Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Let's make sure those thingy is in anybody. Here it goes. And I'm not going to worry about the notifications and stuff. It'll just do what it does. Shall we start?
|
Ivan:
[0:16]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[0:17]
| Okay, here we go. Oh, I haven't annotated the thing for you. I'll probably do it tomorrow. What? What? I'll get it done. I've been doing other stuff. Here we go. welcome to curmudgeon's corner first saturday march 7th 2026. It's just after 18 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Menter. Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:08]
| Hello! Sam, it's another boring week, huh?
|
Sam:
[1:13]
| Another boring week. Yes, always. Always. You know, we do have them occasionally. Less often than we used to, but they still occasionally happen.
|
Ivan:
[1:24]
| Okay, you might try to remind me when the fuck was the last boring week. Because I can't remember.
|
Sam:
[1:30]
| You know, now you're putting me on the spot.
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Ivan:
[1:33]
| Yeah. You know, I, I don't, I mean, I'm trying to remember. Anytime do we have, I don't, I mean.
|
Sam:
[1:41]
| Let me see. Let me see. I'm going to look at our archives.
|
Ivan:
[1:45]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:46]
| And see when the last episode was, That was mostly fluff. Okay. Last week, we had the Iran war stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:58]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:58]
| The week before that, we had some Epstein stuff. We had some tariff stuff. But there wasn't one big thing. Going back before that, we had Bad Bunny and some economic data stuff. But honestly, some government incompetence stuff. But honestly, it was it was an episode where we had a bunch of small little things and we didn't have a big overwhelming thing just like three weeks ago.
|
Ivan:
[2:26]
| I guess that in my thought, that's relative. Remember, there was a lot of controversy about Bad Bunny and they were like ripping him and MAGA was all on flames about it and blah, blah, blah. I guess I'm talking about this is all relative, right? I guess relative relative to like, you know.
|
Sam:
[2:49]
| Trump era. The week before that was all small things, too.
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Ivan:
[2:53]
| You know, in the Trump era, I guess that all seems minor. Whereas I'm talking about, you know, you don't seem to remember that there were weeks when Obama was president that we were, like, struggling to figure out what to talk about at all.
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Sam:
[3:12]
| Yeah, yeah.
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Ivan:
[3:13]
| You know, like, you know, there was no week when the president said something like, I don't know, there was some truth post today about Iran.
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Sam:
[3:27]
| I, as usual, just woke up. So if something happened this morning, I don't know about it yet. He said something about losers.
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Ivan:
[3:35]
| Things. It was just so, it's just another one of those unhinged things. posts, he was saying something about, I mean, he, let me see if I could find it real quick. I didn't even share it. It's just, it was just so unhinged. It's, but it was, it was about Iran. Let me see. I don't see it right now, but he, he was saying how Iran is just a bunch of losers and things and how we've made them, pounded them into submission, these losers. And, and just, it was just, it's just the post that if I took that post, okay, out of the context of Trump and had said that George W. Bush said something like this, he would have probably, I mean, he might've been impeached. He might have been. They might have gone with the 25th Amendment.
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Sam:
[4:40]
| Just for, like, the post.
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Ivan:
[4:42]
| Just for that post.
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Sam:
[4:44]
| Right.
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Ivan:
[4:45]
| Okay, just for that post, if Obama had made that post that Trump did last night, I think the Democrats themselves would have impeached him. Because it's so nutty. But this is how we have normalized the insanity right now. Because every day is like this.
|
Sam:
[5:09]
| Okay, I found your quote for you. Okay. Okay, so this is a Donald J. Trump truth social post. I'm not going to call it a truth. It's not a truth.
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Ivan:
[5:24]
| You're right. That's a misnomer.
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Sam:
[5:26]
| Whoever took the screenshot, it says 6.11 a.m. I don't know if that's Eastern or what, but anyway.
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Ivan:
[5:33]
| Probably.
|
Sam:
[5:34]
| I will read you this. Iran, which is being beat to hell, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors. and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore. This promise was only made because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack. They were looking to take over and rule the Middle East. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost in thousands of years to surrounding Middle Eastern countries. They have said, thank you, President Trump. I have said, you're welcome. Iran is no longer the bully of the Middle East. They are instead the loser of the Middle East and will be for many decades until they surrender or, more likely, completely collapse. Today, Iran will be hit very hard under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death because of Iran's bad behavior. Our areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
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Ivan:
[6:42]
| I mean, this is a normal fucking 6 a.m. post by our president that in the past, if any of them had done this and sent out a press release saying this, they, you know, probably his cabinet would have put him in a straitjacket and sent them to, you know, Walter Reed and made some excuse about his health. and said, you know, I don't know. We got to figure out something. This guy has lost his mind.
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Sam:
[7:12]
| Ivan, Ivan.
|
Ivan:
[7:13]
| That would have been the past. I mean, but wait, Sam, would that not be accurate?
|
Sam:
[7:18]
| I think they would very, at the very least, be like sequestering him away and trying to figure out what was going on. But, you know, hear this thing. You know, this is just part of Donald Trump's charm. This is just how he is. this is this is what people elected him for because he's straight and to the point and you know tells it like it is etc etc etc right yeah you know i saw something and i guess we're dumping straight into news stuff no.
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Ivan:
[7:55]
| No well here's the thing.
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Sam:
[7:57]
| Yesterday i.
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Ivan:
[7:57]
| I do bring this up in part because yesterday I did go last night. My wife had bought tickets to go see this new Disney Pixar movie called Hoppers.
|
Sam:
[8:06]
| Hoppers? Yes. Are you going to give a review of Hoppers?
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Ivan:
[8:09]
| I am going to give a brief review about Hoppers.
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Sam:
[8:12]
| It's on my list, but obviously I have not seen it yet.
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Ivan:
[8:15]
| I'm not going to give away any spoilers about it.
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Sam:
[8:18]
| Yes.
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Ivan:
[8:19]
| But I guess the one thing is the main thrust of this is a young boy who's an activist for the green spaces in the city versus a mayor who is hell-bent on development. That's the main thing. And I'm going to tell you, look, it's a beautiful movie.
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Sam:
[8:43]
| Okay.
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Ivan:
[8:43]
| I loved it. I mean, it's one of those great Pixar movies.
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Sam:
[8:48]
| So for a while, Pixar had a run where it was like, Pixar never does wrong. And then they had a few sort of, eh.
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Ivan:
[8:56]
| They were like, okay.
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Sam:
[8:57]
| This is back to form?
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Ivan:
[8:59]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[9:00]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[9:01]
| Oh, yeah. Absolutely. A hundred percent. And I don't want to give a spoiler, but the ending itself, in terms of our time, because if you think about the conflict between somebody, the development and somebody in these things is.
|
Sam:
[9:21]
| There are parallels?
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Ivan:
[9:23]
| Well, no.
|
Sam:
[9:24]
| No?
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Ivan:
[9:25]
| Okay. No, no, no, but it's beautiful, and sometimes you wish the world were, like, I was in the movie, which is why I make, you know, one thing that we forget, Hollywood made Hollywood movies because a lot of people's lives were miserable, and it was an escape from that.
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Sam:
[9:43]
| Right.
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Ivan:
[9:44]
| And, oh, it's a Hollywood movie, whatever, whatever, well, you know what, because maybe people need a fucking escape from the drudgery and misery of a lot of shit that's going on. And that, you know what, is uplifting.
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Sam:
[9:56]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[9:57]
| And so the movie, look, total thumbs up. Don't miss it.
|
Sam:
[10:03]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[10:04]
| It's really good. It is really good. And so I thought about how uplifting the movie was, and then I think about this asshole that we got as president, and it's like, you know, like, fuck.
|
Sam:
[10:17]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[10:19]
| You know, fuck me. Why do we have this? It's just, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[10:27]
| It sounds like you're having a good time.
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Ivan:
[10:30]
| I didn't have a good time last night going to the movies for that. I stayed up late yesterday watching, it's the start of the Formula One season.
|
Sam:
[10:39]
| Okay, so you were watching something live coming out of Europe or something.
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Ivan:
[10:42]
| Well, not Europe, Australia. It's starting in Australia.
|
Sam:
[10:45]
| Even worse.
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Ivan:
[10:46]
| Which is even worse, which is the thing, right? because qualifying last night was started at midnight, okay? All right. You know, and so it lasted until like 1.30 in the morning. And a race is also tonight, so it's a what-the-hell time. I got it on my calendar. I have this thing from the F1 people that puts the stuff in my calendar, which is very helpful, okay, especially with the different time zones and stuff. What time does it say the race starts?
|
Ivan:
[11:20]
| Coverage starts at 11 p.m., but I think the race officially starts at midnight. So, yeah. So, no, I was watching that. Very excited about that. You know, the thing is that, well, number one, this year, there's a lot of changes. A lot of people are like, Apple TV bought the U.S. rights to broadcast the F1 races. Which, by the way, actually, they give you access, included with your Apple TV subscription, okay, to the F1 official coverage, okay? So you go to the F1 app now, which I used to have to pay for $150 extra a year, and now I get that free of charge, okay? So I don't have to pay. So it's good. And so Apple's doing that and providing, like, you know, with your Apple TV subscription and watching that. There's a lot of controversy. A lot of people bitching and moaning. But the reality is that for a lot of people that were really good F1 fans had both the subscription to F1 TV, okay, and to Apple TV. So all of a sudden, I get the same shit, and I don't have to pay extra for it. I'm sorry, but this is a massive win for me.
|
Sam:
[12:42]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[12:43]
| Okay? The other people, I'm like, well, sorry for you, but, you know, but I'm thrilled. So I was watching that last night, and I don't know. But also, I have been doing all this stuff with—I've just been playing around with stuff now—, So since I started using the Claude co-work analysis tools, because you know one thing that we talked about, the ChatGPT isn't very good at math. Okay?
|
Sam:
[13:16]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[13:17]
| But Claude is. Okay? With spreadsheets and numbers and things and stuff or whatever, Claude is.
|
Sam:
[13:23]
| Well, and that's because it's not trying to do that just with the LLM. It's using external tools that interact with the spreadsheet and know how to do math.
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Ivan:
[13:36]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[13:37]
| You know, and this is the thing where a lot of the developments that have caused improvements, and I believe we had like a conversation like a year ago or more about how they needed to do something beyond straight LLM technology. They needed to augment it with things that knew about truth, for instance. And this is augmenting it with something that knows about spreadsheets and how to use a spreadsheet. And, you know, and a lot of the tools now also, like, even when you add, when you ask it to do something that is deterministic, will write themselves a little program to do that rather than trying to do it natively. So, like, I remember one example, it just posted within the last month or so, where, you know, I think it was ChatGPT he was playing with, but still failed this test, where they asked ChatGPT to count out loud from 1 to 100, skipping no numbers.
|
Ivan:
[14:37]
| Oh, yeah, yeah, that was hilarious.
|
Sam:
[14:39]
| And it would always go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then I will continue like that all the way to 100. and he's like no no no I want you to go all the way to 100 and no matter what he did it would still stop like that right um and but like, A lot of the more sophisticated ones now, like especially if you're in like one of the coding environments or co-work, like you said, will know to like don't just try to like spit out the LLM's response to that question, but instead recognize it as a request that you go and set off an agent to go do properly by writing a program or looking at a spreadsheet or whatever using tools that are actually meant for that task. Anyway, so your experience with it using the spreadsheets and analysis.
|
Ivan:
[15:29]
| No, so it's allowing me to do ear, The thing is that I find, because you know that I'm always a guy that's built a lot of spreadsheets, numbers, things, finance, blah, blah, blah. I always do a lot of that.
|
Ivan:
[15:41]
| Of course, especially when I worked in finance, I had a lot more time to do that and worked in operations. But the thing is that I'm doing so many other things so much of the time, I don't have the time to spend a couple of days to build a spreadsheet anymore, to detail analysis a couple of things. But the thing is that with using this, I could go back to doing some of the spreadsheet shit that I used to do and it helps me burn through it a lot faster because a big chunk of what I used to have to do in order to do analysis say at work okay was extracting stuff from databases different data sources whatever trying to make these data sets coherent in a certain way okay to normalize the data okay so you weren't you know say for example you you you you had like sales data in one format from one database, and then you had activity, you know, you had the sales. So say you had sales, okay? Then you had the performance of individual sales reps that was tied to that sales data, okay? But they may be organized in a different way. So how do you get those two data sets to not duplicate information, but to give you basically a more rich picture of what was happening with those accounts for example so that would take a whole bunch of work of me pulling data for maybe two three different four different spreadsheets putting it all together whatever but now i could go to shit hey claude here.
|
Ivan:
[17:07]
| I got this, this, this, and this. Fucking tell me, you know, integrate all of this in a coherent way and whatever. And the one thing is that I keep telling it, well, I look through it and I identify, well, no, no, no, you did this wrong. This part, no, no, no, you missed this. No, this doesn't add up. Because one thing that I've always been able to do, and it feels like it's like when I had like 10 employees in finance and they did shit and they did it wrong. And then I kept telling them, dude, that doesn't add up. What do you mean it doesn't add up? I know how much money is supposed to be in that bucket. And what you added it up to is wrong. And I just know it by looking at it. And then I go, oh, yeah, you're right. That is too much money. Yeah, I know how much it's supposed to be there. There's no way it adds up to that much. And it's almost the same thing as I got with Claude. Sometimes I'm like, I actually was trying to do some analysis for my own sales. And I'm like, that number's wrong. And then I tell it, oh, yeah, you're right. I added it up wrong.
|
Sam:
[18:08]
| Uh-huh.
|
Ivan:
[18:09]
| So I kind of like been entertaining myself a lot with that.
|
Sam:
[18:13]
| Okay. Very good.
|
Ivan:
[18:16]
| I find it very entertaining or like doing stuff like, you know, Apple. So Apple, you know, has a lot of like all this health tracking stuff. And over the years of it, I've been using it. And on the phone, it gives you a lot of information and richness in terms of like showing you trends and things or whatever. One thing that I'm annoyed is that Apple doesn't have the same app for the computer. It's not synchronizing it.
|
Sam:
[18:42]
| Right. There's just no fitness app or whatever. The health app is not there. They haven't made it.
|
Ivan:
[18:48]
| Yeah, it's not. There's no equivalent for the Mac. So, okay, I can look at it on my phone, which is cool, and it doesn't give me very good information.
|
Sam:
[18:56]
| On the latest versions of Apple, you can bring up the phone app on your computer.
|
Ivan:
[19:02]
| Right, but it's still a small window.
|
Sam:
[19:04]
| It's still the phone app.
|
Ivan:
[19:05]
| Okay?
|
Sam:
[19:05]
| I know.
|
Ivan:
[19:06]
| It's still the phone. Okay? And what I want is, no, listen, I want a health app that is on the computer so I can look at this stuff in the way that it is on there, which is cool. But there are some people that make tools in order to be able to extract some of that information. So I had been playing with extracting it. The thing is that for whatever reason, the one tool that I found, it would extract every workout in every session as an individual CSV. And I'm just like, oh, come on, man.
|
Sam:
[19:35]
| Are you using the tool that I pointed you out a few months ago?
|
Ivan:
[19:39]
| No, I've had this tool for over a year, so I'm not sure if it's one that you pointed out a few months ago.
|
Sam:
[19:44]
| Well, you know how my sense of time goes. A few months ago might be five years.
|
Ivan:
[19:49]
| That's true. It may have been one that you pointed out. Okay. So I don't remember how I stumbled on it. It may be the one you pointed out. But the thing is, okay, great. So I got, you know, 2,000 CSV files all of a sudden. Great. Beautiful. I'm like, okay, I could figure out a way to merge all this data, but I don't want to do this. And I'm like, and I believe, no, and I had done that, but it was a pain in my ass. But I realized, well, let me have Claude take a whack at it, okay? Well, shit. Damn it. It gave me now finally what I've been looking at in order to be able to track my fitness and my workouts in a better way that I can look at it on the computer as well. Not just my phone, which by the way, the functionality on the phone that Apple has is actually quite good because it does help me, you know, visualize it like very easily on my phone. Their visuals are actually quite good. OK, but but I but they don't they haven't made the same thing for the fucking computer. It's annoying. Apple, somebody fucking, you know, bring the damn health app also to the Mac.
|
Sam:
[20:53]
| You remember how like for years they like didn't bring like stocks and weather or something like, or calculator wasn't on like the iPad or whatever for years.
|
Ivan:
[21:05]
| Well, yeah, there was no calculator on the iPad for whatever reason.
|
Sam:
[21:08]
| Yes. I mean, and yes, there were third party alternatives.
|
Ivan:
[21:12]
| But it was like, just seemed like a gap. It's always there. I always remember, and I loved, I remember that one time, one of the first memories that I have of using a Mac was on one of the original Macs, you know, black and white, using the little calculator app on that Mac. And there was one time that I, funny story. I still remember this one.
|
Sam:
[21:34]
| Funny story. Oh, prepare yourself.
|
Ivan:
[21:36]
| Well, yeah, you're going to, a barrel of laughs. Not really that much. But we did this talent show in high school, okay? And the thing is that the judges did all this stuff on scoring. And so we actually, so one of my classmates had brought his Mac. I think he had a Mac plus or something like that, that they had. I brought it over to the place where we held a talent show to help us with, we had some, we had used it to build some like flyers, things, a whole bunch of things or whatever. And then we had been keeping track of, you know, all the program and things on there. But then all of a sudden I realized, shit, we need to add up the scoring. And so I very quickly had to wind up, like, using that calculator because we didn't even have time for a spreadsheet. I was just like, you know, taking the scores of the judges and then writing it down, but I was like using very intensely that calculator app on the Mac on the original system, which was super cool. I like that calculator app. It's very nice.
|
Sam:
[22:45]
| It was a calculator.
|
Ivan:
[22:48]
| Yeah. Come on. Back then, you know. Well, I'm, okay, I, look.
|
Sam:
[22:55]
| You know, one of the things I saw.
|
Ivan:
[22:57]
| I was always fascinated with the fucking adding machines. And I remember that I would spend hours playing with the adding machines at our store. Dad had these Olivetti ones, okay, that he had bought. And listen, if you look up an Olivetti adding machine, the style of those machines back in the 70s and 80s was really cool. Okay. All right. They were like these digital ones with a little printer or whatever. And boy, would I love to just spend a burn paper on that little thing. Just, just doing, just, just typing away numbers for whatever reason. With no rhyme or reason just to have the, just to have the printer just make the noise.
|
Sam:
[23:36]
| I remember doing the same thing with a handheld calculator with the little red LED digits.
|
Ivan:
[23:43]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:44]
| Like that I had, it was my dad's. And of course, I would steal it and play with it and go into a closet where it was dark. And so the lights were just done. I would play with the buttons. I would also sort of move it around because it would leave like a trail behind it.
|
Ivan:
[24:00]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:01]
| You know, when you moved around. Also, I was going to say, a few days ago, I almost shared it on the Slack, but I didn't, and I'm sure I wouldn't be able to find it again. But somebody on TikTok posted, and I don't know whether it was actually an original or whether it was an attempted recreation. It seemed like it could be an original, but you never know these days. A commercial, a television commercial. from the 1970s for, like, a calculator.
|
Ivan:
[24:33]
| Ah.
|
Sam:
[24:34]
| Like, talking about all the benefits of this cool, amazing, like, calculator, and it was the only calculator you were ever going to need, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and how compact it was. And, of course, it was huge, right? You know, but.
|
Ivan:
[24:49]
| Of course. Look, I just on the Slack, on random, just posted a link to a calculator, like the one that we had at the store, okay? By the way, used one. There are vintage collectors. $170 on eBay to get one of these, like right now. Just check it out because it's a really cool design that the calculator had. And you go take a peek. But it was one just like that, okay, that we had. I don't know if you could see it.
|
Sam:
[25:17]
| I brought it up. Yes, yes. It's to describe to people because this is, of course, an audio show.
|
Ivan:
[25:24]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[25:25]
| Yes. It's, let's see, it looks like it's about a foot on a side, black plastic, really big buttons, one of those little ribbon printer things on the left, some ventilation holes on the right.
|
Ivan:
[25:41]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[25:41]
| Because, of course, like, you know, the calculator is going to generate lots of heat. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, et cetera. So it's cool. I would bring up the, if this was, I mean, I know we do have video like for the live streamers, but if this was a video podcast, maybe I would search for the picture of the calculator I was talking about, or even that video of the commercial I thought I saw. But no, this is an audio podcast, so I won't do that.
|
Ivan:
[26:07]
| The one thing, the buttons on that machine were so, the tactile feel. Like, oh, just fantastic tactile feel. I mean, you know, it cannot, you know, cannot understate how cool those buttons felt, you know. And that big, you see, it's got a big ass plus button, okay? Because back then, most of the stuff that you were doing is adding stuff real quick.
|
Sam:
[26:32]
| That's why they were called adding machines, not subtraction or division machines.
|
Ivan:
[26:36]
| No, it was an adding machine.
|
Sam:
[26:38]
| I mean, of course, the very first adding machines could only add. but they later added other functions.
|
Ivan:
[26:43]
| But it's just so it's just so very satisfying to be hitting you know typing the numbers and plus plus plus plus plus plus plus I don't know okay let me.
|
Sam:
[26:53]
| Let me bang out my two movies, Not in the movies. Yes. We're already almost half an hour in. So let's do this. Okay, number one.
|
Ivan:
[27:02]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[27:03]
| From 2020.
|
Ivan:
[27:04]
| We're already getting one movie. So we're going to three movies.
|
Sam:
[27:06]
| Oh, yeah. Three movies. Amazing.
|
Ivan:
[27:08]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[27:09]
| I mean, one of them was you, which is fair. Fair. Absolutely fair. Fair. Okay. I was going to say yesterday. Last week, we did a video game movie, Minecraft. We both liked it. Thumbs up.
|
Ivan:
[27:23]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[27:23]
| This next one for me is another video game movie from 2023. It's the Super Mario Bros. movie. And surprisingly, this is another thumbs up. I enjoyed this movie as well. Folks may remember there were like Mario movies made and Mario cartoons like a few decades ago that I have not seen, but from all reports were bad. It was like a live-action Mario, and they did something. I don't know. But no, this is fully, like, you know, it's animated. And it doesn't—one of the things that people have praised about it is— and actually different from what the Minecraft movie did. Well, I don't know. There's some similarities. Anyway, they didn't try to do the thing where, okay, these characters are in the real world, and now we're going to do something with them, and it's going to be like, you know—.
|
Sam:
[28:28]
| Use some of the characters, but very, very different from the video games. Instead, they like are continuously reproducing elements from the video games. And like the characters are doing things they do in the video games and such. Let me give you the first couple of paragraphs as usual.
|
Sam:
[28:45]
| Italian American, from Wikipedia, Italian American brothers, Mario and Luigi operate a struggling plumbing business in Brooklyn to the derision of their ex-formin Spike and the disapproval of their father. After seeing a significant water main leak on the news, Mario and Luigi go underground to fix it, but are sucked into a warp pipe and separated.
|
Sam:
[29:06]
| So it does start in Brooklyn, but it's still animated. It's not like humans or whatever. Mario lands in the Mushroom Kingdom, ruled by Princess Peach, where Luigi arrives in the Darklands, ruled by the evil Koopa King Bowser, who seeks to marry Peach and will destroy the Mushroom Kingdom using a superstar if she refuses. Seeing Mario as competition for Peach's love, Bowser imprisons Luigi to threaten him. Mario meets Toad, who takes him to Peach. Peach plans to ally with the primate Kongs to help repel Bowser, and trains Mario before allowing him and Toad to travel along. During their journey, she tells Mario that she ended up at the Mushroom Kingdom as a baby, where the Toads took her in and eventually made her their leader. In the Jungle Kingdom, King Cranky Kong agrees to help if Mario defeats his son, Donkey Kong, in a fight. Despite initially being overpowered by Donkey Kong's strength, Mario defeats him using a cat suit. Dot, dot, dot. It continues. They go through multiple adventures. Anyway, it does not take itself seriously. It is like, You know, it knows we're talking about cartoon video game characters and it leans into that and it's done well. And I had fun. And I guess that's the that's the bottom line for it. I mean, this is not a deep movie. It is a Super Mario Brothers movie. It is animated.
|
Ivan:
[30:30]
| It is. It is shallow. I mean, this is like this. This this is that doesn't even qualify as a shallow pool or pond. It's not even a kiddie pool.
|
Sam:
[30:43]
| I don't know if I go that far, but it doesn't attempt to be like it doesn't. No, no, no. It is an unabashed video game movie that leans into that 100%. It is made as a family movie. So the adults are going to enjoy it too. Especially adults who have nostalgia for Nintendo stuff from decades ago. And I, you know, when I was a kid, I never had a Nintendo. You know, I, I, the first time I played like an actual Mario game, I was already an adult, right? You know, I had other stuff. I was like on the VIC-20, Commodore 64, and then briefly DOS, and then Mac. You know, I never had consoles.
|
Ivan:
[31:26]
| By the way, I am also one that did not have a Nintendo. I had a Sega.
|
Sam:
[31:33]
| Okay, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[31:34]
| So I played Sonic. Right.
|
Sam:
[31:38]
| Yeah so anyway it did well there's going to be a sequel it actually won a a few awards i mean we're not talking like i would make sure before i say this we're not talking to us picture best well it was it was nominated for a golden golden globe for best animated feature you know so that's.
|
Ivan:
[32:00]
| I thought that's that's a fair award yeah yeah.
|
Sam:
[32:03]
| So you know so anyway and a bunch of others Anyway, fun, lighthearted movie, nostalgia bait for Nintendo fans, done well, et cetera. Thumbs up.
|
Ivan:
[32:17]
| Thumbs up!
|
Sam:
[32:18]
| Next up, The Dark Knight Rises from 2012.
|
Ivan:
[32:25]
| Another movie that I didn't see. This is one of those where they, I gotta tell you, this entire thing with Batman making, I don't know how many fucking versions of the stupid thing.
|
Sam:
[32:39]
| Well, they just reboot it every 15 years or something.
|
Ivan:
[32:43]
| 15? It seems like they rebooted it every five years. It's so fucking confusing. I mean, like, none of the timelines align. They change all the actors. I'm like, just, you know what? I get, at what point I'm like, just fuck. I'm like, fuck Batman.
|
Sam:
[32:59]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[33:01]
| That's my analysis.
|
Sam:
[33:02]
| Let me see how often these actually are. So live action.
|
Ivan:
[33:07]
| Look how many Bat- Listen, go back and count.
|
Sam:
[33:11]
| How many Batmans- I am doing that right now, okay?
|
Ivan:
[33:14]
| Okay, all right, all right.
|
Sam:
[33:15]
| And you said every five years. So live action films. So we're excluding TV for the moment. We're excluding whatever, old serials, things like that. Okay, okay. The one that was based on the TV show, the Batman movie in 1966.
|
Ivan:
[33:32]
| Okay?
|
Sam:
[33:33]
| That was actually, it was essentially an extended episode of the Batman TV series set between two of the seasons of the Batman TV series. But there was the Batman movie in 1966. The next Batman was 1989. That was the Tim Burton one with Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton, okay? Okay. Now, in that sequence, you had 1992, Batman Returns, and 1995, Batman Forever. And then finally, 1997, Batman and Robin, which completely killed off that sequence of Batman. because it was really bad, apparently. Okay, so that sequence was the first, well, second. So we added the 1966 version, then we added the 1992 through 1997 version. So that's two so far. Now that's a total of six movies, but only two iterations.
|
Ivan:
[34:34]
| Two iterations, okay.
|
Sam:
[34:35]
| Two iterations, let's see. Fourth and final, yeah, okay. Oh, sorry, I counted wrong. That's four. Four plus the one. So four in that sequence. Okay. The next, now we have related things. Like there was a Catwoman movie in 2004. Okay. But then in 2005 was the reboot that started the sequence that the one I'm talking about is in, I believe, wait, the Christopher Nolan version. Okay, so this starts in 2005 with Batman Begins. Okay, so just to be clear, from... The end of the last series to this one was, do my math, eight years? Eight years.
|
Ivan:
[35:25]
| Okay. Listen, I went and asked GPT for a list because otherwise we'll kill the rest of the audience at this point.
|
Sam:
[35:35]
| Okay, fine.
|
Ivan:
[35:35]
| But look, I went. Hang on.
|
Sam:
[35:37]
| Yeah, okay.
|
Ivan:
[35:38]
| There's been a total of nine different Batmans, okay, since the first fucking movie. Okay? All right? And I'm going to go back to just, you know, 1990, when we had 1989, we had Michael Keaton as Batman. I'm not counting the ones before that. But since 1990, okay, there's been six movies. Michael Keaton, Vol Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, and Robert Pattinson. Listen, I don't understand.
|
Sam:
[36:11]
| And you're right. Some of those were in the same sequence, right? Like I mentioned Batman and Robin, I believe, was like the George Clooney one. Right. And that was actually the fourth movie of the sequence that started with Michael Keaton. And they were theoretically the same universe, but they did change actors.
|
Ivan:
[36:29]
| But here's the fucking thing, man. I mean, there is no other fucking movie goddamn series that has fucking changed the main character of Batman, you know, main character that fucking often. It's crazy. Okay. Listen, Daniel Craig played James Bond for 20 years. Okay. Over that same time period, there were five Batmans. Five.
|
Sam:
[37:02]
| What the fuck man no fuck.
|
Ivan:
[37:06]
| Them you fight batmans.
|
Sam:
[37:08]
| I think it does make more sense like the one where you sort of theoretically have the same sequence but you change the actors it's kind of goofy if you reboot the whole thing with a new actor that's all that's another story okay you're doing the new reboot for this decade right i'm okay with that but but.
|
Ivan:
[37:27]
| I mean, six versions in that time? I mean, literally, what are we doing? Barely five years per Batman.
|
Sam:
[37:36]
| Well, again, though, if you treat it not as by actor, but by sequence, we've got the 1960s version, we've got the 1990s version, and we've got the early 2000s version, and then we've got a later 2000s version. So it's really four.
|
Ivan:
[37:53]
| Here's the one thing for me who is a casual guy with these movies, okay? Every fucking time I would go and see, oh, there's a Batman. And then I look at it and I'm like, but wait, what happened with the old Batman? Wait, so... Wait, again, we're rebooting again? And I'm like, wait, what does this timeline have to do with the old time? It, honestly, to me, confused the fuck out of me regularly.
|
Sam:
[38:19]
| Now, I tend to generally agree with you on lots of things that I like the ones where it's continuations of the universe rather than flat-out reboots better. But, yeah, I don't know. I guess as long as they're sort of clear about it, like the the 1990s Batman sequence is not the same universe as the 2000s Batman universe is not the same as the 2020s Batman. No, no. So, I don't know. So, anyway, to get back to my movie, my movie is the Dark Knight Rises, which is the third movie, I believe, in this trilogy. Okay. Let me make sure. Okay. The Dark Knight Trilogy starts with Batman Begins in 2005, then The Dark Knight in 2008, and finally ends in The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, which is the one that I am talking about right now.
|
Sam:
[39:26]
| Okay, so... So I'm going to give this one the, you know, as we've talked about more granularity, between a thumb sideways and a thumbs up, okay? And let me give you the beginning of the plot on this one as well. Bain, a former—I'm all blubbery today. Bain, a former member of the League of Shadows, leads an attack on a CIA plane over Uzbekistan to abduct nuclear physicist Dr. Leonard Pavel. Meanwhile, eight years after the death of Gotham City Attorney Harvey Dent and the arrest of the Joker, organized crime has been eradicated in Gotham by the Dent Act, legislation that gives expanded powers to the police. Police Commissioner James Gordon has kept Dent's killing spree a secret, and allowed the blame for his crimes to fall on Batman. Bruce Wayne, still mourning the death of Rachel Dawes, has become a recluse.
|
Sam:
[40:29]
| Bane conspires to help Wayne Enterprises board member John Daggett take over the company, and they begin by trying to buy Bruce's fingerprints.
|
Sam:
[40:37]
| Burglar Selina Kyle steals Bruce's prints from Wayne Manor for Daggett, but he double-crosses her and she alerts the police. Bane's henchmen capture Gotham in the sewer—sorry, capture Gordon in the sewers, but he escapes and is found by steadfast Gotham City police officer John Blake, an orphan who has deduced Bruce's secret identity. Blake persuades Bruce to resume his vigilantism.
|
Sam:
[41:03]
| Bain attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange and uses Bruce's fingerprints to verify fraudulent transactions, leaving Bruce ousted from his company and bankrupt. Fearing Bruce will purposefully get himself killed fighting Bain, his butler, Alfred Pennyworth, resigns in the hope of saving him after revealing that Rachel was going to marry Dent and thus Bruce should let her go. Bane kills Daggett to pursue his own goals while Bruce and Wayne Enterprises' new CEO, Miranda Tate, become lovers. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And it continues. There are adventures. There are battles. There are all those things that happen in your normal superhero movie. But I think, you know, last week we talked about Blade II and how it was just nothing but, you know, action sequence to action sequence to action sequence with blood and gore and things happening and gross-out stuff, and I was not impressed at all by that. This was a good superhero movie. I enjoyed it. I had fun. I mean, it's still just a superhero movie, but it was fun. I enjoyed it. And there we go. We're done.
|
Ivan:
[42:11]
| Okay, we're done with superheroes.
|
Sam:
[42:13]
| And let's move on. Once again. I owe everybody an Apple dream.
|
Ivan:
[42:17]
| Fuck Batman.
|
Sam:
[42:18]
| Yeah, fuck Batman. Gotcha. I understand that he's well-built and attractive, but I do not personally want to do that. But you can.
|
Ivan:
[42:27]
| No, no, no. I will avoid that as well. You know, the other day I realized, you know, Sam, there's one thing. Look, I have a lot of, I have, I don't know, I have gay friends, whatever. But you know what? I don't find men attractive. There's just nothing. I mean, there's nothing. Not, I mean, I.
|
Sam:
[42:49]
| I, I, I am offended, Yvonne. Look at me. Look at me.
|
Ivan:
[42:55]
| An Adonis.
|
Sam:
[42:57]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[42:58]
| You're an Adonis, Sam. You're an Adonis. I, I, you know, look, I get, I get, I get, like, for example, I, I mean, I can understand to see somebody, a guy that looks very attractive. I can see how that guy, that guy's attractive. But am I, do I find him attractive? Nah.
|
Sam:
[43:15]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[43:15]
| No. Not in me.
|
Sam:
[43:17]
| Not my thing not your thing so you don't really want to fuck Batman no.
|
Ivan:
[43:25]
| Or Corey Lewandowski for that matter.
|
Sam:
[43:28]
| Okay well with that transition let's take a break I owe you guys an Apple dream it was supposed to be last week and I said I'd do it this week and I still didn't do it so no Apple dream this week maybe next week but in the meantime here is the other, here's another one of our breaks, and we'll be back and we'll talk about, I don't know, Iran or the economy or MAGA fracturing or something. The primary elections, we had primary elections. We'll talk about something after this.
|
Ivan:
[44:02]
| Something.
|
Sam:
[44:45]
| Kachoo. Kachoo. Kachoo.
|
Ivan:
[44:49]
| Kachoo. Kachoo.
|
Sam:
[44:51]
| All right.
|
Ivan:
[44:51]
| So I got to pick something. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Okay. So let's see. I got primary election results. Sam, I don't I didn't really pay close. I didn't pay very close attention to those. I know a little bit, but can you fill us in on what happened with all those primary elections that we had this week?
|
Sam:
[45:23]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[45:24]
| No? Okay. All right, then. Thank you very much. Bye, everybody. See ya. So what do you know about it?
|
Sam:
[45:31]
| I wasn't prepared. I don't have like a nice, neat little summary of everything that happened.
|
Ivan:
[45:37]
| Well, what do you know then? Which is probably more than what I do.
|
Sam:
[45:43]
| Here are some high-level summaries that I can say. First of all, the big Democratic primary in Texas, the moderate-ish guy, his name starts with a T.
|
Ivan:
[46:00]
| Tallarico.
|
Sam:
[46:01]
| Tallarico.
|
Ivan:
[46:02]
| That I know. Tallarico.
|
Sam:
[46:03]
| He won over Jasmine Crockett.
|
Ivan:
[46:06]
| Why are so many people seemingly angry about this whole thing?
|
Sam:
[46:12]
| There are a couple things. One, this is an example of the quote-unquote centrist winning where people were hoping to give the progressive a chance, where progressives were hoping to give the progressive a chance, just to be clear there. And they were kind of excited about her and thought she had a shot, etc. Even though polling sort of says that in Texas, the moderate is more likely to win in the general election. Surprise.
|
Ivan:
[46:42]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[46:42]
| Surprise. But they figured, you know, I don't know. They were excited about that. They were also really upset about this thing that happened in Dallas County where...
|
Ivan:
[46:53]
| Oh, well, I did hear a little bit about that.
|
Sam:
[46:55]
| So there was Dallas County, and this is apparently a county by county thing in Texas, but the Republicans refused to cooperate on allowing people to vote anywhere in the county. and forced a situation where people would have to vote within their own precinct. Okay. This caused a- Oh.
|
Ivan:
[47:19]
| You know, I, I, yeah, I was, I did see that. And I was just discussing that with my wife because my wife usually works elections over here.
|
Sam:
[47:27]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[47:27]
| And I, and I, you know, I, I told her about this. That is one of those changes that is so insane to do. Okay. Because of the confusion. Okay.
|
Sam:
[47:40]
| Well, and especially because it was a change. Like, if it had been that way forever, then people would be used to it, right? But last election, people could go anywhere in the county to vote that was convenient. And now they had to go to their precinct.
|
Ivan:
[47:54]
| But here's the funny thing about all of these changes. You know, I think the Republicans keep making a lot of these changes in the idea that for some reason they think that it will... But I'm going to tell you something. We keep seeing that Republicans are, with everything going on, their motivation level has been dampened. And I happen to think that this kind of shit, when you do this, and your emotions are already dampened to go vote, you know, as a Democrat, you'll probably get even more furious and go, the Republicans are like, ah, fuck it. But I don't, this is not, I don't think, this is stupid.
|
Sam:
[48:42]
| Right. So anyway, they did this. And so lots and lots of people were confused. They would show up at one place to vote, be told they couldn't vote there, be told you have to go across town to this one that's near where you live instead of the one you went to near where you work or whatever. And it's probably less convenient and blah, blah, blah. Some of them would give up at that point immediately. Some of them would have to do it, but do it later. And that's where the next thing comes in, is because as polls were closing.
|
Sam:
[49:11]
| There was, you know, somebody went to a judge and said, hey, because of all this confusion, we need more time. A judge granted them more time, allowed the polls to stay open extra hours. Like they were supposed to close at seven and he allowed them to stay open till nine, something like that. I forget the exact details. So more people were voting from seven to nine in this county. And then that was appealed by the attorney general, who, by the way, was on the ballot. So this affects his own election to the Texas Supreme Court, who ruled, no, no, no, that extension was invalid. So a bunch of people actually did vote from seven to nine. And then the judge ruled that their votes can't count. And then that was still being appealed. And this was an area where Crockett was expected to be strong. Okay. So you're theoretically disenfranchising Crockett voters through this action. And so a lot of Crockett supporters were really upset by this on top of the fact that, you know, they're just disappointed in general and wanted her to win. Right.
|
Sam:
[50:19]
| Crockett didn't concede the night of because these lawsuits were going on, but did concede the next morning when it became clear that there just weren't enough votes in this county to make a difference. Like she lost by a decent amount. Like, I think it was like an eight point spread or something like that. And so she could not make up that ground based on whatever happens on the county and whether or not they allowed the votes for these two hours. Now, they're still going through the process to try to litigate the basic principle of, like, you should count every vote. You let these people vote. You should actually count them. You shouldn't just, like, shove them in a box to the side, right? You count the votes. But it's not going to make a difference in the race. and and so she lost the other guy whose name i've already forgotten again at one talarico talarico i keep you know i keep thinking of other t names but not that one tal talarico talarico talarico okay anyway yeah.
|
Ivan:
[51:20]
| I'm saying it i don't know why you know i'm doing this thing where i'm like you know.
|
Sam:
[51:25]
| People on the left are also uncomfortable with how much he is wearing his religion on his sleeves. Like he's taking democratic positions, but he's doing it from a religious point of view. He expresses himself as an evangelical, even though he doesn't agree with all the right wing evangelical positions. And so that makes people a little bit nervous about like, is he going to be the kind of guy that you get him in office and then he moves Republican anyway, like, and sort of does, doesn't play along with the Democrats a lot. So they're worried about that kind of stuff, you know? So we'll see. But at the same time, it's Texas.
|
Ivan:
[52:11]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:12]
| You know, how do you, how do you appeal to the potential people who are dissatisfied with Donald Trump, but don't like the normal Democrats, you know?
|
Ivan:
[52:22]
| You know, one thing is that I know plenty of people that are deeply religious, but are also very liberal.
|
Sam:
[52:29]
| Yes. And there's not a straight, like, you're religious, therefore you're conservative. It's certain types of religion that go along with the conservatism.
|
Ivan:
[52:40]
| I mean, look, even with Catholics, which the whole abortion thing is an issue.
|
Sam:
[52:47]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[52:47]
| Man, let me tell you something. Some of the most liberal people I've ever met, I mean, like, extremely, are fucking Catholics. That'll make some people that we think are liberal look like just fucking, you know, you know, complete, you know, capitalists. So, I mean, there's the whole.
|
Sam:
[53:07]
| Like, in the 70s and 80s, there was this whole Catholic liberation theology thing going on.
|
Ivan:
[53:12]
| Liberation theologists, exactly. Those people I'm referring to, yes.
|
Sam:
[53:16]
| And, you know, people have said all the time that, like, if you actually, like, read the Bible in the New Testament as opposed to the Old Testament, it's fairly radical liberal ideas all through that thing.
|
Ivan:
[53:30]
| Yes. Well, I mean, that is the reality. And that's one of the things that, you know, because I did I did spend a lot of time with people that deeply, you know, study liberation theology. And, you know, I realize that it's one of those things where it's one of the worst fucking lies by the evangelicals that the New Testament, you know, that they completely act like the New Testament is some kind of right-wing fucking writing when it is about the most fucking flaming liberal thing you could see in your life.
|
Sam:
[54:04]
| Yes. The whole, like, rich people passing through the eye of a needle.
|
Ivan:
[54:09]
| Anti-rich people. I mean, you know, anti-discrimination, anti-every, all of this shit.
|
Sam:
[54:18]
| Yes. The golden rule.
|
Ivan:
[54:20]
| The golden rule.
|
Sam:
[54:22]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[54:24]
| I mean, it's just, it's bonkers.
|
Sam:
[54:28]
| Yes. Anyway, so people are nervous about him for that reason. Also, for Texas Senate, and this was for Texas Senate, by the way, on the Republican side for Texas Senate, they've gone into a runoff between the incumbent. This is not Ted Cruz. This is the other one. What's his name, Yvonne? I'm so bad on names this time.
|
Ivan:
[54:50]
| Tallarico?
|
Sam:
[54:51]
| No, no, no, no. The incumbent senator from Texas on the Republican side.
|
Ivan:
[54:55]
| Cornyn. Cornyn.
|
Sam:
[54:58]
| Cornyn. Yes. So Cornyn is running against Paxton, and neither one of them got a majority, and so they're going to run off. And the runoff schedule in Texas is long, so we're going to have like a few months of this, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[55:11]
| It's in May.
|
Sam:
[55:11]
| It's in May. So you're going to have this going on. And, you know, Paxton has his own set of scandals. So the dream Democratic scenario.
|
Ivan:
[55:23]
| I mean, how the hell this son of a bitch still is in politics is a testament to the new GOP.
|
Sam:
[55:33]
| The GOP in Texas impeached him for all sorts of wrongdoing. And then he was acquitted as part of the impeachment proceedings. He's had issues with his wife. He's had issues with corruption. He's had issues with all kinds of different things. And yet he has survived all of them so far.
|
Ivan:
[55:56]
| The new GOP.
|
Sam:
[55:58]
| Now, so again, the Democratic dream scenario essentially started with the victory, started with the moderate already winning on the Democratic side and ends with if Paxton wins the primary on the Republican side, they think that combination would give them a real chance.
|
Ivan:
[56:21]
| Well, I do agree. because look, you just said it yourself. The guys that fucking impeached him were his own party in the first place. They already tried to fucking torpedo him. Okay. They already believe he is, you know, irredeemable. So, yeah, that's going to, I think that that will definitely impact their chances of keeping the seat. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[56:49]
| Right. So we shall see, like, you know. People on our Slack and elsewhere make the point that, you know, Texas for the Democrats is Lucy Charlie Brown and the football. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[57:04]
| I know.
|
Sam:
[57:04]
| For years and years, it's like Texas is slowly moving. It's getting purple. The Democrats are going to win any time now. Any time now. And, you know, this last 2024 went the opposite direction. It went more red than it's been in a while. You know, but Texas has actually been like, you know, in people's heads, Texas is this solid red state. And in fact, it is not, it is a red state, but it is not as solid as people think it is. It's like, you know, the Republicans have an advantage. It's a decent advantage, but it's not like Wyoming. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[57:48]
| No, and it's also helped a lot by a lot of things that the Republicans have done to structurally tilt it their way, okay?
|
Sam:
[57:59]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[57:59]
| Because if you see the general population, it's not as conservative as the voting would let you believe. It is, but it's moderate, okay? It's not, you know, right? It's a lot of big cities, okay? You know, you got San Antonio, you got Dallas, and they're very blue, and Austin. So, you know, the state is a lot more moderate than... It seems at first glance.
|
Sam:
[58:34]
| Right. And so, you know, who knows? Like the safe response on anything Texas related is I'll believe it when I fucking see it. And not one moment before, you know, you know, because I don't know.
|
Sam:
[58:55]
| Occasionally you get inroads and it really seems to be the common, the combination. you have to have a republican who's in trouble anyway okay right you know and then you have a more moderate democrat you know and with that combination democrats have gotten close before and yeah i i long-term trends yeah at some point you'll probably have a democratic senator again you know or you might have the state go blue in a presidential election at some point But again, believe it when you see it, not one moment earlier. Okay. Other stuff from the primary. There are lots of races all over the country. The only others that I saw someone talking about, and I think this was Chris Hayes on MS Now. I wasn't even fully paying attention, and I think it was on in the background, so apologies. But I think mostly in North Carolina, but in some other places, too, there have been primaries where there has been a Democrat who ended up.
|
Sam:
[1:00:08]
| Cooperating with the Republicans on one issue or another. Like there was one in North Carolina, I believe, who provided the swing vote in the state legislature to allow some additional cooperation with ICE in the state of North Carolina.
|
Sam:
[1:00:26]
| And then some Democratic constituent just got extremely upset about that, ran against them in the primary and won.
|
Sam:
[1:00:36]
| Because and there were several examples of this sort of thing where there were more moderate republicans who actually did the thing and you see this in in the congress like uh all the time too where you have a handful of democrats who will go along with you know with this just this last week we had war powers resolution stuff we had democrats go along with that or we had democrats go along with reopening the government after the shutdown. We have Democrats go along with whatever. We have a small handful of them. And apparently at the local level, in North Carolina specifically, but I think a couple other states, there were Democrats who did that and then just immediately got punished.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:17]
| Well, apparently also, Fetterman's stroke made him a Republican.
|
Sam:
[1:01:20]
| Well, yeah, pretty much. He didn't have a primary this time, but it's a tangent there. But yes. Yeah. So a bunch of these folks got punished. And so which is a little, you know, in Congress, you know, different states are doing different things. Right. In Texas, the moderate won. In a bunch of these other places, the moderate incumbent got punished and tossed out for not doing enough to fight what was going on and instead sort of going along in certain cases. So those are the, those are the two main things that I remember. There probably is more, like I said, I wasn't prepared. Like I, after, you know, sometimes after these, like there was a, there was another election of, A few months. I don't know. Whatever. I had like a nice little cheat sheet of here are all the things that happened that I saw some post online and I saved it and I had it ready and blah, blah, blah. I didn't do that. I did share on the curmudgeon's core Slack a TikTok that had all that kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:29]
| Wait a second. Yeah, and it wasn't even up to date when you shared it.
|
Sam:
[1:02:31]
| Well, it was like.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:32]
| It had some mistakes.
|
Sam:
[1:02:33]
| It was a few hours old.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:35]
| It had mistakes.
|
Sam:
[1:02:36]
| The only mistake.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:37]
| I heard it and I'm like, what the hell is this thing talking about?
|
Sam:
[1:02:41]
| The only mistake was it didn't have that Crockett had conceded. It was a few hours old. Everything else was fine. Let me actually find out. I'll play that for you. There we go. I just have to find it. I just have to find the thing where you complained about it. And then that'll be my shortcut to bringing it up.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:06]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:03:08]
| Okay, here we go. This is Amanda Nelson. By the way, good TikToker, political content, has good content every day. But let me bring it up.
|
Amanda Nelson:
[1:03:18]
| We had elections last night, and a lot of Republican incumbents had very bad nights. But let's start with the big one, the Texas Democratic primary. It's been called for James Tallarico by most places, but there were some issues with the Dallas county vote. Republicans introduced a precinct system to the county for the first time. Most people could vote before anywhere in the county that they wanted, but now they had an assigned precinct. Some of them, most of them, a lot of them had no idea. A judge ordered the polls to be kept open after 7 from 7 until 9 p.m. so that people could figure out where they were supposed to go. And then Ken Paxton, the attorney general for Texas and a candidate in this race for the Republican primary, appealed it. And the Texas Supreme Court sided with Paxton. So those votes that were taken in Dallas from 7 to 9 p.m. are not being counted. So Crockett is not actually conceded. And I expect there will be lawsuits. Dallas County primary voters are largely black. I don't care how you feel about who may or may not have won this race, but we should be calling for every vote to be counted. in all circumstances. Meanwhile, the Republican Senate primary is messy, messy, messy, messy. John Cornyn's already spent $60 million fending off this challenge, and it didn't work. They're going to a runoff. Back to the Dems. In the Texas second, Al Green is struggling to maintain his incumbency. Al Green was the rep at the State of the Union with the sign that said Black people aren't apes. He's 78 years old. Runoff.
|
Amanda Nelson:
[1:04:35]
| In the Texas 2nd, Dan Crenshaw has lost his primary to Steve Toth, who is crazier than Dan. Somehow, this is Dan, if you don't remember.
|
Amanda Nelson:
[1:04:47]
| In the Texas 23rd, Tony Gonzalez is also failing to stave off a primary opponent. This is the guy whose girlfriend set herself on fire. Run off. Yikes. And the attorney general race. Going to a runoff. Oh, who's that? Our good friend Chip Roy. Did not do well. Not going to be in Congress one way or to other. The North Carolina 4th had a primary rematch between Valerie Fushi and Nita Alam. Fushi held on by like a thousand votes. Super close. They had some differences on data centers and funding from Israel. Two votes! North Carolina's state Senate seat, the 26th. Phil has sat in that seat for 20 years. He's been the Senate pro-temporary president for 15. He is responsible for redrawing the maps of North Carolina at Donald Trump's behest last year. He lost by two votes. Two. His son sits on the North Carolina Supreme Court. So, you know, expect shenanigans. North Carolina's House District 106. Carla Cunningham is a Democrat who has voted with Republicans in North Carolina to partner with ICE. She lost her primary 77 to 22. Ouch. Over in Arkansas, we had a special election and a flip. This is the 70th House District. Alex Holliday was running for that seat again. He lost by 200 votes last time. He won by over a thousand votes this time. I talked to him as part of Choose Your Fighter. You can go back on my feed and see that interview. Sorry about your bad day, Cornyn. Hope it gets better.
|
Sam:
[1:06:11]
| Okay, that's it.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:13]
| I forgot about Crenshaw losing, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:06:16]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:16]
| Oh, well. But the thing is that he lost to somebody who is more unhinged.
|
Sam:
[1:06:22]
| Yes, and the guy whose girlfriend set herself on fire, he has since.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:27]
| Yeah, he's withdrawn.
|
Sam:
[1:06:28]
| Well, it was going to go to a runoff, but he has since the party leadership basically told him, get out. And he is not resigning his seat, but he has announced he's dropping out of the race.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:39]
| That is something that is very important correction because I need to honor that girl about that. I don't want this to go wrong. That woman was not his girlfriend. That woman was pressured and harassed into a sexual relationship with this asshole who was her boss.
|
Sam:
[1:06:55]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:56]
| And she felt bad about it, ashamed, embarrassed in her marriage and fucking killed herself over it. No, not her his girlfriend.
|
Sam:
[1:07:08]
| I stand for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:10]
| But everybody's getting this wrong, and it's pissing me off. This woman was harassed intensely by this asshole into a sexual relationship, and she felt cornered as an employee.
|
Sam:
[1:07:25]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:26]
| That guy is really messed up.
|
Sam:
[1:07:28]
| Yeah. And he has dropped out of the race. So I guess the runoff, the other guy is likely to win. But he is at the moment saying he's going to serve out the rest of his term. I know there had been some talk of disciplinary hearings within the House. Like, even the other Republicans are appalled by this guy and were about ready to take action. Yeah, even given they're really narrow margins. But I guess that I guess the deal has probably been made that he can serve out his term in exchange for dropping his reelection bid. So so I don't expect really more to come of that. But, you know, if more comes out, it could still flare up. So anyway, that's it for the election summaries. Shall we take a break?
|
Ivan:
[1:08:18]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:08:20]
| Okay. Here we go. Here comes a break. And when we come back, it'll be my turn. Back after this. Okay. We got two things. Maybe we can spend a little bit of time on each, at least the big things. One, I think we'd be remiss in not following up on Iran. Last week, we were still in the very first hours of it.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:19]
| Well, we did do some coverage of Iran first. You did read the message from our dear leader. Do you want to read it again?
|
Sam:
[1:09:27]
| No, I don't want to read it again. Once was quite enough.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:31]
| I mean, it's like reading that shit, almost like it's like it's like almost like try to it's like almost clogging your heart arteries with something. It's like clogging my brain with like this garbage infusion. OK, of nonsense. Well, but but but wait.
|
Sam:
[1:09:51]
| Wait, I need to say this since you mentioned Donald Trump's statements. there was also a press availability earlier today with donald trump and hegseth, and there are a few quotes i'm just going to scroll up and down i have not watched the actual video of this but i noticed as we've been speaking here on on i have mastodon up and there were a few highlights that were posted it was actually highlights you.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:20]
| Be you be lowlights.
|
Sam:
[1:10:21]
| Yes. Posted by threads. It was actually threads. Aaron Rupar posting on threads. I just had a gateway into Mastodon. Okay. So the first highlight he posted was, this was Trump speaking to a grouping of Latin American leaders. Okay. Trump to Latin American leaders. Quote, I'm not learning your damn language. I don't have time.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:47]
| Well, we didn't expect that Trump at age 80 Whatever the fuck you are Nobody asked you Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:10:55]
| Here's another one.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:56]
| Not learning your damn language Okay, all right, very good.
|
Sam:
[1:11:00]
| Another quote from Trump. We use missiles. You want us to use a missile? They're extremely accurate. FOOM! Right into the living room. That's the end of that cartel person. Okay, let's see.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:16]
| The fucking hell. The fucking hell. How could we be living this right now for real?
|
Sam:
[1:11:25]
| Okay, here's another one. Trump on Mexico. Quote. I like the president very much. She's a very good person. She's got a beautiful voice. Beautiful woman. I said, let me eradicate the cartels. No, no, no, please, president. We have to eradicate them. We have to knock the hell out of them. The cartels are running Mexico. We can't have that. Okay, here's a Hegseth one. So Hegseth was asked, oh wait, let me get the beginning, the question too, because that was important to this. Trump asked Hegseth, is Rubio better in Spanish? And Hegseth answered, I only speak American.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:12]
| Oh, my God. Oh, Jesus Christ. Fucking hell. Well, everything seems to be going well over there.
|
Sam:
[1:12:24]
| Huh?
|
Ivan:
[1:12:26]
| Mi no spico americano.
|
Sam:
[1:12:32]
| Okay, another Hegseth quote, and then I think we can move on and get back to Iran.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:38]
| Oh, God.
|
Sam:
[1:12:39]
| This was all at the meeting with the Latin American leaders. Hey, Seth, for far too long, our country's gaze was only on borders in far-flung places, not our own border, not our own hemisphere, not the Western Hemisphere. President Trump has established the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, the Donroe Doctrine, and the War Department is implementing it as fast as we can.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:02]
| Just, you know, so eloquent, so full of, you know, strength.
|
Sam:
[1:13:11]
| Okay, anyway, I ran. We did speak about it last week, but we were still in the very first early hours of the conflict. I think the main thing that, first of all, it was confirmed that the Ayatollah was killed. at the first, you know, while we were recording last week.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:32]
| Not just the Ayatollah, but almost literally. The whole, I still go and I'm like, I am still in shock at the stupidity of the Iranian leadership.
|
Sam:
[1:13:43]
| That they had a meeting.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:44]
| In terms? Yes! With everybody in person. Yes, and it wasn't in some kind of like ridiculously hardened bunker.
|
Sam:
[1:13:53]
| There's just some house.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:54]
| Of all places. Yeah. What do they think? What? I don't, I'm, I'm, it's stunning.
|
Sam:
[1:14:04]
| Well, and the reports are, and, and, and I don't know how much of this has been confirmed because it seems actually kind of alarming that this level of detail was coming out. But I saw reports saying that specifically, you know, how the Israelis located him and everything was first of all. Well, no, no. First of all, they have all kinds of on-the-ground intelligence, right? Well, yeah, that they do. They do have, like, molds in the Iranian government, and they have that.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:35]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:14:35]
| But also, more specifically, Tehran and lots of Iran has a massive, like, you know, CCD surveillance network around the whole city.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:50]
| And they infiltrated it, of course.
|
Sam:
[1:14:52]
| And the Israelis infiltrated it. So they had access to all the security cameras across the whole city and were on an ongoing basis tracking the movement of all the significant leaders that they cared about.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:07]
| I mean, I'm just shocked that there's stupidity.
|
Sam:
[1:15:15]
| Yeah. So anyway, when we recorded last week, there had been some reports of the Ayatollah's death. Iran was denying it. Other sources were saying yes. But and by the time we finished the show, it looked like it had probably happened, but still wasn't 100 percent confirmed. It was confirmed later. As you said, lots of other leaders killed. I mean, they basically decapitated huge numbers of the Iranian leadership. I mean, seriously, imagine the same effect as someone bombing the State of the Union address here. I mean, we're at that level of decapitation.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:58]
| That level, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:16:00]
| But, you know, and, you know, there are people survive and there's still leadership and it's still continuing, just as it would here. We have the designated survivor, you know, and so, but all of that is going on. And then the Iranians have, of course, been retaliating. And they have been striking basically every fucking country in the region. I mean, especially places where there are American assets in place. But not only. I mean, they hit Azerbaijan the other day. Basically, every Gulf Coast state that exists has been hit. Israel, of course. Israel has been attacking Lebanon as well as Iran. The U.S. has been attacking Iran. One of the things that has been coming out over the last, I guess it's been a week now, is the administration has apparently been taken somewhat by surprise by the level of the Iranian response. What?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:08]
| They just expected that nothing was going to happen?
|
Sam:
[1:17:10]
| Well, the last couple of times that Iran has been attacked, they've sort of done one half-hearted counterattack, and then it's been over, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:21]
| Yeah, but it's almost also because... I mean, on purpose, they held back. I mean, that is what they did.
|
Sam:
[1:17:29]
| They held back on purpose. They held back on purpose before they specifically wanted not to escalate. Okay, this time, you killed their entire leadership.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:41]
| What did you expect?
|
Sam:
[1:17:43]
| You're doing a massive ongoing attack that you have said explicitly will probably last several weeks.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:50]
| But here's the other problem. I'm going to tell you the other problem of what they have done. Okay, the biggest issue.
|
Sam:
[1:17:58]
| What the Iranians have done.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:59]
| Well, I'm going to say...
|
Sam:
[1:18:01]
| Or the Americans. Or the Israelis.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:02]
| The Americans in terms of like, why are they surprised that there was more of a response?
|
Sam:
[1:18:07]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:08]
| Look, in the past, when we've done a military campaign of this type anywhere, okay, first thing to do, There was a mass buildup that took way longer than the buildup that they did. Yes. Spent a lot of time in preparation. And when they went in on first strikes, it wasn't a small first strike. The first strikes were meant to paralyze the other opponent, okay? To immediately inflict such damage that they were basically paralyzed.
|
Sam:
[1:18:47]
| To be fair, they did decapitate the leadership, as we said. But the other part.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:52]
| But that's a relatively easy target, if you think about it.
|
Sam:
[1:18:55]
| Well, no, no. But those are not. The key missing.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:59]
| And actually, that actually. Wait, wait, wait. But that actually is counterproductive for them to do that. Because if you take out the leadership, that there's nobody to talk to that to kind of like say, hey, we're going to do this. You can stop. No. You talk about there's no decision making. You got everybody here under attack. What I heard a little bit is that they decentralized decision-making at that point so that they all could fire anyway if they got hit. So what the hell? You went and you created this situation where they didn't – okay.
|
Sam:
[1:19:30]
| The key missing element for the shock and awe kind of stuff that you were talking about for the Iraq wars was actually you start out by eliminating air power. and making sure you have that's the focus you you make sure you have complete control of the airspace as soon as possible now you'll notice what's happening right now and the other place that the americans had not well there's several places the americans had not thought through even last week we were talking about hey they had no plan for day two right but like, These they're using their cheap drones as part of these attacks that apparently they've stockpiled, you know, 100,000 of these things or something like they've been they've been constantly building these cheap drones. They cost like 20 grand each to make or something like that, something insanely cheap. And they've been attacking all of these Gulf countries where the Americans have been giving them Patriot missiles for defense against missile attacks. These patriots cost like a couple million dollars each per missile, and they're designed to go after missiles, so they're not actually all that good against these drones.
|
Sam:
[1:20:47]
| And every time they shoot down one of these drones, they're spending $2 million to shoot down a $20,000 drone. And they've got a lot of these drones and not very many of the Patriot missiles. And this is just one of those planning things. So enough so.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:04]
| But this is once again, lack of strategic planning around this and forethought into, hey, what can they do? How do we prepare? How do we, by the way, because the preparation for this was not that complicated. Well, and look, who could give you the tools to prepare for this very effectively? What country?
|
Sam:
[1:21:28]
| Well, this is what I was going to say. Ukraine, of course. Because here's the thing. This was not, there's no way this should have been unexpected.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:35]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:21:36]
| Because the Russians have been using the Iranian drones in Ukraine as like their primary mode of attack for months and months and months now. I mean, they use other things, too, but they've been using extensively these drones.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:52]
| And so if you didn't have a strategy to completely neutralize that threat to do that, that you're a bunch of idiots.
|
Sam:
[1:22:01]
| And let's be very specific here. It's not even the Russians using some Russian drones that the Iranians don't have access to are.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:08]
| Using Iranian drones.
|
Sam:
[1:22:11]
| Yes. The exact same kind of drones that Iran is now using in the Gulf.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:16]
| Ukraine is fighting and neutralizing in very large swaths and they've developed defenses for. But hey! You know, we're smarter than everybody, right, Sam? Our leadership is, I mean, as you can see, I mean, those quotes you gave, oof, let me tell you. Talk about, talk about it. I mean, intelligence there. Oof, let me tell you, I'm overwhelmed.
|
Sam:
[1:22:42]
| Well, look, I mean, the fundamental thing is just, it's seemingly just, it's not even that they had a bad plan. It's literally that, again, like we talked last week, the plan did not go beyond the first few hours of the conflict.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:02]
| The plan was like the plan of what we've done before, what Trump has done many times, which is just launch missiles and then, OK, bye. They expected just what you OK, you actually very well encapsulated it earlier when you said that. They thought they were going to get a response like what's happened before. And are shocked that it's been more extensive. And it shows absolutely no, as we've talked about how this administration operates, no long-term plan. No thinking of anything beyond, you know, the current moment.
|
Sam:
[1:23:42]
| And they never, because I feel like this is fundamentally connected to the entire way MAGA operates. and the fact that they have no empathy for anything, no consideration whatsoever of, hey, let's try to think through what it would be like to be the other side of the conflict and what they would do.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:04]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:05]
| You know, because they can't, they physically cannot put themselves into the position of the...
|
Ivan:
[1:24:13]
| Or mentally, not physically.
|
Sam:
[1:24:14]
| But... Right. Into the mental position of the other side and try to role-play that out. It appears to just not be a skill they have at the leadership level. And look, I am sure there are people at the Pentagon who are very qualified to do this.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:32]
| Right, but they're not listening to them.
|
Sam:
[1:24:34]
| I'm sure there were plans on the shelf that had been written and refined over the course of many years and decades of if we really had to do a full attack on Iran, what would we do? I can almost guarantee you those were ignored completely I'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:51]
| 100% sure that you're right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:53]
| Right you know because oh, experts did that. We don't like experts.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:00]
| Oh, we don't like experts.
|
Sam:
[1:25:02]
| You know, that was touched by people that Biden and Obama liked.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:06]
| Therefore, we can't even look.
|
Sam:
[1:25:08]
| We're going to shred them. Yeah. We're not going to look at those.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:11]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:25:11]
| And, you know, and so we hadn't thought of that. Apparently, we hadn't thought of, oh, people might want to get evacuated from the region. How would we deal with that? And Rubio is out there. I think it was Rubio who said, And, like, this wouldn't be a problem except the airspace is closed.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:28]
| Oh, who could have foreseen that that could be a problem, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:25:32]
| And now, and they're also surprised that there may be shipping issues in the Straits of Hormuz.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:38]
| Oh, my God. Who the hell could have foreseen that as well? How could that have impacted the price of oil, Sam? Oh, my God.
|
Sam:
[1:25:48]
| Right. Well, we'll just tell them it's safe. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:50]
| Hey, how could going and battling against every clean energy project of the United States and then all of a sudden launching a war that restricts the exports of liquid natural, liquefied natural gas and oil have an impact on energy prices, Sam? My God, who could have foreseen all of this, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:26:12]
| No one.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:13]
| It's completely out of the blue. There's a whole bunch of elitist, overeducated pinheads that we don't listen to.
|
Sam:
[1:26:22]
| Right. Because, and then, and we had started to talk about this last week, but it seems to have become even more clear this week. No thought whatsoever. Okay, we're going to decapitate the leadership. Okay, who's next? And how does that work?
|
Ivan:
[1:26:38]
| And how would you have worked, if that's what you wanted to do, who did you want to? Because, okay, we're not, by the way, how many times did they flip-flop from regime change, no regime change? Regime change or no regime change? I mean, but of course, because they had no thought about it later because you would, what you would have been doing is working. Okay, who is going to replace them if you're going to kill them all? We negotiated with them in order to go and like do something.
|
Sam:
[1:27:06]
| Now, Donald Trump has said in another Truth Social post that he does expect to have a say in who gets to be picked.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:16]
| Ah, I see.
|
Sam:
[1:27:17]
| And that the one that the Iranians have picked so far, which is the son of the one we killed, the high total we killed, is unacceptable. And that won't do.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:26]
| I see.
|
Sam:
[1:27:29]
| Now of course the i'm sure they're going to try to respond by that but just whoever the iranians pick just kill them until we get one that we think we like or maybe.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:39]
| Okay maybe the iranians will get a little bit fucking smarter this time and not just set him up somewhere where he can just get fucking killed.
|
Sam:
[1:27:46]
| You know yes the the.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:52]
| I don't know. Listen, first of all, what we did is abhorrent. What the United States has done right now. And as we criticize the war plans or whatever, let me go back to one thing, because I do agree that some people have talked about how we're talking about this like it's some kind of sport or whatever. What the United States did in this attack and what it's done and the damage and the killing that is done together with Israel is abhorrent. It's ridiculous. There's no reason for this. There's never been any fucking reason for this. OK, you know, we had, OK, an agreement that President Obama forged to limit their Iranian nuclear plan, OK, to develop nuclear weapons. This had been solved. And the only reason we don't have it right now is because Donald Trump decided that because Obama did it, I don't want it. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:28:43]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:43]
| This issue had been put to bed. Number one. Number two. Right now. The only reason this happened is because of the fucking Epstein files and because Netanyahu wanted it and dog walked Trump into it because he figured, well, how can I get this distraction off my head? Hey, let's go to war. Fuck it. I like bombs. I don't like those Arab guys. Persians. Yeah, not Arabs.
|
Sam:
[1:29:11]
| Donald Trump was quoted this week.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:13]
| Well, he'll call them Arabs, even though they're Persians. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:29:16]
| Donald Trump said this week, in my first term, I built this military. In my second term, I'm using it. So, anticipate more. He's been talking about Cuba recently, too. He recently said something about, like, we're going to put Rubio in charge there. So, like, apparently Rubio's going to, yeah, they're going to do something in Cuba and Rubio's going to be president there or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:42]
| We're going to make him the governor of Cuba.
|
Sam:
[1:29:46]
| Something. Yeah, I don't know. so he yeah he said repeatedly like Cuba's next, in one way shape or another, The peace president.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:58]
| The peace president.
|
Sam:
[1:30:00]
| You know, he did say, didn't he say something like, since you didn't give me my Nobel Peace Prize, now I don't have to worry about peace so much anymore?
|
Ivan:
[1:30:08]
| I think he did say that at one point. But he probably stole the man the Nobel Peace Prize again anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:30:14]
| Well, what better way to get peace than to.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:17]
| Go to war?
|
Sam:
[1:30:18]
| Than to fully destroy your enemy so they can't fight back anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:22]
| There is this movie that I always use to quote. it's not a it's not a good movie but it's uh oh god where the hell i had the dvd around here, it was it's called sale of the century okay and the sale of the century is a movie with gregory hines and chevy chase where they were arms dealers okay and they go to this there is this arms sales like bizarre thing whatever did you know they show what they do and the whole the slogan was arms for peace. You know, I always loved the slogan, arms for peace, Sam. That's what you got. You got, you know, you got, you know, war for peace, arms for peace. Yeah, you know, but sale of the century. It's got a few funny moments. It's not a good movie, but there's a couple of things that are funny in the movie.
|
Sam:
[1:31:18]
| I am looking for this and not finding, Oh, a 1980, Deal of the Century.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:24]
| Deal of the Century.
|
Sam:
[1:31:26]
| Deal of the Century, 1983 is the movie you're thinking about. Sale of the Century was, there were apparently a few game shows with that name.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:34]
| But in different countries. Yeah, that's the game. Deal of the Century. Deal of the Century.
|
Sam:
[1:31:37]
| Deal of the Century. There we go.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:40]
| So, yeah. You know, arms for peace, Sam. War for peace. War for peace. The more we bomb, the more peace we'll get.
|
Sam:
[1:31:51]
| That's that's lovely. OK, let's do a quick switch up because I don't want to end without letting you talk a little bit about more bad economic numbers that came out this week.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:05]
| Sam, hey, look at that. Look, the the the the golden era, the the jobs president. So I shared it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:15]
| I know I know my situation has turned around. I just got like 30 new jobs this week.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:20]
| Wow. Congratulations.
|
Sam:
[1:32:22]
| Yeah. Yeah. I'm no longer unemployed. I am over-employed.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:26]
| You're over-employed. Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:32:29]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:29]
| Wow. That's great. Okay. So I don't know if you, I shared this chart that showed the average job gain, okay, over the last, since 2023 through 2020. February, 2026. Okay. And the one very salient point in this data is the dramatic slowdown in job creation that happened right after Trump basically came into office. Okay. And it's a, Sam, it's a stunning drop that I don't think that I have ever seen. No, I don't think. No president ever has been able to slow down job creation as effectively as Donald Trump has.
|
Sam:
[1:33:28]
| Good job. Donald's done great.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:31]
| Since the start of the presidency. And let me be clear.
|
Sam:
[1:33:34]
| Oh, come on, Yvonne. Sometimes presidents are hostage to— It's not under the president's control. It's nothing. Biden left him this destroyed economy.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:46]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:33:47]
| And he's trying to fix it, Yvonne. Tariffs will fix everything, except the stupid Supreme Court is trying to get in the way.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:55]
| Right. Okay, the refunds. It's Sam, no president ever has been more job destructive as quickly as Donald Trump. It's crazy. It's just crazy. He came into office and ever since he started with this whole thing of his trade war, economic war, tariff thing, basically ending all these subsidies, cutting all these things, you know, Now, President Biden has started all these infrastructure programs and the Inflation Reduction Act and all this investment in the manufacturing economy and whatever. And he basically came in and fucking stopped. All of those and then proceeded to do all these things that made every employer be afraid of hiring people. And he just slammed the brakes immediately on all job creation and has led to job losses. And he did this. In other cases, you can blame, you know, hey, Obama came into a bad economy from W.
|
Sam:
[1:35:04]
| I thought it was all AI. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:06]
| No, it's not the fucking AI. OK, it's not the fucking AI. It's Donald. And it's not even his advisors. It's fucking Donald J. Trump directly has been the biggest job killing president ever, ever. It's incredible. It is. And then, you know, we keep spending all these months where people keep saying that the economic data that the government is showing is great. And me and Pete on the Slack have to keep saying, man, look, the data they keep publishing keeps getting revised backwards. OK, all the other data that isn't manipulated by the government shows you that everything is fucked. It can't be that they're saying that everything is under control while all external data says everything is fucked. And even their data now is showing that we're fucked. Inflation is rising again. And by the way.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:14]
| They think oil is going to hit 100 bucks. That's not going to push down inflation. By the way, the last time we had a big inflation push was precisely because oil soared when Russia declared war on Ukraine. I mean, that was one of the side effects. OK, now Biden didn't incite the war between Russia and Ukraine. Biden did everything he could to try to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine. In this case, this idiot launched a war and was like, oh, wait, this might stop the flow of oil? Wait, this might cause oil to rise? All of a sudden, now they're scrambling to try to, you know, fix the problem, okay? Oh, we're going to offer insurance guarantees. Look, let me tell you something. Do you think insurance is going to go and make a company try to sail a fucking boat that might get shot at? The crews won't want to do it. Who the fuck wants to go and sail a fucking oil tanker through a fucking war zone? Nobody's going to do that. This is idiotic. Vessel traffic from the Strait of Hormuz has dropped like 90%. And unless there is a ceasefire completely agreed upon, it's not going to resume. Another problem that we've got, by the way, is that these idiots had been depleting the SPR last year. Do you know why these idiots have been depleting the...
|
Sam:
[1:37:43]
| The Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:43]
| The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, yes. Do you know why these idiots were depleting the SPR?
|
Sam:
[1:37:47]
| Why, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:49]
| Because they were trying to artificially push down oil prices, okay? Because they kept trying to fucking, like, lower inflation, okay? But using it just simply to lower the price of oil. Not because there was an urgency or whatever. Now the SPR has been depleted and now we've got a real shock that they created and the SPR has been significantly depleted.
|
Sam:
[1:38:13]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:14]
| So they can't use that.
|
Sam:
[1:38:17]
| Awesome.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:18]
| This is the biggest bunch of fucking morons we have ever had in charge. Makes the George W. Bush administration look like an absolute cadre of geniuses.
|
Sam:
[1:38:34]
| Indeed.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:37]
| It's, I mean, by the way, every fucking jobs report that's come out has, keeps being downward. And I said this recently, downwardly revised. OK. Over the last seven months, America has lost 76,000 jobs. That's the net result. In the last 15 years, there have been only nine months where America has lost jobs. All nine happened to be under Donald Trump. Now, I know it included COVID.
|
Sam:
[1:39:10]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:11]
| But all these since 2025 are not COVID. We've had, think about nine, right?
|
Sam:
[1:39:19]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:19]
| Since Trump is in office, we've had one, two, three, four, five.
|
Sam:
[1:39:25]
| In his second term.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:26]
| In his second term. Yep. During COVID, we only had four. And now we've had five.
|
Sam:
[1:39:34]
| You know... This is what folks voted for, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:39:38]
| Yes. And by the way, oh, here's another kicker. Check this out, how he wants to solve the price of oil problem, okay? You know, we talk about Ukraine and them helping with things and whatever, whatnot. Skazma sent one on TV with Larry Kudlow, another fucking psychopath. He says that Trump may now lift sanctions on Russian oil to try and reduce oil prices during Trump's war. Huh? How about that? Hey, now let's, hey, let's make the price of oil go up and let's let Russia sell the oil now at the higher price. How's that?
|
Sam:
[1:40:18]
| Sounds good. You know, I'm sure like on his weekly one-on-one with Putin to report on his progress, he's able to say some good things.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:30]
| Oh, he's getting excellent marks. Yes, he's getting great grades, of course. You know, I'm sure that the Qataris are, at this point, are really disappointed in their investment, like right now. They give this guy a plane. They give a plane, I don't know, all of this shit, whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:40:47]
| Somebody went through at one point, like, just listing countries and the bribes they'd given to Donald Trump, basically. either the plane, the investment in Kushner's stuff, buying, buying his stupid, like crypto company, like whatever, like, and they were just able to like, I, you know, tick through like five or six different countries and list the huge amounts of dollars that they're funneling towards the Trump family. And it's like, oh, well, we're not even usually talking about that because, you know, we've long ago determined, oh, well, that's just how it is now.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:30]
| But here's the thing that's worse for them. So you understand that the Qataris and the UAE, Dubai specifically, more than anything.
|
Sam:
[1:41:39]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:41:40]
| One big economic engine that they've done is the super hubs that they have built for air travel, okay? You know, the Qataris with Qatar Airways and then Dubai with Emirates, okay? Well, what the hell do you think has happened in the last fucking week, like right now? So both hubs have had to completely shut down operations. It has stranded hundreds of thousands of people, okay? I have a friend who had people stranded recently because of this, okay? And many people were stranded there. They couldn't leave. So we're not talking—forget about America's not being able to get home. We're talking about the two of the largest—I mean, the Dubai hub is the largest hub right now in the world, okay? For global—for international air traffic, okay? and Doha is not far back. They've both been shut down. The negative economic impact of both Dubai and Qatar has been horrific right now at this point for this war. And they don't see how they can reopen right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:53]
| Now, I know that they said they tried to do this deal where they said, hey, if they don't use us to shoot at you, then you can't shoot at us deal. That was like this morning, which is part of it because they've been desperately trying to dial this thing down. But I don't know if that's really going to work. Well, like right now.
|
Sam:
[1:43:12]
| I mean, frankly, like if all the Gulf states say you can't, you know, you can't do anything on your American basis. you know i i don't know that trump would listen he might do it anyway and that further deteriorates things right.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:27]
| Um yes you.
|
Sam:
[1:43:29]
| Know like and so i'm not sure they would they're they're in.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:33]
| A hard place well they're yeah they're stuck between a rock and a hard place right now yeah so i suggest that the qataris and the dubai i don't know what the fuck they're gonna buy him now, well um yeah i don't know and it's the problem of trying to do business with trump okay because every deal you get fucked on and they're getting fucked they did these deals they thought yeah yeah yeah we got him we got him we got him our side or whatever and then he always turns around and fucks you anyway of.
|
Sam:
[1:44:02]
| Course i i mean this is one of the things you know, The problem, well, there are many, many problems, but when you have Donald Trump specifically and the way that he deals with everything transactionally and the way where there is no history, like there is no, there is no concept of, I shouldn't go back on this deal because that will affect the next deal because the next deal doesn't matter right now. It's only the current one. And whenever it makes sense for me to go back on it, I'm going to go back on it because I'm never thinking. That far ahead. I'm only thinking right now. And so the whole basis of sort of American soft power over the last century was based on fundamentally, like, obviously there have been exceptions, but, you know, us keeping our word, you know, and across administrations, Republican, Democrat, President A, President B doesn't matter.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:06]
| Any diplomacy, any fucking diplomacy in the world ever only really works if people keep to their damn deals.
|
Sam:
[1:45:18]
| Right. Because if you keep going back, I mean, the Iranians specifically, like this week, a couple days ago, were asked about whether or not they're ready to negotiate with the Trump administration on a ceasefire.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:34]
| No! Who the fuck would believe, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:45:38]
| They're like, we have been negotiating for years. And every time we negotiate and we start to think we're getting close to a deal, they bomb us. So why would we do it again?
|
Ivan:
[1:45:50]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:45:51]
| Yeah. I mean, if anything, the history of negotiations during the Trump administration has been like Iran's actually been engaging in the negotiations in good faith. The Trump administration is not. They've been using them as delaying tactics to get ready to do more bombing.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:09]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:46:10]
| So why the hell would you do that? Why would, why the hell? And frankly, it's the same dilemma Zelensky's in, you know, with negotiating with the Russians. Why would I negotiate with Russians? They broke the last deal.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:24]
| Well, let me tell you something. Even the Russians, I would believe them more keeping their word on a deal than fucking Donald Trump. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:46:34]
| It is a sad state of affairs. Yeah. And, you know, and look, you know, last week I said, you know, this is probably going to be the kind of thing where something happens and then it dies out in two weeks and we're not even talking about it in a month. That may still happen, but it seems like the chances are reducing. You know, between Israel and Iran, they both want to expand this. You know, they both want to make it bigger, not smaller.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:03]
| And Donald Trump's not using— The Iranians gain nothing by making it smaller. It's totally to their advantage to expanding it, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:47:12]
| Yeah. I mean, Bibi has been wanting to— They want the Gulf states to feel pain so that the Gulf states will push back against Donald Trump and Netanyahu.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:21]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:47:21]
| Correct. You know, and it makes perfect sense. And so, like, no, it does not make sense for Iran to back down or capitulate. And you get quotes from Hegseth and Trump basically being like, I don't understand.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:35]
| Complete capitulation. Unconditional surrender. By the way, can you explain to me what the fuck unconditional surrender means? Can you explain that to me?
|
Sam:
[1:47:44]
| Yeah, but not only that, they're like, I don't understand why they haven't already surrendered.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:49]
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. They're like confused.
|
Sam:
[1:47:52]
| Yeah. And again, it's that lack of the ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. But, no, to answer your question, they have almost explicitly said, what we want in Iran is what we did in Venezuela. We take out the top leader, whoever's second in charge, just decides to cooperate with us and do whatever we want.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:15]
| But they killed the second people at charge!
|
Sam:
[1:48:18]
| And a third, and a fourth, and...
|
Ivan:
[1:48:20]
| A fourth, right! So... And we keep bombing them.
|
Sam:
[1:48:25]
| And by the way...
|
Ivan:
[1:48:25]
| There's a difference in Venezuela. By the way, in Venezuela, we didn't go and bomb Venezuela like this. They went in and took Maduro.
|
Sam:
[1:48:34]
| That's it.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:35]
| In this case, we have been bombing the shit out of the country for a week plus.
|
Sam:
[1:48:40]
| We bombed a school full of elementary school girls.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:43]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[1:48:44]
| We killed like at least 150 of them.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:46]
| We fucking killed 200,000 children for God's sakes. Motherfuckers! Yeah. Look, and I'm sure that we have killed many other thousands more innocent people.
|
Sam:
[1:48:57]
| OK, we are many more. We are not being I mean, obviously, we hit the leadership in a fairly targeted way. But more generally, we're not being very discriminant. And there are reports unconfirmed that we're using A.I. shit for targeting, that some of which had inaccurate old information. One of the things I heard is that even the targeting of the school may have simply been because we had inaccurate information about what was at that location. There have been reports where we were going back to like World War One level tactics. Iran had painted silhouettes of planes on runways and we bombed the silhouettes of planes. OK, where where we spent like here's another.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:45]
| Thing that we did. OK, we fucking said we used a torpedo to sink a fucking ship, OK, which we hadn't used since World War Two. And then we sent this other fucking Iranian warship that was thousands of miles away from the from the war zone and clear violation of international rules of engagement and such kind of things.
|
Sam:
[1:50:06]
| Yeah, two things on that. One, it wasn't just the first sub it wasn't just us doing a submarine sinking a ship for the first time since World War Two. It's the first time anybody's done that since World War II. And then on the other one, it was an Iranian naval ship that had been in India for some sort of exercises, exhibition, training, that we also participated in, by the way. We were at the same event. Our Navy was. In order to participate in the event, the ship had to be completely unarmed. And it was just heading home. And not just that.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:41]
| I understood, I don't have a confirmed version of this, but apparently after we fucking sank the ship, we did not fucking off aid to the sailors.
|
Sam:
[1:50:55]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:55]
| We let them fucking drown.
|
Sam:
[1:50:57]
| I believe that is correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:59]
| Yeah. These people are sick.
|
Sam:
[1:51:03]
| This is one of those, are we the baddies moments.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:07]
| And yes, yes, we are. Oh, 100%.
|
Sam:
[1:51:09]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:10]
| And I'm sorry, Hegseth and all the fucking people that authored that should be fucking tried for war crimes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:17]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:18]
| And they've already done a whole bunch of things to qualify for that shit.
|
Sam:
[1:51:22]
| Yeah. Even before this. And now they're doubling down.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:24]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:24]
| Yes, absolutely. You know, and look, we at the same time, just like we had in Venezuela, you have like Iranian Americans and celebrating, you know, we've overthrown the Ayatollah. It was a horrible government. We have Iranians in Iran celebrating.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:40]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:41]
| To some degree. And so, you know, there's this argument that, well, we got rid of the bad guy. So no matter how we did it, it's okay. We got rid of the bad guy, both Venezuela and Iran. And I think you can't, that's once again, sort of first level thinking you have to go beyond that. Yes, you got rid of the bad guy. But if you do it in such a way that violates all the norms of how things are supposed to be done, and you don't have a plan for what's next.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:12]
| Not just norms not just norms sam laws doing it in a way it not just laws doing it in a way that we are just fucking not giving a shit about innocent people yes we're just going out there in a like in some kind of fucking murderous rage where they think this is fun, Sam. This asshole headset this week shared a fucking video combining footage of the attacks with a fucking goddamn video game, okay? Like, we're playing a goddamn video game over there.
|
Sam:
[1:52:50]
| And, you know, people think like precedents don't matter, but precedents matter. We are doing things that we should fully expect at some point.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:00]
| We'll come back to bite us in the fucking ass heart.
|
Sam:
[1:53:02]
| Somebody will do the same thing to us that we just did to them. And when we say, oh, it's a terrorist act, they'll be like, it's exactly what you did in our room.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:12]
| Exactly what the fuck we did. Exactly what the fuck we did.
|
Sam:
[1:53:16]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:17]
| We have no, no, no defense whatsoever against, you know, morally, to stand on any moral high ground at all.
|
Sam:
[1:53:30]
| And if you listen to the people in the Trump administration, they'd laugh at the mere idea of moral high ground anyway. Their whole view of the world is all just about power. And it's what you can do and who's stronger. And that's all that matters. I know, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:47]
| That's their, that's their, that's their thought.
|
Sam:
[1:53:50]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:50]
| They're a bunch of disgusting, evil people.
|
Sam:
[1:53:53]
| Shall we close up then?
|
Ivan:
[1:53:55]
| Oh, on that happy note.
|
Sam:
[1:53:58]
| We always end on a happy note.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:00]
| On such a joyous note.
|
Sam:
[1:54:02]
| You know, we, we should put the movies at the end so that we could end it with like.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:07]
| We can, we can sign off on some kind of happy note. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:54:10]
| It's like, oh, that was an awesome movie. It was fun.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:13]
| It was enjoyable.
|
Sam:
[1:54:14]
| Well, of course, you didn't talk about Batman.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:16]
| And I'm like, fuck, fuck Batman.
|
Sam:
[1:54:18]
| But Hoppers was great, right? It was fun.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:21]
| It was inspiring.
|
Sam:
[1:54:22]
| It was whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:23]
| I tell you all to go watch Hoppers.
|
Sam:
[1:54:26]
| There you go. Great movie.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:27]
| Great movie.
|
Sam:
[1:54:29]
| Okay. So let's wrap this up. Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there. Archives. All the ways to contact us. All the fun stuff, including our Patreon, where you can go and give us money at various levels. We will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that kind of stuff. And at $2 a month or more, or if you ask us nicely, You will, uh, we will invite you to the convention square slack where Yvonne and I, and a bunch of our listeners are sharing things throughout the week, chatting, all this kind of stuff. Yvonne, do you have a highlight from the slack before we close things up?
|
Ivan:
[1:55:08]
| Uh, a highlight from the slack, a highlight from the slack, right from the slack. Um, uh, let me see. Uh, let's see. Something funny. Something funny. I don't want to, like, uh, I should have been ready.
|
Sam:
[1:55:28]
| Well, we're going to have to dock your pay.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:31]
| Yeah, I know. Well, I guess the only thing that I mentioned here that we did that I didn't mention, like, here. Far-right influencer urges followers to vote Democrat and abandon GOP over Iran war. Now, Nick Fuentes, of all fucking people. A right-wing neo-Nazi went on his stream and urged people to vote Democrat. What the fuck world are we in, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:56:02]
| Yeah. Well, we didn't talk about this aspect of it, and I'm not going to go into it long this time, but there are a lot of MAGA folks. Tucker Carlson was also apparently desperately on the phone with Trump over and over and made several personal visits to try to talk him out of doing this in Iran. and has even called him afterwards to say, please, declare victory and go home. Stop. Declare victory and go home. And Trump is like, no. And all of these other MAGA folks are very... Look, there are a lot of MAGA folks very upset that we're going to war in Iran. There are a lot of MAGA folks very upset about the Epstein files. And this is causing rifts. like the biggest rifts we've seen so far now you never want to say forever because we had so many examples over the years of something that looked like it damaged trump and then like a few weeks later they're all back in the fold but these are more significant than the other than any we've seen since the access hollywood tape i'd say you know in terms of people sort of you know.
|
Sam:
[1:57:15]
| People on his own side chastising trump for what's going on so i don't know we'll see and also he's a lame duck so of course they're going to be like splintering off okay yes, anything more on that one hey that one wasn't particularly super funny but you know whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:34]
| Well okay the one the one that i'm going to say is a completely oddball one is that i shared that Lexus actually launched an electric Lexus ES. And I don't know if any of you realize, but Lexus has taken the place that Cadillac used to have in American car buyers, the older buyers. We always thought of this old guy driving around in a soft and cushy Cadillac. Well, that's been replaced by the Lexus. Okay. And the ES is the epitome of the old, old Cadillac driver. My father actually drives one now, which is the reason why I know that this is exactly because that was my father used to drive a Cadillac and now he drives a Lexus. So Lexus launched an electric Lexus. But here's the kicker about this. They launched electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and gas versions. OK, they launched they're going to strategy that, by the way, the Chinese are doing for cars because that's what they're doing. It's one of the reasons they've been really successful by launching a car, but launching, you know, versions of all different types of fuel. The thing is that the electric car is the cheapest one in their case, instead of the more expensive premium one. They actually made it the cheapest car in the lineup, but not just they made it the cheapest car in the lineup. Unlike Tesla and others, hey, let's make the electric car the super high-performance car. The cheap version of the electric car is, well, by historical standards, it's.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:02]
| Fast enough but it's not it won't it's not it doesn't have the the neck breaking speed that a lot of electrics have but it's fast enough if you get into any regular car right now it's like you know hey it goes through 60 in the seven second range which 20 years ago was considered plenty fast it's still plenty fast for most people but it's it's not going to break your neck or whatever but it's relatively cheap that's not something you want.
|
Sam:
[1:59:28]
| In a car you don't want your car to break your.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:30]
| Neck well but sam a lot of electric ev manufacturers seem to help bent on this okay you know i know it's like i mean literally i mean you built these cars zero to 60 just a standard car that some mom is going to drive the soccer that can get to 60 miles an hour in under four seconds and i mean literally that will snap your neck back literally and you're like why they don't need this.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:56]
| And by the way, it's a reason why I insist why Tesla has some of the highest death rates of vehicles out there. OK, if you look at Tesla, oh, no, our cars are safest. Listen, accident data bear out and more people get killed in Tesla's and in crashes than almost any cars right now, even though the cars and crash tests do very well. The problem is that because the cars are so fast, they really incentivize people to do shit that they shouldn't be doing with a car and wind up getting into more crashes. It's not that the car is inherently unsafe. If you drove it like driving Miss Daisy very slowly, you probably would be safer than average. But it's just it's just there are certain cars out there like Mustangs, Dodge Chargers or whatever that people get killed at crazy rates. Why? Because they're so fast, they incentivize people to do stupid shit behind a wheel and get themselves killed. And this car is the opposite. Nope. We want luxurious, dull, boring cars. Not slow, but not fast and cheap. And I think, you know, selling this car, when we're talking about that the average car in the U.S. right now is over $50,000.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:10]
| This Lexus electric car starts actually under $50,000. Okay? It's cheaper than a lot of cars. It's far more luxurious than other cars on the street. I think that they probably will sell quite well because they're nice and cheap.
|
Sam:
[2:01:23]
| Right? Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:25]
| So there you go.
|
Sam:
[2:01:26]
| Okay. With that, one last thing for me. I'm going to do my Robin Letter plug. Robin Letter on Friday, March 6th, hit 50 users. Yay. I'm up to 50. 43 of which were actually active in the previous seven days.
|
Sam:
[2:01:44]
| And so I want to get that to 100 and then beyond. But so if you are listening to this and have not yet gotten a Robin Letter invite, email me feedback at robinletter.com I will get you an invite either to one of my existing Robins or to a brand new one or to you can make your own whatever but you know ping me ping me.
|
Sam:
[2:02:08]
| You want, it's a lot of fun. And I've now, all of the Robins that were created either by me or by Yvonne are now getting real updates. One of them was having, was a little slow getting started, but they've now all got real updates from real people talking about stuff. People are sharing things. I've gotten a lot of feedback from people saying that they're enjoying it and And it's an interesting new way of doing things. So we shall see. But definitely, if you haven't gotten on board yet, get on board. And I'm especially interested, by the way, in people who are interested in creating their own Robins that do not involve me with their own other groups of people. Just a reminder, this is slower, sort of an anti-social media thing. Keep in touch with your friends. but just these tight groups of people where you take turns so that everybody sort of contributes equally and you talk about things and you keep in touch with people slowly, not with pressure to do it like every day and to capture your attention and algorithmically trying to manipulate you. None of that stuff. Anyway, up to 50 users. That's pretty good for like, what's it been? One, two, three, four, five. I launched on February 15th.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:26]
| Yeah, it's not even. We're not even in a month, three weeks.
|
Sam:
[2:03:29]
| Yeah. So anyway, 50 users. Congratulations, me. I added comments yesterday. No, Thursday. Thursday, I added comments. I did some refinements to it based on feedback yesterday or last night as I'm recording this. And I have a list of little tweaks and bug things. And I always have those and I'm working through those as well. but those were the my big batch of new features was being able to edit your posts adding comments that you can edit to the next things i'm going to work on next big things i'm going to work on are going to be monetization crap so we'll see anyway that's it for the show thank you all the.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:09]
| Crap that i the crap that i i tell that i started arguing with sam already sam who needs to make money sam's like.
|
Sam:
[2:04:19]
| The purity of the concept, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:22]
| Right, right.
|
Sam:
[2:04:23]
| No, no, I want it to make money, too. I'm just, like, thinking, like, slow, gradual growth and, you know, like, but, yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:31]
| I'm like, Sam is, well, maybe we could make a buck here, a buck there. And I'm like, no, millions. What are you talking about? A buck here, there. What the fuck?
|
Sam:
[2:04:44]
| I i hope uh i will be very gratified if yvonne's optimism is correct but uh we shall see optimism.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:52]
| I'm just look you can't turn you know if you target that you're gonna make a buck or two you're only gonna make a buck or two.
|
Sam:
[2:04:58]
| Yeah okay i i owe yvonne some annotations of the deck he put together to pitch this to investors so i i will get that done this weekend before i go into surgery on Monday. Yeah, I have my final surgery on Monday.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:13]
| Yay! Woo! Surgery! Surgery!
|
Sam:
[2:05:19]
| Yeah, and I'm presuming recovery will be fast and, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'll be back to myself in a couple days.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:26]
| Fast and furious! Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:05:28]
| We don't need to talk about those movies again. Okay, we are out of here. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Stay safe. Have fun. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll talk to you next time. We'll talk to you next week. Goodbye!
|
Ivan:
[2:05:43]
| Bye!
|
Sam:
[2:06:15]
| Okay, that's it. I'm going to hit stop, and then I'm going to go get some food.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:20]
| Food!
|
Sam:
[2:06:21]
| Yes, food. Food is important. Later.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:24]
| Yes.
| |
|
