Sam: Uh, we're just getting ready to record here. Let's get everything going.
Sam: Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Dog barking in the background, for those of you who can hear it. Okay.
Sam: Let's just do this intro part. Here we go.
Sam: Transcription by ESO.
Sam: Translation by — Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday,
Sam: March 21st, 2026. It's just before 1930 UTC as I'm starting to record.
Sam: I am Sam Minter, and we have no Yvonne with us again this week.
Sam: And this time around, it's his son's spring break, and they're visiting Yvonne's brother in Texas.
Sam: And I am happy to report, as I'm sure Yvonne would if he is here,
Sam: his son Manu actually got on the plane to go.
Sam: There'd been an issue a number of months ago, as some of our listeners may remember,
Sam: where Yvonne was going to come out to Seattle and we were going to do a curmudgeons corner meetup.
Sam: And then Manu wouldn't get on the plane. So it didn't happen.
Sam: But yeah, he got on the plane. He traveled. All good. They're having their vacation.
Sam: But that means I'm here and I put out the email saying, hey,
Sam: anybody want to be a co-host? Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: As usual, leaving out the last couple of people who've done it so we don't get
Sam: repeats all the time. And I got no response.
Sam: Well, after I mentioned something in person, my wife said maybe she could do
Sam: something with me. So we'll see. Maybe.
Sam: But I am doing the thing I usually do when I'm doing solo shows, which is it is Saturday.
Sam: I am starting the recording to get this in the right Sunday through Saturday
Sam: week that we have not missed a week forever. And this will not be it either.
Sam: It's because I'm starting on Saturday, darn it, UTC.
Sam: And then I'll go off and do other things for a while. We're going to the Apple
Sam: store in just a few minutes.
Sam: My son cracked the screen on his iPhone, and we're going to get it taken care of under Apple Care.
Sam: And I'm picking up something else at the Apple store while I'm there.
Sam: Not a big thing. I'm not buying a laptop or anything.
Sam: I'm just, yes, something to pick up. Okay, fine. It's a second Apple TV.
Sam: Because, you know, we now have a second device in the house that we can use.
Sam: Like we, we, my projector that I have in the living room died finally.
Sam: Like it had been having issues for a while, you know, like it wouldn't come on unless you hit it.
Sam: So we'd like get up on a stool and hit it.
Sam: It was on the ceiling and, you know, sometimes it would start up fine.
Sam: Sometimes you'd have to hit it a little bit. and, like, jostle it.
Sam: And then once you've jostled it, of course, it's not lined up properly on the
Sam: screen, so you'd have to readjust it.
Sam: And the bulb... We had replaced the bulb once because it had told us, you know, it was...
Sam: Running, you know, the bulb had had however many hours on it and they recommend replacement.
Sam: But the problem is the projector was old enough that there was no,
Sam: you couldn't get the OEM bulbs anymore.
Sam: They didn't make them anymore. Like the, the, the original company.
Sam: That we got the projector from had moved
Sam: on to newer and better projectors and you couldn't get replacement
Sam: bulbs for this one anyway anymore you could
Sam: get them online from other
Sam: people no name brands and like
Sam: but some of them when you
Sam: went to look for them some of them were even like used you have
Sam: to look carefully to get a new one but we did
Sam: we had done that you know we generally in
Sam: the past like we'd gotten a no-name brand a
Sam: few bulbs ago and it didn't work
Sam: very well and so we did switch to an oem one
Sam: because we could still find them at that point they were just
Sam: like twice the price or something so the the the no-name brand the bulb had
Sam: problems immediately didn't work what whatever or maybe it worked but it it
Sam: it like blew out like very quickly like in a few months or so. I forget.
Sam: But then we ordered another no-name brand because it was at this point the only
Sam: thing that was available.
Sam: And I remember this last time, it caused problems immediately.
Sam: So much so that we took out the new Bulb.
Sam: And put the old one back in because the old one hadn't burnt out it was just
Sam: at the point where the projector was telling us this bulb is old you need to
Sam: replace it and we put it back in,
Sam: and it lasted like another year and a half after that with the caveat that you
Sam: sometimes had to hit the projector anyway we decided a long time ago that when
Sam: it finally died it was time to replace the projector so we we did when it was
Sam: finally dead we did order a new projector.
Sam: And but it was going to take a couple days for the
Sam: new projector to arrive and i you
Sam: know the it was going to take even longer if i'd ordered it from my former employer
Sam: amazon it was going to be a couple weeks but we found uh you know bnh photo
Sam: back in new york you remember like i remember the days where I got their catalogs
Sam: and I ordered stuff from them before.
Sam: And, you know, they've got a big physical store in New York and a big mail order business.
Sam: And, you know, free, you know, just buy everything online from Amazon. That's,
Sam: That's, you know, it was one of the places you went to for electronics.
Sam: But anyway, it was going to take a couple days. We did not want to go a couple
Sam: days without television.
Sam: We did not want to just watch it on our laptops or this was just me and Alex.
Sam: Brandy was still in Olympia.
Sam: We did not want to just, you know, watch on either a laptop or an iPad or my
Sam: computer monitors in my office.
Sam: I mean, you know, I've got 27-inch monitors, but 27 inches is still,
Sam: you know, relatively small compared to, like, a big, like, 120-inch projector
Sam: or however big this thing is. It's even bigger, 200?
Sam: I don't know. It's an entire wall, okay? It's an entire wall.
Sam: But anyway, so we went out to our local store. We have Fred Myers out here in
Sam: Seattle and just picked up one of the really cheap TVs.
Sam: We picked up a $200 TV, which was still like, you know, big compared to the old days.
Sam: I remember, you know, having 20-inch TVs and thinking that was like a big thing
Sam: when I was, you know, however old.
Sam: Anyway, it's not like a big 70-inch screen or anything like that,
Sam: but it's a decent size. It's bigger than the 27 inches. I forget exactly. 50 something?
Sam: 50 something? Anyway, it was a cheap Samsung. It was the cheapest Samsung.
Sam: And we got it and we set it up. And so we used that in our living room for a few days. But now...
Sam: We got the new projector. It's all set up. It's like it was an upgrade.
Sam: It's a it's a laser projector instead of having a bulb.
Sam: So it's not going to burn out the same way. So no no bulb replacements every
Sam: 3000 hours of watching or whatever it's supposed to be.
Sam: And it's it's 4k instead of, you know, old fashioned HD, which which frankly,
Sam: for most things, didn't make a big difference to us.
Sam: But having the new one in place, I can definitely tell the difference on some things.
Sam: Like on lots of streaming stuff, the compression artifacts are bigger than the
Sam: resolution difference anyway.
Sam: It depends what you're streaming, right? Because they vary the bitrate quite
Sam: a bit depending on which service you're using and what the content is and blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But anyway, it's definitely noticeably better.
Sam: I won't deny it's noticeably better. It is absolutely noticeably better.
Sam: It's just like how much better depends on what you're watching.
Sam: I mean, like, you know, Alex and I, amongst other things, you know,
Sam: we're watching, you know, old Doctor Who episodes from the 70s and we're watching
Sam: an animated cartoon from like the, I think it was the late 90s,
Sam: maybe, no, early 2000s.
Sam: Anyway, these things were not HD to begin with, let alone 4K.
Sam: So, you know, and obviously there's some up-resing that happens,
Sam: but, you know, it is a limit to how much better you can make things if the source
Sam: material wasn't great to begin with, right?
Sam: But a lot of things, yeah, you can tell the difference. And it's brighter,
Sam: has better colors, you know, all this kind of stuff. So a good upgrade.
Sam: But anyway, the point is, get back to the beginning of this story.
Sam: Now we've got an extra TV, so we're going to put it in one of our rooms upstairs.
Sam: But now it needs an Apple TV hooked up to it.
Sam: Because, of course, there's no way in hell I'm allowing this TV to get on the
Sam: Internet to use its own built-in smart TV features.
Sam: We had to figure out when setting it up, like, the right way to bypass all that crap.
Sam: Like like smart tvs have a
Sam: really bad reputation for a the software being
Sam: really clunky and slow and bad but b
Sam: also they've turned them into surveillance machines that's one of the reasons
Sam: that for 200 bucks you can get a decently sized tv these days is because they
Sam: are all about tracking everything you watch and reporting it back and all kinds
Sam: of crap and there's some of them like are inserting advertising.
Sam: Some of them are doing things.
Sam: And you, and you think like you, you would initially think, okay, look, okay.
Sam: I know if I'm watching a particular service, obviously that service knows what
Sam: I'm watching. No, no, no.
Sam: The, the, these smart TVs are smarter than that. They're like taking screenshots
Sam: of what you're watching every few seconds and sending them back to the mothership.
Sam: So even if you plug like a Blu-ray player into the thing,
Sam: it knows what you're watching you know
Sam: and the exact amount of this
Sam: varies by company some do it
Sam: more some do it less i figured samsung was a nice established brand i know they
Sam: do it too though you know i don't know so anyway but the point is i'm gonna
Sam: hook an apple tv up to the thing so it can be used and so i'm getting a second
Sam: apple tv and there's probably actually a really old Apple TV laying around somewhere.
Sam: And there was an unused one that I gave to my mom and she's hooked up,
Sam: logged into all our accounts.
Sam: So I don't know. Anyway, we're going to the Apple store for those two things.
Sam: And, you know, that that's the plan for day. Apparently there's some social thing that,
Sam: My wife and I may attend in the evening as well. I've been talking to my wife
Sam: and Alex. There are a couple movies I want to actually see in the theaters.
Sam: I won't do two in this weekend, but maybe one this week, one next week.
Sam: I don't know. There's stuff going on. So anyway, I'm starting this out.
Sam: And then, like I usually do when I do solo shows, I'll spread out the rest of
Sam: the show throughout the rest of the weekend as I have a few minutes here,
Sam: a few minutes there. We'll do it.
Sam: I don't know. My wife may join me for some parts of it. She may not.
Sam: Alex may join me for some parts of it. He may not.
Sam: The dog may join us and bark for some parts of it. He may not.
Sam: You never know. Anyway, though, we need to leave for the Apple store to be on
Sam: time for our appointment.
Sam: So I'm going to say goodbye. I owe you guys an Apple dream. I've been talking
Sam: about it for several weeks.
Sam: I still have not made it ready. however through the magic of me doing this over
Sam: the course of the weekend i will make sure,
Sam: that it is ready to go so does as soon as i say we're taking a break and i'll
Sam: be right back after this you will hear the apple dream won't that be exciting
Sam: well you'll know just a couple seconds because i'm taking that break here's the apple dream.
Break: I think this was a continuation of the last dream
Break: and i had successfully done something but
Break: i don't remember what it was that i'd successfully done
Break: and people were congratulating me for successfully doing the thing and i was
Break: telling them something like yeah but no it doesn't really do that yet or something
Break: maybe i don't i'm not really sure bye well.
Sam: That was one of the most exciting apple dreams ever wasn't
Sam: it i don't even know what to say anyway i'm back as expected i took a long time
Sam: did other stuff it's the next day it's sunday march 22nd a little bit after
Sam: 22 utc and i don't much time because we're going to a movie next.
Sam: Yeah, Yvonne had like raved about Hoppers. So we're going to go see Hoppers
Sam: with my wife, my son, and my mother.
Sam: And I won't talk about it until I get to it in order.
Sam: Probably. Maybe I'll give just a thumbs up, thumbs down in the next segment. I don't know.
Sam: I also want to see Project Hail Mary. We'll probably see that next week.
Sam: Anyway, I got a couple things. And look, I didn't do movies yet in that little
Sam: mini segment a few seconds ago. So I am going to do a couple movies now.
Sam: And then maybe, I don't know. You know, I am not really feeling super news inspired this week.
Sam: There are, of course, news things going on.
Sam: Let's take a quick look. I'm looking at Google News real quick.
Sam: We, of course, have more on Iran.
Sam: You know, Trump is threatening this. Iran is threatening that.
Sam: They sent a missile aimed at Diego Garcia, which showed that their missiles
Sam: have a longer range than people thought they did.
Sam: There's Trump saying he's going to send ICE agents to the airport.
Sam: There's you know cuba's had power issues and trump's been threatening cuba too,
Sam: you know we got stuff we yeah i'm scrolling down the list and there's more there's
Sam: a meteorite near houston on top of the one near ohio that already happened and
Sam: yeah there's this stuff.
Sam: We had people, you know, there were famous people who died.
Sam: Chapel Roan is defending herself and saying she doesn't hate children after
Sam: some incident at some hotel somewhere where security did something. I don't know.
Sam: We care about any of that. Anyway, a couple quick things. First, that are updates.
Sam: First, in the last segment, I said the cheap TV we got was like,
Sam: I don't know, 50 inches or something.
Sam: And I looked at the box because we still have the box. It's laying in our entryway,
Sam: waiting to be taken outside.
Sam: It was 43 inches, which is by today's standards, a relatively small TV.
Sam: By the standards of when I was growing up, 43 inches would have been a huge
Sam: TV. But now it's like you can get smaller.
Sam: Just to be clear, you can get smaller, but you have to look for them.
Sam: You know, like if you go into the just the TV section of your store,
Sam: Most are bigger than 43 inches.
Sam: 43 is already like the small end of the spectrum at this point.
Sam: But anyway, we're, you know, like I said, we just got basically...
Sam: They did have options that were cheaper.
Sam: Alex was at first looking at, like, really cheap projectors.
Sam: Like, they make projectors that are, like, $100.
Sam: But they're relatively dim, and they have some issues, and blah, blah.
Sam: And we just ordered an expensive projector. So it was like, let's get a regular
Sam: TV. We haven't had one in his entire lifetime.
Sam: You know, my daughter had one
Sam: in her room. But we have not had one as a family in his entire lifetime.
Sam: So we got one. And we got the cheapest, decent one, I would say.
Sam: You know, anyway, it still has to make its way upstairs in the next couple of days.
Sam: You know, but anyway, that was the one correction.
Sam: The other thing I wanted to give an update on is last week, Yvonne and I spent
Sam: an inordinate amount of time probably.
Sam: And without actually asking her if it was okay, talking about our friend's file,
Sam: you know, she accidentally purged files she didn't mean to by setting up a synchronization
Sam: thing that got confused between iCloud and Google, whatever, Google Drive.
Sam: And we'd said, oh, but it looks like iCloud has a restore. We did test that later.
Sam: ICloud restore only had three files. We did restore those three files.
Sam: I don't even know if they were missing or not, but we restored them just to be sure.
Sam: And the rest of the stuff wasn't there. So we have yet to do the thing going through the backups.
Sam: We're going to go do that sometime this coming week, probably.
Sam: She's going to call me and we'll screenshot her and go through all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: And she also wants to look at the Google Drive backups, because apparently they also have something.
Sam: But I'm less confident that there's going to be much there because she had just
Sam: turned it on to sync anyway lesson is lesson number one synchronization is not backup,
Sam: Those are two completely different things. And second, synchronization actually
Sam: complicates backups, so be careful about that.
Sam: Third, if you are trying to synchronize the same stuff to two different places, be super careful.
Sam: I'm not saying it'll never work. It may sometimes work. She may have just gotten
Sam: unlucky. There may have been other factors going on.
Sam: But beware like yeah these
Sam: synchronization things are built to just
Sam: synchronize one thing
Sam: really you know so anyway like i don't know how many people would like go through
Sam: the i don't know like you'd think it's an edge case that people would figure
Sam: you know what well what happens if people are trying to synchronize this to
Sam: five different things at the same time but you know that's not the primary use
Sam: case anybody's worrying about.
Sam: At best, it's a secondary use case.
Sam: Anyway, so that's the update on that. I thought I'd also give an update on Robin
Sam: Letter because, you know, it's a thing.
Sam: And I've been talking about it a bunch.
Sam: Why is this stuff here? Because I clicked on the wrong thing. That's why.
Sam: Okay, so my quick Robin Letter update. First of all, once again,
Sam: my appeal, If anybody listening here is not already on Robin Letter and is willing to at least try it,
Sam: please drop me a line. Feedback at RobinLetter.com will get you there specifically
Sam: for Robin Letter, but any of the ways to contact me, I always mention at the
Sam: end of the show, will be fine too.
Sam: It is a sort of anti-social media, like, I keep saying that term,
Sam: but that's, it's not right. It's not anti-social media.
Sam: It's a reaction against what social media has become.
Sam: It's an alternative to social media.
Sam: Basically, it's keeping in touch with family and friends in a way that,
Sam: is slower and more deliberate and is not intended to induce competition or is
Sam: not optimized for gaining views, all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: I've mentioned it before in the show, so I won't go over it much more.
Sam: And I'm just going to give some numbers.
Sam: As of, I don't know, hour and a half from now.
Sam: Well, that's actually, I won't have stats yet, but it has, we just passed a
Sam: couple hours ago, five weeks since I launched the public version of it.
Sam: And I have the stats from the end of yesterday UTC. So these,
Sam: and I know there's been some activity since then, including new users and stuff,
Sam: but I just give the stats.
Sam: In five weeks, we're up to nine active Robins, 75 active users.
Sam: 118 invites were sent out And I'll admit most of them were by me Not all, not all,
Sam: Of those 57 Oh, sorry, sorry I want to be clear When I said active users That
Sam: is active users in the last four weeks I'm tracking The active robins is just
Sam: as of The end of the day yesterday,
Sam: UTC That's a static number, most recent number, nine The rest of these Because I want to,
Sam: As we move forward, it doesn't make sense to say, here's the total number of
Sam: users, here's the total number of invites, here's the total number of invites
Sam: accepted, et cetera. You have to time-bound that.
Sam: And I have been also looking at weekly numbers and daily numbers and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: But a good number to use is four weeks.
Sam: It's you know and people sometimes talk about monthly active
Sam: users and things like that when they're talking about twitter or
Sam: tiktok or facebook or any of the big
Sam: social medias i go for four weeks because it's an
Sam: even number of weeks and you definitely in most things like
Sam: this you have patterns that are weekly so
Sam: if you go with a month first of all months are different lengths
Sam: you've got february at 28 or 29 days depending
Sam: on the year you've got months that are 30 days you've got
Sam: months to the 31 days a month is not a real unit
Sam: and that like infuriates me
Sam: all the time anyway so four weeks so in the
Sam: last four weeks there have been 75 active users 118 invites
Sam: sent 57 accepted there have been 60 updates posted in those last four weeks
Sam: and 1697 read events that's when somebody clicks the button to read somebody's
Sam: update if they try to read it like four different times, it'll count as four, right?
Sam: So, because obviously there have been 60 updates.
Sam: Reading 1,697 is like,
Sam: crazy. It means a bunch of updates have been open more than one time.
Sam: It also includes updates that weren't posted in the last four weeks.
Sam: They might have been reading older updates beyond that.
Sam: It still seems a little bit high for me. Maybe I'll check that number,
Sam: but it seems to be accurate.
Sam: It seems to be like, you know, when somebody clicks the read button,
Sam: you know, you see the thing.
Sam: Anyway, 118 comments left and 171 reactions. So that's pretty good.
Sam: All of these are still growing, by the way.
Sam: If you compare all of these to where we were four weeks ago, they are up quite a bit.
Sam: If you look at weekly numbers, there are some that are sort of leveling off
Sam: a little bit, or sometimes up, sometimes down, but still trending up.
Sam: But anyway, I'm happy with the growth so far.
Sam: There's actually been a little additional growth burst in the last week or so, which is great,
Sam: including two new Robins created by people that weren't me, one of which by
Sam: somebody who I had not talked to about it at all.
Sam: You know, they were included in one of my Robins. They have not had a turn yet,
Sam: but they, and I think in my first post, I did say something about,
Sam: it would be great if people used this and created their own Robins,
Sam: but I did not actually talk to this person.
Sam: I have not actually spoken to this person in 20 years, I don't think.
Sam: Anyway, they made a Robin. And so, and it's, it seems to be going well so far.
Sam: And, you know, I try to be really good, by the way, just if anybody's worried
Sam: about this kind of thing.
Sam: I do not look at the content of Robins I am not in.
Sam: Now, I could, I have not built end-to-end encryption on this thing or anything like that.
Sam: And in fact, there are possible problems with that as it would gain,
Sam: if it continues to grow and gets larger, as an admin, you know,
Sam: I might have to potentially deal with.
Sam: You know, moderation problems or people even posting illegal stuff, you know, I don't know.
Sam: Like, so actually making it completely encrypted so even I can't read it is
Sam: probably not the right thing to do for a thing like this.
Sam: However, just as a policy, like I'm not, you know, I'm obviously reading all
Sam: the Robins I'm in, which at the most at the current time is most of the ones that exist.
Sam: But there are now a few that I am not a member of and I am not reading the content of those.
Sam: I am, however, monitoring the general health of them.
Sam: You know, like how many people were invited? How many people have accepted?
Sam: Who has, not who has posted, but how many posts have there been? Like that kind of stuff.
Sam: Just to understand, are these new ones that are being created working or not?
Sam: Anyway, I'm happy with the progress But I have now, officially as of yesterday,
Sam: reached the limit of what I think I am going to do in terms of inviting individual
Sam: people I know to individual Robbins as a growth mechanism.
Sam: So next up, I'm probably going to make a more general LinkedIn post or something
Sam: about the site and inviting people.
Sam: I'll still keep it as invites only, but basically say that anybody who wants
Sam: an invite, contact me and I'll come up.
Sam: And if they make sense in one of the groups that I already have,
Sam: I'll add them. But if not, I'll just add them cold and empty so they can make their own Robbins.
Sam: Cold and empty sounds bad. Like, I'm not a marketer. What, what, what can I say?
Sam: But yeah, but before that, one thing I've determined is necessary.
Sam: I, you know, I've got this big, long backlog of things to do,
Sam: but one thing that I'll definitely do before I do any additional promotion that
Sam: probably would have helped already with like,
Sam: you know, cause I have, I switched from at first only inviting people who I
Sam: had extensively explained the concept to, and had gone back and forth in email first.
Sam: Then the second phase where I was contacting them either by LinkedIn or by Facebook
Sam: and giving sort of a one-paragraph description and saying,
Sam: hey, would you like to be invited and inviting the people who said yes to finally just saying, okay.
Sam: I've got the email addresses of some additional people I knew in college or
Sam: additional people I knew at one of my previous jobs or whatever.
Sam: I'm just going to send them an invite.
Sam: Straight from the site with the only explanation being the exclamation,
Sam: the explanation that you get in the email that the site sends you and see how that goes.
Sam: And obviously, as you go through those categories,
Sam: the less upfront conversation and explanation you've had with somebody about
Sam: it, the less likely they are to accept and the less likely they are to actually engage once you're in.
Sam: And also even those that,
Sam: that in, there's sometimes confusion on exactly what to do next.
Sam: And like, I'd say 80 to 90% of the people who get in figure that out immediately on their own.
Sam: But I have gotten a couple of comments about people who like,
Sam: what do I do next? I don't understand what do I do?
Sam: So I'm probably going to do one of those like little slideshow things where
Sam: the first time you log in, you get a little tour with like explaining the UI
Sam: and stuff like that and the concept and.
Sam: You know that that kind of stuff just so that people who come in that way know
Sam: what they're supposed to do anyway i've talked long enough about that i've got
Sam: one more story that's not like a newsy story that i thought i was going to to
Sam: talk about today well you know i i was i was.
Sam: I was saving it for yvonne i was going to talk about it with yvonne because
Sam: i figured his reactions would be funny.
Sam: So, but he's not here. So do I tell the story anyway? Or do I save it?
Sam: So here's what I'm going to do. I'm at the very least not going to tell it in this segment.
Sam: I'm going to go ahead and take a break, because we've got about 10 minutes until
Sam: we need to be in the car to go to that movie. We're picking up my mom,
Sam: and then we're going to the movie, and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And so, like, I don't want to start it and then run long and then be late,
Sam: and then I would get all stressed about that and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: So I'm going to go ahead and take another break. And I know,
Sam: look, we've gone through two segments relatively quick here.
Sam: This may not be our standard two-hour show of course
Sam: every time i say that it ends up being even longer it ends up being like a five-hour
Sam: show or something but like nope nope i am just going to accept however long
Sam: this thing is however light this thing is hell a few weeks ago i did a relatively
Sam: short show that was only a few minutes long saying like i just got out of surgery and Oh,
Sam: I should update folks on that, too.
Sam: I did have my last procedure for my lovely kidney stone thing.
Sam: And so, like, back in January, I got this infection. I went to the ER.
Sam: They determined, like, his kidney slash bladder infection slash actually it
Sam: had spread. I was, like, in sepsis.
Sam: They pumped me full of antibiotics. They stuck, like, a drain in my side.
Sam: And then I came back for, you know, and they did the drain in my side just with,
Sam: like, you know, the stuff that makes you not care, not the stuff that.
Sam: Knocks you out completely.
Sam: And then they, I came back in for a procedure where they did knock me out completely
Sam: and they, they stuck a stent inside me and they used a laser to break up the
Sam: stone, but they couldn't get it all.
Sam: So then like several weeks later, I went back in, they changed the stent to
Sam: a new one, I guess, just to give me a nice, fresh, clean one.
Sam: They lasered out the rest of the stone, and then nine days later I had to come
Sam: in to get the stet taken out.
Sam: A stet, for anybody who doesn't know, is basically just a tube that helps widen
Sam: an opening, because they wanted the passageway from, I guess,
Sam: I never asked the details of exactly where this was placed,
Sam: but from my kidney to my bladder, from my bladder to out,
Sam: make all of those spaces bigger so that more stuff could get out more easily,
Sam: and in the second time around so that there wouldn't be swelling,
Sam: so that those things would close up because that would also cause problems.
Sam: Anyway, my description that I did on one of the robins that I happened to have
Sam: a turn on the day after, I got the stent yanked out of my bladder a few hours ago. It was fun.
Sam: Take your pants off, lie down, we'll shove lidocaine in you,
Sam: followed by a camera, and then pull this plastic tube out of you while you scream.
Sam: Fun. Fun, damn it. Anyway, I feel so much better.
Sam: The last, like, week and a half between the last actual surgery that they knocked
Sam: me out for and pulling this thing out of me actually felt worse than any of
Sam: the other time in the month previously.
Sam: Now, they say that I asked the doctor about this, and he's like,
Sam: well, you know, it's actually probably not any more uncomfortable.
Sam: It's just that you're no longer sick.
Sam: You know, the infection is gone, the actual kidney stone is gone,
Sam: and so all you have left is this tube in you, and it's really irritating.
Sam: So it feels worse because you're not comparing it to those other things that were wrong.
Sam: Meanwhile, I'm like, I don't entirely buy it. Like the entire rest of the time,
Sam: like I'd taken like three or four of the heavy duty prescription painkillers
Sam: they gave me like right after procedures.
Sam: And then I switched to like over-the-counter stuff for the rest of the time.
Sam: This last week and a half, I felt like I needed that stuff like constantly.
Sam: Like if I moved even slightly, it would hurt quite a lot.
Sam: I mean, not like I was just shot a lot, I guess. Well, I don't know.
Sam: I haven't been shot, so I can't compare.
Sam: But it wasn't like, you know...
Sam: It wasn't immobilizing, but it was definitely like you couldn't think about
Sam: anything else because, oh my God, it hurt.
Sam: And whenever I moved, I would also immediately get extremely urgent to run to
Sam: the bathroom as quickly as possible.
Sam: So I was spending as much time as humanly possible not moving at all,
Sam: you know, and certain positions were more comfortable than others,
Sam: but fundamentally, it hurt when you moved.
Sam: So it was just like, find a position and then just don't move.
Sam: Anyway, now that they pulled the thing out of me, which apparently they say
Sam: took like between 45 seconds and 60 seconds, so the actual removal did not take very long.
Sam: It was very unpleasant having the thing yanked out of me, but I started feeling
Sam: better very quickly afterwards.
Sam: By a few hours later, it was noticeably better. By the next morning,
Sam: I basically felt really good.
Sam: I wouldn't necessarily say 100%. I still occasionally feel some twinges and
Sam: some, you know, uncomfort, but I'm probably over 95% now.
Sam: I'm feeling much better, and I'm confident within a few more days it really
Sam: will be 100%. So I'm feeling much better with that kind of stuff.
Sam: So thank you for anybody who cares, and for those of you who don't care,
Sam: well, fuck you. You know, so anyway...
Sam: I'm going to go ahead and take that break, because it really is time for us
Sam: to go get in the car and go get my mom.
Sam: And I'm hoping my son is actually awake now. He's probably not.
Sam: So we will go get all that taken care of. We'll go see the movie.
Sam: And later tonight, which will then be Monday, UTC, I'll finish recording.
Sam: I don't know if I'll probably be solo.
Sam: Maybe I'll have my wife with me, but probably not. We'll see.
Sam: We'll see. She's offered a couple times, but I don't know. We'll see.
Sam: And that is that. Here comes the break. And yeah, back in a while.
Break: Okie dokie. Here it comes.
Break: It's just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make.
Break: Oh, I'm tired.
Break: What's wrong i'm i'm really tired you you you it's it's amazing to get the show
Break: on the road there's a road there's a road oh my god there's a road.
Sam: And I am back. As predicted, it is much later.
Sam: It is now Monday, March 23rd, just before 7 UTC, which is midnight here on the West Coast on the 22nd.
Sam: Anyway, I saw the movie, saw Hoppers. Like I said, I'm not going to give detailed
Sam: thing until I get to it in order, but thumbs up. Good movie.
Sam: And I will avoid saying more about that. I will say that I realized just now
Sam: that I hadn't actually done the two movies from before that I was supposed to do.
Sam: And I will say, before I do the two movies, I'll say, look, it's looking very
Sam: much like I'm not going to do any newsy stuff at all. None.
Sam: It will be a newsless show.
Sam: Because, you know, okay, the Iran stuff is continuing to get worse.
Sam: There's all kinds of headlines about gas prices and the Straits of Hormuz and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: I just don't really feel like it. I just don't.
Sam: There's the stuff about the airports being all backed up and security and ICE
Sam: agents going to do that and all the stuff about that, whether it's even legal or not.
Sam: And if it is legal, then what are the effects going to be? And blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Not going to do that. There was, oh, yeah, I did want to update with this, though.
Sam: You know, I ended with my health update. And I'm like, I'm feeling much better.
Sam: I'm feeling much better on that one thing.
Sam: But just within the last 24 hours, I've started to feel like crap in other ways.
Sam: Which is like really i just
Sam: finished or i'm almost finished getting
Sam: better with one thing and you're going to hit me with something else basically sunday
Sam: like i i
Sam: mean i slept till like i went to
Sam: bed just around midnight a little bit after
Sam: midnight which is around when i usually go to bed i did not wake
Sam: up until like 2 p.m like i
Sam: just did not every yeah i
Sam: would wake up occasionally use the bathroom but i was like still like feeling
Sam: utterly exhausted went right back to sleep i went to the movie thing and that
Sam: was fine but then on the way back from the movie i was not feeling good like
Sam: my my head's all kind of like.
Sam: I guess it's like head congestion is going on. I had a little bit of a cough.
Sam: I was just feeling generally exhausted and run down.
Sam: I'm like, this is fun.
Sam: This is fun. I got home from the movie and I basically was like,
Sam: I've got a whole bunch of stuff to do.
Sam: I've got to finish the podcast. I've got to, I've got to do some cleaning.
Sam: We've got some people coming over to the house to do some maintenance work on
Sam: Tuesday. And I basically have to get, like, the downstairs in shape so that,
Sam: like, we won't be completely embarrassed by random worker people coming into the house, right?
Sam: And so, and, you know, that's going to be mostly me. Brandy's been doing a bunch.
Sam: I have to do a bunch of stuff.
Sam: And, yeah, I got home from a movie, and I went upstairs, and I lay down and
Sam: slept, like, three hours, basically.
Sam: Again, after having already had a big sleep earlier in the day,
Sam: and I forced myself to get up because I had to finish the podcast,
Sam: and I, you know, want to do some of the other stuff.
Sam: I want to watch some TV with my son too, you know?
Sam: And it's one of these, like, you know, I mentioned my head. I've sort of got
Sam: a headache, stuffy head.
Sam: Had the chest stuff going on right after the movie, but less so now.
Sam: There is smoke in the air.
Sam: And I don't know I haven't looked if there are wildfires going on or it's just
Sam: this is the weather that people are using like wood burning fireplaces and it's
Sam: in the air but whatever it is,
Sam: the outdoor air itself is bothersome right now to me,
Sam: so maybe that has something to do with it, I don't know that sort of started
Sam: Saturday night, so it would line up,
Sam: but in any case, I am pissed that, you know,
Sam: getting over the one thing. And like, I now feel like crap and I've got stuff to do.
Sam: And I was like counting on the notion that, you know, I feel good now.
Sam: I can do stuff. I can be productive.
Sam: I can like, not just like stuff sitting at a desk working on a computer too,
Sam: but I can do like the physical things that need to be done, like laundry and
Sam: cleaning the house and all this kind of stuff that, you know, I actually don't mind.
Sam: I actually enjoy some of those things when I sit down to do them and when I'm
Sam: not exhausted and when I don't have,
Sam: you know, the situation where I do it for five or ten minutes and then I have
Sam: to sit down either because I'm in pain or exhausted again or anything like that,
Sam: which I was looking forward to.
Sam: And now I'm like, I spent most of the day in bed. This is not okay.
Sam: Okay, so anyway, I'm going to do these two movies and then basically wrap up.
Sam: I don't even know what the total length of the show is because,
Sam: you know, I recorded in segments and I don't remember how long the first two are.
Sam: But I have a sense that this will be a short show, which, again,
Sam: I shouldn't say because whenever I say that, that causes a problem. But whatever.
Sam: Okay, the two movies, as promised last week. First off, Murder by Death from 1976.
Sam: This is a comedy mystery film. and you
Sam: know i i mentioned to yvonne last time he asked who who's who does it star eileen
Sam: brennan truman capote james coco peter falk alec guinness elsa lanchester david
Sam: niven peter sellers maggie smith nancy walker and estelle winwood the quick summary,
Sam: on Wikipedia. The plot is a broad parody or spoof of the traditional country
Sam: house whodunit, familiar to mystery fiction fans of classics such as Agatha
Sam: Christie's and Then There Were None.
Sam: The cast is an ensemble of British and American actors playing send-ups of well-known
Sam: fictional sleuths, including Hercule Perrault,
Sam: Miss Marple, Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, and Sam Spade.
Sam: It also features a rare acting performance by author Truman Capote.
Sam: And here's the thing. I remember seeing this, like, as a kid.
Sam: I can't remember if it was, like, late preteens or early teens,
Sam: but somewhere around that.
Sam: I think, you know, it was one of these things—.
Sam: I don't remember. In my head, it was like, I went to a couple of these things for summer camp,
Sam: where it was like a sleepover summer camp at like the YMCA, and they'd put on
Sam: old movies overnight for the kids to watch.
Sam: And I have a feeling that maybe it was one of those. If it was one of those,
Sam: it puts it in late preteen years.
Sam: Alternately maybe i saw it in college or something i don't know like all you know the years all,
Sam: merged together when you're old like me but i
Sam: remember liking it at the time and thinking it was funny and laughing at the
Sam: jokes and all that kind of stuff and maybe my memory has been corrupted but
Sam: I'll tell you this time around I didn't like it. Thumbs down thumbs down.
Sam: I found it more annoying than anything else.
Sam: Like I didn't find it particularly funny like when they were spoofing things
Sam: I was like just this is dumb you know and I recognize it was a spoof and I recognize
Sam: it was supposed to be that kind of comedy but it just was not working for me. I just you know.
Sam: I don't know,
Sam: Here's the first two paragraphs of the plot from Wikipedia.
Sam: A group of five renowned detectives, each accompanied by a relative or associate,
Sam: is invited to dinner and a murder by the mysterious Lionel Twain.
Sam: Having lured his guests to his mansion, managed by a blind butler named Jassimir
Sam: Bensamum, who is later joined by a deaf, mute, and illiterate cook named Yetta,
Sam: Twain joins his guests at dinner.
Sam: He presses a button which seals the house.
Sam: Twain announces that he is the greatest criminologist in the world.
Sam: To prove his claim, he challenges the guest to solve a murder that will occur at midnight.
Sam: A reward of $1 million will be presented to the winner.
Sam: Before midnight, the butler is found dead. Twain disappears,
Sam: only to reappear immediately after midnight, stabbed 12 times in the back with a butcher knife.
Sam: The cook is also discovered to have been an animated mannequin,
Sam: now packed in a storage crate.
Sam: The party spends the rest of the night investigating and bickering.
Sam: They are manipulated by a mysterious behind-the-scenes force,
Sam: confused by red herrings, and baffled by the mechanical marvel that is Twain's house.
Sam: They ultimately find their own lives threatened.
Sam: Each sleuth presents his or her theory on the case, pointing out the other's
Sam: past connections to Twain and their possible motives for murdering him.
Sam: Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And it continues.
Sam: And, you know, there are various reveals at various points.
Sam: There are various sort of pieces of comedy of various sorts.
Sam: There's some slapstick in there. There's some just, like...
Sam: All kinds of like twists that make sense or don't make sense or are in them
Sam: in and of themselves just silly.
Sam: And like I said, I remember liking this.
Sam: I mean, you know, I don't remember my specific responses to it,
Sam: but I remember thinking, oh, that was a cool movie.
Sam: I don't feel like that right now. I feel like it was dumb, you know?
Sam: And yeah, it's just, no.
Sam: I don't know. Maybe if you like these particular people or the characters they
Sam: were sending up or just the style of stuff, I don't know. I was not impressed.
Sam: And maybe this is one of those things that just didn't age well,
Sam: or maybe it's one of those things that worked really well for Teenager or Below,
Sam: but did not work so well for, you know, an adult.
Sam: Or maybe it would work better if you were under the influence of something or other. I was not.
Sam: But yeah, I was, you know, not impressed.
Sam: Domestic reviews. New York Times wrote that the film had one of Simon's,
Sam: This was written by Neil Simon, along with Robert Moore.
Sam: Wrote that the film had one of Simon's nicest, breeziest screenplays,
Sam: with James Coco very, very funny as that somewhat prissy takeoff on Hercule
Sam: Perrault, and David Niven and Maggie Smith marvelous as Dick or Dora Charleston,
Sam: though they hadn't enough to do.
Sam: Variety called it a very good, silly, funny Neil Simon satirical comedy with a super all-star cast.
Sam: Adding, it's the sort of film one could see more than once and pick up on comedy
Sam: bits unnoticed at first.
Sam: L.A. Times found the film amusing, but added, while it is only amusing and not
Sam: hilarious, madcap riotous, rip-roaring, or richly romping, I don't entirely know.
Sam: It's a short movie, 94 minutes, but a slow one, surprisingly,
Sam: so when you'd have said knock about speed was called for.
Sam: Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave it three stars out of four.
Sam: After getting off to a shaky start, the picture quickly hits a speedball comedy
Sam: pace it doesn't lose until the unsatisfactory unraveling of the mystery.
Sam: Anyway, it is what it is.
Sam: Shall I move on? I think I shall move on. That's enough murder by death.
Sam: Next up, Star Wars Episode II, Attack of the Clones, from 2002.
Sam: I joked with Yvonne, this was a small indie movie that no one's ever heard of.
Sam: Obviously, that is not the case.
Sam: It is the second of the prequel movies in the Star Wars saga.
Sam: I gave a relatively negative review to episode one when we talked about it a while ago.
Sam: Episode two, I think, was fine. You know, I'm giving it a between thumbs sideways and thumbs up.
Sam: I guess the last one, I said I gave it a thumbs down. It's not the kind of thumbs
Sam: down, murder by death that is, that is a straight down.
Sam: So between thumbs sideways and thumbs down. I'm graduating this more.
Sam: I'm saving the true thumbs down to the ones that are actually painful,
Sam: and I'm mad for having wasted my time watching them.
Sam: That was not true of Murder by Death. I just didn't like it.
Sam: So anyway, for Attack of the Clones, Star Wars Episode II, Attack of the Clones,
Sam: I'll give it between a thumb sideways and a thumbs up.
Sam: Not a particularly great, amazing movie, but it was fine and certainly better
Sam: than Episode I. The plot...
Sam: Ten years after the Battle of Naboo, the Galactic Republic is threatened by
Sam: a separatist movement organized by Count Dooku,
Sam: a former Jedi Master who mentored Qui-Gon Jinn. There we go.
Sam: Former Queen-turned-Senator Padme Amidala travels to Coruscant to vote against
Sam: a motion to create an army to assist the Jedi against the growing menace.
Sam: After narrowly avoiding an assassination attempt from bounty hunter Zam Wessel
Sam: upon her arrival, she's placed under the protection of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi
Sam: and his Padawan apprentice, Anakin Skywalker. Zam attempts to...
Sam: The mouth, the blubbering, is like bad today.
Sam: Zam attempts to assassinate Padme again, but is thwarted and subdued by the Jedi pair.
Sam: Zam's employer, a jetpack-wearing bounty hunter, kills her before she reveals his identity.
Sam: The Jedi Council instructs Obi-Wan to find the bounty hunter,
Sam: while Anakin is tasked to protect Padme and escort her to Naboo.
Sam: Despite the Jedi Code forbidding attachments, the two fall in love.
Sam: And the fact that he's so much younger than her, and she knew him as a child,
Sam: which is kind of never awesome. But whatever!
Sam: That was not in the Wikipedia summary, that was me.
Sam: Obi-Wan's search leads to the ocean planet Kamino, where he discovers a clone
Sam: army is being produced for the Republic allegedly in the name of Sifo-Dyas,
Sam: a Jedi Master who died before allegedly ordering the drones,
Sam: with the bounty hunter Jango Fett serving as the clone's genetic template.
Sam: Obi-Wan deduces Jango as the bounty hunter he is seeking and places a homing
Sam: beacon on Jango's ship, before following Jango and his clone son Boba to the planet Geonosis.
Sam: Meanwhile, Anakin is troubled by visions of his mother Shimi in pain and returns
Sam: to his homeworld of Tatooine with Padme to save her.
Sam: His former owner, Watto, reveals that he sold Shimi to a moisture farmer named
Sam: Klieg Lars, who then freed and married her.
Sam: Klieg says Tusken raiders abducted Shimi one month earlier, and she is likely dead.
Sam: Anakin finds her at the Tusken campsite, barely alive.
Sam: After she dies in his arms, an enraged Anakin massacres the entire tribe.
Sam: He later confesses his actions to Padme and vows to prevent the deaths of those
Sam: he loves, dot, dot, dot. It continues...
Sam: Like I said, it was fine. It was a decent first Star Wars movie.
Sam: I don't think it's like one of the... If I was going to rank the top Star Wars
Sam: movies, which I'm not going to right now, but I would not put it in the top tier.
Sam: I would say that neither of these first two are better than the original trilogy,
Sam: than any of the original trilogy.
Sam: I would still put episodes four, five, and six, which, of course,
Sam: were the first, second, and third released, I had of these two,
Sam: and I think probably episode three from what I remember of it,
Sam: but I haven't watched it recently, so I'll reserve judgment until I watch it again.
Sam: Same for, I'll reserve judgment for the newer ones as well.
Sam: That's that. If you like Star Wars, of course you're going to watch it. You know, duh. You know.
Sam: And so, you know, here we go. continuing on with Star Wars.
Sam: And Alex and I had to make a decision at one point on universes like Star Wars
Sam: or the MCU that have both TV and movies.
Sam: Because what I had been doing was...
Sam: When we say watch a movie, and then the next thing to have started was a TV show,
Sam: then I would put watching that next TV show on my TV show list,
Sam: but I would not put a continuation for the next movie on my movie list until
Sam: after the TV show got watched.
Sam: But the pace and
Sam: the way in which we get to the
Sam: next tv show is much longer because while
Sam: i'm watching 10 tv shows at a time one of
Sam: them has to finish completely like we've watched every
Sam: episode that exists before we pick a new show to replace it and so you know
Sam: going through the associated tv shows may take a lot longer than going through
Sam: the movies so we decided to split those up so like what happens is if we finish
Sam: like episode 2 attack of the clones,
Sam: where the next thing in order that came out is like the clone wars tv series
Sam: or the is actually a series of shorts that came out first no alex is telling me i'm wrong.
Sam: Oh i did it that way i i you know i thought the decision was in conjunction,
Sam: to do it this way because I actually thought we should keep doing it the old
Sam: way. It would just take forever. But anyway...
Sam: We should go back to doing it the old way? I think we changed it because at
Sam: one point we were doing the Marvel Universe.
Sam: And the oldest thing was a...
Sam: We were looking for the oldest... We had rolled Marvel movie on the movie list.
Sam: But the oldest one we hadn't seen yet was some series of shorts from the 1940s
Sam: that would have fallen on the TV show side.
Sam: But we still wanted to watch something, so we picked the first movie anyway
Sam: and put the shorts... Anyway, we'll decide.
Sam: I decided. Okay. Maybe I decided.
Sam: We will discuss again the next time it comes up the right way to do this.
Sam: Yeah. You know, cause I don't know.
Sam: There are pros and cons to both approaches. Like, but anyway,
Sam: the point is after Attack of the Clones, the next thing is the 2003 to 2005 Clone Wars series.
Sam: Three seasons, 25 episodes total. so
Sam: there's also a Clone Wars thing in 2008 this is separate from that and then
Sam: there's another Clone Wars thing from 2008 going and I think they even released
Sam: a new season a couple years ago so it lasts a long period of time there's several
Sam: things with Clone Wars in the title.
Sam: Anyway so we broke them up so we'll see I don't think we've watched any Star
Sam: Wars since Attack of the Clones though,
Sam: So next up will either be the Clone Wars TV series, if we roll that on the TV side,
Sam: or Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith, if we roll that on that side,
Sam: or if we decide to re-separate those again, or no, re-combine, I don't know.
Sam: Alex is advocating for that, in which case the only eligible next thing would
Sam: be Clone Wars, the series.
Sam: Anyway, I don't know. It is what it is. I've said it is what it is several times.
Sam: I also notice in terms of, you know, what I was saying earlier,
Sam: I'm losing my voice a little bit now.
Sam: And my eyes are watering. I think both of those, and my throat is getting a
Sam: little scratchy, I think both of those things, like, or all three of those things, whatever it is,
Sam: lend themselves to maybe it is an air quality thing that's bugging me.
Sam: But like I look at my, I just brought up an air quality app.
Sam: It says it's fine right now. So...
Sam: I don't know. Like, yeah, I'm looking at the air quality index at places all
Sam: around me, and they're fine.
Sam: They're all green, really low readings, nothing like— the closest yellow thing
Sam: is quite a few miles away, and they're scattered in a couple specific locations.
Sam: So I don't know what's up with me. I hope I'm not getting sick again. I don't want to be sick.
Sam: Anyway, I'm going to wrap it up.
Sam: Thank you for joining me for yet another curmudgeons corner.
Sam: Go to our website curmudgeons-corner.com check out all the ways to you can see our archives,
Sam: you can see all the ways to contact us you can go to our patreon and give us
Sam: money of course at various levels we will we will mention you on the show we
Sam: will ring a bell we will send you a postcard We'll send you a mug.
Sam: At $2 a month or more, you'll get invited to our Curmudgeon's Corner Slack,
Sam: where Yvonne and I and various listeners are chatting throughout the week,
Sam: sharing links, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And let's see. Oh, oh, oh, I should mention, I have not shared on the Curmudgeon's
Sam: Corner Slack that story that I mentioned I was saving for Yvonne.
Sam: And obviously, I've not shared it here either. So I'm still saving it for Yvonne.
Sam: I will give you the hint that it involves almost running out of charge on my EV vehicle,
Sam: having problems charging at superchargers, and how all of that end up being resolved.
Sam: There's my spoiler.
Sam: But from the Curmudgeon Square Slack, a highlight that we have not talked about on the show today,
Sam: Let me find something good, something good from the, I usually,
Sam: well, Yvonne usually picks these, but he usually picks from the random channel,
Sam: which is the less serious stuff or tech, tech stuff often goes into random channel
Sam: as opposed to like serious news stuff.
Sam: Oh, polymarket. You know, those
Sam: folks who are doing sort of the online gambling, they call it a market.
Sam: You invest in futures for an event, and the price effectively represents the
Sam: percent chance people think that it will happen.
Sam: And it'll either end up going to 100% if it happens or to zero if it does not.
Sam: So, for instance, you know, if something's a 50-50 chance and you buy it at
Sam: 50 cents, then if it does happen, you double your money. If it doesn't happen,
Sam: you lose all your money. Basically, that's how I understand it to work.
Sam: I could be wrong because I've never actually tried this.
Sam: But anyway, Polymarket has apparently opened a bar in Washington,
Sam: D.C. called the Situation Room.
Sam: The quick one-line description is, imagine a sports bar, but just for situation monitoring.
Sam: Live feeds from X, flight radar.
Sam: Bloomberg terminals, and polymarket screens so that people can live in real
Sam: time, watch all kinds of world situations and determine how they want to bet on them, I guess.
Sam: I guess it's no different than sports bars or the places that you go to like
Sam: bet on horses or whatever.
Sam: I can't see myself being, you know, I'm kind of lying.
Sam: I don't see myself getting into the betting part of this. That just seems kind of dumb to me.
Sam: Although Bruce once, one of our listeners told me that he made some bets based
Sam: on what I was saying over on election graphs.
Sam: And he made some money a couple of elections ago. So I don't know if it was
Sam: Polymarket or something else. But so I don't know.
Sam: But honestly, the idea of a place that you can go to sit where the screens,
Sam: instead of being random sports games,
Sam: are, you know, news channels and tickers and charts and graphs.
Sam: Okay let me not lie that would
Sam: be kind of cool now I wouldn't necessarily want to sit there and drink or whatever
Sam: but like if there was a restaurant like this you know yeah I could see that
Sam: I could see one as it is if I go to restaurants if there's a screen that's on a news channel,
Sam: instead of on sports am I going to position myself so I can see that screen
Sam: yes yes I am I'll generally ignore the sports ones. Yeah, generally.
Sam: There are occasional exceptions, but it's rare.
Sam: Yeah. Okay, I think that's a show. I'm going to wrap this sucker up.
Sam: Hopefully, we will be back to a normal show with Yvonne next week.
Sam: In the meantime, and hopefully, I'm feeling really, actually,
Sam: 100% better. And we'll talk about more news.
Sam: Because, you know, the Iran stuff is important. And it will probably get worse over the next week.
Sam: Just, there's my bet. There's my polymarket bet.
Sam: Iran will get worse over the next week. Of course, they're probably much more
Sam: specific, like, you know, bet on the price of oil at a certain date and whether
Sam: or not thing X or Y will happen by a specific date, whatever.
Sam: I'm just very amorphous blobby.
Sam: The Iran situation will get worse, not better, in the next week. We'll see.
Sam: Okay. Is it time for the outro music? I think it's time for the outro music.
Sam: And then I'll figure out what I'm doing. Bye, folks.
Break: .