Sam: Okay, we'll get started. Are we ready to get started, Yvonne?
Ivan: Sure.
Sam: Here we go.
Sam: welcome to curmudgeon's corner for friday october 10th 2025.
Sam: It's just after 2 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Menter and Yvonne
Sam: Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hello everybody. Hello.
Sam: Indeed.
Ivan: Hi.
Sam: Hello and hi.
Ivan: Sam, let me tell you something.
Sam: Oh no, we're starting out good.
Ivan: I mean, there have been times you've been loud wrong. And I just went over the
Ivan: recording of how loud wrong you were.
Sam: Wait, wait, wait. Did you find the timestamp?
Ivan: Yes, I have it. I can play it.
Ivan: Yes. And I can play just how absolutely, ridiculously loud wrong you were.
Ivan: And not just, no, wait, wait, wait. But before you say it, and not just that,
Ivan: but how absolutely right I was.
Ivan: And I told you you were full of shit before I said it, and you're talking out of your ass.
Ivan: and told you flat out exactly what actually played out and how you told me,
Ivan: oh, no, you're wrong. It's going to be that way.
Ivan: The tech companies know what they're doing.
Ivan: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Sam, damn it.
Ivan: Holy shit, were you loud wrong?
Sam: Let's give the context here. So on October 9th, 2015, so 10 years and a day
Sam: ago, we recorded an episode.
Sam: It was episode 435 of this podcast, which I titled Check Us in 2025.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Yvonne and I got into a discussion on self-driving cars.
Sam: And I gave a very optimistic assessment, basically the bottom line being,
Sam: well, I was going to try to pull this audio, but I didn't have time. But Yvonne has it.
Ivan: I have it.
Sam: Yvonne's going to play it, and then I will edit in a higher quality version of it when we're done.
Sam: But Yvonne, why don't you go ahead and play the appropriate clip from this show
Sam: from 10 years and a day ago, and then we can discuss just how wrong I was.
Ivan: Now, hold on one sec.
Sam: I will say that I realized fully, and we even discussed on the show,
Sam: that I was going to be wrong about this like five years ago.
Sam: Like, it did not take the whole 10 years. Because we remembered,
Sam: like, Yvonne put a reminder on his phone for 10 years in the future.
Ivan: On our calendar, I sent you an invite. Was it still on your calendar?
Sam: Let's see if it was still on my calendar.
Ivan: Because I saw my calendar. If you see the picture, it said that I sent you an in-play for it.
Sam: Yes, I have it on my calendar. I never open my Apple calendar anymore, but it's right there.
Ivan: So it is right there.
Sam: It is right there.
Ivan: I literally did set a reminder 10 years in the future.
Ivan: And the funniest thing about this is that all of a sudden, I see this thing on the calendar.
Ivan: And I'm like, what the hell is my wife doing? What is this self-driving car
Ivan: thing? What are you talking about?
Ivan: And I'm like, honey, what is it? I'm like, nah, it's not mine.
Ivan: And then I read it, and then I started remembering.
Ivan: And I said to Sam, I'm like, wait, I'm guessing this is a prediction we made 10 years ago.
Sam: Yes, it was.
Ivan: And it was set as a reminder. It worked.
Sam: Yes. Well, I guess technically you set it as an appointment on your calendar, not a reminder.
Ivan: Yes. Yes. I set it as an appointment on the calendar. Yes.
Sam: Very good.
Ivan: And lo and behold, it worked. We remembered.
Sam: And tell me and the audience what the time stamp is in that show from 10 years ago.
Ivan: I believe it's somewhere. It's around a minute, an hour, 35 minute mark.
Ivan: I got to around the time of the prediction, which is somewhere around a minute,
Ivan: an hour, 39 minutes and 30 seconds.
Ivan: I will. Here, hold on. I'm trying to scroll through this thing. Oh, come on.
Ivan: Here we go. Oh, 139.
Ivan: Okay, so here, let me see. Let's
Ivan: see if the audio will play here so we can listen. There we go. Let's see.
Break: Tooddly-doo, tooddly-doo, tooddly-doo.
2015 Ivan: You say you want to sit there and not worry about it.
2015 Sam: The Google cars are already 100% autonomous.
2015 Ivan: They're 100% autonomous and they still say, well, you still may have to watch
2015 Ivan: because there may be situations where you may have to take over.
2015 Sam: No, no. They are only doing that for legal reasons right now.
2015 Sam: They're not because they have to. And they're still working on it.
2015 Sam: This is what I'm saying. The traditional car companies are coming at it from
2015 Sam: the approach you're saying.
2015 Sam: Google and the tech companies are coming from it from the opposite approach.
2015 Ivan: They're saying right now that Google's overpromising what they can deliver on that.
2015 Sam: Maybe this is.
2015 Ivan: What I'm telling you right now. Google's overpromising what they can deliver
2015 Ivan: on that right now. They're talking out of their ass.
2015 Sam: I think what's going to happen, my predictions.
2015 Ivan: I really think that they're way overpromising.
2015 Sam: My prediction is the companies that are coming at it from the Google approach.
2015 Sam: And I don't know if it's going to be Google or if it's going to be somebody
2015 Sam: else. But the companies that are coming at it from the approach of,
2015 Sam: we are going to build something that does not require a driver,
2015 Sam: period, stop, end of story, that's what they're trying to do.
2015 Sam: They don't succeed until they achieve that, will at some point lap the companies
2015 Sam: who are coming at it from the point of view of the other direction.
2015 Ivan: Now, what I'm going to tell you right now is that those guys that are promising
2015 Ivan: that right now, they are way overestimating how quickly they can get that to
2015 Ivan: work the way that they believe it is going to work. They're not going to get there.
2015 Ivan: That's what I think. I think they're way overpromising.
2015 Sam: I think within 10 years, they will be there.
2015 Ivan: I think it's going to take longer than 10 years. It's going to take longer than 10 years.
2015 Ivan: I'm going to tell you the main reason why that is, because there's just going
2015 Ivan: to be millions of cars around those cars that are not that way.
2015 Sam: It'll take more than 10 years to get mass adoption, but it'll be less than 10
2015 Sam: years until you can buy a car that does that.
2015 Ivan: Listen, even in aircraft that are 10 times smarter than any of the cars that
2015 Ivan: we have out there right now, okay, it took for the technology to have,
2015 Ivan: to have the infrastructure, to have the airplanes be able to talk to each other
2015 Ivan: to everything in order to be able to be able to be able to fly autonomous.
2015 Ivan: And what you're telling me is that, oh, no, we're going to build a car right
2015 Ivan: now that, you know what, it's not going to rely on that. It's never going to
2015 Ivan: end up going to accident and nothing's going to happen, right?
2015 Sam: No, not never, just less than human accidents. The Google cars already have
2015 Sam: a safety record better than human drivers.
2015 Ivan: Listen, I'm telling you right now, but the problem is that you're not going
2015 Ivan: to get away from the fact that you still have that many factors around.
2015 Ivan: I don't know. I listen, like I said, it's but you see, my point is that there
2015 Ivan: are a lot of situations and we're not just talking about driving the United States.
2015 Ivan: We're talking about being able to drive anywhere in the world.
2015 Ivan: OK, not just here, off road, on road, wherever the hell, whatever.
2015 Sam: The first ones of these will be geographically restricted. The first ones of these you buy will.
2015 Ivan: Well, my point is that you're not going to get to something that can go anywhere.
2015 Ivan: It's still going to require some level of human intervention.
2015 Ivan: No, it's going to take, listen, I'm telling you, look,
2015 Ivan: I, I will stake my ground even 10 years from now, the car may be 10 times smarter
2015 Ivan: and be able to avoid to make it 90% of the mistakes you can do right now,
2015 Ivan: but fully autonomous, fully a hundred percent, not 10.
2015 Sam: I tell you, I tell you this then.
2015 Ivan: Yes.
2015 Sam: By 2025, it may be very, it may still be very expensive.
2015 Sam: It may be very limited in terms of.
2015 Sam: how many people have them. But by 2025, you will be able to buy a car that you
2015 Sam: can get in, tell it your destination, and go to sleep.
Ivan: Okay. Sam.
Sam: Was that the end?
Ivan: No, I got it because it was a drag on Ferrari. But that's basically the main point. Sam? Sam?
Sam: Yes? Yes.
Ivan: You're loud wrong. and I was allowed right.
Sam: I was definitely wrong. I was thinking for a little bit, maybe I could finesse
Sam: it, like, do Waymo's count? Because you can legally go to sleep in a Waymo.
Ivan: But you cannot just buy a Waymo. You can't just buy a Waymo,
Ivan: not just that it's geographically fenced, which is the one thing we're talking about.
Sam: No, no, I said they might be geographically fenced or otherwise limited.
Sam: The key part is you can't just buy a Waymo.
Ivan: Yeah, right. You were expecting some very rich people to be able to have one
Ivan: to work and you just can't just buy a Waymo. No.
Sam: You can't just buy a Waymo and they are very limited. I mean,
Sam: again, I allowed the fact they might be very limited, but I figured you'd be able to buy one.
Sam: But the only people who have full autonomous, and even they cheat because they
Sam: have like remote safety drivers that can take over.
Sam: You know, so they cheat as well.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And you can't buy those.
Ivan: You can't buy them.
Sam: You can't buy those. You know, the autonomous taxis are growing while they do cheat.
Ivan: Yes. Tesla rolled out some and they had like people sitting in the fucking car watching them.
Sam: Well, right. All of the, yeah, well, they had people sitting in the car.
Sam: But even the ones that are theoretically, there's no.
Ivan: There's somebody somewhere.
Sam: There's somebody remote. Even if there's not somebody in the car.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: You know, and if I remember right. If you if you played that further,
Sam: we talked a little bit about, you know, I made the point about sleeping in the car.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And now there are definitely people who actually do sleep in the car while they
Sam: use their Tesla self-driving.
Sam: But in our discussion, I specified that it would be legal to do so.
Sam: It is definitely not legal.
Ivan: Well, the one thing that we're talking about was that being safer right now
Ivan: than that that you would drivers. And the reality is that right now,
Ivan: I mean, look, insurance data showed that Tesla drivers have some of the highest
Ivan: rates of accidents that there are out there.
Ivan: And there are the cars right now equipped with the most of the technology,
Ivan: the most advanced in that sense.
Sam: Yeah.
Sam: Well, aside from the Waymos of the world, right?
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Like of cars you can actually buy. But one of the points I was making in our
Sam: discussion from 10 years ago, because I have not re-listened to this episode
Sam: like you just did, but I remember the conversation, even though it was 10 years ago.
Sam: No, but one of the points that I have made probably in this episode,
Sam: but over and over again when we talked about this,
Sam: is the driver assist is actually more dangerous than actually doing full autonomous
Sam: driving because it assumes the driver can take over at a moment's notice.
Ivan: I mean, that's been my biggest knock on FSD, the way it is right now.
Ivan: It's the reason why, during the episode, I was talking about technology helping
Ivan: people, stopping them from having accidents, for example.
Ivan: Which a lot of the driver aides that many car manufacturers do right now do a lot of that.
Ivan: Like, you know, like my car, for example, has avoided me, you know,
Ivan: getting into an accident by me changing lanes and not seeing somebody, for example.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: You know, that kind of stuff.
Sam: My new car has just basic blind spot warnings and stuff, and they've absolutely
Sam: been helpful. It's gone beep, beep, beep when I'm about to try something stupid.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know?
Ivan: That kind of stuff, which we've got a lot of that, and it's significantly improved from what we had.
Ivan: But, you know, the FSD technology, and look, I told the story about this guy
Ivan: was having lunch who was basically being cavalier and falling asleep and doing
Ivan: what the hell we're talking about and doing that whatever. And he got into, he totaled the Tesla.
Ivan: The Tesla drove into a wall because he was that cavalier. Okay.
Ivan: and totaled the car. I mean, this wasn't a small accident, okay?
Sam: Yeah, and this is the thing, and the fully autonomous ones have been slower,
Sam: because I had specified it had to be legal to go to sleep, and part of my argument
Sam: was these cars would not even have the steering wheel. It would just be a passenger compartment.
Sam: And some of the taxis are, in fact, structured that way, the autonomous taxis that are running out.
Ivan: Remote drivers anyways. What the hell?
Sam: A lot of remote drivers have to sometimes take over.
Ivan: They have a wheel over there. So you took out the wheel from a car and there's
Ivan: somebody with a fucking wheel sitting in a room somewhere else.
Sam: It might be a keyboard or a joystick.
Ivan: It might be a keyboard or a joystick, yes, as much as we know, yes.
Sam: And you see videos every once in a while about people like, you know,
Sam: oh, the Waymo got stuck. The Waymo's confused.
Ivan: Yep, yep, yep. You see that, yeah.
Sam: Because, you know, something happens and it just has no idea what to do.
Ivan: Something happened that a human could figure out, but the Waymo could not, basically.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: So, yes, I was absolutely wrong. It did not happen within 10 years.
Sam: You can go to sleep in your autonomous driving vehicle, but if it's a Tesla,
Sam: you would be incredibly stupid to do so, if you're the driver, obviously.
Sam: And in a Waymo, you're probably fine going to sleep.
Ivan: Well, there is somebody else minding the fucking store.
Sam: It's geofenced.
Ivan: Somebody else is minding it.
Sam: Now, have they disclosed? Is there someone actually monitoring in real time at all points?
Sam: Or does the Waymo call for help when it feels like it's in?
Ivan: I thought it was the Waymo call. I thought it was alert. I think so, too. Okay? Yeah.
Sam: I think so, too.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: So there's not necessarily someone watching.
Ivan: But it's doing it, again, it's doing it in a very limited geographic area because
Ivan: it's the one that it knows very well.
Ivan: And even back then, 10 years ago.
Sam: Although they're expanding the geographic area over time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ivan: It is slowly. But, you know, even 10 years ago, I still remember seeing BMW
Ivan: demo a car that could go around a track by itself and a track that it knew very well.
Ivan: It's not like that wasn't possible.
Ivan: I mean, shit. I mean, we had, come on, man. When we were in college,
Ivan: and let's face it, Sam, when we were in college was a really,
Ivan: really, really long time ago now, okay?
Sam: Yes, it was. And they already had self-driving on the CMU campus. I mean, it was slow.
Sam: I remember going out to see the demos of the big self-driving Humvee that they
Sam: put together or whatever in the park.
Sam: And it's like maximum speed was like five miles per hour or something.
Sam: But it did it. And, of course, they improved that rapidly over time and removed
Sam: the amount of restrictions on it, etc.
Sam: I think the first cross-country drive of one of these things was not that long
Sam: after we were in college with the safety driver and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: You know, so I was over-optimistic.
Sam: I was indeed.
Ivan: I love this. Well, actually, I love this more The fact that I found this I mean,
Ivan: all of a sudden I'm just looking at my calendar I'm like, what?
Ivan: Wait, what? We fucking, wait, this was,
Ivan: Fuck. And I'm like realizing, Jesus.
Sam: A reminder from yourself from a decade in the past.
Ivan: From a decade ago. And then it happens that Apple technology apparently is still
Ivan: so, I still use it so widely that it was still on the same fucking calendar
Ivan: I put it from 10 years ago.
Ivan: Now that's more amazing, I think, than anything else.
Sam: Now i had remembered for a long time
Sam: i i every every once in a while and certainly
Sam: every time we've talked about self-driving on this podcast i've
Sam: been like we had that thing that was like for some huge number of years in the
Sam: future has that passed yet it seems like it should have passed yet but no not
Sam: until just now and although like like i said for at least five years i have
Sam: admitted whenever we've talked about self-driving that i was gonna be wrong
Sam: about this when the time game oh.
Ivan: Gosh but you know but yeah so i mean so wait yeah okay so let me ask you a question
Ivan: do you guys have like a home family calendar like the you use what do you use for the or no.
Sam: So here's here's the thing i had set up all of that stuff okay once upon a time
Sam: uh-huh so yes i have we each have like on our phones a private calendar and
Sam: a shared calendar and we're all subscribed to each other's shared calendars, theoretically.
Ivan: But is that which calendar? I mean, I guess it's not using your Apple calendar on the phone?
Sam: No, it was using Apple, but let me get to the part why it's not actually practically
Sam: in use anymore. Because...
Sam: First of all, like my main constraints are generally my work calendar.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And it is possible for me to share my work calendar with my Apple phone.
Sam: But I stopped years ago having anything work-related on my phone that allowed
Sam: the company to have like management rights on my phone.
Ivan: Okay, okay.
Sam: And so no more work calendar on my personal phone.
Sam: OK, well, the way that I. OK, so wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
Sam: let me finish this. Let me finish this.
Sam: And then so I had no more work calendar on my personal phone.
Sam: Now, I could have done something like just block out big blocks of time where
Sam: I'm at work. You know, just like, I'm at work these hours, these days, and boom, that's all.
Sam: But I never did that. And then when Brandy started her work,
Sam: she had similar constraints with her work calendars.
Sam: And she had campaign calendars and work calendars, but they were all on different tech.
Sam: And you couldn't be shared freely, blah, blah, blah. And so I still potentially,
Sam: in some cases, put personal appointments on there.
Sam: But frankly, none of us look at
Sam: our Apple accounts enough or use our Apple accounts to make it worth it.
Sam: Because we all have the things that actually matter and block our calendars on other systems.
Sam: A whole diverse set of systems that aren't brought together because of constraints.
Ivan: Yeah, so basically you don't have family. I mean, here's the thing that we have about the family count.
Sam: We set one up. We just...
Sam: drifted away from it because of all these constraints.
Ivan: I have a family calendar, but the one thing that I do, if there's anything,
Ivan: look, I'm assumed to be at work during the day, bottom line.
Ivan: It's like, look, just assume I'm at work.
Ivan: However, if there is an event that requires me to block time from work to be
Ivan: at, what we do is send an invite to my work calendar. Okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And so that way blocks the work time because I have to be at a doctor or something like that.
Sam: Well, this is what I do at this point.
Ivan: Too. That way is what I do. But then they have the family calendar and everything
Ivan: that they see. And Manu lives by the calendar, religiously.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Okay. So he is looking at, you know, I put my travel schedules on there and
Ivan: it's like, you know, synchronized.
Ivan: You know, if it's travel, I have it that I sent an invite to the home calendar
Ivan: so it's on there so they know what it is and, you know, that kind of stuff.
Ivan: So that way they will see the events that are relevant. And if they need to
Ivan: block time from me, I basically am like somebody else that is like you do business
Ivan: at another company. You can't see the calendar.
Ivan: Hey, you sent them an invite. So, hey, I'll get an invite. Oh,
Ivan: OK. No, I can't do that time.
Ivan: I'll decline it or I'll accept it. And I will be able to block my work time, basically.
Sam: Right. Yeah. Yeah, no, I hear you. And like when I have appointments for anything,
Sam: I put them on my work calendar because that's what I have.
Sam: I put them directly on my work calendar because that's what I have to work around for the most part.
Sam: And even even if it's something like if I have something Saturday that I have
Sam: to remember, I will put a reminder.
Sam: I will block some time on my calendar for Friday afternoon saying,
Sam: remember, you have this thing Saturday.
Ivan: Right. Right. OK.
Sam: You know, because I will look at it while I'm at work, but I'm not looking at,
Sam: any of the personal calendars anymore i'm only looking at my work calendar realistically,
Sam: and okay occasionally you know brandy would get pissed at me like what do you
Sam: mean you didn't know about this i put it on the calendar i'm like well i don't
Sam: look at that calendar anymore you know and i don't know so anyway that's that.
Ivan: Anyway all right so that's my but first basically i i figured i could make.
Sam: Excellent i was gonna bring it up if you didn't right up at the front But you
Sam: beat me to it because you wanted to, like, make fun of me.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Which is important. You could be damn sure if I'd been right,
Sam: I would have been making fun of you.
Ivan: Yes. You know, listen, Sam, for a number of, I mean, it was a long time.
Ivan: I made a prediction about Paul Sangas being the Democratic candidate who's going
Ivan: to be president, I said, in 1992.
Ivan: Sam took that clip, put it on his answering machine for everybody to listen
Ivan: to when they left him a message saying, wrong, sorry, Yvonne, but you were wrong.
Ivan: So, yes, I need to be able to take advantage of what I got right now,
Ivan: given that he spent like, it must have been like a year or more that that was
Ivan: his answering machine message.
Sam: Okay, now, Yvonne, you want to go double and nothing for 2035 on the same prediction?
Ivan: I think 2035, they may have figured it out. Okay?
Ivan: I think another 10 years, they may have figured it out. So, no, I won't do double.
Ivan: No, no. I think 2035, they...
Sam: What if we reverse our predictions then? You can say we will be able to buy
Sam: a car that you can just go to sleep, and I'll say you won't.
Ivan: Gosh, but I'm not even that convinced about that one right now.
Ivan: I think it goes back to, during that, it goes back to the one problem that I said about,
Ivan: you know, with aircraft, one of the ways that they've made it that aircraft
Ivan: can literally like almost fly by themselves is with the adoption of stuff like TCAS, for example.
Ivan: ADS-B and other technologies that constantly share.
Sam: Every plane is mandated to be able to communicate with each other so that you can.
Ivan: And communicate precise data on location, precise data on a lot of information.
Ivan: And they are able to talk to each other, to avoid each other and so much and so on.
Sam: And you don't have the possibility of the kid running across the street chasing their ball.
Ivan: Exactly. You don't have that. But so the thing is that I think that even like 10 years from now,
Ivan: one of the things that I think would make a big improvement in this is that
Ivan: cars would be able to communicate to each other kind of like a way to say that
Ivan: airplanes do in a certain extent in order to avoid those kinds of things.
Ivan: OK, and that the roads would be smart roads and that kind of stuff.
Ivan: But that requires a massive multi, hell, I think over a trillion dollar investment
Ivan: in some of that in order to be able to get to the full level that I think.
Ivan: I think they may be able to get a lot closer, but but.
Ivan: But with the other advances, they may be able to get a lot closer,
Ivan: that it doesn't need to be that way.
Ivan: But my whole point is that since all the other cars don't have that,
Ivan: cars have to keep, even the smart car that can drive by itself or whatever,
Ivan: maybe in a perfect environment, right?
Ivan: You still have all these other morons that there's still hundreds of millions
Ivan: of these other cars and you just dart out of a place, just smash into you senselessly.
Ivan: And so that's the big risk that you have there.
Ivan: And the cars aren't really that well prepared to have some assholes like swerving,
Ivan: coming at, like say, for example, like a wrong way driver. Okay.
Sam: Well, to be honest, to be honest, humans aren't necessarily that well prepared for that scenario.
Ivan: But I think the autonomy gets so confused.
Ivan: It's sometimes even worse. I mean, I've avoided a wrong way drive,
Ivan: like at least once in my lifetime. Okay. And it was.
Sam: I've been a wrong-way driver at least once in my lifetime.
Ivan: Oh, fuck. Well, all right. And what I, okay.
Sam: Not for very long.
Ivan: I realized it very quickly. Okay, yeah, no, no. And I meant,
Ivan: yeah, and I just realized, I meant like wrong-way driver, instead of being on
Ivan: a highway, okay, all right, where I had a car coming at me.
Sam: For a long period of time.
Ivan: At 70 miles an hour, driving the wrong fucking direction on a highway, okay? Or more.
Sam: I remember twice, once was turning onto a one-way street in Pittsburgh.
Ivan: And that's always, you know.
Sam: You know, and I realized within like a dozen feet and pulled over and figured out how to get out of it.
Sam: And then the other was accidentally heading on the off ramp of a highway.
Sam: And then my family started screaming, what the hell are you doing,
Sam: Sam? And then once again, I figured it out.
Ivan: You know, I had like our mutual friend who I haven't heard from in forever.
Ivan: So I don't even know if we're friends anymore, Marilyn, that once borrowed my
Ivan: car and she was lost and was in my car.
Ivan: This was the time that cars had cell phones.
Ivan: Maybe she didn't personally own one, but my car had a cell phone and she calls
Ivan: me from the car to try to figure out where the hell she is to make a turn.
Ivan: And I go and I tell her to make a left turn at this place where she told me
Ivan: that she was, but she made a left turn and started going the wrong way.
Ivan: And all of a sudden I hear her freaking out as she realized that she made the
Ivan: left turn, but didn't get on the right.
Ivan: Didn't get on the right lane, stayed on the left, was driving the wrong way.
Ivan: She's freaking out on the cell phone.
Ivan: She backs up, you know, trying to make a U-turn hurriedly and actually crunched
Ivan: the back of my car as I was on the other side of the cell of the phone.
Ivan: And I've already talked about a little bit how I'm a little bit of an anal about
Ivan: my cars. I will admit that I did not flip out at her because I realized that
Ivan: that would probably make it worse.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I remained calm and I just said, listen, just drive forward. Don't worry about it.
Ivan: and we'll figure it out. Thankfully, it wasn't too much. Okay, it was no big deal.
Ivan: But I know that I felt really like, I felt like somebody just stabbed me in
Ivan: the heart for a second as I heard this, but I maintained composure and did not
Ivan: make the situation worse.
Ivan: And I did not yell at her about it.
Sam: Good job, Yvonne. So sorry, I distracted you from your story.
Ivan: Which, we're done. We're done with story. We're done with story.
Sam: We're done with cars.
Ivan: Yeah, we're done with cars.
Sam: And we have decided not to set another alarm for 10 years from now.
Ivan: No, I'm not setting another alarm. I'm not making another. Okay,
Ivan: wait. No, maybe we'll do a check.
Sam: Okay, let's do a check.
Ivan: Let's do a check. You set the appointment right now. Okay, I'll set the appointment
Ivan: again for 10 years so we can check the status of where we're at with it,
Ivan: but no bet. No prediction.
Ivan: I don't feel very confident about my prediction back then. I felt very confident back then.
Ivan: I don't feel, I don't know.
Ivan: Now I'm in the area of I don't know.
Ivan: Instead of like, now, no way, never going to happen.
Ivan: So I'm on the I don't know, like right now. So let me, I'm making,
Ivan: looking at the calendar. Where the hell is this?
Ivan: Okay, I will make the change now in order for us to, there it is. Autonomous car fully.
Ivan: You can fall asleep. Here we go. Make a change for...
Ivan: October 9th, 2025, but 2035. Okay, here we go.
Ivan: Typing in 2035 onto the calendar. Here we go.
Ivan: Boom, boom. Yep. Here we go. So now it's launched into the future.
Ivan: 10 years from now. Okay.
Sam: We will reconvene.
Ivan: In 10 years.
Sam: And somehow we will manage, and I will accept. I just got the meeting request.
Ivan: You see, you got the invite. There you go.
Sam: I got the invite. Let's, I'm going to accept. There we go. Accepted the meeting invite.
Ivan: Excellent. Excellent.
Sam: So see you in 10 years, Yvonne.
Ivan: See you in 10 years. Again.
Sam: Okay. With that out of the way.
Ivan: You got to cover your movies.
Sam: Yeah. Although I don't know if I want to. Last week we said we'll do three.
Sam: But I don't know if, you know, two is plenty.
Ivan: All right. Go with two. Go with two. Go with two.
Sam: All right. Two is plenty. We've already done half an hour on autonomous cars.
Sam: Okay. Movie number one, Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse.
Sam: which I watched January 2nd of this year. So I'm in the same year again.
Ivan: Jesus Christ. I mean, when is this movie from? I don't even remember this movie.
Ivan: What's the name of the movie again?
Sam: This was a 2023 movie. Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse.
Ivan: How bad? The same as all the other fucking Batman movies, this Spider-Man reboot 10 times movies.
Sam: Here's the thing.
Ivan: Confuse the shit out of me.
Sam: So this is the second in the Spider-Verse franchise.
Sam: The first one was Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse from 2018.
Sam: Okay. And there's a third one coming out, I think, next year.
Sam: Okay. It's due to come out next year, I think. Or maybe it got delayed to 2027.
Sam: Let me check that. Sequel Beyond the Spider-Verse.
Ivan: And this one's animated.
Sam: Yes this series is animated.
Ivan: I had no clue i mean i literally just looked at the poster and it's like i swear
Ivan: to god i mean it's this isn't even one that i maybe saw the poster like no but
Ivan: i just saw it and i was just like shocked at the poster like i have no idea so.
Sam: The third one is now due to come out june 2027 so we got a little bit of time
Sam: yet for for that one so let let me you know Now, I will just put it this way.
Sam: I've watched the first two movies.
Sam: I really enjoyed both movies. Big thumbs up.
Sam: These are about the Miles Morales Spider-Man, not the Peter Parker Spider-Man, just to be clear.
Ivan: Once again, I didn't even know there was a Miles Morales Spider-Man.
Sam: You know.
Ivan: I mean, I didn't even know that. I don't know anything.
Sam: So you should, Yvonne. Miles Morales is Puerto Rican.
Ivan: It sounded from the name of it.
Sam: He's an African-American Puerto Rican descendant.
Ivan: But wait, wait, wait. His dad's African-American, his mother's Puerto Rican.
Ivan: I was mentioning that I wound up for some reason running into somebody online
Ivan: who was African-American from Georgia that got into my face and insisted that
Ivan: all Puerto Ricans were white and Spanish. Are we all white?
Sam: Apparently.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: So this must be fake.
Sam: Anyway, the, the, the, they both got a lot of accolades for having interesting
Sam: animation style, blending animation styles, et cetera.
Sam: The second one really doubled down into the whole idea of the multiverse that
Sam: into the spider first, the first one.
Sam: And the first movie in the series introduced it.
Sam: There was a sort of crossover between the different universes,
Sam: you know, and so you had some intersection between them.
Sam: The second movie went completely in there. Like there's this hub between universes
Sam: where you have Spider-Men from like dozens of different dimensions interacting
Sam: with each other with different histories.
Sam: And they have sort of canonical events that happen in the lives of all spider
Sam: creatures. Because, you know, some of them, there's men, there's women.
Ivan: So there's like a lot of spider creatures.
Sam: Yes. Yes, from different, and, you know, there's some that are,
Sam: like, in the first movie and appearing again in the second movie,
Sam: there's, like, one version of Spider-Man who's a pig, you know.
Sam: There's different animation styles, so you see them, like, interact with each other.
Ivan: I am so lost. I am so confused. There's Spider-Man. I have no idea about these things.
Sam: Anyway, very creative. I really liked it. if I had to pick, maybe the first one's a little bit,
Sam: better than the second one because it
Sam: doesn't get quite all tied up in the mythos of all of these different like universes
Sam: interacting with each other and it's more directly on like you'll look you have
Sam: a small group of characters that you really get to know and like there's,
Sam: and you you meet it's not just spider like one of the female spider-men is in
Sam: some universes she's known as Spider Woman, but this was, colloquially she's Spider Gwen.
Sam: And anyway, I liked both of them. I liked the second one.
Sam: I say, if I had to put them, maybe the first one's a little bit better,
Sam: but I really liked the second one too.
Sam: And it completely sets up its sequel though.
Sam: It's one of those situations where I was pissed at the end of the movie because
Sam: I wanted to go straight to the next one. and it's not going to be out for like three years.
Ivan: For still, you got to, yeah, still a while, yeah.
Sam: Yeah, so, but very creative, creative with the animation styles as well,
Sam: like, and multi-animation styles, because, like, when you get the Spider-Men
Sam: from different universes,
Sam: they're animated differently in terms of how they look and feel.
Sam: Like, some are more comic book-y, some are more 3D animation,
Sam: some are more this, some are more that.
Sam: You get some things where even the frame rate of the animation changes depending
Sam: on what's going on with the character and stuff like that.
Sam: So there's a lot of sort of artistry stuff about it, but then it's also just a good story.
Sam: I will read the beginning of the plots from both of these from Wikipedia,
Sam: from Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. That's the first one.
Sam: Here's the beginning of the Wikipedia plot description.
Sam: New York City teenager Miles Morales struggles to live up to the expectations,
Sam: of his father, police officer Jefferson Davis, who sees Spider-Man as a menace.
Sam: Miles' uncle Aaron takes him
Sam: to an abandoned subway station to paint graffiti as a way to cheer him up.
Sam: There, Miles is bitten by a radioactive spider and gains abilities similar to
Sam: Spider-Man. Because the original Spider-Man is also in here.
Sam: Returning to the station where he got bit, he discovers a collider built by
Sam: Kingpin, who hopes to access parallel universes to abduct alternate versions
Sam: of his late wife, Vanessa, and son, Richard.
Sam: Spider-Man attempts to stop the collider while fighting Kingpin's enforcers,
Sam: the Green Goblin, and Prowler.
Sam: I'll read the second paragraph. Green Goblin shoves Spider-Man into the Collider,
Sam: causing an explosion that mortally wounds Spider-Man, who then gives Miles a
Sam: USB flash drive designed to sabotage the Collider,
Sam: warning that the machine could destroy the city if reactivated.
Sam: After watching in horror as Kingpin murders Spider-Man, Miles flees.
Sam: As the city mourns Spider-Man's death, Miles tries to honor his legacy by becoming the new Spider-Man.
Sam: but inadvertently damages the drive. At Spider-Man's grave, he meets Peter B.
Sam: Parker, a middle-aged and world-weary Spider-Man from another dimension.
Sam: Dun-dun-dun. And then the movie proceeds from there.
Ivan: Ah.
Sam: And then across the Spider-Verse, which happens later, on Earth-65,
Sam: Spider-Woman Gwen Tracy has become increasingly isolated from her friends and
Sam: estranged from her father, George.
Sam: George is hunting Spider-Woman for killing Peter Parker, unaware that it was
Sam: an accident after Peter turned into the lizard.
Sam: Gwen encounters a version of the Vulture from an Italian Renaissance-themed
Sam: alternate universe, and Miguel O'Hara and Jess Drew arrive through dimensional
Sam: portals to help neutralize him.
Sam: George corners Gwen and she reveals her identity to him, and he attempts to
Sam: arrest her before she leaves with Justin Miguel. Miguel. Miguel.
Sam: Second paragraph. In Bookland, Bookland, I'm getting really bad with the pronunciations here.
Sam: In Brooklyn, on Earth-1610, 16 months after Kingpin's defeat,
Sam: oh sorry, spoilers for the end of the first movie, and the destruction of the Alchemax Collider,
Sam: Miles Morales is having trouble with his parents due to his duties as Spider-Man
Sam: interfering with his personal life, and is grounded when he is late to a party
Sam: celebrating his father Jeff's promotion to police captain.
Sam: Miles encounters the Spot, an Alchemax scientist-turned-supervillain whose body
Sam: was infused with portals during the Collider's destruction.
Sam: The Spot blames Miles for causing his mutation and reveals that the radioactive
Sam: spider that bit Miles and gave him his powers came from an alternate universe,
Sam: Earth-42, while the Spot was testing the Collider.
Sam: The spot accidentally transports himself into a void and learns to use his portals
Sam: to travel to other universes and empower himself by using Alchemist's colliders and other dimensions.
Sam: Gwen travels to Miles' dimension and they reconnect, sharing their struggles
Sam: and hinting at feelings of attraction towards each other.
Sam: Dot, dot, dot. Movie continues.
Sam: Anyway, both good. Like them. I recommend them. Even if you don't like superhero
Sam: movies, even if you don't really like animations, these are fun little movies.
Sam: But you will have to wait till 2027 for the third movie in the trilogy.
Ivan: Well, 2026 is almost around the corner.
Sam: Almost here.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You got like, what, a year and three quarters. Yeah. You got a year and three quarters.
Ivan: I'm sure it's going to be a summer release.
Sam: Yeah, June. June. June 2027.
Ivan: So, thumbs up.
Sam: Thumbs up, yes. And thumbs up
Sam: for the older one, too, which I probably reviewed on here a few years ago.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: You know, Bridge on the River Kwai can wait.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: I'll never catch up this way, but Bridge on the River Kwai can wait.
Sam: Let's take a break, and then we'll come back and talk about the actual news
Sam: of this week, as opposed to things from 10 years ago and a movie from last year.
Sam: So, or two years ago is 2023, 2023, you know, all these years just sort of merge together over time.
Sam: You know, our discussion about
Sam: that 10 year and a future prediction could have been last week. Yeah.
Sam: You know, and so it's all, it's, it's all, all blurred together badly.
Sam: Okay. Here comes a break. We'll be back after this.
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Sam: Okay.
Ivan: One thing that I want to mention was that In that recording of that curmudgeon's
Ivan: corner, and I skipped through it quickly trying to find this section and figured if I did that.
Ivan: But Alex, I heard talking into the microphone and actually speaking.
Ivan: That did happen like 10 years ago.
Sam: He used to do that quite a bit. He did entire shows as my co-host.
Sam: Now, he would only talk about his YouTube channel and video games,
Sam: not anything else. But, you know.
Ivan: Hey. You know. Yeah. So anyway, all right, so I guess it's my time to pick a
Ivan: topic, and I'm going to pick something that is newsy.
Ivan: Honestly, I'm surprised that it's gotten, and I put this on the Slack because
Ivan: I'm still shocked that it's gotten zero, no,
Ivan: it's got zero attention, but maybe it's because there's so many scandals and
Ivan: frauds and shit related to Trump that they just.
Sam: Is it the hotel?
Ivan: Yes, it's about the hotel. It's about the fucking hotel. Okay.
Ivan: Because nobody gave a shit about this. Okay.
Sam: Yeah. And you putting it into Slack was literally the only thing I've heard about it.
Ivan: No one else has even talked about it. You know, so everybody remembers that
Ivan: Trump had this hotel during his first term that was basically a walking distance from the White House.
Ivan: And that that hotel basically became the hub, the meeting place for all the
Ivan: Republicans that were going to Washington.
Ivan: They were all spending money there. Many foreign governments would buy rooms.
Ivan: There were stories specifically about certain governments specifically buying
Ivan: blocks of rooms in the hotel, which they didn't even use, just to put money into the damn hotel.
Ivan: And the hotel was very active during that time.
Ivan: Well, soon after Trump lost, okay, back in 2022, okay, Trump sold the hotel for $375 million.
Ivan: Now, the thing about that sale at $375 million— Wait.
Sam: Wait, real quick.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: It was you who bought it, right?
Ivan: Yes, of course. Yeah. I used my petty cash.
Sam: Just checking.
Ivan: Using my petty cash, as usual. So, you know, no, it's a guy called Raul Fuentes,
Ivan: which I think I understood he's of somebody of Jamaican descent.
Ivan: I'm not really sure where, how, and his background is murky.
Ivan: Very little information about him. He owns something called CGI Merchant Bank
Ivan: that owned a few other hotels and real estate properties.
Ivan: Now, the $375 million everybody that had looked at this hotel said was a sky-high crazy number.
Ivan: I mean, even when Trump bought it, okay, and made the lease,
Ivan: they said that they way overpaid.
Ivan: That it was a sky-high crazy price. That there was no way to make money on that
Ivan: property. It didn't have enough rooms, okay?
Ivan: The location, the layout of the building was quite funky because it was the
Ivan: old post office over there.
Ivan: It was a historic building, so there was a lot of things and changes that you
Ivan: couldn't really do to the property, okay?
Ivan: There was a big rent that had to be paid, you know, because it was.
Sam: Really— Just to throw it out there, I remember having a school group tour of
Sam: that old post office when I was, like, in high school.
Ivan: Me too, okay? I did that as well, okay, during that time.
Sam: It was cool.
Ivan: It was cool.
Sam: Nice columns and things.
Ivan: A big open atrium in the middle, you know. Yeah. It's a very,
Ivan: very cool building, okay?
Ivan: So, listen, the price was sky high.
Ivan: There's no way to make money on this. But the guy that bought it also got a...
Ivan: So, but as other deals that Trump has been involved, like him being able to
Ivan: sell a house in Palm Beach that he bought for $20 million that all of a sudden
Ivan: got flipped for $100 million that a Russian bought, Which was like multiple
Ivan: times what anybody would pay.
Ivan: Okay. And nobody understands how the hell this deal happened.
Ivan: This deal happened with this hotel where this guy came up $375 million.
Ivan: The guy borrowed $285 million of the money for the purchase. Okay.
Ivan: And within it, he didn't even get to a year before he was in default.
Ivan: OK, yeah, I mean, this guy, I mean, yeah, he didn't even make it a year.
Ivan: OK, and then he said, well, we got hit with some taxes and blah,
Ivan: blah, blah. And I'm like, well, that's ridiculous.
Ivan: That's complete, utter bullshit on a three hundred and seventy five million dollar deal.
Ivan: You know, you're doing your fucking due diligence. You know what the fuck is
Ivan: coming up? There is no way that you got all of a sudden blindsided by some bill
Ivan: like this. It's bullshit.
Ivan: Especially saying it's taxes. It was crazy. Okay.
Ivan: So very quickly defaulted on the loan. Okay.
Ivan: Donald. Okay. Apparently since he got so much money. Okay. Paid on this. So the price was $375.
Ivan: Apparently agreed to carry $28 million. Okay. All right.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: As that. Which by the way. That's, in deals like this, that's not unusual, to be honest.
Ivan: In some deals where the person made a lot of money and there was like a little
Ivan: piece left over, I've done that in some deal where I've got a property that
Ivan: maybe I have a ton of equity on that the person went and like,
Ivan: maybe, you know, the price was $400,000.
Ivan: Well, they came up to me $370,000 and I figured, you know what,
Ivan: I'll carry a lien for the other $30,000.
Ivan: Okay, you know, whatever. It's not the worst risk. I made a lot of money on
Ivan: it already. I'll carry a note, you know.
Ivan: Well, let it ride. It's part of the profit. I'm just, you know,
Ivan: probably make some more money because I'm getting paid interest. Okay.
Ivan: Of course, he defaulted on that too. Okay.
Ivan: So the place went into foreclosure very quickly. Okay. It wound up being foreclosed already in 2024.
Ivan: Okay. And there was a foreclosure auction. Okay. In 2024.
Ivan: By the way, in which there was only one bidder. And the winning bid,
Ivan: I remember, paid $375,000, go to foreclosure auction, only one bidder,
Ivan: the price was $100 million.
Ivan: I mean, it's not, by the way, the hotel business has been booming the last few
Ivan: years, if anybody hasn't noticed, okay? But hotels have been booming.
Ivan: I mean, talk about $375 to only fetch $100 million?
Ivan: at foreclosure and you know and i'm like i'm sorry this guy that said that he
Ivan: you know that bought the hotel i still don't understand how the he got the loan
Ivan: who gave him the money why would anybody,
Ivan: knowing the hyper inflated valuation of this willingly go and loan this much
Ivan: money on this property that they knew was,
Ivan: everybody, everybody knew the price was ridiculously sky high.
Ivan: So they wrote that off.
Ivan: But by the way, Donald Trump sued for his $28 million, okay? By the way.
Ivan: And he won a judgment because, of course, Trump sued because he always sued.
Sam: Okay?
Ivan: And he won a judgment for like $30 some odd million or whatever, whatnot.
Ivan: The bottom line is that, once again, another real estate deal that Donald is
Ivan: involved, where everything is murky.
Ivan: Pricing, you know, a deal where he buys it that everybody's saying it's impossible to make money.
Ivan: All of a sudden, he gets bailed out by somebody at a sky-high price.
Ivan: And then all of a sudden, the buyer defaults on it, the source of the money.
Ivan: Who the fuck understands this? I mean, it's and it was a significant amount of money.
Ivan: And if you remember, this happened during a period where Trump was under significant
Ivan: financial pressure because of the lawsuits, because of all this shit happening,
Ivan: because of judgments, because of all of this shit.
Ivan: He was under a lot of pressure. OK.
Ivan: And lo and behold, voila, a couple of hundred million dollars came out of the sky.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: It's it's always.
Sam: Ivan I am sure the authorities are aggressively investigating this as we speak uh-huh sure.
Ivan: Uh-huh. Nobody gives a shit about this.
Sam: Right. Yeah.
Ivan: But nobody gives a shit about this because there's so much other shit going
Ivan: on that this is like, well, whatever.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, we've talked about this general problem before,
Sam: but the speed of events, and this was true in Trump's first term.
Sam: It's even more so this term.
Sam: There is so much going on so constantly, so many new things every single week
Sam: that, you know, people did the comparisons to Watergate, right?
Sam: We've got like 10 new Watergates every week.
Ivan: Every week.
Sam: Every week. And, you know, some of them, you know, much, much more significant
Sam: than Watergate ever was.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Some, some of them about the same, some of them maybe a little bit less,
Sam: but like there's stuff every week that is of that scale or bigger.
Sam: And it's just overwhelming.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: There's so much of it. Like, like you mentioned this one, if you put a list
Sam: of potential Donald Trump scandals of recent times, maybe this is number 30
Sam: on the list. Maybe, maybe 40.
Ivan: You know, there's another one that came out today with this kind of murky money trail.
Ivan: And I think this also, by the way, I saw this and immediately I was like,
Ivan: this isn't for the reasons I think people think it is.
Ivan: The Dominion voting systems got sold. OK.
Sam: Yes. Yes.
Ivan: And by the way.
Sam: To some conservative group.
Ivan: Yeah. But the only reason this happened is because it was such a source of lawsuits
Ivan: and problems. And they were still suing and sent people that,
Ivan: how do you, how do you eliminate the problem?
Ivan: Buy them. That's it. Done.
Ivan: It's fucking crazy.
Ivan: And I guess the, you know, the buyer said that they want, oh,
Ivan: but the announcement is double better because, okay, not only does conservatives
Ivan: buy it, but they said that, I guess they're ending their technology and they
Ivan: want everybody to go back to paper, something like that.
Sam: Well, if you actually look nationwide at this point, it's in the high 90s in
Sam: terms of the percentage of people who use systems that are paperbacked anyway.
Ivan: Oh, they're paperbacked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Sam: Yeah, in terms of having a paper trail that's left and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And I forget exactly which technologies Dominion was, but yeah, whatever.
Sam: There are many, many concerns about elections and how elections are going to
Sam: work and how people are going to want to manipulate them in 2026 and beyond.
Sam: I think Dominion is also relatively low on that list.
Ivan: Yeah, no, but I think it was more about the lawsuits. I really do.
Ivan: I really think that that was like the main thing. How do I stop in the lawsuits?
Ivan: Hey, buy them out. No more lawsuits. There you go.
Ivan: Problem solved. Hey, how did Donald Trump stop, you know, his legal problems?
Ivan: Take over the Justice Department. Problem solved.
Ivan: Hey, yes, it works. It works.
Sam: So with that in mind do you want to transition from the hotel to any other issues we can transition I.
Ivan: Mentioned the Justice Department it was kind of like it was kind of like giving
Ivan: you the off ramp in that direction.
Sam: Well I figure we will let you we will let you control for the rest of this segment
Sam: go a little further and then we will take a break and then I will lightning
Sam: round everything that you have not picked by that well.
Ivan: I mean this whole thing like right now with the Justice Department and like
Ivan: well we got the Comey indictment and now we got Letitia.
Sam: James being indicted. Letitia James.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: I was in the process of mispronouncing her name when you said it first,
Sam: because I'm doing so well with that today.
Ivan: With a very flimsy, ridiculous—I mean, I read the fucking—it's stupidly—another
Ivan: ridiculous— It's another two-page.
Sam: Indictment without that many details.
Ivan: It is so flimsy. And the accusation, which is just—it's the same.
Ivan: It's an accusation that, I mean, nobody gets prosecuted for this.
Ivan: And by the way, here's a, well, it's starting with that, but what they're claiming,
Ivan: which is also facts that,
Ivan: terribly in dispute. The reason why a lot of people don't go into this is because,
Ivan: okay, you look at the paperwork and maybe- Describe.
Sam: What they actually.
Ivan: Said she did. Basically, it's
Ivan: the same thing they were trying to go after the lady in the Fed, okay?
Ivan: Which is that in the process of applying for a mortgage that they supposedly
Ivan: misstated that this house is a primary home and not an investment property.
Ivan: And therefore, by doing that, they got a favorable interest rate.
Sam: Wait, just real quick. The Fed one, the accusation is she said it was a primary
Sam: home when really it was a secondary home.
Sam: In this case, it's that she said it was a secondary home, but she never actually
Sam: used it as a secondary home. She just rented it out.
Ivan: Okay. So, yeah, it wasn't. Yeah. Okay. So it was a secondary home, but, you know, I mean.
Ivan: and supposedly over.
Sam: The 30 year lifetime of the loan or whatever this is what just under 20 000.
Ivan: They save 20 000 they would save 20 000 which by the way the loan doesn't have
Ivan: 20 years as far as i know anyway oh.
Sam: It's not a 30 year it's like.
Ivan: A 10 year 15 or something that okay i mean this was on 2020 so only like five
Ivan: years have elapsed so that would be over the life of the loan There are maybe fucking 25 years.
Ivan: So what we're talking here is not even that. We're talking about a couple of
Ivan: thousand bucks in interest.
Ivan: Maybe if, and by the way, here's a problem.
Ivan: This whole thing, the problem is that this accusation is supposedly trying to
Ivan: read the person's mind and their intention. Because you know what?
Ivan: It's not illegal to buy a house, declaring it as a second home because you think
Ivan: it might be a second home. And then you're changing your mind and deciding to rent it out.
Ivan: That's not illegal. And so unless they tell me that they've got some x-ray vision
Ivan: into our head to determine, you know, that.
Sam: I mean, I could do the same with my primary home, right?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: I could decide I don't want to live here anymore. I'm going to rent it.
Ivan: And the fact is not going to force you to refinance.
Sam: Right. So that was actually going to be my question. And, you know,
Sam: assuming that everything outlined is true, is this actually a crime?
Sam: Like, I know the numbers are small and this is selectively enforced.
Ivan: Is it a crime? Well...
Sam: Presumably the motivation has something to do with it, right?
Sam: You have to go in there with the intent of defrauding.
Ivan: Yes. By the way, even the law says that if it's just an omission, it's okay.
Ivan: So if you made a mistake...
Sam: Or if it's the scenario that you said. She intended to use it as a vacation.
Ivan: It's totally legal. This is about as stupid, you know...
Sam: Well this is another scenario and it's it's the same and.
Ivan: By the way according to what i heard about letitia james was apparently there
Ivan: was a there was some papers that did say that but apparently that she corrected
Ivan: them is what i what i read today.
Sam: Well this just this just like comey and involving the same players this was
Sam: another one where the person resigned because he said there was no evidence.
Sam: Actually, the initial reporting was he resigned because of Letitia James.
Sam: It only later came out that it was also Comey.
Sam: He resigned because they were pressuring him to indict in both these cases,
Sam: and he did his investigation and found no reason to indict.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: Like, he found...
Ivan: And once again, there's not... Lindsay Halligan couldn't find anybody in the
Ivan: office that wanted to sign this indictment either because nobody would put their
Ivan: name to this piece of shit, okay? And she wound up having to do it herself again.
Ivan: At least I will say this. This time it seemed like they learned to use some spell check.
Sam: Although, apparently, in the indictment, they misidentify where Letitia James lives.
Ivan: Oh, of course!
Sam: They got the name of the town right, but they said it was in New Jersey.
Ivan: Of course they did. Of course they you know, of course they did.
Ivan: I mean, this whole document is like, the counts, you know, it's five,
Ivan: it's five, well, four, four pages.
Ivan: So, yeah, two pages double-sided, yeah? Okay?
Sam: Right, right.
Ivan: Yeah?
Ivan: I mean, you couldn't even get that right.
Sam: Well, and this brings us back to, like, that these will probably get dismissed.
Sam: There's a good chance of it because there's also, by the way,
Sam: the legal talking heads who've been talking about both these cases.
Sam: What's her name again? Halligan and again.
Ivan: Lindsay Halligan.
Sam: Lindsay Halligan.
Ivan: Another one that, by the way, was picked. By the way, another one of her qualifications
Ivan: that I saw was that she was in some beauty pageant as well again.
Sam: Of course. But here's the thing. for both of them.
Sam: Apparently, the way she was put into this position did not follow the rules.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: She is not legally in this position.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: So they are likely to move to dismiss for at least two different reasons.
Sam: One is the only person who signed the indictment was not in a legal position to do so.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And two, vindictive and selective prosecution where the primary evidence is
Sam: a post that Donald Trump made on Truth Social.
Sam: Specifically saying to go after these two.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: And by the way, the third name in that post was Schiff, Senator Schiff from California.
Sam: So presumably the indictment against him is coming any day now.
Sam: And we'll have all of the same flaws.
Ivan: Yes. Yeah, great.
Sam: But here's the thing, and we talked about this when it happened to Comey.
Sam: I don't know if Donald Trump even cares. Like, even if this gets thrown out, he has made his point.
Sam: He has he has indicted his enemies. He has caused them to spend money on legal defense.
Sam: He has proven that he can he can direct the Justice Department to indict whoever
Sam: the hell he wants, regardless of the evidence.
Ivan: I mean, I mean, it's quite a pyrrhic victory, can I be honest?
Ivan: This victory is only for his own personal vindictiveness.
Sam: That's it. But Ivan, that's all he cares about. That's his whole life.
Ivan: What a fucked up way to live a life.
Sam: That and making sure the money keeps rolling in.
Ivan: Yeah. What a fucked up way to live a life.
Sam: Oh, and that you can hurt brown people wherever possible.
Ivan: Well, that's definitely the top of his list. As I also shared a story on the
Ivan: Slack about how basically, you know, Trump is, anybody that's black,
Ivan: they're like first on the list to get fired.
Sam: Surprise.
Ivan: I mean, that's not racist, is it?
Sam: Oh, of course not.
Ivan: Nah.
Sam: He's judging things purely on their merits.
Ivan: Purely on their merits, yes.
Sam: Purely on their merits. I'm obviously sarcastic here, in case anybody can't tell.
Ivan: If anybody can't tell, yes, our sarcasm, we're laying it really,
Ivan: really, really, really, really, really, really, really thick. Just make sure, okay?
Ivan: Oh, yes. Be ditto.
Sam: Look, that point being made about like, he'll indict anybody if you cross him,
Sam: has power even if these start getting dismissed because there's not that much to them.
Sam: Because one of these days he will find one that sticks. He will get the right
Sam: grand jury. He will get the right judge. He will get the right jury.
Ivan: Well, one of these days maybe he'll find a criminal if he really looks at it.
Sam: And right, yeah. I'm sure he can. There are plenty of criminals around that
Sam: are also enemies of Donald Trump. Right.
Ivan: I'm sure that maybe at some point they'll be right.
Sam: Remember what's his name? What's that guy who is defending the porn star and
Sam: is now in jail? Oh, Avenatti.
Ivan: Avenatti.
Sam: Avenatti. There you go. There's a good example.
Ivan: I figured that he would pardon him. He'd like it. After he figured out he was
Ivan: a scammer, he'd probably love him. Fucking give him a pardon.
Sam: Yeah. So, look, yes, he will undoubtedly find a real criminal at some point
Sam: as well, in which case, by all means, go after them.
Sam: But the thing is, even there, the selectivity is the important part of this.
Sam: Because a couple of people have done a quick perusal of mortgage documents for
Sam: people in Donald Trump's cabinet.
Ivan: Oh, they all have done the same or worse.
Sam: Well, they found at least three that have done the same or worse in terms of
Sam: declaring things as a primary residence where they didn't live and things like that.
Sam: And are they being gone after? No. Of course not.
Sam: And we also have the Justice Department deciding not to investigate any way
Sam: the guy. What's his name?
Sam: Hoden. Hoden. I'm so bad with names. The guy who took the $50,000 in cash.
Ivan: Oh, Holman. Tom Holman.
Sam: Tom Homan.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Now, I did see some legal analysis, by the way, that said, actually,
Sam: it may have been hard to make that case against him.
Ivan: Oh, I know. I mean, I read why, especially because he wasn't in the administration at the time.
Sam: Yeah, which apparently, by the way, that's a cool loophole that apparently with
Sam: our current laws and the current Supreme Court rulings that they've been made
Sam: weakening bribery statutes for the last couple of decades,
Sam: it may actually be perfectly legal to if you have been appointed to a government job,
Sam: but you are not in that job yet. And he wasn't even appointed yet.
Sam: He just anticipated that he was going to be. Right, right. which makes it even further out.
Sam: But if you, even if you were like the way it works, by the way,
Sam: like when people, when president elects announced their cabinet,
Sam: they can't actually appoint anybody until they're president,
Sam: but they announce it between the election and the inauguration so that Congress
Sam: can get a move on doing their hearings and stuff.
Sam: But the official nomination can't happen until you're actually president.
Sam: So in this whole middle zone where you have a fairly good idea that you're going
Sam: to be a high government official but you aren't actually one yet. So at that point.
Ivan: You could just open the cash register and just grab every fucking dime you can.
Sam: Absolutely. You could take all the money you want because the bribery statutes
Sam: only apply to people who are actually in office.
Ivan: Motherfucking hell.
Sam: Even though they have him on camera accepting a bag of cash,
Sam: $50,000 of cash, which apparently he has not had to give back either.
Sam: He's got, he got to keep that money, even though it was part of a sting operation
Sam: where the government just handed him the 50 grand.
Sam: And yeah. So, but anyways, they were continuing the investigation after Donald
Sam: Trump took office, presumably to see if you got the other end of the quid pro quo,
Sam: because then maybe you could still make some sort of case that even though he got the money before,
Sam: you know, he did the action after and maybe you could still make that case.
Sam: Maybe you could do something if he didn't declare it properly on his taxes.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, although someone.
Ivan: Yeah, my question is, did he really filed a 50, that would be the one where
Ivan: he could get caught. If he didn't declare it.
Sam: Also, I heard a couple of legal experts where they were asking the question,
Sam: okay, from a legal tax point of view,
Sam: Is the bribe income considered income at the time you receive it or only once
Sam: you do the action that you were being paid for?
Ivan: No, it's at the time you receive it. I don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Sam: Because apparently this is uncharted legal territory because there are certain
Sam: things where you can defer the income if it was paid for a specific act.
Ivan: Yes, if for some reason it required you to follow through.
Ivan: So basically, it's kind of like in a contract where if you give money and you're
Ivan: supposed to deliver on something, but you didn't deliver on it,
Ivan: then it's not considered. But here's the thing.
Sam: Because it's not income yet, you would have to give it back.
Ivan: If you had to give it back. But here's the thing. He hasn't given the money back.
Ivan: So unless there was a contract signed that said, hey, the money needs to be
Ivan: refundable or something.
Ivan: Hey, this is only if you pull through. But that's it. It's one of these things
Ivan: about contracts, whether something is refundable or not refundable.
Sam: It doesn't matter in the end because they dropped the investigation.
Sam: So even if he didn't declare it on his taxes or he declared it in the wrong
Sam: year or whatever, nobody's looking.
Sam: And basically, also just to put an even bigger point on it, they shut down the
Sam: public corruption office at the DOJ.
Ivan: Completely? There's nobody?
Sam: I think if they didn't shut it down completely, they reduced it by like 90%
Sam: in terms of the staffing or something.
Sam: Like, they basically outright declared, this is not something that we're going
Sam: to spend any time on. So if you want to be corrupt in your public office, go for it.
Ivan: Listen, they said that they weren't going to investigate like...
Ivan: Companies like us, multinationals, where I work at, for FCPA violations.
Ivan: I mean, you know, I heard a discussion, some people talking about this,
Ivan: not at my company, but people talking about, well, what the fuck?
Ivan: I mean, let's just go bribe people. What the hell? Get business.
Ivan: I mean, what the hell? Nobody's going to do anything. now the one problem with
Ivan: this by the way is that you're.
Sam: You're you're gambling that they won't change their minds.
Ivan: Or or no or you're
Ivan: also gambling i mean i don't think you know what you know that what these guys
Ivan: stay in power because statute of limitations of that isn't that short um so
Ivan: if the next administration says well we're going back you know and and investigating
Ivan: this shit that wasn't investigated,
Ivan: then you're fucked. So that's a big gamble.
Sam: Well, and that applies to a few other things where Donald Trump has basically
Sam: said, we're not going to enforce the law on XYZ.
Sam: Yeah, the next administration could change their mind. But I think it's an even
Sam: bigger risk that this administration could change their mind at any random moment.
Ivan: That's true.
Sam: Because the law is the law and they could change their mind selectively.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Oh, you pissed us off? okay, we will enforce it against you.
Ivan: We will enforce it against you.
Sam: Right. That's the whole point of this. And, you know, one of the things that I think we have to,
Sam: look, it's just the reality now, is that the DOJ is now the enforcement arm
Sam: for Donald Trump's will.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You know, it has nothing to do with what the law actually says is legal or illegal.
Sam: it is about, are you a target? Did you piss him off?
Sam: And he will, if, if he likes you, he will wave them away from whatever bad thing you are doing.
Sam: And if he doesn't like you, he will sick them after you for anything they can find real or imagined.
Sam: And if they find something real, you're screwed because you know,
Sam: they'll be able to actually convict you on it.
Sam: If they can't find anything real, well, they'll still indict you.
Sam: Right. And they'll still make...
Ivan: They'll make their life miserable anyway.
Sam: They will make your life miserable, and if you don't have deep pockets,
Sam: they'll bankrupt you trying to defend yourself.
Ivan: Yep.
Sam: Yep.
Ivan: Wow. Such a... Okay.
Sam: Shall we take another break and then lightning round through the rest of the stuff?
Ivan: Let's break it up.
Sam: Okay. Okay, here comes a breaky break. Enjoy.
Ivan: Breaky.
Break: Alexmzilla.com by alex and
Break: dad gaming videos and more
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Sam: Okay, let's lighten around this other stuff.
Sam: Let me start off with just, I've had this iPhone 17 Pro Max for a few weeks now.
Ivan: Oh!
Sam: And I will just say, compared to the 12, I had lots of upgrades,
Sam: lots of advantages, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But by far the biggest one, the battery life on this thing is like,
Sam: compared to my degraded five-year-old battery that I know I could have replaced.
Sam: They have programs to do that, but I hadn't.
Sam: You know, this thing, like I am ending the day.
Sam: Like I'm looking at this thing right now. And admittedly, I like,
Sam: you know, it charges while I'm driving back and forth from work as well.
Sam: But we're near the end of the day. I'm at 73%.
Ivan: Nice. Nice.
Sam: You know, now on a weekend where I'm heavily using it the whole time and I'm
Sam: not like doing non-phone stuff at work and stuff, I can be down.
Sam: I've hit 20% a couple of times. Like when I was off in Toronto last week and
Sam: I was doing stuff and I, you know, whatever, I did get down to 20% a couple of times, but.
Sam: I, it's, it's, it lasts a long time.
Ivan: Well, good.
Sam: And I, and I enjoy that and I plug it in at night, get to a hundred percent, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But you know, I'm coming from a world that where I carried around a spare battery
Sam: with me because I'd always be low by the end of the day, you know,
Sam: or I would make, make sure to plug in every time I could, you know.
Ivan: I just today, I had, a couple of days ago, my wife's first friend in Columbia,
Ivan: she had bought an iPhone 13 that she had sent me money to go get her at the
Ivan: Apple store a few years back, whenever that phone was out.
Ivan: Unfortunately, she was out and about with her baby in a stroller.
Ivan: She had put the phone like in her purse.
Ivan: Somebody went and swiped it from her purse, stole the phone.
Ivan: okay just a couple of days ago good and
Ivan: it was an iphone 13 not a pro now my wife
Ivan: i'd gotten her an iphone 16 last year and you
Ivan: know me i keep the phones in good shape i had her own iphone 13 pro which i
Ivan: always keep like one of those phones as a spare to give away okay i've given
Ivan: away not i've given away a whole bunch of these phones like that and shit i
Ivan: mean what's old me well swipe the phone And I'm like,
Ivan: look, now with the exchange rates and shit to get a new phone in Columbia,
Ivan: the prices and local purchasing power, it's quite onerous.
Ivan: OK, so I was like, you know, she had had some issues with, you know,
Ivan: she's not with the dad of the of the of the baby and the guy is not paying his child support and shit.
Ivan: So so, you know, all of a sudden she swiped out of her phone.
Ivan: So whatever. And I was like, look, I checked the phone and I realized the battery
Ivan: life was was low. So, but I went, you know, I did the appointment yesterday. I went my lunch.
Ivan: I went and I made, I made an appointment at the Apple store, like at 1220.
Ivan: I drove over there to the mall.
Ivan: I dropped off the phone real quick. I went at lunch.
Ivan: And by the time I got back from lunch, they had put a brand new battery on it
Ivan: for $99, and I shipped it off to Columbia now so they can get a new phone.
Ivan: So the battery swap, I'll tell you what, 99, listen, 99 bucks.
Ivan: I mean, I did it during my lunch. It's not like it took me out of the day or whatever.
Ivan: I just went over there, dropped it off, said, hey, no problem. Come back in an hour.
Sam: Here we go. I mean, in my case, if the battery had gotten really bad like a
Sam: year and a half ago, I probably would have bothered with that.
Sam: But it didn't start getting really bad until I knew I was only a few months
Sam: away from replacing it. So I didn't bother.
Sam: But this reminds me, I know we're lightning around two other things,
Sam: but I have one more phone-related story.
Ivan: Ah, more phones.
Sam: This is my wife's phone.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: While I was in Toronto, I had finished doing stuff with my sister,
Sam: her husband, and baby, and I was back at the Airbnb, and I was actually getting
Sam: ready to edit last week's podcast.
Sam: When I get a text from a friend of my wife.
Ivan: Oh, boy.
Sam: Hi, Sam. So-and-so here. Brandy wants me to let you know that she has misplaced her phone.
Sam: We are having dinner with blah, blah, blah, somebody else.
Sam: she will do another sweep of the
Sam: places she has been and if she can't find it she
Sam: will stop at the apple store on the way home okay so
Sam: you know obviously first thought is i've misplaced my phone fine fine so my
Sam: immediate response is i had already noticed that i had not gotten i had checked
Sam: find my a couple times for her and and the last location was two hours old so
Sam: i'm like okay She let her battery dial.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay. And, but of course, her first thought, I misplaced my phone. I'll buy a new one.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: That's immediate first thought.
Ivan: Makes sense.
Sam: You know? Okay. Okay. But I did, the last known location was where she was.
Sam: She comes, she borrows her friend's phone and is talking to me.
Sam: She's like, I had turned it off while I was at this event.
Sam: She was at like a memorial service or something. So she turned it off.
Sam: and she's like i went to put my coat
Sam: in the car and then went back in i don't remember
Sam: using it since then i'll check the car third time and i'm like did you turn
Sam: it off because the battery was low or you didn't want to interrupt the service
Sam: because you know you could just turn on silent yeah that's what i was saying
Sam: yeah whatever she's like i didn't find it inside no one cleaning up has seen it.
Sam: She's like, I had a piece of cake and I had that balanced on top of my phone
Sam: and then a guy came by collecting trash and I think there's a chance I put it
Sam: in the trash with my plate.
Ivan: You guys are, I will say that the one thing about you guys is that you guys are really, how do I say?
Ivan: It's, it's, you guys are in sync in doing this kind of buffoonery. Yes.
Sam: And I'm like, you know, that was before the thing with the coat.
Sam: I haven't looked, it hasn't had a location in the last two hours.
Sam: Did you search the trash?
Sam: and then i'm like i'm gonna go tell find my to make it deep even though it hasn't
Sam: had a location in like two hours right i.
Ivan: Think that yeah because it's supposed to be able to if it's still got battery and you lost it even if.
Sam: You're trying to like turn it off my assumption was that it hadn't located in
Sam: two hours because the battery was dead because she lets her battery die all the time okay,
Sam: but oh and she says i couldn't find it in the trash bag but there are about
Sam: a dozen in the dumpster that she
Sam: couldn't reach so she was searching the trash for the phone okay oh man,
Sam: and then i made a beep and i'm like it says it's playing the sound and has battery okay so,
Sam: then she's like okay but i'm in the restaurant with the people i was with so
Sam: i'll let you know when i'm back out and can you add a lost phone note and i
Sam: i said yes i'll add the lost phone note But I'm like,
Sam: but it's locating in the parking lot.
Sam: So it's either in the car and you couldn't find it or on the floor or under
Sam: the car or it's on the ground. And I'm like, if it's on the ground,
Sam: you should you should step out of the restaurant.
Ivan: Yeah, I get it. Right.
Sam: Before someone runs over it or steals it or whatever. OK.
Sam: And she replied to that. And I had said that I'd put the the lost phone notice on it.
Sam: And she says, OK, text if you get a response.
Sam: Now, I thought when she said okay, she was saying okay till she'll run out to the parking lot.
Sam: So I immediately say, okay, I will beep it over and over again for five minutes.
Sam: Now, actually, she was saying okay to thank you for putting the lost notice on it.
Sam: She was not leaving the dinner she was at.
Sam: So I sit there beeping it for five minutes. She's not even out.
Sam: At the end of it, I'm like, okay, I beeped it for five minutes. Should I do it again?
Sam: And she's like, no, I'm not out. I'm not out of the parking lot.
Sam: I'll tell you what I am. I'm like, aren't you at all urgent about this?
Sam: I recognize you're at a restaurant, but just step out for a minute.
Ivan: Apparently the answer is no at this point. Okay.
Sam: The restaurant was like right across the street from the parking lot.
Sam: It wasn't like it was a half mile away that they'd walk to or something.
Sam: Anyway, when she finally got out, she said she'd looked at the car twice already.
Sam: She was going to go look again.
Sam: And when she gets out, she'll, she'll let me know when she's at the car.
Sam: She gets back out to the car.
Sam: And anyway, I, I, I, she says, we're now looking for it. I start to make the thing beep again.
Sam: And then she sends me a picture. The phone was on top of the car.
Sam: She'd looked in the car. She had not looked on top of the car.
Sam: And she texted me. I would never have looked there.
Ivan: Never.
Sam: Never in a million years I would not have looked there. I would have driven
Sam: away to go buy my new phone with the phone on top.
Ivan: So, you know, I got the story of the guy over here who's my boss's boss's boss,
Ivan: who one time he had this Audi.
Ivan: He had a little Audi TT, Bluetooth, okay, on it.
Ivan: And I don't know where he stopped, but he somehow absentmindedly put the phone on top of his car.
Ivan: And then he got in the car and left. and then all
Ivan: of a sudden on the display on the screen bluetooth link
Ivan: disconnected and he's like bluetooth link disconnected
Ivan: it's like why the hell would the bluetooth link be disconnected i'm like then
Ivan: he realizes oh shit i left it i put it on the top of the car he turned around
Ivan: went back well he got he got he got he found the phone however it was it you
Ivan: know it would work over Bluetooth.
Sam: Well, if you, if you, long time listeners will remember,
Sam: Alex had an iPad that I left on top of the car and I was driving him somewhere
Sam: and I saw it fly off the roof of the car and,
Sam: behind me on the road but where i was i couldn't pull over immediately it took
Sam: me like you know five minutes to find a place to turn around get back there
Sam: run and walk and i found it had been run over like a dozen times by other cars
Sam: by the time i found it but it still turned on,
Sam: and we were able to back it up there you go and then alex ended up really upset
Sam: because i did I did, while he was at school,
Sam: go get it replaced at the Apple store under AppleCare, and he wished we'd kept the broken one.
Sam: But, you know, oh well. Right?
Ivan: Right call. You did the right call. Otherwise, his fingers may have been like quite a lot of shards.
Sam: He's indicating that I've got part of the story wrong. oh
Sam: yes he's indicating that there was a major problem that
Sam: there was one game they they have
Sam: since fixed this i think but at the time terraria
Sam: kept its save files local only unless you explicitly uploaded them they were
Sam: not included in the the backups for the device because they didn't consider
Sam: the game file save files important enough and they didn't bother backing them up And so to this day,
Sam: he's upset that we lost those game save files. Anyway, sorry.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: Continuing with the lightning round.
Ivan: Continuing with the lightning round. What's next?
Sam: Sora 2 came out this week.
Ivan: Ah, yes.
Sam: Which is an AI video clip generation thing. And there have been a number of
Sam: different versions of this.
Sam: But Sora 2, once again, significantly upped the level of realism.
Sam: They also offered an ability where you can quickly like scan your own face and
Sam: include yourself in the movies that you generate as a character.
Sam: And you can choose to let other people use your face in their movies as well.
Sam: So there are apparently three options. Only I can use it.
Sam: Only me and my friends can use it. Or anybody can use it. But they also,
Sam: I forget if they explicitly did it or whether people just figured out how to do it.
Sam: But historical figures and copyrighted characters all over the place.
Sam: They actually had to back off and decide and say, we're going to enforce against
Sam: the copyrighted characters.
Sam: I think they've still got some issues with the historical. Like there were a
Sam: ton of videos going on about like Mr.
Sam: Rogers in action movie scenes.
Sam: Mr.
Ivan: Rogers. Mr. Rogers made a new Liam Neeson.
Sam: Yes, exactly.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Well, there was one that was like a buddy cop film with Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross.
Ivan: The painter guy. Yeah.
Sam: Where Bob Ross was telling Mr. Rogers, some people are not your friends.
Ivan: And then they pull out their guns.
Sam: You know, you know, there, there were like lots of ones with like the Martin
Sam: Luther King doing, you know, I have a dream that someday there won't be a line
Sam: at Chick-fil-A, you know, all kinds of other stuff.
Sam: Some of, some of which were actually kind of cute. Some
Sam: of which were disturbing there were you know various tech journalists like i
Sam: justine put hers out there for anybody to use and of course there are lots of
Sam: really creative things that they made i justine do and there are some also rather
Sam: tasteless things they made i justine do in some of these movies oh.
Ivan: Yeah i know.
Sam: And the the point of this though oh gosh is these are video and they are voice They do the whole thing.
Sam: This is yet another level of realism. If you look carefully,
Sam: you can, of course, tell these are AI.
Sam: And, of course, the elephant jumping out of an airplane effect is still in play,
Sam: where if you see something that is just clearly unreasonable,
Sam: you should be suspicious.
Sam: But these are now at the point where, A, you have to pay attention to know they're not real.
Ivan: This is what— Like.
Sam: In many cases.
Ivan: I'll tell you this. I think, like, short little things or whatever,
Ivan: but I've started noticing that the more I see these, the more quickly I realize they're fake.
Sam: Oh, absolutely.
Ivan: Absolutely.
Sam: But here's the thing, though. there i already like i see so many things shared
Sam: by on facebook of people thinking that these things clearly have been fooled.
Ivan: Okay we do have okay look let's be clear i don't know why i have to reiterate
Ivan: this but if anything that has shown us over the last decade in is indicative
Ivan: of the level of intelligence of the average person on the internet is basically like that of a,
Ivan: you know, of a P, okay, you know, I don't know what to tell you.
Ivan: But, yeah, not like, I'm sorry, they all believe that, what,
Ivan: we've got 9-11 was fake, that Sandy Hook was fake, that, I mean,
Ivan: I don't know, you want me to go through the list?
Ivan: Well, of course they believe this immediately without thinking one second.
Sam: And look, again, the biggest thing is still, like, use a little bit of common
Sam: sense in terms of, like, okay, did Martin Luther King really endorse Chick-fil-A
Sam: while he was giving his speech?
Ivan: Of course.
Sam: His famous I Have a Dream speech?
Ivan: I mean, I don't understand. You know, but— I don't understand.
Ivan: I mean, I think that that was—his concerns were civil rights and chicken.
Sam: Yes. but but the other thing is
Sam: look there are other things you can tell
Sam: like if you look carefully at the background things usually look a
Sam: little weird you know and if you
Sam: pay close attention and especially if you zoom in there's still all kinds of
Sam: artifacts you can you can pay attention to but the other thing is these are
Sam: just so quick and easy to make sora apparently i did download it You have to
Sam: have an invite still, though.
Sam: I don't have an invite. If anybody has an invite to Sora, feel free to send it to me.
Sam: But it's like they built it as a mini social media app, apparently.
Sam: So the feed there is just all of this AI generated slop that people are sharing with each other.
Sam: And they are making it elsewhere. Like, I have...
Sam: the percentage of this
Sam: stuff that i see as i scroll through social media
Sam: of all types is increasing rapidly but with especially with these the sora movie
Sam: clip things and they're only a few seconds long which is another tell right
Sam: like the ai still can't sustain like a three minute clip of this stuff it's
Sam: so five to ten seconds processing.
Ivan: Intensive like right now so.
Sam: Yeah right and and also people pointed
Sam: out they're probably still losing tons of money on this it's like five dollars
Sam: per clip and people are making like thousands of these things but you know it's
Sam: just a percentage of my feeds that are this stuff is increasing dramatically
Sam: and look i'll be honest some of it's amusing some of it's funny some of it's cute yeah.
Ivan: Yeah yeah i i it is By the way, it's good and it's getting better.
Ivan: And I, you know, look, my whole take on this and a whole bunch of people talking
Ivan: about the AI bubble and a whole bunch of stuff or whatever.
Ivan: And I'm like, look, as one that has now, as we have been deploying AI at our
Ivan: company and they have done a lot of work and doing some good stuff for our use.
Ivan: And I have been using it. I have found that my productivity with this shit is
Ivan: so much higher using this stuff that I am like when people are talking about the hype,
Ivan: I'm like, you know, these people sound like the right now, like the people that
Ivan: said that computers were a fad and the personal computers were a fad in the 1990s.
Ivan: I mean, look, my whole thing, you know, I've said a lot of criticism about it,
Ivan: has been about application and use, how certain people go out there.
Sam: Using it for the right thing and understanding the limitations.
Ivan: And understanding what you know and being able to check, because a lot of stuff
Ivan: that I generate, I have to check and make sure that it's correct and making
Ivan: sure that I'm using it for the right stuff, okay, that I know it's trained on
Ivan: and not using it for other stuff that, you know, for example, like we've shown math.
Ivan: fucking ma'am the ai is really.
Sam: Mass deficient so i now i shared on
Sam: the curmudgeons corner slack right before we started recording a screenshot
Sam: that somebody apparently took of the new integration with copilot into excel
Sam: where they had you just three numbers one two three and three cells and And in the cell below,
Sam: they said, you know, formula equals co-pilot, sum the numbers above.
Sam: And it said 15 for one plus two plus three.
Ivan: Makes sense.
Sam: Sounds good. The person who posted this, of course, now, of course, do I know if this is real?
Sam: Or was this a fake Excel screenshot? I don't know.
Sam: But they commented, this will crash the global economy.
Ivan: Well, what do we keep talking about?
Sam: Excel is used in so many places, you know.
Ivan: But they have actually, Microsoft has said that using Copilot in Excel,
Ivan: that the accuracy is actually quite low.
Ivan: They actually said this.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Okay. You know, so my thing is that I'm like, look, if I'm somebody that's using
Ivan: Excel, will you tell me, well, will we only be about 50% accuracy?
Ivan: I'm doing Excel. Listen, 50% accuracy in Excel is not acceptable, okay?
Ivan: I mean, hell, you know, I'm sorry, but I said, like, for a driving car or whatever,
Ivan: you were talking about how much, my criteria for how accurate I want my Excel
Ivan: versus even my car driving is higher.
Ivan: For Excel, I demand a lot more. I'm doing fucking financial calculations that
Ivan: sometimes are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of fucking dollars.
Ivan: You know, I'm sorry. I cannot have such a wide margin of error.
Sam: You know, it tried. Isn't that good enough?
Ivan: Nope. Not for Excel.
Sam: But anyway.
Ivan: Now, for video, dumb video clips, you know, showing like me flying like a, you know, like a bird.
Ivan: Sure. Or I did this. I did these pictures of me using AI to try to show me driving an F1 car.
Ivan: I looked as the fattest F1 driver in history. Okay.
Ivan: I don't know why the AI decided to make me even fatter than I am.
Ivan: Also, it attached a rearview mirror on my arm for whatever reason.
Sam: Where else would you keep your rearview mirror?
Ivan: I mean, yeah. But, you know, other than that, it looked funny.
Ivan: But for funny effect, it was good.
Sam: Well, but the thing is, I think we are definitely in the zone,
Sam: where there's so many people uncritically accepting this stuff or just don't
Sam: know to even think about it.
Ivan: Well, the tariffs.
Sam: We are, the danger is increasing dramatically as this stuff improves.
Ivan: But I think that's, again, that's what's going to separate people.
Ivan: You know, they're talking about people now that are AI proficient, right?
Ivan: In order to do their jobs. I think, once again, That's going to be what separates
Ivan: people that know what the fuck they're doing or people that wind up bankrupting
Ivan: their company because they use the wrong fucking model to calculate, say,
Ivan: a car loan, for example, that basically all of a sudden winds up losing money
Ivan: on every damn car deal going out.
Sam: Well, but I'm talking more tying it back to the political stuff, right?
Ivan: Oh, well, but fuck. Look, look, but come on. We've been living with this.
Ivan: Listen, did we really need it?
Sam: I'm just saying it's getting worse. Not that it hasn't existed for a long time.
Ivan: Well, it's, I mean, I don't know how much worse it is because look,
Ivan: we already had armies of people generating junk, fake content constantly pumped
Ivan: out every day with armies of like, you know,
Ivan: using robotic, you know, RPA processes and bots and programs and just, you know,
Ivan: creating all these fucking bots all over the place, just pushing out the shit all the fucking time.
Ivan: So, I don't know. I mean, now...
Sam: The most recent example being that whole Cracker Barrel thing from a few weeks
Sam: ago turns out to be entirely driven by bots.
Ivan: Exactly. It was totally, you know, fake. Yes. I mean, I...
Sam: Well, it was fake until it was real because the fake activity got some people
Sam: actually caring about it.
Ivan: Got people actually riled up for real. Yes.
Sam: Yes. Which is the point of it, which is why they do it. And all I'm saying is
Sam: the amount of cost and effort to do that is plummeting, you know?
Ivan: I don't know about, I don't know. Listen.
Ivan: Right now, it's really not plummeting because the compute capacity is still
Ivan: relatively inexpensive.
Sam: But the thing is, these companies are giving it away for free even if they're paying for it.
Ivan: Well, look, again, this goes back to what the fuck happened 20 years ago.
Ivan: Let me tell you something, okay? This free shit is going to end pretty quickly.
Ivan: I've got to tell you this right now because this is the fucking thing I talked
Ivan: about the internet or whatever 30 years ago.
Ivan: I'm going to say, oh, no, no, but it's all free. It's all free.
Ivan: Let me tell you something. This free shit is going to end pretty fucking soon.
Ivan: Somebody's got to pay the bills. So somebody's going to have to fucking pay
Ivan: for it. There's got to be a way to make fucking money.
Sam: And the typical, the pattern that has happened industry after industry after
Sam: industry that we've talked about before on this show is that the first wave
Sam: who's jumping into this is not typically the one who actually ends up getting the money.
Sam: Like a lot of the first wave ends up failing utterly and the second wave succeeds.
Ivan: Well, it depends.
Sam: There are always a few survivors from the first wave.
Ivan: Look at streaming. Okay. For example. Look at streaming, right?
Ivan: You know, because everybody thought it was free. You could watch all these programs,
Ivan: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Reality is that the first one that really jumped into this was Netflix, you know?
Sam: Well, they weren't the first first, but yes, they were the first to make it popular.
Ivan: Well, yes, but that's what I'm saying. They're the first one that really people
Ivan: used, okay, as a service.
Ivan: And, I mean, you know, they were a pioneer in it and the way that they marketed
Ivan: it, the way that had the programs held, man.
Ivan: I mean, and look where they are. I mean, it's still, you know,
Ivan: and at first it was super cheap.
Ivan: Now we're talking about how everybody's having to pay for everything, you know.
Ivan: I think we've had a lot of, I think like everything, of course,
Ivan: you know, yeah, some of the people right now, early, maybe later,
Ivan: are not going to be doing as well and whatnot.
Ivan: But my whole thing is that at some point, listen, somebody's going to have to
Ivan: make fucking money on this damn shit.
Sam: Well, yeah, no, absolutely. My point was just it might the people who end up
Sam: making the most money and may like transform the world may not be the sec may
Sam: not exist yet. It may be the second round of companies after the first round makes all the mistakes.
Ivan: But one thing is that right now the- And builds out the infrastructure that
Ivan: the other ones can build on. The adoption rate right now of this across the
Ivan: board is so high that people, listen, people are addicted to this shit, okay?
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: They're going to spend money because, I mean, you want to take it away. They're addicted.
Sam: Listen, like I said the other day- I am paying several, I am paying Anthropic.
Sam: I am paying OpenAI right now.
Sam: I'm paying whoever owns Cursor.
Sam: I'm already paying several of these companies to use their products.
Ivan: Look, like there was a guy, I can't remember why the hell he blurted this out
Ivan: to me like a few months ago that I said this, that also just walked up to me
Ivan: and said, I don't know how I can't write, how anybody writes an email anymore without using AI.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Just blurted it out. That's the kind of dependence that we're talking about, okay?
Sam: Oh, yeah. And that's what they're counting on, right?
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, is that you give it away for free, you get people addicted,
Sam: and then you ramp up the price. Yeah.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: It's the typical, I mean, this has been a pattern in many industries over the years.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: This is no different. It's a well-known technique.
Ivan: And it is so different.
Sam: Anyway, I'm just saying, trouble. Lots of trouble ahead.
Ivan: Fucking, come on. Listen, we have trouble. We've got to.
Sam: We've always got trouble. We've got trouble in River City. Yeah.
Ivan: We got a four alarm fire going off every day right now, for God's sakes.
Ivan: And people are like right now so numb that they're like, what,
Ivan: what, Trump, what, Trump, he what?
Ivan: He's going to Walter Reed.
Sam: Yeah, let's do that. That's on the list too. I had a couple down,
Sam: but let's jump to Walter Reed.
Ivan: I don't know.
Sam: Trump is having an annual checkup for the second time in six months.
Ivan: So
Ivan: I'm sure that's not that I'm sure it's fine nothing he loves doctors he just
Ivan: likes going to Walter Reed it's the fun little trip over there you know.
Sam: It's where my dad was born.
Ivan: No shit my.
Sam: Dad was born at Walter Reed.
Ivan: Oh look at that okay there you go but it's a fun tidbit but look We were talking
Ivan: about this. Something's wrong.
Ivan: I mean, his health is deteriorating.
Ivan: Seriously. I mean, I don't know. And I mean, I don't know if we're talking about
Ivan: 90 to 30, 90 to 80, what exactly the degree is.
Ivan: But look, he has, there is something wrong.
Ivan: It's getting worse. He has been masking this stuff.
Ivan: He had been disappearing. all of a sudden, exactly like you just said,
Ivan: a second annual physical within six months, something's wrong, okay?
Ivan: And I hope whatever it is, it moves faster.
Sam: Yes, you're eager to hurry up on to J.D. Vance.
Ivan: I mean, I gotta be honest, I like my chances against J.D. Vance a lot more.
Ivan: I'm perfectly fine trying to take on the couch fucker.
Ivan: I think he is a much easier target.
Sam: Right. Anyway, yeah, he's going to Walter Reed.
Sam: We'll see. Or we won't see because they won't tell. They will announce that
Sam: he is, once again, the fittest male specimen that has ever been seen.
Ivan: Ever! Ever!
Sam: Ever! Ever been seen.
Ivan: More, more, more potent than ever!
Sam: Exactly. That's Donald for you. Anyway, yeah, so he's going to Walter Reed.
Sam: Okay, but while he is at Walter Reed, he's undoubtedly—actually,
Sam: if I remember right, the Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced probably
Sam: before we get this show out.
Sam: It's due to be announced within the next 24 hours, and it's got to be Donald
Sam: Trump because of the new Gaza peace deal, right?
Ivan: Right. Of course, he's going to win.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Apparently, that's not the case. Apparently, they already know that he's not
Ivan: going to win, and the regions are kind of, like, gearing up for Trump's tantrum
Ivan: over the fact that he didn't get his little prize.
Sam: Now, having said that, though, as we record this, it does look like at least
Sam: the first stage of this thing in Gaza is going to happen.
Ivan: Right, but that's where we're at. We're at the first fucking stage.
Ivan: And by the way, I don't give a shit, even if this thing works.
Ivan: He allowed the complete destruction of Gaza under his watch, okay?
Ivan: He stood not in the way of them. So now all of a sudden— Ivan.
Sam: Ivan, Ivan, you've got to stop.
Ivan: It was Biden.
Sam: It was Biden's fault.
Ivan: It was Biden, yeah.
Sam: It was all Biden's fault.
Ivan: He did nothing. Right. And, you know, Mr.
Ivan: I'm just shooting people at sea because, you know, I'm good at doesn't get a
Ivan: fucking peace price for nothing. Stupid piece of shit.
Sam: Now, what do you think of the thing in Gaza, though? Like, so the initial deal
Sam: that looks like it may be happening is releasing the rest of my breath.
Ivan: That this will, this will last too long.
Sam: Yeah. My, my thought is I'm, I'm honestly surprised it's gotten as far as it
Sam: has, but it looks fairly possible.
Sam: And you guys listening will know better than we do as we're recording on Thursday
Sam: night, us time. But it looks fairly possible that the last 20 or so remaining
Sam: hostages that are still alive may be handed back to Israel this weekend.
Sam: And Israel has agreed to...
Sam: They withdraw from the major cities, not withdraw from Gaza,
Sam: but withdraw from the major cities in Gaza and stop the bombing of Gaza as part
Sam: of this phase one part of the deal.
Sam: They had their vote of their cabinet a few hours ago and they approved it,
Sam: which some people were wondering if there might be hardliners that held out, but they didn't.
Sam: So it looks like at least this first stage is happening. The remaining stages
Sam: are tougher because they involve things like who will run Gaza afterwards?
Sam: Does Hamas get any representation whatsoever? Israelis say no. Hamas says yes.
Sam: how exactly will disarmament work uh how how far with the will the israelis
Sam: withdraw will will the palestinian authority be involved in any way will there
Sam: be peacekeepers from other countries there are all kinds of open issues that so yeah.
Ivan: I know this is like very early so who the hell knows okay yeah.
Sam: So like you know so i i feel like again i'm surprised they got as far as they did.
Sam: I will be pleasantly surprised if they get through this weekend and actually
Sam: do the things they say this will happen this weekend.
Sam: But I will be utterly shocked still if these later phases actually happen where
Sam: the harder questions have been pushed off towards, you know, so we shall see. Okay.
Ivan: I'll bring up another thing. Okay.
Sam: Bring up another thing. We all got like a couple more.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, we just set $20 billion on fire.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: This bailout that we did of Argentina, I'm speechless right now what the fuck we did.
Ivan: We went and we basically bought, we took $20 billion U.S.
Ivan: dollars from our treasury, and I've never heard this being done like in this
Ivan: fashion, and just bought $20 billion of Argentine pesos.
Ivan: Now, any of you that you've heard me talk about the Argentine peso in this program,
Ivan: okay, it is one of the most devalued currencies that basically loses the values
Ivan: faster than anything, okay?
Ivan: Look, the last time I was doing shipments out of Argentina, when I was like
Ivan: doing mostly importing into Argentina, the exchange rate was something like about 50, 60 to one.
Ivan: That was five years ago. Right now is 1500.
Ivan: That's in five years. Okay. The Argentine peso does not hold value,
Ivan: which is literally just set $20 billion US dollars on fire.
Sam: Well, but again, are you properly taking into account the corruption?
Ivan: Am I properly taking it into account?
Sam: Because now isn't a significant portion of this, the reason for potentially
Sam: doing this, that a bunch of Donald Trump's friends have investments in Argentina
Sam: that they want to prop up?
Ivan: Here is, well, this has to do with the fact that a whole bunch of Scott Bessette's
Ivan: friends were directly, okay?
Ivan: I had bought up a whole bunch of distressed Argentine bonds.
Ivan: And they had been looking to get paid.
Ivan: And the bonds had dropped in value substantially.
Ivan: And one way to prop up the value of those bonds is by basically giving $20 billion
Ivan: to the Argentine treasury so they could have the money.
Sam: There you go. So you're not setting it on fire. You are indirectly giving it to your friends.
Ivan: Okay. That's another way to look at it. Yes. Well, not my friends.
Sam: Well, not your friends, but I guarantee the administration is not looking at
Sam: this in terms of how will my investment in the pesos do.
Ivan: By the way, this thing about bondholders going and pushing action on distressed
Ivan: bonds so the administration does something that is favorable to them,
Ivan: isn't just they're doing the same thing in Puerto Rico.
Ivan: In Puerto Rico, he fired the fiscal control board, which, by the way,
Ivan: they actually sued and a number of them got their seats back.
Ivan: But the main reason he did that is because there's a whole bunch of other bondholders
Ivan: that are chubby with the administration that own, you know, electric authority bonds.
Ivan: And those bonds were going to get a massive haircut.
Ivan: And with this, they're hoping that they get a lot more of their money,
Ivan: that they're able to claim a lot more money than they were before.
Ivan: So it's just the fucking corruption from these guys is just, you know, incredible.
Ivan: And by the way, we gave the $20 billion to Argentina that right now is like
Ivan: open the spigot in terms of soybean exports.
Ivan: OK, right now, they actually did something which I actually agree they should
Ivan: have done a long time ago, which was hindering exports, which was they had an
Ivan: export tax in Argentina.
Ivan: for a long time, like 35%, if I remember correctly.
Ivan: So they were taxing exporters. And so a lot of the exporters were pissed off
Ivan: because, hey, we're trying to sell our stuff.
Ivan: You know, we're bringing in the hard currency and you're making us pay 35%. What the fuck?
Ivan: Well, they lifted that tax. Well, guess what? Makes their soybeans a lot more
Ivan: favorable. They're selling them to China.
Ivan: And what's happening with U.S. soybeans, Sam? Are we selling a lot of soybeans to China now?
Sam: No.
Ivan: As a matter of fact, it's not just...
Sam: Zero.
Ivan: The amount right now is zero.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Zero.
Sam: And how do the soybean farmers feel about this?
Ivan: Oh, they're feeling awesome. Great. Many of them have said that if they don't
Ivan: get any money by the end of the year, they're going to be bankrupt.
Ivan: That they need a bailout. So we're going to bail them out.
Ivan: So we bailed out the argentines of $20 billion, and now we're going to give
Ivan: another $15 billion. We're basically paying everybody not to do business with the United States.
Sam: I heard Donald Trump specifically say that he would solve this farmer issue
Sam: by looking for the money on the tariff shelf.
Ivan: So basically, we're turning us into a tariff-like profit machine,
Ivan: but actually stopping shit that makes jobs. Correct?
Sam: I don't see why you... What's wrong with that, Ewan?
Ivan: Ah. Makes sense. Okay. I don't know. It's not the way.
Sam: Anyway. Okay. two more things and then we stop number one how's the government
Sam: shutdown going still shut down still shut down there are some weird things happening
Sam: like marjorie taylor green,
Sam: saying that she agrees with the democrats on what they want to do with the health
Sam: insurance stuff yeah um by.
Ivan: The way but again it goes back to when did these people change their minds when.
Sam: When it hurts them or their direct friends or family.
Ivan: Ah, bam. So two relatives of MTG went to her and said, what the fuck are you doing?
Ivan: You guys quadrupling my insurance premiums. I just got my renewal and it's going through the roof.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: And then she goes and says, well, our leadership didn't say any of this to us.
Ivan: We just thought there were democratic talking points.
Sam: Yes, exactly.
Ivan: Like I said, you're worried about the AI? We don't need the AI to make these
Ivan: people believe bullshit.
Ivan: We're capable of perfectly generating it without AI on a daily basis. Have you seen the GOP?
Ivan: Seriously, these guys cannot. Man, there is a lie generating machine.
Ivan: These guys cannot. I mean, the non- And by the way.
Sam: I said this before. I shared a video on the Slack that's related to this as
Sam: well of AOC that I only saw it this week, but I think it was recorded a couple
Sam: months ago when they were doing the big, beautiful bill stuff.
Sam: And basically she said she pulled aside one of her Republican colleagues on
Sam: the floor of the House, away from cameras, whatever, and said,
Sam: look, you're in a rural district.
Ivan: You're getting killed.
Sam: This thing is going to shut down rural hospitals. This is going to hurt your district really badly.
Sam: How can you possibly be for this?
Sam: And the person, and she didn't identify who it was or whether they were male
Sam: or female, but the person says, we don't believe you.
Sam: When you say things like this, you can say these Democratic talking points all
Sam: you want, but we don't believe you.
Sam: You are lying. This will not happen.
Sam: And, you know, and AOC is like, but look, we've got all of this information.
Sam: We've got this thing and this analysis and this analysis.
Ivan: You're fact diverse.
Sam: And they're like, well, they're lying too, you know.
Ivan: Everybody's lying.
Sam: Everybody's lying.
Ivan: Except the people that they hear, okay? You know, and this is the thing that
Ivan: I, you know, I mentioned this a couple of times that, And I realized that,
Ivan: look, Rush Limbaugh patented this, okay?
Ivan: He was really the pioneer at this, okay?
Ivan: And everybody in the GOP basically now with Trump, they are all completely on this, okay?
Ivan: Look, Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and basically every day for hours just lied.
Ivan: Lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, one day after another.
Ivan: And I mentioned, you know, I listened to hours, hours of him.
Ivan: It was just infuriating.
Sam: I used to listen occasionally, too.
Ivan: And I kept listening. And I'm like, it was infuriating. I'm like,
Ivan: how the fuck do you people not understand that every fucking thing he's saying
Ivan: is one lie after another lie after another lie after another lie after another
Ivan: lie? And here's the reality, Sam.
Ivan: Most of the people don't. They just believe it.
Sam: Yep.
Ivan: And I don't need a fucking AI machine to make up the lies because these motherfuckers,
Ivan: all of them in the administration, just get up there and just lie nonstop.
Ivan: And their constituents are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ivan: No, that's just a Democratic talking point. I believe her.
Ivan: Tylenol. Now and, oh, oh, wait, wait. The circumcisions. Autism.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Circumcisions.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Fucking hell.
Sam: So speaking of those kinds of lies, I will transition to my last one of this,
Sam: which is the massive war zone that is Portland.
Ivan: Oh, my God. It's awful, Sam. It's really just...
Sam: It's burning to the ground. Everyone's in danger.
Sam: It is a hell zone. And you can tell this by the people in the inflated animal
Sam: costumes singing and dancing and making rude gestures at the ice officers.
Ivan: Perfect.
Sam: And the people doing the cha-cha slide and all of this stuff,
Sam: it's just, and actually, we've had a couple legal rulings now.
Sam: The most recent one was actually about Chicago and Illinois,
Sam: where the judge specifically said, I'm sorry, there is no insurrection here. Right.
Sam: You know, and the government was basically trying to say in their case that
Sam: the courts can't override the president's judgment on that.
Sam: If the president says there's an insurrection, there's an insurrection.
Ivan: It's fucking bullshit.
Sam: And the judge is like.
Sam: No, that's not happening.
Sam: It just plain is not. The thing that you're describing is the justification
Sam: for your actions is not happening.
Sam: Now, who knows what will happen when that gets to SCOTUS.
Sam: But, you know, for the moment anyway, you know, the courts are basically saying,
Sam: yeah, actually reality does matter.
Sam: and, you know, it is not, you know,
Sam: a hellscape war zone insurrection when you've got the goddamn inflatable frog
Sam: like making fun of the ice officers.
Sam: And then, of course, they pepper spray the frog.
Ivan: Of course.
Sam: And they, in fact, they pepper sprayed the vent into the frog costume so that,
Sam: like, it would have the maximum effect on the person inside. Yeah.
Sam: It's ridiculous. You see these videos. Jon Stewart did a good compilation of
Sam: it. If you look on The Daily Show's YouTube and stuff, you'll find it.
Sam: But, like, you know, all kinds of scenes from Portland. And the one thing that
Sam: has got me more than everything else, they do have, like, you know,
Sam: older people singing songs. They have people dancing.
Sam: But the repeated theme over and over and over again are these stupid inflatable animal costumes.
Ivan: I love it. It's fantastic.
Sam: You know, the frog, dinosaurs, unicorns, whatever.
Ivan: You need Barney.
Sam: And people have pointed out, Barney, there you go. I have not seen a Barney
Sam: yet, but I'm sure it's coming soon.
Sam: But the thing that people have pointed out is, and this relates back to like
Sam: what we said during the damn campaign about how mocking them works better than
Sam: portraying them as dangerous. They are dangerous.
Sam: But you need to mock them. But mocking them.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Mocking them pierces that better than anything else.
Sam: Yes, yes, yes. Both to them themselves, they don't like being mocked,
Sam: and to their supporters.
Sam: And so these people in Portland who are going around into animal costumes are doing this perfectly.
Sam: Because it highlights just how ridiculous the over-the-top violence that these
Sam: people are engaging in is compared to what's actually the reality on the ground.
Ivan: By the way, if a story today also said, who is Antifa's leader?
Ivan: Kristi Noem claims the arrest of the founder's girlfriend could unravel the movement, Sam.
Ivan: You know, they're taking the girlfriend's boss.
Sam: I saw someone say, like, oh, I didn't know Eleanor Roosevelt was still alive.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Of course, implying FDR is the founder of anti-fascist from World War II.
Ivan: Right. Anyway.
Sam: All right. And we had some other guy. Like Trump had this anti-antifa,
Sam: anti-antifa, whatever, whatever, like conference thing at the White House.
Sam: And one of the people there said, Antifa is real and has been ever since.
Sam: And they pointed out like anti-fascists, like in World War II as their example
Sam: of being the bad guys who'd started this movement.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And it's like they're not even pretending anymore no.
Ivan: No no they're not.
Sam: They're like of course we're fascists yes thank you and if you're anti-fascist that's bad sorry.
Ivan: Anyway all right we're done.
Sam: Anyway we're done right we're done yeah we're done now done now okay everybody
Sam: go to curmudgeon syphen corner.com look at our website find our archives you
Sam: can check out that episode if you want.
Sam: Again, that is from October 9th, 2015.
Sam: You can go to the 2015 section of the archive and scroll down.
Sam: I did have some weird experiences playing it. I could play it just fine on my
Sam: iPhone, but I had some problems on my computer. I don't know why.
Sam: I'll have to check into that later. But it's there. It works.
Sam: I don't know. Maybe it'll work for you. Maybe it won't. Let me know.
Sam: If it doesn't work for you, give me some specifications.
Sam: It'll help me debug it. But apparently it worked for Yvonne,
Sam: right? You played it off your computer.
Ivan: Yes, I played it no problem.
Sam: So Yvonne played it no problem. So maybe it's just me.
Sam: Maybe it's just me. But anyway, the Check Us in 2025 episode from October 9th,
Sam: 2015, go check that out. You can check out our other old episodes.
Sam: It's back in the area where I have a little red note saying that the show descriptions
Sam: are all messed up back then. I hadn't made it back.
Sam: Like every once in a while, I'll fix a month of the old show descriptions.
Sam: but we got a long archive here. We've been going since 2007.
Sam: So sorry about that. Anyway, I've only fixed back through 2017 at the moment, August, 2017. I,
Sam: Anyway, you can find all the ways to contact us as well. You can find transcripts of recent shows.
Sam: And of course, you can find a link to our Patreon where you can give Yvonne
Sam: and I money at different levels. We will mention you on the show.
Sam: We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: At $2 a month or more. Or if you just ask, we will invite you to the Commissions
Sam: Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a whole bunch of our listeners are chatting
Sam: throughout the week about various things and having just tons of fun.
Sam: So, Yvonne, one thing from the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack this week that will
Sam: be so exciting, people will want to sign up and join the Slack.
Sam: Or, if they're already on Slack, just come there more often.
Ivan: There was threads where they apparently, Donald was announcing a new line of Trump watches, okay?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: There is new designs in stock.
Sam: There used to be Trump watches earlier, right? So this is a new...
Ivan: Yeah, this is a new, new, new watches.
Sam: New and better Trump watches.
Ivan: New and, you know, watches. These are, yeah.
Ivan: You've got the president of the United States.
Ivan: Join President Trump's watch community. Be a part of history. I mean, I...
Ivan: There was this movie, like, years ago, that was, oh, God.
Ivan: What the heck? Jack Lemmon is president.
Ivan: And he was president also with, oh, my God, this other, My Fellow Americans, it was called.
Sam: My Fellow Americans.
Ivan: My fellow 1996 comedies about Louisa.
Ivan: He was an ex-president along with, Dan Aykroyd was the current president at the time.
Ivan: And James Garner was another ex-president. And the thing is that Jack Lemmon,
Ivan: as a former president, was hawking every fucking product possible as president.
Ivan: I mean, he had this entire lineup of shit that he was just peddling as a former president.
Ivan: And honestly, this looks just like the parody that we're making in that movie
Ivan: of ex-presidents making money.
Ivan: it's exactly what the fuck we're making fun of back then at that movie okay
Ivan: i mean this guy is in the white house and he is out there filming commercials
Ivan: for these cheap shitty watches okay out there that are another one of his fucking scams right.
Sam: And like he can't get enough scams i mean.
Ivan: We mentioned he's.
Sam: Making making millions off the hotel he's making billions off like cryptocurrency scam bullshit.
Sam: You know, he's making like, you know, huge amounts on all these guys,
Sam: but he can't, he has to sell the watches too.
Ivan: And the watches.
Sam: And you know, it's gotta be what, it's one of these licensing deals,
Sam: right? You know, where he's whatever.
Ivan: Yeah, I'm sure he's making the pay up front like everything. He doesn't want it.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: You know, they're like, hey, you write my check, a hundred million over here,
Ivan: 50 million, 30 million, 20 million.
Ivan: Just, you write the check first and I'll do the commercial.
Sam: Exactly. you know it's exactly what you want your president doing right yes
Sam: well in the white house of course,
Sam: Is there a corresponding exemption from the tariffs for importing those watches?
Ivan: I would, I, you know what? I'm going to guess that if you go through the tariff
Ivan: exemptions, I would bet my bottom dollar that that is there. Yes.
Sam: Because you know they're not made in the U.S.
Ivan: Come on. Come on. Give me a break. What the, what are you talking about, man?
Ivan: i'm sure it's the purest and finest watch being able to made may be made in china absolutely.
Sam: There you go okay we're done thank you everybody for joining us for yet another
Sam: curmudgeon's corner and assuming nothing unexpected happens we will be back next week.
Ivan: Hopefully a meteor doesn't hit us this week or anything of the sort.
Sam: No meteor well there's that there's that three-eye atlas thing which is an clearly
Sam: an alien spaceship that's coming to rendezvous and you know i.
Ivan: Mean right now is it.
Sam: That i'll turn i.
Ivan: Mean if i i could turn every day they'll take over from from trump okay all right sure.
Sam: By the way for those who aren't in touch this is another online conspiracy theory
Sam: that's been spreading is that this comet it is an interstellar comet,
Sam: Comet, not comment. It is an interstellar object, a third ever identified that's
Sam: coming through the solar system.
Sam: All the reputable scientists, of course, are looking at all the planets.
Sam: It's a natural object. There's no evidence that it's actually not a natural object.
Sam: It all makes sense. You have reasonable explanations for everything it's doing.
Sam: But there's a huge group online who are trying to say, no, of course it's a
Sam: spaceship. Of course it's an alien probe.
Sam: It's going to do, you know, all these things are going to happen.
Sam: And it's a big conspiracy, whatever. Yes.
Sam: Okay. We are done.
Sam: We will see you later. We will have one of the aliens on next week.
Ivan: Oh, lovely.
Sam: From the alien probe, once it gets done doing experiments on us.
Ivan: I don't want any probes.
Sam: No probes?
Ivan: No probes.
Sam: No probes. Okay. Bye for real. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Thank you. okay here comes the stop button see you later von all right.