WEBVTT 00:00:24.110 --> 00:00:30.230 Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, March 8th, 2025. 00:00:30.370 --> 00:00:34.910 It's just after 18 UTC as we are starting to record. I am Sam Minter. 00:00:35.470 --> 00:00:40.510 Ivan Bo is not with us this week. He messaged me actually a couple days ago 00:00:40.510 --> 00:00:45.490 at this point saying he was sick and he was feeling worse every day than the day before. 00:00:45.770 --> 00:00:49.810 And he had a lot of other stuff going on too, so he wasn't able to make it. 00:00:49.970 --> 00:00:55.850 So I put out my usual, hey, does anybody want to join us? And this time we have Ed. 00:00:56.030 --> 00:00:58.110 Hello, Ed. Welcome back to Curmudgeon's Corner. 00:00:58.830 --> 00:00:59.990 Hello. It's been a while. 00:01:00.330 --> 00:01:06.350 Yeah, it's been a while. Oh, I should check my notes. Let's see when you were last here, Ed. 00:01:06.670 --> 00:01:10.610 You were last here on August 3rd, 2024. 00:01:11.470 --> 00:01:12.370 My anniversary. 00:01:12.890 --> 00:01:18.430 Oh, there you go. And so, you know, I will mark that you are now here with us today. 00:01:19.190 --> 00:01:23.030 Okay. um so anyway 00:01:23.030 --> 00:01:25.910 we're gonna have our usual sort of thing we will 00:01:25.910 --> 00:01:29.150 talk about sort of less newsy stuff uh at the 00:01:29.150 --> 00:01:32.630 beginning of the show and then we'll move on to more current events focused 00:01:32.630 --> 00:01:38.790 stuff as we progress and as i usually do when we have a guest i'm let the guest 00:01:38.790 --> 00:01:44.850 drive so ed will determine what topics he wants to talk about and i will react 00:01:44.850 --> 00:01:47.010 and chat with him and all that kind of stuff, 00:01:47.970 --> 00:01:49.610 but, but yeah, Ed's going to drive. 00:01:49.830 --> 00:01:55.170 I will do my media review to start with a, yeah, I have a movie. 00:01:55.510 --> 00:01:59.270 I have a movie to talk about. It'll be very exciting. I'm sure. 00:01:59.970 --> 00:02:05.790 Um, and yeah, so, so Ed, what, how, how do you want to start? 00:02:05.970 --> 00:02:11.390 Oh, first of all, I should just say, you know, it's been since August that I 00:02:11.390 --> 00:02:13.070 talked to you. Um, how you doing? 00:02:13.860 --> 00:02:19.720 Pretty well, actually. We just got back Monday from a trip to India and Nepal, 00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:22.640 which was a fantastic trip. 00:02:22.860 --> 00:02:27.380 Really had a ball until I came down with influenza the last three days of the trip. 00:02:27.880 --> 00:02:31.340 Yeah. Good way to end. 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:36.320 Yeah, I was almost over it. And then this morning when I woke up, 00:02:36.420 --> 00:02:40.280 I've got a sore throat and I have a horrible feeling that I'm coming down with 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:44.080 a strep throat in addition to that. So if I start coughing or looking sick, 00:02:44.220 --> 00:02:45.560 I may have to step out for a minute. 00:02:45.760 --> 00:02:46.360 We'll see. Yeah, yeah. 00:02:46.600 --> 00:02:51.500 But I already have an appointment with my primary doc next Monday for a routine 00:02:51.500 --> 00:02:54.960 visit. So I figure rather than going in and get a throat culture now, 00:02:54.960 --> 00:02:56.800 I'll just wait and have her check that Monday. 00:02:57.140 --> 00:02:57.440 Yeah. 00:02:57.460 --> 00:03:00.300 But anyway, I'm feeling better than I did four days ago. 00:03:01.320 --> 00:03:06.240 Well, that's good. Yeah. Yvonne mentioned, like, I guess wherever he is, 00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:11.540 something's been going around and he got it. And so, you know, yeah, as far as I know. 00:03:11.540 --> 00:03:16.880 This, this has been a bad flu year for the whole nation, even with a vaccine. 00:03:16.900 --> 00:03:19.300 I got the vaccine. I get it every year religiously. 00:03:20.120 --> 00:03:24.040 In some years I get it twice this year and I don't need it twice because I've got flu. 00:03:25.020 --> 00:03:30.640 Nice. Yeah. No, I've lucked out so far this season. I haven't really had anything. 00:03:30.640 --> 00:03:34.400 I don't think, but of course, as soon, because I've said that now I'm going 00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:37.420 to be like on my ass next week with something. 00:03:38.300 --> 00:03:44.420 Well, you know, it's been since COVID five years ago right now, I have had, 00:03:44.910 --> 00:03:47.910 two episodes of COVID, which were incredibly mild. 00:03:48.110 --> 00:03:53.850 I mean, for a day, I ran a temp of 99 and a half and had a little sore throat and then was well. 00:03:54.050 --> 00:03:58.450 I have not had anything else, no colds, no flus or anything. So I was really spoiled. 00:03:58.650 --> 00:04:02.370 And of course I let my guard down on the trip and didn't wear my mask all the time. 00:04:02.690 --> 00:04:04.990 So I'm paying for being stupid. 00:04:05.770 --> 00:04:09.830 Well, there you go. So do you have something else in mind for this beginning 00:04:09.830 --> 00:04:11.050 or do you want to talk about your trip? 00:04:12.010 --> 00:04:15.690 Well, I could talk about the trick a little bit. It was, this is one of the 00:04:15.690 --> 00:04:20.350 companies that specializes in working with alumni associations. 00:04:20.790 --> 00:04:25.730 So the members, the tour group were all people associated with the University 00:04:25.730 --> 00:04:28.990 of Chicago as alumni or spouses of alumni. 00:04:29.410 --> 00:04:34.810 So it was right off the bat, it was kind of fun because we had some fairly common denominators. 00:04:35.010 --> 00:04:39.430 A couple, three of us were doctors, several lawyers, and then various other 00:04:39.430 --> 00:04:44.410 people in the group. But the trip itself was, you know, I've never been anywhere quite like India. 00:04:44.670 --> 00:04:46.730 I've been in lots of crowded places. 00:04:47.030 --> 00:04:52.770 It was fascinating. They have a natural preserve there to preserve an area for 00:04:52.770 --> 00:04:55.390 tigers that we spent two days in. 00:04:55.670 --> 00:05:00.850 And as we were going there, the guide said, look, I've been doing this 27 years now. 00:05:01.090 --> 00:05:05.110 I've only seen tigers about four or five times. Don't get your hopes up. 00:05:05.110 --> 00:05:09.970 So we got there the first day, went out in the afternoon and saw a mother and 00:05:09.970 --> 00:05:12.750 her cub and got several pictures of her. 00:05:12.910 --> 00:05:18.050 Then the next day we went back again and we followed, I think it was four tigers 00:05:18.050 --> 00:05:20.410 all together for over an hour. 00:05:20.590 --> 00:05:24.090 They were going around the lake and doing various things. And we just kind of 00:05:24.090 --> 00:05:28.290 stayed on the road going and walking. And it was incredible seeing them in their habitat. 00:05:29.700 --> 00:05:32.920 Plus, we saw several other animals. We saw something called a sloth bear. 00:05:34.180 --> 00:05:37.780 And from a significant distance, we saw one leopard. 00:05:38.080 --> 00:05:42.280 But, I mean, he was up on the side of a mountain. We could barely see him. But we did see a leopard. 00:05:42.840 --> 00:05:43.140 Nice. 00:05:43.740 --> 00:05:47.040 Yeah. So it was the Taj Mahal, of course, we went to. 00:05:47.880 --> 00:05:52.640 We went over to the Ganges and spent a day watching people bathing their sins 00:05:52.640 --> 00:05:58.680 off. So perhaps one of the highlights was one evening we went to spend the meal 00:05:58.680 --> 00:06:02.080 and a couple, three hours with an Indian family. 00:06:02.300 --> 00:06:07.340 It's a married couple who had one daughter and then have adopted seven other 00:06:07.340 --> 00:06:09.340 daughters. So they have eight daughters now. 00:06:10.600 --> 00:06:15.760 And the girls all were very poised. They all speak English. 00:06:16.220 --> 00:06:20.280 And one of them sat with each of our tables. We had about six or seven tables 00:06:20.280 --> 00:06:24.560 and talked with us. And we really had a really an interesting evening. 00:06:26.240 --> 00:06:31.980 So that was then the other real highlight was one night we went to a sitar concert. 00:06:33.900 --> 00:06:38.900 OK. And listen to a guy who's one of the more prominent sitar artists in the 00:06:38.900 --> 00:06:40.380 world. He tours around the world. 00:06:40.880 --> 00:06:44.760 And, you know, sitar music is if you just listen to it for a minute or two, 00:06:44.900 --> 00:06:46.720 it doesn't sound like very much. 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:51.940 But if you sit there and you watch the performer and realize that it's almost 00:06:51.940 --> 00:06:57.140 all improvising, they have a very short melody, and then the rest of the concert 00:06:57.140 --> 00:06:58.940 is improvising off that melody. 00:06:59.200 --> 00:07:03.940 And like any jazz musician who's improvising, they're laughing as they play 00:07:03.940 --> 00:07:05.660 because, wow, that really went well. 00:07:05.980 --> 00:07:10.720 And he was looking over at the percussionist and they would laugh at each other, make faces. 00:07:11.420 --> 00:07:14.560 God, and the music was just mind boggling, I thought. 00:07:15.460 --> 00:07:18.860 Not everybody liked it that much, but I could have sat for hours. 00:07:20.920 --> 00:07:24.400 Very good. You mentioned India and one other place. 00:07:25.040 --> 00:07:30.880 Nepal. We went out hoping to be able to see Everest because it's not that we were in Kathmandu, 00:07:31.020 --> 00:07:35.660 but the smog and dirt in the air was so, we couldn't even see the foothills 00:07:35.660 --> 00:07:40.840 until the very last day when we were just able to make out the foothills a little bit. 00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:44.500 But we still, we toured a couple villages and went several places. 00:07:44.500 --> 00:07:50.280 So it was quite interesting. It was at the end of the Nepal trip is when I came down with my influenza. 00:07:50.960 --> 00:07:53.960 So you didn't actually climb Everest this time? 00:07:54.220 --> 00:07:55.000 No, no. 00:07:55.060 --> 00:07:55.840 Maybe next time? 00:07:56.020 --> 00:07:56.400 I didn't do any mountain. 00:07:58.600 --> 00:08:02.520 My Kilimanjaro was my last mountain climbing. That was five years ago. 00:08:02.980 --> 00:08:06.980 The friend who talked me into that trip wanted to go again this year. 00:08:07.240 --> 00:08:10.480 In fact, he went. He wanted me to go. And I said, you know, Bijou, 00:08:10.640 --> 00:08:12.600 I don't think I'm up to it this year. 00:08:12.760 --> 00:08:15.620 And indeed, that's right. There's no way I would have made it. 00:08:16.460 --> 00:08:21.840 I'm 83 now, so, you know, that day has passed me. It was a wonderful trip. 00:08:22.280 --> 00:08:26.660 Anyone who's in fairly good shape can make it. But when you're in your 80s, 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:29.360 whether or not you're in good shape for 80, you're still 80. 00:08:29.860 --> 00:08:35.560 Right. Yeah. Yeah. So did I sort of hijacked you to ask about the trip? 00:08:35.700 --> 00:08:39.480 Did you have another non-newsy thing you wanted to talk about that you had in 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:40.460 mind before I do my movie? 00:08:40.520 --> 00:08:42.580 Nope. Nope. That's what I was going to bring up. 00:08:43.100 --> 00:08:50.800 Okay. See, I just have this mental ability and I was able to like read your 00:08:50.800 --> 00:08:53.420 mind and guess what you were going to talk about. 00:08:53.680 --> 00:08:58.040 So, well, it was the last four weeks. I mean, we got back Monday and other than 00:08:58.040 --> 00:09:01.460 that, it was four weeks over there. So not much else has happened to me. We did. 00:09:01.880 --> 00:09:07.560 My, my iPad broke down about three days into the trip. So I really didn't get to read news very much. 00:09:07.780 --> 00:09:11.900 It's hard to read news and interact with, with, with an iPhone, which is all I had. 00:09:12.520 --> 00:09:19.700 Okay. Okay, so movie for me. We are up to a movie. You know, I have... 00:09:20.320 --> 00:09:25.800 I have such a big backlog at this point because, you know, I caught up on the 00:09:25.800 --> 00:09:27.760 show giving the movies that I'd watched before. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:33.220 And then I went a long, long time before I actually, like, updated my master 00:09:33.220 --> 00:09:36.700 list with all the movies I'd seen and all this kind of stuff. 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:40.340 So we've got, like, a few dozen of these. But the problem is, 00:09:40.500 --> 00:09:50.380 I think I'm actually watching these things at a rate that's maybe even slightly higher than once a week. 00:09:50.720 --> 00:09:53.940 So, like, I'll never catch up if I only do one review a week. 00:09:53.940 --> 00:09:56.060 Like, I might need to do two at some point. 00:09:56.420 --> 00:10:00.800 But I'm going to stick with one a week for now, and then we'll see how it goes. 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:06.620 But anyway, the next up is something I watched in June. June 7th, 2024. 00:10:07.640 --> 00:10:12.560 For Ralph Breaks the Internet from 2018. Have you heard of this thing? 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:14.860 I don't think I've heard of that one. 00:10:15.180 --> 00:10:20.540 Okay, so this is a Disney movie. It is a sequel. It is a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:23.580 Have you heard of Wreck-It Ralph? 00:10:24.560 --> 00:10:25.080 No. 00:10:28.060 --> 00:10:33.020 So let me talk about both of them in a minute. I did watch Wreck-It Ralph earlier. 00:10:34.420 --> 00:10:38.640 I'll check. I'll check to see when I watch Rocket Ralph. Hold on a second. 00:10:40.440 --> 00:10:43.160 But I'm bringing up the wrong website. 00:10:45.140 --> 00:10:48.440 You know, it is silly of me. 00:10:49.880 --> 00:10:55.560 Okay. I watched Wreck-It Ralph back, which is a 2012 movie, back in 2022. 00:10:56.320 --> 00:11:01.320 And then Ralph Breaks the Internet in June 2024, which was from 2018. 00:11:01.680 --> 00:11:09.520 So basically, the theme of this series is that it's basically about video game 00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:11.460 characters. So the first movie 00:11:11.460 --> 00:11:16.360 is in an arcade and you have the characters of a couple of video games. 00:11:16.560 --> 00:11:20.880 One of them is Wreck-It Ralph, who's sort of a character. 00:11:21.500 --> 00:11:25.240 He's the bad guy in a video game that tries to wreck a building. 00:11:25.240 --> 00:11:30.880 And the hero plumber, you know, clearly inspired by Mario, you know, 00:11:30.980 --> 00:11:34.520 tries to like, it tries to keep him from breaking the building. 00:11:34.700 --> 00:11:39.560 But like the conceit of it is that the video game is their jobs. 00:11:39.980 --> 00:11:47.840 And then the game ends and they go back to their lives. So it's like people clocking out of a job. 00:11:48.060 --> 00:11:53.180 So like Wreck-It Ralph, whose job in the video game is to be the mean villain 00:11:53.180 --> 00:11:57.860 trying to break down the building or whatever, is really a really nice guy. 00:11:58.300 --> 00:12:01.840 And he's good friends with the plumber who's trying to stop him. 00:12:02.040 --> 00:12:05.280 You know, sort of the bell goes off and they like shake hands. 00:12:05.380 --> 00:12:08.640 Good day work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and then go off and go to the bar 00:12:08.640 --> 00:12:10.200 together and all that kind of stuff. 00:12:10.680 --> 00:12:16.680 And then the other girl who's in here is Vanellope, 00:12:16.940 --> 00:12:22.780 who's a character in a sort of a racing video game called Sugar Rush, 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:28.620 which is all sort of like candy and popsicles and little cars running around. 00:12:28.620 --> 00:12:36.760 It's sort of like a version of Mario Kart, but with sort of the candy, girlish theme, etc. 00:12:37.180 --> 00:12:46.940 And the first movie deals with the candy sugar rush game is malfunctioning and they have to like... 00:12:48.370 --> 00:12:53.310 They have to do something. Wait, I'm confusing the two movies. 00:12:53.470 --> 00:12:57.010 I have to make sure I have this right. 00:13:01.970 --> 00:13:09.030 Yeah, in the first game, Vanellope is a glitchable character, 00:13:09.030 --> 00:13:12.230 and there's adventures within the thing. 00:13:12.390 --> 00:13:15.850 And anyway, look, the first movie I gave a thumbs up to, it's a lot of fun. 00:13:15.950 --> 00:13:17.870 These are both animated Disney movies. 00:13:18.370 --> 00:13:24.790 They are cute. They are fun. They are the kind of things that are intended for 00:13:24.790 --> 00:13:29.270 kids, but also aimed so adults will enjoy them as well. 00:13:29.410 --> 00:13:35.610 There's lots of nostalgia bait for older millennials, Gen X, 00:13:35.930 --> 00:13:41.390 etc., who went to physical arcades where you put quarters in the video game 00:13:41.390 --> 00:13:42.870 machines when they were kids. 00:13:42.870 --> 00:13:46.110 And so there's you know this cameos 00:13:46.110 --> 00:13:49.050 by all kinds of video game characters that you would remember from 00:13:49.050 --> 00:13:52.930 when you were a kid in the arcades and the 00:13:52.930 --> 00:13:57.590 you know the first one's very cute there's sort of emotional heart heartstrings 00:13:57.590 --> 00:14:04.310 at the end where you know the they they save vanellope they oh sorry spoilers 00:14:04.310 --> 00:14:10.810 like happy ending sorry i i i maybe shouldn't have given away that there's a happy ending um i'm. 00:14:10.810 --> 00:14:12.130 Not sure how many of us will be watching it. 00:14:12.130 --> 00:14:18.070 But you know they they they they, 00:14:19.330 --> 00:14:24.250 the first one has a bunch of nice heartstrings it works well you end up you 00:14:24.250 --> 00:14:29.630 know with a little tear in your eye the second one they sort of escape the arcade 00:14:29.630 --> 00:14:34.110 and have to go to the internet so what i was saying before about like the the 00:14:34.110 --> 00:14:37.010 the machines malfunctioning and they need to park That's the second one. 00:14:37.210 --> 00:14:41.510 They basically go to the internet to try to find the broken part for the arcade game. 00:14:41.810 --> 00:14:48.290 The first one was a lot of drama within, like, within the game itself and trying 00:14:48.290 --> 00:14:51.610 to go beyond what the programming was and things like that. 00:14:51.610 --> 00:14:55.410 The second one, they escape to the internet, basically, and are in the wider 00:14:55.410 --> 00:15:00.650 world of the internet, you know, trying to find this part and get everything saved. 00:15:01.050 --> 00:15:06.870 The Vanellope character is tempted by getting into sort of grittier, 00:15:07.570 --> 00:15:11.470 more grown-up games that she finds when she's on the internet. 00:15:11.470 --> 00:15:15.770 And, you know, and, you know, again, happy ending. 00:15:17.470 --> 00:15:22.770 Everything's everything's good at the end, but the characters do get to grow 00:15:22.770 --> 00:15:26.370 and move on and not just do what they were doing before. 00:15:26.730 --> 00:15:31.650 And if I had to say the first one's probably a little bit better than the second 00:15:31.650 --> 00:15:34.950 one, but they were both good. I'm going to give a thumbs up to both of them. 00:15:35.950 --> 00:15:38.830 Enjoyable, fun, animated movies. Yeah. 00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:42.760 You know, I honestly found myself thinking, hey, it would be nice if there was 00:15:42.760 --> 00:15:44.860 a third one. There is not a third one yet. 00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:47.960 I don't even see that they're planning a third one. 00:15:48.360 --> 00:15:52.820 But the critical response for the second one, looking at the second one now, 00:15:53.280 --> 00:15:55.000 Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 88%. 00:15:57.600 --> 00:16:02.160 They actually say it levels up on its predecessor with a funny, 00:16:02.360 --> 00:16:06.160 heartwarming sequel that expands on its colorful universe while focusing on 00:16:06.160 --> 00:16:07.640 core characters and relationships. 00:16:09.120 --> 00:16:12.580 And yeah so audiences pulled 00:16:12.580 --> 00:16:15.540 give it an a minus on an a to f scale down 00:16:15.540 --> 00:16:18.300 from an a on the first film so that that sort of 00:16:18.300 --> 00:16:21.820 coincides with me saying it's down a little bit from the first movie but still 00:16:21.820 --> 00:16:28.860 both very good and yeah so ralph breaks the internet do watch both of them if 00:16:28.860 --> 00:16:33.040 you're going to see these movies if you have a kid to watch watch them with 00:16:33.040 --> 00:16:36.240 even better it'll be fun But really, 00:16:36.460 --> 00:16:40.120 look, it's it's nostalgia hacking for people, 00:16:40.780 --> 00:16:43.460 you know, I'd say 40 and above, 00:16:44.140 --> 00:16:47.220 you know, especially like I said, 00:16:47.320 --> 00:16:53.360 especially those who are in the the prime age of like actually seeing actually 00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:59.340 playing video games at physical arcades with quarters, but also going a little 00:16:59.340 --> 00:17:01.860 bit past that to like home consoles and stuff like that. 00:17:01.860 --> 00:17:07.100 The first couple of generations of home consoles, but yeah, it was a lot of fun. 00:17:07.300 --> 00:17:11.940 I recommend them thumbs up. I enjoyed it. You know, watch these movies. 00:17:13.090 --> 00:17:16.330 I'll have to get after my grandchildren. They have some great-grandchildren. 00:17:16.610 --> 00:17:22.250 My youngest grandchild gets her doctor's degree in occupational therapy in a month or two. 00:17:22.810 --> 00:17:26.010 So if they'll just get busy and provide me some great-grandkids, 00:17:26.010 --> 00:17:27.150 I'll have someone I can take. 00:17:27.570 --> 00:17:31.770 Well, there you go. Speaking of which, I'll just throw this out here. 00:17:33.130 --> 00:17:37.270 My sister, my younger sister, who's a veterinarian in Toronto, 00:17:37.630 --> 00:17:40.170 is like eight and a half months pregnant right now. 00:17:40.170 --> 00:17:46.810 So, so any moment now I could be an uncle for the first time and, 00:17:46.950 --> 00:17:50.010 uh, very, very, very excited about that. 00:17:50.110 --> 00:17:53.250 Haven't worked out when we'll go visit the new youngster yet. 00:17:53.470 --> 00:17:58.170 I, I, I'm assuming the new parents will need some time and I'm also sort of 00:17:58.170 --> 00:18:00.230 crushed with some work stuff right now. 00:18:00.230 --> 00:18:04.990 So, so I, I don't know when I'll get up there, but I'll get up there before 00:18:04.990 --> 00:18:10.530 the kid is like too old to, to, to, to meet them and all that kind of stuff. 00:18:11.330 --> 00:18:15.910 You know? So yeah. So I'm thinking of my sister, Cynthia. 00:18:16.290 --> 00:18:21.610 So hopefully all, all that goes as smoothly as you would want it to go and all of that. 00:18:22.130 --> 00:18:25.910 And yeah, I'll mention again, since I just did like, yeah, I'm swamped with 00:18:25.910 --> 00:18:30.010 job stuff now, but very much interested in trying something new. 00:18:30.230 --> 00:18:37.190 So abulsme.com, A-B-U-L-S-M-E.com slash resume. If anybody out there has any 00:18:37.190 --> 00:18:40.410 tips or intros or anybody they'd want to put me in touch with, 00:18:40.610 --> 00:18:42.310 you can see what's on that resume. 00:18:42.630 --> 00:18:46.650 But interested in, sure, things that align with my resume. 00:18:46.790 --> 00:18:52.650 Obviously, that's the most natural path. But also wouldn't mind looking at things that were a change. 00:18:53.070 --> 00:18:58.890 So I am so like wanting something different. 00:18:58.890 --> 00:19:05.030 But anyway, yes, which includes, by the way, if you guys want to like put enough 00:19:05.030 --> 00:19:09.290 into the Patreon to replace my salary so I can just do curmudgeons corner full 00:19:09.290 --> 00:19:11.930 time, I'd be completely up for that as well. 00:19:12.130 --> 00:19:19.110 You know, so if you have the resources to add a few more zeros to your Patreon 00:19:19.110 --> 00:19:22.610 contribution, please go right. I'm not going to stop you, you know. 00:19:22.930 --> 00:19:29.770 So anyway, that is it, I think, for our intro. So we'll take our first break. 00:19:30.430 --> 00:19:37.570 And then when we get back, we'll let Ed pick the first of his more serious current 00:19:37.570 --> 00:19:42.550 events, what's going on in the world right now kind of topics. And we'll go from there. 00:19:43.070 --> 00:19:45.010 So here comes a break. 00:21:46.160 --> 00:21:51.160 Okay, we're back here. So, Ed, what are you thinking? 00:21:51.880 --> 00:21:55.540 Well, I was thinking we might, since I'm a retired physician, 00:21:55.820 --> 00:21:58.900 there's been a lot of medical stuff lately, and I thought we might just kind 00:21:58.900 --> 00:22:01.840 of touch on a few of them relatively short at a time. 00:22:02.300 --> 00:22:06.540 The first one that just kind of, the final steps on it came out yesterday, 00:22:06.540 --> 00:22:08.780 I think, was Gene Hackman's death. 00:22:08.940 --> 00:22:09.980 Ah, yes. 00:22:09.980 --> 00:22:16.500 It turns out after some confusion at the beginning that what happened is he 00:22:16.500 --> 00:22:19.980 was apparently suffering from fairly advanced Alzheimer's. 00:22:20.600 --> 00:22:20.780 Yeah. 00:22:21.020 --> 00:22:24.900 And his wife, who was his caretaker, quite a bit younger than him. 00:22:24.960 --> 00:22:26.460 I think she was in her mid-60s. 00:22:26.600 --> 00:22:26.820 Yeah. 00:22:26.820 --> 00:22:32.580 And he was 95. But she apparently incurred an infection called Hantavirus, 00:22:33.020 --> 00:22:37.920 which is usually seen in New Mexico and Arizona where they lived. 00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:41.740 And the desert mice droppings carry antivirus. 00:22:41.960 --> 00:22:46.740 So it occurs in people who have been cleaning that up. That apparently happened to her. 00:22:47.440 --> 00:22:52.940 And I'm going to guess that maybe she wasn't doing so well herself because as 00:22:52.940 --> 00:22:58.140 far gone as he was in the Alzheimer's, it's a 24-hour-a-day job and people who 00:22:58.140 --> 00:23:00.840 are the only caretaker really get run down. 00:23:01.140 --> 00:23:08.300 But in any event, she died in their laundry room, I think. and he died several days later. 00:23:08.540 --> 00:23:12.620 Let me ask a little bit more, not knowing pretty much anything about Hantavirus. 00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:17.580 Is this something that would have, you know, is it, 00:23:18.330 --> 00:23:21.290 Could it have been treatable? Like, is this something where she would have noticed 00:23:21.290 --> 00:23:24.070 and gone to a doctor and it would have been fine? Or is this something that 00:23:24.070 --> 00:23:27.450 comes on quickly and then it just overcame her? 00:23:27.810 --> 00:23:33.530 Yeah. I don't know a whole lot about it, but I think it doesn't come out just bang and you drop dead. 00:23:33.890 --> 00:23:38.810 There's some time. But as I said, if she was exhausted from taking care of him, 00:23:39.130 --> 00:23:43.150 her own immune resistance would have been diminished. 00:23:43.790 --> 00:23:48.590 And she probably didn't seek help when she got sick. She figured it was a cold, 00:23:48.770 --> 00:23:51.590 upper respiratory illness, which is how it presents. 00:23:52.690 --> 00:23:55.230 And I think it just got ahead of her and she died. 00:23:57.690 --> 00:24:01.910 So this is one of those things where, you know, you sort of, 00:24:02.510 --> 00:24:04.790 like you said, it's sort of like, oh, it's just a cold. 00:24:04.950 --> 00:24:08.150 It's just a flu. I don't even have to worry about this. I'll just like push 00:24:08.150 --> 00:24:12.650 my way through it. And then it gets worse, I guess, rapidly at some point. 00:24:12.810 --> 00:24:16.410 And she fell or passed out or something. And that was it. 00:24:16.810 --> 00:24:22.110 Yeah. Yeah, and as I said, even treated, it's got a fairly high mortality rate. 00:24:22.410 --> 00:24:24.050 It's not a minor illness at all. 00:24:24.670 --> 00:24:28.590 It's kind of one of those relatively rare things that a lot of people don't 00:24:28.590 --> 00:24:30.610 ever encounter and don't think of it. 00:24:31.830 --> 00:24:38.890 The sad part of this is that he then lived several days and apparently is far 00:24:38.890 --> 00:24:42.290 enough gone with his Alzheimer's that he didn't realize that she was dead. 00:24:42.290 --> 00:24:47.370 And he basically starved enough or got weaker and weaker and had a heart attack and died. 00:24:48.510 --> 00:24:52.990 So it's kind of all around, if there's any take-home advice on this. 00:24:53.070 --> 00:24:56.090 Just to complete the story, they also had several dogs. 00:24:56.650 --> 00:25:02.930 One of the dogs was in a crate. The dogs that were not in a crate fended for themselves and lived. 00:25:03.070 --> 00:25:08.110 The one that was in the crate with no food and no water expired after a few 00:25:08.110 --> 00:25:11.330 days because no water. Yeah. 00:25:12.070 --> 00:25:17.190 I think the biggest takeaway I can think on this is if you're taking care of 00:25:17.190 --> 00:25:20.050 a relative or somebody with dementia, 00:25:20.570 --> 00:25:25.070 progressive dementia, you need to have some time off now that you absolutely 00:25:25.070 --> 00:25:28.230 have to find a place where you can have downtime. 00:25:28.230 --> 00:25:35.090 When my father was fairly far gone and dementia, they had a bus that would come 00:25:35.090 --> 00:25:40.030 around, pick people up and take them to the park downtown and they could be 00:25:40.030 --> 00:25:41.430 entertained for several hours. 00:25:41.610 --> 00:25:47.130 And my mother spent those four or five hours sleeping in bed because she knew 00:25:47.130 --> 00:25:48.970 he was safe and she didn't have any. 00:25:49.150 --> 00:25:52.830 And that saved her life because when he finally died of his dementia, 00:25:53.030 --> 00:25:55.090 she was still going strong. 00:25:55.670 --> 00:25:55.710 Right. 00:25:55.910 --> 00:26:01.250 But it's just to think you can take care of somebody alone with dementia is 00:26:01.250 --> 00:26:03.410 a bad mistake. People need to get help. 00:26:03.630 --> 00:26:08.690 They need to get some time off at least a day or so a week in which you're on 00:26:08.690 --> 00:26:13.050 your own and somebody else comes in, family member, nurse, whatever. 00:26:13.670 --> 00:26:13.850 Right. 00:26:13.930 --> 00:26:20.430 But they obviously had no help because they were dead for over a week before the bodies were found. 00:26:20.750 --> 00:26:24.630 If they had had a visiting nurse, there would have been a different outcome there. 00:26:25.090 --> 00:26:32.450 Right. Yeah. No, it's sad all around on that one. Just the sequence events that played out. 00:26:33.270 --> 00:26:39.090 And like you said, there are a variety of opportunities where even if you just 00:26:39.090 --> 00:26:42.270 had somebody else checking in occasionally to say hi. 00:26:42.930 --> 00:26:47.790 Things could have turned out a little bit differently, you know, at various stages. 00:26:47.870 --> 00:26:51.470 Could have saved the dog, could have saved Hackman a little longer, 00:26:51.690 --> 00:26:55.830 maybe even could have saved her, like if, you know, depending. 00:26:56.290 --> 00:27:01.870 So, yeah. So, okay. What other medical thing did you have in mind? 00:27:02.150 --> 00:27:06.570 The next thing on my list is we have the measles epidemic going on in the States. 00:27:06.770 --> 00:27:07.030 Yep. 00:27:07.330 --> 00:27:13.890 And there's a couple observations on that. Number one, measles is probably one 00:27:13.890 --> 00:27:18.490 of the top two or three most infectious diseases that we deal with. 00:27:18.750 --> 00:27:24.030 There's a mathematical formula called R-naught, which is abbreviated with a 00:27:24.030 --> 00:27:29.490 capital R and a zero, that measures how infectious diseases are. 00:27:29.930 --> 00:27:33.470 It's a scale of zero to 16 or 17, something like that. 00:27:33.470 --> 00:27:39.230 Measles comes in at 15, meaning that as a minimum, it means that if one person 00:27:39.230 --> 00:27:44.170 is with a bunch of people who haven't been immunized, at least 15 of them will 00:27:44.170 --> 00:27:45.930 become infected with measles. 00:27:46.350 --> 00:27:50.690 To compare that, for instance, COVID, which we thought of as being a highly 00:27:50.690 --> 00:27:53.950 contagious disease, has an R0 of two to three. 00:27:55.290 --> 00:28:02.610 Polio has an R0 of two. Several other illnesses, I think even And smallpox, 00:28:02.750 --> 00:28:08.250 they have to estimate, but it's our value somewhere in three to five, which is much lower. 00:28:08.990 --> 00:28:16.530 So 15 is huge. Absolutely. And the only way to treat it is to not get it through vaccine. 00:28:16.970 --> 00:28:23.210 If 95 or more percent of the population are vaccinated, that other 5% will be 00:28:23.210 --> 00:28:26.970 likely to get measles because the virus is out there all the time. 00:28:26.970 --> 00:28:32.150 But it won't spread as an epidemic like what's happening in Texas and New Mexico right now. 00:28:32.490 --> 00:28:35.790 And the chances of people dying from it would be very little. 00:28:36.070 --> 00:28:40.490 As a rule, about one out of every 1,200 kids who gets infected dies. 00:28:40.710 --> 00:28:42.110 And we've had one already. 00:28:42.570 --> 00:28:46.570 I think the latest update is one kid and one adult have now died. 00:28:46.690 --> 00:28:50.050 Yeah, an adult. Neither of whom I think were vaccinated. I don't know if it's... 00:28:50.050 --> 00:28:51.510 No, that's correct. No vaccinations. 00:28:52.090 --> 00:28:54.790 Yeah. Now, the other thing is that, 00:28:55.560 --> 00:29:02.060 There are some over-the-counter remedies pushed by the anti-vaxxers and other people. 00:29:02.300 --> 00:29:04.540 One of those is vitamin A. 00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:07.800 And there is a little science behind 00:29:07.800 --> 00:29:13.780 that because in countries where malnutrition and health is very poor, 00:29:14.020 --> 00:29:21.380 vitamin A supplements can help kids who get measles and maybe even lower the incidence slightly. 00:29:22.120 --> 00:29:27.000 But in a country such as ours, where vitamin A deficiency is rare, 00:29:27.240 --> 00:29:31.980 almost non-existent, getting extra vitamin A is not without hazard. 00:29:32.300 --> 00:29:37.140 Because vitamin A is one of the fat-soluble vitamins, which means that it's 00:29:37.140 --> 00:29:42.480 taken up in fat in the liver specifically and stored, and your body doesn't 00:29:42.480 --> 00:29:44.460 get rid of an overdosage very rapidly. 00:29:44.940 --> 00:29:48.980 So one of the side effects of an overdosage of vitamin A is liver failure and 00:29:48.980 --> 00:29:51.760 death, which strikes me as not a great idea. 00:29:53.340 --> 00:29:54.660 The other thing that's... 00:29:54.660 --> 00:29:59.580 And especially, like you said, Americans typically have enough A anyway. 00:29:59.840 --> 00:30:03.260 So even taking the supplement might already be more than you need. 00:30:03.420 --> 00:30:07.880 But also there seems to be a tendency, and I'm not going to say this is universal, 00:30:08.320 --> 00:30:12.960 but among the kind of people who would respond and say, hey, 00:30:13.160 --> 00:30:17.780 I can avoid measles just by taking vitamin A to also just think, 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:20.400 hey, well, if a little bit is good, a lot must be better. 00:30:21.020 --> 00:30:26.780 That is, we saw that during COVID with the, that, like, what's the hell, 00:30:26.880 --> 00:30:30.820 the stuff they were taking was supposed to take care of parasites. 00:30:31.120 --> 00:30:32.760 The invermicin or whatever it was? 00:30:32.820 --> 00:30:34.720 Yeah, yeah, ivermectin, yeah. 00:30:34.780 --> 00:30:35.560 Yeah, ivermectin. 00:30:35.740 --> 00:30:38.580 Yeah, a little bit's good, taking an IV is even better. 00:30:38.960 --> 00:30:42.400 And, you know, and then, of course, the side of, the other side of that, 00:30:42.540 --> 00:30:44.740 cod liver oil has a lot of vitamin A in it. 00:30:45.060 --> 00:30:48.040 So there are those out there. I'm not going to mention names, 00:30:48.180 --> 00:30:51.620 but there is one fairly prominent citizen. I'll mention it. 00:30:51.620 --> 00:30:52.660 It's RFK Jr. 00:30:53.180 --> 00:30:58.280 Yeah. He is sending vitamin K saying this will help. It doesn't help. 00:30:58.440 --> 00:31:03.920 There's absolutely no studies showing that cod liver oil is a benefit. 00:31:04.680 --> 00:31:08.300 Maybe because it has the A in it, it would have a slight benefit. 00:31:08.620 --> 00:31:11.660 Not enough to prevent death. Not enough to prevent infection. 00:31:12.920 --> 00:31:16.240 It's quackery, basically. And it's kind of sad. 00:31:18.560 --> 00:31:22.720 But what they need to do, and I don't see it happening, is they need to be getting 00:31:22.720 --> 00:31:28.880 down there and having emergency vaccination of everybody who hasn't had the vaccines. 00:31:29.440 --> 00:31:36.280 Yeah, I mean, like, this is one of those clear breaks that having someone like RFK Jr. 00:31:36.780 --> 00:31:41.200 In charge of HNHS, which in turn has all of these health agencies under it. 00:31:41.820 --> 00:31:47.960 Is clear immediately. Like if you had a flat out, like straight up science-based 00:31:47.960 --> 00:31:53.600 response to this, it would be exactly what you said. It would be like, holy crap, 00:31:54.300 --> 00:32:01.260 You know, we thought we had eliminated this disease in this country a while ago. Yep. 00:32:01.860 --> 00:32:04.620 Actually, around 2000, they said it's not there anymore. 00:32:05.120 --> 00:32:10.740 Yeah. And vaccination rates have dropped. We are now having an outbreak in a 00:32:10.740 --> 00:32:13.040 part of the country that has low vaccination rates. 00:32:13.200 --> 00:32:19.380 We are immediately going to go in there with a really strong campaign about 00:32:19.380 --> 00:32:24.200 how you need to protect yourself. you need to protect your family, get the vaccine. 00:32:24.540 --> 00:32:28.120 Here it is. It's free. There are clinics set up all over the place. 00:32:28.120 --> 00:32:33.040 You can get it at your local drugstore or whatever, and just have a massive 00:32:33.040 --> 00:32:34.580 campaign trying to get that to happen. 00:32:34.920 --> 00:32:38.940 Now, we know from what happened with COVID that those kinds of things can get 00:32:38.940 --> 00:32:43.980 politicized and people can be like, no, it's the government trying to control 00:32:43.980 --> 00:32:45.500 me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 00:32:45.980 --> 00:32:52.280 But the one advantage of having somebody like Trump or even RFK Jr., 00:32:52.280 --> 00:32:56.240 if he'd actually like suck it up and just follow the science here, 00:32:56.460 --> 00:33:02.300 is that you can perhaps get some of those skeptical people to trust you if you're 00:33:02.300 --> 00:33:06.140 coming from that point of view, if you're someone who they trust anyway. 00:33:07.420 --> 00:33:10.380 You know, and you don't let it become a wedge issue. 00:33:10.500 --> 00:33:14.180 I mean, even during COVID, there's no reason that had to be a wedge issue. 00:33:14.180 --> 00:33:18.000 That could have been a consistent bipartisan. And I mean, hell, 00:33:18.100 --> 00:33:23.600 the vaccine came, you know, Donald Trump was a big pusher of getting the vaccine developed early. 00:33:23.600 --> 00:33:28.500 And he was an early like proponent of it until like it was clear, 00:33:28.660 --> 00:33:33.100 like various other people in his party were like, ah, we don't like this vaccine thing. 00:33:33.260 --> 00:33:37.140 But yeah, no, that would be the approach. Instead, we've got RFK Jr. 00:33:37.460 --> 00:33:42.960 Talking about like cod liver oil, vitamin A and various holistic things. 00:33:43.820 --> 00:33:48.860 And it's just the result is going to be greater spread than we'd see otherwise 00:33:48.860 --> 00:33:51.980 in more dead people. I mean, it's not. 00:33:51.980 --> 00:33:57.740 The other thing we always forget in measles is that one out of every 1,200 kids dies. 00:33:58.420 --> 00:34:02.980 Two or three out of every 1,200 kids has permanent brain, visual, 00:34:02.980 --> 00:34:08.100 and hearing damage because it gets into the brain and does nasty things to them. 00:34:08.100 --> 00:34:13.200 And it's a heartbreaking story early on in this thing of a man who works in 00:34:13.200 --> 00:34:21.440 public health now, whose daughter came down with measles years ago before the vaccines were there. 00:34:21.700 --> 00:34:26.960 And she was doing great. And he was reading her stories at night and entertaining her. 00:34:27.100 --> 00:34:30.920 And then one night she seemed a little drowsy and not responding to well. 00:34:31.100 --> 00:34:32.900 And she was dead 18 hours later. 00:34:33.020 --> 00:34:34.640 Oh, this is Roald Dahl, right? 00:34:35.220 --> 00:34:39.000 I don't remember who it was. It was an editorial. I didn't pay attention to 00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:40.580 who it was. Maybe it was him. 00:34:40.700 --> 00:34:48.000 Let me make. Yeah, this is a famous editorial, and I believe it is Roald Dahl, 00:34:48.080 --> 00:34:51.360 but let me get the difference. Yeah. 00:34:52.130 --> 00:34:55.570 But I think that was before vaccine. So this was like 60 years ago. 00:34:55.990 --> 00:34:56.470 Yeah. 00:34:56.530 --> 00:34:58.270 Yeah, that would be right his age. Yeah. 00:34:59.650 --> 00:35:07.310 Roald Dahl. Okay. My spelling is my, like, my, my, I'm horrible. 00:35:07.510 --> 00:35:10.530 I'm trying to like Google this and like, I can't spell the guy's name. 00:35:10.570 --> 00:35:13.970 I can't spell measles. I can't. Anyway. Yes. 00:35:14.110 --> 00:35:14.770 D-A-H-L. 00:35:14.990 --> 00:35:22.530 It is indeed Roald Dahl. R-O-A-L-D-D-A-H-L. He's famously, he wrote Charlie 00:35:22.530 --> 00:35:24.610 and the Chocolate Factory. He wrote Matilda. 00:35:25.230 --> 00:35:29.690 The letter comes from 1988, which I hadn't realized it. 00:35:29.790 --> 00:35:29.890 Yeah. 00:35:30.050 --> 00:35:37.070 Which is right before he died. And it's basically, like you said, it's begging. 00:35:37.210 --> 00:35:41.410 I'll read a little bit of a quote from it that ties along with what you said. 00:35:42.210 --> 00:35:49.750 The full letter is longer. You can find it on, if you just Google Roald Dahl 00:35:49.750 --> 00:35:52.310 measles, you'll find it right away. 00:35:53.610 --> 00:36:00.490 But the quote here, Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. 00:36:00.670 --> 00:36:04.990 As the illness took its usual course, I can remember reading to her often in 00:36:04.990 --> 00:36:07.910 bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. 00:36:08.090 --> 00:36:11.850 Then one morning when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on 00:36:11.850 --> 00:36:15.450 her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of colored pipe cleaners. 00:36:15.610 --> 00:36:19.350 And when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers 00:36:19.350 --> 00:36:23.230 and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything. 00:36:23.790 --> 00:36:29.430 Are you feeling all right? I asked her. I feel all sleepy. She said in an hour, 00:36:29.430 --> 00:36:32.370 she was unconscious in 12 hours. She was dead. 00:36:34.390 --> 00:36:39.690 So she died in 1962. Like you said, before the measles vaccine. 00:36:40.390 --> 00:36:42.590 Yep. That's the year I started med school. 00:36:43.290 --> 00:36:49.630 And he dedicated a couple of his later books to our James and the Giant Peach and the BFG. 00:36:51.070 --> 00:36:53.270 And yeah, he was just a big... 00:36:55.030 --> 00:37:00.010 He spent a lot of his life after this advocating for vaccines. 00:37:01.030 --> 00:37:06.610 And he was of the opinion that refusal to vaccinate your kids was almost, 00:37:06.690 --> 00:37:08.230 quote unquote, almost a crime. 00:37:08.510 --> 00:37:12.910 And he was one that was pushing for mandatory vaccinations for a lot of things. 00:37:13.650 --> 00:37:17.370 And what we see here is just like over the last couple of decades, 00:37:17.370 --> 00:37:20.530 I mean, for something like measles specifically, 00:37:20.850 --> 00:37:28.150 like independent of some of the misinformation about the risks of vaccines, 00:37:28.150 --> 00:37:32.470 there's been also the sort of thing where, like, well, measles is gone. 00:37:32.830 --> 00:37:35.310 Why, why do we need to vaccinate for it anymore? 00:37:35.910 --> 00:37:38.930 You know, and so a lot of people think that way of like, you know, 00:37:39.030 --> 00:37:44.550 well, this is, this is useless. And the thing is, it's because it's not really gone. 00:37:45.690 --> 00:37:48.750 It's just very, very, very rare at this point. 00:37:48.890 --> 00:37:54.690 And people are protected from it. And the reason it's gone is because everyone was vaccinating. 00:37:55.390 --> 00:37:59.550 And for a lot of diseases, I'm not sure if this is the case with measles, 00:37:59.670 --> 00:38:02.750 but even after you don't have human cases for a while, 00:38:02.950 --> 00:38:07.190 you can have reservoirs hiding out in the animal population, 00:38:07.190 --> 00:38:14.510 or you can have similar diseases that the vaccine would also protect against that could recur. 00:38:14.990 --> 00:38:18.310 There are all kinds of ways for things to come back. 00:38:18.430 --> 00:38:24.090 Now, if you really and truly get to the point where, hey, it's been 150 years 00:38:24.090 --> 00:38:27.850 and there's nothing similar out there at all, okay, maybe you could consider that. 00:38:28.030 --> 00:38:32.290 But take the scientific recommendation on that, not just be like, 00:38:32.810 --> 00:38:36.570 oh, me as a lay person decides there's no risk anymore, so therefore I'm not 00:38:36.570 --> 00:38:38.950 going to take it or have my kids take it. 00:38:39.370 --> 00:38:44.030 Let me ask you one more question about measles before we move on to other stuff. Sure. 00:38:44.560 --> 00:38:50.200 Given the, you know, like you were saying, this has an R0 of 15 compared to 00:38:50.200 --> 00:38:52.000 like two or three for COVID. 00:38:52.660 --> 00:38:58.440 So why do we only have two deaths so far? Why isn't this like going crazy? 00:38:58.940 --> 00:39:02.660 Well, we've had only a thousand cases so far or it's getting close. 00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:04.880 No, it is a couple hundred, I think, so far. 00:39:05.200 --> 00:39:09.660 I know two deaths, but I'm not sure on number of cases. 00:39:10.020 --> 00:39:15.200 The death rate usually is around one out of every 1,200. So we won't have that many deaths. 00:39:15.560 --> 00:39:20.140 And I don't know if they if we haven't had any of the brain infections yet or 00:39:20.140 --> 00:39:26.040 what, but it's it's a relatively small population there, apparently of one of 00:39:26.040 --> 00:39:30.220 the I think of Mennonite sect that have decided they didn't need to vaccinate. 00:39:30.220 --> 00:39:33.300 The majority of the infections have been in those people. 00:39:34.260 --> 00:39:38.540 Well, the thing is, and maybe a majority of the cases are here too, 00:39:38.700 --> 00:39:44.400 but the overall vaccination rate has dropped somewhat just because of the vaccine 00:39:44.400 --> 00:39:47.260 skepticism stuff, like the stuff RFK Jr. 00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:52.580 Is doing in terms of trying to scare people about side effects that don't really 00:39:52.580 --> 00:40:00.580 exist or are incredibly rare. trying to connect things like this to autism, which, like, no, again. 00:40:02.940 --> 00:40:09.000 And even if it were, by the way, with an entire family on the spectrum, 00:40:09.200 --> 00:40:12.820 including myself, I believe, even though I've never been officially diagnosed, 00:40:13.460 --> 00:40:16.880 like, you shouldn't be afraid of that like it's a death sentence anyway. 00:40:16.880 --> 00:40:19.240 But it's not related to the vaccine. Yeah. 00:40:21.010 --> 00:40:27.730 You know, this concept of it's all gone worked with smallpox because the only 00:40:27.730 --> 00:40:30.490 reservoir for smallpox was human beings. 00:40:30.730 --> 00:40:35.430 As far as we know, there aren't any animals that this monkeypox is a similar 00:40:35.430 --> 00:40:37.890 infection, but a lot lower mortality rate. 00:40:38.150 --> 00:40:40.730 Smallpox had 30 to 40 percent mortality rate. 00:40:41.230 --> 00:40:46.250 But there is no smallpox in the world right now. So we don't need to vaccinate for it. 00:40:46.250 --> 00:40:48.950 There's still a couple in vials in a lab somewhere, right? Like, 00:40:49.270 --> 00:40:55.030 you know, somebody could like take one of those vials out and like intentionally 00:40:55.030 --> 00:40:56.870 reintroduce it at some point. 00:40:56.950 --> 00:41:00.470 Which is why for a long time, the military kept on vaccinating us. 00:41:00.630 --> 00:41:05.930 And then somewhere around 1980, they said, we're hurting more soldiers than we're helping. 00:41:06.210 --> 00:41:09.470 And so they quit vaccinating us. And I think that was a wise idea. 00:41:09.810 --> 00:41:12.170 But we still have vaccines. 00:41:12.690 --> 00:41:16.870 You have to do the math. You have to approach it like scientifically. 00:41:16.870 --> 00:41:21.150 You have to say, you have to look at the probabilities correctly in terms of 00:41:21.150 --> 00:41:25.790 like, and this is something that people have trouble with, with anything, right? 00:41:25.950 --> 00:41:30.390 Like they're like, oh, there's a one in a gabillion chance of something really 00:41:30.390 --> 00:41:32.510 awful happening if I take this medicine. 00:41:32.910 --> 00:41:38.210 So I don't want to take it. Well, meanwhile, the chances of you getting some 00:41:38.210 --> 00:41:43.250 disease and having a bad outcome are one in a thousand if you don't take the medicine. 00:41:43.250 --> 00:41:48.050 So like it's, it's, you know, yes, there's a chance that something goes wrong, 00:41:48.190 --> 00:41:52.370 but it's a much smaller chance than the chance of something going wrong if you 00:41:52.370 --> 00:41:55.250 don't take it. So you have to do the math. 00:41:55.390 --> 00:42:00.470 You have to figure this out. You have to like pay careful attention to the studies. 00:42:00.650 --> 00:42:03.110 You also have to like know what the hell you're talking about. 00:42:03.210 --> 00:42:06.130 Like, cause if you look at some of the data sheets on possible side effects 00:42:06.130 --> 00:42:11.310 and stuff, you know, like even the stuff they list on the TV commercials and stuff, you know, 00:42:11.680 --> 00:42:17.520 It's just like, hey, has anybody ever reported this alongside while they were taking the medicine? 00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:23.440 There's not necessarily all the time. Sometimes there is, but there's not necessarily 00:42:23.440 --> 00:42:25.300 proof of a cause effect relationship. 00:42:26.240 --> 00:42:30.880 Those like warnings on the TV commercials don't give you numbers in terms of 00:42:30.880 --> 00:42:33.280 like how likely particular outcomes are. 00:42:33.420 --> 00:42:37.800 There are also certain things that are more or less likely depending on your 00:42:37.800 --> 00:42:40.940 own current medical history. So like, if you've got X, Y, Z, 00:42:41.140 --> 00:42:42.260 then this is counter indicated. 00:42:42.280 --> 00:42:47.780 If you don't, then it's not, you know, it, the point is it's complex and there's 00:42:47.780 --> 00:42:48.740 all kinds of information. 00:42:48.740 --> 00:42:52.000 There's all kinds of uncertainty. And to make a rational decision, 00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:59.040 you have to actually have some, have some expertise and know what the hell you're talking about. 00:42:59.340 --> 00:43:07.880 And the danger is when people come in and see one thing, have no idea what they're 00:43:07.880 --> 00:43:12.520 really looking at and make an off-the-cuff decision that, you know, 00:43:12.600 --> 00:43:15.480 is not an educated decision and is often a bad decision. 00:43:15.600 --> 00:43:20.220 Now, I'm not saying that, you know, patients shouldn't have some right in their 00:43:20.220 --> 00:43:21.760 own treatment. Of course they should. 00:43:22.260 --> 00:43:27.880 But it's important, like, you know, there's this whole death of expertise thing 00:43:27.880 --> 00:43:32.360 going on where everybody thinks that they can figure out everything they need 00:43:32.360 --> 00:43:34.280 and they don't have to pay attention to experts. 00:43:34.620 --> 00:43:40.020 And, you know, I'm sorry, there is a reason you want to pay attention to people 00:43:40.020 --> 00:43:45.860 who spend their whole lives studying something over somebody who spends five minutes, if that. 00:43:46.620 --> 00:43:51.880 Pop and open a Wikipedia page, you know, or, or, or even worse. 00:43:52.120 --> 00:43:55.800 Oh, well, Joe Rogan said so, or RFK Jr. Said so. 00:43:56.400 --> 00:43:56.540 Yep. 00:43:57.260 --> 00:43:59.420 Sorry. I went off for a second. 00:44:00.180 --> 00:44:05.740 Yeah, no problem. I think the, the, the, the reason the justification for having 00:44:05.740 --> 00:44:11.300 mandatory vaccines for kids to go to school is to prevent epidemics in schools, 00:44:11.520 --> 00:44:17.020 obviously, but even beyond that is that there are all sorts of kids anymore 00:44:17.020 --> 00:44:22.680 who have been treated for leukemia and various other things who have compromised immune systems. 00:44:22.960 --> 00:44:29.100 And if your kid takes measles into school, even though that child might've been 00:44:29.100 --> 00:44:33.420 vaccinated, their protection may not be very good and they may get it and die of it. 00:44:34.180 --> 00:44:39.200 I said one patient die of chickenpox when I was in practice. 00:44:39.780 --> 00:44:43.180 It was a little girl. This was before we had the vaccine for chickenpox. 00:44:43.720 --> 00:44:49.340 And this little girl was treated for acute myelogenous leukemia, which I had diagnosed. 00:44:49.780 --> 00:44:54.240 And we were treating her, I was treating her in conjunction with the real oncologist. 00:44:54.520 --> 00:44:58.960 It was a hundred miles trip to the oncologist. So they would send the drugs 00:44:58.960 --> 00:45:02.360 back and I would give them to her and she would see them once a month and me 00:45:02.360 --> 00:45:03.600 a couple of times a month. 00:45:03.900 --> 00:45:09.040 Anyway, her little brothers caught chickenpox at school and five days later 00:45:09.040 --> 00:45:14.640 she was dead. And, you know, I'll never forget sitting there with her mother, 00:45:14.940 --> 00:45:17.240 who's friends of ours, as a child died. 00:45:17.540 --> 00:45:20.240 So, yeah, the vaccines prevent that. 00:45:20.620 --> 00:45:23.600 If there had been a vaccine then and the brothers had been vaccinated, 00:45:23.900 --> 00:45:28.120 that little girl would probably still be alive because she was just then going into remission. 00:45:28.720 --> 00:45:29.280 Yeah. 00:45:29.560 --> 00:45:31.400 Anyway, on that high note. 00:45:31.400 --> 00:45:37.640 It is extremely frustrating when, you know, it's one thing like when COVID was 00:45:37.640 --> 00:45:42.300 brand new, we didn't have treatments. We didn't have a vaccine. 00:45:42.300 --> 00:45:46.040 We were still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. 00:45:46.220 --> 00:45:52.180 There was a lot of people get, you know, informed people like doing their best 00:45:52.180 --> 00:45:53.700 with very limited information. 00:45:53.700 --> 00:45:59.200 And some of the things that were suggested at the beginning turned out to not be relevant. 00:45:59.200 --> 00:46:04.560 For instance, you know, like in the end, it is absolutely clear COVID was airborne 00:46:04.560 --> 00:46:09.520 and not really droplet based surfaces weren't really an issue. 00:46:09.700 --> 00:46:12.460 So like, if you remember at the very beginning, everybody was talking about 00:46:12.460 --> 00:46:13.620 cleaning all the surfaces. 00:46:13.620 --> 00:46:18.200 You know, and we did that when he got back from the grocery store. 00:46:18.380 --> 00:46:20.420 Wipe everything down, wipe everything down now. 00:46:21.200 --> 00:46:26.380 That's good for some other diseases. You know, it's probably a good practice anyway. 00:46:26.840 --> 00:46:30.980 But, you know, and like a lot of the protections that were advocated at the 00:46:30.980 --> 00:46:35.360 beginning assumed droplet was the primary mode of transmission. 00:46:35.360 --> 00:46:37.260 It turns out, no, it wasn't droplet. 00:46:37.380 --> 00:46:42.720 It really was truly airborne, which is really, really fine particles as opposed to bigger droplets. 00:46:43.680 --> 00:46:47.020 And so there, But at first we didn't know anything. 00:46:47.320 --> 00:46:55.340 And so there was a lot of being, you know, we erred perhaps towards overprotection 00:46:55.340 --> 00:46:57.880 or protecting the wrong things in some cases. 00:46:58.180 --> 00:47:02.360 There was always sort of a reluctance to truly embrace the airborne thing. 00:47:02.500 --> 00:47:05.280 I mean, even now people aren't doing what they need to with ventilation. 00:47:05.280 --> 00:47:09.720 But the point is, though, now we do have treatments. 00:47:10.020 --> 00:47:18.700 Now we do have vaccines for COVID, for measles, for chickenpox and all the other 00:47:18.700 --> 00:47:21.700 things you're talking about and a whole host of childhood diseases. 00:47:21.700 --> 00:47:27.840 And thankfully, most people still at this point follow the recommended guidelines 00:47:27.840 --> 00:47:31.040 for young children and get all the vaccinations they're supposed to. 00:47:31.520 --> 00:47:37.700 But the fact that there's a growing percentage who don't and are like, 00:47:38.040 --> 00:47:43.380 yes, science has found good ways to avoid this disease, but we don't want to. 00:47:44.520 --> 00:47:48.080 What? It's just incredibly frustrating. 00:47:48.620 --> 00:47:51.760 Yep. Especially when, like you said, the fact that these, 00:47:51.920 --> 00:48:00.040 the people who decide not to vaccinate are not just affecting themselves because 00:48:00.040 --> 00:48:05.040 for all of these diseases, they can make it easier for it to transmit to other people. 00:48:05.300 --> 00:48:09.040 They can, once they get sick, they get other people sick. 00:48:09.220 --> 00:48:15.740 It's just, you know, it's, it's not, it's not a case where this decision only 00:48:15.740 --> 00:48:17.940 affects you when you have things. 00:48:17.940 --> 00:48:22.000 And measles is a primary example of this, where it really is like, 00:48:22.160 --> 00:48:26.840 if you get that vaccination rate, like really high, like over 95%, 00:48:26.840 --> 00:48:31.860 it makes a huge difference compared to if it's even 90, you know? 00:48:32.040 --> 00:48:32.340 Absolutely. 00:48:33.020 --> 00:48:37.160 So, okay. One more, one more health thing, or did you have another? 00:48:37.260 --> 00:48:38.340 I have another, if you don't. 00:48:39.280 --> 00:48:41.400 Well, I've got another quickie. What is it? 00:48:41.920 --> 00:48:44.540 Well, it may be the same one. What's your, what's your last one? 00:48:45.060 --> 00:48:48.980 Okay. Well, I was just going to comment that there's been some more uproar about 00:48:48.980 --> 00:48:51.840 fentanyl deaths and importing of fentanyl. 00:48:52.200 --> 00:48:55.940 And just, I think it was earlier today or last week, whatever, 00:48:56.500 --> 00:49:00.860 the fentanyl deaths in the United States began dropping in January of 2024. 00:49:01.440 --> 00:49:04.120 At this point, it's down about 60%. 00:49:04.900 --> 00:49:10.480 Of what it was at the peak. It's unclear just what has caused that. 00:49:10.620 --> 00:49:15.800 But one of the things is a drug called naloxone, which probably a lot of people 00:49:15.800 --> 00:49:16.880 should just simply have it. 00:49:16.960 --> 00:49:19.780 You don't know when you're going to be walking down the street and some guy 00:49:19.780 --> 00:49:24.220 will collapse of an overdosage and you can save their life with a dose of naloxone. 00:49:24.500 --> 00:49:29.300 Yeah. My wife is a big proponent of these kinds of things. 00:49:29.340 --> 00:49:33.260 I believe she carries around some and we have some somewhere in the house. 00:49:33.420 --> 00:49:34.360 I should know where it is. 00:49:34.740 --> 00:49:39.600 Um, but, uh, like I don't carry it around, but this is definitely has made a 00:49:39.600 --> 00:49:45.620 big difference in terms of, you know, a people carrying it around, but B just having it, 00:49:46.260 --> 00:49:51.160 available quickly in certain places as well. This is the, it's the nasal spray, right? 00:49:51.540 --> 00:49:54.500 Yeah. That's the one you can, it can be injectable or nasal spray. 00:49:54.640 --> 00:49:54.900 Right. 00:49:55.060 --> 00:49:58.200 A lot of people don't like give shots. So they have the nasal spray. 00:49:58.200 --> 00:50:04.020 Right. And so this is, and basically, you know, Hey, if somebody is having an 00:50:04.020 --> 00:50:07.540 overdose and you got this stuff, you can take it from being, 00:50:08.180 --> 00:50:11.040 you know, an acute situation to a better situation quickly. 00:50:11.400 --> 00:50:15.100 Like, uh, I, I'm not sure if it completely solves everything. 00:50:15.100 --> 00:50:18.520 Like you don't even have to follow up, but I, you, you probably do. 00:50:18.620 --> 00:50:19.940 Right. Ed, like it, it helps. 00:50:19.940 --> 00:50:24.980 Uh, some people will need two or three doses because it wears off fairly quickly. 00:50:25.180 --> 00:50:28.740 So yeah, no, you can't just give it and say, okay, you're cured and go away. 00:50:29.140 --> 00:50:34.560 Uh, it doesn't obviously change the addiction, but it keeps people alive so 00:50:34.560 --> 00:50:37.880 they can get treated for addiction, which is kind of neat. 00:50:38.320 --> 00:50:44.420 So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's very few, the dangers from it are pretty minimal. 00:50:44.700 --> 00:50:48.440 So, I mean, there, there are people out there who say, if you come across anybody 00:50:48.440 --> 00:50:51.320 from any obvious reason, you should give them Naloxone. 00:50:51.640 --> 00:50:53.720 It's not going to hurt them. It might save their life. 00:50:53.960 --> 00:50:54.480 Right. 00:50:54.700 --> 00:51:01.180 But anyway, it's kind of nice to see that we're winning that game even without tariffs. 00:51:02.100 --> 00:51:05.220 Yeah. Well, the stupid tariffs. 00:51:08.640 --> 00:51:12.980 Yes. The cross-border stuff of this, especially on the Canada side, 00:51:13.120 --> 00:51:17.800 but even on the Mexico side, from what I hear, is not like the big problem. No. 00:51:17.800 --> 00:51:23.080 Actually, I understand that the majority of the fentanyl coming in is carried by U.S. 00:51:23.480 --> 00:51:27.140 Citizens with their passports coming through and not getting. 00:51:27.300 --> 00:51:31.900 And in all honesty, when we came back from India and I went through what used 00:51:31.900 --> 00:51:37.480 to be a fairly intensive, you know, inspection by the border patrol or whatever, 00:51:37.660 --> 00:51:40.800 we walked up and I showed them my passport and they said goodbye. 00:51:41.360 --> 00:51:41.720 Right. 00:51:41.720 --> 00:51:46.320 I was, I was through that line in the, because I'm an old fart, 00:51:46.540 --> 00:51:49.140 they, they grabbed me and put me at the front of the line. 00:51:49.320 --> 00:51:53.460 I went into the room and was on my way to the baggage in less than two minutes. 00:51:54.380 --> 00:51:58.740 Nice. Okay. The, the, the other health thing that since, since we have this 00:51:58.740 --> 00:52:02.960 segment on health stuff, uh, what's the latest with bird flu, Ed? 00:52:03.710 --> 00:52:09.370 Oh, God. It's still primarily a bird flu, and it's still hitting our chickens. 00:52:10.610 --> 00:52:12.930 There is a vaccine for it, for chickens. 00:52:14.430 --> 00:52:21.130 Our farmers apparently are resisting, the Farmers Association resisting using 00:52:21.130 --> 00:52:23.930 that vaccine because they say that would hurt exports. 00:52:24.450 --> 00:52:28.510 We've wiped out half of our crops now, so there's no exporting of eggs right 00:52:28.510 --> 00:52:29.930 now. We're importing them. 00:52:29.930 --> 00:52:35.870 Apparently, there are a bunch of countries that will not let you import birds 00:52:35.870 --> 00:52:37.010 that have been vaccinated. 00:52:38.150 --> 00:52:42.070 Well, do they want the eggs, though? I think it's because they won't even take the eggs. 00:52:42.270 --> 00:52:46.550 They probably won't take anything. And, you know, you could probably have a 00:52:46.550 --> 00:52:50.990 whole debate on that and, like, whether that's an appropriate restriction or not. 00:52:53.010 --> 00:52:58.210 We've got a shortage of eggs. Who wants to export them? We'll buy any they can make. 00:52:58.730 --> 00:53:03.530 But anyway, at this point, what they do is if your flock gets the bird poo, 00:53:03.670 --> 00:53:06.470 you kill your whole flock. It's killing farmers. 00:53:06.750 --> 00:53:10.370 That's one of the things the Trump administration is saying. 00:53:10.370 --> 00:53:12.490 They're actively looking at how to change. 00:53:12.810 --> 00:53:17.050 The protocol was exactly what you said for years and years and years. 00:53:17.210 --> 00:53:19.130 This wasn't just a Joe Biden thing. 00:53:19.390 --> 00:53:23.910 But for years and years, the protocol was if you get any infection whatsoever, 00:53:23.910 --> 00:53:28.010 you kill them all to avoid spread. 00:53:28.210 --> 00:53:37.110 And so what they're looking into now is whether you can look at physical isolation stuff as well. 00:53:37.350 --> 00:53:45.030 Now, the notion was once you have one of your like commercial flock infected, the way people. 00:53:45.950 --> 00:53:52.170 You know, and this gets to how inhumane American animal processes go anyway. 00:53:52.370 --> 00:53:57.850 They're often extremely overcrowded in spaces that aren't well ventilated. 00:53:58.390 --> 00:54:04.350 You know, and so basically it's a reasonable assumption that if you got one 00:54:04.350 --> 00:54:06.950 sick bird, they're probably all infected. 00:54:06.950 --> 00:54:12.070 But the notion of the physical barriers and such, 00:54:12.390 --> 00:54:18.630 A, is that most of these flocks, the initial infection comes from the wild, 00:54:18.630 --> 00:54:26.510 where they have a duck or a goose or something that's wild lands in with the chickens, 00:54:26.950 --> 00:54:29.710 infects the chickens, and then takes off again. 00:54:29.710 --> 00:54:33.550 So if you introduce physical barriers that basically make it so, 00:54:33.670 --> 00:54:39.470 hey, the wild animals have no ability to contact the domestic flocks at all. 00:54:39.990 --> 00:54:41.550 I think they still poop, though. 00:54:42.950 --> 00:54:46.830 Well, you have to have roofs. You have to have physical barrier all the way 00:54:46.830 --> 00:54:49.270 around, right? It's not just a wall. 00:54:49.890 --> 00:54:54.490 And that's part of what they're thinking about this, but this is also very expensive. 00:54:54.490 --> 00:54:57.870 And also even within the flocks, you know, I mentioned, you know, 00:54:58.050 --> 00:54:59.710 big overcrowded, blah, blah, blah. 00:54:59.990 --> 00:55:05.050 You could also introduce more robust physical barriers between parts of your flock. 00:55:05.330 --> 00:55:09.750 So it's not just like, you know, a million birds in one big space or whatever 00:55:09.750 --> 00:55:13.790 you use, you separate them out and isolate them from each other. 00:55:13.790 --> 00:55:17.050 So if you do get an infection, you don't have to kill all of them. 00:55:17.190 --> 00:55:19.530 You kill a smaller group of them. 00:55:20.290 --> 00:55:24.770 And then, you know, And of course, like you mentioned, there's the vaccine. 00:55:26.440 --> 00:55:33.300 One thing, you know, people, people don't seriously consider treatment because 00:55:33.300 --> 00:55:34.960 it doesn't scale as well. Right. 00:55:35.120 --> 00:55:40.240 You know, it's like if you've, if you've got a flock of hundreds of thousands of birds, you know, 00:55:40.800 --> 00:55:47.040 that only live a few weeks anyway, typically before you slaughter them or longer 00:55:47.040 --> 00:55:50.420 for egg birds, but for meat birds, you know. 00:55:51.020 --> 00:55:56.420 You're not going to go individually treating each chicken as if it was your family daughter. 00:55:56.440 --> 00:55:59.600 With, you know, individual vet attention. 00:55:59.960 --> 00:56:05.840 And I don't know, maybe we should, but that just isn't like what that industry would consider. 00:56:06.040 --> 00:56:09.340 One thing that was brought up in terms of the egg shortage as well is one of 00:56:09.340 --> 00:56:13.860 the reasons is it's like we're talking about egg shortages, but we're not talking 00:56:13.860 --> 00:56:19.480 about chicken meat shortage is just how quick the turnaround is on meat birds. 00:56:20.020 --> 00:56:25.300 Like literally they slaughter these birds after like a month to a month and a half. 00:56:25.300 --> 00:56:28.680 Really uh in in often often 00:56:28.680 --> 00:56:32.060 and so basically they're like look you know 00:56:32.060 --> 00:56:34.900 we we lose an entire flock of meat birds we can 00:56:34.900 --> 00:56:37.820 replenish that supply in six six to eight weeks 00:56:37.820 --> 00:56:40.920 and be back where we were but for 00:56:40.920 --> 00:56:44.520 laying hens we need 00:56:44.520 --> 00:56:47.800 to wait until they're sexually mature and 00:56:47.800 --> 00:56:50.600 laying eggs and that takes more 00:56:50.600 --> 00:56:56.980 like six months and so you know if we you know if we slaughter a bunch of egg 00:56:56.980 --> 00:57:04.380 laying hens then it's a lot longer before production capacity is back to where 00:57:04.380 --> 00:57:08.140 it was yeah no you know so i don't see. 00:57:08.140 --> 00:57:09.140 It ending very soon. 00:57:09.140 --> 00:57:16.020 Now are we still there have been a handful of human cases apparently in people 00:57:16.020 --> 00:57:22.380 who had contact with birds, there have been a handful, I believe some cats have died as well. 00:57:23.180 --> 00:57:28.500 And I believe in cases, again, the cat was in contact with wild birds, 00:57:28.760 --> 00:57:30.820 you know, that kind of thing. 00:57:31.100 --> 00:57:36.940 I don't think there's any documented human to human cases yet. Right. Animal to human. 00:57:37.160 --> 00:57:41.140 Is that still a worry or do we feel sort of at this point, we know what this 00:57:41.140 --> 00:57:46.360 is and it's, it's, you know, it causes a problem to our, to our egg supply. 00:57:46.360 --> 00:57:48.980 But it's not really a human concern directly. 00:57:49.420 --> 00:57:54.000 I, I, I'm not enough of a biologist to answer, but I, I have heard at least 00:57:54.000 --> 00:57:59.080 one person who was supposedly an expert say that it would take only one mutation 00:57:59.080 --> 00:58:01.340 for it to become infectious to humans. 00:58:01.560 --> 00:58:06.460 So yeah, I, it's probably a question of when does the time bomb go off? 00:58:06.990 --> 00:58:12.710 If she was right. And I had no reason to question her. She knows a lot more about it than I do. 00:58:13.230 --> 00:58:17.230 Well, and to keep in mind, yeah, it may only need one mutation, 00:58:17.270 --> 00:58:19.010 but it needs the right mutation, right? 00:58:19.190 --> 00:58:19.390 Yeah. 00:58:20.410 --> 00:58:25.150 Mutations are happening all the time in viruses, but like most of them won't 00:58:25.150 --> 00:58:28.590 have this effect. But if you get unlucky the one time. 00:58:28.690 --> 00:58:33.530 Yeah. They apparently know which gene it is that would be affected. 00:58:34.890 --> 00:58:39.050 And also, you have to add, not only does this mutation have to happen, 00:58:39.170 --> 00:58:41.790 it has to happen in a bird that ends up infecting a human. 00:58:44.070 --> 00:58:45.530 Or other birds. 00:58:46.390 --> 00:58:49.130 If it infects another birds, they'll get to the humans. 00:58:49.410 --> 00:58:54.250 Yeah. Or I suppose you could have one of the small handful of infected humans 00:58:54.250 --> 00:58:55.430 could have the mutation there. 00:58:55.610 --> 00:59:00.770 There are a number of mechanisms, but it hasn't happened yet. So cross your fingers. 00:59:00.770 --> 00:59:07.150 Well, remember that COVID probably came from bats and it didn't infect any humans 00:59:07.150 --> 00:59:09.830 until somewhere around 2019. 00:59:10.250 --> 00:59:10.930 Right. 00:59:11.410 --> 00:59:13.670 And then it took off after that. 00:59:14.550 --> 00:59:20.430 Okay. Well, let's take a break. Okay. And when we get back, Ed, 00:59:20.530 --> 00:59:22.350 have your next topic prepared. 00:59:22.830 --> 00:59:23.510 Okay. 00:59:24.010 --> 00:59:24.930 Back after this. 01:00:07.890 --> 01:00:09.650 Okay, we are back. 01:00:10.290 --> 01:00:13.070 I timed that perfectly. I went out and got a glass of water. 01:00:16.310 --> 01:00:19.230 Okay, so Ed, next topic. 01:00:20.810 --> 01:00:27.130 Have we talked at all about the private prison solutions to our crime problems? 01:00:27.250 --> 01:00:31.070 We have not talked about private prisons. I'm not sure if we've ever talked 01:00:31.070 --> 01:00:33.450 about it, to be honest. Certainly not recently. 01:00:33.970 --> 01:00:41.050 Okay, well, just briefly. From something I read today, I think it was in the Times, New York Times, 01:00:41.310 --> 01:00:49.250 the private prisons, as we all know, have become a much popular issue in the United States. 01:00:49.630 --> 01:00:54.410 Rather than building new prisons, we hire it out to the private sector on contract. 01:00:55.330 --> 01:01:00.710 Mr. Biden apparently started to cut back on that, but he never finished off, 01:01:00.890 --> 01:01:04.210 really. I mean, he said, well, we want to get rid of all these private prisons. 01:01:04.630 --> 01:01:08.870 And he decreased the number of people in them, but never got rid of it. 01:01:09.010 --> 01:01:12.350 And just to be clear, this is something that's happening at all levels, 01:01:12.490 --> 01:01:14.890 right? Like federal, state, local. 01:01:15.550 --> 01:01:20.970 Yeah. And where it came up as an issue to me this time is that apparently, 01:01:20.970 --> 01:01:25.290 because the private prisons have a fair number of empty beds right now, 01:01:25.470 --> 01:01:27.250 our government has decided, 01:01:27.530 --> 01:01:30.610 well, there's where we can put these immigrants. 01:01:31.250 --> 01:01:34.350 And so they are letting out new contracts. 01:01:34.510 --> 01:01:39.270 Several new contracts have been given and they're about to build some new prisons. 01:01:39.350 --> 01:01:41.950 And it's a growth industry. 01:01:42.150 --> 01:01:46.710 Again, the stock market, apparently, if you look for those contractors, 01:01:46.790 --> 01:01:49.590 they're making big money and going to town. 01:01:50.350 --> 01:01:55.230 I don't know if there's an answer to that, but I do know that that's a hell of a way to run a ship. 01:01:55.870 --> 01:02:00.950 Yeah. I mean, there are so many problems with this. One is you create a natural 01:02:00.950 --> 01:02:06.850 incentive for a whole industry who's based on they do better the more prisoners there are. 01:02:07.460 --> 01:02:15.020 So like the notion of, hey, let's figure out the right way to deal with crime 01:02:15.020 --> 01:02:21.800 in a way that, you know, rehabilitates people, avoids future crime, et cetera, et cetera, 01:02:22.660 --> 01:02:27.580 you know, just easily turns into let's just jail as many people as possible 01:02:27.580 --> 01:02:28.800 because that's how we make money. 01:02:29.680 --> 01:02:32.540 And most of these are set up as well that 01:02:32.540 --> 01:02:35.180 they're not the yeah there may be 01:02:35.180 --> 01:02:38.140 some exceptions but for the most part they're not incentivized on 01:02:38.140 --> 01:02:42.980 quote-unquote good outcomes you know where you do get the the rehabilitation 01:02:42.980 --> 01:02:49.520 and the person coming out better for it and and not being you know not being 01:02:49.520 --> 01:02:58.000 recidivist etc so it really does become warehousing as well and conditions aren't always great. 01:02:58.240 --> 01:03:01.460 And, you know, and I know some people come in straight with a mindset, 01:03:01.640 --> 01:03:03.560 well, they're prisoners, the condition shouldn't be great. 01:03:03.980 --> 01:03:10.080 But at the same time, there's, you know, there's a basic level of humanity that 01:03:10.080 --> 01:03:12.880 should exist, like even for our worst prisoners. 01:03:13.540 --> 01:03:17.880 And I mean, occasionally you see like memes of like, you know, 01:03:18.020 --> 01:03:25.160 is this a Scandinavian prison or like a British dorm room, college dorm room. 01:03:25.360 --> 01:03:31.200 And like the British college dorm rooms are worse than the Scandinavian prisons 01:03:31.200 --> 01:03:35.100 in terms of amenities for the prisoner and how they look and blah, blah, blah. 01:03:35.340 --> 01:03:39.360 And I think, you know, fundamentally, a lot of this comes down to like, 01:03:39.500 --> 01:03:45.300 what is our philosophy of dealing with crime in the first place? 01:03:45.900 --> 01:03:49.300 And, you know, is it simply punishment. 01:03:49.560 --> 01:03:55.960 And I think for the most part in the U.S., it's punishment and revenge sort 01:03:55.960 --> 01:04:03.480 of lead the day in terms of what we're trying to do, rather than sort of an outcome-based. 01:04:04.450 --> 01:04:08.990 Do we make the world better in the end after this sort of view of things? 01:04:09.150 --> 01:04:14.810 And I, I think that's a problem, but like back to private prisons specifically, 01:04:14.810 --> 01:04:20.730 I think the adding everything I just mentioned applies to public prisons too. 01:04:20.910 --> 01:04:25.170 Uh, cause they're a reflection of like our societal societal attitudes, 01:04:25.170 --> 01:04:30.750 but I think the problems are amped up to 11 on private prisons because then 01:04:30.750 --> 01:04:37.490 you also add the profit motive and just like people trying to maximize the dollars no matter what. 01:04:37.710 --> 01:04:42.610 And I think it's exactly the wrong incentive to have in this sort of situation. 01:04:43.290 --> 01:04:49.830 There are a whole bunch of places where I think the profit motive helps in a lot of areas. 01:04:50.090 --> 01:04:54.570 I mean, there's a reason why capitalism has been successful and has driven all kinds of innovation. 01:04:54.930 --> 01:05:02.810 But there are certain areas where the profit motive provides really bad incentives 01:05:02.810 --> 01:05:04.810 that produce bad outcomes. 01:05:05.370 --> 01:05:08.150 We don't have to talk about all the others. I think there are plenty of others, 01:05:08.190 --> 01:05:10.050 but I think this is definitely one of them. 01:05:10.650 --> 01:05:14.150 Yeah. Oh, no question. I add to that that, 01:05:15.080 --> 01:05:22.720 Many, maybe not most, but many public prisons have a fairly stringent policy 01:05:22.720 --> 01:05:28.400 on how guards are hired, monitored, and checked out before they get the job. 01:05:28.580 --> 01:05:31.260 The private prisons do not do a very good job of that. 01:05:31.620 --> 01:05:35.940 Which means that the rate of— This is one of those things, at the very least, 01:05:36.040 --> 01:05:41.200 if you're going to have a private prison, you would expect that the scenario 01:05:41.200 --> 01:05:46.120 would be that they'd have to meet or exceed the standards of the public prisons. But no! 01:05:46.560 --> 01:05:51.800 No, no, no, no. Because prison abuse has apparently become a real issue in a 01:05:51.800 --> 01:05:56.140 lot of these private prisons because who is attracted to being a cop? 01:05:56.340 --> 01:06:01.960 All too frequently, bad guys are attracted to that because I get to beat people up and carry a gun. 01:06:01.960 --> 01:06:04.300 And probably even more so for prison guards. 01:06:04.560 --> 01:06:08.260 Well, yeah, absolutely. A good system screens those people out. 01:06:08.460 --> 01:06:13.400 And when they identify them, they kick them out. But I don't know that the private 01:06:13.400 --> 01:06:15.380 prisons aren't doing that. They don't give a damn. 01:06:16.000 --> 01:06:20.600 They get paid 500 bucks a prisoner a week or a month or whatever. 01:06:21.100 --> 01:06:26.680 And it's just the wrong way to do things. Plus, an awful lot of these people 01:06:26.680 --> 01:06:32.120 who are being picked up and kicked out of the country have not really committed crimes. 01:06:32.320 --> 01:06:34.220 They committed the crime of coming here illegally. 01:06:34.420 --> 01:06:36.960 Okay, that's a crime. They have not robbed people. 01:06:37.260 --> 01:06:40.740 Which, by the way, although there are people looking to adjust this, 01:06:41.360 --> 01:06:43.700 is at worst a misdemeanor and in many 01:06:43.700 --> 01:06:47.680 cases is actually just a civil issue entirely. It's not even criminal. 01:06:48.220 --> 01:06:51.920 Yeah, but very few of these people have committed violent crimes, 01:06:52.260 --> 01:06:55.300 robberies, and other horseshit like that. 01:06:55.420 --> 01:07:00.080 I mean, they've come here to try and make a living and they're willing to take 01:07:00.080 --> 01:07:02.540 jobs that don't pay very much and are hard jobs. 01:07:02.900 --> 01:07:07.460 But what we do is we arrest them and throw them in prison because we have a 01:07:07.460 --> 01:07:12.280 quota that you got to arrest 700 people a day and they're not achieving it. 01:07:12.480 --> 01:07:16.560 So there's all sorts of crap coming because they can't arrest enough people. 01:07:17.400 --> 01:07:23.200 Yeah. And, uh, and look, everything they're doing with that, you know, 01:07:23.500 --> 01:07:30.320 and is we're, you know, first of all, like they're not achieving the numbers 01:07:30.320 --> 01:07:32.500 of the deportations that Donald Trump wanted. 01:07:32.500 --> 01:07:35.720 And he's apparently getting madder and madder about that as the weeks go on. 01:07:36.120 --> 01:07:39.520 Like, why aren't you getting rid of these people? You're supposed to get rid of these people. 01:07:39.880 --> 01:07:46.160 And their deportation numbers are actually less than they were under Biden. um the biden. 01:07:46.160 --> 01:07:47.020 Got rid of a bunch. 01:07:47.020 --> 01:07:50.140 Now they have pointed out that intercepted border 01:07:50.140 --> 01:07:53.400 crossings are way down so the 01:07:53.400 --> 01:07:56.120 the thought is is donald trump 01:07:56.120 --> 01:08:02.080 just being so hostile that he's actually discouraging people from trying maybe 01:08:02.080 --> 01:08:08.280 apparently what happened last time donald was here was that there was a drop 01:08:08.280 --> 01:08:12.460 like this at the very beginning of his administration while people sort of sussed 01:08:12.460 --> 01:08:15.060 out the situation and understood what was going on. 01:08:15.260 --> 01:08:18.920 And then it popped right back up again, uh, afterwards. So we'll see if we're 01:08:18.920 --> 01:08:23.260 in that kind of a situation because you could see them declaring victory. 01:08:23.360 --> 01:08:27.600 Some of them are already starting to like, Oh, look, the crossings are down so much. 01:08:27.740 --> 01:08:32.400 Uh, that means this is all a success. We're doing great now. 01:08:33.140 --> 01:08:41.920 You know, I, I, I would argue that even so, gaining the success by being inhumane 01:08:41.920 --> 01:08:44.100 and brutal is not the right way to do it. 01:08:44.280 --> 01:08:50.260 But yeah, we're certainly not achieving all of Trump's goals on this. 01:08:51.100 --> 01:09:00.480 But if we are doing things by shipping people to inhumane situations in all 01:09:00.480 --> 01:09:03.480 kinds of different ways, whether it be the private prisons or hell, 01:09:03.620 --> 01:09:05.320 Guantanamo, we were doing for a little while. 01:09:05.480 --> 01:09:08.640 Apparently, we're backing off from that because it turns out that was hard and 01:09:08.640 --> 01:09:10.260 had all kinds of issues and was expensive. 01:09:11.660 --> 01:09:13.140 We're shipping people to. 01:09:14.700 --> 01:09:20.920 Foreign prisons, like I think El Salvador and Panama maybe both agreed. 01:09:21.300 --> 01:09:22.140 El Salvador, which... 01:09:22.140 --> 01:09:23.120 It was El Salvador. 01:09:23.560 --> 01:09:26.280 Yeah, their prisons are not a place you want to be. 01:09:26.740 --> 01:09:31.360 So they've apparently agreed to accept a whole bunch of people that we're expelling 01:09:31.360 --> 01:09:33.320 and then figure out what to do with them separately. 01:09:34.720 --> 01:09:41.400 But, you know, if we ship somebody to somewhere that treats them inhumanely, it's still on us. 01:09:42.040 --> 01:09:44.840 You know i i think that the the 01:09:44.840 --> 01:09:47.520 take that the administration has to be is 01:09:47.520 --> 01:09:50.220 like we're just getting out of the country what happens after that is none of our 01:09:50.220 --> 01:09:55.240 business we don't care you know but it it is our business and frankly even if 01:09:55.240 --> 01:09:59.440 we even if we end up ship if someone's here looking for asylum and we ship them 01:09:59.440 --> 01:10:04.360 back to some place that the reason they were looking for asylum was they were 01:10:04.360 --> 01:10:10.020 in danger in that place and we ship them back and something happens to them yeah, that's on us. 01:10:10.640 --> 01:10:15.240 I, you know, and of course there's a whole portion of the population that just 01:10:15.240 --> 01:10:18.480 doesn't care, but we should care. 01:10:18.700 --> 01:10:22.480 You know, I don't know. We're sort of pivoting from private prisons to, 01:10:22.600 --> 01:10:24.700 to the immigration issue, but like, yeah. 01:10:25.200 --> 01:10:29.760 Well, it's the reasons because the private prisons are now getting all these 01:10:29.760 --> 01:10:34.260 immigrants because they can't, they can't put them in regular prisons. I don't think. 01:10:34.700 --> 01:10:40.100 So they've, they're contracting with those private prisons to take on the immigrants and hold them. 01:10:41.040 --> 01:10:45.440 Yeah. And like you said, they're building new facilities. They're doing all kinds of things. 01:10:46.400 --> 01:10:49.400 There are some public facilities being built too, apparently, 01:10:50.220 --> 01:10:52.680 and some things just being repurposed. 01:10:54.100 --> 01:10:57.640 But all in all, it's not great. 01:10:59.640 --> 01:11:08.140 And Donald Trump, if anything, is getting increasingly mad that they're not being inhumane enough. 01:11:08.560 --> 01:11:13.420 Yeah. Oh, yeah. How many times did he say in the previous administration, 01:11:13.420 --> 01:11:17.480 when you're arresting these guys, don't protect their head. Just show them in the car. 01:11:19.860 --> 01:11:25.780 I don't want to talk about him. The guy makes me sick to my stomach. 01:11:27.460 --> 01:11:29.660 It's hard to talk about anything without him. 01:11:31.000 --> 01:11:36.080 Any more on the private prisons or anything else? Before we start wrapping things up. 01:11:36.120 --> 01:11:40.040 Well, the only other thing along in the medical stuff that I thought is kind 01:11:40.040 --> 01:11:46.540 of a good news story is the incidence of cancer of the cervix has been dropping a lot. 01:11:46.820 --> 01:11:49.500 Hey, would this have anything to do with a vaccine? 01:11:49.960 --> 01:11:57.880 It would indeed, because it began dropping when the vaccine was introduced. That's the good news. 01:11:58.080 --> 01:11:58.900 That's the HPV vaccine. 01:11:59.200 --> 01:12:06.080 Yeah, HPV. Actually, there's two strains, HPV-16, which is the really bad one. 01:12:06.220 --> 01:12:09.500 And I forget the number of the other one, but there's two strains that are covered. 01:12:10.640 --> 01:12:15.260 And the good news is that those people who get that are not getting cancer of 01:12:15.260 --> 01:12:20.060 the cervix and presumably probably not going to get cancer of the mouth and 01:12:20.060 --> 01:12:25.340 throat, although only about 50, 60 percent of cancer of the mouth and throat are from HPV. 01:12:25.620 --> 01:12:28.260 But that's half of the cases of cancer of the mouth and throat, 01:12:28.520 --> 01:12:30.460 which is a devastating cancer. 01:12:30.780 --> 01:12:36.340 And just to be clear as well, like originally they were pushing this like for 01:12:36.340 --> 01:12:39.080 girls and women because they have cervix. 01:12:39.200 --> 01:12:39.900 It's for everybody now. 01:12:39.900 --> 01:12:44.860 But it's for everybody now because males can be, can pass it along. 01:12:45.620 --> 01:12:52.180 And, and so the recommendation is that, you know, you, kids should get the HPV 01:12:52.180 --> 01:12:55.980 vaccine is what, right around puberty, right? Like. 01:12:56.660 --> 01:13:00.720 14 to 15, they're recommending before they become sexually active. 01:13:00.720 --> 01:13:05.740 Before they become sexually active, which, you know, frankly can be before that. 01:13:06.200 --> 01:13:11.820 So, so like, you know, get basically as soon as you're eligible, you should get that. 01:13:11.920 --> 01:13:16.120 Now, there was a lot of pushback on that initially from people being like, 01:13:16.220 --> 01:13:19.060 well, my kid's not sexually active. 01:13:19.400 --> 01:13:22.180 They're not going to be sexually active anytime soon. 01:13:22.440 --> 01:13:25.500 Well, then there were the others who said, if you give it, then the kid will 01:13:25.500 --> 01:13:27.580 think that they can go out and be sexually active. 01:13:28.080 --> 01:13:33.020 Yes. And yeah. And of course you got the usual people who are like concerned 01:13:33.020 --> 01:13:37.560 about side effects that aren't really a concern as well, but like you had this 01:13:37.560 --> 01:13:42.880 whole thing with people saying that, yeah, this was, this was being permissive. 01:13:43.060 --> 01:13:50.460 And of course my kid's going to be like a good chaste Christian wait till marriage. 01:13:50.700 --> 01:13:55.620 So there's no reason to have anything to do with this for years and years and years, if ever. 01:13:56.300 --> 01:14:00.280 And, and even, even then they're only going to be with their wife or husband. 01:14:00.440 --> 01:14:01.200 So, you know, blah, blah, blah. 01:14:01.420 --> 01:14:06.040 And it's like, come on people, come on, you know, let, let's, 01:14:06.120 --> 01:14:08.800 let's talk. Hey, let's talk about the real world. 01:14:09.460 --> 01:14:15.160 You know, but even like, okay, fine. Your kid's not going to be doing that stuff. 01:14:16.060 --> 01:14:19.960 What harm is it? Like it's, it's, it's only going to help. 01:14:20.180 --> 01:14:23.480 You never know what situation is, how your kid could get raped, 01:14:23.500 --> 01:14:29.180 you know, like get, get the protection in place. And like, you know, 01:14:29.840 --> 01:14:36.260 And it's proved highly effective at preventing a very serious cancer, you know. 01:14:36.380 --> 01:14:42.720 There used to be a little meme that said, you are not having sex with your sex partner. 01:14:42.900 --> 01:14:46.440 You're having sex with everybody that person's ever been with. 01:14:47.000 --> 01:14:47.220 Right. 01:14:47.820 --> 01:14:53.360 And that's kind of covered. So anyway, the good news is that the incidence is 01:14:53.360 --> 01:14:58.520 dropping. I think in a few more years, we'll probably see that the oropharyngeal 01:14:58.520 --> 01:15:00.020 cancer is also dropping. 01:15:00.440 --> 01:15:06.240 The bad news on that is that the incidence of women getting pap smears and checks 01:15:06.240 --> 01:15:09.040 for cancer is going down. 01:15:09.500 --> 01:15:15.620 Now, let's say we used to do a pap smear every damn year, and we wouldn't give 01:15:15.620 --> 01:15:19.980 women their birth control until they came in and got it because we could make sure they got it done. 01:15:20.480 --> 01:15:23.280 You only need a pap smear about every four or five years now. 01:15:23.280 --> 01:15:28.380 It's just not an imposition. And I understand. I can't swear to this. 01:15:28.460 --> 01:15:34.660 Well, just to be clear, any procedure like that is somewhat of an imposition, 01:15:34.980 --> 01:15:38.020 whether it's a pap smear or whatever. 01:15:39.400 --> 01:15:44.780 But it's not that it's not an imposition. It's that there are significant benefits 01:15:44.780 --> 01:15:49.200 associated with it that you want to balance off against that. 01:15:49.200 --> 01:15:51.260 It's preventative health care. 01:15:51.800 --> 01:15:55.800 You would much rather have good preventative health care than have to deal with 01:15:55.800 --> 01:15:59.620 the problem of a cancer or anything else after it's there. 01:16:00.000 --> 01:16:04.700 Yeah. Well, the other thing I was going to say is that there is a test now that 01:16:04.700 --> 01:16:12.080 you can do yourself at home for the HPV-16 strain, which is the most serious one. 01:16:12.220 --> 01:16:16.820 So if your objection is having a doctor look at your private parts, 01:16:17.000 --> 01:16:20.280 you can take care of that yourself. But God damn it, do it. 01:16:21.200 --> 01:16:24.400 Don't just say, well, I don't need to do that because I've always been careful. 01:16:25.060 --> 01:16:25.420 Right. 01:16:25.560 --> 01:16:29.240 It just doesn't work. It's like I'll never get measles because I never get around 01:16:29.240 --> 01:16:30.520 with anyone who's sick with measles. 01:16:31.240 --> 01:16:34.520 Well, and like I said, more generally preventive care in general, 01:16:34.720 --> 01:16:40.040 get your colonoscopies, take whatever tests they say you need to take, 01:16:40.440 --> 01:16:45.620 if you do your vaccinations, et cetera, et cetera. 01:16:46.100 --> 01:16:51.840 If they're maintenance medications that your doctor recommends for chronic conditions, 01:16:52.100 --> 01:16:56.100 actually take them, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know. 01:16:56.880 --> 01:17:02.080 Can I tell you one advantage of being over 80 now? I don't have to get colonoscopies anymore. 01:17:04.620 --> 01:17:07.700 They're like, if something happens, screw it. It's too late, basically. 01:17:07.840 --> 01:17:12.260 Well, that's it. Because from the earliest detection, which is what you find 01:17:12.260 --> 01:17:15.580 with colonoscopy, the dying of it is 15 to 20 years. 01:17:15.780 --> 01:17:20.160 So, you know, if you're 80, you're going to die before you die. Anyway. 01:17:20.600 --> 01:17:23.680 Oh, come on. You're going to make it to 120, 125, aren't you? 01:17:24.420 --> 01:17:28.600 I doubt it. Not the way I feel this one. I, 01:17:29.380 --> 01:17:34.260 just to add to the fun, you know, last year I did a, a year long walk, 01:17:34.440 --> 01:17:40.140 run exercise program that was to have 2025 miles in the course of the year. 01:17:40.440 --> 01:17:45.940 And I made it, I made, I think actually I made a little over 2,100 miles. So I was quite good. 01:17:46.360 --> 01:17:50.800 However, in October I started to run and my knees started to hurt all of a sudden. 01:17:51.100 --> 01:17:55.020 And I have what's basically a stress fracture in the tibial plateau. 01:17:55.660 --> 01:17:59.500 And I think I'm through running forever. So I had to walk the rest of the year. 01:17:59.780 --> 01:18:04.440 And now since the first of the year, I'm, I'm getting very, I'm not even going 01:18:04.440 --> 01:18:06.180 to get a thousand miles this year. 01:18:06.300 --> 01:18:09.160 I don't think I'm really slowing down this year, getting too old. 01:18:10.240 --> 01:18:12.140 Well, I hear that happens. 01:18:12.760 --> 01:18:16.700 It does. Yep. You know, I can still crack off. I mean, I can still crack. 01:18:16.840 --> 01:18:20.440 I did four miles yesterday with a workout in the gym in the middle. 01:18:20.580 --> 01:18:23.600 So I, I can still get four or five miles a day, which is enough. 01:18:24.640 --> 01:18:27.700 You're getting more exercise than I get. 01:18:27.900 --> 01:18:33.540 And I know I'm bad for that, but more power to you and I need to do better. 01:18:35.680 --> 01:18:39.020 Anyway, I think that's pretty much, I mean, you got some other things, 01:18:39.120 --> 01:18:41.000 but I think that's probably enough for this year. 01:18:41.420 --> 01:18:48.300 Okay. For this year. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Well, yeah, let's wrap it up then. 01:18:49.560 --> 01:18:55.140 Hey, everybody, as you know, go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You can find all 01:18:55.140 --> 01:18:58.760 our archive of shows. You can find transcript of recent shows. 01:18:59.020 --> 01:19:01.440 You can find all the ways to contact us. 01:19:01.800 --> 01:19:06.540 And if you want to get in contact with Ed, you can send it to us and we will relay appropriately. 01:19:07.180 --> 01:19:11.620 You can find, I still have not linked to TikTok. I am still posting highlights 01:19:11.620 --> 01:19:14.600 on TikTok every week. I am waiting for, 01:19:15.050 --> 01:19:20.930 At this point, to see if TikTok continues to survive after the 90-day extension 01:19:20.930 --> 01:19:22.270 that they were given earlier. 01:19:22.650 --> 01:19:25.690 And okay, look, I'm just procrastinating. That's the real answer. 01:19:25.830 --> 01:19:28.590 I'm procrastinating. I don't want to do the extra work. 01:19:28.910 --> 01:19:32.890 But I will eventually add a link to TikTok as well. But you can search for Curmudgeons 01:19:32.890 --> 01:19:34.230 Corner on TikTok and find us. 01:19:34.390 --> 01:19:37.570 The website has links to our YouTube, our Facebook, et cetera. 01:19:37.670 --> 01:19:38.770 We don't do much on Facebook. 01:19:39.850 --> 01:19:44.410 It's just post-announcement of the episodes. There's a link to our Mastodon. 01:19:44.410 --> 01:19:45.630 We don't do much on Maston. 01:19:45.650 --> 01:19:49.650 It just posts links to the episodes and to the live streams when they come out. 01:19:50.330 --> 01:19:54.770 YouTube has our live streams live when they come out, or you can watch video 01:19:54.770 --> 01:19:57.510 of the whole unedited shows there. 01:19:57.770 --> 01:20:02.470 It's a lot. It's fun. The podcast experience with audio is different than the 01:20:02.470 --> 01:20:04.910 video experience. Take a dip at both. 01:20:05.290 --> 01:20:11.890 Like, yeah, typically I do more like the video takes more commitment is the bottom line. 01:20:11.890 --> 01:20:14.890 Like audio podcasts you put on 01:20:14.890 --> 01:20:17.890 in the car while you're driving you put on on your headphones 01:20:17.890 --> 01:20:20.650 while you're doing household chores stuff like that 01:20:20.650 --> 01:20:24.210 does not require your full attention if you're going to put something on on 01:20:24.210 --> 01:20:30.650 video and and actually watch it then you have to actually sit there and watch 01:20:30.650 --> 01:20:38.750 it like which like i i admit i i i am not a fan of video podcasts but it's there if anybody wants, 01:20:38.970 --> 01:20:41.350 you can do that. Lots of people do like the video podcast. 01:20:41.610 --> 01:20:44.810 You can, of course, tune them out the same way as an audio podcast and do stuff 01:20:44.810 --> 01:20:49.450 anyway. The video is just on in the background. But anyway, all that stuff is there. 01:20:49.950 --> 01:20:52.870 Also, a link to our Patreon where you can give us cash money. 01:20:53.270 --> 01:20:57.510 As I mentioned earlier in the show, if you would like to give me enough money, 01:20:58.310 --> 01:21:02.790 that I don't have to go to a corporate job, I would really appreciate that. 01:21:03.710 --> 01:21:08.750 That'd be fun. I would enjoy that I would appreciate it I would I would. 01:21:09.810 --> 01:21:15.750 Consider doing stuff for you in return. I don't know what, but like, 01:21:15.930 --> 01:21:21.170 you know, I would accept that, you know, maybe I had to do something in exchange 01:21:21.170 --> 01:21:24.030 for that money other than just put out the show. 01:21:24.130 --> 01:21:27.490 But although, you know, the show is worth tons, obviously. 01:21:27.830 --> 01:21:31.590 Anyway, you can go to our Patreon at various levels of the Patreon. 01:21:31.710 --> 01:21:36.630 I will send, send you a postcard, send you a mug, mention you on the show. 01:21:36.830 --> 01:21:42.670 At this very moment, I owe Pete and Greg cards and I owe Ed a new mug. 01:21:44.050 --> 01:21:47.950 And I have not done those things. Like I said, I'm kind of swamped right now. 01:21:48.150 --> 01:21:49.970 I will get to them eventually, I promise. 01:21:50.430 --> 01:21:55.450 But at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the 01:21:55.450 --> 01:22:00.270 Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, where Yvonne and others are chatting, 01:22:00.270 --> 01:22:02.590 sharing links throughout the week. 01:22:02.810 --> 01:22:09.590 And so let me, let me find something, you know, I will pick the article and 01:22:09.590 --> 01:22:16.850 I will pick the most recently shared thing on the Slack, which was shared while we were recording. 01:22:17.190 --> 01:22:23.070 Um, Yvonne, who was apparently too sick to join us to record the show, 01:22:23.230 --> 01:22:29.990 but not too sick to be posting on the Slack, posted an article from The Register, 01:22:30.590 --> 01:22:37.190 developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch activated when he let go, 01:22:37.370 --> 01:22:40.250 when he was let go. And so. 01:22:41.290 --> 01:22:48.590 Basically, let's see, a federal jury in Cleveland has found a senior software 01:22:48.590 --> 01:22:50.650 developer guilty of sabotaging his 01:22:50.650 --> 01:22:55.390 employer systems, and he's now facing a potential 10 years behind bars. 01:22:56.350 --> 01:23:01.990 Davis Liu, 55, of Houston, Texas, was a seasoned coder employed by Power Management 01:23:01.990 --> 01:23:06.130 Biz Eaton Corporation from 2007 to 2019. 01:23:06.130 --> 01:23:10.410 In his last year, there was a corporate restructuring and he was demoted, 01:23:10.690 --> 01:23:14.150 both in terms of job responsibilities and server access. 01:23:14.530 --> 01:23:22.890 So he began introducing home-designed malware onto at least one of the employer's production systems. 01:23:22.890 --> 01:23:27.850 He wrote a program that would, in an infinite loop, create more and more non-terminating 01:23:27.850 --> 01:23:32.010 threads that would consume more and more resources until the computer running 01:23:32.010 --> 01:23:36.290 the code crashed and prevented people from logging in and using the machine. 01:23:36.690 --> 01:23:42.430 And basically, the account had been used to execute the malware, 01:23:42.430 --> 01:23:45.790 and he was the only member of the team who had access privilege. 01:23:45.790 --> 01:23:55.310 He set it up with a dead man switch that basically would lock every employee 01:23:55.310 --> 01:23:59.110 out of their accounts if his credentials were revoked. 01:23:59.310 --> 01:24:05.690 So basically, it checked periodically to see if he was still with the company. 01:24:06.330 --> 01:24:09.790 And if he was no longer with the company, would start wreaking havoc. 01:24:10.540 --> 01:24:11.260 Oh, dear. 01:24:12.280 --> 01:24:17.440 So, yeah. So, folks, it may sound fun. 01:24:18.200 --> 01:24:23.700 It may sound like a nice way to get petty revenge on your ex-employer. 01:24:24.760 --> 01:24:26.040 But, no. 01:24:28.600 --> 01:24:33.420 They will take it seriously for good reason. This guy's going to jail. 01:24:34.040 --> 01:24:34.240 Good. 01:24:34.700 --> 01:24:39.960 So, don't do stuff like that. That's in the same case. This should be obvious. 01:24:39.960 --> 01:24:42.280 This should be obvious. Don't do stuff like this. 01:24:42.460 --> 01:24:47.860 That's in the same category as these people who are firebombing Teslas and one 01:24:47.860 --> 01:24:53.280 actually fired a rifle into a Tesla because a guy was driving a Tesla, right? 01:24:53.700 --> 01:24:58.960 Those people need to have free room and board for years and years, not just a month or two. 01:24:58.960 --> 01:25:06.480 Yeah, look, I am not a fan of Elon either, but yes, there have been incidents 01:25:06.480 --> 01:25:08.620 of setting fire to Tesla chargers. 01:25:08.820 --> 01:25:14.620 There have been many incidents of vandalism and property destruction to Tesla 01:25:14.620 --> 01:25:21.040 vehicles. There have been cases of harassing the drivers of these vehicles. 01:25:22.280 --> 01:25:30.100 The least obnoxious one I saw was pictures of somebody who's leaving essentially 01:25:30.100 --> 01:25:35.160 pamphlets on the windshields of people driving Teslas basically saying, hey, 01:25:35.360 --> 01:25:38.880 we know when you bought this, it was cool. 01:25:38.940 --> 01:25:42.160 It was helping environmental causes. 01:25:42.220 --> 01:25:45.240 You thought it was great. but now 01:25:45.240 --> 01:25:48.420 it's not anymore so you really should consider getting 01:25:48.420 --> 01:25:51.980 rid of this car here's some places go go 01:25:51.980 --> 01:25:54.880 list it on car max go list it on whatever it listed 01:25:54.880 --> 01:25:58.140 like three or four different sites that you can sell vehicles 01:25:58.140 --> 01:26:06.400 on but they're like look it's changed everybody you know get out now before 01:26:06.400 --> 01:26:13.340 the only people left driving these things are maga nazi wannabes and people 01:26:13.340 --> 01:26:17.360 are justified in thinking badly for you for driving this car. 01:26:18.420 --> 01:26:24.400 And that's still kind of obnoxious, but it's the least obnoxious I've seen. 01:26:24.540 --> 01:26:27.800 The people who are actually like spray painting graffiti on these things or 01:26:27.800 --> 01:26:30.300 breaking windows or setting fires. 01:26:30.760 --> 01:26:34.240 No, no, no, no, no. It's not helpful. 01:26:34.760 --> 01:26:38.500 You know, and that note is actually right. 01:26:38.660 --> 01:26:41.720 I mean, a lot of the people who bought Tesla as several years ago, 01:26:42.000 --> 01:26:47.700 are absolutely appalled by what Elon Musk has been doing more recently. 01:26:48.060 --> 01:26:53.380 You know, I saw something today about someone talking about how they desperately 01:26:53.380 --> 01:26:57.860 want to get rid of their cyber truck, you know, but they can't get rid of it. 01:26:58.020 --> 01:27:01.280 Like they just can't find somebody to take it off their hands, 01:27:01.400 --> 01:27:05.460 even at a significant discount to what they paid. 01:27:05.780 --> 01:27:09.100 They like are failing to... 01:27:09.630 --> 01:27:14.030 Have any way to get it off their hands. I mean, I guess absent abandoning it 01:27:14.030 --> 01:27:18.350 on the street somewhere and somebody is eventually going to find them for if 01:27:18.350 --> 01:27:21.530 they do that and because there are issues with that too, right? 01:27:22.110 --> 01:27:26.910 Well, you know, you don't need to get violent and destructive to hurt them badly. 01:27:27.150 --> 01:27:31.630 I see that in Germany, the Tesla sales are down 70 some percent, 01:27:31.630 --> 01:27:37.250 but at the same time, EV vehicles, total sales are up 30 percent. 01:27:37.510 --> 01:27:40.470 So they're saying, And screw it. We're not going to buy his stuff. 01:27:40.690 --> 01:27:43.910 You don't have to go out and destroy him. Just quit buying his stuff. 01:27:44.670 --> 01:27:52.690 Yeah. Well, and people are. I mean, because it's not about, I mean, it's not about the cars. 01:27:53.470 --> 01:27:57.610 It's not about like the company even that in what they're doing. 01:27:57.610 --> 01:28:03.130 It's about Elon and the fact that he's become toxic. And specifically, 01:28:03.130 --> 01:28:08.870 he has become toxic to what was the target audience for his company. 01:28:09.850 --> 01:28:19.710 Like the people who are buying Teslas were not mega conservatives who are buying big gas guzzler trucks. 01:28:20.570 --> 01:28:23.710 You know, it was people who were concerned about the environment, 01:28:23.950 --> 01:28:26.890 people who wanted to be like on the cutting edge of tech people. 01:28:27.070 --> 01:28:33.530 It was a lot of liberals. It was a lot of rich left, left coast liberals, 01:28:33.930 --> 01:28:38.470 you know, and other people too, but it was a lot of that and he has alienated 01:28:38.470 --> 01:28:39.410 those people completely. 01:28:39.590 --> 01:28:43.530 So yeah, his, his sales are, are, are dropping, but you know, 01:28:43.610 --> 01:28:49.130 you also, I saw one, one person made a post on Mastodon just a little bit ago, 01:28:49.830 --> 01:28:54.570 uh, Kasim Rashid, who I forget what exactly he does, but I, I followed him. 01:28:54.890 --> 01:28:57.870 He's a, he's a human rights lawyer and a, and some other stuff. 01:28:59.050 --> 01:29:07.170 But he posted, look, the fact that Musk has lost about $100 billion over the 01:29:07.170 --> 01:29:12.070 last month with how the stock market has been doing and Tesla in specific has been doing, 01:29:12.350 --> 01:29:19.870 but he's still the wealthiest person in the world after losing $100 billion in nominal income. 01:29:20.170 --> 01:29:27.070 And not only that, but in terms of his day-to-day life, it doesn't even make a difference. 01:29:27.070 --> 01:29:30.330 No like lost lost 100 billion dollars 01:29:30.330 --> 01:29:33.190 like he's and i'm no longer quoting the 01:29:33.190 --> 01:29:36.650 tweet but he's making the point it's like 01:29:36.650 --> 01:29:39.990 because he goes on and talks about there shouldn't be billionaires and all that 01:29:39.990 --> 01:29:42.990 kind of stuff and i don't necessarily i'm not necessarily one that says we need 01:29:42.990 --> 01:29:46.810 to tax all billionaires out of existence completely or anything like that like 01:29:46.810 --> 01:29:52.230 me i'm not like all billionaires are evil but at the same time the the notion 01:29:52.230 --> 01:29:55.010 that he can lose 100 billion dollars, 01:29:56.270 --> 01:30:01.570 essentially have it not impact his day-to-day life at all and still be the richest 01:30:01.570 --> 01:30:05.910 person in the world by a decent margin is indicative of something. 01:30:07.190 --> 01:30:12.050 On the other hand, if his market keeps going down like it is right now, 01:30:12.270 --> 01:30:15.110 some of his margin loans are going to get called at some point. 01:30:15.410 --> 01:30:17.430 And then he may not be the richest person. 01:30:17.910 --> 01:30:20.490 Yeah, Yvonne has pointed that out a couple of times on the Curmudgeon's Corner 01:30:20.490 --> 01:30:24.570 Slack. I don't know if you mentioned it on the podcast. But yeah, 01:30:24.730 --> 01:30:30.690 apparently Musk is significantly leveraged in certain areas and using his stock 01:30:30.690 --> 01:30:32.310 as collateral and stuff like that. 01:30:32.470 --> 01:30:38.850 So there are certain circumstances that could cause a rapid deterioration in his situation. 01:30:39.110 --> 01:30:46.990 However, I think you can safely say that even in the worst possible case for 01:30:46.990 --> 01:30:49.810 Elon Musk, he's going to be doing pretty well. 01:30:51.470 --> 01:30:54.290 I i'm not so sure anymore there. 01:30:54.290 --> 01:30:54.770 Are there. 01:30:54.770 --> 01:30:59.470 Are more than a few billionaires who ended up on the in the world. 01:30:59.470 --> 01:31:07.850 I don't know i yeah i just do i have trouble envisioning a situation where you 01:31:07.850 --> 01:31:13.690 end up passing elon on a street corner holding up the sign asking for five bucks for dinner. 01:31:15.070 --> 01:31:18.210 I'm sorry. Like he will avoid that fate. 01:31:18.550 --> 01:31:22.430 Yeah. You know, he's, he's got basically three companies. 01:31:22.590 --> 01:31:27.410 He's got Tesla, he's got the rocket company and he's got X. 01:31:28.030 --> 01:31:31.310 X is worthless. It's, it's still losing. 01:31:31.510 --> 01:31:37.550 It has paper value, but nothing else. His Tesla stock is what he leveraged to buy X. 01:31:38.070 --> 01:31:41.830 And the rocket company has now got two spectacular failures in a row. 01:31:41.970 --> 01:31:44.770 I'm not sure that people are anxious to buy that stock. 01:31:45.470 --> 01:31:48.510 Well, that one's private. There, you can't find it. 01:31:48.590 --> 01:31:49.350 Is that privately owned? Okay. 01:31:49.630 --> 01:31:54.770 SpaceX is private. But it does, and normally you'd say, well, 01:31:54.970 --> 01:31:57.830 does this put his government contracts at risk? 01:31:58.350 --> 01:32:04.330 Yep. But in the world we have now, Elon's hanging out in Novel Office every day. 01:32:04.630 --> 01:32:05.570 Yep, that's true. 01:32:05.630 --> 01:32:11.110 You know, and has a significant part in the decisions that will influence his 01:32:11.110 --> 01:32:13.770 company in SpaceX and Tesla too. 01:32:14.410 --> 01:32:20.790 Yep. So like, so I don't know that you can say, well, clearly NASA is going 01:32:20.790 --> 01:32:25.850 to cancel the contracts they have, or at least put a hold on it or put something, you know, 01:32:26.230 --> 01:32:30.050 maybe, maybe not like a pair, apparently even this time, 01:32:30.290 --> 01:32:36.610 like you kind of would have expected that maybe the FAA would have put more 01:32:36.610 --> 01:32:41.590 restrictions on after that first rocket blew up a month ago that would have 01:32:41.590 --> 01:32:43.690 prevented the same thing from happening in the second. 01:32:43.870 --> 01:32:46.550 And from what I've seen so far, they're still investigating. 01:32:46.770 --> 01:32:50.510 It was essentially the same failure that happened a month ago, 01:32:50.530 --> 01:32:54.790 you know, in terms of what physically happened to the rocket. 01:32:55.190 --> 01:33:05.070 So they clearly did not take the amount of time necessary to fully address the situation. 01:33:05.270 --> 01:33:09.010 Now, maybe I'm sure the situation is a little bit different. 01:33:09.010 --> 01:33:15.310 They probably, you know, but, but nevertheless, yeah, who, who knows? Like, yeah. 01:33:15.990 --> 01:33:19.050 It's probably still full speed ahead in terms of that. 01:33:19.250 --> 01:33:24.310 Now, the Tesla stuff, on the other hand, you know, unlike SpaceX, 01:33:24.610 --> 01:33:28.310 where the primary customer is going to be, I mean, there are corporate customers 01:33:28.310 --> 01:33:33.410 too, but government makes a huge part of SpaceX's plans. 01:33:35.190 --> 01:33:39.930 Tesla, you have to get people to buy the damn cars. And if less and less people 01:33:39.930 --> 01:33:42.670 want the cars, that's a problem for you. 01:33:42.670 --> 01:33:48.790 Now can, can Musk at some point sort of make up the people he's losing by getting 01:33:48.790 --> 01:33:51.030 new people excited about the product? 01:33:51.170 --> 01:33:53.430 Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. 01:33:55.090 --> 01:33:56.810 Okay. I think that's it, Ed. 01:33:57.410 --> 01:33:57.590 Yep. 01:33:58.130 --> 01:34:01.290 Sounds good. Thank you for joining us yet again, Ed. 01:34:01.550 --> 01:34:05.010 And we hope to see you again. You know, when I invite people, 01:34:05.250 --> 01:34:10.110 when I need a co-host and I invite people, I always exclude the last few people. 01:34:10.690 --> 01:34:13.770 Like Bruce did not get an invite here because he 01:34:13.770 --> 01:34:16.710 did because he did it last time you know 01:34:16.710 --> 01:34:19.710 he did it only a few weeks ago Ed now 01:34:19.710 --> 01:34:22.390 will not get an invite the next couple of times that we 01:34:22.390 --> 01:34:25.630 have an opening but you know he'll eventually come back around I 01:34:25.630 --> 01:34:28.990 do that to try to enforce some variety because for a while it was just like 01:34:28.990 --> 01:34:32.990 Ed and Bruce and Ed and Bruce and Ed and Bruce and Ed and Bruce they're the 01:34:32.990 --> 01:34:38.590 only ones we ever got on but and it still kind of is that you two are my my 01:34:38.590 --> 01:34:42.610 two most common co-hosts by a long margin, but, uh, 01:34:43.150 --> 01:34:45.650 but I, I, you know, some variety is good too. 01:34:46.130 --> 01:34:49.390 Maybe the next time I do it, I'll draft my son-in-law to come and join. 01:34:49.550 --> 01:34:50.550 We can have a three-way again. 01:34:50.830 --> 01:34:54.730 There, there you go. But yeah, no, it's a, it's a lot of fun to have you and, 01:34:54.730 --> 01:34:58.470 uh, we really appreciate it when you do it. So thank you for coming, Ed. 01:34:58.930 --> 01:34:59.590 My pleasure. 01:35:00.190 --> 01:35:04.690 For everyone listening, have a great week. Stay safe, have fun, 01:35:04.890 --> 01:35:11.590 but not too much fun. And, uh, and we'll see you next time. Goodbye. 01:35:12.330 --> 01:35:12.990 Goodbye. 01:35:43.910 --> 01:35:44.930 Ha ha ha ha. 01:35:45.750 --> 01:35:51.410 Thanks again, Ed, and stay healthy, and we'll talk to you next time. 01:35:51.950 --> 01:35:53.390 Okay. Always a pleasure. 01:35:54.010 --> 01:35:54.570 Yep. Bye.