003 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:11

so we gotta come up with a better intro than we got something that's a little more standard, even if we don't have music going on.

Ben: 0:17

Yeah. I mean, hit

Gene: 0:19

we are

Ben: 0:19

to work. All right. But yeah, dude, what a morning, What a hell of a change in venues, scenery and technical difficulties we've had this morning.

Gene: 0:31

Well apparently you screwed up time zones.

Ben: 0:34

Okay. Well, time zones, whatever. And then we've also had held

Gene: 0:39

you're talking about what else was difficulty?

Ben: 0:42

just, getting to work this morning was pretty difficult, but, it's life.

Gene: 0:46

Yeah. Yeah. So you had to switch switch your browser or something.

Ben: 0:52

Yeah, I ended up having to go to Edge for the love of God. Who the hell

Gene: 0:56

Oh my God. That's what I use.

Ben: 0:58

So you're a MAs. Okay, got

Gene: 1:00

Edge is my dedicated browser. Just for this, just for recording this stuff,

Ben: 1:05

Okay, well I'm

Gene: 1:07

but for any time I'm doing audio, I use Edge.

Ben: 1:10

interesting. I am actually on a totally different laptop in a totally different city, in a totally different time zone, and all that adds up to, this was a pain in the ass this morning, so I apologize for

Gene: 1:22

well I think we are having a little bit of bandwidth issues. So there you go. Now we were told not to have shitty audio ever again by somebody. So I guess if you're that person, you're gonna have to stop listening right now. Cuz my suspicion is being at the hotel you're at, we're probably gonna have some shitty audio

Ben: 1:43

I can try and switch to my hotspot if we think that would be better, but the choices are a shitty hotel wifi or a hotpot Right.

Gene: 1:54

Yeah. High spot may not be the best either. First of all, what hotel are you staying at that you can't like, call'em and do a late checkup? Let's shame these people. What's the hotel?

Ben: 2:07

the hotel at Arundel Preserve in Hanover, Maryland, it's. It's a bespoke hotel. It's not, No, and I'm a Marriott guy. I am a Marriott guy, but this was the choice that was available to me. It was either this or a really shitty aloft or the casino hotel. And yeah, none of those are a good option. So

Gene: 2:33

well that Aloft might have had better wifi.

Ben: 2:36

the Loft might have had better wifi, but it's a very run down loft. So

Gene: 2:42

Oh really? I really don't like bespoke hotels

Ben: 2:47

I typically do not either I

Gene: 2:49

nobody, nobody to complain to and

Ben: 2:52

Yeah. And you get no respect for the hundreds of nights you spent in hotels.

Gene: 2:59

Thousands. Thousands of nights. Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 3:03

well, maybe thousands for you, but it's hundreds for me still.

Gene: 3:07

Oh, okay.

Ben: 3:09

Well, I actually, I don't know o over my career you're probably at tens of thousands. I'm probably at thousands.

Gene: 3:17

well, you should know if you're a myriad guy. Cause I, I'm a a lifetime platinum titanium, whatever the fuck it is at Marriot.

Ben: 3:29

Yeah. I'm lifetime Gold, so that's all I've

Gene: 3:31

Right? Whatever. Oh, Guild. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So you haven't had quite as much spend,

Ben: 3:38

Thankfully.

Gene: 3:39

remember that cuz it, it was so back when I got it, which was like a decade ago lifetime Platinum was$250,000 of spend.

Ben: 3:48

Jesus.

Gene: 3:49

So once I hit 250 grand in one hotel, then I don't ever have to care about earning nights again. I've got status for life.

Ben: 4:00

Well, there you go.

Gene: 4:03

And well, and the main thing, and the reason I mention it, is because it gives me the ability to bitch and then get some resolution if I don't like something.

Ben: 4:12

absolutely, I mean, shit, man, I'm five nights away from hitting titanium this year, and so I'll hit it. And it definitely gives you the ability to complain and have have a resolution to whatever issues are happening.

Gene: 4:30

Yeah. Yeah. And it sh like your status shows up in their thing.

Ben: 4:36

Yep. When you check

Gene: 4:38

if nothing else Yeah, exactly. So if nothing else, they will know that, if they piss off somebody that stays the property a lot, they'll probably hear about it for management. And at the nicer hotels you'll actually get a gift or some other little freebies for having high status.

Ben: 5:04

That actually happens at all

Gene: 5:05

covid, that's a lot worse than it used to be.

Ben: 5:08

So no, it actually happens at all Marriotts now. So you get a, food credit or 500 points or whatever, depending on the hotel.

Gene: 5:18

Yeah. No, that's the standard thing. I mean, I mean, towels turned into an animal with a little handwritten note from the manager saying, We want to thank you for coming to our property, Mr. that kind of thing.

Ben: 5:30

Do you really give a flying shit about that?

Gene: 5:35

well, there's usually like a$25 coupon in there for something, for food or whatever.

Ben: 5:40

Yeah

Gene: 5:41

it's and it totally varies. I mean, this doesn't, this wouldn't happen at a cheaper brand. This would be if you're at a JW or something. But usually at those upper brands, if you're paying a few hundred bucks a night for a room and you have that lifestyle spend, they do tend to treat you nice.

Ben: 5:59

So I don't know when the last time you were at a JW is, but the JW in San Antonio, minimum price is over$200 a night. And they see up of five to six pretty regularly.

Gene: 6:15

Yeah. Yeah. I've stayed at that one. That's a pretty good hotel.

Ben: 6:17

Yeah. It's a great hotel. It's a fantastic little resort. The pool, they've got everything else. The golf course, it's fantastic, but we are sounding elitist as fuck right now.

Gene: 6:30

oh no. Not this, nothing to do with elitism. This is it's probably less elitist than me posting videos about private planes all the time on no gen social no, this is really just one of the trade offs of being away from home for work is the ability to start accumulating affinity points at things like hotels and airlines.

Ben: 6:56

Well, I mean a couple of years.

Gene: 6:58

it enough, you get to lifetime.

Ben: 7:00

Yeah. Yeah. But a couple of years ago, like the, in all my points, I don't have credit cards. I don't have various things to accumulate additional points. All my points are just pure stays because it's been on company dime and everything else. But I'll say this, So Marriott has a couple hotels inside Disneyland actually on property. So a few years ago, me, the wife and the kids went and stayed. On at Disney in a fabulous suite for two, three days and, purely on points

Gene: 7:40

Yep.

Ben: 7:41

what would have caused us us had we stayed, even at a shitty Disney property, it would have been three,$400 a night and it was just points. And that's fantastic. When we went to Florida this last year everybody but me and the baby flew on points, and the reason why I flew at charge and the baby fluid charge was to actually gain qualifying airline qualifying trips. But yeah.

Gene: 8:14

Yeah. That, No, I'm sure the baby has a harder time of getting status every year than you do.

Ben: 8:19

Well, no. So actually with United Infants count towards the adult's mileage.

Gene: 8:27

Oh, interesting. Oh, that's a sneaky thing. I didn't realize that,

Ben: 8:30

Yeah. It's one of those things that you can kind of sneak in there to gain that extra leg or whatever else. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 8:37

No, that's cool. Okay I will brag then. Now this is not the case right now. Back. This would've been, let's see, I'm still my, so it would've been about 12 years ago. When I, this is on the tail end of a lot of travel for a few years for me. Had I did the math for what could I get for my points sitting on my account at Marriott and what I could get was a suite for a month at Atlantis,

Ben: 9:09

Well, there you

Gene: 9:09

Or half a year in a cheap Shitier hotel. And it was, and I didn't do it cuz I, I would go nuts if I was somewhere for a month in one place. I like a five day to seven day trip is ideal for me. I don't like being gone for more than seven days, even though technically my pets are just fine, even if I'm not here for that long. But I just started kind of getting antsy for being on my own computer and just having my own stuff around me and sleeping in my own bed and all that good stuff. But but yeah, theoretically I did the math was like, if I really wanted to just burn these points all at once, what would it get me? So that was an interesting calculation. And I will say when I got divorced, my ex-wife really wanted to get half my point. So I'm like, Fuck that bitch. That ain't happening. I earned those by traveling for work.

Ben: 10:03

Well, I mean, there's something to be said for being gone. I don't know about you,

Gene: 10:07

You get divorced when you're gone a lot. Apparently

Ben: 10:11

I, well, hopefully I can avoid the same trap, but I will.

Gene: 10:17

was literally gone Monday through Friday for nine months.

Ben: 10:21

So I'm not that bad. I've been gone Wednesday through Sunday and I'm going to head back today. We're recording this on a Sunday, by the way, because I was at a com cyber security conference and gone

Gene: 10:33

Now, was this a interesting conference or like a mandated conference?

Ben: 10:39

both

Gene: 10:40

Oh, okay.

Ben: 10:41

So fantastic content, fantastic researchers, did a lot of really good work. Very

Gene: 10:49

the power industry related.

Ben: 10:51

No, this is industrial cyber security in general. Lot of government people there I would say of,

Gene: 10:59

Okay. But it wasn't like Schmoo Con or Defcon or something like that.

Ben: 11:03

Kinda on par. But anyway so as far as government attendance, definitely on par with Schook on the feds were out in force. They were probably at least 30% of the attendees.

Gene: 11:17

I always kinda joked when I went to ShmooCon that it was always a matter of the spot, the hacker,

Ben: 11:23

Yeah. Instead spot the spook. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Man. That's a great way to put it. Okay. Who's actually the security researcher here? Fed. Fed. Fed. Fed. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 11:36

Well, and even the guys doing the presenting, half of'em are like Oh, I just graduated from the Naval Academy. It's Uhhuh.

Ben: 11:45

Sure you did. So I gotta tell one story. So last night not last night before last one of my colleagues clients was at said conference and they had some questions and so I step in to help answer some questions and we ended up going drinking.

Gene: 12:06

Oh, here we go. That's, that explains some things.

Ben: 12:09

Oh no, it wasn't last night. It was night before. Dude, that was rough. It's pretty bad when the lady from insert XYZ industry energy industry ends up drinking you under the table So

Gene: 12:24

Oh wow. Well that's, yeah.

Ben: 12:27

it's impressive.

Gene: 12:29

Yeah, cuz you drink like unlike me who's taken this whole year off, but you actually do drink.

Ben: 12:34

I do drink and I drink liquor, and I do it often and, I can generally hold my own. So when 1130 at night, I mean, this happened so quickly, it was one of those things, it was 1130 at night and I said, You know what? I'm gonna call the tab. I need to go to bed later. Yeah, that, it was it was one of those things, man, just

Gene: 12:59

Wow.

Ben: 13:00

shocked the shit out of

Gene: 13:01

you're in, where'd you say you're in? Virginia?

Ben: 13:04

Maryland.

Gene: 13:05

Maryland.

Ben: 13:05

Maryland, just outside of Baltimore, which I gotta tell you,

Gene: 13:09

Yeah.

Ben: 13:10

I wish there was reciprocity and I wish I could carry in the state. That would make me, that would be the impetus for me to, no, it would be the impetus for me to get a concealed carry license in Texas If I'm up here enough that if I could carry up here, I.

Gene: 13:25

Well, there's probably more reason to carry in Maryland.

Ben: 13:28

Dude, there were 20 shootings in one night while I've been up here.

Gene: 13:36

What you kidding?

Ben: 13:38

no, not shitting local news there. I mean, it is crazy. The amount of violence that has occurred in the DC metroplex area in the week that I've been up here is insane.

Gene: 13:55

That's insane.

Ben: 13:57

It's

Gene: 13:58

I mean, that's like Chicago level, right?

Ben: 14:00

Yes. It's damn near now. It's not as frequent as Chicago. It's not every fucking night, but it's. It's bad, man. I, in June I went to, I was up here in June and I went to some pretty sketchy areas, and that was one thing. But what has increased since then is absolutely insight. And this is coming I, let me just preface

Gene: 14:29

Biden stayed, isn't it?

Ben: 14:31

No. Uhuh, he's,

Gene: 14:32

no, he's Delaware. You're right. Yeah.

Ben: 14:34

Yeah. So I, let me preface this by saying I've been coming to the DC metro area since I was five years old, Right. I've been up here a lot. I've seen plenty. I've been to plenty interesting places in the DC metro area. It's never been this bad.

Gene: 14:52

Wow. Yeah. Well, I think in a lot of places things are really bad. I know. Chicago's been really crappy this year as well. Overall. I know

Ben: 15:05

Well, Chicago's calling causing all sorts of problems today.

Gene: 15:09

Yeah. What's going on today? I don't even know.

Ben: 15:12

O'Hara's got some weather and flights are canceled like an MF right now.

Gene: 15:17

Oh, I thought you meant like shootings.

Ben: 15:18

No I'm just worried about getting home right

Gene: 15:22

Well, you're flying through Chicago.

Ben: 15:24

No. I'm got a direct flight to Houston, but it's got trick, it's got trickle on effects all the way through United American and Delta are all having hell right now.

Gene: 15:36

Yeah, they don't have enough pilots. That's the problem.

Ben: 15:38

Well, they can't right now. They can't move'em around, so they've already offered me 500 bucks for my seat if I can reschedule.

Gene: 15:46

fly. I, No,

Ben: 15:47

Yeah. So I'm like, y

Gene: 15:49

that happens very infrequently with me. I, in fact, the last time I took advantage of something like that was probably over a decade ago. Cuz they just, I don't know, man. The flights are generally full. Although the last flight I had flying back from Mexico, I had an empty seat next to me,

Ben: 16:08

Well, my flight is full overbooked, in fact, And the bad thing for me is my flight today is the last flight out of here to Houston. So if something happens to this, I've either gotta go reroute, do a third city, or stay. And I don't wanna stay. So it'll be it, I am looking at a potentially no fun travel day. And, I gotta say anyone who's curious about why my voice sounds like it is. I've been at a conference all week and it's been loud sorry.

Gene: 16:44

okay. I thought it was cuz you're talking through a headset.

Ben: 16:47

No, my, I'm definitely losing my voice at this point

Gene: 16:50

Nah. Did you present?

Ben: 16:52

I can't talk about that

Gene: 16:53

No. Okay. Alright.

Ben: 16:56

I did not present at this conference. I did at one a couple of weeks ago, and I will be in Houston at the AIP Conference next week.

Gene: 17:06

What's AAP stand for?

Ben: 17:08

American Petroleum Institute.

Gene: 17:10

Yeah, that'll be interesting.

Ben: 17:12

Oh yeah. The number of people I know who are already gonna be there is just astonishing. And it's it's gonna be an interesting one. There's some really great presentations lined up and yeah, it'll be fun if anyone's there. Say, Hi,

Gene: 17:28

Yeah. And for anybody that's new to the podcast, the reason that we're talking about your travel and the type of conferences, cuz Ben is in the,

Ben: 17:39

I'm a dude name bit.

Gene: 17:40

your dude named Ben? Named Ben, first of all,

Ben: 17:43

Yep.

Gene: 17:44

And that comes from no agenda where they love the clip of the quote from, was it Hillary or one of the other

Ben: 17:53

No it was over the IRS scandal,

Gene: 17:56

but it, Yeah. Yeah. But it was during Obama's

Ben: 17:58

yes, and she couldn't remember who came in and worked on a laptop. I don't know. Some dude named Ben. A dude named Ben.

Gene: 18:05

it was a dude named Ben that, that was the description

Ben: 18:08

IT guy. Yeah.

Gene: 18:09

yeah. Of the IT person that worked on their computer. So the saying dude named Ben became a shorthand for IT professional

Ben: 18:20

It's just

Gene: 18:22

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 18:23

just security guy, firewall, jock, whatever. Yeah.

Gene: 18:27

exactly. And so you're still active. I used to be in that field many years ago. So I, I've got the lingo, but no recent experience. You're still in that field, but you're specialized within that field on the energy.

Ben: 18:43

Yeah. But, so I am very focused on industrial cybersecurity and primarily on the energy sector. As you said, all my clients are either electric or oil and gas or some combination thereof.

Gene: 18:57

Now when you're traveling, I know you're a big book reader when you're traveling, how much book reading slash listening do you get in?

Ben: 19:05

So on the plane I'll usually listen because I just, reading on a plane is not great for me. It depends on the trip. Like this trip, I haven't done near as much reading as I normally would and that's primarily because I've been out way too late many nights, and that it has its own set of challenges. Yeah.

Gene: 19:29

Yeah. Yeah, that's that. I know what you mean. I recall those days.

Ben: 19:35

And we did a class for some people and immediately got asked to do another class impromptu the next day from some clients from Japan. That was not planned, so that was an interesting little tidbit

Gene: 19:49

So I've started listening to a book that a friend recommended

Ben: 19:54

off schedule.

Gene: 19:55

off schedule. Yeah. Cuz it's an MP3 file that I got, not a audible, so I figured I can do it on the computer cuz I could probably figure out how to load it into my phone shit. But it's just like whatever, I'm on the computer enough that I can just have it run, playing on the computer. Although it is kinda ironic that I'm so used to just using apps on the phone that I don't even know how to load an MP3 phone into my phone anymore, which we used to do all the time with, what the hell is that thing? iTunes

Ben: 20:23

Yeah. I mean, I have a huge library of illegal audio books that I downloaded back in the day that actually most of them I've gone back and purchased through Audible because it was easier Says a lot.

Gene: 20:36

yeah. Convenience. Convenience. Wait, it says two things. One, you're making more money, and B, you appreciate convenience,

Ben: 20:42

Yeah. By the way, have you used Open Audible at all?

Gene: 20:47

I, What's it do?

Ben: 20:49

It's on your pc, it syncs your library. It it cracks their encryption so that you have permanent access to it.

Gene: 20:57

Oh, you have your own copies. Well, yeah, and there's nothing, I mean, I think that's one of the

Ben: 21:01

There's nothing unethical about that because Audible

Gene: 21:04

bought the damn

Ben: 21:05

license. Yes.

Gene: 21:06

Exactly. And not only that, as I recently found out, I'm missing a whole bunch of audit bull books that I've paid for. And my buddy

Ben: 21:16

How's that

Gene: 21:17

He, Well, here's what's interesting. So I'm missing all my audible purchases pre-Amazon buying Audible.

Ben: 21:25

really? I mean, I've got mine, so that's interesting.

Gene: 21:28

Apparently there was some point, and this is many years ago now, there was some point where they sent out a mail saying Here's how you merge your two accounts

Ben: 21:38

You didn't do the merge.

Gene: 21:39

and I never did that and I didn't really think about it. Cuz I I think I've said this before, I generally don't read a book more than once. I very rarely, I mean, maybe one book every five years, I'll read the second time, but usually I'll only read things once. So it never, I guess I never noticed because I never looked for any of my old stuff. But I noticed there's I've had Audible for 18 years. And I've got 280 books in there. And I know I've bought more than that many because I was always on the one book a month plan. So how the hell do I only have 280 books? And my buddy look his, and he had exactly 280 as well, and we've both been on Audible forever. And he is Well, how can we have the same number of books? That makes no sense. And then he looked into it and said, Hey, I'm missing all my books. Preau merge with Amazon. You should check yours. And I checked and I'm like, Shit, you're right. My oldest book that I have in Audible was right after that merge happened. And so I'm missing probably like six years, seven years of audible books.

Ben: 22:49

Yeah,

Gene: 22:49

more,

Ben: 22:50

I I definitely went through and merged my account and.

Gene: 22:55

Yeah.

Ben: 22:56

I'm at damn near 500 right now.

Gene: 22:59

And he he actually was pissed off enough that he was on the phone with Amazon for hours to get this resolved and to get his

Ben: 23:08

Trying to go back. Yeah, well that's, I mean, that's just not really, I'm, I would think they would not be able to do that at

Gene: 23:15

No. Well, he works at Amazon, but I don't know if that helped or not. And then I said, You know what, dude, that's good for me to know, but honestly it's annoying, but I'm never gonna re-listen to those books. So technically I guess I don't really care. But but it's still annoying when there's something that you did pay for. And I've had this happen with Apple, where I've bought movies from Apple back when I used to run my Apple TV again, like over a decade ago. And yeah they no longer bought They, they disappeared because, Even though they're selling you the mo cuz you know you always have the option. Do you want'em just rent it and watch it? Or do you wanna buy it and have it available forever? Yes, I'd like to buy this movie. It's a good movie. I want it forever. And then their contract with the studio ends and it disappears from your library.

Ben: 24:07

The problem with the term buy is you're buying a license that, I mean, and that's what I have. I have a huge problem with digital media because, if you buy a cd, if you buy a paperback book, whatever, you own that physical asset and you can resell it, you can do whatever when you die, you can pass it down to your kids.

Gene: 24:30

right.

Ben: 24:30

That does not exist with digital media today.

Gene: 24:34

No, that's absolutely right. And this kind of does go along with the whole Charles Schwab. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy. Cause who Any music when you just need a subscriptions to Spotify.

Ben: 24:47

A hundred percent. And I was having a conversation with a guy I've known since probably 20 12, 20 13 in the power industry. And we were talking about California and California's, we're not gonna sell internal combustion engines past 2035. And we started doing the math on what's going to be required to do that. His immediate take was, Well, that ain't gonna work. And then b I guess they just won't have any cars anymore. And I think he's dead. Right. You're not gonna have a

Gene: 25:22

Yeah. You're gonna have public, well, quasi public transportation. You're gonna have basically an Uber license for an electric car, so you'll only be able to have a car if you need one for your work, like you're a taxi driver

Ben: 25:35

Yep. And everybody stays at home or walks or rides a bike. Yep.

Gene: 25:40

Or gets an Uber.

Ben: 25:41

So what we came up to when we were talk we sat there and said, Okay, let's calculate out the average investment cost it's going to require for them to meet this demand based off of the

Gene: 25:54

electrical demand.

Ben: 25:55

Yes. So we first started with how many vehicles there are in California. Okay. Average npg. Okay. NPG to electrical demand calculation based off the EPAs on on, on records. Okay. So we've got, now we have our electrical demand. Okay, let's look at the additional generation that's going to be required in the state. Cool. We've got the additional generation. Now let's look at the additional transmission and distribu. Okay, we've got that. And we came out to, this is an order of magnitude number, so I could be off by, 10 x, but I doubt it. We came up with$32 trillion if they start now.

Gene: 26:40

Well that sounds exceedingly nerdy for something to do with a buddy here, But but yeah it, what essentially what you're saying

Ben: 26:48

is why I am the dude named Ben Defender, Mega Watson, protector of the electric grid. Man. This is what I do. Yeah.

Gene: 26:56

So basically they're gonna be writing unicorns is what you're saying?

Ben: 27:02

I mean, if they're lucky I,

Gene: 27:04

Well, there's a higher chance that they'll be writing unicorns than that. They'll

Ben: 27:08

the fact of the matter is, They have no, no way to do what they want to do. They just don't. I mean, the only way they could even pretend to produce enough generation with their green agenda is to go with nukes, and California's already shut down all their nus, so

Gene: 27:29

it's kind of sounds like Germany mentality.

Ben: 27:32

Absolutely it is. Shoot yourself in the foot and fuck the poor people.

Gene: 27:36

Yeah it's saying we really believe in the green energy, therefore we're going to shut down all our nukes. We're gonna be running purely solar and wind and killing birds and animals, which is of course, what they love doing. And we don't have to worry about power because we can always buy some from our great neighbor Russia

Ben: 27:57

Until the UK and the US decides to blow up the Nord string pipeline.

Gene: 28:02

Well, yeah, and that's the man, the fingers are pointing at the UK almost more and more on a daily basis for all this shit.

Ben: 28:10

It's near a hundred percent certainty. What kim.com came out and said, given, iCloud access is hilarious, but, I would, again, I was just at a conference with very interesting subset of people to include directors of certain three letter agencies. There was zero denial that it was us. I mean, that was a talking point of mine of Come on, we did that. Right. The, just what we did and the reason why we did it, the explanation, and I'm not gonna name names right now, but the explanation I got this week was, and I think we intuitively knew this, was basically we didn't want Germany to have the option.

Gene: 28:56

Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 28:57

We feared Germany caring about their people and saying, Okay, fine, Wil relent. So we've removed Germany's option. That, that, that was the entire purpose of that.

Gene: 29:13

yeah. No and I wonder if, well, I was gonna say when, but I'll say if the German people find out about this, what their response is gonna be to us meddling in their internal affairs, that results in people dying of freezing.

Ben: 29:31

Well, that's the thing is I don't think they will care until they do. And by that point it won't really matter.

Gene: 29:38

Well, it'll matter in the long run. If the finger gets pointed back at the US and Germany elected government, that ends up being a lot less friendly.

Ben: 29:48

Yeah. I don't think the people who are going to care are necessarily going to survive. So I don't know if that's a,

Gene: 29:56

Eh? It could be. It could be. I don't know, man. It's I think there's a lot of people take the take for granted the current state of the world, and I've said this before about the US bases in Saudi Arabia. I think that there's a very high likelihood if the US keeps pushing on Saudi Arabia, that those leases are not gonna get renewed. And it'll be all very above board. There's not gonna be any fighting or it's Hey, yeah, we're we got other plans for that. And they're

Ben: 30:25

very interesting world if

Gene: 30:27

they're not gonna kick out the US proactively, but they sure as hell cannot renew the lease.

Ben: 30:32

Yep.

Gene: 30:33

Germany can do the exact same thing.

Ben: 30:35

And we could also not sell them lots of advanced equipment

Gene: 30:40

Absolutely. And we're gonna get an opportunity to see how well that advanced equipment performs in the winter.

Ben: 30:47

I hope you're wrong, but I fear you're right, but I Are you ready to admit that China is facing financial difficulties yet?

Gene: 30:57

No. I've sent you a video and I'm actually, I brought up this book right, that I mentioned, that I started listening to, and it's it's called War Without Rules, China's Playbook for Global Dominations, written by Brigadier General Roberts Spa. And I guess it's the first of several books he's written on the topic. So I'm starting with this one, but I still very much feel that in all the videos and now starting to listen to this book, kind of similar opinion, it's just all this stuff is written in such a western mentality. I have yet to see or read something that is written in a Chinese mentality talking about the oh shit moment that is coming for China. Because it's really all like completely different culturally. People looking at China through their lens. And by that I mean either Europeans or Americans. And saying, Oh my God, this is so fucked. Look at them. What? What do you think the odds are right now of people in China looking at the US and going US is so fucked. They won't last a year. Very high.

Ben: 32:15

yeah,

Gene: 32:15

worried because that's gonna affect their ability to sell us crap.

Ben: 32:19

Well, I think that, I think the US has more staying power than China. I think when you look at the steel industry collapse in China, when you look at the real. Market in China when you see

Gene: 32:32

man. China's been around for 2000 plus years. US has been around for barely 200.

Ben: 32:36

it hasn't. China as we know it today, has been around since Mao. That's it.

Gene: 32:42

Well, that's not true. What do you mean by China today?

Ben: 32:45

China today, the culture of China today, Ma did a great job with his cultural revolution and purging. It is not the same people. It is not the dynasties. It is not the China of 2000 years. It is not the Confucius China that existed before Mao and that it people,

Gene: 33:06

do you think so?

Ben: 33:08

because Mal went through and purged it rather violently and well, you don't kill that many people and not have an effect on the culture. It is a different society than it was.

Gene: 33:21

I dunno about that, man. I do know about Russia. I know less about China, obviously, but the communism took over Russia for about 80 years or so, and you could say the same thing about the purges. I mean, shit, Stalin killed more people than mounted

Ben: 33:44

don't know that's true. I think Ma killed more than Stalin.

Gene: 33:48

I thought Stalin was more, I'm not even gonna bother looking it up. It's millions more than either one of'em should have. Right.

Ben: 33:55

yes.

Gene: 33:56

It's, the numbers are out outrageously big. It's tens of millions. But but either way the culture of the people in, I guess the culture that I'm referring to goes beyond their political system. It goes beyond the government. They have, It goes to what can you expect from these people and what you can expect from Russia, which is something historically for hundreds of years, if not a thousand years, cuz the country's over a thousand years old. What you can expect is that for one, the cost of human life is much lower in Russia than it is in the United States. United States grumbles when it loses hundreds of people in some kind of bad military operations. Russia doesn't say anything when it loses thousands, because not that long ago it lost 15 million, and the US, I don't believe would lose 15 million people and go back to normal.

Ben: 35:09

Absolutely not.

Gene: 35:12

I think that is one of the distinctive characteristics between China that is similar to Russia, is that the cost of human life in that country has a very different value, and that creates a huge difference in the country's and the government's ability to engage its enemies.

Ben: 35:32

Well, and to your point, China screwed themselves over with the one child policy and they have such an asymetry of the sexes that it is.

Gene: 35:42

Yeah.

Ben: 35:43

That it, it

Gene: 35:44

in depopulation,

Ben: 35:45

absolutely detrimental to them. Yes. They, I mean, war aside, over the next 10 years, they will contract, well, 10, 20, whatever. I mean, you look at the span of a human life, the fact that there isn't the opportunity to reproduce for 30, 40% of the men,

Gene: 36:07

Yep.

Ben: 36:07

that's pretty damn drastic.

Gene: 36:09

The numbers I've seen is that China should go below a billion people down to a lo of about 880 million before the the rise starts up again.

Ben: 36:21

Yeah. And we're talking within the century, right? So we're at 20, 22 now. I mean, we're talking within the century.

Gene: 36:28

Yeah. Yeah. But like in the next 30 years, it'll be down under a billion.

Ben: 36:33

I don't know if it'll happen that quick, but it's it is definitely

Gene: 36:37

Well, the majority of Chinese population is over 40 right now.

Ben: 36:41

No,

Gene: 36:43

Yeah, that was, I just read an article about that recently. Yep.

Ben: 36:47

That is

Gene: 36:48

it's not as bad as Japan, where I think half the people are over 50 right now,

Ben: 36:52

Oh yeah. Japan's age is, so Japan is another society that they are going to collapse. I mean, they have this entire bubble. They've inflated their way through it, but as soon as the equivalent of the baby boomers starts really dying off and are gone, I mean, Japan's gonna lose a shit ton of population. And where does that tax base then come from? How do you handle Japan is going to go the way Amar just based off of population changes.

Gene: 37:30

Yeah, I I haven't been to Japan in many years, but there's an awful lot of I don't know, in the US it feels like everything sort of catches up. Some places are a little bit ahead of other places. I'm sure people on the coast would say the Midwest is always 10 years behind them. But in Japan, the contrast was so huge. There were literally super high techy shit you can't even buy in the us but also brought to the store on a, by a guy on a tricycle cart, with wearing a straw hat.

Ben: 38:05

Yeah.

Gene: 38:06

And it's what these contrasts are huge. It is a lot more of that blade runner dystopian kind of feel. And again, I haven't been there in a while, but that was definitely my impression the several times I've been to Japan and I don't know. I mean, it makes for an interesting tourist place, but but yeah I think

Ben: 38:27

fact

Gene: 38:27

parts of Japan are gonna get head hard.

Ben: 38:30

it's not sustainable.

Gene: 38:32

Right?

Ben: 38:33

And what we're seeing in the US is equally as not sustainable. I think the more and more I've talked to people and everything else, the only way out for the US is the de-industrialization of Europe and the

Gene: 38:48

The reindustrialization of the US

Ben: 38:50

yes. And he, Here's the thing. Here's a great statistic that was told to me this week. We are going to export BMWs to Europe for the first time this

Gene: 39:02

Yeah.

Ben: 39:03

there are more BMWs being made in the US in Germany,

Gene: 39:09

Well, and it's, I don't know that they're gonna be able to make any Germany. Now they've got a huge plant in Georgia, I think. Right. BMW and, but they think you've got several plants, The big one being in Georgia, but they've got a few of'em. All the sport Utes are all made here in the US and I think some of the cars now are as well.

Ben: 39:27

Yep. And they are, that, that particular factory is tooling up basically to build the entire BMW line.

Gene: 39:35

Wow.

Ben: 39:37

So BMW may become an American brand. for all intents and purposes.

Gene: 39:43

Motor works.

Ben: 39:44

which, I mean, I mean that sell that says it all on what, what's happening in Europe right now? The energy prices are through the roof. They can't do shit. It's, if we get out of this without actually fighting World War ii. We deindustrialized Europe equivalent to World War ii. And hell, we can even have the Marshall Plan 2.0. We will have customers, we will have the goods, we will have the ability to do it. And you could see a boom in the US I E 1950s, and we've got the perfect bad guys in Russia and China to have the second Cold War. I really think that's what the politicians are going at. But man, what a hell of a gamble.

Gene: 40:32

it

Ben: 40:33

you're wrong, if you're wrong,

Gene: 40:37

Yep. Yeah, you're fucked if everybody's fucked if you're wrong.

Ben: 40:43

well,

Gene: 40:43

Speaking of China one other thing that I had watched a video, somebody mentioned that I didn't really dig too much into it, but it, I think I will because it sounded interesting that I want to get a little more details on this which is that. The elections that just happened in Brazil,

Ben: 41:03

Oh yeah. Definitely.

Gene: 41:05

was the last brick to fall in South America for a pro Chinese government. So every country in South America right now apparently is on good relations with China, as in doing projects with China. And the last holdout was Brazil. And effectively the way this guy said it, I think was a little bit overly dramatic, but essentially China owns South America now. US has lost control of South.

Ben: 41:35

Well, I mean, the guy who quote unquote won Brazil was very much a, I mean, Bolsonaro was. Trumpian esque and Lula is very much an American shell. It's my understanding. And by the way, Bolsonaro still has not conceded, has he?

Gene: 42:00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I really have not kept up too much on that election. I've, been seeing that

Ben: 42:06

so it's 49.1 to 59.9. Very close elect. No, I mean, it's it's less than 2 million

Gene: 42:16

Wait, 41 or 49?

Ben: 42:19

49.1

Gene: 42:21

Oh, I thought you said

Ben: 42:22

50.9. No, it's less than 2 million votes. And definitely a very dubious election from the limited understanding that I have. But I mean, this guy was convicted.

Gene: 42:33

win?

Ben: 42:34

He was convicted of corruption and a previous president of Brazil was, had a jail sentence. Regardless of what that means in a Latin country. But you know, the fact that he is winning a very close election with Drift is interesting. By the way, there's over 5 million, quote unquote null are invalid ballots. So there's 5.7 million null are invalid ballots. So ballots they threw out

Gene: 43:13

Yeah.

Ben: 43:14

and the count is less than 2 million.

Gene: 43:17

Wow. That sounds like a Hanging Chad's situation.

Ben: 43:21

It very much does. Yep.

Gene: 43:25

I really don't know anything about Brazilian politics. I just have literally never paid attention to it.

Ben: 43:31

I've had a few Brazilians that worked for me, and they are very much an interesting people.

Gene: 43:36

On your plantation.

Ben: 43:38

No. It at different jobs. But the one guy that worked for me, man, he was he was one of those that I started documenting how to fire before he left, and I was happy when he left. Yeah.

Gene: 43:50

It's funny. Yeah.

Ben: 43:53

welcome to corporate America, man.

Gene: 43:55

Yeah. Well, yeah, that sucks. But you sometimes do run into those situations somehow. People that have no business being in certain jobs, nonetheless end up in those jobs and you end up having to deal with it.

Ben: 44:10

Speaking of it's been interesting being up here and watching the political ads.

Gene: 44:16

Oh, you're watching local tv? Okay.

Ben: 44:18

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anytime I travel I will throw a, in the morning when I wake up, I throw on the local news and I watch local TV for 10, 15 minutes while I sit and drink my coffee before I go on with my day. But I'm in Maryland and the number of Federman ads that I'm seeing is astonishing.

Gene: 44:38

You think they're trying to get Maryland people voting for Federman?

Ben: 44:41

No. But I think they're definitely pushing a narrative. The,

Gene: 44:46

Well, I mean, it's a done deal, right? Cuz Oprah said that he's the guy to vote.

Ben: 44:52

Yeah, we'll see. Man,

Gene: 44:54

arbiter of politics in the us.

Ben: 44:56

The DC metro area is very interesting in which you see, from a political ad standpoint, and I first of all, 10 to one Democratic ads over Republican And it, it is just a non-starter. Yeah.

Gene: 45:15

But who the fuck watches TV? I for life of me don't understand why anybody would bother spending money on television ads.

Ben: 45:25

I think the majority of the populace does

Gene: 45:29

Then This country deserves everything it gets.

Ben: 45:32

a hundred percent. I mean, the amount of people who were

Gene: 45:36

been called an idiot tube for literally like 50 years.

Ben: 45:40

Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 45:42

No one should be watching tv. It's bad enough that they watch TikTok. They sure as hell shouldn't be watching tv.

Ben: 45:47

Dude, the amount of people who were obsessed with the the World Series and college football this weekend, which I'm a college football fan. I'm a baseball fan, but, I had shit to do, so I didn't get to watch everything. But there were people who were absolutely glued to it.

Gene: 46:05

But you don't need broadcast TV to watch that shit. You just need a subscription to an online service where you could watch it direct without ads.

Ben: 46:19

I, well, I mean, don't confuse broadcast TV with cable and Hulu or anything else,

Gene: 46:25

yeah, that's what I

Ben: 46:26

a lot of

Gene: 46:26

I don't know if Hulu or somebody else. So I don't happen to be one of those people. It gives a shit about sports. So I don't pay for any of this stuff, but I've seen packages where they're specifically tailored for people that watch, basketball or football or baseball or whatever, and you can get every game and you're paying a subscription to be able to watch'em, so you can watch'em from anywhere you're traveling or whatever. That seems like a much better thing to do than to be bombarded. And this is a, I don't know, maybe I'm just hypersensitive to it, but I can't watch over the air or cable television period if somebody else is watching and I'll go to a different room because the amount of advertising is so insanely over the top. I just don't, I don't like advertising.

Ben: 47:22

Well,

Gene: 47:22

I don't wanna watch it. I don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna see it. I don't want have anything to do with it. And I managed to not have to deal with it because I have no advertising on my web browsers. I pay for YouTube. So I don't have any ads in there. I mean, it's, And I don't watch anything that has ads. I guess that's the bottom line.

Ben: 47:41

Yeah. Well, I mean, but you're not a sports

Gene: 47:44

up with it. What, what does being a sports guy have to do with having to watch advertising?

Ben: 47:49

Easy. Unless you're, if you're watching it in real time, you're going to watch ads. So when there's time out, when there's this,

Gene: 47:56

can't pay for an ad-free sports

Ben: 47:58

Nope. No. Okay, sure. Then you just have dead air. So when they go to

Gene: 48:04

than that

Ben: 48:07

I don't know,

Gene: 48:07

much preferred that air ads are just grading. They're so annoying. They're demeaning. They're they're just horrible

Ben: 48:17

I do not disagree with everything you're saying, but you know, it's it's one of those things that there are going to be ad breaks at the very least.

Gene: 48:27

well, I don't care if there's a bathroom break that happens, but there don't need to be ads playing while I'm going to the bathroom. I just,

Ben: 48:36

It does not bug me the way that it bugs you.

Gene: 48:40

Yeah, I know. I'm hypersensitive to it. But then also, I haven't had a, where I voluntarily gave up television when I moved outta my parents' house. I never got a TV and I only had a TV while I was married cuz my ex-wife watched tv. But I've always just preferred to, not spend time watching a.

Ben: 49:05

On a different note, Palmetto State right now has a sale going on their AK 47 Platform, Gen three for 600 bucks. That looks very

Gene: 49:16

That's a pretty good price.

Ben: 49:17

Yeah.

Gene: 49:18

they're the, well, first of all, they have a sale literally every day, cuz they send me something every single day. Speaking of ads, I do get plenty of them in email. I don't read'em, but I see the names of their ads popping up. But and I've been, I guess I could just opt out. I've just been too lazy to opt out of their emails.

Ben: 49:37

Yeah.

Gene: 49:38

But they have pretty good pricing in general, so the, that's, they've got some sale on as well.

Ben: 49:42

Yeah, they do. And the only reason why I'm bringing it up is because I've been looking at the state armor AK 47 as a just, well, I've already got several, 7 62 by 39 guns.

Gene: 49:57

Oh, you

Ben: 49:57

it would, I do, and I have plenty of ammo. Oh yeah.

Gene: 50:01

Which what types of 7 62 by 30 nines do you have?

Ben: 50:05

Well, I've, that's a very personal question. Gene

Gene: 50:11

Not really. It's do you remember

Ben: 50:14

no, I do, I've got I've got an Egyptian Mattie, I've got Plenty of SKSs. I've got a Ukrainian, or not Ukrainian, Yugo aka

Gene: 50:24

get slot, man? Yeah.

Ben: 50:25

Yeah, so I've got the Gambit and one of my SKSs I've actually converted to a Bullpup. The others just pure it, it's interesting because got these in the nineties when they were$50 and now they're selling for over 500. Yeah.

Gene: 50:42

Oh, yeah. Yeah. In fact the newest generation, Oh shit, what's the brand? It's the one that used to be Yugoslavian. It's not Yugoslavian anymore. It's the check, I guess. Right? They're the ones where the factory is, I'm trying to remember the factory name. But anyway, their new model based on the AK 47 just came out and I think it's 1300 bucks.

Ben: 51:08

Hm. God damn.

Gene: 51:10

Yeah. And I'm still blanking out the brand name. It'll come to me. But yeah, those are, prices are not cheap. A lot of prices are not cheap right now. We're going through inflation worldwide right now.

Ben: 51:25

Yeah. According to Joe Biden's a worldwide problem. Why are you blaming him?

Gene: 51:30

Yeah. Even though he literally started the worldwide problem

Ben: 51:36

Indeed.

Gene: 51:37

And the comparisons of what things were like on, on the last day that Trump was president, like gas braces and food prices, et cetera, versus the prices that are current today. It's it's hard to believe it's only been two years. It feels like it's been a decade.

Ben: 51:59

Well, it, it's worse than that. When you look at the diesel shortage that's coming up and everything else, and, people, the, Okay, so the shortage, when they say 20 whatever day is worth of supply, that's a rolling number.

Gene: 52:15

Sorry I remember the factory name. Aava?

Ben: 52:18

No. Yeah. Well, they, that's a rolling number, right? So it's what we have in reserve that if all productions stop what we would have, but production is still happening. It's a very small buffer and I don't think diesel is going to stop flowing in the next 20 something days or that, but you know, when the supply shrinks and demand starts out pacing it and the right we have seen, because several refineries didn't come back from covid. That's what people need to understand is they shut down and they ain't back yet. And guess what? It's gonna be six months to a year before they could even tool up and come back if they wanted.

Gene: 53:03

Yeah.

Ben: 53:04

As demand starts outpacing supply, you're going to see a huge spike in price

Gene: 53:11

Yeah. And diesel people have to remember, it

Ben: 53:14

is

Gene: 53:14

a percentage of literally everything that's physical goods. All of it has transportation as part of the cost.

Ben: 53:24

okay. powers the trains that deliver goods across the country. The trucks that take the goods off of those trains and distribute them throughout is powered by diesel. I hate to tell everybody this, but the bunker fuel that is used by every ship in the world is counted in that diesel supply,

Gene: 53:51

it's what?

Ben: 53:52

the bunker fuel that's used by ships, between here in China that's counted in that supply

Gene: 54:01

So aren't those mostly Chinese ships still dropping shit off?

Ben: 54:05

new no. The US Merchant Marine and allied countries for out strips. China actually.

Gene: 54:12

That's interesting. Every time I've ever seen a ship docked, the name of the ship is in Chinese characters.

Ben: 54:19

Really?

Gene: 54:20

Every fucking time I've been in California,

Ben: 54:23

interesting because the us Germany, Holland,

Gene: 54:26

to be a lot of Japanese ships, but lately not so much.

Ben: 54:31

The Chinese definitely have a growing merchant marine and they're getting there. But I mean, I remember conversations with my grandfather at one point in time where we were talking about potential war with China. He said, Yeah, they've got a hell of an army, but how are they ever gonna get'em anywhere? And you know that's the thing is China invading the US is just not strategically possible for them because they do not have the Navy and they do not have the maritime marine that they could even use to transport the troops. Warfare is all they have, which is substantial at this point. But you know, I,

Gene: 55:21

Yeah, well, they've got a little more than that. They also have international relationships in well they, they mostly outpace us in Africa, and I think they're definitely trying to do that in South America, like they own the infrastructure,

Ben: 55:40

Yeah, absolutely.

Gene: 55:41

kinda like we own the the military base in. Saudi Arabia and Germany they own infrastructure in Africa and are working on South America. I think that the, there's definitely gonna be a big realign in terms of the valuation of both US and Chinese currency. Cuz I don't think either one, The Chinese isn't back that way. Gold either, is it? They're both just

Ben: 56:11

It, they're totally fiat, the Chinese currency Chinese have been accused many years of playing games with their currency. So I think with the coming collabs of the Chinese steel industry, what has already happened with the real estate market barring a move on Taiwan, if we stay purely in the economic warfare model and we look at what's going on, I think the US has a shot at winning. I think the US has the staying power because out of all the European countries, out of all the Western countries, we are the safest haven and we are depleting capital from our allies. Like crazy. doesn't have that. So if you look at Vietnam, China's a more stable economy. If you look at North Korea, China is a more stable economy. If you look at the East in general, China is the more stable economy, but all these subsidiary countries don't have anything to give. So

Gene: 57:16

No, that's true. But they do have raw resources, which is the main reason China got involved.

Ben: 57:21

yeah, to an extent, but we'll see what happens.

Gene: 57:27

Yeah. I mean this is where the US has always had an advantage. Sometimes Unexp exploited isn't having great natural resources.

Ben: 57:38

And natural defensible borders. The fact that, we have Canada to the north and the naco state of Mexico to the south, we have,

Gene: 57:47

Well, that you mean the communist state of Canada to the north?

Ben: 57:51

Yes. So barring the war of 1812, we really haven't seen an incursion on the US mainland. I mean, World War ii, you had the Aleutian Islands and things like that, but Jesus Christ, that's touching Russia.

Gene: 58:04

Yeah. Kinda like Alaska

Ben: 58:08

Yes.

Gene: 58:11

Yeah I don't know, man. Again, I'm not rooting for China and I don't want people to misinterpret that. What I'm saying is that my perspective's a little different, I think because I kind of grew up here, but I also kind of didn't grow up here. So I've got a little bit of a more of a shifted perspective. And my view of China, I think it takes more, it's more of the Russian view of China, right? It's more of the reason that Russia had nuclear missiles pointed at China view which is you can't trust these fuckers, but you can't underestimate these fuckers either. And I really feel like the US has been underestimating. China for 50 years now. At least 30, but maybe even 50. Ever since Nixon went, I kind of

Ben: 58:59

I think, yeah,

Gene: 59:01

China's been, Oh, those guys, there's some backwards bass, ex little country, nothing to worry about.

Ben: 59:07

well, Nixon screwed up and the one China policy was a screw up. I think we all agree on that, that, we should have said, Okay, yes, we will recognize the communist government of China, but Taiwan, they're their own country. The UK screwed up by agreeing to hand back over Hong Kong instead of saying, Nope, they're their own country. Those were two man major, massive mistakes that have given China a inflated sense of importance and been ready for I mean, it's just ripe for it being conflict points later down the road that we're coming to see to fruition.

Gene: 59:49

Yeah, and I was in Hong Kong the last year before the UK gave it up. And so there was a lot of money being moved out of Hong Kong that year. A lot of people were worried about what's gonna happen and the God, I'm trying to remember now what the name of the company was that I went out there for. It was actually a security project, but but yeah, Hong Kong was a, in some regards a steam safety valve for China. But it was also, while it was British controlled for sure, and I suspect even years after that, it was also a, it was a way for a lot of the people that were able to make money in China, A lot of, it's not completely over the board or over the table. It was a way for them to shift it, convert it, move it in a way that made it a lot harder for the government to get at it. And so there's always a lot of elements of, I mean I don't wanna just use a general word corruption cuz that exists in every country, but it was a very different atmosphere. It wasn't just Oh, here's a little part of the UK that happens to be in Asia. No, it was always a lot more of the people that managed to rise up financially out of China, all managed to get to Hong Kong. And and so you had a disproportionate concentration of both successful business people, but also successful mobsters, gangsters, and even successful politicians that were corrupt as all hell.

Ben: 1:01:32

Well, yes, there was that, and I think your analogy of the check valve is a good one because in communist China, what we're seeing with the lockdowns today and what we've seen in the past is enforcement of whatever the idea is, whether it's law enforcement or the cultural norm or the zero covid policy is fucking brutal. So there's less potential for that to rise, which, here's the thing, you wanna get rid of all crime get rid of all freedom, and are you willing to make that trade off? I personally say no. I will quite frankly, live with

Gene: 1:02:18

Well, there's another way to get rid of all crime, and that's to get rid of all the rules.

Ben: 1:02:23

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, that goes back to what is the definition of a crime, right? So I a hundred percent agree with you that the majority of the things that are complained about as criminal shouldn't be.

Gene: 1:02:42

Yeah.

Ben: 1:02:43

Yeah. And, but you and I think very similarly

Gene: 1:02:45

Well, what about,

Ben: 1:02:47

Go ahead.

Gene: 1:02:49

well, I was gonna say, Well, what about murder and things like that. I was like, Well, fair enough. I mean, you can call'em crimes, but also if you didn't have them as crime, murder would sort of be a rarity anyway, because there would be revenge. And eventually people get conditioned to the fact that even without laws, if the opor or the possibility of revenge resulting in my death, if I commit a crime of murder against somebody else. That's good reason not to kill somebody in, in, even if there's no law that says you can't kill somebody.

Ben: 1:03:30

I would say that I believe in the definition of a crime being harm to one's property, one's person, and one's liberty. Outside of that, it's not a crime. So I would say murder does need to be a crime.

Gene: 1:03:46

Yeah. But I'm, What I'm saying is even if there's no enforcement of murder being crime, there is inherent enforcement that would happen. If it's not police picking you up and putting you in jail the risk of you getting killed or your family getting killed and the Hatfield and McCoy's type situation is going to keep people from murder.

Ben: 1:04:07

but the Hatfields and McCoys went on for a very long time.

Gene: 1:04:12

Right. And then I guess if you actually look at the history of that it had more to do with politics than it did with just families.

Ben: 1:04:22

Well, I mean it, it's not just politics, it's essentially a mob feud in many ways.

Gene: 1:04:32

Well, there you go. Mob Feud.

Ben: 1:04:39

Well, I mean, so both families were involved in local crime. They had different things. They had

Gene: 1:04:48

They were Moon Shiners, weren't they?

Ben: 1:04:49

Yeah. Yeah. Which, hey, nothing against that, but. They had competing interests. It wasn't just a family feud. That's all I'm saying.

Gene: 1:05:00

Interesting. Hey, so I wanna be sensitive to your time because

Ben: 1:05:06

No I'm still good right now.

Gene: 1:05:08

okay. All right. All right, well let's just keep an eye on that, cuz I know you said you've got a hard stop at the hotel you're at because they're crappy.

Ben: 1:05:18

Well, there's that and just needing to get to the airport, but yeah. The hard stop is gonna

Gene: 1:05:23

think you're flying out today. Okay.

Ben: 1:05:27

I'm hoping what I'd say is that hell, let's go till housekeeping knocks on my door, so I'm good

Gene: 1:05:34

Oh, okay. You wanna play that way? All

Ben: 1:05:36

Yeah, I mean, I, so I, my flight, I've gotta leave here at noon to make it to the airport, but other than that, I'm,

Gene: 1:05:43

Oh, okay. You're good then. Now do you remember that daylight savings time changes?

Ben: 1:05:50

Yeah, that happened last night.

Gene: 1:05:51

Yeah.

Ben: 1:05:52

clocks that auto update Gene

Gene: 1:05:54

Okay good. Cause I wasn't sure cuz you were confused about time, so I just wanna make sure you don't miss your your flight cuz your watch is in the wrong time zone.

Ben: 1:06:02

We had a miscommunication and that's been resolved and Yeah.

Gene: 1:06:09

Got it.

Ben: 1:06:11

So everybody knows what I've been doing this week. What about you?

Gene: 1:06:16

What have I been up to? I don't know that there's anything particularly interesting. I'm not traveling. I'm at home. I haven't bought any new guns. Shocker. Nothing's really new in that front. There's been some delays with getting the first product up on Amazon because my partner in this whole venture, I don't know if he screwed up or something happened, but long story short, a bunch of stuff either never got saved or it got saved and then deleted and he's had to recreate the website and then redo the listings on Amazon, a bunch of this stuff. And I, it's not like he was lying about having done it cuz I was there online with him watching. We were both on as he was setting the stuff the first time. But I don't know, maybe some crucial steps got skipped and stuff was in draft form instead of saved or something. And then just long story short, I think this week it'll be the week to actually get the product up on Amazon and then I'll start talking.

Ben: 1:07:22

And I was on mute. I was saying I look forward to it because even I don't know what the product really is.

Gene: 1:07:28

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's true. And I do need to send you a sample and Adam and a few other folks that, that I'm gonna just send stuff out to. But yeah, it's it's been interesting. I mean, honestly for as much as I kind of bitched about the delay that we had and getting the stuff shipped from China, we've now are getting to the point where this logistical delay of getting the product up on Amazon that has nothing to do with China is gonna be at roughly the same amount of time. So I guess I don't really have anything to bitch about.

Ben: 1:08:01

Yeah. And you shouldn't have paid for the expedited shipping.

Gene: 1:08:04

No, I should have still done that because if right now, if we would've ordered by ship, it would've been about a two and a half month shipping time, or I should say receipt time. Obviously the ship isn't gonna take two and a half months to go across, but between the time that they ship and between the time that I would've received the products about two and a half months

Ben: 1:08:28

It's crazy.

Gene: 1:08:29

with, which is, I'm sure for some products that's perfectly fine and it may be for future orders for us as well. We just have to plan this stuff ahead of time enough.

Ben: 1:08:40

Well, you're anxious to get to your initial release,

Gene: 1:08:42

yeah, I need, we need to run a test, right? Cause the test doesn't work. If there's problems with the products, if the sales don't go well on Amazon, yada, yada. That affects what we're gonna do in the future, both financially and timewise.

Ben: 1:08:56

I'm gonna get you to talk about something we haven't talked about really on the podcast,

Gene: 1:09:00

what's that?

Ben: 1:09:01

but you are very much a business minded individual. So yeah. So talk about how like you're launching this test product as a, Hey, this is initial offering. What do y'all think? How do you respond to the market effectively, and how do you listen to the market to know how to pivot and change a product?

Gene: 1:09:28

Well, I mean, right now I'm not testing the market as much as I am testing the company that's making the product for us. But certainly if you're gonna do a initial launch, you don't wanna just go all in. And I've been involved, I've been in either investor or some other way related to a number of products that were brand new. Never been done. The key thing is you have to build up to a minimum viable product and then start doing testing in iterations because the odds of getting something perfectly right the first time through are very slim. So you have to plan on the fact that you're gonna need to iteratively change either the specs or the pricing or the distribution or the manufacturing or something, or all of those, in fact, potentially. And so you don't wanna wait until things are perfect in order to start doing the actual sales themselves. You need to always, It's I think a good example of this that, that people, at least many people, if not everybody will be accustomed to, is if you go on steam and you buy a game, a lot of games are sold in pre-release form, so they're a little bit cheaper, but you also are buying a game knowing that it's not finished and that your experiences may not be complete. They may have more bugs, et cetera, et cetera. And as long as that is clear up front I'm perfectly happy buying a game in pre-release and getting an extra, six months to a year of access to that game, being able to play that game instead of just waiting for the full release. Now the flip side is when they do that and the product is just not playable, that's that. Seriously harmed the company. And the game that I've been raving about Cyberpunk 2077 kind of went through that because I think their marketing pushed them to release the game about two years ago now, not, I think just about two years, maybe a little less. And the reality is that the game wasn't ready. There was still a lot of bugs that needed to get fixed before they really should have released it. But because they had committed to a date the business side of the company was pushing it. And I think the development lost that battle and putting a delay in. And so when the game came out a lot of people were super excited for it. They really, they loved the demo videos that were put out by the company, but the game just was very clunky because of the bugs that existed. And a lot of people started giving it negative reviews. Which is one of the reasons that I did what I did, which is decide to not play this game yet because it wasn't really ready, even though I was released and just hold off. And I didn't really think I was gonna wait two years. I figured I'd wait, maybe a year. But it turned out by the time I remembered that I actually owned this stupid thing, it was almost two years. And and so by the time I played it, it was in great shape. But that's the thing is there's always gonna be a risk. So you have to kind of steer people towards it gently. You have to have a viable product. You, so you could be minimal, but it has to be minimal viable. It can't be something that is vastly different from what your final interpretation of the product is because then you're really selling something totally different. It has to be close enough to kind of what your final product is. So there's quite a bit of testing involved. The other thing I'd say is for anybody creating a new product if you're on the tech side of it, if you're on the product development side of it, I guarantee you, you are underestimating the amount of work that it takes to actually market the product. If you're on the marketing side of it and you understand what's involved in that whole process, I absolutely guarantee you, you are underestimating the amount of time that it takes to develop the product. So both of those sides tend to have a very small kind of inaccurate perception of what the other side is doing.

Ben: 1:13:46

Well, a skewed view, and one of the things that I would add to that is getting your qualifications for what a minimum viable product is right, is actually critical. Because what I see, especially on the software development side, is oftentimes that minimal viable product really isn't viable. It's a technical checkbox that is used and leaned on in a way that is. It's just not feasible, can we do this? Yes. Is it in a usable form? No. That's kind of the thing that is oftentimes missed in agile planning and things like that. Define minimal viable product for me and make it meaningful. If the product technically does what you set out to do, great, but if it doesn't, if it's not usable, then what good are you?

Gene: 1:14:42

Yeah. And it, that, that term is nebulous for a reason because it's gonna be different for different industries and different product types, but you have to have an understanding of what your user is gonna be actually doing with it. You can't just put something out that really you have proven, at least in concept, to work. Like you can't just put out an idea and hope for the best. It'll work. Hey speaking of products you were talking about buying a new monitor stand a while ago. I don't know if you bought it yet or not.

Ben: 1:15:19

I have not,

Gene: 1:15:20

Okay, so the one that you sent me was this kind of a scissor action stand thing that can, it's got an arm, so it's a basically a stick that attaches to your desk and then from that stick from that pole, you've got a kind of a scissor action, two joints that actually connect up to hold the monitor. I know I'm doing a horrible job describing this, but so I bought one of those recently and I would recommend you not buying one, For the simple reason that I hadn't even thought about, but it's definitely there is that if you mounted to your desk and you want the monitor kind of back towards the back of the desk instead of right in your face in. Then your movement of up and down on the monitor will actually end up moving the monitor left to right as well. Like there, it's unavoidable to move it. So anytime you wanna raise the monitor, it moves in my case, left up, left or down right? And that is just by the nature of the design. Unless you can unless you, well, let's put it this way, unless your desk is two desks deep, in which case you can point it straight at you at full length, unless that's the case, you're gonna need to have it be sort of perpendicular, the actual arm perpendicular to you and not pointing at you. And by doing that movement up and down and left and right is tied together. You can't do one without the other. So not a great, I mean, I shouldn't say it's not a great design. It works fine as long as you understand the mechanics of it. I didn't really have the mechanics in my head when I bought it. And when I installed it, I realized, Oh, that's how it works. Okay. This is not particularly good. So if, and then having said that, if you never moved the monitor after the first time you install it, then you're fine.

Ben: 1:17:13

Well, what I'm really wanting is the ability to my desk is not a sit stand desk, so what I want is the ability to, at the very least, bring one of my three monitors up to standing height, and you knowd be okay. But it doesn't sound like the product you're describing is going to work for that.

Gene: 1:17:34

No, it's literally the same one you sent me. yeah, it's it's I've got other stuff that looks worse, but actually does a better job of holding the monitor and not having to be thinking these differences. I will say I'm impressed though with the weight that it's holding cuz the monitor that I've got mounted on there. Not light. It's 30, 32 pounds or something.

Ben: 1:17:56

What the fuck monitor do you have? That's 32

Gene: 1:17:59

Oh, I did buy a new monitor.

Ben: 1:18:02

Okay.

Gene: 1:18:03

bought a new a new gaming monitor.

Ben: 1:18:05

And it's 32 pounds,

Gene: 1:18:08

Well, yeah, actually it is over 30 pounds. Cuz the box was 50 that it came in.

Ben: 1:18:14

huh?

Gene: 1:18:14

It's a 144 hertz one millisecond refresh gaming monitor thing. It weigh, it weighs 43 inches.

Ben: 1:18:26

Okay. So a tv, not a monitor.

Gene: 1:18:29

No, it's a monitor. It has no tuner. It has, it's just a monitor. But it does weigh about two and a half times more than the equivalent size TV that I have sitting on a different. my my Samsung 43 inch TV that I use as a monitor on my Mac. It weighs way less than this thing, so I don't know why it's heavy, but it's main dis distinctive characteristic is just, it's a gaming monitor, so it's got a bunch of gaming stuff in it.

Ben: 1:19:05

Okay. I mean, I'm not I don't buy hardware based off of gaming specs. That's just not

Gene: 1:19:11

I know.

Ben: 1:19:12

Like the laptop you sent me, it's

Gene: 1:19:14

Yeah. That's good. Laptop?

Ben: 1:19:16

cool, but I've got a core I nine with 64 gigs of ram, and the discreet graphic starts sitting right here. That'll be just fine. So

Gene: 1:19:25

Well, not as far as that computer.

Ben: 1:19:28

I. Okay. But most of the time I'm not gaming, man. I mean, I've played cyberpunk a little bit because you've raved about it and it's an interesting game.

Gene: 1:19:41

I was gonna ask you about that, and I know you're traveling and

Ben: 1:19:44

Yeah. Yeah. So I haven't played it in the wild blue,

Gene: 1:19:46

did you get an hour in or two or five or what'd you do?

Ben: 1:19:49

Probably about two ish hours in Yeah.

Gene: 1:19:53

Okay. And then how far did you get along in the story?

Ben: 1:19:57

First two, three missions.

Gene: 1:20:00

Okay.

Ben: 1:20:01

Yeah. It was

Gene: 1:20:01

a female or a male character.

Ben: 1:20:04

Male.

Gene: 1:20:05

Okay

Ben: 1:20:07

I, it always bugs me and I know some people, and you included play as female characters, but that always just seems weird to me.

Gene: 1:20:15

Now I almost always play as a male character. I played as a female character in this game because, well, two reasons. One is it has motorcycles and it has a lot of different clothing of the cyber punk variety. And so I knew that there was a there's gonna be a lot of gameplay where this character is basically sitting on a motorcycle leaning forward. I much rather look at a cute ass of cute female ass, not a cute male ass in short shorts riding a motorcycle than looking at a dude's butt riding a motorcycle. So that was one of the reasons. The other one is I knew I was gonna play both, so I was gonna do a play through as a male and then play through as a female and see how the story is different. And it is different because obviously they have different love interests.

Ben: 1:21:11

They do. And that's the other part of it being weird, is when you get to that stage of the game that I don't know, man,

Gene: 1:21:19

that's an adult game.

Ben: 1:21:20

yeah. It's just not something I I, there's just something in me that doesn't allow me to play a feminine role. I'm sorry, Yeah.

Gene: 1:21:30

Well, I mean, would you rather play as a lesbian or a gay character?

Ben: 1:21:38

I'd rather play as a straight white male like I am,

Gene: 1:21:45

Right? But let's say the game forces you into either being a lesbian or a gay dude.

Ben: 1:21:50

Lesbian.

Gene: 1:21:51

Okay. There you go. There's the answer.

Ben: 1:21:53

Yeah. I mean the, just, at least that way I'm getting to see chicks,

Gene: 1:21:59

Yeah. Yeah. You're still, Well, not only, I mean, frankly let's be real here. Most guys don't really see anything wrong with watching lesbians. That's still fun to. and now real world lesbians don't look like the lesbians in video games or porn. Porn. Lesbians are very different variety. But also, a lot of if you ever, I don't know if you've ever been to a strip joined at all. But an awful lot of those girls are lesbians,

Ben: 1:22:30

Okay. Interesting.

Gene: 1:22:33

like they do this for work because they don't have any attachments to the guys they're flirting with. And they get really good at flirting to make money, but it doesn't mean anything. It'd be harder to do that, and they're still certainly straight chicks that are strippers. But it's harder to do that because you're more prone to actually get attached to somebody that's acting like they care for you. But for a lesbian, this is actually a great job because it, it's acting. It's acting. And then,

Ben: 1:23:02

job, but Sure.

Gene: 1:23:03

Oh, I actually, You kidding. Yoyou girls have gone to medical school as a result of being strippers.

Ben: 1:23:12

A few. I knew a stripper in college, but Yeah.

Gene: 1:23:17

Yes. I'm sure you did. So

Ben: 1:23:19

Not from a client scenario, like a friend of mine started stripping. Yeah.

Gene: 1:23:25

Clearly a lesbian.

Ben: 1:23:28

No, she's married and I, the way I knew her was her boyfriend was a friend of mine.

Gene: 1:23:34

Oh, okay. So you were friends with a guy whose girlfriend was a stripper?

Ben: 1:23:38

I mean, it's more than that. I was friends with her as well. I mean, it was a pretty tightknit group, but

Gene: 1:23:43

right? Yeah, just not a client.

Ben: 1:23:46

No. I've been in one strip club my entire life.

Gene: 1:23:51

Oh, okay. All right. So you're not, You see a lot of guys are really into that because that's the closest they can get to actually, Seeing another woman once again. Married,

Ben: 1:24:00

Yeah. But no, so I, this was on my 18th birthday. I was a drug there by some friends of mine, including two females and, whatever. And it just, not something that's ever interested me. And yeah,

Gene: 1:24:17

Well,

Ben: 1:24:17

to me, you either,

Gene: 1:24:19

somewhat agree.

Ben: 1:24:19

You either you, The reason why I don't like strip clubs is cuz you're in the position of you want to touch it and you can't, or you don't want to

Gene: 1:24:28

on the strip club.

Ben: 1:24:29

Well, okay. Anyway.

Gene: 1:24:32

Uhhuh.

Ben: 1:24:33

Legality wise, it's either something you want that you can't have or you don't want it at all, and that why put yourself in that position.

Gene: 1:24:41

I agree. I agree. I'm not a fan of strip clubs. I will say that I've been to more than you. But my thought pattern is I am not enjoying myself whenever I've been in a strip club because I'm counting the money the whole time. I'm like, this is such a waste. This is a ridiculous waste of money to essentially pay for having. And I'm just gonna say cute cuz it's just not even worth being there if they're not cute. But let's say they're cute, but it's a lot of money to be paying for a cute girl to not touch you And or for conversation. I mean, this is the sad part of it is the most money that I've spent at strip clubs have been instances where I've ended up sitting and having a chat with a chick for three hours.

Ben: 1:25:35

I mean, so my one experience was like that, my friends paid for a lap dance, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, You know what? Just sit down a little talk and the, But that's just it. Here's the thing. Strip clubs are largely either around business deals Really said guys who can't get any,

Gene: 1:25:56

Yeah. Yeah. Insults.

Ben: 1:25:59

Yeah.

Gene: 1:25:59

so there, there's, But some guys, don't know, they can enjoy it a lot more. I just, to me, I'm just doing the math. I'm like this is such a fucking waste of money. I could literally, A, either hire prostitute and it cost about the same, or b. Go out and date some chick and spend that same amount of money. And I would get more than I am getting at the strip club. Like the strip club is the least bang for the buck. Hardy har

Ben: 1:26:32

the least. Yeah, well, the least productive. Yeah. At the

Gene: 1:26:35

well, and the least bang for

Ben: 1:26:36

Yeah. Yeah. I You gotcha. I gotcha.

Gene: 1:26:40

And so to me it's never made, but I've got friends that really like strip clubs. And so they've, they've tended to take those opportunities a lot more naive. And also the second thing I'd say is strip clubs in the US absolutely suck. I've been to strip clubs in other countries quite a bit, and the other country's laws make strip clubs much better than what they are in the us.

Ben: 1:27:05

Any countries you wanna call out in particular

Gene: 1:27:08

Italy was pretty good. I had a pretty good time with strip club in Italy. Well, Russia obviously the Costa Rica was very interesting. That would definitely not be legal in the us. There they have different age limits on their population there. There's just in general, when I've gone to and I get it's never because I'm like, Oh, I'm bored. I'm gonna go to a strip club. It's always the people I'm there for business trip with or I'm hanging out with, they insist on, Oh yeah, you gotta go. This place is great. You'll love it. And in it's usually been, and it's not just that you're allowed to do more with these chicks in the other places, but it's also that they make more of a show out of it. It's almost like the it's a little bit of

Ben: 1:27:51

you really enjoy Tijuana?

Gene: 1:27:53

no, I hated Tijuana. I got robbed in Tijuana, dude. I got robbed by fucking hookers in Tijuana that I hardy, Hardy heart. Tijuana is not a place you wanna go? No, I was there.

Ben: 1:28:06

the totally legitimate businessman, robbed by hookers,

Gene: 1:28:12

Okay. Who hasn't raise your hand? Who hasn't been robbed by hookers in Tijuana? That's what I'd like to

Ben: 1:28:16

I, I've never been I haven't had the opportunity.

Gene: 1:28:19

Yeah. You haven't had the opportunity. I was there. I was only in Tijuana once in my early twenties And I was there with a buddy of mine and, were had some drinks. Probably had about 10 or 12 tequilas and walking around the area, want to see the dunk show all the stuff you do until you wanna, and we're kind of walking back towards the border and these fucking like underage hookers were swarming around us knowing that we're drunk. And I, I completely didn't notice as my wallet disappeared outta my pocket. And by the time we get to the border crossing, I'm like yeah, I was here. Where's my wallet? Where, what the hell? Now luckily my passport was not in my wallet, but all my money and driver's license was. All that should disappeared. At, to, and I was obviously, I was traveling in California cause we drove down from San Diego down to Tijuana. And so that left a very negative perspective, a bad taste in my mouth, if you will, of Tijuana. So I haven't been back since, but my, that was my instance, so that was an interesting trip. I got shot on that trip and I got robbed.

Ben: 1:29:34

Oh, okay. How'd you get shot?

Gene: 1:29:36

Oh, I got shot in the us. I didn't get shot in Mexico.

Ben: 1:29:41

Where did you get shot by Who? Why

Gene: 1:29:44

It's actually kinda a funny story. Got shot at a

Ben: 1:29:47

I don't think getting shot is a funny story. Gene, I think there, there's backstory

Gene: 1:29:52

hasn't gotten shot at least a few times. Come on.

Ben: 1:29:54

Neat. I've had the, I've had the option of getting shot and I've avoided it. I've been mugged once in my life, but yeah,

Gene: 1:30:04

I've never been mugged. No. I

Ben: 1:30:06

got mugged in DC

Gene: 1:30:07

I actually got shot at the Beverly Hills Gun range.

Ben: 1:30:12

Oh, accidental. Okay.

Gene: 1:30:14

Yeah. Accidental Asian business. Very happy, very drunk.

Ben: 1:30:21

Well, drinking and firearms. As much as I like both do not mix.

Gene: 1:30:26

It's funny because this was in the nineties and then in the nineties I kind of feel like that was a normal thing. I mean, I remember going out, partying with some friends and then taking a limo to the gun range and then going shooting Phil Lottos for a while, and that was, nobody even thought about it twice.

Ben: 1:30:44

No.

Gene: 1:30:44

It's like totally normal.

Ben: 1:30:46

And this is why you got shot

Gene: 1:30:48

No. That was a whole different time. No, this was, I got shot in the rain. And I, when I say got shot, I am being slightly dramatic here. What happened was I had a bullet that bounced back from what these guys were shooting, and it hit me in the arm.

Ben: 1:31:01

Hm.

Gene: 1:31:02

So it was a fragment, it was a fragment ricochet. It wasn't like a full, round being shot

Ben: 1:31:07

did it. Break the Skin.

Gene: 1:31:09

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I had a scar for about 12 years. I mean, you can't really tell, I can still kind of feel it if I move over my finger over it, but yeah, no, it definitely broke the skin. I mean, we got to shoot for free

Ben: 1:31:24

got the for,

Gene: 1:31:25

Uhhuh

Ben: 1:31:27

Oh

Gene: 1:31:28

was during the the Beverly ha Beverly Hills cap days. Things were a little different back then.

Ben: 1:31:33

I guess. I mean, man, everybody's so damn sensitive these days and it's

Gene: 1:31:38

you can't shoot anybody without them getting a racket going,

Ben: 1:31:42

Well, I'm referring to even more than that.

Gene: 1:31:44

Okay.

Ben: 1:31:45

it's incredible to me how sensitive people are and

Gene: 1:31:50

fuck'em. That's what I say. Fuck'em.

Ben: 1:31:52

Well, and yeah. So I will say this. You can only be canceled if you're a willing participant if you sit there and say, Fuck you. No.

Gene: 1:32:05

Yeah.

Ben: 1:32:06

What are they gonna

Gene: 1:32:06

That guy that did the the recent video on what's a woman?

Ben: 1:32:11

Yeah. I know who you're talking about. I

Gene: 1:32:13

He's, I can't remember his name. He's part of the Ben Shapiro crowd

Ben: 1:32:17

Oh, yeah. He's Daily Wire.

Gene: 1:32:19

Daily Wear. Yeah. But he was, that was where I saw that quote recently when he said that, I'm not gonna apologize for anything I've done. There's nothing that that I need

Ben: 1:32:30

to apologize

Gene: 1:32:31

Yeah. I have nothing to apologize for and that I'm not gonna allow people to cancel me even because you can't be canceling unless you're willing.

Ben: 1:32:41

Yep. And when it comes down to work or whatever else people can get me fired, but they can't change my mind if I, Here's the thing, if you believe in what you're saying, why would you allow anything to change what you believe other than the facts in your own intellect? Okay. So making it comes down to what happened in Russia. It comes down to what happened in China is the state compels you, or whatever force compels you to think and do something differently than your own principles would guide you. Why would you ever allow that?

Gene: 1:33:22

Yeah. Well, I mean, the book 1984 kind of is a good illustration of that. But I think the the tie into that I wanna jump to before we wrap up here is Elon Musk and the Insta Carma. That

Ben: 1:33:37

show Twitter has been

Gene: 1:33:40

because after he started talking about putting this council together and he's got all these ultra libs on there and everything, and the conservatives rightly are like, Well, shit, nothing's changed. He's basically just doubling down on the same stuff that Twitter's been. And in fact, keeping a lot of the same people in like the ones he didn't fire, a lot of'em needed to get fired. And his payback for doing that is he's getting a bunch of corporations that are pulling advertising because these same people that he's trying to be fair. not gonna be fair with him. They're like, No he needs to, they want him gone. They don't care how it happens. They don't care if they bankrupt the company. They don't care what the process is. They want the net result of Musk not being any longer connected to Twitter.

Ben: 1:34:32

Well, I mean,

Gene: 1:34:33

And if that means destroying the whole company, if there is no more Twitter, they're fine with that.

Ben: 1:34:37

yep. And it's, Kanye is another great example of just scorched earth economic repercussions.

Gene: 1:34:47

Yeah. I think Colleen will still be fine in the end, but but I do I do think that there's some naivete here with people like Musk who have been. Not so much even straddling, but just they're, they've managed to not worry about politics because financially they don't really have to. And Musk I think is deep down he's a libertarian,

Ben: 1:35:15

I agree.

Gene: 1:35:16

never really had to push on any of this stuff because having sufficient enough financial security allows you to live your life more as what you want, including in Libertarian without having to trade anything off for that. And so I think that's kind of where he's coming from. And so when he's got all these conservatives telling him, Hey, you need to fire this whole department, because these people have been doing horrible things for years now and colluding with the government. And his thought is like, Well, it can't be that bad. I mean, And then now he's, I think starting to realize, yeah, it is that bad. These people, they don't just hate you. They would prefer you're dead. Ultimately. If you died tomorrow, there would be thousands and thousands of these Twitter people cheering,

Ben: 1:36:13

well, I, I think that, So first of all, I think part of his attempt to back out was based off. During discovery, which any company that goes through any sort, sort of merger or acquisition, discovery is a big part of it. You learn a lot that you otherwise wouldn't have known. So I think he saw, Holy shit, this is gonna be bad. I think he saw some of the governmental involvement, everything else and tried to back out, and that's when they said yeah, no, you don't get to do that because you can't talk about it and you can't bring it up. It can't be shown in court. You don't get to back out. For this reason, I think he finally accepted it and realized, Okay, I get in there, I can play with these people, I can make it. Okay. And now he is realizing it's nothing but toxic and they're gonna tear you down from the inside. So what you have to do is a leak, what's going on, which we're seeing some pretty interesting leaks outta Twitter right now. And then b. Fire the whole lot and set it up so that you can say, Hey, yeah I was lied to about this purchase. I want my money back sort of scenario. Which is going to be difficult at best for him, but

Gene: 1:37:37

Well, I don't think he wants his money back. I think what he wants, I think he's got an idea and the reason that he decided to buy it in the end. Of what he could turn it into. So the real question is gonna be how much is it gonna cost him beyond what he's already spent to change Twitter into what he wants, Which sounds kinda like x.com. So like one of the positive things that I just saw yesterday was his reply to a tweet talking about video. And somebody in fact, I think Everyday Astronaut who's a guy that I follow for SpaceX stuff he does some of the best videos like describing things like he, his series of videos on different aspects of rocketry are really good because he was a photographer as his background, knew nothing about rockets, but he really was into space stuff and ended up doing a really good job cuz he's got a good eye of visually. Shooting videos. And then he got to know Elon Musk because he's doing it so much, and now he's, one of the very few people, in fact, might be the only guy that's got a video series out there where Elon Musk walks him through for hours down in Texas here and shows off

Ben: 1:38:56

The

Gene: 1:38:56

everything. Yeah. No, well, not the gig you factor, but down in Brownsville or Boca Chica showing him off all the construction going on with Starship.

Ben: 1:39:07

yeah.

Gene: 1:39:07

But he's also done like a series on different engines. He did a whole series on Russian rocketry. But anyway, so he asked Musk, so Musk knows who he is. It's the reason I brought it up. So he asked Musk Kate. I would love if I could post my videos on Twitter and not just on YouTube. But to do that, I need to have monetization. And Musk's response was, we can do up to 40 minute videos with tech we have right now, and we'll work on making that longer. And then this was so funny, Musk asks, So how much does YouTube pay for monetization? He doesn't

Ben: 1:39:51

all in public

Gene: 1:39:52

Yeah. This is probably, this is Twitter, right? And I love, it's it's that fucking innocence of a billionaire, well, what does YouTube even pay when you put shit up on there and you're big enough to have a partnership?

Ben: 1:40:03

And this point, the guy promptly lied and exaggerated the

Gene: 1:40:06

I know he should have, right? No. He, they know each other. So he says, Yeah, YouTube is 60%, I think. And Musk's replied back to him, was like, Oh, we should be able to beat. Musk effectively just committed Twitter to be a video platform that will pay creators more than 60%

Ben: 1:40:28

Well, I mean, if we need a

Gene: 1:40:31

someday. We just don't know when. Right.

Ben: 1:40:34

well, we need a rival to YouTube.

Gene: 1:40:36

We do, and that's the thing is can you imagine how awesome Twitter will be if Twitter ends up being the rival to YouTube?

Ben: 1:40:42

I, it would be Well, and they had not just YouTube. They had TikTok beat with Vine and everything else and they fucked it over. But here's the thing, if you get YouTube made more money pre 2016 before all the censorship and everything else than it has since. You can look at the numbers they have growing viewership, but less engagement, less everything else. It the overall dollars have been stagnant at best. And when you look at dollars per user at YouTube 20, pre 2016 was its heyday. There was.

Gene: 1:41:20

but also there was an awful lot of fakey going on back then. I mean, they have

Ben: 1:41:27

okay.

Gene: 1:41:27

On the fake stuff quite a

Ben: 1:41:29

But there was also a lot of, quite frankly, Nazi propaganda. There was lots of white supremacist shit. There was lots and lots of stuff on YouTube that had an audience and drew in viewers and was there. And quite frankly, as much as I disagree with the content, think it still should be

Gene: 1:41:51

Yeah. I mean, I don't think they accounted for very much financially. I really don't.

Ben: 1:41:55

no, because they demonetized it. But it was the overall engagement on some of that, that was interesting.

Gene: 1:42:01

Difference was that there was

Ben: 1:42:03

David Ike is a great example of what they've taken down that, lost a lot of eyeballs,

Gene: 1:42:09

Well, Alex Jones had a shit ton of eyeballs and they took him

Ben: 1:42:14

over a billion views.

Gene: 1:42:17

Yeah, and they've got, they, they've taken down a lot of people that have a lot of views on there. But either way, getting Musk to talk about this publicly of, Yeah, we can convert Twitter or have add, I guess not convert, but add video. I mean, it, it would get a lot closer to what we can do with the Macon servers right now. We can have videos in there. We can have graphics, we can have longer than tweets

Ben: 1:42:47

Well, how great would it be if Elon added video started monetizing it and turned Twitter into a protocol such that no agenda, social. I post on no agenda, social and it goes out to Twitter everywhere else and turn it into real estate, I think is the great example.

Gene: 1:43:08

See, now you're talking like Ian on Tim Cast because mines mine should be able to connect to Twitter, and I should be able to post on mines and should show up on Twitter

Ben: 1:43:19

I I am insulted by that comparison.

Gene: 1:43:22

I know. He's like the worst person on that show. He's the guy you love to hate. I, every episode I post something negative about Ian.

Ben: 1:43:31

Yeah, the best episodes are when he is not there.

Gene: 1:43:36

but they've gotta have him there. I mean, I know Tim's intelligent enough. That there's gotta be a reason in his mind that he thinks he's better off having Ian than not having Ian than there, because he can't, If it's a total echo chamber with no crazy person, it's a lot less interesting. You gotta have somebody that you could say, Dude, you're an idiot. I can't believe you just said that. And that's what Ian is for that show.

Ben: 1:44:05

Yeah, well, I, I mean, Ian's a character, I get that, but there's a certain annoyance level that just keeps me from watching Tim cast IL regularly. I mean, there just

Gene: 1:44:21

I probably worked, watched three shows a week out of six.

Ben: 1:44:25

so Luke, total opposite effect. If Luke's on, I'll usually watch it.

Gene: 1:44:32

Yeah. Yeah. Luke, I think in a lot of ways He has a very similar mentality to me. His background's similar too though. He was born in Poland and then, his parents immigrated to the US so he grew up in the us but he has a lot of that first generation mentality, which is like a little more mistrustful of everybody. a little more cynical and a lot more appreciative of freedom. And so I would say not a hundred percent, but I say 98% of what comes outta Luke's mouth, I would sign off on

Ben: 1:45:06

Yeah, I, it, his libertarian bent very much fits with my world I have a couple of his t-shirts, his humble t-shirt, merchant self. Yeah, I like a lot of ways to say I can't stand his own show though. Like I never watch his own show. It's

Gene: 1:45:20

He, Yeah. And the show production quality sucks. The. He does the same thing that a lot of people do, that you start recognizing when you know something about YouTube, which is, Oh, my food deliveries here. Which is that if you wanna have 22 or 23 minute long episodes because that maximizes advertising, but it minimizes the length of stuff. There's no benefit in having anything over 23 minutes basically, is what it comes down to. But there is a benefit in having at least 20 minutes. It's based on the algorithms and the advertising sales that YouTube does. So basically anything shorter than that gives you less opportunity to earn money from Google. And anything longer is just more work for you without any more opportunity for earning money.

Ben: 1:46:13

Interesting. Well, I'm

Gene: 1:46:15

And you'll notice that if you start watching that there is there's a. An awful lot of people that just randomly seem to have 23 minute episodes.

Ben: 1:46:29

Well, Jean, I think it's about time for us to

Gene: 1:46:32

Yeah. My food's here

Ben: 1:46:32

your food's there and Google's letting me know I should head to the airport. So

Gene: 1:46:37

There you go. Perfect. All right, well, we'll get this episode published. We still need ideas for music or custom music if anyone's up for it. But if nothing else make sure you subscribe to this RSS feed. If you're just clicking, listen to this on the website. Don't do that. No. Click on the little XML thing. Use your phone or whatever you use. Yeah. Podcasting app and subscribe because when I noticed when I looked at the stats is right now 70% of the people that are listening to this are

Ben: 1:47:11

Or on the website. Yeah. Well and the other interesting thing is the timing of listen. Last week we had two big spikes. Day of was pretty little, which is interesting because that's essentially the people who have a subscription on their podcast apps. And then we had these two huge spikes of just random people coming in. Now that said we did a bad job of transitioning. So I think that's part of it. But yeah,

Gene: 1:47:36

Yeah. Yeah. We're amateurs.

Ben: 1:47:39

I am for sure

Gene: 1:47:42

I've only been doing this for 14 years. I'm still an amateur.

Ben: 1:47:46

Yeah. Well, Jean, it's good to get to talk to you. I'm glad we made it work and we'll talk to you next week.