Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| This is Sam from the Future. I'm just here to note that this was recorded on Friday night U.S. Time, which means it was way too early for us to talk about the events of Saturday night U.S. Time where someone tried to rush into the White House Correspondents' Dinner with guns and presumably to try to assassinate Donald Trump again.
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Sam:
[0:26]
| Or, you know, who knows? They might have been after some other person who was attending or just doing something to make a show. Who knows? We don't know yet. But in any case, he was foiled and the White House Correspondents' Dinner was canceled and that was that, and maybe we'll talk about it next week. We'll see. Anyway, here's the show. Do-do-do! I'll see you next time. Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, April 25th, 2026. It is just before 3UTC as we are starting to record. I am Sam Minter. Yvonne Bowe is out this week. Like, I forget exactly what his excuse was. He's got, like, stuff going on, work stuff, family stuff. I don't know. But in any case, this week, we have Bruce with us again. Hello, Bruce.
|
Bruce:
[1:35]
| Hello, hello. It's good to be here. It's been a while.
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Sam:
[1:39]
| I checked right before we started. It was November.
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Bruce:
[1:43]
| Okay.
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Sam:
[1:44]
| So, you know, in my head, it had been even longer than that since you were on the show. But like I looked, no, it was the November 7th show was the last time you were on. So, so it's not quite as long as I thought, but you know. So, as usual, when we have a guest on the show, I basically let the guest pick the topics. We'll do three segments. You know, usually we start lighter and go newsier as we go, but we don't have to. We can do whatever you want, Bruce. So, what do you want to talk about this week?
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Bruce:
[2:16]
| After the light and frothy stuff, let's talk about Iran. And I'd like to talk more about more than just the war, but also the implications around the whole thing. Globally there's a lot of things i i took a few notes of what what's been bumping around in my head and what i've been listening to on the podcast that i i find and media that i follow and i kind of bounce that off of you and and then also i was looking through some the the slack and it's interesting this week there's been a number of articles or news items about basically rigged betting markets yes and so i just wanted to tie that all together so.
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Sam:
[2:59]
| Those will be the big things you you mentioned still wanting to start with a light and frothy so what kind of light and frothy do you want to start with.
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Bruce:
[3:05]
| So today i got a text message for me let me pull it up, She basically texted me and said, we are buying Bob and Tina's jet skis. And that's some friends of ours that are across the lake. And I'm like, okay. So we bought a couple of jet skis.
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Sam:
[3:30]
| Very nice. And by the way, you mean like the real watercraft as opposed to my dog who's named Jetson.
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Bruce:
[3:37]
| Yeah, yeah. So this is exciting, especially for our teenage daughter. Our boys are all out of the house. And so they're going to be all jealous that we wait until they move out of the house and then Elise gets to enjoy the jet skis. And we live on Lake Stevens, and so it's going to be a lot of fun this summer. We'll be zipping around the lake. So, yeah, looking forward to that.
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Sam:
[3:59]
| So living there at a lake, have you had other lakey stuff? Do you have like a little sailboat or whatever? What have you had?
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Bruce:
[4:09]
| Our summers are centered around just the water. And it makes, I have to admit that we are very, very lucky to be here. We have a motorboat. We do wake surfing. We have tubes where we call kids behind the boat. We have paddle boards where we paddle around the lake. We have kayaks. We have a little raft that we swim out to that I put out every summer. And oh my we've also been lately doing what's called wake foiling which is it's not like not just a board but it's a board with a a a post and a and a wing underneath it so that when you get enough speed it lifts the board out of the water oh i think i've.
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Sam:
[4:58]
| Seen videos of that.
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Bruce:
[4:59]
| Yeah and so that's a lot of fun i have not i haven't even tried, Our oldest son, he's been doing that. And so we'll learn to do that. But now we have jet skis on top of that. So it's a lot of fun.
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Sam:
[5:18]
| Very cool. Very cool.
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Bruce:
[5:20]
| So yeah, that and I, you probably have some movies and I was actually looking at your movie list on your- The next two movies.
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Sam:
[5:32]
| Which I'm happy to do if you want me to.
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Bruce:
[5:34]
| Oh, yeah, yeah.
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Sam:
[5:35]
| Or we can skip them. Our Cars from 2006 and National Lampoon Vacation from 1983.
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Bruce:
[5:41]
| Yeah, definitely do it.
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Sam:
[5:43]
| Okay. So did you have anything else first, or should I jump right into that?
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Bruce:
[5:47]
| Well, other than that, I just mentioned that I looked at your list, your wiki, and I saw a movie this week called Weapons, and I thought, oh, wow, I need to make sure that's on Sam's list. Well, it's on there. It's on there twice.
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Sam:
[6:04]
| Oh, okay.
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Bruce:
[6:05]
| Then I noticed that there's a lot of movies on there multiple times.
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Sam:
[6:09]
| Yeah, so originally, this is the 2005 film?
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Bruce:
[6:13]
| No, Weapons? No, it came out last year.
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Sam:
[6:16]
| Oh, sorry, 2025. I missed it, too. Yes, I have the right one up on Wikipedia, though. I've added it again. See, originally, when I first started this list, whenever I added something, I would actually check and make sure. Was it already on the list? And if it wasn't, I wouldn't add it again. But eventually i determined a that was too much work and b the fact that it comes up multiple times that interested me enough to add it to the list i might as well let that be a factor so like if it comes up multiple times it's got a higher chance of coming up when i when i roll the you know to pick what i'm watching next yeah.
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Bruce:
[6:56]
| And i you know i you got your system but i i think i've got a better system.
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Sam:
[7:01]
| I do basically.
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Bruce:
[7:03]
| The same thing you do but i use it within an app there's an app that i use called just watch i've mentioned it before.
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Sam:
[7:07]
| I use just watch to figure out where to watch things like i'm always looking things like we we just alex and i just started a movie like half an hour ago we watched the first half hour and then i stopped to do this and you know first thing is always like bring up just watch search for it find out where it's available and in this case the particular movie was available on paramount plus which we have so i you know we just brought it up if it's not available on anything we have for streaming it's usually available to purchase from apple or whatever and then we do that if it's not available anywhere online we end up like you know we'll search like has somebody put it on youtube you know we'll we'll search that kind of stuff but often we end up like ordering you know a physical dvd or whatever in those cases There's one that we just, not a movie, but we just rolled a replacement TV show. And it's a British TV show from like 10, 15 years ago or something and not available anywhere for streaming. And the only DVD we could find to purchase was a European region DVD. So that means it doesn't play on U.S. players without like modifications and stuff. So we now have the DVD has arrived like within the last few days.
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Sam:
[8:31]
| And so the next thing is we're going to figure out the right way to like, you know, break into that so that we can actually watch it. And there are multiple ways to do it.
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Bruce:
[8:41]
| And there's technology to get around that.
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Sam:
[8:42]
| There's multiple different choices of how to get around that. And we will do one of them.
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Bruce:
[8:49]
| Yeah. So I use JustWatch. I keep my list on there. And there's a way to sort the list and filter it to just the services that you have. So I have, I have a few services. So, and then I sort it according to the IMDB score. And so I'm always seeing the highest rated movie. Life is too short to watch a poorly rated movie.
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Sam:
[9:12]
| Even if it's online. I don't know. Like every once in a while, like they're so bad, they're funny. But I agree that like there, there are certain ones that after watching them and, and, you I'm just like, that was a horrible waste of my time, and I am upset that I spent time on that. There was one of those that Alex and I watched this week that I'll probably end up talking about on the show in a year and a half or something. But it was bad. It was really bad. It was a low-budget horror movie that was just awful. But anyway, so—.
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Bruce:
[9:53]
| Do the movie reviews.
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Sam:
[9:55]
| Do the movie reviews. Okay. First, Cars from 2006. I presume you've seen this movie.
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Bruce:
[10:00]
| Absolutely. No spoilers.
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Sam:
[10:03]
| No spoilers? Okay.
|
Bruce:
[10:05]
| Well, you don't have to worry about spoilers. That's why.
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Sam:
[10:07]
| Oh, okay. Okay. Well, first, tell me what your thoughts are of Cars. It's a Pixar film from 2006.
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Bruce:
[10:13]
| I thought it was wonderful. I really appreciated that there was an homage to Steve McQueen, which was one of my favorite actors from when I was a kid, and it was a good mix of... I think the best animated movies are ones where they have a good mix of kids' humor and adult humor to kind of get everybody... Involved and i thought it was a good story so yeah.
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Sam:
[10:38]
| No i i'll agree and i i think i have talked about cars on here before it's i i loved the the homage to sort of route 66 and small towns and all of that kind of stuff uh and i found that it had a good emotional core to it and i you know i really and like you know where where did i start watching it when when alex here was really small and it was a Pixar movie and it was one of his favorites. And he watched it over and over and over again. And he has the, it had a bunch of the toys and everything else. And so of course I've seen it like a thousand times, not necessarily all sitting down from beginning to end, but like, as it's on in the background coming in and out and, and over and over and over again. And I found like, I didn't get sick of it, you know, as well. Now it's got a reputation. Like, you know if you talk to people who like you know are all about the pixar movies there was the the the way they describe it is pixar had hit after hit after hit that were just awesome incredible you know 10 out of 10 and then they describe cars as the first one that they thought wasn't really up to that level and i'm like, I liked it.
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Bruce:
[12:00]
| Yeah, you're on a break, man.
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Sam:
[12:03]
| You know, and so I really enjoyed it. As I always do, I'll read the first couple paragraphs of the plot from Wikipedia. In a world populated by anthropomorphic vehicles, the Dinoco 400 race is the last of the Piston Cup season. Heading into the event, retiring seven-time champion Strip the King Weathers, the cunning, consistent runner-up Chick Hicks, and the talented and arrogant rookie Lightning McQueen are all tied for the season points lead. Lightning is desperate to win and leave his unglamorous Rusty's sponsorship for the prestigious Dinoco and struggles with teamwork due to his self-centered attitude.
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Sam:
[12:44]
| At the end of the high-stakes race, Lightning squanders his lead by refusing to change tires in multiple pit stops, causing his rear tires to blow out before he can win. The race ends in a three-way tie between the leaders, setting the stage for a decisive tiebreaker race at Los Angeles International Speedway in one week. After the race, Lightning rushes through the night on the interstate to reach California inside his transport truck, Mack. A mishap culminates in lightning stranded alone in the run-down desert town of Radiator Springs, Arizona. He inadvertently damages the main road and is sentenced to a community service assignment of repaving the road under the supervision of the town's judge, Doc Hudson, who is prejudiced against lightning for being a race car. And then, of course, you know, he meets people in the small town and things happen and eventually there's a race at the end. And, you know, I...
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Sam:
[13:41]
| You know, I will say more. This is a thumbs up. I will give it a double thumbs up. I really like this movie. And it's just a lot of fun. And like I said, it pulls the heartstrings in the right places. It's sentimental. I mean, some people might find it too sentimental. I don't know. But I like it. I like that kind of movie.
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Bruce:
[14:01]
| And it's got Paul Newman who was in there.
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Sam:
[14:05]
| Wasn't this his last movie, actually?
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Bruce:
[14:07]
| I don't know. I don't know about that. But yeah, it could be.
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Sam:
[14:09]
| I believe this was his last movie. before he passed away. And it's got a good cast. They all do it well. And you forget their cars. I've seen someone post a meme, and I'm not going to forget which movie it is. I've added it to my list ages ago. But apparently, you can follow the plot lines. The context of this was somebody said online and some social media within the last few months, you know what they should really do? They should do a live an actual live action version of cars where it really is the race car drivers not the cars and and do the whole thing in the plot and then someone pointed out some movie from the 1950s or something and they're like it's basically the same plot with race car drivers you know so it exists already apparently well yeah.
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Bruce:
[15:03]
| Given that all these studios cannot come up with an idea.
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Sam:
[15:06]
| Of an.
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Bruce:
[15:07]
| Original idea and that and all they can eat they either do sequels or live action versions of previous anime movies without changing a thing.
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Sam:
[15:16]
| It's like yeah.
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Bruce:
[15:18]
| It wouldn't surprise me if they did a live action cars yeah.
|
Sam:
[15:21]
| And and you know it's um i don't know that but.
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Sam:
[15:26]
| The remakes thing, I've said this before in other contexts, like when it's just a straight remake without changing anything, it's like, what is the point? Like, I know it's definitely cashing in. And in the case of some of these IPs, it's like, you know, especially the older IPs, like when Disney's making live action remakes of, you know, their original cartoons from like the 30s or whatever. It's because those originals are coming out of copyright soon. You know, and so you want, you get the new version to sort of re-up that. But even, but some of these things, I mean, they pointed out, like, it hasn't been that long since Moana and they're coming out with a live action remake of that. You know, and I guess part of it is like a lot of these movies that are aimed at kids, they figure there's a brand new generation of kids, you know, relatively frequently. And you might as well get a new property in front of them instead of the old one and make more money off it. And, you know, they'll probably like both. They'll probably see both of them and they'll, you know, or all three or all five, you know. And, but, you know, I, I understand sometimes like when you remake something and you also update it in some way, like sometimes I don't think you really need to do that. But like, you know, like you can make the the the modern day version of Romeo and Juliet or whatever. You know, you're you're you're.
|
Bruce:
[16:55]
| Taking the same plot in like a modern time or something like that. That's been done before, I believe.
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Sam:
[17:01]
| Oh, it's been done hundreds of times. You know, like if you take an old property like that, I mean, depending on how close an adaptation you're thinking about, there's like literally you can go out and find dozens that are basically. Oh, take the plot of Romeo and Juliet, but put them in, you know, 1940s Chicago or take the plot of Romeo and Juliet and put them in space or whatever.
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Bruce:
[17:26]
| You know, put it in a gang setting in Chicago.
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Sam:
[17:32]
| Right. Well, I mean, the gang setting in New York is West Side Story. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[17:39]
| Let's see. Adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. There we go. Let's see. Let's see if we can get a nice list here. A list of films based on Romeo and Juliet. First of all, there's a list of direct adaptations that's probably like 50 items long. And then other adaptations another i'm not even going to try to like read these because there's over a hundred that are indirect adaptations you know so yeah so yeah and i can sort of see that when you're when you're updating it in some way you're doing something that actually is different than the original but the ones that are like literally a shot for shot remake of the original they're not changing the setting they're not changing the time frame they're not changing anything they're just like hey let's do it again it's like you know unless there was something drastically bad with the original why bother like and like sometimes sometimes earlier adaptations were bad, and okay, let's see you do it right. But many times, like, for some of these things, there's something that's, like, literally considered a classic of, you know, this was a masterpiece when it was made. Okay, why? Why? It's just, you know, I don't know.
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Bruce:
[19:07]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[19:07]
| But... Okay. So that's it for cars. Double thumbs up for cars. The next up is National Lampoon's Vacation from 1983. Have you seen this one, Bruce?
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Bruce:
[19:22]
| That I definitely have seen, but I probably haven't seen it since then. But yeah, it was a conflict. Was that with Chevy Chase and everything?
|
Sam:
[19:28]
| Yeah, that's Chevy Chase. And I alluded to this last week with Yvonne. This is so not my kind of movie. And because I'm a stickler to this, for what you were saying in terms of like, there's no time for bad movies. I tell you right now, National Lampoon's Vacation is not my kind of movie. But of course, I feel myself obligated to watch all the sequels. So we've been working our way through the sequels.
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Bruce:
[19:55]
| Yeah, the sequels are, of course, they follow the same formula. Once you've seen one, they kind of like all blend together in your mind. But it's like, I think there's European Vacation and...
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Sam:
[20:07]
| Okay, here's the list. Vacation in 1983, European Vacation in 1985, Christmas Vacation in 1989, Vegas Vacation in 1997, Christmas Vacation 2 in 2003, and then a remake, Vacation, in 2015. Wow.
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Bruce:
[20:26]
| I had no idea. Okay. Yeah, same sort of thing of slapstick humor. And, yeah. And I guess it's a little bit of what you call the cringe humor, where you're like, ooh, man, how...
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Sam:
[20:41]
| So, again, the summary, the beginning of the plot summary, Clark Griswold, wanting to spend more time with his wife Ellen and children Rusty and Audrey, decides to lead the family on a cross-country expedition from the Chicago suburbs to Southern California amusement park Wally World, billed as America's favorite family fun park. Ellen wants to fly, but Clark insists on driving so he can bond with his family. He has ordered a new car in preparation for the trip, but the shady dealer claims it will not be ready for six weeks. Clark is forced to buy the Wagon Queen family truckster, an ugly oversized station wagon, after the car he traded in has been crushed. During the family's travels, they experience numerous mishaps, such as being tagged by vandals after taking a wrong turn in St. Louis, Missouri. Clark aggravates a bartender in Dodge City, Kansas, and is tantalized on numerous occasions by a beautiful young woman driving a Ferrari 308 GTS. Dot, dot, dot. it continues numerous misadventures they eventually get to the end like you said it's got slapstick humor it's got some crude sex humor it's got some you know just like you said sort of a little bit of gross out humor or or cringe humor where oh i can't believe they're doing that that's horrible like why would anybody do this and you know.
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Sam:
[22:03]
| I guess I can understand at some level how some people really like this kind of stuff, but I don't. I just like, I don't find it particularly amusing.
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Sam:
[22:13]
| The cringe factor of it sort of overwhelms me beyond everything else.
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Sam:
[22:18]
| I keep thinking like, I don't sympathize with any of these characters at all. They're all just idiots. and they're either idiots or vulgar or whatever and why would i care what happens to these people and i'm not laughing at the like the mishaps because i'm like well that's just bad you know and so it's just not my kind of movie so i'm not giving it a straight thumbs down because like it was it's not my kind of movie but it wasn't it wasn't the kind of movie where i felt it was a complete and total like i felt horrible after getting out of it like you know like some some movies just give me a visceral negative reaction this was just sort of like so i'll give it sort of like halfway between thumbs sideways and thumbs down but like definitely not my kind of thing and you know i have subsequently subjected myself to european vacation and christmas vacation i have not gotten any further on that list yet but just just as a heads up i felt exactly the same way about the next two and i can't imagine feeling any different about any of the others that i haven't seen yet but i eventually will probably see them anyways because like you know you know my you you mentioned you looked at my list recently and you know it has thousands of things on it.
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Sam:
[23:45]
| But there's a separate category for continuations of things I've started, which gets a higher preference. So like it is more likely for me to get a sequel of something I've already seen than to get a brand new thing from the list.
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Bruce:
[23:59]
| Why do you torture yourself like this? I mean, if you don't like it, you drop it. Wow.
|
Sam:
[24:05]
| Yeah. You know, so yeah, I don't know. Maybe at some point I'll think about that. And we're actually right now, the movie that Alex and I just started is something that we've actually already, we saw it in 2022. So it's only been four years since the last time we saw it. But it came up again on the list because, well, reasons. There are numerous reasons things can come up again. Because normally when I watch something, I remove all of its instances from the list. So I don't stop myself from adding duplicates. But when we watch something, I do take off all the duplicates.
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Bruce:
[24:45]
| Thank goodness.
|
Sam:
[24:46]
| But, you know, then sometimes they get added again for one reason or another. Dang. Anyway, that's all I got for movies this time. So next up on the movie list, Mr. Jones from 2019 and The Short History of the Long Road, also from 2019.
|
Bruce:
[25:10]
| I haven't heard of either of those. I'll have to look those up.
|
Sam:
[25:13]
| I won't give my full review now, but I will say both of them were decent movies.
|
Bruce:
[25:18]
| Okay. I'll take a look at those. so okay so.
|
Sam:
[25:23]
| I get any more light and frothy before we take.
|
Bruce:
[25:26]
| A break one worth to me before we go to the break as how's your job search going.
|
Sam:
[25:31]
| Well, I noticed that you just joined the curmudgeon's corner Robin today.
|
Bruce:
[25:38]
| Yes, I felt like I had to do that today.
|
Sam:
[25:42]
| And so if you had read my update, which I posted only a few days ago, you would know all the stuff.
|
Bruce:
[25:48]
| Okay, good. I will read those. I did see how I can read them in order, so I will read through those. Okay, well then I'll do that.
|
Sam:
[25:55]
| So I will give the short update, which is, it's going nowhere, basically. You know, the, I had, I had one phone screen with a company. Well, first of all, I was sick for like three months. So that put a damper on like everything. But like the, I had one phone screen with one company that I knew before the phone screen that it wasn't going to be a really good match. And that was confirmed within the first 10 seconds of the phone screen. And it was like, you know, just because of the nature of the questions they were asking me, we're like, yeah, no, that's not me. You know basically and and repeating that over and over and over again for half an hour, as we went through our screen and then other than that you know i'm i'm you know i know some people are literally like applying to hundreds and hundreds of jobs and getting like a handful of phone screens and maybe one of those leads to a i haven't been anywhere near that prolific Like.
|
Sam:
[26:53]
| Yet, I'm doing, because basically, I'm still maintaining some sort of, like, does this actually seem like a good match for me? And ones that seem like a good match for me are actually few and far between as I'm searching. Because most of the types of things that I would say I've done before, those companies are still busy firing people. They're not really in a big hiring mode right now and they're all like trying to figure out what they're doing with AI and, all this kind of stuff. And, and so it's just not a good time for any of that. Now, you know, as, as things move on, I'll undoubtedly, you know, start doing things that are further and further away from like what I actually feel like is a good fit as I get desperate, you know, but I haven't quite been there yet.
|
Sam:
[27:46]
| I've, you know, we're, we're, we've got some buffer left and more buffer if we start dipping into retirement, which obviously we don't want to do, but like more buffer available there. I've got family members who have stated repeatedly that they'll help out if we need it. I obviously don't want to really do that either, but, you know, but we still have options and we still have things. So we're not in a desperate case. I'm not yet applying to be a greeter at walmart at some point it may come to that but i'm not yet doing that you know i i i want i i feel like i have to give this robin letter a shot thing a shot to see if i can make any money off that it's a long shot and i know like i've done the math i know how big i would have to get it in order to make even a a passable replacement for my previous income and it's it's several orders of magnitude larger than it is today. But, you know, I feel like, you know, I have to give things like that a shot because this is going to be my best opportunity ever to try. So I might as well, you know.
|
Bruce:
[28:53]
| It's a great concept. And I, like, as you saw, I'm enjoying the day and I'm going to create a ramen for my family and we'll see how it goes.
|
Sam:
[29:01]
| Awesome. You know, today, actually, and you signing in was right in the middle of this. I was having a networking lunch with a former co-worker today. And while I was sitting there at lunch, I have a behind-the-scenes, like... As an admin of an early product, I still have it set up to, like, send me push notifications whenever there's any activity for anybody on anything.
|
Sam:
[29:31]
| And, like, normally that's, like, I get two or three alerts a day that something has happened. And while I was at lunch, I had, like, two dozen of these updates with, like, somebody joined. One person created a new Robin while I was there at lunch.
|
Sam:
[29:49]
| You know, multiple people provided updates. People reacted to updates. People commented on updates. And I was like, well, it's just going crazy right now. It was the most activity in a really short period of time that I've seen yet. Where we are right now, by the way, let's see. Of people who have created an account and signed in at least once, there's now 111 as of a couple hours ago. So my trailing four week active number, which is the number that like is more is a number that you could actually say something about is 89 right now. And that hit an all time new high today, even though I haven't personally been inviting new people or creating new Robins since the end of March. So it's been almost a month since the last time I've done any activity, but it's still it's still grown during that period. It's sort of after I stopped inviting people myself, it was sort of down or stagnant for like two to three weeks and then has started like picking up again on its own without me doing a damn thing, which is great. But it's not it's not growing fast enough to do what I need to do. So I've said this on the show before, but like I.
|
Sam:
[31:05]
| Next on my list is not new features for the thing. It's like, how the hell do I figure out the marketing aspect of this? Like, who do, where do I post next? When exactly do I turn on open registration? Cause right now it's still invite only. So if you go there without an invite, it just says, you know, Hey, email to get on a list when I need more people, but anybody who's on there can invite more people and it can grow organically, which is what's been happening the last few weeks but at some point i have to i'm going to turn on make it open so anybody can register but the problem is if you register cold you're going to be there with just a screen that says make a robin with nothing else you don't have any experience yet of what it is yeah.
|
Bruce:
[31:48]
| I like the viral way that you've got it set up so hopefully that will um keep going.
|
Sam:
[31:53]
| Yeah i know i know i know i have to switch away from that sooner rather than later like it's just it's too slow you know So, virally over the last month, it's grown an additional 10% in terms of active users. But 10% a month won't get me to hundreds of thousands fast enough to, like, make money off this before I run out of cash. So, you know, and I know I'm probably not really going to make money off it anyway. But, like I said, I got to try. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so anyway, at the, at the very least, maybe I can make some, you know, like as they say, coffee money or something, but, um, anyway, that's that. So thanks for joining and I'll look forward to seeing your, your new Robin. Well, not seeing your new Robins. I don't look at people's content just to be absolutely clear. I don't look at people's content for Robins that are, that I'm not in, but I am very, I'm still very carefully watching the stats and our new Robins being made and how many people are accepting and are people doing updates on a regular basis, all that kind of stuff. So anyway, that's that. Ready for a break?
|
Bruce:
[33:04]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[33:06]
| Okay. Break, break, break, break. Which one? This one. This one. And then we'll start talking more serious stuff, I guess. Back after this. What? No, that was bad. Bye. Okay, we are back. So you said you wanted to talk about Iran first?
|
Bruce:
[34:01]
| Yes. So uh well what happened this week wait wait i have.
|
Sam:
[34:08]
| To start like every week yvonne just asks are we winning yet are we winning is.
|
Bruce:
[34:12]
| It good so well that's that's that's a good question basically winning depends on well according to trump's definition winning is destroying stuff like a video game yes yep but i think he's well i would i would think that he's learning but maybe not, but I like that the United States is learning that, I mean, this is basic strategic doctrine, is that destroying things does not, those are tactics. Strategic doctrine, At a strategic level, you have to meet your goals. You have strategic goals that you want to reach. And those goals are no nuclear weapons, no missile program, and no support for their allies in the region. And they're not leaving any of that.
|
Sam:
[35:08]
| Just to be clear, even what you just said seems to be retroactive and changing on a regular basis. Like, there was no clear articulation of what these goals were before it started. And when you were asking after the fact, after it started, what are the goals? You got different answers from Israel and the U.S. And on the U.S. Side, you got different answers depending on if you asked Trump, Rubio, or Vance, or other people in the administration. You could not get a consistent set of answers. And even that, if you asked right after it started versus two weeks later versus four weeks later versus now, you're not getting the same answers every time either.
|
Bruce:
[35:54]
| And even by Trump's logic, you know, he thinks that he's winning by destroying things. Well, they're not even achieving that. He claims to have destroyed their navy, whereas just a couple of days ago, dozens of Iranian fastboats were out enforcing their blockade or their closure of the strait. And some of their jets were flying around, I think, recently during the ceasefire. So their air forces still exist. Their missile program, they're fully capable of not only launching, but producing more.
|
Sam:
[36:30]
| Yeah, I mean, I've seen estimates that the, first of all, the percentage of the existing ones that have been destroyed, the U.S. Administration was drastically overstating. And there was actually a very significant number still ready to use at a moment's notice. But also, like you said, we haven't fully destroyed their capability of making new ones either. So they're making new ones every day right now. Like it's not like it hasn't stopped. Yeah. And so... Yeah, I mean, and Yvonne and I have talked about this, how like, yeah, if all you care about is you killed a bunch of people and you broke a bunch of things, yes, you killed a bunch of people and you broke a bunch of things. But any evaluation of long-term strategic goals, almost every single one you look at actually comes out in Iran's favor, where they're better off than they were before we started. There are a few exceptions. And, you know, and even even like the sort of, hey, we killed Diatola. Right. Well, you got a more conservative one in its place. You know, happy.
|
Bruce:
[37:42]
| Yeah and you know it's it's this was they tried is the the u.s and israel tried to do regime change earlier like in the december january time frame, they they did economic war destroyed their currency or made their currency crash and also and this this is something that you know was it besant the secretary of treasury he openly admitted that they were causing the economy in Iran to crash, which is basically fomenting all the riots or whatever the... Yeah, the unrest that was in the country. So the unrest was not against the regime necessarily. It was really against what we were doing to cause their economy to collapse. And also, Trump admitted that he sent a bunch of weapons to the Kurds. And he was upset that they took those weapons and didn't use them the way that he wanted them to. So who knows where they're going to end up.
|
Sam:
[38:45]
| Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, like, you know, as you said, There are multiple reasons for the protests, but there was a growing anti-regime movement that was in place, basically with youth being tired of these religious fundamentalists ruling them. That movement was—first of all, the Iranians cracked down ruthlessly against it anyway. But whatever was left of it gone after our attacks because you know what's the natural reaction to your country being attacked you know it's like you you unite against the external enemy rally around the flag you know and and it over and over and over again it seems like trump and his folks and i've talked about this before as part of the empathy problem but they can't bring themselves to even think about things in a way of like, well, okay, put yourself in their shoes. What would you do? You know, they seem to be incapable of doing that mental exercise to try to game out what's happened. That's why they were completely, completely flustered and confused of what do you mean they didn't roll over and just give up? Yeah.
|
Bruce:
[40:02]
| And they didn't do the two—I mean, they never—well, the current administration couldn't imagine, or at least it doesn't appear that they had anticipated, the two most obvious things that they would do, which would be to close the street and attack the Gulf allies that have U.S. Military bases on them. Right. So all of our bases in the Gulf are destroyed, as far as I know, as far as I've been able to see in the news.
|
Sam:
[40:30]
| Well, yeah, I mean, they've definitely been I've seen enough credible reporting that they are more damaged than the administration would like you to think. I'm not sure completely destroyed is accurate either, but they've they've suffered more than than the administration's willing to admit. And, you know, all this stuff is like, again, it's the arrogance of the people in charge. It's not like the military establishment hasn't gamed out war with Iran for decades. And apparently they were absolutely telling him, yeah, they're going to do X, Y, Z. And Trump and Hegseth and those folks were all like, yeah, whatever. You don't know what you're talking about. We're just going to do it anyway.
|
Bruce:
[41:15]
| So, getting back to what's happened in the last week since the last podcast, last weekend Trump was saying that the Iranians, that he was in negotiation with the Iranian leadership and that they had agreed to quote unquote everything.
|
Sam:
[41:31]
| Yes.
|
Bruce:
[41:32]
| Really? Oh, that's great. Well, that's great. But that's apparently not what happened because the Iranians denied that and they're continuing their blockade of the strait. And on the other hand, the Americans are also doing their blockade, but they're blockading from a long distance away. So it's not like they're sitting in the strait keeping Iranian ships from leaving their ports or going into Iranian ports. They're way outside in the Indian Ocean. I think it's the Arabian Gulf. There's a line that's from the Pakistan-Iranian border that goes along the water. It's like hundreds of miles away from Iran. And that blockade, the U.S. Navy... The U.S. Navy, they're stopping some of the Iranian ships, but not all of them, only a fraction of them so far. And unilaterally, Trump extends the ceasefire.
|
Sam:
[42:41]
| Well, look, fundamentally for all of this, you mentioned things like Donald Trump saying, oh, yeah, we've got a deal, we've got a deal, whatever.
|
Sam:
[42:53]
| That from the additional reporting I've seen on this, there are two aspects of this. One, sometimes he's just outright making it up. There is no deal. He's trying his normal mode of operations going back decades is often to announce something as a fait accompli and then just sort of will it into existence. And he's tried that multiple times and it's not working. But also So in some cases, the negotiators on the ground that are lower level, so not even Vance and those folks, but are lower level, actually were getting close to agreement in certain areas.
|
Sam:
[43:35]
| But then Donald Trump goes and posts about it on Truth Social and blows it all up because he's announcing things before they're ready to be announced, even when there is a semblance of truth behind it. He is mischaracterizing what is being agreed and all of this kind of stuff so that basically, even when there actually is behind the scenes progress, Trump has repeatedly blown up and destroyed that progress every time it's happening. Because of his inability to just let things play out. But also, he has the fundamental additional problem that the outlines of any deal that is being discussed is basically the same as Obama's deal from 10 years ago. Except usually not quite as good. Because the Iranians are in a better position now than they were then.
|
Bruce:
[44:34]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[44:35]
| And so we're asking for more. And he is not, you know, he hasn't yet figured out a way to spin, you know, signing off to the Obama deal, but worse and saying that it's better.
|
Bruce:
[44:49]
| Well, he's done something similar to that in the past.
|
Sam:
[44:52]
| Oh, he has, absolutely.
|
Bruce:
[44:53]
| You know, the, what's it, the North American NAFTA.
|
Sam:
[44:58]
| NAFTA, yes.
|
Bruce:
[44:59]
| Yeah, he renegotiated NAFTA to the USMCA, and I think, as far as I know, pretty much it was the same thing, except they changed the name.
|
Sam:
[45:06]
| Yeah, there were some very minor adjustments, but it was pretty much the same thing, except the name. And now, by the way, his administration is saying, that's a crap deal, we have to renegotiate it.
|
Bruce:
[45:18]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[45:19]
| Even though it was the Trump version of NAFTA to begin with, you know.
|
Bruce:
[45:28]
| So Iran is holding two major cards, and that is they control the strait, and the U.S. Has no way to keep them from controlling the strait, and they can respond to any kind of attacks that are—if the U.S. Escalates on the ladder, on the escalation ladder, Iran can continue to go up that escalation ladder also. And if their civilian infrastructure is damaged, they can attack the Gulf states and Israel and essentially make those countries unlivable. I mean, it can get to the point where those countries would have to be evacuated because it's too hot and there's no water. Because they have no air conditioning and they have no water to drink.
|
Sam:
[46:19]
| I mean, I want to be careful there. You're absolutely right. They can further that escalation cycle, but there are ways for the counter-escalation, and for some defense to those things. But, you know, it's called an escalation cycle for a reason. It gets worse for all parties involved. um now how that would end up in the end is unclear but i think the other advantage iran has is that frankly the u.s and israel are increasingly isolated in their position they weren't they didn't have a lot of support to go with to start with but that has only decreased as this has moved on now there are a couple of the gulf states most prominently saudi arabia who are still pushing them. We didn't necessarily think this was a good time to start this, but now that you've started, finish it.
|
Bruce:
[47:17]
| Yeah. Well, what does that mean to finish it? Are they going to put in ground troops? They are amassing ground troops. There's more Navy ships are coming into the area. There's more troops that are coming into the area. Maybe Trump is actually getting ready, using this extension of the ceasefire to get things ready to do his invasion. But what is that going to accomplished. Iran has one other advantage, and that is geography. It's a mountainous country, even more mountainous and larger than Afghanistan. And there's no way that we're going to have, with just, even if we have tens of thousands of, Troops landing on their beaches or dropping in, parachuting into their cities or countryside, that's a country of 91 million people.
|
Sam:
[48:10]
| You know, there's three modes of escalation from the U.S. side. One is just a lot more, you know, of what we've done so far, like just bomb more random targets. The next is ground troops, like you said. And the third is, of course, nukes. None of these options end up working well for us. You know, I mean, many of them don't work well for the Iranians either, but they, they does not like, you know, a, a scenario where, oh, okay, let's do the ground invasion of Iran that ends up with a clean, nice, happy victory after a few weeks, like Donald Trump wants. And, you know, and if you even thought about, well, there were reports that he asked about nukes and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was basically like, no, no.
|
Bruce:
[49:10]
| Yeah, I heard that he just left the room.
|
Sam:
[49:12]
| Yeah. But, and that was reported by one person with one source. So take it with the appropriate grain of salt. But it could, it fits, you know. But let's say he actually did that. whatever level of isolation the u.s has right now would go through the stratosphere you know no one in on the planet would support like you know nukes against civilians you know yeah exactly you know there's.
|
Bruce:
[49:46]
| Also some wider implications on this and that the world has now seen our enemies or adversaries, I would say, have seen how ineffective our military is. And so... So China will definitely be more emboldened to take Taiwan because they know that all they need to do to take Taiwan is just to put a cordon off the area around Taiwan and say any Navy ship that comes into this territory, they're going to get bombed. And they can have those missile launchers on Chinese mainland and that can keep our Navy ships way far away because another thing is our Navy is vulnerable to missiles. They had to keep the aircraft carriers hundreds and hundreds of miles away from the Iranian coast.
|
Sam:
[50:42]
| And drones. And very specifically, one of the things, and this has already been shown in Ukraine, but has been shown even more in this conflict is the asymmetry between being able to produce thousands and thousands of really cheap drones where the price, the price of, I mean, in the Ukraine conflict, some of the drones that are being deployed effectively are literally off the shelf, like couple of hundred dollar drones, but, but the more advanced drones are a few tens of thousands. And we're in the asymmetric situation where we've only recently started to try to catch up in that area. And for the most part, we were shooting down $10,000 drones with $10 million missiles. That only lasts you so long.
|
Bruce:
[51:33]
| And it recently came out on CBS, I believe, that half of our defense missiles, what's it called? The, I forget the name of it, but yeah, half of our defense missiles are depleted.
|
Sam:
[51:47]
| You're talking Patriots or the newer ones?
|
Bruce:
[51:49]
| The Patriots and the new ones, too. I forget the name of them.
|
Sam:
[51:54]
| Anyway, we've used up a significant portion of our total worldwide inventory.
|
Bruce:
[51:59]
| Yeah, yeah, not just the ones that we have in the Middle East, but they've had to ship in all the material, all the coordinates from the Pacific and from the U.S. And that's just about a month of hot fighting before the ceasefire came into place. So if the war were to resume, those would continue to be depleted. And the U.S. can't make those defense missiles nearly fast enough to keep up with. Well, true.
|
Sam:
[52:33]
| However, I've heard that Donald Trump has started asking about whether we could do the World War II-style requisitioning and forcing auto manufacturers to start building weapons instead.
|
Bruce:
[52:47]
| They could do that, but that's going to take a couple of years.
|
Sam:
[52:50]
| Yeah, that takes a significant ramp-up time, even if you are willing to do that, which, you know, there are all kinds of reasons why that might not go down all that well if it was attempted.
|
Bruce:
[53:03]
| And here's one more one other thing is with regard to russia i listened to a podcast today talked about how russia is looking at iran about how iran didn't have no qualms with attacking our allies in the region whereas in the ukraine war russia has been very careful to only attack within ukrainian space whereas you know those those drones that ukraine is just throwing at, the Russian soldiers are made in Germany. And it would be, they could, you know, the Russians could legitimately.
|
Sam:
[53:40]
| There are a bunch, there are a bunch that are Ukraine, Ukrainian made, but there's Europe is absolutely helping to arm Ukraine in all kinds of different ways. And there was a graph that once Trump essentially cut off a hundred percent of that, once he came in into his second term, it was essentially 100% replaced by Europe. So as much as even today, Trump complains about Europe not pulling their weight in that, in fact, they are. They completely took on the deficit that was made when Trump stopped supporting Ukraine. Like, Ukraine's actual levels of support stayed constant or went up. Um but yeah no there's there's things like that i think the dynamics are different there anyway like russia can can maybe try to learn that lesson but i think it would play out differently than the if russia started attacking other nato members surrounding ukraine i think that would play out very differently than Iran attacking some Gulf states.
|
Bruce:
[54:48]
| Yeah, yeah. So, well, we'll see what happens.
|
Sam:
[54:54]
| I mean, the bottom line on all of this that goes across what you've been saying, the Chinese in Taiwan, the Russians, even emboldening the Iranians themselves, is that the net result of this is just massive destabilization. Like, you're taking a situation that may not have been ideal. I mean, the Middle East has not been in a great situation in my lifetime and not even my parents' lifetime. But nevertheless, it was somewhat stable. And there were some things that were improving. The Gaza thing being the notable exception, but it had stayed relatively contained.
|
Bruce:
[55:40]
| Up until October 7th of, was it 23 or 22, that, uh.
|
Sam:
[55:46]
| But even Gaza was relatively contained. But this sort of blew things wide open. And, you know, like you said, it exposed the U.S. as a paper tiger. You know, we could not back up our words with actions in an effective way. We tried to overthrow the Iranian regime, and we failed utterly and left them in a stronger position than we started. And you'll hear the administration saying, oh, no, no, they're actually really weak, all this economic stuff, blah, blah, blah. And look, there are some places where we hurt them, absolutely. But on a strategic level, they have shown that they could survive all this. And one of the questions is, if it becomes a sort of war of attrition of how long can Iran survive under sanctions and the blockade and all this kind of stuff, versus how long will the West be happy with increased oil prices and shortages of materials that are based on oil and all of this kind of stuff.
|
Bruce:
[56:59]
| Including fertilizer, shortages of food.
|
Sam:
[57:02]
| Including fertilizer, food, a whole bunch of other stuff. Yeah, fundamentally, look, Iran's been under sanction since the 1970 revolution, 1979 revolution. You know, they, it's not like they're not used to being squeezed. Then I'm sure they're ready to do it for another 40 years if they have to, you know, whereas I don't think that, you know, I mean, Europe's already increasingly unhappy. A lot of people have said, like, the way, the way that this ends, if Donald Trump continues to be stubborn, is all of the other countries in the world making one-off deals with Iran, you know? Oh, true.
|
Bruce:
[57:42]
| Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that like Spain and Iran is gradually peeling off our allies one by one so that they can get their oil and they're happy to pay. Well, they're not happy. They're willing to pay that toll to get their oil out.
|
Sam:
[57:59]
| And do we realistically think, I mean, people have brought this up in terms of China, but if it's Spain as well, is is donald trump really going to sink a chinese freighter because it tries to go across that.
|
Bruce:
[58:14]
| Well yeah so far they have not sunk any now if if they've really the only way that they could really enforce a blockade 100 would be if they were sinking ships but right now they're just boarding them and they don't have enough manpower to board all of the ships coming out so they Well.
|
Sam:
[58:31]
| And so far they've only really done it to Iranians, you know, like the question, but if you're really going to do this, you have to be willing to take over the Chinese ship, the Spanish ship, the British ship, you know, and, and that's a whole different level of, you know, antagonizing the world. Now, you know, is Spain going to go to war with the U.S. Over this? No, probably not. But they're not going to be happy. And if Europe as a whole just says, you know, screw this shit, you know, there's things go downhill fast. I mean, like all of all of this has just been. Increasing the spiral of weakening the American position across the board. And, you know, I don't, I'm not a conspiracy theorist that thinks that was the intention, but I think it's certainly the result when you have a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing trying to do this stuff.
|
Bruce:
[59:34]
| Yeah. Well, overall, I'm hoping that, you know, however bad this is for the world economy, for all the people that are affected, of course, the people that have died, injured. I'm hoping that the end result of all this, this war, is we end up with a more stable situation where Iran is out from under sanctions. Israel is more fair with its neighbors, including the Palestinians. It's possible. One could think of a scenario where Israel becomes significantly weaker because their aid to them has been pulled back. One could say that Trump will likely be the last pro-Zionist president of the United States. It's going to be much more difficult.
|
Sam:
[1:00:26]
| One of the things that polling is definitely showing right now is both the Republican and the Democratic side, the support for the current Israeli government with current policies is falling through the floor. And, you know, certainly on the Democratic side, you know, it is, if you're going to compete in the Democratic primaries this time around, you are going to have to have a hard line against, like, no, what Israel's been doing is unacceptable. They have to change. And arguably, the fact that, you know, Biden and Harris didn't do that significantly weakened them last time around. It was one of the—there were a variety of other things, but that was one of the things that caused a whole bunch of people who would otherwise be Democratic voters to not vote Democratic. And meanwhile, on the Republican side, you've got a schism on this as well.
|
Bruce:
[1:01:28]
| I mean— And it's divided by age. The young Republicans are vehemently against it, against Israel. And of course, the older Republicans are brainwashed that Israel can do no wrong. So, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:01:41]
| And then on both sides, you've got sort of a. A troubling undercurrent where it is sometimes hard to separate out principled anti, you know, Israel is doing bad things right now versus straight out anti-Semitism. And they sometimes get mixed in unhealthy ways and they get intentionally conflated as well by certain people who like want to portray anybody saying, hey, the Israelis are doing bad things as, oh, you must hate all Jews.
|
Bruce:
[1:02:15]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:02:16]
| Even though like, The majority of Jewish Americans at this point are against what Israel is doing, you know, so.
|
Bruce:
[1:02:24]
| Yes. Those are what they call self-eating Jews.
|
Sam:
[1:02:30]
| Oh, yes, apparently. No, I appreciate your optimism. However, I cannot share it. I feel like this is going to get worse before it gets better. Yeah. Long term, I'm an optimist. long term, I think, you know, hey, all of these silly conflicts will work themselves out and people will intermingle and all of these sort of nationalistic cults will dissipate over time. But, you know, unfortunately, so far history has proven me wrong.
|
Bruce:
[1:03:05]
| Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, human nature is very tribalistic and people are not willing to accept others who are not part of their tribe, and that tribe being party, religion, race, etc.
|
Sam:
[1:03:19]
| Yeah, the specific tribes in question change every few generations often. Some last longer than others, some certainly have lasted many centuries, but very often the tribes that are relevant today are different than the tribes of 100 years ago, are different than the tribes of 500 years ago, right? You know, but nevertheless, there is that human tendency to clump and cluster and separate the world into us and other. And that's just fundamentally... Dangerous and results in all kinds of carnage and bad things. And, you know, we could be doing so much better for ourselves if we could just let go of that. But like you said, it's deeply ingrained in human nature, unfortunately.
|
Sam:
[1:04:10]
| So, okay. On that positive note, let's take another break and then And we can talk your gambling and rigged gambling and, you know, whether there's any other kind. Anyway, let's take another break. We will be back after this.
|
Sam:
[1:05:36]
| Okay, so before we get started on this, I will mention that I got a relevant comment from a listener just yesterday. When I put out the call for people to co-host the show, before you answered, Bruce, our loyal listener, Matt, responded and said, Oh man, I want to, but I'm going to be traveling, I can't, etc. But at the same time he made a suggestion for us which was random idea when you do your end of your prediction show should you place polymarket bets on all of them hmm so yeah.
|
Bruce:
[1:06:15]
| I was thinking the same thing uh yeah for your next uh for your next show or for your next prediction show. I'm going to go through it on Calci. I'm going to see if I can make money off of your predictions.
|
Sam:
[1:06:31]
| You know, I think you mentioned a few years ago, like you made money on something I said on election graphs at one point.
|
Bruce:
[1:06:37]
| Uh, Yeah, I did.
|
Sam:
[1:06:40]
| Like several election cycles ago.
|
Bruce:
[1:06:42]
| There was another website. It's not Calci or Polymarket. There was another one where you could bet on elections. And I made a good amount of money on Trump winning in 2016. Not that I was happy about that, but it was something that was not expected. And that actually happened. So about the prediction mark.
|
Sam:
[1:07:04]
| And my, just to put my election graphs thing in it. My election graphs, like everybody else, did favor Clinton. However, if you looked at my range of options, it clearly showed that as I put it on like our show a few weeks before the election, Trump winning was sort of in the cone of probability. Like if you were talking hurricanes or whatever, it was not at all impossible. And in the last couple of weeks, the chances were increasing. Anyway.
|
Bruce:
[1:07:33]
| Yeah so i noticed in the slack among them there are several stories in there about people rigging these markets either insiders knowing about events who bet on them big amount of money and or both people in the government or or in the military also people who are who intentionally, move the market like there's the example of there's a the guy who there was a he had a bet on temperature at the at some airport in in england and he went out there went under the fence found the sensor and took a hair dryer and and actually blew on the on the the temperature sensor and causing an unexpected spike in temperature at the airport that day. And it's getting crazy. And I don't know if there's any solution to it.
|
Sam:
[1:08:32]
| And some of the other examples, one, someone was just arrested for betting on the Maduro thing a few hours before it happened. And he was one of the military troops who were involved in the invasion. So he knew it was happening. He was he had access to classified information, the existence that the fact that they were about to do this mission and he put a bet on it before it happened. And then the other thing that has been reported on over and over and over again, although we have not yet tied it down to specific individuals, is almost every time in the last couple of months where Donald Trump is about to make an announcement. Like, well, when he does make an announcement on Truth Social or whatever about, hey, there's a new ceasefire or, hey, there's a this or, hey, I'm going to attack or whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:09:25]
| Approximately 15 minutes before that announcement happens, there's a spike of activity. And somebody made money on some trade related to that. Whether it's, you know, betting on the price of oil. Sometimes it's betting on the price of oil. Sometimes it's on one of these betting markets like Calci or Polymarket or one of those. Sometimes it's other, you know, publicly traded stocks and stuff, but clearly anticipating a market movement that indeed happens 15 minutes later when the president puts out some announcement. And this has happened so frequently now that people are actively looking for it. And it's been pointed out, by the way, like if you're if you're like Iran or somebody, you could just be monitoring and look for one of these spikes and like predict something a few minutes at a time. You know, if it you know, if Maduro was properly watching the markets, he could have escaped.
|
Bruce:
[1:10:28]
| Yeah well and not only that i was listening to a podcast about these the betting markets and, like for like reporters will ask questions of a politicians trying to get that politician to say a certain word because they have they have betting markets on words that politicians will say in a speech yes and they'll try to goad them into saying the word it's just like well and.
|
Sam:
[1:10:53]
| Another Another example of that was there was one of the betting markets had was a betting market on how long the daily White House press conference would would last. Like, would it be over or under 30 minutes? And you saw Carolyn Levitt, the press secretary or whatever, watching her watch and walking out 30 seconds before the deadline that where it would have changed the value of that bet. You know, and so and one of the things is, you know, these are right now it's the wild, wild west for these things. A lot, you know, where a lot of it is unregulated, even if it was in the U.S., but more to the point, lots of these are offshore.
|
Sam:
[1:11:43]
| In many cases, it's not actually legal to bet on them from the U.S., but there are ways to do so anyway. Lots of them, for instance, you can't necessarily take credit cards, but you can take crypto.
|
Sam:
[1:11:57]
| You know, I was just watching from 10 years ago. You know, Alex and I are watching old front lines. We were watching a front line from 2016 about fantasy sports betting, which also grew up a decade ago in the U.S. Because there was a loophole in an anti-betting law that specifically excluded fantasy sports because at the time the law went into place, what was fantasy sports betting? It was office pools. It was people doing stuff on paper for low stakes money. But then once people realized there was the loophole in the law that had been created for that, they blew it up. They went electronic. They went daily. They went, you know, whatever. And it became a massive business. And that's the same thing that's happening with these other betting markets right now, is they're taking advantage of various ways to operate in the market. You know, without having to worry about anti-gambling laws, which exist in almost every country in the world, but they make sure that they are legally based in countries where it's okay. And then they scatter their servers throughout the world so that no one place can crack down on them. There's all kinds of shady stuff going on.
|
Bruce:
[1:13:18]
| And like CalShe has made themselves legal because they, they, they're not, you're not betting, you're not betting whether, you're not betting against the house. You're, you're betting against other users and basically trading options contracts on not just, not the price of a stock, but on an event. And so they're, they're using that loophole, even though it's functionally the same as gambling, it's, it's a contract that you're trading. And I'll admit, a couple of months ago, I decided, I'm going to try this out. So I put $100 in the cal sheet and I was like, all right, if I burn through this $100, that's it, I'm done. And if I, maybe I'll make a bunch of money. So as of right now, my, after a couple of months of making small $5 to $10 bets on things, I'm at $76 right now.
|
Sam:
[1:14:09]
| So you have gone down.
|
Bruce:
[1:14:10]
| I have gone down.
|
Sam:
[1:14:12]
| You just haven't burned, you haven't burned your full $100 yet. I thought you were going to say, I've turned that $100 into $10,000 or something.
|
Bruce:
[1:14:19]
| I wish I couldn't. I wish I had to. But it's like, well, it kind of pisses me off because some of these things, they resolve, and it's not totally true. One of the things that I bet on was whether the Tesla robo-taxi would be fully self-driving or they would have no driver. In the, in the seat by a certain date. And that date came along. And just before that happened, Tesla released, oh, we have no driver in the seat. But then a couple of days later, it was revealed that there's actually a driver right behind. There's like a following car. And I was like.
|
Sam:
[1:15:04]
| Well, that doesn't count.
|
Bruce:
[1:15:05]
| That doesn't count. You can't follow your, took your robo taxi around driving it like a remote control so it's like dang so yeah you just got to be careful and i think i'm i would hope that over time when people will wise up and and and not either not do these gambling markets or only bet on things that cannot be Well.
|
Sam:
[1:15:32]
| The fundamental problem as it exists today is because insiders are clearly in there. First of all, some of the companies involved have said, actually, insiders gambling on this is actually a plus because it makes us more accurate. Like if you're looking to us as, you know, because often these are done as zero to 100 that matches the percent chance of the thing happening. Right. And eventually they all go to either zero or 100 and you trade on that value and you hope it goes to 100 or you or you trade in and out of it and make money on the way to whatever it does. And, you know, obviously there's some people shorting these things, too. So hoping they go to zero. But the.
|
Sam:
[1:16:22]
| They basically say, like, our value as a prediction, they say this thing has a 60% chance of happening. Our value to have an accurate percentage is improved the more insiders are trading on the platform because they know the truth of what's really going on. And if because they know the truth, they're willing to gamble more on it, that makes our number more and more accurate. So insiders are good, is their argument. However, the flip side of that is if you have insiders who know the answer in advance, they basically are going to be the ones making the money. And all of the rubes who are just trading based on public information are inevitably going to get killed in favor of the people who actually know the answer in advance.
|
Bruce:
[1:17:12]
| Yeah, it's, you know, caveat emptor, as they say. Buyer beware.
|
Sam:
[1:17:17]
| Now, knowing your libertarian tendencies here, I'm going to ask, do you think there's any place whatsoever for laws to try to nail this stuff down and either say you can't do it outright, I think you'd probably be against that, or at least make it right? More fair?
|
Bruce:
[1:17:42]
| I think it's, I, of course, I don't think there's, there should be any laws, uh, regulating betting markets. It's in the, it's in the betting market's own interest to make sure that their platforms are fair and, and, and not manipulable and, uh, and where they are, where they enforce their rules of like, if, if you want to have a betting market where you can't have insiders then they kick those people off or find them or and.
|
Sam:
[1:18:11]
| I will point out that one of the news stories this week was one of the betting markets kicking off two politicians who are.
|
Bruce:
[1:18:21]
| Betting on their own races yeah yeah yeah um i think if i think that they can be i think they should be self-regulating and i think that can be done well.
|
Sam:
[1:18:31]
| What i'll i'll put this out there i think in the long term, if these companies want to exist long term and continue to make money indefinitely, you are right. It is in their self-interest to not be seen as scams for the most part, or to be seen as an entertainment thing that, you know, people know they're like, I mean casinos still exist you know the house wins you know and they make money anyway because people like to gamble you know people spend money on the lottery every week even though it's a losing proposition for you know.
|
Sam:
[1:19:16]
| The chances of you winning are infinitesimal you know but people spend money anyway you know, And I think long term, you're right. But also, we're living in a universe where lots of these companies are perfectly willing to be operations that last five years. And you suck all the money out of it you can, and then you go and then you close it down and you start up something new. And in that case, if you're willing to burn your reputation over time, as long as you can suck out a lot of money first, then the incentives don't line up anymore, to be fair. And, you know, it actually becomes like, hey, can you get in on that insider trading? Can you make sure that we're pulling the right amount of money out of it for the founders? You know, and so it's unclear. Like, you know, are these same companies going to exist in 10 years? I actually am fairly dubious that, you know, these are long-term, long-going concerns as opposed to, you know, hey, let's pull out what we can't. Now, having said that, I'm looking at CalSHE right now. It's been around eight years already. You know, some of these have been around a while.
|
Bruce:
[1:20:33]
| And the news is actually using their data to help inform people of the probability of certain events happening.
|
Sam:
[1:20:41]
| Well, yeah, but the problem again is that as soon as you know that's happening, then you get people that are buying them in order to manipulate them, you know, and we've seen that already in some of the. I can't remember which election it was, whether it was in the 2024 cycle or before that even, where you had definitive cases where one candidate or another was not directly, but through proxies, was specifically buying up the price for their candidate to make their odds look better than anything that was reflected. anywhere else. And of course, they do the same thing with traditional polling. You have the partisan polling agencies who are intentionally putting out results that are tilted in one direction or another in order to manipulate the narrative. And the thing is, it's even easier to do with these things. So every time I see news companies actually saying, you know, hey, Kalshi says there's an 80% chance of this, you know, you got to take that with a huge grain of salt.
|
Bruce:
[1:21:57]
| True. But the way to solve that would be to go big because the bigger the market, the harder it's to manipulate it. So if you've got...
|
Sam:
[1:22:07]
| That is true.
|
Bruce:
[1:22:08]
| It takes $10 million to move the needle just a couple percent, then that's not worth it.
|
Sam:
[1:22:15]
| Potentially. I mean, but if you can put your $10 million in, move the needle, and then pull it out at now $20, then it's worth it to you because you're not actually losing the $10 million. You're manipulating the market. You're making money off it. You just make sure to pull out after a few minutes or a few hours rather than hold it long term.
|
Bruce:
[1:22:36]
| Yeah, and then they got people on the other side of the bet who see that manipulation happening because they're looking at the volume of the transactions. And so there will be smart people who will be the other side of that arbitrage, which will automatically work against that. So I think the markets, I think, you know, I may be naive, but I see markets as being self-healing the more freedom you give them.
|
Sam:
[1:23:02]
| Well, all of the stuff about like the invisible hand of the market relies on perfect information. The second you have people in there who are operating on insider information and or are willing to spend money to manipulate the market, even if they lose money, then all of the stuff that is self-correcting theoretically about the markets goes out the window because it's broken. Right.
|
Bruce:
[1:23:30]
| Yeah. Yeah. And then then when people realize that, then those markets will cease to exist.
|
Sam:
[1:23:37]
| And like I said, lots of people are perfectly happy to do that. You know, they get their advantage out of them while while they can and then it dies and then they start a new one. No big deal. Yeah. So anyway, so yeah. So regardless of all this, you're, are, are, are you continuing? You're going to, you're going to keep going with your 75 bucks till it's zero or a million.
|
Bruce:
[1:24:00]
| I'm going to keep going. And eventually if it gets high enough, I will pull out my original a hundred dollars and then it will be free money, but I'm not putting anything, any more than a hundred dollars into this thing. But it's kind of fun. Cause I've got a few things like one of the bets I have is what is the chance that a new interstellar visitor will be confirmed this year like.
|
Sam:
[1:24:24]
| A like another one of those little asteroids or whatever.
|
Bruce:
[1:24:27]
| Yeah yeah not an actual like.
|
Sam:
[1:24:28]
| Little green men but.
|
Bruce:
[1:24:29]
| Yeah yeah exactly another was yeah one of those there have been three now.
|
Sam:
[1:24:34]
| There have been three now.
|
Bruce:
[1:24:35]
| Yeah so what's the right now I well I bought it at it was a 68% No, wait, I bought it when it was a 51% chance. So it was basically a 50-50 bet. For some reason, it's gone down to 49%. So it's still pretty much 50-50. And I would think that over the course of the year.
|
Sam:
[1:24:56]
| That's a decent bet, although the time limiting is always a trouble, right? Because, like, fundamentally, there are probably dozens of these things every year. The gating factor is our technology at detecting them is better.
|
Bruce:
[1:25:10]
| So I bet that there will not be one this year.
|
Sam:
[1:25:13]
| Oh, you would bet there will not be one. Yeah. Okay.
|
Bruce:
[1:25:16]
| So over the course of the year, that number should just keep going up and up and up and up because it's a smaller and smaller window. So we'll see.
|
Sam:
[1:25:24]
| Right. Yeah. Okay. Unless they find one, in which case you plummet to zero.
|
Bruce:
[1:25:29]
| Yeah. But.
|
Sam:
[1:25:32]
| Okay. Any other exciting bets you want to report on or talk about in this space?
|
Bruce:
[1:25:37]
| Well, my favorite person in the House of Representatives, he's running a—that's Thomas Massey, and he is running—he's being challenged in his primary.
|
Sam:
[1:25:51]
| Okay.
|
Bruce:
[1:25:51]
| And right now, there's a 72% chance that he's going to win his primary. So i bought i i bought the i bet that he is going to win okay hopefully he wins make some money.
|
Sam:
[1:26:08]
| Okay very good very good.
|
Bruce:
[1:26:11]
| Uh anything.
|
Sam:
[1:26:13]
| Else you want to chat about or should we start wrapping things up.
|
Bruce:
[1:26:15]
| Uh we can wrap things up uh we can talk well we'll talk about the the i you always ask about one thing in the Slack. So I'll be ready for that too.
|
Sam:
[1:26:27]
| Yeah, you're ready for that. Okay, excellent. So starting the wrap up, go to curmudgeon-corner.com. You can find all the ways to contact myself and Yvonne. And Bruce, you want to give any ways to contact you? What's your best ways these days? Are you still on X?
|
Bruce:
[1:26:43]
| I'm still on X. I'm a BYU fan. I have not joined any of the other competitors to X. I'm just a read only pretty much on there. I don't really post anything on there. So...
|
Sam:
[1:26:55]
| Okay. Well, if anybody out there wants to get a message to Bruce, contact me and I will pass it along. The curmudgeons-corner.com has all the ways to contact myself and Yvonne in the show. It has our archives, has transcripts of old episodes, all that kind of stuff. And importantly, it has our Patreon where you can give us money at various levels. We will send you a postcard, we will send you a mug, we will mention you on the show, we will ring a bell, all that kind of fun stuff. And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask, we will invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of other people, sometimes Bruce, are on there chatting about things, sharing links, all of this kind of stuff. It's a lot of fun. You should join us. So Bruce, what is something from the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack recently that we have not talked about on the show that would make people really excited and want to join?
|
Bruce:
[1:27:50]
| Well, I don't know if it'll make them excited, But I was very intrigued by one item in the news that was posted on there. The Justice Department, or I guess it's the FBI specifically, is indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center for fraudulently actually giving aid or funding actually the KKK and other racist groups. And so it appears... According to the indictment that they're actually trying to create racism so that they can campaign against it.
|
Sam:
[1:28:30]
| So that may not be.
|
Bruce:
[1:28:33]
| Actually the case.
|
Sam:
[1:28:34]
| No uh what what the what seems to really be the case is that it has been a well-known thing that the spLC has done for over 50 years that they will pay informants inside these organizations to report on what is going on to help them figure out how to attack them. And this was a primary mechanism that the SPLC used against the KKK for decades as part of their efforts to go after them legally in different ways to dismantle them. And they've done the same thing with other organizations. And the fraud part of this is also going to be very difficult to make stick in any sort of way because, as I said, this has been a well-known part of how they've operated for decades and decades and decades because it's how they've built some of their legal cases against these organizations. And so they've had these paid informants who end up as witnesses in court and who end up, you know, you know, telling their stories in various ways. And it is not, they have not been giving money to the KKK. They have been giving money to people within the KKK willing to flip and give information to the KKK's enemies.
|
Bruce:
[1:29:59]
| Or could this be a case where these informants within the KKK and other organizations are, They're actually encouraging them to foment bad activities. Kind of like the way the FBI does with terrorism.
|
Sam:
[1:30:24]
| Sometimes the FBI has absolutely done that. So far, I have not seen any evidence that the SPLC has done that. And this court case doesn't even allege that. It's alleging the sort of financial fraud stuff, which they don't really have a case for from anything I can see. I suspect this is going to go the way of a lot of the Trump administration's other attempts to go after their political enemies and end up going nowhere, either being thrown out of court or, you know, the jury goes against them in the end. And they did get it passed a grand jury this time, which they haven't in some of the other cases. But it very much seems to be another one of these situations where the mandate from above was the SPLC is calling a lot of our friends.
|
Sam:
[1:31:18]
| Right-wing extremist racist groups. And so therefore, we instruct you to find something you can indict them with and be as creative as you need to be. And that's what they're doing. And so far, that technique has not worked well. The one against the Fed chair was dismissed earlier this week. The ones against like Comey and Letitia James went nowhere. I think this is going to be another one of those. The question is how far along the process you can go and how much pain you can cause the organization you're attacking in the meantime, because they're forced to defend it and they're forced to expend resources on it. And certain people will hear the message that, oh, they're a fraudulent organization and they actually support the KKK. And that's the only part of this story they will ever hear and they will not hear any follow-ups and that'll be that. So it causes damage to the organization you're attacking. From my point of view, SPLC is one of the, organizations I give a small donation to every week, and it makes me think about increasing it. Not every week, every month.
|
Sam:
[1:32:28]
| I give them like five bucks a month. It's not like a huge amount. But when a story like this comes up, I'm like, okay, maybe I should bump that number, because they do actually do good work. And I have not seen anything out of this that makes me think it's actually credible or meaningful or anything other than let's try to find something that we can do something with. Now, if they actually find real fraud, then I would flip immediately. Like, I don't have any, like, I don't have any long-term allegiance. I give money to organizations because I think they do good work. If I find out they're not actually doing good work and they're instead like pocketing the money for themselves or doing the opposite of what they say they were doing or anything like that, well then, okay, I'll stop giving them money and I'll give money to somebody else, you know, but. So, okay, cool. Now that was a, that was a more serious newsy one. Are there any fun things from the Slack that you would want to put up?
|
Bruce:
[1:33:38]
| I don't have anything queued up. So there are plenty of those.
|
Sam:
[1:33:42]
| Okay.
|
Bruce:
[1:33:42]
| I got there.
|
Sam:
[1:33:43]
| Let me see if I can find one real quick. Okay. I'll find one, one that I reposted from blue sky the other day. It was, it's not a particularly long article. It wasn't even an article. It was just some historian posted for everybody's identification, because, of course, everybody was wondering this. Apparently, in medieval, in 14th century England, sometimes things would be traded using eels as a currency. Okay so he he did all the appropriate conversions and historical research to be like well two dozen eggs six eels that that's how much it would cost you in eels to buy a couple dozen eggs a gallon of ale of good ale eight eels if you wanted a two-story cottage three thousand eels, and i guess.
|
Bruce:
[1:34:45]
| That was a delicacy back then maybe i don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:34:48]
| Well i mean you know it it's it's an island nation this there's oceans around it there's seafood and you know i don't know if it was a delicacy or not but it was something you could get out of the ocean and eat you know so a cow 706 eels a sheep 106 so cows are worth a lot more than sheep i guess they still are but you know They're bigger, etc. Those are the five examples that he put. And just the conversion, by the way, the 3,000 eels for the two-story cottage in sort of a currency that we would recognize today, two pounds. I mean, we're talking, you know, 14th century. Inflation does a lot in that many hundreds of years.
|
Bruce:
[1:35:38]
| So I think a pound, wasn't a pound used to mean a pound of silver?
|
Sam:
[1:35:43]
| At some point, it was a pound of something. I think the something has probably changed a few times in the history.
|
Bruce:
[1:35:49]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:35:49]
| But yeah.
|
Bruce:
[1:35:50]
| That's what I thought it was. I thought it was originally a pound of silver. But anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:35:53]
| It might have been. You may be right on that. But yeah, two pounds would have gotten you a two-story cottage in the 14th century or 3,000 eels, now, it might have been harder to carry around the 3,000 eels but, you know get a nice house out of it, nice okay, that's it thank you all for joining us for yet another Curmudgeon's Corner, thank you Bruce for joining us and filling in the last moment again, Always good to have you here. And for everybody else, have a good week. Stay safe. Have fun. Blah, blah, blah. And we'll see you next time. Goodbye. Say goodbye, Bruce.
|
Bruce:
[1:36:40]
| Oh, goodbye.
|
Sam:
[1:36:42]
| Here we go. Here comes the music. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Bruce. Have a good weekend.
|
Bruce:
[1:37:18]
| Thank you. You too. Bye.
| |
|
