Ivan: Okay, one more time with feeling. Hello?
Sam: One more time with feeling. Can you hear me?
Ivan: Yes. Okay.
Sam: And I can hear you. Good, good, good, good.
Sam: Why hasn't this gone up? There we go. Okay, put that out. Put that out.
Sam: Bloom. Okay.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, that sounds wonderful.
Sam: I try. I try hard. Okay, are we ready? Shall we begin? And hope for the best.
Sam: Oh, Jesus Christ. I just accidentally zoomed in and the whole screen got big.
Ivan: I did that a couple of times as well. I'd never done that before.
Ivan: I'm like, all of a sudden, yo! I'm like, wait, no, that's too close.
Sam: Okay, here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, December 6th, 2025.
Sam: It's just after 17 UTC as we're starting to record.
Sam: I'm Sam and J. Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hello!
Sam: Now, one thing before we get started, and I meant to do the prep for this,
Sam: but I completely forgot until literally this very second, so I haven't done
Sam: it yet, which is we are now in December, which means we are rapidly approaching
Sam: our end-of-the-year special shows.
Sam: The last show of the year is going to be predictions for 2026,
Sam: and the first show of next year is going to be review of our predictions that
Sam: we made a year ago for 2025.
Sam: Now, as I've done the last few years, I'm going to put up a Google Doc that
Sam: has some basic categories and invite our listeners to start dropping in things
Sam: they want us to do predictions on.
Sam: Now, you know, like I said, I haven't prepped the Google Doc yet,
Sam: but this is heads up to start thinking about it.
Sam: And I promise you for next week, I will have a link to that Google Doc.
Sam: For anybody who remembers previous years, it's probably going to be the same
Sam: URL as last year, but with 2025 changed to 2026. But I haven't set it up yet.
Sam: And yeah so start thinking about it start thinking about things you would like
Sam: us to predict we of course have things we we always like tend to include anyway
Sam: but pain but we are look looking for suggestions from people and things you
Sam: want us to predict and uh we predicted pain for.
Ivan: This here i'm sure and i i'm pretty sure i was right.
Sam: You you generally predict pain and you generally predict that Fidel Castro will die.
Ivan: Yes, I'm consistent.
Sam: Even though he's died many years ago.
Ivan: Well, I, yeah, well.
Sam: Some, you've sometimes gotten it right and sometimes wrong because sometimes
Sam: you predict that he will die and sometimes you predict that he will be dead
Sam: and those are different.
Ivan: Those are different. Right.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: You know, I, I agree. Those are different. Okay. I don't think that if I predict
Ivan: he will die again this year, I could be a next year.
Ivan: I will be correct. Or if I did that, I got to check back on the logs to see
Ivan: what I predicted. But, yes, that tends to be accurate.
Ivan: I will say that my prediction for pain for this year was probably quite accurate.
Ivan: I don't think that if anybody goes and describes 2025 and doesn't include the word pain, I, you know.
Sam: That is one of your pretty safe predictions. Did you?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I will say. Yes.
Ivan: And this year it was more accurate than others.
Sam: Yes anyway so other than that we're going to do our usual thing with less newsy
Sam: stuff in the first segment and then moving on to more newsy stuff as we go of.
Ivan: Course i would be remiss to point out that it.
Sam: Didn't seem.
Ivan: That until until this year when i shared a video clip from.
Sam: Yes, I did not know where the pain thing was from. Yes, I had no idea that it was from something.
Ivan: You had no idea of where that came from.
Sam: Yeah, no, I had not the slightest clue. And then suddenly it was revealed to me.
Sam: But yeah, I just thought that was a thing you did. I had no idea it was from something.
Ivan: Yeah, no, it was, you know, I wasn't that original.
Ivan: I mean, I have some original ones, but not that one. it was you know i i guess
Ivan: have you watched the rocky movies.
Sam: I i have only ever seen and we are we we recently it must be one of.
Ivan: Them had to be on.
Sam: The afi list rocky the original rocky
Sam: was on the afi list and i think i'd seen it before but i did actually recently
Sam: like within the last couple months re-watch it with alex i'm not ready to review
Sam: it on the show yet because i'm going in order but okay but i have only ever
Sam: seen the original rocky none of the none of.
Ivan: The sequels okay.
Sam: None of the sequels and there's a lot of sequels since i've now watched the
Sam: first one they will now be on the list to eventually get to them including like
Sam: they're still releasing these damn things right i mean now they're releasing
Sam: new whatever but yeah that is so So they.
Ivan: Are still absolutely releasing these. But this, that was from Rocky three.
Ivan: Rocky three was, uh.
Sam: The one with Mr. T.
Ivan: Mr. T. Yeah. It was, I think it was an 82 that it was out. Something like that.
Ivan: I, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, let me see. Uh, when was it released? Uh, let's see.
Ivan: Uh, why am I, I'm, I am slow. Here we go.
Ivan: Uh, it was released. Yeah, I was right. 82. So it's been a while.
Ivan: So, yeah, and that was what Mr. T played a guy, a guy named Clubber Lang.
Ivan: And he was asked at some point, like, you know, he was being interviewed and
Ivan: he was asked, predictions, what are your predictions?
Ivan: And he looks at the camera all angry as a Mr. T look. Pain.
Sam: Right. Yes. Anyway, so I am going to work on trying to catch up with my movie
Sam: list and do two of those today.
Sam: But in the meantime, Yvonne, what's your non-newsy, less serious thing to start off the show with?
Ivan: My non-newsy, less serious thing to start the show off with? What the hell?
Ivan: What happened this week? I don't even remember. What was I doing?
Sam: Our list is very sparse this week, like, of things that we've noted.
Ivan: Well, I had a very busy, well, I was, like, busy, but it wasn't,
Ivan: it was a, the type of busy is a different type of busy.
Ivan: What happened is my wife this week has been working elections.
Ivan: There's been a local, my wife regularly works elections. There was a local,
Ivan: I think it's state representative election that that off cycle because somebody
Ivan: died or something, whatever.
Ivan: And they were she was being replaced, not for our district.
Ivan: And she's they they do early voting for those.
Ivan: And she's she's been doing early voting, you know, for this election, you know, at the site.
Ivan: And so, so she's been out of the house all day because it's,
Ivan: she started working at last Saturday and she's been there every day.
Ivan: She's had to get there at, to the polls, bowling station, like leave the house
Ivan: at seven 30 in the morning and she's not getting home until eight o'clock.
Ivan: So I've been having to take mine into school, pick him up from school,
Ivan: take him to basketball, take him to tutoring, take him to here.
Ivan: So I have been like, you know, quite.
Ivan: You know, and doing my job. Okay. You know, because some of us have a job still
Ivan: and, you know, and so I, I've been, you know, I've been doing both at the same time.
Ivan: So it's just, I feel like I've just been running around back and forth,
Ivan: back and forth, back and forth.
Ivan: Um, and then one of the things that I was trying to solve this week is something
Ivan: that I did not expect that the time I spent in the 80s programming COBOL would be useful.
Sam: So you were doing COBOL this week?
Ivan: I had to do something related to COBOL this week, okay?
Ivan: And I didn't realize that the time that I spent programming in COBOL would be
Ivan: useful right now in my career.
Sam: So you weren't actually programming COBOL this week.
Ivan: I wasn't, but I was resolving. issue with it.
Ivan: The thing is, I remember when I coded in Cobalt, it's the only language that I have used that I...
Ivan: A lot of, you know, a lot of, like, basic is running a real-time compiler.
Sam: Okay?
Ivan: You're not...
Sam: Usually.
Ivan: Yeah, usually. So you write the code, and you have it, and you run it,
Ivan: and it's being compiled in real-time.
Ivan: But COBOL, you compile, you take the code, you modify it, you compile it,
Ivan: and then you run it, okay?
Ivan: So if you are making changes, you go and you rewrite some code,
Ivan: you have to recompile it first before you run it.
Ivan: And then that compiled code is the one that's run.
Ivan: And usually, you know, for every platform, you have to have a compiler,
Ivan: you know, like I remember that I was using back then Ryan McFarlane Cobol.
Ivan: And I had to, I was running it on Xenix, you know?
Ivan: And so the first thing I ever did, I mean, the only code that I ever worked
Ivan: on in it was for a payroll program that was written for another hardware platform.
Ivan: But in order to run it on the hardware that we had, first, we had to make some changes to it.
Ivan: The second thing was that we had to recompile it for the hardware that we were
Ivan: running, okay? Otherwise it wouldn't run.
Ivan: And you have to have the right compiler. And if you didn't have the compiler, you know, so anyway.
Ivan: I have a customer that has PeopleSoft. Now, PeopleSoft that I knew,
Ivan: that I knew, is not written in COBOL. It's a newer application.
Ivan: But I came to discover and find out. Because, you know, the only time I ever
Ivan: used PeopleSoft before was that we had the company at HP, we used PeopleSoft for.
Ivan: We had replaced our old ERP that we had for the old HR system,
Ivan: which was written in, like, whatever legacy system it was.
Ivan: We have people so right but that's the only time i ever really used it but company
Ivan: i work with does sell they owned it and so there's a customer that has it and all of a sudden,
Ivan: people called me for a project and said hey we need a
Ivan: cobalt compiler and i'm like wait what what do
Ivan: you mean for what i did not realize and learned over the last recent time that
Ivan: apparently everything that is batch processed in people soft is actually run
Ivan: in cobalt i have no idea of that okay okay,
Ivan: And so, I mean.
Sam: I mean, it's well known that COBOL is still in use in all kinds of legacy things,
Sam: but it's kind of surprising whenever you find out it's in use for something
Sam: that you consider sort of an up to date modern thing that is right.
Sam: You know, as opposed to something that's been running in a closet for 40 years, you know, exactly.
Ivan: And that was surprising. Now, the application itself is not.
Ivan: But what I've come to find out is that, hey, there are certain things that if
Ivan: you want to run batches, you want to do things, you want to code something,
Ivan: you want to do some customization, it's written in COBOL.
Ivan: And so I had to go and I got on a conference call where I realized that the
Ivan: only guy on the call that had,
Ivan: you know, we're talking about, well, how many users do you really need for to buy a compiler license?
Ivan: And I realized, well, I've actually done this.
Ivan: And the reality is that all you probably need is one because you just sit one.
Ivan: You're going to have to have one licensed guy who's going to be sitting over there.
Ivan: And anything that's changed, he will be the guy who will be doing the compiling
Ivan: for that code to go and send that.
Ivan: Then put in the system and run.
Ivan: But we don't really, not everybody needs one. And so I, I got on a call where
Ivan: there were like about 10 or 15 people and I happened to be the only guy that
Ivan: had ever compiled anything in Cobalt Sound.
Ivan: And that makes me feel quite old.
Sam: Full of fucking things.
Sam: Yeah, well, I mean.
Ivan: Shit, I am, I mean, if, you know, if that doesn't date me, I don't know what the fuck does.
Sam: That is certainly an option. Next thing you'll be talking punch cards.
Ivan: You know, I never used punch cards, but, you know, did do a lot of the of the
Ivan: the the cards where you filled out the data by by filling, you know,
Ivan: you answered the little bubbles and then use the, you know, then fed them into
Ivan: the IBM mainframe, you know, the to to to to test run test scores or whatever using those that those.
Sam: I don't think I ever actually used a punch card for anything real.
Sam: I remember I had a punch card with like my name punched in it or whatever.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And I'm pretty sure my dad, at least one point in time, actually did use punch
Sam: cards for actually like something real.
Sam: So, but you know.
Sam: Anyway, so, okay, you used COBOL. Anything else you got?
Ivan: My knowledge, my first-hand knowledge of using COBOL was actually useful in
Ivan: an actual business situation today in 2025.
Sam: I'm amazed. I'm amazed.
Ivan: Amazed is not the right word. But yes, it does definitely show that, fuck, I'm old.
Sam: So before we move on to my movies, and because you mentioned you're old,
Sam: your recovery continuing the pace, you look like you feel good today.
Ivan: I feel pretty good. I am feeling pretty good.
Ivan: So it's definitely a pace. We are now in week four, day, what,
Ivan: one or two around there of it.
Ivan: It's definitely feeling well. They said six weeks.
Ivan: It's coming along. Yeah. Yeah. So it's feeling good so far.
Sam: Excellent. So I'm going to bang out two movies.
Ivan: Bang out two movies. Let's bang on the movies. Okay. All right. Let's see.
Sam: What do we got for movies? So first of all, I will have to issue a correction
Sam: for a number of weeks ago when I talked about the movie Godzilla versus King Kong.
Sam: A few when.
Ivan: Was that what what was that out what year is this movie.
Sam: When did godzilla versus kim king kong come out yeah okay i i will tell you
Sam: that is not the one i'm gonna be talking about but let me get the list up godzilla
Sam: versus kong king kong versus godzilla let me get the title right was 1962 so.
Ivan: That was the 62 one but then they do a modern remake of that.
Sam: There there were There was Godzilla vs.
Sam: Kong in 2021 and Godzilla X-Kong, The New Empire in 2024.
Ivan: I, I, okay.
Sam: And by the way, upcoming Godzilla X-Kong Supernova in 2027.
Ivan: Well, I am maintaining my perfect streak of not having watched any of them.
Sam: So I am not talking about any of those modern ones.
Sam: What i said wrong when i
Sam: talked about godzilla versus or sorry king kong
Sam: versus godzilla on the show earlier was i had said that you know we were working
Sam: our way through both the godzilla and the king kong movies and you know we had
Sam: and i forgot which one we'd hit king kong versus Godzilla in order in,
Sam: and I thought maybe it was the Godzilla movies, I was wrong.
Sam: I, in fact, had not yet started the Godzilla movies when we watched King Kong versus Godzilla.
Sam: I had been working my way through the King Kong movies.
Ivan: But not any Godzilla movies.
Sam: Yes. And the King Kong, on the King Kong side, I believe this is actually third in both of them.
Sam: I, of course, have to check that now, too.
Sam: Da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. Here we go. King Kong franchise.
Sam: Where's the list? Yes, it's third in both.
Sam: So the King Kong vs. Godzilla is third in both franchises. But we were doing it on the King Kong side.
Sam: Now, another side note before I go to the main movie here is that last night,
Sam: actually last night, it came up when we were picking a random movie to watch
Sam: that Alex and I should watch the next King Kong movie.
Sam: But then we realized that the
Sam: first two king kong movies king kong
Sam: and son of kong from 1933 i had
Sam: watched way back in 2015 before alex
Sam: was watching movies with me he was only six years old at the time so he requested
Sam: that we restart the king kong franchise so at this very second Yvonne we are
Sam: halfway through the original King Kong we started it last night and paused because
Sam: everyone was sleepy how many okay how.
Ivan: Many movies are there in the.
Sam: In the King Kong franchise yeah so I I looked this up last night it it depends
Sam: how you count like Wikipedia has oh well it has the direct to, okay,
Sam: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, including some direct to video
Sam: animations in the King Kong site.
Ivan: 14? Damn.
Sam: Whereas in comparison, Godzilla has 40.
Ivan: 40?
Sam: 40. there.
Ivan: Are 40 Godzilla movies.
Sam: Including both including both Japanese and American versions yes wow,
Sam: fuck that's a lot of movies so Eddie,
Sam: Anyway, we have restarted the original King Kong with my son as of last night
Sam: and paused halfway through it. We will continue later today.
Sam: But my point of all of this extended introduction is that after we watched King Kong vs.
Sam: Godzilla, we realized we had not actually started the Godzilla franchise yet.
Sam: So today's movie is the original Godzilla from 1954.
Ivan: Okay. Okay.
Sam: So, and I will give it a very similar review to my review of King Kong versus
Sam: Godzilla, which is that it is a bad movie.
Sam: However, it is the type of bad movie that is extremely fun to watch.
Sam: Oh, because because it is bad in an amusing way that keeps you laughing,
Sam: keeps you making fun of it.
Sam: Like, you know, when Alex and I watch these movies, like we pause regularly
Sam: to make snarky comments about the movie or to make fun of the special effects
Sam: that we're laughing all the time.
Sam: Because, I mean, my God, it is a guy in a big rubber suit stomping on a model
Sam: of the city. You know, I mean, and it's just, it's, it's hilarious.
Sam: I will, of course, read the beginning of the Wikipedia plot summary just for
Sam: context. But I mean, it's Godzilla.
Sam: It's the monster goes into Japan and stops on things.
Ivan: Basically.
Sam: Anyway, plot in 1954, after the Japanese freighter Aiko Maru is destroyed near
Sam: Odo Island, another ship, the Bingo Maru, is sent to investigate,
Sam: only to meet the same fate with few survivors.
Sam: A fishing boat from Odo is also destroyed with one survivor.
Sam: Fishing catches mysteriously dropped to zero, blamed by an elder on the ancient
Sam: sea creature known as Godzilla.
Sam: Reporters arrive on Odo Island to further investigate. A villager tells one
Sam: of the reporters that something in the sea is ruining the fishing.
Sam: That evening, a storm strikes the island, destroying the reporter's helicopter,
Sam: and Godzilla, briefly seen, destroys 17 homes, kills 9 people,
Sam: and kills 20 of the villagers' livestock.
Sam: Odo residents travel to Tokyo to demand disaster relief.
Sam: The villagers' and reporters' evidence describes damage consistent with something
Sam: large crushing the village.
Sam: The government sends paleontologist Kyoto Yamane to investigate the island where
Sam: giant radioactive footprints and a trilobite are discovered.
Sam: The village alarm bell is rung and Yamane and the villagers rush to see the
Sam: monster, retreating after seeing it as a giant dinosaur.
Sam: Yamane presents his findings in Tokyo, estimating that Godzilla is 50 meters,
Sam: 160 feet tall, and has evolved from an ancient sea creature,
Sam: becoming a terrestrial creature. He concludes that Godzilla has been disturbed
Sam: by underwater hydrogen bomb testing.
Sam: Debate ensues about notifying the public about the danger of the monster.
Sam: Meanwhile, 17 ships are lost at sea, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Plot continues.
Sam: I will note that we have been making a point to watch the Godzilla movies with
Sam: Japanese audio and English subtitles.
Ivan: Titles. Okay.
Sam: You know, not dubbed into English.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay. you know but uh but yeah
Sam: it's still funny you know it's you know the horrible special i mean this was
Sam: 1954 you don't expect that much but still even for 1954 it's kind of weak in
Sam: terms of special effects but
Sam: honestly that's what gives it its charm the acting is not that great but,
Sam: Even with, you can tell, even with the language difference, it's not just,
Sam: you know, oh, the acting's weak, they're speaking Japanese.
Sam: No, no, you can tell the acting is weak, just generally.
Sam: But it's all, it's hilarious. I'm going to give it a thumbs up.
Sam: And you know this whole genre is
Sam: loved by lots of people specifically because of
Sam: this kind of feel that i'm talking about you know it's it's nobody i mean some
Sam: of the modern remakes they're trying to make it a little bit more serious and
Sam: have a high special effects budget and stuff but the reason people like are
Sam: fans of these old ones is precisely because they're ridiculous exactly Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, if I remember when I watched it, the whole thing that,
Ivan: you know, the little bits that I watched, because I'm pretty sure I've not watched
Ivan: any of these in its entirety.
Sam: All the way through.
Ivan: Yeah, just bits and pieces. Is that the part that made it funny was exactly
Ivan: that. That it was just the special effects were just dumb.
Ivan: And that's what made it funny.
Sam: Yeah. And the story is silly and the plot's not, is very thin, you know.
Ivan: It's just a big dinosaur destroying the city.
Sam: Well, and they do have humans, like there's side plots going on with the humans.
Sam: Like there's this guy and his girlfriend and he's trying to,
Sam: the girlfriend gets in the way of where Godzilla's going to be and he has to save her.
Sam: And, you know, and then there's various people that you care about or at least
Sam: theoretically care about.
Sam: Because they're involved in the battle against Godzilla or they're involved
Sam: in trying to figure out what's going on or whatever.
Sam: So there are humans in these movies that have something to do and have some
Sam: sort of plot, but none of it really matters all that much.
Sam: The main point is the guy in the rubber suit running around destroying things.
Sam: So that's movie number one.
Ivan: Movie number one. Okay.
Sam: Movie number two.
Sam: Is from 2003 it is
Sam: a made for is this correct i just want to make sure i'm pretty sure it was made
Sam: for tv yes it was made for tv for the sci-fi channel and it's river world from
Sam: 2003 Have you ever heard of either this or the book?
Ivan: I had never heard of River World.
Sam: So River World, I was a fan of the novel series.
Sam: There was a series of science fiction novels by Philip Jose Farmer that was
Sam: released from 1971 to 1983.
Sam: And I remember reading and liking these books as a teenager.
Sam: So, you know, I was excited, you know, movie coming out about it.
Sam: And I don't remember if I saw it back in 2003 when it was new. I might have.
Sam: But, you know, I watched it again last year.
Sam: And we're not last year. It was actually this year. We're now talking about
Sam: movies I watched last January. So I'm only 11 months behind.
Ivan: That's not that bad.
Sam: Yeah, so.
Ivan: It's not that bad.
Sam: Anyway.
Ivan: I mean, we've been doing the show for 20 years. I mean, you know, it's not that bad.
Sam: Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, the basic premise of the books, let's start with that,
Sam: is every human being who's ever lived is resurrected around the banks of a river on an alien planet.
Sam: And have to and they have to figure out what's going on with the world i never
Sam: heard of this movie why were they resurrected what was going on who are the
Sam: beings that brought them there all of this kind of stuff okay i guess i'm looking.
Ivan: At is this was this a tv movie yeah i guess.
Sam: Yes okay sci-fi channel.
Ivan: Okay all right so that's that's one reason i had never heard of this okay All right, yeah.
Sam: Yeah, and it was intended to be the pilot for a series, but the series never got made.
Sam: They did try a reboot in 2010 as well. I have not watched that yet.
Ivan: Well, it wasn't exactly like acclaimed is what I'm looking at here.
Ivan: It's got an IMDb rating of barely 5.1, which is really, really low on IMDb.
Ivan: I mean, a 5.1 is really a clunker on IMDb.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: It's got, let's see. Before you get to your rating, I'll read here.
Ivan: 5.1 on IMDb, 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, only 41% in Just Watch.
Ivan: At Google users, 58% said they like it, but I have a feeling that this is like
Ivan: a little bit of a selection bias because probably the only people that go there
Ivan: to Google to review it are actually the people that liked it.
Ivan: Probably the rest of the people are not really giving a shit.
Ivan: I'm like, well, this thing sucked. I'm not going to Google to look at it.
Ivan: So that's what I see. So Sam...
Ivan: What are your thoughts?
Sam: So, I am giving it a thumbs down. It was just, it was not memorable in the slightest.
Sam: Well, it was not memorable in the slightest in terms of the actual movie itself.
Sam: The thing is, I, having been a fan of the books.
Ivan: Ah, I see.
Sam: It kept annoying me. Differences and things that were done badly and things
Sam: that were just like, you know, missing.
Sam: It was not a good adaptation of the books, I felt either.
Sam: Like they, first of all, they didn't like, it wasn't centered around the same character, you know,
Sam: like there were, there were a lot of things that just like, I felt like this
Sam: is not a good adaptation of the books.
Sam: It's sort of, even the basics of the concept weren't like, just weren't implemented.
Sam: Well, I kept, there were little details that I kept like stopping it to talk to Alex about like,
Sam: well, you know, they did this, this way, but in the book that it was like this
Sam: and they had this thing and like, but in part, like I'll give you one example
Sam: and I recognize why they did, they wouldn't have done it.
Sam: This is not an example of why it was a bad adaptation. Any adaptation would
Sam: have changed this, but it's what I obsessed about. Okay.
Sam: In the book, like, you know, first of all, everybody's resurrected naked initially.
Ivan: No, I figured you would like that.
Sam: They did do that in the movie.
Sam: I did like that. I enjoyed that. That was good. And they did do that in the movie as well.
Sam: Although it was a made-for-TV movie, so you didn't see any.
Ivan: No. This is ridiculous.
Sam: It was implied nudity rather than actual nudity.
Ivan: You know.
Sam: But no, the thing is, they discover these giant mushroom things that once a
Sam: day erupt and give them little canisters of supplies.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: In the books, one of the supplies that comes out of the little canisters are
Sam: these things that are essentially washcloths with magnetic edges,
Sam: and people made clothes out of those.
Ivan: Washcloths with magnetic edges?
Sam: Yeah. So, like, you could take a bunch of these little squares of fabric and,
Sam: using the magnets, connect them together and make clothes and stuff.
Ivan: Interesting.
Sam: Okay. And I remember reading the books thinking that was a really nifty concept, and I liked the idea.
Sam: Like, you know, whereas in the TV show, the canisters just contained clothes.
Ivan: Oh, no, Matt, no. Well, that's just not a good way of doing that.
Sam: And all kinds of different clothes, too. So the people were wearing all kinds
Sam: of different things. One of the things in the book is that fashion did arise
Sam: by people creating different sorts of things out of the magnetic washcloth things.
Sam: But it was all made out of the same underlying material.
Sam: Anyway, and obviously this is a change I would have made too if I was adapting
Sam: it. Like explaining the little washcloth things is a little esoteric.
Sam: But yeah, it was just completely non-memorable. and for fans of the book it seemed to be not.
Sam: It didn't do it justice, I think. And also they were trying,
Sam: they, they moved really fast, really far.
Sam: Like the books contain, I mean, it was a what five book series. Did I say?
Sam: Yeah. It ended up being five books and you only very, very slowly start figuring
Sam: out what's going on in the, in the, in the world that they're talking about.
Sam: And you know the first book is all
Sam: about sort of adapting to the fact that you're in
Sam: this universe and you only find out little tiny glimpse and
Sam: hints of what's really going on and stuff like that and
Sam: because they were making a movie out
Sam: of it they i guess they wanted to accelerate that
Sam: so you figured out a little bit more about what was happening a little bit faster
Sam: but you know they were hoping to make a series out of it so they could have
Sam: still dragged that out longer right you know and and it's they they skipped they still had like.
Sam: I mean, one of the things is in both the book and the movie is,
Sam: you know, you get all humans from all time resurrected together.
Sam: So you get people from different historical periods interacting with each other,
Sam: which is cool. You get some famous people from different periods.
Sam: One of the main characters ends up being Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain.
Sam: Okay you know and and that that's kind
Sam: of cool i mean he makes a riverboat because you know
Sam: samuel clemens was a riverboat pilot on the
Sam: mississippi okay he ends up building a riverboat and
Sam: blah blah blah and that's in both the the books and the movie but you know anyway
Sam: it it was it was not great as you read the you know descriptions like if you
Sam: were a fan of the books maybe watch it for completeness but you know your time
Sam: would be better spent going and digging the books back up movie.
Ivan: Adaptations of books are are always like i you know they're such a crapshoot
Ivan: i mean you know there are some that are.
Sam: Done very well no.
Ivan: Sometimes they're done.
Sam: Well some are so bad you you you have to evaluate them on their own merits though
Sam: like i i'm i'm this comparison to the book thing is somewhat unfair in some
Sam: cases because it is a different media and different things.
Ivan: Yeah, but, but some people just make really shitty movies out of good books.
Ivan: I mean, I, I still remember.
Ivan: I, I, I will, I forever think that, you know, from the Clancy book series,
Ivan: there was only like one movie that was a good, that was really good.
Ivan: It was Hunt for Red October.
Ivan: The rest were meh.
Ivan: They weren't that great. I mean, they even brought Harrison Ford in and some of whatever.
Ivan: And honestly, they deviated so much from the book. Okay.
Ivan: In things that didn't need deviating, is my point.
Ivan: They just changed the story completely in many cases.
Ivan: You know, probably the one that was the worst was they did the sum of all fears.
Ivan: And the entire story everything changed okay it just it had no it had barely
Ivan: any you know semblance to what was in the book.
Sam: That's the kind of adaptation i hate the most actually like.
Ivan: I'm like why did you use the book then you know yeah.
Sam: And there are a variety of these and Another was, and I haven't seen this,
Sam: but I've, well, I won't mention ones that I haven't seen as examples,
Sam: but even though I've heard people make the complaint.
Sam: But, yeah, there are certainly ones where really the only thing is sort of the
Sam: one-sentence high-level concept of the book and maybe a couple of characters.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that.
Sam: And nothing else matches.
Ivan: And nothing else matches, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Sam: And that's annoying. Like you said, just make a new one. Don't even bother.
Ivan: That great example is the Jason Bourne movies.
Ivan: And their source material in the Ludlam books. The reality is,
Ivan: I will say, that the Ludlam books, in my personal opinion, they're kind of dull.
Ivan: Ludlam was not that good. And then a whole bunch of them were written by somebody
Ivan: else that wasn't even him because he died. And then somebody decided to write
Ivan: books in his name anyway. The movies, because the source material of the book was not that great.
Ivan: They actually, well, okay, great. We've got the character born.
Ivan: We know he had amnesia. We know he did this. We know he did that.
Ivan: But if we do what's in the book, this doesn't really work. Okay?
Ivan: All right. Let's do something a lot more exciting.
Ivan: And so even though it carried the name of a book or whatever,
Ivan: whatever happened in the movie was way better than whatever the fuck the source book was.
Ivan: So they did a good job of that, of making the movie a lot better than,
Ivan: in my opinion, a mediocre book.
Sam: Yeah. Anyway, this is what I would say I would recommend people go read the books.
Sam: But at the same time, I haven't read them since I was a teenager.
Sam: So I don't know if I would still like them now.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: You know, like they may not have aged well or they may include whatever.
Sam: Whatever you know so i mean i enjoyed them as a teenager but that was a long
Sam: time ago again reminding.
Ivan: Our audience how old we're getting thank you sam.
Sam: Oh yes yes of course okay shall we take a break and then hit serious stuff serious
Sam: serious xm radio no not that kind Not the star either.
Ivan: Not the star either? Okay. All right. We might be time to get serious.
Sam: Okay. As promised last week, the first break today is a wiki of the day. So enjoy.
Ivan: Wiki wiki.
Sam: Okay, now we're back. So, Yvonne, you want to kick it off, picking our first
Sam: newsy topic? Newsy, news, news, news?
Ivan: Newsy, newsy. Well, you said it with the newsy pronunciation.
Sam: Oh, not, not, not Nuzzy. Is it Nuzzy? Is it Nuzzy?
Ivan: I don't know.
Sam: You want to talk more about her?
Ivan: I would really prefer not to. although she was in the news again because she
Ivan: got fired or quit or something um yeah,
Ivan: Oh, if we didn't put a lot in here this week.
Sam: No, we, our, our list is so sparse this week. I added a couple of things, but like there's.
Ivan: You know what? I just actually, uh, there is one that was from last Saturday
Ivan: that we didn't talk about.
Ivan: And I actually just pulled up an article on it.
Ivan: It's related to a couple, it's related to cost of living. Okay.
Ivan: Which we didn't talk about.
Sam: Okay. Let's talk about the cost of living.
Ivan: So, you know, and I mean, this is relevant politically, like right now,
Ivan: as the Republicans are arguing about what to do about these health subsidies.
Ivan: And they haven't really done anything like right now.
Ivan: And there was an article that i had shared about somebody that was calculating
Ivan: that the that the true poverty line should really be at 130 000 that's a lot.
Sam: Yvonne what what is it what is it really right now that.
Ivan: I mean that's like that's like
Ivan: it's 35 000 for for for a for a two person household with two kids. Okay.
Sam: So for a four person family.
Ivan: Yeah. $35,000, which I don't care where you are living in the United States.
Ivan: I mean, you're, you're at that point, you are heavily dependent on government
Ivan: aid to, to really be able to eke out a sustainable existence, okay?
Ivan: There's just no way at $35,000. I mean, at that level with a family,
Ivan: you need to be getting SNAP, Medicaid.
Ivan: Maybe even some housing assistance, I mean, in order to be able to pay.
Ivan: Because look at $35,000, here's one of the issues that you've got right now. $35,000 gross, okay?
Ivan: One of the things is that we have one of the most regressive taxes that we have is Social Security tax.
Ivan: So anybody at the $35,000 level cannot escape paying the 7% for,
Ivan: 7.5% for Social Security, okay?
Ivan: So that right off the bat.
Ivan: You know, takes away $2,600, okay? Right off the bat, no exemptions, no nothing.
Ivan: Yet unemployment tax, other stuff or whatever, that gets you up to $3,000.
Ivan: You can't get out of those.
Ivan: So you're already down to $32,000 right off the bat, okay?
Ivan: Add sales tax anywhere that you live for any money that you spend.
Ivan: You're buying shit, you're paying sales tax, okay?
Ivan: That also takes a chunk out of these people as well.
Ivan: Another probably, they got to be spending $10,000 to $15,000 a year in taxable
Ivan: stuff. That's another $1,000.
Ivan: So you're really down to like $30,000 of actual money.
Ivan: Divide that by 12 months for $2,500 for a family of four.
Ivan: When you are looking at a median car payment right now, a $750,
Ivan: in an America that is heavily dependent on cars, okay?
Ivan: Think about this. On a family of four, for sure, half their money is going to
Ivan: transportation, even if they bought used cars.
Sam: Yeah, I was going to say, the $750 is for like a new car, though, right?
Ivan: Yeah. Right. But, okay. But take it down to a used car. Take it down that they have two used cars.
Ivan: Say they're paying $350 a month for each.
Ivan: But they're going to need two cars. And most of this nation,
Ivan: if you've got two kids, I mean, so that gets you the $700.
Ivan: Add auto insurance. Auto insurance right now.
Sam: $400 on the median. I definitely know where, you know, yes, they ideally would need two cars.
Sam: Lots and lots of families deal without because they just can't.
Ivan: Okay, but most of the time they can't deal with one car.
Ivan: The reality is that those families somehow have to scrounge how to get a second one.
Ivan: Because there's just, if the, if
Ivan: the two people have jobs and if they have kids, there's just no, I mean.
Sam: And they're living in some place without adequate public transportation.
Ivan: Public transportation, which is most of this nation.
Ivan: You have to figure it out. But once you add, think about this.
Ivan: Two car payments of $350, $700.
Ivan: Add car insurance, $400. You're at $1,100.
Ivan: Add gas. Not cheap right now, all right?
Ivan: $300, $400 a month. You're already at $1,500. These people have $1,000 just in the transportation.
Ivan: They haven't paid for a place to live. They haven't bought food.
Ivan: I mean, so saying that above that, you're not in poverty at $40,000 is crazy.
Ivan: And the thing is, when they were talking about the $130,000,
Ivan: look, they were considering a household payment that basically you're paying
Ivan: $2,000 for your house, $1,000 for your groceries,
Ivan: $1,500 for your car transportation.
Ivan: And one of the things that a lot of people have to pay for is daycare, which I've seen to a lot.
Ivan: If you're paying for daycare, $2,000 a month if you have to pay for daycare.
Sam: And I believe I read that the person who did this analysis used,
Sam: picked a county in New Jersey as their sample.
Sam: And obviously there are places that are more and less expensive.
Sam: But it's in the ballpark.
Ivan: But the thing is that I said, listen, take out $30,000. Listen, take out the daycare.
Ivan: Take it down. If you made this down to $90,000,
Ivan: okay, and not the $130,000 because you picked, like, a lower place to live,
Ivan: you do the math after tax and whatever, especially because one of the problems
Ivan: that they're talking about in an article I just shared today is the benefit clips, okay?
Ivan: Because what's the problem? And this is a problem, like, with...
Ivan: A lot of what Biden kept trying to do, which he couldn't do as much as he wanted
Ivan: to, was to help people in the middle class because of those benefit cliffs,
Ivan: like with child tax credits and stuff or whatever. How to get universal.
Ivan: Remember how he wanted to institute one of the things that, you know,
Ivan: oh, the Democrats don't care about the middle class.
Ivan: Biden was out saying he tried his damnedest to make sure that people had universal access to daycare.
Sam: This is one of those things, by the way, I just want to say,
Sam: like, to me, it is like malpractice when politicians put in place things with cliffs to begin with.
Sam: Like, come on, folks, like on almost anything, you can design the program.
Sam: So instead of having a hard cut for those who don't know, benefit cliffs are
Sam: things like where there is a hard and fast threshold.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Below it, you get some benefit. Above it, you do not.
Ivan: You got zero.
Sam: And so it creates a system where, like, let's say the threshold is on income.
Sam: And just for the sake of argument, let's say it's $20,000 as a threshold.
Sam: If you make $19,999.99, you get the benefit.
Sam: You make one penny more, you get nothing.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: You know, and sometimes they're not quite that harsh.
Ivan: They're not quite that steep, but they are pretty steep. Yes.
Sam: And it is not that tough to create things where instead of having hard thresholds,
Sam: you have a graduation that goes from over an extended length of time that sort
Sam: of eliminates that threshold.
Sam: Where if you're at a low enough level, you get the full benefit.
Sam: And as you make more and more money, you get less and less benefit up to the
Sam: point where you can afford to pay for it yourself. And now you get zero.
Sam: You know, but and I've I've often advocated for just just give everybody the
Sam: benefit and tax it back from the people who can't afford it as just a simple model anyway.
Ivan: And you. Yeah. And you. And that makes sense. I agree with your with your thinking with that.
Sam: But in reality, we've got lots and lots of programs with these cliffs which
Sam: cause all kinds of incentive problems. They cause people to like,
Sam: not like they can't make more money because if they did, they would lose their
Sam: benefit and stuff like that.
Sam: And it's just like, it completely messes up incentives.
Sam: Also, it creates a huge bureaucracy to enforce the threshold because you have
Sam: to measure whatever it is that is the threshold.
Sam: They often have to do extra paperwork.
Sam: There are all kinds of problems with it. But anyway, go ahead.
Ivan: So the whole the whole thing is that this goes to this entire thing where,
Ivan: you know, how Trump has been getting upset because he's been getting hit on
Ivan: affordability and how his ratings on the economy keep keep diving.
Ivan: And this entire thing also with the health care health care subsidies being,
Ivan: you know, eliminated by the by the GOP for a lot of people.
Ivan: And this is the shit sitting the affordability crisis.
Ivan: This is the end. And the Republicans are not doing anything about it.
Ivan: They couldn't they they pay lip service to it, but not actually doing anything.
Ivan: And I get people like I get people that keep saying, well, the Democrats didn't
Ivan: try to do anything with it. Damn it.
Ivan: Biden tried really, really hard to do certain things to actually address this.
Ivan: You know, and none of the Republicans were in for it.
Ivan: OK, you had the whole issue with they didn't have enough votes with,
Ivan: you know, Manchin and Sinema.
Ivan: Manchin kept blocking a lot of this stuff as well, okay?
Ivan: And so the reality is that he was trying very hard to do shit,
Ivan: to directly address these things.
Ivan: And the Republicans would have none of it. None of it. And so...
Ivan: In his first year, he was able to get people child tax credit checks, okay?
Ivan: He was able, and he had pushed his stuff to try to get every,
Ivan: he wanted to give everybody fucking child care.
Ivan: So people were not like that example in $130,000 where you're living in a place
Ivan: and you're having to pay $2,500, $3,000 for daycare for your kids.
Ivan: So people are in the workforce and they're not going broke and they're not making
Ivan: the decision of the of, you know, because it almost becomes unless the job is
Ivan: making a ton of money, you can't afford that, that, that, that child care.
Ivan: It makes no sense to be basically working just to be paying child care.
Ivan: It just doesn't for many people. And so at that point.
Sam: You might as well stay home and take care of the kid.
Ivan: Exactly. But that also harms the workforce as well.
Sam: You know, and you still need money for other things.
Ivan: And you still need money for other things. And so, and there was another article
Ivan: that was like, that I was looking at today, and this has been going around,
Ivan: that with surging auto debt, that repos across the U.S., they talk about that
Ivan: car dependent Miami feels the pain.
Ivan: But the reality is that across the board in the United States right now,
Ivan: there is a surge in car repossessions.
Ivan: OK, there was this this report out like right now that found that annual car
Ivan: repossessions and low defaults fall rates are at the highest since the years
Ivan: during and immediately after the Great Recession.
Ivan: Think about this. people are defaulting on their cars at levels not seen since
Ivan: the 2008 financial crisis. I mean...
Ivan: People are really, really, really struggling, okay? This is really bad.
Ivan: And we've got Republicans at the helm that don't seem to give a shit.
Sam: I heard Donald Trump say this week that the affordability crisis is a Democratic scam.
Sam: It's all just a bunch of lies.
Ivan: That is correct. That is exactly what he said, yes. That is exactly what he said.
Sam: Isn't he right?
Ivan: Oh, of course he's right. It's all scam. No, he's not right. Fucking asshole.
Ivan: And here's another problem that we've got right now. They keep focusing on the
Ivan: Fed lowering rates, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: I have been talking about how because of what Trump has done this year,
Ivan: because of his actions with foreign trade and alienating foreign buyers of U.S. treasuries.
Ivan: Even with expected interest rate cuts, none of those are making a dent on the
Ivan: 30-year mortgage rate, okay?
Ivan: The 30-year mortgage rate is not dependent on the short-term rates that the
Ivan: Fed sets. It's dependent on the 10-year U.S. Treasury 10-year rate.
Ivan: And that fucker won't budge.
Ivan: It is not moving down. It's not moving down.
Ivan: And there was nothing that they could do to make it move down.
Ivan: In large part because it takes policy changes to...
Ivan: To, well, policy changes that Trump already made have made it that the stupid
Ivan: rate is remaining stubbornly high.
Ivan: And none of those are easy to undo.
Ivan: The trade war is the main reason why the stupid 10-year won't go down.
Ivan: And because he hasn't really backed off on any of this shit,
Ivan: it's causing the problem where you've got,
Ivan: A, you've got affordability for a lot of shit where people
Ivan: are struggling right now because inflation is is is
Ivan: higher than it's the e-pushed inflation back up and
Ivan: it's pushing interest rates higher because the
Ivan: reason why the 10-year dropped had a lot to do with our trade balance and our
Ivan: trading partners willing to be holding u.s treasuries and they have had because of Trump,
Ivan: they have been less willing to hold them unless they get paid more.
Ivan: That's the way the bond market works. OK, you know, you will hold something
Ivan: that's very sure that you feel safer and pay a lower rate.
Ivan: But if you start feeling insecure about it, then the rate goes up.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: You're a higher risk. You need to pay more. And Trump has made that America is a higher risk.
Ivan: A borrower. And there is nothing that he is doing that's going to fix that.
Sam: So speaking more broadly than just affordability, you know, we've got a ton
Sam: of recession indicators, don't we?
Ivan: Oh, my God. Everything is flashing red. Yes.
Sam: So so go into that a little bit more.
Ivan: Jobs. OK, this week. OK, by the way, they went and decided not to publish a
Ivan: whole bunch of economic data.
Sam: Oh really well why we i don't understand like what why do you think.
Ivan: That could be sam do you think it's because it was all it all looked great.
Sam: Yvonne we know that they have said that these these all of these metrics they've
Sam: discovered were being manipulated by the democrats and were bullshit numbers
Sam: so they have to get a handle on everything they can't publish it while they don't know.
Ivan: Ah, that's why. Yeah, no. Obviously, it has to be because all the data was shipped.
Ivan: The ADP jobs report showed that we had the worst period of hiring that we've
Ivan: had in years as well in terms of private sector hiring. It's been awful.
Ivan: We had the most layoff notices that we've had since the Great Recession.
Ivan: I don't know if you've heard about this story.
Sam: I am proud to be part of that, you know, that story.
Ivan: Okay, yeah. I mean, yeah.
Sam: I have contributed in my own way.
Ivan: I mean, it's one of those things where all the fucking indicators are flashing
Ivan: red, okay, about this. Yeah.
Ivan: And the fact that the only thing that held up GDP this year is investment in AI.
Sam: Oh, God. Yeah. That makes it feel good.
Sam: There's no, like, frothy bubble there or anything. Yeah.
Ivan: Look, there are things in the, in the AI space that obviously has happened with
Ivan: a lot of these waves that are overvalued.
Ivan: I don't doubt that there's a whole bunch of things, but also I think we've got,
Ivan: I think we've got on that space.
Ivan: We've got opinions like that are all over the place about this, right?
Sam: I had shared on the, on, on the show, one of the shows while you were in surgery,
Sam: the one where Bruce and Ed were on.
Sam: Um i talked about i shared this on
Sam: the curmudgeons corner slack too but there was there was
Sam: some chart i believe it was in the
Sam: economist where they said predictions on
Sam: ai's effect on world
Sam: gdp they're all had a chart well basically
Sam: the two extremes of the
Sam: thing were one that went up to infinity when you get the singularity and ai
Sam: takes over everything and one that goes down to zero because the ai causes human
Sam: extinction and and that that was the extremes extremes of the prediction you
Sam: know so it's like okay and.
Ivan: That's and that's basically what you you see in the market and with everybody
Ivan: talking about this there that that is basically the spread of opinions i think that,
Ivan: objectively looking at this i i
Ivan: what are the one of the things you
Ivan: know they keep trying to compare it to 2000 and the
Ivan: tech bubble there well there's one thing one of the things that was
Ivan: the biggest issue in the 2000 tech bubbles there's
Ivan: no monetization they kept building cool
Ivan: shit without any way to monetize it
Ivan: okay all right that that's not what's happening
Ivan: with any of this ai stuff there there there is
Ivan: clearly a path to monetizing this
Ivan: i mean i i you know i i have seen this happen
Ivan: like with a lot of what a
Ivan: lot of the things that are being done that that i don't i don't have a i don't
Ivan: have an issue with finding the the ways to monetize it but i also find so many
Ivan: people that decry it yet it you said adoption is no nobody's using this stuff that that's bullshit oh.
Sam: Everybody's using it.
Ivan: Everybody's using it everybody's using it and people sometimes are using it
Ivan: they don't even know they're using it okay and.
Sam: Like in my example and i'm paying i am.
Ivan: Paying several.
Sam: Ai companies at.
Ivan: This very moment i i think.
Sam: I'm i'm paying cursor i'm paying anthropic i'm paying open ai right now i've
Sam: got regular monthly subscriptions for all three of them i use one of them a
Sam: lot more than the other two so i may want to change that up at some point but
Sam: like at the moment i'm using all three.
Ivan: And yeah and i'm using it practically every day and and listen of the younger
Ivan: generation those people can't live school right.
Sam: How would you write an essay for school without ChatGPT?
Ivan: I told you that my experience, I bumped into a guy that said that he doesn't
Ivan: understand how he could write an email without AI anymore.
Ivan: And so I see a lot of people, you hear a lot of loud people complaining,
Ivan: oh, they're forcing me a copilot and this or whatever.
Ivan: I don't want to, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Where the reality is that we've
Ivan: got an entire generation of
Ivan: people right now that are 100% dependent on AI for basic things every day.
Ivan: So when they are trying to tell me how this is a complete bubble,
Ivan: that they're building shit that nobody is using, that is absolutely a lie.
Sam: And by the way, the adoption rate on this is insanely high.
Sam: I mean, the stuff we're talking about didn't exist three years ago.
Ivan: Two years! So that's why when I go, when I see people, they're trying to tell
Ivan: me, look, is there stuff that could be, that is overvalued, okay?
Ivan: That, you know, we're overpaying for it.
Ivan: That where maybe they may be overspending in the short term on certain things.
Ivan: I believe that. But the reality is that.
Sam: Or the typical pattern that happens on all kinds of waves like this,
Sam: where the first run companies who are really driving it and like burning out
Sam: and not making the monetization work.
Sam: And it's the second wave that ends up being the ones that really.
Ivan: Or something. Or something happens in the middle. Listen, with a lot of things,
Ivan: let me give an example of like real estate, like back in 2008,
Ivan: a lot of, you know, we're talking about how there was a lot of overbuilding into 2008.
Ivan: But the reality is that in the next five years, all that real estate got bought up.
Ivan: And by the way, the prices that we thought were crazy in 2008 now are cheap.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And so that's the thing where these waves sometimes wind up,
Ivan: it happened in the PC industry in the 90s, where all of a sudden there was a
Ivan: wave of overbuilding of PCs,
Ivan: and all of a sudden they tried to put too many PCs on the market,
Ivan: and all of a sudden they had to cut prices in order to get people to buy,
Ivan: and some companies lost money for a little bit because of whatever.
Ivan: But then after, you know what, now, whatever.
Sam: Look, generally speaking, I mean, these bubbles and such aren't necessarily
Sam: saying this thing pops and is gone forever. It's just that there's stuff that's
Sam: premature and over, you know.
Sam: And so, yeah, you get the up, you get the down, and then you have it slowly go back up again.
Sam: And very well end up higher than the bubble was.
Ivan: Well, there were a lot of things in the bubble. But listen, but there are certain
Ivan: things in the bubble that we talk about in bubble that are like impossible.
Ivan: It was like, you know what?
Ivan: Like people were paying 400 times earnings for Cisco.
Ivan: There was no mathematical model ever to get to 400 times earnings to make Cisco
Ivan: sell enough to make that value make sense.
Ivan: OK, but right now, when they're trying to tell me that NVIDIA is in a bubble
Ivan: where they are, they're comparing.
Ivan: I got people comparing NVIDIA to Cisco, whereas NVIDIA is like a 30,
Ivan: 20 some odd times future earnings, whereas Cisco was at 400 times.
Ivan: I'm like, OK, guys, look, you guys are not looking at the numbers.
Ivan: You guys are not looking at the numbers. I'm sorry, but you're comparing two
Ivan: things that are different.
Ivan: Now, when you're telling me that you've got a Palantir that's at 500 times earnings
Ivan: and that I can't make or figure out how in the world they're going to,
Ivan: you know, make that kind of money.
Ivan: And you've got a Tesla out there and you've got some other stuff that's like
Ivan: valued like that. Yes, I do agree.
Ivan: And there's a whole bunch of overvaluation and there is that kind of stuff.
Ivan: But I do think but the biggest thing that I keep seeing is all these people
Ivan: trying to go on TV and try to tell me how nobody uses AI.
Ivan: AI doesn't work or whatever, blah, blah, blah. Let me tell you something.
Ivan: AI can do a whole bunch of fucked up things. And like you said,
Ivan: I think it is one of the most polarizing technologies that we have ever deployed.
Ivan: And it shows that that economist article that you mentioned where the spread was.
Ivan: Why the spread was, why they're going to be destroyed by it or,
Ivan: you know, the edge of the outcomes was like the entire spectrum of the existence
Ivan: of the planet, basically. Yeah.
Ivan: I think that, but people to say that it's not being used when I see so many
Ivan: people right now that basically just depend on it every day.
Sam: And as we've talked about this technology, it's also continuing to evolve very rapidly.
Sam: I mean, when we started talking about this two years ago, you know,
Sam: there were all kinds of problems. And it was bad.
Ivan: And it was bad.
Sam: And, and, you know, we, and in some ways it still is, but the ratio of utility
Sam: to badness is shifting over time. It is getting better over time.
Ivan: It is getting a lot better.
Sam: And it is, and even at this point, like even comparing, if you go back and look
Sam: three months, there's a noticeable difference, let alone if you're looking back a year.
Sam: And, and, and so it's really hard to predict where we're going.
Sam: And, and there is the,
Sam: you know, like you said, there is the question of, okay, you can see the path to monetization,
Sam: but we're still very much in the phase where all of these companies are spending
Sam: a shit ton more than they're making in order to grow the technologies,
Sam: do the improvement, you know? Yeah.
Sam: But like a lot of the big name brands that everybody talks about,
Sam: you know, you're, you're, but they're, they're investing that to continue improving
Sam: the technology to spur that adoption.
Sam: You know, all the usual things that happen in the early growth stages of things.
Sam: And so the question is, where does all that stabilize and who's left standing?
Sam: Do you have a game of musical chairs and you've got like 10 players and five
Sam: and only two of them survive? Maybe, you know, maybe.
Ivan: Maybe, maybe. for all we know. But bottom line is that you know...
Sam: Anyway, you were saying this is the only thing that GDP got down on.
Ivan: That is a GDP. The thing is that I don't... You know, I think that,
Ivan: Obviously, there could be too much froth in this, but saying that it's just,
Ivan: this isn't a tulip bulb bubble.
Ivan: Okay, all right.
Sam: I will say, by the way, by the way, if you account for everything,
Sam: you know, tulips are probably cost more than they did during the tulip craze.
Sam: At least nominally. Probably not.
Ivan: Nominally. Probably not. Yeah, not, not, not.
Sam: Because it was like people were spending their entire year's income on one tulip and stuff.
Ivan: Yes. I don't think tulips are that expensive like right now.
Ivan: I wonder how much a tulip bulb is right now. That's a great question.
Sam: You should get the long-term chart of tulip bulbs going all the way back to the tulip.
Ivan: I should try to find one of those. But anyway, the bottom line is that,
Ivan: unfortunately, the economy is only being held up by that.
Ivan: And that's not a lot of companies that are in this gig.
Sam: Well, in general, I've seen a number of people talk about how the uneven distribution
Sam: of the economy is a significant issue in terms of companies.
Sam: Like you mentioned, there's somebody did a chart where they're like, here's the S&P 500.
Sam: Here's the S&P 500 without the 10 companies who are doing well.
Ivan: Now, to be fair, I looked at that, and to be fair, even since 2020,
Ivan: the increase in the stock market on the non-whatever companies,
Ivan: the ones that are not involved in that, was 120%.
Ivan: That's not a bad return, okay?
Sam: But the other ones.
Ivan: It's 1,000-plus percent, yeah.
Sam: Well, and in the last year, the others have been more down.
Sam: Right. Um, and, and then, but also I've seen like analysis of like things like
Sam: consumer spending and stuff.
Sam: Consumer spending is being held up by the top 10%.
Sam: Like the top 10% who's invested in the stock market, making money from the stock
Sam: market, all this kind of stuff, they're doing well. They're spending lots of money.
Sam: They're doing, you know, they're buying their lots of Christmas presents.
Sam: The other 90% is hunkering down.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And so you see that division as well.
Ivan: Not totally. And so this is not sustainable. This is not sustainable.
Ivan: We're going to, you know, and the problem that the GOP has is politically,
Ivan: this is a time bomb in their hands.
Ivan: Because really the guys that are hurting, for the most part,
Ivan: are their constituents.
Ivan: Those are the guys that had voted them in because supposedly the Biden economy
Ivan: wasn't working for them and the Republicans were going to fix the economy.
Ivan: And what they have done is make it incredibly worse for them.
Ivan: And all the surveys right now show that.
Ivan: And they're not doing anything to fix it.
Sam: Yvonne, has this pattern happened before? Has this pattern happened before?
Sam: Have Republicans come in when the Democrats left them a good economy,
Sam: and then something happens?
Sam: It's just bad luck, right?
Ivan: Yeah, it's just bad luck, yeah.
Sam: Oh, it's because the Democrats really left them a mess.
Ivan: Yeah, they left them a mess. I mean, October— Yes.
Sam: This has happened before. This is this has been like the typical pattern for
Sam: Republican administration, Republican administration going back like decades now.
Ivan: Yeah. October 2024. There is an article in The Economist on the cover.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: That the headline was The American Economy, The Envy of the World. Yeah.
Ivan: That was the headline over 2024. And right now, it's a basket case.
Ivan: Like right now, it really is. I mean, it's being held up by one massive technology
Ivan: shift that has caused a massive spend in that direction.
Ivan: But the rest of the economy is stagnating. It's suffering badly I mean,
Ivan: All these immigration rates are hitting the economy negatively,
Ivan: okay? All right? They're driving up costs, okay?
Ivan: You've got, you know, in some places now, you've got a dearth of workers for certain things, okay?
Ivan: And what it's doing, it's driving up costs of construction and some other things
Ivan: because they can't get workers for that, okay?
Ivan: And then you've got on the other part where he went and he took a,
Ivan: he took a, they took a chainsaw to the federal government and cut hundreds of thousands of jobs,
Ivan: driving up costs because the deficit
Ivan: went up while creating a mass of unemployed people at the same time.
Ivan: And they went and they raised the tariffs, which impacted a lot of medium businesses,
Ivan: small, medium businesses, and it's impacting individuals heavily because it's driving up costs.
Ivan: It's just, it's everything that they've done is just bad for the economy. All of it.
Ivan: This week, they were trying to tout how we, oh, we're bringing,
Ivan: we're going to bring back manufacturing of chips to the U.S.
Ivan: Fuck, Biden had been working on that and had more success than that over the
Ivan: last four years with the Chips Act than they ever did in their lifetime.
Sam: It was a whole big thing.
Ivan: Yeah, and it was making progress. All the green manufacturing with the new energy, they hit that too.
Ivan: So they fucked that part of the industry too, which was also surging,
Ivan: everything they have done you know it's the saying oh my god what the hell this
Ivan: political commentator said I think it was Conway everything Trump touches dies yes.
Sam: So, Yvonne, I guess we can save the real predictions for the prediction show for next year.
Sam: But, like, how bad is this going to get worse before it gets better, right?
Ivan: Oh, God, yes. It's going to get a lot worse. I'm not turning this around anytime
Ivan: soon. No, they're not doing it. Like I said, they're not doing anything to fix
Ivan: it. They're making it worse.
Ivan: Look, when people's pocketbooks get hit next year with the double whammy of
Ivan: losing insurance coverage or those that keep it have their...
Ivan: This is tens of millions of households that are getting this impact.
Ivan: Think about all the other impacts that they've had negative.
Ivan: Aside from, okay, great. So now they've got their health insurance rates are
Ivan: soaring. So that reduces their disposable income. Bam. You got that.
Ivan: They also went on student loans. Remember? Student debt.
Ivan: Remember how that was also a big positive on the economy because they were forgiving
Ivan: a lot of that and suspended payments on a lot of those? Well, they lifted all of that.
Sam: Okay yep that's.
Ivan: Also hitting millions and millions of people as well they.
Sam: Just keep.
Ivan: Fucking people sam.
Sam: So yvonne order of magnitude are we talking about short quick recession that
Sam: people barely notice are we talking 2008 level great recession or are we talking
Sam: 1929 level Great Depression.
Ivan: I'm thinking more early 90s style recession.
Sam: Okay, tell me more about,
Sam: What was that like? I should remember.
Ivan: The early 90s recession was a period of very low growth to negative growth where employment was,
Ivan: you know, people were struggling to find jobs and costs were rising. Okay.
Ivan: And that's why H.W. Bush lost.
Ivan: We were coming off a bank bust at that time where there had been a massive bank
Ivan: bailout because this was the S&L crisis.
Ivan: And this was also a part where the defense industry was shrinking because of the end of the Cold War.
Ivan: And that caused a lot of layoffs. Okay.
Ivan: And so employment was muted.
Ivan: You know, people were struggling to get jobs.
Ivan: The automakers were also laying off a lot of people because they had been getting
Ivan: hammered by imports at the time.
Ivan: GM and Ford were not doing very well against our foreign competitors.
Ivan: And I think that you're going to get a style like that where.
Ivan: We're having right now a period of more like stagflation where we've got high
Ivan: costs and higher unemployment for a while, like right now at this point.
Ivan: One of the reasons I don't think balance sheets for a lot of people and companies
Ivan: are in better shape than they have been at in the 80s and 90s or at other times.
Ivan: And so I think that that that's one reason why we're not talking about 2008 levels,
Ivan: but we're talking more like now it looks more like early 90s kind of where it was hard to find a job.
Ivan: I don't know if you recall, but I do recall that it was like when we got out,
Ivan: when we graduated from college in 93, it was a tough job market for us is a
Ivan: very tough job market for us to find a job in 93.
Ivan: And that was like because of the effects of that recession that we that that
Ivan: come out and like the the shrinking defense budgets and all of this stuff and
Ivan: whatever and how that lowered employment how,
Ivan: the auto industry was shrinking how we were it was it was it was a difficult
Ivan: economy so that's that's i think what we're facing right now okay very cheery
Ivan: way for arrest this turn yeah i.
Sam: I I figure it's time to take a break and move on.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. There you go.
Sam: Okay. We'll take a quick break. I'll come back and I'll preview to try to cheer things up a little bit.
Sam: I'm going to talk about this week's election results and.
Ivan: Oh, there you go. Yeah.
Sam: You know, how things might be looking for next year's elections.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Back after this.
Sam: Okay, we are back. So, elections. We had this race, congressional race in Tennessee.
Sam: The Democrat did lose, but they were expected to lose.
Sam: Yes. The question was margins. Now, I know some people were hoping they would
Sam: pull out an upset, but the reality is they lost by, I forget the exact number,
Sam: it ended up being like 6% or something.
Sam: But this was a district that Trump had won by 22%.
Ivan: 2%, yes.
Sam: It's a huge shift. And if you look at some of the maps that show shift per county
Sam: or shift per whatever subgeographic area, they were all moving blue.
Sam: Like very red areas were moving blue by a significant direction.
Sam: And if you look at all of the special elections that have been going on since
Sam: the 2024 election, on average,
Sam: and I'm going to forget the exact number, but it's somewhat like 10%,
Sam: maybe even a little bit more, of the shift towards the Democrats.
Sam: And this is huge like if
Sam: if this replicates it all and and you look you have people
Sam: have pointed out special elections are special there tend to be more motivated
Sam: people that come out and it's a different kind of electorate than in a midterm
Sam: let alone like every four-year presidential election but it's a different sort
Sam: of people that come out for special elections so they're not 100 percent predictive
Sam: and you can get divergences.
Sam: But generally speaking, if you look at the last however many midterm cycles,
Sam: when one party is winning special elections by this margin, they end up taking
Sam: the House of Representatives like 60, 70 percent of the time.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Agreed. Yeah.
Sam: And,
Sam: You know, and we're talking about, you know, there was also news about the Texas
Sam: redistricting and the Supreme Court, like, upheld the districts that,
Sam: well, they let them stand for now.
Ivan: Right, until a case goes through. Right.
Sam: But the case won't go through before next year's elections. Basically,
Sam: these maps will be in place for 2026.
Sam: But what you have here is also the scenario where, look, people weren't all
Sam: talking about how they gerrymandered these maps to gain five more seats.
Sam: But that kind of assumes that the electorate looks a lot like it did in 2024.
Sam: Right if you if you've got
Sam: a 10 12
Sam: point shift in the electorate then a
Sam: lot of these seats that they had gerrymandered thinking they were so safe they
Sam: could afford to dilute them a little bit and take over some blue areas and and
Sam: kill those seat democratic seats are are at risk right and and And just more generally,
Sam: if, you know, I had talked on this show a while back about,
Sam: you know, people had done analysis that if everybody did all the gerrymandering
Sam: for their party that they could legally do before 2026, so Texas does their
Sam: thing, California does their thing, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: The most typical scenario is it would represent a Republican gain of between
Sam: five and 10 seats that they get out of that effort net between,
Sam: you know, Democrats doing their thing, Republicans doing their thing.
Sam: If you have a scenario where the overall shift is 10 to 12 points towards the
Sam: Democrats, that swamps that five to 10 seats.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, and and you're you know, you're talking a wave election and you're
Sam: talking, you know, you may have a shift of, you know, 30 seats overall,
Sam: which is more than enough to bring the Democrats back into the House.
Sam: And may may may even put the Senate at risk, which, you know,
Sam: had been viewed as sort of potentially out of reach.
Sam: Like, you know, the best case scenario for Democrats was getting the getting
Sam: the House back, but they probably wouldn't get the Senate back because it's
Sam: just a bad set of races for the Democrats for Senate.
Sam: But if you're talking about that big wave, there's at least a chance for the Senate.
Sam: You're maybe not going to predict it, but it becomes in play where maybe it wasn't before.
Sam: And so, and this all has to do with the stuff that you were talking about in
Sam: the last segment, Yvonne. It's like, yeah.
Ivan: And they're not doing anything to fix it, which is the problem.
Sam: They're not doing anything to fix it, but I just, and speaking more.
Ivan: You know what they're doing? We're building a ballroom, Sam.
Ivan: I don't know if you saw. And the ballroom keeps getting bigger.
Ivan: And the ballroom keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Sam: I know. And he fired the architect who didn't want to make it as big.
Sam: So you have to get another one now.
Ivan: But I don't know if this one will either, because he hired an architect that
Ivan: is the guy that has done so much of the construction in D.C.
Ivan: Historically. OK, which is the weird thing. And I thought, wait a minute,
Ivan: you went with with a guy who's basically his career has been spent trying to preserve D.C.
Ivan: Looking a certain way. I don't know how the hell this guy is going to go and
Ivan: just agree with doing that.
Sam: Yeah. Well, anyway, like I'm sure this guy will get fired.
Ivan: Too, is what I'm saying.
Sam: Yes. OK. But, but what,
Sam: Back to what I was talking about, I think the shift is not—it's twofold,
Sam: and it's always complicated what factors are at play.
Sam: But one is Democrats are really riled up.
Sam: The Democrats are turning out for these things. They are really upset.
Sam: They are turning out. They are voting for their people. And by the way,
Sam: this person who came really close in Tennessee was not a moderate Democrat.
Sam: They were a fairly progressive Democrat. So like this sort of is,
Sam: you know, you get the whole arguments about like, well, what kind of Democrats
Sam: should the Democrats be running and is, you know, adapting to the district and
Sam: make sure like in a place like Tennessee,
Sam: of course, like if a Democrat is
Sam: going to win, it's going to have to be a Republican light type candidate.
Sam: And no, this was not a Republican light type candidate.
Sam: They did well anyway. now would,
Sam: Maybe if they'd run a Republican light, they would have actually won. I don't know.
Sam: But, you know, anyway, but that's item one.
Sam: Number two is disillusioned Republicans, where maybe these Republicans aren't
Sam: going to vote for Democrats.
Sam: Some of them in the wishy-washy middle might. But a lot of, you hear over and
Sam: over again, these people saying, this isn't what I voted for.
Sam: Now, on the one hand, yes, it is, you damn idiot.
Ivan: You fucking idiot. Yes. Yes, it is. You fucking morons.
Ivan: It's exactly what you voted for. They told you, you know, they told you they
Ivan: were going to eat your face. They told it to you right to your face.
Ivan: And what you said is that the Democrats are exaggerating about it.
Sam: Or lying.
Ivan: That they didn't really mean it. Or lying.
Sam: Just outright lying.
Ivan: Lying. That they didn't mean it. Right.
Sam: But, you know, yes, the administration has been doing exactly what they said they were going to do.
Sam: And so all these people go, oh, this is, I didn't expect this, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Come on give me a fucking break but you know and part of it is economy you have
Sam: a lot of the people are saying like he promised prices would come down prices haven't come down no.
Ivan: Days day one he was gonna cut kill inflation on day one sam.
Sam: No not just kill inflation who's gonna make prices go down go down you know
Sam: like and those discount houses.
Ivan: Sam are the discount.
Sam: Houses available at the Trump Center for Peace. Eggs really did come down, didn't they?
Ivan: Eggs did really come down. As a matter of fact, speaking of eggs,
Ivan: I went recently and I ordered...
Sam: A Fabergé egg?
Ivan: Well, I did not order a Fabergé egg, but I did order eggs online to get from Costco.
Ivan: And the thing is that I saw the item And I'm like, okay, it said eggs.
Ivan: I didn't look at how many eggs I bought. Okay.
Ivan: I mean, I have been eating eggs right now from that order for the past couple
Ivan: of months. And I have been like making like massive egg, egg, like it was so many eggs.
Ivan: Okay. I got, it must be like 60 eggs or something like that. Some crazy amount.
Ivan: It was a box. It was literally, instead of like, you know, one of these like
Ivan: two little rope, you know, egg carton things.
Sam: Not a dozen.
Ivan: It was a box double stacked with eggs.
Ivan: I mean, it was just crazy. Now, what I will say is that the reason why I didn't
Ivan: think I was getting that many eggs was because it was cheap.
Ivan: I saw the price, and I think that that box cost me like $9.
Ivan: And I'm like thinking I'm getting a dozen maybe two dozen eggs tops or whatever
Ivan: no I got holy shit Sam I got a ton of eggs,
Ivan: for very little money so yes the price
Ivan: of eggs did come down yes but lots of
Ivan: other prices have not lots of other prices have definitely not they keep talking
Ivan: here's the thing they keep talking supposedly how there's gas at less than two
Ivan: bucks a gallon somewhere And they're literally for there is no place in the
Ivan: United States where you can get that nothing.
Ivan: It doesn't exist. But they keep talking about.
Sam: Right.
Sam: Yeah. So look, prices is one of these things where people are talking and,
Sam: but also on other things too.
Sam: I mean, even the immigration stuff, which is supposedly one of the,
Sam: you know, things that Donald Trump was stronger about.
Sam: And it's an issue that the Democrats are weak on and whatever.
Sam: You get all these people saying, you know, I, I want, I thought he was going
Sam: to get rid of the criminals, but he's going after everybody, you know?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And again, again, this is one of those things, well, this is exactly what he
Sam: said he was going to do. I'm sorry.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: So I'm sorry.
Ivan: I found my receipt. So, so, so I wouldn't lie.
Sam: For you, you're back on the eggs, back on the eggs.
Ivan: Yeah. Kirkland Signature Eggs, large. What I didn't see, it was five dozens.
Sam: Five dozen. Okay.
Ivan: I got five dozen eggs for $14.97.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Five dozen. Basically $3 a dozen.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Very cheap. But yeah, I got five dozen eggs. This is ridiculous.
Sam: You know, if I was a little bit closer, I'd come over for a few omelets.
Ivan: I still got some eggs left from it. Yeah.
Sam: No, but yeah, look, there are a lot of disillusioned Trump supporters.
Sam: And third? The Epstein stuff.
Sam: We're sort of in a lull with Epstein news, but that'll hit in a couple more weeks.
Sam: We're about halfway through the 30 days.
Ivan: I mean, it's going to blow up again, right? Because if they don't...
Sam: It will blow up again.
Ivan: Because...
Ivan: Here are the scenarios, right? They have dragged on releasing it because it's bad.
Ivan: So we know that it's got to be bad. So that's why they keep dragging on releasing it.
Ivan: Either they'll try to refuse to release it again or to release something so
Ivan: redacted that we run out of ink trying to print it.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And it's going to leave because it's so redacted that what it's going to do
Ivan: is make it blow up again because then they're hiding everything.
Sam: Right. So with all of these factors together, you get Republicans who are just
Sam: turn out as depressed. They're a little bit disillusioned.
Sam: Also, like, even if they are gung ho on Trump, that doesn't always translate
Sam: into whoever their local person is.
Ivan: Did you see that Nancy Mace is like, it sounded like she's going to quit as well, aside from MTG?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: That's another bad sign for Republicans.
Sam: Well, and there are apparently a whole bunch of Republicans who are thinking
Sam: about, at the very least, not running again and possibly quitting early.
Sam: And I saw speculation that one of the issues here is that if you get one or
Sam: two more quitting, the Democrats have a majority.
Sam: So like you have to like they're
Sam: going to carefully consider their timing because nobody's going to be want to
Sam: be the one Republican that tips the balance so like the question is anybody
Sam: who wants to get out has to do it quick because otherwise they might be locked
Sam: in because they don't want to be that person well.
Ivan: You know or somebody you know we've unfortunately we've had this happen somebody gets sick or dies.
Sam: That could happen too because that happens So far in this term,
Sam: it's only been Democrats who died.
Ivan: I know.
Sam: They had to be replaced. Fuck.
Ivan: Fuck.
Ivan: Jeez. Yeah. The damn luck.
Sam: But, you know, yes, you never know when when something could happen.
Sam: But yeah. And look what what you're hearing from those Republicans.
Sam: There are two factors in play. One is nobody really wants to be in the minority.
Sam: So there are a lot of people thinking we're going to lose next time.
Sam: I don't want to be here if we're in the minority because it's not fun.
Sam: But then we've also got people saying, well, actually, it's not fun right now
Sam: either, because we can't actually do anything. We can't actually do anything.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: We're not enacting any policies. We're not doing anything. All we do is grovel
Sam: to Donald Trump and do whatever he says.
Sam: And I'm not they're not having fun.
Sam: And a lot of people don't like Johnson. I specifically heard some reports this
Sam: week about how a bunch of the folks who are considering leaving are women.
Sam: And one of the reasons is specifically because they feel like Johnson treats women like shit.
Ivan: Even in his own party. No, you don't say. Really?
Ivan: You're shocked? Oh, my goodness. You are shocked that your dear Republican leader is a misogynist. Wow!
Ivan: It took you this long to find out, you stupid idiots!
Sam: Yes. Yes.
Ivan: How do you think they finally figured it out, Sam?
Ivan: Did you see that cringy interview where he was sitting with his wife,
Ivan: but literally was trying to sit as far away as possible from his wife?
Sam: I did not see that.
Ivan: There is a video clip that is hilarious where he is shown in some interview
Ivan: with his wife that their interaction is so fucked up. OK, all right.
Ivan: In terms of physical contact or whatever, I mean, he is literally, literally.
Ivan: Just seems to, they're trying to avoid her at all costs.
Sam: That's lovely. Well, and of course, we've got the rumors about J.D.
Sam: Vance getting ready to dump Usha for Charlie Kirk's widow.
Ivan: I totally buy that. I mean, that's on brand for these guys.
Ivan: I mean, look, Newt Gingrich dumped his dying wife for somebody else, right?
Sam: Twice, I think.
Ivan: Yeah, right.
Sam: Once while his existing wife had cancer.
Ivan: But no, cancer was dying, right, yeah.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: So, hey, this is on brand.
Sam: Perfectly.
Sam: Okay, so, yeah, we may see more Republicans leave.
Sam: We may see that staunched by the fact that they just can't afford to lose any more people.
Sam: But, yeah, as of now, we're down to two vacant seats.
Sam: I'm just looking at the stats. As of December 4th, two days ago,
Sam: which, by the way, apparently when a Republican was elected in a special election,
Sam: there was no delay in swearing them in.
Sam: But it's now 220 Republicans, 213 Democrats, two vacant seats at the moment.
Ivan: By the way, I just saw that there's an opinion piece on by the Washington Post
Ivan: editorial board where the headline was, relax, it's not a winning economic message.
Ivan: And this is about the economy and Mike Johnson specifically.
Ivan: Republicans have a holiday message for cash-strapped Americans. Chill out.
Ivan: Relax, in quotes, said Speaker Mike Johnson, advised on Thursday,
Ivan: assuring voters that we'll feel better.
Ivan: What's provisions from the big, beautiful bill kick in next year?
Ivan: We are exactly on the trajectory where we've always planned to be.
Ivan: Steady at the wheel, everybody. It's going to be fine.
Ivan: Sam, it's going to be fine.
Sam: It's going to be fine. Excellent. All right.
Ivan: Look, the big, beautiful bill provisions is only going to give people like me more money.
Ivan: OK, that's it.
Sam: And by and by people like me, you mean people who are fairly well off anyway.
Ivan: Exactly. Yes. Those are the only fucking people that are getting money.
Ivan: He's fucking everybody else.
Ivan: The people who wound up having to cut back the number over here said apparently
Ivan: that Americans right now,
Ivan: this year, consumers estimate they will spend an average of seven hundred and
Ivan: seventy eight dollars on holiday presents down from one thousand twelve.
Ivan: At this point last year, okay?
Ivan: I haven't started my Christmas shopping yet. I need to do that.
Ivan: Growing numbers are using buy
Ivan: now, pay later services, another indication people feel strapped for cash.
Ivan: That are released by ADP show. That was the unemployment drop.
Ivan: But this is the winning message that Speaker Mike Johnson is selling. Relax.
Ivan: Don't worry about it. Steady the course. What we did is great and it's only going to get better.
Ivan: Despite every indicator saying the opposite.
Ivan: Which is probably why these people are like, you know, they're like,
Ivan: he's driving us a cliff, so let's get off the clown car before it crashes off the cliff.
Sam: Well, and some of these Republicans, by the way, have also been quoted in the
Sam: press saying that if there was another speaker election now,
Sam: Johnson would not win it.
Sam: He would not have the votes. however i have not heard that there's any stirrings
Sam: going on to try to remove him.
Ivan: But the biggest problem was because they know that would be a disaster too like
Ivan: another disaster i mean exactly they're gonna go through like another how many
Ivan: rounds did it take for him to be speaker i mean we lost track i mean that was
Ivan: just well no that that was.
Sam: The first time.
Ivan: That was the first time no no the second time he
Ivan: got it when he got the job when he
Ivan: got the job that we settled on mike johnson okay it took bazillion rounds if
Ivan: if mike johnson said resigned right now there's nobody in line to take this
Ivan: check right so it's gonna be a shit show again again yes.
Sam: Okay, let's wrap this thing up.
Ivan: All right, let's wrap.
Sam: Can we wrap this up?
Ivan: We could wrap it up.
Sam: Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there. Find all the stuff.
Sam: All our old episodes, transcripts going back a couple years now,
Sam: all the ways to contact us, a link to buy a mug. You guys wanted a link to buy a mug.
Sam: Start buying damn mugs. You know?
Sam: I i haven't seen the like the huge i i haven't seen the order of like 100 100 mugs at a time.
Ivan: That's what i expected we need to get we need to
Ivan: get like you know how there for it used to be a big thing in order to funnel
Ivan: cash to like say somebody at the house of representatives was that if they they
Ivan: came out with a book all of a sudden you know some guy I would buy 10,000 copies of the book. Okay.
Sam: Right. Yes.
Ivan: That was the easy way to funnel money. So look, if you want to funnel money
Ivan: to us and buy 10,000 mugs, we are open to, we are open to having money funneled towards us. Yes.
Sam: We can be bought.
Sam: Yes. The, the, the new all MAGA all the time, curmudgeons corner.
Sam: Yes. For the right price.
Ivan: Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah no i i don't i don't i think that
Ivan: if they you know they could give me like a i will say that if
Ivan: i do that negotiation i will take the money up front uh and i'm sure that after
Ivan: the first week they will try to get their money back which i'll say no and well.
Ivan: I'm not going to refund the caymans or someone exactly they're they're not getting
Ivan: their fucking money back and i'm not and they're not going to renew.
Sam: Hey, I got to do it to them.
Ivan: Hey, they're doing it to us. I got to do it to them. Give me a fucking break.
Sam: There you go. And of course, a link to our Patreon where you can give us money as well.
Sam: At various levels there, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell.
Sam: We will send you a postcard. We will send you one of those mugs,
Sam: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the
Sam: Commudgeons Course Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of others are hanging
Sam: out throughout the week, sharing links, chatting.
Sam: I, you know, we, there are all kinds of conversations going on.
Sam: We've been, Yvonne and Pete and some other folks were talking about cars for a while.
Sam: They were talking about like, you know, what exactly is wealthy? What's not wealthy?
Sam: All this kind of stuff. There are all kinds of topics going on.
Sam: But what Yvonne is something that was discussed on the Curmudgeons Car Slack
Sam: this week that we have not talked about on the show that you would like to highlight?
Ivan: Well, there were two things. One is Sam made a point of mentioning that I didn't
Ivan: share this picture of this drunk raccoon,
Ivan: apparently a raccoon broke into
Ivan: a uh a liquor store of
Ivan: some kind and broke the bottles and then licked the the the alcohol got drunk
Ivan: and was found passed out drunk by the bathroom like laid out like i have actually
Ivan: picked up drunk people laid out i thought you were gonna say you'd.
Sam: Actually picked up drunk raccoons.
Ivan: No no i've done that with i've done this with people Okay?
Ivan: More than once, okay, that they passed out at the bathroom like this. Not with a raccoon.
Ivan: Apparently, the Virginia Distillery Company, formal statement regarding the
Ivan: very intoxicated raccoon, they issued a statement.
Ivan: We'd like to address the reports of their very intoxicated raccoon found inside Virginia ABC store.
Ivan: According to eyewitnesses, the raccoon entered the premises,
Ivan: bypassed the allocated Berman, and went straight for our award-winning American single malt.
Ivan: We're proud of our whiskey. We did not expect it to be so quite appealing to local wildlife.
Ivan: Anyway, so they had that. So we had the drunk squirrel. Okay. The second thing.
Sam: Now, apparently, speaking of AI as well, this was a true incident.
Sam: This was a true incident. However, people have been spreading around fake AI
Sam: video of the raccoon drinking out of the bottles and stuff.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And so.
Ivan: I at first thought that it was fake. So I didn't share it. I didn't realize it was real.
Sam: And here's one of the, this is what is going to make our media environment so complicated.
Sam: This was a true story, but with fake video circulating about it.
Ivan: Look, I saw Progressive the other day actually do a commercial showing,
Ivan: like, animals driving, which they actually mentioned that it was AI-generated,
Ivan: and this was a TV commercial that they did, like, with a voice of flow,
Ivan: but with, like, AI-generated images.
Ivan: So this is, we're going to get a lot more of this. So anyway,
Ivan: the second story talking about AI, let's say I've shared. Okay.
Ivan: You can go on a real live date with an AI girlfriend at this New York City cafe.
Ivan: We wish we were kidding. Okay.
Ivan: I, what the fuck.
Sam: Man? So the picture they have, the picture they have showing there,
Sam: by the way, you go to this restaurant. It's like, it ranges like a semi-fancy
Sam: formal restaurant with like tablecloths and candles and all this crap.
Sam: And then at the table, when you sit down, they prop up a phone on a holder that
Sam: has your AI girlfriend to talk to during your date.
Ivan: I mean, you know, couldn't they at least get you an iPad?
Sam: It looked like a phone in the picture.
Ivan: Yeah, I know. But could they at least get you a fucking iPad? I mean, for real.
Sam: Think you know just they could they could do a full-size monitor even you know like apple vision like.
Ivan: The screen so you could think that you know you're like looking at them or something
Ivan: there you go that that's a good use for apple for.
Sam: The apple vision thing they could indeed but no this this looked like it looked
Sam: like you had a phone where you were facetiming somebody but it's a fake person.
Ivan: Right. This is, I mean, I, I, I have to, I, I find myself not being drawn.
Sam: You know, when I FaceTime my fake AI girlfriend, I do it from home.
Sam: I don't need to go to the restaurant.
Ivan: I find myself not drawn to having fake conversations with AI.
Ivan: I don't, I don't. You tried to do it on the show.
Ivan: It was kind of blah.
Ivan: I, I, I got, I upgraded my, my Google home assistant now to Gemini and it says
Ivan: that I can have conversations with it.
Ivan: I have not been interested in having a conversation with the fucking.
Sam: Yeah, I'll tell you, I, you know, I mentioned I'm paying at least three different
Sam: AI companies, is one of which I'm really using. The other two I used earlier, but use less now.
Sam: But I'm always using it to do specific things. I can't say I've ever once just
Sam: like, you know, I'm going to talk to it. I'm going to have a conversation.
Sam: I just haven't done that. Even when I use the voice mode, I'm asking it questions.
Sam: Like I've done that where like I'm walking the dog, Alex and I,
Sam: and my mom who sometimes walks a dog with us, we're talking about something
Sam: like the other day I was walking.
Sam: We were walking the dog, my mom, my son, and myself.
Sam: We're walking the dog. We're going around. My mom makes a comment about like
Sam: one of the trees we pass and how it had really big leaves.
Sam: And she wondered something about it. So I pop open, you know,
Sam: chat GPT. I take a picture of the tree.
Sam: I ask it what's up with this tree. What's the name of the tree,
Sam: whatever it tells me, It talks to me and we have, we have, I asked some follow-up questions.
Sam: It was, it was the big leaf maple, by the way, my mom was remarking on how big the leaves were.
Sam: And so we asked what it is. It turns out the name of the damn tree is the big leaf maple.
Sam: And it was like, you couldn't be any more creative than that.
Sam: It couldn't be like something else. No, it's the big leaf maple because it has big leaves anyway. way.
Sam: So, but it was, it was purpose. Like, you know.
Sam: I'm using the AI to get some information. I'm using the AI to help program something
Sam: I'm working on. I'm using the AI for something.
Sam: I can't say I've ever once just been like, you know, I'm lonely right now.
Sam: Let me just spend the next half hour talking to the AI.
Ivan: No, no, no. I just, I get nothing from that. I mean, I just, no, no.
Ivan: It's like the same problem that I have with watching like how,
Ivan: uh, these, uh, supposed to like scary movies where I know it's fake.
Ivan: And I just, they don't, I'm like, just looking at it. I'm like,
Ivan: this is just stupid. And that's it.
Sam: I don't know. Meanwhile, I get startled by things on shows I'm watching that
Sam: aren't even supposed to be scary.
Ivan: Exactly. There you go.
Sam: I jump in. Not, not, not Godzilla. I just laughed at Godzilla.
Ivan: Two, two more things.
Sam: I want to do more things. Go, go.
Ivan: One was, I shared, I lost everything at a friend's recommendation.
Ivan: I invested my life savings in a firm abroad.
Ivan: Now it's all gone and the CEO was in court. What now?
Ivan: So, you know, investing everything into some obscure offshore investment,
Ivan: okay, and then being shocked at the fact that you lost all your money,
Ivan: okay, and, you know, it's a scam.
Ivan: You're a fucking idiot okay if you do that okay just put all your.
Sam: Money into the donald trump coin like.
Ivan: Exactly and normal people just lose 100 that
Ivan: way yes then the last one that i
Ivan: had it was the there was an article on bloomberg about the
Ivan: microsoft is the house that excel built and they talked
Ivan: about how excel started or whatever
Ivan: the interesting part about the story was that the guy who
Ivan: was the key developer at some point basically quit
Ivan: microsoft he was like i'm burnt out this sucks
Ivan: sometime in the 80s and he decided to go he said
Ivan: fuck this i quit i'm going to be working
Ivan: at a farm and picking vegetables and he did that for two to three months and
Ivan: then realized shit this sucks i'm gonna go back let me call and they actually
Ivan: wanted him back at microsoft Let me call them to see if they'll hire me back.
Ivan: And so he did. But the guy went in the middle of it and said,
Ivan: fuck this. I hate this shit.
Ivan: I'm going to go work on a farm and pick vegetables and then realize,
Ivan: what the fuck am I doing? This sucks.
Sam: Okay. You know, I can see some of, you know, as I'm trying to figure out what to do with my life.
Sam: Like, okay, I could pick vegetables.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: Let's go do that for a while.
Ivan: If you look at this guy, he said that, yeah, after a little bit of doing that,
Ivan: he realized, holy shit, this sucks.
Sam: No, I honestly, there are some things that are complete career shifts that might
Sam: be interesting to me. Picking vegetables is not one of them.
Ivan: Picking vegetables is not one of them.
Sam: Farm work in general is not something that appeals to me, I don't think.
Ivan: Yeah, no, he, you know, he went and he basically just went and he was like,
Ivan: he was like burnt out. He's pissed off. He quit.
Ivan: And yeah, he was, uh, he was, uh, he was picking vegetables for,
Ivan: for a bit, for, I can't remember exactly.
Ivan: It was farm work and it was hard. And he realized that, yeah,
Ivan: I, I, um, I, I don't, I don't, I don't like doing this.
Ivan: Let me see. I actually found it here specifically.
Ivan: He was so frustrated both by delay and he'd been excluded from the meetings
Ivan: in which the decision was made that he quit telling colleagues his plan was
Ivan: to leave the software industry in favor of migrant farm work.
Ivan: I look back on it. It's clear I was just totally burnt out.
Ivan: Project Odyssey got back on track after Clunder ran out of cash somewhere in
Ivan: the OJ Valley two months after his departure.
Ivan: I picked lettuce a couple of times and did some other odd jobs,
Ivan: he recalls. Then my backpack was stolen.
Ivan: I'm like, I need money. Let me call Microsoft.
Ivan: And they were desperate to have him back. And so they were like,
Ivan: fine, just get back here.
Sam: Beautiful. Okay. I think we're done.
Ivan: We're done.
Sam: Thank you, everybody, for joining us yet again. Have a great week. Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Next week, I will have that link for everybody to suggest things for us to predict
Sam: on our annual prediction show.
Sam: In the meantime, stay safe. Have a great week. We'll talk to you later. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Thank you. Thanks, Yvonne. Have a good weekend. We'll talk to you later.
Ivan: All right. Bye.
Sam: Later. Bye.