Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Testing, one, two, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, I forgot, four! And maybe something else. Okay, fine, here we... Hi, this is Sam from the future. Here at the very beginning of the show, at what we call the cold open, when we originally recorded this, I had an audio issue that Yvonne said made me sound like Chewbacca. And it took us a while to resolve that. Normally when there's something sort of semi-amusing like that, I put it here in the cold open before the show starts. But this time, it was actually also long before we fixed it. But just so you guys can experience it, if you wish to, I'm going to put it at the very end of the show, after the outro and all that kind of stuff when we're done. So you can listen to me sounding weird and Yvonne cracking up about it for a while until we resolve the problem.
|
Sam:
[0:57]
| If you feel like it. Also, since I'm here anyway, I'll mention that the last segment of the show is about TikTok. But we recorded it Friday night and there were developments since then before I'm putting the show out. So just to put it out there, TikTok was indeed shut down by TikTok themselves anticipating the legal deadline on Saturday evening U.S. Time. And then Sunday morning, it was back on with TikTok pointing to various assurances president to be. They just said President Trump, but various assurances that President Trump gave about actions he would take once he became president, once he becomes president on Monday. So TikTok's back on again. So when you listen to that last segment, you can see how well we did at anticipating what would or would not happen. Anyway, on with the show. I'll start with the pre-open that... Well, there's still a little bit of cold open besides the weird cold open. And besides me doing my Sam from the future, here's what happened with TikTok. Of course, I've already spent like a lot of time talking about this stuff. I might as well have played the Chewbacca stuff. Well, this is still a lot shorter than that. Anyway, why am I still going? Here comes the thing. Do, do, do.
|
Ivan:
[2:25]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:27]
| Okay. Better?
|
Ivan:
[2:29]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[2:32]
| Okay hold on let's get the uh make sure the live stream's going.
|
Ivan:
[2:40]
| You shaved oh that's right you went to the gala and the thing and the thing.
|
Sam:
[2:46]
| Brandy got a haircut brandy asked me to you know.
|
Ivan:
[2:51]
| Damn it the least you could do.
|
Sam:
[2:56]
| It's like the first time in 18 years that.
|
Ivan:
[2:59]
| What you hadn't shaved in 18 years.
|
Sam:
[3:02]
| Yeah i mean i'd only trimmed the beard but i hadn't like hadn't been clean shaven since before alex was born you.
|
Ivan:
[3:10]
| Look a lot younger i must say.
|
Sam:
[3:15]
| Okay let's make sure this is gone 1948 there we go okay Since we had that extended preamble, should we just go?
|
Ivan:
[3:26]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[3:27]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[3:28]
| You were able to hear the sound.
|
Sam:
[3:30]
| I was able to hear the sound, both on the back and forth and on the clip you sent me. I think one of the three times we connected may not have fully recorded on Riverside, but I have everything on YouTube.
|
Ivan:
[3:47]
| Oh, wait. So, so on Riverside, it was recording you sounding like that?
|
Sam:
[3:51]
| Oh, I don't know. Like I, I, I had recordings like, well, I ended up with, this is now the third recording that Riverside has, but I think it's the fourth time we actually connected. So I don't know. I don't know exactly if it lost something, but if it did lose something, I have that on, on YouTube anyway. So anyway, I think we got everything. I think.
|
Ivan:
[4:18]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[4:19]
| We'll see. But not, the only thing that I would use is if we got good recordings of Chewbacca, then I will of course include that. Yes. Okay. Let's get this thing started. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, January 18th, 2025. It's just before 4 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Mentor, Yvonne Bo is here, and this is our last show of the Biden presidency. Okay anyway we're gonna do our usual sort of thing we'll talk about whatever in the first segment and then more newsy stuff in the second and third segments one of the segments picked by and one picked by me that's the plan so as we butt first into this you want to start yvonne you got a butt firsty thing do.
|
Ivan:
[5:39]
| I have a butt firsty thing well, not gonna make a butt first out of our follies and trying to record the show today so you know i.
|
Sam:
[5:57]
| Don't know we had some fun technical difficulties i'm hoping we got enough of it that i put a little bit before the theme song just yeah and get a taste uh yeah.
|
Ivan:
[6:06]
| We we was uh yeah what the fuck happened this.
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Sam:
[6:11]
| I don't know it.
|
Ivan:
[6:12]
| Was a long well the thing.
|
Sam:
[6:14]
| You know it doesn't have to be like a personal story it can just be something something that's been in the news that isn't particularly like serious you know or well the one.
|
Ivan:
[6:24]
| Thing that wasn't serious that wasn't in the news, but that thank God I did make change my flight on third.
|
Sam:
[6:32]
| Oh yes. I know what this is.
|
Ivan:
[6:33]
| Okay. Because well, A couple appointments wind up being rescheduled. My schedule kept changing. I did some of the appointments with something happened. And then so it wound up that I didn't have the, I had Thursday afternoon appointments, but they wound up getting pushed to next week. I'm actually flying back to Puerto Rico next week. And so they wound up getting pushed. So I'm like, well, I'm trying to get back home earlier. So I snagged, I called the agency and I said, well, they were able to get me on the, 7 40 something a.m. Flight to to Miami okay got me got got me you know back at 10 a.m. Or a little earlier than that i'm like great you'd probably be home by 11 a.m. Gets you know work pick up my son from school so my mom doesn't have to go pick him up because my wife is still like you know even though they actually took off her cast she's finally on a walking boot and she's trying to get used to nice well i mean.
|
Sam:
[7:35]
| Not not that it's nice to have a walking booth boot.
|
Ivan:
[7:37]
| But it's nice as an improvement.
|
Sam:
[7:39]
| From where it was.
|
Ivan:
[7:40]
| By as an improvement or was that we did that yesterday afternoon and uh so so i was doing that flying back from san you know back from san juan first like and so then spacex decides to launch their rocket yesterday starship and so it broke up in space, and it broke up really spectacularly badly in such a way that basically flights that were going over my route, basically there was a ground stop in San Juan. The flights to Miami, you know, flights northbound could not leave because of the debris coming down from this rocket.
|
Sam:
[8:25]
| There were lots of spectacular videos of the explosion, both from the ground and from aircraft. There were lots of people pointing their cameras out of their plane from commercial flights, various places. And apparently there was some damage on the ground on Turks and Caicos.
|
Ivan:
[8:42]
| On Turks and Caicos, yeah. so this wasn't like just whatever this was you know this was a serious incident okay and flights wound up being diverted because debris was raining down and you know there was like i actually shared a video from one of the this this flight guy that i follow a lot and he showed all these circling patterns that all of a sudden aircraft had to do nor avoid that and basically there was a ground stop in san juan so it would have meant i was going to go on the late later flight if i did that I would have been delayed into oblivion.
|
Sam:
[9:16]
| I just want to point out one thing. Like, theoretically, they already, like, even before the thing explodes, they close certain airspace where they think there'd be a chance of a problem. Like, if there was a problem with the flight where they think that there might be an issue. Like, they already closed some airspace. They move. They put some warnings in place. but apparently whatever it was wasn't sufficient given the actual.
|
Ivan:
[9:45]
| Damage well here's the thing the the only notum that is out there for that is for a very small area just very close to the you know the coast of texas like right on the you know right near the word rocket is lost but it's not much further out than that okay i actually in that video i shared they actually showed the area. And it was an area that was in the Gulf that was just very close to Texas. It was definitely nowhere near where the debris started raining down. So, so yeah, so that was not, you know, that, that, that, that NOTAM was, I mean, it wouldn't have, it, it, it, it, it didn't matter because they wound up having to implement, they did, the FAA does have an emergency procedure for these situations. And they had to actually pull that one into into action because of this. You know, look, I'm pretty unnerving. I got to be honest with you. You know, honestly, just going to brought down a commercial airliner.
|
Sam:
[10:52]
| And just to be clear, so people are aware who haven't been following this. This was an unmanned flight. It also was not one of SpaceX's routine satellite launches or whatever. It was a test of the newest iteration of the Starship spacecraft, which is their big one that's intended to hold not just humans, but many humans. Like it's supposed to be like either a small number of humans, take them all the way to the moon, or conceivably like you could configure this thing to hold 50 people at once and send them to space or whatever. Right. But it's it's it's large, large capacity for cargo or humans or whatever you want to put in it. They have been iterating on this thing to test it. This is not the first one. This is not the first one that has blown up spectacularly. And we've talked before about, you know, hey, this is just SpaceX's general philosophy, right? You iterate over and over and eventually you get to the point where, I mean, their regular orbital launches have been going quite successfully with a high success ratio for a long time now, but people made fun of them for years because they kept blowing up rockets while they were developing it. And when they started trying to catch the rockets, the boosters, when they came back down, those failed over and over and over again before they succeeded.
|
Sam:
[12:19]
| And this is just how SpaceX has chosen to do it. Whereas sort of the traditional NASA way was to move much more slowly, be much more careful, you know, and they've had big spectacular losses too, even with that philosophy. But SpaceX is just like, hey, we're iterating fast. We'll have some accidents. We'll fix it. We'll go forward. And presumably they hope they'll be fairly sure of the technology before they actually put humans on board. But in the meantime, time, you know, okay, this one blew up. But like you said, like they...
|
Ivan:
[12:56]
| You're pushing the envelope with this, okay? And that's the problem. And, you know, I mean, seriously, this could have brought down commercial airliners yesterday, okay? Not just one. If swift action hadn't been taken. This is crazy.
|
Sam:
[13:15]
| And if one or two happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
|
Ivan:
[13:19]
| Exactly. Yeah. This is too cavalier. And I've always said that it's too damn cavalier. You know, this is the same philosophy as people that go and don't buy insurance, you know, where they live in a place with hurricanes and they're like, well, you know, we had five hurricanes and nothing happened until until a big one just winds up, you know, blasting everything to bits. And that's the philosophy that they're taking and i you know i think it's too dangerous i i i think that you know they could really accomplish a lot of what they're doing without being as cavalier as their their people but you know i i mean and honestly you know if we have to wait a couple of extra years for some of this stuff it's not the end of the world either then.
|
Sam:
[14:07]
| You wait a couple extra years.
|
Ivan:
[14:09]
| Yeah i just don't i don't i don't i don't see the i i don't i don't see the uh the value in the extra risk and that was like very yesterday was bad and you know i saw that the faa decided to ban them but i'm expecting that that will be lifted like on tuesday well.
|
Sam:
[14:31]
| It's it yeah well even so it's pending an investigation and they've.
|
Ivan:
[14:35]
| Already by the way an investigation what yeah what what are the funniest thing is that physical investigation they asked them to do a self-investigation right you know which is you know one of the things saying is like yeah we've been doing that with bowling how did that fucking turn out well.
|
Sam:
[14:49]
| And self-infect I mean they they already have a preliminary like they think it was a fuel leak or something didn't they did I see that.
|
Ivan:
[14:55]
| Yeah it was a oxygen leak I believe in a place that it couldn't be vented and so therefore it built up and exploded right oh yeah and Elon was like oh yeah yeah no problem we'll just fix it and then we'll launch another one again next month which is like okay you know, And I'm actually pretty confident that they're going to let them launch it next month.
|
Sam:
[15:17]
| I would imagine. I mean, you know, the point of, I mean, to be fair here, the point of an investigation is to fix the problem and iterate and try again. If they can, within a month, figure out the problem, fix the problem, iterate.
|
Ivan:
[15:37]
| Yeah, but I'm sorry. How many of these are blown up?
|
Sam:
[15:42]
| Well what this is the eighth right or something this.
|
Ivan:
[15:45]
| Is yeah it's like seven yeah i'm not i mean i don't know like three but not all but i think like three of them there was that one that had that a spectacular like blast at the right at the pad right at the law at the pad they had another one that exploded in mid-flight this one in mid-flight so that's three off the top of my head that i remember i mean these things just explode like right now they're just like yeah we'll launch another one i'm like you know like i and i yeah i don't you.
|
Sam:
[16:18]
| Know how how else are you gonna test it yvonne you know.
|
Ivan:
[16:22]
| Look i guess the good thing is that they're not putting people in there right maybe like ah you know we lost a couple of more astronauts oh maybe maybe.
|
Sam:
[16:31]
| You just need a bigger and larger exclusion zone for the next test until.
|
Ivan:
[16:35]
| You like what like you know what are we going to shut off? The Gulf of Mexico? I was thinking the Gulf of America. What?
|
Sam:
[16:46]
| I was thinking the whole planet, but you know.
|
Ivan:
[16:48]
| Oh, yeah, that's reasonable. Sure. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[16:51]
| I mean, you never know which way this thing's going to go, right?
|
Ivan:
[16:53]
| Well, that's true. Yeah. You know, it could really spin out of control. Yeah, for all we know. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[16:58]
| You know, next time it's going to hit Antarctica.
|
Ivan:
[17:01]
| Oh, there you go. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[17:04]
| No, no. You actually have a fairly good idea where they're going to go.
|
Ivan:
[17:07]
| Yeah i have a fairly good idea where it's going to go but still i mean i'm like yeah what's i i don't but but it's a long it's a pretty big path um.
|
Sam:
[17:16]
| Well and especially when it explodes and especially when it explodes when it explodes at high altitude the debris can cover a significant area i mean that's that yeah that that's why like it's potentially dangerous you know and so yeah i don't know i i mean i i think there are advantages, to Elon's approach here or SpaceX's. It's not really just Elon. I mean, it's, but the, there are some advantages that approach, but you're absolutely right there. It is a conscious decision to play fast and loose with safety in order to iterate faster. You know, that is a very conscious decision as part of what they do. I, I feel like they are a little bit more conservative once you have humans on board, but a little bit more conservative. I mean, would it be entirely shocking if at some point, you know, SpaceX loses some humans? No, no. I mean, NASA was theoretically super careful and slow and blah, blah, blah. And they still lost people, you know?
|
Ivan:
[18:25]
| So you want to lose a few astronauts to be like, well, that's a shame. OK, yeah, great. But where are the next guys going? Huh?
|
Sam:
[18:33]
| Yeah, I have noticed like one of the things I pointed out this years ago and it still hasn't changed is that the other two billionaires who have space programs, Branson with Virgin Galactic and Bezos with Blue Origin, have both ridden on their own spaceships.
|
Ivan:
[18:55]
| Yes you have elon has not ah isn't that interesting now i will say for uh look branson was always a branson was always a kazi guy i mean in terms of like you know doing he broke this transatlantic speed record crossing the atlantic on a boat okay and i if i remember correctly, one of the attempts failed and the boat sank. It was that bad. I mean, then they tried again and he did do it. It was... He is one that is willing to put his life on the line on something that is that risky. So he's done that, but I haven't seen Elon doing that. Not yet, anyway. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[19:49]
| I was trying to verify. My memory was that Jeff. Yeah, I found some pictures. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[19:55]
| Jeff Bezos rode on the one with Shatner and all those folks.
|
Sam:
[20:00]
| Well, it wasn't the same flight as Shatner, but yes.
|
Ivan:
[20:02]
| But yeah.
|
Sam:
[20:03]
| He did ride on. I was pretty sure I remembered it, but I just double checked.
|
Ivan:
[20:10]
| It wasn't the same flight as Shatner? I thought it was.
|
Sam:
[20:12]
| No, no. Different flight.
|
Ivan:
[20:13]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[20:14]
| But I mean, he's done a whole bunch of flights with like different celebrities and different paying customers and stuff. And they also, by the way, since we're talking space milestone things, Blue Origin successfully launched their first orbital flight this week as well. No people on board, but they successfully launched something into orbit this week for the very first time as well. All of the other Blue Origin flights are basically straight up and then straight down and again, you get a couple of minutes in space and at an altitude that's actually debatable, whether it's not in space, certain people consider it. Yes. Certain people consider it. No, but like, you know, you know, anyway, so, but he wrote on his, same thing for, for Virgin as well, by the way, the altitude it goes to is sort of in that debatable character territory, but cause there's no like uniform. Everybody agrees definition until you get to orbit. Once you're in orbit, everyone agrees.
|
Ivan:
[21:13]
| So by the way, I double checked about what I said about Richard Branson. I was exactly correct. Branson's first attempt on the record in a 65 foot twin hull Virgin Atlantic Challenger departed New York in June, 1985. And it was fatally damaged by striking a submerged object only 100 miles from Bishop's Rock, the intended finishing line, and sank in heavy seas. All the crew were saved. Okay. So, by the way, but even after that happened, he went next year and tried again.
|
Sam:
[21:43]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[21:44]
| And he succeeded the next year. To do it, breaking the record. So, yeah. So, but yeah, he almost, he went, they hit a submerged object and sank, which is one of the reasons why I always avoid trying.
|
Sam:
[21:57]
| Submerged objects?
|
Ivan:
[21:58]
| Well, OK, yes. OK, you try to do that. But more trying to not navigate at night makes it more difficult to observe. Usually the things that you hit by a submerged object is a floating log or something like that that's very big. And when you're going at a high speed and you hit something like that, it's very likely to cause a whole breach. Okay you know there could be some very heavy objects like hey you got shipping containers that went down and other stuff and whatever whatnot you you know you wind up hitting, all those things at high speed at night it's at night you're not going to see it usually during the day i try to be very observant and looking at out you know you're trying to make sure you see what the hell is out there but at night you're not going to see shit okay all right you know you're you're driving through there you're not seeing a damn thing radar is not going to pick up submerged object if it's over there whatever you're gonna you're gonna smack into whatever the hell it is and go down and so you know so but he but yeah he he he tried again and so basis went up and elon musk apparently is like no not really i i'm okay i'll send somebody else but anyway yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:04]
| Okay so is it my turn so i i i'm gonna note you know and and earlier on, I'm very articulate and proud.
|
Ivan:
[23:22]
| Of my.
|
Sam:
[23:23]
| Ability to speak cogently.
|
Ivan:
[23:25]
| And that.
|
Sam:
[23:27]
| That is what I was going to talk about no I got to do something this week that was pretty cool that I'll just relay and and to start with I'll say presidential inaugurations I've actually been to a couple There's a, there's a one coming up here. And after I was able to vote, I was actually really proud of myself because I had been to like the first three presidential inaugurations after I was able to vote. I attended all three, like just in the crowd. So 92, 96.
|
Ivan:
[23:57]
| You went to W2?
|
Sam:
[23:59]
| Yes. 92, 96, and what's 90? And 2000.
|
Ivan:
[24:03]
| 2000.
|
Sam:
[24:04]
| I went to all three of those. So both Bill Clintons and the first W. But then 2004, I couldn't make it. I'd already moved down to Florida and it just wasn't going to make sense for me to go up there. And I was really bummed about that. And then after that, I was like, you know, I'm no point in ever going again because now I've broken the streak. Right. And also I lived further away and I moved to the West Coast, blah, blah, blah. But the and it wasn't a thing of like supporting who is getting inaugurated. It was like viewing something historic. You know, you only get inaugurations.
|
Ivan:
[24:41]
| Mr. Wolf.
|
Sam:
[24:43]
| Well, that was not at an inauguration. That was a separate trip to the White House.
|
Ivan:
[24:47]
| That was a separate trip to the White House? Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:49]
| Yes. Yeah. When we met Wolf Blitzer and Jim Bohannon and who else did we do? Like Barbara, was it Barbara Walters?
|
Ivan:
[25:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:01]
| You weren't there for this one.
|
Ivan:
[25:03]
| I wasn't there for that one, but I remember it was Barbara Walters.
|
Sam:
[25:05]
| We met a whole bunch of folks because the White House, I can only assume accidentally, invited our college radio station to a event for radio talk show hosts on Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan. And that's why we were there so we were in a little conference room and people came we heard from we heard from bill clinton he came and talked to us we heard from tipper gore uh oh my god tipper gore a whole bunch of people it was a lot of fun but anyway that was not an inauguration but for the inaugurations we were just trying to cover it for the show the first one you were with me for right Yvonne or yeah you went together.
|
Ivan:
[25:48]
| And we got robbed.
|
Sam:
[25:49]
| We got robbed we lost our radio equipment because we left it in the van and somebody broke in and blah blah blah and then I stole the car seat from the van that we'd taken out to make room for the equipment and kept that it's still in my garage to this day it's still there okay it is absolutely still there I guess.
|
Ivan:
[26:09]
| We're past the statute of limitations with avis on the uh well here well the one thing okay.
|
Sam:
[26:14]
| We claimed the seat we we told them the seat was seat was stolen as well yeah well the.
|
Ivan:
[26:19]
| One thing that happened was okay well i returned the van in dc.
|
Sam:
[26:24]
| Yes because.
|
Ivan:
[26:24]
| They broke the window so we couldn't drive back to pittsburgh in that van so.
|
Sam:
[26:29]
| The seat.
|
Ivan:
[26:29]
| Had stayed in pittsburgh because we needed to take out that seat to put make.
|
Sam:
[26:33]
| Right for.
|
Ivan:
[26:33]
| For this for the stuff and so.
|
Sam:
[26:35]
| Yes all.
|
Ivan:
[26:36]
| Of a sudden i returned a van because got smashed. They give us another van. Amos was very nice about that. And then I remember that I go and I drive and I get home and I'm like, oh shit. I got this seat. Fuck. I got this damn car seat in here. So anyway. My insurance paid for it. It's fine. So they got their money.
|
Sam:
[27:01]
| Thank you, American Express. Everything. The point of all this was not anything about attending those inaugurations per se, but that one of the things that our little intrepid group of radio people went for the first two, I think the first time I went with the radio station folks, other times I think I went by myself or with like, I think I went with a couple of our friends the second time and just by myself the third time. But anyway, the time we went for the radio station, Our friend Rebecca had the wonderful thought that, hey, we're going to try to crash some inaugural balls.
|
Ivan:
[27:40]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[27:41]
| Now, of course... We didn't get so far as even finding one, let alone like crashing it and try to get in. And that wasn't going to happen. Right. Like they're, they're all have security and guest lists and all this kind of stuff. But you know, we were, we were young, stupid, naive college kids. So we were like, we'll find one and we'll just find a party and it'll be fun. And like, you know, even if we weren't going, going to find one that had the president coming to visit, we were like, there's gotta be a party that we can just find and join. But no we wound up somewhere i don't.
|
Ivan:
[28:20]
| Remember where exactly we wound up but it wasn't anywhere with anything nearly that exciting as a.
|
Sam:
[28:25]
| No no we we stayed at the night at my dad's house and you know i'm sure we went to a restaurant or something you know whatever but anyway so this week. I did not, you know, the presidential inauguration is next week. I'm not going. It's not next week. It's like a couple of days away as we're recording this, but I'm not going to that. But I got to go to the inaugural ball for the governor here in Washington state. Now I will add though, my wife as a state representative got free tickets to this thing i got in not because of that but because we actually paid for me turns out like you can just you you could just pay and go because yeah they sell they sell tickets to the damn thing for some like i forget which chamber of commerce or somebody put it on and and sells tickets and it goes to them or whatever anyway so you could just buy it and and and but so i i she got the free freebie as an elected official to go in but we did pay for me to go in so I could be her like eye candy and it was a black tie thing so I you ran into the tux? Well, I did not rent a suit, but I bought a new black suit. It wasn't really a top.
|
Ivan:
[29:48]
| Okay, there you go.
|
Sam:
[29:49]
| The guidelines said black tie or, you know, a nice black suit's good enough. You know, they weren't like too picky on it.
|
Ivan:
[29:59]
| Get up, get your bow tie.
|
Sam:
[30:01]
| No, you know, I almost did. But I went with like a little purple tie that went with Brandy's dress. Or actually not her dress with with her hair because she's got purple in her hair so okay went to coordinate that that way but no so i got i got a haircut i shaved for the first time in well over 15 years it was sometime before alex was born was last time i'm thinking it was 17 or 18 years and uh we got to go and and so we got we go into the thing it's super crowded like the first thing you go into, there's like this tent thing in front of the state capitol. And that's where like the food was and stuff like that. And I go in and I'm like, well, this isn't all that impressive. I thought it would be like somewhere fancy and nice. And it's like in some catering tent, but you know, then you, you hang a left from there and you go into the actual capitol building, which is, I, and I've been in the capitol building a number of times, including earlier that week, I went to my wife swearing in for her third term.
|
Sam:
[31:03]
| You know, it was her third swearing in. She had half a term and then she was reelected twice. She was appointed, served half a term and then reelected twice. So it was her third swearing in. The first one was at a judge's office in the middle of the night at some courtroom that we were able to get into right after she was appointed, middle of the night. It was like 10 p.m. or something. But, and then the other ones were in the state Capitol in a house building and they did the blah, blah, blah. And I was there. So I've been to the state Capitol a number of times, impressive building, fancy building, nice building, lots of marble, et cetera. And we go up into, into the rotunda and it looks good, but it's super crowded. And apparently there were speeches. The governor said something, various other people said something, but we did not really do that because my wife also was not happy with the crowds. Like I'm not a big crowd person and she does, she, she doesn't seem to mind crowds when we like go to a concert or something, but she did not like these crowds and was ready to get out. And in part, because every five feet, someone would be recognizing in her and go, Oh, representative Donaghy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know? And so very quickly we were, you have to be on.
|
Ivan:
[32:19]
| You have to be on a lot.
|
Sam:
[32:21]
| Yeah. So it wasn't just like the crowd, like, you know, if you're in a concert, you're in a crowd, but you're anonymous, right? Like this, you're not, but yeah, she, she had to be on and talking to people and blah, blah, blah. And so very quickly after like 15, 20 minutes, we escaped to the parts of the Capitol that were only open to people who had like the badges, you know, for, for being there. And so, so, you know, and it was a lot quieter there, but not completely quiet because a lot of the other elected officials and their staffs and all those were also escaping similarly.
|
Sam:
[33:02]
| So, you know, and so we talked to a bunch of other elected officials of both parties, by the way. There was a section where we went in because it was just the way to get past something. We went in on the Republican side of the building and we're, you know, There are friendly greetings the whole way. It's like we ran into some Republicans. Oh, Brandy, great to see you here. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, it's your husband. Nice to meet you. Blah, blah, blah. You know, so is and then and then we went over to the Democratic side and, you know, a bunch of Brandy's colleagues. And it was really, I'm not going to get into any of the detailed conversations because, you know, but the, it was very interesting because it was sort of flipping back and forth between, Hey, this is just a bunch of friends hanging out and drinking and having a party and having fun. Because of course all these people have like alcohol stashed in their offices you know and so like there's just you know constantly people are partying people are drinking.
|
Sam:
[34:11]
| They're chatting and so it would it would veer between a bunch of friends hanging out and talking and then all of a sudden it would switch to okay let's talk about the specifics of this bill that i'm trying to run and like i in here here's this policy issue what do you think about this? Can we change this? What would make sense in order to get this to go through? And so it's like it flipped between business and pleasure multiple times.
|
Sam:
[34:38]
| And at one point, I don't understand exactly how it was happening, but suddenly myself, my wife, and one other person were hanging out with the Speaker of the House in the Speaker of the House's office for like half an hour, just chatting. Yeah. It was, it was, it was just weird. It was fun. It was weird. I enjoyed it. I, you know, I, I, I dressed up in the little suit, you know, my wife was dressed up all nice too. You know, we, we ended up like we had to leave because.
|
Sam:
[35:12]
| The security guards came and said, look, guys, we can't leave until you leave because, Because, and they couldn't technically kick us out because we were the elected representatives and it's there. I'm not, but like my wife and a bunch of other people were. But they were like, it's one in the morning. We'd like to go home. Could you guys wrap it up, please? So, yeah. But anyway, it was fun. I got to go to an inaugural ball. It was for a governor, not for a president. But, you know, it's still fun. You know, and I, and because we skipped out on the actual speeches and stuff, I did not get to hear the new governor say whatever he said at the inaugural ball. I mean, it wasn't his official inaugural address that happened earlier at the day. And I didn't, didn't go to that. My wife had to sit there and listen to it as part of her job. I have, I have met the new governor before at various events over the last year. Cause like, that's just part of my life now, which I'm highly amused by because Because of my wife and the fact that she's an elected official, I keep getting to meet people.
|
Sam:
[36:26]
| So I've met our representatives. I've met our – like she personally knows like most of – maybe not most of – a lot of representatives like to the U.S. House. She knows personally, texts back and forth with them. A friend of hers was just elected to the House, and she knew a couple others before. I've met at least one of our senators, if not both. I've met the last governor. I've met the new governor. I met Kamala Harris's husband at one of these things. She got to hang out with Bill and Hillary Clinton once.
|
Sam:
[37:05]
| Oh, yeah, we heard from Hillary, too, when we were at the White House. We heard from both Clintons and both Gores, I think, too, actually. Anyway, it was fun. I just wanted to note that and, and, and the, the weird, the weird thing with the thing I'm always like, actually, I'll just put it out there. I'm super impressed by my wife when I go to these things because, you know, of the politicking, like she's going around, she's talking policy, she's talking details of bills. She's like, you know, yeah. Making friends and influencing people as they say, like, you know, she's, she's, you know, making things happen and she's pushing various things that, and the thing is, and she knows the stuff backwards and forwards, like it, cause she's one of the ones that like, and I've heard some of the other, she's a wonk. And I've heard some of the others comment even like, you know, about how she reads the damn bills, you know.
|
Sam:
[38:11]
| And she's one of the ones that'll like pull out something and say like, you know, on page 30 of this thing, there's this clause that doesn't make any sense. We need to rip this sucker out before it goes out or we need to fix it because this will become a problem down the line. You know, anyway, kudos to my wife. I'm always impressed when I go to these things. And it was fun to like, you know, dress up and see people that like. Do things and in a fancy building. Although most of the time we were in the back rooms that were less fancy, but so, but yeah, and it was, it was fun. Okay. That's it for me. And that means it's time to take a break. And when we come back, Yvonne, we'll pick a serious topic. The first break. Yeah. I have surprised him. See, I gave you a warning there. You have the time.
|
Ivan:
[39:04]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[39:06]
| He's like, I what I have to do. What I have to do.
|
Ivan:
[39:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[39:11]
| Anyway, our first break is a random wiki of the day. Here we go.
|
Break:
[39:15]
| Do do do. Hello, this is Standard Amy. I'm here to let you know about Sam the Curmudgeon's other podcasts, the wiki of the day podcasts. Wiki of the day comes in three varieties, popular, random, and featured. Each highlights a new Wikipedia article each day. They just pick the articles differently. This week on random wiki of the day, you would have heard the summary for Catering, constituency. The Catering Functional Constituency, Chinese, is a functional constituency in the elections for the Legislative Council of Hong Kong created for the 2000 Legislative Council election to replace the Urban Council and Regional Council constituencies. The constituency is composed of bodies of several catering associations. It is also corresponding to the catering subsector in the election committee. Since its creation, it has been held by Liberal Party's Tommy Chung. A similar hotels and catering functional constituency was created for the 1995 election by the then-Governor Chris Patton with a much larger electorate base composed of almost 70,000 voters. That's it. See? Fun, entertaining, and educational, right? Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on your podcast-playing software of choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com to check out our archives. Now back to Curmudgeon's Corner. Do-do-do.
|
Sam:
[40:39]
| Okay, Yvonne, so what's the choice?
|
Ivan:
[40:42]
| Hmm. The new iOS mail app classification. Okay. Okay, so you would put that on there, And I also saw some people complaining and certain things about, well, the iOS summaries are bad and they were like rolling back some of those. But let's start with a mail classification.
|
Sam:
[41:07]
| I'll tell you.
|
Ivan:
[41:09]
| What are you? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[41:11]
| Yes. So first of all, just for reference, I still have an iPhone 12 series, so I don't get any of the Apple intelligence stuff. i haven't oh i've iphone 12 pro i thought you.
|
Ivan:
[41:22]
| Got a new phone.
|
Sam:
[41:23]
| No no no i i've i've been i did i debated it a little bit but i the conclusion i keep coming to is this one's still working fine i don't need to yet i'll i'll wait until the damn thing breaks or there's something really really compelling that i'm like oh my god i need that and nothing about like the new nothing about The features that are available to the 15 and 16 that are not available to the 12 has yet made me feel like compelled that I have to upgrade.
|
Ivan:
[41:57]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[41:58]
| Because I still get the newest iOS. I still get the newest iOS.
|
Ivan:
[42:03]
| It's just some of the features. Well, here's the question. So do you have the new mail classification, though?
|
Sam:
[42:09]
| I do. I do.
|
Ivan:
[42:11]
| Okay, so you do have that. Okay.
|
Sam:
[42:15]
| And so I can speak about it. I put it on the list.
|
Ivan:
[42:18]
| Yes, I know you did. I had not put it up. I had thought about it to talk about it, but I had not put it up. But you did.
|
Sam:
[42:25]
| I mean, here's something. mail to me is not like email specifically.
|
Ivan:
[42:32]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:33]
| It is now a horrid chore.
|
Ivan:
[42:36]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:36]
| I have, I have my own domain. I don't use Gmail or anything like that. And it is, I've used the same email address for something like 25 years now.
|
Ivan:
[42:47]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:48]
| It has been around a long, long time. And so the reality of what that produces is that. 99% of the mail I get is fucking spam. Okay?
|
Ivan:
[43:01]
| I'm gonna go like I recently with the help of this classification I have been able to filter like my daily email down to where it's a manageable number of messages in my inbox. Okay? Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. But I'm saying this to give you perspective on the email deluge that you're talking about. OK, a couple of weeks ago, I went and I I cleared out all my email read and I also did it the same for my junk mailbox. OK, I want to see how many junk messages I'm getting, like, you know, how quickly they're piling it. So from let me see the date. From January 6th to today, which that is how many days? We're talking about 11 days. Okay. How many junk messages do you think I got in 11 days? Take a number. What do you think?
|
Sam:
[44:00]
| A thousand.
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| 1,219 messages. How the hell? Who the hell could manage through this ridiculous deluge of shit? I mean, that's just...
|
Sam:
[44:16]
| And here's where I was. So before this Apple Mail update, I'll tell you, I had on the before the Apple Mail update, there was no the spam filtering that was available in the Apple Mail ecosystem was on the desktop client and you had to turn it on. Well, it was on by default. But, and I also had at my, at my hosting company, the one that has my email domain, ablsmay.com, A-B-U-L-S-M-E, if anybody wants to send me even more spam, you know, also had a spam filtering solution on it. The server side spam filtering solution was so bad. I had to turn it off. And by bad, I mean real mail going to junk. Okay. Cause it's one thing when spam ends up in your mailbox, but when real mail goes to junk, that is more problematic.
|
Ivan:
[45:15]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[45:17]
| You know, I mean, and, and it was also like, Somewhere I had turned off every option to auto delete spam that I could find, but, but things in the spam folder were still getting auto deleted at some point. So like I was actually, there was mail that I wanted that I waited too long and was gone. OK, there were also for some reason there was mail that was I had a problem for a while that there was mail that was like once or I'll tell you, and this is not related to Apple's mail app. I'm pretty sure it was related to my server. But for a few months, I had a problem where like I would I would come. I would open my mail app, usually on my desktop. I would see some mail. I want it. Yeah, I would move. I would move to go click on it. Like it had just come in. I saw it show up at the top of my mailbox and it would disappear. And then I would go searching for it and it would not be in my spam and it would not be fucking anywhere. And I'm like, and like sometimes this was like the security codes. Like when you, you, you, somebody mails you a security code for two factor authentication. And I couldn't find the damn thing. And I'm like, it's gone. What the fuck? And, and so I, And I'm anal about keeping every email I ever receive. I have for years. I eventually started deleting spam.
|
Sam:
[46:46]
| Like it's been like, I've deleted spam for like 15, 20 years now. But before that, I was keeping every spam message too.
|
Ivan:
[46:53]
| My God. What?
|
Sam:
[46:59]
| What?
|
Ivan:
[47:00]
| You're deleting. I'm shocked. You're deleting spam. This is you.
|
Sam:
[47:04]
| I know. A couple times I've regretted it. And I was like, you know, if I hadn't started deleting spam, I'd have this rich data set to do an analysis going back 25 years. But no. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[47:15]
| No, no. What we really needed was that you should have printed them all. We should have kept printing them all.
|
Sam:
[47:22]
| Printed the spam. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[47:24]
| Yes. Yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[47:26]
| Make a real spam folder. Here's my spam folder.
|
Ivan:
[47:29]
| Yes, here's your spam folder. Well, a spam folder, spam garage. Basically, at this point, it would just fill up the whole garage.
|
Sam:
[47:38]
| Okay, anyway, my point was, getting back to the mail app. So I turned off my server-side spam filtering because it was sending real mail to spam on a regular basis. I still had the spam filtering in Apple's desktop mail app. And in, in Apple's desktop mail app, I also had dozens of rules that would pre move sort of folders that.
|
Ivan:
[48:04]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[48:04]
| Yeah. I had, I had all sorts of rules to move things into folders based on like, Hey, if it's from these addresses, put it here. My goal and all of that was try to make it. So my main inbox was only human beings.
|
Ivan:
[48:18]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[48:18]
| Like no, no, nothing automated.
|
Ivan:
[48:21]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[48:22]
| No, even mail I wanted, like confirmation emails and stuff, I did not want that in my main inbox. I had a folder for that.
|
Ivan:
[48:30]
| You wanted email that was sent by people. Okay.
|
Sam:
[48:32]
| Yeah, I wanted my main inbox to be human beings. Now, they could be human beings at companies that I interacted with or for school or whatever, but I wanted them to be from actual human beings typing in something and hitting send. But I was failing even at that. And at a certain point, like I was like, I was not getting messages. So I turned off most of those rules. I turned, I turned off the Apple mail, even the Apple mail spam. Cause I was still missing some stuff. And I was like, maybe it's coming from that. I don't know. But then I was like really excited about this, like this automatic categorization that, that Apple was going to launch in, in mail. Cause I was like, maybe like they've got a primary, they've got transactions, they've got updates, they've got promotions. Maybe with all of that kind of stuff, when I look at those filtered zones, they will all make sense.
|
Ivan:
[49:32]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[49:33]
| And, but here, my actual experience with it is, God damn it, you need another one of these filters for spam. Because every single one of these categories still has tons of spam in it.
|
Ivan:
[49:48]
| Okay. Well, okay. So maybe, okay. Let me say something about this. I think that I am on iCloud.
|
Sam:
[50:00]
| I mean, to be clear.
|
Ivan:
[50:01]
| For my email. Wait, wait, wait.
|
Sam:
[50:02]
| Hang on.
|
Ivan:
[50:02]
| I'm using iCloud for my email.
|
Sam:
[50:04]
| Yes, iCloud has additional server-side spam filtering that I don't have from my domain. I have Apple Mail, too. I do have an iCloud Mail as well, but I don't use it as my primary, and it doesn't get as much of this stuff either.
|
Ivan:
[50:18]
| All right, so iCloud does have that, and the reality is that on mine on the phone, I've got the stuff going to junk that is just junk that I don't even want to see, and then I've got all this stuff sorted, okay?
|
Sam:
[50:34]
| So
|
Ivan:
[50:35]
| It's not just unfiltered I've got.
|
Sam:
[50:38]
| That where.
|
Ivan:
[50:40]
| It's already downsizing to just stuff been doing over the last couple of years a pretty decent job of tagging what the fuck I don't want to say okay.
|
Sam:
[50:52]
| And I recognize that like one way to look at this is that that's the server's job and iCloud is apparently doing an okay job for you and my mail host is doing a crappy job which is why i had to turn it off because i didn't want to lose the mail it was sending to spam that was actually good stuff right and so of course i have more spam in my inbox duh that's my own choice i need to get a better mail server and move my stuff over which i have thought for a while but it's just such a pain in the ass because it's not such a pain my my entire family has mail on the domain and i have a bunch of aliases that like send like to both me and my wife or to the whole family or stuff like that set up. And I actually looked at iCloud does let you put stuff on your own domain and have a couple addresses, but they don't do the alias things like the last I checked. I haven't checked recently.
|
Ivan:
[51:46]
| No, I got aliases. I got a couple of, I got a couple of aliases made for me.
|
Sam:
[51:50]
| No, like that sent to multiple people. I'm talking about like.
|
Ivan:
[51:54]
| Oh no, I got aliases for me for certain things, but I don't know if it's a multiple people.
|
Sam:
[52:00]
| I'm talking about setting up an alias. I can be like, no, no, no, I gotcha. Yeah. I can have one address that goes to the whole family kind of thing. Anyway. So I haven't looked recently and it would be a pain in the ass to migrate because I have to like.
|
Ivan:
[52:15]
| It's a lot of change it. I get it. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:18]
| Because it's not just if it was just me it would be easy but because i have the whole family on this damn thing i have to go to all their devices and change their settings too when i do this and there's a transition period where you have to move all the stuff off the old server get it on the new server unless you're going to lose stuff blah blah it's a pain and i can see how it's a major.
|
Ivan:
[52:36]
| Pain yes yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:37]
| I don't have time for that shit so but i think i think there's a role for the mail client here too yeah okay fine you want server side spam filtering but the mail client as well should be smart enough to know okay let let me look at my primary category right now, okay that's those there are a couple first of all it's it is the primary category itself is better than it's pretty good it's it's no this.
|
Ivan:
[53:06]
| Is this is.
|
Sam:
[53:08]
| I'm gonna listen the primary category.
|
Ivan:
[53:10]
| Without even without and i've done some training because you can tell it start telling it hey this is not primary hey this is primary and so forth so you can start training it look that in and of itself was a revelation i i thought.
|
Sam:
[53:25]
| So so so what what's the training just when you move it out of the category there is somewhere.
|
Ivan:
[53:30]
| There where there is where if you take a message and you can select hey this is not this category this is the other category and voila i'll start putting them there.
|
Sam:
[53:40]
| Oh, categorize sender?
|
Ivan:
[53:42]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[53:43]
| Yeah, categorize sender.
|
Ivan:
[53:45]
| And that will start saying, oh, you don't want that one in here. You want it in promotions. Okay, fine.
|
Sam:
[53:52]
| All I'm saying... Well, junk is not a category in categorize sender. I've got it up on my screen right now.
|
Ivan:
[53:58]
| The thing is that because I have it on iCloud, I have a category as junk. Yes.
|
Sam:
[54:03]
| Oh, man. You know... They need to make that work. So yeah, junk right there. I'm upset. I am. I am. Well, I have moved to junk, but it's in the I can I move stuff to junk all the time. But in that categorized sender stuff, one of the categories.
|
Ivan:
[54:23]
| Well, no, you categorize. But the thing is that if you select one to move to if I and on my on iCloud, if I selected to move to junk. OK, it's either those categories or junk.
|
Sam:
[54:36]
| Yeah so i i have not maybe move to junk is slowly training like the mobile device to move it but i don't.
|
Ivan:
[54:44]
| Think i don't i don't know i don't think it is i think this is because it's on icloud i'm going to server i know that's been working because that's the way that i've been making sure that and and it's like sending it to junk on whatever device i'm i'm using so i mean i'm logging into So that email odd by, you know.
|
Sam:
[55:04]
| So let me just give an example. And I think it does need junk, but even if it didn't have junk, it should know that something titled Consumer Survey from sdqsd at bnd.floristnct.com that says your last chance to claim your reward, Fill in a short survey to get your award with a giant image of a Dell computer that is clearly not actually from Dell. This offer is brought to you by Jalen Eaton.
|
Ivan:
[55:45]
| You're saying that that's, you know.
|
Sam:
[55:49]
| This does not belong in my primary, no matter what.
|
Ivan:
[55:54]
| Are you sure? I mean, come on. Aren't you really sure? I mean, come on, you want that Dell computer. I mean, come on. This is the opportunity of a lifetime that you've been waiting for to get this free Dell.
|
Sam:
[56:09]
| Exactly. And all I'm saying is that there should be like. I recognize again, again, okay. My problem is I'm not using iCloud for this. I'm not using Gmail. I'm using some, I'm using the same folks I use for my website hosting and mail is not their specialty. And so they've got some default crappy spam filtering that didn't work very well. I understand, but the mail client can help here at the very least, put it into a suspected junk if you're not like, like routing it to an actual junk folder. Cause like, yeah, there is a, I do have a junk folder at my, at that mail server too. Like you can move stuff. I would give you permission if you were good. And you know, and the other categories, by the way, are, are worse. Like if I go into transactions, okay. First one, daily headlines, something I've never signed up for. Senior perks. Thank you for properly identifying me as an old person. The Voltex heated vest.
|
Ivan:
[57:22]
| Hey, I think a senior perks. I mean, come on that they've got you.
|
Sam:
[57:26]
| You know yeah something from jeff research jeff research emerald map reports come on.
|
Ivan:
[57:36]
| The emerald the emeralds i mean come on.
|
Sam:
[57:40]
| Oh oh here's another golden opportunity here's one from demo dennis hammer which is a fake paypal receipt for an iphone in australian dollars. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[57:53]
| And these are all your primary.
|
Sam:
[57:55]
| No, I've moved on to transactions now.
|
Ivan:
[57:57]
| Oh, that's a transaction. Well, that sounds like a transaction, but you got a receipt.
|
Sam:
[58:02]
| Yeah. Yeah. I got a receipt for the Australian iPhone. I didn't order via PayPal.
|
Ivan:
[58:08]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[58:09]
| And, you know, updates is even worse. It's just my, my, my point is like, okay, we're getting with all of this Gen AI shit. The one thing that you'd think they could apply this to that would actually be useful. Do my fucking spam filtering.
|
Ivan:
[58:31]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[58:31]
| And get it right.
|
Ivan:
[58:32]
| All right. Well, unfortunately, my spam filtering is a lot more effective than yours. It's taken a lot of time to get there. And listen, I will tell you that I had a lot of difficulties over the years. There were some years that the spam filtering at Apple was just not working at all. I had a fight with Apple support over that where all of a sudden one of the OS updates, the spam filtering stopped working. And I was like furious. And I did hammer at them for months until apparently development finally rolled out a patch that fixed it. Okay. But I kept hammering them. I'm like, I had a case open. I'm like, this is bullshit. I'm using your damn spam filter, whatever. Now all of them are just going into my email inbox. This is it. So eventually they did fix it. But yeah, I mean, I definitely mine. If I look at my let's see, let's look at my primary. Okay.
|
Sam:
[59:34]
| Oh, and by the way, I go to promote. I guess the closest thing is promotions because my promotions is basically all spam. Well, not even there. There are a couple of things in promotions that are legitimate email from my son's school is ending up in promotions. okay so but.
|
Ivan:
[59:51]
| You can change that as a category.
|
Sam:
[59:53]
| I i know i can change that one so at least that one but like i guess i could consider promotions to be spam and just train it so all spam is promotions yeah, Yeah, because like I never want I practically never want a real promotion. So maybe that's the right way to think about it. Promotion.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:11]
| I'm looking at this over here and the ones that I have over here, like I have an open support case with plume because one of the pods they sent me the new ones is defective. OK, I did get notified. I want in primary like a notification. Hey, I logged on to my Apple ID. So I've got that. OK, I got my notifications from American Express. Hey your card was not present for a purchase i'm like okay i want to know that my tax documents from charles schlubb i want that in my primary okay all right i i want that i apparently somebody has been trying very ardently to hack into my hertz account i keep getting notifications of my 2fa for hertz repeatedly over and over which i'm not trying to log in obviously they're failing I'm getting the notification, but somebody is definitely trying to hack into my, my, my that an appointment from Manu's therapist appointment with a wind mitigation inspection, a couple of notifications or credit cards, notifications that I signed some documents and appointments. So, so basically everything in my primary is stuff like, Hey, you know, you know, you, you got a charge on your credit card. You have an inspection coming in. So that's pretty useful. Let's go to transactions.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:26]
| Amazon, Amazon. My wife now, all of a sudden, being at home, for God's sakes. Okay, one thing that I told Sam that, you know, they're like, you know, talk about a guy that eats his own product. Sam definitely, you know, loves the product. Okay, all right? That is no problem, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:01:44]
| We get multiple Amazon boxes on our porch every day.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:50]
| Listen, thank God your employer doesn't sell cocaine, Because if it was cocaine, you'd be like the most addicted person in history. OK, so all my Amazon notifications like my hotel, you know, notifications from hotel that I'm going to, which I'm like, I already know I'm going to the hotel. I don't need that, you know, promotions from my Hilton Walgreens notifications, my FPL email bill. I know I'm getting the electric bill. I know what it is. There's no surprise on those. So those are all in the transaction thing. Credit cards. I bought Girl Scout cookies. Okay, so I'm going to the other one. Updates. I don't know. Apple update. Oh, it actually made a cut. It's got my iCloud thing there.
|
Sam:
[1:02:33]
| Right, right. Your point is it's working well for you. You spent some time training it. And it's working well. So I need to spend some more time. I need to spend some more time and I need to consider spam as promotions and just treat it that.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:48]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:02:49]
| Teach it everything that goes into promotions and pull out the things that aren't promotions. The other thing I will say, though, that is disappointing on that front, and I'm sure they're working on it, but they didn't update the desktop client with the same thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:07]
| They said they're releasing it later. They said for some reason it wasn't.
|
Sam:
[1:03:11]
| I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:12]
| I don't, but this is what I will say. Look, the one thing about it is, look, it's not perfect, okay? But look, I have like Microsoft Outlook that I've used for work a whole bunch for several reasons. Sometimes I get secure messages or other stuff. Worse, we don't wind up using that client. And they've had a classification of like primary inbox or other, which I found somewhat helpful, okay? This takes it several steps ahead. And I found that Outlook classification useful. It really did help in filtering out some messages that I really didn't want to be seeing as primary. But, you know, I don't want them to go into junk. This is from almost any email client I've seen recently. By far, one of the biggest changes I've seen at anybody trying to make the damn thing more useful than it is right now. Because of the deluge of shit that we get.
|
Sam:
[1:04:06]
| Well, and see, the thing is like, I, whenever I open my mailbox, the other thing, by the way, I use heavy use of in, in the Apple ecosystem, both on desktop and on my phone. Although sometimes it doesn't sync properly, but like is the VIP category. I basically any human being any human being i'm really expecting email from because just making it my inbox was not working but i've basically and any human being i'm expecting email from i designate them as vip and then i go into the vip folder and that really is essentially all it's all humans and like one set of notifications i've decided was important enough to put there and so but every time I open my yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:55]
| VIP works to.
|
Sam:
[1:04:56]
| It does help but every every time I open my regular inbox I'm like oh, Because the first thing I have to do is scroll up and down through the thing, mark all the spam, move to spam. And I guess now instead of move to spam, I will classify it as promotion. And then I will mark everything in the promotions folder as spam. And yeah, I have to go through that. Then I basically have a three pass approach. First is go through looking for spam and move that to spam, classify it, whatever I'm going to do in the future. Then second, I go through looking for stuff that is real mail, is mail I want, but I don't really have to do anything with. And I file that away into an archive folder. And then for whatever's left, I look through it and I'm like, okay, what do I actually do with this? And the problem is by the time I get to that third stage, I'm tired.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:50]
| The missing step is to print it all.
|
Sam:
[1:05:55]
| Yes. Yes. I must still print it all. Yes. Yvonne is referring to the fact that when I was in college and we had limited disk space, so I couldn't just keep everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:08]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:06:09]
| I would regularly just print all the mail. And I had huge stacks of printed archival email.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:17]
| And especially- It did help. It did help that at CMU, we could print unlimited.
|
Sam:
[1:06:24]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:24]
| I mean, that's an insane thing that no university does that anymore. We could send jobs down to, they had these massive printers down at Wheaton Hall, and we could just fucking like just deluge that, hey, print this, you know, whatever, massive thing, and they would just have it over there ready for you.
|
Sam:
[1:06:43]
| Yvonne was not there when I finally left CMU, because I went to one year of grad school before I dropped out, because... You know, it wasn't actually what I wanted, but like before I finally left CMU, I spent like several days doing nothing but print, but print to make sure I had everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:03]
| I believe it, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:07:04]
| I totally believe because it, because it wasn't, it still was like, there was limited to space. There wasn't a good way to move the stuff to a new account. Like, cause I, I'd gotten a, I'd gotten a commercial account, but there wasn't a good way to just transfer my stuff from my CMU account to the other account.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:20]
| Not back in those days, no.
|
Sam:
[1:07:23]
| I just spent days printing shit and like reams and reams and reams and reams of paper. I still have, and I still have all of this in my garage. There's like something like 10 of those banker boxes full of nothing but email from CMU.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:40]
| Listen, I went to his apartment in New Jersey after he moved out of this. There was a stack that reached a ceiling with printed emails i i will not forget i'm like what the fuck is this oh those are the emails i'm like.
|
Sam:
[1:07:56]
| Including spam including spam because i was not deleting spam yet at that point back then i mean it's just you know well there wasn't that much there wasn't that much i am pretty sure that when that first spam email went out that like you can look up you can look up what was the first spam email i'm pretty sure i got a copy of that thing probably well you know the one i really remember was the first usenet spam that not email spam but yeah whatever anyway we are old yeah we're old okay so we we just spent an entire segment talking about email it's been a long time since we've had a tech topic like that yes like it's it's a little bit different than what our normal fair has been recently i.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:40]
| Mean we talked we talked the last time about what you would call it of the meta rules on whatever on content. So we talked about the content moderation stuff, now we talked about email.
|
Sam:
[1:08:54]
| Well, and you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:56]
| And next week, I'm going to talk about, I don't know, basketball.
|
Sam:
[1:09:01]
| Yes, you're going to do everything you possibly can to avoid talking about the start of the Trump administration.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:07]
| Correct. I'm going to talk about basketball spreads and NFL playoffs. And, you know, I don't know, Sam is going to just, you know, like collapse into a heap of blubber on the other end, listening to this.
|
Sam:
[1:09:23]
| And then I'll force you to talk about Trump for the next segment. But like for today, though, like as much as we could talk about like, you know, right before we started recording, there was a Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is planning on massive deportation raids in Chicago starting Tuesday.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:44]
| It's always good to telegraph those in advance.
|
Sam:
[1:09:47]
| Yes, yes. I'm sure no one will hide or anything. But the point is the fear, though. If he gets people to hide, it serves the purpose. But anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:00]
| Serves the purpose of what? Publicity? Oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:10:04]
| Publicity and terrifying people.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:06]
| Yeah, I forgot that that's the main.
|
Sam:
[1:10:07]
| It's all performative. Anyway, it is time for another break. And when we come back, I'm going to keep with the tech theme and talk TikTok. That'll be my topic. Okay. And so we will be back after this.
|
Break:
[1:10:25]
| You're supposed to say doo-doo-doo. Doo-doo-doo! Alex Emsala! Alex Emsala is awesome. Its videos are fun. And today, once again, we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you how awesome Alex Emsala is. I'd say on a rate from 1 to 10, Alex Emsala is awesome at, I don't know, 37? 82? too. He's pretty radical. His videos are phenomenal. They're full of creativity. And they're so funny and exciting to watch. Wow, what happened to your voice then, Amy? Was that dad pretending to be you? Because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't because I told him to? Yes. Good job on remembering, Dad. Do, do, do!
|
Sam:
[1:11:24]
| Okay, we are back. Before I start talking TikTok, I will say it had been a long, long time, but Alex actually posted several new videos to that channel over the last month. Wow!
|
Ivan:
[1:11:39]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:11:40]
| I know. Now there's still, he's 15 now. He's posting videos from when he was seven that were originally recorded when he was seven, but he did post some new stuff like right on, right around new year's, December 31st, January 1st, he posted a few things. I don't know if he's going to do it again anytime soon, but yeah, you can go check that stuff out. You know, look, people, you have failed me. My, my, my real retirement plan, forget about other stuff. My real retirement plan was his YouTube channel was going to blow up and he was going to become a millionaire and pay for me.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:13]
| I mean, that's a good plan.
|
Sam:
[1:12:16]
| Now, and his current 80 subscribers is not really doing that for me. So, like, he is not generating income for me yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:27]
| So we got to get him to start generating income. I think that's him.
|
Sam:
[1:12:31]
| You know, I told him this the other day. I was like, look, you, you keep like developing more and more sophisticated, like partially built video games that you get bored with and move on to something else before they're actually done. You have to actually finish some of these things, put them out there, sell them, make us some money. You know, you, you, you, you can like, I am counting on you kid to be making enough money so I can quit my job and lay back and like, I don't know, like we talked about the other day, sleep and watch TV. I've got a bunch of other projects I want to work on too, but yeah, whatever. Like the kid needs to pay for himself. You know, so.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:13]
| That's got to happen soon.
|
Sam:
[1:13:15]
| You know, we, we, we, we had a couple ideas for projects that we were talking about a couple of years ago that again, he got bored and moved on before we got something that worked, you know, and like physical products too. Like there was a gadget that we like were, were, were trying to think through and blah, blah, blah. It had some, I thought it had some potential, but he and I had creative differences on the direction it should go. Like, I wanted to go one approach, he wanted to go another, and, like, it just didn't work out, you know? So, anyway. Okay, TikTok.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:52]
| What happened with TikTok, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:13:55]
| So, as we are recording this, early Saturday UTC, Friday night, U.S. Time, it is still not quite 100% clear. Now, the Supreme Court upheld the ban of TikTok that Congress passed. The current situation is that the Biden administration has said, look, this thing expires Sunday on the weekend before the inauguration on Monday, which, by the way, is also a federal holiday. We're not doing jack. You know, the no enforcement actions are going to happen Sunday or Monday. And so this is up to Trump. This is whatever happens is up to Trump. Now, there are a few things there. First of all.
|
Sam:
[1:14:47]
| TikTok themselves have said for a while that unless they won, they're just going to proactively shut down access to TikTok in the US. They're you know they're not going to wait for apple to pull them from the app store for apple and google to pull them from the app store and for isps to do blocking or whatever they're not going to wait for any of that crap they're they're just going to proactively like block the us themselves and shut this down they said they're going to redirect uh anybody who tries to use the TikTok app to a webpage that just explains what's going on. And they, after the Biden administration had said, look, no enforcement Sunday or Monday, it's up to Trump, TikTok explicitly said, look, we're still going to shut down the service on Sunday. And presumably this is like 12.01 AM on Sunday Eastern time or something. We're still going to shut it down unless we have like an ironclad, assurance from the Biden administration of XYZ, at which the Biden administration can't because they can't make promises for the Trump administration.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:05]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:16:06]
| And so it looks like TikTok will be shutting down. Now, the question is for how long?
|
Ivan:
[1:16:12]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:16:13]
| Because there are a few other things that are, I've heard a number of people say, and I have not investigated the law myself to know this detail because I haven't heard this universally from all places, but apparently there is something in the law that the president can declare a one-time 90-day extension. So you'd think if they had that capability, the Biden administration could have punted it that way since the deadline is on the freaking 19th, which by the way, you know, Congress put the deadline on January 19th on purpose. Thought purpose yeah yes so but or was it it was a certain number of days like the the law was passed and then some federal agency had to make a declaration that tiktok met the criteria because because the law does not actually say tick i think it does mention tiktok by name in one place but it's worded in such a way that it could conceivably apply to other companies and there's some sort of executive there's some sort of executive declaration that has to be made so it's probably some amount of days after that. Anyway, whatever. But there's no way it was coincidence that it's January 19th. But, So I guess there's the possibility that, and meanwhile, Trump has been signaling in all kinds of ways that he wants to find a solution. He submitted an amicus brief a while ago saying that he wanted to, you know, Supreme Court, please give me more time so I can make a deal once I'm president.
|
Sam:
[1:17:40]
| So maybe he signed something to do that 90 days, or he gives TikTok the assurance that he's not going to enforce for a while, which by the way, that's like, hey, yes, this is the law. It's been affirmed by the Supreme Court, but the executive is going to decide not to enforce it is also sort of like not the best way to go about doing things either. But there's the possibility TikTok shuts down for a couple of days. Trump comes in on Monday or Tuesday and And this talk savior, Sam, he's the tick tock savior.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:18]
| Man, he's coming in. You say he's been mentioning what you needed.
|
Sam:
[1:18:22]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:23]
| He's going to come in and save immigration on the first.
|
Sam:
[1:18:26]
| Yes. Yes. I mean, there's been talk of a Trump executive order on tick tock, but although it's unclear, what exactly is that executive order? It's going to be ignore the law.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:37]
| Maybe.
|
Sam:
[1:18:37]
| Sure. that there's all there's also an effort in in congress to do an extension there as well but it's unclear it has the votes or where it would go so it looks like this you know by the time you listen to this episode if tiktok because i'm not gonna get this thing out saturday probably who knows maybe i will but there's a good chance by the time you listen to this episode tiktok will have been shut down or not. If it is shut down by TikTok themselves shutting it off, there's also a chance that early next week, it somehow gets resolved and TikTok comes back. And Donald Trump is the savior of TikTok, which by the way, there's approximately half of the US population are TikTok users at this point. It is not a small piece of social media. And a lot of those folks are upset. And so, you know, what you were saying, Yvonne, oh, Donald Trump's the savior, like coming in and rescuing TikTok would be like, this would be good for his ratings. Like, you know, people will actually appreciate that. Hell, I'll appreciate it and like it. You know, I, I, I'm, I'm also addicted to TikTok. I like my TikTok. I find stuff there. and look.
|
Sam:
[1:20:04]
| Here's the thing. And we had a conversation about TikTok when this was going through Congress. My ultimate take on this is that if you are going to take this kind of significant action, just saying that, oh, it's dangerous because China owns it, without backing that up by declassifying whatever classified evidence you have that they're actually doing something nefarious And the various protections that TikTok has said that they have in place to make sure that the key critical components are controlled by American employees in the U.S. And are not controlled by China. Because that's what they say. Like, their defense is like, look, we've actually firewalled this off. The subsidiary can do this. The servers are in the U.S. The people running them are in the U.S., blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[1:20:59]
| Like, if you're going to do something this drastic, you should have to prove it publicly, not just say, trust us, we've got information that it's actually bad, or worse, trust us that this is a danger, that they haven't actually acted on, but it is dangerous. Because, you know, look, I fully believe, yes, like, having the ability to manipulate the conversation is problematic but here's the thing also, It's problematic when X does it too. It's problematic when Facebook does it as well. The fact that TikTok has the capability, okay, fine. They've got Chinese ownership and maybe that's a little bit different. But frankly, I'd be a lot happier. If there are certain behaviors of things that social media companies should not do with your data or should not do with how they manipulate the algorithm, then make that illegal across the board. Make it apply to the American companies, too.
|
Sam:
[1:22:03]
| This just does not seem like the right solution here. And it seems heavy handed. It seems like and of course, their defense is, well, we didn't we didn't tell them they had to shut down. We just told them they had to sell. They could have sold. And apparently there's various billionaires who are like, we're trying to work out a deal. We'll buy you. But ByteDance is like, no, it's not. for sale it's not for sale sorry we will shut down before we sell it.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:33]
| I mean of course there was the whole rumor this week that the chinese wanted to sell it to musk.
|
Sam:
[1:22:39]
| Yes well there was a rumor that they were talking to him but like bite dance has consistently said they're not selling to any.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:47]
| I know that but i'm like at this point i'm like look man here here listen you want to talk about a nice bribe to uh musk we're talking about a 40 they estimate valuation of tiktok at 40 50 billion dollars okay basically makes them whole on on on his twitter loss and the reality is that as i have experience school of business in russia and so forth like the the especially the last few years on their sheet the last six seven years the government control that's china.
|
Sam:
[1:23:24]
| Not russia but.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:26]
| No no no i know but but what i'm saying is that russia and china russia and china as i mean but like in in china which i also had to deal with look government control and and and uh pressure on on the companies has risen to a level that was unseen before and the reality is that they know such a decision like that. Whereas 10 years ago was probably pretty much wholly in the hands of the companies. Not anymore. That era is gone in China right now in business. And so it's disingenuous to think that this is not a government-influenced decision. My whole thing in terms of the ban, I actually was with China on the, My whole thing is they have the authority and have banned so many of the large U.S. Companies from doing business there on the internet.
|
Sam:
[1:24:22]
| It's not reciprocal. It's not reciprocal.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:24]
| I'm just like, you know what, fuckers? If that's the way you do business, then fuck it. We'll ban all of yours. The hell with this. Because this is ridiculous. This is not reciprocal trade. You guys want to be able to put your company's any app they want on our markets. Yet we get zero access almost. Zero.
|
Sam:
[1:24:44]
| Right. Like it's not like Facebook and all of these are, you can't access them in China.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:51]
| They're all banned.
|
Sam:
[1:24:53]
| Well, and the thing is like the, I've heard one or two people make that argument, but the main arguments for this were not about the trade reciprocality. It was about the Chinese government being able to use this as a form of influence over Americans and as a form of sucking in data because basically like most social media apps like this is not unique to tiktok they basically are set up so they suck every possible piece of information off your phone they possibly can.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:27]
| But but that's my.
|
Sam:
[1:25:29]
| Point you know you.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:30]
| Know you're not saying reciprocality but the reality is that that's really what's happening when you're saying hey you're doing all of that here and we have no access there at all and so I just you know but yeah I, Look, I, but bottom line.
|
Sam:
[1:25:49]
| I'm, I'm checking heard. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:52]
| I heard. Did I, that was that a bullshit? Well, of course I didn't double check this factually. I heard that the Tik TOK US CEO is going to be at the inauguration.
|
Sam:
[1:26:02]
| Was that accurate? That is correct. He is going to be.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:06]
| So I mean, I fully expect it to somehow in some way be online.
|
Sam:
[1:26:13]
| Yeah. Yeah, so my bet at this point, and I forget what I said on the prediction show, but my bet is it's going to get shut down on Sunday and it will come back online certainly before the end of the year, but quite possibly within days, depending on what Trump does and what sort of deal he makes. But I did look up TikTok in terms of their data sucking policy on the Apple App Store. Data linked to you if you use the TikTok app. Purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers, diagnostic, financial information, contact info, user content, browsing history, and usage data are all captured.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:02]
| No, nothing.
|
Sam:
[1:27:03]
| Yeah. Data not linked to you may be collected, but not linked to your identity usage data.
|
Sam:
[1:27:11]
| So just, just a tad, but like, to be clear, like you go into almost any other of these apps, they're doing the same damn thing. This is not, this is not uncommon. This is like, you know, so if you have objections to that, you know, talk to all these other apps too. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention though. is in the last week, I don't know how closely you've been following this, Yvonne, but there has been a cohort of people on Twitter. Who have been like, you're going to shut down TikTok because it's a Chinese app? Fine. Fuck you. We're signing up for Red Note. And Red Note is a Chinese social media app aimed internally at Chinese people. It's in the UI by default is Chinese. The description is in Chinese, like everything. thing, you know, and it is unabashedly, like TikTok is like, hey, we've got an American subsidiary and we've tried to firewall things off. Now, Red Note, which by the way, another translation I've heard, because the real name is, of course, in Chinese. Red Note is how I've seen it translated most commonly, but also Little Red Book, which of course has certain connotations in Chinese.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:36]
| Exactly. Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:28:37]
| But so there are all of these TikTokers going over there, signing up for Red Note, and they're calling themselves TikTok refugees. So there's been this whole thing of like all these Americans crashing this Chinese app and starting to post over there, having Chinese people come in and, first of all, be extremely welcoming. Oh, welcome to the TikTok refugees. And like, we'll help teach you some Chinese. There's like all kinds of Americans posting videos. I have not signed up for Red Note. So I am looking at videos that people have taken of what's going on on Red Note and posting them back on TikTok. There's Americans like trying to learn Chinese to talk to their new Chinese friends. They're American TikTok refugees who already have hundreds of thousands of followers on Red Note. There are Chinese people asking the Americans for help with their English homework. And apparently there's all kinds of like wholesome cultural exchange going on between the the americans and chinese people on this app and there's been like you know people showing each other their pats and stuff like there are a couple i thought.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:52]
| You were going to say something else okay.
|
Sam:
[1:29:54]
| Well actually let's go for to something else because one of the things the americans are finding out fairly quickly is there are lots of things that aren't allowed. Oh, you know, cause really?
|
Sam:
[1:30:14]
| Do tell. Well, apparently like certain, there's certain things where like that would, people would post on TikTok doing certain dances in, let's say scantily clad. Like TikTok doesn't allow like unclad that you go other places for that. But TikTok lets you like show a little skin that was not allowed. They're apparently oh you know gay lesbian trans stuff does not go over well over there apparently not really you know although I did see one person countering that but apparently like there were lots of Americans hitting terms of service issues over there and getting their accounts shut down for posting things that are not allowed on Chinese social media.
|
Sam:
[1:31:05]
| Don't tell really real and so hitting that and like then you get the people saying with the backlash hey people i know you're all going like to red note to sort of screw the man because there are lots of people like oh by the way there are all kinds of memes about like saying people on tiktok saying goodbye to their chinese spy um and and there's all kinds of people like going over and talking about how they're going over to Red Note to give them all their personal information, because, you know, again, screw the U.S. government. They're worried about us giving up all our data. So here's all my data. Have fun. Enjoy it.
|
Sam:
[1:31:48]
| But, you know, there are people coming back and saying, look, look, you know, it's all nice. You're trying to stick it to the man and blah, blah, blah. But this app has all kinds of issues too with their policies, with what's supported, what's not supported. And there are actually reasons why not to do this. And then one other thing that apparently has... Oh, I'm just going to talk about red note rumors and things like that. Let me just say up front, a lot of this stuff has not been entirely confirmed. But here's one thing that apparently did happen. There was this one Chinese man who, when all the Twitter refugees were showing up, filmed a welcome video and was like, welcome to Red Note. We appreciate your presence here and we're welcoming you and it'll be great to have you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some Americans started distributing this as saying, look, the Red Note CEO welcomed us.
|
Sam:
[1:32:56]
| And we're all like distributing this about how the Red Note CEO was welcoming and blah, blah, blah. And then the next day, like posted on the same channel or whatever, was this guy's girlfriend is like, dude, everybody thinks you're the Red Note CEO. No, it's just some guy, some guy in an apartment with his girlfriend. It's just some random guy posted that welcome message. And then there are people going like, well, he looked like a CEO, you know, he taught, you know, he's, he was welcoming us to the app. Who else would it be? You know, and, but apparently there's another rumor going around that Red Note is actually.
|
Sam:
[1:33:47]
| Considering separating out the foreign IPs now, because there's just a little bit too much interaction with the Americans going on that they'd rather not have. So they're going to segregate the IPs out to make sort of an American portion of Red Note and a Chinese portion of Red Note and reduce the intermingling. Another thing I saw a bunch of posts on were Americans, reacting to like apparently one of the things that's really common on red note was like and it's common on tiktok too it's common like people i mean not common common but it's something that people have done like showing like they go get a bunch of groceries and show what they got and stuff like that and so a bunch of americans were like oohing and aahing over how cheap the groceries were in China.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:39]
| Oh, God, here we go again, this stupidity.
|
Sam:
[1:34:42]
| And how people could, and like, oh, this is just a regular worker living alone in a really nice apartment that I could never afford here in America. And so there are a lot of people, and also people just remarking at how technologically advanced China was, like seeing some of the buildings and stuff like that, of like, oh my God, they're not living in huts i don't i don't know what they expected but.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:08]
| Oh my god these idiots i swear to god all such fucking morons i mean basically so in a couple of weeks the chinese will figure out oh my god we've been invaded by a bunch of morons and by the way here's the other thing there's this app that is not in english and she mentioned anything so yeah there may be a nice big, you know, Thousands of whatever people, tens of thousands of maybe go over there. But the mass market is not going to go with the fucking...
|
Sam:
[1:35:44]
| No, they're not doing this. No, no. Wait a minute. Red Note is the number one downloaded free social media app on Apple right now. But there's a big difference between rising to the top of the download charts for a few days or even weeks than having a whole bunch of people actually take the time to move over there and be over there on a regular basis. It's going to be a handful of people doing it for novelty for a little while and then dropping off again. Like, you know, people are looking for...
|
Ivan:
[1:36:17]
| Not like what happened with threads at the original Spurt.
|
Sam:
[1:36:20]
| Yes. I mean, people will check out the alternatives. People are looking for TikTok alternatives. People got a lot of mileage over the fact that, you know, oh, they want to ban the Chinese app? We'll show them Americans using a Chinese app. And some people got mileage out of that. But you're right. It's not a mass thing. It's not like the 170 million people who are using TikTok are going to move to Red Note. It's going to be, like you said, a few tens of thousands who do it for a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:51]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:36:52]
| And this was something that, if they do separate out the IP addresses, there were people who were like, Chinese Americans who were using this to keep up with their friends in China who are like, if you fuck this up for us, we're going to be pissed if like American IPs get segregated from the Chinese IPs on this app, you know? So anyway, yeah. TikTok. I am going to go through all the videos I've posted on TikTok for either curmudgeons corner or myself. I've got local copies of anyway, so I don't have to go download all my videos, but I might go through and look and take like screenshots of comments and stuff. Cause I don't think even if I go and do the download all my stuff, I don't think the comments are included because they're actually somebody else leaving the comment on yours. They're not really yours. So I might do something like that to like archive the stuff tomorrow. I don't know. And I'll just double check that I have copies of everything. So, but I don't know. I, But if this actually gets shut down and stays shut down, there'll be a lot of people who would be pissed off by it.
|
Sam:
[1:38:08]
| They will blame Biden. He did sign the law, although the law was included in some omnibus bullshit must pass thing. It wasn't a standalone. So I don't know. But people will blame Biden anyway. And if Trump rescues it, they'll give him the credit. And perhaps deservedly so. I don't know. And look, there probably are real national security concerns. That probably are the real trade concerns.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:31]
| There is no reason why he's getting the servantly so the credit. First of all, it was the Republicans that actually pushed this through.
|
Sam:
[1:38:39]
| Well, it was fully bipartisan. And they may have originated it, but this is one of the things that act like was 95%.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:48]
| Yeah, but like you said, this was part of a bigger bill as well. So they tucked it in there. Trump had been actually banging the table for it. Okay, a while back, if you don't remember. And then he changed his mind. Exactly. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:39:04]
| Well, and specifically, he changed his mind when one of the major TikTok investors, who was American, donated a bunch to his campaign. And then he changed his mind.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:15]
| Oh, wow. Gee.
|
Sam:
[1:39:16]
| Or I guess legally to one of his super PACs, not his actual campaign, whatever. And then the other thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:25]
| I wonder how many shares of DJT that guy bought.
|
Sam:
[1:39:29]
| Yes. And then he did well on TikTok. TikTok was one of his platforms that he used to spread his message during the campaign as well. So anyway, I think this is a stupid way of dealing with it, even if there are real problems. But maybe Trump will do a deal and force a sale to some consortium of Elon and other billionaires. Mr. Beast has said he's got some billionaires. He wants to buy it too. You know, so Mr. Beast, famous YouTuber. Have you not kept up with Mr. Beast?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:07]
| I think I vaguely have heard of him.
|
Sam:
[1:40:12]
| You know, I do not subscribe to Mr. Beast's channel. I find him kind of obnoxious, actually. But he comes up with a bunch of other YouTube channels I watch. They mention him and talk about him and stuff like that. So he's kind of unavoidable, but I find him annoying. But he's done really well. He's made lots and lots of money on YouTube. And, you know, his thing is giving away that money in, like, game show kind of things and various other ways of giving it away.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:42]
| I just looked up. His net worth is only $500 million. Mr.
|
Sam:
[1:40:46]
| Beast?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:46]
| Barely. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:40:48]
| No, Mr. Beast, just to be clear, Mr. Beast has not said he wants to buy it. He has said that he is coordinating a group of billionaires that he knows to put up an offer.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:59]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it really would have to be a lot of other people putting up the money.
|
Sam:
[1:41:03]
| Yes or a handful of specific people.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:06]
| You know.
|
Sam:
[1:41:07]
| That yeah so.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:09]
| I don't know let's be clear even elon musk because this is the one thing when he bought twitter he had to go beg borrow and steal the damn money okay yes so well.
|
Sam:
[1:41:20]
| He he probably still would now but he's considerably richer than he was when he bought twitter.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:25]
| Oh yeah but remember that all of it is most most i know it's all locked up.
|
Sam:
[1:41:30]
| It's a big problem.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:31]
| It's all locked up. So even if he went, he would still have to borrow the money from somewhere or sell some stock of something or do something or whatever. I mean, he can do it, but it's not like, you know, it's not like he's sitting in, you know, he's not Berkshire Hathaway, which right now I think is sitting on like 300 billion in cash is some crazy amount of money. So Warren Buffett as basically the guy that decides at Berkshire, he goes there. We'll write a check tomorrow. Cash. But but very few companies have that access to cash. Maybe he'll do it.
|
Sam:
[1:42:00]
| You think he wants TikTok?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:02]
| He doesn't want that shit. He doesn't want anything to do with that shit. He has been very quiet and pretty much on purpose. He's really just staying out of his whole shit. He's old. He's tired. His partner doing this died. And he's just like, right now, it's just like, let's just leave me the fuck alone.
|
Sam:
[1:42:22]
| Yeah. And I can't blame him. And the end of the thing is, if ByteDance really, and like you said, probably driven by the Chinese government actually making the decision. If their bottom line is we're not going to sell, no matter what, we'll shut it down first. Then it's getting shut down in less Trump basically decides we don't care and we're going to ignore the law or we're going to shove through, we're going to, we're going to, you know, we're going to shove through a bill to undo the law from a couple of years ago. Yeah. Which is possible. You know, they, maybe that's part of the shock and awe is a bill to undo the tick tock law. I don't know. We'll see. Anyway, that's it. By the time you listen to this, you'll know if it was shut down on Sunday or not. And yeah, so we're done. Anything else on TikTok, Yvonne? I think we're done.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:21]
| Well, now we're done.
|
Sam:
[1:43:23]
| Okay, so the stuff at the end. Thank you, everybody for joining us again. You can go to curmudgeons-corner.com where we have archives of the show, transcripts, links to all the ways to contact us, links to our YouTube. There is no link to TikTok. If TikTok does survive this thing, I will add a link to TikTok. I've been, I've been posting to Tik TOK, like little one minute video clips of the shows for the last month, month and a half. And some weeks they get a lot of traffic. Some weeks they don't, I don't know what makes the difference. You know, I guess some of the shows China likes and some of them China doesn't, but I, I, I pro I probably won't get to even post clips from this show before they shut down, if they're really shutting down on Sunday, unless I really rush it out Saturday. I don't know. I don't, maybe I will, maybe I don't feel like rushing, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:24]
| Tired.
|
Sam:
[1:44:27]
| Anyway, go check out our TikTok before it disappears. I don't know. It's curmudgeon's corner on TikTok. You can search for it. Anyway, all that stuff is on there. Importantly, also a link to our Patreon where you can get, oh, you know, I promised last week I'd look up what the right rewards were for the three people who adjusted their Patreon last week. And I forgot. Remind me next week, Yvonne. I'll look it up, like figure out what they deserve. Anyway, thank you for everybody who already contributes to our Patreon. If you don't contribute to our Patreon, consider it. It's just a little bit of cash to help us pay for the expenses of the show. And importantly, and at various levels, we'll mention you on the show. We'll ring a bell. We'll send you a postcard. We'll send you a mug. And importantly, at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of our listeners are chatting throughout the week. Oh, and also tell your friends. I remembered last week, but for years I've forgotten to say, tell your friends. Oh, and review us on iTunes. I haven't said that in years. I haven't checked iTunes in years.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:33]
| Well, we haven't checked it. Yeah, we haven't checked the reviews.
|
Sam:
[1:45:35]
| I haven't checked that forever. But leave us a review on iTunes and tell your friends and boost us up so we can be making millions on this show too.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:46]
| Boost! Boost!
|
Sam:
[1:45:47]
| Anyway, Vaughn, is there something from the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack that we have not talked about on the show that will make people so excited about the Slack that they want to contribute to our Patreon that you would like to share with us today?
|
Ivan:
[1:46:00]
| I was actually looking for this stuff. See what we've got here. That sounds interesting and funny.
|
Sam:
[1:46:16]
| By the way, today's popular wiki of the day was in fact, Mr. Beast. Presumably because of his tiktok stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:24]
| Because of the tiktok stuff yeah well okay so planters offers 45 000 and benefits to drive its iconic nutmobile apparently i mean i'm guessing they gotta pay travel expenses right you know is that just you know you got fuel expenses and hotels they want you to drive this thing.
|
Sam:
[1:46:46]
| All around the country yeah so i presume.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:48]
| Right so they gotta be paying for travel expenses. So, so apparently, do you dream of hitting the open road in a peanut-shaped vehicle? Planters giving three lucky people a chance to drive its iconic Nutmobile across the country, earning $45,000 a year, plus travel stipends, health benefits, and a 401k?
|
Sam:
[1:47:04]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:05]
| I mean, you know what? If I was retired, I would, sure. Why not?
|
Sam:
[1:47:13]
| You know, I think they probably frown on you taking the peanut up to 120 miles per hour.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:19]
| They might, yes. But that might get a lot of publicity for the peanut.
|
Sam:
[1:47:24]
| You could do the- You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:25]
| You got a police chase. You got a police chase of the peanut.
|
Sam:
[1:47:29]
| Do the cannonball run in the peanut.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:33]
| Yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:47:34]
| There you go. Get from coast to coast as fast as possible.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:38]
| Right. Yeah, I'll do a cannonball run on the peanut mobile. You know, yeah, that's one of those things. I could do all those things, yes. I'm sure. I mean, I'll tell you what, get them a hell of a lot more publicity than any other damn thing they're doing.
|
Sam:
[1:47:56]
| I, I, you know, it would be, can you imagine the helicopter chase of the peanut? The peanuts going 120 miles, 120 miles an hour down the interstate with a hundred cop cars after it and helicopters, live TV coverage. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:17]
| You know, because in order to do that, I'll have to get it juiced up. So I'll go and I'll take it to a shop.
|
Sam:
[1:48:22]
| Oh, you don't think the stock peanut can do that?
|
Ivan:
[1:48:25]
| No, no, no. So no, I'll go and I'll have to go to a shop. Guys, we need to modify this thing. Okay, come on. This thing needs to do over 100 miles an hour. You know, I'll spend $10,000, $20,000 in parts, put it in there, whatever, get the peanut, and then we put it on the road, and then we're blasting through, and then we get the massive police chase going on. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:48:46]
| You know, for some reason, every once in a while, you see these people doing the land speed record in rocket powered vehicles. You never see a rocket powered peanut.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:56]
| No. Hey, go to the salt flats, get a couple of Genesis to take, you know, take off units attached to the damn thing and try to go and do, you know, do a speed thing on the on the peanut.
|
Sam:
[1:49:11]
| Now, the aerodynamics of a peanut are not necessarily ideal, but that would just make it more interesting.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:17]
| Make more interesting. Make sure I got to get a helmet, fire suit, and other things if I'm going to be doing that as well. By the way, my wife actually, because I haven't been out on a racetrack in a while, did gift me for Christmas this thing to go on a racetrack on a car in February.
|
Sam:
[1:49:36]
| Try not to die.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:39]
| Die well i'm thinking well not a race car i i went and i the one thing that i that i picked was that i've driven almost every german car but i i've never driven like an italian supercar like a ferrari or lamborghini or something so i have never done that so i chose to i i i did choose to drive a lamborghini at the track okay so because i haven't done that and i i'll i'll report on what that is i'm sure we.
|
Sam:
[1:50:08]
| Will expect your report once that's done assuming you don't die.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:12]
| I expect to be yelled at at the i'm pretty sure what i'm i'm expecting i i've heard from some other people that one of the things is that most people that show up you know they haven't really driven cars fast before so they're not going that fast but then you get a guy like me that showed up that that's like you know driven very fast and they're like kind of like freak They kind of like freak out because all of a sudden this guy gets in the car and all of a sudden, you know, slams it, you know, smashes the gas and pulls out. They're like, whoa, wait, what happened? So I'm fully expecting to be yelled at next month. Very loudly. So that's already happened. So we'll see what happens. I'll try not to get killed.
|
Sam:
[1:50:53]
| Very good. Yes. Try not to get killed. And, you know, if you're going to do the cannonball run with the peanut, though, you got to make it a race against the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:06]
| I mean, can you imagine the publicity that we would get? Peanut versus Oscar Mayer Wiener cannonball run. I mean, that would be that would get a lot of publicity.
|
Sam:
[1:51:17]
| There you go i.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:19]
| Like this idea okay all right.
|
Sam:
[1:51:21]
| Okay with that we are done hey everybody we did not talk much about politics except where it intersected with tiktok and stuff this time around that's.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:32]
| A big political issue.
|
Sam:
[1:51:34]
| It is it is but like but like for one like we're a couple days again away from the second trump administration and we did not really talk about it we didn't really talk about biden's legacy or any of that kind of stuff but you know here's one thing i will say i am like i guess i.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:52]
| Keep looking at people complaining about biden and i want to punch him in the face like right now just like get the fuck out of my.
|
Sam:
[1:51:58]
| Yeah well and all i was gonna say is trump has promised shock and awe for the first hundred days and specifically a bunch of stuff in the first few days, first day, first week. So by the time we get here next week, we'll see how much of that was talk and how much of that was real. Like we've said, talk about what he does, not what he says. Starting on Monday afternoon, we'll find out what he actually does. So there we go. Stay safe, everybody. Have a good week. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:37]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:52:38]
| Say goodbye, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:39]
| Bye. Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:52:41]
| Bye.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:42]
| I said bye three times.
|
Sam:
[1:53:14]
| We didn't talk about the Gaza ceasefire deal either, but we'll find out whether that actually happens and like.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:19]
| Well, yeah, that's still not in effect.
|
Sam:
[1:53:23]
| Yeah. It's supposed to take into effect later this weekend. Everybody approved, but we'll see what actually happens and how long it lasts and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, goodbye, Vaughn. I'm hitting stop.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:34]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:53:35]
| Do, do, do. And this is Sam again. And as promised at the very beginning of the show, So if you hold on just a few seconds, you'll hear the fun and exciting audio difficulties I had at the beginning of our recording. Here you go. Do, do, do.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:57]
| Shaved. Wait, why? Why does this sound weird? I hear like. Speak. I've got to record this. You sound like Chewbacca. I don't... What the hell is going on? You sound like Chewbacca on my end. What? I forgot if I record this. We have some audio problem. Can you... Can you... Ha ha ha.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:21]
| I mean, I don't really if I could understand what you're saying I would say let's go with a show like this but no, I can't even understand what you're saying, are you sure you don't have some audio filter but I can't the sound's not coming out I can't I mean, let me, hold on. What? Sound? I see. Aha. Okay, okay. Hold on. Okay, go ahead. Please speak. Hold on. Wait, wait. Record now. Okay. Okay, Sam, so what were you saying again? Go ahead. Ah, I see. Well, it's really good, Sam. This is great. Yes. All right. You know, yeah. Sure. Whatever you're saying. Yeah. And, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:50]
| Okay, let me, let me see, there's a little, uh, speak some more, speak, speak.
|
Slow Sam:
[1:56:55]
| Okay, let me, let me.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:58]
| Let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me. Sure, all right, good, all right, all right, let me, oh shit, that wasn't recording, speak again.
|
Slow Sam:
[1:57:11]
| Talk some more, talk some more.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:15]
| I don't know. Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. I'm going to be like.
|
Slow Sam:
[1:57:20]
| I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:21]
| I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like.
|
Slow Sam:
[1:57:25]
| I'm going to be like.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:32]
| Okay, good. Alright, great. Perfect. Alright, I'll try reconnecting.
|
Slow Sam:
[1:57:38]
| Uh-huh. I'll show you now.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:42]
| Oh, God, it's still the same.
|
Slow Sam:
[1:57:44]
| Okay, what's next?
|
Ivan:
[1:57:51]
| I don't understand. I mean, did you play back? Did you play back what I said?
|
Slow Sam:
[1:57:59]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:02]
| I mean, we could come eat it, but we can try this. I just exit it and then I just, I actually, I, okay. Yeah, I, I exit it completely. I grabbed the link again and connected again. I didn't just do a reconnect. The keys sound normal, though. For some reason. The key tapping sounds normal. Just not when you speak. All right. All right. Let's all leave. Okay. All right. No. Still. The coughing sounds great. Oh, God, I need to record that as an effect. You're coughing. You sound like the sound effects Ferris Bueller was using when he was asleep.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:59]
| What the hell is going on? Because you hear me fine. I mean, I did a few zooms today. The sound was fine. Do do do me a favor here try okay all right let's let's yeah let's exit the whole thing okay let's exit quit the browser start start again okay all right let's do this hello no fuck, okay so what the all right okay let's do that okay yeah all right let's try that all right okay.
| |
|
