Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Hello.
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Ivan:
[0:01]
| Hi.
|
Sam:
[0:05]
| Massive enthusiasm today, I hear.
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Ivan:
[0:08]
| Woo!
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Sam:
[0:09]
| Woo!
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Ivan:
[0:11]
| Please keep this tab open until the upload is done. What the fuck? What is...
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Sam:
[0:19]
| Something weird happening?
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Ivan:
[0:21]
| Well, maybe it's just that I haven't noticed it, but it's just there's... Nothing. Nothing important.
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Sam:
[0:28]
| All good?
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Ivan:
[0:30]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[0:31]
| Everything's wonderful? Oh, yeah.
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Ivan:
[0:35]
| Everything is wonderful? Really?
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Sam:
[0:37]
| Everything. Everything. Shall we start the music?
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Ivan:
[0:41]
| Yes.
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Sam:
[1:04]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, May 2nd, 2026. It's just after 17 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Mentor and Yvonne Bowes here with us again this week. Hello, Yvonne.
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Ivan:
[1:18]
| Hi.
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Sam:
[1:22]
| Okay. The enthusiasm is just infectious here. I'm getting so, like, hyped up, you know?
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Ivan:
[1:32]
| I am so fucking done. with everything with everything and everybody and everybody and everything excellent excellent, so it's like what a you know I think Pete this week said something on Slack on our Slack yes on our Slack on.
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Sam:
[1:53]
| Our Slack yes.
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Ivan:
[1:53]
| Which I think kind of like crystallizes our current reality he made this mention about, a comic book that I didn't know about. I'm not a comic guy. I'd never heard of it.
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Sam:
[2:11]
| Yeah, me either.
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Ivan:
[2:12]
| Look, you know, I used to, when I was little, I read a lot of comics, but my comics, a lot of Mexican comics, okay?
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Sam:
[2:23]
| Okay.
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Ivan:
[2:24]
| Memin. You look them up. This character from Mexico cartoon, I read those. There were Spanish comic books. There was another... There was a few... Gavilán, Memín... Those were my comics. But then also, a lot of... Disney comic characters like Daffy, Rico Macbato, God, who's the Scrooge? Rico Macbato.
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Sam:
[3:02]
| Scrooge McDuck.
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Ivan:
[3:03]
| Scrooge McDuck.
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Sam:
[3:04]
| Rich Duck.
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Ivan:
[3:05]
| Rico Macbato.
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Sam:
[3:08]
| Rich McDuck. Rich is Scrooge McDuck.
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Ivan:
[3:13]
| Condorito, just from Chile. I like Condorito. but not these okay but so but he he showed he's talking about this guy who apparently, at some point decided to show his utter contempt for his fans i mean it is quite interesting, and so this guy's kind of like trump and you know it's so funny that trump has more than once showed complete contempt for his voters and they don't give a shit and so this guy did the same so he went like first where he was like early he was counterculture edgy comedy so wait the.
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Sam:
[4:01]
| Interesting thing here before you read the table.
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Ivan:
[4:03]
| Yeah yeah oh yeah is.
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Sam:
[4:05]
| That this guy apparently you know was well he does comics but.
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Ivan:
[4:12]
| You know.
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Sam:
[4:12]
| He was he was always somewhat ideological you know in what he did.
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Ivan:
[4:17]
| In what he did but.
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Sam:
[4:19]
| But and I guess this is both his personal life and in the comics I guess again I am not familiar with the comics either but apparently his views and what he's ideological ideological about have, morphed quite a bit over you know, the years.
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Ivan:
[4:37]
| A bit!
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Sam:
[4:38]
| A bit!
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Ivan:
[4:39]
| A bit!
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Sam:
[4:42]
| A bit. I mean, go ahead and read the table now.
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Ivan:
[4:46]
| The table goes that from 2000 to 2011, he was counterculture edgy, and his main antagonist was organized religion and consumerism. Okay? 2011 to 2018, he was a rad fem, says here, radical feminism. The patriarchy. It was the patriarchy. Okay? Basically. Then, another shift. 2018 18 to 2021.
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Sam:
[5:13]
| He became a TERF.
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Ivan:
[5:15]
| Yep. Gender critical, and he was anti-trans people and woke culture. And now, 2023 to 2021, neo-Nazi, conspiratorial, the Jewish people, and global.
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Sam:
[5:32]
| To the present. 2023 to 2021 goes backwards in time. You know, it is no longer 2021.
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Ivan:
[5:39]
| Are we doing that? Are we really fucking doing that?
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Sam:
[5:44]
| Okay, 2023 to present. Go ahead.
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Ivan:
[5:48]
| Sorry, I stepped all over you. Now it'd be a Nazi conspiratorial, and it's the Jewish people and the globalists. A quote, and he had to clarify, I'm not paraphrasing, this is an actual quote from him. The Jews are poisoning your wells.
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Sam:
[6:07]
| Lovely, lovely.
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Ivan:
[6:09]
| What the fuck? Listen, I swear to God, everything right now feels just like this. Everything.
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Sam:
[6:28]
| Basically, it seems like if you go back 25 years, everybody was kind of normal. Things were going on. And, you know, there were positives and negatives, as always. But, like, you don't have anything normal. And then people just turn into Nazis.
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Ivan:
[6:47]
| Right!
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Sam:
[6:48]
| Because why not?
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Ivan:
[6:49]
| Who are Nazis? 25 years ago, it was pretty well established to most people that Nazis were bad. This wasn't the debate. If you said Nazis are good, everybody thought you were insane. And now, Nazis, a lot of people, good. We need more of them.
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Sam:
[7:21]
| I feel like for the most part, people still won't say that quite out loud, but it's damn close.
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Ivan:
[7:27]
| Sam, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, but a lot of people do say that very clearly quite out loud now.
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Sam:
[7:34]
| A lot of people do, but there are a lot of other people who sort of, if you analyze it, yes, their views are very fascistic, very racist, very anti-Semitic, etc. But if you ask them, they'd be like, oh, no, we're not Nazis. That Nazi is a slur.
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Ivan:
[7:53]
| Our Secretary of Defense has a fucking Nazi tattoo.
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Sam:
[7:58]
| So does the likely Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine.
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Ivan:
[8:03]
| Now, at least he actually says, Look, I was young and dumb.
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Sam:
[8:09]
| Yes.
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Ivan:
[8:11]
| You know? Which I could, you know what? I can believe this, okay? Young people do some very dumb shit. You know, although he was still.
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Sam:
[8:22]
| He was still defending it like as recently as a few years ago. And, you know, he's not young anymore.
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Ivan:
[8:30]
| Not that old either.
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Sam:
[8:31]
| To us, probably.
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Ivan:
[8:32]
| Yes. Yeah, not that old either. But anyway.
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Sam:
[8:37]
| Yes. So you're feeling great about everything. Great about the world. Everything's sunny. You're skipping through the fields of dandelions or whatever.
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Ivan:
[8:50]
| I got a whoop. Okay.
|
Sam:
[8:52]
| A whoop. What's a whoop?
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Ivan:
[8:54]
| Yeah, this thing that I'm wearing here that Sam is, as I'm showing him on video.
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Sam:
[8:59]
| Is it some kind of smartwatch thing?
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Ivan:
[9:01]
| No, it's not a smartwatch. Because the thing is, I have...
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Sam:
[9:04]
| An activity tracker. It's an activity tracker.
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Ivan:
[9:07]
| It's an activity tracker. It's not a watch.
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Sam:
[9:09]
| It's more like old Fitbits or whatever.
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Ivan:
[9:11]
| Yeah, except a lot more sophisticated, okay? Because it even measures blood pressure. Right. So it's got the one thing, I was looking to try to get something. I wear a watch every day. I don't, while I like the Apple Watch, there are many reasons why I don't like it. The main reason is you have to charge it regularly.
|
Sam:
[9:36]
| Yeah.
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Ivan:
[9:38]
| And I, you know, and I don't, I don't want a watch that I want to, that I want to charge. Okay. I wear pretty much automatic winding watches. Okay.
|
Sam:
[9:51]
| Mechanical.
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Ivan:
[9:51]
| I, I, um, good old-fashioned mechanical watches. Mechanical, yeah. And I, I wear my watch.
|
Sam:
[10:00]
| Meanwhile, I'd be like, you know, I wear this because it does stuff. For decades, I was like, watch, that's useless. It only tells you your time. The phone does that. Why would, why the fuck would you need like a thing? It only has the time. And it's, and it's not as accurate. And it's not as accurate as, you know, so.
|
Ivan:
[10:17]
| And I, and I, and I, and I sleep with it and I, and I, I, I wear it. The only, the only time I take it off is to shower. And I, I, I, I, I like, I know because one time I almost like, kind of like, I don't know, I, I, I must've been really, it was one of those crazy days. I almost like left the house without putting it on. But as I walked through the door, I realized I had this awful weird sensation in my arm. I'm like, what the fuck? And I realized, oh wait, I don't. have my watch on. What the fuck? So I went back and I got it. But I was looking for an activity tracker, and I was comparing the different available ones, okay? And I was comparing, like, what's the difference between what you get in the Apple Watch, what do you get? The ones that I looked, the Oura Ring, because my wife got one. And, well, I had heard about this one, the Whoop. The thing is that the Whoop does have a number of features that an Apple Watch doesn't have, okay? One is blood pressure monitoring.
|
Sam:
[11:18]
| Right? Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:19]
| The Apple Watch doesn't have that. The other thing is that the battery life on this...
|
Sam:
[11:23]
| I hear they're working on it, right?
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Ivan:
[11:24]
| I have heard about it.
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Sam:
[11:26]
| But it's not there.
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Ivan:
[11:29]
| Blood pressure monitoring, and also how often you have to recharge it. It lasts a few weeks, okay?
|
Sam:
[11:38]
| Right.
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Ivan:
[11:39]
| And that's typically one of the... And you don't even have to...
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Sam:
[11:41]
| Yeah, the pure activity monitors tend to last weeks as compared to the smart watches, which last about a day. You basically plug them in at night, just like your phone.
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Ivan:
[11:52]
| Yeah. And so it'll track sleep. Okay. And it also, to charge it, you don't have to take it off. It's got this thing where, okay, say, you know, the battery life's a couple of weeks. What you do is you actually slide. There's a battery pack that I slide on the battery pack. Say I'm going to, oh, it needs to charge the night. I don't have to take it off. I slide this little battery pack on it that charges it overnight. Yeah, I take it off, put it back on charge. That's it. So you don't even have to take it off for recharging.
|
Sam:
[12:18]
| The first six weeks or so that I had an Apple Watch, I did not take it off to charge. I would put the little charging puck between it and my wrist. And, you know, I did that. I would do that while I was driving. I would do that, like, you know, when I happen to be sitting next to the charger.
|
Ivan:
[12:38]
| Okay, but the thing is, the thing is supposed to be tracking, you know, like, I understand. If you have it doing that, it's blocking the ability to measure like your heart rate and some other features or they can't work.
|
Sam:
[12:51]
| Well, not yet. Not at that moment. No, you are absolutely correct. But, you know, but it's still on your wrist and you can still like see the other things it does and, you know, text and make phone calls and all that stuff. You know, not that I ever do that.
|
Ivan:
[13:06]
| But the most important thing. Yeah, exactly. The most important thing for me on the watch is to know what the fuck time it is. And I don't want to have to look at my phone to know what fucking time it is.
|
Sam:
[13:16]
| Yeah, because you have this weird thing that there's actually some periods of time where your phone is not in your hand.
|
Ivan:
[13:23]
| Correct.
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Sam:
[13:23]
| With the screen on. Whereas, like, for me, if I'm awake, my phone is in my hand and the screen is on.
|
Ivan:
[13:28]
| Look, I'm in meetings and things and stuff going on. And honestly, I think it is a lot more, especially in, like, business meetings. If I'm looking at my wrist, that I'm just... a customer will know that I'm just looking at what time it is. You know, it's not that I'm looking at a message or something or whatever. Okay. You know, I'm just like trying to figure out, hey, how much time do I got on this meeting right now? I gotta be honest. I sign stuff all the time. I gotta put down the date. And one thing is that I have the date very, you know, what day of the month it is very clearly on there. I realized how often I use that because I have, I started using an older watch that I have and I started using it again. And that watch has the date in very, very small. And I realized how much I use the date because I wore it and I was like, oh, shit, wait, I'm having trouble reading the date. And I realized that I looked at what date, day in a month it was so often. I realized, well, I should use this watch as often because I have trouble reading the day in a month on there.
|
Sam:
[14:35]
| Okay, so I distracted you by moving the conversation to smartwatches. The thing you actually have.
|
Ivan:
[14:43]
| So this one tracks activity, exercise. It does a lot more. What I realize is this has a lot more health tracking features than even the Apple Watch right now has. Like I mentioned the one that was like the blood pressure. I mean, I know they brought back blood oxygen. Okay.
|
Sam:
[15:06]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[15:07]
| So, but it's, but, but, you know, but it's got that it's the battery lasts longer. So the one thing is in the comparison, basically it was, it's, if you don't, you know, since I didn't like really the battery life, a trade-off on the Apple Watch, that this is better than an Aura Ring because it tracks a lot more stuff. And so I've been using it only for a couple of days. I do like the fact that it does detect things automatically. Like, if I'm working out, so I did a workout, I don't have to tell them I'm doing a workout and realize, okay, that was a workout, let's log it, okay? Now, I don't know, But right now, I've only worn it a couple of days. I don't have a detail. It's still not doing the, I don't have a full detail tracking of all the different things that it has. But it's got the EKG as well, like as on the Apple Watch. So it does do that. Blood oxygen, blood pressure. Here's the one that I like. It also has this stress monitor. It actually reads your level of stress.
|
Sam:
[16:20]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[16:21]
| And I will say this, it's pretty good because I realized I was looking at this thing. I had, I had a, I had a fucking.
|
Sam:
[16:28]
| And it's been through the roof all week.
|
Ivan:
[16:30]
| It hasn't been through the roof all week, but I will tell you that yesterday I had a very stressful call. And I looked back after the call. I had a really bad, I had a call that really pissed me off to no end with a customer. And they set it up for Friday at 4 o'clock. Of all the damn times I set this up, just to send me into a miserable fucking weekend. Okay? By scheduling this call for Friday at 4 o'clock. Okay?
|
Sam:
[17:00]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[17:00]
| And I noticed that I went back to see, okay, did the stress monitor catch that this guy, that this call was like awful? The answer was absolutely yes. I could see that you could tell on the chart that according to it, the stress in me was going through the roof as this call was going on. Okay. So, yeah. So, I thought, oh, there you go. It's pretty cool. Okay. So it's trying to track to see how stressed I am. And apparently, as far as I can tell, it's doing an accurate job. Well, we'll see how it goes. It's tracking my sleep, which I hadn't had a sleep tracker. And I had done some stuff with sleep tracking, but, you know.
|
Ivan:
[17:49]
| So, you know, so we'll see. But, you know, it's looking like, you know, So it's still calibrating some of the things that it says that basically I've only worn it a couple of days. It needs about six more days until we've got recovery scores, what my stress is, my VO2 max, you know, which is for exercise estimate of how am I on my health span and just overall health, tracking my resting heart rate, my heart rate zones. calories consume, you know, active and at rest calories. There's a lot of things here that Apple does do as well. And I do think that, For the most part, the only one that it has that the Apple Watch doesn't have, as far as I can tell, is the blood pressure monitoring.
|
Sam:
[18:46]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[18:47]
| But if you are not one that doesn't wear an Apple Watch, this is a good alternative in order to track the stuff. I mean, so I got it. It's more than a couple of days. It's cool.
|
Sam:
[19:04]
| So I will note that while it does not have a direct, like, here is your blood pressure, I just looked it up, the Apple Watch does have hypertension notifications.
|
Ivan:
[19:21]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[19:21]
| So it can detect high blood pressure and notify you when there's an issue. It's just not set up and authorized to actually give you, like, here's your blood pressure right now.
|
Ivan:
[19:37]
| Yeah, that's the thing. And that's good. Okay, I didn't realize. So that's good. I'll tell you, look, I think that the Apple Watch is very compelling. It's a good watch. If the Apple Watch had, like, battery life of a couple of months, I would be like, okay, I would be far more...
|
Sam:
[20:01]
| Well, and the short battery life.
|
Ivan:
[20:06]
| I'm like, eh, no.
|
Sam:
[20:06]
| I mean, the trade-off is right now with current technology is to get a couple of months. You basically have to, you know, you can do all the monitoring with that kind of battery life. You can't do all the interactive features and have a cell phone in it and texting and all that other crap that's in the Apple Watch. yeah here's another thing i'll tell you on apple watch after when my mom was having a health scare last year we decided to get her an apple watch okay and you know so because she had fallen at home and decided not to call us for like eight hours before she'd fallen and she couldn't get up at like 10 p.m and she didn't like contact us till like seven in the morning because she didn't want to bother us at night okay jesus fucking christ okay anyway that was the start of that event but so we got her an apple watch but i was like you know my mom doesn't like us like us to get like more expensive things so i actually got her the and also knowing like she wasn't going to use all the advanced features on the Apple Watch.
|
Ivan:
[21:22]
| Right, right, right.
|
Sam:
[21:24]
| It's mainly going to be a watch and do some other things. So we got her the cheapest available Apple Watch, the SE, whatever the current version of that is. And she's loved it. She's absolutely loved it. Great. Her old, like, mechanical watch had died, and she'd been holding off and replacing it. And she likes that it just tells her at a time. And she's amused by other things it does. Okay, cool. Like, some of the notifications will come in on her watch, and sometimes it'll tell her things. And, you know, so she likes the watch. Yes, yes, exactly. She wears it all the time. But she had an appointment a few weeks ago with her cardiologist, regular standing appointment with the cardiologist. And her cardiologist tried to show her how to do an ECG.
|
Ivan:
[22:17]
| EKG. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:19]
| I think the watch does an ECG, not an EKG, but whatever.
|
Ivan:
[22:24]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:25]
| Anyway. And they couldn't figure it out. And then, of course, I and I was like, oh, I'll help you set it up later. But then I looked it up. The SE doesn't have that feature.
|
Ivan:
[22:35]
| It doesn't have the feature. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:36]
| And I'm like, I could, I mean, all the others do. Every other Apple Watch does that's been sold in the last, like, however many years. I think the last one that didn't have it was the Apple Watch 4 or something, which was a long time ago. Except the SE, because it's their cheapest one. And I'm like, I could have splurged for the next level up. The only reason I didn't was because I thought.
|
Ivan:
[22:59]
| Was because you were bummed. You were thinking about, yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:01]
| I was thinking about my mom. I was thinking she wouldn't use the extra features. I also thought she'd be annoyed if I bought her the more expensive watch as opposed to the cheaper one. You know, so we got, and now I'm like, you know, now she can't do the little thing her doctor wants her to do. You know? And she's like, that's fine. I don't need to do that. You know, it's fine.
|
Ivan:
[23:25]
| You know, I don't know. I mean, you know.
|
Sam:
[23:29]
| So yeah, exactly. I mean, and also just to point out, that is a feature that is not automatically running in the background. You have to go.
|
Ivan:
[23:40]
| You have to, right.
|
Sam:
[23:41]
| You have to say, I want to have one of these things right now.
|
Ivan:
[23:45]
| No, yeah. Same thing here. I mean, I have to go and like say, okay, I want to do it. And I put my fingers on the thing the right way.
|
Sam:
[23:52]
| And it will read. And the reason somebody like a cardiologist would like it if you had that on your watch is if you start feeling weird, do it. And then they can retroactively look at the results and see was something going on or not. So, I don't know. We'll see. But, you know, at this point, I'm like, damn it. I should have gotten the one level. I mean, and the price difference isn't that much.
|
Ivan:
[24:17]
| It's not that much, actually. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:18]
| No, no. It's not. Like, you know, oh, well. But, you know, she likes her watch. So, you know. And I like mine.
|
Ivan:
[24:27]
| So, you know.
|
Sam:
[24:28]
| And by the way, Brandy got a new Apple Watch 2 last year sometime and is actually wearing hers more now. Because even though, like you said, still you have to plug it in every night. But it used to not even make it through the damn day. You know, they have improved it. And when it wasn't making it through the day, it often ended up just being, you know, a dead thing on your wrist and, you know, you'd plug it into charge and then forget about it.
|
Ivan:
[24:57]
| But I don't know, I think I mentioned this. Maybe I didn't mention it on the show, but we had this discussion on the Slack. I was having that issue with my son's watch where the battery was like racing through real quick.
|
Sam:
[25:09]
| And they were able to replace the battery or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[25:12]
| No, it wasn't even that. It's a software issue. Um, it was a software issue where it basically, you need to just restore the watch. They did it for me at the Apple store and they did that and voila, battery life restored.
|
Sam:
[25:29]
| In the case of the ones we had, and I have one of sitting on a shelf over here right now. They were also really old. They were Apple watch.
|
Ivan:
[25:38]
| No, but this watch was old, but I went and they tested the battery and they told me, no, no, no. Yeah. It's, it's not. It's not the battery. They told me, no, it just takes it to do the software restore. Bob, also on our Slack, confirmed that he had the same issue with an older Apple Watch, that he thought that was the issue, and all it took was restoring the software, and the battery life came back to closer to normal.
|
Sam:
[26:06]
| What it was. Now, even then, the battery life has improved since those early Apple Watches.
|
Ivan:
[26:11]
| Yes, yes, yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[26:12]
| Yeah. They initially, they were like, you know, 15 hours or something. And now it's pretty close to 24 now.
|
Ivan:
[26:18]
| Yeah. It's really, it's really more a full, you know. Yeah. It will work now most effortlessly through a full day. You're not, you're not going to wind up if you, if you take, you, you put, took it off the charger in your morning. You're, you're not going to wind up with a dead watch at 9 PM anymore. No.
|
Sam:
[26:34]
| And also the, the new USB-C chargers also charge it faster.
|
Ivan:
[26:40]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[26:40]
| So what I've noticed as well is, like, I can put it on the charger, take a shower, and it's fully charged when I get out, basically. You know, not quite, but close enough. And you can plug it in for five minutes and be at, like, 30%, 40% and be good for a long time, you know. So much better than it used to be. Anyway, anything else about your lovely fitness tracker that you would like to share before I do a couple movies?
|
Ivan:
[27:06]
| Well, I mean, I'm being just a little bit more. the reason I wanted to get a fitness tracker, it's not that my look, I'm, getting old. And so I was going to say.
|
Sam:
[27:20]
| Speak for yourself, but you know.
|
Ivan:
[27:22]
| Yeah. Right.
|
Sam:
[27:23]
| You're only, what, what, what are you like nine months older than I am? Something like that.
|
Ivan:
[27:26]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[27:27]
| No, seven, seven, seven.
|
Ivan:
[27:28]
| Seven.
|
Sam:
[27:29]
| You're ancient. I'm a young whippersnapper.
|
Ivan:
[27:32]
| And look, I'm actually, look, I am in good health, but I think part of it is also because I am keeping tabs on my health regularly. I mean, I actively am doing things to ensure that I am in good health, you know, and, but this is just something, just being more proactive about it in order to make sure that I am, I mean, we have the available technology that it can detect whether my blood pressure is fine or I'm having atrial fibrillation or something like that, then, you know, why not, you know, So use it, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's an obtrusive, it's unobtrusive.
|
Sam:
[28:12]
| Unobtrusive, yes.
|
Ivan:
[28:13]
| Yeah. And, and it, it does a great job of, of, of keeping tabs on all that stuff. Why not use it, you know? And it's not expensive either relatively. I mean, there's different price points and options on it. Like, I mean, I think an Apple watch is actually cheaper than this because this requires a subscription. Yeah. But even like, you know, if you're not wanting to buy something like this, I mean, an Apple Watch does a lot of stuff that's really good related to health and safety, like you mentioned, you know, you know, the fall detection and calling automatically somebody in case you're you're in an emergency, that kind of stuff. And it's, you know, I think that that stuff is, is excellent, especially for older folks, you know, like my father, you know, his, well, you know, my father did the same. Well, my father was worse. My father had the Apple watch, the fucking thing called emergency services. He told him not to come.
|
Sam:
[29:14]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[29:17]
| I've said this before, and I don't know if you recall why. Do you know why?
|
Sam:
[29:21]
| This is, is this when he fell off the ladder?
|
Ivan:
[29:23]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:24]
| Yeah. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[29:25]
| Do you know, but do you know why he said for them not to come?
|
Sam:
[29:29]
| Because it would be embarrassing?
|
Ivan:
[29:31]
| No, because the door, front door was locked and he was worried that they were going to break the door.
|
Sam:
[29:38]
| Ah, okay. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[29:40]
| I mean, he was literally there.
|
Sam:
[29:43]
| Injured on the floor.
|
Ivan:
[29:44]
| He wound up at a trauma center. Okay. You realize, right? This was not a small injury.
|
Sam:
[29:50]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[29:52]
| Eddie, he basically told him not to come because... Now, if he had been unable to speak, they would have shown up. And that's the thing.
|
Sam:
[30:04]
| Right, right, right.
|
Ivan:
[30:04]
| Yes. But he was in a state where he could speak, even though he was like seriously, seriously injured. And he told him, nah. For the fucking front door. Like, fuck.
|
Sam:
[30:17]
| I understand the tendency.
|
Ivan:
[30:19]
| Like, fuck the front door.
|
Sam:
[30:19]
| Look, I understand the tendency. When I was sick in January, I was practically incapacitated before I agreed to go to the ER. Okay? but you know but also I'll give a story about my wife from like this is now oh god it was before Alex was born so it was probably like 17-18 years ago now she'd, For, you know, she served in the military in the Navy and in the Navy, her back got injured, you know, so she's, she had a bad back, always had issues with her back and, you know, sore being, you know, whatever. You know, all the usual back issues you would associate when somebody says they have back issues. They're like discs were out of position, whatever. Anyway, one time about 17 years ago, she was leaving our house. And the house we lived in at the time, I guess our current one does too, but the house we lived there at the time had a small little porch and then some steps down when you go out the front door.
|
Sam:
[31:23]
| Anyway, she slipped and fell down those steps. Okay? And, you know, I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen and was out very quickly after it happened. She landed flat on her back on the ground in front of our steps. Okay? presumably having bounced down the steps. I don't know exactly the mechanism. But point was, she could not get up. She was like not, she was in pain. It hurt. She couldn't get up. And I was like, let's, okay, we got, you know, we got to get you to the hospital. And she's like, I can't get up. I'm like, we got to call. I'll help you up.
|
Ivan:
[32:09]
| Call 911.
|
Sam:
[32:10]
| I'll help you up. But if that doesn't work, we'll call an ambulance. You know, you got to get help. And she's like, no, no, no, no, I'll be fine. Just like, you know, I'll take some Advil or whatever and just let me be here for a while and I'll be able to get up eventually. And she kept protesting. It was like, don't you dare call anybody. I'll be fine. I'll be fine. be fine. Eventually I set a deadline that said, okay, if you cannot get up by such and such a time, We are calling an ambulance, period, end of story. And it was a pretty long time. I probably should not, I probably should have just done it. But she was actively protesting, no, don't you dare, blah, blah, blah. I think it was probably like six hours or some shit. And then we eventually called the ambulance and they took her away. And she was in the hospital for several days while they dealt with her back issue, you know. And, but, you know, she was absolutely not. Absolutely. You are not calling the ambulance. We are not making a scene. I don't want the neighbors to hear this. I don't want anybody to know about this. I don't want this to do that. Blah, blah, blah. But she clearly was in distress. Oh, she's here. Now she wants to talk about this story. Do you want to add to this story?
|
Brandy:
[33:29]
| No, I just wanted to call you out because I heard you yelling about me as I was going down the stairs.
|
Ivan:
[33:33]
| Well, let's not fall down the stairs.
|
Brandy:
[33:36]
| I still would have been fine if you hadn't called the ambulance.
|
Ivan:
[33:38]
| No, you wouldn't have.
|
Brandy:
[33:39]
| Eventually, I would have gotten into the house just because it would have started turning.
|
Sam:
[33:44]
| Anyway, the other fun story.
|
Ivan:
[33:47]
| Even still fights about it to this day.
|
Sam:
[33:49]
| Yes, exactly. The other fun part of this is that fall, just coincidentally, and by pure luck, pushed something back into a better position, and her back has been better ever since.
|
Ivan:
[34:05]
| Of all fucking things. something that probably surgery would have been required in order to correct but no you know what she managed to hit herself in the right fucking way to actually put it back into the right spot nice, you know look I'm not that stubborn about going to the hospital if I'm not feeling well I'll fucking go, I mean, I know when it's okay, and I know when it's bad. It's like when I had the diverticulitis like a while back that I, listen, I was like, yeah, it's just whatever. And I got up, and I felt the pain. And all of a sudden, because my, you know, I went and actually took a shower and started getting dressed, and I'm like, my wife's like, where are you going? Where am I going? Going to the ER. And she's like, what? Yes, I'm going to the ER. Why? Because there's something seriously wrong. I'm not fucking around. I'm going to the hospital. And I'm like, well, let me take you. No, take care of Manu. I'm going, I can, I can still drive. I'm going to the, but I'm going to the ER. Okay. You can catch, I'll let you know what's going on. You can catch up with me there later. And lo and behold, they went, they checked me out. They did a CT scan. Well, guess what?
|
Sam:
[35:17]
| You're going. Having said that, weren't you complaining about symptoms for like weeks or months before that?
|
Ivan:
[35:24]
| I had some issues in the weeks or months before, but they were mild. Okay. It wasn't pain. I mean, I had something was wrong, and I'm pretty sure I had been to the doctor and stuff. It wasn't anything, it wasn't anything serious. You know, at that point, it just seemed like I was just dealing with like some, you know, gastro constipation, just something like that. Just nothing on the artery. But then it got really bad.
|
Sam:
[35:56]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[35:57]
| And, you know, and so what I, but even they.
|
Sam:
[36:02]
| My trigger for going to the ER in January, fever over 105 and throwing up constantly.
|
Ivan:
[36:09]
| No, I didn't wait for that. The doctor said that I actually, where I was, that I did come in early. I knew something was wrong that had been brewing, but I did not let it get to a point where I was like that bad. And the moment that it started really getting... bad, like at the beginning, I immediately knew this is not, this is not normal. I'm going to the hospital. And they said that, that, you know, I definitely went there early. Look, my hernia, the same thing. Look, I, the doctor said that I caught it early as well. I knew something was not right, but, you know, I'd been to the doctor a few times that they couldn't figure it out. and you know the doctor said the the reason he struggled to find it is like oh yeah this is very early stages but so so i know when something is like off it doesn't take me getting to the point where i'm like paralyzed you know to to to to get there i'm like no this is not right i'm going and the last couple of times i've been absolutely right there was something wrong no.
|
Sam:
[37:23]
| This is probably something I have to get better at as I continue to age. But from experience with, you know, older people around me, it seems like the tendency is often opposite. Where it's like, no, no, I'm fine.
|
Ivan:
[37:36]
| I'm fine.
|
Sam:
[37:38]
| I don't want to bother anybody.
|
Ivan:
[37:40]
| It's not bothering anybody. And I'm like, no, no, no, fuck you. No, this is not right to hell with this. Look, pluck me in, figure it out right now.
|
Sam:
[37:53]
| Ha ha ha. okay okay you know should we got movies yeah we got a couple movies should i do the movies okay first one uh and you missed last week yvonne when i did like european vacation vacation no regular vacation i did regular vacation last week and yeah i did regular vacation and cars you missed talking about cars bruce liked cars i.
|
Ivan:
[38:21]
| Mean come on who doesn't like cars you.
|
Sam:
[38:24]
| Gotta Some.
|
Ivan:
[38:24]
| Kind of probably Donald Trump doesn't like the movie cars.
|
Sam:
[38:29]
| Probably. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[38:30]
| Anyway, I mean, that's, that's the kind of person I would expect not to like the movie cars, but anybody, you know, who is a, come on.
|
Sam:
[38:37]
| Oh, I just got a notification. Let me tell you one more thing, which is just currently amusing me. We have these ring cameras, right? We don't, we don't, we don't have the doorbell camera, but we have like the kind that you can move around and you put wherever you want. We actually bought a doorbell one, too, but it's been sitting waiting to be installed for almost a year now. Anyway. But it's on the thing right next to the front door, like in its box, waiting for a second. Of course.
|
Ivan:
[39:02]
| Yeah, that's, you know, yeah, sounds.
|
Sam:
[39:06]
| Anyway, we've got like a camera pointing at the porch. We've got one pointing at a driveway. And we've got one in the backyard, mainly to watch wildlife and the dog go in and out and stuff like that. And we do get some interesting wildlife. We've seen raccoons and rabbits and possums and an occasional rat. We have not seen a bear yet. not since it did we did have that one bear that came to our driveway a couple years ago right knocked over the trash can right but not nothing since then but anyway ring has been adding and ring has issues like they share with you know police and blah blah blah they're all they're all kinds of stuff that ring has issues anyway and i would prefer a system that was entirely local and just uploaded and it, whatever. Anyway, that's not the point of this. They've been adding AI features. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[40:00]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[40:00]
| So it makes AI descriptions of, you know, what you, what it sees. So like, I'll give you, so when you get an alert about activities, things like, here's some recent ones for me. Two birds are walking in the yard. A dog is walking in the yard. An opossum is walking on the driveway. A raccoons are walking in the yard. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[40:26]
| Oh, very useful notifications. This is really so helpful. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[40:31]
| Here's another one. A person is getting out of a blue car on the driveway. That was me.
|
Ivan:
[40:36]
| Okay, that one's more helpful. Okay, yeah, I like that one. Okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[40:39]
| A person is bending near an open door of a blue car, et cetera.
|
Ivan:
[40:45]
| Okay, I'm now curious. I'm like, if two people start having sex in front of the camera will start telling you, oh, you know, start going into some kind of like more, um, you know, explicit description, I guess not.
|
Sam:
[41:01]
| Yeah. So here, here's the thing. After school, my, my son and I typically, you know, I, I deliver my son to school, but I take the dog with us. I wait outside the school while he's in school. After school, we go and take the dog for a walk. Okay. At a park near the school. Uh, that's part of our normal routine this day. And then, like, while we were walking the dog a few days ago, I'm trying to see if I can find those exact messages, but I'm having to scroll back too far. So I'll switch back to the one that just made me remember this. We were walking around with the dog in the park. I get an alert from the ring camera. A criminal is walking on the yard next to the railing.
|
Ivan:
[41:51]
| What?
|
Sam:
[41:52]
| I'm like, what? I'm going to go look at this. And then it keeps alerting over the next few minutes. A criminal is entering the house. You know, a criminal is carrying a box on the porch, et cetera. I'm like, what the fuck? I go look at it.
|
Ivan:
[42:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:09]
| And and and it's my wife the criminal is my wife and i'm like okay what's what's going on here is and then it you if you click on it has a more information and if you click on it it takes you to like pictures of this person and so it goes there's a screen that says a criminal and it has like a dozen pictures of my wife's face close-ups of my wife's face making making various like and some of them she's scowling some of them whatever as and whatever and i'm like what the hell is ring doing some kind of racist shit here where it's like there's a black woman so it's like you're you're a criminal what.
|
Ivan:
[42:46]
| The hell right uh-huh.
|
Sam:
[42:49]
| And then I look over at my son, and he's cracking the fuck up.
|
Ivan:
[42:54]
| He fucking named her. He's got the face identification, and so he fucking named her a criminal.
|
Sam:
[43:03]
| Yes, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[43:06]
| Fucking little shit. It's funny. Okay, I'll give him credit. It's funny. That's fucking funny. Okay, that's good. Yeah, because my front door, like Google Nest, does that thing words that's a facial recognition so you tell her hey you know this person whatever so those they'll tell you that you know but but no so he sent down a criminal okay fucking little shit.
|
Sam:
[43:32]
| Yeah he got me he completely got me i'm like what's going on yeah okay maybe we don't.
|
Ivan:
[43:39]
| Have time for the.
|
Sam:
[43:40]
| Movie like.
|
Ivan:
[43:41]
| Today we're like running.
|
Sam:
[43:42]
| A little bit like because we got lots of real news yeah we got so i will put it off once again the the two movies next time i i previewed them last week but i'm going to push them off yet again mr jones from 2019 and the short history of the Long Road, also from 2019. Have you heard of either one?
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| No.
|
Sam:
[44:01]
| Okay. I didn't think so. But let's move on. Let's take a break. And we'll come back for movies another time. We got lots of real news this week. We had the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting. Comey was indicted again. SCOTUS issued a major ruling on the Voting Rights Act. Spirit Airlines died and related, Yvonne wants to talk about the coming oil crisis. So we're going to take a break, and we'll be back, and we'll, over the next two segments, knock off as many of those as we can. Back after this.
|
Break:
[44:41]
| No, no, it's not the beginning of the show again. We're just taking a little time to credit the artist responsible for the music we use at the beginning and end of the show. What you are listening to right now is the O of pleasure.
|
Break:
[45:14]
| The music we close our show with is Celestial Soda Pop. Both of these songs are from Deep Breakfast. Now Platinum, Deep Breakfast was the first independently released album ever to be certified gold by the RIAA. Ray Lynch's other albums are.
|
Break:
[46:18]
| And the best of Ray Lynch. You can check out Ray Lynch or buy his music at raylynch.com, iTunes, Amazon, or anywhere you usually find music.
|
Sam:
[46:37]
| Okay, Vaughn, where do you want to start?
|
Ivan:
[46:40]
| Where do you want to, I don't know, what do you want to, uh, let's talk about, oh gosh, let's start with the Persian Gulf. Start with what's going on with the Iran or Persian Gulf.
|
Sam:
[46:55]
| I didn't even list that when I was going through things right before the break.
|
Ivan:
[46:57]
| Well, but I put the oil crisis, the oil crisis is related to the fact about the Persian Gulf and the Iran. Yeah, so Sam sent a picture of price of gasoline near his house.
|
Sam:
[47:09]
| No, no, it's near my son's school. I want to be clear about this.
|
Ivan:
[47:13]
| Well, there is some school. Okay. Okay. It's on our route.
|
Sam:
[47:18]
| It's near in the Seattle area. But, and I want to say, the picture is the highest gas price I've seen in this area by far. Most places are 20 to 50 cents less than this one place. Still not that much less. Yeah. True. So this one near my son's school, $6.19 for the regular gas.
|
Ivan:
[47:44]
| And that was cash price.
|
Sam:
[47:45]
| $6.19.9. I never forget the .9. And there is one other place I saw over $6 yesterday as well that is closer to my house. But most of them around here are like, they have gone up in the last week noticeably. They're like, you know, $580, $590, $570, those type of prices. But yeah, this one is consistently the highest I see on a regular basis. And it had been pegged at $599 for like a month and just jumped to $619 this week.
|
Ivan:
[48:26]
| Listen, I got a lot of places around where I live that regular is $5, $5 something, $524, $519, $519, $509. $5.14, $5.09, $5.19 here again, another $5.19, many $5.19s, $5.14, $5.19, and that's regular with credit. Premium, premium is over six bucks. I got a lot of places over six bucks. $6.24, 609 609 again 609 624 again 649 jesus um.
|
Sam:
[49:06]
| I'm popping up my gas buddy app yeah i downloaded just the last the last time we talked about this 629 649 jesus in my immediate area so within within like three miles of home lowest price is 519 highest price is 615 yeah so correct regular.
|
Ivan:
[49:27]
| For regular so it's i mean this is this is really sky high, And one thing is that we had like a spike like this after the Ukraine war started. But here's the difference.
|
Sam:
[49:46]
| Yeah, somebody posted a graph that showed that it was high. It had a spike.
|
Ivan:
[49:50]
| But here's the key difference between that situation and this one. The Russian oil supply. we sanctioned it so some people stopped buying it but what happened is that other customers started buying it and so all it did was really shift supply around in the end we didn't have We had a short-term disruption, but we really didn't have a long-term cut in the supply. Okay? It just, just who, where you bought it from changed, okay? And, you know, so the Chinese started buying, the Indians started buying more Russian oil. And so that, but that freed up supply from other places. So it, you know, the supplies just moved around. And in the end, the prices started, it came back down pretty quickly because there wasn't really a cut in the supply. The problem is that we have an actual blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. And this is cutting off, the supply is stuck. There is an actual, real, huge cut in supply.
|
Sam:
[51:18]
| And by the way, because they can't move that oil and their storage is full, they're cutting production because they have no place to put it if they pull it out of the ground.
|
Ivan:
[51:27]
| Yeah. You have to cut production. And by the way, restarting production takes a long time. and so you're going to we are going to experience high gas prices and shortages of certain products maybe not in the U.S. directly but there are countries that are having shortages of diesel and aviation fuel and the aviation fuel one is really abrupt But Sam had shared a story how they were talking about that right now, the situation with aviation fuel is so bad in India that it could bring the entire aviation system of India to a standstill at this point. It is, I mean, this is something of epic proportions. There have been a lot of airlines that already proactively, because of limited supplies of fuel, have reduced schedules in Europe and in Asia because they can't get enough aviation fuel. Diesel. Man, look, this diesel situation, you think gas is expensive? You fucking looked at the prices of diesel? Because a lot of refined diesel used to come out of there, and diesel is over $7 all over the place.
|
Sam:
[52:57]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[52:58]
| And listen, diesel is what moves merchandise everywhere. This is the fuel that really makes commerce move across the world, And this is a sky-high price I mean, I, you know, it's really nuts But the thing is, the main differentiator that you have right now Is that because of what you mentioned because they're having to cut production, because there is a cut in supply. These prices aren't coming down anytime soon. And this is very inflationary. Very, very inflationary.
|
Sam:
[53:52]
| And just to be clear, not just because of the cost of the fuel itself, which is a factor in inflation itself, but because everything else you just said. Because it is diesel, because it is the transportation that gets products from point A to point B.
|
Ivan:
[54:10]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[54:10]
| Because all of your raw materials. Right. First of all, lots of products have petroleum as a raw material.
|
Ivan:
[54:16]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[54:16]
| But above and beyond that, all those raw materials have to be moved around. And so the fact that diesel and fuel is higher in turn makes everything else higher too.
|
Ivan:
[54:31]
| Yes. Yes. Totally. So we're in a, and by the way, I don't know if, did you watch the clip I shared about Donald Trump saying affordability is bullshit?
|
Sam:
[54:46]
| I don't think I did. I read the title or whatever, but I did not watch it.
|
Ivan:
[54:50]
| Yesterday on the Slack where Donald Trump is talking to, and by the way, the reason I shared is because there's a Republican pollster that was just so appalled that he said, you know, this is, that the midterms, this is over. because right now his approval ratings are already so bad that you didn't really need to give the opposition a clip of you saying that you don't fucking care about the fact that they're going right now to fill up their SUVs and it's costing them over $100 a fill-up.
|
Sam:
[55:30]
| Right. Right.
|
Ivan:
[55:33]
| And you don't care. And then he does not give a flying fuck about it. At all. He's not going to do anything about it. He just declared victory again. And declared that the war has been terminated. We have no deal. The Strait of Hormuz is still, according to the stats, Bloomberg keeps that Hormuz tracker. it's still basically nothing is moving through or barely.
|
Sam:
[56:06]
| Anything i i i heard like a couple weeks ago there was a german cruise ship that went through and i heard this last week there was one of those russian super yachts that made it through well.
|
Ivan:
[56:19]
| That was like them taking advantage of a couple of windows that existed where they just basically decided to just sneak them out as.
|
Sam:
[56:28]
| Quickly as they could.
|
Ivan:
[56:30]
| But that's about it. You know, the ships had no crew, whatever, they had been stuck there. And yeah, the thing about the Russian superyacht, yeah, the place I watch for a superyacht, the superyacht news channels, they talked about it. That ship had been stuck there and they took advantage of some window in a lull, whatever, they said, fuck it, let's go. And look, there actually have that apparently, well, a supertanker apparently appears to have crossed the Strait of Hormuz. That's a newsflash from this morning on Bloomberg. So there is some movement. But still, look, the Hormuz traffic is still down. The tracker, May 1st, it said that four ships outbound, two ships inbound. That's it. May 2nd, we've got three outbound and three inbound. That's it. This is from a normal traffic of... Over 50 ships in each direction. So that's still 90% down. Yeah. We're still not.
|
Sam:
[57:33]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[57:34]
| It's still barely moving. It's just a trickle. And by the way, I don't know if you saw that Trump said that he was going to sanction anybody that pays the tolls.
|
Sam:
[57:47]
| I have heard him blustering about such things, yes.
|
Ivan:
[57:51]
| Yeah. So. Yeah, that's going to help. But we've got no plan for ending this. You know, there is no plan. Because the Iranians have zero...
|
Sam:
[58:07]
| Won't be.
|
Ivan:
[58:08]
| Right. The Iranians have zero incentives.
|
Sam:
[58:11]
| At least not during this administration. You know, once... Maybe 2029 we'll resolve this thing.
|
Ivan:
[58:19]
| I mean, the Iranians have no incentive of like... Why would the Iranians make a deal? I'm still at this point there is you know there is.
|
Sam:
[58:30]
| No incentive one of the one of the really interesting things I should say about this particular conflict, and not to say that well let's just put it this way if you read the statements coming out of Iran and you read the statements coming out of the US which one sounds calm and normal and rational.
|
Ivan:
[58:56]
| The Iranians!
|
Sam:
[58:59]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[59:00]
| The fucking Iranians! Because we have a run by a psychopath!
|
Sam:
[59:07]
| And this is not necessarily to say that the stereotypical the Iranians are crazy, blah, blah, blah, is true at all. I don't think it ever was.
|
Ivan:
[59:16]
| But in the past, in the past, they have been the one to make statements like the ones that Trump is doing.
|
Sam:
[59:23]
| Sometimes. They were often rational, too. But the contrast right now is dramatic. You know, you have the Iranians putting out calm, nicely worded statements that seem eminently reasonable, and you just have Trump tweeting at three in the morning as a raving madman.
|
Ivan:
[59:43]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[59:44]
| Like, all caps, random stuff, yelling, whatever, threats, alternating between the threat to destroy Iranian society with the, oh, negotiations are going great, everything's fine, we'll have this wrapped up tomorrow, or the war is over yesterday. At which time the Iranians put out, you know, the nicely worded statement, basically saying, we have no idea what he's talking about. No idea. Oh, and then the Lego videos.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:21]
| Oh, yeah. The Lego videos are very good. I got it. Those are pretty good. By the way, look, Spirit Airlines shut down last night at three in the morning.
|
Sam:
[1:00:33]
| Look, they have been in some financial.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:34]
| Yeah, it is totally related. they had been in financial difficulty for some time but look, but the nail in the coffin has been the price of jet fuel, you know, they had had, they had tried JetBlue and Spirit had tried to merge, the US government blocked them.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:52]
| I I honestly think that was, That was bad. A combined Spirit and JetBlue probably would have been a stronger competitor against the rest of the airlines as a low-cost airline instead of trying to leave them to fend off on their own because they were both struggling. And that would have been better. So right now what you've got is that Spirit failed, leaving quite a lot of people unemployed. it probably it will probably strengthen the other low-cost airlines in the end but quite a lot of people lost their jobs last night sadly but look it was the price of jet fuel that did them in, there's just you know it was the price of jet fuel there's no other reason, the that that really drained their cash so quickly the last 45 days 60 days that they just could not sustain it. So, look, we haven't had an airline shut down like this in 40, Over 30 years.
|
Sam:
[1:02:05]
| Wow. I had no idea it was that long.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:07]
| It was really Eastern and Pan Am. Like a large airline that shut down like this. Those are the last two top 10 major carriers. Didn't we have other small budget carriers? We had some other smaller ones, but much smaller, but not one that was considered like a top 10 major airline.
|
Sam:
[1:02:26]
| And Spirit was?
|
Ivan:
[1:02:28]
| Yeah, absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:02:29]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:30]
| We had some other smaller ones. I remember Tower Air, but those were Arrow Air, which was more charter. Those were like really small, small carriers. But Spirit was one of the top 10 airlines in the United States. It was one of the ones that really, you know, was...
|
Sam:
[1:02:50]
| I take it the Trump shuttle shutdown was more than 30 years ago, unfortunately.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:56]
| Yeah. Yes, but they weren't considered a major airline. They just had, you know, but yes.
|
Sam:
[1:03:00]
| Oh, man.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:00]
| Yeah, but Trump, you know, now has shown his ability to continue bankrupting airlines.
|
Sam:
[1:03:08]
| What was the airline that Trump bought to make Trump's shuttle?
|
Ivan:
[1:03:15]
| He bought the...
|
Sam:
[1:03:17]
| Because it was one that had issues as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:20]
| I think it was Eastern.
|
Sam:
[1:03:21]
| Let me see.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:22]
| I don't think it was the Eastern Airlines shuttle. Let me see. It was New York Air. Let me see. Because there was a Pan Am shuttle, there was a New York Air shuttle, there was an Eastern Airline shuttle. I can't remember which one he bought the assets from. And I think if I remember correctly, it was, I was, okay, I was actually, it was the, it was the Eastern Airline shuttle.
|
Sam:
[1:03:48]
| Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:49]
| It was the Eastern Airline ones. So it was the Eastern Airlines Shuttle, which was the original and the most famous one of the shuttle operations.
|
Sam:
[1:03:58]
| I'm remembering a variety of things that, you know, that smaller things that shut down, like, but in the 80s, which is now a long, long time ago. Yeah. So.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:09]
| And actually, it eventually became the U.S. Air Shuttle. So that's part of American Airlines. But they don't run a shuttle like that anymore. That service ended a long time ago because the thing about the shuttle was that you got to the airport and they had like flights every hour and you didn't even have to buy tickets in advance. You boarded the plane. You paid on the plane. Okay. For the flight. Okay. So.
|
Sam:
[1:04:34]
| Nice.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:35]
| So that's, that wasn't like, that's not the way it, that type of service ceased over 20 years ago, if I remember correctly, they ended like doing it that way. And part of it was security regulations and other stuff or whatever, you know, that brought an end to that.
|
Sam:
[1:04:51]
| That just becomes a lot less viable when you have to wait in the TSA line before you go anywhere.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:56]
| That's just a TSA line. But the fact that they want to know who the hell is boarding the plane.
|
Sam:
[1:05:00]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:01]
| And you boarded without tickets. So if you're on a no-fly list or whatever, there's no way to check it. You're showing up. I mean, you may show an ID. I mean, all you did was show, hell, I mean, before it didn't even show ID, nothing. You just showed up, you passed the metal detector, you got on the plane. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:05:18]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:19]
| So, so yeah, so that's, but yeah, I mean, it's the first major airline that we've had fail in a long, long time. And we had airlines going into bankruptcy, but you know, we had the issues like post 9-11. We had a lot of airlines that were in bad financial shape. Even the 2008 recession, most of the airlines, I mean, all the airlines survived. that, hell, even just post-COVID, airlines survived. I mean, now, they did receive substantial government assistance, for that but yeah i mean it's just it's just the first time but it look but reality is this was because trump decided to launch this war trump has made the price of uh jet fuel sky high he's back i mean spirit airlines is out of business because directly of trump's iran war and a lot of other airlines are struggling. Hell, like I mentioned, you've got the whole damn Indian jet industry at the verge of collapse right now at this point because of this. Can you tell me anything good that we have gained out of the Iran war?
|
Sam:
[1:06:35]
| Ivan, I've heard Donald Trump himself say it doesn't matter that the Strait of Hormuz is closed, they can buy the oil from us.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:43]
| I see. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:06:46]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:47]
| So that's the solution? Is buy oil from us?
|
Sam:
[1:06:50]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:52]
| Ah, okay. All right, that'll fix the problem.
|
Sam:
[1:06:55]
| Doesn't that help our, helps our oil industry? It's bringing back domestic industry.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:03]
| I mean, is this helping our domestic oil industry? Well, yeah, they're making money hand over fist. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:07:11]
| Well, see, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:13]
| Now, I did see that, you know, one of the Republicans complaining about price gouging by the oil companies because they're basically charging market price. And I basically, I guess, I shortly expect the Trump administration to announce price controls. Very capitalist of them.
|
Sam:
[1:07:36]
| Well, you know, the Republicans are known for this. We did this, you know, Nixon did it.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:41]
| Nixon did it. Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:07:44]
| Like all of these stereotypes. Let me just bring this up again. Republicans are the party of the free market.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:54]
| Free market.
|
Sam:
[1:07:55]
| Free market, Sam. And which party has done price controls? Oh, it's the Republicans. Oh, the Republicans are deficit hawks. The government must spend within its means. Oh, which party has increased deficits much more than the other? Like the Republicans.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:17]
| I mean, like the lion's share of it. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:08:20]
| Yes. What was the only president to actually have a surplus in our lifetimes? Oh, it was a Democrat. It was a Democrat. It was a Bill Clinton. Oh, and, you know, Republicans aren't for welfare. Well, welfare for companies, I guess, is okay. Just not for people.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:41]
| Yes, welfare for companies is good.
|
Sam:
[1:08:44]
| Yes and for rich people.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:45]
| And for rich people yes yes yes yes yes yes i it's just anyway it it's just never ends it's just unreal you know, so no end to the iran war we're gonna get fucked listen this they had gdp numbers that came out You.
|
Sam:
[1:09:07]
| Asked for good sides. Will this accelerate the transition to non-carbon-based fuels?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:16]
| Absolutely. A hundred percent. So, I mean, I guess that's the one thing. Look, many people had advocated that we should have been taxing fuel to these kind of prices in order to bring on a revolution in clean energy. and because this is the fastest way to get these kinds of things to happen it's true it it, So, and the oil shock of the 1970s.
|
Sam:
[1:09:45]
| So this is clearly, this is clear. Wait, wait, Yvonne. This is clearly what has happened here. Behind the scenes.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:52]
| Trump is a green, Trump is a green energy guy.
|
Sam:
[1:09:56]
| Well, and very specifically, he and Elon have made up, so he did this to help Tesla.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:01]
| Oh, of course. Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:10:03]
| That was, you know, that was the only reason for this invasion and not invasion. The attack on Iran was specifically five-dimensional chess because he intended the Straits of Hormuz to be closed. He intended the price of gas to go to $20 a gallon. And the beneficiary of this is his good friend, Elon.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:26]
| Ah, I see. Okay. That's good. That's good. That's good. Hey, can we check to see if.
|
Sam:
[1:10:33]
| Like, Donald Trump's— And oil company people, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:36]
| Oh, yes. can we check to see if donald's kids invested in some clean energy startups recently oh.
|
Sam:
[1:10:42]
| Yeah i i yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:50]
| Well you.
|
Sam:
[1:10:52]
| You you you semi-joke about this but of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:55]
| I'm not one of the trump kids i i know.
|
Sam:
[1:10:58]
| I know it's not really a.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:59]
| Joke i'm laughing because it's so ridiculous because i know that I just said it. It's fucking probably true.
|
Sam:
[1:11:05]
| Well, yeah. I mean, one of the things that was reported in the last two weeks is that one of Trump's kids did just get his company a major Pentagon contract for drones.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:19]
| Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Of course they did.
|
Sam:
[1:11:25]
| It all ties together, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:29]
| Well, look, I just saw today in April, Honda showed that all their large SUVs, their sales dropped like dramatically. And that the sales for the good old Honda Accord sedan rose like by 30, 40 percent. So did Toyota, by the way. obviously the main reason is because those cars are far more fuel efficient than any of these suvs i mean you know uh uh toyota camry hybrid right now gives you 56 toyota only sells a camry in a hybrid like right now it gets you 60 miles per gallon okay so if you're on some suv getting 20 miles per gallon you you shift to a to a camry i mean you're you know you're dropping your consumption, you know, substantially. I mean, you're, you're, you're really saving a huge amount of money.
|
Sam:
[1:12:20]
| And when I, when I interrupted and went in a different direction, you were, you were starting to talk about what happened in the seventies when we had the oil shock.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:27]
| Well, that's the thing. I mean, the reality is that that oil shock changed our consumption habits, our energy consumption, everything. And it was long lasting. It, listen, the, the changes that that brought on lasted for well over a decade, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:12:46]
| I mean, there was eventually reversion, but yes, it lasted for a while.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:51]
| But it lasted for over a decade, okay? But back when gas became cheap, cheap again in the mid-1990s, then people started buying more gas-guzzling cars again, but it really did shift Americans to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars for a very long time. And... You know, but the thing is that many, many reasons why they shifted back to other cars because it was performance and whatever, because those cars, yeah, they did save on fuel, but they were not very sporting or fast or whatever, whatnot. But that's not the case with electric cars. You go to a fucking electric car. My wife right now is a, my wife with her electric BMW is a menace. Okay. because the fucking car is so fast especially compared to like the other cars that she had that right now i i'm i'm riding with her and i'm like and i'm like okay you know i want my neck to make it home okay all right seriously okay because she is stomping on that on that pedal like with abandon and you know she's just rocketing off everywhere and i'm just like, it's just yeah so that's not an issue with these cars like back then where people would go into a little car and it wasn't very fast no yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:14:12]
| Well and i'll say for for most people most driving you don't actually need faster peppy but people want it anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:20]
| Exactly you know exactly they want it like so they don't you're actually your car you're not as a matter of fact it's probably better performance so this might be the catalyst, That we had needed, but politically had been unpalatable for Democrats to have done this.
|
Sam:
[1:14:45]
| So thanks. I remember talking for years about how, yeah, actually what you want is the price of oil to go up.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:52]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:14:53]
| You need that in order to. Yeah. Yeah. Because the the the carbon output is causing irreparable damage or very hard to repair damage. And it's accelerating. It has not gotten better. And so, yeah, you need the price to skyrocket so we find alternatives and we use alternatives. But, yeah, nobody politically was going to win by saying, yeah, we want to increase your fuel price. That is our goal.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:22]
| By the way.
|
Sam:
[1:15:22]
| Because we want to force you to do something else.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:25]
| Listen, yeah, look, just confirmed. I expected EV sales soared in April 2026. driven by high fuel prices surging demand for more affordable used models. European battery electric sales jumped 51% in March alone. With Irish electric car registrations skyrocketed 109% in April. 109% in April. Used EV sales rose over 20% in Q1 2026. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's it's happening yeah i mean.
|
Sam:
[1:16:07]
| Yeah and i and i'd say honestly like if there's long-term stuff you know the fuel stuff we can see move pretty rapidly because a lot of the alternatives were already actually in place and it just needed adoption oh yeah but there are other places like like we need to use less plastic you're right you know across everything right now plastic is in practically everything. I mean, I'm looking around me right now and like this plastic everywhere. You know, and, and it, it, it has all, first of all, it's using carbon to get there. And also there are environmental issues with what happens once it becomes waste, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I guess it's better than burning it, but it's still bad, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:16:54]
| So, and it's also like a lot of it does get recycled. Not, not as much as it should be, but thankfully it's also possible to recycle a bit, a bit of it, not all of it.
|
Sam:
[1:17:04]
| But yeah. I mean, basically, there have been a number of documentaries produced on this. Plastic recycling, as opposed to like glass recycling, paper recycling, et cetera. Those are real viable things.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:18]
| Yeah, it's not really as efficient.
|
Sam:
[1:17:19]
| Not only nowhere near, but 90% of it is like just a scam. Like, I mean, it just is not actually economically viable in most cases. Most plastic is not recyclable. There's a subset that is, but even in that subset, the economics of actually using that for new products is iffy. And so it's, you know, for recycling makes sense for other kinds of products. For plastics, the answer is at some point we have to move to making and using less of it and finding alternative materials to use instead, you know, and, but we're a longer way from that. But anyway, and there are some things that plastic really is the only thing that's going to do it, at least that exists yet, you know, but the material scientists need to get on top of that, you know, you know, find the, find the good alternative, find the plastic alternative that's, you know, I don't know, made out of. plants or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:23]
| There are some. There are some out there right now.
|
Sam:
[1:18:25]
| No, I know. I know there are. I know. And I, you know, I was trying to find something funny to say, but I only came out with plants.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:32]
| Plants.
|
Sam:
[1:18:33]
| Because I, you know, because plants are still carbon. I was going to say teeth.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:36]
| But teeth are still carbon. Out of your kidney stones.
|
Sam:
[1:18:40]
| There you go. We have found the right solution. We have found the use for my solution. Use for my solution. We will find that this is my path to being a multi-billionaire in no time sell my kidney stones to make plastic yes or plastic substitutes plastic substitutes yes yes yeah yes i'm sure i can i can personally provide the volume needed for the planet which.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:13]
| Is we just.
|
Sam:
[1:19:13]
| You know oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:14]
| No what we'll start doing is that will start cloning you. And we'll create this entire farm of clones that all we do is basically harvest the kidney stones.
|
Sam:
[1:19:29]
| That sounds perfect. You know, you were getting to the vision of the room full of Sam clones. Yes. I was thinking we could be more efficient and perhaps a little bit more humane with the giant warehouse full of Sam kidneys.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:47]
| Oh, I see. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so we just put the... Oh, we just... Okay, we just do the kidneys. Ah, I see. I was thinking more like the Borg ship, something like that.
|
Sam:
[1:19:59]
| Yeah. Okay. Or, yeah, or the Matrix.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:03]
| Or the Matrix. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Something like that.
|
Sam:
[1:20:06]
| Yeah, something like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:08]
| You're a little bit more practical. We just, we don't, we're not, or anyway, we'll just recreate the kidneys. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I can be sold on that idea. I mean, I was like thinking about this room full of Sam clones, and we're just, but okay. All right, fine. That would be, that does sound inhumane.
|
Sam:
[1:20:28]
| I think, well, we could grow them without brains. People are actually working on that for meat substitutes, where it really is meat. We'll just grow the cow without a brain, so it's more humane.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:42]
| Okay, listen, I... Okay, it's fair. No suffering.
|
Sam:
[1:20:46]
| I mean, it's still actually real meat. We're just taking the...
|
Ivan:
[1:20:51]
| Right, the suffering part out of it.
|
Sam:
[1:20:53]
| Yeah, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:54]
| That's fair.
|
Sam:
[1:20:56]
| We just need Star Trek replicators. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:00]
| That solves the problem.
|
Sam:
[1:21:02]
| You got to get working on that, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:04]
| That's another thing we got to get working on.
|
Sam:
[1:21:07]
| I think on this tangent, it's time for a break.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:12]
| Yes, it's time for a break.
|
Sam:
[1:21:13]
| It's time for a break. And this is a Wiki of the Day. It's a featured Wiki of the Day. Today's featured Wiki of the Day as of when we are recording this. And hopefully this time the Wiki of the Day actually will be fun, as opposed to the last Wiki of the Day, which was a murder-suicide. So, yeah. the last one that we included on the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:38]
| Yeah, I know.
|
Sam:
[1:21:38]
| I remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:39]
| Yeah, it was not great.
|
Sam:
[1:21:40]
| Okay. And when we come back.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:43]
| We'll- It's fun and exciting.
|
Sam:
[1:21:46]
| Exactly. When we come back, we'll try to zoom through as many of the other topics as we can get to. Back after this.
|
Break:
[1:21:52]
| Do, do, do. Hello, this is Neural Arthur. I'm here to let you know about Sam the Curmudgeon's other podcasts, the Wiki of the Day podcasts. Wiki of the Day comes in three varieties popular random and featured each highlights a new wikipedia article each day they just picked the articles differently this week on featured wiki of the day you would have heard this summary for fuji class battleships, The Fuji-class, Fujigata Senkan, was a two-ship class of pre-Dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy, IJN, in the mid-1890s. They were the first battleships in the IJN, and were constructed in the United Kingdom as Japan lacked the industrial facilities needed to build them. Their design was based on the battleships being built for the Royal Navy at that time. The ships participated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, including the Battle of Port Arthur in February 1904 and two bombardments of Port Arthur during the following month. Yashima struck a mine off Port Arthur in May and capsized while under tow several hours later. Fuji fought in the battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima and was lightly damaged in the latter action. She was reclassified as a coast defense ship in 1910 and served as a training ship for the rest of her active career. The ship was hulked in 1922 and converted into a barracks ship fitted with classrooms. Fuji was finally broken up for scrap in 1948.
|
Break:
[1:23:12]
| That's all there is to it. See? Fun, entertaining, educational, and short. Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on your podcast playing software of choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com to check out our archives. Now back to curmudgeon's corner. Do do do.
|
Sam:
[1:23:32]
| Okay, that was more fun, right? Sort of?
|
Ivan:
[1:23:36]
| Yeah. So one quick thing, because we haven't put this on the topics. Net approval, Sam, on inflation. How's Trump doing on that? He's doing good?
|
Sam:
[1:23:49]
| He's doing great.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:51]
| Yeah. I'm looking at this and I've never seen a chart this bad for an issue.
|
Sam:
[1:23:56]
| I don't understand why people are upset. Why are people upset, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:01]
| Affordability is a scam by the Democrats.
|
Sam:
[1:24:04]
| It is a scam by the Democrats. Things are way down from where they were during the Biden administration.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:11]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:12]
| Right? Aren't they?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:13]
| Right, right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:13]
| Aren't they? Aren't things so much better?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:15]
| Amazing.
|
Sam:
[1:24:16]
| So what's everybody talking about? Inflation is good.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:20]
| Yeah, inflation is great. Inflation is good, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:24:23]
| Although, yeah, the numbers, the reported numbers aren't as bad as people make it out, right? I mean, aren't the, you know, aren't we doing pretty good?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:33]
| Not on inflation. No? No. Even those numbers were above. This week when they did the economic reporting, even those numbers were above.
|
Sam:
[1:24:42]
| Are you saying even the fake numbers coming out of the Trump administration? Because you've said before, like, they're cooking the books.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:53]
| Right? Well, here's a number. They cooked up, again, the GDP number to look a lot better, like, before the revisions, okay? So they said that it was like a 2% growth, which I don't believe for one second, okay? It's going to come back, like, to the previous one where it was revised down. It was like that, and then it got revised down to 0.5, okay? I fully expect that Q1 will show a recessionary number, okay? But this inflation negative approval number, Sam, he is at minus 41.5% on inflation. Okay, all right?
|
Sam:
[1:25:27]
| On net approval.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:28]
| On net approval, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:25:30]
| Approve minus disapprove.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:32]
| Yeah. Negative 41.5%. I mean, holy shit. But I don't recall any president, I think maybe the only one that had some kind of negative approval like this. I think it was on the economy. It was W during the crash. It'll wait. That's probably the only guy that has had some kind of like shitty net approval on the economy or some economic related issue like this. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:26:08]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:09]
| W, and then we got to go back to Carter. Yes. Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:26:13]
| Yeah. I was going to say Carter, Nixon, folks around in that.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:17]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:17]
| Because we had some issues back then.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:19]
| Yes. But that's how bad this is. It's, I mean, it's stunning. But look, the situation is truly bad. This is, it's just so bad. It's so fucking bad. You know, between the layoffs, the poor job generation, poor job creation, and now you're fucking their pocketbooks. It's just, you know, oof. But by the way, they voted for this. Now, I see that...
|
Sam:
[1:26:57]
| Well, Yvonne, I keep hearing them say they did not.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:02]
| Oh, they did. You fuckers did.
|
Sam:
[1:27:06]
| They did.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:06]
| They fucking did. I mean, I remember saying specifically before the election that Trump would be inflationary. I said so repeatedly, that everything that he had said that he wanted to do was going to be inflationary.
|
Sam:
[1:27:21]
| Well, yeah, Yvonne, but you misunderstood because tariffs were going to be paid by the Chinese.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:30]
| Ah, I see. Well, most got struck down. I don't know if you saw that a number of companies reported excellent Q1 earnings because they got massive tariff refunds.
|
Sam:
[1:27:42]
| Wait, wait. I thought Donald Trump said that he would really appreciate it if companies did not take their refunds.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:50]
| Yeah, the company said, fuck you, okay? Give me my money, okay? GM got a $300 million tariff refund. I heard Ford got a billion-dollar tariff refund. I mean, a billion-dollar tariff refund. I mean...
|
Sam:
[1:28:08]
| Now, Yvonne, are they passing those on and refunding the people who brought their products?
|
Ivan:
[1:28:13]
| Ha ha ha ha ha! You're so funny! Ha ha ha! you're a comedian yeah right sure uh-huh yeah yeah they're sending they're gonna they're gonna you know ford is gonna get right on sending a check to anybody that bought a car right away to give them that money back yeah uh-huh right yeah yeah oh yeah that's happening uh-huh okay Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:28:41]
| Yes. Okay. You got more to say on inflation and economy?
|
Ivan:
[1:28:49]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:28:50]
| Okay. So let's rapid fire through some of these other topics. So we had the White House Correspondents Dinner event. So some guy decided he was going to try to get in. He brought a shotgun, a pistol, some knives, and basically tried to sprint through and get to the room where all the president and pretty much 80% of the cabinet and a bunch of reporters were all hanging out. His little manifesto says his target was basically any administration officials, except he called out Kash Patel. He said not Kash Patel. He did not want to get Cash Patel.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:39]
| He said no, not Cash Patel?
|
Sam:
[1:29:41]
| He specifically called out in his manifesto that Cash was not a target.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:46]
| Why?
|
Sam:
[1:29:47]
| So, I don't know. I mean, he seems... I mean, if you're going to target the rest of them, why not?
|
Ivan:
[1:29:58]
| Why not, Cash? Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:30:01]
| That's odd.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:03]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:30:05]
| Anyway, he ran through. He was tackled. One Secret Service officer was shot, but their bulletproof vest worked, and they're fine.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:15]
| But it's far off a shot, right?
|
Sam:
[1:30:17]
| Well, that has been unclear. They've been hedging on that, which makes me think, in fact, he probably did not get off a shot. The security folks in place, Secret Service and other security that were there, did shoot at him. They apparently missed him completely. There's no reports that this guy was injured. They did hit a Secret Service officer, but like I said, Bulletproof Vest protected them. They're going to be fine. and and they got the guy and he's in custody and that's where we are that.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:55]
| Part of what i'm out of thinking that they let this guy they they knew they look this guy telegraphed this plot and that i mean this guy was staying at the hotel he had sent messages i believe that i heard that family had tried to reach out to get this guy arrested because he had sent them messages about this And I'm beginning to think I'm going to go with my conspiracy that, you know what, they knew about it. They let him through because they wanted to justify the ballroom because the first thing he did right after the fucking thing was talk about his fucking ballroom.
|
Sam:
[1:31:28]
| You know, I don't believe that. I think opportunistically they took the opportunity on the ballroom. But I don't think they actually.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:38]
| Listen, man, this guy got far more popular the last time they tried to take a shot at him. OK, these this would not be beyond these bastards to know that this was happening. And to wait on it and to fucking like let it unfold at least to a bit in order to try to see if that would pump up Trump's numbers. Because these guys are crazy bastards.
|
Sam:
[1:32:03]
| Sam, I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I've heard people doing this kind of conspiracy thing. I'm like, no, I don't buy it.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:14]
| You know what? I'm not going to say that I am ironclad saying that this is what happened. What happened? But I very much believe that this is highly possible. given the composition of this entire psychopathic administration.
|
Sam:
[1:32:35]
| I don't think Trump himself would risk it. Like, because what if they screwed up and he actually got through it?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:41]
| He thinks he's invincible.
|
Sam:
[1:32:45]
| Look, and also just look.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:47]
| Didn't you hear that he could be an astronaut? He could be a fucking.
|
Sam:
[1:32:50]
| I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:51]
| He's like.
|
Sam:
[1:32:53]
| If you look at the video of the guy running past, certainly none of those people that he was running past had the slightest fucking clue. Yeah. I mean, maybe. Yeah. Is it possible someone else did? I don't know. Maybe I am dubious.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:09]
| It's not those guys, but what I'm saying is that they figured, listen, let's let them go all the way. What the hell? We'll stop them anyway, right? We got enough security.
|
Sam:
[1:33:19]
| So the things that have been said about this, aside from ballroom, ballroom, ballroom, is that there's been a lot of criticism over, you know, is this not a good venue? Were they too lax on security? It looked like the security people who were at that checkpoint had basically packed up and they figured they were done. There is notes about, well, the rest of the hotel and all of the parties surrounding this had no security at all. And there were lots of cabinet people at those, those parties with zero security in front of those parties. And, and then there was criticism over how long it took them to evacuate everybody from this thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:01]
| Well, fuck, they had been talking about doing the fucking dinner anyway. Which is, like, insane. Trump was insisting on going back, that he wanted to give his fucking speech.
|
Sam:
[1:34:15]
| Well, and there's this picture after they evacuated Trump, while they were evacuating RFK Jr. There's a picture of them evacuating RFK Jr. And in the background behind him, to the side of the stage, you can see Trump standing there watching. And Trump's actually confirmed that was him. It wasn't just somebody that looked at him. He's like, I wanted to see what was going on. So it's like they pulled him off the stage, but they didn't actually like take him to a secure area. He was standing right there offstage watching the crowd.
|
Sam:
[1:34:52]
| And, you know, and also it was noted they got Vance out of there very quickly. It took them longer to get Donald Trump out. Now, some people have attributed weird motives to that as well. And like, oh, they wanted Trump to die so that Vance could take over. I've seen that conspiracy talked about. I think that is much simpler. Even though Trump denies it, it's pretty clear on the video he fell. They had trouble getting him out of the chair. And then he fell. Then he fell twice. And then they had to get him up. So this wasn't a matter of like them intentionally taking longer to evacuate Trump. It was that Vance is an able-bodied, you know, significantly younger person who just got up and ran, whereas Donald Trump had trouble getting up and trouble running and just stumbled multiple times. So maybe he needs a wheelchair.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:46]
| Sam. Maybe we need to get Trump a wheelchair. I don't know. Maybe we could have some intrepid reporter go and report on this shit now.
|
Sam:
[1:35:55]
| Maybe it should be Jake Tapper.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:57]
| Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen Joe Biden riding around that fucking wheelchair right now was talking about two years, you know. How's Biden's walking right now, Sam? With cancer.
|
Sam:
[1:36:12]
| Wait, Yvonne. I think you misunderstood. If you look carefully at that wheelchair, it's actually a bicycle.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:20]
| Oh, I see. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:36:23]
| It's a bicycle.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:24]
| Because if Biden's still evil, fucking cancer can ride a fucking actual, like, bicycle, like, for exercise, whereas this bastard can't run off a stage even when he thinks they're getting shot at without falling over twice.
|
Sam:
[1:36:39]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:43]
| Listen, I better not, at some airport or something, come across Jake Tappell. Because I'm going to get arrested for assault. I'm going to get arrested for assault if I fucking bump into that bastard. Because I'm going to lose it.
|
Sam:
[1:37:01]
| You know, trivia piece here, I won't actually talk much about it until many years from now, probably when we get past it. But one of the books I am currently reading is by Jake Tapper.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:15]
| Which is...
|
Sam:
[1:37:16]
| But it's his first novel. It's his novel.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:21]
| I see.
|
Sam:
[1:37:23]
| The hellfire club.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:24]
| Was that was that reviewed as any good i.
|
Sam:
[1:37:28]
| Don't know let's see i have to look there were sequels so.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:35]
| I think i did i i i actually i asked that not facetious i i do think that it may have been said that that was a decent.
|
Sam:
[1:37:44]
| I mean, we're only like 10 or 15 pages in, but it's, it's not bad so far.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:50]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:37:51]
| All right. And I, I, I was kind of like the, the opening scene, by the way, happens in a real place in DC that was only a couple blocks from where my dad used to live there and where I'd been on a, in a regular basis. So he's describing the scene and I'm like.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:10]
| Yeah, I know this place.
|
Sam:
[1:38:11]
| I've been there.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:12]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:38:12]
| Multiple times.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:14]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:38:14]
| I know I have a clear vision in my head of this location because I've spent time there anyway. Now, the other thing to note is people have said there was no official designated survivor, even though something like 80% of the cabinet and the line of succession was at this event. I will point out there were plenty of people missing. So it's like the line of succession was insured automatically. Okay, and somebody actually looked into it. Who, if this guy had wildly succeeded and killed everybody there, who would be president right now, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:56]
| I have no idea because I'm not sure who was there or who wasn't there. I have no. Who?
|
Sam:
[1:39:00]
| It was Chuck Grassley, who is the president pro tem of the Senate and 92 years old.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:07]
| Jesus Christ. President Grassley. Well, honestly, I look like somebody said we'd be an improvement. Look, I mean, like I said, like somebody said this week that they would vote for for those squirrels balls that RFK Jr. like cut, you know, instead of Donald Trump, if the opportunity came up.
|
Sam:
[1:39:32]
| That's lovely. OK, we'd better move on. We got we got a couple other things to bang through. And Comey, former head of the FBI, longtime antagonist of Donald Trump, was indicted again.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:48]
| Look, Todd Blanche came in. Main reason that he came in is because, what's her name, Pam Bondi had failed to keep prosecuting these people. So I guess as part of his first thing is to ram through another one of these again, which will probably get dismissed again.
|
Sam:
[1:40:05]
| What was he indicted for, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:07]
| What was it? because he posted an Instagram post that said 8647. Right? Yeah, that was it. Right. In seashells.
|
Sam:
[1:40:17]
| Made out of seashells.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:18]
| Seashells. Yeah, yeah. This thing is going to get dismissed again.
|
Sam:
[1:40:24]
| Of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:25]
| It's such a fucking waste of time. It's ludicrous. It's just this guy. And he also indicted somebody else. Who am I forgetting? He indicted Comey and somebody else.
|
Sam:
[1:40:36]
| Oh, did he?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:38]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was somebody else. Somebody else got.
|
Sam:
[1:40:43]
| There's several other investigations underway, but I don't remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:47]
| Let me see what I remember. Maybe I'm ready. Let me see. Who the heck else? Who the hell? Somebody else. Comey? Okay, I can't. Fine. I thought I heard of some other action that he did. But, okay, no, just Comey. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:41:15]
| Yeah, and there has been word that he is ramping up a variety of investigations into Trump opponents. But, yeah, this is the only indictment so far. But, yeah, like, I think you mentioned this when Bondi was kicked out.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:31]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:41:31]
| She was kicked out because she wasn't being aggressive enough about this stuff. But the fundamental problem is that Donald Trump wants them essentially to make shit up. Or I corrected myself last time we talked about this. It's not that he wants them to make stuff up. It's that he fundamentally can't comprehend the idea that someone would not be guilty of these kinds of things.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:00]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:42:00]
| Yes. If they had the opportunity to be guilty.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:03]
| That's correct.
|
Sam:
[1:42:04]
| Because he can't imagine the scenario of having those kind of opportunities and not taking them. Right. Because he would.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:12]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:42:13]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:15]
| There was some guy, I remember, that we had posted something on Slack that I'm trying to see if I find. Where it was a conservative guy that his lament was that the problem is that they can't find competent MAGA people. And exactly. And, you know, and I mean, literally, it's a fucking oxymoron. Competent and MAGA people is not, you know, just just it's just you can't be competent and be MAGA. Because you have to MAGA people believe in all sorts of shit that isn't real. Facts don't matter. And so, you know, in order to be a fucking prosecutor that wins the case, facts need to matter. And so you can't be competent and a MAGA prosecutor. And so they keep finding, you know, the one thing is that they will keep finding people that will try, okay, to do it, right? But they fail. and then or they will push through an indictment like lindsey halligan and then fall flat on her face because it's incompetently done it's just.
|
Sam:
[1:43:36]
| Well or or donald trump forces them to do things a certain way like there's another example this week there was there was a motion in the case about the ballroom about the judge who stopped the ballroom construction in the wake of the white house correspondence dinner event where they basically said you have to let the ballroom through because of the White House Correspondents' Dinner. This is just proof. But it was like three pages... That were almost clearly written by Donald Trump himself, like, or at least in his style.
|
Sam:
[1:44:12]
| It's like, it's like Donald Trump talked and they wrote it down. They randomly capitalized things just like Donald Trump. They were yelling about like how magnificent things were and the magnificent, amazing ballroom and the most secure ever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, bunker, whatever. Anyway, it's just ridiculous. Now, you mentioned the things that I would say there are a few MAGA-adjacent people that I would say actually are potentially competent and actually good at getting things done. But I'd say they are MAGA by convenience. They're not true believers. Well, that's the thing. They are using it. They are manipulating MAGA for their own agendas. I would put Stephen Miller in that category. I might put Bannon in that category, perhaps. There might be a few more who are, they are not MAGA true believers. They are ones who recognize how gullible and manipulatable MAGA is and are therefore doing that manipulation to advance their own agendas and their own interests.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:32]
| But, but, but, okay, but exactly. So you've got people like, say, Marco Rubio, right? Who I know is not a fucking moron, okay? But he wants to use MAGA to advance his own personal interests, okay? Yeah, I get that, but that means that you're not a real true Maga. true MAGA believer. And the thing is, one of the problems is that most of these people that aren't true MAGA believers eventually wind up getting themselves in trouble and getting kicked out very quickly, okay? Because Steve Miller, listen, Steve Miller is, he is really MAGA. I mean, he really believes in his eugenics shit and hates immigrants and all this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:46:15]
| No, no, I want to be, no, no, let's be clear, the separation. I would put the MAGA cult at the people who are all about Donald and whatever Donald does.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:25]
| No, I see what you're saying.
|
Sam:
[1:46:26]
| What Miller is.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:29]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:46:29]
| He is a white supremacist. Whatever. He has his own agenda. He clearly has fascist tendencies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He couldn't give a shit about Donald Trump personally. Donald Trump is an instrument to him to use to advocate his agenda.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:48]
| But look, this guy has been on Donald Trump's side the whole fucking entire time. I mean, I actually... Listen, I would take Steve Miller out of that because Steve Miller is not one that has even criticized Donald in any way for a number of things that he has failed at being able to do. The guy who I agree with you more on this is more Banyan.
|
Sam:
[1:47:15]
| I just think that's not the moment yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:17]
| Banyan is not a Trump cultist because he's not that type. But look, the reality is it's this entire thing of what happens when reality clashes with your bullshit and what do you do at that moment? Okay. Because it's like the whole Iran war thing. Bluster meets reality. And it just shows the degree of complete incompetence behind all of this.
|
Sam:
[1:47:50]
| Yeah. I mean, that's it. Because this is what happens, and I'd say, yeah, I've done the comparison before. COVID was another type event for Donald Trump in his first term. His normal modus operandi is to just power through it, bullshit, talk about how great things are, and lie over and over and over again until people believe the lie.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:17]
| The same thing now he's trying to do with affordability.
|
Sam:
[1:48:20]
| He's trying to do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:21]
| People driving past every fucking gas station looking at $5, $6 a gallon. And he's trying to tell them how everything's good.
|
Sam:
[1:48:27]
| Yeah. Well, and, you know, this potentially works in some areas. People don't pay a lot of attention. People don't dig in. All they hear is, well, Donald Trump said over and over again, why would you not believe him? But when that directly contrasts with something that people can actually see on a regular basis, like in the case of COVID, hey, grandma just died. You know, there are people dropping dead all around me. Now, even then, in the end, a huge portion of the country ended up believing his bullshit.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:05]
| No, but in that case, even the deaths kind of like, after the initial wave, the deaths kind of like filtered through the thing. It's not as prevalent as the fucking gas price. You cannot wake up every day right now and not drive a gas station and look at those motherfucking signs with that number. You're stopping at that gas station every fucking week. You're pumping gas and you're paying more than you have ever paid in your life. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:49:36]
| So, Yvonne, question. Once we pass $9.99, are they going to have to go out with little pieces of paper and stick them next to the signs? Because those signs don't have a spot for the one I haven't seen.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:57]
| The answer is, because I believe that this happened in the 70s, is a yes.
|
Sam:
[1:50:03]
| Put a little piece of paper out there.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:04]
| Yeah, because they did.
|
Sam:
[1:50:06]
| They had to.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:06]
| Because it was always, gas was always in cents, not over a dollar.
|
Sam:
[1:50:13]
| Oh, right. Because they had to add the dollar.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:15]
| That's right. Yeah. Because it was always in cents. And yes, they had to do that. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:50:24]
| Will they drop the 0.9 cents once it's over $10?
|
Ivan:
[1:50:29]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:50:30]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:32]
| They'll never. That 0.9 has always been there. It's the biggest scam ever in gas prices. You know, it's always, always, $0.59.99. I mean, it's, man, it is always the biggest, it's always been there. They're never dropping that.
|
Sam:
[1:50:56]
| Is there some legal reason why it has to be there or is it just like the psychological $0.59.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:02]
| Is less than $0.60? I always thought it's just a psychological thing because, look, whenever I've done pricing, there is a massive difference between, you know, I was going through a pricing scenario recently. We're trying to go from $72,000 down to like drop like $11,000. And then it was $61,000. And I said, now making $59,900. And I'm like, why? Because they'll think they're getting a hugely better deal than at $60,500.
|
Sam:
[1:51:35]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:36]
| That's just the way the brain works.
|
Sam:
[1:51:39]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:40]
| So.
|
Sam:
[1:51:41]
| People are stupid.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:43]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:51:43]
| Is the other way to say that.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:46]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:46]
| There are a lot of these psychological hooks that are there.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:50]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:51:51]
| Yes, people. And even if you know better, even if you know the trick is being played on you, they've shown over and over and over that it still works.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:03]
| It works. It works.
|
Sam:
[1:52:05]
| Yeah. Same thing with anchoring, where you mention a price first and then that anchors people's opinion on what's fair or regular. Even if you know that is happening, it still works. Okay. We're out of time, but I would feel bad if we didn't at least mention SCOTUS on the VRA. This was expected. You know, people knew that the Roberts Court has been after that. The case was heard a number of months ago, and it was fairly clear that the conservative majority on the court was going to gut it. They actually did this week. Basically, there were three major pillars of the Voting Rights Act. Over the last decade, one by one, those pillars have been knocked out. And this last one was related to redistricting. And basically, like with the other two pillars, they've made it almost impossible for people to appeal districting because it was racially unfair. Basically, a successful claimant would have to prove completely that the districting was done specifically for racial animus and not for political advantage. And of course, these two in our current environment are closely tied together.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:30]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:53:31]
| So if you can say we are we are doing these districts because we want Republican districts, then that's perfectly fine. You just have to not say we're doing it because we want white districts, even though in many parts of the country, these two things are perfectly aligned almost. You know, and, and so, yeah, and this is basically the, you know, the Supreme Court over the last few iterations of this kind of stuff has basically said that.
|
Sam:
[1:54:07]
| This, you must directly show that the reason for this is flat out, obvious, practically openly stated racism to go against it. It can't be hidden within other purposes. And they've said manipulating things for partisan advantage is absolutely fine. It's gerrymandering in specific. They have said that doing districts for partisan advantage is 100% totally fine and is not a reason to throw out districts. And so here we go. Now, this is kicking off another round of redistricting battles. two states in the south, Alabama and Louisiana. Louisiana was the one with the Supreme Court case. They have to redraw their districts because of the result of the Supreme Court case. Alabama has also said they're going to do theirs. A number of other Republican states have said they're going to push further redistricting. And a lot of them are trying to squeeze in Even this year for this election.
|
Sam:
[1:55:19]
| Louisiana and Alabama are actually already delaying primaries that were due to start. One of them was due to start today and has been delayed so that they can try to do this redistricting. It'll undoubtedly end up in court again. But is SCOTUS going to stop this? Probably not. And a number of Democratic states have said, OK, we're going to accelerate our efforts, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:43]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:55:44]
| Now, some of this will get done in time for 2026, but whatever doesn't get done in time for 2026, they'll have plenty of time to do it for 2028. And so you are going to see in both red and blue states the most horribly gerrymandered districts we have ever seen in our lifetimes. And we are going to see less and less and less competitive districts, which, of course, is bad for democracy. But you can't look at the Democrats and say, well, you should do fair districts. Because one of the things we've learned over the last is if you let the other side do this and you just say, oh, we're going to be above and beyond this and be fair.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:29]
| No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:56:30]
| Then you just get slaughtered.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:31]
| Right. No, you can't. You can't.
|
Sam:
[1:56:33]
| And look, the Democrats have said over and over and over again, put a bill in to require fair redistricting. We will sign it tomorrow. We do nonpartisan commissions, do whatever. If you put something in that makes sense, that would come up with free competitive districts, whatever, whatever, we're on board. We'll do it tomorrow. But it has to be uniform everywhere with fair rules. Otherwise, you know, we got to fight back. And this also points to, by the way, I got to yell about this again.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:11]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:57:12]
| Even though it's old news at this point. The Democrats had a bill in place that would have fixed this and would have required national standards on on how elections are carried out. national standards on, fair jerrymandering, fair redistricting, fair redistricting, national standards on what would be, you know, how voting should be run, how counting should be done, how recounts should be done. And there weren't, very carefully, much of this remained in state control, but they were just setting guidelines that the states had to at least meet. And what happened?
|
Ivan:
[1:57:58]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:57:59]
| In order to get the House past this, in order to get it through the Senate, you would have had to kill the filibuster, at least for this type of legislation, if not for everything. And Manchin and Sinema would not go along and Biden would not push them on it. And so here we are. We are where we are.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:20]
| Oh, well. Gosh.
|
Sam:
[1:58:23]
| And by the way, I mentioned 2028. it'll be even worse after the census in 2030 for the regular redistricting cycle, unless something is reversed before then, which, you know, is probably not, you know? So, okay. Okay. I think that brings us to the end of the show, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:45]
| It does. Oh, well, darn.
|
Sam:
[1:58:49]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:49]
| Darny, darn, darn.
|
Sam:
[1:58:53]
| Like darning socks. Yes. No one does that anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:58]
| Probably not.
|
Sam:
[1:59:00]
| I mean, I'm sure some people do, but fundamentally it's easier to buy new socks.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:06]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:59:06]
| It's cheaper to buy new socks. It takes us time to buy new socks. This is true of almost everything. Like the things that are worth repairing is a smaller and smaller set of things. Like when's the last time you saw a TV repair shop?
|
Ivan:
[1:59:24]
| Yeah, no, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:59:25]
| That used to be a thing. Vacuum cleaner repair used to be a thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:30]
| But also, look, to be fair, I find that a lot of devices that we use right now last a lot longer. TVs, I mean, I've got TVs. I realize that I've got some of these newer TVs. I mean, I've got some that are eight years and they're still, like, perfect. And I'll tell you, in the past, two TVs did not last as long.
|
Sam:
[1:59:50]
| Yeah, yeah. The CRTs. I understand what you're saying. No, absolutely. But also, even lots and lots of things.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:57]
| They're much more difficult to repair. Yeah. Things are much more difficult to repair.
|
Sam:
[2:00:01]
| They're more difficult to repair, and it's cheaper to begin with. I mean, the inflation-adjusted cost of a large-screen TV is minuscule compared to what it was decades ago.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:13]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:00:13]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[2:00:13]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:00:15]
| And for all kinds of other things. It's just like it makes absolutely no economic sense to even think about repairing certain things. you toss them in the trash and you buy a new one.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:25]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:00:27]
| Which, tying back to that whole plastic discussion, doesn't do great things for the environment either. But, you know, whatever. It's where we are right now. Okay. curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there. Look at our archives. Find out all the ways to contact us. All that lovely sort of stuff. We got transcripts. Read the transcripts. I expect you to be reading every transcript. You can amuse yourself because these are machine-generated transcripts and they make mistakes all the time. I don't think our transcripts have even once ever never spelled Yvonne's name correctly. It's almost always Y-V-O-N-N-E. Almost always. And there are other variants too. It's not even consistent, but it's never spelled Yvonne's name properly. It makes all kinds of other mistakes. It's fun. Go, go read the transcripts, look for, look for issues. And of course we have a link to our Patreon where you can give us money.
|
Sam:
[2:01:26]
| You know, various levels. 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 these kinds of fun things. And importantly, at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, you will be invited to the Curbudgeons Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of other people chat throughout the week, share links, talk about interesting things, whatever. Several things from the Slack were mentioned in the first half of the show so yvonne what is some interesting super compelling article from the slack that we have not talked about on the show that would make people want to join the slack and log in every day all the time god um to get our insights i.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:12]
| Mean article i'm not gonna say there were two things that i shared uh that i thought were interesting one was i shared a picture of erica kirk hosting.
|
Sam:
[2:02:25]
| Yes the.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:26]
| The old charlie kirk podcast and i don't.
|
Sam:
[2:02:30]
| Know if you saw this picture i saw the picture but she looked like she was.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:37]
| Getting ready for a raid a nighttime raid by the.
|
Sam:
[2:02:42]
| CIA in some.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:44]
| You know, location. Like, it was just, bizarre i just i'm like what the hell look was she going for it's just you know it's it was just it was just quite strange okay also on other news uh apparently donald trump is intent on putting his picture in some passports okay yes and we shared a mock-up not all.
|
Sam:
[2:03:17]
| Passports to be clear.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:18]
| Apparently only issued in an office in an office in dc but but the one that i liked is that california uh governor newsom started making fun of this and he's produced a whole bunch of actually i gotta be honest i kind of like these driver's licenses with driver's license license plates there's a there's a mock-up of of of it okay and so they had one that uh in honor an honor of California's 175th anniversary will be rolling out a very special driver's license for every Californian this summer. It will feature a handsome, high-quality photo of me, Gavin Newsom. Many people are saying it's the best license ever made in the history of the world. This is about celebrating our beautiful state. It's not about me, despite the very handsome photo, okay? Enjoy Governor Newsom. Let me tell you something. I'll tell you what. Governor Newsom's pretty phutogenic. Actually, that doesn't look bad on the driver's license. I'm like, if I got this driver's license, I'm not that offended. But if I got a driver's license with Donald, I got a passport. I was like, I was in fear. I'm like, holy shit. Is my passport, what the fuck is it expiring? Because I got a fucking picture with a passport with Donald Trump's face on it. I was going to vomit. But apparently we can avoid it.
|
Sam:
[2:04:39]
| But Ivan, you'd be okay with your driver's license with Ron DeSantis.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:45]
| Come on.
|
Sam:
[2:04:47]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:49]
| Oh, God, that would be, yeah, thank God it's term's over soon.
|
Sam:
[2:05:01]
| You know, I'm, yeah, okay. I was going to say, I'm glad I'm not in one of those societies where they plaster the picture of a president everywhere. But Donald Trump is certainly trying.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:13]
| Oh, he's, he's definitely, listen, he's definitely trying to make like Washington, D.C. look like Moscow in the old days.
|
Sam:
[2:05:21]
| Mm-hmm. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:23]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[2:05:24]
| Okay. One, one last thing for me, because my son Alex just passed through and handed me something he wants to make sure I mention. I've, I've been working on doing some research for marketing for Robin Letter. Go, go check it out, RobinLetter.com, anybody who hasn't already, blah, blah, blah. and contact me if you want in. But I've been doing things like, okay, well, where am I going to post about this? What kinds of things do I need to say? Do I need to change the copy on the website to explain certain things better before I push people at it? When exactly do I want to open registration to anybody who wants it instead of invite only, et cetera, all that kind of stuff. I'm trying to do that. I also did some growth modeling to try to understand what current growth looks like and where I have to push levers to make it better, all that kind of stuff. But he made a document for marketing, and his main suggestions, Is instead of Robin Letter, build Dungeons and Robins, which is basically like a variant of Dungeons and Dragons, but with Robins. And he generated a picture of what the cover might look like that has Dungeons and Robins in the Dungeons and Dragons font. And a picture of a Robin sitting on a tree branch wearing a medieval helmet.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:49]
| Nice.
|
Sam:
[2:06:50]
| So.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:51]
| Nice.
|
Sam:
[2:06:52]
| And I accused him of this being an AI-generated image, but he showed me the image editing where he had taken a separate image of a robin and a separate image of the helmet, and he'd put in the text himself, he'd composited the things himself. I did accuse him, however, that he probably did not take the pictures of the helmet and the robin himself.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:17]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:07:18]
| But he made the rest. It was not AI-generated. My accusation was false.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:24]
| You made an unfounded accusation, you cheap bastard.
|
Sam:
[2:07:30]
| Yes, but he is suggesting a new direction to rebrand Robin Letter. No, not a nude direction.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:39]
| Oh.
|
Sam:
[2:07:40]
| Although.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:40]
| That one is going to be quite a different.
|
Sam:
[2:07:42]
| I could shift the direction of Robin Letter to instead of being an alternative to keep in touch with your friends with text updates, alternative to social media, it can be an alternative to OnlyFans instead, where you take turns sharing nudes with your friends.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:01]
| Oh, God, no. Oh, God.
|
Sam:
[2:08:06]
| No?
|
Ivan:
[2:08:08]
| That would be epically catastrophic.
|
Sam:
[2:08:14]
| So instead, maybe his idea of birds in medieval armor.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:19]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:08:20]
| Well, that all birds thing changed from shoes to an AI company.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:29]
| AI, right.
|
Sam:
[2:08:30]
| Yeah, so you just got to do the right pivot. it. I did have one person once, and this was a few months ago before I actually launched Robin Letter, saying you need an AI hook. What you need is to build an AI to write your updates for your friends for you. So you don't actually have to talk to your friends. It just writes the update for you.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:55]
| Well, I mean, to be fair, having an AI assist for writing isn't the worst thing in the world now.
|
Sam:
[2:09:01]
| It is not a worst thing in the world. But if the whole point is keeping up with your friends, having an AI write it for you kind of defeats the purpose.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:08]
| Look, I mean, I have, okay, a lot. And I use it a lot. Sometimes I'm trying to write something and I'll draft it and AI will tweak it and then I'll tweak it back. And then it gives you another suggestion. And I find that it helps me get my point across in a clearer manner. It's better than a lot of the autocorrect stuff that I get where I get mistakes that they go filter through. And one of the things that pisses me off with some of the autocorrect is that it will suggest words that make no sense in the context of that in order to fix a word. And I'm like, listen, asshole, obviously that word doesn't fit with that sentence. I mean, you know.
|
Sam:
[2:09:50]
| But I think the suggestion here was more like and let's put it in a Facebook context instead of Robin Letter. But make me a Facebook post that will make me popular with my friends and make me think make them all think I'm doing that.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:03]
| That would be that would be awful. And I that's like, yeah, I mean, I know that I had this thing where I was working on Claude to do some updates to my my profile on LinkedIn and resumes and other stuff, which it actually did a very good job of helping me, like, get them updated in a better way. And I've noticed, by the way, that it has been generating based on the changes we did more of the right contacts to me.
|
Sam:
[2:10:32]
| OK. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:35]
| But one of the things that it suggested, hey, I'll draft you an update every week to post on LinkedIn. and I gotta tell you something the first update it suggested to me I just wanted to like set it on fire I was just like oh my god this is such utter bullshit right I will not post this this is ridiculous I am not I had I did have it I did it did help me create an update where I wound up writing a lot of it that was more the later something I would talk about but but holy shit This thing, hey, make an update that'll make people interesting. The shit that it came up with, I wanted to just hit my computer with a sledgehammer.
|
Sam:
[2:11:17]
| The latest thing I did, and this is Robin letter related.
|
Sam:
[2:11:22]
| One of the Robins I have, a Robin for people who knew me in high school, was struggling because I only had like a handful of people in it. Because fundamentally, like I haven't kept in touch with those people. I don't have their email addresses. I don't know who to contact. Find them. Yeah, well, it wasn't find them. I knew some of them were Facebook friends. So I wanted to make an additional Facebook post to be like, hey, I set this thing up. If you know, you know, people I knew in high school, whatever, contact me, I'll get you in, whatever. I very specifically, you know, did not want an AI generated post. I like, people smell that from a mile away and hate it. So I was like, I will write this post. However... Maybe give me some tips on how to structure it so that it works well with Facebook's algorithm. Like, how long should it be? Give me a word count goal that I can stay within. Should I, I know Facebook truncates things. How much is likely actually to be seen? How much should I like make sure is up front versus in detail that they have to click more for? Tell me those kinds of information. and then once i wrote it i did say okay critique what i wrote and do you have any suggestions and it had a couple of suggestions that were useful i'm like okay that makes sense and i made a revision you know based on those suggestions it did not write a single word that's what i like.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:52]
| But but but that's well i mean but that's what i like about using it for it's just not not not hey just make me post like be popular no fuck you no.
|
Sam:
[2:13:02]
| And by the way i did get one new person so far. I posted this like a couple hours ago. One new person so far joined that particular high school, Robin. We'll see if I get any more. I may not. I may not. That may be it. But, you know, it was worth a shot. Anyway, I think we're done, Yvonne. I think we are way past done.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:23]
| We are way past done.
|
Sam:
[2:13:24]
| So, everybody, have a great week. Have a good time. Blah, blah, blah. I always say blah, blah, blah. I should like shake up the ending. I should come up with a new closing statement. What was that one Dan Rather did that everybody made fun of him for?
|
Ivan:
[2:13:40]
| Oh, fuck, I don't remember.
|
Sam:
[2:13:43]
| Oh, man. We're old to even know that happened.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:47]
| Yeah. Yeah, I know. I remember what you're saying, but I don't remember what he said.
|
Sam:
[2:13:55]
| Okay. Now I, Dan Rather attempted catchphrase. Search. Dan Rather quotes. Courage. Courage. He ended a couple newscasts with courage. I remember that.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:12]
| Okay. Courage.
|
Sam:
[2:14:15]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:16]
| That doesn't work.
|
Sam:
[2:14:17]
| And, you know, Concrite and Concrite.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:21]
| Concrete.
|
Sam:
[2:14:23]
| Concrete. Walter Concrete.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:28]
| Cronkite.
|
Sam:
[2:14:29]
| Now I can't even say the name correctly. Walter Cronkite.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:32]
| Well, that's the same problem I got right now with Nutlick. I can't say his name.
|
Sam:
[2:14:38]
| Well, and, you know, I mentioned Dan Rather shows our age. Then I go mention Walter Cronkite. And then I was about to say Edward R. Murrow. So, you know, I'm just, yeah, all of these people had their catchphrases. So I'll go with a different kind of catchphrase. We're leaving engage. That was, of course, Captain Picard from Star Trek The Next Generation when he starts, when he goes to warp, he tells them to engage.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:35]
| What did Shatner say?
|
Sam:
[2:15:39]
| I don't think it was consistent back then. The whole notion of the captain always saying the same thing, I think, started later.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:46]
| Yeah, that's what I'm realizing. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:15:47]
| I mean, there are a few that are probably classic Kirk versions of that, but I don't think it was consistent. whereas a lot of the later captains, like some of the more recent series, which I have not watched, but I've seen clips of, actually like made fun of that. We're like, oh, this is my first time going to warp in this starship. What's my catchphrase going to be? I have to come up with something. And they actually like, you know, had the character say that on screen. Anyway, yeah, that's it. Engage. I did not let you have a chance to say goodbye, so we can say goodbye now. Bye, everyone.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:22]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:16:24]
| Now I'm hitting stuff.
| |
|
