Sam: Let's make sure those thingy is in anybody.
Sam: Here it goes. And I'm not going to worry about the notifications and stuff.
Sam: It'll just do what it does. Shall we start?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay, here we go. Oh, I haven't annotated the thing for you.
Sam: I'll probably do it tomorrow. What? What?
Sam: I'll get it done. I've been doing other stuff. Here we go.
Sam: welcome to curmudgeon's corner first saturday march 7th 2026.
Sam: It's just after 18 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Menter.
Sam: Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hello!
Ivan: Sam, it's another boring week, huh?
Sam: Another boring week. Yes, always.
Sam: Always. You know, we do have them occasionally. Less often than we used to,
Sam: but they still occasionally happen.
Ivan: Okay, you might try to remind me when the fuck was the last boring week.
Ivan: Because I can't remember.
Sam: You know, now you're putting me on the spot.
Ivan: Yeah. You know, I, I don't, I mean, I'm trying to remember. Anytime do we have, I don't, I mean.
Sam: Let me see. Let me see. I'm going to look at our archives.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And see when the last episode was,
Sam: That was mostly fluff. Okay. Last week, we had the Iran war stuff.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: The week before that, we had some Epstein stuff. We had some tariff stuff.
Sam: But there wasn't one big thing.
Sam: Going back before that, we had Bad Bunny and some economic data stuff.
Sam: But honestly, some government incompetence stuff. But honestly,
Sam: it was it was an episode where we had a bunch of small little things and we
Sam: didn't have a big overwhelming thing just like three weeks ago.
Ivan: I guess that in my thought, that's relative.
Ivan: Remember, there was a lot of controversy about Bad Bunny and they were like
Ivan: ripping him and MAGA was all on flames about it and blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: I guess I'm talking about this is all relative, right?
Ivan: I guess relative relative to like, you know.
Sam: Trump era. The week before that was all small things, too.
Ivan: You know, in the Trump era, I guess that all seems minor.
Ivan: Whereas I'm talking about, you know, you don't seem to remember that there were
Ivan: weeks when Obama was president that we were, like, struggling to figure out
Ivan: what to talk about at all.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Ivan: You know, like, you know, there was no week when the president said something
Ivan: like, I don't know, there was some truth post today about Iran.
Sam: I, as usual, just woke up. So if something happened this morning,
Sam: I don't know about it yet. He said something about losers.
Ivan: Things. It was just so, it's just another one of those unhinged things.
Ivan: posts, he was saying something about, I mean, he, let me see if I could find it real quick.
Ivan: I didn't even share it. It's just, it was just so unhinged.
Ivan: It's, but it was, it was about Iran.
Ivan: Let me see. I don't see it right now, but he, he was saying how Iran is just
Ivan: a bunch of losers and things and how we've made them,
Ivan: pounded them into submission, these losers.
Ivan: And, and just, it was just, it's just the post that if I took that post,
Ivan: okay, out of the context of Trump and had said that George W.
Ivan: Bush said something like this, he would have probably, I mean,
Ivan: he might've been impeached.
Ivan: He might have been. They might have gone with the 25th Amendment.
Sam: Just for, like, the post.
Ivan: Just for that post.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Okay, just for that post, if Obama had made that post that Trump did last night,
Ivan: I think the Democrats themselves would have impeached him.
Ivan: Because it's so nutty. But this is how we have normalized the insanity right now.
Ivan: Because every day is like this.
Sam: Okay, I found your quote for you. Okay. Okay, so this is a Donald J.
Sam: Trump truth social post. I'm not going to call it a truth.
Sam: It's not a truth.
Ivan: You're right. That's a misnomer.
Sam: Whoever took the screenshot, it says 6.11 a.m. I don't know if that's Eastern or what, but anyway.
Ivan: Probably.
Sam: I will read you this. Iran, which is being beat to hell, has apologized and
Sam: surrendered to its Middle East neighbors.
Sam: and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore.
Sam: This promise was only made because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack.
Sam: They were looking to take over and rule the Middle East.
Sam: It is the first time that Iran has ever lost in thousands of years to surrounding
Sam: Middle Eastern countries.
Sam: They have said, thank you, President Trump. I have said, you're welcome.
Sam: Iran is no longer the bully of the Middle East. They are instead the loser of
Sam: the Middle East and will be for many decades until they surrender or,
Sam: more likely, completely collapse.
Sam: Today, Iran will be hit very hard under serious consideration for complete destruction
Sam: and certain death because of Iran's bad behavior.
Sam: Our areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time.
Sam: Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
Ivan: I mean, this is a normal fucking 6 a.m.
Ivan: post by our president that in the past, if any of them had done this and sent
Ivan: out a press release saying this,
Ivan: they, you know, probably his cabinet would have put him in a straitjacket and
Ivan: sent them to, you know, Walter Reed and made some excuse about his health.
Ivan: and said, you know, I don't know. We got to figure out something.
Ivan: This guy has lost his mind.
Sam: Ivan, Ivan.
Ivan: That would have been the past. I mean, but wait, Sam, would that not be accurate?
Sam: I think they would very, at the very least, be like sequestering him away and
Sam: trying to figure out what was going on.
Sam: But, you know, hear this thing. You know, this is just part of Donald Trump's
Sam: charm. This is just how he is.
Sam: this is this is what people elected him
Sam: for because he's straight and to the point and you know tells it like it is
Sam: etc etc etc right yeah you know i saw something and i guess we're dumping straight into news stuff no.
Ivan: No well here's the thing.
Sam: Yesterday i.
Ivan: I do bring this up in part because yesterday I did go last night.
Ivan: My wife had bought tickets to go see this new Disney Pixar movie called Hoppers.
Sam: Hoppers? Yes. Are you going to give a review of Hoppers?
Ivan: I am going to give a brief review about Hoppers.
Sam: It's on my list, but obviously I have not seen it yet.
Ivan: I'm not going to give away any spoilers about it.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: But I guess the one thing is the main thrust of this is a young boy who's an
Ivan: activist for the green spaces in the city versus a mayor who is hell-bent on
Ivan: development. That's the main thing.
Ivan: And I'm going to tell you, look, it's a beautiful movie.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I loved it. I mean, it's one of those great Pixar movies.
Sam: So for a while, Pixar had a run where it was like, Pixar never does wrong.
Sam: And then they had a few sort of, eh.
Ivan: They were like, okay.
Sam: This is back to form?
Ivan: Oh, yeah.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. A hundred percent.
Ivan: And I don't want to give a spoiler, but the ending itself, in terms of our time,
Ivan: because if you think about the conflict between somebody, the development and
Ivan: somebody in these things is.
Sam: There are parallels?
Ivan: Well, no.
Sam: No?
Ivan: Okay. No, no, no, but it's beautiful, and sometimes you wish the world were, like,
Ivan: I was in the movie, which is why I make, you know, one thing that we forget,
Ivan: Hollywood made Hollywood movies because a lot of people's lives were miserable,
Ivan: and it was an escape from that.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And, oh, it's a Hollywood movie, whatever, whatever, well, you know what,
Ivan: because maybe people need a fucking escape from the drudgery and misery of a
Ivan: lot of shit that's going on. And that, you know what, is uplifting.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And so the movie, look, total thumbs up. Don't miss it.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: It's really good. It is really good.
Ivan: And so I thought about how uplifting the movie was, and then I think about this
Ivan: asshole that we got as president, and it's like, you know, like, fuck.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: You know, fuck me. Why do we have this? It's just, I don't know.
Sam: It sounds like you're having a good time.
Ivan: I didn't have a good time last night going to the movies for that.
Ivan: I stayed up late yesterday watching, it's the start of the Formula One season.
Sam: Okay, so you were watching something live coming out of Europe or something.
Ivan: Well, not Europe, Australia. It's starting in Australia.
Sam: Even worse.
Ivan: Which is even worse, which is the thing, right? because qualifying last night
Ivan: was started at midnight, okay? All right.
Ivan: You know, and so it lasted until like 1.30 in the morning.
Ivan: And a race is also tonight, so it's a what-the-hell time.
Ivan: I got it on my calendar. I have this thing from the F1 people that puts the
Ivan: stuff in my calendar, which is very helpful, okay, especially with the different time zones and stuff.
Ivan: What time does it say the race starts?
Ivan: Coverage starts at 11 p.m., but I think the race officially starts at midnight. So, yeah.
Ivan: So, no, I was watching that. Very excited about that. You know,
Ivan: the thing is that, well, number one, this year, there's a lot of changes.
Ivan: A lot of people are like, Apple TV bought the U.S.
Ivan: rights to broadcast the F1 races.
Ivan: Which, by the way, actually, they give you access, included with your Apple TV subscription, okay,
Ivan: to the F1 official coverage, okay?
Ivan: So you go to the F1 app now, which I used to have to pay for $150 extra a year,
Ivan: and now I get that free of charge, okay?
Ivan: So I don't have to pay. So it's good. And so Apple's doing that and providing,
Ivan: like, you know, with your Apple TV subscription and watching that.
Ivan: There's a lot of controversy.
Ivan: A lot of people bitching and moaning. But the reality is that for a lot of people
Ivan: that were really good F1 fans had both the subscription to F1 TV, okay, and to Apple TV.
Ivan: So all of a sudden, I get the same shit, and I don't have to pay extra for it.
Ivan: I'm sorry, but this is a massive win for me.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Okay? The other people, I'm like, well, sorry for you, but, you know, but I'm thrilled.
Ivan: So I was watching that last night, and I don't know.
Ivan: But also, I have been doing all this stuff with—I've just been playing around with stuff now—,
Ivan: So since I started using the Claude co-work analysis tools, because you know
Ivan: one thing that we talked about, the ChatGPT isn't very good at math. Okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: But Claude is. Okay? With spreadsheets and numbers and things and stuff or whatever, Claude is.
Sam: Well, and that's because it's not trying to do that just with the LLM.
Sam: It's using external tools that interact with the spreadsheet and know how to do math.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: You know, and this is the thing where a lot of the developments that have caused improvements,
Sam: and I believe we had like a conversation like a year ago or more about how they
Sam: needed to do something beyond straight LLM technology.
Sam: They needed to augment it with things that knew about truth, for instance.
Sam: And this is augmenting it with something that knows about spreadsheets and how to use a spreadsheet.
Sam: And, you know, and a lot of the tools now also, like,
Sam: even when you add, when you ask it to do something that is deterministic,
Sam: will write themselves a little program to do that rather than trying to do it natively.
Sam: So, like, I remember one example, it just posted within the last month or so, where,
Sam: you know, I think it was ChatGPT he was playing with, but still failed this
Sam: test, where they asked ChatGPT to count out loud from 1 to 100, skipping no numbers.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, yeah, that was hilarious.
Sam: And it would always go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then I will continue like that all the way to 100.
Sam: and he's like no no no I want you to go all the way to 100 and no matter what
Sam: he did it would still stop like that right um and but like,
Sam: A lot of the more sophisticated ones now, like especially if you're in like
Sam: one of the coding environments or co-work, like you said,
Sam: will know to like don't just try to like spit out the LLM's response to that question,
Sam: but instead recognize it as a request that you go and set off an agent to go
Sam: do properly by writing a program or looking at a spreadsheet or whatever using
Sam: tools that are actually meant for that task.
Sam: Anyway, so your experience with it using the spreadsheets and analysis.
Ivan: No, so it's allowing me to do ear,
Ivan: The thing is that I find, because you know that I'm always a guy that's built
Ivan: a lot of spreadsheets, numbers, things, finance, blah, blah,
Ivan: blah. I always do a lot of that.
Ivan: Of course, especially when I worked in finance, I had a lot more time to do
Ivan: that and worked in operations.
Ivan: But the thing is that I'm doing so many other things so much of the time,
Ivan: I don't have the time to spend a couple of days to build a spreadsheet anymore,
Ivan: to detail analysis a couple of things.
Ivan: But the thing is that with using this,
Ivan: I could go back to doing some of the spreadsheet shit that
Ivan: I used to do and it helps me burn through it a lot faster because
Ivan: a big chunk of what I used
Ivan: to have to do in order to do analysis say at
Ivan: work okay was extracting stuff from databases different
Ivan: data sources whatever trying to make these data sets coherent in a certain way
Ivan: okay to normalize the data okay so you weren't you know say for example you
Ivan: you you you had like sales data in one format from one database,
Ivan: and then you had activity,
Ivan: you know, you had the sales.
Ivan: So say you had sales, okay?
Ivan: Then you had the performance of individual sales reps that was tied to that sales data, okay?
Ivan: But they may be organized in a different way. So how do you get those two data
Ivan: sets to not duplicate information,
Ivan: but to give you basically a more rich picture of what was happening with those
Ivan: accounts for example so that would take a whole bunch of work of me pulling
Ivan: data for maybe two three different four different spreadsheets putting it all
Ivan: together whatever but now i could go to shit hey claude here.
Ivan: I got this, this, this, and this. Fucking tell me, you know,
Ivan: integrate all of this in a coherent way and whatever.
Ivan: And the one thing is that I keep telling it, well, I look through it and I identify,
Ivan: well, no, no, no, you did this wrong.
Ivan: This part, no, no, no, you missed this. No, this doesn't add up.
Ivan: Because one thing that I've always been able to do, and it feels like it's like
Ivan: when I had like 10 employees in finance and they did shit and they did it wrong.
Ivan: And then I kept telling them, dude, that doesn't add up.
Ivan: What do you mean it doesn't add up? I know how much money is supposed to be
Ivan: in that bucket. And what you added it up to is wrong. And I just know it by looking at it.
Ivan: And then I go, oh, yeah, you're right.
Ivan: That is too much money. Yeah, I know how much it's supposed to be there.
Ivan: There's no way it adds up to that much.
Ivan: And it's almost the same thing as I got with Claude. Sometimes I'm like,
Ivan: I actually was trying to do some analysis for my own sales.
Ivan: And I'm like, that number's wrong.
Ivan: And then I tell it, oh, yeah, you're right. I added it up wrong.
Sam: Uh-huh.
Ivan: So I kind of like been entertaining myself a lot with that.
Sam: Okay. Very good.
Ivan: I find it very entertaining or like doing stuff like, you know, Apple.
Ivan: So Apple, you know, has a lot of like all this health tracking stuff.
Ivan: And over the years of it, I've been using it.
Ivan: And on the phone, it gives you a lot of information and richness in terms of
Ivan: like showing you trends and things or whatever.
Ivan: One thing that I'm annoyed is that Apple doesn't have the same app for the computer.
Ivan: It's not synchronizing it.
Sam: Right. There's just no fitness app or whatever. The health app is not there. They haven't made it.
Ivan: Yeah, it's not. There's no equivalent for the Mac.
Ivan: So, okay, I can look at it on my phone, which is cool, and it doesn't give me very good information.
Sam: On the latest versions of Apple, you can bring up the phone app on your computer.
Ivan: Right, but it's still a small window.
Sam: It's still the phone app.
Ivan: Okay?
Sam: I know.
Ivan: It's still the phone. Okay? And what I want is, no, listen, I want a health
Ivan: app that is on the computer so I can look at this stuff in the way that it is on there, which is cool.
Ivan: But there are some people that make tools in order to be able to extract some
Ivan: of that information. So I had been playing with extracting it.
Ivan: The thing is that for whatever reason, the one tool that I found,
Ivan: it would extract every workout in every session as an individual CSV.
Ivan: And I'm just like, oh, come on, man.
Sam: Are you using the tool that I pointed you out a few months ago?
Ivan: No, I've had this tool for over a year, so I'm not sure if it's one that you
Ivan: pointed out a few months ago.
Sam: Well, you know how my sense of time goes. A few months ago might be five years.
Ivan: That's true. It may have been one that you pointed out. Okay.
Ivan: So I don't remember how I stumbled on it. It may be the one you pointed out.
Ivan: But the thing is, okay, great.
Ivan: So I got, you know, 2,000 CSV files all of a sudden. Great.
Ivan: Beautiful. I'm like, okay, I could figure out a way to merge all this data,
Ivan: but I don't want to do this. And I'm like, and I believe, no,
Ivan: and I had done that, but it was a pain in my ass.
Ivan: But I realized, well, let me have Claude take a whack at it, okay? Well, shit.
Ivan: Damn it. It gave me now finally what I've been looking at in order to be able
Ivan: to track my fitness and my workouts in a better way that I can look at it on the computer as well.
Ivan: Not just my phone, which by the way, the functionality on the phone that Apple
Ivan: has is actually quite good because it does help me, you know,
Ivan: visualize it like very easily on my phone. Their visuals are actually quite good.
Ivan: OK, but but I but they don't they haven't made the same thing for the fucking
Ivan: computer. It's annoying.
Ivan: Apple, somebody fucking, you know, bring the damn health app also to the Mac.
Sam: You remember how like for years they like didn't bring like stocks and weather
Sam: or something like, or calculator wasn't on like the iPad or whatever for years.
Ivan: Well, yeah, there was no calculator on the iPad for whatever reason.
Sam: Yes. I mean, and yes, there were third party alternatives.
Ivan: But it was like, just seemed like a gap. It's always there. I always remember,
Ivan: and I loved, I remember that one time, one of the first memories that I have
Ivan: of using a Mac was on one of the original Macs,
Ivan: you know, black and white, using the little calculator app on that Mac.
Ivan: And there was one time that I, funny story. I still remember this one.
Sam: Funny story. Oh, prepare yourself.
Ivan: Well, yeah, you're going to, a barrel of laughs. Not really that much.
Ivan: But we did this talent show in high school, okay?
Ivan: And the thing is that the judges did all this stuff on scoring.
Ivan: And so we actually, so one of my classmates had brought his Mac.
Ivan: I think he had a Mac plus or something like that, that they had.
Ivan: I brought it over to the place where we held a talent show to help us with,
Ivan: we had some, we had used it to build some like flyers, things,
Ivan: a whole bunch of things or whatever.
Ivan: And then we had been keeping track of, you know, all the program and things on there.
Ivan: But then all of a sudden I realized, shit, we need to add up the scoring.
Ivan: And so I very quickly had to wind up, like, using that calculator because we
Ivan: didn't even have time for a spreadsheet.
Ivan: I was just like, you know, taking the scores of the judges and then writing
Ivan: it down, but I was like using very intensely that calculator app on the Mac on the original system,
Ivan: which was super cool. I like that calculator app. It's very nice.
Sam: It was a calculator.
Ivan: Yeah. Come on. Back then, you know. Well, I'm, okay, I, look.
Sam: You know, one of the things I saw.
Ivan: I was always fascinated with the fucking adding machines.
Ivan: And I remember that I would spend hours playing with the adding machines at our store.
Ivan: Dad had these Olivetti ones, okay, that he had bought. And listen,
Ivan: if you look up an Olivetti adding machine, the style of those machines back
Ivan: in the 70s and 80s was really cool.
Ivan: Okay. All right. They were like these digital ones with a little printer or whatever.
Ivan: And boy, would I love to just spend a burn paper on that little thing.
Ivan: Just, just doing, just, just typing away numbers for whatever reason.
Ivan: With no rhyme or reason just to have the, just to have the printer just make the noise.
Sam: I remember doing the same thing with a handheld calculator with the little red LED digits.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: Like that I had, it was my dad's. And of course, I would steal it and play with
Sam: it and go into a closet where it was dark. And so the lights were just done.
Sam: I would play with the buttons. I would also sort of move it around because it
Sam: would leave like a trail behind it.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: You know, when you moved around. Also, I was going to say, a few days ago,
Sam: I almost shared it on the Slack, but I didn't, and I'm sure I wouldn't be able to find it again.
Sam: But somebody on TikTok posted, and I don't know whether it was actually an original
Sam: or whether it was an attempted recreation.
Sam: It seemed like it could be an original, but you never know these days.
Sam: A commercial, a television commercial.
Sam: from the 1970s for, like, a calculator.
Ivan: Ah.
Sam: Like, talking about all the benefits of this cool, amazing, like,
Sam: calculator, and it was the only calculator you were ever going to need,
Sam: and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and how compact it was.
Sam: And, of course, it was huge, right? You know, but.
Ivan: Of course. Look, I just on the Slack, on random, just posted a link to a calculator,
Ivan: like the one that we had at the store, okay? By the way, used one.
Ivan: There are vintage collectors.
Ivan: $170 on eBay to get one of these, like right now. Just check it out because
Ivan: it's a really cool design that the calculator had.
Ivan: And you go take a peek. But it was one just like that, okay,
Ivan: that we had. I don't know if you could see it.
Sam: I brought it up. Yes, yes. It's to describe to people because this is,
Sam: of course, an audio show.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Yes.
Sam: It's, let's see, it looks like it's about a foot on a side, black plastic,
Sam: really big buttons, one of those little ribbon printer things on the left,
Sam: some ventilation holes on the right.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Because, of course, like, you know, the calculator is going to generate lots
Sam: of heat. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, et cetera.
Sam: So it's cool. I would bring up the, if this was, I mean, I know we do have video
Sam: like for the live streamers, but if this was a video podcast,
Sam: maybe I would search for the picture of the calculator I was talking about,
Sam: or even that video of the commercial I thought I saw.
Sam: But no, this is an audio podcast, so I won't do that.
Ivan: The one thing, the buttons on that machine were so, the tactile feel.
Ivan: Like, oh, just fantastic tactile feel.
Ivan: I mean, you know, it cannot, you know, cannot understate how cool those buttons felt, you know.
Ivan: And that big, you see, it's got a big ass plus button, okay?
Ivan: Because back then, most of the stuff that you were doing is adding stuff real quick.
Sam: That's why they were called adding machines, not subtraction or division machines.
Ivan: No, it was an adding machine.
Sam: I mean, of course, the very first adding machines could only add.
Sam: but they later added other functions.
Ivan: But it's just so it's just so very satisfying to be hitting you know typing
Ivan: the numbers and plus plus plus plus plus plus plus I don't know okay let me.
Sam: Let me bang out my two movies,
Sam: Not in the movies. Yes. We're already almost half an hour in.
Sam: So let's do this. Okay, number one.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: From 2020.
Ivan: We're already getting one movie. So we're going to three movies.
Sam: Oh, yeah. Three movies. Amazing.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I mean, one of them was you, which is fair. Fair. Absolutely fair. Fair. Okay.
Sam: I was going to say yesterday. Last week, we did a video game movie,
Sam: Minecraft. We both liked it. Thumbs up.
Ivan: Yes. Yes.
Sam: This next one for me is another video game movie from 2023. It's the Super Mario Bros. movie.
Sam: And surprisingly, this is another thumbs up. I enjoyed this movie as well.
Sam: Folks may remember there were like Mario movies made and Mario cartoons like
Sam: a few decades ago that I have not seen, but from all reports were bad.
Sam: It was like a live-action Mario, and they did something. I don't know.
Sam: But no, this is fully, like, you know, it's animated.
Sam: And it doesn't—one of the things that people have praised about it is— and actually
Sam: different from what the Minecraft movie did.
Sam: Well, I don't know. There's some similarities. Anyway, they didn't try to do
Sam: the thing where, okay, these characters are in the real world,
Sam: and now we're going to do something with them, and it's going to be like, you know—.
Sam: Use some of the characters, but very, very different from the video games.
Sam: Instead, they like are continuously reproducing elements from the video games.
Sam: And like the characters are doing things they do in the video games and such.
Sam: Let me give you the first couple of paragraphs as usual.
Sam: Italian American, from Wikipedia, Italian American brothers,
Sam: Mario and Luigi operate a struggling plumbing business in Brooklyn to the derision
Sam: of their ex-formin Spike and the disapproval of their father.
Sam: After seeing a significant water main leak on the news, Mario and Luigi go underground
Sam: to fix it, but are sucked into a warp pipe and separated.
Sam: So it does start in Brooklyn, but it's still animated. It's not like humans or whatever.
Sam: Mario lands in the Mushroom Kingdom, ruled by Princess Peach,
Sam: where Luigi arrives in the Darklands, ruled by the evil Koopa King Bowser,
Sam: who seeks to marry Peach and will destroy the Mushroom Kingdom using a superstar if she refuses.
Sam: Seeing Mario as competition for Peach's love, Bowser imprisons Luigi to threaten
Sam: him. Mario meets Toad, who takes him to Peach.
Sam: Peach plans to ally with the primate Kongs to help repel Bowser,
Sam: and trains Mario before allowing him and Toad to travel along.
Sam: During their journey, she tells Mario that she ended up at the Mushroom Kingdom
Sam: as a baby, where the Toads took her in and eventually made her their leader.
Sam: In the Jungle Kingdom, King Cranky Kong agrees to help if Mario defeats his
Sam: son, Donkey Kong, in a fight.
Sam: Despite initially being overpowered by Donkey Kong's strength,
Sam: Mario defeats him using a cat suit.
Sam: Dot, dot, dot. It continues. They go through multiple adventures.
Sam: Anyway, it does not take itself seriously. It is like,
Sam: You know, it knows we're talking about cartoon video game characters and it
Sam: leans into that and it's done well. And I had fun.
Sam: And I guess that's the that's the bottom line for it. I mean, this is not a deep movie.
Sam: It is a Super Mario Brothers movie. It is animated.
Ivan: It is. It is shallow. I mean, this is like this.
Ivan: This this is that doesn't even qualify as a shallow pool or pond.
Ivan: It's not even a kiddie pool.
Sam: I don't know if I go that far, but it doesn't attempt to be like it doesn't. No, no, no.
Sam: It is an unabashed video game movie that leans into that 100%.
Sam: It is made as a family movie. So the adults are going to enjoy it too.
Sam: Especially adults who have nostalgia for Nintendo stuff from decades ago.
Sam: And I, you know, when I was a kid, I never had a Nintendo.
Sam: You know, I, I, the first time I played like an actual Mario game,
Sam: I was already an adult, right?
Sam: You know, I had other stuff. I was like on the VIC-20, Commodore 64,
Sam: and then briefly DOS, and then Mac. You know, I never had consoles.
Ivan: By the way, I am also one that did not have a Nintendo. I had a Sega.
Sam: Okay, yeah.
Ivan: So I played Sonic. Right.
Sam: Yeah so anyway it did
Sam: well there's going to be a sequel it actually won a a few awards i mean we're
Sam: not talking like i would make sure before i say this we're not talking to us
Sam: picture best well it was it was nominated for a golden golden globe for best
Sam: animated feature you know so that's.
Ivan: I thought that's that's a fair award yeah yeah.
Sam: So you know so anyway and a bunch of others Anyway, fun, lighthearted movie,
Sam: nostalgia bait for Nintendo fans, done well, et cetera. Thumbs up.
Ivan: Thumbs up!
Sam: Next up, The Dark Knight Rises from 2012.
Ivan: Another movie that I didn't see. This is one of those where they,
Ivan: I gotta tell you, this entire thing with Batman making, I don't know how many
Ivan: fucking versions of the stupid thing.
Sam: Well, they just reboot it every 15 years or something.
Ivan: 15? It seems like they rebooted it every five years. It's so fucking confusing.
Ivan: I mean, like, none of the timelines align. They change all the actors.
Ivan: I'm like, just, you know what?
Ivan: I get, at what point I'm like, just fuck.
Ivan: I'm like, fuck Batman.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: That's my analysis.
Sam: Let me see how often these actually are. So live action.
Ivan: Look how many Bat- Listen, go back and count.
Sam: How many Batmans- I am doing that right now, okay?
Ivan: Okay, all right, all right.
Sam: And you said every five years. So live action films. So we're excluding TV for the moment.
Sam: We're excluding whatever, old serials, things like that. Okay, okay.
Sam: The one that was based on the TV show, the Batman movie in 1966.
Ivan: Okay?
Sam: That was actually, it was essentially an extended episode of the Batman TV series
Sam: set between two of the seasons of the Batman TV series.
Sam: But there was the Batman movie in 1966.
Sam: The next Batman was 1989.
Sam: That was the Tim Burton one with Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton, okay? Okay.
Sam: Now, in that sequence, you had 1992, Batman Returns, and 1995, Batman Forever.
Sam: And then finally, 1997, Batman and Robin, which completely killed off that sequence
Sam: of Batman. because it was really bad, apparently.
Sam: Okay, so that sequence was the first, well, second.
Sam: So we added the 1966 version, then we added the 1992 through 1997 version. So that's two so far.
Sam: Now that's a total of six movies, but only two iterations.
Ivan: Two iterations, okay.
Sam: Two iterations, let's see. Fourth and final, yeah, okay.
Sam: Oh, sorry, I counted wrong. That's four. Four plus the one. So four in that sequence.
Sam: Okay. The next, now we have related things. Like there was a Catwoman movie in 2004. Okay.
Sam: But then in 2005 was the reboot that started the sequence that the one I'm talking
Sam: about is in, I believe, wait,
Sam: the Christopher Nolan version.
Sam: Okay, so this starts in 2005 with Batman Begins. Okay, so just to be clear, from...
Sam: The end of the last series to this one was, do my math, eight years? Eight years.
Ivan: Okay. Listen, I went and asked GPT for a list because otherwise we'll kill the
Ivan: rest of the audience at this point.
Sam: Okay, fine.
Ivan: But look, I went. Hang on.
Sam: Yeah, okay.
Ivan: There's been a total of nine different Batmans, okay, since the first fucking movie. Okay? All right?
Ivan: And I'm going to go back to just, you know, 1990, when we had 1989,
Ivan: we had Michael Keaton as Batman.
Ivan: I'm not counting the ones before that. But since 1990, okay,
Ivan: there's been six movies.
Ivan: Michael Keaton, Vol Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck,
Ivan: and Robert Pattinson. Listen, I don't understand.
Sam: And you're right. Some of those were in the same sequence, right?
Sam: Like I mentioned Batman and Robin, I believe, was like the George Clooney one.
Sam: Right. And that was actually the fourth movie of the sequence that started with Michael Keaton.
Sam: And they were theoretically the same universe, but they did change actors.
Ivan: But here's the fucking thing, man. I mean, there is no other fucking movie goddamn
Ivan: series that has fucking changed the main character of Batman,
Ivan: you know, main character that fucking often.
Ivan: It's crazy. Okay. Listen, Daniel Craig played James Bond for 20 years. Okay.
Ivan: Over that same time period, there were five Batmans. Five.
Sam: What the fuck man no fuck.
Ivan: Them you fight batmans.
Sam: I think it does make more sense like the one where you sort of theoretically
Sam: have the same sequence but you change the actors it's kind of goofy if you reboot
Sam: the whole thing with a new actor that's all that's another story okay you're
Sam: doing the new reboot for this decade right i'm okay with that but but.
Ivan: I mean, six versions in that time?
Ivan: I mean, literally, what are we doing? Barely five years per Batman.
Sam: Well, again, though, if you treat it not as by actor, but by sequence,
Sam: we've got the 1960s version, we've got the 1990s version, and we've got the early 2000s version,
Sam: and then we've got a later 2000s version. So it's really four.
Ivan: Here's the one thing for me who is a casual guy with these movies,
Ivan: okay? Every fucking time I would go and see, oh, there's a Batman.
Ivan: And then I look at it and I'm like, but wait, what happened with the old Batman? Wait, so...
Ivan: Wait, again, we're rebooting again? And I'm like, wait, what does this timeline
Ivan: have to do with the old time?
Ivan: It, honestly, to me, confused the fuck out of me regularly.
Sam: Now, I tend to generally agree with you on lots of things that I like the ones
Sam: where it's continuations of the universe rather than flat-out reboots better.
Sam: But, yeah, I don't know. I guess as long as they're sort of clear about it,
Sam: like the the 1990s Batman sequence is not the same universe as the 2000s Batman
Sam: universe is not the same as the 2020s Batman.
Sam: No, no. So, I don't know.
Sam: So, anyway, to get back to my movie, my movie is the Dark Knight Rises,
Sam: which is the third movie, I believe, in this trilogy. Okay.
Sam: Let me make sure. Okay.
Sam: The Dark Knight Trilogy starts with Batman Begins in 2005, then The Dark Knight in 2008,
Sam: and finally ends in The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, which is the one that I am
Sam: talking about right now.
Sam: Okay, so...
Sam: So I'm going to give this one the, you know, as we've talked about more granularity,
Sam: between a thumb sideways and a thumbs up, okay?
Sam: And let me give you the beginning of the plot on this one as well.
Sam: Bain, a former—I'm all blubbery today.
Sam: Bain, a former member of the League of Shadows, leads an attack on a CIA plane
Sam: over Uzbekistan to abduct nuclear physicist Dr. Leonard Pavel.
Sam: Meanwhile, eight years after the death of Gotham City Attorney Harvey Dent and
Sam: the arrest of the Joker, organized crime has been eradicated in Gotham by the
Sam: Dent Act, legislation that gives expanded powers to the police.
Sam: Police Commissioner James Gordon has kept Dent's killing spree a secret,
Sam: and allowed the blame for his crimes to fall on Batman.
Sam: Bruce Wayne, still mourning the death of Rachel Dawes, has become a recluse.
Sam: Bane conspires to help Wayne Enterprises board member John Daggett take over
Sam: the company, and they begin by trying to buy Bruce's fingerprints.
Sam: Burglar Selina Kyle steals Bruce's prints from Wayne Manor for Daggett,
Sam: but he double-crosses her and she alerts the police.
Sam: Bane's henchmen capture Gotham in the sewer—sorry, capture Gordon in the sewers,
Sam: but he escapes and is found by steadfast Gotham City police officer John Blake,
Sam: an orphan who has deduced Bruce's secret identity.
Sam: Blake persuades Bruce to resume his vigilantism.
Sam: Bain attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange and uses Bruce's fingerprints to verify
Sam: fraudulent transactions, leaving Bruce ousted from his company and bankrupt.
Sam: Fearing Bruce will purposefully get himself killed fighting Bain,
Sam: his butler, Alfred Pennyworth, resigns in the hope of saving him after revealing
Sam: that Rachel was going to marry Dent and thus Bruce should let her go.
Sam: Bane kills Daggett to pursue his own goals while Bruce and Wayne Enterprises'
Sam: new CEO, Miranda Tate, become lovers. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.
Sam: And it continues. There are adventures. There are battles. There are all those
Sam: things that happen in your normal superhero movie.
Sam: But I think, you know, last week we talked about Blade II and how it was just
Sam: nothing but, you know, action sequence to action sequence to action sequence
Sam: with blood and gore and things happening and gross-out stuff,
Sam: and I was not impressed at all by that.
Sam: This was a good superhero movie. I enjoyed it. I had fun.
Sam: I mean, it's still just a superhero movie, but it was fun. I enjoyed it.
Sam: And there we go. We're done.
Ivan: Okay, we're done with superheroes.
Sam: And let's move on. Once again. I owe everybody an Apple dream.
Ivan: Fuck Batman.
Sam: Yeah, fuck Batman. Gotcha. I understand that he's well-built and attractive,
Sam: but I do not personally want to do that. But you can.
Ivan: No, no, no. I will avoid that as well. You know, the other day I realized, you know,
Ivan: Sam, there's one thing. Look, I have a lot of, I have, I don't know,
Ivan: I have gay friends, whatever.
Ivan: But you know what? I don't find men attractive. There's just nothing.
Ivan: I mean, there's nothing. Not, I mean, I.
Sam: I, I, I am offended, Yvonne. Look at me. Look at me.
Ivan: An Adonis.
Sam: Exactly.
Ivan: You're an Adonis, Sam. You're an Adonis. I, I, you know, look,
Ivan: I get, I get, I get, like, for example, I, I mean, I can understand to see somebody,
Ivan: a guy that looks very attractive.
Ivan: I can see how that guy, that guy's attractive. But am I, do I find him attractive? Nah.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: No. Not in me.
Sam: Not my thing not your thing so you don't really want to fuck Batman no.
Ivan: Or Corey Lewandowski for that matter.
Sam: Okay well with that transition let's take a break I owe you guys an Apple dream
Sam: it was supposed to be last week and I said I'd do it this week and I still didn't
Sam: do it so no Apple dream this week maybe next week but in the meantime here is the other,
Sam: here's another one of our breaks, and we'll be back and we'll talk about,
Sam: I don't know, Iran or the economy or MAGA fracturing or something.
Sam: The primary elections, we had primary elections. We'll talk about something after this.
Ivan: Something.
Sam: Kachoo. Kachoo. Kachoo.
Ivan: Kachoo. Kachoo.
Sam: All right.
Ivan: So I got to pick something. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.
Ivan: Okay. So let's see.
Ivan: I got primary election results.
Ivan: Sam, I don't I didn't really pay close. I didn't pay very close attention to
Ivan: those. I know a little bit, but can you fill us in on what happened with all
Ivan: those primary elections that we had this week?
Sam: No.
Ivan: No? Okay. All right, then. Thank you very much. Bye, everybody.
Ivan: See ya. So what do you know about it?
Sam: I wasn't prepared. I don't have like a nice, neat little summary of everything that happened.
Ivan: Well, what do you know then? Which is probably more than what I do.
Sam: Here are some high-level summaries that I can say.
Sam: First of all, the big Democratic primary in Texas, the moderate-ish guy, his name starts with a T.
Ivan: Tallarico.
Sam: Tallarico.
Ivan: That I know. Tallarico.
Sam: He won over Jasmine Crockett.
Ivan: Why are so many people seemingly angry about this whole thing?
Sam: There are a couple things. One, this is an example of the quote-unquote centrist
Sam: winning where people were hoping to give the progressive a chance,
Sam: where progressives were hoping to give the progressive a chance, just to be clear there.
Sam: And they were kind of excited about her and thought she had a shot, etc.
Sam: Even though polling sort of says that in Texas, the moderate is more likely
Sam: to win in the general election. Surprise.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Surprise. But they figured, you know, I don't know. They were excited about that.
Sam: They were also really upset about this thing that happened in Dallas County where...
Ivan: Oh, well, I did hear a little bit about that.
Sam: So there was Dallas County, and this is apparently a county by county thing in Texas,
Sam: but the Republicans refused to cooperate on allowing people to vote anywhere in the county.
Sam: and forced a situation where people would have to vote within their own precinct.
Sam: Okay. This caused a- Oh.
Ivan: You know, I, I, yeah, I was, I did see that. And I was just discussing that
Ivan: with my wife because my wife usually works elections over here.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: And I, and I, you know, I, I told her about this.
Ivan: That is one of those changes that is so insane to do. Okay.
Ivan: Because of the confusion. Okay.
Sam: Well, and especially because it was a change. Like, if it had been that way
Sam: forever, then people would be used to it, right?
Sam: But last election, people could go anywhere in the county to vote that was convenient.
Sam: And now they had to go to their precinct.
Ivan: But here's the funny thing about all of these changes.
Ivan: You know, I think the Republicans keep making a lot of these changes in the
Ivan: idea that for some reason they think that it will...
Ivan: But I'm going to tell you something. We keep seeing that Republicans are,
Ivan: with everything going on, their motivation level has been dampened.
Ivan: And I happen to think that this kind of shit, when you do this,
Ivan: and your emotions are already dampened to go vote,
Ivan: you know, as a Democrat, you'll probably get even more furious and go,
Ivan: the Republicans are like, ah, fuck it.
Ivan: But I don't, this is not, I don't think, this is stupid.
Sam: Right. So anyway, they did this. And so lots and lots of people were confused.
Sam: They would show up at one place to vote, be told they couldn't vote there,
Sam: be told you have to go across town to this one that's near where you live instead
Sam: of the one you went to near where you work or whatever.
Sam: And it's probably less convenient and blah, blah, blah. Some of them would give
Sam: up at that point immediately. Some of them would have to do it, but do it later.
Sam: And that's where the next thing comes in, is because as polls were closing.
Sam: There was, you know, somebody went to a judge and said, hey,
Sam: because of all this confusion, we need more time.
Sam: A judge granted them more time, allowed the polls to stay open extra hours.
Sam: Like they were supposed to close at seven and he allowed them to stay open till
Sam: nine, something like that. I forget the exact details.
Sam: So more people were voting from seven to nine in this county.
Sam: And then that was appealed by the attorney general, who, by the way,
Sam: was on the ballot. So this affects his own election to the Texas Supreme Court,
Sam: who ruled, no, no, no, that extension was invalid.
Sam: So a bunch of people actually did vote from seven to nine. And then the judge
Sam: ruled that their votes can't count.
Sam: And then that was still being appealed. And this was an area where Crockett
Sam: was expected to be strong. Okay.
Sam: So you're theoretically disenfranchising Crockett voters through this action.
Sam: And so a lot of Crockett supporters were really upset by this on top of the
Sam: fact that, you know, they're just disappointed in general and wanted her to win. Right.
Sam: Crockett didn't concede the night of because these lawsuits were going on,
Sam: but did concede the next morning when it became clear that there just weren't
Sam: enough votes in this county to make a difference.
Sam: Like she lost by a decent amount.
Sam: Like, I think it was like an eight point spread or something like that.
Sam: And so she could not make up that ground based on whatever happens on the county
Sam: and whether or not they allowed the votes for these two hours.
Sam: Now, they're still going through the process to try to litigate the basic principle
Sam: of, like, you should count every vote.
Sam: You let these people vote. You should actually count them. You shouldn't just,
Sam: like, shove them in a box to the side, right?
Sam: You count the votes. But it's not going to make a difference in the race.
Sam: and and so she lost the other guy whose name i've already forgotten again at
Sam: one talarico talarico i keep you know i keep thinking of other t names but not
Sam: that one tal talarico talarico talarico okay anyway yeah.
Ivan: I'm saying it i don't know why you know i'm doing this thing where i'm like you know.
Sam: People on the left are also uncomfortable with how much he is wearing his religion on his sleeves.
Sam: Like he's taking democratic positions, but he's doing it from a religious point of view.
Sam: He expresses himself as an evangelical, even though he doesn't agree with all
Sam: the right wing evangelical positions.
Sam: And so that makes people a little bit nervous about like, is he going to be
Sam: the kind of guy that you get him in office and then he moves Republican anyway,
Sam: like, and sort of does, doesn't play along with the Democrats a lot.
Sam: So they're worried about that kind of stuff, you know? So we'll see.
Sam: But at the same time, it's Texas.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, how do you, how do you appeal to the potential people who are dissatisfied
Sam: with Donald Trump, but don't like the normal Democrats, you know?
Ivan: You know, one thing is that I know plenty of people that are deeply religious,
Ivan: but are also very liberal.
Sam: Yes.
Sam: And there's not a straight, like, you're religious, therefore you're conservative.
Sam: It's certain types of religion that go along with the conservatism.
Ivan: I mean, look, even with Catholics, which the whole abortion thing is an issue.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Man, let me tell you something. Some of the most liberal people I've ever met,
Ivan: I mean, like, extremely, are fucking Catholics.
Ivan: That'll make some people that we think are liberal look like just fucking,
Ivan: you know, you know, complete, you know, capitalists.
Ivan: So, I mean, there's the whole.
Sam: Like, in the 70s and 80s, there was this whole Catholic liberation theology thing going on.
Ivan: Liberation theologists, exactly. Those people I'm referring to, yes.
Sam: And, you know, people have said all the time that, like, if you actually,
Sam: like, read the Bible in the New Testament as opposed to the Old Testament,
Sam: it's fairly radical liberal ideas all through that thing.
Ivan: Yes. Well, I mean, that is the reality. And that's one of the things that,
Ivan: you know, because I did I did spend a lot of time with people that deeply,
Ivan: you know, study liberation theology.
Ivan: And, you know, I realize that it's one of those things where it's one of the
Ivan: worst fucking lies by the evangelicals that the New Testament,
Ivan: you know, that they completely act like the New Testament is some kind of right-wing
Ivan: fucking writing when it is about the most fucking flaming liberal thing you could see in your life.
Sam: Yes. The whole, like, rich people passing through the eye of a needle.
Ivan: Anti-rich people. I mean, you know, anti-discrimination, anti-every, all of this shit.
Sam: Yes. The golden rule.
Ivan: The golden rule.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, it's just, it's bonkers.
Sam: Yes. Anyway, so people are nervous about him for that reason.
Sam: Also, for Texas Senate, and this was for Texas Senate, by the way,
Sam: on the Republican side for Texas Senate, they've gone into a runoff between the incumbent.
Sam: This is not Ted Cruz. This is the other one. What's his name,
Sam: Yvonne? I'm so bad on names this time.
Ivan: Tallarico?
Sam: No, no, no, no. The incumbent senator from Texas on the Republican side.
Ivan: Cornyn. Cornyn.
Sam: Cornyn. Yes. So Cornyn is running against Paxton, and neither one of them got
Sam: a majority, and so they're going to run off.
Sam: And the runoff schedule in Texas is long, so we're going to have like a few
Sam: months of this, apparently.
Ivan: It's in May.
Sam: It's in May. So you're going to have this going on.
Sam: And, you know, Paxton has his own set of scandals.
Sam: So the dream Democratic scenario.
Ivan: I mean, how the hell this son of a bitch still is in politics is a testament to the new GOP.
Sam: The GOP in Texas impeached him for all sorts of wrongdoing. And then he was
Sam: acquitted as part of the impeachment proceedings.
Sam: He's had issues with his wife. He's had issues with corruption.
Sam: He's had issues with all kinds of different things.
Sam: And yet he has survived all of them so far.
Ivan: The new GOP.
Sam: Now, so again, the Democratic dream scenario essentially started with the victory,
Sam: started with the moderate already winning on the Democratic side and ends with
Sam: if Paxton wins the primary on the Republican side, they think that combination
Sam: would give them a real chance.
Ivan: Well, I do agree. because look, you just said it yourself.
Ivan: The guys that fucking impeached him were his own party in the first place.
Ivan: They already tried to fucking torpedo him. Okay.
Ivan: They already believe he is, you know, irredeemable.
Ivan: So, yeah, that's going to, I think that that will definitely impact their chances
Ivan: of keeping the seat. Yeah.
Sam: Right. So we shall see, like, you know.
Sam: People on our Slack and elsewhere make the point that, you know,
Sam: Texas for the Democrats is Lucy Charlie Brown and the football. Okay.
Ivan: I know.
Sam: For years and years, it's like Texas is slowly moving. It's getting purple.
Sam: The Democrats are going to win any time now.
Sam: Any time now. And, you know, this last 2024 went the opposite direction.
Sam: It went more red than it's been in a while.
Sam: You know, but Texas has actually been like, you know, in people's heads,
Sam: Texas is this solid red state.
Sam: And in fact, it is not, it is a red state, but it is not as solid as people think it is.
Sam: It's like, you know, the Republicans have an advantage.
Sam: It's a decent advantage, but it's not like Wyoming. Okay.
Ivan: No, and it's also helped a lot by a lot of things that the Republicans have
Ivan: done to structurally tilt it their way, okay?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Because if you see the general population, it's not as conservative as the voting would let you believe.
Ivan: It is, but it's moderate, okay?
Ivan: It's not, you know, right? It's a lot of big cities, okay?
Ivan: You know, you got San Antonio, you got Dallas, and they're very blue, and Austin.
Ivan: So, you know, the state is a lot more moderate than...
Ivan: It seems at first glance.
Sam: Right. And so, you know, who knows?
Sam: Like the safe response on anything Texas related is I'll believe it when I fucking see it.
Sam: And not one moment before, you know, you know, because I don't know.
Sam: Occasionally you get inroads and it really seems to be the common, the combination.
Sam: you have to have a republican
Sam: who's in trouble anyway okay right
Sam: you know and then you have a more moderate democrat
Sam: you know and with that combination
Sam: democrats have gotten close before and yeah i i long-term trends yeah at some
Sam: point you'll probably have a democratic senator again you know or you might
Sam: have the state go blue in a presidential election at some point But again,
Sam: believe it when you see it, not one moment earlier. Okay.
Sam: Other stuff from the primary. There are lots of races all over the country.
Sam: The only others that I saw someone talking about, and I think this was Chris Hayes on MS Now.
Sam: I wasn't even fully paying attention, and I think it was on in the background, so apologies.
Sam: But I think mostly in North Carolina, but in some other places,
Sam: too, there have been primaries where there has been a Democrat who ended up.
Sam: Cooperating with the Republicans on one issue or another.
Sam: Like there was one in North Carolina, I believe, who provided the swing vote
Sam: in the state legislature to allow some additional cooperation with ICE in the
Sam: state of North Carolina.
Sam: And then some Democratic constituent just got extremely upset about that,
Sam: ran against them in the primary and won.
Sam: Because and there were several examples of this sort
Sam: of thing where there were more moderate republicans
Sam: who actually did the thing and you see this
Sam: in in the congress like uh all the time too where you have a handful of democrats
Sam: who will go along with you know with this just this last week we had war powers
Sam: resolution stuff we had democrats go along with that or we had democrats go
Sam: along with reopening the government after the shutdown.
Sam: We have Democrats go along with whatever.
Sam: We have a small handful of them. And apparently at the local level,
Sam: in North Carolina specifically, but I think a couple other states,
Sam: there were Democrats who did that and then just immediately got punished.
Ivan: Well, apparently also, Fetterman's stroke made him a Republican.
Sam: Well, yeah, pretty much.
Sam: He didn't have a primary this time, but it's a tangent there. But yes. Yeah.
Sam: So a bunch of these folks got punished. And so which is a little,
Sam: you know, in Congress, you know, different states are doing different things.
Sam: Right. In Texas, the moderate won.
Sam: In a bunch of these other places, the moderate incumbent got punished and tossed
Sam: out for not doing enough to fight what was going on and instead sort of going along in certain cases.
Sam: So those are the, those are the two main things that I remember.
Sam: There probably is more, like I said, I wasn't prepared.
Sam: Like I, after, you know, sometimes after these, like there was a,
Sam: there was another election of,
Sam: A few months. I don't know. Whatever. I had like a nice little cheat sheet of
Sam: here are all the things that happened that I saw some post online and I saved
Sam: it and I had it ready and blah, blah, blah. I didn't do that.
Sam: I did share on the curmudgeon's core Slack a TikTok that had all that kind of stuff.
Ivan: Wait a second. Yeah, and it wasn't even up to date when you shared it.
Sam: Well, it was like.
Ivan: It had some mistakes.
Sam: It was a few hours old.
Ivan: It had mistakes.
Sam: The only mistake.
Ivan: I heard it and I'm like, what the hell is this thing talking about?
Sam: The only mistake was it didn't have that Crockett had conceded.
Sam: It was a few hours old. Everything else was fine.
Sam: Let me actually find out. I'll play that for you. There we go.
Sam: I just have to find it. I just have to find the thing where you complained about it.
Sam: And then that'll be my shortcut to bringing it up.
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: Okay, here we go. This is Amanda Nelson. By the way, good TikToker,
Sam: political content, has good content every day. But let me bring it up.
Amanda Nelson: We had elections last night, and a lot of Republican incumbents had very bad
Amanda Nelson: nights. But let's start with the big one, the Texas Democratic primary.
Amanda Nelson: It's been called for James Tallarico by most places, but there were some issues
Amanda Nelson: with the Dallas county vote.
Amanda Nelson: Republicans introduced a precinct system to the county for the first time.
Amanda Nelson: Most people could vote before anywhere in the county that they wanted,
Amanda Nelson: but now they had an assigned precinct.
Amanda Nelson: Some of them, most of them, a lot of them had no idea. A judge ordered the polls
Amanda Nelson: to be kept open after 7 from 7 until 9 p.m. so that people could figure out
Amanda Nelson: where they were supposed to go.
Amanda Nelson: And then Ken Paxton, the attorney general for Texas and a candidate in this
Amanda Nelson: race for the Republican primary, appealed it.
Amanda Nelson: And the Texas Supreme Court sided with Paxton. So those votes that were taken
Amanda Nelson: in Dallas from 7 to 9 p.m. are not being counted.
Amanda Nelson: So Crockett is not actually conceded. And I expect there will be lawsuits.
Amanda Nelson: Dallas County primary voters are largely black. I don't care how you feel about
Amanda Nelson: who may or may not have won this race, but we should be calling for every vote
Amanda Nelson: to be counted. in all circumstances.
Amanda Nelson: Meanwhile, the Republican Senate primary is messy, messy, messy, messy.
Amanda Nelson: John Cornyn's already spent $60 million fending off this challenge,
Amanda Nelson: and it didn't work. They're going to a runoff.
Amanda Nelson: Back to the Dems. In the Texas second, Al Green is struggling to maintain his incumbency.
Amanda Nelson: Al Green was the rep at the State of the Union with the sign that said Black
Amanda Nelson: people aren't apes. He's 78 years old. Runoff.
Amanda Nelson: In the Texas 2nd, Dan Crenshaw has lost his primary to Steve Toth, who is crazier than Dan.
Amanda Nelson: Somehow, this is Dan, if you don't remember.
Amanda Nelson: In the Texas 23rd, Tony Gonzalez is also failing to stave off a primary opponent.
Amanda Nelson: This is the guy whose girlfriend set herself on fire. Run off.
Amanda Nelson: Yikes. And the attorney general race. Going to a runoff. Oh,
Amanda Nelson: who's that? Our good friend Chip Roy.
Amanda Nelson: Did not do well. Not going to be in Congress one way or to other.
Amanda Nelson: The North Carolina 4th had a primary rematch between Valerie Fushi and Nita Alam.
Amanda Nelson: Fushi held on by like a thousand votes. Super close. They had some differences
Amanda Nelson: on data centers and funding from Israel. Two votes!
Amanda Nelson: North Carolina's state Senate seat, the 26th. Phil has sat in that seat for
Amanda Nelson: 20 years. He's been the Senate pro-temporary president for 15.
Amanda Nelson: He is responsible for redrawing the maps of North Carolina at Donald Trump's behest last year.
Amanda Nelson: He lost by two votes. Two. His son sits on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Amanda Nelson: So, you know, expect shenanigans. North Carolina's House District 106.
Amanda Nelson: Carla Cunningham is a Democrat who has voted with Republicans in North Carolina to partner with ICE.
Amanda Nelson: She lost her primary 77 to 22.
Amanda Nelson: Ouch. Over in Arkansas, we had a special election and a flip.
Amanda Nelson: This is the 70th House District. Alex Holliday was running for that seat again.
Amanda Nelson: He lost by 200 votes last time. He won by over a thousand votes this time.
Amanda Nelson: I talked to him as part of Choose Your Fighter.
Amanda Nelson: You can go back on my feed and see that interview.
Amanda Nelson: Sorry about your bad day, Cornyn. Hope it gets better.
Sam: Okay, that's it.
Ivan: I forgot about Crenshaw losing, you know.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Oh, well. But the thing is that he lost to somebody who is more unhinged.
Sam: Yes, and the guy whose girlfriend set herself on fire, he has since.
Ivan: Yeah, he's withdrawn.
Sam: Well, it was going to go to a runoff, but he has since the party leadership
Sam: basically told him, get out.
Sam: And he is not resigning his seat, but he has announced he's dropping out of the race.
Ivan: That is something that is very important correction because I need to honor
Ivan: that girl about that. I don't want this to go wrong.
Ivan: That woman was not his girlfriend. That woman was pressured and harassed into
Ivan: a sexual relationship with this asshole who was her boss.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: And she felt bad about it, ashamed, embarrassed in her marriage and fucking killed herself over it.
Ivan: No, not her his girlfriend.
Sam: I stand for it.
Ivan: But everybody's getting this wrong, and it's pissing me off.
Ivan: This woman was harassed intensely by this asshole into a sexual relationship,
Ivan: and she felt cornered as an employee.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: That guy is really messed up.
Sam: Yeah. And he has dropped out of the race.
Sam: So I guess the runoff, the other guy is likely to win.
Sam: But he is at the moment saying he's going to serve out the rest of his term.
Sam: I know there had been some talk of disciplinary hearings within the House.
Sam: Like, even the other Republicans are appalled by this guy and were about ready to take action.
Sam: Yeah, even given they're really narrow margins.
Sam: But I guess that I guess the deal has probably been made that he can serve out
Sam: his term in exchange for dropping his reelection bid.
Sam: So so I don't expect really more to come of that. But, you know,
Sam: if more comes out, it could still flare up.
Sam: So anyway, that's it for the election summaries. Shall we take a break?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Okay. Here we go. Here comes a break. And when we come back,
Sam: it'll be my turn. Back after this.
Sam: Okay. We got two things. Maybe we can spend a little bit of time on each, at least the big things.
Sam: One, I think we'd be remiss in not following up on Iran.
Sam: Last week, we were still in the very first hours of it.
Ivan: Well, we did do some coverage of Iran first. You did read the message from our
Ivan: dear leader. Do you want to read it again?
Sam: No, I don't want to read it again. Once was quite enough.
Ivan: I mean, it's like reading that shit, almost like it's like it's like almost
Ivan: like try to it's like almost clogging your heart arteries with something.
Ivan: It's like clogging my brain with like this garbage infusion.
Ivan: OK, of nonsense.
Ivan: Well, but but but wait.
Sam: Wait, I need to say this since you mentioned Donald Trump's statements.
Sam: there was also a press availability earlier today with donald trump and hegseth,
Sam: and there are a few quotes i'm just going to scroll up and down i have not watched
Sam: the actual video of this but i noticed as we've been speaking here on on i have
Sam: mastodon up and there were a few highlights that were posted it was actually highlights you.
Ivan: Be you be lowlights.
Sam: Yes. Posted by threads. It was actually threads. Aaron Rupar posting on threads.
Sam: I just had a gateway into Mastodon.
Sam: Okay. So the first highlight he posted was, this was Trump speaking to a grouping
Sam: of Latin American leaders. Okay.
Sam: Trump to Latin American leaders. Quote, I'm not learning your damn language. I don't have time.
Ivan: Well, we didn't expect that Trump at age 80 Whatever the fuck you are Nobody asked you Okay.
Sam: Here's another one.
Ivan: Not learning your damn language Okay, all right, very good.
Sam: Another quote from Trump. We use missiles. You want us to use a missile?
Sam: They're extremely accurate.
Sam: FOOM! Right into the living room. That's the end of that cartel person.
Sam: Okay, let's see.
Ivan: The fucking hell. The fucking hell.
Ivan: How could we be living this right now for real?
Sam: Okay, here's another one. Trump on Mexico. Quote.
Sam: I like the president very much. She's a very good person. She's got a beautiful
Sam: voice. Beautiful woman.
Sam: I said, let me eradicate the cartels. No, no, no, please, president.
Sam: We have to eradicate them. We have to knock the hell out of them.
Sam: The cartels are running Mexico. We can't have that.
Sam: Okay, here's a Hegseth one.
Sam: So Hegseth was asked, oh wait, let me get the beginning, the question too,
Sam: because that was important to this.
Sam: Trump asked Hegseth, is Rubio better in Spanish?
Sam: And Hegseth answered, I only speak American.
Ivan: Oh, my God. Oh, Jesus Christ. Fucking hell.
Ivan: Well, everything seems to be going well over there.
Sam: Huh?
Ivan: Mi no spico americano.
Sam: Okay, another Hegseth quote, and then I think we can move on and get back to Iran.
Ivan: Oh, God.
Sam: This was all at the meeting with the Latin American leaders.
Sam: Hey, Seth, for far too long, our country's gaze was only on borders in far-flung
Sam: places, not our own border, not our own hemisphere, not the Western Hemisphere.
Sam: President Trump has established the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine,
Sam: the Donroe Doctrine, and the War Department is implementing it as fast as we can.
Ivan: Just, you know, so eloquent, so full of, you know, strength.
Sam: Okay, anyway, I ran. We did speak about it last week, but we were still in the
Sam: very first early hours of the conflict.
Sam: I think the main thing that, first of all, it was confirmed that the Ayatollah
Sam: was killed. at the first, you know, while we were recording last week.
Ivan: Not just the Ayatollah, but almost literally. The whole, I still go and I'm
Ivan: like, I am still in shock at the stupidity of the Iranian leadership.
Sam: That they had a meeting.
Ivan: In terms? Yes! With everybody in person.
Ivan: Yes, and it wasn't in some kind of like ridiculously hardened bunker.
Sam: There's just some house.
Ivan: Of all places. Yeah. What do they think?
Ivan: What? I don't, I'm, I'm, it's stunning.
Sam: Well, and the reports are, and, and, and I don't know how much of this has been
Sam: confirmed because it seems actually kind of alarming that this level of detail was coming out.
Sam: But I saw reports saying that specifically, you know, how the Israelis located
Sam: him and everything was first of all.
Sam: Well, no, no. First of all, they have all kinds of on-the-ground intelligence, right?
Sam: Well, yeah, that they do. They do have, like, molds in the Iranian government, and they have that.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: But also, more specifically, Tehran and lots of Iran has a massive,
Sam: like, you know, CCD surveillance network around the whole city.
Ivan: And they infiltrated it, of course.
Sam: And the Israelis infiltrated it. So they had access to all the security cameras
Sam: across the whole city and were on an ongoing basis tracking the movement of
Sam: all the significant leaders that they cared about.
Ivan: I mean, I'm just shocked that there's stupidity.
Sam: Yeah. So anyway, when we recorded last week, there had been some reports of
Sam: the Ayatollah's death. Iran was denying it.
Sam: Other sources were saying yes. But and by the time we finished the show,
Sam: it looked like it had probably happened, but still wasn't 100 percent confirmed.
Sam: It was confirmed later. As you said, lots of other leaders killed.
Sam: I mean, they basically decapitated huge numbers of the Iranian leadership.
Sam: I mean, seriously, imagine the same effect as someone bombing the State of the Union address here.
Sam: I mean, we're at that level of decapitation.
Ivan: That level, yes.
Sam: But, you know, and, you know, there are people survive and there's still leadership
Sam: and it's still continuing, just as it would here.
Sam: We have the designated survivor, you know, and so, but all of that is going on.
Sam: And then the Iranians have, of course, been retaliating.
Sam: And they have been striking basically every fucking country in the region.
Sam: I mean, especially places where there are American assets in place.
Sam: But not only. I mean, they hit Azerbaijan the other day.
Sam: Basically, every Gulf Coast state that exists has been hit.
Sam: Israel, of course. Israel has been attacking Lebanon as well as Iran.
Sam: The U.S. has been attacking Iran. One of the things that has been coming out over the last,
Sam: I guess it's been a week now, is the administration has apparently been taken
Sam: somewhat by surprise by the level of the Iranian response. What?
Ivan: They just expected that nothing was going to happen?
Sam: Well, the last couple of times that Iran has been attacked, they've sort of
Sam: done one half-hearted counterattack, and then it's been over, right?
Ivan: Yeah, but it's almost also because...
Ivan: I mean, on purpose, they held back. I mean, that is what they did.
Sam: They held back on purpose. They held back on purpose before they specifically wanted not to escalate.
Sam: Okay, this time, you killed their entire leadership.
Ivan: What did you expect?
Sam: You're doing a massive ongoing attack that you have said explicitly will probably last several weeks.
Ivan: But here's the other problem. I'm going to tell you the other problem of what
Ivan: they have done. Okay, the biggest issue.
Sam: What the Iranians have done.
Ivan: Well, I'm going to say...
Sam: Or the Americans. Or the Israelis.
Ivan: The Americans in terms of like, why are they surprised that there was more of a response?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Look, in the past, when we've done a military campaign of this type anywhere, okay, first thing to do,
Ivan: There was a mass buildup that took way longer than the buildup that they did.
Ivan: Yes. Spent a lot of time in preparation. And when they went in on first strikes,
Ivan: it wasn't a small first strike.
Ivan: The first strikes were meant to paralyze the other opponent, okay?
Ivan: To immediately inflict such damage that they were basically paralyzed.
Sam: To be fair, they did decapitate the leadership, as we said. But the other part.
Ivan: But that's a relatively easy target, if you think about it.
Sam: Well, no, no. But those are not. The key missing.
Ivan: And actually, that actually. Wait,
Ivan: wait, wait. But that actually is counterproductive for them to do that.
Ivan: Because if you take out the leadership, that there's nobody to talk to that
Ivan: to kind of like say, hey, we're going to do this. You can stop.
Ivan: No. You talk about there's no decision making.
Ivan: You got everybody here under attack. What I heard a little bit is that they
Ivan: decentralized decision-making at that point so that they all could fire anyway
Ivan: if they got hit. So what the hell?
Ivan: You went and you created this situation where they didn't – okay.
Sam: The key missing element for the shock and awe kind of stuff that you were talking
Sam: about for the Iraq wars was actually you start out by eliminating air power.
Sam: and making sure you have that's
Sam: the focus you you make sure you have
Sam: complete control of the airspace as soon as possible now you'll notice what's
Sam: happening right now and the other place that the americans had not well there's
Sam: several places the americans had not thought through even last week we were
Sam: talking about hey they had no plan for day two right but like,
Sam: These they're using their cheap drones as part of these attacks that apparently
Sam: they've stockpiled, you know, 100,000 of these things or something like they've
Sam: been they've been constantly building these cheap drones.
Sam: They cost like 20 grand each to make or something like that,
Sam: something insanely cheap.
Sam: And they've been attacking all of these Gulf countries where the Americans have
Sam: been giving them Patriot missiles for defense against missile attacks.
Sam: These patriots cost like a couple million dollars each per missile,
Sam: and they're designed to go after missiles, so they're not actually all that
Sam: good against these drones.
Sam: And every time they shoot down one of these drones, they're spending $2 million
Sam: to shoot down a $20,000 drone.
Sam: And they've got a lot of these drones and not very many of the Patriot missiles.
Sam: And this is just one of those planning things. So enough so.
Ivan: But this is once again, lack of strategic planning around this and forethought
Ivan: into, hey, what can they do?
Ivan: How do we prepare? How do we, by the way, because the preparation for this was not that complicated.
Ivan: Well, and look, who could give you the tools to prepare for this very effectively? What country?
Sam: Well, this is what I was going to say. Ukraine, of course. Because here's the
Sam: thing. This was not, there's no way this should have been unexpected.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: Because the Russians have been using the Iranian drones in Ukraine as like their
Sam: primary mode of attack for months and months and months now.
Sam: I mean, they use other things, too, but they've been using extensively these drones.
Ivan: And so if you didn't have a strategy to completely neutralize that threat to
Ivan: do that, that you're a bunch of idiots.
Sam: And let's be very specific here. It's not even the Russians using some Russian
Sam: drones that the Iranians don't have access to are.
Ivan: Using Iranian drones.
Sam: Yes. The exact same kind of drones that Iran is now using in the Gulf.
Ivan: Ukraine is fighting and neutralizing in very large swaths and they've developed defenses for. But hey!
Ivan: You know, we're smarter than everybody, right, Sam?
Ivan: Our leadership is, I mean, as you can see, I mean, those quotes you gave, oof, let me tell you.
Ivan: Talk about, talk about it. I mean, intelligence there. Oof, let me tell you, I'm overwhelmed.
Sam: Well, look, I mean, the fundamental thing is just, it's seemingly just,
Sam: it's not even that they had a bad plan.
Sam: It's literally that, again, like we talked last week, the plan did not go beyond
Sam: the first few hours of the conflict.
Ivan: The plan was like the plan of what we've done before, what Trump has done many
Ivan: times, which is just launch missiles and then, OK, bye.
Ivan: They expected just what you OK, you actually very well encapsulated it earlier when you said that.
Ivan: They thought they were going to get a response like what's happened before.
Ivan: And are shocked that it's been more extensive. And it shows absolutely no,
Ivan: as we've talked about how this administration operates, no long-term plan.
Ivan: No thinking of anything beyond, you know, the current moment.
Sam: And they never, because I feel like this is fundamentally connected to the entire way MAGA operates.
Sam: and the fact that they have no empathy for anything, no consideration whatsoever
Sam: of, hey, let's try to think through what it would be like to be the other side
Sam: of the conflict and what they would do.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, because they can't, they physically cannot put themselves into the position of the...
Ivan: Or mentally, not physically.
Sam: But... Right. Into the mental position of the other side and try to role-play that out.
Sam: It appears to just not be a skill they have at the leadership level.
Sam: And look, I am sure there are people at the Pentagon who are very qualified to do this.
Ivan: Right, but they're not listening to them.
Sam: I'm sure there were plans on the shelf that had been written and refined over
Sam: the course of many years and decades of if we really had to do a full attack
Sam: on Iran, what would we do?
Sam: I can almost guarantee you those were ignored completely I'm.
Ivan: 100% sure that you're right.
Sam: Right you know because oh,
Sam: experts did that. We don't like experts.
Ivan: Oh, we don't like experts.
Sam: You know, that was touched by people that Biden and Obama liked.
Ivan: Therefore, we can't even look.
Sam: We're going to shred them. Yeah. We're not going to look at those.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: And, you know, and so we hadn't thought of that.
Sam: Apparently, we hadn't thought of, oh, people might want to get evacuated from the region.
Sam: How would we deal with that? And Rubio is out there. I think it was Rubio who
Sam: said, And, like, this wouldn't be a problem except the airspace is closed.
Ivan: Oh, who could have foreseen that that could be a problem, Sam?
Sam: And now, and they're also surprised that there may be shipping issues in the Straits of Hormuz.
Ivan: Oh, my God. Who the hell could have foreseen that as well?
Ivan: How could that have impacted the price of oil, Sam? Oh, my God.
Sam: Right. Well, we'll just tell them it's safe. Go ahead.
Ivan: Hey, how could going and battling against every clean energy project of the
Ivan: United States and then all of a sudden launching a war that restricts the exports of liquid natural,
Ivan: liquefied natural gas and oil have an impact on energy prices, Sam?
Ivan: My God, who could have foreseen all of this, Sam?
Sam: No one.
Ivan: It's completely out of the blue. There's a whole bunch of elitist,
Ivan: overeducated pinheads that we don't listen to.
Sam: Right. Because, and then, and we had started to talk about this last week,
Sam: but it seems to have become even more clear this week.
Sam: No thought whatsoever. Okay, we're going to decapitate the leadership.
Sam: Okay, who's next? And how does that work?
Ivan: And how would you have worked, if that's what you wanted to do,
Ivan: who did you want to? Because, okay, we're not, by the way, how many times did
Ivan: they flip-flop from regime change, no regime change?
Ivan: Regime change or no regime change? I mean, but of course, because they had no
Ivan: thought about it later because you would, what you would have been doing is working.
Ivan: Okay, who is going to replace them if you're going to kill them all?
Ivan: We negotiated with them in order to go and like do something.
Sam: Now, Donald Trump has said in another Truth Social post that he does expect
Sam: to have a say in who gets to be picked.
Ivan: Ah, I see.
Sam: And that the one that the Iranians have picked so far, which is the son of the
Sam: one we killed, the high total we killed, is unacceptable. And that won't do.
Ivan: I see.
Sam: Now of course the i'm sure they're going to try to respond by that but just
Sam: whoever the iranians pick just kill them until we get one that we think we like or maybe.
Ivan: Okay maybe the iranians will get a little bit fucking smarter this time and
Ivan: not just set him up somewhere where he can just get fucking killed.
Sam: You know yes the the.
Ivan: I don't know. Listen, first of all, what we did is abhorrent.
Ivan: What the United States has done right now.
Ivan: And as we criticize the war plans or whatever, let me go back to one thing,
Ivan: because I do agree that some people have talked about how we're talking about
Ivan: this like it's some kind of sport or whatever.
Ivan: What the United States did in this attack and what it's done and the damage
Ivan: and the killing that is done together with Israel is abhorrent.
Ivan: It's ridiculous. There's no reason for this.
Ivan: There's never been any fucking reason for this. OK, you know,
Ivan: we had, OK, an agreement that President Obama forged to limit their Iranian nuclear plan, OK,
Ivan: to develop nuclear weapons. This had been solved.
Ivan: And the only reason we don't have it right now is because Donald Trump decided
Ivan: that because Obama did it, I don't want it. Okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: This issue had been put to bed. Number one. Number two.
Ivan: Right now. The only reason this happened is because of the fucking Epstein files
Ivan: and because Netanyahu wanted it and dog walked Trump into it because he figured,
Ivan: well, how can I get this distraction off my head?
Ivan: Hey, let's go to war. Fuck it.
Ivan: I like bombs. I don't like those Arab guys. Persians. Yeah, not Arabs.
Sam: Donald Trump was quoted this week.
Ivan: Well, he'll call them Arabs, even though they're Persians. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah.
Sam: Donald Trump said this week, in my first term, I built this military.
Sam: In my second term, I'm using it.
Sam: So, anticipate more.
Sam: He's been talking about Cuba recently, too. He recently said something about,
Sam: like, we're going to put Rubio in charge there.
Sam: So, like, apparently Rubio's going to, yeah, they're going to do something in
Sam: Cuba and Rubio's going to be president there or something.
Ivan: We're going to make him the governor of Cuba.
Sam: Something. Yeah, I don't know. so he yeah he said repeatedly like Cuba's next,
Sam: in one way shape or another,
Sam: The peace president.
Ivan: The peace president.
Sam: You know, he did say, didn't he say something like, since you didn't give me
Sam: my Nobel Peace Prize, now I don't have to worry about peace so much anymore?
Ivan: I think he did say that at one point. But he probably stole the man the Nobel
Ivan: Peace Prize again anyway.
Sam: Well, what better way to get peace than to.
Ivan: Go to war?
Sam: Than to fully destroy your enemy so they can't fight back anymore.
Ivan: There is this movie that I always use to quote.
Ivan: it's not a it's not a good movie but it's uh oh god where the hell i had the dvd around here,
Ivan: it was it's called sale of the century okay and
Ivan: the sale of the century is a movie with gregory hines and chevy chase where
Ivan: they were arms dealers okay and they go to this there is this arms sales like
Ivan: bizarre thing whatever did you know they show what they do and the whole the
Ivan: slogan was arms for peace.
Ivan: You know, I always loved the slogan, arms for peace, Sam.
Ivan: That's what you got. You got, you know, you got, you know, war for peace, arms for peace.
Ivan: Yeah, you know, but sale of the century. It's got a few funny moments.
Ivan: It's not a good movie, but there's a couple of things that are funny in the movie.
Sam: I am looking for this and not finding, Oh, a 1980, Deal of the Century.
Ivan: Deal of the Century.
Sam: Deal of the Century, 1983 is the movie you're thinking about.
Sam: Sale of the Century was, there were apparently a few game shows with that name.
Ivan: But in different countries. Yeah, that's the game. Deal of the Century. Deal of the Century.
Sam: Deal of the Century. There we go.
Ivan: So, yeah. You know, arms for peace, Sam. War for peace.
Ivan: War for peace. The more we bomb, the more peace we'll get.
Sam: That's that's lovely. OK, let's do a quick switch up because I don't want to
Sam: end without letting you talk a little bit about more bad economic numbers that came out this week.
Ivan: Sam, hey, look at that.
Ivan: Look, the the the the golden era, the the jobs president. So I shared it.
Sam: I know I know my situation has turned around. I just got like 30 new jobs this week.
Ivan: Wow. Congratulations.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. I'm no longer unemployed. I am over-employed.
Ivan: You're over-employed. Wow.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Wow. That's great. Okay. So I don't know if you, I shared this chart that showed
Ivan: the average job gain, okay, over the last, since 2023 through 2020.
Ivan: February, 2026. Okay.
Ivan: And the one very salient point in this data is the dramatic slowdown in job
Ivan: creation that happened right after Trump basically came into office.
Ivan: Okay. And it's a, Sam, it's a
Ivan: stunning drop that I don't think that I have ever seen. No, I don't think.
Ivan: No president ever has been able to slow down job creation as effectively as Donald Trump has.
Sam: Good job. Donald's done great.
Ivan: Since the start of the presidency. And let me be clear.
Sam: Oh, come on, Yvonne. Sometimes presidents are hostage to— It's not under the
Sam: president's control. It's nothing.
Sam: Biden left him this destroyed economy.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: And he's trying to fix it, Yvonne. Tariffs will fix everything,
Sam: except the stupid Supreme Court is trying to get in the way.
Ivan: Right. Okay, the refunds. It's Sam, no president ever has been more job destructive
Ivan: as quickly as Donald Trump.
Ivan: It's crazy. It's just crazy. He came into office and ever since he started with
Ivan: this whole thing of his trade war, economic war, tariff thing,
Ivan: basically ending all these subsidies, cutting all these things,
Ivan: you know, Now, President Biden has started all these infrastructure programs
Ivan: and the Inflation Reduction Act and all this investment in the manufacturing economy and whatever.
Ivan: And he basically came in and fucking stopped.
Ivan: All of those and then proceeded to do all these things that made every employer
Ivan: be afraid of hiring people.
Ivan: And he just slammed the brakes immediately on all job creation and has led to job losses.
Ivan: And he did this.
Ivan: In other cases, you can blame, you know, hey, Obama came into a bad economy from W.
Sam: I thought it was all AI. Right.
Ivan: No, it's not the fucking AI. OK, it's not the fucking AI. It's Donald.
Ivan: And it's not even his advisors. It's fucking Donald J.
Ivan: Trump directly has been the biggest job killing president ever, ever. It's incredible.
Ivan: It is. And then, you know, we keep spending all these months where people keep
Ivan: saying that the economic data that the government is showing is great.
Ivan: And me and Pete on the Slack have to keep saying, man, look,
Ivan: the data they keep publishing keeps getting revised backwards.
Ivan: OK, all the other data that isn't manipulated by the government shows you that everything is fucked.
Ivan: It can't be that they're saying that everything is under control while all external
Ivan: data says everything is fucked.
Ivan: And even their data now is showing that we're fucked.
Ivan: Inflation is rising again. And by the way.
Ivan: They think oil is going to hit 100 bucks. That's not going to push down inflation.
Ivan: By the way, the last time we had a big inflation push was precisely because
Ivan: oil soared when Russia declared war on Ukraine.
Ivan: I mean, that was one of the side effects. OK, now Biden didn't incite the war
Ivan: between Russia and Ukraine.
Ivan: Biden did everything he could to try to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Ivan: In this case, this idiot launched a war and was like, oh, wait,
Ivan: this might stop the flow of oil?
Ivan: Wait, this might cause oil to rise? All of a sudden, now they're scrambling
Ivan: to try to, you know, fix the problem, okay?
Ivan: Oh, we're going to offer insurance guarantees. Look, let me tell you something.
Ivan: Do you think insurance is going to go and make a company try to sail a fucking
Ivan: boat that might get shot at? The crews won't want to do it.
Ivan: Who the fuck wants to go and sail a fucking oil tanker through a fucking war zone?
Ivan: Nobody's going to do that. This is idiotic.
Ivan: Vessel traffic from the Strait of Hormuz has dropped like 90%.
Ivan: And unless there is a ceasefire completely agreed upon, it's not going to resume.
Ivan: Another problem that we've got,
Ivan: by the way, is that these idiots had been depleting the SPR last year.
Ivan: Do you know why these idiots have been depleting the...
Sam: The Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Ivan: The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, yes. Do you know why these idiots were depleting the SPR?
Sam: Why, Yvonne?
Ivan: Because they were trying to artificially push down oil prices, okay?
Ivan: Because they kept trying to fucking, like, lower inflation, okay?
Ivan: But using it just simply to lower the price of oil. Not because there was an urgency or whatever.
Ivan: Now the SPR has been depleted and now we've got a real shock that they created
Ivan: and the SPR has been significantly depleted.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: So they can't use that.
Sam: Awesome.
Ivan: This is the biggest bunch of fucking morons we have ever had in charge.
Ivan: Makes the George W. Bush administration look like an absolute cadre of geniuses.
Sam: Indeed.
Ivan: It's, I mean, by the way, every fucking jobs report that's come out has,
Ivan: keeps being downward. And I said this recently, downwardly revised. OK.
Ivan: Over the last seven months, America has lost 76,000 jobs. That's the net result.
Ivan: In the last 15 years, there have been only nine months where America has lost jobs.
Ivan: All nine happened to be under Donald Trump. Now, I know it included COVID.
Sam: Yep.
Ivan: But all these since 2025 are not COVID. We've had, think about nine, right?
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: Since Trump is in office, we've had one, two, three, four, five.
Sam: In his second term.
Ivan: In his second term. Yep. During COVID, we only had four. And now we've had five.
Sam: You know... This is what folks voted for, right?
Ivan: Yes. And by the way, oh, here's another kicker. Check this out,
Ivan: how he wants to solve the price of oil problem, okay?
Ivan: You know, we talk about Ukraine and them helping with things and whatever, whatnot.
Ivan: Skazma sent one on TV with Larry Kudlow, another fucking psychopath.
Ivan: He says that Trump may now lift sanctions on Russian oil to try and reduce oil
Ivan: prices during Trump's war.
Ivan: Huh? How about that? Hey, now let's, hey, let's make the price of oil go up
Ivan: and let's let Russia sell the oil now at the higher price.
Ivan: How's that?
Sam: Sounds good. You know, I'm sure like on his weekly one-on-one with Putin to
Sam: report on his progress, he's able to say some good things.
Ivan: Oh, he's getting excellent marks. Yes, he's getting great grades, of course.
Ivan: You know, I'm sure that the Qataris are, at this point, are really disappointed
Ivan: in their investment, like right now.
Ivan: They give this guy a plane. They give a plane, I don't know,
Ivan: all of this shit, whatever.
Sam: Somebody went through at one point, like, just listing countries and the bribes
Sam: they'd given to Donald Trump, basically.
Sam: either the plane, the investment in Kushner's stuff, buying,
Sam: buying his stupid, like crypto company, like whatever, like,
Sam: and they were just able to like, I, you know,
Sam: tick through like five or six different countries and list the huge amounts
Sam: of dollars that they're funneling towards the Trump family.
Sam: And it's like, oh, well, we're not even usually talking about that because,
Sam: you know, we've long ago determined, oh, well, that's just how it is now.
Ivan: But here's the thing that's worse for them. So you understand that the Qataris
Ivan: and the UAE, Dubai specifically, more than anything.
Sam: Okay?
Ivan: One big economic engine that they've done is the super hubs that they have built for air travel, okay?
Ivan: You know, the Qataris with Qatar Airways and then Dubai with Emirates, okay?
Ivan: Well, what the hell do you think has happened in the last fucking week, like right now?
Ivan: So both hubs have had to completely shut down operations. It has stranded hundreds
Ivan: of thousands of people, okay?
Ivan: I have a friend who had people stranded recently because of this, okay?
Ivan: And many people were stranded there. They couldn't leave.
Ivan: So we're not talking—forget about America's not being able to get home.
Ivan: We're talking about the two of the largest—I mean, the Dubai hub is the largest
Ivan: hub right now in the world, okay?
Ivan: For global—for international air traffic, okay?
Ivan: and Doha is not far back. They've both been shut down.
Ivan: The negative economic impact of both Dubai and Qatar has been horrific right
Ivan: now at this point for this war.
Ivan: And they don't see how they can reopen right now.
Ivan: Now, I know that they said they tried to do this deal where they said,
Ivan: hey, if they don't use us to shoot at you, then you can't shoot at us deal.
Ivan: That was like this morning, which is part of it because they've been desperately
Ivan: trying to dial this thing down.
Ivan: But I don't know if that's really going to work. Well, like right now.
Sam: I mean, frankly, like if all the Gulf states say you can't, you know,
Sam: you can't do anything on your American basis.
Sam: you know i i don't know that trump would listen he might do it anyway and that
Sam: further deteriorates things right.
Ivan: Um yes you.
Sam: Know like and so i'm not sure they would they're they're in.
Ivan: A hard place well they're yeah they're stuck between a rock and a hard place
Ivan: right now yeah so i suggest that the qataris and the dubai i don't know what
Ivan: the fuck they're gonna buy him now,
Ivan: well um yeah i don't know and it's the problem of trying to do business with
Ivan: trump okay because every deal you get fucked on and they're getting fucked they
Ivan: did these deals they thought yeah yeah yeah we got him we got him we got him
Ivan: our side or whatever and then he always turns around and fucks you anyway of.
Sam: Course i i mean this is one of the things you know,
Sam: The problem, well, there are many, many problems, but when you have Donald Trump
Sam: specifically and the way that he deals with everything transactionally and the
Sam: way where there is no history,
Sam: like there is no, there is no concept of, I shouldn't go back on this deal because
Sam: that will affect the next deal because the next deal doesn't matter right now.
Sam: It's only the current one. And whenever it makes sense for me to go back on
Sam: it, I'm going to go back on it because I'm never thinking.
Sam: That far ahead. I'm only thinking right now.
Sam: And so the whole basis of sort of American soft power over the last century
Sam: was based on fundamentally,
Sam: like, obviously there have been exceptions, but, you know, us keeping our word,
Sam: you know, and across administrations,
Sam: Republican, Democrat, President A, President B doesn't matter.
Ivan: Any diplomacy, any fucking diplomacy in the world ever only really works if
Ivan: people keep to their damn deals.
Sam: Right. Because if you keep going back, I mean, the Iranians specifically,
Sam: like this week, a couple days ago, were asked about whether or not they're ready
Sam: to negotiate with the Trump administration on a ceasefire.
Ivan: No! Who the fuck would believe, you know?
Sam: They're like, we have been negotiating for years. And every time we negotiate
Sam: and we start to think we're getting close to a deal, they bomb us.
Sam: So why would we do it again?
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, if anything, the history of negotiations during the Trump administration
Sam: has been like Iran's actually been engaging in the negotiations in good faith.
Sam: The Trump administration is not. They've been using them as delaying tactics
Sam: to get ready to do more bombing.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: So why the hell would you do that? Why would, why the hell?
Sam: And frankly, it's the same dilemma Zelensky's in, you know, with negotiating with the Russians.
Sam: Why would I negotiate with Russians? They broke the last deal.
Ivan: Well, let me tell you something. Even the Russians, I would believe them more
Ivan: keeping their word on a deal than fucking Donald Trump. Yeah.
Sam: It is a sad state of affairs. Yeah. And, you know, and look,
Sam: you know, last week I said, you know, this is probably going to be the kind
Sam: of thing where something happens and then it dies out in two weeks and we're
Sam: not even talking about it in a month.
Sam: That may still happen, but it seems like the chances are reducing.
Sam: You know, between Israel and Iran, they both want to expand this.
Sam: You know, they both want to make it bigger, not smaller.
Ivan: And Donald Trump's not using— The Iranians gain nothing by making it smaller.
Ivan: It's totally to their advantage to expanding it, okay?
Sam: Yeah. I mean, Bibi has been wanting to— They want the Gulf states to feel pain
Sam: so that the Gulf states will push back against Donald Trump and Netanyahu.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: Correct. You know, and it makes perfect sense.
Sam: And so, like, no, it does not make sense for Iran to back down or capitulate.
Sam: And you get quotes from Hegseth and Trump basically being like, I don't understand.
Ivan: Complete capitulation. Unconditional surrender.
Ivan: By the way, can you explain to me what the fuck unconditional surrender means?
Ivan: Can you explain that to me?
Sam: Yeah, but not only that, they're like, I don't understand why they haven't already surrendered.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. They're like confused.
Sam: Yeah. And again, it's that lack of the ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes.
Sam: But, no, to answer your question, they have almost explicitly said,
Sam: what we want in Iran is what we did in Venezuela.
Sam: We take out the top leader, whoever's second in charge, just decides to cooperate
Sam: with us and do whatever we want.
Ivan: But they killed the second people at charge!
Sam: And a third, and a fourth, and...
Ivan: A fourth, right! So...
Ivan: And we keep bombing them.
Sam: And by the way...
Ivan: There's a difference in Venezuela. By the way, in Venezuela,
Ivan: we didn't go and bomb Venezuela like this.
Ivan: They went in and took Maduro.
Sam: That's it.
Ivan: In this case, we have been bombing the shit out of the country for a week plus.
Sam: We bombed a school full of elementary school girls.
Ivan: Yes!
Sam: We killed like at least 150 of them.
Ivan: We fucking killed 200,000 children for God's sakes. Motherfuckers! Yeah.
Ivan: Look, and I'm sure that we have killed many other thousands more innocent people.
Sam: OK, we are many more. We are not being I mean, obviously, we hit the leadership
Sam: in a fairly targeted way.
Sam: But more generally, we're not being very discriminant.
Sam: And there are reports unconfirmed that we're using A.I.
Sam: shit for targeting, that some of which had inaccurate old information.
Sam: One of the things I heard is that even the targeting of the school may have
Sam: simply been because we had inaccurate information about what was at that location.
Sam: There have been reports where we were going back to like World War One level tactics.
Sam: Iran had painted silhouettes of planes on runways and we bombed the silhouettes of planes.
Sam: OK, where where we spent like here's another.
Ivan: Thing that we did. OK, we fucking said we used a torpedo to sink a fucking ship,
Ivan: OK, which we hadn't used since World War Two.
Ivan: And then we sent this other fucking Iranian warship that was thousands of miles
Ivan: away from the from the war zone and clear violation of international rules of
Ivan: engagement and such kind of things.
Sam: Yeah, two things on that. One, it wasn't just the first sub it wasn't just us
Sam: doing a submarine sinking a ship for the first time since World War Two.
Sam: It's the first time anybody's done that since World War II.
Sam: And then on the other one, it was an Iranian naval ship that had been in India
Sam: for some sort of exercises, exhibition, training, that we also participated in, by the way.
Sam: We were at the same event. Our Navy was.
Sam: In order to participate in the event, the ship had to be completely unarmed.
Sam: And it was just heading home.
Sam: And not just that.
Ivan: I understood, I don't have a confirmed version of this, but apparently after
Ivan: we fucking sank the ship, we did not fucking off aid to the sailors.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: We let them fucking drown.
Sam: I believe that is correct.
Ivan: Yeah. These people are sick.
Sam: This is one of those, are we the baddies moments.
Ivan: And yes, yes, we are. Oh, 100%.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: And I'm sorry, Hegseth and all the fucking people that authored that should
Ivan: be fucking tried for war crimes.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And they've already done a whole bunch of things to qualify for that shit.
Sam: Yeah. Even before this. And now they're doubling down.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Yes, absolutely. You know, and look, we at the same time, just like we had in
Sam: Venezuela, you have like Iranian Americans and celebrating, you know,
Sam: we've overthrown the Ayatollah.
Sam: It was a horrible government. We have Iranians in Iran celebrating.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: To some degree. And so, you know, there's this argument that,
Sam: well, we got rid of the bad guy.
Sam: So no matter how we did it, it's okay. We got rid of the bad guy,
Sam: both Venezuela and Iran.
Sam: And I think you can't, that's once again, sort of first level thinking you have
Sam: to go beyond that. Yes, you got rid of the bad guy.
Sam: But if you do it in such a way that violates all the norms of how things are
Sam: supposed to be done, and you don't have a plan for what's next.
Ivan: Not just norms not just norms
Ivan: sam laws doing it in a way it not just laws doing it in a way that we are just
Ivan: fucking not giving a shit about innocent people yes we're just going out there
Ivan: in a like in some kind of fucking murderous rage where they think this is fun, Sam.
Ivan: This asshole headset this week shared a fucking video combining footage of the
Ivan: attacks with a fucking goddamn video game, okay?
Ivan: Like, we're playing a goddamn video game over there.
Sam: And, you know, people think like precedents don't matter, but precedents matter.
Sam: We are doing things that we should fully expect at some point.
Ivan: We'll come back to bite us in the fucking ass heart.
Sam: Somebody will do the same thing to us that we just did to them.
Sam: And when we say, oh, it's a terrorist act, they'll be like, it's exactly what you did in our room.
Ivan: Exactly what the fuck we did. Exactly what the fuck we did.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: We have no, no, no defense whatsoever against, you know, morally,
Ivan: to stand on any moral high ground at all.
Sam: And if you listen to the people in the Trump administration,
Sam: they'd laugh at the mere idea of moral high ground anyway.
Sam: Their whole view of the world is all just about power. And it's what you can
Sam: do and who's stronger. And that's all that matters. I know, I know.
Ivan: That's their, that's their, that's their thought.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: They're a bunch of disgusting, evil people.
Sam: Shall we close up then?
Ivan: Oh, on that happy note.
Sam: We always end on a happy note.
Ivan: On such a joyous note.
Sam: You know, we, we should put the movies at the end so that we could end it with like.
Ivan: We can, we can sign off on some kind of happy note. Yes.
Sam: It's like, oh, that was an awesome movie. It was fun.
Ivan: It was enjoyable.
Sam: Well, of course, you didn't talk about Batman.
Ivan: And I'm like, fuck, fuck Batman.
Sam: But Hoppers was great, right? It was fun.
Ivan: It was inspiring.
Sam: It was whatever.
Ivan: I tell you all to go watch Hoppers.
Sam: There you go. Great movie.
Ivan: Great movie.
Sam: Okay. So let's wrap this up. Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there.
Sam: Archives. All the ways to contact us.
Sam: All the fun stuff, including our Patreon, where you can go and give us money
Sam: at various levels. We will mention you on the show.
Sam: We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And at $2 a month or more, or if you ask us nicely,
Sam: You will, uh, we will invite you to the convention square slack where Yvonne
Sam: and I, and a bunch of our listeners are sharing things throughout the week,
Sam: chatting, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: Yvonne, do you have a highlight from the slack before we close things up?
Ivan: Uh, a highlight from the slack, a highlight from the slack, right from the slack.
Ivan: Um, uh, let me see. Uh, let's see. Something funny.
Ivan: Something funny. I don't want to, like, uh, I should have been ready.
Sam: Well, we're going to have to dock your pay.
Ivan: Yeah, I know. Well, I guess the only thing that I mentioned here that we did
Ivan: that I didn't mention, like, here.
Ivan: Far-right influencer urges followers to vote Democrat and abandon GOP over Iran war.
Ivan: Now, Nick Fuentes, of all fucking people.
Ivan: A right-wing neo-Nazi went on his stream and urged people to vote Democrat.
Ivan: What the fuck world are we in, Sam?
Sam: Yeah. Well, we didn't talk about this aspect of it, and I'm not going to go
Sam: into it long this time, but there are a lot of MAGA folks.
Sam: Tucker Carlson was also apparently desperately on the phone with Trump over
Sam: and over and made several personal visits to try to talk him out of doing this
Sam: in Iran. and has even called him afterwards to say, please, declare victory and go home.
Sam: Stop. Declare victory and go home. And Trump is like, no.
Sam: And all of these other MAGA folks are very... Look, there are a lot of MAGA
Sam: folks very upset that we're going to war in Iran.
Sam: There are a lot of MAGA folks very upset about the Epstein files.
Sam: And this is causing rifts. like
Sam: the biggest rifts we've seen so far now
Sam: you never want to say forever because we
Sam: had so many examples over the years of something that looked like it damaged
Sam: trump and then like a few weeks later they're all back in the fold but these
Sam: are more significant than the other than any we've seen since the access hollywood
Sam: tape i'd say you know in terms of people sort of you know.
Sam: People on his own side chastising trump for what's going on so i don't know
Sam: we'll see and also he's a lame duck so of course they're going to be like splintering off okay yes,
Sam: anything more on that one hey that one wasn't particularly super funny but you know whatever.
Ivan: Well okay the one the one that i'm going to say is a completely oddball one
Ivan: is that i shared that Lexus actually launched an electric Lexus ES.
Ivan: And I don't know if any of you realize, but Lexus has taken the place that Cadillac
Ivan: used to have in American car buyers, the older buyers.
Ivan: We always thought of this old guy driving around in a soft and cushy Cadillac.
Ivan: Well, that's been replaced by the Lexus. Okay.
Ivan: And the ES is the epitome of the old, old Cadillac driver. My father actually
Ivan: drives one now, which is the reason why I know that this is exactly because
Ivan: that was my father used to drive a Cadillac and now he drives a Lexus.
Ivan: So Lexus launched an electric Lexus.
Ivan: But here's the kicker about this. They launched electric, hybrid,
Ivan: plug-in hybrid and gas versions.
Ivan: OK, they launched they're going to strategy that, by the way,
Ivan: the Chinese are doing for cars because that's what they're doing.
Ivan: It's one of the reasons they've been really successful by launching a car,
Ivan: but launching, you know, versions of all different types of fuel.
Ivan: The thing is that the electric car is the cheapest one in their case,
Ivan: instead of the more expensive premium one.
Ivan: They actually made it the cheapest car in the lineup, but not just they made
Ivan: it the cheapest car in the lineup.
Ivan: Unlike Tesla and others, hey, let's make the electric car the super high-performance car.
Ivan: The cheap version of the electric car is, well, by historical standards, it's.
Ivan: Fast enough but it's not it won't
Ivan: it's not it doesn't have the the neck breaking
Ivan: speed that a lot of electrics have but it's fast enough
Ivan: if you get into any regular car right now it's like you know hey it goes through
Ivan: 60 in the seven second range which 20 years ago was considered plenty fast it's
Ivan: still plenty fast for most people but it's it's not going to break your neck
Ivan: or whatever but it's relatively cheap that's not something you want.
Sam: In a car you don't want your car to break your.
Ivan: Neck well but sam a lot of electric ev
Ivan: manufacturers seem to help bent on this okay you
Ivan: know i know it's like i mean literally i mean you built these cars zero to 60
Ivan: just a standard car that some mom is going to drive the soccer that can get
Ivan: to 60 miles an hour in under four seconds and i mean literally that will snap
Ivan: your neck back literally and you're like why they don't need this.
Ivan: And by the way, it's a reason why I insist why Tesla has some of the highest
Ivan: death rates of vehicles out there.
Ivan: OK, if you look at Tesla, oh, no, our cars are safest.
Ivan: Listen, accident data bear out and more people get killed in Tesla's and in
Ivan: crashes than almost any cars right now, even though the cars and crash tests do very well.
Ivan: The problem is that because the cars are so fast, they really incentivize people
Ivan: to do shit that they shouldn't be doing with a car and wind up getting into
Ivan: more crashes. It's not that the car is inherently unsafe.
Ivan: If you drove it like driving Miss Daisy very slowly, you probably would be safer than average.
Ivan: But it's just it's just there are certain cars out there like Mustangs,
Ivan: Dodge Chargers or whatever that people get killed at crazy rates. Why?
Ivan: Because they're so fast, they incentivize people to do stupid shit behind a
Ivan: wheel and get themselves killed.
Ivan: And this car is the opposite. Nope. We want luxurious, dull, boring cars.
Ivan: Not slow, but not fast and cheap.
Ivan: And I think, you know, selling this car, when we're talking about that the average car in the U.S.
Ivan: right now is over $50,000.
Ivan: This Lexus electric car starts actually under $50,000. Okay?
Ivan: It's cheaper than a lot of cars. It's far more luxurious than other cars on
Ivan: the street. I think that they probably will sell quite well because they're nice and cheap.
Sam: Right? Okay.
Ivan: So there you go.
Sam: Okay. With that, one last thing for me. I'm going to do my Robin Letter plug.
Sam: Robin Letter on Friday, March 6th, hit 50 users.
Sam: Yay. I'm up to 50.
Sam: 43 of which were actually active in the previous seven days.
Sam: And so I want to get that to 100 and then beyond.
Sam: But so if you are listening to this and have not yet gotten a Robin Letter invite,
Sam: email me feedback at robinletter.com I will get you an invite either to one
Sam: of my existing Robins or to a brand new one or to you can make your own whatever
Sam: but you know ping me ping me.
Sam: You want, it's a lot of fun. And I've now, all of the Robins that were created
Sam: either by me or by Yvonne are now getting real updates.
Sam: One of them was having, was a little slow getting started, but they've now all
Sam: got real updates from real people talking about stuff. People are sharing things.
Sam: I've gotten a lot of feedback from people saying that they're enjoying it and
Sam: And it's an interesting new way of doing things.
Sam: So we shall see.
Sam: But definitely, if you haven't gotten on board yet, get on board.
Sam: And I'm especially interested, by the way, in people who are interested in creating
Sam: their own Robins that do not involve me with their own other groups of people.
Sam: Just a reminder, this is slower, sort of an anti-social media thing.
Sam: Keep in touch with your friends. but just these tight groups of people where
Sam: you take turns so that everybody sort of contributes equally and you talk about
Sam: things and you keep in touch with people slowly,
Sam: not with pressure to do it like every day and to capture your attention and
Sam: algorithmically trying to manipulate you. None of that stuff.
Sam: Anyway, up to 50 users. That's pretty good for like, what's it been?
Sam: One, two, three, four, five. I launched on February 15th.
Ivan: Yeah, it's not even. We're not even in a month, three weeks.
Sam: Yeah. So anyway, 50 users. Congratulations, me. I added comments yesterday.
Sam: No, Thursday. Thursday, I added comments. I did some refinements to it based
Sam: on feedback yesterday or last night as I'm recording this.
Sam: And I have a list of little tweaks and bug things. And I always have those and
Sam: I'm working through those as well.
Sam: but those were the my big batch of new features was being able to edit your
Sam: posts adding comments that you can edit to the next things i'm going to work
Sam: on next big things i'm going to work on are going to be monetization crap so
Sam: we'll see anyway that's it for the show thank you all the.
Ivan: Crap that i the crap that i i tell that i started arguing with sam already sam
Ivan: who needs to make money sam's like.
Sam: The purity of the concept, Yvonne.
Ivan: Right, right.
Sam: No, no, I want it to make money, too. I'm just, like, thinking,
Sam: like, slow, gradual growth and, you know, like, but, yes.
Ivan: I'm like, Sam is, well, maybe we could make a buck here, a buck there.
Ivan: And I'm like, no, millions.
Ivan: What are you talking about? A buck here, there. What the fuck?
Sam: I i hope uh i will be very gratified if yvonne's optimism is correct but uh we shall see optimism.
Ivan: I'm just look you can't turn you know if you target that you're gonna make a
Ivan: buck or two you're only gonna make a buck or two.
Sam: Yeah okay i i owe yvonne some annotations of the deck he put together to pitch
Sam: this to investors so i i will get that done this weekend before i go into surgery
Sam: on Monday. Yeah, I have my final surgery on Monday.
Ivan: Yay! Woo! Surgery! Surgery!
Sam: Yeah, and I'm presuming recovery will be fast and, you know,
Sam: blah, blah, blah. I'll be back to myself in a couple days.
Ivan: Fast and furious! Yeah.
Sam: We don't need to talk about those movies again. Okay, we are out of here.
Sam: Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Stay safe. Have fun. Blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll talk to you next time.
Sam: We'll talk to you next week. Goodbye!
Ivan: Bye!
Sam: Okay, that's it. I'm going to hit stop, and then I'm going to go get some food.
Ivan: Food!
Sam: Yes, food. Food is important. Later.
Ivan: Yes.