026 Just Two Good Old Boys

Ben: 0:12

Oh,

Gene: 0:13

but I have recorded a podcast where I forgot to re hit the record button

Ben: 0:17

well, if you forgot to hit the record button, then you've done a podcast that you didn't

Gene: 0:21

now. That's true, that's true. I participated in the podcast that nobody heard. Yes.

Ben: 0:26

Fun stuff.

Gene: 0:27

Occasionally it

Ben: 0:28

you went on a little trip this week.

Gene: 0:30

I, I did, yes. I, nobody saw me in China, so don't get started with any rumors. But no, I went down to the very southern tip of Tejas, the the Republic Once in Future, and looked right across from the Mexican border, but right before the Mexican border. There's a, a little private area that's owned by SpaceX in Boca Chica, and I think it's called, it's either Space Village or Space City. Now. They've renamed it, I think, officially,

Ben: 1:04

They've got a pretty pretty interesting launch site.

Gene: 1:08

it is, it is. It's

Ben: 1:10

Not as far south as Cape Canaveral, but pretty close.

Gene: 1:13

It's, yeah, it, well, I think it might actually be as far south as Cape. It's not as far south as Miami, that's for sure. But and as far as Northern Florida, eh, it might be, I have to look at a map, but either way, there, there's only two places in the US that is mainland where it makes sense to launch rockets and that's right there. Or in Florida Yeah. So, you know, that's why we should really get Florida to succeed with us and really screw'em. Pull, pull a bike in

Ben: 1:43

the reason why do you, why, why are those the only two viable spots?

Gene: 1:48

Oh, because the, the closer to the equator, you launch the flatter the, your trajectory around the earth will be. So

Ben: 1:57

Well, the less atmosphere you have to transit through as well.

Gene: 2:01

Yeah, not really. There's

Ben: 2:04

Really

Gene: 2:05

there's actually a fatter atmosphere at the equator

Ben: 2:08

new. That is not how that works.

Gene: 2:10

that, that's totally how it works.

Ben: 2:12

Okay. I'm, I'm gonna call bullshit on that one

Gene: 2:14

All right. You can, I'll, I'll call bullshit on you then. That's fine. We can, I'll double, double bullshit, dare you.

Ben: 2:20

The atmosphere is thinner at the equator than it is anywhere else, including on top of Mount

Gene: 2:26

No, nope. There's, it's, there's a difference between thinner and thicker.

Ben: 2:32

Yes, there is.

Gene: 2:33

is actually taller at the equator, but the density is less.

Ben: 2:39

No,

Gene: 2:40

yes, yes. yes. Anyway

Ben: 2:44

it makes sense to launch from the equator for various reasons,

Gene: 2:47

yeah, yeah. Well, the main reason really

Ben: 2:49

or as close to the equators you can get.

Gene: 2:51

the, and by the way, the difference in launching and fuel costs between launching from the North Pole and equator is minuscule. It's so, it, it made sense when we were running rockets that had carrying capacities of 200 kilograms in the tons of capacity we're doing right now. It really doesn't make any difference. But the trajectory that you end up with when you launch from the equator is very circular, and it's very cheap to get to a geo stationary location.

Ben: 3:20

Well, and quite frankly, when you're in the commercial business like SpaceX is, and you could be deploying satellites for the North or southern hemispheres. Launching closer to the equator makes a hell of a lot more sense because if you're deploying to the south or you're deploying to the north it's equidistant or as close to it as you can get. If you're launching from Northern Canada, then, you know, putting a payload in the southern hemisphere is gonna be much more costly.

Gene: 3:51

I'm not sure what you mean by putting a payload into the southern hemisphere, but

Ben: 3:54

In an orbit around the Southern

Gene: 3:57

wait, there is no such orbit. Your, your orbit is either gonna be at the equator or it's going to be dipping both into the south and north atmospheres, because it's gonna be at an angle.

Ben: 4:10

have you ever seen the orbit of the i s s?

Gene: 4:15

I, I have,

Ben: 4:16

So part of the orbital conditions are also based off of the rotation of the Earth. So if you're mapping to the s to the the Earth, then the Earth's rotation comes in to play.

Gene: 4:28

Yeah. And that has nothing to do with the southern or northern hemisphere.

Ben: 4:32

Okay.

Gene: 4:33

I, I think you're talking about stuff you don't really know. Ben, I hate to break it to you cuz you're a smart guy generally. But orbits are very interesting. They're, they're peculiar, but they're also in complete equilibrium. Cuz once you get out in space, once you're actually you're actually in orbit. So you've, you've achieved

Ben: 4:54

If you want a stationary orbit, if you want a, if you want a stable orbit, sure, they're an equilibrium, but they do not necessarily have to be yeah. The majority of things go around the equator. Got it. Or they're in a polar orbit. Got it. But you do have some classes of orbit out there. The Apollo 12 third stage was a great example of an extremely elliptical orbit. And yeah, there's lots of

Gene: 5:21

elliptical orbits, but that elliptical orbit will be an equal amount in the well. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now we're getting into more complex stuff. That's fine. So I, if this is what you meant, then fine. I'll take it back.

Ben: 5:35

I'm just saying

Gene: 5:35

Here's the thing, it's hard to talk on the radio about things that are very visual, because when you're ta starting to use words about, you know, the southern orbit, like there, if you're referring to ammonia orbit, which has spends more time in one hemisphere than the other, yeah, you could do that. But it, it's, it's not really a southern orbit because it's still orbits the

Ben: 6:02

again, I think we're speaking semantics and we gotta cross ways, but you know,

Gene: 6:08

Yeah. Let's start the podcast off by talking about shit people don't see in front of'em and have to imagine, and they think we're both wrong. But yes, it was a so I went to SpaceX

Ben: 6:18

you sent me some videos.

Gene: 6:19

sent you some videos. I was, I decided the only way I'm gonna see the launch is if I'm there the whole damn week. And what I hadn't considered is that four 20 happened to be during that week had I realized that four

Ben: 6:32

You could have gone for one day

Gene: 6:34

I could have literally been there one day. Yeah, exactly. Obviously, that's when the Musk's gonna launch them. Think ready? You're not. And that's exactly what he did.

Ben: 6:42

with 33 engines.

Gene: 6:44

Yeah. Well, it's a, ultimately it had 31 running on takeoff and then fewer than that, eventually it was losing engines.

Ben: 6:54

That it had 33 engines.

Gene: 6:55

yeah. Yeah. It's well, it just, how many fit man? You know, if you, if you make a rocket that's that size and you have an engine that's a particular size, that's about as many as you can cram. I don't, I honestly, I don't think there's room to cram a cram a single more engine in there.

Ben: 7:12

Yeah, but still, come on. And for those who aren't no agenda listeners, 33 is the magic number and usually means an abort.

Gene: 7:21

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It, it's a it was amazing to watch, but even more amazing to listen to. That's the thing that I, I keep telling people is a reason to go live and in person is

Ben: 7:36

I, if you've never seen a launch, they're, they're fantastic to watch. I mean, there is something just absolutely special about watching a launch live.

Gene: 7:45

Yeah. Because it's def defining, it truly is defining gravity. Unlike an airplane which slowly starts to pick up speed while it's still on the ground and going flat and then takes off. Like people have seen this happening for millions of years by watching birds do it. Not exactly like airplanes, but similar motion. The bird will start running and then start flapping and swings and fly off. Nothing does what a rocket does.

Ben: 8:10

well, and you have that moment during launch when the rocket just seems to hover

Gene: 8:14

Yeah. And and it was about five seconds for this launch.

Ben: 8:17

Right, and I mean, where the engines are really getting going and it's defeating gravity, but not, but it, it reaches this funny state of equilibrium for a few seconds and then boom goes and it, it, it's it's amazing to me, given the amount of thrust, quite frankly, how slowly even, I mean some, it's actually smaller rockets, they accelerate faster, but the bigger rockets tend to accelerate slower.

Gene: 8:44

Oh yeah.

Ben: 8:45

And it it is just like on flying on a jumbo jet,

Gene: 8:49

Yeah.

Ben: 8:50

you know, if you are flying on a triple 77 versus an A three 80,

Gene: 8:55

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 8:56

the takeoff speed is totally different. The, the, the acceleration rate, even though the amount of thrust that is being applied is tremendously greater, the thrust to weight ratio is tremendously greater. It's different.

Gene: 9:12

Yeah. It's well proportion is, comes into it when you're watching a small rocket, you know, you model rocket or even just a small commercial rocket. It's maybe a. 50, 60 feet tall for commercial ones probably like five feet tall at the tallest for a model rocket. And when you watch those things, they just zip up. Like it just shoots off like a bullet. The bigger the rocket, you can really notice this, I think with the, the Delta four, which is my favorite rocket. In terms of shape, I think it's the prettiest spaceship that we've ever built. I, I like it way more in the space shuttle. It's just, it's, it's very pretty. And I like the color. I like the orange, yellow mix cuz a, I guess subconsciously makes me think of a orange like one of those ice cream that has a mix of ice cream and orange sherbet in it. I forget what they're called. Anyway, it's a, it's a delicious looking rocket. But

Ben: 10:12

Okay.

Gene: 10:13

it's, it, that one very much starts off super slow and then accelerates this thing just fricking hovered in the air. And in fact, started drifting sideways, which everybody who is not with SpaceX instantly said, oh my God, they're losing engines. This is horrible. It's gonna crash into the landing pad. People that are with SpaceX or, or understand how this shit actually works, said that, that's called a a crash avoidance maneuver that's performed every time it launches. Because if you look at the launch stand for the. For the

Ben: 10:47

the long stand for this first Starship is unique.

Gene: 10:52

It's massive.

Ben: 10:53

It, it is. So one of the things in looking into this, the way it literally, the, so nasa, every launch of Apollo, the space shuttle, everything else, they had a special assembly building where they attached the vehicle to the main engines, and then they had a crawler that literally moved it out to the launch pad

Gene: 11:16

And those are cool though. The crawlers are a fucking

Ben: 11:19

Set it on the launch pad and then launched it.

Gene: 11:22

Yep.

Ben: 11:23

Starship Uhuh, we've got the main boosters stood up there through this crane assembly method. We literally pick up Starship, set it on top and attach it on the launchpad. Totally different process.

Gene: 11:36

Yeah. It's, and incidentally, the, the Starship that it picks up and attaches when it's empty, it's 220,000 pounds. That's the empty weight.

Ben: 11:51

Empty.

Gene: 11:52

Yeah. That's what the crane is picking up and attaching on top of the

Ben: 11:57

And what's the fully loaded weight?

Gene: 11:59

2.9 million.

Ben: 12:01

Yeah. So one of the things that shocked me on this in the coverage and looking at and looking into some detail on this, was the cost reduction that SpaceX thinks they can get by using Starship.

Gene: 12:15

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 12:16

So what was NASA's cheapest per pound cost?

Gene: 12:22

Oh, it was, NASA's was over a thousand. I know, maybe, I think it was 10,000 right around there. Something like that. Have you looked it up? It's, it's high.

Ben: 12:31

yeah. So NASA's per pound cost Hmm. Was around 10 grand.

Gene: 12:39

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 12:39

And Starship thinks they can do it for how much?

Gene: 12:44

With a couple bucks, right?

Ben: 12:45

Yeah, I, I mean, well that's per kilogram, so a little more than that. So like four bucks a pound?

Gene: 12:52

under 10. Which, which is a factor of two magnitudes.

Ben: 12:56

Yes.

Gene: 12:59

It's, it's significant. Now, of

Ben: 13:00

Well, I mean, my immediate thought is space burial is a thing for me now.

Gene: 13:05

Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, your wife might even send you there.

Ben: 13:10

Yeah.

Gene: 13:11

I

Ben: 13:11

you know what? It might not be a bad way to go at this

Gene: 13:14

yeah, exactly.

Ben: 13:15

You know what, honey? I'm, I'm gonna go on a one week trip here.

Gene: 13:18

you,

Ben: 13:20

see you

Gene: 13:20

you rather have your spouse make Diamonds out of your ashes or send your ashes up to space.

Ben: 13:25

Space.

Gene: 13:27

Yeah. Cuz that way she can't enjoy

Ben: 13:28

100% put, I mean, the only space burial we've ever had is Gene Roddenberry.

Gene: 13:34

I thought a bunch of people have sent their ashes up. Isn't there like a regular commercial fights doing that now?

Ben: 13:39

Not that I'm aware of. All right. Well, the first was definitely Gene Roddenberry because Star Trek fans made a big deal out of chipping in and putting him in part of his ashes in the space.

Gene: 13:49

There's a company called Celest that is for 26 years, been sending up ashes into space.

Ben: 13:56

Hmm, interesting.

Gene: 13:58

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 13:59

Or are they really, or are they just saying they did?

Gene: 14:02

Well they're, they're showing a trajectory on a map so you can

Ben: 14:07

Yeah. But, but is this like a Blue Origin thing where, you know, it's a model rocket that gets kind of up there, you know, and that's it. Are, are, are your ashes actually achieving orbit?

Gene: 14:17

They say space, they don't say orbit, so maybe they're, maybe they're

Ben: 14:21

Yeah. See, C, c, c,

Gene: 14:24

and then dumping'em and then they're falling back down and burning up,

Ben: 14:26

dude, they could use a fucking weather balloon.

Gene: 14:29

Oh, they could totally do it. Yeah. Yeah. Weather balloon do it. You remember that the video of the sky they reviewed in the weather balloon. Right.

Ben: 14:35

Yeah. Oh. Which was just, wow.

Gene: 14:39

Oh, interesting. I mean, it was obviously a big ad for for Red Bull.

Ben: 14:43

so SR 71 and the, what is it, u2, you know, they, they skirt the edge of what's considered space. It's amazing that they can maintain lift at that altitude.

Gene: 14:55

Oh, completely, totally. I think that we will see, well, if it's at all economically feasible, obviously, but we will see planes going higher than the a hundred thousand meters once we have SCR, jets running, because

Ben: 15:13

Yeah. I

Gene: 15:13

right now we're just, just not enough atmosphere to have any density of oxygen.

Ben: 15:18

so the, the, for those who don't know, the average commercial flight is around 30,000 feet. Big international flights is

Gene: 15:25

one 10th of the way to space.

Ben: 15:26

Right. It big international flights is, is around 40. And the limitation there is really oxygen, right? The amount of oxygen that the engines can intake in order to produce enough thrust.

Gene: 15:41

your physics guy, man, how would you get more oxygen? What are the two possible easy ways to get more oxygen?

Ben: 15:47

Well, having something compressed with you or two, having a larger funnel into a smaller engine.

Gene: 15:55

E, exactly, exactly. Well, there's actually the third way, which is what those the SCR jets can do is by flying faster. So you scoop up more action.

Ben: 16:06

Well, but if you look at any scr, jet design, literally the entire width of the aircraft, so the various scr jet designs have huge intakes. If you think of a normal jet engine, I mean, you know, you're, you're talking four or five feet around, and that's about it. Literally, if a SCR jet were on a commercial airliner, it would be the entire width of the, the aircraft main body and out to at least the first set of engines for two engines. So you're talking about a massive differential in intake capacity.

Gene: 16:43

Yeah. Absolutely. So much bigger area, but it's, it's, it only works like it's

Ben: 16:49

Yeah. You, you, you have to be you have to be approaching hypersonic speeds or supersonic speeds rather to, to, for a SCR jet to work. Absolutely. 100% agree.

Gene: 16:59

But it's also a

Ben: 17:00

part of the design,

Gene: 17:01

There's less

Ben: 17:02

that's part of the design difficulty is you have to have engines to get you there

Gene: 17:07

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 17:07

before you can engage the scr jet.

Gene: 17:09

Exactly.

Ben: 17:11

And making that transition in flight, eh, it's a little dicey.

Gene: 17:15

reading about SCR jets in popular sciences since the eighties.

Ben: 17:19

Oh yeah. I mean, the, the idea of a

Gene: 17:21

working on'em forever. Yeah, yeah. But I'm, I think we're closer cuz I've watched some videos on YouTube of actual, I think it's one of the British air companies is really close to getting one going and I can't remember who in the US is working

Ben: 17:36

so NASA has abandoned several designs that could have been potentially commercially feasible, including the original replacement design for the space shuttle. The original replacement design for the space shuttle very much had SCR jet capacity, and the entire thought was okay. The space shuttle was a falling brick, it was a glider coming in. We would like to, as we go into orbital reentry, have a little bit more control. What can we do?

Gene: 18:06

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, it's a great use of Grand Jack cuz you're basically,

Ben: 18:12

Well, you're already

Gene: 18:12

gravity

Ben: 18:13

You're already there. You're, you're, you're at the right speed, you're at the right altitude. You've got it. Why not use it for thrust as the most efficient thing? Because, you know, rocket engines are not efficient, to say the least.

Gene: 18:28

Yeah, yeah. Rocket engines and atmospheres are literally, they're, they're between 103 hundred times less efficient than jet engines.

Ben: 18:40

Well, and part of that is because they have to carry their own oxi. Oxidizer, right? So in the case of Starship, you're using essentially liquified natural gas with some additives and liquid oxygen. A SCR jet would only have whatever the propellant was and then would utilize that surface area and the speed at which it was traveling to capture the thin atmosphere, compress it and use that for the oxidizer. So yeah, you, you, the, just the weight of the oxid oxidizer is, is, is a huge portion of that

Gene: 19:15

Yeah. E exactly. Because in the, in the atmosphere, you don't have to bring the heaviest component with you because in, in rockets it's obviously because of the amount of volume of oxygen that it's gonna use up. It's bringing liquid liquified oxygen, not just regular gaseous

Ben: 19:34

and and part of that is just a differential and thrust, right? So if you, if, and I'm saying right a lot, but if you look at a jet engines amount of thrust to equivalent size, rocket fuel tanks and everything included, the, the, the rocket's going to have a quite a bit more thrust.

Gene: 19:56

Yeah.

Ben: 19:56

But the part of the problem there is there, you could not have a naturally aspirated rocket, I guess is what I'm getting to. You do, would even at sea level, would not have enough oxygen for the amount of fuel you're potentially burning at that time.

Gene: 20:11

Yeah. Well, part of it too is just the the. Efficiency that you end up with when you only have to bring the fuel itself, not the oxidizer goes up. So like a, a kerosene you know, RP one fueled rocket gets somewhere between 280 and 340 i s p, which is sort of the, the mileage or the efficiency of the engine. If you go to methane, that'll go up to about three, between three 20 and 3 75. When you burn hydrogen, you're gonna go

Ben: 20:52

hydrogen's gonna be the most

Gene: 20:53

yeah, up to about four 50 or so.

Ben: 20:56

And something you pointed out to me that I hadn't even really thought about or considered is, while hydrogen is the most efficient from e exactly, the per volume is the issue.

Gene: 21:09

Even in liquified form, yeah. So you end up having to bring much bigger tanks, and that's why you look at the the what's the new spaceship we're doing for the moon called the s sls?

Ben: 21:19

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 21:20

You look at the size of the SLS and you're like, well, that's almost as big as Starship. It's not quite, but it's almost as big, but it produces half the thrust. It shouldn't it be half the size? Well, no, because hydrogen takes more space

Ben: 21:39

Yeah, but I mean, let, let's be fair you know, hydrogen's just, it's, it's environmentally friendly and Elon Musk clearly does not care about the environment because, you know, hydrogen produces water vapor as an exhaust. Whereas what he's burning is just, you know, we, we saw the plume and it was just toxic. Man, I, I can't believe he

Gene: 22:00

Oh my God. Toxic, please. It's totally not

Ben: 22:04

He destroyed a minivan.

Gene: 22:05

It dis that a piece of rock destroyed a minivan, not the fuel

Ben: 22:12

I'm having too much

Gene: 22:13

that destroyed a minivan. And what, what you're referring to is there was a video caught on, there was a, about a dozen different YouTube channels that all had cameras on the closest but not SpaceX property that you could be to the rocket and no humans could be there. It was all off limits, but technically it wasn't SpaceX ground, so they couldn't tell you to not have your shit there. Right. So it was basically a parking lot that was a bit away.

Ben: 22:43

by the way, if you're dumb enough to park that close,

Gene: 22:46

I think they were all doing it on purpose. I mean, obviously they were trying to get the, the money shot, the launch of the, of the SpaceX and the guys whose van got splattered. They, they said they're totally fine with it. They, they know the risks. They're not at all. If anything, they'll probably raffle off to their audience and make some money off of it. But yes, there, there was an unplanned concrete shower that was happening which was the launch stands concrete foundation. Literally got obliterated by the, the forces being generated by the, the engines. And that concrete had to go somewhere. So a several mile wide surrounding area of the launch sand got sprayed with chunks of concrete that are from as small as regular pieces of dust or pieces of sand, I should say, all the way up to the biggest ones, which are about the size of a washer dryer.

Ben: 23:48

Which by the way, is a significant

Gene: 23:50

that's, you don't wanna be hit with a piece of debris that size, that's for sure. But that's, the minivan, I think got hit by something football size and it, it took out the rear roof and rear window,

Ben: 24:02

Yeah. I mean the, the pictures are entertaining. It was a significant amount of force that was involved.

Gene: 24:08

Yeah. And Musk had, there's a quote that I, I forwarded recently that from Twitter, from him, from several months ago that said you know, we're really hoping that we can get away without needing to have a water diversion system or a. Flame diverter.

Ben: 24:24

Yeah. But why, I mean

Gene: 24:26

strong enough concrete, well, I can tell you what his rationale is cuz he

Ben: 24:29

Okay,

Gene: 24:29

this because

Ben: 24:31

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's explain. For those who don't know. So, especially during the Apollo missions, I think is when NASA really started using water diversion. Essentially, as the engines are igniting, they dump.

Gene: 24:45

It's a de

Ben: 24:46

don't know how much, how many gallons, but it's an insane amount of water to literally be a dampener for the rocket thrust to prevent damage to the surrounding buildings and to the launchpad. They used the same system for the space shuttle. I mean, NASA has used this literally since the sixties.

Gene: 25:05

thing with the Russians. Literally everybody that launches rockets

Ben: 25:08

Yeah. Except Musk for some reason.

Gene: 25:10

except for Musk. Yes. Well, I

Ben: 25:11

what's his

Gene: 25:12

the reason. So the reason is we won't have those on Mars when we fly there, and we need to have a rocket be built that can take off without having one of those.

Ben: 25:21

Yeah, that's a shitty rationale though, cuz the Martian atmosphere is so much less dense. It won't

Gene: 25:26

it. That's exactly right. Because that was my first thought too, is like, hold up, if you're using this as an excuse it's not apples to apples here because the, the you, first of all, you, you need a quarter of the thrust to take off from ours.

Ben: 25:40

Yeah.

Gene: 25:41

So therefore you can even shut down part of your engines. And then secondly, the Martian atmosphere is super thin.

Ben: 25:48

yeah.

Gene: 25:49

So you're not gonna have that same kind of compressive effect that you do on, on the earth.

Ben: 25:55

so, you know, I'm, I, I really love, really good hard sci-fi,

Gene: 25:59

Mm, yes.

Ben: 26:00

So, Andy Weir obviously. He's great. The biggest problem and the only, there were two errors in the Martian that I called bullshit on, and the biggest one was that the Martian wins were tipping over the spacecraft and they had to launch. Yeah, no,

Gene: 26:18

No, not

Ben: 26:19

there have never been wins recorded that would have sufficient mass and inertia to do that. I'm sorry. Bullshit. It was, it was a

Gene: 26:27

were really fast though, but they're very

Ben: 26:30

Cuz there's no density. There's no density to the atmosphere. So anyway, the point is

Gene: 26:36

I

Ben: 26:37

Andy Weir's, couple of t tropes aside, he is a fantastic writer. And have you have you read Project Hail Mary?

Gene: 26:45

Yes. Yes.

Ben: 26:47

Oh my God. Such a good book. It was way his moon book Artemis, or whatever it is,

Gene: 26:51

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 26:52

But Martian The Martian and Project Hail Mary are so good.

Gene: 26:58

Yeah. I, I really enjoy his writing. I mean, honestly, it's as much

Ben: 27:03

He's got a great sense of

Gene: 27:04

space nerd as I am. I'd say probably the last year and two, no more than that. So since Covid the last three years, I haven't read any books other than space books. Like space science fiction. That's all I read at all. So it's, I'm definitely smoking the you know, whatever Musk's smoking there.

Ben: 27:23

Yeah, I, I, I mean, I read a lot, so the, the current book I'm on, which is post-apocalyptic and kind of interesting is the Dog Stars by Pete Heller. Peter Heller. It, it's interesting, so, I'll, I'll give a better book report when I'm done

Gene: 27:39

yeah, yeah, we, we will see if you recommend it as your one more for me to add to my list, which is now over a hundred books that have been purchased. But I haven't thought up on, I, I probably read a book every 60 days or so, so I'm pretty slow compared to you.

Ben: 27:54

Yeah. I, I'm, it depends, so depends on what's going on there. There are times when it, it'll take me a month to finish a book, but that said, I really get into a book and work and life aren't getting in the way. I'll, I, dude, I, I will go through books a week.

Gene: 28:11

yeah. And then I, I will alternate between like a book every couple of months and then if I get you know, like when I had Covid, it's like a year and a half ago or whatever, when, when I'm feeling down, I'm just not doing anything, then I'll go through a, a book a day.

Ben: 28:27

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 28:28

But generally, cuz I, I read in the evenings before I fall asleep and so I tend to not get more than a chapter or two before I'm done.

Ben: 28:39

Yeah. And, and that, that's definitely an issue if I am traveling where I have time to read, I mean, that's what I'll do.

Gene: 28:48

Yeah, travel makes that better for sure.

Ben: 28:50

well, I I, if I, if it's travel where you can read, right. If you're on an airplane or something like that, then yes. If you're driving, you know, less so he might be listening to an audiobook, but that's gonna be the extent of it.

Gene: 29:03

Oh yeah. And then I've done that before. I generally use driving for, catching up on podcasts,

Ben: 29:09

Yeah.

Gene: 29:10

cuz I'll go through those in spurts as well. Like drive, you know, driving to Boca Chica is it's about six hours from Austin, so I had a six hour drive down, and then a few days later I had a six hour drive back. Well, that, that gives me a lot of time to catch up on the podcast.

Ben: 29:25

Yeah. Speaking of which you had a conversation with Adam that you and I got into a little bit of a text debate yesterday on

Gene: 29:34

I did. Yeah. So, I can't remember what prompted it, but we ended up talking about the, the whole

Ben: 29:39

probably the Megan Kelly thing.

Gene: 29:42

what was the mega Kelly thing? Remind me.

Ben: 29:44

Well, Adam's going to be going on Megan Kelly, and she's been a little bit militant as of late.

Gene: 29:51

Yeah. Yeah. And it, it just, the whole thing with, with trans, and for me, you know, I've generally had a very libertarian attitude about most of this shit, which is I don't care. I. People do whatever the hell they want. I don't really care. I'm not gonna pay attention to anybody. It tells me how to use pronouns or what words to say or not say. But other than that, I really don't give a shit. But it's starting to become more apparent that really the inmates are running the asylum. And what I mean by that is that me, that mental illness has become normalized or is trying to become more normalized. And what we're talking about people not being happy with are isn't the mental illness itself, it's the, the sort of end result or the side effects of the mental illness. So for example, the people wanting drag shows to be performed in front of children is a side effect of the mental illness and what the mental illness is. And this is, again, this is not anything, I don't think new or earth shattering, although I'm sure it'll make some people's feelings hurt, is that people who feel like they're in the wrong body, people that want to be a different gender are mentally ill.

Ben: 31:13

Well, and let's just say it this way. So body dysmorphia well, hold on. A lot of people may not realize it, but bulimia and anorexia are body dysmorphias.

Gene: 31:26

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 31:26

We would not say to a bulimic or anorexic that, oh no, you're not thin enough. You, you, you do need to lose weight. We would not affirm their

Gene: 31:36

if you lost some weight.

Ben: 31:38

I'm sorry.

Gene: 31:39

They, yeah. You can't say, oh, you would look great if you lost a

Ben: 31:42

Right. You would never do that. You would never do to do that to that person. You would try to comfort them. You would try to say, no, you're fine the way you are. You would try to give them confidence in their body in who they are. You would not try and play into their mental illness yet. That is exactly what we're being asked to do. That said, you and I both know people that, okay, cool. This is the path for you, Blair White Buck Angel being the examples we've used on this podcast in the past

Gene: 32:16

Yeah. And there there's a, a subtle difference there. Oh, and first of all, buck Angel readily admits in most interviews

Ben: 32:24

it's a mental

Gene: 32:25

it's a mental, I have a mental illness and I am, I can talk about it cuz I've had it now for 40 years.

Ben: 32:31

and you know, people have bipolar, people have lots of different things. One of the things that you and I disagreed on in our text conversation yesterday is about pathology. And I said, well, pretty much everyone has some sort of pathology. I definitely have my own peccadillos. I know you do too. We are not getting the, you know, if, if you're winning of that perfect human award. Sorry, Jean, you and I are

Gene: 32:53

got 12 of those on the shelf, buddy.

Ben: 32:55

Uhhuh.

Gene: 32:56

I make one out for myself every year.

Ben: 32:59

Yeah. Ever since that 3D printer came out, man, I can do whatever I want. Yeah,

Gene: 33:03

I get that damn perfect human award every single year.

Ben: 33:06

yeah. To Gene by Gene

Gene: 33:08

yeah. Well, you can't trust somebody to not steal it, you know? Everybody wants it.

Ben: 33:12

Uhhuh Uhhuh. Anyway, my,

Gene: 33:14

I think realistically though, is

Ben: 33:17

well,

Gene: 33:17

I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to bring back, or like, it's up to

Ben: 33:22

let, let me finish my point real quick. My, my, my point is that we have a problem here and I, I think what has to happen is people stand up and go, okay, you can do whatever you from my standpoint, I being the libertarian liberty loving person that I am, I won't even use the phrase libertarian, being the liber loving person that I am. You own your body as an adult. You can do whatever the hell you want with it. Good for you. Do not ask me to say, red is blue.

Gene: 33:57

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 33:58

I'm not going to do it. Do not ask me to say to a person who's dying of anorexia that, oh yeah, you're fat.

Gene: 34:07

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 34:07

I'm not gonna do it.

Gene: 34:09

Yep. Yeah. E exactly. And the the point where I'm getting to, and I've very much been of the libertarian mindset for most of my life, I'm about ready to bring back asylums and just say, you know what? This was a mistake. Shutting them down. We, we have a certain percentage of the population that cannot be served without 24 7 medical care and asylums as much as you can think, well they're for the normal people to keep all the crazies away. I think that's a side benefit as well. Certainly that plays into it. But honestly there are people that really need much better care. And I think one of the reasons, one of the things that can back up what I'm saying is the tremendous amount of drug addicts that we have that are all living in the streets. And there's plenty of'em in Austin as well, but a lot of'em in California and, and the western states where drugs are readily available. But those same states are the ones that also will, will say that these people aren't actually sick. They're just making their own life choices. No, these are the same people that would've been in mental asylums in the past and now they're just on the street. I think it's, it's honestly, We can do better. We can do better, and we can provide the 24 by seven care that people that can't care for themselves, that are not mentally capable of doing it, and they have certain pathologies, really need

Ben: 35:44

Well, and

Gene: 35:45

as a benefit that will keep them away from trying to convince everybody else to change their language.

Ben: 35:53

A couple things there. One, I don't disagree with you that, especially drug addicts and everyone else, the, the homeless population that we see, especially in the mid eighties, up until when we abolished our asylum system would've absolutely been in there. And the reason why is because most people are homeless due to a massive life event, usually loss of family, that sort of thing. Massive bankruptcy. And you know, the homeless population is by far and away men.

Gene: 36:22

Although there's plenty of women here in Austin, I'd say it's about 60 40.

Ben: 36:26

and well that, that's unusual because the vast majority of homeless nationwide men. Now, what I would say is the asylum program, and this is where you and I kinda got into it yesterday, was I don't think the asylum is the way to do it, because I don't think involuntary commitment is, I, I, I think that's too dangerous of the tool. I think people would commit you and I for being crazy white right wing gun owners. And we need to take the same argument against red flag laws,

Gene: 36:54

Yeah. And I, I get. Those arguments, but there's a way to prevent that from happening and to not let it become politicized

Ben: 37:04

Well,

Gene: 37:05

as you, you have to, before you can commit somebody they, they have to take an IQ test and the result of that test will determine if they're able to be committed or not.

Ben: 37:19

Well,

Gene: 37:19

And I guarantee you a person who's a drug addict, even if they had an IQ of over a hundred in the past, no longer does.

Ben: 37:27

well, they, if they're strung out, they may not be able to complete the test at the same level, that's for sure. But what I would say there is you know, any, anything that circumvents due process I'm against, but I, I think you have a better solution right there in your own back yard in Austin,

Gene: 37:43

What's that? 10 in the street?

Ben: 37:45

No mobile loaves and fishes,

Gene: 37:48

Yeah. I think that's, that's sufficient for a certain percentage. That's

Ben: 37:54

that's sufficient for the percentage of people who are going to recover.

Gene: 37:59

exactly.

Ben: 38:00

So, and, and quite frankly, the rest, they're, they're gonna be lost no matter what you do.

Gene: 38:04

They are. But you know, I would be much in favor of, of having people that. That are, God, I hate to say something that sounds like we're closing the door in them, but essentially people that are not likely to recover, not likely to be leading normal lives to be in places where they have appropriate level of care. It's not even treatment at that point, it's just care.

Ben: 38:32

But at this is the difference between you and I. You're a status and I'm not. I, I don't

Gene: 38:38

to say that.

Ben: 38:40

Yeah. So for those who don't know, mobile, loaves and Fishes, outside of Austin's a pretty, pretty interesting charity. They have a community of teeny homes that they rent to the unhoused or the homeless, and they make them have a community. They don't care if they do drugs. They don't, there's no anything put on that. It's just if someone's gonna od, let's make sure we have, get enough community around it to prevent it and, you know, build them up. They have to have a job. They have to pay for things, they have to work in the community garden. There are some expectations. And I think, I think that setting those expectations, setting up that accountability to each other is absolutely crucial for any society or community to actually form.

Gene: 39:26

Yeah.

Ben: 39:27

And I think that's what we are failing right now. I think this entire conversation, especially around the trans and trans rights and what should or shouldn't happen to kids is that no one's fucking accountable for anything.

Gene: 39:38

No one's accountable. And I, I think again, what this comes down to in my opinion is we don't test for anything anymore. Which is why I think that the way you get around red flag laws is you can have language that is very similar to what the proposed red flag laws state, but you have to have a test that doesn't involve other people making decisions, but literally involves the person in question having to pass a test to have this not go any further. So if the idea of red flag laws, let's just look at those in general, is to say that people that have mental illness should not have guns. Now I would agree with that sentiment. People that have mental illness should not have guns. I think that people that are not capable of safely utilizing a firearm or, I mean if you wanna push it, you could say any weapon, put swords and other things in there as well. If they can't demonstrate that they can safely utilize these things in the proper method, then I don't want them to have them.

Ben: 40:48

Yeah, my, my problem, so I, I wanna get back to the original issue, but as far as red flag laws are concerned, you know, the idea of taking someone's firearms from them because they may be a danger to others, might sound like a good idea. But are you gonna take their kitchen knives as well? And if you're

Gene: 41:08

why I said other

Ben: 41:08

you're not gonna put them in a padded rubber room,

Gene: 41:11

And hence, you get to my

Ben: 41:13

of their liberty?

Gene: 41:14

need to reopen the

Ben: 41:16

No, you don't need, this is the difference. You cannot prevent crime. You should not try to prevent crime. Stop it. It's wrong and immoral.

Gene: 41:26

Yeah. I, I don't agree with that. I think that it's not an issue of preventing crime. It's an issue of taking people that are incapable of making good mental judgments for the, for society in general, of taking them out of society. You know? No, you're not like telling them, but you are removing them from society

Ben: 41:50

And people are allowed to be wrong,

Gene: 41:53

people, and that's why you have a test that is not, this is, this is the key, right?

Ben: 41:57

defined by whom.

Gene: 41:59

By me, obviously this is, the test is, has to be something that that person themselves will either pass or fail and it you, what you can't do, which is absolutely immoral, is have a. A third party make a determination on behalf of somebody else and say that they're guilty. Like you shouldn't be

Ben: 42:21

by very definition, that's what you're doing because you're having someone raise a concern

Gene: 42:27

Yeah.

Ben: 42:28

for whatever reason it is. It could be whatever you're having a family member say, I think this person should be committed. This person should have their rights removed for some reason, and without a trial, without due process, you're removing their rights. And that's where I have a problem with it.

Gene: 42:45

Well,

Ben: 42:46

done anything. They have not committed any crime. It is merely, I fear that they may do something so therefore they are a problem and we must remove them. That is not moral.

Gene: 42:58

I think that, that there's a, well, it depends. Look, there's, there is a social contract here. You can kick anybody outta society that you want. If you have a small enough society. So if you have a group of five friends, four of'em can decide that, you know, this, this fifth guy, he's a pain in the ass. We don't like him anymore. We're not gonna be friends with him anymore. He's out of our group. That that is a normal, typical human interaction. So

Ben: 43:29

Yeah. The, so, the what what I would say is that group of five friends can say, okay, we're not gonna hang out around you anymore. We're are going to remove ourselves from you. But it would be very different if that group of four people said, you know what? I don't really like hanging out with John. Let's go throw him in a room, lock the door and walk away. Totally different. One is

Gene: 43:50

that's a red herring cuz it's not what I'm

Ben: 43:52

the other is unlawful. I imprisonment.

Gene: 43:55

Yeah. It's not unlawful imprisonment. It's, I think that it comes down to test, dude. I would fucking

Ben: 44:02

No, I the example you just gave, I completely agree with four people say, you know what, John, we don't like you. We're gonna go over here. We're gonna remove ourselves from the situation goodbye. Totally agree with. That's fine. John decides to walk over, they can leave again. But they cannot force him to stay in one position. They cannot lock him down and say, John, we don't wanna be around you, and you're kind of an asshole, so we're gonna lock you in this room and you're not gonna be able to do

Gene: 44:30

what happens in every high school in the country.

Ben: 44:33

I'm sorry. In what

Gene: 44:34

you didn't go to, well it, because the high school is basically human nature, unbounded,

Ben: 44:42

Hmm. I totally disagree that it's unbounded, but go on.

Gene: 44:46

while it's less bounded, it's, it's where decisions are made based on no history and just sort of what feels right. And I think it is,

Ben: 44:57

Well, the, the, the subjects in, in question definitely have larger Amy amygdalas than frontal lobes and are making i decisions based off of emotion, not logic. Yeah.

Gene: 45:08

Yeah, but, but emotion is part of being human and it, it's, it's just like,

Ben: 45:16

on the human, unfortunately.

Gene: 45:19

well, yeah, I mean, it depends.

Ben: 45:21

sorry, I, I I know a few humans that I don't know.

Gene: 45:24

no, it is unfortunately a part of human I agree with that,

Ben: 45:27

Well, no, no, no. I'm, I'm saying that it's really unfortunate when you come across a human that you're not sure if they actually feel any emotions.

Gene: 45:34

no, no. I'd much prefer those. I, in fact, the best humans are

Ben: 45:37

the record, Jean prefers the psychopath. You know, Jean, we have a few counselors

Gene: 45:42

I've found myself being, I, I have a number of friends that are certified psychopaths, and I find myself to be the most relaxed around them.

Ben: 45:51

I'm just gonna let sit there for a second cuz

Gene: 45:54

No comment. Okay.

Ben: 45:56

Wow.

Gene: 45:56

it's true. I mean, I, I just, I don't know. I, I, it, things are so simple and clean what the psychopath, like, you don't, you don't have to wonder about anything. So, anyway, my point is that, that I think that there needs to be a mechanism in place. To be able to legally and rationally and with as little emotion as possible. Let's go back to that. To be able to take people that have mental illnesses and be able to separate them out from society.

Ben: 46:37

Well, we're not gonna agree on this one. So let's get back to the actual

Gene: 46:40

No, probably not.

Ben: 46:42

Dylan Mulvaney, bud Light, the whole trans issue, and especially around the differential in optics.

Gene: 46:51

Sure. Well, and I will say I don't drink beer. Like we've talked about this before. I'm like, I'm not allergic or anything. I just don't really like the flavor. I don't like hops. So if they made beer without hops, I would probably drink it, but they don't.

Ben: 47:05

I think that would just be cold water.

Gene: 47:07

yeah. And I, I drink that and, and iced tea and so the, whether people don't like Bud Light or protested or whatever makes zero difference to me personally, cuz I never, I've never bought Bud Light ever

Ben: 47:22

I, I don't drink Bud Light but I will say that my normal beer of choice. Is an Anheuser-Busch InBev product, unfortunately. And I haven't dumped it out because

Gene: 47:36

bad, but that's that Belgian company, right?

Ben: 47:38

yeah, that's they did a reverse merger where they hostily took over Anheuser-Busch, which is why it's a b i on the stock ticker.

Gene: 47:46

yeah

Ben: 47:47

that said, I'm, I'm not dumping my beer out because I, I'm just not that wasteful. But I am, I am really, truly considering whether or not I'm going to purchase that again right now. And y you know, it was one thing, and here's the thing. If you wanna per boycott just Bud Light, I think that is sufficient. I'm not gonna go full temp pool and no Anheuser-Busch or any of these other people who I think are taking it to an extreme fuck man, I, I think taking

Gene: 48:19

all of them. I'm boycotting all the entire beer

Ben: 48:22

boycotting the largest beer brand in the world.

Gene: 48:25

I'm boycotting the whole industry.

Ben: 48:27

Yeah. Well you, you're a non, non-issue there anyway. I, I if just boycotting that one brand, even if Anheuser Busch sees the other brands, because the majority of people aren't gonna pay attention if someone switches from Bud Light to Melo Bal Ultra, you know, a, it doesn't really matter to Anheuser-Busch, but they are gonna see it in the marketing. So I think that's efficient.

Gene: 48:48

Yeah. I, I think, I think that this, more than anything, I'm not particularly offended by this ad. What I think is stupid. It's not so much

Ben: 49:00

encouraged though by the reaction

Gene: 49:02

Yeah, a reaction's good is that of all the beers to have him be promoting, they pick a blue collar beer, they should have had him promote something that was appropriately gay and then,

Ben: 49:14

the biggest beer brand in the

Gene: 49:17

but it could have been, yeah, it could have been a big brand,

Ben: 49:20

let, let's level set this, let's level set this. So first of all, it wasn't like he was going to be the spokesman.

Gene: 49:26

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 49:27

He was sent an influencer pack and he posted and went off, and then it became this viral moment. So he was given a minimal amount of

Gene: 49:38

Oh, I don't buy that. I think the whole thing was scripted.

Ben: 49:42

Oh, I don't, I don't at all. I think InBev stepped in it and they did not understand what they were doing. You had one VP of marketing who was really woke and trying to do something. And by the way, she's on the leave of absence now. So I, no, I, I, I don't think the c e o the head senior leadership had no freaking clue that Dylan Mulvaney was going to be approached and this done. And they sure did not foresee this backlash because it, it is, they, they're leaning into it. They're trying not to apologize. But dude, they are hurting.

Gene: 50:19

Yeah. I know. I'm not buying it. I think the whole thing was scripted and I think they knew exactly what they were doing. They were trying to shift the focus of the company to younger drinking age. They know that. Young people are not motivated by horses and cowboys. They're motivated by TikTok and who's dominating TikTok right now. So that's what they went for. And they didn't realize there was gonna be this much backlash. They're idiots. They should have realized it, but I think this is absolutely planned, and they knew exactly what they were doing. I'm not buying this

Ben: 50:53

I don't think

Gene: 50:54

oh, we hired a dumb

Ben: 50:55

level. This was not that big of a campaign. I, and this is one thing I will criticize the write on, they're taking what was a fairly minor campaign and to me, somewhat blowing it out of the water. Now, that said, I, I don't like Dell Mulvaney. I don't think InBev should be going through and doing what they're doing by any stretch. And I, like I said, I'm very much reconsidering my beer choice next time I buy any beer,

Gene: 51:20

Yeah,

Ben: 51:21

100%, because I'm not going to, to the points we've been making for the last half hour or however long it's been, I don't want to affirm.

Gene: 51:30

again because of

Ben: 51:31

I don't want, I'm not gonna do that. I don't want to affirm someone's mental illness. I, I, I just don't, I'm not going to say the sky is red when it's blue. I'm not gonna say grass is gr you know, char truce when

Gene: 51:43

wasn't a woman that was advertising the beer?

Ben: 51:46

I'm sorry,

Gene: 51:47

So is your problem that he wasn't a woman advertising the beer?

Ben: 51:50

I don't care if it's a woman or a man or anything else. It's the method in which those videos were done. Him in the, the bathtub with bubbles and cracking open a beer and then shimmying in the way he did is just not appropriate in any way, shape or form.

Gene: 52:05

thing that's funny to me,

Ben: 52:06

and here, here, hold on. Here's the thing. If they had Blair White doing that same

Gene: 52:12

it would've been just as cringe, dude.

Ben: 52:13

I don't agree 100% Do not agree. It is Dillon Mulvaney. He is nails on a chalkboard problem.

Gene: 52:22

Here here's the thing. I think that in, in my I guess, view of this Dylan is LARPing being a woman. And in the, in the effect of doing that, insulting women.

Ben: 52:40

No, he's mocking them.

Gene: 52:41

Yeah. He's mocking

Ben: 52:43

My hiking hills.

Gene: 52:44

Yeah.

Ben: 52:45

Eloise video. Dude, there's a thousand different things. This is why I say him versus Blair White would not be a different, it would be a difference. Blair White, I believe,

Gene: 52:55

with Blair White. Nobody, nobody would know that Blair White is not a chick unless they know who Blair White is. And so all

Ben: 53:06

thing with Buck Angel. You would not know he was not a dude.

Gene: 53:09

Yeah. And, and you, and he's, he looks like a dude up top does not look like a dude down below. But the. The only reason that people would've known if Blair did they add was if they knew who she was or they were told later. It's like, oh, can you believe that was a, a tranny? Oh my God, that's so crazy. So I think it would've still had a, a very negative result because a lot of people that drink that beer just don't wanna associate with anything that is trans, including Blair White.

Ben: 53:44

I think there would've been a negative effect. I don't think you would see a three week very strong boycott that is causing distributors to damn near go bankrupt

Gene: 53:54

And that'd be great. I mean, if we can have some actual end result out of this instead of just mouth flapping, which is mostly what happens on the conservative side, nobody actually follows through with anything. They flip blop back right away.

Ben: 54:07

Yeah. So I was at a, I was at a birthday party yesterday with in-laws. And I didn't bring up Jack's shit, but everyone was joking about, oh, so-and-so you drink Bud Light, don't you? Yeah. Come here. You know, I mean, there were jokes being told about it. There were people saying, I'm never gonna buy that again. There were people saying, I, I have a fridge full of it and that's, that's it. I'm done.

Gene: 54:29

so my comment on Dylan Malini, was

Ben: 54:33

the people I was around are typically not political, by the way.

Gene: 54:37

ready?

Ben: 54:38

Yeah.

Gene: 54:39

Kind of figured your friends and family are all political?

Ben: 54:42

No. This is on the wife side. They are very much not.

Gene: 54:46

Anyway, lemme finish. The

Ben: 54:47

They're all public schoolers,

Gene: 54:48

ah, I think that

Ben: 54:51

which got brought up, by the way, which is a whole nother topic. We should get into

Gene: 54:54

public school, yeah, we, we can do that. To me, Dylan Mulvaney has never acted like an actual woman. He's acted like a parody of a woman. But really what he's acted like is the way that I've seen

Ben: 55:09

hiking hills. My Barbie pouch. Touch

Gene: 55:11

a certain group of gay men act for most of my life. Like, there are, there's a, a, a plethora of different personality types within the gays, within the gay community. Right. I've had, believe it or not, I've had gay friends, like since high school. So, I've been exposed tangentially to a lot of this culture. And there's very much been a group of gays that act like they're pretending to be a caricature of a woman. Everything's exaggerated, everything's over the top. Everything is overly feminine. But they're not trying to play what a real woman acts like. They're trying to play this gay kind of persona that is an over the top feminine male. And that's what I've always seen Dylan as. It's like, this is a, this is one of those gays. This is, this is one of the gays that really enjoys playing. This hyper feminized role. And he's not really, he's not truly trans. And I think Tim Pool says this as well. He doesn't seem as trans because if he was trans, he would be trying to act more like an actual woman. But he's not acting like a woman. He's acting the way that a, I don't know how, what percentage, maybe five, 10, 15%, but whatever of gays have been acting for a long time.

Ben: 56:44

and, and I think Tim's point on that is the whole normalized the bulge video that he did. You know, women can have bulges too and all this. If he were really dis suffering, suffering from a body dysmorphic issue, specifically gender dysphoria, he would be trying to hide anything that he could that was reminding him of his actual male nature. And the fact that that isn't a problem for him is somewhat problematic. Now, I would say immediately that if you look at any of the trans porn actresses or anything like that, that makes you question a lot of'em. And I, I, I think we have what is a societal contagion in everyone's focused on the male to female, but the vast majority of transitioners today, which is wrong and shocking, are actually female to male. And historically this has never, ever, ever been the case. The mass majority, majority, historically, for the last a hundred and some odd years that we've been keeping track of this, of gender dysphoric, have been male. It's only been a fraction of a percentage of the population. And

Gene: 58:01

there's been some female, like Jonna Ark

Ben: 58:04

very, very, very few buck Angel being another example, but very, very few. Now we have this inversion where 80% of the transitioners are

Gene: 58:14

Cutting off their tits. Yeah,

Ben: 58:17

Cutting off their tits, sterilizing themselves, doing lots of, lots of things here.

Gene: 58:22

yeah. Making permanent long-term lifetime changes.

Ben: 58:25

But everyone's focused on I am jazz. They're focused on the, they're focused on Leah Thomas. They're focused on really the wrong things. Now, you on social media often post, you know, men winning

Gene: 58:41

Yeah. I, I love that tag.

Ben: 58:43

as a troll.

Gene: 58:44

women.

Ben: 58:45

Yeah. And, and this,

Gene: 58:46

is a total

Ben: 58:47

Kelly is very caught up in, you know, hey, women's spaces and all this, but my God, look at what we're doing to our girls. And you wanna talk about the effects of, you know, the effects on a nation.

Gene: 58:59

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 59:00

Okay. So sterilizing a few males or whatever does not have the same proportional effect as sterilizing a larger percentage of females. So, so when you're,

Gene: 59:11

same number of females,

Ben: 59:13

when you're talking about sterilizing

Gene: 59:15

you can sterilize 80% of the male population and it's not gonna matter.

Ben: 59:20

right? When you sterilize five to 10% of the female population, you are talking about, you know, a substantial reduction in birth rates

Gene: 59:31

In, in any potential future birth rates. Yeah,

Ben: 59:34

Yeah. Because birth rates are defined by number of children per female,

Gene: 59:38

Yep.

Ben: 59:39

guess what? They have to actually do it. So if you're barely at replacement rate,

Gene: 59:44

Soon enough, men will be winning even more.

Ben: 59:47

If you have barely a replacement rate and you sterilize 10% of your females,

Gene: 59:53

Yeah.

Ben: 59:54

you're fucked.

Gene: 59:55

Well, how many,

Ben: 59:56

we, we've been

Gene: 59:57

do we need to, how many percent do we need to sterilize to get to the Handmaid's Tale?

Ben: 1:00:03

so we've been talking a long time about the demographics, right? You, you introduced me to Zhan and we've been looking at

Gene: 1:00:11

sure. Blame it on me.

Ben: 1:00:12

you did, and we've been going down that trail. Well, if we sterilize 10% of our females in this coming generation

Gene: 1:00:20

That's what China is.

Ben: 1:00:23

no shit, dude. We are, we, that is putting the US on the same demographic collapse as China. And I really think that's the point of all this. I I I, I hate to say it, I don't wanna be

Gene: 1:00:36

That's your meta-analysis, huh?

Ben: 1:00:38

That is, if you look at this, it, the uk, the Netherlands, Europe is pulling back their gender affirmation treatments. They're saying, whoa, this did not work. This was a mistake. The US is fucking head on into

Gene: 1:00:50

all in,

Ben: 1:00:51

and, and if you look at the demographics, we should be set up for success in the coming de-globalization. Well, you start doing this shit to us, you really sterilize between five and 10% of the females of the next generation.

Gene: 1:01:05

yeah.

Ben: 1:01:06

We are one generation behind China.

Gene: 1:01:08

Yeah. That's true. And, and they're not even the ones well, I mean, it's hard to say right now, but I think a lot of these kids would've Absolutely. Had normal heterosexual lives and gotten pregnant.

Ben: 1:01:22

Yeah, well, I mean, e even if they were a lesbian, there's still a percentage that is going to want to have kids. It, it, you know, it even if you're gay, the Dave Rubin is a great example where they went to extraordinary methods to have kids and I think Dave Rubin would probably be a good parent and that's fine.

Gene: 1:01:39

Yeah, I, I would agree. He seems like the kind of guy that that would make a good parent.

Ben: 1:01:44

Well, what I'm coming down to is I don't believe that a homosexual man or homosexual woman can't be a good parent. I'm not going to ever say that cuz I think there are a lot of straight parents that aren't good parents. That said, a man and a

Gene: 1:01:59

I think there's also a lot of parents whose children didn't know that they were actually gay

Ben: 1:02:05

sure. 100%. Yeah. Whatever it does, it, it, my point is it doesn't matter. But removing the option from children that jazz is a perfect example of, you know, prepubescent was never going to have a normal life. That's evil.

Gene: 1:02:27

The,

Ben: 1:02:28

There's nothing.

Gene: 1:02:29

group of people with a a pathology to commit suicide is this particular pathology.

Ben: 1:02:39

Yeah. I mean there, there's lots of reasons for that. And correlation is not necessarily causation, but I, I think you have a group of individuals that

Gene: 1:02:48

Yeah. And that's all I'm saying

Ben: 1:02:49

a lot of things, and thus, yes, they're more

Gene: 1:02:52

that I, I think for a percentage, and I don't know what percentage, but for certainly a. Significant percentage of people that are going through this type of,

Ben: 1:03:04

I will also say,

Gene: 1:03:04

reassignment. Let me just finish real quick that, that's gender reassignment for a significant enough percentage of them. It's not about the sex or gender, it's about a self-loathing. It's about wanting to change out of who they are to start a new part of their life. Turn, turn the, the leaf over. Is it, and this isn't going to work for the vast majority of them because you still are you, regardless of what kind of surgery has been performed to you and what kind of hormones you're on. And the, the self-loathing isn't going to go away. And this is where we see the end result of that is in an unacceptably high percentage of suicide, it's something like 18%.

Ben: 1:03:53

Now l let's make a few definitional definition clarifications here because as we've seen an increase in the female rate of transgender transitionings happening, we've actually seen a decrease in the effective rate of trans transgender suicides. And the reason why is because men, women are more likely to attempt suicide. Men are more likely to actually do it, and that trend stays with this group

Gene: 1:04:23

want something done, you ask a man to do it.

Ben: 1:04:27

Gene et or gene

Gene: 1:04:28

Suicide involved. No, it's true. It's, that's why it's funny. It's funny because it's true.

Ben: 1:04:34

well, regardless, it, we have a epidemic of mental illness plaguing our kids. And you know, this is no different than the bulimia epidemic that we've had in the past. This is no different than cutting. It is a social contagion. And the last thing you need to do is affirm someone who

Gene: 1:04:57

Let me buy you a better knife.

Ben: 1:04:58

on this. I'm sorry.

Gene: 1:05:01

Yeah. Let me buy you a better knife.

Ben: 1:05:04

Exactly. Here.

Gene: 1:05:06

You, the knife you're using is too dull.

Ben: 1:05:08

Yeah. Yeah. Remember it's not across the street. It's down the road, right?

Gene: 1:05:11

Uhhuh. Exactly. Yeah. That, that'd be a once and forever kind of deal. Now I will say that there is a certain addiction to the endorphins created by pain that I think a lot of teenagers go through. I know I definitely did when I was doing weightlifting and power lifting and stuff. You know, pain starts to become something that you look forward to, and I think it, it's definitely a lot more so the case as a teenager than once you get in your twenties where you're trying to have less pain and more sex. But But like, I think a lot of these things stem from what are very normal parts of human development. They just happen to be exaggerated. And that can be because of circumstance. It could be because of prescription drugs that way too many kids are on. It could be for a number of reasons, but I think that the letting, letting children who have not fully matured, whose brains are not mature, whose bodies are not mature letting them make permanent changes, or not even letting them, but actually making a decision on their behalf to make permanent changes. I think that's, that's borderline inhuman.

Ben: 1:06:33

Well, it's psychotic, and you have the, the formal, one of the things that's not being, so people point to, oh, well, when these girls go on cross sex hormones, they have a, they, they feel better. They're, they're almost euphoric. Well, yeah, that's the pharmacological effect of testosterone.

Gene: 1:06:50

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:06:51

Yeah. A, a male given more testosterone is going to have similar feelings. You're, you're going to have a more drive, you're going to have more impetus. That's, that's the effect of that. Whereas with male to female, when going on cross-sex hormones, you do not see that spike in endorphins. You do not see that same effect. And if we're judging

Gene: 1:07:12

do when they win. Swimming competitions

Ben: 1:07:16

Well, that, that's not an effect of the cross-sex hormones. That's an endorphins of, I went from 500 whatever Leah Thomas was as a male to I'm the number one. Yeah, yeah. That, that's a different set of endorphins. But the, the point is, you, you can't if, if you're going to judge a group, it, it's interesting to me that the scientific community is saying these two things are the same. They're both gender dysphoric.

Gene: 1:07:45

there is such a thing?

Ben: 1:07:47

What a scientific community. No, I, no, I, I, as much as I'm tied into academia and everything else, and I look at people modifying p-value, I look at the rate of academic dishonesty. It, it, it, and, and that's even in hard sciences. I'm not even talking about social sciences cuz I don't have exposure to that. I am not involved in psychology or anything else. But engineering and physics and computer science, the, the studies and the crap that comes out is just crap. And we are awarding PhDs for fucking nonsense.

Gene: 1:08:24

I know.

Ben: 1:08:25

I mean, I, I have a friend of mine who works for, and I'm not gonna say it because they'll be mad at me, but works for a major university system here in Texas and is. Over a graduate program and talking to them and hearing some of the, the, the ooh, quote unquote research that ends up higher, getting someone a higher education degree. You know, we, we socially prescribe this value to PhDs that just shouldn't fucking

Gene: 1:08:59

really, it no, it really shouldn't. There's been way too many examples of PhDs being stupid.

Ben: 1:09:06

Yeah.

Gene: 1:09:08

I agree. And it, it's, it is one of those things that I, I kinda occasionally wonder like, how would've my life been different if I decided to stay in in school instead of dropping out? Because I, I would've, had I stayed, I probably would've stayed for a long time.

Ben: 1:09:29

Well, me too. I mean, my, my entire, my I thought process, what I planned to do when I started college was go through and get my PhD in physics.

Gene: 1:09:40

Yeah.

Ben: 1:09:41

that, that was, that was the plan. That's what I was going to do. And I got a little bit of taste for academia being in the honors program and doing some undergrad research projects and saw the politics of it, and I said, yeah, no way. Fuck that.

Gene: 1:09:57

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I just kinda, my problem I think mostly was that I couldn't just take the classes I wanted. I didn't like the requirements essentially. And I, and now this obviously would go away in the graduate program, but like, I was in, in school for a total of six years and I dropped out. So that, that tells you a little something about my personality type. But I did stuff like, I took three semesters of in Aglio, which is the traditional 500 year old printmaking, the, the pre typography printmaking. So I did that for like over a year. You know, I just took classes that I was interested in and apparently there was not a degree that was comprised of those classes,

Ben: 1:10:55

Well, I mean, I took

Gene: 1:10:57

I was going for a philosophy degree.

Ben: 1:11:00

yeah, well, I, I, I, I took a lot of philosophy. I took a lot of different classes actually, but I was a physics and math major. I took, you know, for. My econ credits and things like that. I took actually one of my favorite classes, one of the hardest classes I ever took was economic Development of the Third World.

Gene: 1:11:20

Mm.

Ben: 1:11:21

And it was really all about globalization. And had a very, very tough professor there at the Bush Business School. And for a 200 level econ requirement credit, I took a 400 level class. So if that tells you anything about my personality and yeah, anyway, it was a very interesting class and it was all about Breon Woods and globalization and how things worked. And yeah, it, in retrospect you know, it, it, it's one of those things that taking that class and having the background that I had really has a, formed some pretty solid opinions. But yeah, I w I was always taking classes, you know, because I wanted to, like, for, for instance, when a and m instituted flat rig tuition every, every semester I took a PE class. Why? Because I wanted a fun, do nothing credit that I, I took fencing, I took golf, I took rock climbing, I took this, I took, you know, yeah.

Gene: 1:12:23

Yeah, and I think, I think maybe that part of it too is just I went to too big a college. If I would've gone to a smaller school, I probably would've been a little more focused. But

Ben: 1:12:33

Where did you go?

Gene: 1:12:33

the University of Minnesota, where I wanna say there was like 35,000 students or something

Ben: 1:12:41

Oh yeah. The, and, and you know, I'm the same way. So I I graduated high school young and ended up going to a community college in Idaho for, you know, a, a few for a year. And it's funny cuz I took 19 and 20 credits back to back there, and I had four os, you know, and yeah, it, it was just, I, I should have stayed either a smaller school or gone to something like m i t a and M was the wrong school for me in many ways. I

Gene: 1:13:14

Well, and I, I got accepted to Michigan Tech and the, what was the other school? The Worcester Polytechnic Institute, because I was going to go for an engineering degree. And amazingly, even though I got accepted of those two technical schools at the University of Minnesota, My GPA was too low to go to into the Institute of Technology, which I, I think that was right at that point where a lot of Asians were going in.

Ben: 1:13:50

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:13:50

So I'm gonna blame the

Ben: 1:13:51

Blame them.

Gene: 1:13:52

Yeah. Blame the Asians. But No, seriously, cuz it, they like everybody in that got admitted that the Institute of Technology had a a high school GPA of 3.6 or above

Ben: 1:14:07

Oh, yeah.

Gene: 1:14:08

and I was like a three one.

Ben: 1:14:10

Oh shit. Yeah. I, I was salutatorian

Gene: 1:14:14

Yeah. I was a fuck around Victorian.

Ben: 1:14:16

y No, I, I was salutatorian. And the only reason why I was salutatorian is the high school that I graduated from was a public school in rural Idaho that did not take a different, it was not a weighted gpa, so the high school cheerleader that had a four oh, but took no AP classes. And I took all AP and college credit classes, and I had a single b in a college class that I got college credit for that was taught by the local college that that, that counted against me.

Gene: 1:14:51

Well, it was the same thing. I think every high school was that way. Back in my day, there was no waiting at all. And I was doing the same thing. I was taking AP classes and you know, my. My B plus in an AP class counted exactly like a b plus in gym for somebody else.

Ben: 1:15:06

Yeah. Al also, my my, the high school I was at, it was an A, so 92 0 100 is an A is a four, and a 89 to 80 is a three.

Gene: 1:15:21

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:15:22

That, that was all the waiting. So, one, one other thing before we leave the trans topic. Did you see the U Utah lawmaker?

Gene: 1:15:30

I did. Yeah, I watched that.

Ben: 1:15:31

Yeah. Holy crap. One. Why does Utah,

Gene: 1:15:35

I know, I know of all the places, I think there's,

Ben: 1:15:40

and Montana

Gene: 1:15:42

there's a, this is what's weird to me is it seems like there are more, more aggressive very testosterone heavy men that seem to keep wanting to become women. It makes no fucking sense to me.

Ben: 1:16:02

mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:16:02

it's like, what the hell man? The, these are not like demure kind of, feminine type men that keep trying to be women. These are like butch dudes that really temperament wise are nowhere near women, but I. Maybe it makes sense. Maybe they, they just kept getting into fights as men and figured, well, gee, maybe I'm a woman. You know? I mean, it's like they're fucking, we are just letting people go untreated. That's the problem.

Ben: 1:16:37

I agreed.

Gene: 1:16:38

Yep.

Ben: 1:16:39

So speaking of Montana has a potential solution,

Gene: 1:16:44

What's that?

Ben: 1:16:45

They want to ban TikTok at the state level.

Gene: 1:16:48

That's not a solution.

Ben: 1:16:51

I don't think it's a solution either, but it's an interesting legal, it's an interesting legal question. Can a state

Gene: 1:16:57

No, they can't,

Ben: 1:16:59

why not?

Gene: 1:16:59

I don't think they can, I don't think a state.

Ben: 1:17:03

Sorry, hold on, hold on. Different states ban different books and different media states historically have had different laws around pornography, have had different laws around self-expression in the form of stripping and so on. Why can't Montana say TikTok cannot do business in our state?

Gene: 1:17:21

because what TikTok is, is essentially a movie rental house. They're,

Ben: 1:17:28

And there have been restrictions in the past.

Gene: 1:17:31

y Yeah. You, they can ban X-rated videos, but they can't ban a particular chain of movie rental places.

Ben: 1:17:40

Sure. If all they do is

Gene: 1:17:43

Any banned by anybody on a particular company, in my opinion, is unconstitutional. You can ban industries, but you

Ben: 1:17:51

well, but we're not, this is not a constitutional question, it's a state level question. So I don't know enough about the Constitution of Montana to know if

Gene: 1:17:58

that's

Ben: 1:17:58

against the Montanan constitution.

Gene: 1:18:00

I don't think that, I think it's a federal issue. I don't think it's a state issue. You can't, the federal government would overturn that state ruling essentially,

Ben: 1:18:09

O o. Okay. You, you, you believe in the incorporation doctrine? I do not,

Gene: 1:18:14

I know you don't, but the rest of the country does.

Ben: 1:18:17

no. The rest of the country does

Gene: 1:18:19

It kind of does.

Ben: 1:18:20

So, for instance, to just explain to potentially new listeners, although I don't know how many we have, the incorporation doctrine says that the second Amendment applies to the states. And I would say no. It does not. No Federal law applies to the

Gene: 1:18:35

where we

Ben: 1:18:35

The states have their own individual constitution. That is why we are the United States Capital S of America. We are a federation of

Gene: 1:18:44

But here's the thing that was true until we had the Constitution of the United States of America, at which point then that became no longer true.

Ben: 1:18:54

No. The consultation of the United States of America only is the law of the land

Gene: 1:19:01

You don't need the law of the

Ben: 1:19:03

power. No, no, no. The cons, 10th Amendment. 10th

Gene: 1:19:06

First amendment Why do you need a First Amendment nationally? If you can have the opposite of that in every state level?

Ben: 1:19:15

because it was to restrict Congress and the federal government. It was a restriction placed on the federal government, not the states.

Gene: 1:19:24

Yeah. I, I just, I don't, if that's what it is, honestly,

Ben: 1:19:29

That's what the framers intended.

Gene: 1:19:31

then that's a very poorly constructed set of framework because I think there are certain laws that need to be nationwide,

Ben: 1:19:42

Yeah, but that's not what the founders intended. The only thing that was intended to be nationwide was that the federal government would ensure that each and every state that was a part of it would enforce a Republican form of government, Republican small R, not big r, a representative, Republican form of government. That is the only prohibition that the federal government is given to mandate to the states. That is the only one. Everything else is

Gene: 1:20:08

we take that perspective,

Ben: 1:20:10

that is the founder's perspective.

Gene: 1:20:12

have then everything in the constitution is essentially only the things that the federal government will not Trump states on. And in every other instance, the federal government can Trump states on.

Ben: 1:20:30

The federal government may only trump the states where it has power,

Gene: 1:20:36

Right.

Ben: 1:20:37

which would be interstate

Gene: 1:20:39

that's not listed in the Constitution as

Ben: 1:20:41

is reserved, is reserved to the states and the people

Gene: 1:20:46

Right. But, but, so there's nothing for the federal government to do that because if all the,

Ben: 1:20:52

protect our borders. Serve a Navy, enforce tariffs and trade, and that's it.

Gene: 1:20:58

yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, I think that

Ben: 1:21:03

There should be no F B I. There should be no. At tf, there is no constitutional power

Gene: 1:21:07

on all that stuff. But I think that in that scenario, if that was actually practiced, if that was actually the case where the

Ben: 1:21:16

We would be a far better off country.

Gene: 1:21:18

then we would not be living in the United States of America today. We would be living in the Republic of Texas. Because I would not

Ben: 1:21:25

Fucking a. Amen.

Gene: 1:21:27

the, so you trick me into getting there.

Ben: 1:21:31

for me. Thank you, gene

Gene: 1:21:34

No, it's true cuz I, I, I think,

Ben: 1:21:36

Viva Laas.

Gene: 1:21:37

I don't think that the the original settlers from Kentucky and Tennessee pronounced it tejas.

Ben: 1:21:43

I guarantee you they

Gene: 1:21:45

I think they were pretty adamant that the Mexicans were pronouncing it wrong.

Ben: 1:21:49

I mean, it was originally spelled with the J dude

Gene: 1:21:52

Ah-huh. Well, the Mexicans were spelling it with a j.

Ben: 1:21:55

Anyway,

Gene: 1:21:57

That's a ha sound.

Ben: 1:21:58

Republic of Texas should have never joined the union. It was a failing and a fault of our of our

Gene: 1:22:05

yeah. Obviously agree on that, but I, I just think that a country that doesn't have the First Amendment, so you, you only have a handful of states that have the first amendment.

Ben: 1:22:18

that's not true at all. In fact, almost every state has a bill of Gar, Texas has the bill of guarantees, things like that, that are essentially the first 10 amendments for the states. In fact, Texas goes above and beyond what the US Constitution does and other states do as well. But that is based off of each and every individual state. And that's not to say that a state couldn't remove that and say the state's going

Gene: 1:22:44

that were created,

Ben: 1:22:46

isn't. That's the, that's the question.

Gene: 1:22:48

that were created close enough to the founding of the United States of

Ben: 1:22:53

Texas was not very close.

Gene: 1:22:55

tended to model themselves constitutionally on the United States, on the 10 10, on the, you know, the amendments. Right. The, I just don't know that if a state that was created much later, like, why, or Alaska,

Ben: 1:23:10

Well, let's look, which one do you want me to look up?

Gene: 1:23:15

well, I'm sure they both have it.

Ben: 1:23:16

Which one do you want me to look up?

Gene: 1:23:19

What? You don't have to look at anything up. Dude. I'm sure they both have exactly the same shit in their constitutions that, that everybody else does. But I don't know, man. I think if, like, if there's a state created today, it would not have any of

Ben: 1:23:33

Hawaii Constitution, article one, bill of Rights, political power, rights of the individual, equal rights freedom of religion, speech, and the Press and assembly. Oh, that's 1.4. Interesting that they moved it that far down. Freedom of the press. Freedom of speech due process and equal protection under the law. Yeah, they, they have their own civil rights bill that is in article one of the Hawaii constitution. Here goes and there's quite a bit here. Jesus Christ. They are verbose, equal protection. Sorry, I'm scrolling through pretty quick property rights. All of this is in section one of the Hawaii State Constitution.

Gene: 1:24:14

rights. That's

Ben: 1:24:15

Privacy right to privacy,

Gene: 1:24:16

from the original

Ben: 1:24:18

search and seizure restrictions. All still Article one. Yeah. Th and this was originally written in the fifties and has been amended quite a bit. Establishment of religion and segregation indictment and preliminary hearings,

Gene: 1:24:35

All right, we get it. We get it, dude.

Ben: 1:24:37

I mean, they have the Bill of Rights in

Gene: 1:24:40

They have it. I don't know, I just

Ben: 1:24:41

It's a state's issue.

Gene: 1:24:42

yeah. Okay. Okay. Fine, fine. I'll give it to you. I'll give you the state's issue, even though I would, I will say that the majority of people don't see it that way.

Ben: 1:24:53

Well, that is actually a fairly recent thing, and I would point out that had the incorporation doctrine been a majority held belief in the 1950s when Hawaii became a state article, one of the Hawaii constitution would not read like it is does today.

Gene: 1:25:13

You think, you don't think, there was a committee that was formed whose job was to basically look at the other 48 states and copy the best bits of their constitutions. You don't think that's how these things usually happen?

Ben: 1:25:24

No, because when you look at this article, one of the Hawaii constitution is like 30, 40 pages

Gene: 1:25:31

Yeah. That's cuz it was a committee. A committee built it. That's exactly the way it looks.

Ben: 1:25:36

It, it's insane. But they do have jury trials, self-incrimination. I mean, all of the 10 amendments are really represented here. I haven't seen anything around the second yet. Speedy trial right. To be informed.

Gene: 1:25:51

Know if they have the second amendment there.

Ben: 1:25:53

I'm sorry.

Gene: 1:25:54

I don't know if they have it there.

Ben: 1:25:55

Well, right to bear arms. Well hold on, hold on. On one point 17, a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of the free state. The right of the people to keep it bear arms shall not

Gene: 1:26:07

got, they got round two on the 17th.

Ben: 1:26:10

Literally, literally copies the US

Gene: 1:26:12

Okay. There's one more thing this reminds me of, which is a pet peeve for me. I, the, I was watching somebody yesterday talking about, oh, it was I posted a couple of videos of people, one from the army, one from the Marines,

Ben: 1:26:29

Oh yeah, I saw those.

Gene: 1:26:30

the anter gunner ones, right? They're, they're basically people talking about how this is, we need to change laws. Too many children are dying. Regular people don't need guns.

Ben: 1:26:40

Yep.

Gene: 1:26:41

These are weapons of destruction for the army only. Not for all of you. Just for us.

Ben: 1:26:46

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:26:47

One of the idiots

Ben: 1:26:48

it's unconstitutional that we have a standing army.

Gene: 1:26:51

yeah, giving an argument for it and saying, yeah, right there in Second Amendment says, A world regulated militia, regulated, controlled, the government can control everything about it. That's what regulated means. Like, no idiot.

Ben: 1:27:05

Regulated

Gene: 1:27:06

not what it means

Ben: 1:27:07

and trained

Gene: 1:27:08

Yeah. Regulated. Because I actually looked this up because I was having an argument with somebody amazingly, and I, I found, I know, I found, I have a little plaque here on my desk that says I'm not arguing. I'm just trying to explain why I'm correct. And I actually have a little one on, a little one that says that on my desk. But well regulated that phrase. From a dictionary from 1820. So shortly after, not that long after the start of the country the phrase well regulated, literally is translated to in good working order.

Ben: 1:27:46

yeah. And to be clear, the Constitution and the first 10 amendments, the Constitution was ratified. And our first federal elections happened in 1789,

Gene: 1:27:55

Yep.

Ben: 1:27:56

so we gotta remember that.

Gene: 1:27:58

Yeah. So like 30 years later from dictionary. And the example,

Ben: 1:28:03

of the actual second

Gene: 1:28:04

the, the example that was given was a well regulated clock. We'll keep good time for a month. Now, clearly they don't mean that are government regulations about the clock

Ben: 1:28:17

Right. What, what, what re well regulated militia means is people armed sufficiently

Gene: 1:28:25

armed and in practice. Yep.

Ben: 1:28:27

enough that they could secure the state. Right. That, that's why that's the entire verbiage is the well regulated militia being necessary for the, the, the security of a free state. It is right there saying, Hey, our people have to be armed and capable of using those arms to repel foreign or

Gene: 1:28:47

I, and I think it goes a little even beyond that because the difference between guys that have guns sitting in the box at home,

Ben: 1:28:56

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:28:57

And a well-regulated militia is one of the group actually goes out and practices shooting.

Ben: 1:29:04

Or carries regularly.

Gene: 1:29:05

Yeah. I mean it's, it's the things that you do that go along with being competent with the weapon.

Ben: 1:29:11

you know, and I've gotten a lot of pushback from some people in my life, you know, since I've started carrying daily. And you know, my thought process is, well, I'm, there is no law preventing me from doing so. It is not only my, you know, I hate when people say it's my constitutional right. No, no, no, no. The Constitution protects your human

Gene: 1:29:35

given, right?

Ben: 1:29:35

your human right nature, and nature's God to use a framer's founding language. I have no, so under constitutional carry here in Texas, there are very little scenarios where there's any reprisal against me for carry. Even if I

Gene: 1:29:53

unless you're in Austin.

Ben: 1:29:55

well, even if I ignore a 30 out five sign that is, that I can argue is poorly placed or whatever. Even, even if the jury says, Nope, you saw it, you ignored it. That's a$500 fine misdemeanor and I can't carry in there again, then it becomes, you know, heavier trespass laws. So, you know, th there is little to no argument not to have a

Gene: 1:30:17

Although they are, there are definitely sticklers for not having guns in bars.

Ben: 1:30:21

Well bars 50, 51% laws are very different. If a, if a restaurant, and, and this is a key distinction between concealed license to carry versus constitutional carry. A license to carry holder has to be notified. There has to be a red 51% sign posted for them to be held liable. That for whatever fucked up reason does not apply to a constitutional carry person.

Gene: 1:30:48

Yeah.

Ben: 1:30:49

So if you walk into a restaurant that makes 51% of their revenue and they don't have it posted, and some, a law enforcement officer stops you and says, checks the books and says, oh, well they make more than this, then you're screwed. A concealed carry permit holder would have the ability to say, well, but it wasn't posted. And that is a differential that is unfortunate that exists in the law today.

Gene: 1:31:13

I think that's just two different sets of politicians writing laws that weren't jiving with each other. Because remember, they also had the screw up about that 18 versus 21.

Ben: 1:31:23

I'm sorry.

Gene: 1:31:23

They also had that screw up with 18 versus 21,

Ben: 1:31:26

Yes.

Gene: 1:31:28

where there seemed to be this missing group. Like you could have, you could carry without a license when you were 18, 19, 20, but if you wanted to carry as a concealed carry holder license, you had to be 21. And it was, it was weird cuz they were actually. Like you were, you had to do more work when you got older. It was some, it was, it was a weird thing. I, I, whatever. Anyway, there was some group of people bitching about it, so they had to address

Ben: 1:31:57

there are definitely lots of issues there. My point is, given what's going on in our society in our world, we had that robbery at the Houston Taqueria not too long ago.

Gene: 1:32:08

I heard gunshots from my house about a month ago,

Ben: 1:32:11

now,

Gene: 1:32:12

and it was, and I was, I counted, I, I was learned to count gunshots and it, it was nine shots, like somebody eed a fucking clip

Ben: 1:32:21

Hmm.

Gene: 1:32:22

or even a magazine.

Ben: 1:32:24

Well, and you know, here's the thing. I I, I am not, and if I am ever involved in a justifiable shooting, I'm sure this clip will come back up to bite me in the ass. I, I have no intention. I have never ever pointed a firearm at a human being in my life.

Gene: 1:32:41

Yeah. Well, you've never wanted to kill anybody.

Ben: 1:32:43

I've, I hope I never, ever have to, but the meek shall inherit the earth. I want to be prepared. You know, Christ said to his disciples, if you do not have a sword, go out and sell your cloak to buy a sword. Be prepared, be strong, be able to be that light in the world that you have to be. And I, I think it's all part of it. I really do.

Gene: 1:33:08

Hey, speaking of the religious shit,

Ben: 1:33:09

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:33:10

So this is what I was, we were having that conversation with Adam.

Ben: 1:33:15

Adam, and then you and I, yes.

Gene: 1:33:17

Yeah, yeah. And then you and I about the trans stuff. So one of the things I kind of made a point about is I'm trying to find where my point was

Ben: 1:33:25

As you scroll through our text conversation,

Gene: 1:33:27

it's exactly. Cause I, I have transcripts of every conversation you know,

Ben: 1:33:31

Uhhuh Uhhuh.

Gene: 1:33:33

So yeah. So I, I think if you look at it through a religious context, the, the desire to change sex, gender, to become what you are not is a repudiation of God. And it's really a placement of your individual ego above the entirety of the world. It is saying that I'm the most important thing in this world, and the reality will be bent around my will, not the way that I was born, and presumably created by God.

Ben: 1:34:13

I'm gonna, I'm gonna take it a little bit different direction. So, two things. I'm, I'll, I'll address your points here. Two things. One, one of the things that Peterson says around identity is, identity is negotiated, right? Identity is socially negotiated, and I think this is why Dylan Mulvaney is such a fingers on the chalkboard versus Blair White.

Gene: 1:34:36

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:34:38

I, I would have a hard time saying I'm with her to Dylan, but I would never have a problem with that to Blair, right? Or. Putting Buck Angel in there, I'd never, I would never say her versus him because they are representing that they are playing that negotiated game, whereas Dylan is not

Gene: 1:34:58

Yeah. Like Blair is not playing an exaggerated fake woman. She's just trying to be feminine.

Ben: 1:35:04

Exactly.

Gene: 1:35:05

Yeah.

Ben: 1:35:06

So I, I, I think there's a differential there. I I would say also that at a former company we had a coworker transition. And I had one of my other coworkers who was also a Christian, come up to me and we were talking about various things and it came up and his point was, man, I would hate to stand in front of God and say you made a mistake.

Gene: 1:35:28

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.

Ben: 1:35:29

I, I, I think there's some truth to that. Now. You can say nature or you can say whatever. There are intersex people, there are hermaphrodites and, and,

Gene: 1:35:39

totally different.

Ben: 1:35:40

and money. You know, the money, the guy who started all this gender stuff, he was hyper-focused around that. And then he had the twins. And when you look at the twins study that he did first of all, they both ended up dead.

Gene: 1:35:53

Yep.

Ben: 1:35:54

And the, the, the, the, the kid that had a circumcision accident that they turned into a female and raised as a female, literally from a few months old, ended up detransition. So it's a totally failed study. And, you know, I,

Gene: 1:36:13

But that, I mean, that's also a little, that's, that's more akin to the parents doing this to the kids. Whereas, you know, somebody does it when they're 18, dumbest decision may be it's least their own damn choice.

Ben: 1:36:25

Well, and again, w what we should be dealing with is fractions of a percent that are hermaphrodites at birth or who are truly trans are truly suffering from gender dysphoria. That should be less than 1% of the population.

Gene: 1:36:42

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think that is, that is an unfortunate choice the parents will have. But if the kid is born with both sets of sex organs you can pick one and it's usually easier to pick the male.

Ben: 1:36:57

hmm. There are several things there. First of all, genetics play a role here.

Gene: 1:37:03

But that's such a tiny, tiny percentage of births.

Ben: 1:37:06

my point. So this should be a non-issue.

Gene: 1:37:09

yeah, exactly.

Ben: 1:37:10

And, and here's here, and this is the thing. So what I would say to anyone who's screaming at me because of trans rights or whatever, Hey, I am all for an adult doing what they want to do. I am all for. If you are truly having an issue and you think that's the best course of treatment for yourself, that you go do that.

Gene: 1:37:31

Right. But also without any expectation of anybody else changing the way they act or perceive you.

Ben: 1:37:37

But again, if you are doing it like buck Angel, you're not gonna have that problem.

Gene: 1:37:44

yeah, yeah. But, you know, I don't know if you were paying attention, but back about a month ago, there's a big brew haha, big pushback against Blair White. When Blair had that photo of, of her with guns or with a gun, whatever it was, it was some kind of a, you know, gun Yeah. Photo. And a lot of conservatives that didn't realize Blair was actually trans started saying, no, all trans needs to be stopped and this person is part of the path to normalization and so therefore Blair

Ben: 1:38:14

think she is.

Gene: 1:38:15

Yeah. But I, I think that it's a it's a lot less normalization to ask somebody that looks like a woman to, you know, act as somebody to, to treat them as a woman than it is to somebody that still looks like a dude and still acts like a dude and when swing meets. But we all have to pretend there's a woman.

Ben: 1:38:38

Well, and you had that incident at Popeye's or whatever the restaurant where you know, they went off recently and it.

Gene: 1:38:45

there, yeah, there's definitely some of that going off. But my, my point with the religious context was, and as you know, I'm not at all religious not Christian or anything, but it doesn't mean I can't think about this stuff. Is that it, it seems that the desire to be the thing that you think you are deep down, that your body does not coincide with

Ben: 1:39:10

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:39:11

the opposite decision of what Jesus had to do, who actually was different than his outward appearance of not being human. Or, you know, if you wanna do the whole Catholic thing, being in a trinity, but still living as a human.

Ben: 1:39:32

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:39:33

God didn't, or, you know, Jesus didn't like decide that, Hey, this, this body is too limiting for me with all the powers of God.

Ben: 1:39:42

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:39:44

And so I really should just be like a glowing orb with 88 eyeballs.

Ben: 1:39:50

there's a better allegory than that.

Gene: 1:39:53

I'm sure there is. I'm, I'm an amateur dude. Come on, gimme, gimme a little

Ben: 1:39:56

Well, but I, I mean the, the, the whole concept of Lucifer, right, the, the most favored of angels. Now one, one of the things I hate is there's a lot of things that come into societal norms that aren't in the Bible, right? When we really think of Lucifer's fall, we, we really think of paradise lost in Milton.

Gene: 1:40:20

Right, right,

Ben: 1:40:21

know, that that had a little bit of an influence, but I, I think that's actually a better allegory to the current issue.

Gene: 1:40:27

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:40:29

So, have you ever read Paradise Laws, by the way?

Gene: 1:40:32

I did

Ben: 1:40:33

Yeah.

Gene: 1:40:34

in high school. Yeah. It was not an easy book.

Ben: 1:40:38

Well, it's a poem, but yes.

Gene: 1:40:40

Well, yeah, but I actually I know we're talking about it. I, I sent him the, some images from Silence of the Lambs because there, again, you're dealing with a, a pathology, not to, for anybody to think that, oh, well, all, you know, people that are trans are clearly just a one heartbeat away from being serial killers. Not the case. But I think that it is indicative of people that are mentally unstable, that are uncomfortable in their own skin to want to change the skin instead of learn to be comfortable in it.

Ben: 1:41:26

Well, and you know, the epidemic here is around the adolescent years. You know, the epidemic is around the teenage years when, I don't know about you, but I was an awkward teenager. I think pretty much everyone is,

Gene: 1:41:41

Well, I, I

Ben: 1:41:42

very few people who aren't awkward teenagers

Gene: 1:41:44

had plenty of crashes on roller blades, if that's what you mean.

Ben: 1:41:48

Well, I mean, I,

Gene: 1:41:50

It's pretty awkward.

Ben: 1:41:52

I mean, there were several different things that I can think of in high school that were troublesome, but,

Gene: 1:42:00

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:42:01

you know, you get through it, it's fine. And, you know, seeking and easy out there isn't

Gene: 1:42:07

Who, who hasn't been a fucking teenager who can't remember not knowing

Ben: 1:42:13

generation, about 10% of them,

Gene: 1:42:15

yeah. What, what, what you mean they still haven't hit it yet?

Ben: 1:42:18

no. I mean, they're trying to escape it.

Gene: 1:42:20

Yeah.

Ben: 1:42:21

trying to escape

Gene: 1:42:22

away from being a teenager. It's, it is as close as humans come to metamorphosis, to a reconstruction of

Ben: 1:42:29

puberty is so fucking awkward for everyone.

Gene: 1:42:32

Yeah. Well, it's a, yeah, exactly. It is meant to be awkward. It's, it's in between two different phases.

Ben: 1:42:38

when my voice started to drop, there were definitely some screeches and things that started to happen and what is going on, and you

Gene: 1:42:45

I think I was eight

Ben: 1:42:47

Yeah. Okay. As hairy as you are, I might buy that.

Gene: 1:42:52

That's born with hair on my knuckles,

Ben: 1:42:54

yeah, yeah. Anyway, you know, the, there, your, your balls drop there. From then there are just you, you start building up muscle mass differently. I mean, the differentiation between the sexes starts at puberty, and up until then, both sexes are fairly androgynous and it is awkward to, you know, be a, a girl that suddenly is growing breasts and, you know, starting a period and everything else. It's awkward to be a male that, well, my balls are flopping around now, and my voice is going crazy, you know, and th th there's just different things. And for men, I can speak to that because I'm not a woman, I'm a man. And I can tell you that when those hormonal differences come in into play,

Gene: 1:43:39

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:43:40

it's intense.

Gene: 1:43:42

Yeah, they,

Ben: 1:43:43

mean, I don't think people, I don't think women appreciate. I think everybody makes a big deal about how hard puberty is on a woman, but I think it's equally as hard and very different for a man. Right. You

Gene: 1:43:58

oh, I think it's harder for men because children temper wise are closer to women

Ben: 1:44:05

Yeah. There, there's

Gene: 1:44:06

you. You go from being a lot more feminine as a boy to having to become masculine whether he wants or not, and I think there's, and there's certainly some boys that, that have a hard time. Doing that and they stay feminine. But

Ben: 1:44:25

go ahead.

Gene: 1:44:26

no, I, I mean, I, I think that physical changes obviously starting to bleed out of a hole in your body every month. That's a major thing, but,

Ben: 1:44:35

Never trust something that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.

Gene: 1:44:38

that's a why saying so,

Ben: 1:44:41

Sorry.

Gene: 1:44:41

that's not a knock on women. That's

Ben: 1:44:43

It's a sal hard joke.

Gene: 1:44:45

that's just fact. So, yeah, I think it is harder for men because you have to become something. You, you were never,

Ben: 1:44:52

Well, and you, you have the flood of testosterone. That is, it's why up until recently, teenagers always got in. Teenage boys inevitably got in fights, and it is shocking to me that that doesn't happen today at the rate that

Gene: 1:45:12

with Adam about this topic. In fact, maybe, maybe he and I ought to do a podcast. So here's my take on that. And then he, he was kind of pushing back on it, but I think it was just miscommunication. But I think that that pornography has been responsible for a decrease in sexual urge and well, or the amount of

Ben: 1:45:37

So you think all the teenage boys are just jacking off

Gene: 1:45:39

And I think video games have been responsible for a decrease in actual violence. I didn't have the option to play video games and go run around something that absolutely releases the same adrenaline rushes

Ben: 1:45:56

y Well,

Gene: 1:45:56

you feel in an actual fight.

Ben: 1:45:58

and what I would say is that when I was playing video games, even as a teenager, you know, the, the most violent video game I had was Mortal Combat, and that was nowhere near what we're talking about here today.

Gene: 1:46:11

no. There's some pretty damn realistic video games. But it, it's I think that in a lot of ways what these things do, whether it's pornography or video games, is they, they release steam, they take up some of the,

Ben: 1:46:26

I'll buy that.

Gene: 1:46:27

Some of the desire that is inherent in a male.

Ben: 1:46:33

Yeah. And especially for men, because, you know, if you're, you're, you're cheating your endocrine system by being addicted to that pornography or that video game

Gene: 1:46:43

you don't even have to go as far as addicted. All I can say is that before, before there was readily available access to porn, like I had to actually pay for porn when I was young. Right. And I don't mean like an online subscription.

Ben: 1:46:57

had internet access,

Gene: 1:46:58

Yeah, I mean, before internet, like I had to pay for a Playboy subscription. I had to buy a penthouse. You know, these were things that, that you had to go outta your way to do and or a Sears catalog if you didn't have any money. But

Ben: 1:47:16

But, you know, even for me, I had to

Gene: 1:47:19

let me just finish the

Ben: 1:47:19

being caught on the family computer in a living

Gene: 1:47:22

right, right. There was risk

Ben: 1:47:24

versus now

Gene: 1:47:25

On your fricking phone twenty four seven. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So there, there was more effort required to participate in solo sex.

Ben: 1:47:34

Well, even if it was ubiquitously available to me, you know, I, I didn't have a laptop in my, my room until I was in high school, and quite frankly, already had sex. So, you know, there was that

Gene: 1:47:47

the, there's a certain, like the reason that sex feels as good as it does is because it's supposed to be a motivator for you to go through the trouble and, oh, boy, is it trouble to get with a woman?

Ben: 1:48:04

Well,

Gene: 1:48:04

of the whole point is like, yeah. But once you get with her, once you convince her that you are worthwhile, oh boy does, does that sex just make it all worth it? And,

Ben: 1:48:16

and I, I think that that ties into your analysis on the violence as well, because if you're not, if you're not striving for the same women, if the c p M rate goes to zero, right, because you have an infinite supply, essentially. Well, why do I wanna fight you?

Gene: 1:48:37

And this is a question that I don't necessarily think guys nowadays ask themselves consciously, but you have to ask it from a suicidal standpoint. It was like, what is the point of women for a man who is today 18 years old? What, what is the point? Like, why would it have anything to do with women?

Ben: 1:48:58

and you know, my answer on this, I, I think mgtow is definitely the logical conclusion

Gene: 1:49:05

Yeah. And one more, one more move towards depopulation.

Ben: 1:49:10

It is the wrong answer,

Gene: 1:49:12

It's everything. All these things, all these factors are all pushing depopulation.

Ben: 1:49:17

which is the wrong answer.

Gene: 1:49:19

maybe, or maybe this is a self-correcting system,

Ben: 1:49:24

No, we need more humans, not less.

Gene: 1:49:26

eh?

Ben: 1:49:28

And we need better humans.

Gene: 1:49:30

Yes. Okay. See, this is, this is where my eugenics kicks in. Better humans, better defined through better science.

Ben: 1:49:38

my kids are not gonna get a cell phone until, you know, till they're, till they're driving at. That will be the earliest point that they get a cell phone. And I'll be damned if a flip phone is available. That's what they're gonna have.

Gene: 1:49:54

Oh, they'll have flip phones, but the flip phone will be thinner than your current phone.

Ben: 1:49:58

Yeah. Well I just don't, I, what I'm saying is no browser,

Gene: 1:50:02

Oh yeah. Good luck on that. Yeah. I think the phone may just be a browser at that point, and everything lives

Ben: 1:50:07

will figure something out. Okay.

Gene: 1:50:09

Yeah. You'll be that Dad,

Ben: 1:50:10

yes, I will be 100%. I will be the asshole dad.

Gene: 1:50:16

Get your ass in here and turn your damn phone off. Yeah. So I, I think that this is a, this is something that is in a lot of ways a result of first world problems, good living, lack of

Ben: 1:50:34

Weak men that making bad times

Gene: 1:50:37

Yeah. And and there's two ways to regulate population naturally. One death in wars, two lack of sex.

Ben: 1:50:47

or perverted sex that does not

Gene: 1:50:50

Yeah, sure, sure, sure. But yeah, if you wanna look at like, the last phases of the Roman Empire and our current United States are very similar in a lot of ways. But the bottom line is like, if you look at it, not from a what's good for me standpoint, but just from, let's say you're an alien studying the planet Earth and you're just observing shit without really caring what happens. You're just now, you know you're interested in. Seeing what's next. I'm not so much interested in what's better. What,

Ben: 1:51:18

What can we make these fuckers do?

Gene: 1:51:20

well, not even necessarily that you just seeing, you know, I had an aquarium for a long time. I loved watching the fish and it was interesting seeing them build little nests and move rocks around with their mouths and then have little babies and then watch other fish, try and eat the babies. And it was like the, this whole, this whole na nature play happening in a, in a 125 gallon tank. It was fascinating.

Ben: 1:51:43

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:51:45

I really kinda, I don't miss the care of the fish. I definitely miss the watching of the fish. So if I ever got to a point where I could just like pay somebody to care for the fish, then I would probably get in the aquarium again.

Ben: 1:51:57

Well, you could always go freshwater and it'd be a

Gene: 1:51:59

No, it was freshwater. Yeah. No, that still was maintenance though. Even freshwater.

Ben: 1:52:03

Yeah. I I grew up with aquariums as well. You know, my dad doing what he did for a living. I, I think I've told you the the story of the octopus, right.

Gene: 1:52:12

No, I don't remember. I love octopus, by the way.

Ben: 1:52:15

Okay. So we had growing up we had a pretty large saltwater aquarium that my dad, if he caught something that was interesting in the gulf, he would, you know, throw it in aerated ice chest and bring it home sort of thing. So we had seahorses, we had shrimp in there. We had

Gene: 1:52:34

do you catch seahorses?

Ben: 1:52:35

Huh?

Gene: 1:52:37

How? How did you catch seahorses?

Ben: 1:52:40

Well they got caught in the net when my dad was fishing.

Gene: 1:52:43

How thin is the net?

Ben: 1:52:45

Oh. Pretty small. Like quarter ranch. Yeah.

Gene: 1:52:47

Wow. That's like,

Ben: 1:52:49

To, to catch shrimp. I mean, you see how small shrimp are, so, yeah. Anyway we had an octopus at one point in

Gene: 1:52:56

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:52:57

and I don't remember if it was me or my mom. This was when I was a fairly little

Gene: 1:53:01

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:53:02

but one of us forgot to put the brick back on top of the

Gene: 1:53:06

Oh, and he pushed the open

Ben: 1:53:08

was on the ceiling when we got home. And inked everywhere.

Gene: 1:53:13

Oh, Jesus. Poor little feller.

Ben: 1:53:17

Incredibly intelligent, capable of moving outside of water for extended periods of time and, you know, damn near tool users,

Gene: 1:53:27

Very, very curious. They're very, very smart. I think they're about as close

Ben: 1:53:31

nine distinct brains.

Gene: 1:53:33

as we have. Yeah. Yeah. And then green blood.

Ben: 1:53:37

Yep.

Gene: 1:53:38

Very, very cool Animals. I'm a huge fan. This is one of the animals. Absolutely. Yeah. I think they're close to aliens as we get. This is one of the animals I will not eat.

Ben: 1:53:48

Oh, but they're so tasty.

Gene: 1:53:50

Eh, you

Ben: 1:53:52

Have you ever had octopus?

Gene: 1:53:53

too. I have had octopus Yeah. When I was a kid,

Ben: 1:53:56

yeah, they're tasty.

Gene: 1:53:57

eh, not tasty enough to eat. I'm, I'm happy enough to give them a certain level of respect. I like, I've also had dolphin, but I don't generally practice eating. Dolphin.

Ben: 1:54:10

Yeah. I've never eaten

Gene: 1:54:11

Kinda tastes like chicken.

Ben: 1:54:12

Yeah. I've, I've had shark, I've had alligator,

Gene: 1:54:16

yeah, those are all dumb animals.

Ben: 1:54:19

Yes. Alligator and sharks are

Gene: 1:54:21

Never had cat. Cats are too smart.

Ben: 1:54:24

I've had mountain line.

Gene: 1:54:25

I've never had that. Really? You've eaten cat. Holy shit.

Ben: 1:54:28

Yep. Yep. I've had mountain line

Gene: 1:54:30

Bear Of course. Although I like bears, I'm borderline.

Ben: 1:54:33

Their meat is nasty.

Gene: 1:54:35

Oh, you didn't have a good one then.

Ben: 1:54:37

I, if you get a boar, that's nasty.

Gene: 1:54:40

don't want a boar for sure. Yeah. But dude, even, even with hogs, you don't want a boar.

Ben: 1:54:48

Not over 50 pounds. No.

Gene: 1:54:49

No.

Ben: 1:54:50

You want a prepubescent one.

Gene: 1:54:52

Exactly. Get one of them trans little pigs.

Ben: 1:54:56

Oh, dude, I, I don't know if I ever told you this. We were at my property in east Texas and we were walking through a field and all of a sudden these pigletts start scaring and we popped as many as we could. We ended up with about four or five of'em, and they were just big enough to fit in my hand.

Gene: 1:55:14

Oh wow.

Ben: 1:55:15

That was some of the best wild long we'd have

Gene: 1:55:18

I bet, man. That

Ben: 1:55:19

We just roasted'em whole, I mean, you could have used the, the, the ribs as toothpicks.

Gene: 1:55:23

Well, honestly, you know it, I don't know why it's not more popular in the us but I've always liked veal a lot.

Ben: 1:55:30

I'm not a big veal fan. It's just, it's bland. That's, that's the problem is it's bland.

Gene: 1:55:36

depends how you cook it. It's,

Ben: 1:55:39

my point is the meat is not as flavorful,

Gene: 1:55:41

it's not well, but it depends on what, yeah. I mean, like, there is a, there is a lot more you can do with me that has no natural flavor, but the texture is really good. Texture is

Ben: 1:55:54

Oh, yeah. It's very tender.

Gene: 1:55:56

Yeah,

Ben: 1:55:57

Yep. A hundred percent. Well, I, I mean, mutton is more popular in the US than veal is ironically enough,

Gene: 1:56:04

I know.

Ben: 1:56:04

which makes no sense.

Gene: 1:56:06

no sense at all. I totally agree with that because it, the thing with veal too is it's, it like, it takes less effort to make,

Ben: 1:56:15

Yes.

Gene: 1:56:15

so you would think a lot more farmers would be pushing it.

Ben: 1:56:20

It's more expensive though, because you don't get as much return on the pound,

Gene: 1:56:23

Yeah. But you don't invest as much per, per animal.

Ben: 1:56:26

correct? I mean, yeah, you're talking about a couple months versus,

Gene: 1:56:31

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:56:32

you know, over a year, but you're also talking, you know, one third the overall weight.

Gene: 1:56:38

Yeah. Yeah. Two months, one third weight, a whole year full of weight. I don't know. I'd take the two months myself.

Ben: 1:56:48

Well, we go to auction, buy a 500 pound wing calf or a couple hundred bucks and have it slaughtered.

Gene: 1:56:54

And have it slaughtered right away. Yeah. I wonder how much the slaughter would probably be fairly close in price to a full size.

Ben: 1:57:00

Oh, it'd be identical per pound. And that's part of the

Gene: 1:57:02

Yo per pound would be okay. No, I thought it'd be identical per animal.

Ben: 1:57:06

No, it's per pound. So I, I've been looking at, you

Gene: 1:57:10

not bad that, hold on that now you just told me something I didn't realize. So that would actually be a good deal then

Ben: 1:57:15

hold on, let me, let me finish. I've been looking at different slaughterhouses around certain areas to try, well, I'm trying to start the operation, you know, and there was one that it was Hundred and something dollars, kill fee, and then price per pound to slaughter and package. So your K fee isn't going to change, but your price to pack and do whatever is gonna stay the same. That's generally how it's

Gene: 1:57:43

Have you found any halal ones?

Ben: 1:57:46

I have not been looking for that.

Gene: 1:57:48

Start asking that as well,

Ben: 1:57:50

why,

Gene: 1:57:51

because I would definitely pay for that.

Ben: 1:57:53

versus kosher?

Gene: 1:57:54

Oh, it could be kosher. Just you're more likely to find a halal butcher,

Ben: 1:57:57

Well, halal is to a lower lower degree than kosher. So kosher, kosher is acceptable under halal, but halal is not acceptable under kosher is my understanding. Yeah.

Gene: 1:58:09

I know, but, but I would prefer halal to regular butcher.

Ben: 1:58:13

why?

Gene: 1:58:14

It's more humane.

Ben: 1:58:16

Well, the humanity of it isn't the issue if that's what you're worried about.

Gene: 1:58:20

No, it's the only thing I'm worried about.

Ben: 1:58:22

okay, well, I, I, I think any of these will be fine for you then.

Gene: 1:58:26

Really? How do they kill the animal?

Ben: 1:58:29

22 to the back of the head while they're not looking.

Gene: 1:58:33

Is that all it takes? 22.

Ben: 1:58:35

Oh, absolutely.

Gene: 1:58:36

Really? Hmm. Yeah. Cuz the, the key to kosher is, well, I shouldn't say the key. One of the aspects of kosher is that the animal has to be kill then the blood drained within a very short period of time.

Ben: 1:58:50

Yeah. Yeah. So the way a modern slaughterhouse works in the United States, no animal sees another animal drop dead. They just don't do that because it causes too many problems. So literally take'em in either with a knocker or whatever, but it's generally head trauma. Instant death drops,'em, then the door opens, the next one comes in after the other one's been removed and rinse and repeat. But you, and you can,

Gene: 1:59:18

I've seen some pretty bad videos though of

Ben: 1:59:20

yeah, but that's all old, that's all old. If you look at what what's her name? Shit, Peterson had her on she's University of Colorado. She's autistic, but really revolutionized the way slaughterhouses work in the US Temple Grandon, temple Grandon, there we go. Or whatever her name is Temple Grande. I think they, they've made some massive changes just because of efficiencies that end up being way more humane.

Gene: 1:59:45

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:59:47

So, yeah. Anyway the point is, yeah, if you want to go get a couple hundred pounds of veal, you can do it.

Gene: 1:59:54

I might have to look into that. That's

Ben: 1:59:56

And the other problem though is your, your, your, your kill weight and your amount of meat is gonna be dramatically different between a 500 pound calf and a 1500 pound cow because, You know, you're, the percentage of weight that is bone at 500 pounds is far, far greater

Gene: 2:00:17

Well, it's not just bone, it's organs versus actual muscle.

Ben: 2:00:21

Yeah. Knowing you though, I'm assuming you're gonna want some of the organs

Gene: 2:00:25

Yeah. Some, I mean, veal is really good from a calf. It's better than cow. Veal

Ben: 2:00:32

mm-hmm.

Gene: 2:00:34

or veal, what am I saying? Liver. I'm thinking liver. I'm saying veal. Yeah. Liver from from veal is better.

Ben: 2:00:40

I, I don't know if I told you this, but I need to find a source for some ua.

Gene: 2:00:45

Okay.

Ben: 2:00:46

And the reason why is when I was in Barcelona,

Gene: 2:00:49

You had some.

Ben: 2:00:50

we, well, we went to this cookout and they were doing steaks and it was a Brazilian guy doing the steaks, but the way he was doing this was he was cooking the steaks and he was taking a torch and he was melting that liver

Gene: 2:01:03

Mm.

Ben: 2:01:04

on the steak.

Gene: 2:01:05

Wow.

Ben: 2:01:06

Oh, dude.

Gene: 2:01:09

Yeah. And

Ben: 2:01:10

never had anything like that. It

Gene: 2:01:11

UA has to be eaten on top of something though. You can't just eat it with a spoon.

Ben: 2:01:17

Yeah, 100%. But I mean, it, the way it just melt, literally just melted it. It was like butter. But such a different and better flavor.

Gene: 2:01:29

yeah. I think John and Adam talked about this a while ago, but I think California ironically is one of the few states that still allows while garage to be manufactured.

Ben: 2:01:39

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 2:01:40

Cuz a lot of states have banded for, you know, cruelty, three animals. But California I think is one of the states that still has it. Cuz you're basically, you're, you're creating a fatty liver by overfeeding the bird with grain, which ends up getting deposited as fat and liver. And it's ironically, one of the things I'm taking pills for is to prevent fatty liver, make my own damn fog, grab myself. Technically liver's the only organ that can regrow. So you theoretically, let's say you were Hannibal Lecter you could actually

Ben: 2:02:17

Some fava beans and nice ke

Gene: 2:02:20

Yeah. Don't like fava though. You could actually eat your own liver like

Ben: 2:02:26

Okay. All right. All right. I, I think we're done here.

Gene: 2:02:29

Are we, are we done with cannibalism? Is that where we

Ben: 2:02:31

That, that's, that, that, that. I think

Gene: 2:02:33

we had the Silence of the Land's reference earlier, so that's good, by the way. One of the all time best.

Ben: 2:02:40

It's why you can donate, oh, let's say it differently. You could donate portion of your liver to a loved one who is suffering and you could regenerate and it be fine.

Gene: 2:02:50

Yeah. I guess they could eat it just as well as you could.

Ben: 2:02:52

Oh God. Gee damnit. I was trying to save you here. I tried so hard.

Gene: 2:02:57

one of the best tv So shows I think from an acting and from a food perspective, absolutely. Gorgeous Foods was a show called Hannibal,

Ben: 2:03:07

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 2:03:07

which was done probably at this point, about six, seven years ago when it came out. But they, I think they did three seasons. It was essentially the, the precursor to the Silence of the Lambs. I guess it would, like, it takes place immediately before that. But in that show, Hannibal is not in prison. He, this is like before he was in prison, right? When people

Ben: 2:03:36

while he was being a cannibal

Gene: 2:03:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But

Ben: 2:03:40

cannibal.

Gene: 2:03:41

Right. And it's the, the role of Hannibal is played by that sweet. He's Swedish or Norwegian, I can't remember actor, but

Ben: 2:03:51

the record, you can get canned UA as a product of Canada for off alpha Amazon.

Gene: 2:03:56

okay. Well there you go. I don't know that canned would even be any worse because obviously it still has to be prepared when it's fresh,

Ben: 2:04:03

Exactly.

Gene: 2:04:05

Yeah. But God, his name's like Nils something. Maybe I don't, but he's a really good actor. He has the perfect cannibal, which to me is not the guy that played it in Silence of the Lambs. The perfect cannibal as more of the way I pictured him in the book has this sort of non-descript European accent that is, you can't quite place it, you can't quite tell what country it's from, but it's somebody that clearly has some like grew up knowing manners, you know, like a little bit of an aristocratic kind of a accent.

Ben: 2:04:45

Yeah. So neither of us got it,

Gene: 2:04:48

Yeah. Neither I, I totally don't have that. I wish I did. I am not, not particularly aristocratic sounding, but even though I am a Duke but it was done really well. It has the best food porn of any TV show ever made. I, I

Ben: 2:05:06

is just so wrong.

Gene: 2:05:08

no, not at all. Because that, I mean, this is the whole point of it, is that he wasn't just cannibal, he was also an exquisite cook. So he doesn't have to be cooking human to cook good food. It just helps. So,

Ben: 2:05:26

Christ.

Gene: 2:05:28

so check it out. It's a great show. That's my recommendation. No books. But I, I will recommend that TV show.

Ben: 2:05:33

did you watch Picard at all?

Gene: 2:05:36

No, I'm not gonna watch Picard. It's, it's, no, I, you're literally the only person of the people that have watched Picard that doesn't see it as being politically correct.

Ben: 2:05:45

Okay. People season, I 100% agree with season one and two. Season three is good, and this is what I'm trying to tell you. You can just watch season

Gene: 2:05:55

watch season three. Okay, well maybe I'll get around to doing that. So right now I have about a hundred books to read, so maybe at some point I'll, I won't, I'm not, I don't think I'm gonna watch it anytime soon. I did watch that little short clip you sent me of will Wheaton

Ben: 2:06:09

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 2:06:10

being back on the deck of the enterprise.

Ben: 2:06:12

We're wheating.

Gene: 2:06:14

Wheaton. Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:06:17

yes.

Gene: 2:06:18

And dude, like why does a guy that looks like dad get tattoos? That's my first question.

Ben: 2:06:25

That's

Gene: 2:06:25

like the biggest dork.

Ben: 2:06:27

That's your one thought.

Gene: 2:06:28

Oh my God. He just looks such like, such an idiot. He's,

Ben: 2:06:32

I, I sent that to you because I thought you would appreciate the effort they went to to recreate that set.

Gene: 2:06:39

I appreciate the fact that they got the guy back from the dead who actually designed the ui.

Ben: 2:06:45

Well, he, he designed the original t and g set.

Gene: 2:06:48

Yeah. That's like, holy

Ben: 2:06:49

been, he's done that for Picard the whole way through though.

Gene: 2:06:52

Well, that's fine. But what else has he done? Has he done anything in other movies that was

Ben: 2:06:56

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He

Gene: 2:06:57

the only thing he's

Ben: 2:06:57

famous set designer,

Gene: 2:06:59

Yeah, but I remember that was revolutionary back in the day. I remember on my Mac running that theme.

Ben: 2:07:06

Yeah. Elk Cars.

Gene: 2:07:07

Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 2:07:08

I, I, I still think someone should actually produce a full-blown os using that as you

Gene: 2:07:13

they should,

Ben: 2:07:14

and, and it's

Gene: 2:07:15

and for an iPad. So it's all touch based.

Ben: 2:07:18

well, I, I will say this, that there are Android themes that are l l cars

Gene: 2:07:23

Are they really? Oh,

Ben: 2:07:24

Yes. 100%.

Gene: 2:07:25

Hmm. But I also thought it was interesting that Will Wheaton like 30, 40, however long later, 30 years later, still remembers his hand movements for programming in coordinates. Like he's just pushing, you know nothing. But he remembers where he pushed the nothing in the original show

Ben: 2:07:46

cuz he did it uniformly every

Gene: 2:07:48

every time. Yeah. He's like, oh, dial in the number that here over here Mark drag my finger across to accelerate. I mean, it's like, this is hilarious. It's now they can actually have full motion shit there. Back in that show, it was all backlit transparencies. You know, there's no computer screens that were actually functional.

Ben: 2:08:12

actually they did have like at the, the terminals that were behind tactical for example, they actually, those were actual back projected monitors that could show stuff?

Gene: 2:08:24

Oh, I guess they could do projected. I was gonna say, cuz they didn't have LCDs back then.

Ben: 2:08:27

No, no, no. It was, it was projected

Gene: 2:08:29

yeah.

Ben: 2:08:29

it was to whatever script. You know, it wasn't something they could push a button and it would change. It was, okay, I'm gonna hit this and it's gonna be timed and someone presses play and pause and, you know, does the whole

Gene: 2:08:42

Yeah.

Ben: 2:08:43

But they, but yeah, they, they

Gene: 2:08:45

I remember one of the big,

Ben: 2:08:46

Special effect for the day.

Gene: 2:08:48

one of the biggest revolutionary special effects he type things when that show came out was blue LEDs. Like, that was the first time that anyone really saw blue LEDs. They didn't exist before. We had red and green and yellow, but we didn't have blue. Do you know that? Were you aware of that?

Ben: 2:09:08

No, I, I was not,

Gene: 2:09:09

Yeah. Blue LEDs were the last color l e d to prove, to be invented.

Ben: 2:09:14

I know they used neon on the tactical panel because they couldn't get fluorescence in there cuz it was too thin.

Gene: 2:09:20

Yeah. Yeah,

Ben: 2:09:21

And LEDs were not a viable technology at the time.

Gene: 2:09:24

No, no, no. They were, I mean, that was, that was exactly a timeframe when I was playing around with electronics a lot. And like I remember getting bicolor, LEDs was awesome. And then like, you know, blue was just unheard of it. It didn't exist. So very cool stuff.

Ben: 2:09:46

So,

Gene: 2:09:47

what,

Ben: 2:09:48

well, last topic,

Gene: 2:09:50

okay.

Ben: 2:09:51

I think it's hilarious the number of celebrities trying to now remove their blue check mark.

Gene: 2:09:57

really, I haven't been paying attention.

Ben: 2:09:59

Yeah, because it, this all started with

Gene: 2:10:02

Wait, I thought they, they, they, they want to remove or they're just saying, I'm not gonna pay.

Ben: 2:10:08

So Stephen King said that, hell, I'm not gonna pay, I'm not gonna do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then Musk paid for his check mark against his will, and he goes on Twitter and says, oh, he didn't pay for this. Why is this still here? And Musk just says, you're welcome, I'ma stay. Musk is an excellent troll dude. He really is.

Gene: 2:10:32

There's a few things he does well. There's a number of things he does well. He's pretty good at making rockets, pretty good at making cars. He's pretty good at making kids. Got like nine of'em. And he's pretty good at trolling. What do you mean theoretically?

Ben: 2:10:49

I mean, is most Kevin kids or is he just cloning himself?

Gene: 2:10:52

I'm, well, I think the, the mama babies think that being pregnant probably means that they're having kids, but maybe they're just implanting musk clones. That would be better for humanity, honestly, if he was cloning himself instead of just having rich little brats, that

Ben: 2:11:07

Well, and this is something that you have to consider and this is something that is very difficult for me to consider and face given myself. You always have the regression to towards the mean, right? So if you have two parents that have sub 100 iq,

Gene: 2:11:29

Well,

Ben: 2:11:29

odds

Gene: 2:11:30

I don't even wanna say what I'm thinking right now, but Go

Ben: 2:11:32

The odds are very high that their child is going to be smarter than them.

Gene: 2:11:37

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:11:38

If you have two parents that are very intelligent,

Gene: 2:11:41

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:11:42

you can generally take the average of their IQ between the two of them

Gene: 2:11:46

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:11:47

and remove about 10 points, and that's where the kid's IQ is going to be.

Gene: 2:11:50

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:11:51

Cuz you always have the regression to the mean

Gene: 2:11:53

Yeah.

Ben: 2:11:54

and someone with an abnormal IQ in either direction is an abnormality.

Gene: 2:12:02

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And

Ben: 2:12:06

It

Gene: 2:12:07

so it's better to clone is what your point is, I guess.

Ben: 2:12:10

I,

Gene: 2:12:10

I agree. I think we oughta do more cloning rather than having kids.

Ben: 2:12:14

yeah. Not what I said, but

Gene: 2:12:15

That's what I heard.

Ben: 2:12:17

Well, I'm just saying I have two kids and recognizing that they're not going to be me is something that I have to deal with and come to terms with.

Gene: 2:12:27

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if I win the lottery in the next decade here, I, I may just clone myself.

Ben: 2:12:36

Yeah.

Gene: 2:12:37

would be actually a better thing.

Ben: 2:12:40

Well then we'll really get to see the whole nature versus nurture debate to fall out.

Gene: 2:12:46

well, yeah, because I think this time round I would ensure that the kid actually goes and gets his PhD. That would be the, the difference between us. No, I, I don't know. It's an interesting question cuz obviously there is a biological benefit in genetic diversity, otherwise sex wouldn't exist. We

Ben: 2:13:06

Well,

Gene: 2:13:06

all simply, you know, go through mitosis.

Ben: 2:13:10

well, genetic diversity ensures survival of the species.

Gene: 2:13:14

Yeah, because your, your presumption is a certain percentage of the, of the kids will all be worse off than the previous generation. But there's this other portion which will be better off and that's the one that'll reproduce next time. So

Ben: 2:13:32

Well, and it prevents one disease from wiping out all of humanity.

Gene: 2:13:36

Right, exactly. Unless you're happened to have been born in, in north America and never had small px,

Ben: 2:13:44

Okay?

Gene: 2:13:45

cuz you know, small px, they wiped out a lot of Native Americans,

Ben: 2:13:51

But not all of

Gene: 2:13:52

not all of'em, but a, a very large number. It wiped out pretty much all the North Americans in Mexico.

Ben: 2:13:59

Okay? But not all of them.

Gene: 2:14:01

No, not, you know,

Ben: 2:14:02

Maybe 90%, but there was 10% that survived

Gene: 2:14:05

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 2:14:07

Versus if they all had the genetics and everything of the 90% they probably wouldn't have.

Gene: 2:14:12

and that is the biggest problem I think, with cloning is that the,

Ben: 2:14:17

Other than the moral issues,

Gene: 2:14:18

there's no moral issues with cloning. It's been solved. They've totally solved those problems, man. The

Ben: 2:14:24

who is they and how did they

Gene: 2:14:25

sci, the science is in trust. The science.

Ben: 2:14:28

Oh,

Gene: 2:14:29

the moral problems. The only issues there is with genetics.

Ben: 2:14:32

I'm gonna start calling you Fauci.

Gene: 2:14:35

Please. No,

Ben: 2:14:37

I get a wheeze?

Gene: 2:14:39

Probably if we keep talking much longer, you'll start getting some wheezes.

Ben: 2:14:43

All right,

Gene: 2:14:44

that guy is Dr. Death. I, I was just referred to him as Dr. Death.

Ben: 2:14:48

Yeah. Well, him well, the, there's a whole lot of people that just need to be, you know, I I I, I use the phrase drug out in the street and shot, and my wife can't stand it when I say that.

Gene: 2:15:02

Just say Tarn Feathered.

Ben: 2:15:04

are gonna start saying that. I'm like, well, maybe they need to, as long as they're using it about the right people, I might be okay with it.

Gene: 2:15:09

Yeah. But I think we do need to go back to doing some tarring and feathering, like, I think not enough is being done to humiliate people right now.

Ben: 2:15:18

Well, I, I think we're beyond the stage where we need to humiliate. I think we are at the point where we're rapidly approaching revolution, and,

Gene: 2:15:27

Well,

Ben: 2:15:27

know, I will, I will quote John F. Kennedy in saying that those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution

Gene: 2:15:36

Mm-hmm. That might be the first Democrat I vote for.

Ben: 2:15:39

I, I sent you his speech. I said that to you in the text.

Gene: 2:15:44

Yeah.

Ben: 2:15:44

Yeah. The R F K Jr. His announcement speech, dude, I, I, I, I, I will very highly likely, if he is still in it when the Texas primary comes around, I will likely vote as a, in the Democratic primary to vote for him.

Gene: 2:16:02

Yep. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Cuz I think that

Ben: 2:16:05

actually kind of torn between voting for him and the primary Irv of a, but you know, hey,

Gene: 2:16:11

Oh, that's true. Yeah. Cuz you can, you can't do both of'em unfortunately.

Ben: 2:16:14

no,

Gene: 2:16:15

I don't know why you can't. You should be able to. The primary is a weird thing cuz it's really a private sort of a voting thing.

Ben: 2:16:22

Don't get me started.

Gene: 2:16:24

what? On primaries. I didn't know you had an opinion on this.

Ben: 2:16:28

oh, dude. Primary should not exist.

Gene: 2:16:30

Yeah, I agree.

Ben: 2:16:31

Popular votes should not exist. The way they do that is not the way our constitution was written. In

Gene: 2:16:37

be done

Ben: 2:16:37

Constitution does leave it up to the states, which is fine, and states have decided to go down this path. But realistically the electoral colleges who defines who's president and how you select those electors is what should matter. And we shouldn't be voting for president. What we should be ca who should be campaigning is the electors and vote for me because I will choose the president based off of this. That's how our

Gene: 2:17:08

Right, right, right. I, you know, I agree with you, but I think it's a hard thing to sell to the average person because you're basically asking them to remove a right from themselves. But unfortunately,

Ben: 2:17:21

No, you're asking them to actually participate in a representative republic, which is what we're supposed to have. Not a democracy.

Gene: 2:17:29

Sure. But no one really cares. But yes

Ben: 2:17:31

I do. I

Gene: 2:17:32

unfortunately, because the women get the right to vote, the nature of elections shifted from being one about principles to one about feelings, and we've been paying the price ever

Ben: 2:17:48

got elected.

Gene: 2:17:49

Absolutely. How J F K got elected. Absolutely. How Barack Obama got elected. It's, it's the way a lot of people have gotten elected was because, not that they were necessarily the most qualified person for the job, but they checked off a box.

Ben: 2:18:06

So, question for you. Do you think Michelle's gonna run?

Gene: 2:18:10

I think it'd be hilarious if Michael runs.

Ben: 2:18:13

Yes.

Gene: 2:18:14

it'd be like

Ben: 2:18:15

I mean, given the topic of the show, it only makes sense.

Gene: 2:18:19

I don't think she's dumb enough to run, honestly. Why would she wanna work? They're millionaires now. They're set. They're kids. They're, they bought property in what's that little island? Martha's a vineyard. Now they have a house up there. Why would they wanna work? Why would she wanna work?

Ben: 2:18:34

Power,

Gene: 2:18:35

How much power do you really want? And what do you do with that power?

Ben: 2:18:40

Turn it into more millions by the play to pay the pay-to-play scheme that the Clintons than the Obamas now the bidens have used over the last few decades.

Gene: 2:18:52

I think that the, the Clinton, the thing is, if you want to get rich like the Clintons, you gotta be willing to play the death game.

Ben: 2:19:01

You have to have a a a a a kill list, huh?

Gene: 2:19:05

You have to have a certain moral code that, that allows you to assassinate people the way the Clintons have

Ben: 2:19:13

Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 2:19:15

allegedly.

Ben: 2:19:16

Which was funny that Darren gave up the, gave up the whole scheme for us on the na social.

Gene: 2:19:23

oh, what do you, what? Which one? What do you do?

Ben: 2:19:25

Well, why you didn't go to the Houston Meeta.

Gene: 2:19:28

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. There's a hit on,

Ben: 2:19:31

got, you got a heads up the, the joke.

Gene: 2:19:35

Yeah. I don't know how people always come up with these things that are totally not true. Now fir the first five comments I like, not, not one. One would be funny, right? But literally the first five people that replied back to me after the Starship blew up, was like, oh, now I know what you want. It's like, oh, what, how, how, how close did you end up having to get to it? Like everyone's insinuating something here. What? I'm, I'm just watching the damn event and everybody thinks I actually blew it up.

Ben: 2:20:02

Yeah. Well, you know, I work for a company and you, as you insinuate that I'm a fed

Gene: 2:20:08

You are a fed, that's why we can talk about all these things cuz we have safety

Ben: 2:20:14

yeah. I, I, I can 100%

Gene: 2:20:16

and speaking of feds,

Ben: 2:20:18

clearance. Never have, never will.

Gene: 2:20:20

that, that's what all the spice say. So,

Ben: 2:20:22

read the Snowden papers when they came out. What did you do?

Gene: 2:20:26

Were the Snowden's papers. Oh, I was vindicated by Snowden. This is all the shit I've been telling people for a long time and

Ben: 2:20:33

yeah. The at and t building. Yeah.

Gene: 2:20:34

like my, my dad and stuff, like, people just didn't believe this shit. It was like, yeah, okay. Like, how would you know? And the shit actually comes out. It's like, yeah, I know cuz I fucking work with this shit.

Ben: 2:20:44

Well, w what shocked me was that Snowden came out and said what we said in theory publicly, and there wasn't a revolution in this country.

Gene: 2:20:54

Totally, totally. I, yeah, the lack of, of pushback. So there's, there's a guy who I think I sent you a link to.

Ben: 2:21:03

Benny Johnson,

Gene: 2:21:05

what

Ben: 2:21:06

go ahead.

Gene: 2:21:07

who's Benny Johnson?

Ben: 2:21:09

Oh my God. Really?

Gene: 2:21:11

What am I think? No, who? Who's he?

Ben: 2:21:14

What's his name? Maybe it's not Benny Johnson, but it was the interstate leaker before Snowden.

Gene: 2:21:18

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, that's not the link I was talking about. No, I was watching an interview that,

Ben: 2:21:25

Oh yeah, the Lex Friedman podcast that you sent me, which I can't stand Lex, but I'm trying to listen to that one.

Gene: 2:21:30

so Lex has really kind of, I was a big fan of Lex when Lex was starting out. Nobody was watching him,

Ben: 2:21:39

But he, he tries to sound like I'm on NPR and welcome to the

Gene: 2:21:44

is one of the things I liked about what he was doing.

Ben: 2:21:46

I help you today? Jean, are you

Gene: 2:21:49

it, this has been my computer voice of preference for literally the last 30 years, ever since, you know, I wrote a in 1988, I, I wrote a program on the Mac that would talk to me.

Ben: 2:22:03

so one of the funny things about Picard, and really we can leave it at this, but so spoil a we're this far at the end of the show. I think that if you don't want to hear a spoiler around Picard, you can stop now. And if you don't I don't wanna hear it. But the enterprise D comes back in

Gene: 2:22:22

Okay.

Ben: 2:22:23

and they recreated the bridge, they recreated the set so well, and of course, you know, they had to use the same computer voice Problem is the actress who did that, which is Mrs. Roddenberry is dead,

Gene: 2:22:35

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:22:36

So when p. When Picard takes over command of the enterprise D again, it's it says Captain Picard instead of Admiral Picard. And they even make a joke of it in the show. I'll take the field, the motion, but the reason why it said Admiral is because they had to reuse or the reason why it said Captain instead of Admirals, cuz they had to reuse her voice.

Gene: 2:23:01

And they couldn't just fake it. Come on. How could they not fake her voice?

Ben: 2:23:05

They don't know. Apparently AI is not good enough that they didn't trust it, so they just reused it.

Gene: 2:23:10

I'm sure I could probably even just do a Google search and find that voice.

Ben: 2:23:13

I, I'm just telling you, dude, that's what they did and it was, it was awesome. It Season three is,

Gene: 2:23:19

all right. All right. Fine. I'll watch fucking season

Ben: 2:23:21

three is nothing but a fan jerk off of t n g.

Gene: 2:23:26

Wonderful. So the, my last comment on this whole thing that I started talking to before you switch topics to Star Trek on that Lex Friedman podcast, he interviews Andrew Bustamante, and I like Andrew. Andrew.

Ben: 2:23:43

You like fake spice.

Gene: 2:23:45

I like fake spies. Okay. I mean, he was at the CIA for a decade, but Sure. He's a fake spy.

Ben: 2:23:50

He's controlled opposition.

Gene: 2:23:52

He is. He is very articulate.

Ben: 2:23:56

He is,

Gene: 2:23:58

And he has a good sense of humor, which is the most important quality in the spy.

Ben: 2:24:02

he definitely says the quiet part out loud though.

Gene: 2:24:04

Oh, yeah. Yeah. He does. He does. But but I appreciate it. So you watched that whole episode.

Ben: 2:24:10

No, I haven't finished it, but I have started it.

Gene: 2:24:13

But it's pretty long. It's like a three hour long interview. But I love the way that he just sort of pats LS on the top of the head verbally,

Ben: 2:24:23

Yes,

Gene: 2:24:24

because Lex is a smart, I mean, Lex has got 160 iq. He's a smart dude, but

Ben: 2:24:29

You think he's that high

Gene: 2:24:31

Oh, he's talked about it. Yeah, he's very he's also a little Asperger ish.

Ben: 2:24:37

that he definitely is.

Gene: 2:24:38

down the spectrum for sure. But,

Ben: 2:24:41

And that, that's the thing. To have a high IQ and not be is kind of the unique

Gene: 2:24:46

that's kind of where I figure is like I'm, I had the magic spot there. I'm totally normal and yet I'm really smart.

Ben: 2:24:53

Yeah. Gene, no one who's actually normal would ever accuse you or I of being normal?

Gene: 2:25:00

Well, I think we're pretty damn normal as far as I'm concerned. But I don't see, that's the thing, like I'm normal enough not to take offense at being called normal

Ben: 2:25:10

yeah.

Gene: 2:25:11

because there are plenty of people that would be like, oh, I don't know. Don't call me normal. I'm not normal. I'm special. Ah, no, I did. If everybody

Ben: 2:25:20

I wouldn't say I'm special. I just despise what is considered normal

Gene: 2:25:23

if, if everyone was a clone of me, and that'd be normal, that'd be perfect.

Ben: 2:25:27

Yeah. I, I, I, okay. So what I

Gene: 2:25:30

You ever watched that movie, John Malkovich, or being John Malkovich?

Ben: 2:25:33

Yes.

Gene: 2:25:34

When I watched that, I was like, how do I do that? That would be so cool.

Ben: 2:25:38

So what I would say is I am not offended by being called normal, but I don't like what, what is meant by normal today?

Gene: 2:25:47

Dude, do you, do you dislike being cult cis though?

Ben: 2:25:51

Yes, because I don't think that cis needs to exist. I'm just a male. I'm not a cis male. I'm a male. There's no need for a modifier there.

Gene: 2:26:01

right. Well, and and that's kind of what I, when people have used that term with me and by people, usually girls, I date it because they're 20

Ben: 2:26:11

Yeah. Stop with the college girls,

Gene: 2:26:12

Yeah. Well, that's, Hey, not my fault. That's just who's available. And so when they use

Ben: 2:26:19

make some off recording comments.

Gene: 2:26:21

I bet you will. I, I just say, look what that, do you know what cis actually means? What the definition of it this is? Of course they don't, but listen, it just, it means normal. It means the standard. It means no deviation. So non deviant. So just when you think SISs. And you wanted to use that in front of something, just say normal. So when you say normal male, normal female, and, and it's really hard for them to do that because that to them sounds like they're now being anti all these things that they're supposedly for because then you, then you have the, you know, the trans male versus the normal male.

Ben: 2:27:02

Yeah. They

Gene: 2:27:03

you're saying that means trans is abnormal? Well, yeah. By definition it is.

Ben: 2:27:09

Gene, how in insensitive of you?

Gene: 2:27:13

I know, well, their parents didn't do a very good job of teaching them to deal with reality. So somebody has to,

Ben: 2:27:20

yeah, and that, that, that is one thing that I think we need more of is just let reality smack people in the face a little bit more.

Gene: 2:27:29

yeah. Yeah. We need we need some more people letting Karens just, you know, hit their head in the wall.

Ben: 2:27:36

Well, yeah, the, there, there's that old meme about you know, a teenager saying, oh, my life sucks, or whatever. And then the, the guy holding up his hand and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa. You have yet to feel the reality of life, you know,

Gene: 2:27:52

Yeah. And that it's,

Ben: 2:27:53

just wait.

Gene: 2:27:54

it's all relative. But I know during those teenage years, With the, the breadth of new experiences, new freedoms and hormones, all three of those hitting at the same time. It, it is, it feels a little overwhelming, but literally everybody went through it and yet somehow this generation can't

Ben: 2:28:18

let's say it a little bit differently. Every one of your ancestors successfully went through it. Why can't you?

Gene: 2:28:24

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, your ancestors somehow managed not to sterilize themselves. Shocker. And on that fun note, and we've been going for like two and a half hours, so we should probably

Ben: 2:28:38

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 2:28:40

You were very chatty today.

Ben: 2:28:42

I'm so sorry.

Gene: 2:28:44

Oh, it's all right.

Ben: 2:28:46

We'll talk to you later, gene.

Gene: 2:28:47

sounds good. We'll see you next week.