Sam: You are not in your usual location.
Ivan: No kidding. Really?
Sam: Wow.
Ivan: Sherlock Holmes.
Sam: Where are you?
Ivan: I'm in San Juan. That's why I said I had to take a 6.30 a.m. flight to get home.
Sam: You didn't say to get home. I thought you were leaving home to go somewhere.
Ivan: No, no, no. I need the flight to get home.
Sam: Gotcha. You're sideways.
Sam: I'm okay with you sideways.
Ivan: Here's the thing. Over here, I'm not sideways. Yet you are.
Sam: I'm sideways.
Ivan: I'm like, why the hell? I'm trying this for the first time on the iPad.
Sam: You're using the app? Okay, you're right side up now.
Ivan: I guess this doesn't rotate.
Ivan: Wait, what the fuck did I do? What is grid beaker slider?
Ivan: I don't know what any of these things are. I don't know.
Sam: Okay. Good, good, good.
Ivan: Well, it's just that I was trying to move the camera because the thing is,
Ivan: oh, here. Okay, that'll, that'll, okay, that fixes that. There you go.
Ivan: That's better. Not, I'm looking at the wrong place.
Sam: You're all good. Shall we, shall we go? Or shall we?
Ivan: Yeah, we need to go because I have to, yeah.
Sam: Sleep! Sleep is good! Okay, here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 31st, 2024.
Sam: It's just after zero UTC.
Sam: I'm Sam Minter and Yvonne Bo is here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: I am here. Hello.
Sam: You sound so enthused.
Ivan: Well, I got sick this week.
Sam: I am finally over my COVID, by the way.
Sam: I tested negative starting Wednesday night. And my symptoms had abated a few
Sam: days before that. So, yeah.
Ivan: Look, I had a very stressful work week, which unfortunately,
Ivan: I'm really frustrated because I managed to accomplish.
Ivan: Well, no, I'm grossly excited to say nothing.
Ivan: I did move things forward, but I wanted to put, I'm in sales.
Ivan: I wanted to move them to completion.
Ivan: Unfortunately, completion did not happen. Did I get advances?
Ivan: Yes, I got some significant advances, but some of that stuff was hindered by
Ivan: the fact that, I don't know, on Tuesday night, I'd gone out to dinner and hung out with some friends.
Ivan: are actually celebrating the fact that one of my co-workers actually closed
Ivan: some of their first deals.
Sam: Okay, good.
Ivan: It's a new employee. They've been here a few months. We had a little bit of wine. We had nothing.
Ivan: Nothing too much. We ate, whatever, but nothing too much.
Ivan: Three in the morning, I feel my intestines are acting like when I get sick or food poisoned.
Sam: They're not happy at all.
Ivan: No. And I'm like, what the hell is going on?
Ivan: I'm like, and so anyway, the next day I have some important meetings I need to try to go to. Okay.
Ivan: And I'm like, look, I got to book this up. It doesn't fucking matter. I got to. I can't.
Ivan: And so I woke up.
Sam: You tried to push through it anyway.
Ivan: No, I did. But listen, I did. Okay. All right. Well, I woke up. No, I got up.
Ivan: I felt like, I don't, I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me?
Ivan: And I wasn't really sure what was going on yet still. Okay.
Ivan: But I felt just completely destroyed. I just felt just what the hell.
Ivan: When I get to the office and then we go to this thing.
Ivan: And then, you know, one thing is that at some point realize that we got there.
Ivan: And well, I had been able to explain to a couple of people that we're gonna go to the meeting and.
Ivan: What the purpose of it was. And we found out that, anyway, the guy that we wanted
Ivan: to talk to didn't want to receive that many people at once.
Ivan: So they said, look, I told him, look, I feel, take me back to the office. I can't.
Ivan: You said, look, I got it. I got it. Listen, we got it. Just,
Ivan: you know, these people aren't even my, they're not on my same team.
Ivan: They're on a different team, but we were having stuff that dealt with the same organization.
Ivan: organization and so this guy was just look i'll
Ivan: help you out okay all right because i know what i gotta do i
Ivan: don't i don't need to sell you i right now it's just a process thing
Ivan: you need to get some approvals through some organization and i'm
Ivan: just like so he drove me back to the office and i got there and listen
Ivan: my i i i left everything
Ivan: in the bathroom at the office and thank god that nobody was there when i
Ivan: got there because i was just oh god yes and i
Ivan: you know i had thought that from there i should
Ivan: have taken an uber and just left my rental
Ivan: car back at the office and i had my briefcase i'll
Ivan: just go straight to the hotel probably would have been the
Ivan: smartest thing because i i drove back and i almost fell
Ivan: asleep twice and hit and and on one of them i well i probably wouldn't have
Ivan: crashed but i i did fall asleep at a traffic light oh wow at two o'clock in
Ivan: the afternoon yeah okay like i think that's a short drive i got there i got to the hotel,
Ivan: I proceeded to get into bed and completely passed out.
Ivan: I then had to wake up because some stuff happened. I needed to talk to the contract
Ivan: people. I needed to talk to people.
Ivan: I basically wound up still working hours and hours, but from bed,
Ivan: just laying down in bed and going to the bathroom.
Ivan: The next day, I felt somewhat better, but I had an in-person meeting,
Ivan: and I told the person, listen, I don't think it's a good idea I come to your office.
Ivan: how about we just zoom this make this brief,
Ivan: and we'll go from there so I got them on I just I zoomed that meeting I did
Ivan: have to look I had to cancel a meeting I had in the afternoon on the previous
Ivan: day I couldn't go to a customer this one I zoomed,
Ivan: So that was like Wednesday, Thursday.
Ivan: I didn't eat for two days. But today, by yesterday evening, after my system
Ivan: had been properly evacuated, I felt a lot better.
Ivan: I found out, I told my co-worker I was celebrating with on Tuesday.
Ivan: I said, well, I called her up and I said, look, this happened.
Ivan: And she said, you know what? I know what happened. It's like, what do you mean?
Ivan: Well, I had a note from school.
Ivan: There's been a 24-hour virus going through all the kids at school.
Ivan: And that they've been getting this. And it's been like, you know,
Ivan: like that, like pretty quick.
Ivan: And on the day that I was at the office, a whole bunch of kids,
Ivan: parents had picked up their kids at school and brought them to the office.
Sam: Your kids who were sick?
Ivan: Well, they probably weren't. well they may have had it but they weren't.
Sam: Right okay it wasn't like they they got called from school come pick up your
Sam: kid they're sick and they took him to the office right but it was more just kids were exposed yeah.
Ivan: And so i wound up being it so i'm still i i did work today a full day but i
Ivan: don't really feel back to 100 you.
Sam: Don't look back to 100 you you look at most 50 percent Oh.
Ivan: I'm like, I'm about 50. And then, you know, it was really, really stressful with work.
Ivan: You know, just getting stuff and working until very, I still wound up working
Ivan: all the time, even though I was basically just in bed with fucking laptop and
Ivan: phone and shit. And, you know.
Ivan: But, yeah, I'm not.
Sam: That sucks. There's no other word for it. Your week sounds awful.
Ivan: It's awful. It's awful. Plus, I didn't get.
Sam: You didn't get done what you wanted to get done. No.
Ivan: No, no. It wasn't because of that.
Sam: Well, it didn't help. It didn't help.
Ivan: Well, it didn't help. Okay. That's for sure. But the biggest reasons for that
Ivan: are just, you know, happened weeks and weeks in advance.
Ivan: Well, we had shit like, for example, unfortunately, this is in Puerto Rico,
Ivan: and one of the things that a lot of stuff got delayed because we had a storm two weeks ago.
Ivan: So they had a storm, not like the storm that happened like Maria seven years
Ivan: ago, but it still had some impacts.
Ivan: And so a lot of people didn't get any work done that week.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: So that delayed shit, honestly, probably the storm.
Ivan: Without that storm, I would have gotten, we would have had enough time to get
Ivan: everything done. End of the month.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: But, you know, hey, and I gotta be honest.
Ivan: I went from traveling nonstop. The pandemic made me spend one year where I didn't travel at all.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: So now I have slept, I don't know. I have traveled a ridiculous amount again,
Ivan: and I just want to fucking go home.
Ivan: Yeah. I'm sick and tired of this fucking hotel. It's a nice hotel.
Ivan: I'm fucking sick and tired of it.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: So no matter how fucking nice it is.
Sam: I gotcha.
Ivan: I did get, you know, I did, you know, I was so exhausted.
Ivan: One thing, at least, you know, about the hotel, it's in front of the ocean.
Ivan: So I had just opened my slider door and I probably, you know,
Ivan: when I got back from the office, I just crashed for a while.
Ivan: just hearing that sound until some idiots started playing music outside for
Ivan: some reason on on a on a plaza i decided that this is like fun to have some
Ivan: boom boxes start playing music and woke me up okay.
Sam: Well i'm glad you're feeling better even though you're not completely better
Sam: at least you're you know 50 is better.
Ivan: Than where it sounds like you were oh man i mean that was like i mean people
Ivan: are looking at me the other day i'm like are you okay there'll be people I was like, it's like stress.
Ivan: I'm like, what the fuck is going on now? This thing is real sick.
Sam: So anyway, our plan for the day, this is our but first.
Sam: Yvonne was just sharing his illness. Well, hopefully you can't actually catch
Sam: it through listening to the podcast.
Ivan: This is not like Smell-O-Vision?
Sam: No, no. We don't do that.
Ivan: Where was Smell-O-Vision? I can't remember what the hell.
Sam: Well i saw i
Sam: saw recently actually that like you know
Sam: that oh the the the sequel
Sam: to the tornado movie twist or two or whatever just came
Sam: out like a few weeks ago and there are apparently some there's some theaters
Sam: that are like 4d something something blah blah blah oh sure that i think it
Sam: does include the smell of vision but it also includes the thing where it shakes
Sam: the seats and stuff like that in the movie.
Sam: So apparently a lot of people were watching this tornado movie in this theater
Sam: that has the full immersive experience where you feel like you're actually in the tornado.
Sam: And I don't know if they actually impale some audience members with random debris or not.
Ivan: That would be interesting.
Sam: You know, but yeah.
Ivan: Yeah, I mean, that would be.
Ivan: That would be interesting.
Sam: A little too realistic?
Ivan: That might be a little bit. You know, I've mentioned that, you know,
Ivan: there is this ride at Disney called Soarin' that is like that in terms of when
Ivan: you, they do the movie and they take you, you know, flying and they,
Ivan: you know, make the effect of feel like you're going,
Ivan: but they also add all the sets and things.
Ivan: Like if you're in the savannah, you know, you smell that.
Ivan: If you're at the Taj Mahal, I think there's, I don't know what flowers,
Ivan: roses, whatever there are, are you getting those so they do add that to the
Ivan: to the experience so that that is so they do that yeah i guess it's you know somebody decided hey.
Sam: Let's i think once or twice i went to things
Sam: that had that kind of stuff and you know it was a novelty like but but it was
Sam: it was not when when i went it wasn't like a regular movie it was a movie that
Sam: was designed to do these things so it I mean, I think it was 3D, too.
Sam: So, of course, they were always like shoving stuff at your face.
Sam: And then like at certain points in the thing, it would shake or at certain points
Sam: they'd spray some smell in your general direction.
Sam: And I'm like, OK, this was an interesting experience.
Sam: I wouldn't want like normal movies to be like this. You know, I think that.
Ivan: You know, the thing is that, you know, the thing with those kinds of movies,
Ivan: right, is that they're focusing more on the effects rather on the movie.
Ivan: And so it's just, it's just not a good movie. It's just something to show off
Ivan: that they can do the effect.
Ivan: You know, whereas if you have a good movie and you intersperse like really good,
Ivan: like surround sound that feels realistic and certain movements and certain things
Ivan: that you do it like that, it's directly related to the plot.
Ivan: And that makes more sense. Otherwise it's just, yeah.
Sam: I mean, I think even there, I mean, yes, you can do it.
Sam: So it's really good and it's integral to the experience. But like most movies,
Sam: I don't want to smell what's going on. I just don't want to.
Sam: Like, I don't care how integral it is to the story. I don't want to smell it. I'm sorry.
Sam: And like, if I'm sitting on my couch, relaxing, watching a movie,
Sam: I don't want my couch. It smells like shit?
Sam: Well, yeah, I don't want necessarily, oh, they're going through a cow pasture.
Sam: Lovely. I can smell it. You know, and I don't want my couch to shake. I don't know.
Ivan: The smells are not, you know, the thing. But look,
Ivan: but there is a big, big, big difference in, you know, when you go to an IMAX
Ivan: movie with the sound, you know, that is realistic versus, you know,
Ivan: you're watching an IMAX.
Sam: Well, yes, compared to watching on your phone and also like even like a regular
Sam: television or television versus sound bar versus a real like seven to surround system, whatever.
Sam: Like there are differences at all of those levels.
Sam: And but, you know, most and like like I have the surround sound.
Sam: I have I have the surround sound system in my living room when I watch things.
Sam: But, you know, and occasionally it matters. like if you're watching a movie
Sam: that takes advantage of it well i think the problem is.
Ivan: When you have it on all the time you stop noticing that it's happening and so
Ivan: you know it's one of those things that i just i really notice it when i you
Ivan: know for example i'm traveling and i'm watching something because i'm renting
Ivan: freaking thing with a little speaker it's not exactly really that much you know it's it's not really.
Sam: You notice the difference more after that yeah of course yeah.
Ivan: Yeah yeah i.
Sam: Mean and like most of the time what's on my projector system in my is news and
Sam: like you know i it's really i.
Ivan: Think we really notice it it's like a movie like a really.
Sam: I know i was just gonna say surround sound does not add a lot to wolf blitzer
Sam: no you know probably probably.
Ivan: The opposite to be honest with you.
Sam: Yeah i i mean but and even with movies mr
Sam: wolf on the kind yes mr wolf mr wolf it
Sam: it it depends on the kind of movie too like
Sam: some movies you know like an action movie is
Sam: going to take a lot more advantage of the surround sound and
Sam: stuff like that than a rom-com you know sure you know so i mean you may still
Sam: get some of that like some ambient noises from behind you and some stuff like
Sam: that but it makes more of a difference in things that where there's lots of
Sam: movement and action and things going on you know so and fine anyway.
Ivan: We've dragged this out.
Sam: Anyway okay.
Ivan: All right what are you gonna.
Sam: Okay what are Should I skip my movie? We can get right onto the meat of things.
Ivan: No, no, no. What's your movie this week?
Sam: Ghostbusters.
Ivan: The first one?
Sam: The first one. Okay, you've watched it. Oh, yeah, I have seen Ghostbusters many times before.
Sam: This comes from when the newest Ghostbusters was in the theater.
Sam: My wife was like, hey, let's go see it.
Sam: And then we were like, well, wait, we haven't seen the one immediately before it.
Sam: And it's sort of a direct sequel to the one immediately before it.
Sam: So I'm like, you know, let's, let's watch all of the Ghostbusters and then we'll go see the new one.
Sam: Like, so let's, let's catch up on the series.
Sam: But of course, catching up on the series took us months.
Sam: And so it's long gone from the theaters now. We could, it's,
Sam: it's now available on streaming, the newest one.
Sam: we have caught up like we've actually watched all
Sam: the ones prior to the newest ones we we skipped
Sam: for now the various ghostbusters tv series
Sam: we have skipped those there were there were like three different ghostbusters
Sam: cartoons or something but we we have skipped those but we have watched all of
Sam: the ghostbusters movies and but now i'm only here to talk about the first one
Sam: and i'll I'll get to the other ones later.
Ivan: Okay, let's talk about the first.
Sam: So, I mean, it's a classic.
Ivan: How does it hold up 40 years later?
Sam: Pretty good, actually. Yeah? Like, there are a few parts that fall flat,
Sam: but I'd say mostly it holds up.
Ivan: That's good.
Sam: And, I mean, you know.
Ivan: I am remembering some of the lines from it. I'm just smiling from like thinking
Ivan: some of the stuff because I still remember that one of the first parts is – what's his name?
Ivan: Oh, God, Will Murray doing these experiments on this – with these two people.
Ivan: I guess he's like doing electrical torture or something, the questions.
Ivan: And the reality is he's just after – you know, he wanted just this girl.
Ivan: He was just torturing the other poor guy.
Sam: Yeah, he was zapping the guy and telling the guy that he got everything wrong,
Sam: where the woman that was there got everything right.
Sam: And there was, you are psychic.
Sam: This is amazing. Like, blah, blah, blah. Yes, yes.
Sam: I'm going to give it a thumbs up. I mean, Ghostbusters is Ghostbusters.
Sam: I mean, who hasn't, like, seen this?
Sam: Like, I don't know. It's, you know, like I said, some parts hold up a little bit better than others.
Sam: but for the most part, it's pretty consistently still funny and it's,
Sam: it's got some classic moments and, you know, and spoilers, you got the marshmallow guy near the end and.
Ivan: You know, yes.
Sam: Ray, if someone asks you, if you're a God, you say yes.
Sam: You know, stuff like that. It's a, I mean, it's got good lines.
Sam: It's, it's, you know, there's, there's a reason it's a beloved franchise.
Ivan: Blah blah blah I'm trying to think of something that just can't make me happy
Ivan: it was the little marshmallow guy.
Sam: Exactly and you're right I mean it's exactly 40 years it came out in 1984 I'm not.
Ivan: Sure if it was 40 years yeah.
Sam: 40 years in June so we're two months past 40 years.
Ivan: I'm wondering when that movie came out 40 years before It was the number one movie in 1944.
Ivan: I'm going to check. 1944.
Ivan: See, four years before that, the number one movie was called me going my way.
Sam: No idea.
Ivan: I mean, me neither. The second one I've heard, but I don't think I've watched it. Meet me in St. Louis.
Sam: I've heard of that, but I don't think.
Ivan: I've never watched top grossing movies going my way.
Ivan: I don't know what the hell it's about. Well, let's see. What is it about?
Ivan: It's, it doesn't really say here. What's wrong?
Ivan: Okay. God, I'm slow. My Way, I said, right? 1944?
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah, Going My Way, 1944. It's a musical.
Sam: Okay. Wow.
Ivan: With Bing Cronby.
Ivan: It's a 1944 American musical, comedy, trauma film directed by Leo McCary and
Ivan: starring Bing Crosby and Mary Fitzgerald, written by Frank Butler,
Ivan: based on a story by McCary.
Ivan: The film is about the new young priest taking over a parish from an established old veteran.
Ivan: Crosby sings five songs, with others performed on screen by Metropolitan Opera
Ivan: star Miss Soprano, Rye Stevens.
Sam: Deep um okay i i've added both that one and meet me in st louis which is also
Sam: a musical to my my grand list of movies i i i can.
Ivan: See how this kind of year this kind of movie light and frothy 1944 with the
Ivan: war going on seemed like something that people want to watch.
Sam: Yeah a nice distraction from everything else that was going on yeah blah blah blah yeah.
Ivan: That makes Makes sense. Makes sense.
Sam: Anyway, Ghostbusters is also
Sam: kind of light and frothy. It's not a serious movie at all. It's a comedy.
Sam: You know, there are really goofy, silly things happening throughout the movie.
Sam: It's just fun. It's just a fun romp. You know, it has a nice,
Sam: you know, exciting ending that, you know, spoilers again.
Sam: It turns out well. Everyone's happy. They're triumphant. Whatever.
Sam: Has a good song. You know. Has a good song.
Sam: you know, who you're going to call catchphrase that has lasted 40 fucking years.
Ivan: I mean, that's the thing, I guess, you know, think about, okay,
Ivan: nobody remembers that fucking movie from, from, from 1944, but to be fair.
Sam: To be fair, it's been 80 years now. Maybe they did remember it 40 years ago.
Sam: Like if, if you were a teenager, when that movie came out and people made references
Sam: to it, you might know them right off the top of your head.
Ivan: But I don't think, I will say, to be fair, that those war years were not peak for movie making.
Sam: Hmm.
Ivan: Okay? There are a few classics from the 40s. There are a few,
Ivan: but it was, you know, because of the war, I mean, they weren't making as many,
Ivan: like, say, you know, big movie productions.
Ivan: It's just, you know, hell, there were even actors and people who were going to war themselves.
Ivan: Right. So it wasn't exactly, like, you know, the easiest time for that.
Ivan: that so i i guess that that to be fair is not not not not good judging like
Ivan: that that time period on by the way that movie by the way go my way 83 on already
Ivan: rotten tomatoes 90 on metacritic okay so it does have some good you know good reviews so okay.
Sam: And and yeah like to this day i mean if you say who who you're gonna.
Ivan: Call you're gonna call i mean you know people you know the right way to respond to that phrase.
Sam: Yeah, exactly.
Ivan: 40 years later, yes. So that was a very iconic movie indeed of the 1980s. Absolutely.
Sam: Now, I'm not sure if you picked a random 18-year-old, would they get the references instantly? They might.
Ivan: Because we got the Ghostbusters.
Sam: Yeah, they got the new one. And one of the differences between now and when
Sam: we were kids is the absolutely easy access to the Backit catalog.
Sam: Like, you know, what are you talking about?
Ivan: I, I, will you, will you, I mean, didn't you stream your movies back in 1984?
Sam: I mean, it was, I'm sure it was possible to go get going my way at the blockbuster
Sam: and watch it, but it took a little bit.
Ivan: Not even actually, I've got to say probably not.
Sam: I don't know.
Ivan: No, because the blockbusters used to have a very limited selection.
Ivan: you know, of what the hell was current, what the hell was renting frequently.
Ivan: Yes, they did have some of those old classics, but you know,
Ivan: it wasn't like they had every movie available. Okay.
Sam: Well, no.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Cause you had to maintain physical inventory and you have limited space.
Sam: So you have to pick and choose the things that people are likely to get. And so exactly.
Sam: So you'd have a classic section, but there'd only be.
Ivan: You know, like the really big things like Casa Blanc, stuff like that,
Ivan: out whatever that everybody remembered okay you know.
Sam: Now there were there there were back in the day there were some specialty video
Sam: stores that specialized in certain eras or certain genres yeah but you have
Sam: to go find those you had to go find them you had to do that yeah well it's not like.
Ivan: You know i still remember the scene in the movie big where he was the ceo of
Ivan: the you know he's a big shot at the toy company and i don't think we had the
Ivan: facility where tom hanks goes and says hey could you go get me a copy of the
Ivan: super bowl and just edit out all the commercials show so i can watch it when
Ivan: i want please so yeah we we didn't have those kind of power.
Sam: Yeah and i i definitely can't get big to
Sam: my list too yeah so yeah so
Sam: anyway thumbs up to ghost busters if you haven't seen
Sam: it i'm not even going to pretend anybody listening has not
Sam: seen ghost busters but if you haven't seen it recently it's
Sam: worth a re-watch and you know like you know no spoilers for the other ones i'll
Sam: do ghostbusters 2 next week but like but you know so far we've caught up with
Sam: all of the Ghostbusters other than the brand new one that was out in the theaters this year. And...
Sam: You know, it's worth watching the whole damn series. You know, it's fun.
Ivan: I'm going to say, I'm pretty sure, I guess I watched probably Ghostbusters and
Ivan: Ghostbusters 2. That's right.
Sam: Okay. We'll talk about the rest in due course as I get to them in order.
Sam: And we're starting with Ghostbusters 2 next week.
Ivan: Well, let me see. Well, hold on. I'm looking. So it's Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters 2.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: So then there was a 2016 reboot, which was, what the heck was that called?
Sam: Was it called Ghostbusters? It was just called Ghostbusters.
Sam: They retroactively added some name to it, but it was just called Ghostbusters.
Sam: It was the one with female Ghostbusters that was in a different continuity.
Sam: So they tried to reboot the series from scratch rather than making a sequel.
Sam: And it kind of fell flat. And it's like, when I get to that movie in order,
Sam: we'll talk about this more.
Sam: But there was a controversy. Did people hate it because it was actually bad?
Sam: Or because there was a lot of hate to it just because they cast women?
Sam: And so was it bad because it was bad? Or was it bad because people just had
Sam: a negative reaction to casting women in these films?
Ivan: Then we got Ghostbusters Afterlife and then Ghostbusters Frozen Empire was the new one.
Sam: Yeah. and i i've seen i've seen i've
Sam: seen all of them except frozen except frozen empire
Sam: i haven't seen frozen empire yet and they're also a whole bunch of uh you know
Sam: tv shows you know animated tv shows and blah blah blah yeah so there's a bunch
Sam: of stuff i haven't watched the tv shows i haven't watched the tv shows but maybe someday i.
Ivan: I haven't watched tv shows nor the sequels nor anything.
Sam: Anything.
Ivan: But I will say that I think you're motivating me to watch Ghostbusters with my son.
Sam: Well, and that's the thing. Now, there are a few scenes that get slightly racy,
Sam: like PG-13 racy, not R-racy.
Ivan: That's fine. You think knowing me, you think, I mean, I haven't watched that
Ivan: stuff, maybe a little bit slightly racy.
Ivan: I mean, come on. The kid, like right now, all the complaints I was listening
Ivan: to today is that, you know, he's saying shit a lot.
Sam: Uh-huh.
Ivan: I'm just like, well, what the fuck you expect?
Sam: Now, here's the question. Do you have him saying shit in English, Spanish, or both?
Ivan: No, no, no. In English. The thing is that we've been focusing on his English
Ivan: because he is right now, I've seen that he's picking up more words in Spanish,
Ivan: okay? But we've been focusing on his English.
Ivan: And I will say that I probably, I have focused my cursing lately more in English.
Sam: Yeah, but anyway, I watch all these movies with Alex, and we have never shied away from,
Sam: you know, the R rated stuff, you know, it's just like, you know,
Sam: if, if he doesn't like it, he will leave.
Sam: Whoa. Oh, oh, alarm, alarm.
Ivan: Sorry. You know, I have been woken up by a fire alarm, fire alarm in this,
Ivan: in this hotel before and I'd been stuck outside for a while. Understood.
Sam: Anyway, like we, we, we don't shy away from that.
Sam: And my, my whole philosophy for that is like, he can self-censor.
Sam: if he's upset by what he sees he can leave or he can tell me what's going on you know yeah what i.
Ivan: Mean it's not like you know what are you gonna do.
Sam: Yeah yeah i mean like well he.
Ivan: Doesn't like me swearing.
Sam: Oh no he he does not like the swearing but he will watch movies with swearing
Sam: with me like oh so it's just a swear.
Ivan: So the problem with the swearing is more is.
Sam: You is you yeah well okay no he he doesn't like the swear he will cringe when
Sam: there's swearing in a movie we are watching but he will not ask me to stop the
Sam: movie okay although there are a few movies that have tested that because of
Sam: how much swearing was in them but you know but.
Ivan: The opposite my son is apparently picking up chip off the old block.
Sam: There you go okay let's let's take a break And then we will do our two segments of more newsy things.
Sam: I never actually said the agenda, but it's the usual.
Sam: Two segments of more newsy stuff. The first one will be stuff picked by Yvonne.
Sam: The second one will be stuff picked by me.
Sam: Assuming Yvonne makes it that far. If Yvonne collapses, we'll just end the show.
Sam: That's fine. We can have a short show. It's good.
Sam: But this first break is another Apple Dream. This is Apple Dream 35.
Sam: It's a short one, one minute or so. Here we go.
Ivan: That's good advice. There was more that happened before.
Sam: Was anymore.
Sam: Bye. And that's it.
Sam: So, you know, don't let your toddlers play around freely in the balcony in your high-rise.
Ivan: The always necessary high, you know, child safety adult dream.
Sam: Yeah. And you know, like I'm thinking it's been a long time.
Sam: Like I've got a backlog of these on my phone that I've never published to TikTok.
Sam: And at some point I need to catch up on them. And I haven't recorded a new one.
Sam: Like I, I'm so far behind on publishing the ones I already recorded on my phone
Sam: that I have, I got out of the habit of like, okay, if I wake up in the middle
Sam: of the night and I still remember a dream, quick record it. I haven't done that in many months.
Sam: like if if i wake up and i had a really good one i'll do it but if i if i wake
Sam: up and like okay there was a dream but it was like mediocre and not all that
Sam: interesting i'll be like oh screw it yeah i'm not gonna do it right now i don't
Sam: feel like that's fair if i caught up maybe but like i,
Sam: haven't done that in a while anyway yvonne of the newsy topics what do you have in mind there's.
Ivan: A a number of political ones. What are we talking about?
Ivan: We got, I see one, two, three, four political ones.
Ivan: So why don't we talk about those? Okay.
Sam: Where do you want to start on politics?
Ivan: Where do we want to start on politics? Why don't we start on politics on the
Ivan: polls, Sam? Are you giving an update?
Sam: Okay. Let me bring that up real quick.
Ivan: I said Sam a ton of polls, so give him a lot of work.
Sam: Well, you know, actually in this case, like about half an hour to an hour after
Sam: you sent them to me, like the Bloomberg article was behind the paywall,
Sam: but the link to the detailed polls was in the part you could see before they
Sam: graded out and said you had to register or whatever.
Sam: Like sometimes, sometimes the link to the full details is like below that part.
Sam: Now, interestingly enough, the actual like PDF with the full results is not behind the paywall.
Sam: So if you have the link, you can get to that.
Sam: But the link to it is in the article that they publish. And depending on the
Sam: article, like if they mention.
Ivan: If they put that link.
Sam: Because the way Bloomberg works, the way Bloomberg works, which is where this
Sam: set of polls that you've on, they let you see like the first two or three paragraphs. photographs.
Sam: And then after that, they're like, to see any more, you have to pay.
Sam: And sometimes they put the link in the top part and sometimes they put it in
Sam: the bottom part. This time they put it in the top part.
Sam: So I was actually able to link to and get to the whole thing,
Sam: but I got a, I had a head start on it because Yvonne sent it to me.
Sam: But no, here's where we are right now. Bottom line, we are still in a neck and
Sam: neck race, essentially.
Sam: With Harris having a slight advantage at this point.
Sam: If you go to electiongraphs.com, you'll see my, my, first of all,
Sam: the straight up, like trust all the polls.
Sam: If either candidate has even the very slightest advantage, assume they're going to win.
Sam: And if you do that, Harris wins by 46 electoral votes right now.
Sam: Um, and the tipping point is Pennsylvania with Harris ahead by 0.9%.
Sam: So that's still a fairly narrow margin of error there, but she is ahead.
Sam: And the reason I say that is because if like the last couple of cycles,
Sam: the polls have underestimated the Republicans.
Sam: If they underestimated the Republicans by the same amount that they have the
Sam: last couple of cycles, you end up Trump with a very narrow victory.
Sam: Like even though the polls show Harris slightly ahead.
Sam: Now, if this time the polls are underestimating the Democrat, it goes the other way.
Sam: And maybe Maybe this is a Harris landslide. You know, the problem is like,
Sam: there are so many states that are really close right now.
Sam: So let, let me read you some of the close states right now.
Sam: Here, here are all the states that where the current margin is less than two and a half percent.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Virginia Harris's ahead by 2.4%.
Sam: Michigan, Harris is ahead by 2.1%. Nebraska's second congressional district,
Sam: I currently have the average at Harris up by 1.8, but there have been very few
Sam: polls right there, so grain of salt there.
Sam: Pennsylvania, Harris up by 0.9. Nevada, Harris up by 0.5.
Sam: Georgia actually has Harris ahead right now, but only by 0.4.
Sam: Iowa's in this list has Trump up by 0.6, but there have been zero,
Sam: zero Trump versus Harris polls in Iowa so far.
Sam: So that's based only on sort of Iowa's average behavior over the last five elections.
Sam: And it has been moving more red. So I don't actually expect Iowa to be anywhere near that close.
Sam: It's probably a strong Trump state at this point, but there just haven't been
Sam: any polls to prove that yet.
Sam: Arizona, Trump up by 0.6%. North Carolina, Trump up by 1.2%.
Sam: Maine's second congressional district, Trump up by only 1.4%.
Sam: Every single thing I just listed is incredibly close and could easily go either
Sam: way, even if you assume the polls are generally right.
Sam: Now, if the polls have some sort of systematic error to them, that adds to things.
Sam: But like, those are just like right on the edge, all of those states,
Sam: that's like a huge number.
Sam: And so if you look at, you know, just, and I did two and a half percent, but like my,
Sam: my best case and worst case in the trust, the polls says any state under 5%
Sam: could go either way fairly easily.
Sam: The range you get from that is from Harris by 174 to Trump by 114.
Sam: Like it's a massive range.
Ivan: It's ridiculous.
Sam: You know, because you got a huge number of states with lots and lots of electoral votes, very close.
Sam: And the polls have been moving. As a general statement about trends,
Sam: we had massive movement towards Harris after Biden dropped out for the first
Sam: few weeks to the beginning of August.
Sam: Then we add a little bit back to Trump and then back to Harris again.
Sam: And then in the last, I don't know, couple weeks, it moved back towards Trump
Sam: again and then has started to move back towards Harris again since the convention.
Sam: But we're still, it's still close.
Sam: It's still, there's a lot of back and forth as we get new polls in or out.
Ivan: I think a whole bunch of national polls also that are showing, like.
Sam: The national polls have, generally speaking, had a slow trend towards Harris,
Sam: but we're back down a little bit from the peak.
Ivan: But it's been like a tiny amount. They got to like a three, you know, like on Thursday.
Sam: The high was 3.9% and it's back down to 3.4.
Ivan: Exactly. And it's been around that range, basically.
Sam: Yeah. And so.
Ivan: Yeah, it's not, it's not like, it's not, you know, no, no, no mailing it in. This is, this is all.
Sam: No, not at all. Like right now, my odds, I have my two different models that
Sam: account for the amount of time left for the election, which as we are recording
Sam: is refresh 66.9 days left.
Sam: But between like, I'm going to ignore the, if the election was to the light today stuff, stuff.
Sam: But my model, including the time left, my two models, the range is from Harris
Sam: having a 53.1% chance to Harris having a 57.2% chance.
Sam: So she is favored a little bit, but that's not like, we're not talking 95%.
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Sam: This is not that far away from a coin toss at this point.
Sam: And that's where we are now. I mean, I think, you know, so it, it frankly,
Sam: like we ha we haven't yet had a big convention bounce show up,
Sam: but we still don't have a lot of post-convention polls.
Sam: We have a few, there were a whole bunch, you know, Yvonne mentioned,
Sam: he made me a bunch of work, but over the last 48 to 72 hours,
Sam: there have been so many swing Wing State polls, there have been quite a lot.
Sam: And so it looks like if we got a convention balance, at least so far, it looks pretty small.
Ivan: Well, I think one thing is that we all don't.
Sam: The thing is that things had bounced so far towards Harris already,
Sam: it's hard to squeeze more juice out of that.
Ivan: That's what I was thinking.
Sam: But here's the thing, though, and this gets me back.
Sam: I have a couple charts on electiongraphs.com that compare to 2016 and 2020.
Sam: Right now, it looks like, unless something major changes in the next couple days,
Sam: for the very first time ever, Harris will be doing better than Clinton was doing
Sam: at the same time before the election.
Ivan: Wow. Okay.
Sam: For the very, like, like, again, that we're not quite there yet.
Sam: We're like a day or two away from like a place in the calendar where Clinton
Sam: suddenly did much worse for a few days.
Sam: That's where we're talking, but we're still nowhere near where Biden was in 2020.
Sam: Like we're still several percent behind, like at the moment,
Sam: like I'll give you like the stats as of right now, Now, 67 days before the election,
Sam: right now we have the tipping point, which is the margin in the state that would
Sam: put the winner over the edge.
Sam: We have Harris up by 0.9% in the tipping point state, which right now is Pennsylvania.
Sam: At this exact same time, 67 days before the election, Clinton was up by 3.4% and Biden was up by 4.6%.
Sam: So we're still a long way behind the pace of either of those two times.
Sam: And of course, Biden just barely pulled it out and Clinton lost. So...
Sam: So, as you said, we've got a long way to go. Nobody should be complacent.
Sam: There are a lot of things that indicate how – we've talked about how Trump seems
Sam: to be struggling right now in terms of how to respond to Harris and how he's
Sam: getting less rational and how he's doing things that should hurt him.
Ivan: But it's not impacting his voters. I mean, they're just whatever.
Sam: I mean, he's got the core group that is not going to change no matter what.
Sam: And, you know, a lot of the stuff that we've seen is actually like,
Sam: I mentioned this last time we were talking polls on the show,
Sam: but like, for the most part,
Sam: the changes here have been on the Democratic side, where the Democrats are doing stronger.
Sam: Everything I talked about on election graphs is all centered around margins.
Sam: But if you separate it out to look at how the Democrat is doing versus how the
Sam: Republican is doing, basically what's going on here is the Democrat has been improving,
Sam: but Trump has been staying flat.
Sam: The number of people supporting Trump is not moving.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, a little bit, but like, if you look on the national polls,
Sam: like 538 national poll graph,
Sam: and this is especially clear, like if you if you look on mobile,
Sam: or you, you know, so that you have a narrower thing, it's even more obvious
Sam: than if you look on desktop. top.
Sam: But, you know, I'm looking since this only has since Biden dropped out because
Sam: they have Biden versus Harris.
Sam: But when on, what was it?
Sam: July 24th, Trump was at 44% in their average.
Sam: As of right now, Trump is at 43.7% in their average.
Sam: He's dropped 0.3% in that timeframe.
Sam: Meanwhile, Harris has gone from 44.9 to 47.2.
Sam: So Harris has gotten some movement, but Trump, it's just flat. It's just flat.
Sam: You know, nobody's coming or going. So this is all about undecideds and maybe
Sam: a few of those RFK people jumping to Harris.
Sam: That's what it's about. It's not people are turning away from Trump.
Ivan: And it's all the one thing that, like we've said, we don't exactly know about
Ivan: turnout, which always is a big driver around all of these things.
Sam: Well, and you hear anecdotally all these stories about how like,
Sam: you know, the support for Trump is, you know, you're not seeing as many like
Sam: Trump parades and you're not seeing as many signs or the trucks with the flags behind them.
Sam: And they're just less than there were before.
Sam: But and so maybe that indicates less enthusiasm, but does it mean they won't vote?
Ivan: No, but I think more like a lot of that we've talked about over the last four
Ivan: years. There's been turnout for special elections and all these other things,
Ivan: et cetera, that we've been surprised. We've been continuously surprised.
Ivan: You know, we were continuously surprised in 2016 and even in 2020 on turnout
Ivan: in the opposite direction.
Ivan: But we have been repeatedly surprised in the opposite direction.
Ivan: It doesn't, you know, to create a massive landslide, you know,
Ivan: in the electoral system, it's not like it takes a lot of points.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: One to two points that you're underestimating on one candidate at a number of
Ivan: states creates a landslide.
Ivan: It's that simple in the EV college. And so, yeah, it's very tight.
Sam: I just brought up election betting odds. So this is, this averages odds from
Sam: Betfair, Smarkets, Predictit, and Polymarket.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And right now, this very second, they have Harris 49.1%, Trump 49.1%.
Ivan: Jesus.
Sam: So, and then like other random people that's just dumbass.
Sam: It's not even the right people. Like, if an asteroid hit and killed both Trump
Sam: and Harris, the people they have third, fourth, fifth, and sixth on the list
Sam: are not the people who would be most likely to win.
Ivan: Which is why those aren't exactly the best places to look at.
Sam: I mean, they have Haley next at 0.6%, and then Michelle Obama at 0.5%. And then RFK Jr.
Sam: at 0.2%, and Hillary Clinton at 0.1%.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: You know, here's the thing. It is possible that neither Trump or Harris will
Sam: end up as president. There are scenarios that play out that way.
Sam: One or both of them could drop dead or have to drop out or whatever.
Sam: That could happen. But in the scenarios that that happens, we're not going to
Sam: get Haley, Obama, Kennedy, or Clinton.
Sam: We're going to get like Walls or Vance, you know?
Sam: Or even if those two were knocked out too.
Sam: It's not going to be Haley, Obama, Kennedy, or Clinton. There would be other
Sam: people who would be more likely anyway.
Ivan: Okay. All right.
Sam: Of course, I should say this.
Ivan: Yeah?
Sam: If both Harris and Trump were, well, you'd have to kill Biden too.
Sam: I was going to say you could end up with Speaker of the House Johnson or somebody
Sam: as president if you knocked out people.
Ivan: Oh, God. Okay. Well, no, but you have Biden.
Sam: Okay, did you have other politics questions besides polls?
Ivan: So, I mean, we had these things that happened. You didn't watch the interview.
Sam: I did not. I've heard clips, basically. I have not watched it.
Ivan: I mean, it sounded good.
Sam: The basic summary of the impressions I've heard from people and from the few
Sam: clips I have heard is that Harrison Walls both essentially knocked it out of
Sam: the park in terms of handling the interview well.
Sam: However, the interview itself was just dumb. The questions were dumb and it's
Sam: like, didn't add any real information.
Sam: There was a lot of, what do you think about this Republican talking point?
Sam: A lot of the questions were structured like that now
Sam: i've seen like i've read some of the chyrons on fox news when i have like the
Sam: four up display with all the news networks and they're doing a lot of like the
Sam: interview proved she's unserious you know and you know that she has no weight
Sam: and no real policy and blah blah blah she has no weight what.
Ivan: She's weightless what is she in space.
Sam: Oh yeah probably probably you know Our first president in space.
Sam: You know, but from the little bits I've heard, she handled the questions that were asked,
Sam: very well. Trump said that it was boring. Trump said it was boring,
Sam: which again, that's not necessarily bad.
Sam: There were policy questions asked where she answered in detail.
Sam: She knew what the fuck she was talking about and said, well,
Sam: X, Y, Z, and here's why we did this, and here's what we're going to do next
Sam: and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: I guess Trump expected him to, I don't know, do the tango or something.
Sam: Well, and you know what you're used to like in a Trump interview is that he
Sam: doesn't answer the question at all.
Sam: Instead, he yells about how the question is stupid.
Sam: He yells about how it's unfair, how he actually won the 2020 election and people are after him.
Sam: And like all of this sort of performative stuff without any – Like,
Sam: and this people have brought up over and over and over again,
Sam: which is like the ridiculous double standard that is applied here.
Sam: Like people are nitpicking Harrison walls on like detailed policy questions.
Sam: And were you exactly right in the way you worded your history about the whatever.
Sam: And meanwhile, Trump can't say a single sentence without being,
Sam: without lying about every word.
Sam: And, and, and, and like, he says things that don't make sense.
Sam: He says things that have no relation to reality whatsoever.
Sam: He just in the last couple of days, he's gone back and forth on abortion and IVF.
Ivan: That was the next thing that I, that I had on my list. Hey, Sam.
Ivan: So, So is Trump, you know, pro-choice? Is he pro-IVF? Is he anti? What is he, Sam?
Sam: Look, here's the thing. And this applies to absolutely everything Trump-related.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: He doesn't give a shit about the actual policy. He says what he thinks will get him to win.
Sam: Correct. Like, and this, every single issue.
Sam: Like, he doesn't care. he doesn't care he doesn't care at all what.
Ivan: Could i say with.
Sam: Yeah yeah that's it
Sam: that's it and so like he sensed that people
Sam: were upset a little bit about abortion and so he tried to moderate his opinion
Sam: a bit and guess what his his quote-unquote base got really upset by it so he
Sam: went back the other direction a few hours later and of course before that he
Sam: was taking credit it for getting rid of Roe,
Sam: and he's been trying to push this.
Sam: Everybody wanted it to just go to the states, and that's what they got,
Sam: so everybody should be up for it.
Ivan: Everybody wanted it. Everybody had been collaborating for it to go to the states.
Ivan: I didn't hear about this. That was what all the polls said.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Everybody. And so he's trying to,
Sam: he's flailing around trying to figure out the fact that like this out of several
Sam: issues where his stated positions in the past and the Republican party more
Sam: generally there where they have really unpopular positions,
Sam: he's trying to triangulate and figure out how to say something that will get more people on board.
Sam: and it has absolutely nothing to do with his beliefs on the damn issue if he
Sam: ever says something that actually represents a belief it's an accident and.
Ivan: Actually he doesn't he doesn't know what he's.
Sam: Talking about anyway.
Ivan: No he believe that he should get money now that's one thing yes now that's one thing that.
Sam: Is one thing that he actually has.
Ivan: I mean a principled opinion on uh you know like his his very principled opinion
Ivan: on cryptocurrency that which is.
Sam: He hated it and.
Ivan: Pulling out a big.
Sam: Donor that liked it.
Ivan: And then he liked it and then he likes
Ivan: it and then he was going to be the most crypto pro president
Ivan: ever and then he was going to as usual i mean the thing is i don't understand
Ivan: how these people support him when he does this shit every time i'm going to
Ivan: be announcing you know you were talking about the double standard harris asking
Ivan: a question about policy giving a detail i'm gonna announce the detailed,
Ivan: cryptocurrency that my administration will have because the united states is
Ivan: going to be a crypto what the fuck was it it was like heaven it was like the
Ivan: olympus whatever the fuck it was okay just like the best place for crypto and
Ivan: we're gonna create like some kind of crypto like like, super fund or something or whatever.
Ivan: And then he announces his crypto thing.
Ivan: And basically, he's...
Ivan: getting paid by some guy to brand his own crypto currency that's it yeah nice
Ivan: and then he decided to promote it to everybody on lo and behold on x by you
Ivan: know by by you know by shoving around,
Ivan: this guy who i guess is paying him money for some new cryptocurrency that's so that's the trump,
Ivan: cryptocurrency policy.
Ivan: Buy the branded crypto.
Ivan: I will get money and we will be fine.
Sam: And yes, and this is not the only issue he's done this on. He's completely reversed the opinion.
Ivan: I mean, how old would I have during a campaign selling $99 digital trading card?
Ivan: I mean, Which scam is he not running, man?
Sam: And nothing's changed. I mean, he's been doing this the whole time.
Sam: It's just like, what's this week's version?
Ivan: It's just like in the middle of a fucking election campaign.
Ivan: He's like, oh, yeah, let me just announce another scam.
Ivan: So, okay, the other thing that I've got here on the list that everybody seems
Ivan: to have forgotten already.
Sam: Arlington?
Ivan: Well, that one's like, whatever. ever know more important superseding indictment sam.
Sam: Oh yeah we'll talk about that and then and then
Sam: i'll do arlington for a little bit but yeah we
Sam: had the superseding indictment the reason it's gone away so quickly in terms
Sam: of attention is because there were no charges added or anything this was the
Sam: special counsel for the dc case the january 6th case just refiling refiling the the indictment,
Sam: essentially taking out all the stuff the Supreme Court said they couldn't use.
Sam: Great. So they actually, as we are recording, both the special counsel and Trump's
Sam: lawyers have a few hours left to submit their briefs to Judge Trunkin on,
Sam: Trunkin, is that how you say it?
Sam: Anyway, whatever, you know how bad we are at hands.
Sam: Yes, briefs, not underwear. Oh, okay.
Ivan: You could. Oh, you mean, okay. No.
Sam: All the lawyers have to submit their underwear.
Ivan: That would be one hell of a way of doing this, but no, thank you.
Sam: No, they have to submit their briefs on how this case should proceed,
Sam: given the Supreme Court's judgment on presidential immunity.
Sam: But the superseding indictment is specifically redoing the indictment,
Sam: taking out everything that is...
Sam: would be problematic given what the Supreme court said, or in the cases where
Sam: the Supreme court said there was a presumption, but that could be overcome putting
Sam: in detailed arguments about why it overcame the presumption and stuff like that.
Sam: So it's not like new charges.
Sam: It's just representing the old charges in a way designed to deal with the Supreme court decision.
Ivan: Right. Okay.
Sam: Because there was some evidence that they are like, there are some things like
Sam: where he talked to the Justice Department to try to get them to do bogus investigations
Sam: that the Supreme Court said was off limits. So that stuff's completely gone.
Sam: There are some places where there were references to conversations that happened
Sam: in the Oval Office or tweets that were done from the Oval Office.
Sam: Those references are gone. They also added stuff to specifically point out that
Sam: all the co-conspirators were acting in their private capacities when they were
Sam: talking about Mike Pence.
Sam: They took out things where there were conversations with Mike Pence about executive
Sam: office functions, just generally when they were talking about election fraud,
Sam: for instance. All that stuff's gone.
Sam: But they left in when Pence was acting as president of the Senate.
Sam: Because that isn't, you know, the vice president has a dual role.
Sam: Yes, they're an executive branch, but when they're, when they're acting as president
Sam: of the Senate, they're actually part of the legislative branch.
Sam: And so they made it clear, like almost every time Pence was mentioned,
Sam: they talked about, you know, his role as president of the Senate and anywhere
Sam: they couldn't say that they took out.
Sam: So those are the kinds of changes they made.
Sam: And, you know, Like I said, within the next few hours, it's due by,
Sam: I think, Friday midnight Eastern time.
Sam: So getting very close here, they're
Sam: supposed to submit their plans to the judge on how to move forward.
Sam: And then sometime next week, we'll hear more about that as well.
Sam: Because I think the judge is going to have a hearing and then they'll make a
Sam: decision and then we'll see what's going forward on that.
Sam: So yeah, that's what's going on with the superseding indictment.
Ivan: Okay. Well, I want to mention something about the Arlington thing.
Ivan: I'm just like, I don't know what I mean. What do you expect from this asshole?
Sam: So here's the thing. And this is an example of like, as well of has Trump lost some of his mojo here?
Sam: Because the intention here was to beef up his, you know, his whole reputation with the military.
Sam: And specifically, the thing that he was going to at Arlington was the one-year anniversary.
Sam: Was it one year? Two years. Whatever.
Ivan: Yeah, I think it's whatever.
Sam: Two years.
Ivan: The anniversary.
Sam: Yeah, the anniversary. However many years it is, we've lost track of the soldiers
Sam: who were killed in Afghanistan while we were withdrawing.
Sam: And so he was going with the families of some of those people who were killed
Sam: to visit their graves, blah, blah, blah. And so the intention was A, highlight Biden's,
Sam: issue in Afghanistan of all the things in his presidency, that was one of the
Sam: ones that was the most chaotic.
Sam: And you can argue why it almost had to be that way, but nevertheless, it was not a good look.
Sam: Um, and so he wanted to highlight that. And plus he wanted some nice pictures
Sam: of him supporting veterans and stuff.
Ivan: Yeah. But that's the problem.
Sam: But it completely backfired on him because he went and like,
Sam: he made a campaign commercial out of this, But the problem is that there are
Sam: federal laws saying you can't do that at that part of the cemetery.
Ivan: Great. And there's a good reason for that.
Sam: You know, basically you cannot.
Ivan: Not just at that cemetery. At any of the military cemeteries around, you know, that exist.
Sam: Right. Well, apparently.
Ivan: National cemeteries.
Sam: National cemeteries. No, but even within the national cemeteries,
Sam: apparently, like if you want to do that in the part that has Civil War veterans, you can do it.
Sam: The parts that are restricted are the parts that are from modern wars where
Sam: the relatives of the dead are still very actively visiting people they knew, right?
Sam: And so, but yeah, so he went in, him and his team.
Sam: They were told multiple times that, no, you cannot have, you know,
Sam: video and photography in this area. like, you know, your own private ones,
Sam: especially anything related to your campaign.
Sam: They ignored that. Somebody on their team assaulted the army person who was telling them no.
Sam: And then, and of course they use all this footage in a commercial anyway,
Sam: and it has Trump standing next to the grave, grinning and giving a big thumbs up sign.
Sam: And it's like- I didn't see that.
Ivan: He's reciting Trump. I'm grave grinning with a thumbs up.
Sam: Yes. Yes.
Ivan: I cannot stop.
Sam: And so, of course.
Ivan: Like that part, I didn't know.
Sam: Yes. That is the case. I've seen the pictures I've seen and not,
Sam: it's not just that the picture exists.
Sam: They, they're using this in ads.
Ivan: Okay.
Ivan: I'm going to go right beside my, my, my, my, my, my family's grave and just be sitting over there.
Sam: Yes. The big thumbs up, big grin.
Ivan: It's literally a meme. It's literally a meme like this. Like, he's fucking crazy.
Sam: So here's the thing. Like, all sorts of military organizations who already weren't
Sam: all that hot on him because of the statements he's made about,
Sam: you know, prisoners of war being idiots.
Sam: John McCain and others, he made statements while he was president that he didn't
Sam: want, like, the people, you know, who were in wheelchairs because they lost legs in the war.
Sam: Don't bring them in here. Don't show them. No one wants to see that.
Sam: He said things like that. He made a comment just a couple of weeks ago about
Sam: the Medal of Honor not being as good as the Medal for Civilians because you
Sam: didn't have to die or be injured to get the other one.
Sam: And so a lot of military organizations have basically condemned his behavior
Sam: at the cemetery, all that.
Sam: Now, there was one fake poll that's been going around showing like Oh God.
Ivan: The fake poll. Which I went and I suspected it had to be fake.
Ivan: And I said to this, I said, is this real?
Ivan: But yeah, somebody went and doctored like a Fox screen To show like 90% And
Ivan: I'm like looking at it and I'll go, bullshit, no way.
Sam: Yeah, it was like I would dream, but no.
Sam: Trump's ratings being like near zero for everything, like 10%,
Sam: 5%, whatever, amongst military families.
Ivan: It should be, but But it isn't.
Sam: It isn't. And the military has been getting less Republican over time.
Sam: But historically, the military has been a very conservative organization.
Ivan: Yes, yes.
Sam: And so you certainly don't get like, you know, suddenly the military are the
Sam: most liberal people in the universe and are all 95% for Harris or some bullshit like that.
Sam: But it is hurting him amongst those groups.
Sam: Yeah, it's not happening. Yeah, it's not happening.
Sam: that you are willing to sacrifice your own opportunities or your life because
Sam: you are serving some higher cause that is completely alien to him.
Sam: He can't understand that happening.
Sam: And so, you know, so whenever you get that kind of scenario where someone has
Sam: died or been injured or hell,
Sam: even when they're doing something like they're giving up financial opportunities
Sam: to work in the public sector,
Sam: let alone like dying or being injured.
Sam: What do you mean you're teaching for like 30K a year when you could be doing
Sam: something that made you money?
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You just can't understand. and i this
Sam: stuff is seems to be like a lot
Sam: of people are reacting negatively to it but again we were
Sam: just talking about polls like these numbers are flat like.
Sam: Most so maybe most of the people who actually care about
Sam: this kind of stuff already left him a long time
Sam: ago and the ones that are left are going to be there forever
Sam: yeah you know so okay that's
Sam: that's all the stuff are we done with politics yeah okay let's take another
Sam: break and then i'll bring up a couple non-politics things and then we'll then
Sam: we'll wrap this sucker up back after this.
Sam: Okay. There we are. For those of you who are just listening on audio,
Sam: you missed both Yvonne and I sort of dancing and bopping along.
Ivan: Dancing, bopping, yeah.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I got three things that aren't directly related but are sort of whatever.
Sam: Just three things that we can talk about quickly. So I want to start,
Sam: though, with something that hit the news a few hours before we were recording.
Sam: Brazil has banned Axe. What the fuck's going on, Yvonne?
Ivan: Well, as far as I can tell, for a long time, the thing is, the way that I understand,
Ivan: and don't get me, don't, even though I have to deal.
Sam: Don't quote you.
Ivan: Well, no, I'm not an expert in the Brazilian legal system, even though I've had to deal with it.
Sam: No, really? Yeah, you're not an expert. I thought you were a Brazilian lawyer all this time.
Sam: I have been under the misunderstanding.
Ivan: And I am standing a lot more familiar with, like, say, how federal courts work, state courts.
Ivan: And I know how you could appeal U.S. federal and state courts.
Ivan: I understand why you could bring a state action or why you could bring a federal
Ivan: action for certain cases.
Ivan: But normally would be because the difference is, you know, I know some of that
Ivan: from Brazil. I know a little. OK.
Ivan: But one thing that I that I remember is that the judges, when they're assigned,
Ivan: they're like prosecutors themselves. Okay.
Ivan: And so when they have been doing this investigation into X,
Ivan: the thing is that they have been demanding many things from X to produce them.
Ivan: And Elon thinking that every nation has the same rules and laws,
Ivan: they've been ignoring them. them.
Sam: Well also they as well as asking for documents and other evidence and stuff they're also.
Ivan: Asking him to remove some posts right correct and
Ivan: they were also asking him to send subcontinent actions of
Ivan: according to local law and one of the things that i always said is and i still
Ivan: don't understand how x has not gotten into more trouble regarding this across
Ivan: the world especially in europe okay where i know that it there are certain things
Ivan: related to this is that if they don't have that That ability,
Ivan: at some point, this is going to catch up with them legally mid-time,
Ivan: because they basically got rid of most of the people that do this.
Ivan: And so they have not been complying with orders. They've not been responding
Ivan: to subpoenas. They've not been responding to everything.
Ivan: And from what it seems is that he's acting like everywhere, where he thinks
Ivan: that he can just ignore the law ad infinitum.
Ivan: and they finally got fed up and they said you know what
Ivan: listen if you're going to be in complete content fuck you you know we're it's
Ivan: a temporary order as far as i understand it's not a permanent ban but look brazilian
Ivan: courts have been this is a fuck around and find out thing because just to be
Ivan: clear they've said they've.
Sam: Said they've said x can't operate there.
Ivan: Yes they've.
Sam: Also said that anybody using a vpn to get access to x anyway has.
Ivan: Significant fines.
Sam: Like close to ten thousand dollars for trying.
Ivan: To do that um i i think.
Sam: I think i saw somewhere else that they're also telling app stores to pull some
Sam: of the vpn software as well.
Ivan: Right so.
Sam: This is a fairly extensive order to.
Ivan: Well this is and listen the one thing is that this is a fuck around and find out moment.
Ivan: A few years ago, Facebook had been brought to court over failure to comply over certain things.
Ivan: I can't remember exactly related to what. Bottom line is that they kept doing the same shit.
Ivan: They had taken the Facebook Brazil president and jailed him.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I vaguely remember that. Yeah. And then I know another time,
Ivan: The Cisco Brazil president was also thrown in jail, in large part,
Ivan: by the way, because it was found out that he was in cahoots over a scam to evade import duties.
Sam: Oh, beautiful. Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah. So that, yeah, so that, that was the thing.
Ivan: So, and look, even my previous employer, Kodak, and I can talk about this because
Ivan: this is in public filings, or if you look at the SEC filings for my old employer, Kodak, it's there.
Ivan: We had a whole bunch of assets frozen. That were still frozen when I left because
Ivan: there was a $100 million tax judgment against Kodak Brazil.
Ivan: And the bulk of the assets that the company owned there were under,
Ivan: you know, were frozen until this got resolved.
Ivan: involved so brazilian courts
Ivan: don't fuck around okay they will
Ivan: you know it's not something you know their
Ivan: court system is strong they're not like they you know i will say that when they're
Ivan: talking about when they go about enforcing shit they don't fuck around and so
Ivan: where he thinks that in the u.s he can like vote the motion make us a peanut
Ivan: push off whatever pa pa pa pa man Man,
Ivan: they get really hard with big companies that don't comply.
Ivan: And you really, really, really just try to just ask the same.
Sam: And to be clear, this isn't like X going through the legal process and in the end losing.
Sam: It's them refusing to participate in the process. Correct.
Ivan: And having multiple and multiple opportunities to comply where they refused.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: So, you know, well, I mean, it's a big market.
Sam: Yes. And so one of the things I heard, I haven't had a lot of confirmation on
Sam: this, but I saw a couple of people post on Mastodon that apparently a whole
Sam: bunch of Brazilians in response to this are signing up for Blue Sky.
Sam: Enough so that they crashed Blue Sky.
Ivan: Well, listen, think about this. Brazil has 200 million people.
Ivan: They have super high internet penetration.
Ivan: mobile phone penetration all this shit this isn't like you know taking it away
Ivan: from some country that you know some tiny country where nobody has cell phones
Ivan: so yeah i mean i'm i'm expecting the figures from a whole bunch of tech companies
Ivan: are gonna be like whoa we just got a whole bunch of people signed up for shit in a hurry and.
Sam: And anybody who doesn't already have a brazilian presence is going to be like,
Sam: oh, let's get that taken care of right now.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: You know? Yeah, okay. Along those same lines, the CEO of Telegram got arrested in France.
Ivan: I, you know what? I read a little bit about what the hell was going on,
Ivan: but I didn't look at the details too much.
Ivan: It seems that it was, like, also related to not complying with some requests
Ivan: for investigations and stuff.
Sam: There was some of that and then
Sam: also, well, and I've heard mixed things about this. So on the one hand,
Sam: At a high level, it's, hey, Telegram has become a cesspool for illegal activities.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Everything from child porn to coordinating arm sales, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: But it's not, like people think of, there's a component of it that's like a
Sam: WhatsApp or whatever, where it's like person-to-person communication.
Sam: And that does exist. and it and
Sam: by the way people assume it's like end-to-end encrypted by
Sam: default it's not okay do that to do
Sam: that person to person with end-to-end encryption you actually have to take
Sam: some extra steps to do it but telegram also has like lots of channels really
Sam: large channels that are open chat rooms right a lot of this illegal activity
Sam: was happening there and so basically similar to what Elon's getting in trouble for in Brazil,
Sam: which, by the way, we didn't mention, they've also sanctioned SpaceX as well
Sam: as X, just because they're related somehow.
Sam: Anyway, specifically Starlink.
Sam: But with these Telegram channels, a lot of this illegal activity was happening
Sam: in these public channels.
Sam: It wasn't even in the secret places. And they were refusing to censor those
Sam: locations out of a, you know, free speech mindset or whatever.
Sam: Look, I sympathize to some degree with not wanting to put a heavy hand on censorship.
Sam: But on the other hand, when your open chat room that anybody can join is facilitating
Sam: illegal activities right there.
Ivan: Look at some point somebody's going.
Sam: To do something about that.
Ivan: All the major telecommunication carriers
Ivan: whatever the hell you want have areas dedicated
Ivan: to basically law enforcement requests
Ivan: and a process and how to deal with them and how to comply with the law okay
Ivan: when the requests come in the problem always comes in it's the same promise
Ivan: as X is having in Brazil is that if you start getting those requests and you
Ivan: basically decided that you want to operate like a rogue state,
Ivan: well, at some point, they're going to come down on you. They're going to come down on you hard.
Ivan: Plain and simple. You have to have a process. You have to be able to respond.
Ivan: You have to be able to comply or say why you're not going to comply and the
Ivan: reasoning, period. End the story.
Sam: Or if you really and truly are like, we can't operate under those rules,
Sam: then you don't operate in that country.
Ivan: But you can't operate in that country, period.
Sam: And look, lots of companies have made significant compromises in order to operate
Sam: in China, for instance, or many other countries that have severe rules.
Sam: They agree to things they would never agree to in the U.S. because it's the
Sam: only way to be in that market.
Sam: And you can judge them for that decision to make that compromise.
Sam: compromise but if you go into a country and then say yeah but i'm not going to follow their rules,
Sam: I'm going to blatantly operate illegally.
Ivan: And I understand that maybe you don't agree with the rule, but unfortunately,
Ivan: that's the rule there. And you're going to suffer the consequences.
Ivan: You know, simple as that. I mean.
Sam: Yeah. So and now the one thing that I heard was part and I don't have the details.
Sam: I have not dug into this and a bad host for not doing so. Bringing up a topic
Sam: I haven't researched fully.
Sam: Oops. Oops, not like we ever get a lot of gear, you know, like we always only.
Ivan: Oh, no, we're we are the experts on everything.
Sam: On everything. Like we would never make a mistake thing. We never pull shit
Sam: out of our asses to talk. No, never, never, never.
Sam: Anyway, apparently there are one part of this potentially is about asking for
Sam: encryption keys and other stuff that might compromise privacy for people using Telegram.
Sam: And there's some questions about what Telegram has,
Sam: what Telegram doesn't have, what level of encryption they have,
Sam: and when do they apply it, and stuff like that, that may have implications of
Sam: France doing some things that have other negative consequences as well.
Sam: But in the end, like, like you, like you said, it boils down to,
Sam: if you don't like the laws in a country, then maybe don't do business in that country.
Sam: But if you are going to do business in that country, you're kind of forced to follow their laws.
Ivan: Yeah, basically.
Sam: It's part of the deal. And whether you like them or not, you can lobby to change the laws.
Sam: You can say it should be something else and work in whatever way that country has to change laws.
Sam: But if you are blatantly going to do something against the laws of the country
Sam: after multiple warnings that apparently happened in this case,
Sam: as in Brazil, then in the end, the country is going to do something.
Sam: And in this case, unlike Brazil shut down X, France did not shut...
Sam: Yeah, basically. Shut down Telegram. They arrested the CEO instead.
Ivan: I mean, Elon actually said the other day when he saw about this whole thing
Ivan: that maybe he's going to have to curtail some travel because he's afraid of legal repercussions.
Sam: I'm sorry. Like, you know, I would not shed tears over Elon getting arrested somewhere.
Ivan: No, not really, no.
Sam: Yeah. Go ahead and make that trip to Brazil, Elon. Yes.
Ivan: Yeah, I'm sure that'll go fine. I actually had a boss deported from Brazil.
Ivan: I had a boss that arrived that did not have the proper papers,
Ivan: a VP at HP, and he basically was not allowed to enter and was summarily deported.
Sam: Beautiful. That's what you want to see happen.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Okay, one more.
Ivan: One more, one more.
Sam: One more.
Ivan: One more, one more, one more thing. The stranded astronauts.
Ivan: Well, they're going to be stranded longer, and they're sending the ship back.
Sam: NASA officially made the decision.
Sam: We talked about how this might be possible, but it's now official.
Sam: They are not going to let the astronauts go back to Earth on the Boeing capsule
Sam: because they don't think it's safe. At least they don't feel it's safe.
Ivan: Here's the one thing. Now, I will say this. I don't think, actually,
Ivan: I don't think that it's because they don't think it's safe.
Ivan: I actually don't think that. I think that in the, if this was, if they hadn't lost two.
Sam: If they hadn't lost two space shuttles, they'd be sending them down on that.
Ivan: Exactly. If they hadn't lost two space shuttles and Boeing isn't being raped
Ivan: over the cold through all the fuck ups they have done the last decade on quality and,
Ivan: you know, design and shit or whatever, they might be coming back on that ship.
Ivan: But the brand new Boeing CEO that came in, but I was reading this,
Ivan: the brand new Boeing CEO that came in, got on the phone with Bill Nelson.
Ivan: They looked at their wrist.
Sam: From NASA.
Ivan: From NASA. And this guy basically is like, you know what?
Ivan: The first act that I'm going to do as CEO is not bring down,
Ivan: not go kill two astronauts.
Ivan: Screw this. Send the capsule back and bring it back somewhere else.
Ivan: Okay? Even if the chance was less than 1%.
Sam: Well, I mean, and this is the fundamental thing. Like the NASA folks explicitly said,
Sam: look, we have learned over the course of mistakes we have made in the past with
Sam: Challenger and Columbia that basically there were, in those two occasions,
Sam: there were engineers who raised red flags and they were ignored.
Ivan: Ignored.
Sam: And then people died.
Ivan: And here's the thing. You have a solution. Okay? You have a choice.
Ivan: You don't have to bear the risk.
Ivan: It may not look good, but you don't have to take the risk. You've got another
Ivan: way of bringing them back.
Sam: Right. Now, they have to wait until, like, February or something.
Sam: They were supposed to be there eight days. They're going to be there eight months. But, you know.
Ivan: I mean, shit. I mean, I'm sure they're astronauts.
Ivan: I'm sure that from, you know, unexpectedly long stay at the ISS,
Ivan: but also at the same time as being astronauts, it's like, well, shit.
Sam: I get to stay at the ISS? for.
Ivan: Eight months and.
Sam: They will find useful things to do they will get to like participate and like
Sam: yes i mean i'm sure they didn't plan to spend this time away from their families
Sam: etc blah blah blah but you know better than getting in the capsule and burning
Sam: up and re-entry i hope they filed taxes and.
Ivan: Shit they didn't have an extension due.
Sam: Well so someone i was interacting with on mastodon asked about whether they could vote.
Sam: And so here's what I could find so far.
Ivan: Shit.
Sam: There are mechanisms in place for astronauts to vote from the ISS.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: However, the standard procedure for that is you have to sign up for it before you leave.
Ivan: Well, fuck. What? And we got to strand these guys in space.
Sam: So I was like, I'm sure they'll figure out some way around it.
Sam: But apparently like there's some federal form that you're supposed to fill in
Sam: and, and like most astronauts are based out of Texas.
Sam: So Texas, like a couple of decades ago, passed a specific set of laws for how
Sam: astronauts should vote.
Sam: And they, they built specific mechanisms for how the ballots get transmitted
Sam: to the space station securely and how the results get transmitted back securely
Sam: and all of this kind of stuff.
Sam: but they have to fill out some fucking form before they leave.
Sam: And apparently I don't, I haven't confirmed whether these two astronauts are based in Texas.
Sam: Like most are, if they're not based in Texas, it depends on your local laws, wherever you are based.
Sam: But, but I'm sure they'll work out something for them.
Sam: They'll figure probably, but, but yeah, so, so Boeing's really happy about all this.
Sam: And, but yeah, like, look, You're right. I mean, NASA, this is,
Sam: if NASA had picked anything else, like,
Sam: it's no way i mean maybe they get lucky and everybody i mean get lucky there's
Sam: probably a 95 chance everything would actually be what i read is even higher
Sam: than that it was like probably closer.
Ivan: It was higher than that but.
Sam: It's probably yeah 99 yes.
Ivan: It was probably 99 but you know they were like man no no let's not you know no.
Sam: Yeah why take the chance if you don't have to exactly You know, and so,
Sam: but, you know, didn't I hear there's yet another like Boeing quality issue about
Sam: like the 777s or something? I don't know.
Ivan: Well, no, okay, not a quality issue.
Ivan: What they discovered was normal during, you know, flight testing in the 777X.
Ivan: that they'd, you know, unfortunately this is something that is,
Ivan: the kind of things they discovered during testing was that certain certain,
Ivan: I don't remember what the name of the part is.
Ivan: The support structure laid to the engine towards the wing, and I'm not sure
Ivan: if it's the pylon or something, but they discovered that they all had been fracturing.
Ivan: And so they're not sure if it's a fabrication defect, a design defect, or so forth.
Ivan: But they discovered that, and so obviously they're trying to get the 777X certified
Ivan: to begin deliveries soon.
Ivan: And the plan has right now been delayed already four plus years.
Ivan: And so this is a big setback for them that they discovered this on the 777X.
Ivan: But yeah, I mean, it was something that they discovered during...
Sam: Well, it's better discovering it during testing than after.
Ivan: It was not during production. It was whatever. This is the flight search and
Ivan: testing and they were going through the parts.
Sam: But the point is, Boeing has been having a tough time recently.
Ivan: A very tough time.
Sam: Very tough time. I mean, they got a new CEO.
Ivan: Like you said.
Sam: They'll turn it all around.
Ivan: Here is what I will say. I was looking at going through my re-watching all the
Ivan: seasons of Air Disaster, starting with season one and going through like season 14 right now.
Ivan: Let me tell you something. Airbus had a really bad streak for a while L2 of this ship.
Ivan: It had a really bad streak of stuff.
Ivan: And so one of the things that I could see that was the most pervasive was and
Ivan: Boeing had been later to implementing a,
Ivan: More computerized, you know, less direct control of flights,
Ivan: whereas Airbus use a side stick to transmit a computer commands.
Ivan: The side sticks in the new Airbus aircraft aren't connected one to the other.
Ivan: So you can have like inputs that are differing inputs and the damn airplane
Ivan: will average them out, which I find is idiotic.
Ivan: Makes no sense. Once, you know, on a Boeing aircraft, you know,
Ivan: you both are pushing, you know that if you're both pushing forward or back and
Ivan: the other pilot knows that.
Ivan: And Boeing has been later to add like computerized things to do certain things,
Ivan: like what happened with the 737 MAX.
Ivan: but man i saw so many accidents
Ivan: lately on airbus where they had added
Ivan: those features over the last eight years and it caused a crash on
Ivan: a320s a330s the a300
Ivan: i mean there was one specific i
Ivan: was just reading about the a390s it's one of the first ones
Ivan: fly by wire that it was like the pilots hit
Ivan: the take off and go around button and they said
Ivan: it where the fucking pilot couldn't overwrite it and so
Ivan: the pilots are pushing forward the goddamn stick on
Ivan: the plane on landing the plane's nose will not fucking
Ivan: go down and they just stalled right near the fucking
Ivan: runway and by the way oh yeah there's a software update that didn't put in and
Ivan: i'm like oh for god's sakes you know so boeing had really not done a lot of
Ivan: that kind of stuff that their airplanes Lange's Insult recently.
Ivan: And so I think that they're now, I mean, they've had this issue with.
Ivan: With that, but also the other problems have been fabric, you know,
Ivan: manufacturing problems.
Ivan: And that is an issue which is more specific to Boeing because they decided over
Ivan: the last decade plus to change the way they made their planes.
Ivan: And it's really caused them a lot of problems because they've decided to contract
Ivan: substantial pieces to a whole bunch of other manufacturers.
Ivan: And so their entire control of their supply chain is not the same way it was as before.
Ivan: and and that's well hell they they had to one of the companies they spun off
Ivan: for this they had to buy it back so.
Sam: Right anyway so okay so basically i think we.
Ivan: Need to i need to.
Sam: I think we're done you need you need to go to sleep you need to catch your plane
Sam: in the morning need to continue your recovery okay i i will mention one one
Sam: quick thing on polls one quick Just on how fast they're coming in.
Sam: Since we have been recording the show, not only since we've been recording the
Sam: show, since we talked about polls earlier in the show, there have been two new
Sam: polls, one in Texas and one in Minnesota, that have been released.
Ivan: Minnesota matters, Texas, I mean, or less surprising, the data in Texas.
Sam: Yeah, well, no, it's not surprising. It's as Trump ahead by eight.
Sam: So neither one of these are surprising.
Sam: They're both in line with roughly where the states are already.
Sam: So it's not going to change anything big, but there are two new polls just in
Sam: the last couple hours since we've been talking that, you know,
Sam: I'll probably put in after we're done, but yeah, because the polls are happening hot and heavy.
Sam: It's going to get more and more as we get closer, but like, it's getting to
Sam: the point where, you know, it's a substantial time commitment for me now each
Sam: week to put in these things.
Sam: And of course, like, you know, I'm occasionally asked, you know,
Sam: you could just like build something that ties into FiveThirtyEight's API and
Sam: just pulls all their polls automatically.
Sam: And I do not do that. I manually enter polls because I make slightly different
Sam: decisions than FiveThirtyEight.
Sam: I use them as my main source, and then I also check with the Hill decision desk
Sam: poll information because sometimes decision desk has something that FiveThirtyEight
Sam: rejects for whatever reason.
Sam: So I look at different places and I determine differently which versions of
Sam: the polls to include, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: So I do it manually, but it ends up taking a lot of time. Anyway, we're done.
Sam: You can all go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: It now has the link to our YouTube. is now on the website.
Sam: So if you want to see the YouTube versions of this, someone subscribed last week.
Ivan: Whoa! There you go.
Sam: We now have two subscribers to the YouTube channel. Me and somebody else.
Sam: What was their... It's probably a bot.
Sam: They had a name. It actually came up with a name. I forget how to get to it now, so oh well.
Sam: But yeah, we're not going to look now. Anyway, there was a person...
Sam: Anyway, you can get there.
Sam: You can watch it. Nobody's been watching live today. Oh, well, you missed out.
Sam: You could see how sick Yvonne looks.
Ivan: God, Jesus. I look awful.
Ivan: Yvonne does not look great. I look a disaster. I look a fucking disaster.
Sam: Anyway, we'll let Yvonne go. On the website, you can also find all the ways to contact us.
Sam: You can find the archive of our shows, transcripts for recent shows,
Sam: all of that kind of fun stuff.
Sam: and of course a link to our patreon where you
Sam: can give us cash money and various levels on the patreon we will mention you
Sam: on the show we will ring a bell we will send you a postcard we will send you
Sam: i was gonna say a book we don't send people books we could send people books
Sam: i don't know what book we'd send you but we could no but our mug you know i mean.
Ivan: I don't know a.
Sam: Book of transcripts of the show.
Ivan: There's the whole script. Wow. Jesus. Yes. There you go.
Sam: We will self-publish all the transcripts since I started including transcripts
Sam: and self-publish it into a book.
Sam: We can get both Yvonne and I to sign it and send it to you. There you go.
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: I'll be cheap. If you want that instead of a mug, just let us know. We'll take care of it.
Ivan: Oh, God. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Okay. Yeah.
Sam: I'm sure that will be extremely valuable as a collector's item.
Sam: Anyway, at $2 a month or more. Yes, yes.
Ivan: No, no, no, go, go, go, go, go.
Sam: At $2 a month or more, or if you just contact us in any of the ways on the website
Sam: and ask, we will invite you to the Commerciants Corner Slack where Yvonne and
Sam: I and a bunch of listeners are chatting and sharing links throughout the week.
Sam: So Yvonne, anything to highlight from the Slack?
Ivan: Bank employees found dead in her cubicle four days after last clocking in.
Ivan: A Wells Fargo employee in Arizona was discovered dead in her cubicle last week,
Ivan: four days after she was last seen clocking into the office.
Ivan: Security at the Wells Fargo branch located in the 1100 block of West Washington
Ivan: Street contacted the Plembe Police Department after 60-year-old Denise Prudhomme
Ivan: was found dead in her cubicle Tuesday, August 20th.
Ivan: Prudhomme had last scanned into work Friday, August 16th at around 7 a.m.
Ivan: and never checked out. Police reported that Prudhomme was found on the third
Ivan: floor of the building in a cubicle that was not in a main hallway.
Ivan: There's no immediate sign of foul play.
Ivan: An anonymous employee told KPNX that co-workers had noticed a foul odor,
Ivan: but assumed it was related to a plumbing issue.
Ivan: Prudhomme's body was eventually discovered by another employee passing by.
Ivan: So how's all that employee interaction at the office, huh, Sam?
Sam: Yeah, that's what I said. Now, of course, like, I made a stupid joke about this
Sam: in terms of like, Like, you know, forcing people back into the office for all
Sam: the interactions, but yet somebody died and was not found for four days.
Ivan: They've been found for four days!
Sam: But at the same, I mean, this is an awful story.
Ivan: It's an awful story! I mean, I'm really tired of it for a second,
Ivan: but also, no, but it's a good point. I'm like, fuck.
Ivan: I mean, these people didn't notice that their co-worker is dead for four fucking days!
Ivan: I mean, what the hell? Wasn't there a cleaning crew there that night?
Sam: Apparently not.
Ivan: There had to be around them.
Sam: I don't know.
Ivan: Well, it's really look really, they look really focused.
Sam: Well, it sounds like they weren't on a main hallway or something.
Sam: They were off in a corner and they just didn't go. Maybe they even saw like
Sam: the person there and we're like, Oh, we don't, we don't want to disturb them.
Ivan: I will say this. And you talk about what I want to say. Have you been,
Ivan: you would element about this is poor lady. I guess you have anybody that Mr.
Sam: I don't know. Like maybe, Maybe, I imagine if there was a family,
Sam: maybe they were, they didn't know, like they called and it would take a few days to do that.
Ivan: Sam, well, what do you mean a few days? If you didn't come back from the office.
Sam: Okay. Yeah, I think my wife would notice within a couple hours.
Sam: Where's Sam? Shouldn't he be home by now? Exactly.
Ivan: Where the fuck are you? but.
Sam: Like if I lived alone it might take a while before.
Ivan: Like my mom or my sister or something but that was my point the pressing aspect
Ivan: of that that I was saying is that they didn't have anybody that even noticed she was,
Ivan: That's right, though. Yeah. Anyway.
Sam: Okay. Well, on that cheery note. Yay.
Sam: Yes. I feel sorry for her and her family, and probably her co-workers are feeling
Sam: a little guilty, too, at this point.
Ivan: Oh, God. They better be fuckers.
Sam: Yeah. Anyway, thanks, everybody, for joining us for yet another Curmudgeon's Corner.
Sam: And hopefully we will be back next week, and Yvonne will be feeling a lot better.
Ivan: Speaking of next week oh god i'm gonna be in vegas okay oh for god's sake well
Ivan: i don't know what the hell we're gonna do but okay we'll.
Sam: We'll figure that out so maybe we'll have yvonne maybe we won't ah who the hell
Sam: knows but yeah and don't don't do what i did and gamble the entire 75 cents you have to your name and.
Ivan: The good news is
Ivan: i'm going on the company dime so therefore i'm not the company
Ivan: is giving me an award for how much i sold last year and part of it is a trip
Ivan: to vegas for for the don't don't gamble your award well i can't gamble my award
Ivan: part of it was in you know the the you know the the type that the companies
Ivan: give like the earned technology so i it's not invested yet ah.
Sam: Right okay well do you get it like a little plaque or something, at least?
Ivan: I probably will, yes.
Sam: Well, don't gamble that. Don't gamble the plaque.
Ivan: I'll go to the... I'm staying at the win on course.
Ivan: It's expensive wood's there. I'm going to go to the table. I'm going to put
Ivan: the plaque down. Okay. All of it on eight.
Sam: But if you win, you get more plaques.
Ivan: I get more plaques, yes.
Sam: There you go. Okay, we're done. We are so done. Bye, everyone.
Sam: one. We'll talk to you next week, or at least I will. We'll see.
Sam: I don't know. Whatever. Something. Bye. Later.
Ivan: Bye. Bye-bye.
Sam: Thank you. Okay, Yvonne, sleep, feel better, get home. I'm hitting stop.