Sam: Hello, Mr. Bo.
Ivan: Hello.
Sam: Are you happily back from all your travels?
Ivan: Happily? I'm back.
Sam: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I understand.
Ivan: Happily.
Sam: Happily ever backily.
Ivan: Happily ever backily. There you go. There it goes. There is your title.
Sam: Title shall we uh just uh crank her up and go uh-huh here we go wait wait i
Sam: almost forgot an important button here we go,
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, June 15th, 2024.
Sam: It's just after 2 UTC as we're starting to record.
Sam: I am Sam Mentor, and for the first time in like years, Yvonne Bo is back. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Years. In a couple of weeks. Hello.
Sam: Yes, yes. We had a good time with Bruce and then Pete while you were gone, but now we got you back.
Ivan: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i heard you complaining about me being absent but in my defense i.
Sam: Was i was teasing not really complaining.
Ivan: In my in my defense i have looked up stats okay so according to this year yeah
Ivan: i have slept at a hotel let me see how many nights i had it right here here we go Oh, where'd you go?
Ivan: Nights this year. You're already to 41.
Ivan: 43 nights in a hotel.
Sam: Out of how many so far this year? How many days?
Ivan: I mean, well, I mean, there's, it's about a hundred and what?
Ivan: Uh, 50 days. I'm going to guess 60 days, 160 days.
Sam: Day one 67 day one 67.
Ivan: So I've spent about, I've spent about a third 25 to 30. already what did you
Ivan: say 43 days 40 40 hang on 43 nights at a hotel that's that's 25.7.
Sam: Percent of the time since the year began.
Ivan: Yeah slept at a hotel so yeah it's been a job you know oh thank you it's been
Ivan: it's been a lot of nights and i've been out of town,
Ivan: You know, I, I looked up last year total.
Ivan: I think I maybe spent like less than 20.
Ivan: Yeah, that's right. Less than 20 last year.
Ivan: And, and I, we're not even, yeah. And I mean, more than doubled in,
Ivan: in five and a half months.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, so.
Sam: 20 was all of last year.
Ivan: All of last year.
Sam: Not, not just up to this point of last year.
Ivan: Right. That was all of last year. you know so i i'm oh so any.
Sam: Anyway folks our plan for the day is as usual we're going to do a but first
Sam: yvonne's going to do something non-newsy i'm going to do something non-newsy
Sam: and then we'll have a couple news related segments after that that yvonne will
Sam: pick the first one i will pick the second one there we go.
Ivan: And a couple of occasions that i was traveling you know i think some of you
Ivan: that have listened to the podcast for whatever the hell damn reasons we had
Ivan: a lot of technical issues oh your.
Sam: Your connections sucked whenever you were traveling.
Ivan: Oh my god i mean it was just bad i mean you know on several occasions i mean
Ivan: there was one you know there you know on a couple of them i couldn't even be
Ivan: there for the finish i mean say i'm
Ivan: at the finish by himself because kept disconnecting so many times story.
Sam: Of my life.
Ivan: Yeah well no so um so anyway you know i i so i i i don't know so what what's
Ivan: going on uh what's so what what do.
Sam: You want your but first to be this time yvonne.
Ivan: My butt first you have.
Sam: A interesting thing to talk about that's not particularly newsy i'm just re
Sam: repeating how this usually works because i'm sure you've forgotten by now.
Ivan: Trying to remember what's happened news where the hell is i was in anything you.
Sam: Did guatemala and then you did disney right.
Ivan: Well i'll talk about something that is just it's not like general news but it
Ivan: is kind of it's it's it's well it's it's personal newsy because no you know
Ivan: okay nobody really cares about puerto rican elections okay all right yeah those
Ivan: puerto Puerto Ricans care about the elections.
Ivan: I mean, it's not like, you know, it doesn't really impact.
Sam: Are you guys a state yet?
Ivan: Nope. So independent. Nope.
Ivan: So anyway, one of the things that so Puerto Rico had primaries recently.
Ivan: Okay. And.
Ivan: You know, the incumbent governor was primary, okay?
Ivan: The incumbent governor came to office in a really circuitous way.
Sam: Circuitous?
Ivan: Yes. Because there was a governor from their party that was governor up until,
Ivan: like, 2019 when he was forced to resign because of a massive scandal involving
Ivan: a Telegram account that had a chat between him and his high school buddies in
Ivan: which he basically disparaged just about everybody.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: In very sophomoric terms. Homophobic terms.
Ivan: Transphobic terms. I mean, misogynist terms. I mean, every, which every,
Ivan: which, you know, is, you know, you know, racist, you know, misogynist,
Ivan: whatever, you know, all the bad ists.
Sam: They, they were misbehaving in the group chat or whatever.
Ivan: Oh my God. And, but he, it's not like he was a passive, you know,
Ivan: it's not like he was on a chat where other people just said stuff or whatever.
Ivan: He was an active participant saying this kind of stuff.
Ivan: So he was forced to resign
Ivan: for according to the
Ivan: law he had appointed this person that's currently governor as his
Ivan: replacement because something in the
Ivan: line of succession where the people that were in line also had previously resigned
Ivan: nice okay so the secretary of
Ivan: state was it was it was a mess and then it went to the supreme court the.
Sam: Puerto rican supreme court.
Ivan: So the puerto rican supreme court and it came
Ivan: about that somebody else should be
Ivan: governor and not this guy so after a very short amount of time he had to step
Ivan: down and this person wound up being governor then he ran for election he did
Ivan: win but the percentage of the vote that he got was like 30 some odd percent
Ivan: and so you You don't need a majority. You didn't need a runoff. It was, you know.
Sam: You just need the plurality and you win. And there were like a whole bunch of candidates.
Ivan: And it was a big split. Okay. Okay.
Ivan: And so he was governor. He has not been very popular.
Ivan: I was trying to understand why that has been.
Ivan: And a lot of the stuff came back that he was just and I can see it now that he was just very not.
Ivan: How do I say empathetic with the plight and the problems that the Puerto Ricans had? OK. OK.
Ivan: Um, and so he lost the primary as the incumbent to some, you know,
Ivan: so, so he got, you know, here's the interesting part.
Ivan: The polls leading up to the primary showed that supposedly he had a,
Ivan: I mean, it wasn't a huge lead, but it should have been above the margin of error. Okay.
Sam: Okay. So it is a big enough lead that you, you're not like it's close.
Ivan: Big enough in the lead that he should have won okay but not only did he lose
Ivan: he lost big okay it was it was over 10 points yet.
Sam: Another big pulling error i.
Ivan: Know and that's yeah and i mean it was like it was a big miss and not just that
Ivan: turnout was terrible okay it's just turnout was awful,
Ivan: And so it was just one of those that just smacked you in the face.
Ivan: I'm like, what the hell, man?
Ivan: I mean, it's just, you know, you get this turnout that is just so bad.
Ivan: I mean, compared to the previous primaries.
Ivan: And hell, I think if I remember, the previous primaries were ran right there during COVID.
Ivan: And this one had worse turnout.
Sam: Okay. Yeah. No.
Ivan: So it was, it was pretty bad.
Ivan: One thing that has weighed on everybody has been the situation with the electric grid.
Ivan: There's a massive power outage again this week. Okay.
Sam: This is still ding ding.
Ivan: This is my phone telling me to go to sleep.
Sam: That this is still stuff that's never been fully fixed after the hurricane a few years back.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah, but a big reason for that is because even though Congress had authorized
Ivan: a lot of funding for Reconstruction,
Ivan: very little has been spent so far.
Ivan: I mean, this is like seven years later. And a big part of that was because during
Ivan: the Trump administration, he had blocked a lot of it from being spent.
Ivan: Usually by, you know, three or four years, he would have gotten it done.
Ivan: There's been a lot of changes also in the structure of the electric company
Ivan: in Puerto Rico, because there was a discovery of this massive fraud for which.
Ivan: Nobody seemed to have gone to jail about related to the purchase of overpriced
Ivan: oil from Brazil that was above market price,
Ivan: but that also did not meet federal clean air standards and that they were faking
Ivan: the certificates for it.
Sam: Beautiful. Beautiful.
Ivan: And this was in the tune of billions of dollars, which contributed to the bankruptcy
Ivan: of Puerto in Puerto Rico as well.
Ivan: It's because Puerto Rico is going through a bankruptcy process right now,
Ivan: still that supervised by a board of oversight appointed by, by,
Ivan: by, I think it's the president was the main person that disappointed people to the board.
Ivan: I thought that was a law authorized by Congress because Puerto Rico did not
Ivan: fall under like municipalities can file for bankruptcy,
Ivan: but not, but, But a state can't file for bankruptcy or a territory.
Ivan: And so this is what this has become, where it's just been a complete shush show.
Ivan: I did speak to people where finally they are putting these plans together to
Ivan: finally spend a lot of this money on the electrical grid.
Ivan: But look, they have this massive power outage again, like recently and during the primaries.
Ivan: There was a massive power outage the day of the primaries. the counting took
Ivan: several days which shouldn't have taken several days but it did,
Ivan: and people are deeply unhappy there there there is one funny like aside so you
Ivan: know we're talking about ai right and oh.
Sam: Were we yeah oh okay yep.
Ivan: We've you know we've talked about it a few times on the show over the last...
Sam: And we may well do so again. It's one of the potential topics.
Ivan: Right. And so it's been a subject that we've talked about.
Sam: It keeps coming up.
Ivan: It keeps coming up. And so there is this comedian in Puerto Rico that I don't know what tools he...
Ivan: What AI tools he is using, but I've seen him play for a couple of months with
Ivan: every time some event happens, him creating some parody of it using AI tools. Okay.
Sam: All right.
Ivan: And he's created videos. And one of the things I think I mentioned that he made
Ivan: a video where there are a lot of people in it and the videos are very spooky.
Ivan: On our Slack, we had shared a video of like AI making videos,
Ivan: I think it was a beer commercial.
Sam: Oh yeah. That was, that one was like a while ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ivan: But it's been like a, but, but, but that it's just when a lot of people were
Ivan: involved, they started doing AI, had to do a lot of really odd stuff.
Ivan: Okay. So he did some videos before where there was like, well,
Ivan: what are the things that happened? There was, there was talking about the power.
Ivan: There was, they had, I've never heard of this before anywhere.
Ivan: Where they were having an influencers awards night okay.
Sam: Yes yes they do have those things.
Ivan: They do okay i i didn't know
Ivan: this and they had it at this theater they were
Ivan: they were scheduling it at this very old theater from
Ivan: was it the streamies no no
Ivan: no this was a local one in puerto rico i don't know what
Ivan: the hell they called it okay okay and so
Ivan: but they were going to do it at this theater that
Ivan: dates back to to spanish colonial times
Ivan: there is this really cool theater in san
Ivan: juan that i've been to for events it's
Ivan: it's it's really nice but it's a it's a small interesting
Ivan: location it was i mean it's
Ivan: the theater is about it was inaugurated
Ivan: in 1832 to give perspective okay so it's you
Ivan: know this was like a couple of hundred year old theater okay and
Ivan: they were going gonna do the this you know influencer night
Ivan: thing whatever well when they got there the
Ivan: event was gonna start there was a power outage so they couldn't have the event
Ivan: now there was a whole bunch of videos posted online and so he made this comedic
Ivan: video that showed like all these people at this theater and uh influencers dressed
Ivan: in like garb from like 200 years ago.
Ivan: And just just making fun of it so this weekend he produced a whole bunch of parody songs,
Ivan: using these tools and one thing the songs were hilarious and i realized that
Ivan: he said look guys you know i don't know what's going to happen with ai but i'll
Ivan: say this i was able to produce,
Ivan: it took me a couple of years one time to produce an album i was able to produce
Ivan: eight songs in a weekend you no no not this guy the the guy that's making the parodies oh.
Sam: Okay i got i got confused at some point thought you were talking about yourself.
Ivan: No don't no not me no so this guy that made
Ivan: the parody video before of the of the yeah yeah
Ivan: yeah yeah was able to make eight videos making
Ivan: fun of the political situation and the
Ivan: song and the music or whatever whatever that were really original okay
Ivan: but he used it using all these ai tools and they were hilarious so maybe this
Ivan: is what you know i know a lot of people are scared of what the eye is but i
Ivan: saw that i mean what he said is his productivity of doing this kind of shit it's like skyrocketed,
Ivan: and and the content was original it wasn't you know it wasn't a recycling of
Ivan: like shit that you You just saw copy-pasted from other places.
Sam: Although the way those tend to work is like the way it's put together into the
Sam: new thing isn't recycled, but the style of some of the elements maybe is.
Ivan: Well, I think the one thing is, you know, it's you pick the thing is,
Ivan: I really see it more a lot like.
Ivan: What he was talking is, look, I'm the guy who picked, you know,
Ivan: I want to create it this way, right?
Ivan: This is what I want it to look like. This is, I maybe I will write the song,
Ivan: but it will help me, you know, make multiple instruments at once and make it,
Ivan: do it faster and a whole bunch of stuff. And yeah, yeah.
Ivan: Click you to videos and give, Hey, I want the graphics to look like from this
Ivan: era and from this. And, And it just made it happen a lot faster.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: So, yeah. So he was...
Sam: Well, and just to, like, not to get into the whole AI discussion,
Sam: maybe we save that for later if we end up talking about Apple. I don't know if we will.
Ivan: But I just thought... But Puerto Rico, the whole thing... To circle the whole thing.
Ivan: The thing is that Puerto Rico has had a rich history of, like,
Ivan: very funny political satire and parody. And I remember that there were these shows.
Ivan: There was an hour and a half show that I used to watch every week.
Ivan: It was just making fun of politicians from every party of everything and whatnot or whatever.
Ivan: And this guy is from that vein. vein
Ivan: and he he he really has
Ivan: you know i was just seeing all these
Ivan: videos he's been producing the last couple of weeks just making fun of
Ivan: what happened to the primary and the power outage the thing
Ivan: into whatever and they've been
Ivan: hilarious you know but but i will
Ivan: say that what he's discussing with my wife is that
Ivan: man i mean and and it's just they're
Ivan: just just i find it
Ivan: that the videos that we do
Ivan: in puerto rico for this are a lot i find them so much
Ivan: funnier than almost any content i've seen even in the u
Ivan: has to do this stuff and it's it's the thing is that i think that the parody
Ivan: is done the guys used to have the slogan we try to offend everybody equally
Ivan: so the one thing that they were trying to do is that they weren't doing it so
Ivan: So if you're one from one party, you would be offended when not.
Ivan: It doesn't matter which he was making fun of Party X.
Ivan: But even if part of Party X, you saw it and you were like, oh,
Ivan: my God, this is so hilarious.
Ivan: You know, I think, and that's the thing that I think is the,
Ivan: the, the theme I like about the political satire that it's not,
Ivan: you know, the stupid, like, let's go Brandon stuff or whatever,
Ivan: not like this. That is really, truly insulting to a guy.
Ivan: It's something that even if you were a Democrat, you saw this,
Ivan: you'd be like, like, oh my God, this is hilarious.
Ivan: So I think that is the, the healthier part of the, of the political thing.
Ivan: So yeah, so AI making satire and I'm seeing these guys just doing this shit
Ivan: so, so, so well, I was like, damn.
Sam: Well, this, this, this relates to things that we've said before.
Sam: I think Pete and I even covered this a little bit last week is that the,
Sam: maybe I, I, all of this runs together in my head now I'm getting old,
Sam: but like, tell me about it.
Sam: But the thing is, the place where these things can sort of run wild right now
Sam: is where truth doesn't matter.
Sam: It's just being about being creative and putting things together.
Sam: Because then, you know, no one's going to tell you, hey, in that skit you just
Sam: did, this part was wrong.
Sam: Or you got something factually incorrect.
Ivan: Well, you're making a comedy skit, so the facts don't matter about this.
Ivan: You're just making comedy.
Sam: Right, exactly. That's what I'm saying.
Ivan: So that's right.
Sam: The place where AI still has lots and lots of issues is whether it matters if
Sam: it's factually correct or not, you know?
Ivan: Right. If it's creating a cheap comedy video, who cares?
Ivan: But if it's trying to dispense medical advice, then, you know,
Ivan: you want to be a little bit more careful.
Sam: Maybe don't trust it when it says glue your cheese onto your pizza or whatever.
Ivan: Gluing the cheese to the pizza just doesn't sound good.
Ivan: How about gluing a cheese to my sandwich?
Sam: Yes, go for it. And it's still useful.
Sam: I once again, just yesterday, had ChatGPT help me with some simple scripting
Sam: stuff I was using to monitor something on my computer.
Sam: And I took a few iterations, but I got it to do exactly what I wanted a lot
Sam: faster than if I was doing it by hand.
Sam: You know and so yeah again it's like if
Sam: there are certain domains where it's really good there's certain
Sam: domains where it sucks the problem is when you try to get it to do the things
Sam: it sucks at and the things that sucks out today it may be great at in a year
Sam: or two years or three years but if you're figuring out what to do today you
Sam: want to use it for the things it's actually good at today not things that could
Sam: be good at in the future right.
Ivan: Well i think that look the whole thing about this is just a you know to to wrap
Ivan: it up a little bit since you know is that you,
Ivan: using it for anything above
Ivan: like an aid to you doing something right now is not really a good idea i mean
Ivan: because it's just if you're using it to aid what you're doing and it's accelerating
Ivan: your work which is what i saw with this guy i used it a little bit and it helped
Ivan: me accelerate some work and some stuff, that's good.
Ivan: But if you're just taking its output without any vetting, you're setting yourself for problems.
Sam: Yes, absolutely. And of course, there are all the issues of like,
Sam: you know, is it using training data without permission? And should they be doing that?
Sam: And how much energy usage does this stuff take up? How much water does the stuff use?
Sam: Because there's cooling and, you know, there are all kinds of issues associated with it.
Ivan: Well, we could just melt the icebergs.
Sam: That's for a different segment. So your segment started somehow in Puerto Rican politics. politics and.
Ivan: It ended in ai.
Sam: Ended in ai yes is it my turn yes okay so normally at this point i would do
Sam: my next media thing and my next media thing is i finished house of cards the
Sam: american version of house of cards all six seasons but i'm gonna save that for next week.
Ivan: You know that i.
Sam: Save it for next week save it for next week i got something else no.
Ivan: No no no no no i was just going to mention that.
Sam: Yes i'm.
Ivan: Not going to talk about it is that i don't think i ever finished it i think
Ivan: i didn't watch like the last season.
Sam: Yeah you i remember you talking about this years ago you bailed out at a certain
Sam: point i forget which season you bailed out at but we can talk about that next
Sam: week yeah because i actually finished all six seasons but i have something else to talk about today.
Ivan: Yeah which is you're pregnant.
Sam: Yes i am pregnant how many months,
Sam: i i three months i'm good you
Sam: know due due in december good
Sam: good so it'll it'll be great
Sam: great great great we're welcoming a new addition to the family and yeah no no
Sam: i am not pregnant neither is my wife no no as far as i know no one in my immediate
Sam: family is pregnant okay okay you You know, we'll see.
Ivan: Yeah, okay.
Sam: But no, as far as I know, that has not happened. No. What I have to report on this time is...
Sam: The Mac mini that I've been complaining about for years and years and years,
Sam: it seems like anyway, I think it's like three years.
Ivan: It's been years.
Sam: I think it's three years. I think I got it in 2021, I think.
Sam: And it was always significantly underpowered for my needs from the day I bought it.
Sam: I bought it under duress because my iMac that I had before that died.
Sam: We were in the middle of the pandemic. i did
Sam: not have a lot of extra cash and everything was out of stock anyway so i got
Sam: the absolute bottom line mac mini and i've been struggling with it ever since
Sam: it is now on a shelf somewhere i am talking to you right now from a brand new
Sam: computer and a brand new setup.
Ivan: I i i was going to say i am like i i i was pretty sure that was the case because
Ivan: you know unlike you guys i i could see them on video yeah and i could tell that
Ivan: the video quality was substantially improved.
Sam: It's the same camera that hasn't changed.
Ivan: Well something is making it look better i mean
Ivan: maybe it's because no no no i'm gonna tell you why i think it's because almost
Ivan: most of the time before right now it is coming across blurry but most of the
Ivan: time with your old computer the resolution Evolution would never get to full HD ever.
Ivan: It always stayed at pixelated levels.
Ivan: And all of a sudden, I've noticed that, wait a minute, he's looking crystal clear.
Ivan: This never happened before. All I ever got to see was a blurry Sam at the other end.
Sam: I've made a number of changes because I not only upgraded the computer,
Sam: I upgraded my whole new setup. I have a new desk.
Sam: It's one of these standing desks that moves up and down. I got extra monitors.
Sam: So I am back in a three 27 inch monitor situation for the first time in many
Sam: years since even before the last computer died.
Sam: All kinds of things. So I am very happy. I'm very thrilled. I did not get a Mac studio.
Sam: I got a MacBook Pro with a nice little docking setup and everything else.
Sam: So that like I'm running it in clamshell mode with the three big monitors and
Sam: a keyboard and a mouse and all that right now.
Sam: And like 90% of the time I've been doing that, but like now I have the flexibility.
Sam: On a few occasions, I've picked up the computer, I've gone somewhere else in
Sam: the house and I can do that, which I could not do with the desktop scenario. It has been.
Sam: About 20 years since the last time I had a laptop. I think it was actually like
Sam: 18 and a half or something like that.
Sam: Since I switched from a laptop to an iMac and I've been on iMacs ever since
Sam: until I had the Mac mini, but I'm at bat.
Sam: I've had laptops for work, of course, but for home, my, my theory was always,
Sam: I've got a laptop for work.
Sam: So at home, I'll go with the desktop. but this
Sam: time I decided to go ahead with the the laptop there
Sam: were two reasons for that one at this exact
Sam: moment in time the the MacBook Pros have a newer chipset than the studios did
Sam: and they've been refreshed more recently yes plus the portability like I said
Sam: I really I really like had been thinking about it a lot and there were a number
Sam: of scenarios where I wanted to like just I had stuff to do,
Sam: but I didn't want to like go up to my office and do it. I wanted to sit in the
Sam: living room or something.
Sam: And I was like, you know, and I didn't want to use my work computer because
Sam: like, well, theoretically I can and have sometimes done personal stuff on my work computer.
Sam: I would rather avoid it, you know?
Sam: So I got that and I didn't completely max out the MacBook pro because I couldn't,
Sam: I I couldn't really say I needed the absolute top end options.
Sam: So for instance, I did get the 16 inch and I did get the, the,
Sam: the M three max version and with 16 core CPU,
Sam: 40 core GPU, 16 core neural neural engine, all that.
Sam: I did the mid range memory. So 64 gigabytes. I,
Sam: 64 gigabytes i couldn't justify 128 i was like i don't know.
Ivan: No you don't.
Sam: You know and i did the big
Sam: thing i splurged on is i got the four terabyte ssd and
Sam: those things are fucking expensive on the internal built-in ones
Sam: oh yeah i i did not go for
Sam: the eight terabyte ssd i did not determine
Sam: that was necessary but i really wanted the
Sam: four because like my my imac
Sam: from years ago had a three terabyte fusion drive and
Sam: i was always filling that sucker up
Sam: and like i've lived since then the built-in drive on the stupid mini was only
Sam: like 256 like not even terabytes gigabytes and then i moved to a one terabyte
Sam: external and it always felt cramped And I'm like, I know I can fill two.
Sam: I want to get enough that I'll have some headroom that I won't have to worry about this for a while.
Sam: I will probably eventually have to worry.
Sam: In fact, already, like, frankly, like, my photo library is bigger than four terabytes.
Sam: So I'm still going to put that on an external drive.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Uh, and, and so I have to like either put only, you know, the,
Sam: the, the way, the way it works, you can keep most of it on iCloud and only put
Sam: the local stuff, but I still want a local copy of everything.
Sam: So I'll make sure I have a local drive with a local copy of everything so I
Sam: can get it backed up, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Anyway, I got the four terabyte. I could not just to go from four terabytes
Sam: to eight terabytes would be, would have been an extra $1,200.
Sam: I couldn't, I mean, it's just the, the numbers are too big. I'm like,
Sam: I could not justify doing that.
Ivan: Yeah, no, no, no, no. It's just, it just starts getting out of control. No, I get it. Yeah.
Sam: So I got the four terabyte SSD, which already was like a thousand bucks more
Sam: than the base model, like then, then just having one terabyte.
Sam: And I got the 64 gig and I've got it. You know, I had, I got.
Sam: I had previously one 27-inch external monitor. I got two more.
Sam: You know, I got the little moving up and down desk thing. I got a new desk chair.
Sam: You know, I am thrilled. This was actually all in place when I talked to Pete last week.
Sam: But I wanted to save it to talk to you about it, Yvonne.
Sam: So I didn't mention it last week. Like, ah, but, and,
Sam: you know, and I thought about trying to keep the Mac mini going in parallel
Sam: to use as like a file server or something, but it was, it, it, it just has issues.
Sam: It like, I, I could not trust it for anything.
Ivan: There is something. Yeah. There, there is something wrong with it. Yes.
Sam: I could not trust it. It crashes all the time. I haven't, I haven't been able
Sam: to properly back up the external drives that were attached to it in a long time.
Sam: And in fact, right now I'm having to deal with that because one of them failed
Sam: and that stupid Mac mini had not successfully finished a full backup of it.
Ivan: They'll call it.
Sam: So I'm having to like figure out like, you know, disc recovery services and
Sam: all that crap to try to get that stuff back, which is pissing me off by the way.
Sam: But I'll let you know how that goes when that saga is over.
Sam: But I am thrilled with this new
Sam: thing. It feels like for the first time in years, I can freaking breathe.
Sam: Breathe. Like I, I've got like all the windows up that I want and the thing is not struggling.
Sam: It is not telling me I'm out of application memory twice a day.
Sam: I, I do not have to reboot the damn thing.
Sam: And like, I know, like I use my computer in a way that lots of people don't.
Sam: I always have a, you know, a whole bunch of applications open.
Sam: My browser has hundreds of tabs open.
Sam: I often have multiple browsers.
Sam: I've got all kinds of stuff going on. I know I, use this in a way that is heavier
Sam: than lots of people use it, but that Mini just could not handle it.
Sam: The base model Mini with only eight.
Sam: Gigabytes of ram and you know
Sam: a single terabyte once i had
Sam: moved to an external drive and and a slow comparatively slow
Sam: chip and blah blah blah i mean it was an m1 but still
Sam: it was i it was car
Sam: it was a constant struggle almost since the day
Sam: i bought the damn thing and in recent months
Sam: it it was just getting super super annoying and
Sam: i was holding my breath till the day that my company
Sam: provided the next set of stock options which happened at
Sam: the end of may and like essentially as
Sam: soon as that happened i was like okay ordering i'm i'm ordering and so i'm thrilled
Sam: i like i i loaded up the latest version of the x-plane 12 flight simulator and
Sam: it like it's smooth as butter like on on any old computers that i'd tried previous versions of the
Sam: flight simulator on to get it to run in a decent way at all.
Sam: I'd had to turn down all the graphic options and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: This was like default options.
Sam: Everything go nice. It's smooth. It's pretty.
Sam: I'm driving three monitors off this thing. If I feel like it,
Sam: I can open the lid of the MacBook and be operating on four monitors.
Sam: Although I've found like I did that for a little while and I was like,
Sam: you know, almost all the time three is good. but that fourth one ends up being
Sam: extra every once in a while.
Sam: If I have something that I'm really want it for, I can open it up and have the
Sam: fourth one and it's fine.
Sam: The one annoying thing I found is that this is a, a Thunderbolt limitation.
Sam: I understand from the ports, like each Thunderbolt, each Thunderbolt cable can
Sam: only drive two of these monitors.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: So like I have to plug in with two monitors to get all three.
Sam: I plug in with two cables to get all three monitors or a fourth or a fifth.
Sam: I think it can drive up to six.
Sam: External monitors. I don't need six external monitors. I'm not doing that.
Sam: But the three is awesome.
Sam: I got several years back, I had a three monitor setup and I was really happy
Sam: and really thrilled with it.
Sam: And then for various reasons, I ended up going back down to two and the mini could only do two.
Sam: And it was this again, it feels like I can freaking breathe again,
Sam: like I can use my computer and do all the things I want to without it complaining,
Sam: without it crashing, without it like slowing to a crawl. all.
Sam: I mean, with the, with the old system, sometimes like, you know,
Sam: I I'd flip windows and I'd have to wait five seconds for it to catch up with me and I'd type.
Sam: And sometimes I'd have to wait for it to catch up with me.
Sam: And I know like if I'd, if I'd closed everything and done one thing at a time,
Sam: maybe it would have been okay, but it wasn't. So anyway, I am.
Ivan: I mean, you know, you, I mean, you were making do for a while because,
Ivan: you know, there were circumstances stances that that forced that you
Ivan: know it happens i mean you know having to
Ivan: drag it out for a bit until you know things you know it changed i i look but
Ivan: even like that mac mini i still can't remember which you know one of the computers
Ivan: you had in past years where if you went to boot up an application that.
Sam: Was that that was the imac before the mac mini when it was dying like in In
Sam: the last few months, I had it.
Ivan: Right. It would take like 30 minutes or something like that in order for a fucking
Ivan: application to open or something like that.
Sam: I had to know before we started the podcast.
Sam: I had to plan like a couple hours in advance to reboot, reboot the computer
Sam: and bring up like the three applications that I needed to have open while recording the show.
Ivan: And the Mac mini, you know, to be fair, you know, was cheap. Okay.
Sam: And it was, it was cheap and it got the job done. It was a little painful, but it got the job.
Ivan: It got the job done. Definitely, you know, a lot better than that dying computer.
Ivan: So, you know, I mean, I, I, I look at the last two computers I bought.
Ivan: I, I didn't even, I wound up buying them because the previous computer just
Ivan: both of them died suddenly on me.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, the Mac Mini that I immediately replaced with this was working
Sam: immediately before I bought this.
Sam: But about a month earlier, it had a near-death experience.
Sam: Like, it crashed and would not come up.
Sam: And I had to, I spent like something like 72 hours repeatedly trying to reinstall
Sam: the operating system, trying to move to a new external drive,
Sam: trying to like do all kinds of different things.
Sam: And eventually, I don't know what combinations of things I did,
Sam: but eventually I got it to come back, but it was really touch and go for a while there.
Sam: So I'm glad it made it the extra like month and a half.
Sam: But you know and like I said I was thinking about like trying to keep that around
Sam: and do something else with it like mount all my external drives on that and
Sam: never attach them to this thing and when push came to shove I was like.
Sam: Fuck that i can't trust the old computer i can't
Sam: like if i was going to do anything with it i'd have to
Sam: like wipe it to factory state start over and then
Sam: maybe use it for something really simple but i'm
Sam: like you know i've got this nice docking setup i'll have the external drives
Sam: i want hooked up to the dock when i plug in the computer i'll have access to
Sam: all of them and i've actually haven't finished setting up everything on this
Sam: like i'm i'm i've decided i'm going to systematically add these drives back one at a time,
Sam: give them time to back up to the network,
Sam: make sure everything's good, make sure everything's working properly.
Sam: I'm going to take the ones that are nothing but archival stuff for my son and
Sam: attach those, those drives to his computer instead of mine.
Ivan: Now that's a good idea.
Sam: Now that means he'll have like a crap load, extra drives.
Sam: He'll have like 15, 20 drives attached to his computer, but let that hit be his problem.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Uh, and in the And I will only attach the ones that I'm actually using for this computer onto this one.
Sam: And like I said, I'm going to do it slowly. Like right now, Backblaze hasn't
Sam: finished backing up my main system yet.
Sam: So I'm not attaching the first external drive until that's all done.
Sam: And it's actually having an issue where there are certain files that's having
Sam: issues backing up and I'm sort of figuring those out one by one.
Sam: I think it's like things that are in iCloud, but not locally downloaded to my computer.
Sam: And it's getting confused by that because the state on my old,
Sam: because it inherited the state from my old computer, but my old computer was confused.
Sam: So I'm dealing with those issues one by one. And then once I have that all settled,
Sam: then I'll attach the first one of these external drives and then I'll do that.
Sam: And then I'll slowly work my way through them. And in the meantime,
Sam: I have them all unplugged since there's no, no reliable new backup of a whole
Sam: bunch of these. I'm just like, I'm unplugging them.
Sam: I'm not doing anything with them until I'm ready.
Sam: And then I will plug them in. And the first thing that's happening is they're
Sam: getting a cloud backup, you know? So anyway, yeah, well.
Ivan: Well, congratulations, Sam, you finally were able to get that new computer.
Ivan: I know it'd been, uh, it'd been a while.
Sam: Yeah, no, I am. I can breathe. I'm happy.
Sam: The next project that I've also talked about here on the show is couches.
Ivan: Oh, couches. Well, but that's a every two year thing that you mentioned.
Sam: Yes. Yes. I, what I, after I talked to you and listed all the criteria of the
Sam: new couches, I realized one of the other ones that had to be added to that list.
Sam: I I've added a few since I talked about it on show, show, but one of the criteria
Sam: I added was cheap enough that I won't blink or care if I have to replace it in only two years.
Ivan: Well, I can see how that would be important. And I see Sam again in like crystal clear, like HD.
Sam: Well, you're blurry though. Like you're blurry to me.
Ivan: I don't know why the hell I'm blurry. Am I blurry most of the time to you?
Ivan: Or am I, I mean, like right now you.
Sam: You, you, you have been, you have been today.
Ivan: I have been today.
Sam: Every once in a while you come in clear, but, but not, not always.
Sam: But today you're like, you're, you're blurry and you're freeze.
Sam: And now of course i we're talking and like people listening to the show can't
Sam: tell yeah i mean i guess your voice is blurry all the time well.
Ivan: My i mean.
Sam: I'm sure.
Ivan: My voice is blurry all the time.
Sam: I mean i don't i mean it sounds like.
Ivan: I mean i should have a blurry voice.
Sam: Yeah anyway and i did think a
Sam: little bit about like what if they come out with new ones
Sam: like right away oh fuck wwdc was
Sam: coming up and like oh you can't it wasn't due
Sam: for it wasn't due for macbook pro updates anyway they were you know they come
Sam: in a little cadence and it it would it would have been surprising unfortunately
Sam: but but wait wait here's the thing here's the thing at a certain point i was
Sam: like i don't fucking care i need it i need it now if they come out next week
Sam: i still need it fucking now i.
Ivan: Mean that's been my issue the last couple of times i think you know when i got
Ivan: like my imac like the one computer previous to this that I got it in 2018.
Ivan: Right. Right. So I think it was 2017. Yeah.
Ivan: 2017 or 28 i think it was 2018.
Sam: Yeah and.
Ivan: It was like look i mean i can't i can't wait the other one's dead.
Sam: Right i.
Ivan: I i don't you know it's it's dead dead i mean it's you know i got home and it
Ivan: was completely dead i mean there's just nothing that i could do about it you know so.
Sam: Exactly right right now i'm looking
Sam: at the the mac rumors buyers guide which i always go by for these things it's
Sam: been 228 days since the last macbook pros were released which they put as neutral
Sam: mid-product cycle because the average time between updates is 390 days so a
Sam: little bit more than a year where's.
Ivan: The mac studio on that uh.
Sam: Wait wait hold on i'll tell you i'll tell you in a second the looking back at
Sam: the last six well the last six releases of the macbook pro the longest time
Sam: between releases was 705 days.
Sam: The shortest time was only 176 days between updates.
Sam: Like I would have been kind of pissed if like there was one that short year,
Sam: like it's been 228 days and one comes out at 230.
Sam: I mean, even so I needed the damn thing, but so I wouldn't have been that pissed.
Sam: Okay. Mac studio, you asked, it has been 375 days since the last Mac studio release. least yeah.
Ivan: So it would have been and so it would have been a bad moment to really pick up a mac studio.
Sam: Yeah they recommend that as caution
Sam: approaching end of cycle there's only been one update for the mac studio so
Sam: far and that was after 454 days so it's getting close now the root the rumors
Sam: for the macbook pro are now that they put out the m4 chips for the ipad that
Sam: there got to be M4 MacBooks coming soon.
Sam: But soon probably means end of this year, maybe beginning of next year.
Sam: And I wasn't going to wait six months.
Sam: Yeah, no, no, no.
Ivan: No.
Sam: You know, if there were really, really active rumors saying,
Sam: hey, they're going to be new MacBook Pros in July, maybe I would avoid it.
Ivan: Maybe, but, but yeah, no, you, you, you really.
Sam: I, I needed it. And like, you know, and there were no such rumors.
Sam: The rumors were, eh, maybe the, maybe at the end of the year at the earliest,
Sam: probably early next year, those, that's what the rumors were saying right now.
Sam: So I was like, no, no. not waiting.
Sam: Anyway, nobody probably cares about the new computer, but I am thrilled by the
Sam: new computer. I'm also thrilled by the new desk. I'm thrilled by the new chair.
Sam: I, on both of those, like I spent more on the computer.
Sam: And so I got a little bit less.
Sam: I spent a little bit less on the desk and a little bit less on the chair that
Sam: I would have done otherwise.
Sam: But I also realized this chair and this desk do absolutely everything I fucking need.
Sam: Did I really need to buy one that It costs twice as much. No,
Sam: I probably didn't, you know?
Sam: And in fact, this one, the desk I got is it's a, it's, it's,
Sam: it's probably about half the price,
Sam: maybe even less than half of the price of the one that I'd been eyeing for a
Sam: while, but it's got a bigger surface area and I'm using every inch of that bigger
Sam: surface area and it's fine.
Ivan: The big, well, that's a good thing.
Sam: Ben, the big difference like is I am sure like this one, if you like lean into
Sam: it, like I, I, if I push it, I can jiggle it, you know, like, Oh.
Ivan: I see a jiggling.
Sam: Yvonne can see my picture jiggling. Cause I'm like just putting my hand on the
Sam: desk and like shoving it a little bit.
Sam: I'm sure the more expensive one is a little bit more sturdy.
Sam: But it's not like it's shaking so much I'm worried it's going to fall down.
Sam: It's not like it's like bothering me on a regular basis.
Sam: It's like, okay, if I shake it, it shakes, you know?
Sam: And so I'm like, this, this is fine. It's great.
Sam: Same, same thing with the chair. I was looking at like the wire cutter recommended
Sam: chair and it was like, you know, for $450 was their budget chair.
Sam: And I'm like, I guess I'll wait. I'll keep the old chair for a while.
Sam: And then I was just browsing and I'm like, there are perfectly decent chairs
Sam: for under a hundred bucks.
Sam: I'm just going to pick one of those and it's fine.
Ivan: You know, you know, and I spent a lot of money on furniture.
Ivan: The one thing I did not really spend a lot of money on is a chair.
Ivan: I will say, and I still have this chair. I bought this chair at Costco and I
Ivan: tried the chairs and I found it very comfortable and it was,
Ivan: you know, a hundred and some odd bucks.
Ivan: I will say that the glass that the chair is on, so it won't scratch the floor,
Ivan: is more expensive than the chair.
Sam: Yeah, and that's another thing I got. I have never used one before,
Sam: but I got one of those mats for under the chair.
Sam: But I got one of the plastic ones.
Sam: And, like, it was supposedly a pretty thick one, whatever. And then,
Sam: like, after I had it, like, 48 hours, I'm like...
Sam: Dense under the chair i can't glide smoothly on
Sam: this thing it also moves a little bit like
Sam: it shoves to the side like all the time apparently
Sam: when i sit down i push it to the left and so it's always sort of scooting to
Sam: the left i'm like i'm gonna have to like buy one of the slightly more expensive
Sam: but that's still not super expensive ones that's really solid and not like this rubber mat.
Sam: Like, like the rubber mat, maybe it protects the carpet, but this carpet is
Sam: completely destroyed anyway. I don't need to protect this fucking carpet.
Sam: I just want something where I can like roll smoothly and I can't roll smoothly on this.
Ivan: Well, for, for that one, it's not, well, that's exactly right.
Ivan: I mean, the one thing in your case is not, you know, I, I did it more,
Ivan: but you know, it's not because of the smooth rolling on your case,
Ivan: you need the smooth rolling and the plastic is not going to do it.
Sam: Yeah. Like I have a carpet, like if this was hardwood floor i wouldn't even
Sam: bother with it at all like yeah but.
Ivan: Well i wound up doing it i didn't do it before with a hardwood floor the problem is that that because.
Sam: You want it but now you want to protect the floor because you damage floor over the course of the years.
Ivan: Yeah because we yeah i damaged a floor over the course of the years and i realized
Ivan: i'm like damn it you know but i got listen i got the one that they advertise
Ivan: which is this vitrasa one okay but And it's advertised on a word of place.
Ivan: It's pricey, but look, it's, it's solid.
Ivan: Okay. Number one, it's, and it's clear.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Okay. So you don't, you barely notice that it's there.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Okay. But it's totally solid and it's like perfect for whatever,
Ivan: but it's really, you know, their mat is definitely worth the money compared
Ivan: to the other ones that I've had.
Sam: Yeah. I, I, I haven't ordered a new one of these mats yet, but it's like,
Sam: it is frustrating me more by the day. So I, I imagine before too long, I will.
Sam: Cause like, you know, I have a chair with wheels so I can roll around,
Sam: but then yeah, I start, I want to roll and.
Ivan: You can't roll.
Sam: And I realize I'm, I'm sunken in dents and like, yes.
Sam: And I have to like, before I can roll, I have to put a whole bunch of extra
Sam: effort to get myself out of the dent and look, okay.
Ivan: A little bit of exercise.
Sam: It is a little bit of exercise. I mean, it's not like a huge amount of effort, right?
Ivan: Leg strengthening exercise. I saw the other day, listen, you need to get,
Ivan: I saw there was an infomercial on TV on one of these things that you put on the floor.
Ivan: And it's apparently, so you're pedaling, like exercising as you're...
Sam: I've got one.
Ivan: You do?
Sam: Yeah. Or I forget if I got it for me or if I got it for my wife or something.
Sam: It's like, it's in the garage. It's not like right here or anything.
Sam: Cause no one ever used the damn thing, but it's like, you know.
Ivan: Nobody uses anything that they sell from one of those TV infomercials.
Ivan: Well, it basically, that's what happens.
Sam: Like, I don't know if I saw it on an infomercial. I saw it somewhere like,
Sam: cause I was like, you know, need to exercise more.
Sam: Maybe I can use one of those little thingies that I can like pedal while I'm on the thing.
Sam: And so I looked one up and I bought it and it was cheap. It wasn't like an expensive
Sam: thing. It was, and I got it.
Ivan: They're not expensive, but that you're like, you're like, this is bullshit.
Sam: No, no. And you know what I do have though? I do have,
Sam: cause this is, I am sitting right now at the standing desk because
Sam: I didn't want to prematurely give away my thing
Sam: but i do have one of these balance
Sam: board things to stand on when i've got it
Sam: in standing mode that like oh that you have to like you know it because it's
Sam: it's it's it's only got it's like got a rocker on the bottom so you stand on
Sam: it and it wobbles and so you have to use your sort of whole body has to balance
Sam: to keep yourself vertical while you're on this thing instead of falling over.
Sam: And it's just like a constant sort of micro dose of exercise while you're standing on the thing.
Sam: So there you go. And, and, and, you know, I am sitting right now,
Sam: but I have, you know, I found like, it's interesting.
Sam: I, the other thing, by the way, about my, my setup with the monitors and everything
Sam: is because I've got it set up this way.
Sam: If I'm working for work, I just unplug my home laptop and plug in my work laptop
Sam: and I'm all set to go with the whole setup for work too.
Sam: So, so I've been doing that and I found myself more likely to stand at the standing
Sam: desk desk when I'm working for my job than when I'm doing my home projects on my computer.
Sam: I don't know why, but so far that's been the case, you know,
Sam: and it also depends like, you know, if it's early in the day and I've still
Sam: got a bunch of energy, I'm more likely to stand by the time we're,
Sam: we're recording this in the evening.
Sam: And by now I'm like, I want to sit down.
Ivan: I know one thing that I, this week after I've been like doing all this traveling,
Ivan: like i i i uh you know i have
Ivan: been struggling to stay focused on on work oh
Ivan: my god i i've just been like i mean i it's just i i did get a lot done but it
Ivan: it seemed to take a lot more effort right than the usual to just stay focused on the task at hand and.
Sam: We will finish but first any minute it now but like.
Ivan: Well I'm sure by now everybody's already like turned off the podcast yeah.
Sam: Everybody's gone everybody's gone but like the the the on Tuesday this week
Sam: I noticed early in the morning I was like oh crap I've got this one morning meeting and,
Sam: And then I've got almost nothing the rest of the day. I'm going to be able to get a lot of stuff done.
Sam: But several things then happened. I was working from home that day.
Sam: So first thing was I was like, hey, I'm working from home.
Sam: My wife is here. I finished my first meeting. Let's go get some breakfast.
Sam: Like, let's go to a diner and get some breakfast. Yeah, that was fine.
Sam: But then we went to a diner that was a little bit further away and then they
Sam: were slow. And then by the time we got back from the diner, it was like,
Sam: oh, two hours just went by. How'd that happen?
Sam: And then like, actually right before we left to go to the diner,
Sam: like I got a, an impromptu call that somebody scheduled with like no notice.
Sam: It's like, Hey, can we talk real quick? So I ended up spending half an hour on the phone for that.
Sam: And then after I got back, there was another meeting that I was like,
Sam: I was planning on skipping, but I was like, I should tune in at least a little bit.
Sam: And then I ended up on that meeting for an hour. And then by the time all of
Sam: these things were done, my like, oh, my God, I've got six free hours that I
Sam: can just like sit down and work.
Sam: I ended up with like one, you know, and I was like, well, there goes that fucking day.
Sam: I was really excited that I was going to be able to get a whole crap load of stuff done.
Sam: And I didn't. And then, you know, I and I got a little bit of that work done
Sam: in the next couple of days.
Sam: But I never got like the really solid. solid because here's the thing when you
Sam: got the big solid open chunk of time it's not just you've got six hours of time
Sam: it's you've got six hours where you can build up a head of steam and you can
Sam: like really get into something and get some solid stuff done because i don't know about you.
Sam: But when i've got little like 15 20 half
Sam: hour slots of time like yeah there's
Sam: certain things i can do i can check my email i can check
Sam: my messaging things like that but like for a lot of stuff like it takes me a
Sam: half hour just to get myself into the groove of working on the thing and so
Sam: like if all i've got is half hour slots i i don't get it i never get the flow
Sam: and get into that pattern listen.
Ivan: My my thing is that i spent that whole week traveling and then a whole week
Ivan: on vacation and i got back and i had so many things that were open items that
Ivan: i am like struggling as to wait, which one the fuck do I do first?
Ivan: And then new things kept coming in at the same time. And so I did get through
Ivan: a whole bunch of it, but part of it is that I also need to do my, I have a fricking,
Ivan: note over there on the wall that i need to do some account
Ivan: planning because they changed all my almost all
Ivan: the accounts that i'm that i'm dealing with and so i
Ivan: i am one that that sees a value well me i in order to get on track to what the
Ivan: hell we're going to do for this year right which for us just started i need
Ivan: to fucking write down what the fuck we're doing otherwise it's just you know, attending fires.
Ivan: Right. Instead of doing, you know, a focused work.
Ivan: And, and so I, I, I, I started some of it, but I'm not through it.
Ivan: So I don't know. So anyway, now that we've like bored every listener to death at this point.
Sam: I, what one, one more computer thing, one more thing is I just got more.
Sam: I just got a text from my wife saying this
Sam: happens daily and it's her computer saying
Sam: your computer was restarted because of a problem and this is her old iMac which
Sam: is many years old how old is it i don't it's really old like it's five or six
Sam: years old if not older at this point because she already replaced it remember remember she.
Ivan: Got that lap computer stolen.
Sam: Yes because she got a new MacBook Pro like
Sam: a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever it was
Sam: and then it got stolen and right
Sam: and because she needed something she did something very similar
Sam: to what i did she got like a bottom of the line macbook
Sam: air and she can that thing barely
Sam: does the thing she needs it to even though her
Sam: needs are much less than i my needs she's still like that thing it's its screen
Sam: is too small it's got this it's got that she has all kinds of issues with it
Sam: it doesn't do what she needs it to do so she often tries to use her much much
Sam: older iMac and it's starting to have issues now too. So I can easily see,
Sam: Like the next stock grant, guess who's getting a computer then.
Sam: So, you know, we may, this may be a two computer year for this family.
Sam: So we usually try to space them out.
Sam: Like, cause everybody in the family needs something, but like we try to space
Sam: them out, but this may be a year we can't. So we'll see.
Ivan: You know, I will say that as a, okay, if I, one more thing on the computer is
Ivan: that, so I got, I got my wife, a Mac book air, right at the start of the pandemic.
Ivan: So that was like about four years ago.
Ivan: And she had a MacBook. And we gave that MacBook to Manu to use.
Ivan: And he's using it for school and stuff or whatever.
Ivan: I will say that, surprisingly, those two have held up pretty well.
Ivan: I mean, that MacBook, I got...
Ivan: Shit, it's older than my iMac, so it's 2017. And it's still...
Ivan: You know, I've checked it out.
Sam: It's still chugging along.
Ivan: Still chugging along perfectly fine.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: You know, both of those.
Sam: Alex will probably need a new computer at some point too.
Sam: Like it's one of the, he, he, he hasn't complained yet, so I'm not bringing
Sam: it up until he starts to complain.
Ivan: Don't bring it up.
Sam: But, but it's older and it's, it will undoubtedly need it at some point.
Sam: And he's pushing it kind of hard. He's doing like programming and games and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: So, you know, Oh.
Ivan: Manu's not pushing it very hard, so therefore it's probably helping.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: We need to move on.
Ivan: Yes, we need to.
Sam: We move on, and then maybe since we've talked about computers now,
Sam: we don't do WWDC as one of our topics. Probably a good idea.
Sam: Anyway, first break coming up, and then Ivan will pick a topic,
Sam: and depending how long he goes and what the topic is, maybe that'll be it. Maybe I don't get one.
Sam: I mean, I sort of had a topic. Back after this.
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Sam: Okay, Yvonne, what's our topic?
Ivan: Well, I was going to bunch it up as politics.
Sam: Okay. Politics.
Ivan: All right. So politics.
Sam: I think with that broad a topic, let's just say this is the rest of the damn show. Politics.
Ivan: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So Hunter Biden is not fit to be president.
Sam: He is not. Not. No.
Ivan: Right. That's the conclusion I've got.
Sam: That's the conclusion. hunter biden is
Sam: guilty of sin like yeah you
Sam: know like yeah one of the
Sam: things like that we see here is i have yet to hear and maybe i've just missed
Sam: it but i have yet to hear any democrats really grousing about this outcome nobody
Sam: is now and saying you know So, witch hunt,
Sam: they're going after him, they're blah, blah, blah, he should have been innocent, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: You know, I have heard people say he probably would not have been charged if
Sam: he wasn't the president's son. And that's probably true.
Sam: But at the same time, he's fucking guilty. He did it.
Ivan: Here's the thing. I don't know about not being charged. I mean,
Ivan: but I think that the, listen,
Ivan: most of the people, like with the situation that Hunter had,
Ivan: same as the situation that Hunter,
Ivan: idiot donald j trump had in these situations 90 plus percent of people will
Ivan: plead out right yeah the evidence in both of their cases is pretty clear cut well.
Sam: Before that like like it i think it is important to say that the gun charges
Sam: he had in particular are ones that are very very rarely brought alone as.
Ivan: Opposed to as part of a larger criminal like they've done a bunch.
Sam: Of other stuff and you put the gun charge on top.
Ivan: Well what happened is that hunter was being investigated for a number of things
Ivan: and and has happened sometimes with these investigations is that look they decided
Ivan: to bring the one that they they had the the the strongest case for but but they.
Sam: They were doing guns and taxes.
Ivan: Guns and taxes. But again, he was offered a plea deal.
Sam: Yeah, he was.
Ivan: He rejected the plea deal. And the reason why he rejected the plea deal.
Sam: Remember, first, the judge rejected the plea deal.
Sam: Here's the important part. Both parties had presented a plea deal where they
Sam: asked the judge to be the determiner of whether Hunter was being good afterwards.
Sam: And it started falling apart when the judge was like, no, that's not my job.
Sam: I'm not going to do that. And then she asked him, do you understand what you're pleading to?
Sam: And then there was an issue where there was a misunderstanding where Hunter's
Sam: team thought that if he pled, he'd be off the hook for everything.
Sam: And the prosecution was like, no, you don't want to be off the hook for this.
Sam: We're still going to be investigating other stuff.
Sam: And that's where it all fell apart.
Ivan: Right. And that was the thing.
Ivan: He had specifically asked, hey, if I plead to this, I am basically immune from any other prosecution.
Ivan: And it was very extensive. And I was like, fuck, I've never heard a prosecutor
Ivan: ever agreeing to such a plea deal. I mean, it was just the ask was absurd.
Ivan: I mean, I think that they could probably, you know, do away with a couple of
Ivan: things, but you couldn't ask for that kind of blanket immunity.
Ivan: And so there was just no way away about it.
Sam: Basically, they were still digging into the finances.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And weren't and weren't willing to say we're not going to find anything else.
Sam: Like they were willing to plead him on the guns and the finances they already
Sam: had. but they weren't willing to clear him for more financial stuff that they
Sam: were still digging into.
Ivan: And that, right. Right.
Ivan: Well, I mean, it's, it's very difficult for somebody to get cleared on,
Ivan: you know, basically on things you don't know. Right.
Ivan: You know, and so, and that was the problem.
Ivan: It's just, you know, I, I'm going to pardon you for any crimes you may, you may have committed.
Sam: Right. I mean, basically, but on the facts here, I mean, it was like, yeah,
Sam: you were clearly a drug addict at the time that you signed a document saying
Sam: that you weren't in order to try to get the gun.
Ivan: And look, he may get, listen, the reality is that because of what the charge
Ivan: is, you may get probation for all we know.
Sam: If you add up all the maximum charges, it's a lot of years, but he won't get the maximum.
Sam: It'll be, like you said, his first time offender, blah, blah,
Sam: blah. Just like Trump won't get the maximum.
Ivan: Well, it's not just a first-time offender. It was a single charge.
Sam: Well, three, but yeah.
Ivan: Well, three, but it was like for the purchase of one weapon,
Ivan: there wasn't a crime associated with it that was committed.
Ivan: There's a whole bunch of circumstances that usually, like you mentioned,
Ivan: most people that get this charge are charged with other crimes,
Ivan: usually. They committed a murder or robbery or something like that.
Ivan: That's not the case in this situation.
Ivan: So you will probably get off with a light sentence.
Ivan: He might get some jail time. And the reason he might get the jail time is because
Ivan: one of the things that prosecutors and probation officers are looking for in
Ivan: the report is some kind of,
Ivan: except as a guilt and contrition. Okay. It's what they're looking for.
Ivan: But if you basically are just still at that moment, just acting like,
Ivan: well, I'm not a criminal.
Ivan: I didn't do anything wrong. Well, if you don't think you did anything wrong,
Ivan: then you are going to do it again.
Sam: Right. I mean, here, here are the couple of things with this.
Sam: One is his sentence is probably going going to be on the lighter side but he's
Sam: still got the tax stuff coming up in september and because at that point it
Sam: won't be his first offense anymore it ups the risk of the sentence for the tax
Sam: issues later which he's probably guilty of too by the way.
Ivan: Right well there's a whole bunch of financial things where apparently he wasn't
Ivan: paying you know he had refused to pay Some, some child supports alimony or so
Ivan: a whole bunch of tax stuff,
Ivan: or he hadn't properly filed a report on a whole bunch of money.
Ivan: There's a whole bunch of shit.
Sam: Yeah. Only some of them he's been charged with, but, but in general,
Sam: I mean, I don't know how many times on this show I've uttered the words,
Sam: Hunter Biden is a piece of work.
Sam: Like he, this man has lots of issues and it, from all reports,
Sam: he may have cleaned himself a little bit, cleaned himself up a little bit in
Sam: the last few years, but he has had lots and lots of problems. Yeah.
Sam: You know, finance, financial stuff, sex stuff, the way he's treated the people
Sam: he's been in relationships with the gun thing, the drug things that look,
Sam: this guy has had a lot of issues and nobody denies that, including himself.
Sam: He wrote a whole book about it. Like, you know, So he's admitted all this stuff. And so we'll see.
Sam: Like, I mean, he probably, I would not be surprised if he does some time before
Sam: we're done with this thing. Now, another part of this,
Sam: And the contrast and what brings it into politics is his father's reaction to this.
Sam: You know, first, first of all.
Ivan: What chant?
Sam: Yeah, no, that, that's not what Joe did. No, Joe, Joe's like.
Ivan: No, it wasn't like an all caps on, on, on, on social media. no joe.
Sam: Joe is like you know.
Ivan: You didn't get you get a net get like a run-on
Ivan: endless sentence of like capitalized letters saying you know the the nancy pelosi
Ivan: uh fbi doj witch hunt that has has pursued my son,
Ivan: something like that. No, no, no.
Ivan: George Soros.
Sam: No, no, no. Of course, what Joe, what Joe Biden did, what, what Joe, who.
Ivan: Am I missing? I need, I need, I need more conspiracies. I'm not very good with this conspiracy stuff.
Sam: Yes, yes, yes. What Joe Biden did was first of all.
Ivan: I need my conspiracy AI. Can I find some conspiracy AI?
Sam: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. OK, OK, enough, enough.
Sam: What Joe Biden actually did was, of course, express support for his son,
Sam: say, you know, I love my son. We support him.
Sam: You know, as he goes through his appeal. But oh, by the way,
Sam: we respect the legal process. We respect the verdict.
Sam: As my son decides what to do about appeals, we will support him in that.
Sam: Oh, but by the way, I'm not pardoning him.
Sam: And then when people asked, well, will you commute his sentence?
Sam: He's like, I won't commute his sentence either.
Sam: And because he's basically saying, look, look, I am not going to use my presidential
Sam: powers for the direct benefit of my family.
Sam: Now, I have one thing to say on that.
Sam: I understand him saying that right now, but I have said before and I will predict again.
Sam: Again, if Joe Biden is about to leave the presidency, whether it be in 2025
Sam: or 2020, what would it be? Nine, 2029.
Sam: And on the day he is about to leave the presidency, Hunter Biden is actually in jail.
Sam: I think he'll commute a sentence on that last day of his office,
Sam: despite what he's saying today.
Ivan: But I look, I don't I don't know. No. Now, you mean if he's in jail that but
Ivan: but OK, here's one thing here.
Sam: If Hunter is actually in jail on Joe Biden's last day in office,
Sam: he's going to spring his son. I'm sorry.
Sam: He will. He will say, look, the circumstance.
Ivan: Look, I don't know. I'm going to listen. I love it. Let me just say this,
Ivan: because I've had to deal with the situation where I had my father convicted
Ivan: of a of a federal offense. look i i i gotta be honest unless i thought that i mean you.
Sam: You wouldn't have sprung your dad because you felt like he needed to learn his lesson.
Ivan: Oh fuck yeah you know oh fuck yeah well.
Sam: Because there is there is that certain thing that says that says hey son hey
Sam: son you have to suffer the consequences for your action you you have to learn yeah yeah.
Ivan: You know if you're telling
Ivan: me that it look if maybe when I was leaving
Ivan: office and my father had been in jail maybe two years
Ivan: and maybe there were five more years left in
Ivan: the sentence but then maybe I'm like oh god you know
Ivan: but I don't think that any of these offenses like get that kind of jail time
Ivan: so my father got six months look if I'm getting if I'm leaving office and there
Ivan: is like about a month left I'm
Ivan: not fucking commuting a sentence you're staying there for a month Yeah.
Sam: You're right. I will agree to that caveat.
Sam: If he's only serving a few months and there's only a little bit of it left,
Sam: then yeah, let him serve out his term.
Sam: I mean, hell, what's her name? Martha Stewart served her term.
Sam: He can serve for his term too. right exactly exactly if on the other hand for
Sam: whatever reason he ends up with like decades in jail,
Sam: I think changes the picture, but that's unlikely.
Ivan: I think, I think that changes the picture, but it's unlikely.
Sam: So, yeah. So me, meanwhile, and the contrast is amazing.
Sam: And what is shifting a little bit to the Republicans. One of the things has
Sam: been lots of reporting on is how the Republicans are so disappointed because
Sam: they were hoping he would get off and not be convicted,
Sam: that either be a hung jury or an actual acquittal, and then they could go on
Sam: about how the system was rigged.
Sam: And it was clearly the weaponized DOJ who was going after Trump,
Sam: but it was all set up and Hunter was let go.
Sam: But instead, he's convicted.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And now they've still come on and tried to say, well, yeah, they convicted him
Sam: of this thing, But it's all just a smokescreen to distract from the real bad things.
Sam: The Hunter Biden, the Biden crime family, Biden crime family is is responsible
Sam: for. And this is the tip of the iceberg.
Sam: And they're using it as a distraction for all the really bad stuff.
Ivan: I mean, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, I know that the Biden crime family has done so many things.
Ivan: I think I heard that there is presidential M&Ms. I think they're involved in
Ivan: the trafficking of the presidential M&Ms.
Ivan: I heard they taste good, too.
Sam: You know, I've heard Godfather 4 is going to be about the Biden crime family.
Ivan: Oh, that's what it is. Oh, wow. Well, that's Joe. Well, maybe that's the next
Ivan: career Joe Biden will have.
Ivan: He'll have an onscreen career. Going to go make some movies.
Sam: Yeah, I don't know.
Sam: So and this is this is the thing. Like, I can't like if they were going after Don Jr. junior or Eric.
Sam: I, I don't feel like the Republicans would be reacting in the same way the Democrats are.
Ivan: Oh, are you kidding? Oh my God.
Sam: The Democrats almost universally. They're like, yeah, Hunter did some bad shit.
Sam: He deserves what he gets.
Sam: The Republicans would be like, wait, Sean, they're after him for no reason.
Sam: He's a per being persecuted, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: What, which was the Clinton who Clinton had, Who did he have?
Ivan: A brother? Which one was the one that was...
Sam: Clinton had a brother.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did Clinton have... Yeah, I can't remember.
Ivan: I thought Clinton had a problem with one of his siblings or something.
Sam: I keep thinking Billy Carter, but that's a different presidential brother.
Ivan: No, that's a... Yeah, that's a... Yeah, right.
Sam: As we all look up, Bill Clinton's brother. brother, Roger Clinton.
Ivan: Roger gets two days in jail, three years of probation. There you go. So, yeah.
Ivan: So Roger went to jail when President Clinton was in office.
Ivan: So there you go. Look at that. I don't remember anybody going and saying it
Ivan: was a witch either back then.
Sam: It was reckless driving, DUI.
Ivan: Well, was it a witch hunt? Did anybody call? I don't remember anybody did.
Ivan: No, whereas, you know, Madison, this guy, Cawthorn, the guy that the Republicans
Ivan: like expelled or he lost the primary Madison Cawthorn.
Ivan: Yeah, because he was like saying that they all had cocaine, like prostitute parties in Washington.
Ivan: Okay. So the other day he got, he got into a drunken driving car accident and
Ivan: crashed into a police car.
Ivan: And somehow a couple of
Ivan: months later some police department like i don't
Ivan: know one of these like two-bit police departments was giving
Ivan: him some award you know like a couple of months after he had crashed into while
Ivan: driving drunk in a car that was not fitted with the devices that usually are
Ivan: required for somebody with his you know because he doesn't have legs if i remember
Ivan: he He can't hit the pedals. He need the hand assist.
Ivan: It didn't have that shit. He was driving a fucking Mercedes without that shit
Ivan: and crashed into a fucking cop car drunk.
Ivan: And he gets some kind of fucking award from some two bit bullies department.
Sam: So going back to Roger Clinton for a second, because I had not remembered all
Sam: of these details and talking crime families.
Sam: One of the things that Roger Clinton did was accept a $50,000 Rolex from the Gambino crime family.
Ivan: Holy shit. Really?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Fuck.
Sam: Yeah. And Bill Clinton did end up pardoning Roger Clinton for a cocaine possession.
Ivan: Session on his last day at office on.
Sam: His last day of office.
Sam: I think it was his last day of office. I don't actually see that it's his last
Sam: day of office, but it was probably right before he left.
Sam: For like, yeah, for a cocaine charge.
Sam: Yeah. And actually, I guess the time in jail was probably the cocaine charge, not the DUI.
Sam: I don't know for sure. But yeah, it would make sense if it was.
Sam: It says he spent time in federal prison after being convicted of a sting operation
Sam: for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Sam: Cane so like presidents have had lots of
Sam: family who aren't exactly sinners you know and going back a long long time probably
Sam: to the beginning of the republic but having a messed up family is not the same
Sam: as you being messed up yourself i'm sorry correct yeah yeah it's like Like,
Sam: and yeah.
Sam: So meanwhile, Donald Trump is going to Capitol Hill asking what's his name?
Sam: Johnson to figure out how to undo his conviction.
Sam: It's like, dude, I don't think the house of representatives has that power.
Ivan: You know, apparently like.
Sam: Uh, apparently Johnson, apparently Johnson's answer, by the way, was he'd work on it.
Ivan: But well that's that's a good answer i think it's a good answer i mean if you're
Ivan: in that that spot yeah it's a good answer i i i did see you know who the heck
Ivan: was it my my mind's like going,
Ivan: what was i talking no you're talking about johnson you're talking about congress
Ivan: you know trump yeah you know so trump went to to to oh yeah he went to he also had a meeting with
Ivan: his CEO Business Roundtable also when he was in Washington.
Sam: Ah, right, yes.
Ivan: Okay. Basically, anybody who actually spoke about what happened at the Business
Ivan: Roundtable basically said that he was an incoherent mess, that he didn't know
Ivan: anything about what, yeah.
Sam: Yes. And by the way, that
Sam: was also the reports from the
Sam: people who gave off-the-record comments about his
Sam: meeting on Capitol Hill with congressional leaders as
Sam: well yeah uh when he met the republican caucus now the on the record folks were
Sam: all like it was a great speech it was uplifting we're all unified but the people
Sam: who spoke off the record were making comments like it was listening to it was
Sam: like listening to your drunk uncle yeah.
Ivan: Oh yeah that was the one that was listening to the drunk uncle that's right yes,
Ivan: Yeah. And he doesn't even drink. Well, thank God Donald Trump doesn't drink.
Ivan: Okay. Real for God's sake. All right. Yes. Can you imagine this guy drunk?
Ivan: Okay. What the hell he would do? Oh my God. You know, thank God he doesn't drink. Good Lord.
Sam: I mean, but yeah, the, both the CEOs and the congressional people,
Sam: the reports are he's He's having a hard time keeping a train of thought, being coherent.
Sam: And look, we've said Donald Trump has had these kinds of issues a long time,
Sam: but from all reports, it's getting worse.
Ivan: He's got a lot worse.
Sam: And some of it is out in public, too.
Sam: I mean, we had this whole thing with his sort of sharks versus batteries versus
Sam: electric boats rambling statement this time around.
Donald: Well, I went to a boat company in South Carolina. The boat, I said, how is it?
Donald: He said, it's a problem, sir. They want us to make all electric boats.
Donald: So I said, let me ask you a question. And he said, nobody ever asked this question.
Donald: And it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT.
Donald: Very smart. He goes, I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight
Donald: and you're in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the
Donald: battery is now underwater and there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there?
Donald: By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark.
Donald: I watched some guys justifying it today. Well, they weren't really that angry.
Donald: They bit off the young lady's leg because of the fact that they were not hungry,
Donald: but they misunderstood who she was. These people are great.
Donald: He said, there's no problem with sharks. They just didn't really understand
Donald: a young woman swimming now.
Donald: It really got decimated. And other people, too. A lot of shark addicts.
Donald: So I said, so there's a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here. Do I get electrocuted?
Donald: If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery. The boat is sinking.
Donald: Do I stay on top of the boat? and get electrocuted?
Donald: Or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell
Donald: you, he didn't know the answer. He said, you know, nobody's ever asked me that question.
Donald: I said, I think it's a good question. I think there's a lot of electric current
Donald: coming through that water. But you know what I'd do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted?
Donald: I'll take electrocution every single time.
Donald: I'm not getting near the shark. So we're going to end that. We're.
Ivan: So somebody made this great AI clip of the scene in Jaws where the captain is
Ivan: talking to Roy Scheider on one side and Richard Dreyfuss on the other side talking about,
Ivan: you know, what they do to catch a shark or whatever.
Ivan: And there's this ominous music in the background and you hear the ship rolling
Ivan: and creaking and whatnot.
Ivan: And what they did is that they got the voice of the captain,
Ivan: okay, to basically say the speech that Trump, well, the speech,
Ivan: the incoherent mess that Trump said about boats, batteries, sharks. And it's great.
Ivan: I mean, it works in that environment. But I'm like, holy shit.
Ivan: I mean, what the fuck? It coherent, complete bluster mess that was.
Ivan: I mean, I don't understand who the hell. Listen, I not even for a candidate I really like.
Ivan: Do I go to a rally? And this is even for candidates that say inspiring shit,
Ivan: you know, smart shit, shit that you want to cheer for when they're saying it.
Ivan: I mean, I, you know, I mean, I don't go to those.
Ivan: I mean, who the hell stands out there in the heat to hear this mess of words
Ivan: that come out that just are completely incoherent and go,
Ivan: yay, yay, he's my guy, yay.
Ivan: I'm like, yeah, what sharks batteries and boats sinking MIT.
Sam: I, I have not actually listened to a whole Trump speech and to end in a long, long time.
Sam: And apparently it's getting hard to find them.
Sam: If you don't show up in person, nobody's covering them live.
Sam: Not even Fox is covering them at live. Right. And people are speculating.
Sam: Part of that is because it's not, yeah, you hear these little segments about
Sam: like the shark and the boat and stuff that's like a couple minutes long.
Sam: But apparently he will ramble on for two hours and it's all like this or almost all like this.
Sam: It's just a rambling stream of conscious,
Sam: a lot of repeated themes about how he's persecuted and how the 2020 election
Sam: was stolen from him and Hillary Clinton and Russia,
Sam: Russia, Russia, and just a scrambled mess of all kinds of things. that's hard to follow.
Sam: And, you know, even the people who show up to these, like they're,
Sam: they're often leaving before the end and all kinds of stuff. And, and,
Sam: And so there's been a start of a debate of like with news folks,
Sam: you know, should, should we actually start showing more of this again?
Sam: Cause people need to see how incoherent he is.
Ivan: I mean, there are certain people that are sharing clips, you know,
Ivan: out there from every, from every event.
Ivan: Okay. I mean, that, that is happening, but.
Sam: Well, and the thing is, the thing is you wonder you, the thing,
Sam: the thing is though, if you wonder.
Sam: If you only show the little clips here and there, you wonder,
Sam: is this selective editing? Is it actually fine? Because there have been some.
Ivan: Instances- But is it like OAN or Newsmax or any of those carrying these things?
Sam: No, not even them.
Ivan: Wow.
Sam: But here's the thing. There were examples even today of this coming the other
Sam: way, where one of those that you You just mentioned,
Sam: I don't know which one had some
Sam: clips of Biden at an event that showed him sort of at the end of event,
Sam: sort of wandering off aimlessly in some direction.
Sam: And they're like, where's he going? What's he doing?
Ivan: Oh, he was, that was the New York post. He wasn't, he went to say hi to some paratroopers.
Sam: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. He was, they cropped it in such a way that you couldn't
Sam: tell where he was going, but But he was actually going somewhere with a purpose
Sam: to talk to a person who was over there.
Sam: There was another example where they edited something in such a way that made
Sam: it look like he was trying to sit down somewhere where there wasn't a chair.
Sam: That also was deceptively edited. That wasn't what happened. Blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Well, there was another one that they were like complaining that apparently,
Ivan: I can't remember one event, Biden was like standing there, whatever.
Ivan: And I guess like a whole bunch of us, he can't dance worth a damn.
Ivan: And so everybody else was dancing and you know he was there smiling or whatever
Ivan: he was dancing and people are like look at this guy look at this whatever and
Ivan: i'm like what he's just okay he's can't dance okay next week.
Sam: They're gonna put out like him doing a tiktok dance or something but.
Ivan: You know but.
Sam: Here here's the thing the the point is that everybody at this point has to be
Sam: wary of of deceptive editing right
Sam: like okay Trump looked really stupid in that 30 minute 30 second clip.
Ivan: Well and then you know add by I've got I've
Ivan: got now I'm gonna make this curmudgeons a curmudgeon corner
Ivan: AI and think about all the fucking you know because I've already seen from other
Ivan: places all this deceptive shit that is using AI generated content to just spew
Ivan: horse shit all over the place I'm not talking about just here in this election just everywhere.
Sam: Oh, yeah, this is going to be a huge problem because it's now really,
Sam: really easy to do the deep fakes of someone talking that is pretty convincing.
Sam: We're like, if you're paying close attention, you can tell still.
Sam: But if you're just casually looking, it looks like the real thing.
Ivan: You mean to tell me Donald Trump wasn't sitting on a 50-year-old boat talking
Ivan: to Roy Scheider? Oh, man.
Sam: Yeah. Well, the thing is, even without that, like some of the examples I just
Sam: gave weren't even fancy AI stuff.
Sam: They were just like crop the video.
Sam: So you can't see what's over to the side. Like this is simple shit that could
Sam: have been done for years.
Sam: But the point is that everybody needs to be on their guard.
Sam: So if you hear like the 32nd soundbite of Trump sounding stupid,
Sam: stupid okay maybe it was out of context now from the reports i'm hearing it's
Sam: not out of context he very much is rambling and incoherent but you shouldn't
Sam: trust that because you don't know like maybe they're really yeah yeah.
Ivan: Right no i agree.
Sam: You know you know so you gotta you you gotta you know what what is it domiata
Sam: proviate or whatever trust but verify i just mangled the russian version,
Sam: but you know, it's yeah. Like,
Sam: And look, we're having this battle where the Republicans are all trying to make
Sam: out like Biden is the old senile guy, but it's Donnie.
Sam: Come on. He's not looking great.
Ivan: So let's be clear. Biden is old.
Sam: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Ivan: Biden's old.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: But, you know, I saw him the other day also doing a press conference with Zelensky,
Ivan: asking certain questions, going through stuff or whatever.
Ivan: Ever i've seen him do a number of interviews you know
Ivan: this year you know he's he's done
Ivan: several interviews with certain people you know
Ivan: he has a you know somebody was complaining you know
Ivan: they did this wall street shooter article that he apparently got some facts
Ivan: confused in certain times and whatnot and i'm just like fuck i get i mean jesus
Ivan: christ over here we're fucking like fishing through fucking google to get our
Ivan: facts right i mean what the hell man so yeah Yeah, maybe he got a fax wrong here and there,
Ivan: but you know, he's not, he's not, you know, he's not.
Sam: I bet Joe Biden would have known off the top of his head, Bill Clinton's brother's name.
Ivan: Probably. Yes. I bet you he would have. And I, and I, and I'm going to bet that
Ivan: fucking Joe Biden also wouldn't have told me to stick a UV light up my ass and
Ivan: check myself with bleach.
Sam: Well, see, this is the thing. And we've talked about it, about Donald Trump
Sam: before. I mean, it's not like he was this brilliant mind in 2016.
Ivan: No! Yeah.
Sam: You know, I think he is getting worse, but it's not. He was incoherent,
Sam: you know, eight years ago.
Sam: You know, he had his issues. And he's all the psychological issues as well, right?
Ivan: You know, I was seeing also, like, you know, talk about his psychological issues
Ivan: that, you know, Apparently, Dr.
Ivan: Fauci is having a book published right now, in part talking about him being...
Ivan: The advisor to presidents in the past and you
Ivan: know he dedicated a significant section to you know
Ivan: to mr you know i don't even mr trump yes where basically in the chapter entitled
Ivan: he loves me he loves me not okay dr fauci described how mr trump repeatedly
Ivan: told him he loved them while at the same time excoriating him with tirades flecked
Ivan: with four-letter words okay OK,
Ivan: the president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him.
Ivan: You know, what the fuck was he doing? He said he loved me. The country was in
Ivan: trouble and I was making it worse.
Ivan: He added the stock market went
Ivan: up only 600 points in response to the positive phase one vaccine news.
Ivan: And it should have gone up 1000 points.
Ivan: And so I cost the country one trillion dollars. The president added an expletive.
Ivan: I'm like, what the fuck? Fuck. I mean, this is, you know. Yeah.
Ivan: So, yeah.
Sam: Well, we're less than a week and a half, believe it or not, from the presidential
Sam: debate, the first presidential debate.
Sam: So we're going to get to see Trump and Biden head to head and see what it's
Sam: like. It'll be interesting.
Ivan: Okay. I got it. Okay. 50 bucks says that Trump backs out.
Sam: I don't know. i i think his ego once will make him do it i.
Ivan: Mean he yeah listen he might say he's gonna do it but look what about look like
Ivan: did he testify right look at his yeah but look at his testimony in his trial
Ivan: right he said he was gonna yo yeah yeah i'm gonna go defend myself and then
Ivan: what do you say well they didn't let me and.
Sam: And look you know that debate could go either way They could both come out looking
Sam: bad. You know, who knows?
Sam: You know, if I had to bet, I think Joe Biden will come out ahead just in terms of being.
Sam: Well, it depends on what you're looking for. Right. And this is the fundamental
Sam: problem with our politics.
Sam: If you're looking for someone who seems like they know what they're doing and
Sam: they're competent, Joe Biden will come out way ahead.
Sam: If you're looking for somebody who's going to come out sort of angry and passionate
Sam: and And like they're sticking it to the other guy. Trump's going to win that one.
Ivan: I don't know about that either. Look, Trump's come out looking,
Ivan: just sounding like an incoherent mess every time we've seen him lately talking in public.
Ivan: And so, I mean, and so I don't know, you know.
Ivan: And actually, Biden did a pretty good job in the state of the union of coming
Ivan: out and pounding the table forcefully.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Ivan: So I don't know. I mean, it could be, you know, I mean, my odds are is that,
Ivan: you know, listen, every other debate that he participated has participated has been a disaster.
Ivan: Okay. For Trump, it's been bad or, you know, none of them have been good.
Ivan: I mean, Hillary completely destroyed him, okay, in the debates, okay?
Sam: Well, and that's a good example, right? She completely destroyed him in the
Sam: debates, but did it end up affecting anything in the course of that election? No.
Ivan: Well, no, because we had Comey.
Sam: Right. But, yeah, I mean, the usual thing with debates, and we're going to have
Sam: one more show before the debate, so we should maybe save this for next week.
Sam: But like the usual thing with debates
Sam: is that like there's no
Sam: lasting effect like even if it has an immediate
Sam: pop like one way or the other in the
Sam: days immediately after there's no lasting effect with the with the exception
Sam: of every once in a while somebody has a complete meltdown or a bad thing like
Sam: the you know you're no jack kennedy moment kind of thing you know okay.
Ivan: Let me let me Well, unless what the dream I had two days ago happens.
Sam: Okay. What was your dream, Yvonne?
Ivan: Which is, holy shit, I forgot that. I haven't mentioned this.
Ivan: I had a fucking dream and it was so vivid. I have to check my phone,
Ivan: make sure that this wasn't real.
Ivan: That fucking Trump had a heart attack while at the podium on stage.
Ivan: Okay. And they were trying to resuscitate him on the fucking,
Ivan: on the fucking stage. Okay.
Ivan: And, you know, and then they took, and then they took him away and I didn't
Ivan: see what happened during the dream.
Ivan: And then I woke up and I'm like, wait, what the fuck? Wait.
Sam: Wait, was Joe Biden giving Donald Trump mouth-to-mouth?
Ivan: No, no. Some random people were going and doing chest compressions on him,
Ivan: whatever is what I'm looking at.
Ivan: And I was like, I have to admit, I can't believe because I'm not one that really
Ivan: is taking pleasure from anybody dying.
Ivan: But I have to say, I was kind of excited if that was true.
Sam: And i've.
Ivan: Never felt like that about anybody in my life.
Sam: Well i will say if that ends up happening yvonne the secret service will be
Sam: coming to ask you whether you poisoned him so it.
Ivan: Was just a dream it.
Sam: Was just a dream just a dream no i mean so yeah debate's coming up in a couple
Sam: weeks week and a half something like that what what other politics i think we
Sam: got a few other things. We've got Supreme Courts going on.
Sam: We've got Garland being held in contempt.
Sam: We've got UK, EU, and France election stuff.
Sam: We've got all kinds of stuff.
Ivan: I don't know. SCOTUS said one thing one way, and then,
Ivan: they did the,
Ivan: abortion medication stuff they basically unanimously batted away the challenge.
Sam: Well in it's very important how they did it they said that the particular people
Sam: who brought the case which were doctors did not have standing in this case uh
Sam: it's usually what they do.
Ivan: With these they they don't.
Sam: Right but they they they there are two things about that are that are important One,
Sam: the way they did it also potentially makes it harder for other doctors to get
Sam: standing in cases on all kinds of other issues or even on the abortion issue
Sam: in the opposite direction, which may have negative consequences. is.
Sam: Also, the way they did it very specifically leaves it open that the same issue
Sam: can be brought back up with a different set of people almost right away because
Sam: they didn't get to the main issue. They only stopped at standing.
Sam: And in fact, in the other one, the bump stock decision, they did something similar.
Sam: The problem was with the way it was done administratively, not with the general concept.
Sam: So if they didn't touch the second amendment implications, for instance,
Sam: it was just the ATF can't do this, it would have to be a law.
Sam: And of course, that ends up kicking it because there's no way that would get passed as a law anyway.
Sam: Sorry for jumping from the one to the other, but back to you, Yvonne.
Ivan: No, but I guess, listen, but here's
Ivan: the one thing that's happened with most of these cases when when they've been
Ivan: you know when they get to the when they get to scotus and they get dismissed
Ivan: with you know in that way man i don't see them coming back again very very quickly well very quickly is.
Sam: Important the cycle is usually two to three years so like they'll be back but
Sam: it'll be a few years it's not going to be like next No.
Ivan: It's not. No, it usually it gets they kick the can down the road several years.
Ivan: Okay. All right. So and that's if it comes back. In some cases,
Ivan: I've seen that they just don't come back.
Ivan: I mean, like, I don't expect, for example, that that bump stock ruling that
Ivan: somebody is going to come back and try to, you know, argue something about that again.
Sam: Well, the thing is, since they tossed out that rule for it to come back, either the,
Sam: administration would have to try to do it again administratively without a law,
Sam: in which case it would probably come back relatively soon, or Congress would
Sam: actually have to pass a law about it, which, come on, with our existing Congress,
Sam: just isn't going to happen.
Ivan: Right. Right.
Ivan: So I just, you know, so basically, whatever, this has been basically kicked
Ivan: down the road a few years, like right now, at best case.
Ivan: So worst case, everybody's going to say, forget it. We're not going to even try again.
Ivan: But but, you know, like right now with all of these, they keep like I mean,
Ivan: there's so many of these files.
Ivan: But you know that there is one thing that happened recently,
Ivan: that there was a significant change related to filings of these cases, okay?
Ivan: Where in the last, you know, several months,
Ivan: a change was made in federal court where there had been a number of people seeking
Ivan: to challenge, you know, all sorts of things, okay?
Ivan: OK, especially conservatives that had been shopping to go to this court specifically
Ivan: in Texas that was seen as very favorable to to getting all these challenges, you know, up.
Ivan: They were there every time that they brought something up to that court,
Ivan: that case start, you know, got traction and and and and and started going up
Ivan: the chain. OK, as some sort of challenge.
Ivan: But but the federal courts made a change that you can't do this kind of shopping anymore.
Ivan: OK, in order to limit this shit.
Ivan: OK, and I saw that that quietly happened recently, but nobody paid a lot of
Ivan: attention to it for whatever reason.
Ivan: And I read it. Let me see.
Ivan: When the hell did it come out? It happened over the last few weeks and I didn't share it.
Ivan: Let me see. Let me try to find it. Okay, here we go. Okay, here it is. This was in March, okay?
Ivan: The Judicial Conference of the United States published a new policy last Tuesday,
Ivan: March 12th, to curb judge shopping in federal courts.
Ivan: In essence, it directed district courts to randomly assign cases on a district-level
Ivan: basis when the plaintiffs seek an actual injunction.
Ivan: Today, a few districts adopt internal divisions that have the result of allowing
Ivan: plaintiffs to choose the judge who will hear their cases.
Ivan: For example, the Northern District of Texas, which is the one I was talking
Ivan: about, assigns all cases filed Amarillo division to Judge Matthew Cash or whatever his name is.
Ivan: Some have received cash or whatever benches more friendly to their goals and
Ivan: have thus chose to file cases only in Amarillo.
Ivan: In 2023, Judge whatever issued a national injunction that reversed the decades
Ivan: long approval of Mipfer Stone, the most used abortion medication in the country.
Ivan: Country, thus nearly prohibiting abortion access nationwide.
Ivan: Even those cases were illegal.
Ivan: So it goes back to this case. So the problem is that right now they changed the rule.
Ivan: So this, this is, they, they have been funneling everything through this fucking judge.
Ivan: Okay. That, right. It's just doing this sort of bullshit and starting the,
Ivan: you know, steering up this shit in these cases.
Ivan: And basically, you know what they said? No. No.
Ivan: No more of this. And that had been the source of most of these cases.
Ivan: And I do think that going forward, thank God, and I don't know why more people
Ivan: didn't pay attention because this is a massive change.
Ivan: This cuts down on a lot of this shit that's been going on from the right.
Ivan: Right so and you know because commentators were quick were quick to tie this
Ivan: new policy to the flood of national chasm mayor or whatever like.
Sam: Injunctions okay as.
Ivan: It turns out so.
Sam: We are so good at pronouncing names and even remembering names like one of the
Sam: things i noticed when i listened to old episodes is how often we're like actively
Sam: avoiding saying the name we'll be like Like the prime minister of country X,
Sam: you know, without ever mentioning the name.
Ivan: Oh, well, the prize bidder of, you know, well, whatever the fuck,
Ivan: you know, just like, you know, or, you know.
Sam: Oh, that guy, you know, that guy. Yeah. That one, that one. Yeah.
Ivan: The guy, the guy. Yeah. Yeah. That guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ivan: That's right. You know? Yeah. I don't know.
Ivan: Speaking of political wipeouts. Okay. All right. Since we didn't even touch
Ivan: this and it's not on the list.
Sam: Wait, wait. before before you do that like just to finish off scotus just to mention.
Ivan: Oh yeah yeah the other coast both.
Sam: No not not the other case like both alito and thomas have been in the news again.
Ivan: Oh god fuck.
Sam: You know thomas for more like more bribes basically.
Ivan: Money that more bribes i mean basically because he takes them you know there
Ivan: was a graph that showed how much money thomas you know takes and everybody the
Ivan: fuck else and basically it's just I mean I,
Ivan: You know, Clarence Thomas just has a fucking deposit box in front of his house.
Sam: Alito was number two, by the way.
Ivan: Alito was number two. Yeah.
Sam: Far below Thomas, but he was number two.
Ivan: Oh, but, but, but far below Thomas, but he was number two.
Sam: Yeah. And, but yeah, that, so Thomas was revealed to have even more of these
Sam: gifts from generous, wealthy friends.
Sam: Like I shouldn't say bribes. Come on. you know who amongst us doesn't regularly
Sam: get you know private jet trips from your favorite billionaire friends you know
Sam: i i do that every weekend every weekend yeah so,
Sam: and they pay for my kids private school yes you know it it happens all this kind of stuff.
Ivan: Country club country club memberships i know you have several country club memberships.
Sam: Yeah because you know i'm all about the golf yeah.
Ivan: You know i i know you love that golf.
Sam: I mean.
Ivan: Oof, let me tell you. You and that golf. My God.
Sam: Anyway, and then Alito and his wife were both caught on on secret recordings
Sam: where there's some progressive activist who infiltrates. This is apparently her thing.
Sam: She infiltrates conservative events, pretending to be a religious conservative
Sam: and trying to get people to say things that would be embarrassing if made public.
Sam: And she succeeded in this on both Alito and Alito's wife.
Sam: With Alito saying things about how it was important that, first of all,
Sam: the divisions in this country would not be solved by compromise.
Sam: Somebody's going to win.
Sam: And by the way, which I agree with.
Ivan: Alito's comments were not that bad. Okay. All right. I mean, he.
Sam: Also said something about returning the country to godliness,
Sam: et cetera. There were comments that were sort of like.
Ivan: But his comments were not, they were like a little bit, you know,
Ivan: I wasn't comfortable with, but they weren't that bad.
Sam: They were like the things you wouldn't expect. You would expect even if a judge
Sam: believed these things, they wouldn't say them publicly.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: But also you'd want a judge to be more cognizant of their role,
Sam: that even if they, for instance, have deeply held religious beliefs,
Sam: that they wouldn't be implying that the country should- But we.
Ivan: Knew this about this guy. Okay. All right. Right.
Sam: So we know this about this guy. But also it was in contrast.
Sam: She got Roberts on tape with the same question. And Roberts responded exactly
Sam: the way you would want somebody in his position.
Ivan: Yes. Yes. That that. Exactly.
Sam: He basically said, well, you know, I shouldn't be the arbiter of morals.
Sam: I'm the arbiter of the laws.
Sam: That's up for Congress and the president and the political elected people.
Ivan: Roberts, I mean, you know what? I heard Roberts and Roberts made me feel,
Ivan: I mean, I felt better after hearing Roberts. Can I be honest?
Sam: Yeah. I mean, Robert said, no, I don't think it is a Christian country.
Sam: My Muslim and Jewish friends would not think so.
Sam: And, you know, so Roberts seemed very reasonable.
Sam: Alito less so. And Alito's wife just seems like a nut job.
Ivan: Oh, my God. Alito's wife is a psychopath. Now, I will say that after seeing
Ivan: that, I do totally believe what Alito said about it was his wife that did the
Ivan: whole flag thing. And not just that.
Ivan: She actually flat out said, hey, you can't control me. I do whatever the hell I want.
Ivan: I'm like, I'm like, OK, so Alito. OK. She did say.
Sam: That right now she is refraining from additional flag things.
Ivan: Because he asked her respect for him because he asked her. He asked her not to. So, yeah. So, yes.
Sam: Now, and to be clear, the asking her not to was after all this blew up.
Sam: She was specifically saying she wanted to put up a flag to counter the pride
Sam: flags that she could see, like to to basically say shame on you for the pride flag.
Sam: But she is refraining from doing that at his request.
Ivan: Yeah so yeah.
Sam: Okay you you were going to talk about election wipeouts.
Ivan: Speaking about political wipeouts i don't know if you've seen well i i'm pretty
Ivan: sure you know even if these polls are off by some it seems like the tories are
Ivan: going to get completely destroyed at this election that's soon not called,
Ivan: I mean, they're like.
Sam: Even if they have a surprise on an upside, they're still going to lose it.
Ivan: But, but it's not just, it's not just a loss. I mean, they're,
Ivan: they're, they're getting annihilated.
Sam: Oh, I know that it looks like they're, they're going to have like,
Sam: they're going to have like almost nothing left.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You know, at least that's what it looks like. We will wait and see what the actual results are.
Ivan: But I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, I, I, I, I am jealous.
Ivan: Okay. to a certain degree because it's what i wish would happen to the republicans over here.
Sam: Yeah like i like i
Sam: i i keep thinking i i've said for
Sam: years now i look forward to the day when the
Sam: republican party dies out and american politics becomes
Sam: essentially a battle between the obama
Sam: and hillary wings of the democratic party yeah no
Sam: or the hillary and and bernie wings the
Sam: hillary and bernie wings is better right you know i i that yes that's where
Sam: i hope things will go but no we we are clearly nowhere near that yeah no we
Sam: we we we are we there's a significant chance that donald trump will be president again so but.
Ivan: But it's like i mean man But the Tories are going to get absolutely destroyed,
Ivan: you know, and it's their own doing.
Ivan: I mean, they basically got Brexit done.
Ivan: Yeah, they basically got Brexit done.
Ivan: They did it. And now basically their party is going to get almost wiped off
Ivan: the map because the reality has finally, finally settled in with everybody.
Ivan: Holy shit. What a bad, bad, bad, bad thing we got. We bought.
Ivan: It's so bad.
Ivan: So, so yeah, I mean.
Sam: You know, it's talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: No, it's like, yeah. And, and like anybody who knew anybody who knew anything
Sam: predicted it too. Like, yes, yes.
Sam: And just like, well, and meanwhile, we've got what, what, what was Donald Trump's
Sam: latest, like get rid of the income tax and replace it all with 85% tariffs on everything imported.
Ivan: He basically took the Herbert Hoover economic plan. I mean, ask her,
Ivan: check out how that worked out and.
Sam: How well did that work out?
Ivan: Yeah, exactly. I'm like, it's this guy. I mean, fuck.
Ivan: I mean, this guy, you know, his economists are just dumb. What the fuck is wrong with all of them?
Ivan: Well, of course he didn't use economists. What am I, what am I thinking?
Ivan: He came up with this, but did you see the European parliament elections that
Ivan: did get a, a rightward shift in, in the European parliament.
Sam: But, but the centrist party still still retained control
Sam: but the right wing grew a lot the right
Sam: wing and it was it was it did very significantly
Sam: country to country overall europe-wide the right wing grew a lot and specifically
Sam: in germany and france uh the right wing did really well and so that also resulted
Sam: in france calling a special election for their parliament in like in like two weeks i.
Ivan: Don't know why he called it because he's going to get crushed.
Sam: Well, I think part of it, like I was seeing somebody say,
Sam: there was a previous iteration somewhere,
Sam: where basically this kind of thing happened and they let it linger and sort
Sam: of it was held over the government for a year, year and a half, something like that.
Sam: And the whole time it was just sort of shenanigans that didn't go well.
Sam: So it's sort of pulling the Band-Aid off. And I guess his hope is like he's
Sam: saying like, look, this is your chance right now.
Sam: Repudiate this stuff, nip it in the bud so that like if Macron actually wins.
Ivan: It did work one time before. So, OK, so.
Sam: Yeah, like if Macron actually wins at this point, then he's sort of neutered
Sam: the right wing attack for several years.
Sam: Now, of course, if he loses, whole other story.
Sam: But, you know, that's the gamble, I guess.
Sam: And the thing is, this is also like, you know, the whole European thing of like,
Sam: I mean, what, in the UK, the election was called, what, a month and a half in advance?
Sam: I mean, in France, they didn't even bother with that. It was like three weeks, two and a half.
Sam: Like, I guess the election is actually in two rounds. But the first one's on June 30th.
Sam: Which is like, we're talking two and a half weeks.
Sam: Like, our freaking election cycles are more than four years.
Sam: People start running for the next one before the next one even happens.
Ivan: I kind of wish for this election cycle. Can I be honest? I mean,
Ivan: I really, you know, I mean, this would not be so bad.
Ivan: I do like the idea of like, you know, well, Mexico has six-year election terms for president.
Ivan: President and so and but it's only a one term okay for for the presidency i
Ivan: actually kind of like that one to be honest because they can't run again oh.
Sam: And mexico had a recent election as well new new female president etc.
Ivan: Yeah there's a new female president that won there's a lot of we'll get she's not.
Sam: Sworn in yet but she won the election.
Ivan: Yeah it's it's yeah it's like six months you know the the they have a super
Ivan: long like uh you know from election
Ivan: to inauguration it's like fricking six months takes forever. Yeah.
Sam: And you think ours is long at three months, you know?
Ivan: Yeah, I know. Yeah, no, no, there there's, yeah, it's like, yeah,
Ivan: she's not getting into office until end or.
Sam: Two and a half, whatever it is.
Ivan: So, but, but it's like with their case, I've heard her speak many times.
Ivan: She's very bright and very articulate.
Ivan: What a lot of her detractors are, are saying is that she's a puppet to the current president who is.
Ivan: Basically sounds a lot like Trump. I mean, in terms of his coherence. AMLO.
Ivan: Yeah, who just says a lot of incoherent shit and does a whole bunch of dumb shit.
Ivan: His economy has improved. And I will say that the one thing that he has done
Ivan: versus other Latin American presidents, it's give a lot more money to the poor.
Ivan: And, you know, they have a lot of income inequality. And Mexico has been doing
Ivan: well, so he's giving a lot more money to the poor.
Ivan: I don't begrudge him for that. I think that's great. But he also did stuff like
Ivan: he killed a project that was halfway done to build a new airport for Mexico
Ivan: City after several billion dollars had been spent.
Ivan: And to basically build another airport that he decided in a location that he chose of his own.
Ivan: The other airport had a long-term plan designed by all this shit that you do
Ivan: in order to really build something that was well thought out.
Ivan: The new airport that he built, basically nobody's flying to it.
Ivan: And so the overcapacity problem at the existing airport in Mexico City is basically the same.
Ivan: And so basically he squandered like $7 billion and did nothing.
Ivan: And oh, by the way, the other airport, some people are thinking,
Ivan: oh, well, maybe, you know, when he gets out of office, we'll continue to construction.
Ivan: No, he went and he flooded the construction site because it was on a dry lake bed.
Ivan: He decided to flood it. And so therefore you can't even salvage the several billion dollars spent.
Sam: Nice. So do you think she's actually a puppet of his? Or is she going to be
Sam: actually her own independent person?
Sam: Because she seems like she's well-educated. She was a scientist, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Man, I got to tell you something. I, yeah, I, you know what?
Ivan: I'm, you know, my Mexican friends say, no, no, no. She's just a puppet.
Ivan: And I know that they're very, you know, close and passionate about this, closer than I am.
Ivan: But I'm looking at this more from the objective political-like situation.
Ivan: And one of the things that I've seen when this shit happens,
Ivan: especially when that guy can't come back to office, right?
Ivan: Right. And I'm just like, you know what? But listen, this guy may,
Ivan: I've seen this before with candidates of other parties and other places, okay?
Ivan: Man, when that person goes in, it's like, listen, you're not the fucking president.
Ivan: Fuck you. I'm doing what the hell I want.
Ivan: So I really, you know, I'm waiting and seeing because from what I hear her and
Ivan: what she says she wants to do and what she wants to do, tell you what,
Ivan: I, you know, it doesn't to sound bad but i understand the fear that people have
Ivan: so because of the current president
Ivan: but we'll know pretty soon enough how that's going to turn out okay.
Sam: So anyway all of these election cycles are nice and short so like you announce
Sam: an election and a few weeks later you're done as opposed to like us talking
Sam: about the election for four fucking years.
Ivan: We've been fucking i mean for fucking christ sakes i mean donald trump has been
Ivan: running for re-election for what for For three years, basically?
Sam: Officially, right. But he never really stopped, right? Well,
Sam: as far as he's concerned, he's been president the whole time.
Ivan: Well, yeah.
Sam: He was always the rightful president, you know? Right.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: At least we did not get the spectacle of him trying to pretend he was president from Mar-a-Lago.
Sam: Like, you know, I.
Ivan: Don't know what that would have been funny though.
Sam: He could have tried that. Like, you know, but yeah. Anyway, I think we're done here, Yvonne.
Ivan: All right. Done.
Sam: We'll have to talk about Apple intelligence some other time.
Sam: Next time we want to talk about AI.
Ivan: Steve Wozniak referred to, well, I have AI actual intelligence.
Sam: Ah, nice.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: There you go. I like that. Yeah. Okay. Okay, we are done here.
Sam: The stuff at the end, go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: You will find all the ways to contact us, Mastodon, email, Facebook, et cetera.
Sam: I don't know why I said et cetera. Those are the three ways that are on there. There's no others.
Ivan: There's no others? Okay.
Sam: There's no others. Those are the three that are on there.
Ivan: Telepathy.
Sam: Ooh, that's good. I guess you could also contact us through Patreon by just
Sam: giving us cash. That is a good way to contact us.
Ivan: Yes. Just send. That's correct. Yes. Yeah.
Sam: We, we don't need any words. We don't need like long statements of love.
Sam: Just send cash. That, that works.
Ivan: Yes, that works good.
Sam: So, so on our Patreon at various levels, you can, you can get us mentioning on you on the show.
Sam: You can get us ringing a bell. Where's the bell? Where's the bell?
Break: Bell.
Ivan: Where'd my bell go? Oh, it's hard.
Sam: I'm yeah. You lost the stupid bell. You lost the microphone.
Sam: I gave you, you know, all you're just losing things left and right.
Ivan: I know. I know. I know.
Sam: Anyway, we will mention you on the show. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug.
Sam: And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the
Sam: Curmudgeon's Chorus Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of other folks,
Sam: including Bruce and Pete,
Sam: who co-hosted the last couple of weeks, are hanging out and sharing links and
Sam: talking and all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: You know, Bruce gave some additional follow up on Ocean Gate after talking about
Sam: it on the show two weeks ago.
Sam: Pete has shared some information about what you might want to do if you want
Sam: to get up and running with the 3-in-3 game we talked about last week.
Sam: So there's all kinds of fun stuff on there and all the sharing of the news and everything.
Sam: I should mention before I get Yvonne's example from the Patreon,
Sam: not from the Patreon, from the Slack.
Sam: Did I even say, like, yeah, we would invite you to Slack, blah,
Sam: blah, blah. I'm confusing myself.
Sam: But yeah, our archives are also on the website. You can look at all our old
Sam: shows, listen to all our old shows.
Sam: I should say, and look at transcripts recently. I had to mess around with the
Sam: code that does the transcript again two weeks ago because once again,
Sam: they changed the format of the HTML that I get from Alphonic, which tells,
Sam: me I should stop grabbing the HTML and actually grab the VTT transcript file that they have there,
Sam: which I can also use for the podcast 2.0 stuff to let you see the transcript
Sam: embedded in your podcast player. So maybe I'll do that one of these weeks.
Sam: I'm yeah. One of these weeks, I just need a little extra time and yeah, that's it.
Sam: So Yvonne, what is an example of something from the curmudgeons corner Slack
Sam: this week that is interesting and exciting and will make people want to join us on the Slack?
Ivan: Well, since I mentioned already the other, other link, well,
Ivan: there is this one that was posted recently.
Ivan: Elon Musk demands money back from employees he laid off.
Ivan: Clawback after firing a number of Twitter staff in Australia,
Ivan: the platform's new owner, Elon Musk, is threatening to take him to court,
Ivan: demanding to claw back payments after claiming the company had overpaid them.
Ivan: About two years later, after he fired them, this son of a bitch wants to go
Ivan: and fucking get money back to these supposedly overpaid people.
Sam: That's nice of him. And our listener, Bob, shared that story. So thank you, Bob.
Ivan: I will say that I had a company. The company did a payment to me. Okay.
Ivan: It wasn't an overpayment, to be clear.
Ivan: But what happened was that I got paid during one role and I switched roles.
Ivan: And they thought that I should give the money back.
Ivan: That was their opinion about it. And they sent me a thing asking for the money
Ivan: to be, for me to, they didn't even ask me to, like, it's not a notification
Ivan: they were taking the money back.
Ivan: Because I've had this happen at some other jobs with sales where a sale got
Ivan: reversed and, well, no, no, no, no, you owe us this money back.
Ivan: I actually had that happen recently. That's normal.
Ivan: But these guys, they knew they were on thin ice.
Ivan: So they sent me a note that basically for me to sign an authorization to take
Ivan: the money out of my paycheck. I said, listen.
Ivan: I'm not voluntarily turning over this money, okay?
Ivan: You guys want to send me a notice that you want me to acknowledge,
Ivan: basically, to acknowledge and to tell me that you're taking the money?
Ivan: You go and fucking take the money. But I'm not fucking, I'm not basically signing
Ivan: a fucking electronic funds authorization for you to take the money out.
Ivan: Screw yourselves. You know what?
Ivan: They said they didn't try again, which is what I would do if I was a Twitter fucking employee,
Ivan: is to say fuck you sue me okay you know it's like i thought he got 50 billion
Ivan: dollars more now you know and he's still bitching although.
Sam: That's still in court right the the board it got approved by the shareholder
Sam: vote or whatever but it's still going to go through court and blah blah blah.
Ivan: Yeah yeah we we all.
Sam: Know elon's just a dick i mean that's the bottom line right.
Ivan: I mean on average you know yeah and the one thing the one thing about this is
Ivan: that you know people are saying well, how come he won the vote? Well, think about this.
Ivan: The stock is down 70%, like in the order of 60-70% since its peak.
Ivan: That means that all these people that thought he's a lunatic already sold their shares.
Ivan: So the only people left over are these people that I guess they're fine with
Ivan: turning over 25% right now of their stake to him. I'm like, yeah, he's crazy.
Ivan: Yeah it just makes no sense so anyway.
Sam: Yeah okay are we done yep okay well you know only two segments this time but
Sam: two long segments so sorry guys
Sam: anyway that is yet another curmudgeons corner in the can as they say the.
Ivan: Can can the can.
Sam: In the can it refers to the old like cans that you You put film in?
Ivan: Oh, yeah, that's right. I worked at a company that made those.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we are done. Everybody, as usual, stay safe,
Sam: have fun, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And if all goes as expected, we'll be back again next week. So we'll talk to you later. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Okay, watch this, Yvonne. This is exciting.
Ivan: Yeah.
Ivan: Oh, you're rising. You are rising.
Sam: I am rising.
Ivan: He has risen.
Sam: I have risen. Just like what? The Poppin' Fresh Doughboy.
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: And now I'm blurry.
Ivan: Now you're blurry again.
Sam: Anyway, yeah, I'm now standing Standing at my standing desk,
Sam: it is so exciting. Is this, this is the highest it goes, right?
Sam: Yeah. I went to the high mark.
Sam: Anyway, this is actually a little higher than I would normally stand at it.
Sam: Unless I was on that little balance thing. If I'm on the little balance thing.
Ivan: Oh, the balance thing.
Sam: That gives me a few more inches. And so then, then this height is just about
Sam: right when I'm on the little balance thing.
Ivan: There you go. There you go. Now you're probably, you're back, not blurry.
Sam: But then I'm all wobbly and. okay.
Ivan: Well, it's good for your core strength.
Sam: Exactly. Okay. Bye Yvonne. I'm hitting stop.
Ivan: All right.