Automated Transcript
Ivan:
[0:03]
| I hear barking.
|
Sam:
[0:05]
| Checking. Yes. Yes, you do. Okay. Blee-blee-blee-blee-blee-blee-blee-blee. Ruh-ruh-ruh. Ruh-ruh. Okay. Okay, all that's taken care of. Let's wait for the dog to shut up. Did somebody just come by or something? Roar. Oh. Oh, there they are. Oh, that was bad. Jadski, there's nothing going on. Oh, my God.
|
Ivan:
[1:13]
| Well, he's obviously bothered by something.
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Sam:
[1:16]
| Who knows what? He's delusional most of the time.
|
Ivan:
[1:20]
| Oh, okay. There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:24]
| Or, you know, it's something like, you know, there's a squirrel taunting him from the front yard. You know, that kind of thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:30]
| And see how that could be annoying.
|
Sam:
[1:32]
| Although there isn't any that I can see on our little camera right now. Okay.
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Ivan:
[1:39]
| Is he quiet? I think so.
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Sam:
[1:43]
| Shall I just hit start?
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Ivan:
[1:45]
| Yes.
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Sam:
[1:46]
| Here we go. Music.
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Sam:
[2:09]
| Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, November 29th, 2025. It's about 1715 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter and Yvonne Bowe is with us again. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:25]
| Hi.
|
Sam:
[2:27]
| You seem more chipper than last week. Is your recovery continuing apace?
|
Ivan:
[2:32]
| It is. I mean, yeah, it is. You know, it's getting better.
|
Sam:
[2:37]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:38]
| It is, you know, it is an upward slope.
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Sam:
[2:42]
| That's better than a downward slope.
|
Ivan:
[2:45]
| Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's making progress. It's making significant progress, yes.
|
Sam:
[2:51]
| Excellent. Well, um.
|
Ivan:
[2:53]
| I mean, I am, they said six weeks and barely over three. So it's, you know.
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Sam:
[2:58]
| So it's going the way it's supposed to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um.
|
Ivan:
[3:02]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[3:02]
| Anyway, we're going to do our usual, our first segment. we'll talk about lighter and frothier things and whatever, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah with Yvonne and I. I'm trying to catch up on movies and stuff. So yeah, lots of blah, blahs, lots of blah.
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Ivan:
[3:17]
| Blahs. Lots of blah, blahs, lots of blah, blahs, blah, blahs.
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Sam:
[3:21]
| Yeah, lots of blah, blahs. And you know, I'm working on catching up with the movies and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, more blah, blah, blah. Anyway, but Yvonne will pick something else undoubtedly and then we'll do more serious stuff towards the end. We're towards that. The last more than half. You know, it's usually mostly serious stuff, but, you know, we like to start out with the other stuff. So what's up this week with you, Yvonne, that you want to bring up for our butt first?
|
Ivan:
[3:50]
| Can I just say that I would be okay with not having to work again? I mean, if I could sustain the income.
|
Sam:
[3:58]
| Yeah.
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Ivan:
[3:58]
| That's all I'm saying. I mean, it would be just, you know, I...
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Sam:
[4:04]
| You know, this last month of being unemployed, From a mental health point of view, I am so much happier than I have been in years, years. I am enjoying myself. I am relaxing. I am get, I mean, I'm not getting as much done as I would like to get done. That never happens, but I'm getting stuff done that I'd like to get done. And the things that I'm getting done are the things I want to get done rather than other stuff that's going on.
|
Ivan:
[4:38]
| You're not commuting?
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Sam:
[4:39]
| I'm not commuting. I mean, you know, and I, you know, I, I had, I basically mentally had said, I'll take November and, you know, November, I'm going to just relax like this. And then come December, I have to start taking the idea of figuring out how I'll make money later more seriously, you know?
|
Ivan:
[5:05]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[5:05]
| And, but I'll be completely honest with you. The idea of actually, even though I intellectually know it is most likely what I will end up having to do. The idea of going back to a regular corporate job is like horrifies me. It's like, I mentally do not want to do that. Like I want to, so I'm like, you know, I, I see the little things go by of like, oh, you know, make money with day trading. Oh, okay. That sounds great. You know, let me try that. Or, or, you know, whatever scam I get, I get the little like texts all the time, you know, let's see what, what's the most recent one I have? Like, I'm just, I'm just looking at, Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. They're just stupid political ones, too. Oh, but I know I get several of these a day, so I just have to find one that's appropriate. Oh, well, of course I get the ones that are just completely unknown numbers. Hey, long time no see. Where are you staying these days? Oh, where are you staying these days, Sam? I get several of these every day. But anyway, you guys know what I'm talking about. These make money fast things, work from home, make hundreds and hundreds of dollars every day, you know, doing nothing.
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Ivan:
[6:34]
| You'll make a thousand dollars a day working one hour a day.
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Sam:
[6:38]
| Yeah, these kinds of things. I get these scam texts all the time and I'm like, oh, that sounds good. Maybe I could try that.
|
Ivan:
[6:46]
| You know, as you start diluting yourself, this shit starts becoming like viable.
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Sam:
[6:54]
| Exactly.
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Ivan:
[6:55]
| It's a you. Yeah, you start to say, hey.
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Sam:
[6:57]
| It's like you know maybe i can uh yeah maybe i don't know there are these scams about like sell whatever online or read and you look there's all kinds of crap okay and and you know i and i'm i'm like letting uh you know and and part of it even on my little personal projects i know i'm like really stretching it to think any of them could make any money whatsoever you know but, I spent a lot of the time from after all the turkey stuff was over Thanksgiving to now. Like, you know, I've been working, you know, one of one of the projects that I have is this Juke Potter thing for random podcast discovery and jukepotter.com. Everybody go check it out. Anyway, like I threw my random to do list thing, which, by the way, I've also enhanced my to do list mechanism. So I'll show you that in a second because I've got a website I can show you on that now.
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Sam:
[7:59]
| But, you know, what came up was, OK, work on some Juke Potter again. So I started working on some Juke Potter again. And the thing, the thing that was next on my list was like, figure out some monetization for it. Right. So now if you go to jukepotter.com there, there, I now have put in samples cause nobody's actually paying me cause nobody's going to this damn website, of course, but like I've built a monetization mechanism where people can buy sponsored placements on the site, you know? And so of course I've put in my four podcasts. I've put in an additional eight podcasts from from that Snohomish podcast network thing that I've been going to mixers on just as samples. So like if you go to the site, you know, a certain, you know, sponsored ones come up if you're in the category that those things are part of. And I'm like, you know, here's the pricing model. And if it became super, super popular, I could actually charge people from it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Sam:
[8:56]
| Now, it's not got enough features yet that I'm going to go out and publicize it. And it would take a huge amount of volume to make any non-trivial amount of cash. And so most likely, it would never make more than Curmudgeon's Corner makes us, which is like $25 a month. But I've built the mechanism so it could, you know, and I don't know. But yeah, and I also am thinking, okay, what's the minimum I could actually get buy on? and not, like, be thrown out of the house, you know? And not lose the house.
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Ivan:
[9:30]
| These are the thoughts that you're like, I don't remember what you're going through.
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Sam:
[9:34]
| Exactly it's like how could i how could i coast how could i coast and not actually go to work and and you know like it's not saying you know i recognizing you know i i i am not in a position where i can live completely off my savings for the rest of my life but you know if i found a nice shopping cart and a bush to live under maybe i could you know i don't know i don't know i don't know you know i i and and of course like job market sucks right now and is getting worse of course oh.
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Ivan:
[10:15]
| My god it's it's it's.
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Sam:
[10:16]
| You know so so it's like all.
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Ivan:
[10:18]
| I've been sharing is on the slack are all these terrible like like like just job news and you know the administration has decided, with the same attitude they had during COVID is now the attitude they're having with the economy. Hey, you know, how do we solve the problem with the COVID cases? Stop testing. So, hey, how do we solve the problem with the economic numbers looking bad? Hey, let's stop publishing them.
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Sam:
[10:47]
| Right, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[10:48]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[10:51]
| So, yeah, it's like, well, what's the point of even looking, right? You know, so I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[10:56]
| I think these are terrible times. But it is, I think there is... And memory serves, and I had read certain articles, that this is probably one of the worst, at the start of December, it's probably one of the worst times to be looking for a job.
|
Sam:
[11:12]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[11:13]
| I did get a job many years ago that I started in December, but pretty sure I remember correctly, the interview started like in September. So this was like in 2009. So it wasn't like, you know, but nobody.
|
Sam:
[11:30]
| Most people don't kick off. when i started now yeah i know like january is a better blah blah blah yeah yeah but i mean when i started the job that i'm leaving now um i i started in mid-january i'm pretty sure the interview process was in december for that position oh okay you know i and so like because I remember.
|
Ivan:
[11:57]
| Well, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying statistically.
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Sam:
[12:01]
| It's not a great time. Like, nobody's in that mindset. But then, of course, I've seen other people talk about, like, well, that's when you jump in because nobody else is doing it. You know, but whatever.
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Ivan:
[12:15]
| I don't think that's, I mean, I'm talking about from the employer side, not the workers. If they need a job, they're going to be hunting.
|
Sam:
[12:23]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[12:23]
| You know, but from the other side, it's not the same thing. But anyway, I... You know, there was this, you know, you're talking about money, but there is this article that I saw related to, and I think it's, you know, somebody pretty accurately decided, you know, we talk about the poverty line being 30 some odd thousand dollars for a family of four, which is ridiculous. Nobody can live. I mean, you know, I mean, you can't live without public assistance. Okay. And those people at that money are getting a lot of public assistance. Okay. Right. It's it's it's almost impossible to to live, you know, at that at that amount of money, at a family of four. OK. Yeah. And they were making this calculation where, you know, what the hell should the real poverty line be? OK.
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Sam:
[13:16]
| Right. OK. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[13:17]
| And they they they went through the numbers, crunched the numbers for a family of four. and you know they think and obviously this also goes back to the definition of what poverty is okay all right which also people started arguing about this okay that the real number should be something much closer to about 140 000 for a family of four not not just, Not 30 some odd thousand, 140,000 for a family of four. And by the way, the thing is also defining what the heck poverty is. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[14:00]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[14:01]
| Because it doesn't mean that if you're making 120, you're starved. But what they're saying for a family of four is that on average, and by the way, this is not adjusted for inflation depending on the different states as well. Okay. Right.
|
Sam:
[14:15]
| I was going to say, cost of living is very different depending on location.
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Ivan:
[14:20]
| It could be a lot less and more. But on the average of the United States, okay, for a family of four to live basically where you're paying child care, your car, your taxes, your health care, transportation, food. And the numbers they picked aren't crazy numbers. it adds up to about $136,000 a year for a family of four. And this is going in like, you know, think about $23,000 for housing, which isn't that expensive a housing if you think about it. $1,000 a month on food, also not crazy. $14,000 on transportation, which you think about four people, right? Cars, insurance, gas. I mean, that's not even that crazy a number if you think about it. Health care, also another $1,000 a month when you add your insurance premiums and whatnot, blah, blah, blah. You know, that gets in there. You know, taxes. That family is paying between the 7% Social Security tax, Medicare, whatever, and, you know, other taxes or whatever. Close to $18,000 in taxes alone. Okay? So it starts getting to, you know, it really adds up real quick. Okay? Now, some disputed the thing that they added $32,000 for child care in.
|
Ivan:
[15:47]
| But look, and that some people don't have that expense, I understand how they're saying that. You know, you can dispute the number where it's $100,000, $100,000, $100,000, $100,000, $100,000.
|
Sam:
[15:57]
| $100,000, $100,000. Well, with child care, you either need someone staying home doing it who's not making an income or you have to pay a huge amount for it.
|
Ivan:
[16:05]
| Yeah. And that's the thing because that's a real...
|
Sam:
[16:09]
| Or you're doing it illegally and paying somebody under the table at like some... But even that's not cheap.
|
Ivan:
[16:13]
| Listen, if you think about it, if somebody from that family has to cut back their working in order to do that, it's costing you $30,000 a year. It doesn't matter how you slice it.
|
Sam:
[16:25]
| Right. Okay?
|
Ivan:
[16:26]
| Whether you're paying it out to a child care provider. And I remember, you know, daycare for people is $2,000 a month. You know? It's not more. That's a real number. It's not more. It's a real number. So, you know, it's one of those things. So, yeah, I mean, in America, really, saying that the poverty line for a family of four is $33,000, I mean, that's basically, I mean, that may mean that they are living in, I mean, they're not, they're living, I mean, they're living a really big. I mean, they're living a very anxious and stressful life at that number. OK, they're not eating well. They're probably skipping meals. They're not getting health care, maybe, depending if they're on Medicaid or not, depending on the state, because that's another thing with the gaps that we got in health care and whatnot. So those are the things that I'm thinking about. But the reality is that, yeah, I mean, I think that I would be, you know, if I didn't have to go back to work, I'm OK. I've said this before. I've had this before. I would be fine. Now, I will say I don't have the same level of dread that you have about going back to work. I will say that my work environment is significantly better.
|
Ivan:
[17:50]
| By miles, I don't have the same issue with work that you've had for years. but what i'm saying is that i don't really you know there are there are these people i'm talking you know you talk to like oh my god they don't know what the hell to do themselves if they don't if they don't go to work and i mean i i don't i don't know if you've met these people but i have yeah i mean they're workaholics they cannot live without work okay i'm.
|
Sam:
[18:21]
| Like screw that i have.
|
Ivan:
[18:22]
| So much.
|
Sam:
[18:24]
| And the last month, of course, has showed it to me perfectly, but I have no... dearth of things that i will fill my time with if given the opportunity and yeah certainly some of it is relaxing some of it is watching tv some of it is unproductive stuff sure but i also have things i want to get done all the.
|
Ivan:
[18:51]
| Fucking time for god's sakes give me a break okay come on man.
|
Sam:
[18:55]
| But you know i i have.
|
Ivan:
[18:57]
| Spent this last week because i you know part of my thing is that i i had You know, I, I, Manu didn't have school and I did work a little bit of this week, but I, I, I didn't, I, I, you know, I had planned to try to work the least amount of time possible.
|
Sam:
[19:15]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[19:15]
| Okay. I did have to take care of a couple of things, but I, I, you know, look, we have unlimited PTO and I was like, look, I, I gotta, you know, I, I, you know, I did.
|
Sam:
[19:25]
| If you can't use your unlimited PTO for recovering from surgery, what the fuck good is it?
|
Ivan:
[19:31]
| Oh, no, no. And look, I took a number of days already. The one thing is that I had planned on taking some time off now. Here's the one thing about my time. Look, my time, a lot of the times, it's not even dictated by my boss. Not that my boss is looking for me. It's that I attend customers. And, you know, I do sales. So the reality is, and there isn't really anybody that in some cases can answer, you know, can take care of this stuff for the customer. It is what it is. This is one of the things about this type of job. So, you know, I would tell people, look, if it was something, there was a couple of things that nobody else could take care of. I took care of it. Okay. But the other is I just punted. You know, I'm like, whatever. You know, I did not kill myself working, but I did.
|
Ivan:
[20:22]
| But this is the thing I'm telling you This is the thing about taking a sales shop, If you're on a sales shop And you want to sell properly One thing that's going to happen It's not about your boss You know, if a customer's trying to reach you And you're not there They get upset, Simple as that It's just like if you Listen, if you go to a store You're trying to find somebody to help you, right? And you can't find a person You know, you don't like that So that's the unfortunate side effect of Of the job. But I did rest a lot. I watched a lot of TV. Gosh, I spent a lot of time. Well, the other thing that happened was that I was thinking of taking Manu to go do something. But Manu got sick on Saturday, right as this week started. And he's been nursing a cold the whole week. It got better for Thanksgiving. Substantially better on Wednesday. But he had been very stuffed having a lot of hard time getting to sleep because he was congested. He was. But so so I thought I was going to take him out to do some stuff, but he was sick. And so I'm like, well, I guess we're just going to lounge around and play video games and not do much of anything and watch TV. Well, we did go see a movie. OK, last night because he felt better. He felt better. So we went to see you Zootopia 2 is out Yes.
|
Sam:
[21:46]
| I've heard that Now, I don't know that I've, seen the first one.
|
Ivan:
[21:52]
| I don't know if I saw the first one either. Actually.
|
Sam:
[21:55]
| I mean, I can bring to mind like clips, but I don't think it's from watching the movie. I think it's just from being around in a universe where Zootopia exists.
|
Ivan:
[22:06]
| It may well very be possible. I'm on the same boat as you. I don't know if I saw the first, but I did see the second one. And so I'll add a movie review.
|
Sam:
[22:16]
| I'll just go quickly.
|
Ivan:
[22:17]
| Thumbs up.
|
Sam:
[22:18]
| Thumbs up for Zootopia 2.
|
Ivan:
[22:20]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:20]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[22:20]
| Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good movie. Out in theaters.
|
Sam:
[22:23]
| Good for the whole family. Not just kids.
|
Ivan:
[22:26]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good for the whole family. Yeah, yeah. My wife, Manu, and I, we all three went. We had a good time at the theater yesterday. Great pact.
|
Sam:
[22:36]
| We are probably going to go tomorrow. I have on my to-do list. Oh, that I was going to show you. So I have to do that in just a second. But we're probably going to go to a second Wicked movie tomorrow. so I have to buy the.
|
Ivan:
[22:50]
| Ticket to Force a Wicked.
|
Sam:
[22:51]
| Moon I am we have talked before how like musicals aren't really your thing they're not really my thing either but I enjoyed the first one couldn't watch the second one so and we re-watched the first one on at home a few days ago I mentioned that.
|
Ivan:
[23:05]
| I like musicals like a musical like a musical like you know like a Broadway musical in person that I like but not a movie musical so much.
|
Sam:
[23:16]
| Right I.
|
Ivan:
[23:17]
| Don't know what, Okay, so, like, The first time I went to see a musical, probably the worst way to see a musical, I will say.
|
Sam:
[23:27]
| Okay, yes.
|
Ivan:
[23:29]
| Well, the reason I say it's the worst way is that, look, I, this was, like, when we were in college, there was this one time that I went to, like, near, like, I went to, I went to London, okay, for spring break. Okay, for a couple of days. Well, I went to Madrid, but then, I flew to Madrid, but then my girlfriend at the time said, oh wait but we're all going to london and i already bought the ticket to go my mom said we're all going to london like fuck it's just madrid then i gotta check i gotta and i was like i couldn't change the ticket so i could fly to london and then go to madrid i have to fly to madrid first fly to london and this was like from pittsburgh so i had to fly from pittsburgh to newark right pittsburgh to newark newark to madrid then madrid to london and that same night that I got there. We went to... They had tickets to go to... Of course, they lived in Madrid, so they're in the same time zone. I was not, okay? They had tickets to go see Cats, okay, that night in the West End. And I'd never been to... Hey, one thing you want to do is go to a theater in the West End to go see a show, okay? You know, so I got there. I was very... I had a hard time watching it, even though I liked it. It was Cats.
|
Sam:
[24:43]
| Cats is a little odd of musicals. I have seen Cats.
|
Ivan:
[24:49]
| I will say that it took a substantial amount of coffee that I consumed. for me to stay. I mean, it wasn't because the musical was bad. It's just that I had spent like 20 plus hours traveling. I'm jet lagged on my ass and I'm like all of a sudden trying to watch Cats.
|
Sam:
[25:07]
| That might not be the best situation to see it in.
|
Ivan:
[25:10]
| No, I can say like flat out. No, no. If you want to watch my recommendations, if you go to London, you want to watch a show, at a theater at West End, do not go the same day you arrived.
|
Sam:
[25:26]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[25:27]
| That's my travel. Okay.
|
Sam:
[25:29]
| Now we've on, I want to get your reactions to this thing alive. Cause we've talked before about my various to-do list mechanisms.
|
Ivan:
[25:35]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[25:36]
| And so one of the, one of the things I've done in the last two weeks is take one of the things like a.
|
Ivan:
[25:42]
| Randomizer or something.
|
Sam:
[25:43]
| Yes, exactly. I, yes, I used to do this for a while. I did this on a spreadsheet and then I'd move to a different method using dice. But like, I revived this one because I sort of missed it. The basic premise behind this one, it's mostly for recurring tasks, like things that you want to do on a regular basis. Like, you know, I mentioned juke potter, like I have that in there as like, I want to do something with that every three days. Okay. And so the basic premise is that you look at what percentage of the, like, if you're supposed to do it every three days, then if it's been three days since you have done the thing, then it's, it's sort of the baseline. Okay. And if it's been half that time, it's half the priority. So like if it's been one and a half days, it's half the priority to do that thing. Then if it's the three days you said, and if you've let it go six, it's double the priority. If you let it go nine, it's triple the priority. Okay. Et cetera. And, but these priorities don't represent just like the order on a list. They go in, each thing comes in with a score. And then when you're deciding what to do, you pick based on like the higher the score, something has, the greater a probability it has of coming up.
|
Sam:
[27:09]
| So, like, the things near the top of the list have a greater priority of coming up when you pick a task than lower. And I also have a mechanism to do a multiplier that says, like, this is every three days, but it's 10 times more important than other stuff. So, multiply its score by 10. It's 10 times more likely than it would be otherwise, right?
|
Sam:
[27:27]
| So, anyway, here I am sending you the URL to this. Look at it on your computer. I have not optimized it for mobile. So, it doesn't fit right on a phone. but you can bring up this i i've made it the the site itself i'm not giving the url on the podcast but i i haven't put any protections uh against seeing it i've made protections you have to you have to type in a pin to change anything so this is read only to you okay, so so first of all describe what you see here and tell the audience well.
|
Ivan:
[28:04]
| I mean i must say Sam, you made it very graphically pleasing. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[28:09]
| Thank you.
|
Ivan:
[28:10]
| So it's this Apple to do priority based task manager, and it's got the task. And I guess because of the scoring, right? It goes and it puts, you know, it has this bar chart that shows the most, it shows how, Because of the scoring, where it is at the top of the list, okay?
|
Sam:
[28:32]
| Right, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[28:32]
| It says how many times, you know, when did you repeat, okay? And it's got the multiplier, and it shows you the last time that you had an action. What is the N?
|
Sam:
[28:42]
| How many times I've done it under this system?
|
Ivan:
[28:45]
| Oh, so you've done it 18 times, okay? So the thing is that, for example, at the first one that he's got here, move tasks from simple note to to-do. So that's apparently very functioned.
|
Sam:
[28:55]
| So you put it on a to-do list. And so this is transferring stuff from my old to-do list onto this thing.
|
Ivan:
[29:00]
| So that one, he's done 18 times. It's like it's got a multiplier of 10. The next one that's on here, apparently, that is critical. It's got a multiplier, but he has not done it at all. It's buy movie tickets.
|
Sam:
[29:12]
| Yeah, it's the movie tickets for tomorrow. Right. And you'll notice there's a repeat column. The first one I have on there, do every six hours. Move one of those items. And I've done the 18 of them, and it's got a 10x multiplier. But the last time I did it was two days, eight hours ago, two days.
|
Ivan:
[29:30]
| So let's see, uh, you help Alex video, which you haven't helped them in six months. And you've done it once. It's online. The laundry round. Oh, this one isn't that bad. You've done twice. Okay. This one you did about a week and three days ago. That's not terrible. Okay. All right. Although I would say, considering that you don't actually have a job, that's actually miserable.
|
Sam:
[29:57]
| Well, and my target is to do this every 12 hours, twice a day. Because I have calculated that in order to keep up with the volume of laundry, I have to do it twice a day and.
|
Ivan:
[30:07]
| You've only done it to what god okay snow.
|
Sam:
[30:12]
| Laps and look you have neglected dimensions on the left of this with the scoring for each one of these like the the move tasks from the simple they're ranked.
|
Ivan:
[30:21]
| You know like one two three so i'm moving down the rank list.
|
Sam:
[30:24]
| You're going down the rank list but the important part is like that that move things from my old to-do list has a 15% chance of coming up. If I pick a task, the buy movie tickets has an 11.9% chance. Help Alex video has a 3.85%.
|
Ivan:
[30:38]
| Oh, I see.
|
Sam:
[30:41]
| So now, now hit the pick a task button, Yvonne, or turn, turn up your volume, turn up your volume. Cause the, the sound is kind of flaky, but there are sound effects here.
|
Ivan:
[30:50]
| Okay. Let me see. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait, where's, where's my volume knob? Okay. Here. Okay.
|
Sam:
[30:57]
| I heard the blit-twiddle.
|
Ivan:
[30:59]
| Oh! Oh! Oh, you could... Yeah, well, the thing is, the sound is coming through my headphones, unfortunately.
|
Sam:
[31:06]
| Oh, wow.
|
Ivan:
[31:07]
| Hang on, I could do something. Let me see. All right, I'll do this again. Did that come through?
|
Sam:
[31:14]
| No. No.
|
Ivan:
[31:15]
| It does this little cool sound effect, and then it randomly picks it, and it picked the task. On this instance, down at number 114, which had a 0.107% chance, which is feed and water mic, which was done four days ago. Okay, well, that's not bad. You didn't do it four days ago.
|
Sam:
[31:38]
| Well, and see, it's got a once a week target. And so what happens is when you complete a task, because the priority is based on how long it's been, it drops all the way to the bottom of the list and then slowly works its way back up.
|
Ivan:
[31:51]
| Sam, can I just say something? This is actually pretty cool. I will tell you this. I don't understand why the hell putting this in an app and putting it on the App Store, to be honest with you, if you can make a mobile. I see four people.
|
Sam:
[32:06]
| This is one of my projects that I did.
|
Ivan:
[32:09]
| It's a nation of procrastinating. Let's be clear about this. Okay. You know, this is, this is reality. There are, you know, so if you went and you put this, you know, we got to come up with a name. Okay.
|
Sam:
[32:24]
| You don't think Apple to do is the name?
|
Ivan:
[32:26]
| Not going to help. Okay. All right. Not going to help. But if we can come up with a name, but put this on the app store, this might.
|
Sam:
[32:33]
| Well you know like like like you said when you pick a task there's a little sound effect there's an animation yeah it's it's it's addictive like i have sat here yes just hitting the pick a task button over and over and over again.
|
Ivan:
[32:48]
| I i must admit i did i get quite quite enjoyable it was quite enjoyable to do so.
|
Sam:
[32:56]
| Since since you couldn't hear it i will insert later what the sound effect sounds like at this point. anyway i'll add that but yeah no look this is the kind of thing like as i'm going through things i'm like i built this for myself but i'm like okay how could i repackage this how could i make some money off this could i gotta be honest with you other.
|
Ivan:
[33:27]
| Than just making it mobile and and getting a nicer name this is actually pretty good this is really damn cool i gotta be honest with.
|
Sam:
[33:35]
| I think.
|
Ivan:
[33:37]
| That people I think that there are a lot of people out there, who probably would enjoy using this. Not me, but a lot of people, though.
|
Sam:
[33:49]
| Yes, if anybody listening wants to see this thing, I'm not going to give the URL on the podcast, but if you ping me individually, I'll share it so you can play with it and hear the little sound. The sound is erratic, though. I found if I use it over and over again, sometimes it doesn't come out properly. I've got on my list, debug why the sound doesn't always work. You know, things like that. And you'll notice I've got little, like, statistical things. Like, there's a line at the one sigma, two sigma, three sigma of, like, how often things come up and the percentage, you know. And it's color-coded by how late the thing is. Because, of course, the default is, like, everything's late. Everything's less frequent than I'd like it to be. The ones with the green bars, Yvonne, are the ones that aren't yet late. and you have to get down to 131 on the list to find the first one that's not late. Yeah, to find any green.
|
Ivan:
[34:43]
| Yeah, it's all the top 23 here. And it's like they're all like, you know, in distress.
|
Sam:
[34:51]
| Well, when I first transferred my previous method into here and I did an import from another tool I was using on my phone, like the top category, the color would be black. And those were the ones that were more than 100 times past their deadline. I did clear out all of those and I've did all, I had like a couple dozen of those and I cleared them all out. I took care of those. And now, now we're in the, the, the, the blue is the next most latest category. The one I have some purple ones at the top, which are less late than blue, but they're at the top because they've got a multiplier on them for the importance. So.
|
Ivan:
[35:29]
| Wait, you haven't showered in a week?
|
Sam:
[35:32]
| Yeah, well, it's been a week.
|
Ivan:
[35:36]
| What?
|
Sam:
[35:37]
| I'm not sure it has really been that. There are other ones on here that sometimes those are accurate. When I do something that's on the list, for instance, I have on here Feed Sam to remember to eat. but very often i eat because like if i eat because i rolled eat i will remember to put this but if i eat on my own you don't market as completely well no i i try to remember to but i often forget if i have done a thing on my own as opposed to because i rolled it on this list i'm sporadic as to whether i remember to hit the button on here.
|
Ivan:
[36:22]
| Got it got.
|
Sam:
[36:23]
| You know but but But I would not be surprised if the shower thing is accurate. But, you know, but I'm starting to feel icky. I might take care of that later today. You know, there's a 1% chance it'll come up when I roll for shower. So, you know. And by the way, this is keeping stats behind the scenes. I haven't built the graphs yet. But it's keeping stats on how many tasks I do every day and things like that. and what the scores were and all kinds of stuff like that so I can build graphs of my productivity and things like that.
|
Ivan:
[37:00]
| Well, of course, I was going to increase the priority like by 40.
|
Sam:
[37:03]
| But you hit the PIN number.
|
Ivan:
[37:05]
| I don't, yeah, I got to put the, I don't have the PIN number, so.
|
Sam:
[37:10]
| Well, this is, you know, my son, of course, Very first thing, like I told him, was like, don't mess with this. I know you're going to.
|
Ivan:
[37:18]
| You started talking with us.
|
Sam:
[37:23]
| Within like an hour or two of me setting this up the first time, he'd figured out my code and started to add things to this list for me. I'm like, don't do that. And like I changed the code. And then he knows the new code. He does things like, you know, start screen recording on my device.
|
Ivan:
[37:44]
| What does he have? He's key logging you? What the fuck?
|
Sam:
[37:48]
| One time when I was working at my desk, he placed his phone on top of my microphone on, pointed at the keyboard and recorded me putting in the PIN number. And I didn't notice it was there.
|
Ivan:
[38:03]
| He's like Mike Johnson and his kid, for God's sakes. What the hell?
|
Sam:
[38:08]
| Another time, he borrowed my phone for a second, started screen recording on the phone so that he could capture it as I typed it in that way. You know, he knows all the passwords. He is. He can be stealthy. yeah and and so you know that there there's nothing you know anyway but i've told him that if i catch him changing stuff to the list because i know he's got the passwords that that he loses like some privileges and attention for me for like 24 hours so ah that's discouraged.
|
Ivan:
[38:44]
| Them from maybe.
|
Sam:
[38:45]
| Anyway it's fun and this is the kind of thing like you know and you know i i've been able to do something like this. And yes, AI assistance helps because I can take the idea and like describe what I want and it'll help me actually build it. And like, I can iterate on the idea without thinking too much about the mechanisms of how to do it. And I can build a little thing. And yes. And of course, yeah, every single thing, every single thing I do, I'm like, is there a way to monetize this? Can I monetize this? Can I make this the, you know, whatever, you know so yes of course and i've got like a big to-do list of like additional enhancements and things i want to change and do and like like it wouldn't be hard for me at this point like i to to like set up an account mechanism and set up a url and be like okay yvonne you think this is cool, here here you go set up an account you can have your own blank one give me five bucks a month thank you very much you know.
|
Ivan:
[39:44]
| I think we're going to have to put some ads on it.
|
Sam:
[39:48]
| Well, like I said, I added monetization.
|
Ivan:
[39:52]
| No, ads. You pay for ad free. Yeah, yeah. There you go.
|
Sam:
[40:00]
| Since I've spent so much time on this, should I still do a movie or is it too late?
|
Ivan:
[40:05]
| Do one.
|
Sam:
[40:06]
| Do one.
|
Ivan:
[40:07]
| No, do one. Do one.
|
Sam:
[40:08]
| Okay, where did I put the stupid thing? Okay, the next movie on the list is, making sure I pick the right one, Blade from 1998.
|
Ivan:
[40:22]
| 1988 Blade?
|
Sam:
[40:25]
| 1998.
|
Ivan:
[40:27]
| I don't even know what the fuck. I don't remember this movie. It's Wesley Swipes.
|
Sam:
[40:31]
| Swipes. Wesley Snipes.
|
Ivan:
[40:34]
| Swipes?
|
Sam:
[40:35]
| Like Swiper, no Swipey or whatever from Dora.
|
Ivan:
[40:41]
| I like how it sounds. It's Wesley Swipes.
|
Sam:
[40:46]
| Anyway, yes. This is...
|
Ivan:
[40:50]
| Oh, this is from like that... Yeah. Now, you know, he had that Blaine trilogy, which the movies made money. But I think also these are the movies that got him into his tax troubles as well.
|
Sam:
[41:01]
| Oh, OK. Yeah, I didn't remember that. But it's ringing a little bit of a bell when you say it.
|
Ivan:
[41:06]
| Yeah, well, you know, he went to jail for not paying. You know, he found this this this this brilliant genius tax guy that went and told him that he didn't know federal tax. and then he started trying to claim massive tax refunds and then he said returns. He was basically claiming to be a sovereign citizen or something for a while.
|
Sam:
[41:28]
| Oh, nice. That always works out well for people.
|
Ivan:
[41:31]
| The IRS did not take too kindly on that and he wound up broken in jail.
|
Sam:
[41:38]
| Excellent. Good job on him, I guess. Anyway, yes, Blade is a Marvel thing. thing it came from a marvel comic but it's not in the mcu it's not in a marvel cinematic universe but it is marvel and he anyway this is the first of like you said there's a trilogy um basically it's he's a vampire but he's a good vampire that fights bad vampires you know that's I'm.
|
Ivan:
[42:13]
| Surprised My wife has been all into these vampire shows And things, I'm surprised my wife hasn't watched this. I don't think she has.
|
Sam:
[42:22]
| Here's the beginning of the plot summary from Wikipedia. In 1967, a pregnant woman is attacked by a vampire, causing her to go into premature labor. Doctors are able to save the baby, but the woman dies. 30 years later, the child has become the vampire hunter Blade, who is known as the Daywalker, a human vampire hybrid that possesses the supernatural abilities of the vampires without any of their weaknesses, except for the requirement to consume human blood. Blade raids a rave club owned by the vampire Deacon Frost. Police take one of the vampires to the hospital where he kills Dr. Curtis Webb and feeds on hematologist Karen Jensen and escapes. Blade takes Karen to a safe house where she is treated by his old friend Abraham Whistler. Whistler explains that he and Blade have been waging a secret war against vampires, using weapons based on their elemental weaknesses such as sunlight, silver, and garlic. As Karen is now marked by the bite of a vampire, both he and Blade tell her to leave the city. Dot, dot, dot. Plot continues. There are lots of fights.
|
Sam:
[43:42]
| I'll tell you. I'm going to give it a thumbs down. I know some people like this kind of movie, but this is one of the ones that's like, it's high, it's basically fight scene after fight scene after fight scene, lots of violence flight, uh, fight scenes as well. Uh, there's, there's lots of sort of gross out, maybe a little bit of exaggeration, but that it's just, it's one of the, it's the type of movie that if you are into, I just want to watch the fights. I don't really care that much about the plot. I don't care that much about the characters. I just want to see them go from one fight tableau to another fight tableau to another fight tableau and then the good guy wins and it's the end of the movie okay oh sorry spoilers, you know that that's that's roughly the kind of thing that is not the kind of movie i really enjoy so thumbs down for me some people love that kind of thing and if so maybe you'll like this i don't know but you know i and i'm not saying there was no plot and no characters but it just it was very clearly not the priority of the movie, you know, and, and so it was what it was.
|
Ivan:
[45:11]
| So these movies made a lot of money, which is a crazy thing. As far as I can tell.
|
Sam:
[45:17]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[45:17]
| I mean, they made three of them.
|
Sam:
[45:19]
| Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Box office. It dislodged Saving Private Ryan from the box office when it first came out.
|
Ivan:
[45:28]
| Wow. Think about that. Think about that.
|
Sam:
[45:32]
| Let's see. Let's see. What do they have totals here? Finished the run with $70 million domestically, $61 million worldwide for a total of $131 million. But this was back in 98.
|
Ivan:
[45:47]
| 98.
|
Sam:
[45:48]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[45:49]
| So this is like a $300 million film now. Yeah, yeah. A little over $300 million.
|
Sam:
[45:55]
| Apparently, though.
|
Ivan:
[45:55]
| What was the budget? What was the production budget? Usually they put there.
|
Sam:
[45:59]
| How much did it cost to make it? You know, you're asking me stuff, and let's see, $45 million budget.
|
Ivan:
[46:08]
| So, well, I guess $45 million to $160 million, I guess that's four times. So that's what they expect. Okay, sorry, it made money. I thought it was maybe bigger than that given that they made three of them.
|
Sam:
[46:21]
| Right oh and what's interesting here is this is one of those like this is pre-MCU this is pre-rebirth of Marvel blah blah blah, Marvel Comics was paid $25,000 for the rights to the character for the movie.
|
Ivan:
[46:37]
| Oh I'm sure they were flat fee no percentage by the way there is a reason why Marvel back then was doing horribly financially.
|
Sam:
[46:45]
| They didn't know how to make deals like this?
|
Ivan:
[46:49]
| No. No, they did not. No.
|
Sam:
[46:53]
| Anyway, critical response, Rotten Tomatoes gives it 59%, rating of 6 out of 10. The site's critic consensus says, Though some may find the plot a bit lacking, Blade's action is fierce, plentiful, and appropriately stylish for a comic book adaptation. There you go.
|
Ivan:
[47:13]
| Okay. Well, there you go, Sam. They basically said, you don't know what you're talking about.
|
Sam:
[47:18]
| No, they said exactly what they said. Light on plot. Lots of action. That's pretty much what I said.
|
Ivan:
[47:23]
| I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
|
Sam:
[47:25]
| Sure you are. Yeah. Whatever. Well, this is how I'll make my living, Yvonne. I'm just going to be a full time movie reviewer.
|
Ivan:
[47:33]
| You're going to be Roger Ebert.
|
Sam:
[47:35]
| I'm going to be Roger Ebert. I will go and, you know, people will pay me to say thumbs up, thumbs down. You know, that's another moneymaker.
|
Ivan:
[47:44]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[47:45]
| Okay let's keep coming.
|
Ivan:
[47:47]
| Up with all these money-making schemes.
|
Sam:
[47:48]
| Yeah exactly it's you know i mean and and surely any day now i'll win the lottery i mean i'd have to buy a ticket but.
|
Ivan:
[47:59]
| Well uh yeah.
|
Sam:
[48:00]
| Yeah but i'm sure if i did i would instantly win that's how it works right.
|
Ivan:
[48:07]
| It does work very easily, yes. You just have to buy one ticket. One number only.
|
Sam:
[48:13]
| Exactly. Exactly. Okay, let's go ahead and take that break, and then we'll come back with Newsy stuff. Newsy stuff. Now, I'll tell you.
|
Ivan:
[48:23]
| Not Olivia Newsy.
|
Sam:
[48:25]
| Not Olivia Newsy. There was more stuff related to that.
|
Ivan:
[48:29]
| Oh, fuck, Jesus Christ. Was there more stuff? My God.
|
Sam:
[48:32]
| There was. I didn't even. And it was one of those things where I saw that there was more stuff, but I did not have any desire to find out what that additional stuff was. So I pretty much ignored it.
|
Ivan:
[48:45]
| It was bad. It was really bad. We didn't even put it on the topic list. But Sam, holy shit, it was bad.
|
Sam:
[48:55]
| Since you mentioned it, do you want to give like a one minute summary?
|
Ivan:
[48:58]
| What's going on here? After we get back.
|
Sam:
[49:00]
| After we come back. Okay. I will mention that the first break should have been a new wiki of the day break, but I was running late to get ready, so I didn't prepare that. So I'm saving that till next time. So there will be a new wiki of the day one next time. But in the meantime, here is a different one. Here you go.
|
Break:
[49:29]
| Alex, I'm the ref. dot com by Alex and Dad gaming videos and more from Alex elementary school by day youtube by night alexmzela.com, Alex Mzela is A-L-E-X-M-X-E-L-A.
|
Sam:
[50:02]
| Okay, we're back. So, Nuzzy.
|
Ivan:
[50:05]
| Okay, the Nuzzy story that I saw come out this week was that Nuzzy went and had tried to help RFK Jr. kill the bear story. That, you know, that he took a dead bear and put it in Central Park.
|
Sam:
[50:22]
| Okay, yes.
|
Ivan:
[50:23]
| That she had actually worked with him and plotted with him to figure out how to kill the story.
|
Sam:
[50:28]
| Oh, excellent.
|
Ivan:
[50:30]
| So much for her being such a journalist.
|
Sam:
[50:33]
| Is that all? I heard there were more affairs with more people and that she was...
|
Ivan:
[50:39]
| Well, that was... Well, I'm saying that was the last one. The other one... Well, she had been banging Mark Sanford. Okay. All right. So that one...
|
Sam:
[50:48]
| I don't know if we talked about that. Was a Florida politician? Am I remembering right?
|
Ivan:
[50:51]
| I didn't see the Florida one.
|
Sam:
[50:52]
| South Carolina? Where was he? Where was he?
|
Ivan:
[50:54]
| Well, that's Mark Sanford. South Carolina. He was the governor of South Carolina. He was the guy that went on the Appalachian Trail.
|
Sam:
[51:01]
| Oh, right. Was it her that she was going on the Appalachian Trail with?
|
Ivan:
[51:07]
| No. She was going. No, that was in Argentina. He flew to Argentina. He had this girlfriend in Argentina. Okay? That it was his side chick back then. That, I think, ended at some point. Okay? He got divorced. And then when he was running for president in 2020, He was running for president in 2020. Olivia Nazeep, while covering him, had chased after him, chased after him, and.
|
Sam:
[51:35]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[51:36]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[51:36]
| Well, how can you properly do a story on somebody who's running for president if you have not had sex on them, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[51:43]
| Well, apparently that's one thing that soured her on Biden because it seems like she thought that Biden was, you know, Biden was like— He wouldn't have sex with her? Apparently, you know, based on some stuff, it seems kind of like that was the vibe I got from some of the coverage.
|
Sam:
[52:03]
| Okay. Interesting.
|
Ivan:
[52:06]
| So, you know, there you go. Makes me up my respect for Joe Biden, which is already high, even way higher.
|
Sam:
[52:14]
| I'm left speechless. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[52:18]
| There was a story where she was writing and waxing poetic about Trump's energy and virility.
|
Sam:
[52:25]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[52:26]
| And then at the same time, shitting on Biden. What, based on the track record we are seeing right now, what the fuck can I surmise?
|
Sam:
[52:39]
| I'm done.
|
Ivan:
[52:39]
| What are you wanting me to tell you?
|
Sam:
[52:40]
| I don't know. And of course, this flurry of publicity is because, of course, she's just put out a new book where she's talked about a bunch of this stuff.
|
Ivan:
[52:49]
| Oh my God. But then her ex is bringing out more.
|
Sam:
[52:54]
| Stuff that she has not brought up herself.
|
Ivan:
[52:55]
| Correct and i know he posted something yeah actually he's the one that shared the story about her working with rfk jr to try to bury the the cub story okay and this whole thing goes back and you know she's employed right now as a fucking reporter still somewhere and i'm just like how the fuck i i you know i say that and i realize that a network like Fox News has people like Gutfeld and Jesse Waters, and, you know, Megyn Kelly still has a job somehow. And so, yeah, I guess, you know.
|
Sam:
[53:38]
| Okay, so I think here.
|
Ivan:
[53:41]
| Listen, this is, by the way, I think being covered by a lot of people from the sensibility of what we thought reporters should be.
|
Sam:
[53:53]
| Some of us oldsters still have this idealized vision of the folks who are after the truth and impartial and this and that. Impartial in a truth-seeking way, not impartial in a both-sides sort of way, etc.
|
Ivan:
[54:20]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[54:22]
| Okay. Anyway, Nuzzy was not going to be your main topic, was it? What were you really going to talk about this second?
|
Ivan:
[54:28]
| No, no, no. What are we going to... Well, fuck, I already... Jeez, I already picked something. You and her short, you go pick something.
|
Sam:
[54:35]
| You can keep talking about... Oh, okay, yeah. I thought you were going to say you wanted to talk about Nuzzy for another 20 minutes.
|
Ivan:
[54:41]
| No, I mean... What are you... Look, I don't want to talk about Nuzzy, but... You know, I shared a clip on Slack today. You talk about people and this entire, I mean, reality that we live right now is going to say an issue. It's not an issue would be maybe something that we can find a solution for. The reality, this is our reality right now, where you get an asshole like Tucker Carlson going and basically, I mean, that Pierce Morgan in an interview comes out. as the voice of reason on the Nazi regime where Tucker is questioning that, oh, you guys just chose to go to war against the Germans because Hitler wasn't planning on invading Great Britain, even though it's well documented that he planned on it. And he wanted to. Oh, because you just could have made a deal. I'm like, a deal? The Russians made a deal with him. Like what? Like he didn't go and say, fuck you on your deal. By the way, Neville Chamberlain made a number of deals with him. And he also.
|
Sam:
[55:58]
| And he's remembered fondly by history because of it.
|
Ivan:
[56:02]
| Exactly. Because he was a naive idiot that went. And like it was Churchill that decided to draw a line in the sand and say, fuck, fuck this shit. And Tucker Carlson is doing all this entire remissionist history on his show that Pierce Morgan had to repeatedly correct him on like, you know, we, I mean, Hitler wanted to invade Great Britain. I mean, you know, I mean, oh, you chose to go to war against him. I mean, does he forget the Blitz? Anybody remember the Blitz?
|
Sam:
[56:31]
| Well, very few.
|
Ivan:
[56:33]
| I'm not talking about Carlson. Very few, obviously. Yeah, this is a big problem that we've got right now.
|
Sam:
[56:41]
| Just as an aside, because we always do asides, one of the things that I've heard people mention just on the cyclicality of history is often simply because the terrible events of the past that right after they happen, Everybody's like, we're never going to let this happen again. We're going to, you know, we're going to restructure how we do things specifically to avoid this bad thing happening.
|
Ivan:
[57:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[57:10]
| What always happens is a certain number of years later, let's say 60 to 80 years later.
|
Ivan:
[57:18]
| Forget about the whole thing.
|
Sam:
[57:19]
| The people who actually remember it, like with their own live memories, as opposed to reading about it in a book or hearing about it from their parents, die off and are, and the people who no longer remember it are now in charge and immediately make the exact same mistakes that people made 80 years previously.
|
Ivan:
[57:43]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[57:43]
| And guess where we are right now?
|
Ivan:
[57:48]
| I'm just, you know But you know that the bigger problem is, right? That in Tucker Carlson's case Yes.
|
Sam:
[57:55]
| Okay We're talking about Tucker, I forgot Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[57:58]
| Is that he's a grifter? Yes So you don't really know what the fuck he really believes, I do believe that he is a racist. I mean, that part, I'm sure.
|
Sam:
[58:10]
| I'm sure.
|
Ivan:
[58:11]
| He keeps talking about how diversity to him is awful. Who wants to live in a diverse place? Who wants this, you know, I want to be in a place where everybody around me is white.
|
Sam:
[58:25]
| Yes. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[58:27]
| And how it's so bad to live with people.
|
Sam:
[58:30]
| Was it him or was it somebody in the administration this week? It might have been Miller or somebody, completely unsurprising, you know, talking about how certain populations are fundamentally unassimilizable and so therefore should not be let in simply because of that, et cetera.
|
Ivan:
[58:49]
| Sounds like something Miller or, it sounds like something either of them would say.
|
Sam:
[58:54]
| Because the whole notion is, you know, you don't want to let people in who are going to change the culture in any way, you know, because you want to retain that purity and, you know, like you were saying, whereas, of course, like folks like us are like, no, no, that's the strength. Of course you want to change the culture. You want to have a melding where you get the best of all the cultures together and you learn from them and they learn from you. And together you have something better that was better than what either of you had before or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[59:34]
| You know one phrase that we used to hear very quickly. We used to hear frequently. Yeah. You remember that?
|
Sam:
[59:44]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[59:46]
| Have we said that all the time? And now it seems that people avoid saying it like it's a bad thing?
|
Sam:
[59:51]
| Well, and honestly, there's, yeah, there are multiple criticisms of the melting pot. One is from folks like Tucker Carlson and Miller who are like, we don't want our culture tainted. by the other culture through this melting pot process. But then there's also folks who are like, well, you don't want people to give up their identities either. You don't want people to be lost in assimilation and not, you know, they come from country X.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:28]
| The melting pot is not assimilation, okay? Because assimilation is like the Borg, okay? All right? I mean, it's all I think about, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:00:37]
| Well, people have said there's another model It's more like a plum pudding or something where, you know, it's all mixed together, but still everything retains its additional identity. I think the actual, like from my point of view, the ideal is something where you do mix everything together and you come up with a hybrid that is better than any of the ingredients.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:58]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:00:59]
| I can understand, however, how if you are in sort of a marginalized culture where retaining stuff from that culture becomes more important to you.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:14]
| Look, I'm Puerto Rican, okay? Well, you know, I live in the society where I speak a language that is not the native language of my island, but I speak it better than my native language. That's a reality. Maybe not that much better, but my... You know, my language skills in English are, because I use it more, that's the main reason, definitely better than my Spanish ones, even though my Spanish ones are still pretty good.
|
Sam:
[1:01:49]
| You're not saying you're illiterate in Spanish.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:52]
| Not even close. I mean, I write, I do, I do business in Spanish. But what I'm saying is that the reality is that my English, because of various reasons, is better. Okay? and so but i still use my spanish every day i cook with seasonings that we use back home every day but i'll cook a steak using them for example you know i don't you know and i think that many of us from puerto rico do a job of enjoying a lot of the things that our culture has, like it's music, like it's family activities, like the food and so forth, while living in the United States, fully integrated into what society has been for many decades.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:46]
| And it's one thing I know that Cubans, for example, that moved to Miami back when exiled from Fidel, because of the racism that persisted back then, many of that generation of Cubans that got brought up in Miami were dissuaded from learning Spanish, that you've got a generation of Cubans that many of them cannot speak Spanish very well, or don't speak it at all. And it was their fear of...
|
Ivan:
[1:03:25]
| Of them being marginalized in society okay the parents were worried about it because they were being marginalized and so they they had in many ways pushed away some of that culture i i think that that changed i don't i don't think that changed later okay with the later generations but the reality but that was a reality i think my nieces and nephews their spanish is not as good as, as ours that were brought up in puerto rico but they still speak it and they still like a lot of the things about our our culture and do it but but in the end what they have as a culture it's not an assimilation it's not what we had is something completely different and i and i think that's perfectly fine because it's it you know i i sometimes we want to preserve everything like It's a museum where culture is an ever evolving thing, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:04:26]
| Well, and this is actually one of the core things that folks like Stephen Miller just can't accept. They do want to freeze it in time. They believe like these things were right and good and the way things should be and they should be like that forever. as opposed to, yeah, no, like I don't expect that my values are the same as my grandparents. And I don't expect that if I have grandkids, that their values will be the same as mine. Things evolve, things change, and that's not a bad thing, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:05:01]
| Yeah. And, but, but these people, the whole make America great again, right?
|
Sam:
[1:05:08]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:09]
| So turn back the clock to, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:05:12]
| Well, at first, people were always thinking that Trump meant the 1950s. He's later pretty much made it clear that he's really thinking 1890s. That's where he'd like to go back to.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:21]
| Robert Barron's.
|
Sam:
[1:05:23]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:24]
| Yeah, that was the big economic oligarchy in America. Basically, you know, the great segregation. Women had no rights. I can't remember who the heck it was. it was, they were trying to pull, no president would have ever done something. And I can't remember the exact thing that Trump, that was the calling, like, you know, and somebody, well, Andrew Jackson would have done it. And I'm like, look, the fact that you have to go back to a president so far back that at that time, there's something related to women that not even, you know, you have to pull for a time that women couldn't even own property legally, for God's sakes, and blacks are slaves, that shows you how retrograde that thought is.
|
Sam:
[1:06:10]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:11]
| If you have to go back that far, then something's fucked up about it. And yeah, he wants to go back to the time where women didn't vote. Yeah. At times.
|
Sam:
[1:06:22]
| And Donald Trump hasn't specifically said that one, but certain folks on the sort of Magali. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:32]
| Okay but anyway we're talking about the the reality of the current journalist uh you know profession yeah and what the opinions in general people are our our opinions on journalism are seen as.
|
Sam:
[1:06:47]
| Yes. Well, and even I would say, like, I don't think the sort of idealized Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite thing is necessarily exactly the right model to go back to either. I had mentioned truth seekers rather than both sides. I think there's a big problem with the sort of both sides view of journalism these days. I think having, knowing, I think trying to pretend journalists don't have an opinion isn't necessarily helpful, but I think.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:22]
| But you've got to separate two things.
|
Sam:
[1:07:24]
| You've got to separate.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:24]
| One is I have an opinion. It's like you being a scientist, right?
|
Sam:
[1:07:28]
| You've got to separate the advocacy from fact-finding.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:32]
| Exactly. It's the same as doing a scientific experiment. You could think that something is going to happen with a science experiment, but when you're doing the experiment, And if the testing shows you something different, you have to go and accept, oh, shit, I thought this was going to happen, but that's not what happened.
|
Sam:
[1:07:50]
| But at the same time, like, I keep... There was a quote, and I don't know who said it. It's gone around many times since then, of, like, it... it's comparing news people to, to weather people, you know, where if you don't report like, Hey, this one guy says it's, it's going to be sunny. And this one guy says it's going to be rain. If you are a good reporter, you go outside and check yourself and you report what you see. Is it raining? Is it not raining? You know, like it's not everything. There are things that are sort of purely matters of opinion and blah, blah, blah. And then, okay, you can present like this person thinks this and this person thinks that and blah, blah, blah. But there are many, many things where the objective truth is actually knowable. And in that case, it is the responsibility of a good journalist to seek out that truth and report on it and not just report on what the other people are saying about each other. You know, and, and I think that there's, There's hesitancy to do that in a lot of places. Also, I think that the fact that at this point, there's a huge concentration of media ownership in large corporations makes it more difficult as well because there's not a lot of separation. Sam, Sam, I mean, that was true.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:20]
| I'm sorry, but in history, that's been the case of large media. I mean, actually, wait, forget about large media. In the past, that's the only media that existed.
|
Sam:
[1:09:30]
| No, but there's a couple differences, I think, that are – it's not just that it's corporate ownership. It's what are the incentives of the corporate ownership right now, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:42]
| But – oh, my God, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:09:44]
| We had like Hearst and all of those folks. Like they had a clear agenda and they were pushing it and they were actually – they were transparent about it. They were using the media that they owned.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:56]
| Is Rupert Murdoch not transparent about what he's trying to push?
|
Sam:
[1:10:00]
| Give me a fucking break! No, I'm not even talking about Fox. I'm talking... The issue I feel like with the Comcasts of the world and folks like that that own stuff is that they are relatively... risk averse in some of these areas where they're that they do own you know of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:24]
| Msnbc just got sold sam sam yes that's always been the case look i still remember there there's this movie about this guy that whistleblower on tobacco industry jeffrey jeffrey wygand what the fuck was the name i don't know if you you you i don't know if you've seen that movie it's a great movie by the way.
|
Sam:
[1:10:42]
| I'm not saying any of this is new.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:45]
| Wait, hang on. Let me bring up the name of the movie. The Insider.
|
Sam:
[1:10:51]
| I'll just mention, as I was going to Wikipedia to look up the book, to take a screenshot, to add it to my list, what was already on my Wikipedia app on my phone, was Bozo Goes to College.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:06]
| Oh, excellent!
|
Sam:
[1:11:08]
| Great!
|
Ivan:
[1:11:09]
| You mean Bonzo, not Bonzo.
|
Sam:
[1:11:11]
| Bonzo. Bonzo goes to college.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:13]
| That would have been weird. That would have been...
|
Sam:
[1:11:16]
| It's the sequel to Bedtime for Bonzo, which, of course, starred Ronald Reagan.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:22]
| Ronald Reagan.
|
Sam:
[1:11:23]
| So I add both these to my list and then look up the insider. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:27]
| Okay. I don't... Did you ever watch that movie?
|
Sam:
[1:11:30]
| It's not ringing a bell. I'm bringing it up right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:34]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:11:35]
| I don't think so. I don't think so.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:36]
| And it was based on a true story. related to the whistleblowing related to the big tobacco and them hiding up the fact that they knew that nicotine was addictive that there was a lot of scientific research and that they were actually manipulating the nicotine content in cigarettes in order to increase addiction and how this guy that was a chief scientist for it was philip morris yeah okay the story all sounds familiar it wanted to blow the whistle because there was a testimony well it's a story because there was articles in several newspapers regarding this. He actually worked for Brown and Williamson tobacco. How he saw the tobacco executives go and testify in Congress saying that they said that they didn't know nicotine was addictive.
|
Sam:
[1:12:24]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:24]
| And that they said it over and over. When, by the way, internally, they discussed that tobacco was a nicotine delivery device, okay? And that they knew that directly, okay? And one of the things was that this is a story that's supposed to go out in 60 minutes. and there was a big blow up at 60 minutes because cbs was in the process of being sold, and cbs corporate went and killed the story okay because they said that brown and williamson came and threatened to sue them and they could sue them out of existence and blah blah blah, and all of a sudden as the story was about to go on air they forced they tried to force the producer to change the story near the last minute lowell bergman was the producer like well known about this he refused then they aired a story which didn't have all the explosive testimony, then lowell bergman leaked most of the stuff i think it was to the wall street journal or i can't remember who it was and then the story came out and then all blew up and then 60 minutes had to actually publish the story. And by the way, this is what led to the, remember the massive tobacco settlement that we got back then.
|
Sam:
[1:13:43]
| Yeah, I remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:44]
| That changed advertising, that changed everything. This is the igniter of that, okay? So if you haven't watched this movie, which I know fictionalizes some parts of it, and there was some arguing by some people around now about it, But it was very close to what the fuck happened. Okay. All right. In the story. But this was the 90s. CBS executives were telling 60 Minutes to kill a story, to fucking edit it because of, interest that had to do with money just the same shit as when cbs was being sold now, and this is the thing that when people go and they tell me oh my god look what's happening to cbs like this never happened before oh my guys are you out of your fucking just to be clear i i am not saying any of this is new i am saying that it literally happened the last time they were being sold almost verbatim and people have such short fucking memories that they forget yeah yeah yeah like.
|
Sam:
[1:14:58]
| No, all I'm saying is I think the incentive structure in not just big corporate, but any for-profit media just doesn't necessarily always align with truth. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:15:16]
| But here's my one thing. Money and big media has always been an issue. It's always been plus, always slanted coverage in a certain way, one way or another. That's just been a reality. However, I do say that we are in the era and we have an issue. You know, the thing is that you could look at this from a we're better or worse off in a certain way with this. OK, because back then you couldn't do independent media the way it's being done now that is as pervasive and is and is heard by as many people as it is right now. However, the problem is that there is so much also independent media, and so many of them are peddling lies.
|
Sam:
[1:16:00]
| Right. Well, I mean, this gets us to the whole information bubble thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:05]
| Whatever the hell corporate media had as a defect compared to this environment where I got a Tucker Carlson out there basically just saying, oh, no, UK, you got into a war because you wanted to.
|
Sam:
[1:16:18]
| Well, right. I mean, this goes into the whole, there's so much media, so available in so different ways, and the barrier to entry is so low. I mean, Hal, we've been doing a podcast for nearly 20 years. Exactly right. You know, that people select what they listen to and what viewpoints they want to hear, as opposed to having sort of that.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:40]
| Universal TV and watching Dan Rather.
|
Sam:
[1:16:43]
| Yeah. Or Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow before them, you know, where basically one of the things that people sort of say made democracy a little bit healthier was the fact that there was the shared reality. like everybody watched the the evening news on the three big networks and there wasn't a huge difference you didn't have a different view of reality if you watched abc instead of cbs you know there may.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:13]
| Have been some nuance different maybe they got an extra detail some other stuff whatever but the reality is that the facts were aligned 90 plus 99.
|
Sam:
[1:17:22]
| Whereas right now if you are a 100% Fox News viewer, you will have a very different view of what is happening in the world than if you were a 100% MSNBC viewer, or let alone... Well, as I mentioned.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:37]
| This week, I switched, TV providers for home, and I've, been having the DirecTV for Business Channel thing up a while now, and I realize that I'm looking at what what CNBC and Bloomberg are covering versus what the fuck Fox Business is covering, which is like some alternate planet. Okay, all right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:18:07]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:08]
| It is, I mean, there could be, I mean, literally, there was like big stories, shit happening, important, like the other week, like right now on the business side. I can't remember which one. CNBC and Bloomberg are all over it. Bloomberg, Fox is socialism. They have this tyrant about the socialism threat in New York and how they're going to destroy this, how he's destroying the city.
|
Sam:
[1:18:34]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:35]
| The story that was happening was like it didn't exist. And I think it was related to some bad economic data, something relevant that was just not aligned with the GOP agenda.
|
Sam:
[1:18:48]
| Yeah. I mean, I tip, I often, not as often as I used to, like my consumption of live TV news in any way has, of course, like everybody else has gone down considerably since the election. but like i'll still like i'll put up the uh four up news thing on on on my thing and usually put it on mute and just have it on like you know yeah so.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:14]
| Do i it's all on mute yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:19:16]
| And and yeah like you said like i i the the chyron on fox earlier like last night sometime was some guy i don't even know which show it was, but it was like, you know, Democrats have wine for Thanksgiving. W-H-I-N-E. you know, was, it was the chyron as the thing that they were talking about, where I guess, you know, Democrats are complaining about whatever, blah, blah, blah. You know, they had their, their three hosts laughing and talking about that. And for like five minutes or whatever. Yeah. Yes. It's completely different universe, depending on which of the, what your news sources were. And I was about to say, and that's even talking about TV, which honestly is old people at this point yeah this.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:05]
| Is old people shit yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:20:07]
| Yeah if you start talking about the the the the manosphere podcasts and you know the youtube channels people are watching and row tv and the you know and you know the various like discussion groups where people will hang out even if you're not like talking about the you know what whatever that one was with the the the road you know what was it rhode island or connecticut where all those republicans were taught hot talking about like how they love nazis and all the other stuff a couple months ago and even if you're not what.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:44]
| Well that wasn't that the the chat of the youth people or.
|
Sam:
[1:20:48]
| Yeah yeah the young republicans yeah right even even if you're not talking that you know you're talking you know reddit groups and whatever you know like it is much more you know you are finding out people who agree with you and you are seeking out and it people have talked endlessly about information bubbles and look i'm in one too i work to pierce it a little bit by like like making sure i have i i have that four up and i see what fox is talking about you know now do i take it seriously could i stand watching more than a few minutes of fox in a row with this volume up no oh my god listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:31]
| Man it it it it's it's it's torture, It hasn't changed from the formula Is what I said It's the old Rush Limba formula He really patented it Where they just go All facts are just ignored We just twist and talk About bullshit, But now you add a big dose Of misogyny And just absolutely just, Racism To it as well It's really fucked up.
|
Sam:
[1:22:07]
| Okay let's take another break you you tried to switch topics and have me pick one like half an hour ago or something and.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:14]
| Yeah we just ended up continuing the.
|
Sam:
[1:22:16]
| I didn't do anything so let's take a break and then i will pick a topic for the remainder of the show and.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:23]
| We will.
|
Sam:
[1:22:23]
| Be back after this.
|
Break:
[1:22:30]
| No no it's not the beginning of the show again we're just taking a little time to credit the artist responsible for the music we use at the beginning and end of the show what you are listening to right now is the o of pleasure by ray lynch.
|
Break:
[1:23:03]
| The music we close our show with is Celestial Soda Pop, Both of these songs are from Deep Breakfast Now Platinum, Deep Breakfast was the first independently released album ever to be certified gold by the RIAA, Ray Lynch's other albums are The Sky of Mind.
|
Break:
[1:24:07]
| And the best of Ray Lynch. You can check out Ray Lynch or buy his music at raylynch.com, iTunes, Amazon, or anywhere you use your music.
|
Sam:
[1:24:26]
| And we are back. Okay, so, topic.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:31]
| Yeah, topic.
|
Sam:
[1:24:33]
| I think of the things this week, the one that we'd be most remiss in not talking about is the controversy over giving illegal orders to the military.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:47]
| Are you going to go to that? Oh, fuck. I thought.
|
Sam:
[1:24:51]
| What did you want? What did you want?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:54]
| No, no, no, no, no. No, I was like trying to look at, I was trying to guess what you were trying to guess.
|
Sam:
[1:24:59]
| What did you guess I was going to go for?
|
Ivan:
[1:25:01]
| My guess, my guess was that you're going to talk about Comey and James dismissal. But, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:25:06]
| Yeah, no, I like that that's old news at this point.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:10]
| Okay, all right, so the illegal orders. Okay, all right.
|
Sam:
[1:25:12]
| No, and specifically, what came up this week started?
|
Ivan:
[1:25:16]
| By the way, the criminal orders. Let's be clear about this. These are criminal acts.
|
Sam:
[1:25:22]
| Yes, well, where this started, yeah, well, I was going to get to that towards the end. But before that, earlier in the week, a group of like, I believe it was five senators. The only one I remember off the top of my head is Mark Kelly was one of them. Put out a video basically saying, hey, if you're in our armed forces, remember, it is part of your oath that you need to refuse an illegal order.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:51]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:25:52]
| You not only have the right—well, I think they just mentioned you have the right to reject an illegal order. But in fact, it's actually considered your responsibility to refuse an illegal order. It's part of the oath that the law is more important than your orders. It's part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice says this as well. people pointed out like there's a plaque at West Point that specifically calls out your duty in this realm. And of course, you know, The administration responded very negatively to this. Now, you'd think the right response in a normal administration would be to come out and say, absolutely right. And nobody ever has to worry about this with us because we would never issue an illegal order. But absolutely, it is the responsibility of every member of the military to reject illegal orders. Oh, and we will never do that. That is not what they did. Instead, they were going after and saying, like, anybody who's even— No.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:06]
| They didn't. They didn't just say, hey, we rule of law. Yeah, we are right there with you.
|
Sam:
[1:27:12]
| No, no. They instead are going after and investigating the senators supposedly for sedition because they are undermining the military. They're encouraging the military to defy orders, etc. et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, wait a second.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:30]
| That's a normal reaction.
|
Sam:
[1:27:31]
| They're talking about illegal orders. And they're like, well, they're implying that our orders are illegal and therefore they should be ignored.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:40]
| No. Nobody's implying anything, assholes.
|
Sam:
[1:27:43]
| Well, okay, look, the clear.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:47]
| No, no, no. You're not going, listen, not, listen. I'm sorry. When you're saying that, you know, you're not saying that all the orders are illegal, but then you should examine the orders that you're being given. I mean, are there some orders that sound illegal? Yeah, but you're not directly challenging any individual order. You know, what else you're saying is, hey, remember your oath.
|
Sam:
[1:28:12]
| Yes, that's basically all they said.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:14]
| If telling somebody, remember your oath, to the other person, it sounds like an accusation, guess what?
|
Sam:
[1:28:22]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:24]
| You're the one with the problem because you aren't carrying a guilty cause around because you know you're breaking the law.
|
Sam:
[1:28:30]
| Exactly. Now, just realistically, the path for rejecting illegal order is a hard path. Like if you're some schlub who's at a low level of the military and you just, you know, on your own decide, hey, this order sounds illegal. I'm not going to do it. The process from that point in time to you being vindicated and, you know, it is. It's lengthy.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:59]
| It's not easy. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:29:00]
| And you, you are likely, you know, damaging your career by making that choice. But, you know, this is why, this is why the reminder is good that it is actually your responsibility to do so.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:16]
| Unfortunately, Sam, such is the life of, many times, making the right decision.
|
Sam:
[1:29:23]
| And so anyway, they got extremely defensive. They got aggressive in the ways we talked about. And then later in the week, a leak came out about Secretary Hegseth that you were mentioning, specifically the very first time they went after one of these boats off the coast of Venezuela that they claim are running drugs or whatever they're claiming. there were survivors that were clinging to the wreckage and hegseth specifically ordered a second strike to go back and just kill them all right this this is something where now there's a very that is flat.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:06]
| Out a criminal act.
|
Sam:
[1:30:07]
| Yeah i was going to say there there's a very strong argument that the first attack on these boats that every attack on these boats is a criminal act is a criminal act but but it's at least an argument where people, you know, could have a good faith argument about whether or not there's a legal justification. I think the answer is no. But for the second attack, it is clearly 100 percent, you know, Geneva Convention, U.S. law, everything going back wherever that the military going after and attacking non-combatants intentionally who pose no threat whatsoever because they are already injured, taken out of the battle, whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:30:53]
| It's 100% a war crime, undeniable. Like there's not even, like you usually, when these things get reported, you have at least some of sort of the conservative military experts giving some sort of justification. They've been remarkably silent on this one. And so after this whole start of the week with people talking about, hey, it's important to say no to illegal orders, remember your oath, blah, blah, blah, and the administration blowing up against that, oh, look, here's Hegseth giving a clearly illegal order and having it followed just a few months ago, and almost unambiguously so. And of course, this is why they don't want anybody thinking about whether an order is illegal or not. They just want obedience because they are 100% doing things that are illegal and are contemplating more, both internationally and domestically. I mean, Trump and company have talked about the things they want to do bringing military into cities.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:05]
| Is there a statute of limitations on prosecuting Hegsiv for something like that? Do you know? Off the top of my head, I haven't researched it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:13]
| I haven't researched either. I think U.S. law might be difficult because of various things about granting immunity.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:22]
| No, fine. We'll fucking turn him over to the international courts. I'll turn his ass.
|
Sam:
[1:32:26]
| I don't think there are statutes of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humanity internationally.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:32]
| Turn his ass over to the international criminal court.
|
Sam:
[1:32:36]
| I actually posted that on Blue Sky.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:38]
| I'm like, the next administration needs to- First state is arrest them, put them on a fucking plane and dump them in The Hague.
|
Sam:
[1:32:45]
| Fuck you. Yeah, I mean, look, the administrations of both parties have rejected the authority of the ICC for years because they're afraid the ICC would go after Americans. The next Democrat in office has to say, fuck all that. We recognize the ICC. And if Americans do something bad, they absolutely should be put to account for it. Oh, and by the way, here's the whole damn Trump administration. Take them, please, and do what needs to be done. Because clearly our system failed at that.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:17]
| It's not equipped to handle this right now.
|
Sam:
[1:33:20]
| Over handling January 6th and all that kind of stuff, we failed utterly at actually bringing Trump to justice over that. But yeah, just take the whole damn administration and hand them over to the ICC.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:35]
| Of of of justice not served for some reason and i haven't found yet why that is trump announced this morning the pardon for a honduran ex-president convicted of drug traffic who was serving a 45-year sentence that today i don't know why i'm not sure what i don't know i'm not sure what the payoff or the thing that he got i'm sure it's got the, You know, he's got to be making money off of this somehow.
|
Sam:
[1:34:04]
| Of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:05]
| But he went and, you know, I'm going after Maduro for drug trafficking, but I'm going to pardon somebody else that just got convicted last year of this.
|
Sam:
[1:34:16]
| Well, yes. And speaking of previous administrations, like getting consequences for their actions, I remember a while back when Trump was being prosecuted. I think Bruce on our Slack asked about, this is just the danger of the new administration going after the previous administration leading to a cycle, and asking, what countries do this? Has this happened, especially during a campaign? And of course, you know, we have examples. We have Netanyahu in Israel, although he hasn't been brought to justice either. We've had things happening in Korea. Of course, we just had ex-president of Brazil go to jail this week after apparently Donald Trump was planning on busting him out and rescuing him, but they arrested him first. I just saw something about, apparently Peru has a whole bunch of ex-presidents in jail.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:17]
| Yes, that is true.
|
Sam:
[1:35:19]
| And a new one just got arrested this week. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:24]
| Brazil has sent more than one president to jail. I mean, this isn't the first one. I mean, the current president had been in jail.
|
Sam:
[1:35:30]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:31]
| Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:35:33]
| And look, you certainly can have a scenario that's unhealthy, where just every administration automatically puts the previous administration in jail. That's not what we're talking about here, and that is unhealthy. But if they're actual crimes, absolutely people should be held to account, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:53]
| But by the way, in almost all the cases that we're talking about here, look, there have been criminal acts. This isn't, you know—, you know hey you want to stop going to jail how about you stop being a criminal.
|
Sam:
[1:36:08]
| Yes well of course the whole view here is the reason you try to get power is so that you're exempt from all those laws and you can do whatever the hell you want right yes this is this is why you accumulate lots of money this is why you become president of a country this is why you you know go into politics more generally, I guess. I don't know. It's all about corruption and power for a significant group of these folks.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:37]
| There is a big group of these people that are like that. I do agree. But one thing that I had observed in the past in the U.S. is that that number was lower. Used to be. Used to be. In the U.S.
|
Sam:
[1:36:48]
| Used to be.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:49]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:36:49]
| And you honestly did have lots of people. And, you know, look, I've got family who's in politics. Listen, let me give you a good example.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:58]
| A
|
Sam:
[1:36:59]
| Lot of people who are actually in it because they thought this was a good way to it was public service and it was making the country better and they were.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:05]
| Helping you a good example let me give you a great example aoc and mtg i think got to congress both around the same time pretty close okay not that far off right so mtg left congress and now has a net worth of 35 million dollars according to the latest financial reports that she had filed okay how much do you think mtg aoc is worth.
|
Sam:
[1:37:26]
| More than she was when she was a waitress, but she's not, like, crazy rich.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:31]
| Not by a lot. Okay? Less than $100,000. Okay. It's her total amount of worth right now.
|
Sam:
[1:37:36]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:37]
| Okay, according to the latest file. I mean, what I said, you could clearly see that one person was in it for the grift and one person was in it for service.
|
Sam:
[1:37:46]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:47]
| I, like, my congressman that I had for, because the district's changed, she's not a congressman anymore, Louis Frankel. I still remember that, you know, one time I was flying to DC, I was in coach, and she was sitting in coach right beside me, you know, and I'm like, and I know that from her financial reports, and she also, you know, didn't, you know, enrich herself in some crazy manner while in the house. But you almost see very, especially in recent times, that a lot of these grifters just amassing incredible amounts of wealth while they are in their seat. I mean, I think, you know, Sinema was a Democrat, but there's a reason why people wanted her out. Sinema amassed a multi-million dollar fortune while she was in the Senate.
|
Sam:
[1:38:38]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:39]
| Out of the blue.
|
Sam:
[1:38:39]
| Well, you've seen these things, right, that are saying, hey, Congress does a lot of insider trading because they get information and blah, blah, blah, where people have actually set up investment funds where the only thing they do is they track the disclosures of prominent Congress people and politicians and copy their trades. And those funds have done pretty well.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:05]
| And they went, well, obviously one of the things that there was a timing issue between the time that they traded the disclosure, so if you were able to trade, right. So if you were able to trade, you know, at the moment that they did.
|
Sam:
[1:39:16]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:17]
| But, but this is the kind of shit that we're living with. And I, man, if, you know, I said that you didn't need to do an anti, anti project 2025 plan.
|
Sam:
[1:39:32]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:32]
| It should be somewhere on your to-do list I didn't see it I need to somehow add it I need to bribe Alex to give me your pen code you know.
|
Sam:
[1:39:48]
| Text him and give him the right offer he'd probably text it back to you.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:52]
| Yes I think there's a big to-do right offer he'd probably just give it to me okay alright okay so, Look, I think that these things need to be a priority in terms of legislation that needs to be passed right away. That you need to fucking make so many of these changes.
|
Sam:
[1:40:16]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:17]
| And including constitutional amendments.
|
Sam:
[1:40:19]
| Well, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:20]
| That need to be proposed to fix a lot of issues.
|
Sam:
[1:40:24]
| I mean, yes. I mean, we've been saying since the first Trump administration that reforms to make it impossible for the kind of abuses that have been going on. And I say because of the Trump administration, but it's not just Trump, obviously. Make these things that have been exposed as either not illegal at all under current law or the laws that exist are toothless and impossible to enforce. Fix that. and, you know, make some of these things, you know, all of the corruption we're seeing, all of the abuse of power, blah, blah, blah, make it impossible. The problem is that even when, like, the Democrats are in power, there's a significant chunk of Democrats who are like, eh, I'm not so sure about this because this is constraining their own power, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:24]
| I don't care. It shouldn't matter.
|
Sam:
[1:41:26]
| And their own ability to be corrupt.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:28]
| It shouldn't matter. I don't care. I don't care.
|
Sam:
[1:41:32]
| I don't care either. But what we've seen is like these things have a hard time getting traction and have a hard time getting passed.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:40]
| It's happened before.
|
Sam:
[1:41:41]
| It has happened before. Generally, when reforms happen, it's in the wake of extraordinarily bad abuses. And if anything at all, that's what's happening right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:54]
| That's what's happening right now. And that's what needs to be a cornerstone of getting back into power. It needs to be to do all the things. I'll tell you. I mean, things like...
|
Sam:
[1:42:04]
| The best case scenario coming out of...
|
Ivan:
[1:42:08]
| I'll tell you one thing. DOJ should not report to the president anymore. DOJ should be independent.
|
Sam:
[1:42:14]
| Well, I mean, yeah, speaking of independence of DOJ, that whole mindset was a direct result of Watergate. Watergate. Watergate.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:24]
| Watergate.
|
Sam:
[1:42:25]
| Watergate. You know, and what I was going to say.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:30]
| I like it in a Watergate scandal.
|
Sam:
[1:42:33]
| Yes. Well, like the best case scenario right now in a post-Trump world is that we have the same kind of counter reaction that we had after Watergate. After Watergate, all sorts of reforms were passed to make the kind of abuses that, you know, frankly, not just Nixon, but Johnson and Kennedy were doing before them. Make that impossible or at least very hard. And those protections obviously didn't last forever, but they lasted for a good long while before they started getting eroded away.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:10]
| What he showed is that they weren't even strong enough. They need to be stronger.
|
Sam:
[1:43:14]
| Right. Yes. And so, yeah, our best case scenario is Trump and his administration and the Republican grifters in general screw things up so badly that there is a massive call to fix these problems that's big enough that it can get rammed through Congress and whoever's the next president. And you do restrict all these powers and make it a lot harder to do these abuses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Ah, okay. And, and, and crack down on this to go back to the topic, you know, make it easier to resist illegal orders, make it clearer. What's an illegal order, make it supports for that. And on the military side of things. And yeah, and yeah, join the ICC and turn all these damn people over to them. yeah so that's about all i had you got anything else on this or should we uh start wrapping things up we went actually long last week so we can go short today yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:18]
| We can just wrap things up.
|
Sam:
[1:44:19]
| Okay uh go to a curmudgeon-corner.com you can see all our transcripts you can shake, Yes, I'm done here. You know, it is clearly time to wrap up. And, you know, anyway, you can see our transcripts. You can see all the ways to contact us. You can see all kinds of fun stuff. Old shows, our archives going back to the beginning. And, of course, you can link to our Patreon to give us money. Give me lots of money so I don't ever have to go back to a corporate job. Please, lots. You know, it'd be helpful. Anyway, at various levels on the Patreon, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that kind of stuff at $2 a month or more. Or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our Commissions Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of other folks are talking throughout the week, sharing links, all that kind of stuff. Yvonne, what is a highlight from the Slack this week that we have not talked about on the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:45:30]
| I got a couple. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:45:32]
| Okay. A couple.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:33]
| Some male wellness influencer said 99% of modern guys don't have tan balls, semen retention length five plus days, testosterone 700 plus NGDL, lean mass of 10% body fat, any Bitcoin, their life in order. literally the bar is so extremely low it's not that hard to be a one percent man man so sam when are you gonna start tanning your balls.
|
Sam:
[1:46:06]
| I i don't know what you're talking about like i've been doing that for years like every day oh you know it's it's an important part of my my routine you know and when you can't get outside and do it in the sun they make machines Oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:24]
| They make the little machines. So you're like, okay, all right.
|
Sam:
[1:46:27]
| Yeah, it's like a tanning bed, but just for your balls.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:30]
| Another thing that I saw, they had this Consumer Reports thing where they were showing like really bad devices. Okay, all right, devices that were a problem. Okay, devices that have issues. Okay, so they said, hey, 10 devices you shouldn't buy. So they had scored poorly the MicroLife Advanced Digital Monitor, which is a blood pressure monitor, $40. Okay. They gave it an overall score of 33. They didn't get it down into the red. It was only orange, which is like the color before red. But this is the reason why I said, and I'm like, I'm a little bit baffled why they didn't score it a zero, okay? This device got a dismal score for accuracy and stores memory for only one user. On the plus side, it has a large display and it's easy to read. And I'm like, look, if I buy a fucking blood pressure monitor, the one thing I expect it to do is that it reads the blood pressure accurate. I couldn't give a shit about an easy-to-read display that shows me the wrong fucking blood pressure.
|
Sam:
[1:47:38]
| Now, wait a second, Yvonne. This gives me a business idea. Okay? Because not blood pressure monitors specifically.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:49]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:47:50]
| But my son, very often, when he doesn't feel like going to school, gets out the fever thermometer and is taking it over and over and over again to try to show us that he's got a fever and he shouldn't go to school. And you know, like Ferris Bueller had that whole thing where he faked being sick.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:10]
| Yes, yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:48:11]
| We need to sell thermometers that specifically.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:15]
| Yeah, you can tell it what temperature you want it to show.
|
Sam:
[1:48:19]
| Exactly. You get a little adjustment dial on the back. And we market this to, you know, preteens and teenagers so that they can fool their parents. Oh, no, I'm sick. I'm sick.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:33]
| Look at this.
|
Sam:
[1:48:34]
| I can't go to school.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:34]
| Look at this thing. Right. You know, when you do it is, you know, not that thermometer you put in your head. You know, you got those digital ones that go on your forehead. Right. Listen, to make this cheap, the cheapest thing is, is you did this. You built a little thing. All you got is just a little lever where you select the temperature you want at the show. And so you press the button, it beeps, and voila, it just shows that wrong number.
|
Sam:
[1:48:59]
| I don't know why we are not billionaires, Yvonne. With ideas like this.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:07]
| We're pretty bad at execution, it seems.
|
Sam:
[1:49:10]
| It seems so. I mean, look, this clearly would be a market for this.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:13]
| Plus, we don't have, listen, plus we don't have tan balls. Well, you do have Bitcoin.
|
Sam:
[1:49:19]
| I do have a little bit. I long ago got rid of most of the bit nickel I bought, and so I don't have very much left, but I have some.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:26]
| But, listen, but we are not sub-10% body fat. That I can assure you.
|
Sam:
[1:49:35]
| I don't know what you're looking at I am svelte I am.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:40]
| Listen less than 10% body fat I mean yeah we're not at that level.
|
Sam:
[1:49:47]
| I got the 6 pack going on no I got a.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:51]
| 12 pack I saw some guy the other day when he did shirtless was that a game was that he shaved like the hairs on his belly in order to make it kind of like from afar looked like he had a 6 pack But what he did was just shave the hair in the pattern. Appropriate, in the pattern, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:50:08]
| Okay, then. That's interesting. I guess you could draw it on with a marker or something, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:15]
| You could do that, too.
|
Sam:
[1:50:17]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:18]
| I've seen t-shirts. I mean, you know, these are about as good as the pull-ups that Pete Hegseth did with RFK Jr., where they supposedly both...
|
Sam:
[1:50:28]
| Oh, that kind of pull-up. I thought you were talking like diapers.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:31]
| Yeah, like they were doing... No, not diapers. That's Trump's thing. But they were doing supposed exercises that the form was so... They didn't do any of the exercises they said they were doing to try to show how manly they are.
|
Sam:
[1:50:49]
| Right. Okay. One last thing for me, I will mention my Juke Potter site again, jukepotter.com. The next thing on my to-do list is sort of try to fix bugs. And I know there's a bunch of places where it's sort of not, it works most of the time, but there are things that occasionally glitch out. So please, folks, I want some traffic. Go to jukepotter.com, play with it, try to explore, find some podcasts, send me some feature requests. I'm only about halfway through my list of features I want to add to the thing, so I've got more stuff to add, but send me feature requests. Check out the sponsors. I've got like right now I've got, you know, they're not 12 real sponsors because nobody's paying me money, but I put in my four podcasts and eight more from the Snohomish podcast network, where if you have filtered to something where that podcast would qualify, it boosts them. And I've got a whole backend system tracking how many views and clicks and blah, blah, blah, so that it could potentially be tied to billing. So test that stuff out so I can see if it works and send me feedback and things I should improve on it. Because then the very next thing on my list is like to bash some of these bugs. So if you have any, report them to me.
|
Sam:
[1:52:09]
| And, you know, all my contact information, you can find me on the Curmudgeons Corner website I listed earlier, curmudgeons-corner.com. And yeah, that's it. I'm still working on Robin letter too. I, but there's not stuff to share yet. Everything I'm doing is sort of still internal other than the brochure page. Anyways.
|
Sam:
[1:52:31]
| And, and I guess Yvonne says I should make this to do list thing, a project too. I like a public product. So I'll work on that. I had been thinking about that anyway, but maybe I'll actually start thinking, okay, what do I do to make this multi-user? anyway that's it thank you for joining us have a great week everybody I hope you had a great Thanksgiving if you did the Thanksgiving thing my mother came over we had dinner it was fun you know we did the thing so hope everybody else had a good time too have a great week stay safe we'll see you next time, goodbye bye Bye. Thank you. Okay, I think I'm going to go eat next, Yvonne. Even if I don't randomly roll that I should eat right now. Because I think that's still fairly low on the list. So I would be days before I eat if I waited for that to come up.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:57]
| Okay, that would be it. I like your plan.
|
Sam:
[1:53:59]
| Okay, see you later. Bye. Hit and stop. Bye.
| |
|
