Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Okay, we'll get started. Are we ready to get started, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[0:03]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[0:04]
| Here we go. welcome to curmudgeon's corner for friday october 10th 2025. It's just after 2 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Menter and Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:38]
| Hello everybody. Hello.
|
Sam:
[0:42]
| Indeed.
|
Ivan:
[0:43]
| Hi.
|
Sam:
[0:43]
| Hello and hi.
|
Ivan:
[0:45]
| Sam, let me tell you something.
|
Sam:
[0:46]
| Oh no, we're starting out good.
|
Ivan:
[0:49]
| I mean, there have been times you've been loud wrong. And I just went over the recording of how loud wrong you were.
|
Sam:
[0:58]
| Wait, wait, wait. Did you find the timestamp?
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Ivan:
[1:02]
| Yes, I have it. I can play it. Yes. And I can play just how absolutely, ridiculously loud wrong you were. And not just, no, wait, wait, wait. But before you say it, and not just that, but how absolutely right I was. And I told you you were full of shit before I said it, and you're talking out of your ass. and told you flat out exactly what actually played out and how you told me, oh, no, you're wrong. It's going to be that way. The tech companies know what they're doing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Sam, damn it. Holy shit, were you loud wrong?
|
Sam:
[1:48]
| Let's give the context here. So on October 9th, 2015, so 10 years and a day ago, we recorded an episode. It was episode 435 of this podcast, which I titled Check Us in 2025.
|
Ivan:
[2:10]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:10]
| Yvonne and I got into a discussion on self-driving cars. And I gave a very optimistic assessment, basically the bottom line being, well, I was going to try to pull this audio, but I didn't have time. But Yvonne has it.
|
Ivan:
[2:26]
| I have it.
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Sam:
[2:27]
| Yvonne's going to play it, and then I will edit in a higher quality version of it when we're done. But Yvonne, why don't you go ahead and play the appropriate clip from this show from 10 years and a day ago, and then we can discuss just how wrong I was.
|
Ivan:
[2:45]
| Now, hold on one sec.
|
Sam:
[2:46]
| I will say that I realized fully, and we even discussed on the show, that I was going to be wrong about this like five years ago. Like, it did not take the whole 10 years. Because we remembered, like, Yvonne put a reminder on his phone for 10 years in the future.
|
Ivan:
[3:08]
| On our calendar, I sent you an invite. Was it still on your calendar?
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Sam:
[3:11]
| Let's see if it was still on my calendar.
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Ivan:
[3:13]
| Because I saw my calendar. If you see the picture, it said that I sent you an in-play for it.
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Sam:
[3:20]
| Yes, I have it on my calendar. I never open my Apple calendar anymore, but it's right there.
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Ivan:
[3:25]
| So it is right there.
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Sam:
[3:26]
| It is right there.
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Ivan:
[3:27]
| I literally did set a reminder 10 years in the future. And the funniest thing about this is that all of a sudden, I see this thing on the calendar. And I'm like, what the hell is my wife doing? What is this self-driving car thing? What are you talking about? And I'm like, honey, what is it? I'm like, nah, it's not mine. And then I read it, and then I started remembering. And I said to Sam, I'm like, wait, I'm guessing this is a prediction we made 10 years ago.
|
Sam:
[3:58]
| Yes, it was.
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Ivan:
[3:59]
| And it was set as a reminder. It worked.
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Sam:
[4:02]
| Yes. Well, I guess technically you set it as an appointment on your calendar, not a reminder.
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Ivan:
[4:06]
| Yes. Yes. I set it as an appointment on the calendar. Yes.
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Sam:
[4:09]
| Very good.
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Ivan:
[4:11]
| And lo and behold, it worked. We remembered.
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Sam:
[4:14]
| And tell me and the audience what the time stamp is in that show from 10 years ago.
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Ivan:
[4:20]
| I believe it's somewhere. It's around a minute, an hour, 35 minute mark. I got to around the time of the prediction, which is somewhere around a minute, an hour, 39 minutes and 30 seconds. I will. Here, hold on. I'm trying to scroll through this thing. Oh, come on. Here we go. Oh, 139. Okay, so here, let me see. Let's see if the audio will play here so we can listen. There we go. Let's see.
|
Break:
[4:52]
| Tooddly-doo, tooddly-doo, tooddly-doo.
|
2015 Ivan:
[4:56]
| You say you want to sit there and not worry about it.
|
2015 Sam:
[5:00]
| The Google cars are already 100% autonomous.
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2015 Ivan:
[5:05]
| They're 100% autonomous and they still say, well, you still may have to watch because there may be situations where you may have to take over.
|
2015 Sam:
[5:12]
| No, no. They are only doing that for legal reasons right now. They're not because they have to. And they're still working on it. This is what I'm saying. The traditional car companies are coming at it from the approach you're saying. Google and the tech companies are coming from it from the opposite approach.
|
2015 Ivan:
[5:27]
| They're saying right now that Google's overpromising what they can deliver on that.
|
2015 Sam:
[5:32]
| Maybe this is.
|
2015 Ivan:
[5:32]
| What I'm telling you right now. Google's overpromising what they can deliver on that right now. They're talking out of their ass.
|
2015 Sam:
[5:37]
| I think what's going to happen, my predictions.
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2015 Ivan:
[5:40]
| I really think that they're way overpromising.
|
2015 Sam:
[5:42]
| My prediction is the companies that are coming at it from the Google approach. And I don't know if it's going to be Google or if it's going to be somebody else. But the companies that are coming at it from the approach of, we are going to build something that does not require a driver, period, stop, end of story, that's what they're trying to do. They don't succeed until they achieve that, will at some point lap the companies who are coming at it from the point of view of the other direction.
|
2015 Ivan:
[6:10]
| Now, what I'm going to tell you right now is that those guys that are promising that right now, they are way overestimating how quickly they can get that to work the way that they believe it is going to work. They're not going to get there. That's what I think. I think they're way overpromising.
|
2015 Sam:
[6:28]
| I think within 10 years, they will be there.
|
2015 Ivan:
[6:32]
| I think it's going to take longer than 10 years. It's going to take longer than 10 years. I'm going to tell you the main reason why that is, because there's just going to be millions of cars around those cars that are not that way.
|
2015 Sam:
[6:45]
| It'll take more than 10 years to get mass adoption, but it'll be less than 10 years until you can buy a car that does that.
|
2015 Ivan:
[6:51]
| Listen, even in aircraft that are 10 times smarter than any of the cars that we have out there right now, okay, it took for the technology to have, to have the infrastructure, to have the airplanes be able to talk to each other to everything in order to be able to be able to be able to fly autonomous. And what you're telling me is that, oh, no, we're going to build a car right now that, you know what, it's not going to rely on that. It's never going to end up going to accident and nothing's going to happen, right?
|
2015 Sam:
[7:14]
| No, not never, just less than human accidents. The Google cars already have a safety record better than human drivers.
|
2015 Ivan:
[7:21]
| Listen, I'm telling you right now, but the problem is that you're not going to get away from the fact that you still have that many factors around. I don't know. I listen, like I said, it's but you see, my point is that there are a lot of situations and we're not just talking about driving the United States. We're talking about being able to drive anywhere in the world. OK, not just here, off road, on road, wherever the hell, whatever.
|
2015 Sam:
[7:49]
| The first ones of these will be geographically restricted. The first ones of these you buy will.
|
2015 Ivan:
[7:54]
| Well, my point is that you're not going to get to something that can go anywhere. It's still going to require some level of human intervention. No, it's going to take, listen, I'm telling you, look, I, I will stake my ground even 10 years from now, the car may be 10 times smarter and be able to avoid to make it 90% of the mistakes you can do right now, but fully autonomous, fully a hundred percent, not 10.
|
2015 Sam:
[8:17]
| I tell you, I tell you this then.
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2015 Ivan:
[8:20]
| Yes.
|
2015 Sam:
[8:21]
| By 2025, it may be very, it may still be very expensive. It may be very limited in terms of. how many people have them. But by 2025, you will be able to buy a car that you can get in, tell it your destination, and go to sleep.
|
Ivan:
[8:45]
| Okay. Sam.
|
Sam:
[8:47]
| Was that the end?
|
Ivan:
[8:48]
| No, I got it because it was a drag on Ferrari. But that's basically the main point. Sam? Sam?
|
Sam:
[8:57]
| Yes? Yes.
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Ivan:
[8:58]
| You're loud wrong. and I was allowed right.
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Sam:
[9:01]
| I was definitely wrong. I was thinking for a little bit, maybe I could finesse it, like, do Waymo's count? Because you can legally go to sleep in a Waymo.
|
Ivan:
[9:11]
| But you cannot just buy a Waymo. You can't just buy a Waymo, not just that it's geographically fenced, which is the one thing we're talking about.
|
Sam:
[9:18]
| No, no, I said they might be geographically fenced or otherwise limited. The key part is you can't just buy a Waymo.
|
Ivan:
[9:25]
| Yeah, right. You were expecting some very rich people to be able to have one to work and you just can't just buy a Waymo. No.
|
Sam:
[9:33]
| You can't just buy a Waymo and they are very limited. I mean, again, I allowed the fact they might be very limited, but I figured you'd be able to buy one. But the only people who have full autonomous, and even they cheat because they have like remote safety drivers that can take over. You know, so they cheat as well.
|
Ivan:
[9:54]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[9:55]
| And you can't buy those.
|
Ivan:
[9:57]
| You can't buy them.
|
Sam:
[9:58]
| You can't buy those. You know, the autonomous taxis are growing while they do cheat.
|
Ivan:
[10:06]
| Yes. Tesla rolled out some and they had like people sitting in the fucking car watching them.
|
Sam:
[10:12]
| Well, right. All of the, yeah, well, they had people sitting in the car. But even the ones that are theoretically, there's no.
|
Ivan:
[10:19]
| There's somebody somewhere.
|
Sam:
[10:21]
| There's somebody remote. Even if there's not somebody in the car.
|
Ivan:
[10:24]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[10:25]
| You know, and if I remember right. If you if you played that further, we talked a little bit about, you know, I made the point about sleeping in the car.
|
Ivan:
[10:34]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[10:35]
| And now there are definitely people who actually do sleep in the car while they use their Tesla self-driving. But in our discussion, I specified that it would be legal to do so. It is definitely not legal.
|
Ivan:
[10:47]
| Well, the one thing that we're talking about was that being safer right now than that that you would drivers. And the reality is that right now, I mean, look, insurance data showed that Tesla drivers have some of the highest rates of accidents that there are out there. And there are the cars right now equipped with the most of the technology, the most advanced in that sense.
|
Sam:
[11:07]
| Yeah. Well, aside from the Waymos of the world, right?
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Ivan:
[11:10]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[11:11]
| Like of cars you can actually buy. But one of the points I was making in our discussion from 10 years ago, because I have not re-listened to this episode like you just did, but I remember the conversation, even though it was 10 years ago. No, but one of the points that I have made probably in this episode, but over and over again when we talked about this, is the driver assist is actually more dangerous than actually doing full autonomous driving because it assumes the driver can take over at a moment's notice.
|
Ivan:
[11:43]
| I mean, that's been my biggest knock on FSD, the way it is right now. It's the reason why, during the episode, I was talking about technology helping people, stopping them from having accidents, for example. Which a lot of the driver aides that many car manufacturers do right now do a lot of that. Like, you know, like my car, for example, has avoided me, you know, getting into an accident by me changing lanes and not seeing somebody, for example.
|
Sam:
[12:12]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[12:13]
| You know, that kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[12:14]
| My new car has just basic blind spot warnings and stuff, and they've absolutely been helpful. It's gone beep, beep, beep when I'm about to try something stupid.
|
Ivan:
[12:22]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[12:22]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[12:22]
| That kind of stuff, which we've got a lot of that, and it's significantly improved from what we had. But, you know, the FSD technology, and look, I told the story about this guy was having lunch who was basically being cavalier and falling asleep and doing what the hell we're talking about and doing that whatever. And he got into, he totaled the Tesla. The Tesla drove into a wall because he was that cavalier. Okay. and totaled the car. I mean, this wasn't a small accident, okay?
|
Sam:
[12:53]
| Yeah, and this is the thing, and the fully autonomous ones have been slower, because I had specified it had to be legal to go to sleep, and part of my argument was these cars would not even have the steering wheel. It would just be a passenger compartment. And some of the taxis are, in fact, structured that way, the autonomous taxis that are running out.
|
Ivan:
[13:17]
| Remote drivers anyways. What the hell?
|
Sam:
[13:19]
| A lot of remote drivers have to sometimes take over.
|
Ivan:
[13:23]
| They have a wheel over there. So you took out the wheel from a car and there's somebody with a fucking wheel sitting in a room somewhere else.
|
Sam:
[13:30]
| It might be a keyboard or a joystick.
|
Ivan:
[13:33]
| It might be a keyboard or a joystick, yes, as much as we know, yes.
|
Sam:
[13:37]
| And you see videos every once in a while about people like, you know, oh, the Waymo got stuck. The Waymo's confused.
|
Ivan:
[13:44]
| Yep, yep, yep. You see that, yeah.
|
Sam:
[13:48]
| Because, you know, something happens and it just has no idea what to do.
|
Ivan:
[13:51]
| Something happened that a human could figure out, but the Waymo could not, basically.
|
Sam:
[13:55]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[13:55]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[13:56]
| So, yes, I was absolutely wrong. It did not happen within 10 years. You can go to sleep in your autonomous driving vehicle, but if it's a Tesla, you would be incredibly stupid to do so, if you're the driver, obviously. And in a Waymo, you're probably fine going to sleep.
|
Ivan:
[14:16]
| Well, there is somebody else minding the fucking store.
|
Sam:
[14:19]
| It's geofenced.
|
Ivan:
[14:22]
| Somebody else is minding it.
|
Sam:
[14:26]
| Now, have they disclosed? Is there someone actually monitoring in real time at all points? Or does the Waymo call for help when it feels like it's in?
|
Ivan:
[14:34]
| I thought it was the Waymo call. I thought it was alert. I think so, too. Okay? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[14:39]
| I think so, too.
|
Ivan:
[14:39]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[14:40]
| So there's not necessarily someone watching.
|
Ivan:
[14:43]
| But it's doing it, again, it's doing it in a very limited geographic area because it's the one that it knows very well. And even back then, 10 years ago.
|
Sam:
[14:52]
| Although they're expanding the geographic area over time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[14:54]
| It is slowly. But, you know, even 10 years ago, I still remember seeing BMW demo a car that could go around a track by itself and a track that it knew very well. It's not like that wasn't possible. I mean, shit. I mean, we had, come on, man. When we were in college, and let's face it, Sam, when we were in college was a really, really, really long time ago now, okay?
|
Sam:
[15:18]
| Yes, it was. And they already had self-driving on the CMU campus. I mean, it was slow. I remember going out to see the demos of the big self-driving Humvee that they put together or whatever in the park. And it's like maximum speed was like five miles per hour or something. But it did it. And, of course, they improved that rapidly over time and removed the amount of restrictions on it, etc. I think the first cross-country drive of one of these things was not that long after we were in college with the safety driver and all this kind of stuff. You know, so I was over-optimistic. I was indeed.
|
Ivan:
[16:00]
| I love this. Well, actually, I love this more The fact that I found this I mean, all of a sudden I'm just looking at my calendar I'm like, what? Wait, what? We fucking, wait, this was, Fuck. And I'm like realizing, Jesus.
|
Sam:
[16:15]
| A reminder from yourself from a decade in the past.
|
Ivan:
[16:18]
| From a decade ago. And then it happens that Apple technology apparently is still so, I still use it so widely that it was still on the same fucking calendar I put it from 10 years ago. Now that's more amazing, I think, than anything else.
|
Sam:
[16:31]
| Now i had remembered for a long time i i every every once in a while and certainly every time we've talked about self-driving on this podcast i've been like we had that thing that was like for some huge number of years in the future has that passed yet it seems like it should have passed yet but no not until just now and although like like i said for at least five years i have admitted whenever we've talked about self-driving that i was gonna be wrong about this when the time game oh.
|
Ivan:
[17:00]
| Gosh but you know but yeah so i mean so wait yeah okay so let me ask you a question do you guys have like a home family calendar like the you use what do you use for the or no.
|
Sam:
[17:12]
| So here's here's the thing i had set up all of that stuff okay once upon a time uh-huh so yes i have we each have like on our phones a private calendar and a shared calendar and we're all subscribed to each other's shared calendars, theoretically.
|
Ivan:
[17:31]
| But is that which calendar? I mean, I guess it's not using your Apple calendar on the phone?
|
Sam:
[17:37]
| No, it was using Apple, but let me get to the part why it's not actually practically in use anymore. Because... First of all, like my main constraints are generally my work calendar.
|
Ivan:
[17:52]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[17:53]
| And it is possible for me to share my work calendar with my Apple phone. But I stopped years ago having anything work-related on my phone that allowed the company to have like management rights on my phone.
|
Ivan:
[18:11]
| Okay, okay.
|
Sam:
[18:12]
| And so no more work calendar on my personal phone. OK, well, the way that I. OK, so wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let me finish this. Let me finish this. And then so I had no more work calendar on my personal phone. Now, I could have done something like just block out big blocks of time where I'm at work. You know, just like, I'm at work these hours, these days, and boom, that's all. But I never did that. And then when Brandy started her work, she had similar constraints with her work calendars. And she had campaign calendars and work calendars, but they were all on different tech. And you couldn't be shared freely, blah, blah, blah. And so I still potentially, in some cases, put personal appointments on there. But frankly, none of us look at our Apple accounts enough or use our Apple accounts to make it worth it. Because we all have the things that actually matter and block our calendars on other systems. A whole diverse set of systems that aren't brought together because of constraints.
|
Ivan:
[19:24]
| Yeah, so basically you don't have family. I mean, here's the thing that we have about the family count.
|
Sam:
[19:28]
| We set one up. We just... drifted away from it because of all these constraints.
|
Ivan:
[19:32]
| I have a family calendar, but the one thing that I do, if there's anything, look, I'm assumed to be at work during the day, bottom line. It's like, look, just assume I'm at work. However, if there is an event that requires me to block time from work to be at, what we do is send an invite to my work calendar. Okay?
|
Sam:
[19:54]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[19:55]
| And so that way blocks the work time because I have to be at a doctor or something like that.
|
Sam:
[20:00]
| Well, this is what I do at this point.
|
Ivan:
[20:02]
| Too. That way is what I do. But then they have the family calendar and everything that they see. And Manu lives by the calendar, religiously.
|
Sam:
[20:09]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[20:09]
| Okay. So he is looking at, you know, I put my travel schedules on there and it's like, you know, synchronized. You know, if it's travel, I have it that I sent an invite to the home calendar so it's on there so they know what it is and, you know, that kind of stuff. So that way they will see the events that are relevant. And if they need to block time from me, I basically am like somebody else that is like you do business at another company. You can't see the calendar. Hey, you sent them an invite. So, hey, I'll get an invite. Oh, OK. No, I can't do that time. I'll decline it or I'll accept it. And I will be able to block my work time, basically.
|
Sam:
[20:45]
| Right. Yeah. Yeah, no, I hear you. And like when I have appointments for anything, I put them on my work calendar because that's what I have. I put them directly on my work calendar because that's what I have to work around for the most part. And even even if it's something like if I have something Saturday that I have to remember, I will put a reminder. I will block some time on my calendar for Friday afternoon saying, remember, you have this thing Saturday.
|
Ivan:
[21:14]
| Right. Right. OK.
|
Sam:
[21:16]
| You know, because I will look at it while I'm at work, but I'm not looking at, any of the personal calendars anymore i'm only looking at my work calendar realistically, and okay occasionally you know brandy would get pissed at me like what do you mean you didn't know about this i put it on the calendar i'm like well i don't look at that calendar anymore you know and i don't know so anyway that's that.
|
Ivan:
[21:40]
| Anyway all right so that's my but first basically i i figured i could make.
|
Sam:
[21:46]
| Excellent i was gonna bring it up if you didn't right up at the front But you beat me to it because you wanted to, like, make fun of me.
|
Ivan:
[21:53]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[21:54]
| Which is important. You could be damn sure if I'd been right, I would have been making fun of you.
|
Ivan:
[22:01]
| Yes. You know, listen, Sam, for a number of, I mean, it was a long time. I made a prediction about Paul Sangas being the Democratic candidate who's going to be president, I said, in 1992. Sam took that clip, put it on his answering machine for everybody to listen to when they left him a message saying, wrong, sorry, Yvonne, but you were wrong. So, yes, I need to be able to take advantage of what I got right now, given that he spent like, it must have been like a year or more that that was his answering machine message.
|
Sam:
[22:42]
| Okay, now, Yvonne, you want to go double and nothing for 2035 on the same prediction?
|
Ivan:
[22:50]
| I think 2035, they may have figured it out. Okay? I think another 10 years, they may have figured it out. So, no, I won't do double. No, no. I think 2035, they...
|
Sam:
[23:05]
| What if we reverse our predictions then? You can say we will be able to buy a car that you can just go to sleep, and I'll say you won't.
|
Ivan:
[23:13]
| Gosh, but I'm not even that convinced about that one right now. I think it goes back to, during that, it goes back to the one problem that I said about, you know, with aircraft, one of the ways that they've made it that aircraft can literally like almost fly by themselves is with the adoption of stuff like TCAS, for example. ADS-B and other technologies that constantly share.
|
Sam:
[23:38]
| Every plane is mandated to be able to communicate with each other so that you can.
|
Ivan:
[23:42]
| And communicate precise data on location, precise data on a lot of information. And they are able to talk to each other, to avoid each other and so much and so on.
|
Sam:
[23:54]
| And you don't have the possibility of the kid running across the street chasing their ball.
|
Ivan:
[23:58]
| Exactly. You don't have that. But so the thing is that I think that even like 10 years from now, one of the things that I think would make a big improvement in this is that cars would be able to communicate to each other kind of like a way to say that airplanes do in a certain extent in order to avoid those kinds of things. OK, and that the roads would be smart roads and that kind of stuff. But that requires a massive multi, hell, I think over a trillion dollar investment in some of that in order to be able to get to the full level that I think. I think they may be able to get a lot closer, but but. But with the other advances, they may be able to get a lot closer, that it doesn't need to be that way. But my whole point is that since all the other cars don't have that, cars have to keep, even the smart car that can drive by itself or whatever, maybe in a perfect environment, right? You still have all these other morons that there's still hundreds of millions of these other cars and you just dart out of a place, just smash into you senselessly. And so that's the big risk that you have there. And the cars aren't really that well prepared to have some assholes like swerving, coming at, like say, for example, like a wrong way driver. Okay.
|
Sam:
[25:14]
| Well, to be honest, to be honest, humans aren't necessarily that well prepared for that scenario.
|
Ivan:
[25:19]
| But I think the autonomy gets so confused. It's sometimes even worse. I mean, I've avoided a wrong way drive, like at least once in my lifetime. Okay. And it was.
|
Sam:
[25:29]
| I've been a wrong-way driver at least once in my lifetime.
|
Ivan:
[25:33]
| Oh, fuck. Well, all right. And what I, okay.
|
Sam:
[25:37]
| Not for very long.
|
Ivan:
[25:38]
| I realized it very quickly. Okay, yeah, no, no. And I meant, yeah, and I just realized, I meant like wrong-way driver, instead of being on a highway, okay, all right, where I had a car coming at me.
|
Sam:
[25:48]
| For a long period of time.
|
Ivan:
[25:48]
| At 70 miles an hour, driving the wrong fucking direction on a highway, okay? Or more.
|
Sam:
[25:54]
| I remember twice, once was turning onto a one-way street in Pittsburgh.
|
Ivan:
[26:00]
| And that's always, you know.
|
Sam:
[26:03]
| You know, and I realized within like a dozen feet and pulled over and figured out how to get out of it. And then the other was accidentally heading on the off ramp of a highway. And then my family started screaming, what the hell are you doing, Sam? And then once again, I figured it out.
|
Ivan:
[26:23]
| You know, I had like our mutual friend who I haven't heard from in forever. So I don't even know if we're friends anymore, Marilyn, that once borrowed my car and she was lost and was in my car. This was the time that cars had cell phones. Maybe she didn't personally own one, but my car had a cell phone and she calls me from the car to try to figure out where the hell she is to make a turn. And I go and I tell her to make a left turn at this place where she told me that she was, but she made a left turn and started going the wrong way. And all of a sudden I hear her freaking out as she realized that she made the left turn, but didn't get on the right. Didn't get on the right lane, stayed on the left, was driving the wrong way. She's freaking out on the cell phone. She backs up, you know, trying to make a U-turn hurriedly and actually crunched the back of my car as I was on the other side of the cell of the phone. And I've already talked about a little bit how I'm a little bit of an anal about my cars. I will admit that I did not flip out at her because I realized that that would probably make it worse.
|
Sam:
[27:25]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[27:25]
| I remained calm and I just said, listen, just drive forward. Don't worry about it. and we'll figure it out. Thankfully, it wasn't too much. Okay, it was no big deal. But I know that I felt really like, I felt like somebody just stabbed me in the heart for a second as I heard this, but I maintained composure and did not make the situation worse. And I did not yell at her about it.
|
Sam:
[27:49]
| Good job, Yvonne. So sorry, I distracted you from your story.
|
Ivan:
[27:53]
| Which, we're done. We're done with story. We're done with story.
|
Sam:
[27:56]
| We're done with cars.
|
Ivan:
[27:57]
| Yeah, we're done with cars.
|
Sam:
[27:58]
| And we have decided not to set another alarm for 10 years from now.
|
Ivan:
[28:02]
| No, I'm not setting another alarm. I'm not making another. Okay, wait. No, maybe we'll do a check.
|
Sam:
[28:10]
| Okay, let's do a check.
|
Ivan:
[28:11]
| Let's do a check. You set the appointment right now. Okay, I'll set the appointment again for 10 years so we can check the status of where we're at with it, but no bet. No prediction. I don't feel very confident about my prediction back then. I felt very confident back then. I don't feel, I don't know. Now I'm in the area of I don't know. Instead of like, now, no way, never going to happen. So I'm on the I don't know, like right now. So let me, I'm making, looking at the calendar. Where the hell is this? Okay, I will make the change now in order for us to, there it is. Autonomous car fully. You can fall asleep. Here we go. Make a change for... October 9th, 2025, but 2035. Okay, here we go. Typing in 2035 onto the calendar. Here we go. Boom, boom. Yep. Here we go. So now it's launched into the future. 10 years from now. Okay.
|
Sam:
[29:19]
| We will reconvene.
|
Ivan:
[29:20]
| In 10 years.
|
Sam:
[29:21]
| And somehow we will manage, and I will accept. I just got the meeting request.
|
Ivan:
[29:27]
| You see, you got the invite. There you go.
|
Sam:
[29:28]
| I got the invite. Let's, I'm going to accept. There we go. Accepted the meeting invite.
|
Ivan:
[29:35]
| Excellent. Excellent.
|
Sam:
[29:37]
| So see you in 10 years, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[29:38]
| See you in 10 years. Again.
|
Sam:
[29:43]
| Okay. With that out of the way.
|
Ivan:
[29:45]
| You got to cover your movies.
|
Sam:
[29:47]
| Yeah. Although I don't know if I want to. Last week we said we'll do three. But I don't know if, you know, two is plenty.
|
Ivan:
[29:55]
| All right. Go with two. Go with two. Go with two.
|
Sam:
[29:57]
| All right. Two is plenty. We've already done half an hour on autonomous cars. Okay. Movie number one, Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse. which I watched January 2nd of this year. So I'm in the same year again.
|
Ivan:
[30:14]
| Jesus Christ. I mean, when is this movie from? I don't even remember this movie. What's the name of the movie again?
|
Sam:
[30:21]
| This was a 2023 movie. Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse.
|
Ivan:
[30:26]
| How bad? The same as all the other fucking Batman movies, this Spider-Man reboot 10 times movies.
|
Sam:
[30:36]
| Here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[30:37]
| Confuse the shit out of me.
|
Sam:
[30:38]
| So this is the second in the Spider-Verse franchise. The first one was Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse from 2018. Okay. And there's a third one coming out, I think, next year. Okay. It's due to come out next year, I think. Or maybe it got delayed to 2027. Let me check that. Sequel Beyond the Spider-Verse.
|
Ivan:
[31:05]
| And this one's animated.
|
Sam:
[31:07]
| Yes this series is animated.
|
Ivan:
[31:09]
| I had no clue i mean i literally just looked at the poster and it's like i swear to god i mean it's this isn't even one that i maybe saw the poster like no but i just saw it and i was just like shocked at the poster like i have no idea so.
|
Sam:
[31:24]
| The third one is now due to come out june 2027 so we got a little bit of time yet for for that one so let let me you know Now, I will just put it this way. I've watched the first two movies. I really enjoyed both movies. Big thumbs up. These are about the Miles Morales Spider-Man, not the Peter Parker Spider-Man, just to be clear.
|
Ivan:
[31:54]
| Once again, I didn't even know there was a Miles Morales Spider-Man.
|
Sam:
[31:59]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[32:00]
| I mean, I didn't even know that. I don't know anything.
|
Sam:
[32:03]
| So you should, Yvonne. Miles Morales is Puerto Rican.
|
Ivan:
[32:08]
| It sounded from the name of it.
|
Sam:
[32:13]
| He's an African-American Puerto Rican descendant.
|
Ivan:
[32:17]
| But wait, wait, wait. His dad's African-American, his mother's Puerto Rican. I was mentioning that I wound up for some reason running into somebody online who was African-American from Georgia that got into my face and insisted that all Puerto Ricans were white and Spanish. Are we all white?
|
Sam:
[32:36]
| Apparently.
|
Ivan:
[32:38]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[32:39]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[32:39]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[32:39]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[32:40]
| So this must be fake.
|
Sam:
[32:43]
| Anyway, the, the, the, they both got a lot of accolades for having interesting animation style, blending animation styles, et cetera. The second one really doubled down into the whole idea of the multiverse that into the spider first, the first one. And the first movie in the series introduced it. There was a sort of crossover between the different universes, you know, and so you had some intersection between them. The second movie went completely in there. Like there's this hub between universes where you have Spider-Men from like dozens of different dimensions interacting with each other with different histories. And they have sort of canonical events that happen in the lives of all spider creatures. Because, you know, some of them, there's men, there's women.
|
Ivan:
[33:43]
| So there's like a lot of spider creatures.
|
Sam:
[33:47]
| Yes. Yes, from different, and, you know, there's some that are, like, in the first movie and appearing again in the second movie, there's, like, one version of Spider-Man who's a pig, you know. There's different animation styles, so you see them, like, interact with each other.
|
Ivan:
[34:04]
| I am so lost. I am so confused. There's Spider-Man. I have no idea about these things.
|
Sam:
[34:12]
| Anyway, very creative. I really liked it. if I had to pick, maybe the first one's a little bit, better than the second one because it doesn't get quite all tied up in the mythos of all of these different like universes interacting with each other and it's more directly on like you'll look you have a small group of characters that you really get to know and like there's, and you you meet it's not just spider like one of the female spider-men is in some universes she's known as Spider Woman, but this was, colloquially she's Spider Gwen. And anyway, I liked both of them. I liked the second one. I say, if I had to put them, maybe the first one's a little bit better, but I really liked the second one too. And it completely sets up its sequel though. It's one of those situations where I was pissed at the end of the movie because I wanted to go straight to the next one. and it's not going to be out for like three years.
|
Ivan:
[35:18]
| For still, you got to, yeah, still a while, yeah.
|
Sam:
[35:20]
| Yeah, so, but very creative, creative with the animation styles as well, like, and multi-animation styles, because, like, when you get the Spider-Men from different universes, they're animated differently in terms of how they look and feel. Like, some are more comic book-y, some are more 3D animation, some are more this, some are more that. You get some things where even the frame rate of the animation changes depending on what's going on with the character and stuff like that. So there's a lot of sort of artistry stuff about it, but then it's also just a good story. I will read the beginning of the plots from both of these from Wikipedia, from Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. That's the first one. Here's the beginning of the Wikipedia plot description. New York City teenager Miles Morales struggles to live up to the expectations, of his father, police officer Jefferson Davis, who sees Spider-Man as a menace. Miles' uncle Aaron takes him to an abandoned subway station to paint graffiti as a way to cheer him up. There, Miles is bitten by a radioactive spider and gains abilities similar to Spider-Man. Because the original Spider-Man is also in here.
|
Sam:
[36:43]
| Returning to the station where he got bit, he discovers a collider built by Kingpin, who hopes to access parallel universes to abduct alternate versions of his late wife, Vanessa, and son, Richard. Spider-Man attempts to stop the collider while fighting Kingpin's enforcers, the Green Goblin, and Prowler. I'll read the second paragraph. Green Goblin shoves Spider-Man into the Collider, causing an explosion that mortally wounds Spider-Man, who then gives Miles a USB flash drive designed to sabotage the Collider, warning that the machine could destroy the city if reactivated. After watching in horror as Kingpin murders Spider-Man, Miles flees. As the city mourns Spider-Man's death, Miles tries to honor his legacy by becoming the new Spider-Man. but inadvertently damages the drive. At Spider-Man's grave, he meets Peter B. Parker, a middle-aged and world-weary Spider-Man from another dimension. Dun-dun-dun. And then the movie proceeds from there.
|
Ivan:
[37:48]
| Ah.
|
Sam:
[37:49]
| And then across the Spider-Verse, which happens later, on Earth-65, Spider-Woman Gwen Tracy has become increasingly isolated from her friends and estranged from her father, George. George is hunting Spider-Woman for killing Peter Parker, unaware that it was an accident after Peter turned into the lizard. Gwen encounters a version of the Vulture from an Italian Renaissance-themed alternate universe, and Miguel O'Hara and Jess Drew arrive through dimensional portals to help neutralize him. George corners Gwen and she reveals her identity to him, and he attempts to arrest her before she leaves with Justin Miguel. Miguel. Miguel.
|
Sam:
[38:34]
| Second paragraph. In Bookland, Bookland, I'm getting really bad with the pronunciations here. In Brooklyn, on Earth-1610, 16 months after Kingpin's defeat, oh sorry, spoilers for the end of the first movie, and the destruction of the Alchemax Collider, Miles Morales is having trouble with his parents due to his duties as Spider-Man interfering with his personal life, and is grounded when he is late to a party celebrating his father Jeff's promotion to police captain.
|
Sam:
[39:05]
| Miles encounters the Spot, an Alchemax scientist-turned-supervillain whose body was infused with portals during the Collider's destruction. The Spot blames Miles for causing his mutation and reveals that the radioactive spider that bit Miles and gave him his powers came from an alternate universe, Earth-42, while the Spot was testing the Collider. The spot accidentally transports himself into a void and learns to use his portals to travel to other universes and empower himself by using Alchemist's colliders and other dimensions. Gwen travels to Miles' dimension and they reconnect, sharing their struggles and hinting at feelings of attraction towards each other. Dot, dot, dot. Movie continues. Anyway, both good. Like them. I recommend them. Even if you don't like superhero movies, even if you don't really like animations, these are fun little movies. But you will have to wait till 2027 for the third movie in the trilogy.
|
Ivan:
[40:06]
| Well, 2026 is almost around the corner.
|
Sam:
[40:11]
| Almost here.
|
Ivan:
[40:12]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[40:14]
| You got like, what, a year and three quarters. Yeah. You got a year and three quarters.
|
Ivan:
[40:18]
| I'm sure it's going to be a summer release.
|
Sam:
[40:22]
| Yeah, June. June. June 2027.
|
Ivan:
[40:24]
| So, thumbs up.
|
Sam:
[40:26]
| Thumbs up, yes. And thumbs up for the older one, too, which I probably reviewed on here a few years ago.
|
Ivan:
[40:32]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[40:33]
| You know, Bridge on the River Kwai can wait.
|
Ivan:
[40:37]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[40:39]
| I'll never catch up this way, but Bridge on the River Kwai can wait. Let's take a break, and then we'll come back and talk about the actual news of this week, as opposed to things from 10 years ago and a movie from last year. So, or two years ago is 2023, 2023, you know, all these years just sort of merge together over time. You know, our discussion about that 10 year and a future prediction could have been last week. Yeah. You know, and so it's all, it's, it's all, all blurred together badly. Okay. Here comes a break. We'll be back after this.
|
Break:
[41:27]
| You're listening to this podcast do you like it no do you want to support the show no.
|
Break:
[41:36]
| 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.
|
Break:
[42:11]
| At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our curmudgeons Corner postcard or even a Curmudgeon's 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! Or if you are nuts about us maybe even more. One hundred 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:
[43:07]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[43:08]
| One thing that I want to mention was that In that recording of that curmudgeon's corner, and I skipped through it quickly trying to find this section and figured if I did that. But Alex, I heard talking into the microphone and actually speaking. That did happen like 10 years ago.
|
Sam:
[43:27]
| He used to do that quite a bit. He did entire shows as my co-host. Now, he would only talk about his YouTube channel and video games, not anything else. But, you know.
|
Ivan:
[43:39]
| Hey. You know. Yeah. So anyway, all right, so I guess it's my time to pick a topic, and I'm going to pick something that is newsy. Honestly, I'm surprised that it's gotten, and I put this on the Slack because I'm still shocked that it's gotten zero, no, it's got zero attention, but maybe it's because there's so many scandals and frauds and shit related to Trump that they just.
|
Sam:
[44:05]
| Is it the hotel?
|
Ivan:
[44:05]
| Yes, it's about the hotel. It's about the fucking hotel. Okay. Because nobody gave a shit about this. Okay.
|
Sam:
[44:12]
| Yeah. And you putting it into Slack was literally the only thing I've heard about it.
|
Ivan:
[44:19]
| No one else has even talked about it. You know, so everybody remembers that Trump had this hotel during his first term that was basically a walking distance from the White House. And that that hotel basically became the hub, the meeting place for all the Republicans that were going to Washington. They were all spending money there. Many foreign governments would buy rooms. There were stories specifically about certain governments specifically buying blocks of rooms in the hotel, which they didn't even use, just to put money into the damn hotel. And the hotel was very active during that time. Well, soon after Trump lost, okay, back in 2022, okay, Trump sold the hotel for $375 million. Now, the thing about that sale at $375 million— Wait.
|
Sam:
[45:18]
| Wait, real quick.
|
Ivan:
[45:19]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[45:19]
| It was you who bought it, right?
|
Ivan:
[45:21]
| Yes, of course. Yeah. I used my petty cash.
|
Sam:
[45:23]
| Just checking.
|
Ivan:
[45:24]
| Using my petty cash, as usual. So, you know, no, it's a guy called Raul Fuentes, which I think I understood he's of somebody of Jamaican descent. I'm not really sure where, how, and his background is murky. Very little information about him. He owns something called CGI Merchant Bank that owned a few other hotels and real estate properties. Now, the $375 million everybody that had looked at this hotel said was a sky-high crazy number. I mean, even when Trump bought it, okay, and made the lease, they said that they way overpaid. That it was a sky-high crazy price. That there was no way to make money on that property. It didn't have enough rooms, okay? The location, the layout of the building was quite funky because it was the old post office over there. It was a historic building, so there was a lot of things and changes that you couldn't really do to the property, okay? There was a big rent that had to be paid, you know, because it was.
|
Sam:
[46:29]
| Really— Just to throw it out there, I remember having a school group tour of that old post office when I was, like, in high school.
|
Ivan:
[46:38]
| Me too, okay? I did that as well, okay, during that time.
|
Sam:
[46:42]
| It was cool.
|
Ivan:
[46:42]
| It was cool.
|
Sam:
[46:43]
| Nice columns and things.
|
Ivan:
[46:45]
| A big open atrium in the middle, you know. Yeah. It's a very, very cool building, okay?
|
Ivan:
[46:52]
| So, listen, the price was sky high. There's no way to make money on this. But the guy that bought it also got a... So, but as other deals that Trump has been involved, like him being able to sell a house in Palm Beach that he bought for $20 million that all of a sudden got flipped for $100 million that a Russian bought, Which was like multiple times what anybody would pay. Okay. And nobody understands how the hell this deal happened. This deal happened with this hotel where this guy came up $375 million. The guy borrowed $285 million of the money for the purchase. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[47:28]
| And within it, he didn't even get to a year before he was in default. OK, yeah, I mean, this guy, I mean, yeah, he didn't even make it a year. OK, and then he said, well, we got hit with some taxes and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, that's ridiculous. That's complete, utter bullshit on a three hundred and seventy five million dollar deal. You know, you're doing your fucking due diligence. You know what the fuck is coming up? There is no way that you got all of a sudden blindsided by some bill like this. It's bullshit. Especially saying it's taxes. It was crazy. Okay. So very quickly defaulted on the loan. Okay. Donald. Okay. Apparently since he got so much money. Okay. Paid on this. So the price was $375. Apparently agreed to carry $28 million. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[48:24]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[48:25]
| As that. Which by the way. That's, in deals like this, that's not unusual, to be honest. In some deals where the person made a lot of money and there was like a little piece left over, I've done that in some deal where I've got a property that maybe I have a ton of equity on that the person went and like, maybe, you know, the price was $400,000. Well, they came up to me $370,000 and I figured, you know what, I'll carry a lien for the other $30,000. Okay, you know, whatever. It's not the worst risk. I made a lot of money on it already. I'll carry a note, you know. Well, let it ride. It's part of the profit. I'm just, you know, probably make some more money because I'm getting paid interest. Okay. Of course, he defaulted on that too. Okay. So the place went into foreclosure very quickly. Okay. It wound up being foreclosed already in 2024. Okay. And there was a foreclosure auction. Okay. In 2024. By the way, in which there was only one bidder. And the winning bid, I remember, paid $375,000, go to foreclosure auction, only one bidder, the price was $100 million.
|
Ivan:
[49:36]
| I mean, it's not, by the way, the hotel business has been booming the last few years, if anybody hasn't noticed, okay? But hotels have been booming. I mean, talk about $375 to only fetch $100 million? at foreclosure and you know and i'm like i'm sorry this guy that said that he you know that bought the hotel i still don't understand how the he got the loan who gave him the money why would anybody, knowing the hyper inflated valuation of this willingly go and loan this much money on this property that they knew was, everybody, everybody knew the price was ridiculously sky high. So they wrote that off. But by the way, Donald Trump sued for his $28 million, okay? By the way. And he won a judgment because, of course, Trump sued because he always sued.
|
Sam:
[50:36]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[50:36]
| And he won a judgment for like $30 some odd million or whatever, whatnot. The bottom line is that, once again, another real estate deal that Donald is involved, where everything is murky. Pricing, you know, a deal where he buys it that everybody's saying it's impossible to make money. All of a sudden, he gets bailed out by somebody at a sky-high price. And then all of a sudden, the buyer defaults on it, the source of the money. Who the fuck understands this? I mean, it's and it was a significant amount of money. And if you remember, this happened during a period where Trump was under significant financial pressure because of the lawsuits, because of all this shit happening, because of judgments, because of all of this shit. He was under a lot of pressure. OK. And lo and behold, voila, a couple of hundred million dollars came out of the sky.
|
Sam:
[51:34]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[51:36]
| It's it's always.
|
Sam:
[51:37]
| Ivan I am sure the authorities are aggressively investigating this as we speak uh-huh sure.
|
Ivan:
[51:46]
| Uh-huh. Nobody gives a shit about this.
|
Sam:
[51:49]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[51:51]
| But nobody gives a shit about this because there's so much other shit going on that this is like, well, whatever.
|
Sam:
[51:59]
| Yeah. I mean, we've talked about this general problem before, but the speed of events, and this was true in Trump's first term. It's even more so this term. There is so much going on so constantly, so many new things every single week that, you know, people did the comparisons to Watergate, right? We've got like 10 new Watergates every week.
|
Ivan:
[52:29]
| Every week.
|
Sam:
[52:30]
| Every week. And, you know, some of them, you know, much, much more significant than Watergate ever was.
|
Ivan:
[52:38]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:38]
| Some, some of them about the same, some of them maybe a little bit less, but like there's stuff every week that is of that scale or bigger. And it's just overwhelming.
|
Ivan:
[52:53]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:53]
| There's so much of it. Like, like you mentioned this one, if you put a list of potential Donald Trump scandals of recent times, maybe this is number 30 on the list. Maybe, maybe 40.
|
Ivan:
[53:06]
| You know, there's another one that came out today with this kind of murky money trail. And I think this also, by the way, I saw this and immediately I was like, this isn't for the reasons I think people think it is. The Dominion voting systems got sold. OK.
|
Sam:
[53:23]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[53:24]
| And by the way.
|
Sam:
[53:25]
| To some conservative group.
|
Ivan:
[53:27]
| Yeah. But the only reason this happened is because it was such a source of lawsuits and problems. And they were still suing and sent people that, how do you, how do you eliminate the problem? Buy them. That's it. Done. It's fucking crazy. And I guess the, you know, the buyer said that they want, oh, but the announcement is double better because, okay, not only does conservatives buy it, but they said that, I guess they're ending their technology and they want everybody to go back to paper, something like that.
|
Sam:
[54:02]
| Well, if you actually look nationwide at this point, it's in the high 90s in terms of the percentage of people who use systems that are paperbacked anyway.
|
Ivan:
[54:12]
| Oh, they're paperbacked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
|
Sam:
[54:14]
| Yeah, in terms of having a paper trail that's left and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I forget exactly which technologies Dominion was, but yeah, whatever. There are many, many concerns about elections and how elections are going to work and how people are going to want to manipulate them in 2026 and beyond. I think Dominion is also relatively low on that list.
|
Ivan:
[54:42]
| Yeah, no, but I think it was more about the lawsuits. I really do. I really think that that was like the main thing. How do I stop in the lawsuits? Hey, buy them out. No more lawsuits. There you go. Problem solved. Hey, how did Donald Trump stop, you know, his legal problems? Take over the Justice Department. Problem solved. Hey, yes, it works. It works.
|
Sam:
[55:11]
| So with that in mind do you want to transition from the hotel to any other issues we can transition I.
|
Ivan:
[55:18]
| Mentioned the Justice Department it was kind of like it was kind of like giving you the off ramp in that direction.
|
Sam:
[55:23]
| Well I figure we will let you we will let you control for the rest of this segment go a little further and then we will take a break and then I will lightning round everything that you have not picked by that well.
|
Ivan:
[55:34]
| I mean this whole thing like right now with the Justice Department and like well we got the Comey indictment and now we got Letitia.
|
Sam:
[55:40]
| James being indicted. Letitia James.
|
Ivan:
[55:42]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[55:43]
| I was in the process of mispronouncing her name when you said it first, because I'm doing so well with that today.
|
Ivan:
[55:51]
| With a very flimsy, ridiculous—I mean, I read the fucking—it's stupidly—another ridiculous— It's another two-page.
|
Sam:
[55:58]
| Indictment without that many details.
|
Ivan:
[56:00]
| It is so flimsy. And the accusation, which is just—it's the same. It's an accusation that, I mean, nobody gets prosecuted for this. And by the way, here's a, well, it's starting with that, but what they're claiming, which is also facts that, terribly in dispute. The reason why a lot of people don't go into this is because, okay, you look at the paperwork and maybe- Describe.
|
Sam:
[56:26]
| What they actually.
|
Ivan:
[56:28]
| Said she did. Basically, it's the same thing they were trying to go after the lady in the Fed, okay? Which is that in the process of applying for a mortgage that they supposedly misstated that this house is a primary home and not an investment property. And therefore, by doing that, they got a favorable interest rate.
|
Sam:
[56:49]
| Wait, just real quick. The Fed one, the accusation is she said it was a primary home when really it was a secondary home. In this case, it's that she said it was a secondary home, but she never actually used it as a secondary home. She just rented it out.
|
Ivan:
[57:05]
| Okay. So, yeah, it wasn't. Yeah. Okay. So it was a secondary home, but, you know, I mean. and supposedly over.
|
Sam:
[57:16]
| The 30 year lifetime of the loan or whatever this is what just under 20 000.
|
Ivan:
[57:20]
| They save 20 000 they would save 20 000 which by the way the loan doesn't have 20 years as far as i know anyway oh.
|
Sam:
[57:26]
| It's not a 30 year it's like.
|
Ivan:
[57:27]
| A 10 year 15 or something that okay i mean this was on 2020 so only like five years have elapsed so that would be over the life of the loan There are maybe fucking 25 years. So what we're talking here is not even that. We're talking about a couple of thousand bucks in interest. Maybe if, and by the way, here's a problem. This whole thing, the problem is that this accusation is supposedly trying to read the person's mind and their intention. Because you know what? It's not illegal to buy a house, declaring it as a second home because you think it might be a second home. And then you're changing your mind and deciding to rent it out. That's not illegal. And so unless they tell me that they've got some x-ray vision into our head to determine, you know, that.
|
Sam:
[58:19]
| I mean, I could do the same with my primary home, right?
|
Ivan:
[58:23]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[58:23]
| I could decide I don't want to live here anymore. I'm going to rent it.
|
Ivan:
[58:25]
| And the fact is not going to force you to refinance.
|
Sam:
[58:27]
| Right. So that was actually going to be my question. And, you know, assuming that everything outlined is true, is this actually a crime? Like, I know the numbers are small and this is selectively enforced.
|
Ivan:
[58:43]
| Is it a crime? Well...
|
Sam:
[58:45]
| Presumably the motivation has something to do with it, right? You have to go in there with the intent of defrauding.
|
Ivan:
[58:50]
| Yes. By the way, even the law says that if it's just an omission, it's okay. So if you made a mistake...
|
Sam:
[59:02]
| Or if it's the scenario that you said. She intended to use it as a vacation.
|
Ivan:
[59:06]
| It's totally legal. This is about as stupid, you know...
|
Sam:
[59:14]
| Well this is another scenario and it's it's the same and.
|
Ivan:
[59:18]
| By the way according to what i heard about letitia james was apparently there was a there was some papers that did say that but apparently that she corrected them is what i what i read today.
|
Sam:
[59:27]
| Well this just this just like comey and involving the same players this was another one where the person resigned because he said there was no evidence. Actually, the initial reporting was he resigned because of Letitia James. It only later came out that it was also Comey. He resigned because they were pressuring him to indict in both these cases, and he did his investigation and found no reason to indict.
|
Ivan:
[59:56]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[59:57]
| Like, he found...
|
Ivan:
[59:58]
| And once again, there's not... Lindsay Halligan couldn't find anybody in the office that wanted to sign this indictment either because nobody would put their name to this piece of shit, okay? And she wound up having to do it herself again. At least I will say this. This time it seemed like they learned to use some spell check.
|
Sam:
[1:00:19]
| Although, apparently, in the indictment, they misidentify where Letitia James lives.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:27]
| Oh, of course!
|
Sam:
[1:00:29]
| They got the name of the town right, but they said it was in New Jersey.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:33]
| Of course they did. Of course they you know, of course they did. I mean, this whole document is like, the counts, you know, it's five, it's five, well, four, four pages. So, yeah, two pages double-sided, yeah? Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:00:51]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:52]
| Yeah? I mean, you couldn't even get that right.
|
Sam:
[1:00:58]
| Well, and this brings us back to, like, that these will probably get dismissed. There's a good chance of it because there's also, by the way, the legal talking heads who've been talking about both these cases. What's her name again? Halligan and again.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:15]
| Lindsay Halligan.
|
Sam:
[1:01:16]
| Lindsay Halligan.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:18]
| Another one that, by the way, was picked. By the way, another one of her qualifications that I saw was that she was in some beauty pageant as well again.
|
Sam:
[1:01:29]
| Of course. But here's the thing. for both of them. Apparently, the way she was put into this position did not follow the rules.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:41]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:01:41]
| She is not legally in this position.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:44]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:01:44]
| So they are likely to move to dismiss for at least two different reasons. One is the only person who signed the indictment was not in a legal position to do so.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:58]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:02:00]
| And two, vindictive and selective prosecution where the primary evidence is a post that Donald Trump made on Truth Social. Specifically saying to go after these two.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:11]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:02:12]
| And by the way, the third name in that post was Schiff, Senator Schiff from California. So presumably the indictment against him is coming any day now. And we'll have all of the same flaws.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:26]
| Yes. Yeah, great.
|
Sam:
[1:02:27]
| But here's the thing, and we talked about this when it happened to Comey. I don't know if Donald Trump even cares. Like, even if this gets thrown out, he has made his point. He has he has indicted his enemies. He has caused them to spend money on legal defense. He has proven that he can he can direct the Justice Department to indict whoever the hell he wants, regardless of the evidence.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:57]
| I mean, I mean, it's quite a pyrrhic victory, can I be honest? This victory is only for his own personal vindictiveness.
|
Sam:
[1:03:08]
| That's it. But Ivan, that's all he cares about. That's his whole life.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:13]
| What a fucked up way to live a life.
|
Sam:
[1:03:17]
| That and making sure the money keeps rolling in.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:21]
| Yeah. What a fucked up way to live a life.
|
Sam:
[1:03:24]
| Oh, and that you can hurt brown people wherever possible.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:27]
| Well, that's definitely the top of his list. As I also shared a story on the Slack about how basically, you know, Trump is, anybody that's black, they're like first on the list to get fired.
|
Sam:
[1:03:43]
| Surprise.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:43]
| I mean, that's not racist, is it?
|
Sam:
[1:03:46]
| Oh, of course not.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:48]
| Nah.
|
Sam:
[1:03:49]
| He's judging things purely on their merits.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:51]
| Purely on their merits, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:03:53]
| Purely on their merits. I'm obviously sarcastic here, in case anybody can't tell.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:58]
| If anybody can't tell, yes, our sarcasm, we're laying it really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really thick. Just make sure, okay? Oh, yes. Be ditto.
|
Sam:
[1:04:14]
| Look, that point being made about like, he'll indict anybody if you cross him, has power even if these start getting dismissed because there's not that much to them. Because one of these days he will find one that sticks. He will get the right grand jury. He will get the right judge. He will get the right jury.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:37]
| Well, one of these days maybe he'll find a criminal if he really looks at it.
|
Sam:
[1:04:41]
| And right, yeah. I'm sure he can. There are plenty of criminals around that are also enemies of Donald Trump. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:47]
| I'm sure that maybe at some point they'll be right.
|
Sam:
[1:04:50]
| Remember what's his name? What's that guy who is defending the porn star and is now in jail? Oh, Avenatti.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:56]
| Avenatti.
|
Sam:
[1:04:57]
| Avenatti. There you go. There's a good example.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:59]
| I figured that he would pardon him. He'd like it. After he figured out he was a scammer, he'd probably love him. Fucking give him a pardon.
|
Sam:
[1:05:08]
| Yeah. So, look, yes, he will undoubtedly find a real criminal at some point as well, in which case, by all means, go after them. But the thing is, even there, the selectivity is the important part of this. Because a couple of people have done a quick perusal of mortgage documents for people in Donald Trump's cabinet.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:29]
| Oh, they all have done the same or worse.
|
Sam:
[1:05:30]
| Well, they found at least three that have done the same or worse in terms of declaring things as a primary residence where they didn't live and things like that. And are they being gone after? No. Of course not. And we also have the Justice Department deciding not to investigate any way the guy. What's his name? Hoden. Hoden. I'm so bad with names. The guy who took the $50,000 in cash.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:59]
| Oh, Holman. Tom Holman.
|
Sam:
[1:06:02]
| Tom Homan.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:03]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:06:03]
| Now, I did see some legal analysis, by the way, that said, actually, it may have been hard to make that case against him.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:11]
| Oh, I know. I mean, I read why, especially because he wasn't in the administration at the time.
|
Sam:
[1:06:17]
| Yeah, which apparently, by the way, that's a cool loophole that apparently with our current laws and the current Supreme Court rulings that they've been made weakening bribery statutes for the last couple of decades, it may actually be perfectly legal to if you have been appointed to a government job, but you are not in that job yet. And he wasn't even appointed yet. He just anticipated that he was going to be. Right, right. which makes it even further out. But if you, even if you were like the way it works, by the way, like when people, when president elects announced their cabinet, they can't actually appoint anybody until they're president, but they announce it between the election and the inauguration so that Congress can get a move on doing their hearings and stuff. But the official nomination can't happen until you're actually president. So in this whole middle zone where you have a fairly good idea that you're going to be a high government official but you aren't actually one yet. So at that point.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:27]
| You could just open the cash register and just grab every fucking dime you can.
|
Sam:
[1:07:32]
| Absolutely. You could take all the money you want because the bribery statutes only apply to people who are actually in office.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:42]
| Motherfucking hell.
|
Sam:
[1:07:46]
| Even though they have him on camera accepting a bag of cash, $50,000 of cash, which apparently he has not had to give back either. He's got, he got to keep that money, even though it was part of a sting operation where the government just handed him the 50 grand. And yeah. So, but anyways, they were continuing the investigation after Donald Trump took office, presumably to see if you got the other end of the quid pro quo, because then maybe you could still make some sort of case that even though he got the money before, you know, he did the action after and maybe you could still make that case. Maybe you could do something if he didn't declare it properly on his taxes.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:36]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:08:36]
| You know, although someone.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:38]
| Yeah, my question is, did he really filed a 50, that would be the one where he could get caught. If he didn't declare it.
|
Sam:
[1:08:47]
| Also, I heard a couple of legal experts where they were asking the question, okay, from a legal tax point of view, Is the bribe income considered income at the time you receive it or only once you do the action that you were being paid for?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:06]
| No, it's at the time you receive it. I don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
|
Sam:
[1:09:10]
| Because apparently this is uncharted legal territory because there are certain things where you can defer the income if it was paid for a specific act.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:19]
| Yes, if for some reason it required you to follow through. So basically, it's kind of like in a contract where if you give money and you're supposed to deliver on something, but you didn't deliver on it, then it's not considered. But here's the thing.
|
Sam:
[1:09:35]
| Because it's not income yet, you would have to give it back.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:38]
| If you had to give it back. But here's the thing. He hasn't given the money back. So unless there was a contract signed that said, hey, the money needs to be refundable or something. Hey, this is only if you pull through. But that's it. It's one of these things about contracts, whether something is refundable or not refundable.
|
Sam:
[1:09:56]
| It doesn't matter in the end because they dropped the investigation. So even if he didn't declare it on his taxes or he declared it in the wrong year or whatever, nobody's looking. And basically, also just to put an even bigger point on it, they shut down the public corruption office at the DOJ.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:19]
| Completely? There's nobody?
|
Sam:
[1:10:22]
| I think if they didn't shut it down completely, they reduced it by like 90% in terms of the staffing or something. Like, they basically outright declared, this is not something that we're going to spend any time on. So if you want to be corrupt in your public office, go for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:41]
| Listen, they said that they weren't going to investigate like... Companies like us, multinationals, where I work at, for FCPA violations. I mean, you know, I heard a discussion, some people talking about this, not at my company, but people talking about, well, what the fuck? I mean, let's just go bribe people. What the hell? Get business. I mean, what the hell? Nobody's going to do anything. now the one problem with this by the way is that you're.
|
Sam:
[1:11:11]
| You're you're gambling that they won't change their minds.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:14]
| Or or no or you're also gambling i mean i don't think you know what you know that what these guys stay in power because statute of limitations of that isn't that short um so if the next administration says well we're going back you know and and investigating this shit that wasn't investigated, then you're fucked. So that's a big gamble.
|
Sam:
[1:11:38]
| Well, and that applies to a few other things where Donald Trump has basically said, we're not going to enforce the law on XYZ. Yeah, the next administration could change their mind. But I think it's an even bigger risk that this administration could change their mind at any random moment.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:56]
| That's true.
|
Sam:
[1:11:57]
| Because the law is the law and they could change their mind selectively.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:01]
| Oh, you pissed us off? okay, we will enforce it against you.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:05]
| We will enforce it against you.
|
Sam:
[1:12:06]
| Right. That's the whole point of this. And, you know, one of the things that I think we have to, look, it's just the reality now, is that the DOJ is now the enforcement arm for Donald Trump's will.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:22]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:23]
| You know, it has nothing to do with what the law actually says is legal or illegal. it is about, are you a target? Did you piss him off? And he will, if, if he likes you, he will wave them away from whatever bad thing you are doing. And if he doesn't like you, he will sick them after you for anything they can find real or imagined. And if they find something real, you're screwed because you know, they'll be able to actually convict you on it. If they can't find anything real, well, they'll still indict you. Right. And they'll still make...
|
Ivan:
[1:13:04]
| They'll make their life miserable anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:13:06]
| They will make your life miserable, and if you don't have deep pockets, they'll bankrupt you trying to defend yourself.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:13]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:13:14]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:16]
| Wow. Such a... Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:13:20]
| Shall we take another break and then lightning round through the rest of the stuff?
|
Ivan:
[1:13:24]
| Let's break it up.
|
Sam:
[1:13:26]
| Okay. Okay, here comes a breaky break. Enjoy.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:32]
| Breaky.
|
Break:
[1:13:39]
| Alexmzilla.com by alex and dad gaming videos and more from alex elementary school by day youtube by night alexmzilla.com alexmzilla is a l e x m x e l a and dot com is period F-M-C-O-M.
|
Sam:
[1:14:09]
| Okay, let's lighten around this other stuff. Let me start off with just, I've had this iPhone 17 Pro Max for a few weeks now.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:20]
| Oh!
|
Sam:
[1:14:21]
| And I will just say, compared to the 12, I had lots of upgrades, lots of advantages, blah, blah, blah. But by far the biggest one, the battery life on this thing is like, compared to my degraded five-year-old battery that I know I could have replaced. They have programs to do that, but I hadn't. You know, this thing, like I am ending the day. Like I'm looking at this thing right now. And admittedly, I like, you know, it charges while I'm driving back and forth from work as well. But we're near the end of the day. I'm at 73%.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:58]
| Nice. Nice.
|
Sam:
[1:14:59]
| You know, now on a weekend where I'm heavily using it the whole time and I'm not like doing non-phone stuff at work and stuff, I can be down. I've hit 20% a couple of times. Like when I was off in Toronto last week and I was doing stuff and I, you know, whatever, I did get down to 20% a couple of times, but. I, it's, it's, it lasts a long time.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:25]
| Well, good.
|
Sam:
[1:15:26]
| And I, and I enjoy that and I plug it in at night, get to a hundred percent, blah, blah, blah. But you know, I'm coming from a world that where I carried around a spare battery with me because I'd always be low by the end of the day, you know, or I would make, make sure to plug in every time I could, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:44]
| I just today, I had, a couple of days ago, my wife's first friend in Columbia, she had bought an iPhone 13 that she had sent me money to go get her at the Apple store a few years back, whenever that phone was out.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:03]
| Unfortunately, she was out and about with her baby in a stroller. She had put the phone like in her purse. Somebody went and swiped it from her purse, stole the phone. okay just a couple of days ago good and it was an iphone 13 not a pro now my wife i'd gotten her an iphone 16 last year and you know me i keep the phones in good shape i had her own iphone 13 pro which i always keep like one of those phones as a spare to give away okay i've given away not i've given away a whole bunch of these phones like that and shit i mean what's old me well swipe the phone And I'm like, look, now with the exchange rates and shit to get a new phone in Columbia, the prices and local purchasing power, it's quite onerous. OK, so I was like, you know, she had had some issues with, you know, she's not with the dad of the of the of the baby and the guy is not paying his child support and shit. So so, you know, all of a sudden she swiped out of her phone. So whatever. And I was like, look, I checked the phone and I realized the battery life was was low. So, but I went, you know, I did the appointment yesterday. I went my lunch. I went and I made, I made an appointment at the Apple store, like at 1220. I drove over there to the mall. I dropped off the phone real quick. I went at lunch.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:21]
| And by the time I got back from lunch, they had put a brand new battery on it for $99, and I shipped it off to Columbia now so they can get a new phone. So the battery swap, I'll tell you what, 99, listen, 99 bucks.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:35]
| I mean, I did it during my lunch. It's not like it took me out of the day or whatever. I just went over there, dropped it off, said, hey, no problem. Come back in an hour.
|
Sam:
[1:17:45]
| Here we go. I mean, in my case, if the battery had gotten really bad like a year and a half ago, I probably would have bothered with that. But it didn't start getting really bad until I knew I was only a few months away from replacing it. So I didn't bother. But this reminds me, I know we're lightning around two other things, but I have one more phone-related story.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:05]
| Ah, more phones.
|
Sam:
[1:18:06]
| This is my wife's phone.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:08]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:18:09]
| While I was in Toronto, I had finished doing stuff with my sister, her husband, and baby, and I was back at the Airbnb, and I was actually getting ready to edit last week's podcast. When I get a text from a friend of my wife.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:25]
| Oh, boy.
|
Sam:
[1:18:26]
| Hi, Sam. So-and-so here. Brandy wants me to let you know that she has misplaced her phone. We are having dinner with blah, blah, blah, somebody else. she will do another sweep of the places she has been and if she can't find it she will stop at the apple store on the way home okay so you know obviously first thought is i've misplaced my phone fine fine so my immediate response is i had already noticed that i had not gotten i had checked find my a couple times for her and and the last location was two hours old so i'm like okay She let her battery dial.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:07]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:19:07]
| Okay. And, but of course, her first thought, I misplaced my phone. I'll buy a new one.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:13]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:19:14]
| That's immediate first thought.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:15]
| Makes sense.
|
Sam:
[1:19:16]
| You know? Okay. Okay. But I did, the last known location was where she was. She comes, she borrows her friend's phone and is talking to me. She's like, I had turned it off while I was at this event. She was at like a memorial service or something. So she turned it off. and she's like i went to put my coat in the car and then went back in i don't remember using it since then i'll check the car third time and i'm like did you turn it off because the battery was low or you didn't want to interrupt the service because you know you could just turn on silent yeah that's what i was saying yeah whatever she's like i didn't find it inside no one cleaning up has seen it. She's like, I had a piece of cake and I had that balanced on top of my phone and then a guy came by collecting trash and I think there's a chance I put it in the trash with my plate.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:12]
| You guys are, I will say that the one thing about you guys is that you guys are really, how do I say? It's, it's, you guys are in sync in doing this kind of buffoonery. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:20:27]
| And I'm like, you know, that was before the thing with the coat. I haven't looked, it hasn't had a location in the last two hours. Did you search the trash? and then i'm like i'm gonna go tell find my to make it deep even though it hasn't had a location in like two hours right i.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:44]
| Think that yeah because it's supposed to be able to if it's still got battery and you lost it even if.
|
Sam:
[1:20:49]
| You're trying to like turn it off my assumption was that it hadn't located in two hours because the battery was dead because she lets her battery die all the time okay, but oh and she says i couldn't find it in the trash bag but there are about a dozen in the dumpster that she couldn't reach so she was searching the trash for the phone okay oh man, and then i made a beep and i'm like it says it's playing the sound and has battery okay so, then she's like okay but i'm in the restaurant with the people i was with so i'll let you know when i'm back out and can you add a lost phone note and i i said yes i'll add the lost phone note But I'm like, but it's locating in the parking lot. So it's either in the car and you couldn't find it or on the floor or under the car or it's on the ground. And I'm like, if it's on the ground, you should you should step out of the restaurant.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:45]
| Yeah, I get it. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:21:46]
| Before someone runs over it or steals it or whatever. OK. And she replied to that. And I had said that I'd put the the lost phone notice on it. And she says, OK, text if you get a response. Now, I thought when she said okay, she was saying okay till she'll run out to the parking lot. So I immediately say, okay, I will beep it over and over again for five minutes. Now, actually, she was saying okay to thank you for putting the lost notice on it. She was not leaving the dinner she was at. So I sit there beeping it for five minutes. She's not even out. At the end of it, I'm like, okay, I beeped it for five minutes. Should I do it again? And she's like, no, I'm not out. I'm not out of the parking lot. I'll tell you what I am. I'm like, aren't you at all urgent about this? I recognize you're at a restaurant, but just step out for a minute.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:47]
| Apparently the answer is no at this point. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:22:50]
| The restaurant was like right across the street from the parking lot. It wasn't like it was a half mile away that they'd walk to or something. Anyway, when she finally got out, she said she'd looked at the car twice already. She was going to go look again. And when she gets out, she'll, she'll let me know when she's at the car. She gets back out to the car. And anyway, I, I, I, she says, we're now looking for it. I start to make the thing beep again. And then she sends me a picture. The phone was on top of the car. She'd looked in the car. She had not looked on top of the car. And she texted me. I would never have looked there.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:33]
| Never.
|
Sam:
[1:23:33]
| Never in a million years I would not have looked there. I would have driven away to go buy my new phone with the phone on top.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:40]
| So, you know, I got the story of the guy over here who's my boss's boss's boss, who one time he had this Audi. He had a little Audi TT, Bluetooth, okay, on it. And I don't know where he stopped, but he somehow absentmindedly put the phone on top of his car. And then he got in the car and left. and then all of a sudden on the display on the screen bluetooth link disconnected and he's like bluetooth link disconnected it's like why the hell would the bluetooth link be disconnected i'm like then he realizes oh shit i left it i put it on the top of the car he turned around went back well he got he got he got he found the phone however it was it you know it would work over Bluetooth.
|
Sam:
[1:24:27]
| Well, if you, if you, long time listeners will remember, Alex had an iPad that I left on top of the car and I was driving him somewhere and I saw it fly off the roof of the car and, behind me on the road but where i was i couldn't pull over immediately it took me like you know five minutes to find a place to turn around get back there run and walk and i found it had been run over like a dozen times by other cars by the time i found it but it still turned on, and we were able to back it up there you go and then alex ended up really upset because i did I did, while he was at school, go get it replaced at the Apple store under AppleCare, and he wished we'd kept the broken one. But, you know, oh well. Right?
|
Ivan:
[1:25:23]
| Right call. You did the right call. Otherwise, his fingers may have been like quite a lot of shards.
|
Sam:
[1:25:31]
| He's indicating that I've got part of the story wrong. oh yes he's indicating that there was a major problem that there was one game they they have since fixed this i think but at the time terraria kept its save files local only unless you explicitly uploaded them they were not included in the the backups for the device because they didn't consider the game file save files important enough and they didn't bother backing them up And so to this day, he's upset that we lost those game save files. Anyway, sorry.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:10]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[1:26:11]
| Continuing with the lightning round.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:12]
| Continuing with the lightning round. What's next?
|
Sam:
[1:26:15]
| Sora 2 came out this week.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:18]
| Ah, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:26:19]
| Which is an AI video clip generation thing. And there have been a number of different versions of this. But Sora 2, once again, significantly upped the level of realism. They also offered an ability where you can quickly like scan your own face and include yourself in the movies that you generate as a character. And you can choose to let other people use your face in their movies as well. So there are apparently three options. Only I can use it. Only me and my friends can use it. Or anybody can use it. But they also, I forget if they explicitly did it or whether people just figured out how to do it. But historical figures and copyrighted characters all over the place. They actually had to back off and decide and say, we're going to enforce against the copyrighted characters. I think they've still got some issues with the historical. Like there were a ton of videos going on about like Mr. Rogers in action movie scenes. Mr.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:31]
| Rogers. Mr. Rogers made a new Liam Neeson.
|
Sam:
[1:27:33]
| Yes, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:34]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:27:35]
| Well, there was one that was like a buddy cop film with Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:41]
| The painter guy. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:27:43]
| Where Bob Ross was telling Mr. Rogers, some people are not your friends.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:49]
| And then they pull out their guns.
|
Sam:
[1:27:50]
| You know, you know, there, there were like lots of ones with like the Martin Luther King doing, you know, I have a dream that someday there won't be a line at Chick-fil-A, you know, all kinds of other stuff. Some of, some of which were actually kind of cute. Some of which were disturbing there were you know various tech journalists like i justine put hers out there for anybody to use and of course there are lots of really creative things that they made i justine do and there are some also rather tasteless things they made i justine do in some of these movies oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:26]
| Yeah i know.
|
Sam:
[1:28:26]
| And the the point of this though oh gosh is these are video and they are voice They do the whole thing. This is yet another level of realism. If you look carefully, you can, of course, tell these are AI. And, of course, the elephant jumping out of an airplane effect is still in play, where if you see something that is just clearly unreasonable, you should be suspicious. But these are now at the point where, A, you have to pay attention to know they're not real.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:04]
| This is what— Like.
|
Sam:
[1:29:05]
| In many cases.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:06]
| I'll tell you this. I think, like, short little things or whatever, but I've started noticing that the more I see these, the more quickly I realize they're fake.
|
Sam:
[1:29:15]
| Oh, absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:16]
| Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:29:18]
| But here's the thing, though. there i already like i see so many things shared by on facebook of people thinking that these things clearly have been fooled.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:30]
| Okay we do have okay look let's be clear i don't know why i have to reiterate this but if anything that has shown us over the last decade in is indicative of the level of intelligence of the average person on the internet is basically like that of a, you know, of a P, okay, you know, I don't know what to tell you. But, yeah, not like, I'm sorry, they all believe that, what, we've got 9-11 was fake, that Sandy Hook was fake, that, I mean, I don't know, you want me to go through the list? Well, of course they believe this immediately without thinking one second.
|
Sam:
[1:30:13]
| And look, again, the biggest thing is still, like, use a little bit of common sense in terms of, like, okay, did Martin Luther King really endorse Chick-fil-A while he was giving his speech?
|
Ivan:
[1:30:28]
| Of course.
|
Sam:
[1:30:28]
| His famous I Have a Dream speech?
|
Ivan:
[1:30:29]
| I mean, I don't understand. You know, but— I don't understand. I mean, I think that that was—his concerns were civil rights and chicken.
|
Sam:
[1:30:41]
| Yes. but but the other thing is look there are other things you can tell like if you look carefully at the background things usually look a little weird you know and if you pay close attention and especially if you zoom in there's still all kinds of artifacts you can you can pay attention to but the other thing is these are just so quick and easy to make sora apparently i did download it You have to have an invite still, though. I don't have an invite. If anybody has an invite to Sora, feel free to send it to me. But it's like they built it as a mini social media app, apparently. So the feed there is just all of this AI generated slop that people are sharing with each other. And they are making it elsewhere. Like, I have... the percentage of this stuff that i see as i scroll through social media of all types is increasing rapidly but with especially with these the sora movie clip things and they're only a few seconds long which is another tell right like the ai still can't sustain like a three minute clip of this stuff it's so five to ten seconds processing.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:55]
| Intensive like right now so.
|
Sam:
[1:31:56]
| Yeah right and and also people pointed out they're probably still losing tons of money on this it's like five dollars per clip and people are making like thousands of these things but you know it's just a percentage of my feeds that are this stuff is increasing dramatically and look i'll be honest some of it's amusing some of it's funny some of it's cute yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:19]
| Yeah yeah i i it is By the way, it's good and it's getting better. And I, you know, look, my whole take on this and a whole bunch of people talking about the AI bubble and a whole bunch of stuff or whatever. And I'm like, look, as one that has now, as we have been deploying AI at our company and they have done a lot of work and doing some good stuff for our use. And I have been using it. I have found that my productivity with this shit is so much higher using this stuff that I am like when people are talking about the hype, I'm like, you know, these people sound like the right now, like the people that said that computers were a fad and the personal computers were a fad in the 1990s. I mean, look, my whole thing, you know, I've said a lot of criticism about it, has been about application and use, how certain people go out there.
|
Sam:
[1:33:16]
| Using it for the right thing and understanding the limitations.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:19]
| And understanding what you know and being able to check, because a lot of stuff that I generate, I have to check and make sure that it's correct and making sure that I'm using it for the right stuff, okay, that I know it's trained on and not using it for other stuff that, you know, for example, like we've shown math. fucking ma'am the ai is really.
|
Sam:
[1:33:38]
| Mass deficient so i now i shared on the curmudgeons corner slack right before we started recording a screenshot that somebody apparently took of the new integration with copilot into excel where they had you just three numbers one two three and three cells and And in the cell below, they said, you know, formula equals co-pilot, sum the numbers above. And it said 15 for one plus two plus three.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:11]
| Makes sense.
|
Sam:
[1:34:12]
| Sounds good. The person who posted this, of course, now, of course, do I know if this is real? Or was this a fake Excel screenshot? I don't know. But they commented, this will crash the global economy.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:27]
| Well, what do we keep talking about?
|
Sam:
[1:34:29]
| Excel is used in so many places, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:32]
| But they have actually, Microsoft has said that using Copilot in Excel, that the accuracy is actually quite low. They actually said this.
|
Sam:
[1:34:44]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:45]
| Okay. You know, so my thing is that I'm like, look, if I'm somebody that's using Excel, will you tell me, well, will we only be about 50% accuracy? I'm doing Excel. Listen, 50% accuracy in Excel is not acceptable, okay? I mean, hell, you know, I'm sorry, but I said, like, for a driving car or whatever, you were talking about how much, my criteria for how accurate I want my Excel versus even my car driving is higher. For Excel, I demand a lot more. I'm doing fucking financial calculations that sometimes are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of fucking dollars. You know, I'm sorry. I cannot have such a wide margin of error.
|
Sam:
[1:35:33]
| You know, it tried. Isn't that good enough?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:37]
| Nope. Not for Excel.
|
Sam:
[1:35:39]
| But anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:40]
| Now, for video, dumb video clips, you know, showing like me flying like a, you know, like a bird. Sure. Or I did this. I did these pictures of me using AI to try to show me driving an F1 car. I looked as the fattest F1 driver in history. Okay. I don't know why the AI decided to make me even fatter than I am. Also, it attached a rearview mirror on my arm for whatever reason.
|
Sam:
[1:36:10]
| Where else would you keep your rearview mirror?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:11]
| I mean, yeah. But, you know, other than that, it looked funny. But for funny effect, it was good.
|
Sam:
[1:36:18]
| Well, but the thing is, I think we are definitely in the zone, where there's so many people uncritically accepting this stuff or just don't know to even think about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:34]
| Well, the tariffs.
|
Sam:
[1:36:34]
| We are, the danger is increasing dramatically as this stuff improves.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:41]
| But I think that's, again, that's what's going to separate people. You know, they're talking about people now that are AI proficient, right? In order to do their jobs. I think, once again, That's going to be what separates people that know what the fuck they're doing or people that wind up bankrupting their company because they use the wrong fucking model to calculate, say, a car loan, for example, that basically all of a sudden winds up losing money on every damn car deal going out.
|
Sam:
[1:37:07]
| Well, but I'm talking more tying it back to the political stuff, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:11]
| Oh, well, but fuck. Look, look, but come on. We've been living with this. Listen, did we really need it?
|
Sam:
[1:37:17]
| I'm just saying it's getting worse. Not that it hasn't existed for a long time.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:21]
| Well, it's, I mean, I don't know how much worse it is because look, we already had armies of people generating junk, fake content constantly pumped out every day with armies of like, you know, using robotic, you know, RPA processes and bots and programs and just, you know, creating all these fucking bots all over the place, just pushing out the shit all the fucking time. So, I don't know. I mean, now...
|
Sam:
[1:37:51]
| The most recent example being that whole Cracker Barrel thing from a few weeks ago turns out to be entirely driven by bots.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:58]
| Exactly. It was totally, you know, fake. Yes. I mean, I...
|
Sam:
[1:38:03]
| Well, it was fake until it was real because the fake activity got some people actually caring about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:08]
| Got people actually riled up for real. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:38:11]
| Yes. Which is the point of it, which is why they do it. And all I'm saying is the amount of cost and effort to do that is plummeting, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:23]
| I don't know about, I don't know. Listen. Right now, it's really not plummeting because the compute capacity is still relatively inexpensive.
|
Sam:
[1:38:31]
| But the thing is, these companies are giving it away for free even if they're paying for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:37]
| Well, look, again, this goes back to what the fuck happened 20 years ago. Let me tell you something, okay? This free shit is going to end pretty quickly. I've got to tell you this right now because this is the fucking thing I talked about the internet or whatever 30 years ago. I'm going to say, oh, no, no, but it's all free. It's all free. Let me tell you something. This free shit is going to end pretty fucking soon. Somebody's got to pay the bills. So somebody's going to have to fucking pay for it. There's got to be a way to make fucking money.
|
Sam:
[1:38:59]
| And the typical, the pattern that has happened industry after industry after industry that we've talked about before on this show is that the first wave who's jumping into this is not typically the one who actually ends up getting the money. Like a lot of the first wave ends up failing utterly and the second wave succeeds.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:18]
| Well, it depends.
|
Sam:
[1:39:19]
| There are always a few survivors from the first wave.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:22]
| Look at streaming. Okay. For example. Look at streaming, right? You know, because everybody thought it was free. You could watch all these programs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Reality is that the first one that really jumped into this was Netflix, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:39:35]
| Well, they weren't the first first, but yes, they were the first to make it popular.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:39]
| Well, yes, but that's what I'm saying. They're the first one that really people used, okay, as a service. And, I mean, you know, they were a pioneer in it and the way that they marketed it, the way that had the programs held, man. I mean, and look where they are. I mean, it's still, you know, and at first it was super cheap. Now we're talking about how everybody's having to pay for everything, you know. I think we've had a lot of, I think like everything, of course, you know, yeah, some of the people right now, early, maybe later, are not going to be doing as well and whatnot. But my whole thing is that at some point, listen, somebody's going to have to make fucking money on this damn shit.
|
Sam:
[1:40:16]
| Well, yeah, no, absolutely. My point was just it might the people who end up making the most money and may like transform the world may not be the sec may not exist yet. It may be the second round of companies after the first round makes all the mistakes.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:31]
| But one thing is that right now the- And builds out the infrastructure that the other ones can build on. The adoption rate right now of this across the board is so high that people, listen, people are addicted to this shit, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:40:45]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:46]
| They're going to spend money because, I mean, you want to take it away. They're addicted.
|
Sam:
[1:40:51]
| Listen, like I said the other day- I am paying several, I am paying Anthropic. I am paying OpenAI right now. I'm paying whoever owns Cursor. I'm already paying several of these companies to use their products.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:05]
| Look, like there was a guy, I can't remember why the hell he blurted this out to me like a few months ago that I said this, that also just walked up to me and said, I don't know how I can't write, how anybody writes an email anymore without using AI.
|
Sam:
[1:41:18]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:19]
| Just blurted it out. That's the kind of dependence that we're talking about, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:41:23]
| Oh, yeah. And that's what they're counting on, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:41:26]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:41:26]
| You know, is that you give it away for free, you get people addicted, and then you ramp up the price. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:30]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:41:30]
| It's the typical, I mean, this has been a pattern in many industries over the years.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:37]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:37]
| This is no different. It's a well-known technique.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:39]
| And it is so different.
|
Sam:
[1:41:41]
| Anyway, I'm just saying, trouble. Lots of trouble ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:46]
| Fucking, come on. Listen, we have trouble. We've got to.
|
Sam:
[1:41:49]
| We've always got trouble. We've got trouble in River City. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:53]
| We got a four alarm fire going off every day right now, for God's sakes. And people are like right now so numb that they're like, what, what, Trump, what, Trump, he what? He's going to Walter Reed.
|
Sam:
[1:42:09]
| Yeah, let's do that. That's on the list too. I had a couple down, but let's jump to Walter Reed.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:14]
| I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:42:14]
| Trump is having an annual checkup for the second time in six months.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:20]
| So I'm sure that's not that I'm sure it's fine nothing he loves doctors he just likes going to Walter Reed it's the fun little trip over there you know.
|
Sam:
[1:42:35]
| It's where my dad was born.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:36]
| No shit my.
|
Sam:
[1:42:39]
| Dad was born at Walter Reed.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:40]
| Oh look at that okay there you go but it's a fun tidbit but look We were talking about this. Something's wrong. I mean, his health is deteriorating. Seriously. I mean, I don't know. And I mean, I don't know if we're talking about 90 to 30, 90 to 80, what exactly the degree is. But look, he has, there is something wrong. It's getting worse. He has been masking this stuff. He had been disappearing. all of a sudden, exactly like you just said, a second annual physical within six months, something's wrong, okay? And I hope whatever it is, it moves faster.
|
Sam:
[1:43:27]
| Yes, you're eager to hurry up on to J.D. Vance.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:32]
| I mean, I gotta be honest, I like my chances against J.D. Vance a lot more. I'm perfectly fine trying to take on the couch fucker. I think he is a much easier target.
|
Sam:
[1:43:49]
| Right. Anyway, yeah, he's going to Walter Reed. We'll see. Or we won't see because they won't tell. They will announce that he is, once again, the fittest male specimen that has ever been seen.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:02]
| Ever! Ever!
|
Sam:
[1:44:03]
| Ever! Ever been seen.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:04]
| More, more, more potent than ever!
|
Sam:
[1:44:07]
| Exactly. That's Donald for you. Anyway, yeah, so he's going to Walter Reed. Okay, but while he is at Walter Reed, he's undoubtedly—actually, if I remember right, the Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced probably before we get this show out. It's due to be announced within the next 24 hours, and it's got to be Donald Trump because of the new Gaza peace deal, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:34]
| Right. Of course, he's going to win.
|
Sam:
[1:44:36]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:37]
| Apparently, that's not the case. Apparently, they already know that he's not going to win, and the regions are kind of, like, gearing up for Trump's tantrum over the fact that he didn't get his little prize.
|
Sam:
[1:44:49]
| Now, having said that, though, as we record this, it does look like at least the first stage of this thing in Gaza is going to happen.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:59]
| Right, but that's where we're at. We're at the first fucking stage. And by the way, I don't give a shit, even if this thing works. He allowed the complete destruction of Gaza under his watch, okay? He stood not in the way of them. So now all of a sudden— Ivan.
|
Sam:
[1:45:15]
| Ivan, Ivan, you've got to stop.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:16]
| It was Biden.
|
Sam:
[1:45:17]
| It was Biden's fault.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:18]
| It was Biden, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:45:19]
| It was all Biden's fault.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:19]
| He did nothing. Right. And, you know, Mr. I'm just shooting people at sea because, you know, I'm good at doesn't get a fucking peace price for nothing. Stupid piece of shit.
|
Sam:
[1:45:31]
| Now, what do you think of the thing in Gaza, though? Like, so the initial deal that looks like it may be happening is releasing the rest of my breath.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:40]
| That this will, this will last too long.
|
Sam:
[1:45:42]
| Yeah. My, my thought is I'm, I'm honestly surprised it's gotten as far as it has, but it looks fairly possible. And you guys listening will know better than we do as we're recording on Thursday night, us time. But it looks fairly possible that the last 20 or so remaining hostages that are still alive may be handed back to Israel this weekend. And Israel has agreed to... They withdraw from the major cities, not withdraw from Gaza, but withdraw from the major cities in Gaza and stop the bombing of Gaza as part of this phase one part of the deal. They had their vote of their cabinet a few hours ago and they approved it, which some people were wondering if there might be hardliners that held out, but they didn't. So it looks like at least this first stage is happening. The remaining stages are tougher because they involve things like who will run Gaza afterwards? Does Hamas get any representation whatsoever? Israelis say no. Hamas says yes. how exactly will disarmament work uh how how far with the will the israelis withdraw will will the palestinian authority be involved in any way will there be peacekeepers from other countries there are all kinds of open issues that so yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:08]
| I know this is like very early so who the hell knows okay yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:47:11]
| So like you know so i i feel like again i'm surprised they got as far as they did. I will be pleasantly surprised if they get through this weekend and actually do the things they say this will happen this weekend. But I will be utterly shocked still if these later phases actually happen where the harder questions have been pushed off towards, you know, so we shall see. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:38]
| I'll bring up another thing. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:47:41]
| Bring up another thing. We all got like a couple more.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:43]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, we just set $20 billion on fire.
|
Sam:
[1:47:48]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:50]
| This bailout that we did of Argentina, I'm speechless right now what the fuck we did. We went and we basically bought, we took $20 billion U.S. dollars from our treasury, and I've never heard this being done like in this fashion, and just bought $20 billion of Argentine pesos. Now, any of you that you've heard me talk about the Argentine peso in this program, okay, it is one of the most devalued currencies that basically loses the values faster than anything, okay? Look, the last time I was doing shipments out of Argentina, when I was like doing mostly importing into Argentina, the exchange rate was something like about 50, 60 to one. That was five years ago. Right now is 1500. That's in five years. Okay. The Argentine peso does not hold value, which is literally just set $20 billion US dollars on fire.
|
Sam:
[1:48:59]
| Well, but again, are you properly taking into account the corruption?
|
Ivan:
[1:49:06]
| Am I properly taking it into account?
|
Sam:
[1:49:10]
| Because now isn't a significant portion of this, the reason for potentially doing this, that a bunch of Donald Trump's friends have investments in Argentina that they want to prop up?
|
Ivan:
[1:49:23]
| Here is, well, this has to do with the fact that a whole bunch of Scott Bessette's friends were directly, okay? I had bought up a whole bunch of distressed Argentine bonds. And they had been looking to get paid. And the bonds had dropped in value substantially. And one way to prop up the value of those bonds is by basically giving $20 billion to the Argentine treasury so they could have the money.
|
Sam:
[1:49:55]
| There you go. So you're not setting it on fire. You are indirectly giving it to your friends.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:03]
| Okay. That's another way to look at it. Yes. Well, not my friends.
|
Sam:
[1:50:10]
| Well, not your friends, but I guarantee the administration is not looking at this in terms of how will my investment in the pesos do.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:19]
| By the way, this thing about bondholders going and pushing action on distressed bonds so the administration does something that is favorable to them, isn't just they're doing the same thing in Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, he fired the fiscal control board, which, by the way, they actually sued and a number of them got their seats back. But the main reason he did that is because there's a whole bunch of other bondholders that are chubby with the administration that own, you know, electric authority bonds. And those bonds were going to get a massive haircut. And with this, they're hoping that they get a lot more of their money, that they're able to claim a lot more money than they were before.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:02]
| So it's just the fucking corruption from these guys is just, you know, incredible. And by the way, we gave the $20 billion to Argentina that right now is like open the spigot in terms of soybean exports. OK, right now, they actually did something which I actually agree they should have done a long time ago, which was hindering exports, which was they had an export tax in Argentina. for a long time, like 35%, if I remember correctly. So they were taxing exporters. And so a lot of the exporters were pissed off because, hey, we're trying to sell our stuff. You know, we're bringing in the hard currency and you're making us pay 35%. What the fuck? Well, they lifted that tax. Well, guess what? Makes their soybeans a lot more favorable. They're selling them to China. And what's happening with U.S. soybeans, Sam? Are we selling a lot of soybeans to China now?
|
Sam:
[1:51:58]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:59]
| As a matter of fact, it's not just...
|
Sam:
[1:52:01]
| Zero.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:02]
| The amount right now is zero.
|
Sam:
[1:52:05]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:06]
| Zero.
|
Sam:
[1:52:07]
| And how do the soybean farmers feel about this?
|
Ivan:
[1:52:10]
| Oh, they're feeling awesome. Great. Many of them have said that if they don't get any money by the end of the year, they're going to be bankrupt. That they need a bailout. So we're going to bail them out. So we bailed out the argentines of $20 billion, and now we're going to give another $15 billion. We're basically paying everybody not to do business with the United States.
|
Sam:
[1:52:27]
| I heard Donald Trump specifically say that he would solve this farmer issue by looking for the money on the tariff shelf.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:36]
| So basically, we're turning us into a tariff-like profit machine, but actually stopping shit that makes jobs. Correct?
|
Sam:
[1:52:46]
| I don't see why you... What's wrong with that, Ewan?
|
Ivan:
[1:52:50]
| Ah. Makes sense. Okay. I don't know. It's not the way.
|
Sam:
[1:52:55]
| Anyway. Okay. two more things and then we stop number one how's the government shutdown going still shut down still shut down there are some weird things happening like marjorie taylor green, saying that she agrees with the democrats on what they want to do with the health insurance stuff yeah um by.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:15]
| The way but again it goes back to when did these people change their minds when.
|
Sam:
[1:53:21]
| When it hurts them or their direct friends or family.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:26]
| Ah, bam. So two relatives of MTG went to her and said, what the fuck are you doing? You guys quadrupling my insurance premiums. I just got my renewal and it's going through the roof.
|
Sam:
[1:53:40]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:40]
| And then she goes and says, well, our leadership didn't say any of this to us. We just thought there were democratic talking points.
|
Sam:
[1:53:49]
| Yes, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:51]
| Like I said, you're worried about the AI? We don't need the AI to make these people believe bullshit. We're capable of perfectly generating it without AI on a daily basis. Have you seen the GOP? Seriously, these guys cannot. Man, there is a lie generating machine. These guys cannot. I mean, the non- And by the way.
|
Sam:
[1:54:15]
| I said this before. I shared a video on the Slack that's related to this as well of AOC that I only saw it this week, but I think it was recorded a couple months ago when they were doing the big, beautiful bill stuff. And basically she said she pulled aside one of her Republican colleagues on the floor of the House, away from cameras, whatever, and said, look, you're in a rural district.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:38]
| You're getting killed.
|
Sam:
[1:54:40]
| This thing is going to shut down rural hospitals. This is going to hurt your district really badly. How can you possibly be for this? And the person, and she didn't identify who it was or whether they were male or female, but the person says, we don't believe you. When you say things like this, you can say these Democratic talking points all you want, but we don't believe you. You are lying. This will not happen. And, you know, and AOC is like, but look, we've got all of this information. We've got this thing and this analysis and this analysis.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:29]
| You're fact diverse.
|
Sam:
[1:55:30]
| And they're like, well, they're lying too, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:35]
| Everybody's lying.
|
Sam:
[1:55:37]
| Everybody's lying.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:38]
| Except the people that they hear, okay? You know, and this is the thing that I, you know, I mentioned this a couple of times that, And I realized that, look, Rush Limbaugh patented this, okay? He was really the pioneer at this, okay? And everybody in the GOP basically now with Trump, they are all completely on this, okay? Look, Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and basically every day for hours just lied. Lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, one day after another. And I mentioned, you know, I listened to hours, hours of him. It was just infuriating.
|
Sam:
[1:56:14]
| I used to listen occasionally, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:15]
| And I kept listening. And I'm like, it was infuriating. I'm like, how the fuck do you people not understand that every fucking thing he's saying is one lie after another lie after another lie after another lie after another lie? And here's the reality, Sam. Most of the people don't. They just believe it.
|
Sam:
[1:56:32]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:33]
| And I don't need a fucking AI machine to make up the lies because these motherfuckers, all of them in the administration, just get up there and just lie nonstop. And their constituents are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's just a Democratic talking point. I believe her. Tylenol. Now and, oh, oh, wait, wait. The circumcisions. Autism.
|
Sam:
[1:56:53]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:53]
| Circumcisions.
|
Sam:
[1:56:55]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:56]
| Fucking hell.
|
Sam:
[1:56:57]
| So speaking of those kinds of lies, I will transition to my last one of this, which is the massive war zone that is Portland.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:09]
| Oh, my God. It's awful, Sam. It's really just...
|
Sam:
[1:57:14]
| It's burning to the ground. Everyone's in danger. It is a hell zone. And you can tell this by the people in the inflated animal costumes singing and dancing and making rude gestures at the ice officers.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:37]
| Perfect.
|
Sam:
[1:57:37]
| And the people doing the cha-cha slide and all of this stuff, it's just, and actually, we've had a couple legal rulings now. The most recent one was actually about Chicago and Illinois, where the judge specifically said, I'm sorry, there is no insurrection here. Right. You know, and the government was basically trying to say in their case that the courts can't override the president's judgment on that. If the president says there's an insurrection, there's an insurrection.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:14]
| It's fucking bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:58:16]
| And the judge is like. No, that's not happening. It just plain is not. The thing that you're describing is the justification for your actions is not happening. Now, who knows what will happen when that gets to SCOTUS. But, you know, for the moment anyway, you know, the courts are basically saying, yeah, actually reality does matter. and, you know, it is not, you know, a hellscape war zone insurrection when you've got the goddamn inflatable frog like making fun of the ice officers. And then, of course, they pepper spray the frog.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:03]
| Of course.
|
Sam:
[1:59:04]
| And they, in fact, they pepper sprayed the vent into the frog costume so that, like, it would have the maximum effect on the person inside. Yeah. It's ridiculous. You see these videos. Jon Stewart did a good compilation of it. If you look on The Daily Show's YouTube and stuff, you'll find it. But, like, you know, all kinds of scenes from Portland. And the one thing that has got me more than everything else, they do have, like, you know, older people singing songs. They have people dancing. But the repeated theme over and over and over again are these stupid inflatable animal costumes.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:41]
| I love it. It's fantastic.
|
Sam:
[1:59:42]
| You know, the frog, dinosaurs, unicorns, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:46]
| You need Barney.
|
Sam:
[1:59:47]
| And people have pointed out, Barney, there you go. I have not seen a Barney yet, but I'm sure it's coming soon. But the thing that people have pointed out is, and this relates back to like what we said during the damn campaign about how mocking them works better than portraying them as dangerous. They are dangerous. But you need to mock them. But mocking them.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:09]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:00:10]
| Mocking them pierces that better than anything else. Yes, yes, yes. Both to them themselves, they don't like being mocked, and to their supporters. And so these people in Portland who are going around into animal costumes are doing this perfectly. Because it highlights just how ridiculous the over-the-top violence that these people are engaging in is compared to what's actually the reality on the ground.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:41]
| By the way, if a story today also said, who is Antifa's leader? Kristi Noem claims the arrest of the founder's girlfriend could unravel the movement, Sam. You know, they're taking the girlfriend's boss.
|
Sam:
[2:00:58]
| I saw someone say, like, oh, I didn't know Eleanor Roosevelt was still alive.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:04]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:01:05]
| Of course, implying FDR is the founder of anti-fascist from World War II.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:11]
| Right. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[2:01:13]
| All right. And we had some other guy. Like Trump had this anti-antifa, anti-antifa, whatever, whatever, like conference thing at the White House. And one of the people there said, Antifa is real and has been ever since. And they pointed out like anti-fascists, like in World War II as their example of being the bad guys who'd started this movement.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[2:01:42]
| And it's like they're not even pretending anymore no.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:46]
| No no they're not.
|
Sam:
[2:01:47]
| They're like of course we're fascists yes thank you and if you're anti-fascist that's bad sorry.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:55]
| Anyway all right we're done.
|
Sam:
[2:01:56]
| Anyway we're done right we're done yeah we're done now done now okay everybody go to curmudgeon syphen corner.com look at our website find our archives you can check out that episode if you want. Again, that is from October 9th, 2015. You can go to the 2015 section of the archive and scroll down. I did have some weird experiences playing it. I could play it just fine on my iPhone, but I had some problems on my computer. I don't know why. I'll have to check into that later. But it's there. It works. I don't know. Maybe it'll work for you. Maybe it won't. Let me know. If it doesn't work for you, give me some specifications. It'll help me debug it. But apparently it worked for Yvonne, right? You played it off your computer.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:37]
| Yes, I played it no problem.
|
Sam:
[2:02:39]
| So Yvonne played it no problem. So maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me. But anyway, the Check Us in 2025 episode from October 9th, 2015, go check that out. You can check out our other old episodes. It's back in the area where I have a little red note saying that the show descriptions are all messed up back then. I hadn't made it back. Like every once in a while, I'll fix a month of the old show descriptions. but we got a long archive here. We've been going since 2007. So sorry about that. Anyway, I've only fixed back through 2017 at the moment, August, 2017. I, Anyway, you can find all the ways to contact us as well. You can find transcripts of recent shows. And of course, you can find a link to our Patreon where you can give Yvonne and I money at different 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, all that kind of stuff. At $2 a month or more. Or if you just ask, we will invite you to the Commissions Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a whole bunch of our listeners are chatting throughout the week about various things and having just tons of fun. So, Yvonne, one thing from the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack this week that will be so exciting, people will want to sign up and join the Slack. Or, if they're already on Slack, just come there more often.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:00]
| There was threads where they apparently, Donald was announcing a new line of Trump watches, okay?
|
Sam:
[2:04:12]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:13]
| There is new designs in stock.
|
Sam:
[2:04:15]
| There used to be Trump watches earlier, right? So this is a new...
|
Ivan:
[2:04:18]
| Yeah, this is a new, new, new watches.
|
Sam:
[2:04:22]
| New and better Trump watches.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:23]
| New and, you know, watches. These are, yeah. You've got the president of the United States. Join President Trump's watch community. Be a part of history. I mean, I... There was this movie, like, years ago, that was, oh, God. What the heck? Jack Lemmon is president. And he was president also with, oh, my God, this other, My Fellow Americans, it was called.
|
Sam:
[2:04:55]
| My Fellow Americans.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:56]
| My fellow 1996 comedies about Louisa. He was an ex-president along with, Dan Aykroyd was the current president at the time. And James Garner was another ex-president. And the thing is that Jack Lemmon, as a former president, was hawking every fucking product possible as president. I mean, he had this entire lineup of shit that he was just peddling as a former president. And honestly, this looks just like the parody that we're making in that movie of ex-presidents making money. it's exactly what the fuck we're making fun of back then at that movie okay i mean this guy is in the white house and he is out there filming commercials for these cheap shitty watches okay out there that are another one of his fucking scams right.
|
Sam:
[2:05:54]
| And like he can't get enough scams i mean.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:56]
| We mentioned he's.
|
Sam:
[2:05:57]
| Making making millions off the hotel he's making billions off like cryptocurrency scam bullshit. You know, he's making like, you know, huge amounts on all these guys, but he can't, he has to sell the watches too.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:10]
| And the watches.
|
Sam:
[2:06:12]
| And you know, it's gotta be what, it's one of these licensing deals, right? You know, where he's whatever.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:18]
| Yeah, I'm sure he's making the pay up front like everything. He doesn't want it.
|
Sam:
[2:06:21]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:22]
| You know, they're like, hey, you write my check, a hundred million over here, 50 million, 30 million, 20 million. Just, you write the check first and I'll do the commercial.
|
Sam:
[2:06:31]
| Exactly. you know it's exactly what you want your president doing right yes well in the white house of course, Is there a corresponding exemption from the tariffs for importing those watches?
|
Ivan:
[2:06:45]
| I would, I, you know what? I'm going to guess that if you go through the tariff exemptions, I would bet my bottom dollar that that is there. Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:06:55]
| Because you know they're not made in the U.S.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:58]
| Come on. Come on. Give me a break. What the, what are you talking about, man? i'm sure it's the purest and finest watch being able to made may be made in china absolutely.
|
Sam:
[2:07:13]
| There you go okay we're done thank you everybody for joining us for yet another curmudgeon's corner and assuming nothing unexpected happens we will be back next week.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:25]
| Hopefully a meteor doesn't hit us this week or anything of the sort.
|
Sam:
[2:07:28]
| No meteor well there's that there's that three-eye atlas thing which is an clearly an alien spaceship that's coming to rendezvous and you know i.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:40]
| Mean right now is it.
|
Sam:
[2:07:41]
| That i'll turn i.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:43]
| Mean if i i could turn every day they'll take over from from trump okay all right sure.
|
Sam:
[2:07:48]
| By the way for those who aren't in touch this is another online conspiracy theory that's been spreading is that this comet it is an interstellar comet, Comet, not comment. It is an interstellar object, a third ever identified that's coming through the solar system. All the reputable scientists, of course, are looking at all the planets. It's a natural object. There's no evidence that it's actually not a natural object. It all makes sense. You have reasonable explanations for everything it's doing. But there's a huge group online who are trying to say, no, of course it's a spaceship. Of course it's an alien probe. It's going to do, you know, all these things are going to happen. And it's a big conspiracy, whatever. Yes. Okay. We are done. We will see you later. We will have one of the aliens on next week.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:50]
| Oh, lovely.
|
Sam:
[2:08:52]
| From the alien probe, once it gets done doing experiments on us.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:58]
| I don't want any probes.
|
Sam:
[2:09:00]
| No probes?
|
Ivan:
[2:09:01]
| No probes.
|
Sam:
[2:09:01]
| No probes. Okay. Bye for real. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:05]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:09:36]
| Thank you. okay here comes the stop button see you later von all right.
| |
|
