Ivan: I hear barking.
Sam: Checking. Yes. Yes, you do.
Sam: Okay. Blee-blee-blee-blee-blee-blee-blee-blee.
Sam: Ruh-ruh-ruh. Ruh-ruh.
Sam: Okay.
Sam: Okay, all that's taken care of. Let's wait for the dog to shut up.
Sam: Did somebody just come by or something? Roar. Oh.
Sam: Oh, there they are. Oh, that was bad.
Sam: Jadski, there's nothing going on. Oh, my God.
Ivan: Well, he's obviously bothered by something.
Sam: Who knows what? He's delusional most of the time.
Ivan: Oh, okay. There you go.
Sam: Or, you know, it's something like, you know, there's a squirrel taunting him
Sam: from the front yard. You know, that kind of thing.
Ivan: And see how that could be annoying.
Sam: Although there isn't any that I can see on our little camera right now. Okay.
Ivan: Is he quiet? I think so.
Sam: Shall I just hit start?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Here we go. Music.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, November 29th, 2025.
Sam: It's about 1715 UTC as we're starting to record.
Sam: I am Sam Minter and Yvonne Bowe is with us again. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hi.
Sam: You seem more chipper than last week. Is your recovery continuing apace?
Ivan: It is. I mean, yeah, it is. You know, it's getting better.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: It is, you know, it is an upward slope.
Sam: That's better than a downward slope.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's making progress. It's making significant progress, yes.
Sam: Excellent. Well, um.
Ivan: I mean, I am, they said six weeks and barely over three. So it's, you know.
Sam: So it's going the way it's supposed to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Anyway, we're going to do our usual, our first segment. we'll talk about lighter
Sam: and frothier things and whatever, whatever, blah, blah, blah,
Sam: blah, blah with Yvonne and I.
Sam: I'm trying to catch up on movies and stuff. So yeah, lots of blah, blahs, lots of blah.
Ivan: Blahs. Lots of blah, blahs, lots of blah, blahs, blah, blahs.
Sam: Yeah, lots of blah, blahs. And you know, I'm working on catching up with the
Sam: movies and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Yeah, more blah, blah, blah. Anyway, but Yvonne will pick something else undoubtedly
Sam: and then we'll do more serious stuff towards the end.
Sam: We're towards that. The last more than half. You know, it's usually mostly serious
Sam: stuff, but, you know, we like to start out with the other stuff.
Sam: So what's up this week with you, Yvonne, that you want to bring up for our butt first?
Ivan: Can I just say that I would be okay with not having to work again?
Ivan: I mean, if I could sustain the income.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: That's all I'm saying. I mean, it would be just, you know, I...
Sam: You know, this last month of being unemployed,
Sam: From a mental health point of view, I am so much happier than I have been in years, years.
Sam: I am enjoying myself. I am relaxing.
Sam: I am get, I mean, I'm not getting as much done as I would like to get done.
Sam: That never happens, but I'm getting stuff done that I'd like to get done.
Sam: And the things that I'm getting done are the things I want to get done rather
Sam: than other stuff that's going on.
Ivan: You're not commuting?
Sam: I'm not commuting. I mean, you know, and I, you know, I, I had,
Sam: I basically mentally had said,
Sam: I'll take November and, you know, November, I'm going to just relax like this.
Sam: And then come December, I have to start taking the idea of figuring out how
Sam: I'll make money later more seriously, you know?
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And, but I'll be completely honest with you.
Sam: The idea of actually, even though I intellectually know it is most likely what
Sam: I will end up having to do.
Sam: The idea of going back to a regular corporate job is like horrifies me.
Sam: It's like, I mentally do not want to do that. Like I want to,
Sam: so I'm like, you know, I, I see the little things go by of like,
Sam: oh, you know, make money with day trading. Oh, okay.
Sam: That sounds great. You know, let me try that.
Sam: Or, or, you know, whatever scam I get, I get the little like texts all the time,
Sam: you know, let's see what, what's the most recent one I have?
Sam: Like, I'm just, I'm just looking at,
Sam: Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. They're just stupid political ones, too.
Sam: Oh, but I know I get several of these a day, so I just have to find one that's appropriate.
Sam: Oh, well, of course I get the ones that are just completely unknown numbers.
Sam: Hey, long time no see. Where are you staying these days?
Sam: Oh, where are you staying these days, Sam? I get several of these every day.
Sam: But anyway, you guys know what I'm talking about. These make money fast things,
Sam: work from home, make hundreds and hundreds of dollars every day,
Sam: you know, doing nothing.
Ivan: You'll make a thousand dollars a day working one hour a day.
Sam: Yeah, these kinds of things. I get these scam texts all the time and I'm like,
Sam: oh, that sounds good. Maybe I could try that.
Ivan: You know,
Ivan: as you start diluting yourself, this shit starts becoming like viable.
Sam: Exactly.
Ivan: It's a you. Yeah, you start to say, hey.
Sam: It's like you know maybe i
Sam: can uh yeah maybe i
Sam: don't know there are these scams about like sell
Sam: whatever online or read and you look there's all kinds of crap okay and and
Sam: you know i and i'm i'm like letting uh you know and and part of it even on my
Sam: little personal projects i know i'm like really stretching it to think any of
Sam: them could make any money whatsoever you know but,
Sam: I spent a lot of the time from after all the turkey stuff was over Thanksgiving to now.
Sam: Like, you know, I've been working, you know, one of one of the projects that
Sam: I have is this Juke Potter thing for random podcast discovery and jukepotter.com.
Sam: Everybody go check it out.
Sam: Anyway, like I threw my random to do list thing, which, by the way,
Sam: I've also enhanced my to do list mechanism.
Sam: So I'll show you that in a second because I've got a website I can show you on that now.
Sam: But, you know, what came up was, OK, work on some Juke Potter again.
Sam: So I started working on some Juke Potter again. And the thing,
Sam: the thing that was next on my list was like, figure out some monetization for it. Right.
Sam: So now if you go to jukepotter.com there, there,
Sam: I now have put in samples cause nobody's actually paying me cause nobody's going
Sam: to this damn website, of course, but like I've built a monetization mechanism
Sam: where people can buy sponsored placements on the site, you know?
Sam: And so of course I've put in my four podcasts. I've put in an additional eight
Sam: podcasts from from that Snohomish podcast network thing that I've been going
Sam: to mixers on just as samples.
Sam: So like if you go to the site, you know, a certain, you know,
Sam: sponsored ones come up if you're in the category that those things are part of.
Sam: And I'm like, you know, here's the pricing model. And if it became super,
Sam: super popular, I could actually charge people from it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Now, it's not got enough features yet that I'm going to go out and publicize it.
Sam: And it would take a huge amount of volume to make any non-trivial amount of cash.
Sam: And so most likely, it would never make more than Curmudgeon's Corner makes
Sam: us, which is like $25 a month.
Sam: But I've built the mechanism so it could, you know, and I don't know.
Sam: But yeah, and I also am thinking, okay, what's the minimum I could actually get buy on?
Sam: and not, like, be thrown out of the house, you know? And not lose the house.
Ivan: These are the thoughts that you're like, I don't remember what you're going through.
Sam: Exactly it's like how could
Sam: i how could i coast how could
Sam: i coast and not actually go to work and and
Sam: you know like it's not saying you know
Sam: i recognizing you know i i i
Sam: am not in a position where i can live completely
Sam: off my savings for the rest of my life but you
Sam: know if i found a nice shopping cart and a bush to live under maybe i could
Sam: you know i don't know i don't know i don't know you know i i and and of course
Sam: like job market sucks right now and is getting worse of course oh.
Ivan: My god it's it's it's.
Sam: You know so so it's like all.
Ivan: I've been sharing is on the slack are all these terrible like like like just
Ivan: job news and you know the administration has decided,
Ivan: with the same attitude they had during COVID is now the attitude they're having with the economy.
Ivan: Hey, you know, how do we solve the problem with the COVID cases? Stop testing.
Ivan: So, hey, how do we solve the problem with the economic numbers looking bad?
Ivan: Hey, let's stop publishing them.
Sam: Right, exactly.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah.
Sam: So, yeah, it's like, well, what's the point of even looking,
Sam: right? You know, so I don't know.
Ivan: I think these are terrible times. But it is, I think there is...
Ivan: And memory serves, and I had read certain articles, that this is probably one
Ivan: of the worst, at the start of December, it's probably one of the worst times to be looking for a job.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I did get a job many years ago that I started in December, but pretty sure I
Ivan: remember correctly, the interview started like in September.
Ivan: So this was like in 2009. So it wasn't like, you know, but nobody.
Sam: Most people don't kick off. when i started
Sam: now yeah i know like january is
Sam: a better blah blah blah yeah yeah but i mean when i started the job that i'm
Sam: leaving now um i i started in mid-january i'm pretty sure the interview process
Sam: was in december for that position oh okay you know i and so like because I remember.
Ivan: Well, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying statistically.
Sam: It's not a great time. Like, nobody's in that mindset.
Sam: But then, of course, I've seen other people talk about, like,
Sam: well, that's when you jump in because nobody else is doing it. You know, but whatever.
Ivan: I don't think that's, I mean, I'm talking about from the employer side,
Ivan: not the workers. If they need a job, they're going to be hunting.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: You know, but from the other side, it's not the same thing. But anyway, I...
Ivan: You know, there was this, you know, you're talking about money,
Ivan: but there is this article that I saw related to, and I think it's,
Ivan: you know, somebody pretty accurately decided,
Ivan: you know, we talk about the poverty line being 30 some odd thousand dollars
Ivan: for a family of four, which is ridiculous.
Ivan: Nobody can live. I mean, you know, I mean, you can't live without public assistance.
Ivan: Okay. And those people at that money are getting a lot of public assistance.
Ivan: Okay. Right. It's it's it's almost impossible to to live, you know,
Ivan: at that at that amount of money, at a family of four. OK.
Ivan: Yeah. And they were making this calculation where, you know,
Ivan: what the hell should the real poverty line be? OK.
Sam: Right. OK. Yeah.
Ivan: And they they they went through the numbers, crunched the numbers for a family of four.
Ivan: and you know they think
Ivan: and obviously this also goes back to the
Ivan: definition of what poverty is okay all right which also people started arguing
Ivan: about this okay that the real number should be something much closer to about
Ivan: 140 000 for a family of four not not just,
Ivan: Not 30 some odd thousand, 140,000 for a family of four.
Ivan: And by the way, the thing is also defining what the heck poverty is. Okay. All right.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Because it doesn't mean that if you're making 120, you're starved.
Ivan: But what they're saying for a family of four is that on average,
Ivan: and by the way, this is not adjusted for inflation depending on the different
Ivan: states as well. Okay. Right.
Sam: I was going to say, cost of living is very different depending on location.
Ivan: It could be a lot less and more. But on the average of the United States,
Ivan: okay, for a family of four to live basically where you're paying child care, your car,
Ivan: your taxes, your health care,
Ivan: transportation, food.
Ivan: And the numbers they picked aren't crazy numbers. it adds up to about $136,000
Ivan: a year for a family of four.
Ivan: And this is going in like, you know, think about $23,000 for housing,
Ivan: which isn't that expensive a housing if you think about it.
Ivan: $1,000 a month on food, also not crazy.
Ivan: $14,000 on transportation, which you think about four people, right?
Ivan: Cars, insurance, gas.
Ivan: I mean, that's not even that crazy a number if you think about it.
Ivan: Health care, also another $1,000 a month when you add your insurance premiums
Ivan: and whatnot, blah, blah, blah. You know, that gets in there.
Ivan: You know, taxes. That family is paying between the 7% Social Security tax,
Ivan: Medicare, whatever, and, you know, other taxes or whatever.
Ivan: Close to $18,000 in taxes alone. Okay?
Ivan: So it starts getting to, you know, it really adds up real quick. Okay?
Ivan: Now, some disputed the thing that they added $32,000 for child care in.
Ivan: But look, and that some people don't have that expense, I understand how they're saying that.
Ivan: You know, you can dispute the number where it's $100,000, $100,000,
Ivan: $100,000, $100,000, $100,000.
Sam: $100,000, $100,000. Well, with child care, you either need someone staying home
Sam: doing it who's not making an income or you have to pay a huge amount for it.
Ivan: Yeah. And that's the thing because that's a real...
Sam: Or you're doing it illegally and paying somebody under the table at like some...
Sam: But even that's not cheap.
Ivan: Listen, if you think about it, if somebody from that family has to cut back
Ivan: their working in order to do that, it's costing you $30,000 a year.
Ivan: It doesn't matter how you slice it.
Sam: Right. Okay?
Ivan: Whether you're paying it out to a child care provider.
Ivan: And I remember, you know, daycare for people is $2,000 a month. You know?
Ivan: It's not more. That's a real number. It's not more. It's a real number.
Ivan: So, you know, it's one of those things.
Ivan: So, yeah, I mean, in America, really, saying that the poverty line for a family of four is $33,000,
Ivan: I mean, that's basically, I mean, that may mean that they are living in,
Ivan: I mean, they're not, they're living, I mean, they're living a really big.
Ivan: I mean, they're living a very anxious and stressful life at that number.
Ivan: OK, they're not eating well. They're probably skipping meals.
Ivan: They're not getting health care, maybe, depending if they're on Medicaid or
Ivan: not, depending on the state, because that's another thing with the gaps that
Ivan: we got in health care and whatnot.
Ivan: So those are the things that I'm thinking about. But the reality is that,
Ivan: yeah, I mean, I think that I would be, you know, if I didn't have to go back to work, I'm OK.
Ivan: I've said this before. I've had this before. I would be fine.
Ivan: Now, I will say I don't have the same level of dread that you have about going back to work.
Ivan: I will say that my work environment is significantly better.
Ivan: By miles, I don't have the same issue with work that you've had for years.
Ivan: but what i'm saying is that i don't really you know there are there are
Ivan: these people i'm talking you know you talk to like oh my god they don't know
Ivan: what the hell to do themselves if they don't if they don't go to work and i
Ivan: mean i i don't i don't know if you've met these people but i have yeah i mean
Ivan: they're workaholics they cannot live without work okay i'm.
Sam: Like screw that i have.
Ivan: So much.
Sam: And the last month, of course, has showed it to me perfectly, but I have no...
Sam: dearth of things that i will fill my time with if given the opportunity and
Sam: yeah certainly some of it is relaxing some of it is watching tv some of it is
Sam: unproductive stuff sure but i also have things i want to get done all the.
Ivan: Fucking time for god's sakes give me a break okay come on man.
Sam: But you know i i have.
Ivan: Spent this last week because i you know part of my thing is that i i had You know,
Ivan: I, I, Manu didn't have school and I did work a little bit of this week,
Ivan: but I, I, I didn't, I, I, you know, I had planned to try to work the least amount of time possible.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Okay. I did have to take care of a couple of things, but I, I,
Ivan: you know, look, we have unlimited PTO and I was like, look, I,
Ivan: I gotta, you know, I, I, you know, I did.
Sam: If you can't use your unlimited PTO for recovering from surgery, what the fuck good is it?
Ivan: Oh, no, no. And look, I took a number of days already. The one thing is that
Ivan: I had planned on taking some time off now.
Ivan: Here's the one thing about my time. Look, my time, a lot of the times,
Ivan: it's not even dictated by my boss.
Ivan: Not that my boss is looking for me. It's that I attend customers.
Ivan: And, you know, I do sales. So the reality is, and there isn't really anybody
Ivan: that in some cases can answer, you know, can take care of this stuff for the customer.
Ivan: It is what it is. This is one of the things about this type of job.
Ivan: So, you know, I would tell people, look, if it was something,
Ivan: there was a couple of things that nobody else could take care of. I took care of it. Okay.
Ivan: But the other is I just punted. You know, I'm like, whatever.
Ivan: You know, I did not kill myself working, but I did.
Ivan: But this is the thing I'm telling you This is the thing about taking a sales shop,
Ivan: If you're on a sales shop And you want to sell properly One thing that's going
Ivan: to happen It's not about your boss You know, if a customer's trying to reach
Ivan: you And you're not there They get upset,
Ivan: Simple as that It's just like if you Listen, if you go to a store You're trying
Ivan: to find somebody to help you, right?
Ivan: And you can't find a person You know, you don't like that So that's the unfortunate
Ivan: side effect of Of the job.
Ivan: But I did rest a lot. I watched a lot of TV.
Ivan: Gosh, I spent a lot of time. Well, the other thing that happened was that I
Ivan: was thinking of taking Manu to go do something.
Ivan: But Manu got sick on Saturday, right as this week started.
Ivan: And he's been nursing a cold the whole week.
Ivan: It got better for Thanksgiving. Substantially better on Wednesday.
Ivan: But he had been very stuffed having a lot of hard time getting to sleep because
Ivan: he was congested. He was.
Ivan: But so so I thought I was going to take him out to do some stuff, but he was sick.
Ivan: And so I'm like, well, I guess we're just going to lounge around and play video
Ivan: games and not do much of anything and watch TV.
Ivan: Well, we did go see a movie. OK, last night because he felt better.
Ivan: He felt better. So we went to see you Zootopia 2 is out Yes.
Sam: I've heard that Now, I don't know that I've,
Sam: seen the first one.
Ivan: I don't know if I saw the first one either. Actually.
Sam: I mean, I can bring to mind like clips, but I don't think it's from watching the movie.
Sam: I think it's just from being around in a universe where Zootopia exists.
Ivan: It may well very be possible. I'm on the same boat as you.
Ivan: I don't know if I saw the first, but I did see the second one.
Ivan: And so I'll add a movie review.
Sam: I'll just go quickly.
Ivan: Thumbs up.
Sam: Thumbs up for Zootopia 2.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good movie. Out in theaters.
Sam: Good for the whole family. Not just kids.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good for the whole family. Yeah, yeah.
Ivan: My wife, Manu, and I, we all three went. We had a good time at the theater yesterday. Great pact.
Sam: We are probably going to go tomorrow. I have on my to-do list.
Sam: Oh, that I was going to show you. So I have to do that in just a second.
Sam: But we're probably going to go to a second Wicked movie tomorrow. so I have to buy the.
Ivan: Ticket to Force a Wicked.
Sam: Moon I am we have talked before how like musicals aren't really your thing they're
Sam: not really my thing either but I enjoyed the first one couldn't watch the second
Sam: one so and we re-watched the first one on at home a few days ago I mentioned that.
Ivan: I like musicals like a musical like a musical like you know like a Broadway
Ivan: musical in person that I like but not a movie musical so much.
Sam: Right I.
Ivan: Don't know what,
Ivan: Okay, so, like, The first time I went to see a musical, probably the worst way
Ivan: to see a musical, I will say.
Sam: Okay, yes.
Ivan: Well, the reason I say it's the worst way is that, look, I, this was,
Ivan: like, when we were in college, there was this one time that I went to,
Ivan: like, near, like, I went to, I went to London, okay, for spring break.
Ivan: Okay, for a couple of days. Well, I went to Madrid, but then, I flew to Madrid,
Ivan: but then my girlfriend at the time said, oh wait but we're
Ivan: all going to london and i already bought the ticket to go my mom
Ivan: said we're all going to london like fuck it's just madrid then
Ivan: i gotta check i gotta and i was like i couldn't change the ticket so i could
Ivan: fly to london and then go to madrid i have to fly to madrid first fly to london
Ivan: and this was like from pittsburgh so i had to fly from pittsburgh to newark
Ivan: right pittsburgh to newark newark
Ivan: to madrid then madrid to london and that same night that I got there.
Ivan: We went to... They had tickets to go to... Of course, they lived in Madrid,
Ivan: so they're in the same time zone. I was not, okay?
Ivan: They had tickets to go see Cats, okay, that night in the West End.
Ivan: And I'd never been to... Hey, one thing you want to do is go to a theater in
Ivan: the West End to go see a show, okay?
Ivan: You know, so I got there.
Ivan: I was very... I had a hard time watching it, even though I liked it. It was Cats.
Sam: Cats is a little odd of musicals. I have seen Cats.
Ivan: I will say that it took a substantial amount of coffee that I consumed.
Ivan: for me to stay. I mean, it wasn't because the musical was bad.
Ivan: It's just that I had spent like 20 plus hours traveling.
Ivan: I'm jet lagged on my ass and I'm like all of a sudden trying to watch Cats.
Sam: That might not be the best situation to see it in.
Ivan: No, I can say like flat out. No, no.
Ivan: If you want to watch my recommendations, if you go to London,
Ivan: you want to watch a show, at a theater at West End, do not go the same day you arrived.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: That's my travel. Okay.
Sam: Now we've on, I want to get your reactions to this thing alive.
Sam: Cause we've talked before about my various to-do list mechanisms.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And so one of the, one of the things I've done in the last two weeks is take one of the things like a.
Ivan: Randomizer or something.
Sam: Yes, exactly. I, yes, I used to do this for a while.
Sam: I did this on a spreadsheet and then I'd move to a different method using dice.
Sam: But like, I revived this one because I sort of missed it.
Sam: The basic premise behind this one, it's mostly for recurring tasks,
Sam: like things that you want to do on a regular basis.
Sam: Like, you know, I mentioned juke potter, like I have that in there as like,
Sam: I want to do something with that every three days. Okay.
Sam: And so the basic premise is that you look at what percentage of the,
Sam: like, if you're supposed to do it every three days, then if it's been three
Sam: days since you have done the thing,
Sam: then it's, it's sort of the baseline.
Sam: Okay. And if it's been half that time, it's half the priority.
Sam: So like if it's been one and a half days, it's half the priority to do that thing.
Sam: Then if it's the three days you said, and if you've let it go six,
Sam: it's double the priority.
Sam: If you let it go nine, it's triple the priority. Okay.
Sam: Et cetera. And, but these priorities don't represent just like the order on a list.
Sam: They go in, each thing comes in with a score.
Sam: And then when you're deciding what to do, you pick based on like the higher
Sam: the score, something has, the greater a probability it has of coming up.
Sam: So, like, the things near the top of the list have a greater priority of coming
Sam: up when you pick a task than lower.
Sam: And I also have a mechanism to do a multiplier that says, like,
Sam: this is every three days, but it's 10 times more important than other stuff.
Sam: So, multiply its score by 10. It's 10 times more likely than it would be otherwise, right?
Sam: So, anyway, here I am sending you the URL to this.
Sam: Look at it on your computer. I have not optimized it for mobile.
Sam: So, it doesn't fit right on a phone. but
Sam: you can bring up this i i've made it the the site itself i'm not giving the
Sam: url on the podcast but i i haven't put any protections uh against seeing it
Sam: i've made protections you have to you have to type in a pin to change anything
Sam: so this is read only to you okay,
Sam: so so first of all describe what you see here and tell the audience well.
Ivan: I mean i must say Sam, you made it very graphically pleasing. Okay. All right.
Sam: Thank you.
Ivan: So it's this Apple to do priority based task manager, and it's got the task.
Ivan: And I guess because of the scoring, right?
Ivan: It goes and it puts, you know, it has this bar chart that shows the most, it shows how,
Ivan: Because of the scoring, where it is at the top of the list, okay?
Sam: Right, yeah.
Ivan: It says how many times, you know, when did you repeat, okay?
Ivan: And it's got the multiplier, and it shows you the last time that you had an action. What is the N?
Sam: How many times I've done it under this system?
Ivan: Oh, so you've done it 18 times, okay? So the thing is that, for example,
Ivan: at the first one that he's got here, move tasks from simple note to to-do.
Ivan: So that's apparently very functioned.
Sam: So you put it on a to-do list. And so this is transferring stuff from my old
Sam: to-do list onto this thing.
Ivan: So that one, he's done 18 times. It's like it's got a multiplier of 10.
Ivan: The next one that's on here, apparently, that is critical. It's got a multiplier,
Ivan: but he has not done it at all. It's buy movie tickets.
Sam: Yeah, it's the movie tickets for tomorrow. Right. And you'll notice there's a repeat column.
Sam: The first one I have on there, do every six hours.
Sam: Move one of those items. And I've done the 18 of them, and it's got a 10x multiplier.
Sam: But the last time I did it was two days, eight hours ago, two days.
Ivan: So let's see, uh, you help Alex video, which you haven't helped them in six months.
Ivan: And you've done it once. It's online.
Ivan: The laundry round. Oh, this one isn't that bad. You've done twice. Okay.
Ivan: This one you did about a week and three days ago. That's not terrible. Okay. All right.
Ivan: Although I would say, considering that you don't actually have a job,
Ivan: that's actually miserable.
Sam: Well, and my target is to do this every 12 hours, twice a day.
Sam: Because I have calculated that in order to keep up with the volume of laundry,
Sam: I have to do it twice a day and.
Ivan: You've only done it to what god okay snow.
Sam: Laps and look you have neglected dimensions on the left of this with the scoring
Sam: for each one of these like the the move tasks from the simple they're ranked.
Ivan: You know like one two three so i'm moving down the rank list.
Sam: You're going down the rank list but the important part is like that that move
Sam: things from my old to-do list has a 15% chance of coming up.
Sam: If I pick a task, the buy movie tickets has an 11.9% chance.
Sam: Help Alex video has a 3.85%.
Ivan: Oh, I see.
Sam: So now, now hit the pick a task button, Yvonne, or turn, turn up your volume, turn up your volume.
Sam: Cause the, the sound is kind of flaky, but there are sound effects here.
Ivan: Okay. Let me see. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait, where's, where's my volume knob? Okay. Here. Okay.
Sam: I heard the blit-twiddle.
Ivan: Oh! Oh! Oh, you could... Yeah, well, the thing is, the sound is coming through
Ivan: my headphones, unfortunately.
Sam: Oh, wow.
Ivan: Hang on, I could do something. Let me see. All right, I'll do this again. Did that come through?
Sam: No. No.
Ivan: It does this little cool sound effect, and then it randomly picks it, and it picked the task.
Ivan: On this instance, down at number 114, which had a 0.107% chance,
Ivan: which is feed and water mic, which was done four days ago.
Ivan: Okay, well, that's not bad. You didn't do it four days ago.
Sam: Well, and see, it's got a once a week target.
Sam: And so what happens is when you complete a task, because the priority is based
Sam: on how long it's been, it drops all the way to the bottom of the list and then
Sam: slowly works its way back up.
Ivan: Sam, can I just say something? This is actually pretty cool.
Ivan: I will tell you this. I don't understand why the hell putting this in an app
Ivan: and putting it on the App Store, to be honest with you, if you can make a mobile.
Ivan: I see four people.
Sam: This is one of my projects that I did.
Ivan: It's a nation of procrastinating. Let's be clear about this.
Ivan: Okay. You know, this is, this is reality.
Ivan: There are, you know, so if you went and you put this, you know,
Ivan: we got to come up with a name. Okay.
Sam: You don't think Apple to do is the name?
Ivan: Not going to help. Okay. All right. Not going to help. But if we can come up
Ivan: with a name, but put this on the app store, this might.
Sam: Well you know like like like you said when you pick a task there's a little
Sam: sound effect there's an animation yeah it's it's it's addictive like i have
Sam: sat here yes just hitting the pick a task button over and over and over again.
Ivan: I i must admit i did i get quite quite enjoyable it was quite enjoyable to do so.
Sam: Since since you couldn't hear
Sam: it i will insert later what the sound effect sounds like at this point.
Sam: anyway i'll add that but yeah no look this is the kind of thing like as i'm
Sam: going through things i'm like i built this for myself but i'm like okay how
Sam: could i repackage this how could i make some money off this could i gotta be honest with you other.
Ivan: Than just making it mobile and and getting a nicer name this is actually pretty
Ivan: good this is really damn cool i gotta be honest with.
Sam: I think.
Ivan: That people I think that there are a lot of people out there,
Ivan: who probably would enjoy using this. Not me, but a lot of people, though.
Sam: Yes, if anybody listening wants to see this thing, I'm not going to give the
Sam: URL on the podcast, but if you ping me individually, I'll share it so you can
Sam: play with it and hear the little sound.
Sam: The sound is erratic, though. I found if I use it over and over again,
Sam: sometimes it doesn't come out properly.
Sam: I've got on my list, debug why the sound doesn't always work.
Sam: You know, things like that. And you'll notice I've got little,
Sam: like, statistical things.
Sam: Like, there's a line at the one sigma, two sigma, three sigma of,
Sam: like, how often things come up and the percentage, you know.
Sam: And it's color-coded by how late the thing is. Because, of course,
Sam: the default is, like, everything's late.
Sam: Everything's less frequent than I'd like it to be. The ones with the green bars,
Sam: Yvonne, are the ones that aren't yet late. and you have to get down to 131 on
Sam: the list to find the first one that's not late. Yeah, to find any green.
Ivan: Yeah, it's all the top 23 here.
Ivan: And it's like they're all like, you know, in distress.
Sam: Well, when I first transferred my previous method into here and I did an import
Sam: from another tool I was using on my phone, like the top category,
Sam: the color would be black.
Sam: And those were the ones that were more than 100 times past their deadline.
Sam: I did clear out all of those and I've did all, I had like a couple dozen of
Sam: those and I cleared them all out. I took care of those.
Sam: And now, now we're in the, the, the, the blue is the next most latest category.
Sam: The one I have some purple ones at the top, which are less late than blue,
Sam: but they're at the top because they've got a multiplier on them for the importance. So.
Ivan: Wait, you haven't showered in a week?
Sam: Yeah, well, it's been a week.
Ivan: What?
Sam: I'm not sure it has really been that. There are other ones on here that sometimes those are accurate.
Sam: When I do something that's on the list, for instance, I have on here Feed Sam to remember to eat.
Sam: but very often i eat because
Sam: like if i eat because i rolled eat
Sam: i will remember to put this but if i eat on
Sam: my own you don't market as completely well no i i try to remember to but i often
Sam: forget if i have done a thing on my own as opposed to because i rolled it on
Sam: this list i'm sporadic as to whether i remember to hit the button on here.
Ivan: Got it got.
Sam: You know but but But I would not be surprised if the shower thing is accurate.
Sam: But, you know, but I'm starting to feel icky.
Sam: I might take care of that later today. You know, there's a 1% chance it'll come
Sam: up when I roll for shower. So, you know.
Sam: And by the way, this is keeping stats behind the scenes. I haven't built the graphs yet.
Sam: But it's keeping stats on how many tasks I do every day and things like that.
Sam: and what the scores were and all kinds of stuff like that so I can build graphs
Sam: of my productivity and things like that.
Ivan: Well, of course, I was going to increase the priority like by 40.
Sam: But you hit the PIN number.
Ivan: I don't, yeah, I got to put the, I don't have the PIN number, so.
Sam: Well, this is, you know, my son, of course,
Sam: Very first thing, like I told him, was like, don't mess with this. I know you're going to.
Ivan: You started talking with us.
Sam: Within like an hour or two of me setting this up the first time,
Sam: he'd figured out my code and started to add things to this list for me. I'm like, don't do that.
Sam: And like I changed the code. And then he knows the new code.
Sam: He does things like, you know, start screen recording on my device.
Ivan: What does he have? He's key logging you? What the fuck?
Sam: One time when I was working at my desk, he placed his phone on top of my microphone on,
Sam: pointed at the keyboard and recorded me putting in the PIN number.
Sam: And I didn't notice it was there.
Ivan: He's like Mike Johnson and his kid, for God's sakes. What the hell?
Sam: Another time, he borrowed my phone for a second, started screen recording on
Sam: the phone so that he could capture it as I typed it in that way.
Sam: You know, he knows all the passwords. He is.
Sam: He can be stealthy. yeah and and
Sam: so you know that there there's nothing you know anyway but i've told him that
Sam: if i catch him changing stuff to the list because i know he's got the passwords
Sam: that that he loses like some privileges and attention for me for like 24 hours
Sam: so ah that's discouraged.
Ivan: Them from maybe.
Sam: Anyway it's fun and this is the kind of thing like you know and you know i i've
Sam: been able to do something like this.
Sam: And yes, AI assistance helps because I can take the idea and like describe what
Sam: I want and it'll help me actually build it.
Sam: And like, I can iterate on the idea without thinking too much about the mechanisms of how to do it.
Sam: And I can build a little thing. And yes. And of course, yeah,
Sam: every single thing, every single thing I do, I'm like, is there a way to monetize this?
Sam: Can I monetize this? Can I make this the, you know, whatever,
Sam: you know so yes of course and i've got like a big to-do list of like additional
Sam: enhancements and things i want to change and do and like like it wouldn't be
Sam: hard for me at this point like i to to like set up an account mechanism and
Sam: set up a url and be like okay yvonne you think this is cool,
Sam: here here you go set up an account you can have your own blank one give me five
Sam: bucks a month thank you very much you know.
Ivan: I think we're going to have to put some ads on it.
Sam: Well, like I said, I added monetization.
Ivan: No, ads. You pay for ad free. Yeah, yeah. There you go.
Sam: Since I've spent so much time on this, should I still do a movie or is it too late?
Ivan: Do one.
Sam: Do one.
Ivan: No, do one. Do one.
Sam: Okay, where did I put the stupid thing? Okay, the next movie on the list is,
Sam: making sure I pick the right one, Blade from 1998.
Ivan: 1988 Blade?
Sam: 1998.
Ivan: I don't even know what the fuck. I don't remember this movie. It's Wesley Swipes.
Sam: Swipes. Wesley Snipes.
Ivan: Swipes?
Sam: Like Swiper, no Swipey or whatever from Dora.
Ivan: I like how it sounds. It's Wesley Swipes.
Sam: Anyway, yes. This is...
Ivan: Oh, this is from like that... Yeah. Now, you know, he had that Blaine trilogy,
Ivan: which the movies made money.
Ivan: But I think also these are the movies that got him into his tax troubles as well.
Sam: Oh, OK. Yeah, I didn't remember that. But it's ringing a little bit of a bell when you say it.
Ivan: Yeah, well, you know, he went to jail for not paying.
Ivan: You know, he found this this this this brilliant genius tax guy that went and
Ivan: told him that he didn't know federal tax.
Ivan: and then he started trying to claim massive tax refunds and then he said returns.
Ivan: He was basically claiming to be a sovereign citizen or something for a while.
Sam: Oh, nice. That always works out well for people.
Ivan: The IRS did not take too kindly on that and he wound up broken in jail.
Sam: Excellent. Good job on him, I guess. Anyway, yes, Blade is a Marvel thing.
Sam: thing it came from a marvel comic but
Sam: it's not in the mcu it's not in a marvel cinematic
Sam: universe but it is marvel and he anyway
Sam: this is the first of like you said there's a trilogy um basically it's he's
Sam: a vampire but he's a good vampire that fights bad vampires you know that's I'm.
Ivan: Surprised My wife has been all into these vampire shows And things,
Ivan: I'm surprised my wife hasn't watched this. I don't think she has.
Sam: Here's the beginning of the plot summary from Wikipedia. In 1967,
Sam: a pregnant woman is attacked by a vampire, causing her to go into premature labor.
Sam: Doctors are able to save the baby, but the woman dies.
Sam: 30 years later, the child has become the vampire hunter Blade,
Sam: who is known as the Daywalker, a human vampire hybrid that possesses the supernatural
Sam: abilities of the vampires without any
Sam: of their weaknesses, except for the requirement to consume human blood.
Sam: Blade raids a rave club owned by the vampire Deacon Frost.
Sam: Police take one of the vampires to the hospital where he kills Dr.
Sam: Curtis Webb and feeds on hematologist Karen Jensen and escapes.
Sam: Blade takes Karen to a safe house where she is treated by his old friend Abraham Whistler.
Sam: Whistler explains that he and Blade have been waging a secret war against vampires,
Sam: using weapons based on their elemental weaknesses such as sunlight, silver, and garlic.
Sam: As Karen is now marked by the bite of a vampire, both he and Blade tell her to leave the city.
Sam: Dot, dot, dot. Plot continues.
Sam: There are lots of fights.
Sam: I'll tell you. I'm going to give it a thumbs down.
Sam: I know some people like this kind of movie, but this is one of the ones that's
Sam: like, it's high, it's basically fight scene after fight scene after fight scene,
Sam: lots of violence flight, uh, fight scenes as well.
Sam: Uh, there's, there's lots of
Sam: sort of gross out, maybe a little bit of exaggeration, but that it's just,
Sam: it's one of the, it's the type of movie that if you are into,
Sam: I just want to watch the fights.
Sam: I don't really care that much about the plot. I don't care that much about the characters.
Sam: I just want to see them go from one fight tableau to another fight tableau to
Sam: another fight tableau and then
Sam: the good guy wins and it's the end of the movie okay oh sorry spoilers,
Sam: you know that that's that's roughly the
Sam: kind of thing that is not the kind of movie i
Sam: really enjoy so thumbs down for me some people love that kind of thing and if
Sam: so maybe you'll like this i don't know but you know i and i'm not saying there
Sam: was no plot and no characters but it just it was very clearly not the priority of the movie,
Sam: you know, and, and so it was what it was.
Ivan: So these movies made a lot of money, which is a crazy thing. As far as I can tell.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, they made three of them.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: Let's see. Box office. It dislodged Saving Private Ryan from the box office when it first came out.
Ivan: Wow. Think about that. Think about that.
Sam: Let's see. Let's see. What do they have totals here?
Sam: Finished the run with $70 million domestically, $61 million worldwide for a total of $131 million.
Sam: But this was back in 98.
Ivan: 98.
Sam: You know.
Ivan: So this is like a $300 million film now. Yeah, yeah. A little over $300 million.
Sam: Apparently, though.
Ivan: What was the budget? What was the production budget? Usually they put there.
Sam: How much did it cost to make it? You know, you're asking me stuff,
Sam: and let's see, $45 million budget.
Ivan: So, well, I guess $45 million to $160 million, I guess that's four times.
Ivan: So that's what they expect.
Ivan: Okay, sorry, it made money. I thought it was maybe bigger than that given that they made three of them.
Sam: Right oh and what's interesting here is this is one of those like this is pre-MCU
Sam: this is pre-rebirth of Marvel blah blah blah,
Sam: Marvel Comics was paid $25,000 for the rights to the character for the movie.
Ivan: Oh I'm sure they were flat fee no percentage by the way there is a reason why
Ivan: Marvel back then was doing horribly financially.
Sam: They didn't know how to make deals like this?
Ivan: No. No, they did not. No.
Sam: Anyway, critical response, Rotten Tomatoes gives it 59%, rating of 6 out of 10.
Sam: The site's critic consensus says, Though some may find the plot a bit lacking,
Sam: Blade's action is fierce, plentiful, and appropriately stylish for a comic book
Sam: adaptation. There you go.
Ivan: Okay. Well, there you go, Sam. They basically said, you don't know what you're talking about.
Sam: No, they said exactly what they said. Light on plot. Lots of action.
Sam: That's pretty much what I said.
Ivan: I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
Sam: Sure you are. Yeah. Whatever. Well, this is how I'll make my living, Yvonne.
Sam: I'm just going to be a full time movie reviewer.
Ivan: You're going to be Roger Ebert.
Sam: I'm going to be Roger Ebert. I will go and, you know, people will pay me to
Sam: say thumbs up, thumbs down.
Sam: You know, that's another moneymaker.
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: Okay let's keep coming.
Ivan: Up with all these money-making schemes.
Sam: Yeah exactly it's you know i mean and and surely any day now i'll win the lottery
Sam: i mean i'd have to buy a ticket but.
Ivan: Well uh yeah.
Sam: Yeah but i'm sure if i did i would instantly win that's how it works right.
Ivan: It does work very easily, yes. You just have to buy one ticket. One number only.
Sam: Exactly. Exactly. Okay, let's
Sam: go ahead and take that break, and then we'll come back with Newsy stuff.
Sam: Newsy stuff. Now, I'll tell you.
Ivan: Not Olivia Newsy.
Sam: Not Olivia Newsy. There was more stuff related to that.
Ivan: Oh, fuck, Jesus Christ. Was there more stuff? My God.
Sam: There was. I didn't even. And it was one of those things where I saw that there
Sam: was more stuff, but I did not have any desire to find out what that additional
Sam: stuff was. So I pretty much ignored it.
Ivan: It was bad. It was really bad.
Ivan: We didn't even put it on the topic list. But Sam, holy shit, it was bad.
Sam: Since you mentioned it, do you want to give like a one minute summary?
Ivan: What's going on here? After we get back.
Sam: After we come back. Okay. I will mention that the first break should have been
Sam: a new wiki of the day break, but I was running late to get ready,
Sam: so I didn't prepare that.
Sam: So I'm saving that till next time.
Sam: So there will be a new wiki of the day one next time.
Sam: But in the meantime, here is a different one. Here you go.
Break: Alex, I'm the ref. dot com by Alex and Dad gaming videos and more from Alex
Break: elementary school by day youtube by night alexmzela.com,
Break: Alex Mzela is A-L-E-X-M-X-E-L-A.
Sam: Okay, we're back. So, Nuzzy.
Ivan: Okay, the Nuzzy story that I saw come out this week was that Nuzzy went and
Ivan: had tried to help RFK Jr. kill the bear story.
Ivan: That, you know, that he took a dead bear and put it in Central Park.
Sam: Okay, yes.
Ivan: That she had actually worked with him and plotted with him to figure out how to kill the story.
Sam: Oh, excellent.
Ivan: So much for her being such a journalist.
Sam: Is that all? I heard there were more affairs with more people and that she was...
Ivan: Well, that was... Well, I'm saying that was the last one. The other one...
Ivan: Well, she had been banging Mark Sanford. Okay.
Ivan: All right. So that one...
Sam: I don't know if we talked about that. Was a Florida politician? Am I remembering right?
Ivan: I didn't see the Florida one.
Sam: South Carolina? Where was he? Where was he?
Ivan: Well, that's Mark Sanford. South Carolina. He was the governor of South Carolina.
Ivan: He was the guy that went on the Appalachian Trail.
Sam: Oh, right. Was it her that she was going on the Appalachian Trail with?
Ivan: No. She was going. No, that was in Argentina.
Ivan: He flew to Argentina. He had this girlfriend in Argentina. Okay?
Ivan: That it was his side chick back then.
Ivan: That, I think, ended at some point. Okay? He got divorced.
Ivan: And then when he was running for president in 2020, He was running for president in 2020.
Ivan: Olivia Nazeep, while covering him, had chased after him, chased after him, and.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: Well, how can you properly do a story on somebody who's running for president
Sam: if you have not had sex on them, Yvonne?
Ivan: Well, apparently that's one thing that soured her on Biden because it seems
Ivan: like she thought that Biden was, you know, Biden was like— He wouldn't have sex with her?
Ivan: Apparently, you know, based on some stuff, it seems kind of like that was the
Ivan: vibe I got from some of the coverage.
Sam: Okay. Interesting.
Ivan: So, you know, there you go. Makes me up my respect for Joe Biden,
Ivan: which is already high, even way higher.
Sam: I'm left speechless. I don't know.
Ivan: There was a story where she was writing and waxing poetic about Trump's energy and virility.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And then at the same time, shitting on Biden. What, based on the track record
Ivan: we are seeing right now, what the fuck can I surmise?
Sam: I'm done.
Ivan: What are you wanting me to tell you?
Sam: I don't know. And of course, this flurry of publicity is because,
Sam: of course, she's just put out a new book where she's talked about a bunch of this stuff.
Ivan: Oh my God. But then her ex is bringing out more.
Sam: Stuff that she has not brought up herself.
Ivan: Correct and i know he posted something yeah
Ivan: actually he's the one that shared the story about her
Ivan: working with rfk jr to try to bury
Ivan: the the cub story okay and
Ivan: this whole thing goes back and you know she's employed right now as a fucking
Ivan: reporter still somewhere and i'm just like how the fuck i i you know i say that
Ivan: and i realize that a network like Fox News has people like Gutfeld and Jesse Waters,
Ivan: and, you know,
Ivan: Megyn Kelly still has a job somehow.
Ivan: And so, yeah, I guess, you know.
Sam: Okay, so I think here.
Ivan: Listen, this is, by the way, I think being covered by a lot of people from the
Ivan: sensibility of what we thought reporters should be.
Sam: Some of us oldsters still
Sam: have this idealized vision of the folks who are after the truth and impartial and this and that.
Sam: Impartial in a truth-seeking way, not impartial in a both-sides sort of way, etc.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Okay. Anyway, Nuzzy was not going to be your main topic, was it?
Sam: What were you really going to talk about this second?
Ivan: No, no, no. What are we going to... Well, fuck, I already...
Ivan: Jeez, I already picked something. You and her short, you go pick something.
Sam: You can keep talking about... Oh, okay, yeah. I thought you were going to say
Sam: you wanted to talk about Nuzzy for another 20 minutes.
Ivan: No, I mean... What are you...
Ivan: Look, I don't want to talk about Nuzzy, but...
Ivan: You know, I shared a clip on Slack today. You talk about people and this entire,
Ivan: I mean, reality that we live right now is going to say an issue.
Ivan: It's not an issue would be maybe something that we can find a solution for.
Ivan: The reality, this is our reality right now, where you get an asshole like Tucker
Ivan: Carlson going and basically, I mean, that Pierce Morgan in an interview comes out.
Ivan: as the voice of reason on the Nazi regime where Tucker is questioning that,
Ivan: oh, you guys just chose to go to war against the Germans because Hitler wasn't
Ivan: planning on invading Great Britain, even though it's well documented that he planned on it.
Ivan: And he wanted to. Oh, because you just could have made a deal. I'm like, a deal?
Ivan: The Russians made a deal with him. Like what? Like he didn't go and say, fuck you on your deal.
Ivan: By the way, Neville Chamberlain made a number of deals with him. And he also.
Sam: And he's remembered fondly by history because of it.
Ivan: Exactly. Because he was a naive idiot that went.
Ivan: And like it was Churchill that decided to draw a line in the sand and say, fuck, fuck this shit.
Ivan: And Tucker Carlson is doing all this entire remissionist history on his show
Ivan: that Pierce Morgan had to repeatedly correct him on like, you know,
Ivan: we, I mean, Hitler wanted to invade Great Britain.
Ivan: I mean, you know, I mean, oh, you chose to go to war against him.
Ivan: I mean, does he forget the Blitz?
Ivan: Anybody remember the Blitz?
Sam: Well, very few.
Ivan: I'm not talking about Carlson. Very few, obviously. Yeah, this is a big problem
Ivan: that we've got right now.
Sam: Just as an aside, because we always do asides,
Sam: one of the things that I've heard people mention just on the cyclicality of
Sam: history is often simply because the terrible events of the past that right after they happen,
Sam: Everybody's like, we're never going to let this happen again.
Sam: We're going to, you know, we're going to restructure how we do things specifically
Sam: to avoid this bad thing happening.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: What always happens is a certain number of years later, let's say 60 to 80 years later.
Ivan: Forget about the whole thing.
Sam: The people who actually remember it, like with their own live memories,
Sam: as opposed to reading about it in a book or hearing about it from their parents,
Sam: die off and are, and the people who no longer remember it are now in charge
Sam: and immediately make the exact same mistakes that people made 80 years previously.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And guess where we are right now?
Ivan: I'm just, you know But you know that the bigger problem is, right?
Ivan: That in Tucker Carlson's case Yes.
Sam: Okay We're talking about Tucker, I forgot Go ahead.
Ivan: Is that he's a grifter? Yes So you don't really know what the fuck he really believes,
Ivan: I do believe that he is a racist. I mean, that part, I'm sure.
Sam: I'm sure.
Ivan: He keeps talking about how diversity to him is awful.
Ivan: Who wants to live in a diverse place?
Ivan: Who wants this, you know, I want to be in a place where everybody around me is white.
Sam: Yes. Yep.
Ivan: And how it's so bad to live with people.
Sam: Was it him or was it somebody in the administration this week?
Sam: It might have been Miller or somebody, completely unsurprising,
Sam: you know, talking about how certain populations are fundamentally unassimilizable
Sam: and so therefore should not be let in simply because of that, et cetera.
Ivan: Sounds like something Miller or, it sounds like something either of them would say.
Sam: Because the whole notion is, you know, you don't want to let people in who are
Sam: going to change the culture in any way, you know, because you want to retain that purity and,
Sam: you know, like you were saying, whereas, of course, like folks like us are like,
Sam: no, no, that's the strength.
Sam: Of course you want to change the culture.
Sam: You want to have a melding where you get the best of all the cultures together
Sam: and you learn from them and they learn from you.
Sam: And together you have something better that was better than what either of you had before or whatever.
Ivan: You know one phrase that we used to hear very quickly.
Ivan: We used to hear frequently. Yeah. You remember that?
Sam: Oh, yeah.
Ivan: Have we said that all the time? And now it seems that people avoid saying it like it's a bad thing?
Sam: Well, and honestly, there's, yeah, there are multiple criticisms of the melting pot.
Sam: One is from folks like Tucker Carlson and Miller who are like,
Sam: we don't want our culture tainted.
Sam: by the other culture through this melting pot process.
Sam: But then there's also folks who are like, well, you don't want people to give
Sam: up their identities either. You don't want people to be lost in assimilation
Sam: and not, you know, they come from country X.
Ivan: The melting pot is not assimilation, okay? Because assimilation is like the Borg, okay? All right?
Ivan: I mean, it's all I think about, okay?
Sam: Well, people have said there's another model It's more like a plum pudding or
Sam: something where, you know, it's all mixed together, but still everything retains
Sam: its additional identity.
Sam: I think the actual, like from my point of view, the ideal is something where
Sam: you do mix everything together and you come up with a hybrid that is better
Sam: than any of the ingredients.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: I can understand, however, how if you are in sort of a marginalized culture
Sam: where retaining stuff from that culture becomes more important to you.
Ivan: Look, I'm Puerto Rican, okay? Well, you know, I live in the society where I
Ivan: speak a language that is not the native language of my island,
Ivan: but I speak it better than my native language.
Ivan: That's a reality. Maybe not that much better, but my...
Ivan: You know, my language skills in English are, because I use it more,
Ivan: that's the main reason, definitely better than my Spanish ones,
Ivan: even though my Spanish ones are still pretty good.
Sam: You're not saying you're illiterate in Spanish.
Ivan: Not even close. I mean, I write, I do, I do business in Spanish.
Ivan: But what I'm saying is that the reality is that my English, because of various reasons, is better.
Ivan: Okay? and so but i
Ivan: still use my spanish every day
Ivan: i cook with seasonings that
Ivan: we use back home every day but i'll cook a steak using them for example you
Ivan: know i don't you know and i think that many of us from puerto rico do a job
Ivan: of enjoying a lot of the things that our culture has, like it's music,
Ivan: like it's family activities, like the food and so forth, while living in the
Ivan: United States, fully integrated into what society has been for many decades.
Ivan: And it's one thing I know that Cubans, for example, that moved to Miami back when exiled from Fidel,
Ivan: because of the racism that persisted back then,
Ivan: many of that generation of Cubans that got brought up in Miami were dissuaded from learning Spanish,
Ivan: that you've got a generation of Cubans that many of them cannot speak Spanish
Ivan: very well, or don't speak it at all.
Ivan: And it was their fear of...
Ivan: Of them being marginalized in society okay
Ivan: the parents were worried about it because they were being
Ivan: marginalized and so they they had
Ivan: in many ways pushed away some of that culture
Ivan: i i think that that changed i don't i don't think that changed later okay with
Ivan: the later generations but the reality but that was a reality i think my nieces
Ivan: and nephews their spanish is not as good as,
Ivan: as ours that were brought up in puerto rico but
Ivan: they still speak it and they still like a lot
Ivan: of the things about our our culture and do it
Ivan: but but in the end what they have as a
Ivan: culture it's not an assimilation it's not what we had is something completely
Ivan: different and i and i think that's perfectly fine because it's it you know i
Ivan: i sometimes we want to preserve everything like It's a museum where culture
Ivan: is an ever evolving thing, you know?
Sam: Well, and this is actually one of the core things that folks like Stephen Miller just can't accept.
Sam: They do want to freeze it in time. They believe like these things were right
Sam: and good and the way things should be and they should be like that forever.
Sam: as opposed to, yeah, no, like I don't expect that my values are the same as
Sam: my grandparents. And I don't expect that if I have grandkids,
Sam: that their values will be the same as mine.
Sam: Things evolve, things change, and that's not a bad thing, you know?
Ivan: Yeah. And, but, but these people, the whole make America great again, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: So turn back the clock to, I don't know.
Sam: Well, at first, people were always thinking that Trump meant the 1950s.
Sam: He's later pretty much made it clear that he's really thinking 1890s.
Sam: That's where he'd like to go back to.
Ivan: Robert Barron's.
Sam: Exactly.
Ivan: Yeah, that was the big economic oligarchy in America.
Ivan: Basically, you know, the great segregation. Women had no rights.
Ivan: I can't remember who the heck it was. it was, they were trying to pull,
Ivan: no president would have ever done something.
Ivan: And I can't remember the exact thing that Trump, that was the calling,
Ivan: like, you know, and somebody, well, Andrew Jackson would have done it.
Ivan: And I'm like, look, the fact that you have to go back to a president so far
Ivan: back that at that time, there's something related to women that not even,
Ivan: you know, you have to pull for a time that women couldn't even own property
Ivan: legally, for God's sakes,
Ivan: and blacks are slaves, that shows you how retrograde that thought is.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: If you have to go back that far, then something's fucked up about it.
Ivan: And yeah, he wants to go back to the time where women didn't vote. Yeah. At times.
Sam: And Donald Trump hasn't specifically said that one, but certain folks on the sort of Magali. Yeah.
Ivan: Okay but anyway we're talking about the the reality of the current journalist
Ivan: uh you know profession yeah and what the opinions in general people are our
Ivan: our opinions on journalism are seen as.
Sam: Yes. Well, and even I would say, like, I don't think the sort of idealized Edward R.
Sam: Murrow, Walter Cronkite thing is necessarily exactly the right model to go back to either.
Sam: I had mentioned truth seekers rather than both sides.
Sam: I think there's a big problem with the sort of both sides view of journalism these days.
Sam: I think having, knowing, I think trying to pretend journalists don't have an
Sam: opinion isn't necessarily helpful, but I think.
Ivan: But you've got to separate two things.
Sam: You've got to separate.
Ivan: One is I have an opinion. It's like you being a scientist, right?
Sam: You've got to separate the advocacy from fact-finding.
Ivan: Exactly. It's the same as doing a scientific experiment.
Ivan: You could think that something is going to happen with a science experiment,
Ivan: but when you're doing the experiment, And if the testing shows you something
Ivan: different, you have to go and accept, oh, shit, I thought this was going to
Ivan: happen, but that's not what happened.
Sam: But at the same time, like, I keep... There was a quote, and I don't know who said it.
Sam: It's gone around many times since then, of, like, it...
Sam: it's comparing news people to, to weather people, you know, where if you don't
Sam: report like, Hey, this one guy says it's, it's going to be sunny.
Sam: And this one guy says it's going to be rain.
Sam: If you are a good reporter, you go outside and check yourself and you report
Sam: what you see. Is it raining? Is it not raining?
Sam: You know, like it's not everything. There are things that are sort of purely
Sam: matters of opinion and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And then, okay, you can present like this person thinks this and this person
Sam: thinks that and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But there are many, many things where the objective truth is actually knowable.
Sam: And in that case, it is the responsibility of a good journalist to seek out
Sam: that truth and report on it and not just report on what the other people are
Sam: saying about each other.
Sam: You know, and, and I think that there's,
Sam: There's hesitancy to do that in a lot of places. Also,
Sam: I think that the fact that at this point, there's a huge concentration of media
Sam: ownership in large corporations makes it more difficult as well because there's not a lot of separation.
Sam: Sam, Sam, I mean, that was true.
Ivan: I'm sorry, but in history, that's been the case of large media.
Ivan: I mean, actually, wait, forget about large media. In the past,
Ivan: that's the only media that existed.
Sam: No, but there's a couple differences, I think, that are – it's not just that
Sam: it's corporate ownership.
Sam: It's what are the incentives of the corporate ownership right now, right?
Ivan: But – oh, my God, Sam.
Sam: We had like Hearst and all of those folks.
Sam: Like they had a clear agenda and they were pushing it and they were actually
Sam: – they were transparent about it.
Sam: They were using the media that they owned.
Ivan: Is Rupert Murdoch not transparent about what he's trying to push?
Sam: Give me a fucking break! No, I'm not even talking about Fox.
Sam: I'm talking... The issue I feel like with the Comcasts of the world and folks
Sam: like that that own stuff is that they are relatively...
Sam: risk averse in some of these areas where they're that they do own you know of course.
Ivan: Msnbc just got sold sam sam yes that's always been the case look i still remember
Ivan: there there's this movie about this guy that whistleblower on tobacco industry
Ivan: jeffrey jeffrey wygand what the fuck was the name i don't know if you you you
Ivan: i don't know if you've seen that movie it's a great movie by the way.
Sam: I'm not saying any of this is new.
Ivan: Wait, hang on. Let me bring up the name of the movie. The Insider.
Sam: I'll just mention, as I was going to Wikipedia to look up the book,
Sam: to take a screenshot, to add it to my list, what was already on my Wikipedia app on my phone,
Sam: was Bozo Goes to College.
Ivan: Oh, excellent!
Sam: Great!
Ivan: You mean Bonzo, not Bonzo.
Sam: Bonzo. Bonzo goes to college.
Ivan: That would have been weird. That would have been...
Sam: It's the sequel to Bedtime for Bonzo, which, of course, starred Ronald Reagan.
Ivan: Ronald Reagan.
Sam: So I add both these to my list and then look up the insider. Go ahead.
Ivan: Okay. I don't... Did you ever watch that movie?
Sam: It's not ringing a bell. I'm bringing it up right now.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: I don't think so. I don't think so.
Ivan: And it was based on a true story. related to
Ivan: the whistleblowing related to the big tobacco
Ivan: and them hiding up the fact that they knew that
Ivan: nicotine was addictive that there was a lot of scientific research
Ivan: and that they were actually manipulating the nicotine content in
Ivan: cigarettes in order to increase addiction and how this guy that was a chief
Ivan: scientist for it was philip morris yeah okay the story all sounds familiar it
Ivan: wanted to blow the whistle because there was a testimony well it's a story because
Ivan: there was articles in several newspapers regarding this.
Ivan: He actually worked for Brown and Williamson tobacco.
Ivan: How he saw the tobacco executives go and testify in Congress saying that they
Ivan: said that they didn't know nicotine was addictive.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And that they said it over and over. When, by the way, internally,
Ivan: they discussed that tobacco was a nicotine delivery device, okay?
Ivan: And that they knew that directly, okay?
Ivan: And one of the things was that this is a story that's supposed to go out in 60 minutes.
Ivan: and there was a big blow up at 60 minutes because cbs was in the process of being sold,
Ivan: and cbs corporate went and killed the story okay because they said that brown
Ivan: and williamson came and threatened to sue them and they could sue them out of
Ivan: existence and blah blah blah,
Ivan: and all of a sudden as the story was about to go on air they forced they tried
Ivan: to force the producer to change the story near the last minute lowell bergman
Ivan: was the producer like well known about this he refused then they aired a story
Ivan: which didn't have all the explosive testimony,
Ivan: then lowell bergman leaked most of the stuff i think it was to the wall street
Ivan: journal or i can't remember who it was and then the story came out and then
Ivan: all blew up and then 60 minutes had to actually publish the story.
Ivan: And by the way, this is what led to the, remember the massive tobacco settlement that we got back then.
Sam: Yeah, I remember.
Ivan: That changed advertising, that changed everything. This is the igniter of that, okay?
Ivan: So if you haven't watched this movie, which I know fictionalizes some parts
Ivan: of it, and there was some arguing by some people around now about it,
Ivan: But it was very close to what the fuck happened. Okay. All right. In the story.
Ivan: But this was the 90s. CBS executives were telling 60 Minutes to kill a story,
Ivan: to fucking edit it because of,
Ivan: interest that had to do with money just the same shit as when cbs was being sold now,
Ivan: and this is the thing that when people go and they
Ivan: tell me oh my god look what's happening to cbs like
Ivan: this never happened before oh my guys are you out
Ivan: of your fucking just to be clear i i am not saying
Ivan: any of this is new i am saying that it literally happened the last time they
Ivan: were being sold almost verbatim and people have such short fucking memories
Ivan: that they forget yeah yeah yeah like.
Sam: No, all I'm saying is I think the incentive structure in not just big corporate,
Sam: but any for-profit media just doesn't necessarily always align with truth.
Sam: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. You know?
Ivan: But here's my one thing. Money and big media has always been an issue.
Ivan: It's always been plus, always slanted coverage in a certain way, one way or another.
Ivan: That's just been a reality. However, I do say that we are in the era and we have an issue.
Ivan: You know, the thing is that you could look at this from a we're better or worse
Ivan: off in a certain way with this.
Ivan: OK, because back then you couldn't do independent media the way it's being done
Ivan: now that is as pervasive and is and is heard by as many people as it is right now.
Ivan: However, the problem is that there is so much also independent media,
Ivan: and so many of them are peddling lies.
Sam: Right. Well, I mean, this gets us to the whole information bubble thing.
Ivan: Whatever the hell corporate media had as a defect compared to this environment
Ivan: where I got a Tucker Carlson out there basically just saying,
Ivan: oh, no, UK, you got into a war because you wanted to.
Sam: Well, right. I mean, this goes into the whole, there's so much media,
Sam: so available in so different ways, and the barrier to entry is so low.
Sam: I mean, Hal, we've been doing a podcast for nearly 20 years.
Sam: Exactly right. You know, that people select what they listen to and what viewpoints
Sam: they want to hear, as opposed to having sort of that.
Ivan: Universal TV and watching Dan Rather.
Sam: Yeah. Or Walter Cronkite or Edward R.
Sam: Murrow before them, you know, where basically one of the things that people
Sam: sort of say made democracy a little bit healthier was the fact that there was the shared reality.
Sam: like everybody watched the the evening news on the three big networks and there
Sam: wasn't a huge difference you didn't have a different view of reality if you
Sam: watched abc instead of cbs you know there may.
Ivan: Have been some nuance different maybe they got an extra detail some other stuff
Ivan: whatever but the reality is that the facts were aligned 90 plus 99.
Sam: Whereas right now if you are a 100% Fox News viewer,
Sam: you will have a very different view of what is happening in the world than if
Sam: you were a 100% MSNBC viewer, or let alone... Well, as I mentioned.
Ivan: This week, I switched,
Ivan: TV providers for home, and I've,
Ivan: been having the DirecTV for Business Channel thing up a while now,
Ivan: and I realize that I'm looking at what
Ivan: what CNBC and Bloomberg are covering versus what the fuck Fox Business is covering,
Ivan: which is like some alternate planet.
Ivan: Okay, all right. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: It is, I mean, there could be, I mean, literally, there was like big stories,
Ivan: shit happening, important, like the other week, like right now on the business
Ivan: side. I can't remember which one.
Ivan: CNBC and Bloomberg are all over it. Bloomberg, Fox is socialism.
Ivan: They have this tyrant about the socialism threat in New York and how they're
Ivan: going to destroy this, how he's destroying the city.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: The story that was happening was like it didn't exist. And I think it was related
Ivan: to some bad economic data, something relevant that was just not aligned with the GOP agenda.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, I tip, I often, not as often as I used to, like my consumption
Sam: of live TV news in any way has, of course, like everybody else has gone down
Sam: considerably since the election.
Sam: but like i'll still like i'll put up the uh four up news thing on on on my thing
Sam: and usually put it on mute and just have it on like you know yeah so.
Ivan: Do i it's all on mute yeah.
Sam: And and yeah like you said like i i the the chyron on fox earlier like last
Sam: night sometime was some guy i don't even know which show it was,
Sam: but it was like, you know,
Sam: Democrats have wine for Thanksgiving. W-H-I-N-E.
Sam: you know, was, it was the chyron as the thing that they were talking about,
Sam: where I guess, you know, Democrats are complaining about whatever, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: You know, they had their, their three hosts laughing and talking about that.
Sam: And for like five minutes or whatever.
Sam: Yeah. Yes. It's completely different universe, depending on which of the,
Sam: what your news sources were.
Sam: And I was about to say, and that's even talking about TV, which honestly is
Sam: old people at this point yeah this.
Ivan: Is old people shit yeah.
Sam: Yeah if you start talking about the the the
Sam: the manosphere podcasts and you
Sam: know the youtube channels people are watching and
Sam: row tv and the you know
Sam: and you know the various like
Sam: discussion groups where people will hang out even if you're not like talking
Sam: about the you know what whatever that one was with the the the road you know
Sam: what was it rhode island or connecticut where all those republicans were taught
Sam: hot talking about like how they love nazis and all the other stuff a couple
Sam: months ago and even if you're not what.
Ivan: Well that wasn't that the the chat of the youth people or.
Sam: Yeah yeah the young republicans
Sam: yeah right even even if you're not talking
Sam: that you know you're talking you know reddit groups and
Sam: whatever you know like it is much more
Sam: you know you are finding out people who
Sam: agree with you and you are seeking out and
Sam: it people have talked endlessly about
Sam: information bubbles and look i'm in one too i work to pierce it a little bit
Sam: by like like making sure i have i i have that four up and i see what fox is
Sam: talking about you know now do i take it seriously could i stand watching more
Sam: than a few minutes of fox in a row with this volume up no oh my god listen.
Ivan: Man it it it it's it's it's torture,
Ivan: It hasn't changed from the formula Is what I said It's the old Rush Limba formula
Ivan: He really patented it Where they just go All facts are just ignored We just
Ivan: twist and talk About bullshit,
Ivan: But now you add a big dose Of misogyny And just absolutely just,
Ivan: Racism To it as well It's really fucked up.
Sam: Okay let's take another break you you tried to switch topics and have me pick
Sam: one like half an hour ago or something and.
Ivan: Yeah we just ended up continuing the.
Sam: I didn't do anything so let's take a break and then i will pick a topic for
Sam: the remainder of the show and.
Ivan: We will.
Sam: Be back after this.
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Sam: And we are back. Okay, so, topic.
Ivan: Yeah, topic.
Sam: I think of the things this week, the one that we'd be most remiss in not talking
Sam: about is the controversy over giving illegal orders to the military.
Ivan: Are you going to go to that? Oh, fuck. I thought.
Sam: What did you want? What did you want?
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no. No, I was like trying to look at, I was trying to guess
Ivan: what you were trying to guess.
Sam: What did you guess I was going to go for?
Ivan: My guess, my guess was that you're going to talk about Comey and James dismissal. But, okay.
Sam: Yeah, no, I like that that's old news at this point.
Ivan: Okay, all right, so the illegal orders. Okay, all right.
Sam: No, and specifically, what came up this week started?
Ivan: By the way, the criminal orders. Let's be clear about this. These are criminal acts.
Sam: Yes, well, where this started, yeah, well, I was going to get to that towards the end.
Sam: But before that, earlier in the week, a group of like, I believe it was five senators.
Sam: The only one I remember off the top of my head is Mark Kelly was one of them.
Sam: Put out a video basically saying, hey, if you're in our armed forces,
Sam: remember, it is part of your oath that you need to refuse an illegal order.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: You not only have the right—well, I think they just mentioned you have the right
Sam: to reject an illegal order.
Sam: But in fact, it's actually considered your responsibility to refuse an illegal order.
Sam: It's part of the oath that the law is more important than your orders.
Sam: It's part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice says this as well.
Sam: people pointed out like there's a plaque at West Point that specifically calls
Sam: out your duty in this realm.
Sam: And of course, you know,
Sam: The administration responded very negatively to this.
Sam: Now, you'd think the right response in a normal administration would be to come
Sam: out and say, absolutely right. And nobody ever has to worry about this with
Sam: us because we would never issue an illegal order.
Sam: But absolutely, it is the responsibility of every member of the military to
Sam: reject illegal orders. Oh, and we will never do that. That is not what they did.
Sam: Instead, they were going after and saying, like, anybody who's even— No.
Ivan: They didn't. They didn't just say, hey, we rule of law. Yeah,
Ivan: we are right there with you.
Sam: No, no. They instead are going after and investigating the senators supposedly
Sam: for sedition because they are undermining the military.
Sam: They're encouraging the military to defy orders, etc.
Sam: et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, wait a second.
Ivan: That's a normal reaction.
Sam: They're talking about illegal orders. And they're like, well,
Sam: they're implying that our orders are illegal and therefore they should be ignored.
Ivan: No. Nobody's implying anything, assholes.
Sam: Well, okay, look, the clear.
Ivan: No, no, no. You're not going, listen, not, listen.
Ivan: I'm sorry. When you're saying that, you know, you're not saying that all the
Ivan: orders are illegal, but then you should examine the orders that you're being given.
Ivan: I mean, are there some orders that sound illegal? Yeah, but you're not directly
Ivan: challenging any individual order.
Ivan: You know, what else you're saying is, hey, remember your oath.
Sam: Yes, that's basically all they said.
Ivan: If telling somebody, remember your oath, to the other person,
Ivan: it sounds like an accusation, guess what?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: You're the one with the problem because you aren't carrying a guilty cause around
Ivan: because you know you're breaking the law.
Sam: Exactly. Now, just realistically, the path for rejecting illegal order is a hard path.
Sam: Like if you're some schlub who's at a low level of the military and you just,
Sam: you know, on your own decide, hey, this order sounds illegal. I'm not going to do it.
Sam: The process from that point in time to you being vindicated and,
Sam: you know, it is. It's lengthy.
Ivan: It's not easy. Yeah.
Sam: And you, you are likely, you know, damaging your career by making that choice.
Sam: But, you know, this is why, this is why the reminder is good that it is actually
Sam: your responsibility to do so.
Ivan: Unfortunately, Sam, such is the life of, many times, making the right decision.
Sam: And so anyway, they got extremely defensive. They got aggressive in the ways we talked about.
Sam: And then later in the week, a leak came out about Secretary Hegseth that you were mentioning,
Sam: specifically the very first time they went after one of these boats off the
Sam: coast of Venezuela that they claim are running drugs or whatever they're claiming.
Sam: there were survivors that were clinging to the wreckage and hegseth specifically
Sam: ordered a second strike to go back and just kill them all right this this is
Sam: something where now there's a very that is flat.
Ivan: Out a criminal act.
Sam: Yeah i was going to say there there's a very strong argument that the first
Sam: attack on these boats that every attack on these boats is a criminal act is
Sam: a criminal act but but it's at least an argument where people,
Sam: you know, could have a good faith argument about whether or not there's a legal
Sam: justification. I think the answer is no.
Sam: But for the second attack, it is clearly 100 percent, you know,
Sam: Geneva Convention, U.S.
Sam: law, everything going back wherever that the military going after and attacking
Sam: non-combatants intentionally who pose no threat whatsoever because they are already injured,
Sam: taken out of the battle, whatever.
Sam: It's 100% a war crime, undeniable.
Sam: Like there's not even, like you usually, when these things get reported,
Sam: you have at least some of sort of the conservative military experts giving some sort of justification.
Sam: They've been remarkably silent on this one.
Sam: And so after this whole start of the week with people talking about,
Sam: hey, it's important to say no to illegal orders, remember your oath,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, and the administration blowing up against that, oh, look,
Sam: here's Hegseth giving a clearly illegal order and having it followed just a few months ago,
Sam: and almost unambiguously so.
Sam: And of course, this is why they don't want anybody thinking about whether an order is illegal or not.
Sam: They just want obedience because they are 100% doing things that are illegal
Sam: and are contemplating more, both internationally and domestically.
Sam: I mean, Trump and company have
Sam: talked about the things they want to do bringing military into cities.
Ivan: Is there a statute of limitations on prosecuting Hegsiv for something like that? Do you know?
Ivan: Off the top of my head, I haven't researched it.
Sam: I haven't researched either. I think U.S. law might be difficult because of
Sam: various things about granting immunity.
Ivan: No, fine. We'll fucking turn him over to the international courts. I'll turn his ass.
Sam: I don't think there are statutes of limitations on war crimes and crimes against
Sam: humanity internationally.
Ivan: Turn his ass over to the international criminal court.
Sam: I actually posted that on Blue Sky.
Ivan: I'm like, the next administration needs to- First state is arrest them,
Ivan: put them on a fucking plane and dump them in The Hague.
Sam: Fuck you. Yeah, I mean, look, the administrations of both parties have rejected
Sam: the authority of the ICC for years because they're afraid the ICC would go after Americans.
Sam: The next Democrat in office has to say, fuck all that. We recognize the ICC.
Sam: And if Americans do something bad, they absolutely should be put to account
Sam: for it. Oh, and by the way, here's the whole damn Trump administration.
Sam: Take them, please, and do what needs to be done. Because clearly our system failed at that.
Ivan: It's not equipped to handle this right now.
Sam: Over handling January 6th and all that kind of stuff, we failed utterly at actually
Sam: bringing Trump to justice over that.
Sam: But yeah, just take the whole damn administration and hand them over to the ICC.
Ivan: Of of of justice not served
Ivan: for some reason and i haven't found
Ivan: yet why that is trump announced this morning the pardon for a honduran ex-president
Ivan: convicted of drug traffic who was serving a 45-year sentence that today i don't
Ivan: know why i'm not sure what i don't know i'm not sure what the payoff or the
Ivan: thing that he got i'm sure it's got the,
Ivan: You know, he's got to be making money off of this somehow.
Sam: Of course.
Ivan: But he went and, you know, I'm going after Maduro for drug trafficking,
Ivan: but I'm going to pardon somebody else that just got convicted last year of this.
Sam: Well, yes. And speaking of previous administrations, like getting consequences
Sam: for their actions, I remember a while back when Trump was being prosecuted.
Sam: I think Bruce on our Slack asked about, this is just the danger of the new administration
Sam: going after the previous administration leading to a cycle,
Sam: and asking, what countries do this?
Sam: Has this happened, especially during a campaign? And of course,
Sam: you know, we have examples.
Sam: We have Netanyahu in Israel, although he hasn't been brought to justice either.
Sam: We've had things happening in Korea. Of course, we just had ex-president of
Sam: Brazil go to jail this week after apparently Donald Trump was planning on busting
Sam: him out and rescuing him, but they arrested him first.
Sam: I just saw something about, apparently Peru has a whole bunch of ex-presidents in jail.
Ivan: Yes, that is true.
Sam: And a new one just got arrested this week. Yeah.
Ivan: Brazil has sent more than one president to jail. I mean, this isn't the first
Ivan: one. I mean, the current president had been in jail.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Okay?
Sam: And look, you certainly can have a scenario that's unhealthy,
Sam: where just every administration automatically puts the previous administration in jail.
Sam: That's not what we're talking about here, and that is unhealthy.
Sam: But if they're actual crimes, absolutely people should be held to account, you know?
Ivan: But by the way, in almost all the cases that we're talking about here,
Ivan: look, there have been criminal acts. This isn't, you know—,
Ivan: you know hey you want to stop going to jail how about you stop being a criminal.
Sam: Yes well of course the
Sam: whole view here is the reason you try
Sam: to get power is so that you're exempt from all those laws and you can do whatever
Sam: the hell you want right yes this is this is why you accumulate lots of money
Sam: this is why you become president of a country this is why you you know go into
Sam: politics more generally, I guess. I don't know.
Sam: It's all about corruption and power for a significant group of these folks.
Ivan: There is a big group of these people that are like that. I do agree.
Ivan: But one thing that I had observed in the past in the U.S. is that that number was lower.
Ivan: Used to be. Used to be. In the U.S.
Sam: Used to be.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And you honestly did have lots of people. And, you know, look,
Sam: I've got family who's in politics.
Sam: Listen, let me give you a good example.
Ivan: A
Sam: Lot of people who are actually in it because they thought this was a good way
Sam: to it was public service and it was making the country better and they were.
Ivan: Helping you a good example let me give you a great example aoc and mtg i think
Ivan: got to congress both around the same time pretty close okay not that far off
Ivan: right so mtg left congress and now has a net worth of 35 million dollars according
Ivan: to the latest financial reports that she had filed okay how much do you think mtg aoc is worth.
Sam: More than she was when she was a waitress, but she's not, like, crazy rich.
Ivan: Not by a lot. Okay? Less than $100,000. Okay. It's her total amount of worth right now.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Okay, according to the latest file. I mean, what I said, you could clearly see
Ivan: that one person was in it for the grift and one person was in it for service.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I, like, my congressman that I had for, because the district's changed,
Ivan: she's not a congressman anymore, Louis Frankel.
Ivan: I still remember that, you know, one time I was flying to DC,
Ivan: I was in coach, and she was sitting in coach right beside me,
Ivan: you know, and I'm like, and I know that from her financial reports,
Ivan: and she also, you know, didn't, you know, enrich herself in some crazy manner while in the house.
Ivan: But you almost see very, especially in recent times,
Ivan: that a lot of these grifters just amassing incredible amounts of wealth while they are in their seat.
Ivan: I mean, I think, you know, Sinema was a Democrat, but there's a reason why people wanted her out.
Ivan: Sinema amassed a multi-million dollar fortune while she was in the Senate.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Out of the blue.
Sam: Well, you've seen these things, right, that are saying, hey,
Sam: Congress does a lot of insider trading because they get information and blah, blah, blah,
Sam: where people have actually set up investment funds where the only thing they
Sam: do is they track the disclosures of prominent Congress people and politicians
Sam: and copy their trades. And those funds have done pretty well.
Ivan: And they went, well, obviously one of the things that there was a timing issue
Ivan: between the time that they traded the disclosure, so if you were able to trade, right.
Ivan: So if you were able to trade, you know, at the moment that they did.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: But, but this is the kind of shit that we're living with.
Ivan: And I, man, if, you know, I said that you didn't need to do an anti, anti project 2025 plan.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: It should be somewhere on your to-do list I didn't see it I need to somehow
Ivan: add it I need to bribe Alex to give me your pen code you know.
Sam: Text him and give him the right offer he'd probably text it back to you.
Ivan: Yes I think there's a big to-do right offer he'd probably just give it to me okay alright okay so,
Ivan: Look, I think that these things need to be a priority in terms of legislation
Ivan: that needs to be passed right away.
Ivan: That you need to fucking make so many of these changes.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And including constitutional amendments.
Sam: Well, yeah.
Ivan: That need to be proposed to fix a lot of issues.
Sam: I mean, yes. I mean, we've been saying since the first Trump administration
Sam: that reforms to make it impossible for the kind of abuses that have been going on.
Sam: And I say because of the Trump administration, but it's not just Trump, obviously.
Sam: Make these things that have been exposed as either not illegal at all under
Sam: current law or the laws that exist are toothless and impossible to enforce.
Sam: Fix that. and, you know, make some of these things, you know,
Sam: all of the corruption we're seeing, all of the abuse of power,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, make it impossible.
Sam: The problem is that even when, like, the Democrats are in power,
Sam: there's a significant chunk of Democrats who are like, eh, I'm not so sure about
Sam: this because this is constraining their own power, too.
Ivan: I don't care. It shouldn't matter.
Sam: And their own ability to be corrupt.
Ivan: It shouldn't matter. I don't care. I don't care.
Sam: I don't care either. But what we've seen is like these things have a hard time
Sam: getting traction and have a hard time getting passed.
Ivan: It's happened before.
Sam: It has happened before. Generally, when reforms happen, it's in the wake of
Sam: extraordinarily bad abuses.
Sam: And if anything at all, that's what's happening right now.
Ivan: That's what's happening right now. And that's what needs to be a cornerstone
Ivan: of getting back into power.
Ivan: It needs to be to do all the things.
Ivan: I'll tell you. I mean, things like...
Sam: The best case scenario coming out of...
Ivan: I'll tell you one thing. DOJ should not report to the president anymore.
Ivan: DOJ should be independent.
Sam: Well, I mean, yeah, speaking of independence of DOJ, that whole mindset was
Sam: a direct result of Watergate. Watergate. Watergate.
Ivan: Watergate.
Sam: Watergate. You know, and what I was going to say.
Ivan: I like it in a Watergate scandal.
Sam: Yes. Well, like the best case scenario right now in a post-Trump world is that
Sam: we have the same kind of counter reaction that we had after Watergate.
Sam: After Watergate, all sorts of reforms were passed to make the kind of abuses
Sam: that, you know, frankly, not just Nixon, but Johnson and Kennedy were doing before them.
Sam: Make that impossible or at least very hard. And those protections obviously
Sam: didn't last forever, but they lasted for a good long while before they started getting eroded away.
Ivan: What he showed is that they weren't even strong enough. They need to be stronger.
Sam: Right. Yes. And so, yeah,
Sam: our best case scenario is Trump and his administration and the Republican grifters
Sam: in general screw things up so badly that there is a massive call to fix these
Sam: problems that's big enough that it can get rammed through Congress and whoever's the next president.
Sam: And you do restrict all these powers and make it a lot harder to do these abuses,
Sam: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: Ah, okay. And, and, and crack down on this to go back to the topic,
Sam: you know, make it easier to resist illegal orders, make it clearer.
Sam: What's an illegal order, make it supports for that. And on the military side of things.
Sam: And yeah, and yeah, join the ICC and turn all these damn people over to them.
Sam: yeah so that's about all i had you got anything else on this or should we uh
Sam: start wrapping things up we went actually long last week so we can go short today yeah.
Ivan: We can just wrap things up.
Sam: Okay uh go to a curmudgeon-corner.com you can see all our transcripts you can shake,
Sam: Yes, I'm done here. You know, it is clearly time to wrap up.
Sam: And, you know, anyway, you can see our transcripts. You can see all the ways to contact us.
Sam: You can see all kinds of fun stuff.
Sam: Old shows, our archives going back to the beginning.
Sam: And, of course, you can link to our Patreon to give us money.
Sam: Give me lots of money so I don't ever have to go back to a corporate job.
Sam: Please, lots.
Sam: You know, it'd be helpful. Anyway, at various levels on the Patreon,
Sam: we will mention you on the show.
Sam: We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug,
Sam: all that kind of stuff at $2 a month or more.
Sam: Or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our Commissions Corner Slack where
Sam: Yvonne and I and a bunch of other folks are talking throughout the week,
Sam: sharing links, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: Yvonne, what is a highlight from the Slack this week that we have not talked about on the show?
Ivan: I got a couple. Okay.
Sam: Okay. A couple.
Ivan: Some male wellness influencer said 99% of modern guys don't have tan balls,
Ivan: semen retention length five plus days, testosterone 700 plus NGDL,
Ivan: lean mass of 10% body fat, any Bitcoin, their life in order.
Ivan: literally the bar is so extremely low it's not that hard to be a one percent
Ivan: man man so sam when are you gonna start tanning your balls.
Sam: I i don't know what you're talking about like i've been doing that for years
Sam: like every day oh you know it's it's an important part of my my routine you
Sam: know and when you can't get outside and do it in the sun they make machines Oh.
Ivan: They make the little machines. So you're like, okay, all right.
Sam: Yeah, it's like a tanning bed, but just for your balls.
Ivan: Another thing that I saw, they had this Consumer Reports thing where they were
Ivan: showing like really bad devices.
Ivan: Okay, all right, devices that were a problem.
Ivan: Okay, devices that have issues. Okay, so they said, hey, 10 devices you shouldn't buy.
Ivan: So they had scored poorly the MicroLife Advanced Digital Monitor,
Ivan: which is a blood pressure monitor, $40. Okay.
Ivan: They gave it an overall score of 33. They didn't get it down into the red.
Ivan: It was only orange, which is like the color before red.
Ivan: But this is the reason why I said, and I'm like, I'm a little bit baffled why
Ivan: they didn't score it a zero, okay?
Ivan: This device got a dismal score for accuracy and stores memory for only one user.
Ivan: On the plus side, it has a large display and it's easy to read.
Ivan: And I'm like, look, if I buy a fucking blood pressure monitor,
Ivan: the one thing I expect it to do is that it reads the blood pressure accurate.
Ivan: I couldn't give a shit about an easy-to-read display that shows me the wrong
Ivan: fucking blood pressure.
Sam: Now, wait a second, Yvonne. This gives me a business idea.
Sam: Okay? Because not blood pressure monitors specifically.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: But my son, very often, when he doesn't feel like going to school,
Sam: gets out the fever thermometer and is taking it over and over and over again
Sam: to try to show us that he's got a fever and he shouldn't go to school.
Sam: And you know, like Ferris Bueller had that whole thing where he faked being sick.
Ivan: Yes, yes, yes.
Sam: We need to sell thermometers that specifically.
Ivan: Yeah, you can tell it what temperature you want it to show.
Sam: Exactly. You get a little adjustment dial on the back. And we market this to,
Sam: you know, preteens and teenagers so that they can fool their parents.
Sam: Oh, no, I'm sick. I'm sick.
Ivan: Look at this.
Sam: I can't go to school.
Ivan: Look at this thing. Right. You know, when you do it is, you know,
Ivan: not that thermometer you put in your head.
Ivan: You know, you got those digital ones that go on your forehead.
Ivan: Right. Listen, to make this cheap, the cheapest thing is, is you did this.
Ivan: You built a little thing.
Ivan: All you got is just a little lever where you select the temperature you want at the show.
Ivan: And so you press the button, it beeps, and voila, it just shows that wrong number.
Sam: I don't know why we are not billionaires, Yvonne.
Sam: With ideas like this.
Ivan: We're pretty bad at execution, it seems.
Sam: It seems so. I mean, look, this clearly would be a market for this.
Ivan: Plus, we don't have, listen, plus we don't have tan balls. Well, you do have Bitcoin.
Sam: I do have a little bit. I long ago got rid of most of the bit nickel I bought,
Sam: and so I don't have very much left, but I have some.
Ivan: But, listen, but we are not sub-10% body fat. That I can assure you.
Sam: I don't know what you're looking at I am svelte I am.
Ivan: Listen less than 10% body fat I mean yeah we're not at that level.
Sam: I got the 6 pack going on no I got a.
Ivan: 12 pack I saw some guy the other day when he did shirtless was that a game was
Ivan: that he shaved like the hairs on his belly in order to make it kind of like
Ivan: from afar looked like he had a 6 pack But what he did was just shave the hair
Ivan: in the pattern. Appropriate, in the pattern, yes.
Sam: Okay, then. That's interesting. I guess you could draw it on with a marker or something, too.
Ivan: You could do that, too.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Ivan: I've seen t-shirts.
Ivan: I mean, you know, these are about as good as the pull-ups that Pete Hegseth
Ivan: did with RFK Jr., where they supposedly both...
Sam: Oh, that kind of pull-up. I thought you were talking like diapers.
Ivan: Yeah, like they were doing... No, not diapers. That's Trump's thing.
Ivan: But they were doing supposed exercises that the form was so...
Ivan: They didn't do any of the exercises they said they were doing to try to show how manly they are.
Sam: Right. Okay. One last thing for me, I will mention my Juke Potter site again, jukepotter.com.
Sam: The next thing on my to-do list is sort of try to fix bugs.
Sam: And I know there's a bunch of places where it's sort of not,
Sam: it works most of the time, but there are things that occasionally glitch out.
Sam: So please, folks, I want some traffic.
Sam: Go to jukepotter.com, play with it, try to explore, find some podcasts,
Sam: send me some feature requests.
Sam: I'm only about halfway through my list of features I want to add to the thing,
Sam: so I've got more stuff to add, but send me feature requests.
Sam: Check out the sponsors. I've got like right now I've got, you know,
Sam: they're not 12 real sponsors because nobody's paying me money,
Sam: but I put in my four podcasts and eight more from the Snohomish podcast network,
Sam: where if you have filtered to something where that podcast would qualify, it boosts them.
Sam: And I've got a whole backend system tracking how many views and clicks and blah,
Sam: blah, blah, so that it could potentially be tied to billing.
Sam: So test that stuff out so I can
Sam: see if it works and send me feedback and things I should improve on it.
Sam: Because then the very next thing on my list is like to bash some of these bugs.
Sam: So if you have any, report them to me.
Sam: And, you know, all my contact information, you can find me on the Curmudgeons
Sam: Corner website I listed earlier, curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: And yeah, that's it. I'm still working on Robin letter too. I,
Sam: but there's not stuff to share yet.
Sam: Everything I'm doing is sort of still internal other than the brochure page. Anyways.
Sam: And, and I guess Yvonne says I should make this to do list thing, a project too.
Sam: I like a public product. So I'll work on that.
Sam: I had been thinking about that anyway, but maybe I'll actually start thinking,
Sam: okay, what do I do to make this multi-user?
Sam: anyway that's it thank you for
Sam: joining us have a great week everybody I hope you had a great Thanksgiving if
Sam: you did the Thanksgiving thing my mother came over we had dinner it was fun
Sam: you know we did the thing so hope everybody else had a good time too have a
Sam: great week stay safe we'll see you next time,
Sam: goodbye bye Bye.
Sam: Thank you. Okay, I think I'm going to go eat next, Yvonne. Even if I don't randomly
Sam: roll that I should eat right now.
Sam: Because I think that's still fairly low on the list.
Sam: So I would be days before I eat if I waited for that to come up.
Ivan: Okay, that would be it. I like your plan.
Sam: Okay, see you later. Bye. Hit and stop. Bye.