006 Just Two Good Old Boys

Ben: 0:11

Hey Gene. How's it going?

Gene: 0:13

Good, how are you?

Ben: 0:15

Uh, doing well. Been traveling for Thanksgiving and everything else. Still, uh, still a little sleepy from all the Turkey and food.

Gene: 0:24

Little trip to fan overdo.

Ben: 0:26

Oh, man, it, we, it, it was so good. And anytime my family gets together like this, so we went to my family's Thanksgiving, uh, for Thursday, and then we're going to my wife's, uh, today, uh, later. And, um, man, it's, uh, everybody's pretty good cook, so there's really nothing bad on the table, you know? And my dad, the way he does his Turkey is low, low, low and slow overnight, so it's not all dried out and oh my God, it's good. Yeah. So, you know, he never gets it above 200 degrees, so that way it just doesn't get.

Gene: 1:04

By the way, this is great cuz the about 50% of, uh, unrelenting. My other podcast was all food related and cooking related. So we're starting on the right foot here as well.

Ben: 1:16

Yeah. There, there was a little bit of air fryer talk.

Gene: 1:19

Yeah, I a little bit. Um, does your dad have a sovi?

Ben: 1:24

No, he does not.

Gene: 1:25

Does he have, uh, any other interesting kitchen gadgets?

Ben: 1:30

No, no, no. My parents are old school. They, I mean, they were sitting there making a, a shoe pig salad, which has a lot of stuff chopped up pretty fine in it. And, um, I was like, y'all have a, uh, I mean, they're making a big batch, so they're both sitting there cho and cho and chopping. I'm like, y'all have a, uh, food processor, right?

Gene: 1:50

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:51

Why aren't you using it? I don't know. Didn't think about it.

Gene: 1:54

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:55

they're old school, but.

Gene: 1:57

Have they ever done, or have you ever done FLA matter? A fried, deep fried Turkey.

Ben: 2:02

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We, we've done that several years. Um, they're good. And it's, uh, not a bad way to do it, you know, the whole thing is that it crisps and heats through pretty quickly. Um, but, you know, my, my dad just likes doing it this way more, uh, with deep fried Turkey. The injectables are definitely the way to go.

Gene: 2:24

injectables. What do you mean?

Ben: 2:26

So, have you not used injectables,

Gene: 2:29

Uh, no, I haven't.

Ben: 2:32

injectable seasoning? So, like, Tony sat makes some, there's a bunch of different ones. People make their own, uh, basically you take a butter, um, or whatever liquid you're gonna do, maybe a, you know, citrus or

Gene: 2:45

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:46

put seasoning and then you put it in a syringe and you inject it into the meat.

Gene: 2:51

Oh, I've done that. I just didn't, yeah. I didn't call it injectable, I guess.

Ben: 2:55

Yeah.

Gene: 2:56

Yeah. But as far as butter, I usually just chuck a stick of butter on the insides along with the.

Ben: 3:01

Oh yeah. Well, yeah. So what we usually do on our Turkey is we'll put butter and, you know, herbs and stuff all up under the skin, and then my dad will take a big thing of rosemary, some onions, stuff like that, and stuff it in the cavity. So, yeah.

Gene: 3:18

Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't like when it's right under the skin, uh, because that separates the skin from the meat. And I actually like the skin to be right on the meat. So I usually just make some small incisions with, uh, like a pairing knife and then put garlic and other, other things, uh, maybe a half inch underneath the skin, like in the meat. Make little pockets.

Ben: 3:40

Yeah. Well, there's a bunch of different ways of doing it, but it sure is good. Um, you know, turkey's one of those things that you don't eat often enough, so it's, you know, if it's done right,

Gene: 3:52

people, some

Ben: 3:53

Yeah. I mean, some people eat ground Turkey and all that all

Gene: 3:57

I had ground Turkey all the time. I prefer ground Turkey to chicken and, uh, I prefer bison to beef. Um, I don't know, I think ground, ground Turkey, it has, I don't even, I'm not sure exactly, but I, I do like ground Turkey more. You can, uh, you can make it tastes less like poultry, I think, with the right spices.

Ben: 4:26

Well, and there's also a big difference between, you know, is it a heritage bird or is it just whatever farm raised, right. Same thing with chicken. Anything else?

Gene: 4:36

for sure.

Ben: 4:37

You know, beef and, um,

Gene: 4:40

A wild turkey's awesome. I've only had that a couple times, but it's really good.

Ben: 4:44

Oh yeah. We used to, I used to hunt turkeys in Idaho. I haven't, haven't been Turkey hunting since I've moved back to Texas, but,

Gene: 4:52

I remember one time when my, uh, ex-wife, uh, decided to catch a Turkey. Uh, that was walking by us and then I don't think she realized how fast they run.

Ben: 5:04

Well, and if she got ahold of it, how strong they are.

Gene: 5:08

No, she never, she never got ahold of it, but she, she was thinking she could just grab its neck and that'll be the end of that. I'm get a free Turkey. I'm, I was standing by the car laughing. I'm like, yeah, that ain't gonna happen.

Ben: 5:19

No, no. That's hilarious.

Gene: 5:21

I've grabbed geese by the neck. That's not hard to do, cuz they don't, they go towards you, not away from you.

Ben: 5:26

Well, they're aggressive as hell. They'll pack the crap outta you.

Gene: 5:30

Yeah. It doesn't hurt.

Ben: 5:32

Depends on if you're a little kid or not,

Gene: 5:34

Yeah. Well, yes, of course as a little kid you wanna stay away from that shit. But no, as an adult, you know, if you got a goose walk into, I, I've always fed birds. I don't, I'm one of those people that, uh, enjoys the interaction with the, uh, the last of the dinosaurs.

Ben: 5:52

Yeah, that's what I was about to say. The only reason why you like birds is cuz they evolved from rough tiles.

Gene: 5:58

Uh, the last, uh, living descendants.

Ben: 6:03

So while we are recording this, Tim Poole is on and ranting and raving.

Gene: 6:08

Yeah. He's doing like a weekend stream, which is unusual.

Ben: 6:11

Yeah. And what he started talking about was, uh, the meme going around of his address and house and it being the wrong house and address, which is pretty damn dangerous these days.

Gene: 6:23

Yeah. Yeah. Well, he also talked about how all his neighbors would just love to shoot an Antifa person, so be careful.

Ben: 6:31

Yeah. He a bunch of right wing nut jobs is what I think he said. So yeah,

Gene: 6:36

in a loving way. Uhhuh, he said. Well, he said he's the liberal guy in the neighborhood, which I think is true.

Ben: 6:44

Well, yeah, I mean, him and, you know, him and Shapiro

Gene: 6:48

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 6:50

Um, you know, I think it's interesting that since we've talked last, you know, the, there's been this shooting in, uh, in Colorado that really, it's interesting to hear the, the mainstream narrative. It's not all about the

Gene: 7:06

did it. Did it start strong and then whimper out?

Ben: 7:10

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I, I think it's gonna be interesting to, since he is alive and isn't just shot dead and we don't get to hear his side, we're going to get to hear his side. Now they're saying, yeah, unless he gets suicide ed. Um, now they're saying the, the prosecutor's saying that he may not go to trial for two years, which is just like, what?

Gene: 7:29

Uhhuh.

Ben: 7:30

Um, but I think the purpose is to let the narrative cool off, quite frankly, because apparently this is a non-binary individual according to his own lawyers. And maybe it was a lover

Gene: 7:43

It was a gay

Ben: 7:43

got into it with somebody, you know?

Gene: 7:46

Yep.

Ben: 7:49

Yeah,

Gene: 7:49

that's exactly what it was.

Ben: 7:53

no. Well, I,

Gene: 7:54

very likely that this was not any kind of a, uh, generic guns spree. I think this was a, somebody whose emotions went up to 11, uh, because of some specific person.

Ben: 8:13

Yeah. So when it first came out, you know, it was noted that the club was going to be hosting a child drag queen show, you know, all ages drag queen show, uh, in the next few days.

Gene: 8:27

Yeah. Well let, I mean, let, let just be specific. It was a drag drag queen show for all ages, which is different than a bunch of kids dressing up as drag queens, which would be a child drag queen show.

Ben: 8:39

Um, I think, uh, you, you know, for a fact that there were not going to be kids involved in the show itself.

Gene: 8:46

Uh, well, I watched the video. There was no kids that were dressed up that I could see. There was kids in the audience.

Ben: 8:52

Okay. Well, I mean, if that's the case, that's a different understanding than I have. But regardless, people were linking this to, uh, the show, uh, early on, and the wood chipper memes flying around were

Gene: 9:06

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 9:07

Uh, it's interesting to see the Twitter and

Gene: 9:11

the hells that come from? Why a wood chipper? I mean, you want to make a, uh, some kind of a political incorrect statement about killing somebody because you don't like them being a pedophile, but where's the wood chipper coming from? Is that some movie thing I missed or something?

Ben: 9:27

Maybe, uh, just a way to get rid of a body. I don't know. You know,

Gene: 9:31

You're not aware that it's connected to some existing meme or something, or,

Ben: 9:36

not that I know

Gene: 9:36

okay. All right.

Ben: 9:38

but the point was,

Gene: 9:39

a wood chipper is a particularly good way to get rid of a body.

Ben: 9:42

well, the idea is it's just gonna shatter everything and make little teeny pieces

Gene: 9:48

It does, it basically spreads DNA across a very wide area in the fine spray. It's a stupid way to get rid of a body if you want to do it. You get acid?

Ben: 9:57

Yeah. Or, you know, just go to East Texas and let the hogs take care of it.

Gene: 10:04

Uh, yeah. Yeah. And there's, well, they're not just in East Texas. There's hogs everywhere.

Ben: 10:08

Well, there's a couple places that I know of that are particularly dense,

Gene: 10:13

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 10:13

yeah. You know, it was just over there. So, you know, you've got alligators, you got hogs, you got lots of, lots of animals.

Gene: 10:22

s

Ben: 10:24

Yes, plenty of that, but, uh, not big enough ones to take care of what we were talking about. But regardless, it's

Gene: 10:30

You don't, you don't feed it to'em whole. You, you cut their arms.

Ben: 10:35

yeah, the, the thing that, uh, I was getting at though is it's really interesting to see how brazen people have become on all of social media, whereas I think for a long time people were very, you know, hushed about their opinions and maybe they felt that way, but wouldn't post something like that because, you know, they knew that they would be banned and there would be a problem. And now that, uh, Musk is coming out and offering up amnesty and really looking at things in a different way, I think people have definitely gone, uh, a little far. You know, I, I think there is a decorum issue at this point, but you

Gene: 11:19

I think it's just a continuum. As we're getting closer to full all out war,

Ben: 11:25

Well, we're, we are definitely at the very

Gene: 11:28

that calls to violence, that this idea that calls to violence are a. A, a bad thing that can be punishable I think was gonna flip in the next year or two. I think by the time the next election rolls around, uh, you're gonna hear not just Antifa calling for people's heads, but you're gonna hear a lot more of the Wood Shepherd type stuff from the right as well. The right is just getting finally tired of just putting up with getting fucked up the ass with no loop.

Ben: 11:59

uh, to an extent. Yes. And you know, what people need to understand is the threat of violence exists in all human relationships.

Gene: 12:09

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 12:09

That, that is part of what

Gene: 12:11

well, male ones

Ben: 12:12

us civil. I'm sorry.

Gene: 12:14

Male ones for sure.

Ben: 12:16

Yeah. Uh, I mean, you know, obviously. Inter sex, uh, violence has come down a lot since, you know, it was legal to beat your wife, for example.

Gene: 12:28

It's, it's not what I was referring to though. Uh, what I mean is women have. Different ways of escalating than men.

Ben: 12:37

True. They're more on the reputation

Gene: 12:39

for Yeah, exactly. Exactly. For men, ultimate escalation comes to physical violence. For women, it comes to complete annihilation of reputation.

Ben: 12:53

Yes. And, uh, you know, that that's the main pathology. But, you know, I would say that men can also engage in reputation destruction and

Gene: 13:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

Ben: 13:05

Yeah. But you know, when we're talking about nations or politics, um, I think it follows the male model more than the female model.

Gene: 13:15

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 13:16

You know, and we can, we can say, look at Ukraine or anywhere else. Ultimately a country or someone is doing something you don't like and they push you far enough. You're going to go to war, you're going to engage in violence, you're going to make that stop.

Gene: 13:29

You are, but I would say that the US is using more of the female model. Their, their primary focus is on reputation damage. It's all about pr. It's not so much about the actual violence.

Ben: 13:48

Um, well that's because we're willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, um, you know, it's not actually our war. We're treating it as a proxy war. So, you know, there, there's the difference there. Uh, if it were, you know, American soldiers over there fighting and dying, I think you'd see it handled in a very different way.

Gene: 14:09

Yeah. Well, yeah. It's easier for us just to, uh, pay, um, uh, Al-Qaeda to go over there.

Ben: 14:19

Well, and it what a money laundering boondoggle. That's been,

Gene: 14:24

Yep.

Ben: 14:25

you know, more and more coming out on ftx.

Gene: 14:28

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess some people are surprised by that. That seems like, um, uh, I, I would hope this wakes a few folks up who are gonna realize what I said, day one, which is how do you go from not believing the bullshit you're being told about covid to fully believing the bullshit you're being told about Ukraine. It's the same people telling you both, but the same people that I knew that were all up in arms against vaccine and covid and the fauci and the lies and you know, information coming out that proves them wrong, all of a sudden got fully on board and rah ra with the Ukraine disinformation.

Ben: 15:15

Well, I, I'd see from my experience, uh, the people at work who, uh, are triple vaed and boosted and still wearing masks and everything are the ones on the Ukrainian bandwagon. And

Gene: 15:29

Right. The, oh, they, they are, but they weren't the only ones. That's, that's where my surprise came from, is that there were plenty of people that I was lock step with on the, uh, covid stuff that all of a sudden when it came to Ukraine, it was like, yeah, those, those evil, uh, uh, you know, Russian troops invading that poor country for no reason. Like what?

Ben: 15:53

well in

Gene: 15:53

kidding me.

Ben: 15:54

In a lot of people's minds, they still think of, you know, the ussr, um,

Gene: 16:01

And incidentally, uh, I posted a link to a video. Uh, last night, which is one of the best, I mean, I guess partly cuz he agrees with me. But, uh, one of the best videos that I've seen that Emil did discussing the, um, Ukrainian Halor,

Ben: 16:20

mm-hmm.

Gene: 16:21

uh, which I've covered in one of the Surine speaks in the past, and talked about how the, it, it's very much taken by clips and bits and pieces, the way it's portrayed in the media, that there was somehow directed against Ukraine. First of all, it wasn't, Ukraine was a territory within the ussr. This was not a, a separate country. And it sure as hell did not target Ukraine because tons of Russians died and tons of Georgians died at exactly the same time. And what this was, was very simply a decision made by Stalin. That the country is going to be better off by selling grain for hard currencies from the west that it could then utilize then by taking that same grain and then feeding its people.

Ben: 17:16

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 17:17

So it was a financial decision that traded, uh, essentially starvation for, uh, more hard currency coming into the ussr. And it was not at all directed at anybody, but Ukraine is mostly farmland. And so what you had, there was a lot of farmers which are uh, you know, traditionally have been the least to have issues with getting food and grain and other things because when you're a farmer, there's a lot of opportunities for self-sufficiency from the food department, whereas people in cities have to rely a lot more. On the communist state to provide the availability of food. But in this instance, the farmers were left high and dry because everything that they were growing was going for export. And so there was absolutely a lot of death, but, but I would not call it a, uh, genocide because there was not the other characteristic of genocide with, which is a directed towards some particular group, if you wanna call it genocide. It's the genocide of the ssr because it was directed at everybody in the s r.

Ben: 18:34

you, you had a lot of Ukrainians that died. Yes. Georgians, Russians and so on also went through a similar privation, but I, I think the Ukrainians took a bigger brunt of it than their population necessarily. Sh proportionally should have all that said, it doesn't matter. It was a failure of communism. Right. This is what you get when you get central planning.

Gene: 18:58

central planning. But, but saying more Ukraines died is kinda like saying, well, more people died in Louisiana when, uh, uh, hurricane whatchamacallit came in. Yeah. They happened to be at a place that resulted in more death. It doesn't mean that hurricane targeted people that had a Cajun background.

Ben: 19:21

I, I completely, I, I agree with you because

Gene: 19:24

that's my point there.

Ben: 19:25

Yeah, I, I think that communism is bad and communism is, uh, any central planning or any authoritarian system is the problem, right? That it's not, you are going to have issues like that if you go down the route of central planning because humans are fallible and we all individually make mistakes. But when you're making a mistake for you and your family or whatever, it affects a smaller group of people than when you're Stalin

Gene: 20:01

I don't, I don't know that they saw it as a mistake though. That's the thing is that

Ben: 20:05

They probably were evil enough not to. Yeah.

Gene: 20:08

I mean, given that during the same timeframe of Stalin's rule, uh, 10 million Soviet people, a lot of whom were Russian, died in the prison camps for failure to adhere to communism. I don't think this was a big deal for them to have a few. Also die as a result of lack of food.

Ben: 20:34

Well, and that's something that people just gloss over repeatedly when we talk about the history of the 20th century. We talk about the death camps in Germany and you know, the Holocaust and everything else, which, you know, we, we can do a deep dive sometime on, uh, some of the history of that. But Russia, you know, Stalin and ma killed far more people, people than Hitler did. Um, you know, through whether it was negligence or shitty decisions or, you know, outright putting people in the go logs and working'em to death, you know, it communism, centralization, authoritarianism. Nazis are socialists or communists? Uh, not a good thing.

Gene: 21:28

Yep. Yeah, it's there. There's, uh, by some estimates, uh, more people died, uh, as a result of Stalin in the Soviet Union. Then as a result of World War ii, which also took a very large toll in the Soviet Union, a lot more than any other country.

Ben: 21:48

Yeah, Russia definitely lost a few people, especially with some of the sages and everything else. Um, of the stories about the, uh, the people guarding the seed banks and their starvation and, you know, everything else is just crazy that they, uh, you know, they had food that they could have eaten, but it would mean that, you know, some of those plants would've been lost, so they did not.

Gene: 22:15

Well, or just the distribution of the food, you know, over time. So if you're recovering from World War ii, all resources are limited. You're not gonna just, you know, open things up and for people to use everything up in the first few months.

Ben: 22:32

Well, if you do, then you're gonna have a lot more people dead.

Gene: 22:36

yeah. Yeah. Um, but the, the, I guess one of the things that for sure was the case was the brutality, uh, was scaled to 11 during that timeframe. The, the value of human life was very small. It's, it's just the idea that it, it. There's not much difference whether somebody dies or not, like that isn't gonna affect the decision making.

Ben: 23:04

So what do you think that some, uh, some societies. Have a pretty standard view and vision of human life that stays fairly consistent over time. Where others, depending on what's going on now, I know it's always subject to, you know, all cultures are subject to certain privations causing the change in human life. But largely the uk uh, France, you know, uh, Western Europe,

Gene: 23:40

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 23:41

even after War II in the rebuilding, maintained a decorum on the cost of human life. Whereas China, Russia, Cambodia, great. You know, Cambodia especially did not, so what do you think that is? Is that something cultural or is it just they either hit harder?

Gene: 24:02

I think that it has to do with the progression, uh, towards, uh, more intellectual and enlightenment of the general populace, not of individuals within that group. Um, so France went through this, uh, you know, several hundred years earlier, uh, as did most of Europe. The United States already, for the most part, was, um, by the time it became a country, uh, saw, uh, great value on individual human life. Because if you don't value life, you're sure as hell. Not gonna value liberty. you know, they're kind of tied, tied at the hip. Uh, but Russia was a peasant country up until 19 s. And, uh, and so the mentality, the willingness to accept the low cost value in life, um, which is always the case with, uh, slavery, with, uh, peasant populations, with surfs because, uh, you, you don't really actually own your life your, your lord does. Um, you have certain freedoms as a surf that you don't as a slave, but generally you don't really have ownership of the decision make, uh, decisions that are made around things that could result in your death. Um, and so I think that it's the same thing in China as well, and is that populations that were closer to serve them and peasantry, uh, accepted the low value of life. Much more readily than populations for whom the value of individual human life was, uh, already at a higher value before World War ii, like most Europe.

Ben: 26:05

So looking at today in China with their zero covid policy and locking people in their houses and letting them starve to death and everything else, the brutality of what G is doing over there is to a western eye. Astonishing.

Gene: 26:20

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 26:22

Do you see any hope in that brutality going a step too far for the Chinese people? Are they still in that mentality that

Gene: 26:32

it,

Ben: 26:32

this is

Gene: 26:33

changes over time. It's the same thing in Russia too, is here's, here's the example. The, the mind experiment I can offer is, If we had an all out war, either with China and the US or Russia and the us, uh, 50,000 troops a day losses, 50,000 Russians killed versus 50,000 Americans killed versus 50,000 Chinese killed in both China and Russia. Those are acceptable losses. That's, it's not going to make people want to push back against the government,

Ben: 27:13

But I

Gene: 27:13

but in the

Ben: 27:14

population to sustain

Gene: 27:16

know, but they absolutely. But it has the mentality, the US does not have the mentality. Can you imagine if 50,000 American troops died in one week, what would be the end result for the government here? And we're not talking a theoretical, uh, you know, March on Washington. We're talking about the burning of the.

Ben: 27:39

potentially. It depends on the motivations

Gene: 27:42

guarantee you both. The woke left and Antifa, who's gonna say it's mostly black people getting killed and, and the conservatives, everybody would up in be up in arms. America is not prepared for heavy losses. It's never had heavy losses in the history of the country.

Ben: 27:59

Uh, world War II and The, Civil War were pretty

Gene: 28:02

Just Civil War. World War II compared to other countries for the US was not at all heavy losses. The Civil War was, I think the bloodiest period of the American history.

Ben: 28:14

Absolutely. It was our deadliest war,

Gene: 28:16

Yeah.

Ben: 28:17

over 500,000 killed on both sides.

Gene: 28:20

Yeah. Yeah. That's a tiny number.

Ben: 28:25

It, it's really not, but I mean, that, that's a lot of people.

Gene: 28:30

Imagine that in two weeks.

Ben: 28:33

Well, yeah. I,

Gene: 28:35

What would happen here,

Ben: 28:37

yeah.

Gene: 28:38

because I can tell you, 50,000 Russians get killed. It's not gonna change the thing. 50,000 Chinese get killed. The Chinese might actually be, you know, happy about it

Ben: 28:47

Why do you think it would not change move Russia? Because I, China I can see one because of their population

Gene: 28:53

the mentality of the, of the people, the mentality of the people are not far enough along in the, in the evolutionary progression to value individual human lives.

Ben: 29:08

and you know, that's

Gene: 29:08

That happens over time.

Ben: 29:10

Yeah. So one of the big issues I think we have geopolitically is that because technology is being redistributed from society to society, you have societies that were not at a point where they could have come up with the technology or built a technology on their own. Um, but now they're given this technology and as a result, their culture hasn't caught up to where they need to be in the

Gene: 29:41

we've been breaking the Prime Director for a long time.

Ben: 29:44

Indeed, indeed. Which, you know,

Gene: 29:49

I just had to throw in the Star Trek

Ben: 29:50

well, I mean, it's interesting that we have done this and you know, Nixon's excuse was that China opening up China would, uh, you know, uh, be like essentially the same philosophy as taking down the bur wall

Gene: 30:07

they couldn't imagine the idea that China would not change drastically if it was just simply allowed to see what's happening in the us.

Ben: 30:18

They figured that not only would they change, but that, uh, you know, they would probably be forced to overthrow communism just from an economic standpoint.

Gene: 30:28

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 30:29

Yet, sadly, history did not work out that way.

Gene: 30:33

No. No. And I, I think that this, I don't know that there is a shortcut here because that sort of common mentality of a particular populous is very, it, it, it's slow to change. It's slower to change than individual mentality. If you just picked a random person on the street and in Russia and you said, uh, you know, how, how would you feel about, uh, having 50,000 Russian deaths in, in, uh, in war? Um, they would of course feel horrible and that, you know, it'd be important to try and end this and minimize the possibility. But you take that same person, you put'em in a group of a hundred people, and you ask that group collect. The answer is probably going to be they're doing their patriotic duty, safeguarding the country.

Ben: 31:31

Well, and that, that's an interesting point because most people, and this goes to just human psychology, right? Very few people are willing to stand outside the group and stand by the principles and say, no, this is wrong. It, you know, even if, quite frankly, a majority of the people in the group think it's necessarily wrong, but the I perceived ethos is the other direction, they'll, most of them will go along with it. It's very rare for people to stand up against a crowd in any

Gene: 32:03

that's, yeah. What you bring up is general human nature, but also take into account that you combine that with an existential, um, crisis, which the US has never experienced in. Its. The attack on Pearl Harbor was not an existential crisis. The US was much greater than Japan at the time. And in fact, as you well know, the reason that Japan attacked was because of the pressure that the United States was putting on Japan. So, uh, other than the Civil War, I don't know that there was ever an existential crisis for the United States.

Ben: 32:45

Uh, I

Gene: 32:46

the, the

Ben: 32:47

war of 1812 was pretty close.

Gene: 32:50

The, the threat. Okay. All right. Um,

Ben: 32:53

House was burned down. You

Gene: 32:55

well, I mean, look in the first. Sure. In the first 50 years of the US as a country, there were existential threats. I'll give you that. Uh, but since the Civil War, I don't think there have been even really since the Monroe Doctrine, I don't think there have been existential.

Ben: 33:13

Well, uh, yeah, our geographic isolation and lack of any real rival on The

Gene: 33:20

to fear losing territory as much as we, well, some of us were alive to enjoy the movies from the eighties, like Red Dawn,

Ben: 33:30

Mm-hmm. good movie. Unrealistic, but good movie.

Gene: 33:34

movie, but funny, you know, I, I, I thought it was good when I, when I saw it, when I came out. Um, but realistically, that has never been the case here. Now most European countries have for many, many years been involved in the wars, uh, that were a existential crisis. Yeah. So they, they do have a good understanding of what that means, and I think this is why, um, It's easier to push European countries into what's happening right now, which is effectively de-industrialization and going back to the, uh, the days of candlelight and no, uh, heating of the homes because, um, you just have to settle these things to them as a requirement for us to keep existing. Because if we don't do this, then we may lose territory to Russia.

Ben: 34:35

Yeah, so something is wrong with the reporting out of Ukraine on the damage to their grid because there is no way in hell that they have taken as much damage to the grid as quite frankly, they claim and still have the capacity to have electric lights in, give the

Gene: 35:02

Oh, you're just underestimating Soviet engineering that created a grid that was able to function in time of war. Come on, man.

Ben: 35:08

Yeah. Soviet engineering.

Gene: 35:10

Uhhuh,

Ben: 35:11

Uh, yeah, Uhhuh.

Gene: 35:13

I have no idea this, this is not a topic that I have any expertise in.

Ben: 35:18

well, I, I, I'm just saying the amount of power plants that have supposedly been disabled or destroyed the, uh, transmission facilities that have been taken out. I mean, this is not something you repair in a few weeks if they're really damaged at

Gene: 35:31

you just drive out and stick a new transformer in place, don't you?

Ben: 35:35

Yeah. You know, transformer that takes six months to get from, uh, a country if you can get it. So, and countries typically don't have just a whole bunch of spare transformers laying around, you know,

Gene: 35:45

Hmm.

Ben: 35:46

having worked for a rather large power company here in the us

Gene: 35:50

makes them is, are they Chinese made these days or

Ben: 35:53

Uh, some, some are, um, which we can talk about the transformer that, uh, the government sees that is now a national lab because it was a Chinese transformer, but no, uh, actually Europe, uh, makes quite a few abb, the Swiss, um, make a bunch there. There's a whole bunch of different brand. Um, you know, Siemens, the, pretty much any big manufacturing, uh, company is gonna be involved in transformer building.

Gene: 36:19

how diff, I have no idea here. Um, so I'm showing my ignorance, but how different is the power regulation and transmission given that Europe is on two 20 versus us here? Uh, is the industrial side of it all running the same way or is it completely different there as well? I know there are 50 hertz instead of.

Ben: 36:41

Yeah, the, the, they've just chosen a different voltage in a different frequency. Um, the three face power is three face power. Uh, the only country that operates really kind of a strange one is

Gene: 36:53

is it three, three phase 600 volt then or what?

Ben: 36:58

Well, so three face power means that you have, you know, power operates in a sign wave, AC operates in a sign wave. So you have, with big, you are asking about big industrial power. Uh, that's different than what comes to your home,

Gene: 37:13

sure.

Ben: 37:14

right? But big industrial stuff, three phase. And the reason why you do that is for motor control, things like that. Basically you have a peak constantly, right? So,

Gene: 37:25

What's more efficient

Ben: 37:26

90 degrees offset,

Gene: 37:28

I remember right as well, for three phase.

Ben: 37:30

uh, yes. I mean, that's why you see everything in threes on the big transmission lines and everything else, right? Um, Australia's a little odd because they have a single phase long range transmission.

Gene: 37:43

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

Ben: 37:44

Uh, yeah. It was done for cost savings to some of the rural areas, and it's, it's a little weird. Yeah.

Gene: 37:52

There's some, uh, New Zealand guy I think, and no gender, social that always likes

Ben: 37:57

he, he's a greeny. He, he, uh,

Gene: 38:00

he always uses Greenland, which has the population of like Connecticut as the example of what everybody in the world should be doing, which is running on waterfalls, geo power, solar and wind, where New Zealand is literally a craggy outcropping sticking outta the ocean that allows you to do all those things where no other country can.

Ben: 38:26

Yeah, well, or it would be very difficult, you know, uh, for example, tole a bend here in Texas, which is an 80 mile long lake, it's a big body of water. Tole a bend has two generators on it, and it produces a whopping 80 megawatts.

Gene: 38:45

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 38:45

You know, uh, we just don't have the head pressure here. We don't have the geography for hydro to be successful, so,

Gene: 38:53

Now do, are there any, uh, other types of power generating equipment that I guess has evolutionary been designed to deal with? Small head pressure, like, um, you know, something that's more of a, uh, more like the, the old, uh, water mills where the, the movement of the water is just spinning a

Ben: 39:26

Well, I mean that, that's essentially what's hap It's still a turbine that's being spun in a hydro generation facility and yeah, you have low

Gene: 39:34

but you, but you have high. Oh you do? Okay. Cuz you have, you know, the whole point of having the dam in place is to create that head pressure so you can have the turbine spinning under greater pressure and generating more electricity per turbine. I get that, but can we not just cover the whole stream with slow moving, low head pressure turbines.

Ben: 39:58

So the, there are some, uh, so Ty typically you have to have, the turbine design is per pressure. So whether it's steam or in water or whatever your, your turbine design is gonna be based off of the amount of pressure you're gonna be dealing with. There are some startup companies right now that are trying to harness the power of rivers, which essentially means no head pressure, just water

Gene: 40:24

Right. That's what I

Ben: 40:25

small individual turbines to take that. Some of that.

Gene: 40:29

just think of a whole bunch of old school mills sitting on the banks of the river,

Ben: 40:34

Yeah, they're doing it a little different. The, the problem is, you, you're, you're not going to, each one is going to generate very little power. It's only in the aggregate that it matters. Right. So that, that's, that's the problem, is you are going to have to have a shit ton of something versus a single thing, uh, that brings in maintenance issues, that brings in, you know, lots of different things. Ju just like a solar power plant or a windmill for that matter. We have a lot of wind power in Texas. But, you know, the maintenance on each windmill is pretty egregious. And, you know, you have to have a lot of them to produce any amount of

Gene: 41:18

Wind is ridiculous. That that should just be banned al.

Ben: 41:21

You know, here's the thing. As soon as that tax subsidy for windmill ends, it's abandon. I mean, so in 30, 40 years when all these subsidies expire, we're gonna have all these windmills that then there's gonna have to be a government program to go take'em down and clean'em up.

Gene: 41:40

Yeah. Well, they'll fall down eventually.

Ben: 41:43

Yeah,

Gene: 41:45

Made that well, but I, I don't like all the birds getting killed. I'm not a fan of windmills whatsoever.

Ben: 41:51

well there, there's that environmental impact for sure. Um, and you know, what you have to realize is the deicing of these windmills during the winter, during Yuri was a great example, you know, and yes, windmills can operate in winter conditions if they are designed for it. You know, so before anyone says, well, but they've got windmills up

Gene: 42:14

of those. Yeah.

Ben: 42:15

Yeah, well, you know, those blades typically have small electrical heaters actually built into the blades to. Keep ice from forming it in general, in Texas, we don't have that problem generally, so guess what? That feature isn't included. So anyway,

Gene: 42:35

Yeah. No, that's as,

Ben: 42:38

the whole thing we need to do on the answer for, to make the environmentalists happy, if they would accept it and make, you know, not our, uh, our standard of living, uh, you know, retract is, you know, build some nukes, but man,

Gene: 42:58

nukes are definitely the best way to go for sure. There's no two ways about it,

Ben: 43:03

yeah, the problem

Gene: 43:05

are afraid of nukes. That's the problem, is it's an irrational fear of nukes, and much like there's an irrational fear of c.

Ben: 43:12

Agreed. And you know, here, here, here's the thing. Um, if Vog three and four don't get finished,

Gene: 43:21

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 43:22

I, I, you're just not gonna see a company go out on a limb to build a nuke for a long time until the NRC gets really, uh, really changed

Gene: 43:33

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then I think we're too early in the process for me to make any kinda accurate prediction on this, but I do think that the chances are fairly high that 50 to a hundred years from now, so middle of this century onwards, uh, given what is happening in Africa, where they are building a bunch of nukes, where the cost of energy is gonna be significantly lower, where they skipped the entire cycle of having to wire their cities and countries and went directly to wire less. Uh, I think African countries are gonna emerge in, uh, leadership positions starting with about 50 years from now and then moving forward.

Ben: 44:21

So I am unaware of the, this, uh, that you're saying about power in Africa and nuclear power in Africa. I guess it's South Africa or what.

Gene: 44:31

Oh, no. There's a lot of ethical countries that are putting nukes in, um, because they're, they don't have all the ridiculous regulations on it.

Ben: 44:38

Yeah, but I, I would think that that would be a problem of, uh, the, some of the non proliferation treaties who's building them.

Gene: 44:47

Oh, they're, these are all, uh, these are all small. Uh, what we would refer to as, uh, what do they call'em? Pocket nuclear, um, generators.

Ben: 44:58

sort of thing. Couple hundred megawatts

Gene: 45:00

Yeah. And, and again, the only reason I know is cuz my ex-wife's uncle, uh, was one of the, uh, executives in the company that did that.

Ben: 45:12

Yeah. I don't know how I feel about a lot of these

Gene: 45:15

when they sold a new nuke, they, you know, we'd hear about it.

Ben: 45:19

yeah. I just don't know how I feel about, uh, fizzle material being handed around to unstable governments.

Gene: 45:26

Gens outta the bottle.

Ben: 45:28

Oh yeah, that, that 100%. But I mean, given the right materials, you know, making a dirty bomb is absolutely any idiot can do it.

Gene: 45:40

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 45:41

you know, anyone who's taken high school physics can create a fishing bomb at this point.

Gene: 45:46

Yeah.

Ben: 45:48

the delivery system's a little different, but still,

Gene: 45:52

yeah. No, that's true.

Ben: 45:56

yeah, the delivery

Gene: 45:57

it's gonna,

Ben: 45:58

thing that's

Gene: 45:59

it's gonna happen. I mean, most of these nuclear plants are either Chinese or. Um, there's, uh, I don't believe Westinghouse reading of the US companies are working on any of this stuff.

Ben: 46:10

Well, Westinghouse is out of the, out of the game because of Vocal three and four.

Gene: 46:17

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 46:18

I mean, they, they literal, they filed bankruptcy over Vocal three and four and Southern Company is choosing to proceed with the building of their reactors on their own. Literally, they're doing it in house at this point.

Gene: 46:31

Wow.

Ben: 46:32

Yeah. Vocal three and four is several years late and multiple billions over budget.

Gene: 46:39

Yeah. That's not a surprise.

Ben: 46:41

yeah, if Southern Company wasn't the massive behemoth in the power industry that it is, any other company, uh, that I can think of would have folded the project by now.

Gene: 46:55

Hmm.

Ben: 46:56

But, uh, Southern Companies pretty unique. They do go on, uh, Boondoggles with projects pretty often. Um, you know, they, they, the Kemper County project, I mean it took them years and years and billions over including, uh, government money. And as long as the Department of Energy was willing to continue to fund it, they were willing to put in some of their own money as well for Kemper County. But they finally gave up. So Kemper County was an interesting one cuz it was a utility scale coal gasification unit for a, uh, combined cycle. So literally being able to take locally mind li night, create a sin gas, and then run it through a, uh, normal combined cycle.

Gene: 47:44

Interesting.

Ben: 47:45

Yeah. But the gasifier, they could never get

Gene: 47:48

have there been any, uh, any. Research reactors built, or, or just nothing at all's been built in the US known for years.

Ben: 47:59

not anything real recent. There are some theoretical designs and some, you know, very, very small scale lab testing, but nothing at even like the one or two megawatt scale. Uh, I mean, the last reactors to be built in the us you know, uh, that weren't just typical lightwater reactors was in the nineties. Uh, is all that I'm aware of. Um,

Gene: 48:26

when is the one that's over in your city built?

Ben: 48:29

uh, a and M's reactor I think was in the seventies or the eighties. Yeah,

Gene: 48:35

Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, that's too bad. I, I think us could literally just end up falling behind in a lot of this te.

Ben: 48:49

yeah. It was 1972.

Gene: 48:51

72. Okay. Wow.

Ben: 48:53

Yep, yep. Yep.

Gene: 48:55

Yeah.

Ben: 48:56

A and m has, you know, several different reactors over the years. The one that's out by the airport, which most people know about, is a two mega wa little pulse reactor for, you know, essentially experimentation training

Gene: 49:14

Makes sense.

Ben: 49:16

reactor.

Gene: 49:18

Yeah, and it, I don't know, I, I just, uh, I watched some of these old documentary footages of the nuclear program in the US back in the sixties and seventies, and the complete lack. Of any fear or, uh, protective equipment that was involved. And then it, it really feels like we are completely 180 degrees from that right now where people are afraid to say the word nuclear.

Ben: 49:51

Well, I mean, you had same thing with marijuana though, right? So, um, what was the movie? Something Fever?

Gene: 50:04

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, what was it called? It was, um, uh, what did they refer to it as? Yeah, I know the one you're talking about, like Yeah.

Ben: 50:19

yeah.

Gene: 50:20

It was the one that Hearst promoted.

Ben: 50:23

Yeah. But anyway, uh, damn it, I can't believe neither one of us could, you know, it's one of those things. But anyway, um, the whole thing is there was some propaganda around marijuana that caused, you know, the laws to be changed and sentiments to change for many, many years. We're finally starting to see that sway back, but

Gene: 50:40

Reefer Madness.

Ben: 50:42

reefer Madness. There you go. Um, You had, uh, the China syndrome and then, you know, things happened at Three Mile Island and, uh, you know, then obviously Cherno, uh, that people were fearmongering on, quite frankly, and scared the shit out of'em. Um, but, you know, people still live in the exclusion zone today in, in Noble, Fukushima, you know, everywhere through Mile Island. Never really had an exclusion zone. Uh, so yeah,

Gene: 51:15

Yep.

Ben: 51:17

people are afraid of things that they don't understand. Uh, you know, they, they, they don't understand. Well, you know, time, distance and shielding is what matters with radiation exposure. And oh, by the way, you know, what do you think a sunburn is? And you know, how much radiation do you think you get if you fly regularly and so on.

Gene: 51:38

Yeah. And, and what is 5g?

Ben: 51:41

Exactly. And there's ambient, you know, which, you know, could be causing lots of problems, but it, it's also about the frequency. Uh, you know, frequency matters, you know, but here's the interesting thing with radiation, higher frequency, more DNA damaging and so on. Easier at a block,

Gene: 52:00

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 52:01

you know, w when people start talking about, you know, really it's radioactive material, getting into your thyroid and everything else, that could be the big problem. But, you know, it's not actual just pure radiation. But if you're talking about a radioactive source that's high energy, high frequency, yeah, it can damage you, but a piece of paper can stop it, you know, depending on what it is. So time, distance, and shielding, and then making sure that you don't have things going into your body and ingesting, you know, breathing, that sort of thing.

Gene: 52:33

Well, and, and there's a big difference between, uh, you know, beta radiation and neutrons.

Ben: 52:39

Hmm,

Gene: 52:40

And like you said, the, the shielding is vastly different between those as well.

Ben: 52:47

exactly.

Gene: 52:49

So yeah, it's, um,

Ben: 52:52

Well, and

Gene: 52:53

again, most people are

Ben: 52:54

from the China syndrome of a core meltdown, right? Meltdown is not, it's, it's a term from that movie. Uh, you know, and the idea in the movie, one of the things they talk about is it'll melt all the way through the core of the earth to China, right? It just utterly nonsensical bullshit

Gene: 53:16

Uh, and I remember even years ago, probably 20 years ago, of watching, uh, a, uh, a film about, um, the new safe, uh, liquid salt reactors

Ben: 53:34

Oh yeah,

Gene: 53:35

and how there they literally solidify as they cool, uh, preventing, you know, leakage.

Ben: 53:44

well, there, there are lots of different designs. Um, China tested recently, one of the first intrinsically safed reactor designs where they literally took the unit up to full load and, uh, cut all cooling. Well, you could not do that with a typical lightwater reactor design at all. Any western design reactor today, that is not a thing. Um, what this allowed them to do, uh, they cut the cooling and it went up, hit its peak, and then shut down on its own. Um, The technology is still pretty classified, so we don't have a lot of details on exactly how they're doing that or how it's working. Uh, but hey, you know, that's pretty cool. And that's just a typical light water reactor design. It's not, uh, nothing like molten salt or anything else, or a breeder reactor. You know, it's funny because, uh, the very first nuclear power plant in the US was a breeder reactor. Uh, and you know, Rick over, uh, chose the lightwater reactor design because it could be, uh, utilized more quickly. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 55:00

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that, that decision to focus on dual purpose reactors, I think was definitely motivated by military reasoning.

Ben: 55:11

Well, yeah, and putting a, you know, a, a breeder reactor that's using milant salt instead of water is a little heavier, you know, so that, that takes more displacement from the ship and so on. So the, the light water reactor one out for many reasons, um, not just, you know, it's dual use nature, but the just practicality of putting on a ship. Now obviously designs have, uh, gone further and, you know, we've done better, but, uh, yeah, he, he made a decision that has definitely impacted the world, so,

Gene: 55:49

Yeah, for sure. And it even sounds like Japan is, uh, easing up their fear of nuclear again.

Ben: 55:57

Yeah. Uh, Japan is definitely going to be, uh, going back down the road. Uh, I mean, they have to, they have really no other choice. They, they can't afford, you know, they don't, they're not exactly a major oil producing nation. And, you know, I think they're realizing that renewables, especially given their geography is, you know, outside of some hydro here and there, not a thing. So

Gene: 56:24

could go to, um, purely a whale Blu economy.

Ben: 56:31

yeah. Let's, let's go back to fishing. The whales to extinction.

Gene: 56:36

Uhhuh. Yep. Um, now why haven't we been just building nuclear power plants under the sea? You got infinite cooling possibilities, and they're far away from human, you know, civilization centers.

Ben: 56:53

Yeah, but I mean, you, you don't really wanna damage the oceans as well. And you know, the oceans are, are a harsh environment. Salt water is very corrosive. Um, you know, water itself is a universal solvent. Um, so, you know, you have all these things that kind of work against it. Um, yeah, so ease of maintenance, lots of lots of things,

Gene: 57:20

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 57:21

you know, but I mean, Microsoft years ago put the,

Gene: 57:24

I mean, we

Ben: 57:25

the data

Gene: 57:25

them, they're, they're in submarines.

Ben: 57:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they, they're in a

Gene: 57:29

We could just park a bunch of submarines alongside the shore and then string up lines away from them for power.

Ben: 57:38

You could, I think it'd be an expensive way of building it. I mean, I

Gene: 57:42

it goes back to cost in

Ben: 57:44

Yeah. But why do that? Why not just educate the population and put'em on land?

Gene: 57:49

You think that's easier to educate the population?

Ben: 57:52

Yes,

Gene: 57:53

I don't, I don't, I think that's more difficult. It's easier to take money from the population to do things in a, so you don't have to educate'em.

Ben: 58:03

Yeah. I, I think as soon as the green movement and everybody goes, oh, nuclear power power's. Okay. I, I think then we'll be done. It's, you know, it's interesting the move to hydrogen, uh, a hydrogen economy, and the only way I see you getting there is with a ubiquitous

Gene: 58:27

Free energy,

Ben: 58:28

Well, no, no, no. So if, if we basically built pretty much nothing but nukes, so if you were gonna run the US grid, or even the Texas grid

Gene: 58:38

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 58:39

on nothing but nukes, You would actually have to have a shit ton more power plants than we have today. And the reason why is because when a new gets up to full stable load, it just sits there. It doesn't fluctuate, it doesn't move, it sits there, it can't ramp, it can't do any of that because it just, that's not the design, it's not

Gene: 59:01

So what happens if you have excess power on the grid that's not being utilized?

Ben: 59:06

It's wasted. Um. Right.

Gene: 59:10

no negative side effects though.

Ben: 59:11

correct. So what could you do with, since we have to have way so with. Power plants that can ramp meaning change their load more easily, um, which basically means natural gas. So coal can ramp some, but realistically what a coal plant wants to do. Same thing as a new get up at high stable load and stay there or go down to low stable load and stay there. It can move some in between, but not a whole lot, not easily. And it's at a very slow ramp rate. Combustion turbines can come online and you know, get up to full load or move around. They don't care. Right? It's like a jet engine. You have a throttle control essentially like that. And then you can put in the steamers and everything else on the combin cycles. So, A lot of places, uh, you know, you'll see like there's a plant in, uh, New York that, uh, my company owned that literally set between two nukes and was designated medium impact, uh, by the local ISO because of being there for voltage control and being able to ramp when the nukes can't. So if you're gonna go to get rid of all fossil fuels, meaning okay, we can't have these natural gas plants to ramp and so on, essentially you're gonna have to have a shit ton more generation than you really need.

Gene: 1:00:29

Can you burn hydrogen in the gas?

Ben: 1:00:33

You can so

Gene: 1:00:36

use the nukes to create hydrogen

Ben: 1:00:40

well, what I think you do instead.

Gene: 1:00:42

and then, burn the, uh,

Ben: 1:00:44

Yeah, but what I think you, what I think you do is instead is go the other way of voltage control. Meaning you have the nukes producing a shit ton more power than they need, and these hydrogen electrolysis plants being

Gene: 1:00:57

or the access.

Ben: 1:00:58

for the excess and they load shed as needed for voltage control

Gene: 1:01:03

There you go. That makes

Ben: 1:01:04

and then all of that hydrogen could go into your other manufacturing and cars and so on.

Gene: 1:01:13

Yeah. Cause I, I think the, the big issue with hydrogen,

Ben: 1:01:17

that's a hundred plus year endeavor, probably.

Gene: 1:01:20

yeah. So the Japanese and Chinese are perfectly happy to take that on. Americans are like, what? We'll be dead by then. Fuck that. Let's do something that'll be done tomorrow,

Ben: 1:01:29

Exactly. Which,

Gene: 1:01:30

which is why this country is doomed.

Ben: 1:01:35

we'll see.

Gene: 1:01:36

There's no long term pervasive thinking here. Everything's short term gain.

Ben: 1:01:44

Uh, yeah, but you have that unseen hand and I think that that is a generational thing that flip flops and I, I think we're in that fourth turning where it's gonna change back. We're gonna have some hard times and then we're gonna go back through that entire chain of events.

Gene: 1:02:04

Mm-hmm. and then looking back at history, every Empire Falls. So the question is just simply when, not if.

Ben: 1:02:15

Well, yeah, I mean, history is, history rhymes. It doesn't necessarily mirror everything. And I think there is, You know, changes that happen. Um, the fall of the British Empire, for example, was not the same as the fall of the Roman Empire. Um, the fall of the Ottomans was not the same as the Roman Empire. So I, I think you have some, I think our societal collapses are evolving, is what I'm saying.

Gene: 1:02:47

I mean, you can say that, but there were plenty of commonalities between their falls in terms of the populous of that country.

Ben: 1:02:55

Absolutely. But you know, my point is the fall of the Roman Empire sent us into the dark ages. Uh, that's not what happened when, you know, the British Empire fell and it was much larger than the Roman Empire,

Gene: 1:03:10

Well, yes, but I'm gonna say something that's not popular here. I don't think the fall of the Roman Empire send us into dark ages. I think it was the conversion of Rome to Christianity that sent us into the dark ages. It was the denial of all the, the cultural and the science that preceded that event. And it wasn't so much that all of a sudden the fall of the government somehow lost all that knowledge. It was a superstition ruled

Ben: 1:03:38

Okay.

Gene: 1:03:41

gene@seine.com.

Ben: 1:03:44

I just, I I hear you and I get it, but I, uh,

Gene: 1:03:49

shaking your head. I know.

Ben: 1:03:50

yeah,

Gene: 1:03:51

Uh, and then, and the British Empire was not based around, uh, you know, a particular religion that ended up getting, uh, stamped out. It was

Ben: 1:04:02

I would say that the only reason why Human Knowledge survived the Dark Ages was Christianity.

Gene: 1:04:08

Well, that's just a false statement.

Ben: 1:04:10

No. The monks preserved a lot of shit.

Gene: 1:04:13

The majority of that knowledge was actually preserved outside of Christian areas and areas that were, it wasn't heresy to have that knowledge. Um, if you want, I thank Islam for something. A lot of it is the preservation of science that preceded Christianity.

Ben: 1:04:27

Yeah. And the number zero.

Gene: 1:04:31

Sure, sure. Well, all numbers that we use currently, the, the, all the numerals that we use, instead of Roman numerals, you can think the, uh, Arabs for as well.

Ben: 1:04:40

Yes.

Gene: 1:04:44

So empires fall, new empires rise. So the real question here is who's rising and who's falling? And I made a prediction earlier in this episode, uh, which I don't think is very popular. I don't think many people are making this predict. Is that within 50 years, I think we're gonna see the rise of African Nations

Ben: 1:05:05

maybe, um, know, it, it, it, so there's a book, um, written by Henline that I would point to forums, freehold, where.

Gene: 1:05:21

now. Book Recommendation

Ben: 1:05:23

Yeah. And a lot of people will say it's racist or whatever, but it's an interesting book. And just take it as a treatise on, uh, humans. And it wouldn't matter if it were the subject for the African countries or Asian or Europe, it's, the point is during the Cuban missile crisis, it goes the wrong way. And Russia and the US annihilate the northern hemisphere, and the only continent that was basically untouched is the Russian, or is the African continent, African continent. And they, you know, uh, several hundred years in the future have taken over civilization. And, you know, they're not great people. You know, they, they, they're very, it's a very racially charged book in a lot of ways, but

Gene: 1:06:10

Are you a Black Panther denier?

Ben: 1:06:12

Huh?

Gene: 1:06:13

Are you a Black Panther denier?

Ben: 1:06:15

No, actually the book talks about an advance of further technologically advanced culture than we are today. So, you know, there's that, um, it's, it's just the slave holding nature that's some people find objectionable, but

Gene: 1:06:31

Fair enough. But

Ben: 1:06:32

realistic nature of humans.

Gene: 1:06:34

be a mistake of the Western world is the, uh, abandonment of slavery.

Ben: 1:06:40

I don't see that as a mistake, but

Gene: 1:06:42

Well, we'll find out.

Ben: 1:06:45

okay.

Gene: 1:06:46

I mean, you know, if I, I, like I said, in, in the foundation, I kind of really think that, Uh, that what most people consider to be the good guys are not really the good guys.

Ben: 1:07:00

in a lot of times. And, you know, I would say that the only approach I would say on this is that I believe that. If you're a free individual, you should have the right to sell yourself. Uh, if you own your body, then you should be able to give,

Gene: 1:07:16

Yeah. I, I think, I think that everyone should be born free,

Ben: 1:07:21

Yes, absolutely.

Gene: 1:07:22

after that, uh, should not be limited by, um, you know, government edict.

Ben: 1:07:30

Yeah.

Gene: 1:07:31

You wanna sell yourself, that's fine. Somebody you sold yourself to wants to sell yourself to somebody else. That's fine.

Ben: 1:07:38

Well, I mean, a lot of, uh, a lot of people who came to America came as indentured servants, you know, um, they, they came

Gene: 1:07:48

the, the silent majority in.

Ben: 1:07:51

yes, absolutely came over owing to a colony or to an individual, their passage and the cost of their passage. Uh, and they had to work.

Gene: 1:08:03

Now you're, you're talking about the Mexicans and the Coyotes right now? I, I assume

Ben: 1:08:07

No, I'm talking about the white settlers that came, you

Gene: 1:08:11

know, I know, but it's the exact same deal. It's like literally like your passage is gonna cost you 5,000 US dollars, which you don't have. So now you gotta work that off after they sneak you into the US to pay them off before, you know, if you don't, then they'll take you up.

Ben: 1:08:28

Yeah, well, regardless, the, the, the point is, you know, that was an economic tool that a lot of settlers used, and this country would not be here if that economic tool had not exist.

Gene: 1:08:47

And, and Incidently, the Governors of the Colonies Pre American Revolution also used that to that advantage by getting, uh, labor that they could literally purchase for the price of the ticket.

Ben: 1:09:00

Well, and here here's, but it was a win-win because a, you had this new continent that needed to be conquered, if you will, or tamed and turned into farmland. And you had people whose economic situation in the uk, in France, in, you know, uh, various parts of the world was such that they had no opportunity. They were a burden on society. And by them willingly going into that and getting freedom and land and creating a life for themselves, you know, it, there was no downside to this. Now were some people abused and taken advantage of? I'm absolutely sure, given human

Gene: 1:09:42

Yeah, human nature. Exactly. Which, you know, is, is still a stark contrast to Australia, which was just simply a penal colony

Ben: 1:09:51

Well,

Gene: 1:09:52

about 20 years ago.

Ben: 1:09:53

there were, there was a colony as well, but Yes.

Gene: 1:09:58

Well, yeah, you sure You needed the guards for the penal colony. So there were some free men in Australia, but

Ben: 1:10:03

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:10:04

in general, it's safe to say that Australia is basically, uh, you know, what happens when you, when you have large prison?

Ben: 1:10:12

Yeah. But you know, why did they have guards? Why not just take the boat, dump'em off, leave,

Gene: 1:10:22

Well, and uh, it's fair enough, but I, I think that, uh, given that Australia was owned by the Crown, they, they didn't want to just simply give up the island. They wanted to utilize the, the penal colony labor. To try and make that a better island for the crown.

Ben: 1:10:43

It's a continent gene.

Gene: 1:10:45

It's still an island.

Ben: 1:10:48

So is North America on island

Gene: 1:10:51

It's an our, our capel actually.

Ben: 1:10:56

Okay.

Gene: 1:10:57

Well, it is. I mean, it stretches from the very north, uh, in the arctic all the way down to the south.

Ben: 1:11:05

yeah, this, this is like, uh, this is like the, uh, debate over when does a pond become a lake. You know, there's no clear definition.

Gene: 1:11:16

Yeah, it's a good point because, uh, is a privately owned lake, a lake or a pond, regardless of size,

Ben: 1:11:23

So, you know, it depends. And I don't

Gene: 1:11:27

if it's, and if it's a pond made of cement is a cement pond or swimming,

Ben: 1:11:34

indeed, I don't know.

Gene: 1:11:38

So we,

Ben: 1:11:40

Fuzzy definitions.

Gene: 1:11:41

the, the hard questions here.

Ben: 1:11:42

Yes.

Gene: 1:11:45

Oh man. So what else going on, man? It's, uh, seems like we've covered a few topics here. What, what else is interesting?

Ben: 1:11:52

Uh, well, have you been tracking the Oregon gun law?

Gene: 1:11:56

Uh, not really. I've heard about it and it seems insane, but that's what people voted for, so they're gonna get it.

Ben: 1:12:03

Well, I don't know. There's some pretty good challenges going up against it right now, um, that we only just need to watch and hope and pray for, because if we can get a stop

Gene: 1:12:14

their gun regulations.

Ben: 1:12:17

Well, they've been losing court battles that

Gene: 1:12:19

Yeah,

Ben: 1:12:19

the, the enforcement of the, uh, gun regulations in California is still very much up in the air. Um, Anyway, just something to be watching. Uh, not a lot of full details on, you know, the court cases. Everybody can go read about the, the, uh, Oregon law, but essentially magazine capacity bans, um, uh, you know, stock traits. Very, very California esque on

Gene: 1:12:47

a little worried about the fact that that congress passed a, an update of the assault weapons ban with the current Democrat led Congress. And there's actually a fairly decent chance that the, uh, Senate is going to pass their own version of that once it can be convenes because they think they have enough Republicans that are gonna go, uh, for gun regulations given all the, all the incidents happening with guns, these.

Ben: 1:13:16

and maybe, um, I, I hope that is not the case. And the question is whether right now the real question is whether they can get it through the process before, uh, before January, because quite frankly, the there, my understanding is there are enough differences between the House and Senate bills as it stands right now, that it is, um, unlikely to make it through reconciliation before

Gene: 1:13:47

So you, you think the updated house can kill it in re reconciliation? That would be good.

Ben: 1:13:53

Well, I mean, if the bill doesn't get passed before the Congress, it would have to be reintroduced anyway before the rollover, the new Congress. And given the tax implications of the current legislation, um, that has to originate in the house and the new Republican majority isn't gonna originate that bill.

Gene: 1:14:11

yeah. Yeah, well, hopefully, hopefully that'll be the case cuz uh, it, it's just, it's knee jerk trigger, absolutely insanity. That they keep taking isolated incidents of people that are mentally unstable to use them as some kind of a prop to demonstrate that, uh, a whole class of tools needs to be taken off the market.

Ben: 1:14:38

Well, and you know, have we not figured out that, um, you can't legislate morality, so, and you can't prevent crime. That's the thing I I is trying to prevent crime. A crime prevention bill is moronic. What you do is you enforce and you punish when a crime occurs. And a crime by definition is harm to one's property, one's life, and one's liberty. Anything else is not a crime.

Gene: 1:15:10

Well, and I, and I think there generally the perpetrators of these types of mass shootings are also dead. There's no, nobody to sentence after the fact. This thing in Colorado is somewhat unusual. Um, but the idea of taking something which happens a fraction of a percentage of 1% of the time, and then changing gravely, changing the regulations for the entirety of the population, uh, it, it's, you know, I, I don't know, uh, any other word other than tyrannical to call.

Ben: 1:15:52

in removing people's right to defend themselves, you know, just like the capacity, uh, issue on the magazines. You know, the, and this is something that I really like, uh, some of the challenges to, uh, the terminology in the bill. So one of the things that they're challenging it on is, you know, banning of high capacity mags. Um, you mean. Standard capacity max. So yeah.

Gene: 1:16:19

Well, and I don't, I don't know if you listened to Ellen thing, but Darren was saying they just passed regulations in Illinois, obviously stemming from Chicago, that effectively disallow the police to arrest people in cases of, uh, burglary. So somebody breaks into your house and you call the cops. The cops can show up and take down information, but they will not arrest that person even though they're still standing there.

Ben: 1:16:51

burglary, or trespassing,

Gene: 1:16:53

Uh, I think it was, I think he said burglary.

Ben: 1:16:56

huh?

Gene: 1:16:57

Like somebody literally break it, like breaking in and stealing shit from you. If the cops show up and they're still there, the cops will not do anything other than collect information. That's the way he described it.

Ben: 1:17:11

I mean, You're just gonna have people dying then.

Gene: 1:17:18

I, I mean, I would hope so. I, I think more people need to start treating any kind of intrusion, even if it's not armed as an assault on your person and responding accordingly.

Ben: 1:17:31

I,

Gene: 1:17:32

Somebody breaks in, I don't care if they have a weapon or not, they're not leaving on their,

Ben: 1:17:37

I very much fully agree. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. If you can't rely on your society to, okay, if you want a disarmed populace, then you have to have a very strong societal agreement that you are going to punish

Gene: 1:18:01

right?

Ben: 1:18:02

any, um, any threat to someone's life, liberty, or property.

Gene: 1:18:07

Yeah. Like, uh, Stalinist Russia or, you know, China during Mao

Ben: 1:18:14

Uh,

Gene: 1:18:14

good examples of unarmed societies.

Ben: 1:18:18

yeah. And then you have the government to worry about,

Gene: 1:18:21

Mm-hmm. But like when the government is responsible for millions of deaths of it's own citizens, um, having an unarmed society.

Ben: 1:18:33

becomes a problem in of

Gene: 1:18:34

You know, it, it kinda, it, it makes sense of that point.

Ben: 1:18:38

and I don't want to make it sound like I'm for an unarmed society because I'm not, but I'm just saying we're bri, the, the libs who are sitting there wanting to take the guns are also then saying, we're not going to enforce xyz uh, crimes. You know, Austin, if something is stolen, you know, it's, if it's under, I think it's$2,000 at this point, they're not even going to investigate it. That's insanity. So you're breaking the social contract on both ends. Um, that's my only point, which.

Gene: 1:19:09

Well, and I, I, I really pray to a non-existent God that, uh, they're going to sorry, I have to get that in there, that they will end up taking Austin's incorporation away. That would be so awesome.

Ben: 1:19:24

Dude, it looks like that may

Gene: 1:19:26

Cool. Would that be? Man, our city is so shitty, full of Californians that we're gonna make it not a city

Ben: 1:19:34

Yeah. The, I I think that there is a damn good chance that that passes,

Gene: 1:19:40

that would be so awesome. I would love to see that

Ben: 1:19:42

the district of Austin.

Gene: 1:19:46

it's, it almost turns into like a penal colony, just put'em. Put a big old fencer on Austin

Ben: 1:19:52

Yeah.

Gene: 1:19:53

and if you wanna leave you, you need to get permission to enter Texas.

Ben: 1:19:57

Can you imagine, uh, Adler's reaction to that?

Gene: 1:20:01

Oh, it'd be hilarious. The last mayor of Austin ever.

Ben: 1:20:06

I, I guarantee you he'd use it to run for governor or try. He's

Gene: 1:20:10

Oh

Ben: 1:20:10

looking for that excuse for a while.

Gene: 1:20:13

Uhhuh Given what he is done to this city. Yeah, I wish he would run for governor. That would ensure there's no chance in hell that he.

Ben: 1:20:22

Yeah. I dunno. He keeps winning in Austin, but I, I, he would, I think, get

Gene: 1:20:26

is not Texas, dude, please.

Ben: 1:20:28

but I think he'd be beaten worse than Beto. So

Gene: 1:20:31

Oh, totally. I mean, I, I'm shocked at how, how many votes Beto got, frankly,

Ben: 1:20:36

yeah. Yeah, indeed.

Gene: 1:20:38

this just tells you the number of stupid people here. Have you been watching that series of the Bees, the Babylon Bees, uh, Californians moving to Texas.

Ben: 1:20:48

I've seen a couple of.

Gene: 1:20:50

Uh, I think they've got five episodes now. That is the best series I've ever seen them do. It's, uh, every episode is hilarious. They're all full of truisms. The actors they have playing these parts are doing a great job. And I mean, they're, they're just professional actors. It's not like they're, you know, people that work for the Bee. Uh, they, they did a casting call and hired people to play these parts, but they're doing a phenomenal job. And the irony in this, That those actors that are playing, these folks do live in California,

Ben: 1:21:24

Geez, Yeah.

Gene: 1:21:25

so they're genuinely Californians coming to Texas and, and uh, one of the last episodes they had was they end up at a Bucky's

Ben: 1:21:34

yeah.

Gene: 1:21:35

and they're blown away by holy shit. This is a thing, which is a reaction that most people that have come here that I've taken to Buckys have as well, is like, this is a gas station. This is not a gas station.

Ben: 1:21:48

Buckys is awesome

Gene: 1:21:49

Other states don't have Buckys.

Ben: 1:21:51

They're starting to Yeah,

Gene: 1:21:53

yeah, but I mean, as a concept, like people can't imagine a gas station that was 72 pumps and a Walmart size area for buying stuff. They're like, what

Ben: 1:22:08

Yeah. It's uh, it's pretty cool, but, uh, you know,

Gene: 1:22:13

I love Buckys. It's.

Ben: 1:22:14

well, and, but people, well, why would you want That is a question that some of the people who haven't seen it, you know, often pose. Well, because when you stop to get gas, you can amazing selection of jerky, food, everything else, you know, they've got a deli there.

Gene: 1:22:32

and their food is good. I actually have Bucky's barbecue sauce in my fridge.

Ben: 1:22:35

Yeah, they've got some pretty good food and you know, they've got unique snacks and everything else. Anything you could, could want. It's not like stopping at a little convenient store or even a truck stop, you

Gene: 1:22:46

it's like a giant Canadian store.

Ben: 1:22:48

Yes.

Gene: 1:22:48

Uh, and they have, um, they add blue in pumps. So as somebody drives a diesel,

Ben: 1:22:56

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:22:57

I can fill up both my diesel and my ad blue, uh, at Bucky's from a pump.

Ben: 1:23:04

Yeah. Your diesel exhaust fluid.

Gene: 1:23:07

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:23:08

Your pig piss.

Gene: 1:23:10

yeah. Pick piece, which comes from China, which is hilarious. Of all the places in Texas where you have more fricking hogs than we know what to do with, and we're importing the hog piss from China.

Ben: 1:23:22

well, you know, uh, it. I mean, urea injection actually as a cataly, uh, as a catalytic was power in power plants before it was ever in diesels. Um, it does reduce NOx emissions and things like that. Um, you know,

Gene: 1:23:40

And what in UIA is doing that? Like what chemically speaking, do you know?

Ben: 1:23:45

the ammonia, uh,

Gene: 1:23:47

It just doesn't, it doesn't have to come from piss. It just has to be

Ben: 1:23:50

no. And in fact, power plants, like a modern coal powered plant would use anhydro ammonia

Gene: 1:23:56

Okay. That makes more sense.

Ben: 1:23:57

Um, but anhd ammonia in of itself is a

Gene: 1:24:00

More volatile.

Ben: 1:24:01

thing. Well, it, it's dangerous, uh, you know, farmers use it and things like that,

Gene: 1:24:06

I don't know, man. I grew up around that stuff. That's every.

Ben: 1:24:10

w okay, so quantity

Gene: 1:24:12

Farmland. Yeah.

Ben: 1:24:14

So in the scale that A modern power

Gene: 1:24:17

gallons,

Ben: 1:24:18

no, no, no, no, no. Lot more than that. So one of the power plants that. My former company owned, uh, had enough Anh hydros ammonia on site that if a catastrophic leak were to occur was enough for potential seven mile kill radius.

Gene: 1:24:34

Wow. That's pretty impressive. Now, was it, was it ammonia that blew up what blew up in West Texas a few years back?

Ben: 1:24:41

Well, the, that in, in literally in a town called West that was a fertilizer plant,

Gene: 1:24:47

And, and, but so what part of that fertilizer blew up is, I guess, where I'm getting at? What, what was the, it was nitrates, right?

Ben: 1:24:55

right? It was either nitrates or armonia, which most fertilizer is a mix

Gene: 1:24:59

Do you remember what it was?

Ben: 1:25:00

No, I don't. Uh, but, uh,

Gene: 1:25:02

don't either.

Ben: 1:25:02

anyone who's seen

Gene: 1:25:03

I remember. I remember that explosion because I, I drove by there, uh, a few days after that event and you could literally see it from the highway.

Ben: 1:25:14

Oh yeah. From 35. Yep. It, it was devastating to that town. I mean, it, it, that, you know, other than the loss of life and everything else, I mean

Gene: 1:25:24

Like how many pastries were harmed in in that event?

Ben: 1:25:28

Well, that's the thing is other than, you

Gene: 1:25:31

I'm making an inside joke. People don't know this, but West is famous for their Czech of Slovakian pastries.

Ben: 1:25:38

Yes. The check stop is in West and anyone who's driven down 35,

Gene: 1:25:45

pastry things there as well.

Ben: 1:25:47

yes,

Gene: 1:25:48

It's not just Czech stuff.

Ben: 1:25:49

I, I understand. But, um, that's the famous one. But the problem for West, which is just north of, uh, Waco, uh, on 35, the, that was their main industry, and that is gone. So that, that has really hurt that town a lot.

Gene: 1:26:06

They had a couple of barbecue places closed right after that too, which is unfortunate.

Ben: 1:26:10

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Gene: 1:26:13

It is kind of a pass through town though. Every, basically between Dallas and Austin or, uh, Dallas or, uh, well any of the cities south of there I guess. But on the way back and forth from Dallas, you always drive through West.

Ben: 1:26:27

Yep. As long as you're not going to Fort Worth, you

Gene: 1:26:33

yeah, yeah, yeah. Fort Worth would be a different route. Yeah, that's true. Uh, is there a midway food point on the drive from Fort Worth, or, sorry, from, uh, Austin to Houston? I'm less familiar with that route. I've gone there a few times, but not very many

Ben: 1:26:48

Uh, you going down two 90 or what?

Gene: 1:26:50

probably.

Ben: 1:26:52

Uh, I don't know. It's been a long time since I've made that drive that direction. So, I mean, you could always, uh, um, yeah, I mean, not

Gene: 1:27:06

West is kind of a natural little, Hey, let's stop filled up the gas and get some snacks kind of place,

Ben: 1:27:13

Yeah,

Gene: 1:27:14

so than Waco.

Ben: 1:27:15

absolutely. Well, and you know, Waco, Waco's turning around though. So Waco's one of those cities that is actually, uh, getting some decent food now and a little bit of a revival in downtown and, but Waco is one of

Gene: 1:27:29

stadium help?

Ben: 1:27:30

Yes. Uh, and you know, Baylor is definitely a thing, but um, you know, if you go to downtown, uh, Waco, it's architecturally the 1950s and that's it. Um, you know, Oklahoma, uh, in, I'll be in Tulsa in a few days, so that's part of why I'm thinking about this. Oklahoma City and Tulsa, very much the same vibe, except they have modern skyscrapers and things like that as well, but Waco, For whatever reason, never took off the way Houston, Dallas. And, you know, it, it was a fairly large city, even in the fifties. And, but it's just never built up any industry like the rest

Gene: 1:28:13

Yeah. What is the industry other than Baylor?

Ben: 1:28:17

cattle.

Gene: 1:28:19

Okay. Hmm.

Ben: 1:28:24

Yep. Speaking of,

Gene: 1:28:29

Cattle or Waco.

Ben: 1:28:31

cattle. I think, uh, I think that little side business I was talking about might be, uh, coming to fruition. So we'll

Gene: 1:28:40

Good.

Ben: 1:28:41

Gotta figure out some of the tax stuff

Gene: 1:28:44

Okay.

Ben: 1:28:44

a way to move some money around without paying too much of a penalty. But,

Gene: 1:28:48

Hmm.

Ben: 1:28:49

So

Gene: 1:28:50

come out and help.

Ben: 1:28:52

okay. Well, yeah, so, uh, yeah.

Gene: 1:28:55

No. If you get some, if you get hogs or anything, I'll totally come out.

Ben: 1:28:59

Well, we're looking at starting with a few cows right now and we'll go from there, but

Gene: 1:29:04

are you gonna get like a yearlings or what are you gonna get?

Ben: 1:29:07

Yeah. So we're gonna, you know, probably start, uh, with nothing too fancy, probably just, uh, regular Angus and, you know, uh, go from there, get around, get'em around

Gene: 1:29:19

do dairy as well, or just purely the, uh, okay.

Ben: 1:29:23

beef, beef only. But, uh, the, the original thought and where we want to get to, I think is, you know, doing longhorns grass fed and finished and direct to consumer sort of thing. Um, uh,

Gene: 1:29:38

I, I feel like somehow this is a bad thing, but I have to say that I, I actually prefer corn finished.

Ben: 1:29:46

well a lot of people

Gene: 1:29:48

think they taste better.

Ben: 1:29:49

Yeah, it's a milder flavor and it's a more marbling fattier meat.

Gene: 1:29:54

Yeah. I like grass fed, but corn finished.

Ben: 1:29:57

Yeah. And you know, we may do a variety, uh, but I really think from a health standpoint and where I've gotten to is grass fed and finished. Um,

Gene: 1:30:07

But it's better for the cow for sure.

Ben: 1:30:09

yeah, I mean, if, if you feed the cow nothing but grain, it will eat itself to death. So

Gene: 1:30:16

Yeah, for sure.

Ben: 1:30:18

anyway, but uh, looking at the numbers and looking at the, the price per cow that places like K and C are getting is, uh, you know, pretty astonishing. So I think there's a business workable business model there.

Gene: 1:30:33

Well, and, uh, on the last episode of Under Hunting, I hate to keep going back to my other podcast, but we literally were comparing beef prices in our cities. Uh, and it's insanely cheap in Chicago, but. I guess Chicago has historically had a large beef,

Ben: 1:30:56

It's where a lot of stuff because of the railroads. Yeah. Back in the day.

Gene: 1:31:00

And I think that might be partly responsible for their even current cheaper pricing than what we have here. Which ironically, this is where we grow beef, but it's cheaper in Chicago.

Ben: 1:31:13

Yeah. I mean, you know, k and c cattle for a whole cow, which, you know, they, they estimate, uh, you know, between four 50 and 500, uh, pounds of

Gene: 1:31:27

Yep.

Ben: 1:31:28

is$3,100.

Gene: 1:31:30

Yeah. And I, I looked at doing that, uh, about two years ago, a, a friend of mine bought half a cow and he was like, yeah, next time, do you wanna split one? And I'm like, yeah, it might be a good way to go. And then I thought, yeah, that, you know, I can get a freezer for cheap enough. I should be doable. But then when I started looking at the cost, I'm like, holy. This is a big commitment. I mean, I'm sure I'll eat all that meat eventually, but that's kinda like committing to a very, especially, you know, keep in mind I'm a single dude, right. I'm not feeding a family with a bunch of kids. It's like, that's a lot of beef, even a half a cow.

Ben: 1:32:05

Yeah. And you know, one, one of the things they're doing though is you, you have, yes, it's a big commitment. They're getting a better than they would get at auction price for the beef. And they're, you know, doing it in different packs. They're selling individual steaks. You know, very few people are actually just going and getting a half a cow or a

Gene: 1:32:29

Well, and the cost of butchering is significant.

Ben: 1:32:31

It is, it's not insignificant.

Gene: 1:32:33

Yeah. So I guess if I, I'd almost be tempted to go take a, a, uh, course in butchering myself and spend the money on that. And then buy the meats as a, uh, you know, a half cow or a full cow split, and then do the butchering myself

Ben: 1:32:58

Okay.

Gene: 1:32:59

versus paying somebody that much money just to do the butchering.

Ben: 1:33:04

It's pretty hard to do though.

Gene: 1:33:07

I don't know. I've watched a lot of videos, dude. It doesn't

Ben: 1:33:09

I, I understand, but I'm just saying weight and moving and you have to have a

Gene: 1:33:12

a significant, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you would presumably rent that, but yeah, for for sure.

Ben: 1:33:18

Well when I was growing

Gene: 1:33:19

are not light

Ben: 1:33:20

yeah. When I was growing up, the cows that we were raising and then some of'em selling, some of'em slaughtering for our own food, there was a mobile butcher that would come out

Gene: 1:33:30

There you go.

Ben: 1:33:30

you know, had a trailer and boom, there you go. Um, And, you know, part of it was, uh, the, it was interesting because the cost changed on what you wanted to keep. So if they got to take the bones that obviously weren't part of a cut, and the organs and the hide and all that, it was a substantially reduced cost. And the reason why is they would take that and sell it.

Gene: 1:33:55

Yeah.

Ben: 1:33:56

So, yeah.

Gene: 1:33:57

Yeah, exactly. I've never, like, when I was young, I was always only around dairy farms. I was never around, uh, beef farms. Um, so I played with plenty of cows as a little kid and stuff, and, but I never, uh, never had to be around them getting slaughtered.

Ben: 1:34:15

Yeah. Well, you know, it's, it's a thing that exists, so

Gene: 1:34:21

Well, I remember the first time I saw a pig getting slaughtered. That was pretty, uh, pretty strong reaction.

Ben: 1:34:29

really

Gene: 1:34:30

They squeal

Ben: 1:34:31

yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I

Gene: 1:34:33

lot.

Ben: 1:34:34

I don't know. I grew up hunting, so you

Gene: 1:34:36

Well, yeah. But there's a difference when you take a live animal and you start cutting it.

Ben: 1:34:41

Well, you don't do that.

Gene: 1:34:43

Well you do back in the old country.

Ben: 1:34:46

Well, that's a dumb way to do it.

Gene: 1:34:48

Mm.

Ben: 1:34:49

You kill the animal, then you do it

Gene: 1:34:51

Okay. So you hit it with a hammer first, then you cut it.

Ben: 1:34:54

Sure. But anyway, I mean, you make sure the animal is you, you do it as humanely as possible. This is one of the reasons, like when I'm hunting, you know,

Gene: 1:35:03

get all the blood out, you have to make sure the cart's still beating when they start draining the blood,

Ben: 1:35:08

yeah. So this is one of the arguments that I make for when I'm, when hunting, you know, not taking a torso shot, taking a headshot on a deer, because you're either gonna miss it or you're gonna kill it. You're not gonna, you're not gonna do one of the two.

Gene: 1:35:22

okay. The danger is that you hit it but it's not fatal and you, you cut it, like you shoot it and you blow off its teeth. Now the thing's gonna starve to death, cuz it, it can still run. It's not gonna bleed out, but it can't

Ben: 1:35:35

when I say a head or neck shot, I'm talking about back of the head neck. So you're either gonna miss high or low, or

Gene: 1:35:41

that may be where you're aiming. Doesn't mean that's where you're gonna hit there is wind, you know?

Ben: 1:35:46

Okay. It depends. In Texas, you're not taking a long shot, dude.

Gene: 1:35:52

fair enough. I thought you were talking about back in Idaho

Ben: 1:35:55

Well, I mean, if you're taking a three, 400 yard shot plus, then sure we can, we can talk

Gene: 1:36:01

Center of Body.

Ben: 1:36:02

But then again, you blow out along or whatever, you still have the trouble tracking it down. But in Idaho, losing animals is, a lot less prevalent because you know it's easier to track. It's not scrub, scrub brush that you're going through.

Gene: 1:36:17

But I think also this is a good argument for a high powered rifle and not the minimum necessary for the kill, because you wanna have something that even if you're not exactly right on target, will still bleed it out.

Ben: 1:36:31

Yeah, you, you want a big enough wo channel and all that. I agree. And that, I mean, that's why I hunt with 30

Gene: 1:36:38

you've never, uh, hunted with a, uh, shotgun with slugs, have you?

Ben: 1:36:42

uh Yeah, yeah. As a kid.

Gene: 1:36:43

Oh, you have? Okay. Okay, got it. Yep. Cause that's always something I thought would be, uh, a good way of doing it. I've never done it. I've always just used a 3 0 8, uh, every time a gun, deer hunting. But, uh, but a theoretically speaking like that would force you to be a little closer to the animal and more likely that you would have a faster kill.

Ben: 1:37:05

Yeah. Well, you know, there, there are lots of different options. I personally, you know, you know me, I like my high powered rifles,

Gene: 1:37:14

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:37:16

Got to do a little bit of shooting this weekend and a little bit of

Gene: 1:37:18

Oh, nice.

Ben: 1:37:19

it, it was nice. Yeah. Yeah. I took out the, uh, the m uh, SOCOM 16, so M one A and my beara and, uh, my pistol and yeah, we, we had some fun.

Gene: 1:37:31

How's the begar treating you?

Ben: 1:37:32

Oh, I love it. It's a, it's a great gun.

Gene: 1:37:36

I still need to buy the optic for my, um, for my handgun that I bought recently.

Ben: 1:37:42

Yeah. The, in that optic man, I, I was letting one of my cousins and her husband, uh, shoot it. And you know everybody who's shot that, who has any pistol experience, everybody thinks the optic is a game changer, especially for a defense weapon.

Gene: 1:38:00

Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. I, um, I remember back in the old days, meaning the, uh, 1990s, um, there was occasionally people that had scopes on their handguns. And the attachment typically back then was, uh, screws to the frame over the slide. then a, um,

Ben: 1:38:27

Yeah, but it was a literal scope and

Gene: 1:38:29

It was a scope, it was literally, it was not usually a red dot, it was like a small scope. Um, but shooting those guns, of course you tend to be way more accurate than iron sites

Ben: 1:38:41

Yeah,

Gene: 1:38:42

at, at the gun range.

Ben: 1:38:43

Well, I in Iron site, so it's a very big difference there because iron sites, uh, you know, are not optimal. A scope is pretty much optimal as far as accuracy is concerned. And I'm not saying the red dot, it makes you more accurate. In fact, it makes me less accurate because it's a sim six MOA dot meaning.

Gene: 1:39:02

that was your choice.

Ben: 1:39:03

It, it is my choice, but I think it's the right choice for the purpose for the gun because easy acquisition of the target and hitting, uh, hitting a human torso is the purpose of that gun. Right? that's why I wanted that bigger, brighter dot. And even a three MOA dot, you know, is a vast difference from your iron sites. So, yeah.

Gene: 1:39:26

Oh three on my age. Yeah, I guess it is. I mean, it should be pretty close the size of the, of the middle dot, uh, hiring sites,

Ben: 1:39:40

Well, yeah.

Gene: 1:39:43

I don't know, but I do still need to pick one up. And I, I think I'm once again leaning towards getting Thet Trican.

Ben: 1:39:51

Yeah. The battery life though.

Gene: 1:39:54

Well, and that's part of the reason why is um, because the tricon you can get with the fiber optic as well,

Ben: 1:40:01

Well then you're talking real expensive

Gene: 1:40:03

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's

Ben: 1:40:04

you've got the Okay,

Gene: 1:40:08

Yeah, but you know the old saying, you should never have a sign on a gun that's cheaper than the gun.

Ben: 1:40:14

ah, I, I disagree with that.

Gene: 1:40:16

Well, it's an old saying though.

Ben: 1:40:17

I understand. But technology has progressed, so

Gene: 1:40:21

Yeah. So, I don't know, I still haven't pulled a trigger on it, but I'm definitely leaning towards, uh, the tricon unless somebody else makes one that has fiber optics as well, having dual illumination. I wish they still made the old one they used to have, which had tridium and fiber optics for the pistol. And I know it was bigger, it was less, you know, like the new ones are all super lightweight, but I just like the idea of no batteries.

Ben: 1:40:51

Well, I like that idea as well. But then the tridium, you still have to replace every few years and everything else, so there's no,

Gene: 1:40:58

still haven't sent, I still haven't sent my scopes in. I mean, my, my tridium updates are gonna be over 800 bucks right now, for scopes that I already own.

Ben: 1:41:07

Yeah,

Gene: 1:41:08

Uh, so it is

Ben: 1:41:09

that's the cost of a scope

Gene: 1:41:11

Uh, yeah, it's a cost of aScope, not the scopes that I got, but it is absolutely, and it's a, you're gonna do it for the rest of your life. Because that Tridium lasts about seven to 10 years and then you gotta get it swept out again. I wish that was just cheaper. I mean, it would be great if we had cheap Tridium, but we're no longer buying it from Russia.

Ben: 1:41:34

Well, and, you know, Tridium has handling issues and everything else. The, the watchmakers in the twenties or thirties cost us that one.

Gene: 1:41:46

Yeah.

Ben: 1:41:47

Tridium

Gene: 1:41:47

that was, that was radium. Yeah,

Ben: 1:41:50

Was it radium? I thought it

Gene: 1:41:51

that That was radium. Yeah. Yep.

Ben: 1:41:55

Yeah.

Gene: 1:41:56

Um, alright, well I dunno. It's good enough. We've covered a few topics. You got anything else or should we wrap things up?

Ben: 1:42:04

Well, we need to wrap because I've gotta run to, uh, yet another holiday experience.

Gene: 1:42:09

Oh, fun

Ben: 1:42:10

yeah, that's the way we gotta cut it a little short this week,

Gene: 1:42:13

I think we're about close to on time. Either way. Good enough. Um, and, uh, yeah, so we'll, we'll get back on it. And then I gotta, I know I, I mentioned it last time, but I've been looking at what's available and, uh, a few of these websites that lets you, uh, essentially licensed music. Um, also talked to a guy that does some independent music creation stuff, like Musician, I guess would be what those people are called.

Ben: 1:42:47

That would be what those people are called, gene

Gene: 1:42:49

so I got some options, uh, that I want to, to kinda take a look at. But once again, this episode, no, no music, but we'll get there eventually.

Ben: 1:43:00

All right, gene. We'll catch you later.

Gene: 1:43:02

Take care.