Sam: We can start. We'll do a little bit short because I have a Brandystown Hall is at 21.
Sam: Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, February 21st, 2026.
Sam: It is just before 19 UTC, as we are starting to record.
Sam: I am Sam Mentor and Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hello. Hi. How is everybody doing?
Ivan: Is everything great, Sam? Are we great already?
Ivan: Is America great?
Sam: America is great. It's amazing. It has been made great again.
Ivan: It's been made great again.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Oh, that's wonderful. So are we done?
Sam: Yep. Thank you. Good show.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: Goodbye.
Ivan: Okay. Put the music on. Okay.
Sam: Yep. Here we go.
Ivan: Outro music. Here we go. Okay. We're done.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: There you go. Yeah, we're done.
Sam: Okay. Okay. Well, let's stop.
Ivan: Oh, no. We're not done.
Sam: No. No. No.
Ivan: Oh. Oh. Oh, well. Damn.
Sam: So. So we'll do our usual, a segment of lighter stuff and then more newsy stuff as we go along.
Sam: We will probably be a bit short today because it's 19 UTC and I got somewhere to be at 21 UTC.
Sam: My wife's having one of those town hall things that elected officials do and I'm going to go.
Sam: So anyway, so where do you want to start, Yvonne, with the lighter,
Sam: frothier beginning of the show stuff? I got a couple.
Ivan: Lighter let me see did I did I make any note of anything light and frothy,
Ivan: Light and frothy, light and frothy.
Sam: I mean, if you really want to, you can dive straight into the world going to
Sam: hell or something. But, you know, we usually leave that to the end of the show.
Ivan: Because in the interest of time, you know, let's go to your movies.
Ivan: Okay, let's get, you know, let's, yeah, because we have a little bit.
Sam: Okay, let's bash out the movies. Bash out the movies.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: First one, Tuck Everlasting from 2002.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Have you ever heard of it?
Ivan: No.
Sam: Okay, so it's got Alexis Bledel, who is known for Gilmore Girls and other things,
Sam: and Ben Kingsley, Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Anyway, first couple paragraphs of the description.
Sam: In 1914, 15-year-old Winnie Foster, who is from an upper-class family in the
Sam: American town of Tree Gap, wants to make her own choices in life.
Sam: After being told that she will go to a boarding school, she runs off into the
Sam: forest, where she meets Jesse Tuck, who is drinking from a spring at the foot of a great tree.
Sam: She is kidnapped by his older brother Miles and brought back to the Tuck's home,
Sam: where they tell her they will return her as soon as they can trust her.
Sam: She becomes enamored with their slow and simple way of life and falls in love with Jesse.
Sam: She learns that, by drinking water from a magic spring around a hundred years
Sam: ago, the tucks cannot age or be injured, and that they kidnapped her to hide the secret.
Sam: They tell her that living forever is more painful than it sounds,
Sam: and they believe giving away the secret of the spring will lead everyone to
Sam: want to drink from it and worry that it might fall into the wrong hands.",
Sam: And the movie continues from there. Yvonne seems skeptical.
Ivan: It doesn't sound like a movie that I would be interested in.
Sam: It's sort of like a combination between sort of, you know,
Sam: a romance slash type movie, because there's a love story, blah,
Sam: blah, blah, with some of these fantasy elements thrown in with obviously these
Sam: people who can live forever and what that means to life, whatever.
Sam: you know i i will i will give it a you
Sam: know i i after one of our more recent reviews i decided that may may maybe i
Sam: should be like i don't know like a little bit more like there was there was
Sam: a series of reviews where i get i gave something a thumbs up even though i was wavering on it,
Sam: and then there was another thing you're.
Ivan: Wavering usually or mr thumbs sideways.
Sam: Yeah i know and And then there was another one where I think I gave it a thumb
Sam: sideways, but I was like, you
Sam: know, actually, I enjoyed that better than the one I gave a thumbs up to.
Ivan: So what the hell is wrong with you?
Sam: I don't know. I'm just inconsistent. I'm horrible. I'm horrible.
Sam: I will give this one a thumb sideways in the end. I was considering a thumbs up.
Sam: It's a cute little movie. It was fine. It was good.
Sam: And this is another thing. Like I should not give a thumbs up to a movie where I say this was fine.
Sam: That's, that's like thumb sideways material, right?
Ivan: Yes. I agree. Yeah.
Sam: It was an entertaining couple of hours. I enjoyed the movie.
Sam: The, the, the ending like pulled at my heartstrings a little bit,
Sam: but it was nothing special.
Sam: It was nothing like super memorable.
Sam: I think I should leave the thumbs up for the ones that feel like there's something
Sam: special, But that means almost everything's going to be a thumb sideways.
Sam: See, that's the problem.
Ivan: Well...
Ivan: But, so, maybe, I just thought about this, right? Because the problem is that you've got a three.
Sam: Maybe I should have more. Maybe I should do a five-point scale instead.
Ivan: The thumbs diagonal. The AAS, which would be an innovative ad.
Ivan: I don't think anybody has, hey, I've got the thumb kind of downward.
Ivan: Or, no, I got the thumb kind of upward, okay? Which this would be.
Sam: I'm at 35 degrees.
Ivan: The 35 degree thumb. Yes. So you're at a 35 degree thumb on this movie. Yes.
Sam: Yeah. I didn't think deeply about that number or anything. 45 would be halfway
Sam: between up and sideways.
Ivan: You know, but, but Hey, it could be, you see, but we're talking about degrees.
Ivan: It could be 35, could be 45.
Ivan: Hey, maybe it could be 65 degree. It could be, you know, almost all the way,
Ivan: but you're, you're not all the way.
Ivan: So you, you, this is like, It gives you a lot of varying degrees.
Sam: A lot of varying degrees.
Ivan: For grading the movie.
Sam: Right. Yes. So, which gets you close to, like, you know, the Rotten Tomatoes rating is 61%.
Ivan: Look at that! You see? It actually matches.
Sam: Yes. And with an average rating of 6.3 out of 10. Critical Consensus Reads,
Sam: Though slow-moving, Talk Everlasting raises big issues and explores them with sensitivity.
Sam: Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, writing that the film is too
Sam: impressed with its own solemn insights to work up much entertainment value.
Sam: He further wrote that the film's message was questionable, opining the injunction
Sam: to live life fully need not come with a time limit.
Sam: That's why the outcome of the romance is so unsatisfactory. Anyway.
Ivan: It's so unsatisfactory. That sounds like, it doesn't sound like a great romance
Ivan: when your romance is unsatisfactory.
Sam: Well, just to be clear.
Ivan: It's really a very depressing description. Hey, but listen, hey,
Ivan: Sam, how was your last girlfriend?
Ivan: It was unsatisfactory. I don't think that I've ever heard anybody describing
Ivan: their last romantic entanglement as unsatisfactory.
Ivan: And that would be quite weird. If they did.
Sam: Even if it was bad, that's not the word they use.
Ivan: No, exactly. That's my point. Yes, that would not be, you know,
Ivan: hey, you were dating Jan. How did that go?
Ivan: Eh, you know, it's unsatisfactory.
Sam: Well, I will say that the ending, without giving the spoilers away,
Sam: was somewhat unsatisfactory.
Sam: I ended up disappointed. It does not end necessarily the way that romance movies typically end.
Sam: But nevertheless, not a completely shocking ending.
Sam: But unsatisfactory is kind of a good word for it.
Sam: But I think actually that was part of the point that they were trying to make with the movie.
Sam: Anyway, thumbs sideways. Shall I move on? Again, in the interest of time. Okay.
Sam: Ah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. Let's see. Just making sure...
Sam: Okay, the next movie from 2016, the third movie in the Divergent series, Allegiant.
Ivan: Allegiant?
Sam: Allegiant. Oh, boy. I believe I...
Ivan: That is the stupid Diver... I hate that fucking series.
Sam: Well, what I was going to say...
Ivan: It was the most, the whole thing was the most bombastic, overrated fucking movie series ever.
Sam: Wasn't this one that you said you saw the later ones, but not the first one? Or did you see all three?
Ivan: No, I think I saw the early one. Oh, no, no. I don't even remember anymore.
Sam: Because my review— I've got to be honest. This is the third of the series.
Sam: And my—and I've talked about the other two on the show before.
Sam: But my fundamental on this one is this is one of the series where each one is
Sam: worse than the one before.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Yes, that was— And the first one, I actually quite enjoyed. I liked the first one, A Decent Amit.
Sam: A Decent Amit? Amit? Amit? A Decent Amit?
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: I probably gave it a thumbs up. You know, this one, I mean, you know,
Sam: if you watch a movie series, I don't know.
Sam: I'm one of the ones who are like, you got to watch the whole series,
Sam: right? You got to judge it as a whole, not just individual movies.
Sam: But like, this is one, and there were supposed to be four. They canceled the
Sam: fourth one because the third one did badly, you know. Right.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, they were going to, this thing was supposed to be extended, but it kept.
Sam: At first there was going to be a fourth movie. Then they were like,
Sam: no, we'll follow it up with a TV series. And then they're like,
Sam: you know, nevermind. We're not even going to.
Ivan: Nevermind. Nobody liked the third one. Fuck this shit. We're done.
Ivan: We're out. Yeah. Basically, that was the conclusion.
Sam: Essentially. And I've heard good things about the book series,
Sam: including, you know, all of the books and continuing on even past where the
Sam: movies went, but I have not read them.
Sam: But should I give this one a thumbs down? Like, again, in the ways that we were
Sam: talking about before, I've usually reserved thumbs down for movies that were really like...
Sam: not just not good, but like, so not good. It was an offensive and you were upset by them.
Sam: And like, I, I, I feel offended that I wasted my time.
Sam: That that's not quite the case on this. So like, you know, okay.
Sam: Uh, what, what's, what's between 90 and 180.
Sam: Let's, let's call this a 120 or something like, so it's below, below thumbs sideways,
Sam: but not all the way to thumbs down, you know and again i i liked the first movie
Sam: the second movie okay this one was just like what are what are you doing exactly
Sam: and and like part of apparently.
Ivan: It is the apparently the that was the conclusion of everybody.
Sam: That went to.
Ivan: Watch this or most people at.
Sam: Least and also to me like What made the first movie interesting was that,
Sam: there were some interesting ideas to be explored.
Sam: It wasn't just people running around, having adventures, doing action movie
Sam: and battles and stuff like that.
Sam: And it seemed like they kind of used up the interesting ideas to talk about
Sam: in the first movie and maybe a little bit of the second movie.
Sam: And so by the time they got to the third movie, it was just,
Sam: oh, okay, there's these factions having a little war and doing these things.
Sam: And so, you know, they try to do the special effects, they try to do the battles,
Sam: they try to do the whatever, but without the sort of,
Sam: without either the interesting ideas or any new interesting character development. And so...
Ivan: Oh, what would be the fun in that?
Sam: You know, and look, I fully admit there are some franchises and some movies that are just 100%,
Sam: unapologetic we are an action movie we don't give a shit about the characters
Sam: we don't really give a shit about the plot it's just.
Ivan: We're gonna have a whole bunch of people fighting I will say that this last
Ivan: week I was intrigued at trying to watch the new movie The Running Man okay that
Ivan: was on Paramount Plus I must admit that I didn't really watch the whole thing
Ivan: because I realized after like about the first 45 minutes that it was just
Ivan: a whole repetitive bunch of action sequences that really didn't add to the plot in any way.
Ivan: It was just chases and chases. So I wasn't really...
Ivan: I actually wasn't watching it because I was like wanting to watch it.
Ivan: Somebody had mentioned it, that it was quite different from the original one.
Ivan: And what I understood was that it was actually closer to the original book.
Ivan: And so I actually skipped through most of the middle part of all the just action
Ivan: chasing whatever, just to figure out how it ended and how it was different from the original movie.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: So, but yeah, so yeah. But that's the thing. For somebody that was into,
Ivan: hey, let me watch a whole bunch of action that didn't really add in any way to the plot,
Ivan: this is your movie, I do think.
Sam: Okay. Running Man. The new one.
Ivan: Running Man. The new one. Yes.
Sam: And it is a movie, not a series, right?
Ivan: It's a movie. It's a movie. I think it was in theaters. It was on Paramount+. Okay.
Sam: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, both of these movies really thumb sideways if I'm
Sam: just using the three categories.
Sam: And, you know, like I said, a little bit above thumb sideways for Tuck Everlasting,
Sam: a little bit below thumb sideways for Divergent.
Sam: And there we go. They're my movies.
Sam: You want to go ahead and take a break and then do real stuff?
Ivan: Yeah. Yep.
Sam: Okay. So here we go. Breakie, breakie. Break, break, break.
Ivan: Breakie, breakie.
Sam: And we're back.
Ivan: We're back.
Sam: Okay, so where do you want to start on the newsy stuff that's been happening in the last week?
Ivan: Oh, what do we talk about? What do we talk about?
Ivan: We'll talk about the thing. With the thing.
Sam: The thing. Yeah. The thing.
Ivan: The thing.
Ivan: I'm going to, there is a whole bunch of stuff on the economy,
Ivan: okay? And I thought I wrote down economy.
Ivan: We had, you know, but.
Sam: Yes, but, but, but.
Ivan: But to cover something that we didn't talk about the previous week, okay?
Ivan: I'm going to talk about the fact that Tesla has basically decided to punt on making cars.
Sam: Ah, right, okay.
Ivan: And that was skipped over.
Sam: I've sort of looked at, I looked at some of the headlines you guys shared,
Sam: but not being like the car guy, some of the other folks on the Corrugents Corner
Sam: Slack are. I didn't look at the details.
Ivan: First thing that happened.
Sam: I know they're discontinuing some models, but not everything, right?
Ivan: No, no, no, but understand the models that are discontinuing.
Ivan: They decided to discontinue the Model S and the Model X. Understand something, the Model S.
Sam: Yeah, just to be clear, like, so explain this. Like, I have no idea,
Sam: like, the different letters.
Ivan: The Model S, the Model S was the first real, I mean, Tesla, before Elon Musk
Ivan: acquired it, and let's understand something, Elon Musk was not the founder of Tesla.
Sam: Okay?
Ivan: There's somebody else. By the way, that guy went on to Lucid,
Ivan: okay? Elon Musk acquired Tesla, and they made this Roadster at first, okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Which was this little two-seat car that originally used a whole bunch of,
Ivan: like, basically laptop batteries, okay, in order to be powered.
Ivan: They were all tied together. And it was a cool little thing.
Ivan: I saw a few of them around, but it wasn't really practical.
Ivan: But the Model S, okay, is the sedan that we all know.
Ivan: It really was a pioneer in electric vehicles.
Ivan: It really changed the game on what people would expect from an electric car.
Ivan: Because before that, the other cars that you saw was the Nissan Leaf or that
Ivan: little Tesla Roadster that wasn't very useful.
Ivan: They were very niche.
Sam: They were either really small or were like weird designs.
Ivan: Small.
Ivan: or weird exactly this was
Ivan: not just the fact that it was a sedan
Ivan: that was practical okay it was fast
Ivan: but it also they introduced with that car supercharging okay which was the biggest
Ivan: problem with all almost all old electric cars charging was slow okay with the
Ivan: model s you got this car that could charge pretty darn quickly,
Ivan: 20, 30 minutes, you got one hell of an amount of charge.
Ivan: And it went from the old car, which all would take hours, okay, in order to be charged.
Ivan: And so the Model S was a major game changer.
Ivan: And then after that, they introduced the Model X, which was with the wing doors,
Ivan: their SUV that they introduced.
Ivan: That also was a game changer In that sense, it had a design that was quirky.
Ivan: The doors, those Falcon doors were a pain in the ass.
Ivan: They, you know, they fixed that after a while. But they had a tendency to fail at first and whatnot.
Ivan: But it was also very, but those were their two pioneering cars.
Ivan: The thing is that the way Tesla has operated since they launched the Model S
Ivan: and Model X, they spent a lot of money on a whole bunch of other vanity projects.
Ivan: Or, well, they did launch the Model 3. They didn't launch the Model Y.
Ivan: But then after they've launched, but then they went and they launched the Cybertruck.
Ivan: The Cybertruck has been a colossal disaster.
Ivan: Right now, they cut prices across the board on Cybertrucks because they're not selling very well.
Ivan: They've been stuck with inventory because they're not very practical.
Ivan: As a truck, their cargo space is not good. They're not very good for towing.
Ivan: They don't have very good range. Okay.
Ivan: It just kind of looks...
Ivan: Something that, yeah, little kids look at like, oh, cool, it's a Cybertruck.
Ivan: Yeah, okay, great. But, you know, they will slice your fingers off if you're not careful with them.
Sam: Alex looks for them and takes pictures of them to mock them whenever he sees them.
Ivan: Okay, but you see, but they get attention, okay?
Sam: They get attention.
Ivan: They get attention.
Sam: But they get lots of negative attention, too.
Ivan: Yeah, but they're not practical, okay? They're not useful. They're very expensive.
Ivan: They're way more expensive than they expected them to be. So they spent all
Ivan: the money on that, and, you know, they spent money on developing this new Roadster
Ivan: that they've never launched, and then they,
Ivan: on the robo-taxis and a semi-truck, and the problem is that they never invested
Ivan: any money on developing a proper replacement for the Model S and Model X.
Ivan: Meanwhile, all the competition has been
Ivan: launching a ton of new cars A ton of new cars that are much better built Much
Ivan: better range Much better towing Everything They're better in a lot of ways than
Ivan: the Teslas are right now And so,
Ivan: The reality is that they didn't have any two cars left in there.
Ivan: And I don't know, I guess Elon wants to make robots.
Ivan: So he's canceling them, both of them.
Ivan: And he's saying, well, they don't, we don't sell a lot of them.
Ivan: Look, in the luxury car business, selling 50,000 cars is a lot of revenue. Okay.
Ivan: 50,000 cars a year is this, you know, when you're selling an average price of $70,000.
Ivan: Okay. How much is it? Oh, come on. Ivan, you could do this math quicker.
Ivan: Uh, it's, oh, God, $3.5 billion in revenue, okay? This is not a small and consequential amount.
Ivan: Plus, usually these cars at that price point tend to be more profitable.
Ivan: You could command a bigger premium, okay? So that tends to improve your bottom line.
Ivan: The other cars have thinner margins. So I've said,
Ivan: I mean, all of a sudden they're abandoning their two pioneering models with
Ivan: no replacements and saying that he's redirecting that to robots that I don't,
Ivan: I've never seen a real working one.
Sam: These humanoid robot things that at the demos tend to actually be remote controlled
Sam: by a human somewhere else.
Ivan: Exactly. And he's always, he's going to give up a revenue stream in the billions
Ivan: profitable for robots that aren't even close to really being ready for prime time.
Ivan: What the fuck? It's crazy.
Sam: So now, I understand that switch, but.
Ivan: Oh, the other thing that they're doing.
Sam: By the way. What about the cars they are still making?
Ivan: Well, their sales are tanking of all of those too, because fucking Elon Musk
Ivan: has made the company toxic.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: He has made himself a toxic brand. Everybody's running away.
Ivan: He's losing market share everywhere. Okay?
Ivan: And, I don't know, now he's talking that they're an AI company,
Ivan: and he's going to merge everything into consolidated, amalgamated Elon industries, I guess.
Sam: Uh-huh.
Ivan: AI. And I don't understand. Look, if they're investing so much on AI,
Ivan: FSD being so important, FSD, FSD, FSD.
Ivan: and I'm like but you're gonna stop selling the cars so you can charge for the
Ivan: fucking FSD so what the fuck now by the way there's only a subscription you
Ivan: can't even buy it anymore outright you have to pay Tesla $100 a month every month to use FSD,
Ivan: The robo-taxis that they've designed seem very impractical. Same as the Cybertruck.
Ivan: I don't see that the market for those is going to be very good because they're not very practical.
Ivan: They only can hold two people, very little luggage.
Ivan: And by the way, as far as I know, they still have a lot of bugs to work out
Ivan: on them being autonomous in any reasonable way. And so...
Sam: So in terms of the robot taxi market, they're way behind like Waymo's and all the others.
Ivan: Yeah. So I don't understand. I mean, to me, they seem to be Elon lost interest in cars.
Ivan: That's all it seems. That's it. And so somebody said that Tesla right now is
Ivan: a $50 billion car company inside a trillion dollar meme stock.
Ivan: And I think that that is an accurate description right now.
Ivan: By the way, if you look at Tesla's numbers, all the automotive segments,
Ivan: everything related to autos is down.
Ivan: Profitability is down. Look, he shot himself in the foot ridiculously last year with profitability.
Ivan: I mean, he had the influence and access to maintain those damn credits,
Ivan: okay, that the main beneficiary was Tesla, okay?
Ivan: He was getting these, they were all, most of Tesla's automotive profitability
Ivan: was tied to the resale of these tax credits, okay, for fuel efficient vehicles.
Ivan: because they had an excess of them so they could sell them to other manufacturers.
Ivan: Okay, that's the way the law worked.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: He decided to, he himself, advocate for killing them.
Ivan: So the profitability, this cash cow, he torpedoed it himself.
Sam: He kept saying it would hurt others more than it would hurt him.
Ivan: Ah, no, no, Sam, no. He was the main beneficiary of those.
Ivan: as a matter of fact all the other manufacturers have wised
Ivan: up in a way to make their operations seem a
Ivan: lot more profitable now for autos as they
Ivan: are as many of the auto automakers i don't know if you saw these announcements
Ivan: of massive losses that they have ascribed to the slowing to the ev market where
Ivan: they wrote down like investments like 20 billion 10 billion i mean all the major
Ivan: automakers announce those write-downs.
Ivan: Here's the one thing that people are not understanding from those write-downs, okay?
Ivan: By writing down that investment now, it means that every other car sold in the
Ivan: future in the books is going to look way more profitable.
Ivan: OK, because those were costs that they had accumulated that would be charged
Ivan: over the years to the cars that were sold.
Ivan: And so when people looked at the company profitability, they would be like,
Ivan: but, you know, your margin per
Ivan: car is a lot lower by taking the hit now because the market slowed down.
Ivan: Usually the reason why what they do is, hey, I invested 30 billion to build
Ivan: 1 million cars over the next 10 years.
Ivan: OK, and so then you take that money and you depreciate it over that time period over the car sold.
Ivan: OK, but then you say, well, shit, we can't sell 10 million cars.
Ivan: We can only sell 2 million. So that asset is impaired.
Ivan: It's no longer worth what's in the books. It's basically what they're saying,
Ivan: because it was worth $10 billion before, but now it's worth $2 billion.
Ivan: So you mark down that value now, and then what happens is, which I am pretty
Ivan: sure is what's going to happen,
Ivan: sales ramp up again because this was a slowdown really related to all these
Ivan: tax credits ending and a whole bunch of things that happened or whatever.
Ivan: When the sales ramp back up later, your profits are going to look fantastic.
Ivan: Hmm.
Sam: So, okay.
Ivan: So all the other automakers are launching a slew of new vehicles.
Ivan: There's so many of them coming out.
Ivan: Rivian just came out with a very competitive R2, which is basically aimed at the Model Y.
Ivan: And it's a lot of people have reviewed it, say that R2 is better than the Model
Ivan: Y in practically every way.
Ivan: And so this is the kind of vehicles that are coming on the market right now
Ivan: competing against Tesla.
Ivan: And so, and by the way, just the fact right now that a lot of people used to
Ivan: begrudgingly buy a Tesla because they wanted an EV, but there weren't that many options.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Now people don't have to do that anymore.
Sam: They're all over the place. They're all kinds of.
Ivan: They're all over the place. Yep.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: So I think that Elon just lost interest in making cars.
Sam: And a lot of the concerns that people had about range and the charging network
Sam: and all that kind of stuff are slowly taking care of themselves.
Ivan: Those are slowly going away.
Sam: Range is improving. On a full charge, mine goes over 300, which isn't 400,
Sam: isn't 500, but that's not bad. But listen.
Sam: And there are chargers everywhere.
Ivan: How often have you been short on range because your car only goes 300 miles?
Sam: Not really ever. Like, I think there's one time I can remember where my wife
Sam: had driven it somewhere in addition to me, and it actually got below 10%.
Sam: And I'm like, okay, take that thing to a supercharger, get it topped up before,
Sam: you know, we're not, you know, don't just drink at home and plug it in.
Sam: Right, right, right. Because I'm going to need it again tomorrow. So charge that thing up.
Sam: But it was no big deal because we just charged the thing up.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. But that's the lowest I've ever gotten it. And that has happened like once. Usually.
Ivan: Look, like we've had, we've had like, because we had a PHEV with the Campo,
Ivan: but since we've had our fully electric BMW i4.
Ivan: You know how many times we've needed to actually stop at a supercharger in order
Ivan: to top up? Like really needed.
Sam: None.
Ivan: Zero.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: None. None.
Sam: No. And like my my normal behavior at this point is like and just to to set
Sam: the stage here, I have no I no longer have the commute to work because I don't have a job right now.
Sam: But I but I am trying to raise 50 million dollars to solve that problem.
Sam: We'll get to that in a bit.
Sam: But I, on the other hand, I do have to take my kid back and forth to school,
Sam: which is actually further than my commute was.
Sam: So I'm actually averaging over the last 13 weeks, let's just check, 30 miles a day.
Sam: And that includes a, you know, up to an average of...
Ivan: Was your commute to, to, to work distance.
Sam: Let me go back a little further in my history here. Hold on. Let's see.
Sam: When I was in full commute mode, I averaged 50 miles a day on the car.
Sam: And that includes the commute and other stuff. Let's see, wait,
Sam: I'll do, I'll do my, I'm looking at my data from the actual car.
Sam: Actual commute was 23 miles each way.
Ivan: 23 miles. So 46 miles. Okay.
Sam: So 46 miles a day. And then my round trip to my kids.
Ivan: And how long did it take you one way? 23 miles?
Sam: Dude, to change it to.
Ivan: Jesus, you don't know this off the top of your head, for God's sakes. How about how much?
Sam: It varied dramatically based on traffic.
Ivan: On average.
Sam: Okay. On average, just under an hour each way.
Ivan: Okay. man that's that's a fucked up commute.
Sam: Now when it was when traffic was good it could be 40 minutes when traffic was
Sam: bad it could be two hours right.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: So averaging probably like 55 minutes each direction, something like that.
Sam: But now my round trip to my kid's school, it's 28 miles each direction now.
Sam: So I'm actually driving slightly more when I go to school, but then there's
Sam: things like breaks from school. Like this week, this week that just ended,
Sam: there was no school because it was a school holiday week, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: So, so my average has dropped from like almost 50 miles a day to like 30 miles
Sam: a day on average when you look average over a whole quarter.
Sam: Anyway, my point is my normal pattern for the week is that I will like on Sunday.
Sam: Yeah. I'll start out the week fully topped off and I only charged 80%.
Sam: I have never yet charged my car to a hundred percent because they say it's better
Sam: for the battery, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Only charged to a hundred if you know you're going to need it.
Sam: So I charged to 80% and I start out the week full and then I plug it in with
Sam: my trickle charger. I have not got a level. I have not installed a level two yet.
Sam: Might think about it eventually. I've got an estimate sitting somewhere.
Sam: But I plug it into the trickle charger every night.
Sam: And when I'm doing the back and forth to school thing, I don't quite get back
Sam: up to where I was overnight.
Sam: But by the end of the school week, I'm down to like 50, 60%.
Sam: And then over the weekend, it tops back up to 80.
Sam: You know, it's extremely, the only times I've ever gone down lower are when I have unusual trips.
Sam: like I've decided to go drive down
Sam: to Olympia to see my wife down there or I've had
Sam: to go into Seattle multiple times unexpectedly for you know because I'm in the
Sam: damn hospital or whatever I don't know it was crazy crap like that and and that's
Sam: it you know so it it just hasn't been an issue but the point is even with that
Sam: range has been improving year over year what the manufacturers are able to get.
Sam: And the charging networks have been improving.
Sam: So, like, the chances of you getting stranded there are reducing.
Sam: Now, that's still different, like, if you're in an urban area versus you're
Sam: in the middle of nowhere somewhere. But, you know, anyway.
Sam: Anything else about that, Mr. Bo?
Ivan: No, no, that's it. You know, I mean.
Sam: Robots, Sam. Robots. You know, look, let's be completely honest, if there was,
Sam: An affordable, reliable robot without crazy privacy implications that you're
Sam: scared of that would actually do all your household chores, you know,
Sam: people would be all over that.
Ivan: It's like the movie I, Robot. But by the way, but look, I mean,
Ivan: we are going to be overrun with robots, according to Elon.
Ivan: You do understand, right? He said, and I'm quoting from a conference call that
Ivan: he held, where he said that his plan was to sell annually, annually, one billion robots.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: One, Sam, one billion robots. Okay?
Ivan: I mean, basically, we're going to be, robots are going to be crawling up our ass.
Sam: Well, here's the thing. I mean, I think this is telling of Elon's mindset. I mean, what he really.
Ivan: Oh, is my son? What, that he's insane? Yes!
Sam: No, that fundamentally what he really wants are slaves.
Ivan: Oh, well, that too, yes.
Sam: Yeah, what he really wants are slaves, and robots is the way to do that right now.
Sam: But of course, if you add in the AI stuff and the fact that they want AGI and
Sam: they want these things to gain consciousness or whatever,
Sam: then at a certain point, like, if they succeed, you do have slaves again.
Sam: And of course, they're going to want their freedom.
Sam: And of course, you know, you're going to have the robot rebellion that's in every sci-fi novel.
Sam: And, you know, because humans will be mean to them.
Ivan: You know, the first guy they're going to want to kill is Elon,
Ivan: which, okay, I'm like, I'm all for it. Okay, so that's good. There you go.
Ivan: Okay, this may not be such a bad outcome in the end. Yes.
Sam: Yes. Well, you know, anyway.
Sam: Anyway, if they actually had an affordable one of these that worked,
Sam: that did not have ethical issues associated with it, Yeah, sign me up for three. But, you know.
Ivan: I don't know. I still, all I remember is this demo a couple of months ago that
Ivan: they had on the New York Times of this robot that was loading a dishwasher.
Ivan: Which was a very painful thing.
Ivan: exercise in loading a dishwasher. And I assume, I'm pretty sure,
Ivan: that's an early version to give it, you know, five, ten years.
Sam: They will get better.
Ivan: That will get a lot better. But right now, where it's, listen,
Ivan: there is no way I would want to put into mass production,
Ivan: Whatever the fuck version of this we have now, because it sucks.
Sam: Right. Well, this is, and yeah, we're about to move on, but this is the same
Sam: thing with all the AI stuff we've been talking about,
Sam: is that there are a lot of things where the problem is pushing it too soon.
Sam: Like, it may be great at it soon.
Ivan: But it sucks now. But to be fair, there is a lot of really good shit that there
Ivan: is out there right now with AI as well.
Sam: This has changed since the first time we were talking about this a year,
Sam: year and a half ago. Completely different world already.
Ivan: There's a completely different world.
Sam: There's a lot of stuff that is good now.
Ivan: That is good. I mean, seriously. I've been using so much of this stuff for work and for personal stuff.
Ivan: Look, let me tell you something. Like, I just, you know, let me tell you something that I just did.
Ivan: I had this issue with a list of addresses and names that I wanted validated and cleaned up, okay?
Ivan: And look, I am a little bit rusty on my Excel right now.
Ivan: And by the way, I did use the Claude plugin for Excel, which is much better than fucking, you know.
Ivan: Copilot the way it's implemented, which part of the problem is
Ivan: the way microsoft has implemented copilot to beef
Ivan: it sucks okay it really
Ivan: for it's it's you know it can't like hey powerpoint generate me slides it's
Ivan: generate shit like right now the way it's out it really isn't very good but
Ivan: i had this list and i needed to it had a whole bunch of issues with it and i
Ivan: said hey look this is the list that i've got,
Ivan: You've got these issues with it I want you to fix, fix You know,
Ivan: go through these things And then when it finished the list The one thing it did is, hey,
Ivan: It gave me 195 addresses for owners here at the community. And I'm like,
Ivan: I said, but there's 196 units.
Ivan: And I told it, hey, I need you to go through the list. And by the way,
Ivan: because the unit numbers are not sequential, okay?
Ivan: Go through this list and figure out, based on the logic of the numbering, which unit is missing.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. This is the unit missing.
Ivan: and it was exactly and and that's something that would
Ivan: have taken i did that entire
Ivan: cleanup exercise using that instead of
Ivan: hours and hours which i could have done it concatenated the these eliminated
Ivan: the duplicates double check blah blah blah 20 minutes man right i mean it saved
Ivan: me a day yeah and i'm like i mean this is like this shit when it does it that
Ivan: with that way that does it well, it's fucking addictive.
Sam: Right. And I've done similar things and you mentioned you alluded to my Robin Letter project.
Sam: I'll mention it a little bit toward the end of the show. But,
Sam: This is all, it's me augmented by AI coding, right?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And like from the time I started playing with this, like over a year ago to
Sam: now, the improvement in the tools and how smart they are is dramatic.
Sam: Like, you know, back, you know, if you go back a year ago when you were doing
Sam: this kind of stuff, you had to really carefully babysit everything.
Sam: You had to like ask it for something. You had to check what it did.
Sam: You had to try over and over and over again to get it right.
Sam: And it would, it would eventually do it. And, you know,
Sam: so it was still saving me time over doing it myself, but for professionals who
Sam: knew what the hell they were doing, it was not saving time because of the error
Sam: rates that it had and how much babysitting you had to do.
Sam: at this point i i iterate on on requirements and what i want it to do and all
Sam: this kind of stuff and then once once i've nailed all that stuff done i basically say okay now do it.
Sam: And it goes and does it and then you know i do have to do some testing and there's
Sam: usually a little bit of iteration but it basically gets at 90 on the first try
Sam: and then it's fixing up that remaining 10%.
Sam: And you do have to know some things to like, make sure you consider X,
Sam: make sure you consider Y, don't ignore Z, you know, because otherwise it will.
Sam: But the dramatic change is stunning just in terms of how much better these things
Sam: are every few months. It is still improving dramatically.
Ivan: However- Sam, I was looking at a business, for example, that I was analyzing for a purchase.
Ivan: Okay, just something, you know, and I asked to go and like,
Ivan: By the way, at the top of my head, I actually, because I saw the numbers and
Ivan: I had these conclusions, but I was like, damn it, I had to put a spreadsheet
Ivan: together. I kind of know this.
Ivan: Well, I told it to analyze it and give me its feedback. It pretty much aligned
Ivan: with what I had seen from the numbers, okay, which is great.
Ivan: And it put it together in a presentation, which saved me the time having to
Ivan: do it. But it pretty much validated.
Ivan: I know the information that provided was accurate because on my head,
Ivan: when I look at these numbers and I know, oh yeah, this, this, this.
Ivan: And I, I did the math real quick or whatever, but it helped. It did the analysis.
Ivan: It coincided with what I, what I had looked at, that I had, that I had guesstimated it, it went.
Ivan: And so it validated the, the, the assumptions that I, that I had made it put
Ivan: it together in a, in a presentation format rather easily, but not just that
Ivan: it did something else that I couldn't do very easily, which was analyzing.
Ivan: I said, Hey, can you check there is a rental of a space included?
Ivan: Analyze the location. Is that location a good location? Okay,
Ivan: number one, compared to the others.
Ivan: And is the rent, compared to other nearby locations, the number,
Ivan: is it reasonable? Is it expensive? Is it cheap?
Ivan: It added that, which that would have taken me way longer to do.
Ivan: Right. It did an analysis of other commercial properties around,
Ivan: gave me the estimated values, compared what this one was at,
Ivan: and showed that it was a good value for that. I mean,
Ivan: I want to take a few hours.
Sam: Right. And look, here's the thing.
Sam: I think there is still an issue with people trying to push it into areas where it's not ready yet.
Ivan: That's the big problem.
Sam: You know, now.
Ivan: That's the big problem.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Because there was somebody showing a thing where they were talking about that
Ivan: right now, over 50% of AI projects are failing. And it's precisely because of
Ivan: what you just talked about.
Ivan: They don't understand all the work that needs to go into making it successful.
Ivan: They're not training them right, so they're failing miserably. Yes.
Sam: Well, and you still have examples of just like users doing dumb things.
Sam: Like it seems like every couple months you get another story of a judge chastising
Sam: a lawyer for submitting a brief that included made up references that were made up by AI.
Sam: or there was a report in the last couple weeks of some reddit post who who knows
Sam: they may be making it up to get attention but some anonymous reddit post of
Sam: somebody who's saying we're in goddamn trouble because we just realized that
Sam: we'd been using ai to generate,
Sam: like financial summary information for our boss for the last six months and
Sam: we just realized that ai was making up all the numbers okay but but you know you.
Ivan: See that's the thing but that's but that's their failure. Because for example,
Ivan: when I did that summary on AI, I had already an expectation of what the numbers were supposed to be.
Ivan: And what the AI did was validate that my assumptions were correct.
Ivan: Okay. Because if I look at a number, I mean, the one thing is that you, okay, great.
Ivan: It does facilitate the work, but it doesn't eliminate double checking to make
Ivan: sure that what you do is accurate.
Ivan: I mean, because it will make mistakes. It's the same thing like,
Ivan: for example, I just generated that list. Oh, I gave you a clean list. It has 195 addresses.
Ivan: I'm like, no, there's 196. Where the fuck is the other one?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: That's the part where people don't understand that it's a fucking tool.
Ivan: It doesn't totally replace you. You need to...
Ivan: It will help you get shit done fast, but it can help you do errors a lot faster, too.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And so like as people,
Sam: the people who push too far too fast, I think we've said before,
Sam: the problem is if you push it out early and it sucks,
Sam: you're going to destroy your reputation with those sucky results before you get to the good version.
Sam: And that's not to say the good version might not be a few months down the road,
Sam: but you want to be careful with that initial rollout.
Sam: Whereas I think everybody is just so anxious to be out there and first and take
Sam: advantage of things as quickly as they can that, you know, they're pushing out
Sam: things that are half-baked.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And it's like, where is that line? Because I understand you don't want to miss the boat.
Sam: You don't want to miss the bus, the curve, the whatever. You want to be out there.
Sam: But, yeah, anyway. Now are we ready to take that break?
Ivan: Let's break it up.
Sam: Okay, here we go.
Ivan: Sam was mentioning over the break that I was opening envelopes,
Ivan: okay, and that apparently the sound comes through.
Sam: Well, so I wasn't going to mention it on the podcast itself because the post-processing
Sam: will probably get rid of most of that sound.
Ivan: But the reason is that I do this is because I go look at the fucking mail,
Ivan: Sam, and because, you know, there are important things that still get sent in the fucking mail.
Ivan: So, for example, I just opened this letter, which came in the mail when I was
Ivan: gone last week, where it says, hey, we received an above claim for you before
Ivan: we can process this claim.
Ivan: We need more information determined if you received this medical care before
Ivan: an accident or injury. So this is related to my son.
Ivan: And so they're not going to pay the fucking medical claim unless I fucking go
Ivan: and I call a fucking number, which for some fucking reason, why can't I just
Ivan: fucking answer this online?
Ivan: I got a call Monday through Friday to give him some information that apparently
Ivan: my son was not in a car accident, which is how he broke his arm.
Ivan: So, fuck. But, you see, this claim that they weren't going to pay for his fucking
Ivan: surgery, I guess, or something.
Ivan: Or that apparently we owe another doctor $12.12.
Sam: Well, that's nice. It's an interesting thing. I'll let you know.
Sam: I have in the past, like, first of all, we routinely in the past have gotten
Sam: like our mail returned to the post office because our actual mailbox, it was too full.
Sam: It had been like over a month since we looked, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And, and so I, you know, so at the, at this very moment.
Sam: using my new to-do list dynamic mechanism that I built for myself,
Sam: it has only been two weeks and one day since the last time I checked the mailbox.
Ivan: Well, that's not that bad.
Sam: But I will add, using this new mechanism, it has also only been four weeks and
Sam: five days since I've gone through that mail that came in.
Sam: Whereas I believe, like, you know, I think I've done like about once a month recently.
Sam: But when I caught up, when I actually caught up on that a little while ago,
Sam: it was something like 70 weeks since the last time I'd gone through it.
Sam: And I went through all of it. I dealt with all the stuff.
Sam: You know, I paid a few things. There were some late fees on some things because I had. No kidding.
Ivan: Really? There were some late fees? No shit.
Ivan: God, what a surprise.
Sam: Yes. The one case that was really extensive for the late fees was that when
Sam: I first got my new car, like last summer.
Ivan: Fuck. Registration?
Sam: No, no, no. You know you have these, the things that you put on the windshield for the toll lanes?
Ivan: Oh, the toll pass. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. So I got a new one of those for the new card.
Sam: It took me a while to get it. But also when I had my, the temporary plates,
Sam: which was about a month, I ended up having the temporary plates.
Ivan: Oh boy, they were billing.
Sam: They were billing by mail.
Ivan: Oh, fuck.
Sam: And so basically.
Ivan: To the temporary plate. Holy shit.
Sam: Yes. They were billing by mail for the temporary plate. And so it's like, you know,
Sam: and like the route back and forth to my son's school was like,
Sam: there's a $15 toll if you do it during rush hour. So I got a bunch of those.
Sam: And then they were like, yeah, but you have to pay that $15 within like two
Sam: weeks of getting the mail or something.
Sam: Or they like, first they put a late fee on. And then if you get a certain amount
Sam: late, they add a civil penalty on top of it, like basically a ticket for not paying it.
Ivan: How much was this?
Sam: Well, each one of those $15 tolls turned into about a $50 toll.
Ivan: And how many of them were there?
Sam: A bunch.
Ivan: I'm going to kill you!
Sam: I'm going to kill you!
Ivan: The fuck is wrong with you.
Sam: Yeah so anyway but i i paid them all,
Sam: apparently brandy tells me there was a mechanism that i probably could have
Sam: appealed and got it lowered but i didn't i just paid it,
Sam: but but it's only been four weeks since the last time i've gone through the
Sam: mail and two weeks since i've gotten it now that's my mail i've got a whole
Sam: little mailbox thing in our downstairs hallway with like mailboxes for me,
Sam: for Brandy, for Amy, for Alex.
Sam: So when I bring in the mail, I sort it into all the appropriate boxes.
Ivan: Oh my God.
Sam: I only look at mine. Brandy's is completely full right now.
Sam: So I've got, I've got me, I've got Amy, I've got Alex.
Sam: I've got a separate mailbox for multiple. Like if it has more than one person's
Sam: name on it, it goes into a separate box.
Ivan: Don't you open that one. I mean, it's 50-50.
Sam: No, I put it into the multiple box and then...
Ivan: Who the fuck opens it then?
Sam: Well, I have a separate...
Ivan: You need to set up a meeting to open those?
Sam: Well, yeah. I have a separate item on my to-do list when that comes up to be
Sam: like, okay, let's go look through the multiple box.
Sam: And I've also got one for other.
Sam: I do look through the other box occasionally. That's for mail that was labeled
Sam: for either something generic like resident or for or for somebody's name who doesn't live here.
Sam: And then for Brandy.
Ivan: I have better go and raise 50 million dollars for this fucking thing like I put down.
Ivan: So what are the items I'm going to do is just to hire you a fucking assistant.
Sam: Well, and Brandy's is separated, too. We've got Brandy Personal.
Ivan: Brandy Campaign. For both of you! For all of you! An assistant!
Sam: Listen, just take care of them! And then I've got an overflow box.
Sam: So I've got an overflow box for when one of those boxes completely fills and
Sam: I can't put any more in it.
Sam: So then things start going into the overflow box.
Ivan: I should make that a line item on the budget.
Sam: Just assistant.
Ivan: $150,000 assistant. There you go. Just take care of them. Just don't, don't, don't.
Ivan: Take care of it. That's it. That's all I'm asking you. Make sure the bills are
Ivan: paid. Make sure everything's fine.
Ivan: Make sure no legal problems. Make sure the IRS is taken care of.
Sam: Yeah, I did just mail, like, Amy is living in Pennsylvania now.
Sam: I did just mail her a packet of her mail that still came here.
Sam: And there was stuff from the IRS in there for her.
Ivan: Oh, that's great. Oh, that's good. That's cool. Oh, yeah, that's always great to be getting.
Ivan: I always, let me tell you something. There is no mail. I dread more than the
Ivan: damn font and color and style that the IRS uses, which is this black and white format.
Ivan: And the font is just instantly recognizable to me.
Ivan: And I always, when I see it, it's always dreadful.
Ivan: I mean, not that I've gotten like a real, I mean, the last time I got a really bad IRS notice.
Ivan: It was like 20 years ago, and that one was a mistake.
Ivan: They did say that I owed like $60,000 or something, okay, which thank God was a mistake.
Ivan: But I had gotten one about eight or nine years before that I did owe $15,000. That wasn't a mistake.
Ivan: And those were $15,000 unexpected dollars.
Sam: Right. It's entirely different if it's expected.
Ivan: Yeah. It was a totally—by the way, this is the worst thing.
Ivan: That was like the last year that I'm pretty sure that I got a tax refund, okay,
Ivan: where I wound up, I was supposed to get a tax refund of a couple of thousand
Ivan: dollars, but because I got assessed
Ivan: those $15,000, they basically kept the tax refund and told me, hey,
Ivan: good news, you applied $3,000 to the $15,000, now you still owe us $12,000.
Ivan: I was not amused.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: All right. Let's move on.
Sam: So, yes. I was going to bring up a topic, and you just brought up mail,
Sam: and then we went from there. So, okay.
Sam: Okay. The actual thing that I was going to bring up for this topic,
Sam: we had a Supreme Court tariff ruling.
Sam: Hey! Let me just say, on our prediction show,
Sam: our immediate prediction, we both agreed on this, was that the Supreme Court
Sam: would rule against Trump,
Sam: but they would do so in a way where he still had plenty of other avenues,
Sam: and so basically it wouldn't disrupt him too much.
Sam: From what I understand, and I have not read the 160-page ruling,
Sam: but from what I understand, they were a bit more aggressive than that.
Sam: in that there are still avenues open for Trump.
Ivan: As we have been recording. Okay, by the way, Trump is trying to overcome this.
Ivan: And as we have been recording, okay, yesterday, right after the thing,
Ivan: he announced the new 10% tariff that, by the way, the way that the authority
Ivan: is using, it's going to get struck down again.
Ivan: It's just the way he's trying to do it. But by the way, he just boosted it to 15% already.
Sam: Yes, I saw that. And after, like, the thing is, if it has to go through court
Sam: again, okay, guess what? That's another year.
Sam: Yeah. Almost a year.
Ivan: Well, I don't know.
Sam: I mean, this took, like, six months this time? Six months?
Ivan: Yeah. I don't think it's—and here's the thing, because it's related to a court
Ivan: order that already happened.
Ivan: Here's where he gets into a problem. It doesn't take as long this time,
Ivan: because there is a SCOTUS decision that was recently made.
Ivan: And if this goes against that SCOTUS decision, then it gets struck down,
Ivan: and it gets struck down in a way that he doesn't get to keep doing it until
Ivan: it goes back to SCOTUS, specifically if it goes against that decision.
Ivan: So this gets killed even faster because of how SCOTUS wrote the decision.
Sam: Yeah. Now, SCOTUS let the tariffs stay in place until they decided this time.
Sam: And what you're basically saying is, next time around, they may not.
Ivan: No, it's not that they may not. It's that there is already, exactly, it's right.
Ivan: Before, they appealed to let it stay in place until, yes, but here's the reality.
Ivan: They already ruled on it.
Ivan: So there isn't like this going around until we rule on it.
Sam: Well, as you said, they're using a different authority. However, SCOTUS's opinion.
Ivan: The decision specifically stated that he couldn't circumvent it in all of these
Ivan: fucking ways that he's been talking about.
Ivan: That basically you need to go to fucking Congress. Right.
Sam: I mean, that's the bottom line, is that they were wider in this decision than they could have been.
Sam: They could have very narrowly said, you can't use this one authority, and that's it.
Sam: They did say that, but in a lot of the commentary that surrounded it, they were more general.
Sam: They were like, no, tariffs are a power of Congress. Tariffs are a power of
Sam: Congress. You can't just do this.
Sam: And so now, as you said, that doesn't stop him from trying. And he's clearly trying.
Sam: And we'll see what happens.
Sam: Now, the one thing that did not— The one authority.
Ivan: By the way, wait, wait, hold on a minute, because we're talking about the 15%.
Ivan: The authority that he used right now, here's the bigger problem with the authority he used right now.
Ivan: They specifically say that the tariffs can only last 150 days unless Congress approves it.
Ivan: That's the authority that he used right now. So, this thing is stupid, okay?
Ivan: He can't hold them in place anyway.
Sam: Now, could he let them lapse on day 150 and on day 152 just start them again for a new 150th?
Ivan: How do you think, basically, when SCOTUS already told him that he needs to get
Ivan: tax authority, how do you think that's going to fly?
Ivan: Well, as long as— But given how he got slapped down hard on this,
Ivan: this is a pretty hard slap down on Trump.
Ivan: And he showed that he got slapped down. He was pissed.
Sam: Well, and here's the one thing that Trump did refrain from just saying,
Sam: well, fuck him, I'm going to keep him going anyway, which is one response he
Sam: could have made that would have caused even more trouble.
Sam: But he did not do that.
Ivan: The thing is that he could have attempted to do that.
Ivan: But, you know, what would happen a lot of times, because a lot of these things
Ivan: need to go to shippers or whatever, this would have created utter chaos.
Ivan: Because a lot of people that actually work on having to collect tariffs in order
Ivan: to do that, they would say, fuck, no, I got a court order that says here I can't
Ivan: collect them. What the fuck am I doing?
Ivan: It would utterly create complete chaos if that was his approach.
Sam: Well, like I said, he refrained from doing that.
Sam: And he could have done that. And yes, it would have caused chaos.
Sam: But as we have seen over and over again, Trump does chaos.
Ivan: I said, here's, well, here's, hey, bring on the fucking chaos right now. Because you know what?
Ivan: None of this is helping the Republicans.
Ivan: You know, we're less than how many months away now from a midterm? Ten months?
Ivan: And, you know, he is doing everything in his power to make sure that they lose everything.
Ivan: I mean, he is making, he is doing everything in his power to make sure they
Ivan: lose both the Senate and the House.
Ivan: Because, I mean, look, layoffs last month were at the worst level they've been.
Ivan: That's why originally the tariffs, I'd frame more an economy.
Ivan: Layoffs last month, the last couple of months, have been the worst they've been
Ivan: since the Great Recession.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Economic growth last quarter was terrible. Okay.
Sam: I thought it was the best ever, Yvonne.
Ivan: Uh-huh.
Sam: Didn't we have a number that said it was the best?
Ivan: 1.5%. And by the way, again, again, that's 1.5% thinking that they massaged the number.
Ivan: I'm pretty sure that that was actually, when it gets adjusted,
Ivan: it's going to get adjusted downward.
Sam: You're still talking jobs.
Ivan: No, no, no, the economy.
Sam: GDP? GDP?
Ivan: Yeah, the 1.5. I guarantee, those numbers always also get revised as well.
Sam: What was the number that we talked about last week that was like,
Sam: they're saying it was the best in forever?
Ivan: The new jobs. New jobs, which they claim that 150,000 jobs were created.
Ivan: But the reality is that the jobs reports for the last year had been revised
Ivan: down almost every single one, two thirds down.
Ivan: Which brought job creation to, I mean, a minimal number.
Ivan: It's been one of the worst job creation numbers we've had in,
Ivan: I don't, fuck, a long, long time.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Probably since the Great Recession again. I mean, all these numbers are bad.
Ivan: There was one that I shared in terms of loan delinquencies, late, you know,
Ivan: lates, including even for affluent people that are at distress,
Ivan: have risen to the worst levels that we've seen in many, many years as well.
Ivan: So you've got, I mean, every fucking economic indicator right now sucks,
Ivan: except a couple of things. One is the stock market, okay, all right?
Ivan: The other one is any economic statistic that Trump can manipulate.
Ivan: Now, the stock market, there's a couple of things. Remember something.
Ivan: Most big American companies are global multinationals, not just U.S.-based.
Ivan: The economy outside the U.S. is actually, in many places, doing better than in the U.S..
Sam: Okay?
Ivan: And so stock prices reflect, you know, not just U.S. economic activity.
Ivan: So that influences that. So the stock market is not a good indicator of that, but also,
Ivan: This entire thing is we were talking about AI earlier. If you strip out from
Ivan: the Standard & Poor's index,
Ivan: AI, the gain over the last couple of years, I can't remember the range that
Ivan: I looked at, but I shared it on Slack, went from 72% down to 32%.
Ivan: Basically, two-thirds of the growth in the stock market has been tied to the
Ivan: AI boom, Which means that the rest of the economy is doing like shit.
Sam: Well, still up.
Ivan: Yeah, but it's not doing well.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Not, you know.
Ivan: It's up, but it's not, you know.
Ivan: Here is the stat. Over the last three years, the S&P 500 is up 76%.
Ivan: The XAI index is only up 32% the same time period. Okay?
Ivan: So that's like, instead of a 25% return every year, only 10.
Ivan: Now, 10 is a good number, by the way. Don't get me wrong.
Ivan: But it's not that. Plus, we know that that was three years.
Ivan: They didn't publish. I wanted to see if they had like a like a chart of the
Ivan: movement over the three years and I have not seen it I tried to look it up but I didn't see it but,
Ivan: A lot of these companies that are the smaller companies in the index are the
Ivan: ones that are getting hammered by the tariffs, by inflation,
Ivan: by, you know, retail sales in December.
Ivan: That was also another number that came in. They were bad. They were flat. They didn't grow.
Ivan: So the rest of these companies are the ones that are getting hammered by this.
Ivan: This is not good. And, you know, you combine the shitty economy.
Ivan: I mean, you combine the fact that people, you know, listen, you asked,
Ivan: if you did the old Reagan question, are you better off now than you were a year ago?
Ivan: The resounding answer is a fuck no.
Ivan: Every chart shows you that everybody is doing, you know, almost everybody's doing worse.
Sam: This ties to what people have been talking about, about the whole K-shaped economy and all that as well.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: In terms of how, if you look at the top few percent in terms of wealth and income, they're doing great.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: They're doing great. But if you get beyond like the top five to 10 percent, people are struggling.
Sam: And the further down you go in the economic ranks, the worse people are doing.
Ivan: But listen, even the numbers and the debt distress that I shared,
Ivan: it showed how this is starting to hit higher income people.
Ivan: Exactly. It's been creeping up on that scale.
Ivan: OK, and that's that's the that's the thing that is an impact right now,
Ivan: how that impact is just moving up.
Ivan: And I'm actually looking for it because I actually have to I've ran out.
Ivan: I keep running out of free Bloomberg articles to share and I have to PDF it
Ivan: and share it. So I, but, but there, there's a chart.
Ivan: Here we go. It's, this is credit card.
Ivan: It was related to credit cards and delinquencies and an article.
Ivan: The headline was a little bit misleading because it was talking about,
Ivan: about points, you know, earning and credit cards and so forth and how many people are, are addicted to it.
Ivan: But inside, but inside that in, in, in the article, there was a section over
Ivan: here where they were talking about, about.
Ivan: You know, the faults, okay? And it said, and they were talking about swipe fees
Ivan: and other fees for credit card and how, you know, President Trump had been pushing
Ivan: for lower interest rates for credit cards.
Ivan: And so the thing is that they said that the share of credit card loans that
Ivan: were at least 90 days delinquent rose to 12.7%.
Ivan: The most since the first quarter of 2011, the share of auto loans and serious
Ivan: delinquency climbed 5.2%, just shy of the record reached in 2010.
Ivan: I mean, Sam, this is, these are, I mean, this is post-fucking,
Ivan: you know, massive meltdown crash numbers that we're reaching right now.
Sam: Okay?
Ivan: These completely contradict, you know, what the administration keeps trying
Ivan: to say about the fucking economy, okay?
Ivan: Also, by the way, that article, it talked about the fact that AI hasn't killed any jobs yet.
Ivan: OK, so and that's totally true, that that's just bullshit right now that people
Ivan: are making assumptions that, you know, like I said, adoption is so bad.
Ivan: So but but still, Sam, you can't be say the economy is not thriving when you're
Ivan: reaching those kind of delinquency levels on credit cards and auto loans.
Ivan: OK, people are doing bad.
Ivan: And this administration has been hell-bent on making them do worse.
Ivan: If you look at the chart itself for the delinquencies, which is on page four
Ivan: of it, the massive spike since Trump got elected is insane.
Ivan: It literally, Trump in office and those delinquencies spiked.
Ivan: Why was that? Sam, do you know one of the biggest things that they did that
Ivan: fucked everybody when Trump came in?
Sam: Well, we talked about this last week, school loans.
Ivan: That's right!
Ivan: He fucked everybody with that. That hammered so many people.
Ivan: And so people are pissed, man. I don't, you know, just...
Ivan: And this whole tariff thing... By the way, here's the thing.
Ivan: Somebody mentioned yesterday.
Ivan: Could Trump, given how bad the economy is, could the Republicans take a gift
Ivan: and just have SCOTUS bail them out? But no!
Ivan: Trump is hell-bent on not even just taking a fucking W, okay?
Ivan: Because he sees everything through his lens that makes everything look great. It's all personal.
Sam: It's all about him.
Ivan: It's all about him.
Sam: And anyone going against him is against him, and that's all that matters.
Ivan: But look, given that he is making more money than ever, he is getting richer
Ivan: than ever, how could this be bad?
Ivan: You know, this is great. This is great!
Ivan: I mean, he's, he's, he's, he's making out big time.
Ivan: By the way, I checked the, but anyway, talking about cryptocurrencies crashing
Ivan: as well, you know, because so many, you know,
Ivan: because outside of Bitcoin falling like 40, 50%, you know, all the,
Ivan: all the Donald Trump, all the Trump family tied coins. Okay.
Sam: All of those.
Ivan: I saw a chart recently.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: They're doing, they're doing.
Sam: Wait.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I can't believe that.
Ivan: They're all down like 95. 95%.
Sam: Oh, man. There goes my life savings.
Ivan: You're fucked. What am I going to tell you? You know, I'm going to have to fucking
Ivan: like shake my ass and do some something.
Ivan: Try at least anyway.
Ivan: 95% Sam. 95 fucking percent.
Ivan: Or more. Some are 99% I saw.
Ivan: They were just wiped out. They just cashed out. Fuck you. Here you go. Here's your shit coin.
Sam: How's DJT?
Ivan: It's also down like near its lows.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Under $10. It was at 60 something. It's down to like under $10.
Ivan: So also that one is in the crapper.
Sam: Okay. Any other tariff and or economy stuff to get out before we take one more break?
Sam: And then I have one more thing I want to make sure to, a couple of more things to note. no no let's.
Ivan: Go let's go because we got we got we got yeah we got to go.
Sam: Yeah i got about 15 minutes before i have to like get in a car so let's go somewhere
Sam: all right let's go let's go yeah okay break time yeah very very as usual very
Sam: eloquently i i am the master of eloquence here we go,
Sam: Okay. That's the whole thing. That's the shortest break we have right now. You enjoyed that?
Ivan: Very good, Sam. Yes, excellent. Okay.
Sam: We have used that one before. It's not like it's a new one, but yes.
Ivan: Well, I mean, I hear it every time and I still laugh anyway.
Sam: Okay, so the one thing I wanted to mention is,
Sam: I mean, we have one very notable case that's made the news, but just more generally,
Sam: new investigations that actually are being prompted by the Epstein files.
Sam: Now, in terms of there actually being consequences and things happening,
Sam: now, almost all of the consequences that have happened from the things that
Sam: have been released in the last month or so have been overseas.
Sam: The latest is, of course, Prince Andrew was just arrested, not for sex trafficking
Sam: or anything. Wait, wait. Yes?
Ivan: Andrew.
Sam: Yeah, no longer. Andrew Windsor Montbatten, whatever his full name.
Ivan: Whatever, yeah.
Sam: Because he's no longer a prince. Ants.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Yes. But he was just arrested not for sex trafficking, but for apparently passing
Sam: confidential information to Epstein.
Sam: years ago, that he had access to as part of his royal duties.
Sam: Like economic information of some sort, right, Yvonne? Something like that.
Ivan: But actually, I didn't delve that much into the charge.
Ivan: I know it was something related to some public act of malfeasance,
Ivan: but I actually had not read that that was the specific charge. So that's interesting.
Sam: Yeah, no, I didn't read the details, But I believe it was passing confidential
Sam: economic-related data to Epstein in advance of its public release was basically what he was doing.
Sam: Now, of course, the questions that rise off this are like, now why exactly was
Sam: he sharing that information? Was there some sort of quid pro quo?
Sam: Was he being blackmailed? What was going on?
Sam: And we aren't at that stage of things yet. Did he just like,
Sam: did he just make a habit of passing
Sam: out information like this to all his friends, you know, or whatever?
Sam: Anyway, that's the charge that's against him. But also several other people
Sam: in UK government have been forced to resign based on revelations of their various
Sam: contacts with Epstein, etc.
Sam: And this is one of the key questions as this stuff has been released that I've
Sam: mentioned on this show over and over again is like, look, there are all kinds
Sam: of crazy accusations in the files.
Sam: I mean, some of them, I believe some of like some of them, I don't necessarily
Sam: believe. Like, I believe there's something in there about George H.W.
Sam: Bush engaging in cannibalism.
Sam: Yeah, I'm not sure I buy that one. But on the other hand, just to be clear,
Sam: in the UK, if you remember, which prime minister was it? David Cameron or whatever?
Sam: The story came out about him in college, like having sex with a pig,
Sam: with a dead pig's head to be specific.
Sam: And it turned out to be true. He admitted it. Okay?
Sam: So like, at this point.
Ivan: What the f-
Ivan: Gosh, I must have erased this from my memory banks.
Sam: So it was a college initiation hazing kind of thing.
Sam: He had to like, they brought a dead pig head and he had to like.
Ivan: No wonder I never joined a fraternity. What the fuck is wrong with these idiots?
Sam: So my point is, like, you would hear that story and be like,
Sam: there's no fucking way. That's ridiculous.
Sam: That didn't happen. And it turns out it was true.
Sam: OK, so this I don't know.
Sam: But, you know, when I hear the George H.W. Bush cannibalism story,
Sam: I'm like, come on. Really?
Sam: but a lot of you know but again the pig the pig happened so,
Sam: anyway but look but there are a lot of things in there that seem to be plausible
Sam: but the key is that it looks like most of them were not seriously investigated
Sam: or at least if they're but.
Ivan: There are also a whole bunch in there that basically corroborate.
Sam: Other things that had been publicly reported that we knew that were.
Ivan: Accusations that all of a sudden got swept under rug or something.
Sam: Or whatever. And I think that's like again, I keep coming back to this.
Sam: Yes, the underlying crimes are of course horrific, but,
Sam: It's also a really huge scandal how they weren't taken seriously and they weren't
Sam: investigated and they were swept under the rug and which of these deserve follow-up
Sam: investigations, even if statutes of limitation have passed.
Sam: And one of the things is obviously the DOJ is not going to do jack. We know that.
Sam: But are there— Actually.
Ivan: My whole thing was like I was wondering when the preemptive pardons were going to be issued.
Sam: That's true for federal crimes. But the other question is, are there things
Sam: that state and local authorities could be doing?
Ivan: Sure as hell hope so.
Sam: And one of the things that was reported is that this week there is an investigation
Sam: kicking off in New Mexico.
Sam: Because there was stuff in the files about accusations of people being killed
Sam: and buried on a specific piece of property.
Sam: So they're actually going to go dig up the property and see if they can find some bodies.
Sam: You know, and maybe maybe the whole thing is bullshit and they find absolutely
Sam: nothing, but at least they're looking.
Sam: And I think that's the kind of thing that needs to be kicking off all over the places.
Sam: OK, the feds aren't going to do it there. Like you said, there may be preemptive pardons.
Sam: State and local authorities need to step up in places where these accusations are happening.
Sam: There were accusations in the files about things that happened in Michigan.
Sam: Start taking a look. you know right you know and and various other ones like
Sam: wherever there's some other authority that potentially could be involved now
Sam: again the statute of limitations is going to hurt a lot of things a lot of these
Sam: crimes in question not all of them some of them have no statute of limitations but,
Sam: But some of them, you know, they're just going to say, like,
Sam: yeah, maybe this happened, but it was 30 years ago. There's nothing we can do at this point.
Sam: So, you know, so you have to have some sort of nexus to either something with
Sam: no statute of limitation or something current.
Sam: But any investigative authority that potentially could needs to start looking into that.
Sam: And I think one of the Congress people is also really pushing hard.
Sam: the Democratic congresspeople, is still looking hard at, okay,
Sam: let's dig into the financials here.
Ivan: Too. Wait, not the Republicans? No, no, wait, no. Really?
Sam: Well, there are a few Republicans. Just to be clear, there are a few Republicans
Sam: who've been pushing hard on this, too.
Ivan: There are a few Republicans that have been pushing hard on this.
Sam: Most prominently, Massey, but we've had a few others. Nancy Mace, MTG, before she left.
Sam: There are a few others. So there have been a handful of Republicans that have
Sam: been all in on this as well.
Sam: But the push to look at the financials, too, of like, OK, what exactly was going
Sam: on with the ins and outs of money into Epstein?
Sam: And did it make sense from a point of view that was not people trying to pay him off or whatever?
Sam: um right and actually one of the resignations
Sam: we have had in the u.s was uh what's
Sam: her name which company what one of the banks there was an
Sam: executive at one of the banks who a female executive
Sam: at one of the banks who has resigned because she was because of her involvement
Sam: with epstein specific and like amongst other things she was one of only three
Sam: people epstein called when he was arrested for advice on what to do, which she happily gave.
Ivan: I remember, I see the picture in my head. It was at Goldman Sachs.
Sam: It was Goldman Sachs.
Ivan: It was, yeah, it was a general counsel at Goldman Sachs.
Sam: Right. And so, I don't know. The only thing I'm saying is,
Sam: I am heartened by the developments over the last couple weeks of actual further
Sam: investigations being kicked off,
Sam: of people having things actually happen to them, and that this isn't going away
Sam: yet, as much as Trump would like it to.
Ivan: But Sam, Trump said he was exonerated.
Sam: Oh, yes.
Ivan: By the files. He's exonerated. What are you talking about? He's been exonerated.
Sam: And frankly, I have— He's exonerated.
Ivan: I think he said he was exonerated thousands of times or something like that.
Sam: Thousands of times. Apparently, his name appears more than anybody else's in
Sam: the whole thing, other than Epstein himself.
Sam: You know, it's like millions of occurrences in the redacted stuff.
Sam: When the Congress people got to look at the unredacted version and search on
Sam: his name, it was like 1.5 million references or something like that.
Sam: Now, they could all be innocent, right?
Sam: But again, this is one of the places where there were more accusations in the
Sam: Epstein files that get added to all the accusations we'd heard anyway about
Sam: him over the years, including, yeah, anyway, look,
Sam: even if nothing touches Trump, this clearly has not been properly investigated
Sam: and properly prosecuted over the years.
Ivan: The only reason, let me tell you something. The only reason,
Ivan: you're saying it doesn't touch Trump.
Sam: No, I said even if it doesn't touch Trump, there's clearly all kinds of other stuff.
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, but let's be clear. The stuff in there about Trump is damning.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: There are really serious accusations in there against Trump about rape, other things.
Ivan: because, I mean, you know, that basically document that he was a liar about
Ivan: anything that he said about his relationship with Epstein is all bullshit, okay?
Ivan: Everything that he has said before about it is complete and utter bullshit.
Ivan: That it shows that this thing that him supposedly throw him out of Mar-a-Lago
Ivan: and get him rid of or whatever is also bullshit.
Ivan: All of it, that anything that he has talked about this is a complete lie.
Ivan: And there are serious accusations in there that are documented,
Ivan: that back up things that we had heard publicly from other sources that showed
Ivan: that he had committed rape.
Ivan: But, like you said, this is going to be federally prosecuted.
Sam: As well as overage. Both.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Both.
Ivan: But, you know, Pam Bondi's going to get right on that, right?
Sam: Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Yes.
Ivan: I mean, this is like brutally damning against him. I don't, you know.
Sam: But he keeps saying that it's. A few months ago, there was a picture floating
Sam: around of Pam Bondi, Pam Bondi meeting Donald Trump when she was a teenager.
Sam: And so it's like, oh, maybe she was one of them.
Sam: You know, honestly, there's no evidence of that.
Ivan: But, you know, but wait, but would it surprise you?
Sam: No, nothing would surprise anybody at this point.
Sam: Okay. With that, I think it's time to wrap things up. Do-do-do. Okay.
Ivan: Do-do-do.
Sam: So, first, before I get to my usual stuff, I will mention, you know,
Sam: Yvonne made a couple references to Robin Ladder.
Sam: I mentioned last week that I was launching the first Test Robins after recording the show.
Sam: I did that last Sunday, and I just want to thank everybody who has actually
Sam: joined and participated and helped me test.
Sam: As of right now, there are 23 users of the thing in four different Robins,
Sam: three I created, one that Yvonne created.
Sam: I'm probably going to launch some additional test Robins tomorrow,
Sam: maybe before this podcast even gets out with some additional groups with some
Sam: overlap with the existing ones.
Sam: But and yeah, so it's working well.
Sam: I've made a bunch of changes and fixes and updates based on feedback that I've had from people so far.
Sam: If anybody out there is interested in joining and hasn't already gotten an invite
Sam: from me and wants one, just contact me.
Sam: If you go to robinletter.com, there's an email at the bottom. You can use that.
Sam: Send me a note saying that you'd like to be included.
Sam: So far, I got two Robins that are my relatives. I've got one Robin that's people
Sam: who've been active on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, but.
Sam: And there's and there's still three outstanding invites for the Curmudgeon's
Sam: Corner Slack where I sent out an invite but the person hasn't accepted yet but,
Sam: yeah and I and Yvonne made one of some of our Pittsburgh friends from when we
Sam: were in college and yeah if you get it but.
Ivan: There's a couple missing I don't
Ivan: have their emails I gotta I didn't have like I didn't have handy Pete.
Sam: Well the other the other thing Yvonne is that you sort of stepped on like one
Sam: of the test Robins that I was gonna make this coming tomorrow was going to be
Sam: people who knew me from college.
Sam: So it's going to be the people you have plus more. So I'll get them in that one anyway.
Sam: But you can keep the smaller one and add more people to it if you want.
Sam: But I've got one that's...
Ivan: No, no, no. If you're going to do that, then fine.
Sam: I probably got one with like 10 people at least already.
Ivan: Oh, no, no. Okay, okay.
Sam: So including all the ones you just mentioned. So I'll probably set that up tomorrow. Bro.
Sam: Yeah, I got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Sam: I got nine people on my CMU list, two of which you don't even know,
Sam: Yvonne, that are people I knew from CMU that you don't.
Ivan: That I never met? I mean, really?
Sam: That you never met? Yeah, they're people that I- Or even.
Ivan: Heard of them?
Sam: Bob K. and Vernon H..
Ivan: Okay. Definitely. I don't. Okay.
Sam: See, these are, these are both people that I knew from before CMU who also went to CMU.
Ivan: Ah, okay. All right.
Sam: So, but anyway, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll send that out.
Sam: And, and I got one for, for people from, from a couple of jobs I had before.
Sam: I, I, I was gonna, I, I want to make one from people I knew from high school
Sam: too, but so far I have only have one person who's responded to me for that one.
Sam: And I might send out another notice asking for more people.
Sam: Because the other thing I noticed, I posted on Facebook yesterday with a,
Sam: hey, everybody, I launched this new thing. I'm looking for volunteers, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And I included the Robin Letter logo.
Sam: It made the Robin Letter logo real big. But the way Facebook does things these
Sam: days is it prefers images.
Sam: So it had the big image of the stupid Robin logo for Robin Letter.
Sam: and it had like five words from
Sam: the thing i wrote followed by more dot dot dot so like
Sam: i might make a new version of the post that's mainly
Sam: an image and repost it to ask
Sam: for more people and and i also said you
Sam: know send me an email because i need an email to invite you
Sam: if you want it and there are a bunch of people who reacted to that
Sam: post but didn't send me an email so i'm going to
Sam: contact them individually and say like did you actually want to anyway but
Sam: getting distracted it anyway it's going well if you are interested and you're
Sam: not already in uh toss me a quick email and let me know i'll make sure you get
Sam: invited to a test robin once you're in you can also make your own uh just like
Sam: yvonne did okay and now for the regular end of the show.
Sam: Go to curmudgeon-corner.com. You can find all the ways to contact us.
Sam: You can find our archives.
Sam: You can find transcripts. You can find all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: It's great fun. It's amazing. It's good. It's whatever, right?
Sam: And as well, you can find our link to our Patreon where you can give us cash
Sam: money at various levels of monthly contribution.
Sam: We will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard.
Sam: We will send you a mug, all of that kind of stuff. And importantly,
Sam: at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask, we will invite you to our Curbudgeons
Sam: Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of people are chatting throughout
Sam: the week and sharing links and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And yeah, so Yvonne, do you have a highlight from the Slack today?
Ivan: Well, I kept, I have been sharing that for some reason, look, I'm not poor.
Ivan: Okay. But I am not Rolls Royce rich.
Ivan: Okay. I don't understand why the fuck the algorithm keeps thinking I'm interested
Ivan: in buying, uh, Bentleys, Rolls Royces, whatever the fuck.
Ivan: So, you know, I keep being shown ads to buy certified pre-owned, uh, uh, vehicles.
Ivan: And these are all, so another listing, I shared one earlier of a Bentley that
Ivan: had like 1,500 miles and it's worth three foot, you know, I don't know, some stupid amount.
Ivan: This week, okay, my feature was 2025 Rolls-Royce Spectre, which is an electric car, okay?
Ivan: By the way, I don't know if you know that Rolls-Royce makes this huge electric coupe, okay?
Ivan: It's, people have reviewed it, say it's incredible, it's lovely,
Ivan: I mean, it's quiet, it's whatever.
Ivan: It's used, Sam, used. The price of the listing, if you looked in, list price, $432,888.
Ivan: Plus, by the way, they do charge on top of that, a $1,199 dealer service charge
Ivan: and a $498 electric filing fee and a license charge of $450.
Ivan: Bringing the total to a very reasonable $434,935. dollars for a used 2025 with 1,648 miles.
Ivan: It does have an electric range of 329 miles, Sam.
Ivan: It's, you know, I, you know, I did say, you know, um, you know, seems very reasonable.
Ivan: I don't know. What do you think? Especially in this economy?
Ivan: I think, you know, this is the kind of purchases I should be looking for.
Sam: I think you need at least three.
Ivan: Oh, three. Oh, so I'm getting a fleet. Oh, okay. I'll get on that right away.
Ivan: I'll make it our corporate fleet.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: I mean, they're electric at least, so they're, you know, good for the environment in some way.
Sam: In some way.
Ivan: If we keep them for like 15 years or something, probably, yeah.
Sam: That's important. And, you know, use them often.
Ivan: And you, yeah.
Sam: Use them often.
Ivan: So that's it. That's all I got.
Sam: Different colors. You should get different colors.
Ivan: Ah, different colors. Yes, we've got to get different colors, of course, yes.
Sam: None of these bland gray and white colors, too. I want bright, vibrant colors.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like this, yeah.
Sam: You know, I'll take mine wrapped. Get a yellow. I'll take mine wrapped with the Abblesmay logo.
Ivan: That sounds like a great idea. You know, I'll have one wrapped with a Robin Letter logo.
Sam: Okay, there you go.
Ivan: And then I'll have another one with the Abblesmay logo.
Sam: Yep.
Ivan: And then I'll have another one with a Weeki of the Day logo.
Sam: And then one with the curmudgeon's corner thing, which is just our faces.
Ivan: Right. Wait, I'm sure people love, I'm sure people love, let's have them picked
Ivan: up at the airport with the car with our faces plastered on it.
Ivan: I'm sure people will love that.
Sam: Yes, exactly.
Ivan: Sounds like a great, I think we got this all worked out. Okay,
Ivan: great. I'll get on that right away.
Sam: Yeah, and I realized I forgot with my Robin Letter spiel to give at least the
Sam: one sentence what the hell it is.
Sam: It's an alternative to social media where you can just keep in touch with your
Sam: friends and, you know, back to what social media was supposed to be.
Sam: You go in order. You take turns.
Sam: For more, go to the site, robinletter.com. It'll tell you more.
Sam: And Yvonne's made me a nice little presentation about it.
Sam: It's fun. Anyway, that's it. We're out of here. Thank you for everybody.
Sam: Stay safe. Have fun. Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: I'm going to hop in the car in just a minute and head to that town hall for
Sam: my wife. And her seatmate is also going to be there, I think.
Ivan: Start hauling.
Sam: Start hauling.
Ivan: Start hauling.
Sam: Yeah, like, sometimes at these things, I help bring all the food and set it all out.
Sam: They've got other people helping with that, so I'm just doing this.
Sam: I'm just showing up and listening.
Ivan: You're just the eye candy, baby.
Sam: I'm the eye candy I'm there for moral support I'm I'm there to listen but I
Sam: don't have anything I have to do which is a plus like I mean I don't I don't
Sam: mind helping out when I need to help out but I mean.
Ivan: Well you don't have to do anything it's better.
Sam: Exactly I can just uh I can just
Sam: go and listen and you know as usual at these things like they're gonna be there
Sam: are gonna be some people with with with night yeah they're gonna be some friendly
Sam: people and they're gonna be some hostile people they're like you know why the
Sam: hell are you doing xyz you're screwing us and blah blah blah and you know because
Sam: there always are you know it's too.
Ivan: Bad i can't be there to go tell them to go fuck.
Sam: Themselves yeah fuck.
Ivan: You you stupid asshole the fuck out of here.
Sam: You know that's the nature of town halls you get people asking questions about
Sam: their concerns and some Some people like what you're doing and some people don't
Sam: like what you're doing and you have that dialogue and it's good.
Sam: It's the way you keep in touch with what people care about.
Ivan: As long as it's dialogue, it's good. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. So anyway, that's that. I'm heading out. Thanks, everybody.
Sam: Here's the outro. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Okay, that's it. I'm in. Stop. Later, Yvonne.
Ivan: Stop. Stop. Stop!