035 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:23

Hey, Ben, how are you doing today?

Ben: 0:25

I'm doing moderately well, Gene. I'm, I'm, I'm hanging in there. Fair to Midland? Fair to Midland. I woke up on the right side of the dirt this morning.

Gene: 0:35

Ah, okay. Well, that's

Ben: 0:37

something anyway. Well, it's always a positive. Yes.

Gene: 0:41

Yes. Let's see,

Ben: 0:42

what should we start with? Even if nothing else is going on it's always a positive.

Gene: 0:46

So you sent me a link to an AR 10 and you said, this is a great deal. You should get one of these. And I already have plenty of guns in that caliber, plus I'm not as big a fan of the AR platform as you are.

Ben: 1:03

Well, I mean, let me clarify, there are plenty of things wrong with the AR platform. And most of my ARs are, I don't own a standard AR 15. Let's put it that way, because I don't. 5, 5, 6, and direct impingement just aren't my thing. I do have a couple that are direct impingement, but they're usually for longer ranges and have been tuned quite a bit. I, my main, the first AR ever really built out and used Delta this day as a truck gun is 8 SPC and has a gas piston system on it that I built. So, yeah. And ever since I've gotten the AR 10 platform, I've not touched the AR 15 platform.

Gene: 1:50

Yeah. Well, and I, I'm more of a fan of the AR 180 than I am of the AR

Ben: 1:58

15. Yeah. If I had a tax stamp and could find one under, 15 grand, I would love to have an AM 180. Mm hmm.

Gene: 2:07

But it's I mean, there, there's still...

Ben: 2:12

For those who don't know the AM 180 is a fully automatic drum fed 22 that was used for riot control.

Gene: 2:20

Yeah. You're talking about the AM 180. I'm talking about the AR 180.

Ben: 2:23

Okay. Oh, you're okay. Yes. Yes. Alarm light. Yeah. Used by the

Gene: 2:28

revision of the AR 15 an improvement, which did not use a, a gas tube spring in the back.

Ben: 2:37

Right, right. Yeah. It was used a lot during the, the troubles.

Gene: 2:42

Yeah. I think Schwarzenegger used in the Terminator movie.

Ben: 2:46

Right. Right. But the, the, it was mass produced. It was the, it, it is the version of the AR style platform that was made to be stamped out like an AK.

Gene: 2:56

Yeah, exactly. And it so it has a foldable rear

Ben: 3:00

style. Brandon Herrera did a video on St. Patty's day, a fan of Brendan. Dude, have you watched the Darwin awards? If that doesn't make you a fan of Brandon, I don't know what will.

Gene: 3:12

I've I've been watching Brandon for many years, but then all of a sudden you're, like, starting sending me videos of his, and I, I think it's great. I, I'd love to meet that guy. I mean, he's only, like, 40 miles away from here. I need to actually go to the trouble of finding out if there's any kind of a... Event thing or something, or just stalk him for a while. I mean, I was about to say

Ben: 3:33

gene

Gene: 3:34

stalking, stalking a guy. That's a big gun YouTuber yet said that would go over very

Ben: 3:39

well. I think,

Gene: 3:41

No, I, I honestly, it probably isn't that hard to stalk him. All you gotta do is just figure out which

Ben: 3:46

storefront is,

Gene: 3:47

I don't think he's ever had the store though. I think he's just a partner that I don't think he actively participates in it. That's just a way for him to get a lot of weapons. That's my my take on it at least. But yeah, the, the M 180, that was a South African gun, right? Or it was used in South Africa.

Ben: 4:05

Yeah. AM one 80 is an American gun. The American one 80. And yeah, that was the one I was thinking of. Yeah.

Gene: 4:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a crowd control gun.

Ben: 4:15

Well, it was meant to be less than lethal. It'll control the

Gene: 4:19

crowd. All right. By putting holes into them.

Ben: 4:22

But smaller

Gene: 4:23

holes. Yeah. And a very high rate of fire, if I remember right.

Ben: 4:27

Oh yeah. I mean, yes, a tremendous rate of fire. It's a very cool 22. I would love to have one.

Gene: 4:36

Yeah. And the closest I've come to that was many, many years ago. In fact, in 1994, so that'll be what, almost 30 years ago. I it's. Did a little celebration event thing, took a bunch of friends out in the limo and then we, we ended the evening by going to the gun range in a limo and and then shooting full out of guns. And the gun that I mentioned this is was a 22 caliber Tommy gun Thompson with a drum magazine. And that thing had a crazy high rate of fire on it. Yeah.

Ben: 5:16

Yeah. The Tommy gun is a awkward gun to shoulder.

Gene: 5:21

Yeah. And I, I've shouted in both 45 and 22 and 22 is way easier than 45 for that gun. Like that gun in 45 is not a good gun.

Ben: 5:29

Well, it was for the time, but the magazine release the bolts, uh mm-hmm. the bolt cycling the stock the way you, I mean, it is just an awkward, awkward,

Gene: 5:39

it's got awkward, awkward gun. Yeah. Yeah. But I've foot, I've shot Otto Tommy Guns in the past as well, but lucky 45. Yeah. At the FBI Academy.

Ben: 5:50

Ah! Fed.

Gene: 5:53

Fed. I was just, there as a guest. Huh. I've been a guest at these places. Huh. Huh. Huh. Who's a fed here? Everybody knows who the fed is around this podcast. Huh. Huh. Mr. Tra Oh, I'm gonna be traveling to far off destinations. Huh.

Ben: 6:07

Huh. You've done it far more than I have. Doesn't make me a fed. I don't know. It doesn't make me a fed either.

Gene: 6:14

Yeah, it does That's how that works. What, did you send me a video of

Ben: 6:20

something? Yeah, just a link to a video about the a AR 180,

Gene: 6:24

the AM 180? Yep. Cool. Cool. No, the AR 180, but Oh, the AR 180. Okay, cool. And I got close to getting one of those, but nah. It was, I just had too many guns.

Ben: 6:39

Yeah. You you're a, your SIG SWAT rifle is a far better gun in my mind, which really, if you look at, if you look at all the hybridized bastard children between AKs and ARs, it's probably one of the better ones.

Gene: 6:58

I think the best one's actually the the I w I the what the hell is the model? It's the, it's not the war, it's the other one. The I w I. Yeah, I'm like this

Ben: 7:12

weekend guns.

Gene: 7:13

I know, right now it's how bad it is. So it's the one that I only got the 13 inch version of, and I kept waiting for the nine inch version to get available at a reasonable price and it never did. As a pistol. Yeah, exactly. As a pistol. And it like the nine inch was supposed to sell for the exact same price as a 13 inch, but there was always like a. 800 premium on it. Yeah. So, cause everybody wanted the 9. And I've shot the 9. A buddy of mine's got the 9. That Well, in fact what's his face? Dude, the guy that wrote the books about getting drunk and hooking up with chicks. Tucker Max. That's the guy. Yeah, Tucker's got one.

Ben: 7:53

So I've got your good buddy, but my

Gene: 7:55

good buddy, I forgot his name. Exactly. Or he's not a good buddy. He's a, he's a guy that knows who I am. They'll pick up my call and we'll occasionally get together and shoot guns and bullshit. But. We could not talk for six months at a time. I

Ben: 8:08

heard a joke. Well, you know the definition of good buddy.

Gene: 8:13

What's that? Somebody on CB radio? Huh? Somebody on CB radio you just met?

Ben: 8:18

No, I'll tell you off the air. We want to keep this family friendly. What the hell did you bring

Gene: 8:24

it up for? Now you're making people look shit up on the internet. Definition of good buddy,

Ben: 8:29

a good buddy, a good buddy is one who goes to town, gets two blowjobs, comes and brings you one.

Gene: 8:36

All right, I, I would agree with that definition. That is a good buddy. All right. Yeah,

Ben: 8:41

no homo. Anyway, yeah,

Gene: 8:43

that's a good point. It depends on how he brings it. On her own legs or is he bringing it with his mouth?

Ben: 8:51

Anyway, it's, it's just, yeah, it was just a funny thing, so, yeah.

Gene: 8:57

So what else going on the moon landing next week?

Ben: 9:01

Well, yeah. So you, you, it's funny. I had started watching that before you even sent it to me and that's great. Yeah. What Jean's referring to is the Y files did a thing on landing. Yeah, it is very good. He does a lot of good research for the most

Gene: 9:18

part written. I mean, it's just. I, I, I know for some people this would actually be a he does have a team would be a turnoff, but it just so reminds me of NPR programs that I used to listen to when I was young. Like they're always been really well produced and the writing's good, the sound quality's excellent.

Ben: 9:38

Let's clarify, it's coast to coast AM meets

Gene: 9:41

NPR. That's a good way of phrasing it, yeah, cause the NPR would never have stuff like this on NPR. Coast to coast would be only this kind of stuff, but with bad production value.

Ben: 9:54

Yes. So I think the production value of NPR and the kookiness of...

Gene: 10:01

Exactly. From the Kingdom of Nigh, coast to coast with Art Bell. Art Bell was great. Loved watching, or listening to

10:09

him,

Ben: 10:09

rather. I miss him and what was the other guy? The rest of the

Gene: 10:13

story. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that guy's name? His, his son's actually still

Ben: 10:18

doing it, yeah. Yeah. I like, I remember working with my dad as a kid mm-hmm. sitting there eating lunch and listening to that. Yep. All the time, and it, it's amazing to me because there are so few people. So I'm, I'm reading a book series right now, and in a week I'm, I'm already on book three of the series. Wow. Luckily Paul Harvey. Yeah. Luckily, luckily there's like 10 or 11 of these books. And these are not particularly long, but they're not particularly short. They're 200 and some odd pages each. And like I said, I'm in less than a week. I'm already over halfway through book 3. Like, I'm just churning through these. I'm reading these. Four or five hours a day, which is, but it's, it's the survivalist series. The first book is called going home and it's by a American and the a stands for angry. And this is very much a book for anyone who listens to this podcast. This is going to be up your alley. If you like this podcast and our discussions and share some of our political leanings, you will enjoy this book. DHS and FEMA are the bad guys in these books. I'll put it that way. It, they're very well written. They're very well they are a little bit structured, meaning each book is its own self contained story with a problem action solution, sort of methodology in each. I'm sorry. With three acts. It's, it may be divided into five, depending but it's, it's multiple character point of view, you have three main characters through at least the first three books that, it kind of bounces back and forth between their storylines, but their storylines all intermingle it's, it's, it's got a different It's not like it's a, excuse me, it's not like it's a great work of fiction, but it's highly entertaining and it's well enough written that it keeps me sucked in and it makes you think,

Gene: 12:25

And what's the

Ben: 12:26

series called? It's the survivalist series. The first book is called don't just Google the survivalist series. Cause there are a couple that will come up, but it's going home by a American. And then once you find that you'll be able to find all of them, but I love that the author's pseudonym and pen name is a American and the a stands for angry. So Jean, did you write these books? I am not

Gene: 12:50

angry. I'm, I'm a very jolly person, as and I, I'm a big

Ben: 12:55

fan of the CIA. Just cause you're, on the fluffier side doesn't mean you're jolly.

Gene: 12:59

Yes, I'm, I'm, I keep waiting for my for my gig as Santa Claus one of these years. Dude, you should so do that. Oh yeah, yeah. I used to shoot with Santa Claus. He was a member of the same gun range that I

Ben: 13:10

was. I mean, you can always just, sit there and look for the hot single moms, there you go. Yeah. Do you want to sit in my lap, little lady?

Gene: 13:20

Why don't you and your mom both come up here for the photo? Is

Ben: 13:25

that a flashlight in your pocket? Sorry. Oh, Jesus. I'm going to hell. Oh, I

Gene: 13:32

feel that. So, let's see, what else? Yeah, we talked about the Moonlight, and it's like the thing that I love about that series, the Y Files, is that they do a great job of selling you on a particular conspiracy theory topic. And then talk about it more. And then the second third of the show, or the third third, I guess, is explaining why probably it's not true. But at the end, you're still kind of left to make up your own mind because now you've heard all the pros, but also all the cons. On that particular conspiracy that explain why the pros aren't really

Ben: 14:10

pros. Yeah, unless he believes in it, and then he kinda, is a little more... But even though... You can

Gene: 14:15

tell the ones he believes in. Yeah, I think he gives cons for all of them. I mean, they're not... He, for

Ben: 14:20

the most part, I agree, but he's still, you can tell the ones he

Gene: 14:23

believes in. Oh yeah, well the babblefish is the one that's really, I agree with most of the time. So babblefish... You mean hecklefish. Sorry, hecklefish, heckle, babblefish. Heckle, babblefish was a, a translator animal from Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And also, in the early search engine Echo, stop! Frickin Echo started talking. Echo, lights off. Well, luckily you're on the headset, so, ain't gonna happen.

Ben: 14:53

It will do that. Echo, kill Gene. Hey, hey, hey, hey!

Gene: 14:57

Don't give it any ideas. It's got the keys to the house. So

Ben: 15:02

be careful. Echo delete jeans, access to home.

Gene: 15:06

Exactly. And it, it knows how to call the police. So we got to echo

Ben: 15:11

down. I won't want,

Gene: 15:13

Dude, don't even joke about that. You know

Ben: 15:15

what? Somebody is going to be playing

Gene: 15:18

the podcast. Yeah, exactly. They were going to be playing at somebody. Well, like most people don't set their input word to echo. I put it on that because I say Alexa too much. So that wouldn't work. And the other option is computer. Well, come on. I mean, I use the word computer like every hour minimum. So

Ben: 15:38

that that's a Star Trek reference, right? Computer. That's

Gene: 15:42

for the ultra Star Trek. He geeks that want to talk to their house and say the word computer. But I always thought it was stupid when I was in Star Trek 2 because you don't talk to the computer by saying computer. That's like. It's not a, it's not a name, it's a description

Ben: 15:58

word. Well, if you notice they will use the word computer and the computer will not respond. But, if they are addressing...

Gene: 16:07

There's gotta be a dramatic pause. Computer? Exactly. Blah blah blah. Exactly. But the computer's always listening. That's the part you gotta remember on Star Trek. Oh, man. So all the, the crazy

Ben: 16:20

bullshit situations that they

Gene: 16:23

get into. dystopian state. Oh, it's completely dystopian. All the bullshit situations they get into, the computer just ignores, doesn't suggest a way to, oh, should I put that fire out by evacuating all the oxygen? Nah, computer just sits there quietly until it's asked something.

Ben: 16:36

Well, I mean, clearly this is a future where we've decided that artificial intelligence should be drastically limited.

Gene: 16:43

Clearly, because either that or Majel Baird didn't want to do too much time doing speech work. I really wish you could just buy her voice for Alexa. Imagine how many more they would Trekkies out there. If you could have Mangelbert's voice, which is the, the, Jean Roddenberry's wife's voice was the one that was used for the computer in

Ben: 17:04

the original Nurse Chapel. Diana Troi's mom in Next Generation.

Gene: 17:10

Which I think that's her best role, I think. I think she was better as Diana Troi's mom than Nurse Chapel.

Ben: 17:15

Oh, agreed. Not a, not a great actor, although I will say the, what strange new worlds is doing as far as tying in the storyline of nurse chaplain Spock tension on the original series is actually really good. And I,

Gene: 17:31

I like the actress that does the chapel on that,

Ben: 17:34

which they, they dropped a surprise episode yesterday.

Gene: 17:38

I, I got the message, but I, I'm not that far along.

Ben: 17:42

I, I still, yeah, it's a, it's a crossover with lower decks, which is hilarious. You've

Gene: 17:46

got to like, cause you like that cartoon stuff.

Ben: 17:49

Oh dude, the lower decks is hilarious. I'm sorry. It's funny. Which they, people who voice act

Gene: 17:56

take place after all. Oh yeah. It's

Ben: 17:59

120 something years in the future.

Gene: 18:01

So how do they do a crossover episode?

Ben: 18:04

You'll just have to watch and see.

Gene: 18:06

Okay, but I have very little reference. I've watched maybe three episodes of Lower Deck, so...

Ben: 18:11

It's self contained. Okay, alright. You're, you're good. You won't

Gene: 18:14

get a lot, but... Would I even know that it's Lower Deck as a reference? Yes. Oh, okay. Cause they mentioned it by name.

Ben: 18:22

They don't mention it by name, but there's, there's enough crossover stuff to cross pollinate. It's actually,

Gene: 18:28

yeah. And, and lower decks was always my idea. So I remember even like back in high school. So this is before the next generation was out talking about back in my

Ben: 18:40

day in high school. Exactly. Went down the shores, roamed the earth.

Gene: 18:45

That's true. They did. And that's why I'm still a fan of like all kinds of reptiles. So I always thought it'd be cool to do a show from the point of view of the the peons, the, the people that are never on the deck, they're on the bridge rather. They're never on the bridge. These are the people that, cause they tell you how many people work on the ship, right? So it's a fairly sizable crew. It's a crazy big crew on the next generation ships. And yet we generally see maybe. Five or six other crew members aside from the main bridge cast. So I always thought it'd be really fun to do a show from the perspective of people that are bitching about their jobs and they're constantly having to work overtime when they're not, they won't want to and all, all the, the sexual tension and stuff that that's going on on the ship because those stories I think would be very open, like you could remove a lot of the restrictions that you have. As far as the box that you have to write within for the the bridge crew, you wouldn't have applicable. For all these other people,

Ben: 20:00

well, and TNG and Voyager both did those episodes. They didn't do a series, but they did those episodes and lower decks is, the protagonists are incense.

Gene: 20:12

So an episode is good, but I, a whole show, I think would be. Pretty funny. And of course, that's as far as I got is just kind of telling my buddies that, oh, it'd be great if somebody and then not doing it. I could have written fan fiction for all

Ben: 20:25

we know. Yeah. Well, and the, the good part about it is, is it is made to, it really is made for a comedy. Like that, the Lower Decks, it works well. It's a, it's a funny show. It's worth watching. I think if you're not watching Lower Decks, you're missing good Star Trek. Prodigy, less so. I haven't been able to get into Prodigy very much partially. It's the kid's show that they did in combination with Nickelodeon. Yeah, it's, it's, it. The story, it's just, I haven't been able to get into it and I mean, I've watched Star Trek, the animated series, right? I am, I, other than portions of discovery and prodigy, I have seen everything that's ever been put out and then some, like, all, a lot of the fan fiction stuff. I very much into this. I tell you what, discovery, Really hard for me to watch parts of it. I mean, it is just so just garbage bad. And then prodigy. I have not found a way to get into. But, we'll see. I mean, it's canceled now. So I've got time to go back and rewatch it, but I don't think I was the only 1 who thought it was bad. And it was 1 of those quote unquote kids shows that wasn't. Wasn't enough of a targeted audience for kids. Like I, my kids were like, nah, that's this. No.

Gene: 21:53

Yeah, so, and Disney looks like is financially on the verge of blowing up, which is

Ben: 21:57

great. Dude, Disney's down to where they were when they were closing the parks during the pandemic from a stock standpoint. Mm hmm. Yeah Disney is in utter f I think free fall now, part of that, so full disclosure I have owned and do own some Disney stock that I've had for a very, very long time. Why would you have that? Well, when, when my uncle was teaching me about the stock market and so on and taking me to his broker in the early nineties and saying, okay, let's pick out let's spend some money and have you actually pick out some stocks and. Let's do this. I chose Disney as one of the stocks. Now, having held X number of shares of Disney since the early nineties and added to it. It has split multiple times since then and through their acquisition of ESPN and everything else has done exceedingly well for me. Now that said. I'm not buying any new Disney stock anytime soon. I should have sold when they got back up around 200 and I would have been happy, but I didn't. So we'll see, but I'm a long term investor. I don't buy in stocks willy nilly. And quite frankly, when I was investing in Disney throughout the nineties and early two thousands they weren't doing what they're

Gene: 23:15

doing today. Yeah, but they always had a tinge of,

Ben: 23:20

Oh yeah, their, their tinge is one thing, but when they're outright that's another, and, when, when you look at sound of freedom and Disney was one of the big production houses that shelved it for a long period of time. And here's the thing, movies get shelved all the time, but a a blockbuster typically does not. And this is the, I don't care how you score it. It's embarrassing for Disney and I think Universal was the other major production house that had shelved it that this, 14, 15 million dollars. Even if you conclude marketing campaign movie has made over a hundred million dollars at this point. Well,

Gene: 24:02

it's I think the crap they're putting out combined with the, the Florida governor's recent push against their land holdings, I think is definitely going to make the stock go down even further.

Ben: 24:16

Well, their push against the land holdings actually, I mean, that could bankrupt the company. Yeah, which would be awesome. Well, I mean, they're, I mean, they have not built into their business model normal tax liability. They haven't built into their business model a lot, lots of things. So I, I think that that could be extremely dangerous for Disney as a corporation.

Gene: 24:43

Well, I, I would not advise anybody to invest in Disney. That's all I would say.

Ben: 24:48

I tend to agree, but you know, I don't give investment advice.

Gene: 24:52

Yeah. No, I don't either, but I think that would be a prudent thing. There's a, I mean, that's even aside from the, what's going to happen to all these companies when the U S gets into a hot war the only companies you want to be investing in are the one that make munitions. Well, everybody else is going to go down. Well, and there's, there's not a whole lot of U. S. manufacturing companies out there to

Ben: 25:17

invest in. Well, I mean, it depends on how you define manufacturing because there are a lot of small manufacturers that the defense production act could potentially. Call up. So we'll see. Like, like

Gene: 25:35

Tesla has been threatened with,

Ben: 25:37

yeah. Tesla GM, all of them. Anyone who manufactures anything could get called up, which ends up being, a decent amount of people. It just, it matters who's president and what happens. I w I will say that we do have a decent munitions production capacity in this country far more than anyone outside of Russia or China. Yeah, it's

Gene: 26:02

it'll be interesting right now. know if the odds are over 50%. I don't know that they're quite that high, but the odds are definitely higher now. Then they've been calling up the reserves. Yeah. It is higher now than they've been for the, for the last decade to have a hot war before Biden's term is over. Like, I think a lot of the advice coming in is this is the only way for the Democrats to keep power is to do the same thing that I don't think they

Ben: 26:35

will. I think that would seal their fate.

Gene: 26:38

I don't know, man. You don't think they will? They've done crazier things before.

Ben: 26:42

No, no, no, I, I, I have no doubt

Gene: 26:45

that they will try and And we have a War II.

Ben: 26:48

Yeah, I, I, I fully understand that they will try and start a hot war to hold on to their power, I just don't think that would work. In fact, I think you would see an anti war candidate like Kennedy or Trump or Vivek, skyrocket and get in there real frickin quick. Now, unless they suspend the election and well, then they could. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, if they do that,

Gene: 27:11

because it's, it's clearly election tampering and conspiracy for people to come into a federal building with some signs, but it wouldn't be tampering at all if they suspended the elections.

Ben: 27:24

Right? So, the way I see it is if. If the elections are ever suspended in this country

Gene: 27:32

yeah, then we don't have a country now,

Ben: 27:35

The, one of the, one of my favorite means that I've seen lately, you're aware you've read tale of two cities, right? So, tell two cities is a story about the French revolution and it starts off. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. The meme that I've seen that I really, really. Like and I enjoy seeing it was fuck around times. It was find out times Okay, I see where this is going well I approve of this message that's a

Gene: 28:06

that's a good meme but But I think that the French well that phrase right the best of times worse at times I think that that both of those were true

Ben: 28:20

Well, I think that refers to kind of any war

Gene: 28:24

the conditions leading up to it. Yeah, because there's, I don't think there's been a, a group that wasn't doing really well just before the war, it's just, it's not necessarily the group that ends up on top after the war. But there, there've been plenty of people that have been super profitable off all the Ukraine crap.

Ben: 28:47

So speaking of war and rumors of war and more war to come India, India, have you been tracking India? Not really. What am I missing? India has banned the export of all non Basmati rice. So their main food, staple rice, they have banned the export.

Gene: 29:09

What other kind of rice do they have? I always just thought Basmati was the Indian rice. Well,

Ben: 29:15

so they have Basmati as a specialty rice that they can export to the world just because it's one of their major cash cows, but their main food staple rices and so on. They've they've blocked the export of and Basmati is. Various the export of what is sent for global consumption is smaller than the rest, they have other races like Jasmine and so on. But regardless, so we didn't hear the funny part. It was, I saw videos of DFW people stocking up on rice and shit. And it's like, okay, stop. First of all, the U S is a major rice producing country. We're number two or three in the world. What's Texas.

Gene: 29:56

Are you kidding me? I've never seen a rice field here.

Ben: 29:58

Oh, are you joking me? Texas is a huge rice producer.

Gene: 30:02

Okay, where? I've seen all kinds of other stuff growing here. I've never seen a rice field. Where are the paddies, man?

Ben: 30:07

Right outside of Beaumont, down by the coast, between Houston and Beaumont. All that area is huge rice production. Southeast Texas. Yes. Got it. Yeah. I mean, I mean, hold on. Yeah. I mean, if you Google Texas rice production, you can go, you can do it, but Texas has over 225, 000 acres of high quality, long grain rice production. That where's Texas ranked in rice production? I haven't seen it. So Texas by itself ranks fifth in the world for rice production.

Gene: 30:44

Didn't know we had that many Asians here.

Ben: 30:46

No, no, no, no, no, no. More like Cajuns, Kunases, and everybody else that eats rice and beans and everything else. Rice is a southern staple, thank you very much. And Louisiana produces quite a bit of rice. Anyway, the point is, people were going and hoarding based off of this, and there's no need. The U. S. produces its own rice. But India's involvement in this, and the reason why they're doing this, is because they see it come in global famine. They see the so one of the things that you have to realize is rice is very... Fertilizer dependent to maintain modern production levels. It requires a lot of phosphate and Russia is a huge source of phosphate. They've been sanctioned by everybody. The other major source was Ukraine. Oh, interesting. So yes, between phosphate and potash, there's been a massive reduction in the what we can produce from staple goods. Then you take into account for the nitrogen fertilizers that are required. And the fact that most of those come from fractionating, natural gas and, we've cut off one of the world's major suppliers of natural gas fertilizer and everything is going up. There are lots of people predicting famine at this point. And India's moves are, they're, they're trying to insulate themselves and try and make sure they can feed their own population. But that's going to be a pretty tall order.

Gene: 32:09

Well, if they're normally exporting, so they're.

Ben: 32:12

Yes, but they're also normally importing other

Gene: 32:15

goods, right? So what are they not going to be importing?

Ben: 32:19

Well, that's going to depend on the other countries.

Gene: 32:22

Hmm Because I would imagine India is one of the countries not affected by the phosphate exports from Russia. Why? Because they're buying all kinds of stuff from Russia They're not really on board, they're part of BRICS. They're not on board with all the Western sanctions. We'll see. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that they would ban just completely all exports of, maybe there's other factors at play here.

Ben: 32:50

It's worth looking into this. This is something that popped up on my radar literally yesterday. So and it happened on a Friday, so yeah other news, Europe is going to start requiring Americans to get visas. Well, that makes sense. Not really. We've been visa free with them for, since the end of World War II, pretty much.

Gene: 33:15

Well, fair enough. But I think people in Europe have to realize that a lot of people in America at this point are got here through maybe less than official means. Yeah.

Ben: 33:29

I don't think that's the motivator.

Gene: 33:31

But just regardless you got on a plane in the US doesn't mean that you're good to go.

Ben: 33:35

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Re regardless, I think that I think that the, you're gonna see some changes from our state department in retaliation as well. You don't get to just slap this on us and, then come to the U. S. without a visa, but it's been interesting because the Japan passport, the U. S. passport, there's been lots of moves as far as what countries will accept passports here lately.

Gene: 33:59

Yeah, it's I don't think that's a bad thing then. I think it's less convenient for sure, but I don't think it's a. Bad thing

Ben: 34:09

I mean the convenience factor. You got to go online and fill out a form.

Gene: 34:13

Yeah, exactly What do you do? But it's you go along with the idea that the the world is not run by the u. s. Anymore you keep saying this I know it's gonna take a long time for people in this country to realize it But the rest of the world is moving along Okay, I remember I was surprised I needed a frickin visa to go to Australia. I was like what to penal colony I need a visa why? What am I going

Ben: 34:41

to do? Smuggle a weapon in there or what? No, no, no, no, no. You might incite them to violence and get them to finally leave the island. Huh.

Gene: 34:52

God forbid that happen. I mean, they've got a lot of desert there. That's wide open.

Ben: 34:58

Well, that's the, that's the thing. If, if you could ever actually get to where you could utilize the Outback Desert portion of Australia, it. But it's so inhospitable they've talked about digging canals across to irrigate and do everything else and really, they really ought to do something massive as far as geoengineering there to try and just from a mining standpoint, but it's it's so inhospitable, they can't even hardly mine it. Cause there's just no water. I mean, it's a massive, massive area that makes the Sahara look wet, almost. Right.

Gene: 35:36

Yeah. It's, it's a it's just literally the rim around the country and, and mostly in the East side that has population. Oh yeah. Interior is very, very

Ben: 35:47

empty. The interior of the continent is almost totally uninhabited and quite frankly, uninhabitable,

Gene: 35:56

probably make a pretty good movie set for Mars or the moon or the moon. Well, the Arizona is definitely more of the, the Martian color.

Ben: 36:08

So probably, I mean, you're saying you actually buy into the Martian color.

Gene: 36:13

Well, it's a whole other thing. Yeah, I know. It's a whole other thing. It's like all the Mars photos are fake because that's not the real color. That is, that is a good point. They do over ratify that's not a word, but I'll use it. Mars in photos, they make it appear

Ben: 36:29

a lot more red. Have you ever heard a good explanation for that?

Gene: 36:33

I think it's what people are used to. It's kind of like, you don't want to, it's a brand. It's the brand that Mars has, it's the red planet. Okay. Have you not heard that before, the red planet?

Ben: 36:44

I have, I have. But that doesn't make any sense. So, whatever.

Gene: 36:51

Well, in the movie, The Martian the planet wasn't red.

Ben: 36:55

Andy Weir did such a good job on that book. He just had to have his little trope about the wind knocking over the the launch vehicle. Other than that, it was... Well, that is ridiculous, but yeah. Well, it's not possible.

Gene: 37:08

Yeah, it's not possible with natural conditions.

Ben: 37:11

It's not possible because Mars atmosphere is not dense enough to do it. Yeah,

Gene: 37:16

yeah, but if you put a if you blow up a nuclear weapon next to the Martian vehicle, I'm sure that... The atmosphere will move sufficiently fast to still knock it over. That's why I said natural conditions. Huh. But, cause Musk wants to just nuke the hell out of Mars to make it habitable.

Ben: 37:33

Yeah, well, it might warm it up a bit. Yeah,

Gene: 37:37

well that's what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to melt and release all the currently frozen things to become gaseous. The problem is it's still a temporary solution because there's a reason that Mars has such a crappy atmosphere is because it got blown off and it's going to continue to get blown

Ben: 37:54

off regardless of what happened to Mars or didn't happen to Mars. I think colonizing it is is definitely something that should happen. And I think it will happen from Texas as predicted by the expanse. Yeah, exactly.

Gene: 38:11

Yes. The Texans colonized Mars.

Ben: 38:14

Well, and it's funny because Alex, the character from The Expanse is of Indian heritage, but his ancestors came, migrated from Mars, from Texas. So he's got a very Texan way of looking at life and things and

Gene: 38:29

that was the best character in the show. Honestly, I was very pissed when they run them off. Yeah. Yeah. And for such bullshit reasons. He was caught in the whole Me Too thing.

Ben: 38:40

Well, I mean, he was written out of the books before that, so I don't know if that's the case. Well, it is the case. Look it up. Well, they may have expedited it in the storyline, which they did, because of that, but the books, the... I'm not saying he didn't

Gene: 38:54

die, I'm just saying I didn't like him getting rid of, written off that show, because it was a knee jerk reaction to the whole Me Too thing. Yeah, I understand that. He was, apparently went and invited some girls back to his room at a sci fi convention. Oh no! Who went to his room, and then Obviously not willingly, Gene. Yes. How could they consent? Must have dragged them out there. What were they doing at a sci fi convention to begin with, is my question. And then and nothing happened, incidentally, they didn't have sex, but apparently they felt threatened, and that was enough to kick him off the show.

Ben: 39:33

You know what? What's really just, it really chaps my ass. What's that? Mr. Cowboy. Oh, my God. When you look at the, like this story that you're talking about, first of all, sci fi convention, have you seen most of the women? Yeah, exactly. Number one. All right. Number two. Yeah. The actor who's playing Alex or whatever, probably could have gotten away with what probably happened. Is they were all really hopeful, but he was actually a nice guy and didn't do anything. And then they were like, why not? That's when they got pissed. That's, that's probably what I think.

Gene: 40:18

Yeah. Well, whatever happened is people's personal lives should not equate to them being written out of a storyline because the storyline was not going that direction at the time. It was, it was literally the bullshit that happens these days where storyline doesn't matter. It's, it's purely what matters is how people perceive socially the social credit score of that person.

Ben: 40:45

Yeah. Well, I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm halfway joking here and, talking through it, but.

Gene: 40:53

Yeah. But either way, I mean, it's the idea that unless you're pulling an OJ where you're using drugs. Okay, like that, it's hard to argue for, but why would you argue for that? Gene, there are no drugs because even those women, Gene,

Ben: 41:13

even though when did you stop beating your wife? Yeah.

Gene: 41:17

Yeah. Well, once she divorced me, probably fully consensual, I have the tapes.

Ben: 41:23

But Jesus Christ on the lot of

Gene: 41:25

levels, right? Uhhuh, and oh, come on. What couple doesn't enjoy a little bdsm. Come on. So, with all these, all these women that are going after guys mm-hmm. at the time, these things were happening outside of the non-consensual drug things. They're, they weren't objecting 99. 9% of these cases that I've heard when they describe it and both sides describe it very similarly, it's a change in retrospect, it's a change in feelings after the fact, it's kind of like saying, well, I was young and dumb and now I'm smart and older, and now I realize that, gee, maybe I shouldn't have slept with as many people as I have. So, therefore, that person did a bad thing by sleeping with me. Shocker. Wait, that's kind of what it comes down to in a lot of these cases, is that it's a it's some kind of a retrospective regret that kicks in. Yeah, that, I

Ben: 42:35

don't

Gene: 42:35

disagree. And the courts have just bent over backwards to accommodate that. It's, it's not like women haven't had regrets forever. That, that's a natural thing that's always been happening. The difference is simply that, that courts have started to act on it. Well, courts... They're not willing to say, so you were young and dumb and you acted stupidly? Okay, well that's not something you get to sue somebody for.

Ben: 43:02

Well, the courts have been going the wrong direction for a very long time. Mm hmm.

Gene: 43:08

Yeah, Soros. One word. What about Soros? Well, Soros has been paying to put in.

Ben: 43:17

Oh, that's DAs. No,

Gene: 43:18

that's no, no, no, no, no. Judges too. Judges. Plenty of judges run for office, buddy. And Soros is supporting the judges that he wants. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 43:26

Yeah. And well,

Gene: 43:29

so you've got, it's, it's

Ben: 43:31

anyone who allows legal system,

Gene: 43:34

Taking over the legal system of a country through legal means. That's what source has been doing. Yeah. And he's affecting. The outcomes of what is considered crime.

Ben: 43:44

Well, I, I, I, I think the best thing we can do is encourage encourage limits are robbed to be played in lots of venues and giving people ideas and then hold on the best we can and hope for a better out French

Gene: 44:01

style, French revolution to happen.

Ben: 44:03

You say it, but that would be

Gene: 44:05

the best encouragement to the rest of the world. Yeah, if the French, I mean, it would recall a French

Ben: 44:11

revolution. It I tell, I think that there's a good chance of one here in the United States.

Gene: 44:19

Yeah, but that, that, this one I would have to live through. So I'm less inclined to want that, but I'm more inclined to have a French style French revolution happening in France where they all speak French anyway, and then that would be a wake up call, I think, to a lot of countries. It's like, hold up. If, if a country in Europe is going to do this. We're fucked because our little country could totally do this. I think there's going to be a lot of that kind of mentality because right now they feel very isolated. It's been a damn long time since there was a revolution and the last few that have happened, they've been in kind of like, middle of nowhere, backwards countries. So there's not a huge revolutionary threat these

Ben: 44:58

days. Well, all it takes is one of the color revolutions to start and in the U. S. or France or somewhere, and Bob's

Gene: 45:10

your uncle. Well, but the color revolutions are run from Hillary's laptop, so how does that work?

Ben: 45:18

Doesn't really matter. Someone, someone kick it off here. It, I'm not saying that it would Who is John Galt? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Anyway, we'll see. You could definitely scare some some elites into maybe backing down a little bit, but we've gotta have some follow through to the point we see change. Mm-hmm. you have hope for change? I haven't. So here's the thing. This world is this country is headed for some bad times. Either those bad times lead us back to something good. Or they lead us down to a dystopian future that I really don't want my kids to live through either way. It's going to take the involvement of good people to stand up and stand by their principles and not just go quietly.

Gene: 46:16

What's the saying for that? All it takes for evil to win and for good people to

Ben: 46:22

stand by and for evil to triumph in this world is for the good men in it to stand by and do nothing. And who said that? I don't

Gene: 46:28

remember. I'm not a, I'm not a big quotes guy. I I know some people are really good at, like, memorizing quotes from people and repeating them. I've always been annoyed at that because... It really, to me, doesn't matter who said it, if it's true and it's good, then it should be repeated. I'm not gonna be a stickler for attribution because there have been too many instances in science and other things where multiple people have arrived at the same conclusions in not too drastic a time

Ben: 47:01

difference. Yeah. And, quotes attribution, attribution is difficult, especially over a period of time. So whatever.

Gene: 47:09

And don't trust the internet attributions. I've literally found most of them. A majority are falsely attributed. The, the number of quotes that you have from George Washington and the Abraham Lincoln that didn't even come up until this century is ridiculous. I mean, it's like people are just attributing any old thing that they like. To people that are famous, because that gets more views, I guess, I don't know, like, Oh, George Lincoln, George Lincoln, George Lincoln, that George Lincoln guy, he's a great president. That George Lincoln guy. Yes. That's, now we have his 28th.

Ben: 47:49

Don't get me started.

Gene: 47:51

Oh, hey, did you watch, by chance, that video that I posted in our mutual group on Signal from the high school teacher talking about history?

Ben: 48:01

Brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr. When did you post this? Yesterday. No, I have not gotten to it. The part of history you always

Gene: 48:09

skipped? Yeah. If you want to get mad, watch that video. Okay. Cause this is, this is much more dangerous, I think, than the blue haired, crazy, learning 20 different sexualities teachers out there. This guy comes across as not being weird. He has a million YouTube followers and he basically, it's not insignificant. It's not insignificant. And in this video, he explains how. Slavery has been the history of the United States since the beginning and how what people are taught in schools about slavery is completely wrong because it is whitewashed and neglected and that it basically It goes through and why everything is tied to slavery in America. So, you wanna get mad? Watch the video. Mm-hmm. I, I guess I can stick a link to it in the show notes

Ben: 49:13

as well. Yeah. And this is where, although I, where will say, don't give any more views. Th this is what I would say is the fuck around times, find out times, sort of thing.

Gene: 49:23

Yeah, but again, anyone can have an opinion but

Ben: 49:26

then they can be wrong and they can be held to account for their opinions. But here's the thing, here's the thing, you are allowed to believe whatever the hell you want. You're allowed to espouse whatever the hell you want. You're also accountable for whatever you say and do. Free speech does not mean free of consequences.

Gene: 49:45

Well, we'll see if you watch it. I'm curious as to your reaction, because His presentation and demeanor is very authoritative. Like he, he doesn't come across as like, Oh yeah, this guy. Now, why would anyone believe him? He's clearly crazy. He doesn't come across like that. He comes across as very sane and correct. And he's got a, just a ton of little facts. He's throwing at you left and right, but you have to be more intelligent and dig a little deeper to see the holes in his arguments. But for the average person, this would be like, Oh, yeah, well, that's, that's total concrete proof that the left is totally right about this stuff and the right is wrong. So that's the people that need to go to a Gulag first, and then after we pick them up, then we start focusing on the blue hairs. Yeah,

Ben: 50:43

well.

Gene: 50:45

Oh, I'm talking about France, of course, not here. No. No. No, because people, in this country, you, you, you end up being in jail for a year without being charged. If you talk about anything that. Resembles in any way possible counter government thoughts. Yeah.

Ben: 51:05

Have you ever looked at the list of countries that don't extradite to the U S no, it's not a promising list. Your, your best bet is literally Dubai and really Dubai does not

Gene: 51:20

extradite the cost of living might be an issue in Dubai and somewhere you want to live. Venezuela might be better, at least from a cost of living perspective. Yeah, it depends on where you want to live, but I mean, if you're in Dubai to avoid extradition to the United States, first of all, I guarantee you that there are people that can be bribed. And pay it off and you will be black bagged maybe it's not a us hostile country is my point. They may not have an official extradition policy, but that's mostly to allow people that have cheated on taxes to not have to be. Oh,

Ben: 51:59

yeah, I mean, it depends on what

Gene: 52:01

they're not stepping forward and saying, Hey, Julian Assange, come here. No,

Ben: 52:05

no, no, no, no, by no means, I wouldn't suggest that they were, but yeah.

Gene: 52:13

Yeah, I think it is a fairly

Ben: 52:14

small list, but I may, well, it's a small list and the, the list is not super great. So anyway, I may or may not be, inquiring

Gene: 52:26

Mexico definitely does extradite. Oh, yes. Unless you're a Mexican citizen. Yeah. It doesn't actually add Mexican citizens. So that's an approach. I guess that's something you could become a Mexican citizen.

Ben: 52:39

Countries that do not extradite us citizens. So here's the, here's, here, here's the list that is not super long. Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Russia, the Ukraine, Indonesia, Lebanon, UAE, Cambodia, Morocco, Vietnam, Cyprus, Cyprus, actually that's that there's where you go, Cyprus, Belarus. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Qatar, Nepal, Oman, Moldova, Kuwait, Vanuatu, which I didn't even know that was a country, Tunisia, and Mongolia. That's it. So out of all of those, dude, Cyprus,

Gene: 53:27

it's in the EU. So I don't understand how they don't extradite. I

Ben: 53:31

don't either, but it's right there by Greece and beautiful part of the world.

Gene: 53:36

So some would say Turkey, but yeah,

Ben: 53:40

and cheap cheap to live. So.

Gene: 53:43

Reasonable. Yeah. What's his name? The yes. Indeed. You, you, you, you newly found love for that part of the world is showing

Ben: 53:51

a dude. It is the, the Mediterranean is just absolutely gorgeous.

Gene: 53:58

It's no wonder that the Roman empire had, or that they had an empire. It's literally like one of the best places to live. As a non technological civilization.

Ben: 54:12

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, well, not a high tech civilization, they were technological, but the climate is tempered enough that it's very easy to survive. You have abundance oranges

Gene: 54:23

to grow on

Ben: 54:24

trees. Well, and it's awesome as they do pretty, well, oranges grown are grapes grown vines, but yes. Anyway yes, you have lots of the Mediterranean is exceedingly hospitable to human life. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And it's just the Greece. So you know, I will, I will say my time in Spain was less less enjoyable, but still very beautiful portion of the world, but the people so where I was at was in Barcelona, which is part of Caledonia, which, during the Spanish revolution was communists, but okay. Or at least they were, they were the OG anti fascists anyone who hasn't read it George Orwell actually fought in the Spanish revolution and he wrote a book, Ode to Caledonia, that's well worth reading. So yeah, but anyway, that, that sort of mentality as Hemingway, I can't stand Hemingway as an author. I think that's hilarious. I've read a ton of Hemingway. But I, I don't, he does not understand relations between men and women at all. I, I think anytime he writes about a romantic inter, interaction between a man and a woman, his homosexuality is showing. Ooh. And I, I, for whom the bell tolls is a moronic story in lots of ways. The old man in the sea is just utter trash. No, and Hemingway is not that great of an author. Sorry.

Gene: 56:02

I think he's one of the best authors. His writing style sucks is, is really the, the one that is. Should be imitated the most.

Ben: 56:14

No, he hyper focuses on details too much.

Gene: 56:18

It is the style of writing that is utilized by the best ad writers out

Ben: 56:24

there. Okay, sure, for something like that. But when he spends three pages describing something, one little item. He's gonna spend three fucking pages describing this. They're all short sentences. Oh my god, yes, so it's even more inane. Thank you.

Gene: 56:40

It's not inane. Oh, for fuck's sake. No, I, I think the storylines are fairly weak. He was really a journalist, not much more so than a fiction writer. But

Ben: 56:50

that's my

Gene: 56:50

point. But I mean... He's now remembered for his stories, but really he was a journalist, and I think it was a very good journalistic writer.

Ben: 57:01

Okay, but so for a journal, you're right. If he was taking his writing style and applying that to an article to describe the war in Ukraine, for example, or the war in Caledonia. Sure. But when he 600 page book. And, for him, the bell tolls or however long it is, it's been a long time since I read it. And the, the, the principle of the story, I actually like the telling of it and the details of it are just, you take this great idea and trash it. Oh, you want to pull a surprise for it? Okay. And you know what? I'm convinced Hemingway was one of the first people who started the whole trend in Key West. What? The gay trend? Yeah.

Gene: 57:50

He wasn't gay. Mm hmm. Huh. No, he, he'd been married four times. You don't marry four times if you don't have some particular desire for, you know what. It's like, it's a, I think, well, first of all he was also a work for the U. S. government in a lot of capacities, which I think makes him more interesting, not less. But I think as far as writing style, I, I am a big fan of that style of writing. I've actually taken classes on how to write I think that... If you combine the a number of these factors about him, he really was one of the people that made a huge contribution to American style of literature, which maybe you don't like.

Ben: 58:42

I can't stand that style now. I, I, like I said, I think it's inane. I don't think it's written very well. I think he takes what could be very good stories and destroys them.

Gene: 58:54

Jesus. Wow. You're quite opinionated. When did you first start hating him?

Ben: 58:59

The first time I ever read old man in the sea when I was like eight or nine and going, well, this is bullshit. Well,

Gene: 59:05

I, I can see, I can see a kid thinking that that's a little more difficult to see an adult thinking that, but okay.

Ben: 59:14

I, why it's a crappy book, a farewell to arms was probably one of his best, but again, it was not great.

Gene: 59:23

Books are allegories. They're not. They're not just stories. I

Ben: 59:27

understand. I've read all of his books, or at least the majority of his books, multiple

Gene: 59:32

times. Why would you read something you dislike multiple times? That doesn't seem rational.

Ben: 59:37

Well, first of all, because I read it because... I, I, so I just read and anything that's listed as a classic, especially as a kid, I read and then I got into high school and had to read it, going, going to public school, I had to reread a lot that I had previously read. Which was just sad, Oh, we have to read the scarlet letter, dude, I read this when I was 10. Why am I rereading this? This is a long ass book. Hawthorne goes on almost as much as Hemingway does, but he's a lot more verbose. Actually, I like Hawthorne more than I like Hemingway.

Gene: 1:00:11

I've never read anything other than the scarlet letter by Hawthorne. What else did he write? What's the

Ben: 1:00:16

other big book

Gene: 1:00:18

or just what was the other one about? I don't even care what it's called And why do we read the Scarlet Letter in American schools anyway? It's not because it's great

Ben: 1:00:28

fiction well because it's about the it's about the Puritanism in the US

Gene: 1:00:36

I did that just start after the McCarthy McCarthyism that they started putting that into the curriculum. Oh,

Ben: 1:00:42

no, no, no. Ha Hawthorne. House of seven Gables was this other major book. Yeah. No Hawthorne's been popular since the Scarlet letter was. Published, in fact, it was as actually seen as a rebuke of puritanism during the first and second Reformations. Mm-hmm. or second Reformation rather. Because, hey, the, when you go through the, the second reformation, you had this idea of Christianity, especially in the US that's much more forgiving than the Puritans were. And the Scarlet Letter is a perfect story about. Puritanism making assumptions and going too far and punishing someone that did not deserve it.

Gene: 1:01:22

But she did deserve it. How? She was an adulteress. Gene, have you read the book? Yeah, I read the

Ben: 1:01:30

book. How was she an

Gene: 1:01:31

adulteress? Was she not sleeping with a married man? Well, I'm sorry, what's your definition of adulteress?

Ben: 1:01:38

We have very different recollections of the book, but it has been a She had a

Gene: 1:01:42

kid from a guy that she wasn't married to. What? It was her husband. What did you read? How is he

Ben: 1:01:48

her husband? Cause he was her, that, that was the whole thing in the book.

Gene: 1:01:53

How is he her husband? I thought he was married to somebody else.

Ben: 1:01:57

It's been too long. I'll have to read a synopsis and then send it to you.

Gene: 1:02:00

Yeah. Yeah. I think you should. Cause I think it's not about what you thought it was when you were eight years old.

Ben: 1:02:05

Well, I've reread it since then. It's a,

Gene: 1:02:07

it's a feminist book. That tries to portray women's sexuality as being disconnected from responsibility. That's what I got out of it. Okay. Show me I'm wrong. Now, it's been 40 years since I read that book, but I'm pretty sure it's

Ben: 1:02:24

true. Anyway, I still hate Hemingway. Him and his damn three toed cats,

Gene: 1:02:32

not three told they're four toed. No, they're six toed. They're six toed cats. They're

Ben: 1:02:35

very cute. Three on each foot. Paw. Yes. Congratulations.

Gene: 1:02:39

No, no. They have an extra toe. They don't have, oh, you're missing the child. I've pet his cats, dude.

Ben: 1:02:46

Oh yeah. I know there's some running around Galveston and the beach.

Gene: 1:02:50

They're awesome. They're, they're very, very cute critters. Although I, I'm not sure it was him or his, one of his wives that was into the cats as much. But he definitely left his house to him, so he must have liked them at least to some degree. No, I, I, I'm still a fan of Hemingway. I, I don't think that he's a that, that the contents of any of his fiction novels were particularly good. I don't think they were, earth shattering or extraordinary or anything else. I just like his style of writing and it's predominantly a writing style for writing good ad copy and for writing a good articles, good propaganda. It's very powerful writing. It, it forces the reader to see a particular image very well.

Ben: 1:03:45

And and I, yes, by describing it to the nth degree. No, no,

Gene: 1:03:49

no. See, now what I would say there, there is an author who I liked that did that. I'm trying to, I'm blanking this name now is Hunt for Red October. Who wrote that? Bup, bup, bup, bup, bup. Do you not know?

Ben: 1:04:04

No. Not off the top of my head.

Gene: 1:04:07

It's... God damn, what's the guy's name? God damn it.

Ben: 1:04:11

Which, by the way, they're working on making the caterpillar drive from Hunt from Red October actually a reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you've seen that.

Gene: 1:04:19

I did not, but that makes sense because I think they already had made a version of that, that worked back then.

Ben: 1:04:25

Well, and that's the Tom Clancy, by the way. Yeah, Tom

Gene: 1:04:27

Clancy, yeah, exactly. Now, Clancy's books are like 90% super detailed description, 10% action. Okay. Dude, first of all, they're thousand page books. And then, and I've read all of those and at least all the ones that he worked on. I stopped reading when he just started putting his name in books and not actually working on them. But they're very super detailed. They're fairly well researched. He did have a total in to the CIA and NSA. So he was, he was using the most accurate info that. We actually had at the time for a lot of his books. And I really enjoyed reading him as a teenager I thought they were great books and Even though I was in my 20s I was really reading a lot of them and enjoying him and but like I said, he just he cashed out man

Ben: 1:05:23

You know who I really enjoyed until they killed him Michael

Gene: 1:05:27

Crichton. Oh Crichton. Yeah. Yeah Crichton now Crichton is a great writer In terms of content and in terms of writing style as well. Yeah. They

Ben: 1:05:36

decided to off Crichton when he wrote shit. What was it? State of fear.

Gene: 1:05:41

Yeah, I would, I would buy that conspiracy theory because

Ben: 1:05:44

I don't think it's a conspiracy.

Gene: 1:05:46

I know, I know. But yeah, he, he was well, he was a scientist first of all. So he actually wrote. Without too much fantastical kind of, in fact, if you look at Jurassic Park, the movie, they took a lot more liberties in the movie than he does in the book.

Ben: 1:06:04

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. He's actually much more concise of an author. Now, he will still do a lot of great descriptive work and things that you obviously would enjoy that I find a name, but he does it in a way that's not annoying in my mind.

Gene: 1:06:23

I I don't think I'm particularly difficult to sort of distill into what I enjoy reading, which is. I, I like hard sci fi and I like I like there to not be any either glaring errors or use of hand waving magic, unless I'm reading a fantasy book. Yeah, I agree.

Ben: 1:06:46

I agree.

Gene: 1:06:47

So if an author can do that and it, same thing, it doesn't even have to be sci fi. If, if we're doing like a political thriller. I want the same thing. I don't want any magic hand waving to be thrown in there. Yeah. You

Ben: 1:07:01

don't gloss over something. Yeah. You don't want to gloss over like you don't want a magic MacGuffin, like, the secret service stopping an investigation without finding out whose bag of weed it is, or I'm sorry, cocaine.

Gene: 1:07:14

Who's back at cocaine. It is. Yeah, exactly. You, you

Ben: 1:07:17

don't want, it's just too implausible. Like that would never happen in real life, not in real

Gene: 1:07:22

life. Or, like having these huge branches of the U. S. government charged with investigating people who have connections with adversaries or overseas like China and being able to really follow their actions to understand if what they're engaging in is at all illegal. We have agencies that we're spending literally billions on to do these functions in the U. S. government. So, when books start to talk about, some really kind of observably idiotic behavior by politicians that end up just getting away with murder, it's like, how, that's unbelievable. That would never happen. Yeah. So, not an enjoyable book.

Ben: 1:08:13

Did you did you go through and listen to the music video I sent you about that's done to cats in the cradle? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 1:08:25

And I thought it was very creative. It's good. Good. Yeah.

Ben: 1:08:28

I thought it was extremely

Gene: 1:08:31

well done. I don't know if they use the same backing track or they recorded a new backing track, but it was pretty well done. Yeah. Which there's a certain talent that people have for making these style of what do you call that? When, when somebody takes an existing piece of music, yeah, like parody music. Like Weird Al Yankovic obviously was a prodigy of this kind of stuff, but there are certain people that are really good at that But they will never have a hit musical track

Ben: 1:09:00

now, but I mean, this one was just so perfect hunters in the basement. He'll be high soon instead of, yeah I'm going to be like you, dad. Oh, good. Oh,

Gene: 1:09:14

it was very good. All right, what else going

Ben: 1:09:19

I am, so I've been working on and part of this has been inspired by a couple of things, but the, the book series I'm reading right now, not withstanding has definitely kind of spurred me on a little bit, but I've been redoing kind of my get home bag and how I'm going to keep things in my truck. I've decided to. Update and upgrade a few things and going through and doing actually redoing my go bag the bag that stays in my wife's car and the bag that stays in my car and changing some things around that's been interesting. And, there are lots, you can spend a lot of money real quick. So yeah, I'm, I'm prioritizing and, thinking

Gene: 1:10:02

through it. Expensive these days. What's that? Some Texas expensive these days.

Ben: 1:10:08

I'm not getting the reference. And maybe I'm not hearing you correctly. Cause you were like,

Gene: 1:10:12

Oh, some texts. C4.

Ben: 1:10:16

Yep. Yeah. I, I, I heard you making that money joke. Yeah. The no, but the vertex bag I got is awesome.

Gene: 1:10:25

I really should be sponsored by those guys. The way you're talking about them,

Ben: 1:10:28

dude. I actually, I got a pair of their jeans too. Oh, you did? Wow. Yeah. I hadn't ever tried any of their clothing. Are they like Kevlar weaved?

Gene: 1:10:37

No,

Ben: 1:10:37

no, no, no. They're, they're, they've got, so they're, they're actually a majority denim shocker. They've got reinforced knees, they've got some extra pockets, all that, but Denim is just cotton, right? I mean, yeah, treated, but yes, anyway they were, 65 or whatever, so they weren't super expensive jeans but they're comfortable, they fit well and cool. I needed a new pair of jeans anyway, so I tried on mine. Yeah. But vertex is making some good stuff that I've got. Let's see. Anyway I went to the military surplus store and considering what I want for my shelter and things for my get home bag. I normally on my big go bag, I've got, an actual. Sleeping bag and sleeping system and things like that. Okay. And, but in the smaller get home bag, I'm, I'm not going to take a full sleeping bag. Right. Right. Right. So I've got a little survival baby sort of thing. That's, not reflective. I've got space blankets and stuff like that too, but I want something that's not reflective. And then the other thing I got for that was a will be and Just a piece of advice. If you're ever looking for something like that, there's a lot of new made and, oh, we've improved this, that, and the other. But when you actually look at the quality that you're getting from China versus what was actually issued and the cost difference, go get the, grade two previously issued ones and

Gene: 1:12:03

you'll be great. That's probably good advice in general. There's. If you order a bunch of something and then you can kind of make your own comparison, see what you like the most, but obviously you don't want to do that for expensive stuff, but I, I just did that with protein bars. So I think I mentioned I, I ordered some weights on Amazon, so I'm starting to do a little more exercise around the house. And yeah, it's always a good thing. And then I thought, well, I should, I should probably get some of these protein bars because if I'm exercising, I want to make sure I'm getting a little more protein, maybe than I normally do. And obviously the, the goal there is to find something with as few carbs as possible, but that doesn't taste like cardboard because that's what you run into when you get rid of all the carbs protein kind of tastes like cardboard. It's, it's very dry, chalky and not, not at all pleasant tasting and adding oil to that in, in form of fat makes it. Easier to go down, but still doesn't improve the flavor much, but you, so you still need something. So I bought like, I don't know, seven or eight different protein bar packages to see which one tastes the best. And I found one talked about it on my other show, Unrelenting. And in fact, Darren was finding that it's cheaper to buy in Illinois than it is here in Texas.

Ben: 1:13:32

I haven't listened to this week's No Jindo or Unrelenting. I've been too busy reading.

Gene: 1:13:36

Yeah, it sounds like it. But and when you say reading, do you mean listening or reading

Ben: 1:13:42

a combination in paper? So, so I depends on what I'm doing. Like if I'm doing dishes or something, I'll use audible. But one of the things I really like about audible and kindle and why I've spent the amount of money that I have there. Yes, I can go back and forth. So if I'm up doing something, I'm listening. But as soon as I

Gene: 1:14:01

sit by both versions, do you don't think it

Ben: 1:14:03

depends? So a lot of times the audio book you have to purchase, but then if you're a prime member, you can get the text for free. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So sometimes you have to buy both versions. Sometimes there's deals and sometimes if you're a prime member, you get it for free. Okay.

Gene: 1:14:21

I, which reminds me, I need to send out a bunch of my books.

Ben: 1:14:24

Yes. So one of the things I'll say in addition, if like this book series not only am I buying the Kindle version and the audible version, but as soon as I'm done with the series, given, if I like it, I'm going to buy the entire series and probably hardback if I can get it, not paperback. Wow. Okay. I like physical books.

Gene: 1:14:45

Yeah. Yeah. I don't like moving with physical books, so I got rid of all my,

Ben: 1:14:50

yeah, I'm currently looking for another bookshelf for my office because I'm out of shelf space. Hmm. So

Gene: 1:14:57

I get it, I get it. I just, when I moved to Austin, I just said, that's it. I'm done. Cause I, I, every time I moved, I had like boxes and boxes, probably 15, 20 boxes. This is why you hire movers. Even if you hire a mover, well, I don't trust them to pack shit.

Ben: 1:15:17

I don't, no, no, no, no. You pack and you unpack, but you have them move.

Gene: 1:15:21

Yeah. I mean, yes. Moving physically, I guess the hard part, but it's packing is. So I ended up just I was going to sell the books. And I realized how little they pay. I just ended up donating. Well, had a couple of really good sci fi collections in there.

Ben: 1:15:36

It's too bad. We weren't friends back then.

Gene: 1:15:38

You could have probably taken some of that stuff. I know I would have taken

Ben: 1:15:41

all. Yeah,

Gene: 1:15:42

yeah, yeah. No, I, I have Most of my books were sh shocker. They were either sci-fi mm-hmm. or Science Mm-hmm. That's, that's the two main categories of books I had. And all, all across all science. So physics, chemistry, et cetera, but El electronics, computers, whatever. But but the main fiction side of it were were sci-fi and I, I kept. I think I kept about 20 books that I just, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of.

Ben: 1:16:13

Yeah. Did you did you translate that video I sent you? Oh, no. I

Gene: 1:16:19

saw that you asked about, I haven't watched it yet. Oh,

Ben: 1:16:21

okay. Damn it. I'll check it out.

Gene: 1:16:24

What was it about? Toilet seats. Toilet seats. Okay. Interesting.

Ben: 1:16:31

It's a, it's a, it's a Russian in Ukraine stealing a toilet. And I'm just curious to hear the translation.

Gene: 1:16:38

I haven't been to Russia in a damn long time, but from what I recall, the toilet seats were no different than they are in other areas. They're all made in China, guys.

Ben: 1:16:45

I, I know, but it was just, it was so funny, I had to send it to you, dude. Just, just as a kind of a backhanded

Gene: 1:16:52

jab at you. I haven't really been paying attention too much to the Ukraine thing.

Ben: 1:16:56

Yeah, the Kirkoff Bridge

Gene: 1:16:57

got hit again. Yeah, I saw that. And the, I mean,

Ben: 1:17:01

it's a miracle that thing's still standing. It must've

Gene: 1:17:04

been designed well but I think, I think they're going to do what I've been predicting since pretty much the start, which is there, this is going to accelerate the capture of Dessa. They're going to be completely cutting off whatever's left of Ukraine from water.

Ben: 1:17:21

I can see that,

Gene: 1:17:23

Which Odessa was always a Russian city.

Ben: 1:17:26

Well, and quite frankly, if they do that, if they do capture the entire coastline of Ukraine, first of all, I think there's a high, high, high chance that Zelensky ends up dead out after this. And Poland and their expansionist tendencies could happen.

Gene: 1:17:47

Yeah. Well, and I, again, this is like before CSB started being crazy and telling me all kinds of things that prompted me to not, to cut them off for a year. One of the things I said is like anybody that's worried about this Polish shouldn't really worry because. Honestly, if this thing goes through, Poland's going to end up with Lviv, like that'll just be a part of Poland, which it's historically always been Russia would not want that city to be part of Russia anyway. So like Poland gets something out of this. So if you're Polish, why are you against this war? You had to be for this war.

Ben: 1:18:28

Well, you could be a moralist. What's that? Someone who's morally opposed to it.

Gene: 1:18:37

Yeah, I just don't know what that is, but. Someone really opposed to make a

Ben: 1:18:42

joke. uhhuh. No, no, no. You, you, you not understanding morals I think is very, very, not a joke. Yes, exactly.

Gene: 1:18:51

So I don't know. I, I think if they capture that so which they're moving towards and are likely to do that would bring Transtria to be unified with Russia again, and Yes. Yep. And that would be freaking hilarious because. Transnistria is like the weirdest place on earth.

Ben: 1:19:13

And for those who don't know, it literally sits out it's land. It's totally isolated. You have to rush to supply. It has to go through foreign territory to get there.

Gene: 1:19:25

Yeah. It's an exclave and it's similar to like Guantanamo Bay where the U S has always had that in Cuba. And it still does, which seems really strange because. We have a longstanding hostile relations with Cuba, but yet we're in Cuba. It's like, if we, this is what, what never made any sense, right? Is if during the Cuban revolution, if the United States was doing what they're doing right now with Ukraine, instead of just giving lip service you literally have a staging base to capture that country, that territory, and they didn't do it. You're talking about Cuba? Yeah, I'm talking about Cuba. I'm talking about JFK not taking over Cuba. Well, it's surprising given how little Cuba... Would have presented as an obstacle.

Ben: 1:20:22

You say that, you say that, but the Bay of Pigs went

Gene: 1:20:27

terribly, terribly wrong. Because the Bay of Pigs was Cuban nationals with very little support from the U. S. government. And it's, it was, this is not a full. For

Ben: 1:20:39

the American army, before the Castro regime and before Shay and the Cuban revolution, the Cuban government was incredibly friendly to the U S it

Gene: 1:20:49

was, it was super corrupt, just like Ukraine. It was super friendly to the U S and it was a great place for laundering money. I see a similarity here. Yeah.

Ben: 1:20:56

And but a better vacation spot. Oh

Gene: 1:21:00

yeah, by far,

Ben: 1:21:01

yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So what it comes down to is okay. Man, after, after the Castro revolution took place, they immediately associated themselves with the USSR. And I don't think the USSR would have just let us go in and conquer Cuba. I think that would have become our Afghanistan.

Gene: 1:21:27

A little harder to supply. The supply lines, because there could have been a blockade very easily, right? I

Ben: 1:21:32

mean, our supply lines to Afghanistan were not exactly easy. And when I say Afghanistan, I'm talking about Charlie Wilson's war Afghanistan. Yeah, right. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm talking to the audience there, Gene. Oh, okay.

Gene: 1:21:45

Okay. I see. Yeah, so maybe, but time is the issue. So if the U S would have taken the revolution of Cuba as a hostile act against the United States and its interests, well, certainly financial interest, it was they could have gone in there with Guantanamo Bay as the staging grounds within three months. And taken full control, and that could have been just like Puerto Rico. It would have just been a place where people would want to be the 51st state. And they spoke Spanish, and it's off the coast of Florida anyway. No, they speak

Ben: 1:22:32

Cuban, but yeah.

Gene: 1:22:34

You mean Cuba? Cuban is Spanish dude's. Not Cuban is not a language.

Ben: 1:22:40

I mean, it is. It's a dialect. It is. There are some definite distinct differences.

Gene: 1:22:45

It's still Spanish though. It's it's not Portuguese. It's not anything else. It's Spanish. Yeah. It's like saying Creole is a separate language. It is.

Ben: 1:22:56

Okay, sure. It's like, no, it's like saying Cajun is a separate language to French. Yeah, it is a separate language.

Gene: 1:23:02

Well, yeah, it's, it's a poorly spoken French. Absolutely.

Ben: 1:23:06

Gene

Gene: 1:23:07

Etzer. Gene. Oh, yeah. Anyone's going to debate me on that. Everybody agrees with me on that, dude. It is. I don't agree with you. All right. Well, everybody else does. So I think the U. S. could have done this quickly. It would not have taken very much. The during the revolution or shortly after the revolution in Cuba the United States could have sent in peacekeepers like it always does. Enforced martial law and effectively taken over Cuba. Now the U S actually had Cuba for a period of years. I can't remember what years that was.

Ben: 1:23:46

It depends on what you mean by have Cuba, Spanish American war. There was an occupational force there, but that's when we installed the pro U S government and it lasted for X amount of time,

Gene: 1:23:57

but we could have just installed it to be a U S territory and not just simply a government there. But we didn't. But we didn't, but we had a second chance to do that is my point.

Ben: 1:24:08

In the we, we still may, I mean, it's not

Gene: 1:24:12

going to happen now.

Ben: 1:24:13

Oh, I don't know. I think it's more likely to happen now. As soon as Castro's brother dies, there's no line of succession. There's no third Castro waiting in the wings and Raul already has a very tenuous grasp on the Cuban people. You still have the expat movement in the U S. That would love to see the overthrow and return of Cuban nationalism. So no, I, I think as soon as Raul's done, I, I think a second bay of pigs where they may actually succeed is actually a real

Gene: 1:24:46

possibility. I think it's going to be a lot more difficult there. China is a lot more deeply involved in Cuba right now than it's ever been.

Ben: 1:24:56

Yeah, well, unless China installs a puppet government that they are going to absolutely control and commit military forces to, which I don't see the U. S. allowing yeah, I don't see that happening. All China

Gene: 1:25:07

needs to do is keep the U. S. out of Cuba and then offer to trade Taiwan for Cuba. And by trade, I mean, Hey, we'll turn a blind eye if you turn a blind eye.

Ben: 1:25:19

Okay. I don't see that happening. First of all, Taiwan is way more fortified than Cuba. We are not talking apples to apples and oranges to oranges. And quite frankly, if it came down to it, I would say, let them have a Cuba. We'll take Taiwan. I'll make that trade. Fuck you, China. We'll see. Which by the way the whole Donald Trump don't trust China. China is as ho. Mm-hmm. who was it? Oh, it was my parents. They hadn't heard that one, so I had to play that for'em. No. Yeah, yeah. Everybody got a good kick out of it.

Gene: 1:25:52

That is a funny one.

Ben: 1:25:53

Yeah. Donald Trump don't trust China. China. Is that how the,

Gene: 1:25:58

the, I, I think China is going to be hard pressed not to start. A military action in the territory of Taiwan.

Ben: 1:26:13

If they don't, they lose it.

Gene: 1:26:14

Yeah. If, because as soon as the U S gets into a hot war in Europe, that is the ideal, perfect time for China to take over Taiwan, because it's either going to place the U S in a, in a dual front situation, or it's going to be super easy for them to come in and us is going to walk away from Taiwan the same way you did in Afghanistan.

Ben: 1:26:38

I like the vakes option on this actually a lot. What did he say? So Vivek has proposed his plan on how to end the Russian Ukrainian conflict. And that is to, to basically tell Russia, okay, here are the territories of Ukraine. You can have now walk away from China and let's in these sanctions and you and us be out, let's bring you back into the fold, but

Gene: 1:27:05

you can't trust the U S I mean, that sounds good. But at this point, China, they've never trusted and that's a, that's a a known person you don't trust the United States, Russia trusted in the nineties and what good has that trust accomplished? Yeah,

Ben: 1:27:24

well, I don't know if they actually trusted us in the nineties,

Gene: 1:27:29

but yeah, absolutely. I would say there was a very. Everybody wanted to be like America, everybody, the oligarchs down to the, the everybody wanted blue jeans and rock and roll, baby. It's exactly right. Everybody did want blue jeans and rock and roll. And there was a huge, like, it wasn't just that the U S one, it was that people finally saw the light, like they could see the benefits in the nineties of what the U S had accomplished. And the culture and society that it had, and everybody wanted it on every level of financial level or whatever you want to say, my point is that you'd be hard pressed to find somebody in Russia in the early nineties, or even the late nineties for that matter, that. Didn't see the US as the, the country to aspire to become, I'd say maybe the only exceptions were these really old, very hardcore, true believers in communism. That were dying off because because Russian society was just not very good at keeping its citizens alive. Drinking too much vodka.

Ben: 1:28:49

Yeah,

Gene: 1:28:50

I mean, I'm sure it's better than it used to

Ben: 1:28:52

be. And quite frankly, I have a very loose definition of alcoholism, but the Russians definitely can meet that.

Gene: 1:29:01

Of alcohol, of being alcoholics?

Ben: 1:29:04

Yeah, the alcohol abuse like, I'm 1 of those who I don't think if you have a drink every day, that necessarily makes you an alcoholic. Although by the Western textbook definition, it certainly would. But if you're binge drinking or drinking to the point of blacking out or, there are lots of things there that seem commonplace.

Gene: 1:29:25

Yeah, it's I don't think Russia ever really fully had a program in place to combat alcoholism. I think that it's certainly gotten better. It's tightened up a lot from the the, the way that had been in the seventies and eighties where people were literally just drinking themselves to death but I don't know, man. I mean, it's, I think that for what they have in alcoholism, they, they have fewer people addicted to drugs.

Ben: 1:29:56

Well, and I mean, alcohol is a drug, but it is cheaper. Well, and I mean, a lot of people will argue that alcohol is more destructive than certain other drugs and, this, that, and the other. Here's the thing, not in our legal system, in our legal system, the other drugs are far more damaging. Which, by the way, remind me to talk to you about something about our legal system offline. I I, there's just, I'll put it this way. There are just so many things that I've seen examples of that are so disheartening. I, I forget where I was watching it, but There's this anyway,

Gene: 1:30:44

well, the

Ben: 1:30:46

judges in our legal system have two bigger egos and too much power

Gene: 1:30:54

and they were installed by Soros

Ben: 1:30:57

for a large extent. Yes. Those that are elected, at least,

Gene: 1:31:02

yeah, I would, I would agree, but the ones that aren't elected, well, who puts them in?

Ben: 1:31:07

They're appointed generally. Exactly. They're, they're, and there's some

Gene: 1:31:12

confirmation. They're all political, no matter what we have a judicial system that is really created by the politicians in office. So I guess you could say they're somewhat representative of the populace because. At least assuming not every election is stolen that the, the legislature would represent the populations trends and they're the ones that get to choose who ends up being a judge. But for federal judges, at least, it's a lifetime appointment, so it's not like, it's not like you got to worry about it.

Ben: 1:31:48

Speaking of stolen elections, did you watch the culture war on Friday? So Mike Lindell and another election guy? Yeah, yeah. They were on they were on there and it's definitely worth worth watching. He's, and the, the other gentleman who was on there was criticizing him for this, but he's apparently coming out with a new plan for us elections on August 17th and well, why don't you just announce it here? Why don't you announce it here and he's saying because I have to have a media event. This is the only way I can get it out. You're just trying to make money off of this and everything else. And it's a free event. No, I'm just trying to get the word out, which, Lindell

Gene: 1:32:27

who was saying that he was saying to announce it.

Ben: 1:32:30

Mike Lindell is having an event to announce something regarding elections on the 17th because he's been largely blackballed by everybody. Yes, sorry. I'm just looking at your life expectancy chart for Russia.

Gene: 1:32:45

Yeah, it's actually not quite what I thought. So apparently between 1960 and 1980 life expectancy was going down, but it went down more. In the nineties, but then it recovered in two thousands and actually, I think it got to pretty damn close to what the U S life expectancy is.

Ben: 1:33:04

Yeah. I mean, the biggest jump is from the end of world war two. So yeah, yeah. Thank

Gene: 1:33:12

you. The Russian what happened? They're doing great. Yeah. Yeah. And what he's referring to is the average life expectancy in the, in 1896, which was a measurement. Was 31 years old, the average life expectancy by 1920, which was now you got to remember World War One, the combination of Russian revolution and World War One took that down to the mid twenties, and then it climbed to the mid thirties between 1920 and World War Two. World War Two took it down to 33 years old, and then post World War Two, then it went from 33. All the way up to 69 years old.

Ben: 1:33:55

Well, and, towards like 1950, it hit 40 and then by 1960, it was up in the seventies. So, that, that's a pretty dramatic, we stopped killing our population.

Gene: 1:34:08

I mean, you could kind of see, in the in the pre Russian revolution days, there kind of was a reason for the peasants to revolt. Oh,

Ben: 1:34:17

100%. I mean, that, that, that's like the French revolution, right? I mean, we can joke about Marie Antoinette and everything else,

Gene: 1:34:23

but... There's a rational, rationality behind it.

Ben: 1:34:25

Oh, yeah, no one says it's not justified. It's just, it didn't need to be a Bolshevik revolution, right? Exactly. Well, and here's the thing. The Russian revolution wasn't, wasn't either. It wasn't even really a Bolshevik revolution. It's just that the Bolsheviks took advantage of the situation and took over during the chaos.

Gene: 1:34:43

Know what Bolshevik means?

Ben: 1:34:45

I don't know. I'm going to go with bullshit

Gene: 1:34:47

artist. I don't know. That's pretty good. No, it actually means big or bigger. But Troy means big. And so they're like the, the biggies, I guess that would be the term biggie gene.

Ben: 1:35:01

But I want to learn a little bit of Russian from you.

Gene: 1:35:05

Okay. So the reason I say that you're missing the joke. Okay. I'm definitely missing the joke. It's not funny. So, the reason I'm bringing that up is because they were literally the minority of those involved in the revolution, but their nickname were the biggies. And so it's, it's a way to sort of create an image that, Hey, we're, we're the ones that are representing the most people, which they weren't, they weren't either the ones that doing the majority of the revolutionizing, nor were they representative of the majority of the opinions. They were just one of the minor parties, but they're also the ones that took over after the revolution was actually done. And then once they took over, they do what socialists always do, which is. Prevent anybody else from following their path. Bye.

Ben: 1:36:02

Well, you can't have any counter revolutionaries, you have to, you have to make sure that, everything stays pure.

Gene: 1:36:10

Exactly. So, the same means that they used to achieve ascending to that office would then block from anybody else from being able to do that. And they started cleaning house themselves and getting rid of Trotsky and other people that were part of the party originally ensuring that like most of these socialist governments. Socialism is just a label to get to the place that you want to get to well to become, Oh, no, no,

Ben: 1:36:42

no, no, no, no, no, Jean, Jean, Jean socialism is right wing communism is left wing. Yeah, there you go. These are, these are, which is total bullshit, right? I mean, socialism and communism are left wing. The, the extreme economic positions that we talk about here, they, you want to say that the Nazis were far right and the communists were far left. Bullshit. They were both far

Gene: 1:37:05

left. They were totally far left. Yeah. Nazis were nowhere near far right. They were

Ben: 1:37:09

far left. Now they will sit there and say, Oh, well, they were authoritarian.

Gene: 1:37:13

And that's, I think the distinction people confuse authoritarian right. When communism isn't. No, I know. But that's what I'm saying is that people. In the U S and not just the U S, but I think people confuse authoritarian with right wing where in reality, authoritarianism can be both on both sides, but it's most commonly been on the left. You, you look at most leftist governments, they are authoritarian and some right wing governments are,

Ben: 1:37:44

but what I would say is the, the right wing extreme position is a monarchy.

Gene: 1:37:50

Which would be authoritarian, but also there are monarchies and then there are monarchies and like the British monarchy is about just keeping your wealth and not doing much of anything else. Okay. So, the queen was very, it was very important to her. And I think this is coming from her parents or her dad. Anyway, like the, the one time king that. You should not be involved in politics. We're above politics. We are the sovereigns of the country. And that attitude was not prevalent in most other monarchies. The monarchies saw themselves both as, as sort of cultural leaders, but also as. Political leaders, they were the ones that were responsible for the course of political action in the country, including declaring wars against others. So,

Ben: 1:38:52

well, I can say is. Perhaps Elizabeth Churchill was maybe not the best prime minister. How about

Gene: 1:39:01

that? Oh, yeah. What are you going to tell me next? That Lincoln was not the best president?

Ben: 1:39:07

Oh to say the least.

Gene: 1:39:09

Huh. You're just confusing history now. Huh. That's the podcast you should do. Confusing history. How to rewrite, how to rewrite the lies that we've been all told.

Ben: 1:39:22

You mean how to write the lies?

Gene: 1:39:26

Well, wouldn't it be

Ben: 1:39:28

rewrite as incorrect?

Gene: 1:39:29

Not Oh, how to write the law. Oh, that's bad words. See, that doesn't come off. That would come across if I read it. Not if I just heard it. Yes. How to write the lies that has many meetings. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I think We've talked about this topic before to where the history is written by the victors and quite often once you start pulling on that string and Unraveling it you find an awful lot of holes in that history things that change over time and are interpreted In the way that's very beneficial.

Ben: 1:40:04

So, right, R E I R I G H T, the lies. com is available.

Gene: 1:40:10

Right, the lies? Mm hmm. Ooh, that's pretty good. Now, if you got that domain, which is probably only 10 bucks would you actually... Do anything with it or just do what I do and just hold it for three years and then go, Oh, it's a waste of money. And then drop it.

Ben: 1:40:26

I don't know. I mean, the slightly racist, what I already got. So, it's, it's one of those things every year when domains were new, my wife's like, what is this? Cause it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's not all at once. It's like, what, what, what, what, what, how many domains do you have? I have a

Gene: 1:40:44

problem. I know. I know. Oh my God, dude. I. This is probably before your time, but I remember getting domains for free. From ICANN just for filling out the paperwork and what we used to do, at least what I did and some friends of mine is anytime we'd be in a conversation or had an interesting idea or something we would jot it down and then get that domain because it'd be hilarious. com is. com's were so easy to get. And it's back in the day when Adam got MTV. com same deal. It's like nobody, nobody, nobody else wanted this. So why wouldn't you get it? And I had a lot of domains that were like three letter, four letter domains. And I've let them all go. Once they started charging, I'm like, I'm not paying for 180 domains. Screw that. How dare they charge the internet's supposed to be for everybody. So

Ben: 1:41:43

little social, okay. So I will say this, the domain registration companies. Once you get that set up and you do any amount of marketing, it's, it's a fucking annuity. It just prints money. Oh yeah. Yeah. How many domains do you think I actively have right

Gene: 1:42:01

now? I know I've cut mine down to about 20. I was at over a hundred for some period of

Ben: 1:42:07

time. So I've cut mine down recently I'm at 27.

Gene: 1:42:14

Oh, that's just slightly high. But I, I try to keep it below 20 from a cost standpoint, because I, I honestly only use about five. I don't know. How many do you actively use? So,

Ben: 1:42:28

let's see actively in use one, three, four 10 of them. Okay.

Gene: 1:42:38

So you probably use a few more than I do. And you own a few more than they do,

Ben: 1:42:42

Like the sterling family. com and things like that.

Gene: 1:42:47

I don't know why you'd have some other company's family's domain, but whatever. No, I guess that's a market you could have gotten into. I, I think it would have been, if I was smart, I would have gotten like johnson. com or anderson. com or, just pick family names that have a whole lot of people and then set up a a pop mail server and just sell them for like a couple bucks a month forever.

Ben: 1:43:12

Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. So, my son's first name is William, right? And he was a big kid. And he's got cousins that's Waylon and Wyatt. And we've always made a, made a joke that they should start a band, Willie, Waylon and Wyatt, and he was a big kid, he was almost 10 pounds when he was born. And I always wanted to call him bill after my grandpa and she doesn't want that. So she wants to call him well, and I don't want to do that. And Well, here's the joke I always just said, you know what? We ought to call him. What's that? Well, he was a big baby and, Willie's a nickname for William. So we ought to call him big Willie. That's that's

Gene: 1:44:01

a kid would love that.

Ben: 1:44:02

She was not amused.

Gene: 1:44:04

Well, she needs a better sense of humor is what I would say. Yeah, that is a funny one.

Ben: 1:44:10

Big boy. Anything else, gene? I'm trying to

Gene: 1:44:14

think if there's any other topics, issues, things we haven't covered,

Ben: 1:44:20

Debates coming up. Did you see the blaze TV forums? So if you haven't watched it, go back and watch the full interview. We talked about it last time on pens, but. Go back and watch Asa Hutchinson. Go back and watch Ron DeSantis.

Gene: 1:44:38

So why would I watch people? I just like, no, because

Ben: 1:44:41

Tucker Tucker ended three presidential campaigns. Oh yeah.

Gene: 1:44:45

No, I, but I watched, I don't need to watch the blaze for that. I watched Tucker.

Ben: 1:44:50

No, but he's the one who did it. And it was the blaze that hosted this media event. Oh,

Gene: 1:44:55

okay. Oh, I didn't know that.

Ben: 1:44:57

Yeah. This, this whole thing where Tucker was interviewing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was TheBlaze. That was the Blaze that was

Gene: 1:45:02

hosting. Well, good for them. I mean, I'm, I like the Blaze. I just don't really watch'em. Yeah. I don't, they don't really have shows that I, I mentioned Glenn

Ben: 1:45:10

Beck. I, I got into Glenn Beck when he was on Fox. Mm-hmm. And back when he would have the whiteboard and talk about the spooky Do the spooky do, yeah.

Gene: 1:45:23

Yeah. I think Glenn Beck lost a lot of people at that point.

Ben: 1:45:28

I, I, I, I have more respect for Beck than I do Hannity.

Gene: 1:45:32

Oh yeah, absolutely. Hannity is worthless, but I've never liked him. He's, he's Irish and Catholic. Ireland's a beautiful country. I don't want to, it's a disparage Ireland at all, but I just, there's something about these people, they're

Ben: 1:45:48

just, this is the co host. You have

Gene: 1:45:49

really, oh, Darren knows this full well, believe me, but he's also got that Polish side, which is much better, but There's something about these, these Irish types that just kinda, I just don't, I can't trust them. So it comes down to,

Ben: 1:46:04

for good

Gene: 1:46:05

reason, Irish, right? For good reason. Well, I mean, you do have your faults. What can I say? It's, it's a thing. And I think I'm not allowed to have a co host who's not part of Irish anyway. So,

Ben: 1:46:17

so, Bimro's, he, he's definitely part of

Gene: 1:46:21

Irish. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. He's English Irish.

Ben: 1:46:27

Which y'all, that was the, I've never listened to Grumpy Ol Ben, so that was the first time I really heard him and he and I sound like we get along, there's a, there's a little, I think Darren is actually the outlier here. He is, he is. I don't think he realizes it though. No, no, no. Like, if you listen to the other podcast he does, which I don't listen to very often, but With the, the subsonic

Gene: 1:46:47

one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't understand them because it's below my hearing

Ben: 1:46:51

range. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, Darren's kind of the, oh, he's surrounded by libertarians and he's the only neocon.

Gene: 1:47:00

Although he would take offense to you calling

Ben: 1:47:03

him that, but yes, okay. He's he's a morally acolyte. He is. He loves Bill O'Reilly. I know he does. That's why I'm calling him the Bill O'Reilly

Gene: 1:47:12

acolyte. Absolutely. No, he loves him. He subscribes to him, pays good money for it. Yeah, I I, I would agree. I, I think, I think he has, because he's the one that produces a lot of these podcasts. He thinks he's the host and everybody else is a co host. But I think it's the other way around. I think that he's the producer and everybody else is the host and has the producer on the mic. But yeah, Bemro's, we get

Ben: 1:47:39

along. So what was Rush Limbaugh's.

Gene: 1:47:43

Oh, the black dude. Yeah, what was his name?

Ben: 1:47:45

Not smidely. Snerdly. Snerdly. There we go.

Gene: 1:47:48

Snerdly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They, they worked together for like 30 years.

Ben: 1:47:56

Yeah. So, so, Derringer Snerdly is I guess what I was getting at. Yeah, exactly. Through the formerly nicotine stained

Gene: 1:48:04

fingers. Although, I don't, well, you haven't listened to it, but we we did talk about microphones quite a bit in the last episode and he's got the same mic that Rush had. Although his isn't gold plated, but Rush had a gold plated version of the Heil, Heil PR

Ben: 1:48:22

40. I believe. Yeah. Rush made a ridiculous amount of money.

Gene: 1:48:28

Made a good chunk.

Ben: 1:48:30

I started with you. He made a

Gene: 1:48:32

ridiculous amount of money. No, it's all syndication. Howard Stern did the same thing. They were just different. Demographics they were hitting

Ben: 1:48:40

now, one, one thing I will say rush always, there was always an enemy. He was just, he was a professional contrarian. I don't know that rush really had any strong principles. I guess is what I'm getting at.

Gene: 1:48:54

Oh, he was always

Ben: 1:48:55

conservative. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I, again, he, when the bushes came to power, he was a neocon he, he, he, he went with

Gene: 1:49:04

the wind. He was a conservative. He was not a libertarian. I think that's, that's certainly a distinction is back in the day. So I started listening to Russian 1990 and his show at that point was basically him smoking a cigar and reading the New York Times and making fun of it. And like, you literally heard him flipping the paper pages of the New York times and that was every day that was his show. So it was not, there were no guests. It was a lot less tied into specific Washington politics and a lot more sort of general. General disdain of a conservative with New York and by extension, the rest of the country, but you know, it was, it was, I

Ben: 1:49:52

mean, I can fully support disdain for New York

Gene: 1:49:55

as, as can I, and I, I, my, my niece lives there but I still New York

Ben: 1:50:01

to get out now.

Gene: 1:50:02

Oh, she just bought a house there, dude. Oh my

Ben: 1:50:05

God. I was actually at Sam's the other day returning a tote, a couple totes because they were just way too big. Anyway this guy in front of me was standing there and he was wearing a United shirt. And I was like, Oh, you work for United? And we get to talking. And he's like, yeah, my kids fly up to New York all the time. They just love it up there. And I'm like, the hell's wrong with them? He goes, I don't know. Hey, black guy. Anyway, it was just funny because I'm like. Why the hell do they like going to New York? I don't know.

Gene: 1:50:33

Yeah, it's not all it's cut out to be. Now, back in the day, New York was more interesting, it's a lot less interesting now. But it was never a place I'd want to live. Like I worked there for three months, I think. And since I didn't have to pay for cost of living. It was, it was actually kind of fun. I, I'd be out in the city all the time and I, I went to a bunch of dates out there. I hung out at the clubs. It was, it was an interesting time, but I would not want to move there. If you like a city. Yeah, well, and the thing that New York has as a mega city is it has neighborhoods, which is one thing that a lot of cities just don't have very many of. I mean, Houston

Ben: 1:51:15

has

Gene: 1:51:16

neighborhoods too. It does. I agree. And that was one of my thoughts behind moving to Houston. Is like after living in Dallas and living in Austin, like, where do I want to go next? Is it Houston or San Antonio and San Antonio would be more Mexicany and Houston would be more like the benefits of a bigger city with actual neighborhood. I even know the neighborhood I would be in I don't know what it's called. It's next to the museums. Like the museum district. Oh, you mean

Ben: 1:51:47

off downtown? Yeah. Southwest of downtown. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 1:51:49

That's the one. Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:51:51

Yeah. I like that area. Well, I, I just don't like cities, but that's neither here nor

Gene: 1:51:57

there. Yeah. And I, and I'm, I, I up not deciding to move to Houston in the end, so in fact, I mean, I mean, end up in San Antonio, I may end up a lot further out from that. Mm-hmm. as you and I have talked about, I'm still not anywhere near ready to pull that lever. I need to make my current business be a lot more stable. Before I go anywhere too far, but that's the plan anyway,

Ben: 1:52:22

long term I got to tell you expatriating and finding a little Island country and where my money goes a lot farther looks looks pretty promising Nicaragua,

Gene: 1:52:35

maybe it's, I think it's going to become, I can,

Ben: 1:52:38

I can, I can, I can come up to speed on Spanish again, really quickly. Yeah. Spanish is not too hard. Well, especially since I already speak it, but yes. Oh, do you?

Gene: 1:52:49

Yeah,

Ben: 1:52:49

yeah, I'm fairly fluent in Spanish.

Gene: 1:52:51

Okay. Oh, really? Fluent, even.

Ben: 1:52:54

I used to be, I'm fairly, fairly, fairly, but I, I learned Castilian. So, so that's a problem especially in Latin America, Latin America has different dialects and different not that

Gene: 1:53:07

hard. You can figure out that.

Ben: 1:53:08

Yeah. But there's a lot of words. No, no, no. There's a lot of weird little idioms that you know, like the U S versus UK. The word fag example or lift. Yeah. So, I don't know if I've told this story, but I was, I was working much

Gene: 1:53:23

more descriptive in the UK. I should say they're more allegorical. They, they tend to use analogies and allegories when they're describing things way more than we do.

Ben: 1:53:36

So let me tell you this story. I was working for a oil company and I was at one of the regional offices where they're working on building out a pipeline and there's a crew there from South America. And it was a cold, wet, rainy day. And I walked outside to grab something out of my truck and I saw a group there and they were talking and I said, ah, chaqueta. Mm hmm. Which? In Spanish, Spanish means, ah, it's cold. I need a jacket in Nicaraguan or wherever they were fun from maybe since I would, or somewhere in Latin America it's cold. I need to Jack off. That's the distinction I'm

Gene: 1:54:19

talking about. That just makes it funny. And everybody would get a smile on their face. And right. Even if you weren't trying you, that may be a good thing to say anyway. No,

Ben: 1:54:29

it's cold. I need a jacket. Yeah, exactly.

Gene: 1:54:33

Exactly. No, that's cool. Well, Spanish is a useful language, but it's also one of the easier ones to pick up. So I think for even people that don't have Spanish like. If you're going to move somewhere, I would think it's way easier to move to a Spanish speaking country than a Chinese speaking country.

Ben: 1:54:51

I don't know about that. Conjugation. So, modern Chinese is a little bit different, but it's basically pictographic. So, there is no spelling in Chinese. Modern Chinese, a little bit different, but Cantonese really is pictographic. And if 10, 000 characters, you're... Pretty fluent. English. Yeah, my point

Gene: 1:55:10

is you don't need to learn 10, 000 characters to do Spanish. Oh,

Ben: 1:55:15

excuse me. So English is by far the most vocabulary required to become fluent. Yeah, English the hardest

Gene: 1:55:23

languages to learn. Absolutely. I say this as somebody who had to learn English.

Ben: 1:55:26

The, the Romance languages. So anything Latin based. First of all, you have to learn a ton of conjugations and, things like that. But you still have to have a fairly decent vocabulary. And it's far more than an Asian language.

Gene: 1:55:41

Yeah, but you can, well, I don't know, I don't know how to describe it, but to me, it's a lot easier to communicate, forget about proper grammar, but to communicate what I'm trying to communicate to somebody that is speaking Spanish than somebody speaking Chinese. So it's. And I've never taken Spanish. I've never taken either of those languages. I, I learned a little bit of Spanish just to kinda get by when I went to Costa Rica, but it wasn't much. And when I was a kid, I learned Italian to some extent. Mm-hmm. but not, not really fluent.

Ben: 1:56:20

Yeah. I mean, I, so I, when I was in Spain, I was able to get around actually in Spain fairly easy cuz I, yeah, I was able to get around

Gene: 1:56:28

perfectly fine in Spain, having not learned any languages.

Ben: 1:56:31

Well, I'm, I was using Spanish, but yes, anyway, I don't know. It doesn't hurt that I also, had a shit ton of Latin as a kid. So yeah,

Gene: 1:56:40

exactly. That's why I'm surprised you would think that Chinese isn't any, isn't harder than Spanish, because if you, if Latin, Spanish is super

Ben: 1:56:49

easy. Well, and if Latin and Spanish, then Portuguese, you can get by in pretty easily. You can get by in French

Gene: 1:56:57

pretty easily and Italian.

Ben: 1:57:00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. German is the closest language to English, but it's the one I had English. It's the one I had the most heart. It's the one I had. I

Gene: 1:57:11

just, just delete a space and use K's instead of C's and that's pretty much

Ben: 1:57:16

German. Yeah, I just, it just didn't click for me. Turkish I was getting into and then the only Asian language I've ever learned at all was Vietnamese.

Gene: 1:57:27

And these are all different styles of girlfriends, I'm assuming I'm

Ben: 1:57:32

totally right friends and roommates and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the, the Vietnamese one was dating a girl who was first generation American and her, her parents did not speak English. So I learned

Gene: 1:57:47

a little bit of the restaurant or laundromat.

Ben: 1:57:51

That's racist gene or both.

Gene: 1:57:54

That's your options right there. Huh. Huh.

Ben: 1:57:56

Huh.

Gene: 1:57:57

Yeah. The ones I love is, is where they own the restaurant, but it's not of the ethnicity of them. That's always fun. Like one of my favorite buffets here in, in Austin is a Chinese buffet that's actually owned by Koreans. And so

Ben: 1:58:15

the Koreans and the Chinese are super racist against each other. Huh.

Gene: 1:58:19

Huh. I feel just like home going there. But dude, so they're not just racist against the other guy. I, I hung out in Japan with a Korean dude. And I swear to God, I got so sick of him. Like I, I'm, I tend to critique things and make fun of things around me. I do that as a general hobby. I guess this dude is in the whole other league. We were walking around in Osaka and literally every few steps. Something comes out of his mouth about how horrible it is here and like how these people are idiots and how Korea is so much better. And I was just like, it was hilarious at first, right? That's why I ended up hanging out with him. But eventually it was just like, Oh my God, will you fucking give it a rest? It's like, I get it. Korea is better. Yes. We know that that's, I'm glad you like your country, but can we just move on? It's we're both here. Okay. We're, we're in a different place. We don't need to, we're not here for the purpose of making fun of it nonstop. We can make fun of it a little bit, but we don't need to do it nonstop. But,

Ben: 1:59:30

Well, I, okay. So I, I think all of Southeast Asia, all of the Orient as it were, and people, they hate that, but I know that's part of the reason why I do it. When you look at all of Asia early Southeast Asia and the coast, the APAC region I think you're seeing a huge move away from China. The Vietnamese are taking manufacturing from China and building it out and moving politically away from China. You have Singapore that has always. Definitely wanted its independence from China. You have the seven dotted line problem showing up for everybody in the region. You have Japan doubling down on its alliance with the United States. Even when the Biden administration wanted to renegotiate the trade deal, the Japanese said, no, actually, you know what? We like the trade deal that Trump struck with us. We're good. Which was not in their favor. I think China is really, I hate to say it, but getting backed into a corner they are losing influence. They are losing their manufacturing base. Right now it's a trickle, but you know, once that dam starts to break, you're going to see a huge move away from China as a manufacturing institution. First of all, they're not cheap anymore. Mexico, they were,

Gene: 2:00:48

they were first cheaper. Yes. Well, they were second to market. Japan was first to market. China was second to market. And we're going to start seeing all the third to market countries going up. And of course, for as much as I would like to make fun of China and Taiwan. Taiwan has a high tech manufacturing base that China wishes it had they, they are several generations ahead of what anything China does. And the biggest reasons for all these things is because the U. S. dollar has provided influx of consumer money and we want what they can make. Companies like Apple signing multi billion dollar deals with local manufacturers. To make stuff for the U S market for the rest of the world's market. But

Ben: 2:01:35

go ahead. Well, what shocks me looking around the world is the Middle East, Southeast Asia parts of Russia everywhere, but. A couple of places in the EU which the EU would fall into the categories of the West require Westerners to really run their operations efficiently. Like the locals aren't the ones running the manufacturing plant. Yeah.

Gene: 2:02:08

Yeah. And it's, it's absolutely true. And. This has been like, I've never actually done this, but I've often thought about it, especially when I'm between clients, like, man, I should just get my books translated and then set up some speaking gigs. Because I've had multiple people tell me that if I did that I'd make way more money and I would be booked up for years. But there's a certain part of me that just doesn't want to be there. I mean, like I'm, I'm comfortable here.

Ben: 2:02:42

Well, and if you're, if the shit hits the fan while you're over there, you're totally

Gene: 2:02:46

fucked. Oh, dude, there's no amount of bribes that'll get you safe in some of these places.

Ben: 2:02:53

No, it really struck me though, because when I look at what's going on in Vietnam, when I look at Fuck, even China, man, even, even the Russian oil industry is very reliant on Western talent. Why is that? We, we give ourselves so much crap here in the West, but Jesus, why is the rest of the world reliant on engineers and expertise from the U. S., Germany? And maybe a little bit of British,

Gene: 2:03:23

well, I think a lot of it historical, but a lot of it was also barriers to entry is that these companies don't just have good technical people. They have great lawyers, the deals that they set up with countries prohibit competing with these companies on a national level. So effectively you're saying, Hey, we'll bring in. Our great oil industry and the government will get a ton of money as a result of that. You also have to preserve our unique place in doing this by preventing anybody that's working for us from going off and starting to work for a competitor.

Ben: 2:04:05

Yeah, well, but that's not what I see. So like in the UAE, the Emirati are at the very top, but the. Middle class, if you were the high managerial class, the people that actually get shit done are almost all us

Gene: 2:04:23

expats. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the U S has bar none, the hardest work culture of any country in the world, as far as I'm concerned. And I've, I've had people. That I work with and have worked for me from probably over half the countries in the world. And there's nobody that gets shit done the way Americans get shit done.

Ben: 2:04:45

Well, and part of that is really cultural. For instance, I've got people I'm working with right now that are from, I won't say the, the EU countries, but they're on their month long holiday for the year. Right. Exactly.

Gene: 2:05:00

That's shit like that. That's so ridiculous. Yeah, I don't care. Well,

Ben: 2:05:03

and it's guaranteed. And it says that in the other, and I know you have

Gene: 2:05:06

a conversation, you have people from those countries working well

Ben: 2:05:09

and having conversations with them. Oh, well, you Americans, you'll just, you don't have a work life balance. You do this and that. And the other, I said, well, I have actually more vacation than you. I just don't use it. Exactly.

Gene: 2:05:21

And they don't understand that. I've

Ben: 2:05:23

had the it if you don't use it? Well, because if I need it, it's there, but you know, I, I don't need that much vacation. I couldn't possibly take that much.

Gene: 2:05:32

No, I remember I went for like three years and I took five days off it over the course of three years

Ben: 2:05:39

and I don't think I've ever been quite

Gene: 2:05:41

that bad, but everybody that was working on my projects was taking time off it with all the Europeans. I should say we're taking time off like crazy. And of course we, I already had the. I told you about my take on the Australian workforce, which is. Fuck around workforce because they know that on Mondays, it's still Sunday here. So they Monday is a fuck

Ben: 2:06:02

off day. We, we, I, I deal with that right now with Singapore. So Mondays and Fridays are just done. Yep.

Gene: 2:06:09

Right. Because exactly. Yeah. So that's basically a three day a week workforce.

Ben: 2:06:14

Yeah. If they're working for an American company. Yeah.

Gene: 2:06:18

Exactly. Yeah. I'm sure if they're local, then it's a different kind of mentality. Maybe not. I don't know. But

Ben: 2:06:22

well, one of, one of the keys there is you have to have them engaged with clients or projects that are in their region. Like you can't have a engineer in Singapore working on something for the U. S. They have to be working on something for Singapore. Otherwise you're not going to get the three days out of them. I agree. And

Gene: 2:06:43

that's true of a lot of places. And I, when I was working for British telecom they had some issues with getting data centers set up in Moscow. And as soon as I got on the phone with the main guy there and started speaking Russian with them, all the, there were no problems. They were just basically able to figure out a way to push back to not have to do shit in as much of a hurry. It was just like, people are, are willing to people are lazy everywhere, but people are willing to see how Americans are the only ones that actually work hard. Cause it's true that they're, they don't push back on other countries either. And sometimes they should, it's sort of like, well, why can't you get this? Go, go through, explain to me the reasons and the rationale why you can't get this done. When we need it done, well, where's the problem is maybe we can go fix that problem. And then you go through a few layers of these. It's like, yeah, the problem is you just don't want to work long. The problem

Ben: 2:07:50

is you're a lazy.

Gene: 2:07:52

Yeah. And like I'm lazy too. Everybody's fucking lazy. Then I know that the issue is coming up with yourself. Oh, you're not lazy. Really? Okay.

Ben: 2:08:02

I I'm, I mean, define lazy.

Gene: 2:08:06

Lazy is when you prefer to take the the path that requires less work. Okay.

Ben: 2:08:13

I, I would sign of intellect

Gene: 2:08:14

technically. Yeah, no, every invention that's come out, that's come out by a lazy person. It's always finding a shortcut. How do we get things done with less effort? That's what being lazy is. So. Where's that going? Oh, yeah, just different countries. So, in the end, like, if you can find a way to get through a person and motivate them sufficiently, it's possible. But, but you're absolutely right. It's like the, when these Brits or these Germans go on vacation, they're on fucking vacation.

Ben: 2:08:47

Oh, you, you can't get a hold of them? No! There is no work phone with them. There's no, I'm checking email. It's I'm off the grid

Gene: 2:08:55

for a month. Off the grid for a month, even though they're fully on the grid, they're just doing non work

Ben: 2:08:59

activity. Well, and this, I mean, that would never fly in, in any us, any us

Gene: 2:09:05

company. Nope. No, although I will say. Way more so that that would fly today than 20 years ago, 20 years ago. That's an instant you're fired today. That's like a third of the workforce. No,

Ben: 2:09:18

today that is, you will not be promoted. You will not be moved forward. You will be

Gene: 2:09:22

so saline people. I know in companies like Facebook and Amazon and it's like, Oh, I need to take a personal, personal mental health day. And they just, okay. They're like, well,

Ben: 2:09:35

I mean, I have personal days and I've got shit ton of PTO. I don't ever use it, but if I wanted to take off for any reason, no one's going to ask me, but part of the reason why no one asked me is because I never effing take off.

Gene: 2:09:48

Yeah, I, I know that, but I'm just saying that there's a lot of people for who they do use it and they do take off. Yeah. And they're, they tend to be in the, in the millennial group, kinda like you are.

Ben: 2:10:02

And they tend to not get promoted and they wonder why they aren't making the money that, oh, I so-and-so is making, and things like that. This

Gene: 2:10:09

just reminding me one last thing before we wrap up here. And I actually sent this to Adam as well cause I figured he'd get a kick out of it. In South Park, they have a, a restaurant called Bonita Casa, Casa

Ben: 2:10:25

Bonita, Casa Bonita, Casa Bonita, Casa Bonita,

Gene: 2:10:28

which is, which is one of Cartman's favorite places to eat. Well, Matt and Trey bought the real Casa Bonita. I don't know if you're aware of that. Mm hmm. I am. Okay. So the funny part of the story is that apparently the employees of Casa Bonita are trying to unionize and are unhappy with their wages with their, like they, they don't like the The wages that they've been given after Matt and Trey bought it because they put them on a 30 an hour like fixed, no, no T tips necessary at the restaurant wage, but you're making 30 an hour, but you're making literally 60, 000 a year. So 30 bucks now, that's what comes down to if you're, if you're a full time employee, if you're part time or obviously you're part time, but.

Ben: 2:11:22

Which is a ridiculous amount of money

Gene: 2:11:24

for a restaurant, 60 for bringing food to a person in a restaurant. I don't know how these people think they would've been making more than 60 grand a year with tips and like fi, like I don't even know what the basic wage for are. Well, and

Ben: 2:11:40

the, quite frankly, the shitty ones wouldn't at all.

Gene: 2:11:45

I think it's a trend that's gonna happen more and more as Americans are fed up with ridiculous tips. We've, which we've already talked about. in the past.

Ben: 2:11:55

Yeah. But you know, one thing I, one thing I've heard from friends in the restaurant industry and everybody else that the reason why a lot of wait staff and people don't like this isn't that they think they would make more, but it removes the differentiator. So the good waiters and waitresses are the people who are doing well. It's like a tip sharing program, tip sharing programs do the same thing where it destroys

Gene: 2:12:21

morale. But here's my point is that. That is the norm. So tip sharing is the norm and there's an expectation. Not new ass, but Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, dude.

Ben: 2:12:33

Not in Texas. How can you, Texas especially like in fine D fine dining and everything else, fine

Gene: 2:12:39

dining is the only place where that's not normal. But in, in most cafes and most places, you go for a quick meal, they're absolutely ask them, ask the waitress. Next time you go, just ask the next several. Do you guys have tip sharing or does each person get to keep a hundred percent of what what I leave for them as a

Ben: 2:12:56

tip? Now, usually there will be some tip sharing with like the bar or something like that and their drinks orders and so on, but that's, that's different. I wouldn't put that in tip sharing. Tip sharing means all tips go into a pool and everybody gets an even amount

Gene: 2:13:10

out of it. Yeah, exactly. It's bullshit. So, but, but here's the thing, if paying a tip regardless of the quality of service is the expectation, then that whole argument about, well, but it's meritocracy, you should be for meritocracy and use tips, goes out the window because if it was truly based on meritocracy and above average service, like there's nothing that prevents you from leaving a cash tip at a restaurant that is tip free. And if somebody does an outstanding job. You could totally do that, even though you don't have, like, there's no expectation of a tip. It doesn't mean you can't leave a tip. Yeah.

Ben: 2:13:54

And quite, quite frankly, I would say that I still tip based off of meritocracy. Oh, I do too. That's why

Gene: 2:14:02

some people would think I'm a cheap tipper because quite often the service quality just isn't very good. I

Ben: 2:14:07

mean, it's been a long time, but I've. I've, I've left a no tip and a nasty note based off of really shitty service. Most of the time I, I tip a minimum of 15% generally, and I have gone up over 25% depending. But that's generally the range. And I think that's more than enough typically.

Gene: 2:14:37

Yeah. And it just, there's, there's these days and expectation where a lot of places they'll start off with 20 and go up from there, would you like 23 or 40%?

Ben: 2:14:47

And here's the thing, any place that automatically adds a gratuity, first of all, I never add more, no matter how good the service was. I immediately do not add more. And I immediately complained to management.

Gene: 2:15:01

Cause no, I think a lot of people are fed up, especially as the value of the dollar decreases in each, it's not like salaries are going up that much. So no, they're not

Ben: 2:15:10

dollars with inflation in any way, shape

Gene: 2:15:13

or form. So that dollar has to get stretched a lot more, but Hey, the good, the good news about inflation is that. If it keeps up, then it'll be cheaper to manufacture products in the U S and then sell them overseas.

Ben: 2:15:26

Yes. Did you hear about the Vicks plan to stabilize the dollar? So he wants to tie it to a basket of commodities. Including precious metals and agricultural products, which I think is a very, very smart way of doing it.

Gene: 2:15:47

There's one problem with agricultural though, is that you can have good years and bad years that you didn't have anything to do with. And so the value of the dollar could end up shifting based on poor harvest. The

Ben: 2:16:01

yes, it would increase the value of the dollar because if you tie it to a dollar buys. X number bushels of wheat and there isn't a lot of wheat available, then therefore the, you

Gene: 2:16:16

know, it decreases the value of the dollar because now the dollar can afford less wheat. No,

Ben: 2:16:22

nevermind. You're, you're tying it to it. So on the international market. So it, okay. This would depend if you're looking at. The production of a particular item locally, domestically, or internationally. Yeah.

Gene: 2:16:39

Well, my point is simply that other industries that are not based around random events like harvest. Would not be in favor of anything. The dollar is tied to that has that much

Ben: 2:16:52

volatility. Well, again, if it's part of a basket of goods, then that's the, the basket of good idea is I think the better

Gene: 2:16:59

what we've had that portion of it forever. And it's, it is the thing that is used to calculate. Inflation,

Ben: 2:17:08

which is the cost of living as a

Gene: 2:17:10

commodity. No, we haven't, but we've been calculating it forever. Like, we know what the cost of living in US dollars is, and that's how we can determine that we

Ben: 2:17:17

don't because the government lies.

Gene: 2:17:19

We have shadow stats that still uses the same formulas that have been used since the 70s. And so we know how much the value of the dollar has gone up and down. And if the dollar was simply down, well, there've been little bits in time, but lately for sure down. Yeah. But if we look at, if we just use that, like you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you just say the dollar is now worth one basket here of this stuff, period, then you effectively make the new dollar, which was a digital only currency issued by the U. S. government. Equivalent to that value, regardless of what the old dollar values were. Well,

Ben: 2:18:01

regardless, currency standard versus the inflationary trend, but you can't,

Gene: 2:18:07

but you can't do that. It has to be a new currency. You can't re quantify what a dollar is. Nixon did it. Yeah, that's a one way path. That's a, that's going off, not coming on. Why why can't you do it? Because you're going from, and because you're going to overvalue the dollar when you do it, there's no way around it, it's going to happen. And people are not going to pay with dollars. It's it'll move people off the dollar way faster.

Ben: 2:18:40

We'll see. Oh, we may see there. I do this right now. It has to be a currency to flee to.

Gene: 2:18:47

And I'll tell you, I buy products in euros online because. Why? I get a better deal. No, you don't. Because I do. Absolutely.

Ben: 2:18:57

You are

Gene: 2:18:58

ignoring VAT. I'm not paying VAT because I'm not in Europe. You don't pay VAT as a foreigner. VAT is for local only.

Ben: 2:19:08

No, there, okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So if you're buying goods from Europe, you're paying a VAT tax because. Because the production of that good required multiple stages and there was a VAT tech assessed each time.

Gene: 2:19:26

That's not neither of those things. That's true. Wholesale manufacturing in Europe does not pay VAT taxes. When you're buying products from Europe as a European or Brit, you're paying a VAT. As a American buying products from Europe, you're not paying the VAT. If you're physically in Europe, you can get your VAT. Refund it to you. If you fill out some paperwork before leaving the country, if you actually bought products there, if you're buying them online, the way that I'm buying them, you just don't pay it in the first place. So it's actually cheaper to use, to pay for these products using euros than it is to use U. S. dollars.

Ben: 2:20:08

A value added tax, VAT, is paid at every single stage of product production from sale of the raw materials to its final purchase by a consumer.

Gene: 2:20:18

By a consumer, but not by

Ben: 2:20:21

a foreigner. Nope, every stage along the way. Which a foreigner is a consumer anyway, and we're already at time and I'm not going to argue that taxes with you, but whatever you want to pay in euros, go ahead. You have to pay the exchange rate and do lots of

Gene: 2:20:38

things, pay the exchange rate. Yeah, there's no, there's no exchange rate if you're doing it online.

Ben: 2:20:45

So what you mean is you're having your bank do the transfer for you. Correct. Yeah. And as long as you don't have any foreign transaction fees on your credit card, that's fine. Which Muslim don't these days. Correct. Any travel card, any travel card doesn't,

Gene: 2:21:00

they don't care. It doesn't cost them. I do. Yes. I agree. So anyway, my point is that, and it's, it's only true because people, products are priced. With the old assumption that euros are more valuable than dollars and which is, which is not true. Well, it's not to the value that they're, they're almost one to one. They were one to one for a while, but it's, it's almost that point where,

Ben: 2:21:29

One euro is 1 and 11 cents. There you

Gene: 2:21:32

go. Yeah. But I think it dropped to one to one like a year, maybe two years ago. Something like that for a little bit. It was really close. I didn't buy any years. I could have just bought some years when it was one to one and

Ben: 2:21:44

yeah, I thought it was probably nine. Yeah. I thought it was below that in the last month. Let's see about, Oh,

Gene: 2:21:53

look, look at the last two

Ben: 2:21:54

years. Yeah. So in September 26, 2022, it got down to 96 cents.

Gene: 2:22:01

There you go. So it was upside down. Yeah. So it's just, you got to just pay attention to these things. And if

Ben: 2:22:07

you're in the last five years, it's been as high as like a dollar 21.

Gene: 2:22:12

Yeah. Yeah. And it was an artificially boosted currency. When the Euro first came out, it was under a dollar. And it should have stayed there.

Ben: 2:22:20

The worst it ever got was in 2008 shocker at a dollar 57.

Gene: 2:22:27

Yeah. Had the U S not blown up pipelines and not forced Europe to have to deal with.

Ben: 2:22:37

The lowest it ever got was in 1985 at 70 cents to the dollar. I don't remember that. Or 70

Gene: 2:22:43

cents a year. But in, I remember in when it was. The first time that I went to Europe and I used Euros instead of the local currency was in the early 90s. Mm hmm. And it was, I think it was like 95 cents or 98 cents or something like that.

Ben: 2:23:00

Well, damn it, when are we gonna get our Amaro?

Gene: 2:23:03

Well, we may get our Amaro sooner than later. But my, my point is that...

Ben: 2:23:08

The only reason I am not

Gene: 2:23:09

pro America, no, but the only reason that Europe that the Euro is cheaper than the dollar is because the U S has been dragging Europe down with it as the value of the dollar has been going down.

Ben: 2:23:22

Well, no the reason why the Euro is trashed right now is because Germany has shot themselves in the foot and destroyed their American manufacturing base. Germany's done for Germany will be I don't see a way for Germany to

Gene: 2:23:36

recover from that. I think the only thing that will save Germany is a really strong charismatic leader that points to the cause of the trouble in Germany to emerge. That's what I see in the future for Germany. Oh, what could possibly go wrong? And I mean, I don't know that they can blame anybody other than Russia, of course, for all their troubles right now. Well, and you know what's

Ben: 2:23:58

funny though? It's fucking hilarious about all this. They're not allowed to read about it.

Gene: 2:24:04

No, they're not. Cause you know, if you read about history, then you might not repeat it. But if you don't allow somebody to

Ben: 2:24:10

read about it. So there's a guy that goes to, the, the cafe I go to all the time here. And he's he's a foreign exchange student. He's, he's working on his master's. And he's from Germany and he and I talk quite a bit. He's very anglicized though. I mean, you really wouldn't know he's from Germany. Likes guns, very happy to be in Texas, wants to stay in Texas. But you know, he and I were talking and Josh had, my buddy Josh had sent us that thing that was the Nazis had put out before the Beer Hall Pledge that he, Shared that was kind of interesting and I was like, Hey man, you ever read this thing is no, and we started talking. I said, have you ever read mind comp? Have you ever read any of this? He's like, no, it's illegal over there. I've read parts of it, but it's illegal. You're not supposed to like, well, maybe you should. And he kind of looks at me. I'm like, dude, I'm not a fan of Hitler, but everybody should read it. He goes, why? So, what happened and why?

Gene: 2:25:07

That's where you meet with your B and D contact at the cafe. B and D. The Bundesnachrichtendienst... I can't pronounce that. It's one fucking word, but it's basically four words in English. It's the German version of the secret service. No,

Ben: 2:25:25

no, no, this is not my Stasi contact.

Gene: 2:25:30

Well, it's the Stasi contact that doesn't exist anymore.

Ben: 2:25:33

Sure. That's what they want you to think.

Gene: 2:25:36

Yes, that's what they do want you to think. Cause East Germany doesn't exist anymore. Merkel, she was in the, she was in the East German secret service. Yeah. That's where she knows Putin back from the old days. Oh, yeah. When he was the attach she mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:25:53

Mm-hmm. who, who knows maybe, oh, God, Merkel though.

Gene: 2:25:56

Oh, yeah. No,

Ben: 2:25:58

definitely not. I mean, that's all almost up there with like Maxine Waters. Yeah, exactly. I would say Pelosi, but you know, we've seen her in a bikini.

Gene: 2:26:08

Oh, well, and again, I, I say that if you go back to that photo of Pelosi with John Kennedy, oh jfk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When she was like, mm-hmm. 18 ish. She looked pretty damn good

Ben: 2:26:21

Yep, but you know a lifetime

Gene: 2:26:23

of evil a lifetime of evil exactly it shows on the character the character shows on the face

Ben: 2:26:30

Well, you know the you you you've heard the saying beauty's only skin deep but evil are uglies to the bone I have

Gene: 2:26:37

heard that yes, but it's sometimes it shines through even the skin

Ben: 2:26:43

Jean if you don't have anything else.

Gene: 2:26:46

No, we've talked for plenty here. I think I'm done One of our longest podcasts and we had nothing to start talking about when we started. Well, I

Ben: 2:26:56

had a few things, but yeah, we don't need another Seinfeld though.

Gene: 2:27:01

No, no, I already do the Seinfeld show with somebody. This, this show is more about politics.

Ben: 2:27:08

Which we should definitely have your new buddy on at some time. Oh yeah, yeah. I think we should, I think we should kind of do a series. I think we should have Ben Rose on at some point in time. We, we, we should do a couple of things that's shifted up a little bit.

Gene: 2:27:21

We, we could, yeah. Well, and Halsey, the guy you're talking about he would be very interesting. He needs to be, we're going to need to plan things out a little bit more because he's actually active military. So he. He needs to be more conscious of the things he talks about. That's all he, but he's, he's got plenty of opinions and I've heard a lot of

Ben: 2:27:47

voice changer on there. Yeah. I'll put a voice

Gene: 2:27:50

changer on

Ben: 2:27:50

them. Nah, not because it's actually beneficial, but just.

Gene: 2:27:54

Yeah, I think he's, he's fine without that, but no, no,

Ben: 2:27:57

I mean, we should do that just as a fun gimmick and

Gene: 2:28:01

fun. I hate though, when people use those, they sound so corny,

Ben: 2:28:05

we can do it for like the first 15 minutes and then it magically fails. I don't know. Come on. There's some hilarity there.

Gene: 2:28:12

Yeah. Kind of like the moon landing. Okay.

Ben: 2:28:15

Are Tucker, Tucker Max trying anal? Yeah, I don't know what happened there. Oh my God. If you haven't, so it's a chapter, Jean's buddy, Tucker Max. I hope they serve beer in hell. Hilarious book. An ex girlfriend actually gave me that book. There's a chapter on him, his first anal experience and the hilarity that ensues. Worth reading. Oh yeah.

Gene: 2:28:40

Yeah. He's, he's a pretty good writer.

Ben: 2:28:43

He's funny. He's got a

Gene: 2:28:44

sense of humor. He does. He does. And I think that a lot of people were very shocked by the content. And so we're very negative on the whole, bro culture of the book. Oh, please. Yeah, well they were. But I think a lot of people saw a lot of themselves in the variety of Tucker's experiences and he's very self effacing too. Yeah,

Ben: 2:29:10

people don't want my reaction to the whole comments around the bro culture and I'll get in trouble.

Gene: 2:29:15

All right. Good enough. Let's wrap it up. Talk to

Ben: 2:29:19

you next week, Gene. Talk to you next week.