Sam: Test test test okay talk for a second bruce hello hello hello okay sounds good okay oh.
Bruce: Boy this is the first time i've
Bruce: done a video version you've uh you changed since the last time i was on.
Sam: No i i remember seeing you last time but you're right it wasn't the we didn't
Sam: do anything with the video it was only like we saw each other but like right
Sam: now like this this is going out live if nobody's watching, but it's going out live.
Sam: And, and then I will, I will probably still put some highlights on Tik TOK.
Sam: Uh, although we'll see, like, I don't know if I'll do that forever.
Sam: Cause it's once again, one of those things like when, like when we,
Sam: like when we did Facebook, maybe I'll save this for the show. Anyway, let's do this.
Bruce: That's fine. I have a Tik TOK channel too, and I can, uh, I can share them online. mine.
Sam: There you go. Okay. We can just get started if you want. You know how it works.
Sam: I'll, I'll rely on you for topics since you're the guest.
Bruce: Oh, yep. So like, don't tell you now or what?
Sam: You can surprise me unless you think it's going to like, like throw me off the
Sam: edge and confuse me. And then, okay.
Sam: Then you can surprise me. It's okay. Okay.
Sam: So let's, let's get this thing started and then we can go. Okay. Here comes the music.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, February 1st, 2025.
Sam: It's just after 3.30 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Minter.
Sam: Yvonne Bo could not make it this week. This weekend is his birthday.
Sam: Sunday is his birthday. He's going to be old.
Sam: And his family's doing stuff with him. And he's got stuff going on even tonight.
Bruce: He's going to be old?
Sam: Oh, yeah. He's going to be very old.
Bruce: Old.
Sam: Very old. He was already old. He's going to be very old.
Sam: And as you can hear we've got bruce with us who has uh joined us before on a
Sam: number of occasions let's see i should check real quick when was the last time
Sam: i just i just yeah i think that's right i i actually just i just changed my
Sam: thing to have your current date it was,
Sam: May 31st. Our May 31st show is your last time on.
Sam: And so for those of you who are not familiar, if there's any such person out
Sam: there, when we have a guest host, I give the guest host a lot of preference
Sam: over picking the topics.
Sam: We'll still sort of do our first segment being a little bit less newsy.
Sam: And then after that, two segments of other stuff, but I'll pretty much let Bruce pick.
Sam: He has not told me what he wants to talk about. I told him not to.
Sam: I told him he could surprise me.
Sam: And so, yeah, so that's, that's, that's the plan for the show.
Sam: And I expect Yvonne will be back next week.
Sam: So Bruce, to start out, you got any non-newsy stuff you want to chat about or
Sam: updates on, you know, how, how, how's life since last May?
Bruce: Oh, very good. Very good. There's a number of things I could talk about.
Bruce: I went on a cruise and with a family, had a lot of fun.
Sam: Did everyone get sick? Did everyone get sick?
Bruce: No, everyone was fine. Okay, because that's the rep for cruising. Yeah.
Sam: That's the reputation cruises have.
Bruce: Yeah, well.
Sam: Whether it's COVID or the flu or just colds or diarrhea or whatever,
Sam: that you go on a cruise and everybody ends up sick.
Bruce: Well, the worst thing that happened was one of the kids got a sunburn. Oh, okay.
Sam: Okay.
Bruce: The main thing I wanted to mention is, as you know, every year when you do your predictions.
Sam: Your predictions. Yes, you beat us.
Bruce: So a number of years ago, and I've done this ever since. I guess it's got to
Bruce: be for the last seven, eight years maybe.
Sam: Wow.
Bruce: On my personal blog, I copy. Give the link.
Sam: It's contrarianconformist.blogspot. Am I remembering right?
Bruce: Yes, something like that. Yes.
Sam: Blogspot.com.
Bruce: Yeah yeah i still use blogspot.com which
Bruce: is like so old but i'm
Bruce: too lazy to go with a more modern blog site but but anyway yeah every year i
Bruce: i copy basically all the same questions you have and i compare myself to you
Bruce: all and normally i do about between the two of you i Okay.
Bruce: Better than one or worse than the other. But this year-
Sam: You beat both of us.
Bruce: I beat both of you. I'm quite proud of myself.
Sam: What were the biggest topics that you consistently improved on us on?
Bruce: The topic that I really shined on was the Congress, the predictions on Congress.
Bruce: I got everything correct except for one of the predictions. Wow.
Bruce: So, and then also I did really, I got everything right on Asia,
Bruce: the Americas, global predictions.
Bruce: Mostly I did very well on Europe, Middle East, all the international stuff I did pretty good on.
Bruce: The things I did poorly on was the presidential race.
Sam: I think we all did poorly on the presidential race.
Bruce: Yeah, that was, it was quite a surprise. I don't think we knew that it was going to be a crazy year.
Bruce: Yeah. But nobody could have predicted what actually happened.
Bruce: And hey, we all came out. We survived.
Bruce: Well, maybe, well, I guess we're living in the consequences of it now.
Bruce: We'll talk about that later.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Bruce: Yeah, but yeah, I was, my grand total was 76 correct out of 124 predictions
Bruce: and that's 61.2%, which is, I think, like maybe four or 5% better than y'all.
Sam: Yeah, we had like what, mid 50s, high 50s, something like that.
Bruce: Which is worse than what you normally get. So I took advantage of a bad year.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, it was our worst ever. Our worst ever.
Sam: Well, I'm pretty sure it was our worst ever. Like I said on the show where we
Sam: reviewed results, the first few years I did this, I just did it on paper.
Sam: And I'm sure I've shoved those pieces of paper somewhere. They may even still be in my office here.
Sam: But if you forced me to find them, it would be a significant effort of time to find them.
Sam: But everything for a long time now has been in a spreadsheet that I just have.
Sam: And so I'm opening it right now to tell you, yeah, the actual final percentage
Sam: for us was 50.7 for me and 54.1 for Yvonne.
Sam: So an average of 52.4. And you got what, 60 something?
Bruce: 61.
Sam: 61. So almost 10 points better than us.
Sam: So congratulations, the grand prognosticator.
Sam: There, I could say the word.
Bruce: As my kids would say, I've got a big brain this year.
Sam: Big brain. You know, I'm thinking of the old Johnny Carson skit,
Sam: you know, with the turban and everything.
Sam: Everything so that's very cool anything anything else no that's that's it,
Sam: Okay, well, I got two things. One that, you know, I was starting to say something
Sam: to Bruce before the show, and I figure I'll say it now.
Sam: I had mentioned, like, the fact that we're posting video clips on TikTok of
Sam: highlights, because the thing we use to record has like this AI thing that you
Sam: push a button after you're done recording, and it finds like,
Sam: usually about 12, like,
Sam: clips that are usually about a minute long, but they can vary from 30 seconds to a couple minutes.
Sam: And then you can adjust them manually that it thinks will be interesting.
Sam: Now of those 12, usually I can find four that actually do seem interesting.
Sam: Like, and to me, like the things I want to like make it interesting to post
Sam: on TikTok or something is like, I want a back and forth between me and the co-host.
Sam: I don't want a monologue with one of us just talking as an example.
Sam: Sometimes it'll pick like, hey, maybe it was an interesting minute,
Sam: but it was all Yvonne, and so I'll ignore that.
Sam: Or it was some random side topic that we actually only talked about for that
Sam: 30 seconds, and so I'm like, eh, that's not a good highlight.
Sam: But I can usually pick four And I post them and it's kind of interesting because first of all,
Sam: according to the stats that TikTok gives you, like each one of these clips that
Sam: I post gets something on the order of,
Sam: five to ten times as many views as the podcast gets downloads every week well
Sam: that's just an now here's the thing though if you look the average length of
Sam: one of those views is like two seconds so this is not like i.
Bruce: Didn't know i gave you those stats that's interesting.
Sam: It does give you all kinds of stats if you go look in the stats it tells you
Sam: like you can see the actual curve of drop off and they're like you know most
Sam: viewers drop off in the first three seconds look here to see what happens and
Sam: it gives you the percentage that actually watches the whole thing to the end.
Sam: And that's usually like five to 10% actually watched the whole thing,
Sam: but it also like the comments are usually assessable.
Sam: Like it's, it's like mostly people clearly trolling like that.
Sam: And of course the, the one minute clips are taken out of context.
Sam: So like it may be them saying something about what we said that we actually
Sam: addressed on the full show.
Sam: Like, but you haven't thought about this or whatever. And if you actually listened
Sam: to the whole show, we actually spent five minutes on that, but it wasn't in
Sam: the one minute clip, you know, and, and, and, you know,
Sam: you know, just people, people trolling that they're, and mostly,
Sam: mostly the trolls are clearly like of the MAGA type orientation.
Sam: There are occasionally some, some other folks and there are occasionally some
Sam: serious comments on one occasion.
Sam: There was like a clearly a mega person and a lefty who just decided to have
Sam: a whole long argument in our comments.
Sam: Well you know it started it started out
Sam: relevant to like whatever we had said but by
Sam: the end they were just yelling at each other and so
Sam: you know it is what it is but like the thing is it takes me on top of my normal
Sam: process to put out the podcast maybe an additional half hour to put these things
Sam: out and so over time i i actually find it kind of fun so i'm still doing it
Sam: at a moment and I've been doing it maybe a month and a half now,
Sam: but I figure I'll give it three months because then after that,
Sam: like really the whole purpose of doing this in the first place, well,
Sam: my son, Alex bugged me about how I should do it for months before I actually did it.
Sam: But like the whole point is theoretically get put more people to listen to the
Sam: actual show, you know, and of course, like years and years ago.
Sam: We still have a Facebook page. I still mention it at the end of the show and stuff like that.
Sam: But we actively promoted the Facebook page. We paid money for Facebook ads.
Sam: We built up. I think the Facebook page has thousands of followers.
Sam: But it gets no traction. The way Facebook works, even if you have thousands
Sam: of followers to a page, your stuff won't necessarily surface to the people who've
Sam: followed it unless you pay to promote the individual.
Sam: Individual posts, which we are not doing.
Sam: And so, but, but for the first couple months, we did, we, we,
Sam: we promoted people to the page and we promoted whatever.
Sam: It had zero effect whatsoever on actual downloads of the podcast.
Sam: So like I left it up, but I'm like, I'm not going to spend effort here.
Sam: I'm certainly not going to pay the money anymore.
Bruce: It shows that for, for that purpose, Facebook ads, we're not doing what they're.
Sam: Supposed to What the Facebook ads did was what Facebook wanted them to do.
Sam: It would boost your follower count. It might boost, you know,
Sam: views of the Facebook page, but it would not take people off Facebook to something else.
Sam: True. You know, and then, you know, so, okay, maybe it was doing what Facebook
Sam: was wanting. It wasn't doing what I wanted.
Sam: And for TikTok so far, we haven't seen any noticeable change in our trends on
Sam: our downloads. It's the same as it's been for years.
Sam: So I'm like, is it worth the extra half hour?
Sam: It's kind of amusing. So maybe it is a little bit, but it's,
Sam: it's certainly not like getting, getting any promotion that actually like helps. So I'm like, eh.
Sam: Do I really want to spend the time and effort and thought, especially like,
Sam: you know, Facebook got the reprieve, which technically speaking is not legal even,
Sam: which, you know, I won't get into all the details of that conversation,
Sam: but like there was a mechanism in the law to do a 90 day extension,
Sam: but it had to happen before.
Bruce: You said, you said Facebook, you meant TikTok.
Sam: Oh, TikTok. Sorry. Yeah.
Bruce: TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. The Facebook.
Sam: No, whatever, you know, no. Now, TikTok got a reprieve,
Sam: but what the law actually allowed was a 90-day extension, but the 90-day extension
Sam: had to be before the deadline actually ran out,
Sam: and there had to basically be certified that there was a deal in progress that
Sam: was almost certain to happen.
Sam: So the timeframe expired, so the 90-day extension wasn't in play anyway,
Sam: but Trump basically just promised that nobody would enforce it and so it's sort
Sam: of partially back like if you've already got the app you can continue to use
Sam: it but it's still not in the app stores and so it may very well go away again
Sam: at the end of this or may not there are a number of possible deals i've.
Bruce: Been hearing or seeing headlines here and there that there there's actually
Bruce: some they're more open to being sold.
Sam: Yeah, I have heard that too. But every report I've seen that says that has been
Sam: sort of second or third hand. So I don't know how much to trust it.
Sam: Also, one of the things they've said is that even if they sell TikTok the brand
Sam: and TikTok the users and all of that, they're not selling the algorithms.
Sam: Which is what a lot of folks seem to think is the reason that TikTok behaves
Sam: differently and has a different vibe than the various other Instagram reels or whatever,
Sam: which haven't gotten the same level of attention.
Sam: Now, of course, there are other people who say that it just feels different
Sam: after it came back, and maybe they've already changed the algorithm and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And they did add some new options in the settings that you can apparently mess
Sam: with to affect what's in your feed. And so they have done some things post coming back.
Sam: But who knows? It's all people speculating. It's not anybody who knows is not talking.
Sam: Like, yeah, the people who know are quietly doing the things they're going to
Sam: do. And we'll find out when we find out.
Sam: But, yeah, so I don't know.
Bruce: I would be sad if they sold. I hate to see that the government force them or
Bruce: bully them into selling and then them actually doing it. I'd like to see some other outcome.
Bruce: But unfortunately, the Supreme Court didn't rule the way that I really thought that they would.
Bruce: But we'll see. I mean, oh, well.
Sam: I mean, and yes, there are all kinds of like I feel like the law was very much
Sam: ill considered and not the right way to go.
Sam: But I'm not necessarily sure that the Supreme Court was wrong in that saying,
Sam: you know, Congress does have the power to do that, which I think is a different
Sam: question than should they have done it.
Sam: But either way, then there's the other issue of even though it's for a result
Sam: I'm actually happy with, which is TikTok is still on,
Sam: you know, is it okay for the president to blatantly ignore the law in the kind of way that he's doing?
Sam: Anyway, we're, we're verging into newsy stuff.
Sam: So the, uh, of, of, of just say, you know, I may, you know, I may or may not
Sam: continue posting the Tik TOK clips.
Sam: If any of you listeners have an opinion on that, let me know, cause I'll do it.
Sam: If people like it, like that actually listened to the show.
Bruce: Um, I, I do see them pop up on my feed, but I follow you on Tik TOK. So, um, I, and yeah.
Bruce: If she do do some posts from this, I'm looking forward to seeing the comments.
Sam: I generally speaking do four clips from every show.
Sam: There's one show I only did one because it was actually the one where we talked
Sam: about the TikTok ban because I put it out after TikTok was reinstated and things had already happened.
Sam: So I just like a lot of the clips that came up with were us talking about the TikTok ban.
Sam: And it was all sort of outdated by the time I was even posting it.
Sam: So I only posted one from that show, but every other one I've posted four.
Sam: But I feel like I'm, except one, the most recent one, I actually posted five.
Sam: So at first I was trying to very religiously, I'm going to post four on every show.
Sam: And now I'm like, I'll look at the 12 it gives me and I'll post the ones I like
Sam: and I'll ignore the ones I don't like.
Sam: And I'm not going to hold myself to a number because there were a couple of
Sam: times where after it generated the 12, I didn't like four.
Sam: And so I messed with it and made it generate more, too much work, too much work.
Sam: The only other thing I was going to mention, and this is also a,
Sam: Hey, listeners, give me your thoughts on this is I am finally after many months,
Sam: I think the last time was also last May,
Sam: finally logging all the stuff that I've,
Sam: movies I've watched, books I've read, et cetera, in the last like nine months.
Sam: And so I will once again have a backlog of those and the option to start doing
Sam: media reviews again here.
Sam: And so the question, well, two things. One, I am looking,
Sam: I have not finished pulling the stuff and counting and seeing how many there were,
Sam: but it is looking like I may actually be averaging more than one a week,
Sam: which would mean I would never catch up by doing one a week.
Sam: So the questions here to the audience are A, right?
Sam: Do you want to hear that back at all? Like, did folks even enjoy the media reviews?
Sam: Because if not, I don't have to do them at all.
Sam: If I do do them, you know, do I try to do more than one so I actually catch up?
Bruce: I'm looking at the list and it's a fun list.
Sam: Oh, yeah. Some of these are already on our, like, on our Commudgeons Corner plaque.
Sam: On our Commudgeons Corner Slack, I've already started to put in some of the ones I've watched.
Sam: I'm working my way backwards from now to last May. So I've got a couple months
Sam: more of these to enter in before I actually am ready to start talking about them.
Bruce: So you're saying, I'm looking forward to your reviews on a lot of these.
Bruce: So my vote is yes, go through them and do, and if you need to do two a week
Bruce: and do them quick, you know, make them, make them two, make them one minute reviews.
Sam: You know, we say that, but you know, I fail constantly. constantly.
Sam: I'm like, okay, I'll do a quick review. I'll just do the thumbs up,
Sam: thumbs down, then I'll be done.
Sam: And then like, boom, like before you know it, Yvonne and I have talked 30 minutes
Sam: about like some stupid movie from the eighties or something.
Sam: And, you know, and there we are, but yeah, no, we got, we got a bunch of these,
Sam: but like, I I'm looking and, you know, January, January, we've done more than one a week.
Sam: December was more than one a week. a lot november was more
Sam: than one a week october was less
Sam: than one a week you know but but as
Sam: september was less than one a week but august was more
Sam: you know so i think the average is going to turn out to be more than one a week
Sam: if i ever want to catch up and like keep up so i don't know so anyway tell if
Sam: you're out there i give all the ways to give us feedback at the end let me know
Sam: your thoughts do you want reviews if so would it would you be upset if there
Sam: was more than one some weeks,
Sam: you know, anyway, that's it. That's all I got.
Sam: So unless we got anything else on either of those things, Bruce,
Sam: I'll take a break. And when we come back, we can have your first more serious topic.
Bruce: Good. Now's a good time. I got to answer the door. Okay.
Sam: Go answer the door and we'll be back right after this.
Sam: Okay. We are back. Bruce timed it perfectly.
Sam: Okay. Bruce, what's your first topic of the day?
Bruce: Okay. So I want to, well, the big news this week is that air crash.
Bruce: And I think definitely Yvonne should be talking about that.
Bruce: So I'm going to leave that to him. I'm looking forward to hearing his evaluation next week.
Sam: And we had a second one just a few hours ago too.
Bruce: Oh gosh.
Sam: Well, it wasn't a commercial airliner. It was an air ambulance transporting
Sam: someone who'd just gotten life-saving treatment in Philly,
Sam: and they were on their way back to Mexico via somewhere in the Midwest,
Sam: and it crashed right next to a mall outside of Philadelphia.
Bruce: Oh, gosh. Wow.
Sam: So, seven people on board, and I've heard mixed reports whether people on the
Sam: ground were hit, but there were many fires on the ground, houses and cars.
Bruce: I think it'll be better for Yvonne to do that next week because there'll be
Bruce: a lot more information available.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Bruce: But in the meantime, I think we should do a tech topic. Okay.
Bruce: Deep Seek. This is a perfect topic for me because it's right up my alley.
Sam: Because you did or are you still working at an AI place?
Bruce: I worked at an AI company about a year and a half ago. After I left Ocean Gate,
Bruce: I worked at a company called Bright AI.
Sam: For those who don't remember, Bruce was at Ocean Gate, which is the place with
Sam: the sub, you know, that had the thing happen.
Sam: Yeah, we've talked about that on the show before. Go ahead, Bruce.
Bruce: Oh, yeah. You know, actually, you know, since my last visit,
Bruce: there was the Coast Guard review of that.
Sam: Of Ocean Gate.
Bruce: I didn't even think about that. But.
Bruce: I should give you a quick evaluation of what my take was from that.
Sam: Okay, go ahead. Do Ocean Gate update first.
Bruce: Let me give you a quick take on what was the cause of the accident,
Bruce: of the implosion of that sub.
Bruce: Okay. I'm not going to get into the deep sea.
Bruce: Basically, there are two systems. There were two systems that we designed into
Bruce: the sub to monitor the health of the carbon fiber hull.
Bruce: One used ultrasonic acoustic sensors, and the other used strain gauges to detect
Bruce: movement or the deformation of the hull.
Bruce: And those two combined would be able to detect if the hull was flexing beyond its linear range.
Bruce: It would move like a spring, and when it came back to the surface,
Bruce: it would come back to its original shape.
Bruce: And the acoustic sensors would be able to hear if there was any breakages that
Bruce: were beyond a safe amount.
Bruce: And when we did test hulls and when we tested this system out,
Bruce: it worked very well in predicting when the hull was not healthy,
Bruce: long before it actually failed.
Sam: And so with the test hulls, you actually tested the failure on a bunch of them?
Bruce: I tested the failure on multiple one-third scale hulls.
Bruce: So in the 2022 expedition, there were three years of expeditions.
Bruce: The one that I went on was in 2021, then I left the company,
Bruce: and then they had another set of expeditions in 2022, and in 2023,
Bruce: that was the year that it imploded.
Bruce: Toward the end of the expedition in 2022,
Bruce: they had done several successful dives, but on one of the dives,
Bruce: as they were coming to the surface, they were almost at the surface,
Bruce: the hull emitted a very
Bruce: loud bang it was so loud
Bruce: that it could be heard on the surface and the
Bruce: stockton who was who was very he was all he was very positive minded he always
Bruce: liked to justify things and we had to kind of keep them reined in but he just
Bruce: made the assumption that,
Bruce: it was not the hull, that it was the hull settling within its metal cage. It was not a problem.
Sam: Right.
Bruce: But during the Coast Guard...
Bruce: Review or testimony last september they
Bruce: showed the data on those sensors during that
Bruce: event and clearly it shows that
Bruce: the hull changed shape and it
Bruce: was a permanent shape change that and
Bruce: and after that event the the hull was
Bruce: behaving differently and so but they but because they were they just disregarded
Bruce: that or i don't know what happened because i wasn't there suppose for some reason
Bruce: they decided to keep diving the sub even after the sensors showed that there
Bruce: was a problem and so basically.
Sam: The stuff the safeguards that were in place to tell you when the hull had an
Sam: issue and was no longer safe had gone off they got the alarms they decided uh we don't care.
Bruce: Exactly yeah you can design a system to warn but you can't design a system that
Bruce: forces it not to work or not forces people to not make a wrong decision so after
Bruce: that bang they did a dive that,
Bruce: either that week i think like like the next day and it
Bruce: was fine they did one more dive even after that
Bruce: and went down came back up no problem that was the and those those two dives
Bruce: after the bang were the last dives of that year fast forward to the third expedition
Bruce: in 2023 the first dive where they went down at a deep dust, it imploded.
Bruce: So like we saw in our testing, if there's an event, there's plenty of time between
Bruce: the event and the actual failure.
Bruce: That's what happened, and they just ignored the warnings. They ignored the warning.
Bruce: Now, there has been no report from the Coast Guard, But that's my evaluation.
Bruce: I'd be surprised that they didn't come to the same conclusion.
Sam: So what was the report that was released then?
Bruce: There was no report yet. They had their testimony. But as far as I know,
Bruce: they have not come out with a final report of the accident.
Sam: Okay.
Bruce: Yeah. So.
Sam: So, DeepSeek.
Bruce: DeepSeek. There was a huge shock to the AI industry this week,
Bruce: or I guess about a week ago.
Bruce: Chinese company came out with their own AI model and testing over the last week
Bruce: has shown that it is comparable to the performance to open AI chat GPT.
Sam: And their most recent, most powerful models too, not just.
Bruce: Yeah. And so it was so shocking that it caused a huge dip in value of NVIDIA,
Bruce: which is the company that provides...
Sam: At least according to initial reports, there are some people who are out there
Sam: doubting it, but it was done much, much more cheaply for a couple of different reasons.
Sam: One, due to export controls, at least in theory, China is not allowed to have NVIDIA's best chips.
Sam: So they were using some of the previous generation.
Sam: And in order to do that, they had to do all sorts of optimizations.
Sam: Which I've heard subsequent reporting that, you know,
Sam: the American companies have been thinking about some of those optimizations as well,
Sam: but hadn't really bothered with them because it's easier if you have access
Sam: to hardware and money to just throw hardware at it than it is to do optimizations.
Sam: And so the end result of this is that it was something like a hundred times
Sam: cheaper for the results they got to train this thing, maybe even more.
Sam: And then I saw something subsequent that an American research group has managed
Sam: to do something at a smaller scale, but using the same kind of techniques, even cheaper.
Bruce: So they report that they did it for $6 million, which is kind of like the pizza
Bruce: budget for some of these other companies. and American companies doing that.
Bruce: It's really interesting.
Sam: The AI initiative that was just announced by the Trump administration was $500
Sam: million, I believe, for building major data centers out and blah, blah, blah, etc.
Bruce: As a logical engineer, I can tell you, I can totally understand what has happened here.
Bruce: The when when you
Bruce: go to an engineer or engineering team and you
Bruce: tell them that there's no limitation on them they can spend whatever they want
Bruce: and have as many resources as they want to accomplish a certain task they will
Bruce: take everything and that's why you're seeing these you know like x,
Bruce: x's ai's they're putting up like a hundred thousand cpus
Bruce: and and meta has like another hundred thousand cpus in these data centers to
Bruce: to generate these models and to to and so i can just imagine that they they
Bruce: just ask for what they want and they get what they want and so they they have no sense of,
Bruce: efficiency. And I can understand because they want to get a quick result.
Bruce: And when you have these powerful NVIDIA processors, you can come to a solution
Bruce: very quickly. In the last three companies.
Sam: Well, and this is an example, like this is writ large because of the scale.
Sam: But you see this play out all the time, even on your home computer, right?
Sam: I mean, because people who are writing software, take advantage of the hardware they have.
Sam: And the fact that like at this point, you know, hard drive, I'm not,
Sam: not even using the right term.
Sam: Storage is cheap. Most of it's no longer spinning platter hard drives anymore.
Sam: Storage is cheap. Memory is cheap. CPU is cheap.
Sam: You know, where Moore's law has been doing its thing for years and years and years.
Sam: And they, on the one hand, they always want to push these things to the limit.
Sam: But it also incentivizes people not to bother with the optimizations because they don't have to.
Sam: And so you get things like we've got computers that compared to computers from
Sam: 5, 10, let alone further back in time years ago, are amazingly powerful.
Sam: But like your day-to-day activities, like browsing the web or something,
Sam: feels the same as it did, like speed-wise. it takes just as long to boot up your computer.
Sam: You know, if you're, you know, sometimes when you're like typing in a word processor,
Sam: it still has trouble catching up with you as you type.
Bruce: As right now is, is, you know, it gets pixelated and, and I've got fiber to
Bruce: my house. It's still, it's like.
Sam: Yeah. And I don't, I don't have the fastest connection in the world,
Sam: but I have more than enough for like multiple HD video connections, you know? And,
Sam: And yeah, and all these things where it's just because the, the bang for the
Sam: buck is not in optimizing the little things and making it,
Sam: you know, so, you know, when you have the option of like, oh,
Sam: we don't have to worry about like making this super efficient,
Sam: the hardware is good enough, it'll be fine.
Sam: And the hardware will get better over time anyway. And then we can push it harder and harder anyway.
Bruce: So I have examples of this. The last three companies that I've worked for have
Bruce: all used these NVIDIA modules to solve problems.
Bruce: And in every case, it's been overkill.
Bruce: These NVIDIA modules, they literally, so just the modules are about that big.
Bruce: And it's got the processor and memory and the supporting logic around it.
Bruce: And you can build a system around that. And it has very powerful tools that they provide.
Bruce: And there's no other company out there that even comes close to providing that
Bruce: much computing power for the wattage that you consume.
Bruce: And so it's, but they're very expensive.
Bruce: It's literally $2,000 for this little module.
Bruce: And and so it's very easy for for
Bruce: a startup company to say you know let's
Bruce: let's use these and get to a a working
Bruce: prototype right away and and i can
Bruce: do that but then what happens when you want
Bruce: to start selling more of them then it
Bruce: gets super expensive and that's when i
Bruce: was at boeing they had this we're designing
Bruce: this system this image processing system for the triple
Bruce: seven freighter and it was way
Bruce: overkill there we were literally doing something that
Bruce: you could do on a mobile phone but they
Bruce: were making it so robust and working
Bruce: 100 of the time in all possible situations they
Bruce: had a the development cost was going to be 50 million dollars for this imaging
Bruce: and and so finally when management came out and said oh crap that's way too
Bruce: expensive and so So they basically threw away two years of work.
Bruce: And basically the whole time that I was at Boeing was basically down the tubes.
Bruce: And then I ended up getting laid
Bruce: off from there. And then I come into the company that I'm in right now.
Bruce: They basically are wanting to do the exact same thing.
Bruce: It's an NVIDIA board in a box on an aircraft.
Bruce: And I'm like, this is overkill. And then what they're doing in my current company
Bruce: is much less than even what they were doing at Boeing. So I'm like, this is way overkill.
Bruce: So at least I'm able to go into them and say, let's do something a little bit less expensive.
Bruce: We'll, we'll see how it works out.
Sam: Yeah, I think, I think those are examples are everywhere. And like that,
Sam: I mentioned on the show last week, there's a personal project I bought a domain
Sam: name for, and I'm just starting it up.
Sam: And the, I have not gotten anywhere significant, but the first thing I wanted
Sam: to do was just put up like a splash page, like an HTML page with an image and
Sam: some text as a placeholder before I put anything in.
Sam: And of course I'm, I'm, you know, I know this project is beyond my technical
Sam: skills. So I'm, I'm using AI to, to help me.
Sam: And like, if I was going to do the splash page myself, I would write an HTML
Sam: page using HTML one O technology that's been around since the,
Sam: you know, late 1980s, early 1990s.
Sam: And it would be fine. And it would render on everybody's computer just fine.
Sam: It would, it would work on my phone. It would work everywhere.
Sam: And of course this, this, you know, the thing is telling me,
Sam: no, no, no, we need all this framework and all this stuff. and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: You know, and I know I like, I want to do more than the splash page eventually
Sam: that may need some of this complexity, but like, I ended up spending like hours
Sam: and hours and hours just getting to stupid splash page to work.
Sam: And I'm like, using 20 year old technology, I could have had this up in like less than five minutes.
Sam: I'm like, why, why, why is any of this needed? You know?
Sam: And I don't know. I'll, I'll find out when I try to make the more complicated
Sam: stuff if I really needed this. But it's frustrating.
Sam: So anyway, back to Deep Sea.
Bruce: Back to Deep Sea. So you mentioned the chip embargo that we have or the export restrictions to China.
Sam: Looks like it backfired.
Bruce: It's backfired big time because we have unintentionally given their engineers
Bruce: a tighter goal and forced them to be efficient. and they went ahead and did it.
Bruce: And so by forcing them into a limited engineering space, they've actually come
Bruce: up with a solution that's better
Bruce: than what American companies have been able to come out with so far.
Bruce: Now, will American companies catch up? Yeah, sure.
Bruce: But it'll be a game of catch up.
Sam: And also I'll add like,
Sam: This was foreseeable.
Sam: First of all, technology export controls, generally speaking,
Sam: have never worked for a variety of reasons.
Sam: One, this effect. You give them an incentive to either figure out how to do
Sam: something more efficient in this case or develop their own technology from scratch.
Sam: Like, you know, I am actually shocked that, you know, it's only a matter of
Sam: time till China can natively build its own GPU chips that rival anything that NVIDIA has.
Sam: You know, there are ways and, you know, things will get around the export ban anyway.
Sam: There are ways to do that. I mean, if you remember when they were trying to
Sam: like keep people from exporting encryption technology and then people were printing
Sam: it on T-shirts and stuff because the code was so simple and it's like,
Sam: you know, it's just idiotic.
Sam: And like the, I remember the one way it actually got to Europe or whatever,
Sam: the first, there was something that was more than a t-shirt,
Sam: but like that was the specific law was written.
Sam: So exporting the, the, the stupid thing was you couldn't send it electronically,
Sam: but somebody figured out that the law didn't cover if you printed it out.
Sam: So somebody actually printed it out and mailed the big sheaf of paper,
Sam: and then they scanned it on the other side.
Sam: And it was not against the law. And it was not against the law. It was just idiotic.
Sam: And so, but it's like, eventually, if it's worth doing, it will jump that gap,
Sam: no matter what legal stuff you put in there.
Bruce: And so it's interesting that all the previous debates that were going on about
Bruce: AI are kind of like out the window.
Bruce: All the concerns about copyright infringement.
Sam: Oh, well, OpenAI is throwing a little fit because they say that DeepSeek used their stuff.
Bruce: They're getting a dose of their own medicine. But, you know,
Bruce: it's like there may be copyright restrictions on training for U.S.
Bruce: AI companies. but the Chinese companies aren't going to care.
Bruce: They're going to suck up all the copyrighted material they want.
Bruce: And, and I don't, I think that was kind of a, a red herring anyway,
Bruce: because it's like, there is a,
Bruce: a common practice in the U.S. called fair use. And I think the way AI companies
Bruce: are using a copyrighted material is fair use.
Sam: Well, in the U.S., the fair use argument is going through the courts right now
Sam: in various lawsuits related to this.
Sam: The one I can think of off the top of my head is the New York Times and a consortium
Sam: of other news and other information providers sued OpenAI, and they might have
Sam: sued others as well on exactly this issue.
Sam: OpenAI's defense is fair use, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: And their argument is essentially what they do is remix the things in the same
Sam: way any other artist does.
Sam: Like if I draw something in the style of person X, I've done it because I've
Sam: consumed that person's media.
Sam: I've looked at it. I've read it, I've whatever.
Sam: And so if I am then going to produce my own creative output,
Sam: of course it is, it is influenced by everything I've ever read,
Sam: seen, listened to, et cetera.
Sam: Now the arguments are at some point you get too close to the original material, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But like, you know, it, it's going through courts.
Sam: We'll see what they say. And of course we, We're going to have the same issue
Sam: we always have, both with legislators and with courts trying to deal with tech,
Sam: which is the decisions are going to be made by people who have absolutely no
Sam: understanding of the technology whatsoever.
Bruce: But like I was saying, that's all out the window anyway, because there's this big loophole.
Bruce: Any foreign company can generate their models, and then we use those models.
Bruce: So it's like it's putting american ai companies at a disadvantage that they have that they,
Bruce: It can't use copyrighted material if that becomes the case.
Sam: Well, this is the kind of thing where all of the arguments that were made about
Sam: TikTok are going to apply to DeepSeek potentially as well.
Sam: So you could have Congress trying to ban use of DeepSeek as well.
Sam: And the thing with all of this is, and yes, it could be used to suck up your data.
Sam: It could be used for all kinds of nefarious purposes. But at the same time,
Sam: it just seems incongruous with the basic values of this country to be saying,
Sam: I'm sorry, Americans, no, you can't have access to this.
Bruce: Yeah. Basically, they're putting these restrictions on because of what could
Bruce: be done, not because of what is actually being done.
Sam: And that's one thing I heard some of the legislators who are willing to talk
Sam: about it, and one of them was AOC, about the TikTok ban. She voted against it.
Sam: But one of the things she said is, yeah, we had classified briefings on this,
Sam: and I can't tell you what was in the classified briefing for obvious reasons,
Sam: but I can tell you that it was not particularly impressive.
Sam: It was not anything that backs up all the hype.
Sam: And just like the public statements, it was mostly about what could happen,
Sam: not about things that are happening.
Bruce: Yeah. So it turns out that AI is not as hard to do as we initially thought.
Bruce: It's not going to be a huge draw on power. It's not going to be a huge amount of chips.
Sam: Well, I'm not sure that is true. What will happen is if you find all of these
Sam: efficiencies that you can bring,
Sam: then imagine what you can get out of it if you throw the same amount of power
Sam: you were going to throw at it without the efficiencies.
Sam: So in these kind of scenarios, becoming more efficient has very rarely resulted in actually using less.
Sam: It results in getting more out of the same or more than you did.
Sam: I forget what they call it. There's an actual name for it.
Sam: One typical example is just in traffic that if you build more lanes in a highway
Sam: to relieve the traffic jam it doesn't actually make traffic move more smoothly
Sam: because more people will use the road and fill up the new capacity.
Bruce: Yeah well but at least we know that we can get most you know we can i think
Bruce: it's asymptotic you know as you get as you pour more and more power to it it's you know,
Bruce: a lot you may get a little bit better but not a whole much better but.
Sam: Well this is this is the value this is of course the whole ar i ai argument
Sam: from the people who are you know pushing the,
Sam: highest like the view the the craziest views of like the singularity and all
Sam: this stuff rely on the sense that once you get to a certain point you can have
Sam: the ai design the next better version of the AI,
Sam: and then they start cycling faster than humans ever could, and it races to infinity
Sam: in terms of how smart the AIs are and what they can do and everything.
Sam: But I think the counter to that is what you said, and maybe that'll happen,
Sam: but what we've seen in all sorts of other spaces is the asymptotic behavior,
Sam: where it gets harder and harder and harder to extract that next bit of value.
Bruce: Yeah. So I think that the real value is going to be not in just the basic AI models.
Bruce: It's going to be on the services that sit on top of AI, like what Microsoft's
Bruce: doing and what, and there's various other companies are doing to take,
Bruce: that are sitting on top of OpenAI or ChatGPT to,
Bruce: that are actually more than just chat or just answering questions.
Bruce: So that's where they're going to be able to make some money.
Bruce: Because the original idea of OpenAI was that it was going to be open source for safety.
Bruce: And they were not originally planning on making hundreds of billions of dollars
Bruce: off of it. And I'm actually glad.
Sam: And they had designed a corporate structure to try to force them not to,
Sam: in fact, to keep it nonprofit, et cetera.
Sam: And then like a year and a half ago or whenever, That was that big battle at
Sam: OpenAI, where essentially people realized, what the hell are we doing?
Sam: We could be multi-billionaires. Yeah, yeah.
Sam: I'm hoping that that's all that was out the window.
Bruce: Yeah, I'm hoping so. Yeah.
Sam: But yeah, so we'll see. I think there's also just like most of these other technological waves,
Sam: it seems like the general pattern before is it's not necessarily the first movers
Sam: who end up being the ones who make all the money.
Sam: You often have a first wave that is trying to be bleeding edge and essentially
Sam: flame out. They spend all the money.
Sam: They don't succeed in making a profit. They eventually go out of business,
Sam: but they leave behind an infrastructure that's picked up by the second wave.
Sam: And the second wave are the ones who actually end up building technologies that
Sam: become ubiquitous and end up being the next major trillion-dollar companies.
Bruce: Yeah, sure.
Sam: So we'll see. And this has, like a lot of other technological waves,
Sam: there's potential dangers associated with it.
Sam: There's all kinds of things that could go wrong, could go badly,
Sam: but also all kinds of things that could be super positive.
Sam: You know, you, you really could, if you have this asymptotic explosion,
Sam: you know, you really could have like some successor of chat GPT just one day
Sam: saying, oh, you wanted a cure for cancer.
Sam: Here it is, you know, et cetera, you know, you know, just, just go in and ask,
Sam: or maybe, maybe you don't even have to ask. It just says, oh, this is what you need.
Sam: And of course, the science fiction stories have been written for over 100 years
Sam: now about what if the AI decides the best thing for the world is to get rid of the humans.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah.
Bruce: Yeah, I have my doubts on both of those. Yeah, knowing that these are essentially
Bruce: really advanced autocomplete programs,
Bruce: it's not just looking at statistical and the text completion.
Sam: They are some of the most recent ones
Sam: are that is one layer of the technology they're adding other things to but the
Sam: argument i always come back to is that you know in the end you can't convince
Sam: me that i'm anything more than a really advanced autocomplete myself so at a
Sam: certain point can you tell the difference and once you can't tell the difference does it matter.
Bruce: Well and that's why we have the the turing test which and which is kind of a
Bruce: subjective test in the first place, you know, when I was younger.
Sam: These things now have passed the Turing test. They passed that level a couple years ago now.
Bruce: And we, and I mean, you know, when I was much younger, I always thought,
Bruce: oh, wow, that's a very bright line, the Turing test.
Bruce: Well, now it's not as bright as we thought.
Sam: Now, although still, like, at this point, like, you can generally eventually tell.
Sam: Like, if you have a relatively lovely.
Sam: Insightful person who knows what they're doing, but you can't necessarily just
Sam: pick an average person off the street.
Sam: Now you can, you can potentially fool that average person off the street in
Sam: a specific area, but eventually these things start going sideways.
Sam: Like if you try to have an extended conversation for a long period of time and
Sam: you're like, that's what's going on.
Sam: But on, on images and stuff, now you
Sam: see people all the time being fooled by AI images
Sam: on Facebook and stuff yeah especially if
Sam: you get video and video now like
Sam: the video's gotten good enough it's it's fooling people i saw
Sam: on my facebook feed like today something
Sam: with like some seal or
Sam: something that jumps onto a boat and the person like
Sam: helps rub the barnacles off it and it's this wonderful heartwarming
Sam: story and whatever and you're and like i look at
Sam: it and i'm immediately like yeah that's clearly ai but
Sam: i know lots of people are like oh look at
Sam: that heartwarming video about the seal you know
Sam: yeah and um it's turning
Sam: apart with things and it's getting harder and harder like even if you do know
Sam: to tell the difference like even a year ago it was clearly obvious the video
Sam: was not like real now you have to pay attention in another year or two like
Sam: you might have to be an expert to tell the difference.
Sam: And, and then after that, you might not be able to at all. You might be able to fool the experts.
Sam: And it's, and so like a lot of things that, you know, people used to be like,
Sam: well, like it's what's true. Show me the photo, show me the video.
Sam: Well, that's going to be harder and harder and harder. So.
Sam: I keep wanting to do one, one, one thing that's on my to-do list that the technology
Sam: now exists for is the voice cloning.
Sam: So like, I want to, I want to clone my voice and Yvonne's voice and like drop
Sam: in a break one day as a surprise to Yvonne.
Sam: That's a conversation between the two of us. That's completely made up and get his reaction.
Sam: Because my son here, one of the things he does routinely in ChatGPT is when
Sam: he wants to have a discussion,
Sam: he asks ChatGPT to generate a dialogue in the style of Curmudgeon's Corner with
Sam: Yvonne and I talking to each other.
Sam: And so I want to throw some of those in. But right now, the technology,
Sam: like I can clone my voice. I can clone Yvonne's voice.
Sam: Technically speaking, I have to have his permission to do that,
Sam: which is whatever. but yeah, he might.
Bruce: He might sue.
Sam: Yeah, he might sue. But then if I want to generate a cut and right now,
Sam: right now I can really easily take a script for each one of us and generate
Sam: the voice, but I can't do, I can't give it a script with both of us and have
Sam: it automatically switch back and forth.
Sam: I'd either have to do each of our parts independently and then edit them back
Sam: together myself or write, do some scripting to, to, to do the combination,
Sam: which, you know, at that point it's work.
Sam: And at that point I don't want to do it anymore because like it would take too much effort.
Sam: So I'm waiting for it to get even easier than it is today. But,
Sam: but yeah, this it's, it's, it's getting scary good and it's getting better faster.
Sam: And, you know, so we'll see.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: Okay.
Bruce: Pretty good for this one.
Sam: So let's take a break then. And when we come back, your second topic,
Sam: and then we'll wrap it up after that. Here we go.
Sam: Okay here we are again and.
Bruce: I do use this mug.
Sam: Excellent bruce is holding up their curmudgeon's corner mug uh we like it i
Sam: i i i am i'm using i use mine regularly as well i now have two one at work and
Sam: one at home there you go and and one with a crack in it that i use as a pencil holder or something.
Bruce: So what I wanted to talk about is a libertarian take on the Trump presidency so far.
Sam: Okay. And I can see like right off the bat,
Sam: I see some tensions there potentially that I love to hear your take on in,
Sam: in terms of on the one hand, I'm sure you love the idea of reducing,
Sam: you know of hey let's shut down huge portions of government and but on the other
Sam: hand doing it in sort of authoritarian style ways probably rubs wrong and some
Sam: of the other stuff but what do you think what's going on what's the take.
Bruce: Yeah i there's a number of things that i am happy with a number of things that
Bruce: i am very mad and upset and disgusted with i can we can do a lightning around
Bruce: covering those things, but since you mentioned the cost cutting,
Bruce: you know, a traditional,
Bruce: normie Republican way to cut government would be to give notice and to have
Bruce: like a study group that would come out with a report of saying what parts of
Bruce: government could be cut or what could be kept.
Bruce: But no, what Trump's doing is he's saying, cut everything, and everyone would
Bruce: then have to come to him and justify their existence.
Bruce: It's basically flipping the script 180 degrees.
Sam: Now, the fundamental problem with that, of course, well, there are many problems
Sam: with it, but the one I'll point out right now is that,
Sam: That's actually illegal. Now, he doesn't care, and maybe nobody will do anything about it.
Sam: But in our system, Congress determines what the government spends money on, not the president.
Sam: And there's, in fact, specifically a law that prohibits the president from not
Sam: spending the money that Congress has allocated that was passed in response to
Sam: Richard Nixon trying to not spend money the Congress had allocated.
Sam: And so to just decide, hey,
Sam: this money that has already been authorized by Congress has already been specified
Sam: for a specific purpose, X, Y, Z, and just say, well, we're not going to do that.
Sam: Violates the way our system is supposed to work in terms of separations of power and who decides what.
Sam: And essentially, the presidency over the course of the history of the United
Sam: States has essentially already, with Congress's acquiescence essentially,
Sam: taken over the power to make war, which was given in the Constitution to Congress, not the president.
Sam: And if we get a situation where the president ends up just ignoring the money
Sam: directives out of Congress as well, then essentially,
Sam: essentially we're completely neutering Congress and saying, okay,
Sam: yeah, we, we want a unitary executive who once we elect them can just do whatever the hell.
Bruce: Yeah. And I'd agree that that is what he's doing is against the law,
Bruce: but on the, on the flip side, and I hate to use this as, you know,
Bruce: to say, Hey, well, the other side has been doing the same thing.
Bruce: Why can't Trump do it? Because like when Biden wanted to forgive loans,
Bruce: he decided to, to just spend the money right off of executive order.
Bruce: And then he was sued, and he lost in the courts.
Bruce: So that may be what happened.
Sam: As recently as last week, Yvonne and I were saying the Democrats should play
Sam: hardball too and make the courts reverse them on those kinds of things rather
Sam: than preemptively decide not to.
Sam: Because as you said, Biden did that in a couple places, but there's so many
Sam: more places the Democrats could have.
Sam: The Democrat normal response is, sorry, that's just not possible. So we can't try that.
Sam: But that doesn't, and it's sort of my take on that is, yeah,
Sam: the right thing to do is to try to go through the system the way it's supposed to.
Sam: But when the other side is playing hardball, you got to play hardball too.
Sam: But at the same time, do I want to end up in a universe where I
Sam: we are concentrating power even further.
Sam: I think one of the main insights of the U.S.
Sam: Constitution that is extremely frustrating in terms of actually getting things
Sam: done, but also extremely wise,
Sam: is the distribution of power across
Sam: multiple power centers rather than concentrating it all in one place.
Bruce: And over time, that power has moved over and into the presidency.
Bruce: And maybe the silver lining on this would be that Congress, maybe Trump will push this too far.
Bruce: And Congress, probably not a Republican Congress, but maybe a Democrat Congress
Bruce: in two years, will say, that's enough.
Bruce: We're going to rein in the president, well, the presidency, not just its president.
Bruce: You know, they've tried to rein him in by impeaching him. Well,
Bruce: that doesn't do anything.
Bruce: The way to rein in the power of a president is to actually pass laws.
Sam: Well, the problem is to do that, you either need super majorities or you need
Sam: to get rid of the filibuster.
Sam: And if you're doing things the president doesn't agree with,
Sam: you need to be able to override a veto as well. So you need veto proof majorities.
Sam: But what you're describing is exactly what happened after Richard Nixon.
Sam: Basically, the Congress, after Richard Nixon's resignation,
Sam: went through a whole bunch of areas where they identified abuses by the executive,
Sam: not just by Richard Nixon, but by Johnson and Kennedy, too, and passed laws
Sam: to make those things illegal.
Sam: And most of those have held up in court.
Sam: One of the things that we're going to find out with Donald Trump pushing all
Sam: of these things and doing things that are blatantly against the current law
Sam: is will the current conservative Supreme Court actually end up ruling that, you know,
Sam: those laws constraining the presidency were unconstitutional to begin with.
Sam: And so, of course he can do these things.
Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. So, well, we'll have to see how that plays out.
Sam: So before you move on to the other topics, cause I'm sure you want to talk about
Sam: immigration and some other things, what, what's your overall take on that balance
Sam: though, in terms of like,
Sam: you know, are you, are you more worried about Donald Trump sort of exerting
Sam: dictatorial authority on all kinds of areas.
Sam: The other would be like, you know, firing all kinds of civil servants who are
Sam: supposedly non-political, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Or are you more happy about, hey, he's going to cut the shit that I thought
Sam: wanted, that I wanted to cut for my entire life.
Bruce: I'll be honest. I'm happy that he's cutting and whatever way he does it, I'm fine with that.
Sam: So this is an interesting libertarian position to me.
Bruce: Even if it's chaotic, yeah.
Sam: But chaotic, but like dictatorial. Like, so you would be willing to trade.
Sam: Like, I will take the smaller government, even if the exchange is a massively
Sam: increased presidential power for, you know,
Sam: somebody basically saying, okay, they can do whatever they want,
Sam: including all kinds of abuses of the type you're probably going to talk about
Sam: next when we talk about immigration.
Bruce: The powers that he has have already
Bruce: been established by earlier presidents anyway. And so he's using it.
Sam: He's trying to expand them much further. And the question is, does that succeed?
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: So you'd rather have a small government dictator than a large government democracy.
Bruce: That sounds like an oxymoron to me. A small government dictator.
Bruce: This means a government that is smaller, less powerful, an FBI that has reigned in.
Sam: Oh, he's not reigning in the FBI. He's doing exactly the opposite.
Bruce: I don't know. He's been a victim of the FBI. So I think that he's going to reign that in.
Sam: Oh, no, he's not going to reign it in at all. He's just going to make sure it's
Sam: his tool to use in the way that he wants to.
Bruce: Yeah, we'll see.
Sam: Okay, I'll let you move on now.
Bruce: Anyway, he made...
Bruce: During the Libertarian National Convention, Donald Trump and RFK Jr.
Bruce: Spoke, and that was an unprecedented thing. I don't know if it has ever happened
Bruce: at any political party. Where a candidate in the other party.
Sam: Well, I think there are some minor parties who have done weird things like that,
Sam: like the Constitution Party in New York and some parties that normally don't
Sam: run their own candidates anyway, but end up endorsing one of the major candidates.
Bruce: So the Libertarian Party made a deal with Donald Trump to release Ross Ulbricht from prison.
Bruce: Ross Ulbricht, a lot of people may wonder, who is he and why is he so important?
Bruce: He was the founder of what was called the Silk Road.
Bruce: It was the first Bitcoin, like eBay, that used Bitcoin back around 10, 12 years ago.
Bruce: And he and of course it was used for trading drugs and and all kinds of illegal
Bruce: things it was if you wanted to buy a hit person.
Sam: That's where you would go yeah.
Bruce: Uh yeah and that's what that's what he was accused of but he was never convicted
Bruce: of that he was simply convicted for establishing this uh this this marketplace
Bruce: and he was made an example of and he was sentenced to Two life terms plus 40 years,
Bruce: which was way excessive for a crime like that.
Sam: And so- I would agree that's excessive. I probably think he deserved some time,
Sam: but that seems excessive.
Bruce: Yeah. So Donald Trump not only released him from jail, but gave him a full pardon.
Bruce: And which was beyond what was even asked for by the Bloomberg sharing party.
Bruce: And, and, and, and also just, and didn't do it just quietly.
Bruce: He did it very loudly, put, put it on his social media.
Bruce: And so that was a very good thing to do.
Bruce: He saved this, you know, this still relatively young man from having to spend
Bruce: the rest of his life in jail.
Bruce: So I think that the Gaza ceasefire, I'd like to credit Trump for getting that done.
Sam: I think on that one, even the Biden folks agree that his influence was helpful.
Sam: You know, basically, he provided a type of pressure that the Biden folks could
Sam: not in terms of threats he was making,
Sam: but also just in terms of having the relationship with Netanyahu that wasn't overtly adversarial.
Sam: And by the way, for those criticizing Biden from the left, yes,
Sam: the relationship between Netanyahu and Biden was overtly adversarial,
Sam: even though he was still providing weapons and some other stuff.
Sam: But those two people hated each other.
Bruce: I like to think that Obama was even more adversarial with Netanyahu.
Bruce: I think Obama would have handled the situation even better than both Trump and- Maybe, maybe.
Sam: But frankly, it was the kind of thing where it's a Nixon goes to China kind
Sam: of thing where there was no way that that deal was going to happen under Biden,
Sam: if nothing else other than to spite Biden.
Sam: So a new person coming in, and especially someone like Trump coming in, could force it to start.
Sam: I still have doubts about its long-term success, but to start with,
Sam: yeah, the wheels were oiled by Donald Trump coming on.
Bruce: I have real doubts as to what did Trump promise Netanyahu in order for him to do that?
Bruce: Because just a few weeks ago, your predictions, one of the predictions y'all
Bruce: make was, you know, will all the IDF, I think this is one of the questions I
Bruce: put in there, will the IDF fully withdraw from Gaza?
Bruce: You both said no way. And I said no way in my prediction.
Bruce: And they're fully withdrawing if they haven't already, which is a shock.
Sam: I thought that was a partial withdrawal, not full, out of certain areas.
Bruce: Did you see the video where the Palestinians are all in mass moving back to
Bruce: their homes in North Gaza?
Sam: Well, yeah. I did see that. And maybe I just haven't been paying attention about that.
Sam: I thought that was certain areas that were being opened, not all of the Gaza
Sam: Strip, no Israeli presence, which I don't think that's true.
Bruce: From the channels that I've been following, they're saying it's a full withdrawal,
Bruce: but yeah, double check on that.
Sam: Even if that's true, I don't think it'll stay that way.
Bruce: Oh, yeah, I agree. I'm afraid. My fear is that once the hostages are released,
Bruce: that they will go back in either that or they'll do to the West Bank what they did to Gaza.
Bruce: And they'll flatten the West Bank also, which is horrible.
Bruce: And this touches into one of the things I'm just horrified by what Trump has
Bruce: said, that he actually has proposed that the Palestinians be moved into Jordan and Egypt.
Bruce: And he actually used the word clean, not even having the self-awareness to know
Bruce: that that's ethnic cleansing, which is anathema.
Sam: I think it's even giving him the benefit of the doubt saying he doesn't have the self-awareness.
Sam: If he doesn't, he's stupid. I would say maybe he doesn't know.
Sam: But the people around him who he's listening to that cause him to talk that
Sam: way, they absolutely know.
Bruce: I don't know what more Israel could do to Gaza.
Bruce: I mean, any additional bombs they drop on there are just going to make the rubble shake. Right.
Bruce: There's nothing left. But the people are still there, and they will not leave.
Bruce: And Egypt and Jordan won't let those people,
Bruce: won't let the Palestinians in because if Jordan and Egypt were to let them in
Bruce: or to accept them as refugees,
Bruce: the people would rebel because the Egyptians and the Jordanians,
Bruce: they are absolutely ashamed for what their governments are doing to enable Israel to do it.
Sam: And even if not, it would destabilize those countries in other ways.
Sam: But frankly, even if you said, hey, let's find some uninhabited piece of land
Sam: that's nice and let's move them all there.
Sam: I mean, certainly you from a libertarian perspective, you're forcing them against
Sam: their will to go somewhere they don't want.
Sam: You are confiscating what was their property. I mean, first you bomb it to hell
Sam: and then you take it and, you know, to build condos or whatever.
Sam: You know, this is, you know, ethnic cleansing is considered,
Sam: you know, tantamount to genocide for a reason.
Sam: Because you are uprooting an entire society and trying to kill it,
Sam: essentially, even if you just displace the people.
Sam: And in the meantime, you are violating core human rights about self-determination.
Bruce: Yes, absolutely. So on other topics, you all talked about DEI last week,
Bruce: and I'm actually happy that they're closing the DEI offices and the government.
Bruce: Now, does that mean that I'm against DEI policies?
Bruce: No, I think DEI itself is a good thing, but I don't see any need for there to
Bruce: be actually people who are employed to implement DEI.
Bruce: It should just be an abnormal function of HR.
Sam: Well, but yes, there were people who specialized in that that they're getting
Sam: rid of, but what they're doing extends far, far, far beyond that.
Sam: They're, you know, they're, they're firing those people, but they're closing
Sam: down even things like, you know, no, you can't have, you know,
Sam: the women engineers affinity group.
Sam: You know, you have to remove any references of this to you from your signatures of you.
Bruce: I agree. That's going beyond removing the, yeah, your pronouns on your emails.
Bruce: I don't do that, but I don't disparage anyone for wanting to put that on their emails.
Sam: But I mean, every day, they've put out information with more restrictions on
Sam: exactly what people can do, even self-organizing employees.
Sam: Basically just, and of course, they've requested people to report on other employees
Sam: who are still discussing this stuff in any way, shape or form.
Sam: You know, the restrictions have been greater and greater.
Sam: And also, by the way, so far, one of the reasons for the cuts,
Sam: like we're going to stop funding for X, Y, and Z that they've given is specifically this.
Sam: We're going to stop funding any grants for 90 days while we can review them
Sam: to expunge anything even slightly DEI related.
Sam: And then we'll turn back on some of the ones we like. But like one of the core
Sam: excuses is we have to review them for DEI to make sure we remove all that and
Sam: no money is going to that whatsoever.
Bruce: Yeah, that's getting extreme. I wouldn't agree with it.
Bruce: I've seen also where their organizations are actually removing documents that
Bruce: have certain key words, removing web pages that have certain words.
Bruce: That's getting into the top.
Sam: One of the things I saw earlier today was there's been an order to,
Sam: I forget which part of the government this was,
Sam: but they were ordered to change all their documents that mentioned LGBTQ and remove the T and Q.
Sam: They were allowed to keep the LGB part.
Bruce: Okay. Yeah. Like I was saying, I think it's getting into thought control.
Bruce: I don't think that's, that's not good.
Bruce: I am also, I'm happy that they are making federal workers go back to the office
Bruce: and work back in the office.
Bruce: I think that's, I was actually recently in Ottawa and they have the same issue there.
Bruce: There's, there's entire buildings that are fenced off because there's no workers
Bruce: in them. But I normally would have workers.
Sam: But why not solve this by going the other modern way? close the buildings,
Sam: sell the buildings, and let people work remotely.
Bruce: If it can be done remotely, yes.
Sam: Most of this stuff, I mean, the thing we found out, and of course you've got
Sam: me on a pet peeve because I'm forced to go into office five days a week now
Sam: and hate it, but one of the things the pandemic showed is that,
Sam: Almost all of these white-collar jobs can be done fairly well remotely.
Sam: At most, you might be taking a 10% hit or something like that that you can make
Sam: up for by closing all these buildings and maybe even paying people slightly less.
Sam: But you could gain all kinds of efficiencies. And if everybody was distributed,
Sam: you help with traffic. You help with boosting the economies of places outside of major cities.
Sam: There are all kinds of advantages to let people be everywhere,
Sam: but you have to lean into it all the way. This seems completely retrograde.
Bruce: Well, you have to remember, you're talking to somebody who would prefer that
Bruce: there not be any government workers at all.
Sam: Well, yeah.
Bruce: So I would prefer that if it pushes them to leave their jobs, all the better.
Bruce: And that shrinks government, all the better. Although, even if they were to
Bruce: get rid of all federal workers,
Bruce: the biggest chunk of money that's being spent at the federal level is entitlements
Bruce: and military anyway, which wouldn't be touched by.
Sam: Yeah, like on our Slack lately, Yvonne has mentioned several times,
Sam: if you did fire 100% of the federal workforce and eliminated their salaries,
Sam: compared to the overall budget deficit,
Sam: it's still a really small amount compared to everything else.
Bruce: Yeah. So it's all window dressing.
Bruce: The hard work, of course, is dealing with the entitlement crisis and with the military spending.
Sam: Which you can solve. The best way to solve the entitlement crisis,
Sam: Bruce, is raise taxes. Taxes are too low.
Bruce: I would not agree with that. I would say that it would be to allow people,
Bruce: instead of taxing people and giving the money back to them,
Bruce: just let the people keep the money themselves and reserve entitlements to only
Bruce: the poorest of the poor, keeping people off the streets.
Bruce: There's there's no reason why we need to be taxing people to give assistance
Bruce: to people who are the wealthiest segment of our of our population which are
Bruce: the retired people in this country the wealthiest well yeah i mean.
Sam: As as far as.
Bruce: I you.
Sam: Know my position because we've talked this about this before as long as you
Sam: tax them more than they're getting back i'm actually fine with that, I don't care.
Sam: It's the net that matters there.
Sam: And the easiest way to get an overall net that makes sense is to not have the
Sam: extra bureaucracy associated with determining who gets the benefit and who doesn't,
Sam: but just give it to everybody and tax it back from the people who can afford it.
Bruce: Yeah, that still gives too much power to politicians.
Bruce: It gives them a tool that they can that can control society with how much money
Bruce: they're taking and giving to people in different groups that they like.
Bruce: If you get the government out of the loop entirely, then civil society can take
Bruce: care of itself, charities, and helping people involuntarily rather than by force.
Sam: Yeah, that's failed over and over again. But anyway, move on.
Bruce: Okay. He has banned the creation of a CBDC, at least while he's president.
Sam: Sorry, a what?
Bruce: A central bank digital currency. Oh, okay.
Bruce: That would be basically a government, a federal reserve version of Bitcoin.
Bruce: I'm glad that he is stopping four and eight, at least pausing it,
Bruce: and it's including everybody, even Israel is having to- There were two exceptions.
Sam: Egypt and what other one? I forget the other one, but there were two exceptions.
Bruce: Maybe it is Israel or maybe- It might.
Sam: Have been Israel. It might have been Israel and Egypt. I forget.
Sam: Egypt was definitely one of them, but I forget what the other one was for sure.
Sam: And then there's already been some backtracking on that where they've said,
Sam: oh, but this certain class of stuff, like if it's life essential,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, will continue.
Sam: But there's been some reports where even some of that has stopped.
Sam: Like there are all kinds of like,
Sam: I, I just shared on the curmudgeons corner slack, like a couple hours ago,
Sam: there's some like health program in Sudan or something that's primarily funded
Sam: by us dollars that combat some disease or other.
Sam: And they literally are, their funding goes week to week.
Sam: And so they, they, they were ordered to stop all activity whatsoever.
Sam: They have not stopped all activity. They're violating that order.
Sam: However, they'll still run out of money and supplies within a week if this isn't rescinded for them.
Sam: And then, like, whatever kids they're taking care of will start dying.
Bruce: So what will happen here, and this is what I'm hoping to see,
Bruce: is that those programs that are most vital, most necessary, those will...
Bruce: Bubble up to the surface very quickly, and then those will get reactivated.
Bruce: Those that have the highest level of justification will be able to be justified and get back online.
Bruce: But those programs that aren't well justified, that are not having a good effect,
Bruce: not having a good result, then those will be the ones that will remain.
Sam: Well, so far, what's actually happening is the courts are saying that this overt
Sam: suspension is illegal because Congress mandated that these funds be spent.
Sam: And then this will undoubtedly go through the courts.
Sam: And then the question is, what will SCOTUS do? So it probably,
Sam: and I think that that's the point of a lot of these exercises right now,
Sam: is for the Trump administration wants to push an expansion of executive power
Sam: above and beyond what it currently is,
Sam: force it to SCOTUS, and they're gambling SCOTUS will side with expanded executive
Sam: power in more places that they don't.
Sam: And they're also doing so many of them that the idea is, hey,
Sam: we're going to try 400 of these things.
Sam: SCOTUS can knock down 300. We still will have gained in 100 places and expanded in those areas.
Bruce: And one more thing that I'm happy about, and you're going to be very upset about
Bruce: this, is I'm glad that he has released all the protesters from January 6th.
Sam: Yes, I am upset about it.
Bruce: Except for the violent ones. The violent ones, I think they should have done it.
Sam: Well, out of the 1,500, the violent ones were about 600. So...
Bruce: Hmm. Okay. Well, I didn't know it was that much.
Sam: It's that much. And even at like, I saw somewhere the, the breakdown was something like,
Sam: and I don't have the numbers in front of me, so I could be off by a few hundred
Sam: in either direction, but it was something like 1500 total,
Sam: about 600 of them were violent in some way.
Sam: So that includes, they were beating on somebody or broke a window or whatever,
Sam: but it wasn't necessarily serious injury.
Sam: And about 100 were the ones that did serious, grievous injury to police officers and such.
Bruce: Well, I don't know what they define as violence. I don't consider vandalism violence.
Sam: But— Yeah, I don't think that—I think I misspoke there.
Sam: The 600 were violence against people, and the 100 were caused serious injury.
Bruce: Okay. Yeah, so those—.
Sam: But most of the ones who were in the nonviolent category, too,
Sam: by the way, were already out of jail. So they got their pardons to expunge their
Sam: records, but they'd already served their sentences or most of their sentences already anyway.
Bruce: Yeah. So on the con side,
Bruce: I'm embarrassed as an American that President Trump is trying to gain control
Bruce: of Greenland and Panama and joking about annexing Canada and renaming the Gulf
Bruce: of Mexico and Mount Denali.
Bruce: And it's it's just it's it's
Bruce: so stupid and I I
Bruce: really don't think it will go
Bruce: anywhere but it's just embarrassing I would it makes me not want to travel especially
Bruce: to Denmark with a passport or to go or you know I have I have colleagues that
Bruce: I interact with frequently in Canada and.
Sam: Well, the question on these, like, I don't think he's going to literally invade these places.
Sam: But on the other hand, you know, the question is, does he really try to exert,
Sam: you know, economic pressure tariffs and other things specifically with the goal
Sam: of exerting more control?
Sam: And Greenland, both of these are weird as well, because if you look at it, like, the U.S.
Sam: Has air bases all over Greenland already. We have all kinds of mineral rights
Sam: all over Greenland already.
Sam: Like, and Denmark has specifically said in response to Donald Trump's posturing
Sam: about Greenland is like, we could do more.
Sam: Do you want another base? Do you want more oil drilling? What do you want?
Bruce: We can talk. Maybe that's the end goal. Maybe he doesn't really want – maybe
Bruce: he'd like it if he could get it, but getting more – Well.
Sam: So far, so far apparently the report out of Denmark is that when the Danish
Sam: prime minister or whatever came back with those kind of counteroffers,
Sam: Donald Trump was, no, I don't care about any of that shit. I just want it.
Sam: And so, you know, so if it is a negotiating, the one like rational thing to
Sam: say on both of these is, okay, he's posturing to get more of this stuff.
Sam: Or maybe in Panama, he wants like not just equal treatment with the rest of
Sam: the world in terms of how much passage costs, but he wants a special deal for the U.S.
Sam: And he's going to try to influence or whatever. But at least so far,
Sam: he has not seemed to actually be making that kind of negotiation.
Sam: He's just saying, I want it.
Bruce: Yeah. I think Panama is even less likely to succeed because the Panamanians,
Bruce: they've already built a secondary canal that's wider.
Bruce: They've invested more. You know, it's like, it's not.
Bruce: It's not our canal anymore.
Sam: And they've widened some stuff and they're working on another one.
Sam: There's not an open second passage yet, but yeah, it's there.
Sam: They've, they've done all kinds of infrastructure improvements since the 1970s
Sam: when, when Carter agreed to give it up, let alone, you know,
Sam: a hundred years ago or whenever the damn thing was built.
Bruce: And there's, and there's Panamanians that are living there. It's not like Greenland
Bruce: where there's only 50,000 people there and easily walk in.
Sam: There you go. There's your swap. Have all the people in Gaza move to Greenland
Sam: and give Gaza to the people who live in Greenland right now.
Sam: Just force them all to move.
Bruce: The first thing Trump could, he could at least be, set a good example and offer
Bruce: the Palestinians to come and live in America.
Bruce: If you really wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza, you just, hey,
Bruce: have them come in and be Americans.
Sam: Give them Cleveland.
Bruce: Yeah.
Bruce: Yeah. Or West Texas.
Sam: So speaking of that, I know you're working your way down the list.
Sam: Yeah. What are your thoughts on immigration and the mass deportations and all this kind of stuff?
Bruce: I'm so upset about that. The immigration problem could so easily be solved.
Bruce: And we've talked about this before, where very easy compromise would be to say to all the illegals,
Bruce: you can get a green card, but you can't ever vote if you just pay a $10,000 fine.
Bruce: If what they say is right, that there's actually 10 million illegals here,
Bruce: you take 10 million times $10,000, that's quite a bit of money. What's that?
Bruce: Like $100 billion or so? uh that would be your.
Sam: Your solution is say you can be a legal resident but you don't have a path to citizenship.
Bruce: Exactly let them stay you know i'm sure that anybody who's facing being deported
Bruce: would be happy to take that deal i think even people who aren't facing that
Bruce: would be happy to take that deal because well the thing.
Sam: Is and you and i have talked about this before on the show So the fundamental
Sam: difficulty here is, I mean, you and I think, you know, freedom of travel,
Sam: freedom to settle where you want is actually important.
Sam: Like, yes, there should be open borders. I think at the very least to me,
Sam: like the default should be, of course you can come unless there's a really fucking good reason not to.
Bruce: Yeah. Only if you have a criminal record of Fujifilm.
Sam: Yeah. And even then depends on the crime, honestly. Like I don't,
Sam: I don't care if they had a traffic ticket or, or shoplifted 30 years ago, you know,
Sam: but the thing is like, I look at it and say, illegal immigration is a supply
Sam: and demand problem to solve it.
Sam: You make the immigration easier. You let people come in legally.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: Easily. And that's not the problem.
Bruce: But the problem is the border and it would, it would stop people from coming in illegally.
Sam: Yeah. But the fundamental, the fundamental problem is these people,
Sam: it's not actually illegal immigration that they care about. It's immigration period. End of story.
Sam: They don't want people in the country who don't look like them.
Bruce: And they will vehemently say that they are not racist about it,
Bruce: but it is clearly a racist attitude.
Bruce: Because they're totally fine with white Western Europeans coming and settling in America. Yeah.
Bruce: But those dirty Mexicans, they don't want to have anything to do with them.
Sam: And Donald Trump specifically, apparently, really likes the Eastern Europeans
Sam: too. That's where he's gotten two-thirds of his wives.
Bruce: Yeah, true. But yeah, it's just sickening that we are,
Bruce: We need immigrants. We need these people to come regardless of their skill level.
Bruce: We need the whole spectrum of low-skilled to high-skilled people.
Bruce: I've worked in high-tech industry,
Bruce: and clearly when companies in America are not able to hire people in the U.S.,
Bruce: then jobs just get exported.
Bruce: We can either import people or export jobs. And companies clearly have been
Bruce: exporting jobs to other countries to do their manufacturing.
Bruce: If we had open free immigration for the last 50 years in this country,
Bruce: we would be so much richer.
Bruce: We would be rich beyond belief because those factories would be here in America.
Bruce: And we would be dominating the world because we would have a growing population but bruce bruce.
Sam: We'd also be a lot less white.
Bruce: And i love ethnic food,
Bruce: i love chinese and thai and mexican and indonesian food it's like there's just
Bruce: so much richness in this country and all the and i yeah.
Sam: The culture too i was that's what i was going to say it's not just like the food or anything.
Sam: It's like, it's actually so valuable to hear all of those other perspectives
Sam: and those viewpoints on life.
Sam: And, and, you know, the old concept that you used to, like there,
Sam: there used to be like what a schoolhouse rock songs on like the melting pot and stuff.
Sam: The whole idea is that when you bring folks together, you end up something with
Sam: something that takes the best parts of all of them and you gain something from that.
Sam: And, and I think that's the, but right now what you have is this,
Sam: the, the, the xenophobic tendency here and racist tendency is just,
Sam: we're scared of the other, we're scared of the other taking over.
Sam: And so we're, we're doing everything we can to resist that as we've talked about
Sam: on the curmudgeons corner slack a little bit too, though,
Sam: so far in terms of raw numbers, we're not really much different than where we
Sam: have been the last couple of years in the Biden presidency.
Sam: The difference so far is.
Sam: Is how it's presented. I mean, Donald Trump is pushing them to ramp up even further.
Sam: And if he succeeds, maybe we will see numbers that are significantly bigger than prior years.
Sam: But right now, it's not about like how many deportation flights there were.
Sam: It's instead of paying for tickets on commercial airlines, we're spending much,
Sam: much more money to send them on a military plane.
Sam: And by the way, we're going to have Dr. Phil go on a ride along taking video.
Sam: So we're we're making all sorts of video of the arrests of the detentions to
Sam: make a show of the whole thing.
Sam: So we're just making it a lot more visible and, you know, we're scaring a lot of people.
Sam: And, and, and now, you know, they've said so far, you know, we're going after
Sam: the worst criminals first and all that, but there are more and reports,
Sam: more and more reports coming in that along with, Yes, some people who are significant criminals.
Sam: There are lots of people who, other than their status without documentation,
Sam: have been living good beneficial lives and paying taxes and all this kind of
Sam: stuff. They're being swept up along with it.
Sam: There are American citizens being swept up, too, that have only been able to
Sam: prove that they were, in fact, a citizen after the fact. And we're just making
Sam: a show of it right now and scaring people.
Sam: And that's entirely the point of it right now.
Sam: But Trump is insisting on quotas that are rising.
Sam: And once you put in the numerical quotas and saying you have to arrest this
Sam: many people per time period, then of course, you're going to just get whoever they can catch.
Bruce: Yeah and anyone and and we don't have a a national id in this country no it's you are not required.
Sam: To have an id at all.
Bruce: Yeah and so if uh if if some someone
Bruce: stops me on the street some police that if any
Bruce: you know what's what they called ice stops me
Bruce: on the street and asks me to prove that i'm american i i'd have to go home and
Bruce: get my passport but if i didn't have a passport i'd have no way of proving that
Bruce: and so and i'm not i would i would say probably a minority of americans have
Bruce: a passport so which is the only way here.
Sam: Here in washington the enhanced driver's license will also prove citizenship
Sam: because you have to produce that documentation to get one.
Bruce: Oh yeah well i've i have been disobeying and i am not getting that enhanced driver's license.
Sam: Of course you are. Of course you are.
Bruce: I am not complying with the real ID.
Bruce: Because they passed that law 20 years ago, and they still have not required
Bruce: the real ID in the airports.
Bruce: Yeah, they keep pushing back the deadline. Yeah, they keep pushing back the deadline.
Bruce: Supposedly this year, they are finally going to put their foot down and say,
Bruce: yes, you actually have to do that.
Bruce: And when that actually, when that day comes, then yes, I'm going to have to
Bruce: get my passport and use my passport to go to travel within the United States, which is ridiculous.
Bruce: But no, I don't want the enhanced driver's license. Real ID.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, but this is exactly the kind of thing, though.
Sam: If they really want to get serious about deporting all the illegals,
Sam: you're going to have to require some sort of ID of everyone.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: You know, this is where these things escalate. I mean, well,
Sam: there are many places where they have the potential of escalating,
Sam: but this is just one of them.
Sam: Now, you know, I don't have the same revulsion against the idea of a national
Sam: idea as you do, but at the same time, you can see where these things can easily
Sam: escalate to, oh, no, we can't tell if you're a citizen.
Sam: Okay, we're going to have to make a mechanism where we can.
Sam: Oh, now that we have that mechanism, you're going to have to provide that proof
Sam: for all of these kinds of normal everyday activities.
Sam: If you don't have this proof, you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do this.
Sam: You know, that that's where these can ramp and they can ramp relatively quickly,
Sam: depending on all of these things that we're talking about, about, you know,
Sam: does Trump get away with extending executive power in such a way that,
Sam: you know, he can declare things by decree.
Bruce: And that's when the pendulum will swing back the other way, and immigrants and
Bruce: immigration will be more favorable.
Bruce: The thing that was so frustrating to me during the election was to see Biden
Bruce: and then later Harris adopting Trump's policy of anti-immigration.
Bruce: And it would have taken bravery to stand up and say, no, we are a nation of immigrants.
Bruce: I want more people and we need to allow more people into this country.
Sam: That was clearly one of them. There were several other issues as well where
Sam: the campaign took the – and I blame a lot of the Obama-era consultants who were brought on.
Sam: I keep saying September was a turning point and this was part of it.
Sam: That where they really decided that their only way to win was to convince Republicans
Sam: who felt a little bit queasy about Trump to come to their side.
Sam: And so in order to do that, they watered down what the Democrats really believe
Sam: about a variety of issues and tried to come up with wishy-washy,
Sam: middle-of-the-road positions that at the same time sort of tried to move right
Sam: to get some of those swing voters over.
Sam: Where, and I think the end result of that was you didn't convince any of those
Sam: people to come over, but you convinced some Democrats to stay home.
Sam: And that made the difference.
Sam: Whereas I feel like in a lot of places, like you get all these people trying
Sam: to triangulate about the middle, because sometimes that technique does work.
Sam: Arguably, that's how Bill Clinton became president.
Sam: But at the same time, I feel like the right way to go about it is to really
Sam: own your convictions and double down on it and be like,
Sam: be honest about your conviction convictions because people appreciate the honesty,
Sam: whereas they can smell that fake a mile away.
Sam: And like that's part, I mean, that's the Trump strategy. Both times he won,
Sam: he wasn't going after the median voter or trying to get swing voters.
Sam: He was 100% about activating the people who were excited about him.
Bruce: Yep. Amazingly. And he's gotten more and more popular with every election. Trump did.
Sam: Well, in terms of absolute number of votes, yes, it went up each time.
Sam: In terms of percentage, it went high, down, and then up again.
Bruce: Now, five years ago, I really thought Biden was campaigning on being the most
Bruce: pro-immigration candidate in a long time.
Bruce: And I really thought that he maybe he got it maybe he would understand to to
Bruce: reduce illegal immigration you increase legal immigration that just seems like
Bruce: a such a simple thing to understand but for some reason the politics doesn't allow it and yeah i.
Sam: Mean and the fundamental reason for that is because you have at least 50 if
Sam: not more of the population who really they don't care about legal illegal The
Sam: only thing they care about is please don't let anybody else in,
Sam: especially if they're brown.
Bruce: Because, yeah, there are people that they see someone who looks different from
Bruce: them and that core monkey brain,
Bruce: tribal instinct kicks in and they don't like people around them that don't look like them,
Bruce: which is just sickening.
Sam: Or don't think like them or don't worship the same God or don't want anything
Sam: that like makes them feel fundamentally like,
Sam: hey, this person threatens my sense of self and my sense that I'm the one who's
Sam: right and best in the world.
Sam: And especially, by the way, they don't like the sort of menial labor immigrants
Sam: either, but especially successful immigrants.
Sam: Those are the ones you have to be the most scared of because they're taking over.
Sam: And just to be clear, I am mocking and pretending to be the other view.
Sam: I am not saying that on my own view.
Bruce: Any other any other.
Sam: Trump actions you want to rattle through.
Bruce: Uh no that's all of them that's all of them so okay.
Sam: Well i guess that brings us to the end bruce.
Bruce: Yeah for now i'm
Bruce: happy to do this again and yes i i'm i'm
Bruce: it's glad it was fun to to kind of go over
Bruce: a whole bunch of different issues with you and yes there are certainly areas
Bruce: we disagree but i i like to think that that your special skill and my ability
Bruce: why also skill is to have these conversations without animosity and without taking it personally i.
Sam: Think you know.
Bruce: Within limits i.
Sam: Mean you do this in a way that i can do this there there are certainly certain
Sam: positions that if someone had and was adamant about and presented in a certain
Sam: way i would have a hard time and i would have to stop.
Sam: But even strongly held positions I disagree with,
Sam: if the other side is sort of speaking rationally and actually talking about
Sam: facts and not making stuff up and not doing personal attacks,
Sam: then yeah, it's good to have the conversation.
Sam: It's just so much of the time, the, you know, it seems like arguments are disingenuous and, you know,
Sam: or, and, and aren't that kind of argument and instead just go off the rails into, you know,
Sam: things that just don't work.
Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, uh, people just get too animated about these things,
Bruce: but, but yeah, I think rat cross aisle conversations are definitely need needed
Bruce: and there needs to be more of that.
Bruce: And that's one of the main reasons why I like participating in the,
Bruce: in the Slack channel, because it's a way for me to get out of my bubble,
Bruce: and to hear what the left point of view is.
Bruce: And I like to, I have to admit, I love being able to throw in my dig in there every once in a while.
Bruce: And I point out things that the left does wrong.
Sam: Well, I admit certain times, like I'll let the others, certain times I see something
Sam: that you put in there and I'm like, okay, he's just trolling.
Sam: I'm going to ignore that. If the others want to engage, they could do it.
Sam: I'm just going to ignore that because he's just looking to get a rise out of
Sam: us and i'll i'll ignore it.
Bruce: I will admit i was bothered a little bit a couple
Bruce: weeks ago there was a bit of a conversation where i
Bruce: saw some really strongly anti-religious comments and i had to respond and i
Bruce: needed to because i'm i'm as you know i'm a religious person and i i think that
Bruce: i couldn't let those those anti-religious comments just sit there. I needed to defend it.
Sam: I'm anti-religious, but I try to be quiet about it most of the time,
Sam: as long as the religion is harmless.
Sam: I'm like, I don't care what you believe, as long as the belief doesn't cause
Sam: you to be harmful to other people.
Sam: And at that point, I'm like, whatever.
Sam: Otherwise, it's like, I'm like, it's your business if you're delusional.
Bruce: Yeah, I fully agree, especially when religion tries to use the power and force
Bruce: of government to achieve their means. That's absolutely wrong.
Sam: Right. Okay. Let's wrap this sucker up.
Sam: Everyone, as you know, go to curmudgeon-corner.com. You'll see all our transcripts.
Sam: You'll get all our old shows, all the ways to contact us.
Sam: A link to our Patreon if you want to give us cash. We talked a lot about the Patreon last week.
Sam: I still owe sending out the cards and mugs that we talked about last week. I'll get to it sometime.
Sam: I promise not too long. I'll get to it.
Sam: Oh, Bruce is showing his cat for anybody who sees videos.
Bruce: This is Mittens, our cat. And she doesn't like to be held, but she loves to rub up against me.
Sam: We should have more pets on the show. Anyway, hello to Mittens.
Sam: Anyway, as you all know, at various levels on the Patreon, you can get those cards.
Sam: You can get mentioned on the show like happened last week, you can get a mug at $2 a month or more.
Sam: Or if you just ask, you can get invited to our curmudgeons corner slack that
Sam: Bruce and I have been talking about conversations going on there.
Sam: Uh, you know, Bruce is on there. I'm on there.
Sam: Yvonne is on there. A variety of other people are on there. We've had a couple
Sam: new people join in the last couple of weeks. So it's good to have more folks.
Bruce: Uh, and you know, uh, you and Yvonne are so onto it about posting the latest news.
Bruce: If there's breaking news, I actually go to the Slack channel first because I
Bruce: know that that's where I'm going to get the news first.
Bruce: Cause you all, you have a race to see who can get the news, who can get that link on there first.
Sam: Today, I posted something five hours after Yvonne had posted it and he yelled at me and was like.
Bruce: Haha.
Sam: Shame on you you're five hours late and then another person came in three hours
Sam: later and posted the same article again.
Bruce: So yeah it's.
Sam: A lot of fun you should join us if you aren't there already and that's it hey
Sam: bruce do you have something from the slack you'd like to highlight for.
Bruce: Oh yes let's see
Bruce: well that we've not talked about already well i
Bruce: think there's some really good links in
Bruce: here about the accident in dc
Bruce: and and so and there's some really good discussion and and yvonne has been throwing
Bruce: in their knowledge you know what he's been gleaning from these articles so it's
Bruce: a really good primer for for me to know what's going on so yeah i think there's
Bruce: some really good discussion at least on that.
Sam: Yeah and so depending on what breaking news happens in the next week.
Sam: We may ask Yvonne to talk a bit about this crash in DC where the helicopter hit the regional jet.
Sam: There have been a couple other things. Like I mentioned at the,
Sam: what I call an air ambulance. There was, there was a six year old kid who just
Sam: finished treatment and they crashed into a residential area next to a mall apparently.
Sam: But, but that's relatively small and actually private jets crash all the time.
Sam: There was one in California from a few days ago, I think. And I,
Sam: you know, commercial flights, it's really rare.
Sam: Like it's been is 2007. I think they said the last one in the U S was.
Sam: And then the last one that was bigger than this one in terms of number of dead
Sam: was like 2001, you know, so commercial accidents are very, very rare at this
Sam: point, private, not so much. They still happen all the time.
Sam: And helicopters, helicopters is like the most dangerous way you can travel.
Sam: I remember on the curmudgeon score slack, like last year or something,
Sam: somebody pulled up the numbers and it's significantly more dangerous even than
Sam: motorcycles you know it's just.
Bruce: Full disclosure the current the company i work for right now.
Sam: Yeah helicopters or.
Bruce: Makes helicopters we do final assembly on helicopters.
Sam: You know it's just it's a natural part of like trying to make something shaped
Sam: like a brick fly you know so no anyway Anyway, that's it.
Sam: Thank you, Bruce, for joining us yet again. It's been fun. And,
Sam: every time you come on, I worry that we're going to get into some big argument
Sam: or something. But like you said, we always end up having a nice conversation.
Sam: Anyway, thanks, everybody. Have a good week. Stay safe. Yvonne should be back
Sam: next week. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.
Bruce: Bye, Alex.
Sam: Oh, did you hear him? Okay. He heard you. okay bye Bruce we'll talk to you next time I'm hitting stop.