Sam:
[0:00]
| And now we got this boom. Okay. Shall we just go?
|
Ivan:
[0:07]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[0:09]
| Yes. Okay. Here comes. I almost forgot that button. Here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, December 14th, 2024. It is just before 1830 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Inter. Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:51]
| Hello. Hi.
|
Sam:
[0:54]
| You sound exhausted.
|
Ivan:
[0:55]
| Dude, seriously. how would i not be fucking exhausted i mean are.
|
Sam:
[1:03]
| You kidding me we're gonna do our butt first for first which is just our own stuff and then we'll get into newsy stuff in the next two segments so yvonne what's been going on that's exhausting you.
|
Ivan:
[1:14]
| You know that aside from my wife being sick Aside from me.
|
Sam:
[1:23]
| Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:24]
| What the hell? I'll just put it on speaker here. This could be on the show. Hello. Yes, you're on the podcast right now. So say hi to everybody.
|
Juana:
[1:34]
| Hi, everybody.
|
Sam:
[1:36]
| Hi, Wada.
|
Juana:
[1:37]
| We are live from my bed.
|
Ivan:
[1:43]
| Sam said hi. You can't hear him. I'm sorry. But what? I'm sorry. But what's going on?
|
Juana:
[1:50]
| Were you medically able to attend your event on the day you purchased your insurance plan? No, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:57]
| On the day you purchased it? Yes.
|
Juana:
[2:00]
| But I didn't go to the event.
|
Ivan:
[2:02]
| On the day you purchased it, were you able to attend the event? The answer is yes. On the day you bought it, you could go. But now you can't.
|
Juana:
[2:12]
| Is the patient included on this plan? Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:17]
| Okay i i i all right can i can i get back to recording a podcast at this point.
|
Juana:
[2:24]
| Thank you so much.
|
Ivan:
[2:25]
| All right you're welcome okay bye bye, One of the things that my wife is doing right now is filing, you know, I will say she bought tickets to go to a concert next Friday. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:40]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:41]
| It is very impractical to go to, she can't go really medically. She can't go. Her leg needs to be elevated and needs to be elevated for an extended period of time. So, so she can't go to a concert. I will say that I usually, you know, you go to, she bought it on ticket.
|
Sam:
[2:58]
| For those tuning in for the first time, if they're already a couple of weeks ago, your wife had an Achilles tendon injury. And then last week she had surgery for it.
|
Ivan:
[3:07]
| That's correct. Okay. And so she, she had surgery, so she, she cannot really, her mobility is severely restricted at this moment. And so my wife had bought these tickets to a concert recent times. It must've been in October. where I really, when my wife goes to buy tickets to a concert, I really shouldn't let her buy tickets to a concert. And the reason I say this is because I keep thinking we're going to go to a music concert and we're not talking for a international superstar. We're talking for a medium star, but not one that is like, it's not like Madonna or something, right?
|
Sam:
[3:50]
| You weren't doing the Taylor Swift concert.
|
Ivan:
[3:52]
| Exactly. This is not the Taylor Swift concert or anything of the sort. Okay. And my wife, for some reason, just always buys whatever the hell the most expensive tickets that are available. And it's just an eye-watering price every time. I'm just like, I figure 200 and some odd bucks for a couple of cups. No, $700. Wait, why are we paying $700 to see Joe Blow? I mean, what are we doing? What are we doing? it but this time i almost always ticket master aside from the fees and other shit the ticket master adds because you know ticket master gets shit for a good reason i mean you see the price for an event and then on top of that fees this that i mean it just it's just so much on top of it okay all right it's crazy and one of the things they also sell is this insurance and the insurance is not cheap okay and i'm i always usually fuck this i'm not buying the stupid insurance right but my wife if she's doing it bought the insurance and i was like and.
|
Sam:
[4:59]
| This time it came in.
|
Ivan:
[5:01]
| Handy yes it did okay now now i will say this that like every insurer and you know we have insurance as a subject of course this guy you know what happened finally the claim was not easy okay and so she is going through right now the questionnaire that they have for for her to be able to secure a refund for the tickets okay, So that's part of it. And it's not easy. I mean, they're not, you know, she tried to call customer service today on a Saturday. They don't even have customer service available on Saturday. We're sometimes, well, I don't know why the hell I'm complaining about it. You know, we have way too many people that really don't need to be working on weekends. You know, so I guess it's okay. I mean, you know, that's fine. But obviously, she couldn't get through to customer service.
|
Sam:
[5:58]
| Well, also, a bunch of this crap should just be automated. It doesn't even need a human, right?
|
Ivan:
[6:03]
| Agreed. I mean, I don't really. Well. I mean, I guess it should be. But the thing is that the system, we're not very good at building user-friendly systems. In general, for that matter. Okay.
|
Sam:
[6:19]
| True, true.
|
Ivan:
[6:20]
| So, you know, especially when you've got a whole bunch of, I'm sure, executives, they're trying to make it difficult for you to really, okay, well, yeah, we want to sell this insurance, but come on, we really want to keep us, we really want to minimize claims. I mean, that's the way you make money in insurance. I mean, let's be clear. I mean, if you're doing insurance.
|
Sam:
[6:45]
| I mean, that's why that guy was killed, right?
|
Ivan:
[6:49]
| Well. In his case, I'm still, let's be clear. I don't know why the hell that guy killed him. They didn't even have a policy with his insurance company. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell, you know, I mean, what created in his head a vendetta against the insurance industry.
|
Sam:
[7:07]
| Sorry, sorry. I didn't want to move on to the real topics sooner.
|
Ivan:
[7:11]
| And we may not even talk about that. Between the surgery, between me having to be now on another round of antibiotics due to the CT scan results that I got from the previous week, between the condo board, for which I'm not going to go into details, but the bottom line is that it got to the point where the prize is not worth it. There is no point in me just... You know, there are certain battles in life that are winnable, but they're not worth the fight. And this got to a point where at this point in my life where that was one of them. And I just thought that. So I quit. I told him, fuck you, whatever.
|
Sam:
[7:55]
| And just to remind people just last week, I asked you, why don't you quit? And you gave a whole bunch of reasons why you wouldn't. And then like a week later, you're out.
|
Ivan:
[8:03]
| Well, the reason that the, I will say that probably what tipped it to me for me, there were two things that tipped it. One was when the doctors called me and told me that I had to go back on, on medication. And I'm realizing how this is impacting my, my health in general. Okay. And I, I'm just like.
|
Sam:
[8:26]
| Cause the, cause the, the thing you had is potentially aggravated by stress.
|
Ivan:
[8:31]
| Yes. But that doesn't help. And you know, there's a new board member that is on the board and I'm like trying to see if I could find a way to work with this person. And it became very evident within with my discussions that that just wasn't really feasible. And we've had before where we've had challenges that have come from the outside, but the board has been unified. If I got a divided board together with an outside challenge, then that makes it far more difficult. And so when, when everything just from the last time we talked about to that point piled up, I had also, I also remembered that I had made a commitment that look at some point after a lot of things that to improve the community happened, I was going to quit, but I was hoping to pass the baton to someone you liked. no no it's not that not necessarily to more qualified people and i'll say that flat out because someone you approved.
|
Sam:
[9:36]
| Of let's put it this way.
|
Ivan:
[9:37]
| Listen i have i know people that i've worked with that are qualified that i don't necessarily like i will say flat out for example when i worked at hp i did not like mark hurd our ceo and i thought he was eminently qualified for the job at the same time so no they're not they're not they're not the same i i i think that there was a combination of both in this case and so i was just like but but you know what it wasn't worth it so so i did that but i also went on a business trip okay you know i had to go on a business trip which this was very complicated as well you know having to have like my mom be here my my my mother law be here having somebody else help our you know our our our i don't know i shouldn't call her it'd be she's she's more than a cleaning lady we have our our basically the person that comes and helps us at the house also drove manu to school a couple of days this week okay she's i mean look she's calling her a a cleaning lady is really way way way me undervaluing her work she is that does a hell of a lot more than that. She helps me organize. She helps me take care of stuff. Hell, you know what? With all this shit going on, she put up the Christmas tree.
|
Ivan:
[10:59]
| I mean, no. She's just, you know, She really takes, you know, and she is wonderful. She really likes my son too, which is great. So I'm like, you know, she is like, oh, at this point, if I, if she, if she moves away or something, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'll, I'll have a fucking heart attack. Okay. All right. Because, you know, she's, she's, she's a blessing. Okay. We'll say that, you know, but, but she, but the business trip taking care of, I don't meet, you know, me flying up. I mean, come back. I have to pick them up at school. I have to take the school. I got to take care of them. I got to serve breakfast to my wife in bed. I got to serve lunch. I got to serve dinner. I had, I got, I got to try to work out fucking. I did go work out today. I haven't gone to work out in two weeks. And I said, look, I don't think it's going to be helpful to my health to not work out. So I did go work out. I made a point of doing that because I think that if I'm not healthy, then that's not helping anybody. So I'm taking my medication. I'm trying to work out. I want it worked out, but I'm exhausted, Sam. This is fucking, you know, I'm on call right now, 24 seven.
|
Sam:
[12:09]
| Yup. Yup.
|
Ivan:
[12:10]
| So, but I will say this.
|
Sam:
[12:14]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[12:14]
| I stopped popping Tylenols every day after I resigned from the board.
|
Sam:
[12:19]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[12:20]
| So that was definitely the right call. Cause there's give, it was giving me a fucking tension headache and I wasn't realizing how much it was really like stress you know that how much stress it was generating good so good so i did that.
|
Sam:
[12:36]
| Okay my turn for my but first and.
|
Ivan:
[12:40]
| This is the house on fire i forgot i forgot for god i meant to do.
|
Sam:
[12:46]
| That no i.
|
Ivan:
[12:47]
| I mean always a way of organizing and cleaning the house is basically just uh you know burn it down burn it down i mean look nothing to take care of afterwards that's for sure there.
|
Sam:
[12:58]
| You go nothing to worry about at all after you do that.
|
Ivan:
[13:01]
| Nah it's fine okay.
|
Sam:
[13:03]
| No the thing i had was actually not on my agenda before we started this podcast.
|
Ivan:
[13:09]
| Okay but.
|
Sam:
[13:11]
| Now i feel like i have something to say about it.
|
Ivan:
[13:14]
| Which is?
|
Sam:
[13:15]
| And that is Apple's center stage feature.
|
Ivan:
[13:19]
| Ow!
|
Sam:
[13:21]
| Because, you know, if you're listening to this as a podcast later, you don't realize because it's audio only. But if you're watching on YouTube, either live or later, you'll see the video of us. And Yvonne has this center stage feature turned on. And all I can say is it's just been moving constantly. The whole time we've been doing this so far, it's just constantly zooming. in, zooming out, moving to the left, moving to the right. Now, Yvonne's not moving around a lot. He's just sitting there, but it's just going wild. And I'm just like, okay, the center stage sucks. I'm getting dizzy here looking at Yvonne as the feature tries to keep him centered. And again, if he was, the feature is intended to, you could move around a bit and it keeps you centered, which is fine but it's like zooming in and out and and.
|
Ivan:
[14:15]
| Even tiny movies do on tv you know you realize right that they constantly do that in order to try to like keep your attention like on what's going on i mean i feel.
|
Sam:
[14:28]
| I feel like i'm on a boat in rough seas.
|
Ivan:
[14:33]
| Oh my goodness then i'll definitely keep then i'll definitely keep the sun from now on.
|
Sam:
[14:38]
| For sure man no it's like you know i understand the need for the feature but it i i i have questions about the current implementation if it's moving this much when yvonne isn't moving this much like if he if he was like walking.
|
Ivan:
[14:54]
| Around or guess that the microphone has something to do with it and and yeah now you know yeah i i here we go yeah i i do think that for some reason the the i'm trying to because the.
|
Sam:
[15:06]
| Microphone was in the image.
|
Ivan:
[15:07]
| Yeah yeah and i think that that is like kind of like messing with with it now i moved you see there you go.
|
Sam:
[15:14]
| Yeah like if you move and it adjusts no problem but it was like you're just sitting still and it's just like.
|
Ivan:
[15:22]
| There i know that there is a there there is a here i thought there was somewhere where i could adjust the zoom which obviously that would reduce how much movement it does.
|
Sam:
[15:33]
| You don't have to spend time messing with it right now.
|
Ivan:
[15:37]
| There we go. There we go.
|
Sam:
[15:40]
| I just wanted to complain about a silly tech feature.
|
Ivan:
[15:43]
| Yeah, actually, you know what? That's exactly what it was.
|
Sam:
[15:47]
| What was it?
|
Ivan:
[15:47]
| It was the Zoom. I had it set to a setting that was making it. If you look now, I'm moving.
|
Sam:
[15:53]
| Yeah, much better.
|
Ivan:
[15:54]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had the Zoom setting set. I had the Zoom setting in a way that it was making it move around a lot.
|
Sam:
[16:02]
| Because we've recorded this show with video for like a long time. And this has not been a problem for a long time. I think the very first time you got a computer with center stage, it was doing something funky. But not since then. So you were messing with the settings.
|
Ivan:
[16:15]
| I was messing with the settings. And I had it. Now that I did adjust the Zoom setting, now it's not doing that anymore. So there you go.
|
Sam:
[16:23]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[16:24]
| So that's why.
|
Sam:
[16:26]
| Do I have?
|
Ivan:
[16:27]
| Listen, you know, talking about Apple, you know, since you brought up Apple stuff.
|
Sam:
[16:33]
| Okay, go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[16:34]
| Okay, all right. You know, a whole bunch of people, like a whole bunch of AI features Apple's been rolling out like this week specifically.
|
Sam:
[16:43]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[16:43]
| A whole bunch of different like takes on what things are doing or not. There's one that was funny. There was somebody that, and I saw this dialogue as well. There is this new Apple feature about images. I haven't I haven't played with it yet, but I but I heard, you know, how downloading. However, I will say that somebody was bitching about the dialogue because the dialogue said, hey, features are downloading over your please stay connected to the Wi-Fi to to do that. And they're like, well, I'm over Ethernet, bitch. What the fuck are you telling me about Wi-Fi? And I realize that that that dialogue is kind of like a generic dialogue that they have that I think actually the same one is on the phone when it's dialing. i.
|
Sam:
[17:24]
| I was gonna say you're like wait on the phone no.
|
Ivan:
[17:27]
| You're talking somebody on their mac on their mac yeah so so and they were like complaining about it and it's like yeah it's you know that so they have this generic dialogue you know that just refers to wi-fi because reality is that right now most people, don't connect their computers.
|
Sam:
[17:45]
| No hard.
|
Ivan:
[17:46]
| Connected to to an ethernet port.
|
Sam:
[17:48]
| It's just that's.
|
Ivan:
[17:49]
| An oddity now.
|
Sam:
[17:50]
| Not not if it's like if you have a specific reason where it matters to you like i know like some hardcore gamers always want to be directly on ethernet like blah blah blah there's some other use cases where it really matters but for the most part for normal usage like it doesn't matter it doesn't matter and why would you bother i mean even if even for a desktop computer but honestly desktop computers are much rarer now than they used to be most people like if you're thinking about having a new computer you got a laptop look i have mine you connected you have a you have a desktop you i do have a that.
|
Ivan:
[18:28]
| I do have a studio but but the reason more than anything that i have a connected is because it's super convenient i mean the hub is like right there it's not.
|
Sam:
[18:34]
| Exactly Like.
|
Ivan:
[18:35]
| I mean, you know, it's not like I'm having to like run, do an ethernet run somewhere, whatever, whatnot. No, it's, I mean, the thing's right there. And I'm like, okay, well, why the hell not when I plug it in, when it's going to be obviously when it's right there, but it's right there.
|
Sam:
[18:50]
| But like, honestly, most people like, you know, this last time I got a computer, I got a laptop and I'm using it as a desktop, right? 90, 90% plus of the time I'm using it as a desktop. I have it plugged in to a full-size keyboard, a mouse, three monitors, some external hard drives, blah, blah, blah, but, I can unplug it and go sit on the couch whenever I feel like it.
|
Ivan:
[19:14]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[19:14]
| You know, and it gives you that flexibility and blah, blah, blah. Could I have gotten a desktop only set up for less? Yes. I mean, I could have also spent just as much and gotten a more powerful desktop.
|
Ivan:
[19:27]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[19:28]
| But like it's with the trade-offs, at this point, it just makes sense most of the time. Now, honestly, like, would I have thought differently if like the most recently released laptop was older and the most recently released desktop was newer? Maybe like it just happened at the time I was buying it. It was the reverse of that. But, you know, we're we're we're buying my wife a replacement computer probably any time now. And she's also going to do a laptop and do the same thing with a setup so that she can plug it into her desk because it just makes sense. It like gives you that additional flexibility. Like if you have both, if you have a desktop and a laptop, then, oh, okay. Then maybe, yeah, it makes sense to also have the desk. Like it depends on your use cases and what you're going to be using it for. But of course, having both costs more money than having one.
|
Sam:
[20:23]
| And it's really like, if you're going to go for the desktop, the pure desktop, it's like, okay, do you really have the use case that is 100% Like you are going to put it in one place and that's where you're always going to use it. And you know that and you never need the flexibility, you know? So I don't know. And so and of course, once you're like in a laptop configuration, I mean, I suppose you could like have your docking situation set up to switch to Ethernet when you're docked. But like for the most part, I mean, the default is wireless. The default is wireless for everything, even if you've got the desktop. Like you said, you're convenient. you're it's right there i mean it's right there like like less than.
|
Ivan:
[21:05]
| A foot and a half away but if i had to but right if i had to if it was in another room where there wasn't an ethernet run right now i wouldn't do it.
|
Sam:
[21:13]
| Yeah you just use the wireless you wouldn't bother running no no.
|
Ivan:
[21:17]
| No no i don't think so no no.
|
Sam:
[21:18]
| Yeah and and i think that's true for for most folks like you know i don't know like my my i finally like my my daughter for a while did end up using a wired connection into her desktop computer because she was using it for games and she was constantly complaining about like you know well.
|
Ivan:
[21:39]
| Dropouts and stuff yeah.
|
Sam:
[21:40]
| Well not because yeah lag lag dropouts just like and things that like for my usage like i would never even notice like if i'm watching like streaming video it's all buffered and i would never even notice like if it hiccuped for a half a second or something but if she's playing a you know live internet game with people all over the world and she has that kind of glitch then she gets annoyed so right of course of course unlike you who would worry about like properly running a cable i i just have a cable running across the floor through the hallway down the hall into her room yeah i i you know i i don't no no.
|
Ivan:
[22:25]
| No no no no i i i you.
|
Sam:
[22:28]
| Know the.
|
Ivan:
[22:28]
| Ethernet cable that's here i had to do it the the actual box that has the fiber coming into the house is in a hallway okay and so the thing is that for me to even like set up my wi-fi router and other stuff or whatever there just wasn't really a place for there in the hallway it was just it was just a i could have but it was just it was inconvenient and so i had somebody go and run an ethernet cable from that location where no matter what what service came in this is the place where everything came into the house from you know from outside okay cables wise whether it was cable tv whatever so i just had him look run i need a.
|
Sam:
[23:16]
| Cable from there is all about cable management and making the cables invisible i'm all about the massive tangle of cables where everything is accessible at all times and i can change it at will but when i do want to change it i have to untangle everything because it's all like you know a huge mass of random wires all like scattered all over my desk you know so yeah anyway.
|
Ivan:
[23:43]
| I will say the cable management is okay right now. It could be better. I mean, I do have like, because I did set on my 2-EA table.
|
Sam:
[23:53]
| I will say when I got the new microphone a couple weeks ago, I did make sure the cable for that one was attached to the little arm that I have the microphone on.
|
Ivan:
[24:05]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[24:05]
| And then routed behind the computer. Now, it's not all taped or whatever, but it's not just hanging straight down from my microphone.
|
Ivan:
[24:13]
| Well, the one thing I said that I, a big thing I did is that there are like on this desk, on this desk, there are places where you can like, you know, so to put the cables through, go hidden. But, but also I had three power strips put in on the, on the table itself. So that way I don't have to be like hunting for a plug or something or whatever. there are on the desk there are there are there are plugs that are easily accessible.
|
Sam:
[24:40]
| For anybody.
|
Ivan:
[24:41]
| To get which is very convenient at this point but anyway.
|
Sam:
[24:45]
| All right shall we shall we take a break and move on yeah.
|
Ivan:
[24:48]
| We need to.
|
Sam:
[24:48]
| Okay we will take a break and when we come back we will have a little bit more serious more newsy topics starting with yvonne picking but first here is popular. Yeah, Yvonne's camera swinging around again. Okay, here, this break. He's trying to make me dizzy. He's intentionally trying to make me dizzy. Okay, this break is popular wiki of the day. Here you go.
|
Break:
[25:17]
| Do do do. Hello, this is Noral Sally. I'm here to let you know about Sam the Curmudgeon's other podcast, the Wiki of the Day podcasts. Wiki of the Day comes in three varieties, popular, random, and featured. Each highlights a new Wikipedia article each day, they just pick the articles differently. This week on popular Wiki of the Day, you would have heard this summary for Kshamuraju.
|
Break:
[25:44]
| Kshamuraju, born May 29, 2006, also known as Kshdi, is an Indian chess grandmaster and the reigning world chess champion. He is the youngest undisputed world chess champion in the history of the game. A chess prodigy, Ksh is the youngest player to have surpassed a FIDE rating of 2,750, doing so at the age of 17, and was the third youngest to have surpassed 2,700 at the age of 16. He earned the title of Grandmaster at the age of 12 and remains the third youngest Grandmaster in the history of chess. He won a team gold and an individual gold medal at the 45th Chess Olympiad in 2024, as well as a team bronze and an individual gold medal at the 44th Chess Olympiad in 2022. At the age of 18, he became the youngest candidates tournament winner and, subsequently, the World Chess Champion by defeating Dingler in 7.5-6.5 at the World Chess Championship 2024. At the junior level, he is a multiple gold medalist at the World Youth Championship and the Asian Youth Chess Championship. Gush is also a silver medalist at the Asian Games. That's all there is to it. See? Fun, entertaining, educational. In short.
|
Break:
[27:04]
| Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on your podcast playing software of choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com to check out our archives. Now back to curmudgeon's corner. Do do do.
|
Sam:
[27:20]
| For those of you on the live stream, Yvonne had to step away for a bit, probably to do something with his wife.
|
Ivan:
[27:26]
| And I heard a scream, but apparently everything's okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[27:30]
| Everything's okay. Good. So Yvonne, well, we are back. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to start?
|
Ivan:
[27:37]
| Okay, I'm sorry, but you said, oh, I'm not going to talk about insurance. I'm looking at our topic list. It's quite thin.
|
Sam:
[27:43]
| No, I said maybe we wouldn't. I said, I didn't know whether we were going to talk about the CEO killer again this week or not. We did mention him a little bit last week, but they caught the guy this week.
|
Ivan:
[27:53]
| So, well, I will.
|
Sam:
[27:55]
| Is that your topic? Is that what you want to talk about next? Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[27:58]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[27:58]
| Go, go.
|
Ivan:
[28:00]
| I think that.
|
Sam:
[28:01]
| So what's the update?
|
Ivan:
[28:02]
| I mean, there's not much of it. Well, the main update. Okay. They caught the guy. And he doesn't even have United. He didn't even have United healthcare insurance.
|
Sam:
[28:15]
| So he did have a chronic back issue.
|
Ivan:
[28:17]
| He did have a chronic back issue. but like maybe he was rejected by some other company. He did not come from a, he, no, he was a family of means. It's not, there is.
|
Sam:
[28:29]
| You know, I was going to say that it's not like, even if the insurance company did screw him, he comes from a background where they could probably have absorbed the cost. They were a fairly wealthy family.
|
Ivan:
[28:42]
| If I remember, they were a fairly wealthy family. So that, that, that wasn't a consideration. now and prominent.
|
Sam:
[28:51]
| Too like there were like elected political.
|
Ivan:
[28:53]
| Officials in maryland and such yes that are.
|
Sam:
[28:55]
| Related to him.
|
Ivan:
[28:56]
| I mean that doesn't mean that a person can't be radicalized about a subject yes which seems to be the case but i i will say that the, the thing that most disturbed has disturbed me and i've seen already some discussions devolve into really contentious discussions related to the assassination of this guy, is how many people are like...
|
Sam:
[29:27]
| Rah, rah, good.
|
Ivan:
[29:28]
| Yeah, yes.
|
Sam:
[29:31]
| And I mean, I've heard a middle position as well, which is like, there's the rah, rah, good. Glad it happened, folks. There's the, oh my God, what are you talking about? Murder is bad. This is only harmful, blah, blah, blah. The middle position is sort of like, Well, of course, murder is bad and it's probably counterintuitive, but maybe don't live your life in such a way that when you're murdered, like half the country is like.
|
Ivan:
[29:59]
| Oh, well, you know, this is my problem. The problem is that this is a.
|
Sam:
[30:05]
| And we did talk a little bit about this last week, but let's keep going.
|
Ivan:
[30:09]
| But the thing is that I find the judgment very... That it doesn't really look at how the world is in terms of how many leaders, people in industries and things make decisions of all sorts that result in eventually people one way or another dying or injured. And that there is no, probably no one, no leader on, no president, no, no leader of any large organization that doesn't do decisions that are harmful. And my whole thing is that when, where is your line to which ones are okay to just murder or not? Because you're jumping up and down and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, good. He's dead. And I'm like, okay, so where are you drawing the line? What's your line? I mean, because here's the thing. I'm one that's opposed to the death penalty. Okay. I'm one that, so if you're opposed to the death penalty.
|
Sam:
[31:26]
| We have talked before about how upset you were about the execution of Saddam Hussein. Oh, you remember. And we have talked about on this show how neither one of us were entirely comfortable with how the bin Laden thing went down either. How it would have been better if we captured him.
|
Ivan:
[31:44]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[31:45]
| You know, and so, yes.
|
Ivan:
[31:48]
| So if I don't, if I'm not comfortable with any of those, why the fuck would I be comfortable with this? And why are so many people comfortable with it? I just don't, and no, and no, beyond gleeful. I understand the, the, I understand more than most of these people how difficult it is to deal with insurance companies because for full disclosure, and I guess I haven't discussed this before, but the subject is whatever.
|
Sam:
[32:14]
| You mentioned it a little bit before.
|
Ivan:
[32:14]
| I mentioned it a little bit, but let me be clear. The reason my father went to jail specifically was because of issues with health insurance companies. And his grievance with the health insurers was that, and I will say that the grievance itself was valid. His solution was the problem. His grievance was that insurers had decided that, well, we're getting squeezed by cost. So here's our solution. You're a pharmacist and you're selling drug X. Drug X costs $5. It used to be, we would pay you to dispense the drug $5 plus 30%. Okay. Cover your cost, overhead, profit, whatever, you know, so you get that. So then one day they said, well, we'll pay you five plus 15%. Okay. And these numbers are close to reality. I'm not, I'm not making these numbers up. We'll pay you five plus 15.
|
Ivan:
[33:17]
| Ah, that's too much. we'll pay you 5% plus 0% plus a $4 dispensing fee, no matter what the price of the drug is. Okay? So if the drug is $1,000, you make $4. Okay? Ah, nah, nah. That's too generous. We're going to pay you... Oh, the average wholesale price. There is a publication that shows these. Average wholesale prices for drugs.
|
Ivan:
[33:48]
| We'll pay you the average wholesale price minus 10%, minus 10%, right? Okay. So you have to be, you know, by the way, very difficult to get that. Oh no, we'll pay you now average wholesale price minus 15%. So the insurance companies decided, well, the problem, the way to solve our problems is just to just say, oh, you, you want to, you want to do business with us. you have to treat us as a lost leader. So the only companies that could do that are major chains. And they could also negotiate with the drug companies to sell them the drugs at discounts that would offset these things. And so it's a very difficult environment. It's a very difficult environment. They go and they do that. And my father, because he was very aggrieved about this, went about a way to try to solve this in a way that wound up landing him in jail. And for good reason.
|
Sam:
[34:43]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[34:44]
| You know what? I... And by the way, one of the insurers, yeah, it was bought by UnitedHealthcare. And you know what? I still think that it's preposterous and ridiculous to be okay with the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, even though they landed my dad in jail. So everybody here that goes, oh, you know, whatever, which for the most part, most people have not had relatives die in the hands of health insurers. Okay. And they go and they give me this shit. And I've spent literally the last 20, 30 years because I had to take over my dad's business. I got deposed by the insurers nonstop because they were going after the company. And I had to wind up in court, spent probably back then. Jesus Christ. I would be retired by now if I had spent probably a couple of hundred thousand dollars in legal fees back then in the 90s.
|
Ivan:
[35:43]
| You know, literally went bankrupt. You know, I mean, we literally went bankrupt over this. So what people tell me all these grievances that they've got, and I've had to afterwards fight for my son's coverage, fight for this, fight for that. I've spent literally 30 years fighting the insurance companies. And all these fucking people saying this. I'm sorry, that's not the solution. The problems in the system are it's in many cases, man, it's not even a fucking, you know, the insurance companies to a certain way, they are a vehicle to institute a lot of fucked up policies. OK, because one of the biggest problems that you've got with with insurance is that right now, mostly it's employer provided. OK, I or the government pays for it. So you've got to a couple of perverse things going on here, because, by the way, the companies decide in most cases what is covered by the insurance plan.
|
Sam:
[36:48]
| You mean the employers?
|
Ivan:
[36:50]
| The employer. The employer.
|
Sam:
[36:52]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[36:53]
| Okay. And the insurance company is there just to enforce what the employer said that they will cover. So many of those decisions wind up at the employer's feet. Now, the Affordable Care Act did put a lot of locks and restrictions. So this wouldn't be as draconian as it was because people, well, nobody remembers anything. Matt, before the ACA, the fucking restrictions that companies could put on insurance were nuts. No preventive care. You wouldn't get a dime, you know, no preventive care. You would not get covered for any preventive, you know, I know so many plans that would not cover any preventive care at all, at all.
|
Sam:
[37:48]
| Which one of those things, by the way, this is one of those rules that makes sense from a money-making perspective, potentially, but is completely backwards from an optimizing healthcare perspective.
|
Ivan:
[38:01]
| Exactly. For the nation. That's correct. Yes. Absolutely. Okay? No preventive care. Lifetime limits. So what the fuck does that mean, a lifetime limit? Say you got a chronic disease. You got to. The insurance company spent a million dollars. They would say, oh, no, you're fucked. We're not covering another dime. See ya. Bye. You know, you're fucked. Die. See you later. which is one of the reasons why so many people used to go a lot more often bankrupt from medical care in the past.
|
Sam:
[38:37]
| And by the way, it still happens more in this country than anywhere else in the world.
|
Ivan:
[38:40]
| But it happens a lot less as the affordable care.
|
Sam:
[38:43]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[38:43]
| Okay. Pre-existing conditions. Oh, you have this, you're moving over to us. Ah, you're fucked. You're not getting covered.
|
Ivan:
[38:53]
| There are so many perverse things, But there and there's still a lot of perverse things, unfortunately, that are still going on. You know, there was there was an article recently about they were talking about certain practices the United Health Care does for Medicaid specifically. OK, related to how they get contracted to manage Medicaid in certain states. And one of the things that they do.
|
Ivan:
[39:18]
| So so the way that a statement, this is one way of doing it instead of paying for actual costs. okay which a lot of employers for example i know that i believe that my company and a few companies that i've worked for the the insurance administers the plan but they only pay actual expenses okay so so they pay a management fee to the insurer okay and then they they will pay what actually is spent okay so and which is a reason why of course they have that there are certain incentives to save money, which is this is where this whole thing gets perverse. OK, and so but with Medicaid, it also happens in a way where, OK, we're going to give you a your Medicaid for the state of Georgia. You're going to cover this area here. There's 300,000 Medicaid recipients. We're going to pay you $50 a month to manage their care and you get to manage the care. And so, because there is this number of subscribers at a price, they obviously have an incentive to...
|
Ivan:
[40:26]
| You know, cut costs as much as possible. So they get to keep most more, more of those $50 that are getting given every month. And, and, and the thing is, in many of these, they don't have enough health outcome targets that prevent them from saying, well, fuck this shit. Well, we'll, oh, they'll say what they cover, right? Oh, we'll cover this, this, this, and this. But there aren't enough locks in how difficult they make it to access the coverage many times. So you see, oh man, And you see so many doctors right now refusing to take Medicaid because of this, because they're like, man, they don't pay enough. We can't take these patients.
|
Ivan:
[41:06]
| We're just, you know, we're not going to take them. They're not paying us enough. I can't make, you know, we can't do this. So the thing is that if they measured however more health outcomes, hey, this population right now has this incidence of diabetes this incidence of this we have this many hospitalizations we have this you know there are certain metrics because hospitalizations can also get tricky metric because hey what do you do oh don't let him go into a fucking hospital let's just throw him out right you have to you know anyway so yeah so there are all these perverse things in the entire system that make it that that you wind up with the system and look the aca tried to do a lot of things to to do this well hell hillary care was going to do a hell of a lot more to do that but the reality is that that i mean when obama went to do this you know he did a lot and as usual and as i've learned my experience is that you can do a whole lot to make people's lives better and Like a lot of people just won't fucking appreciate it or really understand that you're the person that did it.
|
Ivan:
[42:18]
| You know, this is, this is where we are right now. And the system is perverse. Okay. And, and I think that a lot of times laying blame on the, many times I feel that the insurance companies are the ones that are kind of like, uh, in the middle of all of this because men, you know, Hey, what better way of shifting the blame from me doing anything as a government I don't know. Than to hire them to run it. And so they take all the slings and shots.
|
Sam:
[42:48]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[42:50]
| You know. It's just a fucked up system.
|
Sam:
[42:55]
| Agreed. Agreed. No.
|
Ivan:
[42:57]
| And if we start deciding. Well where do we start the murder list. Of all the blame. Then you know what. Maybe you can start with a fucking GOP. Assholes who fucking block any meaningful health reform. Over the last 40 years. How about we start with those. if you want to start a murder list, okay? And I'm not advocating one.
|
Sam:
[43:16]
| I was going to say, let's not go there.
|
Ivan:
[43:19]
| I'm not advocating one.
|
Sam:
[43:20]
| But you could still say, and I've heard people argue about UnitedHealth versus the other insurance companies. UnitedHealth has a reputation for being especially ruthless even in comparison to their competition.
|
Ivan:
[43:35]
| Oh, fucking bullshit. I have UnitedHealthcare right now. Let me tell you something. I've had United. I've had Aetna. I've had Cigna. I've had, listen, I've had everybody bullshit. Listen, my experience has been with UnitedHealthcare that they have compared to like about the last five insurers. They have made it easier for me to submit claims. They have, they actually recently, okay, went and there was like, there was a thing with my son's speech therapy where all of a sudden they were paying me different. they have they have assigned care advisors and they have somebody that went and like fought my case for about four or five months and get they gave me my money back and i didn't even do anything other than call them up and say hey this is wrong this isn't the way and they said no well you know what we're gonna we're gonna file a case we're gonna do this we're gonna do that and they gave my fucking money back i had a whole bunch of other smaller insurers basically like told me to go fuck myself over stuff and that they didn't make it easy for you to submit a claim or they paid or they processed them late or they never processed. I mean.
|
Ivan:
[44:42]
| I will say that in terms of admin, that UnitedHealthcare is far superior than most of their bigger competitors, okay? The doctors, the people that have told me more that UnitedHealthcare is more ruthless, it's more on their end is with doctors, okay? But in terms of the consumer, I will say that having had them the last.
|
Ivan:
[45:07]
| You know, I've had them, you know, I've had so many freaking providers that honestly they've been the one that's been the easiest to work with and so i'm like you know, i i shit man i'm like man you guys are pissed off at united healthcare but you're man i mean i'm sorry but blue cross is worse etna's worse why i go after those guys i i don't i i just It was just very arbitrary. Okay, first of all, like we've said this before, how the death sentence is very arbitrary in general. It's why I'm not for a fucking death sentence. It's always been arbitrary. It's never executed fairly.
|
Sam:
[45:57]
| And I'll add, the only real, like... If, if what you're after is revenge. Okay. Like I see that, but if you're actually.
|
Ivan:
[46:10]
| But this guy wasn't even after revenge.
|
Sam:
[46:12]
| That was not, but I'm saying more generally, like in terms of this one, but also death penalty writ large, also just hell violent solutions to problems writ large, including most wars, you know, almost always the violence actually ends up making things worse. not actually improving the situation and solving the problem. You know, you may eventually get to something, but I'm not convinced there's very many situations at all where the violence is actually the optimal solution as opposed to figuring out something more civilly. But, you know, in terms of the healthcare situation specifically, and we touched on this last week, it's not like killing this guy is going to suddenly have united health change a whole bunch of their policies i mean you mentioned maybe some people will make some decisions differently on the margins but it's not like they're suddenly going to be like you know a whole bunch of things that we were rejecting last week we're going to accept this week because you killed the ceo that.
|
Ivan:
[47:20]
| Now yeah Yeah, exactly. But look, in the history of revenge, how has revenge really worked out over history? Just revenge doesn't work out very well.
|
Sam:
[47:35]
| The old phrase is an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
|
Ivan:
[47:40]
| Yeah. It's just not a solution. It's just not a solution. And, you know, yeah, I mean, I think there are, Well, I'm usually pretty consistent on topics. I've been very consistent on this topic. I don't think that I, you know, I mean, sure, I think I may be very a little bit on some, but I don't on this, like you mentioned, I wasn't comfortable when they when they hung Saddam like that. I wasn't comfortable with killing bin Laden. I'm not comfortable with this. And I wasn't comfortable with them trying to assassinate Trump either.
|
Sam:
[48:21]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[48:21]
| So no so but but look man if anything that i learned over my odyssey over here my my personal stuff and whatever with people's vitriol lately it's just that man we are in a really really really bad era in terms of people expressing their hate and vitriol openly well.
|
Sam:
[48:49]
| And and part Part of this, too, is I think these are all related. People are very frustrated because they don't think they can get the results they want in the normal ways, in the approved ways. They've seen like years and years of, you know, we wanted X, Y, Z. We voted for whoever and it didn't happen. Whatever the thing was, you know, and depending on who you're talking to, the things they want.
|
Ivan:
[49:18]
| Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. hold on hold.
|
Sam:
[49:20]
| Yes hold on yes not.
|
Ivan:
[49:22]
| That maybe it didn't happen it's just that so many times changes to things are so small and.
|
Sam:
[49:31]
| They happen.
|
Ivan:
[49:31]
| Gradually then people don't notice them okay.
|
Sam:
[49:34]
| Yes it's like and and even when they do they don't know who to attribute the change to good or bad good or bad because right things things happen things happen with delays like you you pass a law and the effect of it happens five years later.
|
Ivan:
[49:49]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[49:50]
| You know, all of this kind of stuff. So both in terms of getting credit for good things and getting blamed for bad things, people just don't associate cause with effect. Don't blame or give credit to the right people.
|
Ivan:
[50:06]
| Nope.
|
Sam:
[50:07]
| And like you said, a lot of things happen gradually and they discount them entirely because they didn't even notice they happened. Right. It's almost like unless you have suddenly this big ceremony where on such and such date everything changes completely, people are oblivious. Unless it's bad. Unless it's bad. They notice gradual bad news.
|
Ivan:
[50:31]
| It's like the whole thing with the Affordable Care Act, right? How many people want to repeal Obamacare but love the Affordable Care Act? You're like, we're in a really shitty era in terms of, but information as well in general.
|
Sam:
[50:59]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[51:00]
| And that's, that's the bigger problem. I think it used, it used to be that 80, 90% of the people operated based on a certain number of facts that came from certain limited sources. imperfect as they may have been yep but but even like when they fucked up most of them were trying most of the major ones were trying to get the facts out but we know that they're i mean they're they're being run by humans okay so they will have they will have their bents and their slants and so forth to an era where you know the alex jones type era.
|
Sam:
[51:36]
| There was a day where it was actually like i i i'm not going to make up a percentage but a very large group of the general public and i'm talking not just college educated whatever but read a newspaper every day.
|
Ivan:
[51:54]
| Yeah like you know of all levels of education of.
|
Sam:
[51:59]
| All levels of education.
|
Ivan:
[52:01]
| Of all.
|
Sam:
[52:02]
| Like you know blue collar white collar.
|
Ivan:
[52:05]
| Yeah whatever.
|
Sam:
[52:06]
| Like you know you you got home from the mines and you read the newspaper right.
|
Ivan:
[52:11]
| You read the paper even if it's just a little bit of reading the paper it's just even if it's cruising the headlines right that and watch the same and watch the the literally like 90 got their news from the same three different 30 minute broadcast yeah three same three yeah and.
|
Sam:
[52:27]
| Look like on the one hand the proliferation of information is like incredible we've got like so many resources at our fingertips. But on the other hand, what that leads to is we've got these information bubbles. We've got a lot of confusion because people don't know who to trust, who not to trust, whatever, end up trusting the wrong people, blah, blah, blah. And so, yeah, you definitely have the information environment is very broken right now. It's very divergent, depending on what you're paying attention to, what you're not. I think also there's an education gap in terms of like people going through school and coming out and still having no freaking idea of basic civics and how things work.
|
Ivan:
[53:15]
| Well, to be fair, that happened more in the past. That happened in the past. But I think – I mean.
|
Sam:
[53:22]
| It's always been complicated, right? I don't expect everybody to know the ins and outs of congressional committees and crap.
|
Ivan:
[53:28]
| But the point specifically about where people get the news, okay, in general and the sources themselves. And it goes back to something I was like last night. I was like – my son and my wife were in bed. I had no room. I was in the living room. I couldn't find what to watch. The bucket list was on. And it reminded me one thing that Jack Nichols said that was actually accurate.
|
Sam:
[53:51]
| Which is like, by the way, you're talking about the movie, the bucket list, right?
|
Ivan:
[53:55]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[53:56]
| And which I have not seen. So I'm going to like make a little note of it. But, but I have heard as well. This is one of those like Mandela effect kind of things.
|
Ivan:
[54:07]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[54:08]
| People have pointed out that the phrase bucket list.
|
Ivan:
[54:12]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[54:12]
| Was coined by this movie in 2018. It did not exist before that. Or by the book it was based on. Was it based on a book?
|
Ivan:
[54:20]
| Yeah, it might have been.
|
Sam:
[54:21]
| No, no, it was...
|
Ivan:
[54:22]
| It was in the movie?
|
Sam:
[54:24]
| It looked... Oh, no, wait, this is the wrong movie. Not 2018. I had the year wrong. But there's another- Well, no, there's a 2018 bucket list film that's an Indian movie. That's not the one you're talking about.
|
Ivan:
[54:38]
| No, this one came out of 2007, 2008.
|
Sam:
[54:42]
| 2007, 2007. Yes, that's the one you meant. No, but that's when the phrase bucket list was coined, apparently. Or at least so I've heard. I read this on the internet and you know how true things are on the internet. If I saw it on the internet, it must be true. There's no doubt what's going on.
|
Ivan:
[54:57]
| I thought I heard it before, but be that as it may.
|
Sam:
[55:02]
| That's what people always say. I thought I heard it before. It's been around all my life.
|
Ivan:
[55:07]
| But maybe.
|
Sam:
[55:07]
| Apparently not.
|
Ivan:
[55:08]
| Okay. But be that as it may. Okay. Jack Nicholson said something that I've always reminded.
|
Sam:
[55:14]
| It's on the Wikipedia page for Bucket List. It was written. The movie was written by Justin Zakim. And Zakim coined the expression Bucket List. after he wrote his own list of things to do before I kick the bucket and shortened it to Justin's bucket list. The first item on his list was get a film made at a major studio. The list gave him the idea for the screenplay and the bucket list became his first studio film.
|
Ivan:
[55:44]
| There you go. So, okay. So he said that.
|
Sam:
[55:48]
| Man, anyway, sorry for the tangent. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[55:51]
| No, no, no. The one thing is that Jack Nichols is a, you know, is a we're talking about religion and uh and one of the things that morgan freeman tells jack nicholson is like so you're saying that 95 of the people out there are wrong jack nicholson looked back and said listen i have made my i have made my money in my business because 95 of the fucking people are wrong yes that's the reality and worse most of them think they're right um yes so that That's part of this issue with information being so... right now that it's coming from so many different sources. You basically get the situation where everybody thinks that whatever they're watching is right.
|
Sam:
[56:38]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[56:39]
| And everybody else is wrong.
|
Sam:
[56:40]
| Right. Absolutely. And it's easy to get locked into that. I mean, I fully admit like there are a set of things I watch and listen to and read. Now, I try to make it very wide, as wide as possible to try to burst some of these bubble things. But at the same time, you know, there are certain sources that, yeah, I look at them. I'm like, yeah, I'm not even going to look at that because it's trash, you know? And I know there's a group of people who think the same thing about the sources I trust, you know? But yeah, like it's the lack of a common reality is definitely a problem right now. Okay. Anything else on that? Or should we take a break and move on.
|
Ivan:
[57:23]
| Yvonne? I, okay. Unfortunately, I have been called for duty.
|
Sam:
[57:28]
| Ah, okay.
|
Ivan:
[57:30]
| I don't know if I can continue recording the show.
|
Sam:
[57:34]
| Okay, well, we can, you know, I can take a break and maybe I'll have something to say later. Or maybe not. We could just shut it off now. We could be done. I'm okay with that.
|
Ivan:
[57:44]
| We could be done. I mean, look at, look at what, I mean, look at, let me say something. I think this is the thinnest, thinnest, thinnest.
|
Sam:
[57:53]
| You know, I was going to talk about New Jersey drones.
|
Ivan:
[57:57]
| And maybe what the hell is there to say about the fucking new jersey drones hey there's a whole bunch of drones under new jersey we don't know where they came from i just read today that there's so many millions of drones flying or unauthorized space on a regular basis right now, that that you know nobody knows what the hell to do about it but i'm like okay there's drones in new jersey and they're flying nobody knows where they can they're big and they're big Like.
|
Sam:
[58:25]
| Say, I don't believe no one knows. It's just ridiculous. Of course, somebody has figured. I mean, if nothing else, the people flying them know.
|
Ivan:
[58:34]
| Well, yeah, sure. Well, at least we don't have a straight answer. We don't know.
|
Sam:
[58:39]
| Yes, we don't have a straight answer. but yeah and and and and asad like the stuff there but like like we we can we can call it i'm i'm good with that nice short show for once yeah.
|
Ivan:
[58:53]
| And and it's not you know look exigent circumstances unfortunately i i'm like right now i am a primary caregiver i have no backup i got people that want to need to eat i've just been.
|
Sam:
[59:04]
| Informed what are you talking about that's yeah i know nobody needs to eat yeah and so i probably have one over here who wants to eat too i don't know so um okay so let's let's let's let's wrap this sucker up curmudgeon-corner.com the one oh the one thing i need to say that i promised last week and the week before that i would say the the sheet is now up for oh i've got a i've got a 3d printed hedgehog in my hand too that my son just gave me.
|
Ivan:
[59:38]
| That's always, always handy.
|
Sam:
[59:41]
| Always necessary. Anyway, the Curmudgeons Corner Prediction Show for 2025 is going to come up the last week of this month, which means we will probably be, let's see, I'll look at the calendar. Two weeks from now, we will probably be recording this prediction show. So time is limited. I have set up a Google Docs document that is currently completely blank. other than headings for potential categories like politics, international technology, etc., and some subcategories that we've used in the past.
|
Sam:
[1:00:18]
| And the, oh, I noticed a formatting problem. I'll fix it after I do this. Anyway, it is at tinyurl.com slash ccpred2025. Like we've done the last couple of years, We will mostly do predictions based on listener requests. I will go in and at the last moment, fill it in with some of the stuff we usually do if we don't have enough. But if you are interested in asking us to predict things, go to tinyurl.com slash ccpred 2025 and add your requests of things you would like us to predict. They need to be things that will happen within calendar year 2025 and will be clearly and where we'll be able to clearly determine if we were right or not in January, 2026. So those are the guidelines. And also please sign your name to it like dash, you know, first name, initial. It doesn't even have to be a real first name and initial, just something that we can thank you for adding the request. Anyway, you got two weeks. to get in your requests of things for us to predict and the last last show of the year will be predictions for 2025 first show of 2025 will be evaluation of how we did for our 2024 predictions.
|
Sam:
[1:01:41]
| So anyway go to curmudgeon-corner.com you can find all the ways to contact us you can find our archive of shows you can find transcripts you can find links to other stuff and you know i've got But we've been posting highlights on TikTok lately, too. But, you know, hey, that may be banned in a couple of weeks. So, yeah, who knows? Yeah. What will happen with that? But there's also a link to our Patreon where you can give us money at various levels. We will send you we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that kind of stuff. And two dollars a month or more. Or if you just ask, we'll invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack where Yvonne and I are chatting with listeners all throughout the week. sharing links, all that kind of stuff. Yvonne, you got to go or do you have something you want to highlight?
|
Ivan:
[1:02:28]
| I got, I, I, I've been looking for it. I got it. Okay. All right. So I don't, I don't remember if we mentioned the Hawk to a girl coin the last, last time.
|
Sam:
[1:02:37]
| I don't, we talked about it on the Slack, but I don't think we talked about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:40]
| So, so, so, all right. But, but, okay. So the thing is that the Hawk to a girl went and like, apparently started for a.
|
Sam:
[1:02:48]
| Uh, uh, for anybody who doesn't know who she is, there was one of these.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:54]
| Do we have to explain this?
|
Sam:
[1:02:56]
| There was one of these on the street interview things, and somebody asked her about something.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:04]
| And somebody asked her about something. You're going to be specific. Listen, they asked her something about how you keep a boyfriend or something, and she answered with an answer about what you do. And Hak Tua was basically her spitting on the guy's dick while she was going to suck it. Okay, all right, so there you go. All right, I'll be exactly explicit.
|
Sam:
[1:03:21]
| You were more explicit than I was going to be, but okay, fine.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:24]
| Okay, so yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:03:26]
| And she got famous for this.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:28]
| She got very famous for this.
|
Sam:
[1:03:29]
| She's making the most of her 15 minutes of fame and cashing in in all kinds of different ways.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:34]
| And she was doing a whole bunch of stuff, which is for the most part to be seen fine.
|
Sam:
[1:03:38]
| Good for her. She started a podcast. She's been on all kinds of other shows. She's making all kinds of deals.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:45]
| She's got an agent.
|
Sam:
[1:03:47]
| By the way, if you get a viral 15 minutes of fame, by all means.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:53]
| Cash in in every way possible cash in go cash in i'm i'm fine so the one thing is that we we had shared a story and there was another one that we shared about this like this week from a from a teenage kid but this is the headline hawk to a girl responds as people call for her to be jailed with fans losing life savings after buying her cryptocurrency the viral section has been accused of pulling the rug under investors as her crypto coin plummeted by $430 million in just 20 minutes.
|
Sam:
[1:04:25]
| And there's about 90%. Maybe we did mention this on the show. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:29]
| I don't remember that we mentioned it. It's but, but we had so.
|
Sam:
[1:04:32]
| But, but you saying that makes me remember, I don't know. I don't know. Is it all together?
|
Ivan:
[1:04:38]
| But then we had this week, but we also had the reason I was mentioning is because we had this week, aside from that one, if we mentioned it, our apologies, because my brain is fried, that there was some other kid this week that in less than 10 minutes, a US team made a small fortune selling off a mean coin he made on a lark. Traderless feeling swindled, sought revenge. I'm just like, man, you know, if you guys are buying, look at who you're buying this shit from.
|
Sam:
[1:05:11]
| Random coin created by a teenager on a lark on a site that lets anybody create a coin with almost no effort, then you get what you deserve. of and of course i said we got to make curmudgeons coin and alex emzola coin so that you know hey like.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:28]
| You guys could.
|
Sam:
[1:05:30]
| All buy it and then we can rug pull and.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:34]
| You know listen he's a look alex is a teen he's got time i don't have time for this shit right now i don't have time i don't have time for anything i would see if you create a couple of meme coins and like you know pull like 30 40 million dollars so we could just fucking like call it a day i'll put him on the assignment Yeah, I'll take, I'll, I'll just take a 15%.
|
Sam:
[1:05:54]
| You keep 85.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:56]
| Okay. I'll take 15%.
|
Sam:
[1:05:58]
| I don't know. You're going to have to convince him not to keep a hundred if you're making him do the work.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:03]
| I mean, you know, we're going to keep him out of jail. That's my part.
|
Sam:
[1:06:08]
| You'll provide the lawyer.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:09]
| I exactly. I do the post. He's got to do the pre I'm, I'm doing the protection side. Okay. All right. I have the right attorneys. I can make sure that he's well defended. to i'm doing that part okay you gotta do the other part first.
|
Sam:
[1:06:24]
| Well it's unclear to me whether either hawk to a girl or this teenager actually did anything illegal.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:32]
| I know i don't i don't know either but however i'm sure that they will be the recipients of a lot of lawsuits and so you know so you gotta have a strategy to fend that shit off okay okay, Okay. All right. So we're done.
|
Sam:
[1:06:48]
| There you go. Okay. Thanks everybody for joining us. We'll see you next week. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And please, again, tinyurl.com slash ccpred2025. Add things that you would like us to make predictions on. And last year, everybody waited until like a couple days before we were going to record the damn show, before they added anything to this thing. And then all of a sudden we had like a bunch of people add their requests. Don't wait till the end. Start adding them now. Okay. With that, we are out of here. Have a great week. Stay safe. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:27]
| Bye-bye.
|
Sam:
[1:07:58]
| Okay, here comes the stop button. Go take care of your family, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:02]
| All right, well, we got to save. Save. Come on, go save.
|
