051 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:22

Hey, Ben, how you doing? Hey, how are you, Gene? I'm doing good. Yeah.

Ben: 0:29

Hey, we're we did our 50th episode and didn't even say anything about it.

Gene: 0:34

Yeah, that's, that's true. You know, I think it's, it's, I guess it's technically a round number, but it's not that round the number. I think 52 is actually going to be a more round number.

Ben: 0:47

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I guess, depends on, yeah,

Gene: 0:52

I mean, it's a year's worth, right?

Ben: 0:56

And I mean, we got to talk about that because next weekend is Christmas Eve and then the weekend after is New Year's Eve.

Gene: 1:02

That's right. So good question. Let's talk about it. Do you want to record on other days or do you want to just take a break?

Ben: 1:10

I'd say let's shoot for other days if we can. Yeah, I'm up for that. Yeah. Let's shoot for the Saturdays. Saturday. Yeah, that should work. Yeah, let's do that. That way, it's nice and easy. New Year's, I don't really care about, but Christmas Eve, I've got family coming in. That, that one, that one moving a little bit might work. And we don't post the, I mean, you still haven't posted last week's

Gene: 1:32

episode, I know, I'm, I'm putts sometimes with posting the stuff. Yeah. And as

Ben: 1:37

soon as you post it, I got to, I have to download it and then I've got to render it and then I've got to upload it to rumble.

Gene: 1:44

Oh, right. Okay. I will get into a much more timely. I forget about that. I, cause the thing is I actually have it in in the script right away. Usually I just don't get around to deleting all the ums and ahs until I remember to. And so I, yeah, as soon as I. There's no reason I can't get them done sooner, so you can post them sooner as well.

Ben: 2:10

A lot's happened since we talked last. Yeah! What do start with? I would say, let's start with Alex Jones on Tucker.

Gene: 2:20

Okay, before we do that, let's start with me. I think I mentioned to you previously, or if I didn't on this show, I might have on others. That I have occasionally had gout. So I'm, I'm a I've got the genetic predisposition to it. And it, usually when I've had it, it happens like once a year, once every 18 months or so. But it's been a good six to seven years since the last time I had it. So I was thinking, yeah, I wonder if there's something that I changed in my diet, maybe? Something that's just not, you know, whatever I'm doing, you know, is a good thing, right? Gout sucks. It's, it's Painful. It doesn't damage anything, but it hurts like a sumbitch, because what it is, is, is crystal form. Little knives. Yeah, little knives around your nerves on your toes. And it's painful as fuck. So last night I kind of noticed, yeah, that's weird, my, my big toe seems to be a little sensitive. I wonder if I bumped it or did something weird to it. Didn't think twice about it. This morning I wake up, I'm like. oh. I remember this feeling. A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I remember my big toe feeling like this. Sure enough, I got myself some

Ben: 3:36

gout. That sucks. Does it lay you up

Gene: 3:39

or what? No, I'm sitting here doing podcasts, obviously. No, it's, what it is,

Ben: 3:43

is I mean, that would be laid up as far as I'm concerned. Fuck you. The easiest way to describe How many steps a day do you get in, Gene? I don't know, a

Gene: 3:50

thousand? All well you know, I mean, if I go somewhere it's more than that, but if I'm in the house, it's about a thousand.

Ben: 3:57

I'm already at a thousand this morning.

Gene: 4:00

coNgratulations. You're in the house,

4:03

Yes.

Ben: 4:04

It's, yeah. It's 30 degrees outside. Yes, I'm in the house.

Gene: 4:07

It is a cold one. So the easiest way to describe the pain is, you know how you take a nine volt battery and you put it on your tongue? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's, it's painful, but it's tolerable. You're not going to want to walk around with a 9 1 1 battery tied to your tongue. But, you can still test whether the battery's got any juice by sticking it on your tongue. It's not something you're going to be like, Oh my god, it's so painful, I don't want to do it. That is the level of pain. When you do nothing, when you don't move your foot. Like a constant equivalent to a 9 1 1 battery on your tongue. Except it's on my big toe, so it's totally tolerable. You know, I can, I can work, I can do a podcast, I can do whatever with it. It just seems annoying. It's annoying as fuck because it's constant, it does not go away. And of course, if I actually start walking around, then that pain level shoots up considerably. Because now I'm actually moving the joints and it's scraping against all the nerves and stuff on there.

Ben: 5:09

But have you ever tried to do any sort of. You know, like gallbladder cleanse or anything like that to try and clear out some of those crystals? Because what happens with gout is a crystallization around the nerve sheath and part of your your filtering system Which your gallbladder and liver are part of is supposed to help remove some of the that out of the blood

Gene: 5:35

exactly so the biggest thing that Is good is just drinking a lot of water and specifically distilled water because if you're drinking water with minerals, you're just potentially adding to it. You're not going to be absorbing any of the crystallization, but if you drink distilled water, you're adding pure water, which. Which allows more of the crystals that are formed from the blood to get reabsorbed back into the blood. Again, the good news is it, it usually lasts about a day and a half to two days. It doesn't last very long. After that, you just got a little bit of soreness, just like you, you know, bumped your toe or whatever, but it's not the same level of electricity buzzing through there. But yeah, it's always annoying when it happens, and, and this is, like I said, the first time in about six, six and a half years? So that's a good long run. Yeah. If I can go another another six years after this one, I'm okay with that. And I know it's genetic cause I came up on my genetic profile and my dad occasionally gets killed as

Ben: 6:41

well. It makes you more susceptible to it, but anyone can get gallop and yeah, it's apparently not a fun and not everyone gets it from excesses either now you given your history probably, but yeah,

Gene: 6:55

Yeah, but you know, nitrates is really the thing that sets it off with most people. And when I, when I found that out years ago, I was like, goodbye, liverwurst. Right,

Ben: 7:06

right, right.

Gene: 7:08

Yeah. The irony is. I was actually making liverwurst and I, we talked about it in the last show with a buddy of mine from deer that we were cutting up. So using deer liver. And so I was working with it, but I didn't, I didn't eat any yet. Like I've been looking forward to eating some of the product. Your

Ben: 7:26

body was just punishing you preemptively.

Gene: 7:28

I think so. I think it was like, wait, you touched liver. Oh, you were asking for it now.

Ben: 7:35

Have you ever done a liver cleanse?

Gene: 7:37

Yeah,

Ben: 7:39

I think, I think I, I, you know, I've been on this whole non drinking kick anyway and everything. And I think here, right after the first of the year, I'm going to go through and do a week long liver cleanse. And do that before I drink, before I start drinking again, a week long,

Gene: 8:02

Fender. I Did do that too. I guess no week long fast. So that's, that's why I'm doing on the 2nd of January is a fasting for a week.

Ben: 8:11

Yeah. I don't know if I'll do the fast. I can do the cleanse and the fast at the same time, but that seems a little rough cleanse has calories. nOt necessarily. No, doesn't have to. What,

Gene: 8:23

what are you gonna use?

Ben: 8:26

I mean, yes, there's calories in the olive oil and the oxy powder and that little bit of stuff. That's not enough to worry about interrupting the fast. It's

Gene: 8:36

not food. That's called not a fast. If you put any calories into your body, it's not a fast. That's a bullshit thing that Americans do. Actual people that fast, fast without any calories. Mm

Ben: 8:49

hmm. Okay. We can talk about it, but I'm just thinking about it. We're in a podcast.

Gene: 8:58

But anyway, so for people that don't know, I do this, I try to do it every year. I probably have done it four out of five years. Do a fast on January 2nd. I used to do it on the 1st, but then I realized that the 1st is like, there's too much other shit going on. So I shifted it to the 2nd last few times. And then it just. Honestly, I should probably do it like every quarter, but it, it feels really good when you're done with it. Every year. So I try to at least do it once a year, every January. It's a good way to start the year off. anD it, it just sort of, you get a little more clarity of mind along with just flushing everything out of your system. Cause over the course of a week, you know, there's pretty much not anything left in there. So it's a good thing. I'm, I'm a definitely a supporter of people doing fast.

Ben: 9:53

Yeah. So speaking of Alex Jones has ended his Twitter fast.

Gene: 9:59

Yeah, that's a good, good transition.

Ben: 10:03

And Oh, and Schroeder's back. I wouldn't has been making the rounds. He's doing good.

Gene: 10:08

Tim pool

Ben: 10:08

show dude, his appearance. He was great on that show. Fantastic. Anyone who is at all, like a little up in the air on, I don't know about. Oh, and Troyer and all this go watch him on temple and you're your friends who are liberal, who are defund the policers, send them that interview because it's fantastic, you know, I, I, I just, I, I think it was great. So anyway, temp temple Alex Jones and Tucker talked for several hours, a couple hours was published. Did you watch the unedited thing?

Gene: 10:51

No, I just watched the, whatever the original

Ben: 10:53

version was. Yeah, so the original version was like an hour or something. Yeah, that's what it was. The unedited that they also, that got out there, was like three something hours. Oh, wow. Jesus. And I haven't finished it. It, it, I mean, cause it's a repeat. They did a good job on the edit. There's no, but it's Alex and Yeah, they, they, they did it, the, you're not missing anything from what I've seen so far. But Tucker seems to have a genuine rapport with Alex and it, it's like it not have a rapport with dude. Oh Obama.

Gene: 11:34

Tucker is super friendly. Really? I haven't seen him talk to Obawa. Papper? Okay, okay. I mean like human beings.

Ben: 11:44

Okay, he doesn't like lizard people. What do you want from me? Yeah, exactly. He doesn't like lizard

Gene: 11:49

people. Lizard people. Oh. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm picturing,

Ben: 11:54

we need a we need a hecklefish jingle. Lizard people! Yeah, hecklefish is awesome. Alright anyway, so after that interview, and after that was published a few days later, Musk apparently watched the interview and decided, Oh,

Gene: 12:12

fuck, I'll bring back Alex. Yeah, I'm sure Musk got a billion people sending him a copy of that thing, and then Yeah hey,

Ben: 12:20

did you watch this? This guy's not crazy. He's reasonable.

Gene: 12:25

And I think the big thing was Musk didn't realize that the reason he was banned had nothing to do with the thing that Musk didn't like about him. Yeah, with Sandy Hook. Sandy Hook, yeah.

Ben: 12:38

And then Did you watch the Twitter spaces? I

Gene: 12:41

did. I watched that. I was watched the whole damn thing. Yeah.

Ben: 12:44

Yeah. The audio is absolutely atrocious.

Gene: 12:48

I mean, it it's, yeah, it's, it's certainly a telephone audio, but

Ben: 12:53

I mean, it's worse than that, the way it clips and switches between speakers, it's just not a useful

Gene: 13:00

platform in my mind. It's going to get Musk to tell some engineers to go fix it though. So that's a good thing. But at least it didn't like crash and drop off. So they had over a million people listening

Ben: 13:16

live. And I don't know how many tens of millions since then.

Gene: 13:20

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then not many companies have that capability. Obviously YouTube does, they can do Twitch does. But not many companies can stream to that many people all at the same time, so that was pretty cool. But yeah, and it seemed like everybody that I've ever watched on YouTube was on that stream. Everybody showed up. That was pretty cool. Although, I don't know the host. The guy who hosted it, I've never heard of him.

Ben: 13:45

I haven't either. Interesting thing. And let's sidebar on A strategic purchase purchase that Twitter should potentially make. buT so I thought it was funny because Alex called out the vague for peeing on the stream. And then in his interview the next morning with Crowder, he's the vague totally dominated us all by just taking a piss on the stream. Yeah, that was good. And that, that was a great segue, like that was fantastic. He

Gene: 14:15

just marked his territory. Yeah, he was marking his territory. I

Ben: 14:18

own these bitches. Exactly. Which I thought Vivek handled it pretty well because he got, he was peeing and got called out and didn't just go,

Gene: 14:27

Oh Jesus Christ, sorry. I know. I would not have handled it that way. Oh no, I

Ben: 14:30

would have flipped out. I would have been like, ah shit, I thought I had it

Gene: 14:33

muted. Yeah, yeah. No, he just kind of nonchalant. But, which makes you wonder then, is Vivek an open door bathroom guy? I think so. I wonder.

Ben: 14:45

Yeah. I mean, I am.

Gene: 14:47

Whatever. Yeah, in our culture, we just walk around naked in the house.

Ben: 14:51

Yeah, I mean, if it wasn't for kids, I would totally be naked in my own house a lot.

Gene: 15:01

It's a it's interesting. I mean, there's some stereotypes that I definitely have questions about Vivek with. For example, you know, every time you walk into an Indian person's house, It smells like an Indian person's house. Gene, that's racist. I wonder if Vivek's house smells like an Indian person's house. No, it's, it's the food they eat, man. It's the smell of the spices. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's nothing racist about it.

Ben: 15:28

I mean, I, I, I have had, I have Spent a lot of time with friends of mine who are Indian that is not true of everyone and now some of the, some of the Indians that this is how much they cooked and everything like there was this one Indian friend of mine that her house, she had a roti machine in her kitchen because she cooked all the time and made a lot of roti and Her house did not smell like spices, didn't smell like curry. Okay. I don't know. I think it

Gene: 16:01

depends. Most of the guys I worked with and given like they were in IT, most of their houses smelled like that. I'm trying to remember if there was any of them, both Pakistani and Indian dudes.

Ben: 16:15

Well, and maybe, maybe it's the dudes and not the chicks. No,

Gene: 16:19

because it was their wives

Ben: 16:20

cooking, dude. Right, right, right. But I'm saying if you had a single dude, maybe, you know, versus a single chick. Oh yeah, single dude

Gene: 16:28

smells like Chipotle. I'm sure an Indian single guy would be would be eating the same junk food that everybody else is. What do you mean, Jesus Christ? Oh, like you never ate Chipotle when you were single. I don't know. I prefer free birds. Okay. Same difference. Same smell. No.

Ben: 16:45

Yeah. It's the smell of farts. I made the Vorex chili since we last talked. Oh,

Gene: 16:50

you did? Yeah. Is that, is that real chili or chili with beans?

Ben: 16:54

Oh, no, it's a four bean stew. Okay, so it's not really chili. It's delicious. Yeah, I'm sure it was a good And I put my own sp Spin on it.

Gene: 17:04

What are the four beans in that

Ben: 17:06

stew? There are red pinto, white pintos great northerns and pinto or red pen, red kidney beans, white kidney beans, pinto, and great northerns. There you go. Okay. Got it. Yep. Got it. And I, of course do my own little variation on it, but it's, he, it's a really good little dish he made there. I gotta give him props on that. Dvorak does know how to cook. Yeah,

Gene: 17:34

Not surprised there. He enjoys good food. Anyway,

Ben: 17:37

I don't know why you gotta crap on chili with beans. I've never understood that whole fight. You're not

Gene: 17:43

from Texas, clearly.

Ben: 17:45

I am from Texas. Then you ought to know. Okay, yeah, I get it. But I also know how, growing up, You know, like a cow, what I would call a cowboy chili may or may not have beans in it, but it's not ground meat either. It's chunks of Chuck and stuff like that. And that's generally how I do it. So the Vorax you know, the Vorax little recipe there. I find very tasty and he called it a chili, so I'll call it a chili. I'm not that picky. Now my family recipe is very different, but it's also very good. So it just depends on what you want.

Gene: 18:23

Yeah. I'm not saying it can't taste good. You know, if it has beans in it, not really chili, but okay. And I was told literally the first day that I started working in Texas, a coworker took me out to a restaurant and he says, Oh, you gotta, you gotta taste real Texas chili. And I said how's Texas chili different? He says here we have real chili, and real chili doesn't have beans. I Was indoctrinated many years ago into this concept. And, and I will say, as somebody who's primarily a carnivore, I approve of that.

Ben: 18:58

Yeah, me too. And I mean, you were helping your buddy with that deer venison chili, whether it's deer or elk is the best to me.

Gene: 19:07

Dude, you know what I got from him and I, I need to figure out a way to to leverage his equipment without coming off like I'm you know, trying to Mooch. Leverage his

Ben: 19:20

equipment. Yeah. You know how to leverage his equipment. Let me do this without actually doing

Gene: 19:24

it. Yeah, so he has a, a freeze dryer, which is much better than, than a

Ben: 19:29

dehydrator. Yeah and no they're a pain in the ass.

Gene: 19:34

His equipment, not my equipment, and so he gave me a few different MREs that he made himself that are freeze dried And I'm like goddamn dude. This is awesome. This is perfect like having having homemade Vacuum packed freeze dried MREs that what that's better than the stuff you buy

Ben: 20:01

Yeah, as long as you find a good recipe for

Gene: 20:03

it. yEah. I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can do if you I'm not at a point where I'm willing to go and buy a freeze dryer myself. They're expensive.

Ben: 20:13

Exactly. And my, my parents had one for a while, a friend that has one. Yeah. So my parents had a friend that basically gave them one for a while and they used it and it was enough of a pain in the butt and expensive enough of an item that they weren't going to use it enough. And so they got rid of it. But

Gene: 20:35

yeah. I'd tell you having in fact, he gave me some from freeze dried venison chili. And then have you tried it? Not yet. No, I haven't tried any of the stuff that he gave me yet. I'm trying to decide whether, how much of it I should keep long term and how much of it I should eat right away. He also gave me some freeze dried hamburger, like ground, ground venison. And which freeze

Ben: 21:00

drying, depending on the unit that you're using can take quite a bit of time.

Gene: 21:04

Again, not my equipment. Don't really care.

Ben: 21:06

I'm just saying you got to leave it in there for a long time. Takes a lot of

Gene: 21:10

electricity. I'm totally fine with that. That's why I prefer a friend who has one. So yeah, but if you're

Ben: 21:16

doing it at their house enough, you know, and that electric bill goes up, he might be like, I

Gene: 21:23

might start charging exactly. But I, I love the concept of it. I love the idea. It's a like I've, I've had a dehydrator before many years ago. And I used to make beef jerky all the time. And while I enjoyed having homemade beef jerky made specifically with the ingredients that I like and the quality of meat that I like, and it's not coming from outside the United States, the way that most jerky sold here is. I Just, there are some exceptions

Ben: 21:56

to that.

Gene: 21:57

I'm sure there are. I'm sure most of the have you ever had built on I've tried it. I, I think I spit it out, honestly. Really?

Ben: 22:07

Huh. You must have had some nasty built on, because normally it's pretty damn good.

Gene: 22:10

It did not, did not really. I mean, all

Ben: 22:14

it is is hang dried meat.

Gene: 22:17

Yeah, but it had a, I don't know, it just did not taste, maybe I was just expecting it to taste like jerky. Oh, it does not taste like totally did not taste

Ben: 22:28

like jerky now. This is like the ultimate dry aging of meat. Yeah. Anyway, I'm gonna at some point in time. Yeah, I'm going to probably make some here this winter. You can't do it in the summer in Texas. You have to do it in the winter just because of the relative humidity. And I've just got to get my wife to let me well. Not bitch too much, rather about it, you know, that sort of thing. Do you

Gene: 22:54

have a shed where you can do

Ben: 22:55

this? I do not, so normally it means it's hanging over the sink. Huh. Which it, it hints the problem.

Gene: 23:02

Yeah, I could see that being an issue.

Ben: 23:05

For sure. Anyway, no, I'm, I'm just joking about that,

Gene: 23:09

but Alex Jones, or are we done with that? No,

Ben: 23:11

I think it's interesting. Alex is back. There was a lot of really good conversation. You had Michael Flynn on there. You had frickin everyone on the stream. And big love fest. Jason Calacanis came on. Except for him. He's a dick. And made a total ass of

Gene: 23:27

himself. I don't understand why he was put on that.

Ben: 23:30

He just he was a dick and I'm going to get Alex. I'm going to get him. I'm going to get him. And, but they had already covered everything. And he came off. And Elon's no, we already talked about that. He already explained

Gene: 23:44

that. Honestly, he's just kind of trying to needle Elon about it. It's so Elon, so does everybody then that goes out and then. You know, lies about people getting killed. Are they all going to be alive back then? Which is

Ben: 23:55

not what Alex did. It's Jesus fucking Christ. And you know, I'm sorry, but anyone who was watching the stuff play out at the time. You know, since here's what I don't like, since Alex has been sued to oblivion and silenced the way he has been silenced, the entire internet has basically just gone along with a story that you should probably have questions on. That's all I'm going to say, because I don't

Gene: 24:33

want to get sued. Exactly. Yeah, there and there was stuff that came out like one of his contentions was one of the guys in the video on the parents was seen laughing and talking to somebody else. And then as soon as he walks over into the camera, he got all serious and yeah,

Ben: 24:54

as soon as he turns

Gene: 24:55

to the camera and it's that looks absolutely fake and it's true. It does look fake. That's that's just a fact. It looks fake. Now we find out. That because the guy after his kid died was losing it, he got prescribed a you know, like the azepam or one of those drugs that women take. Happy pills. Yeah, happy pills. And he just started taking them. And so one of the effects that he noticed is that he started flip flopping between laughing and crying. There was no in between normal state. Yeah,

Ben: 25:30

but before knowing that. How is Alex supposed to know that? Exactly. And, from the outside, having seen that video, and watching it, you're like, what the fuck? Exactly.

Gene: 25:44

Exactly. iT is And I don't know how, how it's illegal all of a sudden to say something that's controversial and say, even if it's wrong, how is that something that ends up in court? And we all know it's the kangaroo court, they threw away a bunch of expletory evidence, they, they rammed the thing through.

Ben: 26:07

There was no judgment, it was summary judgment. Yeah,

Gene: 26:11

yeah one of the cases, the other one, they actually had a, they had a jury. But it, either way, it's no. Americans should be going through trial based on what Alex went through. tHat should not be a thing. Those those lawsuits should have been thrown out. They're, they're not lawsuits that I think the legal system is ever intended to have go through. Making somebody feel uncomfortable by saying something about them, which even if it's not true should not result in the bankruptcy of the person saying that

Ben: 26:50

you shouldn't have certain you shouldn't have. Process are other sides going after trillions of dollars that you obviously cannot pay. I mean, they've already had a billion dollar judgment against him, which he obviously can never pay. And, you know, there is no point to that other than to destroy the person. And

Gene: 27:13

it's destroyed a person and it's to demonstrate that if anybody else tries to do this, the same thing will happen to them. Yeah,

Ben: 27:20

Sandy Hook, regardless of the whatever around it, what the Obama administration used it for and the way they weaponized it, especially at the time, was just Terrible. I ended up buying a ton of reloading supplies at the time. No,

Gene: 27:38

everybody did. Obama won the the gun salesman of the year

Ben: 27:41

award. Oh, it was in ammo more than anything. Because they were talking about taxing and banning ammo. They were basically every they thought they could use that as the Australian moment here in the U. S. And for

Gene: 27:57

people that don't know, Australia just like the U. S. did, until they had a mass shooting event and I think it was their first female prime minister, and they absolutely flipped. thEy, they went from zero to banning

Ben: 28:11

everything. Yeah, and now you know, if you've got a knife that's too long

Gene: 28:19

Now you can make the joke that's in, um Uh, that Paul Hogan made about it's not a knife. This is a knife. Exactly. It's the other way around, because you can't have those in Australia. You can only have them in America. Which incidentally in Texas, thankfully now we can carry swords legally. We have open carry for swords.

Ben: 28:42

Yeah, but we all, we have, this is something a lot of people need to realize. We now have a interesting secondary crime that's been added. So Texas has long been a, you know, no ID state. Basically, unless you're charged with a crime there, there's no need to identify yourself. But what they've done and what's really shitty and everyone who lives in Texas should be calling their state representative about this to repeal this. Unfortunately, we didn't get to it beforehand, but it's already in effect. If you're pulled over now and you are found guilty of even a traffic infraction and you have not given, they can add on a misdemeanor. And it can be up to a class a misdemeanor.

Gene: 29:29

If you explain that better. So if

Ben: 29:31

you are pulled over and you ask the cop. Normally, the cop would have to tell you why he's pulling you over before he would ever be able to ask for your ID. However, if he doesn't, he no, he no longer has to. You have to ID if you're driving a vehicle at this point in time in Texas, because if you don't, and this is, this is the functional thing. If you don't, if you fail to ID and they want to push it, they can add up to a class A misdemeanor to you.

Gene: 30:07

For failure to ID, but that's a secondary only, isn't it? Not

Ben: 30:10

anymore. Not, that's what I'm telling you is if in a, with a traffic stop, they have added this. You

Gene: 30:15

can't do a traffic stop unless you're committing a crime.

Ben: 30:20

Theoretically. I mean. They. Theoretically, sure.

Gene: 30:26

This is why the the ID was a secondary charge because. Yeah,

Ben: 30:31

They're making it not there. It's still a secondary charge technically, but the way they are doing it essentially means if a, if you're in a involved in a tracking traffic stop and you do not, or challenge the officer about your ID, you can, that officer can screw you over. And that's, that's the unfortunate

Gene: 30:57

truth. But I kind of feel like that was always the case.

Ben: 31:04

No no, because this muddies the water is the entire point. That's what, that's kind of what I'm saying here is this now adds a different layer of ability to fuck with you. And that's why this law needs to be repealed and go away. And it's a new thing. Yes.

Gene: 31:21

Yeah, I've not heard of it. Yeah, it's interesting. I've, I've done a couple of gone to and hung out with auditors a couple of times in Texas, but I've never had enough interest to just do it on my own. I always just assumed, regardless of state, that you can't drive without the position of your license. iF they pull you over for whatever reason, and you don't have your driver's license on you, it's gonna be a, a secondary charge for that anyway, so if you have your license, it makes sense to give it to them, because you shouldn't be driving without it. Yeah,

Ben: 32:02

check the chat real quick.

Gene: 32:04

Walking through, okay. If you're just walking around and somebody, a cop, somebody, meaning a cop, stops you then they don't have a right to your license because You're not required to have a license to walk.

Ben: 32:23

Luckily, this law does not change that. It's only for driving. But it is the entire law enforcement point was to stop this. What did you pull me over for questioning? Now, you have to provide ID immediately, which is just bullshit. And anyway, if, if you watch any audit videos, it's, it, it is a law to back the blue and I'm, I'm just not that big of a fan personally. Yeah, no,

Gene: 32:55

I, I, I agree with it, but I also kind of feel like Do you agree with the law or agree with me? I mean, I don't, I don't agree with either. I mean, I agree with you sentiment wise, but I also feel like I think they could have done it even without the law in the past.

Ben: 33:14

Yeah, this just takes it from a Class C misdemeanor in Texas to potentially a Class A, which is a massive difference. So you're facing up to a 1, 000 fine and a year in jail. Yeah that's, So it takes it from a traffic ticket To a year in jail. That's the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gene: 33:33

I don't even know if operating a vehicle without a motor license is a year.

Ben: 33:39

That's kind of the point on why this is bad,

Gene: 33:42

Gene. You didn't start off with that. You should have started off with that. yEah, I think it's a Class B to operate a motor vehicle without a license. But if this is a Class A, that's insane. Because, that's backwards. You could be, you could just say, you have no license, and it would be a lesser sentence.

Ben: 34:03

No, because you would still be potentially charged for the failure to ID.

Gene: 34:07

I don't think you can be charged for failure to ID if you don't possess it. I think that that has to be for people that possess one and then fail to provide it.

Ben: 34:19

You should be, you're required if you're over the age of 18 and even if you don't have a driver's license to get a state ID. So you are required to have an ID, not required

Gene: 34:28

to have an ID. You totally are. You're not, there's no law like that, dude. You, you, you will probably want one, even if you don't have a driver's license to utilize it, to get into things, but there is no state requirement for all children to get an ID at 18 years old. You have to register for selective service, but you don't need a state ID.

Ben: 34:55

Identification requirements, Texas Department of Public Safety. The anyway we can talk about this later because I don't want to spend a bunch of time looking stuff up, but there, there is an ID requirement which is a problem. I'm not saying that it's not, I'm not saying that it's right, but it, it does exist and it. It's not just Texas, that it exists in lots of states have ID requirements that you must have Id a means of identification.

Gene: 35:27

Yeah. I don't, I don't know, man. I, I find that hard to believe simply because the ID serves no purpose as an identification. If you don't do anything that requires an id. And you

Ben: 35:41

can't commence commerce in the state without ability to identify yourself.

Gene: 35:47

Sure. You, you may not have a kiosk to sell shit without an ID. That's fine.

Ben: 35:51

No, you can't get a utility utilities in your name without an ID.

Gene: 35:56

Yeah, if you live with your parents, don't need that, do you? Okay. I'm just saying that you like, you don't need an ID unless you're doing things that require an ID. And simply existing is not sufficient reason. To obtain a state ID. If you, if you don't drive a car, you don't need a driver's license. In fact, if you look at, there's been a lot of examples of rich people not having driver's licenses.

Ben: 36:25

Yeah. There's lots of teens these days that don't have driver's license. Right.

Gene: 36:30

Right. That's true too. Yeah. They, they don't seem to the way that I did when my youth, I couldn't wait to turn 16 so I can start driving by myself and get away from my parents.

Ben: 36:41

I got my permit and a hardship license by the time I was 14. That's

Gene: 36:48

amazing. Somebody trusted you.

Ben: 36:51

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I'm living in living in rural Idaho at the time and needing to drive myself the 30 minutes to school. Got it.

Gene: 37:04

Yeah. I think, I think we had some, some kids under 16 that like had moped licenses and shit, but I don't think anybody. Oh, no. I was driving a truck. Wow. Yeah, that's but either way, yes, I agree. This is a bad law. I'm just saying that. It kind of like you would have probably gotten a ticket under the old laws as well. Anyway, I can see that this is a making it worse, which is stupid. So we definitely should be not passing laws that further criminalize actions that. Literally have zero harm, like there, there's no victim here. Mm

Ben: 37:51

hmm. Oh, no, no, no, no, you, you're missing it. The victim is the officer that has to dance around with you.

Gene: 37:57

Mm hmm. Yeah the officer's getting paid for it, so hardly the victim. That's literally what they're getting paid for.

Ben: 38:06

Yeah, so I think we need to wipe pretty much all non violent. Misdemeanors and even most nonviolent felonies off the books and remove prosecutorial discretion and choke the system.

Gene: 38:29

Yeah, that's why I've always been a big fan of defund the police. I was on that bandwagon instantly. I don't care where it came from. It's always been a good idea.

Ben: 38:38

I, I, I, I, I hate to say it, but I very much agree now I don't go the route of San Francisco. I think if you steal something, I don't care how small it is. You should face consequences

Gene: 38:53

for that problem with San Francisco. Yes, there is a problem with liberal socialist mentality. They're thinking that just because target owns the product doesn't mean that you can't steal it. If you really wanted to. Really, that problem is fixed very easily without police, and that is by having an armed society. Yes, I agree. You know, you fuck around, you find out,

Ben: 39:16

as they say. I mean, you at least run the risk,

Gene: 39:19

right? And the more armed the society, the more risk you run.

Ben: 39:23

Agreed, but right now, what we have is if someone is And we've seen some of these cases in New Jersey and especially in the Northeast and in California as well, where a armed assailant comes in someone's home, someone shoots them, does not kill them, but shoots them. And the, the legal system is so effed up that the homeowner is the one sued. Which is just the, the fact that that is even theoretically possible is insane. You know, we, we have the entire laws for Kaczynski and everybody else that you can't profit from the commission of your crime. How is that any different? Oh,

Gene: 40:12

Jesus. Absolutely. No. And that's a law that should be in existence is to say that that. Anyone who is in the process of committing a crime cannot sue somebody that is trying to prevent the crime. Like that's, that's, that's an obvious blanket thing that should exist. Yes, is it? I don't full indemnity. I don't care if somebody wants to unload a full magazine into you

Ben: 40:40

and you're trespassing on their property shown to be stealing.

Gene: 40:45

But if you're in the act of committing a crime, then you don't get to sue the person on whom you are committing this crime that that should not be possible.

Ben: 40:58

I mean, just like the insurance riders and everything else, you know, if you don't so for instance, if you have a pool in your backyard and you don't have a child gate around it and neighbor comes over and isn't watching their kid and their kid falls in the pool and drowns, you can be held liable. Yeah. Fuck that.

Gene: 41:17

It's insane. Fuck that. You gotta be able to sue the neighbor for letting their kid drown in your pool. Exactly.

Ben: 41:25

Fuck. Yeah. Yeah. If you're a parent, you have a responsibility to take care of your kids, not someone else to keep your kids out of making a stupid decision. And now should people childproof and things like that? Yeah. If they have kids, like for instance, you know, I, I go around, I have. I still have baby gates and stuff on the stairs and everything for, you know, when kids, we, we, we protect things. Right. How long do you keep

Gene: 41:55

those up until they're what age?

Ben: 41:59

Um, I mean, my son really isn't the problem. It's the, my daughter, cause she's younger still, you know, so that, and it's just like right now I'm, I'm upset.

Gene: 42:12

Like at what age are you going to take those off?

Ben: 42:14

Probably, you know, when a couple more years when my daughter's four or so, I'll probably take them all

Gene: 42:19

to about four because I, yeah, I had no crap like that when I

Ben: 42:23

was growing up. Yeah. Yeah. I understand. But another incentive that I have is this keeps them at the bottom of the stairs and my office is at the top of the stairs. They can only make so much noise. There's that incentive to,

Gene: 42:38

would you not have a door in your office? I do have a door on my office.

Ben: 42:42

Oh, there you go. But, if they were standing outside beating on the door, you would hear it. Definitely. Yeah. If they're standing down at the bottom going, Daddy! Shaking the gate, you don't.

Gene: 42:55

Oh, really? You wouldn't hear that? No. Oh, okay. Alright. That's

Ben: 42:59

always Not

Gene: 42:59

with my door closed. Yeah, I've got a a buddy that, And noise gates on. Yeah, no, he's gay, exactly, that I've known forever played video games with for 20 years now, and so I've known him since he was in college, and so he's got kids right now, and, and if we're playing video games past midnight, he's always talking like this, and I'm like, dude, why are you whispering? He's kids are asleep. Close your fucking door. He's got a thing about not wanting to close his office door. And I don't get it. That's why I asked if you had a door, because I Is, is that a thing or is that just him?

Ben: 43:39

No, it, it, there's, there's the whole thing on you know, wanting to be able to hear, you know, if he's supposed to be on lookout or listening and lots of different things. I, I, my parents closed

Gene: 43:51

their doors all the time,

Ben: 43:53

right? And there's just so much insanity. And I, I, I know my parents didn't know where I was. Exactly. And you know, there's, I think a large portion of divorce. I know a lot of my struggles and everything else have been directly related to over parenting by one of the parties, right? And you, first of all, you can't be a helicopter parent. That's just terrible for the kids. It's terrible for you. And it destroys everything. You know, if you're not putting your marriage first and making time in your marriage, yes. And not only that, but it absolutely just, it destroys the marriage. Sorry ladies, your husband needs to be the focus of your life. And if he's not, then you're going to have a fucked up marriage. Period. End of story. Full stop. Never seen it any other way. And for someone like me, that's the only way it can work. And I've been very honest about that my entire life. This is what I want.

Gene: 45:00

Well that's, that's how it, I mean it's why you have such a divorce rate in the United States. Yeah, I should. Is that women have been sold a a lie. And they bought into it, hook, line, and sinker. And they think that they're an equal partner. And they're not. Never have been. That's not how nature works. What you need to do, ladies, is find the man that you can trust to take care of you. Not financially, but physically. Which is to say. oKay, fine, both, but you know what I mean, it's like finance, you, you've seen all the videos of these women's I'm looking for the guy who's six feet tall and he's leased 480, 000 a year and you know, he's a, he's going to keep me in Louis Vuitton and diamonds. That's not what I'm talking about. Yeah, and

Ben: 45:50

those are the women you definitely do not want.

Gene: 45:52

Somebody that you are willing to follow because they check all the boxes. To to make sure that when you have kids, that they're going to be the right

Ben: 46:01

dad, they have the principles that you want. And this is the other thing, the expectation of a lot of people these days that the dad should be just totally, absolutely 100 percent involved in an a infant and toddler's life. It's insanity. It is insanity. First of all, by the time I'm done with work and everything else, which is what I should be doing, the toddler four year old up to, you know, probably about six, should probably be in bed pretty soon after I'm done. You know, seven, eight o'clock at night. And then that's time for wife usually, but not a lot of relationship, but the idea that you know, here, dad, you go do that bullshit. It's just, you know, I'm sure there'll be people who accuse me of being an uninvolved dad. I'm not an uninvolved dad. I love my kids. I go out of my way to make time for my kids, but this idea that. It should be, the dad should be a second mother. It is the problem. No, that's, that's not reality. That's not what you are. Dad should be dad, not mother 2.

Gene: 47:18

0. Exactly. Yeah. You can't have two good cops for no, that's,

Ben: 47:25

that's the worst he can do. And you know, and that's another thing is, you know, be ready. If you're being a dad. For your kids to tell you that you're mean because you're going to be the one that's banks. You're going to be the one who says, yeah, no. And you, your kids better if your kids don't know when you say something, if they don't react drastically differently to you versus your wife. You're not being a dad, you're being mom 2. 0.

Gene: 47:53

Exactly. And kids that grow up with two moms we know how they turn out. Yeah.

Ben: 47:59

Anyway. Mm

Gene: 48:00

hmm. Sorry for the rant. Get those hormone blockers ready. Sorry for the rant. It's not a rant. It's just it's, it's truth. Speak the truth. That's exactly right. And it ultimately I think this is something that a lot of guys in this country need. I think to their own detriment have let slide just to not have arguments. And if, guess what, if you don't have the arguments and, and preferably before you have kids then it's going to be that much more difficult for you to fix the situation later on. And if you don't fix it, you will have a household with two moms.

Ben: 48:45

And you, you also have this idea and this. This pervasive nature, especially in my generation, unfortunately, that, you know, Oh, you can't tell me what to do. You can't tell me this. You can't tell me that I'm the head of this household. I'm the husband. The fuck I can't. And that's another thing is you can't have two leaders. You can't have a democracy of two. And that's why we're at where we're at is because we have sold this idea That Oh, I'm going to be an equal partner. It's such bullshit.

Gene: 49:30

It's

Ben: 49:30

total bullshit. And before anyone accuses me of this, because I've been accused of it in the past. Oh, you think you have, you have a penis, so therefore you must be in charge. No, I'm in charge because of the money I make, because of the temperament that I have, because the IQ that I have, because the education that I have. I am the kind of person pretty much anyone would want to follow.

Gene: 49:54

Period. Yeah, and she doesn't have a penis, so there. Yeah,

Ben: 49:58

and I don't care if a woman leads in a relationship. It's just not gonna work for me I mean

Gene: 50:03

if Obama's wife wants to be the man of the house, that's fine.

Ben: 50:05

I mean, what is a woman Jean?

Gene: 50:09

Yes a woman see that right there. We here's a definition woman somebody who follows a man There's a definition I

Ben: 50:22

like it I like it but you need to send that to Michael Knowles to Matt you mean No, no, no. Michael knows we'll make more fun of it. Oh, okay. I knew what I was saying. Okay. No, no, no.

Gene: 50:36

Oh yeah, it's, it's and again, it has. It has nothing to do with Oh, you're, you just happen to be unlucky and you were born as a woman. No, a woman, an actual woman doesn't have a desire to be a man. And American women have been brainwashed into a lie, making them think they want to be men.

Ben: 50:59

And we, we have to recognize that we are fundamentally different and that that difference is okay. And, you know, what makes, what makes the individual valuable, what makes the individual valuable is uniqueness and difference. Yeah, yeah.

Gene: 51:15

All that stuff. But no, we're, we're not different because we're random. We're different because this is what evolution creates. This is what, whatever my point is. If we, if we truly didn't need to be different, we wouldn't be different. We would just have one sex. There's a reason why we have two sexes in every animal species until you get to the little teeny weeny little tiny ones who flip flop sexes at whim apparently. But for. Animals certainly um, you know, all animals that are what am I thinking of you know, mammals, certainly all mammals. But even beyond that, you look at animals, they all have two sexes and the two sexes are not just for genetic diversity. They're also for a diversity of what the two sexes do within the relationship.

Ben: 52:18

tO an extent, I mean, there are, there are animals that don't have relationships at all, but,

Gene: 52:24

but that but that, again, in that, in that environment, the males are designed to compete with each other to get the best females. There's still a difference between male males and females. Yeah, even if they don't disagree after having sex, but you know, the, somebody has to sit on the eggs and in some bird species, incidentally, it's the, it's the male. Yeah, penguins, oh, penguins do. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So part of that,

Ben: 52:52

so part of that, just to kind of make a joke before we transition away from this, you know, ladies, next time your man falls asleep after sex, you should be thankful. And the reason why is because that is a genetic thing to keep them from running away. Yeah, that's probably true. That's no, there's a whole evolutionary biology study on beyond

Gene: 53:13

even that falling asleep next to another thing, human or otherwise. Shows a level of trust

Ben: 53:21

and intimacy and the other argument on this paper that I'm referencing is all about the inherent starts of monogamy and, you know, where that came from and anyway, yeah, because his males are not naturally monogamous.

Gene: 53:37

Yeah, speaking of actually the feeling that you get when you, when you have sex with a chick that you literally met that day. And then right afterwards, you're like, where did I leave my pants? Because your thought instantly starts going to leaving, is that you've accomplished the task at hand, and it's time to move on. And that's, again, this is not chauvinism, this is biology. This is, this is natural. This is what should be happening.

Ben: 54:09

Speaking of men having sex, in this case, two men, on a congressional floor, and

Gene: 54:19

videotaping it. Where was the camera, who's holding the camera is my question.

Ben: 54:22

I don't know, but it's hilarious. Have you seen the shirts that Luke put out already? No. Oh my God, dude. Go, go to thebestpoliticalshirts. com. Everyone needs to buy this shirt immediately. It is hilarious.

Gene: 54:36

Okay, what does it say? Let me see here.

Ben: 54:38

It, the, the caption is the real catcher is the US taxpayer.

Gene: 54:42

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The memes, the memes. Oh God, that, that's pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah. It's hilarious. Yeah, it's like the chutzpah, the chutzpah that it takes, yeah,

Ben: 54:56

and for those who don't speak Yiddish, can you translate chutzpah? yOu know,

Gene: 55:00

the guts, the balls, whatever. Yeah, just the audacity that it takes. There

Ben: 55:05

you go. That's the word. Okay, you could have translated. That or insolence. Insolence would be a good word too.

Gene: 55:12

Yeah, but it's, it's this attitude of not only do I not care, but, you know, I, I make a point of doing something that other people will dislike. And it's

Ben: 55:24

so for those who don't know, a congressional staffer and we don't know if he was giving or receiving let in another mail to go into a Senate chamber. I believe it may have been a house chamber, but 1 of the hearing rooms. Yeah, one of the hearing rooms to film an adult activity together.

Gene: 55:46

Yeah, and it doesn't look like either one is Lindsey Graham, in case everyone's wondering.

Ben: 55:50

I said staffer, not, you know, that's true. Now, we don't know who was filming though, Gene.

Gene: 55:56

Could have been Lindsey.

Ben: 55:59

I feel like Lindsay would have not been able to not join in, though. Yeah, I think Lindsay. I don't, he doesn't strike me as someone with a lot of impulse

Gene: 56:06

control. There needs to be a Ukrainian flag in the background somewhere there if it was Lindsay doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I like

Ben: 56:13

somebody else. Somebody needs to photoshop Lindsay Graham's head on the receiver. On the receiver.

Gene: 56:19

Exactly. Somebody else said, look, this is not the first time that two guys have been fucking in that room, but it's the first time there's been a camera turned on.

Ben: 56:27

I, you know, I, I would not be surprised if that were true.

Gene: 56:32

I think the odds are like 99 percent that that's true. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yes. If you include the aides and not just the elected politicians, it's virtually assured there's been fucking going on there. And not just fucking of the country. By the politicians, it's it really is, I think, a a statement of the times that we live in this. We are in late stage Rome. Yeah. Unfortunately. So we're just watching it get dissolved. And then your kids generation will certainly never see the America that, that I did and even you did. But at least they'll still be in an America that has some relevance in the world. Their kids may not.

Ben: 57:25

Hmm. I don't know. I think, you know, with the pre programming of this new civil war movie I, man, you know what? I, I think it's time for Texas. I think it's time to just say, you know what, being an American would still be right. Being an American is like being European. You are a Texan, not an American. I mean, you can be an American, but you know, your nationality is Texas. Not I think Mars. Yeah, and, and, you know, again, and this is something that people need to realize. We are the United States with a capital S for a reason. We are not provinces of Canada. We're not provinces of Australia or the UK or anything else. We are independent and free states in a federation.

Gene: 58:19

Mm hmm. Just like the Russian Federation. No. What do you mean,

Ben: 58:24

no? I mean, no, the state constitutions are far stronger in the United States than anywhere else in the world. The fucked up 14th amendment and the interpretation of the incorporation doctrine has screwed us over and that needs to go. Getting rid of the incorporation doctrine has to be a priority. You know, all it takes is for a

Gene: 58:44

majority of the states to come together.

Ben: 58:48

Dude, a constitutional convention is a very scary thing.

Gene: 58:52

iT may be scary, but we ain't getting rid of it any other way.

Ben: 58:57

I understand, but the odds of us coming out of the Constitutional Convention without the Second Amendment is pretty high. I don't think

Gene: 59:05

I think Without

Ben: 59:06

the First Amendment is pretty high.

Gene: 59:08

Yeah, that's pretty high. I don't think without the Second, I think the majority of the states

Ben: 59:15

Okay. I don't trust my politicians. And you know, here's the thing. I work on that. I try very hard. I vote every, every election and I, Know who I'm voting

Gene: 59:28

for. Any Charlie Browns seems to never get elected. Or is that Bart Simpson? Hmm. You know, reins. Oh,

Ben: 59:36

yeah. Anyway, I don't know, man. It, it's a, it's a turning point in our country and it's gonna be very interesting to see where it goes. But I'm interested to see this new movie and see why the hell California and Texas are in up. Yeah,

Gene: 59:52

that's about the only thing I know about it.'cause all I know is what I saw in Tim Pool, and Tim doesn't get into any details in

Ben: 59:57

that. Have you watched the actual trailer? No. Oh, you should go watch the actual trailer, dude. Okay. I mean, it looks like an interesting movie. The president's the bad guy. It's going to be interesting. I'm going to bet he's like a Trump like figure or something. And he's so bad that Texas and California have to band together, even though they hate each other. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what the storyline is going to be,

Gene: 1:00:23

but you don't think in the movie that

Ben: 1:00:26

I want to put out in the ether, Texas leaving the United States as a thing. I'm good with that. Let's normalize that.

Gene: 1:00:33

I think it's pretty normal. I think a lot of people, even in other states know that if there's one state that's going to leave, it's going to be Texas.

Ben: 1:00:41

Yeah. If we leave, we will take several with us. I don't think you would have just Texas leaving. I think the, the Texas nationalist movement and the Texas guys who think that that's possible aren't, aren't being realistic. I think we would take Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana at a minimum with us. I,

Gene: 1:01:04

here's the problem. I don't think that we could because Texas leaving is not existential to the United States. Yes, it is Oklahoma, Texas Louisiana, all leaving at

Ben: 1:01:18

once. No, it is existential. It is existential. You want to know why? Food production and refining capacity alone. You have over a third of the nation's refining capacity. Yeah. In, in the golden triangle alone, much less anywhere else. If Texas

Gene: 1:01:39

leaves, we may be attacked by the United States. If Louisiana and Texas, Oklahoma leave, we will be nuked by the United States. No.

Ben: 1:01:47

Absolutely. No, we're gonna be attacked regardless, so

Gene: 1:01:52

get ready. What's the difference between attacked and nuked though? And I think, I think they would nuke us.

Ben: 1:01:56

Yeah, we've got missile silos here too. Do we? Yes. Oklahoma does, I didn't think Texas does. Texas does

Gene: 1:02:03

too. Where's, where's the Texas ones? I don't remember seeing those on the map last time I looked.

Ben: 1:02:08

Yeah, all down actually near the coast, some of the older Minuteman stuff. Look it up. We have silos in Texas. Okay.

Gene: 1:02:18

Because obviously, you know, much like Ukraine had to de

Ben: 1:02:22

de nuclearize. Yeah, we would not do that as Texas.

Gene: 1:02:26

Yeah, that would be a problem for them. I see a bunch of decommissioned

Ben: 1:02:34

ones. The Atlas F missile sites. Atlas F? Okay. Yep. And some of them have been decommissioned. Some of them have not, but yes, there are missile silos in Texas. Okay.

Gene: 1:02:51

Let's keep it that way.

Ben: 1:02:56

Yeah. So the Atlas F are declassified and decommissioned. There are some newer stuff as well, though. Anywho, We have a lot of military land here. Yeah. And, you know, that's another thing that really pisses me off about Texas politicians. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as federal land in the state of Texas. Like all your parks and everything were state parks, not federal parks. And then we decided to give our state parks to the federal government so we could Well, that way we could get it off the budget. We could still use the land. Why wouldn't we just give them the land? Why wouldn't we give the federal government land that has no constitutional right to own land outside of some very specific things? BLM should not exist. And when I say BLM, I mean, Bureau of Land Management should not exist. So yeah, I think the only way to save this country is to do a very, very hard reset on this

Gene: 1:04:02

country. Yeah, obviously. But I don't, I don't know, man. I mean, I think civil war is Tim likes to say every show. It's certainly something that seems more and more likely, but also I'm not sure that there are two sides because I'm seeing like five or six sides.

Ben: 1:04:24

aNd this is, you know, I, I'm almost done with the last of the Charlie books. Where are you at in the books, by the way, I'm at the end of book nine. Okay, so you're catching up. I really think. You know that something like that, honestly, I, I know it'd be terrible. I know it wouldn't be something anyone really wants to live through, but I think for the survivors, it would probably be a good thing. If you survived that, if you made it through and we're able to kind of rebuild the United States. You might have a shot at having a half decent government.

Gene: 1:05:06

So let me ask you this. Given where this country started and the, the ideas that the founders of the country had for it. If it was to be done a second time over, where do you think their mistakes were?

Ben: 1:05:23

In the Constitution itself. The Constitution's the problem. We have too strong of a federal judiciary, too strong of a federal government.

Gene: 1:05:32

So you, you think that it didn't feel like we had too strong a federal government for a hundred years? Yeah.

Ben: 1:05:40

And then we allowed Congress to cap its number. We include, we did the 14th amendment. We did lots of things. We had a fricking civil war over the civil war was over the federal government exercising power. It should not have had over the states period. Exactly. Yes. It is about taxation. It is about lots of different things. Anyone who wants to say that the South fought for slavery, let me just tell you that the South could have stayed in the union. The South had enough states that it could have said, we're not going to admit a single other state and the South could have blocked any attempt to change the constitution. The South was not in. Any danger of staying in the union and losing slavery. People need to understand that the South could have stayed in the union and slavery would have gone nowhere until it economically died, which slavery

Gene: 1:06:34

was a small piece of the rationale because certainly the non adherence to laws that were national laws by the Northern states to return property was. One of the things that was chafing the South, but it was far from the

Ben: 1:06:55

main thing. There's several things, but anyway, the, the point. Remains that, you know, the Constitution of the United States replaced the Articles of Confederation in order to theoretically give us a more perfect union and put down some of the rebellions that were happening at the time. However, you immediately had rebellions right after the Constitution was ratified. That didn't change things. We were still a forming nation. And what we ended up giving up is too much power to a central government. And one of the worst things Congress did, the two worst things that we have allowed Congress to do is A, cap their number and B, directly elect senators instead of the state legislatures because the senators were supposed to, the Senate was supposed to represent the states, capital S. Right. That's why they make treaties. That's why they appoint judiciaries. That's why

Gene: 1:07:52

they And why there's an even number of them for every state.

Ben: 1:07:54

Yes. So anyway, you know, had Congress not capped its number, we'd be well over a thousand congressmen and women at this point. And what that tells you is this country's too fucking big. A, because you can't have a deliberative body that big and get anything done, which I think we'd be better off than we are now. And B, right now, the average Congress critter represents 150, 000 people. You tell me how you're going to represent 150, 000 people. That's a lie,

Gene: 1:08:23

man. They represent one person.

Ben: 1:08:25

Yeah, whoever got them fucking elected. Exactly. Anyway, the point is, if you take a country like Great Britain, which is 10 percent of our population.

Gene: 1:08:36

Yeah, and fits into Texas

Ben: 1:08:37

twice. Yes, but if you take a country like Great Britain, the average member of parliament represents 20 to 30, 000 people. That's far more doable, but still shit. So the point is Texas becoming its own nation or some others. We will immediately have more representation in government. You will, you will see the Texas politics shift dramatically because you will have more representation. Austin, Dallas, San Antonio will change the nature of the state far more actually than it currently exists. Unfortunately to the left. Yeah I mean, maybe, maybe that's not a bad thing. I, I'm, I am not an uber conservative. I am a classical liberal gene. You know, what people do in their bedroom, I don't give a shit. Marriage laws shouldn't exist. What do you want from me? Yeah, no, I agree with that. Liberal cannabis? Legalize all drugs for all I

Gene: 1:09:37

care. Yeah, that was always one thing that I was in favor of that always confused people is I think that no drugs should be banned. No, if you're an adult. In karma and Darwinism. Exactly. And I think people ought to be able to take themselves out of the gene pool. Yes,

Ben: 1:10:00

agreed. And I think it ought to be so if people want to live homelessly and everything else, that's fine. As soon as someone tries to assault me and I shoot them, the cops shouldn't do anything but clean it up and say thank you.

Gene: 1:10:12

Yeah, they should say, what, was this on your property? Yes, sir. Okay, we're done.

Ben: 1:10:16

Or I know, I was just walking down the street and this guy decided to attack me.

Gene: 1:10:21

tHe streets should really We shouldn't have public streets either.

Ben: 1:10:24

Oh, don't even get me started there. I, yes. Anyway, the, the, the point is we could go a different route and be much happier people, but you know, I, I also believe that Galt's Gulch one day will be a thing.

Gene: 1:10:42

Yeah, I don't know. I'm, I'm starting to get to that age where I'm starting to think it's not going to be a thing because for most of my life, I kept waiting for that to happen. And. And yet things keep getting worse and, and yet it does not happen.

Ben: 1:10:59

There's, there's gotta be a breaking point though at some point where it just does not, you can't. Do

Gene: 1:11:06

you, do you think there were no people who thought like Anne Rand that lived in Russia?

Ben: 1:11:14

I think there were, but I think there, They were fewer and they did not have the history and they allowed themselves to be disarmed and that was the biggest problem. Yeah, yeah, and

Gene: 1:11:25

that's the thing is I think it takes more than intelligent people with libertarian ideas. I think it takes people. Oh,

Ben: 1:11:34

it takes armed people who are willing to go. Yes. I

Gene: 1:11:38

agree. And that's the piece that's missing in most countries. That's why I stick to my, my standard line of every country has the government they deserve because it's the government they're either willing to support or not willing to overthrow. This is why when the whole question of innocent people in Gaza comes up, there are no innocent people in Gaza because the people in Gaza elected the government that just massacred over a thousand innocent people. And

Ben: 1:12:12

I don't think you and I are going to agree

Gene: 1:12:14

on Gaza. I don't care if we agree on Gaza. It's, it's the same exact consistency here. Yeah. People that are unwilling to do anything about their government and therefore they hold the responsibility for it. Just like all Americans hold responsibility for the government that we currently

Ben: 1:12:32

have. Yeah. Okay. Here, here, two wrongs don't make a right. Can we agree on that? Okay, so that's where we disagree because I think personally that what. Has happened is not good, and there are no good sides, so I don't think Israel the way it exists today should exist. I don't think that

Gene: 1:12:57

don't live in Israel.

Ben: 1:12:59

I don't, but here's the thing. The British created a fucking problem. When Israel was set up the way it is today. I'm not saying that Jews don't have a right to their own land. I'm not saying that any of that, but I think having a theocracy government is a problem having a it's, it's not a theocracy

Gene: 1:13:20

government. It is. It has, it has some theocratic leanings for sure.

Ben: 1:13:25

It, it is, it is a theocracy. Fundamentally, if you are not Jewish, you're a second class citizen in Israel, which is part of the entire problem,

Gene: 1:13:34

that that's totally not true. There are Muslim and Arab people in the Israeli government. There are, there are literally Arab judges on the Israeli Supreme Court. It is, it is not a second class citizenship issue. The, the way that it still sort of ties into a theocracy is that those judges have to take into account religious

Ben: 1:13:59

law. Which is a theocracy, which is a problem.

Gene: 1:14:06

Comparing a theocracy like they have in Iran to Israel shows Israel to be a very slightly into that direction compared to, let's say, the United States. Sure, compared if you take the United States and compare it to Israel, then Israel looks more theocratic. I give you that. You can't just say that 1 percent theocracy is equivalent to 100 percent theocracy. That's that's a false comparison and this is the same problem that I have with people saying well, you know That that did see an equivalence between the Israelis and the Gazans. No, there's not an equivalence there you have one group of people that has a government an elected government that routinely carries out terrorist actions And then you have another government which does things to try and prevent that putting up border walls Shooting shooting back when they're shot at. There's a difference there.

Ben: 1:15:17

Yeah. I don't think the Israelis are innocent. I think the treatments and look, yes. Total war. Yes. I, I don't disagree with a lot of things. However, I will say that two wrongs, in my opinion, don't make a right. And I would hope that we would have some better humanitarianism towards each other. We don't, they have a right to defend themselves, not saying they don't. I just think that they're not doing themselves any favors when it comes to the, the greater world and the worldview.

Gene: 1:15:56

Of them. Sometimes you have to do things that are unpopular, but right. Okay. Yeah, sure. And I think a lot of countries could be placed into that category at various points in their histories. I, I think what's going on there in a perfect world wouldn't be happening. And we can agree on that, but given the circumstances to where a higher percentage of the population was brutally murdered than the United States experienced on 9 I think their response is absolutely predictable and

Ben: 1:16:32

expected. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of things that I think we can agree that are very similar between 9 11 and what happened to Israel.

Gene: 1:16:43

Yeah, and I'm not getting into what, what was the actual cause of 9 11, I'm just saying, talking about the response. I am. So if you have a if you have a group of people that has a massive amount of their population as a percentage all of a sudden get murdered, I think that it would be irrational to expect a response other than what we're seeing, regardless of what country it is, and regardless of if it's a democracy or a dictatorship or a theocracy or anything else. It's this. This is what happens when you fuck around. You fuck around. You find out.

Ben: 1:17:25

Yeah. And I I can agree with that. And

Gene: 1:17:28

frankly, I think this is exactly the response that Hamas wanted. And

Ben: 1:17:34

let me put it to you this way again. I don't say that Israel doesn't have a right to exist or anything like that. I don't go that far. But what I'm saying is that. The UK screwed the pooch when they set this up and when they put us in all in this position, including Israel they should have handled it very differently. And we'd be in a much better position as a result. They didn't. That's what I mean by it. So Israel, if attacked. Because they are a sovereign nation, whether I like them or not, has the right to defend itself. The people in Gaza, who is the area that is controlled by the Israelis, if they don't like their government, they have a natural right to fight against that and throw it off. Yeah. That, that's my take on it. I

Gene: 1:18:29

mean, that's good. They're kind of doing that. They said their Gaza will no longer be a valid form of government, whether it's like it or not moving forward and Gaza is going away much as the Nazis in Ukraine have gone away. Yeah. And,

Ben: 1:18:45

and again, anytime you're, anytime you are willing to declare your independence or say this far, no farther, you got to be ready to give your life. And you may

Gene: 1:19:01

or may not win. That's absolutely the case. And I think that the, the thing that clearly the, the Gazans have here is great PR. Because that PR machine, to me, is it's right on par with the Ukrainian PR machine at the start of the conflict.

Ben: 1:19:27

The Ukrainian PR machine that's failing miserably at this point because they're

Gene: 1:19:32

about to go away to it. I guarantee you, the Gaza machine will look just as bad in 20 months. We'll we'll move on. We'll move on to the new thing. The new shiny object that the majority of the population has an icon of on their X feed. But for right now it's this one, but it's the same thing. It's you've got a you've got somebody that. Is fucking around and now seeing the repercussions of the fucking around. Mmkay. The government of Gaza could have just as easily used that PR machine without killing a thousand people to keep pointing at their horrible living conditions and all this other bad stuff and woe is us, we, what can we do, we're victims. The minute that their government went and killed a thousand civilians. This was not a military operation. This was a civilian killing operation. They lost all right to be victims. I, okay,

Ben: 1:20:40

there are a lot of things there. And I, anyway, go on. Because I, I don't really necessarily think we need to talk more about Israel than we already have. But, I'm happy to talk. I know you are. And you know, you have a reason to. Not

Gene: 1:20:58

really. I mean, I, I guess I kind of do. I have relatives there, but I'm, I've never been there. I don't really think that their form of government is very good. I Think they're way too socialist as an entire country and they're way too scammy. Most Israelis I've dealt with are, are, you know, they're exactly what you would expect from a caricature. They always have some little scammy thing going on that they're trying to snucker you into. And it's, it's not a pleasant experience dealing with them anymore. So with them, with the Arabs, they live right next to it.

Ben: 1:21:32

Yeah. I will say this, that had Israel been armed personally, had there been people even with pistols, concealed carry permits in those crowds. You wouldn't have seen what

Gene: 1:21:47

happened. See, that's another point. Not only are they socialists, they're also anti gun in a country where military service is mandatory. Like how stupid

Ben: 1:21:56

is that? Which means every single person is trying to use a

Gene: 1:21:58

gun. Yeah, exactly. So having laws that prevent people from being able to have concealed carry permits or even have open carry. Is asinine because you've literally put every single person through months and months of training

Ben: 1:22:12

and you could even say once you're done with your military service, right? You can go do

Gene: 1:22:16

this. And like in Switzerland you must do this. You have your gun that is issued to you at 18 for the rest of your life. And I think that's the proper expectation. So again, I'm not a fan of Israel or their government system and or the people. Yeah. Those are three things I'm not a fan of. However, looking at what has happened in this particular conflict I, I really don't see this huge push of people that we're observing in this country and in Europe to be jumping on the bandwagon of the Arabs. Really?

Ben: 1:22:56

Yeah, I'm not jumping on anybody's bandwagon, but what I will say is that there are no good guys in this. And I, I don't, I don't see changing that point of view very easily because I just, I don't think there are very many

Gene: 1:23:10

good guys in this. Yeah, I, I don't know, man. It's, all I can say is, Egypt doesn't want the people from Gaza, Saudi Arabia doesn't want the people from Gaza, Iran doesn't want the people from Gaza, Jordan doesn't want the people from Gaza. Nobody wants those people because they know that they're gonna have trouble. Yeah. They're stuck. Under Israeli control. Yeah. You know, what do you do? I don't know to the UK, I guess that'd be the solution.

Ben: 1:23:45

I mean, I actually, I have a, I have a perfect solution. What's that? After the peace treaty is signed and Ukraine is no longer at war, they're going to need an influx of population to be able to sustain themselves. That's very true.

Gene: 1:24:00

There you go. You know how racist Ukrainians are? They're literal Nazis, man.

Ben: 1:24:05

Yeah. Okay. This might fix that. Yeah.

Gene: 1:24:10

I mean, uh, yeah. There's a reason the Chechens we're volunteering to go fight in Ukraine. Yeah, I, I understand. Ukrainians do not like the Muslims.

Ben: 1:24:26

Yeah, I understand. I gotcha. That's part of the reason why I'm making the joke. And what's funny is You're missing the point. No,

Gene: 1:24:34

I, I, I get it. I know what you're saying. But I also think it actually could work. Because they will need people. Mm hmm. And these are people. These are people. Yeah you know, if you move them somewhere else, it might make the situation better. Also, you know, I don't think this is something anybody would go for, but that part of Russia, the Ukrainian part of Russia, historically has been the home Of the majority of Russian Jews. Okay. You could also give Ukraine, swap it for Israel. Okay. I mean, I don't think that, that would fly, but, if you could do like a two for one land deal, where you can double the size of the land of the country, and it's not like it'd be brand new you know, pre World War II, actually more like pre pogroms of the Soviet Union, so pre 1918 there was a, a huge amount of Jews oh, in fact, you remember Fiddler on the Roof? Okay. If I were a rich man. That's where that takes place. Dibby dibby dum. Exactly.

Ben: 1:25:44

Yeah, I actually like that play. Yeah,

Gene: 1:25:46

it's a nice musical.

Ben: 1:25:49

I'm not much of a musical fan, but I like Philharmonic. I don't know. Used to sing most of those songs in college with friends. Yeah, it was a drinking thing. Wow. I had a Jewish roommate in college. What can I say? I

Gene: 1:26:04

have somewhere on my CD rip catalog I have a CD of Two Live Jews. Yeah. Mm hmm where they do rap versions of all the songs from God. Mm

Ben: 1:26:20

hmm. No, honey. Yeah

Gene: 1:26:25

Moisha and I can't remember the other guy's name. You know what Moisha is, right? Yeah, but then that's Moses. Okay If you hear Moisha, it's just short for Moses. Yeah,

Ben: 1:26:38

what'd you think of? The y files doing a thing on the book of Enoch. Oh, it was

Gene: 1:26:43

awesome. I loved it Yeah, that

Ben: 1:26:45

was a good one.

Gene: 1:26:46

Yeah, it's definitely one of the better ones. They're all good, honestly. He just does such a great job. I mean, the guy found his calling.

Ben: 1:26:56

Yes. And this is modern day unsolved mysteries is what I equate it to.

Gene: 1:27:03

Yeah, but let's campy.

Ben: 1:27:04

Yeah, no, better, better, absolutely better. So if you liked unsolved mysteries as a kid or as a young adult or like an adult, I guess some of our audience is pretty old then, you know, there you go.

Gene: 1:27:17

Yes, we are. Yeah, it's, it's a a great show. I've really. I've been happy with the popularity that it's gotten because I started watching it when they had I think about 40, 000 subscribers Mm hmm, and just seeing that growth into the millions is awesome So it's financially generating the kind of revenues that they need the guy What's is he and the other people involved? There's I think three of them their story is fascinating. These are all people that didn't make it in Hollywood, even though they were, you know, trying and they were professionals and just couldn't do it. And then left Hollywood and moved to, I can't remember where they live, either Florida or Tennessee. And started this little channel as a way to just do something to take advantage of their video talents. And it totally struck a chord. So very cool story.

Ben: 1:28:18

Yeah, they made it I

Gene: 1:28:20

guess. Now you've read the Dead Sea Scrolls, I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it's always fun when you have sort of less popular old ancient texts that are discussed because they're not discussed very often. And like I, I didn't realize until I watched that episode that the Ethiopian watchers Whatever they're called their holy text also has that story. I've never really looked into the Ethiopian religious history I don't have you

Ben: 1:28:54

I mean, yeah, then he touches on it there with, you know, Quinn Sheba and all that.

Gene: 1:28:58

So I guess, yeah, I mean, I knew that part, but I've never dug into reading a book on Ethiopian the connection between Ethiopians and Judaism.

Ben: 1:29:08

Yeah I mean, that, you know, when you look at what is the Bible. And our friend Josh can talk about this some too, but what is the Bible comes up because the Catholic, the Catholic Bible is very different from what I would consider the Bible, right? Yeah,

Gene: 1:29:26

It's the, the Bible is effectively. The texts that the Council of was it Nicaea? I can't remember off the top of my head. Determined, were the official texts.

Ben: 1:29:43

Yeah, there's, I mean, there's discrepancies and differences. There are different versions of the Bible have different books in them. Some are Redacted some of them are not some of them are considered by a lot of people to be apocryphal

Gene: 1:29:55

where there was only one Christian religion, and that was there was one official version of the Bible, and there were other books that were prior to that council considered by some people to be. Holy texts by other people, including the book of Enoch, yeah, exactly. But once they had that, that standardization at the, I think it's the council, I see it could be wrong though. They decided that now there's an official version of what constitutes the actual Bible. So when you say there are other Bibles with other redacted that is stemming from the outgrowth of that version of Christianity. Much further in time.

Ben: 1:30:43

Yeah, to an extent but here's what I would say. As for if you're looking at the Judeo Christian tradition, and you're saying all books that could be related. Mm hmm. The Quran and the Book of Mormon fall into the same category. Do I consider those to be texts and testaments of Christ? No, but the Latter day Saints surely do. Um, so, you know, yeah, you gotta make your choices.

Gene: 1:31:15

yOu do, but those were also written way after

Ben: 1:31:18

what's the difference. Yeah,

Gene: 1:31:21

That's what I'm saying. It's like calling them

Ben: 1:31:24

and according to and according to and actually according to their progenitors, especially with Islam. Not really. So. Um, and you can, I know, and that part, and if you go with the Book of Mormon standpoint and you go with Joseph Smith finding the ancient text with the Uma and the tumah and translating it, then no, it's just as old. And

Gene: 1:31:48

I mean, I think that's kind of the dumb, dumb dumb, dumb, dumb. But the, the revelations were later. Even if you can pretend like the books were old, the revelations were newer, okay. For both of those. Mm-Hmm. But, but the, the thing that. I mean, it's like in Islam, you also have the the I don't know, I guess it's also a revelation or whatever, but essentially the, the new law that says, and this is the last of God's disciples, you know, prophets, right? So there, there are no more prophets after Muhammad. And that's part of the Islamic law.

Ben: 1:32:33

Yeah. And that's the prophet going here's my story and no

Gene: 1:32:37

one

Ben: 1:32:37

else. Exactly. I mean, you

Gene: 1:32:39

know, but that still leaves the, the very typical sci fi trope of much like with Joseph Smith ancient writings that, that precluded Muhammad. And then coming up with a whole new religion that was revealed later, but was actually created supposedly prior to Mohammed. And therefore it doesn't actually controvert that particular,

Ben: 1:33:09

Law as well. Even more you know, a lot of the book of Mormon and everything else is supposed to be Christ actually, you know,

Gene: 1:33:19

the New Testament of of the later day saints, right?

Ben: 1:33:25

Yeah. Yeah. Egg shaped boats and all. Yeah. No. Sorry. I, I, look, I grew up around a lot of Mormons. My, my boy scout my boy scout troop met in the local Mormon temple. Oh, okay. I've got a lot of really good friends that are Mormon. I just. If you look at, and I'm not even saying that the Book of Mormon is necessarily all bad, but when you look to me, at the Book of Mormon, It's not bad, it's just fake. Hold on. The Book of Mormon, the Quran, and the Talmud, those are three things that I think came after the fact that I have a religious problem with. That's all.

Gene: 1:34:11

The Talmud is not a, it's not a holy book, so it's a little different.

Ben: 1:34:14

Eh, okay. We can talk about the difference between Talmudic Jews and

Gene: 1:34:18

not really more Jewish philosophy. I mean, it's, it's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 1:34:24

As a Goya, I have some problems with it.

Gene: 1:34:27

As a Goya, you shouldn't concern yourself with things like that. Okay. Stay in your lane. Anyway, I'm kidding. Obviously I love all religions. And, and, oh, this

Ben: 1:34:39

is, this is an off the rails version for sure. This is definitely a end of year. Who cares? Sort of right. And by the way, since we're getting canceled next week,

Gene: 1:34:53

yeah, exactly. Yeah. Let's see how long we stay on that video version you're putting out with this kind of conversation.

Ben: 1:34:58

That's why it's on rumble, but yes, YouTube

Gene: 1:35:01

would be pretty much done. I'm

Ben: 1:35:02

sure. Oh, my God. Just saying what we've said already. They'd be like, ah, you're done

Gene: 1:35:07

here. Although, you know, you look at the I think South Park has covered pretty much everything we've talked about to some extent. Yeah. And so thank God for cartoons. iT's a, what's interesting to me is people like, I can totally say without making a joke out of it, that there are good, positive lessons to be learned. From a lot of different religious texts and say that as an atheist, and I have no problem doing that because I can separate the belief in a deity from the lessons in the book. But I think there are a lot of people in some of these newer religions. That if you can call Islam newer, that that would happily stone me to death for pointing out that there may be lessons. Those lessons don't actually prove existence of a deity at all. I don't think the Mormons would stone me, but they would probably sneakily try to pray for me in order to save my soul against my wishes.

Ben: 1:36:29

Yeah, that or, you know, make sure, make sure and not do business with you and everything else. I mean, there's lots of things like that.

Gene: 1:36:38

Yeah, but it's and incidentally, I think I, I'm all for that. I think more people ought to not do business with people they don't like. I think that's, that's something that we've been for whatever reason, not utilizing way too much and by we, I include myself in that certainly, but. You know, I've only really in my 40s started doing that where companies that I think are bad for humanity, no longer get any money from me. Netflix being an easy example, Target being another example, you know, I never drank Budweiser beer, so it'd be hard for me to say that Budweiser is one of those companies cause I never spent any money with them to begin with. But I think more people ought to do things like voting with their wallets. And not instead of what they currently do with most people just don't know, or don't give a shit who the companies are that they're spending money with. So

Ben: 1:37:40

on spending slash saving money. Did you see the Marriott crossover to the

Gene: 1:37:48

Singapore Airlines? I did. That was awesome. I mean, it's not going to do a whole lot for me, but it might do something awesome for you.

Ben: 1:37:54

whY would, first of all, I already have Star Alliance gold and stuff like that. So I already have flight status. Singapore

Gene: 1:38:00

Airlines is my favorite airline.

Ben: 1:38:02

And that's my point is you have lifetime titanium. So therefore with Singapore airlines, now you have lifetime status. Yeah.

Gene: 1:38:09

So as they keep that partnership.

Ben: 1:38:11

Yeah. But I mean, if you want to go to Europe, for example the Houston to Manchester flight. On Singapore airlines is fantastic. I've done it. It's anyone who wants to, if you want to go from Europe to the U S or the U S to Europe, that should be your gateway city into Europe at this point. Houston and Manchester of all things, just because of that flight, it's cheap, it's nice. I mean,

Gene: 1:38:34

yeah, I used to, when I lived in Minnesota, I always used to fly Minneapolis to Amsterdam. KLM's nice too, which not as nice, but of the similarly priced airlines, it was one of the nicer ones. Plus they gave you the

Ben: 1:39:04

Singapore, Qatari and Emirates.

Gene: 1:39:11

Waking up and immediately after waking up on the flight somewhere in the middle of the Pacific being asked if I, if I'd anything to eat and Mm hmm. Yeah, a lox bagel. Yeah, I'd love a lox bagel. And they said, coming right up, sir. Not Jewish at all. Okay. First of all, everybody likes, likes bagels. They're delicious. I don't. Oh, come on. I don't like salmon that much. You don't like salmon? Really?

Ben: 1:39:38

I am very, very, very picky about salmon.

Gene: 1:39:41

Interesting. Of the ways to prepare salmon, what way do you like the most? Smoked. So Lux? Yes. Perfect.

Ben: 1:39:50

I think, but it has to be, it has to be a saltwater caught salmon. It has to be, you know, lots of things because salmon, salmon, river caught salmon is trash

Gene: 1:39:59

as far as I'm concerned. Yes. But you've had salmon caught off the coast of Washington state and smoked by native Americans.

Ben: 1:40:07

I don't know about by Native Americans, but by people with Native American blood, sure. Same difference.

Gene: 1:40:12

Yeah, and I have as well, and that's usually where I get mine.

Ben: 1:40:15

Yeah, and it, and you know, or cooked on a cedar plank or something like that. There are good ways to do salmon, yes. And the bagels come from New York State. Yeah, but the majority of salmon that is consumed in the U. S. is trash.

Gene: 1:40:28

Yeah, and I, I don't, I'm not as, nearly as much of a fan of cooked salmon, like filet of salmon. I'll eat it. But I'll eat something else if there's something else. But I do smoked salmon. I've always liked smoked salmon ever since I was a kid. Put some good schmear on there. Capers, onions, perfect. So, uh, what were we talking about? Sam, oh, flights. Yeah, Cathay. So Cathay was able to just do without looking at a menu, I didn't know they had it. I just, they asked me a question, I gave them an answer, and boom, they had it. So that pretty much made the airline be very cool for me for the

Ben: 1:41:07

future. Yeah there, there's a whole bunch of other ones that will do shit like that too. Yeah, yeah. Like I had on that flight from Manchester to Houston, they had a little salmon appetizer thing that was basically a rosebud of shaped thing of smoked salmon that was absolutely phenomenal. Yeah.

Gene: 1:41:29

Yeah. That's good stuff. Do you like tuna?

Ben: 1:41:33

I do. I love good tuna. Good tuna. And if you're, if it's canned tuna, it better be a really good canned tuna and it better be an oil, not water. It depends. Like I, I like tuna sandwiches and stuff like that. So there's a use for it. And you know, one of the things I'd say is that you really have how do I put this? Vastly different qualities of tuna that end up in cans. And I, I don't particularly like like. Bumblebee tuna or something like that, especially in water, you know, it needs to be in a good, like olive oil or something like that. And there's some good canned tuna out there that, you know, it is decent. Yeah,

Gene: 1:42:17

I, I don't know, again, I'll eat it if someone's making a sandwich like that, but I just, I like, I prefer he, yeah. If it's raw is the best. And if it's not raw, then just seared.

Ben: 1:42:31

Yeah, something like the pepper tuna or something like that, where you just have a little bit of pepper corn on the outside and seared whole. Yeah,

Gene: 1:42:40

yeah, that's much, much more, but salmon, I don't know. I, I just I like salmon. It's very hardy. It's a, it's a fish that always makes me feel like I've had a good meal.

Ben: 1:42:51

Yeah. I, I prefer I prefer tuna over salmon and I, I love Hamachi. I, I, I, I like sushi. There's lots of things I like. Yeah.

Gene: 1:43:05

Do you like sake? Yes. Yeah. I like, I like Hamachi more than sake, but

Ben: 1:43:14

I mean, you're talking about two different things there, but yes,

Gene: 1:43:18

sake is fatty tuna. Yeah, but I, I will say that as far as cooked fish, I think my favorite has to be red snapper. Interesting.

Ben: 1:43:31

I like flounder a lot. Snapper and drums are good too, but yeah. I love flounder, like you take a flounder, you scale a flounder and you just make some cuts in the skin and you make a lemon butter garlic sauce and bake it for just a little while. And that sauce eat the fish whole man. Really?

Gene: 1:43:54

Oh, yeah. I don't know what it is about it. I will, I'll usually not eat fish at all if it's, if flounder is the only option. Really? You can have all my flounder, man.

Ben: 1:44:07

Uh, uh, what, what's wrong with you, Gene? Are you allergic? I mean, that's the only rational reason.

Gene: 1:44:14

No, no, no. It's, I don't know, I don't know what it is. I just, you know, I'll eat most other fish before flounder. Okay. Interesting. I don't know why, just taste wise. It doesn't really do anything for me. Okay.

Ben: 1:44:34

I love flounder personally.

Gene: 1:44:38

Good. I'll keep that in mind. And if I have some flounder, I'll, I'll let you know.

Ben: 1:44:43

Yeah. Catching flounder is also a very hard fish to catch because of the way they exist and they have a very bony mouth and yeah, yeah. And they have a very bony mouth. So

Gene: 1:44:55

neat. I don't even know what flounder eats.

Ben: 1:44:57

Fish they're, they're an ambush predator, so they sit there and then when something gets close to them, they pounce the problem is you'll get a hit from a flounder when you're fishing and you'll go to set the hook real quick, but they have such a bony mouth that you won't set the hook. It'll just pop right out. So you kind of got a little flounder swallow them. Or you gotta go gigging for them.

Gene: 1:45:19

That makes it horrible to pull the hook back out.

Ben: 1:45:22

You're just not, I mean you, If you let them swallow it, That, that's it. The fish is dead. And then if you don't let them swallow it, You're probably not gonna get them.

Gene: 1:45:31

You're gonna cut the hook? You're not gonna reuse it? No. Yeah, I guess. Hey my my Glasses with, with Did

Ben: 1:45:44

you order them using the affiliate link?

Gene: 1:45:46

No no, cause I, I ordered them last week and then somebody was asking me, what did you get? So I said you should make him the link and then put it, put it into a, you should

Ben: 1:45:58

have ordered them using the

Gene: 1:45:59

affiliate link. When I order things, it's usually at 3am and you're asleep already and you're not going to make a goddamn affiliate link, but yes

Ben: 1:46:05

what you should do. Is order them on Amazon using the affiliate link and then send the others back. Duh.

Gene: 1:46:14

It doesn't work that way. Yeah. I mean, I could, I could just get another pair through the link, but anyway,

Ben: 1:46:20

yeah. Go on and talk about your augmented reality.

Gene: 1:46:23

It's not, it's they're really not a granted reality. They're just for being able to watch shit.

Ben: 1:46:30

All it is really a virtual display for,

Gene: 1:46:34

you know, it's a heads up display inside the sunglasses. That's really all it is. I will say the quality is the best I've ever seen. Really? You think so? It is. Do

Ben: 1:46:45

you have them already physically?

Gene: 1:46:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got them. It's a really high res. It's a full 10 AP image for each eye.

Ben: 1:46:54

Yeah. And this is a 10 ADP image image on a, you know, couple inches of screen real estate, right?

Gene: 1:47:02

In front of your mat. It's probably half an inch. I mean, that, that resolution density is insane on these things. And they're OLED, so they're super bright, which is really cool. In fact, I have it on the second lowest brightness setting generally when I've been using them. They're very light. The, there's one cable that goes from the left back of the glasses, like where it's behind the ear. And

Ben: 1:47:30

isn't this basically just a USB C display? Yeah, that's

Gene: 1:47:33

all it is. It's a USB C cable. It just plugs right into your phone or iPad or a computer. Whatever you want.

Ben: 1:47:40

So basically this is a This is very similar to what Google Glass was trying to do, but Google Glass was trying to be an independent thing, only take up one eye, and They, they,

Gene: 1:47:53

what Google Glass is slightly different. They wanted to have a data screen in the corner of your field of vision.

Ben: 1:47:58

Yes. Which, Google Glass, if made today, would be A, trivial to do, and B, extremely useful.

Gene: 1:48:09

I mean The, the, I think the biggest reason they died is because they put cameras on there and too many people didn't like the idea of people walking around with constant cameras on all the time. Perfectly legal. Not in bathrooms, I mean, is

Ben: 1:48:26

it a public area accessible to the public?

Gene: 1:48:29

However, the camera has other laws that preclude photography of people engaged in certain activities. One of the things you

Ben: 1:48:39

also have to remember is that Google glass kind of predated the dominance of smartwatches even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So really the smartwatch is a good

Gene: 1:48:51

answer to it. Yeah. And they didn't put the cameras in their watches probably for a good reason. Yeah. Yet. You know how many videos

Ben: 1:48:58

actually, some of the Apple stuff has the sensors for the hand motions and stuff. I don't know if any of those are optical.

Gene: 1:49:04

Yeah. They do have sensors for that. They're not. They're they're gyroscope sensors, so they're, they're measuring with the gyroscope. You doing that movement, it's kind of cool. The, so back to the, the glasses thing main reason I got them for is to be able to watch a big screen in front of my eyeball where it looks like a big screen. If I'm flying on an airplane or if I'm in a hotel room and I want to watch a big screen. And in fact, for a while, I haven't done it for many years, but for a while, when I was traveling every week or every other week, I would actually bring a small projector with me and then aim it at hotel ceilings. So I could watch stuff when I was in bed, falling asleep in the hotel.

Ben: 1:49:55

I just don't watch that much stuff.

Gene: 1:49:57

Yeah. YouTube, whatever. Back then it was probably Netflix. And so I don't know. I think it does what it's supposed to do. It is at the very infancy in terms of software, but they do have an an API and a developer kit out and there are a few people that are writing some software for it. The new iPhone 15 Max with the latest software lets you create stereoscopic images.

Ben: 1:50:31

And yeah, it sees it as two displays instead of one. Yeah. And I mean, all this is, is a display. It's not like Apple is supporting this device. They just supporting multiple USB C displays. Yeah.

Gene: 1:50:44

And

Ben: 1:50:45

so let's be clear about that because yeah.

Gene: 1:50:49

I don't, I don't know if we're not clear. Why aren't we clear? We're clear. So the bottom line is it's a neat device. Main purpose is just being able to watch shit. From, and, and actually the phone being the source is pretty damn cool. Cause you can literally have it in your pocket and then be watching something on what looks like a big screen. it's, it appears as though it's a 200 inch display in front of you. wHatever that size is. What is that? I don't know 15 feet, something like that.

Ben: 1:51:19

I mean, that's on the diagonal, but sure.

Gene: 1:51:22

It's, I'll tell you this. It's roughly the same size as my projector screen in the bedroom. So that should tell everybody exactly

Ben: 1:51:31

what's and by the way, 200 inches divided by 12 is 16.

Gene: 1:51:39

6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 15, something like that. So it's, it's close enough. It's decent enough size. You could plug it into your Mac. It's only 1080p though. It's

Ben: 1:51:52

1080p, yeah. But it's 1080p right at your

Gene: 1:51:55

eye. Right at your eye, yeah. And it's LEDs, which means that the pixels don't have that screen door. Which is the thing that always pissed me off about VR goggles. All the VR goggles I've ever tried had the screen door effect, you know, you know, I'm talking black, black pattern around every line. Yes. And this doesn't, this feels very continuous. So it's reasonably priced. It's just under 500 bucks.

Ben: 1:52:24

See, I think it's very expensive for what it is because all it is is a dumb display.

Gene: 1:52:28

Yeah, it's a dumb display of good quality and the first version of this thing that I finally bought, I actually played with and looked at in Japan in 1999. And I was very close to buying it, but I didn't like the screen door effect. And that display was, I think 320 by 480 and it costs about a thousand bucks at the time. And that was 23 years ago. So we can. Maybe not a long way but we've come some way. We've come so far away. We've come a we've, we've come a bit of a way. I mean, we've

Ben: 1:53:08

resolution and every, we, we really haven't I mean, if you look at the display resolution we were doing in the early two thousands on like high end expensive monitors versus today I mean, it's

Gene: 1:53:24

cheaper. That's the

Ben: 1:53:25

main thing. The price has come down. But. Eight K is what you're pushing. I mean, we're literally only eight times on the very highest in display for 20 years of development. That's, I mean, now you, you could argue that that's pushing the limits of human vision and there's really no point after that.

Gene: 1:53:44

The next bump is, I think human vision is about 12 to 14 K. And we're at eight. So we. Eight K they're, they're so misnamed. I hate the fact that marketing names. So 4k monitors actually have 8 million pixels on them. And, but they're called 4k.

Ben: 1:54:05

It's one leg of the resolution, right? So you have to remember that's the vertical resolution versus the horizontal.

Gene: 1:54:13

No, I, I know that, but I'm saying that it's,

Ben: 1:54:16

it are the inverse actually. So it's the horizontal resolution

Gene: 1:54:20

displays. Our four times the resolution, which is 32 million pixels, but it's

Ben: 1:54:27

8, 000 pixels in one direction, one direction. Yeah.

Gene: 1:54:31

So those displays are absolutely 100 percent beyond the resolution of the eyeball. So when we hit those, there is no reason to go beyond that. We will be finito. Okay. We're very close, but I agree. Like we had high res monitors, even, even in the analog days before we switched to digital monitors. We still had fairly high resolutions, not as high as today, but pretty damn good. In fact, I have. I think I still have in the garage a a 1600 by 10, 20, yeah, 1600 by 10, 24 monitor that was an SVGA analog port on the back.

Ben: 1:55:26

And you know, you want to hear something sad though? What's that? There are still programs that high DPI scaling is a problem, not just on windows, but Linux high DPI. Yeah.

Gene: 1:55:43

I've

Ben: 1:55:43

been fighting that for a while, like I had like project Libre on Linux as a, you know, MS project alternative does not, because my, my laptops that I'm using have high DPI screens, a big 15 inch laptop with high resolution screens. And, yeah, it's not, it's it's not great.

Gene: 1:56:08

It is the year of Linux. Apparently I didn't realize that we will

Ben: 1:56:11

see. We'll see. It's been the year of Linux for a long time. Yeah. For the last couple of decades.

Gene: 1:56:17

Yeah. But I mean, it's actually making inroads into desktop. I think last survey I saw was 4 percent of all desktops are Linux though.

Ben: 1:56:25

Yeah. And I mean, Mint and Ubuntu and things like that are making their way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Apple, Apple, I mean, they, they are no longer in the desktop game in any meaningful way at all. And. And actually you know, depending on what you want to do again, I just, Windows has killed itself with 10 and 11. I can't continue. I've always had Windows as my main workstation because for our workstation, the Windows operating system was great. My, I've used Windows server extensively throughout my career. The one thing Windows Server does right is actually domains and Active Directory. If you try to run an LDAP instance of Active Directory or LDAP authentication. As the primary, if you run a Linux domain, it sucks compared to windows. It really does. Even going back to the NT days, right? So NT promoting a domain controller in NT four sucked ass today. It's really easy. But LDAP today, setting up an LDAP domain controller is about what it was in T4, right? Oh really? Jesus. Oh, it sucks, dude. It, it, it, no, at least not that I've seen, no one's made it easy. Doing trust, doing lots of different things. I, I've, I've spent a lot of my career doing a lot of cross system authentication and Windows Server Active Directory is, is good. Okay. That, that's one of the best things Microsoft did. For everything else. If your application or anything else supports Linux or a BSD, you're far better running the application server, the file storage servers, everything else in a Linux or BSD variant. I remember one of the backup servers I built in the early 2000s for a company. Before a lot of the legal challenges and before Oracle did a lot of what they were doing back when Solaris was still a viable operating system and ZFS was just emerging. We made this huge, huge ZFS data pool for customer backups and stuff that was. That was cool. That was cool to do cross independent hardware, lots of different thing. We actually made a, it was cheaper because spending the money to try and develop, you know, rate arrays, and this is pre really sans as a thing. And when I say saying that, I mean, storage area networks. So we started building these EFS pools and adding to it and distributing it multiple data center. I mean, we got really cool. And this is in the early 2000s again, so we're running it all in one gig

Gene: 1:59:12

ethernet. I'm sorry, were you running on one gig ethernet?

Ben: 1:59:17

Yeah, yeah, but again, you had to have local, this was network attached. This was network based storage. So most of the customers were uploading, transporting essential backups from, you know, a couple megabits per second if they were lucky. So us having one gig, the storage speed was not the issue, you know. It was the redundancy and the distribution and the size.

Gene: 1:59:46

Yeah, I remember I had I can't remember the name of the company. I actually have an affiliate code for it, but I can't remember what the hell they're called. But they do desktop in the cloud backup storage. They've been around forever. The thing they're famous for is their year end hard drive reviews. Cause they have so many drives that they utilize.

Ben: 2:00:08

Yeah, I know who you're talking about. Yes, I do. Those

Gene: 2:00:11

guys when I, I remember on their home plan, they would let you back. Back

Ben: 2:00:17

bla anything back bla Yeah. Back bla back bla. Yep. Yep. Anything that they, they built that in their storage array that they built. Yeah. And this predates them, by the way.

Gene: 2:00:25

Mm-Hmm. My, my point is, I, I had a this is like a decade ago, I had a a, a 20 terabyte nass, but it wasn't Nas it was, it was just a, a. A what do you call it? I'm blanking out. Drobo. Yeah. It was, it was basically a drobo. Yeah. But it was like with the, the biggest drives available at the time. Mm-Hmm. And it was plugged into the Mac. It took them or me, two months to finish that backup. Mm-Hmm. not because I was maxing out the speed, but because they actually limit the speed of intake. Because they don't want people, you know, like maxing out their, their lines. I remember like when that was done, I said I got the backup done, but I've now realized that it's pointless because if anything crashes on this end. I'm going to need two months to get it back. That's an endless amount of time. And if I want to find one file I accidentally deleted, obviously I could do that.

Ben: 2:01:30

Yeah. I mean, in the early two thousands, realistically, if you wanted offsite storage, it meant offsiting tapes. It meant offsiting lots of different things. And. Spitting storage was expensive and hard to do again. We were trying to do some of the items where we were offsetting certain key files, things like that. And we needed a large spinning tools of information. But you got to remember, this is circa 2003, 2005. For maybe a little later the point is at that point in time, most of your backups were an automated tape machine, and that was the only way you were going to get reasonable storage. Density was through tape at the time. So when we're talking about these things. Don't judge it based off today, judge it based off of them. And tape is still the cheapest storage medium to this day. Um, you know, as far as data density, because of the surface area that you have. But, you know, obviously they've gone the way of the dinosaur just because of access speed and everything else. So if all you're doing is writing a data block and then just reading a continuous data block. Tape is fine. It's the random seek. So finding a specific file out of hundreds that just destroys tape because literally got a scan back and

Gene: 2:02:58

forth. Yep. It was pretty good for, for the time. Yeah. And yeah, we also had, now you were, you're, you're young enough or old enough to remember the, all the optical disc, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those were so awesome when they first came out. It was like,

Ben: 2:03:21

holy shit. I'm taking myself back to 1998 right now. I actually, I remember the gaming PC that I built to play some of this. And back in the day I had a quantum fireball hard drive, which was RPM hard drive and had it was multiple gigabytes and massive cash. And I had an AMD K six two processor, 128 megs of Ram and a Voodoo three graphics card. I mean, I was. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the games I was playing at the time was Half Life. Yeah. Anyway on my Linux box Steam has recompiled and now natively supports Half Life on Linux. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going back through and playing the 25th anniversary edition of Half Life. Are you, are you

Gene: 2:04:12

actually going to do that?

Ben: 2:04:14

I already am. I, I'm, yeah, I'm several hours into it

Gene: 2:04:17

already. And what's your impression?

Ben: 2:04:21

It holds up. It's a, it's a good first person

Gene: 2:04:23

shooter. I think he has the monsters, it's scary.

Ben: 2:04:25

Yes. Yes. If you're, if your headphones are on and you're paying attention, yes, it will still startle the shit out of you. Of course,

Gene: 2:04:33

if you're playing half life, it's got to be after midnight. I

Ben: 2:04:37

mean, I, I play it all different times, but. Huh. Anyway, I love that game. I'm, I'm Counter Strike was the first online first person shooter. I ever really got to play. My, my first real games other than like Mario and, you know, Castle Wolfenstein and the, the first, the first games I was like modifying my computer to make sure I could play and play well was Half life and Counter Strike, obviously, and the World War II variant of that. Which I can't even remember what it was called, but I've got it on Steam. And then Descent. Descent was one of my favorite games back in the day. All the Descents. I don't remember Descent. Oh, you didn't play Descent? I don't think so, no. Dude, you've got to go to good old games or Steam and get Descent and play it. It's a flight simulator where you're fighting robots. It's fantastic. It is. For someone who likes space shit as much as you do and you haven't played Descent is insane. Descent was one of my favorite games.

Gene: 2:05:47

Absolutely. My gaming took a pause for quite a while. So I basically didn't really play video games. From about 93 till about 2004. So I didn't play him for about 11 years. So the

Ben: 2:06:05

original Descent came out in 1994 and Descent 3 came out in 1999. Yeah, that explains it. Yeah, and but Descent, oh my god, it is such a good game. Yeah, that, that, anyway, I'm, I'm dropping the wiki in the chat, take a look. Okay. I, I doubt you'll play it now, cause you'll be like, Oh, the graphics,

Gene: 2:06:31

eh. Yeah, probably, I hate shitty graphics.

Ben: 2:06:34

Yeah, Gene, you know, playing a video game for the graphics is like watching porn for the story.

Gene: 2:06:40

I can't watch porn that doesn't have a good story. Oh, I remember this thing, yeah, I did play it. It's a fun game. Yeah. Parallax, I remember para Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 2:06:51

It's not parallax, it's descent.

Gene: 2:06:54

No. The developers Parallax software. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So I had, if I remember right, if this is the right game, I actually played this in 3D. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty

Ben: 2:07:08

sure it was. They have a, the, the three, they have a 3D version of it that came out in 99.

Gene: 2:07:13

Because I had, yeah, because I, I had the shutter glasses.

Ben: 2:07:18

Yeah, it holds the Guinness World Record as being the first 3D first person shooter. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 2:07:24

And with the voodoo card, you could actually, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Ben: 2:07:31

Yep. Anyway, that, that, those are the games that I grew up on. So I'm, I'm kind of going back to that. Cause I, I'm not like Jean, I don't give a shit about graphics. I like play and you know, I, some of the old stuff is actually harder in a lot of ways. Cause it's not, yeah. So easy. It's not rendered perfectly.

Gene: 2:07:50

Hey, not only that, I don't think the hardness of games has changed at all, not appreciably, I think. They've, it's gotten easier in a lot of ways. Yeah. Some things have gotten easier and certainly the availability of controllers has gotten much better. Oh my God. The controller is so sucked back when I was a kid. Oh, first

Ben: 2:08:08

of all, if you're not using. W a s you know, D and a mouse, you're not gaming, you're playing around on the nothing. So I mean, you gotta remember, I grew up when the consoles all sucked, there were no good consoles and. The PCs, you could do so much more. The games for the PC, everything was so much better. Oh, the flight simulator, everything,

Gene: 2:08:38

but, but that's what I'm talking about. But the flight sim, you still need a joystick for.

Ben: 2:08:42

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even descent, the flights, it was better with a joystick and everything. Yeah. But you know, back then the, the, the competition, the, you have to remember the competition. Yeah. The best competition console was an N64, which sucked. Yeah. And then when I was in college is when the first X Box came out, you know?

Gene: 2:09:05

Yeah. And that had amazing graphics for when it came

Ben: 2:09:07

out. Oh yeah. And I loved Halo, but Halo on the PC was better than Halo on the Xbox.

Gene: 2:09:13

Games on PC have always been better because they, they don't have the constraints of the CPU and the shitty video cards so that you can make them. So that. You can have high resolution. You

Ben: 2:09:23

can have, you can have them for variable specs, which is nice, which means what would most game manufacturers do is they take. What is the high end and they build that as kind of the middle of the road for their specs and then challenge the hardware to catch up to the game is the way the PC gaming industry has gone for a long while

Gene: 2:09:45

now. Unfortunately, what some games have done, depending on the game is they build the game for the current generation console or maybe in the next gen console and then port it to PC. And then start working on expanding the textures and the resolution,

Ben: 2:10:02

which is not the way to

Gene: 2:10:03

do it. You got to, yeah, it's, it's a crappy way as a PC player. I think it's the crappy way to

Ben: 2:10:08

do it. Because you're never going to maximize the PC. Yeah. So anyway, but most people today are console gamers, right? Yeah.

Gene: 2:10:18

But that's why you, and games like star citizen, which don't have a console version and probably will never have a council version, can't have a console version there. Yeah. I mean, the council would have to be more powerful than today's high end PCs basically. To be able to run the damn thing. yoU know, games like that, you're, it's a trade off, right? So they're limiting their market share because everybody knows if you can sell on the console, you're going to make serious bank. If you're limiting yourself to PC gamers, only you'll make money, but it's just, it's not going to be anywhere near as much as consoles. Yeah.

Ben: 2:10:54

Regardless, I just had to let you know, I'm I've, I've been going back and

Gene: 2:10:58

playing now once again exercising your brain about time.

Ben: 2:11:05

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, my reflexes are definitely way slower than they used to be. Right. Exactly. That is a thing. It's a total thing. That is a total thing. I have to get used to that.

Gene: 2:11:17

I, I'm telling you, I, looking back, I think I peaked my reflexes probably at about 29 and they've never gotten, like they started going downhill after 29.

Ben: 2:11:29

Yeah. I, I, did you ever play Quake? Yeah, of course. All right. So I remember during the Quake three days, we used to have these huge land parties and everything else. And Quake is a very ADD, schizo multiplayer game in a lot of ways. And I actually used to use a track ball for Quake. Yep. I did too. And the reason why is because you could sit there and spin it and spin your character around and then stop it in a way that you could never do with a mouse. Yeah, so if you got good at it, it was pretty

Gene: 2:12:01

amazing that having that free spin ability, you're absolutely right on. And it's 1 of the things that unfortunately, very few mice have. A free spinning wheel anymore. Yeah. There's only a couple of mice that still do. And it is very useful in games to be able to just flick and have something, just keep going until you stop it instead of continuously having to move your fingers around all the time. But yeah, I use, I actually use the track ball for everything back then back in the mid nineties. And I kind of, I think I really. I went probably to touch pads first and then back to mice after I started gaming again in the two thousands, because I realized I need that fine level of control for aiming. Yeah. Yeah. The game that really kind of sucked me in and made me build a PC was battlefield 1942 because prior to that, the games I was playing were like civilization you know, or some city. There were games that didn't require a

Ben: 2:13:05

whole lot of spec. Which by the way Civ 6 is also installed on my Linux laptop. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steam has, Steam has recompiled a shit ton of games at this point, dude. You ought to look at it, because they're even setting up some of the new releases to be very playable on Linux. Windows is dead. Windows, one of the main things you used to keep it for was gaming, and that is going

Gene: 2:13:30

away. I, I think it is because now that the toolkits have been compiled for Apple's own silicon both for Unreal five engine and for, Oh shit. I forgot the other engine, but two major engines basically are now filing game. You can compile your game for the Mac natively. And that, that chip is a lot more DSP ish, which means it can do a hell of a lot more parallel processing than what most people are running their Windows on. And so the, the games coming out for the Mac, which used to be like, you know, Let's just say later games,

Ben: 2:14:12

well, but, you know, used to

Gene: 2:14:13

seeing flipping around. So we're going to be all the top games are going to come up with a Mac as well. It

Ben: 2:14:18

used to be though, that there was a big movement of windows users who would run their own hardware that would build their own PCs and everything else that's largely gone away. The fact of the matter is the people who are running custom PCs are running some Linux variant and, or can run some Linux variant. At, you know, full driver support and everything else. And the, the, the PC gaming market has moved away from windows is what I'm getting at, like there'll be people like, but

Gene: 2:14:50

there could be trending that way. I'll give you that, but it sure as hell hasn't moved away from windows still is 95 percent of the market. Yeah,

Ben: 2:14:57

but I think that's going away because again, all right. So steam, steam, for example, if the average windows user is just going to go buy commodity, whatever hardware period. Yeah. And a four or 500 laptop is what 90 percent of people are running.

Gene: 2:15:14

And as far as Linux, to your point, steam deck is running Linux. Exactly. So the steam, if they're recompiling everything to run on steam deck anyway. Exactly.

Ben: 2:15:24

And the hard, the, the OS parasitical load of hardware utilization is so much less. Yeah,

Gene: 2:15:33

that's true. yeAh. And because it's depending on the game, you know, even just like shutting down the browser makes a difference on a system with 128 gigabytes still makes a difference of RAM. Yeah. Of RAM, not a hard drive of RAM. Yeah, exactly. So it's, it's. I was, I have to confess, and we better wrap up, we're going over, over time, over time, but I was looking through the the chip and motherboard section of Newegg the other day, and I'm like, ooh, am I getting, am I getting the

Ben: 2:16:08

Is that your Christmas present, Gene?

Gene: 2:16:10

No, I, I, I think the glasses are perfectly fine for a Christmas present. I don't need to get anything else for a Christmas present for myself. It's you know, good enough. Good enough. They're not super useful. They're only useful when I travel. But I still am looking forward to having them. I've, I've watched a few movies on them now. And they're perfectly adequate for that. You theoretically could even use them in, in lieu of a monitor plugged into a computer. But. The monitor looks better because it's

Ben: 2:16:41

physical. Yeah. So I had to just use a snipping tool to do something here. Oh, okay. aNyway. Yeah. I, I, I hear you. I hear you.

Gene: 2:16:56

So anyway I'm glad we, we got you playing video games. That's a good thing. I

Ben: 2:17:00

guess it's a time suck, but you know,

Gene: 2:17:02

whatever. You know what? It's a time suck, but I think of the different time sucks, it's much better than watching YouTube videos.

Ben: 2:17:09

Oh, I, I, I don't know about that.

Gene: 2:17:12

And, I can listen to audio books while I'm playing video games.

Ben: 2:17:16

Yeah. I, I'm usually listening to the game.

Gene: 2:17:19

Yeah, but it depends on the game. But if I, like lately I've been playing World of Warships. Yeah, which I, I think is, is a perfect game for middle aged men. So

Ben: 2:17:28

question, Jean, on your zoom background, on your zoom icon here, if I zoom into your glasses and the reflection in your glasses and the background aren't copacetic, yeah, you think, yeah, I'm just saying, yeah, they're not, that's great. Yeah, I just noticed that that's all

Gene: 2:17:48

the background is AI based. Huh. Okay. And you know, it's I was in Mexico, mm hmm. Mm hmm. Sure. Sure you are. You could, you could see the backgrounds of Mexico. It's snowing there right now. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, look at you, pixel peeping the photos on a Zoom call. Yeah. I

Ben: 2:18:10

just noticed it. It just, it was like, wait, wait a second. Do you like my hat? Do you like the hat? Yeah. Your, your beard hat.

Gene: 2:18:17

My beard hat. I love that thing. I think it's such a cool idea. It's so meta. Yeah. Yeah. It's a guy wearing a hat that has a picture of a guy in glasses, or the guy in glasses wearing a hat with a picture of a guy in glasses.

Ben: 2:18:31

With a beard. Although the beard doesn't really match

Gene: 2:18:33

your beard, though. They do have a new version out for a gray beard. With a longer beard. Yeah. I, I don't know.

Ben: 2:18:41

With the skunk striped down the middle. The

Gene: 2:18:43

black and white is good. I, what I may get is just a black version of the hat with the white for the, instead of the black for the beard, but I don't know. We'll see. All

Ben: 2:18:54

right, Jean. I will see you next week. Actually, we're going to be in person. Oh, we

Gene: 2:18:59

are.

Ben: 2:19:00

Where's that? Shooting.

Gene: 2:19:03

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're having a range day. Yeah.

Ben: 2:19:05

You have an invite.

Gene: 2:19:07

I do. Did you send me one? Good. Yes. Okay. And it's

Ben: 2:19:11

in your email. Oh, perfect. Yeah.

Gene: 2:19:14

Thursday. Thursday. Let me see what's going

Ben: 2:19:17

on Thursday. That's the date you said. So that's the data set

Gene: 2:19:24

January. We're still in this month. Oh yeah. It says a range. They been cool. Yeah. So we're

Ben: 2:19:30

going to have a handful of people there at the very least.

Gene: 2:19:33

All right. Because remember if nobody RSVPs, you're coming up here.

Ben: 2:19:37

Yeah. We are already got

Gene: 2:19:38

RSVPs. Oh, you do? Okay. So who else coming?

Ben: 2:19:42

lEt's, we can talk about that offline. Yeah,

Gene: 2:19:44

exactly. All right. We

Ben: 2:19:46

got it. I don't want to, I don't want to what is it called? Docs. Anyone? Yeah.

Gene: 2:19:50

Yeah. Let's not docs anyone. That's a good point. wE got anything else or we wrapping up? I think that's good. All right. Sounds good. I will catch you this coming week, I guess.

Ben: 2:20:00

We'll see you then. Gene.