Sam: Hello.
Ivan: Hello.
Sam: So where are you? Where are you now today? You're traveling again?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Shall we?
Sam: Let me make sure I have this thing here. Blah, blah, blah. Not quite yet.
Sam: So tomorrow you'd be traveling home. You'd be on the way home. Okay.
Sam: I understand. I understand. And not going somewhere tomorrow. You'd be going back.
Ivan: No, I'm going home tomorrow. And so therefore it'd be more, yeah.
Sam: Yeah, I understand.
Ivan: And we may not be home on Saturday at all. So I, you know, because Monday is
Ivan: a holiday. So I don't, you know.
Sam: Monday is a holiday?
Ivan: Yes, Monday is Columbus Day. I don't know if your company celebrates it.
Sam: Oh, hell no. We get like five holidays all year long. They do absolutely nothing.
Ivan: I'm not even sure if my company celebrates it, but regardless, I'm taking it off.
Ivan: I mean, I, I, I, I mean, I, I, I do have, I operate or we have unlimited PTO.
Ivan: So, and the thing is that where all my customers are, they're going to be on
Ivan: holiday on Monday, which is otherwise I would be coming back.
Ivan: I'm coming back here on Tuesday. i would be flying back on monday if they would
Ivan: be working but they're not so i am just like well because.
Sam: All of your customers in latin america are are all about celebrating the conquistadors.
Ivan: Well no in puerto rico specifically which which is where my my current like
Ivan: just the focus of my deals right now is in puerto rico that that's that's where
Ivan: but remember that because puerto Rico,
Ivan: it's Columbus, Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day, whatever the hell it's
Ivan: called right now. I'm not even sure.
Ivan: Is it still Columbus Day?
Sam: Because i got it it depends like in in in the mainland i think it depends on
Sam: state i don't even think it's a federal holiday no.
Ivan: It's because it's a federal holiday.
Sam: My question.
Ivan: Is is yes it is banks are closed on monday there is no school on monday.
Sam: Okay national holiday yeah yeah in many countries in october.
Ivan: Observed in the united states yes.
Sam: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Since 1971, federal holiday, generally observed by banks, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And I think some states then have overridden and said, we're going to be indigenous
Sam: people's day or whatever, but I guess the federal holiday is Columbus day. Okay.
Ivan: So it is observed in a lot of other places. Like I see that in Argentina,
Ivan: Columbia, Peruvian, But yes, in the U.S.
Ivan: It's, you know, second Monday of October.
Ivan: Yes, it's a holiday. There is no school for my son on Monday.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Cool. Shall we start?
Ivan: Mm-hmm.
Sam: Okay. Here it goes. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Break: Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Friday, October 11th.
Sam: It's just after 2 UTC as we are starting to record. I'm Sam Minter. Yvonne Bo is with me.
Sam: And yeah, we're going to do another one of these show things. Show thing thing.
Ivan: Thanks. Hello.
Sam: And as usual, our agenda is Yvonne and I will both have something a little bit
Sam: less newsy or at least less serious newsy.
Ivan: So do I sound better today on the road since I found the microphone?
Sam: Yes, you do. Yes, you do.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Like last week, I don't know if anybody could notice because I edited out the
Sam: part where I told Yvonne he was screwed up.
Sam: But like the first couple minutes of the show, he was on his Apple ear thingy, bopple thing.
Ivan: AirPods.
Sam: AirPods. That's what they're called. And so I paused.
Sam: I said, Yvonne, before we continue, are you on your AirPods instead of your
Sam: actual microphone? and he's like, ah, crap, and we switched it over.
Ivan: And for some reason, and the thing is that, you know, it's weird because usually
Ivan: it just uses the last settings I used.
Sam: Okay?
Ivan: And for whatever the hell reason, last week it didn't. It just decided it was
Ivan: just connected to something else.
Ivan: So, you know, but yeah.
Sam: But you have found the missing small portable
Sam: microphone that's the the the lav kind that attaches to your shirt that i gave
Sam: him like theoretically paid for out of their the patreon the curmudgeon's corner
Sam: patreon i haven't actually like logged everything and kept track of it since
Sam: i did that but whatever and yeah so yeah it's yeah.
Ivan: I i i did find it it was for whatever the hell damn reason i i i am it was,
Ivan: It the the the little baggie that it's in looks like some other baggies that
Ivan: I used to store some other stuff and gifts and stuff and some of their like gift bags and stuff. OK.
Sam: Oh, not the baggies for your drugs.
Ivan: No, not the baggies for the drugs. No, that's a separate stash. OK.
Ivan: And so and so it looked it looked like that. And so I think my my cleaning lady
Ivan: was cleaning and she put it together with those bags.
Ivan: And so the other day i was looking i
Ivan: i couldn't find because i remodeled
Ivan: the office earlier this year and i
Ivan: had reorganized where my stuff was i was
Ivan: having difficulty finding some documents i needed i was about to do my taxes
Ivan: and i couldn't find my tax folder and um and so i started just going through
Ivan: the whole office to find some stuff and lo and behold,
Ivan: together with these bags.
Ivan: Wait I saw damn it find oh here
Ivan: it is I thought actually because I couldn't find it
Ivan: that I must have it must have fallen out of my bag and
Ivan: stayed at a hotel something I don't know right right for
Ivan: a bit but but no no no it just got mixed up with
Ivan: some similar looking bags that had nothing to do with
Ivan: it and so that's why I couldn't find it and so
Ivan: but this time i made sure i grabbed it immediately and
Ivan: i put it back in its proper location and
Ivan: so i i was carrying it with me and since i'm going to be traveling today we're
Ivan: recording today because the next day i'll be traveling and then because like
Ivan: i said i i am noticing that it's not an official company holiday but it doesn't
Ivan: really matter to me because i'm like like i mentioned And I think it was interesting to say,
Ivan: I mean, we have an unlimited PDO policy and Monday is not a day that I can really do a lot of work.
Ivan: I've been working very hard on a couple of things with customers that I know
Ivan: that are going to be on vacation.
Ivan: I mean, I know they're out. So I'm like, what am I going to do?
Ivan: I mean, that's my focus right now that I've been here. So I will get on a plane
Ivan: again on Tuesday morning and try to sort it out because Monday is not going
Ivan: to be really much productive.
Sam: Well, you know, you mentioned you have unlimited. I don't have unlimited.
Sam: I have an amount that accrues and all this. Well, this is what I was going to say.
Sam: Well, I save it up. Like I am about to take three weeks off.
Ivan: Oh, that's right.
Sam: I've got one more week at work and then I'm going to take three weeks off for
Sam: the stupid election stuff because like, and, and, you know, we'll talk like
Sam: polls and crap at the, at the end of the show, I'm sure.
Sam: But like right now at this very moment, I counted and I already forgot whether
Sam: it was 30 or 40, but like on the order of 30 or 40 data points that came in
Sam: over the course of the day to day.
Sam: But I was at work doing my actual job.
Sam: And so I didn't put those data points in yet. And and now I'm doing this show.
Sam: So I'm not putting them in. So some and after we're done here,
Sam: I'm undoubtedly going to have to pay attention to my son for a little bit.
Sam: And then it's going to be like 10 or 11 o'clock at night.
Sam: And then I'm going to have to spend the next four or five hours putting these
Sam: damn data points in. And you're going to be like, why does it take you four or five hours?
Sam: That's probably an exaggeration. It probably doesn't actually take that long.
Sam: But also the way I have it set up is very much a sequential one at a time thing.
Sam: Like I put in one data point.
Sam: And then I tell my system to process it and it updates a bunch of stuff and
Sam: it sends out a toot and it does this stuff.
Sam: And then I check all of it to make sure it all works properly before I enter the next data point.
Sam: So it's like, yeah, actually typing it in takes like a minute or less.
Sam: But like, then I wait for it and blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: You're just a slacker.
Sam: And I know people keep telling me, well, not people keep telling me, I keep telling myself.
Sam: I could switch. There are a couple of sources where I could just ingest polls
Sam: automatically and just have this stuff happen without human intervention.
Sam: But the problem is, like, I make different decisions about which polls to include
Sam: and which not to include than the various sources I could use.
Sam: And so I'm still doing it by hand because I, like, look at each one and decide
Sam: what I want to do with it and blah, blah, blah, and enter it or don't enter it and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And I know I could probably build something that made like, looked at those
Sam: other sources and then said, do you want to include this one? Yes or no?
Sam: And would still save me time, maybe for 2028. We'll think about it again.
Sam: But like, at the moment, I do a lot of manual stuff.
Sam: But it also the manual stuff, make sure I am paying attention to it with every data point that goes in.
Sam: I'm like, what was the effect of this data point? You know, anyway.
Sam: But yeah so so yeah i have but
Sam: my point is the maximum vacation time
Sam: accrual is four weeks and i'm going
Sam: to use up three and i'd already used a
Sam: little bit on one thing or another so it means actually after
Sam: i come back from this i'm gonna have very few days left so like if something
Sam: comes up i'm gonna be like oh i'm out of time i can't do whatever now that you
Sam: know if something did like if something major came up right they would let me
Sam: go negative but you know but yeah because i.
Ivan: I actually you know that was one thing i i i was at a place where i i know that
Ivan: for stuff like that they could let me go negative on on time off and i could i would have.
Sam: To make it back up it's not a you wouldn't go negative because like i want to
Sam: go to the bahamas for a week but if you if you like had you know like you went you had an emergency.
Ivan: Because your mom your mom was sick you have to go take care of her for a couple
Ivan: of weeks so you need to take time off yeah you could go.
Sam: Negative something yeah yeah exactly and uh
Sam: so but yeah it's kind of annoying because like normally
Sam: like i keep getting the notices that i'm like you know
Sam: you're at you're at or near your maximum you
Sam: better use some time or you're not gonna you're gonna be wasting it
Sam: because you won't accrue anymore and uh but this year
Sam: i knew i'm taking the three weeks off at the end of the year so i'm like okay
Sam: whatever but this is exactly why like way back in the day when i did random
Sam: trips it was exactly because i realized i was never using my vacation time and
Sam: i was like i should use my vacation time i'll i'll do one random trip every
Sam: quarter no matter what and i used up my vacation time but yeah since then i haven't been doing that,
Sam: I should do it again.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Were these things our butt firsts, or do we have something else to say for our butt first?
Sam: I really should catch up on my movies. I should keep up with,
Sam: I should catch up, like log all my movies and TV and books and stuff so I have
Sam: something to talk about.
Ivan: What's your butt first? You're going to go with a movie?
Sam: No, because I haven't logged them, so I have no idea. I don't have nothing to talk about.
Ivan: Okay. All right. Well, I don't, I don't have anything else to say.
Sam: So are we going to jump out? We're going to take a break and jump straight into newsy stuff. Okay.
Sam: Whoa. It is. It's amazing. Like, uh, you know, I'm trying to think any quick,
Sam: cause, cause you know, I, I've, I've become so used to the fact that I always
Sam: had a book or movie to talk about that.
Sam: I haven't been bothering to log the little goofy things that I might want to talk about.
Ivan: And so a lot of things that I'm like, you know, the, we're all news.
Sam: Time like usually here's the.
Ivan: One thing because like the.
Sam: Weather the weather is news yes right,
Sam: so oh i can't i will mention one thing except except it's it's it's i haven't
Sam: actually done it yet but i'm seeing all over my social media feeds the people
Sam: talking about the geomagnetic storm and how the the aurora the northern oh yeah.
Ivan: Yeah yeah and it's going to extend for what.
Sam: It's It's going to be very, very far south, nowhere near where you are in Puerto Rico.
Ivan: No, no, no.
Sam: But I, yeah. But like as far south as the Carolinas, you know,
Sam: on the East Coast and as far south as, you know, Central California on the West Coast.
Sam: And, you know, earlier this year, I think it was in May, there was one of these.
Sam: And Alex and I, I don't know if I talked about it on the show.
Sam: I probably did. But Alex and I actually went out, like we left home at like
Sam: one o'clock in the morning, drove like an hour east.
Sam: So we were away from the city lights in sort of the darkness in the mountains
Sam: and, you know, went and watched the roar for a little bit.
Sam: And it was one of those things where, yeah, you could see it with the naked
Sam: eye, but you could see it so much better with your phone camera.
Sam: And it's supposed to be almost as good tonight as it was back last May,
Sam: maybe in some places just as good and i
Sam: don't know i i on the one hand i'm sort of like it
Sam: would be cool to see again but on the other i'm
Sam: like did that in me like maybe like
Sam: if i walk out the front door and i can actually see it from my house then maybe
Sam: i'll take a few pictures but i don't know if i'm gonna like wait until the middle
Sam: of the night and then drive out an hour you know to find a really dark place
Sam: and all that, which, which was cool.
Sam: Cause you could like last time when this happened in May, you could see it from
Sam: my front door, but barely. Yeah.
Sam: And you really needed the camera assist. Like you couldn't really tell with
Sam: the naked eye, but you could tell with the camera.
Sam: But whereas when you really went out to a dark place, you could tell with the
Sam: naked eye and it was spectacular with the camera, you know?
Sam: And so, but I'm like, you know, I did that.
Sam: Do I really have to do it again? I don't know. But it is really cool.
Sam: And my social media feeds are right now.
Sam: Like I'm just, I'm, I'm looking at the screen on Mastodon over here and like
Sam: every other thing is like a picture of the Aurora from somewhere in the country.
Sam: You know, and they're, and they're looking cool, you know? So I don't know.
Ivan: Okay. I was wondering if I had seen it.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I was wondering if I had seen it and I finally did find some pictures that I
Ivan: took of Aurora Borealis when I was flying like one night going,
Ivan: when I was flying, I'm not sure which leg, but on the trip, it was going to
Ivan: London, I think, to Asia.
Ivan: Well, I was ending to Asia for some or something. And, you know,
Ivan: we were doing and yeah, and I actually did find that it was like in 2019 that
Ivan: when we flew that I was able to see it out the window.
Ivan: So it's like rubbering if I saw it. And it was I managed to grab some pictures of it.
Ivan: It was like really bright it was it was it
Ivan: was it was cool i mean it was it was it was so yeah so so i have seen it i was
Ivan: like trying to remember the ice i've seen it i'm like shit i've seen it right
Ivan: yeah and i was like i i did find the the the picture so it was like yeah i was
Ivan: like uh on one night overnight like going doing the circle route thing yes you know how planes.
Sam: Go over the northern areas because it's shorter.
Ivan: It's shorter yes because unlike what some people.
Sam: Think it you know it's it's a flat plate sitting on a turtle or something whatever you know.
Ivan: Right but yeah anyway.
Sam: Okay anything else shall we uh take that break and and and hit the.
Ivan: More yeah let's take the break let's let's go yeah here we go here.
Sam: Here it comes.
Break: Do you want to understand what is really going on with the presidential election cycle?
Break: Then go to electiongraphs.com right away.
Break: There you'll find charts and graphs covering the nomination processes in both
Break: parties and the general election race for electoral college votes.
Break: For the delegate races, we track not just delegate totals, but also the ever-important
Break: analysis of how each candidate has to do with the remaining delegates in order to actually win.
Break: For the Electoral College, we track state-by-state poll averages to categorize
Break: which states are actually in play and which are not in order to show you the
Break: range of likely electoral results and how that changes over time.
Break: Sure, you can get some of this stuff elsewhere, but not in exactly the same way.
Break: And not for me, Sam, your prime curmudgeon. I think my election trackers are
Break: better than the rest, so come look at mine.
Break: Electiongraphs.com.
Sam: Yeah so anyway that's you know
Sam: i i was just thinking as that was playing that that may well be like the.
Ivan: Last time i.
Sam: Well i may it may be the last time i played a break before the actual election.
Ivan: Uh because.
Sam: Because it only comes up like one out of every 10 times
Sam: i play the break and we've only got like a few weeks
Sam: left and you know maybe maybe it will maybe it won't it's random but i made
Sam: that break in 2016 i've just used the same one ever since even though i've changed
Sam: some stuff since then but i just pull it out every four years you know it's
Sam: fine it's fine fine god damn it anyway.
Ivan: Your your.
Sam: Turn you want to talk about hurricanes for yours and then elections for mine
Sam: or you want to do something different.
Ivan: I mean we've got the hurricanes you know what i mean all right let's talk about
Ivan: let's talk about the storms so we we you know,
Ivan: so florida i'm not in florida i'm in puerto rico you.
Sam: You skipped out and left your family to fend for themselves.
Ivan: Yeah yeah yeah look i looked at the i looked at the maps,
Ivan: on sunday i was talking to my mom i'm looking
Ivan: at my wife and i said look this is not
Ivan: coming down here but i i did have like
Ivan: a contingency plan i had actually even like i saw
Ivan: that i could hold a ticket if i needed to in order to fly back early and i was
Ivan: like well at first i did i saw that i saw there were plenty available coming
Ivan: the thing is that to go the tickets that were i realized i didn't even need
Ivan: to hold it i went and i and i looked at who was available and the prices were cheap, and I realized,
Ivan: look, people aren't flying to go there.
Ivan: They're wanting to fly out.
Ivan: So I saw, look, if I need to get back, it's not a big deal.
Ivan: I can get on the next available flight. It's no big deal.
Ivan: If the track changes, but I looked at the track. I was booked to fly on Monday.
Ivan: I had checked the flight the night, checked the track the night before.
Ivan: I looked at the track on Monday and I'm like, listen, this is, it's, we're 48.
Ivan: The computer models are very good at 48 hours out.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Okay. It's really when it's longer than 72 hours plus where they really are
Ivan: not good. But 48 hours out, they're really good.
Sam: And by the way, even at 72, they're much better than they used to be.
Sam: There's still a lot of room for error.
Ivan: Yeah, even at 72. But at 48 hours, what the track that was forecasted was within
Ivan: 100 miles of where it went.
Ivan: 100 miles total north-south, okay? So it was very, very accurate, okay, in that sense.
Ivan: So, look, the storm was forecast to be well north of 200 miles,
Ivan: north of where I live, at least.
Ivan: And so I'm like, look, the worst we're going to get, which we just got with
Ivan: Helene, some blustery winds and some rain or whatever.
Ivan: There was a whole bunch and far more than we have ever gotten before. Strong tornadoes.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: There were quite a lot of them. We had never gotten so many simultaneous tornado
Ivan: warnings at once. This was a record.
Ivan: There was 125 active tornado warnings that popped up at once.
Sam: Across the whole state.
Ivan: Across, yes. That was a nutty number. We've never had that many at once.
Ivan: And actually, those tornadoes that did touch down in certain places caused significant
Ivan: damage in quite a number of places.
Ivan: And far away from where landfall was, okay?
Ivan: And so that was something that was a little bit unnerving because my wife called
Ivan: me and said, hey, we got a tornado warning. What do you do?
Ivan: I'm like, well, there's nothing you could do. I mean, you stay inside.
Ivan: I mean, our property is as protected as it can be.
Ivan: You know, so, you know, we have, you know, we have hurricane impact glass.
Ivan: We have, we have roofs that were built within the last 10 years.
Ivan: That means that, you know, if you, you, you do a new roof, you,
Ivan: you, you don't go and you can't build it to whatever standard it was built before.
Ivan: They have been like raising the standards of what hurricane protection you got.
Ivan: So it's got to be built to whatever the hell the current, the current standard is. Okay.
Ivan: And so they're built for at least a Category 4 hurricane, you know,
Ivan: so basically 155-mile-an-hour wind resistance.
Sam: Of course, the wind in an actual tornado can be significantly higher than that.
Sam: It can be significantly higher. If you have a direct hit from the tornado.
Ivan: If you have a direct hit from the tornado.
Sam: But tornadoes are much smaller.
Ivan: But tornadoes are much smaller. You know, it really is, you know,
Ivan: I mean, you can't do, you know, there's not much you can do.
Ivan: You know about a tornado i did see a
Ivan: number of the houses that were similar to to to mine that
Ivan: got hit by a tornado for the most part what happened was
Ivan: that they lost the the for the
Ivan: most part most of them just lost the decorative coverings right which is you
Ivan: know which i don't understand why fucking i actually have decided that the next
Ivan: time i'm fucking doing one of these roofing projects i'm gonna go with metal
Ivan: roofs okay the hell with this okay you know fuck this shit.
Ivan: They're actually, I've seen a whole bunch of companies now, they got these metal
Ivan: roofs, they go with Stam'd,
Ivan: 250 mile an hour winds you know fucking
Ivan: yeah you know whatever i'm like what the hell am i doing you know
Ivan: and i saw that it's maybe like 20 more money i'm like
Ivan: what the fuck am i what the hell am i fucking around with this thing no the
Ivan: next time just fucking put put up a metal roof the hell with this shit okay
Ivan: they actually look cool by the way and so so it's not bad so but anyway i so
Ivan: we had that happen okay that was like happening as the as the storm was approaching
Ivan: and you know Well, the thing is that,
Ivan: as everybody is saying, the landfall with Tampa was always,
Ivan: Tampa was the one that everybody was scared about. And it really was.
Sam: For years and years and years, people have always talked about,
Sam: like, there are several worst case scenarios that people talk about. They talk about Tampa.
Sam: They talk about Miami, New York, and New Orleans.
Sam: And we came close to the worst case in Katrina for New Orleans,
Sam: but not quite. Right. It actually was better than the worst case.
Sam: It veered at the last minute. And as bad as Katrina was, it was not the worst case scenario.
Sam: But for Tampa and New York has dodged a couple as well. They had that that super storm Sandy a while.
Sam: But but Sandy was also dodged a little bit away from the worst case scenario.
Sam: And Tampa is one where, as they talked about a lot this time around,
Sam: it hasn't had the kind of direct hit they're really worried about for over 100 years.
Sam: And it's had a few near misses. And this time was once again a near miss,
Sam: like coming in, you know, a couple dozen miles further south than what would
Sam: have been the worst case scenario.
Ivan: But even the thing is that Tampa is far more susceptible than Miami or Fort Lauderdale,
Ivan: Palm Beach to the flooding because of how the Tampa Bay is and how people built around the Tampa Bay.
Ivan: Because on the on the east coast in
Ivan: miami even though you can get store you get storm surge it's not as big as a
Ivan: storm surge that you get on on the tampa bay area part of it is because of how
Ivan: the the the ocean shelf and how it is and how shallow it is coming into miami
Ivan: it makes it that you do get surge,
Ivan: but it's not at not 18 feet of surge, okay?
Ivan: You get a lot less. The problem in Miami has been more that there's been so
Ivan: much more construction in recent years, and there are many areas that man,
Ivan: they just flood regularly right now because the drainage and some things haven't been done.
Ivan: The reality is that I think I've mentioned before, look, I.
Ivan: Okay, I know I have information about what the plans are, which actually they've
Ivan: been made public by the U.S.
Ivan: Army Corps of Engineers, and I've had direct, you know, I've directly seen these plans.
Ivan: They have a great plan to avert that in Miami, and they have the money assigned to it.
Ivan: The complaint was, the last time it was presented, is that it involved a lot
Ivan: of seawalls, and the people thought they looked ugly.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And the frustration expressed to me is,
Ivan: like, these idiots are worried about how it fucking looks instead of the fact
Ivan: that we've got a plan that we have worked on for over a decade so the fucking
Ivan: place doesn't flood in case of the worst-case fucking scenario. Okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: The worst-case scenario of climate change, the worst-case scenario of a hurricane,
Ivan: the worst-case scenario of whatever the fuck.
Ivan: We already made the fucking plan. And you assholes are all dicking around because
Ivan: you think the walls look ugly.
Ivan: And they're like, they want to just fucking like, you know, they want to just kill themselves.
Ivan: Okay. All right. Because it's just stupid. You're engineers.
Ivan: You figured out how to fix the problem. And then you've got politics,
Ivan: which Florida, unfortunately, has been flooded with politics infiltrating into
Ivan: this shit right now a lot over the last decade.
Ivan: More so than ever, because before it wasn't as bad. But the hurricane went and
Ivan: hit straight onto Sarasota, which is not the worst case.
Ivan: And what it did is actually drained the Tampa Bay instead of actually pushing
Ivan: the water into the Tampa Bay. So Tampa Bay did not get hit.
Ivan: They actually had more flooding from Helene as it went by.
Ivan: And they actually had this one because of the way it went through.
Ivan: And thankfully, because the water was cooler as it was approaching there, strength did go down.
Ivan: But, you know, the places there on the shore, they had been hammered already
Ivan: by by by storm surge, you know, from Helene. And so they got it again.
Ivan: You know, and a lot of the structures in the path of the storm,
Ivan: there's still a lot of people that have built homes that basically are just
Ivan: not built for hurricanes.
Ivan: And, you know, somebody was asking me the other day, and I did share an article
Ivan: explained a little bit. So why is that? Why so many people in Florida?
Ivan: And why they build these houses? And part of it is that, you know,
Ivan: Florida had a very, very, very long streak of not getting hit by a lot of storms, okay?
Ivan: And even in the west coast of Florida, too, look, we're talking about Tampa
Ivan: Bay. Tampa Bay has not been hit by a major hurricane in 100 years.
Ivan: This is one of the ones that has come the closest, okay, in recent times.
Ivan: And so, you know, Florida had a very long streak of that.
Ivan: And then in the early 90s, they got hit by Andrew.
Ivan: Okay and when they got
Ivan: hit by Andrew what happened was okay Miami
Ivan: South Florida Miami Palm
Ivan: Beach and Broward adopted much stricter construction codes
Ivan: but the rest of the state didn't they like acted like ah that's just Miami we
Ivan: you know we that's not gonna happen here which is just idiotic okay so the rest
Ivan: of the state has operated and
Ivan: like South Florida had I kept never understanding this We would get like,
Ivan: I was talking to somebody that just bought a house in Jacksonville two years
Ivan: ago, which, by the way, is also
Ivan: on target to be able to be hit by our hurricane. It's had close calls.
Ivan: And they were paying like $2,000 in insurance. Well, I'm paying $8,000 in insurance.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And I'm like, and their house is not, they just bought a new house that's built
Ivan: with wooden walls. It was just built recently.
Ivan: And I'm like, this thing in a fucking Cat 3 hurricane, forget about four or five.
Ivan: Cat 3 storm, this thing is gone.
Ivan: There's nothing left here. Okay. Pitching up matchsticks.
Ivan: And we're building these. They're still building these new. You have so many
Ivan: people that came from the south, moved into Florida,
Ivan: built houses like they were building houses in Tennessee, in those areas,
Ivan: built them especially in the northern part of the state.
Ivan: It really makes no sense. So many of them moved. And because there was such
Ivan: a lull in storms, you still have a lot of this construction around.
Ivan: Now, in a lot of cities, like I know that my nephew just moved into a new place in Orlando.
Ivan: And I had been worried about, is he going to be okay? And he told me,
Ivan: actually, no, this new place that I went into Orlando, which is not close to
Ivan: the coast, which actually, you know, one of the things is a hurricane moves inland.
Ivan: It pretty quickly loses strength in terms of wind and whatever, whatnot.
Ivan: If you're in an area that is not prone to flooding, he told me,
Ivan: hey, it was windy, whatever, but everything was fine. It's no problem.
Ivan: And they had impact glass.
Ivan: They've got, you know, structure is solid. It's not made out of wood.
Ivan: And he was like, okay, so he was fine. But in Central Florida,
Ivan: for example, those people in those more modern areas that I'm around,
Ivan: I talked to a couple of people, they were fine.
Ivan: But there was one person specifically that I knew lived somewhere further south
Ivan: close to Sebring, Florida.
Ivan: And I knew that all those houses there were basically pre-manufactured houses,
Ivan: which is almost like a trailer on top of a fucking slab of concrete.
Ivan: And I am like, this person's saying, well, I'm going to ride it out.
Ivan: I was looking at that map this fucking storm was going straight for them,
Ivan: And I'm like, I tried to call him. I said, you're out of your mind.
Ivan: Get the hell out of there. No, no, no. We're going to ride this out.
Ivan: Okay, look, these people are not island people. They were from Indiana.
Ivan: They've never lived through this.
Sam: Right, right, right.
Ivan: Okay, so today, fine. They posted today. They were alive. Yes.
Ivan: But they posted that all their, half the houses around them were destroyed.
Ivan: And I'm like, okay, how could you just, you know, How could you just, I mean, do you realize,
Ivan: you know, I don't know about you, but if I'm somewhere where the house next
Ivan: to mine or a few, several of them got destroyed and I lucked out,
Ivan: I'm not feeling very good the next day.
Ivan: And I'll tell you something that that night had to be horrible because my wife
Ivan: still from the one big hurricane that we had in 2004,
Ivan: Wilma, still has is is petrified from them. She's got post-traumatic stress from it.
Sam: In the in the short time I lived at Florida was like one of the years that we
Sam: got a whole bunch of hits.
Ivan: Yeah, we had a whole bunch.
Sam: And for the first one, like we picked up the whole family, all the pets,
Sam: everything, and we evacuated all the way to New Orleans.
Sam: The second or third one, we're like, this one's not that bad. We'll hang out.
Sam: And like, it was scary. You know, we were all fine. The place was fine, whatever.
Sam: This was when we were staying in like your relative's place. Yes.
Sam: And, and, you know, it was, it was fine, but there were, there was lots of damage in the neighborhood.
Sam: We, we stayed in like the noise of the storm going over.
Ivan: The noise.
Sam: Cause we'd boarded up everything. So you couldn't see outside.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: It was just the noise of, like, destruction obviously happening all around.
Ivan: Happening outside, yes.
Sam: Things creaking, things slamming, things whatever.
Sam: And, yeah, it was a little scary. And we were like, okay, if there's another one.
Ivan: We're not standing.
Sam: We're going. We're going.
Ivan: And, look, here's one thing. Look, my family, I, you know, like me and my parents
Ivan: or whatever, you know, sort of these things, right?
Ivan: I, you know, people are like, oh, my God, Florida is like, you know,
Ivan: nobody can live in Florida, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: I'm like, fuck, man, I've lived with this shit since I was a little kid.
Ivan: I mean, you know, this is what happens when you live in the Caribbean,
Ivan: in the tropics. This is what it is.
Ivan: Florida had gotten lucky for many years. But look, I still remember when I first
Ivan: went to Carnegie Mellon the first year, okay, two weeks later,
Ivan: okay, Hurricane Hugo hit Puerto Rico. Hurricane Hugo didn't hit Florida, but it hit South.
Ivan: I think it was like Charleston, okay? South Carolina.
Ivan: It destroyed Charleston, South Carolina. And it was, it got up to a category.
Ivan: I think it was like category three, four, five. It was, listen, that was brutal, okay?
Ivan: And when it hit, it destroyed. It hit San Juan. And that was,
Ivan: and look, I, when it hit Puerto Rico, hours before the storm hit,
Ivan: Back then, telephone to Puerto Rico, to here, was not on Fiverr underwater. It was satellite.
Ivan: And so, damn it, the satellite signals started, the satellite stopped working.
Ivan: I don't know if the dish, whatever, but I couldn't place a call out.
Ivan: And, man, I spent two weeks that I had no idea what the fuck happened.
Ivan: I could read the newspapers.
Ivan: But but in terms of and and even you know it
Ivan: was a lot of coverage because you know what happens
Ivan: when you're in the u.s like whatever happens something
Ivan: in puerto rico i mean they'll mention it but they're not going to be covering
Ivan: it in depth especially back then and so you know i'm making calls i actually
Ivan: talked to some people in san juan finally i was able to because then what happened
Ivan: was it was forget the satellites satellites come back up the phone lines to
Ivan: where my parents lived got knocked out.
Ivan: Okay. And so the power lines got knocked out. Everything got knocked out,
Ivan: but it was, it was several weeks until I found out they were okay.
Ivan: But, but the thing is that, you know, we had that, you know,
Ivan: my mom endured her first hurricane when she was, you know,
Ivan: five, six years old, you know, we, we lived through them like the forties, fifties, sixties.
Ivan: Seventies, eighties, you know, every year.
Ivan: I mean, I don't know to me, it's like, Look, it's something that from where
Ivan: we are, that you live, that you prepare for.
Ivan: OK, yeah, that's just the way it is. And you prepare for properly and it's and it's usually OK.
Ivan: Yeah. Puerto Rico was before Hurricane Maria had never had a lot of problems
Ivan: with recovering from a storm.
Ivan: The circumstances surrounding what happened like here
Ivan: with that hurricane in 2017 had to
Ivan: do first with the fact
Ivan: that the the island government had been in bankruptcy
Ivan: and that had been something that had been going on and that
Ivan: had caused that the electric grid had been
Ivan: left in a state of total disrepair that
Ivan: it was just it was just a story you
Ivan: know everybody knew look if a major hurricane hits
Ivan: it there electric grid is in such bad shape it's it's it's
Ivan: not going to work and you know
Ivan: as you talk to people here the it wasn't the storm itself the the storm itself
Ivan: the winds it's not like the wind knocked out people it wasn't it wasn't that
Ivan: it was the aftermath unfortunately that killed people because when you had so
Ivan: many people that depended that couldn't get.
Ivan: More specifically medical treatment aid people
Ivan: that needed medicines oxygen that people
Ivan: that you know that they could get the help for that it was the the post storm
Ivan: and the lack of recovery and the fact that i mean it's been shown right now
Ivan: already that the trump administration actually blocked aid to puerto rico post
Ivan: hurricane he didn't want to send the aid he was like fuck fuck you.
Ivan: I mean, he actively sabotaged recovery.
Sam: There was more about that just this last week,
Sam: that more revelations of the Trump administration still coming out,
Sam: more details about how not just for Puerto Rico, but for California,
Sam: for other places, he absolutely was like, hey, did they support me?
Sam: If the answer is no, then why should they get aid?
Sam: And specifically the example that came out this week for California was related
Sam: to the fires and everything like that.
Sam: And somebody actually had to go and show him the, the number of Trump voters
Sam: in the specific County that was having the fire issue and show him that yet,
Sam: even though it was California and even though there was a, it was a blue state.
Ivan: It's a red area of the state.
Sam: It was a red area of the state. And not only that, the population density was
Sam: such that the number of Trump voters in that one county was bigger than the
Sam: number of Trump voters in some entire states, you know?
Sam: And then he's like, okay, fine, send them some aid.
Ivan: But this is the thing. And so the reality is, is we approach this election again. It's,
Ivan: is how that really impacted. Now, in what happened right now in Florida with
Ivan: Milton, as he had to go through- Yeah.
Sam: Let's talk about this one.
Ivan: No, no, no. Yeah, no, no, no. And, you know, it's just, so many people are talking
Ivan: about, look, we're getting more storms, and they're like, oh my God,
Ivan: you know, it's just, listen, unfortunately, Florida had been lucky for a long
Ivan: time, not getting hit with storms.
Ivan: People got lulled into complacency, okay? And so that is why I think,
Ivan: and you've got a lot of newcomers that just aren't used to storms.
Sam: Yeah, I was going to say that there are a few things here. One,
Sam: there was a period that was a lull, like you said.
Sam: Two, just in general, because of climate change, they're going to be more and
Sam: bigger and the effects are going to be stronger.
Sam: Three, you do have huge population increases since the last time there were big stuff.
Sam: And lots of new people who've never experienced blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And you were talking before,
Sam: in some places, the people who are doing the regulation are not all in on the
Sam: idea that, okay, you build something new, it has to meet these newer standards.
Sam: And of course, you've also got a wide variety of incomes out there as well.
Ivan: Oh, God, yes.
Sam: There are some folks that can afford all the fancy, super protective stuff,
Sam: and there are some folks that can't. And what do you do there?
Ivan: But listen, Puerto Rico has showed that you can afford, you can build,
Ivan: you know, it doesn't have to be just a rich people.
Ivan: You know, we got houses over here that are built for less than $100,000 that
Ivan: can withstand a storm better than houses that I know in the States,
Ivan: in Florida, for a million dollars.
Sam: Well, a big part of it is just use the right construction materials for the
Sam: area that you're constructing. Like, we're in an earthquake zone.
Sam: In an earthquake zone, wood is better than concrete.
Ivan: 100%, yes.
Sam: But if you're in a hurricane zone.
Ivan: You want concrete!
Sam: Yeah, you don't want wood.
Ivan: No, exactly. You don't want wood. And, you know, talking about climate change,
Ivan: now it sparked a different thing in terms of hurricanes.
Ivan: This was a very strange hurricane.
Ivan: And this is a hurricane that was definitely, absolutely, one that climate change
Ivan: spurred, that in the past would not have happened. because it formed off the
Ivan: Yucatan Peninsula, okay?
Ivan: Right there in the Gulf of Mexico.
Ivan: And that is not, that didn't happen before. You didn't get a storm.
Ivan: The water used to be colder there. So you never got these storms forming there
Ivan: and then strengthening that quickly because it gathered steam and strengthened super quick, okay?
Ivan: And then go in this west to east route,
Ivan: which is not I don't know it's not the way you usually think of hurricanes going
Ivan: no they don't do that it's the reason why Tampa never got hit.
Ivan: And so all of a sudden you've got Gulf of Mexico that is a lot warmer that all
Ivan: of a sudden can fuel a storm and have it go from tropical storm to cat 5 and like,
Ivan: this in a snap of a finger.
Ivan: So, yeah, I mean, it's it's creating a different threat that what you were seeing.
Ivan: And so we I think that's one thing where we used to be preparing for a different threat.
Ivan: And now because of climate change, you're getting a totally different new one at this point.
Ivan: And the whole damn state of Florida has to adopt the same damn frickin building code.
Ivan: That takes into account,
Ivan: storm surge hurricanes what the
Ivan: fuck the strength is and so forth and so on you can't
Ivan: because right now it used to be that
Ivan: the panhandle west coast north florida
Ivan: ah whatever man the panhandle has gotten hammered by three hurricanes in the
Ivan: last couple of years three three of them okay and well at this point one thing
Ivan: about it is that because insurance companies have basically said fuck you, we're not.
Ivan: Insuring you.
Ivan: We're not, you know, either, you know, so let's push some people to not build.
Ivan: However, you know what we've gotten also is a whole bunch of people that have
Ivan: decided to rebuild there with no insurance and no mortgage, no nothing,
Ivan: and a place that got obliterated already.
Ivan: And I'm just like, you know, I mean, it's, Listen, the storm surge shows that
Ivan: that place is just not a good place to build.
Ivan: Yes, I know you love your ocean view, but it's just not survivable. And so...
Ivan: I don't know. I will say this. No significant change to this stuff is going
Ivan: to happen to this governor.
Ivan: I will say that, thank God, that the worst-case scenario of this storm did not happen.
Ivan: However, regardless of that, the damage has been quite extensive,
Ivan: especially in the west coast of Florida, because they got storm surge from two storms back to back.
Ivan: And, oh, by the way, the hurricane season ain't over. We've still got a few more weeks.
Ivan: And last year we had a hurricane in november so um so so what's not like it's
Ivan: not like the hurricane season it's not like you know oh closing time okay yeah
Ivan: no more hurricanes november 1st ha ha ha see ya no no no it's not it's not you
Ivan: know it doesn't work that way yeah.
Sam: There was that one year where they had to like go into the greek letters right.
Ivan: Yes that happened more.
Sam: Than once actually i think but.
Ivan: Yes you.
Sam: Know and if i.
Ivan: Remember we haven't actually gone through that many letters the the thing is
Ivan: you know some people and i know like the.
Sam: Time frame like that that time that that happened i it it also just stretched
Sam: so there essentially wasn't an end like you had like the new the new season
Sam: started picking up before the there was just there was no month that had nothing.
Ivan: Yeah and so i look the
Ivan: one thing about it is that you know
Ivan: predicting how many hurricanes you're going to get in a season obviously
Ivan: you know people it's like oh they predict this is going to be the most
Ivan: active season blah blah blah and look the one thing is that look you can't predict
Ivan: how many hurricanes you're going to get because you have to get the conditions
Ivan: however what has been clearly demonstrated by the storm is that the conditions
Ivan: are there that once you get something spooled up,
Ivan: it's spooling up in places that you don't expect to an intensity so quickly
Ivan: that you wouldn't have gotten before.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And that's that's your current climate reality.
Ivan: And oh, by the way, the other thing is that I don't care how many people would
Ivan: argue with me about this.
Ivan: There is no safe place from climate change. It doesn't fucking matter.
Ivan: It's pick your poison. OK, all right.
Ivan: And there it doesn't exist. OK.
Ivan: Yeah. You know, I was talking about was having dinner lunch in California.
Ivan: Is that these people, they were telling me about how that auto dealership that
Ivan: was in Kansas that got completely obliterated by tornadoes like a couple of
Ivan: years ago. Okay? Just gone.
Ivan: $100 million business. Just completely destroyed. Okay?
Ivan: You know, with the wildfires, with the flash floods, with what happened in North
Ivan: Carolina and Tennessee like right now with that tropical storm that went and
Ivan: churned all the way inland, all the way over there, and caused all that damage.
Ivan: I had somebody argue with me? I don't know if you remember that last year they
Ivan: had these crazy flash floods in Las Vegas.
Sam: Vaguely. Vaguely.
Ivan: There was a ridiculous rain event in Las Vegas.
Ivan: Once again, one of these things that never happened where they had this massive
Ivan: rain event in Las Vegas that caused crazy flash floods where everything was
Ivan: like, I mean, the streets looked like rivers, cars were being dragged. It was just crazy.
Ivan: Somebody was trying to argue with me that that's not That's not a natural disaster. And I'm like,
Ivan: um, that's not, okay.
Sam: Unless you're going to argue it's a man-made disaster instead.
Ivan: Well, you could say that.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: So what?
Ivan: Well, we could argue that all of these are right now or, you know,
Ivan: man, they're influenced.
Ivan: They have been influenced by our influence on the planet.
Sam: Humanity has made it worse.
Ivan: Humanity has made it worse. But but Sam, is that do you have the joystick hiding
Ivan: over there in that shelf over there where you control the storms?
Sam: Wait a second. Yes, I do.
Ivan: Oh, OK. There you go. So that's how you steer it into the. i steer the storm.
Sam: With this little joystick yep yep.
Ivan: Yeah and.
Sam: You know i push the button a few times if i want to make it.
Ivan: Stronger tornadoes that that makes the tornadoes yeah exactly yeah yeah you
Ivan: click the button when you click it a whole bunch of times that's why they got
Ivan: so many tornadoes you're just non-stop clicking the button exactly so so.
Sam: Real quick before we move on from this subject do you have a quick summary of
Sam: like what the actual damage looks like as of.
Ivan: What we know right now they're still going through they you know i will say
Ivan: this i expected worse i talked to people in central florida and a lot of the
Ivan: people there that i expected to have no power,
Ivan: they had power they had water they had power i saw that disney is opening tomorrow
Ivan: again right okay and so so that means that they didn't get that now i will say
Ivan: that disney does definitely prepare their parks.
Ivan: I'm surprised by how well they have designed those parks to withstand storms.
Ivan: Because they've gotten hit by several.
Ivan: And it's like, eh, it's fine.
Sam: They're closed for like a day.
Ivan: Yeah, they're closed for like a day and then they're like, eh,
Ivan: we're cleaned up, it's fine.
Sam: You did have that stadium lose its roof, right?
Ivan: That stadium lost its roof, but I realize that I don't understand why it talked,
Ivan: you know, we're talking about shitty construction, man, I mean,
Ivan: that stadium was just, the roof was like cloth.
Ivan: I mean, it would have come off by just me blowing hard.
Ivan: It's just ridiculous. I don't understand how they, they thought that that was like a great place to,
Ivan: Stage people. I mean, I realize that I see Tropicana Field, and that's the stadium
Ivan: that had, and it looked like it was just barely a cloth roof.
Sam: Well, I heard some people talking about it saying that, at least theoretically,
Sam: even though, yes, it was some sort of special fabric or whatever,
Sam: it was supposed to be rated for winds that were greater than what this hurricane sent through.
Sam: So something was wrong, or somebody cheats out.
Ivan: It was somebody screwed up. Okay, all right, fair enough.
Ivan: Because the one thing is that the roof on the... Because I think both of these
Ivan: were built relatively, you know, not that far apart, the baseball stadium in Miami.
Ivan: The roof of this baseball stadium in Miami is like a steel structure.
Ivan: It's like super, like, you know, very, very sturdy looking at least.
Ivan: And, you know, this thing is just a, looks like a flimsy piece of cloth.
Ivan: But I guess that they said, okay that's what i was checking that
Ivan: i was wondering what it was rated for and so
Ivan: i guess somebody just screwed up okay that happens you
Ivan: know we'll we'll find out about a structure
Ivan: like that but one thing about a
Ivan: structure like that is that it it it
Ivan: takes just a weak spot right that
Ivan: they screwed up for the whole thing to fail and so it may it may have just been
Ivan: that they made you know wherever where it was installed they left a weak spot
Ivan: that nobody identified and that's why it failed so that could be that but yeah
Ivan: you know how other than that i.
Sam: Know i know we're not very far in and people are still searching and stuff but
Sam: how are we on death toll compared like helene ended up with like 240.
Ivan: No nothing like that no you know you know
Ivan: what people because helene just happened even though
Ivan: i talked about a couple of people that didn't take it seriously and whatnot
Ivan: man people really evacuated and they evacuated
Ivan: early they really took it seriously they saw what happened with helene
Ivan: people got the fuck out right and so so
Ivan: yeah i i do think that the fact
Ivan: that yeah that unfortunate incident just happened
Ivan: recently with helene made it that yeah i mean people really did evacuate early
Ivan: the one thing that was amazing was that usually sometimes in these evacuations
Ivan: like the day before it hits people are still jam-packed in traffic and the reality
Ivan: was that the day before it hit and the hours before,
Ivan: the roads were clear because everybody had already evacuated.
Sam: There were all kinds of pictures of the traffic jams but they were earlier.
Sam: They were like more than a day before.
Ivan: More than a day before, yeah. They were already cleared out and so it wasn't
Ivan: really you know, I think that that absolutely,
Ivan: saved lives and so far i haven't heard of any reported deaths yet from the storm
Ivan: i i know that not even from the tornadoes or whatever but so far i i haven't heard i.
Sam: I've seen some reports of deaths from the tornadoes uh.
Ivan: That's the one that from the tornadoes is the one that i think
Ivan: that that there may be some i hadn't heard any because from from
Ivan: the others but but at this point i still had not seen any
Ivan: any reports of that yet but but i
Ivan: know from the tornadoes they were still digging through because man the tornadoes
Ivan: it was just so many different places and it hit people just unexpectedly like
Ivan: they just didn't expect that that was going to happen well now they're saying
Ivan: okay first count 11 dead that i'm looking at right now and.
Sam: It is still early they're going to be finding people.
Ivan: For a while like people who didn't leave.
Sam: And were in flimsy buildings and all that kind of stuff.
Ivan: That that i do think that thank god that so many people went and like evacuated
Ivan: early thank god because it would have been a lot worse i think it would have
Ivan: been and that so that's the main thing that we've got thank god so.
Sam: Right okay shall we take a break and then start talk see what it is start talking
Sam: politics before i do that though i just want to do a.
Ivan: Call out for.
Sam: Most of this last segment sean has been watching us live so.
Ivan: Welcome so.
Sam: Welcome sean and glad to have you here and yeah hope you're enjoying watching live very exciting.
Ivan: Live yeah.
Sam: Exactly okay here we go we're going to take a break and when we come back we'll
Sam: do the uh the election 2024 politics thingy thingy boo blop here we go yeah boop If.
Ivan: My mouse works.
Sam: Why is my mouse not working? You know, I sometimes things are stupid.
Sam: Like, let me try the other mouse. Like for some reason, I was unable to click
Sam: with the one mouse. But here we go.
Break: Supposed to say do do do do do do
Break: do alex emzilla alex
Break: emzilla is awesome its videos are fun and
Break: today once again we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you
Break: how awesome alex emzilla is i'd say on a rate from one to ten alex emzilla is
Break: awesome at i don't know 37 82 too.
Break: He's pretty radical. His videos are phenomenal. They're full of creativity.
Break: And they're so funny and exciting to watch. Wow. What happened to your voice then, Amy?
Break: Was that dad pretending to be you because the audio was distorted when it really
Break: wasn't because I told him to?
Break: Yes. Good job on remembering, dad.
Break: Do, do, do.
Sam: Okay. Okay. We are back. Very exciting.
Sam: Back, back, back. So I guess I will start as I have the last few weeks with
Sam: the whole election thingy.
Sam: And specifically, I'll start with polling and election graphs.
Sam: I mentioned at the beginning of the show, how many new polls are coming in.
Sam: And this is why I'm taking off the last couple of weeks before the election,
Sam: because this just becomes out of control.
Sam: OK, I'm counting right now.
Sam: Today, state level polls only, not the national. One, two, three,
Sam: four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Oh, wait.
Sam: I'm counting wrong. And these are data points. Like some polls have multiple data points.
Sam: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.
Sam: Skip the national ones. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
Sam: 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40.
Sam: There were 40 state-level polls released today that I have not yet put into
Sam: the system. I will do it soon.
Sam: But here's the deal. The bottom line summary is very similar to when we talked
Sam: about it last week, that we are still in a situation where really it is too close to call.
Sam: There are so many states. And these 40 polls that I just mentioned,
Sam: I scanned through them. I don't think they're going to change the big picture here.
Sam: These seven key states are all really,
Sam: really close and probably beyond the ability of polling to tell the difference
Sam: of who's ahead or who's not and which way will the polls be wrong this time.
Sam: However, having said all that, for about the last week and a half to two weeks.
Sam: Harris has had a string of really bad swing state polls. I am really bad.
Sam: What do I mean by really bad?
Sam: They're still really close, but more that have narrow Trump leads and less that
Sam: have narrow Harris leads. They're narrow regardless.
Sam: But, you know, with my current averages out without those 40 new polls that
Sam: I just mentioned, you know, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are both on the Trump side of the line.
Sam: Barely barely like we got pennsylvania at
Sam: 0.3 percent and wisconsin at 0.4
Sam: percent trump leads in my in my five
Sam: poll averages these new polls will change that they will toss up it's basically
Sam: a toss-up but like they're they had spent most of the time for the last couple
Sam: months on the harris side of the center line right now they're on the trump
Sam: side of the center line but Just barely.
Sam: Okay. Now, let me say this. Let me say this.
Sam: First of all, like last week, we talked about how a bunch of them are low quality pollsters.
Sam: There are a couple higher quality pollsters that weighed in like Quinnipiac
Sam: and Emerson and a couple others.
Sam: And they're all those sort of agreed with the smaller pollsters that have less reputation.
Sam: But like the latest things that I saw like I scanned through the 40 even though
Sam: I haven't put them in yet I think Pennsylvania is going to look look a little
Sam: bit more blue after I put them in but Michigan and Wisconsin are going to look
Sam: a little bit more red after I put them in the bottom line is they're so so close but like.
Sam: I want the trend to reverse. We absolutely know, like, look, you know, exactly.
Sam: First of all, the bottom line is it's too close to call.
Sam: It's too close to call. A little bit on the red side is not all that different
Sam: from a little bit on the blue side.
Sam: However, coupled with the last few elections have underestimated the Republicans a bit.
Sam: I really would feel much, much, much better if we had a situation where the
Sam: tipping point was on the Harris side of the line.
Sam: By like one or 2% than right now where the tipping point is on the Trump side
Sam: of the line by about 0.4%. And, you know, again, this, when I enter the latest
Sam: set of polls, it'll change.
Sam: And then there'll be more polls on Friday and more polls on Saturday and more polls on Sunday.
Sam: This is going to all wiggle around. The bottom line is just too close to call,
Sam: but I still like I, a month ago, Harris was looking stronger than she does now.
Sam: And I would prefer to be back there than where we are now.
Sam: Like, you know, it's sort of like we were,
Sam: yeah, for most of the time since August, if you looked at everything,
Sam: it's been a very narrow Harris lead when you do all the state by state poll averages like I do.
Sam: So it makes me nervous when right now it's a very narrow Trump lead instead.
Sam: Either way, it's very narrow, but I'd rather it be on the other side.
Sam: And that's roughly where we are.
Ivan: One of the things, so we've been talking about the polls and the quality,
Ivan: and there was this article from
Ivan: the Tilt in the New York Times that I'd shared, like it was October 6th.
Ivan: And the headline on it was, how one polling decision is leading to two distinct
Ivan: stories of the election.
Sam: Yes, yes.
Ivan: And it talked about the methodological decisions that seem to have produced
Ivan: two parallel universes of political polling. And,
Ivan: And it's, it is this thing about weighing on recalled vote.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Which means that you're trying to account for how voters say they voted in the last election.
Sam: Yeah, basically what you're doing is you're asking everybody how they voted in 2020,
Sam: and then you wait all of your responses to try to get it to match the actual
Sam: election results in 2020 because you sort of are taking that as a baseline that
Sam: like if you wait that, then everything else should wait.
Sam: Then you're sort of measuring who changed their mind since last time,
Sam: and maybe that'll be more accurate than other ways of waiting.
Sam: And part of what Nate Cohn discussed in this article you're talking about is
Sam: most of the time in the past,
Sam: waiting this way has been considered to be a very, very bad idea and would get wrong answers a lot.
Sam: But a lot of but a lot of pollsters are doing it this time basically because
Sam: they're like, hey, we got the Trump thing wrong two elections in a row.
Sam: Maybe this will fix it. Can I summarize that correctly?
Ivan: Yes, that is correct. And, you know, and that's exactly what it is.
Ivan: The reality is that, well, it's a big decision, okay, all right,
Ivan: and it does make a lot of, and it does impact the poll significantly.
Ivan: And so, what it would do is that if you went and you shifted from that methodology
Ivan: to actually doing it based on the result,
Ivan: I mean, it moves a lot of things towards the Harris side of the ledger, substantially.
Sam: Well and so yeah except that example in florida you know where it went the other way.
Ivan: I don't even understand what the.
Sam: Hell there was a sienna poll that nate conant the new york times also used as
Sam: an example of this effect that ev like all the not counting this poll the polling
Sam: average in florida had trump ahead
Sam: by just under five percent four or five percent right four yeah Yeah,
Sam: the low end three, if he got lucky.
Ivan: Yeah, it was about 4%.
Sam: Or if Harris... Yeah, I mean, my averages had dipped down as low as three,
Sam: but had been back up to four or five by the time this Siena poll came out.
Sam: But the point is, the range things were going on was...
Sam: Was under five, but all of a sudden Sienna comes in as like, Trump's ahead by 14.
Ivan: 14. And we're all like, come on.
Sam: And it's like nowhere near the rest.
Sam: Like I'm, I'm looking at my, my chart for Florida right now.
Sam: I mean, before this came in and, and, and I say 14,
Sam: but actually They released like five different versions of the poll,
Sam: depending on likely or registered, whether you include leaners or you don't,
Sam: whether you include third parties or not.
Sam: They ranged from 11% to 14%, depending on which view you looked at.
Sam: But before that, the previous polls were 4%, 6%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 4%, 5%, 2%, 1%.
Sam: There was one poll that added down to 1%. You know, and so like, it's like,
Sam: and this supposedly is the poll that Nate Cohn was using as an example of not
Sam: doing this waiting that everybody else is doing.
Sam: And it moved everything in the opposite direction.
Sam: So I don't know. The other thing that Nate Cohn also did in the New York Times
Sam: last time around in 2020,
Sam: I think it was 2020, maybe it was even 2016, but I think it was 2020,
Sam: where they took one actual poll and they shared the raw data.
Sam: I think it was three different polling companies to use their own weighting
Sam: methodologies on the same data.
Sam: And there was a massive spread between what, and I don't remember the numbers
Sam: because this was years ago, but there was a massive spread of variation based
Sam: exclusively not on the poll data itself,
Sam: not on the random sampling they did, nothing like that.
Sam: But on the analysis that they did to wait it before coming to a conclusion,
Sam: because all pollsters these days have to they can't just like call a million people,
Sam: get a thousand to actually answer the phone and then just divide and do the math.
Sam: Like because the people who are
Sam: responding to the phone aren't necessarily
Sam: representative of the electorate and you have to adjust it to try to match them
Sam: up but that's like that's i mean i i i want to use a nicer term but it's guesswork
Sam: you are guessing what the final electorate is going to turn out,
Sam: you're guessing what turnout is like.
Sam: You're guessing questions like, does the youth vote actually turn out this time around?
Sam: Or do they go back to like they used to be in previous years?
Sam: Because the youth vote was really high in 2020 and 2022.
Sam: Abnormally high. Is it abnormally high again? Or is it low again?
Sam: Like it was in previous years. And you're guessing.
Ivan: Well, part of the problem is that that is the thing about this.
Ivan: And that's what makes this, because we don't have large margins.
Ivan: Is why this damn thing makes it that it's so fucking unpredictable.
Sam: Right. Like, yeah. And it's because it's so close that you, like,
Sam: polling can tell you, like, if somebody is winning 60-40, okay.
Ivan: Oh, you know, whatever, fine. Yeah.
Sam: You know who's going to win. And polling can give you a really good idea about that.
Sam: But if it's really damn close to 50-50, polling just doesn't know. And like, yeah.
Sam: And like the kind of probabilistic stuff I do on my site tries to like compensate
Sam: for that a little bit by how much they've been off by in the past.
Sam: But it's still like, you know, okay.
Sam: If you, if you have like, like right now, you know, okay.
Sam: I have, you know, Harris having like a 30% chance, but a 30,
Sam: 70% chance is still like, oh, sorry.
Ivan: Sorry, that was, I was trying to, I was trying to find a robo-taxi launch.
Ivan: I have that ready. I'm sorry. Shut up, phone.
Sam: Anyway, no, a 30% chance is, yeah, okay, Trump at 70% is favored,
Sam: but 30% is, easily happens.
Sam: It's not like, it's not like, if the underdog wins in that situation,
Sam: nobody's surprised. Yeah, it was the underdog winning, but it was,
Sam: it was a conceivable thing.
Sam: It's not like, yeah, you're, you're going to be shocked at it.
Sam: Oh my God, they, they won. And also because everything's so close and dependent
Sam: on like this week's polling.
Sam: And what was in the field, like things are moving around. Like it could,
Sam: it could be radically different in a few days. And so, I don't know.
Sam: And this is why like the big pollsters often like their trend lines are very smoothed out.
Sam: So like things don't move very quickly on election graphs.
Sam: I'm set up so that things do move quickly and that the pros and cons of that.
Sam: The con is, of course, a few outliers can throw me way off for a few days until
Sam: they age out of my averages.
Sam: The pro, though, is I can pick up changes faster than the people who are averaging
Sam: over long periods of time.
Sam: It's one of the reasons why election graphs was one of the few places that saw
Sam: the last-minute move towards Clinton in 2016.
Sam: But whatever.
Sam: On polling, one thing I saw – I don't know if I mentioned this on the show before.
Sam: I was having an out-of-show conversation.
Sam: But i saw an article
Sam: and i won't be able to remember the reference but there
Sam: is a group that
Sam: has had a huge amount of success in
Sam: predicting some they they're not involved they're not
Sam: trying to do the u.s presidential election right now but they've done some
Sam: local elections in like europe okay yeah
Sam: and they have gotten some predictions that
Sam: were super super close to the
Sam: actual answer like not only within like a percent
Sam: or two but within like a couple hundred votes of the
Sam: actual answer and they're not doing
Sam: polling at all the way they are
Sam: doing it is they are doing they
Sam: they They do a demographic model and then they do a simulation where they make
Sam: a little AI model of every human and try to predict based on everything they
Sam: can find out about that user or user about that person.
Sam: Because, you know, these are actual people and you can find out information about them online.
Sam: You can find out, you know, by scanning their social media, do they seem to
Sam: lean Republican or Democrat? You can find out their age and their race and their
Sam: sex and where they went to school.
Sam: You can find out all kinds of information about these people.
Sam: And basically, they build a simulation of each actual individual voter and try
Sam: to predict how that voter is going to vote.
Sam: And then they run this simulation, and they've apparently gotten very,
Sam: very close to the real answers.
Sam: Because they're predicting not only how they're going to vote,
Sam: but if they're going to vote as well.
Sam: Okay and so i don't know i i just think that's that it's interesting cool and
Sam: a little bit scary you know because they're basic you know because you know
Sam: look at yvonne's social media you know he's voting for harris,
Sam: If they could listen to the podcast.
Ivan: Fuck. I mean, if they thought I was voting for Trump, then Jesus Christ,
Ivan: they need to take some psychedelic drugs.
Sam: Okay. So that's it for polling. Still too close to call.
Sam: Although, again, the summary, things have been a little too Trumpy in the last
Sam: couple of polls. I'd really rather them do something else.
Ivan: There was one comment.
Sam: And I was going to move on to other politics. Yeah, go ahead.
Ivan: But before, there was one comment that you made online, if I remember correctly.
Ivan: He said something that if they waterboarded
Ivan: you yes you would you you would you know you would confess that you think that
Ivan: you think that based on all of this mathematical shenanigans that we're talking
Ivan: about that you think that they're underestimating no not.
Sam: On the mathematical shenanigans. On the mathematical shenanigans.
Sam: On the mathematical shenanigans.
Ivan: On the methodology.
Sam: My just gut feel about looking at everything.
Sam: And I have no rigorous logic behind it at all. It's just a gut feel.
Ivan: Right, right, right.
Sam: And I think I said this on last week's show, actually. I believe that it is
Sam: more likely that they're underestimating Harris than they're underestimating Trump.
Sam: And a big part of that is, first of all, there's all the shenanigans we just
Sam: talked about, about like how they're doing weighting and methodology and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But also just the enthusiasm gap that seems to be really obvious.
Sam: Like, you know, it's not you can a you can compare the rallies and that's not
Sam: really you can't really tell.
Sam: But also so many anecdotal stories that I've been hearing about how places that
Sam: four years ago were coated with Trump flags and Trump posters and whatever and
Sam: are just empty right now,
Sam: which is not saying those people aren't necessarily going to vote for Trump,
Sam: but they're not as excited about it as they were.
Sam: And the same thing is true.
Ivan: A more factual thing, which is totally true, difference between 2016 and now.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I think that leading up to 2016,
Ivan: we've been talking about how Trump has emboldened all the racists. Okay?
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: You know, we talked a lot about how a lot of people said that,
Ivan: oh, when they asked me about it, I really don't want to admit that.
Ivan: You know, that I was supporting Trump. Okay.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: But we have gone from that to where these guys basically just,
Ivan: you know, we'll paint it on their chest and,
Ivan: you know, whatever, and carry around a flag and stickers and,
Ivan: you know, tattoo their ass with Trump's name.
Ivan: I'm sure somebody tattooed Trump. I'm sure on his ass and, you know,
Ivan: on everywhere in their body, because I've seen a whole bunch of them.
Sam: It's just, They're probably a
Sam: whole bunch doing the Roger Stone treatment like he has Nixon on his back.
Ivan: Nixon on his dick. Exactly. Well, yeah. Well, no, I thought it was Nixon on his dick.
Sam: Roger Stone has Nixon on his back. Now, he may have Nixon other places,
Sam: too, but he certainly has it on his back.
Ivan: I thought he said he... I've seen pictures. No, no, no, but I thought it was
Ivan: a tattoo on his dick, too.
Sam: I have not seen pictures of that. I've seen pictures of the one on his back.
Ivan: I have not seen pictures of that either, and I don't want to,
Ivan: by the way. Let me be clear. If anybody has it, don't send it to us.
Sam: You can just show up at one of the Roger Stone swinger parties, too.
Ivan: Oh, God, no. Jesus. Well, actually, if I showed up to one of those,
Ivan: just punch him dead in the face. Would that be OK?
Ivan: I think if there is a guy that I would meet that I would probably risk getting
Ivan: arrested for assault, it's Roger Stone.
Sam: You should punch him in the Nixon instead. Yeah.
Sam: One of them.
Ivan: That's not a bad idea. I could start there. First kick him there and then punch him.
Sam: There you go. Anyway, so what were you saying?
Sam: You were saying the more data-driven reason why you think it's blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: No, what I was mentioning is that before the 2016 election,
Ivan: I think that there was definitely an effect of people not wanting to,
Ivan: you know, not publicly wanting to declare their love of Trump.
Ivan: Whereas now you're on the other end where people that are Trump's have no problem
Ivan: declaring it loud and proud, wearing it on their head, wearing it on stuff.
Ivan: I mean, I still keep getting shocked by people that I think it's I will say
Ivan: that I think I've got 90 plus percent of people that I think that that that
Ivan: I that I knew that or Trumpy like Trump.
Ivan: But still, I occasionally get surprised by this one person that I.
Ivan: You know, actually, I probably was on the fence.
Ivan: I wasn't sure that also just recently goes and puts themselves in a fucking
Ivan: picture on social media with a Trump hat on.
Ivan: And I'm like immediately at that point where I'm just like, OK,
Ivan: I never want to see your fucking face again.
Ivan: Thank you. Just just because I don't even have that many friends on social media.
Ivan: So, you know, I got maybe a couple under 500. so
Ivan: what i don't i don't need i don't need that
Ivan: guy there so i but but but this
Ivan: is something that happens now where i got yeah i
Ivan: see people like going to like fucking like beach parties wearing trump hats
Ivan: i'm just like what the fuck is with these people but well like i said although
Ivan: i think those people but my point is that they are loud and proud now so i don't
Ivan: think that there is something that...
Sam: Do you think they're less so now than 2020, though?
Sam: Like, what do you mean?
Ivan: So what?
Sam: Like, then 2020, like, I know you were saying 2016 and the shy voters,
Sam: they came out and were much more vocal in 2020.
Sam: Do you think that's receded a little bit at this point?
Ivan: No.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Nothing. No, no.
Sam: So then you think, I think, I think you think they're less like the people who
Sam: are loud and proud are still loud and proud, but there are a lot of people who are sort of like, yeah.
Sam: And I think that's, I think that's the case. I mean, and again,
Sam: I keep hearing these anecdotal stories and the reason you'd have to waterboard
Sam: me for me to say this, well, I guess I've said it, but like the reason I don't
Sam: like put it on my election graph.
Ivan: Yeah, I didn't have to do that. There you go.
Sam: You did have to walk.
Ivan: I'm actually happy that I didn't. I'm really happy that I didn't have to waterboard
Ivan: you for the answers. Okay. I am glad. Yes.
Sam: The reason why I won't inject this into my election graphs analysis,
Sam: where I'm going to stick to the numbers on election graphs and with the range
Sam: of variation that the polls have had historically, is because,
Sam: again, and we've mentioned this briefly before, but there's so much room for
Sam: motivated thinking here.
Sam: Like I, I see all these anecdotes of like, oh, people who are like,
Sam: you know, they were diehard Trump supporters and now they're either sitting
Sam: it out or they're going for Harris.
Sam: And I hear more of those stories and I hear people like making questions.
Sam: Making TikToks or whatever about how their previous Trumpy neighborhood now
Sam: no longer has lots of flags and signs like it used to.
Sam: And I'm like, yeah, okay. But am I seeing these because that's what I want to see?
Sam: And meanwhile, there are plenty of neighborhoods where that stuff is just as strong as it used to.
Sam: And even in the neighborhoods where it's less strong, maybe those are,
Sam: maybe they didn't put that on the sign, but they're still going to vote for it. You know, and look.
Ivan: I think that the thing is how to empirically measure this. Right.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And it's and it's very difficult.
Sam: Well, that's where you get to the polls have it too close. Right.
Ivan: And it goes because even when we, you know, because you could take data from 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022.
Ivan: And you can see the shifts, you know, in voting and in locations.
Ivan: But one thing that we know from past experience is that midterm election voting
Ivan: doesn't necessarily directly translate into general election voting.
Sam: It's a different group of people who show up.
Ivan: It's a different group of people, you know, and you've seen trends and sometimes
Ivan: those trends do translate, but you can't, but there isn't a track record where that is the case.
Ivan: And so it's tough to go and look and say, okay, look, we know what's happened
Ivan: since 2020. We've seen every special election.
Ivan: We know the details. We know how Democrats have won consistently.
Ivan: But historically, that hasn't directly translated into presidential.
Ivan: It doesn't mean that it's not an influencing factor. And it's why I think that
Ivan: you and I keep speculating that maybe we're undercounting.
Ivan: But at the same time, we can't really say that,
Ivan: that that data those data points actually translate into something something
Ivan: that directly correlates to the general election.
Sam: For we won't know till we won't know till
Sam: they start counting the votes you know and and
Sam: that that we won't know that's the bottom line with this scenario right now
Sam: and and i we spent a lot of time last week talking about that doesn't necessarily
Sam: mean the actual result of the election is going to be super close it might be
Sam: but the problem is it might be Within the data we have now,
Sam: it could also be a really healthy Trump win.
Sam: It could also be a really healthy Harris win. And it's even possible that one
Sam: or the other would have a landslide.
Sam: It's just that we don't know.
Ivan: We don't know.
Sam: And I really would feel so much better if in these last few weeks,
Sam: how many days now is this stupid thing less than.
Ivan: 30 20 something.
Sam: Yeah it is as
Sam: of this moment 25.8 days as
Sam: we're recording till we're done and and yeah i would feel so much better if
Sam: some if harris was able to like pull out like another four or five percent out
Sam: of her ass or something but i don't i don't think it's gonna happen yeah you know uh is.
Ivan: And here's the thing, like we've talked about again, it's not a popular vote thing.
Ivan: I mean, even like the consistently, the national popular vote polls show that Harris is ahead.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: You know, by what margin is the question? But she's ahead. She's ahead.
Ivan: She's ahead. She's ahead. She's ahead.
Sam: It has declined a little bit in the last couple of weeks, but she's ahead.
Ivan: She's ahead. Okay. She's solidly ahead. So, but you know.
Sam: So let's move on. Let's move on from polling and stuff and talk about some of
Sam: the, the other things that are going wrong.
Sam: They're going wrong, going on, not necessarily wrong.
Sam: Like I did want to mention one of the things Harris has been doing.
Sam: People have been complaining. Oh, you're not doing enough interviews.
Sam: You're not talking to the press.
Sam: You're not answering hard questions, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: This week, she went on an interview blitz. She was all over the place.
Sam: She's been on Howard Stern. She's been on this Call Her Daddy podcast thing,
Sam: which I'd never heard of before, but is apparently really, really popular with under 35 women.
Ivan: Another thing we don't know about.
Sam: She was on 60 Minutes. She was on...
Ivan: And Trump declined to be on 60 Minutes.
Sam: Trump declined. she was on Colbert she was
Sam: on she was on all over the place right now I
Sam: still heard complaints that she's on the
Sam: wrong places like she's not
Sam: doing serious news blah blah blah now come on 60 minutes 60 minutes really but
Sam: but okay fine but all these others she was like those are fluffy those are soft
Sam: those are whatever and I'm like come on you you fucking asshole people like first of all like,
Sam: When she has been on serious news things, for the most part,
Sam: I think 60 Minutes was a little bit better.
Sam: But some of the other ones she has done, it's been trying to ask her to respond to Trump nonsense.
Sam: Or it's been trying to do gotchas on like, hey, your position eight years ago
Sam: was slightly different than your position today. What do you have to say about
Sam: that? And stuff like that.
Sam: And it wasn't, it's not really, I don't, you know, people are like,
Sam: make her talk about the issues and detail and policy and blah,
Sam: blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, look.
Sam: If you really want policy, it's all out there. You can go find it. Okay?
Sam: But this is not how people decide elections.
Sam: What you want to know about, you want to know about her values and you want
Sam: to know about her character.
Sam: That's what you want to know.
Ivan: Every day, the policy doesn't matter. Every fucking day Trump comes out.
Sam: Maybe competence.
Ivan: With some, well, but yeah.
Sam: And none of it applies to Trump, of course. Yes. Yes. Like, because he's,
Sam: he's a battling moron with no, with no competence whatsoever,
Sam: with no character whatsoever.
Sam: And he's, and it's still a goddamn toss up election, but like,
Sam: but what, what gets people about Trump though, the people who do like Trump
Sam: like him because they like that kind of personality and they like that.
Sam: They feel like they like he idiots. They like idiots, but they also feel like
Sam: he hates the same people they hate, you know, and that matters to them.
Sam: And he's going to poke the liberals in the eye and—,
Sam: Let's be clear about this.
Ivan: We're talking about, you know, yeah, yeah, these guys are complaining this week
Ivan: about Trump policy. Bob Woodward came out with a apparently or is coming out
Ivan: with a book with a new book right with a new book and let's see,
Ivan: Trump was shipping fucking COVID tests to Putin.
Sam: Now, and I want to be very careful when we say this, because everybody,
Sam: when the first headline comes out, you think, oh, you send in the little boxes of the home tests.
Sam: No, he was sending the really expensive, large
Sam: hospital quality tests that were in very short supply at the very beginning
Sam: of the pandemic that governors and hospitals were fighting to try to get so
Sam: they could do real-time quick analysis of who had COVID and who didn't in the
Sam: early stages of the pandemic.
Sam: This was before the little home tests. This was before all that he was sending. Go ahead.
Ivan: I mean, let's see. What else did he do? Oh, he's been calling Putin all the
Ivan: time, like right now, ever since we...
Sam: Hey, buddy! Now, Putin, by the way, Putin's spokesman confirmed the thing with
Sam: the tests, but said the phone calls haven't been happening.
Sam: Now, take what you want out of Putin's spokesman said.
Ivan: Exactly. Thank you very much. I mean, what the hell else?
Ivan: I mean, it's just...
Sam: The double standard is amazing.
Ivan: You know, an entire range of egregious fucking bullshit.
Ivan: I mean, this motherfucker was shipping critical medical equipment that we needed
Ivan: to a thug that is out to destroy this country.
Sam: Now, Yvonne, you could say it was an important sort of diplomatic way to improve
Sam: relations and get some trust and try to work a deal with him.
Ivan: Uh-huh.
Sam: Now, Putin, apparently, the other thing that Woodward reported is Putin specifically
Sam: told Donald, don't tell anybody about this.
Ivan: Yes. I wonder why. Why?
Sam: Um i mean.
Ivan: I mean and they mentioned how going to mar-a-lago is like going to north korea
Ivan: i actually i don't know if i mentioned this i i was this.
Sam: This was a lindsey graham quote.
Ivan: Yeah i i actually got somebody invited me to mar-a-lago like about eight months ago,
Ivan: somewhere along that and i looked at him like are
Ivan: you out of your no i looked at him i said this are you out
Ivan: of your fucking mind i wouldn't be caught dead in mar-a-lago but
Ivan: i i hear people you know the man people
Ivan: that are it's like a magnet for grifters right now
Ivan: it's like a magnet for grifters let me
Ivan: change that it's a magnet for grifters it is
Ivan: the ultimate grifter magnet i mean you know as we're talking about this i don't
Ivan: know he was selling some other shit this week i can't remember what the latest
Ivan: one another scammy thing this week it wasn't what the fuck what did the yeah
Ivan: we talked we talked about.
Sam: The watches last week there were there were the coins there were the coins.
Ivan: Yeah we had the coin uh there's there's a
Ivan: crypto thing um so there
Ivan: was another there was another scam this week i
Ivan: can't remember what the hell it was right well
Ivan: there's so many it's like it's like
Ivan: you keep losing track every fucking week it's
Ivan: like some other fucking you know
Ivan: scam thing that he's selling
Ivan: i just i don't and and you know you
Ivan: talk about the double standard thing i mean what fucking
Ivan: president that every week announces like selling bibles
Ivan: made in china for three dollars okay so he's got those okay mister i hate hate
Ivan: the china bibles what we had elon paying 47 per person to register to vote was
Ivan: that that was another another scam thing is that is that legal i.
Sam: Think so actually because you're you're not paying them to vote a particular
Sam: way you're just trying to get them to register.
Ivan: Okay well.
Sam: And but wasn't Elon actually, he wasn't, he was paying to get the information
Sam: of other people to try to influence.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Like, it wasn't, there was some level of indirection in there. I forget the details.
Sam: But there's also, there's a liberal organization, Cards Against Humanity,
Sam: they have a game, but they're also lobbying in various things.
Sam: They're doing something similar in the other direction, too.
Ivan: I'm like, I don't know. I know that he announced, I saw that there was some
Ivan: other things It's just, it's just every week there isn't, I mean,
Ivan: I go and I turn and I'm like,
Ivan: oh, well, you can go and buy the new Trump, you know, whatever,
Ivan: like, you know, dick measure or whatever. I don't know. I don't know.
Ivan: That would be, yeah, exactly. It's a tape measure. You could measure your dick
Ivan: against Trump's to see if you have the virility of the greatest president that we have ever had.
Ivan: I mean, I'm sure that he would fucking sell that if I fucking told him that
Ivan: we could get like $59.99 for each one of those. And he gets 50%.
Sam: Well, that's lovely. I looked up the Cards Against Humanity thing just to put it out here.
Sam: Here's an article in The Hill. Cards
Sam: Against Humanity, to pay swing state non-voters to make a plan to vote.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And so this came out October 10th. Cards Against Humanity is jumping into the
Sam: 2024 White House election by offering to pay blue-leaning non-voters in swing
Sam: states to create a plan to vote.
Sam: They rolled out a website on Tuesday to encourage people who did not cast ballots
Sam: in 2020 to vote this November. They are looking to pay some battleground state voters up to $100.
Sam: The payment could be received if the eligible voter writes an apology for not
Sam: casting a ballot in 2020, makes a voting plan, and posts on social media,
Sam: Donald Trump is a human toilet.
Sam: So, anyway.
Ivan: I mean, that sounds, okay, that's an interesting plan. And, you know,
Ivan: I just, it's the double standard thing, man.
Sam: I mean, it's amazing. I mean, Donald Trump is practically drooling on the floor
Sam: at his campaign rallies at this time.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And meanwhile, like Harris is intelligently answering questions to all kinds of interviewers.
Sam: And by the way, just getting back to it for a second, these non-serious interviewers,
Sam: I've listened to part of the Howard Stern interview and I've listened to part of the.
Ivan: Howard Stern has turned into a very good interviewer as he has aged, okay, by the way.
Sam: Yes, yes. But what I was going to say is both the Call
Sam: Her Daddy interview and the Howard Stern
Sam: interview were miles above other interviews I've heard in terms of actually
Sam: asking interesting questions that elicited interesting answers that weren't
Sam: just talking points that I'd heard a hundred times before.
Sam: That gave you insight into Harris as a person, not just as, you know,
Sam: now some of the stories I'd heard before, because I've paid attention,
Sam: but they were actually asking interesting questions, whereas the traditional
Sam: journalists asked bullshit crap.
Sam: You know, like, what do you think about Donald Trump saying that you only recently turned black?
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: You give her a chance to like dismiss that, but like that doesn't tell you anything,
Sam: but you know, instead, you know, some of these other interviews are like actually,
Sam: and I apologize, I'm not prepared.
Sam: I don't have an example on the top of my head. I'm just telling you the general impression.
Sam: And I didn't listen to all of either interview, but I listened to enough of
Sam: both interviews to be like,
Sam: this is what an interview of a presidential candidate should sound like yeah
Sam: yeah you know and i i managed to get myself completely distracted from whatever
Sam: point i was actually making before that but we're.
Ivan: Talking about the we're talking about the you know the double standard.
Sam: Oh yeah the double standard because because like harris is answering intelligently
Sam: about all this stuff has depth to her answers clearly knows what she's talking about.
Sam: And Donald Trump makes, what was the latest example?
Sam: It was another person ragging on the New York Times.
Sam: And I know people like to do that. But here's what it was.
Sam: Donald Trump made some comments this week about immigrants and how,
Sam: basically saying the old racist trope about them being inferior because of their
Sam: genes and they are polluting the gene pool and all of this kind of stuff.
Sam: The New York times headline was in remarks about migrants.
Sam: Donald Trump invoked his long held fascination with genes and genetics.
Sam: It's like this gets back to the sane washing that we talked about a couple weeks
Sam: ago. It's like, you know,
Sam: There's this really strong desire to paint this election as a normal election,
Sam: as a choice between two policy ideologies with normal candidates who behave normally.
Sam: And like pretend this is, you know, Gore versus Bush, you know,
Sam: or Obama versus Romney or whatever.
Sam: It's not. No. But there's this this super desire to seemingly pretend that it is.
Sam: And so on the one hand, you try to take whatever the hell Donald Trump is doing
Sam: and try to present it in a more normal light.
Sam: And at the same time, as Harris is already talking intelligently about something,
Sam: so you try to play gotcha and be like, oh, but that's different than what you said six years ago.
Sam: And can you explain there's this one hole
Sam: in what you're talking about and can you go into
Sam: more detail on this and how have you explained how you're going
Sam: to pay for this and all this kind of stuff where you
Sam: know again donald trump has no
Sam: idea about fucking anything you know and
Sam: here we are yeah other than hate other
Sam: than you know he's all in it
Sam: for himself and there are a whole bunch of people he hates
Sam: and he wants revenge for all the people who've taken
Sam: him who have treated him badly over the years and
Sam: i mean how companies i mean
Sam: voters he directly talks
Sam: about how this campaign is all about retribution you
Sam: know is not even hiding it
Sam: it's like right there it's one of the main themes of
Sam: the campaign and and there you go
Sam: anyway what else we got we had a request on the curmudgeon's corner track track
Sam: slack from uh from pete to talk about how shockingly trumpy generation x is
Sam: and i know you exchanged some articles with him on the slack but i didn't have
Sam: a time to look at him so well.
Ivan: I i did share the article and the one thing is you know because there's been
Ivan: several analysis of this and and one of the things that keep happening that's
Ivan: why i shared that article you know about it is that a big part or a problem
Ivan: is how you measure generation X, okay?
Ivan: And what the range of years that you take for Generation X, and how you measure it.
Ivan: And once you dig through the data, it's not borne out that way. I just...
Ivan: I mean, it's, I guess it's, it's a little bit more.
Sam: At this point, haven't people pretty much standardized around like what?
Ivan: 1965 to 80. The problem is no, no, no, nobody uses the same range.
Ivan: Part of the problem is a lot of the polls, a part of the polls that when you
Ivan: listen, when you add people and you go like, well, we're going to go up to 60,
Ivan: you know, the problem is that a lot of people do the surveys and they take an
Ivan: age range that they did and they use that as a proxy for generation x right
Ivan: because when that's not because.
Sam: The the age ranges and surveys are usually like 50 to 55 you know or.
Ivan: Yeah you know 20 to try to use that as a right and then they try to use that
Ivan: as a proxy for a generation when then they're not actually asking.
Sam: Those generational ages yeah.
Ivan: No no and a whole bunch of the times almost every time that you dig into it
Ivan: then you find that you know generation x is is probably like 50 some odd it's
Ivan: never the majority of Generation X that's Trumpier.
Ivan: It's a lot, you know, there's a lot more people that I would like in the 40s,
Ivan: in the 40s, but it's still majority not,
Ivan: Trumpy is what a lot of the data analysis shows once you dig under the hood of the numbers.
Ivan: But yeah, I will admit that it's, I would like it to be better than that.
Ivan: But I think that, and that I think also varies by region, you know?
Sam: Oh yeah. Well, generations are really a made up concept anyway.
Sam: You know, there, it's not really as like straightforward, like people ascribe
Sam: all of these qualities to, you know, this generation is like this and that generation is like that.
Sam: And, and really, no, there are some societal trends that the general concept
Sam: that what is going on during your formative years has an effect on people's
Sam: personalities. Oh yeah, of course.
Sam: That's, that's almost a obvious, you know, like, did you grow up?
Sam: During a time of recession? Or did you grow up in a time of economic boom?
Sam: What was going on in politics at the time that you were first paying attention to politics?
Sam: Of course, that stuff makes a difference. But actually chunking it up into defined
Sam: generations is kind of bogus to begin with.
Sam: And like you said, even when people talk about boomers, right?
Sam: I mean, the whole thing with boomers, there was a whole sort of culture war
Sam: thing going on that, you know, if you were talking conservative boomers versus
Sam: liberal boomers, whole different universe. Oh God.
Ivan: Yes. They are very, very different. And even like in that analysis that I,
Ivan: that I showed, it was like, kind of like it showed hell.
Ivan: It showed that in the last election,
Ivan: the majority of like the really older Americans voted blue. Yeah.
Ivan: It was like the group in between, it was like really like, it was just interesting
Ivan: how, how trends have, have moved in that way.
Sam: How things are really more complicated and not, don't fit the simple explanations
Sam: that people try to put on them.
Ivan: Yeah. I will also say that, look, there are patterns depending on where you
Ivan: were, I mean, like where you were educated.
Ivan: Look, I will say that if you look at our cohort of people that I,
Ivan: for example, went to school with us, I mean, it's not a hundred percent,
Ivan: but vast majority of us are definitely not MAGA.
Sam: Well, yeah, some notable exceptions, but we know the high, you know,
Sam: if you actually look at this stuff, yes, there are correlations with age.
Sam: Yes, there are correlations with generations, which are based on age,
Sam: but the biggest correlations in American politics right now are educational
Sam: level and rural versus urban.
Sam: And, and, and there, there, there's some correlations to sort of demographics
Sam: and income and things like that,
Sam: but rural versus urban and education are the two biggest correlations to political
Sam: orientation right now. And gender.
Sam: The gender gap is getting huge, bigger than it has been in a long, long time.
Ivan: Oh, by the way, women are getting more educated, by the way,
Ivan: versus men, which that also has an influence, okay?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: I will say that there was a bumper sticker that I saw that somebody showed a
Ivan: picture that I think more clearly explained this entire thing.
Ivan: And what they said is that the less you understand how things work,
Ivan: the more likely you are to believe in conspiracies.
Ivan: And that's just reality. You know, when you don't understand how anything the fuck works,
Ivan: some idiot comes out and tells you that fires were created by space lasers,
Ivan: you know, that the wildfires in Hawaii were started by space lasers,
Ivan: you know, and you don't know shit about nothing, you might believe that. Okay?
Ivan: Well, you have more of a probability to believe that.
Sam: Or people are steering, or Joe Biden is steering the hurricane with a joystick
Sam: on his desk in the White House.
Ivan: With a joystick, yes. But, you know, because they don't understand that you have the joystick.
Sam: Right, exactly.
Ivan: Right, I mean, that's very clear. And I think that that's the biggest fucking
Ivan: divide, I think, that we have.
Ivan: You know, it's this whole thing, like I mentioned recently about the conversation I had.
Sam: The one caveat I'll put on that is there are plenty of MAGA people who actually
Sam: do understand in quite a lot of detail exactly what is happening,
Sam: but are going to use it for grifting and manipulating.
Ivan: Well, that's the other. But that group, wait, that group knows what the fuck is going on.
Sam: Yes. those.
Ivan: Guys are just trying to profit off whatever the fuck it.
Sam: Is they're they're trying to profit yes
Sam: correct and that's the only thing they care
Sam: about and i don't want to underestimate too there is sort
Sam: of this fundamental cultural divide going
Sam: on as well that is being taken advantage of all these forces of this huge group
Sam: of people who feel like they're losing control and that their vision of America
Sam: is losing out and all of this grifting and influence control,
Sam: influence control, all, all, all of this MAGA stuff that's building on top of
Sam: this is taking advantage of those feelings in order to gain power.
Sam: And money.
Ivan: No, and I think that, yes, and I think that's the thing.
Ivan: Is this, I found the data that we're talking about in splits in generational voting.
Ivan: And no matter how you cut it in like, and this is a Washington Post article
Ivan: that I shared that was actually digging into the data.
Sam: Give the title and the date so people can find it if they want.
Ivan: The title, this was last year. Gen X is not the Trumpiest generation, period.
Ivan: Washington Post. This is by Philip Bump. This was one year ago because he decided
Ivan: to dig into the data because, you know, people were had been saying this.
Ivan: OK, and, you know, he did go and did the deeper analysis and trying to to to
Ivan: to understand what was going on.
Ivan: It actually showed like in 2016 that silent generation voters,
Ivan: for example, they were they have been clearly on the on the Trump side of the
Ivan: ledger, no matter how you slice the data.
Ivan: I think it was like, you know, it was, there were definitely significantly there. Boomers less so, okay?
Ivan: It was more silent generation more than anything else. But no matter how you
Ivan: slice the data, 2016, 2020, whatever, Gen X wasn't, okay?
Ivan: Now, the one, I will say one thing that you noticed about the vote between 2016
Ivan: and 2020, that no matter how you slice the data, was that there was a lot of other in Gen X in 2016.
Ivan: And a lot of what happened there is that a lot of those others actually moved to vote Trump,
Ivan: the ones that were others, but still by a majority, still not Trumpy.
Ivan: So it showed that definitely the Trumpiest generation, for sure.
Ivan: Simon, those guys definitely are the ones that are that really are the Trumpiest
Ivan: of all in the analysis of the data. So there you go.
Ivan: You know, so that's that's the bottom line. It's, you know, you look at it,
Ivan: you dig into the numbers.
Sam: So in other words, the Trumpiest people in American government right now,
Sam: Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.
Ivan: Basically yes okay gotcha gotcha
Ivan: but i you know but once we go back to
Ivan: this thing you know it oh look it's what
Ivan: we were talking again look like i mentioned man i
Ivan: i think you know you the education either like you said winds up working in
Ivan: two ways either you understand what the fuck is going on and you're just a prick
Ivan: and you just want to fucking profit off of it and you don't give a fuck.
Ivan: Or, you know,
Ivan: You're like us.
Ivan: I was just, you know, the other day calculating my taxes again, and I have to pay again.
Ivan: And, you know, I thought about it for a second and I realized it's my fucking what I got to do.
Ivan: Yeah. As much as people hate on Bill Gates the other day, he was saying, hey, you know what?
Ivan: I should be taxed more. As a matter of fact, I think my estate should be taxed
Ivan: like almost double what it is or triple something like that.
Ivan: He was advocating for an estate tax that would basically take two thirds of
Ivan: what he has and that that would be OK.
Ivan: And so because he understands how important that is for society.
Ivan: Recently, there was an interesting case. I'm talking about estate tax.
Sam: OK.
Ivan: There was a guy in Texas, OK, who some people have been sleuthing to find out who the hell he was.
Ivan: And they found out he was some obscure billionaire that
Ivan: nobody knew he was a billionaire after he died that did not do anything on purpose
Ivan: to avoid the estate tax and wound up paying the biggest estate tax bill by almost
Ivan: like seven to 10 times more than anybody had ever paid.
Ivan: It was a seven billion dollar estate tax
Ivan: payment when he died once people
Ivan: started digging into around the guy what they found out that the guy
Ivan: was just a pretty decent guy and he'd
Ivan: left some money to his kids and what he said is well i could create a charity
Ivan: or something or whatever maybe my money just just go to the government so they
Ivan: can do what we need you know for people and his estate when he died wound up
Ivan: being the largest estate tax bill ever.
Ivan: I was like, and this guy was an investment manager, find out.
Ivan: So this is not a guy that was unsavvy about money or whatever.
Ivan: This guy apparently had been managing investments for other people.
Sam: He could have avoided the taxes if he wanted to.
Ivan: No doubt about it. He just decided not to.
Sam: Paid the ticket okay shall we wrap this
Sam: up yep okay thanks everybody for joining us for another curmudgeons corner you
Sam: can go to curmudgeons corner.com or curmudgeons hyphen corner.com i should say
Sam: because some asshole took curmudgeons
Sam: corner.com so i always have the hyphen oh fuck you yeah not you i.
Ivan: Mean the guy who took it not not you i have to keep screaming this recently
Ivan: i keep saying fuck you without saying no not you.
Sam: Them well and just
Sam: like on youtube there's like there's like three curmudgeons corners
Sam: or something like that at this point you know like and we're the last one to
Sam: the party of putting it on youtube youtube but and and speaking of which thank
Sam: you sean for watching live he watched for one segment and then he dropped off but you know okay all.
Ivan: Right well thank you thank you.
Sam: Thank you sean that's that's
Sam: plenty that's plenty yeah but yeah
Sam: curmudgeon-corner.com you can find all the ways to contact
Sam: us you can find our archives transcripts blah blah blah importantly you can
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Sam: Or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our curmudgeons corner slack where
Sam: Yvonne and I, and a bunch of listeners are chatting and sharing links throughout the week.
Sam: And yeah, Yvonne, do you have any highlights from the curmudgeons course slack
Sam: you'd like to share today.
Ivan: Ah let's see i'm i'm
Ivan: trying to figure out none of the cobalt programming stuff i think you know we
Ivan: we decided to go overly geeky on on on programming and and i'm like you know
Ivan: i realize that you know i'm even on the low low end of the totem pole on my programming skills,
Ivan: oh here we go this so football game this weekend at stanford university and
Ivan: the Stanford Band's halftime show had some girl dressed up in a cardboard Cybertruck
Ivan: that keeps losing control and running into things.
Sam: You know, this morning when I was heading to work, I saw, I've seen many Cybertrucks.
Ivan: I've seen many.
Sam: There are a variety of them around there. I mean, I actually don't know if it's
Sam: many or if it's the same one I'm seeing over and over again,
Sam: but I've seen a bunch, okay?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: But for the first time this morning, I saw a Cybertruck with the back open,
Sam: you know, where the cargo is.
Ivan: Were they parked or were driving?
Sam: Driving. Driving. With the back open. Like the cargo area was open instead of
Sam: having that little bit on it.
Ivan: Yeah, well, that's, okay, but that's not.
Sam: I mean, it is supposedly a pickup truck, right? You should, like,
Sam: you open the back and you can put stuff there. Now, I didn't see something.
Ivan: Well, was there.
Sam: I mean there might have been but it wasn't big enough that it was sticking out
Sam: or anything but the back was open and i was like i haven't seen that before.
Ivan: I haven't seen i i must admit that i haven't seen that before either it's probably
Ivan: i'm gonna guess it's unintentional,
Ivan: right oh and uh well i did i did find this and posted lately talking about cyber
Ivan: trucks that Tesla has finally revealed its CyberCab.
Ivan: And it looks like a smaller, sleeker Cybertruck.
Ivan: And he had a whole bunch of them, prototypes. However, deliveries are to be in three years.
Ivan: I mean, and given how he has missed deadlines, Bob already mentioned probably 2030.
Ivan: And I think he may be right. But this thing is about the most impractical, like,
Ivan: robo taxi i've ever seen because it could only fit two people right i i i mean
Ivan: i guess there are a lot of people that are single passenger rides but is it isn't a proper.
Sam: One that where like it really is truly complete like there is no steering wheel you're only a passenger.
Ivan: No i saw that there is a i think i i i don't know i i think i wasn't oh god i.
Sam: Gotta look because i don't i don't really truly believe these are truly doing
Sam: what you like what you would want on a fully autonomous vehicle in unless there
Sam: is no manual override the person inside the car can only specify the destination.
Ivan: Well here's the thing i will say that the the ones that waymo has been driving
Ivan: around do have a wheel but there is no manual override right i mean you you
Ivan: can't i mean even though the wheel is present there you it's you can't use it.
Sam: So wait if you hop into the front you can't take over.
Ivan: That's correct yeah it has to
Ivan: be if somebody needs to do it it's remotely so um
Ivan: i i know that's that that's been
Ivan: an issue because i've seen these like get stuck
Ivan: somewhere and like the people inside getting yelled at by
Ivan: somebody outside and they're like you can't do anything i
Ivan: can't do anything i'm like you know so yeah so so
Ivan: i know that that's been the case even if they've they've left
Ivan: that but i know that there was a video now that you
Ivan: you know you're saying this there was a video of of
Ivan: him driving around so now let me pull up and
Ivan: there's a whole bunch of robots and more
Ivan: robots and i don't know stupid robots
Ivan: dancing and i don't know who gives
Ivan: a shit about the fucking robots dancing so let
Ivan: me see here's a video and i'm looking and there was a video
Ivan: with elon writing inside one and they
Ivan: did it inside hollywood studio like and
Ivan: so it's in it's in a controlled area they didn't
Ivan: do this like demo like out on the road but i
Ivan: see elon sitting behind a wheel but not behind a wheel because he's in the passenger
Ivan: seat but i i saw him there but i can't you could i couldn't see inside so i
Ivan: can't tell if okay but he was sitting there looking like an idiot well i guess
Ivan: looking like himself and anyway well we didn't.
Sam: Mention like his appearance at the trump rally where he was jumping around.
Ivan: Yeah looking like a complete fool i mean i i i mean i don't understand how he
Ivan: just didn't lose pennsylvania with that stroke.
Sam: Yes well anyway let's wrap it up i will say i'm i'm trying to post blog posts
Sam: on electiongraphs.com as well as the updates so check it out periodically i'll
Sam: probably do one over the weekend,
Sam: just to get another one out there.
Sam: And yeah, I don't know.
Sam: We'll see. We'll see. We have an election coming really, really freaking fast at this point.
Sam: So we'll see you all next week. I guess this is it.
Ivan: Okay. Oh, well, one more thing.
Sam: Just a quick thing. One more thing.
Ivan: One more thing. I don't know if I mentioned last week that the provider of our
Ivan: car chargers for our, and I don't remember if this happened before the last
Ivan: show, that the provider of our car chargers went and announced that they were
Ivan: shutting down their North America operations.
Ivan: And then at that moment said, oh, we're shutting off all the software.
Sam: The car charges for your condo.
Ivan: For a condo. And they just went, oh, and software won't work.
Ivan: And I think that they must have gotten like, because the problem is that this isn't a small company.
Ivan: This is their U.S. subsidiary that we're shutting down. But this is a large
Ivan: global company. It's still planning to sell these in other countries.
Ivan: I mean, and it's used by a lot of companies. I know that Florida Power and Light,
Ivan: our energy provider, was putting these in people's houses for God.
Ivan: Sakes so and they were saying they were shutting down the software well
Ivan: i'm guessing that enough people yelled at the
Ivan: company loud enough that today there
Ivan: was this day that was shutting down everything said well we're not
Ivan: really gonna shut down the software and make all your chargers
Ivan: not work which is like jesus you
Ivan: think i mean so so at least
Ivan: i i got that message now there won't be any customer service but
Ivan: we're not shutting down the software you you say we're saying hey we're shutting
Ivan: down all the software we're pulling it we're pulling the apps from the app store
Ivan: where i'm like but wait a minute you're still running this in europe but why
Ivan: the fuck are you shutting down
Ivan: the fucking service and just letting everybody out a little lurch you'd.
Sam: Think in that scenario at the very least you'd like sell it off to somebody
Sam: else to manage or something.
Ivan: Well that's i guess what finally somebody screamed in their ear and that's what
Ivan: they said today that they were going to find how to do that because the first
Ivan: way they did it just made no sense whatsoever i mean I mean,
Ivan: it was just, and you know, the thing is, it's like,
Ivan: I mean, it's NL, which is a very large Italian, like, energy company.
Ivan: So, I mean, they were really giving themselves a black eye.
Ivan: They got some other big companies that bought this shit from them in North America,
Ivan: and they were, like, screwing them.
Ivan: And I'm guessing that a couple of those picked up the phone and said,
Ivan: what the fuck are you doing?
Ivan: Oh, yeah, I guess that wasn't such a great idea.
Ivan: Sometimes executives make decisions. I'm just, well.
Sam: Okay, okay. Let's wrap this sucker up.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: Hey, everybody, as usual, stay safe. Have a good week. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Hey, before I shut this off, have you heard the Cybertruck song that's on TikTok and stuff?
Sam: Cybertruck? Okay. I will include it for our listeners at the very end of the
Sam: show. I do not have it ready.
Sam: You can imagine what the word Cybertruck rhymes with that would be part of the lyrics of that song.
Sam: Anyway, I will find the audio and I will include it right here at the end.
Sam: And so listen to that bye everyone bye.
Break: One two three four cyber truck driving out some stuff and then it's stuck always
Break: driven by a stupid fuck it is the cyber truck it is the cyber truck.