Sam: Hello there. Okay, let's get the stream going.
Sam: One, two, three. There we go.
Sam: Do that. And then... And that.
Sam: Okay. Hello, Yvonne. Can you hear me okay?
Sam: Yes, I agree completely with all sentiments. Ready to just go?
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's get this show on the road because it can't be.
Ivan: We got to do this toot-sweet.
Sam: You have a hard stop? Tell me when it is, Sol.
Ivan: I mean, I don't have a hard stop, but I got a lot of shit to prepare because
Ivan: I got to fly out of town again tomorrow.
Sam: Okay, understood. Here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, November 1st, 2025.
Sam: It's just after 16 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam and Jervon Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Ah, hello. This is the first podcast of Sam being a free man.
Sam: So I guess for those who don't know, I guess I'll start out my butt first.
Sam: So here's our schedule. The butt first is the non-newsy stuff.
Sam: And then we'll talk about news stuff. Yvonne and I usually...
Ivan: This is kind of newsy.
Sam: Well, okay, news, but it's like not like world news.
Ivan: Well, no, well, no, no.
Sam: You were a tiny part. I was a part of a news event.
Ivan: Yes, you were, this time, you were actually part of a news event.
Sam: That's right. I was in China with Donald Trump.
Ivan: Oh, yes, of course.
Sam: I helped out with that whole story. I made peace with Cambodia and Thailand or something.
Ivan: You made the soybean deal.
Sam: Yes, that was me. That China is now buying 11 soybeans from the United States, as The Onion reported.
Ivan: 11?
Sam: 11.
Ivan: So that's the number that you negotiated. 11.
Sam: That's the number. Just 11. 11 soybeans.
Ivan: I thought they were—so, okay, well, that tracks, because Trump reported that it was like millions.
Ivan: But, as usual with him, so it's an exaggerated number. The number you negotiated was 11.
Sam: 11. Now, that was according to The Onion, of course, and you know what kind
Sam: of a news source they are.
Ivan: Well, I mean, lately, honestly, the reality is you can't tell the difference
Ivan: between The Onion and Real News.
Ivan: So I, you know, I mean, when The Onion really has to work so hard, so hard to be fake,
Ivan: I mean, they really, really struggle at this moment in time in history.
Sam: So anyway, no, my real news, and I will continue for...
Sam: 85 more days or so to not explicitly say the name here because that's how long
Sam: until ties are officially broken.
Sam: But a major tech company had a large round of layoffs this week and I was one of them.
Ivan: Yeah, the worst thing is that I get the news. I see that because the news came
Ivan: out the day before and you know i see the news and the first thing is like oh
Ivan: shit man no come on i'm gonna be this time and then the next morning.
Sam: Well, and look, I, you know, Yvonne shared the article on the curmudgeon's core
Sam: Slack that my company was about to have another really large round of layoffs.
Sam: So far, only half of what is rumored has happened. So I keep assuming there's
Sam: going to be a second drop soon.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure.
Sam: But yeah, my immediate response was, essentially, I would be absolutely shocked if I was not included.
Sam: I haven't talked a lot about what's been going on at work for obvious reasons here on the podcast,
Sam: but basically for the last few years, it's been clear I was not a great fit
Sam: for where I was. Well, let's be honest.
Sam: There have been ups and downs. There have been ups and downs.
Ivan: I don't even think, listen, a great fit for where you've been. I think.
Sam: No, I'm talking very narrow organizationally the projects I have actually been assigned to.
Sam: so recapping the last couple years i was on a project for a while that to me
Sam: was from nearly the beginning clear that it was doomed okay it was an experiment
Sam: it was something they were trying to do but it was clear to me it wasn't working and at first again.
Ivan: This is not that has nothing to do with fit with you that's just.
Sam: No no wait wait let me let me finish so at first and so at At first,
Sam: I had something very narrowly tailored that was in the realm of things I knew,
Sam: things I had expertise in, things I was doing,
Sam: and I made that happen.
Sam: But then after that was done...
Sam: There was clearly a, what do we do with Sam now kind of thing going on?
Sam: Like to try to fit me into other things that were happening in the project that were less good fits.
Sam: And that increased over time.
Sam: And over the last three months specifically,
Sam: I was actually, it was so clear
Sam: that I made no sense in the team that I was
Sam: actually organizationally part of that another
Sam: team where the manager was someone
Sam: I knew pretty well was borrowing me
Sam: to do some stuff and that was for the first time in a while I was actually having
Sam: some fun but that manager had no official head count to keep me permanently
Sam: etc so like and and even there let me finish a few more seconds And then you
Sam: can tell me all the stuff.
Sam: But like, and even there, like the stuff I was doing was clearly sort of like,
Sam: okay, if no one was doing this, they could get by.
Sam: And so when the, you know, when it came up, it was like, okay,
Sam: clearly like, you know, if they were going to make a list, you know,
Sam: I'm in the, okay, it's nice to have him doing the stuff he's doing, but we don't need it.
Sam: We can do without. And so I was like, okay, I'll be on the list.
Ivan: All right. This is my my whole thing is that my entire disagreement with you
Ivan: were, well, it's just that I wasn't a good fit for what.
Ivan: No, no. Listen, they were doing this on purpose.
Ivan: OK, this is not they they could have given you other stuff to do that.
Ivan: This is, you know, the company is so large that I am sure that there are many
Ivan: other fucking places where they could have used your skills and knowledge.
Sam: If you look at it from a high enough up level, sure.
Sam: My sort of like immediate managers had nothing to do with, but could they have
Sam: worked to find something else? Yes.
Sam: But I mean, their approach to that is you go look. And I poked around looking
Sam: and didn't find anything.
Ivan: But I was still trying to do the day job. Listen, I'm sorry,
Ivan: but let's be clear about this. The company had been trying.
Sam: The company was very much trying to shed people in various ways.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: They were trying.
Ivan: This is the whole return to office thing. The reason why they weren't finding.
Ivan: The reason why they weren't trying to position you somewhere else is because
Ivan: they wanted to get rid of people.
Ivan: They were actively doing shit so people would quit.
Ivan: I mean, literally, I mean, for an extended period of time right now,
Ivan: it was first, you know, look, they had laid off some people. I read about somebody.
Sam: OK, let me just say one thing.
Sam: I believe that is true on the higher levels. If you look really short term at
Sam: my immediate management, I would say less so like my skip level, not my immediate.
Sam: Somebody is somebody I've worked with for many, many years, have a good relationship
Sam: with them, et cetera. And I don't think they were they were explicitly,
Sam: hey, let's figure out how to get rid of Sam.
Sam: But the overall incentives of the whole company right now are slim down, get rid of people.
Ivan: Let me put it to you this way, another way, because I've dealt with this before.
Ivan: Look, the guys who were in your direct management, okay,
Ivan: I'm sure that they, as I have happened to be before, they were wise to the fact
Ivan: that they were going to demand that they fire some people, okay?
Ivan: I mean, they were actively, so I still remember a few years ago where I was
Ivan: in that situation on a couple of occasions where, look, I had some people that
Ivan: were really bad performers, okay?
Ivan: Now, I didn't, I held on to them for a little bit.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Now, why? Because what they asked for people that I already had,
Ivan: who the hell I'm going to call it.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Exactly. Okay? So, you know,
Ivan: whomever was at your direct management level had made the decision,
Ivan: now you know what listen they're gonna ask me so some people i'm not gonna fuck
Ivan: this shit you know i've got this guy marked to you know what when they ask me
Ivan: oh here you go here he is head on a platter here you go done i.
Sam: Hear you i hear you.
Ivan: But uh so but my my my my whole thing is look you had spent almost 20 years almost it will.
Sam: It officially my end date is not till the end of january so i will make 20 years
Sam: my 20 year anniversary is january 11th.
Ivan: And the when i have been going through these things usually it's because our
Ivan: profits are falling we're getting
Ivan: squeezed we've got costs you know shit you know sales are not going.
Sam: Well you save more money getting rid of old timers.
Ivan: You know but and but but even then you know what we never really targeted like,
Ivan: We never really, like, I didn't, you know, we didn't look through the salaries
Ivan: and, like, say, oh, this guy's too expensive.
Ivan: But I do think that given the recent trends in Silicon Valley,
Ivan: and I'd shared this thing where they were talking about how some people at high-level
Ivan: executives who keep saying, well,
Ivan: Silicon Valley's too young, so they're spending $150,000 on, like,
Ivan: cosmetic surgery to make themselves look 20 years younger.
Ivan: and how they, for some reason, shun, you know, older people.
Ivan: They, they, they, listen, a lot of these people have the mentality right now
Ivan: that I, hey, why do I want this older, more expensive guy when I can get four younger, cheaper guys?
Ivan: And that's, that's, that's a thought. I, the other day was reading a couple
Ivan: of articles related around this.
Ivan: And the one thing that I realized is the stupidity of this whole fucking thing.
Sam: Yvonne, you were reading it as you were dyeing your hair and beard and putting on like face cream.
Ivan: Of course, yes. As you can see, my beard is so dyed at this moment.
Sam: It's white for people who can't see it. So is mine.
Ivan: It's perfectly white. So I was reading about this.
Ivan: The one thing that I keep stumbling into this just stupidity about this is that...
Ivan: One of the things that I know that myself personally bring to the table as having
Ivan: done 20 years of 30 years of a whole bunch of this shit and not being that slow yet, thank God,
Ivan: is that, you know what, I've already done a whole bunch of this shit and I already
Ivan: know how to do it right and not wrong.
Ivan: And so I see so many young people that come into our organization that just
Ivan: have no idea and just keep doing it wrong.
Ivan: And I'm just like, OK, fine. You know, listen, you want to pay for somebody
Ivan: to spin their wheels for five days to figure out the wrong way while I usually
Ivan: in a few hours figure do it the right way. OK, go ahead.
Ivan: Just because the guy is cheap. But you know what? You're just replacing volume
Ivan: for knowledge, for experience.
Ivan: OK. And I hate to break it to people like right now when they talk about older
Ivan: and younger people right now.
Sam: Are you about to start slagging on the young people?
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no. I'm going to talk about a difference that there is right
Ivan: now between then and now.
Ivan: When I was, when I came into corporate America, a lot of the executives that
Ivan: were older than us were not raised with computing.
Ivan: so when i would go in and do a task say and i had to use these new computer
Ivan: tools or whatever right now boom boom boom i could get to do it they had no
Ivan: idea how to do it the executives had no clue they looked at us like we were
Ivan: space aliens they were like how the hell did you do any of this i vaguely.
Sam: Remember those days.
Ivan: Yes and i and we were like space aliens okay how the fuck could you know all
Ivan: this shit here's the reality i'm still like at at at my older than even a lot
Ivan: of those executives and I'm explaining to fucking younger people coming in right
Ivan: now how the fuck to do a PDF how the fuck to do this how do you send this document
Ivan: I'm like Jesus Christ don't you guys know how to do anything,
Ivan: OK, because and there they come from a different spectrum on computing where
Ivan: it's like all they do to everything on a fucking phone.
Ivan: It's all I don't know how to fucking use a computer in a lot of cases.
Ivan: I mean, they because, well, they just spent their whole time on the phone.
Ivan: Oh, so you don't actually know how to use your fucking computer.
Ivan: You don't actually know how to go in an application and actually pull a CRM
Ivan: report or like do this thing, a transaction online.
Ivan: Well, I literally spent the last couple of months explaining to people how to
Ivan: do some kind of transaction where you have to fill out a portal and submit information.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: Because they don't know how to do it. They don't know how to do it.
Ivan: They're like sitting there and they are baffled by a transaction portal.
Sam: I have definitely heard this report from more people than you in terms of younger
Sam: folks being, you know, whizzes with the phone.
Sam: right but you know if you put them in front of
Sam: a you know an actual old fashion
Sam: old fashion an actual full-fledged computer
Sam: there are lots of tasks they just don't know how to do because they've
Sam: never actually been confronted with them they've never had to they never
Sam: had to and in some cases you can say well you know fast forward another 10 years
Sam: they won't need to like these are obsolete dying skills but maybe maybe not
Sam: maybe but but at the same time it does It is a gap for some people right now.
Ivan: For a large group of people, Sam, it's not that small.
Ivan: I thought at first it was a smaller group. Sam, I had to, all my nephews who
Ivan: went to university, highly educated people,
Ivan: 20s and 30s, none of them could navigate a fucking government portal. Not one of them.
Ivan: To upload a whole bunch of documents, to submit a fucking application for citizenship.
Ivan: And yes, if any of you are listening, you guys, for the love of God,
Ivan: Jesus Christ, none of you could do what I'll be telling you, for real.
Sam: Just imagine if you had to do it all on paper.
Ivan: Holy shit. They would have, they would have died. They would have just, yeah.
Sam: Okay. Back to me.
Ivan: But my point is that, yeah, listen, there is, there is, I do see a dichotomy in the economy.
Ivan: I do see companies that do value your skills, but it is definitely evident that
Ivan: your CEO really, really, really hates tenure.
Ivan: weird employees i mean they're they're he has it in for people that have been
Ivan: there a long time they're expensive well i think old i think more culture yeah.
Sam: The culture yeah yeah.
Ivan: Culture well oh it's not about profits no yeah we we were actually yeah we were
Ivan: making tons of money we didn't it's just we needed to fix the culture well.
Sam: You know look there there if anything i think actual culture stuff since our
Sam: current CEO took over for the last one has declined significantly.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Now, he blames it all on COVID, right?
Sam: and work from home.
Ivan: No, it's him.
Sam: It's him. It's him.
Ivan: It's him.
Sam: And there are just all kinds of things in terms of what's the priority,
Sam: what things are emphasized, what things are less emphasized.
Sam: Since that switchover, there has been a change of tone that is quite noticeable
Sam: in all sorts of things from top to bottom, I think.
Sam: Now, is is this common when you go from a founder to the first person after the founder?
Sam: It kind of is. It's happened in a bunch of companies, you know, but change.
Ivan: Well, I mean, look, people at well, we can talk about that company by name,
Ivan: Microsoft, for example.
Ivan: OK, you know, have said that also about the current CEO going from Balmer to
Ivan: Satya, that a number of that actually for all the Balmer was a psychopath to
Ivan: a certain extent about certain things.
Ivan: But he really was like, in terms of like treatment of employees was better, way better.
Ivan: And that and that also I think there is this thing.
Ivan: And I and I know that the one guy who the last couple of years definitely everybody
Ivan: took as an example was Elon, who basically started treating employees like dirt.
Ivan: And, you know, it's like because he,
Ivan: even though you can, look, you can take a look at the empirical metrics and
Ivan: you can see that his companies haven't actually done that well during that time
Ivan: period, the ones that he's running where he's treating employees like shit.
Ivan: Everybody took that as an example because he's rich and famous. That's it.
Ivan: And so a lot of people just jumped on that bandwagon of, hey,
Ivan: let's treat employees like shit.
Sam: Yeah, and, you know, look,
Sam: There was a lot of trying to rein back in control after work from home.
Ivan: But it's just a power play. It wasn't about profits. It wasn't about performance.
Ivan: It wasn't about any. This is the thing. This is all about power.
Sam: Yeah. And getting things back to what people were used to, I think.
Ivan: Make America great again?
Sam: I guess so. I mean, the one thing all that work from home proved to a lot of
Sam: employees like me is how much better quality of life could be.
Sam: And you could still get most of the shit done.
Sam: Now, if you do trade off, are there some things that are better in person?
Sam: I'm sure there are some things that are better in person. I know there are some
Sam: things that are better in person.
Sam: But you can carefully trade them off. You can learn how to work in that remote environment.
Sam: You can do all kinds of things to make that work because there's balance in this benefit.
Sam: However, for a lot of companies, the effect they noticed is,
Sam: hey, wait, the balance of power is shifting towards the employees.
Sam: We can't have that. We need.
Ivan: It's like I used to say that some people, you know, are bosses and some people like to be bossy.
Ivan: And that's the thing. You can't be bossy if you don't have people there.
Ivan: And if you're a person that has trust issues, not being able to see the people,
Ivan: you know, like having them there.
Ivan: I want that person right there, right there.
Ivan: See them. I want to see them at that desk.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I want to see them sitting at that chair.
Sam: Well, I will say I had at one point in our list of potential things to talk
Sam: about that we never got to.
Sam: This project I was working on like the last two to three months,
Sam: for the first time in years, the other people I was dealing with on the project.
Sam: Actually in the same city and, in fact, the same building as I was.
Sam: I actually moved into the office of one person that I was working with.
Sam: And for the first time since being mandated to go back to the office,
Sam: there actually was some benefit for, oh, look, the guy is sitting right there, five feet away.
Sam: The other people I'm working with are down the hall and I do bump into them in the hall.
Sam: And And yes, there were circumstances where people were talking about something
Sam: and I walked past in the hall and
Sam: I'm like, oh, I should be part of this conversation. And I just stopped.
Sam: So, you know, look, there are benefits in certain circumstances.
Sam: And, you know, for the first few years of mandated return to office,
Sam: everybody I was working with was somewhere else, including the people I was reporting to.
Sam: So it's not like I saw them anyway.
Sam: But these last couple of months, I was like, OK, fine.
Sam: This has some value because the people I'm working with are actually right here,
Sam: at least a significant amount of time.
Sam: And, but there's still the issue of trade-offs, right?
Sam: Like what, was there some value in those conversations?
Sam: Yes. Was it worth me spending two hours a day in the car? I don't think so.
Sam: Because frankly, that made me less productive during the time I was theoretically working.
Sam: It honestly probably reduced the number of hours I would actually work,
Sam: you know, because outside of work, obligations stayed the same, you know.
Sam: And so anyway, let me hit real quick, like, how I felt about all this and what I'm doing next.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: For folks.
Ivan: Yes. More important. Yes.
Sam: Yeah. So first of all, as should be clear from the conversation so far, I was not surprised.
Sam: Like I, I, if anything, I was surprised I lasted this long.
Sam: given how I felt about things also just, you know, and, and I'm sure this reflection,
Sam: I've been burnt out on this stuff for so long.
Ivan: You know, a few times, Sam had been like, so burnt out. He threatened to quit. And what I said.
Sam: I never actually threatened you.
Ivan: You said that you listen.
Sam: You said I wanted to.
Ivan: You said you wanted to quit my statement.
Sam: I've wanted to quit for a decade.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Was I ever actually going to do it? No.
Ivan: Listen, yeah. Well, you weren't tempted a couple of times. What I said is,
Ivan: listen, you asshole, you will not leave that fucking company unless they give you a package.
Ivan: Those were my words. I'm like, you're not going out.
Sam: Or I had an offer from somewhere else.
Ivan: Or you had an offer from somewhere else. Yes.
Sam: I was never going to leave without one of those things in reality.
Sam: As much as I fantasized about doing it, one of those things was going to happen.
Sam: So, but, you know, I, you know, I've been burnt out for a long time.
Sam: I've been unhappy for a long time.
Sam: So honestly, and like even my limited efforts to find something else,
Sam: you know, it's hard to spend a lot of time and effort doing that when you're
Sam: also trying to make the current thing work and you're spending time on that.
Sam: So, you know, but immediately, like, look, it's a it's a mix of emotions.
Sam: On the one hand, of course, there's some anxiety. There's a lot of unknown.
Sam: But at the same time, it feels like a huge weight off my shoulders.
Sam: You know, I'm like, thank God that is over.
Sam: Like, I I've been unhappy for a long time.
Sam: I can decompress a little bit. And again, the last couple of months were a little bit better.
Sam: But on average, I've been unhappy for a long time.
Sam: And, you know, look, there was a decent severance. It gives me some runaway.
Ivan: I'll say more than decent. It was considering how the market is. It was pretty good.
Sam: They did do a good job. I mean, basically, I have my current salary for eight months.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Roughly.
Ivan: Yeah. They did do, you know.
Sam: Considering how. Some of it in lump sum. some of it and
Sam: you know i i continue i'm officially an employee till
Sam: the end of january and then i get a lump sum severance after
Sam: that and essentially i've got i've got eight months of runway before i even
Sam: have to start thinking about things that you know pull into savings or retirement
Sam: or asking family for help or anything like that i did immediately get offers
Sam: tell you already yes that.
Ivan: The house in Melbourne is not there.
Sam: Anymore.
Ivan: Okay, all right.
Sam: The house that my wife and I lived in for like a year?
Ivan: Yeah, a little bit more. Yeah, yeah.
Sam: Something like that, that we rented from Yvonne's family when we were in Florida
Sam: for a little while before we got our own place, which then we had to turn around immediately.
Ivan: Which is like, we were like, I mean, at first it was free. Then we were like,
Ivan: I don't know, a few hundred bucks. We were not charging you much.
Ivan: We actually didn't want to charge you anything.
Sam: There was a nominal fee.
Ivan: Yeah, we didn't actually want to charge you anything. You guys kind of like insistent.
Sam: We we paid you something but uh yeah yeah i i forget what it was but it it you're
Sam: you're right you gave us a deal it was good thank you very much but don't have a house anymore if.
Ivan: It was there but.
Sam: Yeah i and you know like immediately after i sent out stuff to family like a
Sam: couple family members were immediately like hey we we've got some stuff saved
Sam: we can help if you need it You know, just let us know.
Sam: And I was like, I very much appreciate that. I hope it won't be necessary.
Sam: We've got some runway. But believe me, if push comes to shove and it is necessary,
Sam: you know, I'll take anything that anyone wants to offer.
Sam: But but we're not there yet. We got we got some runway. We got some time.
Sam: And, you know, immediately, like I'm I'm taking a little bit of time to decompress
Sam: before even really thinking of much.
Sam: I mean, Brandy had knee surgery this week, you know, so she had knee surgery
Sam: on the same day the announcements came out, by the way.
Sam: Listen, I just just just to be clear on timeline.
Sam: I'll notice this note. Note this, too.
Sam: They sent out text messages at 3 a.m. saying to check your email.
Ivan: Oh, that's lovely. At 3 a.m., you motherfuckers.
Sam: At 3 a.m. They sent the text messages out at 3 a.m. saying, check your mail before you go to work.
Sam: okay and so then and i i woke up in the middle of the night as old folks like
Sam: us often do to use the facilities i saw the message at about 4 a.m you're.
Ivan: Like ah shit.
Sam: Well not shit you're.
Ivan: Like ah well there it is.
Sam: I was like oh there it is there's the expected message yeah
Sam: you know yeah i went and checked all the messages i
Sam: i i read the the documentation they sent us and all that kind of crap and i
Sam: and then i waited because i i was like i was really tempted to immediately send
Sam: something to the curmudgeon's corner slack and stuff but i'm like no brandy
Sam: needs to know first before i go tell anybody yes that.
Ivan: That that's uh.
Sam: That's uh that's yeah yeah yeah you know so i waited i waited for her to wake up,
Sam: Then I talked to her. I did not go back to sleep after that.
Ivan: I can say. Understandable. Yeah.
Sam: You know, I spent some time working on other stuff on my computer. I did some other stuff.
Sam: You know, I wrote a letter to send to my family. But I waited for Brandy to wake up.
Sam: Brandy was first. Second, I sent something to the curmudgeon's course.
Sam: First Brandy. second other family members immediate
Sam: family members my dad my mom my sister and then third was the curmudgeon's corner
Sam: slack and you know and then as soon as all that was done it was time to get
Sam: brandy ready to go to the hospital to get like a big chunk cut out of her knee
Sam: you know um well that reminds a.
Ivan: Little side comment it reminds me.
Sam: That when i got when.
Ivan: I got fired.
Sam: From kodak the guy was trying to schedule.
Ivan: A call for a day that was having my colonoscopy and i'm like you You know,
Ivan: I actually, but he just asked for a conference call.
Ivan: This wasn't like an obvious thing, which is normal for him to ask for a conference
Ivan: call. So it wasn't like, hey, I need to have a call to you to discuss something. Can you do it today?
Ivan: And I'm like, well, no, not today, but can we do it tomorrow?
Ivan: Sure. And then the next day, that was the thing.
Ivan: So I don't know what the hell is the thing with the medical procedures and the thing.
Sam: Anyway, we had the surgery. Then we, you know, so that took that day.
Sam: The, the next, and then I've been doing stuff like Halloween prep stuff for
Sam: my son and some stuff like that.
Sam: Cause he always does, you know, between my wife and my son, Halloween is a very
Sam: elaborate thing at our house.
Sam: And anyway, so like, I, I haven't, I, I'm going to take some time to, to decompress.
Sam: I'm not like going into immediate, like I must be spending, you know,
Sam: six hours a day job hunting yet.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I will get to that point. and I won't wait that long.
Ivan: Yeah, but you can take a couple of weeks to chill out.
Sam: I can take some time.
Ivan: You need it.
Sam: You know, I'm going to sleep in.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I'm going to like, you know, relax a bit. I'm going to do some stuff around the house.
Sam: I mentioned in my note to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, I want to spend some
Sam: time like on some of my personal projects that haven't been getting the amount
Sam: of time I wish they could get.
Sam: Like things that I've been maybe squeezing in an hour a week.
Sam: Let's do a little bit more than that for a little bit.
Sam: And then, yes, I'll start earnestly trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing next.
Sam: And certainly there's a lot of just traditional job hunting for.
Sam: First of all, all the networking stuff.
Sam: Yes, if you've known me in the past, you'll be getting emails from me.
Sam: I'll post something new on LinkedIn within the next few days.
Sam: days i'll post something on facebook within the next few days
Sam: saying hey i was one of the people blah blah blah if
Sam: you know anything talk to me blah blah blah and and
Sam: then i'll be doing individual reach outs to people who seem to make sense and
Sam: all that kind of stuff yes i'll be doing all that kind of stuff yes i'll be
Sam: looking at job listings and like just i'll be much more aggressive than i have
Sam: before probably and just applying to all kinds of shit instead of just stuff
Sam: that looks like, hey, this would really be a great fit.
Sam: I would love this. But also, I want to take some time to,
Sam: explore things that are further afield too not that i think they're necessarily
Sam: the way i want to go but i would feel bad about myself if i didn't at least
Sam: like look into things that weren't like immediately obvious like continue the same shit i've been.
Ivan: Doing what i mean you know look if you
Ivan: could get if you get paid similar to what you're getting
Ivan: paid right now what you were getting paid okay and and
Ivan: you got the job like when when sam worked at
Ivan: this place called wabco okay many years ago you
Ivan: know one of the one of the i will say that one of the cool things about
Ivan: him working there was he always wound up
Ivan: making all sorts of experiments with big rubber things
Ivan: so we have these like massive like about one
Ivan: of the things that he that he gave me and i i wonder where
Ivan: the hell it is because i know i had it before he made this huge rubber
Ivan: ball that was made out of a super bouncy material
Ivan: but it was like the size of an orange okay
Ivan: it was just huge and this thing had
Ivan: these ridiculous i mean the bounce ability
Ivan: of this thing was crazy also at the same time it was
Ivan: very it was big and heavy it was big and heavy i mean if you threw this thing
Ivan: inside a room you would destroy the room okay it would cause some damage for
Ivan: sure okay and i remember that i would go outside to show my nephews this damn
Ivan: ball and on pavement you threw that thing into the pavement and it would bounce into the sky like crazy.
Ivan: But at the same time, when it hit the pavement, I mean, the pavement shook from
Ivan: how hard that damn thing hit.
Ivan: So if you could find a job that would provide that kind of environment again.
Ivan: But, you know, with similar pay, I would really be all for that.
Sam: Yeah. You know, like, look, honestly, like in my head, my ideal world would
Sam: be to figure out something to make money that does not actually involve once
Sam: again, working for a big corporate thing.
Sam: But I know, I know all the pitfalls of that.
Sam: Okay. I know all the reasons that often doesn't work. I don't actually just
Sam: want to drive an Uber or something, you know?
Ivan: Okay i'm sorry but for giving your driving uh skills i would say that the last
Ivan: thing that you should should be on your list is driving an uber.
Sam: Well i i could drive the ones where you're just delivering people's dinners or something.
Ivan: Without actually having passengers i i want to see how how many dinners get
Ivan: spilled crushed you know like wait are.
Sam: You not supposed to do that.
Ivan: Yeah that yeah that that's part of it yeah not like that yeah dinners that get
Ivan: left on the on the roof of the car you drive off that you know that kind of
Ivan: stuff yeah yeah look you know.
Sam: And i don't know and at the same time i.
Ivan: Know a paper route a paper route there you go no you know i.
Sam: I also kind of feel like i know i don't have like the right mindset for a freelancer kind of thing.
Sam: I just, I don't feel like I could make that work. I don't know.
Sam: Maybe I'm wrong, but I want to at least think about, I want to brainstorm off
Sam: the wall options and knowing 99% of them would never ever work,
Sam: but just at least brainstorm a little bit about them.
Sam: See if, you know, anything can happen, you know, like, I don't know. I could do a food truck.
Ivan: A food truck?
Sam: A food truck. I told Brandy.
Ivan: I told Brandy. Wait, wait, wait. Here's the menu at the food truck is going
Ivan: to be popcorn. The crescent rolls.
Sam: People like popcorn?
Ivan: Crescent rolls. Okay.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: There you go. What else do we have? Crescent rolls, popcorn.
Ivan: I'm forgetting some other staple. Coke.
Sam: Yeah, there you go.
Ivan: Yeah, and Coke.
Sam: No, I...
Ivan: That would be the menu. Hey, crescent rolls, popcorn, Coke.
Sam: I told Brandy, like, okay, I can't do the cooking, but I could run the register.
Sam: I could run the register in the food truck.
Ivan: Oh, there you go. Okay, well, okay. There you go. All right.
Ivan: That's something. That's...
Sam: Somebody else will have to do the cooking part, but you know...
Ivan: You know, I ran it. Let me tell you something. I ran a register for years.
Ivan: I will say that for a while, it was fun, but after a while, it gets a little bit boring.
Sam: Well, the key to make it like work better is to make sure you don't have that
Sam: many customers because then you can just do other stuff.
Ivan: Well, that's true. That is the one thing that happened. Yes.
Ivan: But even that, I guess that back when I did it.
Sam: Of course, I guess that doesn't work as well for the making money.
Ivan: No, it doesn't. Okay. No, it does not. I will say that when I was,
Ivan: you know, when I was little and I did that at the store on Sundays,
Ivan: usually the crowds were pretty thin at the store.
Ivan: Okay. That I would do a shift at the cash register on Sundays from 1 p.m. till 9 p.m.
Ivan: OK. All right. On a Sunday. Tells you the kind of kind of fun that we had owning
Ivan: our own business a whole bunch of times. I did that during the summer mostly.
Ivan: And, you know, the one thing that I will say is that I think given that we have
Ivan: more electronic devices now, it'd probably be more entertaining.
Ivan: Back then, basically, it just meant that I was just reading a lot.
Ivan: You know, just a lot of magazines. We had a big magazine rack.
Sam: Reading's not a bad thing.
Ivan: I don't know. We had a big magazine rack and stuff. So, you know,
Ivan: and then the other thing that would happen is I'd eat the inventory,
Ivan: which that wasn't like that really good because we had a lot of,
Ivan: you know, I mean, here's the thing.
Ivan: Every couple of hours, I would make fresh popcorn because we had a popcorn popper.
Ivan: And, you know, we had, you know, you don't, after a few hours,
Ivan: it wasn't, I mean, I don't want to be serving like,
Ivan: four-hour-old popcorn. So we ditched that.
Ivan: Usually it would sell out. So, you know, you make another batch.
Ivan: The one thing is that making the batch of popcorn, the smell would actually,
Ivan: customers at the store, they would come, oh, that smells good.
Ivan: Let's go buy popcorn, right?
Ivan: But the thing is that that also was incentive that it was very difficult.
Ivan: Actually, let me take the word difficult. It was impossible to be making that
Ivan: popcorn and not be eating some of it as you're making it when it's coming out all nice and fresh.
Sam: Right, of course. You know, anyway, like and, you know, like I want to like
Sam: I've mentioned on this podcast two of my I've mentioned the Robin Letter thing
Sam: I want to build. I want to actually build the damn thing.
Ivan: Well, but I told you I will tell you one thing here. Here is one thing.
Ivan: And I'm not I'm actually this isn't actually this is not a joke one.
Ivan: OK, which I think that you could be working on. You know, we've talked about
Ivan: doing an anti project 2025 platform.
Ivan: Look, look, can I just say this? Your wife is a politician, okay?
Ivan: I'm sorry. You should work on that.
Ivan: You know what? You've got the time.
Ivan: People haven't done that. And I think that if you...
Sam: I think there are a couple people working on something like that.
Ivan: Who? Who? Who?
Sam: I don't know. I've seen some mentions, but none that I was...
Ivan: Well, whatever. Okay. But you know what? Listen, you've got time on your hands.
Ivan: You've got tools. You can write.
Ivan: And you've got a wife who's a politician. Can I just say that I think that this
Ivan: should be a platform that a politician goes and takes up as that this is our...
Ivan: or should be our future plank to what the hell we got to do in order to knock
Ivan: down this bullshit in the future and that it should have a crafted plan.
Ivan: And I will also mention here, as I was telling- Project 2029. Yeah.
Ivan: And I will tell, and I will also say this, that Sam is eminently qualified for
Ivan: this. And this is not being joked. This is very serious.
Ivan: Usually I know I'm making jokes about this, but no, very seriously talking about,
Ivan: because Sam, as I discovered when I was in college and explained to my wife,
Ivan: is actually very good at fucking writing.
Sam: You know,
Sam: you've said that a number of times.
Ivan: Other people have disagreed. I'm sorry. Bullshit. Those people are morons.
Ivan: They have no idea what the hell they're talking about.
Ivan: Sam is actually very good at writing, okay? So I know that he can structure,
Ivan: and by the way, not for nothing, the 20 years at that fucking company, okay?
Ivan: One thing that is a skill that most people learn at that fucking company is
Ivan: to actually fucking write stupid fucking lengthy documents detailing shit ad nauseum.
Sam: I have done some of those, although I hated the company process for that so
Sam: much, I avoided it as much as possible.
Ivan: But still, you know what?
Ivan: You cannot avoid learning to do so anyway, because it is part of the corporate culture.
Ivan: You know, it's one thing that that has positives, but it has its negatives. That stupid process.
Sam: So, yeah, for for anybody who doesn't remember my my Robin Letter idea,
Sam: you can you can go to Robin Letter dot com.
Sam: I fleshed out like all the the about page, the FAQ, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: There's nothing other than that done yet, but I. I.
Sam: filled out that stuff. Now I got time.
Sam: It's the idea is basically a, an alternative to the kind of social media we have right now.
Sam: That's all algorithmically generated. That's instead a way to keep in touch
Sam: with well-defined circles of people that you actually want to share personal information with,
Sam: but not people you're so close with that
Sam: you're communicating with them every day anyway so like
Sam: you know you want to you want to keep in touch with all your cousins or like
Sam: the circle of friends you had in college or something like that where it is
Sam: a well-defined group of people and it sort of is a mechanism to do that that
Sam: is built around also you you take you have your turn you take turns communicating
Sam: so nobody can like you don't have the one loud guy who
Sam: always wants to post 16 times a day dominating everything.
Sam: Instead, you get to talk when it's your turn.
Ivan: Well, I mean, maybe you could restart.
Sam: That's a basic idea.
Ivan: Okay, but you know what I would combine with that Robin letter?
Ivan: Okay, I went to the page. I just sent my feedback expressing my interest.
Ivan: You know what you could combine, though, which this is something Sam used to
Ivan: do back 20-plus years ago.
Ivan: He did this email stack ranking. Okay, all right? of who were the guys that most interacted.
Sam: I emailed the most.
Ivan: Or no, who sent me the most emails. Who sent you the most emails. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: Oh, I should catch up. I should count the last 20 years since the last time I did that.
Ivan: But if you added that to that, you see, the thing is that it would be good to
Ivan: be in a stack ranking to see who the guys that are interacting the most to Robin Letter are.
Ivan: You see? I think that there should be some kind of stack ranking.
Sam: Well, there should be some gamification.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: For sure.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: This is probably a V1 or V2 feature, but yes.
Sam: I want to get just the basics working, but, but yeah, anyway, that's the idea.
Sam: Go to robinletter.com, express your interest if you're interested in,
Sam: and like, you know, of all the ideas I've had, this is the one that seems like
Sam: the most likely that could actually generate some income if I fully executed it.
Sam: Now, do I think it could replace my actual income?
Sam: Probably not, but maybe a little trickle of something that's more than the 30
Sam: bucks a month we get from this podcast. I've had other people say, well, now you have time.
Sam: Maybe you can put the time in and really take the podcast to the next level.
Sam: I'm like, we've been doing this for 18 years, guys. You know.
Ivan: Well, look, but to be fair, go back on the podcast thing. Reality is that when
Ivan: we did do some marketing.
Sam: Yes. And we did some activity.
Ivan: We did get a boost.
Sam: But the marketing was expensive, though. So we spent a decent penny to get a
Sam: couple hundred additional listeners.
Ivan: Actually, we got over a thousand. We gathered over 1,000 Facebook followers from that.
Sam: We still have several thousand Facebook followers. Facebook followers were cheap
Sam: but gave us no listeners.
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no. We did get some listeners from there. Now,
Ivan: probably the conversion was very low.
Sam: Yeah, the conversion was low. The most effective thing we did on that was when
Sam: we advertised on the Overcast podcast player that gave us an ad directly on
Sam: the screen where people were searching for politics podcasts.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: That was the most effective. That got us a bunch of new listeners,
Sam: some of which I believe are still with us today.
Sam: And I believe Ed found us that way.
Ivan: So we didn't kill them.
Sam: Ed, who's on our curmudgeon score Slack all the time.
Ivan: So we didn't kill them. They're still with us today.
Sam: Yes. All right.
Ivan: Well, that's good. Okay, well.
Sam: Indeed. No, no, no, wait. It wasn't Ed. It was Bob. Bob found us that way.
Ivan: Bob, Bob, Bob.
Sam: Ed found us a different way. But it was Bob. Bob found us that way,
Sam: I believe. I could be wrong. Correct us, Bob.
Ivan: Well, yeah. Somebody, anybody correct us. I mean, we're, you know,
Ivan: we're, we're, we're terrible.
Sam: We, but, but yeah, like, you know, but we, we, we spent like,
Sam: you know, hundreds of dollars to get a few hundred more weekly listeners who
Sam: faded out over time for the most part.
Sam: Anyway, there's things we, there's things we could do. I'm doing some cross
Sam: promotion with the, um, sir, folks.
Sam: I'm going to be the, you know, Emily was on this podcast a couple of days ago.
Sam: I'm going to be on their podcast. I'm recording.
Ivan: I was going to, I was going to mention that. You know, I've seen like some podcasts
Ivan: do a cross podcast. Okay.
Ivan: It's kind of like we did. We need to do a, a, a, a, a thing.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: We need to do some things.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Anyway. Yes. And, you know, and my dad is chiming in with like,
Sam: I have some ideas on how you can better monetize election graphs next time around. You know?
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: Okay. I think his idea I'm guessing here His idea is probably going to be Post
Sam: your updates on Substack,
Sam: That's my guess as to what he's going to say.
Ivan: No, that's something that you have time for as well.
Sam: But we shall see. Yeah. And that's actually one of the, you know,
Sam: okay. I mentioned Robin letter.
Sam: I've got a, a juke Potter, which I mentioned on here.
Sam: I've got a vert, which is to discovery of podcasts to like find long tail podcasts.
Sam: I haven't, I don't have a good idea of how to monetize that one though.
Sam: That one's more fun, but I want to make a version of that.
Ivan: Listen, could you just, at the beginning, just tell people, hello,
Ivan: welcome to... And first thing, could you just send us money, please?
Sam: Oh, there you go.
Ivan: Is that a bad monetization?
Sam: I want to also make a book version of Juke Potter, and there I could get affiliate fees pretty easily.
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: If anybody ever bought things from there. Ads.
Ivan: Ads.
Sam: Yes, of course, ads.
Ivan: Well, everybody gets ads. And I know that a lot of these people,
Ivan: they get ads based on, you know, they got some kind of thing.
Sam: And you know, another thing I want to like, and I'm doing the off the wall things
Sam: that would be fun to do, but probably wouldn't actually successfully make me a living.
Sam: But like, I want to bring back my random vacations and do something with that.
Ivan: Well, listen, listen, listen, there's a couple.
Sam: I think in the modern day for that, in the modern day for that,
Sam: instead of posting them like text and pictures, I was thinking do video.
Ivan: Sam, you literally got on NPR. Okay.
Sam: I did get on. Thanks to John, who's a listener today. He's the one who sent,
Sam: sent information about me to NPR for that.
Ivan: You literally, you know, we talk about it was the Savvy Traveler.
Ivan: You literally got on NPR based on that.
Ivan: Okay. So it's not like, look, we talk about a few times that,
Ivan: well, we haven't done anything, whatever.
Ivan: Listen, the podcast got linked and we got a lot of listeners what it was like
Ivan: linked on Huffington Post and so did election graphs as well.
Ivan: Okay. A few times. So that happened. You got on NPR. Okay.
Ivan: As well. We got that. We've had some boosts. if you look at,
Ivan: you know, the chart over the years, you know, we picked up some new listeners
Ivan: who've done some stuff, but the reality is it hasn't been consistent.
Ivan: Now, also, I know that it's not like we've had a consultant come on over here
Ivan: and say, hey, how do we make this podcast more interesting?
Ivan: Well, maybe you guys shouldn't be ranting for hours on end about nonsense,
Ivan: you know, and the podcast shouldn't last forever.
Sam: Maybe we shouldn't spend the first hour talking about Sam getting laid off.
Ivan: Well, I actually think, I got to be honest, I do think that this part of the
Ivan: show is one that actually, and I've heard a couple of people say,
Ivan: is more interesting than a lot of the other stuff.
Sam: Than the policy stuff.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, we've gone back and forth over the years, and sometimes we've
Sam: said, hey, let's just get right to it and jump into the news.
Sam: And we've heard people be like, oh, we missed that part where you guys just talk. So, yeah.
Ivan: Yeah. No. This is actually a staple of our show, and it should remain that way.
Ivan: Like, otherwise, you know, we're not if I'm not rambling aimlessly about,
Ivan: I don't know, who knows what the hell.
Sam: So, yeah, to be absolutely clear, I would love it if one of these random side
Sam: projects I just mentioned could actually make money.
Sam: I'm just not like holding my breath about that.
Ivan: You know, but but but but I do think that part of it is that you just haven't focused on it.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, look.
Ivan: We both have jobs, day jobs. I know that my day job really, God,
Ivan: I'm just like, you know, like I had a friend of mine today that texted me today
Ivan: at eight in the morning and I'm like.
Sam: I'll tell you one example of these things.
Sam: Like a friend of mine who does the, who does a lot of sort of startups and small
Sam: businesses, not maybe I should talk to them too, but like I,
Sam: that's an alien world for me.
Sam: But in this circumstances, who the hell knows? But, like, they told me at one
Sam: point, okay, this Robin Letter thing, you get a working prototype up and running.
Sam: I know all the right people that you could just sell that idea to for,
Sam: like, you know, a lump sum.
Ivan: It's not going to take you that long. Listen, I know you, and you've got this
Ivan: employee there that you could, like, make them work on it, okay, on the code.
Ivan: You could get this up and running pretty quickly as a prototype.
Sam: I think I think the biggest like this kind of idea, like the biggest thing stopping
Sam: me is the fact that is time. Now I got some time.
Ivan: Now you got some time. So I think, look, we're going to talk about specific
Ivan: things at first that I would say focus on.
Ivan: Robin letter sounds like a good thing. OK, all right. I write,
Ivan: write, write, do podcast, you know, a promotion, expansion is some kind of plan.
Ivan: Sounds also like a good thing. And then after that, you know,
Ivan: you start looking at some work and some stuff or whatever. But I do think that
Ivan: those two things, like, just right off the bat, and, and, and,
Ivan: as I mentioned, the Project 2029.
Ivan: Those three things is a good three thing, you know, so that this way you're
Ivan: not shooting at every damn thing.
Ivan: Those are three things that you could focus on some time right now to work on
Ivan: that you haven't had time before.
Ivan: And then after a few weeks, you start hitting the job thing and,
Ivan: you know, get set up on that.
Ivan: But work on that, which is stuff that you've been wanting to do.
Ivan: Spent some more time on it and you just haven't had the time to do.
Sam: Well, and like a few weeks ago, I talked about the huge piles of laundry waiting
Sam: to be dealt with. I could do laundry.
Ivan: Well, yes. Oh, I could do laundry.
Sam: I could clean the house.
Ivan: You know, Sam was talking about worst case scenarios at some point.
Ivan: And he was talking about, well, what if we have to sell the house and move to a cheaper place?
Ivan: Which that's something that eventually at some point is a possibility also as
Ivan: well. I mean, because, you know, but what I, you know, it's,
Ivan: that's not a crazy thing.
Ivan: I mean, a lot of people, a lot of people at our age actually do that.
Ivan: Okay. They go and like they, they lived in a house that was more expensive and
Ivan: an area closer to work, but then they moved to, to a cheaper place. So that's not crazy.
Ivan: What I said about that was that this was, listen, I will not miss the opportunity.
Ivan: If Sam says that to take the opportunity to, to, to use my addictive OCD to
Ivan: go and like clean up that place.
Ivan: I will, because they can't say no, and I will just take the absolute pleasure
Ivan: at just, oh, my God, I'm going to have a couple of trucks lined up.
Ivan: I'm going to be dumping shit into trash.
Ivan: It's going to be awesome. I'm going to feel great doing this.
Ivan: This is right up my alley.
Sam: Well, Brandi and I have already talked about logistics. I've said on here before,
Sam: like our garage is completely full of storage stuff enough so that we've got
Sam: a separate storage pod next to the house. And we,
Sam: I've said before on here, we could, we are, you know, yes, we are hoarders.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And fully admit we are hoarders. But at the same time, I know that I am mentally
Sam: ready to probably get rid of 70% of the stuff in that garage.
Ivan: Whoa.
Sam: The problem is that it's all intermingled.
Sam: It's not sorted in any way. Like there will be one bin that is just labeled
Sam: miscellaneous crap from 1994. you know or whatever laughter.
Sam: And so, you know, and the thing is, in that bin, there will be things I want
Sam: to keep along with things I want to trash.
Sam: So we need time to actually go through the bin.
Sam: There is now time to do that. So Randy and I have already talked about in the
Sam: month of November that's coming up right now, spending more time than we have
Sam: in years just pulling shit out of the garage and others.
Sam: We've got several rooms inside the house that are completely full of storage, too, at this point.
Sam: You know, you have to sort of make your way through the halls to avoid stuff.
Sam: Yes, we are hoarders. Okay. I admit it.
Sam: We're hoarders, especially me, but also like the whole family,
Sam: the whole family is neurodivergent in one way or another.
Sam: There's ADHD, there's autism, there's OCD, everything is happening here and the house reflects it.
Sam: So, but we have time now we can go through a whole bunch of this shit and make room.
Sam: And so we're going to spend some time in November, at least that's the goal right now.
Sam: But you know, anyway, I, you know, we got, I got lots of stuff to do.
Sam: The way I put it, and I had like an exit conversation with my skip level,
Sam: the guy I've known for 20 years.
Sam: And, you know, you know, when talking about how I'm feeling and stuff,
Sam: I'm like, look, right now I'm feeling good. It's a little bit of a relief.
Sam: I'm feeling optimistic about things.
Sam: Talk to me in six months if I haven't found any money-making possibilities,
Sam: and it may be a whole different story.
Sam: But right now, I'm feeling good. So...
Sam: With that, shall we take a break?
Ivan: Let's take a break, yes.
Sam: I think there's no need for a movie or TV. The next thing is actually a TV show.
Sam: So next week, the original Twilight Zone.
Ivan: Oh!
Sam: Alex and I finished watching every episode from beginning to end.
Ivan: Every episode of the original Twilight Zone? Damn. I mean, I've watched a lot
Ivan: of episodes of the original Twilight Zone.
Ivan: I can't say that I have watched all of them, But I definitely,
Ivan: definitely have watched a lot of episodes of the original Twilight Zone. Absolutely.
Sam: So anyway, that's next week. We'll save it till next week. Let's take a break and we will come back.
Sam: And since basically the whole first segment was just me talking about being
Sam: laid off and possibilities and all that.
Ivan: Here's a reality. I was telling to somebody today. It's not like I know it's it's a but first.
Ivan: Yes. But it is a relevant thing that is going on right now in this fantastic
Ivan: Trump economy. I mean, I mean.
Sam: I mean, I mean, the same the same day that, you know, there were layoffs at my company.
Sam: Meadow was also laying people off. There have been recent layoffs at UPS.
Sam: There have been recent layoffs, a whole bunch of.
Ivan: But we've got other we've got friends, people that we know. I mean,
Ivan: I've got. Listen, with CDC, of course.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: CDC.
Sam: We talked about the federal stuff.
Ivan: Yeah. I mean, we have a, you know, our. One of our friends from,
Ivan: Jesus Christ, from Pittsburgh, her husband, they got laid off at CDC.
Ivan: And, well, actually, by the way, that layoff, I didn't realize,
Ivan: you didn't actually say this, there's an injunction against that layoff.
Ivan: The court did issue an injunction against them for that.
Ivan: So, right now, there's been a court order that stopped that layoff from happening.
Ivan: So, but still, the government's closed, so it's not getting paid anyway.
Ivan: But, yeah, but there was an injunction against that.
Ivan: So he got laid off. I got a friend of mine in Texas that also got laid off,
Ivan: worked for a German company. He got laid off.
Ivan: I mentioned there was a friend of mine down here that he worked for,
Ivan: you know, your damn company.
Ivan: And he basically, I mean, he was kind of forced out because they told,
Ivan: hey, either relocate to Brazil or you need to, you can't keep your job.
Ivan: I'm like, he's like, fuck you.
Sam: I do want to mention one more thing about this round of laughs because it doesn't
Sam: apply. I've been there almost 20 years. I got a decent severance.
Sam: I'm all well settled where I am.
Sam: I have seen quite a few reports of the opposite situation.
Ivan: Oh, God. Yeah.
Sam: Someone where someone was just relocated by the company across the country.
Ivan: That was your company.
Sam: They've been in the job six months or something and then are laid off.
Sam: They're now in the new place. They've moved. They've ripped apart their whole life.
Sam: They haven't even been at the company long enough to have a performance review
Sam: cycle. And, okay, you're out.
Sam: And the severance is nothing because they're basic. I mean, there is a minimum
Sam: severance that they did. It's like four weeks or something.
Ivan: Well, they got the 90 days, right?
Sam: They got the 90 days plus four weeks or something, I think, is the minimum.
Sam: But, but still like, you know, I I'm in a position where I can be like,
Sam: oh, we got eight months of runway.
Sam: There are a lot of people who've been there last time who are like.
Sam: I'm fucked.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: They just completely fucked me. I just started. I moved because of them. And now I'm screwed.
Ivan: I, I, those I find that's just, I mean, those are so egregious.
Ivan: And by the way, when, when the CEO actually admits, Oh, we didn't do it because
Ivan: we, we were short on money. It's a culture thing.
Ivan: I, I honestly, I wanted to punch him in the face.
Sam: And of course, a lot of people are saying this is all AI related to.
Ivan: It's all. Actually, he also said that it wasn't AI related.
Sam: I know he did. I know he did in our case.
Ivan: He flat out said so. So he said it wasn't.
Ivan: But here's the thing. It wasn't about money. It wasn't about AI. It was just.
Ivan: Just. I actually. Honestly, I wanted the stock to go up, which actually to a
Ivan: certain extent in one way actually benefit you as well.
Sam: And let me say this flat out. You know, I have left my company.
Sam: but i still have a bunch of their stock in my 401k i still have one last final
Sam: stock grant coming to me in the next few weeks i am all about their stock continuing to go up.
Ivan: I'm like yeah just.
Sam: Just go fine fine just just you know i i'm not i'm not like oh man i'm resentful crash no.
Ivan: No no no don't crash the stock fuck oh no no not not right now no.
Sam: Exactly okay let's let's
Sam: take a break and when we come back yvonne will pick the newsy topics for us
Sam: i'm me i'm done so three four five six i i always count to figure out the breaks
Sam: i should like have this done in my head but you know like you said you know
Sam: we could professionalize the show so like i could i i would edit out where I'm like,
Sam: which break will I fuck that? No, like we'll change in other ways.
Sam: But like, it's part of our charm, right?
Ivan: It is part of the charm.
Sam: There you go. Okay. Here, here, here, here comes.
Sam: Okay, we are back. Yvonne, where shall we start the news portion of the show?
Ivan: All right, I think that the place to start is with what the heck is going on in Washington.
Ivan: With the shutdown, with the SNAP benefits, with negotiations,
Ivan: with the nuclear option. I'll say it like Sam says it.
Sam: Nuclear. Nuclear.
Sam: Nuclear.
Ivan: Yes, the nuclear option. So, Sam, what's going on in Washington, huh?
Ivan: So, so are we getting any closer to ending the shutdown now?
Sam: So maybe, maybe.
Ivan: You say maybe. Okay.
Sam: Well, the reason, so let's put it this way.
Sam: To start with, for most of the length of this shutdown, the politics have been
Sam: aligned in such a way that it was in neither party's interest to end it.
Sam: Okay? The Democrats were better off keeping it shut down because people were
Sam: blaming the Republicans. If you're talking about it, forget for the moment. We will get back to it.
Sam: Forget for the moment the people being hurt by the government being shut down.
Ivan: Right, right, right.
Sam: But from a purely political point of view, people were blaming the Republicans
Sam: so it was good for the Democrats.
Sam: On the other hand, on the Republican side, they couldn't believe that people
Sam: weren't blaming the Democrats.
Sam: Plus, a lot of the policy things they want to do are— Well.
Ivan: Because—wait, wait, if I understood, because Mike Johnson said that the Democrats
Ivan: run our government. They are the party in power.
Ivan: That's what he said, right? I mean, is that wrong?
Sam: Yeah.
Sam: Yes, that's wrong.
Ivan: You know, how the hell does that bastard have the fucking brass balls to get
Ivan: up there and claim that the Democrats are in charge of the government?
Ivan: Now, well, I say that, and I'm like, why the hell did I say that? This is the new GOP.
Ivan: They just say shit like this regularly. That is false.
Ivan: And a lot of their people believe it regularly anyway. And that's why they keep
Ivan: saying even more egregiously fucking false shit because their followers,
Ivan: so many of them just believe it anyway.
Sam: Yeah, it works. So look, the and for the Republicans as well, it.
Sam: Of course, they were doing it anyway, but this shutdown made it easier.
Sam: You disable more agencies, you fire more people.
Sam: And also, it also makes the case, like, the longer things stay shut and things
Sam: don't fall apart, the stronger the case that we don't need that stuff anyway. Right? Right.
Ivan: Look, this is listen, this is the same case that all these fucking people make every time.
Ivan: And I'm talking about historically, I'm not just talking about the Republicans
Ivan: and the Democrats. I'm talking about this kind of governments across the world.
Ivan: You know, the best case that I've always had.
Ivan: Venezuela in the early 2000s, OK,
Ivan: Hugo Chavez goes in and he is demanding that the oil company deliver ever larger amounts of money,
Ivan: far more than the company could give without impacting future revenues,
Ivan: basically impacting the company long term structurally, where it would get damaged
Ivan: in the long run, where it could not sustain its level of profitability and production. production.
Ivan: The Penevesa was one of the most professionally run oil companies in the world.
Ivan: They had a reputation for being the most efficient oil company in the world, okay?
Ivan: The number of employees per production, it was like, you know, through the roof.
Ivan: The Venezuelans, the oil employees, they put it this way.
Ivan: Right now, I went to Guiana, I was talking about their oil exploration.
Ivan: There's so many Venezuelan expats over there working there.
Ivan: You go to Canada, you You go to like the oil sands or whatever.
Ivan: There are large communities of those expats because those guys are so, so good at their job.
Ivan: They have been in Houston, in Canada, in everywhere where there are large projects.
Ivan: Those guys were highly desirable.
Ivan: So Maduro, if Chavez said, ah, you guys are idiots. You don't know what you're
Ivan: talking about. Fire them all. Okay.
Ivan: And for the first year, oh, you see, they were all lying. You see,
Ivan: they're still making oil. You see, nothing happened. Yeah, nothing happened.
Ivan: Right now, with time, because this is the thing, none of those things have an
Ivan: impact immediately. 20 years later now.
Sam: Have we had a recurring theme on this show, Yvonne, about delayed results and
Sam: how people have a really hard time understanding that an action now may have
Sam: an impact five or 10 years down the road?
Ivan: Exactly. And that's exactly what happened to Venezuela, where,
Ivan: sure, the first couple of years, no impact. 10 years later, their oil production was down in half.
Ivan: Now, 20 years later, Venezuelan oil production is down like 75,
Ivan: 80% down from where it was.
Ivan: It's down so bad that they used to export distillates like gasoline,
Ivan: diesel, that kind of stuff. They have to import all of that, okay?
Ivan: They don't even make it. In Venezuela, you used to go to a gas station,
Ivan: used to pay four or five cents a gallon, a fuel.
Ivan: Four or five cents a gallon, Sam, okay? You could go, if you took your boat
Ivan: and you took it to Venezuela, where I would take a boat to the Bahamas and it
Ivan: would cost me like $2,000 to fill up.
Ivan: I would fill it up in Venezuela for like $10, $20, okay? It's ridiculous.
Ivan: Now they have to import fuel.
Ivan: Now, they've lost their entire energy independence.
Ivan: But that was the effect of, you know, it wasn't an immediate effect.
Ivan: And this is the same thing that they're doing with the federal government. Okay?
Ivan: Yeah, you see? Nothing happened right away, right?
Ivan: You know, you see? Nothing happened. But all of these effects.
Ivan: It's just they're going to be in the future.
Ivan: You just don't see them, like, right away. And that's the thing.
Ivan: All these idiots all rely on, you see, right now, nothing happens.
Ivan: You know, and it's only when something later in the future blows up,
Ivan: but that's when it's going to be evident.
Ivan: And that's what they're relying on, that there are people, that people,
Ivan: like we said, that they don't understand that the causes and effects are going
Ivan: to be further down the road. Now, now, immediately right now, there is one.
Ivan: Listen, I will say on the opposite side, Sam, look, as much as I know that there
Ivan: are certain things that they've been trying to take, you know, action.
Ivan: And on some of them, they've been stopped. Like I talked about those layoffs.
Ivan: The judges stopped them on that one.
Ivan: the snap the snap money judge also went
Ivan: and like stopped them on that one like right now they said that they still have
Ivan: to pay snap but look let me tell you something on some other
Ivan: fronts it's actually positive i don't know if you've noticed look all these
Ivan: like decrees on like health policy and whatever and all of this bullshit where
Ivan: we kept getting all this bullshit i've realized that we haven't been getting
Ivan: none none of that destructive shit anymore because the government is shut down oh.
Sam: You you mean like the rfk jr bullshit and anti-health stuff.
Ivan: Yes so there are a whole bunch of actions
Ivan: like like that on the opposite side that yes they have been the fact that the
Ivan: governor shut down is why i said a month ago what the fuck just keep it shut
Ivan: down anyway so there are a number of destructive things that they have been
Ivan: doing that have been slowed down or stopped by the fact that the government is shut down right now.
Sam: Unfortunately, like, the deportation and border patrol stuff isn't part of that.
Ivan: But there is some stuff that has been slowed down like that.
Ivan: Hey, and Sam, did you hear that RFK Jr. this week?
Ivan: What did he say about Tylenol, Sam? What happened?
Sam: Maybe the proof isn't quite there yet. Maybe... He backed off slightly from what he said before.
Ivan: Listen, like.
Sam: I thought we'd nailed this, Yvonne. I thought we now knew exactly what this
Sam: was and how to deal with it.
Sam: Just keep the pregnant people from taking Tylenol, and we've eliminated the
Sam: scourge from our society forever.
Ivan: The scourge of people like us. Yes.
Sam: Yes. No, look, and this is where I was starting to say it.
Sam: So far, the politics had been aligned, so both parties had an interest in keeping it going.
Sam: As things become more painful, that starts to change.
Sam: Now, you mentioned the court rulings, which I think changed things once again.
Sam: Before the court rulings saying that, okay, you have to pay SNAP anyway,
Sam: which there's still some stuff to play out there.
Sam: But it was looking like the Republicans were actually getting very,
Sam: very nervous about missing the SNAP payments.
Sam: Because one thing that, you know, look, as much as the Republicans go on about, like,
Sam: you know, the welfare state and like, you know, all of these evil brown people
Sam: taking our money to for food stamps they don't need and blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah. The vast majority.
Sam: The percentage of people using these resources, on average, is significantly larger in red states.
Ivan: Yes, it is.
Sam: You know, and is larger in rural areas than in urban areas.
Ivan: Why is that, Sam?
Sam: You know, it's a complete mystery to me, Von. Yeah.
Ivan: It's amazing how keeping a whole entire class of people like uneducated and
Ivan: poor, not giving them education and not giving any benefits.
Ivan: It's amazing how it just completely keeps them in a cycle of poverty, Sam. It's stunning.
Sam: Yeah. Interesting. So, look, the Republicans were starting to freak out that
Sam: the shutdown was actually hurting their folks.
Sam: I don't think we talked about it on a show. We talked about it on Slack as well.
Sam: Marjorie Taylor Greene's getting freaked out. out that the Democrats are actually
Sam: right about health care benefits.
Ivan: Yeah, I know.
Sam: As well, because, wow, this is hurting your people.
Ivan: My family, literally.
Sam: In the case of MTG, yeah.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And so I think they were getting nervous about this and the politics was starting to change.
Sam: You had Donald Trump starting to pull out the nuclear option thing and potentially
Sam: support that, which a lot of Republican leadership had rejected as,
Sam: no, no, no, no, no, that's not a possibility.
Sam: I will call out for details on this.
Sam: Talking Points Memo had a good article on this published on October 31st.
Sam: It's titled Trump wants to abolish the filibuster. Please proceed degenerate.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Or degenerate. Now, this is a behind the paywall article at TPM.
Sam: But for those interested, if you look for my Blue Sky account,
Sam: I posted a gift link to it there.
Sam: Well, I reposted. Josh Marshall, who runs Talking Point Memo,
Sam: posted a gift link, and I reposted that.
Sam: So you can look at his account or mine and find a gift link to it so you can read it free.
Sam: But he talks about how Democrats should actually, say, bring it on.
Ivan: I agree. He's right. He's right.
Sam: You know, we've talked on the show.
Ivan: And that should be part of your platform, Sam, Project 92010.
Sam: Yes, killing the filibuster.
Ivan: We got to kill the filibuster. To hell with this. It's got to be over.
Sam: Josh points out something we've said on this show a number of times,
Sam: which is the way our government is structured right now, which a big part of it is the filibuster,
Sam: has broken the connection between elections and results.
Ivan: Yep.
Sam: And the vast majority of people don't understand how this all works.
Sam: Most people don't even, well, hell, I get the feeling that lots of people never
Sam: even had middle school civics.
Sam: But even the people who do, most of them weren't paying attention,
Sam: don't remember the details.
Sam: And certainly the esoteric nature of the filibuster in the Senate,
Sam: something that most people don't get.
Sam: And so you have, I don't get it. I voted for the Democrat for president because
Sam: they said they wanted X, Y, Z, and I didn't get it. So fuck them next time.
Ivan: But could we be clear on one thing? Okay, you do realize, right,
Ivan: that Biden, even with the filibuster, got so much of the shit that he promised done.
Sam: Yes, he did. He did. Which they still didn't get credit for.
Sam: But, you know, but but on a more fundamental basis, simply from a structure
Sam: of government perspective, you know, even even with the structure we have,
Sam: clearly elections do have consequences.
Sam: You only have to look at how the last 10 months have gone to know that. Yeah.
Sam: But if you one of if the Republicans actually were. Yeah.
Sam: I I'm going back for like, if they actually had free reign, they had no Democrats
Sam: couldn't stop them with a filibuster. Democrats couldn't stop.
Sam: Then you get what you pay for, you know, you know, you, and this goes for the Democrats.
Sam: If they win too, you elect a party into office and then you actually get to
Sam: live under their policies.
Sam: And then the next election you adapt accordingly.
Sam: Now, I think the Republicans this time have been so strong and you,
Sam: in terms of actually implementing their agenda anyway, that you see it in the polls.
Sam: You see them plummeting in all kinds of ways over the last few months because
Sam: people don't actually like it.
Sam: But basically- Right now.
Ivan: I just checked, by the way, a silver bulletin has Trump's net approval at its
Ivan: lowest since the election. He has at the lowest point.
Sam: And the economists average for for Donald Trump approval shows that this week
Sam: for the first time ever, not only did he hit a low for this term,
Sam: he had a low for both terms.
Sam: He's at the lowest he has ever been in either one of his two presidencies.
Sam: So, but hitting back to that, if you have the effect, then the elections mean
Sam: more instead of people just being cynical and saying, it doesn't matter who
Sam: I vote for, nothing happens anyway,
Sam: which, and not understanding how things work.
Sam: But and the Democrats, we talked about how Democrats should have eliminated
Sam: the filibuster and done X, Y, Z when Biden first got in.
Sam: Manchin and Sinema stopped it from even being a possibility.
Sam: And and frankly, Biden didn't really want it either. He's a Senate institutionalist.
Sam: He loves the filibuster.
Ivan: Look, he was trying to get back to normal.
Sam: And that was lots of folks were trying to get back to normal.
Ivan: So that was their whole his thought. And listen, you can argue whether he was
Ivan: right or wrong about that. That's another thing.
Ivan: But but what he wanted is his plan.
Ivan: OK, was, hey, I'm not going to do that because by blowing that up,
Ivan: then making creating making this worse.
Ivan: And so, therefore, let's not do that. And I understand his argument. I disagree.
Ivan: I think I disagreed with it, but I understand his argument. OK. All right.
Sam: And the thing is here, there will
Sam: be a political hit for whoever actually eliminates the filibuster first.
Sam: Now, what the Republicans have been doing, people pointed out they've used the
Sam: nuclear option twice in the last six months, and nobody's practically noticed.
Sam: Like, because they've done it for specific things. Instead of just saying there
Sam: is no more filibuster anymore.
Ivan: Filibuster?
Sam: They've done it for specific things.
Ivan: It's a filibuster.
Sam: They could do it for this. It's a filibuster. Nuclear filibuster.
Sam: what is this you want me to enunciate and actually speak properly this is crazy
Sam: talk here oh i've got all this time i could take like a public oh oh oh my god
Sam: i i i could go do toast masters or something let's not go crazy here okay.
Ivan: Shall we okay come on give me a break okay no.
Sam: The the point is there might be a political hit for being the first one to do
Sam: this but if the Republicans do it for you and then you take power next time,
Sam: then by all means, it's done. Just go.
Ivan: Do it.
Sam: Just go. Do it. Do all the stuff you want to do that you couldn't otherwise.
Sam: But Josh Marshall points out in this article as well, he feels it's actually
Sam: very unlikely, even with Donald Trump saying, just go nuclear,
Sam: kill this thing and move on.
Sam: There are a number of Republicans who, just like Manchin and Sinema on the Democratic
Sam: side, are going to be like, no, no, no, no. We don't want to get rid of the filibuster.
Sam: But some combination of Democrats and Republicans might be able to do it,
Sam: but the Democrats aren't going to want to kill the filibuster for the Republican bill.
Sam: So it's probably unlikely that it'll happen at this point.
Sam: And I'll say the court saying you have to pay SNAP anyway probably diminishes-
Sam: It takes this off the table for now. Trump was bringing this on the table because
Sam: this was about to start being painful for people.
Ivan: But it was because he decided to do it. It's not because he had to.
Ivan: He was like, he had been unilaterally deciding to try to stop the SNAP payments.
Sam: Well, people have also, well, yeah, because there were all sorts of arguments
Sam: that they actually could keep going anyway.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Now, what's actually happening with the legal case is Trump has filed back to
Sam: the court saying, OK, you're mandating that we pay this.
Sam: Tell us the right legal way to do it because we didn't think there was one.
Sam: And so they're asking the court to do that.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And we'll see we'll see how that goes. I'm sure the court will respond in an appropriate way.
Sam: And but I think it takes the pressure off, at least for now,
Sam: because, again, to end this shutdown, one or both sides, the political pressure
Sam: needs to flip where they feel like they are clear.
Sam: clear their people are hurting and they
Sam: are hurting politically by letting it go on longer with donald trump saying
Sam: let's use the nuclear option that was like oh okay if he pushes that we could
Sam: be done in days my guess is because of the snap stuff he's going to back off
Sam: on that for at least a little while but there is also an argument that,
Sam: He's just bored and wants to move on.
Ivan: Listen, listen. Are you kidding? Is he bored? I'm sorry. What was he posting?
Sam: Did you see the pictures of the new bathroom?
Ivan: That's exactly what I was going to say. Listen, you know what the worst thing
Ivan: is? And I saw it before you shared it on the Slack.
Ivan: And I saw it and I'm like, nah, fuck. I'm not going to share this. Come on, man.
Ivan: This is such bullshit. This fucking asshole. What the hell?
Ivan: But Sam did share it where, you know, Trump was obsessing this week about,
Ivan: renovations to the Lincoln bathroom and how what he wants to do is take it from where it looks now,
Ivan: which it looks period appropriate to make it look like any generic bathroom
Ivan: at some kind of Trump hotel.
Sam: He actually did this, right? This is not a plan. He actually did this.
Ivan: No, no, no. I thought that, no, that was, I don't know.
Ivan: Didn't you see that he put a whole bunch of different alternative options no
Ivan: no i thought no no no no okay it and
Ivan: my understanding is that this is in the planning stage right now and there was
Ivan: a place there where he showed a whole bunch of different how about this color
Ivan: how about this color how about this color this is what the fucking president
Ivan: is focusing on a goddamn bathroom rebuttal and oh no no no.
Sam: No no wait i i brought up the truth social post it's i renovated past tense the lincoln bedroom.
Ivan: No but did you see okay hold on did you i thought that.
Sam: No no no it's it's done.
Ivan: No it was renovated in 1940s architect of green style i did it in black i did it.
Sam: Yes the other one he showed was what it looked like before oh my god.
Ivan: Yeah, very, yes, this looks like an 1800s bathroom.
Sam: The old one?
Ivan: The new one, I'm being sarcastic. This looks like some fucking generic bathroom
Ivan: at any goddamn luxury hotel.
Sam: He says this was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln.
Ivan: Uh-huh. Yeah? Sure. this is what any fucking you go into any luxury hotel right
Ivan: now and honestly because they're all the I mean,
Ivan: the bathrooms get kind of boring and all these, this is what they all fucking
Ivan: look like. If you go to Ritz-Carlton, the forces...
Sam: Like marble everywhere.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or a lot of these, you know, mansions right now that they're
Ivan: making all over the place.
Sam: It feels like it would be too slippery.
Ivan: Yeah, I mean, especially because he put all that marble on the fucking floor.
Ivan: Usually you try to put some kind of like tile on the floor that is like not
Ivan: as slippery as the fucking marble.
Ivan: But he won't be using the bathroom anyway.
Sam: I was about to say hopefully he will and you know a slip could happen.
Ivan: Oh god yeah please yes could he just go you know what that would be fantastic
Ivan: he goes takes a shit he hasn't pulled up his pants he slides he falls he breaks
Ivan: his head open and that's how he dies and we get pictures of him you know in.
Sam: His new bathroom.
Ivan: Yeah in his new bathroom dead perfect But anyway.
Sam: Back to the shutdown and how it's going to play out. I think the snap things
Sam: buys them some more time.
Sam: Yeah. Unless he is just bored and wants to have it done with,
Sam: which, you know, the Republicans could end this at any time they wanted to.
Sam: But I think they still have incentive to keep it open.
Sam: I mean, for one, Johnson is keeping the House away until the Senate resolves it.
Sam: Part of their pressure plan here is instead of engaging in negotiations,
Sam: the idea is we will keep this through until the Senate passes the bill as it
Sam: was passed by the Republicans in the House on a party line vote,
Sam: which means one of two things.
Sam: Either you kill the filibuster about it or you get a bunch of Democrats to flip and vote for it.
Sam: The Democrats' view is we want to propose a new bill in the Senate that reopens government,
Sam: but also undoes some of the tax credit things for Obamacare that were in the big,
Sam: beautiful bill, which was not beautiful.
Sam: But and the Republican position is we're not even going to talk.
Sam: We will talk about all that stuff, but only once the government is open.
Ivan: Obviously, I am showing right now, Sam, my reaction to this on video,
Ivan: which is I give these assholes a big, fat middle finger because I don't trust them, you know, on them.
Ivan: You can't just give them anything like that. Oh, yeah. Oh, then we'll talk about it. No.
Ivan: A bunch of fucking liars. No, you can't trust them.
Sam: Well, this is something that, by the way, at various points in the past,
Sam: the Democrats have agreed to deals that are structured like,
Sam: you know, give us what you want.
Sam: Give us – no, the – put it in this context, sorry.
Sam: Reopen the government now and we'll give you a vote on that thing you want.
Sam: And it's a vote the Democrats will lose, guaranteed. And the Democrats are,
Sam: okay, we'll have the vote. We've made our point. We've gotten our message across.
Sam: We'll take the vote and lose, but we'll reopen the government.
Sam: No, don't. You've got this is the one piece of leverage you have right now.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You do not give in in exchange for a vote you know you're going to lose.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Now, you want if if you're going to make a deal here, then it has to be we do
Sam: we do the thing first. First, we get the thing we want, and then we'll give you the thing you want.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, and the thing we want is not a vote. The thing we want is the actual result.
Ivan: The actual result.
Sam: And or you force them to kill the filibuster and push it through on their own
Sam: terms, in which case they own the results.
Ivan: Let them own, you know, throwing millions of people off their health insurance,
Ivan: which is what they're doing effectively.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I mean, you know, the one thing is that this is so politically suicidal for them.
Ivan: I don't even understand why the hell they keep insisting on it because it's nuts. The reality is...
Sam: And the latest polls have the general public blaming Republicans for this on a two-to-one basis.
Ivan: Exactly. And if they go and get to January and tens of millions of people lose
Ivan: their health insurance, how's that going to turn out?
Sam: Right. And also it's been pointed out, House comes back into session,
Sam: you immediately get this one person, one Democrat sworn in, you immediately
Sam: get the Epstein vote as well.
Sam: Yep. And which will, you know, they just have the 218 needed for the discharge position petition.
Sam: But the word is that if this actually came to a vote, it would not just pass,
Sam: but pass overwhelmingly on a bipartisan fashion, because Republicans don't want
Sam: to put their name against this either.
Sam: And so that's part of, you know, Johnson's reason for staying away as well as
Sam: the shutdown theatrics.
Sam: So we shall see.
Sam: My prediction right now, government staying shut down a while.
Sam: I think we're going to beat the 35 day record. Oh, we're fucking better.
Sam: You know, honestly, I wouldn't be completely shocked if the government stays
Sam: shut down straight through the midterms. Keep it shut down a year.
Ivan: I don't know about that.
Sam: I would be a little surprised if it goes that long.
Ivan: Yeah, I would be surprised by that.
Sam: Because pain points will start piling up over time.
Sam: And at some point, it will become painful enough to start greasing the wheels.
Sam: We're just not there yet.
Sam: Okay, Vaughn, next topic.
Ivan: Well, we don't have a lot of time for another topic. Well, wait,
Ivan: I picked the first topic. It's your turn.
Sam: Well, yeah, I said you could have the whole second segment since the whole first segment was about me.
Ivan: Well, okay. But I said that I don't have that much.
Sam: We can wrap things up pretty soon then. Yeah, we can start wrapping things up.
Ivan: I think we actually, the only thing that's here that we haven't covered that's on the list of subjects.
Ivan: I mean, we don't, you know, talking about the New York mayor race, which is not on the list.
Ivan: I mean, I don't know. Do we want to talk about that? What do you think?
Ivan: Two options here. Two options. There is this deciding to win thing or the New York mayor election.
Sam: Well, actually, I think they're related.
Ivan: So we can bring them together. Okay, so let's bring them together. All right.
Sam: So first of all, Mom Donnie's going to win. Mom Donnie's going to win.
Sam: Like he is so far ahead on all the polls.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: We, what's his name? Jeffries finally reluctantly gave an endorsement.
Sam: And it is so clear. It's like, I don't really want to do this,
Sam: but I guess I will. Schumer has not.
Ivan: Yeah, Schumer has not.
Sam: As of, you know, us recording, Schumer is still saying, well,
Sam: I'm talking to the guy. I'm thinking about somebody who's like,
Sam: the election's in a couple of days. Who are you going to vote for?
Sam: And he's like, I don't know.
Sam: And he walks away. Right. Look, this is just.
Sam: And and this ties to the so deciding to win is a policy research strategy paper,
Sam: whatever you want to call it, from some Democratic think tank that basically
Sam: expresses the centrist Democrat view that.
Sam: Oh, God, people have been pushing for a long time that it basically is.
Sam: And I'll fully admit, I did not read the whole thing. there
Sam: were a bunch of stuff things going on this week as you
Sam: were busy first segment there were things going on my
Sam: mind was elsewhere i did not read the whole thing but in
Sam: summary as i understand it this is a recapitulation of the view that basically
Sam: democrats should take take a handful run to the center it's basically run to
Sam: the center and it's also basically be poll driven Take things that pull well,
Sam: double down on them, take things that pull less well, and ignore them.
Sam: You know, push them to the back burner, minimize them, try not to talk about them.
Sam: The end result of this is things like, yeah, the advice that keeps being given
Sam: over and over and over again.
Sam: Talk about, and the thing that's weird is.
Sam: Sometimes what people say to try to do with this stuff doesn't actually align with the polls.
Sam: Like, for instance, they'll say the kitchen table issues only.
Sam: Talk about the economy. Talk about jobs. Talk about that.
Sam: But don't talk about immigration because we're weak there. We're actually the
Sam: Democratic positions on immigration poll better than the Republican.
Ivan: That's what I'm saying. This is the thing. I don't. This whole stupid playbook.
Sam: Now, messaging is bad. Like the Republicans somehow push through this as a threat
Sam: and get it internalized in people's heads.
Sam: But when you ask the people about specific things, like, do you think we should
Sam: be deporting non-criminals who've lived here for 20 years but happened to come
Sam: here illegally at the beginning?
Sam: Most people say no. You know, for instance.
Ivan: This whole damn thing gets back down to the policy wonky thing where,
Ivan: you know, if you go down on all the Biden accomplishments in his four years
Ivan: and you ask people, say, independently, hey, what do you think of this?
Ivan: What do you think of that? I'm sure they all poll great. Did that translate into winning, Sam?
Sam: Not often so.
Ivan: No, no, it does not. And the whole thing, it goes back down to,
Ivan: and I said this and I'll say it again,
Ivan: the Republicans had two very vociferous messages that were bullshit,
Ivan: but that cut through to people.
Ivan: One is the threat of the trans movement is going to destroy America.
Ivan: And, you know, the other one was, the other one is that the Democrats are pro-abortionists.
Ivan: they want more abortions oh.
Sam: Yeah okay and brown people are scary.
Ivan: And brown people are scary yes yes that those are the three things and and they
Ivan: have nothing to do with facts nothing to do with anything and the thing is that
Ivan: the democrats counter argument to those were basically to not address them.
Sam: Yes and and you know the.
Ivan: Sam, people, listen, that trans thing, I keep being, you know,
Ivan: shocked how the Democrats, especially the leadership in general,
Ivan: misunderstand how deep that message cut through to people and their underlying
Ivan: prejudices about something they don't understand.
Sam: The thing is, though, the key approach difference I think here is important
Sam: is Democrats, because of that, decided to just be quiet, avoid the issue.
Ivan: Avoid it!
Sam: And I think the...
Sam: The way to counter that is not avoid the issue because that gives ground that
Sam: it's like, oh, you're right on trans.
Ivan: Yeah, you're accepting that what their argument is true.
Sam: You're accepting their argument is true. You're accepting their framing of the issue.
Sam: Instead, it has to be a vigorous defense. No, you are wrong. You are bigots.
Ivan: You are exaggerating this whole thing about men going and switching and women to sports.
Ivan: You're talking about a tiny number of people. You're talking about all this bullshit about them.
Ivan: It's a lie. All this thing about that is a lie.
Ivan: This entire thing that there's indoctrination of people is a lie.
Ivan: This whole thing that I mean.
Sam: The entire thing is like also and I want to get it. It's not just that it's a lie.
Sam: It's also you are you are fundamentally wrong on how you treat.
Sam: Assume it was right. You need to treat these people better.
Sam: You need to vigorously make the case for your side.
Ivan: But remember, the main commercial, what they had was a guy dressed as a woman
Ivan: competing in women's sports.
Ivan: You see, this is the thing. You're getting back into the detail of the wonk.
Ivan: The thing was, they showed some fucking guy during major live TV events in the U.S.,
Ivan: during the NFL playoffs or whatever, showing some fucking guy dressed as a woman
Ivan: competing in women's sports.
Ivan: You know what the ad right after should have shown? This is a complete lie.
Ivan: This is not what's happening. This is absolutely false.
Ivan: And they're trying to scare you into vilifying a small, you know,
Ivan: a minority of Americans right now into vilifying them over something that isn't true.
Sam: Yes, it's not true. But at the same time, like I said, you can't,
Sam: in any way, throw these marginalized communities under the bus either.
Sam: You have to show, like, you have to be like.
Ivan: This is a group of people that should be defended. But my point is that by staying
Ivan: quiet, they didn't defend them.
Sam: No.
Ivan: The narrative went and like everybody, so many people that know little on the
Ivan: subject because the low information voter, all they saw is that.
Ivan: That's the image they got.
Sam: The counter is stick to your position and defend it vigorously.
Sam: and not cower in the corners. Like, over and over again, in the years prior
Sam: to things going sideways with Donald Trump,
Sam: things were moving, like, when confronted with, like, let's look, gay marriage.
Sam: At one point, like, the polling on that was people couldn't even imagine it.
Sam: People started making the case.
Ivan: By the way, can I make a, I want to make a point because we have been talking about Newsom.
Ivan: Do you realize who the mayor, who the first mayor that started issuing marriage
Ivan: certificates to gay people was?
Ivan: And I did not know this until about a couple of weeks ago.
Sam: The first mayor?
Ivan: Yeah. It was Gavin Newsom, San Francisco.
Sam: Was it Gavin Newsom?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I remember.
Ivan: By the way. By the way. I know because we're talking shit about how Newsom takes
Ivan: the winning position. This was at a time when none of the mainstream Democrats,
Ivan: including Barack Obama, were for gay marriage.
Sam: Right, right. Now, my point, though, is that that is an issue where we have
Sam: moved from gay marriage being an obscure position to it having super majority support.
Sam: In a very rapid period of time because of advocacy for that,
Sam: because of normalization of like, no, you know, gay people shouldn't be ostracized
Sam: and marginalized and made fun of.
Ivan: Let's be clear about this. Project 2025 wants to abolish gay marriage, too, by the way.
Sam: No, I know. I know. Absolutely. And, but all this happened through not,
Sam: oh, sort of public opinion naturally changed on its own.
Sam: It happened because people were aggressively pushing the idea and also making
Sam: sure that there was exposure.
Sam: Like, you know, it's you're you're you you make it so that people can be out
Sam: and known and that, you know, your uncle is gay.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Or that you are. And now, like that, you know, you have friends and family that are trans.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You know, and, you know, you want to show like, no, what they're going,
Sam: what they are advocating will hurt people. And you shove that in front of people's face.
Sam: Same with immigration. You need to counter the, oh, brown people are scary,
Sam: immigration bad, MS-13, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, with no.
Sam: Look, here is the guy who waits the tables at your favorite restaurant.
Sam: You know, and I don't want to stereotype that either. There are lots of highly
Sam: successful rich people as well.
Ivan: No, no, no. But we're talking about the illegal. And a lot of the illegal governments,
Ivan: unfortunately, you know, most of them cannot get.
Sam: Cannot get those kinds of jobs. Exactly. Because of their documentation.
Ivan: Exactly. Yeah. Even though they may have the skills. But when they come to the
Ivan: United States, many times they may be doctors, they may be nurses,
Ivan: they may be whatever the hell it is that you want, but they cannot get those jobs.
Ivan: And so they go and they have to take low paying menial jobs in order to make
Ivan: sense meat because they cannot get those more skillful jobs,
Ivan: even though they have the skills.
Sam: And look, after all of these deportations started happening,
Sam: you start seeing all these stories of Trump supporters who are like,
Sam: oh, man, I voted for Trump and now they deported my wife or whatever.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, these are these are stories that you could have dug up beforehand
Sam: and been like, he is talking about deporting your wife.
Sam: He's talking about deporting the person who takes care of your lawn or help,
Sam: you know, or whatever, all of these things.
Sam: and bring it and humanize it and say, look, these are the people that are trying to hurt.
Ivan: It makes you very tasty tacos in many cases.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: They're quite tasty.
Sam: No, look, the point is, though, on all of these, defend those positions.
Sam: And getting back to Mom Donnie for a second, I think one of the reasons Democratic
Sam: leadership is freaking out about this is that they're like, oh,
Sam: my God, he's a socialist.
Sam: He's in front of all these things. This may work in New York,
Sam: but in the rest of the country, it's going to kill us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: He's the mayor of New York, okay? You know, fuck this. He needs to, you know...
Sam: He won the damn Democratic nomination as a Democratic leader.
Sam: You should be fucking supporting him.
Ivan: And I'm sorry, but you know what? Aside from the fact that maybe he made some
Ivan: statements in the past of certain things that maybe I disagree with,
Ivan: the reality is that his positions that he's had for a while— And most of those
Ivan: are overstated anyway. And most of those are overstated. Yeah,
Ivan: you know, that's what I'm saying.
Ivan: Aside from maybe some statements in the past, the reality is that his—what he
Ivan: is advocating for the city, it's not bad.
Sam: Fairly normal stuff.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: But look, here's the other thing. He is young. He is charismatic.
Sam: People are excited about him.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And you're shitting on him?
Ivan: Right.
Sam: This is exactly what the party needs.
Ivan: This is exactly what the party needs.
Sam: Young, charismatic people who people are excited about and who are energizing the voters.
Sam: And this, again, going back to deciding to win again, deciding to win is all about,
Sam: this strategy that has failed multiple times over the last decade and a half, right?
Sam: Which is Democrats being like, we have to figure out how to win back these voters
Sam: who used to be Democratic and have moved to Donald Trump.
Ivan: And actually, if you look at the result of the last election,
Ivan: once you got down another real detailed analysis of who showed up to vote,
Ivan: what did it show, Sam? Sam, did you see? Because we shared this on the Slack.
Sam: I can't remember. I shared it. You shared it on the Slack.
Ivan: What did it say, Sam? What was the final bottom line again?
Sam: It said the more democratic a region, the lower the turnout.
Ivan: Ah!
Sam: And this this applied all across the country is basically, you know,
Sam: Democrats not being excited and not turning out to vote because you're you're
Sam: you're trying to message in a way.
Sam: And like a lot of this, I don't want to keep going back to the last campaign,
Sam: but part of this is like, you know, okay, first Biden and then Harris were like,
Sam: okay, let's campaign a lot with Lynn Cheney and stuff and try to win those like
Sam: never Trump Republicans and stuff like that.
Sam: Which, okay, you didn't get very many of those, but you did provably lose a
Sam: bunch of left-leaning people who were like,
Sam: I can't vote for them. They're like on the stage with Lynn Cheney.
Sam: You know, and they're they're not supporting Palestine and they're doing this.
Ivan: How many times did I fucking vociferously say over and over that this entire
Ivan: elections came down to fucking making your base show up?
Sam: Yeah well and this is the one thing
Sam: like for for for decades and decades
Sam: on both sides the political strategy was go for that median voter go for the
Sam: median voter go for the media it's changed trump changed that proved that going
Sam: for the base and energizing people who typically don't vote at all, can win.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And can win very effectively.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And what it does, I don't want to point to Donald Trump as like a model in a
Sam: lot of areas because the base that he energized was a bunch of-
Ivan: Is a fucking bunch of racist lunatics. Yes.
Sam: Exactly. He got the racist lunatics to come out.
Sam: But on the left, you know, look, there are a whole bunch of people who aren't
Sam: coming out because they're disillusioned and don't believe anything you say
Sam: and think you're too centrist that you could potentially get there.
Sam: Now, and, you know, how far I'm not saying the solution is move the party left,
Sam: but I am saying the solution is don't actively alienate those people.
Sam: Now, will the result be the party does move a little bit left? Yes.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And that's OK.
Ivan: You know what? The problem is, again, the party moving to the left,
Ivan: a lot of the shit that we're talking about,
Ivan: policy-wise is is is the nuance it's it's nuance in in.
Sam: Most cases but also people have pointed out like
Sam: when we say move the party left we're
Sam: kind of actually saying only move it back to where it was a few years ago yeah
Sam: like things are moving like me like democratic leadership positions at this
Sam: point are often very similar to where the republicans were 15 years ago not
Sam: always not always, to be clear,
Sam: but like it depends on the issue. It depends on a whole bunch of stuff.
Sam: But, you know, if there is a lot of energy potentially waiting to be activated on the left.
Sam: And I think what we went and in positions aside, frankly, positions aside,
Sam: you need youth, you need energy and you need conviction on positions.
Ivan: The average Democratic voter has also moved far to the left.
Sam: Yes, the average Democratic voter has moved further to the left.
Sam: But I think what people are sick of overall is this sort of is the exact kind
Sam: of stuff they're talking about and deciding to win of like people triangulating
Sam: and trying to pick their positions based on how they think the election result is going to go.
Sam: No, you want people who have a strong feeling about their positions to start
Sam: with and then work on convincing everybody else to agree with them.
Ivan: Yep. Yep.
Sam: You know, and show that you really believe it and show people why you believe
Sam: it and what and the benefit it will have for them and everybody else.
Sam: Like, and, you know, honestly, another thing we found is a huge portion of the
Sam: public can't even imagine something unless it directly affects them.
Sam: So you have to show how this stuff affects you. You have to show that this isn't
Sam: some theoretical, we're defending the rights of somebody that you don't know
Sam: and have no knowledge of.
Sam: But you have to show how, yeah, this does affect you.
Sam: This is in your neighborhood, whether you think so or not. you
Sam: know remember uncle jim
Sam: was doing this kind of stuff and you know what this
Sam: would affect him or yeah and you have
Sam: to break through some of this bullshit too i mean like on the snap conversation
Sam: we were having i've seen so many posts in social media about a bunch of people
Sam: just like the you know people who don't know that their local state plan is
Sam: really the same as obama can there There are a lot of people saying, wait, what do you mean?
Sam: Snap and food stamps and EBT are the same thing?
Sam: I didn't know this would affect me. I thought this was affecting like,
Sam: you know, the poor people in the inner cities.
Sam: What do you mean this is going to, this is affecting my stuff?
Sam: You know, shocking, shocking. So there's definitely some communication stuff,
Sam: but and a lot of and I know I know it's not all about age,
Sam: but the top layers, there are
Sam: so many, not even boomers, but also silent generation people hanging on.
Sam: it's time to let go let the
Sam: young folks have this completely aside from
Sam: policy issues they understand the media environment
Sam: better they're not just like oh we'll buy some more tv ads they know how to
Sam: like work in a social media world they know how to do this and or at least can
Sam: get the right consultants to do it for them but many of them are know how to
Sam: do it themselves and you You know,
Sam: it's just like the people who are stuck in the 90s, I've seen a lot of people
Sam: referring to this as actually stuck in the West Wing mindset of like,
Sam: you know, the way the government works should be the way it worked in West Wing, in the West Wing TV show.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, the TV show.
Sam: You know, not the actual West Wing. You know, maybe if there had been an East
Sam: Wing TV show, this wouldn't have happened.
Ivan: This wouldn't have happened if we wouldn't get the East Wing demolished.
Sam: The East Wing being torn down, but, you know, no. And, you know,
Sam: no, that's, if that ever, first of all, it wasn't how the real world would work,
Sam: even in the 90s, to be clear.
Sam: But it's certainly not how things
Sam: work now. And it's certainly not how the political environment works now.
Sam: You have to recognize that going back to the days where the two parties cooperate
Sam: and Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan go have a drink afterwards,
Sam: that's not the world today.
Sam: Maybe someday it'll be back, but you got to move on and deal with the world as it is.
Ivan: Not anytime soon.
Sam: Now we can be done.
Ivan: Now we can be done? Okay. Hold on. Let's be done.
Sam: Now we can be done. So, curmudgeons-corner.com, as I mentioned last week, recently stuff added.
Sam: The social media stuff moved around and made to look nicer. There's a way to order the damn cup.
Sam: I mean, mug, if you want cups, let us know.
Sam: We can do more swag, but no, if you
Sam: want a mug, Commodities Corner Bug now available directly for purchase.
Sam: Nobody's bought one since I, you know, a bunch of people said they wanted mugs
Sam: and then I add it to the site and I haven't seen any orders come in.
Sam: Of course, I haven't checked my mail either.
Sam: Maybe there are. Oops. I don't know.
Sam: Let's see. do i have any order let's see fantastic
Sam: no no no no did wait ah
Sam: i'm sizzling let's
Sam: see no no i'm just checking checking no no no nobody has ordered one yet i you
Sam: know you people out there who are like i want a curmudgeon's corner link on
Sam: the damn website so i can just buy one it's been a week?
Sam: How long do you need? Look, I get a dollar for every one of these mugs sold, and I've been laid off.
Sam: Buy some damn mugs.
Ivan: Buy about, you know, a thousand mugs a week, damn it, you people.
Ivan: What the hell's wrong with you?
Sam: Exactly. Buy some damn mugs. Anyway, we've got the link to the mug now.
Sam: We've got all the ways to contact us.
Sam: We've got the archive of our show. We've got transcripts. And of course,
Sam: another way to give me money, we've also got the Patreon.
Sam: go to the Patreon at various levels we'll mention you on the show,
Sam: we'll ring a bell we'll send you a postcard, we'll send you a mug,
Sam: and all that fun stuff and importantly, at $2 a month or more or,
Sam: if you just ask us we will invite you to the Commudgence Course Slack where Yvonne and I,
Sam: And a bunch of other folks are sharing links, talking about the news,
Sam: talking about other stuff.
Sam: That was the first place outside of my family you would have found out that I was laid off.
Sam: You know, you could have known already and now you didn't know until you listened
Sam: to the show and that's on you.
Sam: No, all kinds of stuff. So, Yvonne, it's lots of fun. Please join us.
Sam: Yvonne, what is the story from the Commissions Core Slack that are going to
Sam: make people want to give us millions of dollars and join the slack.
Ivan: Sam altman wants a refund for his
Ivan: fifty thousand dollar tesla roadster deposit okay
Ivan: so apparently sam altman
Ivan: back in july of 2018
Ivan: placed a fifty thousand dollar
Ivan: deposit for a tesla roadster okay which
Ivan: you know they announced that they would be coming soon and apparently
Ivan: he tried to send an email recently to
Ivan: try to get a refund on it
Ivan: and on the link that was on the on the
Ivan: deposit to try to request a refund the
Ivan: email came back as undeliverable okay um
Ivan: nice you know so yeah so it and so to be clear the tesla roadster 2.0 was announced
Ivan: in 2017 and it is eight years later and we haven't even seen a prototype.
Sam: Of course.
Ivan: You know, so, yeah. So, I mean, it was a $50,000 deposit on this fucking car.
Ivan: It wasn't like, you know, because other cars that he sold, you know,
Ivan: you get $2,000, a couple of whatever bucks.
Ivan: $50,000 deposit for this thing.
Sam: That's a hefty deposit.
Ivan: It's a hefty deposit. And I have heard stories that there's a number of people
Ivan: in this, on this boat, that also gave these $50,000 deposits that they have
Ivan: not been refunded so far.
Ivan: And I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing that Salm Altman is going to get his
Ivan: money back anytime soon.
Sam: Yeah. So, one more thing I realized I should say about the Slack,
Sam: especially for new people.
Sam: Like, because we have had a couple new people to the Slack.
Sam: you should be aware when you when you first joined the slack you're put into
Sam: what we call the general channel that's where we mostly talk
Sam: about news but we also have a random channel the place
Sam: where i talked about on my layoffs was a random channel you have to
Sam: join the random channel if you wanted it we've all so you
Sam: know so that's where we talk about all the non-newsies sort of fun or fun stuff
Sam: like layoffs fun fun fun layoff stuff um we also have we also have a channel
Sam: for games where people are playing Wordle and the weekly news quiz from what?
Ivan: Bloomberg.
Sam: Who is it? Bloomberg?
Ivan: The pointed news quiz.
Sam: Jesus Christ.
Ivan: Last week, I somehow scored well and I got so many. The questions were so hard.
Ivan: That had been my, you know, because the thing is.
Sam: I haven't done this week yet.
Ivan: The pointed news quiz, you can gamble on points.
Ivan: And so sometimes you can come out ahead of points, even though you didn't answer
Ivan: as many questions wrong. Each question has 10 points, but there are sliders
Ivan: where you can double or triple down your bet, whatever.
Ivan: And so, but last week I did on points, okay, but the reality is...
Ivan: Man, I had like five answers wrong. And a lot of the questions,
Ivan: I think your dad would have done really well. Like half the questions were about Africa.
Ivan: African government. I'm like, who is the president of this country?
Ivan: I'm like, what the fuck do I know? Listen, let me tell you something.
Ivan: I have always struggled with Africa, countries, politics. I remember in high school.
Sam: Speaking of which, there was a huge massacre in Sudan this week.
Ivan: Yes, that was in the news this week, which we didn't talk about.
Sam: This is something I, you know, I'll fully admit, I have not followed it in detail,
Sam: but apparently like over 10,000 civilians killed, you know, and you'd think
Sam: that would be like top of the news everywhere.
Sam: But of course it's not because that's not how things work.
Sam: But anyway, we have the Games Channel. as said i i haven't done wordle in a
Sam: long long time but a few people are sharing their world and i screwed up a 50.
Ivan: Game streak this week because i was so busy with work yesterday.
Sam: That and and i have been trying
Sam: to do this news quiz the last couple weeks i haven't done this week's yet i'll
Sam: do it later today and then we had nicholas who are i call him nick i he's on
Sam: the thing as nicholas but i know it's nick it's nick nick was on here asking
Sam: if we do pips well i haven't done it but i'm.
Ivan: I i was about to do it for the.
Sam: First time it's a new york time it's another new york times crossword no it's
Sam: a dominoes kind of thing right like dominoes i.
Ivan: I i saw i haven't looked but i saw.
Sam: It's another new york times game uh well all i know is i was.
Ivan: Gonna try it i was planning on trying it today.
Sam: Okay. So we might be doing those and basically sharing these kinds of stuff.
Sam: And then we have one channel called Show Topics where people can suggest things
Sam: for us to talk about on the show.
Sam: Usually it's mostly me writing down things, occasionally Yvonne,
Sam: and very occasionally somebody else, but we'd love more input there.
Sam: And then I have one I haven't posted, oh God, in over a year.
Sam: I have to take care of that.
Sam: A show stats one where I post like charts of our listenership periodically.
Sam: But it looks like I haven't posted since September 2024 in that one.
Sam: So I should post an update there.
Sam: Anyway, we've got a bunch of channels. Check out all of them, not just general.
Sam: And yeah, and tell if you've got a deposit down for your roadster.
Sam: You know, tell us your experiences about it. And if you get a refund on it, just send it to me.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Sound good? Sound good? Okay. Okay. With that, we are done. We are out of here.
Sam: Thank you, everybody, for listening to another Commissions. Oh,
Sam: oh, next week, Yvonne will be out.
Sam: We've already got two volunteers to join us on the show.
Sam: We've got Bruce and Ed that are lined up. I owe them a message saying that the
Sam: time they suggested is good.
Sam: The time they suggested is good. I will respond to that.
Sam: But we're looking at doing like a round table.
Sam: So the more the merrier. If you also want to join myself, Ed,
Sam: and Bruce on next week's show, let me know.
Sam: Let me make sure when we're recording this, because we do have a time now.
Sam: Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. When did we say? When did we say? Hold on.
Sam: November 6th, which is, wait a second, where am I?
Sam: Where am I? November 6th, which is Thursday.
Sam: Thursday at 7 p.m.
Sam: Pacific time, which is 10 p.m. Eastern, is when we are recording the next episode.
Sam: If you would like to join myself, Ed, and Bruce, please send me a message either
Sam: through to Curmudgeon's Corner Slack if you're on there or through any of the
Sam: contact mechanisms listed on curmudgeon-corner.com.
Sam: Let me know.
Sam: I will also still send out the usual email I send out about these things directly
Sam: after this show is put out.
Sam: And of course, we're doing this because Ivan will be out because Ivan will be
Sam: recuperating from his own surgery.
Sam: So, Yvonne, good luck on your surgery. Enjoy your surgery.
Ivan: Oh, thank you. Enjoy the surgery. Oh, thank you.
Ivan: Listen, I was going to ask the doctor to say, hey, you know,
Ivan: you're putting me under propofol, right?
Ivan: And I don't know if you've ever been under that sleep, but, you know, it's like.
Sam: I don't remember what I was under.
Ivan: Exactly. You're like done. You're out. You don't remember anything that you
Ivan: wake up on the other side and it's all done.
Ivan: I was like, look, could I just use this until Trump is dead?
Ivan: Can you just listen? Just send me in there. It's just, you know,
Ivan: because I won't notice that I'm gone.
Ivan: It's just, look, moment Trump is dead, and you wake me up and you tell me,
Ivan: hey, Ivan, surgery's good, Trump is dead. Great!
Sam: There you go. Of course, he's going to do one of those, like having his mind
Sam: uploaded into a robot or whatever, and he'll live for millions of years.
Ivan: Oh, then we'll, you know...
Ivan: You know, we can probably, probably Elon Musk.
Ivan: I don't know. It's probably going to be like that robot that was doing the dishes
Ivan: this week that was making the rounds on video. You not see that one?
Sam: For $20,000, you can now put your deposit down on a humanoid robot that will
Sam: do the chores in your house.
Sam: Their goal is to have not all AI enabled. But the reality today is the AI is not up to the task.
Sam: So what you would get right now if you buy this thing would be a tele-operated
Sam: thing where there's somebody with VR goggles somewhere operating the robot in
Sam: your house doing the cleaning.
Ivan: Oh, that's so helpful. And yes, at a snail's pace, mind you,
Ivan: because they were showing how this thing struggled to put like two cups, a fork,
Ivan: and like a plate inside a dishwasher, and that took five minutes.
Ivan: And by the way, when it went to close the dishwasher, it couldn't even really
Ivan: close the dishwasher all the way, let alone turn it all on.
Sam: Right. Probably can't push the buttons to properly turn it on.
Ivan: Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah. Right. I'm not perfected yet.
Sam: No, I look, this is a technology I am anxious for. Listen, get me one of these things that works.
Ivan: Yes. Listen, if you could get me one of those that works.
Sam: With a real robot, not like some human guy.
Ivan: With a real robot, I would be happy with it. But, you know, right now you're basically spending.
Ivan: It's one of those things. It's like what we get with Trump in general, which is.
Sam: I mean, fuck all this AI to do other stuff.
Sam: Give me the AI that will actually do all my household chores. Oh my God.
Ivan: What I said is that this is the typical Trump product. Extremely expensive and
Ivan: very low on effectiveness.
Sam: Yes. Yes. I mean, I actually have confidence that eventually the technology
Sam: will get there for something like this.
Ivan: But this is not it. And I will say this, that if that robot was $20,000,
Ivan: right now, and it worked the way that you described it.
Ivan: Isn't it just a deposit that's $20,000?
Sam: Or is it like the actual robot's $20,000? I thought it set the price of $20,000,
Sam: plus some sort of subscription, I'm sure.
Ivan: But what I'm saying is that if you told me that you would sell me a robot right
Ivan: now for $20,000 that could help with household chores, I mean,
Ivan: I would think that you could probably finance it in some way, right?
Sam: I'm sure.
Ivan: Yeah. I mean, that would be something to consider.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, say, like, I got my parents that are getting old. That would be nice
Ivan: for them to have a little robot at the house that could help them with their daily chores.
Sam: Of course, there are a lot of science fiction stories that start with the household
Sam: robots and end badly for the humans.
Ivan: To be clear, there's that movie, the best one probably with this is that iRobot
Ivan: movie, you know, where, I don't know, all of a sudden the robots,
Ivan: you know, are being centrally controlled by a thing and then they...
Ivan: try to jail all the humans.
Sam: There have been countless.
Ivan: There have been a lot of movies, but the one that was like a big one.
Sam: Like Reason. There have been movies, books, TV shows. My son and I,
Sam: preview for a head, we actually just finished The Orville, which also has this theme.
Sam: There's a race of humanoid robots that overthrew their masters who were mean
Sam: to them that started out as exactly this kind of household robot.
Sam: And I pointed out to Alex, they even the ones that Elon is making not the ones
Sam: that this is but the ones that Elon is making his household robot things actually
Sam: look like the ones from the Orville he probably like where.
Ivan: He got them from.
Sam: Probably and anyway they go and massacre all the living beings because the living
Sam: beings treated them like slaves surprise,
Sam: anyway we're done Yvonne I was trying to say goodbye bye thank you everybody
Sam: have a good week stay safe all that stuff goodbye bye say bye one more time one more time bye bye bye,
Sam: Okay, now I get to start my decompression, relaxing, working on shit, all that.
Sam: I get to start using up all that time. Right, Yvonne?
Ivan: Yeah, start decompressing. Okay, go to your decompression chamber immediately.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: You have one in the house, right? It's in the garage.
Sam: Yeah, but not like being thrown out of a spaceship. Not that kind of decompression.
Ivan: Oh, well, maybe.
Sam: Maybe. Okay. I guess I kind of was thrown out of a spaceship.
Ivan: Basically.
Sam: In a sense.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. Okay, done.