Sam:
[0:00]
| Uh, there you go. Okay. We've got that up. Now we got to do this. Boom. Okay. I think that should have. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[0:16]
| Good.
|
Sam:
[0:16]
| What you got? Anything?
|
Ivan:
[0:18]
| I love that people have gone. Just, just it's hilarious. Making, you know, fun of Mark Zuckerberg.
|
Sam:
[0:25]
| Ah, okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:26]
| Breaking in a blow to Priscilla chance, divorce case against Mark Zuckerberg. Mr. Zuckerberg's legal team has proven their marriage invalid on the grounds that it was never consummated, citing evidence of Zuckerberg's Ken doll anatomy.
|
Sam:
[0:37]
| Nice. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:39]
| I'm sure he's really enjoying all of these on his uncensored.
|
Sam:
[0:46]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:48]
| It's all of these things.
|
Sam:
[0:50]
| If there's no fact checking, then we might as well say whatever we want about Zuck.
|
Ivan:
[0:54]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[0:55]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[0:55]
| Yes. So, okay. You don't want fact checking. Okay. All right. Cool. Let's just, oh my God.
|
Sam:
[1:03]
| You're ready to go, Mr. Bo.
|
Ivan:
[1:05]
| Yes, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go.
|
Sam:
[1:08]
| Here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, January 11th, 2024. 1834. It is just about 1830 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Mentor. Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:44]
| Hello.
|
Sam:
[1:45]
| And we're back from our special predictions and predictions review shows and blah, blah, blah. And so we're going to do a regular show. We'll do a butt first with like, you know, the kind of stuff that's involved in that. And then we'll do more serious stuff towards the end of the show, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[2:01]
| Yes, I guess.
|
Sam:
[2:02]
| So, so how's things, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[2:06]
| You know, I took finally, that's been a while, a very lengthy time off. Okay. So I went and I, I, I didn't work from the gosh, let me see. I got to look it up on the calendar because I, I, I, I, I, I didn't work from the, where's December from the, the 20th of December. And I really didn't get back to work until about 8th. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:36]
| Nice. Nice.
|
Ivan:
[2:38]
| And, you know, I will say that on Monday the 6th, just because I needed to check something, I went to try to, I think I had like a question. I had to get something from my work computer and I, I, I didn't even take my work computer off. on my trip to Disney, which I always do everywhere. But I decided for once, screw this. I'm not taking this damn thing. Okay. Which by the way, did, did prove to be a little bit problematic. One thing came up that I, that I, I don't have VPN access enabled any other computer other than my, that laptop. And it, it created a sort of situation that made it far more complicated for me to resolve. I didn't manage to get it resolved, but it made it way more complicated than it normally would be. Okay.
|
Sam:
[3:26]
| Yeah. So, yeah, I applaud you for not bringing the laptop, but the whole point of not bringing the laptop was that you're not available for work.
|
Ivan:
[3:34]
| The problem was that there here's, I forgot that. So there was somebody's contract that expired on December 31st and we haven't signed a new contract. And I needed somebody to approve that their services would continue and wouldn't get shut down on December 31st. And so it, this, this was not something like this was all of a sudden I'm like, shit, wait, they're going to shut them down unless I get the stupid approval. So I couldn't risk getting one of my biggest customers shut down on December 31st.
|
Sam:
[4:12]
| I get it.
|
Ivan:
[4:12]
| So I, yeah, well, I, I thought I, here's the thing. I thought that had been handled and I realized all of a sudden, shit, I never saw anybody actually approve this stupid thing.
|
Sam:
[4:25]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[4:26]
| So yeah, it's just, you know, so I, I, I did, but, but thankfully I, I did contact a couple of people and say, Hey, I'm on damn vacation. I just realized this isn't approved. Can you help me like contact the approvers and get it approved? And so they actually managed to do that. So, so, but that was like, uh, well, what do you want me to do? You want me to, yeah, this would have been great. Let me let my most important customer get shut down. So basically when I get back, I'm completely fucked.
|
Ivan:
[4:54]
| Other things could have waited, not that one. So anyway, so I didn't take the laptop, but then here's the one thing. When I tried to log in on Monday to get this, I needed something from the HR system payroll. Somebody, I think some medical, somebody was asking me some information. I don't know, whatever. I needed to, I needed to log into the computer. okay i i couldn't remember i struggled to remember the password for the computer number one i was like shit wait i don't remember this damn laptop's password and then and then okay i did remember the laptop password but i will say that the one that i couldn't remember and i had to look i haven't written i i know that i i wrote it down somewhere because that was very difficult i had no idea what the hell the damn vpn password was, I tried, I almost locked myself out and I'm like, I'm like, oh shit, I got to look where I wrote it down. I don't want to get fucking out now. This would be bad. Okay. So, so that's how much time I spent completely disconnected. I will say that it definitely helped me get a little bit more settled in terms of, I felt I was able to figure out, okay, I've been worrying about all these things. I guess these weren't that important. We can just focus on these. Nobody apparently gives a shit about this.
|
Ivan:
[6:20]
| So I figured, well, if somebody gives a shit, they'll call me. But look, I'm already Monday afternoon. I'm already getting on a damn plane to go visit customers. One thing that happened is also that I did notice, thankfully, that... So most of my customers right now are located in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic.
|
Sam:
[6:42]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:42]
| And the one advantage towards taking towards time off is that both Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic celebrate three Kings day, which is 6th of January.
|
Sam:
[6:53]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:54]
| So that is a very big holiday in Spain. Okay. Which is why it's celebrated Puerto Rico. But I did notice that very few countries, I thought Puerto Rico, it's always been celebrated and it's always been a holiday. But I did, you know, I went, I decided, well, I was like asking, hey, where is this a holiday in Latin America? And I realized that it's only a holiday in, it's not a holiday in Mexico. And I thought it would be.
|
Sam:
[7:20]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[7:20]
| But it's only a holiday in Columbia, in Puerto Rico, and in the Dominican Republic. Everywhere else, they don't actually even celebrate it. But in Puerto Rico, I don't know if it's still true, but it used to be three Kings Day was bigger than Christmas in terms of you actually, when I was little. you would get gifts on both Christmas and Three Kingsdays.
|
Sam:
[7:41]
| Well, this all relates to the song with the 12 days of Christmas. Traditionally, it's a 12-day celebration. One of these is the beginning of the 12 days. One of them is the end of the 12 days. You also, if you get Orthodox traditions, there's a difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
|
Ivan:
[7:59]
| Which also differ a bit.
|
Sam:
[8:01]
| But they still have the 12 days. So like this is how how this has evolved as a celebration has differed worldwide, you know, a bit sort of the most common at this point worldwide is the December 25th is the main celebration.
|
Ivan:
[8:17]
| Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[8:19]
| But, you know, there are all kinds of variants of, you know, I mean, and some some traditions actually like it's like the whole 12 days. It's not beginning and it's like the whole 12 days.
|
Ivan:
[8:29]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[8:30]
| Yes. And they're different like religious things that happen on every day of the 12 days and stuff like that. And, you know, I'm not familiar with those traditions in detail, but, you know, there's all kinds of variations.
|
Ivan:
[8:42]
| Here was the good news about this or bad news, depending, because my bosses were complaining. Well, why haven't your customers said anything? And I'm like, dude, I emailed them this week. All I got was out of offices from everybody until Monday from all of them. literally, they all just bounced World War out of office until next Monday. I mean, next Monday the 13th. So they, they all took off like on the 22nd and also not coming back on the 13th, which is by the way, well, at least for my vacation was great because they were customers weren't there. So, you know, it's not like I was going to get a call from them anyway. So, but, but, you know, so yeah, but so, but yeah, but you know, yeah, Puerto Rico, we celebrate that. That is a big holiday, but I realized that I was calling people in Mexico and they're telling me now it's, it's a regular work day. I'm like, you know, so. But yeah, but Puerto Rico, yeah, we used to, the one thing that we had to do, so you know how people put milk and cookies for, for Santa, right?
|
Sam:
[9:44]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[9:44]
| So the big thing for three Kings day when I was growing up is that you have to leave hay for the, for the camels that the three Kings wrote in too. So you had to put these little, like, like little baskets of hay under the Christmas tree. So when, when the three Kings arrived, so they could feed the camels. okay camels or horses i don't even remember camels there were camels yeah there were camels yes you had to they could feed the cows so yeah so yeah we had to we so we all of us the night before would go out and basically rip out okay we ripped out grass right and just put it a little little thing and then put it under the tree.
|
Sam:
[10:26]
| Yeah so anyway i i guess to wrap your section knob it was good to take three weeks off.
|
Ivan:
[10:35]
| Oh fuck yes i mean i i you know look confers to me again what i what i realized when i got when i got fired a couple of years ago dude i'm so ready to fucking retire it's not even funny i i could i could i i'm like i've got you know all these people i'm like oh you know that wind up like a couple of months after they retired they die because they have no purpose in life blah blah blah that's yeah dude i'm i'm not in that camp.
|
Sam:
[11:02]
| I've got so much I would fill my days with.
|
Ivan:
[11:05]
| Oh, I'd be full wall to wall.
|
Sam:
[11:07]
| I have no issues with. Now, would I spend some time sleeping in and watching some TV?
|
Ivan:
[11:15]
| Oh, I did a lot of sleeping. Let me tell you something that I do some sleeping. Look, I was struggling to wake up before. Some days I was like waking up at 12. Listen, I never wake up at 12. I was waking up at 12. Okay.
|
Sam:
[11:31]
| Right. i'm.
|
Ivan:
[11:32]
| Like you know the hell with this you know so yeah.
|
Sam:
[11:35]
| Sleeping is good sleeping is good i just.
|
Ivan:
[11:39]
| Want to wake up get my coffee so go go lay back on the bed watch some tv fuck all of you whatever yeah yeah yeah.
|
Sam:
[11:46]
| Like i i have lots of things i would want to do but like absolutely like the one of the important stuff would be never setting an alarm ever again i wake up when i wake up when what I want to do to get ready for my day. And then at some point, a few hours later, I'm ready to do something interesting and productive. And I do it.
|
Ivan:
[12:07]
| You know, every day that damn alarm to me, it's just like this slave device. They just like really just, you know, you know, I am enslaved to this stupid thing. It goes off. I hate it. I don't want to hear it. I know I got to get up. I'm just like, fuck, stupid thing. I got to get up.
|
Sam:
[12:29]
| I got to go to the thing. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[12:32]
| So, well, it's just like, you know, say, fuck it. No.
|
Sam:
[12:37]
| Uh, yeah, I hear you. So I'll, I'll give you mine. So first of all, since I took off a lot of time at the end of October and beginning of November for election graphs, I, I did not want to take more time, at least no significant time over the break. So, so I, I worked, I worked through the entire time, except for actual New Year's Day and Christmas, which were given as holidays by my company. But let's be honest. Those days are super slow.
|
Ivan:
[13:08]
| Oh, yeah. You know, I've been some years where I've wound up working some of those days. I usually have always taken them off, but I've worked some of those days or the slowest days ever.
|
Sam:
[13:19]
| For the longest time, I actually explicitly like had the philosophy of it's a waste of time to use paid time off. Because like I know your company has it like unlimited time off. Mine does not.
|
Ivan:
[13:30]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[13:30]
| But my philosophy was it's a waste to actually use that time, your paid time off on those days, because even if you work, there's so little to do. And it's so slow, like, you know, you might as well be taking the day off.
|
Ivan:
[13:46]
| Right, right, right.
|
Sam:
[13:47]
| And so I did work through those days, but they were slow days. I did, you know, but here's the other thing. As has been in the news lately, my company has gone to full return to office. They had been three days a week. As of January 1st, it's full in the office all the time forever.
|
Ivan:
[14:08]
| Yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[14:10]
| So even those weeks leading up to January 1st, like, oh, by the way, it's three days a week in the office, regardless of holidays and vacation. So like, it's not you get two days working from home. it's three days in the office so like if you if you've got a holiday in that week that means you can only work from home one day okay like okay even in the old three days so like basically you know i was in the office a lot between between christmas and new year's and all that kind of stuff to a a fairly empty even more empty than usual office well.
|
Ivan:
[14:44]
| Probably one thing i would guess the traffic was lighter because i i've i've had to commute sometimes during those days and the traffic, you know, schools out and other stuff and whatever. And so, you know, some people take off. So traffic would have been lighter. I would have hoped, right?
|
Sam:
[14:59]
| Well, yeah. I mean, during that week, I mean, traffic was light just because of everything related to the holiday RTO or not. That's what I'm saying.
|
Ivan:
[15:07]
| You know, between the holiday people out, schools out. Yeah. Traffic usually gets pretty thin those days.
|
Sam:
[15:12]
| Which brings up after the RTO five mandate on January 1st. Like, and let me just say like there, the quick summary, the quick summary of life after RTO five, it sucks. It's horrible. It's useless. It's okay. Anyway, so, um, I.
|
Ivan:
[15:36]
| I, look, I, I lived through this once. Okay. Yes. You know, I had been at HP for many years and the last three years at HP between 2007 and 2010, I was basically fully remote and I switched jobs to a job that I had to be at the office five days a week. And I remember the first couple of months was an adjustment, but I, I, I will say that eventually I, I, I got used to it back, back.
|
Sam:
[16:07]
| Yeah, I mean, look.
|
Ivan:
[16:08]
| It sucked.
|
Sam:
[16:12]
| I did it prior to the last few years. I did it my entire freaking career, right? So obviously you can get used to it.
|
Ivan:
[16:20]
| It's just it's a rough transition.
|
Sam:
[16:22]
| Including at the exact same building I'm in now, you know, so it's not it's not even new in that sense. I've worked at this building back when I worked five days a week. And now and my my company has always been relatively flexible. Like if I had to do something like, you know, if I had something going on, I could work from home occasionally, just not on a regular, you know, I'm working from home.
|
Ivan:
[16:45]
| Right. It's not your primary workplace. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[16:47]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[16:48]
| Hey, you got, you know, I don't know. You they cut your spleen out today. You know, I got a, you know, I don't know something. Oh, that's that's pretty. OK, that's that's I might take some time off for that. Yeah, that's a good point.
|
Sam:
[17:01]
| Just say that.
|
Ivan:
[17:02]
| Yeah, that's not a work from home day. I'm like, I don't I don't know. they have to put your finger in a split. There you go. Okay. All right. Okay. So that one. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, you know, I need, I need to work from home, but yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[17:14]
| No, but here, here's the thing here, here, here is the first few days. Like they made a January 1st instead of a Monday, which was, whatever like but it meant the first couple days was still most people were off a lot of people took that whole week off right right right the first was on a wednesday that thursday and friday were still pretty slow lots of people scheduled it to come back that monday but so but.
|
Ivan:
[17:39]
| Okay monday how was monday though.
|
Sam:
[17:41]
| So monday was the first day where first of all okay a couple things Monday that Monday I still I also had huge trouble like adjust you you mentioned sleep, adjusting my sleep properly to the idea of getting into work at a reasonable time right yeah because I mean and I was to wake up earlier yeah I was doing it three days a week anyway but like depending on when meetings were I would adjust that and traffic wasn't as bad blah blah blah but like so yeah like monday and tuesday i massively struggled to even get up at like a reasonable i ended up actually getting to the building like at 11 both days okay now i i didn't miss anything i had no meetings those mornings whatever but like it was a struggle because like you know and and the work from home pattern i've mentioned this before like if i had a 9 a.m meeting I'd roll out up at 8.
|
Ivan:
[18:41]
| 8 59.
|
Sam:
[18:42]
| Yeah, exactly. I'd wake up at 8 59, roll into the other room, open the laptop and be on the meeting. You know, I can't do that if you have to like do a commute.
|
Ivan:
[18:53]
| Um, you have to get ready, you have to get dressed, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So a lot of extra things on the Thursday.
|
Sam:
[19:03]
| I, I, I'm, I'm think I had the, have the timelines right. Or no, it was Wednesday or Thursday of that first week. The first full week I had, I had an 8am meeting. No, I think it was Thursday. I had an 8 a.m. meeting followed by an all-day, quote-unquote, off-site. Okay? Now, the off-site, just to be clear, was in California in a conference room at the regular building. The part of the team that's in California is out. So, like, they say off-site. They just mean everybody goes to a conference room all day. They don't actually do off-site off-sites anymore. Really? Once upon a time, when you said offsite, like.
|
Ivan:
[19:49]
| It was offsite.
|
Sam:
[19:50]
| It was offsite. You went to a hotel. You went to a conference center. Sometimes you went to a resort. I remember going to resorts for offsites. And there being like fun activities as well. No, I hate the mandatory fun activities, actually. But like, there was stuff, right? There was nice food.
|
Ivan:
[20:08]
| You know what? Let me tell you something. For all the bitching I did about sometimes at Rico, and there was a specific VP. You know, we did a whole bunch of these. And I have to say that I had a whole bunch of fun at a couple of them. Look, one of them was this one. There was a challenge about building stuff with Legos. And we actually, I'll tell you that I thought this is stupid. Why the hell? It actually turned out to be a lot of fun to do the Lego building challenge. Okay. All right. There was also one, another activity that we did that was.
|
Sam:
[20:37]
| How about the zip lines, Yvonne? The zip lines.
|
Ivan:
[20:40]
| Okay. Not the zip lines.
|
Sam:
[20:41]
| Did you love the zip lines?
|
Ivan:
[20:42]
| Fuck the stupid zip lines which by the way, Let me be clear about this. I was the VP in charge. I did not want the fucking zip lines, but all the employees wanted the zip lines. And I decided not to deny the employees the zip lines. Okay. That was their choice. And I decided to also, as their leader, I should just sit down at the base of the fucking camp drinking beers while they're doing the zip lines. I'm like, fuck. I, you know, this is, this is the kind of shit that does not help workplace cohesion. I'm like, fuck it. They want zip lines. I'm going to, okay, I'm going to let them do the zip lines. And oh, by the way, because I'm going to participate in the zip lines. By the way, I just found out recently, speaking of this, that that team the other day was talking to somebody else. They said, Ivan, you know what? They're working now with this other company, Swiss, so whatever. They referred to the time that you were their boss as the golden era of their career.
|
Ivan:
[21:41]
| Literally, because they said, you know what? Because I care about people. So I treated them super well. And they were like, you know, and actually we did some really great results. I mean, shit, this company wouldn't have bought the business if we didn't. And so they're still reminiscing that. This is the thing about why those acts are important as a leader. That act that I went and I basically accepted an activity that I knew wasn't my favorite. And I went and I, and despite that, I went and I partook it, even though I feared for my life. right right had a really positive impact on them okay okay.
|
Sam:
[22:20]
| Okay i'll like look lots of people love them i i i hate them.
|
Ivan:
[22:25]
| But i'll tell you the one at rico the the lego there was no no no no there was a better one there was there was some kind of like it was kind of like um jeopardy style questions okay all right and we were a team of people and there would be all these questions and we were stacked into different teams, okay? And questions ranged from like, hey, what's the city with the largest population in the world, okay? Tokyo, okay? But here's the thing, right? So it wound up that there were like about 12 teams, okay? Okay. okay there were literally in the end it was lit really me against another guy in another team who were the who were the guys that had answers to all the fucking questions but it was so much fun because everybody was like jesus christ these guys you know but me it was it wasn't like my team it was like they were all looking at me oh you know the fucking ass yes here so we were like it was It's just this motto-in-motto showdown between this guy and me on these fucking answers on a whole damn team. And I believe I wound up winning. Right, because I got a camera out of it. I got a Rico camera.
|
Sam:
[23:39]
| This is why you like this. This is why you like this activity.
|
Ivan:
[23:42]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[23:42]
| Because you won.
|
Ivan:
[23:43]
| Oh, no, it was a showdown. It was motto-in-motto. Basically, it's one of those things where everybody's like, ah, you know, we're all the smartest guys in the room, like whatever, bah, bah, bah. There's 50 fucking people. You know what? the only two people have got the essence of me and this other guy everybody else said no shit they all just got a wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong but we're like we're like barreling through these we're just like annihilating them and like finally but i i managed to win and i got some actually it was a decent camera it was out but it was uh they add a rico waterproof like digital camera that i still probably got somewhere around so okay.
|
Sam:
[24:17]
| So let me finish my story.
|
Ivan:
[24:18]
| Yes so.
|
Sam:
[24:19]
| So the first day that I was really going to try it, and getting in at 11, by the way, it still wasn't that bad traffic-wise. It was worse than normal, even at 11. But it was still not horrible. But trying to get in at 8 a.m. Here's the thing. I said to myself, I need to allocate two hours to this. I need to leave at 6 to be sure to get there.
|
Ivan:
[24:46]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[24:46]
| And because like just to set the stage the no traffic time from my home to my office is 35 minutes like if you do it at two in the morning with no traffic whatsoever 35 minutes yvonne being a speedster could probably make it in 25 okay probably i'm sure but you know how many miles there would be laws broken wait how.
|
Ivan:
[25:10]
| Many miles is the distance.
|
Sam:
[25:11]
| Hold on let me yeah because i could give you i'm gonna get it precise i'm gonna do like ways right now to work if i left right now, it is 23.2 miles and ways says if i did it right now at this very second on a saturday morning it would take 34 minutes so.
|
Ivan:
[25:31]
| 34 minutes so 23.2 miles to take 34 minutes i will do the at 2 a.m the 50 miles from Miami to my house in 41 minutes. So I'm guessing that I could do that in about a little over 20.
|
Sam:
[25:50]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[25:51]
| Yeah, that's about right. That sounds, yeah. I'd do it in about 20 minutes. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:55]
| Now there's parts at the beginning and the end that aren't highway, but you know, Yvonne could treat them all as highway anyway, you know, just that I don't.
|
Ivan:
[26:01]
| That really doesn't faze red lights.
|
Sam:
[26:04]
| Who cares? You know, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[26:05]
| I'll stop for those. That's what got me into trouble with the cops once because I do respect the red light. So all of a sudden I realized it like turn red that I would like slam the brakes and all four tires would be smoking and they realized Jesus, this guy must have been coming really fast as a stoplight if yeah that's how it stopped as all four tires are going yeah well.
|
Sam:
[26:24]
| Anyway then stop the no traffic time is about 35 minutes and the normal i'd say like regular traffic i'd been having is about an hour okay plus or minus depending on what was going on but i'm like you know i have to allocate two hours because you never know with rush hour traffic and blah blah, blah, blah. So of course, so I'm like, okay, I have to leave at 6am to get to the 8am meeting to be, to be sure to be on time for the 8am meeting. And in order to leave at six, I have to be getting up at like five or some ridiculous time like that.
|
Ivan:
[27:02]
| Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way it works. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[27:06]
| And, and by the way, this was for an 8am meeting that nobody was going to be in the same building for anyway it was going to be a conference call whatever but.
|
Ivan:
[27:17]
| That's because okay nobody was working remotely it's because the participants were all in different locations.
|
Sam:
[27:22]
| Yes okay yes and then are well i don't know if they were working remotely or not but the but they were all in different locations and the only and i was trying to get there in person anyway because at nine o'clock i had the beginning of this all day thing right and i didn't want to be traveling in the middle of the all day otherwise i would have taken the 8 a.m by home from home and then gone in right anyway needless to say i failed to get up at 5 a.m i i i repeatedly, was like snooze effect effectively anyway instead of instead of snooze i was telling alexa to like set a 30 minute timer and stuff like that but yes well yeah it's the same thing it's the same thing It's the same idea. I was effectively snoozing. I ended up actually leaving the house closer to seven than to six, which meant I had one hour to get there. Now, when at the moment I got into the car, it said I was still going to make it just barely.
|
Ivan:
[28:23]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[28:24]
| Okay. By the time I'd made it from my house to the highway. Okay. It had decided that that was not the case anymore. It had already slipped to, I'm going to be like five minutes late or something. And I'm like, ah, five minutes, whatever. But I got to the highway, to the exit to get onto the highway nearest my house. It was a dead stop. It was like red lights as far as you could see. Nobody moving. the little the little thing that the lights that come on and let one car yeah yeah yeah highway were were active and it was all backed up you know and obviously that there'd been an accident somewhere blah blah blah and the time kept slipping the you know i'm gonna be 10 minutes late i'm gonna be 20 minutes late well could you.
|
Ivan:
[29:12]
| Well here's a question this is just like a virtual beat could you you know connect.
|
Sam:
[29:18]
| Well this is what i did right i okay so so i i ended up i i was watching the time and the estimates and it actually after i i got on the highway eventually i got past where the accident was and it started freeing up and for a little bit it started saying i was going to make it again i'm like oh maybe i'll make it or be like one or two minutes late no big deal i'll do that but then it started slipping backwards again so i i was like Like, okay, at 7.45, I will assess the situation. And if it says I'm going to be more than five minutes late, I will pull off the highway and like, you know, pull into the parking lot by a Starbucks or something and get online to this stupid meeting. So at 7.45, it was saying I wouldn't get there till like 8.20 or something. And so, yeah, I pull off the highway. I find a parking lot. I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, I'll dial in from my laptop. I'll use, I'll tether to my phone and I'll, I'll dial in from my laptop. Laptop battery is dead.
|
Ivan:
[30:23]
| You know you can plug it into the usbc charger right.
|
Sam:
[30:26]
| Yes but my usbc charger in my in my not a lot of.
|
Ivan:
[30:31]
| Not a lot of output.
|
Sam:
[30:32]
| The the juice is enough that it would probably take 12 hours to like get the laptop charged up right yeah maybe not it would probably boot sooner than that but the point was i had oh god so it was so so i did plug in the laptop but it did not revive within the time i was sitting there so what i did was i i i i i slacked the person who was running the meeting from my phone asked him to send me the link because like i i don't have my like work email and stuff on my phone my work email and calendar intentionally i don't have i don't have anything on my personal phone that would require me to give administrative access to my well.
|
Ivan:
[31:17]
| Your company doesn't pay for your phone right.
|
Sam:
[31:19]
| My company does not pay for my okay so no i could i could conceivably like i could get them to subsidize it a little bit if but i i just no no no it's not.
|
Ivan:
[31:29]
| Like in my case in my case my company pays for my service and stuff or.
|
Sam:
[31:32]
| Whatever because you know i'm.
|
Ivan:
[31:33]
| On i'm on the road so you know.
|
Sam:
[31:34]
| Like they yeah yeah yeah they they would i believe pay some amount but i like it's not worth it it's not worth it and and so yeah.
|
Ivan:
[31:43]
| Some amount to me is not worth it i'm like either you know you're paying for it or what's the deal i'm like no they're paying for mine so i i'm like of course i have all of that there but i get it you know i mean if they're not i mean i'm getting it yeah it doesn't.
|
Sam:
[31:56]
| Yeah so i don't have those.
|
Ivan:
[31:57]
| You're not you're not insanely i mean like i said you know.
|
Sam:
[31:59]
| I do i do i do have the company slack on my phone because i just have to log into it i don't have to like give them control of anything right like, and once upon a time i did have all that company stuff on my phone but i just was not comfortable with it and it got rid of it at some, cause, cause they add restrictions of like, there's things you're not supposed to do with your phone that are like, frankly, normal usage of your phone. Now they don't know. They only enforce some of it, but like, it was annoying. I didn't like it. So anyway, so I got the dial in information and dialed in from the car and then drove and then drove the rest of the way with them on the, on the line. But the point was, the point of this was traffic was horrific. Okay. yeah it and like normally i don't have 8 a.m meetings on a regular basis usually the earliest people are doing stuff is 9 or 10 but like even 9 o'clock you know it's like you have to, to be reliably there you have to leave at 7 and by the way most of the time that will get you there by like 8 15 or 8 30 so you're there earlier than you need to be at that point i guess i could get like coffee and I don't drink coffee, but I could get a snack.
|
Ivan:
[33:08]
| Yeah. So yeah. Something.
|
Sam:
[33:09]
| But, but the point, the point is yes, the, the, the trip there was horrific. And then that, that, that day I ended up doing this also offsite onsite thing. I said, like I said, almost everybody was in California. There were two of us that were in a conference room in Seattle and it was good to see that person in person and talk to him. No, no question. I had a good conversation with him offline from the meeting, but like the rest of the days I've been in are still the case where most of the people I work with are not in Seattle. So it's still like I'm going and sitting there. It's not like I'm actually interacting in person with like my team all the time, blah, blah, blah. I mean, maybe even then I don't like the trade-off, but I understand the thought of the trade-off. But the reality for a lot of people is still that most of the people they work with are scattered throughout the world. And so, I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[34:08]
| It's just a reality for some of us. I mean, I think this is one of these things that really varies a lot. You know, I.
|
Sam:
[34:18]
| There are certainly there are certainly teams. And we've talked about like specifically, like, you know, new in their career, people who are learning the ropes. And like, if you've got a dev team, that's all sitting together and they can like, you know, talk to each other and bounce problems off each other. That's a different scenario.
|
Ivan:
[34:40]
| But I mean, I, I, the one thing I will say that, but then we need to move on because otherwise we'll, the show will be five hours. i'm i'm perfectly fine with working remotely with people you know when they're, easily accessible during regular business hours i get really irritated and this started happening especially when at hb we started moving remotely some people got the idea oh i'm remotely i'm like i'm never answering anybody i mean seriously and i had certain people that it was just like dude yeah you're supposedly working remotely i try to reach you, You don't answer email. You don't answer email. you know i don't know i think we used the microsoft whatever the hell chat thing we used right right you know you don't answer anything okay you know i'm like what the fuck well now that guy when he was in the office you know he was kind of like difficult to get but i knew where the fuck he was in the office and i could go like get him hey dude i need your shit like today well.
|
Sam:
[35:47]
| That's the whole thing like the the remote thing is a different way of doing things and you have to handle it differently but you have to have that accountability too like if people can't get a hold of you then you're not doing your job.
|
Ivan:
[35:59]
| That's right you.
|
Sam:
[36:00]
| Know it's like you can't evaluate people anymore by are they sitting in their seat.
|
Ivan:
[36:05]
| Now x number of hours.
|
Sam:
[36:07]
| But you still can evaluate them on you know.
|
Ivan:
[36:11]
| Are they responsive do they think i've seen that i sometimes i i see the frustration as to why some management default to like sending a whole bunch of people like everybody back to work and certain things like in that when I have recently experienced with a number of people, especially that are younger, that don't fucking answer anything. Email, they definitely will not pick up the phone. Okay. That's for sure. And I'm trying, I'm like, dude, I need you. And you're supposed, it's business hours. You're not answering. And that really fucking pisses me off.
|
Sam:
[36:49]
| I understand yeah anyway look and i and again and this is something we've debated for years now i don't deny some advantages of being in person it's just there's trade-offs there too there's a lot of loss there so okay.
|
Ivan:
[37:09]
| So all right.
|
Sam:
[37:10]
| So anyway that's it like i you know i you know uh it sucks Okay. It sucks. It sucks. And I'm sure I will adapt accordingly, but it still sucks. And I think it's stupid. And I think the companies that successfully lean into remote and figure out how to make it work well will actually end up having a competitive advantage over the years. Like it may take a while for that to like fully evolve, but I think that's going to be an advantage over the years. And the companies who are instead trying to bring things back to the 1990s are going to end up harmed by it in the end. Right now, the labor market is such that they can get away with it. I don't think it'll stay that way forever.
|
Ivan:
[38:01]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[38:02]
| Okay. So with all that, let us take a break and then we will come back and Yvonne will start us off with some actual newsy topics. And then we will go from there. So first break is a random wiki of the day. Here we go.
|
Sam:
[39:57]
| Okay. Before I ask you for your main topic, Yvonne, one additional thing to say real quick, and this is just a note, no discussion needed. Almost a year ago, I think it was last March or April, actually, but almost a year ago, I replaced my whole computer setup. I got a new desk. I got new monitors. I got a new laptop. I have been thrilled and happy with almost everything in that whole setup. But I will say the one thing and we talked about it on the show at the time that I cheaped out on and I was like, I don't have to spend a lot of money on this piece was my desk chair. And I will say I do regret it. This thing is already falling the fuck apart.
|
Ivan:
[40:41]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[40:42]
| Like I just during the break, I sat back and like the like one of the bars in it like was I felt it on me instead of the cushion. And I'm like, you got to be like, and it's loose. I could probably tighten up some of the screws and it'd be a little bit better again.
|
Ivan:
[41:01]
| I don't have right now the most expensive.
|
Sam:
[41:03]
| You talked about this.
|
Ivan:
[41:05]
| I bought a Costco one.
|
Sam:
[41:06]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[41:07]
| And it's good.
|
Sam:
[41:08]
| This was like some random online share that costs like 60 or 70 bucks. Like it was cheap.
|
Ivan:
[41:16]
| This didn't cost that much more. It was like about a hundred bucks at Costco.
|
Sam:
[41:19]
| And I am feeling right now that maybe I don't, you know, look, I'm not going to do like the $2,000 expensive chair.
|
Ivan:
[41:30]
| Look, I have been, listen, now that you mentioned this, I have been looking at one of those. I got, I will say that there is one that, listen, but there is, listen, you brought the chair. There's been specifically this last week, I saw this ad for this chair called the chill chair. Now, the one thing that was very attractive about this share, more than any of the other ones I see, is that it has the ability that at some point, say you're on a conference call. And I like, I wind up like lifting my feet like on the desk. Well, no, this has like this thing.
|
Sam:
[42:07]
| I'm looking at it.
|
Ivan:
[42:07]
| Yes. So you could like, well, just like, oh, I want to be comfortable. I want to raise. Exactly. And you're like, ah.
|
Sam:
[42:16]
| I'll tell you right now. Like I, I, I always like when I'm at my most productive, I have my feet up. And like right now, people on video can see I'm sort of in a feed up position right now. I have my feet on a trash can. Like I have a full size large kitchen.
|
Ivan:
[42:34]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not the best thing.
|
Sam:
[42:36]
| I know.
|
Ivan:
[42:37]
| But, you know, I mean, it's workable. It's like me putting up my feet on the desk. Well, that's not the best thing. This thing has this little extension thing. So you could just raise your feet. Yes.
|
Sam:
[42:50]
| I see that.
|
Ivan:
[42:52]
| It's got massage.
|
Sam:
[42:53]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[42:54]
| It's got massage. It's gut raising the feet. It's got heat. It's got, and I'm like looking at this thing and I'm looking at the price thing and I'm like, fuck, I can't keep spending. I went, you know, I went through how I spent money the last two years and I'm like looking at all this shit I spent money on and I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm not fucking spending another two grand. No, no, no. I've just been like burning money. Like it's, it's, you know, it's like, I mean.
|
Sam:
[43:25]
| No, no, as I said, I am not going to get like a multi-thousand dollar chair that is just not happening, but, but look, I might, I might say, yeah, look at that chair. Yeah. Yeah. But I might say like, okay, yes, yes. But I might say this, this like $60, $70 chair was okay for like. eight months. Maybe I'll go for a couple hundred. Maybe I'll go for a couple hundred and hope it lasts a little longer.
|
Ivan:
[43:57]
| Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this Costco chair has been quite a few years and it's lasted pretty well to be honest. So the one good thing, listen, Costco, usually whatever they sell, good price and they've tested it. So usually good quality. So you're not going to get one that's only going to last you six months.
|
Sam:
[44:15]
| Yeah yeah so i mean so i'm thinking like almost every time i sit on this thing now i'm like it's uncomfortable you know and it wasn't when i first bought it but like it's already deteriorating it was.
|
Ivan:
[44:28]
| It was it was not not not high quality.
|
Sam:
[44:30]
| Yeah so i mean i don't know i there's like i said i could probably tighten up the screws i could probably add some like some cushioning i don't know after.
|
Ivan:
[44:39]
| Six months it shouldn't be needing all of that stuff.
|
Sam:
[44:42]
| Yeah so i'm thinking maybe the chair gets replaced and i increase the budget a little bit yeah but not a lot i would say i'm not i'm not getting your chill chair thin here i'm not doing that desk.
|
Ivan:
[44:55]
| Chairs here we go i see at costco here we go i gotta see if i find one.
|
Sam:
[44:58]
| Yeah yeah okay at you know it's 160.
|
Ivan:
[45:03]
| 169 dollars there you go costco there you go.
|
Sam:
[45:06]
| Yeah i could that that that's about the budget range i'm thinking yeah yeah yeah you know.
|
Ivan:
[45:12]
| They've got you know they've got 160 bucks 120 bucks they got something to go over that but they've got plenty of very nice looking chairs for less than 200 i must admit this is this did they have a they have a pretty decent selection.
|
Sam:
[45:26]
| Yeah i'm i'm i'm looking at their website yeah anyway i'm not going to shop online while talking to you, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[45:35]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[45:36]
| Anyway, okay, Yvonne, real topics. Real topics. Where do you want to start us off? There has been news, there have been things going on, and obviously we're only days away from the second Trump administration.
|
Ivan:
[45:52]
| Okay, I'm going to start with the one that actually got, well, I know I gave the second thumbs up, but two thumbs up on the list. Which is... Meta moderation changes. Okay.
|
Sam:
[46:05]
| Yes. And meta in general, like, well, there is not just meta, but like there seems to be a, a theme of companies making changes to be more friendly to Trump world as Trump world approaches.
|
Ivan:
[46:23]
| What I said, this is, you know, I've said this, I think I've said it on our Slack and I said it in other places when this subject has come up. I basically said, look, Suck is a grifter. And if Harris had won in a landslide, there would be gay pride flags all over HQ this week. And he would be on, I don't know, what's that, on The View interviewing. So Trump won. So he's on Joe Rogan, and he is talking about his masculinity and, you know, I don't know, making all these changes for so-called free speech.
|
Ivan:
[47:17]
| I mean, he's just a grifter. That's all there is to it. There's no conviction in there about anything. He's just a grifter. And he will suck up to whomever just for for dollars. I think we also spoke spoke a couple of weeks about certain, you know, a lot of companies that were donating to the inaugural to the inaugural. And how I was like, look, you got to at least I said you have to at least in some way ingratiate yourself with this administration because they're going to be regulating your ass. OK, and I get that. But but wait, Yvonne.
|
Sam:
[47:57]
| Bribery is illegal.
|
Ivan:
[47:59]
| Oh, oh, it is. I mean, I think that it's pretty clear that, you know, like right now, the SCOTUS has taken a view that this is just, you know, this is all fine. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[48:11]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[48:12]
| Especially for the president, you know, that he and themselves and themselves.
|
Ivan:
[48:16]
| And themselves that they can take all the money that they, you know, that they can get. But, you know, so, yeah, you know, so they're out there. But but Zuck is taking it to the level of, I mean, just just just being such a sucker. And by the way, I think here's a problem that I've always seen with with with behaving like this. The people that are the biggest suck ups like this usually are the ones that get screwed the worst. Because all you're showing is that you have no conviction and that you're weak.
|
Sam:
[48:50]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[48:50]
| And to me, it's, I mean, the fact that it all came out just in such a massive way, like all at once, like that.
|
Sam:
[49:00]
| Well, let's enumerate the things real quick for background.
|
Ivan:
[49:04]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[49:05]
| One, Zuck has said, they've had for years, well, since 2016 was the trigger for it. They had a partnership with various fact-checking orgs, like Snopes and PolitiFact and blah, blah, blah. There's like eight of these organizations that they had partnerships with where they would do fact checking on things that were going viral and basically add labels to them based on the fact checker stuff.
|
Sam:
[49:29]
| Zuck said, hey, we're going to do something more like what X is doing now with community notes, which basically is like we're not going to partner with any orgs that have like known reputations or anything. It's just going to be basically the community can add context to things. And to be fair, this has sometimes worked even on X, like where the community, you know, Elon himself has had posts that he's made that get community notes added saying exactly why he's full of shit.
|
Sam:
[50:03]
| You know, so this does sometimes work. And in fact, I've seen some arguments that it might even work better because it can scale better. But the one trick to it is, well, how do you in the end determine who to trust? Because you can also get situations where the community notes is correcting something that's right with something that's wrong. you know so you have to be careful with that and you're sort of relying on wisdom of the crowds to always get the right thing which it may or may not do but in any case he's basically saying we're not going to partner with these these organizations who are known for this and he his statement about it went ahead and like said that they were biased and stuff like that now we'll talk about each i'm tempted to dive right into talking about this one but let's hit the other changes too. They also changed their guidelines on the hate speech guidelines on what's acceptable and what's not. Basically allowing a lot more things that were prohibited.
|
Sam:
[51:11]
| Basically slurs against various groups, anti-trans statements, blah, blah, blah. Basically opening this up in the name of free speech saying that, hey, a lot more is allowed than was before. I am sure there's still a line somewhere, but it's been adjusted and it's, you know, basically allows for a lot more negative speech to a lot more groups and, and not coincidentally, these are all groups that Trump and the MAGA folks have been going out. And one last thing, and then we can talk about all three of them. They, along with a bunch of other companies, have also announced basically retreats or shutdowns in a lot of DEI initiatives, in diversity initiatives within the companies for hiring, for education, for making people respect various differences in culture, et cetera. They've pulled back on those things too. Those are the three main things I know about. Did I miss any, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[52:11]
| No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[52:12]
| Okay. So let's talk about them individually.
|
Ivan:
[52:15]
| Well, one thing about you're talking about the allowing certain things to be discussed and how they're dialing back some of their moderation. Yes. I will say that. their moderation had also gotten like somewhat off the rails crazy okay.
|
Sam:
[52:32]
| Oh yeah like like cracking down on too much stuff i mean cracking.
|
Ivan:
[52:37]
| Down on like innocuous comments randomly for.
|
Sam:
[52:40]
| No reason if you if you remember for for specifically both you know all of the meta owned stuff facebook instagram threads had basically been very actively deprioritizing anything political at all, You could still post it, but they would not boost it. It would get very little algorithmic visibility, et cetera, because they were like, we don't want to be in that business. They're now removing some of those restrictions again, too.
|
Ivan:
[53:08]
| But that's the thing. But my problem is that that's a choice.
|
Sam:
[53:12]
| They can make. They could say this is not the problem. That's a choice they can make. But that's not the way they framed it. Right.
|
Ivan:
[53:22]
| That's the thing. That's not the way they framed it. you know you could say hey you know look we have been in a business where one of the things is that we have been trying to prioritize other other speech not political speech okay as our choice of what we want in the environment we want.
|
Sam:
[53:39]
| Your cute cat videos.
|
Ivan:
[53:40]
| We don't want this shit we really don't want we really don't want the place to be uh cesspools arguing about dei or whatever the fuck Okay. Right. All right. And so, but now we're, we're going to change that. But the problem is I, I.
|
Sam:
[53:56]
| And I, and they're backing off from that. Now they're, they're opening the spigots again for politics. They, they, part of what Zuck said was like, we've heard your feedback that people do want to talk about this stuff. So now we're going to let you.
|
Ivan:
[54:09]
| Yeah. But, but the problem is that there's a lot of people that don't want it anyway. And I'm like, and the only people that are bitching about it are right-wing psychopaths. Okay. For the most part, as far as I can tell. And I'm like, look, unless you go and like you make me, and actually I did see this. there was in threads recently and it added a button that said hey do you want to see political content.
|
Sam:
[54:30]
| Yes and i basically said no and i said no oh.
|
Ivan:
[54:34]
| You did i.
|
Sam:
[54:35]
| Said but but also to be but that's fine but i'm like but wait i'm.
|
Ivan:
[54:39]
| Like gives you the i'm like okay.
|
Sam:
[54:41]
| And also by the way threads does allow you to go to the followed tab which isn't influenced by that at all like i i clicked that button but i never look at the threads algorithmic tab at all i flip straight to the other one but.
|
Ivan:
[54:53]
| My whole thing is, and this has been the issue with ever since many of these started applying like really like intense algorithms to all of this versus originally how it was like really when Facebook started. Yeah, it was basically that for the most part. And the question was.
|
Sam:
[55:12]
| I mean, there was a day.
|
Ivan:
[55:13]
| Chronological. Right.
|
Sam:
[55:15]
| But there was a day where Facebook was actually about seeing what your friends and family were up to these days.
|
Ivan:
[55:20]
| That's it. And that was basically it.
|
Sam:
[55:21]
| And that's not what.
|
Ivan:
[55:22]
| Whether you wanted to see it. You have to dig to find that stuff now. Yeah. Do you want to put the priority on like chronological or what's trending amongst them? And that was basically it. And now it's like, I don't know. You log in. And God knows what the hell you're going to be presented first. Okay. Yeah. You have no, no, no, no, no clue. And I think that that's one of the bigger, bigger problems in which a lot of these platforms basically, because they want to drive whatever content gives engagement, you know, creates engagement, which the engagement is what creates clicks, which creates money where they completely, you know, don't care what the, they don't, Zuck doesn't want to care about what the fuck the content is.
|
Sam:
[56:05]
| Well and he has said this before.
|
Ivan:
[56:07]
| He has said this.
|
Sam:
[56:08]
| Before they had to back off this week from like flooding it with ai stuff too like facebook it had been saying we're we're going to create a whole bunch of like ai content creators who are going to be in your feed and and they they'd already prototyped like 30 of them or whatever and and people got wind that they were actively planning on saying, yeah, we want to get to the point where most of what you see is just AI generated. And people are like, we don't want that.
|
Ivan:
[56:44]
| I don't get it.
|
Sam:
[56:49]
| Because if you're optimizing, it's cheaper, but if you're optimizing for engagement, get the humans out of the loop. You don't have to pick which things you instead have ai constantly optimizing like what gets you to click let's make more of that.
|
Ivan:
[57:06]
| And that's the whole problem with these damn platforms today okay and it's the reason why many years ago you very wisely said and i you know i i wish that it is something that would have happened is that twitter should be run like wikipedia, You know, and not by, you know, not the way it's wound up being run. Okay. That that's the way it should be.
|
Sam:
[57:29]
| Wikipedia is being attacked by all these folks right now too, by the way.
|
Ivan:
[57:32]
| Because of the way it's run. Right. Because they hate it. Because they hate it because it's not run, you know, it's not run just for their wimp. And, you know, and that's, that's today's, that's today's everything, isn't it? Right. I mean, I mean, that is every, I mean, that, that seems to be like everything everywhere. You know? You're not doing it for me. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not making money out of it. You're, you're saying negative things about me, which may be true, but I hate them anyway. Fuck you. I hate you.
|
Sam:
[58:04]
| Well, basically to talk about.
|
Ivan:
[58:07]
| So let's go, you know, you were going back and like, so let's go through each of the moderation changes. We'll go back to the fact checking. The fact checking. I'm like, look, this is another one of those that is a decision as content provider. That is their call.
|
Sam:
[58:25]
| Absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[58:26]
| Whether you want to try to provide people, you know, facts based on what you believe are, you know, uh, you know you know i say you.
|
Sam:
[58:40]
| Believe but you know do you want to.
|
Ivan:
[58:41]
| Do you want to provide people stuff that has been evaluated by several groups to be factual.
|
Sam:
[58:48]
| Okay let me or you just.
|
Ivan:
[58:51]
| Want like the loudest you.
|
Sam:
[58:53]
| Know and most.
|
Ivan:
[58:54]
| Popular voices to just get heard facts be damned.
|
Sam:
[58:57]
| But let me let me just say one of the things that zuck said was one of the problems with the fact checkers where they were biased as far as i can tell the reason they're.
|
Ivan:
[59:08]
| Biased towards facts.
|
Sam:
[59:09]
| They're biased towards facts i mean people have looked yes the.
|
Ivan:
[59:14]
| Fact checkers are gonna go and like get a post from the flat earthers and they're gonna be like fuck you.
|
Sam:
[59:19]
| Well no it's not flat no no more specifically the accusation comes from the fact that they find conservative sources to be lying more often than liberal sources no shit sherlock and and so therefore they're biased and it's like no.
|
Ivan:
[59:35]
| This is just stupid this is just stupid conclusion.
|
Sam:
[59:40]
| The the that is not bias the reality the reality right now is that look there's no shortage of exaggeration and occasional fibbing on the left as well however however however the pattern specifically in the donald trump era more so than ever before is that the entire freaking model is based on facts don't matter if facts don't matter making shit up alternative facts as alternative facts kellyanne conway once said Yes. You know, where they are basically.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:21]
| Where we laughed and realized that it wasn't just a line. It was an M.O.
|
Sam:
[1:00:27]
| It was an M.O. The entire philosophy is if you don't like reality, you just say the opposite long enough and people believe it anyway. And there's so many domains this is in from, from climate change to, you know, to the, the situation with immigrants to the situation with trans people like this, this, you know, stuff that is nothing is blown up into something based on this kind of stuff. And, or things that are minor are blown up into major, you know, and, and it's, it's the whole MO. And so the fact that fact-checking organizations find problems with conservative sources more often than liberal sources is not evidence of bias.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:12]
| No. It's evidence that those organizations just lie nonstop on a regular basis about everything.
|
Sam:
[1:01:19]
| Right. And so, like, look, again, there are arguments on is relying on a small number of organizations like this the right way to make to clean your information environment? It might not be. But that's not what's happening here. What's not? It's not that Zuck is actually saying, you know, community notes do a better job at ascertaining accuracy.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:43]
| No, that's not exactly what. No, that's not what's happening. What he's saying is that, hey, these conservatives that I want to, you know, basically cozy up to right now don't like the fact that, you know, when we're checking through their facts, they keep coming up as liars. And so, therefore, that's what I consider bias. Right. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Stupid, stupid shit.
|
Sam:
[1:02:08]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:09]
| Just just he could have just come out. But, you know, the thing is, Zuck is such a fucking just just weasel because he could just could have come up and just said, you know what? I'm not in the business of checking facts anymore. I just don't want to be right. You know, I and and, you know, let the discourse happen out there and, you know, let the people decide for themselves. I just don't want to be in that business.
|
Sam:
[1:02:35]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:36]
| I mean, but saying that it's bias, it's just like, you know, kiss my ass. you know i i mean.
|
Sam:
[1:02:41]
| His statement like if you i did not watch the thing but i list i saw a bunch of clips i saw.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:48]
| Quotes i did i i mean it wasn't that long i watched i think i watched i it was a couple of sucking.
|
Sam:
[1:02:55]
| Up it was full of sucking up.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:57]
| Yes a hundred percent it was full of statements dude he fucking named what's his name the ufc guy to the fucking board the same day yes I mean are you fucking kidding me I mean I had never seen such a corporate zuck up pun intended ever in my life.
|
Sam:
[1:03:19]
| Yeah. I mean, it's like almost every sentence was like, what do they want to hear from us? Let me give it to us.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:26]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:03:27]
| You know, this did not reek of this is now. I don't know. I don't know what his actual personal opinions are on any of this stuff, but this certainly like read as let's just make nice, give them everything they want. listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:42]
| What i what i said i don't think that he has any convictions i think he's just a fucking grifter and i'm like and look if you look at back i remember watching the well they had that movie about when when facebook was created with the.
|
Sam:
[1:03:55]
| Wrinkle body i have not seen it it's on my list okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:57]
| Look as far as i can tell he was like that all the way back to the creation of facebook.
|
Sam:
[1:04:03]
| This is you.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:04]
| Know if you you know if you watch that movie you see the depiction of him it seems just it it tracks this tracks perfectly.
|
Sam:
[1:04:13]
| Right what.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:14]
| He just did it's all about the money.
|
Sam:
[1:04:17]
| So i think the next thing on the list of things the the loosening up of moderation policies just fits in the same boat like you know yeah you can you can you can claim that you know, trans people don't exist or that they're not real women or whatever and that's fine now it didn't used to be you can i there are places that have lists of somebody leaked like a manual or something that showed like some things that are now allowed that weren't before and they're all like really obnoxious horrific comments about like look let's put it this way the the point of all of this moderation is not, Look, people could have sort of the unpopular opinion on any of these issues, and you could potentially have an actual debate in a rational way and talk about it. But that's not what happens online.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:26]
| What happens online is harassment.
|
Sam:
[1:05:27]
| What happens online is harassment.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:29]
| It's serious harassment. That's the fucking problem. it's not like we're we're debating about hey what's the best way of of giving health care to americans okay well we could do a market-based method we could do single-payer or whatever versus the illegal immigrants are taking all the free health care and they are eating cats well.
|
Sam:
[1:05:52]
| And some of these some of the examples were specifically about uh gay and trans people and things like saying that, you know, those aren't real, you know, those are mental illnesses.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:03]
| Those are right. They're mental illnesses. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:06:06]
| You know, or they're pedophiles.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:08]
| They're all pedophiles. They're mentally ill pedophiles. You know, and please don't take us out of context. This is we're quoting other people.
|
Sam:
[1:06:17]
| Yes, please. But, you know, and look, this is one of those things where, again, could you theoretically have a high-minded debate about the nature of.
|
Sam:
[1:06:33]
| Trans people and what what what's going on physically mentally blah blah blah how what the right way to deal with it in society is could you have a high-minded debate about that yes you could but the act with very few people with very few people could actually do that and you'd need like people who actually knew what the fuck they were talking about who were experts and knew the stuff and blah blah blah and you'd still have to be careful to do it in a way that was responsible but that is not what's happening at all no what's happening it's just harassment of that community it is is harassment of that community is intentionally belittling them it is denying their experiences it is it is trying to make them uh uncomfortable enough that they go back in the closet and stop being visible you know that is the intention of all that kind of conversation yep and and and so yeah these the the various as far as i can tell the sum total of this loosening up on moderation is just let's make it easier to harass people let's make it easier to make or even aside from harassing let's make it easier to make this a hostile environment where those people won't want to be here and won't want to participate I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:50]
| And it's like, well, it's a double, well, it's a double combination. It's, I think the, the, the main thrust is to let's make the harassers comfortable.
|
Sam:
[1:08:01]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:02]
| And allow them to be able to express their hate freely.
|
Sam:
[1:08:06]
| Yes. That's, that's a good way of putting it. And, and, and, and look again.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:14]
| Is that, is that really like, you know, let me ask you a question, you know, seriously, let's say we were in a. Thank you. in a bar, if somebody came up to another person of a different, say, transgender and started, saying slurs and insulting that person, you know what, in a, in a place of business and they started a fight like that, they started harassing that person verbally to the, you're shot at everybody that would be thrown out.
|
Sam:
[1:08:41]
| Wow.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:43]
| That's a reality.
|
Sam:
[1:08:44]
| In lots of places, I would say there's some bars where that would be encouraged where somebody came in that was the wrong group they would be thrown out.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:52]
| In a in most places of business okay not ones that you know i don't know if you go to a i don't know some kind of redneck biker bar yes exactly yeah yeah if you go to like that you go to downtown fort lauderdale miami or whatever and you started harassing a customer a person that you saw that was of a different you know tissue, whatever, and started harassing them in public, you would get thrown out of that place of business.
|
Sam:
[1:09:20]
| And the reality is mainstream businesses. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:23]
| From from yeah, from mainstream businesses. Yes. And the reality is that Facebook and these companies are mainstream businesses. And what they're doing is allowing their platform to be open to this kind of harassment. It seems preposterous.
|
Sam:
[1:09:37]
| Well, and this is the thing I was about to say, too. Like, once again, these are private companies. I actually like think that for the most part, they should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do. Yeah. But they are setting the tone.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:51]
| They're creating an environment uncomfortable for everybody else.
|
Sam:
[1:09:54]
| Yeah. I mean, and look, in the U.S., we actually like companies aren't free to do whatever the hell they want. Like you can't say no blacks allowed. You know, there is the notion of protected classes that, you know, have to. you can't act against like that. But even if you said, okay, okay, Laissez-faire, do whatever the hell you want. They are choosing what kind of community that they are going to create. And they are choosing who to include and who not to include and who should be comfortable there and who should not. And I'm not going to pretend that we're going to see major numbers drop offs for meta in the next few days. But I have seen like multiple people in my family, in my high school friends list and just and other people random online as well talking about closing up their their Facebook accounts at this point because they they're like, this is not a place I want to be. Just like people a year or two ago started to do with X. Now, again, X is still out there. X is still relevant.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:05]
| Here's the one thing. X is still out there. But X right now is diminished, is severely diminished. And as a business, it is, I mean, it's not a business anymore. X is not a business anymore. X is Elon's toy. X paid, you know, he paid $45 billion to have a massively, you know, a massive megaphone of a toy. That's it. It's not a business anymore.
|
Sam:
[1:11:33]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:34]
| And the question is, is that what, I mean, you know, my question to the other companies, is that what you want? Because I don't think that stockholders at Meta, if this starts impacting business this way.
|
Sam:
[1:11:49]
| And look, I'll be honest. Yes, people are saying they're leaving, but people always say they're leaving. I feel like it's going to be a small.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:56]
| Tiny number. But in X, that has been real. I mean, the abandoning of business at X has been real. I mean, the documented revenue drop is 90%, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:12:09]
| All I'm saying is I don't expect that same level of drop from now.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:15]
| I don't expect it. And I will tell you this also.
|
Sam:
[1:12:19]
| I'd be surprised if I saw 10%.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:20]
| But I will tell you this also. because he is such a grifter and a suck-up. Okay, all right. There's also another thing about what he's saying publicly and what the fuck he will do that he sees impacts business. Okay, so let's see what the hell actually just translates into actual like, changes because i i guarantee you one thing as happened a couple of years ago when profits and revenue at meta tanked when he was all in on the.
|
Sam:
[1:12:56]
| Met vr yeah metaverse it.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:59]
| Didn't take that long for him to oh shit this isn't making money let me back off this stupid thing and let me do let me let me go back to doing what makes money okay and so i think that will be more of something that dictates what he does than anything else.
|
Sam:
[1:13:17]
| Well and i think the the question on that i mean they're like i said i feel like the number of people who will leave based on principle right now is tiny i mean i'm probably not gonna leave at least not right now in the same way that i left at twitter uh well i mean but but.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:36]
| I didn't leave right away either from twitter it took.
|
Sam:
[1:13:39]
| Me a little bit but and that's what i was going to say like it's more it's it's not the people leaving on principle it's do you actually poison the environment so people in general find it unpleasant yeah and and you already i think you know facebook isn't cool you know like it it went from you know Facebook started as a college-only thing, if you remember, way back in the day before it expanded to everybody. It has long ago stopped being the place where the cool kids go. And instead, it's the place where— Old fogies, like us. Old fogies are treating stuff and where people make fun of their grandmothers for falling for AI hoaxes and stuff like that.
|
Sam:
[1:14:27]
| And so it's already the old people place, really. instagram less so than facebook but you know and but if you make it if it starts getting to be more more negative more unpleasant than it is now then people will start coming less on their own not necessarily shut down their accounts and leave but come listen and facebook and all facing an issue with lagging engagement and lagging like you because again like and this is the fundamental disconnect too. I mean, what Facebook was for originally was connecting with family and friends.
|
Sam:
[1:15:06]
| Then they tried to pivot to groups, they tried to pivot to video at various places, all this stuff. But people aren't getting out of it the kinds of things that they really wanted. And they de-emphasize news, so it's not good for that stuff either. it's like what is it good for exactly it's it's unclear there there are a few places where like their their groups or pages that have interesting like community discussions like i i'm in i i i've subscribed or like to a few like local groups where people from the towns near me are talking about stuff and i find out about some local stuff there like there I'm on a few groups that I find useful. There was a discussion recently, a store nearby me did a remodeling lately. And so there are lots of people talking about like, was it a good remodel? Is it better now? Is it worse? Should I check it out? And that's interesting because it's like a store, like half a mile for me. I might want to check it out. I might not want to check it out. And so, okay, that was cool. but like it it becomes increasingly unclear like if it's not the place to go talk to keep up with what your friends and family are doing then what is it really for and why do i go yeah so now.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:26]
| I get that.
|
Sam:
[1:16:27]
| Okay all right anything is it time to move on time.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:31]
| To move on.
|
Sam:
[1:16:31]
| Time to move on okay here we go we'll do a break and then I'll think about what I want to say. Back after this.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:43]
| What do you want?
|
Sam:
[1:18:44]
| Okay we are back so first of all this is not my topic but i figured we should just not your topic well i mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:52]
| You're gonna pick the topic.
|
Sam:
[1:18:54]
| I'm right no i mean i'm gonna pick the topic but i'm gonna say something first that is not my real topic is oh i see i just wanted to acknowledge i don't think we have a lot we can really say but i wanted to acknowledge the fires in la just why i.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:08]
| I i i had put it okay so that's not your topic.
|
Sam:
[1:19:11]
| That is not what i'm gonna pick i i just wanted to say oh it's going on it's big it's horrific thousands and thousands of people affected blah blah blah i.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:22]
| Had put it down on the subject not specifically the fires themselves but it talks a little bit about the.
|
Sam:
[1:19:27]
| Insurance yes yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:29]
| Because the the the whole thing there is this entire issue right now where the united states hasn't for whatever reason taking a lot of these climate-like hazards, like hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, that kind of stuff, and done the same thing as we did with flood insurance. And the reason why there's a national flood insurance program is because this was the big catastrophe in the past that used to decimate people like this on a regular basis, okay? And why so many water control things have been done by the Arden Corps of Engineers around the United States in order to prevent those from happening, okay? But also they instituted a national flood insurance program. And the problem is that I just don't understand is like, you know, I'm sorry, but for most of these climate risks right now, you know, you know, private insurance should be for the other types of hazards like slip and falls, whatever, you know, a fire at your house, blah, blah, blah, whatever. When we're talking about climate risks, either we go and like take that same model extended to all these other climate risks, or I don't understand how the fuck people are going to get reasonable insurance.
|
Sam:
[1:20:35]
| Well, and also I'd say like we have to figure out at some point people have to start getting the hint essentially of saying, hey, maybe there are certain places where we just shouldn't have residential stuff anymore. And I'm not talking about moving people out who are there right now, but maybe if something burns down like this, you say you cannot rebuild, or at least you cannot rebuild unless it is rebuilt in such a way that it will not be subject to the same hazard again.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:09]
| Well, I think part of the problem is also, but in certain cases, there are certain things that you could have done to mitigate this. but the problem is that they're expensive with well no it's not that it's that it went back towards okay you built the houses it's like the same thing in issue in florida with like houses that were built between the 1970s and 90s okay they were built in a certain way that there is no mitigation of that you basically have to read you have to build a new thing you have to build a new structure but you could build a new structure in the place where it is and it doesn't it doesn't have the same risks. The problem that you've got is, you know, now there are certain places where you just look, it's just unreasonable to build. Okay. But, but in a lot of these places, it's not that you couldn't build. It's just that there have been a lot of things and technology that have come along to mitigate these risks. And for some reason they aren't mandated or, or, or you, I saw.
|
Sam:
[1:22:06]
| This is exactly what I'm saying though. Like if, if you are in a zone, For instance, let's say these fires in LA, if your house burned down in one of these, like there shouldn't just be a default. Let's build it right back exactly how it was before. It should be like.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:23]
| If you're going to insurance, they don't allow you to do that here in the state of Florida. Because, by the way, in California, you can't either. The newer structures that are built, actually, you have to build them to the current code. You can't build it back to where it was.
|
Sam:
[1:22:37]
| Well, right, right, right, right. But I mean, you have to, in those kind of situations, you should probably take a look at elevating the code too. I know they're much stricter on earthquakes than they used to be. But I'm not sure what codes are in terms of like fire resistance.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:49]
| I heard that they have made significant changes in terms of fire resistance for new construction in California precisely because of this. But I will say that there are some other systems that I know that I noticed. I started looking up this and I saw that they have like, I'm like, come on, there's somebody must have built some system to prevent your house from burning down. Right. Okay. Which involves like, you know, covering it in water.
|
Sam:
[1:23:17]
| Doing something. Outdoor automatic sprinkler system or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:22]
| Correct. And I saw that it is, it does exist. And as a matter of fact, they showed a couple of houses that were in areas that were recently impacted by massive fires where those houses survived no problem and every single one around them was destroyed. Okay? So there are things to do.
|
Sam:
[1:23:44]
| I had suggested a couple of years ago, and the technology is evolving. It might not have been there a few years back, but you could potentially have live real-time satellite surveillance, find the Protos fires as soon as they start, have a drone go out there and squash it while it's still tiny.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:03]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:03]
| You know, just automatic full, like within a protected zone.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:06]
| I mean, basically, somebody just goes out there and just just basically like swarms it. And you're like, OK, there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:24:12]
| You could have it set up there. Somebody likes a fucking match and there's a drone on them in 10 seconds, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:17]
| Oh, yeah, exactly. You know, but but part of it also and I know I went to California when I went to California, like a couple of months ago, where Napa Valley had been struck by a series of fires, just like what's happening in Los Angeles about three years ago. the one of the things that that that was the main issue was they had so many years of actually wet weather to created all this vegetation that in the past usually would burn would burn off itself but there weren't houses and things built around now there are yes and now there are and so all of a sudden you know you've got you've got climate that's made it somewhat drier and then you have all this vegetation yvonne.
|
Sam:
[1:24:51]
| Trump hold us the solution.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:54]
| Other rakes the.
|
Sam:
[1:24:55]
| Governor newsom should have been out raking the forests.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:58]
| Is the rakes i forgot about raking yeah i forgot about the raking but i'll tell you listen the solution sam you would love this fucking solution okay yes it it it it it's like you know it has this algorithm with software detects the distance of the fire active if you you get a warning on your phone if you don't activate it if you don't respond with a certain number of minutes it automatically self-act you know it self-activates it it starts like just irrigating the entire area dowsing it in a way that doesn't matter because most of these fires get started by by embers that are flying off and they hit as they start it completely just makes any of those embers not be able to light up this this thing this system was a shit man i'll tell you what i saw this and i'm like thinking i see these people 15 20 million dollar houses they You don't have to sound like, listen, if I lived and I had a $15 million mansion in Malibu, fuck i'd be all over this why the hell you know are all these people buying this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:26:03]
| Man well it's like most things and we've talked about this problem in all kinds of contexts before, preventative stuff costs money and people are always like oh i can't you know i don't why did i spend that money i haven't had a problem so far it seems fine it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:18]
| That man that is always the default the behavior man it's just amazing it's just the human default behavior i don't need that i've always been fine i never had the disaster and all of a sudden you see them sitting there in the middle of the rubble of the bullshit that they said was never gonna happen.
|
Sam:
[1:26:37]
| Yep well because it's because on average like it most preventative stuff never like in an ideal world the preventative stuff never gets used.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:49]
| Well i i'm gonna cancel the insurance i never had to use and.
|
Sam:
[1:26:54]
| I'm like.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:55]
| Fuck you should be happy you asshole you.
|
Sam:
[1:26:58]
| Never had.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:58]
| To use the fucking insurance you dumbass.
|
Sam:
[1:27:00]
| No i i did want to say before i move on to my real topic i did want to say like it along the lines of the drones coming out and like catching fires early i saw one video this week where it was sparked by all the fire of sparked by all the fire somebody was showing off like it was some like hotel atrium or something there was like a giant hotel atrium you know the kind that has like the big open space that you can look up like hundreds of stories or not hundreds but you know what i mean you can look up it's a wide area blah blah blah and they're like stories.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:34]
| Hundreds of stories was the biggest fucking building in.
|
Sam:
[1:27:37]
| The world hundreds it could be it is hundreds of stories. It was the Burj Khalifa. No, anyway, no, but it was some, you know, big wide hotel atrium, big space in the middle. And they were like, look, it's an indoor space. No sprinklers. Where do you see any sprinklers? Where would you put them? What are they? And they're like, here's, here's what they have. Look at, look at that thing over there. And then, and there's this little device and they did a demo of it. And it was exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. with drones it was they had whole like live heat sensing system in that whole area and if it sensed like a fire kind of thing this thing would pivot aim at the thing and then squirt it with high pressure water nice like fire hose level high pressure water and put the thing out so they they actually intentionally set a small little fire and this thing went vroom and that thing was out out like in two seconds like with this massive deluge of water i would love to see.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:43]
| Like somebody all of a sudden trying to light a cigarette and all of a sudden just like trying to light a cigarette.
|
Sam:
[1:28:47]
| We said no smoking asshole exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:56]
| That would be the best. I love this. You think that side wasn't serious?
|
Sam:
[1:29:05]
| That's right. No, it was cool. I will say like they set the fire and this thing like pivoted and turned and aimed and then like kaboom, like massive like thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:17]
| Well, one thing I was at this winery that I know that they had, I didn't discuss with them. I think they probably had the system that I was discussing because the one of the winery for name, if you want to look it up online and you can see on probably on the satellite pictures, Pulido, Pulido Walker. OK, and you could see from the satellite pictures from the last couple of years, you can see how they had the vegetation up until a couple of years ago and how there's none like really up to them. But they but they basically said that the fires had come up to their steps. They were like right there. And somehow with the, whatever they have set up, they were able to prevent the fire from consuming the, the winery, but that the fire basically made it all the way up to the structure, but they were able to prevent the fire from engulfing the structures. So, uh, but they, they, they told me the guy told me, yeah, we had a first class view of hell and that was like, not cool.
|
Sam:
[1:30:14]
| Well, even, even some of the stuff they've identified in the California fires, like the, the system they have for getting the water to the hydrants is really designed for dealing with one house at a time. It's it's just doesn't have the.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:28]
| Yeah, I mean, it was, it was impact.
|
Sam:
[1:30:31]
| It was impacted by power outages as well. And they shut the power off because the power down power lines were causing more fire. So they shut the power off. But that impacted the ability of the water distribution system to work properly. And so there are all kinds of things here that there are technological solutions to, but they're expensive.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:49]
| But there was also, also, I understood that there was a massive like retaining tank in the Palisades that had been out for service.
|
Sam:
[1:30:59]
| Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:00]
| That uh and it just happened to this happened to hit at the wrong moment it's kind of like what happened in new orleans where you know oh they were oh they knew the bollards to stop the, terrorists didn't work and they were in the process of replacing the bollards with ones that worked and this guy came right as they were in the middle of that process so.
|
Sam:
[1:31:22]
| Right okay okay i.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:24]
| All right enough so half not your real topic.
|
Sam:
[1:31:26]
| Half my segment was fires because i made the mistake of mentioning that i wasn't going to mention it.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:32]
| Right but this works but.
|
Sam:
[1:31:34]
| I think we can boom through the other stuff too because it's almost perfunctory at this point but i felt like we had to deal with like the wrapping up trump pre-presidency stuff so.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:49]
| We've got pre-presidency stuff. Can I say one thing about the pre-presidency stuff? The other day I was trying to, I see, you know, and I know that this is dialed down some, but you were sending some articles this week and I was thinking about, uh, I'm thinking about everybody just trying to analyze the any of Trump's pronouncements, statements, things, or whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:32:12]
| We're invading Greenland, Canada, and Panama next month, Yvonne. All three of them. We're invading. We're done.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:19]
| This is the... I mean, if you had a drunken uncle at a house spewing nonstop idiocies, would you stop to parse and analyze every single one of them as to what the implications were of.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:39]
| You know, I don't know, your uncle deciding that he was going to build the tallest building in the world and that he was going to jump off of it and rappel off of it and that he was going to, like, take over every neighbor's house at gunpoint. I don't know. Just saying all sorts of shit like this. And you're sitting over there parsing, hmm, what if he did get $100 billion and was able to invade, you know, all his neighbors. I'm like, what are you doing? What the fuck are we doing? This is analyzing any of all of this shit is analyzing the ramblings of a drunken lunatic. And the crazy thing is, he doesn't even drink. I can't imagine what this son of, I mean, if this guy was truly drunk, Look, what in God's name would he actually say? Oh, it's unreal. I mean, I'm just like, and I'm just like, at this point, I'm just like, eh, okay. Oh, so Greenland, uh, war with these guys, war with the other guys. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:51]
| Watch it, whatever. You know, I, you know, I, what, what's the point of all of this at this point? i i i'm just look.
|
Sam:
[1:34:02]
| There there are a couple things one he he has used this exact same strategy since he since he came on on the national scene for.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:12]
| Well to get attention yeah because he wants the attention he.
|
Sam:
[1:34:15]
| Wants the attention he wants the.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:16]
| Distraction it's about controlling what.
|
Sam:
[1:34:20]
| People are talking about and whatever so like it who knows what his real intentions towards greenland are but the point is like he spins everybody up and and it's like.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:33]
| But that's the dumb thing then that's what he wants the problem is that that's exactly what he wants if you and the thing is that he will say you know one thing is that elon had stolen some of the spotlight from him in previous weeks so whoa how do you fix that problem.
|
Sam:
[1:34:46]
| You you talk about taking over greenland panama and canada.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:50]
| Yep exactly that that's basically how you fix that problem it's just it's just their reaction, like, you know, just like a, you know, a child who starts just screaming louder because nobody's paying attention to them. And then all of a sudden it just starts like screaming louder and louder. You know, my whole point is that you could talk about, I think, talking about the fact that he's been amping up his crazy talk is a subject of discussion. Talking about the specifics of what he has said and all of that crazy talk is really not very productive.
|
Sam:
[1:35:22]
| I have seen articles talking about what the logistics would be if the United States did try to take over Greenland, for instance.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:29]
| We didn't want to talk about it. Exactly. It's like, hey, so one of my uncle got $200 billion and he was able to buy his entire neighborhood out and burn it. You're writing an article about the logistics about taking over Greenland? What the fuck is the matter with you?
|
Sam:
[1:35:48]
| So I think, you know, for the most part, I like what you said in terms of you can talk about the fact that he's amping up the crazy talk, but talking about the crazy things is probably a waste of time. the except and more generally i like the and i i think it i think it was rachel maddow who's who was popularized this as well the pay attention to what they do not what they say because oftentimes as well while there's something it's a diversionary tactic there's something else going on that's happening quietly that's actually more impactful and so it's often like when When something's like this going on, look for the other thing. Look, what's the other thing going on?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:35]
| But you put down this thing about the big, beautiful bill. Okay. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, these guys now, while I saw that Elon and his Doge thing have already actually, I guess they finally actually looked at some of the numbers and now have said, Oh yeah, cutting that number. Yeah. You know. Oh, that's there's no way to make that number you know we gotta cut down like maybe less than half so this is the shit we when you get shit talkers talking about budgets and things or whatever which i just experienced here that these people never looked at the fucking numbers and then they actually sit down and looking at the numbers oh yeah well yeah all that shit we said yeah that's just i guess that's not gonna work but i heard them talking a whole bunch about you know again Again, trying to cut the Affordable Care Act. Again, trying to cut Medicaid. Again, trying to do those things, which are things that they have tried to do in the past. Okay. All right. So I wouldn't, those I wouldn't put past, you know, them trying to revive and try to do again, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:37:47]
| They may not succeed, but certainly trying. The other thing, though, I was going to say is the whole thing about pay attention to what they do, not what they say. I think that's generally good advice, but sometimes you have to pay attention to what they say, at least in terms of understanding.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:05]
| The problem is, it's too many things.
|
Sam:
[1:38:10]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:10]
| You can't.
|
Sam:
[1:38:11]
| No, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:11]
| If you go to a press conference and the guy spews out 100, and I'm not exaggerating the number, 100 different unhinged things. how much time do you got to really pay attention.
|
Sam:
[1:38:25]
| To 100.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:27]
| Unhinged things that he says at one press conference.
|
Sam:
[1:38:30]
| And i i no and look look i think you're right and i think your approach of, talk about the fact that he's talking unhinged more than the specifics is a good way of navigating that but on the other hand like if you're denmark do you just ignore him completely no.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:46]
| I don't think that Denmark as a government can do that, obviously, or Canada for that matter. Okay. Obviously, that's a different... Or Panama. As a recipient of those things, you have to at least look at them because one thing that obviously that he will be trying to do is to try to extract something from you to make it seem like he won anyway. So you have to find out what the fuck that is. Yes. Okay. So from their perspective, I get that.
|
Sam:
[1:39:18]
| Or let's get another example for Europe in general. Trump has been vocally anti-NATO since before his first presidency and seems to have in between presidencies doubled down on NATO is useless, they need to pay more money, blah, blah, blah. If you are a non-US NATO member, are you making contingency plans for if Donald Trump tanks the whole fucking thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:45]
| I would be.
|
Sam:
[1:39:47]
| Yeah. Like you have.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:48]
| I mean, you know, no, no, no. But but there is a thing. Look, there is a difference between us as a pundit trying to analyze 100 different unhinged things that he said. Right. There is a difference if, say, I am the I am the leader of NATO right now. I can't remember the oh, my God. What's the name? The chairman that stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:40:07]
| I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:08]
| Director General. I think it is the rule. Fuck. Now I'm going to have to look it up.
|
Sam:
[1:40:13]
| Of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:15]
| You know, I'm the leader of NATO. OK, I'm I'm obviously I was just mentioned and I'm targeted. I'm evaluating how does this impact what what what we need to make sure to mitigate any action, obviously.
|
Sam:
[1:40:29]
| But but you have to sort of to some degree say, OK, he's probably bluffing secretary general. Yeah, he's probably bluffing. This is probably bullshit. He's just trying to use it to get some other concession out of this. but what if he is serious what would we have to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:47]
| Right so but but that but that's what i'm doing as a organization what i'm right saying is that and i would be doing that i'm not exactly like but but at the same time i'm not ripping everybody off their desk and tell them to stop working on everything else right now because all we are focused right now is on trump said we're fucked fucking nato i'm not doing that i okay but you're the leader you're not you're not.
|
Sam:
[1:41:10]
| Mobilizing the entire danish army to go defend greenland right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:14]
| Exactly no no and that that's what i'm saying okay but obviously you have to you know prepare and have your contingencies and have your plan on how you you're going to deal with him if it comes to that i mean i i believe in being prepared but but it's it's one of those things where but again it's not like i'm calling up you know probably a bad timing to use as a four alarm fire right now and bringing everybody off the off the street and saying, you know, we're on war right now with Trump. What are we doing?
|
Sam:
[1:41:46]
| Okay, okay, okay. That was a great discussion. The things I wanted to actually make sure we just tick off are, Trump was actually sentenced to nothing, but it actually happened.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:59]
| So basically to being a felon, but to being a felon.
|
Sam:
[1:42:02]
| That's it with no, no, no jail, no fine, no probation, nothing, nothing, nothing. I guess there are some consequences like he can't have a firearm in the state of New York anymore. Things like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:17]
| He can't have a liquor license.
|
Sam:
[1:42:19]
| There you go. Yeah. So there are a few minor things like that. Some of them are like, get a roundable. Like people have mentioned, for instance, that there are a whole bunch of countries that you can't get a visa to go into if you're a felon, including Canada, for instance. However, there are exception processes.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:37]
| It's diplomatic. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:42:39]
| Like he's, it's not like he's not going to do a state visit to Canada at some point. He probably will. You know, it's not like they're going to say, oh, sorry, you're a felon.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:48]
| Did he ever visit Canada in his first term?
|
Sam:
[1:42:51]
| Oh, I don't know. He might not have.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:53]
| He might not.
|
Sam:
[1:42:53]
| So maybe he won't visit Canada, except as a conquering hero when he takes over Canada.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:58]
| When he takes over, right, as the 51st state.
|
Sam:
[1:43:01]
| 51st state. Which would, by the way, be a democratic state.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:05]
| Which is one of the things that I'm like, okay, so basically we're- And of course, like-
|
Sam:
[1:43:10]
| Okay, I was about to say if this was really going to happen, XYZ, but to what you were saying before, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:17]
| It's another one of these, like, the fuck are we talking about?
|
Sam:
[1:43:20]
| What are we doing?
|
Ivan:
[1:43:21]
| We're analyzing the impacts now of Canada becoming, you know, part of the United States.
|
Sam:
[1:43:25]
| Yeah, it wouldn't be one state. It would be multiple states for each province. But no, no, no. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:30]
| Oh, so we would get, like, 10 Democratic senators.
|
Sam:
[1:43:34]
| There you go. Well, there are a couple of Canadian provinces that would probably not be Democratic. but we would get more.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:41]
| We would get like six.
|
Sam:
[1:43:43]
| Yeah, something like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:44]
| Well, no, wait, wait, take note. That's not accurate. I'm going to tell you something because we keep thinking about foreign governments. Listen, foreign conservatives are.
|
Sam:
[1:43:51]
| For the most part- Yvonne, Yvonne, Yvonne, anyway. Let's not go into exactly how would a merger of U.S.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:58]
| And Canada work. How much of a waste of time of discussion is this?
|
Sam:
[1:44:02]
| Yes, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:02]
| Anyway, all right, let's move on.
|
Sam:
[1:44:03]
| Okay, so the sentencing did happen. The couple notes, like I think they're the prosecution here, I think, made a big mistake pre-election when they basically agreed with the notion of delaying sentencing till after the election.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:20]
| I don't understand what I don't get it. I mean, I don't get it. But I also I'm pulling I'm I'm trying to understand why the judge gave the sentence he gave.
|
Sam:
[1:44:31]
| Well, basically, because there are a couple of things. by the way that.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:36]
| Is the most lenient sentence.
|
Sam:
[1:44:38]
| That is possible that.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:40]
| That is that no that anybody has gotten for that crime nobody.
|
Sam:
[1:44:43]
| That has been prosecuted.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:45]
| For that in new york has ever gotten such a lenient sentence.
|
Sam:
[1:44:48]
| So here's here's one thing right off the bat i think it was strategic the supreme court ruled five to four to let the sentencing go forward and part of the statement they put out was that it was specifically because the judge had said this would be the sentence.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:08]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:45:08]
| Like if this was anything else, if the judge, if it looked like there was still a possibility that the judge might impose a real sentence, like several months in jail, even if it was like automatically stayed till after the Trump presidency, I can almost guarantee you that 5-4 vote would have gone the other way. Like you would have at least lost one of the two conservatives that went along with the sentencing. You know, we had Roberts and Barrett agreed to let this go forward. One of them would have flipped if there'd been a real chance of at least one, maybe both of them would have flipped if there'd been a real chance of a real sentence here. And that's a big part of it. I also heard that even if that hadn't happened, even if the Supreme Court had let this go forward and he decided to do something else and done jail time.
|
Sam:
[1:46:02]
| The appeals process almost certainly would have undone that anyway. I mean, honestly, even now, there is a very good chance, like Trump is still going to appeal this. There's a very good chance in the end that he wins. Like this is going to end up at SCOTUS. It may take two years to get there, but this is going to end up at SCOTUS again. And the issues of the fact that there was evidence that was potentially influenced by the supreme court immunity decision blah blah blah will come in and this could still be vacated this could still he could still end up getting this felony conviction expunged from his record you know uh listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:43]
| You can get a felony conviction expunged without having to appeal.
|
Sam:
[1:46:47]
| Okay no no i know but but no no but my my whole thing this may be overturned anyway like no.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:54]
| But but but well.
|
Sam:
[1:46:55]
| But But if there had been a more significant sentence, I've heard multiple people say that the appeals process would be accelerated, even with Trump as president, to get it out of the way, and it would increase the chance of Trump winning that process. I think he may win eventually anyway. But basically, this sentence was the only sentence that would have gotten the Supreme Court to let the sentence even happen before Donald Trump took office. and and it has the best chance of holding up on appeal as well that's why yeah but but i feel like the the again the the prosecution's decision like when it when it was time this sentencing was originally supposed to be in what june or something and the trump then we had.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:44]
| The immunity uh uh you know uh, whatchamacallit, the immunity decision from SCOTUS.
|
Sam:
[1:47:53]
| But even after that, it was scheduled for like September or October.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:56]
| Yeah, but it was appealed on the basis of that. And then it got delayed and delayed.
|
Sam:
[1:48:00]
| Right, right. But after that, the sentencing was rescheduled for like September or October after all the SCOTUS stuff about immunity. And then Trump petitioned again to have it delayed. And the prosecutors, they didn't actually say we agree with that, but they said, we leave it up to the judge. Do whatever you want. And the judge basically, his response to them was actually kind of annoyed. He's like, look, because you didn't even present an argument for why not to delay it, I'm going to have to agree with the delaying. Whereas he seemed to, what I read between the lines is that if the prosecutors had made a vigorous argument for why not to delay, it might not have been delayed.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:48]
| Well, I never understood why the hell they didn't. That's the one that baffled me completely.
|
Sam:
[1:48:54]
| And here's the thing. If there had actually been a sentence in this in September or October, the arguments for why this had to be the nothing sentence would not have applied at that point because Trump wouldn't have been the president-elect. So he might have been sentenced to jail. There still would not have been any actual time in jail because of appeals and blah, blah, blah that would have lasted forever. But now, would that have made any difference in the election? I don't fucking know. It might have even helped Donald Trump, you know, to be honest.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:29]
| P.S.
|
Sam:
[1:49:30]
| But- But I feel like the the the delay, delay, delay that Donald Trump successfully deployed in all four of his his criminal cases was massively successful. In the end, it got Donald everything he wanted. And I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:50]
| But look, let's be clear that one of the biggest issues regarding all of these cases was the timidity by the by the U.S. Attorney General going after him right after, you know, a lot of this should have been attacked way earlier than it was.
|
Sam:
[1:50:06]
| Maybe. I think there's still a lot, you know, SCOTUS, I think, would have put their thumb on the scale anyway. They would have imposed additional delay.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:15]
| But they started these cases like almost two years later than they should have.
|
Sam:
[1:50:21]
| Well, there's been reporting that they were looking at other things during that time period. There was stuff they were doing. It just wasn't very public.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:27]
| They moved way too slow. They moved way too slow.
|
Sam:
[1:50:31]
| I have seen reasonable arguments on both sides of this. I tend to agree with you that they should have at least done some things earlier. But at the same time, like people have pointed out what if you if you had done like the South koreans have been trying to do and like yeah i tried to arrest donald trump like on january 21st yeah um of of that year yeah um yeah you might not have developed all the evidence that you ended up with otherwise because i think that's bullshit yeah and of course you could maybe not.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:03]
| Arrest them on january 21st but certainly look as the house committee showed they could have found that evidence a lot sooner.
|
Sam:
[1:51:13]
| There were certainly questions of approach. Apparently, one of the things that's been reported is the DOJ actually spent a lot of time trying to find a connection between Donald Trump and the mob over financial stuff. and weren't able to prove anything. And they spent like a year and a half on that. And I certainly think what the committee showed was starting at the top down rather than the bottom up was the right approach here. And that's not what they were doing. So anyway, there are a bunch of stuff there. Mistakes made, water under the bridge. The other thing related is the special counsel report. It looks like at least the- That's getting released. Well, the, the January 6th part of it looks like it will be.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:59]
| I understand the other one is supposed to be released also tomorrow.
|
Sam:
[1:52:02]
| Well, Sunday, the last Sunday is the delay date for the January 6th stuff. My understanding was the, the classified document stuff is still being held because DOJ is indicated that there's a cut because they still have the case open against the two co-conspirators.
|
Sam:
[1:52:20]
| And so DOJ is not releasing that right now. That part of things is still being looked at. Honestly, I feel like DOJ should go ahead and drop those charges. I mean, what's the fucking point? I mean, the point against the charges on his valet or whatever, we're to try to pressure them on this case anyway. I mean, really. Like if it, if that's the, if the fact that there's an open case is stopping them from drop, from dropping the report, they should drop the case, like drop the rest of the case, drop the report. I mean, we've, we've also heard that, look, there are thousands of pages in these reports, but also nothing new. I mean, it's more detail on all kinds of stuff, but we know both these stories. We know the January 6th story. We know the classified document story. There's more detail, perhaps more evidence, perhaps more rationale on why DOJ thought this was important enough to bring charges, all that kind of stuff. But it's not like they're going to drop these documents and we're going to go, wow, that changes everything. You know, it's, you know, it's too late. Anybody whose opinion was going to change on anything has already changed and everybody voted already. Donald Trump is still becoming president on the 20th.
|
Sam:
[1:53:41]
| Nothing's changing that and you know but it's good it's good to have it on the historical record and and even the classified documents one like people have mentioned like if they don't release it before january 20th you know donald trump can order the doj at that point to just destroy it like without it being released anywhere that's.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:04]
| Why it needs to be fucking.
|
Sam:
[1:54:05]
| Released yeah so they need to do whatever they need to do to get that out you know so like i said if nothing else for a historical somebody will.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:13]
| Leak it anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:54:14]
| You'd think but hell we've.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:17]
| Had other even i mean shit we had that scotus decision leaked and they never figured out who did.
|
Sam:
[1:54:23]
| It was jenny thomas.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:25]
| Maybe. Who knows? But we just don't, you know, I'm not going to.
|
Sam:
[1:54:29]
| No, I don't know, obviously, but we don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:31]
| But what I'm saying is that, you know, we've had, I mean, I'm sure somebody at some point they think is going to be, you know, it's going to be, you know, destroyed. They'll be like, oh, fuck it. We're leaking this. The hell with this.
|
Sam:
[1:54:43]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:44]
| I mean, that's what I did.
|
Sam:
[1:54:47]
| You're past the statute of limitations, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:54:49]
| Wait, wait, wait. I mean, shit, you know, I'm sure Carly's still looking for me.
|
Sam:
[1:54:55]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:56]
| Maybe one of these days I got to bump into Carly. Hey, you were looking for me? Fuck you, bitch.
|
Sam:
[1:54:59]
| We should invite her on the podcast.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:01]
| That'd be great.
|
Sam:
[1:55:02]
| That'd be a fun show.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:03]
| If I could tell her, that would be great. That'd be a great show. Actually, that would be a great show. Holy shit.
|
Sam:
[1:55:12]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:12]
| Hey, Carly, how could you believe so much of the bullshit you say? What? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:55:18]
| Okay. The only other things to mention Trump-wise to wrap things up, are, are forward looking things that we will see in just a couple of weeks. They're saying that there will be up to a hundred executive orders on the first day related to a whole bunch of stuff. First day probably means the 21st. Maybe he'll sign some things the afternoon of the 20th, but.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:42]
| Well, it's like he did that last time, that entire whole thing where he's just signing order after order.
|
Sam:
[1:55:47]
| Right. So we're going to see a bunch of those. And then the. Congress is basically trying to figure, that's where the one beautiful bill thing comes in. They're apparently arguing over whether it's one bill or two bills, but they're trying to shove things through reconciliation to do all kinds of stuff. They're calling this, you know, people remembering Iraq War I and calling this the shock and awe strategy and trying to basically, in the first few weeks of the administration, ram through all kinds of things that will probably, on balance, be fairly unpopular, actually, but be things that they had promised during the campaign. And we'll see what happens with that. Yeah. And yeah, that's it. Shall we wrap up, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:56:31]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:56:32]
| Okay. Thanks, everybody. Oh, oh, oh, Patreon. By the way, I'm going to give the thing, but I wanted to mention, I mentioned something about the Patreon because Yvonne incurred an additional expense to up us from Slack to Slack Pro or something so that we could keep our archives and things wouldn't be deleted. Thank you, Yvonne. But I mentioned something about this on our Slack, about how people needed to up their game on the Patreon because we weren't even coming close to breaking even. And three different people upped what they were doing. Two people upped and one people added. One people added. Ed became a patron for the first time. Thank you, Ed. And I have to look up what rewards each of you are supposed to officially get. But also, Greg increased his contribution on our Patreon. And who's the other? Bob. And Bob also increased his contribution. So thank you, Ed, Bob, and Greg for your Patreon contributions. We appreciate them. We will look up what you're officially supposed to get and do that next week, maybe. I forget like this clapping, this bells, this postcards, things, things. Anyway, so thank you all. And for anybody else, uh, patreon.com slash curmudgeons hyphen corner. Is it? No, it's patreon.com slash curmudgeons corner, right? No hyphen on that one.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:57]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:57:58]
| You know, go to curmudgeons hyphen corner.com and follow the link to our Patreon. There you go. Then you don't have to worry about the Patreon URL. Curmudgeons hyphen corner.com has all of the ways that you can get in touch with us, has our archives, has transcripts, all that fun stuff. It includes the link to our YouTube where we live stream, or you can look at the actual videos of these podcasts after the fact. And it includes a link to our Patreon, as I said. Our Patreon, you can give us money. And even with the new contributions, it still costs us more money to host and deal with the logistics of the show than we get from the Patreon, but that's okay. We do it for love. However, more money is good anyway. So, you know, toss us some money if you enjoy the show. Also, I haven't said for a long time, tell your friends. Like, if you like this show, tell your friends who you think might like it as well. That would be great.
|
Sam:
[1:58:55]
| I don't have a link to our TikTok on there. I've been posting clips, but like, it looks like TikTok only has like a couple, a week to live. Like they had their SCOTUS argument and it apparently by all reports did not go well for them. So we'll see, they may go dark on the 19th because TikTok is also said, by the way, like people are like, well, you can just use it. You can, you'll still be able to use it. It just won't get updates. It won't be on the app store, blah, blah, blah. TikTok has said that they will officially shutter their business if they don't win this case in the US. So, and who knows if VPNing to other countries would be useful or viable, but it looks like TikTok will be gone. So good thing I didn't add the link to TikTok because I just have to undo it. Anyway, give us money at Patreon. At $2 a month or more, we will invite you to that curmudgeon's corner Slack, which is now pro, which means you can search our archives from way back when, I guess. But we would love to have more people on there. On our Slack, Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week and sharing interesting links and stuff like that. Yvonne, do you have an interesting link to highlight for this week.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:59]
| Oh god do i have an interesting link for this week do i have one uh well apparently they have these like they're trying to sell these like uh robots at ces the human uh chatting with real bonics lifelike companion robot and i'm like i don't know those are not lifelike, Can I just say, is that, I mean, I, I, it's very, it's, they're very weird.
|
Sam:
[2:00:35]
| It's LLM powered so it can talk to you and stuff and blah, blah, blah. It talks to you. It tries. It's very human ish. It is very, very uncanny and uncanny Valley. It is very, very, very uncanny Valley. Did I even say that right? Uncanny keeps coming out of my mouth wrong.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:54]
| Yeah. It's just you.
|
Sam:
[2:00:57]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:57]
| And by the way, I don't know if you noticed that they made the robots with very large breasts. I'm thinking that they're targeting a certain audience.
|
Sam:
[2:01:06]
| And oddly shaped, too.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:08]
| And oddly shaped. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:01:10]
| I'm just like. Because look, they make sex dolls, too. I know that. This looked more like a sex doll.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:19]
| That's right. That's more than actual.
|
Sam:
[2:01:22]
| Just to be clear, not that I have a lot of experience with those.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:25]
| I'm just saying.
|
Sam:
[2:01:27]
| But it looked more like a sex doll than it did. Like they're pitching this as like, you can have it at your booth at conventions for your like tech product or whatever. I'm like, no, this is going to scare people away. This is not for now. Technology is progressing maybe in a few years. I don't know. But like this, this is like the thing I mentioned earlier about Zuck saying they wanted AI bots all in your feed generating content. Like, People don't want this. Like they're going to keep trying to shove it down our throats, but people don't want this.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:03]
| People don't want this. No.
|
Sam:
[2:02:04]
| You know, and even when they do have like real companion bots and stuff, like I also saw like somebody made like a little a little robotic dog thing and they've had robotic dogs for years. Remember the Ibo? Yes, of course. You know, they've had robotic dogs for a long time, but like somebody made a companion robotic dog that's meant for people with dementia and stuff like that. And it looked a little uncanny valley too, but at least it was like.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:33]
| Well, it wasn't trying to act like it.
|
Sam:
[2:02:36]
| No, it was modeled after a stuffed animal. It looked like a stuffed animal.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:42]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[2:02:43]
| I mean, the animatronics still made it look a little off.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:47]
| Yeah, but this thing is just creepy. Yes, more than anything else. They were just creepy.
|
Sam:
[2:02:55]
| We are in for an interesting next few years as these technologies develop. And because they are definitely very uncanny valley right now. But do they get to the other side in a few more years? I don't know. They might. And that would change lots of stuff. but yeah okay we are done thanks everybody for listening for for thanks everybody for, okay goodbye have a great have a great week blah blah blah blah blah blah we'll see you next time goodbye bye, Okay, that's it. I'm heading stop. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:08]
| All right. Bye.
|
