Automated Transcript
Ivan:
[0:00]
| Oh yes i guess you didn't get much sleep.
|
Sam:
[0:08]
| What do you mean.
|
Ivan:
[0:09]
| Well did you stay up until they actually started.
|
Sam:
[0:13]
| Well remember 3 a.m.
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Ivan:
[0:17]
| Oh york is only midnight actually okay yeah that's not that bad okay yeah there's a time i gave up like about one in the morning yeah no i time.
|
Sam:
[0:27]
| Yeah no i i i I.
|
Ivan:
[0:30]
| Mean, I could see they were working, but I'm like, what the fuck are they doing? I couldn't.
|
Sam:
[0:36]
| I am never asleep by midnight anyway.
|
Ivan:
[0:39]
| No, no, no. I kept thinking there's three in the morning.
|
Sam:
[0:43]
| Yes, there's three in the morning.
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Ivan:
[0:44]
| Yeah, yeah. Right. And then you would have stayed up until like five or something or six.
|
Sam:
[0:50]
| No, they, the whole, the scaffolding was to put curtains.
|
Ivan:
[0:59]
| The curtains. You know, and I did, you know, the worst thing is that I, well, let's, hold off, let's talk about, let's talk about it on the show.
|
Sam:
[1:07]
| Well, I'll, yeah, this will be included. Okay, shall we start?
|
Ivan:
[1:13]
| Yeah, okay, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:14]
| Shall I hit the music and do the thing?
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Ivan:
[1:16]
| Yeah, yeah, fire it up.
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Sam:
[1:18]
| Fire it up, fire, fire, fire.
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Ivan:
[1:21]
| Launch the missiles.
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Sam:
[1:23]
| Here we go. Oh, yeah. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, June 13th, 2026. It's just before 1730 UTC. I'm Sam and Terny Yvonne Boas here again. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:03]
| Hello.
|
Sam:
[2:05]
| So shall we continue what we started or should we jump into something else and then go back to that later?
|
Ivan:
[2:10]
| Yeah. No, no, no. We can continue. I, you know, I thought, I'm like, as this was happening, wouldn't they want to do this like behind a curtain? I kept thinking about that. Okay. It was a thought that crossed my mind. Okay. But they didn't put that thing up until I went to sleep. So, so, so when I saw it, then this morning, I'm like, ah. Okay, that's, yeah, they didn't, you know, Trump didn't want his little ego, his little tiny little ego.
|
Sam:
[2:44]
| Well, there are a couple things here. First, I did see a few people trying to justify the curtains and the scaffolding and everything.
|
Ivan:
[2:57]
| There was no reason.
|
Sam:
[2:59]
| Let me say what some people said. Well, look, yes, they put it up with a scissor lift easily and they didn't need scaffolding for that. But when you're taking it out, it's you're actually doing a restoration. You have to be very, very careful taking it out. You have to patch the holes. Well, now that is a thing.
|
Ivan:
[3:22]
| If what they're going to do is that entire job, which.
|
Sam:
[3:25]
| Well, wait, but wait a second. And then they were like, and you got to be really careful to set it up so you don't accidentally drop the letters so they hurt, the Kennedy setter letters below and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then two things. First of all, even if that was true, it potentially explains the scaffolding. It does not explain taking like 12 hours to put up the scaffolding and then, waiting around until three in the morning. Right. Yeah, because that was clearly that was clearly to we want to do that. Like people were there were multiple live streams put on by various different networks of just a camera pointing at it, waiting to see it come down. There was a crowd in person at the Kennedy Center cheering it on. And so clearly they wanted to wait as long as humanly possible in order to have less people watching. And then putting the tarps in front of it also helped with that. And look, they missed it.
|
Ivan:
[4:36]
| I did not see a counter. I did not see a counter crowd.
|
Sam:
[4:40]
| No. And they missed the deadline, by the way. It was supposed to be done by midnight. They did file something before midnight asking for an extension. And the judge did eventually give them the 12 hours, but not until after they'd actually missed the deadline. Okay. And by the way, the whole be really, really careful with restoration. There was one cameraman who actually got the shot, got in the right angle so he could see behind the tarps.
|
Ivan:
[5:13]
| Yeah, so you could see what they pulled the letters.
|
Sam:
[5:15]
| And this was not a complicated operation. I saw someone describe it as they popped that thing off like Lego, you know, with their bare hands, no tools involved. They just grabbed the letter and pulled and it was gone. and and you know they might do some of that patching and stuff but, and as of now apparently you know which is now i don't know however many hours later whatever time it is i forget anyway they they, the the it's still up the the the the curtains are still up so people are back.
|
Ivan:
[5:51]
| Come oh they're not gonna come down for a while i.
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Sam:
[5:54]
| Didn't right right exactly so so the question is you know Do these curtains stay up for the rest of Donald Trump's presidency?
|
Ivan:
[6:06]
| I would be surprised.
|
Sam:
[6:08]
| You know, a few years, it's fine. Because you now have to mask the abomination that is the Kennedy Center without Trump's name on it. Because nobody can be allowed to see that. Also, by the way, the board said, apparently the board added something that, you know, the Trump-controlled board added something to the bylaws. that basically said if the Trump name is not on there, they're not giving any money, releasing any money to the Kennedy Center at all to actually do anything.
|
Ivan:
[6:44]
| Of course, that will be challenged legally.
|
Sam:
[6:47]
| Of course. You know, probably even the curtain will be challenged. Somebody's going to sue them to take the damn curtain down.
|
Ivan:
[6:55]
| But look, right now, I don't even give a shit if they give another dime to the Kennedy Center or the Kennedy Center doesn't hold another fucking event until Donald Trump is out of office. Just to get the fucking satisfaction of having his fucking name ripped off the damn wall was enough for me.
|
Sam:
[7:18]
| Yeah. I mean, I mean, and the fact that he had to put up the curtain, I'm not sure. Like I wanted to have the spectacle of the letters coming down and all, but I also, the fact that his ego is so fragile, he had to cover it up and do it at three in the morning, is in itself somewhat gratifying, you know?
|
Ivan:
[7:41]
| Yes.
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Sam:
[7:42]
| So, you know, that's fine. And, you know, I do actually wonder about, like, you know, the whole patching the holes and stuff like that. Because, you know, you drilled holes into a stone wall. I mean, it's not like you're ever going to put it back exactly how it was. I mean, they have good ways to patch that.
|
Ivan:
[8:02]
| Well, not exactly, but they, listen.
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Sam:
[8:04]
| I know. They can make it look decent.
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Ivan:
[8:06]
| Super restoration job. You could make it look good, but it takes, it takes work.
|
Sam:
[8:12]
| Right. Unless they were going to replace the whole damn wall, you know, but I mean.
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Ivan:
[8:19]
| Look, which they could do because it's had to be done. I worked on these stupid jobs and sometimes we've had to just go and fuck and like redo an entire wall.
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Sam:
[8:33]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[8:33]
| Because of something like this. So, yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[8:36]
| And like you said, there are good, they're, they're ways, and I don't know how big the holes were either, you know, like how noticeable will it be, you know, and, and they get, and they can do a, they can do a good job. And then there's a difference between, can you make it so that you'll only notice if you're looking for it versus can you make it so even if you're looking for it, you can't see it.
|
Ivan:
[8:57]
| Well, I mean, that's like one of the things I had to do in certain places where we were like fixing some, patching some walls like this, where basically I was just like... Okay. I mean, you have to really be looking for where the gap is. So fuck it. It stays like that. Okay. If you didn't know, you wouldn't see it. Okay. Good enough.
|
Sam:
[9:19]
| Right. And they're levels below that, too. Right. Like, OK, it's kind of noticeable, but it's not that bad, you know. And now for the Kennedy Center, I'm presuming that at some point, maybe not in Trump's presidency, but at some point they're going to want to fix it really nice. you know on the other hand you know you're you're apparently you can still go to the capitol building and see where your compatriots shot it up like 60 years ago or whenever that was.
|
Ivan:
[9:56]
| Well but they click they did that wait wait wait that's been that was finally fixed it was there for a long time though.
|
Sam:
[10:03]
| Really they completely fixed it because i thought i heard even recently Because, there are other places in the capital you can still see Civil War stuff. I remember that the last time that I went to the Capitol. No one shot up the capital in the Civil War, but there were a few fights and stuff.
|
Ivan:
[10:21]
| Okay. That I recall. So the first time I visited the capital, the bullet holes were there.
|
Sam:
[10:28]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[10:29]
| Okay. But I thought that the last time I visited D.C. that I went, apparently they had been patched, okay? But I do know that they were there for a long time.
|
Sam:
[10:42]
| When did that happen? The 50s? The 60s?
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Ivan:
[10:45]
| It was in the 60s, yeah.
|
Sam:
[10:47]
| Okay, yeah. For those who don't know, a bunch of Puerto Rican...
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Ivan:
[10:52]
| A Puerto Rican group called the Mecheteros, which was advocating for independence, went and broke into Congress and started shooting.
|
Sam:
[11:02]
| Right, yeah. Because sometimes places like this actually intentionally decide not, to fix things because it becomes part of the historical story of the building or whatever, you know. I don't know.
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Ivan:
[11:23]
| I'm going to look it up now. I thought that it had been patched last time I asked.
|
Sam:
[11:30]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:31]
| I checked on this, but I may be wrong. I might still be there, but I saw them. And I will admit that the first time that I, that I, it was a tour, it was a visit that I went to the Capitol. I'm not sure for what, I mean, because I went to DC for various things and visited the Capitol on various occasions. But there's this one time that I was in the gallery and the tour person pointed that out. And I kind of felt like, oh God, it's like.
|
Sam:
[11:58]
| You kind of hid, like, basically, yeah, your face. and like, oh, I'm not, I'm not, it wasn't me. Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[12:09]
| So let me, let me research that. But anyway. Cue the Jeopardy music.
|
Sam:
[12:13]
| But not really because it's copyrighted.
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Ivan:
[12:15]
| Oh, right, exactly. Oh, okay. Apparently they still are there.
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Sam:
[12:29]
| Okay, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[12:30]
| Yeah. The bullet holes and structural damage left by Puerto Rican nationalists on Capitol Hill were purposely left partially unpatched to serve as historical reminders. It was in 1954.
|
Sam:
[12:43]
| I thought it was in the second. Okay, so it was 50s.
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Ivan:
[12:45]
| It was the Magisteros, but it was in 54.
|
Sam:
[12:47]
| This is good because, you know, if they had been patched up, you would be compelled to go and make new holes.
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Ivan:
[12:53]
| No, I'll try not to do that.
|
Sam:
[12:55]
| No? No?
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Ivan:
[12:56]
| No.
|
Sam:
[12:57]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[12:58]
| And I believe that, I know that, I think they were pardoned. But their circumstances commuted at least at some point. So, yeah. But anyway.
|
Sam:
[13:12]
| Anyway.
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Ivan:
[13:13]
| Yeah, it was, yeah, Jimmy Carter commuted the census.
|
Sam:
[13:16]
| Well, there, there you go. There goes Jimmy doing his thing.
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Ivan:
[13:21]
| You know, that was the right thing to do. You know.
|
Sam:
[13:25]
| But... So, shall we do our normal butt-firsty stuff? I mean, we started off on the sort of newsy event, although not a super serious newsy event, the whole Donald Trump on the Kennedy Center thing.
|
Ivan:
[13:39]
| Well, I mean, it's... But I think that you hit it on the head. I mean, it's a name on a wall.
|
Sam:
[13:52]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[13:53]
| Right. I mean, that doesn't impact Americans pocketbooks or or anything or nobody's.
|
Sam:
[13:58]
| Being held in an internment camp, you know, because of that. Right. Because obviously people are. That's the whole point of like of all of the Donald Trump things that are out there.
|
Ivan:
[14:10]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[14:11]
| There are so many that are more significant than this.
|
Ivan:
[14:16]
| However it's just the fact of just you know this is one of his ego trip things, And, you know, like, I don't know, I guess they had that UFC fight yesterday.
|
Sam:
[14:32]
| Oh, wait, it hasn't happened?
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Ivan:
[14:34]
| I think it was yesterday.
|
Sam:
[14:35]
| I thought it was tomorrow.
|
Ivan:
[14:37]
| I thought it was yesterday.
|
Sam:
[14:40]
| You're going to have to check this one, too. I thought it hadn't happened yet.
|
Ivan:
[14:45]
| I know that there were airline pilots were bitching about.
|
Sam:
[14:50]
| I know they had some, they did some stuff with the lights. They had some opening activities. But I think the main event is Sunday the 14th. I could be wrong.
|
Ivan:
[15:01]
| Let me see.
|
Sam:
[15:02]
| I could be wrong.
|
Ivan:
[15:04]
| I'm trying to look at this. I mean, when UFC Freedom 250. No, you're right. It is on Sunday. Okay. I thought that because there were airline pilots complaining.
|
Sam:
[15:19]
| Well, they've been testing the lights for like two weeks.
|
Ivan:
[15:22]
| Yeah, and airline pilots had been bitching that the damn lights were, you know, worse than the fucking lasers they get pointed at them.
|
Sam:
[15:32]
| Right. Why do you need pilots going into, you know, National Airport able to see? I mean, it's silly.
|
Ivan:
[15:41]
| Yeah, well, I mean, we've shown that, you know, that's, you know, we don't, safety, we don't need that shit at National.
|
Sam:
[15:49]
| Everything's fine. And famously, the airspace around Reagan National in D.C. is really easy for pilots to deal with. So, like, they have nothing to worry.
|
Ivan:
[16:00]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's just a room to roam.
|
Sam:
[16:03]
| Yes. Anyway. Yeah. I got a book and a movie. Do you have something else first before I do a book and a movie?
|
Ivan:
[16:21]
| I have not hooked up my Whoop to my work calendar. But I will say, Sam shared this thing where it showed that the Whoop does have a stress monitor. And it works. I will tell you.
|
Sam:
[16:41]
| You've been mentioning in the show the last couple you know last couple times the stress monitor is very accurate okay.
|
Ivan:
[16:49]
| And I, so there was some guy that apparently hooked up the whoop and synchronized, you know, wrote some, you know, code. I don't know what he used, codex or anthropic, whatever. It went and like coded something so he could see who his, the people that he talked to at work that were causing the most stress.
|
Sam:
[17:10]
| So specifically, he synced it up with his calendar at work and had it, for each meeting he was at, had it look up the attendees of the meeting as well, and then generate a leaderboard based on his stress level at meetings, correlated to who was at the meetings to generate a leaderboard of which people caused him the most stress.
|
Ivan:
[17:38]
| It's fantastic. I love this. great. I, I, you know, I'm sure that I, I don't, but I noticed that typically, my work days are not that stressful for the most part. You know, I, I will say that the, the month of May, because it was the last month of our fiscal year was stressful, but in general, like my usual work days are not that stressful that's good, so yeah it's just more when something is like damn it a customer isn't answering i'm like fuck we got three days to do this what the fuck come on man, yeah that that's it that is definitely, more stressful but not my job not not not my regular work the work day no, So that's a good sign, you know, at least for my health.
|
Sam:
[18:31]
| Well, at this point, you know, I, you know, get up late. I take Alex to school. I bring Alex home from school. I walk the dog. I watch some TV.
|
Ivan:
[18:44]
| I do.
|
Sam:
[18:44]
| I do. I do. I do other things when I want to do other things.
|
Ivan:
[18:48]
| You know, I do realize that I've left your devices right now at this point. You basically just not go back to work.
|
Sam:
[18:57]
| Oh, yeah. If, if, if I can find any fucking way to make that work and not like be homeless, absolutely. You know, and yeah, so we'll see. My best estimates at this point, though, are that you have to have, a very optimistic scenario for how my portfolio does for the money to not run out before my expected lifetime. But yeah, so there has to be some delta, either significantly save money or have some income.
|
Ivan:
[19:42]
| Yeah, you got to do one thing or another, okay?
|
Sam:
[19:45]
| Yeah, basically. Now, there are scenarios where if my X company's stock does well enough, I'm absolutely fine. But again, you have to be very optimistic about that scenario.
|
Ivan:
[20:00]
| But what's the percentage return that you have calculated? Where if the return, you know, if you had that average annual return, basically, you could just say, fuck it. Did you figure out that number?
|
Sam:
[20:14]
| I'll give you a rough estimate.
|
Ivan:
[20:16]
| Yeah, like what's the percentage? Yeah, it's like around what?
|
Sam:
[20:20]
| 20 to 25% a year.
|
Ivan:
[20:22]
| Fuck, that's high.
|
Sam:
[20:25]
| Yes, that's the number that would like...
|
Ivan:
[20:29]
| Now, here's the question.
|
Sam:
[20:30]
| What has been the historical return? Well, over the...
|
Ivan:
[20:34]
| If you go to the last 10 years.
|
Sam:
[20:36]
| If you go to the last 10 years, it's more than that.
|
Ivan:
[20:38]
| Hmm.
|
Sam:
[20:40]
| But also that that number is sort of to make it so that I can maintain my current expenses indefinitely and the balance stays roughly flat indefinitely, which is actually more than I need. Like I can I can have it go down. I just need it to like last until I'm in my 90s.
|
Ivan:
[21:03]
| You need to go down slowly.
|
Sam:
[21:04]
| Right. Yeah. So anyway. It's not impossible. But on the other hand, the chances of the stock doing just as well in the next 20 years as it did in the last 20 years is not, you know, most companies don't have a 50 year run. That's all that good. You know, at some point.
|
Ivan:
[21:32]
| There is one thing. Now, at some point, one thing that could be like a driver of improved returns, even though the company may not be growing as fast, is what's happened with some companies where they start basically buying back stock or paying dividends. Okay. And so it's so and that's what's happened with some of these large companies where you bought the stock and then you kept a lot of it for a long time. And then all of a sudden, they're like, well, we're going to start returning cash to stockholders. OK.
|
Sam:
[22:13]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[22:14]
| So the two ways that you do that is either you buy back stock or you pay dividends. The stock buyback, you're like, well, how does that get me money? Well, the thing is that at some point, what happens is that you cut down the number of shares outstanding. All right. And so what that does, it raises the price of all the other shares that are still trading, okay? Because you've got a pie. You're dividing it up, say, by 1 million shares, okay? But if you lower the number of shares outstanding to 750,000, just simple numbers, that stock will go up. As a matter of fact, my employer did that several years ago on purpose, very aggressively, and doubled the price of the stock, even though the company wasn't really worth that much more in total.
|
Sam:
[23:08]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[23:09]
| Which is very interesting. So, well, it's possible.
|
Sam:
[23:14]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[23:17]
| Here's the thing. The scenario you're thinking about is not the scenario, oh, I need to win the lottery.
|
Sam:
[23:23]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[23:24]
| No. It's a scenario that's, like, possible, could be difficult, but it's not an impossible, it's not a, it's not a dream. Okay?
|
Sam:
[23:35]
| Right. Right. And, and also like, I, I, you know, the way, yeah, no, that, that, that, yes, yes. And there, there are all kinds of modifiers you could put on top of that and all kinds of behavioral stuff. But, you know, it also, you know, you know, the way these things work, it's very sensitive to what happens in the next few years, too.
|
Ivan:
[23:59]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[24:00]
| As opposed to like, you know, I would be able to better afford a crash if it happened 15 years from now than it happened this year. You know, right.
|
Ivan:
[24:12]
| Like that yeah you know.
|
Sam:
[24:13]
| That that that kind of thing so you know uh so i gotta i i but i'm watching, i gotta watch i gotta figure out.
|
Ivan:
[24:23]
| Here's a interesting thing i just saw about stock markets aside that we may talk about it later before we get to your movies but you know might talk about elon musk and, i don't know i really don't want to talk about him because he's a fucking asshole whatever fuck fuck him but, but there is this bank there's this brazilian bank called new bank that actually is sponsoring this new state soccer stadium that they built here i never even heard of this thing but it's apparently some kind of like the number one like virtual bank, in brazil okay and it's in some other places, and then apparently you remember years ago when we had hawaii accidentally sent that missile alert.
|
Sam:
[25:03]
| Yeah absolutely i.
|
Ivan:
[25:04]
| Remember yeah so so this bank did something similar, where, New Holdings co-founder, Christina Hunkeda, apologized to New Bank customers who received an app alert, telling them the bank had been liquidated, saying it was sent by mistake. Really bizarre, but that's exactly what it was, an operational error. Now, you know, I'm sorry, but if I get a notice that Charles Schwab and Company, or Fidelity, of being liquidated, I would freak out. I would immediately go into a panic. So apparently this bank sent that in error to customers saying, you know, we're being liquidated. That's not really to notice you want to get from your bank. So anyway. All right.
|
Sam:
[26:00]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:01]
| Books and movies. What do we got?
|
Sam:
[26:02]
| Books and movies. I was getting distracted because at some point I had looked up the actual, like, last 20 years, what the annual return of my X company was every year. And I was going to look it up to actually give you a real number rather than a top of my pad number. I think it's because I found lots of places with like monthly history and daily histories. And I thought I had it like right here in my like browser history, but I'm not finding it. Okay, well, let me see. I think I probably slightly overstated how good it is done. Let me see.
|
Ivan:
[26:40]
| Hold on. Let me see. I'm pulling it up. Let me see. Let me get the answer here. All right.
|
Sam:
[26:50]
| And this year had been doing really well until like the last month. It just, like, gave back several months of gains, which was annoying. But, you know, whatever. Yes, because, of course, I am extremely over-indexed in my old company stock.
|
Ivan:
[27:07]
| Let me see. Hold on. Well, this happens. No, you're right. The annualized return for the last 20 years split adjusted 25.6%. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[27:20]
| Yeah. So like if it continued to do that for the next 20 years, I'm sad. I don't have to do a damn thing.
|
Ivan:
[27:28]
| I see. I don't know about those 20 years. What about the last 10 years? Let's see. All right. Calculating. There we go. But see, the last 10 years has been only 21%.
|
Sam:
[27:41]
| That's still not bad.
|
Ivan:
[27:43]
| No, no, no. No, no, no. That's still close.
|
Sam:
[27:46]
| I could make 20% work. But see, the thing is, you never know when a company that's been doing well for a long time decides to have a lost decade and be flat for 10 years. You know?
|
Ivan:
[27:59]
| I mean, agreed. You know, I, you know, the last five years. You see, look, like the last five years has only been 12 and a half percent. So that return has slowed down. Okay.
|
Sam:
[28:11]
| Right. Although, yeah, although until the last few months, the last year was pretty damn good. It was like, you know, but again, that's the whole problem. You can't assume that the past is telling you about the future because things change. That's the whole thing.
|
Ivan:
[28:27]
| But look, I want to do this way about about former employers. You know, look, like like Hewlett Packard. Right. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, to be precise, which is the part of Hewlett-Packard where I worked at. The stock had basically been, you know, it went public at $883,000. It had been like as recently as a year ago at $15,000. Basically, it only had, you know, over 10 years of returns have been meager. Okay, all right, you know, pretty low, okay? And then all of a sudden, After all of that, it went up to $48 this year. But it spent, like you said, a decade where it just, it was just range bound. I mean, it was like in 2018, it was $17.54. And like last year was at $15.43, for example. I mean, it just, it had not budged in like almost a decade. And then boom. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:27]
| So, yeah. Anyway. So we shall see. I, you know, I don't have, you know, I've got, I've still got runway, but at the same time, like, you know, the runway will run out unless I get that, like, you know, really nice scenario.
|
Ivan:
[29:46]
| Well, you got to make some adjustments at some point.
|
Sam:
[29:48]
| So, at some point, yes. I'm living a van by the river.
|
Ivan:
[29:55]
| The van by the river!
|
Sam:
[29:58]
| Exactly. I can do that.
|
Ivan:
[30:00]
| You know, hopefully people still remember that reference since we were old people.
|
Sam:
[30:04]
| No, we're ancient. We're ancient. It's old.
|
Ivan:
[30:08]
| It's a very old reference. It's a 30-year-old reference, Sam, at this point. So think about this. A 30-year-old reference. If this was in 1985, these were people making references to us for shit that happened in the 50s.
|
Sam:
[30:22]
| Should I share that thing I shared online that you gave a middle finger to?
|
Ivan:
[30:27]
| Oh, God, yes, please.
|
Sam:
[30:29]
| Okay, so this is a Facebook friend shared this. It was from a Facebook account called Diary of a Mom. You see these things all the time, but I'm just going to read this one. And this refers fairly...
|
Ivan:
[30:40]
| Diary of a mom or diarrhea of a mom?
|
Sam:
[30:44]
| Diary. Diary of a mom. Not diarrhea, diary.
|
Ivan:
[30:49]
| Okay, diary. Okay, got it.
|
Sam:
[30:51]
| Okay, now...
|
Ivan:
[30:51]
| Sounded like diarrhea, which is not...
|
Sam:
[30:53]
| This is a genre that I've seen fairly frequently, and this is specifically targeted directly at Gen X people who graduated high school around the same time as Yvonne and I did. Plus or minus a couple years. Okay. My husband apparently woke up this morning itching for a fight. The first thing that man, who is a high school English teacher, said to me was, I'm meeting my incoming freshman today. I know that seems innocent enough. Stay with me, friends. the next thing he said was they are the class of 30, yes that's 2030 that is when these babies will be graduating from high school, according to the calendar that's only four years from today i did the math just to be sure, this was bad enough right but then that man the love of my life said the following. They are to us what we were to the class of 1944.
|
Sam:
[31:59]
| I didn't believe him, but then I did the math, this time on my calculator, because my menopausal brain is oatmeal. But y'all, the math, maths. 1930 minus 1987 equals 43. 1987 minus 43 equals 1944. So yeah, I'm not talking to that guy today. This was wholly unnecessary.
|
Ivan:
[32:23]
| Yeah, well, my son is part of that class.
|
Sam:
[32:26]
| The class of 1930. What? 1930. Not 1930. 2030.
|
Ivan:
[32:32]
| Yeah, my son is part of the class of 2030. Yes.
|
Sam:
[32:38]
| Yeah. Amazing, isn't it? It's been a while. Time keeps, like, doing that thing that time does. It's kind of annoying. And, yeah. Like, that halfway point between World War II and now is pretty much when we were graduating from high school.
|
Ivan:
[33:02]
| Fuck.
|
Sam:
[33:07]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[33:08]
| And all I do, my whoop keeps recommending I do this. This actually works as box breathing. I go and, like, breathe, one, two, three, four. And it brings my stress down.
|
Sam:
[33:19]
| There you go. There you go. So, next up, a book and a movie. Now, this book, speaking of the 1940s, this is actually a book from the 1930s.
|
Sam:
[33:32]
| But I listened to it as an audio book. And I'm going to preface, before I talk about this specific book.
|
Sam:
[33:41]
| That the last few audiobooks I've listened to, I'm seeming to have more of an issue than I used to sort of focusing on the audiobooks and paying attention to them properly, okay? Now, first of all, I'm not listening to them, like, every day either. So, like, you know, I am commuting back and forth to my son's school, even though I'm not commuting to work right now. And so that does give time in the car. But I actually not all that often pick the audiobook. So I don't, like, I don't get the momentum of keeping up with it. And also, I just, I find myself not focusing on it. Like, I've successfully listened to audiobooks in the past, but these last few, I just haven't. And I don't know if it's like the specific narrators of the audiobooks, or if something else is going on, or just I can no longer pay attention to things, or I'm distracted by, you know, actually driving. because that's when I listen to these. The only time I listen to things like this are either when I'm driving or when I'm doing household chores and I have it on my headphones. Those are like the two times. And so the last few that I've done...
|
Sam:
[35:06]
| I found myself just sort of not being, not feeling fully immersed in it. And by the time I get to the end, sort of feeling like I want to be done with this and move on to the next one. But I'm not 100% sure that the issue is the book itself rather than I'm having trouble with the format. Do you know what I mean?
|
Ivan:
[35:30]
| Ah, yes. Okay. That's what I was thinking. Okay. So it's not, yeah, it's not the book. And I've seen this happen. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[35:36]
| It might be the book. I'm not sure, but it might just be the format. Anyway, this book from 1935 by Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here. Do you know of this book? It's kind of famous.
|
Ivan:
[35:54]
| I must admit, I have complete ignorance.
|
Sam:
[35:58]
| So it is set in a, and this is somewhat timely, perhaps, it is set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, following an American politician who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator, imitating Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany. and it follows a newspaper editor who sees what is happening for what they are ahead of time and becomes a big critic of him etc it.
|
Sam:
[36:34]
| Was it was basically a critique of fascism, pre-world war ii so in the 1930s when hitler was already in charge of germany, but had not yet begun all of his expansionist crusades and, long before the U.S. became involved in the war, etc. And so it's basic, it was, I mean, the title, it can't happen here. It was basically a cautionary tale saying, hey, it could happen here. And it sort of outlined a scenario where it does. And so I'll give my usual, like, first couple paragraphs of the plot from Wikipedia. In 1936, American Senator, Berzelius Buzz Windrup enters the presidential election campaign on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness. Sound familiar at all? And promising each citizen $5,000 per year, equivalent to $116,000 in 2025, portraying himself as a champion of the forgotten man and traditional American values.
|
Ivan:
[37:45]
| Hmm also sounds familiar yeah Windrip defeats you know you once again like show how we are so so prone to repeat history and like we just forget it.
|
Sam:
[37:58]
| Yeah. Windrup defeats incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination and then beats his Republican opponent, Senator Walt Trowbridge, in the November election. Having previously foreshadowed some authoritarian measures to reorganize the government, Windrup outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the Minutemen, named after the Revolutionary War militias of the same name, who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of a corporatist regime. One of Windrips' first acts as president is to eliminate the influence of Congress, which draws the ire of many citizens as well as the legislators themselves. The Minutemen respond to protests harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets.
|
Sam:
[38:48]
| In addition to these actions, Windrith's administration, known as the Corpo government, curtails women and minority rights, eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by Corpo authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minutemen officers. Those accused of crimes against the government appear before kangaroo courts presided over by military judges. A majority of Americans approve of these dictatorial measures, seeing them as painful but necessary steps to restore American power. And then it continues, and basically, spoiler, it goes all the way through this guy's administration until the outbreak of a new civil war that eventually overthrows the fascists. So that's a spoiler for the end of this 90-year-old book, 91-year-old book. And, you know, I'll say, like I said, I don't know if it was the audiobook format and the way that I was reading it.
|
Sam:
[39:54]
| I know I wanted to like this because I wanted to be like, hey, look at all the parallels to the current time. Look at this cautionary tale. And, you know, yes, things haven't gotten quite as bad as in this book right now. But, you know, there's there's tendencies in that direction. And it's a cautionary tale. And I wanted to, like, really get into it and like it. What I found myself actually doing was mixing up—there were a whole lot of characters in a whole lot of different settings, and I couldn't keep them straight. And I was like, well, who is this guy again? How is he involved in this? Like, what's this guy?
|
Ivan:
[40:35]
| You remind me there was this episode of Seinfeld where George was supposed to read a book.
|
Sam:
[40:41]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[40:42]
| And the book was not available normally as an audio book. But apparently he found that there is this place that has books for the blind.
|
Sam:
[40:52]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[40:53]
| And that they had the book, but, you know, you had to be blind. Okay, right? So he gets the book. So he gets the book and he starts listening to it. But the voice is annoying and it really sounds like him. And it drives him nuts because it's like this is the worst narration. in history i can't you know i i don't want to listen to you know to me reading a book you know for two days so so i don't know maybe it's just a style of a narrator.
|
Sam:
[41:27]
| I mean it could have been i mean the and the the one reason that makes me think it's the format is like the last several audiobooks I've completed, I've had this sort of feeling, you know, and, and at one point I was like, okay, it's the guy's accent. I just couldn't get into it because of the guy's accent or the woman's accent. I forget which it was. Uh, this time, I don't think he had a, I don't know, But I still, I just, I don't know. And after I finished this one, I have started, actually, I think I've started two since then. Anyway, the one I'm currently on that I've just started, not that long ago, I'm only like a chapter in. And I'm already starting to feel this way about it. You know, so I don't know. But, you know, again.
|
Ivan:
[42:23]
| I think that that has to be.
|
Sam:
[42:27]
| Despite the voice and all that, it is also a scenario where there were a lot of characters with a lot of names and different settings. And I was having trouble sort of mentally keeping track of who was who and how they were related to each other. And look, I've read big, complicated books before and not felt that way, though, so I don't know. But it might be a combination of that plus, like, the format. And also, like, again, adding to it, like, I'm trying to listen to it while I'm doing something else that requires partial attention. and I'm only listening to like half an hour every couple weeks instead of listening to it every day. So by the time I'm opening it up again, I've sort of half forgotten what happened last time. I don't know, some combination of those things. So I'm going to give it a thumb sideways. I don't want to give it a straight thumbs down. It had some interesting ideas. It's got good parallels to today. It's probably worth reading in that context. I just didn't get into the audiobook version of it. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[43:39]
| Oh, wow.
|
Sam:
[43:40]
| Oh, wow.
|
Ivan:
[43:42]
| Look, I haven't listened to a lot of audiobooks. I mean, for the most part, I've read books, but I'm not big on audiobooks. But the one audiobook that I did listen to from end to end was the one that you gifted me.
|
Sam:
[43:58]
| Oh, I gifted you an audiobook?
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| Oh, a long time ago. In the 90s, by the way.
|
Sam:
[44:03]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[44:03]
| Yes. You gifted me Atlas Shrugged as an audiobook. You know, I had not read. And so you gifted it to me. And I and I did hear it. And it was on tapes. And I remember that I this was the 90s. OK.
|
Sam:
[44:19]
| And I think I did read it once back then, too.
|
Ivan:
[44:23]
| Yeah, but I did not read it. But I did listen to the to the audio book. And it was well narrated. OK. It was actually very, you know, how do I say it was very engaging. So I listen to it.
|
Sam:
[44:37]
| This, of course, by the way, for those who don't immediately recognize it off the top of your heads, it's by Ian Rand, and it's, like, one of these cult libertarian books.
|
Ivan:
[44:47]
| Yeah. It's one of those, yes, it is such a cult libertarian book.
|
Sam:
[44:53]
| I have heard people say, like, quote, that, like, teenage boys, especially in our generation, would end up either reading The Lord of the Rings or Atlas Shrugged, and either way, they'd get screwed up by it, just in a different way.
|
Ivan:
[45:14]
| I wasn't a teenager when I read it.
|
Sam:
[45:16]
| And I wasn't a teenager when I read this thing.
|
Ivan:
[45:18]
| But when I finished, I thought it was very silly. My conclusion was, this thing is very silly. This is done by an idiot. This is so silly.
|
Sam:
[45:31]
| Well, apparently, this is the key thing where all kinds of kids would read this and then become radical libertarians after reading it. And basically, like, the summary, the high-level summary.
|
Ivan:
[45:46]
| This is the glorificate—the book glorifies the Elon Musk types. Like, they are the geniuses and gods of the Earth.
|
Sam:
[45:54]
| Basically. And it basically has a whole bunch of these sort of industrialist leaders who they are the thinkers. and they drive society and they eventually get like disgusted by regulation and society trying to control them and blah, blah, blah. And then they shrug, Atlas shrugs. They decide to go off and found their own little isolated society.
|
Ivan:
[46:20]
| Which is why all these assholes are trying to find and fund, you know, found their own city. Did you notice that they're all trying to do this now? Just like an Atlas shrug, where they're trying to go. They did this in a place in like Central America turned into a fucking disaster and they've tried like on a whole bunch of different places and it's always a fucking disaster.
|
Sam:
[46:41]
| It never works out. It never works. Because if you get a bunch of, The people who would think to do this, almost by definition, are egotistical maniacs who are narcissistic and think only of themselves.
|
Ivan:
[46:58]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[46:59]
| What better way to have something rip itself apart than to put a whole bunch of these people together in one place? You know, because none of them want to be the non-leader. They all want to be in charge. They all want to do their own thing. They're all going to be bumping heads all the time. They don't have a natural instinct for, hey, let's figure out how to cooperate and do things for the benefit of everyone. No. And so instead, these things tend to like fail badly when people try them. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[47:35]
| So, apparently Trump did a truth social post where I guess he threatened to use nukes.
|
Sam:
[47:45]
| Again?
|
Ivan:
[47:46]
| Against Duran again.
|
Sam:
[47:50]
| That's lovely. Okay, let's finish this up. We've been going long enough. I'll do one quick movie. This, from 1997, The Legend of the Spirit Dog. Now, have you heard of this one?
|
Ivan:
[48:09]
| No.
|
Sam:
[48:10]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[48:10]
| Not at all.
|
Sam:
[48:12]
| Well, to give you an idea of how prominent this movie is in the world.
|
Ivan:
[48:18]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[48:19]
| It was not available on any of the streaming services I could find. Nobody had put it on YouTube. It was not available on Blu-ray. It was not available on DVD. Okay. We watched it on VHS, okay? Now, it does not have a Wikipedia page, so I cannot read a summary of it on Wikipedia. Now, I...
|
Ivan:
[48:48]
| How did this movie wound up on your list?
|
Sam:
[48:51]
| Well, there you go. We already had the VHS tape.
|
Ivan:
[48:56]
| Oh.
|
Sam:
[48:57]
| And the reason...
|
Ivan:
[48:58]
| Your VHS still works?
|
Sam:
[49:01]
| Yes. I have a working VHS hooked up in my entertainment center. We don't use it often, but it is there and it works. Now, the reason we already had this VHS tape, I can't remember if it's an aunt. I think it's a cousin. One of Brandy's cousins is in this movie.
|
Ivan:
[49:24]
| Oh.
|
Sam:
[49:26]
| My wife, Brandy Donaghy, her relative, Maggie Donaghy, plays Earth Sedona in this movie. So we had the VHS. I've had this VHS on a shelf in our house practically since the day Brandy moved in with me like 25 years ago. Something like that. We had never watched it.
|
Ivan:
[49:50]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[49:51]
| So this is waiting. Time to watch it.
|
Ivan:
[49:55]
| It was now time to watch it. Okay. Wow.
|
Sam:
[49:58]
| Exactly. And so we watched this. So what to say about this movie? First of all, I have an IMDb summary, which is only a single line.
|
Ivan:
[50:12]
| There is an IMDb summary.
|
Sam:
[50:14]
| It is only a single line. A young boy in Alaska becomes involved with the legendary battle between a raven and a wolf.
|
Ivan:
[50:25]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[50:27]
| So.
|
Ivan:
[50:27]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[50:28]
| Now, I watched this last July, so my memories have already faded somewhat of this movie. But the fundamental thing is this kid in Alaska. He's got a single mom, kid in Alaska. There's a dog that he interacts in the wilderness. And like it says, there's a raven. Now, these are both, you can tell through the title, the spirit dog. They are real, but they're like mystical as well. So this dog and this raven have like supernatural powers of some sort.
|
Ivan:
[51:06]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[51:06]
| And there's also a background battle going on between some like, I forget if it was oil drilling or minerals or mining or what, But there was some big corporation that was basically out, you know, raping the pristine wilderness of Alaska and disrupting the lives of the wildlife, disrupting the life of, you know, Native Americans who lived there, all of this kind of stuff. And the kid, somehow assisted by these supernatural powers, you know, figures out the mystery behind the things that the corporation was doing in secret. Because they were saying they were doing one thing, but they were actually doing things that were much more evil. And somehow they solved the mystery and spoilers. They prevent the company from doing what it was going to do in the end. This is very, okay, pretty low budget.
|
Ivan:
[52:14]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[52:15]
| Pretty sure it was made for TV, although I'm not 100% sure of that.
|
Ivan:
[52:20]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[52:22]
| It miscellaneous sort of low budget, semi-psychedelic special effects when they go on like spirit journeys and stuff like this.
|
Ivan:
[52:32]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[52:33]
| Um, and no, no offense to my wife's cousin, mediocre acting, you know, and you know, it, It was a thing. It was just really, you end it and you're like, what the hell did I just watch? You know, it's sort of that experience.
|
Ivan:
[52:58]
| I take it that you're giving it a thumbs down.
|
Sam:
[53:00]
| I'm giving it between a thumbs sideways and a thumbs down. It was one of those bad in an amusing way sort of things as opposed to bad, bad, bad, you know? so and i will also point out that as we were watching this we were trying to keep our eyes out for, my wife's cousin right we didn't realize which character she was until afterwards when we looked it up ah because she disguised well first of all too young.
|
Ivan:
[53:35]
| Or so you know so.
|
Sam:
[53:36]
| Long she was young enough she was young enough that my wife didn't directly recognize her but also i think like, there was like lots of makeup makeup and stuff yeah yeah like that would do it, i mean and a costume that wasn't like right right right right so it was like it wasn't directly like yeah But we looked it up and figured, oh, was it that person? Okay, I guess so. And anyway, I would say, you know, no, you don't need to go check it out. But even if you wanted to go check it out, this thing's hard to find.
|
Ivan:
[54:20]
| I don't think I'm going to go look for it. Given how difficult you made it. First of all, I could mail you the VHS.
|
Sam:
[54:27]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[54:29]
| Well, here's the thing. I still, I think I, I think I still might have the VHS, but it's not plugged in.
|
Sam:
[54:37]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[54:37]
| And I don't have a way right now that I can plug it in.
|
Sam:
[54:41]
| Cause you, you like, when you install these things, you have them all like all the cords.
|
Ivan:
[54:46]
| No, no, no, no, no. That's not the reason. The reason is that I don't have a system that has the right inputs to take that kind of video source anymore.
|
Sam:
[54:54]
| Oh, well.
|
Ivan:
[54:55]
| Everything that I've got is, you know.
|
Sam:
[54:57]
| Well, I'll give you two things.
|
Ivan:
[54:59]
| One, I think— I'm sure that I can get an adapter, yeah.
|
Sam:
[55:02]
| Yes, you can get an adapter for like $20.
|
Ivan:
[55:03]
| You can get an adapter. But like right now, I guess I can get an adapter. But like right now, if I wanted to watch it, I can't because it's not plugged in. Everything I've got right now, the last time I upgraded the AV receiver, basically I made it that I have no other inputs other than HDMI.
|
Sam:
[55:20]
| And so— Yeah, I think mine still has— Mine has a lot of HDMI inputs. It has like six or eight. I forget how many. a lot but it's got legacy inputs too so it's got a.
|
Ivan:
[55:32]
| Bunch but i mean i don't know but how old is yours like right now because i think my previous one had that but but this one i got not that long ago and i basically said fuck you know between.
|
Sam:
[55:43]
| Five and ten years we.
|
Ivan:
[55:44]
| Replaced yeah so it's like yeah so so this one is much newer than that and i was just like it's got no i think it's got it's It's like, it doesn't have any, yeah.
|
Sam:
[55:56]
| If we got one today, I'll tell you, like, we have a turntable hooked up to it.
|
Ivan:
[56:03]
| Oh, it's got for that, which is audio.
|
Sam:
[56:05]
| We've got a turntable. We've got a cassette deck hooked up to it. We've got a VHS.
|
Ivan:
[56:10]
| It does have analog audio.
|
Sam:
[56:13]
| But I will say, of those legacy devices, the only one we have actually used is the VHS. I can't remember, other than running it once or twice to test it when we first hooked it up. Nobody's played a vinyl record, and no one's played a cassette. Even once. We have watched a couple of VHS tapes. So, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[56:43]
| I don't even... I mean, I got rid of all that.
|
Sam:
[56:46]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[56:47]
| I don't... I don't... It's just... It's all gone. It's all done.
|
Sam:
[56:54]
| I can see a variety of reasons why at some point or another, you know, VHS come... One, like, it's only once every couple of years or something that we watch a VHS, but it happens. So if I upgrade it again, I would want to make sure I had a way to hook up the VHS. You know, it could be an adapter, but I would want to have something. Okay, we have gone way, way, way, way, way too long.
|
Ivan:
[57:22]
| We started kind of with the news.
|
Sam:
[57:24]
| We did. But let's take a break. This will be an Apple dream. and after the Apple dream we will talk newsy stuff for the rest of the show, okay here comes the Apple dream.
|
Break:
[57:41]
| So in this one, Just as background, I haven't been able to play Wordle with my son and other people for a while. Because we had gone back in time because we'd missed a Myrtle or two. Wordle, not Myrtle. Myrtle would be something different. And because we'd been going back in time because we missed a couple. But then my son wanted to do something else before he did more. So we got further and further and further back in time. and then my wordle lost its scores and I know you can reset them using this tool but I haven't done it yet and he hasn't wanted to go back yet so we haven't done any wordles so anyway I was dreaming that my friend Yvonne knew this and had sent me, to a wordle clone but this particular wordle clone, you did the wordle live at the same time as the other person and there was video so you could see each other working on your wordle, and so i was doing that while i was walking down the street in some city.
|
Break:
[58:49]
| And he got his wordle and i started my wordle with thank to thank him for the thing because i guess you could see each other's, guesses as you went and so that was part of the race you could see each other so i am describing a game that would actually be kind of cool, developers out there live wordle see each other's guesses race see each other's video while you do it, i'm just saying anyway then i woke up bye.
|
Ivan:
[59:23]
| I fully expected you to come out and like a Steve Ballmer is like kind of way and like go developers, developers, developers. But no.
|
Sam:
[59:32]
| Yeah, exactly. You know, Alex left a comment on that TikTok about how he's trying to get me to actually make this thing. And back when I originally recorded it, it seemed completely out of the realm of possibility. Now, with all the Vibe coding tools, I'm like, maybe I could. Maybe I could make the thing.
|
Ivan:
[59:54]
| Look, I coded a f*** app already. I wasn't even trying to do this. I did that. I wasn't even trying to.
|
Sam:
[1:00:01]
| Yeah. I mean, it still would be a little tricky because it's multi-user and you'd want people interacting in real time and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:11]
| But you could mock it up at least.
|
Sam:
[1:00:14]
| Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, and I still kind of like that because I've done it in Perth. I've done it in Perth. I've done it in Perth.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:19]
| I've done it in Perth. Inputs my receiver has. Yes. Seven HDMI, three RCA, one phonograph input, two of the optical digital inputs, one coax digital input, and a USB-A port, an Ethernet. But no, you see, no like coaxial video. And no RCA video either. Okay. You know, only audio only. Okay. So I could hook up a tape deck. I can hook up a record player. But straight out of the box, I can't hook up a VCR.
|
Sam:
[1:00:55]
| Okay. But yeah, like I said, adapters are out there. And they're not very expensive.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:01:04]
| So I should send you this VHS tape in the mail. No thanks. And give you homework that you have to watch this thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:13]
| No? I'm okay. I'm fine. Thank you.
|
Sam:
[1:01:16]
| Are you sure? There's a dog.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:19]
| I'm sure.
|
Sam:
[1:01:19]
| And a thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:21]
| I'm pretty sure. I'm sure.
|
Sam:
[1:01:23]
| And trippy little psychedelic visions and stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:27]
| I'm pretty sure. I think I'm good. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:01:30]
| Okay. Now, with that, what's the first newsy thing you want to hit? Why don't you do one and I do one? And then by the time we're done with that, we'll probably be done with the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:41]
| Yeah, because that's, I mean, we already covered one. Oh, fuck me. Let's see. We had... Let's talk about another Trump defeat.
|
Sam:
[1:01:56]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:57]
| This has been a theme, Sam. Trump is, and this is something that happens usually with second-term presidents, especially when their popularity is going into the shitter. That slush fund thing that he was trying to do basically wound up getting torpedoed. I mean, I don't see how he, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:20]
| Part of that tax settlement that he did Which, by the way, speaking of taxes, I don't know, I can't remember if I posted this on the Slack or not. The fact that I was trying to get somebody at the IRS on the phone and because, of the Republican cutbacks is basically impossible, Sam. There's just no, I mean, there's no way to get to talk to anybody at the IRS right now. I basically had to write my congressman and they said that they were going to go check on me right now because I have not my tax return. My tax return has not been processed since February. OK, I mean, not processed. All right. It's not like they they they checked it and they had errors. They had objections. It's simply not been processed. OK, at this point. But but as part of, you know, Trump getting his way with everything, you know, he was getting this sweetheart settlement now that, oh, we're going to bar no investigations, no more tax audits of Trump that he can't get on in a past. And then that that, oh, I'm not going to take the 10 billion, but he's going to create that that one point six billion dollar slush fund. And well, basically, the judge, it wound up that then they backed off and said, no, we're not going to do it. I guess the judge actually passed, you know, a ruling saying that they can't do it. Plus, it got defeated in Congress, too, right? I mean, it didn't—they weren't able to get it through, right?
|
Sam:
[1:03:50]
| Well, they weren't able to get, you know, explicit funding for it. The Trump administration was arguing that they could do it anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:58]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:03:58]
| But they were losing—.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:00]
| But now they got the legal ruling on the other side anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:04:03]
| Now, the thing is, there's still stuff going back and forth in court. And one of the reasons that people are like, yeah, they say it's not going forward, but then why are they still fighting it in court?
|
Ivan:
[1:04:16]
| Well, because they want it.
|
Sam:
[1:04:17]
| Right. And so...
|
Ivan:
[1:04:19]
| Even though they say they don't, they do?
|
Sam:
[1:04:21]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:23]
| That's the reality.
|
Sam:
[1:04:25]
| And apparently, a lot of the people who were expecting that they would get money out of this thing, are still being told behind the scenes that one way or another, the administration will figure out some way to get them money. If it's not this, it'll be something else.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:45]
| Well, I think that one thing is that they have to, look, yeah, but it's like, my whole point is that the avenues for him are getting, look, he's been losing these now, okay? He wasn't just able to, you know, last, you know, last year he was getting shit through like without any, any problems. And now he's getting active opposition to a lot of shit that he's trying to do. And the reality is that when you're at your approval rating.
|
Sam:
[1:05:22]
| From Republicans.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:23]
| From Republicans. From Republicans. And when you're approval rating, is it the shitter? Like his is. It makes it a lot easier for Republicans to oppose him. You know, like right now. So. So, yeah, I mean, it seems like to a certain extent, the tide is turning in a certain way against him, like right now for a whole bunch of this stuff. And I'm like, I'm happy. I mean, fuck Trump. You know, we had that dame come down last night. Then he's got, you know, the slush fund gets problematic. And then, you know, it's just, it's good. It's good. I'm liking this.
|
Sam:
[1:06:06]
| Yeah, I was just looking at, I just picked up the economist version of approval averages. There are a lot of good ones out there.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:13]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. Economist is a good one.
|
Sam:
[1:06:16]
| They have him now at negative 25 net approval.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:23]
| Fuck. That's historically bad, isn't it?
|
Sam:
[1:06:27]
| Yeah. Compared the same time in his first term, he was at negative 10. The same time in Biden's term, he was negative 11.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:40]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:06:42]
| And that's, yeah, that's bad. Now, I've seen people say that he is still doing better than Nixon in the last week before he resigned.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:56]
| Wow! I'm still ahead of Nixon! Um, that's something I want on my wall of accomplishments.
|
Sam:
[1:07:10]
| Now, I haven't recently self verified that, but I did. I did hear that. So, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:18]
| Well, that's OK.
|
Sam:
[1:07:22]
| One of five thirty eight used to have a nice comparison of this, but they're gone.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:26]
| Well, they got over at the silver bulletin. Yes, they have it. I mean, yeah, he's got you know, he's got the approval things up there.
|
Sam:
[1:07:35]
| The comparison to old presidencies?
|
Ivan:
[1:07:38]
| I think, hang on, let me see. I don't, actually, I don't remember.
|
Sam:
[1:07:42]
| I'm looking at Silver Bolton right now as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:44]
| The Silver Bolton. I'm trying to find it. See.
|
Sam:
[1:07:49]
| I don't see the comparison to old presidencies.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:52]
| No, I don't, no, I don't, no. He's got the approval rating, but not.
|
Sam:
[1:07:56]
| Yeah. Ugh.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:59]
| I guess you're right. He doesn't have the.
|
Sam:
[1:08:02]
| I've seen somebody put up a new one somewhere, but I can't remember where it is. But like, you know, the old 538 had the approval ratings and right below it had the comparisons to every president going back to Truman. And that was nice. And that's not there anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:20]
| We see even real clear politics. No, they don't have the comparisons.
|
Sam:
[1:08:25]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:26]
| Oh, Biden job approval, Trump first term job, Obama, Bush job approval. But no, they don't have, no, not that far back, no.
|
Sam:
[1:08:35]
| Yeah. So, somebody has it. You know, I don't know. I swear somebody has recruited.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:43]
| Listen, this is bad. It's bad. His approval rating is bad. And I don't think that, by the way, bathing all these, like, statues around Washington in gold is getting great shit. Him to anybody.
|
Sam:
[1:08:57]
| No?
|
Ivan:
[1:08:58]
| No. No.
|
Sam:
[1:09:01]
| Well, for the moment, he's gold plating like lions and horses and crap.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:07]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:09:08]
| And, you know, we've got the Arc de Trump or whatever that he wants to build that'll block the view of Arlington Cemetery.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:17]
| Yeah, listen. How is the construction of the ballroom going right now?
|
Sam:
[1:09:21]
| I'm just saying, we do not yet have the 50-foot tall statue of Donald Trump that's gold-plated. I'm sure that's coming.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:34]
| I mean, I've seen mock-ups of it.
|
Sam:
[1:09:36]
| I've seen mock-ups, to be fair, by other people, I think, not by Trump himself. But he's probably reposted them.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:44]
| Yeah, I think so.
|
Sam:
[1:09:48]
| He has reposted AI photos of him added to Mount Rushmore.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:53]
| Yes, he has. So I'm sure, yeah, he's probably reposted a gold statue of himself.
|
Sam:
[1:09:59]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:00]
| And uh look i was looking for some shoes for for manu and i saw that at macy's they have trump's favorite shoes floor shimes okay you know here's the i i looked over here because, i i went to nordstrom where i usually buy my shoes i was looking for shoes in his size, inflation let me just say inflation because i'm just like look i i don't want to buy expensive shoes for Manu because, not because I wouldn't buy expensive shoes for Manu. It's because he's growing. He's going to grow them real quick. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:10:35]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:36]
| It doesn't make any sense. Okay? For me to buy him, I would buy a more expensive, shoe if, you know, I know he's going to use them for 10 years or something like I normally do. Okay? But the Floresheims are $100. Any dress shoe at Nordstrom really starting like is $800 like right now. $800. But Trump is gifting $100 shoes. Cheap bastards.
|
Sam:
[1:11:09]
| I'm sorry i i have my sketchers i love them they cost a lot less than that and i'm happy with them, i do have one pair of like you know the shiny kind that i got for some event i was going to last year, i don't like them i'll wear them if i have to i'm not even sure where in the house they are right now they're probably in my closet, i hope you know, but i'm sure i'm sure even then i probably i might have spent a hundred bucks, but i'm not gonna go higher.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:48]
| But but let me tell you something those eight hundred dollar nine hundred dollar thousand dollar shoes right now i will say that not even 10 years ago there were like six hundred, And so that's how much inflation has really hit us in the last decade. Okay. Where that's, that's where that's at. Okay. So.
|
Sam:
[1:12:09]
| Yeah. I, I, I can just say, I don't get it. Like I, I, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:13]
| They last a long time. Number one, the shoes do last a long time. And I use them a lot. Okay. You don't use those. You, you, those shoes, you barely use them. Listen, the last time I bought a pair of 130, $150 shoes that I use regularly, and I walk a lot in them, they actually cut my feet. Literally, I was bleeding. I literally wound up coming. Yeah, I literally came back from a business trip, with my feet bleeding. And I basically threw them in the trash and I said, no, I will spend more money for shoes.
|
Sam:
[1:12:44]
| Yeah. No, I got cheaper shoes, but I fully admit, like.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:49]
| You don't got to use them very much.
|
Sam:
[1:12:50]
| Well, no, I'm talking about my Skechers. Like, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:55]
| Those are comfy.
|
Sam:
[1:12:56]
| They're comfy, and I don't expect them to last years.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:00]
| But he's like, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:13:01]
| Exactly. I replace them on a regular basis, you know. I'll buy a couple pair a year. I mean, not that I'm killing them in six months usually. But I usually have spares. Like, I usually keep the ones I wear every day, and I keep a spare. The reason for the spare is for when I inevitably step in dog shit. And then I can just swap out to the clean pair. And sometimes, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:33]
| There is.
|
Sam:
[1:13:34]
| And then I'll hose down the old shoes and wait for them to dry.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:38]
| Okay. You know, very few things are as unpleasant as stepping on dog shit. It really is one of the most unpleasant things to do. I haven't done it in a long time, but fuck, I still have vivid memories of the last time I did it, which happened in Buenos Aires, of all places, walking on the sidewalk, because people tended to not clean up after their dogs on the fucking sidewalk.
|
Sam:
[1:14:04]
| Well, I'll tell you.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:05]
| And walking back to the office. I still, oh, God.
|
Sam:
[1:14:08]
| I'll tell you, there is a difference. Same general genre, but there is something that you can do to make it even more unpleasant. And that is stepping on dog shit barefoot.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:22]
| Oh, God. What are you, RFK Jr.? What are we doing?
|
Sam:
[1:14:29]
| Well, this has not been much of a problem lately, but we used to have a problem with one of our dogs repeatedly going inside.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:36]
| Oh, in the house. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:14:38]
| In the house. And you would often discover this at the moment you stepped in.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:43]
| Oh, God. Okay, let's change this.
|
Sam:
[1:14:46]
| Luckily, this has not been a problem lately.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:48]
| I think everybody already turned off the podcast at this moment.
|
Sam:
[1:14:52]
| Hey we have one person on the live stream right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:54]
| Oh god you know that person's about to tune out to the south like.
|
Sam:
[1:14:59]
| Right now at this moment right okay so i shouldn't pivot i shouldn't pivot to dog vomit no start talking about that no no no, okay so are are you done with the trump, Trump sucks. Trump loses.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:21]
| Trump is downhill. And by the way, I don't know. I thought about mentioning it, but I don't know why Trump said that we're going to have an Iran deal tomorrow. I don't fucking believe it. Believe it for one second. He says we're signing it tomorrow.
|
Sam:
[1:15:35]
| Blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:36]
| He threatened to nuke him.
|
Sam:
[1:15:40]
| A couple of outlets have now done charts of how often Donald Trump has said that. Did I share one on the curmudgeons corner slack?
|
Ivan:
[1:15:51]
| Yes, you did.
|
Sam:
[1:15:51]
| I'm scrolling back looking for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:54]
| It was like 30 some odd times.
|
Sam:
[1:15:56]
| It was more than that. Okay, here we go. This is one that was from, which outlet did this? Washington Post. Here's a chart from the Washington Post. As of June 9th, so this was as of four days ago as we're recording it, and it was up to 29 as of June 9th. The first one was on March 23rd, and they've got these color-coded as to which ones were public appearances, which ones were true social, which ones were phone calls or interviews, and these were all comments of very close. So, like, here we go. March 23rd, almost all points of agreement. March 24th, I think we're going to end it. March 24th, Iran desperate to cut a deal. March 25th, Iran wants to make a deal so badly. March 26th, Iran is begging to make a deal. Let me skip ahead like 20 or some of these and do the last five on this chart. June 7th, very close to having a deal. June 7th, very close to a final deal. June 8th, total victory in the next two weeks. June 8th, they want to make a very good deal. June 8th again, they're willing to give us everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:17]
| Everything, Sam. Everything. Everything.
|
Sam:
[1:17:21]
| And so as of today, apparently either we're going to nuke them or they're going to sign a deal tomorrow. One of the above.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:33]
| One of the above. This is so ridiculous. It's the most preposterous fuck. Who will you ask? This is the worst fucking, I mean, he makes Reagan. Listen, it's just, no, Reagan was, I mean, even Reagan didn't fall asleep this much. Plus, he actually had a lot of people in his staff that were smart.
|
Sam:
[1:18:05]
| Well, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:06]
| I mean, he did do that one time that he did. You don't remember when he went to Gorby and they almost like.
|
Sam:
[1:18:12]
| They almost got rid of nukes.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:13]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:18:15]
| Yes they were this close and actually that time apparently they really were.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:19]
| They really were.
|
Sam:
[1:18:20]
| And both sides got pulled back by their advisors of like what the hell are you about to do right, yeah now we all know he's surrounded by incompetent yes men and, even when he gets advice that is actually good he ignores it yeah and anyone who has the gall to tell him he might be wrong about anything is gone almost immediately. Well, first they tend to get ignored and shoved to the side, and then eventually they're gone. Like Tulsi Gabbard, for instance. It took a few months before she actually left, but it was clear that she was being ignored for months before that. So here we go.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:06]
| Are we going to shed a tear for Tulsi?
|
Sam:
[1:19:09]
| Well, I feel bad for her. Her husband has cancer. I still feel bad for that, you know? And it's a fairly aggressive, bad kind. You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:22]
| I mean, she's still a complete sellout.
|
Sam:
[1:19:27]
| Yes, well. Anyway, shall we move on to something else?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:32]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Sam:
[1:19:34]
| Now, you explicitly said you did not want to talk about this, but I think we have to.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:38]
| Why?
|
Sam:
[1:19:40]
| Well, we don't have to, but I'm going to anyway. I am going to force the discomfort upon you. SpaceX went public. Our friend Elon Musk, who bankrolls this show, as you all know, uh-huh is now a trillionaire the world's first trillionaire now i haven't checked these inflation adjusted ancient people like that guy who was king of tim timbuktu, a thousand plus years ago yeah i mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:08]
| Because yeah you don't want to include monarchs i mean it doesn't.
|
Sam:
[1:20:14]
| Well yeah i don't know but even inflation adjusted apparently i think he's if he's not at the top he's damn near are close to richest people of all time, even including monarchies.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:27]
| You know, as the IPO happened, an investment firm published this thing saying how, they believe that the stock is overvalued like 400% and that it's ridiculous, but they were still buying it anyway. And this is the kind of shit that gets... musk is a trillionaire.
|
Sam:
[1:20:53]
| Not on the basis i i have to say this i i did look up somebody updated their list of historical all-time richest people inflation adjusted, after the ipo yesterday, So they apparently first put out their list in 2010. This is from a site called Celebrity Net Worth. Now, I will caveat before I read this that last time I looked into this, I found four or five sites that had tried to do this. And they all had different lists because they use different methodology.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:28]
| Different methodology, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:21:30]
| For, like, how you determine what is state wealth versus what is individual wealth for those who were, like, monarchs and stuff. And also, how do you do the inflation adjustment calculation over, you know, 2,000 years or something instead of, like, there are fairly standard methods for doing that over 50 years. But, like, if you want to compare— How do you do it?
|
Ivan:
[1:21:54]
| But back to, say, the rulers of Spain. And, like, you know, when they had the entire free, you know, the Western Hemisphere and gold reserves. I don't know. How do you compare that to today?
|
Sam:
[1:22:06]
| Anyway, this particular person is at CelebrityNetWorth.com, updated June 12th, and their new top 10, number one, Elon Musk, at over a trillion dollars. Number two, John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, $630 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. number three someone close to our hearts andrew carnegie 459 billion.
|
Sam:
[1:22:39]
| Then number four the person i was talking about mansa musa ruled the mali empire controlled a immense gold and salt trade quite a few centuries ago 400 billion, number five jacob fugger 400, billion a german banker merchant, and mining pioneer. I'll do the top 10, then I'll stop. Number six, your good friend, Larry Ellison, $395 billion. Number seven, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, $300 billion. Number eight, Larry Page, Google co-founder, $293 billion. Number nine, Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, $280 billion. Number 10, the other Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, $275 billion. Honorable mention, number 11, Mark Zuckerberg, $250 billion. There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:37]
| Nice. Well, if there is...
|
Sam:
[1:23:39]
| Sorry, I interrupted you when you were going through the timeline of the IPO and stuff around it.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:45]
| No, no, no. Not so much the timeline. I was just talking about how so many people actually, analysts and others, basically said, this thing is ridiculous. It's stupidly overvalued. The numbers don't make any sense. Oh, we're going to buy it anyway. And this is how this guy is a fucking trillionaire. It's not because he's built anything that is worth anywhere near what the fuck it is. For all the talk about Steve Jobs' reality distortion machine, holy fucking hell is Elon Musk the king of the reality distortion machine.
|
Sam:
[1:24:24]
| Yeah, I've heard people estimate that an actual properly valued version of this would be like, what, maybe half of what they're actually talking about?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:32]
| Not even!
|
Sam:
[1:24:34]
| Not even?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:35]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:24:37]
| And because it's got a number of stacked businesses, because it's SpaceX, but then he brought in the AI stuff. Twitter is now folded in there somewhere, too. Right, yeah. Although Twitter's a tiny part of things. And various other things. I guess Tesla's separate still, but I'm sure it'll merge them at some point. And each one of these, if you look at them individually, it's, Are, it's, not, again, it's a reality distortion field that gets you the value, not the on-the-books stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:15]
| There is nothing on the books to justify anything like, what the books tell you is, I mean, at least 90% less what the fuck this thing is worth. At least.
|
Sam:
[1:25:35]
| Oh, 90%. That's even less than a...
|
Ivan:
[1:25:37]
| 90%.
|
Sam:
[1:25:37]
| Like I said, yeah, okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:39]
| At least. There is nothing in here worth $2 trillion. Maybe $200 billion.
|
Sam:
[1:25:47]
| Now, come on, Yvonne. Everybody's gambling that he's going to successfully go to the moon and Mars and...
|
Ivan:
[1:25:55]
| Hey, Sam, how many robo-taxis are there out there on the streets?
|
Sam:
[1:25:59]
| You shared this not that long ago. I forget. Give me the number.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:04]
| Around 50 and by the way they don't work very well none of them work very well, repeatedly failed repeatedly don't get people to where they're going uh-huh.
|
Sam:
[1:26:17]
| So they're not as good as that other one.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:21]
| No. The Waymo one. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:22]
| Waymo. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:24]
| No. So that's the shit. You know, other than, how are we making $2 trillion out of lunching rockets to Mars? You want to fucking explain to me what the business proposition here is?
|
Sam:
[1:26:39]
| Okay, Yvonne, we are going to build the Mars colony. and Elon will basically own it as a personal, you know, like we were saying, like the people wanting to make their own kingdoms where they can run their own laws. Elon's is going to be on Mars and it's going to be the replacement for Earth, once Earth destroys itself. And so it will be the entirety of the human economy in another 30, 40 years. So there you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:09]
| Oh, in 30, 40 years. Oh, I see.
|
Sam:
[1:27:12]
| Yeah like we have to I mean I was going to say we have to keep it within Elon's lifetime but I'm sure he's working on immortality too.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:22]
| There listen many decades ago the reason why the space race died, is because we kept going to these planets and we didn't find anything worth any money actually to fucking do up there or to do it in a way that would be financially feasible anyway okay i mean it's not like you know, there is this tv show i watch for all mankind on, on on apple tv which is a great tv show but it a lot of it is how they're mining and how they're, you know, mining on the moon, mining in Mars, and that's how they make money. How they brought an asteroid that had all this iridium, I think it was, and how they mined it and brought it over. Okay, that's the money angle. I haven't found anybody who's told me, okay, great, we go to Mars and how is this profitable in any way? How do we make money out of this other than yay we went to mars but it's all based on tourism.
|
Sam:
[1:28:25]
| Permanent colonies permanent colonies to replace the earth when earth dies.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:32]
| Okay which is it's going to die in 30 years that's that's that's so we're going to kill off the earth in 30 years Well.
|
Sam:
[1:28:39]
| Presumably. Like, again, I brought it down to 30 years because I was thinking in Elon's lifetime. But then, again, I'm sure he's working on immortality, so it might be okay if it's a little bit longer before the Earth goes boom. 40, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:56]
| Okay. There is no, you know—, this is just ridiculous i predict that this thing will eventually crash like every single one of these things has it historically crashed.
|
Sam:
[1:29:17]
| Well i mean more more generally i saw someone pull some stats on, on ipos in general there's usually a dip before they start going up i mean obviously there are a lot of companies that eventually become very successful but usually in the first year or so they're down by quite a bit.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:36]
| By quite a bit.
|
Sam:
[1:29:37]
| Because you have the original pre-ipo stockholders cashing out yeah and so like it's not uncommon to see a 50 cent 50 percent drop in the first year, you know and then depending on the business sometimes they go up again after that. But, you know, now let me ask though, another thing that people have been quite concerned about is the fact that this is big enough that it will, there was some question on timing and whether it would be sooner rather than later, but apparently it's going to be back to sort of the normal later.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:16]
| The normal, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:30:17]
| But because of his size, this will be included in lots of index funds.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:24]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:30:25]
| You have S&P index funds, you have all market funds, you have all sorts of index funds that, will automatically include this once we get to a certain point of time past where we are now, which means once that hits, there's going to be massive, essentially automated purchases of this that will then... presumably drive it up at that point, but then potentially crash again after. And then suddenly, all sorts of people who have just invested in, you know, hey, I'm just going into, you know, an S&P index fund because that's nice and safe. All of a sudden, they have a bunch of SpaceX.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:13]
| Let me give you some perspective. Apple's worth about $3-4 trillion. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:31:17]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:19]
| Apple has over $200 billion of annual revenue, over $50 billion a quarter, $100 billion in annual cash flow, okay? $100 billion, over $100 billion in annual cash. SpaceX 2025 revenue, $18 billion for the whole year. They're expecting maybe 19 point something billion this year. Not a lot of growth. So also very little growth. It had a $5 billion loss. Loss. Not profit. Sam, not profit. Loss.
|
Sam:
[1:32:00]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:02]
| It had negative $7 billion in EBITDA. and it's valued at basically almost the same as that. You don't fucking tell me how the hell anybody's going to make money off of this shit. Because I can't do, there is no math on this earth based on anything of sound financial analysis that gets me to that valuation.
|
Sam:
[1:32:30]
| So once it gets included, what does this do to all these index funds?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:34]
| It doesn't do that much. It won't do that much. You got to remember, there's a whole bunch of trillion dollar companies right now in the damn stock market, you know, like Aramco, Apple, NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft. You know, they're not bigger than those are. So it'll do something, but it's not going to, like, take any of the indices hostage. I'm just going to have an impact on it. It is what it is, you know? And I'm going to guess, and my guess is that by the time it gets a balloon again.
|
Sam:
[1:33:04]
| The collapse of this eventually is not going to take down the rest of everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:10]
| Look, I don't know. You know, having something of this size collapse will have collateral damage.
|
Sam:
[1:33:20]
| And I'm guessing you're thinking it eventually does collapse. If nothing else, at some point Elon dies.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:28]
| There's... The fucking numbers, Sam. The goddamn financials. It doesn't compute.
|
Sam:
[1:33:43]
| You know, but we've decoupled these things from reality, haven't we?
|
Ivan:
[1:33:48]
| For Elon, yes. Not for everybody else. Not that I like talking about our company stock, but let's be clear. Our company announced record revenue profits or whatever, and, you know, because of concerns about capital investment, the stock went down. It went down. This guy announces, I don't know, this shit, and he's up 20%.
|
Sam:
[1:34:15]
| Yvonne, you just sound jealous.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:21]
| I mean, if I had to maybe, you know, okay maybe I would like to have this kind of level of influence on people where I could just talk out of my ass and all of a sudden, hey look Robin Letter, check this out look, whatever, three trillion dollars here you go, yes yes, Ivan, yes I'll put Sam out there in a space suit, I'll put Alex out there in another space suit.
|
Sam:
[1:34:48]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:49]
| And, you know, Manu's in another, you know, suit. All three of you in a space suit while I'm out there you know, just mumbling nonsense, talking about synergies and, you know, exponential growth and, you know, bullshit and yes! I mean, okay. Alright, maybe I would like to have that kind of power.
|
Sam:
[1:35:14]
| You get on Navipop. I expect you to deliver on this promise. I give you two weeks.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:24]
| Two weeks? Two weeks. You've got, you know, I'm on a Trump deadline right now.
|
Sam:
[1:35:31]
| Exactly. Two weeks.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:33]
| Okay. Well, I mean, you're so tasked with destroying my employer like in a few weeks as well. So therefore we've got our work cut out.
|
Sam:
[1:35:41]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:44]
| It's just it's just the most ridiculous bullshit Sam, I will say this I have had and this is historically where I remember some of the things that have most annoyed me it's like when I've seen these people like get promoted at the company that have continuously failed, continuously failed and yet they get promoted at places where I've worked and this is the same it's the same shit, This guy has failed to deliver on so many things over and over and over. Okay? And even when he's delivered some things, the success has been exaggerated many times on whatever success he has done. Okay? And he just keeps getting rewarded over and over for this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:36:34]
| Yes, he does.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:37]
| But, look, I've seen people like these go on 10, 20-year streaks.
|
Sam:
[1:36:41]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:41]
| Okay? And then all of a sudden, kaboom. Okay? I was remembering there was this guy in Brazil that at one point was one of the richest people in the world called Aiki Batista. Okay? I love that name. This guy at some point was worth over $100 billion. Okay? All right?
|
Sam:
[1:37:02]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:02]
| And then, I don't know, one day, The rug got pulled out from under him and everything crashed. He went from being worth $100 billion to having negative net worth in what seemed like the flip of a switch.
|
Sam:
[1:37:19]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:20]
| Now, the one thing is that obviously a lot of people have a vested interest in continuing to prop up Elon Musk's worth. I mean, that's that's part of this is how this is almost like become a self-fulfilling, you know, thing.
|
Sam:
[1:37:37]
| Because it's like it's very similar to the Donald Trump situation, to be honest, where like people hit hitch themselves to that star.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:45]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:37:46]
| And then they were going to ride that as long as they possibly can, even when it's obvious that the person they're following is insane. I think this is true of Elon as much as it is of Donald Trump. He clearly has some personality issues that he really just should. You just just see a therapist and leave us all out of it. Right. But no.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:09]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:38:12]
| You know, and like you said, he's got, speaking of Musk, not Trump now, he seems to have actually had a bit of a knack to get himself in some of the right places at the right time to take credit for other people's work. and, you know, and he's got that sort of marketing panache that, you know, a reality distortion field, like you were saying before, that gets people to like him and follow him and think he's great and blah, blah, blah. And there is something to that. But it's, and obviously, I guess you need all parts of this. Like, I mean, you brought up the Steve Jobs example. You know, Apple would be nowhere if it was just Wozniak.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:00]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:39:01]
| You know, you need somebody who can do that kind of visionary stuff and that kind of promotion stuff, as well as the people who figure out the actual details and make it work.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:18]
| You know, but, but I think one thing is that even on a lot of these other people, even like Steve, Steve actually delivered shit. We got a fucking iPhone. We got a fucking iPad. We got, I mean, Jesus, we got, there were products like real ones that sold a lot of money. We got a fucking iPod.
|
Sam:
[1:39:42]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:44]
| I mean, there were things, real ones.
|
Sam:
[1:39:49]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:50]
| With billions of revenue and profits.
|
Sam:
[1:39:53]
| Very true. I mean, you know, over the history of the company, there were some rough times too.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:00]
| There were some rough times too, but, you know, also.
|
Sam:
[1:40:05]
| He delivered. Yes, it got to the size it is because of real things that were happening. It wasn't just all made up bullshit. And and like, to be fair, Tesla and SpaceX have done some real stuff, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:19]
| OK, but the thing is translate like what Tesla has done into like the numbers, actual the numbers. And the reality is that Tesla right now is almost like cash flow is it's, you know, the cash flow does not justify how much they're valued. The cash flow of any of these other things doesn't justify any of these. And a lot of the things that Steve Jobs did, the cash flow followed. It wasn't just delivering a thing. There was a business with a cash flow attached to it that generated huge growth.
|
Sam:
[1:40:54]
| Let me ask you this, specifically for SpaceX, but I guess there's some history with Tesla too. How does the transformation from private to public change how much of this bullshit you can get away with?
|
Ivan:
[1:41:07]
| Because on the one hand he's still a majority shareholder so the reality is that when you keep, that much shareholder control then outside pressure is not as great you know Steve when they went public you at least have required.
|
Sam:
[1:41:26]
| Public disclosures now where previously you.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:28]
| Could just hand wave a bunch of stuff correct yeah and it's one of the reasons why for example we know there's only 50 fucking robo taxis out there because they're required public disclosures. That's how we found out. So, you know, I obviously being in being public does put a different pressure. And also, I'll tell you another thing. I right now, would like the most progressive fucking president that we can get the next turnaround, because you know what? I want him to fucking like bury these fuckers like Elon. I'm so fucking done with them. Tax the hell out of them. Fuck. Regulate this shit. Because another thing is that Elon has felt a lot of impunity, with SEC violations and shit like that. Okay? He's continuously violated, you know, regulations in terms of full disclosure, in terms of insider trading, in terms of, you know, just stock manipulation, shit like this. where he has just not really had consequences. And in this Trump regime, nobody is getting barely... The only people who are getting punished are his enemies.
|
Sam:
[1:42:53]
| Right. And that's the whole thing. Basically, white-collar crime is legal in the Trump administration as long as you are a friend of Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:03]
| Yeah. Maybe that's why my tax return hasn't been paid. I'm not being, at some point I'm like is it? I mean I don't register Democrat or just you know fuck it. We're going to with you know you're a registered Democrat we won't send you a refund Seriously I'm beginning to even question that at this point.
|
Sam:
[1:43:25]
| You're right at this point you can't.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:28]
| Why would I rule that out at this point? No! I can't just dismiss it out of hand.
|
Sam:
[1:43:33]
| I mean it may not be true but you can't dismiss it out of hand.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:36]
| I can't, exactly, I can't dismiss this out of hand.
|
Sam:
[1:43:41]
| Yeah, yeah. No, I generally agree. I mean, you see charts going around every once in a while of sort of the, when you hear like, make America great again, and all this kind of stuff, you know, people say, okay, he's not real. the original thing was, okay, he wants to go back to the 1950s when he was young, but it really, it's become clear. It's really the 1890s or something he wants to go back to. But here's the thing with the 1950s. You periodically see these charts showing the immediate post-war period and all kinds of economic metrics that are just outstanding. like the the gap between rich and poor was the narrowest it had been in american history and stayed that way for decades growth was out of control all kinds of, all kinds of economic indicators were just amazingly positive and people point out during that time, you had the like 90 marginal tax rates at the high end right yeah one of the most.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:53]
| Progressive taxing systems you know that we had it was it was a it was a very, you know progressive tax system.
|
Sam:
[1:45:02]
| Absolutely and and you know the argument that still.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:05]
| Didn't stop people from getting rich.
|
Sam:
[1:45:07]
| Right and you you hear the argument all the time that high taxes will keep people from from innovating and keep people from being entrepreneurs and you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:19]
| It's complete bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:45:21]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:21]
| Total lie.
|
Sam:
[1:45:23]
| And just to be clear as well, people never understand the marginal. The 90% isn't what you pay on everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:29]
| And it was like really like, right. And it was like on people. Yeah. And there were ways around it, obviously, because people got really rich despite that.
|
Sam:
[1:45:38]
| Yes. And so look, I don't think it would solve all problems instantly if you had much higher taxes on ultra wealthy, but it can't, I don't think it would hurt. And I think it would actually have a lot of benefit, you know? And like you said, just if nothing else, like, you know, one of the problems, you know, we started, you mentioned Ian Rand and Atlas Shrugged and all of that. But one of the issues that—and I went through a phase where I felt that I was fairly libertarian. I got into that, and I realized at some point that the issue that I had was not particularly big government, but I do have an issue with concentrations of power, periods. And what you have when you have people like Elon Musk is a concentration of power that is completely unaccountable to anybody.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:42]
| Anybody.
|
Sam:
[1:46:43]
| And that is a problem. Like, yes, big government can be a problem if it's doing all kinds of horrible fascistic things or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:52]
| But that was the backlash in the 1920s and 30s against the Robert Barron era. Why they broke up Standard Oil, why we broke up all these fucking—that's exactly what happened.
|
Sam:
[1:47:02]
| And the point of democratic government is that you recognize you've got a concentration of power, so you put constraints and controls over it. And, you know, what you have right now with someone like Donald Trump, who's systematically ripping apart all of the constraints and controls that are on government, you make government more powerful and, you're building a new robber baron class who, basically are unconstrained for like the reasons you said. There are laws against a lot of the stuff Elon Musk has been doing. Does he give a shit? No, because he doesn't believe that they can actually touch him. No one will actually put him in jail and, oh, they're going to fine him? Ha!
|
Ivan:
[1:47:47]
| Ha!
|
Sam:
[1:47:48]
| Here's a billion. I won't even notice.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:51]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:47:52]
| You know? And frankly, even when they have fined people like him, it's not a billion usually. It's like, oh, here's a couple million.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:02]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:48:04]
| Like, that's not even him dropping a penny on the ground.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:07]
| Here is the one thing that I guess maybe gives it hope. A lot of the fucking, the biggest people that have been supporters of these kind of clowns are delusional, white voters that are not graduated from college. Okay? All right? Right. And a story on the cover of New York Times, that just came up right now on my feed over here says that now, finally, his support amongst that group has cratered because, basically, take a wild guess. What do you think finally has turned into?
|
Sam:
[1:48:38]
| Of Elon specifically?
|
Ivan:
[1:48:40]
| No, no, no, Trump.
|
Sam:
[1:48:41]
| Oh, we're back to Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:44]
| Well, because it goes back to why it supports these people. But why, you know, and Trump, I think, is their, like, whatchamacallit, he's their avatar for all these rich people, okay? So their support is dropped, but why do you think that is, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:49:04]
| Well, he's not delivering anymore on all of the stuff. Just tell me.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:11]
| It's the inflation. It's the fucking handling of the economy. It's the fact that they're all getting fucked. Listen, all it took for all these assholes to stop supporting him is gas to pop up to five bucks. That's all it took. And now they're like, oh, yeah, he's screwing us. Not anything else he did. Nothing. His cratering support among a loyal demographic that has served as the foundation of his political coalition for a decade has the potential of being among the most consequential developments of 2026. Okay? Basically. His support has cratered.
|
Sam:
[1:49:51]
| This all ties back, again, to this whole class of people who can't see beyond what's the effect on me.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:00]
| On me.
|
Sam:
[1:50:01]
| Yes. On me.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:02]
| On me.
|
Sam:
[1:50:03]
| Like, how anything is affecting anybody else who gives a fuck.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:07]
| You gave me all these scapegoats, okay, that appealed to me and my racism, and you said you're going after them, great, beautiful, but now you wound up fucking them over with $5 gas, and now they're like, oh, he's fucking me. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:50:26]
| Right. Yeah. So on my anti-bigness crusade, by the way, I definitely tax the ultra-wealthy. I also think it wouldn't be a bad thing to have a maximum size for corporations, too. Like, you hit this size, you have to split, you know? like and frankly when companies have been forced to split in the past standard oil the railroads at&t better for the economy yeah and for innovation like people are like you know i mean, the breakup of.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:01]
| At&t led to a lot of innovation absolutely yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:51:04]
| Yeah i mean so i i wouldn't i wouldn't be opposed at all to just have you know, and and you can do it in a dynamic way not some hard number, but like, you know, your company is some percentage of GDP. You automatically have two years to split it up. You can figure out however you want to break it up you want, but you've got two years to split it up after you hit this threshold.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:29]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:51:29]
| You know? And I think that would be good results all over the place for competition. And like, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:37]
| Jobs. Jobs. David Pérez, Jr.:
|
Sam:
[1:51:39]
| Competition, jobs, for consumers in general, the economy. In general, you make things too big, it causes problems because their self-interests start to dominate over everything else. They don't care about anything else. And there you go. And that isn't to say some things don't—there are some things that have to be big in order to operate in the way that you want them to. Hell, I've said before, I wouldn't be upset with a world government. But it would have to be one with massive constraints on it that controlled what it could or could not do. And it was accountable in some sort of democratic way, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway. Okay. With all that, time to close out.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:27]
| We've beaten everything to death. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:52:28]
| Beaten everything to death. I'm sure there can be more things to beat.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:34]
| I'm sure there.
|
Sam:
[1:52:35]
| Let's not talk about that here. Okay. Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there. see all our archives, see transcripts, see all the ways to contact us, then go ahead and contact us. Oh, and tell your friends. Leave reviews places. I don't say that very often anymore. Leave reviews, tell your friends, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You also have our Patreon there. Go to our Patreon. You can give us money at various levels. We'll mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all of these fun things. And, uh, oh, oh, oh, and if you want to give them a, go to Robin Ladder too. Yvonne mentioned that too, RobinLadder.com. It's still, it's still growing. Someone created a new Robin just a few hours ago and invited some people to join. It was cool. And anyway. $2 a month or more, or on Curmudgeon's Corner, not Robin Leonard, at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us. We'll invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and others are chatting throughout the week, sharing links, all that kind of stuff. So Yvonne, what is a compelling, interesting, super fun thing that we talked about on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack that we have not mentioned on the show so far?
|
Ivan:
[1:53:55]
| I guess the one that I shared recently where Roku has decided that they're going to improve the user experience, Sam. And you know how they're going to improve the user experience?
|
Sam:
[1:54:08]
| I saw the thing, so I do know.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:10]
| They decided to revamp their home screen to give more ad opportunities on your home screen, Sam. How's that sound? Does that sound like a vastly improved user experience?
|
Sam:
[1:54:25]
| There's a reason I have an Apple TV and not any of these other devices.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:29]
| Yeah, me too.
|
Sam:
[1:54:32]
| I also, by the way, like we set up an actual television in addition to our projector a few months ago in one of our rooms. But I made very sure the TV, I'm not giving it access to the Internet. it. I did not tell it my Wi-Fi information. I did not do any of that because I don't want the damn TV to be smart. I have the Apple TV. That's what it's going to run on. Like there's no, I don't want the TV doing that stuff because the whole TV business at this point, is subsidized by advertising and subsidized by selling information about what you watch and all this kind of crap. and I'm just, I don't want that. Give me a fucking dumb monitor and I'll hook the device I want to up to it. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:28]
| So, yeah, so Roku decided— But finding a dumb monitor is actually hard.
|
Sam:
[1:55:33]
| It's very hard. And they're more expensive. You have to get commercial displays, like the kind they use for the menus at fast food restaurants.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:41]
| That kind of stuff, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:55:42]
| That's what you need. And they're more expensive and harder to find and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:47]
| Yeah, because the ads and all this shit subsidizes the fucking TV.
|
Sam:
[1:55:50]
| Yeah, exactly. Now, and I understand there's a benefit for having cheap TVs, but still. Anyway, go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:57]
| But, you know, but what it reminds me of, you remember the era when Windows basically, when you would get a Windows PC and it would have all this like fucking like junkware, like installed there with ads read. Oh, put up this other app and the other app and all that. And Windows 95 was notorious for trying to drive you to grab all this shit that basically was just fucking, when you bought a PC from a lot of major manufacturers, it was basically just crammed with ads. Oh, sign up to this thing, get into this thing. And people were, like, driven crazy by this because it was just, shit, can I just get a PC just with Windows and not be forced upon all this junk? And basically, Roku, as I mentioned earlier that nobody fucking remembers history, has decided that their winning strategy is to replicate that.
|
Sam:
[1:56:55]
| Beautiful. Has Windows gotten any better since then?
|
Ivan:
[1:56:58]
| Not that I've heard of. People recently have really, really, really been talking how the last version of Windows is truly awful.
|
Sam:
[1:57:08]
| Great. Yeah. I haven't tried it in so long, and I don't feel any desire to.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:14]
| I mean, the last Windows that I really used that I installed was 7.
|
Sam:
[1:57:20]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:21]
| And that was out, like, what, 2009? Yeah, something like that.
|
Sam:
[1:57:27]
| I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:27]
| I'm thinking the last one. Let me see.
|
Sam:
[1:57:31]
| I've occasionally touched 10 or 11, not to really use it, but like touched it for a couple moments. No, no, no, that I've touched it.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:38]
| Yeah. But the one- Windows 7 was released October 2009. That's the last one that I ever installed.
|
Sam:
[1:57:44]
| The last one I think I actually used on a regular basis because work made me is probably NT.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:51]
| Oh. Oh, well, no, I had to use Windows 7. I, well, you know, I was using Windows 7 at work up until like 2017. Yeah, that's no. Yeah, yeah. 2017. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Of course, they also made me use Lotus Notes.
|
Sam:
[1:58:11]
| Oh, there you go. Okay. Before I finally say goodbye, I finally, I texted before the show began to my wife to get confirmation on who that person in the movie was. And we got, we got, we got an answer just now. Okay. And it's, was it Maggie Donaghy? I'm just double checking the name. Yes, Maggie Donaghy. It's my wife's aunt. She was married to her mother's brother, until her mother's brother passed away a few years back. So it's an aunt by marriage. So that's who Maggie Donaghy was, who's in Legend of the Spirit Dog, which, you know, available on VHS if you can find it somewhere anyway. That's it. We're done. Thank you, everybody, for joining us for yet another Curmudgeon's Corner. Have a great week. Have fun. Be safe. All that kind of stuff that I always say. And we'll see you next week. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:23]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:59:54]
| Thank you. Okay, I'm out. I'm going to go put up campaign signs. We finally have all the campaign signs, so I'm going to spend the afternoon putting some out. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, I'm heading to stop. Bye, Ivan.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:07]
| Bye. Let's see.
| |
|
