Sam: Okay, we're all set. Shall we just jump in?
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Is that about right?
Ivan: What about right? Wrong.
Sam: I was making the noises. Okay, here we go. Let's start.
Sam: Welcome welcome welcome
Sam: welcome welcome yeah what
Sam: welcome to curmudgeon's corner for i'm
Sam: so confused well welcome to a
Sam: new episode of curmudgeon's corner for saturday march 1st 2025 it is just after
Sam: 3 utc as we're starting to record i am sam mentor yvonne boazier hello yvonne
Sam: uh hi you sound so enthused and so energetic uh,
Sam: yeah that's about right yeah um i've I am also tired. I've had a long week.
Ivan: I had a very long week with work. Things and things didn't exactly pan out as
Ivan: I expected during that. That sucks.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Okay. Yes. You know, the steady stream of like amazing news.
Sam: Oh yes.
Ivan: Where, you know, I, it's Sam. I mean, it's so refreshing.
Ivan: You know, this week I heard all these coherent plans about how we're tackling
Ivan: inflation and we're going to get the economy,
Ivan: you know, growing, you know,
Ivan: faster and helping the average American, you know, feel better economically.
Ivan: And we are going to be a leader and we are going to be a leader,
Ivan: around the world and peace and prosperity and democracy.
Ivan: It's just, I mean, it's just so refreshing, Sam.
Ivan: I mean, every day we've got a leadership that is working for every American
Ivan: so hard, you know, it's refreshing, right?
Sam: Yes. Right.
Ivan: Or, okay. Did that not happen?
Sam: No, that, that, that did not happen. And we will talk more about newsy stuff in a minute.
Sam: As usual, our agenda is we spend time, you know, what was the phrase that our
Sam: listener Pete said? Chewing the fat?
Ivan: Chewing the fat, yes. Was that it? Yes, chewing the fat.
Sam: So we will chew some fat for a while, Yvonne and I, on non-newsy topics.
Sam: And then we will take a break.
Sam: And then we'll come back with newsy stuff. And as Yvonne said,
Sam: there's been plenty of it.
Ivan: So what are you talking about? It's been slow news cycle.
Ivan: It's just boring stuff.
Ivan: We got a whole bunch of policy wonks out there really just, you know,
Ivan: working really hard at the details of governing and absolutely prices and interest rates.
Ivan: And they're, they're really, you know, going out there and really trying to
Ivan: figure out how to help the average American very hard, you know,
Ivan: you know, it's, it's, it's, it's refreshing, Sam. I feel refreshed.
Sam: Sparkly. Sparkly.
Ivan: Tingling even.
Sam: Oh, tingling again. Okay.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You know, that's good.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: So, okay. What's, what's your non-newsy thing? I will do another movie later, but you can start.
Ivan: What's my non-newsy thing? What the hell is my non-newsy thing?
Sam: Or at least it could be something you read in the news that just isn't like
Sam: the sort of serious political stuff, too.
Sam: That works, you know, it doesn't have to be like, oh, you went to the store
Sam: and had this exciting experience at the store or something or your latest travel escapades.
Sam: It doesn't have to be that kind of stuff. It can be.
Ivan: My latest travel escapades.
Sam: My travel has gotten extremely boring. Oh, OK.
Ivan: No, no, no. My travel has gotten extremely boring. well just going back and.
Sam: Forth to puerto rico.
Ivan: That's all i'm doing yes it's all back and forth,
Ivan: basically at this point it's turned into that i keep i i've even gotten to the
Ivan: point where they rented me the same rental car twice um like the exact same
Ivan: car not like the exact same car yes not.
Sam: Not just like the.
Ivan: Same not the same model i got the exact same car i'd
Ivan: got like five six weeks earlier i'm like oh i i
Ivan: got this car already you know
Ivan: i what i i've
Ivan: what have i what have i done i i i i oh well i did mention this a few weeks
Ivan: back that i was going to go and do this car thing but oh yes.
Sam: Yes yes that you you got to like drive some fast car in.
Ivan: Our race truck. Yeah.
Sam: Okay, that's worth talking about. Tell us about it. Did you crash? Did you die?
Ivan: I did not crash or die. You know, I will say, I had read some reviews online,
Ivan: and people online were saying that this was kind of lame.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And I will admit that that tempered my expectations, okay?
Ivan: So I had some low expectations coming in.
Ivan: So I got there. You know, the first thing that they do is they do this session where they explain how,
Ivan: show you how on a, on a, you check in first, they give you these things,
Ivan: then they, they, they have like half minute, half minute, half an hour,
Ivan: 40, you know, at least half an hour session where they explain the safety rules.
Ivan: They explain you're going to be riding with an instructor. You're not riding in the car by yourself.
Ivan: And they, they, you know, what, how you need to follow their instructions and
Ivan: so forth and so on as you do that,
Ivan: and you know so that's this is pretty well organized then the thing is that,
Ivan: I first did and I wound up doing this.
Ivan: Is unplanned but it's the way it turned out I didn't go straight into the race
Ivan: car itself there was first a ride along okay on some other car,
Ivan: okay, that you rode along.
Ivan: And I will say that was not a bad idea because one of the things that,
Ivan: as I've raced tracks, it's very hard to just arrive at a track that you've never
Ivan: raced in and just drive it flat out.
Ivan: And, you know, any driver, look, good race car drivers, they don't just show
Ivan: up at a track, especially a new one that they're unfamiliar with and just go
Ivan: out there and lay a mega fast lap.
Sam: Especially if it's not like the standardized shapes too, right?
Ivan: I mean, even then you have to look. It's not like an oval. Still,
Ivan: you have to learn it. Now, I mean, it's got all these turns and twists.
Ivan: It's not an oval. It's a course.
Ivan: And it has a lot of twists and turns and straights and whatever.
Ivan: You have to know how those are and so forth.
Ivan: They've laid it out that it's a decent racetrack. racetrack itself, okay?
Ivan: And so, you know, anybody, I mean, if you watch like.
Ivan: Any racing you will see that that they will do practice
Ivan: so they go
Ivan: out there so so all right so i got to do this
Ivan: uh first little like go
Ivan: jaunt around the track in in a sedan that is
Ivan: a very fast sedan where they got to show me how the
Ivan: track like went around okay and this
Ivan: was supposed to be with my son in the car
Ivan: but oh okay my son decided that
Ivan: he wanted to sleep um okay the
Ivan: only time that i found for this was quite early on a
Ivan: saturday and he decided he preferred to sleep i when i went to his room to try
Ivan: to get him up he basically took his pillow put it on top of his head and just
Ivan: go away i'm like okay don't worry about it's fine well i got there and they
Ivan: did change it around so So I didn't get like,
Ivan: I didn't like that money wasn't lost.
Ivan: They kind of like repackaged it and some other things. And I got a video because
Ivan: I didn't buy the video, but the video and stuff, whatever.
Ivan: I'm like, oh, okay. All right. So I'd some, and some other extra little extra
Ivan: thing. So I'm like, okay, well this works. Okay.
Ivan: And so I did that, that around the track. And then, then after you did that,
Ivan: then they put you into the, into the, into the.
Ivan: You you chose you had a few choices i chose
Ivan: an italian car specifically because i
Ivan: i had never i i've never driven an italian supercar
Ivan: right so that was like the thing and so then we you know with the instructor
Ivan: that talked about a little bit we went out and we started doing laps and it
Ivan: was about The whole thing itself Was about less than 15 minutes Okay Hmm,
Ivan: It's relatively short, but I.
Sam: Think your orientation was longer than the actual race.
Ivan: Yes. And that's fine. Okay. That's not for specifically what you're doing out there.
Ivan: I thought that the amount of time on the track was perfectly fine. Okay.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I've done like quite a lot more of that gets exhausting at the track. Okay.
Ivan: So I will say yeah it
Ivan: was the amount of time was done some people
Ivan: said no it's not a lot I thought it was perfectly fine because you did get to
Ivan: do enough high speed driving because the way that they structure it they've
Ivan: planned it out enough with the instructors that you're able to get up to,
Ivan: speed real quick okay And they've also built a lot of safety margin into it.
Ivan: So anybody who is a novice is, is not going to wind up into a wall or off the track.
Ivan: By the way, one of the things that the orientation, they talked about all the
Ivan: fees that you would incur if you did that. Okay.
Sam: All right. Yes.
Ivan: That was a very important thing, you know, about all the fees that you would incur.
Ivan: If you, if you go off the track, it's $500.
Ivan: Well, you had insurance, but there were like these deductibles that you would
Ivan: incur before you get up to the insurers to the damage part.
Ivan: So basically try to discourage anybody from just being a cowboy out there.
Ivan: And they built a lot of margin so people wouldn't wind up into a wall.
Ivan: Because one of the things is.
Sam: I mean, there's good reasons to not want that.
Ivan: There's excellent reasons. There's totally excellent reasons.
Ivan: One thing I was talking with the instructor is like, well, this isn't a racing
Ivan: school. And he's totally right. Because at a racing school, we basically,
Ivan: we would go as far, as far as we can with our throttle down on the track.
Ivan: And then slam the brakes as late as possible.
Ivan: We did not do that, okay? We did get a good long way, but we lifted off the
Ivan: gas, which in racing you don't do.
Ivan: You don't lift off. You go, you're going with a pedal to the floorboard and you slam the brakes.
Ivan: But over here, we did lift off and we braked early, okay?
Ivan: Earlier than normally you had. And they had color-coded cones to show you,
Ivan: okay, this is liftoff here, this color cone, this other color cone means braking
Ivan: and so forth. And you went around.
Ivan: And look, the reality is that these cars are really fast.
Ivan: You know, I was able to, in like a blink of an eye, get this thing over 120 miles an hour.
Ivan: Okay. It really did not take very long to do that.
Ivan: So, so you were able to get up to quite a lot of speed. Okay.
Ivan: Especially if you were aggressive with the throttle, he did explain to me how,
Ivan: you know, about the throttle, whatever I, because a lot of these throttles of
Ivan: these cars, if you don't press them all the way down. Okay.
Ivan: They won't go to, they won't, they won't really go to full speed.
Ivan: You have to really like, you have to really like smash it all the way down.
Ivan: Okay. It's not just like pull it all the way kind of down or whatever.
Ivan: You have to really hit the floorboard because it will when you do that,
Ivan: it will make it will it will downshift these cars. They didn't want you shifting either.
Ivan: Now, the one thing is that in the past, obviously, you used like a manual five
Ivan: seat manual. Look, this was meant for novices, no manual cars.
Ivan: OK, and the reality is that now these super
Ivan: high performance automatic transmissions that
Ivan: they've got for this kind of car shift faster
Ivan: than you know it used to be a manual was faster than
Ivan: the automatic now forget it no these cars are faster
Ivan: than anything that you could do okay they will upshift downshift
Ivan: they'll do all that for you it's really just you know you're you're not worrying
Ivan: about shifting for the most part you could do it and i and i would see that
Ivan: how i would be if i was really racing i would but but it was perfectly fine
Ivan: but the one thing that happens is When you press the pedal all the way down.
Ivan: These throttles are now electronic, so it will unleash more power.
Ivan: While at the same time, it signals to the transmission to downshift. Okay?
Ivan: So we'll do both of those things by just smashing the gas. And so the cars got up to speed.
Ivan: It was fun. It was a lot of fun.
Ivan: I i will say i i got a lot more enjoyment out of it than i thought that i would
Ivan: uh i would recommend it to anybody that wants to go and like really give the proper plug.
Sam: Where did you go.
Ivan: It's called oh god what the heck i gotta get the name of of of this place so.
Sam: Like other people were sort of saying it wasn't that good you liked it.
Ivan: Yeah yeah it's called the extreme w you the extreme experience.com okay and
Ivan: extreme x-t-r-e god x-t-r-e-m-e,
Ivan: experience.com so you know so
Ivan: extreme experience so it's
Ivan: it's it's it starts with both starts with
Ivan: an x instead of with an e oh of course of course so um yeah and the thing is
Ivan: that they do it around the country they actually have all these trucks where
Ivan: they bring all the equipment and everything to the play to a different city
Ivan: different places they do that and you know look like i've said i Look,
Ivan: I am one that is worried about the environment.
Ivan: I don't plan on buying a car like this again.
Sam: Well, how good would that car
Sam: be in daily driving, Yvonne? Could you go to the grocery store with it?
Ivan: Actually, here is the thing about these new modern hypercars.
Ivan: They are actually pretty decent now at driving around slow.
Ivan: Okay? Now, could you put a lot of groceries in them? Not particularly, but you drive to work.
Ivan: It does drive. It does have like a this is the crazy thing they've done these cars.
Ivan: Now I could I could have shifted it to the soft comfort mode and it's just pretty
Ivan: puttying around like like a normal car. No big deal.
Ivan: And I did drive a little bit like that because once you start,
Ivan: you don't first go out like that. You're just driving around slowly or whatever.
Ivan: And I'm like, oh, this is just, you know, like whatever. It's like just any normal car.
Ivan: Now, it used to be that these cars before now, they were just, I mean,
Ivan: doing that was an ordeal, but, but you could, but you, you could manage that if you want, but I,
Ivan: but that's not the reason I'm just like, I said, no, I, I'm not,
Ivan: I'm not buying what these kinds of cars, even though I know that,
Ivan: I don't know why, why, you know,
Ivan: why I'd be wearing a different era now where apparently none of that matters.
Ivan: I guess, you know, but you know, I had a lot of fun. If you want to experience
Ivan: that, I would highly recommend it. It was a good time.
Ivan: You know, I may not sound that excited about it right now, but it's probably
Ivan: more because I'm just a little bit tired.
Ivan: I, you know, I've been like six, seven weeks.
Ivan: I don't know. I've lost track of like fucking traveling every fucking week and
Ivan: chasing people and calling people and doing and presenting and meeting and going
Ivan: from one meeting to another fucking meeting and something and so forth.
Ivan: And I'm just like, I'm, I'm, I'm wiped.
Sam: I really i feel you i feel
Sam: you okay my turn yes okay so
Sam: my movie this time around
Sam: is ghostbusters but
Sam: which one not yeah not the original but
Sam: the 2016 ghostbusters the
Sam: one with the women it is after the
Sam: fact been sort of well apparently they put it into credits
Sam: right away it's ghostbusters answer the call but
Sam: it was marketed as just ghostbusters at the
Sam: time ghostbusters and here's here's the thing this is one where so first first
Sam: of all it is a reboot it is not a sequel to ghostbusters and ghostbusters 2
Sam: okay it it basically starts It's over.
Sam: There's a new cast of characters. They are, in fact, women.
Sam: They're sort of analogs to the ones that were in the original Ghostbusters,
Sam: but completely recharacterized.
Sam: So it's not just like, yo, it's Venkman, but it's a woman Venkman, you know, or whatever.
Sam: It's that their backstories are different. How they come together is a little bit different.
Ivan: Which year did this movie come out?
Sam: 2016.
Ivan: Oh yeah was there another ghostbusters after that so there.
Sam: There have been multiple ghostbusters after this that are.
Ivan: Sequels to the original multiple yes.
Sam: There were i believe two.
Ivan: More we've had i i i have managed to not watch any of them you actually beat
Ivan: me to a movie that is a modern movie to watch.
Sam: There you go. Well, see, here's the thing, though. The two after this were sequels to the first two.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: They basically tried to erase it. And they pretend it never happened.
Sam: They pretend it never happened. And here's the thing, because the main thing
Sam: around this when it happened was this massive I don't know.
Sam: Reaction against the fact that it was women ghostbusters
Sam: and your sort of typical misogynistic trolls
Sam: went after it okay and so they were flooding review sites at the time with negative
Sam: reviews before the movie even came out they were you know talking about how
Sam: you know these these women aren't funny and this is not like a good,
Sam: you know, this is disrespectful to the original Ghostbusters and all kinds of stuff like this.
Sam: The, the, the women in it, by the way, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig,
Sam: Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones were the four pretty good cast.
Sam: That's a pretty good cast. Those are all like well-known funny women. Okay.
Sam: You know, now Now, here's the deal.
Sam: I'll give you my overall review and then talk a little bit more about it.
Sam: I will give it a thumb sideways overall.
Sam: Okay? It was fine. It was not exceptional. It was not great. While I was watching it.
Ivan: I was— So they gave it shit for the women, even though maybe the problem is,
Ivan: you know, but look, sometimes happens the script wasn't maybe that good.
Sam: Well, here's the thing. It was an average okay movie. It was not a bad movie. Okay?
Ivan: Right. So it was just average. And so, yeah.
Sam: Yeah. And, and, and look, it did not deserve any of the use it got.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Like it did not at all. Like now generally I like sequels better than reboots.
Sam: I always get a little grumpy when they just like completely ignore the previous
Sam: and say, we're starting over, but you know, it's sometimes it works.
Sam: Sometimes it doesn't, but like when you're going for something that there's
Sam: a lot of nostalgia value for having the connection to the original is, I think, good.
Sam: So I question the choice to reboot rather than sort of introduce new characters
Sam: into the Ghostbusters universe.
Sam: But this is what they chose to do. And it was...
Sam: You know, I kept thinking like it, it sort of roughly paralleled the structure
Sam: of the first ghostbuster movie.
Sam: They changed a bunch of stuff. Like the, the details were not the same.
Sam: You did not have like, you know, the, the, the, the, the gate,
Sam: the key master and the gatekeeper or whatever.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. I am the geek. Yeah. I'm the key master. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. You did. You did not have Rick Moranis and.
Ivan: Oh God. And who's the other person? I'm sorry. It's just the other person wasn't as famous.
Sam: Sigourney Weaver is actually more famous.
Ivan: Oh, okay. Well, I thought it was, I thought, wasn't it the, it was,
Ivan: wasn't it? Oh, nevermind.
Ivan: Okay. I didn't remember that it was Sigourney Weaver. Okay. Yeah.
Ivan: Sigourney Weaver is definitely far more famous than Rick Moran.
Ivan: Way, way, way.
Sam: Anyway, like, and the one thing I will say, yeah, like,
Sam: but again, like, it got abused for it got abuse it did not deserve at all like
Sam: people were all like ripping it to shreds saying it was horrible blah blah blah
Sam: right now like with years passed by it has a 74 percent at rotten tomatoes which you know what.
Ivan: Percentage you're rotten.
Sam: 74 that's not bad that's not bad right like it's good actually you know it it
Sam: is you know like when it first came out like i said they were flooded with these
Sam: negative reviews. It was in the toilet. Right.
Sam: But now years have passed.
Sam: More people have rated whatever. 74% is not bad. You know, it was a fine movie.
Sam: And I just get pissed when I think about it, about like the abuse it got.
Sam: Now, again, like I'm only giving it a thumb sideways because it paralleled the
Sam: original Ghostbusters so much.
Sam: If you'd seen the original ghostbusters every single
Sam: moment you were thinking about the comparisons like yeah
Sam: are they doing a problem are they doing it better or worse than the original
Sam: what it what have they changed and what is the same you know you're thinking
Sam: about that like the whole damn time and and i think that detracted from it i
Sam: will say actually like with.
Sam: And this is kind of a negative that I'm going to say this, but the,
Sam: the best part of the movie was the cameos from the original cast.
Sam: Cause most of the original cast did end up in cameo roles and new one.
Sam: And especially like sort of in the end credits, they brought in everybody from
Sam: the original movie was sort of like, you know, sort of in, in,
Sam: in like little gaps in the end credits, they'd roll some credits and then there'd
Sam: be like a little mini scene.
Sam: And repeat over and over again.
Sam: And it add all kinds of little riffs between people in the original cast.
Sam: And that was actually the funniest part of the whole damn movie,
Sam: was the people in the original cast are interacting with the new people,
Sam: not as their original characters, just as completely different characters.
Sam: But doing some of the things, like for instance, you remember Bill Murray and
Sam: Sigourney Reaver doing the whole scene where he pretended to be a psychic.
Sam: And first there was some other character
Sam: and then sigourney weaver came in and he reacted
Sam: completely different to sigourney weaver than the other character they basically
Sam: redid that scene okay you know in the end credits of the movie and it was funny
Sam: like again the funniest part of the movie were these cameos and it's like well
Sam: that doesn't say much about the rest of the movie but the rest of the movie was okay.
Sam: But yeah, like thumbs sideways. It was okay. If you're watching all the Ghostbusters, don't leave it out.
Sam: It's unfair to these people. Oh, I should mention, like I mentioned the harassment campaign.
Sam: It was so bad that I believe it was Leslie Jones was the one that was completely
Sam: like exited social media because she was getting so much abuse.
Sam: And it's, no, just...
Sam: Be good people come on even if you
Sam: don't like the movie there's no reason to
Sam: like turn it into a harassment campaign and
Sam: that's essentially what happened and the these
Sam: women were harassed relentlessly for this movie and
Sam: sort of chased off and then they they sort
Sam: of try to pretend this movie didn't even
Sam: exist and that's not fair that's not fair at
Sam: all this this was fine this was a fine
Sam: movie it you know it it's in
Sam: the shadow of the the others though but it
Sam: it was you know i don't
Sam: know it just pisses me off and that's all i have to say about that okay okay
Sam: and and and you know i did i have watched one more of the ghostbusters movies
Sam: but then there's like the the very most or maybe two how many are there ghostbusters
Sam: franchise let me just make sure i.
Ivan: Guess i'm going to guess.
Sam: Five there so yes the in
Sam: the original in the original timeline there's
Sam: now there's four with another one coming so there's there was ghostbusters ghostbusters
Sam: 2 ghostbusters afterlife and ghostbusters frozen empire i have seen ghostbusters
Sam: afterlife i will eventually talk about it here i have not yet seen frozen empire
Sam: it just came out last year both.
Ivan: I mean You've seen, I have seen none of these Ghostbusters, other than the first
Ivan: two, like, back from, what, whatever the hell it was, 80s, 90s,
Ivan: I don't, I don't, 80s, right?
Sam: Yeah, the first two were 84 and 89.
Ivan: Yeah, so, yeah, these were from the 80s.
Sam: And then this one with the women was in 2016, and then the two that returned
Sam: to the original universe were 2021 and 2024. for.
Sam: I will hold my opinion on the 2021 version until I get to it in order.
Sam: And I have not yet watched the last one. The last one only came out last year.
Sam: The reason I was rewatching all the Ghostbusters was actually to try to prepare
Sam: to see the new one in the theaters. I didn't make it.
Sam: So anyway, okay, that's it. Let's take a break. And then I guess we'll hit the newsy stuff. yeah.
Sam: So much fun with the newsy stuff okay here's a break,
Sam: Okay, we are back. So, Yvonne, as is traditional, you pick first.
Ivan: I'm trying to...
Sam: You know, you could have thought about this during the break or even before the show started.
Ivan: I was... Well, I was reading about something that perhaps to talk about,
Ivan: but I don't think that we've got much to say about it. I don't think I've got
Ivan: anything to say about it.
Ivan: So, I mean, other than it sucks. but i mean i i think i could i could make that
Ivan: argument for everything that is in the news you can mention.
Sam: The thing that sucks and then move on to the real topic.
Ivan: There is this guy who's an nfl punter that
Ivan: went to meeting in california to protest it was an anti-maga protest that he
Ivan: did and for some reason he got fired from his job at a school as a coach basically
Ivan: they said that the only reason they said is they were getting way too much attention over,
Ivan: his comments at the school and they just didn't want to deal with it.
Ivan: So anyway, that sucks.
Ivan: So anyway, let's just hit the elephant in the fucking room.
Ivan: Okay, so Trump and Zelensky met at the White House.
Ivan: Did that go well, Sam?
Sam: About as beautifully as any meeting I've ever seen between heads of state.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: No, it did not go well.
Ivan: I mean, just, you know, I mean, I've got a fucking president that basically
Ivan: just sat there and just talked like he was Vladimir Putin.
Sam: Well, and Vice President Vance took part as well.
Ivan: Oh, and Vance also.
Sam: The whole thing was clearly planned out. This was not like they deny it.
Sam: But clearly this was like they they plan to ambush him like this.
Sam: This is not like spontaneous.
Ivan: How was it? Was Marco Rubio happy?
Sam: Marco Rubio was not happy.
Ivan: He looked very glum. He looked about as bad as I did on election night.
Ivan: I mean that's the face that I had like going into election night this last election you know I'm just,
Ivan: Is it surprising?
Sam: No.
Ivan: No.
Sam: Although I did hear an interview in the hours after this from someone saying
Sam: that the Ukrainian delegation expected that it would be tough.
Sam: But they did not expect this. They did not expect it to be this bad. And how?
Ivan: I also, I will agree with their assessment.
Ivan: I expected it that it would be tough. But I thought since this asshole invited
Ivan: him to the White House, that it would be a little bit better.
Sam: One thing Rubio said after this, I think it was an interview with Fox,
Sam: was that actually Zelensky was the one who insisted on coming to Washington
Sam: for the final negotiations on this mineral deal rather than signing it there.
Sam: And presumably that's because he wanted to get directly in front of Trump to
Sam: try to like negotiate something.
Ivan: Well, I mean, I, I mean, if you're going to sign something that if you're negotiating
Ivan: something that of that importance,
Ivan: wouldn't you, you know, they're, they're saying they want to go forward.
Ivan: Wouldn't you ask for, Hey, can we have face to face?
Ivan: But they agreed to it. They could have said no.
Sam: Oh, yeah. They agreed to it for sure. I mean, basically, the notion is that,
Sam: hey, Trump is very transactional.
Sam: Trump is very much about personal one-on-one interactions as well.
Sam: So, like, if you're trying to make a deal, you want to get face-to-face with Donald Trump.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And so that all makes sense. Just to make sure we've covered it.
Sam: You know, basically, the timeline, they came in. They had a meeting.
Sam: And then they were having a sort of Oval Office part of the meeting where they
Sam: brought the press in for photographs and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: And basically, Vance and Trump started berating Zelensky while this was going on.
Sam: And Zelensky, for the most part, kept calm and cool.
Sam: And, you know, he didn't snap back at them. He did.
Sam: He also didn't give in. He like when they said something wrong,
Sam: he was like, no, that's not right.
Sam: You know and and tried to hold
Sam: his own there and it got very contentious and
Sam: very hot there was one point on there
Sam: were multiple video feeds from this one of them sort of
Sam: panned to the side and you saw a woman with
Sam: like her head in her hands apparently this was
Sam: like the the actual like u.s envoy to ukraine who was like this is not going
Sam: well um but they and then they They were going to have a full-fledged press
Sam: conference with the two of them afterwards, and they were going to sign the mineral deal.
Sam: That all got canceled. And there were conflicting reports at first,
Sam: but it looks like in the end, Zelensky and his team went off to another room
Sam: for a while while the White House decided what to do next.
Sam: And then White House staffers came in and told them to just leave.
Sam: And so they left the White House. And so there's no deal, nothing signed.
Sam: And, and there's all sorts of speculation about, like, like I said,
Sam: this seemed planned to me, but like the white house denies it.
Sam: The white house says that Zelensky provoked them.
Sam: You know and okay even if the lens first of all i see nothing in the videos
Sam: that indicate zelinski provoked anything but even if he did well keep your damn
Sam: self under control you you don't like.
Ivan: Lash out they berated they brought him in and
Ivan: they just berated him and and and you
Ivan: know vance with his you know fucking sanctimonious
Ivan: bullshit you should
Ivan: be thinking us you should be thanking us and then you know trump saying well
Ivan: i got all the cards you would be you know you you would be and then just all
Ivan: the lies i mean it went back to the damn lies you know you started the war you're
Ivan: a dictator you're i mean i'm just like.
Sam: They didn't they didn't.
Ivan: Repeat all.
Sam: Of that during this session.
Ivan: But a number of that stuff was like you know Insinuated I've got all the cards
Ivan: You're just You're fighting because You We're,
Ivan: You feel powerful because we're backing you or something like that.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: To that effect.
Sam: And look, part of this is, you know, okay, if you brought him here and knew
Sam: you were going to do this, then you knew you weren't going to go through with
Sam: this mineral deal anyway.
Sam: Which, by the way, was not good terms for the Ukrainians.
Sam: The Ukrainians were just trying to make good with Trump so that they could,
Sam: you know, have further discussions afterwards.
Sam: And so, like, look, here's the bottom line that, I mean, lots of people predicted
Sam: before the election, but I think is absolutely clear now.
Sam: This isn't just Trump backing off from supporting the Ukrainians.
Ivan: And it's from backing up Europe, period. Backing up Europe. Backing up anybody.
Ivan: Backing up Taiwan. Listen, backing up anybody.
Ivan: This is like Trump retreating completely from the role that the U.S.
Ivan: Had in the world post-World War II. Well, I'd go and and and accelerating an
Ivan: arms race globally, because that is what we are looking at now.
Sam: Look, I'd go further than that. It's not even the United States moving from
Sam: a pro-democracy position to a neutral position.
Sam: They are nearly 100 percent taking Putin's side on every single one of these issues.
Sam: This isn't just moving to neutrality. This is switching sides in the war.
Ivan: Oh, I mean, in the Ukraine case, yes. Okay.
Ivan: I just, because again, because Trump, this is, because Trump's transactional.
Ivan: I think that is the case with Ukraine.
Ivan: I don't know what the fuck else he's going to do with anything else,
Ivan: but it definitely, in Ukraine's case, he is taking Russia's side.
Ivan: Yeah. Period. A hundred percent.
Ivan: Whether that holds up in any other thing, who knows? I don't know.
Ivan: But he definitely is inclined to be aligned with Putin on stuff.
Ivan: And so, like I said, it goes into, takes the U.S.
Ivan: From a role that it had as basically seen as defender of the Western world.
Ivan: In large part, especially in the post-Soviet collapse period of time,
Ivan: into now it's just like everybody better fend for themselves because the U.S.
Ivan: Might just basically throw you under the bus.
Sam: Well, we started to talk about this last week, and I mentioned something on
Sam: the curmudgeon's corner slack as well.
Sam: But Europe in particular, but this applies to other parts of the world too,
Sam: The whole world basically has to assume at this point that the U.S.
Sam: Is, A, completely unpredictable. It could go any way and it could change on
Sam: a dime, but fundamentally needs to be considered as an adversary.
Sam: Like even our nominal allies.
Ivan: Oh, you can't. Yeah, you cannot count on them as an ally for anything.
Sam: Not at all. But worse than that, you have to make plans assuming that the U.S.
Sam: Is going to be outright hostile.
Sam: You are not safe making an assumption of anything else.
Ivan: But Sam, here is the thing that he has repeatedly said. He wants to significantly diminish the U.S.
Ivan: Military strength right now.
Ivan: I mean, Sam, he said it. he wants a 50% I mean this is this is like I mean basically
Ivan: I mean Putin told him this,
Ivan: Oh, cut your military 50%. He's going, he is saying he wants this.
Ivan: Now, I know Congress isn't authorizing it, but it's what we want.
Ivan: And obviously it will hobble, you know, the military in many ways.
Ivan: But again, the one thing is that the only, if I am, say,
Ivan: Taiwan right now, I would be crazy
Ivan: if I'm not making plans to ramp up our defense spending like tenfold.
Sam: Same for Europe.
Ivan: Same for Europe.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Tenfold. Fuck this shit. You know, if I'm spending, well, maybe not Europe tenfold
Ivan: as much, you know, but certainly like double, triple, whatever your outlays are right now.
Ivan: But for Taiwan, I would say I'm fucking spending 10 times whatever the fuck
Ivan: we're spending right now.
Ivan: And we're basically just, you know, becoming a militarized nation at this point.
Ivan: If I were Taiwan, that would be my approach.
Ivan: And I would say that I would probably be thinking along those lines of our North
Ivan: Korea or Japan. I mean, what I'm saying is that this is unleashing a global arms race.
Ivan: It's crazy. But this is what.
Sam: I think you're right. I think it's inevitable. And honestly,
Sam: like, it's the smart thing for any of those countries to do.
Ivan: Fuck yeah.
Sam: We lived in a universe for 80 years where, you know, the U.S.
Sam: Was the arsenal of democracy.
Ivan: Yep. That was the phrase that was used multiple times.
Sam: And so lots of countries grew up essentially under our protection.
Sam: And you can argue that they should have been defending themselves all along.
Sam: But the fact is that by extending this umbrella, the U.S.
Sam: Produced a sort of peaceful zone that was able to develop rapidly.
Sam: Europe was able to recover from World War II. Japan was able to recover from World War II.
Sam: Other areas in that umbrella were able to move forward faster than most of the rest of the world.
Sam: And it was the Pax Americana, right?
Ivan: But it wasn't just that. It gave you significant advantages economically.
Ivan: The fact that the U.S. dollar has been the reserve currency.
Ivan: All of these damn things are interrelated, Sam.
Sam: All of them.
Ivan: And this is what these idiots are not seeing.
Sam: Well, and the key point they're not seeing as well is like Donald Trump views
Sam: all this as like, why were we giving away all this shit for free?
Ivan: But you weren't giving it for a way for free, you asshole. That's the prison. You fuck out.
Sam: We got all kinds of benefits out of this.
Sam: Like, yes, these other countries benefited as well. But there's no comprehension
Sam: in someone like Donald Trump that everything isn't zero sum.
Sam: If we help out if we help out Japan or Germany, we must be hurting ourselves.
Sam: No, there's a such thing as a relationship where we can do something that benefits them and us.
Sam: And, and that was what was happening. You know, this, and I know there are people
Sam: who are like, you know, American hegemony was not good.
Sam: There are all kinds of bad, you know, colonialist things and everything else.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I get it. It wasn't perfect, but let me tell you something.
Ivan: You know what? But this is the same shit that I heard from all of us going into
Ivan: Iraq and saying that we're bringing down Saddam because we're going to bring
Ivan: like pieces, you know, this Jeffersonian democracy over there.
Ivan: Ask them if they preferred how the fuck it was under God, under Saddam.
Ivan: And Saddam was not. And so that was way worse than the United States is.
Ivan: Let me tell you something.
Ivan: Most Iraqis still to this day that were alive back then say,
Ivan: fuck this. Give me back Saddam.
Ivan: That's the shit that we're talking about right now And so, yeah Was it perfect? No,
Ivan: But the alternative where we're basically ushering in a new fucking global arms
Ivan: race now in 2025 is way worse.
Sam: Well, not just the global arms race,
Sam: but also if every country in the world is forced into sort of fend for yourself,
Sam: transactional one-on-one interactions with others, it's just inherently very unstable.
Sam: Yes. I mean, that is...
Ivan: Extremely so.
Sam: This is why the pre-World War II world had so many wars.
Sam: Was like a constant, like.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Wars were the norm. The peaceful.
Ivan: Wars were their own.
Sam: Yes. And wars between major powers.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: We've sort of, for the last 80 years, frozen them.
Sam: Now, have there been wars in various countries and these proxy wars?
Sam: Absolutely. You just listed Iraq.
Sam: We go back further. We had Vietnam, Korea.
Sam: We've had wars all over the world that we weren't involved in,
Sam: although for a lot of them, we stuck our fingers in one way or another.
Sam: There have been plenty of wars, but there have not been the flat out straight like, hey.
Sam: Germany is going to invade France and try to expand its borders,
Sam: you know, like we had in World War II and a bunch of other countries,
Sam: too, obviously, not just France.
Sam: Whereas what we're normalizing here again is Russia saying, yeah,
Sam: we want Ukraine. We're going to just take over.
Sam: And we're allowing that.
Sam: And not only that, hell, Donald Trump's out there talking about like Greenland
Sam: and Panama and Canada and blah, blah, blah. It's all part of the same thing.
Sam: It's part of saying, like, we want to go back to the world where all of this
Sam: stuff is in flux. And it's just like whoever's strongest gets what they want.
Sam: You know, again, you can say you can make really good arguments that the quote
Sam: unquote rules based international order was fixed to sort of help the major
Sam: Western powers and shit on everybody else.
Sam: And maybe you'd have a point in some areas. but it also had significant advantages.
Ivan: Benefits, yes.
Sam: Over just everybody's all out for themselves.
Ivan: Everybody is just armed to the teeth. Look, it's the same thing as the problem
Ivan: that we've got with, like, whatchamacallit, gun control in the U.S.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: Are we safer because everybody is armed to the teeth?
Sam: No.
Ivan: No! Is the world going to be safer because everybody's now going to go and get armed to the teeth?
Sam: So much more dangerous. Like the odds of,
Sam: well, I mean, people, people always talk about the odds of like world war three
Sam: or something, but the odds of just more regional conflicts and big ones,
Sam: big ones is going up dramatically.
Sam: Like, and, and there are a number of nuclear powers involved.
Sam: So, you know, that, that may happen too, but even absent that,
Sam: like with this kind of stuff going on.
Sam: You know, hell, you know, Turkey and Greece have had territorial disputes for like decades, right?
Sam: Over like Cyprus and crap like that.
Sam: What's to stop one of these from eventually being, oh, you know,
Sam: well, let's just do something.
Sam: Hell, I just saw a news story flow by like right at the beginning of this show
Sam: about how our lovely defense secretary is apparently warning Mexico that we
Sam: won't warn them if we do military strikes on cartels.
Sam: We're just going to do it if we feel like it's necessary in Mexico.
Sam: You know, and what? You know, so the risk to the world has gone up significantly.
Sam: Like of small scale conflicts, medium scale, large scale, And,
Sam: yes, of World War III, too.
Sam: Now, maybe it'll turn out the U.S. and Russia are on the same side of that one. I don't know.
Sam: And we both decide to nuke France because they're going against us. I don't know.
Sam: I'm hoping not that far.
Ivan: Okay, let's try that thing.
Sam: Nuke the uk instead not france leave france okay well.
Ivan: I mean did we get in are we gonna i mean now that you're talking about that
Ivan: so what are we are we restarting the wars of fact.
Sam: Well well this this goes to the other thing like you know you we mentioned europe
Sam: having to arm up and europe having to figure out what to do about ukraine without
Sam: us because we're clearly not going to help the natural like extension of this
Sam: is you know even if even if nato doesn't dissolve tomorrow,
Sam: which by the way, you know, Trump keeps talking about it.
Sam: I would not be surprised at all if he exits the U S from NATO at some point.
Sam: But yeah, Europe having to like figure out, okay,
Sam: what are we doing now that the U S is an adversary too is,
Sam: you know, they're, they're going to have to make their own pact separate from
Sam: NATO about what they're going to do and how they're going to coordinate and
Sam: all of this kind of stuff and they'd be stupid not to by the way.
Ivan: There is a somebody has a montage of clips where trump in the campaign guaranteed
Ivan: that he will end the war in ukraine.
Sam: In 24 hours 24.
Ivan: Hours of taking office.
Sam: It wouldn't.
Ivan: Even be tough for him to do and that everyone will be happy sam.
Sam: Everyone everyone is clearly happy was.
Ivan: Trump happy today.
Sam: I'm not sure what emotion to attribute to him, but...
Ivan: Yeah, it's true. Who the hell knows what the fuck emotions are inside that monster.
Ivan: Lord. I don't... I gotta be honest. I don't know.
Ivan: If you... One thing that is really disturbing about him, I've never seen him laugh.
Ivan: You realize how fucked up that is? A man that cannot laugh.
Ivan: Do you know what kind of a miserable fucking prick you have to be you can't
Ivan: laugh that is such a horrible existence and I hope it ends soon,
Ivan: by a heart attack.
Sam: Just to be clear you're not encouraging anything.
Ivan: No by a heart attack his cholesterol spikes oh well damn Yeah, too bad.
Sam: So anyway, it's a mess and it's getting worse. And I don't think we're in,
Sam: I mean, what, what are we six weeks in seven weeks in something like this?
Sam: Like not even like we're, we're not even at the a hundred day mark.
Ivan: We're not at the a hundred day. Like we're not at a hundred day mark. And good news, Sam.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Atlanta fed Zen on a forecast today. Basically, at this point,
Ivan: they're basically, with all the shit that Trump's done, that we're probably
Ivan: going to be in negative growth in Q1.
Sam: Right. Because everybody's retreating. Everything's uncertain.
Ivan: It's not just that.
Sam: Inflation's up.
Ivan: Listen, last year, seeing Alice talk about today, one of the biggest drivers
Ivan: last year of economic growth had been government spending.
Ivan: Government spending from, you know, Inflation Reduction Act and all these other
Ivan: things that Biden had put in place or whatever.
Ivan: And so this guy has taken a wrecking ball to that.
Ivan: And by the way, unemployment claims, we just had the worst week of unemployment
Ivan: claims that we've had in a long time. I mean, this son of a bitch.
Sam: What percentage of that is the federal firings?
Ivan: It's it's not clear okay.
Sam: All right but.
Ivan: But this stupid bastard can't even take a good economy and keep it running properly.
Sam: It's i yeah all you have to.
Ivan: Do is not fuck it up.
Sam: Well it almost seems intentional to
Sam: be honest it's like at this point yes you you are you are
Sam: doing stuff that every reputable
Sam: economist says is bad
Sam: yes and and will hurt
Sam: the economy overall now look you
Sam: you can argue like oh okay yeah we need to to make some improvements in what
Sam: the federal government do is doing it's too big etc blah blah blah but like
Sam: everything combined oh and we haven't even mentioned like the the uh the tariffs
Sam: are supposed to come into effect what tuesday this coming Tuesday,
Sam: and now who knows you may back off again before we get to Tuesday but you know
Sam: Canada's already announced their retaliation plans you know this is,
Sam: now of course before Donald Trump was sworn in and Elon Musk was already talking
Sam: about this stuff he said oh yeah this will be painful but it'll be good in the long run.
Ivan: Yeah Elon explain to me what the fuck is the good in the long run because the
Ivan: stupid budget that your bozos are doing, okay?
Ivan: Oh, because we're going to get all these deficit reduction. There is no deficit reduction.
Ivan: We're only doing a whole bunch of tax cuts for the rich and fucking everybody else.
Ivan: How is that going to help the economy? Big fat zero.
Ivan: You know why? Today, one of the things that one of the articles I shared on
Ivan: the curmudgeon court of slack was an article in Bloomberg Businessweek talking
Ivan: about how right now in the last year.
Ivan: And this also, look, this got stimulated by a lot of the moves that Republicans
Ivan: forced on Biden after Republicans took control of the House,
Ivan: okay, where they cut a number of programs that were helping,
Ivan: you know, lower income people.
Ivan: Remember the first year for a while, we had those child tax credits that were
Ivan: going to a lot of people, okay, and other things.
Ivan: And all these fuckers went and said, and there was like help with like,
Ivan: whatchamacallit, he was trying to help people with child care assistance and other shit.
Ivan: Well, who the fuck does that help, Sam? Does that help billionaires?
Sam: Of course, they need free child care too.
Ivan: Right. No, that helped people lower income.
Ivan: So what's happened right now is that even with the economy improving,
Ivan: as that money got pulled back from a lot of lower income people,
Ivan: But the economy had been doing very well and upper income people had been doing very well.
Ivan: The percentage of spending that was by the top 10 percent of Americans had been
Ivan: has reached like a peak that is just not not it's not good.
Ivan: OK, it's like people that make over two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year.
Ivan: Basically, what the article said, it's like we're shooting we're shooting,
Ivan: you know, we're shooting cannons of money at the economy. OK,
Ivan: but but the other people are not spending as much, man.
Ivan: And everything that Trump is doing is only going to make that way worse because
Ivan: that's what's in this fucking budget.
Ivan: It's to make all those people even poorer, way poorer.
Sam: Right. But who cares? Who cares about those fuckers, Yvonne?
Ivan: Well, you know, apparently nobody. But hey, good news, though.
Ivan: Trump supporters also lost $12 billion as the president's cryptocurrency. Guess what happened?
Sam: Why?
Ivan: It collapsed.
Sam: Oh, wait. So I should check my account. This is bad, right?
Ivan: Yeah, this could be bad.
Sam: I put all my money in that Trump coin stuff. That and hock to a girl.
Ivan: And that and a hock to a girl.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Of course, I wasn't the guy with the account at Citibank that got mistakenly credited $81 trillion.
Ivan: Dollars i i that would
Ivan: be nice you know i mean 81 trillion dollars
Ivan: you want to talk about a bank here let me tell
Ivan: you you know all i mean all i needed look i all i have to do is he got to keep
Ivan: it right wired yeah well no not really no i mean not like he could have you
Ivan: know somehow wired 1 billion somewhere to some some country without extradition
Ivan: this is the first thing i needed to No.
Sam: But, but speaking of like pulling money back from stuff like that,
Sam: one of the things that the Trump administration has been doing and they've gotten
Sam: slapped down by a couple of courts, but apparently are still doing it anyway.
Sam: There was $20 billion or so worth of money that had already been distributed
Sam: by the inflation reduction act to various.
Ivan: Oh, and they're trying to claw it back. Yeah.
Sam: They're trying to claw it back they they the
Sam: the whoever they're
Sam: trying to send the justice department after them actually to like
Sam: do an investigation the justice department they they they tried to get one of
Sam: the career people to do it they quit rather than do it so the it's ridiculous
Sam: so the trump appointee and they
Sam: quit with a a a resignation letter saying There's no legal basis for it.
Sam: There's no crime here. There's no legal basis.
Sam: And so the Trump appointee submitted a...
Sam: A request for a warrant to the judge directly himself. The judge said,
Sam: no, there's no legal basis for this because they were requesting to freeze all
Sam: these accounts that this money had been distributed into.
Sam: And the judge said, no, absolutely not. But apparently some of the owners of
Sam: those accounts who would receive the money through those accounts are reporting
Sam: that some of them are actually frozen anyway,
Sam: presumably because the government also went straight to the bank and asked them
Sam: to freeze it and the bank did at least in some cases so you know so this is
Sam: not only like with the usa id stuff but.
Ivan: But this is like but this is the crazy shit that i'm talking about at fucking with the economy sam.
Sam: Yeah why.
Ivan: The fuck they're going into like i mean this is just idiotic shit.
Sam: Well by the way and the problem is it doesn't.
Ivan: Even help the deficit.
Sam: No i i just wanted to say this, like with the, there's several layers of what
Sam: they're trying to do that are more and more illegal as you go.
Sam: The first is just saying, Hey, let's stop doing things in the future.
Sam: Now, if those are things where the executive department has discretion,
Sam: okay, you can stop doing them in the future.
Sam: But then there's all sorts of things that are mandated by law,
Sam: and they're saying, we're not going to do it anyway.
Sam: And stopping that is clearly illegal.
Sam: But then you move on to not only programs that are authorized by Congress,
Sam: but programs authorized by Congress where the spending had already been authorized
Sam: and in the pipeline, where you're.
Sam: From going out that had already been promised. And then this is even further.
Sam: You're trying to pull back money that was already given out, that was already paid.
Sam: And as you go through those, those are all illegal, but it's sort of more and
Sam: more egregious as you go down that spectrum.
Sam: And, you know, the key element here, and we have, you know, we've mentioned
Sam: they are already violating court orders of federal courts.
Sam: None of this has yet gone to SCOTUS and had SCOTUS disagree and then they violate that.
Sam: But this is already like a regular, normal occurrence.
Sam: Yeah. They're violating court orders on a regular basis now.
Sam: This is not something that you would see in other administrations.
Sam: If you did, it was a rarity and it was quickly corrected.
Sam: Because it's one thing to say, oh, okay, we respect the court,
Sam: but we're going to appeal.
Sam: This is like, we're going to ignore their court while we appeal.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: That's an entirely different thing.
Ivan: Right, right, right.
Sam: And, and it's already happening more and more.
Sam: And again, like we said, we're, we're what, what, six weeks in,
Sam: this is going to get worse and worse and worse.
Sam: I don't see how it gets better under these circumstances for a long time.
Sam: I mean, because I don't know, like, do you see Trump like magically saying,
Sam: oh, you know, actually the court said, no, I guess we can't do it.
Sam: Nevermind. Like the whole setup of his administration this time around is to
Sam: make sure there is nobody around him who will say no.
Sam: And that's where we are. Okay, let's take another break.
Sam: And then I'll have a little bit to talk about, and then we can get out of here. Both of us are tired.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah.
Sam: Here we go.
Sam: Alex.
Sam: Okay. So the thing I am going to pick is prompted by the fact that MSNBC fired
Sam: a bunch of people this week and reshuffled others.
Sam: But I think it's, and my topic is larger than that, because I think it's emblematic
Sam: of a whole bunch of things that we've been seeing ever since the election in
Sam: terms of media organizations retreating, for the most part.
Sam: There are a few that have stood up, but there are a lot of media organizations retreating.
Sam: So let's talk about MSNBC for a second, just to start it.
Sam: And I'm not going to remember all the names, but the most prominent one was Joy Ann Reed,
Sam: who was an anchor in the evening, and she lost her show and was kicked off the
Sam: network there was another explanation.
Ivan: Why did they explain why the the the.
Sam: They're they're they're just revamping and retooling and blah blah blah they're
Sam: they're taking a panel show that's on the weekend and they're gonna make it
Sam: go all week long that has you know uh but but.
Ivan: Separately was there a show doing badly.
Sam: Well everything was doing badly i mean and that's that's your fundamental excuse.
Sam: Like both CNN and MSNBC and to an extent, all news, but like was tanking since the election.
Sam: And to some degree, this is normal after every election.
Sam: People, people watch a lot more news in the run up to an election and then they
Sam: sort of tune out for a while.
Sam: But this time it's even more so like you and I have talked on this show before,
Sam: how people, especially on the left, which was MSNBC's target audience,
Sam: decided they just couldn't deal with it.
Sam: They had to turn off politics. They had to turn off news because this was just too bad.
Sam: And so, yeah, the ratings have been tanking. There's no question about that.
Sam: So they're trying to figure out how to deal with that.
Sam: However, the way they dealt with that was,
Sam: The people they fired were all the people who weren't white.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, and I shouldn't say all the people who weren't white.
Sam: They have like Michael Steele, who is black, was one of the weekend.
Ivan: No, but all the people that were almost all the people that were fired were. Yeah, they were not.
Sam: Yeah. Various different ethnicities. There was a weekend host who was very prominently
Sam: like representing Asian Americans and talked about that a lot on her show.
Sam: There was Joanne Reed, who is very prominently black and talking about that there.
Sam: There were, and the other people were all various varieties of non-white. Okay.
Sam: And Rachel Maddow actually called this out on her show afterwards,
Sam: where it was like, you know, this looks bad.
Sam: Like, I think this was a bad decision. These were all great people.
Sam: They were doing a good job.
Sam: Now, some of them more so than others. Like, I like Joy and Reed's show more
Sam: than some of the other people who were let go.
Sam: And Joy and Reed, I think, was the only one who's left the network entirely.
Sam: A couple of others were sort of demoted. They're not going to have their own
Sam: show anymore, but they'll still act as reporters, etc., stuff like that.
Sam: But the people who were let go were also very harsh Trump critics.
Sam: I mean, most of the people on that network are, to be honest,
Sam: but I'd say these were some of the ones that were most—,
Sam: I don't know. I, maybe I shouldn't say that. Cause I, I'm thinking about some
Sam: of the people who are still on and it's not like they're like Trump cheerleaders.
Ivan: You know, exactly. It's what I'm saying.
Sam: But, but it looked bad and they're, they're trying, most of the people who are
Sam: getting pushed into new slots, I'm sort of like, they're, they're okay,
Sam: but I would not say they're better than the people they were replacing.
Sam: You know, like this, The overall quality level will go down after this change.
Sam: And again, that's probably enough about MSNBC specifically.
Sam: They're also doing layoffs of behind-the-scenes staff.
Sam: Rachel Maddow pointed out that they're doing all kinds of layoffs and cutting
Sam: the producers and the camera people and all these behind-the-scene people.
Sam: That's getting decimated as well. So they're clearly in cost-cutting revamp mode.
Sam: And, you know, it's quite possible that the people that lost their shows were
Sam: more expensive people, too. Wouldn't be surprised.
Ivan: That is the reason why I was asking.
Ivan: I'm like, because I was wondering if that was a factor in some way.
Sam: I'm sure it was a factor. Because there's also a reshuffling,
Sam: if I remember right, where they were spinning off some of these,
Sam: the news channel and a couple other things into a separate legal entity and
Sam: some other stuff like that.
Sam: So there's definitely some of that in play as well.
Sam: But I think it's part of this larger pattern than we've seen.
Sam: Because we also had, of course, famously, the Washington Post right before the
Sam: election declined to do an endorsement.
Sam: They were going to endorse Harris and then backed off at the last second.
Sam: They just now, Bezos announced that the editorial page is going to focus on,
Sam: what was it, personal liberty and free trade.
Sam: And that anybody who wants to produce contrarian views on those issues is not,
Sam: can do it somewhere else. They didn't say they'd exclusively do those things,
Sam: but there's going to be an extra emphasis on there.
Sam: The editor there resigned.
Sam: The New York Times has done some things. There have been a number of outlets.
Sam: Oh, CNN fired a couple of people too, and a couple of people left because they were being asked to...
Sam: Basically, the key is on all of these news outlets, they don't want to be seen as 100% anti-Trump.
Sam: They don't even want to necessarily, like they can't even pretend to just be like,
Sam: hey, we're fair neutral down the middle because the way the Trump administration
Sam: is operating is if you say anything bad about him, they're going after you.
Sam: And they've made it clear that they're doing that. They're locking the AP out
Sam: of White House events because they won't say Gulf of America.
Sam: All of this kind of stuff. And I think a lot of these companies,
Sam: because this is not necessarily true of some of the smaller independent outlets,
Sam: but all of these companies that are part of megacorporations and just have sort
Sam: of media as one facet of their business, are very cognizant of the fact that,
Sam: hey, we don't want to piss off Trump too much because then he can hurt us in
Sam: other ways, because he can put the thumb on the scale on mergers and acquisitions.
Sam: There are all kinds of ways he can make their lives miserable.
Sam: This is why you also saw several media outlets settle on where Trump had sued
Sam: them for libel for things that they had done that was perfectly legitimate reporting
Sam: and would probably win in court, but they settled anyway.
Sam: Because it's just,
Sam: not wanting to make waves and not wanting to antagonize. And I feel like it's
Sam: not like none of these places are publishing anti-Trump stuff at this point.
Sam: It's not reached that point. But they are clearly pulling their punches a little
Sam: bit and are a little intimidated.
Sam: And that is not healthy. And this is also part of the standard authoritarian
Sam: playbook for taking over a country is you neuter the press.
Sam: And sometimes it's very overt.
Sam: Sometimes it's more like this. You just make it very difficult for those press
Sam: outlets that do anything that you don't like.
Sam: And you increase that pressure over time and you ratchet it up.
Sam: And it's just, it's disturbing to see play out.
Sam: Any additional thoughts, Yvonne?
Ivan: What else can I add to that? It's a fucking, you know, it's, yeah, he, he, he is.
Ivan: The thing is that I feel that in many cases, it's more like we don't want to tangle with him.
Ivan: So we're just, we're, we're just gonna, you know, we just, we just want to avoid
Ivan: the conflict. You know what I'm saying?
Ivan: They're basically they're being scaredy cats.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I just think it's just ridiculous.
Ivan: You mentioned something about the New York Times. The reality is that I don't
Ivan: see that the New York Times has done anything overt like all of these others to be honest.
Ivan: They've basically pretty much stayed on whatever the hell course they were. Bloomberg for example.
Sam: They haven't done shit.
Ivan: As a matter of fact I know that Michael Bloomberg did certain things specifically.
Sam: Wait, wait, wait. Let me say, even on the New York Times, even on the New York
Sam: Times, even when they report a story that is highly negative to Donald Trump,
Sam: the headline tends to be neutered and couched in neutral language.
Sam: And they, I'd say they pull their punches too.
Ivan: Trump and bans berate Ukrainian leader in Oval Office.
Ivan: I'm reading the new york times headline on that one by the way look
Ivan: i listen but i'm sorry but i will say this new york times has a history of doing
Ivan: that yeah the entire time they've done that for years absolutely so so you know
Ivan: they've been criticized why aren't they more aggressive in their headlines and
Ivan: i'm like you know what to be fair that's the way they've written a headline
Ivan: as far as i can fucking remember,
Ivan: And so, you know, take it for what you take it to whatever you want.
Ivan: You don't like it. I get it.
Ivan: But, you know, the New York Times doesn't also want to be the New York Post.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: And that's and that's how you wind up and using that other language.
Ivan: It's that's how you turn into the fucking New York Post.
Ivan: I, you know, that's just reality. And I get it that, you know,
Ivan: you want to say, well, it's a different time.
Ivan: It's a different person or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah,
Ivan: blah. But, well, that's what you get.
Ivan: Look, another guy who is a very rich billionaire who also has keen business
Ivan: interests, Bloomberg, he basically hasn't done a fucking thing to kowtow to him at all. Nothing.
Ivan: You know, and he's basically, you know, he hasn't gone and told the line.
Ivan: As a matter of fact, hell, he went and he paid which dues that were due to a
Ivan: global organization he paid because Trump decided not to pay him.
Ivan: I can't remember which one it was.
Ivan: I can't remember if it was a World Health Organization or one of those we pulled out.
Ivan: Bloomberg went and wrote the check for the U.S. dues.
Sam: Nice.
Ivan: So he basically, not just that, he said, F you. I'll pay. Oh,
Ivan: you're not going to pay the dues? I'll pay the dues out of my pocket.
Ivan: So I'm like, and Bloomberg is like, yeah, you want to come after me?
Ivan: Come the fuck after me. Fuck this shit.
Ivan: You know, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?
Ivan: What do you think? You're Putin? What?
Sam: Right. Well, he wants to be.
Ivan: He wants? No, I know he wants to be.
Sam: He wants to be. I would not be shocked if some prominent liberals over the next
Sam: three years don't end up falling out of windows. I'm just saying.
Sam: You know, I'm not predicting it. I'm just saying I would not be surprised.
Ivan: Look i i do think uh listen i i will i will say it a little bit differently
Ivan: but we've said this already there will be escalating political violence yeah
Ivan: that's just look this entire thing honestly.
Sam: Probably in both directions but.
Ivan: In both directions there is going to be escalating political violence.
Ivan: There is no way that all of this doesn't unleash that, as well as the military
Ivan: buildup we're talking about, as well as everything else. Look,
Ivan: it's affecting everything, everywhere.
Ivan: You know, even at a state level, it is affecting things.
Ivan: You know, I was just at a dinner table tonight earlier talking about it.
Ivan: All the things that we were just talking about is how, just again,
Ivan: how people's demeanor in general.
Ivan: And I also think that the pandemic had certain effects on that as well,
Ivan: in terms of the anger levels in general and how people are treating each other in general.
Ivan: And what companies are doing, how companies are treating employees in general.
Ivan: There has been this pendulum swing from during the pandemic where,
Ivan: you know, employers, you know, employees had a much bigger upper hand on employers.
Ivan: And now it's like totally the other way.
Ivan: And then and people are just copying what they see from our leaders in in many places.
Ivan: And the saying is, you know, they just copycat this shit. They think,
Ivan: oh, you know, they're doing it, then we should do it that way, too.
Ivan: Now, a lot of this bending the knee on, like, DEI, for example,
Ivan: he can write whatever the fucking thing.
Ivan: He can't really force the companies to do much of anything. But a lot of companies
Ivan: have just decided, you know, to just bend the knee.
Ivan: Now, others didn't, and they said, well, look, if the law says that we've got
Ivan: to tweak something, we'll tweak something.
Ivan: You know but but i see so many that are just rolling over and that's the thing
Ivan: that's a little bit scary is.
Sam: That is that easy rolling over this is the whole thing about i think was it
Sam: tim snyder is the author who you know had the guidebook of fighting authoritarianism
Sam: or whatever it is i should i should look up the proper name hold on.
Ivan: Oh, but before I forget, I just saw this quote. This was regarding Zelensky.
Ivan: No, we talked about that, that Trump thinks this is all a reality TV show.
Ivan: This is going to be great television. Trump sums up his Zelensky showdown.
Sam: Yes. Yes. It's, it is Timothy, Timothy Snyder.
Sam: Uh, and he has a, a variety of books that I'm looking for the name of on tyranny,
Sam: I think is the one that this is from,
Sam: from 2017, but like number one rule, don't obey in advance.
Ivan: Right. It's the number one rule.
Sam: And, and this is, this is what people are doing. I mean, it's rolling over.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, it's just like, oh, how can we avoid getting on Trump's bad side?
Sam: Let's figure out what we can do right now that'll keep us off his radar, keep him happy.
Sam: And yeah.
Ivan: Here is my recommendation. Just don't be Mark Zuckerberg. Don't be Mark Zuckerberg. Change that.
Ivan: They should change that as the first rule.
Sam: Don't be Mark Zuckerberg. Don't be Zuck. I did see a video today.
Sam: Of him ripping off a suit and having a gold lame outfit underneath it for his
Sam: wife's birthday or something.
Ivan: What the fucking hell? Jesus Christ. Sounds great.
Sam: I'll have to share that. But, yeah.
Ivan: Okay, I'm going to summarize all of this.
Sam: Yeah, summarize everything.
Ivan: This all fucking sucks to all fucking hell.
Ivan: And we are only
Ivan: not even 40 days
Ivan: into this fucking thing so my prediction which now sam knows pain why you know
Ivan: sam had no idea that that was a pop culture reference not until the last couple of weeks well.
Sam: I i i like out in in in response to the pain thing yvonne shared a gif or a
Sam: video clip or something of mr.
Ivan: Video clip somebody.
Sam: Asking mr t for predictions and he said pain and i was like wait a second this isn't.
Ivan: Just an yvonne thing no this.
Sam: Exists and apparently it's from it was.
Ivan: Rocky three movie rocky three okay three
Ivan: mr t was this boxer called
Ivan: clubber lang okay and who was vicious and he was yeah he was asked about what
Ivan: was his predictions were for the fight okay between him and rocky and says predictions
Ivan: yeah prediction and he said pain and look unfortunately mr t,
Ivan: If we asked him right now what his prediction is and what we're going through
Ivan: right now, his prediction is accurate.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And everybody's getting fucked. Hey, by the way, you know what? Here's the kicker.
Ivan: This is equal opportunity fucking right now because these idiots are so fucking
Ivan: dumb. I gotta tell you something.
Ivan: Tesla stock keeps plummeting like a fucking rock. Okay?
Sam: Uh-huh. Yep.
Ivan: Mr. Genius over there has pledged a lot of those shares for margin loans. Okay? All right.
Ivan: At some point, if that thing doesn't stop, he's going to have a fucking margin call.
Ivan: He's going to get fucked. OK. All right.
Sam: If that would be fun, that would be fun.
Ivan: You know, this keeps happening. OK, because the amount of money that he has, nobody can.
Ivan: You know, this is not like Donald, that somebody could just throw him up a billion
Ivan: here, billion there, bail him out.
Ivan: This is several hundred more billion dollars. OK. All right.
Ivan: There ain't nobody big enough to bail his ass out, okay?
Ivan: So let's see what the fuck he keeps doing. Because, look, all the financials
Ivan: are pointing that this quarter for Tesla will be an unmitigated disaster,
Ivan: okay, of epic proportions.
Ivan: Something like you probably haven't seen any company shit the bed as bad after
Ivan: being successful for a long time in a product and having some difficulties last year.
Ivan: And then all of a sudden, you're going to be thrown into a massive loss over
Ivan: being a massive asshole.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And we'll see what the fuck happens with that. Because then shit starts getting complicated.
Sam: Because Tesla, as cars, had a few issues here and there, but overall were popular. This is Musk.
Ivan: Right. Yeah.
Sam: This is not independent of him. This is all reaction to how he's behaved the last couple of years.
Ivan: Yeah. And so.
Sam: Now, you mentioned Musk. I thought you were just going to talk about just general
Sam: Donald Trump voters who are now getting screwed by the policies of the guy they voted for.
Ivan: Well, wait until those guys start getting fucked, okay?
Ivan: Because then those guys are going to be angry. This is the reason I predict
Ivan: a lot of violence. One thing somebody said today.
Ivan: I'll tell you something. The two people, the people that tried to take shots
Ivan: at Donald Trump were both Donald Trump supporters, okay?
Ivan: Let me tell you something. You get one of these arm-to-the-teeth guys that finds
Ivan: out how his health care is getting cut, how his shit is getting cut,
Ivan: and how he's going to get fucked.
Ivan: And their family that had, you know, a military job got fired,
Ivan: who was a veteran, bah, bah, bah.
Ivan: All of this shit cascades on one of these guys. Let's see, one of these guys is going to pop.
Ivan: Yeah this is that because this is the
Ivan: he he has totally hyper inflated and made these guys hyperventilated how he
Ivan: was going to be his their savior and their savior is going to come and fuck
Ivan: them and they're going to snap i already have a couple of times yeah.
Sam: I i would not be surprised in the slightest i think i think in our prediction
Sam: show we said there'd be at least one more attempt and I think we predicted it would fail, but,
Sam: Yeah, of course, there's going to, of course, somebody like that is going to
Sam: snap and go after him or people surrounding him or Elon or somebody,
Sam: which is why, you know, all of these people have massive security details.
Sam: Like there was a report this last week about how Elon's security detail got
Sam: deputized so they could continue to carry their weapons like in the White House
Sam: and within the Secret Service perimeter and stuff like that.
Sam: Because Elon Musk's security detail is second only in size to the president's.
Ivan: Jesus fucking Christ.
Sam: Because he knows that, you know, people hate him.
Ivan: Gee, Elon, I wonder why.
Sam: Meanwhile, I know all of these folks have some security, but I remember pictures
Sam: a while back of Bill Gates just standing in a line to get fast food somewhere.
Ivan: Yeah, in Manhattan.
Sam: I thought it was out here in Seattle. He was in Manhattan.
Sam: He was in Manhattan. He was just standing in line getting his food and whatever, saying hi to people.
Ivan: You know what? Because, you know, we kind of, we, we, we, we hated,
Ivan: we hated Microsoft software, but, but, you know, we weren't like,
Ivan: we want to kill like Bill Gates, you know?
Sam: Well, and also since he left Microsoft, he's been doing all kinds of good stuff.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Yeah. And we're like, he's one of those billionaires who has,
Sam: you know, he, he picked a point in time and he was like, I'm out.
Sam: And now i'm going to spend the rest of my money rest of my life and.
Ivan: My money.
Sam: To figuring out the best thing i can possibly do with this money for the benefit of humankind.
Ivan: By the way one other one other note
Ivan: warren buffett who's getting old yeah he
Ivan: had his annual like letter to you
Ivan: know that he writes to stockholders you know
Ivan: basically as an annual report and a
Ivan: couple of things just to see how his mind
Ivan: is thinking right now they they've sold so much securities they're hold they're
Ivan: holding more cash than they had ever had at at berkshire hathaway they're holding
Ivan: berkshire hathaway is so much money they they got like a three to four hundred
Ivan: But like four hundred billion dollars in cash right now, just sitting in books.
Ivan: OK, they've never held that much in their life.
Ivan: And he basically, without saying Trump's name, basically just ripped them to
Ivan: shreds, saying that everything that they are doing is just, you know, stupid.
Ivan: You know, from tax policy to tariffs policy to what they're doing with the government.
Ivan: I mean, he just completely tore tore him to shreds.
Ivan: Now, so for that's worth, I mean, he's not a dumb fuck.
Ivan: And he basically agreed with, you know, what every other economist has said
Ivan: that this is we're just inflicting pain to just inflict pain.
Ivan: These guys are just, right now, they're going to inflict pain to inflict pain. Mr.
Ivan: I'm going to have the strongest economy ever right now is going to hit us again
Ivan: with the last quarter of negative growth that we had since he was president.
Ivan: Stumble genius, Sam.
Sam: Yvonne, it's Biden's fault.
Ivan: Of course, yes, it's Biden's fault. Yes, yes, it's Biden's fault. It's all Biden's fault.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Okay i want to go like i want to you know i i get i would like to do one thing
Ivan: i would like to share an ice cream cone with joe biden before he passes away
Ivan: seriously yeah i would love to buy him a cone.
Sam: Well, you know, head out to Wilmington. He's probably just hanging out these days.
Ivan: You know what? That wouldn't be such a bad idea. Let's go.
Sam: I mean, it's probably a little bit more locked down than Jimmy Carter was.
Sam: But you remember, for decades, Jimmy Carter was just hanging out in Plains, Georgia.
Sam: And if you visited Plains, you could meet Jimmy Carter.
Sam: Like he had his Sunday school class that he taught every Sunday that hundreds
Sam: of people would show up to just because Jimmy Carter was teaching the class.
Ivan: You know, I'll go over there and like, say, hey, Joe, do you want to have a
Ivan: coat? I'll get you an ice cream coat. Let's chat.
Sam: Give him a hug. Yeah. Okay. I think we're done. I think we're done.
Sam: Thank you all for joining us again. As usual, you can go to curmudgeons-corner.com
Sam: and see all of our information. You can see how to contact us. You can see our archive.
Sam: You can see transcripts of last year and a bit of shows, all of that kind of
Sam: stuff. Link to our Facebook.
Sam: Link to, I don't know, link to our TikTok, which, by the way,
Sam: I have, look, I have been so super busy.
Sam: I forgot to even post the clips for TikTok from the last show.
Sam: I think I'll do it right before I edit this show.
Sam: So you'll, and then like do the next one. I don't know. So you'll find a link
Sam: to our TikTok where you can find those things.
Sam: All that stuff. It's a fun website. You should share it.
Sam: Tell your friends to listen and watch. Oh, there's a link to our YouTube.
Sam: So you can actually watch these shows too. The unedited version of the shows.
Sam: Including sometimes blurry me or blurry Yvonne when our connections are spotty.
Sam: Usually I'm spotty more often than Yvonne is. But, you know,
Sam: I saw, I was looking at the preview over at YouTube and Yvonne was blurry for
Sam: part of this show. It happens.
Sam: I was also blurry and...
Sam: Not only blurry, but like low frame rate. So like every few seconds I'd move, you know, for a while.
Ivan: Well, I mean, Sam looks blurry in real life. So therefore, I mean, that's part of it.
Sam: I am a very blurry kind of person. Yes. But anyway, you can get to our YouTube.
Sam: More of you should subscribe to our YouTube and watch over there.
Sam: It's fun too. But I understand. I prefer to podcast audio only podcast myself.
Sam: But importantly, you can also go to our Patreon from there and give us money.
Sam: I once again repeating the busy I have not done
Sam: the cards I have not done the mug I promise I will
Sam: eventually get to it I have been utterly swamped the
Sam: last few weeks and probably will be for the
Sam: next month to be honest but yeah so
Sam: you can go to our patreon give us money at various levels we will send you we'll
Sam: mention you on the show we'll send you a card we'll send you a mug all this
Sam: kind of fun stuff and at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask us we
Sam: will invite you to our curmudgeons corner slack where Yvonne and I hang out and share links.
Sam: And a few of our other listeners are on there regularly and a few more are on there occasionally.
Sam: It's a lot of fun. You should join us. The more the merrier.
Sam: In the meantime, Yvonne, what was something from the curmudgeons corner slack
Sam: that was so compelling that it would make people want to give us money and join the slack?
Sam: Or Fyre Fest 2. Oh, yes.
Ivan: It makes sense for 2025. Fyre Fest 2 reveals alleged ticket sales.
Sam: Wasn't there already a Fyre Fest 2 that fell apart? Like, and so this is actually a third attempt?
Ivan: Maybe.
Sam: I think I vaguely remember them already trying to promote a Fyre Fest 2.
Ivan: It is his grand second attempt.
Sam: Okay. Second attempt at Fyre Fest 2.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Because there was already a failed Fyre Fest 1.
Ivan: Right. Yeah. So you've got another Fyre Fest going on, which I guess makes sense for 2025.
Ivan: But that's one thing. I got a couple of things that happened in here.
Ivan: Yes. I mean, we didn't make an honorable mention because it's in here. Gene Hackman died.
Sam: Yep. And I also mentioned that Michelle Treckenberg, how do you say her name?
Ivan: Oh, God, yes.
Sam: Last week, we started talking about characters that disappeared from shows.
Sam: And I mentioned that on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a character just randomly showed up.
Ivan: And it was her as a sister to Buffy. That's right.
Sam: It was her. And she died this week.
Sam: Official cause of death hasn't been announced yet, but she'd recently had a liver transplant.
Ivan: Apparently.
Sam: Apparently, it was having complications. I saw a couple of reports that people
Sam: who knew her said she knew she wasn't well and that death was a possibility.
Ivan: Yeah, it sucks.
Sam: She's so young. Yeah, 39.
Ivan: 39. Yeah. And a couple of other things. Skype is shutting down on May 5th.
Sam: We used to use that to record the show for years.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: You know?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: We stopped a long time ago.
Ivan: Because it sucked.
Sam: A lot of other people stopped using it too.
Ivan: So, I mean, it got bad, bad, but worse.
Ivan: And they didn't really upgrade it or update it.
Ivan: And it just, it finally died.
Sam: And they lost their, like, the big opportunity would have been the pandemic
Sam: to really jump in and blah, blah, blah. But no.
Ivan: Well, the thing is that they had rolled out, well, but the thing is that they
Ivan: have really replaced Skype with Teams.
Sam: I know, Teams, yes, yes.
Ivan: And so that's the thing.
Sam: And that is, and, you know, lots of people use that.
Sam: I've never used Teams. I think I maybe have one call I had on it once when for
Sam: something, I don't even remember what.
Ivan: And I'm going to confirm this, but it seems it is correctly,
Ivan: that 25 years ago, Steve Jobs changed the path of the PC forever by introducing Mac OS X.
Ivan: And to realize, Sam.
Sam: That it's been 25 years.
Ivan: 25 years ago!
Ivan: Holy shit!
Sam: I remember.
Ivan: I thought about it. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Sam: I remember installing the beta as soon as it was available.
Ivan: Think about this. Imagine if we had been, I mean, if in 2000 we were still using,
Ivan: like, I don't know, a desktop operating system from 1975.
Sam: Well, it has evolved quite a bit in the last 25 years.
Ivan: It definitely has, but still, many of the things that you look at it, the dock.
Sam: Well, actually, if you think, wait, wait, but wait, if you think about it,
Sam: macOS is built on top of Unix, which is from 1960s.
Ivan: Which actually is from 1960s, yes. That is true. The basis of all of this,
Ivan: yes, is Unix, which is from the 1960s, yes.
Ivan: Which I did use, but, you know, so anyway, yeah, macOS 10 is 25 years old.
Sam: Totally shit okay one more thing
Sam: from the slack that i just want to point out that i
Sam: mentioned on the show a couple minutes ago and then immediately shared on the
Sam: curmudgeon course slack that if you were a member you would see the fact that
Sam: i shared it is the video of mark zuckerberg stripping off the suit into the gold lame suit thanks.
Ivan: And what was this?
Sam: Well, the video came out today. I think it was for his wife's birthday.
Sam: So I think it was like very recent.
Ivan: Oh, that is so. Okay. I'll.
Ivan: I'm never doing that. I can guarantee you that one.
Sam: Even for your wife's birthday, Yvonne.
Ivan: If she. Okay.
Ivan: If she insisted that's what I. She wanted me to do. Then. Maybe.
Sam: So apparently it was imitating. I guess it was Benson Boone.
Sam: Did this at the Grammys a few weeks ago. And that was one of her favorite artists
Sam: and she liked that performance. So he imitated it.
Ivan: There you go. So yeah, I, okay. If, if my wife demanded it, then maybe.
Sam: Okay. I'll, I'll have to call her up and make a request.
Ivan: Oh no. What am I doing?
Sam: Make sure that it gets videoed. We'll put it on Tik TOK.
Ivan: So that's how you're going to get the podcast to get more traction.
Sam: We're getting Yvonne in a gold LeMay suit with an open chest area. You know? Oh, fuck.
Ivan: Jesus Christ. Okay.
Sam: Very sort of Savvy Discos looking thing.
Ivan: Disco looking thing. I hate the gym harder than I've been doing.
Ivan: I actually, you know, I will say that I actually, I've gotten,
Ivan: you know how bad it is how much I traveled?
Ivan: I'll tell you one thing I had to do. I had to buy a gym membership down there.
Sam: Okay. Very good.
Ivan: That's how bad it is I'm like oh god fine I went and I They won't accept It's
Ivan: a chain It's Orange Theory Fitness They have a location there But they won't
Ivan: accept my membership From,
Ivan: from here. And I'm like, so I was paying for classes, but then the lady was
Ivan: like, come on, let's say you pack of classes. What are you doing?
Ivan: And I've been like resisting that because I felt kind of like defeated this
Ivan: how long I'm going to be here that I'm actually buying like,
Ivan: like a pack of, and I'm like, okay, fine.
Ivan: You're right. Okay. Here, sell me the pack of classes.
Sam: Okay. I think we're done.
Ivan: We're done.
Sam: Thanks, everybody, again. Stay safe. Have a good week.
Sam: Tell your friends. Make them listen to the show. Tie them down and force them to listen to the show.
Ivan: Oh, that's a way to get listeners.
Sam: That's the way. You know, they will love us and not be able to get enough.
Sam: Anyway, we're done. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye. Bye.
Sam: Okay good night yvonne bye okay.
Ivan: Bye,
Ivan: Thank you.