Sam: That sounded good hey how you doing good good good good good good good good good.
Ivan: Good i'm feeling good i'm feeling great i'm feeling wonderful i.
Sam: Am so glad feeling.
Ivan: Good i'm feeling great i'm feeling wonderful.
Sam: I'm tired now commute but i just i just took a nap actually like i I got home
Sam: from something and I was like, I got like an hour.
Sam: I'm going to lie down and then I'll get up again for the podcast.
Ivan: So I, I mean, I was watching TV. Yeah. So you want to know the future? 25 years in that.
Sam: Shall we?
Ivan: That's when I was trying, I was trying to turn this down, and I wound up doing the opposite.
Sam: You failed. You failed utterly.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Shall we just go?
Ivan: I mean, is there anything else that we can do? No. Okay, let's just go.
Sam: Okay, just go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, October 5th, 2024.
Sam: It's just after 2 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Materini,
Sam: Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hi.
Sam: You know we're gonna do our usual we'll
Sam: do our butt first of like you know
Sam: non-newsy stuff and then we'll get into the news after that first
Sam: segment picked by von then i'll pick the last
Sam: one and yeah that's gonna be
Sam: our normal agenda but i feel kind of lost to be
Sam: honest here because for the first week in a long long time i
Sam: don't have like media of like books or movies
Sam: or tv queued up ready to go because you
Sam: know i mentioned on last week's show i have to do that thing where i go through
Sam: my phone to like log all the stuff i've finished in the last few months and
Sam: i haven't done that so i've got no list and you know it's one of those things
Sam: that like i let it go so long when i actually get around to doing it it takes
Sam: me hours and hours and hours to like do it so,
Sam: yeah i haven't i haven't done it so i don't know i have no idea what i'll even
Sam: talk about You have no idea what you want to talk about. For the non-newsy stuff.
Sam: I mean, I'm just confused and lost.
Ivan: How's the weather?
Sam: It was okay today. It was nice. Now, this is one of those things where you will
Sam: be like, oh my God, it was unbearably cold.
Ivan: What was the high of?
Sam: Because the highs are, let's see, it was 58. The high was 58.
Ivan: Oh, fuck that shit.
Sam: If I'm reading this correctly. And it'll be, the high will be 63 tomorrow.
Sam: Morrow see now to me like you know this was perfect i loved it it was great
Sam: weather this is what i like let's.
Ivan: See what what is the name of that town that you live in right now.
Sam: We're we're technically an unincorporated snohomish county between everest and
Sam: milk everest everest you're near the everest i'm near the ever no no between everett and milk creek i.
Ivan: Didn't realize i mean i thought that mountain.
Sam: I am on the slopes of mount everest that's that's where i live yes i.
Ivan: Would be i.
Sam: I live i live at one of the base camps that.
Ivan: Would be yeah that would be something but you know no no i don't i have no interest
Ivan: in climbing mount everest.
Sam: Yeah no i have no interest in
Sam: climbing any mountain that isn't just a relaxing stroll to get to the top.
Sam: I could do a relaxing stroll.
Sam: Or even a decent hike. I'll be honest.
Ivan: You know, now that Asheville, North Carolina has been in the news because of
Ivan: what happened with the storm, personal story, and I guess that could be my first,
Ivan: but I used to go to summer camp around that area when I was little.
Sam: Oh, okay.
Ivan: I did that. I mean, it's the only...
Ivan: Away summer camp i did was a camp called camp highlander which is just right
Ivan: outside asheville and so did did you check.
Sam: To see if it still exists.
Ivan: Oh no the camp still exists i know it still exists because i had my nephews
Ivan: actually went to it a few years no i mean like after last after the storm i
Ivan: do think that i was looking at the location although i did you know it is.
Sam: Reasonably possible that any random camp could have ceased to exist in the last like 40 years but.
Ivan: Yeah i meant specifically this week they're still they are
Ivan: still in business but i i i
Ivan: looked at the map i don't they they
Ivan: are not they weren't in the path of the
Ivan: worst stuff okay surrounding that at least based on what i could see i could
Ivan: be wrong and there's been a you know some some areas of information has not
Ivan: been very uh complete so well yeah i mean this is one of the things I mean.
Sam: We talked about Helene last week, but we were talking mainly about sort of the
Sam: coastal stuff because there was still the areas that turned out to have been
Sam: most heavily impacted in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee were still
Sam: inaccessible and they'd lost power and communication.
Sam: And sort of after we finished recording, it became more and more clear that
Sam: those areas were actually the hardest hit, much more than along the coast.
Ivan: Yeah i mean definitely that's been a
Ivan: case and you know i i was looking
Ivan: at a lot of the towns and places where they they spoke
Ivan: about that had the biggest impact one of them i'm talking about there is this
Ivan: very big artificial lake called lake which is on the river if i remember the
Ivan: the name and this this the river went past the town called chimney rock which
Ivan: we used to go very often on the way to Lake Lure,
Ivan: and I got devastated by that.
Ivan: So that area was very familiar in general to me.
Ivan: You know, and the mountains, I've climbed only very few mountains.
Ivan: I will say that the mountains I've climbed have been...
Sam: Now, let's be clear by what you mean by that. Like, have you climbed...
Sam: Well, no, but have you climbed mountains that require special equipment?
Sam: Or are we talking like a strenuous hike?
Ivan: Mountains that there is no trail. And so therefore to make it to the top,
Ivan: they don't need specialized equipment because the ox, I mean,
Ivan: they're at about a few thousand.
Sam: Are you using, you don't need, are you using row or no, no, no,
Sam: no, but do you need like ropes and like the things you stab into?
Ivan: No, no, no, but you, but, but, but, What?
Sam: You have to scramble up rocks.
Ivan: Oh, you have to scramble and grab onto stuff.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And it's not, you're not up a trail. Okay. It's not a simple walk.
Ivan: It took a lot of effort to get to the peak.
Ivan: And I did it probably twice around in the Asheville area. I will say that it was very difficult.
Ivan: The only other place that I did that was in Puerto Rico in order to make it
Ivan: to the peak of aljunque which they're actually on
Ivan: that one there are more trails but near
Ivan: the end there aren't and so you know while it doesn't require special equipment
Ivan: it's also not look if you can't if you don't if you can't move grab hold on
Ivan: to stuff you know basically sometimes in some places He says,
Ivan: go on your knees and like,
Ivan: you know, you're not going to get to that.
Sam: I get the picture. There are like several levels of this, right?
Sam: There's like mountains you can get to the top just walking.
Sam: There's mountains that require the kind of stuff you're talking about.
Sam: And there's one that you need special equipment.
Sam: Then there's the stuff that you need like ropes and the crampons and the thing.
Sam: And then there's the ones that you need oxygen for.
Ivan: Yeah. So I did also do around that area rock climbing.
Ivan: I will say, I despise rock climbing.
Ivan: It's a very scary endeavor. For that, we needed the specialized equipment and safety lines and stuff.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: The easy rock climbing one...
Ivan: With a lot of difficulty, I was able to get to. There's another one that was
Ivan: very difficult, which I remember that some people got to the top.
Ivan: I don't know how they held.
Ivan: But I remember that I barely got up, like, maybe like 10, 20% up the way.
Ivan: And I'm like, okay, that's it. That's enough rock for me. This is scary enough. I'm coming back down.
Ivan: I'm just going to go back to camp. The hell with this shit. I'm not doing this.
Ivan: This is not worth it. But yeah, it was mostly around that area.
Ivan: And I will also say that the only places that I probably have like,
Ivan: well, not the only, but like 90% of the camping that I've done outside was around
Ivan: those devastated areas.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I will say that camping outside, you know, like in the middle of nowhere,
Ivan: like in a forest, whatever, is cool when it's not raining.
Ivan: I, unfortunately, for whatever reason, I don't think I'm exaggerating.
Ivan: More than half the time we went out to camp, it was raining.
Ivan: And camping when it's raining is absolutely miserable.
Ivan: But when it wasn't raining, it was a delight. The weather was nice.
Ivan: We got to pick blueberries in certain places. We made s'mores.
Ivan: We went to these natural pools occurring in the rocks. The streams up there,
Ivan: the water was so fresh and clear, you know, coming down from the mountain.
Ivan: Yeah, it was good. I mean, it was good. So I have very fond memories of that
Ivan: area. And like, actually, my brother went with me as well.
Ivan: And some other people in my family and friends, you know, it's very hard to
Ivan: see the devastation that they that has been wrought on the on the area and how
Ivan: people are are are struggling.
Ivan: And how, I mean, the death toll right now is, I mean, already they said it's up to 200 people.
Sam: Yeah, it's like over 220 at this point, last update I had.
Sam: But the thing is, there's still lots of people missing. They're still finding people.
Sam: The number is going to continue to go up from here. We're not at the top.
Ivan: No, we're not. No, we're not. We're not even close. But I did spend a lot of time up there.
Ivan: And I rather, despite some of the weather and stuff, I mean,
Ivan: I did learn. I mean, I learned to whitewater raft.
Ivan: I canoed. I was pretty good at that stuff. and we
Ivan: did we did all this stuff we did horseback riding we
Ivan: did water skiing we did uh i
Ivan: don't know we did uh but swimming diving i don't know why the hell we once had
Ivan: a fucking belly flop competition i don't know why the hell we do that i wound
Ivan: up having to do that that's awful it's painful
Ivan: yeah we had to do that we had we had mud fights i hate mud i despise mud i don't
Ivan: like mud people yeah no all like covered in mud from head to toe fighting yeah no i.
Sam: I this has never.
Ivan: Now been something.
Sam: That i was interested in either.
Ivan: It's so i know so we did these uh,
Ivan: we had a lot of different events i i will
Ivan: say what what interesting thing from one of those one of those
Ivan: trips so we also that was the trip that we took
Ivan: buses and we went to knoxville for the world's fair from
Ivan: there right okay because that was like nearby and
Ivan: so we did that and i also wound up that is where i wound up seeing the movie
Ivan: tron it was a movie that we were actually supposed to go see et which i think
Ivan: was out around the same time and we couldn't go go see it and i I was like, oh, we get to see Tron.
Ivan: Well, I didn't really want to see the stupid space alien movie.
Ivan: I prefer to one of my computers. So we got to go see Tron. And I was a lot happier with that.
Sam: I will say I don't have a movie this time, but, you know, and it hasn't been
Sam: that long since I've seen E.T. It may even be one of the ones I add to my list.
Sam: But I will say thumbs up to both E.T. and Tron. I like both of those movies.
Ivan: I think I eventually watched E.T. and I liked it.
Ivan: Okay, but my preference was Tron, you know, to go watch it. Yeah, they were both out in 82.
Ivan: So yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was the thing. It was either E.T.
Ivan: Or Tron and we wound up watching Tron. I was very happy about that.
Ivan: I think most people were not.
Ivan: That we wound up at Tron instead of E.T.
Ivan: But I was definitely happy about that.
Ivan: So, yeah. So I had a lot of fond memories from camp. A lot of shit happened.
Ivan: Even fistfights. Oh, my God. Why did we wind up getting into so many fistfights at that age?
Ivan: You know, fistfighting used to be more common. I think we talk about kids like
Ivan: right now at school, whatever.
Ivan: I don't hear that often, even from my nephews or whatever, about kids getting
Ivan: into fist fights at school. And I remember that back then.
Ivan: That was not an uncommon thing.
Sam: It probably depends on the school.
Ivan: I mean, but I'm talking like in general, you know, everywhere.
Ivan: I'm talking, I mean, Sam, I mean, we got into knockout, drag out,
Ivan: you know, punches, thrones, landed, black guys, black brutes, fights.
Sam: Yeah. I only remember being tangentially involved in one of those ever.
Ivan: Has Alex ever told you he's been in a fist fight?
Sam: Alex, have you ever been in a fist fight at school? No.
Sam: He pretended to punch me, but I guess the answer is no.
Ivan: I mean, otherwise, you would have heard.
Sam: He was no longer pretending to punch me. He is actually punching me.
Ivan: Well, I'm assuming that if it would have happened, you guys would have heard about it.
Sam: I presume so. No, as far as I know, no, nothing like that.
Ivan: And listen, I told my nephews, you know, that's not very common.
Ivan: And I remember that back then, including in the U.S. or, you know,
Ivan: from kids I talked to in the U.S. or from where I was. and that was not that
Ivan: unusual an occurrence to wind up instead they.
Sam: Just all cyber bully each other.
Ivan: Right they cyber bully each other and and of course then the ones that get really
Ivan: pissed off wind up coming in and like with AR-15s killing everybody.
Sam: Yeah so no more fist fights and instead you get school shooters.
Ivan: Great good trade off good trade off yeah sounds like sounds like a plan but
Ivan: yeah so I don't know we had a lot of that happening horseback riding did a lot
Ivan: of horseback riding That was one thing. I wasn't too bad on a horse.
Ivan: You can't be on a horse. You're very allergic to horses, as we have discovered.
Sam: I have ridden a horse once in my life.
Ivan: Ah.
Sam: And it was okay, I guess. I don't know. I wasn't particularly into it.
Sam: And this was like completely aside from any allergy issues.
Sam: Just the actual activity of like, it was like, okay, this was a thing. I did it once.
Ivan: I don't have to do it again. I must admit, I did like riding the horses.
Ivan: But, you know, I don't know. But also horseback riding is not very convenient.
Ivan: You know, it depends where you're going. It depends where you're going, but also where you live.
Ivan: You know, we used to have stables with horses when I was growing up at my grandparents
Ivan: place that made it a lot easier.
Ivan: But I don't know. We got rid of all the horses. So when you don't have horses
Ivan: makes it very difficult to go horseback riding.
Ivan: So we, yes. Yeah. So, so anyway, so my anecdote was that, yes,
Ivan: I, I had spent a lot of my childhood around the area that was a couple of years
Ivan: of my, my, a couple of my summers when I was growing up in the devastated area, unfortunately.
Ivan: So I've been probably paying more attention to, to that than normally I would
Ivan: place because of it, because I just recognize a lot of the places that they
Ivan: are talking about that were affected by it.
Sam: So and the bottom line like
Sam: i i mean yes there's been
Sam: lots of devastation but also you know there were as
Sam: people got connectivity back you
Sam: got more and more people sharing videos not just
Sam: of the aftermath but what was happening during as well
Sam: and yeah just a lot of
Sam: really scary stuff like i mean
Sam: like you know somebody like in their kitchen and
Sam: all of a sudden you notice that the water outside the
Sam: kitchen is up past the window and then
Sam: the window explodes inward with water yeah you know
Sam: this kind of stuff and then you know and then lots of
Sam: places that are just you know flooded up to people's chest height
Sam: and people float houses floating down the
Sam: river you know yeah all of this kind of stuff and some
Sam: of them you've seen on the news with notes that hey
Sam: you see that person who's on
Sam: the house floating down the river this is the last known picture of them they're
Sam: missing they're gone you know um or there was another where there was like a
Sam: you know several people like on top of a house that then collapsed same thing
Sam: gone you know and you know.
Sam: Yeah so and i've heard there have been a number of people as well that i've
Sam: seen on tiktok that like normally post other kinds of content but turns out
Sam: either are in western north carolina or know people who were and are,
Sam: you know, like there was one that I was that, you know, I see regularly on Tik
Sam: TOK who posts things about like, you know, Tolkien related content,
Sam: you know, Lord of the Rings and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And she came on and was like, we're fine.
Sam: We escaped, we got out, but my, my, my family is still there.
Sam: They're okay too, but they have very limited connectivity and they have like,
Sam: they're, they're running low on supplies and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Blah and like there have been people in my comments complaining that i haven't
Sam: been posting my regular content and fuck you you know you know and stuff like this so yeah.
Ivan: Well okay so that was my uh,
Ivan: Buddy, first thing.
Sam: Your thing? Thing. Your thing? Yeah. Okay, so now I'm panicking.
Sam: What do I talk about? What do I do?
Ivan: So the current temperature in Everett is 54 degrees.
Ivan: We have a forecast low of 48, and it looks like the humidity is 91%. This is quite high.
Ivan: Yeah, to be honest. visibility is 11 miles and and the temperature is four degrees
Ivan: below the average daily high that's expected okay feels like 54 sunrise at 7
Ivan: 14 a.m sunset at 6 38 p.m special that's good expected wind west at three miles per hour.
Sam: Okay so i'll alex is oh the air quality index is 25 which.
Ivan: Is very good apparently.
Sam: So i i am going to talk about something that alex has actually suggested and
Sam: came up on our Commodions course Slack earlier this week.
Sam: Last week I mentioned in passing as we were talking about other stuff that I
Sam: actually do use AI tools regularly at this point.
Ivan: Ah yes, that came up in Slack.
Sam: Somebody asked me like what? This is still useless. And so I did say I am mostly
Sam: using it for coding help.
Sam: And they indicated, actually two people,
Sam: both Bob and Greg indicated that they never had any success
Sam: this is on our commissions corner slack on using these tools
Sam: and it always cost them you know it didn't get
Sam: it right and it caused them it was more trouble than it worth was worth basically
Sam: and so i want to give a little bit of like what i've used it for successfully
Sam: and the limitations on that and talk about it a little bit first of all like Like, for the most part,
Sam: what I've been using it for the last few months is simple scripting stuff.
Sam: Like, where I want to have my computer, like, once a day, check some number,
Sam: log it somewhere, and send me an alert if it's outside of some parameter.
Sam: Okay? I do this for how old my backups are. I do this for how full my hard drives are.
Sam: I do it for a variety of other things.
Sam: And so, you know, this is fairly simple stuff.
Sam: I'm asking to do it in a fairly, you know, fairly old technology,
Sam: shell scripts or PHP scripts or whatever.
Sam: And the total code it's spitting out is for the basic version is maybe a dozen lines of code.
Sam: And if I start getting fancy and like,
Sam: saying, oh, well, I want you to handle this special case and I want you to do
Sam: this extra and I want you to do that.
Sam: Maybe it's a few dozen lines of code, but it's a single file with a script that
Sam: does something fairly straightforward.
Sam: But what it lets me do in that case is basically I can write a couple sentences
Sam: in English language saying what I want And it spits it out.
Sam: Now, does it get it right on the first try?
Sam: Sometimes, but more often I iterate.
Sam: And I think one of the reasons I've been able to get useful stuff out of this
Sam: is I don't come in writing a two paragraph description of something complicated I want.
Sam: You start with something very basic. I start with something super simple.
Sam: Just give me a script that does, that checks this number.
Sam: And then I'm like, okay, well now I want you to take that number and log it to a file. Boom.
Sam: Okay. Now I want you to also check that number. And if it's high, do this.
Sam: Oh, and when you log it to the file, actually, I'd like you to tweak the format and do it like this.
Sam: Like one little tiny step at a time, not like give it a whole set of instructions
Sam: is this is how I've generally done it is one little thing at a time and slowly
Sam: build up the functionality even there.
Sam: When most of the time I've been doing this, I would actually end up fighting
Sam: it because it would like, as soon as it got a little bit more complicated,
Sam: it would sometimes add the new thing,
Sam: but forget some of the old stuff and spit up and spit out a new,
Sam: new script that would do the new thing you added, but no longer do what you asked before.
Ivan: Well, that kind of sucks.
Sam: And like you know sometimes it would
Sam: be like well just change this code without giving you everything which okay
Sam: fine but like if i'm my mode of operation was usually just take everything that
Sam: had given me and cut and paste and replace the old script right and so once
Sam: it started saying replacing parts of the old script with comments saying leave the stuff alone,
Sam: that that method wouldn't work anymore you'd have to be careful and or i would
Sam: have to go back into Tell it, no, no, please give me the whole script and do that.
Sam: And, you know, that was, that was, it worked okay.
Sam: But like I said, whenever it got complicated, it would start to get confused more.
Sam: And so the late, and I've tried, by the way, I started doing this mostly with chat GPT.
Sam: And then I switched it. I heard somewhere online, somebody said that Claude was better for this.
Sam: So I started to use Claude instead. dead so Claude is chat GPT is for open AI
Sam: Claude is from anthropic.
Ivan: How do you spell Claude C L O D or C L A U D E that one the okay the second
Ivan: one okay Claude Claude I'm like what is it an idiot Claude I don't know okay let's anyway so I.
Sam: I, I, people had said Claude was better. So I switched and was doing mostly
Sam: Claude and it was better. It was better.
Sam: But then more recently, and this is only just two or three weeks ago,
Sam: I saw people talking about this thing called cursor, which is basically. Okay.
Ivan: So you mean cursor C U R S O R not C U R S E R, which that would be me.
Sam: Yes. C U R S O R. That's right.
Ivan: Okay. Got it.
Sam: Like the thing on your screen. Anyway, it's an integrated development environment.
Sam: So an IDE that basically has editors for the files that also integrates the AI.
Sam: So it lets you open up the files you're interested in and then talk to the AI in a chat window.
Sam: But the AI can directly edit the files.
Sam: So you can tell it which files to have sort of in memory, in context.
Sam: And it will always have the current version to reference to and make edits to it.
Sam: So before I had to keep saying, no, no, no, no, stupid. Here's the current version of the file.
Sam: Please make changes to that and give me the new file. This way,
Sam: it just makes the changes directly in the editor and does it with what's called a diff.
Sam: So you can see exactly what it's changing.
Ivan: Okay, okay.
Sam: So like one of the problems, I was actually doing this manually.
Sam: When I cut and pasted into my editor,
Sam: I was getting so frustrated with what I was doing that what I was doing was
Sam: constantly always asking my
Sam: text editor to do a diff from the new version to what was saved on disk.
Sam: And I would look through the changes because this is one of the things.
Sam: I could not just trust it.
Sam: And say, whatever it gave me, just use it. I would have to go in,
Sam: look at the diff, see what it was doing, see if it made sense.
Sam: And then if it didn't make sense, go back and tell the AI, hey,
Sam: no, what you're doing is messing this up.
Sam: Please try again or take this into account. And now with it in cursor,
Sam: I could see those changes right directly in it.
Sam: It was sort of automatic, and I could accept or reject each change.
Sam: And it made it much nicer.
Sam: And also it could handle editing simultaneously, several interrelated files.
Sam: Like if you have several files that work together to accomplish things,
Sam: it could handle that and say, you know, make these changes in this file and
Sam: this changes in that file.
Sam: And it made it much more useful immediately than using these independently and
Sam: in cursor you actually can it integrates with the others so like i'm looking
Sam: at my cursor right now and it can use gpt 4.0 cursor small clod 3.5.
Ivan: Sonnet and write in what language mini 01 mini right on preview and code in which languages well.
Sam: I have i have done shell scripts php python and c sharp uh.
Ivan: Well i i was reading this week from a few a few different ones that you know
Ivan: related some development tools that i've heard some company that you know i
Ivan: i know very well has been developing and especially more related to languages
Ivan: programming languages where the expertise is like,
Ivan: The experts on that are not as available as they used to be.
Ivan: So think Cobalt. Yeah, Fortran, Cobalt, RPG, that kind of stuff.
Ivan: You know, stuff for IBM mainframe and stuff and so forth. And I can see how
Ivan: those tools could help people like somebody like me, for example, that knows some Cobalt.
Ivan: But I'm not, you know, I'm not that good. I was never that good with it. Okay. Yeah.
Sam: And this helps me.
Ivan: You know, be able to develop certain things where, you know,
Ivan: I could tell it to do, you know, I could be helping it, instructing it.
Ivan: I could check what it's doing. I know that what it's doing, it's right or wrong.
Ivan: And it could help me, you know, make changes to programs and so forth and so on.
Sam: This is a part of the key, too. Like, I'm mentioning the kinds of things I'm doing.
Sam: I can get around this, but I am not a professional coder.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Like this is not what i've you know i i've i've built various things sort of
Sam: by trial and error you know i don't i i do not follow best practices i do not
Sam: know you're not an you know i don't you know i don't jump in like if i have
Sam: one of these things you don't have you don't.
Ivan: Have your dev test.
Sam: Yeah yeah production environments no i i do all the versioning.
Ivan: You're You're not doing your versioning, Sam, damn it.
Sam: Although with this cursor thing.
Ivan: One of the things is it's got versioning, yeah.
Sam: Well, no, it's not actually directly doing versioning, but it can integrate
Sam: with the standard versioning tools and make it easy.
Sam: So I'm like, maybe I should go ahead and set that up.
Sam: And I'm thinking about it, whereas I never did before, right?
Ivan: Now you've got the ability to perhaps do it, you know?
Sam: Yeah, I mean, well, I always had the theoretic ability. i could have done it
Sam: but it's just like it's always seemed like too much trouble right exactly but
Sam: but if i can do it in a couple clicks okay maybe maybe that's fine hey look i know listen.
Ivan: I know companies okay all right right now that supposedly big companies banks
Ivan: or whatever that are they're making fucking changes to production without even
Ivan: thinking about it okay so.
Sam: Yeah yeah why would you do anything else i mean
Sam: i do that all the time on my site exactly no no
Sam: no one gives a shit about my sites is the difference right like
Sam: right i mean i i you know i shouldn't say a quick
Sam: tangent an election graphs note yeah i had a couple pieces of feedback via mastodon
Sam: within the last few days and unlike what i mentioned like a few months ago there
Sam: was some guy who like ripped me and said i was horrible and whatever no these are positive.
Sam: Well, no, that was like four years ago. And Nate Silver had a point,
Sam: I admit, although he's an asshole.
Sam: Because I've actually since then fixed the thing that he was complaining about.
Sam: Well, he didn't actually complain about something specific. He just said,
Sam: I had no idea what I was talking about.
Sam: But it was in response to something that I later was like, yeah, okay, I'll adjust that.
Sam: Anyway, no, but I had someone mention, I love election graphs and check it way
Sam: too often, but he found a typo, which I fixed right away.
Sam: It had only been live on the site a couple hours, but he found a typo and I fixed it.
Sam: There've been a couple others where people have been confused by something and
Sam: I've answered them, which is nice.
Sam: But then most recently, and this sort of tickled me a little bit.
Sam: Hi, I'm an undergrad in poli-sci at Iowa State.
Sam: For one of my classes, we're looking at the electoral college as an institution
Sam: and we're as a class project, making a website, making our own prediction of the Electoral College.
Sam: I came across your website, election graphs, and I was wondering if it would
Sam: be all right if I could include the Electoral College map on the website that
Sam: we're making. Thanks and best wishes.
Ivan: No, screw you. Where's my money? Pay me. Pay me, you clown.
Ivan: Dance, dance, dance for me.
Sam: I, of course, pointed out that it was released under a Creative Commons license
Sam: and he could do whatever he wanted as long as he you.
Ivan: Didn't make him dance dance you dance.
Sam: Clown dance i i didn't make him dance it's
Sam: it's a you know a what is it an attribution non-commercial share alike license
Sam: so i'm like yeah just do that anyway back to the other thing so here's the thing
Sam: like no i'm not an expert at this if i i have coded a variety of these kinds
Sam: of things that i've mentioned before,
Sam: but it takes me a while.
Sam: And every few minutes I'm looking up what's the syntax for that again.
Sam: And I'm looking it up and I'm putting it together.
Sam: And then I make stupid mistakes and I, I iterate and it just takes, this is a lot faster.
Sam: Cause I'll like, I'll like put in my request and boom, it's spit out 40 lines
Sam: of code in a few seconds that, and all of the code is perhaps straightforward.
Sam: I probably could have done it myself, but boom, it just did it. I didn't have to.
Sam: And then, and I didn't have to look up anything or check syntax or,
Sam: you know, and sometimes it's like handling edge cases on its first shot out.
Sam: Whereas I would have been like, fuck the edge case. I'll worry about it if it
Sam: becomes a problem and it's already, but it's already taken care of.
Sam: And, but then the thing that Alex wants me to talk about.
Sam: Is that he has been teaching himself game development in unity through going
Sam: back and forth with chat GPT for the most part.
Sam: So like he's been building out all kinds of games of like he's built a Minecraft
Sam: clone. He's built a subnautica clone.
Sam: He's built a couple platformer games.
Sam: He's built like a maze game, you know, all kinds of things.
Sam: He's building all kinds of things. And one of the things he wants me to do on
Sam: a regular basis is like when he's working on this, he likes it if I'm sitting
Sam: at my desk a few feet away also working on Unity game development.
Sam: Because he's like, I'm learning this. You should learn it too.
Sam: Now, this is where the C Sharp I mentioned it comes in.
Sam: Unity is a game development platform for those who aren't aware of it.
Sam: It's one of the two biggest ones.
Sam: What's the other one, Alex? Unity and?
Sam: Anyway, it doesn't matter. Unity is one of the two big ones that lots of people use to develop games.
Sam: And I'm talking like professional game developers use this crap.
Sam: And, uh, you know, and I had no freaking clue.
Sam: He, he, the first time he asked me to build a game,
Sam: I built some stupid PHP or shell script to do a version of Flappy Bird in ASCII
Sam: that was just rudimentary and dumb. Okay.
Sam: I'm, I'm actually impressed with myself that I got it to do anything,
Sam: but I, you know, and I did that one by hand, but no, he's wanting me to use
Sam: these tools and use like, you know, a real something.
Sam: And, and so I'm, I'm building this game and same kind of thing,
Sam: building it up, starting out with something very stupid, very,
Sam: well, look, I'll, I'll be honest. It's still very stupid.
Sam: I've been working on this thing for months it's still a very basic very stupid
Sam: game but it's actually started to get somewhat like,
Sam: actually entertaining to play. Like when I start playing, like it's got a high score list.
Sam: Like I spent months building, just making the high score list work,
Sam: but like, you know, I actually like play it and I'm like, Oh, a new high score.
Sam: And I get excited. And if I don't make the high score, I want to play again. Right.
Sam: And that's, that's a step forward. Cause like, and at first I dreaded these
Sam: unity sessions because I was dealing with trying to get chat GPT to tell me what to do.
Sam: And all of the problems that I was talking about before were happening with
Sam: it, forgetting what I was talking about with it, you know, regressing and eliminating
Sam: huge portions of functionality.
Sam: Once I finally gotten them fixed, when I added something new,
Sam: et cetera, but now that I'm doing it in this cursor environment that can handle
Sam: multiple files open at the same time and show me the diffs every time it's just
Sam: become a lot smoother and easier.
Sam: And so is this still what I would choose to do. Like Alex wants me to do this
Sam: an hour a night, every night.
Sam: That's more than I am like wanting to do, but you know, it's less painful than
Sam: it was. And I'm actually making faster progress.
Sam: So in the last week or two, since I shifted my tools.
Sam: I've actually moved from it being a really stupid game that was painful and
Sam: that I did not enjoy joy working on to having something that I actually like I've been having,
Sam: I'll admit I've been having fun and I've enjoyed playing the stupid game.
Sam: It's still a stupid game, but I've enjoyed playing it and I've been making progress
Sam: and I'm like, okay, at some point I'll be like, okay, I want to share this.
Sam: Let some people, let some other people play this and see how stupid my game is.
Sam: See, see, see how well Yvonne can do it. Getting at the high score list on this thing, you know,
Sam: I mean, literally, it's just a game that's basically about can you click on
Sam: things quickly at the right times?
Sam: That's it. That's, that's the gameplay, right? You know, but it's not.
Ivan: Not the first game at that. I mean, there's been a few of those.
Ivan: I mean, you know, but you know, I'm sure it's his own flavor of it, but yeah, I mean.
Sam: We my, my own flavor, my own flavor, even Alex's games are sophisticated and
Sam: like 3d and like this stuff happening.
Sam: Mine is like, you know, a stupid version of my face pops up and yells at you
Sam: and you have to click it, you know?
Ivan: So that's really annoying. You know, I remember writing a game to play blackjack.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: You know, you would bet money and it would accumulate how much it did.
Ivan: Blah, blah, blah. You would keep going until you quit. I wrote that in basic a long time ago.
Ivan: But I must admit that I have no desire in doing that again.
Sam: Well, you know, honestly, I had
Sam: no desire to do it either. It's just it's something I'm doing with my son.
Sam: But, you know, the other thing is the fact that so much of this can be me giving
Sam: an English language description to an AI and it spitting out something that
Sam: gets me 80% of the way there is making me think,
Sam: you know, I've got a little scratch note file with three or four ideas of new things I want.
Sam: Like, you know, a few years back, I built Wiki of the Day.
Ivan: Sure.
Sam: I've built the website for curmudgeons corner that takes the RSS file and builds
Sam: a website out of it, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: I've got a few other ideas of things that are like in my head.
Sam: I'm like, Hey, I wonder if that could work where I have been before being like,
Sam: yeah, that would be an interesting idea, but I don't have the coding skills to even like start.
Sam: And now I'm like, you know, maybe, maybe I do because I mean,
Sam: I still don't have the coding skills to start, but maybe I can start using the
Sam: AI to sort of jumpstart me, build the framework, and then go from there and iterate.
Sam: You know, so there are a couple of, and these aren't like super complicated
Sam: ideas either, but there are things where without this tool, honestly,
Sam: it's unlikely I would ever actually try.
Sam: Now I'm like, once the election is over and I don't have like election graphs
Sam: going on and we get to December, January, maybe I'll like take some of these
Sam: ideas for a spin and see if I can build anything.
Ivan: Well, I will tell you that, you know, you've got your kid who's coding.
Ivan: I have a friend of mine who also has this kid doing all these intellectual pursuits.
Ivan: My son is very big into farting right now, as far as I can tell.
Ivan: And he thinks the farts are just absolutely hilarious.
Ivan: And yeah, I would say that's probably the thing that he enjoys the most right now is farting.
Sam: Yeah, that's nice. Well, just to summarize, I think that the bottom line on
Sam: these AI tools is no, they're not perfect.
Sam: No, they don't give you the right answer the first time around a lot of the
Sam: time, but they make it easier to get started and iterate if you do not already
Sam: know very well what you're doing.
Sam: And so maybe for Greg and Bob, whose skills are undoubtedly better than mine
Sam: at these things, maybe they would be a hindrance.
Sam: But for someone with my level of know just enough to play around,
Sam: but aren't really good at it.
Sam: There are a whole bunch of things already that I've done that could I have done without the help?
Sam: Probably. Probably, but the reality is I probably wouldn't have bothered because
Sam: it would be like intimidating to start of like, man, that's going to take too much work.
Sam: I'm going to have to figure out so much. It's going to take a bunch of time.
Sam: Whereas with this tool, I can just tell it what I want and it gets me close
Sam: enough that I'm like, oh, okay, I can iterate on this for like an hour or two
Sam: and have exactly what I want.
Sam: And this can be like a project that
Sam: i can do in an evening as opposed to a
Sam: project that i would have to clear out a weekend to even think about you know
Sam: and so it's it's enabling me to do things that i just would have you wouldn't
Sam: have been able to do i i again i could have but it would have but i well i wouldn't
Sam: theoretically but you wouldn't have because.
Ivan: It's too time consuming yeah.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. Like I would have said, this is too much. It's not worth the effort.
Sam: Whereas now it's worth the effort. Now, is it worth the however many bottles
Sam: of water per script that are being used to cool the data centers and all the
Sam: electricity and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And I will admit, I have now paid for the monthly subscription for all three
Sam: of the tools I I mentioned I am paying open AI and paying anthropic.
Sam: I am paying cursor and, and it started to add up, but none of these companies are profitable yet.
Sam: They're all like, they're all burning money at insane rates.
Sam: They have yet to prove that this kind of task,
Sam: this kind of thing can actually be a,
Sam: a moneymaker without destroying the environment completely,
Sam: but they're, but they're developing rapidly and this
Sam: is right this is the whole thing of like they're in that land grab and we talked
Sam: a little bit last week about lots of times the first mover companies aren't
Sam: the ones that end up being the long-term successes but you know they're everybody's
Sam: in the land grab right now of like this technology has lots of potential we
Sam: can't afford to not be in it.
Ivan: No totally all right so okay so.
Sam: That's it that's.
Ivan: It let's go.
Sam: Talk about stuff and things okay we'll do a break and then we'll come back with
Sam: yvonne's newsy segment and then we'll finish up with my newsy segment so here we go okie.
Break: Dokie here comes,
Break: It was just my internet being stupid.
Break: My internet being stupid is a new song we will make.
Break: Come on, I'm tired.
Break: What's wrong? I'm really tired.
Break: It's amazing. Let's get the show on the road.
Break: There's a road? There's a road? Oh my god, there's a road!
Sam: Yvonne's a bit overwhelmed hearing this for the second time.
Ivan: You know, yeah, yeah.
Ivan: Oh, God. Yeah. I just, you know, I just mentioned, you know,
Ivan: how my son is into farting.
Ivan: And this is kind of like, you know, I actually fully expect him to.
Ivan: I've been hearing some of the stuff he's recording.
Ivan: If I show him this, he might start making some of this.
Sam: There you go. There you go.
Ivan: Perfect. So, yeah. All right.
Sam: So give him GarageBand on his computer. He can get started.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to get him. He actually has played a little bit with
Ivan: it, but I got to get him to get a little bit better with it. Okay.
Sam: Actually, there's some really good looping things for the iPhone or iPad where
Sam: you just have six recording loops that you can record a loop and add special effects to it.
Sam: And they're just continuously playing and you can layer them on top of each
Sam: other. You can do some cool things really quickly with those.
Sam: Alex used to play with those a lot. Yeah.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: I need to find some of those recordings and add those as breaks.
Ivan: There you go. That's not a bad idea.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: Okay, Vaughn, what's your topic?
Ivan: I'm debating here. You know, let me, okay, let's start with what the fuck is
Ivan: going on in the Middle East right now?
Ivan: Because it's been a week of shit going down. I mean, in between Israel.
Sam: Let me, let me add just a follow up. Cause last time we talked about the middle
Sam: East, we talked about the pagers blowing up.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And we were like, why now? Why are they doing it now? There must be more to
Sam: this story that we don't know yet.
Sam: And so the things that have come out since then are, well, a apparently Israeli
Sam: intelligence had information that these pagers and the walkie-talkies were about to be exposed.
Sam: So basically use it or lose it. Like they were about, they were on the verge of finding out.
Ivan: Figuring it out case.
Sam: There were, there were some people that were getting suspicious and we're starting to investigate.
Sam: So the, basically the Israelis knew that if they let a few more days go by.
Ivan: The gig was up.
Sam: The gig was up. So it was use it or lose it at that point. And then also on
Sam: top of that, once they did this, then it's like, okay, well.
Ivan: We declared war on Hezbollah.
Sam: Part two of the plan, we blow up the pagers, we blow up the walkie talkies.
Sam: Okay. Then we got to follow up with, with airstrikes for anybody we missed.
Sam: And then we got to do a land invasion to start cleaning up the mess.
Sam: Yes. And so that's been the escalation there.
Sam: And they killed a number of leadership people with the pagers and stuff,
Sam: but then they killed more, including the top guy, with airstrikes.
Sam: And then that's when Iran retaliated with their, once again, ineffective strike.
Sam: And now we are currently waiting to see, okay, what's Israel going to do in
Sam: response? And that's kind of where we are.
Sam: And of course the Gaza thing is still going on the whole time.
Sam: And it's connected in various ways.
Ivan: From the reports of what's been going on related to in Iran...
Ivan: After the aftermath of this is that their
Ivan: leadership has been in disarray related to what the hell did the iranian leadership
Ivan: the iranian yeah in iran that's why i was in the iranian leadership because
Ivan: this entire thing hezbollah has been for the most part a funded and,
Ivan: you know, creation that Iran really, you know, it was their instrument for them
Ivan: to be basically putting pressure on Israel,
Ivan: okay, from that front.
Ivan: Hezbollah also is not exactly well, you know, beloved.
Ivan: You know, one of the things that I was reading that people forget,
Ivan: they were supporting Assad in Syria, okay? OK, they were supporting him very aggressively.
Ivan: Now, let's not remember how many hundreds of thousands of people died in Syria
Ivan: with support from Hezbollah.
Ivan: Also, Hezbollah is not exactly.
Ivan: How do I say their methods of ensuring loyalty aren't.
Ivan: You know, they're not buying pizzas for people in order to ensure that they stay in line.
Ivan: In many cases if people are not you know happy so they're a bit you know very violent so there
Ivan: is this thing and the the thing is that shit they got decimated i mean from
Ivan: leadership structure on down this guy had been a leader of hezbollah for what
Ivan: 30 years long long time Long, long time.
Ivan: And not just him, but they got his lieutenants.
Ivan: And not just that, but this entire thing that Israel did with compromising their
Ivan: communications has made them completely paranoid about talking to one another,
Ivan: using any form of communication,
Ivan: which makes it very hard.
Ivan: I mean, I can't imagine saying, think about that if I'm at my company and all
Ivan: of a sudden they tell me, well, your phones are compromised,
Ivan: your computers are compromised, your apps are compromised, everything's compromised.
Ivan: So I'm like, how the fuck do I talk to my boss?
Ivan: What am I going to have to do? Do I have to get in the car and drive over there
Ivan: to talk to him? Am I sending notes? What the hell am I doing?
Sam: Carrier pigeon.
Ivan: Carrier pigeons, yes. So it's been very crippling in that sense,
Ivan: and Iran got left with, well, what the fuck do we do?
Ivan: And while the retaliation they did, which is a retaliation they had done before,
Ivan: which didn't prove to be very effective in terms of having any control,
Ivan: significant damage to israel from it other than i
Ivan: think one of the things that and i think they needed to do it because
Ivan: of that from a pr standpoint at home
Ivan: they need to be shown that they did something and i'm
Ivan: sure they could spin it whatever the
Ivan: hell way they wanted to obviously they'll tell everybody oh
Ivan: my god we decimated israel killed thousands
Ivan: probably i'm sure i don't know but i
Ivan: i see that from from that standpoint when you find
Ivan: out that they thought they were about to be compromised and i
Ivan: also think look this had been the planning for a while obviously this wasn't
Ivan: new and i also think that bb probably pushed forward with it in such an aggressive
Ivan: way because i'm pretty sure this proved to be popular for him at home to have done this and this is a
Ivan: guy like Trump that is also running to try to stay out of jail.
Sam: Yep.
Ivan: And so, and he figured that Hezbollah had so many people that hated it that
Ivan: in terms of that, well, we'll probably get away with this because everybody hates them anyway.
Ivan: And so I think that was part of the calculation. Now,
Ivan: obviously the concern has been what the hell is this going to do with a Middle
Ivan: East that right now has all of a sudden Israel going and attacking in Lebanon
Ivan: with the situation in Gaza.
Ivan: Now, here's the interesting thing aside from this.
Ivan: So the Hamas leadership, their leader, was saying that he was talking today
Ivan: that he's not looking for peace either. Right.
Sam: It seems like no one is, really.
Ivan: No, no. Yeah, pretty much, which is part of the problem with this.
Ivan: He has said that he's blocked the ceasefire deal and has been frustrated that
Ivan: Hezbollah and Iran have not come to his aid.
Ivan: So Hamas is really pissed off that they haven't come in and,
Ivan: like, you know, been all the way in on his strategy either.
Sam: Either and by the way.
Ivan: You know this whole thing you know this goes back to part of reasons why hamas
Ivan: did this they felt that everybody forget about israel that.
Sam: Everyone was ignoring them screwing them whatever we're like fuck you like israel
Sam: we want yeah israel was making peace with saudi arabia and all of these other
Sam: uh gulf states and like we need to get attention back on us like One of the things, too,
Sam: I said nobody's interested in making peace.
Sam: I did see one interesting statement. I think it was from the Jordanian foreign
Sam: minister or something like that, basically,
Sam: saying, you know, Israel keeps complaining there are no partners on the Arab
Sam: side that want peace and want to recognize the state of Israel, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And he's like, look, I'm at this conference of Arab leaders right now.
Sam: And I'll tell you right now, we are all here.
Sam: We are ready to do that right now.
Sam: So if we go ahead with the two-state solution for the Palestinians and make
Sam: that real, and this gets to the, and I think he even said 1967 borders, right?
Sam: And this is the fundamental core of the problem, which is that vision of what
Sam: the future looks like is something that Israel is not willing to even remotely contemplate.
Ivan: Right now they're not contemplating that. That was on the table maybe like 20
Ivan: years ago, 25 years ago, but it's gotten like completely pushed off the map. Yes.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, and this is one where like even the sort of, you can blame it
Sam: on Netanyahu, but even like the populace at large, for the most,
Sam: that solution does not have majority support.
Ivan: Well, of course. I mean, in large part.
Sam: Especially after October 7th.
Ivan: Well, it's a reason why Netanyahu has been leader for so long.
Ivan: Is it because it's just lost the support it had, you know, in the past?
Sam: And, you know, as we've talked about, there was a moment in the 90s where that
Sam: looked right on the verge of being possible.
Sam: Yeah. But that moment was lost. Yeah. And so what you have, like,
Sam: in terms of the peace negotiations, for instance,
Sam: you know, I've heard someone say, for instance, on the Hezbollah side,
Sam: well, Hezbollah is not interested in a peace agreement.
Sam: Well, the problem is Hezbollah wants an agreement that includes Gaza,
Sam: not just what's happening in Lebanon.
Sam: And in terms of Gaza itself, you know,
Sam: Hamas wants a solution that involves Hamas continuing to exist.
Sam: Israel's baseline statement is we want Hamas to be destroyed utterly.
Sam: So, of course, you're not going to have like Hamas is not going to agree to
Sam: a peace settlement that involves their own destruction. Right.
Sam: And and so and Israel is not, you know, bending at all on their ultimate goal.
Sam: They're not willing to be clear.
Sam: It's not renouncing.
Ivan: No, I'm not renounced. Also, the elimination of Israel either.
Sam: No, no, they're not. So basically, yeah, you end up in a scenario where both
Sam: sides are saying, basically saying, yes, we'll agree to peace once we have completely won.
Ivan: Right. Great. That sounds, you know, this sounds like a fight with a spouse.
Ivan: Yeah, let's try. Hey, I will. I will, you know, agree with you if you completely
Ivan: capitulate. How the hell does that go? Okay.
Ivan: You know, usually winds up in a divorce. Okay.
Sam: No, no, no. Yvonne, the answer is she's right. Doesn't matter. She's right.
Ivan: That's another.
Sam: That's how that ends.
Ivan: That's how that ends as well. Yeah. Well, you know, either winds up with she's
Ivan: right or winds up in divorce court, basically.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: That's pretty much the only scenarios here.
Sam: Well, you know, this is one of those areas where like you, you kind of like you wish if, if like, if,
Sam: if you had godly powers, you wish you could just take these parts of the world
Sam: and just pick them up and separate them and put them on opposite sides of the
Sam: planet and say, okay, leave each other alone.
Sam: Time out. You, you have, you know, but you can't do that.
Sam: Like you can't actually like lift up whole countries and move them.
Sam: I just saw somebody and you can and you certainly can't move the populations
Sam: because that's all the whole ethnic cleansing idea is like, oh,
Sam: well, we'll we'll take you out of
Sam: here and we'll move you to Suriname or something. No, you know, Siberia.
Ivan: I don't know. Whatever. Look, I just saw somebody make a joke and send out this
Ivan: but this map of the Middle East without without any of the borders drawn and
Ivan: just say, hey, you draw about better.
Ivan: And i'm like yeah well that's well that's the whole.
Sam: Fucking problem is that all the colonial powers drew stupid arbitrary lines
Sam: a hundred and some years ago.
Ivan: Of course the problem is that all these fucking lines are always stupid arbitrary
Ivan: lines anyway it's like you know the fucking conflict listen i've got conflicts
Ivan: with like you know colombia and venezuela and yana and like Like Argentina with, you know.
Sam: Bring back the goddamn Ottomans.
Ivan: Yeah, exactly. Bring back the Ottoman Empire. That's really what we need.
Ivan: We fucking missing the damn Ottoman Empire.
Ivan: That really would, you know, would clear things up a lot. Yes.
Ivan: Why don't we have the Ottoman Empire back? Was the Ottoman Empire any good? I don't even know.
Sam: Well, it was one of those things where actually during its height,
Sam: it was well known and for
Sam: and they were tolerant they were a place
Sam: where like all kinds of science and technology was flourishing there was real
Sam: there were aspects of religious freedom even there there was all kinds of things
Sam: at the height of the ottoman empire but like most empires as they went into
Sam: decline things got worse and worse and there were problems and then And,
Sam: you know, which is why the damn thing, like, fell apart in the end.
Ivan: Well, it was an absolute monarchy from 1299 to, I mean, you know, to 1876.
Ivan: And then there was some small periods of parliamentary constitutional monarchy.
Ivan: And then there was a triumvirate dictatorship, which is a kind of,
Ivan: you know, I really like the sound of that.
Ivan: I don't like conceptually what it is.
Sam: So Yvonne, who's our third? Who's our third? Who do we go with to finish our triumvirate?
Ivan: For a triumvirate? You know what? I'll draft back Rebecca. She wouldn't be good at a dictatorship.
Sam: Okay. Yeah, there you go.
Ivan: Yeah, Rebecca would be great at a dictatorship. You know, bless her,
Ivan: kick your or mine asses all regularly at a regular time.
Sam: You know, I am fine with the three of us being a triumvirate dictatorship for the world.
Sam: We will start by the whole damn world is going to UTC. Damn it.
Ivan: That's the first act. I like that.
Sam: That's the first, first act. We're done.
Ivan: And the metric system.
Sam: Anyway. And the metric system. Yeah. SI units. Yeah.
Ivan: And the metric system. And so, so anyway.
Sam: Anyway. Yeah. Obviously that is a joke. I do not actually want to be dictator
Sam: of the world. Just to be clear.
Ivan: Just I don't really want to be dictator in a world.
Ivan: But, you know, but I guess the Ottoman Empire, you know, fell.
Ivan: And so now we've got this. But there's a long time. If you think about Jesus
Ivan: Christ, I mean, it's I mean, 1299, basically the 1922.
Ivan: Yeah, it's a long time.
Ivan: So but but yeah, but but we really, you know, did a terrible job of of whatever
Ivan: the heck we did after that.
Ivan: I'm sure that, you know, it was an absolute monarchy. I don't know.
Ivan: I mean, people were generally in the, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15,
Ivan: 16. It was especially, you know, they lived in misery.
Sam: It was not alone in being an absolute monetary. It was not alone in being an
Sam: absolute monarchy during those centuries. No, no, no, no.
Ivan: Not at all. That wasn't an outlier. That was exactly. That was a norm.
Ivan: No, but I do think that, you know, we forget that during that time period all
Ivan: across the world, unless you were royalty and you were in a royal class,
Ivan: you basically lived like shit.
Sam: Well, and even then, I mean, some people have brought up comparisons like,
Sam: would you rather be in the bottom 20% income-wise in the United States today
Sam: or be the king of France 500 years ago?
Sam: Pick the bottom 20% today. You're still better off.
Ivan: Than the king of France?
Sam: Just imagine health care back then. Just imagine nutrition.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: Good cleanliness. Yeah. Yeah, okay.
Ivan: I mean, your life expectancy is low.
Sam: You're going to die by 40.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. Pick the poor person today over the richest person in the world hundreds of years ago.
Ivan: That's true. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point. It's a good point.
Ivan: Ah so so yeah the ottoman empire
Ivan: so well it's gone and so that's not
Ivan: the solution for the middle east so i listen my
Ivan: my whole my biggest concern with this whole thing is an
Ivan: escalation uh you know at this
Ivan: point obviously i would like to get peace at some point but look i mean hamas
Ivan: guy doesn't want a peace bb doesn't want peace nobody wants peace i mean you
Ivan: know hamas didn't want peace in
Ivan: the first place which is why they launched this one of the things i heard.
Sam: Someone mentioned i don't know a week or two ago like as this was spinning up
Sam: i don't i have no idea who said this sorry it was some random person on mastodon
Sam: but it stuck with me it's like a significant portion
Sam: of what is going,
Sam: like, what's the right way to put this?
Sam: Biden's number one priority in dealing with the Gaza situation has been preventing escalation.
Sam: You could say that's his number one priority in Ukraine too,
Sam: by the way, you know, and that take on things that, That, hey,
Sam: above all else, keep it from escalating further is part of what's pissing a
Sam: lot of people off because they want to see more active intervention,
Sam: more like force BB to do this.
Sam: Or, you know, or on the Ukraine side, let's be, let them use the weapons more
Sam: broadly inside Russia or whatever.
Sam: And so, and there's a trade-off with, you know, look, it's an impossible situation.
Sam: Here's the bottom line. It's an impossible situation.
Sam: Like if you had Biden, let's forget Ukraine for a second. Let's,
Sam: we're concentrating on the Middle East.
Sam: Let's say he He went in there and right off the bat said, okay,
Sam: we're cutting off all armed shipments to Israel.
Sam: Well, okay, you've just given up all leverage whatsoever over the situation.
Ivan: Right, which is what we said.
Sam: Yeah. Maybe your leverage doesn't appear to be working all that great anyway,
Sam: but if you did that, you have zero.
Ivan: No, I'm with you.
Sam: And then maybe you do get an escalation.
Sam: And so, okay, you can envision, okay, the priority being getting the hostages
Sam: out ceasefire. Okay, I understand that.
Sam: But like, it puts a different spin on everything. If your number one concern
Sam: is how do we keep this from spiraling into something where every country in
Sam: the fucking Middle East is at war with each other.
Sam: And that is in the realm of possibility here.
Sam: And so far, the lid has been kept on that. And it's been horrible for Gaza.
Sam: And it ain't that great for Lebanon. And it isn't even that great for Israel.
Sam: No but but so
Sam: far we don't have an all-out war with everybody and you could see scenarios
Sam: where that happens you know maybe some of these missiles from iran actually
Sam: get through i mean some got through but there was no significant damage i believe
Sam: there was one person killed and they they were a Palestinian.
Sam: So the Israelis don't care, you know, unfortunately, unfortunately. And, and,
Sam: But you could see a situation where maybe one of these missiles got in and actually
Sam: did significant damage.
Sam: Israel retaliates now in a way that seems disproportionate and other countries
Sam: feel like they have to jump in.
Sam: Or you just end up with all out land war between several of these countries.
Sam: And Jordan feels like they have to get involved or Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
Sam: There are all kinds of ways this could spiral. So far, the lid has been kept on it.
Sam: And if you are in one of the areas that is directly affected, it is horrible.
Sam: The situation in Gaza for the last year now, We're two days away from the anniversary
Sam: for the last year has been inexpressibly bad for civilians.
Sam: Forget about Hamas for civilians, inexpressibly bad.
Sam: The number of dead and injured and displaced is insane.
Sam: And I, and I agree with the folks that it's, it's, it's disproportionate in
Sam: a way that is not actually justified.
Sam: Yes, Israel needs to defend themselves, but this is way past the boundaries
Sam: of what a proportionate response would be.
Sam: But it hasn't expanded.
Sam: We haven't gone outside these areas.
Sam: And to some degree, it's always hard to claim as an accomplishment the absence
Sam: of a horrible counterfactual.
Sam: But I think it actually is an accomplishment that it hasn't escalated.
Sam: I don't know, but I, it's always weak sauce when you say, well,
Sam: it could have been worse.
Ivan: No. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't nuke them.
Sam: I mean, it's, it's pretty damn bad, but it could have been worse.
Ivan: Well, we could have nuked a hurricane. Apparently, MTG says that we can control the weather.
Sam: Yes. Did you not see this? No, I'd seen this. And specifically,
Sam: and you know, yeah, we can save this for the politics section.
Sam: The bottom line is she thinks it's a Democratic plot to suppress votes in Republican areas.
Ivan: So we targeted the hurricane to go through the red areas.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: I didn't know we were that smart. I mean, if we were that fucking smart,
Ivan: you know what, if we're that good, do you know the other shit that we could
Ivan: be doing to make sure that we win this fucking election?
Ivan: You know, I mean, you know how, you know, there's a lot of other shit.
Sam: Okay. Anything else you want to sum up on the Mideast before we move on?
Ivan: Ah, no, it's just, you know, every time we talk about this, it's just depressing.
Ivan: It's, it's, yes, it's depressing.
Ivan: It was just, you know, can we find a viable solution?
Ivan: No, no, there is no viable solution given the people involved right now that
Ivan: we could say, OK, this this has a chance.
Sam: You know, it makes the sort of colonial mind. I mean, we talked about the Ottoman Empire.
Sam: We it makes the colonial mindset tempting. And I realize that probably would
Sam: cause more trouble, not less.
Sam: But it makes you want to say, screw them all.
Sam: Bring in the UN protectorate. Take over the entire region and just impose peace
Sam: by force for several generations. And hopefully it'll stick.
Ivan: And then we'll set back the borders.
Ivan: No, I get that. I mean, I don't know. Look, even one of the things that happened
Ivan: with the Iraq war and in Libya is that even with all the oppression that Gaddafi and Saddam did,
Ivan: many Iraqis and Libyans have both expressed,
Ivan: oh, my God, it was better than this fucking mess we live in now.
Sam: Well, and also what I just described is effectively what we tried to do in Afghanistan
Sam: that we eventually got out of,
Sam: which we, we sat there with troops propping up a, a government that did not have the level of,
Sam: of native support to last on its own and sort of imposed a piece on certain
Sam: parts of Afghanistan that we maintained in control.
Sam: Control as long as we were right it
Sam: didn't take it didn't take like if
Sam: you were in the bubble that was protected during
Sam: the time of that bubble you were okay for
Sam: a while but in the end it's like you couldn't you couldn't sustain doing it
Sam: forever and it was not really yeah in the end people have to control their own
Sam: destinies you cannot impose from outside solutions like that It just, it doesn't work.
Ivan: Well, well, well, well, well. Look.
Ivan: After World War II, we did impose
Ivan: some of this on certain places that had been at war for a long time.
Ivan: But with quite a lot more resources than we would ever be willing to commit to that.
Ivan: I mean, let's be clear. The Germans and the French had been at war twice in
Ivan: fucking, you know, inside 40 years.
Ivan: And well, okay, so we occupied fucking Germany.
Ivan: We fucking partitioned it. we fucking you
Ivan: know basically purged everybody we created
Ivan: elections i mean well we purged everybody at the top one of the things that
Ivan: we that in there that we did that that we didn't do again was a lot of the administrative
Ivan: functions below that were kept which was the mistake i heard many talk about
Ivan: in iraq where oh well we have to debathify so we got rid of all the structures Well,
Ivan: and they argued that that was the biggest mistake and why there was so much chaos post the war.
Sam: Yeah. And to be clear, we still have a military presence in both Germany and
Sam: Japan 80 plus years later.
Ivan: Right. 80 plus years later.
Sam: Now, we're not at war with either country. It's not a contentious relationship for the most part.
Sam: But, you know, yeah, we're still it's not like we've never left. We've never left.
Ivan: Yeah so okay.
Sam: Shall we shall we take a break let's.
Ivan: Take a break.
Sam: We'll be back after this.
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Sam: We are back and so of course i'm gonna pick election 2024 and everything related
Sam: to it for my topic can i are you surprised about the fucking election okay you know you.
Ivan: Would set this note related to what was happening in the year 2016 and what
Ivan: the cover of the new york times was talking about back.
Sam: Wait i did what oh yeah yes i remember this i remember that i forwarded i I
Sam: forwarded some article or some note from somebody who made a point about that.
Sam: When I share things, by the way, it does not necessarily mean I am endorsing
Sam: him. It just means I think.
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I realize that. But the reason I'm bringing it up
Ivan: is because, you know, I realize, you know, one of the things that I know that
Ivan: he was complaining about the coverage of giving to Trump.
Ivan: But man, it's just the shit that has happened, like just in the last week that Trump has said, OK?
Ivan: Just the last week, he literally went on a speech last weekend and advocated a purge.
Ivan: And so, okay, so, and a purge, I mean, this comes from the movie called The
Ivan: Purge, okay, literally.
Ivan: That was like- Never seen it.
Sam: I guess I have to add it to my list now.
Ivan: Look, I don't think I've seen the whole movie, okay?
Ivan: All right? I think I flipped through it once when it was on one of those linear
Ivan: channels, okay? It was out like 10 years ago.
Ivan: But the main concept of the movie was that there would be one day a year when
Ivan: all crime would be legal, like literally all crime.
Ivan: So say on that day, if I wanted to murder you, Sam, I could do it that day and it would be legal.
Sam: OK, it'd be legal. Right.
Ivan: Yes. You know, I could not be prosecuted for doing that.
Ivan: And, you know, people are speculating the way that he talked about it.
Ivan: It's like, I guess he just watched this this week.
Ivan: So because now we're off Hannibal Lecter.
Ivan: OK, which I haven't heard him referred to like recently.
Sam: In a few little bits, yeah.
Ivan: Yeah, and now we're on to a purge where basically he wants a day that in the U.S.
Ivan: Where you could commit any crime and it would be illegal.
Sam: Just to be clear, that is not directly what he said. That's how people are interpreting what he said.
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no.
Sam: Wait, wait, wait, wait. What he said.
Ivan: Of a limited legal violence.
Sam: That all laws were suspended.
Ivan: And so the way.
Sam: The all laws.
Ivan: The way that. Yeah. The way he described it.
Sam: He just had a very violent day. Read the quote. Read the quote.
Ivan: Well, the quote. But yeah. And
Ivan: it was like, well, he described what the fucking purge was in the movie.
Sam: Yeah. He didn't go into that level of detail. He didn't say.
Sam: He just said we could take care of the problem. problem with a day like a very
Sam: violent he said a very violent day yes right he did not go through and it should
Sam: be legal and blah blah blah blah blah but he didn't say all that he just said
Sam: we could take care of all kinds of our problems by just having a very very very
Sam: violent day to take right.
Ivan: Yeah so so i mean we're all speculating that he must have watched the purge
Ivan: in in recent days But but look, my whole point is.
Sam: Yes, you have a point.
Ivan: Yes. In our lifetimes, if any other politician would have gone on the campaign
Ivan: trail and advocated for this,
Ivan: I mean, the next day they would have been, you know.
Ivan: Their candidacy would be over.
Sam: There are so many things that Donald Trump has said or done that going back all the way to 2015,
Sam: where if anybody else had said or done that thing, they would be gone the next day.
Ivan: It would be over.
Sam: Like there are hundreds of things in that category. Actually, thousands.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And yet here we are.
Ivan: And yet here we are. It's just mind-boggling. And then during this week,
Ivan: add to that, his wife came out and said that she is pro-choice.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And I'm like, she hasn't been on the campaign trail with him for I don't know how long.
Ivan: She's written a fucking book and has come out gung-ho pro-choice.
Ivan: And I'm like, what in all fucking hell?
Ivan: I mean, when in ever had you seen the wife of a candidate,
Ivan: first of all, not appear for months because nobody has, you know,
Ivan: she's not made a single fucking, she didn't even go to the fucking convention with him. OK, right.
Ivan: I mean, and now when she comes out one month before the election,
Ivan: she is diametrically opposed to one of his primary accomplishments that he has,
Ivan: you know, you know, tooted his horn about during this campaign.
Ivan: Pain and she's basically just come out against them and it's like nobody cared either.
Sam: Well some people i've said
Sam: i've heard talking about how actually this is
Sam: once again trump doing five dimensional chess because it softens the republican
Sam: position on abortion because hey look here's somebody who's pro-choice that
Sam: is still presumably voting for her husband although Although we're.
Ivan: Not sure about that.
Sam: Okay. So let me get it.
Ivan: How the hell, how, what the fuck did we do wrong? What did we do wrong, Sam?
Sam: To get on this, like to deserve this timeline. Yes.
Ivan: What the fuck did we do wrong?
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I don't understand.
Sam: Okay, just to clean up loose ends. First of all, the article that Yvonne was
Sam: referring to was called Election Countdown, 32 Days to Go, Two Contrasting Front
Sam: Pages from James Fallows, published on his sub stack on October 3rd.
Sam: And it basically looks at the New York Times from when they were blasting the
Sam: whole thing about the Clinton email scandal versus, you know,
Sam: we had the unsealing of new evidence in Donald Trump's January 6th case.
Sam: And it's a much, much smaller little thing on the New York Times.
Sam: But I want to start with, as usual, the election graph stuff,
Sam: just to give a poll update of where we are.
Sam: So, first of all, we still have the same seven too-close-to-call states, essentially.
Sam: Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
Sam: Those are the key seven, and they are still, as of this moment, 2% or less in margin.
Sam: However, the main change since last week is, first of all, national polls,
Sam: about the same, not any significant change over the last week.
Sam: But in state polls in those particular states that I just listed,
Sam: the ones that matter, there have been a bunch of good polls for Trump in the last week.
Sam: And so we've moved from too close to call, but with a slight edge for Harris
Sam: to too close to call with a slight edge for Trump at the moment.
Sam: Because right now, in my averages, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania,
Sam: and North Carolina have all flipped over, are all now on the Republican side.
Sam: North Carolina was before, but Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania,
Sam: I believe, were slightly on the Harris side when we talked a week ago.
Sam: Now they're slightly on the Trump side. But I honestly...
Sam: The bottom line is they're still, they're right on the edge.
Sam: Like the difference between a state being 1% on the Trump side versus 1% on
Sam: the Harris side is really not that much.
Sam: Like the very next poll that comes out can flip it back to the other side.
Sam: Bottom line is they're still too close to call.
Sam: Again, like with, if I took my naive method that I've used since 2008 of just
Sam: do the poll averages and any state that's under 5% margin could go either way.
Sam: That gets you a range. It does have right now, if everybody wins the states
Sam: they're ahead in, has Trump ahead by 32 electoral votes.
Sam: But the range of possibilities is from Harris winning by 174 to Trump winning by 86.
Sam: So massive range of
Sam: possibilities that include both sides winning if you
Sam: look at my probabilities which look
Sam: at you know how far off polls were from the final results in the last four election
Sam: cycles so 2008 2012 2016 and 2020 one thing that's happened is my i added a
Sam: couple months ago a version of accounting for time left before the election,
Sam: because before that I only had if the election was today.
Sam: Those two have now pretty much converged. A month ago,
Sam: there was a lot of additional room for change that basically said,
Sam: hey, a lot can potentially change between August and November.
Sam: Well, now they're going like, you only got a month left.
Sam: Things tend not to change as much in the last month so they're more saying like
Sam: well you know okay what you see is what you're gonna get probably now,
Sam: Things do change in the last month. Specifically, we all remember the last two
Sam: weeks in 2016, the picture changed entirely.
Ivan: I'm sorry. 2016, at this point, like, you know, we had the Hollywood tape.
Sam: Yes, yes. Think like the right news event can like explode everything and change
Sam: everything. In 2016, we're talking about crazy stuff happening right now.
Sam: In 2016, we had Access Hollywood. We had the Comey letter.
Sam: We had a drip, drip, drip of letters from Clinton emails or emails from Clinton.
Sam: You know what I mean. You had a bunch of things happen that potentially would make a big difference.
Sam: And the Comey letter specifically moved things quite a bit just in the last
Sam: two weeks. So I'm not saying at all things can't happen.
Sam: It's just the room for things to change is getting smaller because we just don't
Sam: have that much time left.
Sam: And the other difference is people have always said, you know,
Sam: when people really start to tune in is after Labor Day. Guess what?
Sam: We're now well after Labor Day. Like, so, you know, there's lots and lots of
Sam: rooms for things to change around before Labor Day. But now things are things are settled down.
Sam: If you if you look at my charts, there was this big move towards Harris when she first took over.
Sam: But since then, things have just been bouncing around like within a range, essentially.
Sam: Now, we are at the worst point for Harris at this point in the state polls since
Sam: the first week she was in.
Ivan: But I will say that a lot of the polls that came out.
Sam: I was about to say this. Like, just as an example, let me let me give you the
Sam: five most recent polls in Pennsylvania, who they were from.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: On message. Right.
Sam: Patriot Polling, Emerson, Trafalgar, and Atlas Intel.
Sam: Now, of those, Emerson is the only one that's sort of a well-known pollster.
Sam: And they've been an outlier on the Trump side this cycle.
Sam: They've been more Trumpy than other polls, even though they're a well-known, respected pollster.
Sam: All of the others are small, little, no-name pollsters, some of which have known rightward leans.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: So it is very possible that the next batch of polls that comes out will be in the other direction.
Ivan: That's what I was saying.
Sam: And this is where I get to the whole thing of like all of these.
Sam: Like if you're trying to make a distinction between the polls averaging out the poll,
Sam: not just the individual polls, but the poll averages between having one candidate
Sam: up by 1% and having the other candidate up by 1%.
Sam: No, it's we just don't have that level of precision with since during the month of September.
Sam: OK, we have had polls in Pennsylvania ranging from Harris up by six percent
Sam: to Trump up by three percent.
Ivan: It's nutty. It's just nutty. I just it's nutty.
Ivan: And the thing is that as this era, the last few election cycles,
Ivan: has continued with the, how do I say,
Ivan: it's this entire partisanship that has been inserted into polling.
Ivan: Polling we keep seeing these swings now
Ivan: where it's oh wait we get all these
Ivan: polls from you know all these
Ivan: right-wing polls you shift
Ivan: election towards the other side then you get the other polls and you get some
Ivan: straight polls and there's also some partisan democratic polls as well that
Ivan: are aren't there as well and it really you know and i it seems to me that a
Ivan: lot of the times A lot of these Republican pollsters,
Ivan: they're synchronizing when they're launching all of these at the same time because
Ivan: they understand how the models work.
Sam: We did have a news article this last week that I really should have paid more attention to,
Sam: but it was basically some evidence came out about Rasmussen in particular actively
Sam: coordinating with the Trump campaign on what they were polling and when they were releasing it.
Ivan: Had to be. Had to be. It has to be.
Ivan: They're coordinating in order to launch these polls at the same time in order
Ivan: to give people, hey, look, look, look, we're doing better. We're doing better.
Ivan: And, you know, so I think that that's a lot of the bullshit that's going on.
Ivan: And so it's very, but like you said, the whole point is like,
Ivan: I, I, I've seen a, you know, a lot of the pollsters or whatever is that we are
Ivan: where we are, where it's a razor thin margin and we could be facing another
Ivan: fucking Trump term. It's a reality.
Ivan: It's just, you know, and it's all at this very.
Sam: At this, I had mentioned my allowing for time left was converging with the,
Sam: if the election was today, but my bottom line, right, right now at this very
Sam: second with my current poll averages,
Sam: I I'm given, I'm only giving Harris about a quarter percent,
Sam: like between, between 22 and 25% roughly.
Sam: So I am favoring Trump, but not by an overwhelming margin.
Sam: 25% ain't nothing. That's a decent chance. So it's still, I would consider a
Sam: toss up unless unless that number gets down to like 10% or something,
Sam: but like it's, it's still too close to call and it's very, very volatile.
Ivan: It's very volatile. That's the problem.
Sam: All of this depends. There are so many States that are so fucking close.
Sam: It just, it's like, you know, if, if Pennsylvania, if, if like you said,
Sam: if there are a few more polls that are, if we have another couple of polls that have Harris.
Ivan: It swings in the other way.
Sam: It swings in the other way. so i'm looking at this point at how much things
Sam: are going back and forth and it's estimating.
Ivan: 25 other ones are like i was looking at the.
Sam: They're all over they have.
Ivan: It 54 hours 48 which is basically a fucking toss-up you.
Sam: Know you're.
Ivan: Looking at it i mean um.
Sam: And by and by the way like if my my thing is very very sensitive like if we
Sam: get like it it was a week ago let's see i Let me not lie, I have the actual number here.
Sam: Here we go
Sam: just comparing now to a week
Sam: ago one week ago i had
Sam: harris's shot at 50 now i have it
Sam: at 25 right and it could
Sam: easily go back to being 50 with just a handful of polls in the right states
Sam: moving at the right direction yeah and so all we can really say is it's it's
Sam: really it it I made the distinction last week, and I'll make it again today.
Sam: It's not saying that the final results will be razor thin on election night.
Sam: It could be either side winning by a decent margin.
Sam: What it is is it's close enough that we don't have the skill through polling
Sam: to tell the difference, to tell who's leading.
Sam: We have to wait till election night. and it
Sam: it could end up being razor thin and we're waiting for like a week to find out
Sam: who won it could wind up being a blowout or yeah i mean like fuck like the the
Sam: other part of this the average in florida is down to trump being only ahead
Sam: by 2.9 percent harris could win florida if.
Ivan: Harris wins florida it's all fucking over this would be the craziest fucking
Ivan: outcome the fucking and the other one's Florida.
Ivan: I mean, you know, oh God.
Sam: As long as you don't do the hanging Chad thing again and everything's up to
Sam: Florida and you mess up the election.
Ivan: This will not happen. I know you fixed it like 20 years ago.
Sam: But yeah.
Ivan: But listen, the newer machines that we've got now,
Ivan: are, man, this is, you get, not just that you have the ballot,
Ivan: there's printed receipts.
Ivan: So you, if you want to go to a recount, you have the computer result, okay, tabulated.
Ivan: You have the scan result and a receipt.
Ivan: I mean, you have a triple, you know, triple redundancy here in Palm Beach right
Ivan: now. You know, don't fucking wait.
Ivan: It's happening. Okay. Okay, so we're covered on that. Okay.
Sam: Yeah. So anyway, the bottom line is they're just so meant like all seven of
Sam: these goddamn states and Florida, Florida is not that far off are just right.
Sam: You know, we don't know. We don't know which way Michigan's going.
Sam: We don't know which way North Carolina is going. We don't know which way George
Sam: is, et cetera. Like, and that's enough that it could be, you know,
Sam: a decent sized win for either side could happen.
Ivan: And of course, I'm seeing these stories. I'm seeing this story,
Ivan: how people are giving all red a chance to be Ted Cruz.
Sam: Oh, yeah. That one's within like a few percent to write at this point,
Sam: like already still behind in the polling, but just barely.
Ivan: I mean, that would be holy shit.
Ivan: Honestly you know i despise ted cruz so much that that's one where if i got
Ivan: a chance to go over i had some time to go over to ted cruz and make fun of make
Ivan: fun of him in front of his face after he lost i would take that i would take
Ivan: the opportunity to do that.
Sam: So and this this also is that is.
Ivan: That too petty is that not is that.
Sam: Yeah yeah you can leave ted cruz alone no but go in.
Ivan: Front of his face and go say hey second loser.
Sam: I guess okay i it what was i you know you distracted me with this ted cruz stuff
Sam: i had something else i was gonna say oh god well that's.
Ivan: That's that's an age issue it's not my fault.
Sam: But yeah don't blame.
Ivan: Don't blame me for this.
Sam: I i mean you you you you put in front of me the dancing image of ted cruz and i can't look away,
Sam: anyway uh just just wrapping up polling i guess what one of the things that
Sam: and i was looking for the exact quote i think i retuted it or whatever on maston
Sam: but i can't find it right now is like,
Sam: if if polling says that somebody
Sam: is going to win by 20 and they end up winning
Sam: by 18 nobody gives a shit you got the winner right yeah yeah but if it's the
Sam: difference between saying one person is ahead by one or the other person is
Sam: ahead by one it's the same amount of error but suddenly everybody cares and
Sam: like oh my god polling is awful nobody knows anything blah blah blah no and uh.
Ivan: No and that's what and that's and you you've hit the nail right on the head
Ivan: that that's the issue that you've got right now that it's so razor thin that
Ivan: you can't even say you know with any certainty who will win because it's that close.
Sam: Right and yeah it and you know,
Sam: We've been through before, like there are all kinds of reasons to think this
Sam: time the polls are underestimating the Democrat, unlike the last couple of years.
Sam: But and actually, if you if you if you started to waterboard me and asked me,
Sam: I'd say, yeah, the polls are probably underestimating Harris right now.
Sam: But do I have a level of confidence about that that I can say.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, to make me feel this is the bag. We're fine. Everything will be fine.
Ivan: Trump will be in jail next year. I can't say that.
Ivan: I cannot with any confidence at all say that right now.
Sam: No. Like, I look at that and I'm like, it's so tempting to start coming up with
Sam: all the reasons why polls are probably underestimating Harris.
Sam: But I feel like I cannot trust that I'm not just using motivated reasoning because
Sam: that's what I want to see.
Sam: Yeah you know i know so okay despite i'm moving on from polls to finish up other
Sam: election stuff i mentioned what are the election stuff.
Ivan: That we have we have we have.
Sam: We have the debate and the january 6th filing and all right there was a debate
Sam: i forgot about that and i wanted to talk a little bit about turnout versus persuasion
Sam: as well but let i guess chronologically the debate bait was first we had waltz
Sam: and vance basically i at the time i called it sort of a draw you know,
Sam: waltz seemed nervous throughout vance seemed really confident of course he was
Sam: lying the whole fucking time but he seemed really confident um he also seemed
Sam: he put on a nice act like and apparently that partially threw waltz off because
Sam: like they were expecting him to be all combative,
Sam: The usual asshole, I know.
Sam: But every campaign always puts out that their candidate isn't that great at
Sam: debates to try to get the answer. It's a VP debate.
Ivan: Nobody gives a fuck. Let's be clear about this. The VP debate, nobody cares.
Sam: Nobody cares. Nobody cares.
Ivan: Nobody fucking cares.
Sam: Somebody pointed out the biggest slam dunk moment in any VP debate ever was
Sam: Lloyd Benson's You Are No Jack Kennedy. Did Lloyd Benson end up vice president?
Ivan: No, he did not. They got crushed.
Sam: No, he did not. And so he crushed Dan Quayle at that debate and made no difference whatsoever.
Ivan: Made no damn difference whatsoever. Not one iota, so whatever.
Sam: And I put this as a draw anyway, but a lot of commentators were saying,
Sam: Vance was winning on points up until the very end, but then Walls did a knockout
Sam: punch with the January 6th stuff.
Sam: I don't know, maybe like he, he did have a good thing and they put it into some
Sam: commercials and stuff, but bottom line is what you said.
Sam: VP debates don't matter how the presidential debates usually don't matter very much.
Sam: The, the, the whole thing with Biden this time around is the most consequential
Sam: presidential debate we've ever had in our lives.
Sam: Um, but usually debates don't matter, period. End of story.
Sam: Regardless, at most, they give a temporary bump of a week or two.
Sam: But yeah, and in this case, the VP debate was on Tuesday night,
Sam: and Wednesday, the special counsel released their report, and everybody stopped
Sam: talking about it immediately.
Sam: So anybody, and, and.
Ivan: And, and they talked about the special counsel report for like 15 minutes.
Sam: Yes. And this is what I was going to say about the special counsel report.
Sam: Like, first of all, like I predicted last week that we would,
Sam: you know, there would be new details, but the fundamental story doesn't change.
Sam: And that's exactly what we had.
Sam: We have interesting new details. Like we have Donald Trump saying who cares
Sam: or whatever the hell it was.
Sam: He said when they told him about Mike Pence, he said, yeah. Yeah.
Sam: And we have a more, more clear examples, like a deluge of them,
Sam: you know, lots and lots of examples showing that Donald Trump absolutely knew he lost.
Sam: We've got all kinds of things like that, but fundamentally the story doesn't change.
Sam: And, you know, I, I tune, I turned on Fox news for a few minutes after this
Sam: came on and, you know, basically that, that was the story is like,
Sam: hey, this is old news. It's politically motivated.
Sam: There's nothing really new here.
Sam: And then 15 minutes later, they moved on.
Sam: CNN kept at it for a little bit longer. MSNBC kept on it for a little bit longer than that.
Sam: But by the time we got to four or five hours after this, all of the news networks
Sam: had moved on to other things.
Sam: They would reference it a bit and they would still talk about it some,
Sam: but they'd moved on to other things. They weren't doing wall to wall.
Sam: And anyway, and, and the, the, the kind of voters that you might care to reach
Sam: with it, aren't the ones that are paying attention anyway, anybody who's really
Sam: paying attention to this stuff.
Sam: I mean, part of the spin on Fox news was clearly, and I think they're actually right about this.
Sam: They didn't say this explicitly, but it was sort of implied by the way they
Sam: were talking about it is that anybody who really cares about this stuff was
Sam: already voting for Harris anyway.
Ivan: Right. and.
Sam: Yeah, that's true. Now, we have talked about, like, does this demotivate any Republicans?
Sam: Maybe on the margins, but it's so damn close the margins matter, right?
Sam: So any little thing could make a difference.
Sam: I did see a couple of focus groups, and we've made fun of focus groups and who
Sam: they pick before and stuff like this, but at least one person saying that Vance's
Sam: response on January 6th actually did make a difference to them.
Sam: He went out and would not admit that Donald Trump lost and that that made a
Sam: difference to them as a voter. I don't know.
Sam: One of the reasons to think Harris might be underestimated is this sort of enthusiasm
Sam: gap where Republicans seem to be a lot less excited about Donald Trump than
Sam: they were four or eight years ago,
Sam: whereas people seem to be really excited about Harris.
Sam: And so that's where this kind of thing potentially could make a difference is
Sam: like just reminding people that this existed at all.
Sam: And it's not so much the filing itself, but like Harris is putting it in commercials
Sam: in swing states, reminding people about January 6th and including some of these
Sam: new bits of evidence and things Trump or Vance have said lately and stuff like that.
Sam: And maybe those commercials in the swing state will make some differences on
Sam: the margins and makes maybe not convince any Republicans to vote for Harris,
Sam: although there are anecdotal reports of a few.
Sam: But just, you know, make some of these disillusioned Trump people just stay home.
Sam: And this is where I want to jump into the turnout versus persuasion thing. There is.
Sam: The Harris campaign is still doing a lot of persuasion.
Sam: They had joint events with Liz Cheney.
Sam: Lynn is her mom.
Sam: Anyway, with Cheney, had a joint event.
Ivan: Not Dick.
Sam: Not Dick. Not Dick. But it had a joint event.
Sam: So basically saying, hey, look, there have been a bunch of sort of Republicans
Sam: for Harris that have been out on the campaign trail,
Sam: basically trying to convince people, and speaking at the convention and blah,
Sam: blah, blah, trying to convince Republicans that, hey, it's okay.
Sam: You can vote for Harris and still be a good Republican.
Sam: You you know trump is bad come on you know trump is bad you know the quote from the convention was,
Sam: vote it voting for harris doesn't make you a bad republican it makes you a patriot
Sam: or something like that you know and you you can go back to arguing about policy
Sam: once the danger of trump is gone and and maybe you get a few republicans to
Sam: defect that way but i think with,
Sam: things mapping out the way they are, I think the,
Sam: At this point, you got to do both. You got to do both persuasion and going for turnout.
Sam: But I think the emphasis needs to be on turnout at this point.
Sam: It needs to be get out the people who don't try to convince the people who voted
Sam: for Trump the last eight years to vote for Harris.
Sam: Maybe you'll get a few of them. So don't I shouldn't say don't try to. Sure, try to.
Ivan: But the emphasis should be on your energy on those.
Sam: Yeah, don't spend most of your energy on that. Spend most of your energy on
Sam: getting out the damn vote, getting out Democrats who aren't like there are a
Sam: lot more Democrats than excited now than we're under Biden.
Sam: But there's still a bunch and you hear them whining on social media about like,
Sam: you know, Harris's policy on Gaza and Israel,
Sam: for instance, or, you know, she's not progressive enough for me or whatever,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, or just people who like are convinced that their vote doesn't matter.
Sam: So why bother get those people out?
Sam: That's where I think you've got more bang for the buck going after those people
Sam: than you have going after trying to convert Trump voters.
Sam: And so, so, you know, we've got, let me, let me refresh my page as we are recording
Sam: 31.8 days until, until polls start to close on election night. Right.
Sam: And, you know, you're get out. The vote is where to do it right now.
Sam: Like get those people to the polls who are, you know, leaning are leaning in
Sam: a more Harris direction than a Trump direction.
Sam: But who may not be like who may be iffy in terms of are they actually going
Sam: to vote and get those people to actually vote?
Sam: That that's where the effort needs to be at this point i think and yeah that's
Sam: what i got i don't know any anything else election wise to talk about no.
Ivan: We got nothing oh.
Sam: You mentioned you mentioned the purge day the one other thing and we've mentioned
Sam: this before i just want to say it again his donald trump's ability to be coherent
Sam: is continuing to be really really low,
Sam: you know and getting seemingly
Sam: getting worse as we get closer to the election and advance keeps pissing people
Sam: off but it doesn't just like everything else it doesn't seem to be it's not
Sam: like trump makes an incoherent speech and suddenly he loses five percent in
Sam: the polls no no i mean he keeps confusing.
Ivan: Where the fuck he is what.
Sam: And it still can it still continues to be like if you to like moving to that national poll line.
Sam: Well, not even, I don't know. Like if you compare now to a couple months ago,
Sam: both Trump and Harris have improved a couple percent.
Sam: If you look not at the margin that their actual percentage, I don't even know.
Sam: I was going to say Trump is keeping his base support no matter what.
Sam: And he is like most of the movement over the last few months has been undecided moving to Harris.
Sam: It hasn't been Trump losing support.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And that's part of why I say it's get, do the turnout stuff, get those people out.
Sam: You know, you may convince a few Trump people on the margins,
Sam: but that's, that's not where the juice is.
Sam: Get, get people out and excite people more.
Sam: And, you know, I don't know.
Sam: It's, I feel like there was a lot of momentum when harris first jumped in and
Sam: then it's kind of been static you know ups and downs that are like mostly i mean.
Ivan: She definitely is pulling better than where.
Sam: Biden was oh oh of course and like i said there's a lot of movement right at
Sam: first it's been steady it's right moving from biden to harris moved it from
Sam: biden is significantly behind,
Sam: but if everything goes great, he can catch up.
Sam: He still has a chance, but you've
Sam: got to grit your teeth and maybe he'll win. Moved it from that to...
Sam: This is a fucking toss up.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: But we haven't moved to terrorists. It's clearly leading and is,
Sam: you know, and it would be a stunning if Trump won, it would be, we're not at the point.
Sam: We're not at the 2016 point where if Trump won, it would be a massive upset
Sam: and everybody would be surprised.
Sam: We're, we're in a toss up scenario where it could go any way.
Sam: And I, I really, really wish that, You know, Harris could pull a few more points
Sam: out of this and be clearly ahead before we get to election day.
Sam: But I'll be honest, my gut is that we're going to be in the same position,
Sam: having the same conversation about how it could go either way on the show we
Sam: do right before the election.
Ivan: I don't I expect that that is what we will do. Yes.
Sam: Yeah. And as we talked about to like popular votes, a different question.
Sam: I feel pretty confident that Harris is going to win the popular vote.
Sam: That's not the question.
Ivan: Here i get what you're saying okay let's.
Sam: Close it up.
Ivan: Zip it go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: You can see all our stuff the archive
Sam: of our shows you can listen to old shows please listen to
Sam: old shows they're fun i i actually listen to
Sam: old shows occasionally and you know i i get what
Sam: what's interesting to me yvonne yeah even if i'm listening to a show from and
Sam: like i'm now four years behind on like the oldest show i haven't listened to
Sam: and the old the you know and almost four years it's like the oldest show i haven't
Sam: listened to is like the show after,
Sam: biden was declared the winner in 2020 oh
Sam: gosh but i listen to old
Sam: shows and one thing that's remarkable to me is that
Sam: we'll be talking about something and i
Sam: will think to myself oh here's where i'm
Sam: about to mention this and then i do like
Sam: and i don't remember the actual specifics of
Sam: the conversation but apparently my brain is so similar because like i'm not
Sam: replaying like my memory of the conversation i'm replaying like if i was having
Sam: this conversation now here's what i would say and boom it's the same thing i
Sam: actually said years ago and on occasion i Well.
Ivan: You're very consistent on your positions, basically.
Sam: That's right. Or there have been some occasions where I'm like,
Sam: okay, Vaughn's going to bring up this story now. And boom, there you do.
Sam: So, I don't know. And if you haven't listened to all of those old shows.
Ivan: Not a straw apple's made.
Sam: You know, hey, as a curiosity, go back and listen to some of our shows during
Sam: the Obama administration or something.
Sam: You know, and see what we were talking about. You know?
Ivan: I might just do that. Okay. All right. I haven't heard a replay of one of our
Ivan: old shows in a while. I have done it.
Ivan: Not recently, though. But I have done it for sure.
Sam: Okay. Anyway, you can find that stuff for recent shows. We've got transcripts as well.
Sam: You've got all the ways to contact us.
Sam: And, of course, you've got a link to our Patreon where we can give us money. Yeah.
Ivan: I don't need to give money to myself. We're going to give ourselves money.
Ivan: Okay. We'll do that chase check fraud thing with our stuff.
Sam: Yeah, we'll do that.
Ivan: Right, I'm sure that won't get us into trouble.
Sam: No, not at all. We'll deposit everything we've got into the Curmudgeon's Corner
Sam: PayPal, and then try to, not PayPal, Patreon, and then try to take it back.
Ivan: PayPal, PayPal, PayPal, whatever.
Sam: Anyway, for the Patreon at various levels, we'll mention you on the show,
Sam: we'll ring a bell, we'll send you a postcard, we'll send you a mug,
Sam: all that kind of stuff, or very importantly, at $2 a month or more,
Sam: or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our Curmudgeons Corner Slack where
Sam: Yvonne and I and all kinds of other people, I mentioned Bob and Greg earlier,
Sam: but there's other folks too, are chatting, sharing links, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: So Yvonne, what is something interesting and compelling from the Curmudgeons
Sam: Corner Slack this week that we have not mentioned on the show at all?
Ivan: I i i guess i'm
Ivan: i'm trying to figure out what the best thing from
Ivan: this is okay sure what about
Ivan: crowd size 43 foot nude trump statue erected along las vegas highway erected
Ivan: yvonne yes that's what the story says the tribute to the republican candidate
Ivan: leaves little to imagination okay Okay,
Ivan: I am a naked statue of the former president titled Crooked and Obscene was created
Ivan: in a fenced in lot next to I-15 north of Las Vegas, Nevada on September 28th.
Ivan: The statues resembles a frowning Trump and has arms attached to strings,
Ivan: allowing them to be moved around like a puppet.
Ivan: It it is made
Ivan: of foam covered metal rebar and weighs about 6 000 pounds probably closer to
Ivan: his real weight according to the rap the piece is a bold statement on transparency
Ivan: vulnerability and the public personas of political figures the creators who
Ivan: have not been identified told the.
Ivan: So we've got a naked Trump statue somewhere.
Ivan: It's like, this is our, this is where we are right now.
Ivan: This is I I'm trying to remember. I'm pretty confident right now that in any other election cycle,
Ivan: we have not had a six thousand pound massive naked statue of any of the presidential candidates.
Sam: I don't I don't know. I've seen news reports and pictures of other naked Trump
Sam: statues going back probably to 2015.
Ivan: Oh, no, no, no. What I'm saying is of other presidential candidates,
Ivan: not Trump. Oh, not Trump. Not Trump, is what I'm saying.
Sam: Were there any naked Hillary statues going around?
Ivan: Not that I recall.
Sam: Naked Biden?
Ivan: Or Obama.
Sam: Or Obama?
Ivan: Or Bush. I don't recall.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Yeah, so that's one story.
Sam: You should start a collector's series of all the presidents and presidential
Sam: candidates going back to the beginning of the republic. Naked.
Ivan: Naked. That sounds wonderful. The other thing is that we, on the curmudgeon's
Ivan: quarter slack, there's a couple of more things I'll mention.
Ivan: One is where two shuts down science experiments as power stores dwindle.
Ivan: It's crazy how far away it is and how they're still being able to build that
Ivan: plutonium to keep that damn thing going. Okay.
Ivan: And, you know, surprising that, you know, I know the issues that they have with
Ivan: doing something with nuclear, but damn it. But, I mean, it really seems to be
Ivan: the best way to power these damn things.
Ivan: Okay? You know? I mean, given how the longevity.
Ivan: And the next one is evidence of our complete stupidity and abject failure.
Sam: Our stupidity? You and me? Oh, yes.
Ivan: Yes. Ours. By some person, I guess, has this YouTube channel with 14.5 million subscribers.
Ivan: Subscribers as far as i can tell the only thing is is a video of somebody sitting
Ivan: down looking like they're studying and so it's just your companion that doing that is that.
Sam: What it is they they've got a series of these live streams that basically just
Sam: is an animation of someone sitting at a desk we're working with a timer in the
Sam: corner that every once in a while it takes a break or whatever and you can sit
Sam: and work with it and blah blah blah and there's like music playing in the background
Sam: and they've got different versions of this channel with just different
Sam: styles of music, depending on what you're into and with different character.
Sam: And I guess there are others that do different characters. This particular YouTube
Sam: channel has the same character, I guess.
Sam: But yeah, it's basically just an animation. I presume it's either a repeating
Sam: animation or they've got an AI that occasionally jiggles it or whatever.
Sam: But yeah, it's just a person sitting at a desk studying and they've got millions of people subscribed.
Sam: And at any given time, if you look at the live stream, there are a few thousand
Sam: people watching compared to let's see how many people are watching our live stream right now.
Sam: Zero, zero, zero people are watching our live stream at the moment.
Ivan: We are such massive failures at this.
Ivan: Holy fucking hell. Jesus Christ.
Ivan: I mean, we're literally being beaten by just a fucking animated cartoon playing music. That's it.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: They're not even saying anything.
Sam: But you get to sit and work at your computer with this person in the corner
Sam: of your screen, so they're keeping you company.
Ivan: You know, I liked, not Clippy. You know, I liked the little dog.
Sam: Oh, yeah, because you could change Clippy to be various other characters.
Ivan: Yeah, I like the dog. I would like the dog back.
Ivan: I don't know why there's so much hate of that. I like the little dog. Give me my dog back.
Sam: Yeah, you know, you can just talk to chat GPT now.
Ivan: No, I want my little dog. Why can't Microsoft just AI-infuse the fucking dog and give it back to me?
Sam: There you go. They should do that. They can get on that.
Sam: Well, you know, the new AI they're working on is basically operating under the
Sam: premise of they're always watching your screen and will give you suggestions
Sam: based on what it sees you doing.
Sam: So I don't know how people will feel about that, honestly.
Sam: But some people will love it.
Ivan: Uh you know i don't know i mean
Ivan: what the hell i mean look my fucking
Ivan: social security number is right now out there for for everybody my birth date
Ivan: my email my thing i don't understand how i'm not hacked more often given that
Ivan: i could just fucking google and find all of this in five minutes right anyway we're done but.
Sam: Would you feel would you feel good about the little character in the corner
Sam: of your screen, if it really was responsive to exactly what you're doing on
Sam: the screen at that moment.
Sam: And more so than Clippy, not just like, hey, are you writing a letter?
Sam: But like, hey, I see you're about to send that email to this person.
Sam: You may want to change the tone of that because that might piss them off or something like that.
Ivan: I mean, I've actually had already, I think I've seen this like feature in some
Ivan: different places where I've done that.
Ivan: And then it's like telling me that.
Ivan: So, yeah, sure. I whatever.
Sam: What if it was like, hey, I noticed you like this kind of porn.
Sam: Would you like some more over here?
Sam: There's more of more of that kind over here.
Ivan: That's that's useful.
Sam: OK, there you go. Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, that's useful. Sure.
Sam: I admit it is.
Ivan: So okay yeah but it's a little creepy it's.
Sam: A little creepy but you know.
Ivan: It's a little creepy but but i you know
Ivan: i don't know look look at the
Ivan: things that we're doing like right now and think about it like what the
Ivan: hell 20 30 years ago you tell me about what
Ivan: the fuck is creepy okay you know i mean everybody is dating online using apps
Ivan: i mean you know people when you go out to go date somebody you know you're basically
Ivan: cyber stalking them like right now because you can okay you know search everything.
Sam: About them first before you meet them in person.
Ivan: Yeah and i i went and i i was just i'm checking into my to this hotel like on
Ivan: monday that i haven't been to in a while and they have somebody and i'm like
Ivan: now like the stupid top tier guy at this hotel chain right right their guy
Ivan: that they have this guy that's assigned to cater to
Ivan: the uber elite guys he looked me up
Ivan: on linkedin i mean look
Ivan: and i'm like oh i'm like who the hell's this guy looking at my profile oh it's
Ivan: the guy from the hotel he's checking out who the hell i am right and i'm like
Ivan: i thought i'm like creepy and but also i thought well that makes sense you know
Ivan: so no in care of i thought you know that i thought that's not a bad idea right
Ivan: okay what's what i do before i go meet somebody buddy yeah.
Sam: Yeah yeah of course of course.
Ivan: So anyway anyway.
Sam: We're done we're done.
Ivan: Thank you.
Sam: Everybody for joining us for yet another curmudgeons corner stay safe have a
Sam: good week we'll see you next time goodbye bye,
Sam: okay that's it good night yvonne.
Ivan: All right are we uploaded we're really i'm hitting.
Sam: I'm hitting stop now here we go.