Ivan: Can you hear me? Hello?
Sam: You can't hear me?
Ivan: I can hear you.
Sam: Excellent.
Ivan: Very well.
Sam: That's beautiful. That's amazing.
Ivan: I don't know about that. Let's not go crazy here.
Sam: You know, we were talking last week about our inevitable Grammys. So, you know.
Ivan: Ha ha ha!
Ivan: Uh yeah well.
Sam: Okay shall we just go yeah.
Ivan: Well i uh i i captain.
Sam: I i i i our nose nose your ear,
Sam: okay i'm i'm i'm hitting the button,
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, February 22nd, 2025.
Sam: It's just after 1930 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter,
Sam: Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne!
Ivan: Hello!
Sam: Very exciting. So, usual thing, we're going to do a butt first with some less
Sam: newsy topics at the beginning.
Sam: I got a TV show this time, and maybe a couple other things to mention,
Sam: I don't know. And then, I don't know what Yvonne's got.
Sam: And then after we have the non-newsy stuff, we'll have two segments of,
Sam: like, and that'll be a show.
Ivan: I hate the news. Yes.
Ivan: I fucking hate the news.
Sam: Should we restructure everything and just talk about, like, I don't know,
Sam: gardening or something? I know nothing about gardening.
Ivan: I don't know much. You know, that's one thing I'm terrible at.
Ivan: I know that you need dirt, seeds.
Sam: Well, you could do hydroperilizers.
Ivan: You might not need dirt. Well, you know, yeah. I mean, you know,
Ivan: I say that I don't know anything.
Ivan: And a couple of months ago, when I went to Epcot for decades,
Ivan: they have had this tour called Behind the Seeds.
Ivan: Behind the Seeds. So there is this area, I guess that's my butt first, now great, beautiful.
Ivan: There's this area that is at Epcot called The Land.
Sam: And just shockingly, by the way, just absolutely shockingly,
Sam: your butt first is Disney related.
Ivan: Yeah, but that's because you brought up gardening, planting. shit.
Ivan: So look, Epcot used to be almost exclusively focused on education.
Ivan: Now there's a lot of it really tilts towards entertainment.
Ivan: But originally it was to learn about technology.
Sam: It was like a permanent World's Fair was the original brief form.
Ivan: Basically, yes. Yeah, learn about the countries, learn about the cultures,
Ivan: you know, all that kind of stuff. Okay.
Ivan: You do still do some of that, but that focus is,
Ivan: significantly less but one of the things that's remained there is this area
Ivan: in the land even though they've replaced they added like some stuff that's not
Ivan: educational but there's still a lot of educational stuff there and there is
Ivan: this one boat ride where you go through and they show you,
Ivan: farming techniques how they have evolved over time okay right you know modern
Ivan: farming techniques they show you how they use hydroponics they show you how
Ivan: they grow stuff without soil.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: You know, they have a research lab that they show you how they are testing different
Ivan: methods, how to, you know, do stuff without using any pesticides,
Ivan: for example, using natural,
Ivan: combatants, like certain bugs and certain things. And they keep always said,
Ivan: hey, if you want to know even more about it, there is this tour called the Behind the Seeds Tour.
Ivan: That takes you in depth and what we do, you know, to cultivate this stuff.
Ivan: So I had heard about this tour for, I will say, decades.
Ivan: Never signed up for it. You always have to sign up in advance. Right.
Ivan: You know, it gets booked up. And so if you don't sign up, if you get there,
Ivan: like that week, you'll, you won't get a spot.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: So sometime last year, my wife had been saying, Hey, I want to take that tour
Ivan: because she, she does love to plant, do stuff.
Ivan: She, she does have a green thumb. Okay. All right. I'm like you and me. Okay.
Ivan: So she, yeah, I'm pretty much, I'm not.
Sam: There's a plant behind me in my office. There are two plants behind me in my
Sam: office that actually are still alive despite my best efforts. Like, you know.
Ivan: Are they plastic?
Sam: No, they are not plastic. Okay. One of them is in bad shape right now.
Sam: The other one is getting by.
Sam: My wife got me very hardy plants because I will forget they exist.
Sam: Alex helps remind me to occasionally water them.
Sam: But, like, it's alive. And this one replaces another plant that had lasted for
Sam: years and years and years, but I finally killed.
Ivan: Well, look, I have accidentally, for example, at my mom's house,
Ivan: she would leave town and say, hey, water the plants.
Ivan: I accidentally watered plastic plants more than once.
Sam: I thought you were going to say you forgot and killed them, but yeah.
Ivan: No, no, I watered them, but I, you know, she had some real, very real looking
Ivan: plastic plants. And I watered the damn, my mom was like, hey,
Ivan: you watered the damn plastic plants. Well, they looked real.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Back to the tour. Back to the tour.
Ivan: So she said, hey, I'm going to sign us up for the tour.
Ivan: A few months back then, we were planning this trip to go during the end of the year.
Ivan: We were going like around New Year's.
Ivan: We were going to go between Christmas and, you know, during New Year's around those days.
Ivan: Then, unfortunately, my wife, she booked us, got us all three tickets to go.
Sam: And then she got sick, if I remember.
Ivan: Well, she ruptured her Achilles tendon.
Sam: So she couldn't go. That wasn't sick.
Ivan: So she was the one that, well, yes, so she's the one that was really cool about going.
Ivan: But she wound up not being able to go on the trip. So I wound up,
Ivan: I did go, Manu and I did go on and take the tour.
Ivan: And, you know, they showed us all, you know, how it was one,
Ivan: you know, there are many interesting things that they showed us.
Ivan: There was one area where you went in where they showed where they basically
Ivan: like harvested these bugs.
Ivan: That these bugs were natural enemies of some other bug that came in and would
Ivan: regularly attack their, you know, their plants.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And so instead of pesticides, they managed to somehow harvest these bugs that
Ivan: they could go and then let, you know, and that otherwise were not,
Ivan: you know, harmful in any other way.
Ivan: And they would go in and they would let them out in there and they would naturally
Ivan: take care of these other bugs that were spoiling the stuff that they were growing.
Ivan: So that was like interesting. They also showed you what I said about dirt.
Ivan: Look, they had this entire system where they showed basically,
Ivan: hey, you don't really need dirt at all.
Ivan: We could feed the water and the nutrients in like minute doses.
Ivan: You know we we control the air we control
Ivan: the light everything you know we could
Ivan: in here we could grow whatever the hell we need
Ivan: and the way that we do it consumes like so so much fewer resources than traditional
Ivan: farming in any way so yeah so they they did walk us through that the entire
Ivan: tour showed us their fish. They have fish farms too. They showed us those.
Ivan: But yeah, so I did learn something. I'm not an expert in any way, shape or form.
Sam: But enough so that we could pivot the whole show to that topic, right?
Ivan: Yes, we'll do two hours of hydroponic planting methods.
Ivan: You know what the other thing is? My wife during the pandemic,
Ivan: this was like a very popular thing.
Ivan: At best buy they were selling the this this little little kit where you bought
Ivan: these pods and it had lighting and it automatically like fed it water whatever for you to grow like,
Ivan: indoor like vegetables but you could grow lettuce tomatoes this kind of stuff
Ivan: okay right okay and she got this kit and she was using it for a while and as
Ivan: a matter of fact she was eating the lettuce,
Ivan: I kind of like refuse to eat that lettuce I must admit it looked fine I think
Ivan: I may Have eaten it once or twice.
Sam: We've got an apple Tree in the front yard.
Ivan: Every year it.
Sam: Produces Apples my mother Comes over and has Taken some of the apples and eaten
Sam: them And said they're absolutely fine apples I am scared of the apples I'm.
Ivan: Like why.
Sam: I'm like apples are supposed to come from the grocery Store not some fucking plant in my yard.
Ivan: Oh i have picked apples and i have i have helped make fresh apple pies using
Ivan: those apples at some point while i was at summer camp many many decades i'm sure these.
Sam: Apples are fine i have no idea what variety of apple they are because obviously like.
Ivan: There's a huge variety i mean i wouldn't be worried about an apple i mean i
Ivan: was just you know these green leaves growing indoors i was just like what the
Ivan: hell man i'm like i don't know they looked kind of weird at.
Sam: The end of the tour did they offer you the opportunity to eat stuff they grew.
Ivan: Well here is the thing they did use that
Ivan: produce at the number of restaurants in the that produce
Ivan: was used at the restaurants at the at epcot now okay the reality is that because
Ivan: it's not that small it's not enough to really like supply the whole place it's
Ivan: really more meant like a little like sample but it did They did produce several
Ivan: tons of produce, regardless,
Ivan: every year, they said.
Ivan: So it wasn't an insignificant amount, but it's not enough for a place that big, okay?
Ivan: But it definitely was a significant amount of food that they produced.
Ivan: So anyway.
Sam: So anyway, gardening.
Ivan: That's all I know.
Sam: Amazing.
Ivan: And that's all I, I don't know.
Sam: Maybe next time that tree produces apples, I'll get brave and try one.
Ivan: I tried once an experiment. Like, you know, did you have to do,
Ivan: I mean, you have like a science fair at your school?
Sam: I think at various points, yes.
Ivan: I was not very into the science fair thing.
Ivan: I must admit. There were other people that were very, very like,
Ivan: and then, you know, could go to a national science fair and compete with them.
Sam: I was definitely, like, I was into science, but I definitely was never into the science fair thing.
Sam: Like, the only times I ever would have done something like that were when I
Sam: was forced, and I don't really remember.
Sam: On the science fair topic, though, since you brought it up, I will still bring
Sam: my favorite, I think I probably told this story on the show before,
Sam: but it was my favorite, like, thing that's science fair related. Yeah.
Sam: When my daughter was young, I think it was like sixth grade or something.
Sam: It's like when we, it's the, the year we lived in Florida, they had some science fair thing.
Sam: And I forget the one she was doing. She was doing something like on like,
Sam: I don't know, actually it was the year before Florida.
Sam: No, I don't know. Right around that timeframe, whatever.
Sam: I think she was doing something on like how blankets work or something.
Sam: I forget. But, like, the thing was, we went to— How blankets work? Yes.
Sam: Well, because there's a common misconception— Well.
Ivan: I guess that there is, you know, okay? Yeah.
Sam: There's a common misconception that blankets work because the blanket itself is warm.
Ivan: Oh, people think that? No, it husbands your own— Right.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: It husbands your own heat.
Sam: Yes, yes. There are people who, like, feel like the way a blanket— What the hell?
Ivan: The blanket is hot? What? It's got batteries in it? What the hell is wrong with you?
Sam: Well, there are electric blankets, but that's a whole different thing.
Ivan: Well, there are those. Yes, those do exist. Yeah, but if your blanket is not
Ivan: plugged into anything, the fucking blanket ain't making heat.
Sam: Well, the key was also like you can actually use blankets to keep things cold, too.
Ivan: Correct. Yes, that's true. Because it will hold in, whether it's heat or cold.
Ivan: Right. But the thing is that we generate heat. so you put on a blanket yeah.
Sam: Geez the point was not her project though we got to the science fair where we
Sam: got to view everybody else's and there was one project where somebody had something about,
Sam: It was like about bugs or something. And I completely forget the whole thing
Sam: about like what it was trying to say about bugs, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But, you know, like if you're doing a project about bugs, it is not uncommon
Sam: to like have dead bugs pinned to your board. Right.
Sam: So like, you know, you can see somebody doing something about butterflies and
Sam: it's got a bunch of dead butterflies pinned to the board or whatever. Right.
Sam: The thing on this one is when you looked carefully, you realized that a couple
Sam: of the bugs that were pinned to the board were still alive.
Ivan: Oh.
Sam: They were pinned to the board and like squirming. Like, ah, get me off. Get me off.
Sam: And the stupid bug was still like alive.
Ivan: Oh.
Sam: I think it was some kind of roach or something. But like.
Ivan: Lovely.
Sam: That is like the main thing I remember about this whole incident is this one
Sam: kid at a science project about bugs.
Sam: And like sometimes you'll see a science project about bugs where they're in
Sam: a little terrarium or something and they're supposed to be alive.
Sam: But no, this was the bug was pinned to the board.
Ivan: They were supposed to be dead.
Sam: It was a bug. Like it had it had like a little needle like shoved right through
Sam: the middle of its body, holding it onto the board. And it was still alive and squirming.
Ivan: Ew. It's disgusting.
Ivan: My science experiment faux pas was dumber. I was not into the damn science experiment.
Ivan: I don't know why the hell I said, hey, we put water in the plants.
Ivan: What happens if we put alcohol in?
Ivan: Here's a newsflash. They die. Okay, by the way.
Ivan: So, yeah, they don't like alcohol. But here's the one thing.
Ivan: So I did this experiment where the experiment. What the fuck experiment? it.
Ivan: Look, I went and I got a set of plans. I took a set amount of alcohol.
Ivan: I dumped it into them every day and I took pictures of it every day over a number
Ivan: of days to see what the hell happened to show the results. Well.
Ivan: What problem this is back in the day of film okay
Ivan: so i'm i'm taking these pictures and
Ivan: i think i'm taking these pictures right and this
Ivan: stupid camera is counting that i i'm taking pictures
Ivan: then i think i'm finished i i go and i'm like look i'm going to i need this
Ivan: for i need to go and like get these printed so i need to i gotta i'm gonna i'm
Ivan: gonna just whatever i'm gonna rewind to roll even before it's done just so I
Ivan: can like, you know, take the pictures.
Ivan: So I supposedly do that. I opened the camera. There was no film in the camera.
Ivan: I spent 10 days taking pictures with no film in the camera. The fucking camera
Ivan: was counting pictures. The counter is stupid.
Ivan: The idiotic counter was counting. There's no film! So all of a sudden I'm like, fuck!
Ivan: I just did this stupid experiment for this damn thing.
Ivan: I wrote up all, I wrote up everything about the daily results and what changes
Ivan: or whatever and whatnot.
Ivan: And this damn thing now, I have no pictures.
Ivan: Now what? So I have to go somehow. I believe I somehow, based on my descriptions,
Ivan: I faked the goddamn results for the pictures.
Sam: I thought you were going to say you drew them or something.
Ivan: No, I went and I just somehow tortured the plants into looking kind of like
Ivan: what was happening during the experiment.
Ivan: I believe I added a whole bunch of hot water and alcohol like in massive doses.
Ivan: And that kind of like killed them like in a day or two. Because I thankfully, I didn't do this.
Sam: This wasn't the night before.
Ivan: Thankfully, it wasn't. Okay, so I had a couple of days to try to figure out
Ivan: what the fuck. To kill more fuck.
Ivan: Yeah, to kill more plants. Yes. Because I had to get new plants to kill them
Ivan: because the other ones were already dead. I couldn't kill them again.
Sam: Uh, Beautiful. Okay. All right. My turn. Okay.
Sam: Okay. So, so two things real quick. I am going to, I'm going to talk about bones.
Ivan: Bones, bones, bones, like the TV show bones or like the TV show.
Sam: Physical phones, TV show bones. That's my, that's my show of the, the day to talk about.
Sam: But before that, I just wanted to mention, I mentioned this several months ago,
Sam: like in December or something, but I just want to throw it out there again.
Sam: I am looking for career opportunities.
Sam: So if any of our listeners out there are interested in someone like me,
Sam: either from the stuff you hear here on the show.
Ivan: Now, listen, just listen to him on the podcast. Don't look at him on video. That's all I'm asking.
Ivan: No, no, no. He looks decent on video still. Okay. All right.
Sam: You know, you can look at me on video, but maybe this is time for a new career.
Sam: I can be the guy that's being interrogated on law and order because I was like
Sam: the homeless guy who like saw the crime.
Ivan: I like this career. You know, you're not you're the guy who plays the homeless,
Ivan: you know, and we'll get you like new disguises every week.
Ivan: You play the guy who is just the homeless guy.
Ivan: I like this career. Listen, if I could figure out a way to get paid like a million
Ivan: dollars a year to just be,
Ivan: yes, to be the guy who is just the homeless guy on Lauderdale,
Ivan: I saw them over there and they were like, oh, my God, I don't know. Well, you know, I lied.
Ivan: You know, I've been drinking too much. The meth and ketamine and whatever.
Ivan: But I think I remember them. Yeah, there you go.
Sam: What I was going to say is if you have any tips for me for either things like
Sam: what you see here, like if you want to hire somebody to yammer endlessly about current events,
Sam: by all means, I'm up for the career change, okay?
Sam: Or if you like what I've done with election graphs or Wiki of the Day or anything
Sam: like that, You know, hit me up.
Sam: All the contact information is at the end of the show. Or if you go to abulsme.com,
Sam: A-B-U-L-S-M-E dot com slash resume.
Sam: R-E-S. How do you spell resume? R-E-S-U-S-M-E.
Sam: You know, this is showing how good I am and why you should hire me.
Ivan: You're a genius.
Sam: Because I'm like, how do you spell resume? Yeah.
Sam: Anyway, go there.
Ivan: Austin, he's a great writer. I will say this. As I can attest to this,
Ivan: he's a very talented writer.
Sam: Oh, I am, okay.
Ivan: Yes, you are. Don't confuse his spelling faux pas occasionally,
Ivan: Arizona. You write very eloquently.
Sam: Anyway, you can go there to see what I actually do for a living.
Sam: It's sort of product program management stuff.
Sam: Officially, I've usually had a technical in front of that, but I actually hate
Sam: the technical part of it, so I would be happy to dump that.
Sam: I know, Yvonne's like, you don't say that. But, you know, whatever.
Ivan: Yeah, don't say that. You edit that out. Just stop saying what you did.
Ivan: Cut that out. What are you doing?
Sam: I would be so much happier without that around my neck. Whatever.
Ivan: You're just trying to get to retirement. Shut up. Okay? What are you doing?
Ivan: What the fuck's your problem?
Sam: Anyway, if you have any tips, networking, people I should talk to, hit me up.
Sam: Contacts on that on that web page or we'll give you stuff on that at the end
Sam: of the show okay now time for bones.
Ivan: Bones bones.
Sam: The tv series have you you you you mentioned it.
Ivan: Are you familiar have you watched it listen i know what it is i have watched
Ivan: a little bit of it but i i am not one that liked watching it like my wife liked
Ivan: it so i i mean she would put it on the tv i sometimes would graze around her
Ivan: and just, you know, see some of it.
Ivan: So I know kind of like the actors and how the show works.
Ivan: You know, it's one of these investigative procedurals kind of a thing where
Ivan: the focus is on the forensic analysis, you know.
Sam: Exactly. So, so you've summarized the whole thing. I don't have to say anything.
Sam: No, the first of all, this was one that I, I started it.
Sam: I started watching it before I was tracking rigorously when I started.
Sam: So I don't know exactly when I started, but I fit and, and I talk about TV shows
Sam: only when I finished the entire TV show for the most part.
Sam: Like I've made a couple of exceptions here and there, but anyway, I finished it in.
Sam: In may may 25th i finished it the thing has 12 seasons it ran from 2005 to 2017 and how many seasons.
Ivan: Have you watched again.
Sam: Well i i'm talking about it because i finished all 12 seasons oh.
Ivan: You did finish all 12 seasons.
Sam: Yeah wow yeah okay like this is like i
Sam: finished the show and that's why i'm talking
Sam: about it here so like you
Sam: said it's a police procedural blah blah blah blah it's got
Sam: like a forensic forensic anthropologist the main
Sam: character bones uh who's i
Sam: guess the the character's name is temperance brennan but her nickname is bones
Sam: she goes by that and she works with an fbi agent celie booth and they solve
Sam: murders and stuff and the focus like you said again is on like they're trying
Sam: to figure out who did it by analyzing the remains,
Sam: So that's like, you know, they're like law and order that we'd mentioned in
Sam: passing, you know, that you got the cops out on the street interviewing people
Sam: and stuff. And you get some of that occasionally.
Sam: But the focus here is they figure it out because of the evidence in the body.
Sam: And, uh, anyway, I will say thumbs up.
Sam: I enjoyed this show. I mean, like any show that runs 12 seasons,
Sam: it's got ups and downs and, you know, and at a certain point you're like,
Sam: okay, haven't we done everything we can do with this like set of characters?
Sam: And, you know, they change a few things here and there.
Sam: And sometimes they throw in something big, like, you know, usually it's like
Sam: a mystery of the week kind of thing. But at some point they're like,
Sam: okay, well, you know, we gotta, we gotta up the stakes here.
Sam: Let's have a serial killer who's after the team or whatever.
Sam: Right. Or, or, you know, something else that throws it, throws additional drama
Sam: in or, or something bad happens to one of the main characters or whatever.
Sam: Cause you have to do something to shake these things up if they last this many years. And so, you know.
Ivan: Well, I mean, you don't have to.
Sam: Well, look, I, yes, I know we were just again, law and order.
Ivan: 22 seasons now.
Sam: It took a.
Ivan: Break it's back but shaking it out they basically i
Ivan: mean it's the same and gumball i mean almost the exact same
Ivan: exact formula and and by the way one thing i did find i i did hear i've heard
Ivan: this from more from youtubers but i've also heard this mentioned about these
Ivan: these kind of tv shows that actually certain
Ivan: people whenever they deviated significantly from the formula that's.
Sam: When people leave.
Ivan: Oh yeah people get like really pissed off yeah you know that those are like
Ivan: the usually the most hated episodes or like you know the least watched videos
Ivan: that they put on youtube whatever they they try to deviate significantly from the formula yeah i.
Sam: Mean it it depends and especially for tv shows it depends like sometimes when
Sam: they when a show goes off and does a quote-unquote like creative episode that's.
Ivan: Like like uh like they jumped the shark well.
Sam: Like it like a bunch of shows have done like musical episodes there were just.
Ivan: Oh that's i i've seen that those are all i always found those utterly bizarre well.
Sam: You know and the thing is they're risky like some of those for some shows are
Sam: well remembered as like oh my god that's a classic episode people loved him
Sam: so much others are like they tried to do something different and they just failed.
Ivan: There is the this podcast
Ivan: that i do like dad levitard show did do a musical
Ivan: okay and actually that actually
Ivan: came out really good and and
Ivan: it's all related to it's they they did a lot of songs about sports happenings
Ivan: things and whatnot etc and i find myself every once in a while just listening
Ivan: to it because what they did actually came out really, really, really good.
Ivan: So, okay. But for the most part, I'm not big on music.
Ivan: Oh, I say that, and you know, I've liked going to see a musical,
Ivan: but, but yeah, but I, I do realize that there are, I'm picky about them.
Ivan: Okay. It's not like I, I, okay.
Ivan: I don't blanket hate musicals, but I will say that the majority of the ones
Ivan: that I've watched, I haven't liked, but I've liked some.
Sam: Understood. So anyway, my point was, as with any show, my point was, as with any show.
Ivan: We're not going to talk about musicals for the next hour.
Sam: We're not going to talk about musicals like at, at, at certain points as I'm
Sam: back through the media world and I'm going to do these media reviews again,
Sam: there, there are musicals on the list.
Sam: And when we get to them, we can talk about it.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: But no, my point on bones was like with any show that lasts this long,
Sam: it has some ups and downs, but I will say I never lost interest.
Sam: Like, you know, a number of months ago, I was talking about finishing House
Sam: of Cards and how, like, it really went downhill fast.
Ivan: Oh, my God. Yeah, it started just it just crumbled.
Sam: Like, it was good at the beginning. And then it it crumbled.
Ivan: It just just yeah, I won that.
Sam: Yeah, I would say Bones did not do that.
Sam: I mean, I was I liked it all the way through all 12 seasons.
Sam: There are a few places where I'm like maybe you're stretching a little bit but
Sam: for the most part I enjoyed it all a thumbs up for Bones I liked all 12 seasons,
Sam: And 246 episodes total. Apparently there is a show that maybe I'll watch someday
Sam: that is like one episode of this series,
Sam: like from I forget which season, was a backdoor pilot for another series that's
Sam: not the same characters.
Sam: Like they had a guest star come in and then the new series is based on that guest star.
Sam: I might watch that somewhere called The Finder, apparently. I guess it didn't
Sam: last anywhere near the 12 years.
Ivan: It didn't last very long because I.
Sam: Yeah, but whatever, but, but bones itself, you know, thumbs up.
Sam: I enjoyed it. It's, it's fun. If you let, if you enjoy these kinds of procedural
Sam: things with a bit of like the sciencey stuff thrown in.
Sam: Oh, and of course, like, like a lot of these, these, these days,
Sam: there's a lot of it. That's the personal interdynamics of the characters too.
Sam: So it's not just, here's the case. we're going
Sam: to solve the case there's a lot of you
Sam: know how do these characters interact with each other and they
Sam: do evolve somewhat over the course of the 12 years you know so i mean there's
Sam: some core personality elements that there are the same all the way through of
Sam: course but like you know people get together people like break up people like
Sam: have kids like because i mean 12 years is a long time, you know?
Ivan: Well, but you, I don't know, but you know, there are, well, we can't do it like in the cartoons.
Ivan: Like, you know, Snoopy ran for about 50 years and none of the characters ever grew up.
Sam: That is Peanuts, not Snoopy.
Ivan: Peanuts. Peanuts.
Sam: Yeah, good point. No, they did not grow up. And neither did The Simpsons. You know, The Simpsons.
Ivan: Neither are The Simpsons. Right.
Sam: But, like, that's harder to do when you have human actors.
Ivan: It is. I've seen some shows that...
Sam: Try.
Ivan: Yeah, there have been some shows that you can see that they keep trying not to age the characters.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: But that could only go on for a certain period of time.
Sam: Yeah and it works better with like people who are already sort of yeah like 30 yeah exactly.
Ivan: But but but you.
Sam: Know like you can sort of if you're like characters yeah if you you can sort
Sam: of keep characters from late 20s to late 40s and basically try to ignore their age in the stories you.
Ivan: Know there there are like i think that there's been some shows where you know
Ivan: say they've had like a 10 year old character and they start getting older where
Ivan: they've kind of like all of a sudden just swapped them for.
Sam: Some other.
Ivan: Kid that was like younger you know like nobody will notice it's a different kid.
Sam: Well there was one show i'm not going to remember who it was but it's it's a
Sam: famous instance of oh i think it might have been happy days actually um okay Wait, wait.
Sam: I'm missing a picture.
Sam: I'm checking my references.
Sam: Okay, yes. Chuck Cunningham.
Ivan: Uh-huh.
Sam: Okay, no. Well, there's several, but Chuck Cunningham is one example of this.
Sam: He was the oldest child in Happy Days.
Sam: Richie Cunningham and Joni Cunningham's older brother.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: He was in the first two seasons. In season three, he was gone and never mentioned again.
Ivan: There you go. Just, you know, whatever. He never existed.
Sam: There was, and I believe, let's see, I'm trying to, upstairs,
Sam: I'm just trying to find all these.
Sam: Okay, here we are. where Judy from Family Matters was another character.
Sam: So the Family Matters, this is the series that eventually had like Urkel and stuff, I believe.
Sam: I never watched this show.
Sam: But this one, there was an episode in the latter half of the episode in the
Sam: fourth season, Judy was set to her room as a punishment.
Ivan: Never came back.
Sam: She was never seen or heard from or mentioned on the show again.
Ivan: That's great. Perfect. Talk about the ultimate punishment.
Sam: You know, and, um, yeah.
Ivan: Um,
Ivan: we just you know forget it yeah what who's judy what are you talking about what
Ivan: are you yeah what are you talking about what are you talking about it's what
Ivan: character what are you yeah.
Sam: And no write-off no like.
Ivan: Nothing nothing we're don't even pretend now i'm just just just god,
Ivan: god and yeah perfect so that's the way it should be we just you know we don't even,
Ivan: we don't even pretend we don't
Ivan: even pretend that we you know it's like it's like
Ivan: one of those you know those those things where they're trying to drive the person
Ivan: crazy it's like what do you mean president you know yeah that person doesn't
Ivan: exist what are you talking about you're like but what do you yeah my brother no you know.
Sam: Well there's another series that did that in reverse famously
Sam: as well and that was buffy the
Sam: vampire slayer which i'm i'm not currently watching but i watched almost every
Sam: episode when it was actually on new and i and let me check which season this
Sam: happened in and so in the fifth season of the show.
Ivan: Yeah yeah what did they do.
Sam: All of a sudden, the main character, Buffy, had a little sister.
Sam: Had never existed. Out of the blue.
Ivan: Now I got a sister.
Sam: Teenage little sister. So it
Sam: wasn't like a baby that was just born or something. Teenage little sister.
Ivan: We need to add a sister. We need to add a sister.
Sam: We need to add a sister.
Ivan: It's like, well, they did that. Well, is this because of peanuts?
Ivan: They did that with peanuts. All of a sudden, Snoopy had a brother spike.
Sam: Well, there you go. And like, spoilers here, there did end up being an in-show
Sam: explanation for why Buffy's little sister Dawn showed up at that point.
Sam: They did explain it in-show. I won't get into that because it's spoilers.
Sam: But yeah, it's just like, all of a sudden, she's there. And there's no like
Sam: introduction, like, oh, new sister.
Sam: It's just she's there as if she was always there.
Sam: And yeah.
Ivan: That's a way to do it. Exactly. That's the way to do it. You know, Tal.
Ivan: You know, I should get, I should be, it should be as easy to get Manu a brother.
Ivan: Like some people say, well, I got a brother. All of a sudden,
Ivan: we just show up and, oh yeah, Manu's brother. He's 11. What?
Sam: He's always been there.
Ivan: What are you talking about? What are you talking about? You're like,
Ivan: what do you mean? He's all in it. Yeah. What are you talking about?
Sam: Okay. Anyway.
Ivan: Then I just edit, I just use AI to edit, edit them into all the old pictures.
Sam: You can do that now.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean just edit all the old pictures of videos all of a sudden there's this
Ivan: guy that shows up laughing.
Sam: It could be spike it.
Ivan: Could be spike yes.
Sam: Snoopy's brother spike not the spike from his brother's vampire slayer that's.
Ivan: Yeah no no different spike yeah yeah.
Sam: Different spike different spike okay i think we need to we finally take a break
Sam: and like talk i mean you said you hated the news so i figured no problem going along on the non-news,
Sam: Okay,
Sam: let's take a break. We'll be back. And then Yvonne can tell us which of the
Sam: news things that he hates the most he would like to talk about first. Back after this.
Sam: You know, I was paying so much attention that it took me until the second half.
Sam: Of that break before I realized that it was the Ray Lynch break and not one
Sam: of the breaks for Alex's YouTube channel.
Sam: Oh, I was like, this is still going on. Alex's breaks aren't usually this long.
Sam: What's going on? Oh, it's Ray Lynch.
Ivan: It's not the Alex break. It was Ray Lynch.
Sam: You know, I was looking at stuff on the other screens I have here while it was
Sam: playing. And I wasn't actually paying attention, obviously, you know, so yeah.
Sam: Anyway, so Yvonne, of the various exciting news things.
Ivan: I'm double checking right now just to make sure one thing.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Yeah. I want to make sure that we keep playing this. Ray Lynch is getting older.
Ivan: I wanted to make sure that he's still alive as far as I can tell. Okay.
Sam: I check that periodically as well. Yes.
Ivan: Yeah. He is still alive. Okay. Good. All right. Okay. Just double checking.
Ivan: Yes. he's still he's 81 but yeah he's very much still very much with us.
Sam: You know right around the time we made this break was also when like his house
Sam: burned down or something yes but that was years ago that.
Ivan: Was a long time ago yeah.
Sam: But like yeah so he had but yeah like he's he's i i do check this periodically
Sam: as well not not to feel glum here or something no it's just.
Ivan: That you know yeah I mean, I don't want to like.
Sam: If he ever play it.
Ivan: If he ever, we have to make a note of that.
Sam: You know, if he ever does pass away. And I, I preface that with if,
Sam: cause you know, he may live forever, but you know, then we should mention it when it happens.
Ivan: Yes, we should. It should be. Yes. Should be noted. Yes. If that. Yeah.
Sam: Okay. So topic you find, what, what, what newsy thing are you most willing to
Sam: actually talk about without like destroying your blood pressure.
Ivan: Looking at all of these.
Sam: We could do more movies and TVs, the whole damn show.
Sam: We could go back to the gardening topic. Talk, talk about the last meal you had.
Ivan: I'm thinking about this.
Sam: We could discuss our miscellaneous health ailments for ourselves and our families,
Sam: you know, all kinds of fun stuff like that.
Ivan: Fuck. fuck i'm i'm
Ivan: looking at them and i'm i'm debating here for
Ivan: a second uh-huh i guess
Ivan: the stupid fucking shit that happened with ukraine this week okay now summarize
Ivan: what happened first yes oh we'll preface even before the summary yeah that no
Ivan: one should have been surprised by This.
Sam: Is something we've said repeatedly, like on everything, like,
Sam: and this, this seems to be like a fundamental division when you talk to people about what's going on.
Sam: For the most part, Harris voters, well, I don't even want to put it in terms
Sam: of Harris and Trump voters.
Sam: There are people who believed what Donald Trump says.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And then there are people who are like, ah, that's just how he is.
Sam: He talks about stuff. He won't actually do that stuff.
Sam: But, you know, but everything he is doing lines right up with things he said he would do.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Plus Project 2025, which he said he had nothing to do with. However,
Sam: everybody associated with him did.
Sam: And if you read the positions he actually espoused on his own damn website, which was called like.
Ivan: We're all Project 2020.
Sam: It was like something 47 or something. I forget what he called it.
Sam: But like, it was basically a summary of Project 2025.
Sam: Just shorter. You know? So anyway. way yes no one should be.
Ivan: Surprised by anything so you're.
Sam: Constantly hearing about people being like oh my god i can't believe he's doing
Sam: this we weren't prepared.
Ivan: So he met with putin you know they he talked with putin he didn't meet with
Ivan: him in person not yet not yet no no but they talked,
Ivan: and basically as as we expected he he threw ukraine completely under the bus,
Ivan: And I think, well, one thing that we do know, we've heard this before,
Ivan: so I guess, I guess this was a little bit surprising for him,
Ivan: for me to hear, but it not, it shouldn't have been.
Ivan: Trump has this reputation that, especially of people that he, like,
Ivan: admires that he will go into a meeting with them.
Ivan: They will tell him something and he will come out at a meeting,
Ivan: basically regurgitating that point. Okay.
Ivan: And so he goes to the meeting with Putin, Putin, not being an idiot like he
Ivan: is what basically was to the position.
Ivan: Well, Ukraine started this war.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And so Trump came out and basically just said that, and you basically accused
Ivan: of, you know, ukraine starting the war and then.
Sam: Zelinski being a dictator the.
Ivan: Zelinski's a dictator which that's also a talking point of of.
Sam: The russians i'll mention specifically part of that talking point
Sam: is zelinski refuses to have elections zelinski is
Sam: the ukrainian constitution that was
Sam: in place before the invasion actually explicitly says in a situation of war
Sam: or emergency elections will be delayed so that's not like a decision that zelinski
Sam: specifically made i mean i guess you could say he could say there's no emergency
Sam: anymore but they're at war there.
Ivan: Is no emergency.
Sam: You know so it's it is the situation is mandated by their constitution you can
Sam: argue whether that's the right thing to do i mean you know the u.s had elections
Sam: throughout like all our wars but there They were very, even the civil war,
Sam: but like most of our wars haven't been on our own territory and our constitution
Sam: has no provisions for that, for that, et cetera.
Sam: You know, so it does eventually become untenable. Eventually you have to have elections again.
Ivan: But I understood that the UK also had that, that they, they,
Ivan: they did suspend elections during the world war two.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Um, yeah.
Sam: Although famously, like, Churchill did get kicked out during World War II. Right.
Sam: But anyway, continue, continue.
Ivan: But it was more closely. But, okay, so threw them under the bus.
Ivan: Then I guess the whole thing was demanding, like, basically,
Ivan: hey, just give us all your...
Ivan: And then I think, who was it that said that they never getting their land back? Was it Hagzeth?
Sam: Yes. He said, and I think we touched on this statement last week,
Sam: but he said, yeah, they're very unlikely to get their land back.
Sam: NATO membership is not on the table.
Sam: He said a couple other things along those lines that basically positioned the U.S.
Sam: At the beginning of the negotiations already at the Russian position.
Ivan: And even for, you know, he went, you know, but but during this the whole week,
Ivan: he goes on this thing about making withdrawals from Europe of U.S.
Ivan: Troops, reductions in U.S. military spending.
Ivan: I mean, basically, it's like a Putin wish list.
Sam: Yeah. And he explicitly made the statement about, you know, Europe should get
Sam: out of the habit of assuming the U.S. is their primary defense mechanism.
Ivan: And but but but but but then at the same time you know by the way yeah a lot
Ivan: of this by the way a lot of how we got there okay all right but you know but a lot a.
Sam: Lot of these statements just to be clear over the next few days both hegsess
Sam: and trump backed off a little bit from these statements but they'd already said it.
Ivan: But they were all putin talking points is my point yes came out And basically,
Ivan: it's like, look, if it's like Putin handed him, if anybody would have dreamed
Ivan: of being able to hand the president of the United States,
Ivan: Putin wanted to hand him talking points, he got his wish.
Ivan: It's basically here, read this. And he read it.
Ivan: And then troop withdrawals from Europe. Oh, my God. Defense cutbacks.
Ivan: But here's the crazy thing about the defense cutbacks. He wants like Europe
Ivan: to spend 5% of GDP on defense. Fuck, we're not spending anywhere near that, okay?
Ivan: And worse, I mean, he wants to go and cut it to below what he's demanding the Europeans to spend.
Sam: Right. Let me mention a little bit more about, you started to mention Trump's
Sam: demand for a mineral deal.
Ivan: Yes. Rare earths.
Sam: Yeah, rare earths. So basically, and we even like a couple of weeks ago,
Sam: we talked about how, ah, maybe this is okay.
Sam: Like there's some sort of deal between, you know, in exchange for rare earths,
Sam: Trump will actually put some troops in and provide more support,
Sam: blah, blah, blah. He's transactional.
Sam: And maybe Zelensky's like, okay, deal. Well, what happened was the demand was
Sam: 50% of all of those resources that the Ukraine has,
Sam: and Trump made it clear this was not in exchange for anything going forward.
Sam: The way Trump put it was, this is to pay us back for what Biden spent in Ukraine
Sam: already and gave nothing in exchange, was basically just,
Sam: we demand these resources. So Zelensky said no.
Sam: And apparently that made Trump really upset. And along with some other things
Sam: Zelensky said about Trump,
Sam: basically Trump had talks in Saudi Arabia with Russia, not in person,
Sam: but his people, about the situation without even telling the Ukrainians it was
Sam: going to happen in advance, let alone including them.
Sam: And Zelensky made some statements about how that was unacceptable and no deal
Sam: negotiated without Ukraine would ever be accepted by the Ukrainian people.
Sam: Ukraine has to be involved, blah, blah, blah. And this made Trump very mad.
Sam: The latest I've seen reporting on just in the last 24 hours is that I don't
Sam: know if it's Trump or Musk or some combination thereof,
Sam: but they are saying that they are going to cut off all Ukraine access to Starlink
Sam: if they don't give them all those mineral rights.
Sam: And Starlink is, of course, right now a key portion of how the Ukrainian military
Sam: communicates on the battlefield.
Sam: So we're basically blackmailing them now at this point to get those mineral
Sam: rights in exchange for nothing.
Sam: So all of this, the bottom line on all of this is we have effectively switched sides.
Sam: On this conflict. Yeah, basically. This is not playing some sort of neutral arbiter.
Sam: The Trump administration is now pushing the Russian position on this conflict.
Sam: And Europe and Ukraine are scrambling to figure out how to react on that.
Sam: Now, we haven't quite said, okay, we're going to supply arms to the Russians now.
Sam: But basically everything's short of that.
Ivan: No. And now the Europeans all of a sudden are scrambling and now they're assembling
Ivan: their own aid and weapons package to Ukraine of a significant amount.
Sam: One of Trump's talking points, by the way, has been how the U.S.
Sam: Has spent so much more than Europe and Ukraine, which is just outright false.
Sam: The U.S. has spent more than any other individual country, but if you add up
Sam: all of Europe together, they have spent like 30% more than we have.
Sam: I forget the exact number, but ballpark.
Sam: They have definitely spent more than us on supporting the Ukrainians overall.
Sam: So that's just plain false.
Sam: Also i should mention like his we we
Sam: mentioned he's sort of taking the russian talking points on who
Sam: started the war at all but where that came up more most blatantly was in response
Sam: to zelinski saying that he wasn't included trump basically said well you had
Sam: three years to make a deal you didn't make a deal and in fact you shouldn't
Sam: have even started it you know was his response to all that.
Ivan: Shouldn't even started what?
Sam: The war.
Ivan: Oh, because yeah, he started the war. Right.
Sam: Yeah. Zelensky started the war, according to Trump. Again, there has been some
Sam: minor back off from some of these statements, but-
Ivan: Well, one thing is that I, the one thing that the Europeans are,
Ivan: have been reacting very belatedly is they've known that they've had this risk
Ivan: related to their defense posture, especially since Trump was in his first term.
Ivan: And the reality is that they had to spend more on defense, even though I know
Ivan: that the economy, that they've had issues with economic growth in recent times.
Ivan: But they are the ones that are the tip of the spear in terms of the threat from Russia at the time.
Ivan: And, you know, given what happened in the first Trump term, they should have
Ivan: had a sharper reaction. However, they didn't.
Ivan: Now they're all under scrambling to react to something that they knew was a looming threat.
Ivan: And it shouldn't have surprised them in one bit that it was said.
Ivan: I will say that having Vance and Paxev basically go over there and shit all
Ivan: over them probably wasn't, they didn't think that that part specifically could
Ivan: have happened. I guess they probably expected it from Trump itself.
Ivan: But basically, you know, they went over there and just shit all over Europe
Ivan: in terms of military economy, everything.
Ivan: You know, we support the far right parties. I mean, basically,
Ivan: it was just, you know, that's been the last couple of weeks of our relations
Ivan: with Europe at this moment.
Sam: Well, here's the thing. After Trump won.
Sam: You know, already Europe was talking like, you know, we have to figure out how
Sam: to live our lives without the assumption of a benevolent America.
Sam: I mean, America's never been completely benevolent. There's been all kinds of
Sam: weirdness in the relationship. But fundamentally.
Ivan: An America that actually had a good relationship with Europe.
Sam: Yes. Yes. That's a good way to put it. Like, there was a mutually beneficial
Sam: U.S.-Europe relationship that everybody appreciated. Yeah.
Sam: And they started to, in Trump one, they sort of retrenched, but I think everybody,
Sam: and this goes for us, how we reacted to Trump internally too.
Sam: There was sort of this general feeling that this is temporary. This is an aberration.
Sam: Trump will be here a little while. And then as long as we can get through it,
Sam: things will go back to normal.
Sam: Right now with trump winning a second time including winning the u.s popular vote,
Sam: there's a lot more thought of like well shit this
Sam: might not be temporary this might just be how the way it is and even if it is
Sam: temporary even if like the next u.s president comes in and tries to reverse
Sam: all this stuff well what about the one after that right we can no longer rely on this long-term.
Sam: We have to treat the U.S.
Sam: As an unpredictable entity that at any moment.
Sam: You know, could switch direction. So we can't rely on a damn thing.
Sam: And, and, you know, with, with Trump himself, I mean, with all this mineral
Sam: stuff and everything else, we come back to again, his transactional nature.
Sam: Like there's nothing sort of, there's no sort of base ideological thing here on most of this.
Sam: There's, there's some core racism that exists. There's some core sexism that
Sam: exists that permeates everything, but fundamentally,
Sam: like he could switch direction 180 degrees on a dime if he perceived it would
Sam: benefit him, you know, or, or,
Sam: or if it hurt people that he doesn't like, that is also a reason that he will turn on a dime.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: You know, so, so yeah, no one can count on him.
Sam: And so everybody worldwide is going to have to pivot to that stance that they
Sam: just cannot rely on the U.S.
Sam: For anything one way or another and figure out how to go about things based
Sam: on that new assumption of what the world is like. that, yes, the U.S.
Sam: May do something helpful every once in a while, but they also may do things
Sam: that are horribly harmful.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: Regardless of who you are in
Sam: the world and what the previous relationship was, good or bad. You know?
Sam: And that's the new reality. That's the new reality. And that's a very, very unstable reality.
Ivan: The one thing is that Trump supposedly is doing this for,
Ivan: I'm not even really sure what his in his head he thinks is the reason for this.
Ivan: I mean, do you, because it doesn't make America safer in any way.
Ivan: The reality is no, no, that that's, that's the, that's the clear reality.
Ivan: This doesn't do that in any way, shape or form.
Ivan: So, I mean, I, but I also realize that when we talk about Trump,
Ivan: when we talk about the fact that he's transactional, he also doesn't think he's
Ivan: not thinking strategically in terms of a long term.
Sam: No, no, everything is extremely short term.
Ivan: So he's thinking that he can get a very short-term benefit for whatever the hell reason right now,
Ivan: regardless of what situation he creates in the future, that is inherently far
Ivan: more dangerous to the world in general,
Ivan: including the United States, because this will embolden other countries.
Sam: In short-term versus long-term, and this is a problem not just with Trump,
Sam: but lots of things in the world right now, but in terms of short-term, long-term,
Sam: he couldn't give a flying fuck what happens five years from now,
Sam: as long as there's a benefit to be had in the next few weeks.
Ivan: Yeah so yeah I mean he's really setting up he's setting up America in the long
Ivan: term in a far more precarious situation,
Ivan: I mean, that's my my view. Here's the one thing that I find humorous about all this.
Ivan: I know that it's difficult to to think of that, but but, you know, I find it.
Ivan: The one thing that I found humorous is fucking Marco Rubio's face as he sat
Ivan: at the at this meeting in Saudi Arabia and other meetings with Lavrov and all these people.
Ivan: And with this face that just completely betrays the fact that in his head,
Ivan: you know, he knows he is a complete sellout, but the thing is that he has sold
Ivan: himself out for financial reasons, for political reasons, you know.
Sam: Because just to be clear, Marco Rubio's history, like.
Ivan: Is a hard-life anti-Russia guy.
Ivan: Right. And he is sitting there doing this shit and his face betrays the fact
Ivan: that he is just right now a lackey that is doing what his boss wants that he despises.
Ivan: But because he is just a lackey, he's sitting there looking,
Ivan: you know, absolutely stone face and being, uh, yeah.
Sam: There was another Trump appointee. I forget in what role he was a spokesman
Sam: for something or other, but he used to be a congressman.
Sam: I forget which person it was or which name. But some reporter asked him,
Sam: showed him a clip of him as a congressman taking hardline anti-Russian positions
Sam: and pro-Ukraine positions.
Sam: And basically he was asked, how do you reconcile these?
Sam: How do you reconcile this? Have you changed your mind? Do you now agree with
Sam: President Trump's position on this?
Sam: And he's like, well, obviously, at this point, I, you know, agree with the president,
Sam: you know, and it was clear it was one of these, you know.
Sam: He probably doesn't, but his job is now to push the administration line, just like Rubio's is.
Sam: And on the one hand, that's what you expect, right?
Sam: On any administration, you expect if there are internal disagreements,
Sam: they are kept internal and publicly all the people, you know,
Sam: give the administration line.
Sam: But at the same time, these are such fundamental reversals.
Ivan: I mean, this isn't like, hey, we're going to use, instead of vanilla,
Ivan: we're going to use vanilla with chocolate chip.
Ivan: No, we're not even using ice cream. We're going to give you lava.
Ivan: Yeah, hot molten lava. You're like, do you like hot molten lava?
Sam: These are the level of disagreements where you would expect that if you had
Sam: that level of disagreement in an area.
Ivan: You would resign.
Sam: Yes. You would resign or you would not have taken the job in the first place.
Ivan: Or not taking the job. Right.
Sam: Because these are disagreements that are at the core part of what your job responsibilities
Sam: are. They're not even peripheral.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: They're like, you know.
Ivan: It's not like we're at the margins.
Ivan: You know, the other day I was having this disagreement about a strategy related
Ivan: to something at a customer.
Ivan: You know, the one thing that in my head I remembered is that,
Ivan: you know, look, the end goal is the same.
Ivan: There's different approaches to doing this. There is no one right approach to closing a deal.
Ivan: OK, you know, and so so it's OK, you know, as you know, we're trying to do whatever.
Ivan: But, you know, but in this case, it's not just it's not an approach thing.
Ivan: The position is completely anathema to everything that you did before.
Ivan: It's not sweetening, it's not
Ivan: changing it It's not sprinkling stuff on it It's just, you know You just,
Ivan: you know You are basically saying that you are You are sitting there As Marco Rubio And saying,
Ivan: hey, we're lackeys of Putin,
Ivan: and he's like sitting there Stone-faced Yeah,
Ivan: I am It's pathetic Yes There was one senator this week Republicans just started railing against them.
Sam: On the specific issue of Ukraine, right?
Ivan: Yeah. And Putin, yeah. He went on the floor and just,
Ivan: went completely you know then it started
Ivan: just ripping everything apart that they it's at
Ivan: this week most most have remained absolute it's like
Ivan: the question that you it's like the the evasive answer you
Ivan: said uh whatever the guy spoke yeah yeah or his congressman
Ivan: gave like whatever well do you support this now
Ivan: and yeah i support the president you know not no uh
Ivan: you know and one of these non-specific answers that just
Ivan: gets me out of having to answer more questions about this
Ivan: right but look i
Ivan: it it's a new and different reality maybe
Ivan: it's for the better in some ways look i'll say
Ivan: this that europe for the last
Ivan: number of years has been
Ivan: a little bit rudderless okay and
Ivan: and maybe this galvanizes them into finally coming together and taking some
Ivan: serious actions that actually grows the influence that the EU should have on a global stage.
Sam: Yeah, I agree with that.
Ivan: Because for the size of their economy and the size of what they bring to the
Ivan: table, which is really way bigger than Russia, like 10 times Russia, okay?
Ivan: And if still not bigger, about the size of China as well.
Ivan: And an individual, you know, GDP far exceeds it, you know, maybe this finally
Ivan: is a galvanizing moment that they needed to finally get their fucking ass, you know,
Ivan: off just being wishy-washy about doing certain things and taking leadership in certain things.
Sam: Um, a couple other things real quick before we wrap up the segment,
Sam: cause I'm going to go in a completely different direction for the next segment.
Sam: First of all, you mentioned like the one Senator who's saying something different.
Sam: There have been a number of reports in the last few weeks and more domestically about,
Sam: Republican Congress people going to their home districts and having town halls
Sam: in very, very red districts, by the way, we're talking like districts where
Sam: the Republican won by 60 fucking percent,
Sam: you know, like huge red districts where they are getting a really harsh reception
Sam: at the town halls with people going, basically, what the hell is Trump doing?
Sam: And are you going to do anything about it?
Sam: Mostly seeming related to unhappiness with some of the Dodge stuff,
Sam: with Elon going through and slicing things off randomly that are actually helping
Sam: their constituents in red states.
Sam: But, but just in general now, who knows, like, and are we, and we've got the
Sam: budget stuff coming up, by the way, where right now the proposal that Trump
Sam: has endorsed so far is the one that's going through the house.
Sam: There's a different one that's more narrow going through the Senate,
Sam: where even though Trump has said things like, we're not going to touch Medicare
Sam: and Medicaid, the current proposal on the table in the house very much does touch those things.
Sam: Because, frankly, like, if you're going to make a big dent, you have to.
Sam: And so the question is, of all— Sam— The question is, do these things end up
Sam: eventually, almost by necessity, driving a wedge between congressional Republicans and Trump?
Ivan: Yes, because there's no other— Because there's no other— I mean,
Ivan: I don't see how the hell they survive politically.
Ivan: Listen, them right now already, I've already seen videos and I can't,
Ivan: I didn't see anybody in the news confirm this is accurate or not. Okay. But.
Sam: So let's spread the misinformation. I've got some more information.
Ivan: No, no, no. I'm giving. Wait, wait. I am prefacing this not as confirmed fact.
Ivan: I'm saying that this is something that has come up that they are saying related
Ivan: to some of these changes, for example.
Sam: Yeah. Okay.
Ivan: Medicare insulin price caps, okay?
Ivan: A number of people had said weeks ago that one of the things that Trump had
Ivan: signed as an executive order basically obliterated those.
Ivan: The many news organizations I saw that first said, no, that's not the case.
Ivan: But then I keep seeing anecdotal reports of people going to refill their insulin
Ivan: and all of a sudden they're going
Ivan: from having to pay $6 that they're being demanded $80, okay, to do so.
Ivan: These are, this is the shit, you see, this is the kind of shit that got Biden
Ivan: into problems in the first place, okay?
Ivan: This kind of stuff. My eggs were more expensive, the gas was more expensive,
Ivan: this was more, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.
Ivan: Man, look, if people are going to go to the pharmacy, they're going to find
Ivan: that they're paying 80 bucks for insulin instead of six?
Ivan: This is going to blow up so fast in their face.
Sam: Well, so, so far on almost anything like that, the Trump administration is still
Sam: saying it's Biden's fault, which, you know, look, it's only been a month.
Ivan: Yeah, but then he can fix it. Okay, but wait, but that doesn't last because
Ivan: you can fix, because you can fix it. Now you're there. You're supposed to be fixing it.
Sam: Right. I mean, the, it's the last guy's fault thing will last a while.
Sam: You can do that for a while. You can't do that forever.
Ivan: It's not going to last a while if the price started right after he came into
Ivan: office. That's the problem.
Sam: One of the things that we've said repeatedly on this show is how economic stuff
Sam: has a significant delay between the action that's taken and the result.
Sam: So we have to be fair on that in both directions, right?
Ivan: But the thing is that, but, but, but, okay, but I'm talking about two different things. Okay.
Ivan: One is, hey, I decided to eliminate funding for research and development for these things.
Ivan: OK, that has a delayed effect.
Ivan: Well, we're going to stop the project to build this bridge.
Ivan: OK, we're not going to fix the bridge. Well, that doesn't have an immediate effect.
Ivan: But if you're going to go and, like, people are going to go and get their health
Ivan: care cut, if they're going to go and immediately, like, get their,
Ivan: all of a sudden, the deductibles for their medicines, like, soar, like, you know,
Ivan: 1,000%, that's not a delayed effect. They just did it, like, right away.
Sam: And here's the other thing that they're doing.
Ivan: But here's the other thing that they're mushrooming. Here's the other problem.
Ivan: They're doing these things where, you know, hey, an interest rate increase or
Ivan: cut has a delayed effect. But if you lay off half a million people now,
Ivan: that has an immediate effect.
Ivan: That doesn't get that delayed.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: That's half a million people on the street that aren't going to find jobs right away.
Sam: There's a huge difference between we passed the Inflation Reduction Act with
Sam: all kinds of infrastructure spending that's scheduled over the next 10 years.
Ivan: Years.
Sam: Or the introduction of the ACA, which also phased in over 10 years. yeah i.
Ivan: Think it was 10 years.
Sam: I think it was uh it is close anyway
Sam: it was a long time regardless it was a long time it was in
Sam: both of these situations it's long enough that by the
Sam: time you get the effect everybody has forgotten the thing
Sam: that caused it in the beginning even you know certainly the people who aren't
Sam: paying attention anyway they're just hey this good thing happened and it you
Sam: know there's no a trump so much trump yeah there's no association whatsoever
Sam: with the actions that actually kicked it off because it was way far in the past
Sam: and they're not paying attention anyway. But you're absolutely right.
Sam: Like there are other certain actions of the kind you mentioned,
Sam: like lots of federal layoffs or, you know, institute a tariff right today.
Sam: All these kinds of things are going to have impacts very quickly.
Ivan: Yes. Right away.
Sam: And so, yes, you're going to get some pain there. But, you know,
Sam: and we haven't talked much about like the budget negotiations and all that crap, but,
Sam: It's going to be very tough for them, you know?
Ivan: And then they talk about deficit reduction, right?
Sam: Well, barely.
Ivan: Can you explain to me how the hell we're going to reduce the deficit if we're all going to get a check?
Sam: All of the proposals, both House and Senate, will raise the deficit.
Sam: And that's before we even talk about what you just mentioned.
Sam: There's a proposal on the table to send out checks to all Americans I've heard as much as $5,000.
Ivan: Yes I have to all Americans.
Sam: To give them the benefit of the stuff that Elon is canceling with his.
Ivan: Dodge effort.
Sam: Doge doge I'm saying it wrong.
Ivan: Give them the benefit I don't understand this they're using Visa to pay MasterCard
Ivan: what the fuck is wrong with these people,
Ivan: we're already borrowing that money so you're
Ivan: going to borrow the money now to go and fucking like give
Ivan: us more checks just to give us wait to give us wait the thing is we had economic
Ivan: stimulus checks before because people wrote unemployment whatever blah blah
Ivan: blah no they're saying that these are hey we're giving you checks of our savings
Ivan: but they're borrowing money to give us checks of our savings yeah.
Sam: Well, presumably the checks are less than the actual savings,
Sam: although I'm not sure that's true because everything we've heard so far.
Ivan: The savings that they say because it's all. Yeah.
Ivan: Well, well, well, the thing is that that that what's his name is purporting
Ivan: that he's going to come up with two trillion worth of savings.
Sam: Right. The five thousand dollars is presumably based on actually getting the two trillion.
Ivan: And then that $2 trillion turns into 25% of that $500 billion is handed out of checks.
Ivan: But look, here's the thing. Here's the reality.
Ivan: They may just say, because, you know, they'll cook the books in whatever way
Ivan: to show these $2 trillion in shavings. Shavings?
Sam: Shavings?
Ivan: Shavings? We're talking like Sean Carter right now. We'll shine.
Sam: You keep the little bowl of everything you've shaved off your face in the last year, right?
Ivan: Oh, my God.
Sam: That's what we're talking about.
Ivan: Don't be so disgusting. Anyway, there's a shaming that they're proposing.
Ivan: And so they're going to cook the books.
Ivan: They're going to say that they saved $2 trillion.
Ivan: Then we're going to give a check on the 25%, which is $500 billion,
Ivan: which winds up basically putting a massive, bigger hole in the deficit and sending
Ivan: us checks for whatever the hell damn reason.
Ivan: You know, and a whole bunch of morons because they're going to be signed by
Ivan: Donald Trump and probably Elon Musk, too, as far as I I'm sure that it'll be
Ivan: signed to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, you know, savings, whatever.
Ivan: OK, and then and then everybody look, you see, Elon Musk sent me a check.
Sam: Yes, exactly. like okay and
Sam: and you know in in that interview like uh after
Sam: he lost you know biden specifically said
Sam: hey you know i probably screwed up by not signing the damn checks you know because
Sam: he went back to normal which is the check is signed by like the secretary of
Sam: the treasury or something you know and he's like i should have signed the damn
Sam: checks yeah so that people would because They got checks from me!
Sam: Yes, because all kinds of people thought that Donald Trump was personally sending them checks.
Sam: You know, when in fact, the checks were being sent out in many cases based on
Sam: laws the Democrats had passed that the Republicans didn't want.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, but Donald Trump signed the check.
Sam: And so, yes, the one other Trump related thing I wanted to mention is we were
Sam: talking about all like, oh, he's doing all the Russian talking points.
Sam: So this once again brings us
Sam: to the what the fuck is up with Donald and Putin? you know because and so.
Ivan: People have well before we go back to that hold the
Ivan: donald point because there is one thing that i wanted to
Ivan: talk about in terms of the taxation and that
Ivan: budget and that budget issue which we keep talking
Ivan: about i had pulled up some data before that i hadn't
Ivan: like talked about on the show i shared on the slack specifically
Ivan: related to you know what is our
Ivan: issue why is the deficit at two trillion dollars right now
Ivan: and look it's it's purely related to the fact that
Ivan: the republicans have cut taxes in a crazy
Ivan: way especially to the wealthiest and corporations there
Ivan: is just there there is just nothing and you see it in terms of our economy how
Ivan: it's grown in the last decade the economy in the last decade has added is went
Ivan: from about 15 to 16 trillion dollars about 26 you know 26 25 26 added about
Ivan: 10 trillion worth of it you know of a GDP to the economy.
Ivan: And during that time period, the taxes only rose by, even though it was like
Ivan: a 50%, over 50% growth on the economy, the taxes only grew by less than 10%.
Ivan: We only added like about, you know, a few hundred billion in revenue,
Ivan: which makes no sense whatsoever. Okay.
Ivan: That pretty much means that we're just, you know, we have been just cutting
Ivan: taxes to so many companies. Warren Buffett today, basically,
Ivan: just flat out called every other corporation.
Ivan: They just announced their profits. He just announced that they had record profits,
Ivan: but also that they paid more.
Ivan: They actually, Berkshire Hathaway, paid 5% of the corporate taxes in America paid last year.
Ivan: Berkshire Hathaway, one fucking company. OK, and and that just shows you how
Ivan: fucked up the corporate taxation system is in the United States.
Ivan: And the thing is that he went and purposely did as little as possible to avoid taxes.
Ivan: OK, because if he had, he probably could have paid zero.
Ivan: But he said, fuck it, because, you know, one thing that Ruben Gallego was actually
Ivan: talking about, which I'm actually agreeing on him on this, is that a couple
Ivan: of people, and Mark Andreessen said this, but his conclusion is a different one.
Ivan: I got a lot of people on the left that vilify every business and every corporation,
Ivan: blah, blah, blah, that everybody is a crook.
Ivan: Every rich person is a crook and every corporate company is a crook.
Ivan: The one thing that they do do is that they alienate certain people that actually
Ivan: are advocating for the same shit that they are and just calling them crooks.
Ivan: Look, you want to like, you know, you want to say that most of them are crooked like this? Absolutely.
Ivan: But you also have to recognize that a number of them are your allies in this
Ivan: and not shit all over them, okay?
Ivan: People like Michael Bloomberg, people like Warren Buffett, people like Bill
Ivan: Gates, they want that. They're trying to help.
Ivan: Don't shit on the people that are also trying to help. Don't shit on people
Ivan: that are rich and are saying, hey, I should be taxed more.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I my my tax rate at that rate should be 90 percent.
Ivan: They're trying to help you stop shitting on them. And also the other thing that
Ivan: Runga you actually said, which I do agree with, even though some of the stuff
Ivan: is great with is that a lot of poor people actually want to be rich.
Ivan: So when you vilify every rich person, they're like, but I want to be rich, too.
Ivan: You know, that's the American dream.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I want to be rich. And I'm like, you know, and he's right.
Ivan: And I'm like, you know, I'm one that doesn't care if they vilify people that make a lot of money.
Ivan: I'm like, even though, you know, many times I've fallen into that group,
Ivan: I'm just like, you know, look, I don't care.
Ivan: Because I know that a lot of stuff they're right, they may be lumping everybody into the group.
Ivan: But the problem is that there are so many of them, so many people that make
Ivan: a lot of money that are fucking shitheads that I get why they will take the
Ivan: product rush and just, you know, pay it over everybody. OK, I get it.
Ivan: I understand why they're angry. But I don't I don't think that's working.
Ivan: And by the way, I'm remembering that Clinton.
Ivan: That was a big change that they did from campaigning in the 80s towards a campaign
Ivan: in the 90s of work at Clinton is that he had stopped doing that to a certain extent.
Ivan: And so we need to gain allies across the spectrum everywhere,
Ivan: and we can't just be just in a situation where we are right now taking people
Ivan: that because they fit into certain economic group or something or whatever,
Ivan: just shitting on them right now when they're actively trying to help.
Sam: This goes more to the general Democratic issue with pure, with like, you know, if.
Ivan: Well, it happens in the Republic. So let's not think this is a political purity,
Ivan: you know, purity testing that's going on lately.
Sam: Specifically the notion that like, hey, if you disagree with us on anything, you're out.
Ivan: Fuck you. Yeah.
Sam: Fuck you. You're out. Like, you know, there's not the real, okay, we agree on 70%.
Sam: We can fight about that 30%, but let's, let's move forward together on the 70,
Sam: you know, and that that's, it's hard right now.
Sam: There's, I mean, and look, there's certainly a lot of people who are after the consensus.
Sam: I don't want to say that, but there, there are key elements of people.
Sam: And, you know, the typical example we've used over and over again,
Sam: the last couple months is the people who refuse to vote for Harris because of Gaza.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Um, you know, this does not help, you know, you, you, you gotta look at the,
Sam: you gotta look at the full picture and yes, I understand you think the position is bad on policy X,
Sam: but you gotta look at everything and you have to look at what the policy of the opposition is.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You, you know, I, I saw someone put it that said, okay, so you,
Sam: you argue like it's not true, but you argued that Trump and Harris were exactly the same on Gaza.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, okay, assume that is true.
Sam: At best, that takes that issue off the table because they're equivalent.
Sam: So now you have to look at everything else.
Ivan: So then vote on everything else.
Sam: Right. You can't just say no overall. Okay.
Sam: The one other thing I was going to say, I said I wanted to share a piece of misinformation.
Ivan: You were going to talk about the Russia-Putin-Trump thing.
Sam: Because once again, people are like, what's going on with Trump?
Sam: And he's so subservient to Russia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And of course, we don't have to regurgitate the whole thing.
Sam: But we had a Mueller report that, despite the spin that was put on it,
Sam: showed a lot of improper connections between Trump and Russia in the campaign season.
Sam: We had a bipartisan Senate report that also talked about all kinds of improper
Sam: Russia stuff during the 2016 election cycle, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: However, all that stuff aside.
Sam: There is a new report today, yesterday, yesterday, in the Daily Mirror coming out of the UK.
Sam: Now, by the way, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Yvonne,
Sam: the Mirror is tabloid trash, isn't it? Like, they're not known for, like...
Ivan: I thought the Mirror was owned by the Murdochs.
Sam: Check that. Like, is it owned by the... That would be interesting.
Sam: Anyway, but it's... My understanding is the Mirror is not known for due diligence in journalism.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Am I wrong? I'm not fully up on
Sam: the nuances between different British publications. I'll be honest there.
Ivan: Let's see.
Sam: The Mirror.
Ivan: Daily Mirror.
Sam: What's the verdict?
Ivan: British, founded out of the Mirror, is owned by Raj VLC, Massa,
Ivan: Simply the Mirror, Sister Suba, Sunday Mirror, actually, no,
Ivan: I guess it's not owned by political alignment. and labor.
Ivan: Okay, so they are on the left.
Sam: So they're leftish.
Ivan: Originally pitched to the middle class readers converted into a working class
Ivan: newspaper in 1934. The baby went through a protective period of crisis or death, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Nothing says that.
Sam: Is it reputable or is it like the National Enquirer kind of trash?
Ivan: As far as I can tell, it is,
Ivan: reputable.
Sam: Okay. Well, I haven't seen this anywhere else, and they're only citing one story.
Ivan: I confused Murdoch. I'm sorry. The Mirror was owned by Robert Maxwell. That's why.
Ivan: And they went through a very big crisis after he died because,
Ivan: I mean, Robert Maxwell was his, okay, Robert Maxwell's, Ghislaine Maxwell's
Ivan: dad, who is Epstein's, you know,
Ivan: Paramore, I guess. I don't know what the hell to call her.
Sam: She acquired young girls for him.
Ivan: Yes. who is in jail right now, right?
Sam: I believe so.
Ivan: So, yeah. But as far as I can tell, it's a regular paper.
Sam: Okay, so they, and I am prefacing this by saying I've seen this nowhere else,
Sam: and it's misinformation, and it's not backed up by anything other than a single
Sam: person's accusation anyway.
Sam: So take that with what you will. It is probably misinformation,
Sam: and it's of the same level of quality as you probably had in,
Sam: what was that stupid report?
Sam: What was the stupid report called? The one with the first product,
Sam: the pee tape and everything?
Sam: Oh uh the dossier the steel the steel
Sam: dossier right which which i think that consensus in
Sam: the end was there's some aspects of
Sam: truth sprinkled throughout it but also lots of clearly
Sam: false stuff and that it probably was done specifically as russian misinformation
Sam: about trump and russia to weaken trump in office seems to be what was actually
Sam: happening there but anyway their their headline from yesterday, from February 21st.
Sam: Donald Trump was recruited by KGB with codename Krasnov claims ex-Soviet spy.
Sam: Former chairman of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee.
Sam: Alnur Musayev, claims the Soviet KGB recruited Donald Trump before the collapse
Sam: of the USSR, assigning him the alias Krasnov.
Sam: And it goes on a little bit more with basically this guy who apparently was
Sam: related to KGB at various points in Kazakhstan and in Moscow.
Sam: He did counter intelligence, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: So he's saying this. He was, let's see, he made another allegation in a social
Sam: media post today, or I guess yesterday, for sometime this week.
Sam: The personal file of resident Krasnov has been removed from the FSB.
Sam: It is being privately managed by one of Putin's close associates.
Ivan: Anyway, I don't know, but this is obviously one source, no confirmation,
Ivan: but, but, but there is one thing that we.
Sam: Here's the thing, here's the, here's the thing, just, just like the Steele dossier,
Sam: I could easily see this being Russian propaganda in and of itself,
Sam: whether or not Donald is actually has some sort of relationship,
Sam: it's in Russia's interests to spread the notion that maybe he is.
Ivan: Now here, I, I, I, I, this is what, this is what, what, this is what,
Ivan: what, what, what would make sense.
Ivan: One of the things that I did here that in, in the recent call with, with,
Ivan: Putin, that a lot of the stuff that was being dangled in front of Trump was dollars.
Ivan: Basically, oh, you guys are going to make so much money because if you get rid
Ivan: of the sanctions, go back into Russia and then you'll make a killing.
Ivan: And I mean, look, he had been looking at he has been looking at so many deals
Ivan: with like name and buildings and real estate and things like right now that whatever.
Ivan: I mean, obviously, all he sees are dollar signs in front of him,
Ivan: which incent him to do all of this stuff.
Ivan: And then you plant the story where you get him to follow your talking points.
Ivan: You dangle a ton of money in front of him. And then you dangle this other story
Ivan: that basically says, yeah, this is because we control him for like since the last 30, 40 years.
Ivan: It completely plays into, you know, he's so easily manipulable and gullible
Ivan: that then we can also undermine him by doing.
Sam: Absolutely. This ties in completely. And we had reached this conclusion and
Sam: talked about it on the show before the Mueller report was released that the
Sam: most likely explanation for everything is not is useful. Idiot. It is not.
Sam: Trump is a knowing paid Russian spy or anything like that. It is useful.
Sam: Idiot. It is he is easily manipulated and easily convinced.
Ivan: We'll send a Russian to buy his house in Palm Beach for $100 million.
Ivan: It was only worth $30 million.
Sam: And also, by the way, just a natural alignment. He likes the authoritarian. He likes his dictators.
Ivan: He likes his. He loves his dictators. Loves his dictators.
Sam: Not just Putin. There isn't a dictator he doesn't love. Exactly. Not just Putin.
Sam: He loves his dictators. He thinks that the way Putin runs things is awesome.
Sam: He, like, aspires to be like that.
Ivan: That's what he's trying to do now in the U.S. He wants to run the U.S.
Ivan: Modeled, exactly patterned after how Putin runs Russia.
Sam: And that guy in Hungary, too, and a few others. But yes.
Ivan: But Orban, it's not. No, no, no. It's Putin.
Ivan: Look, it's not. Listen, Orban's economy is a lot smaller.
Ivan: He doesn't have the economic influence that Putin has or reputation that Putin has.
Ivan: It's Putin. His idol is Putin.
Sam: I think it all comes down to natural alignment of interests and useful idiots.
Sam: And even if they did give him a code name and all of this kind of stuff.
Ivan: Like, like he was like.
Sam: It could be a code name for this manipulation. You know, it's right.
Ivan: That's what they coded the name for it. Yeah.
Sam: It's not. I think recruited implies something else that I don't,
Sam: I still don't believe right now, despite everything.
Sam: I don't believe that like, you know, Trump is actually like every day just explicitly
Sam: being like, oh, yeah, Putin's my boss and he pays me like on a monthly basis
Sam: a regular stipend to do what he wants.
Sam: You know, no, it's more complicated than that.
Sam: But this anyway, I just thought this it was interesting, this article coming out now in the mirror.
Sam: OK, let's take a break. and then one
Sam: last thing and i'm gonna like i said i'm gonna shift gears directly
Sam: or completely no politics
Sam: but instead a topic that bruce
Sam: requested that we talk about on the episode after and we just haven't so i think.
Sam: Well bruce was bruce took over it's just hemorrhoids no not not hemorrhoids
Sam: oh okay okay we'll talk about it after we get back here's another break It's a wiki of the day. Enjoy.
Sam: Okay, before the real topic, there have been trumpets.
Ivan: It's not hemorrhoids.
Sam: It's not hemorrhoids.
Ivan: But while we've been- Well, by the way, I was going to just say, we're not experts on it.
Sam: No. You know, it- I'm an expert on it.
Ivan: We could bring up the- I don't have them. I don't have them.
Ivan: I'm just saying I'm not an expert.
Sam: We could bring up the Wikipedia page and spend the next half hour talking about it.
Ivan: We could read it?
Sam: We could read it. We could discuss it. Like, read a paragraph, discuss our thoughts.
Ivan: You know um well.
Sam: Let's see uh h e hemorrhoid okay i i i could uh make a wiki of the day on.
Ivan: Yes there you go great uh you did well you had the four nations thing which
Ivan: i i you know uh hockey yeah did you watch i did watch a little bit i did not
Ivan: watch the whole thing because the schedule didn't work for me,
Ivan: but I did share some of the clips of the us getting booed at the anthem by the Canadians.
Ivan: And by the way, after they beat the U, because Donald Trump right now is 0-2
Ivan: and calling teams ahead of a game and having them lose the big game.
Ivan: He did that to Kansas City before they lost the Super Bowl.
Ivan: He did that to the U.S. team ahead of this, and now they are 0-2,
Ivan: so he has now been called the jinx.
Sam: Okay, so to continue, hemorrhoids, also known as piles, are vascular structures in the anal canal.
Sam: In their normal state, they are cushions that help with stool control.
Sam: They become a disease when swollen or inflamed.
Sam: The unqualified term hemorrhoid is often used to refer to the disease.
Sam: The signs and symptoms of hemorrhoids depend on the type present.
Sam: Internal hemorrhoids often result in painless, bright red rectal bleeding when defecating.
Sam: External hemorrhoids often result in pain and swelling in the area of the anus.
Sam: If bleeding occurs, it is usually darker.
Sam: Symptoms frequently get better after a few days. A skin tag may remain after
Sam: the healing of an external hemorrhoid.
Ivan: I think we've never used the word anus. I don't think we've ever used the word
Ivan: anus as often on this show.
Sam: I don't know why not. You know, we could do more with that.
Ivan: I guess.
Ivan: I take it that's not what Bruce asked. What did Bruce ask him?
Sam: No, Bruce specifically, the show that he co-hosted a few weeks back was the
Sam: day the plane and the helicopter crashed in D.C.
Sam: And he was like, I really want to hear Yvonne's thoughts on this. Now, since then.
Ivan: And then we had another.
Sam: Yeah, since then, we had that Learjet crash in Philly and we had this one in
Sam: Toronto that landed upside down.
Sam: Now and and then a host of other private plane crashes but private planes crash
Sam: all the time they've been so they've been they've been highlighted the last
Sam: couple weeks more often than normal right people are looking out for plane crashes
Sam: but frankly small private planes if you crash all the day if you're paying attention
Sam: there's probably two or three of them every week.
Ivan: Yes it is so you know it is such a common occurrence that private private plane crashes.
Sam: Oh there was a private aviation there was that other one that like some like
Sam: member of motley cruise plane or something crashed in arizona too but that's
Sam: also a private plane but it's also a private plane the the bigger private planes
Sam: crash a little bit less often than the small ones but the two big not that even.
Ivan: Not that much less often i mean it's look general aviation in general is way
Ivan: way way way way way way more dangerous than commercial aviation.
Sam: Okay that.
Ivan: That's just a fact. And yeah, I mean, I share occasionally some clips from this
Ivan: YouTuber that goes in detail and analyzes general aviation accidents on a regular basis.
Ivan: I'm using him because unfortunately, I used to watch another guy from the Airline
Ivan: Airplane Pilots Association, and he used to do that kind of analysis.
Ivan: Unfortunately, he died himself.
Sam: In a plane crash?
Ivan: In a plane crash, yes. On a general aviation plane crash himself,
Ivan: yes. He was, he was the guy that did all the safety videos for them for years. And he died.
Ivan: A couple of years ago. And so they have been doing some now at AOPA,
Ivan: but it's not the same guy that they had before. He wasn't as good.
Ivan: And there is this guy called one Brown, whose YouTube channel is called Blanco
Ivan: Lerio, who is a triple seven pilot.
Ivan: He also was, if I remember correctly, he was a accident investigator in the military. Okay.
Ivan: When he was in the, when he, because he flew when he flew in the military.
Ivan: And so he does a lot of this. So he covers a lot of these general aviation accidents.
Ivan: And so if you watch his channel and you just go to his YouTube,
Ivan: you will see how many he has covered over the last couple of years of these
Ivan: small general aviation accidents that happened just all the freaking time.
Ivan: But talking about the one in D.C. specifically.
Sam: Yeah, let's do the two commercial ones.
Ivan: Yeah, because that's why I'm like, just the general aviation ones are just, you know, forget it.
Ivan: Say that there's not a lot, there's not more of them. It's noise.
Ivan: It doesn't really. The two commercial ones are two accidents that happen with
Ivan: very different factors involved.
Ivan: You know, in D.C.
Sam: Let's do D.C. first.
Ivan: The issue in D.C. is that that airspace is very, very crowded.
Ivan: There is a helicopter, basically an air route that actually goes right just
Ivan: under where the airspace that leads to Runway 33 at National. Okay.
Ivan: And one of the things I have seen, it isn't uncommon for helicopter traffic to go around airports,
Ivan: to go fly either above it, because if you fly high enough above,
Ivan: it doesn't matter if you're flying straight above the airport.
Ivan: I mean, it doesn't really impact operations.
Ivan: Many times they will get clearance if they're going to cross at an altitude
Ivan: that may impact aviation. they'll get that.
Ivan: Now, in the case of the one in DC, they have this air route where they basically
Ivan: specify that military aircraft they can go through there as long as they stay
Ivan: under 200 feet. Problem is that,
Ivan: That, that's very difficult, especially in the type of aircraft they were operating
Ivan: and also with the equipment that they were using.
Sam: You're talking the helicopter.
Ivan: Yes, the helicopter, because the helicopter is the one that needs to stay clear
Ivan: of the commercial aircraft.
Ivan: Now, you're having a plane, it's coming in for a landing, it's a national to the main runway.
Ivan: They asked them to circle to runway 33. That happens normally because it was
Ivan: a spacing issue. If they came in, they may have to wind up doing a go around
Ivan: because the runway, I believe somebody was lining up to take off.
Ivan: They wanted to have them lined up so that way you could have that plane land.
Ivan: And then the other one took off and the traffic flow goes a lot faster.
Ivan: And it's very common for them to get requests to go around to that runway instead
Ivan: of landing on the one that they were set up for.
Ivan: They were just coming in for the landing.
Ivan: And look, the helicopter was flying through the airspace.
Ivan: They did not stay at the the altitude that they were supposed to be at they
Ivan: it's pretty clear that they misidentified the air traffic and a large part of that is they were told.
Sam: To look out for the plane visually and.
Ivan: They saw a wrong plane and they confirmed several times that they had the traffic
Ivan: in sight we have to traffic in sight but the problem was that they were doing
Ivan: this exercise using those damn night vision goggles in the city.
Ivan: And look, I don't understand why the hell they were.
Sam: Was it a specific training?
Ivan: It was training.
Sam: It was training on how to use the night vision goggles.
Ivan: They weren't doing a training on it. They were doing a check ride.
Ivan: Every once in a while, you have to do a ride to certify your proficiency.
Ivan: So this was one of those rides, okay, where they were doing that.
Ivan: But the reality is that those damn goggles have a lot of,
Ivan: They have a lot of drawbacks, okay? Number one, you're wearing them in an environment
Ivan: like a city that is so lit up.
Ivan: There's so much light that it starts washing out everything, okay? Number one.
Ivan: Number two, peripheral vision with those damn things is very limited.
Ivan: It really severely restricts your peripheral vision, okay?
Ivan: Number three, your depth perception gets fucked up with those things as well.
Ivan: So when you're looking at three airplanes that are up in the air and you're
Ivan: trying to pick which one it is, they 100% convinced that they were looking at
Ivan: this aircraft that was way further out.
Ivan: Well, it was the one that was like right there, but it was probably in a blind spot.
Ivan: This helicopter also has a lot of the windows aren't like these wide, expansive windows.
Ivan: They had a lot of blind spots in them.
Ivan: Yeah, it is an older helicopter. It had a lot of blind spots.
Ivan: And on top of that, this wasn't like the latest fucking version of this helicopter.
Ivan: They didn't have ADS-B. They weren't using it.
Ivan: At the altitude, they were in under 500 feet. There were some TCAS warnings.
Ivan: But unfortunately, TCAS, which is Traffic Collision and Avoidance System,
Ivan: usually at above over 1,000 feet, it will tell both aircraft,
Ivan: hey, go, hey, you know, turn left, turn right, go, go, you know, climb, descend.
Ivan: And so it will tell, and you follow the directions of the TCAS.
Ivan: Because the TCAS will talk to each other and they'll tell one plane to climb
Ivan: and the other one to descend. So that way they're not both going in the same way.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Under a thousand feet, you can't, TCAS is disabled. It will give you a warning that there's traffic.
Sam: I mean, fundamentally, the problem is you can't tell.
Ivan: You can't tell a plane to descend if they're already at 350 feet.
Ivan: What are you going to do? Where are they going?
Ivan: So that's the problem. And that helicopter, because it was one of the older
Ivan: helicopters, that one was a completely analog.
Ivan: Helicopter there's no no no fancy like
Ivan: altitude like you know something to hold
Ivan: altitude specifically at two feet with automatic they
Ivan: have none of that okay so look a hundred
Ivan: foot deviation flying by hand is
Ivan: not is not out of the ordinary now the
Ivan: one thing is that and they they actually right now
Ivan: finally stopped helicopter traffic from
Ivan: going through there there had been a
Ivan: history of close calls on that route
Ivan: with the helicopters and the damn planes coming way too close there have been
Ivan: hundreds of them okay of close encounters there that was just a stupid route
Ivan: to be flying it was it was unfortunately flown at night it was flown with the
Ivan: damn night vision goggles.
Ivan: You know, so you had a whole bunch of hindrances. It was a helicopter that wasn't
Ivan: the latest, greatest, most sophisticated one.
Ivan: And another thing is just a question of, you know, just bad luck of timing.
Ivan: I mean, they just literally just came together at that exact same moment that
Ivan: they crossed through there.
Ivan: And probably a hundred other times, you know, they don't exactly.
Sam: It would just be another entry on the list of close calls.
Ivan: Close calls. Yep. But this time they were right there at the exact time at the
Ivan: exact moment and they hit and the helicopter hit them and and the guys on the
Ivan: American Airlines flight didn't even have a chance of react.
Ivan: They had they had no they didn't know what the fuck happened.
Ivan: They just had no they they now.
Sam: Although I think the if I remember right the the the the cockpit recorder did.
Ivan: There was a warning.
Sam: They knew there was traffic. They knew like half a second in advance or something.
Ivan: But no, no, but they knew that. But listen, they knew there was traffic.
Sam: Right. But I mean, specifically, like, correct me if I'm wrong.
Sam: I thought the data showed that they didn't have enough.
Ivan: They got a TCAS warning.
Sam: They had enough time to try to react. They tried to actually change the plane's
Sam: attitude, but it was too late. They couldn't do it.
Ivan: It was too late. Yeah. Well, it wasn't just, it was just not enough time.
Ivan: But they got a TCAS warning. But the problem is that it was one of those TCAS warnings.
Sam: It doesn't tell you what to do.
Ivan: Exactly. And, you know, it's not like airline pilots expect that on final,
Ivan: you know, I, you, you prepare for so many things.
Ivan: You're not, you're not expecting another airplane to hit you when you're like
Ivan: at 350 feet about the land.
Ivan: That's not what you're, you're at that point. You're just, you know,
Ivan: you're cruising, you're comfy, you're coming in now. Yeah, we're going to land.
Ivan: No problem. Boom, boom, boom.
Sam: Now you, you, before moving on to Toronto, you met, you mentioned that you know,
Sam: being off by a hundred feet when you're doing it manually is,
Sam: uh, is not uncommon, is not uncommon, but would you say this still is probably,
Sam: is there, are they going to pin this on pilot error of the helicopter in the
Sam: end or is there, or there's systematic things here that.
Ivan: Well, there is a systematic issue with the fact that, I mean,
Ivan: that corridor, that was just way too narrow a margin of clearance between that
Ivan: route for the helicopters.
Sam: But they're still going to conclude the pilot fucked up.
Ivan: Yeah, they're going to conclude the pilot fucked up because they were supposed
Ivan: to be at 200 feet or under and they were over 100 feet above.
Ivan: But what I'm saying is that,
Ivan: Pilots committing errors, 100 plus minus feet on occasion, okay,
Ivan: flying manually is typical. It happens, okay?
Ivan: You know, that's not, you know, that isn't like, that is, you know,
Ivan: it is something that you plan for, basically, that, you know,
Ivan: you're going in an altitude and you're going at 2,000 feet, 3,000 feet.
Ivan: I mean, there's a reason why we keep aircraft a thousand foot separation, okay?
Ivan: Minimum separation flying
Ivan: a cruise is a thousand feet and it's
Ivan: there for a reason because if you did a hundred feet you know look
Ivan: planes would be crashing into each other regularly okay that's
Ivan: just you know that's why it's a thousand feet a thousand feet is good enough
Ivan: that any pilot being plus or minus a hundred feet whatever because they fucked
Ivan: I mean because there's so many reasons you could have a hundred feet deviation
Ivan: hell you forgot to change your barometric pressure on the altimeter that'll
Ivan: fuck you up by a hundred feet
Ivan: There's been so many crashes that have been predicated on a mistake that has been that,
Ivan: you know, hey, you had a minimum descent altitude, okay, that you had to be over.
Ivan: They crossed it and they had their, this is an accident, I remember,
Ivan: and they had set the barometric pressure incorrectly.
Ivan: And so when they did so, you take that they went below, but then you add the
Ivan: error from the altitude, boom, they crashed. And so it's, you know,
Ivan: that's why you keep a thousand feet.
Ivan: That separation was that they had on that route made no sense.
Ivan: And also error on the part of them.
Ivan: I keep saying there is no justification for doing that kind of night vision training.
Sam: Certification, whatever it was.
Ivan: Or, you know, exactly on that route at that location.
Ivan: You're not flying into a fucking city with night vision goggles for the most part,
Ivan: that is a possible military mission if the power is not cut off you're going
Ivan: into a city where power has been cut off and you use night vision goggles sure,
Ivan: but a city that is lit up when I look the one time I got fucking lost flying,
Ivan: was flying at night with all the damn city lights over Indianapolis, okay?
Ivan: Me and my instructor, we were heading to Indianapolis International Airport,
Ivan: and with the damn city lights, we got confused where the fuck we were, okay?
Ivan: And it got to a point, it was bad, it was so bad. Look, we stayed at,
Ivan: now we stayed at altitude.
Ivan: We stayed at 2,000, 3,000 feet. Because we're like, I can't see this fucking
Ivan: airport. Where the fuck is this airport?
Ivan: And embarrassingly enough, we got on the radio and called the tower and said,
Ivan: Hey, can you tell us where the hell we are?
Ivan: And all of a sudden we get told you're flying right over the airfield.
Sam: You couldn't see it because it was under you.
Ivan: Yes. But that's how bad we misjudged it, that it got lost in the city lights
Ivan: so bad that we approached it and flew over it and we couldn't make it out.
Ivan: And so that's the reason why you don't fucking use those damn night vision goggles
Ivan: when what they will do with all that lights is wash out everything.
Ivan: Looking at a damn city.
Sam: I want to move on to Toronto real quick before we wrap up the show.
Sam: But first, a public service announcement. This is important.
Sam: And you can take this either as a hint of where you want to go look or as a
Sam: hint of something to avoid based on your own personal preferences.
Sam: Okay? And I just want to say that that Wikipedia page I was reading about hemorrhoids
Sam: has quite a few close-up pictures of anuses with hemorrhoids.
Sam: So, again, depending on your personal preferences.
Ivan: Okay, so you probably don't want to look it up at work.
Sam: Well, probably not at work, but depending on your personal preferences, maybe this is like.
Ivan: You're not going to go there at all.
Sam: Well, but maybe there's some people who are like, oh, wow, I want to go investigate that resource.
Sam: Or perhaps you'll want to avoid it.
Ivan: You're giving a warning.
Sam: I am giving. yeah well this is.
Ivan: A content warning.
Sam: Well no no it's it's only a warning for the people who don't want to see it
Sam: that's what i'm saying yeah for the people who do want to see it it's advice
Sam: you know it is a nice place you can go see if you want this kind of content oh.
Ivan: God jesus christ okay i'm like that was a mistake.
Sam: I i was gonna say like personally i'm on the i would have preferred if i had
Sam: not scrolled down on that page i.
Ivan: Yeah i yeah god okay yeah let's not scroll down.
Sam: On that page again ever okay vaude
Sam: with that out of the way what happened in toronto oh and by the way i should
Sam: say right up front important difference between these two crashes in dc everybody
Sam: everyone died in toronto everyone lived yes remarkably but everyone lived some
Sam: some significant injuries but like everyone lived.
Ivan: So toronto was a delta flight that
Ivan: was arriving at toronto international airport and it
Ivan: was in a stabilized approach all the way up until right before landing okay
Ivan: or it seemed like it was in a completely stable approach you you look at the
Ivan: data they weren't like descending too hard or so forth they seem to be on the
Ivan: glide They seem to be going there. The winds were gusty. Okay.
Ivan: Nothing that a commercial airline pilot doesn't regularly see.
Ivan: But what the data showed, what seemed to happen near the end,
Ivan: is that near the end, the descent rate accelerated right as it was about to
Ivan: land. And you didn't see a flare on the plane. So basically a flare.
Ivan: OK, so as you're landing, you usually kind of like in a little bit of a on a
Ivan: small plane, you're kind of at a down nose approach. But you keep your nose down on the plane.
Ivan: You slow down to your approach speed. You usually approach about 130, 150 knots.
Ivan: You're going, you got your flaps extended.
Ivan: And so you're slowing down. The plane is coming down gently,
Ivan: gently, gently about to land. And just like as you're around 50 feet,
Ivan: all of a sudden you actually pull the nose up a little bit to slow down the
Ivan: rate of descent. So you come down nice and gently.
Ivan: Okay. All right. That's basically what you're doing. So this airplane, as it arrived.
Sam: And by the way, if you've played with a flight simulator of any kind on your
Sam: computer or your console or whatever, you yeah that's part of what you do if
Sam: you want a successful landing but.
Ivan: Most people fail on the simulator because most people that are just playing
Ivan: with it just playing on it usually just slam the damn planes on the runway.
Sam: Well yeah most people are playing like and look to get that right and the planes.
Ivan: Can take a big hit by the way.
Sam: Because I've slammed.
Ivan: The plane on the runway.
Sam: Accidentally and if you're playing in the simulator like that like landing is
Sam: a lot harder than taking off way harder It is a lot harder than flying.
Ivan: Any idiot could do the takeoff. Landing is where you make your money.
Sam: And even flying straight and level is pretty easy, too.
Ivan: It's pretty damn easy, too. Yes.
Sam: And on the flight simulators, you can learn how to do various stunts and survive.
Sam: And like, you know, but landing is hard.
Ivan: Landing right is hard.
Sam: Like, I mean, I've played with flight simulators for years and years and years,
Sam: not every day or anything. and I can land successfully, but still probably like
Sam: a significant portion of my attempts fail.
Ivan: And it probably, if it were a real plane that you were landing,
Ivan: most of the people on the plane would be coming off the plane quite angry.
Sam: Yes, yes. If they came off the plane alive.
Ivan: If they came off the plane alive, yes.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Okay. So it seemed like, as I was mentioning, you know, the plane is coming in for its landing.
Ivan: Approach speed looks fine. They were configured for a landing.
Ivan: But right as they neared, like, less than 100 feet, the sink rate accelerated, okay?
Ivan: And so speculation has been that because you're looking at the speed that they were approaching at,
Ivan: because of the strong gusts, that maybe they hadn't added enough extra speed
Ivan: to compensate for the fact that because the winds are gusty,
Ivan: all of a sudden, the wind could slow down.
Ivan: And if the wind slows down all of a sudden at the wrong moment and you had not
Ivan: added enough extra thrust.
Ivan: The plane will just drop like a rock, okay? And that's what it seemed like happened.
Ivan: All of a sudden, near the end of the approach, looking at the speed,
Ivan: the speed seemed like it was more like a speed for a normal approach.
Ivan: And the plane all of a sudden came down very, very quickly and well before the normal landing point.
Ivan: And so when the plane came down super quickly,
Ivan: it hit so hard it broke off
Ivan: the right wing and what
Ivan: happened is that the plane cartwheeled because
Ivan: well the left wing was still intact so it was generating lift so it just went
Ivan: and as the plane slid forward that lift that plane that wing still had lift
Ivan: and it flipped the damn plane over just as it was landing fortunately because
Ivan: it was at landing and because they were in a controlled approach,
Ivan: even though they lost a wig and even though the plane flipped over,
Ivan: you know, thankfully nobody, you know, most, most of the people were able to
Ivan: get on off the plane uninjured.
Ivan: Yeah. There are some that had some more severe injuries.
Sam: But 18 that ended up in the hospital. And I think like two of them were fairly
Sam: critical, but you know, but even they are expected to.
Ivan: Recover everyone so everyone lived
Ivan: so so yeah i mean i just think that
Ivan: it it looks like i mean from the first stuff
Ivan: that i've seen it may just be that they they misjudged how much speed they needed
Ivan: to add you know because of the strong gusts that there were and there could
Ivan: have been just the wind you know as the wind sometimes does especially in a
Ivan: gusty situation the gust came in picked them up real quick, and then all of a sudden,
Ivan: the wind just died down, and they didn't have enough extra speed on it,
Ivan: and the plane just hit the runway hard.
Ivan: But, well, hard, but look, way harder than normal. I mean, because,
Ivan: look, hard landings happen to everybody.
Ivan: I mean, I've been in commercial planes doing hard landings quite a lot of times.
Ivan: I will say, especially when I was learning to land a plane, believe me,
Ivan: almost every early plane was a hard landing. Every landing was a hard landing.
Ivan: I mean, my instructor was like, at one point, ow!
Ivan: How many of these are we doing? Can you stop just dropping us like a rock on the runway?
Ivan: So it took a while to learn not to do that, okay? You know? So,
Ivan: yeah, you know, hard landings happen.
Ivan: But this, all it just seems, it was just a landing that was way harder than normal.
Ivan: And one of the things that, obviously, there's not enough information yet,
Ivan: and we'll see if more information comes up.
Ivan: Whether there was prior damage or repair or something that happened that maybe
Ivan: led to that wing being weaker than it normally would have been.
Ivan: Because there was a recent accident that actually happened with a private plane,
Ivan: I will say, but that came to mind when we were doing this, where it was a private
Ivan: plane that landed very hard and the landing gear on one side failed.
Ivan: OK, and they wound up crashing into another plane that was that was on the tarmac,
Ivan: unfortunately, and killed those people.
Ivan: And when they were going through the records of the aircraft.
Ivan: They had found that apparently they had recently had a repair on that on that
Ivan: on that landing gear that failed on landing.
Ivan: So so obviously people are going to
Ivan: be looking at at that information to see
Ivan: whether there was something in the in the history of
Ivan: the repairs of the plane i mean having had
Ivan: repairs that that unfortunately
Ivan: later on came to cause a crash is unfortunately
Ivan: something that does happen it doesn't happen very often but but it it unfortunately
Ivan: is something that has happened in the past so that is something that they will
Ivan: look at or it may have just been that they'd really really hit the runway that
Ivan: damn hard at that moment but but like i said the from the data that we've got.
Ivan: Adsb data is the same as the flight recorder data once they get the they don't
Ivan: have that yet once they have that that data pulled up and then we'll look at
Ivan: that of course we don't we never even talked about the jeju air crash in in
Ivan: in south korea like that that happened a while back where that one.
Ivan: Well, we don't know what the hell happened on that one, by the way.
Ivan: This is one of those things.
Ivan: There's a lot of also commercial airline crashes outside North America.
Ivan: North America is one where we just haven't had barely any.
Ivan: But in the rest of the world, I mean, you've got a lot of them too,
Ivan: okay? Far more than in the U.S.
Ivan: And, you know, we have so...
Ivan: There are different requirements for airline pilots in the U.S.
Ivan: There's also a, the feed of Air Force pilots,
Ivan: how many are ex-military pilots that turn into commercial pilots is huge in the U.S., okay?
Ivan: And the training standards for our military are superb,
Ivan: okay, for, you know, for pilots, OK, our our military pilots are I can safely
Ivan: argue they are the best trained there. They are the best in the world.
Ivan: And so you get those guys that come off of doing that and, you know,
Ivan: and go straight into commercial aviation that you've got, you know,
Ivan: the level of the average level of pilot. And by the way, the U.S.
Ivan: Also has and has had for many years, due to some earlier accidents,
Ivan: much higher requirements for minimum flight hours for anybody flying commercial.
Ivan: In the rest of the world, they will put pilots, a lot of pilots with 500 hours
Ivan: into a co-pilot seat or whatever, you know, in order for them to pick up hours. In the U.S.
Ivan: Many years ago, because of certain incidents that happened, the minimum got
Ivan: raised to like 1,500 hours, if I remember correctly. It's over 1,000.
Ivan: And that is a much, much, you know, that is a much higher threshold than the rest of the world has.
Ivan: Some have argued that that's created a pilot shortage. OK,
Ivan: but at the same time, I truly believe that a big reason why our commercial aviation
Ivan: is that much safer is because that is the level of experience that we demand from anybody behind a,
Ivan: you know, flying a commercial airline.
Sam: Do we have better maintenance requirements as well?
Ivan: And the maintenance requirements also. We have the maintenance systems,
Ivan: requirements, audits, everything. You know, it's just, yeah.
Sam: Yvonne, just to be clear, we're getting regulations.
Ivan: Yeah, amazingly enough, huh? Can you believe that?
Sam: Oh, well, we're going to get rid of all those anyway.
Ivan: Yeah, we'll get rid of all of those and then we're fine.
Sam: And we're firing half of all the people who work in those areas anyway.
Sam: So NTSB, FAA, we don't need those things.
Ivan: Yeah, we don't need that shit.
Sam: Sorry to distract with the political stuff.
Ivan: Yeah, we don't need any of that shit. Regulations. Regulations!
Sam: Any other plane crashes you want to review real quick before we wrap this sucker up?
Ivan: I'll tell you this. If you guys want to go see a hard landing that didn't cause it a crash, okay?
Ivan: In the Blanco Area Channel, there is one from April 2023.
Ivan: There is a really cool hard landing of a Cargo Lux.
Ivan: If you look up Cargo Lux 747-400 Cablamo. Okay.
Ivan: There is. it's a 747-8 the latest one that has a really,
Ivan: hard fucked up landing that they wind up going around afterwards but it's one
Ivan: of those videos where you're like you want to see a hard landing that's why
Ivan: I'm still wondering if was there some kind of repair on that plane that failed
Ivan: because you look at how hard that plane landed and it still was able to go around,
Ivan: you're like wow so how come this one couldn't Resist that one. So.
Sam: Okay. Well, let's wrap this up. Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there. Find our archives.
Sam: Find all the ways to contact us. As I said,
Sam: if you have any career tips for me, you can contact me through the things on
Sam: Curmudgeons-corner, curmudgeons-corner.com, or go to ablesmay.com slash resume.
Sam: It has some contact info too.
Sam: But yeah all the contact info all
Sam: the archives transcripts link to
Sam: our youtube i still haven't linked to tiktok it tiktok
Sam: is still out there but i i i'm holding off and i'm still posting highlights
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Sam: They still have that 90 day deadline. So we'll see what happens then. I don't know.
Sam: I basically, I'm just lazy. I don't want to add that.
Sam: But you know, and but yeah, find all the links to everything,
Sam: including our Patreon, where you can give us money at various levels.
Sam: We will mention you on the show, we will send you a postcard.
Sam: I still have not sent the postcards.
Sam: We'll send you a mug. I still have not sent the mug.
Sam: Sorry, folks who I owe those things to, I will eventually, I've been kind of busy and yeah.
Sam: And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our
Sam: curmudgeons corner slack where Yvonne and I, and a bunch of listeners are chatting
Sam: throughout the week, sharing links, all that kind of fun stuff.
Sam: The more the merrier, please.
Sam: If you're listening, ask to join. We would love to have you there.
Sam: Oh, and tell all your friends about the show.
Sam: Get more people listening, damn it. And follow us on TikTok and YouTube and all that stuff.
Ivan: And guys that can donate a million dollars for Patreon. Yeah, they will.
Sam: Please, please. It doesn't even have to be a million dollars a month.
Ivan: It can be $500,000.
Sam: Okay. So Yvonne, any highlights from the Slack this week that will make people
Sam: really, really want to join us there?
Ivan: Any highlights from the Slacker Dome? Let's see. What do we got here?
Ivan: Um, let me see. Let me see.
Sam: You're making it sound like this week Slack was a real loser.
Ivan: There are things, just I'm not, you know, there's a lot of things. Well, the asteroid.
Sam: Ah, yes, the asteroid.
Ivan: So, Justin, NASA says that there's now a 3.1% chance an asteroid will hit Earth
Ivan: in 2032, up from 2.6% yesterday.
Ivan: That is the highest risk assessment an asteroid has ever received,
Ivan: surpassing 2.7% in 2004. That's not an Earth killer.
Sam: Unfortunately, there's also an update. More recently, since I shared that,
Sam: the odds have dropped to less than half a percent.
Sam: But apparently, the odds are increasing of it hitting the moon. instead.
Ivan: Oh, what the fuck?
Sam: Now, if this thing does hit, I think it's like a quarter of a percent now or something like that.
Ivan: But it's not a, this one's not an earth killer.
Sam: No, it is. It is a, it is a city killer potentially, but even then they,
Sam: they actually, they actually were, they're not sure if it'll actually hit the
Sam: planet at all or not, but apparently they have a good, pretty good idea.
Sam: If it hits the planet, where it would hit the planet.
Sam: It, it's a, it's a path that stretches from, from the west coast of South America
Sam: up through the Atlantic Ocean across the Middle East and into India.
Sam: And and and northern africa as well i forgot to mention northern africa on the
Sam: way to the middle east that that's the path that it could hit so even if it
Sam: did hit there's a significant chance of ocean and if it missed the ocean there's
Sam: a significant chance of like the middle of the sahara desert or other most of the earth is most.
Ivan: Of the earth is water i mean that's the reality that's why you know even though
Ivan: we've gotten hit by these things before the reality is that most the damn earth is war.
Sam: Yes. So, well, and most of the land is not cities either.
Ivan: It's not city.
Sam: Most of the land is land. Most of the and. Most of the land is relatively unpopulated
Sam: as well because human populations.
Ivan: The bland. The clustered shavings. Well, you know, we had that one that hit
Ivan: like Siberia, right? Yeah.
Sam: Well, we, the two most famous ones were one in the early 1900s.
Sam: There was the big one in Siberia that was, you know, really large,
Sam: it was felt around the world essentially, but then there was an expedition to
Sam: go find it and found hundreds of square miles of flattened trees and such.
Sam: And then there was the one from just a few years ago that was a big fireball
Sam: that impacted in Russia.
Sam: And there were lots of broken windows and a few injured people, but no one killed.
Sam: So they happened occasionally, But this was the biggest risk on that risk scale
Sam: that has been determined so far since they've created it. And we've been doing
Sam: good asteroid tracking.
Sam: But it now looks like the odds of it hitting the Earth are dropping.
Sam: The odds of it hitting the moon are increasing. Last I heard,
Sam: it was like 1% chance of hitting the moon.
Ivan: So when is Elon setting up his moon colony?
Sam: And this was like 2032 or something. So not that far in the future when this
Sam: thing was going to hit. But it's still a much bigger chance that it'll miss
Sam: both the Earth and the Moon.
Sam: But, you know.
Ivan: So so when is Elon setting up his moon colony so we can just he.
Sam: Elon is very much against doing anything with the moon. He wants to go straight to Mars.
Sam: He's only agreeing to, like, do some moon stuff because NASA is paying him to.
Sam: But he wants to just go to Mars.
Sam: But don't worry, things hit Mars all the time, too.
Ivan: That's true. I really would like to accelerate his launch to Mars.
Sam: His personal launch to Mars.
Ivan: Correct. Yes.
Sam: He hasn't ever written in his own rockets.
Ivan: Now, I know this week, because he was all talking so much smack about the ISS
Ivan: and whatever, Mark Kelly, the astronaut, went on X and said, Listen, you coward.
Ivan: What are you getting on one of your rockets, you freaking coward? This is what we get.
Sam: He should have been in that car they launched.
Ivan: Yes. That would have been great. Apparently, it's about to crash back into Earth soon.
Sam: No, it's not. That was also... It was identified as a list of potential Earth-crossings.
Sam: Asteroids, but then they determined it was a car, but it doesn't have a...
Ivan: No, but I thought that they said that the orbit was also decaying.
Sam: It was potential Earth crossing, but it does not. It was ruled out.
Sam: It's not going to hit the Earth anytime soon.
Ivan: No, it won't.
Sam: It's one of those where every few years it'll come somewhat close to the Earth,
Sam: and maybe eventually it'll hit the Earth.
Sam: But even if it did, it's small enough it would just burn up and re-entry.
Sam: Okay, we are done here. Thanks everybody for joining us for yet another curmudgeon's
Sam: corner as usual have fun stay safe blah blah blah tell your friends your friends
Sam: already you know yeah goodbye bye,
Sam: Okay, we're out. I'm hitting stop.
Ivan: We're out. Stop.