Sam: Testing, one, two, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Sam: I forgot, four! And maybe something else.
Sam: Okay, fine, here we...
Sam: Hi, this is Sam from the future. Here at the very beginning of the show,
Sam: at what we call the cold open, when we originally recorded this,
Sam: I had an audio issue that Yvonne said made me sound like Chewbacca.
Sam: And it took us a while to resolve that. Normally when there's something sort
Sam: of semi-amusing like that, I put it here in the cold open before the show starts.
Sam: But this time, it was actually also long before we fixed it.
Sam: But just so you guys can experience it, if you wish to, I'm going to put it
Sam: at the very end of the show, after the outro and all that kind of stuff when we're done.
Sam: So you can listen to me sounding weird and Yvonne cracking up about it for a
Sam: while until we resolve the problem.
Sam: If you feel like it. Also, since I'm here anyway, I'll mention that the last
Sam: segment of the show is about TikTok.
Sam: But we recorded it Friday night and there were developments since then before
Sam: I'm putting the show out.
Sam: So just to put it out there, TikTok was indeed shut down by TikTok themselves
Sam: anticipating the legal deadline on Saturday evening U.S.
Sam: Time. And then Sunday morning, it was back on with TikTok pointing to various
Sam: assurances president to be.
Sam: They just said President Trump, but various assurances that President Trump
Sam: gave about actions he would take once he became president, once he becomes president on Monday.
Sam: So TikTok's back on again. So when you listen to that last segment,
Sam: you can see how well we did at anticipating what would or would not happen.
Sam: Anyway, on with the show. I'll start with the pre-open that...
Sam: Well, there's still a little bit of cold open besides the weird cold open.
Sam: And besides me doing my Sam from the future, here's what happened with TikTok.
Sam: Of course, I've already spent like a lot of time talking about this stuff.
Sam: I might as well have played the Chewbacca stuff.
Sam: Well, this is still a lot shorter than that. Anyway, why am I still going?
Sam: Here comes the thing. Do, do, do.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay. Better?
Ivan: Yes!
Sam: Okay hold on let's get the uh make sure the live stream's going.
Ivan: You shaved oh that's right you went to the gala and the thing and the thing.
Sam: Brandy got a haircut brandy asked me to you know.
Ivan: Damn it the least you could do.
Sam: It's like the first time in 18 years that.
Ivan: What you hadn't shaved in 18 years.
Sam: Yeah i mean i'd only trimmed the beard but i hadn't like hadn't been clean shaven
Sam: since before alex was born you.
Ivan: Look a lot younger i must say.
Sam: Okay let's make sure this is gone 1948 there we go okay Since we had that extended
Sam: preamble, should we just go?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: You were able to hear the sound.
Sam: I was able to hear the sound, both on the back and forth and on the clip you sent me.
Sam: I think one of the three times we connected may not have fully recorded on Riverside,
Sam: but I have everything on YouTube.
Ivan: Oh, wait. So, so on Riverside, it was recording you sounding like that?
Sam: Oh, I don't know. Like I, I, I had recordings like, well, I ended up with,
Sam: this is now the third recording that Riverside has, but I think it's the fourth
Sam: time we actually connected. So I don't know.
Sam: I don't know exactly if it lost something, but if it did lose something,
Sam: I have that on, on YouTube anyway.
Sam: So anyway, I think we got everything. I think.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: We'll see. But not, the only thing that I would use is if we got good recordings
Sam: of Chewbacca, then I will of course include that. Yes.
Sam: Okay. Let's get this thing started.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, January 18th, 2025.
Sam: It's just before 4 UTC as we're starting to record.
Sam: I am Sam Mentor, Yvonne Bo is here, and this is our last show of the Biden presidency.
Sam: Okay anyway we're gonna do our usual sort of
Sam: thing we'll talk about whatever in the first segment and then more newsy stuff
Sam: in the second and third segments one of the segments picked by and one picked
Sam: by me that's the plan so as we butt first into this you want to start yvonne
Sam: you got a butt firsty thing do.
Ivan: I have a butt firsty thing well,
Ivan: not gonna make a butt first out of our follies and trying to record the show today so you know i.
Sam: Don't know we had some fun technical difficulties i'm hoping we got enough of
Sam: it that i put a little bit before the theme song just yeah and get a taste uh yeah.
Ivan: We we was uh yeah what the fuck happened this.
Sam: I don't know it.
Ivan: Was a long well the thing.
Sam: You know it doesn't have to be like a personal story it can just be something
Sam: something that's been in the news that isn't particularly like serious you know or well the one.
Ivan: Thing that wasn't serious that wasn't in the news, but that thank God I did
Ivan: make change my flight on third.
Sam: Oh yes. I know what this is.
Ivan: Okay. Because well,
Ivan: A couple appointments wind up being rescheduled. My schedule kept changing.
Ivan: I did some of the appointments with something happened.
Ivan: And then so it wound up that I didn't have the, I had Thursday afternoon appointments,
Ivan: but they wound up getting pushed to next week.
Ivan: I'm actually flying back to Puerto Rico next week.
Ivan: And so they wound up getting pushed. So I'm like, well, I'm trying to get back home earlier.
Ivan: So I snagged, I called the agency and I said, well, they were able to get me
Ivan: on the, 7 40 something a.m.
Ivan: Flight to to Miami okay got me got got me you know back at 10 a.m.
Ivan: Or a little earlier than that i'm like great you'd probably be home by 11 a.m.
Ivan: Gets you know work pick up my son from school so my mom doesn't have to go pick
Ivan: him up because my wife is still like you know even though they actually took
Ivan: off her cast she's finally on a walking boot and she's trying to get used to nice well i mean.
Sam: Not not that it's nice to have a walking booth boot.
Ivan: But it's nice as an improvement.
Sam: From where it was.
Ivan: By as an improvement or was that we did that yesterday afternoon
Ivan: and uh so so i was doing that flying back from san you know back from san juan
Ivan: first like and so then spacex decides to launch their rocket yesterday starship and so it broke up
Ivan: in space, and it broke up really spectacularly badly in such a way that basically
Ivan: flights that were going over my route, basically there was a ground stop in San Juan.
Ivan: The flights to Miami, you know, flights northbound could not leave because of
Ivan: the debris coming down from this rocket.
Sam: There were lots of spectacular videos of the explosion, both from the ground and from aircraft.
Sam: There were lots of people pointing their cameras out of their plane from commercial
Sam: flights, various places.
Sam: And apparently there was some damage on the ground on Turks and Caicos.
Ivan: On Turks and Caicos, yeah. so this wasn't like
Ivan: just whatever this was you know this was a serious incident
Ivan: okay and flights wound up being diverted
Ivan: because debris was raining down and you
Ivan: know there was like i actually shared a video from one of
Ivan: the this this flight guy that i follow a lot and he showed all these circling
Ivan: patterns that all of a sudden aircraft had to do nor avoid that and basically
Ivan: there was a ground stop in san juan so it would have meant i was going to go
Ivan: on the late later flight if i did that I would have been delayed into oblivion.
Sam: I just want to point out one thing. Like, theoretically, they already,
Sam: like, even before the thing explodes, they close certain airspace where they
Sam: think there'd be a chance of a problem.
Sam: Like, if there was a problem with the flight where they think that there might be an issue.
Sam: Like, they already closed some airspace. They move.
Sam: They put some warnings in place. but apparently whatever it was wasn't sufficient given the actual.
Ivan: Damage well here's the thing the the only notum
Ivan: that is out there for that is for
Ivan: a very small area just very close to the you know the coast of texas like right
Ivan: on the you know right near the word rocket is lost but it's not much further
Ivan: out than that okay i actually in that video i shared they actually showed the area.
Ivan: And it was an area that was in the Gulf that was just very close to Texas.
Ivan: It was definitely nowhere near where the debris started raining down.
Ivan: So, so yeah, so that was not, you know, that, that, that, that NOTAM was,
Ivan: I mean, it wouldn't have, it, it, it, it, it didn't matter because they wound
Ivan: up having to implement, they did,
Ivan: the FAA does have an emergency procedure for these situations.
Ivan: And they had to actually pull that one into into action because of this.
Ivan: You know, look, I'm pretty unnerving. I got to be honest with you.
Ivan: You know, honestly, just going to brought down a commercial airliner.
Sam: And just to be clear, so people are aware who haven't been following this.
Sam: This was an unmanned flight. It also was not one of SpaceX's routine satellite launches or whatever.
Sam: It was a test of the newest iteration of the Starship spacecraft,
Sam: which is their big one that's intended to hold not just humans, but many humans.
Sam: Like it's supposed to be like either a small number of humans,
Sam: take them all the way to the moon, or conceivably like you could configure this
Sam: thing to hold 50 people at once and send them to space or whatever. Right.
Sam: But it's it's it's large, large capacity for cargo or humans or whatever you want to put in it.
Sam: They have been iterating on this thing to test it. This is not the first one.
Sam: This is not the first one that has blown up spectacularly.
Sam: And we've talked before about, you know, hey, this is just SpaceX's general philosophy, right?
Sam: You iterate over and over and eventually you get to the point where,
Sam: I mean, their regular orbital launches have been going quite successfully with
Sam: a high success ratio for a long time now,
Sam: but people made fun of them for years because they kept blowing up rockets while
Sam: they were developing it.
Sam: And when they started trying to catch the rockets, the boosters,
Sam: when they came back down, those failed over and over and over again before they succeeded.
Sam: And this is just how SpaceX has chosen to do it.
Sam: Whereas sort of the traditional NASA way was to move much more slowly,
Sam: be much more careful, you know, and they've had big spectacular losses too,
Sam: even with that philosophy.
Sam: But SpaceX is just like, hey, we're iterating fast. We'll have some accidents.
Sam: We'll fix it. We'll go forward.
Sam: And presumably they hope they'll be fairly sure of the technology before they
Sam: actually put humans on board.
Sam: But in the meantime, time, you know, okay, this one blew up.
Sam: But like you said, like they...
Ivan: You're pushing the envelope with this, okay?
Ivan: And that's the problem. And, you know, I mean, seriously, this could have brought
Ivan: down commercial airliners yesterday, okay? Not just one.
Ivan: If swift action hadn't been taken. This is crazy.
Sam: And if one or two happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ivan: Exactly. Yeah. This is too cavalier. And I've always said that it's too damn cavalier.
Ivan: You know, this is the same philosophy as people that go and don't buy insurance,
Ivan: you know, where they live in a place with hurricanes and they're like, well,
Ivan: you know, we had five hurricanes and nothing happened until until a big one
Ivan: just winds up, you know, blasting everything to bits.
Ivan: And that's the philosophy that they're taking and
Ivan: i you know i think it's too dangerous
Ivan: i i i think that you know they
Ivan: could really accomplish a lot of what they're doing without being as cavalier
Ivan: as their their people but you know i i mean and honestly you know if we have
Ivan: to wait a couple of extra years for some of this stuff it's not the end of the world either then.
Sam: You wait a couple extra years.
Ivan: Yeah i just don't i don't i
Ivan: don't i don't see the i i don't i don't see the uh the value in the extra risk
Ivan: and that was like very yesterday was bad and you know i saw that the faa decided
Ivan: to ban them but i'm expecting that that will be lifted like on tuesday well.
Sam: It's it yeah well even so it's pending an investigation and they've.
Ivan: Already by the way an investigation what yeah what what are the funniest thing
Ivan: is that physical investigation they asked them to do a self-investigation right
Ivan: you know which is you know one of the things saying is like yeah we've been
Ivan: doing that with bowling how did that fucking turn out well.
Sam: And self-infect I mean they they already have a preliminary like they think
Sam: it was a fuel leak or something didn't they did I see that.
Ivan: Yeah it was a oxygen leak I believe in a place that it couldn't be vented and
Ivan: so therefore it built up and exploded right oh yeah and Elon was like oh yeah
Ivan: yeah no problem we'll just fix it and then we'll launch another one again next
Ivan: month which is like okay you know,
Ivan: And I'm actually pretty confident that they're going to let them launch it next month.
Sam: I would imagine. I mean, you know, the point of, I mean, to be fair here,
Sam: the point of an investigation is to fix the problem and iterate and try again.
Sam: If they can, within a month, figure out the problem, fix the problem, iterate.
Ivan: Yeah, but I'm sorry. How many of these are blown up?
Sam: Well what this is the eighth right or something this.
Ivan: Is yeah it's like seven yeah i'm not i mean i
Ivan: don't know like three but not all but
Ivan: i think like three of them there was that one
Ivan: that had that a spectacular like blast at
Ivan: the right at the pad right at the law at the pad they
Ivan: had another one that exploded in mid-flight this one in mid-flight so that's
Ivan: three off the top of my head that i remember i mean these things just explode
Ivan: like right now they're just like yeah we'll launch another one i'm like you
Ivan: know like i and i yeah i don't you.
Sam: Know how how else are you gonna test it yvonne you know.
Ivan: Look i guess the good thing is that they're not putting people in there right
Ivan: maybe like ah you know we lost a couple of more astronauts oh maybe maybe.
Sam: You just need a bigger and larger exclusion zone for the next test until.
Ivan: You like what like you know what are we going to shut off? The Gulf of Mexico?
Ivan: I was thinking the Gulf of America. What?
Sam: I was thinking the whole planet, but you know.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, that's reasonable. Sure. Yeah.
Sam: I mean, you never know which way this thing's going to go, right?
Ivan: Well, that's true. Yeah. You know, it could really spin out of control.
Ivan: Yeah, for all we know. Yeah.
Sam: You know, next time it's going to hit Antarctica.
Ivan: Oh, there you go. Yeah.
Sam: No, no. You actually have a fairly good idea where they're going to go.
Ivan: Yeah i have a fairly good idea where it's going to go but still i mean i'm like
Ivan: yeah what's i i don't but but it's a long it's a pretty big path um.
Sam: Well and especially when it explodes and especially when it explodes when it
Sam: explodes at high altitude the debris can cover a significant area i mean that's
Sam: that yeah that that's why like it's potentially dangerous you know and so yeah
Sam: i don't know i i mean i i think there are advantages,
Sam: to Elon's approach here or SpaceX's. It's not really just Elon.
Sam: I mean, it's, but the, there are some advantages that approach,
Sam: but you're absolutely right there.
Sam: It is a conscious decision to play fast and loose with safety in order to iterate faster.
Sam: You know, that is a very conscious decision as part of what they do.
Sam: I, I feel like they are a little bit more conservative once you have humans
Sam: on board, but a little bit more conservative.
Sam: I mean, would it be entirely shocking if at some point, you know,
Sam: SpaceX loses some humans? No, no.
Sam: I mean, NASA was theoretically super careful and slow and blah,
Sam: blah, blah. And they still lost people, you know?
Ivan: So you want to lose a few astronauts to be like, well, that's a shame.
Ivan: OK, yeah, great. But where are the next guys going? Huh?
Sam: Yeah, I have noticed like one of the things I pointed out this years ago and
Sam: it still hasn't changed is that the other two billionaires who have space programs,
Sam: Branson with Virgin Galactic and Bezos with Blue Origin, have both ridden on their own spaceships.
Ivan: Yes you have elon has
Ivan: not ah isn't that interesting now
Ivan: i will say for uh look branson was always a branson was always a kazi guy i
Ivan: mean in terms of like you know doing he broke this transatlantic speed record
Ivan: crossing the atlantic on a boat okay and i if i remember correctly,
Ivan: one of the attempts failed and the boat sank. It was that bad.
Ivan: I mean, then they tried again and he did do it. It was...
Ivan: He is one that is willing to put his life on the line on something that is that risky.
Ivan: So he's done that, but I haven't seen Elon doing that. Not yet, anyway. Anyway.
Sam: I was trying to verify. My memory was that Jeff. Yeah, I found some pictures. Yeah. Yeah.
Ivan: Jeff Bezos rode on the one with Shatner and all those folks.
Sam: Well, it wasn't the same flight as Shatner, but yes.
Ivan: But yeah.
Sam: He did ride on. I was pretty sure I remembered it, but I just double checked.
Ivan: It wasn't the same flight as Shatner? I thought it was.
Sam: No, no. Different flight.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: But I mean, he's done a whole bunch of flights with like different celebrities
Sam: and different paying customers and stuff.
Sam: And they also, by the way, since we're talking space milestone things,
Sam: Blue Origin successfully launched their first orbital flight this week as well.
Sam: No people on board, but they successfully launched something into orbit this
Sam: week for the very first time as well.
Sam: All of the other Blue Origin flights are basically straight up and then straight
Sam: down and again, you get a couple of minutes in space and at an altitude that's
Sam: actually debatable, whether it's not in space, certain people consider it. Yes.
Sam: Certain people consider it. No, but like, you know, you know,
Sam: anyway, so, but he wrote on his, same thing for, for Virgin as well,
Sam: by the way, the altitude it goes to is sort of in that debatable character territory,
Sam: but cause there's no like uniform.
Sam: Everybody agrees definition until you get to orbit. Once you're in orbit, everyone agrees.
Ivan: So by the way, I double checked about what I said about Richard Branson. I was exactly correct.
Ivan: Branson's first attempt on the record in a 65 foot twin hull Virgin Atlantic
Ivan: Challenger departed New York in June, 1985.
Ivan: And it was fatally damaged by striking a submerged object only 100 miles from
Ivan: Bishop's Rock, the intended finishing line, and sank in heavy seas.
Ivan: All the crew were saved. Okay. So, by the way, but even after that happened,
Ivan: he went next year and tried again.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And he succeeded the next year. To do it, breaking the record.
Ivan: So, yeah. So, but yeah, he almost, he went, they hit a submerged object and
Ivan: sank, which is one of the reasons why I always avoid trying.
Sam: Submerged objects?
Ivan: Well, OK, yes. OK, you try to do that.
Ivan: But more trying to not navigate at night makes it more difficult to observe.
Ivan: Usually the things that you hit by a submerged object is a floating log or something
Ivan: like that that's very big.
Ivan: And when you're going at a high speed and you hit something like that,
Ivan: it's very likely to cause a whole breach.
Ivan: Okay you know there could be some very heavy objects like hey you got shipping
Ivan: containers that went down and other stuff and whatever whatnot you you know you wind up hitting,
Ivan: all those things at high speed at night it's at night you're not
Ivan: going to see it usually during the day i try to be very observant and
Ivan: looking at out you know you're trying to make sure you see
Ivan: what the hell is out there but at night you're not going to see shit okay all
Ivan: right you know you're you're driving through there you're not seeing a damn
Ivan: thing radar is not going to pick up submerged object if it's over there whatever
Ivan: you're gonna you're gonna smack into whatever the hell it is and go down and
Ivan: so you know so but he but yeah he he he tried again and so basis went up and
Ivan: elon musk apparently is like no not really i i'm okay i'll send somebody else but anyway yeah.
Sam: Okay so is it my turn so i i i'm gonna note you know and and earlier on,
Sam: I'm very articulate and proud.
Ivan: Of my.
Sam: Ability to speak cogently.
Ivan: And that.
Sam: That is what I was going to talk about no I got to do something this week that
Sam: was pretty cool that I'll just relay and and to start with I'll say presidential
Sam: inaugurations I've actually been to a couple There's a,
Sam: there's a one coming up here. And after I was able to vote,
Sam: I was actually really proud of myself because I had been to like the first three
Sam: presidential inaugurations after I was able to vote.
Sam: I attended all three, like just in the crowd. So 92, 96.
Ivan: You went to W2?
Sam: Yes. 92, 96, and what's 90? And 2000.
Ivan: 2000.
Sam: I went to all three of those. So both Bill Clintons and the first W.
Sam: But then 2004, I couldn't make it. I'd already moved down to Florida and it
Sam: just wasn't going to make sense for me to go up there.
Sam: And I was really bummed about that. And then after that, I was like,
Sam: you know, I'm no point in ever going again because now I've broken the streak. Right.
Sam: And also I lived further away and I moved to the West Coast, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But the and it wasn't a thing of like supporting who is getting inaugurated.
Sam: It was like viewing something historic.
Sam: You know, you only get inaugurations.
Ivan: Mr. Wolf.
Sam: Well, that was not at an inauguration. That was a separate trip to the White House.
Ivan: That was a separate trip to the White House? Okay.
Sam: Yes. Yeah. When we met Wolf Blitzer and Jim Bohannon and who else did we do?
Sam: Like Barbara, was it Barbara Walters?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You weren't there for this one.
Ivan: I wasn't there for that one, but I remember it was Barbara Walters.
Sam: We met a whole bunch of folks because the White House, I can only assume accidentally,
Sam: invited our college radio station to a event for radio talk show hosts on Hillary
Sam: Clinton's healthcare plan.
Sam: And that's why we were there so we were in a little conference
Sam: room and people came we heard from we heard
Sam: from bill clinton he came and talked to us we heard from tipper gore uh oh my
Sam: god tipper gore a whole bunch of people it was a lot of fun but anyway that
Sam: was not an inauguration but for the inaugurations we were just trying to cover
Sam: it for the show the first one you were with me for right Yvonne or yeah you went together.
Ivan: And we got robbed.
Sam: We got robbed we lost our radio equipment because we left it in the van and
Sam: somebody broke in and blah blah blah and then I stole the car seat from the
Sam: van that we'd taken out to make room for the equipment and kept that it's still
Sam: in my garage to this day it's still there okay it is absolutely still there I guess.
Ivan: We're past the statute of limitations with avis on the uh well here well the one thing okay.
Sam: We claimed the seat we we told them the seat was seat was stolen as well yeah well the.
Ivan: One thing that happened was okay well i returned the van in dc.
Sam: Yes because.
Ivan: They broke the window so we couldn't drive back to pittsburgh in that van so.
Sam: The seat.
Ivan: Had stayed in pittsburgh because we needed to take out that seat to put make.
Sam: Right for.
Ivan: For this for the stuff and so.
Sam: Yes all.
Ivan: Of a sudden i returned a van because got smashed. They give us another van.
Ivan: Amos was very nice about that.
Ivan: And then I remember that I go and I drive and I get home and I'm like, oh shit. I got this seat.
Ivan: Fuck. I got this damn car seat in here. So anyway.
Ivan: My insurance paid for it. It's fine. So they got their money.
Sam: Thank you, American Express. Everything.
Sam: The point of all this was not anything about attending those inaugurations per se,
Sam: but that one of the things that our little intrepid group of radio people went
Sam: for the first two, I think the first time I went with the radio station folks,
Sam: other times I think I went by myself or with like,
Sam: I think I went with a couple of our friends the second time and just by myself the third time.
Sam: But anyway, the time we went for the radio station, Our friend Rebecca had the
Sam: wonderful thought that, hey, we're going to try to crash some inaugural balls.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Now, of course...
Sam: We didn't get so far as even finding one, let alone like crashing it and try
Sam: to get in. And that wasn't going to happen. Right.
Sam: Like they're, they're all have security and guest lists and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: But you know, we were, we were young, stupid, naive college kids.
Sam: So we were like, we'll find one and we'll just find a party and it'll be fun.
Sam: And like, you know, even if we weren't going, going to find one that had the
Sam: president coming to visit, we were like, there's gotta be a party that we can just find and join.
Sam: But no we wound up somewhere i don't.
Ivan: Remember where exactly we wound up but it wasn't anywhere with anything nearly that exciting as a.
Sam: No no we we stayed at the night at my dad's house and you know i'm sure we went
Sam: to a restaurant or something you know whatever but anyway so this week.
Sam: I did not, you know, the presidential inauguration is next week. I'm not going.
Sam: It's not next week. It's like a couple of days away as we're recording this,
Sam: but I'm not going to that.
Sam: But I got to go to the inaugural ball for the governor here in Washington state.
Sam: Now I will add though, my wife as
Sam: a state representative got free tickets to this thing i
Sam: got in not because of that but because we actually paid
Sam: for me turns out like you can just you you could just
Sam: pay and go because yeah they sell
Sam: they sell tickets to the damn thing for some like i
Sam: forget which chamber of commerce or somebody put it
Sam: on and and sells tickets and it goes to them
Sam: or whatever anyway so you could just buy it and and and but so i i she got the
Sam: free freebie as an elected official to go in but we did pay for me to go in
Sam: so I could be her like eye candy and it was a black tie thing so I you ran into the tux?
Sam: Well, I did not rent a suit, but I bought a new black suit. It wasn't really a top.
Ivan: Okay, there you go.
Sam: The guidelines said black tie or, you know, a nice black suit's good enough.
Sam: You know, they weren't like too picky on it.
Ivan: Get up, get your bow tie.
Sam: No, you know, I almost did. But I went with like a little purple tie that went with Brandy's dress.
Sam: Or actually not her dress with with her hair because she's
Sam: got purple in her hair so okay went to coordinate that
Sam: that way but no so i got i got a haircut
Sam: i shaved for the first time in well over 15 years it was sometime before alex
Sam: was born was last time i'm thinking it was 17 or 18 years and uh we got to go
Sam: and and so we got we go into the thing it's super crowded like the first thing you go into,
Sam: there's like this tent thing in front of the state capitol.
Sam: And that's where like the food was and stuff like that. And I go in and I'm
Sam: like, well, this isn't all that impressive. I thought it would be like somewhere fancy and nice.
Sam: And it's like in some catering tent, but you know, then you,
Sam: you hang a left from there and you go into the actual capitol building,
Sam: which is, I, and I've been in the capitol building a number of times,
Sam: including earlier that week, I went to my wife swearing in for her third term.
Sam: You know, it was her third swearing in.
Sam: She had half a term and then she was reelected twice.
Sam: She was appointed, served half a term and then reelected twice.
Sam: So it was her third swearing in. The first one was at a judge's office in the
Sam: middle of the night at some courtroom that we were able to get into right after
Sam: she was appointed, middle of the night. It was like 10 p.m. or something.
Sam: But, and then the other ones were in the state Capitol in a house building and
Sam: they did the blah, blah, blah. And I was there.
Sam: So I've been to the state Capitol a number of times, impressive building,
Sam: fancy building, nice building, lots of marble, et cetera.
Sam: And we go up into, into the rotunda and it looks good, but it's super crowded.
Sam: And apparently there were speeches. The governor said something,
Sam: various other people said something, but we did not really do that because my
Sam: wife also was not happy with the crowds.
Sam: Like I'm not a big crowd person and she does, she, she doesn't seem to mind
Sam: crowds when we like go to a concert or something, but she did not like these
Sam: crowds and was ready to get out.
Sam: And in part, because every five feet, someone would be recognizing in her and
Sam: go, Oh, representative Donaghy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: You know? And so very quickly we were, you have to be on.
Ivan: You have to be on a lot.
Sam: Yeah. So it wasn't just like the crowd, like, you know, if you're in a concert,
Sam: you're in a crowd, but you're anonymous, right?
Sam: Like this, you're not, but yeah, she, she had to be on and talking to people and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And so very quickly after like 15,
Sam: 20 minutes, we escaped to the parts of the Capitol that were only open to people
Sam: who had like the badges, you know, for, for being there.
Sam: And so, so, you know, and it was a lot quieter there, but not completely quiet
Sam: because a lot of the other elected officials and their staffs and all those
Sam: were also escaping similarly.
Sam: So, you know, and so we talked to a bunch of other elected officials of both parties, by the way.
Sam: There was a section where we went in because it was just the way to get past
Sam: something. We went in on the Republican side of the building and we're, you know,
Sam: There are friendly greetings the whole way. It's like we ran into some Republicans.
Sam: Oh, Brandy, great to see you here. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Oh, it's your husband. Nice to meet you. Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: You know, so is and then and then we went over to the Democratic side and,
Sam: you know, a bunch of Brandy's colleagues.
Sam: And it was really, I'm not going to get into any of the detailed conversations because, you know,
Sam: but the, it was very interesting because it was sort of flipping back and forth between, Hey,
Sam: this is just a bunch of friends hanging out and drinking and having a party and having fun.
Sam: Because of course all these people have like alcohol stashed in their offices
Sam: you know and so like there's just you know constantly people are partying people are drinking.
Sam: They're chatting and so it would it would veer between a bunch of friends hanging
Sam: out and talking and then all of a sudden it would switch to okay let's talk
Sam: about the specifics of this bill that i'm trying to run and like i in here here's
Sam: this policy issue what do you think about this? Can we change this?
Sam: What would make sense in order to get this to go through? And so it's like it
Sam: flipped between business and pleasure multiple times.
Sam: And at one point, I don't understand exactly how it was happening, but suddenly myself,
Sam: my wife, and one other person were hanging out with the Speaker of the House
Sam: in the Speaker of the House's office for like half an hour, just chatting.
Sam: Yeah. It was, it was, it was just weird. It was fun. It was weird. I enjoyed it.
Sam: I, you know, I, I, I dressed up in the little suit, you know,
Sam: my wife was dressed up all nice too.
Sam: You know, we, we ended up like we had to leave because.
Sam: The security guards came and said, look, guys, we can't leave until you leave
Sam: because, Because, and they couldn't technically kick us out because we were
Sam: the elected representatives and it's there.
Sam: I'm not, but like my wife and a bunch of other people were.
Sam: But they were like, it's one in the morning. We'd like to go home.
Sam: Could you guys wrap it up, please?
Sam: So, yeah. But anyway, it was fun. I got to go to an inaugural ball.
Sam: It was for a governor, not for a president. But, you know, it's still fun.
Sam: You know, and I, and because we skipped out on the actual speeches and stuff,
Sam: I did not get to hear the new governor say whatever he said at the inaugural ball.
Sam: I mean, it wasn't his official inaugural address that happened earlier at the
Sam: day. And I didn't, didn't go to that.
Sam: My wife had to sit there and listen to it as part of her job.
Sam: I have, I have met the new governor before at various events over the last year.
Sam: Cause like, that's just part of my life now, which I'm highly amused by because
Sam: Because of my wife and the fact that she's an elected official,
Sam: I keep getting to meet people.
Sam: So I've met our representatives. I've met our – like she personally knows like
Sam: most of – maybe not most of – a lot of representatives like to the U.S. House.
Sam: She knows personally, texts back and forth with them.
Sam: A friend of hers was just elected to the House, and she knew a couple others before.
Sam: I've met at least one of our senators, if not both. I've met the last governor.
Sam: I've met the new governor.
Sam: I met Kamala Harris's husband at one of these things. She got to hang out with
Sam: Bill and Hillary Clinton once.
Sam: Oh, yeah, we heard from Hillary, too, when we were at the White House.
Sam: We heard from both Clintons and both Gores, I think, too, actually.
Sam: Anyway, it was fun. I just wanted to note that and, and, and the,
Sam: the weird, the weird thing with the thing I'm always like, actually,
Sam: I'll just put it out there.
Sam: I'm super impressed by my wife when I go to these things because,
Sam: you know, of the politicking, like she's going around, she's talking policy,
Sam: she's talking details of bills.
Sam: She's like, you know, yeah.
Sam: Making friends and influencing people as they say, like, you know, she's, she's, you know,
Sam: making things happen and she's pushing various things that, and the thing is,
Sam: and she knows the stuff backwards and forwards, like it, cause she's one of the ones that like,
Sam: and I've heard some of the other, she's a wonk.
Sam: And I've heard some of the others comment even like, you know,
Sam: about how she reads the damn bills, you know.
Sam: And she's one of the ones that'll like pull out something and say like,
Sam: you know, on page 30 of this thing, there's this clause that doesn't make any sense.
Sam: We need to rip this sucker out before it goes out or we need to fix it because
Sam: this will become a problem down the line.
Sam: You know, anyway, kudos to my wife.
Sam: I'm always impressed when I go to these things. And it was fun to like,
Sam: you know, dress up and see people that like.
Sam: Do things and in a fancy building. Although most of the time we were in the
Sam: back rooms that were less fancy, but so, but yeah, and it was,
Sam: it was fun. Okay. That's it for me.
Sam: And that means it's time to take a break. And when we come back,
Sam: Yvonne, we'll pick a serious topic. The first break.
Sam: Yeah. I have surprised him. See, I gave you a warning there. You have the time.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: He's like, I what I have to do. What I have to do.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Anyway, our first break is a random wiki of the day. Here we go.
Break: Do do do. Hello, this is Standard Amy. I'm here to let you know about Sam the
Break: Curmudgeon's other podcasts, the wiki of the day podcasts.
Break: Wiki of the day comes in three varieties, popular, random, and featured.
Break: Each highlights a new Wikipedia article each day. They just pick the articles differently.
Break: This week on random wiki of the day, you would have heard the summary for Catering, constituency.
Break: The Catering Functional Constituency, Chinese, is a functional constituency
Break: in the elections for the Legislative Council of Hong Kong created for the 2000
Break: Legislative Council election to replace the Urban Council and Regional Council constituencies.
Break: The constituency is composed of bodies of several catering associations.
Break: It is also corresponding to the catering subsector in the election committee.
Break: Since its creation, it has been held by Liberal Party's Tommy Chung.
Break: A similar hotels and catering functional constituency was created for the 1995
Break: election by the then-Governor Chris Patton with a much larger electorate base
Break: composed of almost 70,000 voters.
Break: That's it. See? Fun, entertaining, and educational, right?
Break: Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on
Break: your podcast-playing software of choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com to check out our archives.
Break: Now back to Curmudgeon's Corner. Do-do-do.
Sam: Okay, Yvonne, so what's the choice?
Ivan: Hmm. The new iOS mail app classification.
Ivan: Okay. Okay, so you would put that on there, And I also saw some people complaining
Ivan: and certain things about, well,
Ivan: the iOS summaries are bad and they were like rolling back some of those.
Ivan: But let's start with a mail classification.
Sam: I'll tell you.
Ivan: What are you? Yeah.
Sam: Yes. So first of all, just for reference, I still have an iPhone 12 series,
Sam: so I don't get any of the Apple intelligence stuff. i haven't oh i've iphone 12 pro i thought you.
Ivan: Got a new phone.
Sam: No no no i i've i've
Sam: been i did i debated it a little bit but i the
Sam: conclusion i keep coming to is this one's still working fine i don't
Sam: need to yet i'll i'll wait until the damn
Sam: thing breaks or there's something really really compelling that
Sam: i'm like oh my god i need that and nothing about like the new nothing about
Sam: The features that are available to the 15 and 16 that are not available to the
Sam: 12 has yet made me feel like compelled that I have to upgrade.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Because I still get the newest iOS. I still get the newest iOS.
Ivan: It's just some of the features. Well, here's the question. So do you have the
Ivan: new mail classification, though?
Sam: I do. I do.
Ivan: Okay, so you do have that. Okay.
Sam: And so I can speak about it. I put it on the list.
Ivan: Yes, I know you did. I had not put it up. I had thought about it to talk about
Ivan: it, but I had not put it up. But you did.
Sam: I mean, here's something. mail to me is not like email specifically.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: It is now a horrid chore.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I have, I have my own domain. I don't use Gmail or anything like that.
Sam: And it is, I've used the same email address for something like 25 years now.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: It has been around a long, long time.
Sam: And so the reality of what that produces is that. 99% of the mail I get is fucking spam. Okay?
Ivan: I'm gonna go like I recently with the help of this classification I have been
Ivan: able to filter like my daily email down to where it's a manageable number of
Ivan: messages in my inbox. Okay?
Ivan: Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. But I'm saying this to give you perspective on the
Ivan: email deluge that you're talking about.
Ivan: OK, a couple of weeks ago, I went and I I cleared out all my email read and
Ivan: I also did it the same for my junk mailbox.
Ivan: OK, I want to see how many junk messages I'm getting, like, you know,
Ivan: how quickly they're piling it.
Ivan: So from let me see the date.
Ivan: From January 6th to today, which that is how many days? We're talking about 11 days. Okay.
Ivan: How many junk messages do you think I got in 11 days? Take a number. What do you think?
Sam: A thousand.
Ivan: 1,219 messages.
Ivan: How the hell? Who the hell could manage through this ridiculous deluge of shit?
Ivan: I mean, that's just...
Sam: And here's where I was. So before this Apple Mail update,
Sam: I'll tell you, I had on the before the Apple Mail update, there was no the spam
Sam: filtering that was available in the Apple Mail ecosystem was on the desktop
Sam: client and you had to turn it on.
Sam: Well, it was on by default. But, and I also had at my, at my hosting company,
Sam: the one that has my email domain, ablsmay.com, A-B-U-L-S-M-E,
Sam: if anybody wants to send me even more spam,
Sam: you know, also had a spam filtering solution on it.
Sam: The server side spam filtering solution was so bad.
Sam: I had to turn it off. And by bad, I mean real mail going to junk. Okay.
Sam: Cause it's one thing when spam ends up in your mailbox, but when real mail goes
Sam: to junk, that is more problematic.
Ivan: Yes. Yes.
Sam: You know, I mean, and, and it was also like,
Sam: Somewhere I had turned off every option to auto delete spam that I could find,
Sam: but, but things in the spam folder were still getting auto deleted at some point.
Sam: So like I was actually, there was mail that I wanted that I waited too long and was gone.
Sam: OK, there were also for some reason there was mail that was I had a problem
Sam: for a while that there was mail that was like once or I'll tell you,
Sam: and this is not related to Apple's mail app. I'm pretty sure it was related to my server.
Sam: But for a few months, I had a problem where like I would I would come.
Sam: I would open my mail app, usually on my desktop.
Sam: I would see some mail. I want it.
Sam: Yeah, I would move. I would move to go click on it. Like it had just come in.
Sam: I saw it show up at the top of my mailbox and it would disappear.
Sam: And then I would go searching for it and it would not be in my spam and it would
Sam: not be fucking anywhere.
Sam: And I'm like, and like sometimes this was like the security codes.
Sam: Like when you, you, you, somebody mails you a security code for two factor authentication.
Sam: And I couldn't find the damn thing. And I'm like, it's gone.
Sam: What the fuck? And, and so I, And I'm anal about keeping every email I ever receive.
Sam: I have for years. I eventually started deleting spam.
Sam: Like it's been like, I've deleted spam for like 15, 20 years now.
Sam: But before that, I was keeping every spam message too.
Ivan: My God.
Ivan: What?
Sam: What?
Ivan: You're deleting. I'm shocked. You're deleting spam. This is you.
Sam: I know. A couple times I've regretted it. And I was like, you know,
Sam: if I hadn't started deleting spam, I'd have this rich data set to do an analysis
Sam: going back 25 years. But no. Anyway.
Ivan: No, no. What we really needed was that you should have printed them all.
Ivan: We should have kept printing them all.
Sam: Printed the spam. Yes.
Ivan: Yes. Yes, yes.
Sam: Make a real spam folder. Here's my spam folder.
Ivan: Yes, here's your spam folder. Well, a spam folder, spam garage.
Ivan: Basically, at this point, it would just fill up the whole garage.
Sam: Okay, anyway, my point was, getting back to the mail app.
Sam: So I turned off my server-side spam filtering because it was sending real mail
Sam: to spam on a regular basis.
Sam: I still had the spam filtering in Apple's desktop mail app.
Sam: And in, in Apple's desktop mail app, I also had dozens of rules that would pre
Sam: move sort of folders that.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. I had, I had all sorts of rules to move things into folders based on like,
Sam: Hey, if it's from these addresses, put it here.
Sam: My goal and all of that was try to make it. So my main inbox was only human beings.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Like no, no, nothing automated.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: No, even mail I wanted, like confirmation emails and stuff, I did not want that
Sam: in my main inbox. I had a folder for that.
Ivan: You wanted email that was sent by people. Okay.
Sam: Yeah, I wanted my main inbox to be human beings.
Sam: Now, they could be human beings at companies that I interacted with or for school
Sam: or whatever, but I wanted them to be from actual human beings typing in something and hitting send.
Sam: But I was failing even at that. And at a certain point, like I was like,
Sam: I was not getting messages. So I turned off most of those rules.
Sam: I turned, I turned off the Apple mail, even the Apple mail spam.
Sam: Cause I was still missing some stuff. And I was like, maybe it's coming from that. I don't know.
Sam: But then I was like really excited about this, like this automatic categorization
Sam: that, that Apple was going to launch in, in mail.
Sam: Cause I was like, maybe like they've got a primary, they've got transactions,
Sam: they've got updates, they've got promotions.
Sam: Maybe with all of that kind of stuff, when I look at those filtered zones,
Sam: they will all make sense.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And, but here, my actual experience with it is, God damn it,
Sam: you need another one of these filters for spam.
Sam: Because every single one of these categories still has tons of spam in it.
Ivan: Okay. Well, okay. So maybe, okay.
Ivan: Let me say something about this. I think that I am on iCloud.
Sam: I mean, to be clear.
Ivan: For my email. Wait, wait, wait.
Sam: Hang on.
Ivan: I'm using iCloud for my email.
Sam: Yes, iCloud has additional server-side spam filtering that I don't have from my domain.
Sam: I have Apple Mail, too. I do have an iCloud Mail as well, but I don't use it
Sam: as my primary, and it doesn't get as much of this stuff either.
Ivan: All right, so iCloud does have that, and the reality is that on mine on the
Ivan: phone, I've got the stuff going to junk that is just junk that I don't even want to see,
Ivan: and then I've got all this stuff sorted, okay?
Sam: So
Ivan: It's not just unfiltered I've got.
Sam: That where.
Ivan: It's already downsizing to just stuff been doing over the last couple of years
Ivan: a pretty decent job of tagging what the fuck I don't want to say okay.
Sam: And I recognize that like
Sam: one way to look at this is that that's
Sam: the server's job and iCloud is apparently doing
Sam: an okay job for you and my mail host
Sam: is doing a crappy job which is why i had to turn it
Sam: off because i didn't want to lose the mail it was
Sam: sending to spam that was actually good stuff right and so
Sam: of course i have more spam in my inbox duh that's my
Sam: own choice i need to get a better mail server
Sam: and move my stuff over which i have thought for a while but it's just such a
Sam: pain in the ass because it's not such a pain my my entire family has mail on
Sam: the domain and i have a bunch of aliases that like send like to both me and
Sam: my wife or to the whole family or stuff like that set up.
Sam: And I actually looked at iCloud does let you put stuff on your own domain and
Sam: have a couple addresses, but they don't do the alias things like the last I
Sam: checked. I haven't checked recently.
Ivan: No, I got aliases. I got a couple of, I got a couple of aliases made for me.
Sam: No, like that sent to multiple people. I'm talking about like.
Ivan: Oh no, I got aliases for me for certain things, but I don't know if it's a multiple people.
Sam: I'm talking about setting up an alias. I can be like, no, no, no, I gotcha.
Sam: Yeah. I can have one address that goes to the whole family kind of thing.
Sam: Anyway. So I haven't looked recently
Sam: and it would be a pain in the ass to migrate because I have to like.
Ivan: It's a lot of change it. I get it. Yeah.
Sam: Because it's not just if it was just me it would be easy but because i have
Sam: the whole family on this damn thing i have to go to all their devices and change
Sam: their settings too when i do this and there's a transition period where you
Sam: have to move all the stuff off the old server get it on the new server unless
Sam: you're going to lose stuff blah blah it's a pain and i can see how it's a major.
Ivan: Pain yes yeah.
Sam: I don't have time for that shit so but i think i think there's a role for the
Sam: mail client here too yeah okay fine you want server side spam filtering but
Sam: the mail client as well should be smart enough to know okay let let me look
Sam: at my primary category right now,
Sam: okay that's those there are a couple first of all it's it is the primary category
Sam: itself is better than it's pretty good it's it's no this.
Ivan: Is this is.
Sam: I'm gonna listen the primary category.
Ivan: Without even without and i've done some training because you can tell it start
Ivan: telling it hey this is not primary hey this is primary and so forth so you can
Ivan: start training it look that in and of itself was a revelation i i thought.
Sam: So so so what what's the training just when you move it out of the category there is somewhere.
Ivan: There where there is where if you take a message and you can select hey this
Ivan: is not this category this is the other category and voila i'll start putting them there.
Sam: Oh, categorize sender?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Yeah, categorize sender.
Ivan: And that will start saying, oh, you don't want that one in here.
Ivan: You want it in promotions. Okay, fine.
Sam: All I'm saying... Well, junk is not a category in categorize sender.
Sam: I've got it up on my screen right now.
Ivan: The thing is that because I have it on iCloud, I have a category as junk. Yes.
Sam: Oh, man. You know...
Sam: They need to make that work.
Sam: So yeah, junk right there. I'm upset. I am. I am.
Sam: Well, I have moved to junk, but it's in the I can I move stuff to junk all the time.
Sam: But in that categorized sender stuff, one of the categories.
Ivan: Well, no, you categorize. But the thing is that if you select one to move to
Ivan: if I and on my on iCloud, if I selected to move to junk.
Ivan: OK, it's either those categories or junk.
Sam: Yeah so i i have not maybe move to junk is slowly training like the mobile device to move it but i don't.
Ivan: Think i don't i don't know i don't think it is i think this is because it's
Ivan: on icloud i'm going to server i know that's been working because that's the
Ivan: way that i've been making sure that and and it's like sending it to junk on
Ivan: whatever device i'm i'm using so i mean i'm logging into So that email odd by, you know.
Sam: So let me just give an example.
Sam: And I think it does need junk, but even if it didn't have junk,
Sam: it should know that something titled Consumer Survey from sdqsd at bnd.floristnct.com
Sam: that says your last chance to claim your reward,
Sam: Fill in a short survey to get your award with a giant image of a Dell computer
Sam: that is clearly not actually from Dell.
Sam: This offer is brought to you by Jalen Eaton.
Ivan: You're saying that that's, you know.
Sam: This does not belong in my primary, no matter what.
Ivan: Are you sure? I mean, come on. Aren't you really sure? I mean,
Ivan: come on, you want that Dell computer.
Ivan: I mean, come on. This is the opportunity of a lifetime that you've been waiting
Ivan: for to get this free Dell.
Sam: Exactly. And all I'm saying is that there should be like.
Sam: I recognize again, again, okay. My problem is I'm not using iCloud for this.
Sam: I'm not using Gmail. I'm using some, I'm using the same folks I use for my website
Sam: hosting and mail is not their specialty.
Sam: And so they've got some default crappy spam filtering that didn't work very well.
Sam: I understand, but the mail client can help here at the very least,
Sam: put it into a suspected junk if you're not like, like routing it to an actual junk folder.
Sam: Cause like, yeah, there is a, I do have a junk folder at my, at that mail server too.
Sam: Like you can move stuff. I would give you permission if you were good.
Sam: And you know, and the other categories, by the way, are, are worse.
Sam: Like if I go into transactions, okay.
Sam: First one, daily headlines, something I've never signed up for. Senior perks.
Sam: Thank you for properly identifying me as an old person.
Sam: The Voltex heated vest.
Ivan: Hey, I think a senior perks. I mean, come on that they've got you.
Sam: You know yeah something from jeff research jeff research emerald map reports come on.
Ivan: The emerald the emeralds i mean come on.
Sam: Oh oh here's another golden opportunity here's one from demo dennis hammer which
Sam: is a fake paypal receipt for an iphone in australian dollars.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And these are all your primary.
Sam: No, I've moved on to transactions now.
Ivan: Oh, that's a transaction. Well, that sounds like a transaction, but you got a receipt.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. I got a receipt for the Australian iPhone. I didn't order via PayPal.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And, you know, updates is even worse. It's just my, my, my point is like,
Sam: okay, we're getting with all of this Gen AI shit.
Sam: The one thing that you'd think they could apply this to that would actually be useful.
Sam: Do my fucking spam filtering.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: And get it right.
Ivan: All right. Well, unfortunately, my spam filtering is a lot more effective than yours.
Ivan: It's taken a lot of time to get there.
Ivan: And listen, I will tell you that I had a lot of difficulties over the years.
Ivan: There were some years that the spam filtering at Apple was just not working
Ivan: at all. I had a fight with Apple support over that where all of a sudden one
Ivan: of the OS updates, the spam filtering stopped working.
Ivan: And I was like furious. And I did hammer at them for months until apparently
Ivan: development finally rolled out a patch that fixed it. Okay.
Ivan: But I kept hammering them. I'm like, I had a case open. I'm like, this is bullshit.
Ivan: I'm using your damn spam filter, whatever. Now all of them are just going into
Ivan: my email inbox. This is it. So eventually they did fix it.
Ivan: But yeah, I mean, I definitely mine. If I look at my let's see,
Ivan: let's look at my primary. Okay.
Sam: Oh, and by the way, I go to promote. I guess the closest thing is promotions
Sam: because my promotions is basically all spam.
Sam: Well, not even there. There are a couple of things in promotions that are legitimate
Sam: email from my son's school is ending up in promotions. okay so but.
Ivan: You can change that as a category.
Sam: I i know i can change that one so at least that one but like i guess i could
Sam: consider promotions to be spam and just train it so all spam is promotions yeah,
Sam: Yeah, because like I never want I practically never want a real promotion.
Sam: So maybe that's the right way to think about it. Promotion.
Ivan: I'm looking at this over here and the ones that I have over here,
Ivan: like I have an open support case with plume because one of the pods they sent
Ivan: me the new ones is defective.
Ivan: OK, I did get notified. I want in primary like a notification.
Ivan: Hey, I logged on to my Apple ID.
Ivan: So I've got that. OK, I got my notifications from American Express.
Ivan: Hey your card was not present for a purchase i'm like okay
Ivan: i want to know that my tax documents from charles
Ivan: schlubb i want that in my primary okay all right i i want that i apparently
Ivan: somebody has been trying very ardently to hack into my hertz account i keep
Ivan: getting notifications of my 2fa for hertz repeatedly over and over which i'm
Ivan: not trying to log in obviously they're failing I'm getting the notification,
Ivan: but somebody is definitely trying to hack into my, my, my that an appointment
Ivan: from Manu's therapist appointment with a wind mitigation inspection,
Ivan: a couple of notifications or credit cards, notifications that I signed some
Ivan: documents and appointments.
Ivan: So, so basically everything in my primary is stuff like, Hey,
Ivan: you know, you know, you, you got a charge on your credit card.
Ivan: You have an inspection coming in. So that's pretty useful. Let's go to transactions.
Ivan: Amazon, Amazon. My wife now, all of a sudden, being at home, for God's sakes.
Ivan: Okay, one thing that I told Sam that, you know, they're like,
Ivan: you know, talk about a guy that eats his own product.
Ivan: Sam definitely, you know, loves the product. Okay, all right?
Ivan: That is no problem, okay?
Sam: We get multiple Amazon boxes on our porch every day.
Ivan: Listen, thank God your employer doesn't sell cocaine, Because if it was cocaine,
Ivan: you'd be like the most addicted person in history.
Ivan: OK, so all my Amazon notifications like my hotel, you know, notifications from
Ivan: hotel that I'm going to, which I'm like, I already know I'm going to the hotel.
Ivan: I don't need that, you know, promotions from my Hilton Walgreens notifications, my FPL email bill.
Ivan: I know I'm getting the electric bill. I know what it is. There's no surprise on those.
Ivan: So those are all in the transaction thing. Credit cards.
Ivan: I bought Girl Scout cookies. Okay, so I'm going to the other one.
Ivan: Updates. I don't know. Apple update.
Ivan: Oh, it actually made a cut. It's got my iCloud thing there.
Sam: Right, right. Your point is it's working well for you.
Sam: You spent some time training it. And it's working well. So I need to spend some
Sam: more time. I need to spend some more
Sam: time and I need to consider spam as promotions and just treat it that.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Teach it everything that goes into promotions and pull out the things that aren't promotions.
Sam: The other thing I will say, though, that is disappointing on that front,
Sam: and I'm sure they're working on it, but they didn't update the desktop client with the same thing.
Ivan: They said they're releasing it later. They said for some reason it wasn't.
Sam: I know.
Ivan: I don't, but this is what I will say. Look, the one thing about it is,
Ivan: look, it's not perfect, okay?
Ivan: But look, I have like Microsoft Outlook that I've used for work a whole bunch
Ivan: for several reasons. Sometimes I get secure messages or other stuff.
Ivan: Worse, we don't wind up using that client.
Ivan: And they've had a classification of like primary inbox or other,
Ivan: which I found somewhat helpful, okay?
Ivan: This takes it several steps ahead. And I found that Outlook classification useful.
Ivan: It really did help in filtering out some messages that I really didn't want
Ivan: to be seeing as primary. But, you know, I don't want them to go into junk.
Ivan: This is from almost any email client I've seen recently.
Ivan: By far, one of the biggest changes I've seen at anybody trying to make the damn
Ivan: thing more useful than it is right now. Because of the deluge of shit that we get.
Sam: Well, and see, the thing is like, I, whenever I open my mailbox,
Sam: the other thing, by the way, I use heavy use of in, in the Apple ecosystem,
Sam: both on desktop and on my phone.
Sam: Although sometimes it doesn't sync properly, but like is the VIP category.
Sam: I basically any human being any
Sam: human being i'm really expecting email from because just making
Sam: it my inbox was not working but i've
Sam: basically and any human being i'm expecting email from i designate them as vip
Sam: and then i go into the vip folder and that really is essentially all it's all
Sam: humans and like one set of notifications i've decided was important enough to
Sam: put there and so but every time I open my yeah.
Ivan: VIP works to.
Sam: It does help but every every time I open my regular inbox I'm like oh,
Sam: Because the first thing I have to do is scroll up and down through the thing,
Sam: mark all the spam, move to spam.
Sam: And I guess now instead of move to spam, I will classify it as promotion.
Sam: And then I will mark everything in the promotions folder as spam.
Sam: And yeah, I have to go through that. Then I basically have a three pass approach.
Sam: First is go through looking for spam and move that to spam, classify it,
Sam: whatever I'm going to do in the future. Then second, I go through looking for
Sam: stuff that is real mail, is mail I want, but I don't really have to do anything with.
Sam: And I file that away into an archive folder.
Sam: And then for whatever's left, I look through it and I'm like,
Sam: okay, what do I actually do with this?
Sam: And the problem is by the time I get to that third stage, I'm tired.
Ivan: The missing step is to print it all.
Sam: Yes. Yes. I must still print it all.
Sam: Yes. Yvonne is referring to the fact that when I was in college and we had limited
Sam: disk space, so I couldn't just keep everything.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: I would regularly just print all the mail. And I had huge stacks of printed archival email.
Ivan: And especially- It did help. It did help that at CMU, we could print unlimited.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, that's an insane thing that no university does that anymore.
Ivan: We could send jobs down to, they had these massive printers down at Wheaton
Ivan: Hall, and we could just fucking like just deluge that, hey, print this, you know,
Ivan: whatever, massive thing, and they would just have it over there ready for you.
Sam: Yvonne was not there when I finally left CMU, because I went to one year of
Sam: grad school before I dropped out, because...
Sam: You know, it wasn't actually what I wanted, but like before I finally left CMU,
Sam: I spent like several days doing nothing but print, but print to make sure I had everything.
Ivan: I believe it, you know.
Sam: I totally believe because it, because it wasn't, it still was like,
Sam: there was limited to space.
Sam: There wasn't a good way to move the stuff to a new account.
Sam: Like, cause I, I'd gotten a, I'd gotten a commercial account,
Sam: but there wasn't a good way to just transfer my stuff from my CMU account to the other account.
Ivan: Not back in those days, no.
Sam: I just spent days printing shit and like reams and reams and reams and reams of paper.
Sam: I still have, and I still have all of this in my garage.
Sam: There's like something like 10 of those banker boxes full of nothing but email from CMU.
Ivan: Listen, I went to his apartment in New Jersey after he moved out of this.
Ivan: There was a stack that reached a ceiling with printed emails i i will not forget
Ivan: i'm like what the fuck is this oh those are the emails i'm like.
Sam: Including spam including spam because i was
Sam: not deleting spam yet at that point back then i mean
Sam: it's just you know well there wasn't that much there wasn't that
Sam: much i am pretty sure that when
Sam: that first spam email went out that like you can
Sam: look up you can look up what was the first spam email i'm pretty
Sam: sure i got a copy of that thing probably well you
Sam: know the one i really remember was the first usenet spam that
Sam: not email spam but yeah whatever anyway we are old yeah we're old okay so we
Sam: we just spent an entire segment talking about email it's been a long time since
Sam: we've had a tech topic like that yes like it's it's a little bit different than
Sam: what our normal fair has been recently i.
Ivan: Mean we talked we talked the last time about what you would call it of the meta
Ivan: rules on whatever on content.
Ivan: So we talked about the content moderation stuff, now we talked about email.
Sam: Well, and you know.
Ivan: And next week, I'm going to talk about, I don't know, basketball.
Sam: Yes, you're going to do everything you possibly can to avoid talking about the
Sam: start of the Trump administration.
Ivan: Correct. I'm going to talk about basketball spreads and NFL playoffs.
Ivan: And, you know, I don't know, Sam is going to just, you know,
Ivan: like collapse into a heap of blubber on the other end, listening to this.
Sam: And then I'll force you to talk about Trump for the next segment.
Sam: But like for today, though, like as much as we could talk about like, you know,
Sam: right before we started recording, there was a Wall Street Journal reported
Sam: that Trump is planning on massive deportation raids in Chicago starting Tuesday.
Ivan: It's always good to telegraph those in advance.
Sam: Yes, yes. I'm sure no one will hide or anything.
Sam: But the point is the fear, though. If he gets people to hide,
Sam: it serves the purpose. But anyway.
Ivan: Serves the purpose of what? Publicity? Oh, okay.
Sam: Publicity and terrifying people.
Ivan: Yeah, I forgot that that's the main.
Sam: It's all performative. Anyway, it is time for another break.
Sam: And when we come back, I'm going to keep with the tech theme and talk TikTok.
Sam: That'll be my topic. Okay. And so we will be back after this.
Break: You're supposed to say doo-doo-doo. Doo-doo-doo! Alex Emsala!
Break: Alex Emsala is awesome. Its videos are fun.
Break: And today, once again, we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell
Break: you how awesome Alex Emsala is.
Break: I'd say on a rate from 1 to 10, Alex Emsala is awesome at, I don't know, 37?
Break: 82? too. He's pretty radical. His videos are phenomenal. They're full of creativity.
Break: And they're so funny and exciting to watch.
Break: Wow, what happened to your voice then, Amy? Was that dad pretending to be you?
Break: Because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't because I told him to?
Break: Yes. Good job on remembering, Dad. Do, do, do!
Sam: Okay, we are back. Before I start talking TikTok, I will say it had been a long,
Sam: long time, but Alex actually posted several new videos to that channel over the last month. Wow!
Ivan: Wow.
Sam: I know. Now there's still, he's 15 now. He's posting videos from when he was
Sam: seven that were originally recorded when he was seven, but he did post some
Sam: new stuff like right on, right around new year's, December 31st,
Sam: January 1st, he posted a few things.
Sam: I don't know if he's going to do it again anytime soon, but yeah,
Sam: you can go check that stuff out. You know, look, people, you have failed me.
Sam: My, my, my real retirement plan, forget about other stuff. My real retirement
Sam: plan was his YouTube channel was going to blow up and he was going to become
Sam: a millionaire and pay for me.
Ivan: I mean, that's a good plan.
Sam: Now, and his current 80 subscribers is not really doing that for me.
Sam: So, like, he is not generating income for me yet.
Ivan: So we got to get him to start generating income. I think that's him.
Sam: You know, I told him this the other day. I was like, look,
Sam: you, you keep like developing more and more sophisticated, like partially built
Sam: video games that you get bored with and move on to something else before they're actually done.
Sam: You have to actually finish some of these things, put them out there,
Sam: sell them, make us some money.
Sam: You know, you, you, you, you can like, I am counting on you kid to be making
Sam: enough money so I can quit my job and lay back and like, I don't know,
Sam: like we talked about the other day, sleep and watch TV.
Sam: I've got a bunch of other projects I want to work on too, but yeah,
Sam: whatever. Like the kid needs to pay for himself.
Sam: You know, so.
Ivan: That's got to happen soon.
Sam: You know, we, we, we, we had a couple ideas for projects that we were talking
Sam: about a couple of years ago that again, he got bored and moved on before we
Sam: got something that worked, you know,
Sam: and like physical products too.
Sam: Like there was a gadget that we like were, were, were trying to think through and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: It had some, I thought it had some potential, but he and I had creative differences
Sam: on the direction it should go.
Sam: Like, I wanted to go one approach, he wanted to go another, and,
Sam: like, it just didn't work out, you know?
Sam: So, anyway. Okay, TikTok.
Ivan: What happened with TikTok, Sam?
Sam: So, as we are recording this, early Saturday UTC, Friday night, U.S.
Sam: Time, it is still not quite 100% clear.
Sam: Now, the Supreme Court upheld the ban of TikTok that Congress passed.
Sam: The current situation is that the Biden administration has said, look,
Sam: this thing expires Sunday on the weekend before the inauguration on Monday,
Sam: which, by the way, is also a federal holiday. We're not doing jack.
Sam: You know, the no enforcement actions are going to happen Sunday or Monday.
Sam: And so this is up to Trump. This is whatever happens is up to Trump.
Sam: Now, there are a few things there. First of all.
Sam: TikTok themselves have said for a while that unless they won,
Sam: they're just going to proactively shut down access to TikTok in the US.
Sam: They're you know they're not going to wait for apple
Sam: to pull them from the app store for apple and google to
Sam: pull them from the app store and for isps to
Sam: do blocking or whatever they're not going to wait for any of
Sam: that crap they're they're just going to proactively like block the us themselves
Sam: and shut this down they said they're going to redirect uh anybody who tries
Sam: to use the TikTok app to a webpage that just explains what's going on.
Sam: And they, after the Biden administration had said, look, no enforcement Sunday
Sam: or Monday, it's up to Trump, TikTok explicitly said, look, we're still going
Sam: to shut down the service on Sunday.
Sam: And presumably this is like 12.01 AM on Sunday Eastern time or something.
Sam: We're still going to shut it down unless we have like an ironclad,
Sam: assurance from the Biden administration of XYZ, at which the Biden administration
Sam: can't because they can't make promises for the Trump administration.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And so it looks like TikTok will be shutting down. Now, the question is for how long?
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Because there are a few other things that are, I've heard a number of people
Sam: say, and I have not investigated the law myself to know this detail because
Sam: I haven't heard this universally from all places,
Sam: but apparently there is something in the law that the president can declare
Sam: a one-time 90-day extension.
Sam: So you'd think if they had that capability, the Biden administration could have
Sam: punted it that way since the deadline is on the freaking 19th,
Sam: which by the way, you know, Congress put the deadline on January 19th on purpose.
Sam: Thought purpose yeah yes so but or
Sam: was it it was a certain number of days like the
Sam: the law was passed and then some federal agency had
Sam: to make a declaration that tiktok met the criteria because
Sam: because the law does not actually say tick i think it does mention tiktok by
Sam: name in one place but it's worded in such a way that it could conceivably apply
Sam: to other companies and there's some sort of executive there's some sort of executive
Sam: declaration that has to be made so it's probably some amount of days after that. Anyway, whatever.
Sam: But there's no way it was coincidence that it's January 19th. But,
Sam: So I guess there's the possibility that, and meanwhile, Trump has been signaling
Sam: in all kinds of ways that he wants to find a solution.
Sam: He submitted an amicus brief a while ago saying that he wanted to,
Sam: you know, Supreme Court, please give me more time so I can make a deal once I'm president.
Sam: So maybe he signed something to do that 90 days, or he gives TikTok the assurance
Sam: that he's not going to enforce for a while, which by the way,
Sam: that's like, hey, yes, this is the law.
Sam: It's been affirmed by the Supreme Court, but the executive is going to decide
Sam: not to enforce it is also sort of like not the best way to go about doing things either.
Sam: But there's the possibility TikTok shuts down for a couple of days.
Sam: Trump comes in on Monday or Tuesday and And this talk savior,
Sam: Sam, he's the tick tock savior.
Ivan: Man, he's coming in. You say he's been mentioning what you needed.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: He's going to come in and save immigration on the first.
Sam: Yes. Yes. I mean, there's been talk of a Trump executive order on tick tock,
Sam: but although it's unclear, what exactly is that executive order?
Sam: It's going to be ignore the law.
Ivan: Maybe.
Sam: Sure. that there's all there's also an
Sam: effort in in congress to do
Sam: an extension there as well but it's unclear it
Sam: has the votes or where it would go so it looks like this you know by the time
Sam: you listen to this episode if tiktok because i'm not gonna get this thing out
Sam: saturday probably who knows maybe i will but there's a good chance by the time
Sam: you listen to this episode tiktok will have been shut down or not.
Sam: If it is shut down by TikTok themselves shutting it off, there's also a chance
Sam: that early next week, it somehow gets resolved and TikTok comes back.
Sam: And Donald Trump is the savior of TikTok, which by the way, there's approximately
Sam: half of the US population are TikTok users at this point.
Sam: It is not a small piece of social media. And a lot of those folks are upset.
Sam: And so, you know, what you were saying, Yvonne, oh, Donald Trump's the savior,
Sam: like coming in and rescuing TikTok would be like, this would be good for his ratings.
Sam: Like, you know, people will actually appreciate that.
Sam: Hell, I'll appreciate it and like it. You know, I, I, I'm, I'm also addicted
Sam: to TikTok. I like my TikTok.
Sam: I find stuff there. and look.
Sam: Here's the thing. And we had a conversation about TikTok when this was going through Congress.
Sam: My ultimate take on this is that if you are going to take this kind of significant action,
Sam: just saying that, oh, it's dangerous because China owns it,
Sam: without backing that up
Sam: by declassifying whatever classified evidence you have that they're actually
Sam: doing something nefarious And the various protections that TikTok has said that
Sam: they have in place to make sure that the key critical components are controlled
Sam: by American employees in the U.S.
Sam: And are not controlled by China. Because that's what they say.
Sam: Like, their defense is like, look, we've actually firewalled this off.
Sam: The subsidiary can do this. The servers are in the U.S. The people running them
Sam: are in the U.S., blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Like, if you're going to do something this drastic, you should have to prove it publicly,
Sam: not just say, trust us, we've got information that it's actually bad,
Sam: or worse, trust us that this is a danger, that they haven't actually acted on, but it is dangerous.
Sam: Because, you know, look, I fully believe, yes, like, having the ability to manipulate
Sam: the conversation is problematic but here's the thing also,
Sam: It's problematic when X does it too. It's problematic when Facebook does it as well.
Sam: The fact that TikTok has the capability, okay, fine.
Sam: They've got Chinese ownership and maybe that's a little bit different.
Sam: But frankly, I'd be a lot happier.
Sam: If there are certain behaviors of things that social media companies should
Sam: not do with your data or should not do with how they manipulate the algorithm,
Sam: then make that illegal across the board.
Sam: Make it apply to the American companies, too.
Sam: This just does not seem like the right solution here.
Sam: And it seems heavy handed. It seems like and of course, their defense is,
Sam: well, we didn't we didn't tell them they had to shut down. We just told them
Sam: they had to sell. They could have sold.
Sam: And apparently there's various billionaires who are like, we're trying to work
Sam: out a deal. We'll buy you.
Sam: But ByteDance is like, no, it's not. for sale it's not for sale sorry we will
Sam: shut down before we sell it.
Ivan: I mean of course there was the whole rumor this week that the chinese wanted to sell it to musk.
Sam: Yes well there was a rumor that they were talking to him but like bite dance
Sam: has consistently said they're not selling to any.
Ivan: I know that but i'm like at this point i'm like
Ivan: look man here here listen you want
Ivan: to talk about a nice bribe to uh
Ivan: musk we're talking about a 40
Ivan: they estimate valuation of tiktok at 40 50 billion
Ivan: dollars okay basically makes them whole on on
Ivan: on his twitter loss and the reality is that as i have experience school of business
Ivan: in russia and so forth like the the especially the last few years on their sheet
Ivan: the last six seven years the government control that's china.
Sam: Not russia but.
Ivan: No no no i know but but what i'm saying is that russia
Ivan: and china russia and china as i mean but like in in china which i also had to
Ivan: deal with look government control and and and uh pressure on on the companies
Ivan: has risen to a level that was unseen before and the reality is that they know
Ivan: such a decision like that.
Ivan: Whereas 10 years ago was probably pretty much wholly in the hands of the companies. Not anymore.
Ivan: That era is gone in China right now in business.
Ivan: And so it's disingenuous to think that this is not a government-influenced decision.
Ivan: My whole thing in terms of the ban, I actually was with China on the,
Ivan: My whole thing is they have the authority and have banned so many of the large U.S.
Ivan: Companies from doing business there on the internet.
Sam: It's not reciprocal. It's not reciprocal.
Ivan: I'm just like, you know what, fuckers? If that's the way you do business,
Ivan: then fuck it. We'll ban all of yours. The hell with this.
Ivan: Because this is ridiculous. This is not reciprocal trade.
Ivan: You guys want to be able to put your company's any app they want on our markets.
Ivan: Yet we get zero access almost. Zero.
Sam: Right. Like it's not like Facebook and all of these are, you can't access them in China.
Ivan: They're all banned.
Sam: Well, and the thing is like the, I've heard one or two people make that argument,
Sam: but the main arguments for this were not about the trade reciprocality.
Sam: It was about the Chinese government being
Sam: able to use this as a form of influence over Americans
Sam: and as a form of sucking in data because basically like most social media apps
Sam: like this is not unique to tiktok they basically are set up so they suck every
Sam: possible piece of information off your phone they possibly can.
Ivan: But but that's my.
Sam: Point you know you.
Ivan: Know you're not saying reciprocality but the reality is that that's really what's
Ivan: happening when you're saying hey you're doing all of that here and we have no
Ivan: access there at all and so I just you know but yeah I,
Ivan: Look, I, but bottom line.
Sam: I'm, I'm checking heard. Yes.
Ivan: I heard. Did I, that was that a bullshit? Well, of course I didn't double check this factually.
Ivan: I heard that the Tik TOK US CEO is going to be at the inauguration.
Sam: Was that accurate? That is correct. He is going to be.
Ivan: So I mean, I fully expect it to somehow in some way be online.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, so my bet at this point, and I forget what I said on the prediction show,
Sam: but my bet is it's going to get shut down on Sunday and it will come back online
Sam: certainly before the end of the year, but quite possibly within days,
Sam: depending on what Trump does and what sort of deal he makes.
Sam: But I did look up TikTok in terms of their data sucking policy on the Apple App Store.
Sam: Data linked to you if you use the TikTok app.
Sam: Purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers, diagnostic,
Sam: financial information,
Sam: contact info, user content, browsing history, and usage data are all captured.
Ivan: No, nothing.
Sam: Yeah. Data not linked to you may be collected, but not linked to your identity usage data.
Sam: So just, just a tad, but like, to be clear, like you go into almost any other
Sam: of these apps, they're doing the same damn thing.
Sam: This is not, this is not uncommon.
Sam: This is like, you know, so if you have objections to that, you know,
Sam: talk to all these other apps too.
Sam: Now, the other thing I wanted to mention though. is in the last week,
Sam: I don't know how closely you've been following this, Yvonne,
Sam: but there has been a cohort of people on Twitter.
Sam: Who have been like, you're going to shut down TikTok because it's a Chinese app?
Sam: Fine. Fuck you. We're signing up for Red Note.
Sam: And Red Note is a Chinese social media app aimed internally at Chinese people.
Sam: It's in the UI by default is Chinese.
Sam: The description is in Chinese, like everything. thing, you know,
Sam: and it is unabashedly, like TikTok is like, hey, we've got an American subsidiary
Sam: and we've tried to firewall things off.
Sam: Now, Red Note, which by the way, another translation I've heard,
Sam: because the real name is, of course, in Chinese.
Sam: Red Note is how I've seen it translated most commonly, but also Little Red Book,
Sam: which of course has certain connotations in Chinese.
Ivan: Exactly. Yes. Yes.
Sam: But so there are all of these TikTokers going over there, signing up for Red
Sam: Note, and they're calling themselves TikTok refugees.
Sam: So there's been this whole thing of like all these Americans crashing this Chinese
Sam: app and starting to post over there, having Chinese people come in and,
Sam: first of all, be extremely welcoming.
Sam: Oh, welcome to the TikTok refugees.
Sam: And like, we'll help teach you some Chinese. There's like all kinds of Americans
Sam: posting videos. I have not signed up for Red Note.
Sam: So I am looking at videos that people have taken of what's going on on Red Note
Sam: and posting them back on TikTok.
Sam: There's Americans like trying to learn Chinese to talk to their new Chinese friends.
Sam: They're American TikTok refugees who already have hundreds of thousands of followers on Red Note.
Sam: There are Chinese people asking the Americans for help with their English homework.
Sam: And apparently there's all kinds of like wholesome cultural exchange going on
Sam: between the the americans and chinese people on this app and there's been like
Sam: you know people showing each other their pats and stuff like there are a couple i thought.
Ivan: You were going to say something else okay.
Sam: Well actually let's go for to something else because one of the things the americans
Sam: are finding out fairly quickly is there are lots of things that aren't allowed.
Sam: Oh, you know, cause really?
Sam: Do tell. Well, apparently like certain, there's certain things where like that
Sam: would, people would post on TikTok doing certain dances in, let's say scantily clad.
Sam: Like TikTok doesn't allow like unclad that you go other places for that.
Sam: But TikTok lets you like show a little skin that was not allowed.
Sam: They're apparently oh you
Sam: know gay lesbian trans stuff does
Sam: not go over well over there apparently not really
Sam: you know although I did see one person countering that but apparently like there
Sam: were lots of Americans hitting terms of service issues over there and getting
Sam: their accounts shut down for posting things that are not allowed on Chinese social media.
Sam: Don't tell really real and
Sam: so hitting that and like then you get the people saying
Sam: with the backlash hey people i know you're all going like to
Sam: red note to sort of screw the man because there are lots of people like
Sam: oh by the way there are all kinds of memes about like saying people on tiktok
Sam: saying goodbye to their chinese spy um and and there's all kinds of people like
Sam: going over and talking about how they're going over to Red Note to give them
Sam: all their personal information,
Sam: because, you know, again, screw the U.S. government.
Sam: They're worried about us giving up all our data. So here's all my data. Have fun. Enjoy it.
Sam: But, you know, there are people coming back and saying, look,
Sam: look, you know, it's all nice. You're trying to stick it to the man and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But this app has all kinds of issues too with their policies,
Sam: with what's supported, what's not supported.
Sam: And there are actually reasons why not to do this.
Sam: And then one other thing that apparently has... Oh, I'm just going to talk about
Sam: red note rumors and things like that.
Sam: Let me just say up front, a lot of this stuff has not been entirely confirmed.
Sam: But here's one thing that apparently did happen.
Sam: There was this one Chinese man who, when all the Twitter refugees were showing
Sam: up, filmed a welcome video and was like, welcome to Red Note.
Sam: We appreciate your presence here and we're welcoming you and it'll be great
Sam: to have you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Some Americans started distributing this as saying, look, the Red Note CEO welcomed us.
Sam: And we're all like distributing this about how the Red Note CEO was welcoming and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And then the next day, like posted on the same channel or whatever,
Sam: was this guy's girlfriend is like, dude, everybody thinks you're the Red Note CEO.
Sam: No, it's just some guy, some guy in an apartment with his girlfriend.
Sam: It's just some random guy posted that welcome message.
Sam: And then there are people going like, well, he looked like a CEO,
Sam: you know, he taught, you know, he's, he was welcoming us to the app.
Sam: Who else would it be? You know, and, but apparently there's another rumor going
Sam: around that Red Note is actually.
Sam: Considering separating out the foreign IPs now, because there's just a little
Sam: bit too much interaction with the Americans going on that they'd rather not have.
Sam: So they're going to segregate the IPs out to make sort of an American portion
Sam: of Red Note and a Chinese portion of Red Note and reduce the intermingling.
Sam: Another thing I saw a bunch of posts on were Americans,
Sam: reacting to like apparently one of the things that's really
Sam: common on red note was like and it's common
Sam: on tiktok too it's common like people i mean not common common but it's something
Sam: that people have done like showing like they go get a bunch of groceries and
Sam: show what they got and stuff like that and so a bunch of americans were like
Sam: oohing and aahing over how cheap the groceries were in China.
Ivan: Oh, God, here we go again, this stupidity.
Sam: And how people could, and like, oh, this is just a regular worker living alone
Sam: in a really nice apartment that I could never afford here in America.
Sam: And so there are a lot of people, and also people just remarking at how technologically
Sam: advanced China was, like seeing some of the buildings and stuff like that, of like, oh my God,
Sam: they're not living in huts i don't i don't know what they expected but.
Ivan: Oh my god these idiots i swear to god all such
Ivan: fucking morons i mean basically so in
Ivan: a couple of weeks the chinese will figure out oh my god we've been invaded by
Ivan: a bunch of morons and by the way here's the other thing there's this app that
Ivan: is not in english and she mentioned anything so yeah there may be a nice big, you know,
Ivan: Thousands of whatever people, tens of thousands of maybe go over there.
Ivan: But the mass market is not going to go with the fucking...
Sam: No, they're not doing this. No, no. Wait a minute.
Sam: Red Note is the number one downloaded free social media app on Apple right now.
Sam: But there's a big difference between rising to the top of the download charts
Sam: for a few days or even weeks than having a whole bunch of people actually take
Sam: the time to move over there and be over there on a regular basis.
Sam: It's going to be a handful of people doing it for novelty for a little while
Sam: and then dropping off again.
Sam: Like, you know, people are looking for...
Ivan: Not like what happened with threads at the original Spurt.
Sam: Yes. I mean, people will check out the alternatives. People are looking for TikTok alternatives.
Sam: People got a lot of mileage over the fact that, you know, oh,
Sam: they want to ban the Chinese app?
Sam: We'll show them Americans using a Chinese app.
Sam: And some people got mileage out of that. But you're right.
Sam: It's not a mass thing. It's not like the 170 million people who are using TikTok
Sam: are going to move to Red Note.
Sam: It's going to be, like you said, a few tens of thousands who do it for a little bit.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And this was something that,
Sam: if they do separate out the IP addresses, there were people who were like,
Sam: Chinese Americans who were using this to keep up with their friends in China who are like,
Sam: if you fuck this up for us, we're going to be pissed if like American IPs get
Sam: segregated from the Chinese IPs on this app, you know?
Sam: So anyway, yeah.
Sam: TikTok. I am going to go through all the videos I've posted on TikTok for either
Sam: curmudgeons corner or myself.
Sam: I've got local copies of anyway, so I don't have to go download all my videos,
Sam: but I might go through and look and take like screenshots of comments and stuff.
Sam: Cause I don't think even if I go and do the download all my stuff,
Sam: I don't think the comments are included because they're actually somebody else
Sam: leaving the comment on yours. They're not really yours.
Sam: So I might do something like that to like archive the stuff tomorrow. I don't know.
Sam: And I'll just double check that I have copies of everything.
Sam: So, but I don't know. I,
Sam: But if this actually gets shut down and stays shut down, there'll be a lot of
Sam: people who would be pissed off by it.
Sam: They will blame Biden. He did sign the law, although the law was included in
Sam: some omnibus bullshit must pass thing. It wasn't a standalone.
Sam: So I don't know. But people will blame Biden anyway. And if Trump rescues it,
Sam: they'll give him the credit. And perhaps deservedly so. I don't know.
Sam: And look, there probably are real national security concerns.
Sam: That probably are the real trade concerns.
Ivan: There is no reason why he's getting the servantly so the credit.
Ivan: First of all, it was the Republicans that actually pushed this through.
Sam: Well, it was fully bipartisan. And they may have originated it,
Sam: but this is one of the things that act like was 95%.
Ivan: Yeah, but like you said, this was part of a bigger bill as well.
Ivan: So they tucked it in there. Trump had been actually banging the table for it.
Ivan: Okay, a while back, if you don't remember.
Ivan: And then he changed his mind. Exactly. Okay.
Sam: Well, and specifically, he changed his mind when one of the major TikTok investors,
Sam: who was American, donated a bunch to his campaign. And then he changed his mind.
Ivan: Oh, wow. Gee.
Sam: Or I guess legally to one of his super PACs, not his actual campaign, whatever.
Sam: And then the other thing.
Ivan: I wonder how many shares of DJT that guy bought.
Sam: Yes. And then he did well on TikTok.
Sam: TikTok was one of his platforms that he used to spread his message during the campaign as well.
Sam: So anyway, I think this is a stupid way of dealing with it, even if there are real problems.
Sam: But maybe Trump will do a deal and force a sale to some consortium of Elon and
Sam: other billionaires. Mr.
Sam: Beast has said he's got some billionaires. He wants to buy it too.
Sam: You know, so Mr. Beast, famous YouTuber.
Sam: Have you not kept up with Mr. Beast?
Ivan: I think I vaguely have heard of him.
Sam: You know, I do not subscribe to Mr. Beast's channel. I find him kind of obnoxious, actually.
Sam: But he comes up with a bunch of other YouTube channels I watch.
Sam: They mention him and talk about him
Sam: and stuff like that. So he's kind of unavoidable, but I find him annoying.
Sam: But he's done really well. He's made lots and lots of money on YouTube.
Sam: And, you know, his thing is giving away that money in, like,
Sam: game show kind of things and various other ways of giving it away.
Ivan: I just looked up. His net worth is only $500 million. Mr.
Sam: Beast?
Ivan: Barely. Yes.
Sam: No, Mr. Beast, just to be clear, Mr. Beast has not said he wants to buy it.
Sam: He has said that he is coordinating a group of billionaires that he knows to put up an offer.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it really would have to be a lot of other people putting up the money.
Sam: Yes or a handful of specific people.
Ivan: You know.
Sam: That yeah so.
Ivan: I don't know let's be clear even elon musk because this is the one thing when
Ivan: he bought twitter he had to go beg borrow and steal the damn money okay yes so well.
Sam: He he probably still would now but he's considerably richer than he was when he bought twitter.
Ivan: Oh yeah but remember that all of it is most most i know it's all locked up.
Sam: It's a big problem.
Ivan: It's all locked up. So even if he went, he would still have to borrow the money
Ivan: from somewhere or sell some stock of something or do something or whatever.
Ivan: I mean, he can do it, but it's not like, you know, it's not like he's sitting
Ivan: in, you know, he's not Berkshire Hathaway, which right now I think is sitting
Ivan: on like 300 billion in cash is some crazy amount of money.
Ivan: So Warren Buffett as basically the guy that decides at Berkshire, he goes there.
Ivan: We'll write a check tomorrow. Cash. But but very few companies have that access to cash.
Ivan: Maybe he'll do it.
Sam: You think he wants TikTok?
Ivan: He doesn't want that shit. He doesn't want anything to do with that shit.
Ivan: He has been very quiet and pretty much on purpose.
Ivan: He's really just staying out of his whole shit. He's old. He's tired.
Ivan: His partner doing this died. And he's just like, right now, it's just like,
Ivan: let's just leave me the fuck alone.
Sam: Yeah. And I can't blame him. And the end of the thing is, if ByteDance really,
Sam: and like you said, probably driven by the Chinese government actually making the decision.
Sam: If their bottom line is we're not going to sell, no matter what,
Sam: we'll shut it down first.
Sam: Then it's getting shut down in less Trump basically decides we don't care and
Sam: we're going to ignore the law or we're going to shove through,
Sam: we're going to, we're going to,
Sam: you know, we're going to shove through a bill to undo the law from a couple of years ago.
Sam: Yeah. Which is possible. You know, they, maybe that's part of the shock and
Sam: awe is a bill to undo the tick tock law. I don't know. We'll see.
Sam: Anyway, that's it. By the time you listen to this, you'll know if it was shut down on Sunday or not.
Sam: And yeah, so we're done. Anything else on TikTok, Yvonne? I think we're done.
Ivan: Well, now we're done.
Sam: Okay, so the stuff at the end. Thank you, everybody for joining us again.
Sam: You can go to curmudgeons-corner.com where we have archives of the show,
Sam: transcripts, links to all the ways to contact us, links to our YouTube.
Sam: There is no link to TikTok.
Sam: If TikTok does survive this thing, I will add a link to TikTok.
Sam: I've been, I've been posting to Tik TOK, like little one minute video clips
Sam: of the shows for the last month, month and a half.
Sam: And some weeks they get a lot of traffic. Some weeks they don't,
Sam: I don't know what makes the difference.
Sam: You know, I guess some of the shows China likes and some of them China doesn't,
Sam: but I, I, I pro I probably won't get to even post clips from this show before
Sam: they shut down, if they're really shutting down on Sunday, unless I really rush it out Saturday.
Sam: I don't know. I don't, maybe I will, maybe I don't feel like rushing, you know?
Ivan: Tired.
Sam: Anyway, go check out our TikTok before it disappears. I don't know.
Sam: It's curmudgeon's corner on TikTok. You can search for it.
Sam: Anyway, all that stuff is on there. Importantly, also a link to our Patreon
Sam: where you can get, oh, you know, I promised last week I'd look up what the right
Sam: rewards were for the three people who adjusted their Patreon last week. And I forgot.
Sam: Remind me next week, Yvonne. I'll look it up, like figure out what they deserve.
Sam: Anyway, thank you for everybody who already contributes to our Patreon.
Sam: If you don't contribute to our Patreon, consider it.
Sam: It's just a little bit of cash to help us pay for the expenses of the show.
Sam: And importantly, and at various levels, we'll mention you on the show.
Sam: We'll ring a bell. We'll send you a postcard. We'll send you a mug.
Sam: And importantly, at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us,
Sam: we will invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a
Sam: bunch of our listeners are chatting throughout the week.
Sam: Oh, and also tell your friends. I remembered last week, but for years I've forgotten
Sam: to say, tell your friends. Oh, and review us on iTunes.
Sam: I haven't said that in years. I haven't checked iTunes in years.
Ivan: Well, we haven't checked it. Yeah, we haven't checked the reviews.
Sam: I haven't checked that forever. But leave us a review on iTunes and tell your
Sam: friends and boost us up so we can be making millions on this show too.
Ivan: Boost! Boost!
Sam: Anyway, Vaughn, is there something from the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack that we
Sam: have not talked about on the show that will make people so excited about the
Sam: Slack that they want to contribute to our Patreon that you would like to share with us today?
Ivan: I was actually looking for this stuff. See what we've got here.
Ivan: That sounds interesting and funny.
Sam: By the way, today's popular wiki of the day was in fact, Mr. Beast.
Sam: Presumably because of his tiktok stuff.
Ivan: Because of the tiktok stuff yeah well
Ivan: okay so planters offers 45 000 and benefits to drive its iconic nutmobile apparently
Ivan: i mean i'm guessing they gotta pay travel expenses right you know is that just
Ivan: you know you got fuel expenses and hotels they want you to drive this thing.
Sam: All around the country yeah so i presume.
Ivan: Right so they gotta be paying for travel expenses. So, so apparently,
Ivan: do you dream of hitting the open road in a peanut-shaped vehicle?
Ivan: Planters giving three lucky people a chance to drive its iconic Nutmobile across
Ivan: the country, earning $45,000 a year, plus travel stipends, health benefits, and a 401k?
Sam: There you go.
Ivan: I mean, you know what? If I was retired, I would, sure. Why not?
Sam: You know, I think they probably frown on you taking the peanut up to 120 miles per hour.
Ivan: They might, yes. But that might get a lot of publicity for the peanut.
Sam: You could do the- You know.
Ivan: You got a police chase. You got a police chase of the peanut.
Sam: Do the cannonball run in the peanut.
Ivan: Yes, yes.
Sam: There you go. Get from coast to coast as fast as possible.
Ivan: Right. Yeah, I'll do a cannonball run on the peanut mobile.
Ivan: You know, yeah, that's one of those things. I could do all those things, yes. I'm sure.
Ivan: I mean, I'll tell you what, get them a hell of a lot more publicity than any
Ivan: other damn thing they're doing.
Sam: I, I, you know, it would be, can you imagine the helicopter chase of the peanut?
Sam: The peanuts going 120 miles, 120 miles an hour down the interstate with a hundred
Sam: cop cars after it and helicopters, live TV coverage. Yeah.
Ivan: You know, because in order to do that, I'll have to get it juiced up.
Ivan: So I'll go and I'll take it to a shop.
Sam: Oh, you don't think the stock peanut can do that?
Ivan: No, no, no. So no, I'll go and I'll have to go to a shop. Guys,
Ivan: we need to modify this thing. Okay, come on.
Ivan: This thing needs to do over 100 miles an hour. You know, I'll spend $10,000,
Ivan: $20,000 in parts, put it in there, whatever, get the peanut,
Ivan: and then we put it on the road, and then we're blasting through,
Ivan: and then we get the massive police chase going on. Yes.
Sam: You know, for some reason, every once in a while, you see these people doing
Sam: the land speed record in rocket powered vehicles.
Sam: You never see a rocket powered peanut.
Ivan: No. Hey, go to the salt flats, get a couple of Genesis to take,
Ivan: you know, take off units attached to the damn thing and try to go and do,
Ivan: you know, do a speed thing on the on the peanut.
Sam: Now, the aerodynamics of a peanut are not necessarily ideal,
Sam: but that would just make it more interesting.
Ivan: Make more interesting. Make sure I got to get a helmet, fire suit,
Ivan: and other things if I'm going to be doing that as well.
Ivan: By the way, my wife actually, because I haven't been out on a racetrack in a
Ivan: while, did gift me for Christmas this thing to go on a racetrack on a car in February.
Sam: Try not to die.
Ivan: Die well i'm thinking well not
Ivan: a race car i i went and i the one thing
Ivan: that i that i picked was that i've driven almost every
Ivan: german car but i i've never driven like an
Ivan: italian supercar like a ferrari or lamborghini or something so i have never
Ivan: done that so i chose to i i i did choose to drive a lamborghini at the track
Ivan: okay so because i haven't done that and i i'll i'll report on what that is i'm sure we.
Sam: Will expect your report once that's done assuming you don't die.
Ivan: I expect to be yelled at at the i'm
Ivan: pretty sure what i'm i'm expecting i i've heard from
Ivan: some other people that one of the things is that
Ivan: most people that show up you know they haven't really driven cars fast before
Ivan: so they're not going that fast but then you get a guy like me that showed up
Ivan: that that's like you know driven very fast and they're like kind of like freak
Ivan: They kind of like freak out because all of a sudden this guy gets in the car
Ivan: and all of a sudden, you know, slams it, you know,
Ivan: smashes the gas and pulls out. They're like, whoa, wait, what happened?
Ivan: So I'm fully expecting to be yelled at next month. Very loudly.
Ivan: So that's already happened. So we'll see what happens. I'll try not to get killed.
Sam: Very good. Yes. Try not to get killed.
Sam: And, you know, if you're going to do the cannonball run with the peanut,
Sam: though, you got to make it a race against the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
Ivan: I mean, can you imagine the publicity that we would get?
Ivan: Peanut versus Oscar Mayer Wiener cannonball run. I mean, that would be that
Ivan: would get a lot of publicity.
Sam: There you go i.
Ivan: Like this idea okay all right.
Sam: Okay with that we are done hey everybody we did not talk much about politics
Sam: except where it intersected with tiktok and stuff this time around that's.
Ivan: A big political issue.
Sam: It is it is but like but like for one like we're a couple days again away from
Sam: the second trump administration and we did not really talk about it we didn't
Sam: really talk about biden's legacy or any of that kind of stuff but you know here's
Sam: one thing i will say i am like i guess i.
Ivan: Keep looking at people complaining about biden and i want to punch him in the
Ivan: face like right now just like get the fuck out of my.
Sam: Yeah well and all i was gonna say is trump has promised shock and awe for the
Sam: first hundred days and specifically a bunch of stuff in the first few days, first day, first week.
Sam: So by the time we get here next week, we'll see how much of that was talk and
Sam: how much of that was real.
Sam: Like we've said, talk about what he does, not what he says.
Sam: Starting on Monday afternoon, we'll find out what he actually does. So there we go.
Sam: Stay safe, everybody. Have a good week. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Say goodbye, Yvonne.
Ivan: Bye. Bye.
Sam: Bye.
Ivan: I said bye three times.
Sam: We didn't talk about the Gaza ceasefire deal either, but we'll find out whether
Sam: that actually happens and like.
Ivan: Well, yeah, that's still not in effect.
Sam: Yeah. It's supposed to take into effect later this weekend. Everybody approved,
Sam: but we'll see what actually happens and how long it lasts and blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, goodbye, Vaughn. I'm hitting stop.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Do, do, do. And this is Sam again.
Sam: And as promised at the very beginning of the show, So if you hold on just a
Sam: few seconds, you'll hear the fun and exciting audio difficulties I had at the
Sam: beginning of our recording.
Sam: Here you go. Do, do, do.
Ivan: Shaved. Wait, why? Why does this sound weird?
Ivan: I hear like. Speak.
Ivan: I've got to record this. You sound like Chewbacca.
Ivan: I don't... What the hell is going on? You sound like Chewbacca on my end.
Ivan: What?
Ivan: I forgot if I record this.
Ivan: We have some audio problem.
Ivan: Can you... Can you...
Ivan: Ha ha ha.
Ivan: I mean, I don't really if I could understand what you're saying I would say
Ivan: let's go with a show like this but no, I can't even understand what you're saying,
Ivan: are you sure you don't have some audio filter but I can't the sound's not coming
Ivan: out I can't I mean, let me, hold on.
Ivan: What? Sound?
Ivan: I see.
Ivan: Aha. Okay, okay. Hold on. Okay, go ahead. Please speak. Hold on.
Ivan: Wait, wait. Record now. Okay.
Ivan: Okay, Sam, so what were you saying again? Go ahead.
Ivan: Ah, I see. Well, it's really good, Sam.
Ivan: This is great. Yes. All right. You know, yeah. Sure. Whatever you're saying. Yeah.
Ivan: And, you know.
Ivan: Okay, let me, let me see, there's a little, uh, speak some more, speak, speak.
Slow Sam: Okay, let me, let me.
Ivan: Let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me.
Ivan: Sure, all right, good, all right, all right, let me, oh shit,
Ivan: that wasn't recording, speak again.
Slow Sam: Talk some more, talk some more.
Ivan: I don't know.
Ivan: Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. I'm going to be like.
Slow Sam: I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like.
Ivan: I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like.
Slow Sam: I'm going to be like.
Ivan: Okay, good. Alright, great. Perfect. Alright, I'll try reconnecting.
Slow Sam: Uh-huh. I'll show you now.
Ivan: Oh, God, it's still the same.
Slow Sam: Okay, what's next?
Ivan: I don't understand. I mean, did you play back? Did you play back what I said?
Slow Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I mean, we could come eat it, but we can try this.
Ivan: I just exit it and then I just, I actually, I, okay.
Ivan: Yeah, I, I exit it completely. I grabbed the link again and connected again.
Ivan: I didn't just do a reconnect.
Ivan: The keys sound normal, though.
Ivan: For some reason. The key tapping sounds normal. Just not when you speak.
Ivan: All right. All right. Let's all leave. Okay. All right.
Ivan: No. Still.
Ivan: The coughing sounds great. Oh, God, I need to record that as an effect. You're coughing.
Ivan: You sound like the sound effects Ferris Bueller was using when he was asleep.
Ivan: What the hell is going on? Because you hear me fine.
Ivan: I mean, I did a few zooms today. The sound was fine.
Ivan: Do do do me a favor here try okay all right let's let's yeah let's exit the
Ivan: whole thing okay let's exit quit the browser start start again okay all right
Ivan: let's do this hello no fuck,
Ivan: okay so what the all right okay let's do that okay yeah all right let's try that all right okay.