Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| So, Yvonne, you were saying you're dressed up because you're going to go see your mom later, right?
|
Ivan:
[0:04]
| I'm going to, yeah.
|
Sam:
[0:06]
| So I've got, so this evening, I'm going to some county Democratic gala thing. So I have to find some decent clothes for that in a little bit. And also, by the way, just to put it out here, today is Alex's birthday.
|
Ivan:
[0:25]
| Oh, happy birthday, Alex. We can hear.
|
Sam:
[0:28]
| He can't hear you. But he's 17. Yvonne says happy birthday. We're doing, we always do a joint birthday thing, like somewhere between his birthday and mine, which is like a few days later.
|
Ivan:
[0:41]
| Right, yours is, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[0:43]
| So we're going to do the official birthday thing tomorrow, which we've done every year since he was born. But this year he's like a little bit pissed. He's been like, what do you mean? What do you mean we're not doing something today? But we've always done it this way. But anyway, we'll do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:02]
| Well, my brother's birthday was yesterday, which is kind of like, you know, his birthday is September 11th. It's not exactly the best birthday to have, like, right now.
|
Sam:
[1:14]
| Mm, yes. We were one day off. So, we scheduled it, of course. So, I presume they, like, don't schedule a lot of people for the 11th.
|
Ivan:
[1:27]
| Mm. I'm going to guess that that's, like, well, it depends where you are.
|
Sam:
[1:32]
| It does depend where you are. But I'm talking here.
|
Ivan:
[1:35]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:35]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:36]
| Yeah. In North America, I assume that that's the case, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:39]
| Well, and this is the thing. Like, you know, because lots of people actually schedule their delivery dates. I mean, sometimes it happens the completely natural, it happens when it happens way. But it's not uncommon these days to be like, hey, if it doesn't come naturally by such and such date, we're going to do it.
|
Ivan:
[1:58]
| Well, that's right. But most of the times it does come, you know, quite often it happens naturally, and it's not on the day.
|
Sam:
[2:05]
| No, I'm not saying it's like a majority of the time or anything, but it's not uncommon.
|
Ivan:
[2:10]
| I mean, like Manu was like, dude, I don't know. He's still feeling that all of a sudden, blammo, here we go.
|
Sam:
[2:16]
| Yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, shall I hit the button to start the music and go, go, go?
|
Ivan:
[2:24]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:25]
| Yes. Okay. Here it is. Maybe. Button. There it is! Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, September 12th, 2026. It is 1745 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter, Yvonne Bo is here, and apparently my internet connection right now really freaking sucks.
|
Ivan:
[3:16]
| Oh, you seem fine over here. Hi! How are you?
|
Sam:
[3:19]
| Well, you know, I'm looking over at the other screen at the live stream, and I'm really blurry on the live stream, and you're really blurry to me.
|
Ivan:
[3:29]
| That's weird. You don't look blurry to me.
|
Sam:
[3:32]
| And the upload.
|
Ivan:
[3:33]
| And usually that's my, but you are breaking up though a little bit.
|
Sam:
[3:37]
| Yeah. There you go. And my upload says I've only got like 32 upload. Usually 32%. It's usually pegged at 100% the whole time. But I guess things are working. So we'll, anyway, we're going to do our usual, lighter stuff at the beginning. More newsy stuff at the end. Ahem. I got movies like I always do. What do you got this wonderful day? Or, you know, yeah. What do you got?
|
Ivan:
[4:09]
| We got tech stuff that happened this week.
|
Sam:
[4:10]
| Too.
|
Ivan:
[4:10]
| I think I was taught last week. I think I did fill in on all of our follies with the dishwasher and flat tire and things.
|
Sam:
[4:21]
| You did. You did, yes.
|
Ivan:
[4:22]
| Well, a couple of things, updates on that. One thing is that I had gone and filled my tire using this fluid that they, instead of a spare tire, they gave you this fluid that you, with this air pump, that you then put this bottle on the thing and then you run it. And it's supposed to, if it's a fixable hole, it will patch it and it'll give you enough running distance so you can go like about, it says, 50, 70 miles safely. OK, the first time I tried to do that on a tire, which is about four years ago, it failed miserably. OK, nothing happened.
|
Sam:
[5:03]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[5:03]
| But but this time it did work. I was able to get the tire to actually pop up using the fluid. OK, it filled up quite nicely. Now, I thought because in the past this was the case, these these. These fluids to, like, fill up a tire and patch it so you don't have to, like, change a tire have been around for decades, okay?
|
Sam:
[5:29]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[5:30]
| But the ones that I recall from originally, like, 20, 30 years ago, the way it worked is that if you used it, the tire was done. You couldn't fix the tire. It was game over. And I must admit that I assumed that that was the case now. That I would have to get a new tire. Yeah. But, surprise, surprise, I guess I didn't ride the tire as long as I did. And apparently this fluid is not like the fluids of all time. When I took it to Costco patch, they actually were able to patch the tire and, get the tire that had the air out back running again.
|
Sam:
[6:12]
| Oh. Okay, cool.
|
Ivan:
[6:13]
| So, you know, the repair was $0 because I bought the tires at Costco. So it had the, at Costco that you get unlimited. Yeah, the great thing about, let's say this, the great thing about getting tires at Costco is that they do have lifetime balancing after you buy it. They will repair it for free. If the tire's not repairable, they will give you a credit towards a new tire, depending on how, you know, there's a tire warranty. Say, hey, the tire we expected the last 40,000 miles. Say this tire's destroyed at 10,000. They will issue you a credit so you can get a new tire. Prorated the amount of time that it was used.
|
Ivan:
[6:58]
| But this time they were able to fix it, so zero. The other tire that I lost, they actually, because I couldn't even get to replace the Costco, I went there. They gave me a check. No, no, no. Wait, they credited my credit card. That's right. They did credit my credit card. And it was like almost all the money that the tire replacement cost me. So I highly recommend the Costco Tire Center. Okay. All right. They do very good work. And their warranty and service is usually after their installation fees are a lot lower than everybody else's. They do good work and they warranty everything. So, you know, even if you have a problem, they will fix it. So I got that. So I got the tire. Then the dishwasher became an odyssey because they came to deliver the dishwasher. Then the valve to shut off the water to the dishwasher was broken. It wouldn't shut off the water. So they couldn't deliver the dishwasher. They had to take it back. So I had to get a plumber. Then the plumber came out and they went and they were going to try to fix the valve. Well, the shutoff valve into my condo apparently wasn't working either. So they had to schedule to shut off the water to the building in order to replace that main valve. So I had to reschedule those guys also.
|
Sam:
[8:17]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[8:17]
| Get the condo association involved. Have them notify the building that the water needed to be shut down. Shut down the water to the building and replaced both the main valve and the valve to the dishwasher to then reschedule getting the dishwasher delivered, and then get it installed. But after all of that, it finally was installed. I have a dishwasher that works. Once again, like all these devices, they're all like, now every appliance is like on the internet.
|
Sam:
[8:48]
| Of course.
|
Ivan:
[8:48]
| So this dishwasher is like, I did, I will say.
|
Sam:
[8:52]
| I get notices on my phone anytime somebody uses the microwave.
|
Ivan:
[8:58]
| Yeah, I mean, it's the same. Like, the dryer tells me when it's shut off. The refrigerator tells me the door's open. And so now the dishwasher is also on that. I don't have the microwave or the stove on that thing.
|
Sam:
[9:12]
| Let's see. Our inventory at this point, the microwave, the refrigerator, and the dishwasher. Um i i admit like the dishwasher is online and has an app but i've never used it, okay um and it's not it doesn't send us notifications right now or at least i i i haven't maybe i maybe my wife gets them and i don't i don't know i don't think so i think we just never set that up, i get updates every once in a while from the refrigerator telling us that it just got an update and it has new features. The last one was like, better ice management like.
|
Ivan:
[9:55]
| Okay well i will admit that one thing i bought i like about the ice management in this lg refrigerator unlike in the samsung is that it will tell me if hey you haven't used the ice in a while ours is an.
|
Sam:
[10:08]
| Lg refrigerator too and it also will tell us like there's there's the ice in the door but.
|
Ivan:
[10:14]
| Right which.
|
Sam:
[10:15]
| We use all the time but it's also got like an ice bucket in the freezer.
|
Ivan:
[10:19]
| Yeah yeah yeah i turned those off i don't need that much ice Yeah.
|
Sam:
[10:23]
| Well, we should turn off the freezer one, too, because we never have used it, not even a single time. We get the notices that, like, you know, hey, this ice has been sitting here for, like, you know, however long.
|
Ivan:
[10:36]
| I thought you were like an ice monster. I mean, what?
|
Sam:
[10:39]
| Well, I used the ice from the door.
|
Ivan:
[10:43]
| Yeah, but I thought you also had that ice machine that made tons of ice.
|
Sam:
[10:49]
| We have a standalone ice machine that we got when we had a Samsung refrigerator.
|
Ivan:
[10:55]
| Oh, right. Because, of course, the Samsung refrigerator is designed not to have the ice working.
|
Sam:
[10:59]
| That's right. The ice broke right away.
|
Ivan:
[11:04]
| You had the same problem I did. I forgot. The Samsung refrigerator that it had an ice thing on the door, but it didn't actually work. Well, listen, I got metal parts coming out of it.
|
Sam:
[11:21]
| Oh, nice. Well, but anyway, we haven't actually used our standalone ice maker since we replaced the fridge last year. I think it was last year sometime. Because other stuff started breaking on the fridge. Like, so it was time. Yeah. So we replaced the fridge last year. And the new ice maker on the LG fridge is working fine as of now. You know, cross my fingers. But it does not have the same reputation as Samsung does for this kind of stuff. So I'm hoping it will continue to work fine.
|
Ivan:
[11:57]
| And I thought that you would be using, because you're Mr. Ice, you're using the ice trace. But I guess you're also not using the ice trays in the freezer, I guess.
|
Sam:
[12:06]
| Yeah, not really. I mean, it produces. Well, you know, and honestly, I I'm doing less ice than I used to. Like even when I'm, you know, but I don't know. And this is I probably should work on that, too, because like, you know, the main thing they told me after all my issues earlier this year, they did a whole bunch of tests on me. To like, what is wrong with your metabolism, right? And the only thing they came up with, is I am basically never drinking enough water. I am chronically dehydrated, basically.
|
Ivan:
[12:52]
| Okay, well, that's a problem.
|
Sam:
[12:56]
| That's a problem. I mean, they've told me drink more before, and I just have a really hard time with it. I bought myself a Smart Bottle. Smart Bottle.
|
Ivan:
[13:04]
| So it nags you to drink more water?
|
Sam:
[13:06]
| It nags and measures. Okay. years ago I had a bottle that measured exactly how much you drank that they first recommended for me this time around a bottle that was labeled not with like how much you drank but what time of day you should get certain markers on the bottle and that did absolutely nothing for me it did not work in the slightest so I bought this smart bottle that gives me like I've got an app I've got graphs, I've got like, you know, I can look at this right now and say, so far in today's GMT day, so 18 hours into the 24 hour day, I have only drunk 22% of my target for the day.
|
Ivan:
[13:50]
| But, I mean, it's early.
|
Sam:
[13:53]
| No, but it's early. This is a UTC day. I have it set to UTC, of course. So we're 18 hours into the 24. And I'm at 22%.
|
Ivan:
[14:02]
| Okay. Start guzzling water.
|
Sam:
[14:05]
| Guzzle some water.
|
Ivan:
[14:06]
| Yes. Jeez. I do drink a lot of water regularly. I'm actually drinking, which is not normal, because we never have these. A Diet Coke, which I'm showing on the camera. But we normally don't. I mean, I don't think you've seen me have a can of Diet Coke on this show.
|
Sam:
[14:28]
| Not in a while. Remember, you used to drink it all. That drink I just did, by the way, took me from 22% to 28%.
|
Ivan:
[14:36]
| There you go. But normally you've seen me with water all the time. There happened to be Diet Coke at the house that I just had a swick. I, like right now, I do still like Diet Coke, but I just don't drink it regularly as I did.
|
Sam:
[14:49]
| So i'll have an occasional i want to say one more thing about this bottle in terms of their advertising that bottle i had years ago that measured how much you had it wasn't like it didn't have an app it wasn't online this one's all, bluetooth connected to my phone and crap but, the the the one from years ago, actually had a real like measuring device it had like a little spinny wheel that when you drank water and you sucked it in it would turn and measure how much you drank. This, of course, couldn't possibly have a little device that actually measures water flow. Instead, it has an accelerometer and AI that tries to guess how much you drank by how you tipped it, and how long you tip it and how you hold it on your mouth and all this kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[15:43]
| That seems overly complicated to do something that just some little thing could just measure very easily. Can I be honest?
|
Sam:
[15:54]
| And I'm sure the measurement is more accurate. Maybe. They say outright, like, you know, there's a considerable variation in error rate on this thing. So it's not really a good measurement. It gives you an idea. But like i think this is another one of these examples where people are like, how can we make this ai it's a water bottle like it needs to do something like let's.
|
Ivan:
[16:26]
| I mean you know like i mentioned like it's.
|
Sam:
[16:30]
| I mean also of course it has to have bluetooth it has to have an app it has to have a screen bluetooth.
|
Ivan:
[16:36]
| App and screen i jeez i yeah i i, I will admit that there is a thing. I found that for my dishwasher, it was easier to run from the app than on the actual DisplayPow.
|
Sam:
[16:54]
| Okay. Yeah. I don't know how they managed to do that. I should go dig up the app for our dishwasher and see that.
|
Ivan:
[17:05]
| I found it quite annoying that how the hell can you make the buttons... More complicated than the actual app. I found that ridiculous. Also, I don't understand why everybody makes the process of, like, connecting a device to an app so complicated. I found that my LG refrigerator was utterly complicated, and this Bosch dishwasher was just the same. And I'm always marveling at how Apple, I'm like, oh, you want to add a device? Oh, here, just put your phone. Oh, there. Oh, okay, it gets done. And I'm like, why the fuck, you know, just copy whatever the fuck they're doing. Why are you, why? I don't get it.
|
Sam:
[17:52]
| They're just trying to aggravate you, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[17:55]
| Well, they're doing a good job.
|
Sam:
[17:57]
| Okay. So, anyway. Anything else from you before I like the movie?
|
Ivan:
[18:04]
| I like the dishwasher.
|
Sam:
[18:06]
| You like the dishwasher. Good. I'm glad you like the dishwasher. Okay. First movie. I watched this, let's see, November 3rd, 2025. So we're still keeping up for the moment. We're not quite a year keeping up. We're not falling further behind. Anyway, this is a 1997 documentary. Don't know if you've ever seen this, Yvonne. It's Trekkies.
|
Ivan:
[18:36]
| What is it?
|
Sam:
[18:37]
| Trekkies. It's a documentary about Star Trek fans from 1997.
|
Ivan:
[18:43]
| You know what? I've watched bits of it. I don't think I've ever watched a whole thing, but I did watch some bits of it. Yeah. What year was this again?
|
Sam:
[18:54]
| 1997.
|
Ivan:
[18:56]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was on TV a few times, and I watched some bits of it that I recall.
|
Sam:
[19:02]
| Right. So it's the narrator host is Denise Crosby, who played Tasha Yar in The Next Generation.
|
Ivan:
[19:09]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[19:10]
| And it's interesting because... It tries to walk a very narrow line between, on the one hand, respecting the Star Trek fandom and recognizing that, you know, their existence, you know, launched a franchise and, you know, you know, Tasha Yar, Denise Crosby made some money off it. I mean, she left early and there was a whole drama around her specifically, but whatever. A bunch of people made their careers on this show.
|
Ivan:
[19:48]
| And then she repeatedly came back.
|
Sam:
[19:50]
| She came back as a guest star a few times.
|
Ivan:
[19:52]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[19:54]
| But anyway, there was apparently some hard feelings about her original leaving. But then she had a good time coming back.
|
Ivan:
[20:03]
| But then she repeatedly came back.
|
Sam:
[20:04]
| She came back, and she came back in good ways. She was an important part of one of the best episodes of Next Generation, yesterday's Enterprise. Anyway, but they walk the line between respecting the fandom and completely showing how bizarre some of these people are. And trying to do it respectfully, but at the same time you're watching this, and they are clearly calling out, not like, I mean, both you and I have watched a decent amount of Star Trek.
|
Ivan:
[20:38]
| Quite a lot, yes.
|
Sam:
[20:40]
| You know, we, you know, to give an example of one of the people that is highlighted in this, who I remember making quite a lot of news at the time, is when, in 1996, when, you know, there was a trial related to Bill Clinton and Whitewater, if anybody remembers that scandal. One of the jurors on that trial insisted on wearing their Starfleet uniform, to the trial because that was their uniform and they had to. She was actually an alternate, and she was eventually dismissed from the jury, but not because of her outfit, although apparently there was some back and forth in court about whether she would be allowed to wear it. In the end, she was allowed to wear it, but she did an interview with a news program about wearing the uniform, and she was dismissed from the jury because she did the interview. But anyway yeah that's one example i i i don't know about you yvonne but, while yeah i have never worn my star free fleet uniform to a jury trial or or to anything else like that.
|
Ivan:
[22:05]
| I i don't have A Starfleet.
|
Sam:
[22:07]
| Uniform. I will say, my wife got me a hoodie that looks like, you know, Spock's shirt from the original series. Yeah, so it's got, so it is sort of a, if you saw this thing, you would know it is a Starfleet hoodie.
|
Ivan:
[22:25]
| It's a Starfleet uniform.
|
Sam:
[22:26]
| It's a space hoodie. Well, it's not, it's not the actual uniform.
|
Ivan:
[22:29]
| It's a Starfleet uniform based hoodie.
|
Sam:
[22:32]
| Yes, exactly. But I will say, and I have worn this. I have worn this out in the world a few times. But I am conscious of when I do that. And I'm like, is this a day where I can get away with wearing a Star Trek-themed hoodie? Or should I wear something a little bit less conspicuous? But yeah and you know that and they yeah this has like you know people, you know speaking klingon people doing this people doing that and just sort of the the world of the the conventions and it goes into a little bit of the history how, it was fans doing a big campaign that, brought star trek back for, for its third season and then later for the movies and you know, all this kind of stuff. So there is a sequel. I have not watched the sequel yet. There's a 2004 sequel Trekkies two.
|
Sam:
[23:32]
| I have not watched that yet. I'm sure I will eventually, but no, this is fun. I'll give it a thumbs up. It's 1997. So honestly, it feels a little bit dated today. And also you, You can tell some of the transformation since then. Like, a lot of what they talked about in this documentary was pre-1997, an earlier history of, like, Star Trek conventions and everything, where, you know.
|
Sam:
[24:04]
| If you were a Star Trek fan in specific or a science fiction fan more generally, you know, these were, you know, esoteric geek fandoms, right? And it really has become completely mainstream at this point, you know? So, you know, there are, big major conventions, like we have Comic-Con all over the country, where people, you know, they do their cosplay and they run and they are happily geeking out on this kind of stuff in a way that is sort of... A lot more mainstream than it was when, say, somebody was going to a Star Trek convention in the 1970s or something like that. You know? And so, and, you know, Star Trek is a huge mega franchise right now. It's one of, you know, they have some ups and downs, like, in terms of, like, how much is going on and whatever. But it's, you know, it's not like, oh, you're the geek show, you know, with, you know, Shatner famously on Saturday Night Live yelling at Trek fans to get a life and all this kind of stuff. It's a little bit different vibe today.
|
Ivan:
[25:22]
| Get a life! Get a life!
|
Sam:
[25:25]
| Exactly. Yeah. So anyway, Trekkies, thumbs up. Next up, from the AFI 100 movie thingy, bop-a-loodle-loodle thing, Yankee Doodle Dandy, which was number 100 on the 1998 list. And as we are now doing the 2007 list, it's up to 98. For some reason, it moved up two thingies. and yeah it's a 1942 American biographical musical drama about George M. Cohan starring James Cagney and a bunch of other people and uh.
|
Sam:
[26:12]
| So, Cohen's the guy who did, well, Yankee Doodle Dandy from the title, but also Over There, which if anybody remembers, because I know all of you were there to experience it firsthand, was a big song during World War I. You know, it was about like the troops being over there. Over there, over there, ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba, over there. That's the song, okay? But it goes through his life. So plot summary real quick. In the early days of World War II, George M. Cohen comes out of retirement to star as President Roosevelt in the Rogers and Hart musical I'd Rather Be Right. On the show's first night, he is summoned to the White House to meet the president who presents him with a congressional gold medal. Cohen is overcome and chats with Roosevelt recalling his early days on the stage. The film flashes back to Cohen's supposed July 4th birth while his father is performing on the vaudeville stage. Cohen and his sister join the family act as soon as they learn to dance, and soon the four Coens are performing successfully. But George gets cocky as he grows up and is blacklisted by theatrical producers for being troublesome. He leaves the act and hawks his song unsuccessfully to producers. Dot, dot, dot. He continues. It goes through his career. He does a bunch of, like, theater things, and then he does a bunch of patriotic songs, including Over There.
|
Sam:
[27:35]
| Oh, I mean, it's—I'll give it a thumbs up. I was wavering between thumbs up and thumbs sideways, so maybe it's in between, but—.
|
Sam:
[27:47]
| So it's interesting. It's fine. I don't know if it's really a top 100, but, you know, I enjoyed it, I guess. And, you know, it's got a couple nice songs and it's interesting seeing, like, it's a movie of people doing stage plays at certain parts. So you get like the behind the scenes theater stuff and this, you know, the, the scenery moving in and out and all kinds of stuff like that. And that's, that's, that's sort of fun. So I mean, and yeah, that's it. I don't have a lot more to say about that one. Have you ever seen it?
|
Ivan:
[28:21]
| No, I have not.
|
Sam:
[28:23]
| Yeah. I mean, do, do I recommend you run out to see it tomorrow? Nah, probably not. Which I guess leans more towards the thumb sideways, but it was fine. It was fine. You know, 1942-style musical. It was fine. So, anyway. Okay, that's all I got for this time. Shall we take a break and then jump into other newsy stuff?
|
Ivan:
[28:54]
| Yes, let's do that.
|
Sam:
[28:55]
| Yes. Okay. Well, here comes a break.
|
Break:
[29:04]
| You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No! Do you want to support the show? No! Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe! You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show you know web hosting equipment a little bit of advertising to promote the show and maybe every once in a while some much needed sedatives for Yvonne, at different contribution levels you can get a mention on the show our curmudgeons corner postcard or even a curmudgeons Corner Mug. Fun stuff. Not fun! In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Curmudgeon's Corner! Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No!
|
Break:
[30:12]
| Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more. 100 billion! billion dollars even though you don't have anywhere near a billion dollars. If we're worth anything to you at all, send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Alex hates, really, really hates curmudgeonscorner! That's really mean, isn't it? But I hate curmudgeonscorner, but I really do!
|
Sam:
[30:44]
| And we are back. So, Yvonne, we got some tech stuff this week. We got the iPhone duo. We got more AI news. We've also got politics stuff with Trump having his little convention. We got more Middle East news with things happening. We've got the anniversary of 9-11. Where do you want to start? You want to talk about any of these things? Or you want to go off on a completely different direction? We can talk about petunias and horticulture for the rest of the show.
|
Ivan:
[31:15]
| Duo Sam, I want to get the duo I thought about it, at first I thought that I was like ah who's going to care about the folding phone you know the other one has a better camera I hear blah blah blah but then I saw it in action on specs.
|
Sam:
[31:36]
| The pro or the pro max the 18 pro or the 18 pro max has lots of things that are better there.
|
Ivan:
[31:42]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[31:42]
| But the Fold has the Fold thing.
|
Ivan:
[31:48]
| Yes, it has the Fold thing. You know, a couple of things about the Fold thing. First of all, when it folds.
|
Sam:
[31:55]
| It's actually smaller than the other phone. Of course, I just said the Fold has it.
|
Ivan:
[31:58]
| It's the Duo has it. The Fold is... Yeah, the Duo, yeah. First of all, it's smaller when it's folded than the other two. Yes. Okay? Which I had been on this thing that I would like a smaller phone. And so when folded, it is actually a smaller form factor. But then when you open it, you've got a lot, you know, you've got more screen. So, it makes both things happen at the same time. Usually when you have it, it's smaller. But then when you want it big, it's bigger.
|
Sam:
[32:30]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[32:30]
| This sounds really weird.
|
Sam:
[32:32]
| I mean, and basically, I think everyone knows this. I mean, first of all, this form factor has existed on Android forever. Everybody knows this. They've had Folds in a couple different orientations. And they beat the specific passport. The specific. Wait, wait, wait. I just want to say this. The specific passport form factor is relatively new even on the Android side. Most of them are taller.
|
Ivan:
[32:55]
| Most of them are bigger.
|
Sam:
[32:57]
| Bigger as well.
|
Ivan:
[32:58]
| That's the thing. Actually, almost all the Android phones that I saw that were Fold were ginormous. They would take this phone.
|
Sam:
[33:07]
| Oh, it's a Fold.
|
Ivan:
[33:08]
| It would make it even better.
|
Sam:
[33:10]
| There are at least a couple that are almost exactly this form factor that launched within the last year. But in any case.
|
Ivan:
[33:18]
| Well, I guess I wasn't paying that much attention to those. But anyway, but historically, the ones that I've seen.
|
Sam:
[33:24]
| Yes, I understand.
|
Ivan:
[33:25]
| Have been massive.
|
Sam:
[33:27]
| But you know here here's the thing the fundamental idea of it is you have the smaller phone you want want it but basically it unfolds into an ipad mini i mean essentially, Now, they're doing software on it that's iOS plus some enhancements for the phone factor. It's not actually giving you the iPad OS. But still, it gives you the size and shape, essentially, of an iPad mini if you want the additional real estate. And it has a whole bunch of modes where you can do it sort of half-folded as well and prop it up and do all kinds of things like that. Look, I fully admit it does sound very interesting and, You know, like I said, my wife wants one, too. She's due to replace her phone. She actually was ready to replace her phone a couple months ago because it's been acting up and having some issues. It's, I don't know, four years old? It's old enough it is well due to be replaced.
|
Ivan:
[34:32]
| I'm not at four, but I am at three years. I actually had waited on purpose.
|
Sam:
[34:37]
| But, yeah, no, I told her a few months ago.
|
Ivan:
[34:39]
| I will tell you this.
|
Sam:
[34:40]
| The new ones are coming out in September. Wait. And, you know, both the new regular ones, plus there's the rumors are the folding one will be out.
|
Ivan:
[34:49]
| They're supposed to be available today for pre-order, if I remember.
|
Sam:
[34:52]
| Well, the 18s are.
|
Ivan:
[34:53]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, the 18s.
|
Sam:
[34:55]
| The duos aren't available for pre-order until next month.
|
Ivan:
[34:57]
| No, until October. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[34:58]
| But, yeah, so, of course, and she's like, I think I might want the foldable. You know, I could see using that. And my only, you know, I don't know. You know if we'll order you know if she wants to order my own thing is i would rather like right now a bunch of people obviously at the launch got limited hands-on so there have been a bunch of reviews of people like showing that they're playing with it they're using it whatever, but we don't yet have and probably won't have until right before pre-order day right they They usually lift embargoes and such things. Reviews of people who actually get to use it for a week. Oh, for like a week. Yeah, okay. Yeah, because so far all the reviews are people who've gotten to handle it for like 15 minutes or something. You know? And you can get a good idea after 15 minutes, but you get a good idea of what it's really like to use it once you can take it home and keep it for a week. And we'll have a bunch of reviews from reviewers who have gotten to do that, but not until next month. And I kind of want to hear what they say.
|
Ivan:
[36:11]
| This week, the whole thing was about a whole bunch of, I realized, man, Android people suffer from phone envy because I never give a shit about what the fuck they launch. But anytime Apple launches something, they have to spend like several days. But listen, you don't want an Apple phone. Fuck off, whatever. I, you know, I never even think about it, but I will say this. The one thing is, oh, well, you know, the fold has been around for a long time, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, guys, the first fucking folder was out was that Samsung Note that that Samsung launched. That was so bad. Do you realize? I don't know if you remember that they intentionally bricked any of the ones that weren't actually returned on purpose because they were so bad and so dangerous that they actually intentionally bricked them. If you still had one, they disabled them.
|
Sam:
[37:05]
| Well, I mean, the thing here is, well, first of all, of course, it's been like eight years since then. They've improved dramatically. But I think your point is that they release it when it's not yet fully baked.
|
Ivan:
[37:19]
| Not even remotely close.
|
Sam:
[37:22]
| And so you really play the early adopter tax.
|
Ivan:
[37:25]
| So bad a product has to be that the manufacturer not only recalls all the devices out there, but then proceeds that if you didn't return them intentionally, disables them. I'm sorry. Could you mind telling me when the fuck else in compute history have we somebody made something so bad that they had to do that?
|
Sam:
[37:50]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[37:53]
| So, yeah, no, yes, they did release it. Yeah, they did release it at first. Yeah, but it was a complete disaster. And what's the point of being first if what you're releasing is an utter disaster?
|
Sam:
[38:04]
| Well, and this is the thing that Apple has the reputation for is they're very rarely first on anything. But they'll come in a few years later having refined the com, the the concept and made it nice and put on like bells and whistles that make you appreciate it more like i mean i can't of the reviews i've seen so far like, so many people gush over just the animation when you open this thing you.
|
Ivan:
[38:35]
| Open the phone.
|
Sam:
[38:36]
| Like because it sort of it it it has like a frosted thing that makes it look like Like you're seeing through the lid into what's beneath and then it opens up. And, you know, people are just like, ooh, ah, wow, like it looks so cool. And like, you know, someone within 24 hours had whipped up, you know, hey, I added something to my Android so it does this too when I open my fold. And it's like, okay, that's nice. But, like, this is the polishing touches that Apple is known for that the Android people, for the most part, would be like, yeah, I don't give a fuck about that.
|
Sam:
[39:16]
| I don't care about the nice little animation. But the nice little animation... Is something that makes people who just pick it up and touch it go ooh and ah a little bit more. And it just feels nice. And to some people that matters. To some people it doesn't. But it's one of the things that Apple is known for. Now, I have heard some people also saying, you know, this thing, you know, people are all excited about it right now. But once it gets out there, yeah, this is not going to take off. There's going to be like, there's going to be some people like it, but they're going to look like douchebags using this phone in public and people aren't going to like it. And, you know, people are going to come back to the regular form factor and, and, you know, the, the, the pro or the pro max are going to continue to be the big sellers because this is, this is more expensive. It's underpowered compared to the pros and the pro maxes.
|
Sam:
[40:18]
| And the form factor will be a novelty. Like people use it a few times and then, you know, they're going to want to go back, you know, because it turns out they never actually opened the thing, you know, or whatever. Actually, I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[40:33]
| Listen, I completely disagree. I see a lot of situations where I know that that form factor would be useful, which is the reason why I really want to have it. You know you know a whole bunch of phones come right now of the regular like you know shaped smartphones that we have like right now.
|
Ivan:
[40:54]
| And you know many of them like oh well we'll we'll do it with a little like we'll add a little like stand behind it so the phone can stand right right which, seems like really shitty just to add a stand to the phone but but i i get it you know So it has that certain functionality in certain situations, okay? So I can see what value, but with a fold, what you get is actually you were able to set the phone down to get that functionality, but you're adding like more function to it, you know, at the same time, okay? So you get both things at the same time. And I can see in situations where I'm sitting at a desk on an airplane or others where I want to be able to set the, phone down that way and use it that way. And so I see the value of that. I also see the incredible value, especially taking pictures of my son that sometimes gets distracted with pictures of having this, having the damn screen where you can not just take a picture, but they can see how you look on the, on, on the, on the, on the photo. And I gotta be honest with you. I get so many times that I am like, I'm always dreading, like handing my phone over to somebody for them to take a picture. Because they are so bad at taking pictures. And then I get the fucking pictures, and I'm just like, you asshole. Jesus fucking Christ. You know, good Lord. You know, don't you have any idea how to take a picture? It would be great if I saw what the fuck they were looking at when they were taking the goddamn picture.
|
Sam:
[42:16]
| So you could be like, no, center me.
|
Ivan:
[42:18]
| No, no.
|
Sam:
[42:18]
| No, don't cut off the top of my head. Right. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[42:23]
| Why are we like 100 feet away? For the love of God, could you zoom in a little, please? Yeah. That would be useful. Yes.
|
Sam:
[42:32]
| Maybe not be tilted at a 45 degree angle.
|
Ivan:
[42:34]
| Right. God. Man, my son's last birthday, I had to edit the pictures so bad because I gave the phone. Look, I appreciate that they were nice to take the pictures. Okay. But shit. It was just like, oh, for the love of God. Fuck, man. These pictures are useless.
|
Sam:
[42:56]
| Yeah. No, I also want to get some, like, hands-on feedback from people on things like durability and stuff, you know? Like, you got to think there's no way that that hinge isn't a vulnerability when you drop it in certain ways, right? Eh. You know? I mean, and look, phones break anyway, but, like, these are pretty damn tough these days, you know?
|
Ivan:
[43:21]
| We had hinged phones for a long time.
|
Sam:
[43:24]
| I know. I know we did. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[43:26]
| And they were very—the hinges weren't really much of an issue, okay? You know, listen, the entire issue around these is it wasn't so much the hinge. The biggest issue was the screen and the folding. And in the original versions that we had of these, the crease was like, oh my God, the crease was like, you know, yeah, yeah, we made a folding phone. And it's like, oh yeah, well, great. It's like, fuck, this looks like shit. This stupid screen looks like shit. I can't get my eyes off the stupid crease in the fucking middle.
|
Sam:
[44:01]
| Well, and people have said on this one, you know, it is one of, if not the best, in terms of hiding the crease that's out there. Yes. But there's still a crease. You can still see the crease.
|
Ivan:
[44:15]
| There are some rumors that— But you have to look at it very—it's not as noticeable.
|
Sam:
[44:23]
| Noticeable okay this is one of the things too that, you know you actually need some time to see because on other foldable devices the crease gets worse over time the longer you use it, now now apple has done some things to try to minimize that as well they've, got some new technology that they're using etc but like we won't really know some of this until some people have been using these damn things for weeks or months, you know?
|
Ivan:
[44:54]
| Well, but that's why you have AppleCare.
|
Sam:
[44:57]
| That's why you have AppleCare. And presumably, you know, Apple in their little labs has these stress testing robots that are opening and closing and opening and closing and opening and closing this thing thousands of times over and over again, you know, and they've been happy.
|
Ivan:
[45:12]
| I'm sure they do. I know we, you know, we're, you know, Apple is not Tesla. They don't, they're not sending them out for us to test them. So, so yeah, I mean, I remember how we had that shit over at our, at HP at the factory in Boise, how we, you know, I still remember how in order just to test paper jams, we had this, and there was an entire warehouse full of paper from all places in the world. And I'm like, well, why do you need paper from all places in the world? Said well because they're actually different they are actually different, they're very different they have different you know the fibers the composition the things, it actually we discovered it at the beginning that you know paper in north america that would perfectly work on a printer we went to malaysia and we bought paper over there and it would jam the printer so basically we have this entire fucking warehouse sourced of paper from around the world where they had this entire array of printers, just basically being loaded papers from all over the world just to test them to make sure they weren't jamming.
|
Sam:
[46:13]
| And by the way that there there are videos out there of these kinds of testing devices like apple's included it in some of their keynotes before for.
|
Ivan:
[46:21]
| Previous devices.
|
Sam:
[46:22]
| Like basically torture testing one device or another whether it be like testing the waterproofing testing heat.
|
Ivan:
[46:31]
| Resistance testing.
|
Sam:
[46:32]
| Folding like this other companies have done it too i remember.
|
Ivan:
[46:35]
| One And in particular.
|
Sam:
[46:37]
| Ikea had a video they put out of testing their chairs with this fake butt that would sit on it and get up and sit on it and get up and sit on it and get up over and over. I think, like, I've actually seen, like, I think Ikea used to have, like, an actual one of their test devices in their showroom on one of the chairs showing that working. Anyway, I'm sure they've worked on all this kind of stuff. It's just my concern is specifically with a first-generation product. Is they're almost always, like, things that get worked out. And you do pay an early adopter tax. But I just want to hear, like, I'm not, like, saying wait for V2 next year. But I feel like I want to, like, first of all, I'm not in the market. I got a new phone last year. So I'm a few years out from replacing mine. But like i would wait until i at least hear the reviews of the people who've gotten to live with the device for a little while and give you like okay here's what really works here's what really doesn't because like you're holding it in a controlled demo environment for a few minutes just isn't the same as actually trying to use the thing for like a week or two, and so i want to hear what those people say when we get there i'm.
|
Ivan:
[47:59]
| On the ah fuck it.
|
Sam:
[48:01]
| Of course you are my wife probably It probably is.
|
Ivan:
[48:03]
| Too. Listen, it's not... Listen, I've been... This is... I was going to get a new phone this year. My phone's three years old. I did notice, by the way, the trade-in value on my 15 Pro Max is actually quite good.
|
Sam:
[48:18]
| Oh.
|
Ivan:
[48:20]
| You know, they're... If I traded the phone back in, they would give me back about $500.
|
Sam:
[48:26]
| So, as I'm thinking, my wife probably has the same phone as you. It's probably a 15 Pro Max, too. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[48:33]
| $500 trade-in is pretty damn good. I got to be honest.
|
Sam:
[48:37]
| See, I can't do the trade-ins because then it's not sitting on my shelf for the rest of my life. Like all good old devices should be.
|
Ivan:
[48:44]
| Uh-huh. Well, since I don't have a order thing.
|
Sam:
[48:48]
| I also noticed, and they may change this by the time they get to launch. The last couple of times I've gotten phones, the payment option I've picked is the one where it actually gets billed to me through my carrier. Like on my monthly bill spaced out and i didn't see that in the options for the duo immediately maybe it will be by the time we launch probably.
|
Ivan:
[49:12]
| Yeah because they still haven't like really put the pre-order thing really.
|
Sam:
[49:16]
| Like they have a pricing page but they didn't they have a pricing page but it has other it has other options listed it's just missing that option so i was like sure You know.
|
Ivan:
[49:26]
| If you, you know, it's like, well, I know that they didn't go, it was like, they didn't have the part where you got to the payment thing, thing with the thing.
|
Sam:
[49:39]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[49:39]
| And the thing.
|
Sam:
[49:40]
| But they do, they do have the part where they list several payment options and you can see the differences in the payment options. But anyway, anything else to say about this phone? I guess you can review it once you have, once you have it in person, you can tell us your thoughts. And then like, if you're, if you're unhappy with it, you could, oh, I'm waiting for the video too, where someone intentionally breaks the hinge. Cause you know that, no, within the first day, someone has this in their hands. There's going to be somebody saying, okay, we're going to see what it takes to break this thing, crunch and try to like intentionally break it.
|
Ivan:
[50:15]
| I will try not to do that. I will say this, that I was also thinking about getting one for my son. And the reason is because he has had an ipad mini for a long time uh that he uses and he uses he's he has actually has, an older iphone sc it must be four or five years old yeah the reason i haven't gotten him a new phone is because i've asked him and he kept saying no right, so i'm like hey you know if that's you know if he's happy with the phone why the hell am i gonna get him a new phone But I do think that the way that he uses his devices, that he probably would enjoy that a lot more than his phone. So that was my thinking.
|
Sam:
[51:03]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[51:04]
| Maybe for the holidays.
|
Sam:
[51:05]
| Maybe. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, especially if you, especially if the current situation is phone plus iPad and you're considering, well, this replaces both.
|
Ivan:
[51:18]
| Right, because it's phone plus, it's an iPhone SE plus iPad mini.
|
Sam:
[51:22]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[51:23]
| So, hey, you know. Takes care of both.
|
Sam:
[51:29]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[51:29]
| Pretty much.
|
Sam:
[51:30]
| And I guess that's one way to justify, like, the price. I mean, is say, this isn't just a phone. This is sort of a phone plus iPad.
|
Ivan:
[51:40]
| First of all, first of all, iPad mini. But in one, yeah, basically. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:44]
| So, I don't know. If I was in the market for a new phone right now, I would wait until I could play with it in person at an Apple store. And then I would decide, do I want this or do I want the Pro Max? And I'd probably still go with the Pro Max.
|
Ivan:
[52:04]
| Listen, I think that the bulk of sales is still going to be of the other models. Because it's expensive.
|
Sam:
[52:11]
| If nothing else, they're cheaper.
|
Ivan:
[52:13]
| Yeah. A lot cheaper. It's because it's expensive. I mean, this phone is expensive. This is a very expensive phone. Let's be clear about this.
|
Sam:
[52:23]
| You know, it's a, we're, and this has been true for a few years now, but like now that we have the Neo out as well for, for laptops, you, you get a full ass laptop.
|
Ivan:
[52:38]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:39]
| For like.
|
Ivan:
[52:39]
| Six, 700 bucks.
|
Sam:
[52:40]
| A third of the price of this thing. Yeah. This phone.
|
Ivan:
[52:44]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:44]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[52:45]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:47]
| So roughly, I, I didn't, I'm, I'm not good with that.
|
Ivan:
[52:49]
| Well, no, it is. It's, it's a third. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:53]
| Yeah, something like that. Aren't the NEOs like $799 or something?
|
Ivan:
[52:57]
| You know, it's like everything. The main reason is like it's miniaturization. It's why. I mean, it's getting, because as far as I can tell, this is more powerful than a NEO.
|
Sam:
[53:11]
| I'm sure it is. I mean, the trick with the NEO is it's basically a phone chip. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[53:16]
| And an older one of that.
|
Sam:
[53:18]
| The thing with the.
|
Ivan:
[53:20]
| But you get a bigger screen and a full keyboard. it's a computer and you run.
|
Sam:
[53:24]
| Mac os the thing with entry-level laptops at this point, is like the size constraint is the keyboard and the screen yeah like the the actual electronics inside are tiny you know right right now for premium high-end laptops they throw a whole bunch of other crap in there and they use the space but you know anyway.
|
Ivan:
[53:47]
| I'm trying to remember there was, there was a, oh yeah. Like, like for example, you know, I get, we, we got, well, you have one of these, you know, those like a replica old, like arcade machines, right?
|
Sam:
[53:58]
| Okay. Yes, yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[53:59]
| If you, if you, you know, in the old days, right back, back in, back in our day, you know, an arcade machine like that took so many circuit boards and things and the tube or whatever. And it was just jam packed inside the thing with stuff. So now you open the replica arcade machine, and there's this little tiny computer. The cabinet is, for the most part, empty. It's just for the form factor. That's it. The computer is just this little tiny little thing in there. And the display in the cabinet is just absolutely empty shell.
|
Sam:
[54:33]
| You know, you're reminding me I need to go play that thing. I played it a lot when they first... First of all, they got it for my birthday. It took three years to get built. One they they built it for a subsequent birthday like several years later they built it for me, because i was like i'm not putting i opened it once i looked at the instructions i said this is too complicated you got to do it for me and then three years went by they finally built it for another birthday and then, and then i played it a lot for a couple months, and then i i don't think i've touched it in a while i need to i need to play like.
|
Ivan:
[55:08]
| Last month okay.
|
Sam:
[55:09]
| You need to go play Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[55:12]
| It didn't play like last month.
|
Sam:
[55:13]
| I'll dump out of this and go play right now. No. Anyway. Okay. Since we talked about Apple, why don't we do the other tech thing as part of this segment, and then we'll do some non-tech afterwards. We spent the entire damn show practically last time talking about AI going crazy and all this kind of stuff. And as soon as we published the show... God, we had it blow up with sort of some anthropic employee quit and he posted on Twitter that he was quitting because the executives like think that AI is going to destroy the world and they're not taking it seriously enough. And then one of the anthropic people who's actually like in charge of making sure that the AIs don't go crazy responded on Twitter with, yes, this is actually true. We think there's a greater than 10% chance that the AIs will kill all humans within the next 10 years. We're working to try to avoid this, but we can't say for sure we'll succeed.
|
Ivan:
[56:19]
| I I I I I, I'm trying to figure out from it. And the thing is that I haven't seen anybody properly objective and independent.
|
Sam:
[56:33]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[56:33]
| Give me a real fucking assessment of what the hell you really think about this. Okay. Because I see quite a lot of biased ones. Yes.
|
Sam:
[56:43]
| In many ways. There's two threads of the biased things too. And I feel your pain in terms of not finding sort of a nice independent assessment. The two sides I see is, first of all, a whole bunch of people who are actually working at these AI companies do appear to be completely bought into the notion of this is extremely dangerous and could have catastrophic consequences, but we're going full steam ahead anyway. And then you've got another group of people saying that all of these AI people trying to say how dangerous their technology are, are actually just trying to hype their technology because dangerous is cool. And they want to like hype it up is like you know oh it's so it's super capable it's gonna like rule the universe it's gonna be because they need to hype it up to get people to like, want to spend lots of money on it and but, and the truth is probably somewhere in between and look i you.
|
Ivan:
[57:51]
| Know the one thing that that i was thinking about this week is the moment that You know, you read about Oppenheimer and the creation of the nuclear bomb and how he was worried about the destruction of the world.
|
Sam:
[58:03]
| Because of it.
|
Ivan:
[58:05]
| I mean, with good reasons of concern. Hell, before they set off the damn first nuclear bomb, they were worried that they were going to destroy the planet. Okay.
|
Sam:
[58:15]
| They were worried that the chain reaction would end up burning up the entire atmosphere of the whole planet.
|
Ivan:
[58:20]
| Right. I see a lot of that here as well. And there is, but it doesn't mean that Oppenheimer's concerns weren't valid. Of course they were valid. It's very powerful. But I don't know. And like I said, it's what you're saying, you know. But also, you know, a little bit of this. You remember that a couple of years ago we were having this discussion that some guy was under the complete delusion that the AI that we're working was sentient?
|
Sam:
[58:54]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[58:56]
| I wind up sometimes thinking that some of the AI researchers and spending that much time with the AI itself kind of like almost like gaslight themselves into how good it is as well. And I say that from using it all the time myself, okay? I can see how you could wind up believing, making yourself believe that it's more powerful than it is by constantly testing it and using it all the time. And so it makes you, like, lose a little bit of perspective of what it's actually doing. But I don't know. But the problem is, again, it doesn't seem like we have the right independent people evaluating this. We have people at both sides, like you said. People now think, like you said, hey, the structure is cool, right? Yes exactly you know so you know and so i don't fuck all right and and by the way i actually listen and and it goes back to this whole thing where i've said, what once again and and actually the anthropic guy today wrote an essay about the lack of regulation around all of this, and on a global basis.
|
Sam:
[1:00:23]
| You know you know on the.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:24]
| And on the one.
|
Sam:
[1:00:25]
| Hand they're saying they want something. But on the other, when California was trying to do some regulation, and of course, they put all their efforts into stopping that. Correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:36]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:00:36]
| So it's like, oh, yeah, we want regulation. Oh, not that regulation.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:40]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:00:41]
| You know. It's because you have a fundamental tension. I mean, open AI was founded right on where we're going to try to do this responsibly. We're a nonprofit. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. Now, all that's out the window now.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:55]
| But all that's out the window because.
|
Sam:
[1:00:57]
| Yeah, but that, that, that's how they started was like, this is extremely dangerous stuff. We are going to be the ones who do it responsibly. And, and they all have like people within the companies who are, their jobs are about responsibility and safety and all of this kind of stuff. But, you know, there's this fundamental tension, that, you know, very often the way to be responsible and safe is to be very slow and cautious and try things out very carefully in limited ways.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:36]
| And when you're in a race for money, all that shit goes out the window. That's the problem.
|
Sam:
[1:01:41]
| Bingo. Well, and they believe, and I honestly believe listening to some of these people from these companies talk, they truly believe they are not just in a race for money. They are in a race for the complete transformation of humanity because these AIs will be smarter than humans within years for certain, if not months, and will fundamentally and radically change everything about how this planet operates.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:15]
| I don't know. I do think one thing that, like, with a lot of things that in this type of, in this arena, like, kind of, like, self-driving, that there is, you reach a point where it becomes asymptotic. And I'm wondering what that point will be with this technology.
|
Sam:
[1:02:32]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:02:33]
| Because, and we don't know that yet, but the reality is that there are certain limits to how close you can get to that level of, like, knowledge. We don't know what they are yet. And right now, the problem is also that these models require a ridiculously enormous amount of energy, compute, and all of this for them to actually... Work right now. And it's required.
|
Sam:
[1:03:02]
| And I, what all these companies are gambling on is that you'll solve that asymptotic problem because the models will get smart enough that they can design their own replacements faster than humans can do it. And then those replacements will be even smarter and be able to do the next level. And that's where you get the whole singularity talk.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:22]
| But that's a gamble. It is a gamble. You know what? Yeah, because or you get to a point where, well, there's not much more to squeeze out of this fucking thing. All we can do is just throw more compute at it and it's not really improving that much. And then so you wind up at a place where there's just diminishing. There's just continuously diminishing returns, no matter how much you throw at it.
|
Sam:
[1:03:45]
| And then the question becomes the same as what we had. And, you know, we've talked about this analogy with, you know, the early Internet and railroads, for that matter, and everything else.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:58]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[1:03:58]
| Whether the companies that are the pioneers end up being the companies that survive.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:04]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:04:04]
| Some of them probably will. But in many situations in the past, the companies that do the early innovation spend so much money on the early innovation that they end up going bankrupt before the curves cross. And then other companies pick up later, taking advantage of everything that was already built by the first wave to actually do the stuff that's profitable. Thank you.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:36]
| Well, that's what happened in the dot-com bubble in the late 90s, early 2000s. That's exactly what happened. I mean, that's exactly what happened.
|
Sam:
[1:04:45]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:46]
| I mean, you think about how people, like, trashed, like, Webvan. Remember Webvan? That was, like, that company that spent billions and billions on, like, this delivery service and whatever. And then they said how they squandered all that money in, like, building these physical things or whatever, blah, blah, blah, because that was never going to work. It was never going to work, huh? Never going to work. You know, it was just the timing wasn't right, but they completely went out of business. So then everybody else picked up the pieces.
|
Sam:
[1:05:19]
| Yeah, there are lots and lots and lots of examples like that, where there was an early mover who did the concept, did it too early. It cost too much, but they broke the ground that a few years later, somebody could be like, hey, let's rebuild that thing that failed five years ago. But now the economics are right. You know, now there's enough penetration of the technology. Now costs have gone down enough, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then they take off. And so, and especially right now, you know, with the AI companies, like you said, as they're pushing the frontiers, they are burning so many billions of dollars to get there.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:06]
| Billions?
|
Sam:
[1:06:08]
| Trillions.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:08]
| What? Trillions?
|
Sam:
[1:06:10]
| Yes, trillions. And they're giving away things for less than cost in many cases. I've read a number of times, I have the $100 a month Claude subscription from Anthropic. I think you said you have the $200 a month plan. I haven't switched yet. I haven't needed to, but I thought about it a couple times. But, like, I've seen people estimate that if you were paying the actual cost of full use of that plan, it wouldn't be $200. It would be more like $20,000.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:45]
| For what you're getting out of. I was actually doing some analysis on those costs recently. Man, that cost is so debatable right now all over the place. I've got to be honest, because I've seen...
|
Sam:
[1:06:59]
| Well, the one comparison I saw was specifically not tracing down all the costs to the end, but just comparing the subscription plan versus paying by token on the API plan.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:13]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's just a stupid comparison. I will say that, you know, on some of these... Look, on the enterprise contracts and plans, the cost per token is like, Jesus, it's like.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:27]
| Less than 90% of what those, API plans cost. And that's at a profitable number. Okay. All right. So I think a lot of people that are speculating about them, like being really burning that much money, really, I don't think they've got a true grasp of the costs. Right now and me being knee deep and selling this and not talking specifically about anything about related to my work but, but just what i've seen in terms of the of the overall pricing itself it's it's just that i i think that people, are grabbing some numbers off like list prices on some stuff and they're making these estimates and they really have no idea what the true costs are Look at the reported financials, of a lot of these large companies that provide this, and you see the actual operating margins, excluding capital expenditures, and you can see that this is far more profitable when you're doing the variable costs and regular costs that they really believe so. And look, I got to tell you that I haven't seen something, in the tech space really reach the point where every fucking customer is asking you about this as quickly as this, and seriously spending money on it as well. Not just talk about it.
|
Sam:
[1:08:56]
| But actually spend money on it. Well, because the other part of it is that people are actually getting real value out of it. I mean, two, three years ago when we were talking about this, we were repeatedly mocking how bad stuff was.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:09]
| Yeah, because it was more like a demo. Basically, two, three years ago what you were getting was a demo that created comical results in many cases.
|
Sam:
[1:09:18]
| Right. And it's just gotten so much better. I mean, there are still problems. It's still not perfect, but it's gotten so much better so fast, and people are finding all kinds of real-life applications where it is helping. And we've got multiple different kinds of uses, right? You've got people using it for coding. We had a whole bunch of articles recently about mathematical breakthroughs being made. Although one was interesting because it turns out that the mathematical breakthrough announced by OpenAI, this was the Navier-Stokes thing, turns out there were some actual human researchers using their AI tools to come up with many of these ideas. Yeah. It turns out the newest model from open AI that solved this problem was potentially trained on the conversations with the mathematicians who had actually made the breakthrough, but hadn't made it public yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:25]
| Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
|
Sam:
[1:10:29]
| Because, they were using whatever plan that allows the AI to train on your conversations. And so the AI learned about their confidential research that they hadn't released yet and used it to make the breakthrough and announce it first. Anyway, but, uh, cheating.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:51]
| Cheating, cheating. Fuck.
|
Sam:
[1:10:54]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:54]
| Yeah, sure. I could do a breakthrough that way too.
|
Sam:
[1:10:59]
| Anyway, you've got, you've got all kinds of uses like that. You've also got the sort of the more controversial, like I'm starting to see a divide with people who are kind of okay with that kind of use, but get really upset about when it's creating writing. Or art or, you know, movies or music or sort of the creative things, as opposed to just being a tool to help execute your ideas. And I kind of understand that. But yeah, at the same time, people are producing some really cool shit. You know, like, this is another thing where three years ago, two years ago is a joke. But I've been seeing clips of people, for instance, making essentially Star Wars fan fiction that, you know, goes in a different direction than the official media of, like, the one I've been seeing lately has.
|
Sam:
[1:11:58]
| Luke Skywalker and Anakin Skywalker walking somewhere, talking to each other about stuff and interacting with other things. And it's, you can still tell it's AI. It's not perfect, but it's getting pretty damn good. And it sounds like them and it looks like them and they're interacting with things and people, you know, and this is essentially people who are, have gotten, this is not the AI making up the skit or whatever fully. This is human beings saying, okay, I want a scene with Luke and Anakin having a conversation about this while they walk through this scenery. And it's like, okay, here you go. And it looks good. You know? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:43]
| And so I can see people have that divide, and I think there are certainly a lot of people who are reacting very negatively towards the creative replacement stuff, especially people who are in that industry, like people who make a living doing creative stuff, and you can understand why. But the outright utility of like this is enabling people to do things they were not able to do before i think is undeniable at this point and will only get more so, and it you can't put that genie back in the bottle, you know and on the creative side on the programming side on the just like hey i'm able to handle more stuff at the same time, or I'm able to do stuff that's outside my native skill set. But like, I have the idea, but the difficulty of the execution was keeping me from doing it. Well, now I can have it do the execution or most of it and just work on the idea side. And, you know, I don't know. I think it is very transformative.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:57]
| And i think it is very transformative but i also i i keep going back on the fact that i have like i know a lot of people that have access to the same tools that i do but yet can't do even a fraction of what i know what to do with them, they have no clue i heard somebody today they were telling me something oh i i heard this person was going to take a class on claude i'm like take a class a class the fuck is a i'm like i want i stopped myself before i started mocking i'm like What the fuck you need a fucking class for? The fuck? What fucking class? Did you ever take a class? No. The fuck class?
|
Sam:
[1:14:34]
| Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I've always said that it doesn't matter.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:42]
| You can have them. Yeah. You know, I've always said it doesn't, listen, like with everything, you can have the fastest hyper car to somebody. If they can't drive, it doesn't fucking matter.
|
Sam:
[1:14:55]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:56]
| If you are barren of ideas, the AI is not going to solve your problem.
|
Sam:
[1:15:01]
| Well, you know, the thing is that gap is narrowing over time.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:06]
| No, no, I'm sorry. But the more I have everybody.
|
Sam:
[1:15:12]
| The good output will still come with the people. The idea matters for sure.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:17]
| But I know, but it's like steering it, doing it. I'm sorry. It's just not.
|
Sam:
[1:15:21]
| I don't. It's where we are right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:25]
| You know what? The AI is not going to go and like make the other people sell more than I do.
|
Sam:
[1:15:32]
| I mentioned like when we were talking about this like a year ago, probably I used this example right right now for for if you're going to use this technology effectively, you are constantly in a dialogue. You're telling it an idea. It's doing something. You're reviewing the output. You're adjusting. And your human judgment is being used to refine that and make it better. And you're going through that loop to make it better.
|
Sam:
[1:16:01]
| But over time these things are improving even even things where like i am i am trusting it more right now to be able to do something where i describe on the high level and just let it run, now than i was six months ago and i'm sure six months from now i'll trust even more and maybe that's bad, but they are getting better so that they need less and less guidance as you go, and And the example I'd used a year or two ago was at some point you will get to where instead of like I was talking about those Luke and Anakin like shorts that people are doing instead of having a human being, you know, basically script out and write out what's happening in each scene. And then it just makes the movie in a few years. I am, you're, you're going to be in a situation where somebody at some studio is just going to be able to open up Claude and say, make me a blockbuster movie. Now hit the button.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:07]
| And something fits out that's actually decent. Can I just say that, okay, well, look, for decades, studios have been able to do certain movies that were blockbusters, that were formulaic.
|
Sam:
[1:17:19]
| Oh, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:19]
| All right? So, you know, that's not, that isn't, you know, that it simplifies that process, yeah, but the reality is that the real ones that have been really, really good were not the formulaic ones that just repeated some shit for the most part. The breakthrough franchises came from somebody that sat down and created something totally different.
|
Sam:
[1:17:40]
| It'll take a few years longer until that exec can say, win me an Oscar button, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:47]
| Again, again, even a formulaic one has won an Oscar. I just think that, and I think that, you know, it's just one of those things where I just feel for, like, stuff that is creative like that. And it's just like what you said about the math problem. We found out that it really didn't fucking solve the math problem, which is actually went and like found out, got the information.
|
Sam:
[1:18:10]
| Just to be clear, like over the last couple of months, there have been like, probably a dozen high profile, longstanding, open math problems that have like, huge monetary prizes attached in some cases to someone solving them. The AIs have solved a bunch of them. It's just this one example of the Navier-Stokes where apparently, it just, you know, someone was talking to Claude or ChatGPT or whoever it was about this, and so it used the information and jumped out of them. But, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:44]
| Right, so.
|
Sam:
[1:18:46]
| Anyway, so once again, the universe, not the universe, all humanity, all humanity will be eaten by the AIs within the next few years. So enjoy what you're doing.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:01]
| Enjoy what little time we have left.
|
Sam:
[1:19:04]
| Yes, exactly. And we'll see where it goes. I don't know. I keep coming back to that graph The Economist put out last year sometime, which was what could happen to the economy based on AI? And they had a best case scenario and a worst case scenario on the graph. The best case scenario was AI gets to the singularity and we are issued into a new utopia and GDP goes to infinity. And the worst case scenario was they kill us all, humanity is extinct, zero. And the range of possibilities was everything in between. So, there you go. Okay shall we take a break and then uh hit a couple other things quickly before the end this one this one.
|
Break:
[1:20:04]
| You're supposed to say do do do do do do alex emzela, alex emzela is awesome its videos are fun and today once again we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you how awesome Alex Emsola is. I'd say on a rate from 1 to 10, Alex Emsola is awesome at, I don't know, 37, 82. He's pretty radical. His videos are phenomenal. They're full of creativity. And they're so funny and exciting to watch. Wow, what happened to your voice then Amy. Was that dad pretending to be you, because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't because I told him to? Yes. Good job on remembering dad. Do do do.
|
Sam:
[1:21:04]
| Okay, we are back. My turn to pick something. And I guess I'm going to start with Middle East, Iran-related stuff, because it's been a while since we talked about that.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:17]
| Okay, but, but, but, but.
|
Sam:
[1:21:19]
| Yes?
|
Ivan:
[1:21:19]
| What, but, but, but, but, but, but, but.
|
Sam:
[1:21:22]
| But. But, but, but, but, but, but, yes?
|
Ivan:
[1:21:24]
| Nothing's fucking happened.
|
Sam:
[1:21:27]
| Like what? No, the last couple days.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:31]
| Well, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:21:32]
| The developments in Yemen.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:34]
| Oh i haven't been paying attention to yemen what the fuck happened in yemen.
|
Sam:
[1:21:38]
| Okay so the houthis who are iranian backed did a major offensive and have now taken over almost all of the red sea coast of yemen, including some islands on the strait between yemen and jibouti, which is the way in and out of the Red Sea. Now, and they've been posting videos about how shipping traffic in that strait is within range of their artillery now. Now, they have not done anything at this point. But this strait, if the Straits of Hormuz were bad, if you close this strait, which is called the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, then you're also closing the Suez Canal.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:31]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:22:32]
| And that would just have a little bit of an impact on the world if they decided to do that. Now, and also, Saudi Arabia has shut down the pipeline they were using to get oil, instead of going through the Persian Gulf, to go to the Red Sea instead. They've shut down that pipeline because the Houthis have also been attacking that and have been damaging it. So they've shut down that pipeline, and they are calling Donald Trump, asking him to get involved in the war in Yemen to push back these latest advances by the Houthis, because the Houthis are now threatening the Saudi Arabian oil supply from a second direction and potentially Red Sea shipping in general.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:24]
| So so that's why diesel is at six dollars a gallon because my my wife just actually called me about this that she was, she what she she went to uh training for trying to fill up her electric.
|
Sam:
[1:23:38]
| Car with diesel.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:39]
| Yes that's right of course no she she was driving to a training on elections and she drove past the gas station and saw that diesel was six dollars, And was floored by that price. Okay, I had heard about this. There's a video of some guy who owns trucks, who is a complete idiot, who starts the video by talking about how he still believes that Trump is doing everything right and how I still support him, but you're bankrupting me. And it's like, what are these things? I mean, honestly, these guys now sound like, you know, those battered women that don't leave marriages. That's how these people sound like. It's insane.
|
Sam:
[1:24:26]
| Yes. Lovely.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:30]
| And so, I mean, this is really bad. This thing's not ending anytime soon, is it?
|
Sam:
[1:24:37]
| No, I don't think so. And this is one of the, I also had on my list, you know, over promising versus vision. And I was thinking about like, you know, what the Democrats are promising in order to get elected. And one of the things that comes to mind is like, you know, we've got a bunch of time, but like, even imagine right now you swap out Donald Trump for the best possible example. you could even think of. What exactly are they going to do to fix the Iran situation right now?
|
Ivan:
[1:25:16]
| I mean... Listen, if say if I were elected president, which I don't want to, but if I got elected, I mean, I guess the first thing is that I would go back to try to make a realistic deal that actually accepted the fact that we fucking, fucked up and took some significant lumps in order to end this situation and the story. That's all I could do. And yeah, you know what? And I would blame the loss on Trump because why are we, you know, let's be clear about this. Why did we, why did we wind up in this and why are we taking a bath right now on this? Because we had a great deal that Obama did. Okay. Trump canceled it. Then Trump doubled down on causing this war, killed tons of innocent people, spent a ton of our money. So you know what? The only way to exit this is to make a deal that recognizes the fact that we fucked up and we're going to pay the bill and we're going to get the fuck out of here. Okay? And accept, take the blame. End the story. That's the only thing that you could do.
|
Sam:
[1:26:23]
| That is the only thing. You basically have to say, you know, this was all unnecessary. It was a screw up to be here. But because of that, yes, sorry, the Iranians are in a stronger position than when they started. They've got x y and z that they didn't have before we are and we just have to back off and because all of this like, so i feel like this is the the situation with iran and this goes back all the way to the 1979 revolution if not before is like, it could have gone so much better if we We just handled it a little differently. And like...
|
Ivan:
[1:27:06]
| Listen, I'm sorry.
|
Sam:
[1:27:06]
| Recognize the...
|
Ivan:
[1:27:08]
| Listen, all we needed to do was honor the deal that Obama made.
|
Sam:
[1:27:13]
| Yeah, most recently, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:14]
| Obama fixed the fucking problem.
|
Sam:
[1:27:17]
| At least a big part of it. I mean, the problem... Yes! 90%! Well, the problem that a lot of the... Israelis and american conservatives had was they they would say maybe he dealt with 60 percent but, they were like you can't do this you have to have all or nothing you know they specific.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:39]
| That's how shit works.
|
Sam:
[1:27:41]
| They specific.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:43]
| Doesn't work that way.
|
Sam:
[1:27:44]
| The fucking.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:45]
| World doesn't work that way assholes.
|
Sam:
[1:27:49]
| The specific criticism over and over again was a maybe you made some nuclear deal here, but it was only good for 10 years. And it has an end. And then, oh, by the way, you haven't dealt with missiles. You haven't dealt with them supporting Hezbollah. You haven't dealt with them supporting the Uthis. And so there's still going to be a problem in the region. Okay. Yeah. But we got a deal on something important and you're throwing it out all away because you want the rest. And the whole thought process here was, well, if we just attack Iran directly, we'll get everything we want. Well, let's see how that worked out, huh? You know, so. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:34]
| Ah, fuck. I mean, yeah, I mean, what I said is the only fucking option available. There is no other option. There is no other viable option. If you try to do anything else, it just makes it worse. What are we going to do? Double down and attack? No.
|
Sam:
[1:28:51]
| Donald Trump said this will be over right after the election. Right after midterms, it'll just be over.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:56]
| Right after we get our $5,000 checks?
|
Sam:
[1:28:58]
| Yeah, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:00]
| Ah. I'm sure it's coming right after the Doge check that I've been promised and the tariff check that I've been promised and the health care check. So I'll get all the checks at the same time. And apparently this money will magically come from some magic pot of money that is located out of outer space, I guess, because apparently it's the money will not come out of taxpayer dollars. Somehow we're going to get a five thousand dollar check for every adult in the U.S. And it's not going to come out of taxpayer dollars. Ah, I know where it's coming. Ah, I figured it out. Qatar. Right. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:29:40]
| Well, you know, that $5,000 for everybody, I heard people estimate that's about a trillion dollars.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:45]
| It's a little over a trillion dollars.
|
Sam:
[1:29:47]
| Yes. It's a little over a trillion dollars. And you were just saying we're spending trillions on AI, so we can just have Anthropic pay for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:55]
| Okay. All right. I'll get—I'll make an—let me ask Claude now about it.
|
Sam:
[1:30:01]
| Yeah, more to the point. We won't have Anthropic pay for it. We'll ask Claude how to pay for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:07]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:30:07]
| And there's your answer.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:10]
| Yes. Okay, then. Great.
|
Sam:
[1:30:13]
| Oh, speaking of Claude and speaking of Yemen, another thing that came out from Anthropic, specifically this week, was they shut down access to Claude to certain accounts based out of Yemen. When they discovered that they were working with Claude to design new and improved missile launchers and chemical weapons.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:44]
| Oh, God, great.
|
Sam:
[1:30:47]
| Excellent. Which, by the way, you're not supposed to do with Claude, which I guess is why they shut them down. And also, if you remember, was part of the dispute between Anthropic and the Defense Department, Because the Defense Department wanted all of those protections against using Claude, you know, to kill people and develop weapons turned off, for obvious reasons, because they're the Department of War.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:14]
| War, Sam, war! And then they showed, for some reason, some video of, like, I don't know, a couple of administration guys, like, doing more pull-ups yesterday.
|
Sam:
[1:31:26]
| I hadn't seen that.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:27]
| One of them, like, pushing up. One of them, like, holding. Sean Duffy being, hoisted up by somebody else. But not even doing pull-ups. Because the one guy, there's one guy underneath him pushing the other guy up. And it looked like a video that was made by the Ambiguously Gay duo on SNL. And I don't. You know, Donald Trump was asleep on 9-11 at the Pentagon because he didn't go to New York because they wouldn't let him give a speech. Thank God. Every other president was there except him. He went over there. I guess he gave a speech. I didn't hear it. I saw that he was there yakking. But every time that he's on TV.
|
Sam:
[1:32:10]
| I just turned down the volume. He talked about Iran and blah, blah, blah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:15]
| And, you know, and then he proceeded to sit down and fall asleep.
|
Sam:
[1:32:20]
| Of course. Well, it was boring.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:22]
| I... Fuck all these people. Fuck all these fucking people.
|
Sam:
[1:32:30]
| Well, since you're talking about that, like, he did have his little midterm convention thing in Texas.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:37]
| Oh, that went well, too. I saw that he was just talking to everybody. The place was jam-packed.
|
Sam:
[1:32:46]
| They did not fully fill all the seats. A lot of, yeah, supposedly, theoretically, this convention is to help boost Republicans in the midterms and all that. But most of the Republicans that were actually competing in swing areas avoided this thing like the plague.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:07]
| Gee! I heard all kinds of like— I wonder why!
|
Sam:
[1:33:10]
| You know, somebody went around asking them, Are you going to be there? Are you going to be there? And you know, you get clips of people being like, Oh, I got to go to my son's football game. Oh, oh, no, I'm already doing something in my district. Oh, no, whatever. Like excuses, excuses, excuses, anything that could, and you know, I'm sure some of those are real, but also, because also he planned this, like, he scheduled it like two months in advance or something. So like people have already made plans, but you know these candidates, if they thought It would help them would have been there. Oh, he also was charging like people like candidates like that, like $25,000 a pop to be there. Like there are people who don't have to pay that much. But if you were a congressional candidate and you wanted to go there, he expected $25,000 from you. You know, and they would be there if they thought it would help. But the bottom line is right now, Republicans who are running in swing districts are having to figure out how they can.
|
Sam:
[1:34:27]
| Do the dance where they distance themselves from the things that are making Donald Trump unpopular right now. They, you know, we don't really like what's going on in Iran. We don't like the high prices. We don't like that he didn't release the Epstein files, all of this kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:47]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:34:48]
| While simultaneously not actually going so far as to say Donald Trump is bad, you know, because that would alienate the other part of it. They are screwed, you know, because they have to, like, meet that. Now, there's still, things are still close enough in enough places that it's by no means, the Democrats are favored in November in all kinds of ways, but it's by no means guaranteed, that they will, you know, take the Senate or even guaranteed that they take the House, although they're very favored for the house, but it's not a guarantee right now but nevertheless they are getting he he is a drag on republican candidates right now not a boost and he.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:40]
| Is this is i mean this is any any candidate running for congress what is happening with the white house for you would be the ultimate worst nightmare, This is, I mean, there is nothing that in terms of actions that the president is doing to try to help you. He is doing none of that at all. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:06]
| Mortgage rates this week popped over 7%. Okay. They hadn't been at seven. There's only two times that as we've been adults that they've been at seven. In the 90s. Okay. And then briefly, right before the Great Crash, okay, in 2008. That's it, okay? And a big part of it is because Scott Besant, Besant or whatever, idiot, whatever his fucking name is, is a moron. He went out on the treasury market thinking that him going out and buying treasuries was going to push down rates. And what he did was the opposite, because what traders smelled is fear. And so all of a sudden you had billions and billions of dollars pushing against Eden. You know, the Treasury is not the Fed. They don't have that much money to be trading with. OK, so the markets just saw it and reacted the opposite and made it far worse than before he bought a single treasury. Which, if he had a fucking clue, he would have known that's exactly what was going to happen.
|
Sam:
[1:37:26]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:28]
| So he pushed interest rates back up over 7%. How do you think the voters look at this, huh? It looks good. Diesel at six bucks. Gas at 450. The war's not over. I don't know. Inflation popped. You know, they reported. You know, I guess they could, you know, also another pop. The guy, Nutlick, goes out and says, oh, we've had inflation lowering the last few months. Literally, these guys go out and say the opposite of what is happening. Inflation has been treading up.
|
Sam:
[1:37:57]
| Knocked down you know they they talked about how, part of biden's problem is he tried to tell people that the economy was actually good and they weren't feeling it and the people weren't feeling it, i it feels like donald trump has said oh i can ramp that up even further the like the disconnect between, you know, what people feel and what you're telling them. Because not only, will—because Biden was pointing at economic numbers that were actually pretty good.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:34]
| But people just— They were trending the right direction.
|
Sam:
[1:38:37]
| They were trending the right direction. They were pretty good economic numbers. But people still felt the impact of them having been bad recently.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:47]
| Exactly. It's one of those things where you're coming off of, and maybe it was the framing of how Biden was saying it, where you got burned, you're recovering, but you're still feeling the burns.
|
Sam:
[1:38:59]
| Right. Whereas in this case, in many cases, it seems like they're trying to deny it outright. Right. Now, it depends on the case, like in some, and this also echoes back to like, Biden or, well, this was actually Trump's first term. The people who said transient about inflation, it's the same kind of thing. I've heard Donald Trump and company lately saying, oh, don't worry about those gas prices. That's just temporary till the Iran thing is over. And as we were talking about before.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:35]
| It's not over.
|
Sam:
[1:39:36]
| It's not over. And there's no signs of it getting close to being over.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:41]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:39:42]
| You know, apparently the Trump administration internally is already starting to talk about the expectation that the Iran situation will still be going on, once Donald Trump's second term is over, you know, which is, you know, another two and a bit years out still, assuming he leaves. And survives the next two and a half years, or two and a quarter. But, you know, and honestly, looking at the situation, it seems perfectly reasonable to think, oh, yeah, there'll be stuff going on of one sort or another related to what Trump and Netanyahu kicked off in February for years. Years, you know? Because, honestly, you mentioned the only way out. It's going to be politically damaging to whatever american president actually does that.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:39]
| Listen it depends on the time and so that i don't i don't i don't i don't look, what you have to do with this is the same strategy as i as i, as i do when you take over a business okay you take over you gotta i i like we we got assigned a new business unit that we didn't manage at hp i remember one time first lesson is said it's like look at the financials hey if we have to write off shit. We have to, or whatever. Do it right now. First day. Don't wait.
|
Sam:
[1:41:07]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:07]
| Okay? And that's what you gotta do with Iran. You don't wait till, like, what happened with Afghanistan 9-0-7. No, no, no, no, no. You're prepared. You're gonna do it on day one. You're gonna fucking... You're gonna write it off. You're gonna blame him. Period. Day one. End the story.
|
Sam:
[1:41:21]
| Yeah. We'll see.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:23]
| That's the only winning strategy. That's the only strategy that could get you to avoid, you know, getting beaten up later.
|
Sam:
[1:41:31]
| No, I I agree. You minimize the pain by doing it as soon as possible, but there's no way it's not painful.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:38]
| Oh, yeah, it's going to be painful, but, you know, you have to rip off the Band-Aid.
|
Sam:
[1:41:43]
| It's like you're admitting we lost. Yes. Yes. We did lose. We lost. And I'm admitting reality. Thank you. I'll walk away now. But the alternative is to just hang on and be like, hey, we can't admit we lost. Let's keep going. and then it goes another 10 years. Or you end up in, like, in Afghanistan for 20 years or whatever it was, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:42:10]
| Anyway. But yeah, like, the—I've actually, like, been—the whole thing with Yemen and the Red Sea, I am—who knows? Like, they may get pushed back and this is a false alarm and nothing happens, and everything's fine again in a week. But on the other hand, you know, this could be a significant widening of the scope of the conflict and could cause all kinds of problems. I mean, whether it's, you know, they decide to close the Red Sea as well, or it's, okay, in order to keep them from doing that, we need to massively escalate the war in the Arabian Peninsula. And, you know, whether it's the Saudis or some other coalition or us, you know, having more happen there, you know? I don't know. But, you know, like the, yeah. Do you think Donald Trump has learned his lesson from February and will say no to the Saudis asking for help in Yemen?
|
Sam:
[1:43:28]
| Or do you think you'll be like we'll take care of this one too we had such a success in Iran I mean the US has been involved in Yemen anyway just to be clear we've been doing drone strikes there for decades.
|
Sam:
[1:43:43]
| But like the question is whether we do some sort of escalation there and say okay we're not going to the Houthis took over the coast we're going to take it back.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:54]
| Yeah well that's not going to happen.
|
Sam:
[1:43:57]
| Yeah. Ah. Messy, messy, messy, messy, messy, and getting messier. Let's wrap it up. Ready to wrap it up?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:08]
| Wrap it. Wrap it. Wrap it.
|
Sam:
[1:44:10]
| Wrap it the rabbit.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:12]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:44:12]
| You know, that could be a nice little cartoon character. He wraps.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:15]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:44:16]
| You know? Yeah. So. Okay. I should check. Wrap it the rabbit. Nope. Oh. There is a rapid tea rabbit on YouTube, but there's no rapid rabbit. I can't say these things. There's our new money-making YouTube channel, Cartoon Wrapping Rabbit, made entirely by AI, that wraps the news, Yvonne. Every day looks at the news Claude looks at news or one of the other AIs they, come up with a little script and then toss it over to another and this wrapping rabbit, wraps the news there you go, I'll get right on that excellent I did make some progress this week on my automated Minecraft tunneling videos that I'm working on that I'm sure will be a big success as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:21]
| Huge.
|
Sam:
[1:45:21]
| Anyway. Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there, see our stuff, old shows, transcripts, ways to contact us, all that fun stuff, plus a link to our Patreon, where you can give us money. At various levels, we will mention you on the show, we will ring a bell, we will send you a postcard, we will send you a mug. And at $2 a month or more, or if you ask and we feel like it, we will invite you to our Curmudgeon's Chorus Slack where Yvonne and I and others are chatting throughout the week. And we have a great deal of fun there. We share links. We talk about things. Yvonne, what's this week's highlight from the Curmudgeon's Chorus Slack?
|
Ivan:
[1:46:07]
| I'm going to call this a highlight and I think it's hilarious. I guess we didn't share this like the previous week. It's an older one, but in the news file of shit I enjoy seeing, Maria Bordoromo got fired from from fox business news okay yes yes uh and money yeah, yeah fucking idiot and you know the the thing is that, there was an incident when and were apparent when she apparently decided that ignore the guidelines from corporate where it was like hey you know don't talk about, you know these election things okay because we can, sued and i guess she told like the white house.
|
Sam:
[1:46:56]
| Yeah so specifically apparently what she got fired for was not violating that directive and talking about the election stuff although she did she did it was, leaking the memo telling them not to talk about election conspiracy crap to the white house yes yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:19]
| And so she got fired and she got what she deserved so good for good.
|
Sam:
[1:47:23]
| I am surprised it's been like a whole week and she's not already in the administration. Although I did see, like, I expected her to do a beeline and be in the administration somewhere. Like, hell, you know, she, there's the press secretary spot is open. But, you know, with her money background, I thought, you know, she deserves a, you know, a chair in the Fed or something. Or, you know, you mentioned the Treasury Secretary has been having some issues. Toss him, put Maria in, something like that. But no, the actual rumor is that she may be heading to 60 Minutes.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:05]
| Oh, God. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:48:07]
| Okay, that's it. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week. Have fun. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we'll talk to you next time. Goodbye!
|
Ivan:
[1:48:20]
| Bye!
|
Sam:
[1:48:52]
| Those are the Happy Meal toys that are Godzilla slash Hello Kitty. Excellent. This one's a Mothra. Okay. Bye, Von. See ya.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:05]
| Okay, bye.
| |
|
