050 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:22

Howdy, Ben.

Ben: 0:23

Howdy, Gene. How are you?

Gene: 0:26

I'm alright. How you doing?

Ben: 0:28

I'm doing well. I am ready to go to the range and do some things. I don't know.

Gene: 0:36

Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. I just don't like people, so I don't go on weekends, but I hear ya.

Ben: 0:42

Yeah, the range I go to is pretty des not des how do I put this? It well, it's distant, so it's not near anything, and it's a, you know, big, big place, you know? So, like, they've got The amount of acres that they have that are part of the range,

Gene: 1:02

hmm.

Ben: 1:03

it has got to be like five, 600 acres of range. So it's, it's pretty big.

Gene: 1:11

That's more than big. That's huge.

Ben: 1:14

Exactly. Yeah, it's

Gene: 1:15

500 acres? So you gotta drive around?

Ben: 1:18

yeah, yeah,

Gene: 1:19

Oh, wow.

Ben: 1:20

I mean, they're, they've got several really long ranges. They've got a one that goes out to like 1600 or something.

Gene: 1:27

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:28

you know, that's, that requires a significant amount of space. Now you're not walking on all that because a big portion of it is that long range, right? But yeah,

Gene: 1:40

500 acres? You're serious?

Ben: 1:43

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gene: 1:45

Wow.

Ben: 1:47

In fact, I will look it up.

Gene: 1:49

That is a huge space. I mean, 500 acres, you, you can have you know, a whole neighborhood on that.

Ben: 1:56

Oh yeah. Easily.

Gene: 1:58

Yeah.

Ben: 1:59

So anyway, there's lots of room.

Gene: 2:02

tHe one I go to is air conditioned and

Ben: 2:04

Yeah, no, it's 800 acres, dude.

Gene: 2:07

acres. Jesus Christ. Do they have like an overhead airplane shot of it or

Ben: 2:12

They do. They do.

Gene: 2:13

okay. What's the place? Do you want to give it out?

Ben: 2:16

I'll, I'll, I'll send you the link so you can see it.

Gene: 2:19

All right. You don't want to have a bunch of people showing up there.

Ben: 2:22

Yeah, it's, it's, it's big

Gene: 2:24

yeah, no, that's

Ben: 2:26

and their pistol bays are great because they're like 20 yards wide and 20 yards deep for pistol bays with plenty of steel. They've got elevated shooting platforms. They have an 1100 yard range that's dedicated, but they also have a longer one that

Gene: 2:44

They've got a trap then, right?

Ben: 2:46

I'm sorry.

Gene: 2:46

They've got a trap.

Ben: 2:48

They used to, they got rid of their launchers. So if you bring a launcher, you can do it there. So, yeah,

Gene: 2:56

okay.

Ben: 2:57

but they've got some pretty neat stuff and they've got a, they've got a pretty nice 22 range as well for people who want to do rim fire only and lots of stuff. They, they host lots of events. They're

Gene: 3:10

I was helping a buddy of mine get a deer partitioned out yesterday. That was fun. I Got to bring home some goodies. Got some back trip. My favorite bit of it. Yeah.

Ben: 3:24

I, I really like roasts. I like roasts and I like just ground me to be honest with you.

Gene: 3:31

We did a lot of grinding, man. And I got, one of the things we made, actually, was liverwurst.

Ben: 3:38

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. No, that can be great.

Gene: 3:40

yeah. And I was grinding it. And putting some onions in there

Ben: 3:47

Mm hmm.

Gene: 3:47

and I guess it just kind of got jammed up a little bit with the meat and stuff. So there's a little back spray and I got covered In liver juice.

Ben: 3:58

Yeah. That happens. That's a, that's a, that's a, I need a shower now.

Gene: 4:03

Yeah, yeah, I was like,

Ben: 4:06

I use your

Gene: 4:06

I basically smell like shit now.

Ben: 4:11

Yeah.

Gene: 4:12

And, and it's the color of shit. It's not shit, but it's, you know, it's clean liver, but it.

Ben: 4:18

For, for, for those that don't know liver, especially when you grind it, it, the iron in it, if you know what rust looks like, that's the color of it, especially when it's, when you're grinding it and it's exposed to the air. Yeah, that's quite the quite the site.

Gene: 4:34

I had to laugh about it after I washed it off my head and, and my beard and all over the place. Now, luckily I did put an apron on, so at least it didn't completely cover me, but,

Ben: 4:45

that's still funny.

Gene: 4:46

Yeah, yeah, it's really

Ben: 4:49

Yeah.

Gene: 4:49

kind of,

Ben: 4:50

yeah.

Gene: 4:51

it's the highlight of the, of the day. So that was fun. And then as a treat to myself, I also kind of decided, you know, I, I just need to buy the the Red Dot site that I think is the best and not, not be trying to save money.

Ben: 5:11

For what gun?

Gene: 5:12

So, I got it for one of them right now. It's actually for a gun I haven't bought yet, but I, I did pick up a dual illumination RMR. So now

Ben: 5:23

Okay. So a pistol site,

Gene: 5:25

yeah, yeah. Pistol site. Yeah. I, I, I've talked about this site before. It's I used to have a triple RMR, which they discontinued years ago.

Ben: 5:34

which by the way, RMR is Trijicon's footprint.

Gene: 5:38

It's a Triticon site. It's the actual RMR. I mean, like that's what the footprint is named after.

Ben: 5:45

Yeah.

Gene: 5:45

But I cannot, for the life of me, find it. I'm positive I would not have thrown it away. I have to have it somewhere. But I have no idea where it is. And the triple one was a combination of tritium, battery, and fiber optic. And they don't make those anymore. sO I just got the fiber optic and battery one. And hopefully I will have it

Ben: 6:11

I mean, to be honest, that's really what you want because you don't want to have to replace the tritium ever. And with the battery options and the hour runtime that you have now with the ability to work function with night vision and everything else, I, why, why, why go to the expense of having the tritium? There's no point.

Gene: 6:28

Yeah, I As much as it pains me to say it because I love the way tritium looks. I mean,

Ben: 6:33

Yeah. But I mean, there's really no point though

Gene: 6:36

but there's no point. Yeah, that's correct. That is correct. Plus now that I've kind of dipped my toe into the whole night vision slash thermal stuff, um, you know, having tritium is actually not something you want because you can't control the brightness. So all of a sudden, something that is like nicely visible at night with the naked eye becomes way too bright. Yeah, that's correct. Night vision on,

Ben: 7:02

something you can't turn down or turn off. Yeah.

Gene: 7:05

Yeah. Like you gotta put a black marker on top of it just to get rid of it, which is stupid. So, yeah, it's I, I love tritium. I've had watches with Tritium that, that I've always thought were super cool. I was really close to buying a ball watch at one point. Thankfully I didn't spend the money because Tridium but they just look so pretty when something glows by itself with no power source.

Ben: 7:31

hmm. Okay. Yeah, I agree. I I definitely have on my bonus. So I usually do something for myself every time I get a bonus, which comes pretty much every spring. And I think a PBS 14 is on the list for bonus time

Gene: 7:51

What's a PBS 14? Oh, night Vision. Oh, hello? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And

Ben: 8:02

Everybody says the white falls for us, but it's, you know,

Gene: 8:04

the one that I got.

Ben: 8:05

And

Gene: 8:06

really not, it's like 50 bucks more. Dude, it's really not a big deal.

Ben: 8:10

I don't know, I'm looking at the prices and I have resigned myself that it's going to be about four or five grand by the time I'm done.

Gene: 8:17

grand. Yeah. The,

Ben: 8:18

I don't care about like a ballistic helmet or anything like that because I'm not ever going to wear body armor. So,

Gene: 8:24

sure, sure. The, the fricking mounts for the helmet.

Ben: 8:28

oh, yeah, a couple hundred bucks,

Gene: 8:30

by the time you're done, it's like 500 bucks. For the mounts, because there's three pieces and each piece is over a hundred bucks,

Ben: 8:36

which makes no sense.

Gene: 8:37

which makes no fucking sense. Totally agreed. I mean, somebody with a machine shop should be able to crank those out for about ten bucks a pop,

Ben: 8:43

Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 8:45

including the, the runtime. But yeah, yeah, it's I, I've never had the green phosphorus one, the one that you know about that I got and then had a change of heart and it was just a lot of money for something that I realized wasn't actually what I wanted. And I got them from OpticsPlanet, and luckily they have a decent return policy. So I was able to get that turned around. Now, I will say, their inventory is all over the place, because I looked this week previous week, then we're recording this, and they didn't have, not only did they not have the one that I got in return, they didn't have, like, five other models that I'd seen them have previously.

Ben: 9:26

There are a couple of different versions of the PBS 14, different directions you can go and different suppliers. And the price goes pretty wild, actually. On differences, but on what should be fairly minor differences. Cause the guts, the intensifiers are all the same gen three stuff. So

Gene: 9:47

Yeah, it's Gen 3 spec. Now, the thing that,

Ben: 9:51

film, no film all. I mean, there's so many little

Gene: 9:55

Yeah, the, the main thing that you want to look for from when I was looking into it is it's, it's resolution, but it's not resolution in the traditional way we measure it. It's the film resolution style, which is lines per millimeter. And and it seems to be somewhat random, meaning each unit they get, uh, from the same manufacturer as part of the same, you know, group of orders that they put in. Out of that group, there's a significant variance between the results of those lines per millimeter.

Ben: 10:31

Yeah, but part of that's just because of the manufacturing process. Have you ever looked at the manufacturing process?

Gene: 10:37

For night vision, no.

Ben: 10:38

Yeah. So first of all, it's, you know, there's a lot of redacted bits and proprietary bits. Manufacturing, high quality. Night vision, gen three night vision is a pretty closely guarded secret. And really the U S is the only country who can produce gen three night vision.

Gene: 10:59

Yeah.

Ben: 11:00

Like everyone who has gotten even the most expensive Chinese crap,

Gene: 11:04

they're not very good.

Ben: 11:05

it's crap. Same thing with the Russian and everything else. It's, it's more like a gen two plus a night vision, which is a, which is good. I mean, it's a, you know, it's decent, but it's, there's just a. Order of magnitude difference between gen two, even gen two plus and gen three.

Gene: 11:21

I think, given they've been stuck in Gen 3 for quite a long time,

Ben: 11:25

I, yeah, I think that's about as good as you're going to get with the intensifier style.

Gene: 11:31

I, I, exactly. I think the next progression in night vision is gonna have to be digital, not

Ben: 11:37

So, so one of the things that the Chinese have been doing, and I, I need to actually send you a video of this, but they have a, their, their night vision, which is, but they have a thermal overlay. On their night vision, so it's a combination of a digital thermal, the analog night vision. And then what they're doing is just out instead of it being bright white or something, they're outlining thermal images on the night vision. So you've got both

Gene: 12:02

is, there is a, an American company that has a product like, I can't remember which one it is. I think it might've been a Rico, but it's 12,

Ben: 12:11

Yeah. No, it's not. The, the Chinese version is much cheaper.

Gene: 12:15

for one eye, 12, 000. So do the math.

Ben: 12:18

I mean, you don't necessarily want both eyes and a lot of guys are running panos where they have one eye with a PBS 14, one eye with a thermal, but the problem is all thermal is digital and the refresh rate and things like that are, you know, giving people headaches and stuff like that to run two different things. And you really got to have something really high

Gene: 12:41

think it's the refresh rate. That's the issue. I think it's literally seeing two completely different images and two different eyeballs. It's giving people headache.

Ben: 12:50

Maybe,

Gene: 12:51

Because the refresh rates, now you can, you can certainly get slow ass ones if you don't spend the money. But once you get past about three grand in thermal most of them are 60 frames refresh or higher, which is what your monitors have been for most of your life. So it's not that, that in the refresh is an issue. The refresh comes around when you've got movement. And then if it's too slow, then there's a delay in movement, which is obviously not good. But once you get to 60, you're It's barely noticeable.

Ben: 13:24

so go ahead. PVS

Gene: 13:27

no, I was just going to say, yeah. So, so my, my plan after every turn, the the night vision is to pick up the a thermal for roughly the same price. And I, I think I know which one I'm going to get. I tracked down about five grand, um, which is actually kind of high for a thermal, but the, it's about the same size. As the the night vision that was a PVC 14 or

Ben: 13:58

14.

Gene: 13:59

14. Yeah. It's roughly the same size. It's a little squat here, but it's more or less the same size. And it also has a rail mount on the bottom. So if you want to, you can also swap it out and mounted on the rifle.

Ben: 14:13

Yeah. And depending on the magnification of the optic, so that's one of the things you need to be careful of is like an LPVO is ideal for putting that in front of an LPVO because it's not going to go up to a significant up because you're magnifying whatever screen you're on. Right. So you, you can't go too high a magnification and. You know, there's light escaping, there's lots of things, but LV, LV, LVPO seem to be the kind of the sweet spot and optic for something putting either night vision or thermal in front of.

Gene: 14:46

They, this thing works with ACOG and that's what I have. So

Ben: 14:49

Which have you ever shot with a thermal system in front?

Gene: 14:53

No, no,

Ben: 14:55

dude, it's neat.

Gene: 14:57

I've seen videos, so I know what it looks like, but I've never actually done it.

Ben: 15:00

A buddy of mine he, we were out at some property I have in East Texas and he brought one of his with a thermal scope on it, like a full on thermal for hog hunting and, you know, a very expensive scope and

Gene: 15:12

What was the magnification of the scope? Oh, I guess it's variable. So it doesn't matter. Yeah.

Ben: 15:17

it was variable, but I don't remember. It wasn't just an illuminator in front of a scope. It was a thermal scope. You know, and I think he spent like 8 or 10 grand on it. But this was a couple of years ago and

Gene: 15:31

And thermal is going down in price and improving quality, which is awesome. So the, the current generation of, uh, thermal between like three to 5, 000 is using a six 40 by five 12 capture. And it's actually using a higher resolution to project the image that's doing some upscaling, but the actual capture is at 640 by 512. But there are a few over 5, 000, closer to like 8, 000, but there's a few of them already out that are using either 1024 or 960. And I think there's one now that's doing 1280 resolution thermal. Which the, the only real advantage of that, honestly, is in zooming, because the, the 640 in thermal is going to be certainly good enough to provide an image if you're between one and 4X.

Ben: 16:27

Yeah. I mean, you got to remember it's a very, that resolution, it's not a big TV. It's a very small screen right in front of your eyes. So,

Gene: 16:35

Mm hmm. Yeah, so far we don't have like VR goggle style scopes for guns. Although I'm sure that's coming too at some point.

Ben: 16:44

Yeah I mean,

Gene: 16:45

of view is like 180 degrees. Mm hmm. That'd be awesome. Wouldn't that be awesome? Oh my God, where you could see literally not just the little, little tiny circle around your target, and then the deer walks off and you're like, fuck, where'd he go? But you could see the whole 180 degrees, but at that magnification. That's what I want. I want to, I want to be able to.

Ben: 17:07

The problem with those sorts of things is battery life.

Gene: 17:10

Oh yeah, that's true. And thermal is way worse than night vision.

Ben: 17:14

Oh yeah. Thermal eats batteries.

Gene: 17:17

I think the best one I've seen for like, around five, 6, 001 is about eight hours. Most of them are three to four.

Ben: 17:24

And some of the newer PBS 14s that take a couple CR one 23s, you know, you can get a really good high quality 18, six 50 and put in there and be much better off.

Gene: 17:35

The night vision,

Ben: 17:36

packs and

Gene: 17:37

night visions run at least double the amount of time of the thermals for sure. Plus the, the other good thing is both of the, the newer versions of both night vision and thermals, uh, have USBC ports, so you can actually charge them or plug in a battery pack, which if you're sticking it on a helmet, you need a counterweight anyway, so you might as well have a battery in the back.

Ben: 18:07

Yeah. And you know, the helmets to me just, Oh my goodness. I, I would never spend the money on a ballistic helmet just because the limited protection that they have,

Gene: 18:17

on the motorcycle helmet.

Ben: 18:19

a bump, a bump helmet's fine for me, but I also, I'm not the kind of guy who's ever going to buy body armor because the scenario where I,

Gene: 18:27

That's the guy who said, Where do I buy this? When I sent him a link to Some new armor that I,

Ben: 18:32

Yeah, but that all right, let me rephrase. I'm not going to wear a plate carrier and go out in the woods and think that's something I'm going to do. Because if there was ever a scenario where I'd actually need to wear a plate carrier, I'm probably not going to have the medical supplies or support to help me in case I get shot. So. I'll, I'll go without. Thank you. So that's just not, but you know, I'm like my backpack, my EDC backpack. I'm probably going to get a plate for my EDC backpack because of where I travel to and how much I travel and I don't always get to carry a gun with me. And, you know, it's, it, the body armor has gotten good enough and cheap enough. That I can throw a plate in there for a few pounds of weight and, yeah, not a bad thing.

Gene: 19:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Did you share with me or did I find this? I can't remember. There's a company that basically makes, Uh, briefcases and backpacks.

Ben: 19:30

Yeah, yeah, I sent it to you.

Gene: 19:32

Okay. You did. Yeah. And they have a very good variety of stuff and they're around 300 bucks or so, but they're basically ballistic backpacks that look just like either a regular backpack or ballistic you know, like, and not, not a traditional old school briefcase, but like modern it style briefcases that have that as well. I like that of you. A

Ben: 19:55

this is a good segue to talking about me going a little crazy.

Gene: 20:02

little?

Ben: 20:03

Yeah, yeah. So, last time we talked, I had set up kind of a link tree for some affiliate links and stuff like that,

Gene: 20:12

yeah, yeah. That's right.

Ben: 20:13

And that sucked, uh, Linktree is not scalable, especially just even for the books. So I was like, okay, I, I, I tried a bunch of other services and none of them did what I wanted to do. So I just threw up a, a blog threw up a WordPress site and kind of went a little crazy. So if you go to namedben. com, I've got a notes section, which is kind of just stories that we'll probably talk about here and there. Throwing things up there. I've got a link to our podcast, including our new rumble channel, by the way. Which is part of where I'm going crazy. You've got links to donate to me. You've got links to donate to Jean and you've got our buzzsprout stuff and all that. And then you've got a link section, which has books, gear, and some IFAC stuff. So under gear you can see my current EDC backpack. And when I get the plate, when I decide and get the plate I'm going to get, I'll link to it there, but yeah. And if anyone's curious about where I've been the last I think I went back three years. The last three years of travel

Gene: 21:20

Oh, that's right. I saw that. You get your map.

Ben: 21:22

Yeah, I thought that was kind of a cool little function. Yeah.

Gene: 21:26

The NSA appreciates it.

Ben: 21:29

They already knew where I went, Gene. So anyway, so dude, name, ben dot com. I just grabbed that since that's where the email address already is and everything. There's RSS feeds, there's links to Macedon, there's all sorts of stuff. You can find the rumble channel there on the podcast. You've got a player, you've got everything.

Gene: 21:48

very good. Yeah. It's yeah. When I saw the map, I was like, okay, Ben is basically playing with every feature possible

Ben: 21:58

I I've played around with a few and different plugins and everything, but you know, Hey,

Gene: 22:03

Remember

Ben: 22:04

if I'm going to do something like this, I might as well do it. Like I've got my mastodon feed pop propagating in there and a bunch of other

Gene: 22:11

Oh, you do? Geez.

Ben: 22:12

yeah. If you look on the sidebar on under social media, I've got the last five posts from no agenda, social popping up,

Gene: 22:19

So, remember it's, it's WordPress, which means you will have to update that thing at least once a month.

Ben: 22:26

but you don't think I have auto updates on install a set up already. Come on Come on, come on.

Gene: 22:33

for getting

Ben: 22:34

Act. Yes, I'm aware. And I, let me just put it this way. If this was a website I actually cared about, I wouldn't be doing it on WordPress.

Gene: 22:43

Listener. We don't care about you. That's correct.

Ben: 22:45

No, it's just, it's, it's, this is a hobby, and it's not something that really matters to me at this point in time. If the show ever got big enough where any significant amount of funds was coming from it, then I might feel differently. But right now it's still a cost center, not a, not a

Gene: 23:01

totally. buT that reminds me, we have two people that actually help us out by subscribing.

Ben: 23:07

Yeah, we do have a couple of subscribers and we've had some boosts on Fountain so that's appreciated and,

Gene: 23:15

And we had some boosts from the normal thing as well,

Ben: 23:18

from, yeah, that that that CSB wanted you to send me half a

Gene: 23:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, CSB is like, hey, how come, how come I don't see this going to Ben? I'm like Ben's getting money, I'm getting my world, you know, we're kind of separating things. Huh.

Ben: 23:33

yeah, it's interesting that I said, let's set up, set it all up and split it and you're like, no, no, I got the one I want, I get the, I get the main one, I get the one I want, you can have the rest,

Gene: 23:44

Dude, how much money have you made so far on affiliate purchases?

Ben: 23:48

None. Like none.

Gene: 23:50

No, that's impossible.

Ben: 23:52

Yeah, I'll tell you right now,

Gene: 23:54

I've because I've been going there The way it used to work, I wonder if they changed it, the way it used to work is if you go to an affiliate link and you buy anything else, including non items that are on that link

Ben: 24:06

only what you do.

Gene: 24:09

do they change it? Oh, that

Ben: 24:11

there has been a total of 269 clicks,

Gene: 24:14

And no purchases.

Ben: 24:16

One purchase.

Gene: 24:17

Okay.

Ben: 24:18

And I know who that was and I got a whopping total of 5 and

Gene: 24:23

so all you gotta do is put some links to consumables, like batteries. I'm happy to buy my batteries through you.

Ben: 24:31

Yeah, whatever.

Gene: 24:32

And

Ben: 24:33

I'm not that worried about it. I

Gene: 24:34

No, I know, I know. I'm just saying that it's, it starts adding up before you even notice it. Cause I, back when I used to run links, like it was, I would do very little and I would get a few hundred bucks a month from Amazon for literally doing almost nothing.

Ben: 24:50

thAt'd be great.

Gene: 24:52

It would cover some bills. So, you know, it's, and in fact, you know what I'll do? It's totally up to you cause it's work for you, but I will send you some screenshots or maybe just like a text version or whatever of the last two months of my Google purchases. And if there's anything on there that, that looks like it's a rebuyable item, just create a link in there and I'll just go and buy it through your link every month. I have no problem doing that because it's like, I'm going to spend money with Amazon anyway. And I can't run it through my own links because they're assholes about it, so they don't let you use your own links to buy shit. So

Ben: 25:34

fine. I'll throw, I'll throw some links up for you. But anyway, so, on that website, I've gotten linked to all the books that we've been talking about and everything else. And I'm actually going to add in under the book section, kind of some review notes at some point in time,

Gene: 25:49

you were Darren, you would put Torrent links right next to

Ben: 25:52

Now now I will say this I, with the little bit I've put out on No Agenda Social, I am shocked at the amount of traffic that website has already gotten, like 600 plus people referred from No

Gene: 26:07

a few days. Yeah.

Ben: 26:09

So that, that, that was pretty interesting.

Gene: 26:12

Yeah, and when it's all fully set up, I'll pin it to my thing as well. So I get some more people coming there. Yeah, that's, that's very good.

Ben: 26:22

Anyway, I just wanted to have a resource for everybody. And you know, Jean and I have decided we are going to put stuff up on rumble to an extent I chose rumble. So Jean may do

Gene: 26:32

said, Hey, you should do this.

Ben: 26:34

Yeah. We've got it set up. I am not going to go back and upload the archives though. Takes way too long. Way too long. So I did figure out how to get the size down. I got it down to a couple hundred megs for the video which is good. Change some of the software I was using, but the render time for a project, and this is on a core I nine. And as many threads as Linux will let me do still for a two hour show takes 20, 30 minutes,

Gene: 27:05

Yeah, which seems like it should

Ben: 27:07

not with a static image. No. But it's just, if

Gene: 27:12

I've been

Ben: 27:12

I were on windows using Adobe, I could probably do it faster.

Gene: 27:16

yeah, yeah, you're doing

Ben: 27:17

This is open source world. So,

Gene: 27:20

will. I bought Adobe again. I buy it like every other year, it seems, but so I buy it on the Christmas sale where it's half price. And then at some point during the year, I'm like, God, I haven't used it for four months. Fuck this. And I canceled it. But I do want to take a look at, see what they've got right now for the audio to video filters. The, the ones that basically create some moving waveforms or just some images

Ben: 27:47

on the, yeah,

Gene: 27:48

something. So it's not just static, just dude, because I've seen some shows that literally have, you know, a hundred episodes on YouTube with thousands of subscribers. And that's all it is. It's just a waveforms moving on their podcast. So it's like, okay people want to listen to stuff like that. That's great. I usually don't, I'd rather listen to a podcast on my phone, but whatever.

Ben: 28:12

again I'm a little surprised because I've only posted two episodes and haven't really gone like out of my way to say anything about it other than just throwing it up on the you know, on the website, if you will. Social and the website, and we've had I'm signing in to look at the exact stats right now.

Gene: 28:37

I, I get an idea. The other thing we can do is, is put an image of the text, the text on there, the

Ben: 28:44

Yeah. I, that, that's a whole nother thing. I, I don't have the transcript files. You do. So I haven't been able to do that, but yeah

Gene: 28:51

they're all okay. I'll send you a link, but they're, they're all referenced from the RSS feed

Ben: 28:57

Yeah, so unique views we've had again with the two episodes, like 40, 40 unique views. So

Gene: 29:04

and that's on rumble. So if that was YouTube, it'd probably be like four times that amount

Ben: 29:08

yeah rumble. I

Gene: 29:09

but we'd get canceled within a month

Ben: 29:11

exactly are demonetized and missing the point. So

Gene: 29:17

wE wouldn't get to monetize in there for quite a while anyway. But it's, you know, it's, it's nice to play around with this stuff. The bottom line is I think we both want it to have a source of more than just simply, here's a podcast that you can subscribe to just something where people can interact a little more. I don't think we're anywhere near a point where we need our own Pasadena server.

Ben: 29:39

new

Gene: 29:39

think we do, but but at least putting some more data out that's asynchronous. Yeah. Use the fancy word. Nice

Ben: 29:49

it is the. It is just two good old boys is the channel on rumble and yeah, posted by named Ben and we had a comment from fruit bet 42 saying in the morning. So that was nice.

Gene: 30:03

cool stuff. So what else going on? Let's see

Ben: 30:07

So we have some interesting stories to talk about if you want to go there.

Gene: 30:13

Sure.

Ben: 30:14

So China and. The NRC China is kicking our ass with two stories this week. I posted both of them on the blog. Did you look at either one of them? So largest nuclear ship container ship design

Gene: 30:32

I saw that elsewhere. Yeah.

Ben: 30:34

Yeah. So the U S had a cargo ship in the 1950s, the NS Savannah

Gene: 30:42

sec So before we dive into that I I was gonna do this and then I forgot because we were packing so our two people and I'm again, I'm not gonna read their last names because I don't know if they want to read or not But the two subscribers that we have are will and Timothy. So thanks guys

Ben: 31:03

Oh, we got two new ones.

Gene: 31:05

No, that's the two active ones, but I just wanted to mention their names.

Ben: 31:08

I okay.

Gene: 31:09

Yeah, the two that we brought up like 15 minutes ago, that's their, their name.

Ben: 31:13

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Gene: 31:14

All right. Anyway, back to the ship.

Ben: 31:17

Yeah. So in the fifties we had the NS Savannah that was, you know, Adams for peace project, stuff like that. The, the entire point was, Hey, we can go out and we can make this somewhat. Profitable now, there's some argument on whether or not it was, you know, really economically viable or not. The only reason why it wasn't economically viable having some inside information on, you know. ship was really because of regulation and the concerns around proliferation and everything else was, you know, it was expensive to operate, not because of the fuel or because of the mech, the technology mechanism, but because of

Gene: 32:04

what year was that?

Ben: 32:05

it, uh, like 1956 was when it was originally designed and launched. buT anyway, China is going out of their way to actually. Put out a container ship that will be a nuke. Actually, if you go look at the American Bureau of Shipping's website and I've got it linked they've been proposing going back and revisiting the Savannah, the Savannah was an ABS class ship when it was underway. So they're pushing for it. But IMO. Which is the international maritime organization pushing for carbon zero by 2035 the, the real options are hydrogen based fuel, which by the way, the fuel storage tanks for hydrogen are really actually hard because you get hydrogen intrusion into metals, causing metal fatigue and lots of other interesting things that you don't think

Gene: 32:52

so let me throw an idea out there and see what your thoughts are. I would think that for something that is on water permanently, like a ship, That electrolysis would make a hell of a lot better way to get hydrogen and oxygen for combustion

Ben: 33:09

Sure, but where are you getting the power to do the electrolysis?

Gene: 33:12

and nuclear, obviously.

Ben: 33:14

why not just run directly off the plant? Why go through the process of, you know, creating

Gene: 33:19

but, but like you can make a super small nuclear plant just to do electrolysis.

Ben: 33:24

Sure, sure, sure. You, you definitely could go way smaller, but why not just scale up a little bit and just use it for propulsion?

Gene: 33:32

I guess that's where I have no idea of what propulsion actually requires, but, but it seemed like if you're sitting on water, electrolysis is really a little bit of energy to input. We should get you quite a bit of energy as output.

Ben: 33:51

problem is without it being Distilled water or, you know, very clean water. When you go through electrolysis, you end up with, you know, you end up with more things getting attracted to the cathode nano than, you know, so it's not that simple you, you'd have to purify the water and do lots of things to it. Yeah, before you could, you couldn't just take raw seawater and run it through electrolysis without massive scaling issues and creating a really nasty sludge.

Gene: 34:27

yeah, you'd chew up your anode pretty bad probably pretty quick.

Ben: 34:32

So, any, anyway the. Yeah, it's worth a read looking at what China is preparing there and it, the reaction to it is pretty good I've got some good links there, and then the other one is the world's fourth, the world's first fourth gen reactor now is beginning commercial operations, and again, China, and My, my big point here is that the NRC is what's stopping this when you look at

Gene: 35:00

Next, nuclear regulatory commission.

Ben: 35:03

yes, and when you look at what happened with Vogel three and four, and you look at the companies that are developing small modular reactors going bankrupt and everything else in the U. S. The NRC is what is killing the possibility of. You know, if you, if you're a grainy, if you believe in global morning warming, you should be all over the NRC because they are what's standing in the way between us and a zero carbon future. You know, if you build out a ton

Gene: 35:32

nuclear really is zero carbon.

Ben: 35:34

yes, yes, and it is the lowest emissions, safest form of power known to man, period. And there is no,

Gene: 35:44

running.

Ben: 35:45

okay, that would still be a nuke, but sure. It'd just be a different form, but even so fission people overestimate fission and the amount of waste fission generates. So one, one of the, again, I, I brought this up previously, but if you haven't seen it and you you're on the fence about how we should go with power, watch the documentary Pandora's promise. It's a fantastic film. Have you ever seen it, Jean?

Gene: 36:16

I don't think so. I think you've told me to see it like just personally, but I've never actually seen it.

Ben: 36:21

You should watch it. So it's a fantastic documentary. It talks about radiation. It's done by an environmentalist who was anti nuke for most of his life. And then he started doing some research and it changed his mind. For instance, 1 of the statistics that I think is great. And, you know, there's lies, damn lies and then statistics, but Yeah. One of the statistics and that was used in the film that I think is a great visual is that if you were to take all the spent fuel rods by every power plant across the world and put them in one spot on one football field, it would be less than three feet deep. That's. You know, a teeny, teeny amount of space. Now, when you're that's the fuel rods, when you're talking about, you know, water and things like that, that that's a little different, but the half life of the water is irradiated water or lighter elements than uranium and plutonium is a lot less. And quite frankly, not as big of a deal as we make it out to be in lots of scenarios. You know, people were freaking out when Fukushima happened. You know that, Oh my God, the radioactive water from Fukushima is going to hit the West coast. And it's like, do you have any idea how big the Pacific is?

Gene: 37:42

idiots, man, including

Ben: 37:43

idea of parts per over trillion? I mean, no, right. Even if they dumped every bit of water, it might have an impact locally. But when you're talking about it going across the

Gene: 37:59

You know, Californians worrying about contaminated water when the Japanese are paying 60, 000 per tuna to eat freshly caught tuna in Japan. It's fucking insane.

Ben: 38:13

why are they Paying that much

Gene: 38:16

the top tuna gets about that much, the markets. I mean, they're just, they're not your average tuna, but like high end tuna for sushi.

Ben: 38:25

So what you're telling me is I should be going fishing and sending my tuna to Japan.

Gene: 38:30

If you can get the type of tune that is worth that much by all means, but have you never watched any of those YouTube shows about like tuna market or sushi stuff goes. What the hell do you do with your life?

Ben: 38:43

I watch lots of other things and read and do, you know,

Gene: 38:47

huh. Huh. How, how's your reading going? We haven't talked about that for a while.

Ben: 38:51

Oh, on the books. Yeah. So I'm on the last book of Charlie's Requiem, which is the. It's four, it's five,

Gene: 38:59

Five. Okay. That's, that's better than 12.

Ben: 39:03

I, I am on book five and as soon as I'm done with it, which I'm almost done, I'll be going to book 12 back to the main series.

Gene: 39:12

And I, and I am almost done with nine, so I'll probably be on 10 this coming week.

Ben: 39:17

yeah, it, I gotta tell you nine, 10 and 11 were really pretty good. They really were. I really enjoyed them.

Gene: 39:26

hE's gotten better and better as an author.

Ben: 39:28

Yes, and wait till you read the Charlie's series. It it's, it's way more raw and going to really go up. It's, it's going to be your out up your alley. So,

Gene: 39:40

Good. Just be good.

Ben: 39:42

Anyway yeah, it, Charlie's is getting good. They're tying, there's lots of tie ins to the main series because it's in the same universe and there's lots of, it's, it's good. It really is. So I'm, I'm very happy with it. I've slowed down a bit just because of work and you know, things getting in the way. We just got a big deal with a large oil and gas company for the next year. That's going to consume my life quite a bit. So it's a good thing,

Gene: 40:13

Yeah, it's a good thing. Next I, I would prefer to be more busy than I am at work. So yes, being busy is a good thing.

Ben: 40:20

Yeah.

Gene: 40:22

So I went to a little symposium conference thing last week.

Ben: 40:27

Yeah. Yeah. The homeless Santa Claus conference.

Gene: 40:30

They almost Santa Claus conference. Exactly.

Ben: 40:33

Yeah, I listened to Unrelenting

Gene: 40:34

And I, I think that is a wonderful name for it. And yeah, so to kind of bring people up that didn't listen to underlending or to highlight what I talked about. The, the conference central topic was all about EMPs, um, and the dangers to the United States from EMPs. And to some extent, like what you can do as a non government entity to somewhat mitigate the dangers of EMPs. And then some

Ben: 41:10

which is basically nothing.

Gene: 41:12

No, no, there's stuff you can do, absolutely. In fact, this is one of my points is I, I think that. The private sector will be able to utilize a lot of the brand new products created to combat EMP or to at least to mitigate it somewhat faster than the U S government. Now, obviously there's a a number of installations across the United States, which have had and will continue to have very high levels of EMP protection, but that doesn't do any good for the, those of us that aren't in those installations. And so, you know, this, this, the EMP is not going to be pinpoint targeted and selected. EMPs obviously depends on the size and the altitude, but generally cover a fairly large area. A bigger area is affected by an EMP than would be affected by a ground based nuclear weapon of the same size. So. It's a, it's a broader swath, and it's also less damaging to people directly. Now, it's not to say that fewer people would necessarily die from the MP. I think, certainly as we've been reading in, in the book series in Going Home by American, that the aftermath is where people end up dying, not the immediate

Ben: 42:47

like, you'd be dead.

Gene: 42:49

Oh, most likely, yeah.

Ben: 42:51

I Mean, insulin, dude.

Gene: 42:53

I mean,

Ben: 42:54

Unless you've got enough sheep to start making your own insulin.

Gene: 42:58

I actually would not be dead

Ben: 43:00

probably not the only thing you'd do with them, but

Gene: 43:01

Type 1 diabetics would absolutely be dead without insulin. Type 2 diabetics not really that much. It's just, I would have to stop eating, basically. Which may be good for me.

Ben: 43:12

Mm hmm.

Gene: 43:13

So, I, if I if I lost all insulin, that's really the best way to, uh, to deal with it, is to just not eat. Because if I don't, like in the mornings, you know, when I get up, if I don't eat anything. My, my blood sugar levels normal.

Ben: 43:30

Oh, gotcha.

Gene: 43:31

the, the problem comes in that as soon as I eat something, it doesn't have to, it could be literally one apple and then I can see the, the blood sugar levels spiking up and it's going to come down very slowly, uh, unless I take diabetes drugs, including insulin. So like losing insulin would be a bad thing, but it's not by any stretch. And so that if, if I stopped taking all insulin, it would probably be. Years, two to three years before that would have any permanent negative effects on me.

Ben: 44:07

Yeah my grandfather died of diabetic

Gene: 44:10

And, and how long did he refuse to take insulin? Yeah.

Ben: 44:16

it was just a matter of never being able to control his blood sugar. So he was one of those that he would spike Way up and then crash way low, back and forth, back and forth. And, you know, he ended up the, one of the worst things that ever happened was he ended up having to have a amputation of some of his toes and then the other leg he had to have amputated below the knee. And that's, that's really what killed him was just him. He was such an independent guy and you know,

Gene: 44:48

was he overweight or not?

Ben: 44:49

no, never, never, never, never. He w he was six, three and he never got over like two 20 his entire life.

Gene: 44:56

All right. Yeah. So he had diabetes, not as a result of being overweight, but just some other congenital infection.

Ben: 45:03

They, the VA linked it to a parasite he picked up in Korea.

Gene: 45:07

Really interesting. I haven't heard of that.

Ben: 45:10

Yeah. And basically just destroyed his pancreas.

Gene: 45:13

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 45:15

So he wasn't producing his own insulin was part of the problem. And. You know, yeah, I mean, it, it, it was a late onset type two and it wasn't any weight issues or anything like that. Yeah, yeah.

Gene: 45:31

And that was back in the day before they had all the monitors and pumps and stuff available to where your computer can take care of controlling it.

Ben: 45:38

Even so, yeah. I mean, this is early 2000s when he passed away. So, yeah.

Gene: 45:43

Yeah, I think that was just starting back then.

Ben: 45:46

Yeah, and even so the hit by the time that was coming out, he was already, you know, the damage was done

Gene: 45:54

Yeah. It's, it's neuropathy is what ended up happening and once your nerves go, like all the other cells can be alive, but as soon as the other cells get damaged, they never get repaired. And, and I even know, know that from my personal experience, just like, whenever, if I, you know, bump my leg against the coffee table or something to the point where there's a a scratch or, or like, you know, to where it's more than just a slight bump to where you're like, fuck, this hurts. Right? That would have, in my youth, when I was a kid, that would take, like, three to four days to heal, and it would be totally gone. Wouldn't, wouldn't notice anything. Right now, that same level of trauma to the leg, about a month and a half,

Ben: 46:42

that's great. That's crazy. And

Gene: 46:45

I mean, like, I can watch it just slowly healing over time, but it's a super slow heal. And that's, again, it's, what, what ends up killing you out of diabetes, uh, is not, The direct diabetes, it's all the side effects of diabetes.

Ben: 47:03

this is the grandfather that my son's named after, by the

Gene: 47:06

Oh, okay.

Ben: 47:07

Yeah, my, my dad's dad, he, he, yeah, he was a big influence on me when I, when I was little, when I was my son's age, I used to call him mean grandpa because he always, he never got, let me get away with shit my entire life, man. He, he always had the highest expectations of me and I better listen. And there, there, there was no, I'm going to tell you twice on it's no, you're going to do it. And when I was a kid, you know, I, I didn't like that, but as I became a young adult and then an adult, I really appreciated what. That man did for me, and

Gene: 47:43

I

Ben: 47:44

is why my son's named after him.

Gene: 47:46

In retrospect, the people that were the harshest and the ones that I just thought were assholes, uh, that I think back to the impact that they made, like, you know, learning the Greek alphabet, shit like that. Is it's like, yep, I wouldn't have done it if they weren't assholes. So I'm kind of happy that they were assholes in a sense, because that forced me to do things I didn't want to do as a kid. So, yeah, it's Oh yeah. So we were talking about the conference thing. So my, and like four other topics. So that was one of my takeaways is that private sector availability of technology and stuff is actually going to be able to be utilized before it is broadly across like, One of the presentations was from the the guy from Houston power. I can't remember the name of the company. I told you what it was at the time. Talking about their work on putting out EMT protection to all the distribution power distribution sites. And I was like, Oh, this is cool. They're actually kind of proactive about this stuff. And then, in the course of him talking about the project, they said their, their planned completion date is roughly ten years from now. I'm like, okay it's good that you started. That is a long time.

Ben: 49:11

well, and it, depending on what protection scheme they're putting out there and everything else. You know, it's going to be a rolling constant thing because every time you replace a relay or something like that are you doing the same hardening? Are you, is the current relay you know, there are lots of things there. And again, it depends on what. You're trying to protect against and the problem with the electric grid and hardening it for me. Okay. So 1 company goes through and does this to their substations. Did every generator that is on the list.

Gene: 49:49

Hell

Ben: 49:49

hardening. And if not, okay, what about the distribution system? Okay. If the distribution system didn't, then it really doesn't matter. What about the transmission? I mean, it goes all the way down to the house. So unless you're going literally from generation to load and hardening pretty much everything along the way,

Gene: 50:05

hmm.

Ben: 50:06

any efforts are futile in my opinion.

Gene: 50:11

Yeah, and, and this actually brings us to a point

Ben: 50:14

Hey, Jean talk for a bit. I'm going to do something where I'm going to lose audio for five seconds, hopefully, and fix something.

Gene: 50:20

Yes enjoy taking your piss. Anyway so one of the things that that I brought up in the previous conversation is that one of the ways that you can sort of somewhat isolate yourself as a individual house. From the effects of EMP and the power grid is if you are well protected, you buy the various gadgets and gizmos that will allow you to be to mitigate the situation. And I used the word mitigate specifically because there is no 100 percent guarantees, right? So there's a, a much higher chance that your equipment will not be damaged if you've got one of these varieties of. EMP protection devices, but certainly depending on how far away you are and everything else, there is a chance that even with a mitigation device that it's still not going to work.

Ben: 51:17

And all mitigation really is, is sufficient grounding.

Gene: 51:21

Yeah. And it, and the, the thing I learned that I didn't know before coming to this event as far as the grounding is that the speed of the propagation of the wave with, uh, With the EMP wave is way faster than the lightning strike. And so the

Ben: 51:44

Depends on the frequency.

Gene: 51:47

I, yeah, I mean, I, I don't know. I, I can't, I don't know that level of detail. All I know is that there, I think it was a P1 wave is what it was referred to,

Ben: 51:58

Yeah.

Gene: 51:59

but the, the speed of these these EMP mitigation devices. Compared to like a search protector or a under up your power supply is the speed of reaction, which is one nanosecond.

Ben: 52:19

yeah. I mean, so first of all anything in the electrical industry that is protection related should be measured in cycles, not milliseconds, nanoseconds, because it's about cycles. Second of all, if you, when you're talking about lightning propagation and everything else, you're not talking about when it actually hits the line you're talking with, they're comparing it to is a lightning bolt starts in the clouds and then propagates down and it's semantics, but yeah, so anyway,

Gene: 52:49

what they're talking about.

Ben: 52:50

okay,

Gene: 52:51

What they're talking about is that when a lightning strikes a line or you're, you know, maybe you've got a light lightning pole outside your house. It, it, it doesn't go from zero volts to maximum volts instantly.

Ben: 53:07

No. And

Gene: 53:07

There's a gradual buildup in the voltage of that strike, which is measured in milliseconds. Whereas within the EMP, it's measured in nanoseconds. And that's what I mean by

Ben: 53:19

Yeah. And this is where it should be really, if anyone knows what they're talking about, it should be measured in cycles, but here, here's one of the things that the,

Gene: 53:26

me how the cycles work within the EMP?

Ben: 53:29

so anytime you're talking about measuring electrical protection and line protection, especially it's about cycles. How many cycles does it take before the protection scheme engages? So that's, I'm just telling you, that's how large industrial relays and everything else are measured. How the industry measures them. So one,

Gene: 53:48

cycle was not mentioned once at this conference.

Ben: 53:51

okay that's interesting.

Gene: 53:53

Measuring it differently for EMPs.

Ben: 53:55

yeah, so the difference between EMP and like a lightning bolt, a lightning bolt is a, a large static charge. Exists in one area and then arcs through the air to ground out and there is literally a plasma channel that is created and ions flowing EMP is an induced charge. So there is no resistance from the air and things like that. It's literally an inductive charge that is happening on the line. So that's a big difference.

Gene: 54:28

Yep, it is. And I, I, again, I think with the lightning because of the, the way that the plasma channel is initially created is a slow process in relative terms. I mean, we see it as in a blink of an eye. But if you slow it down, I guess that's, that'd be a good way to describe it is, um, is,

Ben: 54:51

you've seen like freeze frames of lightning where it just goes through the air. That's the measurable

Gene: 54:56

I've shot those. I've got some really nice lightning shots. It's very pretty. I've always enjoyed looking at lightning. Plus it smells great. I love that smell.

Ben: 55:07

Yeah, that was

Gene: 55:08

Oh, so good. But then I get ozone generators throughout the house as well. So I've got, I like that smell in general. It's a good smell.

Ben: 55:16

you ever thrown a CD in a microwave?

Gene: 55:19

Yes, I have. Yes. Yeah, that's always fun.

Ben: 55:24

Yeah, if you ever want to destroy optical media, that's the way to do it.

Gene: 55:29

Yeah. Although I don't, man, I'm sure I have some CDs, but, or DVDs, but not many anymore. I think most of them got thrown away.

Ben: 55:37

Oh, man.

Gene: 55:38

When I transferred stuff to memory sticks and hard drives that could get rid of the CDs. Too

Ben: 55:43

You know, without physical media, if we ever had an EMP event like this described in the books, do you have any idea how much information we would lose?

Gene: 55:53

Oh, yeah.

Ben: 55:54

Like, we would lose the last 20 years, probably,

Gene: 55:58

Oh, easily. Easily.

Ben: 56:00

Of all human knowledge.

Gene: 56:02

Yeah. This is why it's important to have copies

Ben: 56:05

Physical copies. Printed copies. Long term storage copies.

Gene: 56:10

like, I keep Kindle copies, but yeah.

Ben: 56:15

That doesn't really work.

Gene: 56:17

Sure it does. Kindles are great. I have a whole ton of books all in one place. And it's local. It's not remote.

Ben: 56:25

Huh. Huh.

Gene: 56:27

Totally. Totally. Totally. So anyway, long story short, very interesting conference. I would definitely say as a country, we're fucked as individuals. We may not be quite as fucked if you actually bother doing something about it. The the

Ben: 56:42

it's not just the U. S. though. There is no

Gene: 56:44

Oh, sure. Sure.

Ben: 56:45

a

Gene: 56:45

Yeah. Yeah. But I'm just more worried about the US than other countries, but yes, you're correct. All countries. But, uh, in the US, the calculated risk by the US government of an EMP attack today Is roughly 70 times higher than it was 20 years ago,

Ben: 57:04

Oh,

Gene: 57:05

where I think why a lot of these programs are now running in within government.

Ben: 57:11

yeah, part of that is a people paying attention to it. And you know, there's books like what we're reading and then the one second after series and things like that, that have gone literally before Congress that have. Changed the perception, but there's also an increased dependence. So part of the calculation and I'm, you know, anyway, I have some exposure to this part of the calculation is the number of people who will die without air conditioning, for example, and quite frankly, as we have an aging population that keeps increasing. So therefore. More people will die. Our risk is greater, even though technically our risk has not increased or changed any amount. The more diabetics there are. Oh, we have an increase in our risk posture. Okay, you're looking at the outcome basis. But if you look at the fundamentals of what is causing the risk, our risk posture has not changed. So it really comes down to how do you measure risk? Do you measure risk based off of outcome or exposure? Which are two fundamentally opposing ideas in cyber security, for example, you know, most companies, by the way, do use outcome based, which I think is largely FUD. I mean, especially in OT cybersecurity, where you're talking about predicting an industrial process. Yes, the worst case scenario is we destroy the process. That's, that is the worst case scenario at every, in every time. So, when you have an infinitely bad outcome in a traditional risk model. It doesn't make any sense, right? So loss of life. Okay. You know, it's not information leakage. It's not. Personally identifiable information that you're trying to mitigate or protect. It's, it's, it's just different. That's why I prefer an exposure model.

Gene: 58:58

me ask you this Ben, because you're obviously in the industry back in my day when I used to do InfoSec stuff 15, 20 years ago, we had a thing called air gap where the really critical systems does that no longer exist.

Ben: 59:12

Oh man. Okay. So it depends on the system and it depends on what you mean by air gap. So the reality is I have yet to, every industrial process I've walked down I have found things where that air gap. They thought it was complete and it wasn't, for example, a data diode at a power plant and oh yeah, our DCS, everything's behind this data diode and we're sending PI data out the data diode, but everything else is behind it. There's no vulnerability and I start digging in and lo and behold the, the process uses some of the SIMS data, which SIMS is continuous emissions monitoring to control part of the process and for regulatory reasons, because. Their environmental, they have to report their environmental output, but they need that sensor to control the process. And they can't have two because if those two ever disagreed, then I'd get them environmental trouble. And so now they've got a link from the control system, the boiler control system to the environmental system around the backend, and they're using that data in the control system. Oh, and that environmental system is not behind the data diode because it can't be in his. Sitting on the corporate network. So theoretically they have an air gap, but in reality they don't.

Gene: 1:00:38

Yeah, and

Ben: 1:00:39

And that happens all the time, dude.

Gene: 1:00:41

that's unfortunately what I was afraid of was the case because it, so you're basically in this example you're saying is regulations actually fucked with the air gap.

Ben: 1:00:54

It's the law of unintended consequences. People think they, Oh, I've put a lock on the front door. The back door standing wide open and that happens over and over again, a totally different site, totally different site. I walk in and we're doing some going through and there was a, a temperature sensor. That used this was shooting sound waves across a boiler and using that to measure the temperature of the boiler, which interesting, innovative lo and behold, there was a cell modem attached to that device that the vendor had remote access to. And also it was a window seven box sitting out there on this. Boiler that no one really understood or knew about. And if you look at the logic diagrams and things like that, unless you really go into a lot of detail, it's just a temperature sensor. Okay. That temperature sensor it's connected via a bus architecture into the DCS and, you know, even though I may not be able to hack the DCS, I may be able to, because it's a bus architecture. Just do a DDoS attack against everything on that bus. And by the way, if I take out this bus, given everything that's on this bus So what difference does it make? And it's things like that, that you, you have to understand the process in order to be able to protect the process. And that's, that's why there are so few people like me who can go in and look at these things, find out what this is and say, okay, yeah, I can, I can ship your power plant from here. No, you can't. There's, there's, oh, really here. There's a lot of that, dude. I've seen water treatment trailers being brought in that have cell modems connected to them that, you know, have no business being just out there on the Internet, but are so unfortunately, the state of the industry is inside the plant firewall pretty weak, and that's across the board and the U. S. Electric industry. Ironically enough is probably the most prepared and that's really scary.

Gene: 1:02:58

Okay, so they, there was definitely. What you just said that the, the, the U S grids are probably the most prepared out of anybody else was also set up the event, which is, you know, a lot of people kind of took as like, Oh shit.

Ben: 1:03:16

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it is terrifying. And from a cybersecurity standpoint, even the super majors, even a lot of big companies that you would think would have a lot of money outside protecting that perimeter firewall, haven't done a lot of work. And I was reading an article that a large portion. It's interesting because we're seeing a big shift in cyber security spending over 50 percent of organizations next year look like they're going to cut head count and cyber security.

Gene: 1:03:46

Hmm. Really? Wow.

Ben: 1:03:48

Yeah, most of that is going to be around corporate information protection though.

Gene: 1:03:52

So AI is taken over.

Ben: 1:03:53

and, and part of that is because, you know, Sims still aren't really integrated and everything else. I think based off of everything I'm at leasing anecdotally, the ICS world, the initial control system world is still just going to continue because that's a direct. Maintenance and reliability costs to a profit center. So when you're looking at the numbers from the board level, if people are actually doing their job and representing this correctly yes, it will be a cost center, but it will be a cost center for what actually generates revenue. This will be put under required maintenance, same way a turnaround or an outage would be right. And if you put it in that bucket, it's just viewed. Extremely differently than if you just have it as it overhead. So, you know that that's one of the things I would recommend to most corporations is make make sure you're communicating the need for the cost to the board effectively and putting it in the right cost center matters.

Gene: 1:05:02

Yeah. It matters to you if you're on the right side of the course, if you're on one side versus the other, for sure.

Ben: 1:05:10

Sure. If you're anti spending, then put it wherever you want, but

Gene: 1:05:14

as far as treating that differently than just general it,

Ben: 1:05:18

well, but, but it has to be, and, and the reason why is most of your facilities. Are going to require enough individualized care because the, the, uh, for example, when I work for the power company, we had a couple of sites that were literally supposed to be posted stamp sites, meaning they were built to the exact same specifications by the same contractors and so on. Right. bUt they were built a few years apart. So that means the control system technology is different. That means this is different, even though they're physically the same fricking power plant, just in two physical locations. There's enough different about them. We literally have to treat them differently. So it makes sense when you're doing the budgeting to attach dollars to the specific plant so that you're spending. Adequately at the plant, not across a big program, which is a hard lift to get people to agree to. But there's there's rationale and reason for it. So, yeah.

Gene: 1:06:18

And this has been certainly something that's been argued, you know, even back when I was doing this stuff that where does information security really fit? Because I've actually, it was one of the people pushing for more integration with security rather than it, because I think it's better for InfoSec to have access to a bigger budget and have access to a, like you were saying a different channel for priority and for budgeting than just coming out of IT where the security portion of IT is thought of as, you know, it solves no problems, right? It's, it's something we have to do, not something that. Makes our customers, which are the employees of the company, have computers that work better. It's a necessary evil, in a sense, is having to spend money on InfoSec. Whereas in the security side, in that department, like, that's literally,

Ben: 1:07:26

and you mean

Gene: 1:07:27

all they do. Yeah, physical security, yeah, that's literally all they do. Now, if you're, if you're just a a data center, where the physical security is literally some cameras and, and door protections. And there's two people in that department, then obviously no, but if you're a large company, like say target, uh, where physical security is, I think a staff of over 50, 000 people, um, then, and when physical security says to do something, guess what it gets done a lot faster than if infosec says to do something. Because of, of the nature of the relationship going all the way up to the CEO. So, physical security is asset protection. Information security is a pain in the ass.

Ben: 1:08:16

Yeah, and there's a lot of changes to that. And again, that's why I think information security and process security need to be considered separate things. You know, even if you have a OT cybersecurity group that reports to the CISO, that can be fine, but they need their own budget and their own staff. They need to be their own individual thing. In my mind.

Gene: 1:08:38

No, I agree. That's

Ben: 1:08:40

Did you see the visualization of the world's debt that I posted?

Gene: 1:08:44

Did you post that in the same place? No, I didn't.

Ben: 1:08:46

Yeah, you can go to namebin. com and scroll down. You'll see the graphic. It's pretty interesting. Because Asia and North America are pretty equally broken out in the amount of the world's debt that they have. Which is interesting because China and Japan combine to be damn near what the U. S. is. So that was interesting. China, Japan, and India pretty much do. So,

Gene: 1:09:10

india has just as much debt, um, for a country much bigger than UK, Germany, and France. And Italy is surprisingly low. I always kind of assumed Italy would, would be way worse with its finance. Cause I remember, uh, when I was a kid in Italy, in the seventies, where the inflation was insane and you know, they used to have the lira and when I was there, they changed the milliliter as the basic unit. So basically instead of dollar, the base unit was a thousand dollars.

Ben: 1:09:44

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that North America and Asia have pretty much an equal share of the debt

Gene: 1:09:53

You know, Greece is 0. 42%.

Ben: 1:09:57

of global debt. Yes,

Gene: 1:09:59

Oh, of global. Okay. That,

Ben: 1:10:01

debt, not jet, not debt to GDP. This is actual full on global debt, which I thought was an interesting because if you look at like Japan's debt to GDP is 255 percent of their GDP. So that that's a different level of analysis,

Gene: 1:10:17

this chart is completely useless then

Ben: 1:10:19

Why?

Gene: 1:10:20

because it, who cares what the percentage of global debt is if it doesn't take into account the GDP,

Ben: 1:10:29

Uh, no, because this is breaking out who has what amount of overall just absolute dollars of debt. Now, if you go into the article,

Gene: 1:10:38

yeah, I guess the other way to say it.

Ben: 1:10:39

in, if you go into the article, and if you look at the, the scale on the bottom of debt to GDP ratio. So the color coding matters

Gene: 1:10:49

it's a color coding. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 1:10:50

Yeah. So it's absolute and.

Gene: 1:10:54

okay. I didn't get the color coding. So Greece is 0. 42%, which is

Ben: 1:10:58

Of global GDP, but it's over

Gene: 1:11:00

200 percent of their GDP. Yeah. Okay. That makes it better because without the

Ben: 1:11:05

a pretty neat chart.

Gene: 1:11:07

Yeah, but without the color, I just don't think it'd be very useful

Ben: 1:11:11

Okay. I, I, I found it very interesting, but that's me.

Gene: 1:11:16

and then other countries are 15 Is

Ben: 1:11:19

I'm sorry.

Gene: 1:11:20

The other countries are 15 percent. It looks like

Ben: 1:11:23

1. 59.

Gene: 1:11:25

or one point. Okay

Ben: 1:11:26

Gene needs some glasses.

Gene: 1:11:29

needs something to be magnified more on his monitor. I think

Ben: 1:11:33

Anyway, I found it to be an interesting one. So yeah,

Gene: 1:11:36

ma'am How do you see that that decimal point? I gotta blow it up to like 200. Let's see it. 1. 5

Ben: 1:11:42

I have good eyes.

Gene: 1:11:44

Yeah. You damn kids with your good eyes.

Ben: 1:11:48

Your good eyes and your normal sized prostates.

Gene: 1:11:51

Yeah. My prostate's doing just fine For now. For now. You gotta, you gotta eat you know, sweet potatoes and stuff for that. That's what they tell us anyway.

Ben: 1:12:01

Yeah.

Gene: 1:12:02

Oh, I'm running at 80%. That's why. Hello. Okay. The browser was set to 80 percent magnification. That explains it.

Ben: 1:12:10

Uh

Gene: 1:12:11

Um, so, what else? Oh, and if you want to protect your house, And your car, then go to EMPshield. com, use the coupon code SIRGENE to save yourself some money when you do it. and I met the CEO of EMPshield at the event. I almost hate to say this, but do you remember the movie Office Space? Do

Ben: 1:12:38

Yes.

Gene: 1:12:39

you remember the stapler guy?

Ben: 1:12:40

Yeah. Yeah. Milton.

Gene: 1:12:42

Yeah, Milton. Milton is almost exactly what the CEO of EMPshield sounds like.

Ben: 1:12:49

My staple.

Gene: 1:12:50

yeah, he, he doesn't look like him, but he sounds kind of like this, and it's like he was giving a presentation and you're listening to this. I could barely hold it in to not laugh.

Ben: 1:13:02

What are you laughing at?

Gene: 1:13:04

guy, you know, he's an engineer, he's coming up with all these cool devices. I also met his CTO, who's a, uh, Bulgarian guy. And

Ben: 1:13:14

You damn Bulgarian.

Gene: 1:13:16

and he happens to speak Russian. So I think that was kind of funny actually, cause he I think he was a little. Okay. So, let me backtrack a little

Ben: 1:13:26

Did I ever tell you about the Bulgarian that worked for me?

Gene: 1:13:30

He did. Yes. So conferences got probably about 200 people attending, uh, out of that, about one third are in, no, not quite, maybe 20 percent are in uniform.

Ben: 1:13:46

A lot of Feds Disney.

Gene: 1:13:48

yeah. And then there's probably about percent that are representing vendors. So guys from Lockheed, guys from you name it all, all the industrial complex. Yeah. Disney, no, did not see any Disney people there.

Ben: 1:14:07

Oh, come on, they produce more bombs than anyone.

Gene: 1:14:10

they, but I'm bummed. Yes. Very good. Very good. That was, that was actually quite clever

Ben: 1:14:16

Not mine. That was the

Gene: 1:14:18

It's still pretty clever. And then there was probably another 30 to 40 percent of people that are, uh, work for government in some capacity, but don't wear a uniform. And, you know, most of these people are wearing suits, although not as many ties as we used to have back in the old days, where everybody wore a suit and tie. AnD, and then there was me, and I was wearing a black tracksuit.

Ben: 1:14:49

Awww.

Gene: 1:14:49

And and the funny thing is I, I can guarantee you that I was probably the Name most likely to be a fed in that conference.

Ben: 1:15:03

I, I don't disagree.

Gene: 1:15:05

And, and I, you know, like speaking to somebody and the Bulgarian guy walks by and then switching over to fluent Russian and then switching right back to English that, that just makes the point even, even more. It, it was it was pretty funny, but no, I, I, I enjoyed it. It really kind of, there's a little bit of nostalgia there for me. Like, oh man, I used to go to these things all the time. I, I used to interact with a lot of feds. That's like, I enjoyed that. That was fun. That's back when I used to wear, wear a suit and tie all the time.

Ben: 1:15:34

I don't.

Gene: 1:15:35

Yeah. I don't know. I look, you may, if you go through a decade without doing it, like I have,

Ben: 1:15:42

Ah, I

Gene: 1:15:43

you know, it's kind of like, there's, there's a reason I left that, but also. There's a part of me like, yeah, I, I used to kind of do this shit and you know, I wonder where I would have been had I stayed in security instead of moving into operations. It was interesting. I, I, I liked, I got met a few folks that I've actually now been staying in contact with that are sending me way too many text messages. beCause we collected on the political level. So, that's the thing. Um, but yeah, I think I'm going to do more, more of this stuff just because I am actually kind of enjoy it. Also signed up for a

Ben: 1:16:24

go join InfraGard, Gene. You can get all the spook shit you

Gene: 1:16:27

now. No, I'm actually starting a class this month on the history of spike craft.

Ben: 1:16:34

And when you say starting, you mean teaching.

Gene: 1:16:36

No, no, no. I mean, I mean, I'm learning, I'm learning these things because I'm curious as a curious person might be.

Ben: 1:16:44

So, let me ask you something. Did you see the house blow up in Alexandria?

Gene: 1:16:50

Yeah, it's not live actually.

Ben: 1:16:51

Yeah, so, what do you think that was? Cause I haven't heard shit about it since.

Gene: 1:16:55

So you know what they're claiming it was, right?

Ben: 1:16:57

No.

Gene: 1:16:58

They're claiming that it was an explosion of flare guns.

Ben: 1:17:04

Bullshit.

Gene: 1:17:05

I know, right? That's not the

Ben: 1:17:07

Bull. Shit.

Gene: 1:17:08

So the guy apparently

Ben: 1:17:10

couch go flying?

Gene: 1:17:12

Yes.

Ben: 1:17:13

And, oh, by the way, they took down the video. so If you go to WUSA9, which is the local station

Gene: 1:17:20

got it local here on my, on my computer, so I

Ben: 1:17:22

It is saved locally on Nameben. com, so you can see it there. But yeah, the original video has been taken down, so.

Gene: 1:17:29

Yeah. I was actually, that's awesome. The, I was watching that right when it happened and it was a, it was at first posted to LiveLeaks as a you know, police trying to executed a warrant

Ben: 1:17:46

Warren.

Gene: 1:17:47

And then quickly the video title changed to House Blows Up.

Ben: 1:17:51

And if you look at the video, there is a armored vehicle.

Gene: 1:17:56

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:17:56

That is approaching the house with a scoop on the front right before it goes and there's, you know, I think they were about to breach and run in on that guy

Gene: 1:18:09

I, yeah, or whatever it was there that we will never know.

Ben: 1:18:13

yeah all I can say is that was one big explosion, right? It wasn't a lot of little explosions.

Gene: 1:18:19

Yeah, that explosion was heard all the way at the White House.

Ben: 1:18:23

I'm sure that. That was, it didn't look like a big AMFO explosion. It wasn't a real high speed explosion but it was significant.

Gene: 1:18:34

You know what it looked to me like? Is if somebody left their gas

Ben: 1:18:39

yeah, yeah. Natural gas explosion.

Gene: 1:18:41

that's, that's the closest, based on what I've seen in the past, that it

Ben: 1:18:45

Yeah, it was definitely, but you know, if you've ever

Gene: 1:18:48

It was a large volume, but not high speed.

Ben: 1:18:51

Again, it wasn't like an AMFO explosion or something like that. That is high speed. It, it, it was

Gene: 1:18:56

certainly wasn't, yeah, it wasn't, um,

Ben: 1:19:00

don't know. Interesting enough though, that we don't have very much information on it.

Gene: 1:19:05

yeah. Yeah, and, and the other thing that leads me to think it was something like natural gas is that the damage on the surrounding houses were very little beyond the shrapnel. And, and just the bits flying. It wasn't, it didn't push the walls in on the other houses.

Ben: 1:19:25

I mean, but again, you could see a shockwave had it been like info and I'm watching it again right now. Also, it looks to come at, if you're looking at the house, the left front of the house. There's a fireball that goes out. So, I don't know. iT was definitely a boom.

Gene: 1:19:46

And given how close the cops were, I don't think they caused it.

Ben: 1:19:50

I don't think so either. I think whoever was inside is who caused it ultimately. And, you know, it could have been gunpowder too, though. So if you had a large enough amount of gunpowder that you purposefully set off I could totally see that being the explosion as well.

Gene: 1:20:10

Okay. Yeah, I, I've never seen an explosion of a large quantity of gunpowder. I've only seen small quantities, so, I don't know.

Ben: 1:20:19

Okay. I have seen

Gene: 1:20:22

Actually,

Ben: 1:20:22

have seen what, no, no, no. I've seen what a pound of smokeless powder set

Gene: 1:20:27

Oh, really? I don't think I've seen that.

Ben: 1:20:29

That's a big boom.

Gene: 1:20:32

yEah. So, do you think we're ever gonna get a story on that? Or is it just

Ben: 1:20:37

especially since the video has been taken down like I saved it because I thought they might do that. But no, there we that story will be memory hold. I bet which I given where this was at. This is in a suburb of D. C.

Gene: 1:20:53

it's, it's out of a Tom Clancy book. It's literally like, you know, mysteriously some house with a picket fence just becomes the,

Ben: 1:21:02

in 1 of the richest in 1 of the richest areas in the country. By the way, that's what you have to realize is where this took place. There are no poor neighborhoods.

Gene: 1:21:11

It's not only, it, it is literally the, the richest county in the country. Yep. Absolutely. Not for a good reason though. I don't think it's all that fancy.

Ben: 1:21:21

No, no, no, no. But every lobbyist, every, the, the property values in that area is through the roof. I mean, this was a multimillion dollar house that went boom.

Gene: 1:21:30

So which friend of Jeffrey Epstein was in there is the real question.

Ben: 1:21:35

Ah, yeah, yeah.

Gene: 1:21:40

seems to be the thing. Epstein just won't die, will he? I don't think a week goes by without something showing up or popping up that's related to Epstein.

Ben: 1:21:54

Speaking of I beat the I beat the Alex Jones video game.

Gene: 1:22:00

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I actually

Ben: 1:22:02

not a real long game. It doesn't take much to

Gene: 1:22:04

It looks cute as hell though.

Ben: 1:22:06

Oh, it's hilarious. It's great. And Epstein's Island and the skeletons coming up to cause everybody

Gene: 1:22:13

man. No spoilers.

Ben: 1:22:14

It's worth playing and you know, it's, I am very happy. I threw him a few bucks to play it and you can play it on the web. It's, it's, it's got some challenging moments to it and it's a,

Gene: 1:22:26

side scroller, right?

Ben: 1:22:27

yeah, it reminds me of Sonic in a lot of ways are actually another, another one that it really shit, what's that one where you end up being a female at the end that everyone went on about Metroid, Metroid,

Gene: 1:22:42

that's a female? I don't know. I've never played that.

Ben: 1:22:46

A lot of the trans people have gone back and said, oh, it must be da da da da.

Gene: 1:22:51

Yeah, I got Reamed for saying it was like Donkey Kong and people like Donkey Kong is not a side scroller, man.

Ben: 1:23:00

Yeah. Donkey Kong went vertical.

Gene: 1:23:02

I know, I know, but it's, I don't know. It seemed to me like it was in the same genre of flat two dimensional things,

Ben: 1:23:10

Yeah, yeah. Anyway.

Gene: 1:23:11

But it's cute. It's got cool sounds and the voicing and stuff and all the, all the nasty evil characters of the real world,

Ben: 1:23:22

Yep.

Gene: 1:23:24

like Soros.

Ben: 1:23:25

Yeah. And you know, I, I found myself I hope this is version one and they expand and go deeper. Like I would love for them to do. A game three or four times as long with, you know, go more in depth and do the story more

Gene: 1:23:46

if they make money on this one, they probably will.

Ben: 1:23:49

exactly. So, like I said, I, I'm glad I bought it and sent him a few bucks for it.

Gene: 1:23:55

Alex pay off his trillion dollars that he owes to those families, I guess.

Ben: 1:24:00

He also has his own whiskey.

Gene: 1:24:02

Oh, does he now?

Ben: 1:24:03

Yes. He has conspiracy bourbon that he has put out that he gave Tucker a bottle, which by the way, did you watch that interview?

Gene: 1:24:11

No, not yet.

Ben: 1:24:12

Oh, you've got to watch it, dude.

Gene: 1:24:13

Yeah, yeah.

Ben: 1:24:14

You really

Gene: 1:24:15

but I, I didn't watch it start to finish.

Ben: 1:24:17

It is, it's worth watching start to finish. He did really well. This interview I think is what got him back on Twitter.

Gene: 1:24:24

Really?

Ben: 1:24:25

Yeah. You, you heard about that, right?

Gene: 1:24:27

Yeah, yeah,

Ben: 1:24:28

Yeah. So Elon's letting them back on Twitter now.

Gene: 1:24:30

About fucking time. Maybe I'll get my count back one of these days.

Ben: 1:24:33

Yeah, no, you're not, you're not Alex Jones, dude. You're not that popular.

Gene: 1:24:36

Oh,

Ben: 1:24:38

I mean, you might be at Langley, but, you know,

Gene: 1:24:41

yeah. Right. Yeah.

Ben: 1:24:45

yeah. look, all you have to do is look at my travel log and know I'm not a fed, dude. Jesus.

Gene: 1:24:51

Okay. I, I, I challenge everybody to look at Ben's travel log and realize he's a fed.

Ben: 1:24:58

Yes, all the domestic travel, all the myriad of domestic travel.

Gene: 1:25:03

usually the most feds do exactly that. Hey, you know what else feds don't do? They don't travel to countries that the government doesn't want people traveling to.

Ben: 1:25:14

Okay,

Gene: 1:25:14

You ever been to North Korea, Russia, Iran? Nope. Didn't think so. Clearly a fed.

Ben: 1:25:20

I would, I wouldn't a heartbeat.

Gene: 1:25:23

Look, the only country I ever traveled to is Mexico. Everybody knows that. It's, it's the only place I ever go.

Ben: 1:25:29

Huh. See, and I've never been to Mexico.

Gene: 1:25:32

That tells us something.

Ben: 1:25:34

Yeah, no, I need to go.

Gene: 1:25:36

You had a frickin chance I invited you two months ago.

Ben: 1:25:39

I'm, you know, I, I, I am looking at some potential getaways. So, yeah, I

Gene: 1:25:46

Tell you where else you need to go is the Wizard Academy.

Ben: 1:25:49

do. We'll see.

Gene: 1:25:51

Mm hmm. Yes. Ben is noncommittal, as we say in the trade.

Ben: 1:25:57

yOu know, I, and work gets in the way, man. Work gets in the way.

Gene: 1:26:01

Mm hmm. Work is more important. That is true.

Ben: 1:26:06

Yeah. This, this project we're starting is gonna be a good one. You know, it's a, it's a seven figure deal for the first year and we're gonna be more than that and the out years and it's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a good one, first of many.

Gene: 1:26:24

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:26:26

Yeah, this is with a different new partner. So it's, it's a good thing.

Gene: 1:26:30

Hey, did the Republicans have their convention after the last time we recorded, or before? I can't remember if we talked

Ben: 1:26:36

You mean the, the later less, lesser known debates?

Gene: 1:26:41

Yes, the debates that no one watched, yes.

Ben: 1:26:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah I watched

Gene: 1:26:46

Where Vivek cleaned the floor once again.

Ben: 1:26:49

well, I will say the Santas didn't have a bad 1, man,

Gene: 1:26:53

This

Ben: 1:26:53

Santas did pretty good, especially when they were both gang up on Nikki Haley,

Gene: 1:26:58

yeah.

Ben: 1:26:58

like,

Gene: 1:26:59

Yeah. I think this was DeSantis best showing.

Ben: 1:27:02

yeah, I mean, it was literally Vivek is on 1 side and the Santas is on the other. And I mean, they could have been doing an Eiffel Tower.

Gene: 1:27:10

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:27:12

That's how hard they were screwing her over. But, you know, and then poor Chris

Gene: 1:27:16

and Christie was defending her. He's like, how dare you talk to a woman this way? Mm

Ben: 1:27:21

He was playing the cuck husband.

Gene: 1:27:24

That's horrible.

Ben: 1:27:26

Come on, that's a good analogy for how

Gene: 1:27:27

feel bad for, for a lot of these people a little bit because there's a, they're outleagued like. It, you know, they're, you know, how you, you go to your maybe you don't know, but you, you go to like your community chess club and you play the same guys all the time and you all kind of know each other and he's like, this guy's a little better than me. And this, this guy is usually I can trick them into doing something stupid. And then somebody just shows up from India or their parents do anyway. And Oh, valedictorian. Oh, Oh, Oh, overachiever, billionaire. Okay. And now you're going to play them. And it's like, fuck your name, man. That's not fair.

Ben: 1:28:09

Yeah,

Gene: 1:28:09

what I mean when I say that I feel a little sorry for the rest of them because they're just They're not in the same league as Vivek, honestly.

Ben: 1:28:16

and he was brilliant. One of the best things he did was holding up that piece of

Gene: 1:28:20

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Ben: 1:28:21

he immediately got, he got so much traction off of that, and that's gonna pay so many dividends, it's not even funny.

Gene: 1:28:28

He literally took the time to create a meme image during the debate.

Ben: 1:28:35

Yes. And knowing that he will be memed

Gene: 1:28:39

And, and I guarantee you neither Christie nor the what's her

Ben: 1:28:42

even had a clue as to

Gene: 1:28:44

They didn't, now, DeSantis may, I think he's a little more connected, but those two guaranteed had no idea.

Ben: 1:28:51

He also had a great moment when he asked Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, if they want to spend so much money on Ukraine and fight for Ukraine, name, name, some, some of the provinces you want to

Gene: 1:29:01

Name three of the provinces in Ukraine

Ben: 1:29:03

And they couldn't name one

Gene: 1:29:05

but they were just smiling that stupid

Ben: 1:29:07

no, no, no, did you, did you not see the cutaway to Nikki Haley when he asked that question and she just gets this blank, Oh my God, look on her face like her eyes got big and she just knew she was caught.

Gene: 1:29:18

She, she was thinking who to reprimand for not coaching her previous to this with at least three different provinces in Ukraine.

Ben: 1:29:27

I mean, he absolutely nailed them to the wall with that one question. I mean, it was, it was a, Oh yeah, you want to protect it so bad. Where, where do you want to protect? Where do you want to fight for? Boom. Shut up.

Gene: 1:29:39

Now to be fair, I don't think that any American knows the answer to that question.

Ben: 1:29:47

Okay.

Gene: 1:29:48

Because the only ones that we've heard of like Lugansk or Donetsk are the ones that are trying to leave like they're friends of Russia.

Ben: 1:29:56

Yeah, but I mean, I, I can name the three separatist regions,

Gene: 1:30:01

Right, but that's what I mean the three separatist regions, but not any of the ones that are

Ben: 1:30:06

but those are the ones that you want to fight for, right? So, you

Gene: 1:30:09

But you're fighting for you're fighting against them though. They that

Ben: 1:30:13

even if they gave that as an

Gene: 1:30:15

like that would at least be something. Yeah. Yeah

Ben: 1:30:18

Had she said, you know, Lugansk that would have been the, that would have shut down the VEG. It would not have gone the way it

Gene: 1:30:27

oh, yeah, even

Ben: 1:30:28

they did not even do

Gene: 1:30:29

didn't attempt because they don't even know one Let's face

Ben: 1:30:32

That's the

Gene: 1:30:32

They couldn't recall Crimea, which is like been said a billion times on TV.

Ben: 1:30:37

Exactly. And, you know, a lot of people gave him a crap about saying regions or whatever instead of oblasts. But, he was, it,

Gene: 1:30:45

literally means region in Russian.

Ben: 1:30:47

yeah, yeah, administrative region or whatever, yeah. It, it, it, he trans, it was transliteration and it was fine, what he did.

Gene: 1:30:54

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:30:55

He doesn't even know that they're called an oblast. Please, that's your response? Come on.

Gene: 1:31:00

that's a stupid response. But it, it's just, it is silly. I mean, you could have, he could have been asked, named three cities. They couldn't name three cities. They, they maybe could do one,

Ben: 1:31:12

keef,

Gene: 1:31:13

not a real city. It's pronounced Kiev.

Ben: 1:31:16

Keef? Quit Keefing.

Gene: 1:31:19

Ridiculous. So, I think he just, just wiped the floor with it. With everybody, and I do think that it was probably the best showing for Ron, but still

Ben: 1:31:34

wearing the boots again.

Gene: 1:31:35

not re What, what, is he gonna stop wearing him?

Ben: 1:31:38

I don't think he can at this point.

Gene: 1:31:40

Of course not.

Ben: 1:31:41

I think he's stuck wearing those boots for the rest of his life.

Gene: 1:31:44

probably.

Ben: 1:31:45

Which is hilarious!

Gene: 1:31:47

Yeah, I, look. I think that there's plenty to make fun of other than people's physical shortcomings. Like, Christie's fat, Ron is short, those aren't the negative things about them. The negative things about them are

Ben: 1:32:02

you see what I posted on No Agenda Social during the debate?

Gene: 1:32:06

During? No, I was probably watching the debate during the debate.

Ben: 1:32:09

So I, I posted a picture of Fat Bastard from,

Gene: 1:32:13

yeah, I did see it. I

Ben: 1:32:14

with Chris

Gene: 1:32:14

You also sent it to me with haha, so yes, I did see that.

Ben: 1:32:19

Come on, that was floaty!

Gene: 1:32:20

Did you see the photos of Chris Christie in college?

Ben: 1:32:25

No,

Gene: 1:32:25

So some sh I think it might have been Tim Poole that did that. They actually went back and and they're like Cause Tim was saying the same thing I am. He's like, look, there's plenty of stuff we can say that is bad about him. We don't have to resort to his weight. The guy's probably got issues ever since, so anyway, they found the old photos of him. hE was, he was a football quarterback, he was like a six foot something, like 180 pounds of pure muscle.

Ben: 1:32:52

What happened?

Gene: 1:32:54

He got married, and I know how that

Ben: 1:32:56

the picture of his wife, though? Oh, my God. His wife is

Gene: 1:33:00

like. She looks

Ben: 1:33:01

someone pointed out. It looks someone responded to one of my Austin powers. Chris Christie references with it's a man. That's a man. Right? Oh, she looks like General Flynn. It's really unfortunate

Gene: 1:33:17

Christ, that's

Ben: 1:33:18

like, look it up, dude. I was like, what? No.

Gene: 1:33:21

you're kind of talking me out of looking it up at this

Ben: 1:33:23

I mean, it's worse than Michael.

Gene: 1:33:28

really? Because Michael's pretty much Like this gold standard

Ben: 1:33:33

No.

Gene: 1:33:34

the wife not to have

Ben: 1:33:37

Pat Mary Pat Christy.

Gene: 1:33:39

okay.

Ben: 1:33:40

Hold on, I will, like, look at her Wikipedia photo.

Gene: 1:33:44

All right. I'll do it here.

Ben: 1:33:46

It's really terrible. Copy link.

Gene: 1:33:49

Oh my god. It's a dude It's it's absolutely a dude.

Ben: 1:33:53

Right? Right?

Gene: 1:33:55

I mean this is like worse than what's his name? The kardashian

Ben: 1:34:01

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Gene: 1:34:04

who looks nothing like a chick and this is

Ben: 1:34:06

Jenner,

Gene: 1:34:07

Jenner. This is worse than jenner This is like a basically a middle aged white man With a fake hair thing on top.

Ben: 1:34:16

Yeah.

Gene: 1:34:18

Jesus christ

Ben: 1:34:19

what can I say? Yeah. Like I said, it was in, it was funny because people were sending in response to that meme that, you know, the, from that same, that's a mad

Gene: 1:34:30

you know, why is

Ben: 1:34:31

Austin Powers jokes that could have never been done today.

Gene: 1:34:35

What did you send me?

Ben: 1:34:37

A link,

Gene: 1:34:38

Uh, yes, I got that, but why did you send me that particular link?

Ben: 1:34:44

beCause it was a picture of the, that you should see.

Gene: 1:34:48

screen cap what you sent me and then paste it as an image and you tell me if this is what you sent.

Ben: 1:34:56

No, I just right clicked on the Google image. I see that it came in Arabic.

Gene: 1:35:00

Huh, ah, interesting Ben, funny how your default browser language is Arabic. It doesn't work for the U. S. government, okay.

Ben: 1:35:09

It's not the case at all.

Gene: 1:35:10

Oh, no, of course.

Ben: 1:35:11

click on a Google image and send link.

Gene: 1:35:14

link right out of your browser and it comes up in Arabic. Okay, enough said.

Ben: 1:35:19

It was right click on a Google image search.

Gene: 1:35:24

Getting out of that one. We can all see your default language is set to Arabic.

Ben: 1:35:28

Yeah, I

Gene: 1:35:29

So, how about that Israel?

Ben: 1:35:31

so that would not be helpful to me. So,

Gene: 1:35:34

Um, so, It seems like, like all the protesting and whatnot, the occupation of London, as I refer to it, uh, is having zero effect on Israel.

Ben: 1:35:55

Okay. I have mixed feelings about a lot of things here.

Gene: 1:35:58

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:35:59

I don't think there are any good guys in this.

Gene: 1:36:02

Okay.

Ben: 1:36:03

And I, I just, anyway, you can say what you want to say about Israel. I don't think that I, I don't think carpet bombing is the answer, which I'm not saying that's exactly what they're doing cause they're not, but there's a lot of There's just not a lot of good information coming out from either side that I can trust. So I don't know what's happening. And if I listen to the propaganda on either side, it's horrible no matter what. So I, I don't know, man

Gene: 1:36:34

I think they're making headway.

Ben: 1:36:36

maybe.

Gene: 1:36:38

And my position has always been the same, which is, I don't want the U. S. spending any money with anybody, including Israel. Not our problem. Mm hmm. But also I think every country has the right to do what they want in terms of fighting back somebody that attacks them. I don't, I don't, like, I absolutely think Ukraine has a right to fight Russia. There, it's, it'd be stupid to say otherwise.

Ben: 1:37:01

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 1:37:02

Just like, absolutely, Israel has the right to fight the government.

Ben: 1:37:07

pay for it though.

Gene: 1:37:08

No, we totally shouldn't pay for it. We don't. But, but it seems like there's a, a very definite movement that is combining the people that have always been borderline how do I describe them? Neo Nazi types. And there was plenty of them on Mastodon and there still are, but I think, you know, they're, they certainly were the first ones to use Mastodon. If you've got a Mastodon. 10 years ago, half the messages going through were all about blaming Jews for everything So it's a, it's that crowd completely intermingled with the socialist students that are willing to go March for literally anything that somebody tells them is the right cause.

Ben: 1:37:59

That have no clue.

Gene: 1:38:01

That have no clue at all. And I think the students are going to, I mean, the, the people that just always have disliked Jews for whatever reason, that's nothing that we're going to change there, it is what it is, but

Ben: 1:38:13

mean, who does though?

Gene: 1:38:15

But for students, I think they're, there's starting to be more and more, um, you know, around and find out situations they're going to be running into.

Ben: 1:38:28

Yeah. Did you see the the congressional testimony?

Gene: 1:38:31

Yes, I did.

Ben: 1:38:33

was a train wreck.

Gene: 1:38:34

We're not a single one of the college. First of all, why are they all women?

Ben: 1:38:39

ha, ha. Caught that, did

Gene: 1:38:41

These are leadership positions, for Christ's sakes.

Ben: 1:38:44

Oh Gene at SirGeneSpeaks. com

Gene: 1:38:47

Now, luckily, one of them's already either been fired or has left her job at Penn I think it was Penn State. The other three are still holding on, but I suspect all of them will be gone. But aside from the administration, uh, the list Of students from those colleges that are members of the support Palestine organizations have been widely circulated.

Ben: 1:39:14

yes.

Gene: 1:39:15

Yeah. Not in the non disavailable like widely circulated. Most of the firms on wall street have said they will never hire those people for the rest of their lives.

Ben: 1:39:25

Which I don't think is a good thing,

Gene: 1:39:27

It's not strong enough. They ought to be stood up, put against the wall and taken out, but. This is at least, this is at, at least a good step forward.

Ben: 1:39:37

I mean, people make dumb decisions and everyone should have a redemption arc.

Gene: 1:39:44

Sure, when you're in heaven. So, I, I think, I'm obviously kidding. But, I think they're gonna learn a lesson here. This is a valuable lesson to learn and they're gonna learn it first hand. Is that it's one thing joining Black Lives Matter. And then, not really giving a shit about black people. Just enjoying running out there and torching police cars and things. And stealing shit from stores. It's another thing to piss off the people that actually run Hollywood.

Ben: 1:40:12

well, and so there's another more local case of people committing political sub, a coup. If you want to talk about it to

Gene: 1:40:21

Just to wrap this thing up, one of the last things that I, I just posted that I saw on Twitter, or X, sorry, is that The, this is from the firm, what are they called Palantir, Palantir.

Ben: 1:40:41

Yeah.

Gene: 1:40:42

So Palantir basically said that this behavior that is happening right now to where Jews are being told to hide the fact that they're Jewish in order to avoid getting, uh, into violent situations is unacceptable. And Palantir is opening up 120 jobs for Jewish college students.

Ben: 1:41:05

Yeah.

Gene: 1:41:06

And I think we're going to start seeing more of this stuff where the end result is going to be the opposite of what all these protesters are trying to protest for. I think we're going to start seeing, and I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying this is what's happening. We're going to start seeing more outward preferential treatment for Jews in the United States.

Ben: 1:41:30

And you think that's a good thing.

Gene: 1:41:33

I think it's the, it's the unintended consequence of what's going on right now. It's, it's. It was something that people should have thought about before going out and rallying for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Ben: 1:41:51

Okay.

Gene: 1:41:52

So, that's why I say, I think this is going to be a lesson learned by quite a few folks that they completely didn't think about. And, and here's the difference is that you know, let's say we use Ukraine as an example here. Because a lot of people went out and like, yeah, yeah, support Ukraine, blah, blah, blah. But you know, if you, if you protest a Russian restaurant or grocery store, they just close down. That's what happened in Austin. All the Russian grocery stores and restaurants were closed almost immediately after the invasion of Ukraine. Because you had protesters and you had people that were making threats and the, the people actually own the restaurants you know. It would suck to lose your restaurant, but it is what it is. Like you're not going to lose your life over losing your restaurant. There, there are no high profile or not even profile. There, there are no Russians in the United States of a level where they can affect policy. There just aren't any because of the cold war, like it's been. For so many years, there, there has been no opportunity for Russians to get to that level in the United States. There's very little intermingling. So, it's not like you can, you can piss off the Russian community. And I'm using air quotes in this because I think it's not really such a thing. But let's say there was a Russian community, like you can piss it off it with zero consequences.

Ben: 1:43:35

That's I think that should be every community in the U.

Gene: 1:43:38

should be, I totally agree with you, but that is not the case. With the quote unquote Jewish community, the United States, as you and I both know regardless of what the rationale for it is, Jews have been overachievers for a long time. And that overachievement tends to result in getting into higher levels within both government and private industry

Ben: 1:44:06

Yeah,

Gene: 1:44:06

and running all of Hollywood. And so. Consequently, these people have decided to pick on somebody that can push back, and push back in a financial way, and in a legal way, in a way that Russia couldn't, Russians could never push back unless the way, you know, Jews can. Blacks couldn't push back in the same way that Jews can.

Ben: 1:44:35

Interesting to see what actually happens and what they do.

Gene: 1:44:37

and I, that's why I'm predicting this, and I don't think this is a good thing for the country. I think it's a bad thing for the country. I,

Ben: 1:44:43

division that will lead towards more potential for sectarian violence. And I think if the, quite frankly, if the Jewish community responds in the way you were suggesting and the way they're already talking about, they open themselves up to the arguments that Hitler used. Pre World War II. So, you know, if you want to open yourself up to that kind of argument, go right ahead. I think you should be very careful about that because we've already seen where that leads

Gene: 1:45:10

we, we have, but

Ben: 1:45:11

not to victim blame, but

Gene: 1:45:13

thing that happened in Germany was the loss of firearms. And right now,

Ben: 1:45:18

Yeah. And ironically enough, the Jewish community in the U S is one of the largest proponents of removing firearms.

Gene: 1:45:25

that's not true. It's the, the,

Ben: 1:45:27

100 percent is.

Gene: 1:45:28

ADL and the lefties are, but you know, the reality is most Jews have guns. It's

Ben: 1:45:36

I very much disagree with that statement, but

Gene: 1:45:39

let's, let's unite, go to a synagogue and we'll ask.

Ben: 1:45:44

Sure. Let's go to the vast majority of the Senegalese in the U. S. which are in New York.

Gene: 1:45:51

No,

Ben: 1:45:52

The vast majority of

Gene: 1:45:53

the, the density concentration is certainly in New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yEah it, and they do have guns. I mean, most Jews in New York own guns.

Ben: 1:46:03

Huh.

Gene: 1:46:04

Yeah. You know why?

Ben: 1:46:06

Diamond dealers.

Gene: 1:46:07

Correct.

Ben: 1:46:08

Anyway. All right. So, since we've touched the Jewish third rail

Gene: 1:46:12

let me, let me wrap it up. Put a bow on the Jewish. So the bottom line, what I'm saying is I think we're going to start seeing a backlash, which is a preferential treatment for Jews. It's not a good thing, but it's going to happen because. The push has been very strong in the Palestinian side by these kids. They'll follow anything and anybody without really understanding what's going on. I would love to know who's doing the PR piece for the for Hamas, because that company is just kicking it out of the ball. They're doing a better job than Ukraine did.

Ben: 1:46:47

Yeah. Speaking of another PR thing, have you been following the Katie Cox case?

Gene: 1:46:53

No.

Ben: 1:46:54

So, this has come up over the last few weeks

Gene: 1:46:57

Oh, wait, wait. You got to give me more than the name. Yes, I have been following this.

Ben: 1:47:04

Okay, so the first story that comes out is this pregnant woman who has a issue with her baby is in a life threatening pregnancy. Turns out maybe that's not the case and she just has a baby with a birth defect that she doesn't want to carry. And anyway, it's back and forth. It's very unclear to me as someone who pays the hell attention, danger she is actually in. And this is a. This has gone all the way to the Texas Supreme Court already, which they said, no, she does not have a right to an abortion in the US or in Texas, and they're going back and forth. And this is going to go to the US Supreme Court and go ahead.

Gene: 1:47:45

you think,

Ben: 1:47:46

Yes, I do.

Gene: 1:47:47

it will. So let me turn my two cents in here. So my general rule of thumb is I'm, I'm what I would call sort of a a soft pro life person, meaning I'm generally pro life. I think in an ideal world, there would be no abortions at all. tHe two cases for abortions in my mind that justify having them is. If it endangers the life of the mother, and it's like in the first trimester, it's noticeable that it's the life of the mother is, is in danger. if It's something that, you know, you find out in the last three weeks of the pregnancy tough shit. But if you detect it early enough, I'd say life of the mother is one. The second one is a genetic defect in the child. So.

Ben: 1:48:36

and it looks like this falls under some of those categories

Gene: 1:48:39

Yeah, we, we all know the kids born with no arms and no brains and no eyeballs and all this kind of stuff and I think that if you, again, limiting it to the first trimester, if you find out that what you have developing there is a mess of cells that is not a formed complete child. Then I'd say that's my second case for legitimately having an abortion

Ben: 1:49:04

I'm going to shock you as a Christian and as someone who considers myself pro life personally. I think from a political standpoint, I'm actually more part of choice than you are. And the reason why is because I do not believe that you can force someone to live for another period. So, now, do I think that the government ought to sanction or? There's lots of issues here.

Gene: 1:49:30

we, we both are against convenience abortions,

Ben: 1:49:33

Morally, yes, but from so do I think a convenience abortion or abortion as a means of birth control or contraception should be a thing? No. Do I have a right to stop it? That's a totally different question.

Gene: 1:49:46

it, but it's handled differently. So do I think that I need to hold on, let me, let me just say this. So if a woman induces an abortion herself, I have no control over her doing that. And I would not put it in prison. However, what I do have control over is somebody offering for money to perform that procedure. And that, I don't want happening.

Ben: 1:50:11

Okay, but here's the thing. Can the government force you to live for another? Yes or no. And I, I can't force anyone to live for someone else. So regardless Kim Paxton has committed political saboku as far as I'm concerned, from an optic standpoint with this case, because the first news reports that came out were mother in danger from botched pregnancy can't Basically, get a DNC that that's the way this was spun initially. Now, obviously, in the week since, that's not the case. You know, that that's never going to get retracted. It's never going to get taken back from the consciousness. And Ken Paxton has come out and stupidly said that he will put any doctor who performs an abortion on this woman in jail.

Gene: 1:50:57

And he should,

Ben: 1:50:59

According to the law, yes, he probably should. But that's I'm talking about the optics of this. Because in every Democrats mind in anyone who is lightly tracking this story, Ken Paxton is now the devil, which he probably already was,

Gene: 1:51:14

whatever, I don't give a shit about that. I think he's doing the right thing in this case. There's a couple of other elements here. One of which is, do you know the judge that originally granted her the, the abortion permit, if you will? It's the same judge that was presiding over the Alex Jones case.

Ben: 1:51:31

yeah, it's not shocking.

Gene: 1:51:33

This is a Far lefty who was handpicked for this particular case. This woman is not some random woman trying to get an abortion in Texas. This is somebody that wants to change the law and using her body to do it.

Ben: 1:51:48

And I hate to say it, but I would not be surprised if this was not very, very intentional what all is going on.

Gene: 1:51:57

So what we may end up finding out in the end when this woman has her kid, because the only choice she's going to have is to leave the states. And have an abortion, which she may do, I guess. And the other option is that this, just timing wise, there's no way in hell she's going to be allowed to have an abortion before the Supreme Court hearing. And so she's gonna have the kid. And the kid will probably be just fine.

Ben: 1:52:22

I mean, we'll see.

Gene: 1:52:24

I just think when I saw it, it was the same judge as Alex Jones case. I'm like, this is set up, man. This is not a random event,

Ben: 1:52:33

it, and not only that, it's the way the media covered this, because again, the initial coverage was, oh, this woman needs it, otherwise she might die because of complications and so on, and then

Gene: 1:52:43

which incidentally was always a legitimate exception, like in the Texas law.

Ben: 1:52:49

Correct

Gene: 1:52:50

So if that was it, it wouldn't have needed to go to trial.

Ben: 1:52:53

now, in

Gene: 1:52:54

They wouldn't have needed to have a judge intervene.

Ben: 1:52:58

again, they're trying to bring this to light and the way this is being handled from the optic side. I think it's very intentional to, Oh my God, those stupid Texans. What are they doing? Right? That that isn't the entire idea here.

Gene: 1:53:13

It's, it's interesting because I just, I really get the sense that this was like, you know, are you willing to take a hit for the cause by getting pregnant and then going through the legal battle of getting an abortion? That's what it feels like. I have no evidence to say that. It's just, I look at the photo of this woman's smug face. I'm like, yep, she is not only a contributor to the DNC, she's an activist, but she's not a stupid activist. I mean, this, she, she's one of these sort of, you know, activists that isn't going to walk around with a from the river to the sea sign. She's an activist that's going to be focused on making specific legal changes. So,

Ben: 1:54:01

And, and I think that's kind of the point. And what I'm saying is that this has been handled optically to do that. And I think Tim Paxton, as much as I like him, I think he stepped in it. Based off of the trap that was laid. So we'll, we'll see, he might get out of it. You might be right, but I'm, I, my prediction is that this is going to have some repercussions.

Gene: 1:54:24

it's, I think it will have repercussions but I also think Ken Paxton did the right thing.

Ben: 1:54:32

So, yeah, I, I, I will see if it turns out that the original reports of her life not being really in danger, then yes, absolutely he is. buT that is such a subjective thing, you know, every pregnancy, every single pregnancy, even a healthy one, the woman's life is in danger. That it is not an easy thing on your body. So I don't know that's it's so subject. So Lee, before we close out two little product reviews, if you will.

Gene: 1:55:06

Mmm. Okay.

Ben: 1:55:08

I love my watch.

Gene: 1:55:09

Good. I'm glad. though it wasn't it was actually the model that I first sent you, so I'm totally responsible for it, so I'm happy to take the credit.

Ben: 1:55:17

I, I'm glad I didn't go with anything fancy or any touchscreens. The black and white, just static screen is more than enough for me. The navigation features that I can use on this watch are more than enough for me. And the battery life is fantastic. I, I literally have charged at

Gene: 1:55:34

And it still tells you when your phone rings and shit.

Ben: 1:55:36

Oh, yeah. When you're in, you get messages and all sorts of stuff. So it's, it's perfect combination for me. And then I have a sad product review.

Gene: 1:55:45

Oh.

Ben: 1:55:47

Have you had Casper coffee yet? Okay. I'm, I, I will reserve my judgment on the general beans or whatever, but the K cups suck.

Gene: 1:55:59

Really? Wow. Okay.

Ben: 1:56:01

And I have two different types that I've tried just to try and support.

Gene: 1:56:05

them know. I, I've not tried that coffee. I tried the the coffee that Jeremy did Coffee Brand Coffee Company. Their coffee is not very good. Their cocoa is very good.

Ben: 1:56:22

I like a good dark roast. I like a good oily bean coffee. And it just. It, I don't know, it, it tastes like Folgers to me,

Gene: 1:56:30

Ugh. That's horrible.

Ben: 1:56:32

you know, I mean, the Sam's member mark Colombian Supremo beans are better than this, which is unfortunate, especially for the price they charge. But anyway.

Gene: 1:56:44

You gotta figure half that is just kind of donation.

Ben: 1:56:47

Yeah, yeah, which is fine. It was just part of the reason why

Gene: 1:56:50

not buying their coffee because of how awesome it is you're buying because it has their logo on the, on

Ben: 1:56:55

mean, I would like it to be both personally.

Gene: 1:56:59

get it. I get it. I get it.

Ben: 1:57:01

Yeah.

Gene: 1:57:01

So that related to that, let me just throw this out real quick. I know we're trying to wrap up here is do you think that the idea of Financially supporting through purchases, companies you like, and not giving money to companies you don't like by not buying any of their products. Do you think this idea will stick around for the future or is this just kind of a blip on the radar where, you know, it's, and it's true of both sides, right? The liberals have their list of evil conservative companies like my pillow. The conservatives have their list of evil companies like pedophiles, like Netflix. And Disney, do you think the idea of putting your money where your mouth is on, on these things are going to stick around or will we all just go back to consuming products from everybody regardless? And this changed about 10 years ago when companies were starting to be told, and I remember distinctly when this happened and I thought it was stupid then it's proven to be stupid where companies need to have mission statements that incorporate we believe. I thought that was the stupidest fucking thing in the world. You're a company, you should not have beliefs, period.

Ben: 1:58:22

yeah. So I think it's going to go away. And the reason why is a the conservative side has never been good at pork boycotts, right?

Gene: 1:58:32

I'm like the only one doing it, I swear to God. Of everybody I know,

Ben: 1:58:35

I have Netflix. I have Disney because I have kids.

Gene: 1:58:38

The excuse that people seem to

Ben: 1:58:40

yeah. Anyway, that you know, I like being able to control what they watch and put on specific things that I've vetted versus just turning on a channel and letting them. Anyway, we're very careful about that, but the pendulum is swinging back. And I think you and I both have talked about this and recognize this. And I think as that pendulum swings back and companies like Disney and everyone inevitably comes along because they will because of their financial reasons, the right side of this equation is going to just stop. They're not going to care. The left, they may hang on, they may try and boycott, but it'll go back to the leftist boycotts of, like, the 60s and 70s where, oh, you dumb hippie, what are you doing, right? That's where that's going to go. So it, it, the left may hang on to their boycotts, but it will go to cultural irrelevance the way it was in the sixties and seventies.

Gene: 1:59:35

Mm hmm. Yeah, I guess that's true. So if, even looking back to the 50s, where you have the the beats, beatniks.

Ben: 1:59:46

Was pre fifties, but go on.

Gene: 1:59:47

that was pre 50s? When was that?

Ben: 1:59:50

Anyway go on.

Gene: 1:59:51

I think that was the 50s.

Ben: 1:59:53

Let me Google it. And while you, while you talk, let me prove you're

Gene: 1:59:55

I'm Googling, while I'm talking, it was the 50s. I just looked it up. And you, they still had a sort of anti normal

Ben: 2:00:06

Forties and early fifties. It was mainly the 1940s.

Gene: 2:00:10

I don't know what you're looking at. According to Wikipedia, and

Ben: 2:00:12

at Wikipedia.

Gene: 2:00:14

It says Beatniks, member of the social movement in the 1950s and early 60s. There's

Ben: 2:00:18

Started in the 1940s.

Gene: 2:00:20

I'm not according to Wikipedia

Ben: 2:00:22

The version of Wikipedia I'm looking at for Beatnik is exactly what it says.

Gene: 2:00:26

Ah,

Ben: 2:00:27

Anyway, go on.

Gene: 2:00:28

was, it was Jack Kerouac and he wrote a shit in the fifties. So anyway, people love when we bicker like this, by the way, you know that

Ben: 2:00:36

No, they don't.

Gene: 2:00:37

they totally, this is like the best part of the show. People always say that. Yeah. You, when you guys start bickering, it's, it's, it's the most fun. Uh, and of course you had to say, no, they don't. But my point is simply that there's always a counterculture no matter what. And the counterculture hates everything about. Commercialism and the the idea that, you know, that consumerism, I should say, not commercialism, but consumerism. And I think that will continue. And that's definitely more of a left than the right policy, but man, I really do wish more people on the right would actually, you know, not buy tires from Goodyear, they would not shop at target. They would not subscribe to Netflix. Like. If you can't even do that, then what, why should I care about your politics whatsoever? Because your commitment level is zero.

Ben: 2:01:33

I I, okay. I disagree with that

Gene: 2:01:37

Why?

Ben: 2:01:38

because I actually have a pretty deep commitment level. I've gone and I've

Gene: 2:01:43

I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about a theoretical person.

Ben: 2:01:45

right. But I mean, I, I still subscribe to Netflix and I still subscribe to Disney plus, for example,

Gene: 2:01:51

Okay, let's take Netflix. Why do you, why do you want to keep giving money to a company that promotes, actively promotes pedophilia?

Ben: 2:01:58

I don't. So that's your interpretation. And I don't necessarily fully agree. I think cuties was a little bit of a push and out there. Yeah. I, I would say Disney is worse than Netflix by

Gene: 2:02:11

Yeah, but, and I've never given a dime to Disney. I've never been to Disney World, never been to Disneyland. It's, it's you know, it literally is a pedophilia company.

Ben: 2:02:21

that is one interpretation and here's what it comes down to. I, I'm not a fan of Disney. I, if, if I were the only person in the household and I could just say, yep, nope, none of my money's ever going there, then that would be easy. But. There are some movies and some shows that I don't think are necessarily all bad that I am okay with my kids watching and it's the direction that, you know, other people want to go as well. So it's just, that's not the hill I'm going to die on, especially that minor amount of money

Gene: 2:03:00

But it's not even a hill. It's a tiny little mound that no one's willing to climb over.

Ben: 2:03:05

says the single person who isn't having to have arguments with other people.

Gene: 2:03:10

I had arguments. I got divorced.

Ben: 2:03:12

There you go.

Gene: 2:03:13

Exactly.

Ben: 2:03:14

Yeah, okay, so, I'm

Gene: 2:03:18

people are putting, putting, staying married above what they talk about with everybody else as the right things.

Ben: 2:03:30

I don't talk about, no, no, no, no, no, no. So here's the thing. I will, so, for instance, beer. I actually used to buy Bud Light quite a bit, okay? The whole Dylan Mulvaney thing, all that, I even I, I had stopped buying Bud Light many years ago, and I was buying Michelob Ultra, and I actually switched. My, my light beer in the fridge because of that, because guess what? That was my

Gene: 2:03:54

Okay.

Ben: 2:03:55

Only one who consumes it. So therefore I can make that decision on my own and I will do that in a heartbeat.

Gene: 2:04:00

So

Ben: 2:04:00

When my

Gene: 2:04:01

wife bought Bud Light, And there was Bud Lights in the fridge that she bought. You're okay with that.

Ben: 2:04:09

she would not have purchased it. But what do you mean?

Gene: 2:04:12

I mean, it's, I guess my point is, and I think this is a, a somewhat American, not uniquely American, but mostly American thing that I've noticed is the, the idea that people that are in family units have complete isolation from each other On things like religion, politics, all the choices, and I don't know if it's because of the way that that people grew up in the U. S. or what it is, but it like the things that typically creates a, um, a climate of family history and cohesion are the things that make the family similar, not things that make the family different. And maybe it's because the high divorce rate that's in the United States. I don't know. It's, it's really hard to pinpoint what the cause is, but like the number of men that I know that talk about things that they don't like about their wives that are different from them and then do nothing about it is way higher amongst my American friends than amongst friends from other countries.

Ben: 2:05:42

There's some cultural things. There's lots of things there. But one of the things I will say, Jean, is if I. There are a couple of companies that have done some things that are egregious enough that I will choose, especially where it's something like a beer that I can easily change that I will not purchase from them. That said, if I were to purchase only from companies that shared my ideals,

Gene: 2:06:03

Mm hmm.

Ben: 2:06:04

I wouldn't spend very many, very much money at all.

Gene: 2:06:07

Okay. You'd have more money in the bank.

Ben: 2:06:08

Right. And okay. So, but, you know, so I boycott a few companies that do something massively egregious and so on. Okay. Maybe sure. But, you know, there aren't many companies out there that I can support that I really agree with. So it depends on what your definition is. Right?

Gene: 2:06:28

But it's a continuum, right? No one's going to agree with your stance 100 percent person or company.

Ben: 2:06:34

So, but

Gene: 2:06:35

you just, you look at where is that cutoff of how much shit do they have to do for you to

Ben: 2:06:41

per dollar spent. Sure.

Gene: 2:06:43

Yeah.

Ben: 2:06:44

And the amount of change in my life and lifestyle that it has to be.

Gene: 2:06:48

Exactly. Like if, if Ford did, like, let's say you had

Ben: 2:06:52

have a much lower threshold for that than the average person.

Gene: 2:06:56

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You're not my example. That's why I said it's not you. I mean, like just average person because most of these average people. Like, guys, I'm playing video games, right? They're, they're in the same hobby as I am, right? We're all talking on, on, uh, VoIP and playing video games. And a lot of them will bitch about stuff. And then when I actually ask them, Oh so, you know, does that mean you don't shop at Target anymore? I mean, I don't really go shopping very often. Okay, so does your wife shop at Target? Yeah, all the time. Okay, so you really don't have a stance on this as a family then. I mean, as the head of a family. Yeah,

Ben: 2:07:40

When. So when your ex or whoever disagrees and wants to, doesn't give a shit and doesn't think that the Target deal was that big of a deal and that the, the right side of the media is blowing it out of the water and I don't care, I'm still gonna go, I mean, do you take credit cards away? What, what level of effort are you willing to do? And are you willing to get divorced over it? Really for some men becomes the question.

Gene: 2:08:09

yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what I'm getting to. And again, I'm not, I'm not trying to, like, sound all superior. It's like, like, nah, I'm, I got divorced so clearly I didn't pick the right wife. If I would have picked the right one, I would have still been married.

Ben: 2:08:23

you know, you say that, but, Is there such a thing as the right one is my question at this point

Gene: 2:08:29

don't know. I, you know, I, I don't know, but I do know that certainly in older generations whether it was my parents or even just like older people, I know that were let's say that are today in their seventies, um, you know, they absolutely could tell their wife that, you know, Disney just demonstrated their pedophilia. That's it. Our kids are never going to Disney shit again. Like back 30 years ago and the wife would have been okay with it.

Ben: 2:09:03

But this is the whole problem with the girl boss generation. I don't need you to tell me what to do or anything like

Gene: 2:09:10

Yeah. So then she doesn't need your money either. You don't need, yeah, it's a, one goes along with the other, man, because it's not, the biggest lie ever told by feminism is that men and women are equal.

Ben: 2:09:23

I 100% agree. And, you know, and here's the thing. Society preferences, the woman and the man gets punished and takes, you know, takes more than half of his shit in reality, especially when you look at kids in custody and everything else, and that the kids are held as a cudgel over the man. It's horrible. It's terrible. It is not okay. It is not equitable in any way, shape or form. But, you know, the feminists and those people out there that want to be those girl bosses aren't about equity. They want every advantage they can get. They lie about wanting equity.

Gene: 2:10:00

Yeah, equity is a lie used to move the needle further. It is, it never stops. It doesn't stop in the middle. It keeps going once it reaches the middle. No, that's absolutely the case. So my, my point is simply this,

Ben: 2:10:16

So we end the show with at least three third rail topics discussed.

Gene: 2:10:21

That's why it's fun. Third rail topics are always fun, but I think the bottom line is that there has to be a certain, like, if we don't get pushback from men going in the opposite direction soon, not only is the US doomed to become an enclave of China, but we're going to be happy about it because we'll have more rights under Chinese rule than under current feminist run America.

Ben: 2:10:50

I

Gene: 2:10:51

that, Ben, I will talk to you next week.

Ben: 2:10:54

will see you next week.