Ivan: Hello?
Sam: Hello.
Ivan: Okay, you can hear me. Good.
Sam: I can hear you. I can hear you.
Ivan: I can hear you loud and clear.
Sam: Yes. Yes, I can. Yeah, that was amazing.
Sam: We will make a new break out of that.
Ivan: That sounds great. There you go.
Sam: Waiting for the live stream announcement to go out for a second here.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I'm on any second now. You can do it.
Sam: Okay. And then I have to put this back. Okay. Media live.
Sam: Go. Shall we go? Go.
Ivan: Go.
Sam: Go. Here we go.
Ivan: Here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, August 16th, 2025.
Sam: It's just after 17 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam.
Sam: Yvonne Bo is here. Or I'm Sam Minter. Yvonne Bo is here. Hello, Yvonne.
Sam: I forgot my last name. I usually say my last name. I am just Sam,
Sam: but I usually fully identify myself.
Ivan: Samuel Antonio.
Sam: That's right. Samuel Antonio Minter. I should add more names.
Ivan: You know, I have a niece.
Sam: I could do the four-name style, you know, and Minter Brandon.
Ivan: Well, okay. So, well, I have a niece who,
Ivan: for some reason, I'm not really sure why did this, her full name is Cristina
Ivan: Barbara del Carmen Cusa Bo.
Sam: Nice.
Ivan: Okay. It's, I mean, I don't know how the hell, you know, I mean,
Ivan: I gotta, I mean, I gotta, you know, I gotta show me her, I think in her passport.
Ivan: It's like shortened to like Christina Barbara I don't think they've got enough
Ivan: room for all of that But I think her birth certificate is,
Ivan: Christina Barbara del Carmen Okay Which is, that's her first,
Ivan: that's just her first and middle name,
Ivan: You know, so thankfully our, like my, my brother-in-law's and our last names
Ivan: are short, you know, it's like four letters for his only three for our,
Ivan: so, you know, at least, you know.
Sam: So I looked up, there's a list of the longest full names.
Ivan: Okay. Okay.
Sam: Okay. Now, number 10 is Salvador Dali, whose full name is Salvador Felipe Jacinto
Sam: Dali y Dominic, which is 34 characters.
Sam: You know, and that's not all that long.
Ivan: I mean, I think that my niece is close. I mean, you take Cristina Barbera del
Ivan: Carmen Cusabo, what shit? I got to count.
Sam: I mean, presumably these are the 10 longest famous.
Ivan: Famous. Yes.
Sam: Famous people.
Ivan: Yeah, famous people.
Sam: Then we got ones that are clearly sort of made up.
Sam: Like number nine is, Nicholas, unless Jesus Christ had died for thee,
Sam: thou hast been damned, Barbun.
Ivan: Oh, come on. To hell.
Sam: From 1640, 74 characters. Then we have, Tarkeen fin tim lin bin win bim lim
Sam: bus stop fatang fatang ole biscuit barrel.
Ivan: And who is this?
Sam: Born in 1959, 76 characters, was originally named John Desmond Lewis,
Sam: but decided to change his name into a standing reference to one of his favorite
Sam: Monty Python characters.
Ivan: You know what? That doesn't count. Because that's not the name.
Ivan: You know, I'm going with names that their parents gave. Because if you change
Ivan: it later for a gimmick, as many people have.
Sam: That's BS. Yes, that doesn't count. Yes. And then we have Pablo Picasso,
Sam: Pablo Diego, Jose Francisco de Paula, Juan, Nepomuncio, Maria de los Remedios,
Sam: Siprano de la Santisma, Trinidad, Ruiz y Picasso. You got a Ruiz.
Ivan: You know, this is more, you know, it's like almost the same vein as what happened with my niece.
Ivan: I don't understand why, you know, and it's, I don't think it's a coincidence
Ivan: that both of those, because Dali and Picasso are both from Spain, right? Yeah.
Ivan: I don't think that it's a coincidence that, you know, us of being of Spanish
Ivan: descent as well, also, you know, decided on this ridiculously long names.
Ivan: So I think, I think there's a, I think you see a theme here. Okay. With.
Sam: Then, then we have another gimmick one. I won't do all 10 of these.
Sam: But this is Anna, Bertha, Cecilia, Diana, Emily, Fanny, Gertrude,
Sam: Hypatia, Inez, Jane, Kate, Louise, Maude, Nora, Ophelia, Prudence,
Sam: Quince, Rebecca, Sarah, Teresa,
Sam: Ulysses, Venus, Winifred, Xenophon, Yeti, Xeno, Pepper.
Ivan: Oh, come on, man. The fuck? Any other non-gimmick ones in there did you say?
Sam: Oh, let's see.
Sam: Yeah, this one changed his name. This one changed his name.
Sam: This one clearly changed his name. All his middle names are...
Sam: The first and last name are James Bond.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: The middle names are the names of all the movies.
Ivan: What a fuck. Come on. Jesus.
Sam: Um, number two, clearly made up as well.
Sam: And number, I can't even,
Sam: the, the, the number one is not a lot of short names,
Sam: but has a particular, their last name by itself is like several hundred characters
Sam: of German sounding stuff.
Sam: Okay. But yes.
Ivan: But the only two that were not some kind of gimmick, made up,
Ivan: happened to coincide, like with my knees, that they are either from Spain or Spanish descent.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I don't know what the hell our problem is. I mean, I remember my sister,
Ivan: you know, they told me that that was the day that we were giving her at the
Ivan: baptism. I'm like, what?
Ivan: Wait, how long is his name? What the hell?
Sam: So, yes. So, anyway, we're going to do our but first non-newsy stuff.
Sam: Yvonne will have something. I will do a couple movies.
Sam: And then we will do news stuff for the rest of the show after that. That's the plan.
Sam: That's always the plan these days. Unless there's something huge that's blowing
Sam: up that, you know, we drop everything to deal with that.
Ivan: You know, there's this Key and Peele skit. Who? Key and Peele.
Sam: I don't know them. I don't know, though.
Ivan: Oh, come on. You've seen some of these. You remember the guy that did the,
Ivan: whatchamacallit, at Obama when he did one of the...
Sam: The anger guy?
Ivan: The things that they... Yeah, exactly. That guy. You see? There you go.
Sam: I remember him, but I don't know Key and P. I just looked him up on Wikipedia. No idea.
Ivan: All right. So that's the...
Sam: I do recognize... They have a picture of Key performing as Luther,
Sam: the President Obama's anger translator.
Ivan: And I remember that. Okay. So you remember that. So, you know,
Ivan: his partner, one time they did this short clip where the guy was at an office
Ivan: and he was getting coffee. Okay.
Ivan: And you can see that he was sitting like by a window and, you know,
Ivan: he goes and he's looking through the sweeteners and he takes the,
Ivan: you know, the, you know, the diet one, the non-sugar one. Okay.
Ivan: And he's picking which one he's measuring. He's going to go when he's going
Ivan: to. The blue and the pink and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, he's looking at those, right?
Ivan: He's going to put it in. And all of a sudden, outside the window,
Ivan: as people are looking, a nuclear explosion happens in the distance. Okay? All right?
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And you can see that a lot of people in the room start panicking,
Ivan: obviously, as I think that if I were sitting here and I looked up north and
Ivan: I saw a nuke, you know, go off, I'm not sure what my reaction would be.
Ivan: But if I'm in a room with a lot of people, I expect a lot of screaming.
Ivan: Okay. And gasping. Okay. I think that that would be the reaction.
Ivan: would happen don't don't you think i.
Sam: I would expect swearing from you.
Ivan: Yes i think that that i i
Ivan: think that you're right i think that my first words would
Ivan: be what the yeah i think that would start from there yes i think that that's
Ivan: a good point but this guy openings coffee nuke goes off people around him panicking
Ivan: he's looking at that he's looking at his coffee he's making his coffee He drops
Ivan: the artificial sweetener,
Ivan: grabs the regular sugar, and just starts pouring it into his coffee.
Ivan: I mean, at that point, it's like, what the fuck, man? You know, what am I doing?
Ivan: Okay. So I don't think that we are in that kind of situation right now where
Ivan: you're like, you know, I don't think that, I don't expect that you're going to look out your window.
Ivan: And over the next 90 minutes, two
Ivan: hours, we're going to see some kind of a event of that level right now.
Sam: I mean, there is a, there is a naval base a few miles from me that is a target.
Ivan: Yeah. But you know what? Here's a, here's a reality right now because we're
Ivan: doing this podcast and we're tuned to the news.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: If there was a nuclear launch warning.
Ivan: Right. We would be here and all of a sudden, blue sky, the news alerts,
Ivan: all of a sudden they would be like going off like crazy that we have had a nuclear launch detection.
Ivan: I wouldn't think that that would be the first thing, right?
Ivan: Because there's no way that they would keep it like a secret over there.
Ivan: Because, you know, if there's a nuclear launch detection, do you think that
Ivan: it wouldn't leak? could be i mean people i mean it would.
Sam: If they can't keep that if you remember we've had the opposite problem with
Sam: like hawaii sending out the alerts of an incoming missile when there wasn't
Sam: right a few years back we've.
Ivan: Had we've had that we've had.
Sam: That now and uh yeah so but you never know like what it could have been like
Sam: a smuggled in terrorist thing instead of like uh that's true Missile?
Ivan: That very true. Very true. Okay.
Sam: Could be.
Ivan: And I am relatively near Mar-a-Lago. And look, there is a thing.
Ivan: I am relatively near Mar-a-Lago. Okay?
Sam: There you go.
Ivan: Which, you know, if some psychopathic terrorist decides that they want to nuke
Ivan: Mar-a-Lago, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to see the mushroom cloud.
Sam: There you go. So, keep an eye out your window during the show.
Ivan: That is not the solution to anybody that listens to this, for the love of God.
Ivan: That is not the solution. That is not the solution.
Sam: I'm sure our listener base had already started building their bomb when you said that.
Ivan: Jesus. Yeah, no, no. Don't try to get nuclear material.
Ivan: This is not, that's not the solution to the, to the problem.
Sam: Okay. So you got a non-newsy thing you want to start talking about before I do movies?
Ivan: I'm going to talk a little bit about, because I didn't talk about this a couple
Ivan: of weeks ago, about me trying to fast charge our new BMW. Okay. All right.
Ivan: Because I don't, I don't even know if I mentioned this on the show that we decided
Ivan: to, I can't remember. I don't know. It's so busy.
Sam: This is the one you got for your wife, right?
Ivan: Correct, yes. My wife had decided that, well, look, we, tax bill passed.
Ivan: We had been discussing getting it, replacing her Honda CRV hybrid,
Ivan: that the lease is up in less than six months around there.
Ivan: We had been planning on getting an EV. The thing is that with the tax breaks
Ivan: expiring, I was like, well, you know, try to do this before the end of September.
Ivan: Okay? All right? Let's not wait till lease end, okay?
Ivan: Let's, you know, and the car, you know, we could get out of the car with no money.
Ivan: You know, it's like we had not put any money down. We could just trade.
Ivan: It was in a lease where, you know, with the value of the car,
Ivan: we could walk, you know, we just turn it in. It's fine. No problem.
Ivan: You know, there was no, you know, there was no, oh, my God, this car owes more than it's worth.
Ivan: It's got excess miles or something. No, no, no. We could just,
Ivan: no, whatever. This was just any time over the next six months,
Ivan: we could just basically just go and like get a new car at this point.
Ivan: So, so, you know, we know it was coming. So we did get the end.
Ivan: My wife, I said, look, I don't know. What is it that you're interested in?
Ivan: She had, she had gone, she had been all over the place about what kind of car she wanted. Okay.
Ivan: At some point she had even decided, I don't even want an electric vehicle,
Ivan: even though many times she had said she did.
Ivan: You know, I want another hybrid maybe. Okay, so I don't know. She'd be going back.
Sam: Wait, wait, let me guess. She wants one of those little three wheelers where
Sam: the front opens up instead of doors on the side.
Ivan: Not that. As far as I know, the closest thing that she had gotten to that over
Ivan: the last few years was the little BMW i3, which if anybody hasn't looked, you got to look it up on.
Ivan: It's this little, like, it's this little tiny, like, little station wagon hatchback thing.
Sam: Oh, that's cute. I like it.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: I just looked it up.
Ivan: As a matter of fact, you know, here's the thing.
Ivan: BMW was ahead of its time with that car. That car did not sell well.
Ivan: That car was released 10 years ago.
Ivan: The reality is that people now are saying, you know what, BMW,
Ivan: if you went back to production of this car, this car would sell very well now.
Ivan: It was just ahead of its time. It was really, a lot of people that actually,
Ivan: oh, the last ones that were made are like, this is a great car.
Ivan: And some people grabbed some recently I saw, grabbed the used one and they said,
Ivan: what the hell, this car looks like they could just be selling it right now.
Ivan: Now, it came in pure electric, pure electric hybrid. You could get both.
Ivan: OK, basically, they called it like a range extender kind of a thing.
Ivan: It was a nice car. So she had considered that at some point.
Ivan: She had looked at a lot of different cars. Cadillac. We had we had I had not been keen on a Tesla.
Ivan: We had actually I know she had looked at at some when they used to have a retail
Ivan: store. but in their omniscience, they decided to get rid of retail stores because
Ivan: why do you need people to see product?
Ivan: Anyway, they got to trust Elon that it's all there. She didn't like it anyway.
Ivan: So then all of a sudden she said, look, I want a BMW. Let's go see the BMWs.
Ivan: I'm like, okay. And at first what she wanted to see was the SUV.
Ivan: But she tried the SUV. She didn't like it. I didn't particularly like the BMW iX myself.
Ivan: One thing that I will say that drove me nuts is there's an insistence now with
Ivan: a lot of the EV manufacturers to have a fixed glass roof that doesn't have a shade.
Ivan: I want a fucking sunshade that I can close completely.
Ivan: Darkening it, it has a stick, well, you can darken it.
Ivan: No, look, I don't want it just darkened. I want to be able to fucking deploy
Ivan: a shade over the damn roof.
Ivan: And that didn't have that. I will say another thing that really irritated me. I was in the backseat.
Ivan: It doesn't have door handles. It had these buttons to open the rear doors.
Ivan: I couldn't figure out how to fucking open a door. Can I just say something?
Ivan: A car needs to be able to be easily opened by anybody in the car.
Ivan: This is something I don't understand the obsession with car manufacturers on
Ivan: fucking hyper complicating something that should be simple.
Sam: And also without thinking about it.
Ivan: Yeah, I don't, you know.
Sam: Opening.
Ivan: The damn door.
Sam: Like a random person. I mean, not like you want random people entering your
Sam: car without notice, but like you should be able to pick up a random relative
Sam: who's never seen your car before.
Sam: and they should be able to get into the back seat without you explaining.
Ivan: Without instructions and get out. Yes. Especially the getting out part,
Ivan: like in an accident or something.
Sam: Oh, it was hard to get out too.
Ivan: It was hard to get out.
Sam: It wasn't just getting out.
Ivan: It was more, no, it was hard. Yeah, it was a little bit hard to get in.
Ivan: Yes, because I remember the doorknobs were a little bit like,
Ivan: what the fuck are the doorknobs? But it was harder to get out.
Sam: Hmm, okay.
Ivan: That really pissed me off. But I didn't say anything because this is her car. And I'm just like.
Sam: Look, whatever whatever's good for you whatever she you know you know i i i
Sam: will i will be clear like the the car my wife is it and now of course since
Sam: i've updated she wants a new car too at some point but you know she's wanted
Sam: a new car for a long time but well it's old i.
Ivan: Mean it's been you know.
Sam: It's it's it's it's it's only a couple years behind mine but uh and by the way i still like 10 years,
Sam: I still really like my Ioniq, right? But anyway, no, but I've always hated her car.
Sam: From, like, I despise driving. I never liked her car. I despised her car.
Sam: I don't like the way it's laid out. I don't like the internal stuff.
Sam: I don't like, you know, just the physical layout of the controls and how it
Sam: feels to sit in it. I never liked it.
Sam: But it was her car. And she liked it. And she liked it.
Sam: So, like, what do I have to say about it? Exactly.
Sam: So I occasionally have to drive it, but not all the time.
Ivan: So I was in the IX and I was like, you know, the one thing that I was working
Ivan: on is like, you know, we had a budget and we had like, you know,
Ivan: what the numbers worked.
Ivan: I mean, the one thing is I was doing the, I said, look, you need to pick what it is.
Ivan: I'll figure out the, I'll figure out the financial deal.
Ivan: Okay. Don't, don't worry about that. Let me just, let me just,
Ivan: you know, let me, let me see what it is.
Ivan: It fits in our budget and whatever. We talked about, you know,
Ivan: we, you know, we're trying to stay within a certain range of,
Ivan: of the payment where she was at right now.
Ivan: So we had agreed on that. And I said, listen, let me deal with that.
Ivan: Okay. So I know what you, I know what you want.
Ivan: So let me, let me, let me work on that part.
Ivan: So look, so I was like, even though that car was more expensive,
Ivan: the deals or whatever, it'll work out, whatever.
Ivan: So I'm like, look, whatever, you know, this is in the range. I saw the numbers.
Ivan: If she likes it, I'm like, I may not like it, but whatever. It's her choice.
Ivan: Well, she hated it. Okay. All right. She didn't like it.
Ivan: She drove it. She hated it. This thing's too big. What the fuck? Okay.
Ivan: It doesn't drive like a fucking BMW. And I'm like, okay, so then she saw, well, it was an i4.
Ivan: The i4 is a small sports sedan. Okay.
Ivan: I was like, oh, well, you want to, I mean, we don't really need an SUV anymore.
Ivan: I mean, I got a station wagon. It's got plenty of room. Okay.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: You know, so we don't really need the SUV anymore. We needed it when one was
Ivan: little, but honestly, right now we don't really need it.
Ivan: And so she was like, oh, let me try it. Let me try the, let me try the little
Ivan: sports sedan. Well, she tried it. She loved it. Okay.
Ivan: She loved it. And it was actually cheaper than the other car too,
Ivan: which that worked out well. And so we got that. It's great.
Ivan: That car is great. I really, she, I mean, she, honestly, I'd considered that
Ivan: to replace my car a couple of times.
Ivan: I looked at it. I really liked it. I, the i4, the i5, this car,
Ivan: it's, it's great. Okay. I cannot say enough good things.
Ivan: Very efficient electrically, you know, it's very comfortable.
Ivan: The electronics are great.
Ivan: The only mistake I did is I didn't realize I didn't have the active cruise control
Ivan: package, but I realize right now that because of the way we drive and how she
Ivan: uses it, Really don't miss it that much. I thought I would a lot more. Okay.
Ivan: Never commute in that car, whatever.
Ivan: I realized, eh, it's not that big a deal. I'm like, I realized.
Ivan: But next time, I'll pay, you know. But I didn't realize it on the package.
Ivan: The damn sticker confused me. It had these words, you know, how automakers do.
Ivan: It had dynamic cruise control.
Ivan: Dynamic cruise control does not mean active cruise control.
Sam: So what what was the difference between those two terms i'm not sure what was missing i.
Ivan: Don't know well the.
Sam: Dynamic doesn't i mean is it is it is it like old-fashioned just set the speed
Sam: and that's it because that's not it also it.
Ivan: Also had this thing where you could set a you could set it to follow the speed
Ivan: limits it does have that ah.
Sam: Okay interesting that.
Ivan: Is an interesting feature.
Sam: So like it won't stop for the car that's slow in front of you but it'll make
Sam: sure if the speed limit goes from 50 to 40, it'll do it.
Ivan: It will slow the car down, yes.
Ivan: Which that's interesting, I thought, you know, but yeah, but I won't do that.
Ivan: But, you know, but by the way, I do realize, okay, also, which I find is that
Ivan: because of traffic, how it is in Florida,
Ivan: the thing about slowing down for the cars in front of you many times is quite
Ivan: irritating because you get cut off so often here.
Ivan: the fucking car I realize now driving both back to back in like a highway that
Ivan: you get cut off so often that having the car slow down repeatedly for these
Ivan: assholes also can get very annoying,
Ivan: so there's pros and cons is what I've realized right now you'd rather hit them?
Ivan: I won't rather hit them no but I would rather change I'll see it and I change
Ivan: lanes than have the car abruptly, repeatedly slow down.
Sam: See, I am completely of the mind of like, I get in the lane that I know I'm
Sam: going to need to exit as soon as humanly possible.
Sam: I remember, like, I'll do this in my 25-mile commute to work right now.
Sam: Like, as soon as I get on the highway, I know which lane I'm going to need to
Sam: be in 15 miles later, and I get in the proper lane and I just stay in the lane.
Sam: But my most extreme version of this is
Sam: when I used to go home to the washington dc area from pittsburgh when we lived
Sam: there i would get on the highway in pittsburgh and immediately get in the exit
Sam: lane for breezewood and i would stay in that lane for something like it was
Sam: something like 130 miles to breezewood well to be fair if i.
Ivan: Remember correctly that i mean unless they've widened that turnpike it's only two lanes.
Sam: No no it was it it was,
Sam: I believe it was more than two. I forget. Like if I had to do it right now.
Ivan: I forget which lane. There are large portions of that turnpike that were only two lanes.
Sam: So at the end.
Ivan: If you're on a right lane, it's fine.
Sam: Yeah, I remember figuring out it was not the full right lane.
Sam: I don't think it was the full left lane. I think it was a middle lane.
Sam: So I think there were at least three.
Sam: But I remember there was a specific lane I could get into immediately after
Sam: getting on the highway in Pittsburgh.
Ivan: And you stay there for 130 miles. Okay.
Sam: Yes. Yes. No matter what was going on, slow, fast, whatever,
Sam: you know, I'd be in that lane.
Ivan: Well, all right. Well, regardless, look, the car, the car is great regardless.
Ivan: Okay. You know, we really like it very much, you know, and so the, but this is one thing.
Ivan: So one day I, I have not really needed to use the DC charging.
Ivan: Okay. The fast charging. It does come with a package from Electrify America,
Ivan: but look, we have a charger here that works very well.
Ivan: One time that we left her the weekend that she, she traveled.
Ivan: I plugged it in the garage. So it's no big deal.
Ivan: So we had a couple of options to charge here at the condo. It's no big deal.
Ivan: But I wanted to try it. Okay. Just to see how it worked. Okay.
Sam: All right. That was the whole point of the story. I forgot. Okay. Go ahead.
Ivan: Yes. The whole point was that, you know, but I was telling the story because
Ivan: I hadn't talked about getting the car in the first place.
Ivan: So, so, so I go and I'm like, so we go, I went one day that I took Manu out
Ivan: in the car and I decided to stop at the turnpike where there are,
Ivan: in the turnpike stops in Florida,
Ivan: there are both Tesla fast chargers and FPL, Florida Power and Light,
Ivan: a local company, has these DC chargers, FPL Evolution, that they have those there.
Ivan: Right now, because BMW did make a deal with Tesla to be able to use their chargers,
Ivan: but it's not in place yet, okay?
Ivan: It's supposed to happen sometime in the next few months, They're going to mail
Ivan: BMW owners of electric cars.
Ivan: They're going to mail a Tesla adapter so they can use it.
Ivan: It's coming, but it's not set up yet.
Ivan: So I was going to try the FBL Evolution chargers there on there.
Ivan: So when I get to the stop, there's four chargers.
Ivan: Okay. There's one car that's charged.
Ivan: First charger I go grab, broke. Something's wrong. Error. Not working.
Ivan: The next charger over, it says, okay, that one's available, so I move the car to go to that charger.
Ivan: The guy over there that's charging tells me I tried to use that charger. It didn't work either.
Ivan: I'm like, fuck. Well, let me try this. Okay.
Ivan: So I go, and I try it anyway because it says it's working. Got there. Plugged it in.
Ivan: No go. It wouldn't handshake. It kept throwing an error. It said that it's session
Ivan: starting, but no session starting.
Ivan: the other charge the charge of neck is broken and then he was using the one
Ivan: that was working okay and i was like well we don't really need to charge right
Ivan: now so i'm not gonna wait i was just trying to stop to to to try it to see how
Ivan: it worked okay i didn't you know that was the only reason,
Ivan: so okay fine so let me see what the other options are well since we had the
Ivan: the the electrify america free charging, I'm like, okay, let me find,
Ivan: they say that there's an Electrify America that's near our house. Okay.
Ivan: Let me go stop there. Let me give it a try. So we drove up, got to the Electrify
Ivan: America, which is at the mall near our house, about three miles away.
Ivan: But I got there, all three chargers were in use.
Ivan: Okay. There are all three of them. There were like two BMWs and a Honda that
Ivan: were there, that were using the chargers, okay?
Ivan: Because I also think that Honda also has given away Electrify America.
Ivan: But there were only three chargers.
Ivan: I'm like, damn it. You know, and they're all busy, okay? They were busy.
Ivan: Behind it, there was also a charger from EVgo, okay?
Ivan: So I go, and I'm like, well, let me try the EVgo charger. It says a fast charger.
Ivan: Try the EVgo charger. That one's also broken.
Ivan: So I'm like, motherfucker, what the hell? Broke another broken charge. You know, what the hell?
Ivan: So I sat there for a little bit and waited. Actually, okay, so I'll wait.
Ivan: One of these people has to be almost done with their charging.
Ivan: And so they did. In a few minutes, they did. And I was able to plug it in.
Ivan: Now, what I didn't realize is that I had set up the free charging from Electrify America.
Ivan: But apparently, my wife, because she's the owner, is the only one that can use the free charge.
Ivan: I can't, I can't use that account. So when it did it, it connected,
Ivan: it handshaked properly, but it
Ivan: said, hey, you don't have the Electrify America fee deal. You got to pay.
Ivan: I got, whatever, I'll just try it. So I did manage to, to just put the credit
Ivan: card, whatever it's, it's, it is, I find Electrify America is expensive relatively considering.
Ivan: I did find, you know, because FPL, their charger that worked,
Ivan: they're only charging 30 cents per kilowatt hour at the fast charging station.
Ivan: Electrify America is $55, which that is expensive. Okay.
Ivan: So I did manage to connect to Electrify America one. There's one thing,
Ivan: though. Because there were...
Sam: One thing.
Ivan: The entire time, there were three cars there. I guess they don't have enough...
Ivan: electrical infrastructure to get there to have three cars fast charging at full
Ivan: speed of the station at the same time.
Sam: Which is about 250.
Ivan: KW so i noticed that it had
Ivan: dropped the charging rate down to only about 120
Ivan: kW so it was not as fast as it should be okay but my whole thing is man it took
Ivan: me three tries to get a working charger okay you know on my first attempt okay.
Sam: Not exactly.
Ivan: Not exactly great.
Sam: I i have yet to like i
Sam: i've plugged into trickle charge at home and but
Sam: otherwise i i've tried the tesla fast charging but i haven't tried anything
Sam: that's not tesla at this okay there's one that's convenient that's sort of like
Sam: if if i go from home to work i pass it it's closer to home than to work but
Sam: i like i pass it and so like if if i i figure,
Sam: if i need if i need to do that i'll stop on
Sam: the way home from work it's convenient i just turn off i it's and and i i just
Sam: wait a few extra minutes before going home the very first time i tried i had
Sam: the experience that you mentioned of like i plug in it says it's working and
Sam: then it like stops almost instantly.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And then I tried that several times. I ended up, and I could be just completely superstitioning this.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: But I recognized a pattern at a certain point. It was...
Sam: spot 3d did not work for me ah so like and there was like one.
Ivan: Spot that was just fidgety with your car.
Sam: Apparently so like okay i'm i made
Sam: a point like i have after that spot
Sam: failed for me a couple times i've never parked in that spot again
Sam: and you've had no problems okay and i've had no problems
Sam: well at one point like i i got a
Sam: little bit more like i had another spot on that side
Sam: like it's a double-sided thing it's got like yeah i don't know 10 10 10 charging
Sam: spots or something five on each side and so now i always go to the other side
Sam: completely but it it's worked and it has no problem so anyway shall we move on we.
Ivan: Can move on.
Sam: Okay since that took so long shall i only do one movie instead of two or should
Sam: i just try to power through both let's do one let's do one okay the The next
Sam: movie from my list, which is now,
Sam: just checking, November 21st, 2024,
Sam: was Guarding Tess from 1994.
Sam: Do you have any memory, seen this movie, anything?
Ivan: No.
Sam: It's Shirley MacLaine and Nicolas Cage. The...
Sam: As usual, let me read the first couple paragraphs of the description.
Sam: Secret Service agent Doug Chesnick takes pride in his job, performing his duties
Sam: with the utmost professionalism.
Sam: His assignment for the last three years has been a test of his patience.
Sam: Doug is in charge of a team stationed in Ohio to protect Tess Carlyle,
Sam: the widow of a former U.S. president.
Sam: Tess is known for her diplomatic and philanthropic work, but seems to regard
Sam: Doug less as a security officer and more as a domestic servant,
Sam: not unlike her chauffeur Earl or her nurse Frederick Doug's assignment with Tess comes to an end.
Sam: So he's eager to be given a more challenging assignment. Tess decides that she
Sam: wants him to stay and Doug's assignment is extended.
Sam: And then it continues from there. It's the dynamic between this,
Sam: old curmudgeonly first lady and the secret service agent assigned to protect her.
Sam: And there are a number of dynamics between the, you know, the two of these as characters.
Sam: And of course, it's a secret service agent. So at some point there is a threat
Sam: to this woman and what happens then.
Sam: And I'll give it a thumbs up. It was a fun little movie.
Sam: You know, it's not like, you know
Sam: well i always say this isn't going to win any awards but
Sam: let's just check make sure it didn't yeah make sure it did yeah because i i
Sam: don't know it does not look like it won any awards uh it had mixed reviews rotten
Sam: tomatoes gave it 57 percent a weighted score 50 out of 100 from the critics
Sam: mixed or average reviews,
Sam: Washington Post said it was derivative of other recent films like Driving Miss
Sam: Daisy, which I've never seen, The Bodyguard, which I've never seen,
Sam: and In the Line of Fire, which I've never seen.
Ivan: I don't think you can compare this damn movie to The Bodyguard and The Line of Fire.
Ivan: I'm sorry. I've seen all those movies. By the way, I like this movie. It was funny. Okay?
Sam: Guarding Tess?
Ivan: Guarding Tess. It was a funny movie.
Sam: You said you didn't remember. You remember it now?
Ivan: I didn't remember, but now I went and started describing it.
Ivan: I'm like, now I remember that I did watch this movie.
Ivan: And I'm like, yeah, I was mistaken. I'm like, I thought, you know,
Ivan: because I heard the year first, like, it's 1954, not 1994.
Sam: 94.
Ivan: Well, you were breaking up a little bit on my end. So it sounded like 54.
Ivan: And I'm like, there's a 90s in 1954?
Ivan: Then I realized that I looked in the list. I'm like, oh, no,
Ivan: it's 1994. I heard that wrong. This movie was funny.
Sam: Yeah. It was a cute movie. It was sweet in the right places.
Sam: It was funny in the right places.
Ivan: I don't know why people, I mean, the people in Revere is giving it a fucking
Ivan: hard time. It was a fun movie.
Ivan: The dynamic between the primary actors is quite good.
Ivan: You know, it was funny. It was cute. I mean, it was enjoyable.
Ivan: I mean, yeah, nobody's going to give it an Academy Award. But you know what?
Ivan: There's a movie that you go, you watch it, and you're like, yeah,
Ivan: you know, that was a fun time. I like this. This is good.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I don't have a lot to say about it. Thumbs up.
Sam: You know, pull it up in your favorite streaming. I don't know where it is,
Sam: but it's in, I presume it's available somewhere.
Sam: You know, this is some website and app.
Sam: Just I recommend for folks. If you want to find out stuff like this,
Sam: it's called Just Watch. Okay.
Sam: And you can type in any movie or TV show or whatever, and it'll tell you where
Sam: it's available. So, for instance...
Ivan: Well, you know what? Can I just say, the Apple TV...
Ivan: does do a good job of telling you where.
Sam: There's some services that don't participate in that, though. But yes.
Ivan: But it does do a pretty good job of telling you where the hell the movie is available.
Sam: Right. So this one, for example, does not appear to be available to stream for,
Sam: well, yeah, no, it's not available.
Sam: It is on Prime Video to stream, it looks like.
Sam: So if you have Prime Video, you can stream it for free.
Sam: Otherwise, it's available to purchase from Amazon or Apple, you know.
Sam: And speaking of that, I do want to mention one other thing.
Sam: So anyway, thumbs up, guarding tests, you know, go find it.
Sam: But you had been given the assignment to watch Supermeat, the new Supermeat.
Sam: So I will say that as of a couple of days ago, it is now available online.
Ivan: It is.
Sam: It is still in the theaters. It is not available for free.
Sam: Also, it looks like you can stream it free on Prime right now,
Sam: but it's available for purchase from both Amazon and Apple as of a couple days ago.
Sam: So anyway, that's according to just one.
Ivan: Okay, fine. Well, that simplifies my problem.
Sam: So your assignment has been renewed.
Ivan: Okay, I am right now going to put it on my Apple TV watch list,
Ivan: so when I go in there, I'll watch it ASAP.
Sam: And then once you have seen it, we can make arrangements with Peter for when
Sam: he wants to come on the show and talk about Superman.
Ivan: Okay, here's the TV app. Here we go. Let's take care of this.
Ivan: Like right now, let's make sure it's in there.
Ivan: Well, I have been, you know, well, I've also have been doing a very good Sam
Ivan: impersonation of not sending out these postcards.
Sam: Oh, right. The postcards. Yes. Yeah.
Ivan: I've also been doing a very good job of that as well.
Sam: You've been rolling random numbers and it just hasn't come up yet.
Ivan: Yeah, basically. Or just, you know, having them here and just forgetting about
Ivan: it. Well, in part, I was, to my defense, I did leave on a business trip last
Ivan: Sunday. Wasn't even Monday.
Ivan: I did not get back until Wednesday night. And on Thursday, we had to take my
Ivan: son to a doctor's appointment in the city, which basically ate up the whole day.
Ivan: And so I really, about the only real day that I may have had a chance to do
Ivan: that was actually yesterday, since last week. So, yeah.
Ivan: But I have it here now. Now, I'm going to try to make sure that I complete my
Ivan: assigned tasks by next show.
Sam: Okay, so we'll take a break. I will give a preview.
Sam: Next week's movies, assuming I do two, will be King Kong vs.
Sam: Godzilla, the 1962 version, and All About Eve from 1950.
Sam: Okay. Those will be the next two movies to be discussed, assuming we're not
Sam: talking about Superman. Okay.
Sam: Anyway, time for a breaky break, and then we will talk newsy news.
Ivan: By the way, I just purchased it on Apple TV just to make sure that I have it.
Sam: There you go. It was like 30 bucks.
Ivan: It's 30 bucks, yeah.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. So maybe your family who already saw it at the theater will watch it again with you.
Ivan: Maybe.
Sam: Probably not. But probably not.
Ivan: But probably not.
Sam: Okay. here we go break time,
Sam: Okay, Yvonne, we're back, and it's your turn to pick a newsy topic.
Sam: What's the newsy topic of the day? The first one, eh?
Ivan: The Trump-Putin summit.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: How did that go, Sam? Is the war over?
Sam: Oh, yes. The war is over. Everything has worked out great.
Sam: The Ukrainians are thrilled and jumping up and down in the streets.
Ivan: And there are these enormous sanctions now on Putin.
Ivan: And we arrested him when he arrived, right? On the ICC war.
Sam: Oh, yeah, for his war crimes. Yeah, yeah. We arrested him. No, no, not at all.
Ivan: So this was the dumbest fucking summit ever.
Ivan: Might as well have been like, there was a movie called Canadian Bacon.
Ivan: You ever watch that movie?
Sam: I have not watched Canadian bacon. I think I've added it to my list before because
Sam: you mentioned something, but.
Ivan: There was a part where the president was flailing, okay?
Ivan: And so this was when the Cold War was over, okay?
Ivan: So he decided for some reason to have a summit with the Russian premier or whatever.
Ivan: And the Russian premier basically came over and laughed at him and said,
Ivan: at that point is different.
Ivan: It's like, what the fuck you got me here for? You guys already won.
Ivan: You know, we don't give a shit about any of this.
Ivan: And then they laughed and it was an embarrassment to the president.
Ivan: Basically, that's what this was.
Ivan: Look, I mean, I don't,
Ivan: What the fuck?
Sam: Look, people had talked about this before in terms of, you know,
Sam: even before it happened, Donald Trump was asking for this meeting.
Sam: He invited Putin to the U.S. for the first time in many, many years that he's
Sam: been in the U.S., even longer since there's been a U.S.
Sam: president, Russian leader summit on U.S.
Ivan: Soil. Obama didn't invite, I mean, it was during Obama's term. Was Putin in the U.S.?
Sam: The last time Putin was in the U.S. was to give a speech at the U.N.,
Sam: and he did not meet the president while he was here for that.
Ivan: What year was that?
Sam: I think it was like 18 years ago, something like that.
Ivan: Fuck, exactly. It was like, I mean, it was like 18 years ago.
Ivan: It was like a long, long time ago.
Sam: And I think the last time a Russian leader and U.S.
Sam: president actually met on U.S. soil was probably Gorbachev or something. I could be wrong.
Ivan: No, it was Yeltsin.
Sam: Yeltsin? Yeltsin came to the U.S.? Okay.
Ivan: Yeltsin came to the U.S. Don't you remember that one time that he was laughing?
Sam: I remember the time Gorbachev came to the U.S.
Ivan: There was that one time that Yeltsin and Clinton were on stage and I can't remember
Ivan: what the hell happened and, like, Clinton couldn't stop himself from laughing.
Sam: Hmm. Okay, I don't remember.
Ivan: Okay, hold on.
Sam: But I believe you. I believe you.
Ivan: Clinton. A laugh attack It was 1999 Let me see Well let me make sure It was
Ivan: in the US You know what Hold on,
Ivan: uh yeltsin quentin meeting u.s.
Sam: Uh okay list of russia u.s summits yes 1995 so yeah so let
Sam: me let me give the list we had this one that just happened donald trump and putin in Anchorage.
Sam: The one before that was Biden and Putin in Geneva in 2021.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Then Trump and Putin in Helsinki in 2018.
Ivan: Yeah, that was Helsinki. I remember that.
Sam: Obama and Medvedev in 2010 in Prague.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: George W. Bush and Putin in Bratislava in 2005.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: George W. Bush and Putin in Moscow in 2002.
Sam: George W. Bush and Putin in 2001. I'm going back until I get to the U.S.
Sam: Bill Clinton and Putin in Moscow, 2000.
Sam: Bill Clinton and Yeltsin in Istanbul in 1999.
Sam: Bill Clinton and Yeltsin in Oslo in 1999.
Sam: Bill Clinton and Yeltsin in Auckland, New Zealand in 1999. Bill Clinton and Yeltsin met a lot.
Ivan: Yeah, they did.
Sam: Bill Clinton and Yeltsin in Cologne, Germany in 1999.
Sam: They liked each other. in Moscow in 1998, Bill Clinton and Yeltsin in Birmingham,
Sam: UK in 1998, and here we go, Bill Clinton and Yeltsin in Denver in 1997.
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: That was the last time there was one in the US. And my God, I'm not even halfway
Sam: through the Bill Clinton-Yeltsin meeting.
Ivan: There was a lot.
Sam: There were a lot. There were a lot.
Ivan: They genuinely liked each other.
Sam: Yeah. I guess so, yeah. And...
Sam: Anyway, but here's the thing.
Ivan: Ah, the good old days.
Sam: Yes. At any case, Trump was asking for this meeting.
Sam: Trump gave no conditions for this meeting. Trump invited him to the U.S. for this meeting.
Sam: Trump was convinced of his ability to, we can work this out if we just talk in person.
Sam: And like people have pointed out repeatedly over the last few weeks,
Sam: usually when you have high-level meetings between world leaders,
Sam: whatever deal you're going to make is made in advance.
Sam: You have staffers make the deal.
Sam: Maybe the principals come on to push it along here or there,
Sam: but you are working out all the details. You have a document ready.
Sam: The meeting is basically stick it in front of them for them to sign.
Sam: Now, there are exceptions. There are exceptions. There's the famous like Reykjavik thing with Reagan.
Ivan: But they didn't make a deal.
Sam: And they didn't make a deal. Right. They came close.
Sam: But, and there's a whole story about that. That's a fun little thing.
Sam: Look it up if you don't know the history.
Sam: But, in any case, so Putin gets there.
Ivan: By the way, it reminds me that that thing about deals like that reminds me of like trade shows.
Ivan: We have this thing where companies go and like they participate in these trade
Ivan: shows and announce these deals.
Ivan: And almost, almost almost universally. Those deals have been negotiated,
Ivan: have been in negotiation for months and months in advance.
Ivan: And it's almost like it's just a formality what's happening at the trade show. Same thing.
Sam: Right. Yeah. Anyway, they get, they both get to the airport.
Sam: First of all, Putin makes Donald wait because they were going to do this thing
Sam: where they get out of the planes at the same time and they come together and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Putin makes Donald wait. They eventually do their little walking,
Sam: they roll out a red carpet for Putin.
Sam: They come together. Then the first thing is like Donald Trump,
Sam: Donald invites Putin to ride with him on the Beast.
Ivan: What the fuck was that?
Sam: Now, apparently, it had all been arranged. They all had their own cars.
Sam: It was all set up. It was going to work that way. That's the normal way you do this.
Sam: Apparently, protocol-wise, it has been extremely rare for foreign leaders of
Sam: any type to ride in the president's limousine.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And when it has happened, it's been close allies. Not like, you know,
Sam: people we have an adversarial relationship with.
Sam: So anyway, so he invites him on and Putin's like, sure.
Sam: And I've heard people speculating afterwards of all, what the hell are they
Sam: going to have to do to like, you know, check this car out from top to bottom?
Sam: You know, because, I mean, Putin probably wasn't expecting this.
Sam: But at the same time, remember, before he was the head.
Ivan: He was a KGB agent.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: The head of the KGB!
Sam: His entire career has been in intelligence. So, like, if there's anything to
Sam: be— And by the way, people were complaining even that the meeting was at an Air Force base.
Ivan: Which then, I was like, what? You know, it surrounded— You just let all these
Ivan: fucking Russian military people come into a fucking military base?
Sam: You know, you got all the planes, you got this, you got that.
Sam: But apparently, yeah, they had, I wouldn't say completely free reign,
Sam: but they were able to wander around some in the area.
Sam: You know, they some of the staging areas, they they pulled some of the planes
Sam: up right next to it to show off.
Sam: They had a flyover, you know, of of a few things, you know, because Trump wanted to show off.
Ivan: OK, Jesus. That was the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen.
Ivan: I had never seen a fly, especially in a meeting like that, military doing a fucking flyover.
Ivan: I'm like what the fuck.
Sam: Anyway, like, so, you know, Putin was clearly very happy. He was smiling.
Ivan: Oh, my God. Putin was, like, beaming.
Sam: There's also a video of, like, Trump while he was waiting for Putin to come
Sam: over, like, looking all excited.
Ivan: He looked like a fucking, like, little kid waiting, you know,
Ivan: like his father was arriving.
Ivan: I don't know. This is, like, nuts.
Sam: People by the way also made fun he was when trump was walking down the red carpet
Sam: this there's like sped up video that shows he was not even close to maintaining
Sam: a straight line sort of weaving back and.
Ivan: Forth like i'm like what the fuck is going on.
Sam: Anyway then they had their actual meetings the meetings were cut short they
Sam: were supposed to have a lunch they were supposed to have up to six hours of
Sam: meetings. They were done in two.
Sam: They were going to have a news conference where theoretically there were going to be questions asked.
Sam: Trump likes taking questions. There were no questions.
Sam: Speculation is that was Putin saying no, but just the news conference itself,
Sam: optics, usually the host talks first and frames the conversation.
Sam: Putin talked first at the news conference for several minutes
Sam: ongoing and whatever and they didn't
Sam: say a lot like put putin in
Sam: his initial statement spent a lot of time talking about how
Sam: we're neighbors how we can be friends blah blah blah and of
Sam: course a big part of this by the way is putin
Sam: as they were saying coming in from the cold he has been isolated as a pariah
Sam: since the invasion right ukraine yeah a number of years back and has not been
Sam: having these kinds of meetings with any significant world leader.
Sam: And yeah, I, he, he has met with various people that,
Sam: North Korea.
Ivan: Like North Korea and Xi. Like, that's it, basically. China and North Korea. That's it.
Sam: And a number of, like, smaller countries.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, well, whatever. I mean, you know, yeah,
Ivan: he's meeting Lukashenko or the guy in Kazakhstan, whatever. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. But of sort of the major world power countries, he has not been
Sam: meeting them with them because he's out in the cold.
Sam: And they've been very much saying, you are not welcome until this is resolved
Sam: and you whatever and so this was a major success for putin before anything else
Sam: happened just by the fact that he had this meeting at all let's be let's.
Ivan: Be clear about how why is this so idiotic also putin on the record has said
Ivan: that the greatest catastrophe in russia was the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: It is the loss of...
Sam: Oh, and the one guy, the foreign minister or whatever, had the CCCP sweatshirt.
Ivan: Oh, Lavrov wore a fucking CCCP t-shirt, whatever, under his jacket. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, to bring the, you know, to put the point, you know, bring the point home. Look.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: This was the... And it was, for the most part, because of the collapse of the
Ivan: prestige of his country and standing in the world order.
Ivan: as the other superpower and them
Ivan: just being another country him being brought over here
Ivan: like this in this situation to
Ivan: negotiate a war that isn't even between the
Ivan: the the united states and russia it's against
Ivan: you know ukraine which they keep you know
Ivan: what they keep framing is is like a client state
Ivan: like in the good old days of the cold war this entire and and bringing him over
Ivan: here so we can go and tell fuck you know trump fuck you no deal is a massive
Ivan: massive massive win for putin at home well and.
Sam: By the way let's get to that in terms of what happened in the actual deal like
Sam: in the press conference you know donald trump when he finally started talking
Sam: like before he started going russia russia russia and going and completely rambling,
Sam: mentioned, you know, we agreed on some things.
Sam: We didn't agree on some other things. I have to go talk to, you know,
Sam: I'll call the Ukrainians later. I'll talk, I'll call the Europeans later.
Sam: But basically there were absolutely no details whatsoever of anything that they
Sam: agreed on, anything they didn't disagree on.
Sam: Donald Trump did say there's no deal till there's a deal. So obviously there was no deal.
Sam: And of course, from the very beginning of this, the Europeans and Ukrainians
Sam: were pissed off because why are you talking about the Ukrainians without the Ukrainians there?
Sam: And, but apparently there was reporting just in the few hours before we started
Sam: recording the show that apparently one of the things that Donald Trump has told the Ukrainians is,
Sam: look, dudes, you're going to have to give up some territory,
Sam: which they've always had as one of their red lines that they're not going to do.
Sam: Now, and just to be clear, there are different levels of this, right?
Sam: There's the, we will have a ceasefire and acknowledge the de facto situation
Sam: on the ground that the Russians are in control of this territory,
Sam: but we will not give up our legal claim.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: And we will look to resolve this in the future.
Sam: We fully expect to get back this territory in the future. We do not give up
Sam: our claim, but we recognize the facts on the ground and we'll agree to a ceasefire
Sam: sort of freezing the front lines.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: That seems like the reasonable middle ground, honestly.
Sam: Like, you know, I remember Yvonne and I talking the week after the invasion
Sam: happened on this show saying that, frankly,
Sam: that was the likely probable outcome is at some point there would be something
Sam: where de facto Russia would consolidate the territory it had.
Sam: And Ukraine would have to give that up at least for some period of time.
Sam: And oftentimes those situations do become permanent, but in the meantime,
Sam: you maintain the legal fiction and you sort of move on.
Sam: And frankly, I think Zelensky has even said, there's no way we will fully resolve
Sam: this territory while Putin is in power.
Sam: So this is something to be resolved diplomatically, you know,
Sam: years down the road when Russia's under new leadership.
Sam: But we'll see how Ukraine reacts to that, but I'm not thinking well,
Sam: especially since from reports, that kind of let's freeze the front lines but
Sam: not resolve any legal claims.
Sam: Russia hasn't been particularly amenable to that.
Sam: They want to—they've changed their constitution, so legally these parts are
Sam: parts of Russia as far as they're—.
Sam: So we don't have a deal. We don't have anything. And I think you are fundamentally
Sam: right that Putin came to this meeting to tell Donald, fuck you.
Ivan: Yep.
Sam: And he did.
Ivan: Yep. And be able to show everybody back home, you see, I went over there,
Ivan: told him to go fuck themselves, and I'm back here, and he looks weak.
Sam: And he did look weak, and he looked defeated. Like, if you looked at him in
Sam: the press conference, he did not look happy.
Ivan: I saw something. about him showing up to a, he had agreed to an interview with
Ivan: Hannity later that evening where he started off by basically saying, I don't want to be here.
Ivan: Why the hell did I agree to this interview?
Sam: Yes. He said that on camera. Yes.
Ivan: I mean, literally, he is at the mouthpiece of his fucking administration.
Ivan: And he was like, started out by saying, you didn't want to be there.
Sam: Well, because he expected to come in here and talk about his big success.
Sam: even though he had no plan whatsoever.
Ivan: But, but...
Ivan: But this is a guy who always has managed to spin, to lie flat out about any
Ivan: loss being a win. And he couldn't even do that.
Sam: Right. And, you know, there were clips of, like, people on Fox talking about how this did not go well.
Sam: Like, you know, you expect Fox to try to spin it in the best possible way.
Sam: And even the people on Fox were like, yeah, this did not go well.
Ivan: No!
Sam: And, you know, look, he ended it early. He hightailed it back to Washington.
Sam: It's clear he got there and found out right away that this is not going anywhere.
Sam: There's nothing to talk about, really.
Sam: Putin is not willing to move and make concessions on anything.
Sam: Like Donald Trump, also some of the reporting coming up to this was like Donald
Sam: Trump was trying to sweeten the deal for Putin with things like offering him
Sam: mineral rights in Alaska.
Ivan: What the fuck? Are we out of our fucking minds?
Sam: You know?
Ivan: How the hell could one of his aides not tell him if that idea came up to just
Ivan: yell at him and say, are you out of your mind?
Sam: And it wasn't even that. It was one of the offers that we were going to make.
Ivan: That's what I'm saying. How the hell did anybody tell Trump that that's insane?
Sam: Yes. Well, he didn't offer to sell Alaska back.
Ivan: Well, he forgot that Alaska is part of the United States.
Sam: Well, yes, he did do that, too. He said he was meeting him in Russia.
Ivan: No, no, no. But not that. After he finished the meeting, he kept saying,
Ivan: well, I'm going to go back to the U.S.
Sam: I'm sorry.
Ivan: Well, Alaska is not the real U.S.
Sam: Alaska's not the real U.S.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: No, come on.
Ivan: Yes, I know. Anything that's not the lower 48, I know. Me being from one of
Ivan: those places. Yeah, it's like not the real U.S., you know.
Sam: Yeah. And I guess also you had mentioned at the beginning of this conversation,
Sam: are there huge sanctions now?
Sam: Because even within the 24 hours before this meeting, Trump was in interviews
Sam: saying, if we don't get major progress out of this, we're going to take major actions.
Sam: Now, he had mentioned sanctions as one possibility, but he'd also had an interview
Sam: like a week or two ago saying,
Sam: yeah, we can do sanctions, but sanctions won't really make a difference because,
Sam: like, we already have sanctions and Russia doesn't do a lot of trade with us
Sam: anyway and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: So sanctions probably aren't going to be very effective. They were talking about
Sam: secondary sanctions where we would put sanctions on countries that bought oil from Russia.
Ivan: Well, like, exactly, like India, which, you know, that was one of the.
Sam: That could be more significant. Of course, we're also— That.
Ivan: Would be far.
Sam: More significant. Of course, we're also screwing them with tariffs,
Sam: and that's also playing into the game of where we are anyway.
Sam: Right. But Trump had hinted at other actions that weren't purely economic,
Sam: too. He hadn't said anything specifically.
Sam: But he kept talking about how there would be severe consequences if Putin did
Sam: not move towards at least a ceasefire.
Sam: And he had said coming up to this that he would be really disappointed if we
Sam: didn't come out of this with a ceasefire.
Sam: But he also had been spending like the last week before this,
Sam: well, it was only planned for like a week. It was really quickly set up.
Sam: But he was trying to lower expectations. He was saying, I only feel like there's
Sam: a 25% chance of success here.
Sam: So he was lowering expectations at the same time he was talking about he would
Sam: be disappointed if it didn't succeed. And he was all over the place with this
Sam: thing and just came in and got rolled.
Sam: You know, I, I, I, your summary is the best I've heard yet. Putin comes,
Sam: says, go fuck yourself and leaves.
Ivan: Yep.
Sam: And Donald, and Donald Trump sits there and takes it because he has no choice.
Sam: There's nothing else he could do.
Ivan: Nothing else he could do.
Sam: Cause you know, he was talking the other day.
Sam: Well, the other day, like remember the meeting with Zelensky where he was like,
Sam: you have no cards, guess who has no cards now?
Sam: You know, I, I mean, none that we're willing to use anyway.
Sam: Like, I mean, he could be coming there and say, you know, we're going to pull
Sam: the, put the full might of the U S armed forces into the battle in Ukraine,
Sam: you know, but he's not going to do that.
Ivan: Not going to do that.
Sam: You know, we, we, we could probably push the Russians out of Eastern Ukraine. Like if we went all in.
Ivan: Listen, well, if we did a air, I mean, listen, if we did say.
Sam: Even just some air action. Of course, the risk of that is like,
Sam: oh, but. No, I mean, you are right.
Ivan: I mean, do we I mean, if we went in and we decided to go and like do a aerial
Ivan: assault on on Russian on Russian troops on that on that area,
Ivan: we could probably decimate like for the most part.
Ivan: their ability to engage in meaningful war that would allow the Ukrainians on
Ivan: the ground to be able to push them back. But we're not going to do that.
Sam: No, we're not. And by the way, I'm not saying that we should.
Sam: There's a lot of risk in that scenario.
Ivan: There is a lot of risk in that scenario. It's why Biden and everybody else had
Ivan: avoided it. I mean, you know, there's a lot of risk in that scenario.
Ivan: I mean, look, you could send a whole bunch of sorties of B-52s.
Ivan: and fucking just start dropping ordnance on top of these guys like non-stop.
Ivan: You know, send quite a lot of cruise missiles, Tomahawks, shit.
Ivan: I mean, look, man, let me tell you something.
Ivan: When we've sent our aerial assault, a full-fledged aerial assault,
Ivan: forget about what happens after the war, because in many places,
Ivan: we didn't commit enough troops with the Ukrainians that we screwed that up. But our aerial assault,
Ivan: In the last 30 years, it's been deployed. When we go say, fuck it,
Ivan: we're setting the full assault. It's been quite effective.
Sam: Well, and look, there are possibilities that are even less than that that would make a difference.
Sam: I mean, I've heard people talk about, well, just provide air support to keep,
Sam: you know, to take control of the Ukrainian air.
Ivan: The sky. Just take, exactly. To completely just, you know, eliminate the threat
Ivan: from anything aerial coming from Russia.
Ivan: That would be a huge— Right.
Sam: But the point, though, is that we're not going to do that, and there are good
Sam: reasons to not do that, which severely limits the options.
Sam: And especially since Donald Trump has also, and the Republicans more generally
Sam: at this point, have also said we're not really doing a lot of military support on other things, too.
Sam: We have trickled a few things. like donald trump hasn't stopped
Sam: it completely but we've way cut back
Sam: the europeans are trying to pick up some of the slack but
Sam: basically we are not supporting the ukrainians at
Sam: the same level as we did at the beginning even in even in terms of by the way
Sam: a lot of the support was we will let you buy stuff from us right you know as
Sam: opposed to just flat out here's free stuff and even when there was free stuff,
Sam: we replenished our own stocks as part of that, and it was a good deal for us.
Sam: And we were paying American companies.
Sam: So we've been in a stalemate in this situation for a long time now.
Sam: The front lines have not moved significantly. The Russians have made progress
Sam: the last year, year and a half, two years even, on the front lines, but it's been tiny.
Sam: tiny it's basically been a stalemate for for years now and you know,
Sam: Where do we go? Oh, and I guess the Trump has no cards.
Sam: I just realized the re I said that after I saw the Atlantic has an article specifically
Sam: titled Trump has no cards, which I saw out of the corner of my eye right before I said that.
Sam: So not completely original thought.
Sam: But yeah so what next year i i feel
Sam: like i i posted on both the
Sam: curmudgeon score slack and blue sky that you
Sam: know essentially honestly guys having coming
Sam: out of this with the situation essentially the
Sam: same as we came into it is probably one
Sam: of the best outcomes we could have hoped for out of this because
Sam: there was reporting that trump was basically willing
Sam: to sell out the ukrainians here in all kinds of different ways
Sam: you know the the mineral rights for alaska and
Sam: pressuring ukraine to just give up the territory without
Sam: without a security guarantee or anything and just he was willing to potentially
Sam: take most of what the russians were asking for and even then the russians told
Sam: him to go himself but you know you know and i i say that it's sort of a,
Sam: we're coming out of it the same as we came into it.
Sam: But I've heard a lot of commentary since this summit ended that really we are
Sam: worse off because Putin did humiliate Trump and show how weak Trump was in this situation.
Ivan: Well, we are better off in this situation. I
Ivan: do think that in terms of also his
Ivan: position with his supporters well
Ivan: at least for us that want to to fuck you
Ivan: know to get rid of this guy as soon as possible that that
Ivan: that that that was a positive in
Ivan: that respect i mean it's it's
Ivan: another showing of what a weak how weak
Ivan: he he is in reality because
Ivan: all this shit that you know like the
Ivan: i know you had a subject don't go into that later we can
Ivan: go that next like this this whole thing in dc like right now for example these
Ivan: are all these are all the things that an insecure weak man does um that that
Ivan: that is what this is i mean by the way this all started by the way with the
Ivan: whole epstein thing yes we're still and we're we're still at.
Sam: At the very least, a lot of the conversation over the last 48 hours has shifted.
Ivan: And that was his whole goal. That was his primary goal.
Sam: So maybe this really was a success.
Ivan: In that sense, yes. In the sense of, you know,
Ivan: driving conversation away from that.
Sam: I, and, you know, I, and I honestly, over the last half week or so,
Sam: I started to think in a few places, hey, maybe they've outlasted this.
Sam: The Epstein stuff has slowed down and we're not hearing a lot about it.
Ivan: I think here, here is the problem with this Epstein stuff.
Sam: Congress is coming back and they've got hearings scheduled.
Ivan: Listen, but they, he's managed to make it recede. But the problem is that he
Ivan: hasn't managed to make it go away.
Ivan: And this damn Epstein thing is like, you know, it's like, what the hell was
Ivan: that psycho killer that always kept coming back?
Ivan: Can't remember one of those movies, but it's just like Jason. Yeah, exactly.
Ivan: This Epstein thing is just like that. It doesn't. Yeah, you could make them.
Ivan: You're pushing it aside for a little bit. But man, it has a tendency to just fucking not die.
Ivan: that's the thing about it. It still continues to just be out there.
Sam: So since we appear to be moving on from the summit, let's go ahead and take
Sam: a break, and then we'll hit all this other stuff.
Sam: You mentioned the National Guard in D.C.
Sam: We've got the whole redistricting mess with Texas and California,
Sam: which then leads us into how Gavin Newsom has been doing and what that whole
Sam: thing looks like. So we will take a break.
Sam: And then we'll come back and we'll talk about all that kind of stuff back after
Sam: this, this, this, this. Why did I say this?
Sam: This. Anyway, here you go.
Sam: Okay, we are back. So you started with the weaknesses that is the National Guard
Sam: in D.C. So let's talk about that a little bit.
Sam: Donald Trump was like, hey, D.C., crime infested, cesspool, horrible mess,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: We're going to come in. We're going to take over the local police force.
Sam: We're going to bring in the National Guard. We're going to do all this.
Sam: and so well they did
Sam: bring in the national guard they tried
Sam: to bring in their own they tried to fully take over the dc police force and
Sam: bring in their own new commissioner they they were taken to court for that and
Sam: caved on that almost immediately it didn't even get to the point of the judge
Sam: saying, no, you're wrong.
Sam: They came to a deal. They backed off.
Sam: Apparently, the law in which they were trying to take over the local police,
Sam: what the law actually says, and this is the D.C.
Sam: self-rule law from, I don't know, like 40, 50 years ago, 1980s.
Sam: I was going to say South News, but whatever, back then.
Ivan: Oh, fuck.
Sam: Anyway, it doesn't matter. But what it says is that the president can request the D.C.
Sam: police's assistance in federal matters as opposed to specifically saying 73.
Ivan: You're right.
Sam: Well, it was the year 73.
Ivan: 73.
Sam: It's 73. Okay. And but it apparently does not include language to let them just take over.
Sam: Instead, it's you can ask them to help with stuff.
Sam: So they they withdrew what they said about the the taking over completely and
Sam: instead have submitted a request for the DC police to help with immigration stuff,
Sam: which is probably more likely to meet legal muster.
Sam: But in the meantime, they've brought in the National Guard, they're doing other things.
Sam: And so we've got lots and lots of video of these, oh, and not just the National
Sam: Guard, I should say, like the FBI, the DEA,
Sam: all these federal law enforcement agencies have been taken off their normal
Sam: duties and been asked to patrol neighborhoods in D.C. instead.
Sam: And so we've got all these videos of like these federal officers wandering the streets of D.C.
Sam: In some cases, they are blocking off streets and, you know, stopping everybody
Sam: who goes by to question them. There's video...
Ivan: Isn't that completely fucking illegal? Seriously.
Sam: I...
Sam: It is.
Ivan: You have to have some kind of suspicion.
Sam: It could be. I mean, maybe they're setting them up as DUI checkpoints.
Sam: I don't know. There are ways to do that kind of stuff.
Sam: I don't know. I'm sure there will be legal challenges left and right.
Sam: There have been protests on the
Sam: street of the, you know, locals in the neighborhood yelling at the cops.
Ivan: They talked in one group yelling them until they fucking, like,
Ivan: picked up and left. They basically just made them miserable in one place until
Ivan: they just finally gave up.
Sam: And every place they've tried to do those, like, we're stopping everybody on
Sam: this street, from what I can tell, the locals have gone out a couple blocks
Sam: in each direction and just gone with signs and just have been telling everybody, go somewhere else.
Sam: Go around. Go around.
Sam: Go around. You know, and so they haven't.
Sam: So you end up with lots and lots of pictures of these guys just sitting around doing nothing.
Sam: There are a few videos of them talking to people on their porches.
Ivan: Just like California. Same fucking thing.
Sam: Yeah. There was one video of this one group of like FBI agents or something
Sam: who were talking to a group of people on their porch saying,
Sam: you know, hey, have you heard about this thing from Donald Trump?
Sam: Like Donald Trump doesn't want you drinking on your porch anymore.
Sam: You know, yeah, he doesn't want it looking like this.
Sam: You know, we're going to clean this stuff up.
Ivan: I can't drink on my porch. Go fuck themselves.
Sam: Yeah, well, in many places, I'm not sure about D.C., there are laws about open
Sam: alcohol containers in places where they're not allowed.
Ivan: Wait, wait, wait. On your porch, that's your private property.
Sam: In some places, that counts as public because you can be seen from the street.
Sam: You can do it in your backyard, but not your front porch, not where you can see it from the street.
Ivan: What kind of goddamn Nazi laws are these?
Sam: Anyway, so they were talking to these people, But I've also heard reports that
Sam: almost all of the places where these federal officers are patrolling are like
Sam: the tourist and business places.
Sam: You know, like they're hanging out at the mall by the Washington Monument.
Sam: They're hanging out in Georgetown by all the restaurants and stuff.
Sam: They are not going to the neighborhoods where crime is actually a problem.
Ivan: Okay, so let me ask a question. Why do you think that is? Can I say your dose
Ivan: agents and you just got sent to do something you really didn't want to do?
Ivan: What are you going to do?
Sam: You go to the nice places and you hang out.
Ivan: But you don't have to deal with this shit.
Sam: Now, also, this has been pointed out over and over and over again.
Sam: But just to make sure this is clear to everybody, D.C. is very close to 60-year lows.
Ivan: Low in crime!
Sam: It's been on a downward trend.
Ivan: I've been robbed of D.C. And I know that D.C. ain't like when I got robbed like 30 years ago.
Sam: Like a number of people have pointed out, like almost everywhere in the country,
Sam: there was a spike during the COVID years.
Sam: Things went back up, but they're now down again and continuing a downward trend
Sam: that we've been on since the 1970s.
Sam: like crime as an
Sam: issue like the the republicans and
Sam: not just the republicans lots of other people to make an
Sam: issue of crime because it's easy because it's
Sam: a you know it
Sam: it let me find this thing i
Sam: shared on the curmudgeon's course slack from george conway had retweeted somebody
Sam: else or not tweet but you know what i mean hold on let me find it i specifically
Sam: set this so that i could easily find it later and talk about this you.
Ivan: Did a great job of saving it.
Sam: Yeah i know i i i did awesome okay i found it let me get the screen of screen
Sam: of the the the by the way while you find.
Ivan: That just just by the way in terms of crying just overall also Newsom this.
Sam: Week.
Ivan: Hit back because of all of this shit where he went and specifically- Oh.
Sam: Yeah. D.C. is not even anywhere close to the biggest problem in the country.
Sam: But we're all red states.
Ivan: No, exactly. That was the one thing he called out. He said, listen,
Ivan: what the hell are you coming to California when, you know, what,
Ivan: for example, Arkansas has doubled the crime rate of California, okay?
Ivan: Oklahoma is 41% higher. He was like hitting them with the numbers.
Ivan: Like, so why the fuck aren't you going to those cities? What the hell are you coming here?
Ivan: The red states, the guys that voted for you, those are the guys that have the
Ivan: worst crime problem. It's Mississippi. It's Louisiana. It's Alabama.
Ivan: Those are one, two, and three.
Sam: Yeah, this ties into, and even if you start looking city by city, the pattern holds.
Ivan: Yes!
Sam: But what people have pointed out, he's targeting L.A., he's targeting D.C.,
Sam: and in his speech announcing D.C., he listed a whole bunch of cities.
Sam: The one thing in common for every city he mentioned, high non-white populations are,
Sam: And in almost every case, black mayors, and even more so, black women mayors in most of them.
Ivan: One thing that you posted, the White House was posting this stream of people being arrested.
Ivan: Hey, Sam, what was the common thread of all the pictures of the people that
Ivan: the White House had been posting that had been arrested as the federal government
Ivan: tried to take over crime control? What was the consistent theme?
Sam: They were all black people.
Ivan: They were all black! All of them.
Sam: Now, to be fair, they did arrest that guy who threw a sandwich at an FBI agent or something.
Ivan: Yeah, we're charging a guy that threw a sandwich with a felony.
Sam: That has been dismissed, by the way. Like, the judge— Well.
Ivan: By the way, they tried two cases like that, took them to grad juries,
Ivan: and both grad juries declined to charge.
Sam: Yes. like related to these various protests
Sam: and people trying to do stuff in the in the sandwich guy's
Sam: case turns out white guy worked
Sam: for doj he has been fired from doj over this incident by the way yeah but he
Sam: he was up in the face of this officer i'm not sure if they were fbi or some
Sam: other federal agent but they he he threw his wrapped hoagie from like subway
Sam: it was a subway sandwich from Subway.
Sam: He threw the wrapped sandwich at the guy, hit him in the shoulder. Then he runs away.
Sam: and apparently he actually escaped at that point because he arranged to turn himself in later,
Sam: and i saw someone show video they sent
Sam: like a whole swat team to get him when he turned himself in like he arranged
Sam: to turn himself in he called up he said look it was me i threw the sandwich
Sam: i'm turning myself in here's my address come get me and they sent a whole fucking
Sam: swat team after You know, just pick them up.
Ivan: Hey, SWAT team, look, we're going and taking old ladies for immigration issues
Ivan: and, like, arresting them like we're arresting, you know, serial killers.
Sam: Yes. And, of course, yeah, like I said, he got in front of a judge and the judge
Sam: is like, you got to be fucking kidding me.
Sam: Get out of here. You know, send him home.
Sam: Yeah. I guess he still lost his job at DOJ.
Ivan: But I think he could probably sue and like.
Sam: You know, I'm sure he'll get it. I mean, he's a freaking lawyer. He's going to sue.
Ivan: I mean, he should, you know, he should sue and he'll probably get,
Ivan: you know, a decent judgment, you know, for that, because I don't even think
Ivan: that's a good reason to fire him anyway.
Sam: OK, well, I mean, he was charged with a felony, even though it was dismissed.
Ivan: But he wasn't convicted.
Sam: Yes. OK, I found what I was looking for. I saw George Conway repost this on
Sam: Blue Sky, but it's apparently from Heath Mayo.
Sam: And I thought this was a good summary, so I'll read the whole thing.
Sam: And this is probably screenshots from X. I don't know.
Sam: Anyway, he says, this DC stunt by the Trump administration is the only way they know how to do politics.
Sam: They've done it for a decade now, and the Democrats continue to play right into their hands.
Sam: Step one, find a tangible, observable, universally recognized problem that can
Sam: be photographed or recorded and played in news clips.
Sam: Graffiti, theft, broken windows, open air loitering, etc.
Sam: In fact, better if the underlying data paints a different picture,
Sam: like we were talking about.
Sam: So academic types inevitably make nuanced arguments in opposition that the pictures
Sam: and video aren't indicative of the full picture, etc.
Sam: Step two, array an exaggerated, unprecedented, and probably illegal state response
Sam: against the problem that inevitably makes headline news around the country and
Sam: triggers legal challenges.
Sam: You now own the issue and are perceived as the actor.
Sam: At least he's finally doing something, many might say. Right.
Sam: Step three, frame all the forces challenging the state response on constitutional
Sam: grounds or otherwise as weak on crime and the ones who made the mess in the first place.
Sam: Never credit the legal arguments or care about the Constitution.
Sam: This is all about the observable problem on people's screens.
Sam: Step four, pounce when the opposition says this is overreach or fascism or that
Sam: the problem isn't as bad as we're making it seem.
Sam: Continue to paint them as being asleep at the wheel while our cities crumble.
Sam: Punt legality to the courts, and if pressed, just say this is what Trump promised to do.
Sam: Step five, ignore the actual results of the state response and whether it was
Sam: successful at stopping the problem. Because, by the way, completely ineffective.
Sam: This stuff does nothing.
Sam: It does not help, and arguably in some cases it can make it worse.
Sam: The result doesn't matter. If we have to demilitarize or never levy a tariff, who cares?
Sam: The whole point was only to win the PR game.
Sam: And we came away looking like the tough ones, with the institutional swamp arrayed
Sam: against us. The viral videos were endless.
Sam: Did you see what Trump said to that one lefty reporter? hilarious.
Sam: Step six, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
Sam: And then finally, Democrats keep playing right into this stupid playbook and
Sam: never make their own plays.
Sam: As a result, Trump is never on the hook for the success or failure of his nonsense
Sam: schemes, and he usually ends up getting credit with voters for at least appearing
Sam: to attack these observable problems.
Sam: Meanwhile, the problems get worse, while America's governing leaders engage
Sam: in nothing but kabuki theater. There you go. That's the whole thing.
Ivan: I mean, here's the one thing, but here's the one thing in which is why,
Ivan: you know, talking about the response, which is why my whole thing about how
Ivan: Newsom has changed the game in terms of what an appropriate response to all of this shit is.
Ivan: What Newsom is employing right now as the tactics to respond to this is a significant
Ivan: change from what the Democrat playbook has been up to now.
Ivan: You would tell me one that was like comedic, that was comedic talking about
Ivan: Hakeem Jeffries and his response to,
Ivan: I think it was the DC takeover, I think it was, or he said something about how
Ivan: a strongly worded letter was sent and he was like, yeah, that's appropriate.
Ivan: what the fuck people no no this
Ivan: this could not be look you got the on
Ivan: one hand basically you gotta stop showing
Ivan: up to a gunfight with with with you know with basically with just your bare
Ivan: hands like right now right not even with a knife it's just showing up with your
Ivan: fucking bare hands okay and getting shot in the face you gotta stop just saying please.
Sam: Please please don't do this This.
Ivan: Is wrong.
Sam: You should not be doing this.
Ivan: Exactly. You got to stop doing that shit. And you've got to ridicule them.
Ivan: This week, Fox was forced to repeatedly read the statements that Gavin Newsom
Ivan: made ridiculing Trump on TV.
Ivan: And I'm going to tell you that that probably backfired in terms of the effect
Ivan: on people, in terms of the effect on the audience. It's one of those things
Ivan: where you're forcing them to have to react to you.
Sam: I know I'm repetitive on this and I'm going to go back and then we can get back to Newsom.
Sam: But the whole, like, why can't we just mock them thing?
Sam: I mean, we've talked about this on the show for years, but I remember being
Sam: so happy when Walls was doing the goddamn they're weird thing.
Sam: We were finally mocking them and going after this in that way because we have
Sam: seen on a number of occasions that that actually works.
Sam: Painting them as dangerous makes them look strong. Just like what I was talking
Sam: about in the thing I just read.
Sam: It looks like they're doing something. They're taking action. They're strong.
Sam: Look, even their enemies are talking about how dangerous they are. But mocking them.
Ivan: Nuslove is painting them as dangerous and mocking them at the same time.
Sam: There are ways to balance it.
Sam: I will go to the end of my days ruining the fact that the consultants who came
Sam: in on the Harris campaign ended up reeling walls in and telling them you can't do that shit anymore,
Sam: which I think has been reported that that's essentially what happened.
Sam: You know, and they pivoted and instead did this other stuff.
Ivan: That play ball needs to be thrown in a fire.
Sam: Okay? Because there are two things that I think Newsom has been doing very well.
Sam: And by the way, I have not been a Newsom fan. I did not like Newsom.
Sam: I've been unhappy with him as an option whenever he's been talked about.
Sam: And look, even now, I would rather have someone else. But he is the one who
Sam: right now is doing things right.
Ivan: Exactly. No, Sam. But this goes back to the whole thing of like,
Ivan: well, I want the better candidate. I want the other candidate.
Ivan: But listen, so let's let the fascists win again.
Ivan: No, let me tell you something. Nobody else is stepping up to the game.
Ivan: What Hakeem Jeffries did this week was embarrassing. It was embarrassing.
Ivan: Between not endorsing my money. But I'm done. I'm done.
Ivan: Okay. Not endorsing him. Being like a fucking, sounding like an idiot. Okay.
Ivan: While doing it. And that shit, I'm like, oh, yeah, we sent a strongly worded
Ivan: letter about what's happening in D.C. I'm like, I wanted to punch up that in the face.
Sam: Look, here's the thing. I wish more Democrats were doing this.
Sam: But as long as Newsom is the one doing it, then whatever reservations I have about Newsom, oh, well.
Sam: You know, and, you know, look, we talked about a few others.
Sam: You know, we've talked about AOC a number of times, although she's still a little young.
Sam: and but and she's
Sam: got yeah there are questions about her general appeal newsom also
Sam: has let's be completely honest he's a white
Sam: male as well yes and there's probably five percent of the goddamn country who
Sam: will vote against anybody who's not a white male yeah with before they even
Sam: think about anything else and i you know i remember back in 2016 and again in 2020,
Sam: talking about anything but an old white male.
Sam: Anything but an old white male, please.
Sam: But look, I was saying there are two things. One is the mocking,
Sam: and I think the mocking is really important.
Sam: Two is even if there's a chance it won't succeed, you have to be pushing hard
Sam: and trying to do something.
Sam: So his whole thing about the, you know, we're going to, we're going to redistrict to combat Texas.
Sam: You know, and pushing that hard. You know, there are legal constraints.
Sam: Like, one of the things that's pissed me off about this, they've tried to tout
Sam: as a benefit that, oh, we're going to put this to the people in a referendum,
Sam: not like Texas, where the legislature is going to put it through. They have to.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so what? So you oversell it a little bit. Give me a fucking break.
Sam: Okay? All right? That's fine. I know I'm saying, I'm just saying,
Sam: like, believe me, if they could just push it through the legislature, they would.
Sam: The thing is, in Texas, sorry, in California, there was a constitutional amendment
Sam: to do the nonpartisan redistricting commissions.
Sam: And so they basically need a constitutional amendment to undo that first.
Sam: And the process for that is these, you know, referendum votes on the constitutional amendment.
Sam: So, but yeah, but the point is, he's like, what can we do? Let's find something
Sam: we can do and push it hard.
Sam: Maybe it fails in the end, but they're going to try and they're going to push
Sam: it hard, which is the other thing that, you know, even the Texas Democrats that
Sam: we're talking about, they decide, okay, we'll deny him a quorum.
Ivan: Oh, my God. Yeah.
Sam: But they denied a quorum for a few weeks and now they're like,
Sam: oh, well, you know, we can't do this forever.
Ivan: Well, they haven't caved yet, but the plan that they came up with to,
Ivan: oh, yeah, we'll come back was basically was, I mean,
Ivan: make Trump look strong against Putin.
Ivan: I mean, oh, my God.
Ivan: Oh, yeah. We're going to go back if they promise that they're going to let us vote on something.
Sam: I was actually wrong about this.
Sam: Like what they were waiting for was they actually are waiting for California.
Ivan: No, but I heard that I heard it was both conditions.
Ivan: But what I read was that what I read, it was both conditions.
Ivan: A, that California got, you know, was going to do their thing.
Ivan: And B, that the but but that that that that that they in Texas,
Ivan: that they would vote on their plan that would fail.
Ivan: But here's my problem with that, Sam. It's once again, this is showing up,
Ivan: you know, to a gunfight with squirt guns.
Ivan: OK, look, it's like I'm sorry. Even if California does their thing,
Ivan: they still shouldn't cave anyway.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: That's the reality.
Sam: And by the way, that's the one thing that like, I understand why,
Sam: because like, look, the Democratic Party has for a long time,
Sam: like, look, there are a lot of Democratic gerrymandered states, too.
Sam: Although I saw a map that showed, you know, the most gerrymandered on the Democratic
Sam: side and the most gerrymandered on the Republican side. Republicans have been better at this lately.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: But having said that, the Democratic tendency over the last decade,
Sam: maybe 15 years, has been really pushing hard for these nonpartisan commissions.
Sam: Like that's been the Democratic position. And even the states where Democrats
Sam: have gerrymandered in their advantage are kind of ashamed of that.
Sam: And there's movements to try to get them to go nonpartisan as well.
Sam: The counter argument to that is we can't just do this in democratic states or
Sam: they're going to walk all over us, which is exactly what's been happening.
Sam: And so and by the way, the Democrats.
Ivan: It's this thing about going, oh, let's go and let's let's do this fair again
Ivan: when you're fighting somebody who doesn't care about the rules.
Ivan: They don't care about the rules on anything. You can't keep trying to battle
Ivan: these people by following a rulebook that the other guys are not even looking at or care about.
Sam: Well, look, the thing is, look, Democrats have been pushing these nonpartisan
Sam: commissions at the state level. They pushed it hard on the national level.
Sam: If you remember last time the Democrats were in charge, one of the big headline
Sam: bills they tried to get passed, but was killed by Manchin and Sinema,
Sam: was a national voting rights bill
Sam: that included nonpartisan redistricting across the country. It failed.
Sam: But I think Democrats have come around now that said, okay, it has to be national.
Sam: You can't do this state by state.
Sam: Because that puts any states that are doing it fair at a disadvantage.
Sam: And if they're doing maximal redistricting, we have to too.
Sam: Now, one of the problems with this combat is the Democrats have put nonpartisan
Sam: redistricting in so many states that it's actually really hard to do this.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: The number of places they can do this is limited. And most of the places where
Sam: they can do this, with the exception of California, have already gerrymandered
Sam: in the Democrats' favor.
Sam: Right. So, for instance, people bring up Illinois.
Sam: Illinois is already almost maximally gerrymandered in the Democrats' favor.
Sam: They can't squeeze much more out of that.
Sam: New York could squeeze a few more seats out of New York, but New York has the
Sam: nonpartisan redistricting in place, and they have procedures in place for if
Sam: they want to get rid of that,
Sam: they have to follow a long procedure that means they can't do it till 2028.
Sam: They can't do it in time for 2026. California happens to have a way where they
Sam: could change that in time for 2026, barely,
Sam: But a lot of other states just couldn't even if they wanted to because of the
Sam: way it's set up. It just would take too long.
Sam: I mean, frankly, they should probably start anyway.
Ivan: Right. They should start anyway. But that's my point, Sam. You've got to go.
Ivan: You can't, you know, you have to right now.
Ivan: You have to go all in even on those states where you can't do it like right away.
Ivan: Because this fight with them is not going to be over like in two years or three
Ivan: years. This isn't over anytime soon.
Ivan: This isn't, you know, you have to plan for the fact that you're going to have
Ivan: to keep fighting this for years afterwards.
Ivan: And if you have to go back to those states where we did this and we have to
Ivan: undo that, okay, like right now, we have to start that process.
Ivan: Because this is the thing.
Ivan: Forget about fairness, okay? It's not what I'm talking about right now.
Ivan: Forget about trying to create fair rules.
Ivan: When you're battling with an opponent that doesn't give a shit about the rules,
Ivan: what you have to focus on are the tactics that are going to defend your principles,
Ivan: even though they may not be entirely fair, okay,
Ivan: in the way that, you know, even though they aren't fair, because your opponent isn't fighting fair.
Ivan: They aren't fighting fair. You can't play that way until the landscape changes.
Ivan: If they want to come back later and we want to agree on a fair set of rules, fine.
Ivan: But until they don't agree to them, you have to go and say, fuck this.
Ivan: We are going to go maximum battle front right now across the board.
Ivan: And that's what the Democratic leadership and these fucking guys don't get.
Ivan: It has nothing to do with age, has nothing to do with that.
Ivan: It has to do with people. Either you're in a war footing right now,
Ivan: or you're not, you can't be there.
Ivan: That's what we need, period.
Sam: Right.
Sam: There is still so much attitude of we have to get back to normal.
Sam: We want to work with our Republican colleagues and work on bipartisan stuff and blah.
Ivan: Blah, blah.
Sam: No. Normal is not good. We learned this from Biden.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Like the Biden administration.
Ivan: Biden's whole concentration. It failed already.
Sam: Yes, exactly. like
Sam: look and i remember saying this the moment
Sam: the biden administration started and they had the trifecta as weak as it was
Sam: with mansion and cinema they had a trifecta for a while i'm like you should
Sam: be cranking out new states you should be reforming the supreme court yeah you
Sam: should be doing this you should be doing that and they could whatever.
Ivan: The fuck anything.
Sam: And they didn't have the support in the senate to get that done but importantly
Sam: also they didn't have the support of Joe Biden to go nuclear-like.
Ivan: Listen, if Biden had decided it, we had to go over to those two,
Ivan: you know, to Manchin or whatever and basically offer him, let me make you a
Ivan: fucking deal you can't refuse.
Ivan: Whatever the fuck that deal was. I don't care if we're buying cinema handbags at this fucking point.
Ivan: More for her collection. I don't give a fuck.
Sam: Right.
Sam: You know, so, yeah, we should have been doing that now.
Sam: If we get power again, we have to do it then. We need people who are willing to fight.
Sam: And by the way, acknowledging there are long-term problems with this approach.
Sam: If you have every state gerrymandered to the limit for whatever,
Sam: you know, we are making, we are essentially solidifying the regional divisions of the country.
Sam: You really are making red states and blue states and all this kind of stuff.
Ivan: Going back to the same fucking Democratic argument why we're not doing it,
Ivan: here's a fucking problem. The problem is that, yeah.
Sam: Well, this is what I was going to say. This is short-term versus long-term.
Ivan: Exactly. Long-term. But not long-term.
Sam: We're not going to have a long-term.
Ivan: Exactly. We don't have. What long-term? We don't have a long-term to talk about right now.
Ivan: Right now, the long-term is based on this shit and we're fucked.
Sam: You can fix those issues later. like let's
Sam: say you know you you you you get the
Sam: democrats back in power okay now you can do national redistricting
Sam: reform exactly and make it fair again or whatever but even then i think you
Sam: should add more states you should do all because fundamentally we this country
Sam: has a lot of problems based on the basic structure of like the senate exists
Sam: we've we've got the electoral college exists.
Sam: We fundamentally distort things based on that.
Sam: Even the way we do single member districts itself maybe should be reviewed.
Sam: But, you know, whatever. Like, you can deal with the long-term stuff long-term.
Sam: Right now, I 100% agree with you.
Sam: It's a war. It's a battle. This should not be about—it really has to be about winners and losers.
Sam: I'm sorry. It is not about coming to a nice new national consensus.
Ivan: Yeah, and you know who the fucking losers need to be? People like Charlie Kirk,
Ivan: people like Sean Hannity, people like Donald Trump.
Ivan: And all his fucking kids, those need to be losers. The fucking Nazis need to be losers.
Ivan: They need to lose.
Sam: Yes. And by the way, like, I still believe, like, the core group that's problematic,
Sam: even though Donald Trump won with just barely,
Sam: you know, he didn't even get 50%.
Sam: Even though Donald Trump won, he got more votes.
Sam: Yeah. The group that's the core problem, let's go back to Hillary Clinton's
Sam: deplorables, right? It's like a third of the Republicans.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: You know, those are the ones that, yes, they have to lose and they have to be crushed utterly.
Sam: So the rest of the Republicans can rejoin the fold of like reasonable people, you know?
Sam: And not, but- Not both.
Ivan: You have, we know that, In the cloakrooms and the backrooms,
Ivan: a lot of those motherfucking Republicans in the House and Senate are voting
Ivan: because they're basically scared of their constituents right now.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Like that guy that went to the CDC and fired 150 shots at the fucking windows at the goddamn CDC.
Ivan: Those are the people these people are scared of. They're literally afraid. And voting as such.
Sam: A significant fraction. There are true believers there, too.
Ivan: Oh, no, they're true believers. There's a huge contingent of them that are just like that right now.
Sam: And look, we're in a dangerous place. And back to Newsom, the thing is,
Sam: he's acting like he recognizes the gravity of this.
Sam: And a lot of these other folks are not. Like, okay, AOC is, you can argue about
Sam: Pritzker, you can argue about, you know, a few others have been communicating effectively.
Sam: But over the last month, Newsom has been the one who's been being effective.
Sam: He's gotten in the news, he's getting his message across, he's getting attention
Sam: because of the way he's doing it.
Sam: I mean, he's imitating goddamn Trump's tweet style.
Ivan: He's mocking it, basically.
Sam: Well, he's mocking it. And people asked him, do you think this is appropriate,
Sam: what you're doing? And he's like, have you asked him?
Ivan: Exactly. That's the shit. This is the shit where we don't play the game the same for either.
Ivan: You know, we get that question. Why the fuck aren't you saying that to Trump
Ivan: every fucking day, every time he writes something, says something?
Ivan: It goes online. I mean, isn't he the one that reshared a picture of throwing
Ivan: a fucking dildo into a WNBA court?
Ivan: I mean, I'm sorry. You want to talk about inappropriate? What the fuck are we doing?
Sam: People like, oh, that's just Trump. That's how he is. That's not news anymore, you know?
Sam: And that's fundamentally like one of the great weaknesses of the way media works and frankly,
Sam: the way human attention works is how
Sam: quickly we no longer pay attention
Sam: to the thing as long
Sam: as it's the same you know yeah donald.
Sam: Trump does this crazy stuff but he's done this crazy stuff for forever right
Sam: so yeah yeah he does illegal stuff even oh well doesn't matter nothing ever
Sam: you know it is whatever you know people keep talking about legal.
Ivan: Thing it's all you know it's just donald being donald like he's.
Sam: Building this fucking.
Ivan: Ballroom by the way which is illegal.
Sam: Yes. And we also have the just the split media ecosystem as well.
Sam: Like, you know, as we hear more and more of these, like, you know,
Sam: on the curmudgeon's core slack, we we keep joking about giving these people
Sam: what is it a bag of dicks or whatever we are out of bags of dicks to give them.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. Pete is the is the original bag of dicks distributor.
Sam: But, you know, for people regretting
Sam: their Trump vote because now they're negative consequences to them.
Sam: OK. And one of the themes I've seen from these are are people saying,
Sam: you know, they had no idea or, well, they had heard that, but they didn't believe it. Right.
Sam: And part of that is like if, you know.
Sam: If CNN said it or Harris said it, they don't believe it. It doesn't matter what it is.
Sam: Like, they're not going to believe that thing is true.
Sam: Like, even on the Epstein stuff, some of these people are like,
Sam: well, we had no idea Donald Trump was involved in Epstein.
Sam: And we've talked before. Some of them have the excuse that they were really
Sam: young in 2015, 2016 when it was discussed before or in the years since.
Sam: but many of them are old enough to have been there and may have heard it but
Sam: dismissed it immediately as
Sam: liberal propaganda you know of course that's false they didn't believe it,
Sam: until like laura loomer and people like that were asking questions right you
Sam: know or i don't know if laura loomer is one of them but you know a variety of conservatives one.
Ivan: Of them yes.
Sam: Yeah so yeah and so as long as we have that thing where there's an insulation
Sam: against facts simply because,
Sam: if they say it it must be false and look i admit if if donald trump says something
Sam: my default going in position is of course he's lying yeah but you know what you and.
Ivan: Me will go and like try to figure out is that true.
Sam: Right that's.
Ivan: The reality i mean i'm like you know i get something from some source that I don't understand.
Ivan: I don't go by just, ah, it's fake news. I'm like, is that true?
Ivan: I'm like, let me double check. Is that true?
Ivan: No, these people know. They just hear it from somebody. Ah, it's fake news. That's it.
Sam: Well, and in many cases, this also gets into the simple truth,
Sam: the simple statement versus the subtle truth as well, right?
Sam: Like maybe that statement is true, but it has to be understood in a larger context
Sam: for you to really understand what's going on or whatever.
Sam: And, oh, it's complicated. It's not like this or that. It's like some in-between
Sam: like, oh, well, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Sam: It's complicated. Because in almost all situations, the real answer is it's complicated.
Sam: And to really understand what's going on, you have to dive in and you have to
Sam: think about it and you have to understand.
Sam: And there are all kinds of subtleties and there are all kinds of trade-offs.
Sam: And it's not just clearly one thing's right, one thing's wrong.
Sam: And, you know, that makes it tough. And like, you know, and some people don't
Sam: want to do that. Some people are incapable of that.
Sam: Some people just don't have time for that. They've got lives.
Sam: We don't have lives. We just spent all day digging into this crap.
Sam: But like, that's, that's unusual.
Ivan: Listen, my wife the other day were just discussing this.
Ivan: And I know we've, we've touched this on before, but I was just counting the
Ivan: other day to just the sheer volume of shit that I read every day.
Ivan: Because, look, one thing, I read very fast.
Ivan: I read extremely fast, okay? Look, I mean, I read at a pace that I know is faster than most.
Ivan: But what that means is on an ordinary day, I will for sure go over and read over 100 news articles.
Ivan: And I don't, and what I'm saying reading, I mean reading.
Sam: Not just the headline.
Ivan: Not just the headline. Literally reading the whole fucking thing,
Ivan: okay? But that's not normal.
Sam: You're ahead of me like I keep track of lots of things but I mostly skim the
Sam: surface I will fully read a handful of articles every day but not,
Sam: 100, you know.
Ivan: Yeah. No, but it's crazy. I mean, you know, but yeah, so we keep up to date
Ivan: on what the fuck is going on, you know, on a regular basis.
Ivan: But most people cannot deal with that information overload.
Ivan: Fuck, I mean, they can't deal with the information overload from work.
Ivan: The hell, you know, it would reap that much when that much shit is being distributed out there.
Ivan: It's crazy. So anyway.
Sam: I have been, and we need to close up, but I was just going to say it was one other thing.
Sam: I've talked to people occasionally at work, you know, and I mentioned,
Sam: you know, I do, you know, election graphs. I do the podcast.
Sam: I do stuff like that and comes up and it's like, oh, like I,
Sam: I never pay attention to politics. I have no idea what's going on.
Sam: How does that stuff work again? I don't know.
Sam: Like, you know, I met, I mentioned that my wife's a state rep and they're like, what's a state rep?
Sam: You know, how did, what do they do? You know, this
Sam: kind of stuff and these are from people who are you know working at educated
Sam: working at a high a high paying tech job you're clearly an intelligent person
Sam: but this just is not something that they focus on or spend time on and so they don't know they.
Ivan: Don't know they don't know they have no idea.
Sam: So anyway,
Sam: let's close it up. You know the deal, curmudgeon-corner.com.
Sam: Go there and find all our stuff. You got our archives, you got transcripts,
Sam: you got all the ways to contact us.
Sam: And importantly, you've got a
Sam: link to our Patreon. Patreon is how you can give us money, lots of money.
Sam: Eventually, months, months, months later, you'll get a postcard or whatever, if you earn a postcard.
Sam: At other levels, we'll mention you on the show, we'll ring a bell,
Sam: we'll send you a mug, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: It's lots of fun. Importantly, at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us,
Sam: we will invite you to the Commudgence Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a
Sam: bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the entire week,
Sam: sharing interesting news articles, both about politics and all kinds of other
Sam: topics, and just chatting about stuff.
Sam: So what's happening with our cars, what's happening with trips,
Sam: what's happening with this, what's coming, which, by the way,
Sam: I have now booked for early October.
Sam: I have booked my trip to go to Toronto and finally meet my nephew.
Ivan: Wow.
Sam: So.
Ivan: Wow. Excellent. Excellent.
Sam: We'll be doing that in early October. But anyway, yeah.
Sam: So, Yvonne, what's a highlight from the Slack this week that will make people want to give us money?
Ivan: Sam shared this story, which is just, I mean, it's such an interesting offer.
Ivan: I can't believe that more people are not going to sign up for this service.
Ivan: It says that a startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is 100% fatal.
Ivan: NetCub will preserve your brain, but you have to be euthanized first.
Ivan: I didn't even go and read the article, okay, in this case. after just reading
Ivan: the headline because it seems quite preposterous that, oh, yes,
Ivan: well, oh, you can upload your brain, but, you know, we have to kill you.
Sam: Well, presumably, this would be marketed to people who were in the last stages of life anyway.
Ivan: Maybe, I guess. Or maybe not, because, you know.
Ivan: I mean, I don't know. Maybe we can do, we could, can we offer this to Donald?
Sam: Well, because also, by the way, just to be clear, people have offered various,
Sam: like, go freeze yourself, go freeze your head.
Ivan: Right, right, right.
Sam: You know all kinds of things with the idea that they will at some point bring
Sam: you back to life in one way or another i guess this one is a digital upload
Sam: where maybe you can come back as an ai or something i don't know none of these work right.
Ivan: As far as.
Sam: We know just to be clear none of them so far i mean maybe at some point the
Sam: technology will be better but right now none of these work listen.
Ivan: We are getting better.
Sam: You're not transferring information listen.
Ivan: We are getting better at reading information for the brain. On a separate article
Ivan: that we did share, which is real,
Ivan: is that there is this system that has been developed that you could connect
Ivan: to a person's brain and it could decode what words people try to say,
Ivan: but the words they merely imagine saying as well.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Which that's a breakthrough of, you know, that's an incredible breakthrough
Ivan: in terms of understanding what happens in the mind.
Sam: Yeah, and they're talking about using this for people who have various diseases
Sam: that keep them from talking, diseases or injuries that prevent them from talking,
Sam: but their brain still works.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Where basically they can translate their thoughts into a voice.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And this has been improving.
Ivan: No, and they actually talked about if people that they have recordings of their
Ivan: voice that they could actually make it sound like their voice.
Sam: Yes, and there have been other things like that list there
Sam: have been there have been prototypes
Sam: of things that can like identify what
Sam: you are dreaming about if you're dreaming you know
Sam: things like that pull some you know
Sam: very rude very crude kind of stuff it's not very sophisticated yet but i mean
Sam: hell they're making progress along these lines i i joked under curmudgeon's
Sam: corner slack that this just imagine once this becomes mandatory when you're
Sam: like on a Zoom call for work,
Sam: where in addition to anything you say out loud, it reads out loud anything you're thinking.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: That'll make the negotiations go well.
Ivan: Yeah, I don't want all my out loud thoughts to be.
Ivan: You know, to go with said, like, I suppress a lot of things that I want to say on many occasions.
Sam: There are many, many things that happen in my head that absolutely should not be said out loud.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: Correct. In all kinds of different directions.
Ivan: In all kinds of situations. Yeah.
Sam: Yes, yes. There's all kinds of things. Like, there is a reason that you don't
Sam: just say everything that comes into your head.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: You know, and look, there are things that come into my head that I realize are
Sam: wrong and I should not say and I don't say.
Sam: And the fact that it came into my head should not be held against me.
Ivan: Correct. All right. Let's wrap it up.
Sam: Okay. That's it. We'll get your brain chopped up for that thing later, Yvonne.
Ivan: Thank you. So nice of you, Dolph.
Sam: We'll improve the Yvonne GPT with the results.
Ivan: And we'll continue the podcast. Okay, great.
Sam: Okay. Hey, everybody. Have a great week. Stay safe. Blah, blah,
Sam: blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: We're getting close to the end of the summer. School's already restarted where you are, hasn't it?
Ivan: Yes, it has.
Sam: It hasn't where I am, and we've got weird things going on with school anyway.
Sam: But anyway, summer's almost over.
Sam: Enjoy whatever's left of it. And we'll see you next week. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: You You
Sam: know how I mentioned I hate driving my wife's car?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Well, while we were recording, she and my son took off in my car to go eat somewhere.
Sam: She was like, I have to leave now. Can I take your car? I'm like, sure.
Sam: So now I am probably going to go take her car and try to chase her down to join them for lunch.
Ivan: But you have to drive her car.
Sam: But I have to drive her car because she took my car because I blocked her in.
Sam: because we've got something going on.
Ivan: Yeah, you blocked her. And so therefore, yeah, what are you going to do?
Ivan: Yeah, you're not going to make her like, yeah.
Sam: No, no. And then I figure like I join them. Then she has to leave to whatever she's going.
Sam: I will stay. I will eat my food with the boy. And then we'll come in.
Sam: I'll leave her her car. We can swap again.
Sam: So, but I have to drive her car, which I hate, but it's only a couple miles away. So I'll live.
Sam: Okay. I'm hitting stop. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.