033 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:23

Howdy Ben. How are you today?

Ben: 0:25

I'm doing okay. Gene. How about yourself? I'm

Gene: 0:28

all right. A little a little sleepy. Got to sleep pretty late, but other than that, pretty

Ben: 0:34

good. Yeah. So me I've been having hell sleeping lately, man. I I separated my shoulder and it's not a bad separation, but. Dude, that, that hurts

Gene: 0:46

that meant to be

Ben: 0:47

separated, you know, yeah, no kidding. It's like, and it's on my right side and I normally sleep on my right side. So I have just, it's, it's been hard to do that. I don't know. I put in some overhead shelving in the garage. Cause I've got 10 foot ceilings in the garage, so taking advantage of some of that space. And the best thing I can think of is when I was lifting stuff up and putting it up overhead, I just. Did something wrong, exerted yourself

Gene: 1:15

a little too much?

Ben: 1:16

Well, just in a weird way, you know, anytime you're doing stuff overhead, you gotta be careful.

Gene: 1:22

And at which point did you know that you screwed it up? Well,

Ben: 1:26

I mean, my shoulders hurt, but nothing too bad. But the next day I woke up having slept on that shoulder and Oh man.

Gene: 1:34

Okay. Well, that's a good sign. If you didn't feel a jolt when you

Ben: 1:39

did, it's just a minor tear. It's a stage one separation,

Gene: 1:42

but it's still, yeah, that's not a separation. It's just there.

Ben: 1:46

Well, they call it a stage one separation, but you didn't pop it

Gene: 1:49

out of joint.

Ben: 1:49

This is my point. Well, no, no, no. So when the separation is between the collarbone and the actual joint. So when, when someone says they separated their shoulder, the separation is between where the collarbone meets the shoulder joint, there's that little tendon right there, that's, that's what they're talking about.

Gene: 2:08

Yeah. Okay. But. It's not a dislocation. Yeah, it's not a dislocation. Okay, I thought you were just using some southern colloquial term for dislocation.

Ben: 2:16

No, I'm using an actual medical term for

Gene: 2:19

an actual dislocation. I know, I just think so little of how you know vocabulary, I guess.

Ben: 2:24

Dude, I have one of the larger vocabularies of probably anyone

Gene: 2:28

you know. That's, that's what makes this hilarious. Hey, you thought I live in the one story house. I thought you don't know what words are, you know,

Ben: 2:36

you know, you and stairs just don't look like they go together. So it's

Gene: 2:39

okay. You and the words don't sound either,

Ben: 2:43

but they do anyway. So we missed last week's episode. Cause you got invited to a last minute brunch. We're going to do a show on the 4th of July.

Gene: 2:51

Well, okay. So I was too stupid to realize we were going to do a show on the 4th of July and didn't talk to you about, well, should we really do a show on the 4th of July and make a thing out of it? And then when I realized the 4th of July and somebody actually was willing to hang out with me, I was like, fuck yeah, screw that, I'm not doing a show. It's okay. Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm sure nobody noticed.

Ben: 3:14

Yeah, I'm sure CSP noticed. Ah, where are those old lazy Americans not working on holiday? Huh.

Gene: 3:22

I did, I did inform a bunch of my British and Australian video game friends. That you know, it was a, a major holiday that I was going to be gone doing stuff and it was the day that we kicked y'all out of this continent and they all had a good chuckle about that. It was like, yeah, see, now, now I see where you are.

Ben: 3:49

Yeah, exactly. Oh man. There was a meme going around, no gender social the other day. And it was it was a trans person and like a bikini sort of scenario. And it's, well, I missed that one. It's Christ sitting there next to it, smoking a joint going flooded again.

Gene: 4:07

Oh man. Yes, great smoking. Enjoy it. That's perfect. They're

Ben: 4:12

very sacrilegious, but you know, hey, there's humor in that. I mean, I think that's a, that's a good point of evolution when you can see something sacrilegious and not be worried about or offended by it, but just let it roll off your back and laugh at it and go, okay.

Gene: 4:29

Got it. Yeah, it's Oh, that's funny. Although the part with the trans person in the bikini, I could have certainly skipped. Yeah. So have you been paying, I'm tired the whole, sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, I'm getting, getting tired of the whole trance thing. It's like too much in the news

Ben: 4:48

for what should be a very teeny percentage of the population. Yes.

Gene: 4:53

Yeah. Yeah. Well that, and then, you know, there's plenty of people that have had reassignment surgery that just. Didn't do it in order to gain their 15 minutes of publicity either. So it's really a tiny percentage of a tiny percentage and yet it's dominating things.

Ben: 5:13

Indeed. And you know, it's I don't know that it's going to stop anytime soon. So I think we're heading for a pendulum swing, but I think we're still right there at the end of that arc where we're about to stall out for a little bit.

Gene: 5:29

Well, hopefully it's going to make a quick. Turn around rather than a stall, but I hear you. Well,

Ben: 5:36

you know, in any pendulum swing, there becomes that moment of equilibrium of forces where it literally stalls and then the other direction.

Gene: 5:45

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's the point where both sides can see things going the other side's way or their way, depending on if you're a pessimist or an optimist. But essentially you're right. It's like, it is an equilibrium, but everyone's getting some victories.

Ben: 6:03

Well, the forces are well matched is the point.

Gene: 6:06

Yeah. Well matched for the first time in a very long time.

Ben: 6:10

Yes. I think in the political arena, we're starting to see a lot of that. I think we're seeing, you know, DeSantis has gone through and really, I mean, DeSantis is trying to beat Trump from the right, which I don't think he's going to do. I think DeSantis has made some major mistakes, but especially attacking, attacking Trump's stance on, you know, including lesbian and gays and so on in the platform of 2016, which. You know, I personally don't necessarily have a problem with I think if you go back to 2016 and what was being talked about then and what was going on then, or what was at least fairly well known it was not what it is today. So I don't think that's a fair comparison, but

Gene: 6:59

the problem is that it's the same flag. So Santa's politically doing the right thing, which is tarnishing everybody with the same brush. As the people that are currently creating the most negative publicity out there.

Ben: 7:14

Yeah, I, I agree. And I think it is okay to go after and say, Hey, if you, you need, if you were on the spectrum of LGBTQ, whatever, and you don't support the grooming of children or the sexual re education of children, you need to

Gene: 7:32

say something. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cause otherwise it's like, if you don't speak against it, you're sort of condoning it. But also I think that it's, it's going to happen and it's probably going to be more appropriately happening from people that are self identifying as LGBT, but. I think the the LGBs need to cut a line between themselves and the T's,

Ben: 8:02

Because Well, I mean, I think that the T's are very fractionist in and of themselves, right? You've got non binary, you've got all these that shouldn't be considered trans, but if you ask a leftist, you know, I'm trans non binary, I'm this and I'm that.

Gene: 8:20

So I remember when I was in college a long time ago in the galaxy far away the The gay group on campus was just GLB. First of all, that's the other thing that I, I'm old enough to remember and, and notice that I, I've asked a couple of gay people about it, and then they all remember, but no one seems to know why. How did they, the L and the G flip? Cause the gays started all of the sort of protests and groups and everything else. And then the lesbians were sort of there as well. And then somehow when sort of normalization of homosexuality happened in the late nineties, early two thousands, the the Ls. Got first dibs, they got the first billing and said, this was never LGB. It was GLB and I'm sure you've never heard of GLB, right? Yeah, I had, but

Ben: 9:20

you have to remember I had Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. I had some family stuff there. So yeah,

Gene: 9:25

you had you were catering to that particular crowd in your family. I

Ben: 9:29

was not. Well, not you, but so a relative was, you don't know my uncle in the shit, when did he open that? Mm-hmm. late eighties, early nineties. He opened the COPA in Beaumont as a gay nightclub, so mm-hmm.

Gene: 9:46

for, for a financial reason. I don't know. He was

Ben: 9:49

gay, oh, okay. There's that too. Yeah.

Gene: 9:50

I mean, honestly, I think it, it is a good financial reason because one of the factors, especially with gay dudes was dual income, no kids. Back in the day, now they've got a lot of them have kids, but, and, and there's actually gay couples where, you know, one of them stays home with the kids, but back in the 70s, 80s, there's a lot of gay guys with dual income and no kids, like, dude, that's a great demographic to sell to.

Ben: 10:19

Yeah, and you know, so the, the dink population in my generation has grown well beyond the gay community. Like I have peers of mine who talk about living that lifestyle and everything else. And that's a good point. So maybe they're all secretly gay. No, no, no, no, no. Trust me. I can think of this one couple right now. And quite frankly, they're finally getting older and. They're at the point now where they want to have kids. Well, she's 36. Yeah, that's old. It's not too old, but I think over 24 is probably too old. I mean, my mom had me at 40. That's too old. Yeah. But

Gene: 11:06

look how I turned out. Exactly. There's my point.

Ben: 11:10

Anyway. Set yourself up on that one. Yeah. No, I was kidding. Like, I haven't done that a thousand times before. I know. Yeah. No, it's, so yeah, there was definitely a financial incentive, but there was a lot of incentive there and, you know, that club stayed open for years and years and years. Yeah. Yeah, but regardless, I think we're at a pendulum swing. I think they're going to start going back the other direction. Yeah. I think some legislation we've seen is less relevant than a lot of the cultural things that we've seen. You know, people talk about the Florida, don't say gay bill. We see all this, but when you see. The amount of people showing up with pick pitchforks at school board meetings and really starting to make us think of this and you can go online and just see this growing trend or it's just building and building and building. I think we're headed that way.

Gene: 12:06

Yeah. And tolerance has limits, you know, if. If people tolerated absolutely everything, there would be no concept of tolerance to begin with because it would not need to exist. So if 100% of the population is okay with anything.

Ben: 12:24

Let's be honest, there are things that are intolerable.

Gene: 12:30

Well, and I think people are starting to realize that

Ben: 12:33

well, so there are things that this is something I think that a lot of people sit there and don't understand people say, oh, violence is never the answer. You should never engage in violence. No, you push someone to the point where they've tried to reason with you. They've tried to beg you. They've tried to say whatever and say, stop this intolerable behavior. And for different people, that's going to be different things, but whatever it is, at some point, if you do not stop and you keep pushing that individual or that group. They're going to become violent because you have given them no other choice because when something is truly intolerable There you go. Absolutely and violence underlies all Human in our governments. Oh, no all of the human interactions even you and I Ultimately you and I can joke around we can do whatever we can push each other a little bit But ultimately we know if we push either one of us too far violence is a possible outcome Yeah, and that's just the reality.

Gene: 13:33

Yeah. Yeah, and the violence can take many different shapes Agreed. So that's true. Well, speaking of DeSantis, you sent me something that I figured we should chat about the swamp.

Ben: 13:44

This the sanctimonious de

Gene: 13:47

sancti. I just, I don't or whatever. Anyway, so you sent the article and agreeing with it with its sentiment, which is. Florida's gotten well, I

Ben: 13:59

didn't necessarily agree with the article. I will clarify here. It was an article from our Vermont newspaper and basically the new Florida law that's going through will say that several states that are issuing driver's license to illegals are not valid driver's license in the state of Florida. And,

Gene: 14:21

when I read the bill the impression that I think it tries to convey because it has a pre, prelude, preface, whatever, like it's got a couple of paragraphs at the beginning of the bill that aren't the actual bill, but explain why the rationale for the bill exists. Yeah. Is which, by the way, is unusual because most laws that are, and our

Ben: 14:43

preamble would be,

Gene: 14:44

yeah, when I read most of the bills, they do not contain it. They just go right to it. These words will be replaced by these words. Well, the story we so in order to form a more perfect union, right? Why justify it? It should be self obvious.

Ben: 15:01

Just stating a famous preamble. So

Gene: 15:02

I don't know. The, the point of the bill is that Florida uses, well, first of all, Florida issues, driver's licenses with a requirement for proof of citizenship, as do many other States, including Texas. When you get a Texas driver's license for the first time, not a renewal, but for the first time, including if you're an adult and you move to Texas, like I did, they require that you provide a birth certificate or a passport. In order to yeah,

Ben: 15:37

if you have a birth

Gene: 15:38

certificate. Well, then you have a passport. I mean, if you don't have, you have neither, then you shouldn't get a driver's license.

Ben: 15:45

So pro tip for anyone who is thinking about not giving their kids a birth certificate or passport, I ultimately decided to do it because of a, my wife. And then B just, I didn't know. I didn't want to obligate my child to uphold my political beliefs, but it was a really tough decision. Well,

Gene: 16:05

how the hell is a passport obligate your kid to apply

Ben: 16:08

a birth certificate and social security number? But you can go to the state department and issue, get a passport issued off of family records, family Bible, those sorts of things. In fact. Without a certificate of marriage, one of the ways to go through and change a name. If you know, your wife wants to take your name and you don't have a marriage licenses to go to the state department, get a passport issued with the new name and then take it to wherever. Well,

Gene: 16:36

what's to stop somebody coming across the border from using that law.

Ben: 16:40

No, we do not need to keep vital statistics on our population. We do not need to track every birth, it is morally

Gene: 16:47

repugnant. We only need to track the births of citizens. Oh,

Ben: 16:52

jeez.

Gene: 16:53

Anyway. If you choose to not have a child who's a citizen, then by all means, don't track the

Ben: 16:57

business of the government when I have a child or not.

Gene: 17:01

It is, well, if that child votes, then it is the business of the government. And I'm okay with you Okay, later, 18 years later. I'm okay with, with you choosing for your kid not to vote. That's fine. That's your prerogative.

Ben: 17:16

So this is the old Soviet influence. You know, it's like, it's like registering guns. This is the Roman, not the Soviet influence.

Gene: 17:24

No, you don't need to register guns. That's a, that's a God given right. But. As

Ben: 17:29

far as existence, existence of compliant, it does not,

Gene: 17:32

As far as being a citizen of a country that that is not a God given, right? That is not something that everybody automatically gets. And you know, I'm on record saying that I don't think citizenship should be granted simply

Ben: 17:46

by birth. Well, this idea of naturalization, um mm-hmm. you know, is fairly new. Um mm-hmm. If you were to walk across a border in the past and go to a settlement and get a job and start working in that area, you would have been a citizen of that area.

Gene: 18:07

Not in China. And sure as hell not in Qatar. I'm talking about Western

Ben: 18:10

culture. I'm talking about Western culture. I'm talking about ancient Europe. I'm talking about lots of things. Now in Europe, there's a little bit more tribal and linguistic divisions than there are here. But

Gene: 18:23

yeah, for the size of landmass Europe had managed to create, so there are many languages. It's beyond dialects, actual languages. But I think that also goes to the fact that, that European areas, which eventually became countries were much more isolated than areas in other parts of the world. To a very large extent. They didn't intermingle as much.

Ben: 18:48

Well, I mean, Southeast Asia is the same way. It's really just the United States that's different. Well, I,

Gene: 18:57

well, it was Southeast Asia. I think on the coasts. Yeah. I think that's absolutely the case. But I think in the, the general Mongolian Chinese area there were many fewer languages. I hate saying many in front of saying fewer. So there were greatly fewer. There were

Ben: 19:18

fewer people because of the desert and because of, you know,

Gene: 19:23

geography than Europe a thousand years ago. I don't think so. I mean, they. They built the Great Wall of China when Europe's population was very small. Hmm, okay. I'm not, I don't think either one of us is an expert in this particular area, but... No, you're going a

Ben: 19:39

little far back than where I want to be on history, but yeah. Regardless, the point is, most, most areas fracture into much smaller subgroups. The United States has maintained... Control over a way too big of a land mass and quite frankly, way too many people without enough representation per populace.

Gene: 20:00

Yeah, which is certainly an argument for the state government being the more powerful of the

Ben: 20:05

government. Well, state and local more representative. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting two points real quick. So 1 on the. The fusion of peoples and how that has ethnically happened over the millennia, you know, the Russians and the Chinese have, there's talk about them developing bioweapons that target certain ethnic groups, right? You mean

Gene: 20:32

Americans? Yes.

Ben: 20:33

Well, how can you target Americans? No, no, no. I mean,

Gene: 20:37

Americans creating the bioweapons, yeah.

Ben: 20:39

But we would be targeting ourselves as well. There is no way to distinguish. There's no American genetic line. There is a Russian genetic line. a Han

Gene: 20:48

Chinese. Right. So if you lose 10% of Americans, but you lose 90% of the Russians that are Chinese, then that's okay.

Ben: 20:59

That would be incredibly, but

Gene: 21:02

sure, well, from a you know, victory at all costs standpoint, that's a small price to pay. So you just lose the percentage of the population in your own country. That is genetically similar to the target.

Ben: 21:18

Yeah, but my point is, you don't know what extent that is. I guess with 23andMe and everything, they could be getting some pretty good sample data. Huh. Huh.

Gene: 21:29

Exactly. Don't give

Ben: 21:31

your DNA to the government, folks.

Gene: 21:34

Too late. Not for me. I think most people have, whether they know it or not.

Ben: 21:39

How well. The old Simpsons episode, why do you think we keep pennies in circulation?

Gene: 21:43

Exactly. The Simpsons have tapped into the, political mind. I think a long time ago. Yeah. There's a, you know, they're woke, but it's like, yeah, totally woke, but like there's little bits and pieces here and there's like, what, 20 years ago, you guys said that as holy shit,

Ben: 22:00

Dude, that had to be in the early two thousands that that episode came out about tracking down someone based off of their DNA. How'd you get the DNA pennies? Why do you think we keep them in circulation?

Gene: 22:10

This is why I haven't touched money in over 20 years.

Ben: 22:13

Just submitted to another type of tracking. Mm hmm.

Gene: 22:17

All right. In the article, he talks about this horrible, horrible law. And you know, you sent it to me and said, well, would you think this? I said, well, I think it makes total sense to me. I think that if your state requirements for driver's licenses, you're basically providing that service of the ability to drive on roads that the state puts money into as a, a right for citizens. Not for people that are in this country illegally. And you know, that there are a number of States, California being probably the biggest one, which has a a policy of issuing driver's licensing literally to everyone, regardless of their citizenship status and it benefits California in a number of different ways, then why would you accept the California driver's license with any kind of reciprocity? I don't think you should. Because the, there is not a reciprocity for things that are not like, and in this case, there's too much of a difference between what a driver's license means in California and what a driver's license means in Texas. And incidentally, California doesn't just issue one type of license, they have several types of licenses. Which normal U. S. citizens would get, which can be used as your as your identification for an airplane. And then they have another type, which is issued to literally anybody that asks for it which cannot be used for TSA identification purposes. And that is by, in the law, by name, the type of driver's license from these several states, which shall not be recognized as a legitimate driver's license. Yeah, so what they're saying is if you can't use it for boarding a plane, you can't use it for driving in Florida.

Ben: 24:14

Yeah, and I, I, I have a problem with this from an article 4 standpoint of the constitution where, you know, there requires recognition and reciprocity of of documents from other states. So I, in principle, I get where it's coming from. I don't necessarily disagree with it on the principle of what they're trying to do. Mm hmm. But quite frankly, I would love to see this go to the Supreme Court in Florida lose, you know why? Okay, go ahead. Because then that would be a great and excellent case to say, hey, we're going to force reciprocity for license to carry across states.

Gene: 24:58

Yeah, I disagree with that. I don't think there should be reciprocity for license to carry from states. I think we need to have a clarification by the Supreme Court. Of the fact that there

Ben: 25:09

can not be

Gene: 25:11

any restriction on the right to carry,

Ben: 25:13

period. 100%. I'm talking about a step along the way. My entire point is these liberal states are now up in arms saying, How dare you not recognize our driver's license? Right. I would turn that around and go, How dare you not recognize our license to carry?

Gene: 25:28

And they should. They should totally say that. I think that's fully appropriate, but... I think that just because you call something the same name, if in principle, these are completely different things than the right to reciprocity. It loses on its

Ben: 25:48

face, so there are several differences between the states on how you get a driver's license. For instance, when I was getting my driver's license in Idaho and I look at how students had to go through and get their driver's license here in Texas, it's a dramatically different process. Oh, yeah, well, they

Gene: 26:06

did in Texas.

Ben: 26:08

Well, so in Idaho, I got my driver's license, a driver's license, not a permit, a driver's license at 14 because I had a hardship license because we lived outside of town and I drove myself to school. You know, A, there's that, been driving a while. Like my I don't

Gene: 26:23

think you should have been allowed to drive in other states at 14.

Ben: 26:27

Okay, well, I

Gene: 26:28

was. Yeah, I'm not sure you were. I think that I 100%

Ben: 26:32

was. Because it was a license and not a permit.

Gene: 26:36

Yeah, that's fine, but it was not a standard license. It was a hardship license.

Ben: 26:42

It was a standard license issued due to hardship. So it was the same class and everything as a normal 16 year old driver's license.

Gene: 26:51

So let me ask you this. A lot of people when they get a DWI, they lose their, their license. They can't drive anymore, but they can usually get a work only license, occupational license. So do you think somebody with occupational license can drive in all 50 states? Yes. No, no. That is issued by the state. And I have, I have seen court laws with that in mind that is a special case license issued by the state and is not part of the reciprocity. They're talking about the majority population, general license here. And California has chosen to use the word license driver's license for political reasons, I I'm going to assume because they're issuing it literally to anyone that asks for it because you know, that that's their political biases to be a sanctuary state. People do not need to have any proof of residence citizenship. Or anything else in order to get services in California. It's one of those states going bankrupt.

Ben: 28:01

You know, it's interesting because not everyone who goes through a DWI in Texas, which is some of the strictest, strictest DWI laws out there loses their license necessarily. That's actually a separate DPS. Really? That's interesting. My, it is not actually connected to the DWI case, so you can be found guilty of a DWI and still have your driver's

Gene: 28:24

license. Interesting. Yeah, I just always assumed that was... Combined. My my brother-in-law had lost his he had a dwi, so he lost his license for like a year. Shit, dude, I lost my driver's license for a month for speeding too many times in a short period of time for literally just exercising my car. And that's a God given, right? Mm-hmm.

Ben: 28:47

Uhhuh, So a little earlier, I so what else do we

Gene: 28:51

wanna talk on this? I don't know, we can, we're, I think we're done with this. I'm just saying that in, in my read of the law, as it's stated, and my understanding of the reciprocity process between the states, I think this is fine. Although I'm sure it will be challenged because there are plenty of people upset about it, but you know, my example that I used was and I hope you appreciated the example, was that, so if a Thank you. If a slave escapes using the underground railroad to the north. That was a bad example. That was a great example. To the north. And then while living in the north post escape gets a driver's license to drive a horse and buggy do you think that that, that same driver's license from these northern states should be valid when that person goes back south? And then buys a house, decides to live in the South and then gets to vote.

Ben: 29:48

Number one, I'm not pro slavery, so there's that. No one's saying

Gene: 29:53

you're pro slavery. Number

Ben: 29:54

two, part of the problem, and this is part of my argument last night is, this is evidence of us heading towards civil war, this time a true civil war, is because that there was not reciprocity in enforcement of laws such as Fugitive Slave Act. Yeah,

Gene: 30:11

exactly. Yeah, because the North Northern states passed laws effectively saying, Hey, once somebody's here, they're no longer a slave automatically. And that's not how the states agreed to be in the union.

Ben: 30:26

So you're making my point for me. How am I making your point for you because the states did not agree to be in the union where their laws would not be respected and documentation of, in this case, historically property rights are being violated, which we can debate the morality of it, but we're using an extreme example to show, you know,

Gene: 30:48

reciprocity of document. Yeah, but that is literally Florida's point. Is that California is demonstrating the exact same thing that

Ben: 30:56

California can make the exact same point saying, well, we have this document that we have said we will issue and you have in the constitution said you will respect it, but you're not.

Gene: 31:05

No, it does not say you will respect every document of every state in the constitution. It says that like documents and the word like is in there will be respect with reciprocity and again, just because you have a document with the same name. If you actually read the document and you, you see what the what, I don't want to say definition of it is, but essentially what it entails, it is pretty obvious that the word driver's license in California does not mean driver's license in Texas or Florida. And, and that is the same thing as the Northern state having laws that effectively state. Yeah, go

Ben: 31:45

ahead. Article four, section one, full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts. Records and judicial proceedings of every other state. Done. So that is the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed period. There is no but. So the acts, records, and public judicial proceedings. So records, driver's license is a record. Keep reading. This, the next sentence is about Congress passing laws and manner such and

Gene: 32:17

that. Okay, okay. Reread that first sentence again. Reread that first sentence.

Ben: 32:20

Full faith and credit shall be given, not will, not maybe, shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. Period. That means you're married in Texas, you're married in California. No, I don't think it means that at all. It does. No. In fact, this came Not if you're married. This came up with gay marriage back in the day. This came up with gay marriage. That was a bad ruling. And if you were married in a state where it was legal No, it isn't. It is constitutional law. It is my entire point. No.

Gene: 32:53

No, I think that's a bad ruling if there was one and that is not It's

Ben: 32:56

not a ruling. It's Article 4, Section 1 of the Constitution.

Gene: 33:01

Marriage is a perfect example of this. Yes. If I get married to

Ben: 33:04

what if Union, I married in California, what if married, come to Texas? Texas has to legally recognize that union. Yeah, no it doesn't. Yes it does.

Gene: 33:11

Absolutely not. Nope. Does not. Then

Ben: 33:14

we are no longer in California passes law. We're no longer a federation and we need to be disbanded and I'm that because section one, for that Section

Gene: 33:23

one California four clearly states law, which is very likely to pass. That lowers the age of consent. To 11 years old every other state has to recognize pedophiles is not being guilty of anything at all. No.

Ben: 33:37

What if yeah, go ahead that would depend on a great many things So there are items on the books still here in the south because people would get married before the quote unquote age of majority quite often and you can still do that to this day with parental consent and that so You know, I think if California dropped the age of consent to 11 and there was a 40 year old guy who married an 11 year old girl and moved to Texas. Yeah, unfortunately, I think the state would have to recognize that. Sure,

Gene: 34:14

they could recognize it and put him in

Ben: 34:15

jail at the same time. That, that's why this should not be, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. It never was meant to be. This nation was founded July 4th. This nation was founded on secession. And the answer to this is when the, when we can no longer abide by Article 1, or Article 4, Section 1 of the Constitution, because we are diametrically opposed in our belief systems and what we think is right. Then we shouldn't be one nation and we should break apart. That's the answer.

Gene: 34:53

No, I think that is the answer. I didn't throw the word heading towards, and I think it's, it's clearly every since we certainly, since we've been started doing the podcast, but even when it was still under Sir, Jane, but I think even before that I keep waiting for there to be a reversal direction on that count. Like, is it more or less likely that there will be a breakup of the United States and every month I have to think, yep, I think we're getting closer to it. Literally every month closer than the previous month. Well,

Ben: 35:29

that's like saying every day we're closer to the end of the world. Is that true? By logic, it is true, but that doesn't

Gene: 35:38

mean I like certain things that can't be argued against. Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 35:43

Makes me right. Anyway, I, I, I, the entire point here is I think that is a. slippery slope that could be used to our advantage. But if you start going down the path of states passing egregious laws that other states do not want to uphold or morally think that they can't, I think the driver's license issue is just a bridge to those topics. But I

Gene: 36:10

think it is, and I

Ben: 36:11

don't think it's reasonable if you see a maps acceptance when they're attracted person's acceptance in California and you see that become normalized there. I think that's a bridge too far for the other states to do. While I think constitutionally and legally they should be required to do it based off of the constitution. I think the answer then is to say, well, we're done with this. Quite frankly, again, I'll say it again, the Constitution was not meant to be a suicide pact. We have the right to secede. The right to secession is a constitutional right.

Gene: 36:47

The, the problem is that when the Supreme Court can disagree with me all day long, when the south lost to the north, I think that's where the, the right to secession flew out the window.

Ben: 36:58

Yeah. Go. Reed was Davis a trader and did the right to secession Exists before reconstruction and the answer is yes. The interesting thing is they never tried Jefferson Davis for treason and was Davis's trader was the lawyer who is preparing to defend him against that treason case and he turned his narrative and his evidence into a book and it's extremely well written and extremely well thought out legal arguments that unfortunately the Supreme Court and or Congress never got to hear so yeah,

Gene: 37:31

yeah and I

Ben: 37:33

think a lot of people are, Tim is fond of quoting Grant on this, but Grant is a war criminal and a drunken bastard. There's no such thing as a war criminal. And quite frankly, John Wilkes Booth's accomplice should have taken him out too. Alright, there

Gene: 37:51

you go. You keep your Southern bona fide sin. Yeah, the term war criminal is just asinine. There's no such thing. I, I'm just, it's a pet peeve. It always just. Strikes me very odd when people use words like that, war criminal, it's like war by definition is the displacement of civil laws with ultimately are, are most based in primitive actions, which is to go into physical combat. So there's no such thing as a war crime. It's, this is not boxing, this is not something that has rules that govern the the way that you carry out the execution of the other side. That is asinine. So every time I hear it, it's, and I know I'm a minority in this opinion, but it just strikes me as ridiculous because when you've gotten to the point where you accept war as a normal course of events that you can structure rules around it, it is no longer a war. It is you sitting in the Coliseum. Deciding on whose bloody actions get to be punished and whose don't. And that is just bullshit.

Ben: 39:08

Yeah. Well, to the victors go the history. Anyway, there, there's definitely this idea that if you can accomplish it through force, then. You know, rights be to the victor, but I think that there are morals and there are things that you should and shouldn't do in a war. I think that you can commit immoral acts during a war versus fighting a war honorably. I think those are two different things. I would

Gene: 39:34

agree with that. I think that there, there is a, a spin that you can put on all war actions to justify the rationale for you doing what you're doing. But I also think Genghis Khan was equally as able to create justifications for conquering all of the East and including Eastern Europe. And at this point, I, I, this is a factoid, so it could be totally off, but something to the effect where roughly 70% of European populations. Have genes from Genus Khan's relatives. Mm-hmm. it's a lot raping and pills. It's a ridiculously high number. It's well over 50% and it's a small percentage of the genetic overall pool, but it's something that virtually every European has. I do. I've got those genes. You know, how do know my, my relative you know, great man. No, it, it is, it is funny, but it's like, the point of going to war is to win. It is not to follow some set of rules.

Ben: 40:41

Yeah. I think that if you are fighting for freedom and principled, if you're fighting a principled fight and you mimic your enemy to an extent, then become that which you wish to be free from. So you, there's a problem.

Gene: 40:58

Yeah. You're, you're a, you're a fan of apocalypse now. I'm sorry, you're a fan of apocalypse now, I gather,

Ben: 41:07

I've seen the movie like once a long time. Oh, why?

Gene: 41:11

Oh, okay. Well, that's kind of the central core theme of that is that you, you know, you, you become that, which you fight against.

Ben: 41:21

Yeah, it's also the theme of, you know, music and poetry and lots of, lots of star Trek and everything else. So

Gene: 41:29

what's your point? I haven't read that one,

Ben: 41:31

which by the way, I've been going back and watching the original series. While I wait on new episodes of strange new worlds.

Gene: 41:39

Yeah. So let's, let's for topics. They kind of lost me. I watched the first few episodes and it was all chick drama. It was like, there's no action. It's, it's basically them doing a pro trans. Arguments in court disagree with you on this one. Okay, well, what's your take?

Ben: 41:59

So you're saying the Illyrian trial is a trans

Gene: 42:02

hell. Yeah, it's, it's trans rights. No, it's not. Okay.

Ben: 42:07

So the, in this spoiler alerts and I'm not too worried about spoilers. So if you are, you know, fast forward a little bit. So the broken circle, which was episode one Is that was just a crap episode. It wasn't that great. But it was setting up for episode three and I'll get to that in a second. Add so episode two at Astra where number one is on trial for being an augment, which we saw something very similar in DS nine on Bashir. So something very, very similar to play so this

Gene: 42:46

is why con ended up. Getting to be a bad guy.

Ben: 42:50

Yeah. So here's what you have to understand. The first three, the first two episodes set up episode three.

Gene: 42:56

Okay. And there's action in episode

Ben: 42:58

three. There's quite a bit of action in episode. Okay. Well, it's all tied into the storyline and the reason why it was female led and it was all about augmentation and everything else is on, on or on strange worlds. One of the officers is last name is. Union song after con right, con is in her ancestry. Well,

Gene: 43:22

well, it can be in her ancestry because he may be older than her, but not by much because when we meet con in the original. He's not that old and the original happens after

Ben: 43:37

con was in cryo sleep and he had in the okay, you are missing a huge set of Star Trek timeline here, my friend, but I'm not going to nerd out too much on you. But in the original series, when they met con, he had it. Fled earth after the, the eugenics wars of the 1990s. So he was from the 1990s and there in 21, whatever it is. So yes, he, I

Gene: 44:05

definitely not remember that. Okay.

Ben: 44:08

100% space seed. Great episode. You're talking to someone who knows if you've

Gene: 44:14

watched this recently, but I'm sure, you know, I, I don't think I've seen that episode for. Very long

Ben: 44:18

time, but anyway, in episode three they go through and correct some timelines and change things and they give a reason why the eugenics war hasn't happened yet in the real world.

Gene: 44:30

For fuck's sake, they're getting into the time travel thing. Yes.

Ben: 44:33

Oh my God. But it's a, it's a good episode.

Gene: 44:37

This was, this was the biggest problem that I had with Enterprise. Is the reliance on a very

Ben: 44:44

bad writing style. So what they did in episode three, one, they set up some long term story arcs and I'm not going to give away too much, but they set up some long term story arcs that will be interesting to follow some threads that they can follow. And two, they took Canon, Star Trek Canon that's existed since the sixties and moved the timeline of when the eugenics war was going to happen because of. Enemy activity and they touch on the temporal war, but I don't think they're going to delve deep into that at all. Yeah. I think it was just a, okay, let's, let's open up some story points. Let's correct this. Let's say why con, you know, hasn't emerged yet and so on and making this epitomal pivotal point in history, that sort of thing. So timeline.

Gene: 45:29

Great. Yeah. There's only one TV show that's done justice to a temporal war, in my opinion, that's Dr. Who. Oh yeah. Everything else just. Cannot deal with time travel,

Ben: 45:40

but that's because the entire premise of the show is time travel, right? So it's it's just in line. It's not it's not a MacGuffin to go do something, right?

Gene: 45:51

Exactly, and it is a MacGuffin for most other things

Ben: 45:55

Agreed and that's totally what this is here, but it a has some action and be some interesting plot twists and you know, you can say that this is also a female forward episode in some ways, but it had to be her because her last name is song, right?

Gene: 46:13

Which is Ellie. I really liked that actress. Like I'm a fan of her. So I, I like the damaged strong woman characters. I just don't like the you know, perfect with no flaws strong female characters.

Ben: 46:28

Yeah. And you know what? So in episode four Ortega has a. A little bit of a, Oh, I'm going to save the ship moment. But really it is totally episode four is totally folk. The main plot line is on Pike and is very good. So I think you ought to give it another, all right, I'll watch

Gene: 46:50

the third one. But after watching the first two, I was like, Oh God, this is what they've decided to do. Jesus. Yeah,

Ben: 46:58

so the first one I thought was just too disjointed, but after seeing through the first three episodes, that's a story arc. The first three episodes are a, they are elements together and they have to be taken together for them to make complete and total sense. Mm hmm. Mm

Gene: 47:16

hmm. All right. Fair enough. That's,

Ben: 47:18

anyway, the, the on the Illurian trial, I, I can get what you're coming from because, oh, it's just who she is and she can't help it and that sort of thing. But at the same time, they are talking about genetic modification. They are talking about things that are baser than psychological issues. And quite frankly, the way they resolve it is not Just pure acceptance, and this goes through all the way to DS9 and Bashir and, you know, hey, augments are not okay, and they make an exception for her under an asylum clause. Right. Yeah. So it's not, I mean, even if you take it as this is the trans movement, this is trying to normalize it and make it okay. Well, in the end they didn't. She's a queer white is what you're saying. Exactly. The exception that proves the

Gene: 48:08

rule. The one, the one transsexual that, that we're okay with. Yes. Yeah. And, and also I'm also a fan of what's her name Ramin Gad, what's her first name? The chick. I have no idea who you're talking about. The chick that you're literally talking about. The actress. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Ben: 48:25

That plays

Gene: 48:26

Uma. Yeah, Rebecca Rameen. Yeah. I'm a big fan of hers. She was one of those drop dead gorgeous tall models that actually had a brain and a good sense of humor. And I was very saddened that like she was not getting into as many movie parts as she should have probably.

Ben: 48:45

Well, maybe you know, maybe this will lead to some 10 years to

Gene: 48:49

play that part right now.

Ben: 48:51

No, I disagree. I mean, have did you see the actress that played you know, in the menagerie, the, the original. Star Trek pilot with Pike and all that. Yeah. Yeah. She's right in line.

Gene: 49:04

I, I think in actual age, she's probably quite a bit older. I think women aged much faster back then. So you could have a 40 year old that looked like a 60 year old today. Well, how

Ben: 49:15

old is she? She's about 60.

Gene: 49:19

60. She's 50. Nah, I

Ben: 49:22

think she's about 60. 1972. 1972. Really? I'm looking

Gene: 49:26

it up, man. Okay. I didn't think she was that

Ben: 49:28

young. I didn't think she was that old. Yeah.

Gene: 49:31

Well, she was a model to be fair, but I, I really, yeah, I would've put her in like a model in the early 80s. Or maybe late eighties, probably late eighties when I remember seeing her as a

Ben: 49:42

model. Yeah, so 50 is a little bit old. She's 5'11 dude. She's taller than me. She is very tall. Yeah. And I would have put her, I would have put her in

Gene: 49:49

her forties. Yeah. And I think that's, that was what the, this was cast for. And she managed to get in there. Maybe she's a huge Star Trek fan and you know, sometimes the, the super fans have an advantage because they can really get into the lore and impress the producers to get hired. I mean, that would actually make her even hotter if she wasn't into Star Trek before being in Star Trek. It's always sad and this is irrational as hell, but it's always sad for me to hear somebody who I thought did a great job acting something and you're watching an interview with them and they're like, yeah, I'd never read the Lord of the Rings so it was a brand new experience for me. It's like, oh my God,

Ben: 50:30

really? Yeah. And you acted this well? The episode, hmm. I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well,

Gene: 50:40

you've, you've talked me into continuing on with that subject because I really thought like season one, the first episode was absolutely killer. It was like, holy shit, they're back to the original.

Ben: 50:51

Well, and I really think in episode four, they're very much back to a TOS style thing. So what I think they're going to start doing is because, you know, modern storytelling has a lot more long plot arcs. Yep. What I see them doing is. With the exception of episode one of this season, I think episode two and episode three can stand alone, but episode one, two, and three complete a mini story arc or at least a moral story arc. And then episode four is something new, something different. Let me ask you, based

Gene: 51:23

on this encounter of the week on this idea, what, what do you think of genetic programming, genetic modification, manipulation?

Ben: 51:35

I, I think it is a very dangerous and scary idea. Okay,

Gene: 51:41

but morally not opposed?

Ben: 51:44

Well, I, I think that there are moral pitfalls to it. I think if you're selecting your child based off of genetic characteristics or sex and so on you're going to be... You know, going down a bad road pretty quick, but by the way, the woman who played number one originally was my gel Roddenberry. Yeah.

Gene: 52:09

Yeah. Gene's wife

Ben: 52:11

who was in star Trek all the way through DS nine. Yep. Yeah. Play the voice of the computer.

Gene: 52:18

You know what, what is a little sad? Maybe this will happen post you know, her death and stuff. It's. How cool would it be if she had recorded her voice to be able to use it like an Alexa? I mean, it's like shit. You, you're literally could have that voice that you grew up with being the computer's voice be your computer's voice.

Ben: 52:44

Well, there are several L cars overlays and things like that where you can, but anyway so back to genetic engineering, Wait, hold

Gene: 52:51

on, what do you mean overlays?

Ben: 52:53

So there are theme packs and different interface things that have come out over the years for phones, for computers, for

Gene: 53:02

everything. Okay, not for Alexa though. I mean, I would love to have that on Alexa. Well,

Ben: 53:07

but you can have it with

Gene: 53:08

Cortana. Can you? Really? You could just slap somebody else's voice from a, like, that's not authorized.

Ben: 53:17

I think there's some pretty arbitrary stuff and anyway, there's interfaces you can change and do anyway. Genetic engineering you know, I have some family members that have had disabled kids and the thought of them being. Modified or rejected is not beneficial because they wouldn't be them. I believe in the sanctity of each and every human life. I think each and every human life is unique and different. And that is what gives us our sovereignty because there will never, there can never be someone. Just like me, even if you gave them the exact same genetic makeup, they would not have the same life as me. They would not be. Yeah.

Gene: 54:02

Okay. Mr. Obvious. You just restated the, my, my, what I said earlier, which is, you know, you, you said something that is just truism. It's zoology. Yes. Everybody is unique and different, including people with the same DNA

Ben: 54:15

twins. So twins don't share all the same DNA because you have the epigenetics that occurs and things that change their DNA throughout their lifetime.

Gene: 54:25

Yeah, exactly. So we have a precedent from nature to change DNA. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to do it. So I'm, I'm clearly on the pro DNA modification side of the argument

Ben: 54:36

here. Yeah. So what I would say is in utero where the technology exists today I have a problem with it because essentially you're How about in vitro? Well, that's, that's the problem is in vitro and utero is where you're going to be selecting. So if, if the kid has a genetic abnormality, let's say Down syndrome, are you aborting the child?

Gene: 54:58

Yeah, I mean, okay, there, there's, there's a way to get around that. Like you could, if you get, like, I'm thinking of Gattaca. Right? What a great movie. Everybody should watch it.

Ben: 55:08

Yes, and look at the tyranny that it caused.

Gene: 55:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. But, I love dystopian movies. But there is a way to do it by... Analyzing the DNA of the sperm and the egg, pre unification thereof.

Ben: 55:23

Okay, so now you're going to Demolition Man.

Gene: 55:26

The, yeah, we love movies. Yeah, and, and I don't, first of all, I certainly don't see a problem with that. Secondly, I don't really see a problem with, you know, and thirdly, I don't see a problem with Using MRNA to rewrite DNA. As long as all of that is consensual and is done with

Ben: 55:48

that. There's someone involved who can't consent.

Gene: 55:51

Well, and that's where you and I are going to disagree because I don't think that that someone exists yet. I think that's a potential someone. I think that's a potential set. You don't have any unique DNA or washed down the drain or on You know, tissue paper, a lot of unique DNA out

Ben: 56:09

there. No, actually that's just the sperm of the ZOA that end up getting flushed, if you will. And it's not unique until it combines with the ovum. No, it's pretty

Gene: 56:20

unique even before that.

Ben: 56:22

Oh, the Bible will tell you not to spill your seed, but you know, the way I look at it, we're all sinners.

Gene: 56:29

Yes. That's just the the way that they ensure that you become a sinner. That's all. It's like, let's give them something they can't not do.

Ben: 56:37

Well, I think I can just, I think I can at least debunk for our audience the myth about going blind because I still have very good eyesight.

Gene: 56:46

You know, I don't know, man. I think Darren would be the opposite for that argument.

Ben: 56:50

Interesting case study.

Gene: 56:53

Oh man. Yes. And, and I'm, I'm clearly the arguments for getting Harry Palms, cuz I got hair all over the place, man.

Ben: 56:59

Yeah. What do you think of the Koch in the White House?

Gene: 57:03

So my initial thought was, oh, that's how they keep Biden awake. Interesting. I, that's where you went with it. I did not think that this had anything to do with this kid. That's way too obvious. I think that, first of all, In any administration in a given the white house, given the number of staffers that are in there, I guarantee you, there's always been Coke in the white house. Yeah. So it's way before Clinton, but plenty of it during Clinton for sure, because

Ben: 57:31

that's what was, but apparently this was found by the situation room. Okay. Well, I mean,

Gene: 57:36

East wing, it's probably not a bad place to sash Coke. It's my guess. I just think it's mostly a nothing burger. I think it's funny that we're talking about Biden's kid doing coke and being slapped on the hand basically saying, now, don't do that again, little boy. But

Ben: 57:56

did you see the 4th of July celebration where he's behind them and he's rubbing his nose and it looks like he's taking a bump.

Gene: 58:03

I did not, but honestly habitual Coke users, even then when they haven't used for years, they'll have problems with their nasal drying out. Yeah. Yeah. Coke is not great for

Ben: 58:15

that. And now, and if you look at Bill Clinton's nose, Jesus Christ, that man has no septum left.

Gene: 58:23

Nope. Now it's it's, it's pretty harsh. And I, I read, look, I read, spent an episode on somebody else's show talking about the benefits of Coke. I don't want, I don't need to do it again on this show. I think Coke's got a bad rap. I think cocaine in your Coca Cola as the original formula was absolutely the best way to utilize that particular chemical positively. Interesting. You take a soft drink, gives you a pep. It's a, you know, a little extra energy in your step.

Ben: 58:56

Interesting way to look at it.

Gene: 58:57

Yeah, I just don't see coke as being evil. I think that it is dangerous, but so are a lot of other things. And it is absolutely super dangerous for fat dudes like me, because most fat comedians have died of coke overdoses.

Ben: 59:14

Yeah, your heart's already working too hard. Huh,

Gene: 59:16

exactly. But, there's a lot of positive benefits to cocaine.

Ben: 59:20

And one of the things I'll say is that if you're an adult who the hell am I to tell you what you can put in your body? Yeah,

Gene: 59:27

I think I'm going well beyond that and saying it's

Ben: 59:29

actually good. Well, I'm just saying that I don't care what someone puts in their body based off of liberty. Unless it's a little kid.

Gene: 59:39

Don't put little kids in your bodies, just psa.

Ben: 59:41

Well, U underage is a whole different thing.

Gene: 59:46

yes. Cocaine that is brand new should not be consumed. You have to age properly to at least to 18 years old in the United States, less than other countries. Gene

Ben: 59:56

or Gene speaks.com. Uhhuh,

Gene: 59:59

get that vintage Coke.

Ben: 1:00:02

Oh boy. Oh Jesus. Yes.

Gene: 1:00:04

Don't cook like eighties

Ben: 1:00:05

Coke. Oh, by the way, have you seen, ever seen the movie Ted? You know, I never have,

Gene: 1:00:12

And I, I generally like stuff, but it, I, when I saw the ads for that movie and it was just very raunchy, I just thought, okay, not really my kind of

Ben: 1:00:22

movie. So I, I watched it, you know, as you know, College ish age guy when it came out a little older, but you know, still in that same vein. And anyway I rewatched part of it last night and it was definitely hilarious. They had flash Gordon and flash Gordon teaching them how to party like the eighties. Yeah, that's

Gene: 1:00:46

great. Yeah. Well, that that's true. Flash did a lot of partying in the eighties. Saviour of the universe. That was a great soundtrack, dude. I, I think Queen outdid themselves.

Ben: 1:00:58

Dude, Queen put out

Gene: 1:01:00

some good music. They did. Awesome music. But that, that were four very talented guys. It wasn't just Freddy. It was like, literally, all of them were very talented.

Ben: 1:01:13

Oh yeah, I mean, I've used Queen songs for

Gene: 1:01:16

ringtones and Brian is a fucking PhD. He's amazing. I mean, it shouldn't be amazing, right? But... It is because a lot of musicians are, they go the other path with their lives. Yeah, it's a very, very good band. I, I definitely enjoyed the music when it was first when it first came out. And much more recently, you know, when they made that Queen movie the, the music revival for Queen music kind of happened at the same time, obviously. And it, it just reminded me of just how, how good their music actually was.

Ben: 1:01:52

Well, I I think Hunter's definitely going down some of the 1970s, 80s party routes,

Gene: 1:01:59

I think Hunter's going down the American Psycho route. You think? Yeah. Why? I'm, I'm gonna bet... 1 donuts that there's probably a dead hooker in trunk somewhere. No.

Ben: 1:02:13

I bet you there is. No, that would have been buried and taken care of long ago. No,

Gene: 1:02:17

that's what I mean. I don't mean like a trunk in his car that he's driving, I think in a trunk of a car in a junkyard. Maybe. I mean, I would bet that given his partying and his shall we say jail free card that he's had his whole life. I'll bet you there was at least one dead hooker in the trunk, I'm assuming. Well, I

Ben: 1:02:38

mean, we've seen Kennedys get away with, you know, driving into literally, you know, water, body of water, and letting them drown. Yeah.

Gene: 1:02:46

Yeah. And then walking away. Top of Quidditch! Okay! Yeah speaking of Kennedy, so he's, he's definitely embracing the podcasting, huh?

Ben: 1:02:57

Yeah, so he, Robert F. Kennedy has been, him and Vivek don't just, don't, so Vivek is gaining on DeSantis actually quite rapidly. Every point DeSantis is losing, half of them are going to Trump, half of it's going

Gene: 1:03:10

to I would imagine more than half are going to Vivek.

Ben: 1:03:14

Yeah, I'm just saying, as we see it, every time DeSantis goes down, part of it goes to Trump, part of it goes to him Vivek is going to be a contender in this, I don't think he'll win but I think he is a very strong VP possibility for Trump at this point, extremely strong VP possibility.

Gene: 1:03:36

That, he's one of the few guys. Where I think him being in the VP position doesn't work against him.

Ben: 1:03:44

I agree. I think it works extremely well

Gene: 1:03:46

for him. Yeah, yeah. Because I think for DeSantis being a VP is actually a less powerful position than he's got right now. Mm hmm. And it doesn't necessarily automagically lead into him winning if DeSantis was VP the the next when he ran. Mm hmm. I think in a lot of... Well, a lot of people my age, at least George Bush senior kind of spoiled the whole, Hey, if he was a VP, he's gotta be just like the president vibe because I think it was sort of irrelevant who the vice president was when Reagan was president, but 100%, the reason that George Bush got elected is because people were simply voting for a continuation of Reagan's legacy and not for anything George Bush stood for.

Ben: 1:04:36

Well, and George Bush senior lost when he sat there and said read my lips, no new taxes and then pass new taxes

Gene: 1:04:46

because he was always, I mean, that was his mode of modus operandes. He was a consultory kind of figure. He would be the, the guy that was willing to do the deals in the back room in order to get something pushed through that he wants. You can't. You can't do both, at least not well as a politician, but that's the thing is I don't think Bush senior was really a politician. He was a bureaucrat.

Ben: 1:05:15

Well, I mean,

Gene: 1:05:15

he was CIA, but yes, but you can be a bureaucrat in the CIA. You don't have to be the guy out in the front lines, you know, wearing a

Ben: 1:05:23

disguise, right? Right. But it was interesting. So you, you started, we started this conversation trail by talking about Kennedy and the fact that Kennedy has flat out said that the CIA had something to do with his uncle and his father's assassination. That's pretty ballsy.

Gene: 1:05:39

Yeah. If you want to get killed, the sure as hell is.

Ben: 1:05:43

Well, and, and I don't know if you watched him on deploying any small planes. Did you watch him on Napolitano? I did not. No. So Napolitano pushed him, how would you break up the cia? What would you do? Really? And he laid out a plan. Wow. Yeah, I mean, he, look, my ideal ticket would be Trump Kennedy, that's not gonna happen, but it would be a fantastic ticket. I agree,

Gene: 1:06:11

I

Ben: 1:06:11

mean, that would be must see TV. Back in the day, before we went through all this partisan politics bullshit, whoever the loser in the presidential, whoever got number two spot, In the presidential election became the VP.

Gene: 1:06:25

Well, that didn't last very long. And, and then Jefferson was the, the, the point case of why that doesn't work. Why? Because who's

Ben: 1:06:35

his VP? John C. Calhoun.

Gene: 1:06:38

Yeah. It's apparently that he completely hated him by the end of the term.

Ben: 1:06:45

Okay. Calhoun also wrote South Carolina Expositions and Protests, by the way. Okay. But I mean, Which is a great primer on the Civil War. Yeah. Before the Civil War. All right,

Gene: 1:06:59

well, good. My, my point is that people that run against each other should not be together for four years in a, that type of arrangement. I, I just, I think it adds unnecessary stress because you're literally, your number two guy is a guy who's trying to put a knife in your back so he can take over your spot.

Ben: 1:07:25

I don't see it that way, but sure. I don't know. I mean, we're one nation.

Gene: 1:07:32

Oh my God. Nobody actually believes that today. Oh, well, we

Ben: 1:07:36

shouldn't be. We're not supposed to be. You know, united in, we are the states of America. Indivisible. These United States. Yeah. These.

Gene: 1:07:49

Yes. Yes, exactly. Just like it was intended. You sent me a photo of a chick.

Ben: 1:07:56

Oh yeah. This was just on Twitter. It was

Gene: 1:07:59

a Twitter post. And, and how did you happen to see it on Twitter?

Ben: 1:08:03

I was literally just something on Twitter when I clicked

Gene: 1:08:06

on Twitter. Okay. So it's the algos recommending this chick to

Ben: 1:08:10

you. Yes. And the question is asked, man, is this too big for you?

Gene: 1:08:15

First of all. I think there's a high likelihood this is a teenager, but we're not talking about necessarily a woman. Yes, it's a very high likelihood.

Ben: 1:08:26

I mean, this is a checkmark person posting this.

Gene: 1:08:30

Yes. What is so am I, I'm a check mark. So what, what's the difference? Who cares? I

Ben: 1:08:34

think by definition they have to be over 18. No, just need a driver's license. And, and this, but I'm not talking about this is her posting herself so aggressively.

Gene: 1:08:45

Okay. Well, maybe it's a old photo of her. Maybe that works. Maybe that's what it's, but There's certainly, I, I've met plenty of underage chicks that look older than this chick does. Okay, well, whatever. Don't take that out of context, people. Get your minds

Ben: 1:09:02

out of the gutter. So we didn't even have to link to it, so I don't know why you're going through this

Gene: 1:09:06

or whatever. No, people will find it. Believe me. Anyway. Isabella Riley Moody is the chick on Twitter that posted it, so you can look it up

Ben: 1:09:13

yourself. It's interesting, because some of her other posts, she has links to Pearl and everybody else too. Huh.

Gene: 1:09:20

Here's the thing. I think the chick in the photo has a pretty face. I think she clearly has a bad self image.

Ben: 1:09:30

Well, and the picture's taken at a very bad angle.

Gene: 1:09:33

Yeah, yeah. Pictures, she's at some kind of an event that's happening during daylight hours. That in and of itself should tell you that it's a, this is not, not a great thing. And she's, like, she's wearing high heels and a dress at some kind of, like a dance event or something. She's standing by the side of the, the wall. And you can see through the window that it's light outside. So that's, you

Ben: 1:10:01

have spent way more time looking at and analyzing this picture. Then I guess there's an

Gene: 1:10:04

extension cord, just the bottom left. So if you carefully zoom into

Ben: 1:10:10

you know what there actually is.

Gene: 1:10:13

What do you think? I make this shit up. Come on, Jesus. Yes. There's also a tiara to her ass. Zoom and Enhance, Zoom and Enhance. I use that all the time. Exactly. Exactly. Which led me to believe that it's an actual school related event, because why else would there be a tiara? The table has It could have been a wedding. Do they have tiaras at weddings? I don't even know.

Ben: 1:10:35

Yeah, sometimes women

Gene: 1:10:36

wear shit like that. So she's uncomfortable. In her skin in that photo. I will say that if I was black This is like a 10 out of 10 chick right here. If I was a black dude. And I say that knowing black dudes that like chicks with big asses. As I'm not. Black and not into chicks with big asses that does absolutely nothing for me. I think she's pretty enough. And here's what I would do or what I actually did is if you take another window on your computer and you slide it from the right side to the left side. And you keep going until, until the edge is where her neckline and her hairline is. She's a fairly attractive girl. She's got slightly longer torso than leg proportionally to be ideal. That's an unfortunate side effect. So she's definitely using the high heels. She has definitely a pretty face. She isn't doing herself any favors with the particular hairstyle she's using, but it is what it is. No, I think, you know, she is, she's probably about 35 pounds overweight in that image for my personal taste. More than that. I said at least, at least 35 pounds. But, I don't think she's like ugly. I don't think she's, you know, horrible. And

Ben: 1:12:05

this, this picture was posted with a question. Men, is this too big for you? Well, I think I just answered that. She was asking to be objectified here. And I think that's part of the problem here. But if you scroll down in the comments, dude, there's some hilarious comments.

Gene: 1:12:23

Well, again, On Twitter. I mean, it's like troll city. What, what do you expect to get on Twitter if you ask a question?

Ben: 1:12:30

Yeah. I mean, other than shot the hell. I mean, why, why would you do that?

Gene: 1:12:35

Unless you're a masochist? Have plenty of those on there. Fact, these genes I'm sorry. It, it's, it's the old question of like, does, does disease genes make me look fat? Yeah. It's like, well, yeah. Ask the question. So here we go. Yeah. I see that people are talking about her BMI in there.

Ben: 1:12:57

Scroll down till you see the guy who talks about her proportions being off the chart.

Gene: 1:13:02

There's somebody in Arabic writing in here. That's always funny. It's always great. When you see this dudes that have like their picture is literally looks like they're at some kind of Middle Abdallah Al Manini. And then who was also born in 1973, currently but everything, every single tweet they do is in Arabic. It's like, dude, what the hell? You know, I mean, speak English for Christ's sake. Apparently he's a writer. Okay. Well, so what's the writer doing on Twitter? That sounds like a wrong place for a writer to be hanging out.

Ben: 1:13:43

Speaking of Twitter and

Gene: 1:13:44

Twitter, was there a particular comment

Ben: 1:13:45

that there was, but don't worry about it. Okay. Have you looked at threads at all? Oh,

Gene: 1:13:50

there's, oh, okay. Hold on. Hold on. I did scroll to a, a moving GIF meme. Of a black dude looking very happy and rubbing his hands together like he's about to jump into something her dimensions are off the charts. That's the one you were talking about. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said in my description, I think that's

Ben: 1:14:10

that's why I pointed that comment

Gene: 1:14:12

out to Eugene. Yes. Well, it's true, you know, it's and then somebody said clearly because she has no arms. It's like, dude, she has arms.

Ben: 1:14:22

Yeah, anyway have you played with

Gene: 1:14:24

threads at all? No. Is there a point to it? Why would I give... Facebook, any

Ben: 1:14:30

more data? Well, that's the thing is if you look at the permissions that I did see the

Gene: 1:14:36

permissions, it's

Ben: 1:14:36

hilarious. Well, you know, Twitter takes plenty, which is why I don't use Twitter on my phone. You know, and this is why, like, I'm not on Facebook

Gene: 1:14:44

or you could have an Apple phone that just doesn't give those permissions to Twitter.

Ben: 1:14:48

That's not true. It actually does. Totally not.

Gene: 1:14:52

Okay. Go look. All right, you, well, you go look, I know already, I set

Ben: 1:14:56

them up. Okay, anyway, you can deny the permissions in Android as well, but most people don't is the point. Most people just say yes to everything. Yeah. It's the tyranny of the default. Yeah. This is why I recommend to people, hey, you want, even if you want to use Facebook, just use the website on your phone. Don't do the app. Yeah. There's lots of good reasons for that. Or

Gene: 1:15:16

even better, just don't use Facebook.

Ben: 1:15:20

Agreed. But anyway, so threads it's kind of interesting because Musk has sent a cease and desist letter to Zuckerberg. Oh, I

Gene: 1:15:26

am so looking forward to their cage fight. This is how all problems are settled in the future. Yeah,

Ben: 1:15:32

but dude, they sent a cease and desist letter.

Gene: 1:15:36

It literally costs 29 on the legal

Ben: 1:15:39

websites. Yeah, well, I mean, apparently there are some ex Twitterers that went over there and there's some accusations that some of Twitter's code has been repurposed and done instead of, you know, being rewritten. And this, this is a key thing on intellectual property rights for anyone working. This is like. How the IBM clones got made, right? You could have an IBM clone there. You could look at its functionality. You could look at what they were doing and everything, but you just couldn't, you know, look at the base code and copy and paste it. But what you could do is go, okay, let me mimic this functionality and, you know, clone it as best I can.

Gene: 1:16:16

Yeah. You can emulate, you just can't copy.

Ben: 1:16:19

I mean, you can copy functionality. You just can't copy the code that makes that functionality work. And if you stumble along the same sequence that happens to be in the other code, as long as you did not actually review that other code, you have indemnification from it. That's where these, this idea of Chinese firewalls come in on when you have an expert who knows exactly how another company is doing something. And then you have other people implementing it. You don't let the person who knows exactly what. The other companies doing do the implementation. You let them talk to and educate the people who are doing the implementation so that it's a unique thing and not a violation of intellectual property rights.

Gene: 1:16:56

Yeah, so I think it's a nothing burger. I think almost every large company. Has sued another company for this exact thing. When there are people from Google, from Microsoft, from Apple, from every company you can imagine that change jobs. And when those people worked on something that the original company thinks they have a first to market advantage in, they almost inevitably sue wherever these people went to, including that person directly. It's almost like you do that regardless of whether you think you're going to win or not. It's just a, just in case measure. So I would expect to be the. Same case here. I don't think this was Musk himself suing. I think this was a

Ben: 1:17:48

company. Well, it's a ceases assist letter, but Yeah,

Gene: 1:17:50

yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, it's not even a lawsuit, but I, I think it was just a standard practice for the corporate legal saying let's just cover our bases and give ourselves some time to review this in more depth. Then just file a cease and desist right away.

Ben: 1:18:05

Yeah, so yeah, anyway, threads, they all appearances does not seem to add any good functionality or anything that I want. I mean, I'm barely on Twitter, dude. I don't really care about that.

Gene: 1:18:18

I don't know. Well, even What's His Face had made a version of a Twitter knockoff. Jack Dorsey, he's got his own new thing. Yeah, and went nowhere. And went nowhere, exactly. Twitter is not a great idea. I've never thought it was a particularly good idea, even when I signed up for it when it was first launched in Austin here.

Ben: 1:18:36

Well, I mean, but Twitter has come a long way and Twitter has become a interesting space because there was such free flowing talk for so long.

Gene: 1:18:49

I think of some of that is the mythos of Twitter more than the actuality of Twitter. How because I don't think there was a whole lot of free flowing talk happening on Twitter. I just think that it was one of the places it did happen rather than be controlled. But most of the flow of things on Twitter up until I'd say. Trump ran for office until Trump ran for office. Most of the stuff on Twitter was somebody trying to advertise something else by sending it as cheaply as possible to a large audience. And then the, the next biggest thing was chicks posting photos.

Ben: 1:19:30

Yeah, I, I'm gonna disagree because I think Twitter and YouTube up until right around 2016 were very, very... Open. I mean, I remember watching a ton of like David Irving's videos on on YouTube pre 2016.

Gene: 1:19:50

Yeah, but you're kind of making my point for me. You, you were able to find people with Unpopular views on both these platforms in the day, but the percentage of traffic that that represented was tiny. It was teeny tiny.

Ben: 1:20:05

Okay. I don't know. I don't know, but the fact that you can't find it now anymore is problematic.

Gene: 1:20:12

Yeah. Yeah. I don't disagree with that. I think that here's, here's what, one of the side effects, and I noticed this fairly recently, since the last time we talked. But it's been going on for a long time. I just noticed that is that the the concept of private companies doing censorship it's always existed within media organizations. They see themselves ultimately, not just as the reporters of news, but as the censors to the populace, they get to determine what people read about. And I don't think they would hide that fact anytime in the past, but what's We're two events. One is with Trump originally running and winning in 2016 there, that the polarization of the country got kicked into high gear. And that resulted in a more passionate opinions on both sides of the aisle and a disdain for the other side of the aisle, because now you're not just, you

Ben: 1:21:15

had a totalitarian response from the left.

Gene: 1:21:18

Yes. Yes. You have totalitarian response. And then what really excerbated that was towards the end of his term exacerbated. Exactly. What would I say? Excerbated, excerbated, see now I'm Southern, Southern sounding. Huh. Huh. And what you end up with is with the COVID response where there was a push from government officials and medical officials. To stifle legitimate discussion and say, look, don't worry about it. Just do what we tell you. It's for the good of the country. Just shut the fuck up and take your medicine. Or, you know, faux medicine because it doesn't do anything or faux masks because they don't actually prevent the spread of disease. And with

Ben: 1:22:11

that private company, take a look at the chat, continue your thought, but take a look.

Gene: 1:22:15

And with that private companies. Had jumped into this censorship game. And so the, the rationale for doing censorship for YouTube, for Twitter, for all these other places was it's for the good of the public. And we're really trying to provide a way for people to understand the context by placing our own fact checkers on board to disvalidate these things that are clearly false. That hasn't stopped. And so now that it's been legitimized and I think in a lot of ways due to COVID that we have this legitimization that

Ben: 1:23:02

is appropriate acceptance of it because people were so damn scared of what they didn't know and they just wanted someone to take care of them and that's why most people don't deserve freedom.

Gene: 1:23:12

Fuck yeah, most people don't deserve to be citizens,

Ben: 1:23:14

absolutely. But here's the problem, we, we get the society we deserve. And unfortunately, that's the plural.

Gene: 1:23:22

100% agree with that, totally agree. I've been saying that for literally my entire life. Right,

Ben: 1:23:27

so the problem there is we have a shit ton of looters involved.

Gene: 1:23:32

There are, so what do you do?

Ben: 1:23:34

Break up into smaller communities and kick the looters the hell out.

Gene: 1:23:37

Yeah, or just, you know. Just go on strike as it were, leave the looters and go off and do your own thing.

Ben: 1:23:46

And for those who don't know who is John Galt?

Gene: 1:23:49

Yeah. Who is John Galt? Yeah. Who is that guy? Interesting. I don't think there's a way to walk this back is what I'm, my point is. I think that the legitimization of it being appropriate for any provider of services, including services you're paying for, not just free services. It is now assumed normal and therefore will be utilized to its fullest extent that They get to censor what you say.

Ben: 1:24:20

Well, that is a, that is very dystopian.

Gene: 1:24:23

And so when I want to type a Google search, it'll autocorrect you to what it thinks you should be asking instead of what you actually are asking. Well,

Ben: 1:24:31

autocorrect is one thing, but you know,

Gene: 1:24:34

I mean, like an autocorrect that won't let you use the N word as part of a Google search, like if you type it, it will fix it for you and you can't actually search for that

Ben: 1:24:43

word. I've never tried to search for that word. Okay.

Gene: 1:24:47

Sure. I'm sure you've never searched for a lyric of a rap song. Okay.

Ben: 1:24:52

No. I can't say that I have. You

Gene: 1:24:55

racist. How dare you not listen to rap?

Ben: 1:24:58

How dare you? Dude, the only rap I've there's some that I'll listen to, but it's very few and far between. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Gene: 1:25:07

Yeah, I like some of Snoop's older stuff.

Ben: 1:25:10

I like some of Eminem's stuff. I like, nah, that's not rap. How is it not?

Gene: 1:25:15

White gay. Okay. White, white gay. I mean, come on. White men can't jump.

Ben: 1:25:22

Okay. Anyway. Moving on. Did you see the Twitter post I sent you?

Gene: 1:25:28

No, let me click on it right now. It's a Twitter post from Elon EOC. I have a pros for Zachary winner. I fight gets the ownership of the other person's social media platform for 24 hours.

Ben: 1:25:40

That would be hilarious.

Gene: 1:25:41

Elon. Your wife drives a Tesla musk. Okay. I think it's funny that account I've seen before. There's probably about five or six that seem to make it into my recommended that are fake Elon Musk accounts, which is interesting, isn't it? No, cause he said as long as the word parody is part of it, you go for it. He's all for that.

Ben: 1:26:04

Right. But the fact that it would make it into the recommended list.

Gene: 1:26:07

Oh, well, Twitter does know my sense of humor pretty well. The thing that I think is questionable for me on how this is allowed is you can have an Elon Musk parody account, but use of Musk's portrait in that account of his actual image And branding the

Ben: 1:26:30

same image, by the way, that's on his real

Gene: 1:26:31

account, which is what makes these parody accounts actually work is because originally people don't read, they just see it, it

Ben: 1:26:39

literally says parentheses parody.

Gene: 1:26:41

It is so he's fully compliant with the requirements. Yeah, right. But anyway, I just thought that was funny. Yeah, here's another one from that same one. I just spent 44 billion for this app, and now Lizard Boy just decided to hit copy and paste. It's personal now. See you in the cage, Zuck. Yeah, there you go, exactly. And then Elon Musk replies, the real Elon Musk, replies to this account, the fake account, and says, so many people think this account is me. I'm telling you, it's like, the dude has a fucking sense of humor where he replies to his own

Ben: 1:27:16

parody account. Well, I mean, he's, his sense of humor is right up there with Trump's, and people who don't understand

Gene: 1:27:22

it. Oh, it's way better.

Ben: 1:27:24

His is drier, it, it, they're just very different. Or, it's

Gene: 1:27:28

more in line with my sense of humor, I'll put it

Ben: 1:27:29

that way. Yeah, that's fine. I'm just saying that... You know, he's, don't discount the sense of humor. And, you know, if we go back to movies and TV shows, predicting the Future, the Sign of Intelligence So if we go back to TV shows and movies predicting the future you know, in Demolition Man, it predicts that Arnold Schwarzenegger would become president after Yep. An amendment passed. Mm-hmm. what if what if, and I also a Schwarzenegger and what if it was Musk?

Gene: 1:28:02

Musk becomes president? No. Why? No. I, I think that...

Ben: 1:28:09

I can see it. He's popular enough. Same principle. Musk,

Gene: 1:28:13

Musk has certain convictions that I do not want in a president.

Ben: 1:28:17

I, I'm not, that's not what I'm, that's not, I'm not saying it has to be a good one. I'm not saying that I want him

Gene: 1:28:22

as president. Would there So you're just saying, could there be a rule change? Could there be

Ben: 1:28:26

an amendment? Yeah, no, I, I think he's got enough popularity. And as he continues I can see people passing an amendment saying, Hey, you don't need to be born here to be president. And if that honestly, I think he's popular

Gene: 1:28:39

enough to win. I think people that were not born here are typically. Are more pro America than people that were

Ben: 1:28:49

born here if they were integrated into the society correctly. Yes, but I was actually having this conversation with a friend of mine who's from Iraq and, they're at, you know, one of the guys who works at Babylon and we were sitting there and we were talking and he was talking about you know, like Dearborn, Michigan and so on and how crazy it is. And, you know, that's not why he came to America and he could never live there and stuff like that. So

Gene: 1:29:17

it's cute how you call your assets that you're managing friends. That's cute. What? Huh? What? Go on. Go on with your story.

Ben: 1:29:26

Assets that I'm managing. Please. Mm hmm. Trust me, I wouldn't have the legal bills that I have if I were, if I had the operations behind me, but you know, hey.

Gene: 1:29:38

Or food bills.

Ben: 1:29:40

Indeed. Anyway, no, it just, it was interesting because he's, you know, he's a, he's a Muslim, he's from Iraq, he came over in 2010, so he's been here 13 years, and, you know, he looks at places like Dearborn and so on where you have, you know, Sharia law in place and goes, yeah, no, not what I want.

Gene: 1:30:00

No, but at the same time, there, there are no pedophiles there.

Ben: 1:30:05

Oh, I don't know if I agree with that. I mean... Well... If you read the Quran and if you read the Talmud and, you know, other things there's some justifications in there.

Gene: 1:30:16

No, there isn't. No, that's just propaganda. Okay. Pelophile is fairly universally frowned upon.

Ben: 1:30:27

Okay. Anyway, the whole point though is, you know, here's someone who's immigrated and has become very westernized and, you know, wants to live the American life. That's the kind of person who. Very much all into the freedoms because they just got them. They recognize them. They say, Oh yes, this is great. And when COVID hit and everything else, Tony's like, the fuck is this? What are you doing? No, this is wrong. Exactly. Versus the sheeple. Yeah,

Gene: 1:30:58

totally, totally true. Been exactly my experience with people that were born here as well. They, that tends to be a certain, like and. I'll be damned if you take that freedom away from me now, so

Ben: 1:31:12

yeah, I'm right there with you, by the way. So I'm scrolling, scrolling Twitter as we're talking and Sasha Barry Cohen came up and that made me think of something that you ever watched the movie, the, the dictator. Yes. Yeah. So I rewatched that the other day, man. The first part of that movie is so fucking funny.

Gene: 1:31:29

There, there's, there's certain stuff that Sasha Barry Cohen's done that I thought was hilarious. Like his original Ali G interviews were pretty damn, pretty damn tight. But he just went off the deep end, I

Ben: 1:31:46

feel. He did. But, you know, my favorite part, and this was, this was just a funny joke, you know, bleach the skin, grind down the teeth, shorten the penis for the look alike, you know. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. For the body double. Yes. Yes, yes. Just the self deprecating humor. Like that is just, you know, it just, you know, they're going through some, you know, reasonable activity, reasonable activity. Wait, what? Anyway, comedic gold. That's all I'm saying. It was a well timed joke in the movie.

Gene: 1:32:16

Yeah. Now I thought he was actually really good in the one documentary movie that I saw him in. About the Israeli spy. Did you watch that one? I can't remember the name of it. I guess I can IMDB what it was. But. He played a, it was a based on true history. And he played a, I believe the guy was a born in Egypt and lived in Israel. And was a spy for Mossad and he did a great job because he really. I portrayed that character, I think, very realistically not that I would know anything about Israeli spies, but it, it's, it certainly seemed like, don't even know what they look like. It was, what was it called though? The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the oh, it was called the spy. Okay. I guess that's a good name for it. So Google the spy on Netflix, I think it, or at least it used to be a Netflix, I don't know if it still is. And it's a, it's like a six part mini miniseries. And it, it was based on a a book about Eli Cohen. Where he was recruited to impersonate a some kind of a Middle Eastern dude, like living in Egypt or something. So he's basically, he's playing a or maybe it was Syria, maybe it was Syria, but somewhere out there where he's basically playing a local and he, this guy was not. Like he didn't go to spy school after college or whatever. He was like an accountant or something. But he, he lived this double life as a playing you know, an Arab some kind of Arab dude. I don't know. I'm very vague on this stuff. It was a very good

Ben: 1:34:23

movie. I don't know where you're going with

Gene: 1:34:25

this or what you're trying to say. I'm trying, I'm just trying to remember what it was on. I just remember the guy basically... Well, how do we

Ben: 1:34:30

segue to something else while you try and remember that?

Gene: 1:34:32

Well, no, I'm not going to continue bothering you. I'm just saying it's worth watching. It's called The Spy. Yeah. And it's the... It's the best acting from Sasha Baron Cohen I've seen of anything, and probably mainly because it's a not serious. Well, it's yeah, it's totally serious. Like there's zero comedy in it. There's people getting killed. Okay. What else we get? Well, that's going on in the world.

Ben: 1:35:02

Well, so there's been some interesting Starship updates and some launches. I don't know if you want to get into any of that,

Gene: 1:35:10

Like, well, I don't know about any launches of Starship, but well, not

Ben: 1:35:14

of Starship, but SpaceX launches, they just launched another 47 space Starlink satellites. Yeah, they launch them

Gene: 1:35:21

every,

Ben: 1:35:21

literally every day. Yeah, but this was the largest number. That they launched today.

Gene: 1:35:27

Okay. Yeah. Well, and then the, the version twos are physically bigger too. So I thought they used to do 60 at a time

Ben: 1:35:35

of the, whatever version they're on. This was the most that they had put

Gene: 1:35:38

up. Okay. Yeah. So that's version two is the biggest is they are larger physically size. Yeah, that makes sense. And I, the only recent thing that I'm aware of really with,

Ben: 1:35:48

Well, they redesigned the separation

Gene: 1:35:50

system. Yeah, that's what I was going to mention. Yeah, there, it's not gonna, it's funny. The more time goes on, the more this thing looks like a Russian rocket. It's, it's,

Ben: 1:36:01

That does not bode well for the program.

Gene: 1:36:03

No, it does. It looks more like an N1. It's about the same size, but doing hot staging is a very traditional Russian method of of setting it up where the Americans typically. Avoided doing hot

Ben: 1:36:16

staging. Yes. Because they tend to blow up. Well, they, they

Gene: 1:36:20

have that potential.

Ben: 1:36:20

Sure. Right. So describe hot staging versus cold staging.

Gene: 1:36:24

Well, the biggest difference with hot staging is that you ignite the upper,

Ben: 1:36:29

Before you eject the lower. Yeah.

Gene: 1:36:31

You, you're, you're igniting the engines

Ben: 1:36:34

while separation is taking place versus like, if you think of Apollo. Yeah. The se sections would separate. There would be distance and then, then there would be ignition.

Gene: 1:36:44

Exactly. So the Russians have been doing hot staging for a long time. I'm not even sure why to tell you the truth. I don't, I'm not aware of a particular advantage or something that they had, but, but that is been a normal progress. And you can see because the when you, when you see the rockets design, you actually see. That the, the couplers on the Russian ones have vents in them, like they have, they don't hold pressure in, they have a room for the exhaust to come out, even when the rocket is on attached to the one piece. It's, it's interesting. I mean, I, I can see how theoretically one of the things that the hot staging would do, but it's such a small advantage, but theoretically you maintain the momentum the entire time. And so you're you're not losing any momentum for that second or two in the, between the stages, but it's, it's a tiny fraction of the overall flight time to get into orbit. I don't know that that would be enough to justify it. Did, did you see why Musk said they they're making the change at all or not?

Ben: 1:37:57

I've got basically, basically they're trying to increase the survivability of the rocket based off of what they had happened during the first starship launch, where they had issues of the clamps didn't separate.

Gene: 1:38:09

Yeah. They were too strong. Goddammit.

Ben: 1:38:12

Well, I think part of the problem and why they're going to heart hot staging is not only do you have the explosive bolts, you have that release, but then you have the thrust from the other engines to help push and separate. Yes,

Gene: 1:38:24

yes, that is true, but it could also detonate.

Ben: 1:38:28

Well, it could also damn if there's fuel left in the upper stage and damaging curves and so on, and if you're trying to reuse that first stage, there are lots of things there. The

Gene: 1:38:37

reality is that rocket engines country, people might think are made to operate. At at the end

Ben: 1:38:45

of the pressure, they're made to operate at the edge of going boom. No,

Gene: 1:38:50

no, no, no. They're, they're made to to provide exhaust out of the bell at ambient pressure at one bar. And so you've got very fast moving guests, but very very low density gas. And so it's. It's a, that, that's the goal. That's where you increase the most efficiency. And so when you can find the space that that exhaust is coming into, and then we saw a perfect example of this when Starship launched it, it literally ripped apart the concrete underneath it in the stand and then sent chunks flying into people's cars, which is very cool. That's what's cool is we have it on video. So it's not particularly good for a rocket to get. Any back pressure back pressure equals. Boom. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you do hot staging, like it's more dangerous if you don't have a separation then when you do cold staging, if you have cold staging, you do the separation, something gets stuck. You're like, fuck,

Ben: 1:39:59

it's not going to work. And let's be clear though. Most of the time when you do hot staging IE. You know, solid fueled rocket booster engines and things like that. It's usually a solid fuel that's hot stage, not liquid. Well, maybe the Russian designs were different, but as far as what NASA has ever done, it has always been solid fuel. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 1:40:22

Yeah. And, and honestly, it just, you know, I'm not saying this just because I am Russian, because it. Kind of irrelevant, but a lot of the designs that Musk has utilized in social were really based on Russian rocketry.

Ben: 1:40:41

You're you watched the original series, right?

Gene: 1:40:45

I didn't watch it when it was live. I'm not that old. I watched it. Oh, please. Ah,

Ben: 1:40:51

yes. The original Russian invention back in the day. This was the original Russian invention.

Gene: 1:40:58

Yeah. Like television. You know, that was a Russian invention. Electricity. Yep. All Russian. Yeah.

Ben: 1:41:04

That's true.

Gene: 1:41:05

Russian. Well, no, that's not true. But Shakespeare does sound better in Russian than English.

Ben: 1:41:10

Oh my God. Dude, you're missing, missing the point because they made Chekhov. The whole trope was everything was Russian that he had fallen for the Soviet propaganda. You're missing

Gene: 1:41:19

the point. I'm playing into it. God damn it.

Ben: 1:41:23

Yes. Like Shakespeare in the original Klingon. Yeah.

Gene: 1:41:26

Yeah. Yeah. But, but that okay. So all kidding aside, that is literally a phrase my dad has used. As he said, Shakespeare is more beautiful in Russian than it is in English, and he's read both. And I'm like, yes, but it's not really Shakespeare. If you're reading the Russian version, and you, you think it sounds better, then thank the guy that translated it. Not fucking Shakespeare. Mm hmm. Right? Am I right?

Ben: 1:41:53

Yeah, to a large extent. So because

Gene: 1:41:56

a good translation would make the Russian

Ben: 1:41:59

no better. It has to be transliterated is the problem. Not directly translated. It has to be

Gene: 1:42:03

transliterated. Right. But, but the goal, if you're a translator, is to convey the exact same thing, not a better thing than the original. So to say that Shakespeare sounds better in Russian like, or Klingon, that it's, it's Like that's a better version.

Ben: 1:42:23

That was a joke from star Trek 10.

Gene: 1:42:27

Yeah. Yeah. In the original plan. I love that. I, and the problem is that's not a joke. Like you can buy. All of Shakespeare's writing in Klingon on Amazon, people have gone to that extent. I

Ben: 1:42:41

understand. I am, I am, I am, but I humble micro nerd. I am not the full nerd.

Gene: 1:42:48

I'm telling you, dude, the, the, like back when I was young, I know you may not believe this, but I used to go to sci fi conventions. And the Klingon faction was the most hardcore of anybody. Oh, absolutely. The people willing to put on prosthetic makeup every

Ben: 1:43:04

morning. Oh, yeah. And, and speak in a language. Yeah, in a language. Fully develop a language.

Gene: 1:43:09

Fully, a created language. The entire convention, that's all they do too, is speak that to each other. They don't speak English for like a weekend. These people are nuts. Nice. A lot of love.

Ben: 1:43:24

Did you track the box office at all this

Gene: 1:43:26

last week? What do you mean like the box office numbers, like the movies, Hollywood? No, I I've never tracked

Ben: 1:43:33

it. I just don't care. Well, sound of freedom came out and made over 20 million first weekend.

Gene: 1:43:38

Oh yeah. I heard it was second place or something.

Ben: 1:43:40

Right. Yeah. Beat out Indiana

Gene: 1:43:41

Jones. That's right. Yeah. Although a long run, Indiana was obviously going to make more money, but Indiana Jones, we'll see, I haven't seen it, but I I've seen the drinkers review and I trust the drinkers movie reviews above everybody else's. The drinker is a hell of a good reviewer. Do you watch his videos? I am not, you should, you should check it out. He's a Scottish lad.

Ben: 1:44:07

Yeah, I, I have seen some of his videos. I don't follow him directly, but his

Gene: 1:44:11

reviews are brutally honest and they kind of like when he's talking about a movie that I've watched, he pretty much says the same shit that I would say. So I trust his reviews about movies that I haven't seen because I suspect it'll be the same thing if I do watch them. He's not a big fan of the woke culture at all. The part that I think most people don't really realize if they watch his reviews of movies, whether they like him or not, is that he's, he's a script writer. Like, he actually, his job for his whole life has been very intimately tied with the movie industry. And so he understands a lot of the background stuff, not just this was fun to watch, or this was boring to watch. So his reviews are... They take into account the movie making process, not just the end result.

Ben: 1:45:06

Cool. Yeah. Well, anyway, so the, we should probably give a little bit of background about what the sound of freedom is about. So it's definitely about child trafficking and some real life stories. It's based off a true story and is apparently a pretty emotionally hardcore. Movie a lot of people have compared it to the emotionality they felt after watching the passion of the Christ, which I don't know if you ever watched that or not. Yeah. Yeah. I, for me, I mean, that, that movie brought me to tears. I have not seen yet.

Gene: 1:45:38

I prefer last temptation of Christ over that one though.

Ben: 1:45:42

Okay. Anyway, I haven't seen Sound of Freedom yet, but it's it's one of those things that I haven't seen a movie in the theaters in years. Yeah. And Do you want to watch it? I, I think I am. I, I, I've got some free time. Some people are down at the beach and I'm home alone, so I think I might go watch it.

Gene: 1:46:03

Now, the same guy is in that movie that played Jesus. Correct. Same actor, interestingly

Ben: 1:46:08

enough, and this is not, this is not a this is not a Mel Gibson production, but Mel Gibson is very much pushing it. Yeah,

Gene: 1:46:17

I like what Gibson's been pushing lately. He's I think he stopped trying to pretend to not be impartial or to be impartial or whatever, and he's actually willing to just say. You know, these are topics that I have a very strong opinion on. Jews run Hollywood, and I'm a Catholic. And I don't like pedophiles. Which is ironic, being Catholic. But But it is what, I give props to him. I've always liked Mel Gibson. I think he was How could you dislike him? I mean, Lethal weapon. Come on, man. Come on, man. Come on, man. He was, he was the guy. He was the guy that had a sense of humor in the middle of a gunfight. Yeah. How do you just like that?

Ben: 1:47:02

Well, there's lots of ways, but I tend to agree with you that he's got a good sense of humor at the very least.

Gene: 1:47:10

And I, I thought he was good in Mad Max. Like Mad Max was a serious movie. It wasn't campy until the sequels. But the original Mad Max was like, The original Mad

Ben: 1:47:21

Max was very different than like, Thunderdome and stuff like that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

Gene: 1:47:26

yeah. It was a low budget Australian film.

Ben: 1:47:29

Well, but the original Mad Max was very much a kind of a holy crap sort of movie of post apocalyptic. Yeah. You know, it wasn't the road warrior crap and all that that, Right became

Gene: 1:47:45

exactly and you know, they have to read up his voice for that movie. No, I did not why? Yeah, cuz he had the very thick Australian sounding accent And they didn't think that in the American market, people would understand what he's saying. So they had him redo it? They had somebody else redo it. And then they re released That sounds like him. I know, but they re that's because what you've heard is him, after it was re released, like once they made the second one, he re did the audio for the first one.

Ben: 1:48:15

Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha,

Gene: 1:48:17

gotcha. It's yeah, because he grew up in Australia. But he's an American, he was born in America. So he's one of those. There seems to be a bunch of them out there. Yep.

Ben: 1:48:29

I am I've been last little topic here because I've got to head to, I'm meeting some people for lunch, a late lunch here in a little bit. I think they call that brunch. No, that'd be a late breakfast, early lunch. Oh. This is more of a late lunch, early dinner. Oh, this is linner, linner. Anyway I have for years had. Or is it dunch? Anyway, so I, for years have had get home bags in my vehicle. The idea being, you know, winter, you get run off the road, snowy, icy, or whatever this comes from living in Idaho. You've got

Gene: 1:49:04

to have a good orange poncho in there.

Ben: 1:49:06

I actually do have some of your ponchos in one of our vehicles. Thank you. Perfect. Yeah, but, anyway, so get home bags just wanted to recommend Vertex, which I have one of their range bags and I've got this little 20 liter concealed carry EDC little backpack. You can find it on Amazon for like 160 bucks, but it is phenomenal. Very well put together, holds plenty of gear for a get up Vertex V E R T X. And it's their ready pack you know, it comes in, you know, the idea of a get home bag is not you're walking off the woods and to survive it's, you know, get you home so you can get your, your go bag or whatever, but it comes in very much gray man type colors where, you know, it doesn't look super tactical. It's not something that's going to just stand out. It's not something that's going to get your truck. I don't think any

Gene: 1:50:01

black products that they make, everything's gray. Or, or like camo

Ben: 1:50:06

exactly, you know, there's no camo, it's all just very gray man ask. But anyway, the recommended I'm upgrading my get home bag in my truck and actually changing out the firearm that's in there. That's another thing I'm a big proponent of other than the firearm that's on me, other than other firearms in my vehicle, there's one in the bag that if shit is hitting the fan, I can grab that. I know I have ammo. I know I have magazines. I know I have a weapon. I don't have to think, okay, where's the gun in the center console? What do I need to grab? What do I need to do? No, it's there. It's self contained. It's good to go.

Gene: 1:50:40

So I've got a foldable rifle in mine.

Ben: 1:50:44

So yeah, for a long time I had a I think it was the Henry survival 22. That was in there for a long time. But I've, since I'm no longer in Idaho and you know, where I'm likely to be out in the woods I've moved to a pistol just because I, you know, I think the pistols lighter and easier, in fact, I'm getting another one of our XDS is specifically for this bag. Okay. With the crimson trace. Boy, you, you like that good, huh? I do. I do. That's great. It's, it's fantastic for the price and everything. It's, It is a hell of a deal. You know, it, it's what I'm going to put in there. Yeah.

Gene: 1:51:23

No, it's a, it's very cool. Yeah, so let me ask you this. How much plastic explosives you put in there? I'm sorry? How much plastic do you carry with you in that bag?

Ben: 1:51:32

Zero. I don't have access to plastic. I mean, At least not legally.

Gene: 1:51:39

You know, I mean, you got to have some explosive in there because there may be, there may be doors to breach. Yeah, no. Or do you use deck cord or what do you use?

Ben: 1:51:48

None of the above, but one of the things I do keep in there is like a little foldable camp stove with some fuel tablets. Make it easy. You know, the entire idea here is not long term survival. Start a fire from scratch. You know, I've got some magnesium rods and things like that in there as well, but yeah, I love those. But yeah, but make, make shit easy on yourself. foldable camp stove with your, the means to heat up some later

Gene: 1:52:14

as well. Thank you. I'm sorry. And I think just, you put a lighter in there too.

Ben: 1:52:18

Oh yeah. There's lighter waterproof matches, all sorts of things, multiple redundancies. But the whole point is this is not a full dehydrated water. This is not a full go bag. This is a, you know, get home bag. So right. Just wanted to share that. I had had a maxpedition kind of single strap side carry before it was a little smaller but I liked this a little bit better. So I'm.

Gene: 1:52:43

I've never looked at Vertex before. They've got some interesting stuff, dude. They seem to have like,

Ben: 1:52:47

the first exposure to Vertex was the range bag that I got. And that range bag has turned me onto them because it is fucking awesome. The way it's got the pullout. I mean, my, I love that range bag.

Gene: 1:53:02

They've got these interesting products like their, their pocket mini mag, which looks like a. A little miniature magazine holster, but it's in a material that looks like. It's stretchy, which is very cool.

Ben: 1:53:17

Vertex has a lot of really cool stuff. They've got a lot of really cool organization and you're going to hate this, but you know, who turned me on to him? Oh warrior poet society.

Gene: 1:53:28

Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, that's all it is. It's a shilling club.

Ben: 1:53:32

Okay. I don't know about that, but I'm, I'm making it. Have you, have you looked at their range bags?

Gene: 1:53:39

No, I haven't. I, like I said, I haven't seen any of this stuff before,

Ben: 1:53:43

so I have is this the one that I have? Yeah, this is the one that I have. This is their heavy duty range bag. I'll send it to you. I mean, their stuff is not cheap, but it is extremely well built. It's the range bag I have is in the chat. Mm-hmm. It's extremely well built and well designed. You know, again, and it's all it. It it's tactical without totally looking tactical. So if you look at this range bag, which gene can put in show notes or whatever, but it looks like it looks like a camera bag, right? It doesn't look like

Gene: 1:54:13

a screen or like a fly fishing bag.

Ben: 1:54:16

Exactly. It doesn't scream gun to me, but it's got a steel cord that runs all the way through it, that you can do a lock on it. You know, you can chain it in place if you need to, and it's heavy duty enough to carry like I, I. In, in my range bag, I keep boxes of nine mil boxes of 40 and boxes of three Oh eight. And, you know, I've got several hundred rounds of each in that range bag. So that's pretty heavy. Then you throw it more. Ammo can right, but then you throw in guns and you throw in

Gene: 1:54:47

your opens up with little, the side panel drops and there's a little slide outs in there. Yes, that is cool. I've never seen that. That looks awesome. It is. I don't even care if it's a range bag like that. Any bag that that's a cool feature.

Ben: 1:54:59

Well, in those slide outs, those slide outs are for ammo. So they literally have a mesh where you can sift your brass with it. Oh, that's awesome. Dude. It's a, it is the best range back I've ever had.

Gene: 1:55:14

Wow. I might have to pick one of

Ben: 1:55:15

these up. Get the heavy duty one. Get the big one. You want the big one.

Gene: 1:55:20

I'm still using the yeah, 170 bucks. The range bag that I got in, I think around 2000 for free. When I joined the gun range I used to like my favorite range, the, the one that I was a member of forever. When I lived in Minnesota was a range on the Indian reservation. I love that first of all, cause I like giving the big middle finger to the U S government. And this, this range was built using casino money. There was no expenses spared. It had the cleanest air of any gun range I've ever been at. Like you could, you could literally shoot a gun. And you could not smell that a gun was shot three feet away from your face. It was incredible because the range I don't think ever paid for itself. It was literally put in as part of a recreation complex for the tribe by money coming from the casino. It was

Ben: 1:56:29

I'm unfortunately not getting paid by Vertex, but I would highly recommend any of their products. Where are they located?

Gene: 1:56:36

Texas. Oh, okay. That's where the TX comes from. Got it. Cause their logo is almost kind of Swiss looking.

Ben: 1:56:44

Well, they've got some good stuff. And my mine came with the mag pouch, by the way, the six mag mag pouch in there, which is nice. Very cool. All right, man. Well, I've got to run if I'm going to make this this lunch date. Huh.

Gene: 1:57:00

All right. Well, you enjoy school stuff and we'll catch you next week. We'll see you

Ben: 1:57:05

then.