Ivan: We are the curmudgeons Doing a live stream I am a lone curmudgeon Because Sam's computer shit the bed,
Ivan: I can't sing worth a
Ivan: damn I am on live stream I hate being alone on the live stream I need to get
Ivan: back here Nothing I just said rhymes It's why I'm not an artist Please,
Ivan: for the love of God Can you get Sam to fix his shit?
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, September 6th, 2025.
Sam: It is just before 1630 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Entry,
Sam: Yvonne Bose here again. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hi.
Sam: Hi.
Ivan: Greetings.
Sam: Yeah, so as usual, we'll do a butt first with non-newsy stuff,
Sam: and then we'll move into newsy stuff as the show proceeds.
Sam: I will start out by saying I promised something last week when you were out
Sam: that I have not yet completed, which was a time lapse of my wife,
Sam: son, and I moving her old Buick Riata over six feet to the left.
Sam: Yeah so i i started to put that together from the the video clips from our ring
Sam: camera but i haven't finished so i i have not put that out yet but i will i
Sam: will i will eventually now i say that but but.
Ivan: But but it's been done but it was done.
Sam: It was done without without any destruction without any destruction it was done
Sam: before last week's show actually i mentioned it and it said I was going to do a time lapse.
Sam: But yeah, and I say that I will produce this time lapse.
Sam: But you should keep in mind, there was once a snowstorm here in Seattle,
Sam: in the Seattle area, that produced like, you know, a couple feet of snow or whatever.
Sam: And it took like, over a month for all the snow to melt away.
Sam: And I started building a time lapse of that whole snowstorm from the Abelcam.
Sam: And I called it Snow Lapse.
Ivan: Snow Lapse? Okay.
Sam: And I am still theoretically working on the Snow Lapse video.
Sam: It has been at least a decade since that snowstorm. I have not finished it yet.
Sam: But, you know, but eventually I'll put it out.
Ivan: Look, at least I will say that you're consistent.
Sam: There you go. But yes. So anyway,
Sam: and I think I also, by the way,
Sam: I'm going back and forth, whether I just include the moving of the car or I
Sam: also include the reason for the moving of the car, which was that we we filled
Sam: up a whole bunch of dumpster bags versus full of trash.
Sam: That needed to be taken away and we needed to
Sam: like make room for you know
Sam: they were supposed to come in with a like a truck
Sam: and pick up the things and we needed to make sure they had room to come in and
Sam: get them so there's also the putting out of the bins the filling of the bins
Sam: and the taking away of the bins i could include that in the time lapse too so
Sam: of course my my regular but first is going to be a couple movies as it usually
Sam: is these days to try to like move that stuff along.
Sam: What do you got, Yvonne? Did you have a good Labor Day? Did you have a good long weekend thing?
Ivan: Well, I mean, it turned out fine, even though it started with some of the slack, you know,
Ivan: that I had this blowout at my attire on my car on the highway at night on Thursday.
Ivan: Which, one of the things that's just really irritating is that because a lot
Ivan: of new cars don't have spare tires.
Ivan: Probably yours doesn't. I'm going to guess.
Sam: No.
Sam: It does not.
Ivan: It's one of the things that's really irritating. That shit doesn't work.
Ivan: I already tried that once. Shit doesn't work. I don't understand how they're going to go away.
Ivan: That shit only works if you've got a minor puncture, like you've got a nail, slow leak, whatever.
Ivan: But anything else beyond that doesn't matter.
Ivan: And the one thing is that, for safety reasons,
Ivan: This has happened to me For whatever reason Twice in the last three years And,
Ivan: My choice has been If it happens on the highway Especially on the highways here
Ivan: in South Florida Where they have made the shoulders A lot smaller than they used to be,
Ivan: Meaning that if you get off the road You really have very little margin for
Ivan: safety On both occasions I have decided that I will drive that tire,
Ivan: As is until I manage to get off an exit and onto a safe place to park. Okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: There is no way that I will stand on the side of the road, especially since
Ivan: on both occasions, I immediately knew the tire was not repairable.
Ivan: It's not replaceable. I can't do anything.
Ivan: All I'm going to do is just sit on the side of the road to wait for a fucking
Ivan: troll truck, and I might as well sit on a nice, safe place,
Ivan: Instead of In an unsafe location So I dragged it To the turnpike stop I left
Ivan: the car It was at night No towing it to anywhere,
Ivan: I took an Uber home I left it there overnight And then the next day I came to get the car with me,
Ivan: I mean, I called actually roadside from Volvo. They have roadside, whatever.
Ivan: They towed it to the dealer and they put a new tire on it. This is really the
Ivan: only thing. I mean, the tire was like shredded to bits.
Ivan: So that was the one thing that I was trying to take care of.
Ivan: And there was like a concert. I was going to some other stuff.
Ivan: But then the other thing that has been keeping us super busy is,
Ivan: as I've mentioned here, that I was doing all this work to try to claim Spanish citizenship. Okay.
Sam: Right, yes.
Ivan: Which has been quite time-consuming in the sense of gathering all the required documents, okay?
Ivan: But the key document that in order to do this, which has been a document that
Ivan: I've been chasing for months, and I had asked my mom to get it.
Ivan: It's like, look, we needed her grandfather's birth certificate, okay?
Ivan: Because he was the one that was born in Spain and moved over to Puerto Rico
Ivan: in the early 1900s, or late 1800s.
Ivan: And the thing is that, well, I mean, you needed to get this birth certificate in Spain. Okay.
Ivan: And I'm like, well, I mean, I guess, or unless it was in my grandmother's paperwork or something.
Ivan: And i i said mom you need to get that birth
Ivan: certificate okay so but asking
Ivan: her sister or whatever come to find out that my my cousin one of my first cousins
Ivan: had also figured out decided that they wanted to claim citizenship but they
Ivan: had an edge on me they knew the the the the.
Ivan: Spanish consul in puerto rico because there
Ivan: is a consulate for spain and puerto rico okay and
Ivan: she knew the guy so she asked him for help to
Ivan: get the birth certificate and lo and behold we were able to get that birth certificate
Ivan: okay which is just i i i shared a clip of it it's just one of these i mean it
Ivan: the birth certificate isn't a birth certificate they put they put all of these in books,
Ivan: where they registered the births.
Ivan: I guess at some point, the government of Spain, as many governments,
Ivan: they digitized a lot of these records, so you could make them searchable,
Ivan: you had the copies, and we were able to get that.
Ivan: But then, you have to get all this documented trail to show, okay, great.
Ivan: That's your great-grandfather. You gotta get your grandmother's birth certificate,
Ivan: and then you gotta get your mother's birth certificate.
Ivan: You gotta show the trail of how every person is connected to.
Sam: The ones before.
Ivan: Right, to the one that was born in Spain. There's also a thing that Spain had passed a law,
Ivan: recognizing that a lot of people in between the late 1800s and up until the
Ivan: dictatorship of Franco that were Spanish citizens were stripped of their citizenship
Ivan: for various reasons, okay?
Ivan: And that included everybody that lived in Puerto Rico. when the U.S.
Ivan: Invaded Puerto Rico because the U.S.
Ivan: Was invaded. It was a bloodless invasion, but it was still an invasion.
Ivan: And they took over the Spanish-American War and the treaty that ensued.
Ivan: They had taken possession of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.
Ivan: One of the things that happened is that for some reason, in the treaties,
Ivan: Puerto Ricans wound up stateless in a certain way.
Ivan: Nobody recognized Puerto Rican citizenship There was such a thing,
Ivan: existed between 1898 and 1914. But it was useless. You couldn't really travel with it.
Ivan: And then at some point in the U.S. they said, okay, we'll allow,
Ivan: in between that time period, we'll allow Puerto Ricans to go and they can go
Ivan: to mainland U.S. and be naturalized.
Ivan: Okay? We could do that. But that was complicated. Okay?
Ivan: Now, for some reason, Cuba and the Philippines And I guess because there were,
Ivan: Puerto Rico was a lot smaller.
Ivan: Puerto Rico had like, I'm not even sure if it had a million people back then.
Ivan: Cuba and the Philippines were way bigger.
Ivan: Those, that was pretty clear what it was. I believe that there were,
Ivan: you know, they were colonies.
Ivan: There were countries. They had a citizenship, okay, that was Cuban or Filipino
Ivan: citizenship established. So Puerto Rico was the one that was a little bit in flux.
Ivan: And I think also in part was because there was a time period where Puerto Rico
Ivan: was kind of like treated to an extent like a province of Spain.
Ivan: So people in Puerto Rico were Spanish citizens.
Ivan: But look, after the war, Spain stripped everybody that was there,
Ivan: the Spanish citizenship.
Ivan: Even if you were born in Spain and you were you had your residence in Puerto
Ivan: Rico you lost your citizenship period okay nice so that created a situation that.
Ivan: Eventually, Congress debated this for a long time for racist reasons.
Ivan: They said, no, we can't make that a state.
Ivan: But I will say that given the time to their defense, they were actually,
Ivan: they said, you know what?
Ivan: They were completely leaning. We need to give them just citizenship. The hell with it.
Ivan: Okay? It's not that many people, really. This solves the problem.
Ivan: Right now, they can't travel. They don't have citizenship. ship
Ivan: so puerto ricans this this
Ivan: whole situation congress kept dallying around for some reason they didn't get
Ivan: to it they wanted to do it before world war one i i do think in part because
Ivan: they they needed people okay so uh you know what a war but they didn't get around to granting,
Ivan: puerto rican citizenship until like 1917 and it was under the jones act and
Ivan: the one thing about about that is that borrowing and citizenship,
Ivan: and this has been a point of debate, it's just for a virtual that we by a law
Ivan: passed, okay, which in theory, some have discussed, also means,
Ivan: could mean that you could, by,
Ivan: eliminating the law, then we no longer would be citizens, okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And this is a tricky thing, and this has been discussed. I'll tell you that
Ivan: I don't know So, you know,
Ivan: given the current state of things, nothing would be shocking at this point of
Ivan: some kind of like craziness that happens.
Ivan: So, the Spanish government several years ago,
Ivan: in recognition of the turmoil that happened in that period where Spain endured
Ivan: quite an extended period of instability, the late 1800s through until the end
Ivan: of the Franco dictatorship,
Ivan: passed a law that allowed people that were stripped of, you know,
Ivan: and relatives of them, that were stripped of their citizenship from Spain to reclaim.
Ivan: Okay and you know the process basically you need to do this filing with documents where you show,
Ivan: your, you know, uh, your familiar relationship, you know, how,
Ivan: how it connects it and, and submit it.
Ivan: There is a deadline to submit that is October 20th of this year.
Sam: Oh yeah. Okay.
Ivan: So now the thing is that.
Sam: So you're running right up against the deadline here.
Ivan: Well, here's the good news.
Sam: The thing is the deadline set like years ago.
Ivan: Yeah. It was like set a couple of years ago. Yeah. But here's the thing that
Ivan: they, they had a deadline to do it last year.
Ivan: They extended it one year, but, okay, to be, I had looked into this and was
Ivan: like, I wasn't really that motivated to do so.
Ivan: But, given the recent electoral events, then I did become far more interested in this.
Ivan: But then the thing is that I had sent this to my family, and now everybody in
Ivan: my family wants to claim this as well.
Ivan: So all of a sudden, it's just a blizzard of paperwork in order to get all the
Ivan: documents to do this right now.
Ivan: I mean at least but the one most important one,
Ivan: was my great grandfather's birth
Ivan: certificate which thankfully my cousin who
Ivan: had had I have a lot
Ivan: of cousins but only one of them had the brilliant idea the
Ivan: same idea as me to do so but they
Ivan: also had one edge that I did not have is that they
Ivan: actually do the Spanish consul so they were able to
Ivan: procure that birth certificate Which
Ivan: I Which I think is mentioning
Ivan: These are books man It's just
Ivan: Books they kept and they scanned
Ivan: And they registered It's just crazy But
Ivan: right now basically I've got that All of my siblings And as far as I can tell
Ivan: Almost all of my nephews Are submitting this They want to submit their applications All of them.
Ivan: I, all of them. And, and look.
Sam: And so are you helping all of them or are they just, or is everybody doing their own?
Ivan: Now the first thing that I, the first, no, no, no, I am helping all of them.
Ivan: The thing is that the first thing I have to do, it was important that the first
Ivan: thing to do, which I just spent the other day and I, I got confirmation that
Ivan: it was successfully submitted.
Ivan: I was to set my mom's.
Ivan: So I got that done. and I do have a confirmation that it was properly submitted
Ivan: before the deadline and so forth.
Ivan: They said on the site that if for some reason you submitted something,
Ivan: a document that needs correction or something, then by virtue of just submitting
Ivan: it, they will give you time.
Ivan: If you say, hey, you didn't submit this right, you need to correct this, you have time to do that.
Ivan: So just by putting it in before the deadline, that gives you that.
Ivan: Eventually they will review the documents.
Ivan: They will set you up to have an appointment at the spanish consulate to review
Ivan: and then you know you can get the citizenship awarded the one thing there's
Ivan: no residency requirement for this either you don't have to uh and and there's
Ivan: and it can be a dual citizenship also as well,
Ivan: so so it seems pretty straightforward right now but yeah but it's but but it
Ivan: was complicated to get all the.
Ivan: Documents just straightened out and the forms that you had to fill out I always
Ivan: have to remember also that dates, you remember that the US convention for writing
Ivan: down a date is not the same as the rest of the world,
Ivan: and I kept the one thing is that just remembering that I gotta I have to write,
Ivan: I'm used to, well I'm actually used to it the one thing is that i think i came
Ivan: up with a website that it was like you know i i was like okay look i'm doing
Ivan: this in spanish so i have to put day month year not the other way and then
Ivan: for some reason the damn website was trying to do it one one place where i didn't
Ivan: expect that to be needed it tried to do it the reverse and i'm like what the
Ivan: fuck why are you rejecting my date you idiot.
Ivan: I was like, why are you asking for it in English format?
Ivan: By then I realized it was just the format. It's just like,
Ivan: But you have to just, it's just a, it was.
Sam: It's a problem. It's a long, involved, convoluted process.
Ivan: Then things, for example, look, I'm sitting down with my mom.
Ivan: My mom doesn't know how to write an email.
Sam: She should use Chapman GPT.
Ivan: But here's the one thing. Well, no, she doesn't know. Come on, she wouldn't.
Ivan: Here's the interesting thing. I think it's more refusal than anything else. I will tell you this.
Ivan: It's not, it's not that she can't. it says she
Ivan: doesn't want to because i remember when we were listen
Ivan: when we were growing up we had we had compute you know we had a computer system
Ivan: at the pharmacy to process like prescriptions and everything and like our account
Ivan: you know a customer accounts or whatever she used that perfectly without a problem
Ivan: okay all right there's this freaking idm you know whatever right whatever,
Ivan: yeah and it's like it's it was this is you know and she used one of these like
Ivan: mainframe type terminals?
Ivan: She used that perfectly fine. I just don't think she wants it.
Ivan: All of a sudden, to her, me making copies and scanning documents seemed like magic.
Ivan: My father, by the way, who has all this gadget to do this, basically every time
Ivan: he has to scan a document, has to call me to figure out how to scan a document.
Ivan: He doesn't understand how to scan a document yet.
Ivan: He will call me, so how How do you do this?
Ivan: Oh, God, look, you see the thing, the image.
Ivan: Okay, place it, you know, where it says. You see how it's got the stuff written?
Ivan: That means that direction up.
Ivan: And that might bother, damn it. I'll tell you something he did.
Ivan: He bought a combination printer, scanner, copier thing that he has.
Sam: That's our common, yes.
Ivan: Yeah, that's our common, okay? That works pretty decently, except for one thing.
Ivan: It doesn't do double-sided scanning.
Ivan: And I find that quite irritating, okay? Can I be honest?
Ivan: That's just asinine, okay?
Ivan: Why would you have a printer that can do double-sided printing,
Ivan: but not double-sided scanning?
Ivan: I mean, that's just asinine with that thing.
Ivan: Here's another thing I discovered, okay? All right? By doing this all on my father's place.
Ivan: My dad has a laptop, an iPad, an iMac.
Ivan: You know, he doesn't buy shit. He doesn't know how to use most of it.
Ivan: But he just has it all, okay? I realized that I went to use his iMac that was
Ivan: directly connected to the scanner, okay, to do this.
Ivan: Number one thing that's a little bit perturbing is that for some reason the
Ivan: app for Yandex, the Russian search engine, is installed on there.
Ivan: I had removed it already several times. I don't know why he keeps reinstalling.
Ivan: Who keeps doing this? So that's very perturbing, okay, all right?
Ivan: And I removed it before, Sam. I know that I went and I removed this.
Ivan: And I'm like, why the fuck is this thing?
Ivan: Why is Yandex back on? Okay.
Ivan: But then, you know, I did use it. Scan some documents on it.
Ivan: Because for some reason, originally, I couldn't. I was under.
Ivan: My father, for whatever reason, has two Wi-Fi networks. I don't understand why. So I couldn't connect.
Ivan: I couldn't. At first, I was on the wrong Wi-Fi network that my computer or my
Ivan: iPad couldn't find. the damn multifunction.
Ivan: Then I realized I'm in the wrong Wi-Fi. I had to switch over.
Ivan: But before I did that, I used the iMac. But I realized something,
Ivan: Sam. That iMac, I'm shocked.
Ivan: It works pretty... Even though it's got the rushing thing or whatever,
Ivan: I was like, all of a sudden, I scanned and I looked at the interface.
Ivan: It seems like a very old macOS interface. This isn't recent.
Ivan: I'm like, how old is this thing? I did realize, I opened the about This is a
Ivan: 2014 iMac that somehow still runs.
Ivan: You see, I had a couple of iMacs dating to that day that died on,
Ivan: father's, which has been on continuously, he does not shut it off. It's a 2014 iMac.
Ivan: So it's 11 years old. And by the way, it still works pretty reasonably well.
Ivan: I get stuff, and it's not like it was a crawling to a slope or whatever.
Ivan: No, I was able to scan the documents, airdrop them, do whatever.
Ivan: And I'm like, holy shit, this thing works.
Ivan: But my mom was like totally like completely like
Ivan: shocked at my skills of doing this there's another thing also
Ivan: i submitted this to the site but the file
Ivan: sizes have to be under one megabyte yeah and i'm like fuck me i scanned all
Ivan: of these i say hey they have to be person i think it said in some place scan
Ivan: them in full color okay scan them in full color okay great well and i'm like
Ivan: well oh but they can't be over one megabyte.
Ivan: I'm like, god damn it. You want high quality and then you're trying to get me
Ivan: to shrink the size like 70-80% people. Make up your damn mind.
Ivan: Okay? Whoever designed this damn site.
Ivan: Anyway, after going through all that, shrinking the files, using the 10 plus
Ivan: year old technology, impressing my mom with my ability to fill out a PDF without actually printing it.
Ivan: My mom actually had to send some letters to my to my aunt to have her go and
Ivan: be able to go to the office of Puerto Rico that has the, it's called the demographic registry.
Ivan: Okay. All right. That's the actual title of Puerto Rico.
Ivan: That's where they have birth certificates, you know, marriage licenses,
Ivan: all records of all that stuff.
Ivan: My mom wrote the letter by hand because she doesn't, that's a good,
Ivan: she didn't know how else to do it. She wrote it by hand now.
Ivan: Now I will admit she wrote it by hand now. She didn't know how to send it.
Ivan: So I have to have my nephew go Dude, go over there Take a picture of that letter.
Ivan: And somehow Send it to my cousin Who was able to print it and then give it to
Ivan: my mom's sister Who also doesn't know how to use any technology Of course So
Ivan: she can go over there and do this So anyway, this has been,
Ivan: A little bit of an ordeal And then I got all my brothers calling me Hey,
Ivan: how do you fill out this shit?
Ivan: Fine, look, listen Now I got this barrage of people Like all of them Asking
Ivan: for help to do this But you know,
Ivan: It's still The one thing underlying Me doing this Is a sense of anger Right,
Ivan: Because of why the hell I'm doing it.
Sam: Yes, because of everything going on, let's just put it that way.
Sam: You know, let me ask, before we move on to my movies and stuff,
Sam: obviously the purpose of having this Spanish citizenship, which in turn gives
Sam: you EU citizenship, right,
Sam: is to give a potential
Sam: escape route if things get really bad yes you know what what what what is thinking
Sam: through this what kind of things would actually trigger you saying fuck this
Sam: i'm out you're moving to europe i.
Ivan: Think the key the key has to do with protections for money because there are
Ivan: certain laws that give my son certain protections.
Ivan: And also there is a whole bunch of funding that has been available to kids with
Ivan: autism that comes from the federal government, state government, et cetera, and so forth.
Ivan: I mean, RFP Jr. has openly expressed his disdain for people with autism,
Ivan: saying that they're a burden on everybody and so forth and so on.
Ivan: And society, in general.
Ivan: And you keep getting all these wacko funding cuts just to give tax cuts to rich individuals.
Ivan: I mean, to the wealthier people. Which, by the way, includes me in a certain sense.
Ivan: But you know what? The tax does not make up for the loss of benefits that my son would get.
Ivan: It doesn't at all and so I'm worried about,
Ivan: protections I'm worried I mean what are the things I'm worried
Ivan: about what he might do to people of Puerto Rican to Steve
Ivan: Miller and his minions start getting fucking ideas of
Ivan: what they might do to people of Puerto Rican that have citizenship
Ivan: by virtue of something like how we have it for example yeah these guys have
Ivan: been making every damn move and what the hell the Supreme Court starts doing
Ivan: you know but I think that the number one thing is my concern about what programs
Ivan: and protections that my son can have in the future.
Ivan: And I know that in the EU, especially in certain countries, and across the EU,
Ivan: there are a lot more protections and programs.
Sam: It does vary a lot by country.
Ivan: I've heard complaints about France.
Sam: For instance.
Ivan: But, for example, I know that the Dutch, for example, have been experimenting
Ivan: with, for example, building these villages.
Ivan: That basically were, you know what?
Ivan: These people need to live in a place where they have certain protections so
Ivan: they can be more independent, where it's not like we're confining them to an institution.
Ivan: No, we're going to build a village to where they can go shop.
Ivan: They can go do stuff. they have everything that they have inside a perimeter
Ivan: where all protections that they need just to make sure that they,
Ivan: have services and we made sure that they're not exposed to like an environment
Ivan: where they could get hurt that they could live like comfortably you know but
Ivan: but given giving them the independence to you know be on their own so they can go to the,
Ivan: grocery store they can go to do stuff they can do whatever they have all of
Ivan: these things but also have an extra layer of protection for folks.
Sam: And all this, of course, depends on the support level that's needed, which varies highly.
Ivan: Exactly. Because it's something to give people, hey, let's give people independence,
Ivan: but let's also give them, because they can do stuff independently,
Ivan: the concern is, hey, you want them to do it independently, but you also have
Ivan: them to have some additional layer of protection to them.
Ivan: It's this kind of middle ground. They're also trying to do that with older people
Ivan: and other stuff or whatever.
Ivan: Or, you know, say, you know, because one of the things that they do in the U.S.,
Ivan: hey, we stuff them in our nursing home, and they're stuck in this fucking place,
Ivan: in this one building, with very little, like, you know, very little stuff to do, right?
Ivan: Kind of like, it's very depressing, okay, the way that this is set up.
Ivan: But, you know, you go and you change that into a situation where,
Ivan: well, no, they're not stuck in a fucking building.
Ivan: You're you're placed in a in a community where
Ivan: you have all the benefits
Ivan: you know all the benefits of living in a community like
Ivan: sometimes like a yeah you know i'm not gonna gosh it's a terrible example you
Ivan: think of places like the villages for example like that where people go to retire
Ivan: but but kind of like similar hey you've got like the towel you get the whatever
Ivan: but then you add all this all this layer of protection around them so we know
Ivan: hey we know that we're making sure that we're keeping them safe at the same time.
Ivan: And you have the resources to keep people safe, which I think is a great idea.
Ivan: My wife had an idea of a similar concept like that, but she kept thinking about
Ivan: building something like that in the U.S.
Sam: Bottom line, your trigger that would be like, I got to get the hell out,
Sam: would be if some of the protections and benefits that exist right now for you
Sam: and your son start getting withdrawn.
Ivan: Yeah, absolutely.
Ivan: Now, one thing that I do have, thankfully, is the flexibility in going to Spain.
Ivan: And I know that it is that, well, look, I can speak the language.
Ivan: And so the one thing is that I also can probably get transferred to a job with
Ivan: my company there as well.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: You know, because I don't think it'd be really practical for me to be working
Ivan: the Caribbean from Europe.
Ivan: So that that would be a little bit more more complicated
Ivan: but but i but i but
Ivan: i could get a a job you know
Ivan: in in in a similar thing you know doing that in in europe and you know with
Ivan: with the company and i wouldn't lose a number of things and benefits that i
Ivan: that i have as being part of the company and i mean it gives it listen i i'm
Ivan: doing this because you know my wife was like well to remove it to Spain?
Ivan: Like, no, we're not doing that right now, but you know what?
Ivan: I feel so uncomfortable right now. I want to have a plan B. Okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: We need to have a... This is bad enough that there needs to be a plan B in place. Period.
Sam: Yeah. Okay. Well, that like, we didn't really stay light and frothy for that first segment.
Sam: Got a little serious, but you know, anything else before I do movies?
Ivan: No, let's go to movies.
Sam: Okay, so two movies this time that were watched.
Sam: We're still, this first one, November 30th of 2024, and then the second one
Sam: will be December 1st of 2024 when I watched these originally.
Sam: The first one is once again going through AFI's list of movies down to number 15 on the 1998 list.
Sam: 100 years 100 movies list and that
Sam: is the original 1977 star wars
Sam: okay which obviously i have seen before and i'm actually like we're going through
Sam: the star wars franchise in order and we are past that at this point we like
Sam: you know but but you know went back to watch the 1977 original okay Hey.
Ivan: Question. Question. I don't even know if this is possible.
Ivan: If you want to watch Star Wars right now, can you find the original,
Ivan: original one instead of the one with all the edits?
Sam: Not. So there have been people who have reconstructed it,
Sam: and you can find this online, where people have meticulously gone back and done
Sam: the best through all of the available materials and tried to reconstruct the original.
Sam: The original original is very hard to find.
Sam: Like, I remember just a few months ago, somewhere in Europe,
Sam: there was a showing of an original 35mm print in a theater.
Ivan: Oh, wow.
Sam: Like, somebody that had been, like...
Ivan: Yeah, somebody had the print.
Sam: Somebody had the print, kept it in cold storage, it was in good condition,
Sam: whatever. They apparently, I think, did it legally. They got permission.
Sam: For the most part, George Lucas has done everything humanly possible to prevent
Sam: the original version from being re-released in an accessible form.
Sam: His notion is that the versions he re-released are the real version of Star Wars.
Sam: That's what he wanted all along. He just couldn't do it with the technologies.
Ivan: Yeah, with the technology at the time.
Sam: Yeah okay you know but of course a lot
Sam: of people are like you know the 1977 version as released
Sam: in the theaters that's what won all the awards that's what got everybody excited
Sam: originally you know and we don't need you like retroactively re-adding a cgi
Sam: job of the hut for instance right like that i did at one point right what wasn't
Sam: even really a great job of the hot,
Sam: although they've, they've subsequently changed it multiple times to make it better over time.
Sam: But, and, and so like there are sort of fan enthusiast groups who have done
Sam: various forms of reconstructions.
Sam: If you Google it, you can find, you can find these people, you can find articles
Sam: about what they've done.
Sam: I mean, literally there's like, there's people who have spent years of their lives and,
Sam: meticulously getting the best possible available source material and reconstructing
Sam: that original movie, plus trying to do some non-destructive,
Sam: make it seem like the quality is consistent even though they're getting it from
Sam: different sources, whatever.
Sam: And apparently some of these are really, really well done. I mean,
Sam: it's like professional quality, re-edited, back together, back how the original is.
Sam: But George Lucas does not make it easy. And Disney doesn't make it easy.
Sam: Because this was one of George Lucas's conditions to fail to Disney.
Sam: That the original never be released, right?
Sam: Now, you know, who knows if there's some, like, loophole that after George Lucas
Sam: passes away, they can do something.
Sam: And obviously, the average person who wants to go watch Star Wars not only wouldn't
Sam: care, but would probably prefer the newer versions to the older versions.
Sam: Like, if you remember, like, I remember watching when Star Wars was on TV,
Sam: like, you know, in the 80s or whatever, and they would re-put,
Sam: you could see the little rectangles around the spaceship because the black levels weren't quite right.
Sam: Because they were calibrated for the theater.
Sam: But then when you put them on the TV screen, you could see the thing.
Sam: And some of that stuff, you could see if you paid close attention even in the
Sam: theaters, even originally. I mean, it was good for the 1970s,
Sam: but it wasn't perfect, you know, and we do have better technology now.
Sam: And a lot of things that Lucas did in the reissues improved quality in various
Sam: ways, improved lighting.
Sam: I mean, I think the things that people object to are the...
Sam: Let's add a completely new CGI animal in the background of this scene that trips
Sam: over its feet and does some comic relief that is actually distracting from what
Sam: was happening in the scene.
Sam: Because there are a few of those where he just added stuff.
Sam: I mean, George Lucas is really into the technology, and he likes showing off
Sam: the technology, and he likes, you know, oh, we can do this.
Ivan: I mean, he was a guy that founded Industrial Light and Magic,
Ivan: okay? You know, I mean, it was basically the powerhouse for special effects
Ivan: in Hollywood for a long time and CGI and all of this shit.
Ivan: So, yeah, I mean, he really liked this shit. It's not it. This isn't just,
Ivan: you know, because he wanted to improve the movie. He really,
Ivan: really liked the technology.
Ivan: And I'm sure in his head, it's like you said, it was like, damn it.
Ivan: That's how I wanted it to look back then. But the technology didn't exist.
Sam: Right. And look, you know, it's been said over and over again.
Sam: Like the, this is the part of the movie making experience that George Lucas is really into.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Like the story and the writing and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: Basically the best movies are the ones where George Lucas had the least to do
Sam: with that part of things.
Sam: You know, I mean, there's, you can go find, you can go find things that go into
Sam: the detail of the original, the editing of the original Star Wars, for instance.
Sam: And the first cut was crap.
Sam: George Lucas's wife fixed it.
Sam: Like she, she is the one who re edited the story to make it good.
Sam: She took out some parts that were crap. She reordered it. She fixed the pacing.
Sam: She did all kinds of like,
Sam: the original star Wars was a good movie because of George Lucas's wife,
Sam: ex-wife at this point, not because of him.
Sam: Empire Strikes Back had a different director, you know, the,
Sam: the, you know, and when, when he got back in full control and did a lot of the
Sam: writing and everything for the prequels, everybody was like,
Sam: the writing here is crap.
Sam: You know, it's all wooden and whatever, and you've taken the life out of it.
Sam: Yeah. So, and people will argue about those things, but anyway original star
Sam: wars i have to give it a thumbs up oh in terms of which version i watched i
Sam: did watch whatever the newest latest and greatest streaming version on okay
Sam: on disney yeah yeah you were not.
Ivan: Yeah you weren't being picky you went okay i want to watch.
Sam: I mean you know and honestly i've got
Sam: copies of this see i've got
Sam: copies of this on blu-ray i have probably more
Sam: than one over the years but i still like when
Sam: it was time to watch it i'm just like you know disney plus
Sam: come on you know i'm not gonna like go through
Sam: the pain in the ass of getting the physical copy here you
Sam: know we'll just watch it and you know but bottom line thumbs
Sam: up it's star wars what what the hell can you
Sam: say you know it's the original star wars that started the whole thing it deserves
Sam: most of the accolades some some of the modifications for the new version i do
Sam: think were detracted i mentioned the job of the hut scene and there was a you
Sam: know I mentioned this sort of creature in the background and Tatooine.
Sam: Like I could have done without those, but for the most part, good movie.
Sam: I mean, it's star Wars, you know? And yeah.
Sam: Any, any additional thoughts on star Wars from your side?
Ivan: I'm sure I watched the last two years and I give it a thumbs up. It looked good.
Ivan: I mean, you know, yeah. I mean, it's still, still, still works.
Ivan: My son really loves at Disney all the Star Wars stuff. Yeah.
Ivan: They've got a couple of rides. There is one that was an older one that they
Ivan: have updated massively called Star Tours, which he likes very much.
Ivan: And like Smuggler's Run, Rise of the Resistance. The entire village they've got.
Ivan: You know, you've got regularly like Star Wars characters walking through stormtroopers
Ivan: and others, whatever and whatnot. But it is pretty cool, everything they did
Ivan: over there for Star Wars.
Sam: And every once in a while, Anakin comes in and massacres the younglings.
Ivan: Yes. Yeah, that's always fun.
Sam: Yeah. Okay, next up. Next up. Let's get this done and over with.
Ivan: Next. Next. Next.
Sam: Those of you listening to audio don't know, but we had like a half hour of technical difficulties.
Ivan: So we're like, let's get this thing done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ivan: Sam's computer decided to, you know, I don't know.
Sam: Completely crap out on me. Yes, yes.
Sam: Anyway, we are over that now and moving on.
Sam: But I actually have to take my wife to the airport immediately after we finish
Sam: recording. She's going to Europe again for some conference.
Sam: She's like getting tours of how they run ports in Europe and stuff.
Ivan: Anyway, she's okay. All right. Well, you started saying the word.
Ivan: She's getting tears out of you, run porn, what the hell is going on?
Ivan: What are these, what are these, what are we doing?
Sam: Ports.
Ivan: Ports.
Sam: P-O-R-T, like the place where ships come in and unload cargo.
Ivan: I mean, look, that could be something, listen, as much as it's funny,
Ivan: it could be something that is actually a regulatory standpoint.
Ivan: If you think about it, and now it's in Europe, so, you know.
Sam: Yeah, she's the vice chair of the transportation committee, so this is directly in her Oh.
Ivan: So it's transportation. Okay. Fair enough.
Sam: Yeah. Anyway.
Sam: December 1st, 2024, I saw the Wicked in the movie theater.
Sam: Wicked Part 1.
Ivan: Can I read?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: I don't even know what the hell Wicked's about. I know that I've heard about
Ivan: it. I've heard people raving about it. I have.
Ivan: I had no interest. And honestly My interest is so low That I Aside from the
Ivan: title And aside from that A lot of people liked it Yes No clue what else.
Sam: Okay, so let me give you the background. First of all, have you heard of the Wizard of Oz?
Ivan: Oh, yes. That I've watched. Did you see that they did this Wizard of Oz thing at Sphere?
Sam: At Sphere, yes, I did. I have not seen that, so I won't talk about it.
Sam: Well, of course, now that you've brought it up, they expanded it with AI so
Sam: that it fills the whole Sphere. It's more immersive.
Sam: It's an immersive experience as well, so that if there's stuff coming at you
Sam: and there's things in the volume with you.
Sam: And it's shorter than the original movie. They cut like half an hour out of it.
Sam: But there have been mixed reviews from that of some people who absolutely love
Sam: it and some people who are like, they butchered the original. It's AI slop, et cetera.
Sam: So, but, you know, whatever. Anyway, you've heard it. The original Wizard of
Sam: Oz It was first a book by L.
Sam: Frank Baum, and then, of course, there's the classic movie from, I believe, 1939?
Ivan: Is it that old?
Sam: Yeah. Okay. Now I have to bring it up.
Sam: Wikipedia. Okay. The 1939. Yes. And the novel was 1900.
Sam: Um and there were actually like
Sam: movie adaptations before the 1939 version even but obviously they're not as
Sam: famous the wicked was first a a book and let me make sure i have give you the
Sam: correct information for it.
Sam: It is a novel from Gregory Maguire from 1995.
Sam: The basic conceit of the novel is to retell the story of The Wizard of Oz,
Sam: but from the Wicked Witch's perspective. Okay.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Interesting. That is the fundamental thing. Now, I actually read the book years and years ago, too.
Sam: And here's the thing. The book itself is very dark, very twisted, very, let's say, adult.
Sam: Like, it involves, like, weird orgy sex scenes and stuff like that. Yes.
Ivan: Between, like— I mean, the book, Wicked.
Sam: The book, Wicked, yes. Yeah. It involves weird orgy sex scenes with animals and stuff, okay?
Sam: You know, because, of course, The Wizard of Oz has talking animals,
Sam: right? So they are part of this.
Sam: And just generally is very...
Sam: It is a serious, like, mindfuck kind of a book, okay? There's a lot of stuff
Sam: going on it. It's very political.
Sam: It's very, you know, there's a lot going on there.
Sam: But then there was a musical on Broadway made out of it.
Ivan: Correct. Yeah, that I forget.
Sam: It takes away all of that stuff, okay?
Ivan: None of the orgies.
Sam: None of the orgies. None of the, like, really weird, perverted stuff.
Sam: Like that that gets like extracted it was
Sam: it it's been on broadway for many many
Sam: years now i mean it's still there as far
Sam: as i know is it yeah anyway i
Sam: actually my myself brandy and our daughter amy
Sam: saw saw it with the original cast on
Sam: broadway um and and liked it
Sam: way back then that was in the early 2000s and basically
Sam: it's it's still the the the fundamental conceit
Sam: is the same you're telling the story of the wizard of
Sam: oz but it's the backstory of the
Sam: wicked witch so like and i say
Sam: telling the story of the wizard of oz but it's actually starts way
Sam: before the events of the wizard of oz and continues
Sam: after the end of the events of wizard of oz a little bit like it basically ends
Sam: at the same time as the wizard of oz but as a little bit more um and so you
Sam: you basically you have the backstory of the wicked witch and the good witch
Sam: going to college together,
Sam: like before long before the wizard of oz happens so.
Ivan: Are they kind of like bending the timeline as well,
Ivan: Because, you know, the book was written in 1900. I mean, is this like a modernized thing?
Ivan: I mean, in terms of it's not really taking place, you know, I guess in the time frame of the original.
Sam: There's nothing in it. There's nothing in it that where the time frame is indicated that matters.
Sam: Like, like it is so much about the witches and the wizard and all of that kind
Sam: of stuff that like the only place, like if you think about the wizard.
Sam: Of Oz, the only place where the time in the real world matters is to Dorothy,
Sam: because it's sort of set in the Dust Bowl, Great Depression era before she goes
Sam: to Oz. Okay. In the movie, of course.
Ivan: In the movie, because in the book, obviously, that was born.
Sam: The book was 1900. We had to have some of those events.
Ivan: Right, right, right. So that was, yeah, even that was modified. Okay.
Sam: But but yeah but in
Sam: the the musical and the movie like dorothy
Sam: plays so little apart it's like
Sam: an almost incidental thing and
Sam: she's in the second half we'll see like but like for
Sam: the most part it doesn't matter you never see
Sam: like the real world it's all right place in
Sam: oz exactly yeah okay okay and
Sam: and so like fundamentally like it's
Sam: a really really interesting take because it recontextualizes the events so first
Sam: of all you try you learn about the witch's motivations why she was doing what
Sam: she was doing the fact that you know it may,
Sam: maybe she's not really evil.
Sam: Maybe she had good reasons for everything
Sam: she was doing, and she's just misunderstood, and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: There's a whole subplot. The wizard was subjugating the talking animals,
Sam: and this is why the witch was sort
Sam: of rising up in rebellion to defend the animals, and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Anyway, bottom line, musical was great.
Sam: I like the fact that we actually saw the original cast,
Sam: although apparently all the subsequent casts have been good too in various ways
Sam: the movie version was split into two parts part one came out last year part
Sam: two is coming out this year in November I believe,
Sam: and basically the cast here like the original it was what?
Sam: Christian let's see where's the musical Oh, my God.
Sam: Just making sure. Okay, the original musical with the cast that we saw was Kristen
Sam: Chenoweth as Galinda, which is the good witch, and Idina Mazel as Elphaba, which is the bad witch.
Sam: The movie version has Cynthia Erivo and Arianda Grande as the two main characters.
Sam: And, you know, obviously there are a bunch of things you can do in a movie that
Sam: you can't do in a stage play.
Sam: It was really good. I enjoyed it. I mean, the source material was good,
Sam: and they did a really good implementation of converting it into a movie. It was a lot of fun.
Sam: We went with—Brandy was also, I think, in Europe, or at least on some trip when
Sam: we did—no, she was in Pennsylvania.
Sam: Anyway, she was gone when we did this. So my son, my daughter,
Sam: and my mom and I watched this in the theaters.
Sam: I enjoyed it a lot. My mom's main feedback was it was too loud.
Sam: You know, obviously it is a musical. So if you do not like musicals in general,
Sam: you're going to have the same feelings about this one. They sing all the time.
Sam: You know, it's the whole point of the thing. There are a bunch of famous songs.
Sam: But thumbs up, really good version of this.
Sam: I'm actually intending to watch part two in the theaters when it comes out, too.
Sam: It's a lot of fun. and yeah like uh you you said you you have no interest whatsoever
Sam: blah blah blah i'd say like if you if if you generally hate music movie musicals
Sam: then you're gonna hate this too because it's a movie that's.
Ivan: The problem i'm not big on musicals i don't really like movie musicals so this
Ivan: is why i was pretty sure that i'm just like i i i don't remember now i remember
Ivan: that it was the musical, but like I said,
Ivan: I, you know, you mentioned it, and I was struggling, I forgot about the musical.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I will say this, I like more a musical than a movie musical.
Sam: Like, like, if you're going to the theater.
Ivan: If I go to the theater, I find that way more enjoyable than watching a movie
Ivan: that's made out of the musical.
Sam: Right. okay i don't know why that.
Ivan: Is but i find it irritating in a movie and i find it cool like when i'm watching it being.
Sam: Performed and i'll say it for movie it is
Sam: not my favorite genre at all like i i do find like lots of lots of music lots
Sam: of movie musicals i can find like what the hell is the point of this right but
Sam: there there are a few classics i mean the original Wizard of Oz movie was a musical.
Ivan: I mean, I guess Grease was a musical. I like that.
Sam: Grease was a musical. Yeah, I haven't seen Grease.
Ivan: A movie musical.
Sam: Grease isn't on this list.
Ivan: Yeah, Grease was a movie musical.
Sam: Why isn't this,
Sam: Yeah, Grease is not on this list. So I've not seen Grease.
Ivan: You've never watched Grease?
Sam: No, I've seen clips.
Ivan: Well, obviously, I mean, everybody has seen clips, but you've not watched them.
Ivan: Well, Grease was a movie musical.
Sam: Yes, I know that much. And I will make sure it is added to my list. Well, here's the thing.
Sam: Movie musicals to me are the kind where there are a lot of bad ones,
Sam: but there are a handful of really good ones and I think this fits into that category.
Ivan: Okay, okay so that could be it. You know, fair. My wife would probably I'm not
Ivan: even sure if she's watched it I don't know, but I know this would be completely up my wife's alley.
Ivan: You start with the witches, number one, which for some reason right now,
Ivan: she everything that she's watching on TV is around witches,
Ivan: demons, things I don't know it's like, it's
Ivan: like you know like with me with like air disasters law and order to her it's
Ivan: like you know i don't know demons and then witches and.
Sam: Then you know werewolves.
Ivan: That's all she watches.
Sam: Yeah my wife's into those things too
Sam: we should get them together yeah no but like the
Sam: fundamental the the thing that gets me from the very beginning
Sam: and i like this genre in general is
Sam: sort of the take a character from
Sam: a well-known story and reconceptualize the.
Sam: Story around them i think that's
Sam: a genre i like because it's an interesting sort of
Sam: mental exercise as well like what
Sam: like this is the this is the
Sam: bad guy in the story right in in the original wizard
Sam: of oz the witch is just like evil
Sam: and bad and there's not much thought actually given
Sam: to her character beyond evil
Sam: and bad right wants to hurt people wants to
Sam: do whatever and this like expands that
Sam: out and really makes
Sam: it make sense to the point where once
Sam: you've watched this you sort of think
Sam: like oh this is what really happened you know
Sam: it forget what they showed in an original movie
Sam: that's that's obviously just dorothy propaganda or whatever this is like this
Sam: is what's really going on this is this is the scenario the witch was wronged
Sam: you know anyway thumbs up thumbs up to star wars thumbs up to wicked let's let's take our break.
Sam: What do you want real quick? We're running behind because we had our def... I want to get done here.
Sam: I don't know what you want from this. Two curmudgeons corner from Alex.
Sam: What two curmudgeons corner for Alex? I don't know.
Sam: Alex has handed me...
Ivan: Note.
Sam: A note with a list of how to actually make money from curmudgeons corner okay,
Sam: so here is his list.
Ivan: He starts with corn but we do it on only fans curmudgeons.
Sam: Corner with you and I as the main I'm sure that will I.
Ivan: Think people will probably pay for us to stop.
Sam: I think you're probably right. Okay. Number one, Abel's May Passport required to listen.
Ivan: Yeah, that's definitely going to make us profitable. Well, I don't know.
Sam: Number two, become millionaire.
Ivan: Yeah, sure.
Sam: Number three, number three, the white noise Christmas special.
Ivan: Now, that I like. That I like. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Sam: Yeah. It's not bad. Number four, the Apple FNAF brand deal.
Sam: So, Apple FNAF is that game I'm working on.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: Number five, no swearing.
Ivan: Oh, fuck that.
Sam: We've tried and failed so many times. Well, we've tried to reduce it.
Sam: We've never tried to eliminate it.
Ivan: It's not going to work.
Sam: It doesn't work. number six tiktok
Sam: exclusives maybe maybe next
Sam: and i'm losing count because he only had bullets and i was adding
Sam: the numbers and i can't count this high true binary
Sam: clock brand deal for anybody who
Sam: has not seen it on applesmay.com i have
Sam: a true binary clock that is
Sam: like you know those things you can buy like binary clocks that try to do all
Sam: the numbers in binary and it's just a bunch of dots that light up but my problem
Sam: is they convert all the digits to binary so like if you have like you know the the time right now of you.
Ivan: Know but it doesn't i mean date and time or just the time.
Sam: No it's just a well the ones you can buy right
Sam: now like if you you can go out and buy binary clocks all over the
Sam: place and like they do like if it is 12 56
Sam: they will have the binary for one the
Sam: binary for two the binary for five the
Sam: binary for six and that's the display but i've
Sam: always had a problem with this that if you're actually going to do binary time
Sam: you should divide the day up in a binary way so half days quarter days eighth
Sam: days etc so on my website there if you go to abosmay.com and then click on true binary clock.
Sam: There is a four by four grid, each of which is a little ball that lights up or does not.
Sam: Based on dividing the time in the way that I said.
Sam: The 16th one is just a little bit over a second, if I remember right,
Sam: or maybe it's just a little bit under a second, but it's close to a second.
Sam: And the first one is a half day, you know, half day, quarter day,
Sam: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all the way down.
Sam: And so this gives you a little display that's a true binary clock.
Sam: And yeah, I've toyed around over the years with the idea of building a physical
Sam: one of these, but I don't have the right skills.
Sam: So now maybe AI could tell me how to now.
Sam: So I could just have ChatGPT, like give me the schematics for a proper true
Sam: binary clock that I can send to some like place in China and have them make
Sam: millions of them for me and sell them.
Ivan: Aha. Okay, there you go.
Sam: Anyway, that brand deal. Oh, and then here we go. Spinoff TV show.
Ivan: What's been off TV show?
Sam: Well we do have their live stream yeah but it's not quite the same we gotta sell us to like.
Ivan: I don't know i guess we don't sell it to like the networks anymore we gotta
Ivan: sell it to like what netflix apple tv.
Sam: And this would not just be like a video version of the podcast it would have
Sam: to be like a scripted sitcom or something about how we create the podcast i'm.
Ivan: Sure that'll like you know light the ratings on fire.
Sam: And his very last item on how to make money off curmudgeons corner.
Sam: Not make horrible podcast.
Ivan: Ah, well, okay.
Sam: Okay, let's take a break. We will come back and do some serious stuff until
Sam: I have to get out of here to take my wife to the airport.
Sam: This will probably end up, once we take out, Like when I edit this and we don't
Sam: include the half hour of technical difficulties that folks on the live stream
Sam: would see, this may be short. We'll see. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
Sam: We're good enough. Here we go. What? No, that was bad.
Sam: Bye.
Sam: Okay, two other quick things to mention before we hit the serious stuff.
Sam: One, while we were recording this first segment, I have a big glass of water
Sam: to drink while I have this. And while we were recording this segment...
Ivan: I bet I used to pour it over your head, but okay.
Sam: Oh, yeah, sometimes. But my son comes in here, and he has apparently purchased
Sam: himself a package of something that he's over there opening.
Sam: And then he comes, and it's a light.
Sam: He shows me a light. He flashes it in my face while I'm trying to record.
Sam: I'm like, you're distracting me.
Sam: I'm trying to listen to Yvonne stop this. But then he starts dropping these into my cup of water.
Sam: It turns out he bought a whole bunch of waterproof LED light things that have
Sam: a remote control so you can change the colors, you can change whatever.
Ivan: Okay, Sam, wait, wait. Were these cleaned before you put them in your water?
Sam: I probably not.
Sam: He dropped them in there, and I drank out of it anyway.
Ivan: Can you please not drink that water? Donnelly knows what chemicals coated those fucking little lights.
Sam: Well, you know.
Ivan: Try to avoid that.
Sam: Maybe he bought food-safe versions. I don't know, because you could see wanting
Sam: to do this in drinks, in restaurants.
Ivan: Yeah, and I have seen that, yeah. But, you know.
Sam: Or maybe he bought the kind that are meant for fish ponds or something.
Sam: I don't know, but like. You know, I was still thirsty.
Sam: Anyway, I have this glass full. Oh, he's showing me the thing. Is it food safe?
Sam: Mini submersible LED lights, table centerpieces. They're probably not food safe.
Ivan: No!
Sam: Da-da-da. Great for the centerpiece, vase, pond, swimming, cool fish tanks.
Sam: It does mention ice buckets, but you're not supposed to eat that ice probably.
Sam: Yeah so but you know I'm sure they weren't that dirty as I'm drinking it also it doesn't taste great,
Sam: well it tastes about the same as it did before also there have been here in
Sam: pacific northwest just over the last 24 48 hours forest fires not in my immediate
Sam: area but close enough that it's been smoky.
Ivan: That's not good so.
Sam: Like it's actually cleared up a little bit today but yesterday afternoon it
Sam: was really bad like it was like when i was driving home from work there was
Sam: a point where it felt like I went into a wall of smoke.
Ivan: Nice.
Sam: And then it was just like you could feel it when you breathed.
Sam: You couldn't see very far. Visibility was bad.
Sam: And, yeah, so there have been some fires in British Columbia where the smoke
Sam: has been making over here, and apparently within the last 48 hours there's also
Sam: been a big fire in eastern Washington that's been contributing to it.
Sam: But I'm not sure if it's the same one where ICE picked up some of the firemen
Sam: a few, like last week sometime.
Sam: There was a big deal. That was a story there where ICE raided the team of firemen
Sam: who were actively combating the fire and arrested several of them and took them away.
Sam: Which moves us on to the regular serious topics.
Ivan: Well, we already talked about immigration earlier. Well, I guess we need to revisit it a little bit.
Sam: We can talk about the Hyundai plant, maybe.
Ivan: Yeah, that's what I... Well, it goes together with the whole jobs report.
Ivan: Hey, Sam, what did you hear about the jobs report for the last three months?
Sam: I heard that it sucked again, even though apparently we're now...
Sam: We fired the person who gave us the bad numbers, so I don't understand why we
Sam: would have another bad one.
Ivan: By the way, the first thing that happened is something that I don't recall ever
Ivan: having happened. and as the jobs report was going to be released all of a sudden
Ivan: they said oh oh oh we got in the way because we got some technical difficulties and I was like,
Ivan: Wait, what? Which was suspicious in and of its stuff.
Ivan: Okay, I was like, oh, technical difficulties? What, Trump doesn't like the number?
Sam: Right, that's the technical difficulty you'd think, yeah.
Ivan: Yeah, they released the number, and there were more downward revisions for the
Ivan: previous monthly numbers.
Sam: Including making one of them negative.
Ivan: Negative, yeah. So, I mean, look,
Ivan: the uncertainty right now related to tariff policies is causing people to cause investments.
Ivan: I mean, there is no way that you as a company are confident in going and spending
Ivan: and investing money in a whole bunch of projects because of all the uncertainty
Ivan: he has created over the tariffs.
Ivan: Even if, say even if they were legal, say take the legal issue out of the equation,
Ivan: which is also another problem.
Sam: Yes, because courts, the lower courts at this level.
Sam: Have said that these tariffs are illegal, it's stayed pending appeal,
Sam: and it will undoubtedly go to SCOTUS.
Ivan: Well, no, the appeal, you know, well, first you have the lower court and sentence invalid.
Ivan: The appeal was, you know, affirmed the lower court.
Ivan: The administration is right now, that decision has 30 days.
Ivan: They've appealed to Supreme Court, like right now. The bottom line is that they've
Ivan: lost at both levels, and it's been pretty much unanimous that there is, you know,
Ivan: There is no, you know, the law does not support this administration doing this.
Ivan: Okay, but take the legal, put the legal aside.
Ivan: The entire construct of these tariffs and the capriciousness of them and how
Ivan: they have changed and how they are,
Ivan: you know, how they, they, they see, even when you think they're set, they keep changing.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: You know, because he'll wake up one day and say he wants to stick this country
Ivan: with this, stick this country with that.
Ivan: We're going to negotiate this. The fact that there are no treaties.
Sam: I mean, there were some changes with what, was it Japan even this week?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: There was some deal where things were. Yes.
Ivan: There's constant changes. I mean, there's been negotiations going on with Canada and Mexico.
Ivan: So the one thing is that Trump reeled, well, all these executives want certainty.
Ivan: And I'm like, you bet your fucking ass they do, because if you're going to make
Ivan: a decision to shift manufacturing from point A to point B at some point,
Ivan: have to spend billions or billions of dollars on it.
Ivan: You're not, first of all, doing
Ivan: that investment takes years for you to get that manufacturing set up.
Ivan: And you're not going to commit right now billions to do something that three
Ivan: months from now you're going to fucking change again so basically anybody who's an investor just say.
Ivan: I'm not going to invest in anything and the action that they're doing is right now first,
Ivan: is that there's a whole bunch of pricing uncertainty and a whole bunch of companies
Ivan: are a little bit leery of passing all the,
Ivan: Prices increases to see through, simply because if later change your mind,
Ivan: it goes back, then I just raise the prices, I'm going to lower them.
Ivan: You don't want to be doing that.
Ivan: You don't want to be changing prices back and forth the whole damn time, okay?
Ivan: Because that's going to hurt people. But then you've got this whole,
Ivan: there are going to be some looming shortages, okay?
Ivan: One thing that I've heard right now is
Ivan: that especially with European vehicles okay this
Ivan: is the one where I've heard this specifically alright you
Ivan: got you know ships take 30 days 60 days or
Ivan: you know 30 days I think from Europe to make it
Ivan: over here usually you know from the moment you float it on the ship went over
Ivan: here offload it whatever okay and then quit custom all of a sudden you heard
Ivan: that the courts wanted to invalidate the tariffs okay at 30 days I think you
Ivan: just ship a ship usually will have a couple hundred million dollars worth of cars on.
Ivan: A tariff's 25%. Hey, in 30 days, they make this go away. What would you do?
Ivan: Would you pay the $50 million right now to offload them now,
Ivan: extra $50 million, or would you dock the ship?
Ivan: Throw anchor in the ship and say, listen guys, you stay out there until we figure
Ivan: out what the fuck is going on. Yeah, hold off!
Sam: As long as you can. If there's so much as a rumor that it's going to change,
Sam: yeah i mean event you know eventually you're gonna have to land them you're
Sam: not gonna keep them there years but.
Ivan: They're not gonna keep the years but they sure sell to stay there months and
Ivan: here's the one thing the thing is that as a supply chain is supply chain is
Ivan: something that it's like you
Ivan: get the effect of you ever seen these videos where they show the impact of
Ivan: a slowdown in traffic and how it flows all the way back.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: You stop that ship for 30 days, that translates and bring it and bring it on the wave.
Ivan: It's really, the disruptions have this ripple effect. Okay?
Ivan: Because you're stopping this machinery that was designed for decades,
Ivan: not just now, to be this machine that just,
Ivan: you know picked up ship delivered on time you know
Ivan: all of these items and all of a
Ivan: sudden you're fucking putting it telling it to break and stop and break and
Ivan: go and break oh we break break break oh no no accelerating it doesn't this thing
Ivan: must not design for this okay so i mean that's one issue so you've got that
Ivan: issue with suppliers it's not like.
Sam: We don't even have recent examples of this. We had that We had COVID,
Sam: and we had that time like the thing was stuck in the Suez Canal.
Ivan: The Suez, yeah?
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: So, you know, so you've got a lot of companies that all of a sudden are like, what the hell?
Ivan: We also had this buildup of inventories, okay?
Ivan: Which people, what are they doing? They're right now playing a waiting game.
Ivan: They're playing a waiting game, and if your profits are, and if your costs are
Ivan: higher because you've got to buy certain things, your profits are going to be
Ivan: squeezed you're going to start, you're not going to be invested.
Ivan: You're going to start cutting. I shared a video that was like from a meeting
Ivan: of farmers in Arkansas with congressmen and senators,
Ivan: them explaining how the tariffs right now have completely dried up their export market.
Ivan: For certain products. How, like, right now, especially for the soybean market, U.S.
Ivan: Was one of the largest exporters of soybeans.
Ivan: Soybean exporters are getting completely killed because China put these retaliatory tariffs on U.S.
Ivan: Soybeans, so that market is completely dried up.
Ivan: They're buying them now from Brazil. They're not buying them from us.
Ivan: A whole bunch of farmers...
Sam: They're complaining.
Ivan: It's not just they're complaining. farmers are are
Ivan: are getting killed financially and there's
Ivan: a reason that basically yeah yeah and and many of them have said that basically
Ivan: to some the only option they've got is to take out federal government handouts
Ivan: so we've replaced right now we have killed a massive export of the united states
Ivan: to be replaced by government handouts i mean what the fuck is well.
Sam: And to be clear this is one of the complaints as well is apparently the big
Sam: beautiful bill did include some support for farmers but that won't kick in till next year.
Ivan: And so.
Sam: There are a bunch of farmers who would be like that's going to be too late i'm
Sam: not going to be able to make it.
Ivan: Till yeah we're going to be bankrupt by then yeah but it's also some support
Ivan: i mean we literally just you know there was an article in bloomberg basically
Ivan: recently the headline was how trump has basically made it that the rest of the
Ivan: world doesn't want to buy U.S. agricultural products.
Sam: Right. Look, the whole tariff infrastructure is fundamentally hostile to trade.
Sam: That's the bottom line.
Sam: It's intentional. I mean, that's Trump's stated goal is he.
Ivan: Thinks every time we American farming was one of the most efficient machines
Ivan: out there and profitable.
Ivan: We, you know, and so all of a sudden you've made it that we're more expensive than everybody else.
Sam: I mean, Trump's ideal vision of the world is that every country is self-contained
Sam: and doesn't trade at all.
Sam: You know, and so.
Ivan: Well, actually, no, Trump wants the mercantilist one. Trump wants,
Ivan: he wants every equation to be a winner.
Ivan: Mercantilism is that you export it as much and you import it as little as possible.
Ivan: That was the basic philosophy, and that's the one that he wants.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Which is...
Sam: Yeah, I was oversimplifying. He thinks exports are okay. Yes.
Sam: But he wants no imports. He wants to be completely self-sufficient.
Sam: But the thing is,
Sam: doesn't work that way as you have
Sam: just pointed out like if if you are
Sam: hostile to the imports people are going to be hostile to your
Sam: imports and then the exports dry up and
Sam: and you know there's certain areas where you know we're at an advantage there's
Sam: certain areas where we're not but all of this just works to shut things down
Sam: and and and it's like all of the people who knew what the hell they were talking
Sam: about, told you this was going to happen.
Sam: But Donald Trump has his thing for tariffs. And just in general,
Sam: even if you were stable about it,
Sam: even if you just said, oh, okay, we're going to have high tariffs across the
Sam: board, that's it, no negotiation, no changes, whatever.
Sam: But add on top of that the instability and uncertainty that you've been talking
Sam: about, then it just becomes harder and harder.
Sam: Now, obviously, some countries sort of scrambled to like, hey,
Sam: what can we give to make this 15% instead of 35% or whatever?
Sam: And a few of them have made these deals.
Sam: And in many cases.
Ivan: As we've talked about here before- The problem is that those deals are not final. They're not treaty.
Sam: They're all they're all handshakes they're they're
Sam: all letters of intent we don't and most of
Sam: the most of them deal right and most of
Sam: them we've talked about before not only are they
Sam: just letters of intent or verbal agreements or
Sam: whatever but in many of the cases the countries have only conceded to things
Sam: they were doing anyway yeah they're they're just saying like oh yeah we'll do
Sam: this and are relying on the fact that Trump and his people either don't know
Sam: or don't care that that was the plan anyway.
Ivan: And then, well, I think I'll give you an example of a plan.
Ivan: Donald Trump was taking credit for the massive Hyundai manufacturing plant,
Ivan: which the immigration rated this week.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Which is a complex that when in full operation is going to employ 8,500 people.
Ivan: So, you know, you take a multiplier effect, usually of jobs or something like that.
Ivan: It's like minimum, minimum for such a large investment in factory,
Ivan: minimum three times. usually way more, okay, for a factory of that size.
Sam: Just to be clear, the multiplier you're talking about is, you know,
Sam: there's the people employed by the factory itself, but then,
Sam: okay, you need restaurants where they can eat lunch. You need a place.
Ivan: Houses, restaurants, shopping for clothes, purchasing of supplies,
Ivan: maintenance, you know, everything that goes around, all the inputs that go into the factory and the tax,
Ivan: The taxes, the sales tax multiplier, I mean, it's just so much, okay?
Ivan: You know, a factory with that kind of investment and that many jobs generates
Ivan: such a crazy multiplier effect around it, okay?
Ivan: From everything, okay? From the moment of the manufacturing to all the property
Ivan: taxes to all, I mean, everything.
Ivan: Even if you give them a waiver in property taxes Still, you know,
Ivan: all those employees Have to get houses,
Ivan: have to get fed Have to, you know, will shop for clothes Will buy everything
Ivan: around there It is such a huge multiplier effect Okay, and these fuckers go
Ivan: in there Because the thing is.
Ivan: All of these are meant to be, they're for show.
Ivan: Because if immigration had an issue with visas for a lot of people there,
Ivan: they could have called the manager and said, hey, we've got these violations,
Ivan: we need to discuss how these visas are being handed.
Ivan: But no, what do they want to do? They want to show a force and they show up
Ivan: and they arrest all these people.
Ivan: Arrested hundreds of them, including a whole bunch of executives traveling on
Ivan: business from Korea, as many of us do, when something is being manufactured
Ivan: or something or whatever.
Ivan: I remember when I used to go to HB's factory, say, in Mexico,
Ivan: for example, and we would go and have discussions about inventory and stuff
Ivan: and whatever we're talking about, how stuff is being stored.
Ivan: All that kind of stuff, which is what usually somebody from headquarters goes
Ivan: to do at the operation over there.
Ivan: And, you know, when you're setting up a factory of that size,
Ivan: you're going to need a lot of people from corporate to make sure it's being
Ivan: executed the way that you had planned out for it to be executed, okay?
Ivan: And so, but, you know, they were saying that some people maybe had been overstaying some visas.
Ivan: This was, you know, this was something that somebody could have just shown up
Ivan: and said, hey, we've got concerns about these people.
Ivan: We need to discuss what the hell is going on here. Why are these people, these are,
Ivan: are the most part just minor violations. But by the way, Americans incur on
Ivan: a regular basis probably on some business trips and overseas assignments.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Okay? And so my whole thing is you guys want to start this cycle where other
Ivan: countries are retaliating and it's just arresting like U.S.
Ivan: Business travelers because of some minor bullshit violation.
Ivan: Is this what we're doing? This is what we're fucking doing now.
Ivan: Yeah, I mean, this is going to start a cycle that is just, you know, really dangerous.
Ivan: But one thing that I think is why I brought this up in terms of,
Ivan: and we're talking about what happened with jobs and investment,
Ivan: is that Trump was trying to take credit for this plant, as I mentioned earlier.
Ivan: This plant happened because of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act.
Ivan: That's why this plant is occurring. It has nothing to do with fucking Trump.
Ivan: This investment had started years.
Ivan: The reality is that the President of Russia put incentives on electric cars.
Ivan: This entire facility is dedicated on building electric cars.
Ivan: They're building Ioniq 5s, Ioniq 6s.
Ivan: They're building batteries. They're going to be selling batteries.
Ivan: This whole thing is focused on everything related to in-phase production.
Ivan: Not one fucking iota having to do with anything that Trump did.
Ivan: Construction started years ago.
Ivan: It's already producing cars. It had nothing to do with fucking Trump.
Ivan: He started trying to take credit. You see, this is a white terror student bullshit.
Ivan: No, no. Not one fucking thing.
Ivan: But it highlights how long what I'm saying is how long it takes for somebody
Ivan: to set a policy and for companies to invest in how it works.
Ivan: And that's why the IRA, that's why the...
Ivan: We're doing what the fuck Trump is saying, and Trump is going right now destroying those jobs.
Ivan: He's literally going and destroying those jobs, which is why job derasure right
Ivan: now isn't like shit, because he is destroying that.
Ivan: He's destroying trade while not offering anything to replace it,
Ivan: other than drill baby drill.
Ivan: Oh, wait, and better. Hey, to the sectors that do the immigrant work,
Ivan: because we're tired of most of these poor people is ripping away the people that they need.
Ivan: So they don't have what is in this article from Bloomberg this week also,
Ivan: that mass deportations are creating a workforce crisis because they are creating a workforce crisis.
Ivan: Where the fuck we need jobs? OK, because, you know, with the number of deportations,
Ivan: one of the things that is happening right now is that, you know,
Ivan: we've got the shortage of farmers all of a sudden for the stuff that is like
Ivan: fresh fruits, vegetable stuff.
Ivan: That is the stuff that comes to our tables.
Sam: Well, I was going to say that the immigration.
Ivan: Crops are rotting. Yeah. California and Texas, crops are rotting in the fields
Ivan: for a lack of workers to pick them.
Ivan: So you're creating food.
Ivan: Do you realize how fucking incompetent you have to be to create food inflation
Ivan: at the same time as you're killing your agricultural exports?
Ivan: It takes fucking skill to beat this fucking fucker.
Sam: Well, and going back to Hyundai for a little bit and sort of detaining people
Sam: who are here on business trips, like, if you're looking for foreign investment
Sam: in the country, this is a great way to discourage that.
Ivan: Too.
Sam: You know, like...
Ivan: Everything you were doing, raising up the fucking bullshit that you were saying!
Sam: Yes it's all a a continuous theme of all of this stuff is i mean you've said this before,
Sam: like if you take some of what they say they're trying to do at face value then
Sam: they're still really stupid right in terms of like this is not a good way to
Sam: achieve the things you say you're trying to achieve.
Ivan: Nope.
Sam: And you start thinking, well, then are they, is their actual goal actually just to destroy everything?
Sam: Because, or are they really dumb enough to think that what they're doing will
Sam: have these great positive effects and it doesn't?
Ivan: No, I do think that Trump is stupid it or not to believe that what he's doing,
Ivan: will somehow, because you know, we talked about that he's been able to in so
Ivan: many cases force things to happen you know, regardless of anything,
Ivan: to just bend reality to his will.
Ivan: He thinks that somehow he's going to be able to bend his reality.
Ivan: The reality is that you talk about, well, has he bent reality to his will?
Ivan: Listen, for the most part, all he's done is survive.
Ivan: All he's ever done. It's just about survival.
Ivan: It's shuck jiving and getting attention to himself as a narcissist,
Ivan: which everything that he does, does that.
Ivan: And to have the attention and to be able to appear successful is more important than success itself.
Ivan: So what does that mean? I will say that I'm going to create the greatest academy ever.
Ivan: As long as he can tell this bullshit To his followers and they believe it He
Ivan: doesn't care if it's real Because it's just like Oh I'm going to build the greatest
Ivan: hotel ever Even though it's shit.
Ivan: I'm going to make Oh my casinos and my golf courses are wonderful Whatever Even though they are Tappy,
Ivan: crappy And lose money constantly Because he figures out Some way that somebody
Ivan: bails him out Every time Somebody bailed him out,
Ivan: man Every fucking time And his last biggest bailout Was fucking winning the presidency again.
Ivan: Yes The voters bailed the motherfucker out Just since he was on the brink,
Ivan: His father bailed him out. The banks bailed him out.
Ivan: Banks repeatedly bailed him out. And then Republican voters came along and did it again.
Sam: Okay. I want to lightning round through a few other things because for those
Sam: of you not on the live stream, we just last another 10 minutes to technical
Sam: difficulties. All on my end.
Sam: I don't know what the hell is up with my computer. It keeps like crashing.
Sam: Like, and nothing's different than it was, like, yesterday. I don't know.
Sam: But anyway, so the Venezuelan boat that we blew up.
Ivan: We committed a war crime, Sam. We went out.
Ivan: It said a drunk boat. How do we know that was a drunk boat?
Ivan: How do we know anything about that fucking boat? Listen, we just went out there.
Ivan: Sorry. And even if it was, I mean, I'm sorry under the international rules of
Ivan: maritime law, you just don't have the right to just go and blow up a boat for no reason whatsoever.
Sam: You can intercept it. You can detain it. You can give it warnings.
Sam: But no, you can't just blow it up.
Sam: The administration says they have radio intercepts and all kinds of other stuff.
Sam: But like you said, it doesn't matter.
Ivan: It doesn't matter. It doesn't get the right to just shoot them out of the water.
Sam: And apparently at the Pentagon, there were all kinds of discussions about like, this was not okay.
Sam: This was a war crime. There was no justification.
Sam: And then there was an after-the-fact scramble to try to come up with a legal
Sam: justification for this.
Sam: And the memo they put out, I think this was the notification to Congress they
Sam: had to make, basically just said, we did it under the president's Article II powers.
Sam: That's it. It didn't say anything else beyond that. Which is not—.
Ivan: That doesn't negate that it's a war crime!
Sam: Well, and it's not within the Article 2 powers, theoretically.
Sam: I mean, the stance of this administration— The right.
Ivan: To declare war?
Sam: Well, the stance of this administration is basically that the president can
Sam: do anything. That is their stated— Yeah.
Ivan: Well, yeah, well, yeah.
Sam: That is their stated opinion, is that there are absolutely no limits on presidential
Sam: power. The president can do whatever the hell they want.
Sam: And that's basically what they said in their justification for this. Now—,
Sam: And here's our fundamental problem. Like, okay, let's say this was clearly illegal.
Sam: Who's going to do something about it?
Ivan: Not the Supreme Court, not Congress.
Sam: Yeah, nobody. Let's bring them up in charges in the ICC? No.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Nobody's going to pay attention to that either. You know, this is yet another—this
Sam: is—the Trump administration,
Sam: systematically, over the course of the presidency so far,
Sam: has been taking more and more and more steps to just say, okay,
Sam: we're going to do it. Who the fuck's going to stop us?
Sam: Like their their fundamental mindset and we've
Sam: talked about this before i talked about this a little last week as well but
Sam: the the is that there is no conception whatsoever in this administration of
Sam: oh let's check if this is legal or not and then we'll do it no it's we will do what we want.
Ivan: And then try to justify it whatever way well or.
Sam: Not even like then we'll see if somebody tries to stop us that.
Ivan: That of.
Sam: Course they'll take us to court.
Ivan: Yeah and and okay yeah but
Ivan: the courts are slow and and and in many cases the
Ivan: courts of you know the supreme court is ruled on their side it goes
Ivan: and reminds me of the issue that you know we didn't put in the in here but the
Ivan: harvard decision that came this week and the one thing that that happened in
Ivan: that the one thing that i forgot to so to point out was that in the decision
Ivan: basically the the the judges went and and scolded the Supreme Court, okay, by the way,
Ivan: and in which they said, you know, because you remember that they said recently
Ivan: that the Supreme Court had written an opinion, something about lower court,
Ivan: you know, defying our orders.
Ivan: And they went, you know, this just ripped back and says, she acknowledged that,
Ivan: quoting from this article from MSNBC, you know, still called so,
Ivan: Judge and Harbour's case calls Justice Grisham's comments unhelpful and unnecessary.
Ivan: She acknowledged that, like, lower court judges that justices are doing their
Ivan: best to resolve complex issues quickly.
Ivan: Given this, however, she wrote, it's unhelpful and unnecessary to criticize
Ivan: this report for defying the Supreme Court when they are working to find the
Ivan: right answer in a rapidly involving doctrinal landscape.
Ivan: They must grapple with both the existing president and interim guidance from
Ivan: the Supreme Court that appears to set that president aside without much explanation or consensus.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Basically, you guys are wiping your ass with the doctrine that has ruled our
Ivan: courts forever and then you guys are giving a shit because we can't follow it
Ivan: when you guys just decide to fucking to say, oh, yeah, Trump did it. It's right.
Ivan: And you're saying we need to follow you when you don't give us any fucking explanation. Why?
Sam: Well, and Kavanaugh this week as well, I forget what forum he said this in,
Sam: but he was quoted as saying, well, the reason we do a bunch of these things
Sam: on the shadow docket without a lot of explanation,
Sam: is we can't get five justices to agree on an explanation.
Ivan: Then you fuckers shouldn't be doing it if you guys can't come to a consensus to explaining it.
Ivan: Jesus fucking Christ, If that isn't the clearest signal of how fucked up whatever
Ivan: you're deciding is, what is?
Sam: Right. And so, yeah.
Sam: And the problem with the Trump approach of do it and then see who stops us is
Sam: that even when the courts do rule against them, like you said, it takes a long time.
Sam: And they can change the facts on the ground in such a way that by the time the
Sam: court finally gets around to giving a definitive answer and it goes through
Sam: all the goddamn appeals and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
Sam: it doesn't matter anymore because the facts on the ground have already changed.
Sam: And we'll see. Well, by the way.
Ivan: This is a Kilmar Obrego, by the way, with all deporters in general,
Ivan: has not been deported yet.
Sam: Not yet. Yeah, yeah.
Ivan: They keep threatening it, but they haven't done it.
Sam: Now, and there have been talks now of three different places that he could be
Sam: going. And apparently his lawyers have—.
Ivan: Here's the problem. They're all retaliatory. This is all just fucking like— No.
Sam: They're all retaliatory. But also, apparently, the government has been trying
Sam: to get him to admit to some of these things he's accused of.
Sam: I've been guilty in exchange for a better place to be deported to.
Ivan: Fuck you guys.
Sam: You know, I mean.
Ivan: It's such horseshit, you know.
Sam: With, with these kinds of things,
Sam: frankly, like it's, it's actually surprising to me that with, I mean,
Sam: obviously this won't work for every case everywhere, but for some of these high
Sam: visibility cases, I'm surprised that some random nice country hasn't just come
Sam: in and said, we'll give him asylum.
Sam: Not only that, we'll give him asylum. We'll take care of him.
Sam: Like, let's get this taken care of.
Ivan: I believe he talks about that, but it hasn't happened yet. I mean, but yeah.
Sam: And some rich guy says we'll bankroll you.
Ivan: He's married to his mountain. He doesn't want to.
Sam: I know he wants to stay here.
Ivan: He wants to go home.
Sam: I know he wants to go home.
Ivan: He wants to go home.
Sam: But, you know, you give the right billionaire says, look, we'll give you a nice
Sam: salary. to go live in Spain.
Ivan: Listen, you asked me about earlier about what would motivate me to move.
Ivan: You know, the other day I was going around. I love where I live. I don't want to go.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I don't want to go. My friends are here. My family is here.
Ivan: Whatever the hell is here. But
Ivan: I may be forced to go because there is no choice. But I don't want to go.
Sam: Yeah. Okay. Back to the lightning round here. Trump is alive.
Sam: Despite all the rumors. And he seems to...
Ivan: But listen, listen, listen.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Trump must have been seriously hurt. Something had to happen.
Ivan: There is no way he stayed out for that many days where all of a sudden he was
Ivan: going to sleep early where all of a sudden people were sending out true social
Ivan: messages on his behalf unless something happened.
Ivan: Okay? And it's something that they wanted to make sure that nobody noticed.
Sam: I think the most reasonable explanation that accounts for all of the various
Sam: things that have been talked about is that he had some sort of medical procedure
Sam: that was serious enough that he had to recover for it,
Sam: but not so serious that he had to be like sent to Walter Reed for it.
Sam: It was something that they could do at the White House.
Ivan: Listen, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No, know who it is.
Ivan: It probably was serious enough to go to fucking the hospital.
Ivan: But by doing so, That would have created even more rumors. So what do you probably
Ivan: say? Fuck you. You guys are doing it here.
Sam: Right. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. And look, like the White House,
Sam: you know, has some medical facilities.
Sam: Yeah. You know, it is set up so that it can be an emergency bunker and blah.
Ivan: Blah, blah, blah. They needed, you know, in that case, you know.
Ivan: Listen, he's built a, he wants to build a goddamn ballroom. He built a fucking,
Ivan: you know, he cemented over the Rose Garden.
Ivan: Listen, he did all of this shit,
Ivan: I'm sure. But he probably had him build a fucking OR if he needed it.
Sam: Oh, I'm sure there was already one.
Ivan: No, but he probably, like, if they needed more shit, they probably brought it.
Ivan: Bring it, whatever the fuck you need.
Sam: Yeah, probably. I mean, like, but in the end, though, I think,
Sam: you know, it was some sort of, I'm guessing. This is guess and speculation.
Sam: There was some sort of medical procedure he had to do that sort of had him not
Sam: in great shape for a few days while he recovered.
Sam: He is clearly sort of back to normal at this point.
Ivan: Now, there is one thing that we didn't mention. You know, so Trump's alive,
Ivan: okay? All right? So, you know, hopefully he'll be dancing.
Ivan: But anyway, but not right now. But, you know, aside from that,
Ivan: another quick hit to mention related to these interventions in cities and so forth and so on.
Ivan: And there's been a lot of threats and talk about Chicago or whatever.
Ivan: And now that hasn't happened yet, because I do know, you know,
Ivan: by the way, I saw some not so guarded, you know,
Ivan: statements from Governor Pritzker that basically he said he was going to deploy
Ivan: law enforcement to kind of like counter if they if they tried to like send in troops.
Ivan: Okay basically to force almost a standoff which is
Ivan: what i've been saying for months that they should do i'm like look
Ivan: let's state state policists right now are almost as
Ivan: militarized i'm not sure that even more militarized are a national guard hey
Ivan: you know what tell them hey they're in violation of the law if they do if they
Ivan: move in and they do something illegal arrest fuck that shit blockade them you
Ivan: got more of them anyway they're gonna send you know a few hundred you know, cartoon crayons.
Ivan: We'll deploy a thousand state police. What's wrong with you guys?
Ivan: See what the fuck you guys do. What are you going to do?
Sam: We'll see. I mean, it will be...
Ivan: But right now, they haven't done anything. Okay, but...
Sam: Nothing's done yet. But Trump has been posting about it again today.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know what? Like, right now, that's been like...
Ivan: It almost sounds like his... Right now, he's starting to sound like his tradies. Okay? All right.
Sam: Well, at one point in the last couple days, he even said, well,
Sam: we've been talking about Chicago, but maybe we'll do New Orleans instead.
Ivan: Now you're going to go to... Exactly. It sounded like a trade deal.
Ivan: But anyway, aside from that, the one thing that's been happening,
Ivan: you know, you know, ICE enforcement, you know, is far more arbitrary than arresting
Ivan: people sending them to the police. I don't know if you've noticed.
Sam: But...
Ivan: Wait, wait, wait. That's not the point. The point is that right now,
Ivan: in D.C., you know, they've done this takeover, whatever, and they've been trying
Ivan: to send people to criminal charges.
Ivan: Well, guess what? The grand jury's... Which, by the way, as somebody said,
Ivan: a grand jury usually will fucking, and like even indict a ham sandwich.
Sam: Okay? Yes.
Ivan: They've been rejecting all the fucking indictments. They've been like, just fuck all of you.
Ivan: You know, so in numbers you've never seen ever.
Ivan: The graduates are saying, all of them are saying, this is not a criminal case, fuck you.
Ivan: So they're having this issue where, yes, on that side of the equation,
Ivan: they can go like whatever, but they keep trying to like force criminal charges
Ivan: and a whole bunch of stuff and all grand juries are just all no billing.
Sam: Yeah. There have been like six of them so far, and that's really unheard of for this kind of stuff.
Ivan: That's unprecedented. Okay. All right.
Sam: Yes. but like you said like what
Sam: there is they're making the show out
Sam: of the dealing with criminals but the actual effect of almost all of these actions
Sam: has been almost all the immigration side almost all like grabbing people for
Sam: not having their papers and and sending them off to these detention camps or whatever,
Sam: it's still I mentioned last week one of the problems here is it's becoming they're
Sam: doing so much of it so consistently that people are starting to become numb to it you know and oh yeah.
Ivan: Listen that's what happens in dictatorial society it's like.
Sam: You know.
Ivan: But people well but people become numb in the sense also that they stop being
Ivan: intimidated by it, too, in the other way.
Ivan: Okay? They just don't give a shit anymore. Okay? The people are trying to intimidate at some point.
Ivan: I mean, intimidation only works at a certain point. At one point,
Ivan: you're just like, oh, fucking whatever. You know?
Ivan: I mean, you know, how much intimidation can you shove down somebody's throat?
Ivan: It just is what it is, you know, it's just at some point that that now,
Ivan: of course, the one thing that they keep trying to do is trying to amp it up every time.
Sam: OK, well, it almost feels like they they've been hoping at every turn that at
Sam: some point this turns violent.
Sam: At some point, the peaceful protests turn violent. At some point,
Sam: somebody this becomes an all out shooting thing, you know, where somebody is
Sam: resisting and blah, blah, blah, because they want to like escalate further.
Sam: It hasn't happened so far, which I think is actually a good thing,
Sam: but it almost seems like the administration is just looking for the excuse to
Sam: escalate whereby they can, you know, make this even worse.
Ivan: And so far they feel.
Sam: And so far they feel. Okay, next lightning round.
Ivan: How did RFK Jr. do in Congress? A lot of truth You know, told You know,
Ivan: he was You know, used science And all that stuff,
Ivan: Obviously not We got a fucking heroin addict In charge of health and human services
Ivan: That doesn't know anything about anything,
Ivan: Sam He has no clue about nothing Everything is just some kind of Conjecture
Ivan: and bullshit That he pulls out of his ass Whenever it suits him Now autism is caused by Tylenol.
Sam: So on the Tylenol thing, just to be clear, there was a paper last year and a
Sam: new one last month that does talk about a correlation, but I've listened to
Sam: a few people sort of go through, like,
Sam: why this isn't what people think it is.
Sam: So there is apparently a minor correlation between Tylenol use in pregnant women and autism in the kids.
Sam: But there are dozens and dozens of confounding factors that are not accounted for in this study.
Sam: There's a question here at the most fundamental level.
Sam: Is it the Tylenol they took or is it whatever symptoms they were having that
Sam: caused them to take the Tylenol?
Ivan: Take the Tylenol.
Sam: You know, like they had a fever and they took a Tylenol. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Sam: There are all kinds of confounding factors. There are all kinds of reasons.
Ivan: It's just the whole thing. You use the keyword that always got caught on in
Ivan: statistics that is the bane of our existence.
Ivan: For most human beings that don't understand, correlation. Because correlation is not causation.
Ivan: It's the first fucking thing you get taught in damn fucking statistics.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And just because there is some fucking correlation, it doesn't mean most of
Ivan: the time what the fuck you think it means.
Sam: Yeah and look as i've listened to some of the people talking about this they're
Sam: like at the very most what has been here so far is like okay maybe we could
Sam: study a little bit more along this Tylenol.
Ivan: Direction hey sam do you know that but for the most part but for the most part.
Sam: It was it's like there has not been any causal relationship found.
Ivan: There's no mechanism let me tell you
Ivan: something i saw a study i think i think there's a study probably there is one
Ivan: somewhere that found that as temperatures get really hot and people drink a
Ivan: lot more water okay yes that apparently there's a correlation with how much
Ivan: what water they're drinking and heat stroke so water.
Sam: Causes heat stroke.
Ivan: It must be the water it's causing the heat stroke i mean they're drinking all
Ivan: that fucking water and all of a sudden they're they're getting heat stroke? Sam, what the fuck?
Sam: But, yes. And look, there are so many problems with how RFK approaches all these
Sam: things, it's hard to even start. Listen, there's so many problems.
Ivan: There's no many problems. No, there's a basic problem. He doesn't believe in science.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: That's it.
Sam: And also, I will add to that something aligned with what you said earlier.
Sam: He's a eugenicist as well.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: He doesn't believe in science, but also, very much so, he believes in survival of the fittest.
Sam: And if you have some problem, you should die.
Sam: And like you were saying earlier, he doesn't believe that—the whole thing with
Sam: this autism thing, it's all couched in, like oh this is a massive tragedy that like.
Ivan: This is horrible this yes the.
Sam: These people have been ruined in some way and.
Ivan: Yeah you.
Sam: Know and no no.
Ivan: Yeah not.
Sam: At all you know.
Ivan: And i gotta be honest if his style of eugenics causes us to create people like
Ivan: him fuck this shit man because you know he is a walking talking example of how
Ivan: if you tell me about if i want to design eugenics I sure as hell don't want
Ivan: him to come out looking like fucking RFK Jr., I'll tell you that.
Sam: Well, yeah, I mean, fundamentally, if you look at problems that you don't want
Sam: in a population, he's full of them.
Ivan: He's full of them! If you're going to play, you said it. The first motherfucker
Ivan: we should have eliminated is you, you stupid...
Sam: But yeah, like, he doesn't understand the science, and he's fundamentally coming
Sam: from a viewpoint that devalues life in the first place.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And, yeah. And the thing is that was interesting about these hearings were the
Sam: Republicans were going after him too. It wasn't just the Democrats.
Ivan: And, you know, the layup that the Republicans have in order to show that they
Ivan: have even one little look on the fucking spine is to fucking go and, damn it, you know,
Ivan: we call it, oh, God, impeach this son of a bitch.
Sam: Well, in the United States.
Ivan: 80% of Americans, 80% of Americans still believe in vaccinations.
Ivan: 8-0, okay? All right.
Sam: Now, unfortunately, a lot of them really need to be 90-plus in order to be as
Sam: effective as they could be. But yes, yes, still.
Ivan: But with all the horseshit.
Sam: I know, I know.
Ivan: Even still, over 60% of Republicans support vaccinations, even if they say maybe
Ivan: the COVID one. No, the rest, they do.
Ivan: They don't want polio. They don't want measles.
Ivan: They don't want most of this shit.
Sam: You know, I saw someone, this is social media, so who knows,
Sam: it was probably made up, but someone saying that they were talking to someone
Sam: who was explaining why they didn't trust vaccinations and why they didn't get their kid vaccinated.
Sam: And they're like, you know, half the diseases they want me to vaccinate the
Sam: kid for, I've never even heard of.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And it's like, there's a reason you haven't heard of these diseases.
Ivan: There's a reason, you asshole.
Ivan: There's a whole damn reason why, you stupid shit.
Sam: Yeah. And, you know, part of what was going on in this hearing was he was like,
Sam: oh, I'm not, anybody can still get their vaccinations. I'm not denying anybody anything.
Ivan: Oh, he's caused, he's making it more difficult.
Ivan: He's causing insurance companies that can find a way to deny them.
Ivan: He's forcing people to go and have to get prescription.
Ivan: I'm sorry, the vaccination. This is bullshit. He is, no, no, no.
Sam: And what I was saying is even short of impeachment, if if the Republicans could
Sam: apply pressure right to I mean, Donald Trump, Donald Trump.
Ivan: That's the reason why he got off and fired a CDC lady, because Bill Cassidy
Ivan: called him and fucking like laid him a new one over the shit that he was trying to do.
Ivan: And that's the reason why they wound up firing her so they have been already
Ivan: at this point because it's fortunate.
Ivan: But by the way, those motherfucking Republicans, you know what the thing is?
Ivan: They voted to confirm that bastard.
Ivan: Who's not even a fucking real Republican anyway.
Sam: And look, part of it is like, yeah, especially these two doctors who,
Sam: you know, Republican doctors are like, well, he promised us. Oh, come on.
Ivan: You fucking idiot. I mean, what kind of fucking, I mean, yeah,
Ivan: keep talking that to yourself.
Sam: Here's the thing with Donald Trump. He has shown in the past that if somebody
Sam: is embarrassing him and making him look bad, he will fire them.
Sam: So the question is, can this be constructed in such a way that RFK Jr.
Sam: Becomes just an out-and-out embarrassment to Donald Trump among his own base?
Ivan: I sure, that's what we need. You know what we need? We need to get Laura Loomer on board.
Sam: There you go. Okay. One more. One more. The Epstein victims coming out and speaking
Sam: and talking about things. Look, the—,
Sam: This has not gone away yet as much as Trump wanted.
Sam: We do not have the file. Well, some have been released, but the some that were
Sam: released were almost all in the public domain anyway.
Ivan: Yeah, they released the shit that we already have. They did what our trade partners do to us.
Ivan: They gave us the shit that we already had.
Sam: Now, supposedly, there's still more coming, et cetera, et cetera, but look,
Sam: there's this been, the whole thing on Congress trying to vote, there's this,
Sam: discharge petition where the Democrats plus a handful of Republicans,
Sam: including like Marjorie Taylor Greene, for God's sake, and a few others who
Sam: are to push this resolution to demand a full disclosure.
Sam: Now, I want to state right out front, like people have been talking about this
Sam: discharge petition, like even if this thing passed, it would have force of law.
Sam: No, this is just a resolution asking the administration to do something.
Sam: So even if they pass it, he can still ignore it.
Sam: But it's still significant that you've got, they haven't got enough Republicans yet.
Sam: They've got like three or four Republicans on board and they need like four
Sam: more or something like that.
Sam: I forget the exact numbers, but they need a few more in order to pass this thing out of the house.
Ivan: And hey sam sam but yes but but but speaker johnson ah yes i.
Sam: Was gonna bring this up next yes.
Ivan: That trump was the incited yes he was the informant he he was in there trying
Ivan: to bring truth and justice to everybody that's that's why he was friends of epstein well.
Sam: This is actually interesting. Like, people immediately pointed out,
Sam: This thing is not a get out of jail free card, because if, in fact,
Sam: he was an FBI informant, it means he knew something.
Sam: If he knew something, he was probably involved.
Sam: Like the whole thing, they typically when you offer an informant status.
Sam: And by the way, there have been rumors about Trump being an informant for other
Sam: things going back decades and decades as well.
Sam: Like, you know, but, you know.
Sam: Basically, like, did the FBI catch Donald Trump doing something and then offered
Sam: him a deal to roll up on Epstein instead?
Sam: Who knows? We don't know. This is speculation out of a single comment from Johnson,
Sam: but basically saying that Trump, don't worry about all this.
Sam: Trump told me he was an FBI informant, which, like, I don't know that he was supposed to say that.
Sam: Who knows? And meanwhile, wow, the victims themselves have said they're going
Sam: to compile their own list.
Sam: And people have asked, well, why haven't they named names to begin with?
Sam: It's because if they come out independent, they could be sued out of existence.
Sam: They're talking about rich, famous, influential people that potentially they could name.
Ivan: It's not that simple.
Sam: And if they just came out and said, oh yeah, they raped me,
Sam: without having the level of evidence required to actually bring a criminal case.
Sam: And remember, like, that sweetheart deal in Florida from decades ago potentially
Sam: said they weren't going after any of these co-conspirators.
Sam: So there are all kinds of things here. So,
Sam: but they're talking about giving the list to the Congress people and,
Sam: like, Marjorie Taylor Greene and these others are like, I'll read them on the floor, you know,
Sam: because then they have speech and debate immunity and
Sam: they can give that but some of
Sam: them have have said specifically though no one's accusing you
Sam: donald trump why don't you just out put this out but i don't know all of these
Sam: other things coming together at the very least even if donald trump wasn't involved
Sam: directly and i think we've had all kinds of anecdotal stuff about him liking
Sam: underage kids himself over the years,
Sam: even if he wasn't like guilty of that, it certainly seems like he was one of the facilitators.
Sam: And, and this is, or at least knew something. And that's one of the things when
Sam: you listen to the victims talk this week, which they haven't really talked as much when,
Sam: when they are asked what they want out of the files, it's something very different
Sam: than what you hear otherwise.
Sam: Like everywhere else you're hearing, we want more of the men.
Sam: Like we want the rich, famous people who are probably also raping children. Right.
Sam: But when you listen to the victims, what they're, they're at,
Sam: we want to know the story behind the sweetheart deal in Florida.
Sam: Why did he get that deal? Who are the people who helped him there?
Sam: They seem to concentrate mostly on, yeah, the main perpetrators were,
Sam: you know, Maxwell and Epstein.
Sam: Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein.
Ivan: Yeah, Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, yeah.
Sam: But,
Sam: But there are lots of people who helped them get away with it.
Sam: Those are the people that I want to hear about.
Sam: And so the victims talked less about other people who were committing abuse
Sam: themselves as to apparently circles of people who were enabling this behavior.
Sam: Now, there probably were other people actually participating as well.
Sam: We know about Prince Andrew.
Sam: Some other names have been out there. So who knows? but like it's the point
Sam: is it's not going away okay all.
Ivan: Right we gotta wrap this up.
Sam: We gotta wrap this up because we had yet another crash of my computer i don't
Sam: know what the hell is going on with that plus yvonne's been on the wrong microphone
Sam: this whole time so he sounded like crap you know and and i gotta take my wife
Sam: to the airport although she says she's not actually ready yet so oh.
Ivan: Okay well that's good.
Sam: So so instead we're like we'll try to get her ready and then and see if we even
Sam: get to our plane on time. You know, so better stuff. Okay.
Sam: Thank you for being here. You know the deal. Curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: I see all our stuff, all our transcripts, all our old shows,
Sam: all the ways to contact us, and of course a link to our Patreon where you can
Sam: go and give us money at various levels.
Sam: We'll send you a postcard, we'll send you a mug, we'll mention you on the show,
Sam: we'll ring a bell, all that kind of stuff at $2 a month or more or if you just
Sam: ask us, we will invite you to the Conventions Corner Slack, where Yvonne and
Sam: I and a bunch of our listeners,
Sam: are chatting throughout the week and sharing links and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: So, Yvonne, how about one highlight from the Slack this week that we have not
Sam: talked about on the show?
Ivan: Well, I guess I'll mention, because we've got to wrap this up quick,
Ivan: you know, Tesla sales, again, reported in Europe.
Ivan: They're not recovering. You know, a lot of people are just speculating,
Ivan: well, the Model Y, the new model, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Listen, people in Europe basically have said, fuck you, Tesla, in droves.
Ivan: They used to dominate that market.
Ivan: And in the Washington Post, it came out that in Germany, which is one of the
Ivan: biggest markets for Tesla,
Ivan: They are down I think it was Across Tesla they dropped 33.6% In Germany it was
Ivan: even worse They dropped 75%.
Sam: And they're having declines here too, right?
Ivan: Yes, yes, yes. But it's more, it's worse in Europe.
Ivan: They were, they, I mean, let's put it this way. Market share last year in Germany
Ivan: for Tesla was 11% of all, of all vehicle.
Ivan: This is not just electric, of all vehicles registered in Germany. Okay.
Ivan: All right. Think about that. It's the entire market. Okay. I mean,
Ivan: in the U S the entire battery electric vehicle market is around that.
Ivan: So imagine the penetration in Germany where there are 11% of all cars.
Ivan: Through three quarters this year, they're down to 3.4%. I mean,
Ivan: that is just a brutal beating that they have taken.
Ivan: And they basically ceded market to now Volkswagen, BMW, and BYD.
Ivan: And so they're just getting destroyed.
Ivan: And in response to that, the Tesla board,
Ivan: recognizing how bad a job Elon Musk has done,
Ivan: they have decided to award a massive
Ivan: new payout for him that
Ivan: if it comes to fruition he could potentially they
Ivan: use this valuation model Black-Scholes in order to value these based on future
Ivan: projections whatever the fun or whatnot it's magical but it still is the estimation
Ivan: based on that model it estimated it could be worth up to one trillion dollars okay,
Ivan: Bail up for us.
Sam: Baby Ah, yes Okay, with that, I think we need to be done Thank you everybody
Sam: for joining us Yeah, okay,
Sam: Have a great week, have a good time Stay safe.
Ivan: Goodbye Bye Bye.
Sam: Thank you. okay we'll see how this goes depending on what of my stuff got saved
Sam: and where and what this is going to be a joy to edit okay we'll talk to you
Sam: later hitting hitting stop bye Bye.