Sam: There we go, and then I make sure it shows up over here, and I retweet it,
Sam: and then put this back over here.
Sam: Okay, all the preliminaries are done, let's get this sucker started!
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, July 12th, 2025.
Sam: As I'm starting to record, it is just after 18 UTC.
Sam: I am Sam Minter, and we do not have Mr. Yvonne Bowe with us today.
Sam: He called out sick. He messaged me Friday morning U.S.
Sam: Time saying, Hey, I'm sick. I don't think I can record. I've called out of work, too.
Sam: And at the time he mentioned it to me, I was still at home, but just barely.
Sam: I had to leave and run to work. And so I left and ran to work and blah,
Sam: blah, blah, and didn't get to send out my email to folks, say,
Sam: asking for co-hosts until I got home, like, many hours later.
Sam: And no responses this time. Because, I mean, I gave only one time I could possibly
Sam: record, and I didn't give much notice.
Sam: And, you know, sometimes nobody's available anyway. So it's just me. I'm going to do a solo.
Sam: As usual, when I do a solo, I'm going to, you know, you'll listen to one episode
Sam: unless you're on the YouTube live stream.
Sam: But, you know, in reality, I'm going to record each segment separately.
Sam: And in between the segments, I'm going to go off and do other things for hours.
Sam: I have, like, stuff to do and things I want to do.
Sam: So I'm not even going to go two hours straight. I mean, I could do two hours straight.
Sam: It is possible. I have done it. I do it with Yvonne all the time. I could do it solo, too.
Sam: But, you know, whenever I have the extra freedom of it just being me, I take breaks.
Sam: Like, I do a little bit, take a break, do a little bit, take a break, you know.
Sam: Anyway, agenda-wise, this first sort of but firsty segment, I'm going to give
Sam: an update on my car situation. I mean, I did put a little thing at the very
Sam: end of last week's episode for anybody who stayed past the closing music.
Sam: But I'll give an update on my car situation. and do a couple movies. And that'll be it.
Sam: And then I'll take a break and we'll come back with more newsy stuff.
Sam: But honestly, honestly, as I sit here looking at it right now, I'm like, I don't know.
Sam: There's not that much exciting on the list. I mean, look, as always in every week, things happened.
Sam: I mean, if Yvonne was here, we'd probably talk about tariffs.
Sam: There was more crazy, stupid tariff stuff.
Sam: There's stuff about the Epstein investigation.
Sam: Not the investigation itself, because there's really been nothing new there in years,
Sam: but about the Trump administration people self-imploding over the fact that
Sam: they built up a conspiracy theory and then had to come out and say,
Sam: oh, really, there's nothing there.
Sam: You know, other stuff, Elon's starting a new political party, or said he was anyway.
Sam: Well, we'll talk about something. But first, yeah, but first,
Sam: that's why I call it the but first segment is because sometimes I call it but first.
Sam: You know, actually, I stole that.
Sam: There was a podcast called Tank Riot that I used to listen to.
Sam: They haven't put out a new episode in a decade plus.
Sam: I think it's defunct. I think one of the co-hosts died, I think,
Sam: or one of their close family members died or something and they just stopped.
Sam: But i liked it because what they did
Sam: was they would have this but
Sam: first segment where they talked about bullshit oh
Sam: they talked about like you know whatever and
Sam: it was just random and all over the place sometimes personal stuff sometimes
Sam: media sometimes whatever and then after doing that for a while they would go
Sam: on to their official topic of the show generally speaking it wasn't like a news
Sam: and politics show like we do here.
Sam: It was sort of a, they would pick a topic to deep dive into.
Sam: And then they would spend time talking about the topic.
Sam: And anyway, it was, I liked that podcast.
Sam: I had fun with it. And they did the but first. And anyway, that's where that comes from.
Sam: I think their archival episodes are all still up online.
Sam: You can go check them out, Tank Riot. It was fun.
Sam: And sometimes they did talk about politics and stuff too. It just wasn't the
Sam: always consistent theme like we sort of do, although we get away from it sometimes.
Sam: Anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: I'll start with the car stuff. For those of you who listened past the end of
Sam: the episode last week, you know I did go out and get a 2025 Ioniq 5 SEL model.
Sam: Actually, I don't know if I said that in the after podcast, but it was the SEL
Sam: trim level. I'll talk about that a little bit in a second.
Sam: Basically the, you know, I'd been looking at them for a while.
Sam: You know, I sort of had it in my mind that that's the one I kind of wanted if we could swing it.
Sam: And it was probably a little bit more money than we would actually want to spend.
Sam: As I told Yvonne, the amount of money I wanted to spend is zero,
Sam: you know, like, yeah, like I didn't want to buy a new car right now.
Sam: I'd hoped that this one would last a couple more years you know
Sam: i knew it was in bad shape in various
Sam: ways but i hope it would last a couple more years and yes
Sam: yvonne was like oh let's uh get the prius
Sam: just get the prius but i kind of wanted to do the all electric thing the subsidies
Sam: were you know are being canceled in a couple months so like if i'm gonna do
Sam: it like now seems like a good time to do it i'd been looking at this one for
Sam: a while as they pass me on the street i'd been like you know hey, that looks cool.
Sam: I think I like it. I was like, I need to see the interior.
Sam: I'd only seen them passing by. And I had tried to peek in the windows of some
Sam: parked ones, but I was always a little self-conscious about that and only took
Sam: a quick glance. I didn't actually stop and stare.
Sam: So I hadn't really gotten a good view of the interior. My wife had at least one friend,
Sam: i think two who actually had them already and so
Sam: she had actually ridden in them and said yeah it's a nice car you know
Sam: i don't know her worry was it was like slightly bigger than my current car and
Sam: it was like i i've said over and over again like the the size of car i had in
Sam: the 2012 subaru imprasa was just about what i wanted like i i could see i didn't
Sam: really want to go any smaller,
Sam: but I also didn't really want to go much larger.
Sam: I'd consider a little bit larger, but not a lot larger.
Sam: Like when occasionally when my car's been in the shop and I've gotten loaners
Sam: from Subaru, they've put me in like Foresters or Outbacks or,
Sam: you know, things like that.
Sam: And I immediately felt like they were too big. I did not like them.
Sam: I mean, they were fine. And after I drove them for a little while, I got used to them, but,
Sam: Size-wise, I didn't like them. So she was worried that, you know,
Sam: look, you may not think so, but the Ioniq's actually bigger than your current car.
Sam: And I looked up the dimensions. It's a little bit bigger. It's like,
Sam: you know, a couple inches wider and like four or five inches longer.
Sam: I forget the exact numbers, but it was a little bit bigger.
Sam: But you know so that was a concern and and
Sam: also yeah like you know if you if
Sam: you did a straight up purchase the the
Sam: monthly payments were pretty large like
Sam: larger like and i guess in the in the grand scheme
Sam: of things i mean lots of pain lots of car payments are like that
Sam: level you know yeah it was it was like
Sam: a 700 and change car payment if i
Sam: did a straight up purchase of the model i wanted and like
Sam: you know it's i've it's
Sam: been years since i've had any car payment i'm like
Sam: i don't want any car payment and when i did
Sam: like the last one was a lot less than that it seems like
Sam: i mean it was you know what 12 plus years
Sam: well i guess i'm still paying it for a while after that
Sam: but like it's been a long time so things
Sam: were cheaper and so like i get sticker shock
Sam: anyway so those those were all concerned so i
Sam: was like okay fine yvonne i'll look at the other ones too and
Sam: like blah blah blah i'm i i didn't look at
Sam: the other ones at all so my wife had a
Sam: friend of hers yeah okay fine
Sam: they they she has friends who own the dealership the hyundai dealership so she
Sam: texts her friend is like you know hey we're looking for a new car it was unexpected
Sam: yeah unexpected like it was an old car we knew it would happen sometime but
Sam: we didn't know it was going to happen at that moment.
Sam: And we wanted you know what do
Sam: you have you know and she's like i i talked
Sam: to my folks we have something in mind for you come on in
Sam: we'll take care of you so you know
Sam: i will say and i and look it it's been however long i mean my car brandy's car
Sam: it's been forever since last time we bought cars the last couple of times we've
Sam: had one connection or another that you know i mean.
Sam: It it helps like i am the kind of person who
Sam: like i don't want to go in and haggle i don't want to go in and do whatever
Sam: like i i want to look at the sticker say this is what i want buy it and out
Sam: you know i've talked to yvonne about this before like my car before the subaru
Sam: was a saturn and And that was their whole deal was like, yo,
Sam: no haggle. It's just the sticker price.
Sam: Go. I love my Saturn, by the way.
Sam: I like that car. I like the Subaru too.
Sam: You know, even though I wish it had lasted a little bit longer, I liked both those cars.
Sam: Oh, I went through, I tried to figure out my entire car history.
Sam: And I can't remember all the years. And I have this sneaking suspicion that
Sam: maybe I forgot one, but I don't think so.
Sam: So I think it was the first one was a 1976 Dodge Colt that had originally belonged to my grandmother.
Sam: I called it puke green. It was sort of a shiny metallic green.
Sam: I still have its dashboard in my garage to this day because when it finally
Sam: died, I removed the dashboard and I kept it.
Sam: Anyway, 1976 Dodge Colt. That
Sam: was my grandmother's, then it was my mother's, then she let me drive it.
Sam: I guess I technically never owned it. It was always my mother's,
Sam: but I got to drive it. Then there was a Ford Taurus station wagon. It was blue.
Sam: And that was also my mom's, but I got to drive it.
Sam: And then after the Ford Taurus died,
Sam: i got a toyota corolla and i had that
Sam: that that's the one i remember the least about
Sam: because it didn't last that long it got
Sam: totaled in an accident i got rear-ended like i
Sam: got in a multi-car pile-up where i
Sam: was driving along the highway and you know
Sam: i i had to stop because there were people stopped in
Sam: front of me i successfully stopped you know
Sam: i was not moving and then
Sam: multiple cars hit me from behind and that
Sam: one i i had bought used and wasn't worth
Sam: that much to start with probably and yeah it was totaled
Sam: by that accident luckily everybody walked away it was like you know multi-car
Sam: pile up but nobody's severely injured i think i ended up going to like a chiropractor
Sam: for a little bit which like it was a sports medicine slash chiropractor because like Like, yeah,
Sam: I guess my back was hurt a little bit, but I don't know.
Sam: Well, I don't even remember. It was a long time ago. But then after that, I got the Saturn.
Sam: Green Saturn SL2, I think it was, and then the Subaru Impreza, and now Hyundai Ioniq 5.
Sam: That's my entire history of cars, my entire life, unless I forgot one.
Sam: I feel like maybe there was one in between the Taurus and the Corolla,
Sam: but then I think back and I think there wasn't that much time in that interval.
Sam: There can't have been. That has to have been it.
Sam: And I'm hallucinating that There might have been another because I also can't
Sam: remember anything about another car. So I think that's probably just it.
Sam: I just like keep thinking, did I miss one? Is there? No, but I think that's the entire history.
Sam: Anyway, it helps to have someone like because apparently it's a family business.
Sam: The person who's a friend of my wife's wasn't there. She was traveling,
Sam: but her daughter was there.
Sam: And so her daughter came in. And her daughter did sort of the beginning and end of the process.
Sam: And in between, they assigned us to some regular salesperson to do the test
Sam: drive and all the intermediary stuff.
Sam: But it was very smooth. There was no hassle.
Sam: We didn't do any negotiation. They gave us a price.
Sam: I mean, I did send pictures and everything to Yvonne. And Yvonne's like,
Sam: that's a good deal. Go for it.
Sam: You know, like if Yvonne had told us they're screwing you, you have to like
Sam: negotiate or do, then we would have tried.
Sam: But like, no, the very, the first thing I sent, you know, it's like,
Sam: it's like, okay, they're taking care of you.
Sam: Anyway, I, we did the test drive and, you know, the worries about it being bigger
Sam: or whatever, it felt the same to me.
Sam: Like, I mean, I know, I know intellectually it was slightly bigger.
Sam: I can feel a few things where like it's slightly taller off the ground, slightly, but not a lot.
Sam: And like the other dimensions may be a little bit bigger, but not a lot.
Sam: It wasn't enough that like when I, I mentioned, I felt sort of uncomfortable
Sam: in the forest or the outback or whatever. I got into them and I immediately
Sam: felt like, oh my God, this thing's huge.
Sam: And I didn't feel that with this. Like it immediately felt like a normal,
Sam: I'm just normally driving the car, whatever.
Sam: And, and I liked it. And the, the one thing that bugged me, I'll tell you the
Sam: one thing that bugged me, I bought it anyway, but this is one of those things
Sam: where I'm like, why would people do this?
Sam: This seems like an obvious flaw is that from the driver's position,
Sam: at least at my height and, I guess,
Sam: my posture and where I like to set the seats,
Sam: although I tried to adjust it to avoid this and couldn't, the bottom left corner
Sam: of the infotainment display screen, not the one with the dials directly in front of you,
Sam: but the infotainment display screen, the bottom left-hand corner is obscured by the steering wheel.
Sam: And I'm like, all you have to do is move it an inch to the right and you wouldn't have this issue.
Sam: But no, no. And so my wife's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I can see it all.
Sam: I'm like, and I'm looking at the geometry and trying to do physics in my head.
Sam: And I'm like, there's no way you can see it all.
Sam: You're just, you just don't care or don't notice, or, you know,
Sam: you just automatically sort of move your head a little bit to the right.
Sam: Because you can see the bottom left of the screen if you move your head a little
Sam: bit over to the side, you know, or maybe she just sits tilted to the side. I don't know.
Sam: And of course the, and so I'm like, I want to see that corner of the screen.
Sam: They could have just moved it an inch and it would have been fine.
Sam: You know, I'm like, I'm not going to let that stop me from getting the car,
Sam: but it did sort of annoy me. You know, but nothing else annoyed me.
Sam: Everything else was like nice. I enjoyed it. I tested the stuff.
Sam: I had asked to test the SEL trim from the beginning because I'd read somewhere,
Sam: I think it was car and driver or somewhere, that that was sort of the sweet
Sam: spot between cost and value of the packages you can get on it.
Sam: I think there's two packages below and two packages above, if I remember right.
Sam: I'm not going to look it up.
Sam: But here's the thing, and I talked a little bit about this on the Curmudgeon's
Sam: Corner Slack with our listener, Bob, who also has an Ionic 5.
Sam: He got it a few months ago, and he apparently has the next trim level up for
Sam: me, like the Limited or whatever. I don't know.
Sam: I did not, I could have looked and said, okay, I remember that the review said SEL was the sweet spot.
Sam: But what's in the next level up?
Sam: I did not do that. I intentionally avoided that.
Sam: I did look at one level down, and I asked him, okay, one level down,
Sam: what's it missing? What doesn't it have?
Sam: And the big thing for me was actually the wireless charging pad in the middle.
Sam: And I know they're slower than plugging it in, but it's so convenient.
Sam: You just put the thing down, and you're done. and it
Sam: it it the the speed of it is annoying
Sam: compared to a wired one i i will give you that but it's
Sam: so convenient and also like apparently a power
Sam: adjustable passenger seat as and back seat for that matter as well as the driver's
Sam: seat and like those things are cool i i would want that i would miss not having
Sam: the wireless charging pad and i would be annoyed knowing that the driver's seat has, you know,
Sam: is powered, but the others aren't.
Sam: I would just be, if I ever have to ride as a passenger, that would annoy me.
Sam: But here, this is exactly though, why I didn't look at the next level up.
Sam: Cause I knew 100% that if I looked up what was in the next level up,
Sam: I would convince myself that I had to have them.
Sam: I still, to this moment, have not looked up what's in the next level up because
Sam: I know if I did, I'd be like, oh man, I could have got that.
Sam: It was only like this many dollars more and we could have folded that in and
Sam: the monthly payment would have only been like 20 bucks a month more or something.
Sam: And I could have done that. And oh my goodness. and now I'm missing out on doodad X.
Sam: I 100% know that if I'd looked at the higher trim levels, I would have talked
Sam: to myself all the way up to the maximum trim level.
Sam: And because I know myself, I know I would have done that.
Sam: I know I would have been like, and you know, I know, I just know.
Sam: It doesn't even matter what those things were.
Sam: You know i would have convinced myself
Sam: i needed them as it
Sam: is i got what i got and i'm happy i'm
Sam: like this is an amazing upgrade from a 2012 subaru impreza like and and look
Sam: a lot of the things i'm amazed in i guess just to finish that up i guess at
Sam: some point maybe i'll look up what was in the higher trim levels, but I'm going to wait.
Sam: Like, yeah, I know I could do it instantly. I could bring up another window
Sam: right now and check, but I don't want to, because right now I'm happy.
Sam: And I know if I looked up those trim levels, I'd be like.
Sam: Sad that i didn't get them
Sam: because i know like our finances are such
Sam: that i wanted to spend as little money as
Sam: possible i mean and obviously not as i could
Sam: have gotten something much much cheaper than what we got yeah i
Sam: could have gotten a really basic traditional gas
Sam: car with no bells and whistles and you
Sam: know i i could have gotten something for half the price of
Sam: what i got there are still cars out there for 25k
Sam: or so not very many but you
Sam: can get cars you know you can get basic cars with absolutely nothing hell i
Sam: could have gotten a used car i i could have gotten a a newer used car i i could
Sam: have spent a lot less than i did but you know i wanted this but,
Sam: I could have spent more like, you know.
Sam: They're, they're, you know, and I know I could have convinced myself up,
Sam: up, up a trim level or two that once I, I mean, the big decision was you're
Sam: getting this car one, once you're within that range.
Sam: You know I know it was
Sam: a better choice to be more frugal the stupid review said this was the sweet
Sam: spot so I let myself fixate on that and get this one and it's probably the right
Sam: thing to do but I know the moment I look at those other trim levels I would be like oh man.
Sam: I should have done that I could have done that oh I'm missing the blah blah blah.
Sam: And yeah, anyway, so I've been driving it around for just under a week now.
Sam: I ended up getting it driving away from the lot Saturday night or before sunset.
Sam: So it's still light out, you know, so it's, and it's Saturday midday as I'm recording this.
Sam: So not quite a full week, but close.
Sam: I am enjoying it. I like the car.
Sam: I am having, having fun with it. I've, I've, I've charged it up twice now.
Sam: Once I didn't really need it yet, but I was like, you know, I was at like 50% or something.
Sam: I'm like, I want to figure out how to do it. Both times I've charged,
Sam: I've charged a supercharger.
Sam: I have not tried the trickle charge at home because I know Yvonne and others
Sam: were saying if I trickle charge at home overnight, that's probably enough for
Sam: my daily commute. And so I only need to do something else if I'm really going somewhere.
Sam: Honestly, my daughter's car has been parked in my parking spot in the garage.
Sam: Not in the garage, in the driveway. My daughter's car has been parked there.
Sam: And so I've been parking on the street.
Sam: So further away that I could stretch an extension cord. Because I'm parking
Sam: on the street down the block.
Sam: She she's due to like take that car and
Sam: drive east to pennsylvania to to live
Sam: with her grandmother for uh for like at least a year soon she's been she's been
Sam: preparing to leave for over a month now as she like makes sure she feels like
Sam: everything is settled and then she was going to drive cross-country which by
Sam: the way she's got an even older car she's got like a 2002,
Sam: pontiac aztec so who knows if it'll even make it cross country but fingers crossed anyway.
Sam: Yeah the charging was fine went so the
Sam: first time i had to charge it took took some figuring out had to like okay how
Sam: do you do this exactly what do you what do you push and where do you plug and
Sam: what do you do the 2025 ionics use the new standard port that's the old tesla
Sam: port that Now everybody's standardizing on, you know,
Sam: and so like using the Tesla supercharger, I didn't have to use any adapters or anything.
Sam: It's, it came with a bag full of adapters for other types.
Sam: I haven't tried any other types yet. I've got chargers at work.
Sam: But, you know, the thing I've noticed is when I come in in the morning,
Sam: all the chargers are always full.
Sam: By afternoon, they've emptied out. But if I want to do that, I have to remember.
Sam: I'd either have to get there earlier or remember somewhere midday to go move
Sam: my car to the work chargers.
Sam: And I don't think they're the fast chargers like superchargers. They're a lot slower.
Sam: But, you know, I will at some point experiment with them as well. But charging was fine.
Sam: When I was at 50%, it took like 15 minutes. The second time I charged,
Sam: I'd let it get down to like 25 or something, and it was like half an hour.
Sam: And that's charging to 80%, because apparently the advice, I don't know,
Sam: like anybody else with an electric out there, feel free to give me advice on this.
Sam: I saw in a number of places saying generally speaking try to keep it between 20 and 80 percent.
Sam: And only charge to 100 if you're actually like you're gonna need it you're like
Sam: on a large road trip and you feel like you're gonna need it just better for
Sam: the long-term health of the battery whatever so i've i have it set to charge
Sam: to 80 at the moment and you know yeah it's different than like the quick,
Sam: you know, fill up at the gas station and go, but it's not bad.
Sam: And I do plan, I, we, we will get one, an L2, I guess, whatever they call it,
Sam: the next level up charger, we will get one installed at home. That is part of the plan.
Sam: The, it, it came with a coupon for free hardware for that.
Sam: You still have to pay installation, but it comes with the, you know,
Sam: so it came with, you know, here's a $600 value or whatever, 500,
Sam: $600 value for the actual hardware for the charger, and then you got to get somebody to install it.
Sam: And so I'll go through that process. I started that process.
Sam: Like I, I clicked the button to claim the coupon code or whatever.
Sam: And as soon as the coupon code arrives, they said it'll take a few days and then I'll get.
Sam: And then I'll just like plug it in and charge in my driveway.
Sam: And that'll be, you know, a lot more convenient.
Sam: But even the superchargers aren't not convenient.
Sam: And anyway, so the main things I'm struck by in the actual car,
Sam: and I don't know, this is not a car review podcast.
Sam: And I'm not a car person. But, you know, mainly the main things are just the
Sam: kinds of things you'd see in almost any transition from a 2012 to a 2025 and
Sam: not a top end 2012 either.
Sam: Like, so like there are a lot of features that were already in like luxury car
Sam: models that weren't in a 2012 Subaru Impreza that are just standard features
Sam: now that I think I have experienced in loaner cars,
Sam: but have not had in my daily driver.
Sam: And so most of it was like, these aren't even new things.
Sam: These have been around for many, many years, but it's the first time I've had them in my primary car.
Sam: And so things like the backup camera, you know,
Sam: things like having a whole bunch of charge ports built in instead of a couple
Sam: cigarette lighter adapters that you have to like, you know, put your little
Sam: charger doohickey in and then plug into.
Sam: Having a built-in screen for like apple carplay instead of having an aftermarket
Sam: one that i added a couple years ago and before that bluetooth only you know
Sam: but you know all this kind of stuff.
Sam: And and the biggest one though that actually will make that has made an impact
Sam: in my daily quality of life is modern cruise control.
Sam: And by modern, well, what do I mean? Well, first of all, even my regular cruise
Sam: control hadn't worked in my old Subaru in years.
Sam: It's one of the things that stopped working. I'm pretty sure when the second
Sam: or third time the rat ate through the wiring harnesses and we decided just not to repair it this time.
Sam: So I hadn't had any cruise control at all.
Sam: But 2012 Subaru Impreza was old-fashioned cruise control. You set it at a speed
Sam: and it goes that speed. End of story.
Sam: Modern cruise control.
Sam: Detects the traffic in front of you and adjusts your speed appropriately.
Sam: You set a maximum speed, but it slows down if you need to.
Sam: And it detects the lanes and helps you stay in the lanes.
Sam: For my 25-mile approximately, slightly less than 25-mile,
Sam: 25-mile approximately commute each direction into work now that I have to go
Sam: five days a week into the office in Seattle from where I live, where a significant,
Sam: like sometimes the entire length of that drive is heavy traffic.
Sam: But even the sort of normal is at least half of it is.
Sam: And, oh my goodness, letting the car deal with most of that,
Sam: you know, I put myself in the correct lane,
Sam: like for where I need to be, like right when I get on the highway.
Sam: And set the cruise control for, okay, a couple miles above the speed limit, speed limit 60.
Sam: I put it at 65. I will admit, because if you actually set it to 60,
Sam: people will just get really annoyed at you.
Sam: Some people do want to go 70, but 65 seems like a reasonable compromise.
Sam: And most of the time, not going anywhere close to that anyway.
Sam: There are only a few open stretches where you actually get up to that.
Sam: But having it deal with speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down,
Sam: speed up, slow down, stop, wait 15 seconds, start again.
Sam: And, you know, drive around the curves and stuff.
Sam: I mean, you know, this is not even, you know, full self-driving where people
Sam: are tempted to, like, read a book or whatever or play video games or whatever
Sam: those Tesla people do who end up getting in severe car crashes.
Sam: I mean, I can't not pay attention.
Sam: This thing is not that smart.
Sam: But it's pretty good. And, you know, just the amount of mental energy required for the drive is less.
Sam: Even if you are still paying attention and making sure it's not doing anything
Sam: stupid and blah, blah, blah, the amount of mental energy needed is less.
Sam: Even in just the one week driving to work, I can tell I arrive at the office
Sam: less tired because one of my complaints, generally speaking,
Sam: about, you know, since I've been commuting every day again,
Sam: is just that no matter how much sleep I've had the night before,
Sam: I arrive at the office already tired and feeling like I need a break before
Sam: I can start for real because I've just been in the car.
Sam: You know, if a really good traffic day will be less than an hour,
Sam: but, you know, like Fridays are usually a little bit better than the rest of the week.
Sam: If you're around a holiday, it's better.
Sam: But I'd say my typical time is approximately an hour.
Sam: And if it's a bad day If there's bad weather Or there's been accidents or whatever
Sam: It can hit an hour and a half.
Sam: One day this week And I was so glad I had the car helping with this But it did
Sam: take me over an hour and a half To get into work,
Sam: But here's the deal You know, it's 25 miles to work.
Sam: The last mile the
Sam: exit ramp off the highway and the
Sam: like four blocks from there to my
Sam: actual building took more than half an
Sam: hour all by itself you know
Sam: it was actually you know a decent drive
Sam: and then boom you hit you hit the line waiting to get to the exit to get off
Sam: at the exit and then it was crawling forever I remember like I messaged the
Sam: person I was supposed to be meeting and had to like.
Sam: Move a reschedule apologize for
Sam: being late whatever because like it wasn't
Sam: happening yeah i i'd left enough buffer
Sam: that i was intending to
Sam: be at the office half an hour before this meeting i ended up 15 minutes
Sam: late to it anyway if the
Sam: the the finance person when we were signing all
Sam: the papers asked me what's the favorite thing about the new car
Sam: and i was like i haven't
Sam: really driven it yet i hadn't driven the actual car yet
Sam: because like the one we test drove was a different color it
Sam: was otherwise identical so i i didn't say okay
Sam: i need to test drive this actual vehicle i'm like it's the same other than the
Sam: color right and they're like yeah it's the same other than the color so i hadn't
Sam: actually driven the vehicle at all yet so i don't know i'm like what's my favorite
Sam: thing oh so i said the the modern things that would be in here that weren't in a 2012 12.
Sam: But I will say after driving a week, it's the goddamn modern cruise control.
Sam: And I know this is not new.
Sam: You know, I know cars have had this for like a long time.
Sam: It's just, this is the first one I've had that has this, and it makes a big
Sam: difference to my quality of life with my commute.
Sam: So anyway, I'm happy with the car. I'm happy to have switched to a full electric.
Sam: So far, you know now we have i haven't
Sam: tried doing any road trips there are no road trips
Sam: on the agenda i haven't done that
Sam: kind of i haven't done a serious road trip
Sam: in a long long long long time the
Sam: last time was probably like a decade ago where
Sam: i had a work i had a conference i was
Sam: going to in at work in san francisco and for some damn reason i decided hey
Sam: it'll be fun to drive instead of instead of taking a plane so i drove back and
Sam: forth to the conference in san francisco which seattle to san francisco is a decent hike,
Sam: And, you know, so I did that. Let's see. How long is that? Let's just check Google Maps real quick.
Sam: Maps.google.com. Let's do this.
Sam: So let's see. From my home to, let's just say San Francisco without specifying a specific place.
Sam: And if I can spell Cisco correctly.
Sam: Okay it says oh i
Sam: had looked something up earlier as a pedestrian 313 hours
Sam: as a pedestrian if you were going to walk from my house to san francisco now
Sam: let's let's put this in a car 13 hours 13 hours and change okay 12 hours 34
Sam: minutes 831 miles for the preferred route the fastest route.
Sam: Yeah and and i stupidly as well decided i would do that in one day you know
Sam: you can do 12 hours in one day but it's nicer to split that up anyway i did
Sam: it in one day in both directions,
Sam: i'm just dumb i mean i call it one day
Sam: but i actually ended up like you know taking naps at
Sam: rest stops and stuff like that for multiple hours anyway
Sam: that's probably the long time i've
Sam: done a real road trip and we have none planned i am
Sam: i am thinking like since i have a new car i'm
Sam: like you know maybe not road trips like
Sam: that oh because we also yvonne convinced
Sam: us it was okay to get a lease because there were all kinds of additional deals
Sam: and the the the the rebates and
Sam: stuff due to the that's ending and blah blah
Sam: blah you could get into with a
Sam: lease in ways you couldn't get through a purchase although i believe there was
Sam: a there was a weird thing around that with we actually got a subaru rebate instead
Sam: because the particular model we got wasn't eligible for the other but they matched
Sam: the price anyway blah blah blah whatever we we we had plenty of rebate the.
Sam: Anyway what was i saying oh yeah you know i i used to do these random trips
Sam: that were like you know pick a random spot that's less than a certain amount
Sam: of airfare go there the next one for a long time for like 20 plus years has
Sam: been to Quintana Roo, Mexico. We still haven't gone.
Sam: Maybe eventually I'll go. Yvonne said he'd go with me.
Sam: I want to do that someday. But in the meantime, I was thinking short-range random
Sam: trips, like within 20 miles.
Sam: Like pick a random spot within 20 miles. I recently fixed up my random spot
Sam: generator on abelsmay.com so it works again.
Sam: And it had been broken for years because it used an old Google Maps API that
Sam: had been deprecated and I updated it.
Sam: And it's now, yeah, got a cool
Sam: like spinning globe map that like
Sam: when you pick a random spot and you know the
Sam: actual random spot picking never broke but the part
Sam: that showed you where it was on a map had broken anyway i'm thinking you know
Sam: i could do that i you know just you know random spot within 20-25 miles drive
Sam: there see what's there explore a little bit that would be like a fun thing to
Sam: do on weekends It's not that I have a lot of extra time on weekends and, you know,
Sam: I could like do a quick, like mount my phone and do a time-lapse of the trip
Sam: or something and, and make, make, make TikTok content out of it or something.
Sam: I don't know. Of course that makes it even more work.
Sam: I don't know. I want to do something, but even that's like, that's a short drive,
Sam: like no, no road trips spent.
Sam: Anyway, like the range anxiety, I don't think it'll be a real problem because
Sam: my actual driving doesn't require
Sam: the main thing is i probably will have to charge more
Sam: often than i filled up with gas but again the plan is to get one of those chargers
Sam: for home and then that won't really be an issue you know just plug it in at
Sam: home when you park at night like not even every night but every few nights you
Sam: do that i don't know okay enough about cars and i think enough for this segment.
Sam: I do have, I do want to talk about one movie and one book, but let's wait for
Sam: the next segment to do that. I will take my break.
Sam: I will do other things that I want to get done.
Sam: And we'll come back and talk about that. And then I don't know what I'll do
Sam: for the third segment. I don't know if I'll do a third segment.
Sam: We'll see how it goes. Like none of those topics really excite me.
Sam: Maybe while I take my break, there'll be some really exciting breaking news.
Sam: And then there'll be something to talk about.
Sam: I don't know. Anyway, so this is it for part one.
Sam: I hope you enjoyed part one. It was another story time. It was the continuing
Sam: of the thing, the story from the other day.
Sam: Oh, you know, the break I'd had picked is a new break.
Sam: I'll save that for one where Yvonne is here.
Sam: And the next break was an apple dream, which he hasn't heard.
Sam: So I'll save that for Yvonne, too. So I'll just do this other break We'll do
Sam: those others And the new one's really short It's like the shortest break we
Sam: have in rotation But you know whatever It was something.
Sam: Alex had me record like A long long time ago And I just recently told him Hey
Sam: if you send me that I'll make it a break So anyway,
Sam: But that's not what you're going to hear now This is one of the other breaks
Sam: So here goes We'll be back to talk about movies and books after this,
Sam: and after I take many hours.
Sam: For you, it'll be short. Here you go.
Sam: And we're back. As I said, for me, it's many, many, many, many, many, many hours later.
Sam: For you, it's probably just a minute or two later, unless, unless you also paused
Sam: the show, went and did other stuff and came back.
Sam: Which if you did, awesome.
Sam: Anyway first up the this will
Sam: be the media segment i'm going to talk about one movie and one
Sam: book i think it's becoming clear as the
Sam: weekend progresses that absent some new breaking news
Sam: the last segment is going to be about the epstein stuff because the maga implosion
Sam: appears to be growing again no new actual revelations on anything actually epstein
Sam: related but the reaction in MAGA world seems to be spiraling.
Sam: So we'll talk about that a little bit. But first, first, a movie and a book.
Sam: So the movie is Why We Fight from 2005.
Sam: This is a documentary. So it's probably unlikely that many of you have heard of it.
Sam: It was i guess it was at sundance it's like one of these film festival release films,
Sam: it won it did win a prize for
Sam: documentary there i guess and also won another award in like the information
Sam: and culture category in germany and and it won a peabody so what is it i i i
Sam: said what it was, right? Why we fight 2005. Yeah.
Sam: Here's the synopsis from Wikipedia. And we'll go from there. Synopsis.
Sam: Why We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military-industrial
Sam: complex and its 50-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date,
Sam: especially its 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Sam: The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II,
Sam: the American company was, American company, the American public was misled so
Sam: that the government, incumbent administration,
Sam: could take them to war and fuel the military industrial economy,
Sam: maintaining American political dominance in the world.
Sam: Interviewed about this matter are politician John McCain Political science and
Sam: former CIA analyst Chalmer Johnson Politician Richard Pearl,
Sam: Neoconservative commentator William Kristol Writer Gore Vidal And public policy
Sam: expert Joseph Cerinconi I probably murdered that last pronunciation,
Sam: sorry Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the
Sam: stories of a Vietnam War veteran whose son was killed in the September 11,
Sam: 2001 attacks and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son
Sam: on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq.
Sam: A 23-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army because he was
Sam: poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death.
Sam: And a military explosive scientist, An Duong, who arrived in the U.S.
Sam: As a refugee child from Vietnam in 1975.
Sam: So that's the synopsis.
Sam: Basically, I mean, it seemed like a well-done enough documentary.
Sam: It seemed well put together.
Sam: You know, production values was good. It sort of tried to make its case.
Sam: And, you know, there were good interviews and there's lots of, you know,
Sam: good backing information that, you know,
Sam: his thesis is at least part of the picture and that, you know,
Sam: you need to give the military something to do and you need to have something
Sam: for all the military contractors to do and build and make money and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But I kept thinking honestly through the whole thing that, yeah, Yeah,
Sam: I'm sure that factors in in some places, but this made it seem like they were
Sam: trying to convince you that that was the whole thing.
Sam: And I just don't buy it. I don't even buy that it's the biggest thing.
Sam: Obviously, lots of people make money off war and want to make money off war.
Sam: But in each one of the situations they talk about, and it really was mostly
Sam: about, you know, the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Sam: You know, I remember 2003, you know, I was, I was there.
Sam: I mean, I didn't go to Iraq or anything, but I was paying attention to the news
Sam: and I was following what was going on.
Sam: And look, yes, there were lies about this.
Sam: But, you know, from other interviews I've seen from the participants in that
Sam: and the people who drove us to war,
Sam: I honestly believe that there was actually a lot of self-delusion in there.
Sam: Like, you know, the whole, you know, there's weapons of mass destruction.
Sam: A lot of the people involved believed it.
Sam: You know, it turned out to be completely false. And of course,
Sam: lots of us were pretty sure it was completely false.
Sam: And there were plenty of warning signs that it was pretty false.
Sam: And they selectively paid attention to things that supported their case and
Sam: ignored things that didn't.
Sam: And there were, you know, there were motivated informants who made up stories
Sam: because they wanted to get the U.S.
Sam: Involved and all of this kind of thing.
Sam: And look, even when there were even for those who sort of like maybe they knew
Sam: that they were lying about weapons of mass destruction, they had other larger agenda things, too.
Sam: I mean, a lot of the neocons felt that George H.W.
Sam: Bush had betrayed them by not going all the way in the first Gulf War and that
Sam: this was unfinished business left over from the first administration and they
Sam: needed to deal with that.
Sam: They needed to deal with Iraq and that there were sort of geopolitical power
Sam: play things about, you know, advantages in the region if you took over Iraq
Sam: and if you controlled that.
Sam: And, you know, I think there certainly were a lot of people who knew,
Sam: look, fundamentally, you know, that it was sold to the public.
Sam: And if you were paying attention carefully and parsing words carefully.
Sam: You know, no one in the administration ever said Iraq was involved in 9-11.
Sam: You know, but they said things in a way that left the implication that dealing
Sam: with Iraq was part of the retribution for 9-11.
Sam: When you parse them carefully, it was sort of more like,
Sam: if we leave Iraq alone, they could do something like 9-11 or, you know,
Sam: after 9-11, they've supported terrorists more generally, not just the,
Sam: you know, anyway, there was a lot of, you know,
Sam: manipulation where, you know, if you do the careful parsing of language, like lawyer style,
Sam: you realize that they're not saying what the casual observer would think they
Sam: were saying from not paying very much attention.
Sam: And look, that's a theme. I think you're getting a lot of Trump supporters right
Sam: now who are like, wait, what do you mean he's doing X, Y, Z?
Sam: Well, that's what he said. Well, that's not what I thought he said.
Sam: You weren't paying attention.
Sam: But anyway, I think, and especially if you expand the scope to every decade since World War II,
Sam: I just never bought the thesis here that it's all about, you know,
Sam: the American public was misled so the government could take them to war and
Sam: fuel the military industrial economy,
Sam: maintaining, you know, maintaining American political dominance in the world.
Sam: Yeah, the second part. The first part, the fuel the military industrial economy,
Sam: I think is something that the people involved would say is a beneficial side effect.
Sam: Of course, they like that. Of course, they want that. But I don't think that's the primary goal.
Sam: The second part there, maintaining American political dominance in the world.
Sam: Well, of course, I don't think any of them would even deny that.
Sam: I'd say they'd like say that that's one of the primary goals of American foreign policy and should be.
Sam: Now, you may disagree with that statement, but I think the...
Sam: Foreign policy consensus, both Republicans and Democrats through all of those
Sam: years is going to be that, yeah, of course,
Sam: to serve American foreign policy interest, you want America to be as dominant as possible.
Sam: Now, you're going to have disagreements on exactly what that means, economic, political,
Sam: how is influence, are you using soft power,
Sam: are you using hard power are you doing this whatever
Sam: but yeah the the i don't think the notion would be controversial that well yeah
Sam: of course like if you're serving american form american interests you're going
Sam: to want to be able to exert influence all over the world as much as possible.
Sam: Now, we now have the growth of sort of the isolationist views as well that say,
Sam: you know, no, let's worry about home and the rest of the world can do whatever it wants.
Sam: And we're starting to see some of the consequences of that. And even there,
Sam: it's mixed. I mean, we still attacked Iran, you know.
Sam: But anyway, I just fundamentally don't buy the premise. I think there's all
Sam: kinds of the military industrial part of it anyway.
Sam: The dominance in the world part, sure. But I don't think that's surprising or
Sam: interesting in any sort of way.
Sam: I think that's like, you would expect that kind of behavior on any large country.
Sam: I mean, if you're like some tiny country, maybe you don't have visions of grandeur
Sam: where you're going to take over the entire world.
Sam: But any, and it may not be take over I'm being, you know, it's,
Sam: it's exerting influence for your own benefit, but.
Sam: Anyway, because I just think there are all kinds of other factors.
Sam: There's the there's the personalities of the individual presidents involved.
Sam: There's what they want politically.
Sam: There's just generally like what is the situation going in at that moment?
Sam: You know in the 2003 example again i i honestly feel that george w bush.
Sam: Wanted to bring democracy to iraq and
Sam: like that's part of his vision of like what he wanted and the benefit that he
Sam: thought would be great and get rid of the dictator bring in democracy though
Sam: greet us as liberators blah blah blah blah blah and in an alternate universe
Sam: maybe that could have worked out better.
Sam: But of course we had no idea what we were doing,
Sam: which seems typical in many of our foreign interventions where we,
Sam: we, we come in and whatever our stated goals are, we screw them up royally and
Sam: end up with something different.
Sam: Anyway, it is a good enough movie. It was, it was thought provoking.
Sam: I will, I will give it a thumbs up.
Sam: You know, if you're interested in this kind of thing, watch it.
Sam: This does not mean I agree with it, but, uh, it's thought provoking and you
Sam: listen to what they have to say.
Sam: And then, you know, you can decide, like, again, I was not convinced,
Sam: but it just seemed too simplistic in the end to me.
Sam: It tried to boil everything down to one or two factors where I think the real
Sam: world is complicated and all kinds of, there's all kinds of reasons for everything
Sam: and it's multifaceted and all kinds of things come together.
Sam: It's not a simple, you know, this thing caused that.
Sam: It just boils it down way too much. Okay.
Sam: And then the book.
Sam: Complete shift. First of all, this is the first book I've talked about in a while.
Sam: The whole book stream here has slowed down dramatically.
Sam: I am now reading absolutely everything out loud with my son,
Sam: have been doing this for several years now.
Sam: Now, I've actually got, well, three,
Sam: actually, three, two, I've got three streams related to books. Okay.
Sam: I've got my main reading stream, which is I alternate a fiction and a nonfiction
Sam: book from myself for myself.
Sam: And this comes from my big master list of books I might be interested in reading
Sam: someday, which have so many thousands of books, I will never complete them in my lifetime.
Sam: And I have that. I also have a list that I'm specifically choosing to read with
Sam: my son that, you know, I don't have a big master list.
Sam: It's sort of like we went through the Lord of the Rings Hobbit and then the
Sam: Lord of the Rings series.
Sam: Then we finished up a book that we'd been reading together that he had been
Sam: assigned for school. Wait, no, wait, I'm forgetting.
Sam: I'm jumping ahead of fear. We'd read The Lord of the Rings, and then we were
Sam: reading The Hitchhiker's Guide series.
Sam: So these were sort of like things I remember enjoying when I was younger,
Sam: around his age, and let's read them together kind of thing.
Sam: And the one I'm going to read is in The Hitchhiker's part. But subsequently,
Sam: we did read a book that he was assigned for school, and now we're doing some
Sam: stuff on the Earthsea series, if any of you know those.
Sam: But we'll get to those in good time.
Sam: But this book is the sixth and final installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy.
Sam: So the increasingly inaccurately named, as they said.
Sam: The last one of these I talked about on the show was Mostly Harmless,
Sam: which was the last one actually written by Douglas Adams.
Sam: And I when I reviewed this on the podcast
Sam: I mentioned that you
Sam: know this was a 1992 book and he
Sam: he ended it in a really depressing way he basically killed all the characters
Sam: he put them all into really like depressing scenarios and then killed them all
Sam: and that expressed later that,
Sam: he kind of regretted that and he was at a dark time in his life or whatever
Sam: when that happened and maybe he would write another book to sort of not end
Sam: it that way. And then he died.
Sam: Yeah, he died at age 49. So he was not an old guy, but this next one they brought
Sam: in another author to sort of bring it up.
Sam: It was Eoin?
Sam: I don't know how to pronounce this name. It's E-O-I-N, Culfer.
Sam: And anyway, they brought him in, was given permission by Douglas Adams' widow
Sam: to basically fix that bad ending.
Sam: I want to say tie off loose ends and stuff, but a lot of the loose ends were
Sam: actually tied off by killing everybody.
Sam: But, you know, and sorry, spoilers for that previous book, Mostly Harmless.
Sam: But anyway, this one came out in 2009.
Sam: So years and years and years after Mostly Harmless, which was 1992.
Sam: And look, the whole series, like this is one of those,
Sam: I've talked about this phenomenon before in terms of this particular book series
Sam: and also in terms of movies, where the first one,
Sam: maybe two or three, are really unique and interesting and have something.
Sam: And then it's like, okay, now you're just doing the money grab.
Sam: And sort of, like, they become less interesting. They become very repetitive.
Sam: It's sort of greatest hits.
Sam: This one is even more so than the last couple in this series.
Sam: I'd say, first of all, they do some sort of random thing to pluck these people
Sam: out the moment before they are killed so that the story can go on.
Sam: And then there's a story. I mean, the story's kind of interesting.
Sam: I won't read the whole plot summary, but they're taken off to a colony of surviving
Sam: humans, which is, of course, weird, and having an internal war,
Sam: and they're shopping for a new god.
Sam: One of the main characters is friends with Thor, so they try to get Thor to
Sam: be their god, and then there's stuff going on.
Sam: It's all rather silly, which of course the whole series is rather silly,
Sam: but this really felt like,
Sam: okay, we're going to bring up fan favorites from the previous books,
Sam: especially from the first few books that were the ones that are really more classic.
Sam: And we're going to talk about, we're going to bring them back up.
Sam: We're going to reuse that idea, that trope, that character. or we're going to bring it back.
Sam: And you can tell it's an author sort of trying to emulate the Douglas Adams
Sam: style, and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't.
Sam: And then since they reanimated everybody and brought them back to life,
Sam: they now have other things to close off.
Sam: And there were some things that weren't completely resolved from the previous books.
Sam: So, yeah, they look bottom line, thumb sideways at best.
Sam: This seemed like.
Sam: It seemed unnecessary. I mean, I didn't like how they closed off the last book either.
Sam: I wish you'd ended it some other way, or maybe just ended the whole damn series
Sam: a couple of books earlier, because they were declining in quality and interest over the course.
Sam: If you're being a completist about this series, read it. If you're not, don't bother.
Sam: It wasn't outright bad. I'm not giving it that thumbs down.
Sam: It wasn't painful to read or anything like that
Sam: it just wasn't it didn't have like it
Sam: it didn't have what made the first
Sam: couple of books interesting it didn't have that
Sam: new unique flavor it didn't have like the i don't know and and i've said even
Sam: for the first couple they to some degree They seem to be ones that I enjoyed
Sam: more as a teenager than I do as a 50-plus-year-old guy.
Sam: And some of that may be a product of the time. Some of that may be a product
Sam: of my age and the target group. I don't know.
Sam: But yeah, it's just sort of, it exists.
Sam: And it wraps up some things. some things still aren't like fully wrapped up
Sam: in a way I would consider satisfying but I guess that's okay.
Sam: Yeah, anyway. That's it. It's called And Another Thing. Did I ever actually give the title?
Sam: And Another Thing, dot, dot, dot, from 2009, the sixth and final installment
Sam: of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Sam: Of course, they say, and final, this is one of those franchises where every
Sam: couple decades they're going to do something new with it.
Sam: I kind of doubt there'll be
Sam: more books you never know
Sam: i guess but it's one of those things where every once
Sam: in a while they make a new tv show or a new movie or whatever but i imagine
Sam: those are going to if they happen again they will as they usually do start from
Sam: the beginning of the story i doubt any will ever get so far as to get to the
Sam: events that happened in this sixth book,
Sam: Really, anything really interesting happens in the first two, maybe three books.
Sam: And then, you know, I don't know.
Sam: I can remember that things happen in the other books. It's just, I don't know.
Sam: It goes downhill as the series progresses. What can you say?
Sam: Okay, that is it. We're going to go get some food now.
Sam: My wife and I and maybe my son. I don't know.
Sam: And I have to hurry because I have a call scheduled, so I have to make sure
Sam: to eat and be back in time.
Sam: Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we're going to play a break.
Sam: We're going to play a break. We're going to play this break right here,
Sam: and then I'll be back, and we'll talk about the Epstein stuff,
Sam: I guess, unless there's some other cool breaking news that changes everything. Here we go.
Sam: And I'm back. Had some food, did some stuff with my son Alex,
Sam: and now it's time to finish out the podcast.
Sam: As I said, we will do the Epstein stuff. Epstein, Epstein, whatever.
Sam: And, you know, in introing it earlier in the show, I've said a couple times
Sam: now, There's nothing actually new here.
Sam: You know, there's fundamentally—look, there may be more Epstein revelations
Sam: to come at some point, we'll see, but this week particularly,
Sam: we haven't learned anything.
Sam: There's no new facts. There's no release of something that was private before and is now public.
Sam: Everything that i mean look we've known
Sam: for 20 years about like epstein being a scumbag about donald trump being associated
Sam: with him about a whole bunch of other prominent people being associated with
Sam: him in terms of like riding on his plane visiting his island all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: Way back in the 2016 campaign, we had reports on this.
Sam: We had people passing around the pictures of Trump and Epstein together.
Sam: We had call, not call logs, but passenger logs from the plane revealed that
Sam: showed like Clinton and Gates and all kinds of other people on the plane.
Sam: So we've known all of this, but the fundamental thing that is happening this week is that, look.
Sam: The MAGA side of the world, remember, a whole bunch of them are all associated
Sam: with the QAnon thing, too,
Sam: like at least some of these rabid ones that posits that there's this vast conspiracy
Sam: specifically among Democrats and liberals to do child trafficking for sexual purposes.
Sam: Remember, that's the whole Pizzagate thing was related to that, too.
Sam: And so there's this fundamental thing that's
Sam: been propagated within those circles for years
Sam: and years and years now that the Epstein
Sam: files contain a client list and that Epstein was procuring girls for all of
Sam: these clients and specifically that these clients include all sorts of prominent Democrats.
Sam: And that's the reason they care about this, is that we're going to expose all
Sam: these prominent Democrats and the fact that they were actually clients of Epstein
Sam: and he was procuring teenage girls for them to have sex with.
Sam: And that's what's going on.
Sam: And that's the big thing that Donald Trump and his administration,
Sam: when they got back into power this time, were going to reveal the full Epstein files.
Sam: And specifically, they were going to reveal that client list.
Sam: And that client list would have a whole bunch of evil Democrats on.
Sam: That was the bill of goods that was being sold.
Sam: And, you know, part of the problem here now is that some of the prominent people
Sam: like, how do you say his name?
Sam: Boingo, Boingo, Boingo, Boingo, Boingo, Boingo, whatever, you know,
Sam: and Kash Patel and our our lovely attorney general.
Sam: All of these people fed into this, like, conspiracy theory.
Sam: And then they ended up in the administration. Now, I'll point out,
Sam: first of all, a lot of the stuff that happened with Epstein actually being convicted
Sam: and him dying in jail and all this kind of stuff happened while Donald Trump
Sam: was president the first time.
Sam: So, like, if all of this information was in the FBI's files and they wanted
Sam: to reveal all this stuff, they could have done it last time, too.
Sam: And I know deep state, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: The FBI was against them last time. And this time they have their,
Sam: their people, their really their people in there.
Sam: I mean, you know, look, honestly, like, it seems like what happened to me seems
Sam: like what happened to me.
Sam: No, it seems to me that what happened is that these folks who'd been pushing
Sam: these conspiracy theories all along got in there,
Sam: actually saw the information, and realized there wasn't a lot there there.
Sam: Now, I want to be clear what I mean by that, because clearly Epstein was doing
Sam: a lot of bad things, and clearly there were a lot of famous people that were in or around that.
Sam: Now, how many of them partook in, you know, doing something with the young women
Sam: who were coerced into this? I don't know.
Sam: What I suspect is there isn't anything as straightforward as a client list.
Sam: Like where Epstein was going around and saying like, oh, okay,
Sam: Bill Gates is coming this week and I have him on the list and here's what we're
Sam: going to do for Bill Gates and we're going to get like these women or whatever.
Sam: I'm just picking Bill Gates as one possible name. Sorry, Bill,
Sam: if you're listening or Bill Clinton or anybody else.
Sam: Donald Trump because he was also very associated with this.
Sam: Now, all of the people who are upset, of course, never, to them,
Sam: it's always about like all the prominent liberals that might have been involved here.
Sam: They always sort of ignore the fact that Donald Trump was in this circle as well.
Sam: I don't know, but I suspect there wasn't like just a straightforward list.
Sam: Like everybody's saying client list, client list.
Sam: And I know that Pam Bondi actually said, I have the list on my desk.
Sam: Well, she later says she met the files, not just the list. And there is no list
Sam: now is what they're saying.
Sam: But I want to be careful about like, I think people are very intentionally mixing
Sam: up a few different things. There's a client list.
Sam: There's just some list, like maybe the passenger list from the plane,
Sam: which actually was made public a long, long time ago.
Sam: And then there's just evidence of association with Epstein.
Sam: And then there's evidence of actually participation in these,
Sam: I want to use the right word.
Sam: I mean, essentially this is statutory rape because there's no consent for underage people.
Sam: Yeah. Especially with older people. I mean, They carve out gray areas if you're
Sam: 17 and you're doing something with a 19-year-old because you're really close
Sam: in age still. There's some exceptions for those kinds of things.
Sam: But fundamentally, 50-something-year-olds.
Sam: And a 16-year-old, that's just not legal. That's rape no matter what.
Sam: And because the younger person is not considered legally able to consent to
Sam: that, regardless of what else is going on.
Sam: So there's rape, prostitution, all kinds of things that are potentially involved here.
Sam: And there may be evidence of that kind of stuff. And that still wouldn't be
Sam: a client list necessarily if it wasn't like a list.
Sam: And people are sort of alighting all these things together.
Sam: So I think, like, my guess,
Sam: if you really had to put all this together as to what's really going on here,
Sam: is that when people like Bondi and Boingo Boingo and Kash Patel and all these
Sam: folks actually got to see the stuff,
Sam: they realized that there is nothing as straightforward as here's the list.
Sam: And I suspect, you know, I know a lot of people are jumping straight towards
Sam: like they're covering this up because they realize Donald Trump is on the list.
Sam: And the way Donald Trump seems to be panicking about this, the more he panics
Sam: about it, the more it seems like he's got to be implicated somehow.
Sam: But let's back up from that a little bit and we'll return there in a minute.
Sam: I suspect there is nothing as straightforward as a flat out list.
Sam: Like these, you know, where there's a direct like single sheet of paper saying
Sam: these 30 people, I went out and we got underage girls to have sex with these men.
Sam: Like, like a written confession, essentially.
Sam: Like if, if such a thing existed, I think it would have come out years and years ago.
Sam: Now i know even there there's like
Sam: questions of well they would have kept it secret if
Sam: if they couldn't prove any of this right because just because epstein
Sam: wrote something down on a piece of paper doesn't necessarily mean it's true
Sam: but there's also you know there are apparently like a whole bunch of flash drives
Sam: that were confiscated when they arrested the guy years back and that supposedly
Sam: have video on them of these underage people with people.
Sam: I suspect on that, like they've said, well, we can't release that,
Sam: obviously, because it's underage girls in compromising positions and...
Sam: It's illegal to even possess this stuff other than law enforcement.
Sam: And we obviously can't release that, even like redacted versions of it.
Sam: We want to protect the victims here.
Sam: And I actually buy that to some extent. But I also think part of the problem,
Sam: like if I had to guess, and this is all guessing and speculation,
Sam: that identifying the men on these is not straightforward,
Sam: like or is not like solid enough that you could prove it in a court of law.
Sam: Like, you know, you could say, oh, it looks like it might be Bill Clinton or
Sam: Donald Trump or whoever.
Sam: But, you know, you got like fuzzy video in bad lighting and just enough that
Sam: there's like plausible doubt there.
Sam: And so they didn't think it was enough to run on.
Sam: I mean, you've got, this stuff has been through enough different people in enough
Sam: different administrations that I feel like if they had something absolutely solid on anyone,
Sam: Democrat, Republican.
Sam: Unspecified partisan celebrity, whatever, I feel like it would have leaked by now.
Sam: Like the specific leak.
Sam: Now you've had a few people like who, who've made comments, like they've seen
Sam: some of these things and they are incriminating and blah, blah,
Sam: blah, but they're all reluctant to give any specifics.
Sam: And some of them like are clearly pushing the, this for their own personal motives. So I don't trust it.
Sam: So I think it's, I suspect
Sam: that it's a bunch of people like on the MAGA side who were really pushing this
Sam: because their agenda was there's these secret Epstein files that show that Democrats
Sam: are corrupt child abusers.
Sam: And so in furtherance of that conspiracy theory, they talked about the list
Sam: and they talked about videos and they talked about whatever.
Sam: And then they actually came into their positions in the administration and got
Sam: to see everything that was there and realized that it just wasn't substantive
Sam: enough to do anything with.
Sam: Like maybe there's some ambiguous stuff, but there wasn't the smoking gun.
Sam: And they actually realized it. In other words, I think to some degree,
Sam: they're telling the truth now for the first time where all of this,
Sam: they just sort of realized that, you know, there is no there there.
Sam: And I suspect, well, let's put it this way.
Sam: Prior to the latest round of Trump's rants about this, that's where I thought things lay.
Sam: You know, look, it's simply a matter of now they didn't want to admit there was nothing.
Sam: Instead, because they'd riled up their base. So this is, this is a matter of
Sam: like people who had lied and lied and lied for years coming face to face with, oh shit, it actually is.
Sam: There's, there's nothing we can
Sam: do there. He really did commit suicide and there's no smoking gun there.
Sam: It is probably all kinds of incriminating stuff, but not any smoking gun on
Sam: any of the big, you know, we're going to go after the Clintons and Bill Gates.
Sam: And I keep mentioning those two names because those are the ones I keep remembering
Sam: are mentioned all the time. But like, there's really a list of all kinds of
Sam: people that they think are associated.
Sam: And, and so we're just going to say that now. Now, of course the push is,
Sam: well, okay, then release the files.
Sam: And they say they can't release the files because of protecting the victims.
Sam: Well, look, there are ways to redact the victims out of things if you wanted to.
Sam: But Yeah. And, you know, look, MAGA is really, really upset.
Sam: They were promised this and they're not getting it.
Sam: And so what next?
Sam: Well, then Donald Trump started protesting so hard, like, get over it,
Sam: move on, like, look somewhere else. And, you know, a lot of people have said,
Sam: like, this is a, you know, he protests too much kind of moment.
Sam: Like, they're not, you know, you'd think the natural thing if they really,
Sam: if they specifically, they said all this stuff and then they got in and they
Sam: saw the details and they realized, sorry, we were wrong.
Sam: There's nothing here. The way to clear it up, be transparent as possible,
Sam: is release as much as you possibly can.
Sam: Obviously redact names and pictures and everything else of the victims,
Sam: but release as much as possible.
Sam: But Donald Trump comes in like being all paranoid, telling people to move on, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: It's just the more he does of this, the more it leads credence to the alternate
Sam: theory that the reason they don't want to release everything has nothing to
Sam: do with everything I just said, but instead has to do with Donald Trump's all over the stuff. Yeah.
Sam: You know but i'll add honestly you know we had four years of a biden administration in between,
Sam: if there was stuff in there that was definitively you know evidence against
Sam: donald trump that you could definitely say donald trump did xyz let's like go
Sam: after him for that then you'd think they would have done something with it.
Sam: You know, so I feel like even if there is something on Donald Trump in the unredacted
Sam: files, it's probably not conclusive stuff where,
Sam: you know, it probably shows Donald Trump palling around with Epstein.
Sam: But we knew that already.
Sam: Maybe worst case scenario, there's a video somewhere of something that you could
Sam: like say, maybe that's Donald Trump in that video doing something he shouldn't,
Sam: but we can't really tell for sure.
Sam: You know, again, it's blurry, it's dark, it's whatever, and we can't tell for sure.
Sam: And so it's unusable in a court of law.
Sam: And that's a worst case scenario. There may not even be that.
Sam: But it may just be that Donald Trump finds this whole thing embarrassing.
Sam: But the fact that he's protesting so hard is spinning everything up.
Sam: You know, someone commented on Blue Sky, I think, that he apparently hasn't
Sam: heard of the Streisand effect, which is that if you want something to go away
Sam: and tell people, please don't pay attention to this,
Sam: all it does is get more attention to it.
Sam: And what we've got here, you know, look,
Sam: Bottom line, I suspect that there's not anything actually actionable in the actual Epstein files.
Sam: If you and I got to look at the unredacted version of all this and went through it all,
Sam: I suspect that although we might find a whole bunch of things that would make
Sam: you suspicious of various prominent people being involved in things,
Sam: there isn't enough to prove anything about anybody other than Epstein and Maxwell,
Sam: who have already been through a process, and Epstein is dead and Maxwell's in jail.
Sam: But that doesn't mean there might not be lots that's embarrassing or might make
Sam: you say it's not provable in a court of law,
Sam: but it's enough that the average person on the street would be like, oh, yeah, that's them.
Sam: They were clearly involved.
Sam: Clinton's guilty. Trump's guilty. Gates is guilty.
Sam: All these other people are guilty, too. And probably on both sides of the political
Sam: spectrum and a whole bunch of celebrities who aren't publicly associated with
Sam: either end of the spectrum politically,
Sam: but just not provable.
Sam: And so they can't just put that out in that form.
Sam: MAGA's going crazy because they have been spun up so much on these files and
Sam: on Epstein and how it was, you know, surely it was going to take down all the liberal elites.
Sam: And now Donald Trump himself is saying, no, forget about it. And they are pissed.
Sam: Like, if you looked at social media all weekend this weekend,
Sam: there's all kinds of, you know, screenshots.
Sam: I'm not on Truth Social. I am not on X,
Sam: but there are screenshots from both of them circulating about hundreds and hundreds
Sam: of people reacting to things like that from the MAGA side who are clearly incredibly
Sam: angry about this and believe that they have been betrayed,
Sam: that Donald Trump is turning on them and why would he do this?
Sam: And some are blaming him on Pam Bondi.
Sam: I think Pam Bondi is the natural scapegoat that everybody's trying to,
Sam: like, make the target of this.
Sam: Because a lot of these MAGA folks, although they feel betrayed by this,
Sam: they're still sort of in the mode of, this can't possibly really be what Donald Trump wants.
Sam: This is like Pam Bondi. It's her fault. And let's get rid of her and then we
Sam: can get back to business.
Sam: And then Donald Trump will do the right thing. And I don't think a lot of them
Sam: have flipped to the position of, oh,
Sam: Donald Trump is resisting this because he's in the files, because he's actually guilty.
Sam: I've seen a bunch of this anger, but not very many people on that side of the
Sam: fence going there. I've seen liberals going there.
Sam: But for the most part, the MAGA folks are upset at the situation.
Sam: They're upset at Bondi. They're upset at Trump. But there's a lot of like,
Sam: I don't understand why this is happening.
Sam: There's not very much, oh, this must be because Donald Trump himself is guilty.
Sam: But there are a lot of people that are so upset about this and some of them
Sam: are adding it and saying on top of like you know the the big beautiful bill
Sam: isn't what we asked for the,
Sam: you know we thought only criminals were going to be deported this isn't what
Sam: we asked for so there are a bunch of those kinds of things going on there too
Sam: and so there are a lot of people out there saying i can't support donald trump
Sam: anymore a lot in quotes a lot of sort of vocal people on social media.
Sam: And I have to say, some of that traffic may be fake from people who aren't real
Sam: people who are just like troll bots and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: But it includes a lot of prominent MAGA people that you know are real.
Sam: Like Laura Loomer is mad, for instance. And a bunch of others whose names I'm
Sam: not going to recall off the top of my head.
Sam: But a bunch of these folks are mad and upset and believe they've been betrayed.
Sam: And it is fun to watch for the Schadenfreude. Is that how you say it?
Sam: Schadenfreude? Whatever.
Sam: You know, to watch because this is,
Sam: Out of all the times that Donald Trump has seemingly gotten in trouble for something.
Sam: I mean, people on the left-hand side of the spectrum are mad at whatever he
Sam: does every single day because his entire existence practically is offensive.
Sam: You know, everything he does every day, the way he does it, what he is advocating,
Sam: what he is pushing are things that we fundamentally believe are wrong and, in many cases, evil.
Sam: And I shouldn't say his existence.
Sam: If he was just a reality TV star doing his thing, he'd be an offensive little
Sam: person, but we wouldn't care and we wouldn't necessarily call it evil.
Sam: But as president of the United States with power,
Sam: he's doing a lot of stuff that is bad, but like it's no surprise when someone
Sam: on the left is upset by Donald Trump in one way or another, either something
Sam: new he's done, something he's said,
Sam: something revealed about his past, no surprise.
Sam: And we've occasionally had sort of the situations where sort of middle of the
Sam: road Republicans temporarily seem upset.
Sam: We had that at the Access Hollywood tape. We had that after January 6th,
Sam: where a bunch of these folks are like, now he's passed the line.
Sam: Now we're moving on. And then of course they come back into the fold a few days later.
Sam: So, but this seems to be for almost the first time where we've seen not just like, you know,
Sam: old school mainstream Republicans saying, okay, maybe now's the time we can escape Donald Trump,
Sam: but we're seeing sort of MAGA faithful who are upset and pissed and expressing
Sam: their extreme discontent.
Sam: So we'll see how long this lasts and for what, we'll also see how big it is.
Sam: Once we see some polling that actually reflects this, I mean,
Sam: Donald Trump's overall approval rating has been dropping lately anyway.
Sam: It's not at his all-time lows. That was back in May.
Sam: He hit a low in May and then he improved a bit.
Sam: Now he's heading back down, but he hasn't gotten worse than he was in May yet
Sam: as of I checked yesterday, I think.
Sam: We'll see how it affects polling and all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: But what's important to remember about this is the people who seem to be upset
Sam: this time are not your marginal Donald Trump voters.
Sam: They're not the people who were Trump-Biden-Trump voters or were non-voters
Sam: who went to Trump for the first time this time around or anything like that.
Sam: The people who seem to be upset seem to be the diehard, the people who actually
Sam: show up at MAGA rallies and who wave the flags and wear the red hats.
Sam: And so not just a Republican who's like, okay, Donald Trump isn't great,
Sam: but he's better than the Democrats.
Sam: No, this is like, this is the people who've been all in on him for a long time,
Sam: or a lot of people like that anyway.
Sam: And so even if the numbers are small, this particular group defecting seems
Sam: like a significant blow if it sticks.
Sam: Like one possible way out for Donald Trump right now, assuming his underlying
Sam: issue isn't just that there's evidence here that shows that he's directly guilty.
Sam: I mean, remember, there was that one case that disappeared right before the
Sam: 2016 election where a girl was in the process of submitting a lawsuit saying
Sam: that Epstein and Donald Trump raped her together.
Sam: And she provided all kinds of lurid details in her deposition.
Sam: And then she withdrew it all and disappeared.
Sam: And that's never been fully gone back to like what she paid off. Was she just scared?
Sam: Had she made it up completely and it wasn't true and she just couldn't stand
Sam: the heat and so decided to, you know, cut that off before she got caught having
Sam: made it up? We don't know.
Sam: But, you know, assuming it's not just that Donald Trump knows that these files
Sam: include stuff that would show his own guilt.
Sam: The smart thing to do, fire Bondi,
Sam: blame her for this recent decision to say that there's nothing else to see here, everybody move on,
Sam: and promise to double down and investigate further, and we will release the
Sam: stuff, and we will go through the process,
Sam: and then just kick to count the can further down the road.
Sam: Don't have to actually, I mean, if it really does show nothing of substance,
Sam: like I was speculating earlier, figure out how you can release a lot more of it.
Sam: Now, the true conspiracy theorists will never be satisfied no matter what you do.
Sam: And you have to be smarter about it. I mean, this time, one of the things to
Sam: prove that Epstein had actually committed suicide, they released some video of the hallway.
Sam: But then what they released had a one-minute gap in it and evidence that it
Sam: had been multiple clips compiled together and put through imaging editing software a couple of times.
Sam: Now, who knows whether what they released was actually manipulated in some way
Sam: or whether it was just, hey,
Sam: we're going to use, and I heard someone say it was Adobe Premiere,
Sam: we'll use Adobe Premiere to assemble clip A and clip B, so we put them together
Sam: and then we'll save it to a new format, blah, blah, blah. But then they released
Sam: that as if it was the original.
Sam: Like, you can make up an innocent explanation for that. But if it really was
Sam: truly innocent, that is not what you do.
Sam: You're not sloppy like that. If you say you're releasing the originals,
Sam: you release the goddamn originals.
Sam: You know, without any...
Sam: Messing with them so that you don't get the conspiracy theory people saying,
Sam: well, what about the missing minute?
Sam: And why was this edited? And what did you change? And blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But you could recommit to say, okay, we really will release everything.
Sam: And we, of course, we'll redact the stuff about the victims and that'll take
Sam: some time and we'll get back to it.
Sam: And we will do this right. And we will release everything.
Sam: And you guys will see at that point There's nothing to see.
Sam: And again, you'll never convince the truly diehard conspiracy theory folks.
Sam: One of the nature of these kinds of conspiracy theories is because you're telling
Sam: people that the elite is out to manipulate it, you will never believe anything
Sam: they present. But you could do more of this and you could delay it.
Sam: And potentially Trump could kick this can all the way through the rest of his administration.
Sam: Or he could actually present something in a few months that showed this.
Sam: Of course, that doesn't work as well if there really is incriminating material in there.
Sam: And so, I don't know. Again, my initial impression of all this was there really
Sam: is nothing there, or at least nothing usable that could lead to a prosecution.
Sam: And all of these folks who had been pushing the conspiracy theories,
Sam: just once they were in there, were confronted with the reality that there really
Sam: isn't anything there there.
Sam: Again, at least nothing usable. Maybe there's some of that stuff that would
Sam: be scandalous, but not actually usable in a court of law.
Sam: And then there are all kinds of, you know, maybe they leak some of that.
Sam: I don't know. But like, there are all kinds of reasons why you wouldn't want to leak that.
Sam: And I, you know, that was my initial inclination that there really is nothing
Sam: there there because with 20 plus years of investigations into this man,
Sam: you'd think if there was, they would go somewhere.
Sam: Now, we know, like, the first time he was investigated, a lot was swept under the rug.
Sam: And he got off really, really light. And it was the second time around,
Sam: only after press investigations from the Miami Herald, I believe,
Sam: that led to the second round of prosecutions that led to him actually going to jail.
Sam: And even then, again, the call is like, well, what about everybody else involved?
Sam: Like, he wasn't just doing this for himself, right?
Sam: There are reports of parties and there are all these other people.
Sam: Can't we nail any of them?
Sam: And so the question is, is there really evidence that could nail anybody else
Sam: other than Epstein and Maxwell?
Sam: And I just, it seems to me like with
Sam: all of these years spanning multiple investigations by multiple parties,
Sam: if there was enough to go after anybody else, either Trump in his first round
Sam: or Biden or somebody would have gone after that. There's state authorities involved too.
Sam: Somebody would have gone after him. They can't all be intimidated by everybody.
Sam: I mean, they could even be selective. Like the Republicans could only go after
Sam: the Democrats and ignore the evidence against any Republicans.
Sam: The Republicans could have done it the other way around and gone after, did I say that that way?
Sam: Anyway, each party could go after the other party if they wanted to be unfair.
Sam: Now, I would hope that if the evidence did exist, they'd go after a person no matter who they were.
Sam: Republican, Democrat, famous, not famous, poor, rich.
Sam: If they were implicated in a way that you could prove in all of this stuff,
Sam: we should be going after them. End of story. Done.
Sam: But at the very least, you've got to think like, okay—,
Sam: If the Biden administration had concrete evidence on Trump, wouldn't they have gone after him?
Sam: If the Trump administration had concrete evidence against Clinton,
Sam: wouldn't they have gone after him?
Sam: It's hard to believe they didn't. So I feel like the most likely thing is still
Sam: that there's nothing usable there.
Sam: But the fact that Donald Trump keeps protesting about this makes you think like, what?
Sam: Why? Why is he protesting this hard if that's not the case?
Sam: Why don't they just release enough to prove what they're saying,
Sam: if not to their diehard supporters, to everybody else?
Sam: But yeah, and the Democrats are, I think, piling on this in the right way.
Sam: I know sometimes the advice is if your enemy is destroying themselves, just leave them alone.
Sam: But I see no problem with the Democrats piling on here and saying,
Sam: you know, let's have hearings.
Sam: Let's talk about why we're not releasing the documents.
Sam: Let's look into who funded what, when, where, and what the details of this were.
Sam: And they're asking all kinds of questions. They're making hay out of the fact that Donald Trump Jr.
Sam: A few years ago was talking about the releasing the files.
Sam: And George Conway responds to the old tweet from years ago by saying, but your dad says not to.
Sam: I love it. They're trolling them. They're pushing forward, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: So we'll see where it goes. I mean, I should look up the right way to say Boingo,
Sam: Boingo, Boingo name, Dan Bogino.
Sam: Anyway, there are reports that he's considering resigning.
Sam: There were reports that Cash Patel was considering resigning,
Sam: but he has denied them. There's questions about will Bondi get pushed out.
Sam: I don't know how it's all going to play out, But right now, all of this conspiracy
Sam: mongering on the MAGA side has been blowing up in their faces, and it's fun to watch.
Sam: So we'll see how it plays out. And with that, I am done. Let's close out the show.
Sam: Everybody go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You can see all the ways to contact
Sam: us. I still have not linked our TikTok.
Sam: I will say, last week's show, I have not posted any TikToks.
Sam: And the reason is like riverside produces
Sam: little automated clips that i can post that i usually
Sam: either take as is or make really minor tweaks to
Sam: in their internal editor but this time for whatever reason my voice and yvonne's
Sam: voice were misaligned by like five seconds so when we were like would go back
Sam: and forth instead of i talk then yvonne talks then i talk it was more like I talk,
Sam: then there's a five second gap.
Sam: Then Yvonne and I start talking at the same time.
Sam: One of which is what Yvonne should have said in that gap. And one of which is
Sam: my response to what he said.
Sam: And it just came up a muddled mess. So I posted nothing from last week's show.
Sam: And like I try, their editor lets you mute parts out and stuff.
Sam: But as far as I could tell, didn't let you slide things around.
Sam: Maybe there's a way, but I couldn't find it. And I just decided not to worry about it.
Sam: Anyway, that I was reminded all of that because there's no link yet on the webpage to the TikTok.
Sam: Anyway, I guess TikTok is staying around forever at this point.
Sam: Like Donald Trump is illegally extending and extending and extending without
Sam: any sort of resolution what's going on.
Sam: So yeah, I'll add the logo eventually, I guess.
Sam: But anyway, the website includes all the other ways to contact us. I said that already.
Sam: And our archives, transcripts for the last couple years of shows,
Sam: all that kind of fun stuff, our archives going back all the way to 2007.
Sam: Wow. It's been a lot of years. Anyway, and of course, a link to our Patreon,
Sam: where Yvonne and I, no, no, that's our Slack.
Sam: Our Patreon is where you can give us money because we like money.
Sam: And the 25 or so dollars a month we make off this right now is not enough for
Sam: either Yvonne or I to quit our day jobs and do this full time.
Sam: And that is the goal here.
Sam: So you folks have got to step up a lot more than you have.
Sam: Yeah, no, I'm kidding. But you know, hey, if anybody wants to help out with
Sam: the minor expenses and all that kind of stuff for the show, we do appreciate it.
Sam: And at various levels, we will mention you on the show, we will send you a postcard,
Sam: we will ring a bell, We'll send you a mug, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: I still owe a couple cards.
Sam: I owe cards to, oh man, my little log of who I owe stuff to.
Sam: I owe Pete and Greg a card, which I have already written, but I have to finish
Sam: up and send to Yvonne so he can add stuff to the cards and then mail to you
Sam: guys. And I just never get around to it. And I owe Todd a mug.
Sam: I'm just so bad at this. I owe Todd a mug for actually co-hosting the show like
Sam: a month and a half ago or something.
Sam: So eventually, I think I owe him a mug. I don't think I've done it already.
Sam: You know, it's all, I'll figure it out someday.
Sam: But anyway, importantly, at $2 a month or more,
Sam: we will invite you
Sam: to our Commissions corner slack where yvonne and i
Sam: and all kinds of other folks have been
Sam: sharing links talking about
Sam: the news talking about other stuff you know i mentioned
Sam: my new car i talked a lot about like new car
Sam: stuff on there oh by the way during this
Sam: last break i did actually look up some of
Sam: the things that are added between the sel
Sam: version of the onyc 5 and the limited
Sam: version which is the the the next
Sam: one up there's also an xrt or
Sam: something but that's that's specifically like marketed
Sam: to off-roading and stuff and i'm i don't
Sam: know anyway there are a number of things i was
Sam: right there's some i'm there's some i'm jealous of like
Sam: i think the the automatic seats have a few more features
Sam: like there's a a
Sam: better audio system like slightly better speakers honestly
Sam: the seat stuff i could see that being cool the speakers okay that's cool but
Sam: i don't really care like i mostly listen to podcasts the audio quality is not
Sam: a big deal for me i sometimes listen to music but i'm i'm not the kind of person
Sam: who would be like oh man that speakers so much better quality. I wouldn't notice that.
Sam: There are, there are some things with like.
Sam: A couple safety features I would like. Apparently, if you're backing up and
Sam: you're about to run over or anything, like something automatic breaks in that situation.
Sam: And I forget if it was the XRT or Limited or both. It has like a 360 camera thing.
Sam: So on your little screen, you can see all around your car. That is cool.
Sam: I would miss that. But then it has a heads-up display. I don't think I really would care about that.
Sam: Like i've never used one but when
Sam: i've seen them i haven't been all that impressed that
Sam: mean like i feel like i need that and like
Sam: a sun or moonroof whatever the it's not the kind you can open and stick your
Sam: head out of but it's the kind that like you know you can see the sun through
Sam: the top and i don't think i would have wanted that anyway and i think i saw
Sam: that it it's like slightly bigger wheels and I wouldn't care about that.
Sam: In fact, I think I saw it like reduces the range slightly because of that.
Sam: So I don't know. I'm not, I'm not as upset as I thought I would.
Sam: There's some of the features on the limited.
Sam: I would be like, yeah, that would be cool. It'd be nice to have,
Sam: but there's none that I immediately was like, oh man, I should have gotten that
Sam: instead. And I'm really pissed I got the one I did.
Sam: I have not felt that way.
Sam: It's mostly like, yeah, okay. And I think the price difference would have been another $4,000 or so.
Sam: And I'm like, eh, I like what I have.
Sam: So I'm okay. I'm not as upset as I thought.
Sam: So, oh, oh, way distraction.
Sam: We talk about all that kind of thing on the, what I just said that I actually
Sam: looked at the list, I have not said on the Slack yet.
Sam: So, and I'm not going to before this show is out.
Sam: So you listeners have a heads up on the Slack on that one, but we do usually
Sam: give a something from the Slack story we shared.
Sam: So I will give the latest one that I shared on the random Slack channel.
Sam: We divide it up into this one that's more serious stuff and the one that's more random stuff.
Sam: And so this is from the random one. This is an article from the CBC,
Sam: the Canadian Broadcasting Company, from As It Happens, which is one of their radio shows.
Sam: Good show, available as a podcast. I recommend it.
Sam: It's a fun sort of news, but feature news. Like it's, you know,
Sam: a bunch of interesting stories and stuff like that.
Sam: I don't listen to it every day or even every week, but it's a fun show.
Sam: If you're not in Canada, you can get it as a podcast, as I said,
Sam: or all sorts of other ways. But I guess in Canada, you could actually listen
Sam: to it on the radio, but who does that anymore?
Sam: Anyway, it's chimps are sticking grass and sticks in their butts,
Sam: seemingly as a fashion trend.
Sam: And it says the new phenomenon appears to
Sam: be a fresh spin on an old fad of wearing grass in
Sam: the ear and so yeah they
Sam: talk about this apparently a couple generations of chimps ago there was a chimp
Sam: that started sticking grass in their ear as sort of a fashion thing as far as
Sam: they can tell and then a whole bunch of the other chimps started imitating and
Sam: that actually got passed down a generation or two before it faded out.
Sam: But then recently they started doing it again for first in the ear,
Sam: but then some chimp apparently came up with the innovation that instead of sticking
Sam: the stick sticks and grass in their ears, they could stick it in their butts.
Sam: And that has now been spreading through this particular chimp community.
Sam: They speculate that sticking it in the ear may have come from them watching
Sam: humans, because apparently these are a population of captive chimps somewhere.
Sam: And apparently one of their caretakers was like cleaning their ear with grass.
Sam: And I'm like, really?
Sam: Do people do that?
Sam: You know, I've, I've heard of people doing it with Q-tips and I've,
Sam: and I've stuck like pencil erasers in my ear. And I know you're not supposed to do that.
Sam: Like I've seen like, I've seen Dr. Mike on YouTube talking about how you should
Sam: not stick Q-tips and other objects in your ears.
Sam: If you're trying to clean out your ears, they're, they're like liquids that
Sam: you can do if you really need to,
Sam: but you should not be like just sticking stuff in your ear because the chances
Sam: of damage are high because you can screw up and like mess up your eardrum. But like, I don't know.
Sam: And two responses that my wife asked, and I had thought about this,
Sam: but she said it out loud, you know, could they have picked it up from watching people wear earrings?
Sam: Did they really have to see someone sticking grass in their ear?
Sam: They could have generalized this. But then she also said, okay,
Sam: if they picked up the grass in the ear from watching humans,
Sam: where exactly did they pick up the sticking sticks up your butt from?
Sam: Were they seeing humans do that too?
Sam: And I'm like, no, the article says they innovated that themselves.
Sam: And she's like, really? Are you sure?
Sam: Anyway, apparently this is now the big fashion trend among chimps at the Chimfunci
Sam: Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia.
Sam: That's where this is going on, but this is apparently all the rage,
Sam: and they're doing it and passing the behavior on to each other,
Sam: teaching each other how to do it, I guess. I don't know.
Sam: And apparently it's a fashion statement of some sort. Okay.
Sam: That seems like a good place to end. Thank you, everybody, for joining us for
Sam: Curmudgeon's Corner again.
Sam: Have a great week. Hopefully, Yvonne is feeling better next week.
Sam: I saw some updates from him on the Slack that he still wasn't feeling great
Sam: as of at least Sunday night, maybe, or at least Saturday night,
Sam: maybe even Sunday as I'm recording this.
Sam: This is now Sunday afternoon as I'm recording this, U.S. time.
Sam: And yeah, hopefully he's feeling better and we do a normal show next week.
Sam: But with that, we end the show.
Sam: Stay safe, everyone. Goodbye.
Sam: Okay. Hitting stop. No, no, no.
Sam: Alex threw stuff at me. Goodbye, folks. Hitting stop.