Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:01]
| Y'alloo!
|
Ivan:
[0:03]
| Hi, hi.
|
Sam:
[0:05]
| Before we start, so I can time things properly, when's your stop time?
|
Ivan:
[0:09]
| I mean, I don't... Okay, well, it's late here.
|
Sam:
[0:12]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[0:13]
| I don't know. I have to make dinner and stuff or whatever. I mean... So, let's just get started. Okay. Let's just hurry up.
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Sam:
[0:20]
| Okay, fine. You gonna make me dinner, too?
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Ivan:
[0:24]
| Oh, sure, honey.
|
Sam:
[0:25]
| Okay. Because I'm kind of hungry. I just had some chocolate, but... You know, anyway, here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, July 18th, 2026. It is just before 2130 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter and Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:07]
| Hi.
|
Sam:
[1:09]
| So, we're recording a little bit later in the day after a little bit of a juggle. And I'll just start our but first segment by saying, you know, I have grown to understand and appreciate and live with the dynamics that happen when you have a neurodivergent family with one autistic person and one ADHD person. and so two days in a row now we've had things we had to go for that i'm like all, mapping out like okay we have to be there what's it's at such and such a time the drive is about this much time it takes us about this much time to get ready it takes blah blah blah blah so we have to leave it this time and then it'll be nice and comfortable and we have excess time, and then to see, the excess buffers built into the schedule just drain away.
|
Ivan:
[2:06]
| Well, that's why you built the buffers.
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Sam:
[2:07]
| That is why I built the buffers. Indeed. Indeed. But, yeah, both, today my wife had a flight. She's going to Canada for some conference. And she did make her plane. She actually had some time at the gate before her plane, but we were cutting it a lot closer than had been intended. And this was just like, and we rescheduled the podcast. This is why I'm bringing it. Like from, you know, from 17 UTC this morning when we normally would do it, because she had said she wanted to leave for the airport at 1730 UTC. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:45]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:46]
| We did not actually leave until after 19 UTC. So like over an hour and a half later, past the time that she had. And so, you know, I asked Yvonne, can we do the podcast in the afternoon instead? Like just a few hours later, after I have time, drop her at the airport, come back, whatever. And so then at the time she wanted to leave, I'm, of course, ready to go. I've done everything I need to do to be ready. She is still running around the house like crazy trying to pack. There's still laundry going in the dryer that she needs for the trip. She's, you.
|
Sam:
[3:28]
| Know, all of this stuff is still happening. And so I'm basically just sitting there. I mean, I find other, I answered some email and some stuff. I was just sitting there doing stuff for 90 minutes while I wait for her to be ready. And then, of course, once we are ready, it's like a race. Like, you know, the GPS says we'll probably, you know, it'll be less than the time you're supposed to be at the airport, but probably plenty. But if there's any like, you know, if there's some like accident on the highway on the way there or something, not with us, but just some, well, certainly if with us, absolutely. But if there was an accident just ahead of us on the highway that caused an extra delay, then we're out of luck. You know, there's no more buffer left. Right.
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Ivan:
[4:17]
| You know, the buffer is the buffer is is terminated.
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Sam:
[4:21]
| Exactly. So anyway, and then almost exactly the same thing played out like a day earlier. We had like a doctor's appointment for Alex or something down in Seattle. And we were, you know, and I was like, okay, we have to leave at such and such a time. We ended up leaving like half an hour after that or whatever. And yeah, but like, again, this is, I, I, I, I work sometimes it still really stresses me out because my autistic brain like starts setting off fireworks the second you're like 10 seconds late behind schedule. but at the same time i know this is how it goes all the time every time and that's why extra buffer is always built in, you know to allow for these kinds of things so and meanwhile by the way well look i i i have i i i have just just to be clear i have the autistic wannabe on time thing too but i don't necessarily have the, implementation accuracy all the time so if it was me getting on a plane, I would also be running late. So anyway, go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[5:28]
| Well, I live, I struggle with that in this household.
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Sam:
[5:33]
| I figured you might as well.
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Ivan:
[5:33]
| It's caused it's not me and my wife definitely although she doesn't she I mean, she's neurodivergent. Okay, she has time and time and distance are not her forte.
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Sam:
[5:51]
| Yes.
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Ivan:
[5:52]
| So, we recently had a very serious problem with missing a very important event.
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Sam:
[6:03]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:03]
| Okay?
|
Sam:
[6:03]
| Yeah, okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:06]
| Now, you know, we have struggled to make it on time to places. It usually is that Manu and I are very rigid and ready on time.
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Sam:
[6:19]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:19]
| Okay?
|
Sam:
[6:20]
| Yes.
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Ivan:
[6:20]
| It's just, you know, and so we're just sitting around waiting for my wife. Okay. And so, um, so that keeps happening. Okay. And you know, it, it, it, when that happened, my wife did make a commitment though, because that was a very important event and it was her. It was her action to cause for it, for us to be late. Okay. She did make a specific commitment to in future events. And when I say that we need to be ready by a certain time, that she will be ready at a certain time. Because it did, you know, we have missed other things. Like she has missed. At one time, we were all traveling together, the three of us on an airplane. Look, we got to the airport super late because she wasn't there late. Now, I had pre-check. She didn't. The pre-check, for some reason, two of us wound up with it. She was supposed to sign up for it. She didn't. Manu and I had pre-check. She didn't. I'm like, look, I'm going to go through with Manu because on the line, you have to take the regular line.
|
Sam:
[7:39]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[7:40]
| We get there to the gate. She's not arriving. It's not a rhyming. It's not a rhyming. I'm trying to convince them, to get there. Now I'm being yelled at. I just apparently.
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Sam:
[7:58]
| Sorry, I got you in trouble.
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Ivan:
[7:59]
| Yvonne. Well, his wife did the same thing, so we're good, okay? So it wound up getting on the plane because I tried. I begged for the American Airlines people. Don't hold it. She's almost here. She's almost here. Now, they wouldn't hold the damn plane. So I got on and I prayed, okay, because Manu really wanted to get on. So I'm standing there at the gate, Manu trying to get on, holding him back from not getting on. She's not showing up. I'm begging them. They keep telling me, if you don't get on, we're going to leave without you. And I'm like, fuck. Okay, well, I'll get on the plane. So I got on the plane. I sat there, wait, wait, they closed the door. She didn't get on the plane. Now, thankfully, the good news was that being that we were flying through Dallas, there were a lot of flights. There was a flight right after she managed to get on there and we met in Dallas and everything was fine.
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Sam:
[8:57]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[8:58]
| So we managed to make it to the final destination together. But we did make, no, she did make a commitment. So in order to, you know, look, because she said, I understand the timing better. So she's like, okay, look, I will make sure.
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Sam:
[9:13]
| Good luck.
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Ivan:
[9:14]
| What you say for an important event that we've got, you know. But she's actually, look, to be fair, she's actually been very good about this. Okay? It used to be a lot worse. It's gotten way better with time. We've been able to synchronize the time much better. you know and it just happened that this was this was one time that we that it happened that we that did that it didn't it didn't work out but she made a commitment to to the next time for something no no i understood it's just like.
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Sam:
[9:45]
| Some of that stuff and part of what you know again living in this kind of household, you learn over time it's not something they're doing on purpose it's just how the brain is wired, You know, they can have the best intentions in the world, but the brain is wired in a certain way and my brain is wired different than hers. And, you know, and I have plenty of my own issues too. Many, many issues of my own. It's plenty.
|
Ivan:
[10:13]
| It is the brain wiring. I totally, listen, and I get it. The one thing is that obviously in the heat of the moment, you're like, you know, oh, here, here, here she is. Here, here, you can, here, put on that. So, so the brain wiring is definitely the, the, the, the, the thing, but, but, but yeah, because you and I are totally wired, very different. And so, you know, like you with Brandy, I mean, yeah, exactly. Like the thing, you know, you're ready. You're like, okay, let's go to the airport. And Brandy is still like running laundry before you go to the airport. Okay. You said you were, you, you, you walked in. Okay. You're standing there.
|
Juana:
[10:49]
| Are you going to say anything?
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Ivan:
[10:50]
| Get, get over here.
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Juana:
[10:52]
| That comment was private.
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Ivan:
[10:54]
| Which comment?
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Juana:
[10:55]
| The thing that I was laying for thing.
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Ivan:
[10:58]
| I didn't say what it was. You know, yeah, but you made a commitment to do better. But we're just, you know, we're not going to do that again.
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Sam:
[11:06]
| So, look, the thing is, it's the oil and water thing, too. Like, there's the ADHD pattern. And then I have the autistic pattern.
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Ivan:
[11:17]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[11:17]
| And so what starts happening in my brain is as soon as we're just even slightly off of the schedule that I had defined in my head, whether or not I had shared it to everybody.
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Ivan:
[11:30]
| My fireworks start going off in my head. I'm exactly.
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Sam:
[11:36]
| Yep. I know. I don't believe me. And so then I'm getting irritable. And then that's not helping anything because the more I get irritable about it, the more I try to be like, okay, let's go. We got to go. We got to go. Hurry, hurry, hurry. The more that actually slows her down because that's the con. And anyway, so like the point is that over time we, you know, you, you, you learn to adapt. And so like my thing is, you know, I actually like it for, for the two, the two things yesterday and today. Right. Yesterday I was freaking out more about because it was a doctor's appointment and I was going to. And so I was implicated as well. This time, you know, she's getting on a plane. I'm not. I'm like, if you miss your plane, that's on you. You know, I'm not, I'm just going to chill out. You know, I'll be there. I'll be ready to drive when you're ready. And I'm not going to get stressed about it. You could get stressed about it, but I'm not going to. And then meanwhile, for the things that are all of us together, it's just about like building in so much buffer. you're just building.
|
Juana:
[12:48]
| Lots and lots of buffer yeah the comment that i want to say is, You pick your bottles. You don't have to. I mean, there is some stuff that is very important to be on time, like for a doctor's appointment or for... The airplane thing. What about school? He's always on time at school.
|
Sam:
[13:09]
| We have no battle at school. We're late every day for school, and we're okay with it. That is one battle that we don't have.
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Juana:
[13:19]
| If we're going to meet with Latin friends, you get a freak out. We have to go. We have to go. We have to go.
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Ivan:
[13:32]
| I'm ready to go. No, I don't want to sit at home. I want to go to the thing.
|
Juana:
[13:40]
| When we go to Disney, it's like there is a set up schedule. And it's like, I mean, we are in Disney. We're trying to enjoy the butterflies. And I get motion sickness.
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Sam:
[13:55]
| No, I get that kind of stuff.
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Ivan:
[13:57]
| I don't give a shit about the fucking butterflies.
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Juana:
[14:01]
| But I do. Fuck the butterfly.
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Ivan:
[14:03]
| Yeah, okay, but you can go see the butterflies.
|
Sam:
[14:05]
| Well, you know, but that's it.
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Juana:
[14:07]
| Because I don't follow the schedule.
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Sam:
[14:08]
| No, this is absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[14:10]
| A man who wants to get to his things. And you're just like, you know.
|
Juana:
[14:14]
| You guys have to chill out. This freaking Disney.
|
Sam:
[14:16]
| Yeah, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[14:17]
| You can stay back at the hotel.
|
Sam:
[14:18]
| There are certain things like. That works better. When Alex and I joined Brandy at the fair, for instance. We're not doing anything. We get there. We sit under a tree. We eat food. We leave. Okay? and we're all relaxed about the schedule and like there's certain things like and this is a thing for my mind too I'm either in schedule mode or I'm in no schedule mode, and if I'm in no schedule mode then nothing matters I will, do whatever I'm doing it takes however long it takes and you know can change your mind about what we're doing at any given moment and I don't care but, If we're in schedule mode, where there is a specific set of things that are a specific set of times, then I get freaked out about it. But I try not to do schedule mode unless it's absolutely necessary.
|
Juana:
[15:14]
| But, I mean, Ivan, the last time that I saw him on no schedule mode, it was when we went to a trip to Bahamas that it took us three weeks. That's the only time that he didn't scream. Oh, no, he screamed once because, we didn't took a picture of the dolphins.
|
Ivan:
[15:34]
| Because the dolphins were swimming with the boat. You guys. But the dolphins. The dolphins swimming on the boat, these guys.
|
Juana:
[15:47]
| Shh, calm down, dude. You're going to have a heart attack. So he was screaming at us from up in the bridge.
|
Sam:
[15:57]
| Right.
|
Juana:
[15:58]
| So the wind is going that way, like it going back and the sound travels back no forward. So we couldn't hear you.
|
Ivan:
[16:08]
| Eight of them. Eight of them. Eight of them. And none of them could be bothered to freaking, you know, take a picture. None of them. With all the cameras we had. We had a gazillion cameras. No one of them could take.
|
Juana:
[16:23]
| Why you didn't take the picture?
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Ivan:
[16:24]
| Because I was driving the boat.
|
Juana:
[16:26]
| No, Corby was.
|
Ivan:
[16:27]
| No, I was driving the boat.
|
Juana:
[16:29]
| Calm down. Okay, I will leave you now with him. So I love you. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[16:36]
| Drive you know somebody's got to drive the boat.
|
Sam:
[16:39]
| You could have turned the boat hit the dolphins and then like you could get a better picture.
|
Ivan:
[16:44]
| Well not that i could really see them i only could see a little bit of the besides the dolphins actually move it could move quite a lot faster in the boat okay you know they're very yeah yeah i mean like, yeah we're doing 15 knots they could do 20 plus knots it's not like you know and they can turn faster and they can turn fast they can move yeah I'm not moving a big boat to go like that.
|
Sam:
[17:06]
| They can dive. Your boat would be in trouble if it dived.
|
Ivan:
[17:10]
| Exactly. They can dive. They can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nah, nah, nah. That's. It's not like. You know. It's not like I'm beating the dolphins. Okay. In speed. In any way, shape, or form. Okay. So no.
|
Sam:
[17:19]
| Nats. Nats. You need nets.
|
Ivan:
[17:22]
| Nats. Yeah. I need nets. No. I need them to take a fucking picture. I got 10 fucking people. None of them think. Oh. Maybe this is photo worthy. To think. Okay. You got the fucking dolphins swimming there right there with you. You don't think it would have been a cool picture to like have like one of them take a picture with you like the dolphins jumping right right up behind you. I think that would have been one fucking cool picture.
|
Sam:
[17:45]
| There you go. I guess so. But now, you know, you can just ask AI to make that picture for you. You don't need to actually go there anymore.
|
Ivan:
[17:54]
| You know, I was watching somebody do some AI video stuff today. It's not perfected yet. That's all I will say. Okay, it's getting there. but you know no no it's not real you, know i mean it's like we know listen for all this stuff we've been doing really, amazing stuff with cgi for a long time okay you know now you can do it the thing is that you can do it and you know you don't need a entire army of computers and engineers and stuff you can do it like a lot quicker like on your palm of your hand but you know what that shit doesn't replace real stuff anyway. It never did. So, yeah, you know, it's kind of nice for it to be a real thing to take a picture of and not me make it up.
|
Sam:
[18:40]
| There you go. Okay. My story was instead of movies or TV this week. Do you have anything for this but first before we take a break and start talking about news?
|
Ivan:
[18:50]
| No, no. Not today. Let's jump.
|
Sam:
[18:53]
| Jump it! Jumping jumping Jehoshaphat. I will say, according to my dice rolls, we should have had an Apple dream and a wiki of the day today. But because I was rushing home from the airport straight to get ready for the podcast, those are not ready. Maybe next week. We'll see. And instead, we'll have this one to start with. Back after this.
|
Break:
[19:22]
| You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No! Do you want to support the show? No! Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe! You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show, and maybe every once in a while some much needed sedatives for Yvonne.
|
Break:
[20:05]
| At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our Curmudgeon's Corner postcard, or even a Curmudgeon's Corner mug. Fun stuff! Not fun! In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Curmudgeon's Corner! Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more? 100 billion billion dollars even though you don't have anywhere, near a billion dollars if we're worth anything to you at all send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeon's corner alex hates, really really hates curmudgeon's corner that's really mean isn't it, Okay.
|
Sam:
[21:03]
| We're back. Where do you want to start on news stuff? You're not Alex. You're Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[21:10]
| Alex.
|
Sam:
[21:10]
| You're so confusing. It's confusing. Well, he's right next to me. You're right there. You're both on my screen. It's just so confusing. I get you confused all the time. You look the same. You sound the same. You act the same. Of course, I also get them confused with my dog and my wife sometimes, too. But, you know, maybe this is a me problem.
|
Ivan:
[21:34]
| That could be. I don't know. Why don't we talk about... Why don't we talk about... Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
|
Sam:
[21:45]
| Having trouble here.
|
Ivan:
[21:46]
| Well, let's start with this stupid thing that happened a couple of days ago. The one stupid thing.
|
Sam:
[21:52]
| There are many stupid things. Which one are you talking about?
|
Ivan:
[21:56]
| Ah, the... The Trump went on TV to say he was going to show us the smoking gun on, you know, elections.
|
Sam:
[22:09]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[22:10]
| So, Sam, how did that go?
|
Sam:
[22:13]
| From all reports, it went pretty badly. And not just judging, like everyone, you know, from our point of view was sort of expecting, okay, he's going to go lie about elections again. It's going to be a bunch of a bunch of lies and bullshit, basically. But the thing that I'm saying makes it it didn't go very well is that even on the right, it seems to have gone over like a lead balloon.
|
Ivan:
[22:45]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:45]
| Like, first of all, like, Fox, apparently, like, they aired the whole thing live. Most of the networks didn't. But Fox aired the whole thing live. And then immediately after they came back, a reporter came on and read a disclaimer about how Fox News had no proof of anything that the president had said. And then they immediately moved on to other topics and didn't talk about it again.
|
Ivan:
[23:14]
| Why do you think that is, Sam? What could have precipitated that?
|
Sam:
[23:20]
| Well, in the case of Fox specifically, it might have been that huge settlement they had to make for lying about election machines in the past.
|
Ivan:
[23:30]
| Right. So they weren't up for like, hey, we're not going to gamble a few more billion on this because that's what it cost them. It cost them over a billion dollars. We're not gambling another billion on this shit. Okay. Let's just, you know what? Let's move on. shall we? We're done.
|
Sam:
[23:49]
| And apparently nobody here.
|
Ivan:
[23:51]
| And apparently they told everybody, none of you assholes are saying one fucking thing about this. Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:00]
| And they weren't alone. Like various, various Republican office holders were sort of like, I wish he would stop talking about this stuff. It's not helpful. It's not helping. and just generally, I mean, and then, okay, well, let's talk about a few of the things that he talked about. Well, I'm juggling the order of these things. I will say right now, one of his own people on his election task force was interviewed at the White House after the damn speech and was asked about evidence of vote tampering and is like, there's no such evidence. We haven't seen any of that. I'm still researching, though. I'm still researching.
|
Ivan:
[24:44]
| Yeah, yeah. What he said is that all the information that we have right now did not reveal anything. Now, I have not completed my investigation, but we've got nothing that says any of us.
|
Sam:
[24:57]
| Now, but now let's separate out what Donald Trump tried to talk about on the speech, because there were there were several different parts of it. OK, and now let me I'm going to bring up Midas Touch gave a summary of it that I posted to to the curmudgeons corner slack. So I'm going to go over some of these bullet points here. So first of all, yeah, he claimed elections were compromised, trying to justify, first of all, he was trying to push for his SAVE Act, which is dead, and also just potentially set up justification for additional types of interference as we get closer to the election. He said he'll correct vulnerabilities, which is kind of like saying what he plans to mess with. But then here we go. Yeah. He talked about China and what China was doing. One of the things he highlighted, and I'm deviating from the Midas touch post, in a few ways, but he talked about China. And one of the highlights, one of the major tent poles, was how China had infiltrated and gotten all kinds of voter registration files, from all across the country, millions of them. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[26:19]
| Hey, Sam, are those super top secret files that nobody can get?
|
Sam:
[26:25]
| So I said this on the Commissions Corner Slack. I'll say it again here. I have voter files for my states on my on my state on my laptop right now.
|
Ivan:
[26:36]
| Like you are a a a foreign actor, a bad actor. You are looking you're looking to influence the elections, Sam. Why are you influencing the elections? Oh, right. You are trying to influence the election.
|
Sam:
[26:51]
| I am trying to influence the election. That's exactly what I'm trying to do.
|
Ivan:
[26:55]
| That's exactly what the hell you're trying to do. Oh, yeah, that's right.
|
Sam:
[26:58]
| But look, the bottom line is, if not every state, then almost every state, voter registration files are publicly available, usually for a nominal fee. you can go to your state's secretary of state and go through the menus and searches and find it and you can find a place to buy them. And the reason for this amongst other reasons but one reason is almost every single political campaign in existence, buys these damn voter files to figure out things like who to send mailers to.
|
Sam:
[27:42]
| You know, and this is like common activity of every political candidate in the goddamn country from dog catcher to president and everything in between. And in my particular case, I have it on my laptop because I am using a self-done analysis of the voter files to approximate voter population density to help me decide my priorities and where I'm going to put out signs. You know, I know I could just put out signs essentially like on every big intersection. That's fine. That's obvious. You don't need a voter file for that. But I'm trying to prioritize. I only have a certain number of hours in the day. I want to go for the most impactful intersections first. And I'm using an analysis of that data to do that. My wife, I believe, got a more recent copy of the data than what I have on my laptop just a couple weeks ago because she's sending out a mailer. I think it just got mailed like yesterday or something because our primary is coming up in a couple of weeks. The ballots just dropped. And so she's sending out a mailer to addresses all over her district. This is normal. This is publicly available information. And after the fact, you know, after the speech, Donald Trump, of course, declassified a bunch of documents related to it. And guess what? The thing about China, they did not infiltrate these voter files. They just bought them.
|
Sam:
[29:08]
| Just like anybody else, they went and bought them the publicly available data and presumably, you know, OK.
|
Sam:
[29:18]
| China undoubtedly is doing all kinds of propaganda efforts and this may help that. But what they did was not in any way unusual or illegal to get the voter data. Now, which brings us to the propaganda part of it, which is that there was stuff in there about propaganda to influence elections, and specifically Donald Trump highlighted China trying to influence elections in Joe Biden's favor in 2020.
|
Ivan:
[29:48]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[29:50]
| Now, when you looked at the document that he released, that he himself released, the big bombshell documents, it did mention, by the way, that China was indeed trying to do that, that they were doing propaganda efforts against Donald Trump and in favor of Joe Biden. But the paragraph right above that, talked about how Russia was still, in 2020 and 2024, by the way, as well, as well as 2016, was doing their propaganda efforts for Donald Trump and against his opponents. Okay? And it was right there as well.
|
Ivan:
[30:30]
| Now, look, did they not even read this stuff? Actually, the answer is no. What am I saying? Of course, they didn't even read it. He just figured that I'll make up a whole bunch of bullshit, release a whole bunch of documents. Most people won't read it. I don't really care.
|
Sam:
[30:45]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[30:46]
| Okay. You know, I just need this to show that I release classified documents and the people that I that that I want will just listen to whatever I say.
|
Sam:
[30:56]
| Yeah, absolutely. And you can't read it anyway. But at least not much. But look, the thing is, first of all, let me just put right out there. The foreign propaganda is a problem. I mean, we spent probably four years complaining about the 2016 Russian propaganda, because it probably did have an effect on Donald Trump being elected. Was it decisive or not? It was so close. There are many things that could have been decisive. This was probably one of them. OK. And, you know, I'm not going to pick and choose which foreign propaganda I like year by year based on who they are. The problem with some of that was Donald Trump openly encouraging the foreign influence operations on his behalf.
|
Ivan:
[31:43]
| Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
|
Sam:
[31:49]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[31:51]
| Wait, you're wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
|
Sam:
[31:55]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[31:55]
| What happened again? What?
|
Sam:
[31:58]
| Really?
|
Ivan:
[31:59]
| Huh? No. Really?
|
Sam:
[32:03]
| Yes. Yes, really. Amazing. We spent four years litigating this. The quote-unquote collusion and all that.
|
Ivan:
[32:14]
| Let me get this straight.
|
Sam:
[32:15]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[32:16]
| Donald Trump asked for help from the Russians. Did he say that out publicly?
|
Sam:
[32:23]
| Oh, yes, I believe he did, Mr. Bo.
|
Ivan:
[32:27]
| Oh, my God!
|
Sam:
[32:30]
| Who knew? Who knew?
|
Ivan:
[32:32]
| Who knew? Yes, he literally went on fucking campaign rallies and literally said, hey, Putin, find the emails, do the thing, hack them, everything. Which, by the way, they did a whole bunch of it.
|
Sam:
[32:45]
| Yes, they did. But anyway, the point is, at this point, propaganda operations like this are, there is not a country on Earth that is not doing this. we do it in other countries they do it to us like, people are picking and choosing who they would rather like and you know at this point i i i wouldn't be surprised if count bin face is a foreign op of some other country trying to influence the uk right you know all all of this can happen and it look it it is a problem um do we.
|
Ivan:
[33:23]
| Know who the real person.
|
Sam:
[33:24]
| That is under.
|
Ivan:
[33:25]
| The The Count Benface.
|
Sam:
[33:26]
| Thing is okay. We know the real person.
|
Ivan:
[33:27]
| I assume we did.
|
Sam:
[33:28]
| Yeah, okay. He's a comedian, and he's got a real name, and he does other stuff besides Count Benface. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[33:37]
| I mean, I am really rooting for Count Benface to win. I mean, I really, really am rooting for Count Benface to win, because that would be the most hilarious outcome ever.
|
Sam:
[33:48]
| I hear you, and I talked about Count Benface quite a bit last week when you were out, but let's see. I will look up his real name. Give me a second. Count Ben Face. His real name is Jonathan David Harvey.
|
Ivan:
[34:02]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[34:02]
| He's a British writer who contests selections as the novelty candidate. Anyway. Look, the whole foreign propaganda, whatever, well, hell, propaganda in general, like the whole information environment is poisoned worldwide at this point. And it's really difficult for people who aren't, well, hell, it's difficult even for people who do pay attention to sift fact from fiction. But for the people who only pay attention a little bit right around elections, it's super hard at this point. And that's a big problem. And it's going to cause issues going on for years, probably. But the point is, the things that he pointed out are not specifically new, are not specifically unusual, are not things that have, you know, are part of the more general thing that he was then trying to lean into, which was talking about actually affecting votes. and he...
|
Ivan:
[35:12]
| Which, by the way, that was the one thing that the guy that they told to shut up right after the thing quickly said himself. That was the specific thing. He said that they had zero evidence of any votes actually having been changed.
|
Sam:
[35:30]
| Yes. And, you know, he was sort of he said in the speech that they need urgent measures to stop our elections from being hacked, And he cited Maduro rigging some machines in Venezuela in 2020 as evidence that it's possible.
|
Ivan:
[35:49]
| Now, well, anything's possible. One of the things about that, the way that elections are done in the U.S. is that you actually need physical access to the machines for the most part.
|
Sam:
[35:59]
| And thousands of machines because it's all distributed. There's not like a central repository of anything.
|
Ivan:
[36:05]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[36:06]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[36:07]
| And that's the way that these I mean, because of these concerns, that's the way that these machines have been designed a lot of times to just do updates on all of them. They have to be manually updated at the device itself. And you have to have physical access to the machines.
|
Sam:
[36:21]
| None of them are just sitting on the internet.
|
Ivan:
[36:23]
| No. No. So they can't.
|
Sam:
[36:25]
| And, you know, county by county, there's different mechanisms everywhere. You know, county by county, state by state. Like what we do here in Washington State is not the same as Florida, is not the same as Alabama or Georgia or North Dakota, you know.
|
Ivan:
[36:42]
| Which actually makes it more difficult for anybody with a strategy to modify votes.
|
Sam:
[36:47]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[36:47]
| You know, because the systems are all so different. It's actually... That being heterogeneous is actually an advantage for this, not a disadvantage.
|
Sam:
[36:57]
| And when you do listen to the election security experts, they will say that is one of the advantages. They will also say there has been detailed, in-depth examination of all of this stuff. There's been no evidence that anyone has ever succeeded in changing a single vote anywhere in the United States. And they are constantly on the lookout for more vulnerabilities and proactively trying to deal with them. What we have seen sometimes is foreign actors hacking into election-related websites.
|
Sam:
[37:41]
| We have seen them potentially getting some confidential information out, but not changing votes. right and you know i will mention as well and i mentioned this on the slack as well and i won't mention the name but i was at one of my wife randy donaghy's fundraisers last month sometime i forget exactly when but anyway one of the attendees, was someone whose job actually involves protecting elections here in Washington state. Okay. And they were having conversations about this. And I won't, I'm not quoting for obvious reasons here, because I don't know how much of this was on the record, off the record, whatever. But the high level summary was, look, there are actually foreign threats to our election infrastructure.
|
Ivan:
[38:34]
| Of course.
|
Sam:
[38:35]
| They are happening all the time. And some of them are scary. However, we dedicate huge amounts of resources to combating them in real time. We deal with them when they come up. And not any and nothing has touched votes. Nothing has touched votes. You know, everything else, there are all these attempts to interfere. For the most part, they fail because we are proactively fighting them all the time. You know, and all of this stuff is in place.
|
Ivan:
[39:10]
| And look, by the way, another thing that most places have done, I saw here in Florida specifically what they did in order to make sure that we can go back. and like audit results, okay, is, you know, look, they do have machines, that work, but also there is a paper backup trail that you can go back by precinct and, go back and check, you know, what the results, because you go and like, it does create a record, it does create a record, so you have two records, and you can go and like validate, that count, And actually, everybody at the precinct does do such a validation every time they close out results in early voting every day. They will go and count how many ballots did we have? How many did we hand out? How many were counted? There is so much checking and rechecking of each one and records.
|
Sam:
[40:06]
| And there is a move, by the way, to push in more places away from machines to hand-marked paper ballots that you use machines to count them.
|
Ivan:
[40:17]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[40:19]
| And there's a move, generally speaking, to move in that direction nationwide because—, It strengthens that audit trail even more like then. Right. Because with the machines, you could argue that I voted for X and it produced the paper record, but the paper record was wrong. OK.
|
Ivan:
[40:36]
| Well, it can avoid like an incident like what happened in Florida 25 years ago where people thought they voted for one candidate, but they voted for the wrong candidate. Which is why we're in the mess.
|
Sam:
[40:47]
| But the bottom line is right now in this country, there is a there is some kind of auditable trail for every voting system in the damn country. You know, the details differ depending on what that voting system is. But there is an audit trail in place for everything. And in all of the cases that were disputed in 2016, in 2020, in 2022, in 2024, you know, that process has happened. There have been legal disputes. Things have been checked out. There have been recounts. There have been audits. There have been this. There have been that. And not a single one of these has changed the results of any of these elections. What they find, which is completely normal, is on the margins, there are little errors here and there.
|
Ivan:
[41:40]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[41:41]
| You know. That's it. Which.
|
Ivan:
[41:43]
| And that happens.
|
Sam:
[41:43]
| And that happens. And it is conceivable that on a Florida 2000 type scenario, those little errors here and there make a difference in a state.
|
Ivan:
[41:53]
| Which is what happened in Florida.
|
Sam:
[41:55]
| Which is what happened in Florida. You know.
|
Ivan:
[41:56]
| Which is exact. I mean, it was errors. I mean, it was like, you know, the way the ballot was assigned and when it got so close that it was able to generate errors and then it became shit.
|
Sam:
[42:07]
| Well, and the thing to remember here is, like any process, there is a natural margin of error. I mean, people talk about margin of errors in polling, which is huge. You know, it could be plus or minus 4%, whatever. There is a margin of error even in counting a set of ballots, you know? like if you've got a million ballots the chances of all million being counted exactly correctly is actually small you are probably going to have a handful of ballots that get miscounted or mangled or lost or whatever and it just happens and it happens every single fucking time and they work to make it better, but unless you have one of these super super close races that is essentially a tie.
|
Sam:
[42:53]
| Those little errors don't make a difference. And when they are close enough to make a difference, that's when you get the lawsuits and everybody looking at the hanging chads and looking at every single ballot to try to determine what it was. And at the end of that process, you have got so much inspection that you're going to get the best result you possibly can. You know, and even then, you're always going to be able to argue. Somebody could be like, Well, I know they said that was for candidate A, but I think it was for probably candidate B. But, you know, you're going to do the best you can, and you put it under extreme amounts of scrutiny. And that really is only the closest of the closest. I mean, frankly, the propaganda stuff is probably a much bigger issue because there are a lot of people who are being influenced by stuff that's bullshit. You know, but the scary part that they're trying to emphasize is, oh, somebody's messing with your votes. That's not happening. And then, of course, the other thing they want to scare people about is, oh, my God, there are millions of illegal immigrants and dead people voting.
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| OK, I this is the one thing where I've just, you know, look, in order for you to register to vote, you have to prove that you're a citizen. OK, all right. I mean, I, you know, that's one of the first steps. And so you have to prove that you're eligible to vote. Simple as that. You know, there are a number of ways to provide the evidence. The one thing that's an issue for a lot of people, which is why this is so disenfranchising, is that America is a country that doesn't have a national ID program. And so the reality is that you have a lot of people that either don't drive or don't have passports. This is a reality. And so they are trying to say that these people, even though when they register to vote, prove that they are citizens and maybe have some other viable, acceptable form of identification that shows that they are them, you know, that unless it's, you know, I don't know, unless it's some test that a lot of people won't be able to do, they won't be able to vote. And that's fucking bullshit.
|
Sam:
[45:04]
| Well, I mean, here's the thing on all the voter ID stuff. And you've heard you've had Democrats who are, you know, push against voter ID because they, you know, potentially can disenfranchise.
|
Ivan:
[45:15]
| I know it disenfranchises a lot of people.
|
Sam:
[45:18]
| A lot of those Democrats have repeated over and over again. And we've said on this show before, Democratic opposition of voter ID would drop instantly and overnight if you made that ID free and easy to get. Right. You know, if you really did have a, you know, free citizen proof card that like was handed out like candy and, you know, prove you properly should get it. But like it was easy to get and free that did not add barriers to people. Then, OK, fine. Do that. The problem.
|
Ivan:
[45:56]
| Getting a passport is not free. It's expensive.
|
Sam:
[45:59]
| And time consuming.
|
Ivan:
[46:00]
| It's complicated and time-consuming, okay? It is very expensive and time-consuming. And if you don't fucking drive, getting a damn ID, that is an ID that is usable is also time-consuming and expensive.
|
Sam:
[46:15]
| Well, hell, even if you drive, like, part of the legislation they want to do here is, you know, most driver's licenses don't prove citizenship.
|
Ivan:
[46:27]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[46:28]
| The newest, like, you can pay extra and get a driver's license that does in some states.
|
Ivan:
[46:33]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[46:33]
| But, like, most of the time, driver's licenses do not prove citizenship. They just prove that you are licensed to drive in a state.
|
Ivan:
[46:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[46:41]
| You know? And so you need other stuff. You need birth certificates. You need whatever. Right. And, like, this new legislation that, thankfully, looks completely dead was also going to, you know, if your birth certificate was in a different name than your current name, including most commonly women who changed their names.
|
Ivan:
[47:00]
| Most fucking... Yeah, which this is the biggest disenfranchiser you had.
|
Sam:
[47:06]
| Which, by the way... Which, by the way... Yeah, yeah. But more so, like, I gotta imagine, like...
|
Ivan:
[47:13]
| It's the Republicans' wars, which is why a lot of Republicans probably in the House are going, are like, are you crazy? We're not voting for this. This is gonna fuck us more than the Democrats.
|
Sam:
[47:23]
| At this point, like... Yeah, I'm not going to say it's a universal thing, but certainly amongst, like, Democratic women I know, changing your name is becoming less and less common by the year.
|
Ivan:
[47:39]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[47:40]
| Like, my wife didn't change her name, you know?
|
Ivan:
[47:42]
| My wife didn't change her name.
|
Sam:
[47:43]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[47:44]
| By the way, in Puerto Rico, but one thing, in Puerto Rico, actually, it's very common. No, but it's very common that we didn't change names, that women didn't change names. You know, this is a thing that is, this is a very American thing, by the way. Okay. All right. This is a very American thing because it, this does not happen in a lot of Latin countries. It's not common at all. Okay. In large part because of the national ID programs and all this other shit, because you go and you change your fucking name.
|
Sam:
[48:12]
| It's a major hassle.
|
Ivan:
[48:14]
| Oh, it is. I mean, it is so complicated that most people wouldn't in a place like Columbia, Mexico, whatever, wouldn't even contemplate it. OK, it's it's insane. You really, you know, so so no, that that's one reason why this is a very American thing.
|
Sam:
[48:31]
| OK, there are some other countries who are stuck up in the same way. But yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[48:36]
| But if you look like generally this is this is more an American problem than most other places.
|
Sam:
[48:42]
| OK, I'm thinking there are some other like UK, Germany, things like that, that where it's probably.
|
Ivan:
[48:47]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeez. You know what? I'm going to look it up.
|
Sam:
[48:51]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[48:52]
| Now that you said this, I know Latin America it isn't, but okay, let me see. Hold on. I'm going to guess it probably the same, because all of those also have national ID programs. We're the only ones that don't have it.
|
Sam:
[49:03]
| Well, just generally speaking, I said more so in Democrats than Republicans, but also even here, it's becoming less and less common as the years go on.
|
Ivan:
[49:13]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[49:14]
| And so you've got more and more folks who don't change their name upon getting married. And so you have to produce your current ID, plus your birth certificate, plus the documentation of the name change. Now, there's some people who change names as adults for other reasons.
|
Ivan:
[49:32]
| Okay, by the way, say American, it's an English-speaking country thing. It originated in the UK, but the reality is that in most countries, it's prohibited by law. Okay?
|
Sam:
[49:46]
| To change your name at all?
|
Ivan:
[49:47]
| Right? And this is the case in Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium, South Korea. This is a very, that's why I said, the U.S. is bigger than the other English-speaking countries. This is a very American thing. Okay? All right? And British, apparently.
|
Sam:
[50:05]
| Well, apparently the British originated it, so blame them, and then us in Australia, like, got it from them.
|
Ivan:
[50:11]
| Right. Yeah. But in the rest of the world, hell, in many places, it's illegal.
|
Sam:
[50:18]
| Very interesting. In any case.
|
Ivan:
[50:20]
| Except Japan. Apparently Japan is the only country that legally forces married couples to share the same CERNIC.
|
Sam:
[50:26]
| Huh. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[50:28]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[50:29]
| You know, and look, and people do get creative with this too. I mean, obviously there are people who change their names for other reasons. My cousin changed his name at age 10 just because he didn't like his name. He was originally Kelsey Nico Minter. And he changed his name to Jake Lightning Minter. Jake, if you're listening, good choice. I like it. But I always remember.
|
Ivan:
[50:54]
| Jake Lightning. I do. I got to admit that I do like Jake Lightning better than Kelsey Nico. Okay. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:01]
| You know, and so I heard about this when I was a child, and he did it when he was still a child with support of his parents, obviously. And obviously, there are trans people who change their names. There are some people who on marriage have decided to make up a whole new tradition and they both select a brand new last name that they both like.
|
Ivan:
[51:22]
| That I've heard. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:23]
| You know, and then there's hyphenation. Anyway, the point is, all of the things for voter ID laws that have actually been proposed by Republicans, are are more about making it harder to vote than it is about actually proving that they're citizens. Because also, by the way, voting as a noncitizen is already illegal. And happens very, very rarely. People have gone looking for the cases where this happens. And over, like, decades, they find, like, a few dozen.
|
Ivan:
[51:59]
| You know, we've done so much looking up on illegal voting. And isn't it amazing that over and over what keeps happening is that you find Republicans that are doing shit that is against the law. Like, not being registered to vote, being registered to vote in the wrong place. You know, not the rest of it.
|
Sam:
[52:19]
| Oh, Paxton in Texas right now, this very second, like who's railing. One of the things he's been pushing is like stricter voting laws. And it turns out, guess what? For the last five elections, he has not been living at the address where he is registered, which would be illegal by the laws he is pushing himself.
|
Ivan:
[52:40]
| He's an idiot. These fucking guys are pushing for these laws. And these are the first guys that are breaking the law. but you know what is well, and this is the new fucking i mean that has that has happened oh what and donald trump is the other asshole who keeps railing against mail-in voting and the son of a bitch votes by mail.
|
Sam:
[53:00]
| Every time every.
|
Ivan:
[53:02]
| Time every time yes.
|
Sam:
[53:07]
| Oh, yes. But look, the bottom line of all of this is it seems to have fallen really flat. No one's really picking up on this. No one's really excited and pushing it from his side of the fence either. Which means if the intention here is to create the predicates for, like, I don't know, September, October, you know, issuing all kinds of executive orders on this stuff, declaring an emergency and taking control of things, like, he can still use all this stuff as a predicate. but everybody's kind of yawning at it right now so the question is like, when slash if he tries to do all that kind of stuff what happens like uh, and the problem as usual with all this kind of stuff is even if it gets struck down in the courts courts notoriously take a while, and there's all kinds of shenanigans that can happen at the in the meantime especially if he waits to do anything until like, a week or two before the election.
|
Ivan:
[54:22]
| He's going to try to do a lot of things again. You know, my biggest concern will be, or actually the one thing that I'll be looking forward and watching out for is when we will get the next conference from the Four Seasons.
|
Sam:
[54:40]
| Okay. Okay. Right. Uh, you know, I, I was about to say, I heard, I actually heard him quoted in an interview sometime in the last month. And I'm like, Oh my God, I thought he was like on his deathbed and we'd never heard hear from him again. Cause he was really sick for a while.
|
Ivan:
[55:01]
| That's right that's what.
|
Sam:
[55:02]
| Happened he was really sick for a while but i i heard someone like with a with an audio clip of him making some commentary on something recent i forget what it was and as usual it was stupid because it was rudy but like but he was, he was actually like giving an interview to somebody i'm like oh look at that, he's i guess he got better, so you know.
|
Ivan:
[55:28]
| Oh well he's not dead.
|
Sam:
[55:30]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[55:31]
| I'll save my, you know, celebratory drink for when he's dead.
|
Sam:
[55:36]
| Yeah, well.
|
Ivan:
[55:37]
| You know what?
|
Sam:
[55:38]
| Do you want to say about it? I talked about Lindsey last week. Do you want to say anything about Lindsey Graham?
|
Ivan:
[55:43]
| Oh, fuck Lindsey. He's dead.
|
Sam:
[55:45]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[55:45]
| Next. Okay.
|
Sam:
[55:46]
| That's enough. I spent a lot more time on it last week than that. But yeah, that's fine. That's good. Good segue.
|
Ivan:
[55:54]
| Listen, I despise what these people have turned me into. I am not one that ever really, you know, was waiting or like was wishing the death of people. And these fuckers have caused so much damage and so much pain across the world. That I they've turned me into somebody, you know, really looking forward to their fucking deaths. And I hate that about them.
|
Sam:
[56:24]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[56:25]
| And I'm one that hated hating people, too. Fuck.
|
Sam:
[56:31]
| The whole last 10 to 15 years has definitely changed the quality of how people think about politics and their opponents, in ways that will take a long, long time to heal.
|
Ivan:
[56:49]
| It's going to be decades.
|
Sam:
[56:51]
| Yeah, absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[56:53]
| It's going to be decades. There's no doubt about it in my mind. It's going to be decades.
|
Sam:
[56:56]
| I mean, I think it's going to be the usual thing where everybody who lived through it has to be dead before the generations afterwards feel better about this.
|
Ivan:
[57:05]
| People forget. Remember something.
|
Sam:
[57:07]
| Yes, I know. People do forget.
|
Ivan:
[57:09]
| And people have short memories.
|
Sam:
[57:11]
| Well, 2024 is like the biggest example of people having fucking short memories.
|
Ivan:
[57:17]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[57:18]
| Come on, people.
|
Ivan:
[57:19]
| 20 years from now, you know, people will be like, they'll show up, you know, they'll realize that, you know, not even, they'll realize, why the fuck is this airport named after a fucking idiot president? And the name will get just, you know, ripped off, back off and just, you know, fuck this shit, you know, whatever. We'll name it, you know, something else.
|
Sam:
[57:41]
| You think it'll take that long?
|
Ivan:
[57:42]
| And nobody will care. No, it won't even take that long.
|
Sam:
[57:47]
| Um, okay.
|
Ivan:
[57:49]
| I'm hoping, I'm waiting for the vandals to start, like, you know, just, you know, climbing over there and just starting to.
|
Sam:
[57:55]
| Hey, the vandals already took care of the reflecting pool, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[57:59]
| Oh, yeah, right. Well, or, wait, we don't need the vandals. What we need is for Trump to hire some more contractors to improve the signage. That will fix the problem.
|
Sam:
[58:11]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[58:12]
| Next storm comes by and all of a sudden the signs will be all the way in Louisiana. Perfect.
|
Sam:
[58:17]
| Beautiful. Okay, so question to you, Yvonne. Shall we take a break and come back for more, or should we just wrap it up since we started really late and it's already been an hour-ish?
|
Ivan:
[58:31]
| I think we need to do one more thing, and then we'll wrap up.
|
Sam:
[58:35]
| Well, then we will take a break and then come back to do that one more thing back after this.
|
Break:
[58:43]
| You're supposed to say do-do-do. Do-do-do! Alex Emsla is awesome, its videos are fun, and today, once again, we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you how awesome Alex Emsla is. I'd say on a rate from 1 to 10, Alex Emsla is awesome at, I don't know, 37, 82? too. He's pretty radical. His videos are phenomenal. They're full of creativity. And they're so funny and exciting to watch. Wow, what happened to your voice then, Amy? Was that dad pretending to be you, because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't because I told him to? Yes. Good job on remembering, dad. Do, do, do.
|
Sam:
[59:43]
| One quick thing before moving on to the topic you wanted to hit. While we were talking about election registration shenanigans and such, Bob, on our Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, forwarded along an article about how Mike Lindell, the MyPillow...
|
Ivan:
[1:00:01]
| Yes, I saw this! That son of a bitch isn't registered to vote!
|
Sam:
[1:00:07]
| Well, not in the state where he's running for governor.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:10]
| Wait, where the fuck is he registered to vote then?
|
Sam:
[1:00:13]
| He's registered in Texas. So he's running for governor in Minnesota, but he's registered to vote in Texas. That may actually be legal. Like, not all offices require you to live in the jurisdiction, but most do. And the article was talking about how if he wants to vote for himself, He's running out of time to change his voter registration to Minnesota. So... Yes. Anyway. Okay. What was the one thing? I could pick something, but what was the one thing you want to make sure not to leave out?
|
Ivan:
[1:00:52]
| Well, how are the peace negotiations going, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:00:58]
| Oh, Iran?
|
Ivan:
[1:00:59]
| In Iran. Yeah. Well, how's a straight-up Hormuz doing?
|
Sam:
[1:01:04]
| Just in the last few hours before we're recording this, an Iranian attack on, I believe it was Jordan?
|
Ivan:
[1:01:13]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:01:13]
| Killed a couple of American servicemen and I guess maybe took out a couple of helicopters. And this is in response to the last several days of ongoing U.S. attacks on Iran, which were in turn in response to Iran firing a little bit on a couple of ships in the Straits and doing some damage. And Donald Trump has said because Iran killed some American servicemen today, he has authorized the Pentagon to unleash hell on Iran tonight at a greater level than they have in the last few days anyway. So it's going well.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:52]
| It's all going well.
|
Sam:
[1:01:53]
| And both sides have been officially said, by the way, the memorandum of understanding from like two weeks ago is dead. Completely dead. Gone.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:03]
| Great.
|
Sam:
[1:02:04]
| There is no, the ceasefire is over.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:08]
| Did you hear the thing that the Iranians said, which I totally believe actually, because they're more believable than everybody else. But they said that Woodcoff and Kushner over there in negotiations are basically, the whole point is they're doing shit to profit by trading on everything that is going on in negotiations.
|
Sam:
[1:02:27]
| Supposedly, they tried to warn like Rubio or somebody about how these guys were doing this.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:34]
| Like Rubio. Yeah, warn Rubio. Like Rubio right now is like, you know, I'm going to hell. I'm just whatever. I don't care.
|
Future Sam:
[1:02:43]
| Do, do, do. Sam from the future here, just a quick note that the people, what the people, the person who the Iranians supposedly warned was not Marco Rubio. It was J.D. Vance. Anyway, yeah, continue it. Do, do, do.
|
Sam:
[1:03:09]
| He has tried to wash his hands of iran as much as possible hoping that it'll go away so he can get on with invading cuba.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:16]
| Right but it's not going away anytime soon so and apparently there was a story recently that said that basically that rubio is running venezuela yes as i said before.
|
Sam:
[1:03:27]
| Yes he yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:30]
| That he is basically running venezuela at this point but you know, And.
|
Sam:
[1:03:37]
| You know, as we've said, To run a place, you don't have to be registered to vote there, so he's all good.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:45]
| He's all good.
|
Sam:
[1:03:46]
| Yeah, he can run, he can be our viceroy or whatever. No, look, Iran is continuing to get worse again. We're back in an escalatory spiral. But, to be clear, I mean, I don't know what will actually come of Donald's latest threat to unleash hell on Earth. but his threats before have not been that, they haven't followed through with the level of violence that he has suggested, and and so like i continue to think we're basically going to be sort of in, the same kind of tit for tat back and forth that we've had, for the last couple months really with only a very brief break for that theoretical, ceasefire from now through election day through november at least and then after that who knows but like because it that, nothing is going to happen that will resolve this in a way that will make donald trump happy, And nothing's going to resolve it in a way that'll make the Iranians happy either. And so they'll just keep throwing stuff at each other, killing a few people here, a few people there, some property damage. And it's just going to go on at this medium level for the next few months.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:13]
| Yeah. And listen, the level of intensity that happened in the past was enough that air traffic had been disrupted. Okay. Okay. Right now, basically, air traffic is not being disrupted by this. So they are shooting just regularly at each other, but not with the level of— Now.
|
Sam:
[1:05:34]
| Specifically, wait, wait, I want to get clarity. Air traffic over the Gulf states or air traffic over Iran?
|
Ivan:
[1:05:40]
| Air traffic over the Gulf states.
|
Sam:
[1:05:41]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:42]
| Or Gulf states.
|
Sam:
[1:05:42]
| So air traffic over Iran.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:43]
| Air traffic over Iran is, like, nonexistent.
|
Sam:
[1:05:46]
| Right. Okay. That's what I thought.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:49]
| Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Air traffic over Iran or Iraq. They're all basically just, they're going over the Gulf states like, you know, Doha and UAE, you know, flights seem to be going. Now, instead of going the normal route that they used to go more north, like over Iran or Iraq, they're like going over Saudi Arabia. Okay. So they've basically, which is a longer flight pattern than before, or they're going over, or flights that used to go over that airspace are going, like all the way around, like over Afghanistan.
|
Sam:
[1:06:22]
| Okay. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:24]
| You know, so that's, that's what they're doing. Like they're, they're just going, circling around, but, but it's not being as disruptive as in the past, but this is just the one thing that is still happening.
|
Sam:
[1:06:36]
| Not having the Straits of Hormuz workable.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:40]
| Well, listen, it's, listen, we adapting, we have somewhat adapted to, There's a lot of problems associated with this. Listen, the main reason that we haven't had any shortages is because we've been burning through the SPR.
|
Sam:
[1:07:00]
| Right. And that's of oil.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:03]
| Everybody's been burning.
|
Sam:
[1:07:04]
| That's of oil specifically. There are shortages of some other things in some countries because of disclosure.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:10]
| Right. And so we have been burning through the SPR. There are shortages of this other stuff. Prices had gone down.
|
Sam:
[1:07:20]
| Like fertilizer is one of the things I've heard of specifically, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:07:24]
| Look, fertilizer right now is a shit show right now because it's also because of a problem because of Russia-Ukraine conflict. And then you add the issue in the Middle East and then all of a sudden, man, you know, fertilizer is a real issue.
|
Sam:
[1:07:36]
| And fertilizer, by the way, cascades. You have a lack of fertilizer. Then a few months later, you're going to have a lack of crops.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:42]
| You're going to have a lack of food.
|
Sam:
[1:07:44]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:44]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:07:46]
| Okay, continue. continue with your rant.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:48]
| So look i i it's it's just that markets went and like had brought down prices of all these things like for a little bit and it did have a downward spiral of inflation but look man this is not sustainable, if this doesn't get normalized oil's going back to where it was, there's just you know i mean brent is still 88 as of as of friday, it's only a little bit off where it was united the other day said that they had spent six billion more on oil than last year, and and basically their profits last year were six billion dollars the only way they could get away with with with not losing money was that they were charging more.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:36]
| This goes back to, there was a graph I saw recently on something, which is where you see the oil consumption by people, on the higher end of the income spectrum. What I mean by consuming oil, I'm talking gasoline specifically. And you see gasoline consumption by people on the lower end of the income spectrum. And you see that people that are higher incomes, no problem. But people making less money, they're using a lot less gas. They're having to save. You know, they are really having to save. And for all the talk about an EV apocalypse in the United States, which is basically that sales did go back down somewhat because, look, they got rid of these incentives. The reality is that EV sales worldwide hit a fucking crazy record this last six months. okay we're just we're just making sure that we're behind yes and more of our fossil.
|
Sam:
[1:09:37]
| Fuel shocks like this.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:39]
| Correct yes i mean european ev sales soared and you know it's look it 100 sure look if you we think gas prices are here expensive look, gas prices everywhere else are way more expensive In the Dominican Republic, I saw the price of regular, was over $5 last week, okay? People are telling me that the price is killing, like right now.
|
Sam:
[1:10:10]
| Well, and you remember, it's down now. We're back under $5, but over $5. We were over $5 here in Washington State for a long time, and at the spike, I saw some prices over $6.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:22]
| Yep. But they're right now, but this is this last week.
|
Sam:
[1:10:25]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:26]
| But they were over five bucks.
|
Sam:
[1:10:27]
| I gotcha.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:27]
| So... I mean, this is not sustainable, like right now, this situation. You know, everybody's acting like things are back to normal.
|
Sam:
[1:10:44]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:44]
| But it really isn't. Traffic through the strait is way down. People are having to adjust.
|
Sam:
[1:10:52]
| During the ceasefire that lasted like two weeks or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:57]
| It went up a little bit.
|
Sam:
[1:10:59]
| It got up to like 15% of what it had been, maybe 20.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:02]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:11:03]
| And then as soon as things started getting violent again, it's back almost to zero again.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:08]
| Yeah. Yeah. And Trump said that he was going to, the way to solve the problem was to charge a, a some 20% tax. I'm not sure 20% on what, I'm not sure, on every ship going through. But then he backed down from that less than 24 hours.
|
Sam:
[1:11:26]
| He backed down after 24 hours when his, when various advisors told him, um, um, we're trying to tell Iran that nobody can charge on international waters. You're not helping. And he backed off and he, he, he proposed some other thing instead, like whatever it was. Like the problem is as usual with Donald Trump, like these things are off the cuff, whatever he's thinking, you know, This is not well considered coming from his advisors after lots of due diligence and study, blah, blah, blah. He just says whatever comes to mind at any given moment and changes it or not, depending on what the reaction is in the first few hours after he says it. You know, that's it.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:13]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was the only thing I had, like, extra. Is there anything you want to, like, uh...
|
Sam:
[1:12:20]
| I'll just lightning round a couple things, and then we can wrap it up.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:23]
| Okay, let's lightning it.
|
Sam:
[1:12:25]
| So, one, once again, there's debate in Congress about making savings time permanent. Okay? It passed the House. It looks like it's going to die in the Senate, although Donald Trump is for it, so maybe he'll put some pressure on. But then, as usual, there are a whole bunch of people coming in and saying, look, if you're going to freeze the time, you want to freeze it on standard time, not on savings time. And there's all kinds of studies that show why that's better for health, that's better for this, that's better for that, whatever. And of course, every time this comes up, I just get stupid and frustrated because people are arguing about how one way or another will give them more or less daytime, and I'm like, The sun doesn't fucking care. The sun is up exactly the same amount of time, no matter what you put on it.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:23]
| Wait, wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? What kind of crazy babble are you talking about? Wait, the sun doesn't care? So when we change the clocks, the sun doesn't adjust?
|
Sam:
[1:13:35]
| The sun does not adjust. The sun does exactly the same thing it was going to do otherwise. It's just everybody en masse changes when they do things. And look, I understand that. My position for a long time has, of course, been the only thing that really makes sense is global UTC. Break the fucking connection with the number that's on the clock, with what the sun is doing, and then set the times you do things at times that make sense for your own particular location and time of year.
|
Sam:
[1:14:06]
| But at the very least, like, whatever, you don't, don't, we don't need to do the change. Like, pick one and stay there. And then, after a couple years, people will adapt and change when they do things. Now, the counter-argument to this is, like, I'm sorry, work starts at 9 a.m. That can't change. It always starts at 9. It will start at 9 no matter what. We work 9 to 5 here. You know, and so like you can't possibly change an entire society and make them think that school, you know, that work starts at a different time. Or, you know, our problem is that if you change the time, it'll be dark when we send school kids to school in the morning. Well, change the fucking time you send the kids to school. You know, like there's all kinds of if you're going to talk about studies on health and everything, every single study out there has consistently for years now shown that kids do better at school the later in the day they start.
|
Sam:
[1:15:12]
| So let them start later, you know, anyway, like it just frustrates me because the whole argument is like, it seems to be predicated on people can't not even entertaining the thought that you might be able to change when you do things, like according to like what number is on the clock, which, which is why I keep UTC. Come on, people just right now as we're recording. yes, it is 3.45 p.m. Pacific where I am, but it is 22.45. And I have figured that out. Everyone would, it's just like, well, this is a bad example. I was going to say it's like changing from Fahrenheit to Celsius or changing to the metric system, but we know how well the U.S. did at that. You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:16:00]
| Well, we did great in Puerto Rico. We converted this, in our highways, distances to kilometers but left the speed limits in miles an hour. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:16:10]
| It's the perfect combination. The perfect combination. Oh, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:15]
| Super beautiful.
|
Sam:
[1:16:17]
| No chance of confusion there.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:19]
| No, no, no. But all the distances are kilometers, but the speed limits are miles an hour.
|
Sam:
[1:16:27]
| So, yeah. Anyway, I just get frustrated by this whole time zone debate every single time it happens. Not because—and look, I think the people are probably— Do people argue whether—assume, that the workday stays the same, assume that school stays the same in terms of the numbers on the clock. Then they're arguing which is better or worse, having more light in the evenings or having it dark when you have to leave in the mornings. And look, that's going to be different depending on your own personal situation. Do you have kids? Do you not have kids? Where do you work? What kind of job?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:05]
| I just double-checked to make sure, but I was pretty sure about this. Manu's starting high school.
|
Sam:
[1:17:12]
| Yes. 7 a.m.?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:13]
| Fucking 7.30.
|
Sam:
[1:17:15]
| Fucking a.m.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:16]
| Jeez. Fucking Christ. 7 fucking 30. Who the fuck thinks this is a good idea?
|
Sam:
[1:17:24]
| And I am glad Alex is going to a special high school now, because otherwise I would have to be dealing with that 7.30 in the morning stuff. And I'm sorry, I am not built for that. Like.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:36]
| You know, I do it, but I don't like it.
|
Sam:
[1:17:39]
| Yes. Yes. I mean, I would do it if I had to, too, but I would be very unhappy.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:46]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:17:46]
| You know, and look.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:50]
| I still remember when I got to Carnegie Mellon after my first year where I was forced to take some early classes, which I didn't do very well in. And I figured out that I could, like, finagle my schedule somehow to be able to graduate and not have a class start before 10 a.m. And I made sure that that was the case for the rest of my fucking academic career.
|
Sam:
[1:18:13]
| Absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:14]
| You know, at CardiBomb.
|
Sam:
[1:18:15]
| Absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:16]
| I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm showing up for a class before 10 a.m. You guys got to be nuts.
|
Sam:
[1:18:21]
| Yeah. Yeah. I hate all of it. I hate all of this time stuff. And I hate like the fact that it all boils down to people are so fixed in their ways about hours and stuff. And this ties to the work from home stuff too. You know, how about some flexibility? Like, you know, some jobs can't have it. And I understand why, you know, you might need to be a little bit more structured for school and try to make it work for as many families as possible. But at the same time, flexibility, adapt to different people's situations and their learning styles and their work styles and, you know, what else is going on.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:00]
| But the whole thing with high school, it's been shown that at that hour, it's not good for high school students. There's so much research showing this. It doesn't make any fucking sense.
|
Sam:
[1:19:10]
| For basically all students of all ages, the later the better, but especially for teenagers.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:16]
| For high schoolers.
|
Sam:
[1:19:17]
| For teenagers specifically, there are physiological things going on in the body, that make mornings very, very difficult and make them want to stay up late at night. And it's a consistent pattern. It's been shown over and over again. And schools that have done like, hey, let's start at 10 a.m. instead and have experimented with that. The kids get better results. Surprise.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:42]
| Surprise, surprise.
|
Sam:
[1:19:43]
| Because they're still freaking asleep at 7, 8, 9 in the morning. Like, even if they're there in the classroom.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:50]
| I know I was.
|
Sam:
[1:19:52]
| They're not, like, their mind is not fully engaged and on, even if they're physically present. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:01]
| I know I was asleep. Fuck.
|
Sam:
[1:20:04]
| Yeah. Like, anyway. Okay. One final thing, and then we can wrap it up.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:11]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:20:13]
| Explosive diarrhea.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:15]
| Ah, I was wondering if we... Do not recommend.
|
Sam:
[1:20:19]
| Do not recommend.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:20]
| Zero stars.
|
Sam:
[1:20:22]
| I'll tell you, over the last month, I have had some of those symptoms. I agree.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:27]
| Oh, fuck.
|
Sam:
[1:20:28]
| I do not recommend. It is not fun. It is not exciting. It is not something you would... Yeah, well, you'd probably wish it on some of your enemies, Yvonne, since you're, you know, hoping for their deaths.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:41]
| Look, if Donald Trump got explosive diarrhea, would you be upset?
|
Sam:
[1:20:46]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:46]
| No. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:20:48]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:48]
| Fuck it. Yeah. I mean...
|
Sam:
[1:20:51]
| Yeah, but anyway, and I don't know if I've had any of the tainted lettuce or if something else is going on. But the theme on this one as well, that this exposes, I don't know if there's enough evidence to give a cause and effect. But what this has exposed is, hey, guess what? we cut a lot of. We cut a lot of the mechanisms for surveilling and keeping track of outbreaks like this and reacting to them and dealing with them in a timely fashion. And recently, like in the last year, guess what Doge was busy doing? Guess what RFK Jr. was busy doing? Saying, we don't need this stuff. What a waste. Why would we want to have mechanisms in place to track this stuff and, you know, and not only the tracking, but also like the, you know, the inspectors who are sitting in place and making sure things go out in the first point.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:49]
| Well, the thing about the tracking is, is, is very simple. It's like when you start detecting the cases is in order to make sure that you, you prevent an outbreak, you know, by all of a sudden, wait, we've got this, this is happening. Let's trace it and let's understand where it's coming from. So we can, so we can cut this off when it's happening. But also, like you mentioned, the inspectors, the food safety inspectors, all the processes that go into making sure that it doesn't happen in the first place, all these fucking people. We have the same thing. What was it? That screw worm, whatever, or whatnot, that they killed the program for that, too, and all of a sudden we're being overwhelmed with that shit.
|
Sam:
[1:22:21]
| And look, you know, on the tracking, I will say that one of the things people make fun because a lot of this was, you know, people pointed at Taco Bell. Apparently, a lot of this came from Taco Bell and people made fun of how can you tell the difference from regular Taco Bell and all this kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:38]
| That's a fair and that's a fair point.
|
Sam:
[1:22:41]
| But what we've found out that the reason we were able to nail this all down in terms of where this came from, because the federal government, had not done a lot of this tracking, was that Taco Bell apparently has a really, really good inventory tracking system, that let them take from individual stores where there was a problem and figure out exactly the supplier that gave that batch of money. lettuce to that store and be able to trace all of this stuff back. And so you can actually thank Taco Bell for them figuring out where to go back to and what the source of this was.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:25]
| Yes. I totally believe this.
|
Sam:
[1:23:28]
| Because the feds weren't up to the job, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:31]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:23:32]
| But Taco Bell and apparently the supplier of the lettuce itself is apparently complaining now that, hey, you know, we're not getting the cooperation and support we need from the feds to react to this now that it's happened.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:48]
| Oh, I know. I mean, I think I was, yeah, I mean, what do you expect from this administration? Competence?
|
Sam:
[1:23:58]
| I'm surprised RFK isn't out there just saying, it's good for you, eat up.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:04]
| Can he go eat some of it? Just bring a whole bunch to the White House. Well, I don't, but also, I don't think that Donald Trump is one to eat lettuce anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:24:14]
| Probably not. Probably not.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:16]
| Not from what I've seen now.
|
Sam:
[1:24:18]
| I'd be happy with RFK giving a demonstration of food safety by just eating a bunch of this lettuce. However, you were right, though, that we all know that manly men don't eat salad.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:33]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:34]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:34]
| That's right. Damn straight.
|
Sam:
[1:24:36]
| So this isn't a problem anyway. This is like.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:39]
| They don't eat salad. They need testosterone shots.
|
Sam:
[1:24:42]
| Yes, indeed. I was going to bring in the testosterone shots. Exactly. All of these people getting diarrhea, the right way to solve this is not not to eat the lettuce. That's wimpy bullshit. No, you need a testosterone shot so you can properly fight that lettuce.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:01]
| That's right. you can properly fight the lettuce absolutely give some kung fu shit as they would probably say.
|
Sam:
[1:25:10]
| And I think we have a title for this episode fight the lettuce.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:14]
| Fight the lettuce.
|
Sam:
[1:25:15]
| Fight the lettuce there you go, we're done thank you for joining us go to curmudgeons-corner.com to see our archives see all the ways to contact us see transcripts, all that kind of stuff, and of course donate to our Patreon. where you can give us all the money you are not spending on tainted lettuce. And we would appreciate that. At 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 of those kinds of fun things. At $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us and we feel like it, we will invite you to our Commudgeons Corner Slack, where you can join Yvonne and I and a bunch of folks chatting throughout the week sharing links all this kind of fun stuff yvonne, the last week i just asked slack bot to summarize what had happened on the slack in the last week but do you have something interesting that would make people want to join the slack that we have not talked about on the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:17]
| Let me see i i had one but i'm double checking again, yeah i mean that is the best one apparently you know some some cbs news is apparently pulling like using some ai to generate some images to go with a story.
|
Sam:
[1:26:32]
| Okay they were doing a story.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:33]
| About taylor farms which is the one that sells iceberg.
|
Sam:
[1:26:36]
| Lettuce yes for.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:37]
| Some reason it decided that the right image to put was taylor swift uh together with chavis kilsey taylor farm was like a taylor yeah taylor farms i mean it must her farm right.
|
Sam:
[1:26:48]
| Taylor farms gotta be yeah well and he must be a farmer.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:52]
| Right of course yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:54]
| Makes perfect sense to me uh makes makes total sense i don't know what the issue is yeah i saw that too i i it was one of those things that was too good to verify so i didn't spend any time verifying it i was just like okay cute like share, But, you know, look, we didn't talk about Vibe coding or AI or anything this time around.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:14]
| Well, we had the Torvalds comment.
|
Sam:
[1:27:17]
| Yeah, yeah. And, you know, on our Slack, here's another thing that was on the Slack. You know, Yvonne's been talking about cool apps he's been Vibe coding for himself.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:27]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:27:28]
| And how you can do it even as a non-coder and get good results really easily and effective things. and various other people have been chiming in on their own experiences and stuff like that. So, yeah, that's fun. But anyway, yes, AI still, however, as useful as it is in certain areas, still makes really stupid mistakes in other areas. And we still have, you know, hearkening back to our very first conversations after ChatGPT came up, the problem is not the potential of these tools. The problem is people having excessive confidence and using these tools in areas where they aren't actually ready yet. They may still be ready soon.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:14]
| Sam, you know what? Let me tell you something. The thing is that the tools sometimes make it easier to make mistakes. Okay. That's part of the thing. And it takes a lot of like checking of your data. like you know the health app i'm i'm doing and i'm thinking about rolling out something maybe perhaps marketing something related to doing the health because i realized that i showed it some people at, the yes they were like whoa wait a minute we actually at the gym that i'm going they said we actually need this for our trainers okay all right in order to track like what what you know clients are doing so i but the one thing about it is that, Look, maybe somebody would have thought that it was ready already as it looks, because it looks like it works. But there's still a lot of bugs and issues with it, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:28:58]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:59]
| That need resolving. And the thing is, and I also noticed this with the finance dashboard I did. I keep going through the data to make sure that it's accurate, because I notice that sometimes the way it's calculating timeframes wasn't right. The way it was doing certain things wasn't right. like 80 90 percent of us are right but there's still a lot of it in there that i've been having to go and recheck and recheck and recheck, and it's it's the mistake that a lot of people do they come out with an outcome they do it and i will tell you this that it happened a lot to me at the advent of like really sophisticated spreadsheets, i still remember how we would they would so easily create like numbers whereas before you gotta remember we used to do all that by hand okay, but and now all of a sudden you got this computer that will consolidate spreadsheets But the reality is that you have to go through all the formulas and all the math in those to realize, you know, check, check, double check, triple check that you weren't sending out shit that was wrong.
|
Sam:
[1:29:55]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:56]
| OK, that was just dead wrong. And so it's another tool just like that where it does accelerate work, but also at the same time that you have to be very vigilant and smart and understand what is in it in order to make sure that what is coming out isn't wrong. And I've seen already plenty of people send messages, do shit or whatever, where I'm just like, my God, this person didn't, you just used AI, sent this out? They didn't review any of this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:30:24]
| Well, and I'll bring my Robin Letter example. I'm still working on Robin Letter, obviously. I've got a whole list of things to do. But like in setting it up initially... For every hour where the AI would actually be coding or something, I would probably spend five hours going back and forth on requirements before it builds a damn thing to make sure, have we covered all the edge cases? Are we thinking about this right? Are we making sure that what we're doing makes sense in the context of what we're trying to do? Have we thought about what happens if a user does this thing that's not expected? What happens in, you know, and, and, you know, we're talking about time zones early. I'm a stickler for damn time zones. So I'm like talking about, well, what does this display if you change time zones while you're looking at it? You know, if you, if you get on a plane and move several time zones to the right, what happens? Like, do we do the right thing? Yes or no. If no, let's fix it. You know, and this is the kind of thought process where like, if I just naively said go, it would get all kinds of these things wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:31]
| Wrong.
|
Sam:
[1:31:32]
| You know, because, and again, there are things that, okay... If you're doing a quick and dirty thing for your own personal use, okay, you can be sloppy about some of those things. Probably doesn't matter. But like if you're trying to produce a thing that is going to be for public consumption, you want to think through and get that stuff right. There's stuff I have on my to-do list right now that I know is inconsistent within Robin Letter that I want to fix up and clean. So I've added something to the to-do list. I've been, most recently, I've been doing a wave of security crap, which is frustrating to me because it's completely invisible to regular users. But it's like, okay, like I found out doing a security review of it, just as an example, there was a way that if you were already logged in, so you're an authorized user and you're in a robin, you could, if you were clever, figure out a way to manipulate the URL and get access to the other people in the Robbins email addresses, which I don't normally expose. And so, okay, maybe it could have been a design decision that I do expose that, but I didn't want to. And so I went and fixed that. Now, is it something that somebody was doing anything with? No, I'm sure nobody knows. No.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:48]
| But it's one of.
|
Sam:
[1:32:49]
| Those things where if- It's making sure that you get that shit right. And if you're putting something out in front of other people you want to make sure that you don't have like, random shit where people can get their data exposed in ways that they didn't anticipate you don't want to be showing them numbers that are wrong you don't want to let the system get into edge cases that are confusing all this kind so yeah and maybe in another year or two ai will do all that stuff perfectly the first time out of the box too who knows, but right now we're still in a situation where like you were saying with you know, data that you're presenting or whatever, all of these things still require, you know, If you naively trust the AI without also giving your own. You will get screwed so badly just because it will do things that don't make sense. It will make errors. It will do whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:49]
| The exercise that I have spent weeks and weeks in reconciling between expenses, cash flow, what is income, what is really income, what is an expense, what is really an expense, what is debt, payments? Because the thing is that the way that you want to look at your income and your expenses, okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:16]
| Well, there is this thing. Okay, there is cash you get in your pocket, but that cash before that has a pre-tax component. And some of it goes into savings. The reality is that your income isn't just the money you get in your deposit in your checking account. Your income is the money before tax. And then there is money that is going into savings, for example. And then, for example, there is the thing of like you're making a mortgage payment, right? A mortgage payment, interest is cost. But really, the whole thing isn't cost, okay? Because part of it is paying down debt, which, listen, the entire equation of what is actually properly income, what is an expense, what is cash flow, and how to calculate that when you're trying to build a model that is as accurate as possible for retirement. because one of the big problems that I have with most financial models for this is that they don't treat these things properly, okay? They make a whole bunch of erroneous assumptions because some payments that you do and some things that money that's taken out is actually money that's going into savings or money that's going to reduce debt or what is an expense.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:30]
| Working through that to arrive at, A proper way of modeling income, expenses, debt payments, and different things to model out a retirement scenario of where the hell I would be. There have been so many errors and assumptions that have done that I've spent weeks on this. Okay. I think I've got it to, and I'm still, by the way, checking it to make sure that my assumptions are correct. Okay. On this thing. Okay. Because it's the way that I'm trying to figure out whether I can retire at age 67 or not. And the reality is that there's a lot of variables, which we were talking about that a little bit on the Slack as well. that impacted this.
|
Sam:
[1:36:17]
| Everyone was giving me advice on how to deal with my retirement fund now that I've rolled over some stuff to an IRA. No, we were given opinions.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:24]
| Yes. Opinions. We were all given opinions.
|
Sam:
[1:36:27]
| They varied quite a bit.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:28]
| They were widely divergent. They were widely divergent.
|
Sam:
[1:36:30]
| Yes, yes. And I will figure out what I'm doing independently, but took into account the opinions of everybody on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack on what I should do.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:41]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:36:42]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:42]
| Okay, there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:36:44]
| I'm just putting it all in Trump coin.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:45]
| Ha, ha, ha, ha. Buy the gold. Listen, they're issuing Trump gold coins.
|
Sam:
[1:36:51]
| Oh, right.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:52]
| I saw.
|
Sam:
[1:36:52]
| Yeah, they can do that instead.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:55]
| Yeah, those will soar in value.
|
Sam:
[1:36:58]
| Those are actually like dollar coins, though, aren't they? So they'll at least stay even.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:02]
| Yeah, but maybe.
|
Sam:
[1:37:05]
| Maybe. Well, I guess you still have to worry about devaluing due to inflation. But, you know, they'll still be a dollar.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:11]
| No, the price. Well, oh, yeah. Well, it depends how much gold is in it, too.
|
Sam:
[1:37:16]
| True. True. Ah, yes. Well, Krugerrands. That was the old thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:24]
| Krugerrands. That's been a while. I haven't said the word Krugerrands. That's been a while. Yeah. You know, smuggling Krugerrands, that was always a thing.
|
Sam:
[1:37:30]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:31]
| We need to smuggle. That's what we need to do. That's the next business. We're going to start smuggling Krugerrands. But we don't need to smuggle them anymore.
|
Sam:
[1:37:39]
| No. Well, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:42]
| I don't even know if they make them.
|
Sam:
[1:37:43]
| Well, they probably don't. But there are still old ones out there, I'm sure. Okay, Yvonne's going to look it up.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:49]
| Maybe we need to smuggle the old ones. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that was a big thing, the Krugerrands.
|
Sam:
[1:37:55]
| At that point, you might as well be trading in doubloons as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:01]
| Oh, you know, yeah. First minted in 1967.
|
Sam:
[1:38:06]
| Yes, yes, Krugerrands.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:06]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess they're still around.
|
Sam:
[1:38:08]
| They're still making new ones, but no longer under sanction because apartheid's over?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:12]
| I guess not. Yeah. Years of minting, 1967 through present. Yeah. Okay. There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:38:17]
| Well, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:19]
| I guess we don't have to smuggle them. Oh, well.
|
Sam:
[1:38:22]
| Are we done, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:23]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:38:24]
| Okay. Thanks, everybody, for joining us yet again on another. By the way, during the time we are recording, my wife took off, flew from Seattle to Edmonton, Alberta, and landed again and is now deplaning all in the time we were recording. Very exciting.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:42]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:38:42]
| Okay. Have a great week. Stay safe. Have fun. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:49]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:39:21]
| Okay, that's it. Thanks for the flexibility today, Vaughn. We'll see you later.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:25]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[1:39:25]
| Bye.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:26]
| Bye.
| |
|
