Automated Transcript
Ivan:
[0:00]
| Oh!
|
Sam:
[0:00]
| Hello!
|
Ivan:
[0:04]
| Volume, volume, volume.
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Sam:
[0:06]
| Here we go. Here we go. It's starting up. Almost there.
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Ivan:
[0:13]
| Almost there.
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Sam:
[0:14]
| Almost there. That song. That is a song. From the thing. There we go. Almost there. From the Princess and the Frog. good song Disney movie 2009 Disney movie thumbs up.
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Ivan:
[0:34]
| I don't remember this movie I must have missed.
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Sam:
[0:40]
| It's a good Disney movie there's the girl in New Orleans and there's a prince they both get turned into frogs and then they go through an adventure to get back and she gets her spoilers there's a happy ending. Although there are sad things along the way. There you go. Okay.
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Ivan:
[1:03]
| Disney movies have a tendency to include some sad thing in them. Somebody dies, you know.
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Sam:
[1:10]
| Well, it's a whole, like, trope that in almost all Disney movies, the main character's parents die near the beginning.
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Ivan:
[1:19]
| Die. Right, right.
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Sam:
[1:19]
| Yes.
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Ivan:
[1:20]
| Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's really awful. if you think about it.
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Sam:
[1:26]
| Yeah okay shall shall we go here comes, Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, March 28th, 2026. It's just after 1630 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter. Yvonne Bowe is back with us again this week. And yeah, so hello, Yvonne. How was Texas?
|
Ivan:
[2:16]
| Very Texany.
|
Sam:
[2:18]
| Very Texany?
|
Ivan:
[2:19]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:20]
| Did you have a good time with all your flights and TSA and all that kind of nonsense?
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Ivan:
[2:26]
| Absolutely. None of that was an issue. Okay. You know, we, Miami, there was no lines. There's no ICE agents either.
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Sam:
[2:39]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[2:41]
| And so that was uneventful. Manu, you know, was discussed a long time ago. The main thing that I was trying to, we didn't have a lot of time for a vacation this year. my work my wife is taking a class at the university the spring break for the university doesn't coincide with the spring break for manu's school it left very little time for any vacation okay right and so we wound up only going i was like, i was trying to i was trying to make sure that manu could fly somewhere Right Anywhere Okay, I had been When I had been in Texas Back for my surgery Months back I had had some blood work With a With my With a doctor, With my sister-in-law Who's a doctor She actually wanted to check How it was doing And so I was like Well what the hell Let's just all go to Texas Let's visit my brother I mean what the hell It's not like, You know, so let's just go. I mean, what the heck? I mean, it wasn't my brother. I mean, we have a good time. So we did. We went over there. We had a good time. Manu had a great time. Manu, you know, in between the fact that I took him on that flight simulator, I don't know if I discussed that. I can't remember.
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Sam:
[4:07]
| I know you talked about it on the curmudgeon's course Slack. I'm not sure you mentioned it on the show.
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Ivan:
[4:11]
| No. So I, you know, one of the things that I was doing in order to acclimate Manu to get back the flying was that I was able to get them, get some, book some time at a flight simulator. It looked like a real A320 cockpit.
|
Sam:
[4:26]
| Just to be clear, we're talking about not like you're running it on your little computer, but a full-fledged, big.
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Ivan:
[4:32]
| Like... A full-fledged cockpit experience, you know, this really felt like, it's not completely like the one that pilots use, but it's a very good one, okay? Okay. And, you know, it was a full cockpit. Actually, I believe that pilots do use this for ground school because it's, but this is not the ones that they use for certification. Okay.
|
Sam:
[5:00]
| Okay. So it wasn't the one on a big, like, hydraulic platform that moves and stuff. Yeah.
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Ivan:
[5:06]
| Yeah. I mean, those are the ones that they use for certification flights and other stuff. But this one, for ground school to train, this is good enough to train a pilot on an A320 for grounds. That's for sure. Okay? Make sure that they know how to operate the controls. Make sure they know how to set destinations. Make sure that they can, everything replicates truly an A320. I got it. Manu had a blast with it. I had a blast with it. And the pilot was a little bit like, well, he did ask me, do you have any flight experience? And I'm like, yes, I do. It's not been a long time. But the thing is, I sat behind the controls and I've watched enough videos and things and used different flight simulator software that I know what I'm looking at when I'm looking at an A320, you know, display. So when he set it up, I know that I've, listen, I've got the controls. He had set the auto throttles. I didn't have to mess with those. He set the speed. He lined us up for landing. And I know that on the artificial horizon, what I got to do is when he set it up in the ILS, the thing that Airbus aircraft have is this really cool flight director thing. And the flight director, basically, it's like these couple of things on the artificial horizon where, listen, you just need to keep it lined up with that and you will land the plane. Now, it's not as easy as it sounds, okay? All right?
|
Sam:
[6:35]
| Okay, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[6:36]
| Okay, it does take some skill and you using the controls to do it. But if you've had some skill at using the controls to do it, okay, you could do... okay. All right. And so I actually did pretty decent with it. And he was like, what the hell you're, you know, I had some issues with like the actual touchdown itself. And he told me that what he noticed is, well, look, you learn to fly on small planes. Okay. So what happens is that when we're about to land on a small plane, we, we pulled a nose up a lot. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[7:11]
| For the land. all right okay on you don't need to do as much on an a320 i kept instinctively as it counted down 50 40 30 i kept instinctively pulling back on the nose and so i i i kind of like i i lofted it a little bit instead of letting it touch down okay so i did that a couple of times when he told me about it the second time around that i did it i got it right on and he was like why don't you get your license again he's a flight instructor so he gave me his card i may take him up on it right now i'm just there's so much going on right i don't want to add anything more yeah i don't want to add anything more right now but but i definitely left me thinking about it because i really quite enjoyed doing that manu had a great time manu's main thing that he liked was first fucking with me with the controls or he was pushing the, he kept pushing the, the, the runner and kept getting me offline. And I'm like, why the hell am I getting offline? Then the pilot told me, your son's pushing the runner. And I'm like, and also setting off the alerts. Okay. Oh yeah. He loved like, you know, pull up, pull up. Yeah. Making it like, you know, pointing the nose down and getting it to, to yell at me to pull up, pull up. Yeah. Yeah, he liked that. He definitely liked that.
|
Sam:
[8:38]
| See, this is the thing with flight simulators and kids in general. The fun part... is not straight and level flight or takeoffs or landing.
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Ivan:
[8:49]
| No, no, no.
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Sam:
[8:51]
| The fun part is, like, can we crash in creative ways?
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Ivan:
[8:56]
| Yes.
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Sam:
[8:56]
| Or can we do flips in a plane that clearly should not be doing flips, you know?
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Ivan:
[9:01]
| Should not be doing flips, yeah.
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Sam:
[9:02]
| Things like that. Aerobatics in a large airliner, you know?
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Ivan:
[9:07]
| Yes. Those are not fun for any of the passengers. I know that, I don't know if you, in which one, the one for X-Plane, If you're using it, they actually add a sound where you hear the passengers scream.
|
Sam:
[9:22]
| Yeah, I use X-Plane all the time, and so does Alex. I've never heard the passengers scream.
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Ivan:
[9:27]
| Oh, well, maybe you don't have all the sounds up. You will hear the passengers all of a sudden go, ah!
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Sam:
[9:36]
| Okay, I'll have to get a large... I mean, because Alex has crashed large planes in X-Plane quite a few times. I'll have to get that spun up again and see.
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Ivan:
[9:47]
| If you go and like I keep flying usually like a triple seven, simulator a lot if you go like say push the nose down like really hard where you create like a big G input you will hear the passengers like scream.
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Sam:
[10:05]
| Okay. Okay. Gotta work on that. Gotta work on that. Somehow I've missed that.
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Ivan:
[10:11]
| I gotta get the passengers just screaming so yeah so.
|
Sam:
[10:14]
| Uh one of the very early videos on his channel is him playing x plane and as the plane is doing various things me in the background saying you know this is why they don't let six-year-olds pilot planes yes yeah i.
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Ivan:
[10:30]
| Mean you know in real life you had that that guy that russian pilot that let the his kid end up.
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Sam:
[10:35]
| I know right.
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Ivan:
[10:36]
| And literally did crash it.
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Sam:
[10:38]
| I know. Yes. Yes.
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Ivan:
[10:42]
| So, yes, it's been demonstrated in real life. That doesn't work well.
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Sam:
[10:46]
| Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I mean, not to say that there might not be some very responsible six year olds who could handle it properly.
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Ivan:
[10:58]
| However, however, it's not a good idea.
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Sam:
[11:01]
| I don't want to be in that plane.
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Ivan:
[11:02]
| No, I don't want to be on that plane. Okay. So we flew over there. Look, we gave him a tranquilizer as well. I, you know, I had that gas for some tranquilizers. And the first flight, he was a little bit like, he was a little bit. He actually. And the last time I tried, he wouldn't even get on the plane. Okay.
|
Sam:
[11:22]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:24]
| We had, and he was actually anxious all the way to the airport.
|
Sam:
[11:27]
| Uh-huh.
|
Ivan:
[11:28]
| He was fine. He may have been a little bit, oh, let's go to the lounge. I'm like, no, we're not going to the lounge. We don't have time. Okay. We're going straight to, straight to the, and when we got to the gate, we were boarding already.
|
Sam:
[11:39]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:40]
| Uh, so we went straight on and boarded and he didn't, he didn't make a fuss. We sat down. He's a little bit like a little bit anxious on takeoff, but that was it. He was fine. Everything went fine. It was uneventful. Okay. So, and he likes Dallas Airport. Dallas Airport's quite good.
|
Sam:
[11:58]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:58]
| It is the biggest airport in the world. Okay.
|
Sam:
[12:01]
| Like square foot wise or?
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Ivan:
[12:03]
| Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Sam:
[12:05]
| It is the biggest airport. It's not the busiest.
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Ivan:
[12:07]
| But, but in terms of like size, geographical. Yeah. It is the biggest airport in the world.
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Sam:
[12:14]
| Which is appropriate for Houston, which also is known for sprawl.
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Ivan:
[12:17]
| Yeah. But, but sit Dallas, not Houston.
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Sam:
[12:20]
| Oh, sorry. I got confused. Well, Dallas is known for sprawl too.
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Ivan:
[12:23]
| Dallas is very, it's a Texas, all of those Texas cities are known for sprawl. brawl and so you know he had uh the thing is that they have like uh now i'm hearing the.
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Sam:
[12:33]
| Damn theme music from the show the.
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Ivan:
[12:35]
| Dallas theme music in my head oh yeah interesting so we we were going around look that the airport has uh the the skylink train which is very you know that listen you very difficult to get around that airport without the train i mean i i know that i've i've had to, one time a long time ago walked from like say terminal C to terminal A, that's a lot of walking okay, I mean, that's a lot of walking. So having the, so he likes the Skylink train. And the cool thing about the Skylink, unlike like in Atlanta, they have subway. You don't get to see anything. You're down underground. You go, you go back and forth. But Skylink, I mean, you get to see the whole airport, you know, you're riding around and you, you see all the airplanes, all the movements, all the gates. It's, it's, it's, it's very cool to get a full view of all of the operations at the airport just to basically just ride around in Skylink and you can see what the heck is going on. So he likes riding to Skylink. He also was very adamant because we couldn't get on the lounge before departure. We had a long layover to return that he wanted to make sure that we did go to the lounge.
|
Sam:
[13:51]
| Okay. Very cool.
|
Ivan:
[13:53]
| To sit down and eat and, you know, things. Okay.
|
Sam:
[13:58]
| So I didn't say at the beginning. As usual we're doing lighter stuff at the beginning and And then we will move on to newsy stuff later.
|
Ivan:
[14:06]
| Frothy.
|
Sam:
[14:06]
| Frothy stuff.
|
Ivan:
[14:07]
| Frothy.
|
Sam:
[14:07]
| Last time I didn't do any newsy stuff at all. When you were gone last week, I just talked, you know, random other crap the whole time. And I was like, I don't, I don't feel like news. I don't feel like news. I'm not doing news. You know, but.
|
Ivan:
[14:19]
| The news. I mean, the news suck.
|
Sam:
[14:22]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[14:23]
| I mean, all the news suck. You know, it sucks. Everything sucks.
|
Sam:
[14:30]
| So do you have any.
|
Ivan:
[14:33]
| I don't want to get into any details at work. Things at work have been rough.
|
Sam:
[14:38]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[14:40]
| Yeah. I mean, to the point that I wound up at one point even tearing up how bad how bad it was this week.
|
Sam:
[14:49]
| Yeah. So anything lighter before I do my stuff? I'm going to replace one of my two movies with a story that I have from a couple of weeks ago that I saved for you.
|
Ivan:
[15:00]
| Anything lighter, lighter, lighter, lighter, lighter. Oh, well, OK, I will mention this. I wound up, you know, look, this week I wound up traveling. I went to Texas on Friday. I came back on Monday I went to Santo Domingo on Tuesday morning And I flew back from Santo Domingo On Wednesday night Okay, Then I had a friend of mine, This very good friend of mine from Brazil that, you know, we've known him from when I started working at HB almost 30 years ago, for God's sakes. Fucking ridiculous.
|
Ivan:
[15:37]
| Well, last minute he said, hey, I'm coming to town. I'm going to go see tennis. I'm getting there Friday and I'm getting there on Friday. I'm going to be all week. I'm like, fuck, he's getting here on Friday. I'm like, dude, I'm leaving right now. I'm literally leaving. I'm not coming back until like next Wednesday. Okay, we'll see you when you get back Wednesday. So then I texted him, hey, when are you leaving? And he says, Friday morning. It's like, fuck, Friday morning.
|
Ivan:
[16:04]
| Shit. So the only night is Thursday. So he was in Miami, which is, you know, it's like downtown. Like, you know, like to you to go to downtown Seattle, you know, it's, I mean, it's a, it's a, you know, it's a pain. And I've already been to Miami already three times the damn week. And I'm like, fuck, fine, fine. We'll go meet you for dinner. Problem is, of course, you know, having to meet him for dinner, not on the, I was hoping the weekend, not on the weekend. It was like, hey, let me meet him after work on Thursday. Okay. Fuck. I leave here. Rush out. It's just nuts. Okay. So it took like an hour and a half to get to Miami. To give you an example, at four in the morning one day that I drove to the airport, it takes me 40 minutes. Okay. It took an hour and a half. Okay. to get there. And then to come back, it took two hours because Florida Department of Transportation, the geniuses that they are, decided that the construction they were going to do on Thursday night, hey, I go and I get to this place, you're going on I-95 North, which has four lanes, okay, four or five lanes, you know, northbound.
|
Ivan:
[17:14]
| Express lanes closed. So that leaves three or four. It has six. So that took cut it down to four.
|
Ivan:
[17:23]
| Then at some point, it splits into the turnpike where you can go take the turnpike or continue a 95 north. Oh, well, the exit to the turnpike is closed. I'm like, fuck. Exit to the turnpike. And by the way, here's the crazy thing. I think they closed it just as I was driving north because the GPS showed it was open when I was going. And then all of a sudden, traffic built up and it's closed. So they must have just closed it, okay? as I'm driving up. And I'm like, fuck. They closed. Okay. All right. But then it says, hey, lanes closed on I-95. More lanes closed. Like, more lanes closed. How many fucking lanes could they decide to close if they already closed the turnpike? Look, they had narrowed it down to only one fucking lane. One lane northbound. When normally you've got six fucking lanes plus the turnpike where people get off, which is an extra three more lanes, nine lanes, and they narrowed this down to one fucking... Listen, you can't close the turnpike and close all the lanes on 95 at the same time. You got to do one or the other, you cheap fucks. The hell? It was like midnight, and it's the biggest traffic jam ever at fucking 11 o'clock at night. It was just crazy.
|
Ivan:
[18:47]
| Okay but when i got to downtown yes oh my god sam this whole influencer live stream crowd is just so fucked up man so i get to this place look we'll go to this restaurant that i've normally gone to but the area around it has grown a lot and i haven't been there last time i was there was like two years ago and and this has been like a change post-pandemic by the way this is this This wasn't like that pre-pandemic. And I get there, and it's just so crowded, but it's all these young influencers with their media sticks and the things that they're all live streaming to show how they are downtown and we're so cool. And I'm like thinking, could you fucking guys go and like have a good time instead of like trying to stream to everybody to tell them that you're having a good time? And all of them are all in these hyper, they're all like in their 20s, and I guess their parents have a lot of money, And they're all in these ridiculously expensive carts. Like, all of them are over $400,000. And they're all parked, like, in this spot, like, up there. And they're all, like, showing themselves live on video. And I'm trying to avoid all these. Look, I'm just trying to get to this fucking restaurant. I need you all to get the fuck out of my way. Okay. But it was just a bizarre, bizarre look at the modern influencer lifestyle for more minutes than I really wanted to.
|
Sam:
[20:16]
| So what you're telling me is after we finish recording the show, I should just switch from live streaming on my computer to live stream on my phone and live stream the rest of the day, no matter what's going on, no matter what I'm doing.
|
Ivan:
[20:31]
| But you need to go and trade in your car for a $450,000 Rolls-Royce SUV.
|
Sam:
[20:40]
| Oh, I'll get right on that.
|
Ivan:
[20:42]
| Yeah. Because that's the thing that gets... Yes. Because that's the thing that apparently gets attention.
|
Sam:
[20:47]
| Oh, okay. Okay. Can I get one of those, like, sort of kits where I just change the logo of my existing car?
|
Ivan:
[20:55]
| You know what? Actually, that would be even better. I got to be honest with you.
|
Sam:
[20:59]
| Let's just get it.
|
Ivan:
[20:59]
| Yes. Let's just do a kit. There's got to be some kind of kit. Hey, turn Ionic 5 into Rolls kit. Listen, people have done that throughout time. There's got to be a kit. And that would be fantastic. And then we live stream that. Perfect.
|
Sam:
[21:15]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[21:16]
| We are the anti-influencer group. We go in there, and we arrive in the Kitted Out Ionic 5. Perfect. I love it.
|
Sam:
[21:25]
| There you go. Okay. My turn. Do you want a movie first or my story first?
|
Ivan:
[21:32]
| Let's go to the story first. Okay.
|
Sam:
[21:35]
| So I had intended to do this last week, but you were out, and I decided to save it for when you were here. So this is almost two weeks ago now. But I figured you would appreciate this story more than me just saying it to myself last week.
|
Ivan:
[21:53]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[21:53]
| Okay. So here's the fundamental deal. Two weeks ago, Brandy had finished up her session at the legislature in Olympia and, you know, was moving all her stuff out. Okay. Okay. Because she rents a house with another legislature, legislator, for the months that they're in session. And so she's got all kinds of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[22:18]
| How long is the session, by the way?
|
Sam:
[22:20]
| From early January. Well, it changes by year. Like, they have short sessions and long sessions. election years are like are shorter so this wasn't this is an election year so it's shorter so it went from like the second week of january to the second week of march okay so basically two week of.
|
Ivan:
[22:39]
| January to okay so it's only two weeks okay.
|
Sam:
[22:42]
| Two months months not two months.
|
Ivan:
[22:44]
| Two months no two months okay.
|
Sam:
[22:46]
| Yes and then in the long session it's like it's like three months instead okay so okay And I'm rounding here. It's like, it's not quite. And it's like, whatever. It's close enough. Two months and three months. And so she's got stuff in her office to move. She's got stuff in the place she rented to move. Because she, of course, brings like all kinds of supplies. She's got stuff because she's going to be there for, you know, a couple months. So it's basically like moving in for a couple months. It's not like the stuff you bring to a hotel for a week, you know.
|
Ivan:
[23:19]
| Right, right, right.
|
Sam:
[23:21]
| You know, so, anyway.
|
Ivan:
[23:23]
| Is it like an Airbnb? I mean, what do you get? Do you get like an Airbnb?
|
Sam:
[23:28]
| It's an Airbnb. It's a whole house. But it's, yes, they get it through. I don't know if they used Airbnb or some other service, but they rented an entire house. Okay. Her and one roommate. Right.
|
Ivan:
[23:39]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[23:41]
| So, anyway, or housemate, I should say. They didn't actually share a room. At least I don't think they did.
|
Ivan:
[23:46]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:47]
| Maybe they did and they're just not telling me, you know, but, you know. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[23:50]
| I keep forgetting that. I call room, you know, I've made that mistake, and you're absolutely right. Like, when I had, like, you know, when somebody, you know, shared a, One of the rooms in my apartment, their housemates, they're not a roommate. We didn't share a room.
|
Sam:
[24:06]
| Right. Right. Exactly. So anyway.
|
Ivan:
[24:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:09]
| So I am at home with Alex. We are, the initial expectation is just she's going to pack up the rest of her stuff and then come home. And it's in the evening. But around like, I don't know, 8 p.m. or something, she starts telling me that two things, two important notes. One, she's not feeling that good. And two, she's not sure all the stuff will fit in her car. Okay?
|
Sam:
[24:46]
| So she's calling me, and she has to be out of the house that night. So like, you know, she, so there's no, like, oh, we'll just do it tomorrow. Okay. So she has to be out of the house that night. So she's working on the stuff. And I, I, I ask a few times, like, okay, do I need to, you need me to come down? Do you need a second car? You need, do you need help? And for longest time, she's like, no, no, I got it. I'll, I'll figure it out. I got it. Eventually she's like, yes, I do need you. Okay. by this time it's like 10 30 p.m or something you know olympia is like at least it's the middle of the night like if it if it was during the day it's like two hours plus to go because of traffic but like in the middle of the night you can do it in under two hours i mean you could probably do it in 30 minutes because you know you're a maniac on roads but you know how.
|
Ivan:
[25:40]
| Many miles is it.
|
Sam:
[25:42]
| I'll tell you hold on, It's 67 miles.
|
Ivan:
[25:50]
| Oh, fuck. Wait, how long did you say it was going to take you a night?
|
Sam:
[25:55]
| Right now, if I drove it, at this very second while we're recording, Waze says an hour and 35 minutes.
|
Ivan:
[26:02]
| Oh, fuck that.
|
Sam:
[26:04]
| Fuck that.
|
Ivan:
[26:05]
| I'd be there. Jesus Christ. Like, 50 minutes tops.
|
Sam:
[26:09]
| See, the problem is you have to go through downtown Seattle to get there.
|
Ivan:
[26:13]
| Ah. No, but even still, you go through the highway through downtown.
|
Sam:
[26:19]
| Yeah, but there's traffic, you know.
|
Ivan:
[26:21]
| Yeah, but not at 11 o'clock at night.
|
Sam:
[26:23]
| No, no, not at 11 o'clock at night. No, no, no. So like I said, you could probably make it in like 30 minutes or some crap, you know, but we're not going to make it in 30 minutes.
|
Ivan:
[26:33]
| No.
|
Sam:
[26:34]
| Anyway, the point is, I'm not leaving home until like 1030 or something. I forget exactly what time it is. and you know and i'm meeting her and here's the thing here's where the story part you have a.
|
Ivan:
[26:49]
| Full charge on your car.
|
Sam:
[26:51]
| I did not so here's where the story starts coming in because i had not planned on a long trip so i was just you know trickle charging like i usually do and i was going to catch up on the weekend so it was a little low and i actually had not plugged in that particular time yet that day even because this was before my last procedure and I was in a lot of pain still. And, like, the last time I had come home, I had brought Alex home from school or whatever, and I had just gone straight in because I had to carry, like, stuff or whatever. And I was like, I just went in and collapsed. I didn't go back out and plug the thing in.
|
Ivan:
[27:32]
| Okay, well, fuck it. You got to supercharge somewhere. Okay.
|
Sam:
[27:35]
| Right. So I'm like, no problem. There's going to be—we're going up and down I-5. There are going to be superchargers all over the place. Not a problem at all. Anyway, so—and I checked. There was enough to get there. just not enough coming back okay right.
|
Ivan:
[27:50]
| Right right right.
|
Sam:
[27:51]
| So because i and i was like i'll charge i'll charge on the way back i'm not going to bother charging now and then going because that was an option i could have charged a supercharger near me topped up and then had enough for round trip right but i didn't do that i went down there i met her at the state capitol because she'd already finished everything at her house but she needed to get a few more things from her office, And so I met her at the state capitol at after midnight, took a picture of the state capitol, posted it to Blue Sky or whatever. And we got the rest of the stuff we needed. Also, I'll mention, this is still me. Like I said, before surgery, I'm in pain. Whenever I move, it hurts. Whenever I move, like if I move even a little bit, then the side effect of me moving is I desperately have to pee. Oh, nice. At least I feel like I have to. And there's a disconnect between how much is actually ready to come out of me versus how I feel. Like, I feel like I'm about to explode. And then I actually get to a bathroom and there's like a few drops.
|
Ivan:
[28:56]
| It's just a squirt.
|
Sam:
[28:57]
| Yes. Right. But in any way, it becomes incredibly desperate. Like, if I walk like 30 feet, then it's like, ah, I gotta go. Okay. So anyway, I'm there. I help her with the last couple things. And honestly, I was basically providing just room in my car for these last couple things because she managed to fit everything from her B&B or whatever into her car, but not the extra stuff from her office. So I was providing the backseat of my car and, you know, the trunk of my car for a few extra items. You know, that's basically what I was there for. And so we do that. And then it's like one in the morning or something. And I'm ready to go. I'm like, OK, great. I find the closest supercharger. it's only like two miles away no problem i go to the supercharger and i go to charge and she's going off she decided she was booking a hotel for the night because she wasn't feeling good she was she booked a hotel for the night she was gonna sleep and then come home in the morning okay.
|
Ivan:
[29:55]
| Probably yeah okay.
|
Sam:
[29:56]
| Sensible so so i go to the supercharger oh boy and i plug in and it says it's charging for 10 seconds and then it stops. And I'm like, well, crap. Okay, well, I've done this before. At the supercharger near me, this has sometimes happened, where one of the chargers doesn't work. I just change to a different parking spot and it works just fine. So I do that. Same thing. Doesn't work. I try a third spot. Same thing. Doesn't work. I'm like, well, shit. And by the way, the process of doing this, I already need to pee again. Like, because I've been moving to do it. And I'm in the middle of, like, some parking lot at, like, a mall. Everything's closed because it's 1 in the morning. It's not like there's someplace I can run in to pee.
|
Ivan:
[30:49]
| Just pee somewhere around there in the bushes.
|
Sam:
[30:52]
| I wasn't going to do that.
|
Ivan:
[30:54]
| What do you mean? Fucking Jesus Christ, it's midnight. There's nobody, 2 in the morning, there's nobody around.
|
Sam:
[30:59]
| Well, there were actually there were two other cars at the supercharger and it was working just fine for them. OK, it was working just fine for them, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[31:09]
| All right. So it's a you problem.
|
Sam:
[31:10]
| OK, so it's probably a you problem. But I'm like, well, where's the next closest supercharger? And, you know, I there was there were a couple like ones and twosies superchargers that were low speed and I ignored them. there was a and i i also like i never got the adapter thing to work properly so i'm only going to tesla you know ones with tesla plugs but then and and actually that's a thing like i was like maybe whatever was wrong with getting the adapter to work which i've never gone back to ask a dealership about because maybe there's a chance it was related to when amy hit my car if you remember okay yeah like the normal charger worked fine but the the adapter never did and i don't think i ever tried it before then but anyway for those of you who can't see yvonne is holding his head in his hands he is appalled so yeah because.
|
Ivan:
[32:09]
| Here's the thing right like with my wife's car and this is not even my car i went and i fucking went and myself double checked to make sure that the stupid fucking, charging was working like it's a super charge even though we never needed it just to make sure I tried the adapt I'm like I need to make sure this shit works I'm like, I can't be on a business trip, and all of a sudden, my wife is somehow low on charge, and it doesn't fucking work.
|
Sam:
[32:37]
| Yeah, and so we had tried the adapter. We just, it never worked. It never worked.
|
Ivan:
[32:43]
| So the regular Tesla charger worked for it. I made sure, like, I had the issue where I had with the charging over here where it wasn't working. I made sure I fucking.
|
Sam:
[32:50]
| Like, almost didn't sleep. It's not just that you checked, because we checked. You just, when you found out it didn't work, you did something about it.
|
Ivan:
[32:56]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[32:56]
| Correct! Okay, that's the part I didn't do.
|
Ivan:
[32:58]
| I fixed the problem. I went and I fucking spent like a whole day figuring out what the fuck the problem was. Which, by the way, I found out in my case, it was the form of payment. And the stupid ChargePoint app should have... I wanted the people at ChargePoint should be shot because, dude, really? You couldn't explain to me there was an issue with the form of payment?
|
Sam:
[33:23]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[33:24]
| You're going to tell me that that was your problem.
|
Sam:
[33:26]
| Not quite, but you're getting warm. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[33:29]
| Oh, fuck.
|
Sam:
[33:31]
| So I find the next supercharger and it's like another like 20, 30 miles up the road or something. And I have enough to get there. But I'm like, OK, here's the deal. If I get like right now where I am, I'm like three miles from my wife's hotel. I could go to her hotel and figure it out in the morning. If, on the other hand, I go to this Charger, there's a chance I won't be able to get home and I won't be able to get back to her hotel either. Okay?
|
Ivan:
[34:04]
| Oh, my gosh. Oh, God.
|
Sam:
[34:06]
| I decide to go to the next Charger anyway.
|
Ivan:
[34:09]
| Oh, no.
|
Sam:
[34:12]
| So I drive the extra 20 or 30 miles down the road to the next Charger. And same damn thing. I try three or four different chargers at the spot. I try, I'm like, maybe there's a loose connection. I try sort of just like holding the charger and in weird positions and seeing, you know, does it help if I shove it in harder? Maybe something's loose. And I call Brandy and I'm like, nothing's working. Nothing's working. What, you know, what should we do? And I check the distance. I do have enough to get back to her hotel. Barely. With like maybe two or three miles to spare.
|
Ivan:
[34:56]
| Was there a trickle charger there perhaps at that hotel or something?
|
Sam:
[35:00]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[35:01]
| Fuck.
|
Sam:
[35:01]
| No. But I could get back to her hotel with maybe two or three miles to spare. I'm like, okay, fine. I will come to your hotel. We will call and get this like towed to a Hyundai dealership in the morning for them to check it out. There's obviously something wrong with the car. Okay. There's something wrong with the charger. I'm like, okay, Alex may have to miss school tomorrow if neither of us can get home in time to take him to school, whatever, whatever, but I'll do this because I'd left Alex at home. He was asleep when I left. Like, so, you know, I texted him a message of where I went in case he woke up.
|
Ivan:
[35:40]
| I mean, yeah, he's an adult.
|
Sam:
[35:42]
| An adult. Close, close. He's 16. He's 16. He can handle it.
|
Ivan:
[35:49]
| In some places, he would be considered a legal adult.
|
Sam:
[35:52]
| We have no concerns about leaving. We could leave him alone for a week. He'd be fine. Okay?
|
Ivan:
[35:58]
| Starving, but fine.
|
Sam:
[35:59]
| No, he would feed himself. He feeds himself all the time.
|
Ivan:
[36:01]
| Oh, he would feed? Okay.
|
Sam:
[36:03]
| Yeah, he feeds himself. He's made Instacart orders for more groceries. You know, he can take care of himself.
|
Ivan:
[36:11]
| Okay, okay, so he won't starve. Okay, okay.
|
Sam:
[36:13]
| He won't starve. He can take care of himself. now would what he eats be great probably not but honestly it would probably be better than when i'm feeding him you know like he'll make me dinner he'll make me like hamburgers and stuff and other he's made thanksgiving dinner for us like so he'd be fine he'd be better than us.
|
Sam:
[36:39]
| Anyway i on the way back to hotel i'm like i'll try that first supercharger one last time It's only like a little bit off the highway. I'll try that one last time. I go there and I'm like, maybe I'll just try a different one. I will try one of the slots where I saw someone successfully charging a couple hours ago. And of course, nothing. And of course, this entire time, this entire time driving back and forth, I'm like desperate to pee. That's what, you know. So I finally get to her hotel I meet her there I park the car in the hotel parking lot I go in I'm like, The whole plan is We'll call and we'll deal with it in the morning I can sleep And by this time it's like 2.30 in the morning or something, I get in there And of course as I said I desperately needed to pee I go to the bathroom And as you do when you go to the bathroom You pick up your phone, I look at my phone. I pop into my email. I see email from Hyundai. I see 15 emails from Hyundai. And what do you think those say, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[37:59]
| Your credit card has been declined.
|
Sam:
[38:01]
| No. No. No? Okay. There are 15 emails saying that charging service is blocked because I have not accepted the revised terms of service.
|
Ivan:
[38:13]
| Oh, get the fuck out of here. Sam, you live looking at your phone. How the fuck had you not looked at this?
|
Sam:
[38:27]
| There were no alerts. I had to go into my email and not even my priority.
|
Ivan:
[38:33]
| You live looking at your fucking phone.
|
Sam:
[38:36]
| I don't look at my email very often. And when I look at my email.
|
Ivan:
[38:40]
| Oh, well, not your email. You have said that, yes.
|
Sam:
[38:41]
| And in my email, I have accounts that are set to VIP, and I almost always only look at the VIP mailbox. I only look at the other mailbox, like, every couple weeks, like, that has my non-VIP mail. I just happened to poke in while I was, you know, in the bathroom, and I saw this. And so there were 15 fucking emails. And by the way, no alerts on the damn phone. like Hyundai sends me alerts Hyundai's app sends me alerts if I leave the door unlocked for 20 seconds it doesn't send me an alert for this yes.
|
Ivan:
[39:19]
| That is a big massive fail.
|
Sam:
[39:24]
| And so like yeah I had to go into the app and then within the app go into a sub menu and then within that sub menu accept the terms of service, And then everything was okay. So I did, I did at this point, like sleep for several hours at the hotel. I was like, it's already three in the morning. I slept. My intention was to sleep for like an hour and then get back on the road. In fact, I slept until like 8 a.m. or something. And then I got back on the road. But eight or nine. But yeah, as soon as I accepted the damn terms of service, everything worked perfectly. But it didn't tell me. It didn't tell me. Like if it had popped up.
|
Ivan:
[40:08]
| I mean, but that's it's a similar fail to mine, except a different one, because I mean, I went and I had I had gone and like made sure, right, that I wasn't in a situation where I was in a. almost out of charge to figure out that i i had a situation where you know i i came home the car had 30 i plugged tried to charge it wouldn't charge i didn't understand what the fuck was going on and i i went and i the thing is that i could plug it into my garage on the trickle charger just you know on the 110 and so i just went like look i'm gonna plug it into the i'm gonna put it in the garage and put it on the slow charger and let me see what happens and then and and the thing is that i also tried to plug to charge my volvo and it wouldn't charge either and i'm like what the fuck you can't charge either car what the hell is going on and then and i took it to a supercharger nearby and it worked perfectly so i'm like what the fuck you know but but our chargers here are charge point the the supercharger's fpl is a different account and so um properly.
|
Sam:
[41:16]
| Or it had different.
|
Ivan:
[41:17]
| Apparently apparently the card had expired okay but it didn't tell me that way i'm like you know like you said about all these dumb ass notifications hey tell me the fucking card expired right it didn't say anything it actually no.
|
Sam:
[41:37]
| Not a single.
|
Ivan:
[41:38]
| Message warning nothing Now.
|
Sam:
[41:41]
| If I had gone into the app and looked in the right submenu of the app, I would have seen something. But I never use the app when I plug into the chargers because I have it all set up to be automatic. I just plug in and it charges me and I don't have to look at a damn thing. And so, no, I had not opened my Hyundai app. And so... Yes. It's like, again, I get all these stupid notifications for all kinds of other things. And I shouldn't say stupid. I actually appreciate it when it tells me my car is unlocked that I forgot and I lock the car, you know? But at the same time, I would appreciate this one even more. And when I finally rolled into that charger in the morning, after I figured this out, I had less than five miles on the thing. Like, if it had not. Well, you made it.
|
Ivan:
[42:29]
| You made it.
|
Sam:
[42:29]
| I made it. I did make it.
|
Ivan:
[42:31]
| You made it. You made it. You made it. You made it. You made it. You didn't get stranded. I had expected. I fully expected. Sam finally got stranded with no charge story. And no, I did not get that. You wound up, you wound up, you know, barely eking it out.
|
Sam:
[42:49]
| Yeah. Barely eking it out. Because if I had run out, then I would have been stuck. I would have had to call somebody. would have had to do something, you know, get it, get it like whatever it would, it would have been, or if I had not looked at my email, this part of my email that I don't usually check, then. Then we still would have called and had the thing towed in the morning and they would have been like, you dumbass, everything's fine.
|
Ivan:
[43:14]
| This shit is a reason why I even still to this day, even though I've got like, you know, I'm using like with with Apple Mail, I'm using the I don't I don't use the VIP part that much. But I do, you know, my primary bail box, I have the with Apple Mail. I have it set that I am getting my primary notifications there where it's filtered out enough that I'm not I'm not like before where I would get like 50 emails in my primary inbox. It's like like yesterday, for example, my primary inbox, I got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ten messages. OK, you scroll through those or whatever.
|
Sam:
[43:51]
| My stuff is still a mess. I tried the categorization that Apple Mail does now, and I hated it. So I went back to not having that.
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| I'm sorry, but once you get it sorted, it is really easy. I got my transactions in one side. I got my primary receipt. I got the people that send newsletters and updates on one side.
|
Sam:
[44:12]
| And I got promotions on another one. It didn't work for me, not because it wasn't doing what it was supposed to be. It didn't work with how my brain works.
|
Ivan:
[44:19]
| Your brain. They work with your brain. But I still, even with that, I still occasionally will scroll through to junk just in case something is going there.
|
Sam:
[44:27]
| Oh, I still have to check my junk on a regular basis because there are routinely non-junk things in there. But anyway, that's a whole different topic.
|
Ivan:
[44:36]
| I have to say that at least it's... I have been... I've got it set up right now that I'm not getting stuff. It's been a long time that something's gone to junk that shouldn't be there. Thank God.
|
Sam:
[44:50]
| I would bet you that if I open my junk mail right now, I would find something within a few minutes if I looked. Of course, I'm doing that. Let's see. Did I find anything? Not in the first screen of stuff. well there's an email from next door which technically speaking is not spam but honestly i don't really want it so you know what.
|
Ivan:
[45:18]
| Do you mean it's not spam next door is i'm like i'm.
|
Sam:
[45:21]
| Well i actually have the next door account and i apparently did not set my preference to not have that particular email so it's legit it's not you know it's not someone i have no relationship with But that's the only one. Oh, oh, oh, here's one from my son's school district. Okay. So that's real. So two in the first screen full, I, in the first screen of about 50 messages, I found two that weren't spam. So anyway, so that was my story. That was my exciting story. I made it, but I was, you know, when, when I was in the bathroom, Brandy heard loud swearing suddenly coming out of the bathroom. And of course she's thinking...
|
Ivan:
[46:11]
| She's thinking that you're feeling bad from the peak or something or whatever. It's like, you know...
|
Sam:
[46:18]
| Exactly. It's like, is he passing a stone? Is there an issue? Do we have to go to the hospital? No.
|
Ivan:
[46:27]
| No. No, it's you saying, fuck, fuck, this stupid thing. Fuck. Stupid fucking app, you stupid hot day idiots.
|
Sam:
[46:38]
| Exactly. So, anyway. That took a while. Let's just, we'll forget the movies. Yeah, we'll skip the movies for this week. I will give the preview next week will be Lawrence of Arabia from 1962. That's number five on the 1998 AFI list and The Martian from 2015. So those will be the movies for next time. But in the meantime, we will take a break and we will come back and we will talk actual news of the day back after this.
|
Sam:
[47:59]
| Okay, we are back. So on serious newsy stuff, where do you want to start, Yvonne? We sort of, you know, you said TSA wasn't an issue for you. It was for other folks. We had the ICE folks there. We had the LaGuardia plane versus fire truck thing. We have Iran, of course.
|
Ivan:
[48:20]
| Well, let's talk about aviation. That way I can mix into TSA and the accident.
|
Sam:
[48:25]
| Okay, then we'll go from there.
|
Ivan:
[48:27]
| Well, hey, Sam, what did the president do on Friday related to paying the TSA employees?
|
Sam:
[48:37]
| Oh, I was going to say he slept through some meetings like he usually does.
|
Ivan:
[48:41]
| Well, he did that, too.
|
Sam:
[48:42]
| No, he signed an executive order.
|
Ivan:
[48:45]
| Yeah, but Sam, what did we find out when he signed the executive order? Did you read through the fine print of this?
|
Sam:
[48:55]
| Because. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[48:57]
| Because the thing is that we found out that they had not run out of money to pay the TSA employees, that they had chosen not to fucking pay the TSA employees.
|
Sam:
[49:10]
| I was going to say, I've heard semi-conflicting things on this. One is that, in fact, they have not run out of money yet, and they could have been paying these people all along, and it was just an administration choice not to, specifically to sort of increase the pain or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[49:24]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[49:25]
| But also, I've heard, nevertheless, Trump's executive order to pay them is probably illegal, because that's not the right mechanism to do this, etc.
|
Ivan:
[49:36]
| But the reality is that they had not run out of money to pay the guys.
|
Sam:
[49:42]
| Every other part of the Department of Homeland Security was being paid, except TSA. And maybe a couple other stragglers. But, like, you know, the funding bill that was holding up was for all of you.
|
Ivan:
[49:57]
| By the way, Global Entry was reopened, by the way, when I came back from Dominican Republic.
|
Sam:
[50:02]
| But it was all of Department of Homeland Security that the bill is for. And various other parts were being paid properly. And, you know, there are all kinds of rules about in-government shutdowns, who gets paid, who doesn't get paid. There's a lot of discretion. There's a lot of determination of sort of what's critical, what's not, et cetera. So bottom line is it seems to be consensus that they could have paid these folks all along if they'd wanted to.
|
Ivan:
[50:33]
| Right. But they chose not to.
|
Sam:
[50:35]
| They chose not to.
|
Ivan:
[50:37]
| I mean, it's just...
|
Sam:
[50:40]
| And of course, the problem that was happening in many airports, but not all, as you said, in your airport, there was no significant delays whatsoever in the trips you had. In other airports, there were delays of multi hours to get through security lines.
|
Ivan:
[50:53]
| But I don't know if you saw, I shared a chart that, listen, it's really- Basically.
|
Sam:
[50:58]
| Houston was the only bad one, right?
|
Ivan:
[50:59]
| Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know, you didn't comment on this, but I actually said specifically, was this on purpose?
|
Sam:
[51:08]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[51:09]
| You know, given the name of the airport, that was why I said, yes, George Bush Airport. These fuckers did that on purpose. Sam, every other airport was at 22 minutes. Houston was at three hours and 20 minutes.
|
Sam:
[51:28]
| So the thing is about it.
|
Ivan:
[51:29]
| This had to be intentional.
|
Sam:
[51:30]
| The only thing about it being intentional that I would question is, from what I understand, the airports, the reason there were trouble was, I mean, is that TSA employees, despite not being paid, were theoretically supposed to show up. But of course, some were calling out sick because they're like, fuck this, I'm not working for free. And so the places where there were delays were where more people were not showing up.
|
Ivan:
[52:00]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:00]
| So, but that would be sort of under the control of the individual TSA employees, not like a choice from above, unless somebody was like, hey, you Houston folks, why don't you all hang back? I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[52:13]
| That's what I'm saying. Because, I mean, it's crazy. But understand, here's the problem of, well, unless you use sick pay. Listen, if you don't show up to work, you're not going to get paid.
|
Sam:
[52:24]
| Well, they were calling out sick specifically.
|
Ivan:
[52:28]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:29]
| Okay. Which presumably for these agents, there is sick pay. I don't know. I guess. Normally after these shutdowns, Congress pays them retroactively.
|
Ivan:
[52:39]
| They get paid retroactively, right.
|
Sam:
[52:41]
| Yeah. I mean, Congress has to explicitly do that.
|
Ivan:
[52:44]
| But if you don't show up to work, you're not going to get paid.
|
Sam:
[52:48]
| Right. Unless it's a sick day and it's an approved sick day. So they were calling out sick. Now, do you actually believe everyone was sick at exactly the same time during the shutdown? I don't know. But, you know, what are you going to do? I guess they could ask them all for doctor's notes.
|
Ivan:
[53:06]
| I guess. But yeah, three hours and 20 minutes in Houston. I mean, like, if you looked at the chart, it was like three hours and 20 minutes of Houston, Phoenix 20. I mean, Miami, like I said, look, Checkpoint 3, which I don't use Checkpoint 3. I usually use, it's one nearby it, which has pre-checkpoint. It was, that Checkpoint 3 had 15 minutes. Actually, I just realized right now, no, we did go through Checkpoint 3, because Manu doesn't have pre-check. I keep forgetting about this. I'm going to have to sign him up for... Now he's old enough, I've got to sign him up for global entry. Otherwise, yeah, so I've got to do that. And, yeah, we did go to Checkpoint 3. As a matter of fact, they actually... Because they saw that we both had pre-check and he didn't, they actually let us cut in front of everybody. That was actually faster.
|
Sam:
[54:00]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[54:02]
| So, but... I, it's just, my whole thing is that they, they didn't have to not pay TSA employees, but they chose to do so anyway.
|
Sam:
[54:13]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[54:14]
| Because it's just the standard bullshit, fucking bullshit that we deal with every day with this fucking bullshit administration.
|
Sam:
[54:24]
| Well, and despite the executive order, and theoretically they could be paid as early as Monday, but despite this executive order, the actual funding of Department of Homeland Security still has not resolved.
|
Ivan:
[54:38]
| Well, is that right? Because even though the Senate.
|
Sam:
[54:40]
| They didn't make a deal.
|
Ivan:
[54:42]
| Right?
|
Sam:
[54:43]
| They made a deal in the Senate, even though Donald Trump was yelling at them to not make a deal. Right. But the Senate made a deal. They passed something through unanimous consent a couple of days ago. And then the house was like, no, fuck that. I'm not doing that because apparently they pay more attention to Donald than, than the Senate does. And they passed their own thing, which does not match at all, in which the Senate says is a non-starter in the Senate. And I think the difference is the Senate actually did make some nods towards adjusting ICE and funding for ICE and rules for ICE and things like that. And the House is not willing to do that at all. And so— Well, the House.
|
Ivan:
[55:28]
| Well, the House.
|
Sam:
[55:30]
| Well, Speaker Johnson. it and leadership thank you yeah because this is a yet another thing where you know you might end up with a discharge position petition to override but that takes a long time you know that's not going to happen anytime soon that you know right and so we'll see we'll see but if now that we're paying tsa it's not going to be painful anymore so there's no incentive to resolve it sooner rather later so it'll it'll just hang out there for a long time probably yeah yeah now.
|
Ivan:
[56:06]
| There's really no incentive to make a deal quickly anytime soon well if they make the deal they still haven't yet so i i well i don't know but the whole thing is that this is just my whole point about this is it's a it's it's the standard substandard bullshit of these guys and it's always it's always a show It's always bullshit. It's all bullshit. Nothing is what it seems. They're never making anything in terms of trying to solve a problem, legislation, whatever. They create problems. They fake create problems. Everything is a straw man, and this is another one of them. Right. I don't know. Well, going back to the issue at sticking with aviation, that crash at LaGuardia.
|
Sam:
[56:55]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[56:56]
| I shared some detailed information on this on the Slack. The thing is that at night at LaGuardia, they lower the number of people at control tower well below what is in the daytime, even though in many cases traffic is not lighter. OK, and one of the things that they do is that they've got two runways that they combine their responsibilities for ground. And OK, so you've got a ground controller that is the one that supervises movements on the ground of vehicles and aircraft. OK, authorizes when an aircraft is supposed to cross a runway or not, et cetera, whatever. And then you've got the tower controller, which is the one that controls takeoffs and landings. Anybody that is close to the airport, when you are about close, you know, because there's a departure controller and there's an arrivals controller that controls the airspace around the airport. Once you get very close to the airport, you switch to the tower, which is the one that gives you instructions for final land. Okay. So that's the tower controller. So they combine tower and ground at night. But look, at an airport like DeGuardia, that's too much work for one guy. It's just too much. But even still, here's the reality.
|
Ivan:
[58:20]
| The tower, you know, that controller that was doing both, did clear the fire trucks that were involved in the incident to go across that active running.
|
Sam:
[58:33]
| Explain the scenario that was happening.
|
Ivan:
[58:36]
| Okay. So here's what happened. A United aircraft on the other side of the airport, okay, on the east side of the airport, had reported that they had fumes, that there was an issue, and they needed emergency equipment right away. So for those fire vehicles to get there, they had to cross the active runway that was being used for takeoffs and landings, okay? So the vehicles called the ground controller to get clearance to go across. The controller cleared them to cross, but also he had cleared this Air Canada airplane to land at the same time. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[59:14]
| All of a sudden, after the controller did clear the ground and he's looking and they have radar that shows the vehicles on the ground, not just the aircraft, but that shows what vehicles are on the ground. Okay. The tower controller realizes that those vehicles have been cleared across, but there was an airplane landing. He calls out twice for, and he called out vehicle one, stop, stop, stop, stop. He tried to get them to stop. Here's another thing that should have been at play.
|
Ivan:
[59:45]
| That airport has this lighting system that will, if you are an airplane or a vehicle approaching to cross an active runway, red lights will flash to tell you hey forget about don't cross don't fucking cross now people need to verify they're working correctly i mean it's a system that's been installed in place at many airports for a long time i see them all the time when i'm plane spotting work you will see them like light up right there they will be lighting up right right right until all the sun you get cleared they go and they go white so you can you so you can go onto the onto the active runway uh but that that that fire truck should have seen that but here's the thing about it the lead truck didn't stop but when the stop got called out ground radar showed that all the vehicles following him did it was only that one that didn't stop right so i'm not understanding what the hell happened in the communication inside the lead vehicle that there were about, eight or ten trucks that were heading over there, all of the other trucks heard the stop but not the lead vehicle.
|
Sam:
[1:00:57]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:58]
| When the Air Canada plane landed and that vehicle crossed, there was nothing they could do. There was nothing they could do. They had, they were going way too fast. It was too close to the point where they landed. They were doing over a hundred knots. They're fucked. There's nothing they could do. So now the investigation has to go is to understand why the heck that lead vehicle, despite the fact that it got told to stop twice, despite the fact that it had flashing red lights, why the heck all the other vehicles understood the command to stop and he didn't. The controller did make a mistake to clear them. However, the controller did call back to correct it to stop within enough time that they should have stopped. Yes, absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:01:48]
| And to be clear, we should learn more about this. The people in the firetruck survived.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:54]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:01:55]
| You know, they had to be hospitalized. I don't know their current condition, but they survived.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:00]
| Now, the question is, of course, if they're going to fess up. I make sure that they're going to fess up. Why the hell they fucked up?
|
Sam:
[1:02:06]
| Oh, well, I'm sure they are already lawyered up. If not, they should be.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:11]
| They should be. Yeah, that's my concern right now. Now, I mean, was it an equipment failure or did they fuck up? That's good because it could have been an equipment failure as well. Like radio equipment something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just weren't working right something. Yeah. So that's a possibility. Hey, the ground, I mean, those systems work very well. Did the ground light system with the flashing red lights, did it not activate for some reason? And that's something that needs to be determined as well. It needs to be tested. Because that's the reason why that's been put around almost every airport around the U.S. And that's something that has reduced those kinds of runway incursions a lot. And it's a system that people depend on. So we got to check to see if that system was working properly. But yeah, it's very unfortunate, man, because, you know, the controller made a mistake, but the controller caught his mistake. But the reality is that the reason the controller made the mistake is because there was no reason he should be doing that job by himself with that much traffic in the air.
|
Sam:
[1:03:18]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:20]
| But this was not the controller's fault.
|
Sam:
[1:03:22]
| Yeah. The other thing here, though, is it actually seems remarkable that we only had the pilot and co-pilot die.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:31]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:03:32]
| You know, given the nature of the accident.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:35]
| A lot of people did get hurt on the plane.
|
Sam:
[1:03:38]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:39]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:03:40]
| A lot of concussions. A lot of people like slamming their heads into the seat in front of them. Things like that. But only two dead. And I gather the, and some people weren't injured at all.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:52]
| The emergency vehicles, thankfully, were right there. There was an entire gaggle of them.
|
Sam:
[1:03:58]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:59]
| It didn't take too long to get rescue on it.
|
Sam:
[1:04:03]
| Yeah. I guess it probably delayed the attention to that other plane that had the smell or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:08]
| Yes. The other plane, it was a fume incident. You know, I don't know how they dealt with, you know, they dealt with that. They were, yeah. So, they had been originally, the other plane had been trying to avoid evacuating the airplanes and they were trying to get the fire trucks over there for them to, I'm assuming they finally, they probably evacuated that plane because of the fumes.
|
Sam:
[1:04:28]
| So i mean in this case like you said there were a bunch of people injured enough to go to the hospital there are a bunch of people who walked off the damn plane without anything um the the pilot and co-pilot died there was one stewardess who was ejected from the plane found 300 feet away and needed medical attention but will be fine in the end um you know so i i heard you know some some conflicting reports on like, you know, we're, Did the pilots do things that helped, even though, like, they ended up dying? Like, you know, like, for instance, if they had tried to swerve to avoid the truck, it probably would have made things worse, not better. Because, like, given the speed they were going, given the amount of time they had.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:21]
| If they turned— It would have flipped the plane over.
|
Sam:
[1:05:23]
| It would have flipped the plane over or hit on the wings that still had fuel in them and caused a fire.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:30]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:05:30]
| You know, and I've heard a little bit of conflict of whether they were able to slow down more than they would have on a normal landing so that to just be a little bit slower when they hit the truck, I don't know. Maybe that helped a little bit, maybe not. But it clearly could have been a lot worse.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:52]
| Oh, it could have been. It could have been a lot worse, But I really feel bad for those pilots. They really just... And there's nothing they could do. They were just at the worst possible moment, something like that to happen. It's one of those where, you know, I still remember, it reminds me of this car accident that we had where we were driving down. I was a passenger where this guy just ran a stop sign right at the moment that we're coming through. true and it's just this helpless feeling you can't there it doesn't matter how good you're there's nothing to do nothing to do all i did was close my eyes put my hands over my head i said oh shit.
|
Sam:
[1:06:33]
| Because there.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:34]
| Was nothing else to do.
|
Sam:
[1:06:35]
| Yeah and there are a lot of scenarios that end up being like that i mean you know you you talk about first of all if you're the driver driving carefully driving defensively all that kind of stuff but there's some scenarios where there's just absolutely nothing nothing you can do there i mean i remember you remember a few years ago where sort of across the street from where i was working in seattle a crane fell on the damn road right you know and you know there was dash cam video right you know there was somebody that was at a stoplight right red light waiting for it to turn green and a crane fell on the car right, nothing defensive.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:22]
| Driving technique are you using in order to avoid the crane falling on your car.
|
Sam:
[1:07:27]
| Right you know but yeah and and of course this is same thing for pilots in this kind of situation obviously it's just like the the thing that happened happened too late and at a time where there was nothing to do nothing to.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:44]
| Do nothing to do nothing to do unfortunately.
|
Sam:
[1:07:49]
| Okay anything else aviation wise before we move on to another topic, Okay. Ah, let's see. What do we do then? What do we do then? What do we do then? I guess I ran.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:00]
| I fucking ran. How's it going, Sam? Are we winning?
|
Sam:
[1:08:05]
| Oh, yes, clearly. Well, I mean, I keep hearing Donald Trump's...
|
Ivan:
[1:08:09]
| Hey, did you notice that the Iranians hacked Kash Patel's private email? Talk about the great... We have the dumbest fucking heads of anything ever.
|
Sam:
[1:08:23]
| Uh-huh. I would say at least it wasn't his work email, but reality of these guys is they don't use their work email. They're using their personal email for government duties. They're using Signal. Right. You know, from previous history, it's remarkable that they're not, like, signaling journalists about what they're doing anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:46]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:08:47]
| You know? So, no. If you remember just in the early days of this war, there were pictures released of Trump and his advisors at Mar-a-Lago managing the start of the war with a black curtain separating them from the diners that are just at Mar-a-Lago as customers.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:12]
| Why are they so stupid? I mean, okay, fine. Take your stupid positions. That's fine. You know, but why are they just so stupid about even this shit? What is it? I don't get it. I mean, even Putin, with all his despicable positions, manages operational security of his shit a lot better than this. I mean, okay, so these guys are assholes. I mean, the problem is that they're, okay, Putin is an asshole, an evil one, but not stupid. these guys are evil stupid assholes.
|
Sam:
[1:09:52]
| Right fuck, they are and but i keep hearing donald trump say over and over and over that we come you know we've completely destroyed and obliterated and blah blah blah and but we're still gonna go for a couple weeks but then we'll be done okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:12]
| Okay okay yeah the the economist gave the perfect quote about this where they said that what was it they said that, Yes, Donald, you said that you obliterated, you know, all their capability, 100% of their military capability, but it's amazing how much damage to the world economy that 0% of their capability is doing.
|
Sam:
[1:10:40]
| Yeah. I've heard. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:44]
| So stupid.
|
Sam:
[1:10:46]
| The latest I've heard, by the way, is that in addition to the oil that is not going through the Gulf of, the Gulf of Hormuz, the Strait of Hormuz.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:56]
| Gulf of Hormuz?
|
Sam:
[1:10:57]
| Yeah, the Gulf of Hormuz. Well, I also, I'm trying to be careful because it's really- I have.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:02]
| All these fucking names. I have the Strait of Hormuz. Now we're calling it the Gulf of Hormuz.
|
Sam:
[1:11:09]
| Well, also the thing that.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:11]
| That should be the name of the episode. The Gulf of Hormuz. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:11:14]
| The mistake that I've made myself that I've heard others make as well, including Donald Trump, by the way, is to make it plural straights. It is not the straights of Hormuz. It is a single straight of Hormuz. Okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:11:31]
| Jesus Christ.
|
Sam:
[1:11:32]
| You know, it is one, not multiple.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:35]
| Not multiple. Not multiple.
|
Sam:
[1:11:38]
| Right. So anyway, in addition to the oil that's not getting through, there are apparently some necessary raw materials for making fertilizer that are also not going through.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:53]
| Yeah, that is correct.
|
Sam:
[1:11:54]
| And there is, there are apparently, it's starting to cascade because there are fertilizer manufacturing plants in Bangladesh and elsewhere that are shutting down because they don't have-
|
Ivan:
[1:12:06]
| Fertilizer prices have been going through the roof. Yes, that's correct. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:10]
| And this is...
|
Ivan:
[1:12:10]
| It's part of the winning, Sam. It's part of the fucking winning.
|
Sam:
[1:12:14]
| Well, this is one of those things that also cascades because, you know, first the fertilizer prices go up, then fertilizer becomes harder to get because the price is going up and just supply, which then affects agriculture, which then affects food prices, which then affects food availability.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:36]
| You don't understand the 6D chess that we're playing, Sam. This is the thing. We're winning, Sam. We are winning. We have eliminated 100% of their military capability, Sam. 100%. Now we need to get rid of the other 100%, I guess.
|
Sam:
[1:12:57]
| From what I understand, though, Iran is making deals on a one-off basis at a time with different countries, different freighters, whatever, to let specific things through.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:11]
| Listen, that is complete bullshit anyway. It doesn't matter. This whole thing about cutting one-off deals. Nobody is going to go and sail a ship through a fucking shooting war. OK. Most companies, most, most ships are not.
|
Sam:
[1:13:34]
| There have been a few going through.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:36]
| Very tiny amounts.
|
Sam:
[1:13:38]
| Very tiny amounts.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:39]
| Very tiny amounts.
|
Sam:
[1:13:40]
| But the point is, some of those are because of these one-off deals, which are gaining, you know, Iran's making money off it.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:46]
| But Sam, it doesn't matter.
|
Sam:
[1:13:49]
| Oh, no, it won't affect the globe.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:50]
| It's not enough.
|
Sam:
[1:13:51]
| It's not enough to affect. No, here's the thing. It's not enough to affect the global economic situation. It is enough for Iran to claim some specific victories and to gain some cash.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:02]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. But we have eased sanctions on Iran. Cash, Iran's oil. We fucking eased sanctions on the fucking Iranian oil anyway. So what the hell? We gave the fucking money.
|
Sam:
[1:14:17]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:18]
| And the Russian oil.
|
Sam:
[1:14:19]
| And the Russian oil. Yeah, this is the point. Like, if you start, and this harkens back to the conversation we had a couple weeks ago on this, where the way that the Trump administration is calling this a success is, look at all the shit we blew up. Look at all the people we killed.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:40]
| Listen, apparently Donald Trump is getting a daily, like, clip. It's like a video clip. It's like a YouTube. Yeah, a two-minute clip. of like just shit being blown up.
|
Sam:
[1:14:54]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:56]
| You know, and he obviously, it's one of those montages that I'm sure looks cool in the abstract, right? And for a dumbass like him, makes him feel like he's totally winning.
|
Sam:
[1:15:10]
| Yes, and this is the thing. If you are grading solely on shit blown up and people killed, you can rattle off the list of the things you've blown up. We've apparently dropped a shit ton of weaponry on it between us and Israel. we have blown up lots of things we have killed lots of people now 200 of them were innocent school girls but whatever we killed a bunch of people but whatever whatever well.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:39]
| Listen you're channeling what they would say 200 innocent.
|
Sam:
[1:15:43]
| School girls they weren't that innocent they weren't that.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:47]
| Innocent they're iranians.
|
Sam:
[1:15:49]
| You know anyway however Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:53]
| I'm sorry. Is that what they—I'm sure that that's what they were saying.
|
Sam:
[1:15:58]
| Yeah, I'm sure. Now, however, if you start looking at potential strategic goals here— Okay, regime change. We have succeeded in getting someone more hard-line than where we started. Win, right? Yeah, clearly a win.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:15]
| Not just that, but listen, we have emboldened Iran.
|
Sam:
[1:16:19]
| We have emboldened them.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:22]
| Why would they make a deal right now? For deal what? For what?
|
Sam:
[1:16:29]
| Yes. And look, all sorts of, if you look at, there's probably a half dozen different strategic goals that you could potentially say were a goal of this endeavor or excursion, excursion, as Donald Trump says. Oh, that's an excursion. yes every single one of these strategic measures as opposed to how much shit did we blow up is going the wrong direction so like this is not this is completely backfired in terms of any of these other things you know and and look, Donald Trump is saying now that he has delayed the next phase of like blowing up power plants and stuff multiple times now because we are in healthy, fruitful negotiations with the Iranians on a way out. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:32]
| So do you believe this?
|
Sam:
[1:17:34]
| Here is. I am trying.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:37]
| Do you believe this? No, no, no. Yes or no question. Do you believe that statement?
|
Sam:
[1:17:44]
| I believe something is happening, but not what Donald—let me explain what I think, okay? Because I have been trying to parse Donald Trump's completely addled statements that clearly are not well tied to reality to try to figure out what might actually be going on, okay? Because he has said we are in fruitful negotiations. And when asked who we are in negotiations with, has been like, no, we're not talking to the Ayatollah. No, we're not talking to this group. No, we're not talking to that group. What I think is happening is they are talking to some random Iranian that they hope might be able to take over once they kill a few more of the current leadership.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:33]
| This sounds like the Ahmed Shalabi of Iran.
|
Sam:
[1:18:39]
| Who was an exiled Iraqi, for those who don't remember, who hoped to become president of Iraq after the U.S. killed Saddam.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:51]
| They had a lot of work out, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:18:53]
| That did not work out at all. But I think that's what's happening here. I think when they are saying they're talking to Iranians and negotiating with Iranians, they are talking to some random Iranian who's not actually in a position of power, but they hope could be the head of a puppet government after they kill a few more people. That's what I think is happening.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:20]
| Great.
|
Sam:
[1:19:20]
| Sounds great.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:22]
| Awesome. It's like, you know, I mean, listen, this, this, there was this guy who during the financial crisis, right as the 2008 financial crisis, right as Bernie Madoff went down, there was another guy that went down with a similar Ponzi scheme, but that does not get as much coverage for it. It was, if I remember his name is Fred Dreyer, right?
|
Sam:
[1:19:48]
| Okay, I don't remember this.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:50]
| Mark Dreyer. Yes, Mark Dreyer. Okay, well, let me tell you the thing that he was, one of the things that he was trying to do to further his scheme near the end, that is the one thing that almost brought him down. He was trying to sell these notes, okay? And he claimed that they were from an insurance company somewhere in Canada, if I remember correctly. And so he went and somehow he got access to the office of the insurance company, got access to a conference room, and sat down in there to negotiate the sale of these securities like he was part of the insurance company. But all he did was manage to hijack a conference room into place to act like he was the insurance company. And this is kind of like the people I feel that this administration is talking in Iran. It's some fucking guys that decided to go and say, hey, we'll talk to you. OK, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we'll make a deal with something, whatever, blah, blah, blah. They got the Pakistanis in the middle, which I believe are trying to also curry favor with Trump in some way. And so they're saying that they're talking to them. But who the fuck knows who the hell they're talking to anyway?
|
Ivan:
[1:20:59]
| You know, might as well. They're probably just bullshitting him anyway. Because, by the way, he doesn't, you know, because if you were a real president, okay, you'll be using your intelligence services to figure out and figure it out who the fuck you're talking to and making sure that whatever you're talking to is a real source. Instead, you know, this is like, hey, bro, I trust you, baby. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. You tell me what the fuck it is, you know, and that's who they're talking to.
|
Sam:
[1:21:23]
| Like, meanwhile, the actual Iranian leadership, which, by the way, apparently the new Ayatollah has not been seen in a while. So there are rumors that maybe he was significantly injured and maybe he's not dead, but he's not really functional. But the folks who are talking in Iranian leadership are 100 percent. Why would we ever negotiate with the Americans again? The last two times that we were negotiating with them, right in the middle of the negotiations, where we, by the way, were offering real things and real concessions, right in the middle of that, they attack us. So why would we bother? There's no trustworthy negotiation. We had a deal that we made with Obama that was really strict and had a whole bunch of stuff on it, and it was going well. And Donald pulled out of that thing last time. And then these last two times they've attacked us during negotiations. Why would we ever do that again? If you remember, in one situation, the Israelis even attacked the negotiating team at their hotel in, I forget which Gulf state it was. You know, why would we trust any of this? And that's completely legitimate. Why would they? Why would they? There's no incentive for it whatsoever.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:50]
| I mean, the deal was terrible, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:22:52]
| And look, apparently, they were offering stuff close to the previous Obama deal this time around, if not ahead of it in certain areas. And, you know, but it certainly appears that, you know, the Trump administration didn't actually care. It was all just a sideshow. Like, they didn't really want a deal. They wanted to do this. Although there's some question about that, too. It may have been one of these things where Trump was going back and forth and this and Yahoo was just the last person he talked to before he gave the yes, you know, to to do the attack. But I don't know, Yvonne, are we going to we still have we still have all kinds of taco opportunities. Donald Trump has not bombed the power facilities and such because Iran said, you know, you do that, we're going to bomb similar facilities all throughout the Middle East, you know. And so Donald apparently backed out, apparently. And he's talking about these negotiations that are going well. Donald could stop our involvement at any moment. There's a question whether Iran would back off. There's a question of whether Israel would back off. But do you believe that in another two weeks, we'll all be done here? Everything back to normal?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:16]
| No. No. There's no way. No.
|
Sam:
[1:24:20]
| And by the way, even if hostilities stopped tomorrow, all of the price implications of this stuff, they don't reset in a week. That's going to take a long time to rebalance and get things back.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:36]
| Like, listen, the inflationary effects that we have right now are going to last a very, very long time. This is a worst scenario that they have created related to inflation in the economy right now.
|
Sam:
[1:24:51]
| Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like we've already got baked in, I mean, at least through the end of this year, right? Even if things get better right away?
|
Ivan:
[1:25:04]
| Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, the supply shock of oil isn't going to get rectified anytime soon. So this is going to create a serious issue in terms of prices, in terms of everything. It's like these shocks just don't go away that quickly. And so when you have depleted inventories, when you've got like fuel shortages, when you people are going to start one of the things that's going to happen is people are going to start hoarding supplies also which that drives up prices um no i mean like right now listen five dollar a gallon for regular gas right now is real it's here, And it's not going away anytime soon.
|
Sam:
[1:25:52]
| I shared a picture to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack of one gas station near my son's school that's at $6 for regular. Now, to be fair, it's the most expensive I've seen around here. Almost everywhere else is between $5 and $5.50. But there's this one that's at $6. I don't know how they can get away with it when all the ones around them are $5.50, but whatever. Location, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:16]
| Listen, it probably, let me tell you something. Like, one of the things about now, but one of the things about gasoline prices is having, like, my uncle had a gas station. So I remember how they set prices a lot of the time. So it depends on when they get shipments, okay? All right? So they will set the price depending on when the last shipment of gas that came in. You pay, you know, your gas station, you will be paying for spot price for gasoline as it arrives at that moment. And then from that, you will set price. And so, you know, if it's a high volume gas station, they get pretty frequent shipments, your price, you're going to have to push the price up immediately. Because if you get a new tanker that you fill up and it's 25% more than the last one, you can't be selling it. You can't sell it at four bucks when you paid five, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:27:07]
| Yeah. Yeah, and that's why I said location as well, right? Because if it's in a good location, like this one gas station that's at six, there are cheaper gas stations nearby, but not within sight. It's a little different than when it's the one like 30 feet down the road, right? You know, you're going to, the people driving by are going to go to the cheaper one if they can see both of them at the same time.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:27]
| Yeah, when they're like right across the street sometimes. Yeah, that does happen with gas stations across the street where they have. But eventually, what I'm saying is that when the other gas station gets their next shipment, their price is going to go back up. Yeah. Yeah, so we're fucked.
|
Sam:
[1:27:46]
| Nice. Well, I mean, the one good thing from my point of view on this is the more this kind of stuff is fucked, the better the Democrats are going to do in November.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:57]
| So, listen, this is, this is the, this is, I mean, you want to talk about bad scenarios for a party, okay? this is almost as bad as 2008 like right now it's edge it's it's it's it's going towards 2008 1980 type but here's the thing even in 1980 the democrats didn't lose the house well of course the democrats held the house forever okay it was like 50 plus years until neil law until newt Inrish. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:28:38]
| And you say they didn't lose, but I think they lost ground. Like, they lost, they just had enough of a buffer that they could...
|
Ivan:
[1:28:44]
| They lost ground, but they, yeah, but they never, but they never, they didn't lose it for fucking 50 years, okay? You know? So, I mean, this is, you know, this is a very different territory than 1980. We can't compare it.
|
Sam:
[1:29:00]
| Ah, yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:02]
| Yet.
|
Sam:
[1:29:04]
| Yes. We can, you know, like never underestimate the potential for this administration to make things worse.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:14]
| Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, that is one thing that, I mean, they are being quite impressive at just fucking with everything. And the thing is that... Right now, everything they are doing is so unpopular. And they keep doubling and tripling down on it. And it's like... But of course, they go and they show Trump all these videos of the bombs, right? So he's like, yay, look, my bombs. They're so cool. Look at all those cute little bombs over there, killing all those people. it's like listen they were playing the DOD was putting out fucking videos combining video fucking game footage with fucking war footage like this is some kind of game not like we're killing people meanwhile.
|
Sam:
[1:30:11]
| And I shared this on the curmudgeon's corner slack Iran put out, Honestly, a really good music video with like Lego versions of Donald Trump and everybody.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:23]
| Oh my God. They did a brilliant job. You know, this is one of these things where I'm just like, man, look, let me tell you something. On the one side, I have a repressive regime.
|
Sam:
[1:30:33]
| I mean, 100% propaganda, but come on, it was good.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:36]
| Yes, but it was good. But this is what I'm cheering on the Iranian side. A brutal, repressive regime that has murdered so many people, that oppresses them, that kills gays, that kills whatever, puts people in prison without any due process, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Okay, it's a horrible regime. On the right side, I got fucking Donald J. Trump, who is also an evil asshole on it. And I never thought that I would be on the cheering side for Iran on something. They put out that video, and I'm like, this is brilliant. They are right. What the fuck can I say? I can't argue about anything. They put out this fucking video. Not one fucking thing. Nothing.
|
Sam:
[1:31:26]
| It was things about Donald Trump making people's lives worse. It was about him doing this to distract from the Epstein file. It was about, yeah, search up the Iranian Lego propaganda video. It's worth a watch. honestly it's funny it's it's got uh yeah it's got a song behind it that's actually catchy you know yeah and like and like yvonne said most of what they say in there you you look at it and you're like you know they're right about this part they're right about that part you know there are parts where they're like calling for revenge and stuff almost.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:08]
| None of it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:09]
| You know So anyway, one other thing about Donald they'll say, and then let's wrap up. And I know I'd said something about this to a curmudgeon's corner slack and Yvonne's like, you know, Sam, nobody cares. And I agree. Nobody cares. But Donald Trump's mental state is getting worse. Mental and physical state is getting noticeably worse, like on a week to week basis.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:32]
| But the thing is that, listen, I know, but we've talked about it for so long. And the Republicans don't give a fuck. They are not going to do a goddamn thing about it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:44]
| No, they are not. And they're actively covering for it, if anything. I mean, I mentioned earlier him falling asleep. I think Hegseth was talking or something. And Donald Trump was sitting right next to him, two feet away, and was clearly asleep. Hegseth sort of mentioned his name a couple of times to try to get him to wake up. And you saw his eyes roll a little bit. And he's saying things that are, I mean, and look, we're grading on a curve here. We're talking against, like, Donald Trump was never particularly hinged to begin with, but he's even more unhinged now. Like, the things he's saying and how much they are or are not related to reality, it's getting worse.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:29]
| You know what, what, Listen, what really pisses me off to no end now is where the fuck are all these people that kept complaining about Biden's mental state? Fuck you all. Okay? Fuck you all in hell. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:33:51]
| Yes. I mean, hell, even during the 2024 campaign, like, with everything you could say about Biden, Trump was arguably worse even then. He's definitely worse now. You know, he, like, and, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:10]
| Way worse!
|
Sam:
[1:34:11]
| And there's something you could be.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:13]
| Hey, where is Jake Tapper's expose on Trump's mental fucking facilities, huh? Where the fuck is his expose? you know what that prick still to this day and I swear to God if I bump into that guy I'm gonna yell at him okay if I if I bump into that asshole that fucking part about well they were considering putting him in a fucking wheelchair hey Sam have you seen Rin right now even with cancer being rolled around through airports in a fucking wheelchair no.
|
Sam:
[1:34:44]
| No I've seen I've seen recent pictures of him getting ice cream again on planes at the airport, like, you know, all walking by himself. Yeah. And that's with cancer. And by the way, even if he had to be in a wheelchair, that says absolutely nothing about his mental state and what matters. You know, we had a president in a wheelchair before.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:08]
| Yes, you have seen him interacting with people, random interactions with so many people. Has he sounded like an incoherent, blubbering idiot that our president right now sounds like.
|
Sam:
[1:35:21]
| No, no, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:24]
| But if I fucking, I swear to God, that motherfucker, better Jay Tapper, never, ever I see that fucking guy in front of me. Because that guy will experience a screaming match that he will have never gotten in his life.
|
Sam:
[1:35:37]
| Well, and looking back at 2024, the problems with Trump's mental state and with Biden's mental state were different. You know, when you look at Biden, okay, he's tired sometimes. But he's still smart.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:52]
| Biden was tired.
|
Sam:
[1:35:54]
| Biden was tired.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:56]
| And went to that debate sick with a fucking cold.
|
Sam:
[1:36:01]
| With Donald Trump, the issue going back decades, not all of this is new, is the stupid narcissistic personality disorder. The fact that he doesn't distinguish truth from fiction at all. he believes that's like irrelevant never the fact that he's he has zero reading comprehension has like he's just not that smart in general can't like really absorb the materials that you need to be a competent president and and frankly just the the whole fact of like Like, I guess this is encompassed in the narcissistic personality disorder, but it's all about him. It's all about him all the time. You know, and these are all problems.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:58]
| But he did say that it, hey, Sam, have we confirmed who the former president is that he talked to about the war like recently?
|
Sam:
[1:37:06]
| It's probably George Washington. Okay. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:12]
| Is the ghost of George Washington in the White House? Oh, okay. All right. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:37:16]
| Exactly. No, you know, George Washington never lived in the White House. It was built after him. But, no, the, look, and just.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:25]
| Aren't there any pieces? Wait, wait, wait, wait. But no, but I, didn't when they did their remodeling, there's some things from George Washington.
|
Sam:
[1:37:32]
| Oh, I'm sure they're George Washington artifacts. But he did not live in it.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:36]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:37:36]
| He did not live in the White House. He did not die in the White House.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:39]
| No, no, no, he didn't.
|
Sam:
[1:37:39]
| So his ghost is somewhere else.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:41]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:37:42]
| His ghost is off in Mount Vernon or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:45]
| Well, okay, fair enough. Fair enough, fair enough.
|
Sam:
[1:37:47]
| Fair enough. That was George Washington's place.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:49]
| Right? Yeah, Mount Vernon.
|
Sam:
[1:37:49]
| Yeah, Mount Vernon.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:50]
| Yeah, Mount Vernon. Yeah, Mount Vernon. It was Mount Vernon. Yeah, so Mount Vernon, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:37:54]
| Anyway, I just want to say, Like, in terms of Trump's own mental state, I mean, the falling asleep is a physical thing. But, and I'm not saying, some people are directly saying dementia. I'm not going there. I'm just saying pre-existing problems he has had are getting worse over time. That's all I'm saying. And so, like, you get him, when you listen to his speeches, he's confused. He's rambling. he's saying things that are nonsensical he's getting facts wrong and all of these things are happening at an increasing pace and he was never good at any of this stuff to begin with never ever ever and.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:38]
| Now they are worse.
|
Sam:
[1:38:39]
| And now they are worse and they seemingly are getting worse quickly so i don't and and and like you said like nobody seems to care the republicans certainly don't care the mainstream media isn't talking about it a lot like you know they're they're they're all they'll write an article about like he'll get he'll he'll give a little news conference and when they write about it they'll sanitize it all and try to like like like i did when i was like oh he's probably talking to the you know these people in iran who aren't the people in charge but he hopes they'll be in charge i am trying to interpret like you're saying watching it. Yeah, I'm saying, watch, I'm trying to find some aspect of reality out of what really most likely are just incoherent ramblings, you know? So, I don't know. Are we done, Mr. Bo?
|
Ivan:
[1:39:35]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:39:36]
| Okay. So let me wrap this sucker up. Go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You'll find all of the ways to contact us. You'll find our archives. You'll find transcripts. You'll find all that kind of stuff. You will, of course, also find a Patreon where you can give us money. Money is nice. Give us money. And 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 of that kind of stuff. at $2 a month or more. Or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the Commissions Chorus Slack, which we have mentioned quite a few times on this show of like, oh, well, we discussed this on the Slack. We shared this on the Slack. We share all kinds of stuff. We talk about things. We, whatever, the news. Like while we have been talking, Yvonne has simultaneously been having a conversation about his condo association on the Slack. So all kinds of things are going on all the time.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:31]
| I shared my campaign. Okay, I did. And if you look at it, look.
|
Sam:
[1:40:36]
| I have not opened a link. Because I've been paying attention to you.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:41]
| Okay, my campaign site right now, you should take a page from mine, you should take a page from my campaign site for your wife's in terms of the issues part. Because if you look at my issues part, I am fucking detailed as, I will put anybody to shame on details about the issues, the facts, an action plan, what we're doing, whatever. However, it's nauseatingly thorough, okay? Let me just put it to you this way, okay? It is nauseatingly thorough, okay? And backed up with just a ridiculous amount of detail, okay? All right? I also, by the way, I took the opportunity to expose my nemesis. I downloaded all our text messages and I summarized them so they can see clearly how he lied while saying that I was never cooperative. And saying publicly, in private text messages, he repeatedly said the opposite.
|
Sam:
[1:41:49]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:50]
| So I downloaded our entire, there was a massive trove of text. I saved them all. I summarize them and have it there in detail to expose him as a fucking lying piece of shit he is.
|
Sam:
[1:42:05]
| There you go. That's very nice. So aside from that, Yvonne, what's a highlight from the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack that we have not talked about on the show that will make people want to join our Patreon? Or our Slack.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:18]
| It's related to air travel, but really isn't. Okay. All right. And I will say, here's the thing. This happened the first time I, over the years, airlines have combined train or bus travel together with air travel as like a one ticket. Okay. So a flight segment made appear on an airline ticket as a flight segment, but may actually be on a train. This is something I had heard that is rare, has been rare, but has happened, okay? In the 80s, I remember specifically out of Newark specifically, there was a way, you know, it was out of New York area airport where you could combine a certain portion of the travel by air or bus to get to certain places in order to complete your trip, okay? And so the thing about it is that allowed all the, all you could to be able to pay it on your airline ticket. And so you're not buying a separate bus ticket and whatever. So you get your entire transportation all in one. But it's not common. OK, it's very uncommon. And so a few months ago on a podcast I listened to, somebody was going to South Bend, Indiana, and there are planes that travel from Chicago to South Bend, Indiana. But American Airlines went and substituted that with a bus. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:42]
| And so all of a sudden, and the thing is that you board the bus from a gate at the airport. Okay. So the thing is that he goes and he lands in Chicago. He's going to the gate for his connection. And then he gets taken down to a bus. And then he thinks that the bus is going to take him to the plane. But no. bus was taken up to South Bend. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:44:06]
| Excellent.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:07]
| And it arrived at the airport and it left them not like at a bus depot, but it drove to like where the planes arrived and then offloaded them there and his bags. And this was very confusing. So a story came out about this, you know, on the Washington Post, you know, about this when your first class flight turns out to be a bus ride. Some airlines are operating bus routes as flights from small communities to larger. And the one thing that why some people are confused, as I realize, is that if you're buying this now, not from the airline website, okay, but you're buying it from a third party.
|
Sam:
[1:44:50]
| Like an Expedia or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:52]
| It's not obviously clear. Yeah. It's not obviously clear that it's a bus. and that's where people like if you because you go to American Airlines you know you buy it from there it's it's it's very very obvious that part of the trip is on a bus but these people went on Expedia or whatever bought this thing and then all of a sudden you know they're like wait a minute what the fuck a bus and it's a nice bus by the way some people have mentioned that and I've seen the bus. I'll tell you what, this is nicer than some planes.
|
Sam:
[1:45:23]
| Well, yeah. I mean, especially the economy class jammed in on some airlines, right? Buses usually have a decent amount of legroom, for instance.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:37]
| It's a luxury coach bus. It's not, you know, it's a very nice, if you go into the article and you see the pictures, it's a very nice bus.
|
Sam:
[1:45:45]
| It's not a 1980s school bus.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:48]
| No, no, no. Oh, no, nothing of the sort. It's even got fold-down tables like on the airplane and everything, you know? It's got video screens, fold-down, Wi-Fi.
|
Sam:
[1:45:59]
| Very good. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:01]
| So, anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:46:02]
| Nice, nice, nice thing. I will do my obligatory Robin Letter promotion, too. Trailing four-week active users is up to 80. So, that's good, you know. And I suspect, since I've mentioned it on the show several times, anybody who's interested here has already contacted me. So, I've stopped, like, inviting my own people. So I have to figure out what the next growth burst will be and how I will engineer that. But I now have, there are three Robins that have been created that I am not personally on at this point. And all three of them seem to be active over the last few days. So that's going well.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:44]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:46:44]
| So we'll see. We'll see. Yvonne's presumably still working on getting the millions from this for this for me. And I am working on getting the individual dollar bills at some point.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:54]
| I was traveling, but I have modified the documents and stuff. I have some action items that I had. I had been traveling this last week. I've been busy, but I had promised to catch up on it this week when I got back.
|
Sam:
[1:47:09]
| That's all cool. And I've been slogging through some... Some behind-the-scenes stuff, like improving metrics collection and stuff like that, that hasn't had a new user impact. I've got a list of things to get through. I've got a couple bugs before I get to the next new major things that users would be able to tell. So I have to decide when my next social media posts and stuff to try to get more people. Anyway, we'll see. Anyway, robinletter.com. If you're not on it, hit me up in email, and I'll get you on it, because it's still an invite-only mode. So you can't just go to the website and sign up. You have to still have to talk to me or be invited by somebody who's already on it.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:51]
| Invite. Invite.
|
Sam:
[1:47:52]
| Invite. Anyway, that's it. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Have a safe week, all that. I'm about to go to—by the time you guys listen, it'll be long over, but I'm about to go to the No Kings stuff. This is the third No Kings event, and Brandy and I are going to try to hit probably two or three of them in our area over the next little bit. So we'll see how many people they get this time. Honestly, the hype for this one seems to have been a bit less than last time. So I know they hope that these are going to be even bigger than last time, but I'm not sure if we'll end up there because I heard less about these in the run up. Like only in the last few days, it was I really aware, oh, there's one coming up this weekend. So we'll see, but I'm going to go.
|
Sam:
[1:48:40]
| So that's it. Have a safe week. Have a fun week, blah, blah, blah. and we will talk to you next time goodbye goodbye hold on the outro is not playing, okay oh wait is it going is it going yes, Okay. Thanks, Yvonne. We'll talk to you later. Have a good rest of your whatever. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:35]
| Okay. Bye.
| |
|
