Sam: It says it's doing something here we go here
Sam: we go here we go excellent connection and it
Sam: says we're live no picture yet but i'm at oh there we go there we go yay and
Sam: then i'm gonna do the little thingy bop to make sure do wop do do do do wop
Sam: do what do do wop we're those handsome idiot Idiot Kids.
Ivan: Whatever, yeah. Oh, okay.
Sam: I like Idiot Kids. They did a new version of that song just last year, within the last year.
Ivan: I think I heard about that.
Sam: It was like Mbop version two or something.
Ivan: I mean, with these kids that, what, they're like, what, 50 years old now?
Sam: Yeah, they're like our age. I don't know. Now you have to, you are required
Sam: to look it up now that you've invoked it.
Ivan: Fuck. Jesus Christ.
Sam: While the announcement goes out that we are live, it takes a minute.
Sam: How old are the Mbop kids?
Ivan: I just, okay.
Sam: I used to always, with our collective friend Rebecca, I used to make fun of
Sam: her and say they were girls.
Sam: Because they had long hair. But they're not.
Ivan: That's a... God. God.
Ivan: Let's see here. Uh, songwriter. Uh, this is about the song. We're come on. Where the fuck?
Sam: They were like brothers, weren't they?
Ivan: I think so.
Sam: It's like three brothers. I can't.
Ivan: Here we go. Hans. Isaac Hanson, Taylor Hanson, Zach Hanson. Yeah. Okay.
Ivan: Uh, come on. You.
Ivan: Well, no, he's not. No, they're younger. Taylor Hanson's 41.
Ivan: Okay. apple oh that's close enough yeah i mean it's not it's not like they're 25 and.
Sam: The and the beginning of this is why i never go to karaoke with my wife amongst other reasons.
Ivan: Let's see one of them was born in 80 the other one 83 and the other one 85 so
Ivan: the one born in 80 would be i guess the oldest one yeah duh good.
Sam: Job good job.
Ivan: Oh yeah great analysis the analysis
Ivan: is going you know
Ivan: hard and fast here folks let me
Ivan: tell you whoa getting getting impressive information at least 44 well not yet
Ivan: so the other was 41 i guess the other one's 39 so we're like early 40s so yeah so so should.
Sam: Should should we start.
Ivan: Yeah this actual show yeah thing yeah whatever.
Sam: Thing three ah yeah that okay uh yeah if we flip over to here flip over to here
Sam: flip over to here and intro. Go!
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 17th, 2024.
Sam: It's 2.41 UTC as we're starting to record the show.
Sam: I'm Sam Mentor. Did I say that? And here's Yvonne Bowe. Hi.
Sam: Yvonne Bowe is back after like, you know, a multi-decade absence. So here we go.
Ivan: Multi-decade.
Sam: Welcome back.
Ivan: Yes. I am now 70 years old.
Sam: Yes, exactly. It's been.
Ivan: That's what happened.
Sam: Happened there was a cryo chamber involved in some way like your your head was
Sam: frozen in a jar and and and.
Ivan: And we're we're in space.
Sam: Space yes we're.
Ivan: Doing this from the space station orbiting the moon right.
Sam: Yes that the the moon space station yes yeah that's that's where we are so anyway
Sam: we're gonna do our usual which is we'll have a but first section where we talk about at whatever.
Sam: And then we'll have more serious news sections. One generally driven by Yvonne
Sam: and one generally driven by me. That's the plan.
Sam: I will start out before I even get to my real, but first, which of course I
Sam: have a movie, but is that I said right before we, we hit the theme song and started,
Sam: I said that what you heard of my rendition of Mbop was one of the reasons why
Sam: I do not go to karaoke with my wife, but I will mention the other her,
Sam: Reason. Well, one of many other reasons, but another reason I do not go to karaoke
Sam: with my wife is last weekend.
Sam: My wife indeed went to karaoke. And what did she bring home for the whole family?
Ivan: Tequila COVID. Oh, well, okay. Well, that's something.
Sam: So she, she got COVID at the stupid karaoke and she.
Ivan: Oh, but come on.
Sam: She had it.
Ivan: Karaoke too.
Sam: And she had, And now we have it all.
Ivan: First of all, there's been COVID going around a lot. Okay.
Ivan: I mean, we have our listener, Bob, who said his wife got karaoke. I mean, karaoke.
Sam: He caught karaoke. Yes. She caught karaoke. It was a horrible.
Ivan: I mean, all of a sudden she came home and just started singing.
Ivan: And then he saw, you know, it's just one of those things. Yes.
Ivan: It's a terrible disease.
Ivan: No she got covid and i'm sure she wasn't at a karaoke bar i'm gonna i'm gonna
Ivan: i'm gonna put my money on that one so i.
Sam: I i like to blame it in general there are
Sam: a couple things first of all first of all any crowded event it was a crowded
Sam: event with a bunch of our friends in like nobody taking any precautions of course
Sam: and then also as has been shown way back when when covid was the thing and we
Sam: were all excited about it and
Sam: talking about it every week excited yes excited I didn't, it was, it was.
Ivan: We were probably despondent. I don't know.
Sam: Well, you know, the, one of the key events that started to show that in fact
Sam: it was airborne and not through droplets or whatever was the singing.
Sam: There was a choir event that where there was a massive spread and the,
Sam: just in general singing events are, you know, One of the things that can,
Sam: yeah, make it go boom. Make it go boom.
Ivan: Boom, bop.
Sam: Do-de-wee-bop-bop, boom. Yes. Anyway, no.
Sam: And look, this is one of the things where I had been seeing for weeks and weeks
Sam: and weeks the handful of people who still bother and give a shit and post things about COVID that,
Sam: posting about how like wastewater levels of COVID in places that still monitor
Sam: it are the highest they've been in over a year and are super high levels and
Sam: test positivity levels where they are still reported,
Sam: which is very few places are also through the roof.
Sam: And in basically most of the country is in a really hot COVID wave right now. All right.
Ivan: And, you know, but, but, but, but, but, but, but look. Yeah.
Ivan: You don't sound, you have COVID. Listen, I know you guys have been like us,
Ivan: that we've been like every booster.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: That's come out.
Sam: Well, here, let me tell you, I tested positive for the first time about 24 hours
Sam: ago as we're recording this.
Ivan: And I say, you don't sound bad.
Sam: And at the moment I tested positive, I hadn't even noticed that I had any symptoms.
Sam: I was like, I don't have any symptoms.
Sam: Systems. And then my, my son tested first, like, cause we, we made him go to
Sam: a therapist appointment.
Sam: We, we, we had checked our COVID tests. We had checked COVID tests Wednesday,
Sam: evening. Cause we knew my wife had it and she'd been isolating.
Sam: She'd been staying in her room, door closed, blah, blah, blah, mostly closed.
Sam: And like, and when I had to go into the room, she was in, I wore a mask and
Sam: blah, blah, blah. So she'd been isolated.
Sam: And, but we were trying to decide whether to take my son to his weekly therapist
Sam: appointment on Thursday evening.
Sam: And so what we had told the therapist, we would, we would check tests on Wednesday.
Sam: And if we were both negative and we both had no symptoms, then we would go.
Sam: And she agreed to that. And we tested Wednesday evening and no symptoms.
Sam: And so we went on Thursday and,
Sam: Alex was resisting going on Thursday, but he didn't want to go anyway.
Sam: So, and he said he had a sore throat.
Ivan: It wasn't because, yeah, it wasn't because he was sick. He didn't want to go, period.
Sam: He didn't want to go, period. He said he had a sore throat, but there wasn't
Sam: anything we could tell. Like, it wasn't visible. So, we went to the therapist thing.
Sam: As soon as we got home, he grabbed himself a COVID test, and he took it.
Sam: And then a few minutes
Sam: later he excitedly ran to us to show us that he was positive he was so happy
Sam: and thrilled that he was positive and there there were a couple reasons for
Sam: this one he didn't have to isolate from his mother anymore and two it proved he was right he was
Sam: trying to tell us he didn't feel good and we
Sam: made him go anyway and i
Sam: will but look let me say i was
Sam: saying so i then immediately after that took one myself i also tested positive
Sam: and this was also what by the way you know how you're supposed to wait 15 minutes
Sam: to see if you can see the little line on the test blah blah for both alex and
Sam: i and my wife a few days before that the line was like nearly instant.
Sam: Like I had a dark, dark black band on the treatment line before the control
Sam: line even showed up on the stupid test.
Sam: It was like mere seconds and the darkest I've ever seen.
Sam: And so, but at the time I didn't feel any like symptoms, but then of course,
Sam: like within half an hour of the positive test, I'm like, okay,
Sam: but wait, do, do, is my chest a a little tight? Do I have a little bit of attic?
Sam: Because psychosomatically, now that I've tested positive, I'm looking out for every little bit.
Ivan: Yeah, of course. That doesn't help either. Yeah.
Sam: But yeah, no. But by the time I woke up this morning, though,
Sam: it felt like somebody was sitting on my head.
Sam: And so I'm all stuffy, congested, a little bit of a cough.
Sam: And from talking to my wife as well, like, you know, it took a few days for her symptoms to ramp up.
Sam: My symptoms are still every few hours are worse than a few hours previously.
Sam: So I'm still on the getting worse side of this as opposed to the getting better side of this.
Sam: So we'll see. I, I also like for like, this is only my second time testing positive for COVID.
Sam: The first time, I hardly ever felt anything. I felt maybe a few very mild symptoms, but I'm not sure.
Sam: Like, it was not bad. But let's be fair about this.
Ivan: You got, listen, right now, you got your COVID booster how long ago now?
Sam: Oh, long enough it doesn't matter anymore.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: And also, the current one, like, the last time I was at my doctor,
Sam: I'm like, can I have the next one? And she's like, no, current recommendation.
Sam: You could. You could have it now. But current recommendations are you wait.
Sam: They're coming out with a new one in September that is effective against the
Sam: current set of variants.
Sam: And the one that's out right now isn't really that effective against the one
Sam: that's out right now, that's going around right now.
Sam: And so she recommended I wait. So I waited. And of course, I ended up with COVID.
Sam: But my point though was what i wouldn't
Sam: probably wouldn't matter yeah what i wanted to say though
Sam: is that last time i just pushed
Sam: through and i worked anyway like i was like i work from home and it doesn't
Sam: matter i'll just continue to work this time two things one as soon as my wife
Sam: had it i told work like i'm not coming into the office like i know you're doing
Sam: this right office thing I'm testing negative right now.
Sam: I have no symptoms, but I could be a carrier because very often you are contagious
Sam: before you notice the first symptoms, before you test positive.
Sam: So I'm like, I'm exposed. I'm clearly in a situation where I'm exposed.
Ivan: Well, here is the good thing about having to go to the office.
Ivan: You see, you don't feel compelled to work.
Sam: Well, yeah, because here's what I did this time. Like this last time I pushed
Sam: through this time, first I said, I'm not coming into the office, but I'll work from home.
Sam: But I told my boss right at that moment and, and he, we had a back and forth and he sort of agreed.
Sam: I'm like, look, if I test positive, I'm just piecing out.
Sam: I'm like, I am going to shut, I'm going to shut down the computer.
Sam: I am not going to work. I am going to, I'm just going to try to rest as much
Sam: as possible until I. Yeah.
Sam: Until I actually test negative again. And Thursday night I tested positive.
Sam: So like an hour later, I was like on the company Slack saying, Nope, I got COVID.
Sam: I'm, I'm checking out. I'll be back when I test negative again.
Sam: And, you know, and yeah, okay, fine folks, I am doing this podcast.
Sam: I've entered a few things on election graphs, but otherwise I've been sitting
Sam: on the damn couch. I've been lying down immediately before this podcast. I took a two-hour nap.
Sam: I've been trying to be good. I've been trying to basically relax because at
Sam: this point, they've figured out, and I've taken my first Paxlovid,
Sam: the whole family's on Paxlovid right now,
Sam: but they've figured out basically amongst the other factors,
Sam: trying to push through it generally makes it worse and increases your chances of long COVID stuff.
Sam: So you really, your recommended course of behavior is do as close to nothing
Sam: as possible until you're past it.
Sam: So that's my intention. So there you go.
Ivan: So this wasn't your butt first.
Sam: Oh, oops. Yeah, no. I mean, I can save my movie for next week.
Sam: It's Howard the Duck, Yvonne. It's finally Howard the Duck.
Ivan: Okay, no, no. We got to talk about Howard the Duck.
Ivan: No, no, no. We can't skip that. No.
Sam: Should I roll right into Howard the Duck if you want to do something first?
Ivan: Yes, please. No, no, no, please. How was it, Sam?
Sam: Okay, so you and...
Sam: Alex is trying to give me the timeline.
Sam: He says, Daddy has COVID. Timeline. Mommy has COVID. Then Alex spends time with Mommy.
Sam: Okay, Alex-y, are you happy now?
Sam: He writes down Alex-y instead of Alex. Alex-y spends time with Mommy.
Sam: Mommy tests positive for COVID. Daddy spends time with Alex-y.
Sam: Doggy spends time with Mommy. Doggy has COVID.
Sam: I have no evidence one way or another, whether our dog has COVID doggy spends
Sam: time with daddy and Alexi mommy spends time with caddy caddy has COVID daddy
Sam: spends time with caddy and Alexi Alexi feel sick.
Sam: Alexi indicates sick. Daddy says liar.
Sam: Daddy spends time with Alexi. Daddy spends more time with Alexi Alexi feels.
Sam: And that's the end of the thing. Okay.
Ivan: Wow.
Sam: Howard the duck.
Ivan: Howard the Duck how was it?
Sam: Here's the thing you had mentioned on the show one week we were talking bad
Sam: movies and you mentioned how awful,
Sam: Howard the Duck is and then so I was going to add it to my list but in fact
Sam: it was already somewhere on my list and it just happened by pure coincidence
Sam: in the week after you had mentioned it on the show I had rolled something about
Sam: doing the Marvel Cinematic Universe And as it turns out, Howard.
Ivan: Yeah. And I completely forgot that how this stuff was part of it. Yeah.
Sam: It is Marvel. And so I had, I, I came up and I watched it like a week later.
Sam: And of course that was months ago. That was in March. And,
Sam: But here's the deal. I didn't hate it.
Ivan: You didn't hate it?
Sam: I'm not giving it. I'm going to go with the thumbs sideways,
Sam: not a thumbs up. But I did not hate it at all.
Sam: I was amused by it. I found it like, you know, okay.
Sam: And what's her name in it? Like Lee Thompson, right? Is that her name?
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. Leah Thompson.
Sam: And I like her.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And here is the thing.
Ivan: I think that this may be a thing of expectation. okay
Ivan: i gotta tell you why because when it came out i
Ivan: think expectations were very high for that movie
Ivan: okay and and you know
Ivan: when you have this expectation this thing is going to be awesome and
Ivan: it's what howard the duck was then i think
Ivan: you're like oh come on what the fuck okay yeah
Ivan: i mean and and so so i think that was
Ivan: part of it and so i went and i set the expectations
Ivan: so low for you maybe maybe
Ivan: because i that because i literally saw like well it's not exactly you're you're
Ivan: like well it's not the worst ever right and so so yeah it's one of those things
Ivan: where i do think that when it came out and i think i'm pretty sure i saw it at the theaters,
Ivan: okay i was just like what the fuck is this yeah.
Sam: I mean and look i mean i was mildly amused by.
Ivan: It like it was it was fine.
Sam: It was okay like i there were moments that i thought were somewhat funny like
Sam: i said i i i'm a fan of lee thompson i like this like she's cute i like the
Sam: thing she does The duck is.
Ivan: Not cute. The duck is not cute. No. Not at all. No, not in the slightest.
Sam: But it was fine. It was okay. And you may be right. There may be an expectation setting.
Sam: There were probably a few WTF moments in this thing, but it just seemed like, okay, fine.
Sam: It's a movie. It's whatever. Whatever.
Sam: And I... Yeah. I...
Sam: I don't rush to rewatch anything, but I certainly wouldn't watch rush to rewatch this.
Sam: But I saved the thumbs down for the things where throughout the whole movie,
Sam: I'm like, Oh my God, this is awful. I wish I was done.
Sam: I wish I had never selected this. I forced myself to finish them rather than watching them.
Sam: But, and that, that's a good way to put it. Like I save thumbs down for ones that I have to.
Ivan: You're like, I have to force myself to finish. Okay.
Sam: I did not have to force myself to finish the Howard, finish Howard the duck.
Sam: It was fine. It was entertaining.
Sam: I, I had no problems with it. It had some good moments.
Sam: It was an exceptional in any way, shape or form. No, it was not exceptional
Sam: in any way, shape or form, but it was fine.
Sam: It wasn't. And, and I wasn't screaming like, Oh my God, please turn this thing
Sam: off. So it gets a thumb sideways for me.
Ivan: Okay. So, so, okay. So that's, that's, you know, know better than i expected uh by comparison the.
Sam: Other one which this will now be the third or fourth time it's been mentioned
Sam: on the show that you mentioned once and had me add to my list and i watched
Sam: which did absolutely merit that thumbs down category was low blow.
Ivan: Oh yes because you did watch low blow i.
Sam: Did watch low blowing yes.
Ivan: Look yes and that and that movie definitely is
Ivan: way way way worse than howard
Ivan: the duck yeah i mean that yes i i don't
Ivan: think that um that that cannot be argued yeah
Ivan: like uh yeah i i you know i'm looking at howard the duck rotten tomatoes gives
Ivan: it a 13 it's got a imdb of 4.7 which is quite low as well you know but it's
Ivan: not low blow right Low Blow, if I remember correctly,
Ivan: scores way below that.
Ivan: It's got a 4.1 IMDb.
Ivan: For some reason, it's got a 21% Rotten Tomatoes. I just think that's got to
Ivan: be just people just, you know, just say, wow, it's so bad that I'm just going to give it a thumbs up.
Ivan: But yeah, no, this thing is just, you know, a 4.1 IMDB rating is very hard to get.
Ivan: It has to be. Yeah. So, yeah.
Sam: So Howard the Duck is a cinematic masterpiece compared to Low Blow. Yes. And yeah.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Absolutely.
Ivan: 100% agree. Yes. Yes.
Sam: Okay. Anyway, that was my movie for the week. Do you have a butt first of your
Sam: own before we slip into real things?
Ivan: What the fuck was I thinking about my butt first for my own?
Ivan: What have I been doing? I don't know.
Sam: You were gone for decades, like I said. And now you're fondling your microphone.
Ivan: Yeah, I'm fondling the microphone. phone well the
Ivan: only thing i'll make an observation about is i
Ivan: posted a picture of my wife and son playing on
Ivan: the beach um last week and this hotel that i i i have been staying at is is
Ivan: is uh is a hotel that's it's a resort okay but i've been they have a very good
Ivan: corporate rate so i've been staying at that hotel for work.
Ivan: And I had my wife and my son go with me last week to, to this hotel.
Sam: So wait, so the deal was you were, you were doing something for work and they just tagged along.
Ivan: Well, the thing is, so we were supposed to go on vacation last week, but work interfered.
Sam: Ah, okay.
Ivan: And so what I said is, look, I got to go back to Puerto Rico.
Ivan: So why don't you guys just come with me? Okay.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And so, so I, I brought him along and, And the one thing is that they were playing on this beach.
Ivan: Now, the beach is in San Juan,
Ivan: and this is a north facing beach that unlike a whole bunch of beaches that are
Ivan: in the northern part of Puerto Rico, doesn't it's not in a bay.
Ivan: There isn't the reef to block off the waves.
Ivan: OK, so you get some really, really big waves.
Ivan: And this beach, the last few years, has been the scene of a number of drownings
Ivan: by people not heeding the flags at the beach.
Ivan: Okay? Almost every day I've been there, a red flag was up. Basically,
Ivan: red flag, don't go in the fucking way.
Ivan: This beach is public in large part because all the beaches in Puerto Rico are public.
Ivan: You can't really block access to any of the beaches in Puerto Rico.
Ivan: So there aren't lifeguards posted and people have argued. It's like, why the hell?
Sam: Why don't you have lifeguards?
Ivan: But there's been a number of people that have died.
Ivan: I did post a picture and a friend of mine was like, say, hey,
Ivan: you know that that beach is bad. I'm like, listen. a door.
Ivan: My son doesn't even go. My son will play like at the edge of the water,
Ivan: but they don't, he doesn't like to go in swimming and like get himself inside the water.
Ivan: So he doesn't go in there. He prefers to go on the thing.
Ivan: So and then the other day, the weather was exceptionally bad.
Ivan: So on top of the red flag, I saw that the hotel,
Ivan: posted a another flag on the beach itself,
Ivan: like right at the the shore with some skull
Ivan: and crossbones on it red basically trying
Ivan: to warn people not to go into the water
Ivan: and as i see this some tourist clowns went
Ivan: in and were jumping into the water at these waves and i i just don't understand
Ivan: these fucking people i i'm just like guys look at the fucking waves the fuck
Ivan: are you doing i mean it's it's it's not it's nice to sit like
Ivan: brighter water it's nice to get wet a little bit but but when you have the fucking
Ivan: red flag stuck right there with it's called crossbones at the entrance of the
Ivan: beach why are you going into the water why why what's wrong with you yeah.
Sam: It's like those people you always get the video of the people like surfing because
Sam: the hurricane's coming and stuff like that.
Ivan: Yeah yeah yeah there was i'll tell you what
Ivan: there was there was one that i i'll never forget you
Ivan: know the kite board thing kind of thing you know
Ivan: they go with a kite yeah they're they're like they've
Ivan: got this kite it's it looks like a parachute it's dragging
Ivan: them and they're on a board right right i saw this guy
Ivan: on on a hurricane approaching fort lauderdale that did this and they were recording
Ivan: on video and the wind dragged them towards a couple of cement walls and slammed
Ivan: them on live video into into a wall i either he died or let's just say he had
Ivan: almost every bone in his body broken could.
Sam: Beautiful.
Ivan: And I'm just like, you idiots. What do you think was going to happen?
Ivan: A 70 mile an hour gust adores a whole bunch of concrete over there.
Ivan: Where are you going to land softly?
Ivan: Anyway.
Sam: No airbags?
Ivan: No, no airbags. No. Yeah, that guy really.
Ivan: I do think he survived, but let's just say it wasn't easily.
Ivan: Easily speaking of airbags that you mentioned this i i only saw this recently
Ivan: i'm seeing these people like competing in like uh motorcycle competitions right
Ivan: with the motorcycle airbag things yeah yeah well have you seen it's it's like
Ivan: a suit yeah that they wear and and apparently,
Ivan: when they i i didn't realize this until recently that if they get launched off
Ivan: the thing that the The thing trigger pops.
Ivan: Yeah. It triggers these airbags on the body. That's pretty fucking cool.
Sam: I have, I have seen like some sort of like video showing how it works that like
Sam: there's a cord that attaches between their suit and the motorcycle.
Sam: And if it gets snapped, which like happens if they're more, if they get pulled
Sam: more than like a foot and a half away from the motorcycle, two feet,
Sam: whatever it is, it triggers the airbag.
Sam: And it's like, I don't know, milliseconds for the thing to expand.
Sam: Just like a regular airbag i also remember sharing
Sam: with somebody they've they've prototyped the same kind of technology for the
Sam: elderly that just detects all they sure they just wear they wear the suit and
Sam: it detects if they trip or fall before they hit the ground fuck.
Ivan: That's a that's a great idea actually.
Sam: You know so yeah it'd be.
Ivan: Kind of funny to trigger it on them on purpose.
Sam: Well, if you Google it, and I forget what it's called, I'm sorry,
Sam: but, you know, here, I'll...
Ivan: When you're old, I'll visit Sam with a suit, and all of a sudden,
Ivan: I'll just fucking trigger that thing. I'm like, gosh! Sam's like the Michelin Man all of a sudden.
Sam: Well, and it's like that. The YouTube video... Okay, now I have to find this for you now.
Sam: I'll either find it quickly here.
Sam: There we go. Let's see.
Sam: Yeah, I want the YouTube video. Okay.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Here we go.
Sam: I won't play the video. Okay. This is from nine years ago.
Sam: Let's see. Is this the video I'm thinking of? Yes, it is. It is. Absolutely.
Sam: So if you search YouTube for wearable airbag protects elderly from falls,
Sam: you will get a nice little five minute demo video from nine years ago from some
Sam: company that was trying to do this.
Sam: I haven't seen much more about it, and it was nine years ago,
Sam: so maybe their company didn't succeed, but it's got some videos of some guy testing it out.
Ivan: Okay, I just saw that Amazon has S-Airbag Unisex Elderly Anti-Fall Airbag Vest
Ivan: Wearable Airbag Smart Vest for Seniors.
Sam: I guess they have production.
Ivan: And the price is not that bad, $999. Okay. It's not that bad.
Ivan: If you get one of those at a discount from work okay as well i make sure that
Ivan: when you're older i know i know i know it's like my core it's like any of the
Ivan: discounts i've ever had from work never been that good but i'll i'll i'll make
Ivan: sure to just trigger it for the hell of it like you know when i'm visiting you yeah.
Sam: Where where just.
Ivan: To see well you know.
Sam: The the thing is anyway if you search for this video they've got some some a
Sam: volunteer testing out the thing.
Ivan: Falling you get to see it yeah yeah yeah they've got some pictures here of the
Ivan: guy and stuff and everything yeah this is you know i should get this for my dad you.
Sam: Know well and you got to think though like have they fully perfected the technology
Sam: or is this thing going to go off in your face when you're not falling because
Sam: that would probably be bad.
Ivan: Well you know it doesn't hurt you i mean it's just you know as long as it's just well i mean regular.
Sam: Like regular car airbags for instance do potentially do some damage to you it's
Sam: just it's less damage than not having it so you.
Ivan: Don't you.
Sam: Don't want the airbag in your car going off randomly.
Ivan: It makes like so your nose or something or whatever but it's you know but not
Ivan: you know but but you know you know can i say that the only corporate discount
Ivan: that i've ever had for a job that ever was any good okay was the one that It
Ivan: involved working as a travel agent.
Sam: Oh, OK.
Ivan: Those discounts back then, and I know that they're not not as good now where,
Ivan: man, there are like, I mean, 75 percent off.
Ivan: And, you know, airfare. In some cases, I got with one airline,
Ivan: I remember that I got absolutely free travel, which it was basically there was
Ivan: a small carrier that flew between.
Ivan: San Juan and some small islands of the Caribbean around there. And if I showed up,
Ivan: And there were empty seats. I showed my travel agent ID, which I had an official
Ivan: travel agent ID from the International Airline Transportation Association with that and my ID.
Ivan: They would, if there was an empty seat, they would let me get on for free.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And almost, back then invariably, there were always almost empty seats.
Ivan: I, the load factor on a typical flight was 60 some odd percent.
Ivan: I mean, the chances of, The only days you wouldn't get a seat like that was
Ivan: like Thanksgiving weekend or something like that.
Ivan: But any other day, mundane day, you would get on a damn. There was always an MTC.
Ivan: It's stunning to me like right now how almost every flight I get on that I got
Ivan: on the last few weeks was 100% full.
Ivan: Not one MTC. And that, I mean, that's, that did not happen before.
Ivan: It's, it's crazy how that's changed in the industry. but anyway all.
Sam: Right anyway so we're done but first but the hell but first is all done um first
Sam: second it's third the next up then we are going to take a break and it is an apple dream,
Sam: so i so i saved this from
Sam: last week it would have otherwise been last week i will warn you
Sam: this one's a couple minutes long like three minutes long but
Sam: it's it's an apple dream so i'm we'll we'll
Sam: see if yvonne has any reactions to this one and then then when when we get back
Sam: from the apple dream it'll be yvonne's turn to like pick stuff because light
Sam: it up baby because i've got the
Sam: whole covet brain fog thing going on can't think oh yeah yeah yeah go and.
Ivan: Like just said yeah okay yeah yeah yeah whatever.
Sam: Excuses excuse here you go apple dream i.
Break: Was not sure which one.
Break: I was at some place eating. I was with a group.
Break: There was a woman with the group that I knew, and I didn't know the rest of the people.
Break: And I don't know.
Break: The The person seemed very familiar, but I can't quite place them.
Break: It was not Clara from Doctor Who, but it looked kind of like her.
Break: In any case, I had cashed out. Well, no, it was time to pay.
Break: And they told me they couldn't take my U.S. credit card.
Break: And so I was like what do I do because I hadn't cashed out to any of the local
Break: currency because of course I hadn't and I asked if they took any of the.
Break: Common electronic payment apps like can i use cash app can i use venmo can i
Break: use whatever and they're like no but we take this and it was like someone i'd never heard of.
Break: And i was like okay i'll install
Break: it and get it set up but i
Break: couldn't get the internet to work on my phone except my
Break: phone wasn't a phone it was like a stick of
Break: gum well an electronic device the
Break: shape and size of a stick of gum but i
Break: couldn't get internet on it and so the
Break: woman who was with me was like i have cash i'm like can i just vent can i just
Break: use one of these apps to give you the money and she's like she hadn't used any
Break: of them before either but i was like i'll help you it's easy i can set you up
Break: with one of them or i can help you get set up with one of them,
Break: and she's like okay whatever and i
Break: look at the bill and i try to figure it out and apparently
Break: i was at a starbucks i mean it didn't seem like it was a starbucks before but
Break: the receipt had like starbucks stuff on it and at first i couldn't tell which
Break: one was the total because like there There were lines for like how many Starbucks
Break: points I had and stuff on the receipt.
Break: But then I finally figured out which one and I owed like 126 of the local currency or whatever.
Break: And the woman who was with me paid. And...
Break: Then we were getting ready to go, and I was going to talk to her more about how I pay her back.
Break: And there was more, like, we were going to go somewhere, but it was somewhere
Break: specific with the whole group, not just with her.
Break: And there was stuff that happened before we stopped to eat. Like,
Break: there were more people with us, and there was stuff going on that we were doing,
Break: and we just stopped for a snack or whatever.
Break: But the only thing I can remember now is the stop for the snack and the paying
Break: part and not being able to pay because they didn't take cards and I had no cash
Break: and they didn't take the apps.
Break: But the person with me could pay. But now I had to pay her back.
Break: Yeah. Then I woke up. Bye.
Sam: And that's it.
Ivan: You know, yesterday, yesterday, yes, my wife was trying to send money to one
Ivan: of her relatives in Colombia.
Ivan: And they just went through what you were describing.
Ivan: Hey, can I Venmo it to you? No. Can I send it through Apple Cash?
Ivan: No. Can I to PayPal? No. I've never been able to get it to work.
Ivan: We're going through this exact same thing. And then she says, hey, I got this app.
Ivan: It's called Wise. wise i used it to send money i'm like fuck i've never i you
Ivan: ever heard of wise i never know wise no so i'm using that one because so and
Ivan: i went through the thing so i went to install i had to go and install it on
Ivan: her phone and figure it out or whatever,
Ivan: like get it to work in order to first i was i've been
Ivan: trying to check on her iphone whether
Ivan: they have apple cash in columbia and i guess they don't okay okay so but we
Ivan: installed the wise and and and then i connected it i saw that you could add
Ivan: the money through apple pay to it okay you had to load it and you had to check
Ivan: your id and all of this stuff or whatever the interesting
Ivan: thing about it is that i'm going to send it but there were fees involved with
Ivan: sending the money okay it wasn't just it wasn't fearless but at first we were
Ivan: trying to just send 14 dollars not a not a big amount but at first it wanted to charge me it almost.
Sam: Seems at this point like is it even worth it for 14 dollars you know it's like.
Ivan: You know what she was trying to buy something for her cousin she wanted to send
Ivan: the money she wanted to make the point of paying for fucking 14 okay and so it wasn't 14 to you.
Sam: It was you were paying 14.
Ivan: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah right and so and
Ivan: and then at first they wanted to charge five dollars said 14
Ivan: i'm like five fucking dollars to pay 14 this is
Ivan: idiotic but as as i went and
Ivan: i kept doing more setup on the app it dropped
Ivan: the fee down to a buck okay somehow yeah so
Ivan: i was like okay a buck if i'm setting 14 i'm getting charged a
Ivan: buck i'm like ah okay fine a buck okay
Ivan: you can do the buck but i had to
Ivan: wind up basically yeah i had to go went through the same problem that your apple
Ivan: dream had just yesterday right okay yeah apparently a real problem and and then
Ivan: and then today i tried to pay this check at this restaurant that we went to
Ivan: and they have you know have you seen the uh Now they've got the receipt.
Ivan: There's a QR code out. You can scan and pay at some places.
Ivan: There are certain restaurants that have that. You just go.
Sam: I think I've encountered that once. Yeah.
Ivan: So you can just go. You don't have to. Whatever. Just scan the QR code.
Ivan: Boom, boom, boom. And you pay right there. No, you don't have to do anything else.
Ivan: And so this restaurant had it. And I'm like, oh, I'll just pay with a QR code.
Ivan: Well, I don't know what problem they had. It kept declining the transaction.
Ivan: It kept saying gateway doesn't work. i actually got even
Ivan: transaction declines on my apple pay and i'm like what the
Ivan: hell the transaction applies doesn't make any sense so i
Ivan: have to give the guy the card give the guy the card they run it it comes back
Ivan: he brings me the little folder with the thing with the credit card but you have
Ivan: to wait a while because it was a lot of people and i didn't bring back my card
Ivan: the card's not in there and i'm like okay dude the card's not in there and he's
Ivan: saying no yes Yes, it is. No, it's not.
Ivan: Damn it. We've got you brought six folders to the table.
Ivan: All the bad cards except mine are going through every fucking folder.
Ivan: You know, going through it, looking through the floor.
Ivan: Get the manager. Guys, where the fuck is my credit card? You guys,
Ivan: he just ran it and I didn't bring it back. I need my fucking card back.
Ivan: You know, restaurants, they keep the lights dim. They have to turn up.
Ivan: They turned on all the lights in the fucking restaurant.
Ivan: The guy had gone after he ran it. He was running multiple cards.
Ivan: He has set it on top of the printer on the machine.
Ivan: My card was black. The printer is black.
Sam: Gotcha.
Ivan: He didn't see that. I was like sitting right there.
Sam: Nice. But they found anyway.
Ivan: But they found. yeah but anyway okay so we gotta yeah.
Sam: You your choice your your body your choice you you you pick what we're going to talk about.
Ivan: My body my choice what am i having sex on this show now okay um not not usually.
Sam: That you know there.
Ivan: Are many aspects to.
Sam: This show but that is not usually.
Ivan: Well listen yesterday i was trying to you know going through
Ivan: this with my wife and her online line i was seeing on the on the this thing
Ivan: about do you realize that all these people like to just log into like aa meetings
Ivan: online and expose themselves and masturbate online for the hell of it and that
Ivan: they have to keep kicking them out all the time at least the guys thinks this is funny i.
Sam: Have not heard this about aa meetings.
Ivan: Constantly it is ridiculous i don't understand what's wrong with these fucking twisted because i.
Sam: Guess they publicly post the login information to it because anybody is welcome, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And then random folks do that. I mean, I've heard of like web apps where that happens,
Sam: you know, where like, like these chat roulette things and stuff like that,
Sam: where the people who like participate in them just assume that like one out of 10, like ran,
Sam: like the concept of some of these apps is you get connected with random people for video chats. Yeah.
Sam: Which, okay, what are you going to expect?
Ivan: You're playing Russian roulette with that.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. And then apparently a certain percentage of the time you just
Sam: expect are going to be people doing things that maybe you would not.
Ivan: You don't want.
Sam: You don't want. Although, you know, if the ratio is that high,
Sam: I suppose the people participating actually do want that.
Ivan: I guess, yeah. I mean, they must know. I mean, you're obviously trying to find
Ivan: one of these, for God's sake. So anyway.
Sam: Anyway, but AA is different. that is not like.
Ivan: That's me that's not what you're
Ivan: there for no no no so so let's see i'm going through here uh let's talk a little
Ivan: bit about something that you probably wouldn't bring up um at this moment so
Ivan: this week we got new inflation data oh you're.
Sam: Gonna do economy stuff okay go for it.
Ivan: Do some economy stuff because there's been a whole bunch of economy stuff last
Ivan: Last week we had this, like everybody for some reason, there was the Japanese
Ivan: stock market had like tanked.
Ivan: I'm trying to remember exactly the main reason.
Sam: There was a day where, and I remember it was, it was over the weekend.
Ivan: It was like about a couple of weeks ago.
Sam: We were coming in, like it was Sunday night and we started getting all these
Sam: alerts that Japan was going crazy. It was crashing.
Sam: It would be horrible. The, the, the, the futures for the U S markets were way
Sam: down. Europe was having issues, too.
Sam: And, you know, the Japanese markets actually had like a really huge one day crash.
Sam: It was not a great day in the U.S. either. But then things seem to have popped
Sam: back pretty quickly. But what was going on?
Sam: What's it was fears of this and there was going to be a recession after all
Sam: and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Okay, the whole thing about the whole thing with Japan had to do with,
Ivan: this this yen carry trade that's been going on
Ivan: for a long time okay and the
Ivan: what what's happened is that the the yen has been cheap and gotten cheaper i
Ivan: mean we've talked about it on the slack okay one of our one of our listeners
Ivan: pete was talking about going to japan went on a trip to japan and we're talking
Ivan: about all the yen the yen he actually was.
Sam: On the show talking about that trip right after he got back.
Ivan: It was i mean the yen dropped from i
Ivan: remember when i i worked for a japanese company for many years and
Ivan: we were always very concerned about the yen dollar exchange
Ivan: rate in large part because we japanese companies unlike
Ivan: most american companies they're not still have
Ivan: not as diversified in terms of their manufacturing base
Ivan: even though they are diversified not like
Ivan: it used to be there was a hundred percent japanese manufacture a
Ivan: hundred still they have a
Ivan: bigger concentration of exposure to the yen than i
Ivan: would say that almost any american multinational or
Ivan: even european multinational in my experience okay okay and
Ivan: so when the yen got very strong or you know it it really did impact our our
Ivan: pricing and sales and we were always very concerned about that and we were actually
Ivan: talking our meetings how well if the yen gets to this level of whatever to 80
Ivan: we're talking about at that point you know that that That would be pretty painful,
Ivan: blah, blah, blah, whatever, and so forth right now.
Ivan: So the yen right now, we're talking about 80.
Ivan: This was about 12, 13 years ago. We're talking about a yen that was about 160, like right now, okay?
Ivan: It's a massive, massive devaluation of yen.
Ivan: It's made everything in Japan stupidly cheap compared to how it used to be.
Ivan: But it seemed that there had been a big swing in yen dollar in the opposite
Ivan: direction about a couple of weeks ago.
Ivan: And the thing is that a lot of people...
Ivan: They do a lot of trading. They borrow in yen because the interest rates in Japan have been so low.
Ivan: They will go and they will borrow in yen at almost 0%. And then,
Ivan: you know, do investments in dollars.
Ivan: They do this trade that depends on where the currencies are.
Ivan: And somewhere earlier this month like
Ivan: around you know there was in in
Ivan: the last couple of months there was a big shift in the yen okay we had one that
Ivan: it went from it when it was at 160 it dropped really quickly down to 7th down
Ivan: to 144 okay so it's a very quick shift okay and apparently a lot
Ivan: of that stock trading was related to
Ivan: unwinding a whole bunch of positions that that were
Ivan: very exposed to that currency shift and
Ivan: that's why all of a sudden it had nothing we're talking about where's a recession
Ivan: economics or whatever no it's because so many people have plowed so much money
Ivan: into this yen carry trade that when the fucking yen went like it was at ones
Ivan: you know at the end of July,
Ivan: it was like 160 and it dropped all of a sudden to 144.
Ivan: It fucking caught people off guard because that was a huge, huge shift in a
Ivan: very short amount of time. And.
Ivan: It went and it spooked people, and then all of a sudden people were dumping
Ivan: the stocks because people will do these moves.
Ivan: So they were borrowing the money, purchase the stocks, then take those,
Ivan: margin those, purchase other assets.
Ivan: So you've got this sequence of assets.
Ivan: And if all of a sudden one of them moves in a direction you don't want,
Ivan: it winds up unraveling the trade. So you have to go and say, oh, shit.
Ivan: I, damn it, I, you know, I borrowed that money over there.
Ivan: Now I got to pay that money back. So I got to sell the shares and then I got
Ivan: to go sell those shares and then give that money back, the money back that I borrowed in yen.
Ivan: There's this entire sequence of how the assets have been tied.
Ivan: And so that's what happened there in Japan.
Ivan: Obviously, everybody sees that that huge sell off.
Ivan: People freaked out and it sparked other sell offs at the same time.
Ivan: But it had nothing to do with the economic data. It really had more to do with
Ivan: that sudden move into yen and how it impacted how people trade in the yen, borrow,
Ivan: and invest in other places because
Ivan: of the ultra low interest rates that Japan has had for a long time.
Ivan: And that's all it really was related to.
Sam: Because at the time it was happening, all the coverage was frankly not around Japan-specific stuff.
Ivan: No.
Sam: It was like, what's happening in Japan is a warning for the rest of the world
Sam: and everything else is going to go and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: And then one week later, nothing happened. No, it had nothing to do with any of that.
Sam: And so, yeah, like everything bounced right back.
Ivan: Well, because, you know, the sell-off happened.
Ivan: I mean, people took the losses, paid back, whatever.
Ivan: I mean, there is a situation right now where, at this point,
Ivan: there is still a record amount of people that are holding cash.
Ivan: Cash holdings are in ridiculous levels all around.
Ivan: One of the reasons why people have been holding more cash recently is because
Ivan: interest rates have been high. Okay, so you'll hold cash and invest it and get 5, 6%.
Ivan: You know, versus how it used to be like 10 years ago, where if you had cash
Ivan: or if you were gaining half percent or one, you were lucky.
Ivan: So so there's been a lot more of a return on cash with higher interest rates.
Ivan: But if you want a higher return, the only place that you can turn to is to stocks.
Ivan: I mean, that really is you either you have to go into stocks because even bonds
Ivan: now bonds are probably going to have a rally with interest rates going down.
Ivan: But you're in an environment right now where interest rates are high.
Ivan: Unemployment is still at good levels. Economic activity is still at good levels.
Ivan: All the economic data that we've had has been solid. Consumer spending in July was robust.
Sam: Now, there was that one jobs report that freaked people out.
Ivan: But then, you know, because it was slightly above, but at the same time,
Ivan: because they thought, well, that's a signal that maybe spending is bad or profits
Ivan: are not going to be good by companies, but companies that reported good profits,
Ivan: still the number of unemployment number, it came in like maybe off by 10,000.
Ivan: But then there were a whole bunch of adjustments that showed,
Ivan: ah, the numbers are about in line with what everybody expected.
Ivan: And then you also had this inflation number that showed that inflation is continuing to come down.
Ivan: But the one thing is that all of this points to the fact that the Fed will lower interest rates.
Ivan: And if the Fed lowers interest rates, what people are going to do is borrow
Ivan: more money and invest because you could make more money with lower rates.
Ivan: If you borrow money, it's as simple as that. Look, if you, you know,
Ivan: lower rates right now at this economy, which has been doing good,
Ivan: you get a drop in the mortgage rate right now from six and a half back to like five, four and a half.
Ivan: There is so much pent-up demand for people to buy homes that have been holding
Ivan: off because rates are too high.
Ivan: Buying automobiles. You think about companies borrowing money and investing.
Ivan: You do that kind of a rate drop, it's going to drive the economy.
Ivan: And rates dropping means that those people with cash, what are they going to
Ivan: want to do with the money? They're going to want to buy more stocks.
Ivan: They're going to want to invest. They don't want to be sitting on fucking cash,
Ivan: earning and losing, you know, going from 5% earnings to two and a half.
Ivan: Also, your return is down 50%. No, they're going to want to move the money into
Ivan: some other assets to make more money.
Ivan: So I think that it was kind of a what happened with that stock market drop is
Ivan: that people didn't understand what the hell it was.
Ivan: And they were trying to say, oh, it's a signal of this, that or whatever.
Ivan: Then all the economic data came in and said, nah, it's none of that shit.
Ivan: So because it was none of that shit then people are like oh okay well never
Ivan: mind and then off to the races again yeah basically because the economy has been doing really well.
Ivan: You know the one thing that we've had the last couple of years has been a lot of investment,
Ivan: in america and a lot of things that are creating jobs and that are creating
Ivan: things that are or have long-term returns on that investment, when you fix up bridges,
Ivan: when you're putting all this money towards Inflation Reduction Act money,
Ivan: towards renewable energy projects,
Ivan: when you're doing all this stuff for what you would call the CHIPS Act,
Ivan: all that CHIPS manufacturing,
Ivan: all of those things have big multiplier effects in the economy.
Ivan: And the one thing about those is that they're not like one time hits because
Ivan: you build a factory that you spent five hundred million dollars.
Ivan: That factory then is going to employ thousands of people.
Ivan: Then that's going to have an effect. It's not like I just gave people a thousand
Ivan: dollars to spend it on alcohol.
Ivan: Now, yeah, that has an effect. One time you took a vacation,
Ivan: you're done. Now, we're talking about money that's being invested,
Ivan: that's creating manufacturing jobs, that's going to create permanent jobs,
Ivan: that then has an effect all around multiplier around those communities.
Ivan: You know, we talk about infrastructure and the effect it has on long-term on
Ivan: economies and how it allows certain places to have progress.
Ivan: Remember when we had that ship that hit that bridge in Baltimore?
Sam: Yes, yes, of course.
Ivan: And how big of a negative economic impact it has when you cut off a bridge when
Ivan: you don't have that access.
Ivan: But when you invest in infrastructure and then all of a sudden goods can flow
Ivan: free or people can go and say, hey, oh, I'm going to put my wheat in the farm
Ivan: and I can bring it to market faster.
Ivan: It allows me to be able to sell more. That means that I'm going to be able to
Ivan: take advantage of my opportunity.
Ivan: It's a multiplier effect, all these damn things. things
Ivan: it's these are not this is not this is
Ivan: very different economics than from trickle down economics trickle
Ivan: down economics is this thing where we just hey you're rich we're gonna let you
Ivan: make more money well rich guy x for the most part what they do i mean how many
Ivan: fucking yachts can they buy as well as gordon get you know as charlie she told
Ivan: gordon gecko in that in wall
Ivan: street i mean they're not going to invest it for
Ivan: the most part you already got 100 billion dollars you
Ivan: know you got 120 billion a lot of these
Ivan: people just sit on the money but when you push it on the other direction it
Ivan: has sustained economic
Ivan: impact it's it's the reason
Ivan: why you've have gotten from the
Ivan: the trump tax cuts 2018 they showed very little economic impact almost none
Ivan: these things that have happened the last couple of years in the biden administration
Ivan: have been very targeted into specific things that will provide long-term returns
Ivan: that have provided Why did, for example.
Ivan: You're looking at the best wage gains that lower and middle income people have
Ivan: had the last 20, 30 years.
Ivan: And it's also done that the economy, even after having to spike from some of
Ivan: the cash that people had in their pockets because their balance sheets are healthier
Ivan: and all this other stuff.
Ivan: It's it's provider right now that everybody's like well we thought we're going
Ivan: to go in a recession and people are now looking at it more it's like well apparently not because,
Ivan: the one great thing that the fed has done is that by keeping rates high and
Ivan: not having to resort to like things like quantitative easing and other things
Ivan: which means that they're they're putting money in the economy but that's but
Ivan: but that that didn't have a direct effect on people's pocket What you've got right now is that, hey,
Ivan: I drop half a point right now on quarter point or half a point on the on the Fed funds rate.
Ivan: Credit card rates are going down. Home equity loan rates are going down.
Ivan: Mortgage rates are going down. All these things. These are all things that every
Ivan: American will have money in their pocket immediately.
Ivan: Immediately and so and those tools right now are readily available at the fed
Ivan: to act right now especially now that they're seeing that inflation is coming under control back.
Sam: To quote-unquote normal.
Ivan: Back getting back close to normal in.
Sam: The latest update it was under three percent again which was back roughly where
Sam: it was before pandemic right yeah.
Ivan: Getting close to that yes And I and I and I think that a lot of people that
Ivan: were like poo pooing this whole thing about transitory effects or whatever,
Ivan: whatnot, many people on TV talking out of their ass.
Ivan: And I notice now that a lot of those people aren't even showing up on TV anymore right now.
Ivan: One of the things is like, oh, this Fed thing saying the transitory is bullshit.
Ivan: Look, one of the things that there were a whole bunch of transitory effects
Ivan: and everybody keeps forgetting that all of a sudden we had a fucking Putin startup.
Sam: Well, yeah, the fundamental problem with that was just like wording and expectation setting, right?
Sam: Like when you say transitory people, the expectation that comes to a normal
Sam: three months or not, even people are thinking weeks.
Ivan: Weeks, you know? No, it's not that things don't happen that fast in a supply chain economy.
Ivan: It doesn't move that fast, especially not when you get an exogenous shock like
Ivan: a fucking war that spikes energy prices, too.
Sam: Well, and I'd love to hear how long they were really thinking when they said
Sam: the word transitory. But, like, it might have.
Ivan: I think it was more like a two-year window because that is how long it took for supply. Listen.
Sam: Well, right. Maybe it's just in my head.
Ivan: Well, here's the thing.
Sam: Like, if they were thinking two years, the word transitory should never have
Sam: come out of their fucking mouth because that's not how people interpret the
Sam: word. You know what I mean?
Ivan: Maybe that's – Well.
Sam: Like every – Okay. Here's the thing.
Sam: I mean, to some degree, everything is transitory, you know?
Ivan: Well, yes and no because – no, no, no. Because there's structural change and
Ivan: there's transitory change. Yes.
Sam: And that's what I'm saying.
Ivan: The whole point about saying transitory is that what happened with the pandemic
Ivan: was not a structural change.
Sam: Right. Well, and again, like there were better ways to say that.
Sam: Right. Like I understand what you're getting at.
Sam: Like this was this is the kind of change that will eventually revert to the
Sam: previous state is one thing.
Sam: Saying transitory implies it's going to be short.
Sam: And so they just screwed themselves with the terminology.
Sam: And the reason is that you may be quite right that from an expert point of view,
Sam: everybody who heard that was clear that, oh, transitory just means not permanent.
Ivan: Right. It's not a structural change.
Ivan: It's not like, hey, all of a sudden, The port capacity in the West Coast got
Ivan: reduced by 50% permanently, and we're not going to recover for 20 years.
Ivan: And we have no plans of increasing it. That's not transitory.
Ivan: But a spike in shipping rates, for example, that happened.
Ivan: That went from like $2,000 a container from China to $20,000 to $30,000 a container
Ivan: from China, that that was for a year.
Ivan: The following year, by the end of the second year, it was back to $2,000, $3,000. Right. Okay?
Ivan: And those are the things that I'm talking about. But I do think,
Ivan: by the way, that the thing about the window is, and what really got more messed
Ivan: up about the transitory thing, it is the stupid war.
Sam: Right. Okay. OK, I people like they weren't counting on that.
Sam: They were like, OK, pandemic.
Sam: We factored that in, but they did not factor in. Let's have a new war.
Ivan: Exactly. And I I'm telling you that that that damn war exacerbated the effects
Ivan: of inflation and spiked them for another 18 to 20 months.
Ivan: OK, and right when they were right when everything was trailing off,
Ivan: really those levels of inflation that we're getting now should have been here in about 2022.
Ivan: But when you've got that massive spike in energy prices all of a sudden,
Ivan: and also supply constraints with food, because you got to remember that the
Ivan: war not just constrained energy,
Ivan: but wheat production, wheat exports from the Ukraine,
Ivan: one of the biggest exports, those were shut down when the war started.
Ivan: So it had an effect on energy and it had an
Ivan: effect on food and it was a massive effect right when
Ivan: you know we thought everything's going and then you get
Ivan: fucking putin started word i'm like oh fuck this shit
Ivan: well you know so yeah it it really delayed everything substantially and i and
Ivan: i i i i think that if you look at where everything was trending before the war
Ivan: we would have gotten there earlier but But that just impacted everything.
Ivan: I mean, it's impacted. I mean, that's stupid war. It's impacted air travel,
Ivan: a whole bunch of commerce in terms of shipping,
Ivan: you know, food prices, energy prices, so many things at the same time.
Ivan: Now, one thing that people like right now are also they keep getting worried
Ivan: about companies reporting pullbacks and spending in certain areas.
Ivan: And they're like, well, what's happening?
Ivan: Why is this company also saying demand is down 5%? But the economy is not down.
Ivan: We also had a whole bunch of really weird shifts the last couple of years between
Ivan: how people allocated their spending between services and goods.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Okay.
Ivan: You had this massive shutdown of
Ivan: services that all of a sudden spiked in a ridiculous way, goods purchases.
Ivan: I mean, you know, factories that did refrigerators, washing machines,
Ivan: all this other stuff, whatever, could not keep up to the demand.
Ivan: I mean, computers, like other stuff and whatever.
Ivan: And then a whole bunch of that then started coming back down to a certain extent.
Ivan: You're seeing people right now also that we're spending a lot of money on like,
Ivan: travel and experiences all of a sudden shifting this money again to some some other stuff and
Ivan: so what you're seeing is it's not that the economy is going down is that people
Ivan: have done some really really sharp shifts that normally don't happen in recent
Ivan: you know in the economy where they moved from goods,
Ivan: all of a sudden the goods demand soared, then they dropped, then they moved
Ivan: to, oh shit, we're traveling, like there's no tomorrow.
Ivan: And then all of a sudden, oh, well, we've traveled way too much.
Ivan: Okay, and we went to too many fucking restaurants.
Ivan: Let's get back at that. Let's spend on something else, whatever the fuck it
Ivan: is. Let's save some money.
Ivan: Even Home Depot was seeing some stuff, but you see that the overall spending
Ivan: in the economy isn't going down. But also people are shifting money where,
Ivan: well, we spent so much money on the vacation, so let's not shop at the more
Ivan: expensive place. Let's go back to Walmart.
Sam: Right. Okay.
Ivan: Which Walmart had seen, you know, softening demand and all of a sudden Walmart
Ivan: reported gangbuster results because they're like the shifts that have been going on,
Ivan: Sam, it's shifts in spending that in four or five years that maybe you see normally over 15, 20 years,
Ivan: all of a sudden happened like in a very, very compressed timeframe.
Ivan: And so I think that that's also, that data is throwing people off when they're seeing that.
Ivan: And, and, you know, all of a sudden you see McDonald's say sales are down 5%,
Ivan: but then you see casual restaurant spending is actually up.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: As an aggregate. So you're like, okay, so what, what's going on? You know, where's this?
Sam: I saw someone describe that as just like, you know, McDonald's prices went up
Sam: enough that when people were otherwise considering McDonald's would be like,
Sam: well, if we're going to spend this much anyway, why don't we go somewhere nicer?
Ivan: We're going to a nicer place. Exactly. That, that was, that was the one thing
Ivan: I was like, what the hell?
Ivan: I mean, what the fuck? If I'm going to pay $14 a fucking McDonald's that I might
Ivan: just go $14 and go to fucking Chili's.
Ivan: I mean, yeah. Yeah. And so I think that that that has been a big and that's
Ivan: been I'll tell you, those are the kind of crazy shifts that you're seeing people making.
Ivan: And that sometimes what's happening is that people see the results that one
Ivan: company is reporting and they think, oh, my God, people are not buying. No, no, no, no, no.
Ivan: People have been reconsidering their purchasing in a crazy way to like that,
Ivan: like we've never seen the likes of before. okay so so.
Sam: Bottom line economy is still doing great and people.
Ivan: Are starting.
Sam: To finally notice it maybe.
Ivan: Yes and not just that that i think people are feeling better because inflation
Ivan: is going down but not just that but that the good news is that we're well positioned
Ivan: to maintain momentum in the economy because the fed has the tools to be able to help people,
Ivan: with lower interest rates.
Sam: Okay. Now, as will surprise absolutely no one, when we switch to my topic,
Sam: I'm going to be talking politics,
Sam: is do we have enough time left that anything the Fed does actually will impact
Sam: what people feel before November?
Ivan: Yes. I will tell you that because the Fed cut rate is, they're expecting that
Ivan: the Fed will cut rates in September.
Ivan: Right now, just the expectation of that has created a surge in mortgage refis
Ivan: of over 100% of where we were about a month ago. Okay?
Ivan: That Fed rate cut will spur that even more.
Sam: So this isn't something where the average voter will feel a difference in six
Sam: to nine months. You think they'll actually feel a difference right away?
Ivan: They're going to see all of a sudden, oh, wait, oh, that's more affordable.
Ivan: Oh, wait, oh, my credit card payment went down. Oh, yeah, that's going to be an immediate effect.
Sam: Okay. Now, even when people are affected immediately, sometimes it takes a while
Sam: for them to notice that they're affected and to internalize,
Sam: oh, yeah, something actually changed.
Ivan: I think that my experience has been that interest rates, especially when mortgage
Ivan: rates go down and credit card rates go down, that gets noticed really quick.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: A lot faster than other things.
Sam: So you think this will actually just be additional positive tailwinds for the
Sam: Democrats coming into November?
Ivan: Oh, hell yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Sam: As opposed to like a few weeks ago when people were like, oh shit, recession.
Ivan: No, no, you're not going to get a recession. No, no, no. Fed's cutting rates
Ivan: next month. Not going to get a recession. and yeah, not happening.
Sam: Okay. Anything else you want to sub up or can we take a break and move on?
Ivan: We can take a break and move on.
Sam: Okay, here we go.
Break: You're supposed to say do-do-do. Do-do-do! Alex Zemzula!
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Sam: We're back. So like, this segment will be politics in general,
Sam: but as will become more and more common as we are getting really close to the
Sam: end here, I will start out with an election graphs update.
Sam: So last week, I talked about it how, you know, we'd had this big move towards
Sam: Harris after Biden dropped out, but then we had a little bit of a bump up back towards Trump.
Sam: And And that's where we were, I think, last week. Maybe it started to reverse again.
Sam: This last week, things have been moving back towards Harris again.
Sam: So that little bump back towards Trump, which frankly was only really in Pennsylvania.
Sam: And maybe it was just a coincidence with what pollsters were in the field in Pennsylvania.
Sam: Like everywhere else has continued to move towards Harris. And Pennsylvania
Sam: has started to move back towards Harris again.
Sam: So over the last couple of weeks, we now have Harris firmly in the lead,
Sam: in the lead in the national polls, in the lead when you look at state polls
Sam: like I do on electiongraphs.com as well.
Sam: That need that lead is still narrow, but about a percent in the,
Sam: in the tipping point state right now, which is close enough that like, Hey,
Sam: the polls in 2016 and 2020 were off
Sam: by more than 1% underestimating the Republicans in the last two cycles.
Sam: So if they do that again, Harris being leading in the critical states by about 1% isn't enough.
Sam: She might still lose. So like no room for complacency yet.
Sam: But things have been continuing to move in the Harris direction.
Sam: They were really rapid right after Biden dropped out.
Sam: It's been moving less quickly since then, but still moving generally in the
Sam: Harris direction. A couple of things.
Ivan: Well, I think the important thing is it's been a consistent movement.
Ivan: It hasn't stopped. It's not like, you know.
Sam: It hasn't stopped yet. All of the states that were sort of, I mean, the critical,
Sam: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, at the moment Biden dropped out,
Sam: even if you looked at Harris averages, but certainly for Joe Biden,
Sam: were all on the Trump side of the line.
Sam: Now they are all on the Harris side of the line.
Sam: Other states, Arizona in my poll average is now just barely on the blue side of the line.
Sam: Nevada is very close on the Trump side.
Sam: It's only a 0.2% Trump lead at the moment. It had actually been blue for a little
Sam: bit, moved back with the latest poll.
Sam: Georgia is close again. North Carolina is close again.
Sam: And even states like Florida, they're not close in my poll averages yet,
Sam: but they're not as red as they were a month ago.
Sam: And so we're seeing that kind of movement everywhere.
Sam: It is still continuing. It does not seem to have bottomed out quite yet.
Sam: And in a few days, we've got the DNC starting.
Sam: And a few days after that, we've got Trump legal shit happening.
Sam: So I feel like we're probably not at the bottom yet. Like, I will fully admit
Sam: that bump of polls back towards Trump had me doubting for a little while,
Sam: but then a whole bunch more polls came in that got reversed again.
Sam: And we're still like heading towards Harris and she's running on all cylinders
Sam: and seems to be doing everything great.
Sam: Whereas Trump seems to be flailing still.
Sam: And we'll talk about that in a second. One more thing. One more thing I want
Sam: to say about the current polling before we move on to that.
Sam: This is one of those, oh, my God, that will never happen things.
Sam: But I just want to say at the current configuration of where all the states
Sam: are lined up in my poll averages,
Sam: the chances of a 269 to 269 tie are higher than I have seen them in a long time.
Sam: This is because basically if you take all of the states that right now Harris
Sam: is ahead head in the polls, except Arizona, where she's only ahead by 0.2% at the moment.
Sam: Give Arizona back to Trump, you end up in a 269-269 tie.
Sam: My odds, depending on which of the models, range between a 1.7% chance of the
Sam: tie to a 9.1% chance of the tie.
Sam: That is annoyingly high
Sam: because that would take you into
Sam: the whole the house of representatives has to decide
Sam: scenario and it would be the new house of representatives not the current house
Sam: of representatives so that might change balance however it's not the house voting
Sam: as a whole it's a house vote voting by state delegation which is republican
Sam: dominated right now and even if the democrats take the house back,
Sam: it is quite likely that the Republicans will still dominate in terms of state
Sam: delegations in the house.
Sam: And so the ties are pretty much still probably Trump wins.
Sam: But anyway, you have Harris ahead in the straight, if you trust polls view the, in the,
Sam: taking into, in the stats I do that take into account the poll errors in the
Sam: previous few elections and the amount of time left.
Sam: You now, for the first time this week, have Harris's odds of winning greater than Trump's.
Sam: At the moment, I have Harris at 46.8%, Trump at 44%.
Sam: But this is in the uniform swing mode, which I think is the closest of my models
Sam: to what's probably true.
Sam: But you have that 9.1% that throws it into the house.
Sam: And that would still go to Trump.
Ivan: Yeah, that would be interesting.
Sam: Oh, yeah, just a tad. You think January 6th was fun.
Sam: Do January 6th. They certify the electoral results, but then there's no winner,
Sam: and then it has to go into the House and start this kind of stuff.
Sam: And of course, the way it works also, by the way, just to play out House of
Sam: Cards slash West Wing scenarios for a second, the House determines the president,
Sam: but the Senate determines the vice president.
Sam: So you have potential scenarios where you could get like, you know,
Sam: Trump is president, but Walls is vice president.
Sam: You know, things like that.
Ivan: Oh, God.
Sam: Anyway.
Ivan: Christ sakes.
Sam: Anyway, the bottom line is polls are still going great for Harris.
Sam: I will add everything I just said.
Sam: I mentioned I took a two-hour nap right before recording the podcast.
Sam: There are several new polls that came in during those two hours that I haven't
Sam: entered yet, including one for Pennsylvania, which is still one of the tipping.
Sam: The whole tie scenario is because
Sam: the tipping point right now is actually not a single tipping point.
Sam: It's between Pennsylvania and Arizona.
Sam: Like for Harris to win, she has to win all the states up through Pennsylvania plus Arizona.
Sam: For Trump to win, he has to win everything up through Arizona plus Pennsylvania.
Sam: So the tipping point is actually in between.
Sam: But I did take a quick look at those Pennsylvania polls. I think they make it
Sam: even better for Harris again.
Sam: I could have done the math wrong in my head, but I'll be entering those soon.
Sam: And by the time you listen to this, there'll probably be even more polls.
Sam: They're coming out all the time. So anyway, that's it for the polling update.
Sam: You had started to mention, Yvonne, and we talked about it,
Sam: or I talked about it a little bit last week, but I'd love to get
Sam: your take on the Donald Trump flailing that we have seen the last couple weeks
Sam: because I think it's just getting worse like he's not like he's not figuring
Sam: out the right way to attack Harris and going after at least I don't I don't.
Ivan: Think I listen I don't I think it's it's it's a lot more basic.
Sam: Okay this.
Ivan: Is more existential Sam.
Sam: You think he's lost it.
Ivan: Well it lost it because look He knew his only ticket out of jail.
Ivan: Was to win this fucking election. Right.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And he started getting comfortable that maybe he was going to win. Okay.
Sam: He was sure he was going to win. When we had, he was.
Ivan: He, he, yeah, he wasn't just comfortable.
Sam: It was like the thought of music wasn't in his mind anymore.
Ivan: Right. He, he, he hit the convention and he, you know, was deluding himself into this is done.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I won. I'm done. This is going to be easy.
Ivan: Street you know i'm taking this and all of a sudden he is angry.
Sam: Yeah he.
Ivan: Is angry that joe biden.
Sam: Actually dropped out dropped out that they're cheating him also people have
Sam: pointed out like part of this is like the thought of somebody doing this is
Sam: completely alien to donald trump He can't imagine how this could have happened.
Sam: Now, you and I were still like, hey, Biden says he's in. He's staying in.
Sam: But then, you know, Biden didn't. But Trump's view of it is like he can't imagine
Sam: himself ever doing that.
Ivan: Dude, he actually went. One of the things that he posted on Truth Social was
Ivan: that Biden was going to show up at the convention.
Sam: And try to take it back.
Ivan: And take it back.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah. I mean, it's shit like this. It's unhinged.
Ivan: Crazy. Look, but but look, the whole thing is I win.
Ivan: I'm out of jail. All my problems are solved.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Right now, it's fuck.
Ivan: Not only am I falling behind, I'm going to fucking lose and I'm going to go to fucking jail.
Ivan: Because those are your scenarios if you're Trump.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I mean, the reality to him that he is fucked is making him completely unhinged.
Ivan: These guys are trying to, I thought the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen
Ivan: is that they trotted him out for this press conference with these props.
Ivan: Like, it sounded like infrastructure week, but now we're going to talk about
Ivan: inflation. And I guess they bought some.
Sam: Like boxes of cereal and stuff. yeah and.
Ivan: You know what he was on subject for like about a millisecond and then just started
Ivan: ranting and raving like well.
Sam: And not only that he explicitly addressed it he was like they're telling me
Sam: i need to stick to things like the economy and i should lay off on the personal
Sam: attacks but fuck that i think i'm entitled to personal attacks and so i'm gonna
Sam: you know because he literally.
Ivan: Said this and he.
Sam: Literally said this and then went off about how Kamala Harris is stupid and
Sam: blah, blah, blah, and he doesn't like her and whatever.
Sam: And the theme of the last week or so has been other Republicans begging Donald
Sam: Trump to please get on some sort of issue-oriented message and maybe attack
Sam: Democrats in some of the areas where where they seem weak or maybe talk about issues.
Sam: And, and Donald Trump is basically telling those people go screw them. Fuck you.
Ivan: No, here, here is the, here is the problem. Eight years ago when Donald won, yep.
Ivan: The way that he won was because basically he shut the fuck up for about 30 days.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: They took away his phones. They took away his shit and said, you shut the fuck up.
Ivan: You don't say another word and you know some events happened you had the comey
Ivan: letter you had all this shit happening and then that happened okay the last election okay,
Ivan: you know, he was close even with all the shit that happened.
Ivan: But the reality is that right now he is 100% surrounded himself with people
Ivan: that will just let him do whatever the fuck he wants.
Ivan: And if they can't and they won't, they're not going to shut up.
Sam: He just brought Lewandowski back into the campaign, which one of the things
Sam: people have talked about is this time around, he's had a more disciplined campaign.
Sam: He's had a more professional campaigns, uh, staff around him,
Sam: but the, the move, and I forget the name of the guy was something,
Sam: something, whatever, but it's less Evita.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Less Evita. And basically less Evita is one of the folks telling him to try
Sam: to be more disciplined, try to stay on message, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And now he brings in Lewandowski. Who's one One of the folks who was involved
Sam: in 2016 that, and basically that people are reading this as they probably can't both be there.
Sam: LaCivita may be on his way out. If not officially, then it's certainly in terms
Sam: of influence because Trump is not liking the advice that's telling him to,
Sam: oh, go, go talk about the economy.
Sam: Go talk about taxes. Go, go talk about, you know, immigration,
Sam: whatever. And he's like, fuck all that.
Sam: I want to rant and rave.
Sam: And yeah, so...
Sam: I don't know. There are people surrounding Trump who know the formula to get him ahead again.
Sam: And I'd mentioned one of my four models.
Sam: I'd mentioned the straight trust the polls now has Harris ahead.
Sam: One of my four models has Harris ahead. Just to be clear, Trump is still slightly
Sam: ahead in the other three of my probabilistic models.
Sam: But to get back on track, there are people around Trump who know how to do this.
Sam: But it involves the kind of discipline.
Sam: And like you said, last time they took away his phone.
Sam: Basically, it's get him to seem normal for a little while.
Sam: Get him to seem competent for a little while.
Sam: That's the magic formula. If you do that, then you're competitive and you can
Sam: potentially pull this out.
Sam: If you continue to go crazy, then you're potentially losing people.
Sam: Now, the other thing that is not on election graphs proper, but I've seen a
Sam: bunch of analysis from people who've looked at the same polling before and after
Sam: from the same group of pollsters and things like that.
Sam: There are a couple of things we're seeing. One is that it's really,
Sam: so far, Trump's numbers haven't actually changed very much. I look mostly at
Sam: margins on election graphs.
Sam: But if you look at Trump's numbers versus Harris's numbers, Trump's numbers
Sam: haven't changed all that much.
Sam: What's happened here is that people who are undecided in the Trump versus Biden
Sam: race are breaking overwhelmingly to Harris.
Ivan: Well, this is the- And that's what's happening.
Sam: Remember- And also I thought I saw one other number.
Sam: I just want to say this. I saw one other number earlier today.
Sam: I wish I'd like re retweeted it or whatever.
Sam: Cause I didn't. And now I can't find it, but somebody also did a breakdown of men versus women.
Sam: For men, the race is basically not changed for men.
Sam: They are supporting Trump at the same level. They are supporting Harris at about
Sam: the same level they supported Biden.
Sam: But for women, there has been a huge move towards Harris, where women who were
Sam: not on board with Biden are now on board with Harris.
Sam: And so those are a couple of the big moves.
Ivan: Look, one of the things that I had been observing, like before we've gotten
Ivan: to this point now in middle of August,
Ivan: was when you added up the percentages of what they were voting towards,
Ivan: you know, Biden versus Trump, that in so many of the polls, like I'm going to
Ivan: talk more specifically about the national polls specifically,
Ivan: which, you know, which are, you know, they're leading indicators to a certain extent.
Sam: They move faster because there are a lot more of them happening,
Sam: you know, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: And the one thing about those is that so many of them weren't even at when you
Ivan: combine it, the combined total of Trump and Biden combined.
Ivan: Yeah, exactly. There were like even at 90 percent in a lot of cases.
Ivan: They were like and I kept saying, listen, man, we're not getting to a fucking election.
Ivan: We're 10 percent of the fucking voters are going to wind up fucking voting independent.
Ivan: My fucking ass hasn't happened.
Ivan: No fucking way. one way or another this
Ivan: is going to coalesce in some other way or another the two things
Ivan: that have been happening but the effect that you've
Ivan: had right now is that the rapidly coalescing event
Ivan: was biden saying i'm out bring harris in and that decided that moved all those
Ivan: fucking people that were basically just oh okay fine i made the decision it's
Ivan: harris and it's been like it and And in mass. Absolutely.
Sam: Now, I think...
Sam: Honestly, a lot of those undecided people may have eventually come around to
Sam: Joe when they finally were like, oh, fine.
Sam: God damn it. It's my only choice. I'll go for Joe.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: But it would have been a long, hard battle going over the course.
Ivan: It would have been a harder battle.
Sam: And it would have been a slow process over the next few months where people
Sam: slowly, like, finally admitted, oh, my God, this is what I have to do.
Sam: But Harris jumping in made that happen in a matter of days.
Sam: All of that motion happened within the first week to two weeks after she jumped in.
Sam: Huge numbers of undecideds have stopped being undecided and are now Harris.
Sam: They were holding back when it was Biden, but now they're like, okay, I'm in on Harris.
Sam: And also, I'll put out there as well, this was always going to happen,
Sam: but this has also accelerated over the last month, the complete collapse of Kennedy.
Sam: His numbers are like a third of what they were a couple months ago.
Ivan: I mean- And then Kennedy was trying to get a cabinet job on the fucking Harris administration.
Sam: Wait, he tried with Trump first.
Ivan: He tried with Trump first, and now he's calling Harris. Yeah, Trump said no.
Sam: And apparently he tried to talk to Harris. He actually got a phone call with
Sam: With Trump, Harris wouldn't even take his call.
Ivan: Yeah, fuck that guy. What the hell? I'm taking this stupid fucking call.
Sam: You know, but yeah.
Ivan: But look, I'll give you, you know, look, how much the race has been shifting.
Ivan: And I'm going to focus on on the national polls just because they're they're further ahead.
Ivan: OK, I'm looking at I just pulled up the latest polls on.
Ivan: Five thirty eight national polls margin for Harris or Trump.
Sam: OK, I'm looking at that.
Ivan: I'm going to go back.
Sam: By the way, their polling average right now has Harris up by two point six.
Sam: Like 24 hours ago, it had Harris up by three. So it's down a little bit from the max. But go ahead.
Ivan: But but but look at these. Look at these polling numbers like going back to like ten days.
Ivan: It's it was August six. It was plus one.
Ivan: Even Harris plus four. Harris plus one.
Ivan: Harris plus one. One Trump plus two Harris plus three Harris plus four Harris
Ivan: plus three Harris plus three.
Ivan: Even Trump, Trump plus one Harris plus two Harris plus five Harris plus five
Ivan: Trump plus two Harris plus six Harris plus six.
Ivan: I mean, this is this is this isn't slowing down in that direction.
Ivan: The numbers keep getting bigger.
Ivan: OK, toward Harris right now as we're heading towards the convention.
Ivan: Convention and so i mean this is i
Ivan: mean this is obviously the ideal scenario that you want like right now in terms
Ivan: of this if i'm a candidate i've got momentum in my direction and i'm gonna have
Ivan: a fucking convention that's gonna get everybody's attention fuck yeah that's
Ivan: what you want right now oh absolutely i.
Sam: I think that we probably are going to get a bump out of the convention.
Sam: Although like, you know, Harris's big bump was clearly when she got in,
Sam: like, you're not going to have that kind of movement again. That was a massive.
Ivan: But I think you'll get another point. I think it's good for another couple of points.
Sam: I think you're going to have more movement. And then going back to the Trump thing, um,
Sam: We've got Trump.
Ivan: Listen, here's the thing. Trump, this the convention you want to talk about?
Ivan: He's already been melting down about how much attention he's not getting. Right.
Ivan: It's why he was on with fucking Elon on on X Twitter bullshit spaces.
Ivan: Faces, whatever, talking for a couple of hours, which apparently everybody that
Ivan: listened to it was like, what the fuck is this? Okay.
Ivan: But he's going to be even more unhinged with the convention.
Ivan: I mean, that's not going to improve his mood.
Sam: Right. And I think like, well, and people are, one, you're talking about his mood.
Sam: Two, people are, now that Biden is out of the race,
Sam: people are pushing on you know what his
Sam: mental capacity really is and right and
Sam: we've talked about it wasn't that great to begin with like
Sam: even eight years ago no no i
Sam: mean we we had all the reports about from the from his
Sam: administration of like hey he can't actually read a report so we have to like
Sam: condense everything down into like basically slides with cartoons on them in
Sam: order for him to understand you know so and that and that was eight years ago
Sam: or seven years ago whatever oh and that that.
Ivan: That this week he decides to once again shit on the military.
Sam: Yes well yes and i'm like what the fuck well the things that yeah because he
Sam: can't help himself And this gets back to like how in control of himself is he?
Sam: What's his mental capacity anyway?
Sam: Is his mental – forget about like Alzheimer's or whatever.
Sam: He's clearly a mentally ill man. Is it getting worse?
Sam: You know? Yes. And I think the answer is yes because it's all being put under stress.
Sam: And the stress will – forget about – I'm sure there are aging effects here.
Sam: Too. There absolutely are.
Sam: But you take pre-existing, the whole people, I know people are like,
Sam: oh, you can't diagnose him without properly, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: There's so many mental health professionals at this point who've been like,
Sam: look, no, I have not had him in my office, but there's so many hours of public
Sam: behavior you can just observe.
Sam: He's clearly, what do they call it, a malignant narcissist or whatever,
Sam: and all of these other things associated with that.
Sam: And you're putting all of that under pressure. You're putting things that pressure
Sam: his ego, that relies on everybody loving him and looking up to him,
Sam: and he's the best person ever.
Sam: And every piece of evidence that you put in front of him that challenges that,
Sam: whether it be him being behind in the polls or him getting convicted of something
Sam: and having some sort of sentence happen, like challenges that kind of stuff
Sam: and, and, you know, makes him act out more and more.
Sam: And that's exactly what we're seeing so far. Now, can his staff at some point
Sam: do a 2016 and take his damn phone away from him and, and lock him up and not
Sam: going to happen this time. Lock him up.
Ivan: Well, that would, that would help everybody.
Sam: Oh, I mean, if you, if you control his exposure to the public to be only.
Ivan: But, but listen, listen he he has changed listen
Ivan: he was i think up
Ivan: until 2020 somebody that to a
Ivan: certain point was allowing himself to be managed okay
Ivan: right up to a point right now that
Ivan: he has basically removed every fucking
Ivan: safeguard of anybody that has any fucking
Ivan: you know common sense to really
Ivan: stop him or if there are around
Ivan: them none of them will none of them will will even
Ivan: like attempt to stop okay so i
Ivan: right now they are basically i mean
Ivan: sam held one rally this week where
Ivan: the fuck did he go for a rally uh montana oh
Ivan: yeah the great state of montana right i'm
Ivan: sure that that was definitely you know
Ivan: helping him move the needle in his direction okay what the fuck who the hell
Ivan: in a campaign that at like his that is flailing decides to hold a fucking rally
Ivan: and fuck it so montana i'll.
Sam: Tell you the theory behind that rally like.
Ivan: Okay you can do.
Sam: This logic or not.
Ivan: This is.
Sam: One of the states that the republicans are trying to pick up in the senate So
Sam: nominally, he was there to support the Republican candidate going against Senator Tester.
Ivan: Which is a point of parliamentary procedure. Yes.
Ivan: You remember what happened in Georgia in 2020? Yes. There were two Senate seats on the line. Yes.
Ivan: Did Trump give a fuck about the Senate?
Sam: I'm just telling you that's nominally why he was there.
Ivan: No, no, no. Did Trump give a fuck about the Senate?
Sam: No. No. And in fact, he did things that, like, I think— Actively undermined them.
Sam: I think, like, when Trump was doing the whole stop the steal,
Sam: call the Secretary of Defense, try to get them to, like, whatever,
Sam: And the statements he was making there against some of the local people,
Sam: like if he'd shut the hell up, the Democrats might not have won those two Senate seats.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: Like I think Trump actually actively participated in the Democrats winning the
Sam: Senate that year. Right.
Ivan: And so that's why I call bullshit on him going up there for that.
Ivan: I think that he wanted to go to some fucking place that filled two things.
Ivan: By the way, I do think that after he got shot. Yes.
Ivan: I think he's a little bit afraid for his safety.
Sam: I think that's true.
Ivan: And I do think that that is, I think that that is also impeding his ability to go out and do a round.
Sam: And he basically said, and I mentioned this last week, but he said like he wasn't
Sam: planning on really hitting the campaign trail again until after the Democrats convention was over,
Sam: which basically took him out of commission for a month other than a handful of small events.
Sam: And I think you're probably right. Part of it is probably him being spooked
Sam: by the assassination attempt.
Sam: And my God, I mean, I would be too. Let's be honest.
Ivan: I mean, fuck. Listen, like I said, listen, it is about the only one of the few
Ivan: fucking human reactions this bastard apparently has.
Ivan: Because, look, the first thing I said about when he got what when they tried
Ivan: to kill him, what I remarked was how fucked up his reaction was. Right.
Ivan: Because it was just nuts, okay, how he reacted.
Ivan: And now it's like almost post-traumatic where it's actually,
Ivan: oh, fuck, they did almost kill me.
Sam: Right. And, you know, now the Secret Service is like, okay, we're going to have
Sam: bulletproof glass in front of him or bullet-resistant glass in front of him
Sam: so he can do public events again. Again, like the few, the Montana event and
Sam: a couple others were, were smaller.
Sam: They were indoors, I believe.
Ivan: They were smaller and it was, I mean, it's fucking Montana. I mean, no way.
Sam: And then, and then his press conferences, he's done at Mar-a-Lago and Belminster.
Sam: Belminster? Bedminster.
Ivan: Bedminster. Not Belminster. Jesus Christ, we're butchering every fucking name today. We need to talk.
Sam: Go to the police. Oh, but for the record, my election graphs average for Harris
Sam: versus Trump in Montana right now has Trump ahead by 16.7%.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Now, that includes the- Very important. That includes the 2016 and 2020 elections
Sam: because there have only been three polls in Montana since Biden dropped.
Ivan: Listen, there is no fucking way that this guy went over there to support a fucking senator.
Ivan: I, I, I have no, this guy has not cared about anybody else in any race other than himself.
Ivan: And so I'm not sure what, I think that what in his mind going to Montana was
Ivan: like a safe place that he could go and do an event where he would get a crowd
Ivan: that he was comfortable with.
Sam: So, by the way, the Republican going up against Jon Taster is Tim Sheehy.
Ivan: Huh?
Sam: Tim Sheehy.
Ivan: And how's he doing?
Sam: Well, let's put it this way. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
Ivan: That's interesting.
Sam: I'm like, what the fuck? Why isn't there? How can this even be true?
Sam: Like I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for the 2024 United States Senate election in Montana.
Sam: It shows Jon Tester versus Tim Sheeney.
Ivan: By the way, I just saw, I pulled up something for 14 hours ago.
Ivan: Montana Senate new poll has Tester beating Sheehy 49-44. four. Yeah.
Sam: Which by the way, like we had talked about, like when we, when we did predictions
Sam: for this year, like in order for the Democrats to keep the Senate,
Sam: they have to do a clean sweep.
Sam: They basically have to wait every state and right now it's looking like they might.
Ivan: Sam, this was a Rasmussen poll and it has tester up by five.
Ivan: Holy shit. They might keep tester.
Sam: Yeah i mean this is one of the ones that democrats thought they would probably
Sam: lose so not looking like it the the ohio race was also one that they thought
Sam: and the democrats i believe still up narrowly in the polls in ohio as well you
Sam: can check if you want avon,
Sam: you know there are a few of those like now i i'm not yet saying that it looks
Sam: like we're it's it's It's going to happen, but the chances are a lot better than it looks.
Ivan: I just looked at, listen, listen. I mean, listen, I'm sorry,
Ivan: but Rasmussen polls have their thumb on the skin.
Sam: That's just a reality. Yeah, yeah. Okay?
Ivan: And if Rasmussen is posting a fucking poll that they just posted right now and
Ivan: has Tester up by five, that means Tester may be up by eight or ten.
Sam: Right. Yeah. Yeah, and there are a number of other states, too,
Sam: and people are talking about, you know, again, Democrats pretty much have to
Sam: do a clean sweep of all of the states they are defending in the Senate in order to do it.
Sam: And like a few months ago, people were thinking, yeah.
Ivan: That's not going to happen. Every single poll that I've pulled up,
Ivan: the last has browned up by four points.
Sam: And so now it looks like the Democrats might get that clean sweep that they need to keep the Senate.
Sam: And I've even heard people speculating about, is Ted Cruz in trouble in Texas?
Ivan: I mean, look, Republicans hate Ted Cruz. The problem that Ted Cruz has is that
Ivan: even their fucking Republicans cannot stand.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: And so that is the only reason why Ted may be vulnerable is because it's just the guy is just.
Ivan: One of the most unlikable pieces of shit out there.
Ivan: And so there, the one thing that you could have, how could Ted Cruz lose is
Ivan: a lot of Republicans go to the polls and they're just like, fuck this.
Ivan: I'm not, I'm, I'm not even marking them off. Fuck this. I can't do it.
Sam: Well, this is the thing too. Like people are talking about, like one of the
Sam: reasons the Democrats actively pushed Biden out is they were worried about negative
Sam: coattails where, you know, the,
Sam: the, The Democratic Senate candidates were doing better than Biden,
Sam: and they were worried that Biden would drag them down.
Sam: Now we're talking about traditional coattails instead. How is Harris going to help the Democrats?
Sam: Is the enthusiasm about Harris going to, I'm going to use the word twice in
Sam: one show, like give tailwinds to all these Senate candidates and help push the
Sam: Democrats over the edge in the Senate, obviously the House as well?
Sam: You know so right now like all trends are blue like and to be clear the overall,
Sam: we're still in toss-up territory everywhere toss-up for the presidency toss-up
Sam: for the house toss-up for the senate but right now all the trends are moving
Sam: towards blue now will that last all the way from now till november i don't know
Sam: i'm gonna tell you another guy who is.
Ivan: Not but who is deeply hated by a lot of people. It's Rick Scott.
Ivan: Okay. In Florida, Florida Atlantic, which is a university near me.
Ivan: They've actually the, the I've seen that they're polling over the last few election
Ivan: cycles has been pretty spot on what the fuck is going on. Okay.
Ivan: They've got that race right now. The last few polls at recently where they've
Ivan: got Scott up by four, but it's a 4743 split, which means that there's a lot
Ivan: of people out there that are like undecided like right now on that.
Ivan: Listen scott when he won six years ago i think won by less than 10 000 votes
Ivan: right okay it was paper thin it was it was just stupidly thin and people don't
Ivan: like rick scott i mean the guy I just, he's a douchebag.
Ivan: Just, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, maybe he's just, he's a little less disliked
Ivan: than Ted Cruz, but not by a lot.
Ivan: And so that's another one where,
Ivan: the the only reason i bring it up is because you
Ivan: know what the last time it was paper
Ivan: thin it was i mean it was
Ivan: just so close so you know and by the way it wasn't expected to be that close
Ivan: right um so let me let me pull up the the final tally of that election but yeah
Ivan: it was yeah Yeah. 10,000 votes.
Ivan: Rick Scott had 4,000,099.
Ivan: Bill Nelson came up with 4,089.
Ivan: I mean, it doesn't get a lot closer than that. Yeah.
Sam: And since we're talking Florida, let me just talk Florida for the presidency as well.
Sam: First of all, where the polling ended for Biden when people stopped polling
Sam: him had Trump ahead by 5.7% in Florida and with 13.9% in the category that said neither.
Ivan: Undecided. Yeah.
Sam: Undecided or third party. um yeah
Sam: that's my election graphs average of course for harris
Sam: right now that's actually about the same it has like trump ahead by six okay
Sam: but i will point out trends like just looking at oh i have to say has trump
Sam: had by six but that that neither group is down to 6.7 okay but.
Sam: Aside from the average itself, I want to point out the trends on that.
Sam: There was a poll of Harris versus Trump right before Biden dropped out,
Sam: where Trump was ahead by over 10% in Florida.
Sam: And then if you look at the polls since then, there's a couple of outliers from
Sam: this trend, but we had an insider advantage poll, Trump by 10.
Sam: Then we had a redfield and wilton trump
Sam: by eight then you university
Sam: of north florida trump by seven then uh
Sam: redfield and wilton trump by six then suffolk trump by five then we just had
Sam: a poll come out this week for mainstream uh for main street and if you average
Sam: the with and without kennedy trump only two and a half two and a half uh now
Sam: there were a couple outliers there was an
Sam: additional Trump by 8.2 from ActiveVote and McLaughlin by 8 that were not on
Sam: that trend line I showed. They were a little higher.
Sam: But the trend is almost every poll that has come out has showed Florida closer than the poll before.
Sam: Like I said, in the end, the average right now is still Trump up by six.
Sam: And that's over the last two weeks. So that's a fairly recent polling.
Sam: So i'm not ready to say florida's in play yet but the trend in florida just
Sam: like everywhere else has been moving rapidly towards harris if it moves a few
Sam: more percent then yeah florida's in play too you know i.
Ivan: Think the one thing the one other state that you know like georgia i mean biden
Ivan: won georgia okay you know that that's that that that what that that was one
Ivan: and look like right Right now,
Ivan: it's at the same margins or like Biden won the last time.
Ivan: Listen, this is a state that is winnable.
Sam: Oh, yeah. My poll average in Georgia right now has Trump up by 0.8%.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: This is another one where, you know, let me let me check the Biden number real quick.
Sam: Biden's final number was trumped up by four and a half in Georgia.
Sam: Harris has it at point eight. And again, with a rapid trend towards her over the last few weeks.
Sam: Now, again, at some point, the move towards Harris has to stop.
Sam: You know, we're not going to have, you know, Harris winning 48 states in D.C., you know, but.
Ivan: But well, I mean, I don't know. But I mean, for all we know,
Ivan: Trump could come out and like, I don't know, maybe shoot Melania or something for all we fucking know.
Sam: Yes. Well, I heard people spinning scenarios at this point of like,
Sam: OK, well, Trump clearly at this point thinks Vance was a mistake.
Sam: Maybe he dumps vast Vance. And then the only possible rational replacement would be Haley.
Ivan: Ivanka Haley.
Sam: Although Trump hates Haley. But they're like, well, but the party would force
Sam: him to pick Haley. Yeah, right. right, whatever.
Sam: Pick Haley. And then Trump trumps out. And then we have Harris versus Haley.
Sam: And then that changes everything.
Ivan: That wouldn't happen in one billion years. Well, I mean, the part where Trump dumps vans,
Ivan: I see that, or tries to dump them. Can he dump them?
Ivan: Can he just say, fuck you? How does that work?
Sam: Well, I mean, remember there was that, who was it? Eagleton,
Sam: who got pushed out by the Democrats in, I forget, 68, 72.
Sam: Many i forget when that was um okay but basically
Sam: that can happen basically and to show how times
Sam: have changed the reason i mean it came out that he had seen a psychiatrist and
Sam: oh fuck and then he and so he had to drop out good hell and i think he cried
Sam: or something like when he was asked about it um oh for fucking christ's sakes what the fuck what.
Ivan: The oh okay well all right.
Sam: Anyway anyway like So it has happened where the vice president has been pushed
Sam: out after the convention.
Sam: Basically, the RNC would have to meet and pick a new one.
Ivan: Okay, so they could do that.
Sam: But look, he's not listening here. How is he going to pick? We got ballot deadlines too, though.
Sam: At this point, we are now several weeks past where we were talking about it
Sam: is now getting difficult to change ballots.
Sam: So some states you can change it. Some states you can't. At some states,
Sam: you can change it only under certain circumstances.
Sam: But the bottom line, protection against all of this stuff is in the end.
Sam: It's the electors voting.
Sam: And so almost up to the very last minute, the RNC could tell electors do something else.
Sam: Now, there are a few states that bind them, so that induces complications.
Ivan: He might just shoot Vance.
Sam: Yeah, actually, because it's easier to replace somebody on the ballot if they're
Sam: dead. If someone is dead, it's easier to replace them on the ballot than if they're not.
Ivan: That's why I'm saying.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Well, I think here's one thing, though.
Ivan: Look, he's not going to put Haley. I mean, have you seen all the backlash that
Ivan: J.D. Vance's wife has gotten because she's of Indian heritage?
Sam: Yes. Yes.
Ivan: I mean, so what? You think this is going to appease the racists that put Haley on?
Sam: Although in that interview that came out where Vance apparently agreed with
Sam: the notion that the only purpose of postmenopausal women is to be grandmothers
Sam: to their grandchildren. children.
Sam: That same interview that he also sort of not, now to be clear on all of this,
Sam: Vance did not say this himself.
Sam: The interviewer said it and Vance sort of made affirming, uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, noises.
Sam: And Vance is now saying he didn't really agree with him. He was not along to
Sam: the thing he said before that and didn't realize.
Sam: But also he said, the interviewer said, and Vance seem to agree that apparently
Sam: one of the big advantages of marrying into an Indian family was that the grandparents
Sam: were even more dedicated to this kind of stuff.
Sam: Because they like, apparently his mother-in-law had a fairly high powered job
Sam: and quit the job and moved in with them to help with care of the baby after
Sam: they started having kids and lived with them for like a year.
Sam: And like in the interviewer, it's like, well, that's one of the advantages of
Sam: marrying into an Indian family. They're like that, you know?
Ivan: Okay, so, all right.
Sam: So, yes, the racism.
Ivan: Yes, how does this address the racists? Were you putting in Haley?
Ivan: Wait, we got the misogynists and the racists.
Ivan: So you got, you know, it's a, you know, I don't see how, I mean, it would be Haley.
Ivan: Is going to be somebody it's got to be some other.
Sam: You know i honestly i think at this point at this point he's sticking with vance
Sam: i think the maximum danger point for vance has passed,
Sam: and i think unless more comes out they're sticking
Sam: with vance like because because at this point there's a cost to it i still don't
Sam: i still don't although we thought that with biden we thought there'd be a cost
Sam: to a switch and there wasn't so maybe maybe trump could dump somebody dump vance
Sam: and pick somebody that miraculously will completely undo all of the poll changes in the last one.
Ivan: I know. I got the answer. I got the perfect answer. She's available. Palin.
Sam: I thought that's the solution i thought you were gonna say fiorina.
Ivan: Oh well that's you know yeah that's another no no no.
Sam: Palin man okay i.
Ivan: Mean why not recycle palin.
Sam: Yeah i could see that like but yeah the at this point like to really i mean
Sam: to really shake this up and reverse the trends that we've been seeing over the last month I think,
Sam: you know, we've talked about like, can Trump discipline himself and have come to the conclusion?
Sam: No, that that would be one way to stabilize this is if Trump actually acted
Sam: normal from now until the election.
Sam: The other would be that you do have a trump
Sam: replacement on the republican side and we don't end up with the
Sam: trump part of the biden versus trump either and then
Sam: depending on who the rnc put in completely different race but like you know
Sam: unlike biden there is no freaking way trump would do that himself so i think
Sam: that would only happen you know if trump was if trump actually died or was physically
Sam: incapacitated in such a way that he couldn't.
Ivan: This Republican Party is so beholden to Trump. Never have.
Ivan: I don't. They are, they, it's like a suicide pact at this point.
Sam: Yeah, it is.
Sam: And and look they'll you know what was
Sam: it um oh i'm blanking south carolina
Sam: senator guy what's his name i just blanked graham yeah
Sam: lindsey graham lindsey graham went back in 2015
Sam: early 2016 when he
Sam: was running against trump said explicitly if
Sam: if we pick trump it will destroy the republican
Sam: party now he ended up winning
Sam: but i think his prediction of it
Sam: destroying the republican party is still playing out
Sam: i mean frankly even if trump wins this time
Sam: around like the what survives
Sam: of the republican party going forward after trump whenever trump is gone is
Sam: gonna be nothing is nothing nothing like all of the principles that the republican
Sam: party traditionally held are gone no but like no.
Ivan: But but even beyond that sam.
Sam: The organization the machinery that's all raising out yes it.
Ivan: He has completely decimated that.
Sam: All of it yes all.
Ivan: Of it all of it the local organizing, the field offices, everything.
Ivan: He has completely, completely decimated that.
Ivan: Look what's been happening, all these parties in different states where you've
Ivan: had these crisis, where they've had no money, where they're fighting amongst
Ivan: each other. They can't decide anything.
Ivan: They can't do anything. This has been an ongoing saga that you've seen.
Ivan: And listen, if Trump, like right now, loses again.
Ivan: They are in exactly that scenario.
Ivan: They've got nothing left. And the problem that they've got is that,
Ivan: my thought is, even if he loses, if he's not dead, he's going to try to run again.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: That that's what i totally believe.
Sam: I could see that you're not he's i could see him announcing
Sam: his candidacy the day after well after
Sam: he loses well he's never he's never going to admit he loses either
Sam: he's going to contest it again just like he did last time and
Sam: pretend it's a steal and blah blah blah go through
Sam: all the courts try to get another riot try to get
Sam: the house to do something you blah blah it probably won't
Sam: succeed but he's going to try all of that stuff again end
Sam: so he'll never admit he loses and then
Sam: but then i can see him immediately thereafter being like well you know 2028
Sam: 2028 is coming up you know now just just like we he is deteriorating with age
Sam: though like i can't imagine adding another four years to this donald trump yes listen.
Ivan: I i i understand how bad it would be but i'm telling you that.
Sam: He's trying oh yeah yeah Yeah, I don't disagree.
Ivan: So, Jesus Christ, can't get this son of a bitch. It's like a fucking cockroach.
Ivan: Never been able to get rid of this bastard. God, son of a bitch.
Sam: Well, yeah. You keep predicting every year he's going to have a heart attack. Hasn't happened yet.
Sam: Except there was that one mysterious visit to the hospital that we never found out what happened.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: Well, shit.
Ivan: Well, Sam, I mean, Jesus Christ, and talk about my death prediction.
Ivan: And I'm sorry, but a bullet came within what?
Ivan: How many inches of fucking doing it? Like what? Maybe one inch?
Sam: Yeah, something like that. Two inches? Boom.
Ivan: Yep.
Sam: So. Okay, did we miss anything, Yvonne? Or can we wrap this sucker up?
Ivan: No, you can wrap this sucker up.
Sam: Okay. Thanks, everybody, for listening to yet another Curmudgeon's Corner.
Sam: As Yvonne and I ramble on about this and that and that and this.
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Sam: So Yvonne, what's something from the curmudgeon's corner Slack in the last week
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Ivan: Musk's new AI image generator
Ivan: immediately used to troll him and images
Ivan: flooded and videos images what the
Ivan: heck images flooded X showing Musk carrying out a school shooting with Mickey
Ivan: Mouse or being let on a leash by Donald Trump and I'm looking at a picture so
Ivan: disgusting of Donald and him kissing no.
Sam: No men kissing is fine.
Ivan: Now.
Sam: Admittedly, it's Donald and Elon.
Ivan: That's what I'm saying. I mean, listen, I kiss guys, okay, as a hello,
Ivan: okay? It's not a big deal.
Sam: With tongue, I'm sure.
Ivan: But not with tongue. I don't kiss like casual. Listen, I don't kiss casual people with tongue, okay?
Ivan: It's only, you know, for a few years.
Sam: Tongue in the ear?
Ivan: No, no, on the cheek.
Sam: You know. You just lick their cheek. cheek.
Ivan: Yeah but but see.
Sam: These two clouds,
Sam: what's the name of this thing grok is it it's grok grok xai yeah.
Ivan: So, well, people... Rock 2, the latest version of the chatbot startup,
Ivan: is available on X premium subscribers.
Ivan: Appears to let users make images that would fall foul of content restrictions
Ivan: used by some similar tools.
Ivan: As a result, bizarre and occasionally disturbing images were shared on X,
Ivan: depicting real people, including Musk himself.
Sam: You mentioned Mickey Mouse. It's not just real people. It's also copyrighted
Sam: intellectual property stuff that like a lot of these other AI generated tools,
Sam: they're not very good at it. You can get around it.
Sam: So like if you want to do like Disney characters doing stuff,
Sam: you can do it in the others.
Sam: But most of the others have some level of protection to make it harder to do that.
Sam: Apparently, Grok has none of that because it's like, you know,
Sam: free speech or whatever. and and as one of them shows the tesla.
Ivan: Boss holding a sign simply reading i am a pedo.
Sam: Nice but like the the copyrighted stuff is going to get them in trouble even
Sam: faster than this stuff i mean like elon's probably going to freak about these
Sam: and people are have probably already been fired over this i'm sure they're already
Sam: shut it down but but uh mickey mickey but like mickey.
Ivan: Bow saluting adolf hitler and donald duck using heroin.
Sam: But how long how long will it take before four Disney's lawyers have talked to Hacks about this.
Ivan: I'm sure they're already doing so right now.
Sam: Yes. Like, yeah. Like, this is the kind of thing that Disney does not smile at.
Ivan: No, not particularly. No.
Sam: Disney is one of the companies that is well known for being really aggressive
Sam: about their intellectual property.
Ivan: Here, I'm going to say that.
Sam: To the point where they were, I think they've calmed down a little bit on this,
Sam: but for a while they were like, they were in the news for like going after like
Sam: preschools that had hand painted Mickey's painted on the walls and stuff. Yeah.
Ivan: They don't go after that. But for example, I do.
Sam: They used to, they stopped because of the bad.
Ivan: They, they don't, but I know for a fact that they, they will, for example, uh,
Ivan: You know, like certain plays made out of Disney movies, they will allow it,
Ivan: but you better stick to their rules and restrictions around those,
Ivan: or otherwise you're done. Right. Okay?
Ivan: Like you can't live. Okay, you want to do the play? Great. You can't live stream
Ivan: it. You can't post it on YouTube. You can't do that.
Ivan: You know, you have to do all these things around them, for example.
Ivan: If not, then don't drop the hammer on you. Okay.
Sam: And of course, with all of these companies, if you do that, you generally have
Sam: to pay a license fee anyway. But I think Disney is pretty aggressive about that.
Sam: It varies by company, but Disney is one of the more aggressive in terms of those kinds of things.
Sam: Anyway, I'm sure Disney and others will be going after X for what Grok is doing.
Sam: But like I said, I don't think you even need it. Because it's showing Elon himself
Sam: in a negative light, he's going to crack down on them.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: He'll take care of this himself. So anyway, basically.
Ivan: All right. Okay. We're done.
Sam: We're done. Okay. That's it. Thank you, everybody. Have a nice, safe, exciting week.
Sam: Do we have anything? Is there anything?
Sam: Like, is it a holiday yet? No, it's not. It's not the holiday yet.
Sam: We got a couple more weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks.
Sam: Olympics are over. over, oh, we got the DNC coming up. So before we have our
Sam: next show, the Democratic National Convention will have happened.
Sam: Hopefully it will be fun and exciting and Harris will do well and all of the
Sam: ex-presidents and Hillary Clinton will be there and do exciting things.
Sam: It's feeling like it's going to have a lot more energy than the RNC had. We'll see.
Ivan: But let's just say that what i you know
Ivan: the one thing that i found exciting and i i'm hoping that
Ivan: he's well enough to be there jimmy carter basically said that he wants to just
Ivan: right now stay alive to vote to vote for harris yeah that was one of the fucking
Ivan: coolest things i've heard yeah i must say yeah.
Sam: And i i yeah so he's yeah yeah that was touching.
Ivan: Like and yes and and And.
Sam: You know, he's been on hospice for like a year.
Sam: You know, and I've heard interviews with his grandson saying like,
Sam: you know, when he entered hospice, we were expecting days.
Sam: It's been a year, you know, so he's hanging.
Ivan: And look, hospice, you know, like sometimes people think it's like,
Ivan: you know, they're they're they're ill enough that they need that care sometimes.
Ivan: Yeah. And people expect that they will die, but it's not like they're actively
Ivan: trying to have them die. Right.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: All right. I just think that he will, but it's been the best,
Ivan: most palliative treatment for him in order for him to be as comfortable as possible.
Ivan: And well, there you go. Managed to be around me.
Sam: So we'll see. Yeah. But we'll see if he makes it. But the convention itself,
Sam: I mean, to be clear, the Republicans had a bunch of energy.
Sam: They were sure they were like on a glide path to a win.
Sam: And now everything's changed. We'll see how the Democrats do.
Sam: I think it's going to be good.
Ivan: But it was, let's be clear, using a term, it was weird energy.
Ivan: I mean, the people they had on stage talking, I mean, they had Hulk Hogan.
Ivan: What the fuck?
Sam: Well, they had a bunch of sort of washed up 80s people, and people have pointed
Sam: out, well, Trump is mentally stuck in the 80s, so it all makes sense.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Okay.
Sam: We were saying goodbye. Bye, everybody. Have a great week.
Sam: Stay safe. we'll talk to you next time goodbye say goodbye yvonne bye,
Sam: okay thank you yvonne i'm gonna probably go crash and get more covid rustle
Sam: fun fun fun all right i'll do that.
Ivan: Bye okay let's upload.
Sam: Hitting stop stop.