016 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:11

All right. I think we are live now. Good morning, gene. How are you? Mor Morning. It's morning. That's how I am. It's been, yesterday was a long

Ben: 0:21

day. Why was yesterday so long for

Gene: 0:24

you, gene? I was on freaking livestream forever. It's certainly felt like it anyway. I think I did a five and a half hour live stream and then there was something else. Oh, well, and then I was like just watching stuff that was related to it, so got nothing else done all day.

Ben: 0:41

I got a lot done yesterday. Well, good. Yeah. Gonna get a lot more done today before I head off to S four, so. That's right. I'll be, you're gonna be downed for a while. That's, well, thi this is just a cybersecurity conference in Miami, so if anyone's gonna be over, out at S four and wants to hit me up

Gene: 0:59

let me know what's what's that stand for? S four? Jesus

Ben: 1:02

Christ. I don't remember. It's been a long time. Oh, okay. It's been around

Gene: 1:08

a long time. Security something probably is

Ben: 1:10

my guess. Yeah. Yeah. Security mainly focuses on ICS cybersecurity, so, gee, I wonder why I'd be going to that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the balloon, all anyone can talk about is the balloon.

Gene: 1:22

Yeah. Unless they're talking about like drama on YouTube, but Yes. Yes.

Ben: 1:27

You, you're the drama one on YouTube follower. I know, I know.

Gene: 1:31

not me. That's true. You don't give a shit about drama. Yeah. It,

Ben: 1:35

it's funny though, Trudeau even shot one down. It's they found kidding. A little bit of a

Gene: 1:39

spine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I bet you they had to launch one just to make'em look good for

Ben: 1:44

chew one down Yeah. So he didn't look like too much of a cook.

Gene: 1:47

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so let me, let me drop a message to know John, the social, see if we get some more folks coming in through there or from there. All right. For the live recording you talked a little bit, what else going on?

Ben: 2:01

I'm liking the live recording. I'm liking the interaction from the chat and all that. That's a good thing. The balloon stuff really is interesting to me because the first one we let go all the way across the country before we shoot it down. Mm-hmm. Then we shoot something down in Alaska and then mm-hmm. Canada shoots something down when it's kind of over the middle of one of their provinces. Now granted the northern section of said province, not exactly Not exactly inhabited. So you know, how big of a deal is that? It's

Gene: 2:29

polar beers and shit up there, right? Yeah.

Ben: 2:31

Yeah. Mm-hmm. But yeah.

Gene: 2:34

Yeah, it's pretty wacky. Although it sounded like the, the two that I heard about anyway, that the US shut down were nowhere near the same. as the one that made its way across the entire country.

Ben: 2:47

Oh, the fir The one in Alaska, you

Gene: 2:49

mean? The one that went all the way through the US was like the size of a bus and the ones we shut down the size of cars.

Ben: 2:56

Yeah. The one that we let go all the way across was definitely a large implement. And here's the thing, is it a spy balloon as the media's reporting, or is it just a weather balloon? Right.

Gene: 3:08

And I don't know, is there really a difference

Ben: 3:11

Well, or, have we actually looked at it and determined what it was doing? Mm-hmm. they, they say it has Western made parts on it. Well, that pins to lead towards more of a, university experiment to me than China's spy appic, but I could be wrong.

Gene: 3:28

Well, they, they say they traced the path back to China.

Ben: 3:32

Oh, China admitted that it was theirs. Yeah. Yeah. So there's no question there. It's, what was this for? Is the only question. And by the way, we should have better audio today. I'm back on the MOTU in the RT 20. You are.

Gene: 3:45

You sound

Ben: 3:46

very good. Yep. And I did figure out what was going on with the backup rig. There was a firmware update. Oh. And moving from computer to computer. The settings do not follow the mic. I would think the mike would keep the settings, but no, you have to set them up differently on each computer, so. Mm-hmm. we'll have that solved for, the end of the month when we're probably gonna need to play fast and loose with schedules and

Gene: 4:11

Yeah. Yeah. Modified things as needed. Yep. Yep. Although, I mean, you're probably gonna be available in the middle of the night, so that should work out fine.

Ben: 4:23

Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah.

Gene: 4:25

Uhhuh. Now I, can you tell me about all your trips? Way too far ahead of time, so I can't keep straight where you're at. I thought you were gonna be traveling last week. Turned out it wasn't last week, but this week you're traveling, but it's not all the way to Europe. This, this week it's like Miami. Yep. So this week is Miami. Is it the whole week though? You're gonna be in Miami? Yeah, I fly out Monday. Fly back Friday. Damn, that's a long conference.

Ben: 4:49

Well, and it's

Gene: 4:50

Miami, so. Yeah, cuz actually this a week from now, I'm, I'm gonna be up in Fort Worth. Cool. So we're gonna have to figure out timing

Ben: 5:02

Fort worthless. For

Gene: 5:05

Worth for, for Fort Worthless. Yeah. It's I haven't been up there in a few years. I've been to Dallas most recently, but I didn't stop off at Fort Worth,

Ben: 5:14

so, yeah. I, I lived in dfw, the mid cities for a while, and it, it, it's a place it's not it's not, it's not my cup of tea, but some people like it. Yeah.

Gene: 5:25

Yeah. It's, I don't know, it seems like it's a little greener than Dallas. A little more hilly. Although, Texas Hills are not what anybody else would call hills. Well,

Ben: 5:35

I mean, Fort Worth is the gateway to the west. It's the beginning of, the hill country and all that. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. And Fort Worth downtown, is really kind of neat. Versus Dallas, downtown is pretty, any urban downtown Dallas is. Yeah. Dallas,

Gene: 5:50

downtown Dallas is just square buildings

Ben: 5:53

mostly. Yep. I used to work in Energy Plaza Hmm. Back in the day. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 6:01

Yeah. And the thing that surprised me was how early downtown Dallas shuts down. Yes. By 10:00 PM There's very few things open. By 11:00 PM there's five bars. That's it. There's

Ben: 6:14

closed e everybody commutes into downtown Dallas. Mm-hmm. right? Yeah.

Gene: 6:18

Everybody lives there. Well, although there's some more condos now, but Yeah.

Ben: 6:21

Yeah. I mean, you've got some mid rises that have been built up recently, but the majority of people are commuting in and out. Mm-hmm. versus, New York or anywhere like that. Yeah. Yeah. Even Houston though, has more people living like actually in Houston Urban Center than Dallas.

Gene: 6:41

Mm. Somebody said hill country's pretty nice. Hill country is nice. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Hill country's gorgeous. It's yeah. But it's kinda not next to anything

Ben: 6:51

so. Hm. That's part of the reason why it's awesome.

Gene: 6:54

Yeah, yeah. No, I, I, I know it's, see, it's always been a tuck of war with me between being far enough away to be undisturbed and being close enough that I can drive to a nice restaurant or a bar and consequently I've tended to jump back and forth. Every time I move, I'm either right next to downtown or way the fuck away, or right next to or way the when I was living in Minnesota, I I grew up in the burbs, and then as soon as I moved out, I was in Minneapolis proper. And then lived there for a few years. And then from there I moved to further away burbs than where I grew up. And then after I got married I moved even further. So I was literally like an hour's drive from Minneapolis. And then

Ben: 7:44

Snuggles Mc Jr. Lives 45 minutes outside of Houston. I'm interested as to where, because I'm pretty close to that myself,

Gene: 7:50

so Oh yeah, you kind of are, aren't ya? Yeah. Uhhuh well, 45 minutes outside of Houston is actually inside Houston. exactly. Five minutes from downtown. Houston is definitely still Houston.

Ben: 8:02

Oh, Houston's huge. And that's what a lot of people don't understand is when you look at the Metroplexes of Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston, the footprint that you're talking about is just so massive. Mm-hmm. Oh, he's in Baytown. Cool. I, yeah, I grew up on the Gulf Coast, man. I grew up in Crystal Beach.

Gene: 8:20

Yeah, you were one of them kids walking around and coveralls with barefoot and on the beach picking up CRA ads. Yep. That's my image. Anyway. Well, what, I'm assuming it's in your head. Uhhuh.

Ben: 8:34

Yeah. What can I say? I, my dad was a shrimper, so I grew up on the Gulf Coast. Until I didn't, and then I was in Norson r Idaho, so, yeah.

Gene: 8:43

So do you know anything more about these balloons or just the same stuff that's on No,

Ben: 8:46

that, that, that's the thing is everybody keeps ramping up the rhetoric on the balloons. The balloons, the

Gene: 8:51

balloons. And you just think to runaway

Ben: 8:52

balloons, regardless of what they are. We don't have any hard facts. Mm-hmm. So we're sitting here pontificating, people are talking about the threat from China. They're talking about everything from, oh, they sped on nuke sites and did this, that and the other. Maybe, I mean, show me some data and if we think that they were, why the hell did we wait till it went all the way across the continental US and was out to see in the Atlantic to shoot it down? And the Yeah, probably the Biden administration, well, the Biden administration is, oh, well, we wanted to make sure it was safe and not not going to cause any damage to, civilian infrastructure, well, don't shoot it with a missile. Shoot it with a single 50 cow round and let it slowly go

Gene: 9:32

down. Right, right. And that's the thing is it's even the deflated balloon, it's still basically a parachute.

Ben: 9:39

Right. It's going to slow. It's gonna, it's going to arrest the fall to some extent. Yes. And not only that, there is lots of rural area that it went over.

Gene: 9:48

They just catch the damn thing. If we can catch rockets coming down, which well under control helicopters, why the hell can't we catch a.

Ben: 10:00

I don't know, man. Why didn't we shoot it down when it was over uninhabited swaths of the United States. know, You shoot flyover countries called

Gene: 10:07

flyover country for a reason. Yeah. You shoot it with a harpoon and the the backside of the harpoon has a big old parachute on it. Doesn't matter where it lands, it'll land nice and gentle.

Ben: 10:16

Yeah. Well, obviously we weren't interested in stopping it from doing Yeah. What it

Gene: 10:23

was doing. So I think the more interesting videos I've seen is videos that look like, no, I'm not saying they are, but they look like hypersonic missiles flying in urban areas. I haven't seen any of those. Yeah. There's one that was of a airport with a airplane taking off, so it looked like it was shot from the ATC tower. And in the background there's like a little smudge, and then when you slow down the video, you can see something that is the shape of a missile. Mm-hmm. like it has no tail and no visible wings. So it didn't look like a fighter jet, but it was moving at like a third, no, it was less than that. Probably a 10th of the width of the frame per every frame of the video. So at really fucking fast speeds and it was flying behind the airport. If I saw something like that, I would definitely categorize it as a missile and a pretty damn fast one. It was similar to the video that I saw in the, probably about a year ago in the first few days of Ukraine, when they launched several hypersonic missiles.

Ben: 11:35

Did you see the video of or saw

Gene: 11:37

the videos are fake these days?

Ben: 11:39

Did you see the video of the boat, suicide drone in Odessa that the Russian supposedly used to take out a bridge?

Gene: 11:47

I saw people talking about it. Eh, I did not see the video of the explosion. Did you?

Ben: 11:56

I did. And what it looked like, it, it sure. Boat went up to the bridge and blew up. Yeah. But people are talk, making a big deal about this being a suicide drone and mm-hmm. yada, yada yada. O o Okay. I, I, again, I, the, so what is, what bugs me? Mm-hmm. like why does this seemingly matter to people? Yeah. When we have very little information, I guess.

Gene: 12:22

Yeah. Well, or conversely, it, it's like it doesn't really matter. I mean, people are still on YouTube anyway. People are still talking about drama, so,

Ben: 12:34

okay, Gene, what's the

Gene: 12:36

drama? Well, the drama, it's the, the whole Eliza Blue thing.

Ben: 12:39

Is that really still going on?

Gene: 12:41

Mm, yeah. Well, yesterday was a big day because my co-host on this channel Fango, was named in the article with all kinds of accusations of being the mastermind behind taking down Eliza Blue. And so there was go to Fango. I know, right. And there's a lot of very interesting conversation happening as a result of that. He's, he was on a bunch of different shows. We had in fact what's her name? The, the conservative black commentator chick, what is her name? Candace Owens. Yeah, Candace Owens actually called out this channel, this YouTube channel. Holy shit. Cool. Yeah.

Ben: 13:22

Mm-hmm. What's she have to say?

Gene: 13:24

Pretty cool, right? You're on the, you're on a channel that Candace Owens just called out yesterday.

Ben: 13:29

Great. Mm-hmm. Anyway, what, what would what did Candace have to

Gene: 13:34

say? Well, she did a whole thing on Eliza Blue and she thanked a number of YouTube channels that she said, she uses reference material that did a lot of the work. And she did a pretty scathing. Video about the whole situation, which I think virtually everybody has. I have yet to see anybody really do a video defending her. Tim Poole eventually after pissing off a large percentage of his audience and having a lot, a lot of people quit, including me. Like I, I stopped paying him money. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I'm no longer Tim Pool Gene's boycotting Tim Pool. 14 months, dude. I, I was paying him for 14 months and the guy gets me to do this by the way that he's acting. So anyway so finally he relented and he's yeah, okay, I get it. You guys are telling me I'm missing something. And it was a little half-hearted, but eventually he came around and started calling her a grifter as well.

Ben: 14:32

Well,

Gene: 14:33

okay. Yeah. It, it's a thing. It's the thing. But that's what a lot of the a lot of the, I guess reason that I'm kind of tired today is cuz yesterday was a, a

Ben: 14:45

very intensity day. So the Eliza Blue thing mm-hmm. y'all very much feel that she's exaggerating and taking advantage of the whole traffic thing.

Gene: 14:53

She was a hooker. She was a hooker who's trying to place herself in a proper light.

Ben: 14:58

of being. See, and this is why I don't hire hookers. I mean, you look at her and I know you think she's a

Gene: 15:03

hooker. Really? Yeah, right. Come on. She better than that. Think she's an expensive. Well, I mean, she may have been an expensive hooker. I don't know. Not my type for sure. That So, so yeah. The, the whole situation is basically somebody that managed to get it started off as just Hey, why is she lying? But it quickly turned into where the main point is, how the hell does she have the power to get people banned off Twitter? Mm-hmm. And, and then how does she a and that was bad enough. But then she started getting literally hundreds of videos taken down on YouTube, and it was like, and where

Ben: 15:41

does this pack come of power? Right. And where does it come from? Gene, who is she called down the

Gene: 15:45

investigation. I know, right. And that's the thing. And then the, the Tim cast writer dude, Shane, Shane, can't remember Cashman, he, he's wrote this like three-part story, totally exonerating her where he believes everything she's saying. And yet nobody else seems to. And then he wrote a, a hit piece on Def Fango which a number of YouTube lawyers are saying, yeah, I think you might have a case here. This is, this is defamation. Defamation. Yeah. and then quickly I guess Defo, he called Dego finally yesterday they talked and he promised to put out another article and change a lot of the story. So it's I have nothing to do with all of this stuff, but it's kind of been like ground zero for the whole Eliza Blue thing. So I've, I've been a fly on the wall very close, and there's DGA right there. Morning. I

Ben: 16:41

actually just wanted to drop a little information. Mm-hmm. since you guys were talking about this. I just got off, or I've just finished talking with Cassandra from

Gene: 16:49

Tim. Mm-hmm.

Ben: 16:50

and Shane and the other editor are pushing back saying that no, Dago ran that company. He was the guy that started it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he's basically saying he doesn't wanna pull the article, but mm-hmm. the main editor, Cassandra of the website says, Nope, this thing's getting pulled completely. Mm mm-hmm. And we are going to be putting a ar, basically an editor's note on it. Mm-hmm. and

Gene: 17:17

it's not coming back. And he's

Ben: 17:19

not gonna be allowed to write anything else because she knows about all of this stuff. She's actually involved with the same exact company. She knows that I'm the one that actually like, released all this documentation about Shadow Box in the first place. And yes, the other editor and Mr. Shane just simply don't wanna believe. They're just like, no, he, he started it, it was his company. Even though I've put out documentation showing that the tr the company was originally called Troll Link started in 2016, and I don't exist on any paperwork for it. And the only stuff that I have is literally the materials they sent me that they wanted me to eventually put a website up together for. But I didn't do that. I instead just released all the information to the public and exposed this horrendous stroll company that they wanted to, put forward. So that's the big update for today. Mm-hmm. the articles, the other two articles are gonna stay up, but this last one is not coming back and there's not gonna be anything else on it.

Gene: 18:22

Yeah. Shane killed his career completely. 100%. Yes.

Ben: 18:27

Yep. Y Now why do you think he's killed his career?

Gene: 18:31

Because he's broken every rule of a journalist He, he is writing

Ben: 18:35

Fancy's, not, that's, that's describe it. Okay. And I mean, there are lots offi journalists that do that on a repeated and regular basis.

Gene: 18:44

Well, the, there are. But I, I mean, he's not gonna work for the New York Times, let's put it this way.

Ben: 18:50

Yeah. Well, he was never gonna

Gene: 18:51

do that anyway. Well, he had ambitions of doing that. Oh, I'm sure he did. But

Ben: 18:55

that, yeah, people can be delusional. All, he's not a very

Gene: 18:58

good writer. If you read their articles, they're just not written very well. They're written very much in the style of fan fiction. That's about the level of his writing skills and okay.

Ben: 19:07

I mean, I've read some pretty good fan fiction.

Gene: 19:08

This is not me, This is but you read a lot more than I do. This is what he basically did is he, he came in as a journalist and then simply stayed with the person who's at the center of the controversy at her house or her parents' house. Spent several days there, asked her super softball questions, gee, I wonder what was going on. And took her, yeah, he's married, but who knows? That didn't mean anything. Took her answers as gospel.

Ben: 19:44

I mean, if she's alleged to have Vin a,

Gene: 19:46

didn't bother interviewing any of the 20 plus people that are involved in this from the pushing backside and saying she's a fraud. Not a single interview with anybody until yesterday. And and then wrote in his article that he fully believes her and has no reason to talk to anybody else. Super journalist. He, that he is. And then wrote this hit piece, this like several page article that had nothing to do with her but had to do with him. Ferreting out this evil troll company that is de fango is supposedly running. That set her up to take down Elon Musk, basically. I mean, it is a convoluted fantasy that he built. So, yeah, I think his career is nonexistent at this point. I could not imagine anybody hiring him. And if they do, I don't think they're gonna keep it very long. Cuz I, I suspect there's a few folks here with long memories that are gonna make sure that anywhere he pops up in the future, after Tim Cast has a very quick reminder through their comments on, on articles, on videos and everything else, and exactly who Cashman is. He has killed his career. We'll see. And that's not a threat, that's a prediction. I mean,

Ben: 20:59

do you think Tim's gonna get rid of him? Yes.

Gene: 21:01

Really? Yep. Okay. I mean, Tim doesn't like drama. I believe Tim doesn't like drama. This dragged Tim into drama more than

Ben: 21:10

anything. Tim. Thoughts like drama about his

Gene: 21:13

company. Exactly. And that's what the drama's about. And it's gonna stay with him for as long as cast doesn't like people's company, sure, of course, of course. But I think Tim's gonna get rid of him because he doesn't want the drama. So

Ben: 21:25

what'd y'all's take on project Veritas and James O'Keefe?

Gene: 21:29

I know we really haven't talked much about it. Van and I simply because we were focused on the other thing, but yeah,

Ben: 21:35

there's not a lot of information other than the le know, one side of it. Well haven't, no

Gene: 21:39

one's heard anything and I don't think there Keith can talk because of his.

Ben: 21:43

Yeah. Well, he's definitely keeping quiet, but so some of what Tim and others have released on, the letter mm-hmm. that the employees sent. Mm-hmm. I, they all need

Gene: 21:56

to be fired. They do need to be fired. That's exactly right. So there's two issues here, two lessons. And unfortunately these are not lessons that younger folks seem to really follow. Tim's, Tim's gonna have the exact same issue. And I pre, I've predicted this before and I'll just repeat it again. I think that Tim is at some point going to have a employee uprising that is gonna try and kick him off there.

Ben: 22:20

Yeah. But I don't think Tim has a

Gene: 22:22

has a board. He will. So, he doesn't right now. It's not gonna happen right now. He's not big enough, but he will. But this is, so the two points I, I would say, I would bring up in that is the danger of not being the person who, that actually interviews and hires people and leaves that to others. And the secondly is the danger of getting a board of directors that you're not in control of. That's happened at Apple this very similar scenario where they kicked out Steve Jobs. Yeah. It, it is understandable why nonprofit has a board of directors, however you need to make sure that board of directors has no teeth whatsoever. Well set yours up. Kind of like the Clinton Foundation where everybody on the board has the last name. Clinton.

Ben: 23:11

Yeah. Well, my last company, the CEO, did a very good job of making sure the board was under his mm-hmm. complete control, even though he didn't have 51% equity still in the company. Mm-hmm. I mean, he just has enough power and gravitas in the company to and in the industry for that matter, to be able to just say, yeah, no, this is what we're gonna do. Yeah. It's, it is. Which you would think James O'Keefe would have as well, by the way.

Gene: 23:41

I thi I don't think O'Keefe is a particularly good businessman, and I don't, I don't mean he's a bad one, but I've never seen anything that kind of popped out was like, oh, that was a good idea. That was smart. I think he, he is like his, if he could, if he could do anything, I think he'd wanna do standup comedy like That's his real passion. Inly.

Ben: 24:05

Yeah. Well, I mean, him playing the role of the pimp all those years ago was certainly hilarious. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 24:13

So I think he is I think he believes in what he's doing, certainly here, but he's not a strategist. He is. A good old fashioned journalist, he's a guy that wants to just kind of dig in there and get the story in, even if nobody else can. That is going to be a something that motivates his ego, makes him go out and do stuff. And I'm, I'm not sure why they've got as many people as they do and why they've got this board of directors, which has made out people that don't like him. But I mean, the simple answer there, if you got a bunch of people complaining about you, you have to look back at why haven't you let them go earlier?

Ben: 24:57

Well, I mean, I'm very much like I, Verto has to go through some employees because you can't keep using the same people for undercover work, obviously. Right. So, James could never, can't go

Gene: 25:07

undercover again. Somebody just did donation. Quick question guys. Did Tim Pool pay Cashman to do the piece? Cashman is an employee of Tim Pool, so the lawsuit would be against Tim Pool, the company or Tim Cast, I guess Tim Castin, whatever they're called.

Ben: 25:23

So the, I think the, the whole point on that question is did he specifically pay for that article? And doesn't matter. He's a, he's the, he exactly. He's on staff reporter, so yeah. Mm-hmm. I don't think he handed him. He's, here's a hundred bucks. Go

Gene: 25:37

write this article. Exactly. He's not a at least to my understanding, The way that Tim's talked about him is he is an actual employee, not a freelancer who's getting paid to write stories.

Ben: 25:50

Right. Yeah. Well, and and I think that's one of the things that Tim has said multiple times that everybody who works for Tim Cast is an employee. Right.

Gene: 26:01

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, we certainly found out that Luke never got paid anything,

Ben: 26:06

Which is

Gene: 26:06

just shocking to me a guest on 80% of his episodes for free. But I guess maybe the deal they did is that nobody else can advertise their own products except for Luke who can advertise his own shirts. And then maybe that was the trade off. It's I'm gonna give the platform for you with all these millions of people watching to advertise your shirts. But I'm certainly good advertisement for him. It is a good advertisement. And he, his shirts like, he literally has a new shirt every single day. And it, I'm pretty sure it's not Luke that's making the shirts. It's he's probably got some artists he's working with. But in either case if I was Luke, I would, I would probably try and negotiate a deal that did that plus money, because he is by far the biggest attraction on Tim Pool. And honestly, I don't know if I would've canceled if Luke was still on there, because Tim was acting like a total. but I still enjoyed watching Luke. And now that Luke's gone, it's kinda yeah, I'm gonna cancel.

Ben: 27:07

You know what's funny though is I, I like Luke. I like Luke a lot. Mm-hmm. his own show, though. I can't, I can't watch, I can't

Gene: 27:14

listen. No, he sucks at it. Totally. I agree.

Ben: 27:17

He tries to script stuff

Gene: 27:18

too much. And he uses the word of course way too frequently. I dunno if it's annoys you the way it annoys me. But he really needs to have somebody close to him. Tell him to stop saying, of course, Kinda some people say Right all the time, some people say and like I, I clean up stuff from our podcast. Mm-hmm. occasionally there'll be too little, too much of the usage of something. And people kind of veer in and out of it. There might be a month where I say too many times, but I'll sort of notice it myself and I'll, I'll avoid consciously saying after a whole bunch of words but maybe that'll bring up some other word that I start repeating and somebody close to Luke just needs to tell'em to stop using. Of course.

Ben: 28:11

Yeah. And, and we all need those reminders from time to time because it is easy. I mean, we've seen it over the years with no agenda where Oh yeah, they make a set of words. Yeah, exactly.

Gene: 28:23

Yeah. And I, and I think that that is probably, no, Luke did not get canceled from Tim cast. Luke moved to Florida. Tim cast is in West Virginia. So Luke went home

Ben: 28:33

essentially. He got tired of being in his van in the parking lot.

Gene: 28:36

Yeah. Yeah. Cuz he was living in a motor home basically at Tim Cast. Yeah. Think about that. The most popular guest in Tim Cast was living in a motor home not getting paid. What does that tell you about Tim? Well, I mean, good businessman. I'm just kidding.

Ben: 28:51

At least very shrewd. But, Tim's talked about being poor in in his past and mm-hmm. people, it, it's like the children of alcoholics, um mm-hmm. people who grew up poor do one of two things. Right. They either don't drink at all or they follow in the footsteps. So. Yeah. Yeah. I dunno. So I guess what I mean by that is when, when someone who grew up poor gets money, they either spend it all or they're very tight with it all, or mm-hmm. or they're very tight with it or hoard

Gene: 29:18

it all. Exactly. That, that's a very good point. I agree with that. I'm definitely more of the spend it all variety. I grew up super poor.

Ben: 29:27

No, yeah.

Gene: 29:29

not you. I know, I know. I, I like to buy things,

Ben: 29:33

eh, me too. But I, I, I also, I forgot

Gene: 29:36

to return that mic that I bought that I was testing for you too. So now I'm probably gonna have to do a giveaway for that thing.

Ben: 29:43

Ah. I mean, you should still have some time. You got it on Amazon,

Gene: 29:47

right? I did, but I think it was been exactly a month. I just totally spaced it out. I don't know. I'll check if I can return it, I'll return it. But yeah, occasionally I'll just end up with stuff that's brand new and unused and I just didn't want, cuz I forgot to return it.

Ben: 30:02

Did you ever get the Mantis, the mantis, the Mantis x the little training

Gene: 30:10

device? Oh no, I still gotta buy that about yeah. Yeah. I gotta buy that.

Ben: 30:13

That's, yeah, I've been I've been using it pretty consistently. Mm-hmm. I gotta tell you, it's, it's a fantastic little thing. Anyone who wants to look it up. It's the Mantis X Elite. It's a little training device

Gene: 30:24

for your, pull out the image of it for people as we're talking. If they're on the livecast. By the way, guys, if you're listening to, I have one of those to this as a podcast. You do Dhana? Yes. Oh, you got a Manus some bitch. Isn't that, isn't

Ben: 30:36

that for one of the, that's for like laser trading, aid for firearms, correct? Yeah. Yes. No, no, no. I, this is just the accelerometer one. Oh, you, oh no, I have the one, I have the laser one with multiple different sizes for different setups, like shotgun and msu. Yep. The laser one is interesting too. Oh, they're different.

Gene: 30:54

I

Ben: 30:54

thought it was the same device. No, they're separate devices. So the one I have is the Mantas X and it's you know what I use it a lot for, for instance, is draw training. Mm-hmm. so. defeating the garment, pulling, aiming fire dry fire exercises. But it's also shot timer for live fire

Gene: 31:11

and so on two x three and X 10, which

31:14

one

Ben: 31:14

do you have? I have the X 10,

Gene: 31:15

elite X 10 Elite. Okay. Middle. So 250 bucks? Yep. Yep.

Ben: 31:21

Well you can find it. It does not have a laser stores. No. Okay. But they, they have a laser training stuff like the fan I was talking about. That's also pretty cool. This is basically just, this is accelerometer based. It's to help promote good habits. So for instance, if you're pushing in to the gun or limping it or, even trigger pole analysis, it's a very, very sensitive accelerometer. Mm. And it, the analysis is fantastic.

Gene: 31:48

Yeah. You were telling me about how, how it measures everything. Like the amount of time to draw the gun from the holster, the amount of time to line it up before a shot. How fast you, you are with your shots, how many shots per second or minute or whatever. Yeah. I

Ben: 32:02

mean, this, it is the best shot timer with a whole bunch of other analytics. Oh.

Gene: 32:07

Industries says it works for archery too. I definitely need to

Ben: 32:10

buy it. Oh dude, this thing is fantastic. Yeah. They, they have,

Gene: 32:15

I don't know, cheaper to buy it at a store or as it direct sale only. Yeah. And

Ben: 32:19

if you could buy it at online and then I think you can do it at the store as well. I saw mine at I think it was Shields. Mm-hmm. Okay. and then I've been using mine on a very cheap firearm, like a Taurus G three C. Mm-hmm. something small, compact. So like you can set it up on there and since it's a St Striker fire pistol, you can include the laser training aid inside and basically, just consistently practice without having to caulk every single time. And I mean, it definitely helps out, like learning and getting better accuracy. Like I spent a lot of time at the Reno Guns range. Mm-hmm. like there's a pretty nice indoor range that I go to. I saw one of those

Gene: 33:02

there and I

Ben: 33:03

immediately went and purchased one.

Gene: 33:04

And I mean,

Ben: 33:05

it's definitely improved my shot accuracy and just understanding what's

Gene: 33:09

happening. Well, since you are in the podcast I know I've interviewed you on my other podcast, but not everybody listens to that. So who the hell are you? Oh, I'm

Ben: 33:18

Defang Go The Gang Stalker.

Gene: 33:21

Just gonna leave it with that. Okay. Gang Stalker was the label at Tim Cast's journalist was Defaming. Dago with

Ben: 33:30

that's awesome. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 33:33

Of course he got gang stalkers on that cuz you have to Oh yeah.

Ben: 33:38

That's, that's good. That's good.

Gene: 33:39

Mm-hmm. And what do you do Dago?

Ben: 33:42

I make internet online content. And basically, apparently I'm some kind of a internet overlord, but for the most part I do it work and yeah,

Gene: 33:51

drive around in my car a lot. And your black s u v? No, it's a

Ben: 33:55

black Prius, but Oh, okay. I mean, I wish I had a black SUV v apparently I

Gene: 33:59

have a whole fleet of'em. Yeah. Apparently, according to the article, Dago has a fleet of black SUVs that he deploys to stock people 24 by seven. Uhhuh That's hilarious. If you haven't read the article, the, it's part three. Yeah. I will have article this article podcast. And it like, the first several paragraphs are all about defang. It's, it's actually, oh yeah, you can't read it. Oh, we still have, I've got a archive.org. PDF copy. Yeah. There's gotta be, it's gotta be something available about there. Yeah, I didn't even think of making PDFs of those. Probably should have right from the get go, but yeah, it's, well that's all right. I mean, that's good. We'll, we'll get copies one way or the other. So yeah, feel free to pop in and out. I know it's super early for you. It's actually super early for me at 10:00 AM but it's super, super early for you at 8:00 AM so, west Coast

Ben: 34:51

guy, huh? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Nevada. Yeah. Well, you guys are doing the Live Interactive podcast. You guys are li literally creating podcasting 3.0. Yeah. No. Yeah, yeah. No, totally. So I just wanted to pop in and say, Hey, I see you guys are doing pretty great. You see how things are popping off? And then the conversation was really nice, so I figured I'd pop in for a second. Didn't mean to interrupt though. Yeah, no worries. No, man. You're more than welcome. And for those who are just listening on I r s S feed listening,

Gene: 35:21

go ahead. Yeah. We got 90 people on YouTube right now listening live. So welcome, welcome. And then guys, if you wanna listen to the audio version, if you're not gonna be around for the recording of the entire thing make sure you go to just two good old boys.com, all the one word. And that will lead you straight to the, all the links for the podcast itself. And we should be on Apple and all the standard Google all the platforms until we get

Ben: 35:52

banned,

Gene: 35:52

until we get, which I've, I've not actually ever been kicked off by Apple for any of the podcasts I've done, but I think they, I tend not to swear. I don't really, occasionally elsewhere, but not very often. So, oh,

Ben: 36:05

someone's asking what's with the beanie? He's he's.

Gene: 36:09

Very, very bold. Yeah. I think, and, and Angu also wears beanie and is also bald on here. So I think that's a common thing. A lot of people wear beanies. I don't, honestly, I can't wear hats indoors. They make my heads like sweat. I don't want a sweaty hat head from wearing a hat indoors. So I never wear hats indoors. I rarely wear hats outdoors, frankly.

Ben: 36:33

Yeah. I wear hats when I'm too lazy to get up and comb my hair. So really? But, but that's, that's because I'm not

Gene: 36:40

bald. But isn't like an combed hair a, a hairstyle these days?

Ben: 36:46

Not when you're a professional. No, I don't think so. You wear a

Gene: 36:50

baseball hat when you're a professional work at work, really? I, yeah,

Ben: 36:55

depending. You kidding?

Gene: 36:58

How about that? I would have a little, little chat with an employee that did that. Yeah. Well,

Ben: 37:03

but I also don't wear a suit. Suit. I'm a and tie anymore, hardly ever. Fair enough.

Gene: 37:07

I wore

Ben: 37:08

a suit and tie. I mean, it says

Gene: 37:09

the guy in the tracksuit, Hey man, tracksuits are comfy. I wore a suit and tie for the first 20 years of my career. Everything. Yeah, yeah,

Ben: 37:18

yeah. Mm-hmm. Well luckily in the it that's where do you think I was? Big thing Well, and I mean, even back

Gene: 37:26

in the old days, you had to dress for the part.

Ben: 37:29

Right, right. Well, in, in the current company I'm working for, there's definitely a dress code, like mm-hmm. you, you don't go in the office wearing Genes. Mm-hmm. It's just a thing, but mm-hmm. do I not have any customer meetings today? Am I just internal? Yeah. I'll throw a baseball cap on. Hmm. So, yeah, and a lot of that really relaxed during the pandemic, right? Yeah. Lockdowns, no haircuts could see that.

Gene: 37:52

Yeah. Yeah. Somebody said they bought their first tracksuit recently and they, they gave up Nick says A Russian in a tracksuit classic. That's just random. That's, I'm just

Ben: 38:05

doesn't mean, but it needs to be the white Adidas man. That was yesterday falling down. Oh, okay. Uhhuh, got a different color. Right now he's wearing the red Adidas, he's wearing the, the special from that movie Constantine that the Mexican guy found. The spirit desk that he's wearing was wearing

Gene: 38:22

mm-hmm. That's with the one he's got on today. Well, I've got the red and white. They also have a red and black. I've got a lot of different color combos. And of course it's an Adidas, cuz you know, it's tragic. Of course it's an Adidas.

Ben: 38:36

So Gene, yeah. What's going on with Ukraine and them wrapping this up?

Gene: 38:41

Yeah, well they seem to be progre, well they, meaning Russia seem to be progressing a little faster. I think Ukraine is losing a lot of support is what it seems like. It's becoming. More and more difficult to maintain the lie that Ukraine is winning. The, we've got protests in Germany, we do have, but, but we have protests like three months ago too, and that wasn't having a whole lot of impact. I don't think European governments really give a shit about their citizens right now. Major protests in France more relating to energy than participation in Ukraine, but nonetheless destabilizing the governments. The, the, I don't know if it's the president, but it's the head of Moldova resigned. So that is interesting. I'm not quite sure whether that was a US decision to replace that person in Moldova or whether it was a organic thing. It's hard to say, but there is definitely an anticipation that Moldova will end up being the second front. Now

Ben: 39:48

there are a few interesting things about that potentially. Mm-hmm. but so why do you feel like it was a US move to remove the head, head of state

Gene: 40:00

among mobile? I think they wanna put somebody in that's more of a hawk in there.

Ben: 40:05

Okay. So I was talking about the Germans and the German, uh mm-hmm. protests specifically because of how it relates to their constitution. Mm-hmm. them sending we've talked about in the past about the optics, especially from a Russian perspective of the Germans sending arms and what that looks like to the Russians. And I think from what I've been seeing of the German protests mm-hmm. there is a pretty substantial portion of the population that's cognizant of that. Yeah. And is very worried about what that will mean. So,

Gene: 40:39

yeah. So, Dingo mentioned that there's a report from the UK's Ministry of Defense saying that Russians are dying like crazy. Yeah. UK is about the only country that's still kind of clinging onto the lie right now. The actual numbers are about 10 to one, so there's about 10 Ukrainians. That's actually not true. There's about six Ukrainians and four NATO people that are killed for every single Russian that's killed. And those numbers came from Israel, who has been looking at this situation independently, and the data was leaked recently. The Russians have been saying for a long time that it's about eight to one. Israel is actually saying it's about 10 to one right now. So, realistically, I, I posted it, I don't remember it off the top of my head, but I posted a link to No Agenda Social, which is a fedi thing that had a breakdown of all the different casualties, damage equipment, everything else on both sides. And it is it, it is shocking as to exactly what the losses have been from, from Ukraine

Ben: 41:40

at this point. Well, I, I don't think we can trust any of the numbers that are coming out of Ukraine and we won't know. I mean, it's like World War ii. Yeah. know? Yeah. I, I don't know what the truth about World War II is. I just know that I don't know it. Yeah, that's fair enough. Because there's so much propaganda on it.

Gene: 41:54

All sides. Mm-hmm. there is a lot of propaganda for sure. But in either situation even if you take the, the worst case scenario, which the the UK started playing onto, a lot of other Western countries are sort of giving up now. It sort of doesn't matter because Russia can afford to lose more people and still win the war to an

Ben: 42:15

extent. But Russia's also got a collapsing demographic, so

Gene: 42:19

that's, yeah. Not an issue. I mean, everybody keeps harping on this. It, that's not nearly as much of an issue in a command.

Ben: 42:27

Mm. Well we'll see. Now, so why do you think Moldova is going to be the next front? I mean, this is not a NATO country. It is a neutral country.

Gene: 42:36

Yeah. So, so, so is Ukraine

Ben: 42:40

Well, Ukraine has never really been neutral though.

Gene: 42:42

Uhhuh, well, Moldova because of Transtria, uh mm-hmm. Transtria is between Moldova and Ukraine. And Transtria has I guess the, the one thing it's famous for maybe is that it, it still has 80 different Russian troops. Not 80 people, but 80 divisions. I don't know, 80 whatevers of some measurement of Russian troops there. It always has Transtria effectively did the same thing as Eastern Ukraine, except they did it right away after the collapse of Soviet Union and said, Nope, we're not part of Moldova. We were part of the Soviet Union in the country, and we are not gonna be part of Moldova. And so this was this sort of a weird, not really part of Russia, but effectively part of Russia. It was a exclave and so they never changed anything. They are the most Soviet looking country. I don't think they're recognized by a lot of countries as a country They're, they're just perceived as a territory, but that, that is essentially the south I guess it'd be the southwest border of

43:56

Ukraine.

Ben: 43:57

And so you think Russia is going to try and get a land bridge to there? Yeah,

Gene: 44:00

absolutely. That's been the plan from day one is you, you get a land bridge, you get Odessa, Odessa's always been a Russian city. And you get a land bridge all the way through trans history. You effectively have Russia bordering if there's anything left of Ukraine and that, that's debatable at this point, whether there would be or not. But if there is, Russia's gonna border from the east, from the south and from the west, and then from the north you'll have Belarus. And then from the very west you're gonna have Poland. And the US doesn't want that, obviously. So that, I think this is where the second front they're trying to open up a second front through Moldova. I don't think the Malians, the Malians, OVN citizens, whatever you wanna call'em, I don't think that they're gonna be happy about that.

Ben: 44:51

I can imagine. Mm-hmm. you know what's interesting to me is you have people saying that Russia needs to, for, having defensible borders, has to push way further out than what we're even talking about right now. Right Now how true is that? I don't know. If you go with what Zion says, Zion, whatever you're really looking at Russia pushing into NATO territory and yeah. If that is the case mm-hmm. what will the NATO response be? Is the US going to basically say, okay, no, we are withdrawing. Like some people think that we will, or do you think we'll double down?

Gene: 45:33

Yeah. Well you don't, my position on this, I, I think it's inevitable that we're gonna have nuclear weapons used within a year. I don't think there's any way around it. The, the people that want war

Ben: 45:45

no. Are a strategic or

Gene: 45:47

tactical, right? Oh, it always starts off with tactical, but it always escalates. It's the thing is, the last time the US u's nukes, there could not be a retaliation from Japan. Correct?

Ben: 46:01

Well, there could have been a conventional retaliation. Yeah.

Gene: 46:04

At that point in the war. It, it would've been, I mean, I guess there could have, but it wouldn't, it wasn't a serious retaliation. I think that the cuz as you and I know Japan would've signed a declaration of peace even without the nukes. That was, that was not a necessary step. It was an accelerator.

Ben: 46:27

Well, it was to be able to Japan was at that point, Japan, yes. They probably would've signed a declaration of peace. They probably would've gone through that, but they would've wanted to hold onto much more territory than they ultimately ended up holding onto.

Gene: 46:44

Yeah. Yeah. And one of the people in comments here said, if Russia joined with Mexico and told us they were taking Texas, what do you think we'd do? Yeah, exactly. And incidentally, there will be Russian support for Mexico. And I've said this for about a year now. When the opportunity is right tit for tat is gonna happen. And when a non-US friendly government is elected in Mexico, both China and Russia are gonna be in there heavily. And so we, we will see what happens. Yeah.

Ben: 47:12

Well with NAFTA too, I don't know that that happens.

Gene: 47:15

What the, what we're gonna do overthrow the governor of Mexico, if they elect somebody who's more socialist, I don't

Ben: 47:22

think that's gonna happen because we are so integrated as far as their major trading

Gene: 47:27

partner, which part isn't gonna happen. The people of Mexico aren't gonna elect somebody who's not pro us. Correct.

Ben: 47:33

I think they're going to I think they're going to hold a very tight relationship with the US for a long time. Mm-hmm. the Mexican people's economic needs lie with trading with North

Gene: 47:46

America. And you still believe that people vote

Ben: 47:49

rationally? I think people vote with their wallets largely.

Gene: 47:54

Mm-hmm. that's why we have Biden, I guess. Yeah.

Ben: 47:58

Had Covid and the recession there from the lockdowns and everything else had not happened. Absolutely. This would be Trump's second term. There would be no doubt about that.

Gene: 48:10

Really? So you think that COVID lost for Trump? I

Ben: 48:14

think that was a huge portion of it, yes. Mm-hmm. he didn't have the economy behind him the way he did for the first couple of years. Mm-hmm. I mean, my God, we saw here in Texas, we saw under$2 a gallon gas, yeah. It, it, it's been since I was a kid since the last time I saw that$2 gas

Gene: 48:33

under$2 gas. Yeah. No, it's been under two bucks for most of my, it's been way over under two bucks for most of my life. What are you talking about for most

Ben: 48:43

of your life? I'm younger than you though. I know, but I mean, mid two thousands on, it's been over$2 a gallon.

Gene: 48:50

Oh, okay. I have to look it up while we're doing the podcast here, cuz I, I just don't remember that. It's been much over two bucks ever except for a few notable wars.

Ben: 49:00

Eh, okay. You look that up. Anyway, the interesting thing that Biden is doing and what came out of the State of the Union mm-hmm. I don't know if you watched or not, but it was, it was, man, that was a rough one to watch.

Gene: 49:12

Yeah. We, in fact, we watched it live on the stream. Okay. Commenting well, and I add my finger on the boo button.

Ben: 49:21

man, they, they tore into him, didn't they? I've never seen a state of the Union where the president was heckled so much. Yeah, yeah.

Gene: 49:29

Yeah. It was, it was reminding me of the English parliament. Yeah.

Ben: 49:34

Yeah. To a large extent, prime Minister question Uhhuh Now Hehe, here's the interesting thing though, Biden is keeping up a lot of the Trump era foreign policy. Mm-hmm. basically he hasn't, he's, he's doubled down on Trump's foreign policy in a lot of ways. Mm-hmm. which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. So I will give him some credit there. I think you're gonna see a pretty big move away from China. I think this balloon stuff is all about demonizing China, so I, I think that companies that haven't move. Manufacturing away from China are mm-hmm. going too shortly. I think Apple is already making the moves to move away, which they have a huge supply chain problem there. Hmm. Yeah.

Gene: 50:24

I don't think so, but yeah, it's, I think that there's a, there's a, a lot of things that are done are not done for rational reasons in governments around the world, not just here. And I think what we're gonna start seeing as the whole RA war situation starts to ramp up is we're gonna start seeing more decisions that are based around seemingly disconnected issues. And we, we already seen this in Europe. I mean, Europe effectively sabotaged themselves to the point where it's gonna take them 50 years to recover out of the industrial black hole that they've gotten themselves into. And Germany being the biggest component there, but other European countries as well. The, the willingness and support of US policy with complete disregard of what's good for the actual country. And by the way, Mike, yes. The answer to your question was yes. It was completely, what was the question? The question is Gene, the devil's advocate. I actually had business cards that said that

Ben: 51:31

the totally legitimate

Gene: 51:33

businessman. Yeah, well those two, but no, I had business card says avocados dioli. It's a position, it's actually a job title in the Vatican. But I think we're gonna start seeing more of that where the, the policy and decisions of, of more countries outside of Europe even, they're gonna start to become more reflective of, God. I hate to use this word cuz it's not completely true, but it's gonna be more vir signaling and not just vir signaling for the US side. We're gonna start seeing more rueing for the other side as well, for China, for Russia, for countries that are not friendly with the us let's put it that way. The, the unipolar world is done completely. I think the real question right now is, are we going to have a move towards a unipolar world where the US is not the unipolar country? Or are we gonna have a more of a dichotomy there where we're gonna go back to what we used to have during the Cold War where there is somewhat of a balance between the east and the west? Or we get a splinter further and we're gonna have an African faction, a Asian faction, a South American faction and a North American faction. And Europe, I'm not even gonna mention cuz they're basically fucked. So, so

Ben: 52:53

the, the French, so it depends on who you follow. Mm-hmm. there are multiple analysts and trains of thought. I think we do don't believe in splinter. Believe that's not entirely, not in, not in, not in a mm-hmm. totality of what they say you mm-hmm. Anytime you're, and this goes for any type of analysis. Yeah. People have their own biases that they end up putting in. Right? Yep. So one of the things that inherently happens, and I've brought it up before I was at I was given a presentation right during the beginning of the ar Iraq war, um mm-hmm. at a university event. And part of my presentation was headlines from Al Jazeera, CNN and Fox News. Yeah. Fox News. And CNN said, war in Iraq, Al Jazeera said War on Iraq, one letter difference. Total complete change in bias. And, propaganda is a big thing. That, that one letter change in the sentence was a total shift in the thought process about the war. Right. So that's something that has to be considered. Yes. But I think we are gonna break down, I think when you look at the militaries and the economies and the demographics of who can build alliances and basically go back to the period of, pre-war, war I of empires mm-hmm. you're going to have some predominant empires and then you're gonna have some secondary holdovers. And it's gonna be real interesting to see what happens to international shipping, if that goes that

54:26

way.

Gene: 54:27

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think that's, those, there will definitely be more disruptions coming down the line. Yeah.

Ben: 54:34

I, I think we can all agree that Bretton Woods is over. Yeah. Which it, it's astonishing to me that Breon Woods is now being talked about openly and fully acknowledged where in the past, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist if you think that Breton Woods agreement was anything other than exactly what it said it was.

Gene: 54:56

Yeah. But I mean, to some extent it's been over for a while, hasn't it?

Ben: 55:00

No, the US is still out there, trying to be the world's police in a large

Gene: 55:05

way. Well, there was two components to Britain Woods though. One was the, the pegging to the US dollar. The other one was the US dollar being tied to gold. Yes.

Ben: 55:14

And that, that portion has been obviously gone since Nixon, but, but

Gene: 55:18

this is how, it's the other one going away was inevitable. It's just amazing. You got, it lasts as long as it has. Yeah. I don't think that we would've had 44 secondary sore wood if it wasn't tied, if the US dollar was not tied to gold.

Ben: 55:32

Well, I, I, I tend to agree, but one of the things I would say is that, the US had everybody over a barrel mm-hmm. Right. It was the only economy to really survive a War ii. Yeah, for sure. So we could have absolutely screwed everybody over if we wanted. We could have gone into Empire at that point and kept up the old games, but we didn't, in fact, we sacrificed our economy largely to bribe everyone into joining NATO or being a affiliated or allied company to stand against the U S S R Yeah. And the Warsaw

Gene: 56:05

Pack. Yeah. Which I, I, I think was the right move at the time. Yeah.

Ben: 56:11

And now that this is obviously going to unwind 30 years after the U S S R fell apart, right. We'll see how well we can unwind it without starting World War

Gene: 56:23

iii. Yeah. And that's where I think it's gonna be damn near impossible. Because the alliances that exist in time of peace, Are theoretical alliances. It's really alliances that exist in time of war that matter.

Ben: 56:39

A agreed. However, I don't think, I mean, Germany at this point has 100% committed itself to nato. And,

Gene: 56:47

other than the, until the, the bonus stock is overthrown and burned to the ground. Okay.

Ben: 56:53

I think Germany, so goes Germany, so goes Europe with the exactly possible exception of the French.

Gene: 57:00

Yeah. The French are gonna be, protesting themselves. So But that that's always been the case. Yeah. And Italy may end up emerging as the winner in Europe. How so? Well, they're the only ones that have a conservative government that seems to be not following the US, lead on a like a little puppy. Mm-hmm.

Ben: 57:24

well, I, I still don't know how they're gonna come out as a winner. I don't see them as much of a

Gene: 57:31

player. Well, they're further south for one. Mm-hmm. they have less winter to worry about. And they're a negarian society, so they will be able to feed themselves. Germans will starve.

Ben: 57:43

Yeah. And you can look at import maps of who imports food versus who exports food. Mm-hmm. and so on. Mm-hmm. And there are very few countries that have the ability to maintain any semblance of modernity. Mm-hmm. post globalism. And that's gonna be, I understand

Gene: 58:00

the, the plan by the neocons was always to leverage Russia versus Europe in order to further build a wall between Europe and Russia, and then start taking those taking over the sale of goods to Europe fully. It'll be US grain, it'll be US petroleum products. But all of those have a much higher cost than Russian grain and Russian petroleum products. So Europe is going to be, I mean, even if there isn't a nuclear war, which I suspect there's, there will be, I, I definitely on that side of the, the I guess people predicting, but even if there isn't, I, I think Europe is going to be like, I think, I think when European governments. Decided to go all in with the sanctions and even double down on some of them to be harsher than US sanctions. I think I, I think that they thought that literally a few months of those sanctions would end this conflict. And then the

Ben: 59:20

thing would go back. Let's be honest, had those sanctions been applied to Russia in 2008, it probably would've. Mm-hmm. But the Russians, the sanctions that were put on Russia going back to then Yeah. Basically sent a signal to Putin and the Russians that they better insulate their economy from globalism. Yeah. And he started, and they have done that to a very large degree. Russia is very much pulled back from the global economy.

Gene: 59:44

Exactly. And, and he talked about that, is that while this, the original sanctions imposed on Russia were unjustified and painful, the silver lining was, it forced Russia to become a lot more self-sufficient. Mm-hmm. And by doing that, a lot less able to be affected by future sanctions. Yes. And I think we've seen that.

Ben: 1:00:12

I agree. Now China is not that

Gene: 1:00:16

way. No, no. China is a global economy. Country. If

Ben: 1:00:20

you applied the sanctions that are applied to Russia, to China, yeah. China would. They'd be in famine very quickly.

Gene: 1:00:27

Yeah. But so would the us why is that? I know we have a disagreement on this point, but because I see just how many components of everything come from China.

Ben: 1:00:38

Yeah. But we wouldn't be in, there's nothing famine we can in the US feed ourselves.

Gene: 1:00:41

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, we, we could feed ourselves, but would be living. So

Ben: 1:00:46

you don't get a new iPhone

Gene: 1:00:47

and you don't have a power plant. Sure.

Ben: 1:00:50

No. Again, this is something we've disagreed on. A lot of control systems, control system technology is not manufactured in China. Mm-hmm. it, it just isn't. It's manufactured in Mexico. It's manufactured in Europe. Mm-hmm. it's manufactured in the us maximum integrated. Right. We have a,

Gene: 1:01:08

and all the raw materials are made in Mexico for those parts made in Mexico is what you're saying.

Ben: 1:01:13

Okay. So if you get into deep into supply chains, for instance laser etching of the dyes, no, we currently do not have a source for neon outside of China or Russia. Actually. Yeah. Now, or take neon. If we start, if we start producing our own steel and go back to smelting, which we have a lot of idle smelters here. Yeah. In the us, then we can, but you know, right now our steel manufacturing is taking. Iron pig iron from other countries. Mm-hmm. we don't generate our own pig iron, therefore we don't have air separation units to get the noble gases out of the air. Mm-hmm. We could do it in different ways there, we can build that infrastructure up here and in Mexico as a cheap trading partner.

Gene: 1:02:03

Yeah. And that's the difference. Where I think we always end up when we have this conversation is you're talking about we could, and I'm saying we don't, but I'm saying

Ben: 1:02:13

we are moving towards that. That's one of the things that I think Trump, as much as I want to do it all here in the us we don't necessarily, we, we can't do it at a cost effective rate all here in the us So NAFTA two and the renegotiations that happened there, I think were very largely pro us and I think you have a lot of manufacturing returning to North America, if not the us You have a lot of baseline manufacturing going into chi Mexico. By all measures, the Mexicans are cheaper, more skilled labor than China.

Gene: 1:02:51

Yeah, I've seen that on a number of different products. Yeah. I don't think it's true across the board, but I think that there is definitely a benefit to us to have more of. Sort of manufacturing supply chain production happening as close, but still outside of the US as possible. So Mexico or Canada?

Ben: 1:03:12

Yeah, Canada, from a labor standpoint essentially competes with US workers, but Canada has a lot of land and raw materials that can be used. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Gene: 1:03:24

But I don't know, man, I, I just, if all ships from China stopped coming tomorrow, it would destroy China. I don't think there's single sector in the United States that would be operational within six months. Why is that? We wouldn't have food, we wouldn't have supplies because everything depends on either raw or manufactured materials from China and even about materials that aren't, that aren't actually raw materials that aren't coming from China, they're still being purchased by China, in Africa or Russia and then sold to the United States.

Ben: 1:04:04

I mean, some of that is true. You have, chip manufacturing is a great example. You have most of the high-end chips, server, class chips, everything else are pretty much all us. Based, what does that mean, mid-level?

Gene: 1:04:20

I'm sorry, what do you mean based,

Ben: 1:04:21

Produced in the US for instance, Intel

Gene: 1:04:24

bright, but Intel doesn't produce the chips used for the majority of the connected internet products out there. Oh,

Ben: 1:04:31

sure. I mean you, China produces a lot of things that ended up in your ring doorbell or whatever else. Mm-hmm. Okay. So that's not really doing work. I, I think, Dell, HP servers will still be able to get those general laptops, computers, productivity based things. Yeah. Must

Gene: 1:04:50

well, yeah. Yeah. But I'm not sure that they solely produced chips in the us do they?

Ben: 1:04:57

No, they don't. Solely but alar. And, and that's when we saw the supply chain crunch, and, Dinga might be able to back me up on this. When we saw the supply chain crunch on servers, it wasn't processors, it wasn't Ram it, it was essentially motherboard components where some of the lower end processors on a motherboard, like the North Bridge or South Bridge mm-hmm. You weren't able to get that. Now you have companies like Max Integrated. Who's a big defense contractor that can stand up something like Bedrock Automation on its own and produce that solely in the us. The top,

Gene: 1:05:31

which was a flock chip foundries are outside of the us. I'm sorry, the top five chip foundries are outside of the US by volume.

Ben: 1:05:40

Yes. Yeah, but you gotta look at what types of chips

Gene: 1:05:43

they produce. Apple products, Qualcomm, Nvidia, a md b ba, ba. What else here? Foxcon. These are the companies, didn't they make chips for? So the, the top ones I'm seeing here are, are Taiwanese Sim Connector Manufacturing Company, Samsung, United Micro Electronic Corporation, global Foundries, and China Semiconductor Manufacturing International. Yeah. So, and by volume, these are the biggest five in the world. Yes. By volume.

Ben: 1:06:12

Mm-hmm. I mean, you gotta look at where they're utilized and so on. So, I, I think you're much more pessimistic on the US end. I think I'm much more optimistic. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think when we look at the naval power around the world

Gene: 1:06:26

inconsequential, navies don't matter

Ben: 1:06:28

at all. Right. They do when China, for instance, imports a ton of their food, that China is absolutely dependent upon global infrastructure and trade, and all of that happens by ship. And the US has the ability to deny it, that they don't.

Gene: 1:06:52

The only thing that matters right now is missiles. Missiles take out ships. Ships take years to replace a naval warfare will never happen. We're we're beyond that. That was 20th century. In the 20th century, you needed a strong navy because you could have a naval warfare situation. Today you do not.

Ben: 1:07:16

Okay. And if you launch an I C B M mm-hmm. regardless of payload mm-hmm. you have a long time for that to be targeted and taken down 10

Gene: 1:07:28

minutes from Russia to the us. Okay?

Ben: 1:07:30

That's a long time for it to be targeted. A ship isn't

Gene: 1:07:33

gonna get targeted when it's sitting in the port in the us, but as soon as that ship is sitting off the coast of China trying to prevent Chinese ships from leaving, it will get taken out in two minutes.

Ben: 1:07:45

My point is, you need, that's not even a ship, to be able to move a missile closer. To be able to fire it off where missile defenses

Gene: 1:07:54

China don't have hypersonic missiles right now. There's nothing to move. You're talking about the US trying to deny China trade well, which

Ben: 1:08:02

I think they can. They can't. No, they can't. Well, we will definitely see how this plays out over, over the

Gene: 1:08:08

next few years. It's, it's very likely that we will see that playing out. But I, I think I,

Ben: 1:08:13

I don't know how China's economic system survives the coming collapse, like China isn't going to be a manufacturing center for the rest of the world. It's going away. Yeah. I agree with that. Totally. So how do they shift their economy and what direction do they shift it? Two. Yeah.

Gene: 1:08:32

Well, luckily their population's gonna shrink, so the impact on them from the changing economy will be lessened.

Ben: 1:08:40

Mm. I see it as the other way. It's all planned. It very much feels like it, doesn't it? Mm-hmm. Yep. Globally, it feels very,

Gene: 1:08:52

very planned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and just to round out this topic, we can move on to other stuff. Mm-hmm. but I just, I think, and again, we'll see if I'm right or wrong, but I think the two most important military weapon systems or even beyond weapon system, but really the, the focus needs to be on submarines, missile, submarines, and missile. because those, that combination can literally take out everything else from people to ships, to airplanes, to, you name it, missiles, guided missiles and submarines. Okay. So if I was playing the game risk, that's what I'd be focusing on right now. That's such a

Ben: 1:09:36

great game.

Gene: 1:09:37

I haven't played it for decades, but I, I used to really

Ben: 1:09:40

enjoy it. Risk and then access and Allies, which is, the upgraded version of risk. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:09:45

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was mostly I gave up board games a long, long time ago. I was just exclusively

Ben: 1:09:51

computer games. That's a shame. That's what having kids is for. Keep you playing board games and doing fun things like that. Guess

Gene: 1:09:57

There, yeah. There's even Monopoly is on the computer now, like the official version Oh yeah.

Ben: 1:10:04

Has been for a long,

Gene: 1:10:05

long time. Yeah. Yeah. But I remember that used to be a fun game to play back in the day, back in the analog days, kids when we used to play board games and it, it wasn't like retro, it was actually modern

Ben: 1:10:20

Oh, Jesus man.

Gene: 1:10:21

Huh Oh, the good old days. Back when gasoline was well under a dollar. Yeah. The,

Ben: 1:10:28

I mean, I. People today just, we are so spoiled. Everybody has Oh yeah, totally. Everybody has hundreds of channels of tv. We've all got very fast internet. Mm-hmm. everything else. I remember going to my grandparents' farm and a, one of the TVs was still black and white and then and did not have a remote. The other one had a remote, but it was a clicker remote where it actually hit the, the thing and it produced the tone to change the channel or whatever. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I do the, the original remote's. Why? It's called a clicker. I remember TV without remotes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you turn a dial Yeah. There was one channel that came in know, cause this is out in rural Texas. So when, when we were ever up there, we were all outside. We were playing board games if it was raining, that sort of thing. That, that's what me and my cousins did. Because you didn't have any other options. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that there's something to be said for prime. Yeah. I

Gene: 1:11:25

think deprivation, this is, I think it's very good. It's, we have gotten ourselves into a situation which is really not good for our brains, which is that there is always available stimulus no matter where you are or what you're doing. And humans didn't grow up with that over the, the history of us as a species. We grew up with long periods of downtime. Followed by short bursts of high activity and stimulation. Like when, when the, a wolf back attacks you, that's pretty stimulating. Or when you are chasing a wooly mammoth and trying to kill it so you can have food that's pretty stimulating. But for the most part, you're kinda, living in a cave, picking berries a lot less stressful, low low activity, low stimulation. And I think a lot of people right now, whether they know it or not, are living lifestyles where the brain is stimulated for 18 hours and then you wonder why people have to be medicated all the time cuz they can't sleep, they can't relax, they can't think straight, they're overly sensitive to everybody else. They, they can't deal with other people. They're, they're constantly being triggered on things. I think if the, the best, the best way to deal with all that stuff is to decompression out with no internet out in nature for a while. That that's the best reset you can do. And I, I recommend everybody do that for themselves. Well before you get to the point where somebody else has to do it for you.

Ben: 1:13:07

It's not just mental stimulation. We live in a time where abundance is the. The norm, not privation, right? Mm-hmm. And we, I mean, you and I both. And I think from what I've seen, Ingo, we all have a little extra on us that we could probably lose,

Gene: 1:13:28

yeah. Some of us more than others.

Ben: 1:13:30

Yeah. And part of that is, not just self-control and being able to diet and exercise and so on, but it's really, if, if you put a, the, one of the interesting studies that I've seen is if you put a rat where they're borderline starving, right? They're getting enough, but certainly not any in excess. Mm-hmm. it actually increases the life of the rap. Yes. Yes. It actually has a longer life. It is better. Our, our systems are, and it makes sense, especially if you follow through with any evolution theory or whether or not you think it was created or not. Our systems are our, our optimum range is just above starving Yeah,

Gene: 1:14:18

totally. Right. That is very true. And this is like I switched to a intermittent fasting diet about, mm, year and a half ago, I think. Mm-hmm. and most of the time, so probably. six stays a week minimum, sometimes seven, but occasionally just six. I will only eat once a day and I found that allows me to be a lot more focused and able to work and think and write and do all the stuff that really puts a, a large demand on my brain. Mm-hmm. And before I started doing the intermittent fasting, I typically, like when I was, I, I've written a few books. When I was writing books, I found the only time that I could really do it was between when I woke up and lunchtime, I could not write after lunch. I was like, my brain was a soft, fuzzy mess. I could have conversations with people, I could watch YouTube videos, I could do a lot of things. I could be working not horribly, productively, but I could be working. But that time before lunch seemed to be the most productive time. And when I started doing intermittent Fest fasting, that time grew tremendously and effectively. What I've been doing is I will typically do activities that require a lot of, a lot of thinking, a lot of clarity of thought between getting up and about 3:00 PM 4:00 PM and then I'll have my one meal a day at between four and. Maybe three and six at some point between 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM depending on if I'm hungry or not. And and then I will do activities after six that require less focus and concentration. And I, again, I can still have, a lot of fun stuff I can do is just, I know I'm not gonna be nearly as productive if I'm writing. I'm not gonna be nearly as careful if I'm working on spreadsheets. It's just less of a it's, it's not the best time to, to be thinking. And yeah, I, I guess I could push that all the way out to where I would eat at 9:00 PM and then maybe have the entirety of the day be very clear. But I'm not, I'm not willing to do that.

Ben: 1:16:40

Yeah, I kind of, I do an intermittent in naturally. My, my normal eating schedule is basically mm-hmm. I, I have lunch at around noon, and then I eat my last meal generally around five. So, I have in in intermittent fasting, a lot of people say, have your quote unquote feeding window to under six hours, and mine pretty naturally is mm-hmm. But, days like yesterday where went was doing some errands and everything else, and I had a coupon for our our local Brazilian Steakhouse. Oh yeah. Yeah. I love those. Yeah, so, so I didn't eat anything except what I ate. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I also definitely picked out

Gene: 1:17:21

there, so. Yeah. Well you have to, cuz it's not cheap either, so you gotta get your money worth. Yeah.

Ben: 1:17:26

Lot, lots of, lots of delicious meat, so. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:17:31

Exactly. I gotta do that too, dude. I've I've got a couple of gift certificates that are partly used that I need to consolidate and so it's say I could actually go eat for totally free. I just keep forgetting to do that.

Ben: 1:17:44

Yeah. My, my meal was free, but I also, in indulged in some of the the, the tasty beverages, so, yeah. Mm, mm-hmm. Yeah. They've got this one adult beverage that's a Brazilian rum drink, and it's essentially muddled lime and lime juice and little bit of sugar. And the, it's not, it's got a dif it's, it starts with a c it's a different alcohol than rum, but it's essentially a type of rum. I thoughts just quit. Fantastic. Huh? I thought you quit drinking. Said who?

Gene: 1:18:18

I thought you did. Didn't you quit drinking? No. You, Josh did. Oh, Josh quit drinking. Oh, good for.

Ben: 1:18:24

Good shit. Yeah. I was the one making fun of him saying, Hey, quitters. Okay. All right. Yeah,

Gene: 1:18:30

I'm calling him a quitter. Exactly. I don't know, dude. I've certainly enjoyed drinking, but I will say that after all of like last year, I didn't drink at all. Mm-hmm. I I like the consistency of not drinking. I like not having to recover from drinking out. Not that I had like hangovers, but just, just a little more lethargic to normal, just a little more tired and less awake and stuff. I think all this stuff makes more impact as you get older. Like in my twenties, there was not a whole lot of difference in that I noticed on whether I drank the night before or whether I didn't drink the night before. Like it, every day was a fresh beginning with nothing being carried over from the previous day. Right now, not so much. I definitely feel like if I drank the previous day, then the day after is going to be more noticeable. And again, not to the extent where I feel hungover or anything. I don't have a headache, but it just feel like I'm a little foggy. Like I'm a little bit more hazy than I normally would be, like a day after drinking. So, last. I just decided I'm gonna try going a whole year without drinking. And it was amazingly easy, and and then after I finished off the year technically, I said, well, I guess I'll be drinking in this year. I just, I guess I could, but I really haven't gotten around. I haven't had a single drink this year,

Ben: 1:20:03

so. Yeah. Well, I'm going to S four, like I said, and I'm, I'll be at the beer ISAC and I can't not have a beer at that, I mean, I could mm-hmm. but it's just, I, I don't know, man. I, I'm not one of those people. If you, I,

Gene: 1:20:17

if you enjoy it and you have no negative repercussions, by all means, there's no, no reason

Ben: 1:20:22

though to, well, and, that, that comes down to this is if you have a problem with alcohol and this, I, I, I have some friends that absolutely do mm-hmm. and you let it affect your life, then you probably shouldn't drink. Yeah. If you are kind of like you where you can just take it or leave it, then it probably doesn't matter. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:20:45

Yeah. No, and, and again, it's not like I, it's not like I was an alcoholic or anything. I've never been addicted to alcohol and I've never been the opposite. I've never disliked alcohol. I mean, I think right now at the house, I probably have about 30 bottles of different. I have probably 20 bottles of wine and maybe another 15 bottles of really expensive vintage collection of stuff, like ports and things like that. Oh, port. Yeah. And I'm definitely not gonna be pouring that shit out, but I'm also not desperately wanting to drink it either. So,

Ben: 1:21:26

well if you go to get rid of anything, just let me know. I'll take it

Gene: 1:21:29

up for you. Well, next time you're in Austin, then we'll see about

Ben: 1:21:32

that. Oh man, Austin, I, I try and avoid Austin.

Gene: 1:21:36

I know you do. You don't, you don't like all the liberalism here. Eh? It's like leaving Texas It it is crossing into the border of Austin is like crossing in the border of California.

Ben: 1:21:48

Well, let's, it is the San Francisco of the South. It

Gene: 1:21:51

is. We have our, our fruit inspection stations at the Austin border to make sure that the only pot that comes in is legal Austin pot. It's it's a whole different world here,

Ben: 1:22:03

Well, what else we

Gene: 1:22:04

gotta talk about Gene. I don't know what else is going on. So we talk about balloons, talk about our usual conversation about China, where we always disagree. Trying to think of what else. We talked a little bit about Tim Pool. What have you been listening to? No agenda lately or not cuz I've been too damn busy. I honestly have not been listening for the last three weeks.

Ben: 1:22:21

Yeah, I've, I've listened to the majority of Thursdays. You see some of their topics. Well, one of the topics I've got is definitely on German manufacturing and EU manufacturing. I'll be able to talk more eloquently about it in a couple of weeks, but yeah. Cause you're gonna visit them. Yeah. But it sure seems like the Germans are gonna try and replicate the Japanese model of build where you sell, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, and what that is going to indicate is more ec economic stuff coming to the US quite frankly. Yeah.

Gene: 1:22:54

I mean, even read today, I, I remember I read that there are more Mercedes cars built in the US than they are in Germany.

Ben: 1:23:03

Yes. And now a lot of that is because of the current lack of natural gas, right? Mm-hmm. lack of energy. So, and one of the things that I really didn't realize was how extensive the German economy is so dependent. They are. So, and, and this is something in, if you're involved in US manufacturing, you may not really understand. There are parts of the world that are highly specific to inputs. Hey, we can only take this one type of crude, otherwise we have to retool our entire refining capacity. Mm-hmm. the US. We certainly have to retool our refining capacity quite a bit because we're no longer taking as much Saudi crude. We're getting a lot more light sweet crude from mm-hmm. US shale production. But here's the thing. We have refining capacity for pretty much everything because we take pretty much everything as inputs. Yeah. Germany is really, really, really dependent on Russian oil and gas. Yeah. They are very specifically tooled cutting that off. It's amazing to me how much of their manufacturing infrastructure was hit by that. And Germany's supposed to be one of the, world's manufacturing bases. Well, it's pretty much gone. Well,

Gene: 1:24:14

they never, yeah, they, they, this is the thing. I don't know what Germany would've done, had Germany known that they were going to have to sacrifice the entirety of their manufacturing to support this debacle in Ukraine.

Ben: 1:24:30

But they are, and they're continuing and I don't understand it.

Gene: 1:24:33

But I think there's a a lost sun cost fallacy happening here. Okay. I think at this point it's sort of like, well, we just spent a year and lost our manufacturing base. Support'em. I mean, it's kinda like we're, we're all in. We can't quit now. How would it look if, how, how do you explain to people that you just destroyed the manufacturing base of your. for a year. If you want to go back now, the, the, if we can get some additional support, some more documentation besides one single journalist saying that there's proof that the US Navy destroyed the pipeline, that may be enough of a reason for Germany to say, we're done. We're we're getting attacked by the us, we're not gonna support the

Ben: 1:25:27

us. Well, and that, that's kind of the thing is the attack on Nord Stream which is what you're referencing that is an attack on Germany, right? Yeah. That, that, that was the supply line. And if had Nord Stream not been taken out, it, there's a high likelihood that the Germans may have decided to change their mind. Well mm-hmm. once Nord Stream was taken out, they don't really have that option anymore. Mm-hmm. Yep. So, yeah. What's your take on on that as far as what

Gene: 1:26:00

Oh, do I, I mean, Matt ta right. Did it from day one? I, I think

Ben: 1:26:04

its pretty honest. You and I have been. Yeah. Right. But the details that he was putting out,

Gene: 1:26:08

I mean, it was different than what I thought. I, I kind of figured it was done closer to the time of the actual explosion. And probably by seals they're saying it was done by the regular Navy. Underwater teams there not seals. And it was done three months prior to the actual detonation, which would also not just mean the US destroyed a German pipeline, but also that Russian pipeline. It was, yeah. Russia, German, but it was premeditated, like they had put in the that capability earlier than the actual and

Ben: 1:26:43

disruption happened. Yeah. Miles is correcting me. It was Seymour Hirsch, not Mattey. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it definitely premeditated and, goes back to what Biden had said, right. That mm-hmm. Nords stream's not gonna happen. He, he publicly announced it mm-hmm. which is why Congress didn't have to be involved. Lots of things are talked about on that mm-hmm. but it, it, it comes down to that this administration was going to poke a fight with Russia no matter what. Yeah.

Gene: 1:27:10

Well, and if you watch the video that's been going around from the press conference prior to the pipeline explosion where Biden is giving the conference and is press, press conference, and when press with the question is, well, how, how is the US going to ensure that Germany doesn't buy Russian gas? Oh yeah. I can't remember his exact answer, but something to the effect of oh yeah, we, we have ways doing it. And then he has a smirk on his face. Mm-hmm. Like he clearly there is something that he's not saying that he knows. It's not just a theoretical, oh, we'll figure out a way, we'll figure outs. We already a plan in place. It's clearly oh yeah, it's not gonna happen. Let's just, trust me, Germany will not be getting Russian gas. And I think that video is a confirmation, frankly, of the story. I would like to see some additional proof coming out beyond that. But it was pretty obvious at the time that the US Now, I wasn't sure if it was gonna be political or what. I, I didn't necessarily think they were gonna blow it up, but as soon as the pipeline exploded, it was pretty obvious it was us. Mm-hmm. it may have been carried out by the uk, I thought, because they're closer and they do have pretty good underwater teams, but it was Well, and they're not

Ben: 1:28:34

dependent upon that pipeline

Gene: 1:28:35

and they're not Yeah, exactly. they're not dependent on pipeline. It would be, if we were doing like a Bond movie, then Norway doing it would make total sense as well, because they also have pretty good underwater teams. But but they also have the additional benefit of selling natural gas. Mm-hmm. but. Go ahead. I don't know, man. It's, I, I, it's obviously not Russia or Germany that did it. I blame Poland just for fun. Mostly. I remember when it first happened, I, right away Paul said, ah, Poland's Poland's in there. But I kind of enjoy That

Ben: 1:29:09

was just a dig at csb

Gene: 1:29:10

that that was a dig at. Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 1:29:13

Unnamed, this goes back to actually, is he doing better? Hopefully he's doing better, by the way. I have not heard, but yes. Yeah, we communicated dislocation.

Gene: 1:29:20

I thought you guys talked every night.

Ben: 1:29:22

Not every night, but we do talk. I did ask him for advice on an e Ink tablet, which what? I'm still, I'm, I'm looking at E ink tablets oh,

Gene: 1:29:30

E ink. Yeah. Yeah. There's one that advertises nonstop. I looked at'em for a

Ben: 1:29:35

while. Yeah. I, I, I, I love note taking. I,

Gene: 1:29:38

I like that. Why stop by getting the Amazon one, so that way you're combining your Kindle with the tablet? Yeah. I don't if don't like it. There's

Ben: 1:29:45

the others out there. Yeah. So right now, most of my notes for work are typed in OneNote. I'm a huge OneNote user. I like OneNote, but I would love to have something where I can use pen and paper, ask, and then migrate that over. So, mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I'm looking at some options. I have a surface that I'm kind of using as my travel personal laptop that I may start taking notes on as well, but, I, I really want something that's thinner, lighter, better battery life, and some of these ING tablets have some really cool features, so. Yeah.

Gene: 1:30:21

Yeah. Yeah. It's, well, we'll see. I guess it'll be interesting to hear your reviews of what you end up with, but I, I have thought about getting one. Mm-hmm. but then I saw they also have color ones and that seemed way cooler. And there's two or three companies making color ones, but they're fairly small companies. And then you're kind of like, well, do you want to color E ink or do you want to just get an iPad?

Ben: 1:30:49

Well, and that's the thing is so like remarkable too. They're remarkable too.

Gene: 1:30:54

One advertises

Ben: 1:30:54

everywhere right now. Yeah. And it, it, I've seen'em in person. They look awesome. Mm-hmm. the problem I have with it is by the time you get what you want, it's a$700 tablet. Sure. Yeah's, it's not super, it's definitely, yeah. It's a hundred dollars pen. And the whole thing that is very limited in its utility. Yes. So, now the, the, the difference in thought there, and I don't really care about color, right. I want a notetaking device, but what I really want is a, something that is made for notetaking that is very specific for note taking that can interface with one note and that has a couple weeks worth of battery life. Yeah. That's what I want. I have yet to see that feature set there. Everybody's trying to be an e-reader and this Right. And a tablet and this and you know it. Yeah. And basically right now I'd be better off just getting a Samsung or iPad tablet. Mm-hmm. and using a pen, for that. So

Gene: 1:31:54

is it writing with a pen that you want instead of typing? Is that the point or what? Yeah, basically. Oh, cuz my preferred method of notes, which has gotten better and better over the years is just text of speech. Right.

Ben: 1:32:08

But you can't do that in the meeting.

Gene: 1:32:09

Yeah, I do it all the time. I turn. Well, that's annoying. No, it isn't. How's that annoying? I, I push a button on my phone. I don't fuck around with my hand scribbling anything. Right.

Ben: 1:32:21

But I don't know, my notes and my internal monologue are different than what I say in a meeting.

Gene: 1:32:26

Well, I'm trying to record what other people are saying. I know what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 1:32:31

So I, the, one of the things I love about one, what's different than my notes, my notes are totally different than your notes. Uhhuh One thing that I've been using in OneNote, even going back to college, I don't know if you know this or not, but you can use OneNote to record audio. Yeah. So like recording a meeting and then as you're taking notes they sync, right?

Gene: 1:32:49

Yes. Yeah. That's been a thing on iPad for like multiple apps for a long time.

Ben: 1:32:54

Yeah, this goes back to well before the iPad. This was a feature in OneNote back in like 2003.

Gene: 1:32:59

Okay. Yeah. Anyway. Like for laptops you mean? Yes. Yeah,

Ben: 1:33:05

yeah. Yeah. Anyway so I, I, I'm a huge OneNote user man. I mean, my OneNotes are multiple gigabytes in size, usually

Gene: 1:33:13

disgraced. Yeah. I don't know. I was, I think I told you about this before I kind of got a little talking to when I was in the, well, I, I would be in meetings when I was doing a project for Target. I would be in meetings, um mm-hmm. this would be like 2003, 2004 timeframe with the the CISO and the the CIO and stuff. And there's 20 people in the room and ha have the people have their laptops open. Half the people are got notepads, pats paper and I never had anything. I'm unless like it's redundant. I don't, I don't need to write shit down here. Cuz first of all, I have a good memory. I could remember things that are important that I have to deal with. And two, everybody else is taking notes. So I'm not in charge of notes to be distributed to everybody else, so I don't need to worry about it. I got a talking to, it's like people, people don't like the fact that you're not taking notes. It makes it look like you're not paying attention. Mm-hmm. it's bitch, I'm the only one paying attention. Everybody, everybody is taking writing shit. Everybody busy taking notes. Every, I'm actually listening and participating in the conversation. So

Ben: 1:34:23

it's well, I, I think there's a, there's a balance there. Yeah, it's called

Gene: 1:34:27

Have a Secretary. That's the balance.

Ben: 1:34:31

Well, for those of us who are still fairly technical, a lot of what ends up in my OneNote is configurations different changes, different revisions. When I walk down a facility, I take a lot of pictures load those in. OneNote, don't

Gene: 1:34:43

comment on that. Can't draw those by hand. Or maybe you do. I don't know.

Ben: 1:34:47

No, but I annotate network diagrams, things like that. There, there's lots of things that end up in there. It's not just text notes.

Gene: 1:34:54

I know, it's, I, I get it, but I just don't like paper. I don't like pencils. I don't like paper. It's all old crap. I like fan new stuff. Right.

Ben: 1:35:03

But what I'm looking for and how we got off on this damn tangent is that I'm looking for a digital input that can mimic paper. Mm-hmm. But I get the efficiencies of digital notes. That's what I'm wanting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And one of the things that I love about OneNote is the ability to search my notes. Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. I'm not actually gonna go back to carrying a notebook. I don't want that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But I can, I, I can type fairly fast, but I can write, there was a product

Gene: 1:35:33

faster. I think there was a product even before iPads came out that had like a, a surface that you could write stuff on them with a, a normal pen and then it would, it was basically scanning the pressure Yeah. Of your Right. What was

Ben: 1:35:49

that thing called? The stuff has been out for a long time. Yeah. There's the, know, Wacom tablets and stuff like that have been out for a long time. This is just an evolution. Yeah. And I guess I'm wanting a little bit more of an evolution before I sync a thousand dollars into

Gene: 1:36:03

a note device. Here's, here's what I would love to get is I would love to get a 13 inch iPad that's folded cuz I, I like my smaller iPads, but I want more space. And the, the current generation, 12.9 inch iPad, which doesn't fold mm-hmm. it's just a little too big for holding with one hand. And so I would love something that folded the way that the Android the Samsung folding phones do.

Ben: 1:36:35

Man, I would not want to be folding, folding screens. Just, it, it. It seems like an expensive engineering proposition that is going to have a high failure rate. Well, it just

Gene: 1:36:48

has to last a year. I, okay. It'd be handy. I would love something like that. I don't know. Either that or just make, if they could make the the big iPad lighter, that would solve the problem as well. If I can't fold it, at the very least, I want it lighter. And it's hard to make it lighter because the bigger screen means more power drain, which means more batteries.

Ben: 1:37:11

Well, I mean, you could always just go with less battery life. But yeah, I, anyway, I, I don't, again, the use case I'm trying to solve for is very different. And anyway, a general purpose tablet

Gene: 1:37:22

my surface is an iPad. I mean, the iPad would do what you're talking about. You could write stuff on there. Write notes. I don't want an iPad.

Ben: 1:37:29

Why not? I

Gene: 1:37:31

can't stand Apple. I know. But aside from that, why not? It would, it would do what you want. Do a pretty good job of it. Plus you could watch movies on it. Why would I watch movies on a tablet? What do you watch movies on when you're in a hotel? The tv you really, it's too small. Yeah. I, I like tablets. Tablet is

Ben: 1:37:52

a smaller screen than the TV

Gene: 1:37:54

in your head. It's much bigger Screen, A tablet that is an arm length away from your body. Is a bigger screen than the TV that is 10, 12 feet away from your body.

Ben: 1:38:04

Okay. Well, no, I've got a little Roku stick that I take with me. Yeah. Mm-hmm. so I have all my streaming accounts and

Gene: 1:38:11

all that. So you just watched down there? Yeah. I mean, I guess you could do it. I just, I've what I used to when

Ben: 1:38:18

I travel a lot that I can use, but I don't use

Gene: 1:38:21

it. I don't think many people do this. But what I used to do when I traveled every week is I actually brought a portable projector with me and then projected on the ceiling so I could lay in bed in the hotel and watch movies up on the ceiling.

Ben: 1:38:38

Why would you do that? That is

Gene: 1:38:40

a much bigger screen and watching something with your head pointing at the ceiling is easier than tilting your head pointed at the, the wall. It's not ergonomic, like TVs should all be on the ceiling for bedrooms. I, if you're sitting, sure you can look at the wall, but cranking your head to look at a TV that's on the wall when you're laying in bed is stupid. The TV ought be above you.

Ben: 1:39:06

Why are you watching TV in bed like most people

Gene: 1:39:09

TV in bed?

Ben: 1:39:10

Dude, I have, not me. I, I

Gene: 1:39:14

honestly, it's don't do that place. I do watch tv. I don't watch TV anywhere else.

Ben: 1:39:18

I just don't watch that much tv. But

Gene: 1:39:20

I, I guarantee you, I watch. I, I watched one program for about three hours in the last month, so I watched about three hours of TV in the last month.

Ben: 1:39:33

Well, I, I will say that I did watch quite a bit of here in the last week for me, and the reason why I did was because Clarkson's Farm season two came out and, oh, I need to, man,

Gene: 1:39:43

was that good? I enjoyed season one. That was good.

Ben: 1:39:46

Well, season two, I'm not gonna give away too many spoilers, but it's all about him versus the UK planning bureaucracy bs. Oh, that should be fun. Yes. Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah, it is fantastic.

Gene: 1:39:57

Apparently we're not gonna have a season three because Netflix got their butt hurt over his, what's on Amazon comments or Amazon got their butt hurt over his comments, whatever it is. They, they canceled the next season because he didn't like his speech.

Ben: 1:40:13

I thought they backtracked on that.

Gene: 1:40:15

I don't know. Did they, I read the story. What they, they canceled him and it was a story saying that you should never apologize because they canceled them. Then he apologized and they did not renew'em. They, they still maintain the cancellation and now he's already apologized twice.

Ben: 1:40:33

Well, if, if, if he can, I would say he just needs to do the production on his own.

Gene: 1:40:40

The guy's got the money. I think he, he's obviously, he's 70 million. Yeah. I can't imagine that show costs more than a couple of million to make.

Ben: 1:40:49

Oh no. It's fairly inexpensive. I think the biggest thing is that he's subsidizing his

Gene: 1:40:54

farm with the, show you. With the show. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, it's same thing for that guy, the farmer in Vermont that I watched that I sent you videos of. Yeah, that's, I mean, clearly boring. YouTube is pa Oh, fuck you. It's not boring as hell. It's very fun. You just don't watch every episode the way I do. But it's, it's very interesting because he just got his new bull just came in mm-hmm. And he's got all the cows there that are, most of'em are now hand trained. I know you thought it was weird that he names his beef cattle. Yeah. I mean, it's just, but that's how he sells it. Like when you buy meat from that cow, you're buying meat from the name of the cow.

Ben: 1:41:33

Well, that's one of the things I thought about doing as a as a marketing thing. If I ever actually end up selling the beef until I can find a tannery for the hides going in and offering basically at cost, Hey, do you want your hide? Mm-hmm. get, you, get you a big cow rug. So, Yep. I know. We'll see.

Gene: 1:41:52

How far along are you on that whole thing?

Ben: 1:41:54

Any move? I am still working through some of the legal stuff, making sure that I've got everything down. Because yeah, the only way this makes sense for me is to not have to pay a penalty on the money I want to use. So I gotta validate that first. Well, when you get to

Gene: 1:42:11

Cows Way season three, definitely drive up there cuz I love

Ben: 1:42:13

cows. Season three has been confirmed and is in production. Oh.

Gene: 1:42:18

So they did backtrack on it. Okay. Mm-hmm. Well then I, I am corrected then last story I read talked about how they canceled the season.

Ben: 1:42:26

Yeah. This is according to Grand Tour Nation. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:42:31

so well, and, and I think oh, you know what? Maybe that wasn't the show that was canceled. Maybe it was their grand tour that was canceled.

Ben: 1:42:40

Yeah. But I think if they're going to cancel Clarkson, they're gonna cancel all of him. Right. All this shows. Yeah. I don't know, man. Who knows? We'll, we'll

Gene: 1:42:48

have the say. I don't know. I, all I know is back maybe two weeks ago, maybe three, there was a story that, that talked about Jeremy Clarkson apologizes for his statements, which resulted in the cancel of, of cancellation of his show when I thought that it was the farm one, but maybe not. Mm-hmm. What else going on? What else have we talked about from last week? How do you like doing the show on, on the YouTubes?

Ben: 1:43:15

So far it's so good. I enjoy some of the interaction. It's nice to see us getting some listeners live, hopefully, some new people coming in. Yeah. That'll be a good thing for us, and, guys, this is just basically Gene and I started having a lot of these conversations on the phone and we decided to record it as a podcast. Both of us have an interesting and different background and, know, some of what you've heard is us looking at the same data, coming up with different conclusions and having a discussion around it. Mm-hmm. sometimes it's just BSing about guns. Sometimes it's geopolitics, sometimes it's, detailed cybersecurity stuff that I may or may not have inside tracks on. I still haven't shot that. Things like that.

Gene: 1:43:55

You haven't? I need to do that. Did you get it? Yeah, I got it. I just haven't shot it. Yeah. Remember I just about having to, to put on Yeah. Put it on the site manually. Cuz I thought it would come pre-installed. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 1:44:07

And I didn't So you have a boar

Gene: 1:44:10

siding kit, right? No, no. I, well, I, yes, I, I have probably three of'em. I just have no idea where any of'em are, so I'll probably have to buy one.

Ben: 1:44:19

Getting a boar, and I would recommend anyone do this, you can get the cheap Chinese boar siding kits off of Amazon under 20 bucks for pretty much any caliber that you're gonna want. And it's just a laser that goes in the barrel. You put different ends on to make sure it fits the caliber and it'll get you close enough to start. Yeah. And

Gene: 1:44:39

then you can tweak it from there and it's pretty mm-hmm. pretty easy and straightforward. But if you just use your eyeball to set it in, you may have a long a long time to tweak things.

Ben: 1:44:49

Well, now a rifle is very different, right. So a rifle especially a bolt gun where I can take the the bolt out of the gun mm-hmm. and have the gun sandbagged in or in a lead sled or something where it's not gonna move and look down the bore, look through the scope and match that up, that, that, that you can do. Mm-hmm. right. Pistols. Things where you can't really look through the, or even an ar it's a lot harder to ate that way. Yeah. You're gonna

Gene: 1:45:20

show your product. Yes. I almost forgot to show the product. So, while we've talked about the product, and I have links the product in the episodes which is the product being the Emergency Survival Life poncho, which is the big orange, Mylar poncho comes in the three. and is currently on sale at Amazon for 1169, which is a, a price that I lose money on in every single sale. So the price I'm gonna bump it up, I think in another week or so. But for the introductory period, basically selling these things at cost. And in fact, since I did the math wrong, actually under cost so it's totally on me, oops. But if you want to get this for the cheapest price that you can, then make sure you either click on the link that's in the show notes to the show or just search for Yukon Supply Co, and then maybe the word emergency after that. So, Yukon Supply co emergency should get you this product. We just have the one product, so it's not like there's a whole bunch of Yukon Supply co products out there. But yeah, I think it's something that everybody ought have in their glove box. If nothing else, if you're driving around your car you need to change a tire, you got something bright you can put on, so you don't get hit you're, you're running outta gas or your engine dies or something else happens. You got into Clement weather, whether it's cold outside or hot outside or rainy outside. In all those situations, this thing will help you. And while you don't have to have a solar poncho for any of those activities, it definitely makes it better. And the other place I would stick it into is my hunting bag. Because it's always good to have something that's bright blaze orange, that if you need to put it on, like in case it's raining or something crazy happens, that you've got it right there with you. So that's the pitch for anybody that's actually on the YouTubes while you're looking at a picture of it on Amazon. If you're hunting,

Ben: 1:47:17

hunting and you're wearing Mylar like this, you're not really hunting cuz you're making too damn much noise.

Gene: 1:47:23

But yes. Well thanks Ben. But you know, you may be not hunting, you may be on your way back from hunting and it's raining. Mm-hmm. it'd be nice not to get shot by somebody else. So being bright orange would be a plus. Jesus Christ, dude.

Ben: 1:47:38

I've, I I have only ever worn orange hunting when I had to because

Gene: 1:47:44

of Yeah. And in some places you don't have to. That's true.

Ben: 1:47:47

Yeah. Yeah. But you know, supposedly deer can't see in color, so Yeah. They orange see

Gene: 1:47:53

shades of, shades of purple I believe

Ben: 1:47:57

so variety has a different, take variety. Amazon likely to part ways with Clarkson after current contracts, which would take some of his shows through 2025 by the way.

Gene: 1:48:09

Oh, so interesting. Cuz the way that I, in the article I read, and I think it was in the Sun is where I read it mm-hmm. that they were saying that it was already a done deal, that he was canceled. But you're saying. There's just speculation about a cancellation,

Ben: 1:48:24

well, speculation. And that they're likely to part ways and not likely to renew, but they are. Mm-hmm. basically gonna have the contract. So it looks like you're gonna have Clarkson on Prime through at least 2025. One of the shows will go off in 2024. The other will go through through 2025 it looks like.

Gene: 1:48:42

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, I mean, Amazon, back when they got the grand tour going, when they effectively took over the crew that was doing top gear, clearly they didn't care about his speech because, that's what he got fired for or I guess he actually assaulted some guy too. But Jeremy's been very well known for telling people to go fuck off to their face.

Ben: 1:49:12

Well, I mean, he's got that, I don't give a attitude. Right. He's also got the money to back it up. Yeah. Quite a bit. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:49:22

it's a, I'm honestly, I'm a little amazed at how much all three of those guys just are workaholics.

Ben: 1:49:29

What's your fu money number?

Gene: 1:49:31

Well, there's a difference between a, a comfortable living not having to work number and fu money number, fu money number, which is, you couldn't be. An asshole. You can make decisions that cost you money just simply because you want to emotionally. Mm-hmm. I think that has to be over a hundred million. I don't see that being under a hundred million. Why? Because you may need to lose 20 million at a time. Okay. For that. Fuck you to happen. Fuck you. You know what fuck you means that somebody pisses you off. You buy their company or at least you gain enough of control of their company to fire them. That's fuck money.

Ben: 1:50:12

See, for me, it means I am not tied to any individual job because I know I can quit surviving. Yeah. That's

Gene: 1:50:19

the comfortable not having to work number. Yeah. That's a much smaller number. That's probably I don't know, 10 million

Ben: 1:50:25

ish. Well, it's, so for me it's really having enough money in the bank and savings and Yeah. Fungible assets that

Gene: 1:50:34

I Can you figure half a million a year, 10 million in the last year. 20 years.

Ben: 1:50:38

Yeah. Yeah. No, no. So for me, it's, I can quit my job and if I have to wait six months to go get the next job, I'm okay.

Gene: 1:50:47

That's not Fuck you money, dude. That's called normal savings. I, you should be able to go a year.

Ben: 1:50:53

Now most

Gene: 1:50:54

people don't have that. Yeah. But you should be able to have enough savings to go a year without, without breaking the bank.

Ben: 1:51:01

Yep. Or pulling from retirement funds. which a lot of people just think of their 401k as their savings. As their savings. That's your retirement. Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:51:10

Yeah. Yep.

Ben: 1:51:14

All right, man. Well, it looks fuck you.

Gene: 1:51:16

Money is different, dude. Fuck you. Money is I, I can afford to spend millions just to get my way. That's fuck you money.

Ben: 1:51:26

I don't know that that's needed for fuck you money, but, okay.

Gene: 1:51:28

Well, your fuck you is different than my fuck you. Clearly.

Ben: 1:51:32

Yeah. Mine's Leave me the fuck alone. Yours is, I'm gonna go, fuck.

Gene: 1:51:35

Mine is, I'm not gonna leave you the fuck alone. I'm gonna I'm gonna turn your life into

Ben: 1:51:39

hell. So the chant, we've got someone sitting here saying, be there 24 7. So Kyle Knight's saying, breaking airspace over parts of Lake Michigan have been closed.

Gene: 1:51:51

That's been happening quite a bit lately. I've noticed they're closing different parts of airspace on a regular basis than last week, which

Ben: 1:51:59

the question is why.

Gene: 1:52:01

Yeah. Do you have an answer? I

Ben: 1:52:03

don't know. I don't have an answer. I have no idea. I, I do. Now I will bring up, we weren't doing the show on YouTube, so different audience. I'll point out that when the F FAA stuff happened, I had some, a little bit of insight into that. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that I thought was really kind of s. Just staggering is we, not only did we shut down our aerospace for the only time since nine 11, only second time that we've ever done it nationwide, but the amount of fighters and refueling that was scrambled, right? Mm-hmm. that, that was really kind of astonishing to me. We've had some stories saying, oh, it was an inside job. It was this, that and the other. It, it was a cyber event. Mm-hmm. lots of attribution going towards China. And it's interesting that it happened to us. And then the next day happened to Canada, so,

Gene: 1:52:55

yeah. Yeah. So,

Ben: 1:52:57

so I don't know. I'm wondering if there's something related and bigger picture here, plus the balloon things and it all could

Gene: 1:53:04

be tied in. Yeah, I I'm gonna ping Adam after the show and see if he knows anything, if he heard anything about it. Cuz he was pretty opinionated about that last one that we had.

Ben: 1:53:16

The Noam system Yeah. Stuff. Yeah. I, I, and I had given him some information on the back end on what I knew. Mm-hmm. So it's it's an interesting and small world man.

Gene: 1:53:28

We do, we do live in the small world, so, I don't know. I think a lot of these conversations are all theoretical anyway. The nukes are gonna fly in less than a year. So we'll see what

Ben: 1:53:38

happens. I, I mean, locking down the airspace and those notices going out is not theoretical, but,

Gene: 1:53:45

okay. No, no, no. I mean, like conversations about what happens in these different scenarios with China and stuff. Oh yeah. That,

Ben: 1:53:52

that, that is theoretical, but knowing what happened with the FAA is

Gene: 1:53:56

factual. No, that's, that's not theoretical for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that we're ever gonna know though because I, I'm probably not gonna believe whatever they tell us happened. So, there's generally there's no reason for them to actually tell us the actual reasons for any of this stuff. If they close airspace, they're probably keeping the reason for that classified. Yeah. Until somebody says the US government over

Ben: 1:54:23

classifies everything.

Gene: 1:54:25

So, yeah. Like the department of Classification is the biggest department and the entire government, so,

Ben: 1:54:33

Man. By the way, update from csb. He pinged me on the agenda. Social mm-hmm. He apparently is listening a lot. son. Him a bitch.

Gene: 1:54:40

He's damn, he's not allowed to listen. He's, he's, anyway, illegally listening.

Ben: 1:54:45

His he, he's doing much better. So Good. Yeah. Good. He appreciates us caring about his

Gene: 1:54:50

health, so, well, shoulder is is not something you wanna screw around with. Well, we both had shoulder injuries and that's not fun. Yeah. Yep. All right, well, let's wrap her up then. Yep.

Ben: 1:55:00

All right, Gene, we'll talk to you next week, man. All right.

Gene: 1:55:02

Take care.