WEBVTT 00:00:00.010 --> 00:00:07.710 Test test test okay talk for a second bruce hello hello hello okay sounds good okay oh. 00:00:07.710 --> 00:00:08.870 Boy this is the first time i've 00:00:08.870 --> 00:00:13.010 done a video version you've uh you changed since the last time i was on. 00:00:13.010 --> 00:00:18.270 No i i remember seeing you last time but you're right it wasn't the we didn't 00:00:18.270 --> 00:00:23.150 do anything with the video it was only like we saw each other but like right 00:00:23.150 --> 00:00:27.750 now like this this is going out live if nobody's watching, but it's going out live. 00:00:28.570 --> 00:00:33.590 And, and then I will, I will probably still put some highlights on Tik TOK. 00:00:34.130 --> 00:00:37.990 Uh, although we'll see, like, I don't know if I'll do that forever. 00:00:38.290 --> 00:00:41.810 Cause it's once again, one of those things like when, like when we, 00:00:41.950 --> 00:00:47.370 like when we did Facebook, maybe I'll save this for the show. Anyway, let's do this. 00:00:49.110 --> 00:00:54.770 That's fine. I have a Tik TOK channel too, and I can, uh, I can share them online. mine. 00:00:55.130 --> 00:00:59.470 There you go. Okay. We can just get started if you want. You know how it works. 00:00:59.650 --> 00:01:02.470 I'll, I'll rely on you for topics since you're the guest. 00:01:02.850 --> 00:01:07.630 Oh, yep. So like, don't tell you now or what? 00:01:07.870 --> 00:01:12.470 You can surprise me unless you think it's going to like, like throw me off the 00:01:12.470 --> 00:01:15.470 edge and confuse me. And then, okay. 00:01:15.650 --> 00:01:17.770 Then you can surprise me. It's okay. Okay. 00:01:18.510 --> 00:01:24.890 So let's, let's get this thing started and then we can go. Okay. Here comes the music. 00:01:44.730 --> 00:01:51.430 Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, February 1st, 2025. 00:01:51.430 --> 00:01:55.770 It's just after 3.30 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Minter. 00:01:56.290 --> 00:02:00.770 Yvonne Bo could not make it this week. This weekend is his birthday. 00:02:01.410 --> 00:02:04.530 Sunday is his birthday. He's going to be old. 00:02:05.050 --> 00:02:10.530 And his family's doing stuff with him. And he's got stuff going on even tonight. 00:02:11.270 --> 00:02:12.390 He's going to be old? 00:02:13.150 --> 00:02:16.570 Oh, yeah. He's going to be very old. 00:02:16.750 --> 00:02:17.070 Old. 00:02:17.090 --> 00:02:20.490 Very old. He was already old. He's going to be very old. 00:02:21.030 --> 00:02:26.450 And as you can hear we've got bruce with us who has uh joined us before on a 00:02:26.450 --> 00:02:30.350 number of occasions let's see i should check real quick when was the last time 00:02:30.350 --> 00:02:38.410 i just i just yeah i think that's right i i actually just i just changed my 00:02:38.410 --> 00:02:40.690 thing to have your current date it was, 00:02:41.310 --> 00:02:44.790 May 31st. Our May 31st show is your last time on. 00:02:45.470 --> 00:02:49.870 And so for those of you who are not familiar, if there's any such person out 00:02:49.870 --> 00:02:53.830 there, when we have a guest host, I give the guest host a lot of preference 00:02:53.830 --> 00:02:55.810 over picking the topics. 00:02:56.010 --> 00:03:00.630 We'll still sort of do our first segment being a little bit less newsy. 00:03:00.770 --> 00:03:05.050 And then after that, two segments of other stuff, but I'll pretty much let Bruce pick. 00:03:05.670 --> 00:03:08.990 He has not told me what he wants to talk about. I told him not to. 00:03:09.090 --> 00:03:10.290 I told him he could surprise me. 00:03:11.310 --> 00:03:15.650 And so, yeah, so that's, that's, that's the plan for the show. 00:03:15.850 --> 00:03:18.010 And I expect Yvonne will be back next week. 00:03:18.490 --> 00:03:24.710 So Bruce, to start out, you got any non-newsy stuff you want to chat about or 00:03:24.710 --> 00:03:28.510 updates on, you know, how, how, how's life since last May? 00:03:28.870 --> 00:03:32.470 Oh, very good. Very good. There's a number of things I could talk about. 00:03:32.870 --> 00:03:36.070 I went on a cruise and with a family, had a lot of fun. 00:03:36.170 --> 00:03:38.070 Did everyone get sick? Did everyone get sick? 00:03:38.290 --> 00:03:42.170 No, everyone was fine. Okay, because that's the rep for cruising. Yeah. 00:03:43.270 --> 00:03:45.010 That's the reputation cruises have. 00:03:45.330 --> 00:03:45.790 Yeah, well. 00:03:46.230 --> 00:03:50.870 Whether it's COVID or the flu or just colds or diarrhea or whatever, 00:03:51.110 --> 00:03:53.470 that you go on a cruise and everybody ends up sick. 00:03:53.710 --> 00:03:57.730 Well, the worst thing that happened was one of the kids got a sunburn. Oh, okay. 00:03:57.730 --> 00:03:57.970 Okay. 00:03:59.130 --> 00:04:07.710 The main thing I wanted to mention is, as you know, every year when you do your predictions. 00:04:07.710 --> 00:04:09.750 Your predictions. Yes, you beat us. 00:04:09.930 --> 00:04:15.870 So a number of years ago, and I've done this ever since. I guess it's got to 00:04:15.870 --> 00:04:17.490 be for the last seven, eight years maybe. 00:04:17.830 --> 00:04:18.250 Wow. 00:04:18.330 --> 00:04:22.490 On my personal blog, I copy. Give the link. 00:04:24.050 --> 00:04:26.870 It's contrarianconformist.blogspot. Am I remembering right? 00:04:26.930 --> 00:04:28.050 Yes, something like that. Yes. 00:04:28.050 --> 00:04:29.290 Blogspot.com. 00:04:29.290 --> 00:04:32.650 Yeah yeah i still use blogspot.com which 00:04:32.650 --> 00:04:35.690 is like so old but i'm 00:04:35.690 --> 00:04:42.010 too lazy to go with a more modern blog site but but anyway yeah every year i 00:04:42.010 --> 00:04:47.810 i copy basically all the same questions you have and i compare myself to you 00:04:47.810 --> 00:04:54.110 all and normally i do about between the two of you i Okay. 00:04:54.630 --> 00:04:57.030 Better than one or worse than the other. But this year- 00:04:57.030 --> 00:04:57.950 You beat both of us. 00:04:58.030 --> 00:05:02.510 I beat both of you. I'm quite proud of myself. 00:05:02.750 --> 00:05:07.070 What were the biggest topics that you consistently improved on us on? 00:05:07.170 --> 00:05:14.070 The topic that I really shined on was the Congress, the predictions on Congress. 00:05:14.350 --> 00:05:20.210 I got everything correct except for one of the predictions. Wow. 00:05:21.330 --> 00:05:25.410 So, and then also I did really, I got everything right on Asia, 00:05:25.750 --> 00:05:27.910 the Americas, global predictions. 00:05:28.970 --> 00:05:33.330 Mostly I did very well on Europe, Middle East, all the international stuff I did pretty good on. 00:05:36.090 --> 00:05:41.190 The things I did poorly on was the presidential race. 00:05:42.710 --> 00:05:44.730 I think we all did poorly on the presidential race. 00:05:44.750 --> 00:05:50.770 Yeah, that was, it was quite a surprise. I don't think we knew that it was going to be a crazy year. 00:05:51.050 --> 00:05:54.950 Yeah. But nobody could have predicted what actually happened. 00:05:55.150 --> 00:05:57.670 And hey, we all came out. We survived. 00:05:58.750 --> 00:06:01.470 Well, maybe, well, I guess we're living in the consequences of it now. 00:06:01.610 --> 00:06:02.530 We'll talk about that later. 00:06:02.750 --> 00:06:03.410 Yeah, yeah. 00:06:03.750 --> 00:06:11.670 Yeah, but yeah, I was, my grand total was 76 correct out of 124 predictions 00:06:11.670 --> 00:06:17.750 and that's 61.2%, which is, I think, like maybe four or 5% better than y'all. 00:06:18.190 --> 00:06:22.890 Yeah, we had like what, mid 50s, high 50s, something like that. 00:06:22.930 --> 00:06:26.370 Which is worse than what you normally get. So I took advantage of a bad year. 00:06:26.950 --> 00:06:31.510 Yeah. I mean, it was our worst ever. Our worst ever. 00:06:31.930 --> 00:06:35.910 Well, I'm pretty sure it was our worst ever. Like I said on the show where we 00:06:35.910 --> 00:06:40.210 reviewed results, the first few years I did this, I just did it on paper. 00:06:40.830 --> 00:06:46.550 And I'm sure I've shoved those pieces of paper somewhere. They may even still be in my office here. 00:06:47.110 --> 00:06:54.290 But if you forced me to find them, it would be a significant effort of time to find them. 00:06:54.550 --> 00:06:58.830 But everything for a long time now has been in a spreadsheet that I just have. 00:06:59.550 --> 00:07:07.330 And so I'm opening it right now to tell you, yeah, the actual final percentage 00:07:07.330 --> 00:07:14.450 for us was 50.7 for me and 54.1 for Yvonne. 00:07:14.650 --> 00:07:17.570 So an average of 52.4. And you got what, 60 something? 00:07:17.570 --> 00:07:18.350 61. 00:07:18.630 --> 00:07:22.430 61. So almost 10 points better than us. 00:07:22.910 --> 00:07:29.850 So congratulations, the grand prognosticator. 00:07:29.990 --> 00:07:31.090 There, I could say the word. 00:07:31.310 --> 00:07:35.090 As my kids would say, I've got a big brain this year. 00:07:35.270 --> 00:07:40.870 Big brain. You know, I'm thinking of the old Johnny Carson skit, 00:07:40.990 --> 00:07:45.890 you know, with the turban and everything. 00:07:45.890 --> 00:07:52.210 Everything so that's very cool anything anything else no that's that's it, 00:07:53.040 --> 00:07:59.400 Okay, well, I got two things. One that, you know, I was starting to say something 00:07:59.400 --> 00:08:01.800 to Bruce before the show, and I figure I'll say it now. 00:08:01.960 --> 00:08:06.720 I had mentioned, like, the fact that we're posting video clips on TikTok of 00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:12.560 highlights, because the thing we use to record has like this AI thing that you 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:16.140 push a button after you're done recording, and it finds like, 00:08:16.320 --> 00:08:19.020 usually about 12, like, 00:08:19.580 --> 00:08:26.560 clips that are usually about a minute long, but they can vary from 30 seconds to a couple minutes. 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:31.580 And then you can adjust them manually that it thinks will be interesting. 00:08:31.980 --> 00:08:40.000 Now of those 12, usually I can find four that actually do seem interesting. 00:08:40.260 --> 00:08:43.780 Like, and to me, like the things I want to like make it interesting to post 00:08:43.780 --> 00:08:47.940 on TikTok or something is like, I want a back and forth between me and the co-host. 00:08:48.100 --> 00:08:51.960 I don't want a monologue with one of us just talking as an example. 00:08:52.140 --> 00:08:56.300 Sometimes it'll pick like, hey, maybe it was an interesting minute, 00:08:56.500 --> 00:08:58.880 but it was all Yvonne, and so I'll ignore that. 00:08:59.280 --> 00:09:05.120 Or it was some random side topic that we actually only talked about for that 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:09.020 30 seconds, and so I'm like, eh, that's not a good highlight. 00:09:09.160 --> 00:09:15.280 But I can usually pick four And I post them and it's kind of interesting because first of all, 00:09:15.540 --> 00:09:22.780 according to the stats that TikTok gives you, like each one of these clips that 00:09:22.780 --> 00:09:27.360 I post gets something on the order of, 00:09:28.180 --> 00:09:34.340 five to ten times as many views as the podcast gets downloads every week well 00:09:34.340 --> 00:09:40.320 that's just an now here's the thing though if you look the average length of 00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:44.760 one of those views is like two seconds so this is not like i. 00:09:44.760 --> 00:09:46.460 Didn't know i gave you those stats that's interesting. 00:09:46.460 --> 00:09:49.940 It does give you all kinds of stats if you go look in the stats it tells you 00:09:49.940 --> 00:09:54.880 like you can see the actual curve of drop off and they're like you know most 00:09:54.880 --> 00:09:59.200 viewers drop off in the first three seconds look here to see what happens and 00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:03.540 it gives you the percentage that actually watches the whole thing to the end. 00:10:03.680 --> 00:10:08.680 And that's usually like five to 10% actually watched the whole thing, 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:14.320 but it also like the comments are usually assessable. 00:10:14.680 --> 00:10:20.700 Like it's, it's like mostly people clearly trolling like that. 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:24.380 And of course the, the one minute clips are taken out of context. 00:10:24.380 --> 00:10:29.000 So like it may be them saying something about what we said that we actually 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:30.360 addressed on the full show. 00:10:30.540 --> 00:10:34.420 Like, but you haven't thought about this or whatever. And if you actually listened 00:10:34.420 --> 00:10:37.720 to the whole show, we actually spent five minutes on that, but it wasn't in 00:10:37.720 --> 00:10:41.100 the one minute clip, you know, and, and, and, you know, 00:10:41.560 --> 00:10:46.540 you know, just people, people trolling that they're, and mostly, 00:10:46.800 --> 00:10:50.660 mostly the trolls are clearly like of the MAGA type orientation. 00:10:50.660 --> 00:10:55.600 There are occasionally some, some other folks and there are occasionally some 00:10:55.600 --> 00:10:58.260 serious comments on one occasion. 00:10:58.260 --> 00:11:05.440 There was like a clearly a mega person and a lefty who just decided to have 00:11:05.440 --> 00:11:07.180 a whole long argument in our comments. 00:11:07.700 --> 00:11:10.960 Well you know it started it started out 00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:13.800 relevant to like whatever we had said but by 00:11:13.800 --> 00:11:16.800 the end they were just yelling at each other and so 00:11:16.800 --> 00:11:22.580 you know it is what it is but like the thing is it takes me on top of my normal 00:11:22.580 --> 00:11:27.400 process to put out the podcast maybe an additional half hour to put these things 00:11:27.400 --> 00:11:33.480 out and so over time i i actually find it kind of fun so i'm still doing it 00:11:33.480 --> 00:11:36.100 at a moment and I've been doing it maybe a month and a half now, 00:11:36.100 --> 00:11:40.540 but I figure I'll give it three months because then after that, 00:11:40.660 --> 00:11:44.400 like really the whole purpose of doing this in the first place, well, 00:11:44.640 --> 00:11:48.840 my son, Alex bugged me about how I should do it for months before I actually did it. 00:11:48.940 --> 00:11:54.300 But like the whole point is theoretically get put more people to listen to the 00:11:54.300 --> 00:11:59.400 actual show, you know, and of course, like years and years ago. 00:12:00.040 --> 00:12:03.880 We still have a Facebook page. I still mention it at the end of the show and stuff like that. 00:12:04.180 --> 00:12:12.100 But we actively promoted the Facebook page. We paid money for Facebook ads. 00:12:12.300 --> 00:12:15.220 We built up. I think the Facebook page has thousands of followers. 00:12:15.680 --> 00:12:21.360 But it gets no traction. The way Facebook works, even if you have thousands 00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:26.720 of followers to a page, your stuff won't necessarily surface to the people who've 00:12:26.720 --> 00:12:30.020 followed it unless you pay to promote the individual. 00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:32.620 Individual posts, which we are not doing. 00:12:32.980 --> 00:12:37.020 And so, but, but for the first couple months, we did, we, we, 00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:40.260 we promoted people to the page and we promoted whatever. 00:12:40.800 --> 00:12:45.480 It had zero effect whatsoever on actual downloads of the podcast. 00:12:45.780 --> 00:12:50.940 So like I left it up, but I'm like, I'm not going to spend effort here. 00:12:51.100 --> 00:12:53.020 I'm certainly not going to pay the money anymore. 00:12:53.460 --> 00:12:59.480 It shows that for, for that purpose, Facebook ads, we're not doing what they're. 00:12:59.480 --> 00:13:04.440 Supposed to What the Facebook ads did was what Facebook wanted them to do. 00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:08.460 It would boost your follower count. It might boost, you know, 00:13:08.780 --> 00:13:13.980 views of the Facebook page, but it would not take people off Facebook to something else. 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:20.520 True. You know, and then, you know, so, okay, maybe it was doing what Facebook 00:13:20.520 --> 00:13:22.480 was wanting. It wasn't doing what I wanted. 00:13:22.740 --> 00:13:27.740 And for TikTok so far, we haven't seen any noticeable change in our trends on 00:13:27.740 --> 00:13:29.740 our downloads. It's the same as it's been for years. 00:13:30.360 --> 00:13:33.080 So I'm like, is it worth the extra half hour? 00:13:34.020 --> 00:13:38.500 It's kind of amusing. So maybe it is a little bit, but it's, 00:13:38.500 --> 00:13:46.200 it's certainly not like getting, getting any promotion that actually like helps. So I'm like, eh. 00:13:47.220 --> 00:13:51.140 Do I really want to spend the time and effort and thought, especially like, 00:13:51.260 --> 00:13:57.660 you know, Facebook got the reprieve, which technically speaking is not legal even, 00:13:58.100 --> 00:14:00.820 which, you know, I won't get into all the details of that conversation, 00:14:00.820 --> 00:14:04.720 but like there was a mechanism in the law to do a 90 day extension, 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:07.320 but it had to happen before. 00:14:07.740 --> 00:14:09.780 You said, you said Facebook, you meant TikTok. 00:14:10.060 --> 00:14:11.200 Oh, TikTok. Sorry. Yeah. 00:14:11.320 --> 00:14:13.920 TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. The Facebook. 00:14:14.420 --> 00:14:18.740 No, whatever, you know, no. Now, TikTok got a reprieve, 00:14:18.800 --> 00:14:26.980 but what the law actually allowed was a 90-day extension, but the 90-day extension 00:14:26.980 --> 00:14:29.940 had to be before the deadline actually ran out, 00:14:30.060 --> 00:14:34.920 and there had to basically be certified that there was a deal in progress that 00:14:34.920 --> 00:14:36.500 was almost certain to happen. 00:14:37.280 --> 00:14:42.940 So the timeframe expired, so the 90-day extension wasn't in play anyway, 00:14:43.180 --> 00:14:48.340 but Trump basically just promised that nobody would enforce it and so it's sort 00:14:48.340 --> 00:14:52.620 of partially back like if you've already got the app you can continue to use 00:14:52.620 --> 00:14:58.700 it but it's still not in the app stores and so it may very well go away again 00:14:58.700 --> 00:15:03.140 at the end of this or may not there are a number of possible deals i've. 00:15:03.140 --> 00:15:06.540 Been hearing or seeing headlines here and there that there there's actually 00:15:06.540 --> 00:15:09.960 some they're more open to being sold. 00:15:10.420 --> 00:15:18.400 Yeah, I have heard that too. But every report I've seen that says that has been 00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:22.440 sort of second or third hand. So I don't know how much to trust it. 00:15:23.180 --> 00:15:28.680 Also, one of the things they've said is that even if they sell TikTok the brand 00:15:28.680 --> 00:15:33.920 and TikTok the users and all of that, they're not selling the algorithms. 00:15:34.820 --> 00:15:40.860 Which is what a lot of folks seem to think is the reason that TikTok behaves 00:15:40.860 --> 00:15:47.420 differently and has a different vibe than the various other Instagram reels or whatever, 00:15:47.880 --> 00:15:50.420 which haven't gotten the same level of attention. 00:15:50.640 --> 00:15:54.600 Now, of course, there are other people who say that it just feels different 00:15:54.600 --> 00:15:59.620 after it came back, and maybe they've already changed the algorithm and blah, blah, blah. 00:15:59.620 --> 00:16:04.540 And they did add some new options in the settings that you can apparently mess 00:16:04.540 --> 00:16:09.380 with to affect what's in your feed. And so they have done some things post coming back. 00:16:09.700 --> 00:16:15.820 But who knows? It's all people speculating. It's not anybody who knows is not talking. 00:16:16.380 --> 00:16:22.920 Like, yeah, the people who know are quietly doing the things they're going to 00:16:22.920 --> 00:16:24.760 do. And we'll find out when we find out. 00:16:25.640 --> 00:16:27.080 But, yeah, so I don't know. 00:16:27.580 --> 00:16:32.960 I would be sad if they sold. I hate to see that the government force them or 00:16:32.960 --> 00:16:38.720 bully them into selling and then them actually doing it. I'd like to see some other outcome. 00:16:38.840 --> 00:16:43.360 But unfortunately, the Supreme Court didn't rule the way that I really thought that they would. 00:16:43.520 --> 00:16:45.980 But we'll see. I mean, oh, well. 00:16:46.440 --> 00:16:54.200 I mean, and yes, there are all kinds of like I feel like the law was very much 00:16:54.200 --> 00:16:58.320 ill considered and not the right way to go. 00:16:59.140 --> 00:17:05.900 But I'm not necessarily sure that the Supreme Court was wrong in that saying, 00:17:05.900 --> 00:17:10.740 you know, Congress does have the power to do that, which I think is a different 00:17:10.740 --> 00:17:12.820 question than should they have done it. 00:17:13.500 --> 00:17:19.560 But either way, then there's the other issue of even though it's for a result 00:17:19.560 --> 00:17:22.480 I'm actually happy with, which is TikTok is still on, 00:17:23.260 --> 00:17:29.460 you know, is it okay for the president to blatantly ignore the law in the kind of way that he's doing? 00:17:29.460 --> 00:17:31.900 Anyway, we're, we're verging into newsy stuff. 00:17:32.140 --> 00:17:37.360 So the, uh, of, of, of just say, you know, I may, you know, I may or may not 00:17:37.360 --> 00:17:39.140 continue posting the Tik TOK clips. 00:17:39.240 --> 00:17:43.340 If any of you listeners have an opinion on that, let me know, cause I'll do it. 00:17:43.460 --> 00:17:47.340 If people like it, like that actually listened to the show. 00:17:47.760 --> 00:17:55.400 Um, I, I do see them pop up on my feed, but I follow you on Tik TOK. So, um, I, and yeah. 00:17:56.340 --> 00:18:02.460 If she do do some posts from this, I'm looking forward to seeing the comments. 00:18:02.820 --> 00:18:06.660 I generally speaking do four clips from every show. 00:18:06.800 --> 00:18:11.720 There's one show I only did one because it was actually the one where we talked 00:18:11.720 --> 00:18:19.040 about the TikTok ban because I put it out after TikTok was reinstated and things had already happened. 00:18:19.040 --> 00:18:23.800 So I just like a lot of the clips that came up with were us talking about the TikTok ban. 00:18:23.960 --> 00:18:26.880 And it was all sort of outdated by the time I was even posting it. 00:18:27.040 --> 00:18:31.540 So I only posted one from that show, but every other one I've posted four. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:36.920 But I feel like I'm, except one, the most recent one, I actually posted five. 00:18:37.140 --> 00:18:41.860 So at first I was trying to very religiously, I'm going to post four on every show. 00:18:41.960 --> 00:18:46.620 And now I'm like, I'll look at the 12 it gives me and I'll post the ones I like 00:18:46.620 --> 00:18:48.440 and I'll ignore the ones I don't like. 00:18:48.580 --> 00:18:51.560 And I'm not going to hold myself to a number because there were a couple of 00:18:51.560 --> 00:18:55.420 times where after it generated the 12, I didn't like four. 00:18:55.640 --> 00:19:00.560 And so I messed with it and made it generate more, too much work, too much work. 00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:04.380 The only other thing I was going to mention, and this is also a, 00:19:04.500 --> 00:19:11.280 Hey, listeners, give me your thoughts on this is I am finally after many months, 00:19:11.500 --> 00:19:14.060 I think the last time was also last May, 00:19:14.360 --> 00:19:18.920 finally logging all the stuff that I've, 00:19:19.520 --> 00:19:24.900 movies I've watched, books I've read, et cetera, in the last like nine months. 00:19:25.400 --> 00:19:32.140 And so I will once again have a backlog of those and the option to start doing 00:19:32.140 --> 00:19:33.580 media reviews again here. 00:19:33.860 --> 00:19:37.940 And so the question, well, two things. One, I am looking, 00:19:38.100 --> 00:19:42.780 I have not finished pulling the stuff and counting and seeing how many there were, 00:19:42.820 --> 00:19:50.500 but it is looking like I may actually be averaging more than one a week, 00:19:50.520 --> 00:19:54.260 which would mean I would never catch up by doing one a week. 00:19:54.500 --> 00:19:58.420 So the questions here to the audience are A, right? 00:19:58.970 --> 00:20:04.690 Do you want to hear that back at all? Like, did folks even enjoy the media reviews? 00:20:04.850 --> 00:20:06.950 Because if not, I don't have to do them at all. 00:20:07.250 --> 00:20:13.830 If I do do them, you know, do I try to do more than one so I actually catch up? 00:20:14.010 --> 00:20:16.110 I'm looking at the list and it's a fun list. 00:20:16.730 --> 00:20:21.090 Oh, yeah. Some of these are already on our, like, on our Commudgeons Corner plaque. 00:20:22.390 --> 00:20:27.310 On our Commudgeons Corner Slack, I've already started to put in some of the ones I've watched. 00:20:27.310 --> 00:20:33.390 I'm working my way backwards from now to last May. So I've got a couple months 00:20:33.390 --> 00:20:37.590 more of these to enter in before I actually am ready to start talking about them. 00:20:37.930 --> 00:20:42.090 So you're saying, I'm looking forward to your reviews on a lot of these. 00:20:42.230 --> 00:20:46.390 So my vote is yes, go through them and do, and if you need to do two a week 00:20:46.390 --> 00:20:51.190 and do them quick, you know, make them, make them two, make them one minute reviews. 00:20:52.110 --> 00:20:56.990 You know, we say that, but you know, I fail constantly. constantly. 00:20:57.230 --> 00:20:59.570 I'm like, okay, I'll do a quick review. I'll just do the thumbs up, 00:20:59.710 --> 00:21:00.690 thumbs down, then I'll be done. 00:21:00.930 --> 00:21:05.930 And then like, boom, like before you know it, Yvonne and I have talked 30 minutes 00:21:05.930 --> 00:21:09.810 about like some stupid movie from the eighties or something. 00:21:10.130 --> 00:21:15.430 And, you know, and there we are, but yeah, no, we got, we got a bunch of these, 00:21:15.590 --> 00:21:22.810 but like, I I'm looking and, you know, January, January, we've done more than one a week. 00:21:22.930 --> 00:21:25.690 December was more than one a week. a lot november was more 00:21:25.690 --> 00:21:28.830 than one a week october was less 00:21:28.830 --> 00:21:31.970 than one a week you know but but as 00:21:31.970 --> 00:21:34.810 september was less than one a week but august was more 00:21:34.810 --> 00:21:38.430 you know so i think the average is going to turn out to be more than one a week 00:21:38.430 --> 00:21:43.730 if i ever want to catch up and like keep up so i don't know so anyway tell if 00:21:43.730 --> 00:21:46.810 you're out there i give all the ways to give us feedback at the end let me know 00:21:46.810 --> 00:21:51.190 your thoughts do you want reviews if so would it would you be upset if there 00:21:51.190 --> 00:21:52.850 was more than one some weeks, 00:21:53.210 --> 00:21:55.590 you know, anyway, that's it. That's all I got. 00:21:56.610 --> 00:22:00.770 So unless we got anything else on either of those things, Bruce, 00:22:00.850 --> 00:22:05.810 I'll take a break. And when we come back, we can have your first more serious topic. 00:22:06.430 --> 00:22:10.190 Good. Now's a good time. I got to answer the door. Okay. 00:22:10.530 --> 00:22:15.150 Go answer the door and we'll be back right after this. 00:23:05.320 --> 00:23:09.400 Okay. We are back. Bruce timed it perfectly. 00:23:10.780 --> 00:23:14.880 Okay. Bruce, what's your first topic of the day? 00:23:15.260 --> 00:23:21.180 Okay. So I want to, well, the big news this week is that air crash. 00:23:21.320 --> 00:23:24.940 And I think definitely Yvonne should be talking about that. 00:23:25.060 --> 00:23:29.920 So I'm going to leave that to him. I'm looking forward to hearing his evaluation next week. 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:32.100 And we had a second one just a few hours ago too. 00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:33.140 Oh gosh. 00:23:33.140 --> 00:23:39.980 Well, it wasn't a commercial airliner. It was an air ambulance transporting 00:23:39.980 --> 00:23:43.560 someone who'd just gotten life-saving treatment in Philly, 00:23:43.560 --> 00:23:47.940 and they were on their way back to Mexico via somewhere in the Midwest, 00:23:47.940 --> 00:23:51.680 and it crashed right next to a mall outside of Philadelphia. 00:23:51.880 --> 00:23:53.200 Oh, gosh. Wow. 00:23:53.680 --> 00:23:58.240 So, seven people on board, and I've heard mixed reports whether people on the 00:23:58.240 --> 00:24:03.000 ground were hit, but there were many fires on the ground, houses and cars. 00:24:03.140 --> 00:24:06.820 I think it'll be better for Yvonne to do that next week because there'll be 00:24:06.820 --> 00:24:08.080 a lot more information available. 00:24:08.700 --> 00:24:09.040 Yeah, yeah. 00:24:09.320 --> 00:24:13.220 But in the meantime, I think we should do a tech topic. Okay. 00:24:13.980 --> 00:24:19.020 Deep Seek. This is a perfect topic for me because it's right up my alley. 00:24:19.560 --> 00:24:24.440 Because you did or are you still working at an AI place? 00:24:26.280 --> 00:24:30.900 I worked at an AI company about a year and a half ago. After I left Ocean Gate, 00:24:31.020 --> 00:24:33.160 I worked at a company called Bright AI. 00:24:33.540 --> 00:24:37.240 For those who don't remember, Bruce was at Ocean Gate, which is the place with 00:24:37.240 --> 00:24:40.300 the sub, you know, that had the thing happen. 00:24:40.540 --> 00:24:43.440 Yeah, we've talked about that on the show before. Go ahead, Bruce. 00:24:43.960 --> 00:24:46.940 Oh, yeah. You know, actually, you know, since my last visit, 00:24:47.100 --> 00:24:52.640 there was the Coast Guard review of that. 00:24:52.680 --> 00:24:53.380 Of Ocean Gate. 00:24:53.560 --> 00:24:55.700 I didn't even think about that. But. 00:24:56.670 --> 00:25:03.210 I should give you a quick evaluation of what my take was from that. 00:25:03.450 --> 00:25:06.030 Okay, go ahead. Do Ocean Gate update first. 00:25:06.030 --> 00:25:14.250 Let me give you a quick take on what was the cause of the accident, 00:25:14.850 --> 00:25:16.370 of the implosion of that sub. 00:25:16.730 --> 00:25:18.730 Okay. I'm not going to get into the deep sea. 00:25:21.270 --> 00:25:28.430 Basically, there are two systems. There were two systems that we designed into 00:25:28.430 --> 00:25:32.710 the sub to monitor the health of the carbon fiber hull. 00:25:33.250 --> 00:25:41.670 One used ultrasonic acoustic sensors, and the other used strain gauges to detect 00:25:41.670 --> 00:25:45.870 movement or the deformation of the hull. 00:25:45.870 --> 00:25:57.290 And those two combined would be able to detect if the hull was flexing beyond its linear range. 00:25:57.450 --> 00:26:02.530 It would move like a spring, and when it came back to the surface, 00:26:02.530 --> 00:26:04.230 it would come back to its original shape. 00:26:07.430 --> 00:26:13.430 And the acoustic sensors would be able to hear if there was any breakages that 00:26:13.430 --> 00:26:15.710 were beyond a safe amount. 00:26:15.870 --> 00:26:20.770 And when we did test hulls and when we tested this system out, 00:26:20.970 --> 00:26:25.250 it worked very well in predicting when the hull was not healthy, 00:26:25.270 --> 00:26:27.830 long before it actually failed. 00:26:27.830 --> 00:26:32.090 And so with the test hulls, you actually tested the failure on a bunch of them? 00:26:32.450 --> 00:26:37.710 I tested the failure on multiple one-third scale hulls. 00:26:38.010 --> 00:26:44.990 So in the 2022 expedition, there were three years of expeditions. 00:26:44.990 --> 00:26:48.750 The one that I went on was in 2021, then I left the company, 00:26:48.950 --> 00:26:53.170 and then they had another set of expeditions in 2022, and in 2023, 00:26:53.170 --> 00:26:55.690 that was the year that it imploded. 00:26:56.210 --> 00:26:59.550 Toward the end of the expedition in 2022, 00:27:00.270 --> 00:27:06.290 they had done several successful dives, but on one of the dives, 00:27:06.690 --> 00:27:10.450 as they were coming to the surface, they were almost at the surface, 00:27:10.450 --> 00:27:13.550 the hull emitted a very 00:27:13.550 --> 00:27:16.890 loud bang it was so loud 00:27:16.890 --> 00:27:21.430 that it could be heard on the surface and the 00:27:21.430 --> 00:27:29.770 stockton who was who was very he was all he was very positive minded he always 00:27:29.770 --> 00:27:36.550 liked to justify things and we had to kind of keep them reined in but he just 00:27:36.550 --> 00:27:38.330 made the assumption that, 00:27:39.210 --> 00:27:46.030 it was not the hull, that it was the hull settling within its metal cage. It was not a problem. 00:27:47.190 --> 00:27:47.270 Right. 00:27:47.630 --> 00:27:49.570 But during the Coast Guard... 00:27:51.210 --> 00:27:54.950 Review or testimony last september they 00:27:54.950 --> 00:27:58.670 showed the data on those sensors during that 00:27:58.670 --> 00:28:02.510 event and clearly it shows that 00:28:02.510 --> 00:28:05.650 the hull changed shape and it 00:28:05.650 --> 00:28:08.830 was a permanent shape change that and 00:28:08.830 --> 00:28:11.850 and after that event the the hull was 00:28:11.850 --> 00:28:18.490 behaving differently and so but they but because they were they just disregarded 00:28:18.490 --> 00:28:22.550 that or i don't know what happened because i wasn't there suppose for some reason 00:28:22.550 --> 00:28:28.110 they decided to keep diving the sub even after the sensors showed that there 00:28:28.110 --> 00:28:31.090 was a problem and so basically. 00:28:31.090 --> 00:28:38.030 The stuff the safeguards that were in place to tell you when the hull had an 00:28:38.030 --> 00:28:44.950 issue and was no longer safe had gone off they got the alarms they decided uh we don't care. 00:28:44.950 --> 00:28:50.250 Exactly yeah you can design a system to warn but you can't design a system that 00:28:50.250 --> 00:28:55.990 forces it not to work or not forces people to not make a wrong decision so after 00:28:55.990 --> 00:28:58.870 that bang they did a dive that, 00:28:59.960 --> 00:29:03.360 either that week i think like like the next day and it 00:29:03.360 --> 00:29:06.460 was fine they did one more dive even after that 00:29:06.460 --> 00:29:11.900 and went down came back up no problem that was the and those those two dives 00:29:11.900 --> 00:29:18.680 after the bang were the last dives of that year fast forward to the third expedition 00:29:18.680 --> 00:29:25.940 in 2023 the first dive where they went down at a deep dust, it imploded. 00:29:26.440 --> 00:29:33.120 So like we saw in our testing, if there's an event, there's plenty of time between 00:29:33.120 --> 00:29:37.460 the event and the actual failure. 00:29:37.700 --> 00:29:42.480 That's what happened, and they just ignored the warnings. They ignored the warning. 00:29:44.580 --> 00:29:50.860 Now, there has been no report from the Coast Guard, But that's my evaluation. 00:29:51.240 --> 00:29:53.980 I'd be surprised that they didn't come to the same conclusion. 00:29:54.300 --> 00:29:56.680 So what was the report that was released then? 00:29:57.060 --> 00:30:01.500 There was no report yet. They had their testimony. But as far as I know, 00:30:01.620 --> 00:30:05.440 they have not come out with a final report of the accident. 00:30:06.180 --> 00:30:06.340 Okay. 00:30:07.040 --> 00:30:07.860 Yeah. So. 00:30:08.900 --> 00:30:09.820 So, DeepSeek. 00:30:10.200 --> 00:30:15.240 DeepSeek. There was a huge shock to the AI industry this week, 00:30:15.460 --> 00:30:17.320 or I guess about a week ago. 00:30:17.740 --> 00:30:24.880 Chinese company came out with their own AI model and testing over the last week 00:30:24.880 --> 00:30:33.860 has shown that it is comparable to the performance to open AI chat GPT. 00:30:35.340 --> 00:30:39.440 And their most recent, most powerful models too, not just. 00:30:39.540 --> 00:30:46.900 Yeah. And so it was so shocking that it caused a huge dip in value of NVIDIA, 00:30:47.020 --> 00:30:48.240 which is the company that provides... 00:30:53.610 --> 00:30:56.430 At least according to initial reports, there are some people who are out there 00:30:56.430 --> 00:31:05.370 doubting it, but it was done much, much more cheaply for a couple of different reasons. 00:31:05.770 --> 00:31:14.050 One, due to export controls, at least in theory, China is not allowed to have NVIDIA's best chips. 00:31:14.310 --> 00:31:18.230 So they were using some of the previous generation. 00:31:18.850 --> 00:31:23.410 And in order to do that, they had to do all sorts of optimizations. 00:31:23.610 --> 00:31:27.350 Which I've heard subsequent reporting that, you know, 00:31:27.890 --> 00:31:34.230 the American companies have been thinking about some of those optimizations as well, 00:31:34.430 --> 00:31:39.230 but hadn't really bothered with them because it's easier if you have access 00:31:39.230 --> 00:31:45.330 to hardware and money to just throw hardware at it than it is to do optimizations. 00:31:45.330 --> 00:31:50.990 And so the end result of this is that it was something like a hundred times 00:31:50.990 --> 00:31:54.530 cheaper for the results they got to train this thing, maybe even more. 00:31:55.350 --> 00:32:01.310 And then I saw something subsequent that an American research group has managed 00:32:01.310 --> 00:32:05.830 to do something at a smaller scale, but using the same kind of techniques, even cheaper. 00:32:06.290 --> 00:32:12.930 So they report that they did it for $6 million, which is kind of like the pizza 00:32:12.930 --> 00:32:16.510 budget for some of these other companies. and American companies doing that. 00:32:17.290 --> 00:32:20.070 It's really interesting. 00:32:21.370 --> 00:32:28.150 The AI initiative that was just announced by the Trump administration was $500 00:32:28.150 --> 00:32:33.290 million, I believe, for building major data centers out and blah, blah, blah, etc. 00:32:35.610 --> 00:32:42.170 As a logical engineer, I can tell you, I can totally understand what has happened here. 00:32:42.170 --> 00:32:45.670 The when when you 00:32:45.670 --> 00:32:49.150 go to an engineer or engineering team and you 00:32:49.150 --> 00:32:54.570 tell them that there's no limitation on them they can spend whatever they want 00:32:54.570 --> 00:33:00.770 and have as many resources as they want to accomplish a certain task they will 00:33:00.770 --> 00:33:06.250 take everything and that's why you're seeing these you know like x, 00:33:08.190 --> 00:33:12.510 x's ai's they're putting up like a hundred thousand cpus 00:33:12.510 --> 00:33:17.190 and and meta has like another hundred thousand cpus in these data centers to 00:33:17.190 --> 00:33:23.030 to generate these models and to to and so i can just imagine that they they 00:33:23.030 --> 00:33:30.330 just ask for what they want and they get what they want and so they they have no sense of, 00:33:31.080 --> 00:33:34.920 efficiency. And I can understand because they want to get a quick result. 00:33:35.140 --> 00:33:41.940 And when you have these powerful NVIDIA processors, you can come to a solution 00:33:41.940 --> 00:33:44.460 very quickly. In the last three companies. 00:33:44.720 --> 00:33:49.460 Well, and this is an example, like this is writ large because of the scale. 00:33:49.860 --> 00:33:53.740 But you see this play out all the time, even on your home computer, right? 00:33:53.980 --> 00:34:02.080 I mean, because people who are writing software, take advantage of the hardware they have. 00:34:02.400 --> 00:34:07.940 And the fact that like at this point, you know, hard drive, I'm not, 00:34:08.080 --> 00:34:09.220 not even using the right term. 00:34:09.660 --> 00:34:14.180 Storage is cheap. Most of it's no longer spinning platter hard drives anymore. 00:34:14.880 --> 00:34:18.800 Storage is cheap. Memory is cheap. CPU is cheap. 00:34:19.080 --> 00:34:23.880 You know, where Moore's law has been doing its thing for years and years and years. 00:34:24.120 --> 00:34:27.740 And they, on the one hand, they always want to push these things to the limit. 00:34:27.920 --> 00:34:35.620 But it also incentivizes people not to bother with the optimizations because they don't have to. 00:34:35.940 --> 00:34:42.640 And so you get things like we've got computers that compared to computers from 00:34:42.640 --> 00:34:49.160 5, 10, let alone further back in time years ago, are amazingly powerful. 00:34:49.400 --> 00:34:53.980 But like your day-to-day activities, like browsing the web or something, 00:34:54.160 --> 00:35:00.400 feels the same as it did, like speed-wise. it takes just as long to boot up your computer. 00:35:01.040 --> 00:35:06.120 You know, if you're, you know, sometimes when you're like typing in a word processor, 00:35:06.120 --> 00:35:09.400 it still has trouble catching up with you as you type. 00:35:10.380 --> 00:35:14.920 As right now is, is, you know, it gets pixelated and, and I've got fiber to 00:35:14.920 --> 00:35:16.520 my house. It's still, it's like. 00:35:16.640 --> 00:35:20.560 Yeah. And I don't, I don't have the fastest connection in the world, 00:35:20.560 --> 00:35:26.400 but I have more than enough for like multiple HD video connections, you know? And, 00:35:27.370 --> 00:35:33.910 And yeah, and all these things where it's just because the, the bang for the 00:35:33.910 --> 00:35:38.750 buck is not in optimizing the little things and making it, 00:35:38.970 --> 00:35:42.150 you know, so, you know, when you have the option of like, oh, 00:35:42.190 --> 00:35:45.350 we don't have to worry about like making this super efficient, 00:35:45.350 --> 00:35:47.630 the hardware is good enough, it'll be fine. 00:35:47.850 --> 00:35:52.470 And the hardware will get better over time anyway. And then we can push it harder and harder anyway. 00:35:52.790 --> 00:35:58.690 So I have examples of this. The last three companies that I've worked for have 00:35:58.690 --> 00:36:04.810 all used these NVIDIA modules to solve problems. 00:36:05.010 --> 00:36:07.790 And in every case, it's been overkill. 00:36:08.910 --> 00:36:13.150 These NVIDIA modules, they literally, so just the modules are about that big. 00:36:13.330 --> 00:36:17.930 And it's got the processor and memory and the supporting logic around it. 00:36:18.250 --> 00:36:25.970 And you can build a system around that. And it has very powerful tools that they provide. 00:36:26.850 --> 00:36:31.930 And there's no other company out there that even comes close to providing that 00:36:31.930 --> 00:36:35.350 much computing power for the wattage that you consume. 00:36:35.630 --> 00:36:38.750 And so it's, but they're very expensive. 00:36:38.970 --> 00:36:42.050 It's literally $2,000 for this little module. 00:36:42.050 --> 00:36:46.050 And and so it's very easy for for 00:36:46.050 --> 00:36:49.010 a startup company to say you know let's 00:36:49.010 --> 00:36:52.250 let's use these and get to a a working 00:36:52.250 --> 00:36:54.910 prototype right away and and i can 00:36:54.910 --> 00:36:57.630 do that but then what happens when you want 00:36:57.630 --> 00:37:00.470 to start selling more of them then it 00:37:00.470 --> 00:37:03.510 gets super expensive and that's when i 00:37:03.510 --> 00:37:07.750 was at boeing they had this we're designing 00:37:07.750 --> 00:37:11.070 this system this image processing system for the triple 00:37:11.070 --> 00:37:14.330 seven freighter and it was way 00:37:14.330 --> 00:37:17.270 overkill there we were literally doing something that 00:37:17.270 --> 00:37:20.250 you could do on a mobile phone but they 00:37:20.250 --> 00:37:23.770 were making it so robust and working 00:37:23.770 --> 00:37:27.230 100 of the time in all possible situations they 00:37:27.230 --> 00:37:32.470 had a the development cost was going to be 50 million dollars for this imaging 00:37:32.470 --> 00:37:39.990 and and so finally when management came out and said oh crap that's way too 00:37:39.990 --> 00:37:45.050 expensive and so So they basically threw away two years of work. 00:37:45.810 --> 00:37:49.570 And basically the whole time that I was at Boeing was basically down the tubes. 00:37:50.050 --> 00:37:52.350 And then I ended up getting laid 00:37:52.350 --> 00:37:57.210 off from there. And then I come into the company that I'm in right now. 00:37:57.470 --> 00:38:01.130 They basically are wanting to do the exact same thing. 00:38:01.290 --> 00:38:05.830 It's an NVIDIA board in a box on an aircraft. 00:38:06.350 --> 00:38:10.390 And I'm like, this is overkill. And then what they're doing in my current company 00:38:10.390 --> 00:38:14.950 is much less than even what they were doing at Boeing. So I'm like, this is way overkill. 00:38:15.150 --> 00:38:19.770 So at least I'm able to go into them and say, let's do something a little bit less expensive. 00:38:21.070 --> 00:38:22.390 We'll, we'll see how it works out. 00:38:22.530 --> 00:38:27.670 Yeah, I think, I think those are examples are everywhere. And like that, 00:38:27.710 --> 00:38:31.430 I mentioned on the show last week, there's a personal project I bought a domain 00:38:31.430 --> 00:38:33.210 name for, and I'm just starting it up. 00:38:33.290 --> 00:38:37.950 And the, I have not gotten anywhere significant, but the first thing I wanted 00:38:37.950 --> 00:38:42.770 to do was just put up like a splash page, like an HTML page with an image and 00:38:42.770 --> 00:38:45.970 some text as a placeholder before I put anything in. 00:38:46.090 --> 00:38:50.270 And of course I'm, I'm, you know, I know this project is beyond my technical 00:38:50.270 --> 00:38:53.950 skills. So I'm, I'm using AI to, to help me. 00:38:54.130 --> 00:38:57.850 And like, if I was going to do the splash page myself, I would write an HTML 00:38:57.850 --> 00:39:03.110 page using HTML one O technology that's been around since the, 00:39:03.110 --> 00:39:06.590 you know, late 1980s, early 1990s. 00:39:06.810 --> 00:39:10.490 And it would be fine. And it would render on everybody's computer just fine. 00:39:10.490 --> 00:39:13.290 It would, it would work on my phone. It would work everywhere. 00:39:13.690 --> 00:39:17.290 And of course this, this, you know, the thing is telling me, 00:39:17.450 --> 00:39:21.390 no, no, no, we need all this framework and all this stuff. and blah, blah, blah. 00:39:21.630 --> 00:39:26.550 You know, and I know I like, I want to do more than the splash page eventually 00:39:26.550 --> 00:39:31.830 that may need some of this complexity, but like, I ended up spending like hours 00:39:31.830 --> 00:39:35.410 and hours and hours just getting to stupid splash page to work. 00:39:35.550 --> 00:39:41.590 And I'm like, using 20 year old technology, I could have had this up in like less than five minutes. 00:39:41.930 --> 00:39:45.230 I'm like, why, why, why is any of this needed? You know? 00:39:45.410 --> 00:39:50.390 And I don't know. I'll, I'll find out when I try to make the more complicated 00:39:50.390 --> 00:39:53.250 stuff if I really needed this. But it's frustrating. 00:39:53.910 --> 00:39:55.370 So anyway, back to Deep Sea. 00:39:55.370 --> 00:40:03.590 Back to Deep Sea. So you mentioned the chip embargo that we have or the export restrictions to China. 00:40:03.610 --> 00:40:04.570 Looks like it backfired. 00:40:04.710 --> 00:40:11.890 It's backfired big time because we have unintentionally given their engineers 00:40:11.890 --> 00:40:18.670 a tighter goal and forced them to be efficient. and they went ahead and did it. 00:40:19.070 --> 00:40:25.270 And so by forcing them into a limited engineering space, they've actually come 00:40:25.270 --> 00:40:26.270 up with a solution that's better 00:40:26.270 --> 00:40:29.650 than what American companies have been able to come out with so far. 00:40:29.810 --> 00:40:32.670 Now, will American companies catch up? Yeah, sure. 00:40:32.870 --> 00:40:35.010 But it'll be a game of catch up. 00:40:35.590 --> 00:40:37.970 And also I'll add like, 00:40:38.780 --> 00:40:40.880 This was foreseeable. 00:40:43.180 --> 00:40:48.960 First of all, technology export controls, generally speaking, 00:40:49.160 --> 00:40:52.560 have never worked for a variety of reasons. 00:40:53.060 --> 00:40:58.860 One, this effect. You give them an incentive to either figure out how to do 00:40:58.860 --> 00:41:03.200 something more efficient in this case or develop their own technology from scratch. 00:41:03.200 --> 00:41:09.080 Like, you know, I am actually shocked that, you know, it's only a matter of 00:41:09.080 --> 00:41:16.220 time till China can natively build its own GPU chips that rival anything that NVIDIA has. 00:41:16.880 --> 00:41:21.980 You know, there are ways and, you know, things will get around the export ban anyway. 00:41:22.260 --> 00:41:25.800 There are ways to do that. I mean, if you remember when they were trying to 00:41:25.800 --> 00:41:31.520 like keep people from exporting encryption technology and then people were printing 00:41:31.520 --> 00:41:36.300 it on T-shirts and stuff because the code was so simple and it's like, 00:41:36.340 --> 00:41:39.060 you know, it's just idiotic. 00:41:39.060 --> 00:41:43.080 And like the, I remember the one way it actually got to Europe or whatever, 00:41:43.100 --> 00:41:46.440 the first, there was something that was more than a t-shirt, 00:41:46.620 --> 00:41:50.580 but like that was the specific law was written. 00:41:50.980 --> 00:41:58.140 So exporting the, the, the stupid thing was you couldn't send it electronically, 00:41:58.140 --> 00:42:02.320 but somebody figured out that the law didn't cover if you printed it out. 00:42:02.320 --> 00:42:10.640 So somebody actually printed it out and mailed the big sheaf of paper, 00:42:10.640 --> 00:42:12.720 and then they scanned it on the other side. 00:42:12.940 --> 00:42:16.320 And it was not against the law. And it was not against the law. It was just idiotic. 00:42:17.140 --> 00:42:24.860 And so, but it's like, eventually, if it's worth doing, it will jump that gap, 00:42:24.860 --> 00:42:27.260 no matter what legal stuff you put in there. 00:42:27.260 --> 00:42:33.140 And so it's interesting that all the previous debates that were going on about 00:42:33.140 --> 00:42:35.260 AI are kind of like out the window. 00:42:35.460 --> 00:42:38.680 All the concerns about copyright infringement. 00:42:39.100 --> 00:42:45.040 Oh, well, OpenAI is throwing a little fit because they say that DeepSeek used their stuff. 00:42:45.180 --> 00:42:49.460 They're getting a dose of their own medicine. But, you know, 00:42:49.580 --> 00:42:56.260 it's like there may be copyright restrictions on training for U.S. 00:42:56.380 --> 00:42:58.580 AI companies. but the Chinese companies aren't going to care. 00:42:58.720 --> 00:43:01.300 They're going to suck up all the copyrighted material they want. 00:43:01.820 --> 00:43:06.100 And, and I don't, I think that was kind of a, a red herring anyway, 00:43:06.140 --> 00:43:07.720 because it's like, there is a, 00:43:09.540 --> 00:43:14.800 a common practice in the U.S. called fair use. And I think the way AI companies 00:43:14.800 --> 00:43:18.260 are using a copyrighted material is fair use. 00:43:18.420 --> 00:43:24.120 Well, in the U.S., the fair use argument is going through the courts right now 00:43:24.120 --> 00:43:26.300 in various lawsuits related to this. 00:43:26.480 --> 00:43:30.960 The one I can think of off the top of my head is the New York Times and a consortium 00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:37.060 of other news and other information providers sued OpenAI, and they might have 00:43:37.060 --> 00:43:39.720 sued others as well on exactly this issue. 00:43:40.300 --> 00:43:44.300 OpenAI's defense is fair use, et cetera, et cetera. 00:43:44.760 --> 00:43:52.060 And their argument is essentially what they do is remix the things in the same 00:43:52.060 --> 00:43:53.680 way any other artist does. 00:43:53.840 --> 00:43:59.580 Like if I draw something in the style of person X, I've done it because I've 00:43:59.580 --> 00:44:01.760 consumed that person's media. 00:44:01.800 --> 00:44:05.320 I've looked at it. I've read it, I've whatever. 00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:10.020 And so if I am then going to produce my own creative output, 00:44:10.200 --> 00:44:14.500 of course it is, it is influenced by everything I've ever read, 00:44:14.720 --> 00:44:16.280 seen, listened to, et cetera. 00:44:17.080 --> 00:44:23.080 Now the arguments are at some point you get too close to the original material, blah, blah, blah. 00:44:23.300 --> 00:44:27.200 But like, you know, it, it's going through courts. 00:44:27.340 --> 00:44:30.340 We'll see what they say. And of course we, We're going to have the same issue 00:44:30.340 --> 00:44:38.060 we always have, both with legislators and with courts trying to deal with tech, 00:44:38.300 --> 00:44:43.140 which is the decisions are going to be made by people who have absolutely no 00:44:43.140 --> 00:44:44.960 understanding of the technology whatsoever. 00:44:45.280 --> 00:44:50.520 But like I was saying, that's all out the window anyway, because there's this big loophole. 00:44:50.640 --> 00:44:55.880 Any foreign company can generate their models, and then we use those models. 00:44:55.880 --> 00:45:00.820 So it's like it's putting american ai companies at a disadvantage that they have that they, 00:45:01.530 --> 00:45:04.090 It can't use copyrighted material if that becomes the case. 00:45:04.350 --> 00:45:07.770 Well, this is the kind of thing where all of the arguments that were made about 00:45:07.770 --> 00:45:10.950 TikTok are going to apply to DeepSeek potentially as well. 00:45:11.430 --> 00:45:15.550 So you could have Congress trying to ban use of DeepSeek as well. 00:45:15.910 --> 00:45:21.370 And the thing with all of this is, and yes, it could be used to suck up your data. 00:45:21.530 --> 00:45:25.850 It could be used for all kinds of nefarious purposes. But at the same time, 00:45:26.130 --> 00:45:33.890 it just seems incongruous with the basic values of this country to be saying, 00:45:34.110 --> 00:45:38.510 I'm sorry, Americans, no, you can't have access to this. 00:45:38.670 --> 00:45:47.870 Yeah. Basically, they're putting these restrictions on because of what could 00:45:47.870 --> 00:45:51.130 be done, not because of what is actually being done. 00:45:52.550 --> 00:45:57.250 And that's one thing I heard some of the legislators who are willing to talk 00:45:57.250 --> 00:46:02.330 about it, and one of them was AOC, about the TikTok ban. She voted against it. 00:46:02.610 --> 00:46:06.270 But one of the things she said is, yeah, we had classified briefings on this, 00:46:06.370 --> 00:46:10.650 and I can't tell you what was in the classified briefing for obvious reasons, 00:46:10.670 --> 00:46:15.150 but I can tell you that it was not particularly impressive. 00:46:15.150 --> 00:46:20.850 It was not anything that backs up all the hype. 00:46:21.230 --> 00:46:26.870 And just like the public statements, it was mostly about what could happen, 00:46:27.070 --> 00:46:28.810 not about things that are happening. 00:46:29.470 --> 00:46:36.670 Yeah. So it turns out that AI is not as hard to do as we initially thought. 00:46:36.830 --> 00:46:42.790 It's not going to be a huge draw on power. It's not going to be a huge amount of chips. 00:46:43.510 --> 00:46:49.930 Well, I'm not sure that is true. What will happen is if you find all of these 00:46:49.930 --> 00:46:51.710 efficiencies that you can bring, 00:46:51.970 --> 00:46:56.570 then imagine what you can get out of it if you throw the same amount of power 00:46:56.570 --> 00:46:58.950 you were going to throw at it without the efficiencies. 00:46:58.950 --> 00:47:09.150 So in these kind of scenarios, becoming more efficient has very rarely resulted in actually using less. 00:47:09.390 --> 00:47:16.050 It results in getting more out of the same or more than you did. 00:47:16.690 --> 00:47:19.490 I forget what they call it. There's an actual name for it. 00:47:19.490 --> 00:47:25.350 One typical example is just in traffic that if you build more lanes in a highway 00:47:25.350 --> 00:47:30.830 to relieve the traffic jam it doesn't actually make traffic move more smoothly 00:47:30.830 --> 00:47:34.050 because more people will use the road and fill up the new capacity. 00:47:34.050 --> 00:47:40.070 Yeah well but at least we know that we can get most you know we can i think 00:47:40.070 --> 00:47:44.610 it's asymptotic you know as you get as you pour more and more power to it it's you know, 00:47:46.340 --> 00:47:50.160 a lot you may get a little bit better but not a whole much better but. 00:47:50.160 --> 00:47:55.580 Well this is this is the value this is of course the whole ar i ai argument 00:47:55.580 --> 00:48:00.740 from the people who are you know pushing the, 00:48:02.200 --> 00:48:06.820 highest like the view the the craziest views of like the singularity and all 00:48:06.820 --> 00:48:12.600 this stuff rely on the sense that once you get to a certain point you can have 00:48:12.600 --> 00:48:16.540 the ai design the next better version of the AI, 00:48:16.860 --> 00:48:21.680 and then they start cycling faster than humans ever could, and it races to infinity 00:48:21.680 --> 00:48:25.300 in terms of how smart the AIs are and what they can do and everything. 00:48:25.480 --> 00:48:30.300 But I think the counter to that is what you said, and maybe that'll happen, 00:48:30.340 --> 00:48:35.500 but what we've seen in all sorts of other spaces is the asymptotic behavior, 00:48:35.720 --> 00:48:41.980 where it gets harder and harder and harder to extract that next bit of value. 00:48:42.520 --> 00:48:50.240 Yeah. So I think that the real value is going to be not in just the basic AI models. 00:48:50.320 --> 00:48:55.360 It's going to be on the services that sit on top of AI, like what Microsoft's 00:48:55.360 --> 00:49:00.580 doing and what, and there's various other companies are doing to take, 00:49:01.060 --> 00:49:05.020 that are sitting on top of OpenAI or ChatGPT to, 00:49:05.960 --> 00:49:10.580 that are actually more than just chat or just answering questions. 00:49:10.840 --> 00:49:14.240 So that's where they're going to be able to make some money. 00:49:14.620 --> 00:49:20.200 Because the original idea of OpenAI was that it was going to be open source for safety. 00:49:20.660 --> 00:49:26.140 And they were not originally planning on making hundreds of billions of dollars 00:49:26.140 --> 00:49:28.220 off of it. And I'm actually glad. 00:49:28.240 --> 00:49:33.320 And they had designed a corporate structure to try to force them not to, 00:49:33.480 --> 00:49:35.520 in fact, to keep it nonprofit, et cetera. 00:49:35.740 --> 00:49:39.420 And then like a year and a half ago or whenever, That was that big battle at 00:49:39.420 --> 00:49:43.580 OpenAI, where essentially people realized, what the hell are we doing? 00:49:43.580 --> 00:49:46.600 We could be multi-billionaires. Yeah, yeah. 00:49:47.820 --> 00:49:49.940 I'm hoping that that's all that was out the window. 00:49:50.340 --> 00:49:51.600 Yeah, I'm hoping so. Yeah. 00:49:52.560 --> 00:49:59.820 But yeah, so we'll see. I think there's also just like most of these other technological waves, 00:49:59.820 --> 00:50:07.240 it seems like the general pattern before is it's not necessarily the first movers 00:50:07.240 --> 00:50:11.260 who end up being the ones who make all the money. 00:50:11.810 --> 00:50:19.370 You often have a first wave that is trying to be bleeding edge and essentially 00:50:19.370 --> 00:50:21.790 flame out. They spend all the money. 00:50:22.350 --> 00:50:26.650 They don't succeed in making a profit. They eventually go out of business, 00:50:26.650 --> 00:50:32.290 but they leave behind an infrastructure that's picked up by the second wave. 00:50:32.490 --> 00:50:37.510 And the second wave are the ones who actually end up building technologies that 00:50:37.510 --> 00:50:43.470 become ubiquitous and end up being the next major trillion-dollar companies. 00:50:43.930 --> 00:50:44.730 Yeah, sure. 00:50:45.010 --> 00:50:52.250 So we'll see. And this has, like a lot of other technological waves, 00:50:52.550 --> 00:50:55.110 there's potential dangers associated with it. 00:50:55.510 --> 00:51:00.070 There's all kinds of things that could go wrong, could go badly, 00:51:00.090 --> 00:51:03.490 but also all kinds of things that could be super positive. 00:51:03.490 --> 00:51:08.990 You know, you, you really could, if you have this asymptotic explosion, 00:51:08.990 --> 00:51:15.110 you know, you really could have like some successor of chat GPT just one day 00:51:15.110 --> 00:51:16.770 saying, oh, you wanted a cure for cancer. 00:51:16.890 --> 00:51:24.830 Here it is, you know, et cetera, you know, you know, just, just go in and ask, 00:51:24.910 --> 00:51:29.150 or maybe, maybe you don't even have to ask. It just says, oh, this is what you need. 00:51:29.530 --> 00:51:36.990 And of course, the science fiction stories have been written for over 100 years 00:51:36.990 --> 00:51:41.330 now about what if the AI decides the best thing for the world is to get rid of the humans. 00:51:41.990 --> 00:51:42.590 Yeah, yeah. 00:51:44.590 --> 00:51:50.810 Yeah, I have my doubts on both of those. Yeah, knowing that these are essentially 00:51:50.810 --> 00:51:54.870 really advanced autocomplete programs, 00:51:55.110 --> 00:52:01.110 it's not just looking at statistical and the text completion. 00:52:01.110 --> 00:52:04.090 They are some of the most recent ones 00:52:04.090 --> 00:52:08.310 are that is one layer of the technology they're adding other things to but the 00:52:08.310 --> 00:52:15.090 argument i always come back to is that you know in the end you can't convince 00:52:15.090 --> 00:52:20.070 me that i'm anything more than a really advanced autocomplete myself so at a 00:52:20.070 --> 00:52:23.850 certain point can you tell the difference and once you can't tell the difference does it matter. 00:52:23.850 --> 00:52:28.710 Well and that's why we have the the turing test which and which is kind of a 00:52:28.710 --> 00:52:31.770 subjective test in the first place, you know, when I was younger. 00:52:32.150 --> 00:52:37.370 These things now have passed the Turing test. They passed that level a couple years ago now. 00:52:37.630 --> 00:52:41.990 And we, and I mean, you know, when I was much younger, I always thought, 00:52:42.130 --> 00:52:46.150 oh, wow, that's a very bright line, the Turing test. 00:52:46.330 --> 00:52:48.830 Well, now it's not as bright as we thought. 00:52:49.290 --> 00:52:54.550 Now, although still, like, at this point, like, you can generally eventually tell. 00:52:55.030 --> 00:52:58.810 Like, if you have a relatively lovely. 00:52:59.600 --> 00:53:02.980 Insightful person who knows what they're doing, but you can't necessarily just 00:53:02.980 --> 00:53:04.360 pick an average person off the street. 00:53:04.440 --> 00:53:08.040 Now you can, you can potentially fool that average person off the street in 00:53:08.040 --> 00:53:11.660 a specific area, but eventually these things start going sideways. 00:53:11.860 --> 00:53:16.840 Like if you try to have an extended conversation for a long period of time and 00:53:16.840 --> 00:53:18.160 you're like, that's what's going on. 00:53:18.260 --> 00:53:21.200 But on, on images and stuff, now you 00:53:21.200 --> 00:53:24.140 see people all the time being fooled by AI images 00:53:24.140 --> 00:53:27.300 on Facebook and stuff yeah especially if 00:53:27.300 --> 00:53:30.280 you get video and video now like 00:53:30.280 --> 00:53:33.480 the video's gotten good enough it's it's fooling people i saw 00:53:33.480 --> 00:53:37.380 on my facebook feed like today something 00:53:37.380 --> 00:53:40.180 with like some seal or 00:53:40.180 --> 00:53:43.060 something that jumps onto a boat and the person like 00:53:43.060 --> 00:53:46.980 helps rub the barnacles off it and it's this wonderful heartwarming 00:53:46.980 --> 00:53:49.820 story and whatever and you're and like i look at 00:53:49.820 --> 00:53:53.660 it and i'm immediately like yeah that's clearly ai but 00:53:53.660 --> 00:53:56.360 i know lots of people are like oh look at 00:53:56.360 --> 00:53:59.420 that heartwarming video about the seal you know 00:53:59.420 --> 00:54:02.500 yeah and um it's turning 00:54:02.500 --> 00:54:07.380 apart with things and it's getting harder and harder like even if you do know 00:54:07.380 --> 00:54:11.600 to tell the difference like even a year ago it was clearly obvious the video 00:54:11.600 --> 00:54:17.880 was not like real now you have to pay attention in another year or two like 00:54:17.880 --> 00:54:20.160 you might have to be an expert to tell the difference. 00:54:20.680 --> 00:54:24.980 And, and then after that, you might not be able to at all. You might be able to fool the experts. 00:54:25.620 --> 00:54:31.260 And it's, and so like a lot of things that, you know, people used to be like, 00:54:31.380 --> 00:54:35.940 well, like it's what's true. Show me the photo, show me the video. 00:54:36.380 --> 00:54:40.660 Well, that's going to be harder and harder and harder. So. 00:54:42.190 --> 00:54:47.070 I keep wanting to do one, one, one thing that's on my to-do list that the technology 00:54:47.070 --> 00:54:48.830 now exists for is the voice cloning. 00:54:49.490 --> 00:54:54.770 So like, I want to, I want to clone my voice and Yvonne's voice and like drop 00:54:54.770 --> 00:54:57.310 in a break one day as a surprise to Yvonne. 00:54:57.630 --> 00:55:02.810 That's a conversation between the two of us. That's completely made up and get his reaction. 00:55:02.810 --> 00:55:09.490 Because my son here, one of the things he does routinely in ChatGPT is when 00:55:09.490 --> 00:55:11.190 he wants to have a discussion, 00:55:11.190 --> 00:55:18.830 he asks ChatGPT to generate a dialogue in the style of Curmudgeon's Corner with 00:55:18.830 --> 00:55:21.250 Yvonne and I talking to each other. 00:55:21.410 --> 00:55:24.890 And so I want to throw some of those in. But right now, the technology, 00:55:25.070 --> 00:55:27.510 like I can clone my voice. I can clone Yvonne's voice. 00:55:27.890 --> 00:55:30.490 Technically speaking, I have to have his permission to do that, 00:55:30.830 --> 00:55:33.610 which is whatever. but yeah, he might. 00:55:33.670 --> 00:55:34.430 He might sue. 00:55:34.690 --> 00:55:39.930 Yeah, he might sue. But then if I want to generate a cut and right now, 00:55:40.330 --> 00:55:44.730 right now I can really easily take a script for each one of us and generate 00:55:44.730 --> 00:55:50.770 the voice, but I can't do, I can't give it a script with both of us and have 00:55:50.770 --> 00:55:52.450 it automatically switch back and forth. 00:55:53.410 --> 00:55:58.490 I'd either have to do each of our parts independently and then edit them back 00:55:58.490 --> 00:56:03.490 together myself or write, do some scripting to, to, to do the combination, 00:56:03.490 --> 00:56:06.110 which, you know, at that point it's work. 00:56:06.170 --> 00:56:10.490 And at that point I don't want to do it anymore because like it would take too much effort. 00:56:10.910 --> 00:56:14.370 So I'm waiting for it to get even easier than it is today. But, 00:56:14.490 --> 00:56:20.330 but yeah, this it's, it's, it's getting scary good and it's getting better faster. 00:56:20.610 --> 00:56:22.170 And, you know, so we'll see. 00:56:22.430 --> 00:56:22.830 Yeah. 00:56:23.530 --> 00:56:23.850 Okay. 00:56:24.110 --> 00:56:25.350 Pretty good for this one. 00:56:25.350 --> 00:56:31.190 So let's take a break then. And when we come back, your second topic, 00:56:31.190 --> 00:56:34.270 and then we'll wrap it up after that. Here we go. 00:58:18.410 --> 00:58:20.410 Okay here we are again and. 00:58:20.410 --> 00:58:22.190 I do use this mug. 00:58:22.190 --> 00:58:29.610 Excellent bruce is holding up their curmudgeon's corner mug uh we like it i 00:58:29.610 --> 00:58:34.850 i i i am i'm using i use mine regularly as well i now have two one at work and 00:58:34.850 --> 00:58:41.310 one at home there you go and and one with a crack in it that i use as a pencil holder or something. 00:58:42.710 --> 00:58:50.770 So what I wanted to talk about is a libertarian take on the Trump presidency so far. 00:58:50.950 --> 00:58:54.110 Okay. And I can see like right off the bat, 00:58:54.270 --> 00:58:58.930 I see some tensions there potentially that I love to hear your take on in, 00:58:58.930 --> 00:59:05.310 in terms of on the one hand, I'm sure you love the idea of reducing, 00:59:05.310 --> 00:59:11.550 you know of hey let's shut down huge portions of government and but on the other 00:59:11.550 --> 00:59:19.330 hand doing it in sort of authoritarian style ways probably rubs wrong and some 00:59:19.330 --> 00:59:22.830 of the other stuff but what do you think what's going on what's the take. 00:59:22.830 --> 00:59:27.250 Yeah i there's a number of things that i am happy with a number of things that 00:59:27.250 --> 00:59:32.490 i am very mad and upset and disgusted with i can we can do a lightning around 00:59:32.490 --> 00:59:36.350 covering those things, but since you mentioned the cost cutting, 00:59:36.630 --> 00:59:38.890 you know, a traditional, 00:59:40.070 --> 00:59:47.550 normie Republican way to cut government would be to give notice and to have 00:59:47.550 --> 00:59:52.630 like a study group that would come out with a report of saying what parts of 00:59:52.630 --> 00:59:55.830 government could be cut or what could be kept. 00:59:56.390 --> 01:00:03.130 But no, what Trump's doing is he's saying, cut everything, and everyone would 01:00:03.130 --> 01:00:06.850 then have to come to him and justify their existence. 01:00:07.390 --> 01:00:10.730 It's basically flipping the script 180 degrees. 01:00:11.090 --> 01:00:14.270 Now, the fundamental problem with that, of course, well, there are many problems 01:00:14.270 --> 01:00:17.510 with it, but the one I'll point out right now is that, 01:00:18.260 --> 01:00:23.720 That's actually illegal. Now, he doesn't care, and maybe nobody will do anything about it. 01:00:23.880 --> 01:00:30.900 But in our system, Congress determines what the government spends money on, not the president. 01:00:31.680 --> 01:00:37.980 And there's, in fact, specifically a law that prohibits the president from not 01:00:37.980 --> 01:00:42.880 spending the money that Congress has allocated that was passed in response to 01:00:42.880 --> 01:00:46.340 Richard Nixon trying to not spend money the Congress had allocated. 01:00:46.840 --> 01:00:52.640 And so to just decide, hey, 01:00:52.920 --> 01:00:57.400 this money that has already been authorized by Congress has already been specified 01:00:57.400 --> 01:01:02.560 for a specific purpose, X, Y, Z, and just say, well, we're not going to do that. 01:01:03.860 --> 01:01:11.560 Violates the way our system is supposed to work in terms of separations of power and who decides what. 01:01:12.380 --> 01:01:18.320 And essentially, the presidency over the course of the history of the United 01:01:18.320 --> 01:01:24.200 States has essentially already, with Congress's acquiescence essentially, 01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:30.080 taken over the power to make war, which was given in the Constitution to Congress, not the president. 01:01:30.540 --> 01:01:37.000 And if we get a situation where the president ends up just ignoring the money 01:01:37.000 --> 01:01:39.680 directives out of Congress as well, then essentially, 01:01:39.900 --> 01:01:43.240 essentially we're completely neutering Congress and saying, okay, 01:01:43.380 --> 01:01:48.280 yeah, we, we want a unitary executive who once we elect them can just do whatever the hell. 01:01:48.380 --> 01:01:51.600 Yeah. And I'd agree that that is what he's doing is against the law, 01:01:51.600 --> 01:01:55.320 but on the, on the flip side, and I hate to use this as, you know, 01:01:55.400 --> 01:01:57.480 to say, Hey, well, the other side has been doing the same thing. 01:01:57.700 --> 01:02:02.840 Why can't Trump do it? Because like when Biden wanted to forgive loans, 01:02:03.060 --> 01:02:08.120 he decided to, to just spend the money right off of executive order. 01:02:08.840 --> 01:02:12.340 And then he was sued, and he lost in the courts. 01:02:13.100 --> 01:02:14.740 So that may be what happened. 01:02:15.080 --> 01:02:21.920 As recently as last week, Yvonne and I were saying the Democrats should play 01:02:21.920 --> 01:02:25.820 hardball too and make the courts reverse them on those kinds of things rather 01:02:25.820 --> 01:02:28.420 than preemptively decide not to. 01:02:28.600 --> 01:02:32.400 Because as you said, Biden did that in a couple places, but there's so many 01:02:32.400 --> 01:02:34.240 more places the Democrats could have. 01:02:34.360 --> 01:02:41.240 The Democrat normal response is, sorry, that's just not possible. So we can't try that. 01:02:41.860 --> 01:02:48.520 But that doesn't, and it's sort of my take on that is, yeah, 01:02:48.520 --> 01:02:54.940 the right thing to do is to try to go through the system the way it's supposed to. 01:02:55.140 --> 01:02:58.280 But when the other side is playing hardball, you got to play hardball too. 01:03:00.660 --> 01:03:07.940 But at the same time, do I want to end up in a universe where I 01:03:08.310 --> 01:03:11.890 we are concentrating power even further. 01:03:12.150 --> 01:03:19.970 I think one of the main insights of the U.S. 01:03:20.110 --> 01:03:25.030 Constitution that is extremely frustrating in terms of actually getting things 01:03:25.030 --> 01:03:27.290 done, but also extremely wise, 01:03:28.130 --> 01:03:31.790 is the distribution of power across 01:03:31.790 --> 01:03:35.690 multiple power centers rather than concentrating it all in one place. 01:03:35.690 --> 01:03:41.010 And over time, that power has moved over and into the presidency. 01:03:41.450 --> 01:03:49.550 And maybe the silver lining on this would be that Congress, maybe Trump will push this too far. 01:03:49.790 --> 01:03:53.990 And Congress, probably not a Republican Congress, but maybe a Democrat Congress 01:03:53.990 --> 01:03:56.150 in two years, will say, that's enough. 01:03:56.150 --> 01:04:02.270 We're going to rein in the president, well, the presidency, not just its president. 01:04:02.270 --> 01:04:06.710 You know, they've tried to rein him in by impeaching him. Well, 01:04:06.770 --> 01:04:07.630 that doesn't do anything. 01:04:07.870 --> 01:04:11.950 The way to rein in the power of a president is to actually pass laws. 01:04:13.250 --> 01:04:19.070 Well, the problem is to do that, you either need super majorities or you need 01:04:19.070 --> 01:04:20.230 to get rid of the filibuster. 01:04:20.530 --> 01:04:23.950 And if you're doing things the president doesn't agree with, 01:04:24.030 --> 01:04:28.950 you need to be able to override a veto as well. So you need veto proof majorities. 01:04:29.690 --> 01:04:33.510 But what you're describing is exactly what happened after Richard Nixon. 01:04:34.300 --> 01:04:39.200 Basically, the Congress, after Richard Nixon's resignation, 01:04:40.100 --> 01:04:45.760 went through a whole bunch of areas where they identified abuses by the executive, 01:04:46.100 --> 01:04:51.400 not just by Richard Nixon, but by Johnson and Kennedy, too, and passed laws 01:04:51.400 --> 01:04:53.700 to make those things illegal. 01:04:53.700 --> 01:04:56.620 And most of those have held up in court. 01:04:57.180 --> 01:05:01.000 One of the things that we're going to find out with Donald Trump pushing all 01:05:01.000 --> 01:05:05.580 of these things and doing things that are blatantly against the current law 01:05:05.580 --> 01:05:13.420 is will the current conservative Supreme Court actually end up ruling that, you know, 01:05:13.580 --> 01:05:17.620 those laws constraining the presidency were unconstitutional to begin with. 01:05:17.800 --> 01:05:19.800 And so, of course he can do these things. 01:05:20.620 --> 01:05:24.600 Yeah. Yeah. So, well, we'll have to see how that plays out. 01:05:24.820 --> 01:05:28.320 So before you move on to the other topics, cause I'm sure you want to talk about 01:05:28.320 --> 01:05:33.180 immigration and some other things, what, what's your overall take on that balance 01:05:33.180 --> 01:05:34.480 though, in terms of like, 01:05:35.160 --> 01:05:42.100 you know, are you, are you more worried about Donald Trump sort of exerting 01:05:42.100 --> 01:05:45.060 dictatorial authority on all kinds of areas. 01:05:45.220 --> 01:05:49.560 The other would be like, you know, firing all kinds of civil servants who are 01:05:49.560 --> 01:05:51.660 supposedly non-political, blah, blah, blah. 01:05:52.240 --> 01:05:58.720 Or are you more happy about, hey, he's going to cut the shit that I thought 01:05:58.720 --> 01:06:01.680 wanted, that I wanted to cut for my entire life. 01:06:02.320 --> 01:06:09.280 I'll be honest. I'm happy that he's cutting and whatever way he does it, I'm fine with that. 01:06:09.840 --> 01:06:13.240 So this is an interesting libertarian position to me. 01:06:13.280 --> 01:06:14.280 Even if it's chaotic, yeah. 01:06:14.800 --> 01:06:19.900 But chaotic, but like dictatorial. Like, so you would be willing to trade. 01:06:20.880 --> 01:06:28.300 Like, I will take the smaller government, even if the exchange is a massively 01:06:28.300 --> 01:06:31.980 increased presidential power for, you know, 01:06:32.300 --> 01:06:35.920 somebody basically saying, okay, they can do whatever they want, 01:06:36.060 --> 01:06:39.900 including all kinds of abuses of the type you're probably going to talk about 01:06:39.900 --> 01:06:41.220 next when we talk about immigration. 01:06:41.220 --> 01:06:43.180 The powers that he has have already 01:06:43.180 --> 01:06:47.460 been established by earlier presidents anyway. And so he's using it. 01:06:48.140 --> 01:06:52.520 He's trying to expand them much further. And the question is, does that succeed? 01:06:53.160 --> 01:06:53.360 Yeah. 01:06:55.780 --> 01:07:02.200 So you'd rather have a small government dictator than a large government democracy. 01:07:03.660 --> 01:07:07.400 That sounds like an oxymoron to me. A small government dictator. 01:07:07.400 --> 01:07:12.380 This means a government that is smaller, less powerful, an FBI that has reigned in. 01:07:12.860 --> 01:07:16.620 Oh, he's not reigning in the FBI. He's doing exactly the opposite. 01:07:17.280 --> 01:07:20.780 I don't know. He's been a victim of the FBI. So I think that he's going to reign that in. 01:07:21.120 --> 01:07:24.320 Oh, no, he's not going to reign it in at all. He's just going to make sure it's 01:07:24.320 --> 01:07:26.660 his tool to use in the way that he wants to. 01:07:27.880 --> 01:07:28.680 Yeah, we'll see. 01:07:29.760 --> 01:07:31.020 Okay, I'll let you move on now. 01:07:31.200 --> 01:07:33.220 Anyway, he made... 01:07:35.030 --> 01:07:40.350 During the Libertarian National Convention, Donald Trump and RFK Jr. 01:07:40.570 --> 01:07:45.370 Spoke, and that was an unprecedented thing. I don't know if it has ever happened 01:07:45.370 --> 01:07:48.550 at any political party. Where a candidate in the other party. 01:07:49.830 --> 01:07:54.090 Well, I think there are some minor parties who have done weird things like that, 01:07:54.210 --> 01:07:58.770 like the Constitution Party in New York and some parties that normally don't 01:07:58.770 --> 01:08:02.150 run their own candidates anyway, but end up endorsing one of the major candidates. 01:08:02.150 --> 01:08:11.550 So the Libertarian Party made a deal with Donald Trump to release Ross Ulbricht from prison. 01:08:12.130 --> 01:08:15.810 Ross Ulbricht, a lot of people may wonder, who is he and why is he so important? 01:08:16.030 --> 01:08:20.490 He was the founder of what was called the Silk Road. 01:08:20.690 --> 01:08:27.630 It was the first Bitcoin, like eBay, that used Bitcoin back around 10, 12 years ago. 01:08:27.630 --> 01:08:36.250 And he and of course it was used for trading drugs and and all kinds of illegal 01:08:36.250 --> 01:08:39.150 things it was if you wanted to buy a hit person. 01:08:39.150 --> 01:08:40.650 That's where you would go yeah. 01:08:40.650 --> 01:08:45.730 Uh yeah and that's what that's what he was accused of but he was never convicted 01:08:45.730 --> 01:08:51.850 of that he was simply convicted for establishing this uh this this marketplace 01:08:51.850 --> 01:08:59.750 and he was made an example of and he was sentenced to Two life terms plus 40 years, 01:08:59.990 --> 01:09:04.670 which was way excessive for a crime like that. 01:09:05.050 --> 01:09:12.830 And so- I would agree that's excessive. I probably think he deserved some time, 01:09:12.850 --> 01:09:14.230 but that seems excessive. 01:09:14.610 --> 01:09:20.670 Yeah. So Donald Trump not only released him from jail, but gave him a full pardon. 01:09:21.900 --> 01:09:25.840 And which was beyond what was even asked for by the Bloomberg sharing party. 01:09:26.400 --> 01:09:30.280 And, and, and, and also just, and didn't do it just quietly. 01:09:30.460 --> 01:09:34.420 He did it very loudly, put, put it on his social media. 01:09:34.920 --> 01:09:37.860 And so that was a very good thing to do. 01:09:38.080 --> 01:09:42.900 He saved this, you know, this still relatively young man from having to spend 01:09:42.900 --> 01:09:43.700 the rest of his life in jail. 01:09:43.700 --> 01:09:53.300 So I think that the Gaza ceasefire, I'd like to credit Trump for getting that done. 01:09:53.620 --> 01:10:01.340 I think on that one, even the Biden folks agree that his influence was helpful. 01:10:01.340 --> 01:10:11.060 You know, basically, he provided a type of pressure that the Biden folks could 01:10:11.060 --> 01:10:15.220 not in terms of threats he was making, 01:10:15.380 --> 01:10:21.480 but also just in terms of having the relationship with Netanyahu that wasn't overtly adversarial. 01:10:21.480 --> 01:10:26.660 And by the way, for those criticizing Biden from the left, yes, 01:10:26.860 --> 01:10:30.680 the relationship between Netanyahu and Biden was overtly adversarial, 01:10:30.860 --> 01:10:34.020 even though he was still providing weapons and some other stuff. 01:10:34.860 --> 01:10:38.440 But those two people hated each other. 01:10:40.920 --> 01:10:47.760 I like to think that Obama was even more adversarial with Netanyahu. 01:10:48.690 --> 01:10:54.310 I think Obama would have handled the situation even better than both Trump and- Maybe, maybe. 01:10:54.630 --> 01:11:01.470 But frankly, it was the kind of thing where it's a Nixon goes to China kind 01:11:01.470 --> 01:11:07.090 of thing where there was no way that that deal was going to happen under Biden, 01:11:07.090 --> 01:11:09.950 if nothing else other than to spite Biden. 01:11:10.210 --> 01:11:15.690 So a new person coming in, and especially someone like Trump coming in, could force it to start. 01:11:15.690 --> 01:11:20.870 I still have doubts about its long-term success, but to start with, 01:11:20.990 --> 01:11:26.590 yeah, the wheels were oiled by Donald Trump coming on. 01:11:26.730 --> 01:11:32.490 I have real doubts as to what did Trump promise Netanyahu in order for him to do that? 01:11:32.590 --> 01:11:36.890 Because just a few weeks ago, your predictions, one of the predictions y'all 01:11:36.890 --> 01:11:40.910 make was, you know, will all the IDF, I think this is one of the questions I 01:11:40.910 --> 01:11:43.490 put in there, will the IDF fully withdraw from Gaza? 01:11:44.150 --> 01:11:48.250 You both said no way. And I said no way in my prediction. 01:11:48.510 --> 01:11:53.770 And they're fully withdrawing if they haven't already, which is a shock. 01:11:53.770 --> 01:11:57.070 I thought that was a partial withdrawal, not full, out of certain areas. 01:11:58.210 --> 01:12:05.290 Did you see the video where the Palestinians are all in mass moving back to 01:12:05.290 --> 01:12:07.550 their homes in North Gaza? 01:12:07.990 --> 01:12:14.870 Well, yeah. I did see that. And maybe I just haven't been paying attention about that. 01:12:14.970 --> 01:12:18.450 I thought that was certain areas that were being opened, not all of the Gaza 01:12:18.450 --> 01:12:22.430 Strip, no Israeli presence, which I don't think that's true. 01:12:22.770 --> 01:12:25.890 From the channels that I've been following, they're saying it's a full withdrawal, 01:12:26.050 --> 01:12:27.150 but yeah, double check on that. 01:12:29.610 --> 01:12:32.270 Even if that's true, I don't think it'll stay that way. 01:12:32.490 --> 01:12:37.690 Oh, yeah, I agree. I'm afraid. My fear is that once the hostages are released, 01:12:37.890 --> 01:12:45.170 that they will go back in either that or they'll do to the West Bank what they did to Gaza. 01:12:45.430 --> 01:12:49.670 And they'll flatten the West Bank also, which is horrible. 01:12:50.770 --> 01:12:56.050 And this touches into one of the things I'm just horrified by what Trump has 01:12:56.050 --> 01:13:03.070 said, that he actually has proposed that the Palestinians be moved into Jordan and Egypt. 01:13:03.070 --> 01:13:09.710 And he actually used the word clean, not even having the self-awareness to know 01:13:09.710 --> 01:13:13.030 that that's ethnic cleansing, which is anathema. 01:13:15.430 --> 01:13:20.530 I think it's even giving him the benefit of the doubt saying he doesn't have the self-awareness. 01:13:20.890 --> 01:13:25.790 If he doesn't, he's stupid. I would say maybe he doesn't know. 01:13:25.950 --> 01:13:31.250 But the people around him who he's listening to that cause him to talk that 01:13:31.250 --> 01:13:32.930 way, they absolutely know. 01:13:34.800 --> 01:13:40.060 I don't know what more Israel could do to Gaza. 01:13:40.340 --> 01:13:45.520 I mean, any additional bombs they drop on there are just going to make the rubble shake. Right. 01:13:46.760 --> 01:13:52.420 There's nothing left. But the people are still there, and they will not leave. 01:13:52.420 --> 01:13:56.340 And Egypt and Jordan won't let those people, 01:13:56.580 --> 01:14:05.540 won't let the Palestinians in because if Jordan and Egypt were to let them in 01:14:05.540 --> 01:14:08.000 or to accept them as refugees, 01:14:08.360 --> 01:14:14.600 the people would rebel because the Egyptians and the Jordanians, 01:14:14.740 --> 01:14:21.580 they are absolutely ashamed for what their governments are doing to enable Israel to do it. 01:14:21.580 --> 01:14:26.240 And even if not, it would destabilize those countries in other ways. 01:14:27.260 --> 01:14:35.460 But frankly, even if you said, hey, let's find some uninhabited piece of land 01:14:35.460 --> 01:14:37.300 that's nice and let's move them all there. 01:14:37.580 --> 01:14:44.140 I mean, certainly you from a libertarian perspective, you're forcing them against 01:14:44.140 --> 01:14:46.000 their will to go somewhere they don't want. 01:14:46.240 --> 01:14:50.700 You are confiscating what was their property. I mean, first you bomb it to hell 01:14:50.700 --> 01:14:54.460 and then you take it and, you know, to build condos or whatever. 01:14:55.080 --> 01:14:58.620 You know, this is, you know, ethnic cleansing is considered, 01:14:58.620 --> 01:15:02.740 you know, tantamount to genocide for a reason. 01:15:03.780 --> 01:15:08.640 Because you are uprooting an entire society and trying to kill it, 01:15:08.780 --> 01:15:11.760 essentially, even if you just displace the people. 01:15:11.760 --> 01:15:19.320 And in the meantime, you are violating core human rights about self-determination. 01:15:19.960 --> 01:15:27.740 Yes, absolutely. So on other topics, you all talked about DEI last week, 01:15:27.760 --> 01:15:33.660 and I'm actually happy that they're closing the DEI offices and the government. 01:15:34.470 --> 01:15:38.150 Now, does that mean that I'm against DEI policies? 01:15:38.490 --> 01:15:43.690 No, I think DEI itself is a good thing, but I don't see any need for there to 01:15:43.690 --> 01:15:47.870 be actually people who are employed to implement DEI. 01:15:48.070 --> 01:15:50.750 It should just be an abnormal function of HR. 01:15:51.410 --> 01:15:56.210 Well, but yes, there were people who specialized in that that they're getting 01:15:56.210 --> 01:16:00.830 rid of, but what they're doing extends far, far, far beyond that. 01:16:00.830 --> 01:16:06.090 They're, you know, they're, they're firing those people, but they're closing 01:16:06.090 --> 01:16:11.730 down even things like, you know, no, you can't have, you know, 01:16:11.830 --> 01:16:13.830 the women engineers affinity group. 01:16:13.830 --> 01:16:20.010 You know, you have to remove any references of this to you from your signatures of you. 01:16:20.210 --> 01:16:26.750 I agree. That's going beyond removing the, yeah, your pronouns on your emails. 01:16:27.590 --> 01:16:34.210 I don't do that, but I don't disparage anyone for wanting to put that on their emails. 01:16:34.210 --> 01:16:42.270 But I mean, every day, they've put out information with more restrictions on 01:16:42.270 --> 01:16:47.470 exactly what people can do, even self-organizing employees. 01:16:48.630 --> 01:16:53.090 Basically just, and of course, they've requested people to report on other employees 01:16:53.090 --> 01:16:56.890 who are still discussing this stuff in any way, shape or form. 01:16:57.570 --> 01:17:00.710 You know, the restrictions have been greater and greater. 01:17:00.710 --> 01:17:08.030 And also, by the way, so far, one of the reasons for the cuts, 01:17:08.770 --> 01:17:15.570 like we're going to stop funding for X, Y, and Z that they've given is specifically this. 01:17:15.790 --> 01:17:22.650 We're going to stop funding any grants for 90 days while we can review them 01:17:22.650 --> 01:17:26.250 to expunge anything even slightly DEI related. 01:17:26.410 --> 01:17:31.770 And then we'll turn back on some of the ones we like. But like one of the core 01:17:31.770 --> 01:17:36.790 excuses is we have to review them for DEI to make sure we remove all that and 01:17:36.790 --> 01:17:38.210 no money is going to that whatsoever. 01:17:39.160 --> 01:17:43.220 Yeah, that's getting extreme. I wouldn't agree with it. 01:17:43.240 --> 01:17:49.140 I've seen also where their organizations are actually removing documents that 01:17:49.140 --> 01:17:53.520 have certain key words, removing web pages that have certain words. 01:17:54.020 --> 01:17:57.620 That's getting into the top. 01:17:57.620 --> 01:18:05.000 One of the things I saw earlier today was there's been an order to, 01:18:05.000 --> 01:18:08.520 I forget which part of the government this was, 01:18:08.640 --> 01:18:17.420 but they were ordered to change all their documents that mentioned LGBTQ and remove the T and Q. 01:18:17.640 --> 01:18:20.020 They were allowed to keep the LGB part. 01:18:21.340 --> 01:18:26.600 Okay. Yeah. Like I was saying, I think it's getting into thought control. 01:18:26.600 --> 01:18:28.960 I don't think that's, that's not good. 01:18:30.140 --> 01:18:36.000 I am also, I'm happy that they are making federal workers go back to the office 01:18:36.000 --> 01:18:38.220 and work back in the office. 01:18:38.320 --> 01:18:43.340 I think that's, I was actually recently in Ottawa and they have the same issue there. 01:18:43.640 --> 01:18:49.500 There's, there's entire buildings that are fenced off because there's no workers 01:18:49.500 --> 01:18:51.360 in them. But I normally would have workers. 01:18:51.620 --> 01:18:55.520 But why not solve this by going the other modern way? close the buildings, 01:18:55.760 --> 01:18:58.080 sell the buildings, and let people work remotely. 01:18:59.160 --> 01:19:02.260 If it can be done remotely, yes. 01:19:03.260 --> 01:19:07.280 Most of this stuff, I mean, the thing we found out, and of course you've got 01:19:07.280 --> 01:19:10.340 me on a pet peeve because I'm forced to go into office five days a week now 01:19:10.340 --> 01:19:15.820 and hate it, but one of the things the pandemic showed is that, 01:19:16.740 --> 01:19:23.820 Almost all of these white-collar jobs can be done fairly well remotely. 01:19:24.080 --> 01:19:31.480 At most, you might be taking a 10% hit or something like that that you can make 01:19:31.480 --> 01:19:35.740 up for by closing all these buildings and maybe even paying people slightly less. 01:19:35.900 --> 01:19:41.820 But you could gain all kinds of efficiencies. And if everybody was distributed, 01:19:42.140 --> 01:19:49.660 you help with traffic. You help with boosting the economies of places outside of major cities. 01:19:49.980 --> 01:19:53.400 There are all kinds of advantages to let people be everywhere, 01:19:53.400 --> 01:19:57.620 but you have to lean into it all the way. This seems completely retrograde. 01:19:57.760 --> 01:20:00.880 Well, you have to remember, you're talking to somebody who would prefer that 01:20:00.880 --> 01:20:03.200 there not be any government workers at all. 01:20:03.580 --> 01:20:04.360 Well, yeah. 01:20:06.380 --> 01:20:12.320 So I would prefer that if it pushes them to leave their jobs, all the better. 01:20:12.480 --> 01:20:17.680 And that shrinks government, all the better. Although, even if they were to 01:20:17.680 --> 01:20:19.600 get rid of all federal workers, 01:20:20.280 --> 01:20:26.740 the biggest chunk of money that's being spent at the federal level is entitlements 01:20:26.740 --> 01:20:29.380 and military anyway, which wouldn't be touched by. 01:20:29.380 --> 01:20:33.620 Yeah, like on our Slack lately, Yvonne has mentioned several times, 01:20:33.620 --> 01:20:40.860 if you did fire 100% of the federal workforce and eliminated their salaries, 01:20:41.080 --> 01:20:44.060 compared to the overall budget deficit, 01:20:44.300 --> 01:20:47.780 it's still a really small amount compared to everything else. 01:20:47.780 --> 01:20:51.680 Yeah. So it's all window dressing. 01:20:52.000 --> 01:20:59.440 The hard work, of course, is dealing with the entitlement crisis and with the military spending. 01:20:59.680 --> 01:21:04.220 Which you can solve. The best way to solve the entitlement crisis, 01:21:04.420 --> 01:21:07.380 Bruce, is raise taxes. Taxes are too low. 01:21:11.040 --> 01:21:16.300 I would not agree with that. I would say that it would be to allow people, 01:21:16.520 --> 01:21:19.200 instead of taxing people and giving the money back to them, 01:21:19.640 --> 01:21:28.520 just let the people keep the money themselves and reserve entitlements to only 01:21:28.520 --> 01:21:32.480 the poorest of the poor, keeping people off the streets. 01:21:32.480 --> 01:21:38.640 There's there's no reason why we need to be taxing people to give assistance 01:21:38.640 --> 01:21:44.840 to people who are the wealthiest segment of our of our population which are 01:21:44.840 --> 01:21:48.960 the retired people in this country the wealthiest well yeah i mean. 01:21:48.960 --> 01:21:50.180 As as far as. 01:21:50.180 --> 01:21:51.240 I you. 01:21:51.240 --> 01:21:55.780 Know my position because we've talked this about this before as long as you 01:21:55.780 --> 01:21:59.860 tax them more than they're getting back i'm actually fine with that, I don't care. 01:22:00.060 --> 01:22:02.740 It's the net that matters there. 01:22:02.960 --> 01:22:09.680 And the easiest way to get an overall net that makes sense is to not have the 01:22:09.680 --> 01:22:13.740 extra bureaucracy associated with determining who gets the benefit and who doesn't, 01:22:13.820 --> 01:22:17.660 but just give it to everybody and tax it back from the people who can afford it. 01:22:18.500 --> 01:22:23.760 Yeah, that still gives too much power to politicians. 01:22:23.900 --> 01:22:29.100 It gives them a tool that they can that can control society with how much money 01:22:29.100 --> 01:22:31.860 they're taking and giving to people in different groups that they like. 01:22:32.020 --> 01:22:37.260 If you get the government out of the loop entirely, then civil society can take 01:22:37.260 --> 01:22:42.760 care of itself, charities, and helping people involuntarily rather than by force. 01:22:43.360 --> 01:22:47.160 Yeah, that's failed over and over again. But anyway, move on. 01:22:47.440 --> 01:22:52.760 Okay. He has banned the creation of a CBDC, at least while he's president. 01:22:53.600 --> 01:22:54.120 Sorry, a what? 01:22:54.440 --> 01:22:57.260 A central bank digital currency. Oh, okay. 01:22:57.840 --> 01:23:03.380 That would be basically a government, a federal reserve version of Bitcoin. 01:23:05.810 --> 01:23:10.350 I'm glad that he is stopping four and eight, at least pausing it, 01:23:11.070 --> 01:23:17.530 and it's including everybody, even Israel is having to- There were two exceptions. 01:23:18.050 --> 01:23:23.590 Egypt and what other one? I forget the other one, but there were two exceptions. 01:23:23.590 --> 01:23:26.770 Maybe it is Israel or maybe- It might. 01:23:26.770 --> 01:23:29.310 Have been Israel. It might have been Israel and Egypt. I forget. 01:23:29.450 --> 01:23:33.430 Egypt was definitely one of them, but I forget what the other one was for sure. 01:23:34.490 --> 01:23:39.870 And then there's already been some backtracking on that where they've said, 01:23:40.090 --> 01:23:44.530 oh, but this certain class of stuff, like if it's life essential, 01:23:44.810 --> 01:23:46.870 blah, blah, blah, will continue. 01:23:47.110 --> 01:23:49.830 But there's been some reports where even some of that has stopped. 01:23:49.830 --> 01:23:51.510 Like there are all kinds of like, 01:23:51.670 --> 01:23:55.450 I, I just shared on the curmudgeons corner slack, like a couple hours ago, 01:23:55.550 --> 01:24:00.610 there's some like health program in Sudan or something that's primarily funded 01:24:00.610 --> 01:24:04.190 by us dollars that combat some disease or other. 01:24:04.510 --> 01:24:08.870 And they literally are, their funding goes week to week. 01:24:09.050 --> 01:24:14.770 And so they, they, they were ordered to stop all activity whatsoever. 01:24:14.930 --> 01:24:18.890 They have not stopped all activity. They're violating that order. 01:24:19.410 --> 01:24:24.150 However, they'll still run out of money and supplies within a week if this isn't rescinded for them. 01:24:24.370 --> 01:24:28.370 And then, like, whatever kids they're taking care of will start dying. 01:24:28.630 --> 01:24:32.130 So what will happen here, and this is what I'm hoping to see, 01:24:32.290 --> 01:24:39.210 is that those programs that are most vital, most necessary, those will... 01:24:40.100 --> 01:24:45.180 Bubble up to the surface very quickly, and then those will get reactivated. 01:24:45.340 --> 01:24:51.080 Those that have the highest level of justification will be able to be justified and get back online. 01:24:51.460 --> 01:24:59.100 But those programs that aren't well justified, that are not having a good effect, 01:24:59.320 --> 01:25:03.240 not having a good result, then those will be the ones that will remain. 01:25:03.240 --> 01:25:10.600 Well, so far, what's actually happening is the courts are saying that this overt 01:25:10.600 --> 01:25:16.980 suspension is illegal because Congress mandated that these funds be spent. 01:25:17.800 --> 01:25:21.020 And then this will undoubtedly go through the courts. 01:25:21.020 --> 01:25:25.160 And then the question is, what will SCOTUS do? So it probably, 01:25:25.560 --> 01:25:29.800 and I think that that's the point of a lot of these exercises right now, 01:25:30.000 --> 01:25:36.140 is for the Trump administration wants to push an expansion of executive power 01:25:36.140 --> 01:25:38.440 above and beyond what it currently is, 01:25:39.000 --> 01:25:44.140 force it to SCOTUS, and they're gambling SCOTUS will side with expanded executive 01:25:44.140 --> 01:25:46.460 power in more places that they don't. 01:25:46.460 --> 01:25:50.160 And they're also doing so many of them that the idea is, hey, 01:25:50.280 --> 01:25:52.020 we're going to try 400 of these things. 01:25:52.620 --> 01:25:59.960 SCOTUS can knock down 300. We still will have gained in 100 places and expanded in those areas. 01:26:01.380 --> 01:26:06.300 And one more thing that I'm happy about, and you're going to be very upset about 01:26:06.300 --> 01:26:11.900 this, is I'm glad that he has released all the protesters from January 6th. 01:26:11.900 --> 01:26:13.560 Yes, I am upset about it. 01:26:13.560 --> 01:26:16.340 Except for the violent ones. The violent ones, I think they should have done it. 01:26:16.420 --> 01:26:20.360 Well, out of the 1,500, the violent ones were about 600. So... 01:26:21.290 --> 01:26:23.550 Hmm. Okay. Well, I didn't know it was that much. 01:26:24.390 --> 01:26:31.090 It's that much. And even at like, I saw somewhere the, the breakdown was something like, 01:26:31.250 --> 01:26:35.230 and I don't have the numbers in front of me, so I could be off by a few hundred 01:26:35.230 --> 01:26:39.570 in either direction, but it was something like 1500 total, 01:26:39.770 --> 01:26:43.930 about 600 of them were violent in some way. 01:26:43.930 --> 01:26:52.490 So that includes, they were beating on somebody or broke a window or whatever, 01:26:52.710 --> 01:26:55.150 but it wasn't necessarily serious injury. 01:26:55.350 --> 01:27:03.130 And about 100 were the ones that did serious, grievous injury to police officers and such. 01:27:03.130 --> 01:27:08.210 Well, I don't know what they define as violence. I don't consider vandalism violence. 01:27:08.650 --> 01:27:13.230 But— Yeah, I don't think that—I think I misspoke there. 01:27:13.410 --> 01:27:21.030 The 600 were violence against people, and the 100 were caused serious injury. 01:27:21.870 --> 01:27:26.130 Okay. Yeah, so those—. 01:27:27.130 --> 01:27:31.610 But most of the ones who were in the nonviolent category, too, 01:27:31.670 --> 01:27:35.630 by the way, were already out of jail. So they got their pardons to expunge their 01:27:35.630 --> 01:27:41.590 records, but they'd already served their sentences or most of their sentences already anyway. 01:27:41.590 --> 01:27:45.630 Yeah. So on the con side, 01:27:45.910 --> 01:27:54.730 I'm embarrassed as an American that President Trump is trying to gain control 01:27:54.730 --> 01:28:02.030 of Greenland and Panama and joking about annexing Canada and renaming the Gulf 01:28:02.030 --> 01:28:05.090 of Mexico and Mount Denali. 01:28:05.090 --> 01:28:08.110 And it's it's just it's it's 01:28:08.110 --> 01:28:11.610 so stupid and I I 01:28:11.610 --> 01:28:14.470 really don't think it will go 01:28:14.470 --> 01:28:20.830 anywhere but it's just embarrassing I would it makes me not want to travel especially 01:28:20.830 --> 01:28:28.370 to Denmark with a passport or to go or you know I have I have colleagues that 01:28:28.370 --> 01:28:31.650 I interact with frequently in Canada and. 01:28:32.550 --> 01:28:38.230 Well, the question on these, like, I don't think he's going to literally invade these places. 01:28:38.470 --> 01:28:42.830 But on the other hand, you know, the question is, does he really try to exert, 01:28:42.990 --> 01:28:47.690 you know, economic pressure tariffs and other things specifically with the goal 01:28:47.690 --> 01:28:50.230 of exerting more control? 01:28:50.230 --> 01:28:56.150 And Greenland, both of these are weird as well, because if you look at it, like, the U.S. 01:28:56.330 --> 01:29:01.230 Has air bases all over Greenland already. We have all kinds of mineral rights 01:29:01.230 --> 01:29:03.010 all over Greenland already. 01:29:03.650 --> 01:29:10.590 Like, and Denmark has specifically said in response to Donald Trump's posturing 01:29:10.590 --> 01:29:12.750 about Greenland is like, we could do more. 01:29:12.930 --> 01:29:16.810 Do you want another base? Do you want more oil drilling? What do you want? 01:29:16.950 --> 01:29:21.950 We can talk. Maybe that's the end goal. Maybe he doesn't really want – maybe 01:29:21.950 --> 01:29:25.590 he'd like it if he could get it, but getting more – Well. 01:29:25.590 --> 01:29:32.090 So far, so far apparently the report out of Denmark is that when the Danish 01:29:32.090 --> 01:29:36.150 prime minister or whatever came back with those kind of counteroffers, 01:29:36.610 --> 01:29:40.930 Donald Trump was, no, I don't care about any of that shit. I just want it. 01:29:42.250 --> 01:29:48.410 And so, you know, so if it is a negotiating, the one like rational thing to 01:29:48.410 --> 01:29:54.270 say on both of these is, okay, he's posturing to get more of this stuff. 01:29:54.270 --> 01:29:58.850 Or maybe in Panama, he wants like not just equal treatment with the rest of 01:29:58.850 --> 01:30:03.050 the world in terms of how much passage costs, but he wants a special deal for the U.S. 01:30:03.050 --> 01:30:07.510 And he's going to try to influence or whatever. But at least so far, 01:30:07.790 --> 01:30:12.270 he has not seemed to actually be making that kind of negotiation. 01:30:12.270 --> 01:30:13.610 He's just saying, I want it. 01:30:14.270 --> 01:30:25.090 Yeah. I think Panama is even less likely to succeed because the Panamanians, 01:30:25.170 --> 01:30:28.170 they've already built a secondary canal that's wider. 01:30:28.390 --> 01:30:31.370 They've invested more. You know, it's like, it's not. 01:30:32.340 --> 01:30:33.920 It's not our canal anymore. 01:30:34.420 --> 01:30:37.300 And they've widened some stuff and they're working on another one. 01:30:37.400 --> 01:30:40.960 There's not an open second passage yet, but yeah, it's there. 01:30:41.120 --> 01:30:45.700 They've, they've done all kinds of infrastructure improvements since the 1970s 01:30:45.700 --> 01:30:51.220 when, when Carter agreed to give it up, let alone, you know, 01:30:52.020 --> 01:30:54.160 a hundred years ago or whenever the damn thing was built. 01:30:54.800 --> 01:31:00.060 And there's, and there's Panamanians that are living there. It's not like Greenland 01:31:00.060 --> 01:31:04.940 where there's only 50,000 people there and easily walk in. 01:31:05.560 --> 01:31:09.500 There you go. There's your swap. Have all the people in Gaza move to Greenland 01:31:09.500 --> 01:31:12.740 and give Gaza to the people who live in Greenland right now. 01:31:12.760 --> 01:31:14.340 Just force them all to move. 01:31:14.500 --> 01:31:20.580 The first thing Trump could, he could at least be, set a good example and offer 01:31:20.580 --> 01:31:22.640 the Palestinians to come and live in America. 01:31:23.420 --> 01:31:27.420 If you really wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza, you just, hey, 01:31:27.560 --> 01:31:29.440 have them come in and be Americans. 01:31:29.980 --> 01:31:30.640 Give them Cleveland. 01:31:31.280 --> 01:31:31.560 Yeah. 01:31:34.320 --> 01:31:36.340 Yeah. Or West Texas. 01:31:37.600 --> 01:31:40.560 So speaking of that, I know you're working your way down the list. 01:31:40.860 --> 01:31:46.680 Yeah. What are your thoughts on immigration and the mass deportations and all this kind of stuff? 01:31:48.640 --> 01:31:56.360 I'm so upset about that. The immigration problem could so easily be solved. 01:31:57.110 --> 01:32:06.590 And we've talked about this before, where very easy compromise would be to say to all the illegals, 01:32:06.830 --> 01:32:14.210 you can get a green card, but you can't ever vote if you just pay a $10,000 fine. 01:32:14.490 --> 01:32:19.170 If what they say is right, that there's actually 10 million illegals here, 01:32:19.270 --> 01:32:23.790 you take 10 million times $10,000, that's quite a bit of money. What's that? 01:32:24.050 --> 01:32:28.030 Like $100 billion or so? uh that would be your. 01:32:28.030 --> 01:32:32.190 Your solution is say you can be a legal resident but you don't have a path to citizenship. 01:32:32.190 --> 01:32:39.730 Exactly let them stay you know i'm sure that anybody who's facing being deported 01:32:39.730 --> 01:32:43.430 would be happy to take that deal i think even people who aren't facing that 01:32:43.430 --> 01:32:48.070 would be happy to take that deal because well the thing. 01:32:48.070 --> 01:32:52.130 Is and you and i have talked about this before on the show So the fundamental 01:32:52.130 --> 01:32:57.610 difficulty here is, I mean, you and I think, you know, freedom of travel, 01:32:57.890 --> 01:33:00.270 freedom to settle where you want is actually important. 01:33:00.610 --> 01:33:05.270 Like, yes, there should be open borders. I think at the very least to me, 01:33:05.670 --> 01:33:10.830 like the default should be, of course you can come unless there's a really fucking good reason not to. 01:33:11.070 --> 01:33:14.230 Yeah. Only if you have a criminal record of Fujifilm. 01:33:15.150 --> 01:33:18.630 Yeah. And even then depends on the crime, honestly. Like I don't, 01:33:18.630 --> 01:33:24.710 I don't care if they had a traffic ticket or, or shoplifted 30 years ago, you know, 01:33:25.170 --> 01:33:33.010 but the thing is like, I look at it and say, illegal immigration is a supply 01:33:33.010 --> 01:33:34.970 and demand problem to solve it. 01:33:35.310 --> 01:33:39.010 You make the immigration easier. You let people come in legally. 01:33:40.030 --> 01:33:40.430 Yeah. 01:33:41.230 --> 01:33:43.810 Easily. And that's not the problem. 01:33:43.810 --> 01:33:48.370 But the problem is the border and it would, it would stop people from coming in illegally. 01:33:48.710 --> 01:33:53.450 Yeah. But the fundamental, the fundamental problem is these people, 01:33:53.450 --> 01:33:59.490 it's not actually illegal immigration that they care about. It's immigration period. End of story. 01:33:59.730 --> 01:34:04.450 They don't want people in the country who don't look like them. 01:34:04.930 --> 01:34:09.250 And they will vehemently say that they are not racist about it, 01:34:09.250 --> 01:34:13.070 but it is clearly a racist attitude. 01:34:13.070 --> 01:34:20.770 Because they're totally fine with white Western Europeans coming and settling in America. Yeah. 01:34:21.790 --> 01:34:27.550 But those dirty Mexicans, they don't want to have anything to do with them. 01:34:27.870 --> 01:34:32.050 And Donald Trump specifically, apparently, really likes the Eastern Europeans 01:34:32.050 --> 01:34:35.690 too. That's where he's gotten two-thirds of his wives. 01:34:36.830 --> 01:34:42.730 Yeah, true. But yeah, it's just sickening that we are, 01:34:44.590 --> 01:34:51.990 We need immigrants. We need these people to come regardless of their skill level. 01:34:52.170 --> 01:34:56.470 We need the whole spectrum of low-skilled to high-skilled people. 01:34:58.370 --> 01:35:02.550 I've worked in high-tech industry, 01:35:02.550 --> 01:35:13.390 and clearly when companies in America are not able to hire people in the U.S., 01:35:13.390 --> 01:35:15.470 then jobs just get exported. 01:35:15.770 --> 01:35:20.630 We can either import people or export jobs. And companies clearly have been 01:35:20.630 --> 01:35:25.850 exporting jobs to other countries to do their manufacturing. 01:35:26.050 --> 01:35:29.570 If we had open free immigration for the last 50 years in this country, 01:35:29.770 --> 01:35:32.470 we would be so much richer. 01:35:32.690 --> 01:35:38.390 We would be rich beyond belief because those factories would be here in America. 01:35:38.630 --> 01:35:46.430 And we would be dominating the world because we would have a growing population but bruce bruce. 01:35:46.430 --> 01:35:48.050 We'd also be a lot less white. 01:35:49.970 --> 01:35:53.650 And i love ethnic food, 01:35:56.350 --> 01:36:02.870 i love chinese and thai and mexican and indonesian food it's like there's just 01:36:02.870 --> 01:36:08.330 so much richness in this country and all the and i yeah. 01:36:08.330 --> 01:36:13.050 The culture too i was that's what i was going to say it's not just like the food or anything. 01:36:13.230 --> 01:36:19.990 It's like, it's actually so valuable to hear all of those other perspectives 01:36:19.990 --> 01:36:21.730 and those viewpoints on life. 01:36:21.890 --> 01:36:26.610 And, and, you know, the old concept that you used to, like there, 01:36:26.610 --> 01:36:31.750 there used to be like what a schoolhouse rock songs on like the melting pot and stuff. 01:36:31.930 --> 01:36:37.070 The whole idea is that when you bring folks together, you end up something with 01:36:37.070 --> 01:36:42.790 something that takes the best parts of all of them and you gain something from that. 01:36:43.110 --> 01:36:48.330 And, and I think that's the, but right now what you have is this, 01:36:48.470 --> 01:36:53.610 the, the, the xenophobic tendency here and racist tendency is just, 01:36:53.610 --> 01:36:57.730 we're scared of the other, we're scared of the other taking over. 01:36:58.050 --> 01:37:03.210 And so we're, we're doing everything we can to resist that as we've talked about 01:37:03.210 --> 01:37:05.670 on the curmudgeons corner slack a little bit too, though, 01:37:05.930 --> 01:37:13.450 so far in terms of raw numbers, we're not really much different than where we 01:37:13.450 --> 01:37:17.130 have been the last couple of years in the Biden presidency. 01:37:17.410 --> 01:37:20.050 The difference so far is. 01:37:20.390 --> 01:37:25.890 Is how it's presented. I mean, Donald Trump is pushing them to ramp up even further. 01:37:26.090 --> 01:37:31.530 And if he succeeds, maybe we will see numbers that are significantly bigger than prior years. 01:37:31.650 --> 01:37:36.290 But right now, it's not about like how many deportation flights there were. 01:37:36.570 --> 01:37:40.910 It's instead of paying for tickets on commercial airlines, we're spending much, 01:37:41.010 --> 01:37:43.170 much more money to send them on a military plane. 01:37:43.390 --> 01:37:48.530 And by the way, we're going to have Dr. Phil go on a ride along taking video. 01:37:48.530 --> 01:37:54.430 So we're we're making all sorts of video of the arrests of the detentions to 01:37:54.430 --> 01:37:56.290 make a show of the whole thing. 01:37:56.510 --> 01:38:02.750 So we're just making it a lot more visible and, you know, we're scaring a lot of people. 01:38:03.250 --> 01:38:08.270 And, and, and now, you know, they've said so far, you know, we're going after 01:38:08.270 --> 01:38:11.210 the worst criminals first and all that, but there are more and reports, 01:38:11.390 --> 01:38:17.710 more and more reports coming in that along with, Yes, some people who are significant criminals. 01:38:17.890 --> 01:38:23.350 There are lots of people who, other than their status without documentation, 01:38:23.810 --> 01:38:31.450 have been living good beneficial lives and paying taxes and all this kind of 01:38:31.450 --> 01:38:33.250 stuff. They're being swept up along with it. 01:38:33.510 --> 01:38:38.130 There are American citizens being swept up, too, that have only been able to 01:38:38.130 --> 01:38:42.690 prove that they were, in fact, a citizen after the fact. And we're just making 01:38:42.690 --> 01:38:44.930 a show of it right now and scaring people. 01:38:45.210 --> 01:38:48.110 And that's entirely the point of it right now. 01:38:48.190 --> 01:38:52.090 But Trump is insisting on quotas that are rising. 01:38:52.090 --> 01:38:56.170 And once you put in the numerical quotas and saying you have to arrest this 01:38:56.170 --> 01:39:03.210 many people per time period, then of course, you're going to just get whoever they can catch. 01:39:03.210 --> 01:39:13.870 Yeah and anyone and and we don't have a a national id in this country no it's you are not required. 01:39:13.870 --> 01:39:15.270 To have an id at all. 01:39:15.270 --> 01:39:18.730 Yeah and so if uh if if some someone 01:39:18.730 --> 01:39:22.010 stops me on the street some police that if any 01:39:22.010 --> 01:39:25.050 you know what's what they called ice stops me 01:39:25.050 --> 01:39:29.810 on the street and asks me to prove that i'm american i i'd have to go home and 01:39:29.810 --> 01:39:33.370 get my passport but if i didn't have a passport i'd have no way of proving that 01:39:33.370 --> 01:39:39.530 and so and i'm not i would i would say probably a minority of americans have 01:39:39.530 --> 01:39:42.370 a passport so which is the only way here. 01:39:42.370 --> 01:39:46.370 Here in washington the enhanced driver's license will also prove citizenship 01:39:46.370 --> 01:39:49.050 because you have to produce that documentation to get one. 01:39:49.050 --> 01:39:56.390 Oh yeah well i've i have been disobeying and i am not getting that enhanced driver's license. 01:39:57.170 --> 01:39:59.250 Of course you are. Of course you are. 01:39:59.530 --> 01:40:03.310 I am not complying with the real ID. 01:40:04.230 --> 01:40:09.910 Because they passed that law 20 years ago, and they still have not required 01:40:09.910 --> 01:40:11.450 the real ID in the airports. 01:40:12.290 --> 01:40:15.830 Yeah, they keep pushing back the deadline. Yeah, they keep pushing back the deadline. 01:40:16.270 --> 01:40:19.570 Supposedly this year, they are finally going to put their foot down and say, 01:40:19.730 --> 01:40:21.050 yes, you actually have to do that. 01:40:21.050 --> 01:40:24.890 And when that actually, when that day comes, then yes, I'm going to have to 01:40:24.890 --> 01:40:31.510 get my passport and use my passport to go to travel within the United States, which is ridiculous. 01:40:32.350 --> 01:40:37.090 But no, I don't want the enhanced driver's license. Real ID. 01:40:37.930 --> 01:40:40.590 Yeah. I mean, but this is exactly the kind of thing, though. 01:40:40.750 --> 01:40:44.530 If they really want to get serious about deporting all the illegals, 01:40:44.770 --> 01:40:47.770 you're going to have to require some sort of ID of everyone. 01:40:48.370 --> 01:40:48.510 Yeah. 01:40:48.510 --> 01:40:51.970 You know, this is where these things escalate. I mean, well, 01:40:52.050 --> 01:40:54.470 there are many places where they have the potential of escalating, 01:40:54.570 --> 01:40:56.550 but this is just one of them. 01:40:56.890 --> 01:41:01.890 Now, you know, I don't have the same revulsion against the idea of a national 01:41:01.890 --> 01:41:07.990 idea as you do, but at the same time, you can see where these things can easily 01:41:07.990 --> 01:41:11.730 escalate to, oh, no, we can't tell if you're a citizen. 01:41:11.730 --> 01:41:14.230 Okay, we're going to have to make a mechanism where we can. 01:41:14.410 --> 01:41:19.630 Oh, now that we have that mechanism, you're going to have to provide that proof 01:41:19.630 --> 01:41:22.710 for all of these kinds of normal everyday activities. 01:41:22.710 --> 01:41:26.250 If you don't have this proof, you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do this. 01:41:26.250 --> 01:41:32.570 You know, that that's where these can ramp and they can ramp relatively quickly, 01:41:32.570 --> 01:41:36.370 depending on all of these things that we're talking about, about, you know, 01:41:37.030 --> 01:41:42.570 does Trump get away with extending executive power in such a way that, 01:41:42.610 --> 01:41:45.850 you know, he can declare things by decree. 01:41:45.850 --> 01:41:51.410 And that's when the pendulum will swing back the other way, and immigrants and 01:41:51.410 --> 01:41:53.890 immigration will be more favorable. 01:41:54.330 --> 01:42:01.450 The thing that was so frustrating to me during the election was to see Biden 01:42:01.450 --> 01:42:08.210 and then later Harris adopting Trump's policy of anti-immigration. 01:42:08.210 --> 01:42:14.530 And it would have taken bravery to stand up and say, no, we are a nation of immigrants. 01:42:14.790 --> 01:42:18.470 I want more people and we need to allow more people into this country. 01:42:19.330 --> 01:42:25.170 That was clearly one of them. There were several other issues as well where 01:42:25.170 --> 01:42:33.250 the campaign took the – and I blame a lot of the Obama-era consultants who were brought on. 01:42:33.410 --> 01:42:37.430 I keep saying September was a turning point and this was part of it. 01:42:37.950 --> 01:42:46.870 That where they really decided that their only way to win was to convince Republicans 01:42:46.870 --> 01:42:52.170 who felt a little bit queasy about Trump to come to their side. 01:42:52.170 --> 01:42:59.850 And so in order to do that, they watered down what the Democrats really believe 01:42:59.850 --> 01:43:05.850 about a variety of issues and tried to come up with wishy-washy, 01:43:06.050 --> 01:43:11.810 middle-of-the-road positions that at the same time sort of tried to move right 01:43:11.810 --> 01:43:14.450 to get some of those swing voters over. 01:43:14.450 --> 01:43:19.670 Where, and I think the end result of that was you didn't convince any of those 01:43:19.670 --> 01:43:23.930 people to come over, but you convinced some Democrats to stay home. 01:43:24.050 --> 01:43:25.210 And that made the difference. 01:43:25.710 --> 01:43:29.070 Whereas I feel like in a lot of places, like you get all these people trying 01:43:29.070 --> 01:43:33.390 to triangulate about the middle, because sometimes that technique does work. 01:43:33.670 --> 01:43:35.970 Arguably, that's how Bill Clinton became president. 01:43:36.410 --> 01:43:43.690 But at the same time, I feel like the right way to go about it is to really 01:43:43.690 --> 01:43:47.910 own your convictions and double down on it and be like, 01:43:48.030 --> 01:43:53.510 be honest about your conviction convictions because people appreciate the honesty, 01:43:53.510 --> 01:43:57.430 whereas they can smell that fake a mile away. 01:43:57.830 --> 01:44:01.310 And like that's part, I mean, that's the Trump strategy. Both times he won, 01:44:01.450 --> 01:44:05.150 he wasn't going after the median voter or trying to get swing voters. 01:44:05.350 --> 01:44:10.630 He was 100% about activating the people who were excited about him. 01:44:11.330 --> 01:44:17.110 Yep. Amazingly. And he's gotten more and more popular with every election. Trump did. 01:44:17.870 --> 01:44:21.850 Well, in terms of absolute number of votes, yes, it went up each time. 01:44:21.950 --> 01:44:25.930 In terms of percentage, it went high, down, and then up again. 01:44:27.370 --> 01:44:34.490 Now, five years ago, I really thought Biden was campaigning on being the most 01:44:34.490 --> 01:44:38.150 pro-immigration candidate in a long time. 01:44:38.310 --> 01:44:43.110 And I really thought that he maybe he got it maybe he would understand to to 01:44:43.110 --> 01:44:46.970 reduce illegal immigration you increase legal immigration that just seems like 01:44:46.970 --> 01:44:55.090 a such a simple thing to understand but for some reason the politics doesn't allow it and yeah i. 01:44:55.090 --> 01:45:02.610 Mean and the fundamental reason for that is because you have at least 50 if 01:45:02.610 --> 01:45:08.230 not more of the population who really they don't care about legal illegal The 01:45:08.230 --> 01:45:11.790 only thing they care about is please don't let anybody else in, 01:45:11.970 --> 01:45:13.350 especially if they're brown. 01:45:15.170 --> 01:45:19.250 Because, yeah, there are people that they see someone who looks different from 01:45:19.250 --> 01:45:23.870 them and that core monkey brain, 01:45:24.070 --> 01:45:31.050 tribal instinct kicks in and they don't like people around them that don't look like them, 01:45:31.350 --> 01:45:34.230 which is just sickening. 01:45:34.230 --> 01:45:40.030 Or don't think like them or don't worship the same God or don't want anything 01:45:40.030 --> 01:45:43.470 that like makes them feel fundamentally like, 01:45:43.690 --> 01:45:50.330 hey, this person threatens my sense of self and my sense that I'm the one who's 01:45:50.330 --> 01:45:52.310 right and best in the world. 01:45:53.490 --> 01:46:01.210 And especially, by the way, they don't like the sort of menial labor immigrants 01:46:01.210 --> 01:46:03.930 either, but especially successful immigrants. 01:46:06.210 --> 01:46:10.310 Those are the ones you have to be the most scared of because they're taking over. 01:46:11.430 --> 01:46:15.970 And just to be clear, I am mocking and pretending to be the other view. 01:46:16.090 --> 01:46:18.250 I am not saying that on my own view. 01:46:20.630 --> 01:46:22.750 Any other any other. 01:46:22.750 --> 01:46:24.630 Trump actions you want to rattle through. 01:46:24.630 --> 01:46:27.950 Uh no that's all of them that's all of them so okay. 01:46:27.950 --> 01:46:31.710 Well i guess that brings us to the end bruce. 01:46:31.710 --> 01:46:35.470 Yeah for now i'm 01:46:35.470 --> 01:46:38.370 happy to do this again and yes i i'm i'm 01:46:38.370 --> 01:46:41.050 it's glad it was fun to to kind of go over 01:46:41.050 --> 01:46:44.570 a whole bunch of different issues with you and yes there are certainly areas 01:46:44.570 --> 01:46:50.790 we disagree but i i like to think that that your special skill and my ability 01:46:50.790 --> 01:46:59.530 why also skill is to have these conversations without animosity and without taking it personally i. 01:46:59.530 --> 01:47:00.570 Think you know. 01:47:00.570 --> 01:47:02.150 Within limits i. 01:47:02.150 --> 01:47:06.830 Mean you do this in a way that i can do this there there are certainly certain 01:47:06.830 --> 01:47:12.510 positions that if someone had and was adamant about and presented in a certain 01:47:12.510 --> 01:47:16.170 way i would have a hard time and i would have to stop. 01:47:16.950 --> 01:47:23.870 But even strongly held positions I disagree with, 01:47:24.070 --> 01:47:30.130 if the other side is sort of speaking rationally and actually talking about 01:47:30.130 --> 01:47:33.430 facts and not making stuff up and not doing personal attacks, 01:47:33.690 --> 01:47:36.410 then yeah, it's good to have the conversation. 01:47:36.650 --> 01:47:44.290 It's just so much of the time, the, you know, it seems like arguments are disingenuous and, you know, 01:47:44.870 --> 01:47:52.910 or, and, and aren't that kind of argument and instead just go off the rails into, you know, 01:47:54.080 --> 01:47:55.580 things that just don't work. 01:47:56.500 --> 01:48:02.140 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, uh, people just get too animated about these things, 01:48:02.160 --> 01:48:07.720 but, but yeah, I think rat cross aisle conversations are definitely need needed 01:48:07.720 --> 01:48:09.340 and there needs to be more of that. 01:48:09.440 --> 01:48:13.380 And that's one of the main reasons why I like participating in the, 01:48:13.460 --> 01:48:18.800 in the Slack channel, because it's a way for me to get out of my bubble, 01:48:19.800 --> 01:48:24.480 and to hear what the left point of view is. 01:48:24.700 --> 01:48:31.900 And I like to, I have to admit, I love being able to throw in my dig in there every once in a while. 01:48:32.180 --> 01:48:35.560 And I point out things that the left does wrong. 01:48:35.960 --> 01:48:41.060 Well, I admit certain times, like I'll let the others, certain times I see something 01:48:41.060 --> 01:48:43.620 that you put in there and I'm like, okay, he's just trolling. 01:48:43.960 --> 01:48:47.100 I'm going to ignore that. If the others want to engage, they could do it. 01:48:47.200 --> 01:48:50.320 I'm just going to ignore that because he's just looking to get a rise out of 01:48:50.320 --> 01:48:51.920 us and i'll i'll ignore it. 01:48:51.920 --> 01:48:54.720 I will admit i was bothered a little bit a couple 01:48:54.720 --> 01:48:57.740 weeks ago there was a bit of a conversation where i 01:48:57.740 --> 01:49:05.680 saw some really strongly anti-religious comments and i had to respond and i 01:49:05.680 --> 01:49:11.600 needed to because i'm i'm as you know i'm a religious person and i i think that 01:49:11.600 --> 01:49:17.400 i couldn't let those those anti-religious comments just sit there. I needed to defend it. 01:49:18.960 --> 01:49:22.420 I'm anti-religious, but I try to be quiet about it most of the time, 01:49:22.460 --> 01:49:24.100 as long as the religion is harmless. 01:49:25.800 --> 01:49:31.260 I'm like, I don't care what you believe, as long as the belief doesn't cause 01:49:31.260 --> 01:49:33.040 you to be harmful to other people. 01:49:33.320 --> 01:49:35.560 And at that point, I'm like, whatever. 01:49:36.120 --> 01:49:39.800 Otherwise, it's like, I'm like, it's your business if you're delusional. 01:49:39.800 --> 01:49:47.680 Yeah, I fully agree, especially when religion tries to use the power and force 01:49:47.680 --> 01:49:50.680 of government to achieve their means. That's absolutely wrong. 01:49:51.150 --> 01:49:54.450 Right. Okay. Let's wrap this sucker up. 01:49:55.510 --> 01:50:00.290 Everyone, as you know, go to curmudgeon-corner.com. You'll see all our transcripts. 01:50:00.410 --> 01:50:03.830 You'll get all our old shows, all the ways to contact us. 01:50:04.070 --> 01:50:09.690 A link to our Patreon if you want to give us cash. We talked a lot about the Patreon last week. 01:50:09.850 --> 01:50:16.110 I still owe sending out the cards and mugs that we talked about last week. I'll get to it sometime. 01:50:16.490 --> 01:50:18.970 I promise not too long. I'll get to it. 01:50:19.570 --> 01:50:22.910 Oh, Bruce is showing his cat for anybody who sees videos. 01:50:23.890 --> 01:50:28.970 This is Mittens, our cat. And she doesn't like to be held, but she loves to rub up against me. 01:50:30.750 --> 01:50:35.930 We should have more pets on the show. Anyway, hello to Mittens. 01:50:37.310 --> 01:50:41.650 Anyway, as you all know, at various levels on the Patreon, you can get those cards. 01:50:41.790 --> 01:50:46.210 You can get mentioned on the show like happened last week, you can get a mug at $2 a month or more. 01:50:46.330 --> 01:50:50.250 Or if you just ask, you can get invited to our curmudgeons corner slack that 01:50:50.250 --> 01:50:53.490 Bruce and I have been talking about conversations going on there. 01:50:54.110 --> 01:50:57.050 Uh, you know, Bruce is on there. I'm on there. 01:50:57.230 --> 01:51:00.670 Yvonne is on there. A variety of other people are on there. We've had a couple 01:51:00.670 --> 01:51:04.330 new people join in the last couple of weeks. So it's good to have more folks. 01:51:04.530 --> 01:51:12.670 Uh, and you know, uh, you and Yvonne are so onto it about posting the latest news. 01:51:12.810 --> 01:51:19.710 If there's breaking news, I actually go to the Slack channel first because I 01:51:19.710 --> 01:51:22.930 know that that's where I'm going to get the news first. 01:51:23.090 --> 01:51:29.170 Cause you all, you have a race to see who can get the news, who can get that link on there first. 01:51:29.830 --> 01:51:34.930 Today, I posted something five hours after Yvonne had posted it and he yelled at me and was like. 01:51:34.930 --> 01:51:35.590 Haha. 01:51:35.590 --> 01:51:40.330 Shame on you you're five hours late and then another person came in three hours 01:51:40.330 --> 01:51:42.290 later and posted the same article again. 01:51:42.290 --> 01:51:46.650 So yeah it's. 01:51:46.650 --> 01:51:51.230 A lot of fun you should join us if you aren't there already and that's it hey 01:51:51.230 --> 01:51:54.590 bruce do you have something from the slack you'd like to highlight for. 01:51:54.590 --> 01:51:58.010 Oh yes let's see 01:51:58.010 --> 01:52:01.210 well that we've not talked about already well i 01:52:01.210 --> 01:52:04.630 think there's some really good links in 01:52:04.630 --> 01:52:08.370 here about the accident in dc 01:52:08.370 --> 01:52:14.610 and and so and there's some really good discussion and and yvonne has been throwing 01:52:14.610 --> 01:52:18.790 in their knowledge you know what he's been gleaning from these articles so it's 01:52:18.790 --> 01:52:24.150 a really good primer for for me to know what's going on so yeah i think there's 01:52:24.150 --> 01:52:25.570 some really good discussion at least on that. 01:52:25.570 --> 01:52:29.910 Yeah and so depending on what breaking news happens in the next week. 01:52:30.210 --> 01:52:39.990 We may ask Yvonne to talk a bit about this crash in DC where the helicopter hit the regional jet. 01:52:40.270 --> 01:52:43.330 There have been a couple other things. Like I mentioned at the, 01:52:48.380 --> 01:52:51.800 what I call an air ambulance. There was, there was a six year old kid who just 01:52:51.800 --> 01:52:57.180 finished treatment and they crashed into a residential area next to a mall apparently. 01:52:57.700 --> 01:53:03.580 But, but that's relatively small and actually private jets crash all the time. 01:53:03.720 --> 01:53:06.840 There was one in California from a few days ago, I think. And I, 01:53:07.100 --> 01:53:10.620 you know, commercial flights, it's really rare. 01:53:10.960 --> 01:53:15.700 Like it's been is 2007. I think they said the last one in the U S was. 01:53:16.040 --> 01:53:19.640 And then the last one that was bigger than this one in terms of number of dead 01:53:19.640 --> 01:53:26.040 was like 2001, you know, so commercial accidents are very, very rare at this 01:53:26.040 --> 01:53:28.960 point, private, not so much. They still happen all the time. 01:53:29.100 --> 01:53:34.080 And helicopters, helicopters is like the most dangerous way you can travel. 01:53:34.280 --> 01:53:37.180 I remember on the curmudgeon score slack, like last year or something, 01:53:37.440 --> 01:53:41.340 somebody pulled up the numbers and it's significantly more dangerous even than 01:53:41.340 --> 01:53:43.540 motorcycles you know it's just. 01:53:43.540 --> 01:53:46.180 Full disclosure the current the company i work for right now. 01:53:46.180 --> 01:53:50.040 Yeah helicopters or. 01:53:50.040 --> 01:53:55.040 Makes helicopters we do final assembly on helicopters. 01:53:55.040 --> 01:54:00.680 You know it's just it's a natural part of like trying to make something shaped 01:54:00.680 --> 01:54:07.160 like a brick fly you know so no anyway Anyway, that's it. 01:54:07.500 --> 01:54:11.600 Thank you, Bruce, for joining us yet again. It's been fun. And, 01:54:13.780 --> 01:54:17.160 every time you come on, I worry that we're going to get into some big argument 01:54:17.160 --> 01:54:20.020 or something. But like you said, we always end up having a nice conversation. 01:54:21.640 --> 01:54:26.400 Anyway, thanks, everybody. Have a good week. Stay safe. Yvonne should be back 01:54:26.400 --> 01:54:29.580 next week. We'll see you next time. Goodbye. 01:54:59.300 --> 01:55:00.140 Bye, Alex. 01:55:01.800 --> 01:55:08.120 Oh, did you hear him? Okay. He heard you. okay bye Bruce we'll talk to you next time I'm hitting stop.