtering functionality that you can use including picking these algorithmic feeds that i was talking about but other stuff as well and that you know basically putting the burden of moderation on the customer filtering things so they see what they want to see at least that was the original vision they have had to do some moderation which i guess is one of the reasons jack dorsey left like he was originally one of the people pushing blue sky but got frustrated and i think part of it was because they realized that yeah you do have to do some moderation you do have to kick some people off.
|
Sam:
[1:09:25]
| I'm watching i like as i'm talking here i've got my blue sky up i've been following more people. I still don't like, if you rely on the algorithmic feeds, then I mean, the whole point of algorithmic feeds is they make it really super easy. Like you can jump in and immediately be seeing things you like and the algorithm learns what you like and start showing you more of that. I mean, that's the entirety of TikTok's magic. Like people very rarely, like even, I mean, even I I very rarely go to my followed feed, and I'm just on the For You page all the time on TikTok.
|
Sam:
[1:10:10]
| They make it very easy. But if you're not using algorithmic feeds, if you're trying to curate a list of people to follow, then it takes some work. You have to find the people you want to follow. You have to go through the process of following it. And to have a robust feed that always has new stuff, whenever you open the app, you have to be following hundreds of people. Okay, hundreds may not even be enough, depending on your appetite for it. I expect feeds that if I have left the app for a minute, I come back and I have new stuff. There's no thought of keeping up with my feed and watching everything. If you want a feed where you sort of keep up and see everything, then, okay, you want to follow a couple dozen people maybe. But if you want a feed that's always got new stuff, no matter what. You want to be following hundreds, quite possibly thousands.
|
Sam:
[1:11:12]
| On Mastodon right now, I'm following 1,679. On Twitter, I was following 5,000, exactly 5,000, because I kept hitting the cap and having to remove people in order to follow new people, because I didn't have enough people following me to follow over 5,000. So I was capped, which was frustrating me before I left that place. And, you know, so, and every one of those, 1,679 accounts are accounts that at one point or another, I made a conscious choice to follow, either because somebody retweeted that into me, retweeted, reposted that in, in a way that I saw it. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'll follow them. Or in some cases they followed me. and then I looked at their profile and then I followed them. In some cases, you know, I heard about them from a list of people that were like, hey, you should follow these folks. They're cool. I seeded it by following people that I followed on Twitter that I could find on Mastodon, et cetera. And so my Blue Sky and Threads feeds, if I were to use them as my main place right now, are still very sparse. And so I would have to spend time on them. And I don't want to spend time. I don't want to spend time doing that on another place. I don't know. And maybe I could solve that by, well, Sam, just look at the algorithmic feed.
|
Sam:
[1:12:42]
| But algorithmic feeds piss me off. And at least the manipulative sort of algorithmic feeds that are non-transparent that I mentioned, the ones that are optimized for engagement and everything else. And you know people have repeatedly said you know hey people say they want the non-algorithmic feed but whenever we've tested it people spend more time on the algorithmic feed they engage more on the algorithmic feed well yeah duh that's what you're optimizing for that doesn't mean it's best for the person watching it it means you're sucking in their time more and you know it's it's best for the company, especially if you're selling ads on that feed. But anyway, I guess everybody check out Blue Sky. I'm Ablesmay on Blue Sky, just like I am practically everywhere else, A-B-U-L-S-M-E. I'm Ablesmay on threads as well. There's not much point in following me on those platforms because I don't post anything on those platforms. But if you are on those platforms and you are posting things. If you follow me, there's a good chance I'll follow you back and I'll see your stuff when I check in on those platforms. So yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:13:55]
| Okay. What else here? I, you know, I hadn't, you know, I, I spent way too long on that, but you know, for some reason at this point, I'm like more excited about talking about like blue sky and stuff than the other stuff. Like, you know, I could, the next thing I could, I mentioned last week, should I upgrade my phone? I'm debating this right now. Like, you know, I've got an iPhone 12, 12 Pro Max. The currents are the 16s. And I would, if I was going to get one, I'd get the 16 Pro Max. They came out in September. I, the 12 is what, four years old. I'm very much eligible. But my phone still works. It still works fine there, you know, I, and I'm eligible for the latest upgrade.
|
Sam:
[1:14:51]
| Or the latest version. I actually haven't updated to the latest version of the software yet. Cause like I insist on keeping my phone on a universal time and they still, even though they have stuff that keeps track of when your phone is active, when when is not, instead of just doing the updates at a low usage time for you, they do it at a, I think it's like two to four in the morning or something like that. But two to four in the morning to me is two to four utc which is still a time i'm active so it never succeeds in doing an update because i'm always active at that time so i have to do it manually and i just haven't manually triggered it yet i will at some point now i won't do, i won't do it won't do the new apple intelligence stuff but it's unclear to me how much i should care at this point. And it still works. It's still fine. There's one app I use that in the last couple months has been crashing a lot, but I think it's the app's fault, not the phone's fault. Although I'm tempted to be like, hey, if I got a new phone, maybe that would get better. Maybe it's like, get more memory and blah, blah, blah. I don't know. At the same time, I look at some of the leaks of the iPhone 17, which is still, what, nine months out, nine, ten months out, and the leaks may not even be right. But I'm like, that looks cool.
|
Sam:
[1:16:19]
| You know, can I wait another nine months? Probably. Like, the last few times, at this point, like, I used to be on a religion. I was updating every other year. I was updating every two years. I was updating my phone. Then at some point, that slipped to three years. Now I've gone four. And I think really at this point I'm at, I replace when it doesn't work or it has to either break or there has to be some new thing that I'm really jealous about the new ones on that I'm like, Hey, they have this new feature. I can't live without this new feature. I have to upgrade now. On the other hand, the new ones have better cameras than the one I have. The new ones will get the Apple intelligence. And by new, I'm talking about 16 right now, not the theoretical 17.
|
Sam:
[1:17:12]
| But the one thing about the 17, the rumor is they are going to move from having the cameras in a little square bump in one corner to a strip across the entire back. And I can't tell you for years now how much the camera bump has bothered me for being asymmetrical. That you couldn't put your phone flat on a table and not have it wobble when you use the screen. That has pissed me off so much. And one of the things I looked for in cases is cases that would minimize that wobble as much as possible because they would sort of cover up the bump. But even anyway, the rumor is the new one's going to have a strip instead.
|
Sam:
[1:18:03]
| Anyway, I wasn't actually going to talk about like, I think I'm hanging on and not upgrading yet. And the longer I wait, the more it makes sense to just wait till next September. You know, I mean, I wasn't even going to talk about that. It was just an example of as I go through the list, I'm like, I'm, I'm more excited about the non-political stuff. The political stuff is just sort of depressing still. I mean, it is what it is. We'll deal with it. I mean, I have the, the, all the January Trump's cases, the January 6th and the document cases, the federal cases are officially dead now. Officially, official, official, official, which is not a surprise in any way. We expected that to happen once Trump won, but it's still depressing. Like the guy is getting away with all kinds of stuff. And the New York case where he's already been convicted and we were just waiting on sentencing. I don't know that it's official official yet, but most likely sentencing will just be delayed until he's no longer president. I mean, best case scenario, best case, like theoretically, I guess they could sentence him and then defer the sentence. There's nothing happening with the sentence while he's president for sure. But most likely they're not even going to do the sentencing until, what would it be? 2029.
|
Sam:
[1:19:30]
| Did I have that right? No, wait. Yeah, no, that's right. 2029, January 21st, 2029. The first that they might actually do this. Unless something really surprising happens. The Georgia case is still on ice because of the Fannie Willis crap. But most likely, even if that stuff gets resolved, they're not going to do anything with Donald Trump. There might be a possibility that they separate out Donald Trump and go proceed with the rest of the people in that RICO conspiracy? Maybe. And for that matter, we've got cases in Arizona and Michigan that never included Donald Trump related to all those shenanigans. And I guess those are going to proceed. So those might be sort of the sleeper hits of 2025 and 2026 is the progress of those cases against all of Donald Trump's co-conspirators that are at a state level, so Donald Trump can't pardon them, and that don't involve Trump himself, so he can't claim immunity either for being president during the crimes or...
|
Sam:
[1:20:44]
| In the present, but it's still like this man's whole life. I mean, we've talked about crimes he committed back in the seventies and eighties and nineties as well. Nothing, nothing. He's gotten away with fucking everything and it's going to continue. I mean, I'd predicted for years that he was never going to see a day in jail. I guess some of the financial stuff might continue like he he may end up actually forced to pay some money during his presidency for something for you know either the the civil case or the criminal case against his company one of those things eugene carroll you know but he may he may be able to weasel out of like getting those proceedings paused during the presidency too. I don't know. And undoubtedly he's going to do more bad things, break more laws, because he just doesn't care. And at this point he's been proven that not caring is a decent strategy here. But as president, you know, the Supreme Court gave him broad immunity. You can be damn sure everything is going to be an official act at this point.
|
Sam:
[1:22:00]
| And, you know, we've determined that, you know, even if the Democrats took back the House, even if they took back the House and the Senate, for that matter, impeachment won't get you anywhere. And if you wait till after he's out of office, chances are whoever's president after him isn't going to have the willpower to go after him again. I don't know. Tariffs? Yeah, tariffs. Trump's been going on about tariffs again. We all know the direct effect of tariffs is increasing prices. I've been hearing a bunch of his defenders talking about how... Look, this is just a negotiation ploy. It's not about what would happen if the tariffs actually came into place. It's a negotiation ploy. It's leverage. And then he's going to get other countries to do things, and then he won't actually need to do the tariffs. And it's just a method of strong-arming people into doing what he wants them to. And so don't worry about the actual effects of the tariffs, because that'll never actually happen. And I've heard other people that go on about, ha ha, yes, the price of imported goods will go up. We all know that. But the whole point of this is that, hey, guess what? Now you can buy American.
|
Sam:
[1:23:28]
| And yes, that is the theoretical point of tariffs. The reason they have always been tried is this whole, this protectionist notion that you make the foreign stuff more expensive than the domestic, then there's more incentive to produce domestically. And, you know, domestic players will be able to come in and at a lower price than the foreign competition, or if there are no domestic manufacturers at all, they can ramp up and they can start to do it where they weren't doing it before. Problem is, let's assume there's an industry that's already here in the U.S. Typically, they're more expensive anyway. Labor costs are higher here. So the reason that the foreign goods were selling more was they were cheaper. And so your price will still go up, even assuming the American thing is still cheaper than the foreign-born, foreign-born, foreign-manufactured alternative.
|
Sam:
[1:24:36]
| But it doesn't always work out that way. I've been hearing in the last week, a lot of examples of even during the last Trump administration, when he put tariffs on certain appliances that we did still have domestic production of appliances from Whirlpool, I believe. And they raised their prices to match the new price of the foreign stuff because they could, because, you know, that was the new price of a washer dryer or whatever. And apparently there were tariffs on washers but not dryers, but they raised the price on the dryers as well because typically washers and dryers are sold at prices comparable to each other. So you raise the price of the washers and, hey, look, you can get away with raising the prices of the dryers too. And so the result of the tariffs on appliances was not, oh my God, now Whirlpool is selling so much more than they used to because they come in cheaper than the foreign competition. It was, hey, Whirlpool can raise their prices too.
|
Sam:
[1:25:40]
| So it's exactly what happens depends on the exact nature of the tariffs, the exact industries, what the competitive landscape looks like. But that's even when there's already domestic manufacturing in place. If there isn't, then that has to ramp up and that takes years to, You have to build factories. You have to get new supply chains. The supplies probably come from overseas too and might be subject to tariffs as well. Or do you build up, you know, new, do you build up domestic sources of the raw materials as well? Maybe they're available. Maybe they're not. Like some materials we just don't physically have in the ground in the right quantities here in the U.S. To mine them ourselves or whatever. But maybe you do that. But even then, the prices go up. And that's before you even take into account retaliation. So the main argument here, the one that's actually a good argument, is the, okay, it's just a threat. There won't actually be any substantial tariff increases because Donald Trump is going to threaten it. Your various foreign countries, China, Mexico, and Canada have been talked about most recently since Donald Trump specifically has been mentioning them.
|
Sam:
[1:26:58]
| They will capitulate on whatever Donald Trump wants them to, or by the way, or they won't do a damn thing, but Donald Trump will declare victory and say they capitulated anyway. For instance, there was this back and forth with the new president of Mexico where she said, hey, we're already doing a bunch of stuff. And Donald Trump reacted with, look, they've agreed to do a bunch of stuff already because of my tariff threat. She was just mentioning the stuff they're already doing. Sorry. Which is a lot, by the way. Anyway, tariffs. That relates to, though, there's a phrase that I guess Rachel Maddow popularized a few years ago, which is watch what they do, not what they say. Yvonne on our Commudgence Corner Slack has also mentioned a variant of this a few times recently that, like, basically, I'm not going to get all worked up over the craziness that's being talked about right now. About the tariff threats, even the cabinet nominations, right? It's like, he's not president yet. Let's wait till he actually starts doing stuff. And then let's see what he actually does. Because I think we talked last week, he's super transactional, right?
|
Sam:
[1:28:26]
| And this is the whole basis of this tariff threat thing. He's not talking about tariffs necessarily because he really intends to do the tariffs. He is using it as a manipulative tool to try to get other outcomes. And we also mentioned last week, by the way, exemptions from the tariffs are important. And maybe he can get some stuff in return either for the country or for himself in exchange for those exemptions. But the point is, when you're dealing with someone transactional like that, where there's no actual sort of ideological underpinning, really.
|
Sam:
[1:29:09]
| Things can change on a dime. He can literally be saying he's going to be doing one thing next week. And the next week he's doing the exact opposite.
|
Sam:
[1:29:19]
| And he will, and to him, I don't know. I'm not going to say what's in his head, but it's not going to be portrayed necessarily as he's not going to portray it anyway, as an issue that was then this is now this whole flip flop thing. Never an issue with Donald Trump, because what he's doing is not about this is the right thing to do because it is in some way the morally correct thing to do. It is more about this is the right thing to do right now under these circumstances, because if I do this, I'll get that. And if those circumstances change in any way, shape or form, then what the right thing to do is changes as well. And look, there's plenty where I think that's actually the right way to approach things, where things are situational and there isn't an overriding moral principle at play. It's just how can you move things from where they are to something more like what you want and you figure out, given the current circumstances, how do you get there? But to me at least, there's a huge zone where there are moral principles at play and those matter.
|
Sam:
[1:30:42]
| And they affect what you consider to be possible and whatnot and what you like yes you could get the result you want but the way to get there would be immoral so you don't do it you know.
|
Sam:
[1:31:02]
| I'm gonna wrap up very quickly i gotta move on to other things but what else we got, There was a peace deal with Hezbollah, Israel and Hezbollah, brokered by the U.S. and a few others, seems to be holding so far. Good, I guess. I mean, yes, good. I shouldn't say I guess there. The I guess is more that the, I don't know, this part of the conflict didn't even, I don't know, it feels like it didn't even have to happen. Like it was, it was an extension added on to what was going on with Gaza that seemed like it could have been avoided entirely, but good ceasefire, blah, blah, blah. Still got to do the same with Gaza. Not there yet. The Biden administration is continuing to try to make that happen. I don't know if they'll get anywhere before the inauguration. And after the inauguration, you know, honestly, it is very possible that Trump will be able to get something done here that Biden was not because Biden and despite all of the people who wanted him to be even more so, but Biden and Netanyahu were adversarial. They were not buddies.
|
Sam:
[1:32:18]
| Biden was trying to tell Netanyahu to stop. Trump will not be telling Netanyahu to stop in the same way, but there may be ways to end things like maybe it's full steam ahead. Maybe it's let Netanyahu bulldoze all of Gaza and then start building the condos. I don't know. Or also just naturally over the course of time, Netanyahu succeeded in what he wanted. And I mean, one of the reasons stated for the Hezbollah ceasefire was basically that Israel had gotten what they wanted. They killed huge numbers of the Hezbollah leadership and huge numbers of the rank and file fighters as well. And there was what was left was basically non-functional. Maybe Netanyahu declares he got to that point sometime in late January, February, and then, okay, we'll stop for now. I mean, the Israeli position has always essentially been, we'll stop when we win. And they're a lot closer to winning now than they were a few months ago or a year ago. So there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:33:38]
| The Trump cabinet, awful as expected. Yeah, Gates had to drop out, but everybody else is awful. It's all people heading agencies that don't believe in that agency's existence and are in it to cripple it. For the most part, it is not, we want this agency to do this other thing.
|
Sam:
[1:34:06]
| It's not we have a policy difference with the previous administration on what this agency does. It's we don't want this agency to do anything. The exceptions to that rule are the Department of Defense, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Justice. The Department of Defense, you know, is all going to be about macho blustering and all this kind of stuff. You know, we've got the, I can never say his name, Hogarth, Haygarth, whatever. The guy from Fox News who's been tapped for defense. He's all about like, let's get rid of all the woke stuff. Let's get, you know, let's, let's kick out all the trans people on day one. You know, all of this kind of stuff that he says will make the military stronger, that the people actually there right now disagree. But, oh, well, there might be some cuts there, too. But, you know, you got Trump talking about, hey, wanting to use the military domestically. Ah, that'll be fun.
|
Sam:
[1:35:10]
| Trump's whole thing is to be so belligerently aggressive that... Rivals internationally will just capitulate. And so you don't need to actually do violence. It's basically, you know, the old, the old fashioned cold war mutually assured destruction kind of thing. But in, in non-nuclear terms, it's like we want to have such overwhelming force that nobody will even think of messing with us. And we won't have to actually use that force, which look, it's a strategy that sometimes worked in the past. But at some point, if you don't actually utilize that in some places, then people realize you don't mean it and then it stops working. So who knows? Trump did, you know, people's worst fears of Trump being involved in places all over the world did not happen last time. He did get involved in a couple new places. He did some stuff in Syria that we weren't doing. He escalated the drone warfare all over the world.
|
Sam:
[1:36:18]
| He, he did some targeted assassinations. So it's not like he was, you know, a pacifist or anything, but we'll see. We'll see what happens this time. He certainly is all about, you know, we want to get along with Putin and, and, you know, he wants to make friends with North Korea and all of these kinds of things. So one, one, one way to get along and avoid conflict is certainly appeasement. It sometimes works for a while and usually doesn't work forever.
|
Sam:
[1:36:51]
| And that's the potential solution to Ukraine as well, of course, is just like, okay, fine. I mean, when the invasion first happened in the first couple of shows, Yvonne and I were talking about how eventually this will probably end in a peace deal where Ukraine gives up some territory and promises not to join NATO. It was the most likely alternative at the beginning. I guess it's now the most likely alternative again. There was a brief period in the middle where it looked like maybe Ukraine would actually be able to push back more than they have. But no, I think that's out the window now. I think it's the most likely thing. I mean, Trump is of course exaggerating by I'll be able to solve it on in one day. But the most likely outcome as a relatively quick outcome is you freeze the front lines where they are. They make that the effective line of control. And you tell Ukraine, sorry, you're never joining NATO, at least not in the foreseeable future. And done. Which, by the way, even before the invasion, Ukraine was being told no. They were being told you could ask, but we're not doing that right now because we don't want to aggravate the Russians. But whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:38:18]
| Okay. Oh, and Kash Patel for FBI. I think technically speaking, the FBI director has a term that isn't over yet, but by appointing a new FBI director, Trump is making clear that he is intending to fire the current FBI director and put on a new one that is an absolutely insane election-denying thing.
|
Sam:
[1:38:46]
| Anti-FBI, anti-law enforcement person. So we'll see how that goes. It probably matches up with, you know, because Trump got, ended up with Pat Bondi for justice instead of Gates. He's doubling down on FBI because his, his whole intention is to make this agency into the tool of his retribution. Like he feels like from 2016 onward, the department of justice was after him. And so now he's going to go after all the people who were after him. I mean, that's, that's his own words. That's what he says. Again, we'll see what he actually follows through with and what he doesn't. I mean, he never did lock Hillary Clinton up. Maybe he'll get to it this time.
|
Sam:
[1:39:36]
| Because because last time he kept asking people when are we when are we locking up hillary clinton and they kept putting him off because there was no actual legitimate reason to lock up hillary clinton but as we keep saying all of those quote-unquote adults in the room gone we don't have any of those you know what i think i'll wrap it up there there was an interview with harris Harris's campaign team on Pod Save America. I did not watch the whole thing. I saw clips. It was pretty interesting. Basically, her team knowing they were behind almost the whole time. I mean, they kept saying they were underdogs. Election graphs said they were behind the whole time.
|
Sam:
[1:40:21]
| Well, except a very tiny moment in September.
|
Sam:
[1:40:27]
| But not that tiny, a couple weeks. I should look it up. You don't care. They were ahead for a little while in September, according to election drafts. But they knew they were behind the whole time. They knew there were certain strategies of throwing Joe Biden under the bus that might have gained them a few points that Kamala Harris did not want to do. There were a variety of other choices they made that they've been criticized for. But, you know, like I said early in the show, I don't know that those conversations directly help right now. There are a number of things that any one of us could come up with that we would say they should have, could have done differently. We are operating from hindsight. These folks were not. And the worldwide trends were such that even if they had, they came close to doing everything perfect. They ran an excellent campaign. Could they have done a few things different? Maybe. Is there some chance that some of these things could have eked out a win? Maybe. But worldwide, the incumbent parties lost ground and.
|
Sam:
[1:41:45]
| And Harris did better than any of those other incumbents worldwide in 2024. So, okay. Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there. You can find all the ways to contact us. You can find our transcripts, transcripts, old episodes and transcripts from the last couple of years. I have not linked our TikTok there yet. We now have a Curmudgeons Corner TikTok. We do not have a Curmudgeons Corner Blue Sky. I have not set that up or a Curmudgeons Corner thread. Maybe some i don't want to have i don't want to have multiples one's enough right i don't know but.
|
Sam:
[1:42:23]
| Anyway you can get to our youtube you can get to our tiktok you can get to all the ways to facebook email mastodon all that stuff is there also a link to our patreon where you can give us money we like money right now we get 15 a month or so from those of you out there who support us and we appreciate that very much helps us every once in a while buy new microphones and stuff when the old ones die like i said you know things like that but maybe someday we'll have a meetup again we did that once a few years ago it was fun maybe someday i don't know and yeah at various levels on the patreon we'll send you a postcard we'll send you a mug we'll mention you on the show at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask we'll invite you to the curmudgeons Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and a variety of our listeners are hanging out all week long, and chatting about life and politics and news and non-politics and fun stories we see, all that kind of stuff. It'd be great to have more of you. So if you're not on there and want to be, go to curmudgeons-corner.com, pick one of the ways of contacting us and let me know. We'll get you invited. It's a lot of fun.
|
Sam:
[1:43:43]
| Yvonne would usually at this point give a highlight of something on the Slack that we have not talked about on the show. I did not prepare one. I am bad. Let me look real quick. Let me look real quick. Go from the random category.
|
Sam:
[1:44:01]
| Oh, here we go. This is a new thing that Bob posted last night. I have not read the article yet, but I will read you the headlines.
|
Sam:
[1:44:13]
| 94% of AI-generated college writing is undetected by teachers. Dun-dun-dun! Which, you know, is not entirely unsurprising. Like, I've read a number of things where they have these theoretic, like, AI detectors, but the problem is the false positive rate is huge and false negative. They're just not accurate at all. Like they will both detect lots of human writing and say it was AI when it wasn't at all. And they will miss a lot of actual AI writing. So they're basically useless. And they can get people in trouble for not doing anything wrong, which seems like a big problem. But, you know, 94% of AI generated college writing is undetected by teachers. And the subhead here, I'm not going to open up the actual article live, but it says, but by and large, stopping AI academic fraud has not been a priority for most schools. Look, the answer to this is like most things. It's not that you have to detect and stop the AI writing. It's that, hey, your method of evaluating whether students have learned the material by things through like essays has just become obsolete. You have to now do something else. Sorry.
|
Sam:
[1:45:40]
| And in many ways, the methods of teaching are sometimes obsolete as well. Like, you know, I've mentioned before my son, Alex, who's just woken up and showed up as I'm recording here is doing, is teaching himself, you know, game development. This is AI assisted. You know, he's using AIs to like, okay, how do I do blah? And they will give him code and they will tell him and they will do things. But he's still learning how to do it. But it's AI assisted because it's a tool that's out there now.
|
Sam:
[1:46:15]
| And it would be stupid and counterproductive to pretend it's not. But instead, you have to learn what it's good for, what it's not, how to know when it's taking you in the wrong direction, how to double check it, how to do this, how to do that. And like if you were testing somebody on their game development skills, guess what? You know, please generate this standard piece of code that an AI could spit out perfectly in five seconds is not a good test. You know and and there's going to be a lot more in-person stuff obviously like where you want to know somebody knows something you're going to have to not do it asynchronously you're going to have to do it in in person or in a way that like lets you in real time go back and forth with them Now, AI is going to be able to do that soon, too. Like, I can develop, I can do my AI clone that will answer for me and look like me and whatever. Anyway, the point is, it is never a solution to sort of stick your head in the sand, try to prohibit the technology, try to avoid the technology. Oh, gee, no, you have to embrace it and figure out what the world's going to look like with that there.
|
Sam:
[1:47:44]
| Which, by the way, another story I haven't followed, but Australia apparently just passed a law saying you have to be 16 for social media. That's not, it's not going to work. It's, I, I, I recognize the things they may be trying to achieve with that. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. Sorry. It's going to have, it's going to have unintended consequences that they did not want. And at the same time, it's not going to work to solve the problems that they hoped it would solve.
|
Sam:
[1:48:16]
| And hopefully Australia will be a nice experimental bed for that, that will stop other countries from trying similar stupid things before it's too late. So sorry. Anyway, I'm done now. Thanks everybody. Like I said, I've got family stuff in the afternoon. I'll get this podcast out sometime. Hopefully Yvonne will be back next week. Hopefully his wife's injury will heal. I mean, it's going to require some, some treatment apparently. Maybe Yvonne will tell us more next week. But anyway, get well soon, Juana. And we'll see Yvonne back next time. Thanks, everybody. Have a great week. We'll talk to you next time. And oh, it's December now. So starting next week, I'm going to start bugging people about our year-end shows that are coming up, predictions and stuff. And I'll set up a Google Doc for people to give things they want us to do predictions on. I guess I just started it now, but I'll start it for real next time. Okay. Bye, folks. Oh, I was about to just hit the stop button. I need to hit the outro. We need the song. Have a good week. Goodbye.
|
Break:
[1:49:32]
| Thank you.
|
Sam:
[1:50:01]
| Thank you. Okay, now I'm hitting spot. Spot? I'm hitting spot? No, don't hit spot. Spot's a good dog. Here, I'm hitting stop. And Alex is hitting me. I'm hitting stop.
| |
|
